Title: Need Me. A Darkness Within ficlet
Author: Samsom
Posted: 7/4/06
Email
Rating: Hard R
Category: Hmm, good question. Maybe someone can tell me. (Angst)
Content: Angel POV
Summary: A sequel to Don’t Need You, Angel’s POV.
Spoilers: None. S2 setting.
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution:
Notes: I’m not sure how, but this ficlet didn’t turn out like I wanted it to, but I go where the voice takes me. Sorry if it wasn’t what was expected or wanted.
Thanks/Dedication:
Feedback:Of course, chere. Oh, and concrit if you have any. I promise I don’t bite.
Do us a favor and stay away
Brave words from a naive girl.
Barely one tenth of his years and she thinks she knows things.
Oh, she knows evil and she’s brave but she doesn’t know how evil is fought.
Not honorably. Not with ethics, he tried that. Now he had to fight on his terms, and they held him back.
He had to fire them.
Of course she didn’t understand. Of course she’d tell him to get lost.
How many times had he saved her life” Gave her a job, protected her. Maimed and killed for her.
Now she walked away from him, showed him with her back how much she didn’t need him.
Shut the door on him.
He didn’t like it.
Not one little bit.
***
He sat on the stairs leading to the tenth floor, listening to her cry.
She was climbing the stairs from the third floor ICU, probably going for the roof. In their association, she’d follow him to the roof enough times to make going there an instinct when she needed time alone. Something he taught her.
Not that she’d ever admit it.
He stared at the floors between them, wishing he could see her already. She was so pretty when she cried, nearly as pretty as when she was having a vision … agony turning her into a living painting of beautiful suffering.
It always made him want to draw her.
The rotted smell reached him a second before he heard her body slam into the wall, her desperate noises as she was surprised.
He flew down, instinct eradicating reason.
It was a vamp, newly risen and hungry as a wolf in winter, pressing her face first into the wall as it tore her clothing open like the wrapping on a present, grunting and growling at the exposure of her bare flesh.
She struggled, trying hard to push the thing from her, desperate to live, but it was simply stronger, and it bit her, fangs beginning to sink in, exposing her blood to the air.
He roared, his own demon bursting through the human mask he wore so fast it nearly hurt, ripping the thing from her and tossing it like garbage he found clinging to her four inch heel.
It careened into the railing and he was on it before it recovered, his fists beating the features into something unrecognizable, raining blows unmercifully as it knelt on its knees.
But her blood was strong in that enclosed space and it spurred the creature. It popped up and kicked him in the knee, and he grunted as his joints gave way. He stumbled and it swooped by him.
He heard her scream again as it took her down to the ground, intent on finishing its meal.
It would take only a second to rip open her throat.
He swung around still kneeling, grabbed it by the back of the head, and threw it into the opposite wall, hearing the satisfying crunch of bone and cartridge at the back of its neck and shoulders as it collided.
He got to his feet, pulled the stake from his sleeve and drove it home.
Then there was only the smell of her blood in the air.
He turned slowly and walked over to stand over her prone body.
Her shirt was shredded, and she was breathing hard, the blood from her wound sliding down her neck and gathering in a small pool in her clavicle, making such a tempting picture he nearly licked his lips.
She stared up at him, every line of her face telegraphing her distrust.
He did a slow sweep of her body with his eyes, taking in the swell of her breasts and the lean belly exposed to his eyes, before coming back up to her neck again. His nostrils flared, trying to take more of that scent into himself, causing her eyes to widen with subdued panic, one hand rising to cover the wound from his eyes.
The action spiked his anger and he reached down and grabbed her by the belt, yanking her into a standing position. He wanted to see something besides distrust and disdain from her. Something like how she used to look at him, back when she liked him. But she wouldn’t look at him like that ever again, so maybe he’d just have to be happy with her fear.
He backed her into the wall and invaded her space, feeling his coat brush against her, and suddenly the fear he wanted came up in waves, and he would have smiled if he wasn’t still so pissed off.
“I’d tell you not to hold your breath waiting for a thank you but you being dead and all?”
She was always such a good actress when she had to be, but he heard the nervousness lacing the words, her hard swallow.
He reached for the handkerchief he kept in his coat pocket, his features melting away to his carefully blank expression as he dabbed the blood from her wound. It was clotting already, healing.
His hand trembled as he slipped the square of cotton back into his pocket, holding her eyes with his gaze.
“Looks like you might still need me a little after all.”
He turned and left her standing alone in the stairwell, confusion creasing the space between her eyebrows.
And maybe something else knotting up in her belly.
***
Later, in the hour before the sky began to lighten, he leaned against the frame of his balcony window, shirtless and barefoot, staring into his darkened apartment, at his carefully made bed.
He held the blood-stained handkerchief in one hand, bringing it up to his nostrils to draw her essence deeper into his body one more time, holding it there until it dissipated.
Then he lifted his hand to the breeze and opened his fingers, watching as the white square fluttered away in the Santa Ana winds, out of his sight.
He had a war to wage.
~*~