// Radio Free
Disclaimer: The characters of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel are not mine and belong to Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, Mutant Enemy. They are used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
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Feedback is incredibly welcome.
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Angel post-"Not Fade Away"; post-Fray: Future Vampire Slayer. Angel and Gunn in the aftermath.
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Gunn didn't recognize him until he saw the sword. It wasn't that the sword was extraordinary. He'd seen a lot of them in the past several years and most of the time a sharp edge and some incantations would do the trick. It was the combination of stance and sword. Most badass teenage punks didn't go around with swords, even in Gunn's old gang. And most punks did not survive a hellstorm of demons. There were only two buildings left standing and that was because they had managed, in the apocalypse's aftershocks, to end up leaning against each other. Never accuse an apocalypse of making sense.
"I figured you'd show up," said Angel. His voice was different: silk and smoke, none of the hardness that had grown during their time at Wolfram & Hart. Without the suit, with the rags of his shirt, he looked frighteningly young. And his eyes, his eyes were heartbreaking, and Gunn didn't swing that way. Probably. "Only safe place for blocks around."
"You sure it isn't for miles around?" Gunn had tried the radio. One of those hand-cranked things. God only knew if the laws of chemistry were the same. God only knew if anything was the same. He was still breathing. That was good. And Angel was still--breathing wasn't the word.
Angel laughed. It was then that Gunn realized he was a little crazy. Probably not soulless, although he wouldn't put it past Angelus to screw with Gunn's head this particular way.
Gunn must have said Wesley's name, for Angel's sword snapped around. Gunn didn't blink. He knew the way the man fought, knew that arc wasn't going to connect.
"He's gone," Angel said. "I sent him there. And Spike and Illyria."
Gunn looked away. He'd expected, against all reason, for Illyria to be wrong. Then came the dragon and the demons, and the blood leaking out of him, and there was no more time to think about right or wrong or anything but the world's survival in an axe's edge. And that was right, too. Once he'd have assumed that Wesley had his back, no need to think about it. At the end maybe they'd made things right between them. What Angel and Wesley had had between them, Gunn wasn't about to touch.
Gunn asked, "You think anyone in L.A. survived?"
Angel stared out across the expanse of gray-sheened sky. But he had heard Gunn; he said, "Only one way to find out, hmm?"
"Sun rises and you're cooked, man."
"That's all right," Angel said.
Crazy, no doubt about it. "Then we better get started," said Gunn. "Maybe there's shelter out there. Somewhere." His sense of time had gone haywire. No reason it shouldn't. Did time run normally during postapocalypses?
Angel shrugged.
They did a lot of walking in the hours that followed. The light in the sky shifted, suggesting the passage of some sun or moon, if not their own. "Are we in a hell dimension?" Gunn asked. If anyone would know--
"Wouldn't know," Angel said.
"What, you've only gone through--"
"It's not the same."
Gunn wasn't going to press the issue.
After a while, Gunn said, "Not a whole lot to eat around here."
"I'm not hungry," Angel said just as Gunn remembered that Angel was perfectly capable of snacking on humans. There used to be a time when Gunn would always have been aware of that. The things you let experience--friendship--do to you.
And Gunn realized he wasn't hungry, either. Probably post-apocalyptic trauma doing in his digestive system.
They kept walking beneath that troubled sky, taking it slow so they wouldn't stumble over the debris. Gunn started seeing movements in the debris underfoot. "Rats," he said, a little queasy. He'd expected cockroaches. Why did cute things like chihuahuas never survive demonic fallout?
Angel, of all things, shuddered. It was a tiny ripple of the shoulders, but when all they had was each other, it was hard not to notice. "I know."
The going became more difficult. Gravel shifted underfoot, gave way to the jagged edges of holes. Once Angel offered Gunn a hand up. His touch lingered a moment too long. Gunn couldn't decide whether the expression in Angel's eyes was malice or amusement. Well, whatever kept him walking.
The two buildings had faded behind them. Others promised to take its place, dark dreary shapes on the horizon. Gunn wasn't used to being able to look so far in every direction. City boy all the way. The terrain eased. Gunn's feet appreciated it. Come to that--
"You can put your sword away," said Gunn. Wasn't that what the scabbard was for?
"I'll trade you," said Angel, and held his hand out for Gunn's axe.
Well, put it that way, what could he do? They switched burdens. They'd switched off weapons before. You had to be flexible when fighting demons.
"You know," said Angel, "we're the only people who know what happened."
"Wolfram & Hart," Gunn said immediately.
"Well," said Angel, "we're the only people who know the truth. Who can say it."
"To who?"
Angel glanced at him. "You. Me. Whoever's out here."
The clouds broke. The sky behind them was the expressionless color of steel, with faded stars. Gunn didn't recognize the constellations, and if there was a moon, it was hiding.
So was the sun. It took Gunn a while to figure it, the way the horizon bled redder and redder, then golden-orange. And the colors hung there. "Angel," Gunn said, "We're headed east, but we'll never catch up to that thing." He couldn't prove it, which paradoxically made him believe it all the more.
Angel covered his eyes and gazed skyward. "We are in a hell dimension. No sunrise. Ever." He sat down and started to laugh. "The night is always young."
Two hundred years of evil here, good there, fighting for the wrong side or fighting himself, no wonder the man had cracked.
"Get up, man," said Gunn. "Doesn't mean there aren't still people in the night." Help the helpless. They didn't need a business card to do that now that they were out of suits and offices with necro-tempered glass.
Gunn had to nudge Angel with his foot. Angel rose, stretching. He made no protest as they set off again.
The faraway buildings were taller than Gunn had thought, decayed and standing against all inclination. He had a strange sense of walking farther than his footsteps could account for. Angel, for all his blithe expression, seemed to agree. "Look," said Angel, "we were wrong. There's a sunrise at twelve o' clock."
"Not funny," said Gunn, except it was.
The buildings also cast shadows, long shadows that almost took upon misshapen human forms, or maybe demon forms if it came to that. Maybe the shadows were demons. Gunn wasn't discounting anything. They deepened as the livid sun gleamed over the horizon. The air smelled of old roses and contaminated saltwater and rust. Gunn realized the buildings weren't just buildings: they were the outskirts of a city. Well, good. Not that he'd ever been to this part of L.A. Or hell-dimension. Whatever.
"I think we're safe here," said Angel, which made no sense at all. But they had been walking a long time, and Gunn found himself wanting to put the sword down. He handed it back. Angel shook his head. So much for that. "You sleep first."
Gunn shrugged and folded himself up against the lee of a rock. Between nodding off and being jostled awake he didn't dream. Just as well. He snatched up Angel's sword and had cut off the hand of something gray and cadaverous before he was quite awake. "What are they?" he shouted. Eight of them, he counted.
Angel's only response was a snarl. Yellow eyes, fangs, the works. Which startled the gray demon-things enough that Gunn beheaded the next one without much effort. He nearly jumped back when it exploded into dust and the ghost of bones. "The hell?"
The demons were backing away. Angel was smiling. "You really don't know me," he crooned.
Maybe I don't either, Gunn thought, covering Angel's back. "Uh, Angel--"
"You're mine," Angel said as though explaining something to errant children. Gunn felt queasy. "Or do you want to return to dust?"
The six remaining vampires--if you could call them that, with their hollowed-out, misshapen appearance--knew better than to run. Their eyes registered a dull, futile desire for escape.
"Tell me what you know about"--Angel gestured at the shadows, at the looming buildings and shattered, crazy bridges that joined their upper levels--"that."
"Angel," Gunn said, "you really want to stand here jawing with these things? 'Cause if they ain't the weirdest vampires I ever--"
"Gunn," said Angel, still in that velvet voice, "what do you think this says about the people who exist here?"
It took a second for the implications to sink in.
Nothing the vampires--who didn't call themselves vampires, they called themselves lurks--told them made much sense. Gunn wasn't even sure they spoke English, although they seemed to understand Angel well enough, and vice versa. Maybe it was a vampire thing. However it worked, they had a lot to say about the city they called their hunting ground.
Angel dusted them all anyway.
"That was decisive," Gunn said, not sure whether he approved or disapproved. The things were kind of pathetic for vampires.
"It was either that or keep them in tow like I'd sired them." There was an uneasy silence. Angel said, "We're not in the present, Gunn."
"You're going to say that so it makes sense, right?"
"We walked through time. It must have been a dimensional slide." Angel looked around. "And this is the result of what we did."
Gunn appreciated the we. The man could be damned obsessive about taking responsibility. And everyone had voted; everyone had decided. And he could think about this calmly because they hadn't really met anyone human yet, and it hadn't had a chance to become real in his head.
"I'm not the one who has the fountain of youth thing going," Gunn said. "How can we be in the future with both of us alive?"
Angel shrugged. "This is the kind of question we're supposed to ask Wesley." He made a sound like half a laugh. "What, you thought I wouldn't be able to say his name? He's gone. We're here. Either you deal with it or you don't. And there has to be a Slayer here, if there are vampires--"
"Since when did we need a Slayer?" said Gunn.
Angel was silent. Then: "Habit."
"Break it," said Gunn.
Angel said, "She'll need to know, if she doesn't already." About the world that had vanished behind them, the endless fights and prophecies.
"What, so she can stake you?"
"I have you at my back."
Gunn thought about it. This wasn't the Angel he knew, not quite. And he wasn't the Gunn he used to be. But the world, it stayed the same after all: the good fight, the dark nights, demons and sunlight. They could deal with it.
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