Best Souvenir, chapter 14
Chapter fourteen of Best Souvernir. (Whistler never existed. Buffy and Angel meet after the End of Days is over. Future fic, alternate reality.)
A/N: Sorry about the wait. Thanks so much for your patience and anyone who is still interested. Hopefully more will come soon. Big thanks to a2zmom.
Chapter 14
They walked toward the subway station, neither one of them speaking. The streets were eerily silent, even for this time of night, and the shadows seemed uneven, wavering somehow. EEK was still watching them.
The feeling dissipated once they got on the subway, but Angel still didn’t like it. There had been something stronger and darker than Ubel Knopf in that building, and the meeting itself hadn’t been about his account or the papers. It had been a test, and Angel wasn’t entirely sure he had passed. It should have been simple, really. EEK was a bank a lot of demons used. Transactions were not normally conducted here in Manhattan, it was true, but if a demon had to go through some kind of trial every time he wanted to access his funds, the bank wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as it was.
But if Angel had thought carefully about it, he would have realized that if the Immortal really wanted him, a lot of the demon community would be treating him . . . differently. He was wanted, and being watched, even if no one but Buffy had explicitly come to find him yet. He shouldn’t have expected that something like this would follow normal procedure. What had kept him steady was they-They: Ubel, EEK, and whatever It was-hadn’t known about Buffy. The test had been for him, and him alone. He had only truly begun to be concerned when Ubel’s attention turned from him to the Slayer.
Whatever it was that had been in that building with them, it was bigger than both of them. It was something they couldn’t defeat-not yet, anyway. He would have done anything to keep her safe, to get her out of there alive.
But if whatever Ubel was, or whatever they were facing, was really that powerful, had he really tricked it? Could anything really justify what he had just done? What kind of man touched her like that, and enjoyed it, not because his hands had squeezed her breast, or brushed her inner thigh, or even because her heart had been pumping like a rabbit under his grasp-but because she was hating it so much? She’d been livid, outraged, and-he’d smelled it-a little bit afraid, and that had turned him on more than touching her had.
And Ubel got off on it, too. Even if Angel hadn’t been able to see it in the dim light, he could’ve smelled the man’s arousal every time he’d touched Buffy. The man delighted in voyeurism, and Angel had tried to use that fact to distract him, to throw him off. The result hadn’t exactly been helpful. There was no way he was going to take it so far as to let that man participate, but hadn’t breaking his wrist made it worse? What was Ubel Knopf playing at? Did EEK already know he had a soul; were they just jerking his chain?
If so, they could consider it jerked. When his hand had begun to travel up her skirt and Ubel had been watching, panting, that had turned Angel on, too, not because he got off on voyeurism, but because she didn’t, because it sickened and ashamed her and made her furious with impotent rage. Few ideas could have been more revolting to him than taking her right there with Ubel was watching them, and yet part of him had wanted to do it, just to debase her. What had made the idea particularly charming was that she trusted him. He didn’t know why, but she did; he could feel it in her body. He could have used that trust against her, and the idea had been so pleasant.
They got off at Bleecker Street and crossed the street to walk the rest of the way to the hostel. Buffy tripped a little on her high heels beside him. It was difficult not to reach out to steady her; the instinct was very nearly a reflex. But he did not want to touch her now. Or he did want to touch her, too much. He wanted to touch her and show her that his hands could be tender, his arms could be safe, his words could be so gentle. They could be; he knew they could-his hands, his arms, his mouth had never had the chances to touch that way or say those things, but he could do it. He could be so good for her. He could-try.
And he would fail. He would only end up hurting her.
She had straightened and was walking on, and he had to take longer strides to follow. The hostel was only half a block away, now, and-
Someone was following them.
It was a different feeling than what he had felt when they had stepped out of the Trump building. His sense of unease then had derived from something in the air, something all around them that he could feel but not see. This, now, was something more-tangible. He stopped, listening for the footsteps he knew he would hear if he only focussed his senses.
Instead, he heard screaming.
“Buffy,” he began.
“I know; I hear it, too,” Buffy said, whipping around. For a single moment, she merely stared up at him. Her face, her expression, her stance-they were all hard, unforgiving. Looking at her was like looking down the barrel of a gun. “Don’t move,” she said. “A muscle-out of place-and you will be gone.”
Buffy spun on her heel and jogged down in the opposite direction they had come, removing her stake from where it was concealed on her inner thigh as she ran-a trick she had learned through years of walloping up on vampires while in mini-skirts. The scream-a woman’s-had come from several blocks down, but as she got closer, she heard nothing more. Another block, and then there was an intersection, and Buffy stopped short of on the corner to assess the situation.
On the street branching right, framed by a line of Chinese poultry shops with dead ducks hanging in the windows, were four men and a woman. One of the men was quite close to Buffy, obviously meant as a look out, but just as obviously not very concerned anyone would interrupt what was going on, because his back was turned to her. Farther down the street, two men stood on either side of the woman, pinning her to the wall. The last man-looked to be the leader-stood in front of her, leaning in, taunting.
“What do we have here?” the leader sneered.
The woman was medium height, slender, with dark, almost black hair, and wearing a long, flowing skirt. At first, she didn’t answer. Instead, she spat.
The men on either side of her jerked her body so that her head thunked against the brick wall. “Good,” the leader said. “I like it when they don’t behave.”
Buffy walked around the corner, stepping into the middle of the street. “Really? Sounds like we’re going to get along real well.”
The man closest to her, the one supposed to be on watch, lunged at her. Buffy grabbed his arm and twisted. She heard a snap, then a pop-waited for the crackle-then heard a sick thwap as the guy crumpled to the ground, clutching his arm and screaming. “Oops,” she muttered. She hadn’t expected that particular maneuver to carry that much momentum, which meant only one thing. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.
These weren’t vampires, just thugs. Somehow, after all she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, that fact sickened her that much more. At least vampires kind of had an excuse to be sick and evil.
Pissed off, but mostly annoyed, and a little cocky, Buffy lost the stake and surged down the alley past the two guys who had broken off to come at her. She blocked the leader’s fist with a forearm and the other’s kick with a leg, and with her other arm hauled the last one off the woman, knocking him out with another kick. The woman tumbled free, landing on the pavement.
With the four guys down, Buffy moved to help her up. “Hey, you okay?” The woman shook her head. “It’s gonna be alright. What’s your name?”
She blinked. “Jenny.”
“Well, Jenny, you shouldn’t be out by yourself at this time of-mmph,” Buffy finished off, startled. One of the guys had come up behind her, grabbing her scarf, pulling, hard, choking her-no, it was two of the guys, three, jumping her from behind.
No big. They were just humans-except the woman called Jenny was standing there looking as if she was about ready to do something stupid, like try to help. She really wasn’t too bright, considering that she’d been strolling around Manhattan alone at this time of night. The fourth guy, whose arm Buffy had broken, was coming up behind her, ready to jump her. “Run!” Buffy told her, for a split-second distracted from breaking away from the men on her due to her concern for the woman.
Then Angel was there, looking at the woman, lunging past her and throwing down the guy who had been about to attack her. Jenny looked from Angel to the man on the ground. Angel said something to her. Then, finally, she ran.
Buffy kneed the guy trying to pin her, threw off the man behind her, and delivered a punch to the guy choking her that sent him flying to the opposite side of the street. Short work, really-except that one of the guys, running desperately to get away from her, was passing Angel, and he had a knife. And Angel wasn’t paying attention because he was trying to get to her, and even though the vampire had drunk human blood that night he wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape. In fact, he was being downright clumsy, his complete attention so focussed on her he didn’t even notice the guy with the knife. “Angel!” she yelled.
He looked down, startled, when the knife entered his side above his hip. He frowned, and almost leisurely, grabbed the man’s knife arm, turned it back on him, and used the man’s own hand and knife to gouge the thug’s thigh. Then Angel let go and began walking towards her again. “Are you alright?” he asked, when he got to her. His voice was mild and filled with concern. As if he hadn’t even noticed he’d just stabbed someone.
The other men had scattered. The one Angel had wounded was on the ground, howling. Buffy looked at Angel, her expression unfathomable, and then walked over to the guy on the ground.
She knelt beside him, grabbing his good wrist to move his hand away from the injury on his leg. She put her fingers on the gash and pressed down-a lot less gently than perhaps she should have. “It’s not deep,” she reassured him, taking away her bloody fingers to yank at her scarf. She took it off and wrapped the material around the man’s thigh, tying a tight knot. It would soon be completely soaked through, but the pressure should keep the blood from rushing out too fast. Angel had shuffled over to stand by, watching.
“You’ll live,” Buffy told the wounded man. “Keep pressure on it. Go to a hospital. When they ask you how it happened, tell them how you were attacking a defenseless woman in the middle of the night.” She paused, looking thoughtful, and reached into his back pocket. She drew out his wallet and flipped to the ID. “Give them the names of all your friends, too, or I’ll come and hunt you down-” she frowned, looking down at the ID-“James Leon. Got it?”
The man scrambled up, and then hobbled away. Buffy watched him disappear around the corner before she lunged the two feet it took her to get to Angel, and shoved him against the wall. She braced her forearm against his chest, the other against the bricks beside him. “What are you?” she demanded. “I know you don’t have a chip. What are you playing?”
He regarded her passively, almost indifferently. With what seemed like exquisite care, he simply turned his head away.
She pulled her forearm from him and then jerked it back, forcefully, bouncing him against the wall-in much the same way as those ass holes had prodded that woman. She didn’t know why the comparison struck her, or why it made her throat suddenly clench up. She felt like crying. Instead she took his chin in a bruising grip and forced him to look at her. “What did the gypsies he was talking about do to you?” she asked. “When you killed their daughter. What did they do?”
Something flickered in his eyes then-something like fire, something like loathing. Then a wall slammed down, and he began to smile, arrogant, sneering. “They conjured a perfect punishment for me, naturally.” His tone was one of derision, of amusement. “They restored my soul.”
She scowled, letting his chin go. She didn’t see anything funny. “What, they were all out of boils and blinding torment?”
“When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn’t get your soul. No conscience, no remorse . . . . It’s an easy way to live.” Then his smirk grew wider, and Buffy realized suddenly that the hatred and humor weren’t directed at her at all. He was laughing at himself-loathing himself. “You have no idea what it’s like to have done the things I’ve done . . . and to care. I haven’t fed on a living human being since that day.”
Buffy’s other hand dropped from the brick wall and slid down, resting for a moment over his still heart. Then she looked down. “You’re bleeding.”
Angel looked down, too. “Yes,” he agreed, lips still quirking in a twisted smile. The pain in his eyes had nothing to do with the vicious gash above his hip.
She looked back up at him-his face was so close to hers. She took a step back. “Come on,” she said, turning away, and both of them left his blood mixing with the would-be rapist’s in the street.
*
Go to chapter 15
A/N: Sorry about the wait. Thanks so much for your patience and anyone who is still interested. Hopefully more will come soon. Big thanks to a2zmom.
Chapter 14
They walked toward the subway station, neither one of them speaking. The streets were eerily silent, even for this time of night, and the shadows seemed uneven, wavering somehow. EEK was still watching them.
The feeling dissipated once they got on the subway, but Angel still didn’t like it. There had been something stronger and darker than Ubel Knopf in that building, and the meeting itself hadn’t been about his account or the papers. It had been a test, and Angel wasn’t entirely sure he had passed. It should have been simple, really. EEK was a bank a lot of demons used. Transactions were not normally conducted here in Manhattan, it was true, but if a demon had to go through some kind of trial every time he wanted to access his funds, the bank wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as it was.
But if Angel had thought carefully about it, he would have realized that if the Immortal really wanted him, a lot of the demon community would be treating him . . . differently. He was wanted, and being watched, even if no one but Buffy had explicitly come to find him yet. He shouldn’t have expected that something like this would follow normal procedure. What had kept him steady was they-They: Ubel, EEK, and whatever It was-hadn’t known about Buffy. The test had been for him, and him alone. He had only truly begun to be concerned when Ubel’s attention turned from him to the Slayer.
Whatever it was that had been in that building with them, it was bigger than both of them. It was something they couldn’t defeat-not yet, anyway. He would have done anything to keep her safe, to get her out of there alive.
But if whatever Ubel was, or whatever they were facing, was really that powerful, had he really tricked it? Could anything really justify what he had just done? What kind of man touched her like that, and enjoyed it, not because his hands had squeezed her breast, or brushed her inner thigh, or even because her heart had been pumping like a rabbit under his grasp-but because she was hating it so much? She’d been livid, outraged, and-he’d smelled it-a little bit afraid, and that had turned him on more than touching her had.
And Ubel got off on it, too. Even if Angel hadn’t been able to see it in the dim light, he could’ve smelled the man’s arousal every time he’d touched Buffy. The man delighted in voyeurism, and Angel had tried to use that fact to distract him, to throw him off. The result hadn’t exactly been helpful. There was no way he was going to take it so far as to let that man participate, but hadn’t breaking his wrist made it worse? What was Ubel Knopf playing at? Did EEK already know he had a soul; were they just jerking his chain?
If so, they could consider it jerked. When his hand had begun to travel up her skirt and Ubel had been watching, panting, that had turned Angel on, too, not because he got off on voyeurism, but because she didn’t, because it sickened and ashamed her and made her furious with impotent rage. Few ideas could have been more revolting to him than taking her right there with Ubel was watching them, and yet part of him had wanted to do it, just to debase her. What had made the idea particularly charming was that she trusted him. He didn’t know why, but she did; he could feel it in her body. He could have used that trust against her, and the idea had been so pleasant.
They got off at Bleecker Street and crossed the street to walk the rest of the way to the hostel. Buffy tripped a little on her high heels beside him. It was difficult not to reach out to steady her; the instinct was very nearly a reflex. But he did not want to touch her now. Or he did want to touch her, too much. He wanted to touch her and show her that his hands could be tender, his arms could be safe, his words could be so gentle. They could be; he knew they could-his hands, his arms, his mouth had never had the chances to touch that way or say those things, but he could do it. He could be so good for her. He could-try.
And he would fail. He would only end up hurting her.
She had straightened and was walking on, and he had to take longer strides to follow. The hostel was only half a block away, now, and-
Someone was following them.
It was a different feeling than what he had felt when they had stepped out of the Trump building. His sense of unease then had derived from something in the air, something all around them that he could feel but not see. This, now, was something more-tangible. He stopped, listening for the footsteps he knew he would hear if he only focussed his senses.
Instead, he heard screaming.
“Buffy,” he began.
“I know; I hear it, too,” Buffy said, whipping around. For a single moment, she merely stared up at him. Her face, her expression, her stance-they were all hard, unforgiving. Looking at her was like looking down the barrel of a gun. “Don’t move,” she said. “A muscle-out of place-and you will be gone.”
Buffy spun on her heel and jogged down in the opposite direction they had come, removing her stake from where it was concealed on her inner thigh as she ran-a trick she had learned through years of walloping up on vampires while in mini-skirts. The scream-a woman’s-had come from several blocks down, but as she got closer, she heard nothing more. Another block, and then there was an intersection, and Buffy stopped short of on the corner to assess the situation.
On the street branching right, framed by a line of Chinese poultry shops with dead ducks hanging in the windows, were four men and a woman. One of the men was quite close to Buffy, obviously meant as a look out, but just as obviously not very concerned anyone would interrupt what was going on, because his back was turned to her. Farther down the street, two men stood on either side of the woman, pinning her to the wall. The last man-looked to be the leader-stood in front of her, leaning in, taunting.
“What do we have here?” the leader sneered.
The woman was medium height, slender, with dark, almost black hair, and wearing a long, flowing skirt. At first, she didn’t answer. Instead, she spat.
The men on either side of her jerked her body so that her head thunked against the brick wall. “Good,” the leader said. “I like it when they don’t behave.”
Buffy walked around the corner, stepping into the middle of the street. “Really? Sounds like we’re going to get along real well.”
The man closest to her, the one supposed to be on watch, lunged at her. Buffy grabbed his arm and twisted. She heard a snap, then a pop-waited for the crackle-then heard a sick thwap as the guy crumpled to the ground, clutching his arm and screaming. “Oops,” she muttered. She hadn’t expected that particular maneuver to carry that much momentum, which meant only one thing. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.
These weren’t vampires, just thugs. Somehow, after all she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, that fact sickened her that much more. At least vampires kind of had an excuse to be sick and evil.
Pissed off, but mostly annoyed, and a little cocky, Buffy lost the stake and surged down the alley past the two guys who had broken off to come at her. She blocked the leader’s fist with a forearm and the other’s kick with a leg, and with her other arm hauled the last one off the woman, knocking him out with another kick. The woman tumbled free, landing on the pavement.
With the four guys down, Buffy moved to help her up. “Hey, you okay?” The woman shook her head. “It’s gonna be alright. What’s your name?”
She blinked. “Jenny.”
“Well, Jenny, you shouldn’t be out by yourself at this time of-mmph,” Buffy finished off, startled. One of the guys had come up behind her, grabbing her scarf, pulling, hard, choking her-no, it was two of the guys, three, jumping her from behind.
No big. They were just humans-except the woman called Jenny was standing there looking as if she was about ready to do something stupid, like try to help. She really wasn’t too bright, considering that she’d been strolling around Manhattan alone at this time of night. The fourth guy, whose arm Buffy had broken, was coming up behind her, ready to jump her. “Run!” Buffy told her, for a split-second distracted from breaking away from the men on her due to her concern for the woman.
Then Angel was there, looking at the woman, lunging past her and throwing down the guy who had been about to attack her. Jenny looked from Angel to the man on the ground. Angel said something to her. Then, finally, she ran.
Buffy kneed the guy trying to pin her, threw off the man behind her, and delivered a punch to the guy choking her that sent him flying to the opposite side of the street. Short work, really-except that one of the guys, running desperately to get away from her, was passing Angel, and he had a knife. And Angel wasn’t paying attention because he was trying to get to her, and even though the vampire had drunk human blood that night he wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape. In fact, he was being downright clumsy, his complete attention so focussed on her he didn’t even notice the guy with the knife. “Angel!” she yelled.
He looked down, startled, when the knife entered his side above his hip. He frowned, and almost leisurely, grabbed the man’s knife arm, turned it back on him, and used the man’s own hand and knife to gouge the thug’s thigh. Then Angel let go and began walking towards her again. “Are you alright?” he asked, when he got to her. His voice was mild and filled with concern. As if he hadn’t even noticed he’d just stabbed someone.
The other men had scattered. The one Angel had wounded was on the ground, howling. Buffy looked at Angel, her expression unfathomable, and then walked over to the guy on the ground.
She knelt beside him, grabbing his good wrist to move his hand away from the injury on his leg. She put her fingers on the gash and pressed down-a lot less gently than perhaps she should have. “It’s not deep,” she reassured him, taking away her bloody fingers to yank at her scarf. She took it off and wrapped the material around the man’s thigh, tying a tight knot. It would soon be completely soaked through, but the pressure should keep the blood from rushing out too fast. Angel had shuffled over to stand by, watching.
“You’ll live,” Buffy told the wounded man. “Keep pressure on it. Go to a hospital. When they ask you how it happened, tell them how you were attacking a defenseless woman in the middle of the night.” She paused, looking thoughtful, and reached into his back pocket. She drew out his wallet and flipped to the ID. “Give them the names of all your friends, too, or I’ll come and hunt you down-” she frowned, looking down at the ID-“James Leon. Got it?”
The man scrambled up, and then hobbled away. Buffy watched him disappear around the corner before she lunged the two feet it took her to get to Angel, and shoved him against the wall. She braced her forearm against his chest, the other against the bricks beside him. “What are you?” she demanded. “I know you don’t have a chip. What are you playing?”
He regarded her passively, almost indifferently. With what seemed like exquisite care, he simply turned his head away.
She pulled her forearm from him and then jerked it back, forcefully, bouncing him against the wall-in much the same way as those ass holes had prodded that woman. She didn’t know why the comparison struck her, or why it made her throat suddenly clench up. She felt like crying. Instead she took his chin in a bruising grip and forced him to look at her. “What did the gypsies he was talking about do to you?” she asked. “When you killed their daughter. What did they do?”
Something flickered in his eyes then-something like fire, something like loathing. Then a wall slammed down, and he began to smile, arrogant, sneering. “They conjured a perfect punishment for me, naturally.” His tone was one of derision, of amusement. “They restored my soul.”
She scowled, letting his chin go. She didn’t see anything funny. “What, they were all out of boils and blinding torment?”
“When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn’t get your soul. No conscience, no remorse . . . . It’s an easy way to live.” Then his smirk grew wider, and Buffy realized suddenly that the hatred and humor weren’t directed at her at all. He was laughing at himself-loathing himself. “You have no idea what it’s like to have done the things I’ve done . . . and to care. I haven’t fed on a living human being since that day.”
Buffy’s other hand dropped from the brick wall and slid down, resting for a moment over his still heart. Then she looked down. “You’re bleeding.”
Angel looked down, too. “Yes,” he agreed, lips still quirking in a twisted smile. The pain in his eyes had nothing to do with the vicious gash above his hip.
She looked back up at him-his face was so close to hers. She took a step back. “Come on,” she said, turning away, and both of them left his blood mixing with the would-be rapist’s in the street.
*
Go to chapter 15