unficathon fic

Here's the final part of my ficathon fic. Full speed ahead for more Angel/Wes/Illyria dimension-shifting wackiness! The first part can be found here. Thank you so much for the comments -- I still need to reply to some tomorrow.



Eternity in Sixty Minutes (or Less) -- Part Two

"Illyria?" Wes asked cautiously. He stepped carefully into the tableau of figures, as if afraid that they would suddenly erupt into motion at any moment. He studied the weapon his counterpart was holding with intense interest, then noticed the glowing blue cracks spiderwebbing across the other Illyria's stomach. "What happened here?"

"I was...damaged." Illyria frowned in concentration, spitting out the last word as if it was obscene. "My ability to control the flow of time had been compromised."

"Compromised, huh?" Angel strolled around the perimeter of the room, inspecting the scene. "Let me guess. It turns out that the human body can only do so much, even when you add on superpowers." He smirked at Illyria's glare. "But what do I know? I'm just a dumb hybrid, right?"

Illyria blinked at him frostily. "Do not presume that a creature such as yourself could possibly understand my nature."

"Fine," Angel snapped. "Wes? Any idea what that weapon does? You're the one holding it."

"I believe..." Wes said slowly, peering at the gun's controls as closely as he could without touching anything. "It seems to have the ability to..."

"You were attempting to destroy me."

"Not exactly," Wes said dryly, exchanging a glance with Angel. "If I'm correct, this was designed to safely draw off the excess energy that was overwhelming you." He turned to Illyria with a curious frown. "You were...overloading, weren't you? A consequence of implanting yourself within a human body." Wes' voice had softened, and he sounded almost sympathetic. Angel blinked at him in surprise. "This wasn't meant to destroy you," he finished.

"It would have trapped me within the same linear time flow that you lower creatures inhabit," she sniffed. "The result is the same."

"Right," Angel said, rolling his eyes in Wesley's direction. "Now we have to figure out..." He broke off as Illyria grunted, clutching at her stomach again.

The air around them roiled and shifted. When it reformed, they were still standing in the training room with the other figures of Angel, Wes, Lorne and Spike. This time, however, the others in the room were in motion.

"Well, that's the problem," Spike was saying. "You don't always see her when she's..." He broke off with a howl of pain, and Angel watched in shock as Spike crumbled to dust with a grimace of agony. The other Illyria stepped forward through the disintegrating form of Spike, tossing a dagger almost casually into the alternate Wesley's chest. Angel ran forward with a snarl of rage as Illyria turned on Lorne, but her punch passed harmlessly through Angel's body and into Lorne's as if he wasn't even there. Angel watched helplessly as his counterpart leapt at Illyria. She swung a large battle-ax over her head, beheading the other Angel with a single stroke. Angel winced as his headless body collapsed into a pile of dust. His skin was itching and crawling again, worse than ever, and he turned to the current Illyria with a feeling of helpless horror.

"Care to explain this?" he snapped. There was a small smile playing at the corner of Illyria's mouth, and she looked a little too pleased with the carnage that surrounded her.

"It is a possible ending," she said casually. "One of many."

"I see," Wes said remotely, studying the dead body that wore his face with a lack of expression that concerned Angel. "It seems that firing the weapon at Illyria has given her the ability to jump across dimensional boundaries. Unintentionally, of course." He threw a look at Illyria. "Is that right?"

After a brief moment, she nodded. "It would appear so."

"But why?" Angel pressed. "What's different? Why haven't we seen Illyria doing any kind of overloading in our own dimension?" He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "You were saying something about Gunn earlier."

Illyria nodded in contemplation. "I released him from his prison."

"You what?" Angel erupted. "Why would you...wait, never mind. The point is, if you really freed him in your world, you had to travel to the holding dimension to do it. Our Illyria never did that. That must be the trigger!"

"Yes," Wes said thoughtfully. "That could very well be the event that caused the fundamental disruption in your energy matrix." He gave her a twisted smile. "It appears that you endangered your own life in order to save another's. The mark of a true hero."

Illyria looked disgusted but said nothing, merely glaring at her counterpart still standing triumphantly among the scattered corpses and small piles of dust.

"So now, instead of just time-hopping, she's dimension-hopping as well, and she's managed to drag us with her. Can't say I think too highly of your research skills on this one." Angel gave Wes a pointed look, and he shrugged apologetically.

"I cannot..." Illyria interjected, then grimaced. The room once again shifted, and then the three of them were standing in the middle of a blank, bright expanse.

"The White Room?" Angel asked under his breath, and Wes shrugged again.

"I knew these Senior Partners had to be pure evil," drawled a new voice from behind them. "Nobody with any spark of good in them would make something that looks so much like a bloody doctor's office."

Angel shut his eyes with a groan of disgust. He didn't even have to look.

"Spike," he said heavily.

"Looks like," Spike said, strolling casually up to the rest of the group. "And it looks like you're in a spot of trouble."

Angel reached over to give him a swat, and blinked when his hand passed right through Spike's chest.

"Are you really here?" he demanded. "Or did you somehow end up a ghost again? Because that would actually be funny."

Spike pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Dunno. Maybe I'm just a figment of your imagination." He gave a bright smile. "Or I could just be here to haunt you again."

"Yeah," Angel snorted. "I doubt my subconscious would punish me by summoning you."

"Hmmm," Spike mused. "On the other hand, maybe your little pea-brain knew just what it needed. After all, we both know who's the brains of the operation." He blinked innocently at Angel, who suppressed a growl.

"Angel?" Wes asked cautiously. "Who are you talking to?"

"I..." Angel glanced at Spike, who waved cheerfully, then shut his eyes in disgust. "Nothing," he said heavily. "Just...I thought I saw something."

"I do not recognize this place," Illyria said, studying the empty space curiously. "But there is great power here."

Wes nodded, as if this fact confirmed a particular theory of his. "It seems that your ability to shift dimensions is not limited only to places you have seen before, although I would suspect that at least one of the three of us must have been there at some point. In fact, I would suspect that your dimensional hops will soon start to..."

Illyria winced, and suddenly the four of them were in Angel's conference room, standing on the outskirts of a crowd of people.

"...increase in frequency," Wes finished numbly, staring at the city outside the window. "And could someone explain to me exactly when a medieval castle was built in downtown Los Angeles? And are those rainbows?

"Oh no," Angel muttered, squeezing his eyes shut as Spike started to cackle next to him.

"Oh, this is brilliant," Spike sputtered in between gasping laughs. "I can't wait to hear how you're going to explain the cake."

Almost as if he had heard Spike, Wesley walked over to a decorated cake sitting on the conference room table. "Way to go, Spike," he read aloud.

"Wait a second," Angel interjected hurriedly. "This isn't an alternate dimension. This was a dream I had. It's not real."

Wes cast a jaundiced eye at the group of figures surrounding a beaming Spike. "It appears that you dreamed that Spike saved the world," he observed dryly. "And might I ask why you dreamed me using a noisemaker?"

"It was the Selminth parasite," Angel defended himself sulkily. "I can't be held responsible for what I dreamed." Illyria snorted. "What, do you have something to share?"

"You are too limited to comprehend the power of nightmares," she declared haughtily. "There is more to reality than you can possibly comprehend."

"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" Spike murmured. "Not that you can appreciate Tennyson."

"You know," Wes mused thoughtfully, "it is possible that dreams do indeed represent an alternate form of reality -- an alternate dimension, if you will. Several philosophers have speculated..."

"Fine," Angel interrupted. "But this isn't helping us figure out what we need to do to stop this."

"I don't know," Spike said in Angel's ear. "I'm certainly having a good time. I mean, did you see the tie you're wearing?" He broke out into peals of laughter as the room once again melted and remade itself.

Angel found himself standing in what appeared to be a library, small and slightly shabby, but immaculately clean.

"Please," Wes said in a low voice. "Can we move on? It's...my parents' house," he elaborated to Angel's curious look.

"I have no control over the particulars of these shifts," Illyria reminded him. Her voice was strained, and as Angel watched she staggered slightly and clutched her midsection.

The next jump took them to a dark forest that Angel vaguely recognized from a visit to Prussia in the 1830s. He watched his alter-ego stumble past with Darla, both of them drunk and giggling, with rivulets of blood trailing down the corners of their mouths to stain their collars. He remembered the night they'd massacred that small village together; what he didn't remember was the Balrac demon that surprised the pair, staking Angelus through the heart before Darla could do more than howl in drunken rage.

"More alternate possibilities?" Wes asked.

"Guess so," Angel said, slightly shaken at seeing yet another episode of his own death. Before he could finish the thought, there was another flash forward to a different scene. The jumps were happening much quicker now.

flash

They were back in Los Angeles, watching Angel succeed in killing Wesley for kidnapping his son.

flash

There were at the headquarters of the Watchers Council to see Wesley's application for active Watcher of the current Slayer denied, sending one Thomas Caine to Sunnydale to replace Rupert Giles instead.

flash

They were in a world which neither Angel nor Wes recognized, but which made Illyria gasp. She was clutching her stomach almost continually now, and the blue staining her features was giving way to a greyish pallor.

The scenes passed by in a series of stuttering gasps, some lasting for several minutes and others no longer than an instant. Angel caught glimpses of times he'd hoped never to see again, and scenes that he thought existed only in his nightmares. He watched Wesley's death over and over, and his own as well, by fire, by sun, by stake, by sword.

flash

They were in...was it Sunnydale? Angel saw himself fighting at Buffy's side against a horde of vampires. He watched himself get staked through the heart and fall to dust with her name on his lips, and he saw Buffy turn away from his disintegrating body without a second glance. And although this was a younger Buffy, he didn't recognize this girl with the scar across her mouth and the cold, dead look in her eyes. His flesh was crawling, and he couldn't stop himself from scratching feverishly at his hands. He wanted to curl up inside his own body.

"We have to find a way to stop this," Angel said hoarsely, but Wes and Illyria didn't seem to be able to hear him.

"It's not too hard," Spike said, shrugging nonchalantly.

"What do you mean?" Angel asked. "How do we do it?"

"Hey, wanna see a neat trick?" Spike held out the edges of his leather duster, closed his eyes, and threw his head back dramatically. As Angel watched, Spike's clothes melted away until he was standing naked, oblivious to the battle that still raged around him. "Not bad for a figment."

"Spike!" Angel snapped. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Buffy get her neck broken by the Master, and he couldn't keep back a moan of despair. "This isn't the time for games," he bit out. "If you know something, tell me now!"

Spike shook his head with the air of a teacher who has expended all of his patience on a particularly slow student. "Pavayne learned it," he said. "Why can't you?" He leaned forward to whisper in Angel's ear.

"Reality bends to desire."

And then Spike was gone, and Angel looked around frantically for him. The scene flashed forward once more, and he was standing with Wes and Illyria in a large banquet room. It took a moment for Angel to recognize the demon Vail's dwelling. Wes gasped, and Angel turned to see...

Another Wesley was lying on the floor, bleeding heavily from a deep gut wound. His hands were fluttering and his eyelids trembled, his breaths no more than shallow gasps. He was being held tenderly by Fred.

"My love," she crooned, her eyes welling up with tears. "Oh, my love."

"I keep coming here," Illyria said faintly. "I don't know why." She was visibly drooping now, flashes of energy sparking into and out of existence around her.

"Fred," Wesley breathed. He took a step forward, then stopped and wrapped his arms around himself defensively. "It's not...that is, if I had to go, it's not as bad as..." he cleared his throat roughly. "But she's gone, of course. Another impossible possibility."

Impossible. Reality bends to desire.

Illyria.

"Wait, Illyria," Angel said desperately. "I think I know how to stop this." She turned to eye him curiously, attempting to hold herself upright. "Don't you see?" he said. "You're fighting this. You've been fighting this even before Wesley used the weapon on you."

"You expect me to accept death without a fight?" Her speech had become slightly slurred, but her voice had lost none of its power.

"Yes," Angel said softly. "That's the only way to save yourself."

"Angel?" Wes asked in a low voice, but Angel ignored him.

"You're the one who's always going on about the power of your mind," he insisted, walking slowly toward Illyria. "You're here now because you want to be here, and it's killing you. And us," he added as an afterthought, although he didn't think that she cared much about that. "That weapon opened up an infinite realm of different dimensions, different possibilities. You want it to end? Then choose. Right now."

Illyria stared at Angel in bewilderment. "But why should I make a choice that will limit my own potential?" she asked. "Better to face my own unmaking than to exist as such a limited creature."

"Because it's what we do," Wes interjected softly. He was still staring at the figure of Fred cradling his own dead body. "We fight, and we choose to live, because the alternative is unthinkable."

Illyria tilted her head, observing him closely. "Is that your choice as well?" She stumbled slightly as she walked toward him, tightening her arm around her middle. The crackles of energy surrounding her were growing stronger. "It would seem that you prefer death," she said.

"Sometimes," Wes admitted, finally tearing his eyes away to look at Illyria. Their gazes locked, and Angel felt that he was intruding on an unbearably intimate scene. "We accept the inevitability of our own deaths at the same time that we are fighting for life. Even death can be...a relief." For the first time in months, he looked as if he was at peace. Angel couldn't look away from him.

"It is a contradiction," Illyria murmured, staring at the two figures huddled on the ground. "And you would accept such an end?"

"Yes," Wes whispered. "If it was my time."

Illyria stared at him for a moment more, then straightened herself as best she could. "I have chosen as well," she said.

Closing her eyes, she spread out her hands and appeared to be concentrating hard. She visibly shook with the effort of expending her will, a myriad of cracks appearing across the surface of her body armor. Wesley started to go to her, but Angel held him back with a shake of his head. The blue glow increased, the crackles of energy growing stronger. The light grew, strong enough to cause Angel to screw his eyes shut and throw his arm across his face. He didn't know where Wes was. The only thing he could concentrate on was the feeling that his skin would ignite at any moment. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to hold on as the light grew to unbearable levels. Just hold on. Just for a little longer...

flash

Angel sat behind his desk in his office. He frowned in confusion; he had the nagging feeling that there was something he needed to do. But even as he concentrated on it, the feeling faded. He stretched his arms out wide, relaxing his muscles, and shrugged. Whatever it was, it would come back to him later if it was important. He looked up to see Wesley poking his head in the door.

"Ready for your appointment with the Fell Brethren?" he asked. "I have the rest of the relevant files here." He crossed to Angel's desk and dropped a pile of papers on the surface.

"Thanks," Angel said. "How's it going on your end? Any luck with finding a way to rescue Gunn?"

Wes shook his head reluctantly. "Still working on it," he admitted. "I'm checking to see if there are any loopholes we can exploit. Don't worry," he said softly. "We'll find a way to get him back."

"Good," Angel said, straightening himself and shuffling the files on his desk. "I want you to stick around and meet with the Fell when they show up. I'd like to have as few surprises as possible. Speaking of which...where's Illyria?"

Wes frowned. "In the training room with Spike, last I heard. Do you want me to move her?"

"No," Angel said. "I just want to make sure she's out of the way."

"I'll go double-check, just to be sure," Wes said. At Angel's nod, he headed for the office door.

"Wes," Angel said suddenly. "Do you ever feel...I don't know...kind of weird? Like there's something important you need to do, but you don't know what it is?"

Wes turned back to him with a frown. "As a matter of fact, I've been feeling that way for the past ten minutes," he admitted. "Although, it's more a feeling that I've just finished with a big project, but I don't know what it is."

"Huh," Angel mused. He tried to focus on the feeling, but the harder he tried the more it slipped out of his grasp. He felt an odd sensation as well, as if his skin was tingling, but even that was fading. He shook his head. He didn't have time to concentrate on this now. "Deja vu," he announced with a grin as the feelings faded away entirely, and Wes nodded in return. Angel shook his head to clear his thoughts. It was time to get back to work. Time to focus on what was real.



THE END

[A/N: A few lines of dialogue were borrowed from the episodes Hell Bound and Time Bomb.]