Title: Switch In Identities
Chapter Title: Soul Trade
Author: Baby Blues
E-mail: purely_blissful@hotmail.com
Rated: NC-17
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, but the story is.
Summary: Angel catches up with Buffy, and asks her to clear a few things about her mysterious past.
Dedication: To my Devil, thanks for taking care of my Sare Bear. If anything happens to her, you know we’ll kick your ass, right? Tally ‘Op! Lol
Excerpt:
~Angel: About last night . . .
~Buffy: I think you pretty much said all there was to say . . .
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She was there at exactly noon the next day. Dressed neatly in a quilted skirt of soft pinks, peaches, and yellows with a plain white top and a pair of grass sandals. A simple delicate bracelet adorned her wrist as well as a matching necklace around her swan-like neck. She looked innocent and breathtaking with her golden her loose and flowing around her face, her eyes bright and gleaming, her lips glossy and just begging to be kissed.
She had entered the hotel just as Angel stepped out of the kitchen with a cup of steaming black coffee in his hands. Their gaze locked, and a certain tension ignited all around the lobby.
Gunn lifted a brow in his position in a lazy-boy chair behind the office counter, the newspaper in his hands now completely forgotten as he silently studied the intensity of Angel’s stare on the pretty blonde. Invisible sparks radiated and kindled in the atmosphere as though a bomb was just waiting to go off. That or there was a larger possibility of Angel throwing down his cup of coffee to pounce readily at the pretty blonde.
The young man sighed. As much as he’d like to watch 3D porn, he would rather scratch his eyes out than see Angel butt naked. For reals.
“I’m gonna go,” he stated, even though he knew neither of the pair had heard him, and so he continued on, teasing them, “Amm . . . make sure to clean up after yourselves. Use the anti bacterial cleaner in the cabinet under the sink. You know Cordelia’ll freak if she sees or touches anything of the bodily fluid type. Oh! And don’t forget to pick up any stray pieces of clothing, English’ll go ballistic if he sees a thong hanging off of one of the lamps or something’. There are some extra condoms in the first drawer of my desk . . . just don’t ask me why it’s there,” he coughed. Standing up from his chair, he made his way towards the opposite door and left the vampire and the Hunter in their surging electric silence.
“It’s daylight out,” Angel said as soon as Gunn left them.
Buffy lifted her necklace and showed him a ring. “The Gem of Amara, an invincibility ring that lets me go out into the sun and all that good stuff,” she explained and then shrugged, “I only use it when I need to.”
Angel sighed and put his cup down, suddenly disgusted with the bitter taste it would leave in his mouth. He leaned against the office counter, his arms crossed against his chest and watched without a single word as she studied the hotel during daylight.
Silence.
“It was 1953 when I was first here,” she began, her eyes drifting close as memories of a time long gone flooded her mind with images as clear as day and of scents slowly dimming. Angel still sat silent, surprise etching his handsome face. “This place was teaming with movie stars when I came here,” she smiled at the memory. She pointed at a spot by one of the elevators, “I once saw Dorothy Lamour smoking at that very spot with a few of her friends. Billy Haley and His Comets were at the bottom of that staircase singing acapella for the guests,” she said with a nostalgic smile. “I had already left before Elvis and Marilyn Monroe made their appearances here,” she added with a light chuckle.
“Your grandfather already owned this place at 31 years old,” she then smiled and laughed lightly, “I remember your own father running around terrorizing the guests . . . He reminded me of a 6 year old tyrant. You get your quiet disposition from your mother,” she smirked. She clasped her hands behind her back. “It was definitely the Golden Era.”
Angel stared at her for a while. She had been here, watching the family since the beginning. She might have even been around when he, himself, was born. He didn’t know whether to get even more upset or to just let it go since it had already been done and was of the past. But it still irked him knowing this little fact. Wesley was going to have a field day with his Watcher’s journal. “So you’ve been keeping tabs on the O’Connor family for quite a while now.”
Buffy nodded.
Another moment of silence that threatened to strangle the two of them.
“About last night . . . ” Angel choked on his next words, not sure what to say. He had practiced this conversation all through the evening, and he had to forget and stumble NOW?
“I think you pretty much said all there was to say,” she smiled sadly. “You want nothing to do with me because I’m a demon . . . I get it . . . and I understand. You’re the Hunter, you kill my kind.”
Angel’s jaws clenched again, remembering the utter pain that had slashed across her face when he mentioned that certain tidbit. And it wasn’t because she was a demon that really bothered him anymore, it was because of the secrecy that shrouded her and the confusing and undeniable link he has with that mystery.
He uncrossed his arms and ran his fingers through his spiky brown hair. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She stepped forward and frowned. “How DID you mean it?”
He sighed and crossed his arms again. “First off . . . It’s hard for me to accept this . . . to accept you. Since I became the Hunter, there’s only been black and white in my world,” he explained, “Demons are evil, thus, being good and all, I kill them. It’s the order of the Council and its teachings . . . the order of my nature and my destiny, and that’s all I’ve ever known . . . and that’s all I’ve ever believed.”
“Believed? Past tense,” she noticed.
Angel sat up and rubbed his hands on his face. “I’m not certain what I believe anymore,” he confessed. “I’ve learned that there’s not an ‘in between.’ It’s either you’re good or you’re evil.”
“I am good.”
“I’m coming to understand that.” She looked heartbroken that he still couldn’t fully accept it and Angel stepped forward, closer to her. “Humor me here,” he almost pleaded and then sighed, “I’m sorry about what I said last night, I really am, and I take it back . . . but it’s just hard for me to accept that a vampire can be good . . . that a vampire has a soul.”
“There’s more,” she stated rather than asked.
Angel sighed and gazed at her with a somber expression. “Who am I to you?”
She nodded as a look of comprehension came over her face. “Having a soul isn’t the only thing you found out about me . . . isn’t it?”
He was silent once more, but finally asked, “Who’s Liam Angelus O’Connor?” He was eager to hear her answer, but dreading it at the same time. This was her husband, a man she loved. How would he be able to stand hearing her admiration and devotion for someone long gone?
She looked away and began fidgeting . . . but slowly began her story, “He saved my life one fateful night . . . and I became besotted with him. I began following him around constantly . . . stalking him actually,” she smiled causing Angel’s heart to clutch a little. “That’s how my family began helping him and his watcher with research and Apocalyptic stuff. I was always getting in one scrape to the next by trailing him during the night. He always ended having to save me. Call me the damsel in distress . . . as well as vampire bait,” she sighed and began toying with her necklace.
“One thing led to another and I fell in love with him . . . and he with me,” she looked up at Angel with sad eyes, “When he told me, ‘Liz, I love you . . . I try not to, but I can’t stop,’ . . . it was the happiest moment of my life.”
“You two were married,” Angel brought up.
Buffy nodded in reply. “We had one beautiful night together as husband and wife,” she hugged herself in remembrance of that one night when she was Mrs. Liam O’Connor.
Angel frowned. “Wh-what happened?”
Hazel eyes locked with his brown ones, and for that split second, he felt her utter pain and guilt. “I was kidnapped,” she whispered with difficulty as the images of that night came to her mind like a silent movie, all in slow motion, torturing and tormenting her. She shook her head and embraced herself even more tightly, “I was brought to the Master as lure . . . “ she gazed at Angel, staring at him with intensity as she dropped the bomb, “ . . . So I traded my life . . . and sold my soul . . . to him . . . for my husband.”
Angel’s jaw dropped, “Are you saying . . . ”
“I made Ness turn me into a vampire . . . to save Liam’s life.”
Continued to Chapter 13: Over Cold Coffee
Back to Chapter 11: Demons R'Us