Spoiler Warning: references to "Becoming"
Rating: PG
Summary: Three identities trapped in a stone prison on the outskirts of
Hell.
Disclaimer: I write this while worshiping at the lotus feet of Joss
Whedon, and all his minions, who own all the characters which I humbly
barrow for the purposes of this story. Imitation is the sincerest form
of flattery, and this is merely my way of expressing my love for "Buffy
the Vampire Slayer."
Author's Note: I first encountered the traffic controling device known
as a roundabout on my trip through the Irish countryside. Just me, a
rental car, and Ireland. On a roundabout, you can get stuck chasing your
tail forever, or you can follow one of the paths out to discover
something you never expected.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
James Joyce
Normal text is Angel's soul.
Text inclosed in / / is Angelus, the demon.
Text in italics is Acathla.
I remember now, and the memories press down upon me like stones in a medieval torture. Like the stones that my father labored to pull out of the soil, only to replace them with potatoes and then labor to pull those out of the ground. What a fool I thought he was, when in fact I was the fool. I should have gotten down on my hands and knees beside him in that field. I should have sunk my hands deep into my native soil and worked there until I died, leaving a son or daughter behind me for my immortality. But instead, I ran off to Galway, got drunk on penny ale every night, and called it freedom.
Freedom. It was almost mine! You fool. You cur. Centuries of waiting, trapped here, powerless, with my only sustenance the knowledge that one day you would come to unleash me. The hunger for destruction raged inside me, clamoring at the confines of my stone skin. Centuries of hunger and waiting and oblivion, and you spoil it all just because you couldn't kill one human girl.
/Listen, Acafla. Don't go trying to blame this on me just because you couldn't wake up soon enough to seize your chance when I gave it to you. You wouldn't have even had that chance it it weren't for me. I was the key, remember? The key to your freedom./
The key to my freedom and the key to my imprisonment, insolent dog! A tiny bit of a girl was all that stood in your way. But instead of killing her out right, you couldn't resist toying with her.
/Hey, I couldn't let her die too soon, now could I? After all, what fun would Hell be without her?/
Ironic that after all these decades of fighting each other, our thoughts are still two sides of the same coin. He wanted her in Hell with him, and I am in Hell without her.
And now here I am, listening to the two of them bicker for the rest of eternity. A fitting punishment, I suppose. The gypsies couldn't have done it better themselves. I wonder who performed the ritual this time? I had thought the magic was gone, that Jenny Calendar had taken the secret with her to her grave... Another sin on my head. I'm sorry, Jenny...
/Will you listen to that? I had to listen to that for almost a century! Damn! I can't believe I'm locked up with *him* again! And you're complaining about being stuck in here all alone? Well, poor you. Have you ever know what it's like to be trapped in your body with a *soul*? A frigging, goody too-shoes, 'oh I feel so guilty, why don't you put a stake through my heart and put me out of my misery?', 'I'll never kill again,' *soul*?! To have to watch while it moves and talks and *feels* in the body that's rightfully yours? That's the real horror of it, you know, the fact that you feel what it feels, every moment of every hour, until you forget that the feelings aren't yours.../
At least I have that satisfaction. I may have to endure his memories, knowing that everything he did he was able to do because of me. But he has to endure my love, the knowledge that everything he did was meaningless when weighed against what she and I shared.
You couldn't bear that could you? You couldn't bear being so close to something so powerful and yet not being able to use it, to corrupt it. That's what you've always tried to do... take an innocent human being and twist him or her to your use. But you couldn't do that to *her*, could you? She was too powerful for you, and you couldn't bear to admit it. No wonder you couldn't kill her...
You couldn't kill her! One insignificant, puny human standing in your way, and you were powerless!
/Quit your whining, Acafla! I've told you why I didn't kill her. I had plans for her. Great plans! I was going to test her. To see how much she could take and still survive intact. To see if her oh so virtuous soul could be converted to its antithesis. To see if evil could conquer good without destroying it, take good and mold it to its own purposes, like the Devil quoting scripture... It was going to be a grand experiment!/
It was the same tired old plan he's been using since he was created!
That's the trouble with you demons. You never think of anything new. That's why you feed off the human world the way you do, because the human soul is the only thing capable of creating anything, of feeling inspiration! The two of you should probably feel lucky that I'm trapped in here with you, otherwise you'd both go on forever having the same old argument about whose fault it is that you wound up trapped.
Trapped! It's all your fault that we're trapped! You couldn't kill her!
/Shut up, you old blow hard. I can tell why your curse was to end the world by taking a breath. Once you had air in your lungs, you'd talk the stars from their spheres.../
/And as for you, I'll admit that my plan for Buffy shared some fundamental points with certain other experiments of mine, but that was merely part of my ongoing quest to create my masterpiece. My previous endeavors failed because of flaws in the raw materials. Drucilla came closer than others, true, but her mind was destroyed in the transition from good to evil. She wasn't strong enough, and she broke... But a slayer... she was strong enough to be truly transfigured. My plan was to burn her alive in the fires of Hell on earth and have her rise again in my image. Surely you see the genius of the plan!/
You see? That's my point exactly. The only thing that ever changes in your plan is the human you use it on. Just like the only thing that changes in the creation of a vampire is the human that it's made out of. Without the human world, you'd be nothing.
You're so proud of your plan to twist good into evil, but you don't even realize that that's all evil ever does. Satan himself was an angel once, just like Drucilla was once a sweet, innocent girl, and every vampire was once a human being. That's why you don't die. Because death would be a change and evil can't change, it just stagnates. You think you're so clever, but you're not original, you're just another version of the archetype.
/You wouldn't even know the meaning of the word archetype if it weren't for me!/
*swearing in Gaelic*
/No, thanks, I'd rather do that to your girlfriend./
I wish I had hands to wrap around your throat. I wish I could kill you, drive a stake through your heart and watch you turn to dust, I wish...
/What would be the point? We're already trapped.../
Trapped!
/...in our own little corner of Hell. Admittedly not one of the fancier sections of town, but then you're used to the slums, aren't you?/
/You sound all high and mighty now, but when you were on the streets of New York, you knew why you were there. You stayed there to punish yourself because you created me with your greed, your lust, your selfishness. You had a choice, and you took it, and everything I did I did through you./
My fault. All of it my fault...
/But if I'm nothing without you, then you're nothing without me, are you? Using fancy words like archetype, carrying on about the nature of good and evil. Didn't learn all that on your precious little potato farm, did you? I'm surprised you even had the guts to talk to Darla when you saw her in Galway. You, the dirt farmer from the Connemara coast. Wouldn't expect a fine lady like her to understand Gaelic, anyway, if she hadn't made a point to learn it just so she could seduce foolish food like you. She always did like low-class blood like yours, the coarser the better. And if it were stupid enough to try to approach her!.../
/No, I'm surprised that even as stupid and as randy as you were, you would dare approach someone like her. Ah, but then, I'm forgetting. You'd had quite a bit of 'Irish courage' that night hadn't you?/
/You can rail against me all you like but we both know that you would have drunk yourself to death on the streets of Galway if it hadn't been for me./
Maybe so. But at least then I wouldn't have drunken anyone else to death.
But, damn it, he's right. It *is* my fault.
Your fault!
/Shut up, Acafla, and listen. I've got him where I want him now. He'll eat his own heart out, and we don't even have to say a word. Ha, ha! This is the thing I love about human souls./
I kill everything I care for. My family, my friends... I wanted to see the world, and it was my destiny to destroy it. Maybe that was the reason I fell in love with Buffy ... because deep down I knew she would be able to stop me. She would be able to survive loving me as I could not survive loving her. She was stronger than me. At least I hope she was, because otherwise, I may have succeeded where my alter ego failed.
Failed!
/Shhh! Listen! See, when they do this on their own, it's just no fun, but when you *make* them do it, that's a whole other thing./
If loving me has wounded her beyond healing... If she blames herself, or regrets what we shared, I'll never forgive myself.
/That's right. Never forgive yourself./
But I can never regret loving her. She gave meaning to my existence from the first moment that I saw her, surrounded by her friends, with the sun shining down on her so brightly that even the image of her hurt my eyes. She was so beautiful I fell in love in that instant. And then, when I saw her take her first vampire, saw that all that innocence and beauty were wrapped around a core of strength, I knew I would do anything to redeem myself, to be worthy of her, even knowing it was a goal I could never reach.
/Blast! I remember that feeling. It made me sick. It made my skin crawl... How could you even think of redeeming yourself? You were a vampire, a monster, remember? You'll never be anything else./
If I hadn't been the monster I was, I never would have known what it was like to strive for that goal. I never would have met Buffy. I never would have known what it was like to love someone with my entire soul. I would have died in Galway, drinking myself to death out of the shame. Shame for my people, for my conquered country, for my family, my language, everything that I was. Jealous of the English, of their wealth and the power they wielded over us. I never would have learned to be proud of my heritage, my people, myself.
/Pride. I remember that, too. Pride in being human... Arg... He's turning! I can't stand it! Acafla, help me out!/
Out! Centuries of waiting, trapped here, powerless...
/You worthless demon! No wonder you wanted to swallow the world. You're completely without substance aren't you? You don't even have two thoughts to rub together!/
When I gave Buffy a Claddagh ring, I was giving her even more than I realized. I was giving her a part of my past, the very thing I had tried to protect her from. And when I took her to my bed, I understood for the first time the meaning of the old vows. 'With this ring, I thee wed. With my body, I thee worship.' We worshipped each other that night without fear, without shame, without guilt, without regret. That moment of being a part of her was worth everything that came before it. And the only thing I could ask for would be the chance to tell her that. To tell her that I would willingly spend from now until the end of time in Hell, and it won't be Hell if I have them memory of her love here with me.
/Damn. Damn. Damn./
Hurts, doesn't it? Knowing that you don't have any power over me? That's the one point that I kept missing while we were in the human world. You were able to do things with my body and my memories, but you didn't have any power over my soul. You couldn't do anything while I was there except make me feel guilty. And even that small power was only yours because I allowed it. I listened to you for too long, feeling powerless over my guilt.
But eventually, I began to put the pieces together. I began to realize that I wasn't evil just because of what you had done. I could take control of my existence. The past was gone. I couldn't change it, but I could recreate my present and my future. I could fight the forces of darkness with the knowledge and the power that the forces of darkness had given me. The very things that had made me a monster also enabled me to redeem myself. I took evil and twisted it to the uses of good.
And when Buffy loved me, she made me realize that I had achieved the goal I thought was impossible. That was the moment that broke the spell. When she loved me, and I loved her, I learned again to love myself.
I may be trapped in here with you, but I know all your tricks, and you'll never come up with new ones. So you and Acafla can go around in circles until Judgment Day. I have something that you can't touch. I have joy, and love, and humanity. I have a soul.
/Damn. Hey, Acafla. You want to argue about whose fault this is again?/
The End