Challenge: Even the Demons Tremble

[lirazel]

Oh, y'all.  Just what I need--a new challenge community to become addicted to.  As if choco_cherries wasn't enough!

Have you heard of good__evil?  It's kind of the greatest thing ever--each month is dedicated to a different BtVS/AtS character and you write a fic, designate it good so-and-so or evil so-and-so, and have to be convincing.  Fun stuff (especially because this month is Cordy!  Expect to see some Cordy-worship soon!).  But right now they're having an awesome challenge, a "Love Is Everywhere" fest where you pick random numbers and are assigned random pairings.  How could I resist?  Here's the result of (one of) mine.



Title:  Even the Demons Tremble
Challenge:  "Love Is Everywhere Fest," good__evil
Pairing:  Anya/Doyle
Rating: PG-13
Category: Angst/Romance
Timeline: Massively AU; post-Buffy Season 5, but Doyle never died on Angel.
Summary:  In the end, it's only the ones of them who have demon in them who survive.


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“Even the demons believe - and tremble!” - James 2:19 

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In the end, it’s only the ones of them who have demon in them who survive.  Angel and Spike, which isn’t a surprise at all (Anya remembers the way that even vengeance demons spoke with awe and a little bit of fear about the wrath of the Scourge of Europe, and souls and changes and loving a Slayer can’t shake the fundamentals of what it is to be a vampire) and little Dawnie, which is (and it isn’t till then that everyone really begins to understand that she really wasn’t ever human), a lanky green demon with horns and a name that has to be a joke, and some half-breed with an Irish accent and a tendency to drink way too much.  And her.  Aud-turned-Anyanka-turned-Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins (but never turned Harris, because the ring on her finger is the diamond prelude and not a gold band promise).  Six of them, holed up in the basement of an old hotel that Anya once stayed in back in the ‘30s (and had a particularly good spot of vengeance: the woman wished her cheating husband would have his guts torn out by eagles for the rest of eternity—she’d had a book of Greek myths clasped in her hand as she poured out her sorrows to Anyanka.  Vengeance demons can’t mess with eternity, but “till the end of the world” is a different story.  Only how do you know whether it’s really the end of the world or not?  And she’s finding herself questioning her vengeance for the first time, because if she had known what it felt like to have your heart ripped out, would she have visited that even on a cheating man?), hiding from the bedlamchaospandemonium outside and doing their best not to remember (that way lies madness, Spike mutters, again and again, and she’s pretty sure that if it weren’t for Dawn, he’d have stumbled down that road long ago).

Huddled in the dark, eating her meal of canned gook cooked over an open fire, she doesn’t know why she didn’t leave right after, why she let Spike (he was trembling, and maybe that’s the scariest thing she’s ever seen) push her into the backseat of the Desoto so he could keep an arm wrapped around a sobbing Dawn even as he drove, why she unfolded the map and forced herself to play navigator as they went searching for Angel (and somehow it didn’t surprise her at all that Spike’s first impulse was “Sire” or as close as he could come.  Vampires never change).  She knows why she didn’t leave before that (XanderXanderXander), why she stayed to fight, but when it was over, what was left to her?  (This is a rhetorical question; Willow taught her about those.  The answer goes without saying, and it is, “Nothing.”) 

But stay she did, and does (even when D’Hoffryn shows up and asks her to come back home, and she can’t help but feel sorry for him, because without humans, vengeance demons don’t have jobs—demons can get their own vengeance), and she doesn’t even complain much, because what’s the point?  (Another rhetorical question, and the answer to this one is, “There is none.”)

At first it was all sobs and nightmares and terror and none of them looking each other in the eyes and memories pressing so close they seemed suffocating (Willow, who she’d never really liked because she suspected Xander would choose her if forced to make the choice, but whom she’d respected because it wasn’t just anyone D’Hoffryn offered a job to; Giles, who’d been more patient than he had to be and who’d introduced her to the joys of capitalism; Buffy, who she’d always sort of resented because there was worship in Xander’s eyes when he looked at the Slayer, but who, it had to be admitted, was strong and righteous and brave right up to the end when she made the leap just a few moments too late; and XanderXanderXander—lovelovelove).  None of them were really sure that they wanted to survive, not in a world turned to hell, a world their friends’ sacrificed lives hadn’t been able to save because the portal between the worlds wasn’t closed in time. 

Slowly, (agonizingly) slowly, they start to find ways (even if maybe there will never again be reasons) to survive.  Spike and Dawn are living for each other, and Angel is living for redemption and maybe guilt, and Lorne is living for the music he still manages to make…and Doyle?  He’s living for her (this is a great deal of responsibility, but Anya tries to be worthy of it, even if most of the time she’s just so tired, a side effect of humanity she’d forgotten about long ago).

She hated Doyle at first (when she’s honest with herself, which she always tries to be because lies are pointless and hard to remember, she knows it’s because he’s slightly goofy, given to making lame jokes, loyal to a fault, impossible to shoot down and it’s just not fair that he should be so like Xander but not him at all), and in typical Anya-fashion, had been completely unafraid of letting him know just that.  But her disdain only seemed to encourage, and honestly, it was nice for someone else to do the chasing (she’s pretty sure she’ll never be able to do it herself again).  More than that, it’s just nice, when you wake screaming from your nightmares, to have a warm, real body to hold you close and whisper words that you know are lies but that sound so very soothing even if they don’t change anything (well, maybe lies aren’t so pointless after all).   

 His jokes are lame, but even though she’d thought she’d learned everything about lame jokes over the last two years, she doesn’t understand his (she’s learning, though).  He tastes like Guinness and peanuts where Xander tasted like Dr. Pepper and Cheetos, and she doesn’t have to spread her arms as wide to wrap them around his shoulders, which makes her feel like she has to be stronger (it was okay to be weak with Xander, but this world doesn’t leave room for that).  He’s shaped different, smells different, feels different curled around her back at night, and the sound of his breathing is unfamiliar.  But he’s here, and last week he made her laugh for the very first time (a strange, breathy sound that she’s never heard from her own mouth before, and everyone froze in the otherwise-silence as though it had shattered something and then, oh so slowly, smiled).   She likes the way his hands feel on her face, the way he looks at her, surprised at his own solemnity (surprised—maybe?—at hope).

She never thought she’d take a chance on a man again (in her mind, she’d thought, “I’ll give Xander this one chance,” and he had stood for all men, the burden on his shoulders to prove to her that there was something worth it about human men, worth the pain they cause.  This is a different kind of pain, and maybe not Xander’s fault, but she still isn’t sure about the worth it part), and maybe this isn’t really a chance anyways, because maybe it’s all going to be over soon (six of them in a big, big world, filled with pain and violence and didn’t you know that “pandemonium” means “all demons” and nothing else, and wouldn’t Milton be surprised that his capital of hell is now on earth, and when did these six demons become so human that they don’t feel at home in such a world, anyways?).  Or maybe it’s the biggest chance of all. 

No.  Maybe there isn’t any point to carrying on, not in this world turned to hell.  But maybe they can’t help it.  Because somewhere along the line, these demons?  Well, they learned from their long-lost humans that most human of all characteristics.

Carrying on.