Title: Misplaced Hate

Summary: Post NFA…sort of. Flashbacks italized. Although I hope they’re obvious.

AN: Quote: “Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you! He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen”- Tyler Dureden “Fight Club”

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything here. It’s depressing really.

 

 

 

 

“Good for nothing whelp. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you but every night when you stumble in smelling to high heaven of whiskey and wenches, I consider that God may not like me,” his father yelled, towering over him like some furious Greek god.

 

Liam pushed himself to his feet and staggered toward town where he could cure his hangover with another glass of whiskey. “No Father, it’s me he hates,” he mumbled as he made his way toward the pub. He didn’t go home for a week after that. No one missed him until he hadn’t shown up for Mass.

 

“You’re a disgrace to your family, to your mother and to me. And not showing up for Mass is a disgrace to God. Is that what you want? Do you want me to stand in front of Saint Peter and explain to him why my son is such a complete failure?”

 

“Are you sure you’ll even get to go to Heaven? After all God doesn’t like you does he? I mean he gave you me for a son,” Liam shouted back, his words only slightly slurred from the whiskey he’d partaken of. “If I can have part in you going to Hell, I don’t mind the trip so much,” he spat.

 

That had earned him a fist upside the head that had left a bruise for a week. It was just a precursor to the beating he got for peeing in the holy water fount.  It wasn’t his brightest idea but he was drunk and pissing off his father and God all at the same time had seemed like a good two for one deal.

 

 

*

You wake up in a flood of rain, blood and pain, every inch of your body screaming. There are scavengers rooting among the bodies and you know you’ve got to get out of sight; some place slightly more sheltered then the alley you’re lying in. For a moment you consider lying there, letting the scavengers feast upon your flesh, knowing eventually they will make their way to your heart and your pain will dissolve as your body goes in a cloud of ash.

 

Your good Irish Catholic teaching spurs you toward survival. You’ve not yet made amends for so many things and if you die here you know your pain will be eternal. You’ve been to Hell; you’d like to try Purgatory at the very least next time.

 

As you drag your body over the debris, glass and shrapnel the battle created you catch sight of a hand mottled with blue, a pile of dust inside of an old leather coat that once belonged to a slayer, the hubcap axe that was Gunn’s favorite and finally the soft brown hair of a boy you never really knew but you gave up everything for anyway. That is when it occurs to you that God hates you.

 

You drag your body into an abandoned ware house anyway and thankfully pass out from the pain.

 

 

*

 

Angel looked up at the snow as it fell around them. He resolutely ignored the hope that pervaded the air and the giddiness of the girl beside him.

 

“It’s our first snow ever, Angel and it’ll probably our last. It wouldn’t kill you to smile,” she said and then realized exactly what she’d said. It effectively erased the smile from her face and she stared down at the sugar coated sidewalk. “I didn’t mean…” she trailed off.

 

Angel nodded. “I know.” He paused to look up at the sky that was still dusting them with snow. “It’s-“ he stopped, not sure what to make of the snow.

 

“It’s a miracle, Angel. Someone up there wants you alive.  Someone up there believes you’re worth saving,” she finished the sentence he could not say himself.

 

For the first time since his father had introduced the idea, Angel considered that maybe God didn’t hate him.

 

*

 

You don’t know how long you’re out but you know pain and hunger rips you out of sleep and the sweet, dreamy haze you’ve fallen into. The hunger pains in your belly insist on finding something to eat and you know the pain in your shattered limbs will abate with a little healing; healing that will happen faster if you’ve fed. You manage to shove yourself to your feet, the sound of bone grinding against bone screeches in your sensitive ears and adds to the pain in your head. You are fairly sure the fall from the dragon caved in part of your skull. You manage to stumble a few feet using the wall as support when you realize that there won’t be any neat bags of blood or plastic containers filled with nourishing liquid anywhere. The only nourishment will come in the form of the dead and dying lying all around you. You start to turn back, content to lie there and let yourself slowly rot or heal, whichever your body determines is for the best. The demon isn’t as easily dissuaded. Before you even realize it you’ve got a body so freshly dead that it’s still warm nestled up against yours. Her head falls to the side, a mane of gold pools on your legs and you dip your head, pausing just above the creamy smoothness of her throat before plunging fangs into her skin and taking the nourishment her body so willingly offers up. There was a time, just for a brief moment, that a girl loved you so much that you didn’t care whether God hated you or not.

 

*

 

“Buffy…” Angel started and found he couldn’t finish the sentence. He hadn’t expected her to go through this again. He’d thought they’d said goodbye at the Prom and he’d thought she’d accepted that. His eyes fell on the white bandage on her neck. That was before her blood saved him. That was before he left her with a physical scar to remind her of what they’d been and what they would never be again.

 

“You can’t. I know…” she said sounding as defeated as she looked in that moment.  “it’s not fair,” she pouted. Her bottom lip trembled and the waterfall of tears begin. “I hate it. I hate the Powers that Be and I hate a God who would let me love you so much and never be able to keep you.”

 

Angel stepped forward and captured her chin in his hand. He tilted her head up so he could look in her eyes. They were slate gray, a color reserved for when he hurt her. He wiped the tears away with the pad of his thumb and placed a soft, brief kiss on her lips. “You will always keep me,” he whispered and then turned and walked out of the room.

 

She stood for a moment until he was gone, but he heard her drop to her knees and hiss “I hate you.” He never was sure if she were talking to God or to him.

 

 

*

 

 

The husk of the girl you fed on is lying at your feet. You notice your body does not hurt the way it did. The knife sharp pain has turned into a dull ache. You can almost feel the bones knitting and the skin renewing itself. You draw your knees up to your chest and watch her for a moment. She was beautiful in life and it makes you wonder how she got here. Maybe she was taking a short cut through the alley when Hell broke loose.  Short cuts rarely seem to turn out well, you think. You’d taken a short cut with Connor, made a deal with Wolfram and Hart to save him. Only it hadn’t saved him, it’d damned him along with everyone else you cared about. You should have found another way, a way that didn’t involve selling the souls of your friends and loved ones. You remember the fall of baby soft brown hair and the crumbled limbs of a boy lying in the alley who would never grow up and you know that God hates you, but it’s a justified hate.

 

*

 

 

“Why would a God that loves me let me hurt this much?” he sobs. Angel’s entire being ached for his son. He wanted to pull him into an embrace, coo softly in his ear and rock him until everything was alright. It had worked when he was a baby, but the fledgling young man in front of him was no longer a baby. He’d missed all those years.

 

Angel shook his head. “I don’t know, Connor. I’m not an authority on God. I never put much stock in him when I was human and now...he doesn’t put much stock in me.” He knew that Holtz was a Catholic. It didn’t surprise him that he’d raised Connor to believe in a God that loved him.

 

“I just want the pain to stop,” Connor sobbed. “Please make it stop,” he begged.

 

Angel bowed his head and let silent tears course down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Connor. I’m only good at causing pain.”

 

 

*

 

You wake up to the click of boot heels and are feeling well enough to gain your feet and draw back into a shadow. You begin looking for a weapon before it occurs to you that demons rarely wear boots, nor do they smell like vanilla and sunshine. Hope swells inside you, choking you and for a moment it doesn’t matter if your heart beats or not, you are convinced you are going to have a heart attack.

 

She walks into view, her golden hair lighting the way. Lines of concern bracket her eyes but her smile is the same and it brings sunshine to the shadow. She holds her hand out to you. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

 

 As you follow her out of the warehouse to a car she’s rented, you feel the hate, pain and guilt you’ve kept such a tight hold on loosen and for the second time in your life, it occurs to you that it’s possible God doesn’t hate you.  Maybe he never did.