"Fractured - The Hippest Way"

Author: Vatrixsta Cruden
Contact: trixieangelsomething@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: "Blue" belongs to Joni Mitchell.
Dedication: To the four -- yes, FOUR -- people who wrote me and said they were sick! Goodness, it's an epidemic! I hope you all feel better real soon. :)

Blue, songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Blue, here is a song for you

There was no confusion in Angel's mind, no doubt as to what had just taken place. Shock was present, but he pushed it aside, forced a single, clear objective to the front of his mind:

Get her inside the hotel before she remembers.

Wesley kept tranquilizers in one of the closets in the lobby. In their line of work, there was almost always a need for one. Oz had called a few weeks ago, talked of visiting in the summer. Cordelia had bought the gun with darts the next day, 'just in case wolf-boy isn't as Zen master during the full moon as he thinks.'

"Wes, the gun," Angel called out, recognizing the fear and confusion in Buffy's eyes. "It's okay," he added quietly, moving toward her like he would a wild animal.

"The Gunn?" Wesley asked, helplessly looking to Gunn for clarification.

"Oh God," Cordelia said from the ground.

Xander did a double take. "What are you doing down there?"

"Vision," Cordelia muttered. "She's Buffy again. Her soul . . .it's . . . she's got her soul. Wesley, the dart gun . . . Oz . . ."

"Right," Wesley said, making a mad dash for the hotel.

"She's what?" Xander whispered, his gaze immediately straying to Buffy again as Gunn helped Cordelia off the ground.

"Angel," Buffy whispered again, and he placed his hands beneath her arms, lifted her up like a child until she could stand.

"It's all right," he soothed. "Buffy, I'll explain, but I need you to come inside first where it's warm and I can get you dried--"

"I'm not cold," Buffy said, but then a shudder passed through her body. "Or maybe I'm too cold," she added, clutching his forearms tightly. "Angel . . ."

"Come on," he said firmly, placing an arm around her shoulders as he steered them toward the front door.

Buffy gave no resistance, letting him lead her without question. Her confusion was only bested by her terror, and Angel felt his heart break at the misery he knew was to come for her.

Xander beat them inside, and beelined for Wesley.

"What's that?" Xander asked the former watcher.

"Enough tranquilizer to put a small elephant to sleep," Wesley replied.

"She's a slayer-vamp," Xander pointed out.

There was a pause, then:

"I'll double it," Wesley agreed.

"Why are we even bothering with tranquilizers?" Xander asked. "If she's got her soul back, we don't have to be afraid of her."

"Angel isn't afraid of her," Wesley said grimly, "he's afraid =for= her."

Whatever Xander's reply might have been was cut off by an inhuman scream from the center of the lobby. Buffy was pulling against Angel's hold on her arms, screaming and shaking like someone was shredding her soul.

In a way, Xander thought, they were, if those were memories coming back to her. He felt momentary satisfaction that she'd remember what she did to Anya . . .immediately followed by a deep sense of shame. It hadn't been Buffy that hurt Anya, and even if it had been, Buffy's pain did nothing to ease his own.

"Wes!" Angel yelled above Buffy's animal keening.

Taking aim, Wesley fired the dart at Buffy's upper thigh.

Buffy pulled at Angel's clothes ineffectually, sobbing now as she clawed at him. "I can't breathe," she whispered as her lids began to droop. "What have I . . . Why can't I . . .?" Then she was unconscious, and Angel swept her into his arms, cradling her head carefully against his shoulder as he swung her knees over his other arm.

The rest of them could do nothing but mutely follow as Angel headed up the stairs with an unconscious Buffy in his arms. He took a right at the landing and headed straight for his bedroom. Foregoing the bed for a moment, he set her in an armchair, wanting to get her dried and changed before he slipped her between the sheets.

His hands fluttered ineffectually over her forehead, her shoulders. The numbness was starting to set in now and he couldn't make his legs move, couldn't get the towels and a change of clothes for her. Instead, he let his fingertips trace over her still features, her hair, reflecting that it was really Buffy his hands were passing over, not just a shell something evil wore like a Halloween mask.

"She needs something dry," Angel managed to say, though his voice cracked. "She needs to be warm," he added, mostly to himself, as he felt the lack of heat to her skin. Rationally, he knew she was cold because she had no body temperature . . . but 'rationally' wasn't exactly in Angel's vocabulary at the moment.

"Here," he heard a moment later, and Willow was beside him, a pair of flannel pajamas that had a pattern of pigs jumping fences on them. "Cordy had them here."

"She's cold, Willow," he whispered, and he felt her hand on his forearm, stilling his nervous hands against Buffy's skin.

"Angel," Willow interrupted firmly, "I'll do it."

He nodded once, and looked at Willow with enormous gratitude in his eyes. He was too raw for this, too split wide open to casually strip an unconscious Buffy naked, clean her wounds and dress her in a pair of pajamas with little pink pigs on them.

He would have laughed if he hadn't felt so much like screaming.

"I'll help," Faith added quietly.

Willow looked like she might protest, but pursed her lips and nodded mutely.

The rest of them filed out of the room quietly, wondering what the hell to do now.

Ink of a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in

Angel's fist made a satisfying 'crunch' sound as it hit the wall, causing a large crack to span from the floor to the ceiling.

"That's marble," Cordelia said faintly.

"It wasn't supposed to happen to her," Angel muttered, absently licking the blood from the backs of his knuckles.

"None of this was," Giles reminded him firmly. "But it has, and as her . . . as Buffy's family, it's up to us to give her whatever comfort and assistance she requires."

"I just wish . . ." Angel trailed off, shaking his head.

"What?" Cordelia asked, placing a hand over Angel's, dabbing at it with the antiseptic gauze he was beginning to think she carried around with her.

He pulled away from her and paced to the other side of the room, away from the unsurety and concern in their eyes. His gaze was riveted to the city below, cloaked in darkness and the lights people put out to keep the monsters at bay.

"I'll be with her, help her, no matter what," Angel said firmly, well aware everyone was staring at the back of his head. "It'd just be nice if I could get a sign from the powers that said . . ."

"You want permission," Wesley declared quietly, "permission to save Buffy's soul."

"After everything that happened with Darla . . ." Angel trailed off. "It'd just be nice," he repeated again.

"No," Cordelia said firmly.

"Cordy," Gunn said, shocked at her lack of tact.

"No, no, no, no!" Angel, however, had recognized the different cadence to Cordelia's voice. He caught her before she'd moved more than a few inches, her reaction to a vision as violent as ever.

"What?" Angel asked, and there was hope in his voice, guarded and tiny though it was.

"There's a group of teenagers in trouble," Cordelia wheezed, "at the corner of. . . Hollywood and Vermont . . . demons, blue and scaly with a little crescent moon shaped thing on their foreheads."

"Oozaki demon," Giles said quietly. "Fairly easy to kill, but you need Ito root extract--"

"I'll go to the shop on Melrose," Gunn said, already halfway out the door. "Dog, I'll meet you at the hot spot."

Angel nodded absently, looking worriedly at Cordelia. "Are you all right?" he asked softly, noticing she was perspiring -- because Cordelia =never= sweated -- more than usual after a vision.

"Fine," she muttered, "but if the PTB send two visions so close together again, I quit."

"Two visions?"

Her smile was gentle, and she squeezed his hand. "I saw that Buffy had her soul back, Angel. You have your cosmic consent form. Now go save people."

Angel was so relieved in that moment that he kissed Cordelia hard on the mouth, before racing down the hall toward the staircase.

"Neither of them knows how to mix or apply the root," Wesley commented as he took Angel's vacated place beside Cordelia, holding her steady.

"I'll go," Giles announced.

"G-man . . . you don't want to . . . " Xander trailed off uneasily, glancing toward the bedroom where Willow and Faith were tending to Buffy.

Giles shook his head slowly. "Not yet," he said shortly. Then he paused and glared at Xander. "And do =please= stop calling me that."

Well there's so many sinking now
You've got to keep thinking
You can make it through these waves

"So . . ." Willow's mouth was set in a tight line.

"So," Faith echoed nervously, "you take her feet, I'll take her head?"

"I hope you're not being literal," Willow muttered.

Faith sighed, but refrained from comment. They moved to Buffy, Faith none-too-gently removing her little black tank top while Willow went to work on the red leather pants.

Five minutes later, Willow was still struggling to get the pants past Buffy's hips.

"Damn, rain must've shrunk the leather," Faith commented. "I hate when that happens."

Willow glared. "Little help?"

Each taking one of Buffy's legs, they began to tug on the pants, but they wouldn't budge.

"You're supposed to be a slayer!" Willow shouted.

"Slayer means strong, not magical!" Faith countered. "You're the witch -- can't you just . . . you know . . ." she wiggled her fingers, "Bibbity, bobbity, boo! it or something?"

"It doesn't work like that," Willow snapped. "Though why I should expect you to--"

"To what?" Faith asked, dropping Buffy's left leg and wincing slightly when her foot hit the ground with a muted 'thud'.

"Be careful," Willow cried out, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks again. She took both of Buffy's feet and placed them on an ottoman. "You'll hurt her," she added, digging her nails into Buffy's leather encased leg.

"Hey," Faith cautioned, using as gentle a tone as she could manage. "We're all kinda raw right now and--"

"I'm not KINDA raw," Willow snapped, glaring up at Faith through tear-stained eyes, "I'm so raw that I'm bleeding over everything. I lost my best friend and my lover over the last five days, and right now, I have the chance to get one of them back, but it's complicated and I don't know if I'm going to hate her after she wakes up, so please, you of all people can spare me platitudes and just help me get her FUCKING PANTS OFF!"

Faith stood very still as Willow sat back on the floor like she'd just deflated. Xander and Cordelia burst through the door a second later, obviously concerned.

"What'd you do to her?" Xander accused immediately, glaring daggers at Faith as he hurried to Willow's side.

"Nothing, I didn't . . . I didn't do anything," Faith stammered.

"We can't get her pants off," Willow whimpered from the floor.

"You're all a bunch of whiny whelps," Spike declared as he walked into the room. He whipped a pocketknife out of his leather jacket and bent to Buffy.

"Get the hell away from her!" Faith yelled, grabbing Spike by his bleached hair to pull him off of Buffy.

"Watch the hair," he snapped, slipping out of her grasp. "I'm not going to hurt her, even if I wanted to. I can't, remember? Little electron things making sure Spike doesn't bite the nice people anymore?"

"He won't hurt her," Willow whispered from the floor.

"Yeah, see," Spike sneered at Faith before turning back to Buffy. A few slashes of the knife and the pants were in ruins around Buffy's body, leaving her clad in a tiny little bra and an almost nonexistent pair of panties. Spike felt his mouth go dry.

"You should cut up those pink pants of hers," Willow mumbled, semi-incoherent at this point.

"I like the pink ones," Xander said quietly from where he sat, his arms around Willow protectively.

"You would," she replied, almost smiling.

"Okay, thanks for the assistance, everyone in the room with a penis can leave now," Cordelia announced.

"Why don't you guys take Willow with you," Faith suggested, "the cheerleader and I'll take care of B from here."

"I could help," Spike protested before going silent at the combined glares of everyone in the room.

Supporting Willow between them, Xander and Spike left Faith and Cordelia to tend to Buffy.

"So," Cordelia said hesitantly.

Faith actually laughed.

Acid, booze and ass
Needles, guns, and grass
Lots of laughs, lots of laughs

"You're doing it all wrong," Giles complained.

"Look, I don't need some old white dude to tell me how to do this. I've been fighting demons for a long time now."

"And how long have you been mixing magical ingredients, five minutes?" Giles snapped. Then, "I'm not =that= old."

"Whateva', G, but my man's gettin' his ass kicked over there."

"His confrontation with Buffy exhausted him," Giles concluded, none-too-subtly shoving Gunn out of the way as he mixed the solution himself.

A particularly loud crunching sound caught both their attentions briefly, and they turned to see Angel smashing the hood of a car against one of the demon's heads until it came off.

"Good show, Angel," Giles murmured to himself as he went back to the solution.

"Gotta give him that, dude knows how to improvise," Gunn commented.

"Yes, it's something he no doubt picked up from Buffy," Giles noted ruefully.

"They were tight," Gunn said, half statement, half question.

"Yes," Giles answered shortly. "And if you're looking for something more concrete than that, I suggest you ask Angel." He paused for a moment. "Or Cordelia, God knows she can't keep her mouth shut to save her . . . " Giles trailed off when he got a good look at Gunn's eyes.

"It done yet?" Gunn asked, stone in his voice.

Briefly, Giles was happy Cordelia had found someone strong enough to stand up to, and for, her. Then, he focused on the mission at hand.

"Apply it directly to the crescent," Giles instructed, handing over the solution to Gunn.

In a matter of minutes, all three demons were reduced to melting blue puddles of goo.

Well, except for the one Angel had decapitated with the car hood.

"I'm not acting like myself," Willow confessed quietly.

"What makes you say that, pet?" Spike asked softly from beside her.

"I swore," Willow said as though it should be obvious. "I never swear."

"'Bout bloody time you started, far as I'm concerned," Spike said, dismissing her concerns easily.

"But I lost my temper. And I mean, I know, Faith, so it's not entirely out of character, but still."

"The bitchy slayer'll get over whatever you said to her," Spike assured her.

"You didn't hear?" Willow asked hopefully.

"Nah, we mostly just heard your loud shrieking banshee cries," he said, genuinely trying to make her feel better.

Willow was prevented from forming an answer by Wesley's arrival.

"Tea," he pronounced softly, setting a cup in front of her.

"Thank you," she said, subdued now that her tirade was over.

"Where did Xander go?" Wesley asked as he took a seat on the other side of Willow.

"Said he needed some time alone," Spike said vaguely. He hadn't really been paying attention when the boy left. "I'm gonna . . . check on the girls," he said, slipping out of the room before either other occupant could protest.

They sat in companionable silence for a few moments and sipped their tea.

"What if I hate her like everyone hated Angel after he came back from hell?" Willow blurted out suddenly.

Wesley blinked, and looked at Willow carefully. "I was rather new to the group dynamic then . . .but if I remember correctly, after my arrival, you were the only person who didn't entirely object to Angel's reappearance in Buffy's life. After he saved your life during that rather embarrassing incident with Mrs. Post that brought me to Sunnydale, you seemed to accept him again."

"I did," Willow assured Wesley. "I mean . . .it really wasn't Angel's fault that he had a curse and all. But he . . . I mean, I really liked Ms. Calendar. She was my friend and I respected her and she taught my favorite class, but . . ."

"It's not the same as losing Tara," Wesley guessed, giving her a sympathetic wince.

"It took Giles months before he could be in the same room with Angel without clenching his fists all the time," Willow confided.

"I have abundant faith in your ability to look beyond the madness surrounding her and see Buffy at her core," Wesley said softly. "We will all see our way through this, Willow. You most of all."

"Thank you," Willow whispered, "I really needed to hear that."

"Drink your tea," Wesley added, feeling the weight of the situation weigh heavily on his soul. "Tea has restorative powers, you know."

She was already half dressed when he'd peeked in.

Spike had gone straight from comforting the little witch -- who didn't seem to need him that much when the other watcher arrived -- to Angel's room where Buffy had been. The other slayer and the bitch had already tended to Buffy's wounds and done her up in those bloody awful pajamas by the time he'd gotten the door open a crack.

Heaving a sigh of disappointment, Spike had been heading outside for a smoke when he heard what sounded like someone punching the ever-loving daylights out of someone else. Always up for a good spot of violence, Spike had followed the rhythmic pounding until he reached what looked like a training
room Angel had set up.

Standing in the center of it, beating the stuffing out of a dummy, was Xander Harris.

He nearly turned and left right then. Of all the things he did not need in his unlife, dealing with a bitter, angry, grief stricken human boy certainly ranked right up there with 'sunlight,' 'stake through the heart,' and 'a chip that tells me when to bloody piss, too.'

Something about the set of Xander's shoulders, the barely controlled violence shimmering under the surface of every fluid movement of his body kept Spike rooted to the spot. Buffy was going to have an awfully hard time readjusting to life. Chances were, she'd be even more down than Angel, and that was hoping she was having a good day. It'd only make it harder for her if anything happened to another of her friends.

Plus, Red wouldn't like it, and though he was loathe to admit it, Spike had grown rather fond of the little witch over the past few days. Watching over her, making sure she didn't do something stupid . . . it felt good. It felt good to know he was doing something for Buffy, something she might have thanked him for.

Bugger all, he thought, walking further into the room.

"You trying to beat up the scarecrow?" Spike drawled smoothly as he strode further into the room.

Xander glared at him. "Get the hell out of here, Spike. You don't know anything about this."

"I don't, do I?" Spike asked carefully, dangerously. "I don't know about hate so pure and clean that it wipes away all trace of love in your heart?"

"I don't hate her," Xander insisted in a choked voice.

"You don't =want= to hate her," Spike countered.

Xander bowed his head, but didn't answer.

"Well you're not going to get any satisfaction out of hitting that useless thing," Spike continued, shrugging out of his coat.

"I don't really have much of a choice," Xander mumbled. "At least Angel got to go out and beat up some demons."

"What am I, chopped liver?" Spike asked, genuinely a little hurt. He =was= still a demon.

Xander actually laughed, a chilling, disturbed sound. "You want me to beat you up?"

"No, I want you to spar with me," Spike corrected. "The slayer's the only one with carte blanche to beat the ever living hell out of me."

"Just cause you can't stop her," Xander taunted, but moved closer. "You can't hit me back," he reminded him.

"I can if I don't intend to hurt you," Spike assured him. "And I'm gonna have to go awful bloody easy on you to avoid that," he added, and the two men fell into silence as they sparred in the basement of the Hyperion hotel.

Until, of course, Spike burst and shouted "How the bloody hell have you survived the past five years hitting like a five-year-old girl?!"

Well everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
Blue, I love you

They arrived back long before dawn.

Angel went to see Cordelia briefly to inform her they'd all returned home, safe and relatively unscathed. He'd shaken off her offer of First Aid. There would be time to tend to his wounds after he'd taken care of Buffy.

The rest of them were given only one strict order: no one was to come into Angel's bedroom until he'd come out. Buffy was in a very fragile state, and it was best that the only person she was confronted with be as strong as she was, and able to understand exactly what she was going through.

So here he sat by her side, petting the blonde hair of the girl who'd captured his heart when she was fifteen, aching for the screaming he could hear from her soul even in sleep, and guiltily enjoying the sight of her in his bed.

He moved only once during the night, to get some blood from his fridge. He'd be no good to her if he didn't start healing, and the process would go much faster if he fed. Angel drank a pint, then another in quick succession. The blood tasted metallic and bitter going down his throat, and he let himself remember how it had tasted from her vein, both when she'd been alive and after. After. He thought of how the pull of her lips against his throat had brought him to a level of ecstasy he hadn't known before, not with Darla, not with any of the others.

To shake these musings away, he thought of how easily he could lose his soul with her now, now that he would no longer feel guilty from taking her away from sunshine and children and boys. If it were her wish, he would keep her here with him for the rest of eternity. He doubted that even now she'd want to stay with him, though. Buffy had been a sexual creature as a human; add to her nature that of the demon inside her . . . It might well be moot, at any rate, for didn't Buffy now have the same burdens on her soul that he had carried for over a century?

That didn't stop you with Darla, he reminded himself. True happiness was something Angel was convinced only occurred with Buffy. If the same was true for her, she might very well choose to spend eternity without him, and find some measure of peace, than chain herself to someone who couldn't touch her without fear of unleashing two of the fiercest demons who'd ever lived on an unsuspecting world.

He smelled the sunrise as her sable brown lashes fluttered against too-pale cheeks. The memories came to her in a rush as she tried to breathe and found it harder than it should have been. Her face crumpled and a sob escaped her throat. He moved to the bed, placed his hands on her shoulders, and
attempted to hold her.

"I know," he whispered.

Buffy leapt away from him, sliding her heels against the soft cotton of his sheets. "How can you touch me?" she hissed. "Knowing what I've done, what I am . . ."

"You touched me," he responded quietly. "You loved me anyway."

A moment passed, the infinitesimal ticking of a clock before her nails dug into his shoulders, tugging, clawing like a wild thing possessed, drawing him onto the bed as she sob-stuttered into his chest.

Her hold on him was suffocating, but luckily for them, he didn't have to breathe. Weak, she was so weak, but still a slayer-vamp and she cracked one or two of his barely mended ribs. The blood had helped, but not nearly as much as holding her, inhaling her hair, feeling her small body curl into his large one, seeking comfort.

Comfort he could give her. This was something, finally, that he could do, that he could give her, a gift so meaningless in the face of all he had cost her. But this he could do, and do well.

There were things broken in here, too. The really bad cuts and breaks he could do nothing for but stroke and hold and whisper, but the others, the ones he'd inflicted himself earlier in the night, those he could help her to repair.

"You need to heal," he whispered into her ear.

"I'll never heal," she cried into the side of his neck.

"You need to drink," he clarified, reaching for the pint he'd brought for her.

Again, she pulled away from him, a horrified look passing over her face. Horror, and unmistakable hunger.

"I can't," she denied, even as she swayed closer to the sticky sweet liquid.

An intense look passed between them and he measured her resolve. No, he thought, she was not ready to civilly drink pig's blood from one of the Baskin Robbins containers Cordelia stored it in.

"Then take it this way," he offered, bringing his palm to her cheek, his wrist to her mouth.

"You're warm," she whispered, her lips fluttering over his wrist.

"I just fed," he answered. "If this is easier for you, Buffy . . ."

Another long look, then the shift of her face as the ridges appeared, as her teeth grew into fangs and the beautiful hazel of her eyes glowed gold. Her tongue, soft and wet and pink came out, ran over the shape of her fangs inside her mouth. Tears came to her eyes, but she did not allow them to spill over. She shut her eyes tightly, and he was thankful because it was easier to remember hazel when he wasn't staring at gold.

One more tick-tock of a second passed between them, and she latched onto his wrist, fed greedily as the scent and taste hit her senses.

The entire time, he softly stroked her hair as though she were a child.

Blue, here is a shell for you
Inside you'll hear a sigh
A foggy lullaby
This is your song from me

The End

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