Fic: Domino

[clockwork_hart1]

Title: Domino
Rating: Teen
Summary: Angel makes the decision to damn the world and save Fred. But what repercussions await?
Genre: Supernatural/Hurt/Comfort/Tragedy
Special Disclaimer: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol quotes are not mine but the possession of whomever hold the current rights.
Warning: Major Character Death

Originally posted here

"To hell with the world. Spike, get Gunn on the phone, we're dragging the sarcophagus back." He couldn't make himself look up, to meet the eyes of the two men occupying the bridge with him.

"Angel, you can't mean—" Spike was for once, being the voice if reason.

Angel gripped the rope from the bridge until his knuckles turned white, teeth gritted, eyes squeezed shut. "I can't lose anyone else." He whispered to the darkness.

"Yeah, but—"

"No, I don't think you understand." He turned to face his Grandchilde, anger and pain at war on his features, tears stinging like hornets behind brown eyes, "I CAN'T lose anyone else. I promised myself that. I've lost Doyle, Cordy...Connor" he whispered the last under his breath, a conversation between him and the wind. "I'm running out. If I let Fred die, who next? Wes? Gun? Lorne?" He approached Spike, stopping only when the two were but a hair's breadth apart. "Before long it'll just be you and me standing on the edge of apocalypse wondering what the hell it was all for. I won't let that happen." He turned away again to glare into the hole that fell right through the Earth.

"We won't. Angel, I get it, I like Fred, really love the bird. She was the only thing standing between me and Hell and bless her, she didn't give up. Not even when I wanted to just let myself fade and face my punishment. What kind of Champion am I if I don't promise her the same?" I made a promise to a lady. I keep my promises. He too looked down into the unending abyss, "we'll find another way. One where the rest of the Earth doesn't pay the price."

And it was there, in the beat of ensuing silence that a mournful Drogyn spoke, "there is no other way." Heavy laden with sorrow, the man who could not tell a lie turned from the conflicted Champions and chose to walk away, gathering the spell to rescind Illyria. What they chose for the world was exactly that, their choice. What became of the world was between Champions and the Powers that Be, and he would uphold the order of whatever was left behind. He upheld the order of chaos.

Looking out over opposite sides of the bridge the Vampires saw their choice; a girl for the world. The eternal conflict of being a Hero. And both saw there was no choice at all.

The life of one is not a worthy sacrifice for the world.

But Angel's mind screamed out Spike's words, "not this girl, not this day." And his choice was made.

***

"Gunn? Have they—" Wesley was stood at her bookshelf, looking for another book— his girl having fallen asleep to the words of A Little Princess—as Fred slipped swiftly in and out of wakefulness. The phone he'd secretly been gripping as he'd held Fred was now held to his ear like a lifeline.

"Listen, Wes, they're doing something. Something to save her, but—"

"But? There's no 'but' if she can be saved" he hissed into the receiver, looking over his slumbering princess. "I'd damn the world to save her."

"That's kinda what I'm talkin' about. Major fallout, as in half the world'll get infected to save her." Gunn sounded...tired.

"Then screw the world."

"Okay, I'll let them know. But there's something else, when the security guards came to get the Sarcophagus Knox was actin' squirmy. Tryin' to stall 'em, like he didn’t want them to take it. Didn't know who to tell. Angel's busy, Fred's his boss, I just… Tell me to do something before I start pounding him." Lost. That's what Gunn was. Not tired, not grieving, just lost.

"Interrogate him, fire him and tell him if I see him tomorrow I'll shoot him." Wesley's voice was thick and dark, but deep down somewhat cheerful. It scared Gunn.

Fred stirred on the bed, whimpering, pained. "Wesley?" She whispered, voice dry and almost silent, like it hurt her to draw breath.

"Gunn, I've got to go." He lifted the book from the shelf and approached his perfect girl. Pale skin translucent in the soft daylight, veins painted like delicate blue spiderwebs so close beneath.

"But Wes—" The Ex-Watcher had already hung up.

"Would you like a drink?" He settled in beside her on the small soft bed, an arm around her huddled form as she snuggled against his chest. She looked so small there, so fragile.

Fred's head shook slightly, "sick of water, Wesley arms are all I need", she hugged him grip so weak around him, but she tried to hold him so hard. She felt like he was all that tethered her to the world, and if she let go she might...float away.

"I got the book for you, would you like me to read it?"

Fred shook her head again, burying it closer into her handsome man's chest. "I just want to sit, to feel, to be with my man whilst I have the chance." A cough splintered the words as they fell from a dry mouth.

The words almost made him cry, her faltering grip on him letting her feel her faltering grip on life. "Don't talk like that, Book Man and his
Champions have come though, and I swear to you Miss Burkle, you have all the time in the world."

She chuckled into his chest, "then read away."

He opened the book and began to read, and Fred spent the entire time looking into his eyes.

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what's the is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation.'

"Should I be taking offence to this?" Wesley smiled, "is that how you see me and my books?"

She swatted him lightly, though it took all of her strength, "no, silly."

"Why did you pick this book?" His voice was gentle as he planted a kiss on her forehead.

"Because it's about me. I'm Alice, and I've fallen right down the Rabbit hole. I even nearly had my head cut off once."

Wesley grinned as he lay his head down on hers, his cheek nestled in her chestnut hair before continuing to read.

"So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble…"

Wesley looked down at the woman in his arms, but though her body was convulsed in pain, her eyes were closed blissfully, sleeping. "I love you, Fred. So much, and I won't let you die. Not ever."

Hours passed in the world beyond the window, but as Fred lay sleeping in Wesley's arms and as he remained hypnotised just watching her, closed eyes and shuddered breaths so soft but not fading, no time passed at all.

When she first began to stir he thought she was waking. Then her body was shuddering in his arms, convulsing as the parasite tried to anchor itself within her. Wesley was knocked from her side onto the floor beside the bed.

"Fred?"

He watched as her body was lifted from the bed, twisting unnaturally in the air. An awful, throat-shredding scream was prised form her mouth. Wesley stood up, reaching for the bed, trying to ground Fred as she screamed. Tears flowed undulating from his tired eyes, spilling out and wetting the carpet.

Fred's eyes turned to face Wesley, bloodshot and icy, haunting him with a flash of blue. Then she was falling.

A ball of blue energy erupted from her chest and she was hurtling down to the bed beneath. She heard the strangled whisper of her name as she fell, the light touch of Wesley's hand before the world, in a convergence of total clarity, came to a sudden, dreadful halt.

Eyes met, Fred's body millimetres from the bed below, Wesley's hand scarcely touching hers as the energy slammed deeply into his chest.

It was there, that perfectly clear, frozen moment that left Fred totally shattered inside. Desperately searching a face at war with ecstasy and anguish, Winifred Burkle watched her lover die.

Two people, interminably falling, praying to never reach the ground. Time snapped back normalcy. Two bodies met the Earth.

Wesley felt death explode through him, body growing cold and blue as he lay sprawled on the carpet, veins protruding painfully from thinning skin. He screamed hoarsely as breath escaped him and the energy blasted through the doorway, searching for it's next host.

One by one people began to fall all across the world, bodies growing blue and freezing in silent screams. One straight line drawn across the earth between Winifred Burkle and the Deeper Well. The corpses began to fall just like dominoes until Illyria was back inside her coffin
and buried deep within the bowels of the Earth.

***

Angel, Spike, Lorne and Gunn stood gathered around the grave, a crying Fred lying at their feet. Funerals were rare beneath the cover of darkness, but this was the only way for them all to be there.

They tried to call his father, but Roger hadn't picked up.

Giles couldn't make it to America on such short notice.

Buffy and Xander couldn't leave the new Slayers alone.

Faith just couldn't.

A ten minute phone call almost completely silent, until soft sobs were soothed by a voice Angel didn't recognise. Faith and Willow would drive up in a few days time to pay their respects, both unable to speak or do anything other than cry.

But at that moment in time, it was the Fang Gang, alone in the graveyard as a sobbing Fred whispered softly to her lover. "You read to me all my favourite things when I was slipping away," she paused to control the heaving burning up her chest, "so now I guess it's my turn."

She opened the book that lay on her lap, tears splashing down and bleeding the ink as she quietly began to read. A clumsy, tearful voice stumbled ungracefully over the words, softly, like the whispers of a ghost.

"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Phillip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than 'Pip'."

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be", Angel muttered to Spike, a lone tear marring his stoic face.

"The way I figure," Spike whispered back, "is we started a domino effect, and where we saved one of our fighters, another of them had to…" He couldn't finish.

"Is she…?" Lorne turned to Gunn, both watching and feeling the anguish rolling off Fred. The Empath's powers were killing him with the assault of so much grief.

"She's reading him his favourite book", Gunn replied, "Great Expectations, he kept a copy on his desk."

"My Book Man", Fred murmured, fighting against the tears, "you told me my Book Man and his Champions had come through, that I had all the time in the world, and you read me a bed time story and let me fall asleep. My love, my Wesley. It's all my fault." Fred threw her arms around the gravestone, weeping and gripping it deathly-tight.

None of her boys could pull her away as she lay on her handsome man's grave.

"It's not your fault, Fred" Angel soothed.

When she turned to face him, her eyes were black and cold as Hell, "you should have let me die."
And no one had the strength or logic to deny it.


**
End Note: I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I kind of hated myself writing this, but it wouldn't leave me alone.