This is the last of these badly written ones. Probably. ...Hopefully.

Disclaimer: If I owned Angel outside my Puppyverse, believe me, I'd flaunt him. Otherwise, he belongs to that evil little troll named Joss, and his personal tailsweeper, David Greenwalt.

Flame

They say Hellmouths are like a flame - it draws moths into it, and then kills them without a thought. I'm a moth, you see, and I can still see the flame. Not the one of the Hellmouth, but of her. Her soul calls to me, even when she forces me away with words. But I know what that little candle can do if you get too close. I can't get that close. Not again.

And so I'm here. Riena de los Angeles. Queen of the Angels.

Seems kind of clechéd now that I think about it. But I hadn't thought about much when I'd come. I had made up my mind about her, and I was too busy fighting the urge to run back into her arms, to never let go- And that's why I wasn't thinking. Thinking leads to rationality.

I hadn't been thinking when Doyle found me, either. I'd blindly gone along, something else to keep me occupied, away from anything that reminded me of her. But Doyle knew what I was up to, and, evedently, so did the PTB. They sent me after a girl. Young, innocent. That didn't help, did it? But I felt it then, after that day. It was just as obvious as her flame. This city had its own pull.

Here's one thing I can give LA - with all of its lights, glitz, and glamour, its halo, nothing could come close to its shadows. Not any Hellmouth, and certainly not Sunnydale. The city had been called one of broken dreams, of hopes lost to an unforgiving crowd of the richest feeding off the weak. But the rich are not the only preditors here. Moths come in all shapes and sizes - from your wildest dreams to your most horrid nightmares. They draw on the dispair and lonliness only Los Angeles could make.

And I am drawn to them.

Or, at least, I was. I had thought- No, there's that word again.

There are few times for rationality here - this place pretty much throws it out the window and runs it over with an expensive limosine.

I would take that back - there was one day where rational thinking rang out true; twice, as a matter of fact. The frist time when I kissed her, the second when I damned her. But the day was nothing but a whisper along the Pacific sands.

That was the day I realized that the city had not called to me, I had begged her to keep me within her wings. Anything that would keep me from seeing that candle and running towards it. She had sheltered me, kept that light at bay. But even the halo's glow couldn't snuff it out. It came through for a brief shining moment, and that was all I needed.

But then I started thinking again. You can guess where that led.

I couldn't block it out anymore, couldn't deny that it was appealing - the thought of being truely accepted again. Accepted: Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn... they're family to me. Mostly. Even Fred to an extent. But they don't accept me. Not like her. The incident with Darla had been enough to try the patience of a Saint, which none of them are. I wanted nothing more at that time than to fly towards that little light and become lost in it. She would have held me and made everything better.

A fruitless fantasy.

But one day, when I can go towards that candle and have no fear of being burnt, when the day's light no longer poses a threat, and the demon inside me is silenced, that fantasy can become reality. She would cradle me in her arms, whisper the words we'd always felt. Rational thought would no longer be feared, but it would no longer be needed.

One day, the wings of the city will no longer need to shelter me from that flame, and, even though I leave the angels behind, I will be in Heaven.

fin.