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This Thing We Have by Sigyn
 
This Is Terrible
 
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    Angel trudged his way through the destruction as the sun slowly inched its way toward the skyline. The benefit of living in LA, he’d always thought, was that all the buildings usually gave you a little extra time to outpace the dawn.

    He’d hovered around the outskirts of the battle for most of it, unable to force his way into the center of the legion of demonic hellspawn that had been sent against him and his tiny crew. The tide had turned about two hours before dawn, and it wasn’t until now that he realized why. Another front had opened up in the center of the battle, and a collection of twenty or so young women were organizing themselves around a spot on the ground that was quickly becoming a makeshift infirmary. A distinctive blue head amongst them told him that Illyria had survived the battle, but Angel had little hope for any of the rest of his team. Angel knew only one of the young slayers that milled around on the spot. But she was a slayer well worth knowing. “Buffy!” he breathed, unable to cry out his joy at seeing her. He trudged closer, hoping his body would hold out long enough to get to them. One of the young women saw him and pointed him out to their leader.

    Buffy stood up and glared at him. “You were having an apocalypse,” she chastised him, “and you didn’t invite me? I’m insulted. I even had a new outfit, and everything.”


***


    It didn’t take long to fill in the details on both sides. Angel was brought safely out of the rising sun under the cover of a pop-up tent while they briefed each other. Buffy had been informed of the ensuing apocalypse through a prophetic vision when several of the slayers had been in training. So many of them together had made their dreams more potent, and much more precise. They’d arrived several hours after the invasion had begun. Until the slayers arrived, it had simply been a march of destruction, as there was only Angel’s tiny band on the defensive front, and most of them had died in the first fifteen minutes. Angel had only survived because that dragon had carried him away from the front before he’d managed to kill it, and Illyria was still around – injured and tired, but alive – only because she was a goddess. Until Angel had shown up, she’d been the only survivor.

    The slayers had lost fourteen girls, and a further twenty-seven were severely or critically injured. Buffy herself had some nasty looking injuries, but she didn’t seem bothered by them. The girls were on the forefront of her mind. The slayers were grieving. They did not like losing their own.

    “Was there a hellgate?” Angel asked, wondering where all the demons had come from.

    “Wolfram and Hart building,” Buffy said. “Monica collapsed it.”

    “Which one’s Monica?” Angel asked, wanting to thank her.

    “Still under it,” Buffy said. Then she indicated a blooded shirt which was surrounded by a ceremonious clear space. The shirt covered something lumpy, that was still oozing blood. “Mostly.”

    Angel felt sick. “I’m sorry.”

    Buffy shrugged, her face grim and contained. “The city’s still standing,” Buffy said. “We had acceptable losses.” She closed her eyes.

    Angel reached for her. “Hey,” he said. “It’s over. You don’t need to stand tall.”

    “Yes I do,” Buffy said, stepping away from what he had wanted to be his comforting arm. “The girls need me. The world needs me. There are still demons and demon spawn showing up under the rubble who need to be killed. You didn’t think to evacuate the area, so we keep finding victims who didn’t get out in time.” She grunted in annoyance and gestured with exasperation at something behind him. “And random fires appear to be flaring up for no reason at all.”

    Angel looked behind him to where her eyes had been drawn, and saw a flickering flame slowly growing from underneath the rubble of a collapsed building. Angel blinked, took a step forward, and hissed as the sun seared his skin. He slid back under the shade, ripping off his jacket to shove into Buffy’s hands. “My god, Buffy, go stop it!”

    “What?” Buffy said, confused. She was unable to see the black coated arm the little hand sized tongue of flame had sprung from.

    “I think that’s Spike!”

    Buffy didn’t waste time pointing her shock at Angel. The leather jacket in her arms, she launched herself at the growing flame and did her best to smother and shield it before it rose to an inferno.
    

***
 

    The girls had moved their tent rather than try and excise the unconscious Spike from the rubble under the glare of the sun. Buffy had burns on her arms and face, and had lost a shock of hair trying to shield him from the creeping dawn. Spike had pretty much lost his left hand, charred to a blackened crisp that looked like over barbecued meat. If he hadn’t been wearing his thick black leather, he’d have burned to ash. Angel knew from experience that a few months could restore even that severe a burn, but there were other concerns. The angle Spike’s head had been at when they’d finally gotten the rubble off him, and the fact that his spine no longer seemed to align were the most worrying.

    “Don’t move him!” Angel had said when he’d seen his broken neck. “If we don’t stabilize that, he’ll be dust.”

    Buffy had finally looked at Angel then. Until that moment she’d been shielding Spike from the sun, organizing the tent with shouts and orders, and helping with and directing the removal of the rubble from over and around his cold body. “You want to explain to me why he isn’t already dust, at the bottom of the Sunnydale crater?”

    “It’s a long story,” Angel said.

    Buffy looked daggers at him. “And one I don’t have time for until he’s stabilized, apparently. Two questions: is this really Spike?”

    “Yes,” Angel said.

    “Is it all of him?” Buffy asked. “Memories, soul, everything?”

    “It was yesterday,” Angel said.

    Buffy stared at him, and Angel wished she’d just hit him. Her eyes were harder than her fists ever could be. “Fine,” she said finally. “Kawn-Yin, add this vampire to the infirmary list. We need a clinic that can handle twenty-seven slayers, two orphaned imps, an injured tock demon, and a vampire. Are the human city victims organized?”

    “Ambulances already took most of them to hospital,” the older slayer named Kwan-Yin said. “We’re having some trouble getting the authorities to believe the area’s secured.”

    “I think Wolfram and Hart has a clinic safe house which can handle half a dozen,” Angel said.

    Buffy glared at him.

    “It’ll do for Spike,” Angel said. And himself, he thought, though his injuries were minimal in comparison. He’d lost a lot of blood – it turned out dragon scales were blade sharp – but that was solvable with time and a trip to the butcher’s. “And... did you say you found a tock demon?”

    “And two marsupial imps found inside their dead mother,” Buffy said. Tock demons were harmless by themselves – their main skill was time manipulation, so they were sometimes used to confuse and surprise enemies in battle, bringing a warrior back a few moments to strike a killing blow they’d missed. Marsupial imps could be evil or benign, depending on how they were reared. They were a little like huge wallabies. They lived inside the parent demon for several years before they emerged, usually deadly and unpleasant, but had been known to be raised by human sorcerers who kept them as loyal pets, or partners. The better and warmer they were treated, the nicer they would grow. “And I think your blue girl could use someone to look at her, but... no one’s dared ask her,” Buffy added. “She’s a bit creepy. Is this safe house still secure?”

    “It’s independent, for the most part,” Angel said. “Probably not corrupted. Much.”

    “Fine,” Buffy said. “The girls can go to the hospital until other arrangements can be made. We’ll take the demons, Bluey and Spike to your clinic, Angel, if you’re sure it’s safe.”

    “Send me in first. I’ll make sure,” Angel said.

    “Is Marissa still whole?” Buffy asked.

    “A few scrapes,” her friend said.

    “Fine. She’s good with babies. I’ll need her to rear the imps until we can contact Willow and find a good witch or sorcerer to adopt them. So she’s with us. Angel, can you get us transportation?”

    Angel cast about for an ally. “I think so,” he said.

    He made a phone call on his cell. “Harmony?” he asked. “Yep, still alive. One last job, and I’ll add dental to your severance package.”

 

 

 
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