disclaimer in part 1

Swan Song
By Diane
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THE FRACTURE

Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut, crouching down over her
Angel as what few books remained on the shelves went
cascading to the ground. She could hear a vast array of
running footsteps outside the office, shouting, and the
cracks in the Venetian blinds covering the windows started
to glow an eerie red. There was flashing. Lightning.

Wesley didn't pause. "All right, let's move. Angel, your
claymore is in the weapons chest if you're up to it," Wesley
commanded, the grim look on his face giving away the fact
that he did not expect Angel to be joining them. As he
grabbed his own weapon and ran out the door, followed by a
worried-looking Gunn, he met Cordelia's eyes briefly, his
blue eyes weighed with worry, and then he was gone.

Angel stared blankly at the floor, not even attempting to
break free of her hold and join the fray.

She heard snapping wood. Furniture breaking like twigs in a
hurricane gale. Glass, disintegrating into millions of
pieces, every crystalline piece bouncing on the floor with a
bell-like clink -- broken pearls falling to the floor.
Growling, snarling, battle cries. Screeching, protesting
metal agony of swords meeting swords. Dull thuds of maces
smacking into flesh. Cries of pain.

And with every one she winced. She knew the odds they were
up against, and doubted very much that all of that bitter
agony was coming from the army of Mohras.

Noise. Noise. Noise. The cacophony of their very own war,
right in the lobby and courtyard of the Hyperion, was
deafening.

"Angel, come on," she tugged at his shoulder, trying to get
him to move into the corner with her where they would be the
most protected, should someone or something choose to wander
in, looking for an easy battle.

"I don't want to fight anymore," he sighed, shivers racing
along his skin in waves.

The soft, defeated tone made her tremble with worry. She
didn't think he had ever sounded like this before. So...
broken... And if what Wesley said about Buffy's soul was
true... She hurt for him even more.

Cordelia sighed. "Not to fight, to hide in the corner. You
_are_ going to protect me if one of those guys comes in here,
right?" she asked.

Angel stared at her blankly, but at least allowed her to tug
him along into the corner away from the windows. She clung
to him. "Angel, they could probably use your help," she
suggested, trying to sound bright and encouraging as a body
slammed up against the door and shook the walls.

He started to tremble again. "I'm cold," he whispered.

Cordelia stared at him for a moment, looked into his pained
eyes, met with his soul in an eternity that lasted about
three seconds. Woeful pools of chocolate brown stared at
her, unblinking, and she felt a shiver run down her spine.
How was it that he always did that...

Sighing, she brought him to her in an embrace, trying to
let him feel her body heat. She often wondered what it
would be like, not to have any body heat of one's own. Cold
didn't even begin to describe what she imagined.

Cold was a wasteland, a barren, empty, vacuum of freezing,
frosted steppes. What she pictured, was the absence of
everything. A perfect void, where all you could do is freeze
to death in your own pool of solitude. No sense of a heart
beating frantically in one's chest, struggling to keep some
vestige of warmth. Just... nothing. Dead.

"Angel, what did they say to you? What did they do to you?"
she whispered as she rested her chin on his head, his soft,
brown hair cushioning her skin.

Angel shuddered -- took a deep, heaving breath. She could
feel his ribs, scraping along under his alabaster skin with
the mightiness of his gesture -- like he was struggling to
stay afloat. "That I wasted my humanity on a dream. And
then they told me to fight. It was so warm there..."

His crushed whisper quickly melted into longing. "Buffy
used to make me warm..."

He was giving up. He was giving up and he was going to
leave her just like Doyle -- she could feel it in the very
marrow of her bones. The sensation started as a crawling
ache, slow and oozing, and then it crawled up into her head
and gripped her around the back of the throat, spreading out
all over.

A stab of pain lanced through her. "Angel, I'm so sorry..."
she said, tears returning. "I'm sorry that I've been so
callous. What I said before... Or, more, what I didn't
say... was wrong."

He said nothing, he didn't even flinch as another body was
flung up against the outer wall.

She hugged him tighter. "I love you, Angel. I just wanted
to let you know that." Before it was too late and he was
gone, and she would spend her entire life wondering if he
ever knew how much she valued his friendship. A tear formed
in her eye and surrendered to gravity.

Angel said nothing, and she wondered if he even cared
anymore. If it even mattered to him that she cared. Was it
too late, even for that? Shaking her head, she ran her
hands along his arms, trying to ease the tremors, but
nothing seemed to help. He was like a paper airplane in a
hurricane.

"Focus on that one!" she heard Wesley belting out orders.
"You take this one! Team up if you have to!"

"I hurt," Angel whispered, finally committing words to the
relative silence that had spread between them, but they were
cracked and dying. Angel. Dying.

"Where? I thought you were fine..."

He placed a hand on his chest. "Here. I hurt here..." he
said, and she realized all at once what he was doing. After
all her begging, all of her pleading over the last year, he
was opening the floodgates. Letting her in. Letting her be
there for him in the way that he was always there for her.

Angel had heard her after all.

And then, as soon as the realization tumbled into her, she
felt her own heart breaking. Heart. His heart. What magic
touch from the PTB could ever fix that?

He shuddered.

All she could offer was her presence. There was nothing
else.

Glass shattered around them as the bloody, mangled body of
one of Gunn's men was tossed through the window like a
discarded rag doll. She flinched away from the sparkling
cascade of glass shards, but only froze entirely when she
heard a cold growl of a Mohra following the dead body
through the hole. Closing her eyes, she embraced her fate,
a strange feeling marring her gut -- that Angel wasn't
getting up to help her. As much as she had improved at
staking vampires and bopping your general demonic pest over
the head with blunt objects, she was in no way equipped to
combat a Mohra, no matter how dumb in combat it was.

"Ah, I knew I could smell a cowardly odor..." the Mohra
taunted, taking steps towards them with painful slowness.

"Angel..." she hissed, but he didn't move save for the
tremors still raking across his skin.

It stepped forward.

"Damn it, Angel. Fight. Just one more time!" she snapped
under her breath, giving him a shove. His body took the
force into itself, and her movement's only effect was to
have him slip a bit down her arm.

Another step.

"ANGEL!" she growled. Gave him another shove.

The large, hulking Mohra was standing right over them, his
blade raising...

A vicious growl rent her soul, and she prepared herself for
the strange agony of a slit neck, or perhaps absence of a
head altogether, but no blow came. Angel's weight slid
slowly off her until she was relieved of it entirely, and
she dared to peer upwards. The growl. It had come from
Angel. He was in full game face, already collapsing into a
half-hearted fighting stance.

She was immediately struck with his failure to look lithe
and graceful as he usually did. His form appeared the same,
but there were subtle differences. It looked like something
was pulling him down into an imaginary undertow that was
holding the floorboards hostage. A weight, crumpling his
shoulders.

Collapsing.

The Mohra just laughed. "So, the vampire wishes to fight
now, eh?" It jabbed outward in a perfect, sweeping arch
with its long blade -- nothing near as ferocious as the big,
hulking sword the one that had skewered Angel the night
before had been carrying, but still just as deadly. It
curved like one of those big knives the guards carried in
Aladdin. A scimitar?

Somehow, it didn't seem all that important.

Angel dodged the predictable sweep easily, if not stiffly,
responding with a kick. "Cordelia, my claymore," he grunted
as his foot connected with green, armored flesh.

Her eyes flicked to the weapons chest. It was on the
opposite end of the room, but Angel apparently sensed her
apprehension at moving across the floor so unprotected.
"Go, now," he ordered and he snapped his bare foot up into
the Mohra's wrist, preventing it from making another
sweeping blow. For the moment.

She launched across the floor on spring-loaded feet, knowing
that if she didn't get Angel his weapon soon, the fight
would swing into the Mohra demon's favor, if it hadn't
already. Her fingers crawled over the latch of the chest
as another bone-crunching blow was landed. She didn't look
up to see whether it was Angel or the Mohra who had
committed it.

The chest was open in seconds, and her eyes widened as they
wandered over the fifty-two inch blade. Well over half as
tall as she was, and that didn't include the hilt. She
hadn't realized how big the damn thing was. She was never
going to be able to pick this thing up...

Forcing her adrenaline to work for her, she grabbed the long
handle, and lifted, expecting it to be a chore, but it came
up easily. It couldn't have been more than eight pounds, if
that. She got the thing into a standing position, tip down
into the floor, wincing as she pictured the half-dent, half-
scrape it would leave in the recently waxed wood. Briefly,
she debated throwing him the blade like they always did in
the movies, but then thought better of it as images of
decapitated vampires rushed through her head.

She turned. "Angel!" she cried.

The Mohra started to laugh, but Angel wordlessly rolled over
and grabbed the sword from her outstretched fingers,
knocking the desk and a few other obstructions out of the
way as he went.

She flattened herself against the wall as he straightened up
mere inches from her, hefting out the sword menacingly, and
with a surprising dearth of effort -- even more awing now
that she knew up close and personal just how big the damn
thing was... His claymore was at least a foot and a half
longer than the Mohra's blade.

She didn't know whether that was good, or bad.

Angel jabbed outward and the Mohra leapt back, dodging, but
just barely, as it swept up to parry belatedly.

Angel. He wasn't saying anything. Nothing at all. He
wasn't taunting or punning or anything. The silence of the
battle amidst the relative chaos that swirled around them
was disturbing.

She relinquished her death grip on the wall, and scaled her
way back into the corner like a spider seeking refuge in the
darkness, collapsing only when her back met the junction
between the side wall and the back wall.

A large clatter. The Mohra's sword was spinning on the
ground at her feet, and the large, green beast howled in
fury.

Angel, taking advantage of the demon's distraction, did some
wacky thing with his blade and swung the butt of the hilt up
into the Mohra's jaw, crushing it backwards into his head
with the force of the blow. And before she could even
blink, it was over. Angel's blade was back around the right
way, crashing down onto the Mohra's jeweled forehead like a
judge's gavel.

CRACK!

Angel stopped, as if he were a toy that had suddenly run out
of batteries, and he just stood there for a moment amidst
the eye of the fray, where all was temporarily calm. Her
eyes widened as she saw two more Mohras take notice of his
still form with dripping leers. "Angel, look out!" she
warned, just before they beset him from the left and the
right, knocking down what was left of the wall to get to
him.

Slow motion.

He had defended her, and now he was done.

Angel's eyes lazily swept up towards the oncoming Mohras as
his claymore slipped from his lax grip, chocolate pools of
relief. Cordelia screamed as both of their blades started
their down strokes, and Angel just stood there. He just
_stood_ there. Stiller than still.

Surrendering.

His own, powerful blade clattered, useless, to the floor as
his palms turned upwards and spread wide, leaving his entire
torso completely unprotected. She saw his head tilting
backwards, exposing his neck.

He looked like he was being crucified without the cross.

Her eyes widened, breath pounding in her ears as the cry
that had fallen from her lips ceased and there was only
silence.

And then the world sped up again.

SMASH!

Metal shrieked against metal, sending a shower of sparks
fluttering down around Angel in a spray of hot steel. He
collapsed into a kneeling position on the floor. Welcoming
death. Gunn and Wesley, backs to each other, were standing
over the suicidal vampire, barely keeping the blades of the
Mohras off him.

Muscles bulged. A battle of wills.

And then in a skilled, twin maneuver, both Gunn and Wesley
made a rapid upsweep which sent both enemy blades flying,
and an immediate, ruthless down sweep, crushing each of the
Mohra's jewels into their heads and sending them exploding
into a shower of dust before they could even twitch in
response to the loss of their weapons.

Silence. Every single Mohra was dead.

All of the remaining boys stood frozen, staring at Angel,
who remained still, calling up to the ceiling with his
outstretched hands.

Silence.

Angel's eyes slid open, defeat marring their normal,
gorgeous clarity. "Why?" he whispered, looking first to
Wesley, to Gunn, and then his eyes swept shut again as he
stumbled to his feet, groping his way towards the steps.

"Angel," Cordelia called, dashing after him, pushing through
the crowd of open-mouthed, young demon fighters.

Angel's faltering steps self-destructed into a forward
tumble as he reached the banister. Her outstretched fingers
brushed against his shaking muscles only to have him cascade
out of her reach.

"I hurt," he whispered, turning to face her with the most
crushed gaze. A look of panic fleeted across his face as he
took an unnecessary gasp for breath, clutching at his chest.
"Buffy."

And then he collapsed entirely, eyes rolling back into his
head as his tense body went slack, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred
melting into the silent space around him. "Why didn't you
let me?" his groan tumbled from his lips, and he retreated
into unconsciousness. Cordelia's hands spread onto his
chest as she tried to assure herself that he was there and
that he hadn't just tried to hara-kiri right in front of
her.

But she knew that he had.

Her hands came back wet, but clear, and her eyes widened as
she raised her fingertip to her tongue. Salty. The fabric
over Angel's chest was soaked with tears. But Angel hadn't
been crying...

continue