A Merry Little Christmas by Princess Twilite

Summary: Angelus gets in the Christmas spirit. Dark.

Spoilers: Rain Of Fire, Season Four.

Notes: A Christmas Challenge that Doesn't suck: Christmas, 2002, accepting all onscreen canon as fact. It can be Angel's holiday, Cordelia's, both, or any of the other characters who might be watching the suffer through what is, no doubt, the bluest Christmas ever.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light,
From now on our troubles
Will be out of sight.

~*~*~*~

The sweet scent of pine hung in the room like the garland from the ceiling, gathering along the archways like obtrusive vines. They curled like seductive fingers along the hearth, where a fire leaped up, burning the stone chimney.

The table was set, food glossed over with sweet sauces until it shined with the ruby glow of Christmas lights, strung about like leaves, across the chair, across the floor, across her hands, her torso.

She sat, staring at the food as he stared at her, her mouth open but refusing to speak as he tugged the electrical cords and they tightened around her breasts.

Breasts that his bastard son, and the irony did amuse him, had touched.

Cordelia gasped, arching forward, her skin glinting with the flashing blues and greens, red splashing across the tender skin of her neck, where her blood still dripped down - ready.

Grunting, Angelus dropped the wires and lifted a piece of ham from his plate. It didn't look particularly tasty, then again, he'd gotten used to heartier meals and wasn't all that eager to taste anything that belonged to a pig ever again.

Cordelia, however… she would willingly eat off her own arm at this point. Starvation was always such a special treat to him. The body tortured itself and he got to watch.

She watched him, devastated. Tears dripped from her eyes, and down onto her bruised mouth. The things that mouth must have done…

Angelus smiled at her, an almost kind smile that meant certain danger. The lights flashed around her, blinding her as he moved about the room, the silent stalking beast that he was.

What was it that he was humming?

Cordelia lolled her head to the side, sweat dripping down the back of her skull.

She caught a glimpse of his grinning face as he tugged on that sickening and came toward her from the shadows. Cordelia croaked, but did not speak as he took Santa's belt and wrapped it around her throat, tugging her up and against him.

~*~*~*~

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, Make the Yule-tide gay, From now on our troubles Will be miles away.

~*~*~*~

Red flash.

Green flash.

Blue.

Cordelia's eyes burned in their sockets as the colors jumped beneath the lids, air escaping her lungs in a whoosh, catching in her throat and being forced back down as Angelus literally began choking the life from her. Santa's buckle pressed crudely into her chin.

Vision hazy and crackly, his face waved in front of her, from side to side.

He lifted her higher, higher, her feet dangled near his knees.

The laughing imposter who had seen…

Everything.

Shamed, she let him hurt her.

She'd only wanted to make the pain go away.

Pain never went away, it sat in a box beneath the Christmas tree, wrapped up and ticking like a time bomb.

A mistletoe was hung carefully above them, like the apple handed toward Adam and surely Angelus had planned out this sick game completely as he tore her from Connor's bed, snatched up an ax that lay beside that bed, THAT BED, and jammed it deep into his own son's sleeping shoulder.

Connor had jerked, head rising from the pillow in a bellow of rage and pain, but he had been able to do nothing but lay limply as his blood drained across the sex-scented sheets.

"You've been a bad boy this year Connor," this thing wearing Angel's face had murmured, pushing Santa's hat back on his head. "All you get is coal."

The ax came down. Flesh split.

Cordelia screamed, so many memories, Angelus, his victims… Could never be with the other side of this man, no matter how or in what way she loved him.

Black sky, black-out. The city was dark. Had been dark for weeks.

The fire was gone.

There was no way out. Like a trapped rabbit, she hunched and scurried into the corner.

Angelus turned, saw her crouched on the floor like an animal, hair wild on her head and snarled, lunging at her. She had cried hard as his fingers twisted mottled shapes into her flesh, burned his own form of pleasure marks into her skin.

"Like playing tease, Cor-dy? Like playing wh-ore?"

A game. The game. Angelus loved this game.

Cordelia said nothing as Angelus dragged her from the room, her feet pulling along the wood, splinters catching in the back of her heels. Connor's blank eyes stared after them, forever the lost teenager who had tried to destroy his father.

Succeeded.

They both had.

Cordelia was brought back to the moment when she fell onto her back as Angelus let her loose. Pain sang up her spine as she stared up at him, grotesque in the red suit and painted cheeks.

"Want to sit on Santa's lap?" He sing-songed.

~*~*~*~

Here we are as in olden days, Happy golden days of yore, Faithful friends who are dear to us Gather near to us once more.

~*~*~*~

"It wasn't love that set me free, Co-rdy." Angelus grunted into her ears as her back slammed into the table. She barely felt it, beyond comprehension as Santa twisted forever around this image, bleeding her dry from the inside. "Not this time. Who knew?"

He laughed at her, and then shook her until her brain screamed in her head, until her skull knocked against the hard wood, breaking open. Finally, she looked at him, eyes vague.

"It was hate. Pure. Absolute. The worst moment in my entire life."

His eyes burned with it, even now. She could see it in the red ringed gaze. Blisters slithered around the gold, the purest fury she had ever seen.

"You. Fucking my son."

Cordelia turned her head away.

And when her shoulder blades burned where he held them down and her thighs ached where he held them wide, she just laid there, the silent dead thing that she knew she would soon be.

The end of the world yes, but she hadn't known it would be because of her.

Angelus groaned above her, forcing her mouth to form to his, lip against bleeding lip.

When he freed her tongue, she stared at the ceiling.

The lights were so pretty, like little fairies.

Red flash.

Green flash.

Blue.

~*~*~*~

Through the years We all will be together If the Fates allow, Hang a shining star On the highest bough…

~*~*~*~

The pounding of feet slammed into her head like gunshots. Angelus ripped his teeth from her neck. His face hung suspended before her, painted with her blood.

She remembered Angel, handing her a gift, one that she had never opened.

Cordelia had kept it beneath her mattress, knowing very well what was inside, but too afraid to even touch it. But now, there was what if?

What if she was wrong? What if it hadn't been what she thought at all?

She couldn't bring herself to care.

Gunn and Wesley came slamming through the door. Oh look, together again. They looked so serious, like they were finally going through with some crazy plain.

There was the vague sound of flesh ripping open and Angelus screaming in agony as he jerked a stake from his recently healed neck and throwing himself through the air.

"Cordelia!" Wesley yelled. "Cordelia! Get out of here!"

Oh, he was being silly again. She was naked. Didn't he know that you shouldn't go outside when you were naked?

"Cordelia!" Gunn's voice as he tried to reach her. Angelus slammed him down against the floor, snapping his neck with a foot.

Wesley turned, scented death against the fireplace, and hung in little two little socks for Jimmy and Johnny.

Hands gripped his throat and red obscured his vision.

Angelus tore Wesley's throat out, staring at Cordelia with the dark eyes of a mate as he consumed his feast. The eyes of a mate driven to the edge by the need to MAKE HER SEE that she was nothing more than his colorful toy. His Santa Suit was half torn off, hanging down around his hips.

Her fault. Cordelia met his glare, but barely, heart fading away to ashes.

She watched as the Christmas lights flooded over his marble skin.

Pine tickled her nose as Angelus let Wesley's body fall to the floor and stalked toward her. She realized she was flung out near a wreath, her cheek mashed against it. It was decorated with all the things Christmas had once been about.

The colors were beautiful really, so pretty.

~*~*~*~

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now...

End.

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