Title: End of the Age 1/1

Author: Tinkerbell

Rating: NC-17

Summary: Darkfic delving into Angel's culmination. A/D, A/S

Spoilers: Reprise

Improv #10: flow - rave - blue - fall

Disclaimer: Joss, for now. Some day, perhaps Tim Minear. He done good.

Feedback: Is always duly noted. tink0205@cox.net or Tinkerbell@bitchenvy.com

Note: For Maayan, who has the most soothing way of making me all better. She came, she saw, she betaed. She said I could write darkfic. So I did. And for Donna, who said calmly, "There's no slash in it." So now there is.

^+^+^+^

End of the Age

//"So it will be at the end of the age; the angels shall come forth, and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:49-50).//

There seem to be an infinite number of levels of Hell.

Angel has spent time on them all.

His millennia began, of course, when his one true love in all the world saw fit to ram a pointed sword deep into his abdomen in order to gain a drop of his blood.

His blood welled and spilled, he was pulled in agony through the vortex, and the portal was closed.

Angel remembers being vaguely amused that Hell actually had a gate, complete with inscription. The inscription itself was hauntingly familiar, and when he finally placed it, the amusement vanished and was replaced with horror at the realization that someone had either borrowed from Hell â?¦ or Hell had borrowed from someone.

//Through me the way to the suffering city, through me the way to eternal pain, through me the way that runs among the lost. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.//

Though he had been flayed open from end to end, one of his more rational thoughts had been that, ironically, he knew exactly where he was going. 'Lost' wasn't applicable.

Hell was pleased to have him, and howled in protest when he was released from his bondage. His fall back to earth had brought to mind the two men said to have visited the afterlife and returned: the Apostle Paul, who visited the third circle of Heaven, and Aeneas, who traveled through Hell in Virgil's Aeneid.

Angel does not pretend to be as worthy as either of these two men.

For three years Angel lived again on earth and wondered why he felt as if he still had one foot in Hell. It dogged every step he took, it wrapped invisible tendrils around his unbeating heart and persuaded him, very gently, that perhaps Hell was the only true place that he deserved to be.

When of course all along, he hasn't had to go anywhere.

He is right in the thick of it, as he has been for a thousand years.

When Angel met up with the Devil, he had not known the Devil would wear the face of a seraph.

A dragon, a toad, a reptile â?¦ Angel had expected the Prince of Demons to appear as any of these things. Certainly not as a golden-haired man with a cherub's face.

Had the archangel Michael expected the same thing, immediately before he cast Lucifer out of Heaven?

And then the King of Hell had smiled at Angel, and it was a horrible, brutal thing.

Angel sees that smile in Darla's eyes, hears the Devil's cool tones in her voice. And when he slaps her and makes her bleed, her blood flows with the Devil's promise.

//hellonearthangelyou'llalwaysbetrappedinhellonearth//

He penetrates her, tries to reach her dead heart and make it throb with life, to spill his seed in her and create goodness from sin and warmth from frost.

And the Devil certainly does laugh, sounding suspiciously like Holland Manners.

Later, Angel would wonder why he had thought that lying with Darla would do anything to ease the searing cold. He would wonder where his reason had gone and why he had thought to make an oasis in a desert of snow.

But during â?¦ ah, during, Angel only thinks of how damn good it feels to bury himself in a female body and to have something other than his own rough hand envelope his thick length and milk his cock until he comes with a gasp and a shudder.

And Angel does not care who is beneath him. He cares only that his long-denied release is imminent, he cares only that cool hands clutch at him and draw him close and murmur his name in the dark. Lithe legs wind themselves around his waist, aiding his thrusts, and it. feels. so.

//forgivemefatherforihavesinned//

good.

When he wakes again during the night, his first raving thought is how far away the dawn lies and how long it might take for the morning sun to slowly smolder his skin.

His second thought is of the wooden cross he keeps wrapped in silk in his bottom drawer, and if the point of it is sharp enough to penetrate his chest if he falls upon it.

And his third thought is, 'GodJesusMotherofMaryletmejustfuckheronemoretime.'

So he does, searching again for the oasis in the frozen desert, and the strange, creeping pain recedes the moment her slickness welcomes him.

The rain begins.

This time, the sex goes on and on, and Angel stays hard as marble for an eternity. And slowly, Darla fades away and is replaced by another blond-haired, blue-eyed wraith, this one with lean muscles and a mocking grin and a harsh scar over his left eye.

//spikeyoucantbehere//

//angelusimalwaysgonnabehere//

And then somehow the pain is worse.

"Are you part of my hell?" Angel asks Spike.

"Quit thinkin' all the damn time, Angel. What the fuck you hope to accomplish with all yer damn thinkin'?"

The smooth, alabaster skin is too delicious to resist, so he doesn't. Angel slides down Spike's body until he can take his member into his mouth, and the guttural sounds of pleasure that result are soothing balms to the ache at his core.

And just what *does* he hope to accomplish?

Black-nailed fingers scrabble for purchase on the creamy sheets as Angel swallows his childe to the hilt, tight buttocks clench and hips lift and still there is no warmth to be found.

And then it is Angel who finds himself impaled, a stiff cock in his ass and a crown of thorns upon his head.

"You and Joan of fucking Arc," Spike grits out between glistening, dripping fangs. "Get it through your thick skull, you stupid fuck. There. ain't. no. such. things. as. martyrs."

'Martyr?' Angel thinks. 'That's for those who can be saved. There's no one to do the saving.'

And his crown of thorns begins to cut his flesh, and he bleeds.

The third time he wakes, there is no ignoring the grotesque, blinding pain. He sits bolt upright in bed and gasps out loud, wheezing as if his lungs needed the air, and when the lightning makes the room into day, he looks about with wild eyes.

The Devil still lies next to him, blissfully unaware of his torment.

Or, perhaps, very aware.

Angel stumbles to the hallway and down the majestic stairs, unmindful of his nakedness. It is fitting that he is unclothed, because he had been shivering and trembling and nude the first time Hell had spit him out. Only right that he be the same the second time.

Wrench open the front doors, spill out into the rain and the thunder and the word of God.

Angel lies in the street as martyrs before him have done and lets the rain wash its realization over him.

He has not left Hell. Hell is here, and he is a minion of it. He has fucked Darla, he has ground his sire into the bedsheets and wailed and lamented without making a sound except for the groan of his release, and thought that little death akin to Heaven.

It was nothing of the sort, and now a cast-out Angel knows Lucifer's own torment upon being banished from God's kingdom.

He has visited Hell once, and returned. Angel does not hope to be as fortunate again.

~End

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