a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: End of the Age
Author: Tinkerbell
 Pairing: A/S
Rating: NC-17
Setting: 'Reprise'


So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take
out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace
of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
(Matthew 13:49-50)


There seem to be an infinite number of levels of Hell.

Angel has spent time on them all.

His millennia began, of course, when his one true love in all the world saw
fit to ram a pointed sword deep into his abdomen in order to gain a drop of
his blood.

His blood welled and spilled, he was pulled in agony through the vortex, and
the portal was closed.

Angel remembers being vaguely amused that Hell actually had a gate, complete
with inscription. The inscription itself was hauntingly familiar, and when he
finally placed it, the amusement vanished and was replaced with horror at the
realization that someone had either borrowed from Hell · or Hell had borrowed
from someone.

//Through me the way to the suffering city, through me the way to eternal
pain, through me the way that runs among the lost. Abandon hope, all ye who
enter here.//

Though he had been flayed open from end to end, one of his more rational
thoughts had been that, ironically, he knew exactly where he was going.
'Lost' wasn't applicable.

Hell was pleased to have him, and howled in protest when he was released from
his bondage. His fall back to earth had brought to mind the two men said to
have visited the afterlife and returned: the Apostle Paul, who visited the
third circle of Heaven, and Aeneas, who traveled through Hell in Virgil's
Aeneid.

Angel does not pretend to be as worthy as either of these two men.

For three years Angel lived again on earth and wondered why he felt as if he
still had one foot in Hell. It dogged every step he took, it wrapped
invisible tendrils around his unbeating heart and persuaded him, very gently,
that perhaps Hell was the only true place that he deserved to be.

When of course all along, he hasn't had to go anywhere.

He is right in the thick of it, as he has been for a thousand years.

When Angel met up with the Devil, he had not known the Devil would wear the
face of a seraph.

A dragon, a toad, a reptile · Angel had expected the Prince of Demons to
appear as any of these things. Certainly not as a golden-haired man with a
cherub's face.

Had the archangel Michael expected the same thing, immediately before he cast
Lucifer out of Heaven?

And then the King of Hell had smiled at Angel, and it was a horrible, brutal
thing.

Angel sees that smile in Darla's eyes, hears the Devil's cool tones in her
voice. And when he slaps her and makes her bleed, her blood flows with the
Devil's promise.

//hellonearthangelyou'llalwaysbetrappedinhellonearth//

He penetrates her, tries to reach her dead heart and make it throb with life,
to spill his seed in her and create goodness from sin and warmth from frost.

And the Devil certainly does laugh, sounding suspiciously like Holland
Manners.

Later, Angel would wonder why he had thought that lying with Darla would do
anything to ease the searing cold. He would wonder where his reason had gone
and why he had thought to make an oasis in a desert of snow.

But during · ah, during, Angel only thinks of how damn good it feels to bury
himself in a female body and to have something other than his own rough hand
envelope his thick length and milk his cock until he comes with a gasp and a
shudder.

And Angel does not care who is beneath him. He cares only that his
long-denied release is imminent, he cares only that cool hands clutch at him
and draw him close and murmur his name in the dark. Lithe legs wind
themselves around his waist, aiding his thrusts, and it. feels. so.

//forgivemefatherforihavesinned//

good.

When he wakes again during the night, his first raving thought is how far
away the dawn lies and how long it might take for the morning sun to slowly
smolder his skin.

His second thought is of the wooden cross he keeps wrapped in silk in his
bottom drawer, and if the point of it is sharp enough to penetrate his chest
if he falls upon it.

And his third thought is, 'GodJesusMotherofMaryletmejustfuckheronemoretime.'

So he does, searching again for the oasis in the frozen desert, and the
strange, creeping pain recedes the moment her slickness welcomes him.

The rain begins.

This time, the sex goes on and on, and Angel stays hard as marble for an
eternity. And slowly, Darla fades away and is replaced by another
blond-haired, blue-eyed wraith, this one with lean muscles and a mocking grin
and a harsh scar over his left eye.

//spikeyoucantbehere//

//angelusimalwaysgonnabehere//

And then somehow the pain is worse.

"Are you part of my hell?" Angel asks Spike.

"Quit thinkin' all the damn time, Angel. What the fuck you hope to accomplish
with all yer damn thinkin'?"

The smooth, alabaster skin is too delicious to resist, so he doesn't. Angel
slides down Spike's body until he can take his member into his mouth, and the
guttural sounds of pleasure that result are soothing balms to the ache at his
core.

And just what *does* he hope to accomplish?

Black-nailed fingers scrabble for purchase on the creamy sheets as Angel
swallows his childe to the hilt, tight buttocks clench and hips lift and
still there is no warmth to be found.

And then it is Angel who finds himself impaled, a stiff cock in his ass and a
crown of thorns upon his head.

"You and Joan of fucking Arc," Spike grits out between glistening, dripping
fangs. "Get it through your thick skull, you stupid fuck. There. ain't. no.
such. things. as. martyrs."

'Martyr?' Angel thinks. 'That's for those who can be saved. There's no one to
do the saving.'

And his crown of thorns begins to cut his flesh, and he bleeds.

The third time he wakes, there is no ignoring the grotesque, blinding pain.
He sits bolt upright in bed and gasps out loud, wheezing as if his lungs
needed the air, and when the lightning makes the room into day, he looks
about with wild eyes.

The Devil still lies next to him, blissfully unaware of his torment.

Or, perhaps, very aware.

Angel stumbles to the hallway and down the majestic stairs, unmindful of his
nakedness. It is fitting that he is unclothed, because he had been shivering
and trembling and nude the first time Hell had spit him out. Only right that
he be the same the second time.

Wrench open the front doors, spill out into the rain and the thunder and the
word of God.

Angel lies in the street as martyrs before him have done and lets the rain
wash its realization over him.

He has not left Hell. Hell is here, and he is a minion of it. He has fucked
Darla, he has ground his sire into the bedsheets and wailed and lamented
without making a sound except for the groan of his release, and thought that
little death akin to Heaven.

It was nothing of the sort, and now a cast-out Angel knows Lucifer's own
torment upon being banished from God's kingdom.

He has visited Hell once, and returned. Angel does not hope to be as
fortunate again.

~End

Feedback