Title: Cruelest Kindness
Author: Scynneh
E-mail: scynneh@yahoo.com All resulting bliss will be shared with Angel.  
Improv 8: Rain, glow, bound, crave
Disclaimer: Are these silks I am wearing, do I have enough cash to buy those lovely leather boots that are thigh-high? I think not. Then, do I own anything here beside the ideas? Again, I must confess to needing another handkerchief…(sniffle).
Dedications: To Spyke Raven, whose latest pieces have made me stare at my computer with malice and demand why my Muses have to be so uncooperative lately. And lo and behold, I was freed…
Spoilers: After ‘Reunion’ and ‘Redefinition.’ Darla and Dru are taking over L.A. as best they can, vandalizing boutiques wherever possible. Angel has been conflicted about where his loyalties are, and in ‘Redefinition’, he acknowledges the fact that it would be too hard to kill his family at the moment…..
Summary: But there is someone who would be more than willing to carry the weight for our Dark Avenger….
Author’s Note: THE JOSS has made me so angry that when my Muses got together and ‘persuaded’ me to write something, I was easily swayed.
January 2001

*
His mind is a viscous oasis where I swim, drowning in his essence, even while pleasure beckons me to even deeper depths.  I am weak before the call of the banshees that inhabit his inner places, unable to recoil when they reach for me with fingers of whittled bone, helpless while aged silk drapes my skin.  I am ever immobile; not stirring though horror is my voice inside the closed palace of that jointed cathedral we share.

           Laughing of horrors and resentful, clearly, the bean chaoiote are the vengeance borne out of a creature too long imprisoned by the Forces of Good, and they pinion my arms behind my back, and lead me into the cruel obsidian lapping at my legs, dispassionate as I struggle to free myself for duty and light and ‘What Should Be.’ 

  Nonsensical mummers are carried upon their fetid breath, and as I inhale, a lassitude of acceptance crawls into me and movement gradually slow to nothing more than token resistance.  The illumination of gold in my breast is soothed by the blackest of whispers, and that glowing sphere quiets; weary from too many years of struggle.  When at last the waters close over my head, another has risen out of the mire, ready to mete out what he considers justice upon those who have wronged us, and that thought brings me nothing but relief and pure happiness.

---

I am aware of nothingness at first, but as the sheets of cold and driving water scour my face, slime drips away from my eyes, I am able to make out the surroundings of a disillusioned warrior who has fallen and no longer wishes to fight the true nature within.  I stand, free of the moral chains which have crippled my other, able to shake off such tawdry things as: justice, and concentrate instead on the more eternal vengeance.  The Romany were right about one thing: vengeance is an entity, sentient, and able to remain dormant until the circumstances are ripe for a greater spoils.  I have profited from my absence, and gained a deeper understanding of the cogs that are concealed beneath the chrome skin of the malevolent beast calling itself an agency of ‘the Law’.  No, Liberty has been violated and thrown into a bottomless well together with his beliefs, and I no more wish to mourn their passing than the maimed mask I wear for the humans can pretend that he is truly on the side of good.  I have too long stood behind his shoulder and suffered the machinations of humans, even the well-meaning ones with great tolerance for the degrees of stupidity have landed themselves at my doorstep. 

  When at last his precious ‘standards’ began to crumble, I was obliged to shore up the chinks with my own being, offering those pieces as a sort of peace offering, and an agreement to work in tandem for as long as it suited our needs.  No, he was not exactly thrilled with the prospect of being closer to me, but as things slipped even further down into the ravine of confusing possibilities, my assistance was the element that prevented total mental failure.  I drifted into his morality slicker than a buttered herring, and replaced stark sides of the spectrum with my own views on the importance of family and property. And I impressed upon him the truth that evil isn’t a solid impenetrable ebony, it’s shot through with threads of crimson lust and unavoidable envy, with a good dash of gluttonous wrath to round it out.  To utilize that one must identify the harmful cravings that twine around faltering strides to bring stumbling and eventual impact with uncompromising earth.

  I filled out the moth-eaten portions of his psyche while he clung onto possession of the body we shared with increasing reluctance.  Then, one evening, everything simply lost its appeal, and the romanticism of ‘immortality’ took a passenger seat to ‘survival’.  I found myself bound by nothing, and gained control of the remains of the Master’s Grandchilde, the only one to make any sense, and he writhed in the grip of moral delirium.

  Now we are as joined as cement and mutual dissatisfaction can make us, and with the passing of each successive hour, he is further submerged until there is only what once made humans tremble, and gave credence to the fear of the midnights when the wailing women went abroad while the undead tasted noble blood and no one expected Righteousness to rescue the helpless from their fates. 

-Fin