THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC M/F SEX [Buffy/Angel]
If you are underage or you will be offended by graphic sexual scenes STOP NOW

SUMMARY: Angel's in hell...but he won't be there for long because Buffy needs his help SPOILER: takes place after Becoming2 and anything up to it First and second seasons.
NOTE: The season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Becoming Part 1 and 2 was too painful to face. I cannot/couldnot face the thought of Angel in hell forever. This is from Angel's point of view and is painful in places... TISSUE WARNING! This is my own little piece of sanity-making fiction... I had to fix it for them. Enjoy! revised June 22, 1998
DISCLAIMER:Joss Whedon, the WB and Fox own the characters.

I wake with a scream and groggily I look around. I am on green grass in a field. The sun warms my face. *SUN WARMS!!!!!!!* I look down, I'm not burning as I should be in the sun. I look around confused.

The field is beautiful, like the spring fields of the home I left in Ireland so long ago. I look around for some indication of where I am. I am alone.

I wander around trying to remember what happened. What brought me here. How did I get here, and how can I be out in the sun without dying? The rays of the sun are poison to the undead. I look up into the sun confused.

I sit under a lush tree and I close my eyes and try to remember back. My minds skirts the painful memories.... This is not going to be easy.

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Buffy and I barely escaped Spikes lair alive. We were injured and hurting from our interaction with the Judge. We escaped through the sewers and into the night's rain. We showed up at my apartment looking like drowned rats.

Even beaten and half drowned, she is gorgeous. She stood in my apartment shivering. I never regretted the fact I was cold to the touch more than I did right then... I couldn't warm her with my body heat. I didn't have any. I did the next best thing, I got her warm dry clothes and told her to climb into the bed just to warm up. She took the clothes and looked at me with her large eyes. It broke my heart. I wanted to hold her so tightly then, but she needed to warm up.

I realized she was waiting for me to turn around. I don't know why I expected her to strip in front of me. Wishful thinking I am sure. I turned my back to her, giving her the privacy she needed. It was the hardest thing I had done in a long time. The woman I loved more than life itself was sitting on my bed stripping. I had a hard time swallowing. I pushed down the urge to peek, several times.

I heard her cry out in pain when she started to remove her clothes. A scrape she said. I asked to see the injury and she graced me with the permission to see and touch her back. There she sat on my bed with her shirt clutched to her breasts as I stroked her back. It was the most erotic touching we had ever had before. I sat down on the bed behind her and gently looked at the scrape crossing her left shoulder. It was nearly closed already. Her Slayers healing was nearly as good as my vampiric one.

Then she leaned back into me, and I couldn't focus on her scrape anymore. All I could focus on was her soft velvety skin, and her pressure of her body as it leaned into mine. Her skin was so warm and soft. I loved her smell, which is that of a normal healthy woman.

We spoke of our mutual fears that we each nearly lost the other tonight. The possibility of that loss paralyzed me. Without Buffy my world would be meaningless and eternity without her would be hell. I kissed her and she met my kiss strongly.

It was different this time. Our mutual fear of losing the other put a passion and an urgency to the kiss that had never been there before. I told her for the first time I loved her although it had been a fact in my life for months. I couldn't ever tell her before this, afraid I would repulse her. I told her I loved her... I tried not to but I couldn't help myself. God knows how I fought my love for her, until I was swept away in it far beyond my strength to resist.

She mirrored my emotion! She loved me too! My heart soared as we blended in a kiss that was never ending. Our kisses became more involved. I started to pull away as I always do when we get too serious. She is a young innocent virgin. I am an undead vampire monster old enough to be her grandfather several time over. I never want to hurt her, or expose her to vamipric sex which can be quite painful, and includes blood. I can't do that to Buffy, so when we get close... I run.

Buffy didn't allow me to this time. She silenced my protestations proceeded to "seduce me." It wasn't hard, I have wanted her from the time she kicked me head over heels in that dark alley. I just never thought it would ever happen. I thought she would eventually tire of my half life and seek a normal human lover. I was wrong.

She was everything I ever dreamed about in my solitary days of sleeping, and more. She craved my touch as much as I craved to touch her. She kissed me and she bared herself to me. I looked down as she laid on my bed nude, with her hair accross my pillow with a smile on her face that I knew was just for me.

I trailed kisses up her neck to her mouth and she surrenderd her mouth to mine's invasion. She tasted so sweet and so alive. I couldn't belive she was gifting me with her love. It was more than I ever expected, and God knows more than I ever deserved.

I kissed her breasts, and then her stomach. I trailed kisses down to her core, reveling in her little squeaks and moans. I tasted her juices as I sucked on her clit, and as I licked her velvety folds as she pushed my face into her as she came. She wrapped her legs around my head and abandoned herself to my administrations.

I gave pity to her when she was having a hard time breathing, and I went back to kissing her deeply. I slowly inserted myself into her, a little bit at a time watching her face closely. She was a little bit afraid which is normal for a virgin. She was afraid yet she was aroused and wanted me! I felt her blockage, and she rocked against me with a command to move that my body couldn't resist. I smelled her blood as I tore though her virginity. She cried out and grabbed me as I started to rock her with a rythym as old as time.

I hadn't lost my stamina in my decades of celibacy. I made sure she had several orgasms before I allowed myself to even come near my own orgasm. Then she did the most amazing thing...

When I neared my own climax she bared her neck and brought my mouth to her throat. I had no idea where she learned the realities of vampiric sex, or if it was just instinct, but she showed me the ultimate trust. The Slayer bared her throat to her vampire lover.

Even the love she showed me and the gift of her body didn't mean as much to me as that single act. I sank my fangs into her neck gently and took small sips of her blood. Her love and passion sank into my very core with the minute amounts of blood I allowed myelf to take. I felt and tasted her trust and love flow into me with her blood. Complete happiness and contentment infused me me as she joined me in orgasm

She curled up against me and fell asleep on my chest. I held her feeling happier than I had ever felt in my life, living or undead. I drifted off to sleep in complete contentment.

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I woke up on my knees facing her as The Slayer readying to strike me a killing blow.....I was in a strange place that I had never seen before looking deeply into the Slayer's eyes. Seeing a look on her face I had never hoped to see.

This was not my sweet gentle lover, this was not the woman who gifted me her virginity and granted me her trust to complete our lovemaking as a vampire does... This was The Slayer... the mythical Slayer of the undead. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the vampire she was going to slay was me!

She had a sword and appeared ready to complete the killing blow. I didn't know why. What happened? What have I done to earn such hate from her? I asked her hesitantly what was going on.

She seemed surprised to hear anything from me. Then she asked in a small voice if it was me. I told her I didn't remember, I couldn't seem to get it together...she came closer and I smelled her blood. She was hurt, I couldn't help myself, I embraced her... she was hurt and injured. I told her how I felt I haven't seen her in months..

She looked so sad, so tired. Time had been cruel to her and it was etched in her face. She hadn't obviously been sleeping... she had dark circles under her eyes. I asked her what was happening, but she kissed me and hugged me as if it was the last thing on earth she ever expected. I told her I loved her, and she told me she loved me too. Her touch and her hug calmed my fears.

My biggest fear has always been losing control of the demon... but that must not have happened...or she wouldn't have held me with such love. Then she pulled away and told me to close my eyes. I love her and I trust her and so I did so without hesitation.

I opened them in agony as she rammed the sword through me. I stood in shock staring at her in disbelief. The love in her eyes and tears showed me she loved me...why a sword? It wouldn't kill me, just hurt like hell...So why did she do it?

I called her name through my pain and reached emploring her to help me. I saw her disappear into a vortex of some sort, and I was somewhere new... somewhere I knew I would never see her again for eternity... The demon knew where we were and rejoiced at our new location......

I was in Hell!

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I dropped into a burning wasteland. The demon inside of me rejoiced at returning home to this hellish place. It did not resemble the hell I had been taught about as a young Irish Catholic boy.. But memory of Dante's Inferno filled in the parts.

I couldn't get past the shock. Buffy sent me to Hell. Literally.

I looked around and saw smoldering sparks fell from the sky and fell onto the burning sand. Sitting in one place got me burnt from both ends. I walked along and batted off the ashes as they fell on me.

I knew the secret was in memories. What had happened during the time between our love making and my death - again? I walked and thought endlessly until I reached an icy plain. I was used to cold, I walked in and sat down to think.

My memories finally returned. Damn them and me apparently. The Gypsy curse giving me my soul somehow had been broken. Somehow making love to Buffy lifted the curse. The demon had returned as did all of my memories now. I cried frozen tears as I remembered the horror I visited upon my love and our friends. The pain, the insults all replayed in my mind.

I remembered making that girl a vampire just because I knew it would hurt Buffy. Trying to kill Willow, Xander and Cordelia. Killing Jenny Calendar just because she tried to help me.

I remember releasing Akathla, in order to suck the world into hell, and trying to kill Buffy with a sword. I had taken and destroyed her life, took everything from her, tortured and nearly killed her watcher. I had opened the portal to end the world. Buffy closed the portal with my life blood.

To save the world, the woman I loved and who, despite all I had done to her, loved me right until the end ...sent me to Hell!

I am Damned to Hell for Eternity...Someone help me PLEASE!

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So here I am back in the green fieild, far from the burning sands and frozen planes of hell. I could stand hell if it was here..

"Hello Angel" I turned to look into the eyes of the woman I killed. Jenny Calendar. My jaws dropped. How could she be here? I killed her and left her in Giles bed like some sick gag gift. But there she was standing before me smiling. Why was she smiling?

"Jenny...How..." I stammered. I don't think I could stand it if I had to face everyone I had ever killed....The list would be too long!

"You asked for help. I intervened for you" She smiled again... "Come Angel, walk with me... we have much to discuss." I had no option... so I followed her.

We walked a ways before I realized she wasn't going to speak until I started the conversation. I am not good at talking. Decades alone will do that to you. "Where am I?" I ask her, praying it wasn't Hell.

" You're in the Summerland" Jenny answered. That told me nothing. No where in my early religious education in the 18th century Ireland was that ever given as a afterlife destination. I must have looked confused because she continued.

"The Summerland is the afterlife of the Pagans. Happy hunting ground, Heaven. Each person finds what they expect when they die. Your're in the Summerland" She smiled at me. I walked on confused. I expected Hell. Where else does a demon go? I knew with the blood on my hands I was beyond heaven. How could I be in the Summerland? I had never heard of it!

"I intervened on your behalf when you asked for help while in Hell" She turned to me "I owe you a great debt and an apology" I looked at her more confused... She owed me? I killed her, what could she owe me?

"I am a gypsy, of the tribe that originaly cursed you Angel. I was your Watcher to assure you remained suffering. I failed my job. I did not tell Rupert, you or Buffy of it. Had I, you may not have lost your soul. In not preventing you from losing your soul I interfered with the Goddess's plan for you and Buffy. I have endangered Buffy and possibly the world." Tears gleamed in her eye. I was scared about the threat to Buffy, but I could not do anything about... I was dead.

"So now what?" I asked her. "I'm dead and will ever see Buffy again." Tears well up in my eyes. This hurts more than anything has ever hurt. I loved her more than my own soul. I felt as if I was torn to shreds.

"Now I take you to meet the Goddess who has an offer for you. And maybe you will forgive me so I can forgive myself and move on" She smiled at me. I followed her. I had no where else to go.

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She took my hand, and told me to close my eyes. I hesitated. The last person who told me to do that sent me to Hell. But already dead I really had nothing to loose. I finally did so. I opened them to find myself at the side of a lake. An Older woman was sitting in the grass looking at the Sunset. I had forgotten how beautiful a sunset was. I wanted to share it with Buffy, and the pain returned.

"You did well Janna" The woman spoke with a soft and melodous voice. " You may go" She smiled at Jenny who turned to me with tears in her eyes.

"Tell Rupert I loved him. I am sorry we never got to experience it. What was under the acts that Eyghon did was my real emotions. Tell him that. He'll know it was me!" She turned and before I could say anything she was gone. It was disconcerting, and now I realized how Buffy and the others felt when I did it to them. I turned toward the woman.

She wasn't a raving beauty, but there was a beauty in her beyond imagining. She was what I thought Buffy would be like when she was older. I had so wanted to see her at the prime of her life.

She laughed. " I see you love her so much even *I* am compared to her!" No anger showed in her face, but love ammusment and understanding. "I am Cerridwen" I stared. Cerridwen was the Mother Goddess from the British isles. I did what I felt was apporpriate for a Goddess. I dropped to my knees before her.

"No my fallen Angel. I do not want people on their knees. It is not my way." She patted the grass beside her. "Sit with me. I need to talk to you" I sat in wonder. What did she mean by a Fallen Angel?

"You and Buffy are soul mates. You were separated when you were taken into the eternal darkness. She has looked for you across the globe, and across time, not realizing you were out of the reincarnation cycle." She looked out to the lake as I watched her talk. " I had plans for you. You were to be her protector. She is the best Slayer I have ever had." I looked at her in surprise. "Yes, the Slayers belong to me. I did not count on the Gypsies adding to the curse to return your soul. That shouldn't have happened." Damn right it shouldn't have happened!

"All acts of pleasure are my worship" she seemed to be quoting something. "To have such be your downfall was cruel and not planned. Now, the question is, what will we do about it?" I looked at her in wonder. Do about it? Going to hell and then here was sort of final wasn't it?

"No. It is not. You body went into hell through a magickal vortex, and therfore can be returned to the physical plane through a similar magickal vortex. . The question is...do you want to?" I looked at her shocked. She had answered my thoughts. "Yes. I know your thoughts." She answered them again. I quickly tried to remember if I did anything offensive. I can be a real asshole in my head...and out of it also.

She laughed. "No you did nothing to offend me. But time grows short. I will lose my Slayer soon, if we do not rectify this situation."

Lose her Slayer! Buffy NO! I jumped up in alarm. Nothing can happen to Buffy! But reality sank in... I wasn't there to protect her... I couldn't save her... she was going to die because I wasn't there! I felt a pain that hurt more than when she rammed the sword into my chest and sent me to hell. A crushing weight settled on my chest and choked me.

"Are you willing to reenter the physical plane in your original body, and resume a life as a vampire to protector her?" I nodded hopefully. I would give my life to protect her.. "Would you step aside for her to love another, if that was her need and still stay protect her?" She asked softly.

That hurt. I wanted to be the man in Buffy's life, but I knew eventually she would want a normal man, one who could give her a normal life, walk in the sun and give her children. I knew it would hurt like hell, but if she needed me to I would step aside, I would do so willingly just to be able to watch her and protect her. I looked up and looked in Cerridwen's eyes. She smiled.

"You are mine now Angel. You answer to me. I will make arrangements to have you called back to the physical plane. I warn you it iwll not be easy, you will arrive hurting, and in pain." I accept it. I would suffer pain willingly to return to Buffy! "You will need to find Buffy fast. What your demon tried so hard to do, has finally occurred. She has lost everyone and everything. Her heart and her soul are broken. She has left her home, her mother, her friends and her Watcher. When she sent you to hell it was the last act to destroy her." She took a deep breath and she looked at me with deep pain in her eyes. "She is suicidal and if she lives long enough she intends to take her life on the anniversary of the night you lost your soul... her eighteenth birthday"

I was terrified! No! I can't be so close only to have her die or kill herself! Please no! I was frantic. "When do I go back?" I wanted to be soon. I didn't want to wait!

"Now!" Was all I heard and I disolved into pain and fire. I felt the sword in me again and the burning of hell. I felt the demon within me rage as we were once again bonded in mind and body. I felt the bloodlust grip me as my vampire body demanded sustenance, and the demon demanded a life...and I fell forward onto the ground racked with pain

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I looked up in the dark of a forest and into the eyes of some teenagers. I pulled myself to my knees and I looked around. I was in a circle, in some woods. Obviously by the trappings, some teenagers were playing with demonic evocating and got me. Bless their souls!

"Demon, we call you forth to do our bidding!" The apparent leader chanted at me. I stood up and looked down at the sword in my chest. He seemed confused at my appearance. I guess I didn't fit his expectation of a demon. Little he knew.

"I demand you tell me your name!" He yelled at me. I looked at him again. He realized he had no power over me...I had no intention of giving this fool my name. I reached up and pulled the sword out of my chest. I looked around at him and his 'followers'.

"Run little man. You are a fool. Go home to your beds and forget you ever called me forth!" I snarled at him sliding into my vampric image. He seemed afraid which grew to outright terror when I easily stepped out of his supposed circle of containment with my bloodied sword in my hand.

They screamed and started running. I grabbed one... "What is this place? Where on Earth am I?" The boy emptied his bladder in fear and stuttered the name I longed to hear..."Sunnydale California". I let him run.

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I walked toward town, stopping at a farm to fill myself on blood from some cattle. My thirst raged in me. The demon was doing a serious battle for control, having so recently been in the drivers seat of my body. I fought and kept control. I squelched the urges to kill, and focused on my need to see Buffy. I stopped at my apartment and grabbed my small cross I used to control the urges when I fist regained my soul. The pain kept me conscious of the battle I would be fighting.

I couldn't ait and left to go to Buffy's house. Soon I was at her house. I jumped up to the roof. Somehow I needed to explain what happened. I looked through her window. Fear gripped me. Her room was a mess, and she obviously had moved out. Her clothes were mostly gone. Bits and pieces were scattered around the room where it seemed she had hurriedly packed. I wanted to go in but was unable. I left.

There was one place I knew I could find out the information I needed. I found myself on Willow's porch. The last time I had been there I had killed her fish, and left torturous notes. How would she accept my appearance now? I knocked lightly on her door.

"Wait a minute Oz" she said softly as she padded across to the door. Oz? Shy little Willow is used to having some male come knocking on her door in the middle of the night? I smiled. I always knew there was more to Willow than there originally appeared to be. "OH" she said and stepped back in outright fear as she saw it wasn't her Oz but was me.

"Willow, it's me, Angel" She looked at me and then her face lit up as she smiled. I wondered why she accepted it was me so readily. "I need to find Buffy, it's important. Do you know where she is?" She shook her head 'no'. I noticed she made no attempt to invite me in however ...smart move.

"No I don't. No one has seen her since that day." I looked at her confused. "You know, the day she went to close down Akathla, or whatever the hell his name was." She made a deep sigh. "We don't know if she is alive or dead. We are assuming alive, since another Slayer hasn't activated. How are you? "

"I don't remember alot. I got my soul back right before she stabbed me and sent me to Hell" Willows eyes got big. " I just got back" I winced internally at my phrasing. I sounded like getting back from Hell was like taking a vacation to San Fransico for the weekend.....

"Then my working of Jenny's spell worked on you? You got your soul back?" She was happy and proud and then a deep frown crossed her face. "Angelus had already opened the portal?" I nodded sadly. "Then the only way she could have closed the portal would have been to kill you!" Again I nodded. "Oh no wonder she never came home! You got your soul back, and she had to kill you!" Tears welled up in Willows eyes and streaked down her face. I just nodded.

"We need to talk to Giles." She said reaching for the phone... I winced. The last time Giles had seen me, I had just tortured the way to end the world out of him... She turned to me, "meet us at the library" she closed the door. I had no choice, I went to the library.

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I sat in the library nervously as I waited for them to appear. They all had good reason to hate me. Giles most of all. They walked in as a group. I remained sitting. I didn't want to appear threatening to them. I had scared them far to much.

"Well if it isn't dead boy!" Xander snarled at me. There was a coldness to Xander I had not seen before. He hated me more now than he ever had.

"What do you want?" Giles asked me coldly. Hate and fear glinting from his eyes. His tone of voce was hard. The floundering Watcher was gone. Here stood a dangerous man.

"I need to find Buffy" I said simply. I then told them what happened to me, and what I was told about Buffy. They listened to all I said, and never said a word. That would have been impossible for the Xander I used to know.

"She's gone." Giles said slowly. "She never returned from that battle. Her Mom said they had a fight over her being the Slayer. Her mom knows now she is the Slayer. She apparently moved out that morning after the battle, so we know she survived...physically. None of us have seen her or have heard from her, nor do we know where she is. It's been six months."

Six months? My God! she has been wandering alone, and hurting for six months? "I've got to find her!" I told them. "She's going to die if I don't!"

"Like hell, she'll probably die if you do! How do we know if the spell worked. You murderous son of a bitch!" Xander snarled at me. I looked him in the eye and ripped open my shirt and bared my chest.

"Then stake me. If I fail her and she dies, I want it anyway.!" He stood staring at my chest in confusion... then I remembered. I was wearing my small golden crucifix. I wore a small crucifix in the early days after the curse when I battled the demon and the bloodlust. The constant pain of the cross around my neck helped keep the demon at bay. I wore it again now because of how hard the demon was fighting since my return to the physical plane. I guess a vampire wearing a cross was a little bit too weird for Xander and the rest. But it finalized was me and not Angelus in a way I could never have done otherwise.

"Let's see if we can find her!" Willow blurted. The Friends of Buffy started to work on finding her location. I had to find her! I didn't go through hell, literally, just to go to her funeral!

continues