// Shade
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." Angel, Wesley, complements. For Minnow.
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"You're dead," Angel told him.
Well, yes, he knew that. Haunting was a venerable English tradition. Then again, Angel wasn't English. It was a divisive piece of heritage that had almost never come up in their discussions, aside from Angel's lamentable attachment to the University of Notre Dame.
Angel was pacing, pacing, sword in hand. It was bright where the blood hadn't begun to congeal on it. It was not, Wesley understood, an occasion for cleaning swords, or pausing to clean up in the aftermath. Nothing was ever clean in an apocalypse's aftermath. He had the wound in his gut to prove it.
Angel's voice was hard, clipped, distancing the guilt: "I sent you out there to die."
He hadn't had any intention of dying. Hadn't he told Illyria that? Maybe Illyria hadn't believed him. Maybe Illyria hadn't told Angel. Besides, everyone had gone out to die. The one time Angel decided to run the operation like a proper democracy, and he still wanted to shoulder all the blame. Then again, that was the sort of thing they were both good at.
So he had been late to the apocalypse. He had his guns and his bullets, although he had rather sworn off fireballs, given his dying experience. He was capable of learning better after all.
The question became, if he was dead and here at the same time, where had the others gone?
Angel guessed the question, or was musing aloud anyway. Probably both . "Spike always survives. Gunn--" He looked away. "And Illyria..." His voice went quiet, chill. "She's looking for you."
That wasn't possible. She would have found him.
"Maybe she went down fighting."
It figured that Angel would speak of this with a weary regret, as though he wished he weren't standing in the gore of a dragon, as though he wished he had scattered as dust into the hell-winds of the broken alley. As though carrying your sword weren't a kind of fighting, the unending kind that would drag you down forever. Down was not finite.
Angel's hands were crusted with blood, too. He was noticing many things about Angel, now. He wished he knew what it was like to hold, really hold, those hands in his own, blood-crusted or not. Theirs hadn't been that kind of trust until--maybe it wasn't even now. He was afraid to try. Dead and still afraid to try. Pitiable.
The sun was approaching the horizon. It was a sun the color of hell--it didn't matter which hell. They all came to the same thing. Maybe Angel would disagree.
"I walked into the sunlight once," Angel said to him. "It was while Doyle was--it was before you came. The Ring of Amarra."
Which Angel had destroyed. Of course. The thought made him wince. He looked straight at the sun. It no longer hurt his eyes. They weren't eyes anymore, after all.
And Angel lowered his sword, reached for Wesley's hand. "You're cold," he said, in a dried-out voice. "I never thought it'd be like this."
He was only a shadow over Angel's hand, but Angel was looking directly into his eyes, the eyes he didn't have. It shook him.
Wesley preceded Angel into the sunlight, and they stood together, dead shade overlapping dead flesh, paradoxically whole.
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