Title: He Dwells With Beauty
Author: Alex Dollard
Posted: 11-25-2002
Rating:
Email: prague_spring@hotmail.com
Content:
Summary: Angel thinks about the women in his life.
Spoilers: Season 5 of BtVS and season 2 of AtS
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution:
Notes: This is the first fic I ever wrote so please be kind!
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"She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu...
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,"
(Keats, Ode to Melancholy)
Beautiful women are not strangers to him. Even before he became a creature of the night, their smiles followed his steps and although he is alone now, their shades surround him still, drawn by the flame of life that dwells within him even as his body is cold and dead. Of the men and boys who crossed his path, he rarely thinks. Their influence over the man he has become is negligible, he believes, despite the evidence to the contrary. He does not think of the Puritan he subverted, or of the blue-eyed truth speaker who defied him, or of the dark haired boy child who hated him. Neither does he think of the man who was his father, who ultimately set him upon the path that has led him to this time and this place. A wealthy merchant who doted on his only son but sought to mould him in his own image. A virtuous man. A good man, life snuffed out in the demon's vengeful grasp.
Instead, as the cold stars shine their icy radiance over the city of angels, he considers the beautiful women who shaped his life. Their names and faces bound up with pain - theirs - and guilt - his - slip through his oscillating mind as he drifts in the curious limbo between sleeping and waking. A faint breath of jasmine dances through the open window and he half turns towards it.
Rhianna. The dark eyed child who gave him life. Barely sixteen when she met his father, she had fallen desperately in love. The match had been opposed from both sides. His father's family was Irish, bourgeois and devoutly Catholic whereas Rhianna's blood was ancient; a lineage that could be traced back more than a thousand years to the Welsh magician, Gwydion. A family whose fortunes were inextricably interwoven with Cymru, the Wales that is not for public viewing. His father's God-fearing family looked askance upon the pagan Welsh and muttered about witchcraft. Rhianna's grandmother too, holding some strange position in the community, had used all of her considerable influence to separate the young lovers but to no avail. His father didn't care. He was in love with the enchanting Rhianna and he wanted to marry her.
Marry her he did, this fey Welsh princess and deaf to the protestations of his family; he carried his bride over the winter dark sea to the Emerald Isle. She bore him a son and heir, whom they christened William and they were very happy.
He remembers Rhianna singing to him in Welsh, a far more musical language than the Gaelic his grandparents spoke, as he lay with her on her soft bed as a child. Recalls waking later to watch her dress for the evening. Once the rustling silks and smooth dusky curls had been arranged to her satisfaction she would carefully bear him in her arms to bed. Once, when she had not been fooled by his apparent slumber, she had towed him towards the ancient silver mirror that had been a wedding gift. Their faces, absurdly alike for all that his had not yet lost the curves of babyhood, smiled back at them. Only their eyes were different. Rhianna's huge, dazzling eyes were of a light shade of blue violet rarely seen even then and almost never now. His own eyes were just as bewitching, but sadly lacked her brilliance. Even when I am no longer with you, she had said, perhaps foreshadowing her untimely death, you have but to look into a mirror to see me.
How ironic that that is one simple thing he can no longer do! Strange that she had not seen the demon in his future because she certainly had had the Sight. Perhaps she sought to shield the child she loved above all things, from the darkness that lay before him. The first dark haired seer to shape his life, she had unwittingly whispered of a wider world.
And perhaps it was the power of his mother's ancient blood, rather than his own heedless beauty, which drew the second to him.
He never knew her real name. When she chose him, she had walked the night for over two hundred years. A supreme predator whose deadly fangs lay hidden behind a painted mouth. Darla's greatest weapon was her beauty, that soft, golden haired, doe eyed illusion that spoke not of the poison at her heart.
She chose him for his unhoned rage, or the unformed youth he was. She chose him too for his dark beauty, his imposing frame an excellent foil for her slender build. She killed him with one look, one gentle touch of her mouth and she loved him. She loved him for what she had made of him and she loved him with the fierce burn of possession. With rare astuteness she renamed him. Angelus. The most beautiful vampire in England. Angelus, the daemon with the face of an angel. For more than a hundred years they hunted together, bringing sorrow and pain wherever they strayed. She left her Sire, the oldest Master vampire in England for him, she willingly indulged his every whim and desire while retaining her control over him. Darla somewhat reluctantly agreed to the creation of the vampire Penn. She relished the attention and it amused her to watch her boy play teacher to the younger vampire. It was her boredom that caused him to cast Penn off. Leaving the younger vampire to fend for himself in Galway, the two travelled to London, where, unbeknownst to them, a lovely dark haired girl had followed their progress in her dreams for more than two years. Her name was Druscilla and she was to become his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.
The daughter of a minor merchant, Miss Druscilla Alver was the second of three sisters. A pretty tradition of the time named girls after the classics and thus English society reverberated with Chloes and Julias. Druscilla was sixteen when she first caught sight of Angelus and Darla. With a dread that she could not explain, she had hurried her sisters Augusta and Caroline away from the demons, turning her face away and seeking sanctuary in the crucifix. It was to be of no avail. This fragile Seer had piqued his interest. He took her in violence, shattering her fragile sanity, bestowing eternal torment upon her with one sweet kiss.
Even in slumber, his mind shies away from the memories of these two, bound up with over a century of pain and torture. Dark curls mingle with soft blond tresses and suddenly he sees not Darla and Druscilla, but Buffy and Cordelia. Slayer and Seer. Two young girls who were friends and not friends, rivals and adversaries, drawn to him for the very qualities that Darla had noted more than two hundred years before.
The Vampire Slayer, one girl in all the world chosen to fight the forces of darkness. A child sent out into the night to kill the creatures logic swears cannot exist. Her life story is usually tragic, but Buffy Summers refused to conform to stereotypes. She lived and loved and made him feel like a man for the first time since he was cast out of his father's house. Their love was pure and bittersweet. She refused to let him slid into the darkness, she demanded that he make his fight against the darkness an open one so that all should know that Angelus was gone and Angel was a champion. She could not bring him into the human world, though, no matter how hard she tried. Her path led her through darkness and she could not draw him out, her own time in the hot sunshine all too brief. He loved her but he was compelled to leave, his place at her side inadequately filled by a young soldier and later, by the truth seeing blood drinker he made. There is a terrible irony that though he left, his blood still watched over her.
And finally Cordelia. Tied to him through bonds of duty, bonds of family, bonds of history and inevitably, bonds of blood. Between them lies a fractured past when they fought together, however reluctantly, to defend a small Californian town from the horrors that lurked within its heart. Between them lie shattered hearts and the blood of a friend. Between them lie injuries, betrayals that cut deeper than knives and a love so alive, so true and so helpless that even in sleep, it moves him to tears.
"Angel? Are you awake?"
Cordelia, framed in the doorway, the harsh florescent light behind her lighting her short hair to a halo. He stirs. Reaches out blindly. Swipes a trembling hand over his face, noting the tears with surprise. The numbers on the digital clock by his bed dance, refusing to settle into a recognisable sequence. His vision blurs and for a few moments, he doesn't understand that it is because the tears have begun to fall again. She makes a soft sound and comes straight to him, drawing him to her, cradling his shaking form in her arms.
He holds her, wrapping cool arms around her slender form. How long has it been since he has held her like this? Long enough that he is shocked by her lightness, the feel that she is wasting away before his inattentive eyes. How long has she managed to fool him, fool them all?
He holds her, this fragile woman whose rite of passage was bathed in fire and burnt in blood. She soothes him, her personality a strange compliment for his own.
He holds her; he needs her. She is the blood in his veins, the air in his lungs, the sole reason for continuing, and his connection to the world.
He holds her, as he didn't hold them. And he will save her, as he couldn't save them. And he loves her with all that he is, the man, the demon and the soul. Liam, Angelus and finally Angel, he who is all and none of them.
And though they may walk in the shadow of the valley of death, their love is a bright, steadfast star and will see them safely home.
End.