Title: Forged
Characters: Angel and Faith
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: Almost certainly going to be Joss'd by Angel: After the Fall, but relies on some of that continuity (through #8?).
Thanks to: seraphcelene and the_red_shoes. Written for lynnevitational (and cross-posted there).
Summary: Angel has a new plan.

There's an anvil at the end of the halls of hell. Angel is no smith, but he knows what it is to be forged, from drunkard to murderer, from coward to champion.

When last he saw the others, they were battling Gunn and his vampires in a labyrinth of snow and shadows: Fred and Wesley and Illyria, who had come to a truce that Angel still doesn't understand. Spike and Connor, fighting side by side as though they'd been born to it, to Angel's discomfiture. Kate and Nina and Gwen, three women in need of no one's protection. Maybe they think he's dead. Maybe they think he betrayed them. The latter, at least, wouldn't be without precedent. There's no time to dwell on that now.

The anvil stands in a chamber of mirrors. Angel flinches from the kaleidoscope. Each reflection is different. Some wear unrelieved black, while others wear clothes that have not been fashionable for centuries. Some have fangs and some wield swords. All of them are smiling.

From behind him, Angel hears the snick of a knife clearing its sheath. "Whoa there, big guy."

"Faith," Angel says. Buffy's voice he would recognize across a hundred dreams; Faith's voice he would recognize across a thousand lifetimes. Buffy may be the woman he loves, but Faith is his conscience. "How did you get here?"

Faith's chin comes up. Her eyes are narrow. Angel realizes that she's angry. "You ditched us, Angel," she says.

He can tell this is going to be a fun conversation. "You haven't answered my question."

"Please. You think Wesley's stupid? He figured you would slip off in search of the anvil."

It figures that Wesley would find a way to summon the one person who'd have no compunctions about stopping Angel. "Then you know why I have to do this," he says.

Angel may be merely human now, but he has a couple centuries on Faith. He lunges for the anvil. No luck: Faith kicks him across the chamber and into a mirror.

These better not be plate glass or I'm dead, Angel thinks with black humor just as he smashes into the kaleidoscope. Sure enough: not plate glass. The mirror doesn't break. There's no give to it, and the images don't even waver.

Angel gets up. Dodges Faith's next kick. Drags his bruised palm across the anvil's surface. Faith shouts curses at him.

The anvil begins to glow. A dark-skinned woman steps sideways out of the air. She's wearing a dark grey pantsuit and smoke-tinted glasses, and her nails are painted silver.

Subtlety is not Faith's strong point. She tries to stab the woman. The woman grabs her forearm and twists. The dagger drops to the floor with a clatter. Faith is unable to get out of her grip. "What are you?" Faith demands.

"She's the reification of the anvil," Angel says, trusting that Faith will figure out "reification" from context. Faith scowls at him.

"Quite right," the anvil says. "You have your reward, champion. Why do you trouble me here?"

"Reward?" Faith says. "What reward?"

"He hasn't told you about the shanshu?"

"The what?"

"It's a long story," Angel says. Not that Faith is going to take that for an answer.

"Angel," she says, in a don't-screw-with-me tone.

It's too bad Angel doesn't know how to undo Wesley's glamour. How to say it--"I'm human now, Faith," he says. "It happened when I wasn't expecting it."

"Is that what happened to your reflexes," Faith says.

Angel could swear that the anvil is laughing to herself. "Anyway," Angel says to the anvil, "I'm not here about that. I'm here about something else."

The anvil lets go of Faith. Faith shakes her arm as though it's gone numb, eyes the anvil, then decides against another attack. "Speak," the anvil says in an unpromising voice.

It takes Angel three tries to get the word out. "Souls," he says. "All the vampires' souls. I want them put back. Here's the place to do it."

Faith whistles. "I feel obsolete."

"Don't," Angel mutters. "It hasn't happened yet."

The anvil blinks. "Why do you want this, and not something else?" She tilts her head. For a second, reflected in the shades, Angel sees Connor's face, sees Buffy's embrace, sees sunlight and crosses and swords.

"To give vampires the same choices that people have," Angel says. "So they know what's right and what's wrong and why it matters."

"Humans have souls," Faith points out, "and it hasn't turned us into saints."

"But the possibility of redemption is always there," Angel says. He's not thinking of Buffy, for once. He's thinking of Darla and how she shared Connor's soul, how she sacrificed herself rather than returning to being a monster.

"You don't dream small, do you," the anvil says.

Angel inclines his head.

"Break the mirrors," she says, "and it will be as you desire."

"That's it?" Faith says. "Bull in china shop and he'll get his wish?"

"You threw the man into a mirror with a Slayer's strength and the mirror's still there," the anvil remarks, a touch acerbically. Which isn't entirely true; if Faith had used her full strength, Angel wouldn't have been able to get up.

Angel says, "There's a catch."

"Don't think of it as a catch," the anvil says. "Think of it as balancing the world's wheel. If you do this--successfully--you'll return to what you once were. A vampire with a soul, a soul with a curse. And this time there's no way out."

Faith looks at the anvil, looks at Angel, looks at the anvil. Looks at Angel. "You really mean to do this."

"It's okay," Angel says, even though it isn't, quite. "It's not like I'm not used to being a vampire."

Faith shifts her weight, casual-like. The anvil shakes her head in warning, and Faith subsides, sighing.

Angel studies the mirrors. He remembers the trials he endured in hopes of saving Darla, tests of physical endurance and athleticism, that final test of resolve. He rather doubts that the anvil at the end of the halls of hell works the same way.

The reflections keep smiling at him. Some of them wear a man's face and some of them wear a monster's face.

Once Angel would have accepted these images as facets of himself. But for all that he recognizes the clothes, the blood, the weapons, each reflection stands alone.

If there's one thing Angel has finally learned in his time in this world, it's that what he's accomplished has been with allies at his back and friends at his side. "Thank you, Faith," he says.

Faith squints. "Huh? What did I do?"

"You came here," he says. Just like that, one of his reflections is replaced by Faith's image.

And more, and more, and more, all the people over the years who have forged him: Liam's father with his frown; the serving wench who had caught Liam drawing a tree and said, shyly, that she liked the picture; little Kathy, sunlight in her hair; Darla, dressed all in white; Drusilla and her sisters and her sweet William; the parade of people he slaughtered or maimed, some of whose names he still remembers; Holtz and Lawson and Whistler and Buffy and Giles and Cordelia Doyle Wesley Kate Gunn Lindsey Lilah Holland Lorne Connor Fred Illyria--

All the mirrors shatter under the pressure of memory. Faith knocks Angel to the floor and shelters him. But nothing falls but a brief flurry of snow, and then even that is gone.

His heartbeat is gone, and everything is cold, clear. But it's not as if the anvil didn't warn him.

Faith eases up, slowly, and shakes the snow from her hair. "You," she says, "are going to have a lot to explain to Buffy. She's not going to like that you made her job harder."

"Life's all about hard decisions," Angel says blithely. Faith elbows him. He supposes he deserved that. "We'll still need Slayers. There are always going to be vampires who are murderers, the way it is with humans."

"Come on," Faith says. "Let's see if your friend Gunn is doing all right."

Together, they walk away from the anvil.