She screamed again, thrashing on their bed as if being attacked. Fighting off whoever she saw, screaming at them in a language he didn’t understand. Terrified that she was being attacked, and by something he couldn’t see, Angelus quickly gathered her into his arms, rocking her as she rode out the nightmare. 

This had been going on every night for a week – give or take – and he had no idea how to stop them. Sleeping spells, DreamPeace spells, Ancient Indian remedies, nothing had worked. He’d tried his knowledge from his years as being the nightmare, and even from Acathla, but still nothing. Whatever was haunting her, whatever gripped her in its claws night after night, Angelus couldn’t stop it. 

He was frantic, desperate; nearly desperate enough to ask the representatives of Wolfram & Hart for help. But he didn’t want to show his hand, not yet. Lilah and Lindsey were far from trustworthy, and he didn’t want them knowing things that could eventually come back to harm Buffy. 

Sobbing in his arms, Buffy awoke with a start, clinging to him even as she struggled to figure out where she was, what she was, who she was. 

“It has me,” she told him in the same guttural language she always used when she first awoke from these night terrors. “Oh, God, Angelus, it has me, and it won’t let me go. They won’t let me go. They don’t care what they do to me!” 

The fact that he understood her words scared him as much as those words themselves. What had her? What was it doing to her? Why did she scream in a language neither truly understood and yet they both did? 

“Buffy,” his voice was soft, his hands gentle as he combed the hair away from her face, dark eyes concerned as they met her wild green ones. “What did you dream of?” 

It took her a moment, and she looked at him strangely as if not understanding what he meant. Finally, resting her head on his shoulder, Buffy answered. “Blood, mine and its. We were bleeding as they held us down.” 

“Who are they?” Angelus demanded, keeping his voice soft and even with difficulty. But she was scared enough, he didn’t want to frighten her more with his own anger. “And what is this ‘it’ you refer to?” 

Yawning, she shrugged, more a shudder than anything else. “I don’t know, Angelus,” and her voice was terrified, causing his own anger to increase out of fear for her. She still shook in his arms, clutching him as if he were her lifeline. (Don’t let me go, I’ll drown if you let me go.)  

“But it hurts. Everywhere, it always hurts; and I’m screaming, and it’s screaming, and it won’t stop, they won’t let it. There are three of them, and they’re chanting. A black thing, a shadow or something…” her breath caught on a sob. “It suddenly appears, and it’s heading straight for me. I scream, I don’t want this,” she was crying again, he could hear it in her voice, feel her tears on his skin. “God, I don’t want this, make it stop! But it doesn’t matter, they won’t.” 

Shuddering once more, she demanded in a tearful voice, “Why won’t they? Why do they want to do this to me? Why won’t they stop?” 

Having no answers for her, not entirely certain what she was seeing, Angelus just held her tightly to him. “I don’t know, baby,” he admitted with a low growl. “But I swear to you, as soon as I find them, I’ll make them pay.” 

Buffy pulled back and looked into his eyes. His anger was banked beneath his concern for her, and she was touched by that. By his arms around her as she screamed at night, by his soft words and soothing caress.  

“Make love to me?” She asked softly, using words she’d never used and never thought to use with Angelus. But she needed him, needed his hard body against hers, his touch to reassure her. 

Seeing the spark in his eyes, the lust, the promise, even the love he didn’t admit, Buffy kissed him. It wasn’t tentative, not any more; no, this was more a seeking of affection. His affection for her, and yes, even hers for him.  

(He wasn’t her Angel that she loved with all the innocence of youth, but he was hers. He was her support and her life. He was her strength and her weakness. And she was his.) 

“I’ll never let anything hurt you,” Angelus promised as he worshiped her body, taking his time to taste and touch her. To make her forget everything but he and what they shared. “I’ll never let anything take you from me.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Exhausted, Buffy sat at dinner with Angelus and dozens of other dignitaries as they talked of things she only partly understood. It was like this every night since being ‘crowned’ god and goddess of Earth. 

Apparently, some of the Acathlan Nobility wanted to divide the land between themselves, leaving Angelus as ultimate ruler, but holding vast lands as their own. Several of the higher-ranking nobles scoffed at that idea, but Buffy had the impression they already held great power, and it was those without such influence who sought to remedy that.  

While they accepted Angelus as their new ruler, having lived so long without one, they’d grown accustomed to the freedom and their increased power, and didn’t wish to give it up. Not even for their new god. 

Angelus wasn’t one to share, and Buffy wondered how anyone could think that. Before he was the new ruler of the world he didn’t share, and now that he owned the world? Not a chance. 

Covering a yawn, Buffy sipped her wine and listened to the conversation around her. There were shouts, recriminations, and threats, but she didn’t pay attention to them. They’d be dead within the day, if she knew her vampire.  

Not her vampire. The thought startled her out of her drowsy state and she glanced across the vast table at him. He wasn’t hers, he wasn’t. 

But he was, and, she realized with a fortifying sip of wine as she watched him lean lazily back in his ornately carved chair. She referred to him as such in her thoughts, in her actions, even in her words. She thought of Angelus as hers.  

Looking across the long table at him, demons between them, she studied him. His dress, the leathers, silks, and velvets he showered her with also adorned his finely sculpted body. Shifting in her chair as a bolt of lust – not completely unwanted – shot through her, Buffy felt the thin, finely made silk caress her skin. Angelus was handsome, strong, powerful, his aura of strength made her feel safe, even as she fought it.  

“What are you thinking, my bright Star?” Drusilla asked from Buffy’s right. Since Angelus couldn’t be next to her, he’d placed his favored there not to guard her, but to guard over her. That had surprised Buffy; that she wasn’t sitting next to Angelus, but Dru had explained that as mistress, as goddess, she was to hold a place of honor at the end of the table. 

Why, Buffy didn’t know, something about ancient levels of power, but went with it.  

“I’m not feeling well, Dru,” Buffy whispered, locking eyes with Angelus.  

The dreams were getting worse, draining her more and more each night. No matter how exhausted she was, what Angelus gave her to drink in the hopes that the horrible images would stop, they continued to visit her. Badgering her, bombarding her with scent and sight and sound until she thought she’d explode…and sometimes she wanted to. Just to make it stop. 

She wasn’t sleeping well, even in (comfort/safety/love) Angelus’ arms, and Buffy wondered if it was only a matter of time until she went crazy from these images. 

“The past, it haunts us,” Dru whispered, covering Buffy’s hand with her cooler one. “But it holds a message for you, my goddess.” 

Buffy snorted, not so sure about that one. Still looking at Angelus, she saw him nod. Did he know what she wanted? To retire to their rooms, try to sleep without the dreams? Or was he listening to the gaudily dressed woman with three boobs? Jealously flashed through her at not being able to hear what they were saying (It’s such an honor to sit here, she gushed in her low pitched voice. Next to the new god. So very strong and virile, so powerful…Buffy blinked as she heard the strange woman speak, heard her words directed at Angelus, though he wasn’t listening. How did she know that?) at not being able to growl at the woman, scratch and tear at her, and mark Angelus as hers. 

When he abruptly stood, she had her answer. 

Stalking around the table, he approached her chair, pulling it back and taking her hand to help her rise. “Tired, my love?” His voice was low, so low only she could hear, and Buffy was strangely grateful for that.  

(Show no weakness. The demons want to rend you apart at the first sign, show no weakness.) 

“Yes, Angelus…but I don’t want to sleep.” Not without you, she wanted to say. Not without you there to hold me when the dreams inevitably come. 

Kissing her softly on the lips, he nodded. “I’ll be there shortly.” Turning to Dru, he instructed, “See the goddess to our rooms, Drusilla, and stay until I arrive.” 

“Yes, daddy,” Dru said quietly, concern in her eyes and tone. And when she took Buffy’s hand, holding the warmth in her own, neither woman said anything about the comfort it brought her.
~~~~~~~~~~
He watched her sleep. Her exhaustion evident even now when she was too tired to wake despite the nightmares. 

“Dru,” he said from the bed where he held his lover tight in his arms, afraid to let her go even as she lashed out at whatever hurt her. 

His favored childe looked up at him from the opposite side of the bed, her eyes large and scared as they met Angelus’ over Buffy’s struggling form. Drusilla had refused to leave Buffy’s side, even when Angelus arrived back in their rooms. She’d stroked Buffy’s damp forehead, whispering soothing words to the struggling slayer though Buffy couldn’t hear her. 

She was frighten as well, having told him that, “The past wants her, it needs her to understand, but it wants to consume her before she can tell.” 

“Get the Watcher,” Angelus instructed, truly out of options now. As soon as Drusilla left he tightened his grip on Buffy. “I swear, my love, I’ll find a way to stop this.” 

Giles entered the grand bedroom, not really sure what to expect. When Drusilla had pulled him out of the cell without a word, looking like an odd – and alarming – mixture of anger and fear, Giles had thought the worst. He was going to be killed, drained by her because of the sins Angelus held against him. 

Jenny. Keeping Buffy in the dark about Angelus’ true intentions. Lying to his slayer about vampiric courtships. 

“What have you done to her?” he demanded. Seeing Buffy, crying in her sleep as Angelus held her close to him was not what he expected. Then again, neither was surviving through the many levels of the palace to the master suite. 

“Nothing,” Angelus growled, eyes swirling reds and blues as he shifted Buffy closer to him. “She’s too exhausted to wake up, Rupert,” Angelus said, hands soothing on her back and face, gentle, oh so gentle, much to Giles’ surprise. 

“Every night she has nightmares, shouting in a language I can’t identify,” he didn’t add that he could understand her. Rupert didn’t need to know that. Not yet. “She says they’re after her, that they won’t stop. It is after her, It is with her. What is she talking about?” 

Giles refrained from the mocking comment about the god of this new world not knowing everything, and instead focused on his slayer. She was sobbing, shouting in a language that he didn’t understand, and clinging to Angelus as if he could, indeed, help her. As if he were the only one who could. 

“What’s she saying?” He wondered, but it was a rhetorical question. Moving away from Drusilla, he edged closer to the bed where Buffy dreamt. Doing a cursory check, he mumbled to himself, “Asleep, definitely, and dreaming. But about what?” 

Just then a loud scream rent the air, startling Giles into jumping away from her. Angelus merely tightened his grip, and a moment later, Buffy woke. She was disoriented, scared, still crying, but then she stopped, leaned further into Angelus as the demon comforted her with gentle caresses and softly spoken words in Gaelic. 

“Please, Angelus,” she begged, not noticing her guest. “Make it stop. Please make them stop. They keep coming, chanting and forcing it into me. Please, please…” 

“Shh, baby,” he murmured, lips brushing her forehead, hands cradling her face. “What else can you remember?” 

“It didn’t want to do what they forced it to. It was scared, too.” Her eyes were already drooping, her words slower and slurred with her fatigue. 

“Buffy,” Giles said startling the slayer. She jerked at the sound, turning wild eyes to the right where her watcher hovered. He didn’t retake his seat on the bed, but did move closer to the now awake girl.  

“Giles?” Her voice was wary, eyes tired and dark. “What…?” 

“I asked him here, baby,” Angelus told her quietly. “He might know what these dreams are about.” 

Hope sparked in her eyes, green and silver now, and she eagerly turned to her watcher. “Really? What are they? Giles, do you know?” 

He looked at her, slayer, daughter, confidant, and sighed. Rubbing his eyes with his fingers, Giles shook his head. He didn’t want to look at Buffy, not because she betrayed them, as he once believed, but because she was dressed entirely too provocatively for his fatherly tastes. 

The long white gown she wore for bed covered everything, but clung to her in a way no seventeen year old should wear. Curves, more womanly now than he wanted to admit, were outlined perfectly under the clinging fabric and Giles wondered…was it her choice to wear the satin confection? Or Angelus? 

He couldn’t have known that Angelus and Drusilla had dressed her immediately before bringing him from the dungeons. That she was naked by Angelus’ side, as she always was, as he preferred her to be. Giles couldn’t know that the demon who held his slayer so tenderly preferred her heat, her soft skin and unconscious caresses as she – as they – slept. 

(You don’t understand, Giles, she told him sadly. I wanted you to so badly, hoped you’d eventually figure it out. I love you, you’re like a father to me, but I can’t live without him. Even now.) 

“I’m sorry, Buffy,” he admitted finally, sadly. “I don’t know.” At her crushed look, he hastily amended, “Tell me from the beginning,” he said, sitting on the corner of the bed, all too aware that he was sitting on the bed his slayer (his daughter) had no doubt consummated her (relationship/freak show/connection) with the demon who killed Giles’ love and tortured him for information about Acathla. 

Slowly, Buffy did. She didn’t move from Angelus’ arms, even though she was highly aware of the picture they presented to Giles. She’d never convince them now that she was doing all this for them. That she was with Angelus to save and protect them.  

Her fate was sealed with this, but Buffy didn’t care. She needed these dreams to stop, and if Giles could help, Buffy would gladly give up all hope of ever bringing her friends and family to her side, of showing them that this was for them. (For her, she wanted this as much as she wanted them to live.) 

When she was finished, Giles frowned. He reached for his glasses, absently patting himself down for a handkerchief to clean them. Finding none, he absently chewed on the handle. “This sounds vaguely familiar,” he admitted. Not because he wanted to enlighten Angelus to anything, but because Buffy (slayer/daughter/friend) seemed so distressed. 

“I know something about this, but can’t place what.” Closing his eyes, he concentrated. Plus, he didn’t want to see Buffy in Angelus’ arms any longer. But the memory was elusive, and he shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Buffy,” he admitted. “I can’t place it.” 

“Oh,” she sighed, resting her head against Angelus’ shoulder in defeat.  

“But you know something,” Angelus insisted. At his reluctant nod, Angelus said, “Dru, see that Rupert as full access to the library.” She nodded, and some of the tension left the vampriess’ shoulders at that. Maybe the watcher had the answers after all.
~~~~~~~~~~
It was the middle of the day, and he had things to see to. The smooth running of his kingdom took more time than he’d have liked – more time away from Buffy. But it was something he did so that very soon he could spend all his time with her.  

Still, he sat on the bed, fingers combing Buffy’s hair away from her face in a constant rhythm as she tossed and turned, trying to run from whatever held her. Words, disjointed and frightened, tumbled from her lips in a steady stream of language, and his gut clenched. His strong slayer wasn’t meant to break under the onslaught of something foreign, something outside of him.  

She was supposed to bow to him, bend to his will, and yet Angelus knew that was something he’d have to work for. Buffy wasn’t one to meekly do as she was told. It was one of the many reasons he (loved) wanted her.  

“Buffy,” he whispered, closing tired eyes and laying next to her. “Let me in, baby. Let me see what’s happening to you. I’ll fix whatever it is, I’ll kill it, I’ll…I’ll do whatever it takes. I swear.” 

There was no response. Buffy continued to thrash on the bed, begging to be let go, begging for it to stop, the pain, the abuse. Please, please, please… 

“Slayer.” 

The word, spoken in the archaic tongue she adopted when caught in the dreams, caught his attention. It took him a minute to recognize the word, to translate into the English he knew, but when he did, Angelus realized much more than that.

 “Buffy?” No answer.  

There was something there, something he knew, teasing the back of his mind, taunting him with knowledge he should possess. But he couldn’t grasp it.  

(Born to do, no, Buffy, that’s not what you were born for. You were born for me, my love, only for me. The slayer was created for an entirely different purpose.) 

Was she witnessing that? Was she witnessing the creation of the First Slayer? 

(I was chained, they wouldn’t let me go, and there was crying. Screaming and pain. I couldn’t break free, the chains had me, tied me to the earth. Bound me to it, and I couldn’t break away.) 

Chained to the Earth.  

Was that it, then? Was that what the remnant of Acathla was trying to tell him? That the slayer was part of the land? But…why? Closing his eyes, Angelus tried to focus on that, tried to find more information in the mass of power he now possessed. 

Nothing.

All this, he’d changed the world, became its ultimate ruler, and he couldn’t help the one being he’d done this for. 

Laying his head next to hers, Angelus closed his eyes, concentrating on Buffy. He pulled her close to him, cool hands on warm skin, and focused. On her body, on her blood. Even on her soul.  

“Show me, baby,” he implored, determined now.  

They’d done it once, opened a mental connection that brought them closer to each other, that showed him what she did, where she was, and with whom. Could he do it now? Angelus was determined to try.  

He fell asleep. Or maybe he’d done some kind of hallucinogenic drug. It slammed into him, knocking him backwards and taking the breath out of him. His back hurt, his dead lungs ached, he’d banged his head on a rock or something, and his vision was blurred.  

“Noooo!” The word shot through him, bringing him to his feet before the plea, the command stopped. It was Buffy. Her voice was tinged with desperation, with anger, and with something else. 

Power.

Raw, unmitigated power. It streamed off her, and while Angelus couldn’t see her, couldn’t find her in the disorientation of their minds, of hers, or whatever or wherever they were, he knew it was her. She called to him, as always – her body, her power, her blood.  

He’d know his mate anywhere. 

“Buffy!” Did he shout that, or merely think it? He didn’t know, but either way, she didn’t answer. Because she couldn’t hear him, or something else, but that didn’t stop him. Moving, however, was a different thing entirely. It hurt to move, and when he managed to make his legs carry him a few feet, he felt as if he’d climbed Mount Everest, alone, in an hour, with a thousand pounds on his back.  

Trying again, he growled, legs too heavy to pick up, covered the dark terrain with aching slowness, when suddenly he saw it. The light. It was, Angelus suddenly knew with certainly, the light that led to the cave Buffy was in, chained to the wall, being raped and violated by the shamans she’d told him about, and with IT. 

This wasn’t a prophetic dream. It was a dream about the past, about the origin of the slayer. He knew that now, as surely as he knew he needed to find Buffy. Now. 

“Buf-” 

Jerking back, now fully awake, Angelus looked around the room, disoriented. Where was he? What was this? How did he end up here? 

“Angelus!” Buffy calling his name, shouting for him as she bolted upright on the bed blindly groping for him, snapped the former vampire out of his fog immediately. 

“It’s okay, Buffy,” he whispered, arms automatically winding around her body and pulling her close. “I’ve got you.” 

She held onto him, sobbing. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered, and he wasn’t entirely sure she knew she’d said those words. “Please don’t leave me.”

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