#and i really do think that's what fanatics are - people who hate what is evil more than they love what is good

[wanderingmind867]

I feel like Two-Face having a third split personality makes some amount of sense, although I also get why it isn't explored that often. I mean… Two-Face is known for Twos. His gimmick is duality. Having a character like The Judge ruins that gimmick. But at the very least, I do like when media with Two-Face tries to add elements of that third personality into their stories.

For an example of that, I love pointing at the Telltale Series games. When you get the choice to save Catwoman from a sneak attack by some crooks or save Harvey from a giant spotlight crashing onto his skull, the game then offers a branching path for Harvey. Both paths end the same way (because he'd already been injected with a serum by the children of arkham that lowers impulse control and makes people more prone to strong emotional responses), but they develop his character in significantly different ways. I suppose I should be worried about spoiling this for people, but I personally like spoilers, so i'm not that bothered.

If Batman saves Harvey, then the drug still works it's magic and makes him a paranoid wreck, obsessed with consolidating power around himself. But it also makes him less bitter towards Batman. His darker side begins to idolize the vigilante justice aspect of Batman, and I believe he even creates a special police force modeled after Batman (I think). In essence, he becomes a fanatic obsessed with the strength of the bat. Elements of The Judge can be seen in how his paranoia makes him try to become a dictator.

So Two-Face without the scars is (if i remember correctly) a lighter shade of evil. He hasn't got the physical trauma to deal with, he's only got the mental stuff. And it's a little easier for him to manage one without the other. He still looks the same, so it's not like he's gotta be scared of being judged for his looks. So that might honestly help his sanity a tiny bit. I remember the scene where you see him in his office before his mayoral portrait is painted. Without the scars, he's paranoid and messing with his coin, but he's not angry and violent. He's more just paranoid and lashing out.

Meanwhile, a Batman who lets Harvey's skin burn and scar over ends up creating the Two-Face we all know. This man spends half the game hiding behind bandages, or phantom of the opera style face masks. He resents Batman, since Batman saved Catwoman and left him to burn! He can't even have a normal mayoral portrait taken, because one side of his face is red and covered in welts and scars! This Two-Face is so deranged that he can't even be reasoned with. Which kind of makes sense. I imagine it's hard to think when your skin is always pained and your mind is full of a drugged substance.

In either case, Harvey Dent gets put through the ringer. He gets drugged. He thinks his girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend. He potentially mauls a criminal to death with his bare hands. He has a psychotic break. But there's two different flavours of psychotic break. There's the version where he's obsessed with bringing batman style justice to the city, and then there's the version where he hates Batman and blames him for Gotham becoming a hellhole that he has to fix.

If you read into all this, it really feels like Harvey develops a different split personality depending on what happens to him. If he isn't scarred, he gains a split personality in the form of "The Judge", an authoritarian obsessed with law and order (at all costs). And if he is scarred, then he gains a split personality in the form of "Two-Face", an angry and violent man who thinks he has to burn the city to the ground to make it better. Both his negative personalities showcase his obsession with justice and order, but they showcase it in slightly different ways. It's pretty cool.

[apilgrimpassingby]

I genuinely think there are few things more important than loving what is good more than hating what is evil.

[maxdibert]

In which order would you say you dislike, because they’re indeed dislikable, some of the bad characters? Voldemort (not Tom, him after he became the Dark Lord), Barty Jr, Belatrix, Umbridge, Rita Skeeter, Pettigrew, the Dursleys, Greyback, Lockhart, Nagini..

Honestly, I don’t hate any of them. For example, I know that Rowling really tries to make Rita Skeeter come across as the typical sensationalist journalist from the gossip world, but I actually like those kinds of journalists. I watch those shows where the panelists scream at each other and argue about people’s lives, and gossip feels like food for the soul. I even like when people tell me gossip about people I don’t even know because there’s nothing that lifts my spirits more than a good story. I mean, if there’s a juicy gossip, I can skip my antidepressants for the day. No, seriously, I don’t know, it’s annoying, but I’d totally read her column xD

Lockhart is such a diva and honestly, I find him hilarious. He’s a jerk, but I’m not going to hate a guy who dresses like Elton John and looks like he’s ready for a Drag Race competition, and then it turns out he’s faked his whole life. In Spain, there was a case of an actress who photoshopped her image on red carpets pretending to work in Hollywood, and they caught her. Then, in one of the best comedy series made in this country, they gave her a tribute, and I’d do the same for Lockhart in the magical world because what a queen. We love him.

Voldemort is a total asshole, but as a villain, he’s pretty flat. Like, he’s the typical super-evil bad guy who’s pure evil and just there to scare kids, and honestly, he feels like a cartoon, and I can’t feel any hatred towards cartoons. I hate human beings, and Voldemort seems less human to me.

Barty and Bellatrix are a bit too cartoonish for me, and that whole thing of being such a fanatic that you become a psychopath straight out of a true crime story… Well, girl, what do you want me to say? It’s just a bit indifferent to me. I prefer characters who are really messed up, like Homelander in The Boys, who is utterly despicable and pathetic, or Ramsay Bolton in A Song of Ice and Fire. Those are villains I truly hate, ones that make me actually want to punch them, these two? Well… I don’t know, I feel kind of indifferent about them in that sense.

I think if I had to choose people who really get on my nerves in the series and are "the bad guys," I’d go with the Dursleys and Umbridge. To me, Umbridge is the worst there can be: a mediocre person who uses her political status to further corrupt the system beyond what it already is, and abuses that status in a very violent way. And the Dursleys are literally the worst, I mean, literally starving a child? Teaching your son to mistreat other kids? I mean, I think aside from how they treated Harry, there’s how they raised Dudley to treat Harry. They literally encouraged him not to see Harry as a person, filled his head with so much garbage. Not only are they terrible adults, but also awful parents. Interestingly, these three characters are very real, very human. They’re less of a cartoon version of being evil and more nuanced, which is why they piss me off more.

[horizon-verizon]

So Rhaenyra’s downfall is gonna be some divine karma as she is gonna become a fanatical cult leader with a god complex that sacrifices the masses for a prophecy instead of having it be a tragedy caused by misogyny, they gonna make it seem like she brought her own end. Truly groundbreaking storytelling, thanks Ryan Condal.

If not exactly Dany S8 degree of "lost mind" cult leader "fanatical, it will be that she lost sight that Targs are not Gods and she "lost herself" bc she was desperate & had been deprived of the access to male graces her entire life. which is problematic not only bc bk!Rhaenyra seemed to feel little to no real jealousy or wish to do "masculine" stuff or to adopt a more "masculinized" identity, but bc it poses masculinity as both an inherent, immutable and prime desireable state of being rather than a thing that develops from socialization.

They seem to think that they are giving respect to Rhaenyra's end by not really thinking about women=victim and instead focusing more on how said woman "escapes" victimhood by doing what she can only ever do, and that is massive malicious takeover that she can no longer see as inherently evil. Somehow this is their "necessary" compromise with woman-eternal-victim with "feudalism is always bad and we shouldn't care about nuances of living in such a system": a woman fails bc she decided to the biggest-baddest thru weapons of mass destruction and manipulating 1000s to believe these creatures are gods to get where she has always been told she doesn't deserve.

Here's the thing. Cersei is a NLOG and did think that she needed to become a literal man or adopt ONLY masculinized phenomena (looks, behavior, practices, like sword fighting) in order to ever consider herself capable of being a creature of power. Of being an agent of change, influence, power, formidability, authority in her society/community/etc. Something that many people want or develop to want. And most women have ta one point felt this way whether it was a sustained (years long), "momentary", or something we still feel reflexively from time to time. Because we have been socialized that way. To think man = prime/only source of human power/"naturalness". It is inevitable that there will be Cerseis and such...but to make as if women are monolithically going to turn out to be Cersei is itself sexist to maintain that idea that maledom is a unquestionable "prize" or grace.

I see Cersei as both a tragic figure who portrays how fallible and futile it is to deny your own traits or eschew exploring what you are truly affined with at any given moment, or at least be flexible there in one's expression, be it gender or not. Bc Cersei is a figure of extreme repression to fit something she can never be bc it will always be denied to her on account of having a vagina and looking like an ideal of female beauty. It is why she is funny and tragic (to some, just hateful, or that and pitiful). But to make as if every single women MOST women will fall into this trap society makes is to make as if women are also pretty weak of mind, or whatever counts as "soul". Which again counts to reaffirm masculinity's superiority and women's place as needing the "protection" of men.

BK!Rhaenyra was an example of a woman who may not have been perfect but she never felt as if she had to deny who she was to prove her deserving or hide her traits to have access to such. She demanded and didn't give in enough when she was nonverbally and socially compelled to and was killed for it. HotD wants to stray from this to seemingly reaffirm all that I just described, even as its writers might not really understand the gravity of what they are doing.

Both are tragic figures. But they are not the same woman and their womanhoods' developments/how they created their womanhoods within the system give them their own separate flavors of tragedies that also go under the super-category of "women are damned" archetype in fiction. It is also bc these writers haven't really understood agency in gender relations.

Ryan Condal seems to dream of creating parables. He should stick to those. (these aren't "uncomplicated", either, btw, to write a good parable you need to have a good command or knowledge of some cultural ideals and be able to use them to make a very memorable image while conveying your point instantaneously...but Condal seems to favor the simplicity of a parable's one-shot allegory).

[malichev]

I said I would come back when there was news, currently the French union posted a new update about the case, and people are pointing out that the union alleged that CC's had encouraged fans to commit the crimes of harassment, doxxi, etc., against the former workers, since, for those who don't know, Lea, in addition to the Pomme and Dapper ADMs, were attacked and apparently also suffered doxxin. Okay, the French union didn't choose the best words, but one of my last posts was exactly pointing out that the community, especially The Patitos, has to think twice before writing shit because it could make the situation worse. And that's what happened now. Hold the vigilante syndrome. And that's why you don't have to demand that other streamers defend Quackity. Because they also make things worse, because fanatics will use any of the defense speeches as a kind of approval to continue their attacks. For me it's clear that if the streamer doesn't directly say don't attack'', the ''Patitos'', at least on the tweeter, will continue making this mistake. I'm going to take Missa's speech as an example because this is one of the easiest to distort and use as ammunition, he praises Quackity a lot as a friend, which is irrelevant to the case because the criticism was about Quack being a bad boss, not bad friend, but the message of ``protecting Quackity from all evil because he is a good friend, a good person´´ is easily distorted by fanatics, who will take it literally and do everything to ``protect´´ the Quackity, and doing anything can include crimes. And you don't need a French union to know that this happens, every community has some crazy people like that, that's why if you are a content creator, from time to time you need to hold the community's reins, because even a responsible creator has to deal with crazy people in their own community, imagine a creator who doesn't try to set limits.That's why I don't expect other CC to talk about it, because they can be more of a hindrance than a help.Especially because it's not really related to all of them and many of them don't really know what's going on either, sometimes they just want to be a little empathetic, kind and end up being used as ammunition for hate.

[holdinggrudges]

Just recently read your fic, the Chain and I love your writing! As well as the interesting ways including a medium character changes how the story goes.

But now I wanna know what the character's weirdest customer was when running the psychic shop. Just for fun.

hi hi!! i actually loved this question so much that i wrote a little drabble for it (568 words) but, technically, this isn't actually a customer, exactly. but i think it's sort of fun and hopefully an interesting look into the pre-series era for rewrite!reader. (a tw for religion and some slight christianity bashing lol sorry)

AND btw, if you're seeing this post and have no idea wtf i'm going on about: you should read the chain on ao3 it's super awesome i swear!! (@cafekitsune for dividers <33)

Generally, the people of Sioux Falls seem to appreciate your presence. They recognize you, occasionally, from the times you attended the school here. Some of them think you’re a little odd, perhaps, especially those that have heard of but don’t really believe in your gifts. But they’re kind to you in the grocery store, and the ones who know Bobby tend to tell you they think he’s really mellowed out since you came to live with him (this, you don’t tell him because he would deny it; it warms your heart to hear it anyway). 

Of course, there are the…religious types. Those that feel your shop is tainting the so-called purity of the town, as if the liquor stores and the strip clubs didn’t do that already. You get calls from that crowd at least once a week, cursing you out and calling you an evil heathen. It doesn’t matter how many times you explain to them that you’re not a witch, that you perform no spells, that you commune with no devils, their animosity stays the same. You know what they say: there is no hate like Christian love. 

So when the phone in your shop rings, and the first thing the person on the other line says after your spiel is, “Why are you here?” your first instinct is to just hang it up. You’re not particularly interested in being berated today. But the person on the other end continues, their voice quiet, barely more than a whisper. “You don’t belong here.” It doesn’t occur to you to question how, exactly, such a quiet voice is even being picked up by the microphone.

You rub a hand over your face. “Look, I have as much a right to be here as anyone else. I have a license. If you want to complain, call your damn congressman, ‘cause I don’t give a fuck.” You’re so sick of these fucking fanatics on your ass all the time. As if you don’t feel like enough of a freak without people calling you one to your face once a week. 

But then, the person on the phone says, “Why pull the cards if you aren’t going to listen, child?” 

It sends a chill down your spine because you don’t offer tarot readings at your shop. Missouri taught you to do them, and while they aren’t exactly your spiritual forte, you’re connected enough with people’s energies that you should, theoretically, be able to do them semi-accurately. And you tried, at first, but no matter who you’re reading for, no matter what type of spread you pull, you always, every time, without fail, pull the same card—the same damn card that you pulled the day of Lydia’s funeral, desperate for any sort of comfort or guidance. Wheel of Fortune, reversed. Every fucking time. As if you needed another reminder of your shit luck.

There is, of course, no way this person should know that, though. When you pull the phone away from your face to look at the caller ID, the screen is full of 8’s. Not just where the name should be, but filling up the entire area of it. “What is this?” you ask. 

“The wheel turns, whether you wish for it or not. You can’t escape the pull of fate.” With that, the line goes dead. 

You stop answering the phone without looking at the caller ID, after that.

[oorusandei]

An Analysis: The Beast-Yeast Update + White Lily, AKA What Could’ve Been

Crossposted on the Youtube video of White Lily’s release in a fanatical comment. Will do the same here, only longer and more detailed, for the White Lily stans (around 5 total)

For the people who don’t get the lore and/or White Lily’s character, I made a very long explanation and analysis. (The Literature student in me couldn’t resist.) Scroll to the very bottom for short summary.

From what I can tell from this video, Whire Lily seems to have been in some sort of coma or unconscious state. This is likely because she fell into the Ultimate Dough and most of her consciousness was reincarnated into her “evil” form Dark Enchantress Cookie. However, the part of her that is pure and good is trapped in the glass coffin shown, and she’s trying to gather her essence to stay awake for as long as possible. She needs “life powder” to escape, so she can only remain in the coffin if no one else sacrifices themself. Faerie King did make the necessary sacrifice, thankfully, and she’s escaped with the intent of repenting for her sins as her alter ego, Dark Enchantress. Then, it’s revealed that an even darker and more dangerous force has awakened: Shadow Milk Cookie, the first Fallen Hero and Pute Vanilla’s counterpart. Seems like the Fallen Heroes are all counterparts to the Ancients. The Ancients and the Fallen Heroes have the same essence (Truth, Happiness, etc) but things went awry some time along the way, turning them evil.

Looking deeper into it, White Lily is a good example of “same goal, different choices, different story”. Perhaps she, like the Fallen Heroes, had the same fate, but she was at least able to preserve her last bits of goodness. She is my favorite Ancient because the conflict happens internally and not externally. Basically, she’s fighting another version of herself. And the interesting part is, it shows that anything can be “good” or “evil”. You could also say that she’s a morally gray character who could go either way, and this created 2 personas: White Lily and Dark Enchantress. You ever read an “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence” fanfic? This is exactly what happened. Both of them want to seek the truth. It is only the actions they took (and will take) that differ, and what makes them so different from each other. It is why White Lily’s soul split into two. White Lily wants to seek the truth to help Cookiekind: improving stamina and attempting to bake a perfect Cookie, while Dark Enchantress has gone rogue in her quest for and obsession with the truth, firmly believing that Cookies are made to be eaten. It’s noted that this destroyed her character fundamentally, and is ultimately what turned her evil. I like to think that she herself was the reason behind her descent into madness and villainy, not the Ultimate Dough.

Back to the update. Did anyone notice that the Fallen Heroes each have their own corner, or nation, on the map of Beast-Yeast? If we look at the parallels between the Ancients and the Fallen Heroes, we can see a pattern: the Fallen Heroes are direct rivals of the Ancients. If I recall correctly, Pure Vanilla represents kindness, and sincerity (at least he does in my eyes). Shadow Milk is written as a trickster, as someone who likes pranks and doesn’t take anything seriously, the opposite of the genuine Pure Vanilla.

Also, I love PureLily. Don’t hate on PureCacao or anything. Just putting it out there that they were childhood friends turned almost lovers turned enemies to almost lovers again (?) in the coming update, and I’m really hyped. My favorite trope.

I’m honestly impressed that a Cookie gacha game has such intricate lore. Looking forward to this update a lot, the 3 year wait was worth it.

TL:DR: White Lily is in a glass coffin and needs Life Powder to get out. Faerie King sacrifices himself. Evil awakens in the tree as Faerie King’s magic is no longer active: aka Shadow Milk Cookie, first of the Fallen Heroes in the preview and counterpart to Pure Vanilla, similar to what Dark Enchantress is to White Lily.

[marythequeen]

I am so happy, that there is another blog that defends Mary I, SHe is honestly the most vilified Queen in English history. She was painted as an evil catholic fanatic ruler even though she executed fewer people than her father and sister. She loved her country. She dedicated herself to fixing the things she thought were destroying her country. She faced Scrutiny and persecution because of her faith. What is your reaction when people compare Mary I to her Father King Henry VIII? What does she feel about her father? does she adore him or despise him?

i agree with you wholeheartedly!! and it makes me so happy that more and more people start to learn the truth about queen mary.

now here's my thoughts on your questions. it may disappoint you and others but i always speak my mind. mary had, indeed, inherited some of henry's personality traits (it's a whole another topic but if you want me to elaborate it, i can do it sometime) it's her father after all, we all, unfortunately, take from our parents. however, the people that compare mary to henry, do it in a wrong way or they have simply vicious intentions (i'm looking at the protestant missionaries)

they mostly compare their ruling styles and again, they have some similarities even there BUT mary had never ever had her own people applied certain torture methods, unlike what henry viii (and the other tudor monarchs) had constantly. so when they claim that mary followed her father's way of ruling, i simply want to gag my own eyes and forget i read. if we really want to compare henry viii to someone in his family, it would be his second daughter, elizabeth tudor (again, another topic but i'm open to discuss it)

and your other questions, well, we'll never know exactly how mary felt about her father but we can have strong conjectures. in my opinion, it is clear that mary knew exactly what kind of a man her father was and what he was capable of. she faced his cruelties at a young age and suffered greatly because of him and his actions. and mary wasn't a naive woman. she knew it was all his choice, though he was sometimes influenced by others.

do i think she loved him? yes, i do. do i think she despised him? yes, absolutely! these can happen at the same time. you can love someone and still be aware of their vile personality traits.

considering the reports and mary's own words, i think mary hated him as much as she loved him. she respected him but didn't approve his actions. she took care of him when he was sick. we don't know what was her reaction to henry's death, it wasn't recorded, but we know that she took offense when katherine parr got married so soon as we can read her letter to thomas seymour.

and most importantly, she grieved him and i don't think she did it just because she was expected to do this. it was because, no matter what kind of a shit father he was, he was still her father who once called her 'the pearl of his kingdom'

father-daughter relationships are complex, speaking with experience. at the end blood runs thicker than water.

[biryukzlodei-artblog]

Lex is doing this for money, not in name of peace. The war is between the USA/NATO and Russia. NATO attacked first for many years and is pretending that this is not true. No real peace with the United States and NATO is possible. Because the West is lying and violating its own agreements, and promises. In 4 years, the power in US will change again, and the new team will cancel all previous agreements. In fact, the power in the US doesn’t change, only the talking heads, and agreements are concluded and cancelled when it is convenient and profitable for the West to do so. US public political figures are just paid actors same like Zelensky. Putin has a real job to do instead of entertaining another slippery Anglo in an interview, helping the US and NATO pretends to look "objective".

Funny bot answer.

Money is never enough. Anyway, if Lex won’t be a good boy and do what he is told to do by big men above him, his career of the "independent journalist" will be quickly over.

Throughout the entire conflict, Russia has not killed a single journalist, Hollywood star (God forgive me) or NATO politician who visited Kiev. He was in absolutely no danger.

Golden opportunity, sure. 2025, bots still believe that democracy and elections are the real deal and not a theatre. Most Westerners are brainwashed to be Russophobes since childhood and don't know history, and don’t want to know it, trusting whatever talking heads told them on tv. For those who still know how to read, there are plenty Russophobe books from historical till artistic one. And for those who have little interest in this life, there are many anti-Russian games. Here the Russians share the role of the bad guys with the Arabs, Germans and British. Western youth is intoxicated by liberal propaganda; they are like religious fanatics are aggressively taking any critics of their sacred tablets. Few sane people there are afraid to open their mouths to don’t get under social repressions. Those who tired of open hatred or afraid of consequences are happy to support another propaganda narrative "you can’t blame all Russians because of Putin" and "Russians hate this war and are hostages of their evil government". There are zero points to talk "directly to the west in an unfiltered, unedited production" because Russia can’t have influence on these people. They are programmed to live with "Russia bad" protocol. People made their choice years ago and another useless interview won’t change anyone’s minds (what for even?), but will only help NATO propaganda to confirm the legend that they are not part of the conflict.

I can’t care less who he is. He is just a tool for spreading of US propaganda narrative inside the NATO public. Do you really care where the hammer was made when you hit nails with it? I'm sure his service is well paid. There used to be an institute of Russian studies in the West, but today they just push former Soviet Russophobes as "Russia experts" and think that this will somehow help them. Lex they chose because he is a "Russian" (he is not) and know rus language.

[yuttikkele]

i finally and painstakingly have finished reading the lord of the flies. it was not a fun read (it was boring), but I am satisfied with the ending.

THERE ARE LORD OF THE FLIES SPOILERS IN THIS POST.

(under the cut is mostly a lot of questions of what I’m wondering or ideas of what I think happens after the island. because I cannot consume a piece of media and not think things like that.)

The book ending with Ralph literally wedged between two very different but nonetheless savage wars is such an interesting ending. But, at least he’s not in direct danger anymore I guess!

Ofc I know about all the discussion surrounding this book and how it’s unrealistic. Yeah, it’s fiction. The chances of this scenario happening is like one in a million. I believe the book is over exaggerated to get the point across. To show that little boys acting savage on an island is not so different from men waging war. Or really, anything that happens in politics. I could talk more about the inherent evilness of humanity and the actual main points of the book, but I’m here to talk about something else.

While reading this book, being the character fanatic that I am, I kept thinking about how it would be if they all got rescued. Would they be tried in court? Would the boys keep up with each other any? Would they reconnect, learn from their experiences, and become better people? Would movies and documentaries be made about them in-universe? Would any of them write a book? Would some still try to profit off the fame? Would they all be too scared of what they witnessed on the island to do any of that?

How would the boys settle back in to British society? Would it be easy, hard, or uncomfortable? Would some get sent to institutions or facilities after not merging well with society again? Would they have bad reactions to specific foods (especially processed foods) after not eating them for so long? Would they be able to look at a pig the same way again?

I wonder what Jack’s wake up call is like, if he decides to change at all. None of the boys would probably trust him again after they’re knocked back into their senses. Or, maybe they do, who knows! Regardless, I imagine Jack either goes back to his snobbish ways, showcasing any little power he can get his hands on and probably thinking fondly of his time as chief. OR Jack realizes what he did was wrong and that power does indeed corrupt, and it especially corrupts him, and he works on becoming humble. Redemption arc style.

Mostly, I thought about Ralph growing up as a somber little boy, forced to lead at such a young age, having everyone turn on him, and almost dying because a ginger hated his guts. Would he or any of the other boys have PTSD? Any other kind of mental illness? I could imagine Ralph’s mom seeing off a joyful little boy and seeing him return as an almost completely different person. Speaking of returning, does Ralph survive a savage island while his dad dies in a bloody war? Or, does his dad return, only to find out his son had been in as terrifying a place as himself. Ralph grows up, more than likely being the only boy at his school that has ever been threatened by falling boulders. More than likely being the only one to experience what he has in general. He probably grows up and just feels, different. Maybe he feels that he doesn’t belong. Maybe he’s lost hope in humanity. But, I like to imagine, he makes another friend like Simon, which helps him remember there’s always hope, or like Piggy, to know there is always a voice of reason.

[ifyouknowmenahyoudontt]

guys, it wasn't really sirius' job to free kreacher? it would be on walburga and orion, the heads of their household- he owned literally nothing from the noble house of black at the time. his only possessions from any family members were what he got from his uncle alphard black! kreacher was not his servant specifically, it wouldn't have been on him OR regulus.

also, this is kind of just? arguing semantics? yes there were other evils in the wizarding world, that's undeniable! but the order was kind of in the middle of a war against an active threat, the death eaters, who were killing and torturing other people left and right.

this kinda goes back to the "they didn't help remus against discrimination for being a werewolf :/" argument from a week or so ago, to which i will say, go look up the picture of the order of the phoenix- the ORIGINAL one, with james and lily and sirius in it. that's a very small amount of people to try and dismantle entire systems of discrimination that existed for hundreds of years prior.

(mostly) everyone knows racism is bad! have we fixed it? uhh, no, unfortunately not. oh, what about sexism? awww man, no... homophobia, maybe? nahhh.... why? because these have existed for A LONG TIME. even if views are progressing and people are understanding such discrimination is wrong, it's not just going to go away.

and unfortunately, the same goes for house elves, which were kinda just common practice for wealthy wizards. and then with hermione's efforts with SPEW, people kinda got the idea that it's not the greatest- i think! haven't read the books in a while. but even then, if her message didn't really get across, that's more true to life. house elves have been A THING in the wizarding world for centuries, why would they listen to this random MUGGLEBORN girl saying it's wrong? if it was wrong, they wouldn't be allowed, silly goose!

none of this negates the fact that sirius left because he was the black sheep of his household. his parents aligned with voldemort's ideals, his brother was a death eater (notice how his parents weren't death eaters themselves), and it's not illogical that kreacher would adopt the ideologies and terminologies of his masters; it's not sirius' JOB to keep himself in that situation to try and convince kreacher nor regulus, "hey friend, maybe we SHOULDN'T advocate for killing off entire races of people just because we think they're below us! why? oh, because that's just sooo not nice..."

no child of an unsafe, unhealthy, abusive, or (insert other negative adjective) is obligated to stay in that situation to try and change any of the people who mistreat them. sirius black was a teenager, a minor, a child- no older than most of the new marauders fan base (11-17). it is not the job of the kid to try and make any significant changes to improve their family, it's the job of the parents to do better and create a better, safer, more loving household for their children. walburga and orion didn't do that, which is what contributed to regulus being a voldemort fanatic and kreacher repeating all their hateful rhetoric, which is what led sirius to leave. it's not his job to fix his family or save anyone but himself, as the mistreated child. something something, this is just very convoluted victim blaming from everyone who blames sirius for something.

(and again, it's not his job to "save" regulus, or to make him leave too. regulus (1961) was only a year or so younger than sirius (late 1959), very much capable of thinking for himself by time sirius left. very much capable of thinking for himself when he became a death eater. he would probably be offended at the notion that he didn't choose to follow voldemort, because he DID. he was a product of his environment, but had very many windows of opportunity to change his views and leave like sirius did. he didn't make that choice, own up to it. i'm sorry, but he just wasn't an abused baby boy forced to get the dark mark, and it's not sirius' fault he is the way he is.)

!!!!

[saintsenara]

inhuman resources dolores umbridge general | 4.2k words

dolores dressed in brand new robes and arranged a mother-of-pearl cat-shaped hair slide in her curls. the effect was rather good, she thought, admiring herself in the mirror once she'd applied her make-up. all that was needed was a splash of chanel no. 5, an unfortunate muggle habit she just couldn't quit. she’d tell the dark lord that it was a specialist blend she had an apothecary put together especially for her, should he ever ask. or maybe he would share her sympathy for coco chanel's entirely sensible views...

speaking from the fire in the gryffindor common room, sirius black will assure his godson that dolores umbridge is definitely not a death eater. how does he know? well, he's seen the paper trail...

this piece was written for week eleven of @ladiesofhpfest, on the theme of ministry misses [you can find the masterlist for this week's fics here].

author's notes under the cut

as the summary says, i’m always really struck in order of the phoenix by sirius’ absolute conviction that dolores umbridge couldn’t be a death eater - and, indeed, that she’s the catalyst for his iconic "the world isn’t split into good people and death eaters" line. he’s right, of course [umbridge’s role as a character in the series is to show harry that the rot in wizarding society goes far beyond voldemort], but it seems so strange to me that he would be so emphatic when we know that the order is worried about the death eaters recruiting in the ministry - and who has access to fudge - and yet a woman who is canonically extremely close to the minister [and whose emphatic denial of voldemort’s return delights the dark lord] is never suspected.

but, sirius’ thinking does make sense… after all, lord voldemort is many things, but he isn’t ordinary. umbridge, on the other hand, is a creature of absolute [and evil] banality. she is not a fanatic, but someone who is completely mundane, who ends up perpetuating horror in the name of "professionalism" and "doing things by the book". she spends the entirety of this piece unwilling to confront the fact that the death eaters are not interested in giving her a nice authoritarian desk job, of the kind she’ll get in deathly hallows. this voldemort would prefer to destroy the social structures of the wizarding world completely.

in canon, it’s also fair to note that umbridge’s banality could reasonably be described as twee. this is absolutely because jkr generally dislikes hyper-femininity - and so umbridge’s fondness for pink and kittens indicates that she is in some way sinister, in the same way that rita skeeter’s fake nails indicate that she’s morally inauthentic, lavender’s giggles indicate that she’s vapid, and pansy parkinson’s ugliness indicates that she’s a bitch long before she opens her mouth. [even though, as @whinlatter points out, umbridge’s gender performance is really not what we’d expect from a female politician of her era, who tended to make themselves seem less feminine, in order to compete in a male-dominated world.]

but, on the other hand, it is also true that a fondness for twee makes a great villain. the line about umbridge’s house being in keeping with the rustic aesthetic of the village in which she lives is lifted directly from hot fuzz - a god tier film about the evil lurking underneath picture-postcard bucolic splendour. her interest in inhuman resources in dress codes and nuclear families and coco chanel is connected to this - a love of the proper and nice and elegant which ends up being outrageously cruel.

it also ties to something which always stands out to me about the umbridge of canon: that she truly hates magic. indeed, her aesthetic seems to be a deliberate comment on this - jkr has a tendency to make the non-magical pastel-coloured and distinctly lacking in the sort of whimsical medievalism of the wizarding world [see, for example, how petunia dursley’s clothing is described] - and i think it’s worth examining how umbridge’s rigidity is quite strikingly at odds with how we see magic being used by the rest of the villains in the series. lord voldemort, after all, believes that there should be no limits on magic whatsoever, and none of his cronies seem inclined to disagree. it is this, alongside her profound dislike of the dark lord’s beloved hogwarts, which augustus rookwood uses to put the final nail into umbridge’s application.

[rookwood is being extremely nice in doing this, given what lord voldemort did to his leg…]

what voldemort intends to do with the ministry should he win the first war is unclear in canon. he evidently expends a huge amount of time and resources on infiltrating it, and the majority of his terrorist activity in the 1970s seems to be targeting high-profile political figures, but he also seems to have no respect for career civil servants and no inclination to preserve the vast bureaucratic machine which enables them. i am sure that umbridge’s conviction that voldemort would like barty crouch sr. - who is set up in goblet of fire as being, in his obsessive proceduralism, almost as cruel as the death eaters - is completely wrong. the dark lord is clocking the precisely-trimmed moustache and getting the ick.

voldemort also seems to have little respect [even if he acknowledges that it is personally useful] for the corruption in the ministry of magic which this proceduralism enables. he’s shown in canon to be someone who dislikes the social structures of the wizarding world - above all the patron-client relationships purebloods expect to have with those who are not - and i can’t imagine that umbridge’s desire to give the state further control over people’s lives endears her to him either. after all, telling his followers who to marry or befriend is his job.

the ministry is, though, also just a mire of incompetence, which is a further reason why voldemort [who, in canon, is incredibly efficient, even if his film version is a moron] would loathe it. this is an institution which is using owls indoors until the 1970s [and i strongly advise you to google why a black and a tan owl taking a shit on the irish minister’s head would cause a diplomatic incident…], and which is apparently incapable of noticing that its staff is using the internal memo system to recruit for a terror cell using pretty easily deciphered code. but maybe they can be forgiven - the death eaters are hardly working to lord voldemort’s exacting administrative standards either. [a running joke, which also appears in another piece i've done for this fest, death (eaters) in paradise]

maybe hogwarts could do with a bit of government oversight…

three final points: on the epistolary, let me give a shoutout to a brilliant fic, case number not found by doshu, which definitely inspired this.

on the incidental characters, let me give a shoutout to both aurelianus "catsmeat" williams [who fans of one year in every ten - and, of course, fans of jeeves and wooster - have already met], frank jemble [who is indeed just as much of a dick as his name implies], and gaius and bohemond kneebone [also in one year in every ten], whose surname i found on a list of middle english family names a decade ago and have been obsessed with ever since.

and on poor old rodolphus lestrange, let me issue an apology to @sofoulandfairaday, whose boy is being constantly made to look like a fool at my hands. in lord voldemort’s defence, the inferius which bit him genuinely did get loose by accident.

and anyway, cornelius fudge is having a much worse time.

[hearth-and-veil]

Levi is of course #1 on the Comprehensive List of Attack on Titan Characters Who Deserved Better, because nobody deserved better more than Levi.

But Eren is also on that list.

Eren was A CHILD. He was 10 years old when the walls were destroyed and he watched his mother get fucking eaten in front of his face. That, alone, was enough to fuck him up enough to cause him to do what he did. Then the hits just kept coming.

I was 19 when I got into Attack on Titan. That's the same age as Eren when the series ends. At the time, you couldn't tell me shit about fuck. I had such ideas in my head. I was a complete moral absolutist - and, of course, only my morals were the right ones. It was ok for some people to die for the greater good, and I was the only one who got to decide what the greater good was.

I truly did believe that some people's lives mattered less than others.

Had this series concluded when I was 19, I probably would have sided with Eren. I also have a group of people that I love to the point of obsession (a facet that rarely gets mentioned in any analysis of Eren). I would kill for them at 29. I would have murdered for them at 19.

I cannot imagine being given godlike powers, being told I was the only hope for humanity, seeing that it was "right" and "good" for other people to die for me because I was more important than them, and then being told to use my powers to destroy my enemies (such a nebulous concept) and save the world. I would have wrecked havoc.

You know what got me out of that headspace? Seeing the world. Meeting people and being absolutely, horrifically disappointed by them. Seeing that people really were every bad thing that I had been taught they were.... then seeing that those same people were somehow still good. I wasn't the main character in an epic struggle of good versus evil; I was literally just a person and so were they. Everybody I met was an actual person with a life and experiences and feelings and loves and hates and fears and dreams. Exactly like me.

Eren didn't see that, though. Me, I had no choice. I was at a large university with a good sized international student population. I suddenly wasn't surrounded with only fanatically "patriotic" (aka nationalistic) military families anymore. I was surrounded by a ton of different people and I had no choice but to interact with them and learn from them and that was magical. Eren, however, wasn't locked in by tuition and a grew-up-poor terror of wasting money. When humanity disappointed him on the surface, he had no incentive to dig deeper.

Eren grew up believing that humanity only existed inside the Walls, and I don't think he ever changed his mind.

Eren was a child when the series started. He was still a child when it ended. A child soldier, kept sheltered and isolated, increasingly radicalized, and then set upon a world he couldn't understand.

What's funny is, in 2021, when the manga ended, I absolutely reviled Eren. He was just a monster. Evil. It didn't matter why he did what he did. Just two years later, while I still revile his actions, I can't help but look more into his character to try to understand.

Anyway. Tl;dr don't give godlike powers to people whose brains aren't finished cooking.

[maxdibert]

Was James Potter a bad person? Because even good people or kind people can have biases and act shitty because of them.

I don’t think you can say someone is completely good or completely bad, except in certain cases, making exceptions. It’s not common for a person to have absolute evil. It happens, but it’s not usual. I think James was a jerk and also a narcissist, and he must have had certain levels of sociopathy if he was capable of dehumanizing someone so much as to use them as a punching bag. But I guess he was a good guy with his friends (if they played along, though that’s another issue) and probably knew how to be charming and charismatic because people like him always have that dual nature.

My main problem with James is that he has no excuse. I like characters who are objectively much worse than him, but I can understand where their issues come from. For example, Barty Crouch Jr. had a really demanding and emotionally neglectful father who wasn’t present in his life and only lived to pressure him. As a result, he radicalized by doing what could hurt his father the most: becoming a Dark Wizard, which Crouch Sr. hated the most. He became a Voldemort fanatic because he saw in him the father figure he didn’t have at home, someone who valued him and gave him a place. He did unforgivable things, but I can understand where he came from.

In James's case, he has no reason: he was disgustingly rich, raised by parents who adored him and saw him as their greatest gift because they had spent half their lives unsuccessfully trying to have children. They gave him all the love, affection, and attention they could, and yet he decided to be an abusive jerk. He wasn’t raised in violence, which is another reason I can understand why a young person might have antisocial behavior: if violence and disruptive behavior are applauded around you, you normalize it and see it as acceptable. But that wasn’t his case. There was nothing in his upbringing that would justify him torturing someone for seven years — he could do it, so he did.

So I just can’t feel any empathy for him. And what annoys me most about his character is basically that he thought he was morally superior just because he wasn’t a Dark Wizard. Well, to me, he’s kind of on the same level: a rich kid bullying a poor kid, a privileged person abusing someone without resources, and on top of that, thinking he holds the moral high ground. A hypocrite. I don’t think he was pure evil, but I also don’t think he was a good person — he was a narcissistic hypocrite with a hero complex.

[blackjackkent]

All right. Let's go see if we can rescue Volo and then go get Halsin.

I was reminded by a brief dialogue with Shadowheart that this goblin prison is, in fact, a (highly desecrated) temple of Selune, which really only adds to Hector's extremely upset mood at the moment.

I don't think this is what Selune's temples normally look like.

Shadowheart, I respect you being true to yourself, but you are REALLY pushing your luck here right now.

Lovely.

Hector and Co are basically just moseying along as casually as possible, looking like the awkward tourist group at the Evil Sistine Chapel, and trying not to watch as one hapless prisoner gets shoved into this pit to fight a monster.

The place is a bit of a maze, and in the course of trying to find Volo's cell, we run across a drow lady who appears to be helping run the show back here.

We're avoiding getting her attention for now but this does sort of make it feel like things are on a time limit. There's a lot of ambient discussion about the True Souls, the drow woman's plans of attack, and just a general sense that all these people are itching to shed more blood. And the unnerving thing is it's not pure brutality, as might have been expected from those outside. This is calculated, and these are fanatics preparing something much bigger than simple raiding.

Eventually I did manage to find Volo's cell, off in a corner in one of the fetid-looking side rooms, where they are keeping him in a makeshift cage.

The guard, unsurprisingly, was not happy with Hector messing with her prisoner.

"Don't go botherin' my pigeon! He's mine!"

"So I see. Do you have plans for this 'pigeon'?"

"Keep him safe. Listen to him coo. Til I gets hungry or somesuch. What's it to ya?"

Hector, scrabbling for a useful response, comes up with, "I was admiring him. I'd like one of my own." Which I have to imagine elicits a a bit of muted laughter from someone in the group, probably Gale.

"Then *catch* one on your own," the goblin says irritably.

Hector sighs. What does one use to convince a goblin. Money? Do they even care about money? Like so many things, this isn't a situation the monastery prepped him for. "I've taken a shine to this one," he says as casually as possible. "How much do you want for him?"

"More'n you've got, mate. I likes him." A pause - he can see greed warring with stubbornness in her mind. "But erm. How much *do* ya got?"

In point of fact he has about 350 gold. The dialogue options allow us to offer 20, 100, 250, and 500. Gold hasn't seemed particularly hard to come by lately, and Hector sets little store by it himself, and wants to rescue this guy. So he's not necessarily averse to putting out some coin for the purpose, although the others might not like it.

He offers 100.

"Pigeon's worth more than that, times a bagoolion!"

[sigh] All right, how about 250?

"Oh! I could buy twelve pigeons with that much. Here's the key. He's all yours."

Victory!

Volo, I hope you're going to be properly appreciative of how much money we just spent on you.

"Haha! Look at this! I'm quite saved! I guarantee the story of your daring rescue of my person will live on for aeons!"

"I'm not looking for that sort of attention."

"I'll write an anonymous account of your heroism, then! None will know your name, yet your doings will live on! Volothamp Geddarm, realm-renowned author, auteur, and tastemaker, at your service. We mustn't tarry, but I'd hate for our friendship to end here. Please - won't you meet me, once we've both slipped the goblin yoke?"

"Go to my camp. We'll talk there, once we're both safe."

"Smashing! Soon, my friend - soon we can share a flagon of something liquid and a tale of derring-do! I'll slip away when the coast is clear. See you soon, my friend! I simply can't wait to pick your brain!"

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Here be Monsters - A Bangel and Buffy & Faith and Angel & Faith Fanfic

Summary: When Faith tells Buffy she's been assaulted by a supernatural being--someone that Faith at first believes is an Incubus--and Giles then sends Buffy and Angel on a quest to destroy the Rugarus in town, it puts them on the path of a mystery that no one could have expected. Slight mystery. Canon compliant. Post-Helpless. Bangel. Buffy and Faith. Angel and Faith. Slight Fuffy.

For @bisexualblckcanary

Here be Monsters

Angel’s PoV

Angel didn't know what he was doing helping the Scoobies carve stakes, exactly. He wasn't a people person: that was a fact. And ever since he had lost his soul and terrorized the Scooby Gang, he knew they hated him: something he couldn't blame them for that at all. He hated himself.

So why hadn't he made one of his usual quick exits, like always, when he found that Buffy wasn't in the library yet, to save everyone the awkwardness here?

"…and anyway, I'm really starting to wonder if maybe we should start looking into buying stakes on Ebay, so we don't have to do this," Willow was rambling, in trying to fill the otherwise strange silence, Angel thought. Bless her. "Surely it would be more cost effective, like if we need to make stakes and research at the same time or something. But hey: this is just a crazy idea this wacky girl has had. Don't listen to m-"

"I think it's a good idea," Angel cut off her self-loathing thoughts, though he may have partially been lying here. He wasn't entirely sure he felt this way. Though maybe Willow had a point. And Lord knew the sweet girl could use some confidence. "I mean, you can find about anything on the Internet these days… or so I've heard. And if anyone thinks it's weird you guys are buying a lot of stakes, they'll probably just think you're vampire movie fanatics."

Angel threw the last bit in, figuring that Harris would be longing to say something about the FBI--or someone--thinking their actions were strange (as if they'd ever even look into them. Actually, they'd surely think the Watcher's Council, who Giles would get to flip the bill for this if they did do it, were gardeners), so he'd thrown that in there before Xander could say anything. He didn’t want to give the boy any more reason to speak, after all.

"Thanks, Angel!" Willow beamed.

"No, problem," Angel allowed, giving her a small smile.

"Yeah," Xander moaned, sarcasm clearly in every inch of his words. "Thanks, angel eyes." Well, it seemed Xander had talked, and—as always—was annoyed with him. Oh, well. It couldn't have been helped, Angel supposed. The boy just loved to run his mouth, didn’t he?

Out of the corner of his eye, Angel saw that Giles was also irritated, maybe in thinking that Angel would warm Willow up to him again, only to turn evil again and then try to murder her once more.

Resisting the urge to sigh—since his soul wasn't going anywhere any time soon, if he could help it—Angel reminded himself that these reactions were only natural.

It was just when he was thinking of leaving after all, when his pile of fifteen stakes were complete, that Buffy arrived on the scene.

And just like that, Angel had to remind himself he was a fool to doubt that his soul might not be going anywhere: Buffy was far too tempting: she wore a sparkly, yellow tank top, black dance pants, and orange flip-flops.

And while lately Buffy seemed to be wearing her hair up all the time—almost to contrast with Faith, who always seemed to have her locks loose—at the moment she seemed to have found a compromise: at the top of her head she had part of her tresses in a bun, while the rest of it hung down in curls.

As always, she was Angel’s stolen sun. And also, temptation incarnate. As she walked over to him, Angel spied chandelier earrings in his girl's ears that were somewhere between her shirt and shoe color. Tangerine?

"Angel," Buffy whispered breathlessly the moment she saw him.

And he, keeping up their game, smirked at her and said, "Buffy."

Giles cleared his throat then, tearing the former lovers apart from each other—to Angel's relief and chagrin—and Buffy seemed to remember where she was and what she was doing, as she jumped atop their favored library table and began working on a stake herself. "Sorry I'm late for patrol, guys. There was this whole thing with Faith. Would you believe that there was actually a guy she didn't want to sleep with, but somehow, he still manipulated her in to doing so? Anyway, she thought he was an Incubus, so I was being Research Girl for her. But an Incubus hasn’t shown up in Sunnydale in more than a thousand years, so… Now Faith is even more upset. I tried to convince her to come patrol with us tonight, that we'd be there for her, but she said no…"

A pen could have dropped in that moment and everyone would have heard it. That whole thing was rough. At lest the way that Buffy had described it, It didn't exactly sound like rape to Angel—and if it was, he would find down this man who had done this to the second Slayer and kill him. He and the demon, of course, were tempted to do so, anyway—but who could say for sure? And Angel winced, knowing that Liam and Angelus had used similar tactics with girls in the past, and he once again despised himself.

He also knew that part of the reason Faith wasn't here was because of him… the new Slayer had lost some of her trust in Buffy when she'd learned his girlfriend had lied to protect him, or so Buffy had told him.

"That's- that's horrible. Poor Faith!" Willow exclaimed. "Is there anything we can do?" And even though Angel knew that Willow had her problems with Faith, he knew that right now she would give the girl the shirt off her back to make her feel better if she could.

"You know how Faith is with emotions, Will. I imagine anything we say might make it worse. But if I think of anything, I'll let you know. Thanks.

"But right now, I definitely want to kill something. Giles, please give me something to kill!"

"I second that," Xander said, with a certain fury on his face, looking as though he were mere seconds away from punching the table or all the stakes they'd just worked on.

"Oh, umm, yes," Giles said, fixing his glasses—though Angel also noted the concern (as well as calculating) look in the Watcher's eyes. "Buffy, how do you feel about fighting Rugurus?"

"As long as I can hit them, I'm there."

And as the answer to that seemed to be a resounding “yes” for the most part, it looked like they had their itinerary for the night.

…

 "Do you have any ideas on how I can help Faith, Angel?" his Slayer asked him, as the two of them went out patrolling looking for said Rugurus.

In the end, not everyone had ended up going with the duo, since there was a chance Rugurus might not be a group that Buffy "could kill" as much as she might have liked—for the most part, one turned into a Ruguru when they were bitten by one, similar to how a vampire or werewolf were created. But where they differed, was while the bite would give the newly bitten an unbelievable craving for raw meat—to tempt them to sink their teeth into human flesh: their real desire—if they could resist that urge, they wouldn't fully turn. So there was a chance that some (or all) they would meet tonight could might only be in the process of transformation, and could return to normal if they refrained from their craving.

A.K.A. some they faced tonight might be innocent... And with tempers flaring after what they'd learned about Faith, Giles had decided not to send everyone on the warpath, just his Slayer and reluctantly Angel, since theoretically he should be able to sniff out a Ruguru and a half-turned.

"I wish I could give you better advice than giving her presents to distract her right now," Angel said, wincing, thinking of how often since he'd regained the soul, he'd sometimes used distraction as his own means of coping. Often with alcohol. "But… Oz had band practice tonight, right? And Faith likes music. What are the chances that Oz would be kind enough to write Faith her own song now?"

"I think that that's mainly a romantic thing he does for Willow—when he's not just trying to come up with songs for the band to hopefully make moola with someday--but I don't know, Angel, maybe," Buffy replied hopefully.

Really, Angel had known that. He'd been grasping at straws with his statement, and he knew it well… but what could he say? He wanted to help the other Slayer in some way. Whether it was because he still felt guilt over what happened with Kendra, or because he hated that Buffy had somewhat lost her friend because of him, he wasn't sure.

But before he could think it over much more, they were upon the nest. "Buffy," the vampire whispered in his Slayer's ear, not wanting to give their prey a head's up by his voice carrying. "Ruguru at twelve o'clock."

And they were, indeed, Ruguru they needed to be hunting, because they were currently tearing two girls apart. The one girl, unfortunately, was already dead. And while the other wasn't far behind her, Angel could still detect a faint heartbeat within her.

"Buffy… the blonde is still alive. If we can get her out of their clutches, one of us can run her to the hospital."

It was seeming like the best option here would be to split up, of course, even though Angel was loath to leave Buffy fighting Rugurus by herself for the first time, he thought he could make it to the hospital faster than she could…

There was a cave behind these three where un-turned could have been located, and Angel knew it wouldn't be fair if Buffy came across them and fought them, if they truly were un-turned and she thought they fully were. But what was the best choice here?

"Take her to the hospital then, Angel! I can handle a few monsters, who are just a bit hungrier than vampires!"

And if to demonstrate her point, Buffy had already charged into battle and had driven her stake along one of the Ruguru's arms, almost separating the lower part of said arm from the upper with her movement (the Ruguru howled out in pain with her action). Angel knew if she made said motion again, she probably would manage to do just that, and then that one wouldn't be much of a fighter at that point, at least…

He still hated to leave her like this, for a few reasons—one of them of course being that his demon was tempted to drink this already bleeding girl instead of seeing her to safety, but he knew he could fight that urge—but he wasn't really seeing any other options here.

Without any more preamble, Angel lifted this other blonde into his arms and wished his own golden goddess good luck—a scene that was somehow better and worse than the first time he'd said that to her. Then, he disappeared into the night.

…

Truth be told, Angel hated hospitals almost as much as Buffy did. He despised the illnesses that he could smell in the patients, and the hopelessness that he could detect in their family and friends.

He, perhaps, even moreso despised some of the games he'd played at hospitals before he'd gained his soul: letting some of his victims think they'd escaped him as they ended up at one, only for him to drag them away from their only hope…

He also recalled how just last year, he'd been responsible for Buffy, Willow, and Gile coming here. So, yes: if he never saw another hospital, it would be too soon. So he was glad that his business with the girl—Saya Baker, it turned out—didn't take long, and it seemed she would be okay.

Angel was just about to leave the building and see how Buffy had fared with the Rugurus, when he noticed Faith of all people in his peripheral vision.

Angel quite honestly couldn't believe that Faith was at the hospital. She didn't look injured enough to need any medical assistance that her Slayer healing wouldn't take care of (and Angel thought that if that insipid Watcher Wesley [who was sick right now] got word that Faith had come here for the doctors to look at some of her scrapes—if that was why she was here—he wouldn't be too happy about it… which was just ridiculous). He also didn't smell anything deeper in her, like cancer, thankfully. Hmm… could she be here because she had friends or family who were ill?

Truthfully, Angel really didn't know what to do with the other Slayer. And while his heart went out to her for what she was going through, according to Buffy, Angel knew that anything he said or did would just prove to set her off: he was her enemy. And furthermore, the one who was responsible for her decision to leave the Scoobies. Yes, it might have been best if he still decided to risk it all and talk to her, even with all of that. But despite everything Buffy had said and thought she had realized on Christmas, Angel of course knew he was a far cry from a good person.

So he'd decided to try and sneak past her, and hope that her Slayer senses hadn’t developed enough for her to sense him, when he noticed that his first assessment of her has been wrong as he sped past the girl: it looked like a rather strong creature had clawed her arm. And knowing that Faith wasn't the type to take that laying down—or at all—Angel had to stop and ask, "Faith, what happened to you?"

The new Slayer seemed to wake up from a trance, and with a vengeance, at Angel's line of questioning. And he felt that if they hadn't been in a hospital with people all around them, Faith would have thrown herself at him to stake him then and there. "I don't need your nose in my business, Angelus!"

Angel may have been crazy—actually, he knew that he was—but he was starting to put some things together here that he really didn't like. And he truly didn’t want to bring it up: he knew it would go over about as well as his telling Buffy that their dating could get out of hand had… But knowing that all that it took for evil to prosper was for good men to do nothing, he couldn't just leave it alone. He wouldn't.

Speaking softly and gently, the way he might have to a wounded animal—and maybe, just maybe, unintentionally the way he had when he'd attempted to thrall people in the past (which wouldn't work on a Slayer, since he’d never been great at thralling, so it was just so great that that was his voice for this)—Angel found himself pointing at Faith's arm. "I know you're not that reckless, Faith. I'm also aware that no one, in bed, can force a Slayer to do something they don't want to do…"

Faith was looking at him with eyes that said she positively wanted to dust him, and Angel thought she just might, but like a fool he swallowed and pressed on, anyway. "Has some abuser sweet-talked you into thinking he's not an abuser, and that… well, the things he's doing to you aren't abuse? Are you here hoping to talk to someone, because you know deep down that you’ve gotten in too deep?"

Angel was willing to bet the farm that whoever it was who had hurt Faith wasn't human, to be able to injure a Slayer the way they clearly had Faith here--maybe the demon had some type of compulsion, which could have explained a lot; if it was a vampire with thrall, it would be only too ironic. Though it was the slightest bit possible that they were human. However, that would make it all the worse. Because the amount of force they would have had to purposely put into their touch to be able to harm a Slayer… Angel didn't want to think about it.

At once, Faith exploded on Angel--pulling on his ear the way a mother might their misbehaving child. And with her strength—and his lack of it, since returning from Hell—he knew she was likely to pull it off. He thought she probably wanted to.

In the back of his mind—while Angel fought the urge to scream, as he already saw a few flecks of blood falling to the linoleum floor--he was somehow reminded of Buffy's one motion she’d done earlier tonight with the Rugaru…

"Nothing happened to me, Deputy Do-Right! Now how about you do me a favor and keep your inane observations about me to yourself, before I have to remind B that she was crazy to think that she couldn't make it through life without you? Capisce?"

"Hey, you two! Take it outside!"

"I'm leaving," Angel assured the nurse, pulling away from Faith with all of his strength. But not before the Slayer older than Buffy gave him a loo that clearly said, "you've picked the wrong battle," but what exactly she was trying to tell him with that, he wasn’t sure.

…

Visiting Buffy's house in the evenings was pure Hell now. In a sense, Angel supposed it always had been like that… being in close quarters with Buffy—especially in her bedroom, with her scent closing in all around him—made the man in him rise up and want to take her (it also made the demon go crazy for her blood, but he was thankfully good at forcing that back… even if it would be delicious Slayer blood).

Before her seventeenth birthday, her stuffed animals had seemed to look at him accusingly when he felt this way (her mother's thundering heartbeat just a floor below also reminded him that he was wrong to feel what he did for someone so young and full of life like Buffy). But that was nothing compared with now: when he knew he could never once lose control and act on his desires, or it would mean the cruelest vampire the world had ever seen back in action once more.

So, yes: being with Buffy in her room now was Hell—and Angel knew a thing or two about Hell—but sometimes he just couldn't avoid it.

Like right now: when he wanted to make certain that she was alright after her fight with the Rugurus—and apologize that he had had to leave her—and tell her some of his suspicions about Faith.

Thus he climbed up her tree and quietly slept into her window, perhaps expecting to find her sleeping, relaxing, doing her homework, or maybe even exercising… he hadn't expected to find a tired looking Buffy lying in bed—wearing a lovely pair of navy-blue pajamas, he might add—reading one of his favorite books: The Phantom of the Opera.

Her name was out of his mouth in question before he could stop it (wondering if he should go, because he didn't want to disturb her). "Buffy?"

"Oh, Angel!" she started, clapping a hand over her heart.

"Way to go, Buffy," the blonde Slayer admonished herself in a whisper then, with a shake of her head. "Wake up Mom, why don't you?" But then, with her attention back on Angel—a place he always wanted to be, even though he knew it shouldn't be there these days—Buffy got out of her bed and crept over to where Angel was still standing beside her window. "What are you doing here, Angel?" And the moment she was beside him, her left hand was instantly seeking out his own hand to hold. Angel couldn't help marveling at how natural it all felt.

"I just wanted to make sure that you were alright after I left you tonight," Angel wanted to add that leaving her was the last thing he’d wanted to do when she was still hurt by Giles' betrayal of her during her recent Cruciamentum—even if she was over it—and of course there was his becoming her enemy a year ago to think about… but knowing that saying either thing would just hurt Buffy more, Angel left his thought where it was and pulled Buffy into the safety of his arms, kissing the top of her head.

"Yep. Buffy is of the good and still the Little Engine that could. It was Buffy two, Rugurus zero. I kind of don't get why you and Giles were wigging about them earlier. They were no big. But knowing that my Watcher and my Angel care about me is certainly a treat I'll take any day. Mmm," Buffy voiced the last thing right as she stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his exposed collarbone. And Angel would be lying if he said he wasn't affected. But he tried to keep his mind on business.

"It was more because we know you don't want to accidentally hurt an innocent, Buffy… And speaking of innocents… I ran across Faith while I was at the hospital… And, well, I think you were definitely right in saying more of her innocence has been stolen from her recently."

Buffy looked at Angel with concern in her eyes then. And as she disentangled herself from him, he saw her gently put her book back down on her bedside table before she sat down on her bed, in order to better regard him. "Tell me everything," Buffy said tiredly.

And Angel did, hating that he had to make Buffy's impossible load even more thus. But was there anything else for it? Especially since Buffy might be one of the few who might be able to help the dark Slayer. And Angel knew how his girl longed to aid anyone that she could.

"Buffy… I saw Faith at the hospital, and she was really hurt. And you know how hard it is to harm a Slayer. And sure, she could have gotten the injury during patrol, but she hasn't been patrolling lately, has she?

"I think this ties in with what you were telling me earlier. And I think that Faith has fallen into an abusive relationship. But even then, it would be hard to bring physical harm to a Slayer. But abusers can be manipulative." And how Angel loathed his own manipulative past as Angelus. If he could go back and stop himself from being sired, so it would never happen—or keep himself from even being born—he would. "This manipulator also is not human, I’d guess."

Buffy nodded. And though it was simple action, the storm going on in her eyes was anything but. Angel was starting to see this from her more and more lately since her Cruciamentum, and he wondered if the tasks she had already had to face were too much for her to bear. It was unfair what the fates expected any one Slayer face, which was why he would lighten her load as much as he possibly could.

"Right…" Buffy muttered, running a hand under her chin, "because no Joe Schmoe could hope to leave marks on a Slayer…"

"Buffy-”

"Angel, did you happen to catch the scent of the culprit when you were around Faith?" Buffy questioned, completely catching Angel off-guard and interrupting the train of thought he’d had. He honestly hadn't thought that she would think to ask him that. Not because she forgot the abilities of the vampire, of course, but because he knew that thinking about what he could and couldn't smell from her had to make her uncomfortable.

"No, Buffy," Angel said, sitting beside her on her bed now—a risk, to be sure, but he hoped that the subject matter would keep both of their heads in the game. "Either I was too wrapped up in rescuing Saya,” ‘and not killing her,’ he thought but didn’t say. “Or the culprit could be a warlock who is masking their scent."

"Okay. Then we'll see if Will or Giles can do a locator spell on this person tomorrow. Either that, or I guess I'll be Research Girl again." Buffy sounded satisfied with her plan, and Angel found he couldn't blame her for that. It was, after all, a rather sound one.

He also knew that this should have been the end of their conversation here, and one of them really ought to have been finding an excuse for him to go, while they were still treading water… but that wasn't happening.

Instead, Angel crossed over and picked up Buffy's "Phantom of the Opera" book and gave it a once-over. He was relieved to see that she had the David Coward translation, even though he wasn't a fan of this cover for the novel.

"Interesting choice for a light read," Angel couldn't help remarking, a slight smile lighting up his face. "Where are you at in it?"

"'Poor, unhappy Erik,'" Buffy answered, her eyes having taken on a tragic look. And Angel knew why, of course. That was certainly one of the saddest parts of the story.

"You've gotten really far into the novel, then! That's great, Buffy! In a college interview, you might get asked about recent books that you've read, and this would be a good one to list. So, do you think Erik is redeemable?"

Only after the words had left Angel's mouth did he regret them. He'd honestly meant what he'd said: that this could be a great stepping stone for Buffy's future, and a part of him had wanted to help with that.

And, maybe, just maybe he'd been excited at the possibility of talking great literature with the love of his life.

But now he saw his mistake, of course. Because Buffy would say that Erik was irredeemable in the story: there was no way she couldn't. And he had done so much worse than the Opera Ghost. So what did that say about them? Why, something that Angel had known all along.

"I think, Angel, he wasn't irredeemable. He did regret his actions and let Christine go in the end. Though I do think that she should have ended up with Raoul. If things had been somewhat different with Erik, then maybe… but Erik frightened Christine and he started their relationship out with a lie." And Buffy looked Angel deeply in the eyes then, letting him know that that's what the difference was—Angel thought –since she, after all, had never been afraid of him and he'd never outright lied to her.

"I also agree with the author,” Buffy continued on, “that if people had just been nice to Erik, he wouldn't have become what he did. Instead, they could have benefited from his genius. But they weren't nice… I may have accidentally skipped ahead and read the part where Leroux said all of that," Buffy laughed.

Now it was Angel's turn to chortle. "More like: you jumped to the last pages early on, because you wanted to know the ending, right?"

Buffy rolled her eyes, no doubt for the fact that he thought that she would still do something so childish. But Angel noted that she didn't, however, deny the claim.

The vampire was about to say more: maybe something about how he loved Buffy’s heart and that she should never change, but then she yawned.

"I'm keeping you awake. You should get some sleep."

"No!" Buffy protested, grabbing onto Angel's arm the moment he got up from the bed that he’d only recently rejoined her on. "I'm awake. I'm Wakey-McFlakey. I could get up and do jumping jacks right now. I could-"

"Buffy." Angel gave his girl a look, before setting her favored book at the moment back on the table where she'd had it.

"…I guess I could probably appreciate this one night where I'm in bed early, yeah."

"That's what I thought. I'll see you tomorrow night." And Angel dropped a kiss to the crown of her head again, trying not to breathe in her sweet vanilla scent before he headed back towards her window.

“Angel?” Buffy asked, just as Angel’s knees were on the window frame.

“Yes?” he asked, curious about what Buffy could possibly have to say to him now when he could already tell that she was half-asleep. He wondered if she would be coherent. He was somewhat amused to find out.

“Don’t forget that you’re also the Raoul of the story.”

Angel did a double-take at that. He might have said more to Buffy’s kind words, but she was already asleep.

Raoul, huh? He wanted to believe he was Christine’s hero—though she herself was the hero of the story—and her great love, but he wasn’t sure he could. Though it was still a nice thought.

Smiling once more, Angel jumped first into his favorite tree and then leapt down from it. Then, it was back to the mansion for the rest of the night and day.

…

Angel had a feeling of déjà vu walking into the library to greet the Scoobies the next evening, and most importantly Buffy.

He supposed he shouldn't have, since tonight was starting off somewhat differently than the previous night—after all, he was here after Buffy, like he usually was—so perhaps what he was feeling was a sense of things returning to normal. Their normal, anyway.

And yet… Angel found he almost preferred making it to the library before Buffy did. Not because he much valued the time with any of her friends (except for perhaps Willow. And maybe Oz a little bit, even though they were both too laconic to speak to each other), but because he knew he was spending every second with Buffy that he could when he beat her here (for instance, if she was caught up with that Principal Snyder who seemed to abuse her, keeping her from the library so that she got here after him). But if he arrived late, he might have missed some precious moment of her time that he could have been a part of, if he'd been but a moment sooner, but would now never get back.

Angel was just about to try and explain some of these thoughts to Buffy, who was looking at him with a raised eyebrow, but he was interrupted from doing so by Cordelia's loud complaint of, "Giles, I'm not putting were-pumas into the file! The odds of Miss Slays-a-Lot facing them again has to be googolplex-in-one, compared to the trillion-in -one chance she had when she faced them the first time!"

Angel blinked. "You faced were-pumas, Buffy?" He wondered where he'd been during this scenario. Had it been the time Giles had sent him away to deal with one of his favorite cousins (read: one of the last followers of the Master) in Florida?

"It was at the same time that I had to deal with the Muses here in Sunnydale," Buffy explained, waving away his concern. "No big."

Except at the time, it had been a big deal. Angel hadn't been there for it—as that had been his trip to Florida, he knew now—but he remembered well how Buffy had fallen into his arms with relief the moment he returned to Sunnydale, and the tales she had told him. The fact she could laugh about it all now said so much about his Buffy's strength. How he loved her.

"So, about those were-pumas," Oz continued the inane comment Cordelia had made as she worked to recreate the Slayer database that Willow and Giles had once made, but had since been destroyed. "Do we think one of them could be what hurt Faith?"

"I just said-" Cordelia started, appalled, continuing to tap on the computer keyboard one key at a time, as she sat behind everyone else who was at the library table now. "Oh, whatever. You losers never listen to me, anyway. Fine. Think it's were-pumas, even when the chances of that are-"

"I doubt it," Angel cut in, breaking up this fight before it could really start, since he knew that both camps were probably completely off base. "I would have smelt it on her. I think-"

"Yeah, because we all know how reliable your nose is, Dead Boy—and how gross it not is to talk about that—and that we can trust you."

"Xander!" Giles admonished the boy, honestly surprising Angel. He knew what it must have cost the Watcher, of all people, to defend him. "Angel has come to our aid numerous- numerous times now, every time that he has his soul. So I will advise you not to take such a harsh tone with him. And as it is, his abilities are very much of aid to us when it comes to finding out what's going on with Faith."

"Thank you, Giles," Angel said earnestly, looking the older man directly in the eye for a moment, so he would hopefully know how much stock he was putting into the words "Xander does have one point, however. If it's a warlock, he could be messing with my sense of smell."

"Are we thinkin' it's a human who hurt Faith, then?" Willow ventured nervously, a crestfallen look on her face. And it didn't take a genius to figure out why. She'd figured out just as he and Buffy had how near impossible it would be for a human to hurt a Slayer, and that they'd really have to try to do it.

"I doubt it, Will," Buffy promised her friend, reaching across the table to where she sat beside Oz and patting her hand once. "They'd really have to be cooking with oil to manage that. And there's no law saying only we mere mortals get to play with magic, right? …Even though there should. Because a demon doing so, even when they're already overpowered, is just not fair."

What Buffy didn't say, of course, was a Slayer could also be a witch. Not that anyone suspected that Buffy had harmed Faith or that she was a witch, of course (nor should they), Angel knew. Or that Faith was a witch who had done this to herself. But Angel did know for a fact that there had been at least one Slayer witch… or one who had been suspected of being a witch, at least. He supposed the question was whether or not the Watcher's Journals did…

"So what you're all really saying here, is you have no clue what's going on with Faith and you're wasting time distracting me with your pointless theories. Gee! Why am I not surprised?" Cordelia piped up, while looking at one of the Watcher's Journals herself now.

"I hate to admit it… but Cordy may have a point here, Buff. I know we all ruled out talking to Faith. But you’re her Sister Slayer. That has to get you some street cred, right, and maybe get you in the door. Do you think you could try it?" Xander asked sympathetically, laying a gentle hand on Buffy's shoulder now.

And though Angel knew this was done in friendship—it was—and surely was what was needed to get them all where they needed to be now, he couldn't help a moment of jealousy, as he once again remembered that Xander could see Buffy in sunlight and he couldn't… and that Xander could go all the places he couldn't with Buffy. Thankfully, the jealousy passed quickly.

Buffy buried her face in her hands for just a moment, seeming helpless—and how it pained Angel to see it—but she was at once herself again. "Yeah. I can try shooting the breeze with Faith. I mean, what's the worst that can happen?"

Angel hated that the smile she painted on her face now for everyone to see, and how it broke at the last moment.

And he promised himself that no matter what, that somehow, he would be there for Buffy when she confronted her fellow Slayer… whether she knew it or not.

…

Buffy's PoV

Buffy wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea of trying to meet with Faith. She knew she should have been: she should have been chomping at the bit to be there for her sister-in-arms, the way that Buffy often times wished that her friends could constantly be there for her. And she did feel that way. Truly.

…But it was just so hard with Faith. There had been a strange tension between them ever since Faith had found out that Buffy had lied to her about Angel—something that had never gone away.

But even before that, things hadn't always been easy between them. Buffy could never get over the sense that Faith was trying to steal what was hers—ridiculous, she knew—and she had to wonder if there would ever be a feeling of ease between them.

But Faith deserved someone in her corner. Especially now. So Buffy was putting on her big girl panties and doing what needed to be done… but the moment she walked into Faith's apartment—seeing her deal a killing blow to a Ruguru herself, with tears streaming down her face—Buffy wondered if she'd made the right choice.

"…Faith?" Buffy choked out her companion's name.

Faith whirled on Buffy then. And if Buffy had actually caught it (and she wasn't entirely sure she had), she thought that Faith might have looked some sort of mix of embarrassed and traumatized before settling on angry.

Scrubbing at her eyes, seemingly to stop her tears, Faith snapped, "Well, I guess you figured it out now, huh? Figures."

"Figured… what out?" Buffy echoed back, feeling at a complete loss. She thought she was getting pretty good at figuring out mysteries, but what Faith was talking about was completely beyond her. They slayed Rugurus, as they did all kinds of Hell beasties. And it was traumatizing that they were once human, yes, like a lot of their job was, but Buffy couldn't fathom why Faith was getting so bent out of shape over this.

…Wait a second. Wasn't that the girl that Buffy had had Angel take to the hospital? Had she been bitten without either of them knowing it, after all… and had then fed and fully turned? Was it possible that Angel couldn't smell half-turned Rugurus to have known she'd been bitten?

"That I lied to you, of course, Pollyanna. And was never assaulted. And man, do I just love that I had to get to a place where I would lie about something like that when I hate liars," Faith snarled, with a faraway look in her eyes. Was she remembering what had happened before and what had caused her to lie?

"Faith… I don't understand," Buffy admitted, feeling very small and vulnerable, as she crossed her arms over her chest now. But she already didn't like where this was going. It, after all, could only end in heartache for Faith.

Faith sighed. And that, at least, made Buffy feel somewhat better, because it was closer to the sadness she should have been feeling here, in having lost someone she cared about, if Buffy was guessing things correctly. Faith trying to hide it in being livid couldn't possibly be a good thing.

"I don't know why I'm going to tell you this now, B. Me not wanting to tell you before is the whole reason I probably fell into this mess. But I didn't want to be compared to you and Angel—and your shipwreck of a story—and I knew that's what everyone would say-"

Faith was clearly getting going off the deep end again. And she backed away from Buffy—to try and get a handle on her temper, the blonde Slayer guessed—before she continued with, "It all started when I stole a car. A real great choice, I know. But I was capable of doing that, but somehow not smart enough to know how to put gas into the clunker. That's how I met Saya. She saw me struggling and helped me out.

"We talked a little bit then—and she liked me right away and wanted to hang sometime—but I wasn't that trusting. Knowing she used that gas station to get groceries, I decided to go out of my way to another one to get my goods. But one day, wouldn't you know it? She happened to be there. Shopping for a nice card for her sister's birthday, or some shit.

“At that point—even though I'm really no romantic, B, I'm thinkin' maybe there's something to this. So, we go out. And then we go out a few times. We watch the ‘Clue’ movie at my crappy apartment, ‘Fight Club’… and the whole time, Saya doesn't even pressure me for sex. It's kind of nice. I should have known it was too good to last, because she-"

"She got bitten by a Ruguru," Buffy figured out. Of course. And she had come to Faith, probably freaking out (maybe Faith had even told Saya she was the Slayer so she knew she could confide in her). The two of them would have been convinced they could make it work, as long as Saya didn't feed. But even a semi-Ruguru must have had some strength, which explained the marks Buffy had seen on Faith's shoulders.

And when Buffy had asked her about them, Faith had said she'd been assaulted because, in so many ways, she didn't want to be told her and Saya's story was like Buffy and Angel's. Would Faith have been afraid she'd have to face the fact they were doomed if she told the Scoobies the truth, the way everyone seemed to think she and Angel were? Did Faith think she might have told Giles on her if she knew the truth, and then he might have pressured her to slay Saya even if she hadn't gone full Ruguru?

The night Angel had seen Faith in the hospital… had Faith been seeing about getting a psychologist for Saya, in hoping that would help her fight her urges and the change?

In the end, despite their best efforts, it seemed Saya had given in and fed and now Faith had been forced to slay someone she'd started to love.

"Faith, I'm so so-"

"Save it and get out, Buffy. I don't want your pity!"

Of course Faith would see it as pity, Buffy thought—tears starting to sting her eyes now—when she still had Angel.

"At least let me help you bury he-"

"I said leave! This is something I have to do, and me alone. And I swear to God, Buffy, if you get in my way. I will kill you."

"Faith," Buffy started, walking towards Faith because she knew her sister Slayer couldn't mean that. She just couldn't.

But suddenly Angel was there, standing behind the threshold of Faith’s room, and imploring of Buffy the same thing that Faith was.

“Buffy, let Faith have her wish. We can check on her later, when she’s feeling better.” That was the last thing Buffy wanted to do now. She knew that Faith needed her; Faith was raising up her castle walls even higher to protect herself. Pretty soon, no one would be able to reach her within them. Not even Faith herself.

But there was a certain urgency in Angel’s tone that Buffy didn’t understand, but trusted all the same. So, despite herself, Buffy joined Angel outside the small apartment and let him begin leading her away.

“Faith, if you need anything-” Buffy begged, but Faith was already cutting her off with, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. You’ll ever be the perfect little girl scout and help me out. I can handle this, like I handle everything. Including your Boy Toy, if you don’t get out of here, Buffy!”

Buffy hated to admit it, but Faith threatening Angel was the last straw. Threatening her was one thing, but alluding to making an attempt on Angel—when he was still weak from Hell—terrified her. Buffy didn’t know if Angel would at all survive a fight with the other Slayer, if Faith really put her mind to it. And in her grief, Buffy thought that Faith might actually attack him, if she thought that it was unfair that Buffy got to keep the one that she loved and she didn’t.

“Okay, we’re leaving.” And with that, Buffy led Angel out into the night, almost wishing that she’d never come to Faith’s to be confronted with this tragedy in the first place. For so many reasons did she wish this.

She felt numb now—not unlike how Faith herself was now, which Buffy hated—and she didn’t know how long she’d been walking, or even where she was going, until Angel grabbed her hand to halt her. “Want to go to the park?” he asked with a shrug, far too innocently for someone who had surely witnessed everything that she just had. She should have known that he’d been spying with her.

And really, Buffy was glad Angel had been watching out for her in this situation, because she didn’t need to get into a fight with Faith (something he had saved her from)—and she knew she’d been getting close to that with Faith’s temper—but part of Buffy couldn’t help feeling that it made everything worse, because now instead of there being even more bad blood between her and Faith (something she wanted to believe she could have handled), it was now between all three of them. And so someone else had even moreseo joined the “Let’s Hate Angel” club.

“I want to kill something, Angel!” Buffy argued, finally noticing that her popping hot anger had subconsciously led her to Restfield Cemetery where she could get some action.

Buffy pulled out Mr. Pointy from her pocket, and was about to run towards the vampire that she thought she could feel pinging on her radar aways away, but Angel had wrapped his arms around her waist to stop her before she could move an inch.

“No, Buffy,” he whispered into her ear. And if she shivered at all, it was because of the chilly night air, not because she felt any of the things for Angel that she wasn’t supposed to. Not at all. “Your anger is making you see red, so you going after vamps tonight would just be asking for trouble.”

Buffy wanted to argue that she’d used this to aid her in slaying vampires and other nasties many a time, thank you very much, but deep down she knew that Angel was right. She was too distracted to do any serious damage.

Slumping in his arms irritably, because she felt a bit like a kid being told they couldn’t have dessert until they ate their veggies (and whoa. Since when had she enjoyed slaying so much?), Buffy relented with, “Fine. The park, you said?”

Angel nodded without a word, but he did take Buffy’s hand into his own. She’d appreciate that little wonder, at least. Then, as if they’d been walking hand-in-hand together their whole lives—if only they could, Buffy thought with a broken heart—he began leading her towards their intended destination.

Idly, Buffy wondered why he didn’t suggest going back to the mansion for this discussion they were inevitably going to have, but Buffy supposed he must have had something up his sleeve.

Before much time had seemed to pass it all (Sunnydale really was too small. Didn’t it know she needed any excuse she could get to be with Angel? Especially right now?), the two had reached Hammersmith Park.

Angel untangled his hand from Buffy’s, which was definitely a disappointment, but only to hop on the first swing that he saw before him and begin swinging: something that was so bizarre and hilarious to Buffy, that she could almost forgive not being in his arms any longer. Almost.

He indicated with a head motion that Buffy should take the swing next to him; and who was Buffy to deny this strange whim of Angel’s?

Once the two of them had swung together for a few minutes, and Buffy had amused herself by trying to catch Angel’s hand a few times while they did so, they both came to a stop and finally began discussing the Heavy.

“It was my fault, Buffy. I should have known that—Saya, was it?—had been bitten. Twice, it sounds like. I’d never faced Rugurus before, but I’d read about them a lot and I assumed I knew everything there was to know. But I should have guessed that those half-turned would be different… that maybe they wouldn’t have a smell to them. If I had, I could have pieced this all together. Maybe I could have stopped her from changing and Faith could have avoided this whole awful story. You sent me to take care of Saya that night, and I should have done a better job at it.”

Right in front of them, a mother was tying a balloon onto one child’s hand while handing another one of her children a snow cone. It was a cute sight. Buffy figured that this had to be the reason that Angel had wanted to go somewhere, rather than just going to the mansion: so that they would hopefully see people out and about and remember there was still good in the world, even if right now it didn’t seem like it.

“It’s not fair to blame yourself like that, Angel. I mean, who would have ever guessed that. Everything else has a scent, like full-fledged Rugurus. So who would have thought those first bitten wouldn’t? Life just sucks.”

Angel had nothing to say to that, as he seemed to suddenly find his shoes very interesting, and Buffy hoped that he had taken her words to heart and believed her. But knowing him, he had found a new thing to forever beat himself up about.

“What are we going to do about Faith?” Buffy finally asked the dreaded question, tightly grabbing the chains of her swing and—for whatever reason—refusing not to look at Angel right now. Was it because she thought that Faith’s story ending so badly was further proof that she and Angel were destined to forever be Romeo and Juliet themselves? “Should we tell the others that we found out what was going on with he-”

“I wouldn’t,” Angel answered right away, with what almost sounded like a scoff to Buffy. “At least not right now. She won’t thank you if you do. Maybe later… If you tell anyone, I’d tell Giles and try to get him to talk to her. Though I don’t have much love for the Watchers’ Council—and you certainly wouldn’t know it from anyone else but Giles—they’re somewhat trained in psychology. Maybe, once she’s healed a little, he could talk to Faith. But for now, I think the best thing to do is to try and let this whole thing blow over…”

There was something in Angel’s tone at the end there that hinted to Buffy that there was more than what he was telling her—she wondered if it had to do with his past—but she had the feeling he wouldn’t tell her if she asked. And she really didn’t feel like digging up more skeletons tonight, so she let it go. For the moment.

“You think everyone will be satisfied that I couldn’t crack Faith, and to just leave the ‘mystery’ unsolved?”

“On the Hellmouth? Yes, unfortunately.” Again, it seemed like there was more Angel wanted to say here, but whatever it was, it seemed his lips were sealed for the night.

Later, when Buffy was feeling more on her game and like her punning self, she’d really have to do something about that.

Buffy had suffered a few losses since becoming the Slayer, but until tonight, she’d never found one where she’d have to be quiet about something. She wasn’t a fan of it. At all. And if Faith wasn’t so unreasonable, she knew she wouldn’t be taking to such a thing, and rather be charging in like a bull in a china cabinet.

“Well, I hate this,” Buffy tried to laugh, attempting to get closer to her usual self. But it might have sounded more like a cry. She wasn’t sure.

“Ditto,” Angel agreed, seeming to try for a strained smile himself, as it appeared that he was in complete accordance with her.

“Angel… do you have anything to make this night better?” Buffy wailed, swinging closer to him so that their legs brushed. She knew that she was begging and probably sounded like a child—even after Angel had gone to the trouble of bringing her to the park here, in order to improve things a little bit—but right now, she just didn’t care.

Buffy’s favorite vampire didn’t seem to have an answer for a long time. Buffy was even about to mention that maybe he should give up on trying to think of anything to improve this night and just walk her home, but finally he seemed to have come up with something and he offered her a small smile. “Well, in the musical adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, Christine comes back while the Phantom is alive to give him back his ring. It sort of serves as an extended goodbye for them. And in some versions, depending on the actress, she might kiss his hand.”

Huh. In the novel, there was something similar to that: Erik had asked Christine to come back and bury him when he eventually died, and she did. And she buried him with said ring. Truthfully, Buffy liked Christine being kind enough to return in both endings, but maybe she did prefer this musical one. Perhaps she’d have to check this musical out sometime.

“That is a nice little epilogue. Thanks, Angel,” And Buffy blushed, despite herself, before she kissed her boyfriend on the cheek, for she knew too well what he’d been trying to get at with his explanation, after all.

Maybe there was a bit of hope for those who loved monsters, after all.

Author's Note: Rugarus were a monster from the TV show “Supernatural” that I used here.

I tried not to use any references to the Buffy novels for this fic, and I succeeded for the most part except for in two places: The first is that Buffy does fight the muses in the book “Power of Persuasion” and Angel is gone until the end of the book, for he was a mission Giles gave him (and Buffy is very much relieved to see him at the end, resting her head on his shoulder). Though we don’t know what that mission was. I made one up here.

The other is that in the novels, Willow and Giles do create a Slayer database to try and better figure out stuff that Buffy might face on the Hellmouth: A.K.A. they give it all of the stuff Buffy’s faced, and they hope it’ll spit out data for them, like, “It is likely that Buffy will face X on this date.” At one point, Cordelia ends up working on it, after her dad gets caught cheating on his taxes (because Willow is too busy to at the moment) and Giles offers to pay her to, which is why she does it (though I forget if this is before or after the database is destroyed—yes, it gets destroyed—like if she’s adding to a working one or trying to rebuild it). I have Cordelia working on it in this story, as it’s a good reason for her to be there after she and Xander have broken up and she’s left the Scoobies. Yep.