disclaimer in part 1

Swan Song
By Diane
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THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Wesley stared at the book in front of him, but the ancient,
musty-smelling text blurred and the words disassembled
before him into a mess of letters that he couldn't hope to
interpret. He ran his hand along the spine of the book, its
brittle age making the binding crack a bit under the
pressure of his fingers. Dread returned to the pit of his
stomach with nauseating quickness. "He's coming unhinged,"
he whispered.

Cordelia was back at her seat, staring blankly. "I wonder
where he went?" she asked, looking contemplative.

Wesley shrugged, his lips spreading backwards into a
grimace. "Does it matter? He's lost... Whatever that
Mohra said to him has sent him flailing over the edge he has
been straddling ever so precariously." Wesley felt a
headache coming on as he bent down and tried to look at the
book again. To figure out some reason for these portals
opening. Some way to stop it. But the motion was useless.

"It matters because he isn't dead yet," Cordelia snapped.
"And we can still save him."

"He misses Buffy," Fred whispered from her perch on a nearby
chair. She was fiddling with her long, misbehaving locks,
twisting chords of it around her long index finger, letting
it fall off into a free hang, and then working it around
into a twist again.

Wesley sighed and leaned in to rub his temples with his
aching fingers. Every joint, it seemed, was crying.
Stress. "Yes, to state the obvious."

Fred shook her head and thumped her chest. "He misses her
here. She's not _here_ anymore..." She outlined her heart
and frowned. "I missed my heart once, I thought it was
gone, but then a scary monster woke it up again. Grrrr."
She moved her fingers up into curled, gnarled claws.

Wesley stared at her for a moment, eyes narrowing. Not
there anymore...

Cordelia growled. "Yes, again with the obvious... Buffy is
dead. We gathered." Her burning words started as a vicious
snap, but ended in a hitching, shaky breath.

Fred sighed and walked over to her, pulling her up into a
warm embrace. To Wesley's surprise, Cordelia accepted it
readily, and soon she was shaking in Fred's calm grip.
"It's all right," Fred soothed.

Cordelia was shaking. "I can't do this. I can't watch him
fall apart. I don't even know how to help..."

"You can't help," Fred said with a shrug.

Letting out a pitiful sighing laugh, Cordelia released
herself and sat back down in her chair. "You're such a good
pep team..." she murmurred, and went back to clutching
herself in a hug, as though she felt like her insides were
seeping out through her pores.

"The only way to help is to put Buffy back. Back here."

Wesley stared at Fred as she traced her heart again. Of
course... He stood up and slammed his hand down on the
desk. "Of course. Buffy isn't here!" he said, thumping his
chest in an imitation of what Fred had done.

Cordelia collapsed in on herself, re-perching so that every
molecule of her body was squeezed up in as tight of a ball
as she could manage without strangling herself. "Great,
Tarzan. Everyone is going psycho..." she muttered, placing
her head on her knees.

"No, Cordelia, don't you understand? When we were back in
Sunnydale, how would you describe Angel's relationship with
Buffy?"

Cordelia shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Gropey."

"No," Wesley sighed and attempted to explain. "Remember the
Christmas before the Ascension? They were sharing
dreams..."

Cordelia shrugged. "So? That just means they were gropey
on a metaphysical level."

"No. Nonono. What that _indicates_, is that Angel and
Buffy shared a metaphysical connection. Their souls were
literally entwined. It is logical to assume that that bond
still exists, even if they may not have been acting on it
for the past two years... I imagine it would still be
terribly traumatic if one soul was ripped apart from the
other..."

Comprehension was dawning in Cordelia's sad eyes.
"Soulmates."

Wesley sighed, realizing for the first time, that perhaps
Angel wasn't able to be saved. "Yes..." Angel was reaching
for a bond that wasn't there, and he was in mental anguish
because of it. It explained his manic behavior to a degree,
although Wesley decided that a lot of that was regular
earthly grief, as well. But, this whole situation seemed
rather poetic, looked at it objectively and not from the
perspective that Angel was slowly going insane.

Angel's soul was crying.

"So Angel is going to go all 'Where the Red Fern Grows'?"
New, glistening tears formed in Cordelia's eyes.

Wesley ignored her reference and sighed. "Perhaps there's
a spell in one of my books that will ease the pain for him,
allow him to evaluate his situation rationally. We should
enlist Willow's aid, she would probably be happy to help."

He remembered Angel dashing out in that terrible panic, and
at once he doubted the capacity of a spell to work as a
spiritual Band-Aid. Feeling a crushing sensation in his
chest, he repossessed his seat, and proceeded to rub his
temples again. Angel was dying. And they couldn't do
anything about it.

He rubbed his chin. Struggling. Anything that might
help... Was there _anything_? "Perhaps the ritual used on
Darla would work with Buffy. We don't know for certain
until we attempt--"

Cordelia cut him off. "Don't. Don't even think about doing
that. We can't help Buffy. She's gone. Maybe we should
just... Maybe we should just let Angel--"

"Go insane and suffer such agony that his time in Hell would
probably be laughable?" Wesley finished for her, his face
creased with pain.

"I didn't mean that..." Cordelia snapped, relinquishing her
chair. "I meant that maybe we should just let him die!"

Her voice echoed and bounced off the walls, and the second
the words fell from her mouth her fingers flew up to her
face and she let out a renewed sob. "I can't believe I just
said that. I can't believe I'm even suggesting..."

Fred was back. Rubbing her shoulders, making soothing
sounds.

Wesley was going to respond, but Gunn came bounding back
into the room. "Every one is gearing up. I'll have a full
army of us ready to fight in a half hour. Are you sure the
vision said they were going to pop up here?"

Cordelia nodded sadly. "Yes, I'm sure."

Gunn nodded and had turned to leave when the air started to
crackle and lighten. The stapler and the hole punch on the
desk started to jump up and down, clanking about and
nicking the desk's newly finished surface with long, jagged
scratch lines. Papers started lifting off the desk and
fluttered around like butterflies in the air as books
started cascading off the shelves.

"Earthquake?" Gunn asked, looking strangely undisturbed.
"Portal?"

"I don't know, take cover!" Wesley ordered. Cordelia and
Fred had already dived behind the other desk. Gunn dashed
behind Wesley's desk and crouched beside him.

"They're early!" Gunn snapped at Wesley.

Wesley peered over the top of the desk. "It's white. It's
not the Hell portal. I hope."

The light suddenly flashed with brilliance and sent them
cringing backwards. Wesley squeezed his eyes shut,
attempting to get rid of the lancing pain that his
struggling pupils were suffering. And then, he noticed it.
The shaking had stopped.

Angel was laying on the floor, groaning with agony. "It's
so cold..." he whispered as he curled inwards on himself,
shaking so hard that it looked like all of his nerves were
simply firing at random, playing tag with each other,
perhaps.

Every one in the room converged on the crumpled vampire at
once.

"Angel!" Wesley cried, his hands on his friend's shoulders.
"What happened?"

"They won't bring Buffy back..." Angel groaned.

With an iron grip, Wesley forced the quaking vampire onto
his back. Angel was blinking frantically. "I can't see
very well," he mumbled, squinting in Wesley's direction.

"Angel, what did you do?" Wesley asked, afraid that Angel
had gone and done something they would regret later. Like,
say, make a pact with the devil... That was well within
Angel's current sanity levels.

Angel spasmed. "I went to see the Powers."

Wesley couldn't stop his mouth from tumbling open into a
wide gape. His eyes widened. "You _saw_ the Powers?"

Cordelia gasped before Angel had a chance to respond.
"Angel, you're healed! Completely healed!" She had reached
under his bloodstained shirt to check the damages and her
hand had come back dry. Wesley hadn't even been paying
attention as she had ripped the shirt away, so intent was he
on gleaning information from Angel.

Wesley looked down at Angel's stomach. There wasn't even a
scar. Not a single blotch or bit of puckered skin.

Angel grit his teeth together and attempted to stand. "She
healed me."

Wesley grasped Angel's trembling shoulders and shook him,
hard, trying to get some sense out of him. "Who? Angel,
_who_ healed you?"

"I don't know. I couldn't see her. She won't fix Buffy.
She won't fix her... It's so cold here..." Tears started
cascading down his face. He choked and sputtered, and began
to collapse again, but Cordelia and Gunn caught him.

Cordelia wrapped her arms around him. "Is that better,
Angel?" she sobbed, rubbing his back with her own, shaky
hands.

He just started shaking more, traumatized.

There was a crash outside the door, and everyone looked up.
"I'll check it..." Fred said, practically dancing out through
the door.

A few moments passed before they were interrupted again.

"YO, GUNN!" A tall, lanky boy holding a bo poked his head
into the room, not even bothering to take a second glance at
the odd scene before him. "Remember how you told me to warn
you if weird shit started happening?"

Gunn's eyes widened and he slowly turned to the boy,
unblinking, muscles tense. Silence stretched on for an eon.
The boy blinked. Gunn blinked.

Everyone blinked.

"Yeah..." Gunn began cautiously, his voice grating over the
lower registers of human vocal capability.

That was when the screaming battle cries of about thirty
young boys shook the walls, followed by a distant rumble
that sent the precariously balanced stapler and hole punch
careening to the floor.

continue