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Title: It Won't Be Long
Author: Kay Tee
Rating: NC-17
Setting: Takes place just before 'Sleep Tight'



Connor was not the first child Darla gave to Angel.

The first one was a missionary's daughter-- ripe-skinned and sweet-
smelling with wide, happy eyes.  If Angel had found her a few years
earlier, she would have been a satisfying snack, an act of defiance
against any lingering human instincts he retained.  There had been
hundreds of babies before the curse-- screaming, squealing,
squirming, wretched children.  Darla liked to give them to him as
gifts, but she gave him many trinkets-- a sword, a whip, a knife, and
some more subtle toys, for more subtle games.  But a child is always
an unsubtle thing, and Angel knew just what Darla wanted in return
for her gift.

He ran away, taking the infant with him as he escaped China, Asia,
the East, and every piece of land he'd ever seen or touched.  Angel
had planned to leave the baby girl at an orphanage in Hong Kong or
Tokyo, but their conditions were appalling.  When he arrived in
America, he stopped at a dozen different doorsteps, almost leaving
the child behind, but none of the homes seemed quite sweet enough,
quite right enough for his Shannon.

He'd named her on the boat that brought them to their New World.
She'd been a soft pet to him, a distraction on the slow journey,
troublesome to feed, to clean, to quiet, and so she had kept his time
full, and his mind occupied.

Finding no comfortable home in the human world, Angel eventually
settled in San Tuario, a muddy village in central Mexico populated
mostly by peaceful demons.  They watched him clumsily build a small
clay home, their eyes full of distrust; they knew his reputation.
Angel half expected, half hoped he would be murdered in his sleep by
his neighbors, but they never came near him.

They watched him play with the little girl he'd adopted, and slowly
they began to trust him.  He never befriended the locals, but they
eventually stopped waiting for him to rise up in violence.  Angel and
Shannon stayed in San Tuario, away from any humans, away from change
and temptation.

But change comes, as does temptation.  Most of the demons of San
Tuario were unaging, like Angel, but Shannon was human, and she
grew.  A happy child, she lived for years as Angel taught her to,
without knowledge of the outside world, and without ever knowing
another human being.

The spent nearly every waking moment together, Shannon choosing to
sleep during the day in Angel's arms.  They didn't talk much.  Angel
was too reticent, and because Shannon idolized him, she learned to
adopt his ways, his mannerisms, as she adopted his vampiric hours.
Still, they made good company for each other and shared many a
quietly tender moment.

Once she was old enough, Angel allowed Shannon to spend her days
tending the meager garden that supplied most of her food.  She took
advantage of this small freedom to socialize with the offspring of
the local demons.  They whispered to her of war, love, and truth.
They taught her about everything that Angel wanted to shield her
from, and she grew apart from him, wily and alive, and beyond
controlling.

Angel had always assumed that by the time Shannon was twelve, he
would have to take her to a human village to be educated in the ways
of her own people, but he couldn't do it, couldn't share her.  They
always slept side by side on a bare straw mat, Angel watching
Shannon's eyelids twitch while she slept, her blood pumping warmly
through her childish body.  She usually provided for him a small
temptation-- she was, of course, the only human in the area.  But the
longing for blood had become an old ache in Angel even before he met
Shannon, so he watched her, and he hungered, but he got used to the
feeling.  He got so used to the feeling that he barely noticed the
shift, so subtle, so dangerous.

Shannon was just a child, but he was just a man.  He'd spent a
century and a half abusing the bodies of boys and girls her age,
teaching children lust and corruption for the sake of his own
enjoyment.  Even with his soul, part of Angel still craved the bodies
of innocents as he craved their blood.

The vampire watched his daughter as he had spent most of his life
watching humans.  He had always studied them as they played, dreamed,
and worked, trying to discover the best ways to destroy them.  Angel
no longer wanted to wreak destruction on the innocent, but he feared
it was his only destiny.

Shannon was twelve, and lovely in her purity.  She would dance naked
in the rain, red hair clumped and wet down her back, lithe body, pale
and slim, rolling to the music in her head-- the wet beats the locals
created on their exotic instruments, borne from distant eras and
dimensions.

Angel liked to stand in the doorway of their hut and watch her slide
through the mud, dancing back to back with blue-skinned children,
albino fire demons, sharp-toothed elves, and pudding-like freckle
fairies who bestowed kisses up and down Shannon's cheeks and arms
until she was a two-toned mess of a girl.

On sunny days, Shannon worked in the garden while Angel slept or read
in the shade of their home.  He would listen to her heartbeat, her
soft voice trading jokes with the other villagers in lilting
Spanish.  Sometimes she would laugh, and he knew, *knew* he was no
kind of real father.  He never made her laugh like that: loud and
open, soul laid bare and vulnerable.  Angel had never grown fully
comfortable with himself after he was cursed, had always feared being
too close to Shannon.  He knew what he was capable of.  But the
result was that as she grew older, she seemed to slip farther and
farther away from him.

All her life, Angel would meet Shannon just beyond the doorway when
she came inside for siesta after a long day working in the garden.
He would wipe the sweat from her forehead and hand-feed her
strawberries, allowing the red juice to coat her lips temptingly.  He
wanted her, and she was his, but he never touched, never tasted--
just walked the line of decency.  Angel never thought that Shannon
might guess his weakness, might know a right and wrong other than
what he'd taught her.

She was fourteen the first time she refused to bite into the juicy
fruit he held out for her.  Instead, she took the strawberry from his
hand, eyes locked on his in defiance, and fed herself.

As she aged, her defiance grew and she pushed him further and further
away.

She strayed from their home, testing him.  When she was fifteen, she
went down to a nearby river with some friends.  Angel was frantic
with worry-- she'd never gone so far away that he couldn't hear her,
smell her.  He paced the hut restlessly until dusk, when Shannon
returned, wet and happy.  She bucked all his attempts to punish her--
but then, he knew if he raised a hand to her, that would be the end
of his control.  He would have her, but she wasn't ready yet.  So his
punishments were lenient and ineffective.

Soon, Shannon was often too far away for him to sense her; she went
out into the sun and there was nothing he could do to hold her back,
to keep her to himself.  But she always returned before dusk, and
Angel clung to that, clung to every scrap of her he could get.

The idea of bringing her to a human village was totally discarded by
the time she was sixteen.

He had never touched her, not the way he wanted to, but he did want
to, and that was what bothered him so much.  How long could he hold
himself back?  Just until she was old enough.  She never seemed to be
old enough, radiating childish purity from every pore.

When Shannon was seventeen, Angel borrowed a whip from their
neighbor, a tentacled hope demon, and flagellated himself desperately
for about two minutes before he broke down in unmasculine giggles.
He'd always thought the practice ridiculous before his soul was
restored, and even when he was human.  He could never do a proper job
of it, could never punish himself for something that seemed less and
less wrong.

Shannon was almost a woman at eighteen, but still clean in soul and
body.  Angel longed for her painfully, denying himself six months at
a time.  He promised, "In half a year, she'll be old enough; she'll
be ready."  She never was.

By the time she was nineteen, she'd taken to sleeping completely at
night.  When she took up human hours, Angel had been perplexed, then
distraught, as they now no longer shared the pallet for any length of
time at all.  Angel's dismay eventually evolved to relief-- their
daylight hours on the bed had been restless for him.  Her warmth was
always so nearby, though she had stopped snuggling into him when she
was eleven, and had begun to move away from him every time he moved
to hold her by the time she was thirteen.  Now Angel slept better,
and when he was alone in his hut, he indulged in his fantasies;
stroking himself brutally, surrounded by the scent of his adopted
daughter.

Twenty years old.  Twenty-one.  Angel was in despair.  The farther
time took him from his soulless age, the more impossible this immoral
longing became.  He knew Shannon would be ready for him eventually.
He wasn't sure he'd ever be ready for her.

She was twenty-two, and Angel realized he should take her to a human
village, arrange a marriage for her, and disappear from her life
forever.

He wanted so much to feel her, to know her, but she called him Pa-pi
every night when she snuggled into the small bed they once shared,
and he knew his desire was wrong, always would be.

He'd raised Shannon and taught her and loved her her whole life, but
he'd never really known her, never understood her.  He thought it was
because she was a human and he was a vampire.  Or maybe just because
she was stubbornly quiet about everything, never revealing her
thoughts to him when he asked.

One night, Angel came home early from the hunt, his belly full with
some kind of enormous Mexican rat.  He was cross, and went to lie
down on the mat where he knew Shannon would be sleeping.  But she
wasn't there.

He'd always assumed she would one day grow old enough to take a
lover, always assumed that when the time came, he would be her only
choice.  He was shocked that night when he followed her scent and
found her out at the edge of the desert, embracing a hunger demon.

Stunned and unable to move, Angel watched as they made love in the
tall grass, unworried about snakes or wild animals.  His daughter--
his potential lover, his... *his girl* was passionate and uninhibited
with the mysterious, ageless demon.  Angel's rage swept him off his
feet, so he was kneeling and hidden when Shannon kissed her demon
goodnight and ran home.

The demon, Boone, called out to Angel then, having been aware of his
presence throughout the event.  Boone scolded Angel infuriatingly
gently for trying to keep Shannon to himself.  Angel surmised two
things very quickly; Shannon had been hiding her affair for some
time, and Boone was in love with her.

The blue-skinned demon explained that he wanted to take Shannon away,
to show her the world.  In the traditional manner, he even asked
permission for her hand in marriage.  Angel absolutely refused, but
in the end, there was very little he could do.  She was his daughter,
his love, she was *his*, and he would not allow some over-ripe, three-
tongued, empathetic demon to carry her away.  He did the only thing
left in his power; he attacked.

They were evenly matched, fighting with the ferocity of love for over
three hours.  The noise attracted attention from the town, and the
neighbors who had avoided Angel, or feared him, or hated him all came
out of their homes to watch the match.

Eventually Shannon came too, brought by a girl friend who dragged her
down to the field to see.  The beautiful red-head watched her father
and her lover fight to the death.  She stayed completely still, her
face pale and twisted with worry.  She defended neither of them, she
rooted for neither of them, just clasped her friend's hand
spasmodically whenever one of the demons got the upper hand.

The sun was about to rise, and if Angel could have escaped, he would
have, damn Shannon and her tainted honor, lost virginity, total lack
of Freudian devotion-- whatever it was Angel was fighting for, he
wasn't ready to die.  But he couldn't escape, and would have burned
in the sun if Boone hadn't stepped back and let him go.

Simultaneously cursing and thanking Boone's sense of fairness, Angel
slunk back to his hut and waited for Shannon.  She never came home.
Angel paced restlessly, not even pretending to sleep, and waited for
the sun to go down.  Outside, he could hear the normal bustle of the
village, though it seemed a little further away than usual.

When that longest day finally passed, he went into the town and asked
for his daughter, for her lover, Boone.  They were gone.  Part of
Angel was glad.  Getting too close to humans was a dangerous thing.
Perhaps this was Shannon's way of saving him from ruining her.  Some
days he was grateful, others he was bitterly vengeful, but he was
mostly just lonely.  For twenty-two years he'd enjoyed the human
contact she provided, the *humanness* of her.  Now she was gone,
humanity seemed so damn far away.

After a year of waiting for Shannon to come running home to him,
Angel left Mexico.  He knew he could never find her, or if he did,
could never drag her back; he didn't even think of chasing the
lovers.  Shannon was lost to him; Boone was too smart or too in love
to let her go.

Angel traveled north, into the United States.  There, he was
surrounded by humans-- all kinds of temptations.

***

This was his failing, or one of them: He'd always liked young
teenagers, had never really outgrown them as he became a man, years
ago when he was human.

As a vampire, when he was unfettered by magicks, he had found and
debauched only the innocent, the virginal, the child-like.  Darla had
very little patience for his hobbies.  When she discovered his latest
conquest-- that little gypsy girl-- Darla had bound the child up and
carried her home.  Angelus had understood he was receiving both a
gift and a punishment.  There would be fun, but no drawn-out
seduction, no long twisting of purity, no more Drusillas.  Angelus
had made the most of the situation, and there'd been no time for
complaints.

The young were his weakness, the lure the Powers had first used to
draw him into the good fight.

Buffy.

Well, he'd made them pay for *that* decision, at least.

***

But then there was Connor.  Tiny, with enormous blue eyes that gazed
at Angel with so much trust.  A son.  A true child of Angel's own
body.

Angel was sure there would be no temptation, not with his own child,
the only offspring he would ever have.  A baby's skin is soft, like
over-ripe fruit, and not really that tempting to a vampire, though
the blood underneath is the same.  Angel would be safe with Connor,
his love for the boy protecting them both.

At night, Angel sat by Connor's crib, watching his son sleep.  In
that dark room, unbidden and unwanted thoughts still crept into the
vampire's mind.  Angel wondered-- what would Darla's blood taste
like, tied inextricably to his blood, his body?  What would their
essences combined become in their child's veins?  He pushed the
thoughts away with varying degrees of ease.  Not Connor.  He would
not look at his son like that.

Connor's fist was curled to his face, and bright pink lips attempted
to wrap themselves around the whole hand.  Angel watched his child
sleep and tried not to be tempted.  He had years and years with
Shannon before he ever wanted to hurt her, and she wasn't even his
true daughter.  Surely, Angel's own son would be safer from him,
would be precious and unharmed always.

Connor fussed and twisted in his sleep, and Angel stood, ready to
pick the boy up if he woke crying.  But Connor settled again and
Angel stayed on his feet, staring at the scar on Connor's cheek.  If
only Angel had taken advantage earlier...  If only he had tasted...

Angel shook his head.  He would never hurt his son.  Never touch,
forbidden.  Never take.

The vampire sat down again, watching Connor sleep, wondering how
strong the temptation would get as the years passed, wondering if
bloodlust would become bodylust, wondering if he could resist forever.

Angel tried not to think about those eyes, Darla's eyes, peering up
at him in adoration from the face of a teenage son, tried to believe
that Connor would be nothing like Shannon.  Tried to believe that he
was a good man, and could be a good father.

But Angel knew: he was never good at resisting temptation, and
children grow so fast.


-End
 

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