Holding Company
He's in hell.
He knows exactly what that means, he's been there, and the pain's the same; only this time he's not the one bleeding for the amusement of the audience, and he's the only demon present. Well, he's bleeding, but, like he always does, he keeps his expression stoic, and the pain and passion that constantly fight to be allowed free rein ruthlessly tied down, so he can be what's expected of him.
But the soul's the only thing right now that's stopping him from ripping the motionless figure in front of him to pieces. The figure that's taken everything that's his, and no doubt laughed at him while doing it. His darker self can't help but tempt him with how much he used to enjoy ripping into Spike. The artist in him remembers the beautiful contrast of blood, bright and glistening, against defiant skin, and the blossoming of bruises against annoying eyes. The trickles of blood where the needles have been are driving him nuts. He wants that blood. He's missed it. He wants to splatter it across the lab, tear Spike limb from limb, arrange the parts in a tableau, and force Buffy to write an art appreciation paper on it, and that wouldn't even make a start in making up for her betrayal of him, with Spike of all things. The darker side of him wants all this so badly he can taste it.
But he can't. The soul won't let him. It won't even let him acknowledge out loud that that's what he wants, needs and desires so much it's agony. He can barely admit it to himself; he certainly doesn't want to. How, to be Angel, he has to wall up those urges in the dark cellars of his psyche, and they're getting full, stuffed as they are with over a century of buried desires. He certainly can't admit how he feels to his friends. They're human, they don't live with a demon inside them, and for all they've done and seen, they can never truly understand how it feels. How much the blood-scent of Cordy and Fred can drive him wild. How much he really wanted to tear into Lilah for what she'd done to him, and his loved ones. How tempted he is sometimes to see if Wes' blood still tastes as sweet as the ambrosia that hit his tongue after those months underwater. How part of him still really wants to kill Wes for taking Connor, especially now he's lost him again. How the scent of Spike, the same as that all over Buffy, really makes him want to slaughter the little shit.
But he can't. He's supposed to be a hero.
He might have ended world peace. He might have killed his own son, to activate the spell. He might have given himself and his friends over to the enemy in the full knowledge he was sullying his own soul, and theirs, but he'd do it all over again to save his son. His whole mission might have been a lie, but he's been trying to do it to help, to make even a small difference, not for the thought of a cosmic reward, an impossible balancing of the scales. But the thought of being a Champion for Good had still helped in the long dark lonely nights under the sea and out of it. A Champion of the Powers, with a vital role in the End of Days, essential to prophecy, a role, a purpose, a reason to go on, to take action secure in the knowledge that it matters, that he matters; it's kept him going.
And now that's all gone. It's all gone; everything that meant a damn.
Like Dinza told him, he had so much more to lose. Connor's an open wound, he's amazed no-one can see bleeding - he's never felt so drained. But they don't notice; Wolfram and Hart do good spells. So he just has to live with the memories of his son, to add to the day in the sun and bed with Buffy, and he will; he'll polish those precious relics, but they're cold comfort for a lonely eternity he's just lost the hope of ending.
He can't face looking at Cordy, lying so uncharacteristically quietly in the other bed, and he pulls back his hand that's trying to reach out and stroke her hair. Buffy, lost to Spike and handing him crumbs of hope he can't help but feel are stale. But despite everything, he'd still had that elusive promise of shanshu to take comfort in. His shanshu, his role, the Champion of prophecy, the one thing he had left. And he's lost it. She's given it all to Spike.
The little sod, the English bastard that's driven him mad ever since Dru dragged him back from his mother's house, the only one that ever challenged him and kept on doing it, no matter how many broken bones he got for it, the near-fledgling that got himself a Slayer. And now the infuriating little sod has his Slayer, a soul from God knows where, and his shanshu to make the set, and Angel has no doubt whatsoever Spike will never ever stop making sure he knows it. He certainly does know, and his hands can't help but clench into fists; all the better to punch through that smug face, the way Connor punched through Jasmine's. He has to fight to keep his face looking human. He really wants to tear into that throat, silence it forever.
But he can't let any of this out. If he does, he'll let loose and take his friends with him, and they literally are all he has now. Above all, they can never know how close all this is to the surface. They must never know; it's the price he has to pay to have them at all. Angel knows they'd reject him if they knew even half of what the monster in him so desperately wants. It's why he doesn't let Lorne in so much. Lorne knows too much already. He can't let him in to know the rest; it's too dangerous. If he really knew how so very close Angelus is to the surface he'd tell the others, and he'd lose them, the only thing he has to stop him slinking into that aloneness that Doyle found him in, and from there the aimless drifting that he spent a century in.
So Angel pushes down the fury, the anger, the passion for destruction, the beauty of creating pain, the grief, everything that makes up Angelus. The soul stuffs him back into his cage in the basement of Angel's mind, where he can't hurt anyone, especially Angel himself. Angel has to be better than that thing - he has a soul - he's special, chosen - chosen to pay for his sins and to redeem himself in saving others. He knows when he thinks hard about himself that it's the man in him that's weak, that let the monster run riot with his body, that ran back to Darla and killed with a soul. But he's trying so hard to be better, to be worthy of a soul, to be a Champion, to be a righteous man, to make a difference to the sorry world he can't truly be a part of, and it's so hard, but it's what he has to do to atone. So Angel clutches his precious soul to his heart, his talisman against the monster in his own bed and body, the sword of righteousness that imprisons the dragon in its cave. The soul, the bright shining truth that allows him to be Angel, that makes him not Angelus, for all that he can hear him screaming in his chains.
Knox is talking something about Spike's blood tests that only he, Fred, and Wes seem to understand. Lilah's torn between smirking at him for not knowing what the hell the mad scientists are talking about, and narrowing her eyes at Fred swapping rhesus factor talk with Wes. He'd laugh, but he'd only start crying, and then Angelus might get a chance to rattle his chains, so he concentrates on what he is good at.
"His blood, it's the same." Angel hates the way they look at him, at moments like this. It's that little moment before they remember it's because he's a vampire that he knows. They know, but there's times when they almost forget, and it's those times that almost makes the pain of seeing the wrinkle in their noses, when he forgets and says something, worthwhile.
Fred dives into science babble to relieve him of the attention. "It shouldn't be, should it? He seems to be producing his own blood cells and plasma, but we don't know if vampires do that. Do vampires do that?"
They're all looking at him again. "Don't know. Look, when I was sired the physicians were still using leeches. Darla didn't know how we worked. It was just drink blood, avoid sunlight, sharp pieces of wood and decapitation."
Fred fixes Wes with the scientist-on-a-mission look, and gets Wes holding his hands up and saying, "The Council's main interest was in killing vampires, not seeing how they work."
She frowns and says, "We need to know. Not just for this poor man, but what if Angel gets sick, we need to know how vampires work so we can fix him! And to do the study properly on Spike we need a control. Angel, roll up your sleeve. We need samples!"
Wes has a faint smile, which mutates into a wry grin as Fred pushes him into a chair and starts tapping his inner arm trying to raise a vein. Lilah's smirking. If she starts laughing, he's going to make sure she's in too small pieces to come back and haunt him again. The things expected of a hero are truly painful sometimes: that he's not supposed to slice and dice Lilah, and that to help Fred he has to have a blood test. Though that at least he can do himself. So he takes the needle and does the thing that's the most natural in the world - he finds the vein and empties it, but into unnatural glass instead of his tongue, where it belongs. But it puts the science heaven expression on Fred's face, and that helps, a little, but it does help.
Fred's expression is mirrored by Knox, who's sticking a needle, whose size makes Angel feel ill, deep into Spike's leg, before he says, "The bone marrow, this should tell us."
Angel has limits. That's it. So he says so.
That of course makes Lilah snark, "Afraid of a little needle and some blood, Angel?"
He lets a tinge of Angelus into his voice. "You should go next, as the living dead." Fred's eyes light up. Wes' eyes darken with pain at the reminder. Angel feels the guilt, and remembers the taste of Lilah's blood. So he distracts them with, "Mine and Spike's should be enough, Fred."
Fred's nodding hard, and pushing up her glasses, "Ok, but I still don't see how if he's alive now, and he was dead, his blood could be the same, 'cause the..."
He blanks out the rest of her babble, because it is the same blood. He can smell it. He can smell all of them in it. Spike's blood's always been a fine vintage. That top note of Dru - wild and uncontrollable, blended with the tartness of Darla - thorough and goal orientated, against the contrasting sweetness of Angel's own blood, the merest hint of that old bastard - The Master, and all against the backbone of sheer bloody-mindedness that's pure Spike. Family blood. It's so heartbreakingly similar yet different to his son's, not surprisingly Angel supposes, with all that blood of his women that made up Connor. A scent he can never allow himself to have again.
The scent of family; his blood kin, literally. The Irishman in him appreciates the pun. After all, it's not as if he has any human family left: side effect of slaughtering the whole village really. He can still taste them. But now, the only place their blood lives on is in the vampires of his line, the one's with his own blood running in their veins. Them and Connor, and he's had to renounce Connor. Angel's tongue still tingles from the bittersweet echo of Liam's own little sister present in Connor's blood. He blames Angelus for that perfect recall of sense memory, even as he torments himself with the scent and taste of his lost family, human and vampire.
He can't have Dru back. He knows he has to kill her if she comes back, so he really hopes she doesn't. He had to go over the line to try and kill her last time, he's not sure he's got the reserves of good left to try again, and he's desperately afraid he hasn't, that he used everything he had left to save Connor. He knows he should kill her to save innocents, but she's his living penance, the proof of his evil, and some small part of him doesn't want to lose that icon of guilt. Angelus still tempts him with her, the feel of her flesh and the music of her screams, so he knows he should hunt her down and dust her, but so much of him can't, and he despises that weakness in himself. He can't hurt her any more than he already has. How do you top destruction? But the thought of her gone is just too painful right now. He's lost too much and too many to kill her, at least for the moment. So he hopes she stays away and doesn't get a fancy to come after her 'Little Spike'.
He might hate the little shit, but he's souled, he saved the world so he has to be nice to him, as that's what heroes do. It's what Cordelia would tell him he has to do - the real her anyway - and she'd let him have one punch as well. He misses her so very much. But her voice is silent, and he hasn't got her. He's got Spike, and that damned scent. The only blood kin he can possibly have, right in front of him, and that fact just makes his teeth itch and his forehead ache with fighting the urge to tear and rend.
He can still hear Buffy. "Spike's soul... Spike sealed the Hellmouth. I don't need a second front anymore. No Angel, I'm not coming to LA, I've slayers to find, yes, slayers. Long story. Willow'll fill in Wes later; we're all pretty tired. No, I can't come to LA to hunt them down; I just can't; not now. Look, gotta go, hafta dye Faith's hair so she can go visit at the hospital. Yeah, weird much, but she's still public enemy girl; we had a bad time with some cops in Sunnydale. You can? That would be so of the good, I know she'd be grateful. She might not say it, but, hey, Faith much. Thanks, Angel, gotta go, bye."
He feels useless, and unwanted by the girl he wanted to die for. Instead Spike got her, and died for her, while he got to order lawyers to get Faith out of the most wanted bulletins and the records of the California correctional system. He's tainted himself already by doing it, but he'd do so much more if Buffy so much as beckoned a pearly pink little finger to ask. But she hasn't. She gave him a heads up on the averted apocalypse from a gas station and asked him to do something for someone he'd do anything for anyway. Standing down the troops and resources he'd been gathering was good as they'd won, and ordering Lilah to help Faith had been enjoyable, but it doesn't help what he feels when he thinks about Buffy not wanting him, and wanting the bane of his un-life instead. And while making Lilah obey orders had been fun for the Angelus in him, Angel feels bad that he's lengthened Wes' pain by keeping her about for longer than the day it took to show him the facilities and meet the main staff.
Wes' heart is in his eyes right now, looking at Lilah. In the old days he'd have taken such pleasure in making him watch Lilah's destruction, it would have lasted days, and finally when he'd destroyed them both utterly, he'd have taken those suffering, devoted, blue eyes and savoured them. The thought now makes him sick, but it doesn't stop Angelus from making him feel other eyes on his fingers.
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Spike's in Hell.
He knows it. It's the only explanation. His girls, gone, him unable to feel anything, see anything, touch anything. He died in the mouth of Hell and now he's stuck there. He's almost disappointed there's no little imps with nice sharp pitchforks. Anything would be better than this nothingness, and the loneliness of losing his girls from his heart. The pain of that is almost too much to bear, but Spike's no quitter. He's using that pain to fight his way to the surface, to touch whatever it is beyond his body, even if it's horned buggers with pitchforks - and if it is them he's planning on kicking some serious butt for doing this to him. He can't feel anything yet, but there's no way in heaven, hell, or any bloody dimension out there that he's not going to battle his way out, even if it kills him again.
Spike's always gone for what he wants like a bull in a china shop, and even though the demon's gone, nothing's changed on that. And right now, he's bloody furious, so he's going to battle his way out of this limbo, and then he's going to punch the lights out of the first bugger he sees, for putting him here. Nothing and no-one imprisons him, unless it's himself and for a bloody good reason.
It's a hard struggle, but that's never stopped him before and it's bloody well not stopping him now. It's like doing a round or three with a Chaos Demon to get through each layer of the blankets. But though it feels like it's taking years he's fighting and he's winning. Each round leaves him bloody and battered, but victorious in the arena. He'd love the sound of the crowds and the raised thumb, but for this gladiator going on is victory. So he goes on, and on, and it's appalling, but he's getting there.
There's a flash of pain that's from outside. It's swiftly masked, but it's real. More battles and there's a flash of vision, and that's worse than anything; it's one of his victims. One of those he talked to, and didn't know he'd killed. The ones he wanted to die for the shame and guilt of it when he found he'd been used that way.
He manages to croak out, "I killed you. 'M so sorry." Then the shock spirals him back into himself and merciful oblivion for a time.
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The small group around Spike startle at the words. Lilah watches all of the others. Gunn smiles. Angel looks constipated. Lilah can't help wondering if she should suggest a Holy Water colonic, but resists the temptation in front of Gunn. Fred and Wes look at Knox who was adjusting one of the brain wave monitors when Spike spoke, so must have been the one he was talking about. That, or Spike's brain's been fried - which would have the upside of making his signature easier to get on the contract, but harder to find a jurisdiction where it would be legal for him to sign it, which would have the advantage of more time to get Wes. Lilah loves a win/win situation, and smirks.
Which riles Angel. Actually everything seems to be riling Angel, but especially her and Spike. The vampire's a study in repression. Lilah could sell him at auction: 'Angel in Black - I brood, therefore I am'. But despite the Class A restraint in front of her, Lilah's eyes, so skilled at spotting juror weakness, can see the steam coming out of Angel's ears. She might be indentured to Hell for eternity, but its times like this that make it all worthwhile.
And if this Spike can make Angel almost visibly show such emotion, Lilah needs to know more about the guy. Its time like these that she misses Files and Records, so convenient, and whose carefully prepared brain still partially decorates her old office, which is annoying as it means that even with a Form Thirteen she's un-raisable in a usable form. Lilah's going to have to rely on Wes' new toys instead, and on tapping his big brain. She knows he's going to want to investigate everything about this, and she knows he's going to want to talk about it. She also knows that he's not going to be allowed any alternative person to talk to than her. Lilah twists a lock of her hair, and enjoys the anticipation with a snicker.
Which visibly infuriates Angel, who snaps at her, "Still here, Lilah?"
So she parries, "I'm hurt. You don't want me here?"
"My building, my firm, so what I say goes. And so do you. I want you gone, Lilah."
"Sorry, Ace, you can't do that." She enjoys the flicker of confusion in his eyes from that riposte.
"I can. I just have, and I've the contract that lets me do it."
"I told you to always read the fine print. Not my fault if you signed in a hurry before rushing off to... find Cordelia." She loves the almost imperceptible squirm in his eyes at her pause. Let them blame the cheerleader. She and Angel both know she could have said the truth, Connor, and brought his little house of cards down. It's far more entertaining to hold it over Angel than use it, not that she won't if she has to, but right now it's not in her interests to do so. And the expression on his face right now is priceless. She awards herself another smirk at the worry on Angel's face, and the, "What?" from Fred. She's two for two on the people-she-really-doesn't-like-and-loves-to-see-squirm stakes.
Wesley's voice butts in with that quiet growl that goes right to her gut. "There's a clause, isn't there."
She smiles sadly at him. "There's always a clause, Lover. And if he'd asked you to look at the contract I'm sure you'd have spotted it. But I guess Liam's family's lack of business acumen hasn't been fixed by two hundred and fifty years of vampirism. I mean, Angel, I only did one history course for my credits but even I know one servant and no apprentices - not a mark of financial success."
Wes can't help it. "One servant?"
Angel squirms, and she loves it. "Back to why you aren't leaving my offices, before I have you thrown out."
"Bit hard to throw someone into hell, but, hey, you'd know that, wouldn't you, Angel?" More squirm, with added guilt - this is wonderful, another round to Lilah. She just wishes Wes wasn't here to be hurt by it, but she'll live with that as it means she gets to see his face. But, time for the knockout blow, and she's going to savour it.
"You do control this branch, Angel, staplers, staff, dungeon, wine cellar, the whole operation. Or more to the point: the whole subsidiary. You are the Chief Executive Officer of Wolfram and Hart (LA), which is a subsidiary of Wolfram and Hart, the Holding Company. I now represent the Holding Company. You'll find, if you look at the contract you signed, that while you now own and are totally liable for the actions of this subsidiary, the Holding Company retains control of the voting stock, and so, ultimate power. What we say goes, so essentially, you work for me."