This is so good Victor. It just keeps getting better.

Thanks. Closing in on the end, but still a little more mileage to go...

This week's Open on Sunday drabble topic is "Time".

But Not For Love

She touches him.

She's older than she was before she died, either time she died. There are things she understands, things she can look at, see, acknowledge.

And here he is, world without end, except that oh, as usual, dear, the world's about to end, again. And she takes down Caleb, and Angel's still here. Damn, he says, I've missed this.

She touches his cheek for a moment. If he misses her dance of power, she misses something else: age, and death, the indignities of the grave, every imprint of mortality that can't touch him, but will someday take her.

Another one:

Regret (Darla)

She can't keep him.

It doesn't matter that she loves him. It doesn't matter that she believes he still loves her.

The sins that led them to this pass, two hundred years of murder, death, sadism, torture, Angelus' teeth deep in the flesh of so many, so very many, uncounted and unregretted, don't matter.

Until he got his soul back.

The soul matters.

And now she can walk in sunlight, and he accepts his soul, but she can't accept hers, it burns and nothing in all the years and nothing in all of time everlasting can bring them together again

Victor, I'm loving this fic of yours. It zings.

One grammar nitpick:

You alone, out of everyone here, is in complete control of yourself

I think that should be "You alone, out of everyone here, are in complete control of yourself." (I could be wrong, of course, so someone please feel free to contradict me if I am.)

Huh. No, you're right about that. I'll go fix it.

And thank you!

One more Time drabble.

Thief

He listens to Pink Floyd some days, taking him back to a time best left forgotten, nights spent with a charmed circle of pissed-off Oxford brats, tattooed and bitching and eating vindaloo from the local takeaway. He's Ripper again.

He listens to Syd Barrett and back he goes, down the twisty ladder to the days of Ethan and Deirdre, raising hell, raising demons.

Sometimes, he hears the neighbour's music playing, instead of his own, the bloke's a blues man and there it is, too much, too true, B.B. King, singing the story of Rupert's own life:

Time is a thief...

Ooh! I like that, Deb. The soundtrack is just perfect.

That song's been on my mind a lot. Seems appropriate to far too many things.

Part Twenty-Eight: To Die and Die in L.A.

There was a whirlwind of colors surrounding him, an ephemeral light that seemed to grow and then contract for an instant, and then, suddenly, he was somewhere else. He knew it was Los Angeles the minute he hit the pavement—the chemical-scented, polluted air, the distant tang of salt. He knew where he was, but couldn’t identify the source of the rumbling thunder that seemed to echo from everywhere.

Then he looked up, and saw an army of monsters approaching from all directions, as above swooped enormous, reptilian wings.

“Well, I don’t know about you,” said Angel, in front of him, “But I kind of want to slay the dragon. All right. Let’s get to work.”

“They are alive here,” thought Oz. Angel and Spike he knew, the other two had to be Gunn and Illyria. Spike was battered and bleeding. Gunn looked like he was about to collapse. They didn’t realize they’d been fighting this battle, over and over again, for months.

“Angel!” shouted Oz, before the vampire leapt into battle. Angel turned and looked at him.

“Oz,” he said. ‘Hey.”

“Hey.”

There was an awkward silence as everyone stared at him.

“Oz,” said Spike. “You come to pitch a hand, because a werewolf would be handy right now. Assuming it’s housebroken.”

“What are you doing here,” asked Angel. “This isn’t your fight.”

“Uh, guys,” said Gunn. “The Army of Darkness is on the march.”

“Look, guys,” said Oz. “This isn’t real. I mean, it’s real, but you’re trapped in a loop in time, you keep fighting this battle over and over, and when the loop burns out, all reality’s going to collapse.”

But it was too late. The monsters were on them, and Illyria and Spike were already swinging at them, their fists slamming like crowbars into the torsos of orclike things. Gunn, shaky hands clenching a bat, began swatting at creatures as they swarmed. Angel turned to aid his colleagues, but Oz grabbed his shoulder.

“Angel!” shouted Oz. “I’m telling the truth. Wesley sent me! He worked it all out!”

“Wesley’s dead,” said Angel. Oz noted that Illyria, even as she flailed at her enemies, was listening intently.

“Well, yeah,” said Oz. “But he set it up so…”

With a shriek, the dragon dived at them, a breath of flame engulfing the troops. Spike let out a scream as he was engulfed in flame. Gunn was pulled beneath the king-hell tide, and Oz watched in horror as his skull was split open by a mace.

“This battle has happened before,” said Illyria, stopping amid the carnage. “The child is correct. Angel…”

The dragon swooped again, and a wall of flame engulfed Illyria. As she died, a scream escaped her lips, like a chorus of banshees singing into the night sky. Every piece of glass in sight shattered.

“This isn’t real?” said Angel, turning his back once again on Oz. “This fight just repeats and repeats, until the end of time?”

Angel swung at the encroaching hoard, but didn’t push forward.

“Yeah,” said Oz. “This is all going to happen again.”

“Then in the next life, convince me,” said Angel, leaping at the forces in front of him. Oz gritted his teeth, and allowed the wolf to come forward. Edgy and knowing the inevitable result ahead of him, Oz leapt into the fray.

And within moments, he, too, was gone.

“Then in the next life, convince me,”

I wish I'd written this.