TITLE: Stupid Warrior

AUTHOR: Suja sujaraviraj@yahoo.com

SUMMARY: The Oracles Tell A Story

DISTRIBUTION: if anyone actually wants this, i'll be surprised!

DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, never will be. Joss owns everything.

AUTHOR's NOTES: Angel has had so many almost-redemptions that it spawned this story. However, it hasn't come out like I wanted it to, so I'm challenging someone to take the basic idea and make up their own version.

That vampire. He is the most stupid of all the warriors. We have given him so many chances, which have not been realised. Let me tell you a story.

There was once a beautiful soul created. SO beautiful that one single mortal did not deserve it. The higher powers ordered it to be destroyed. And it was, apart from two small fragments which were inexpicable missing. It was later discovered that these fragments had bonded with two mortal souls. The augaries decided that this must be kept secret, for the higher powers would wish destruction upon the mortals who possessed this soul.

The two fragments first came into contact in the 1700's. The male, Liam, was misguided, and wasted his life. The female, Elizabeth, never even had the chance to meet him, for at the age of six and twenty he was turned. And the soul was lost to the ether. Elizabeth died the next day, of a sickness which plagues the soul, when part of it is missing.

We Oracles saw the chance to correct this terrible mistake almost 150 years later, in 1898. The vampire Angelus, once known as Liam, wronged the Kalderash gypsies, and they cursed his soul. It took, however, until the early 1980's to find the soul of Elizabeth. She was born again into Buffy Anne Summers, the child who was to be our strongest warrior, THE Slayer. And suddenly things started to go right for us again. The souls met, and loved. And suddenly chaos erupted. We had not researched the clan of gypsies thoroughly enough, and there was a loophole to the curse. The soul was ripped from Angelus, and the Slayer was crushed. Luckily, the Slayer essence was enough to keep the girl from dying, and eventually we were able to help the young witch restore the soul. Our timing was off. He was sent to hell. And that took about 100 years of work in that dimension to get him out.

The next time we were involved was when he got the god-damn ring of Amarra. If only he'd researched thoroughly enough. The ring protects against curses. But the ever-stupid vampire smashed it, believing his holy-grail was not in that ring.

On his transformation to mortal status, we informed him what was meant to be will be. He thinks too much, and asks for the day back. What a stupid mistake....did he not realise the price for the folding of time is always a life. And that life was not the one that he gave back, it was that of his mentor, his friend. The half demon with the visions.

Oh, the stupid warrior. Does he think that he himself is so lucky, and inexpendable that we would go through all this hassle to keep the soul-fragments together? They must not die...for at least the next 60 years. For this is the final death. They've loved and lost this lifetime, and the two souls have automatic entry to the higher planes due to their warrior status. The Powers are doing a stock-take of souls, and if either of those souls passes through anytime soon, we Oracles are in for a rollocking. Our eternal lives will NOT be worth living if that comes to pass.