// Signed Twice, Rolled the Dice

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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Angel S5 post-"Not Fade Away" and Buffy S7 post-"Chosen." Angelus, Faith, and fallout. PG-13. Thanks to Cofax, Astridv, and Mely for the beta.

California attracted apocalypses the way my mom's apartment attracted stray cats. Now Angel had added to the mess. I knew it the second I heard Buffy's voice on the phone, all the things she was trying not to say.

The Watchers were too busy putting out wildfires around the globe to pay attention to L.A. Said that was what state disaster relief funds were for. Which meant I was supposed to be responsible and stay put, but being responsible was what Buffy was for. She and a bunch of fledglings were dealing with vampires on the Iberian peninsula. They'd had to show it to me on a map.

This thing, this was my responsibility, and it couldn't wait. If Buffy had shared my dreams, I would have known. This was mine.

The sky changed piece by piece the more I penetrated L.A. It looked like rain and broken glass and dust all rolled up into one. Even the sun was a weird muddy color instead of the red-black from the last time I was here. It made me want to wipe my hands.

There weren't many people near ground zero, which went double for demons. Too bad. There were plenty of other things, though. Hoofprints in asphalt, the smell of sulphur, a candy bar wrapper smeared with blood. "Angel," I said out loud, "what the hell were you thinking?"

Of course, it wasn't my hell. It hadn't been about me the last time, either, with our tour of immigrant vampire history. But he'd been in my dreams lately, soaking wet and sword in hand, and smiling in a way that gave me the creeps. So I came hunting--looked for Wesley first, actually, but didn't have any luck. It figured.

One thing had to be said for apocalypses. People didn't always have time to loot the corner stores. I was getting sick of Twinkies and Pringles, but I hated health food. Buffy would have said something to me about my diet, the way she did to Dawn. But food was food, and Slayer metabolism let me survive on junk.

I kept trying to find the site of that old hotel. My sense of direction was on vacation. I didn't like it. I also didn't like the buildings looming to either side, or the footing, or the sagging doorframes. But I was getting closer; my dreams told me so. Even if the map in my head wasn't something with quadrants, but a black circle with protrusions like thorns, splashed red in the middle.

I was getting closer. I knew it. Tasted it, almost.

Closer.

Stop.

"Angel," I said, "come out."

He was leaning against the side of a doorway that looked like it was one creak away from collapsing. "Faith," he said. "What a pleasure. Did you bring a cocktail this time?"

"Angelus." Shit. Where was Willow when you needed her? Or Wesley. Except Wesley hadn't told me that the drug would give me a psychic hotline to a psychopathic vampire. I had a lot of things to say to Wesley.

I punched Angelus. Spun. Kicked.

I couldn't hit him. It was like fighting smoke, except smoke had more presence.

I stopped. I wasn't breathing hard yet. He wasn't breathing at all. Bastard. "Are you even real?" I said. Maybe this was one big apocalyptic hallucination.

He caught me by the arm, kissed me halfway on the mouth, and flung me away. I sputtered, caught off-guard. He was real, all right. "Is that good enough for you, lover?" he said.

"Wrong Slayer," I said, despite the thrill that went down my spine and tickled my groin. "So why aren't you off scourging Europe or something?"

"I was waiting for my date."

I kicked at him again. No luck.

This time I saw his eyes. They were hungry. "Aren't you going to ask what happened to the soul?" he said.

"Go on," I said.

"They took it," Angelus said. "Took it. And left me."

I wasn't stupid enough to close my eyes, but now I knew what the red splash was in my dreams. A signature. Figuring out that kind of thing was supposed to be Wesley's job. Wherever he was.

"Once upon a time," Angelus said, "there was a prophecy. Wesley should have told you all about it. Oh, did I forget to tell you? He's dead."

My gut hurt. "Liar," I said, hitting air again. But I knew I was the liar.

"If a certain vampire played nice and didn't break the rules," Angelus went on, between my punches, "he would become a real boy."

I stopped because I wanted to hear his voice. It had been too long. And it was hypnotic, listening to someone who sounded the same while sounding so different. This wasn't the man on the other side of the glass who had listened to me bitching about prison food.

"Except he gave up on everything and signed it all away. After the dust cleared, he was gone, and here I am. No humanity left."

"There's gotta be a way to fix that," I said.

He moved closer. I knew that smile. I used to smile like that, once.

I had a stake, but I wasn't going to reach for it.

His smile widened.

"You gonna hurry up and try to kill me?" I said. The scar on my neck, the one no one could see anymore, felt like it'd opened again. "Because I remember last time, you were a lot better at being evil. Oh, wait. Except for the part where you brought back the sun."

"Provocative," said Angelus. His gaze lingered.

I cocked a hip at him and laughed. "Is that all we're going to do? Stand here and talk?" Something was seriously wrong. I wanted to move, to strike, to meet flesh. Even dead flesh. And all he was doing was standing there. "Maybe that's all you can do."

Once I would have stepped closer and closer, provoking him in his own language. I was older now. Scary thought.

"You can't have Angel," he said, throaty, "but I'm different--aren't I. Tell me that's not what you're thinking." He kept moving forward and back, like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to be close to a Slayer or not, like the seesaw thing he'd had going with Buffy, back when.

"Please," I said. "A hundred years of living inside Angel's head and you still don't get it?" Except Angel was Angelus. I'd lived inside Angel's head, which even Buffy hadn't. Never thought of it that way before. "Are your feelings hurt that Buffy didn't come for you?"

He breathed in, breathed out. Like a smoker, holding the air just a second too long. Faker. "Buffy," he said, "isn't the one who can see inside me."

Now I knew he was on some kind of crack. Probably the same one I was on. "Yeah?" I said. "I'm not your therapist."

Then, suddenly, I knew. I knew the violent strength of that body, which wasn't quite human in a way different from the way I wasn't quite human. I knew that suntan lotion wasn't good enough and that crosses burned. I knew what it was like to be thirsty for something better than booze.

"Fuck," I said.

Now Angelus moved, fast and brutal. It was my turn to be smoke. I remembered the last time we'd fought. This time I knew what it was like to be inside that skin. Like being a Slayer wasn't advantage enough.

He liked toying with his prey. He must have been waiting for me to catch on.

No one had asked if I wanted to tote around Angel's soul after his latest apocalypse came to collect. Or fail to collect. Whose idea had it been it to make me a walking loophole?

I stumbled at a bad time. I was getting careless. Or maybe the soul was making me dizzy. Double vision, or the air moving the wrong way every time I moved. Angelus knocked me aside. I stumbled up, breath hitching. Took a blow to my jaw.

"You really want to do this?" I said, spitting blood. "You kill me and your soul goes right back where it belongs. You ever think of that? Or maybe I'll come haunt you. Just like old times."

"Could think of worse fates," he said. He eased up, let me stand.

I could run and take Angel's soul with me. Find Willow. But that would leave no one to watch Angelus. And I didn't trust anyone else to do it.

"Maybe," he said as we resumed circling each other, "I'll make it quick. For a friend."

I had done my time in the hospital, and in Buffy's body, and in jail and in Angel's memories. I'd lived harder and better--and worse--than most people ever dreamed. I didn't plan on stopping just because Angelus had missed his afternoon snack. "And here I thought you'd like a little foreplay," I retorted.

"Angel," he said, almost in a purr, "never knew what he was passing up, did he?"

Maybe if I entertained him long enough, I would have time to figure out what to do with my hitchhiker. Wonderful. I got to play shrink. "Admit it," I said. "If you didn't have Angel around, you wouldn't know what to do with yourself."

He laughed. "Wrong, Faith. As long as there are people, and hells to put people in, I'll always have something to do." His eyes made promises to me.

"Sooner or later you'll run out of people who matter to Angel," I said.

That did it. He rushed me. Instead of doing the sane thing and punching him, I grabbed his arm. I had to know what his skin felt like through that ruined shirt. Wisps of white light swirled at the contact. We flinched away from each other.

"Clock's ticking," I said. So the universe didn't have it in for me after all.

He wasn't laughing anymore. "What are you going to do," he said, "hold me down and shove his soul back in?"

"You wish," I said. Actually, I liked the idea. Which was not something Buffy ever had to know. Then I wondered how much of the thought was mine and how much was--okay, not going there.

Angelus was yellow-eyed and snarling. And he looked like he couldn't stop himself from approaching, no matter how tense his shoulders were. The usual swagger, the whiplash motion, both were gone.

"Bring it on," I said.

We locked. I couldn't escape his fangs, his breath--not warm, but not cold either. I had fists and knees and feet, though, and I had his soul. It wasn't so different from having my own. Maybe that was the point.

His mouth locked over mine and bit down savagely. I spit the blood out instead of following my first impulse, which was to bite back. Despite that, we didn't seem to be fighting anymore. And I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. My vision was full of that white light. It reflected in his eyes.

I shouldn't have been close enough to see myself, bruises and all, reflected in his eyes, without getting my throat torn out.

For no good reason, I wondered if Angelus had ever gotten close enough to Buffy to touch her hair and eyes and mouth.

"You'll always wonder," he said, lingering on the always, "what I could have given you."

His face was drowning in light, returning to human. I almost expected my own face to change, too.

"You'll always know," I said, pressing against him out of the raw knowledge that I had better not let go, not now, "that--"

I swayed. I spit blood again. It was too red, too real. If Angelus came at me now, in his last moments, I was dead. My vision doubled and doubled again, then cleared. The light was gone.

When I fell to my knees, someone caught me. I felt a light touch, like rain, on my face, avoiding the bruises. "I'll always know what?" said a raw voice.

Angel.

"You have this being human thing backwards," I said. "Like I'm closer to figuring it out because I have a pulse." The words came out garbled. I was going to have to stop filling my mouth with blood. Just because Angel had his soul back didn't mean I had to tempt fate.

I let him help me up, as if I could have stopped him.

"It's been two hundred years," he said quietly, "and a lot of lives."

Wesley.

"Has there ever been a vampire Watcher?" I asked. I thought maybe Wesley would have liked that.

His expression told me the answer.

I couldn't wait to see Buffy's reaction.

* * *