BtVS Ficlet: A Better Man
Sep. 15th, 2025 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: A Better Man
Fandom: BtVS
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Angel.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Pretty much everything.
Summary: Angel has a lot to be ashamed of, and while he knows he can never make amends to his family, and all the people he slaughtered over the years, he knows he’s a better man now than he used to be.
Word Count: 620
Written For:
ravenlilyrose’s prompt ‘any, any, the person I used to be’, at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own BTVS, or the characters.
When Angel looks back at who he used to be, back in Galway, before he ever met Darla, before she turned him into a vampire and rampaged with him, and Spike, and Drusilla through Europe and the Orient, torturing and killing, leaving devastation and a trail of blood-drained bodies in their wake, he can only feel shame. As much as he hates the monster Darla turned him into, he hates the man he was back then: a drunkard, a wastrel, a gambler, a womaniser, and a bitter disappointment to his entire family.
He’d been young, yes, but that was no kind of excuse. The oldest child of a man of certain wealth and standing within the community, he’d resented his father, resented being expected to work, had helped himself to his father’s money to go out drinking, gambling, and whoring, surrounding himself with people who only wanted to be his friends because he’d had money. There had been no shortage of people happy to let him buy them drinks, and food, and the company of the tavern wenches, and it had never crossed his mind that his friends would likely not stick around when the money ran out. He’d thought himself important, someone deserving of respect, when in truth he’d deserved nothing more than every one of his father’s insults, and every one of the beatings he’d earned himself.
He's older now. Not so much in years, or not in a physical sense since vampires don’t age, but older in terms of experience, with all he’s seen since having his human soul restored, and… He finds himself wishing he’d known, back when he was human, what he knows now about treating others with kindness and respect in order to earn respect in return. He wishes too that he’d understood about humility, and honesty, and doing right because it IS right rather than to win praise and adulation. How many grave mistakes might he have avoided making if he’d had such wisdom as a youth? He’ll never know.
He isn’t human, and will likely never be. He’s still a vampire, albeit one with a human soul, but for all that, he thinks he’s a better man now than he was when he was alive. If he could go back in time, revisit the family he slaughtered, his dear mother, darling little sister, and yes, even his father, he’d fall on his knees in front of them and beg for the forgiveness he knows he doesn’t deserve.
But of course, that can never happen. His mistakes, arrogance, and stupidity as a young man cannot be undone any more than the monstrous acts he committed after becoming a vampire can. He can never apologise to any of his victims; all he can do is to continue the never-ending fight against the forces of evil, in the faint hope that he might cleanse a few of the stains from his soul.
No matter what he does, it will never be enough for his soul to find rest in heaven when his existence is ended, but that isn’t why he fights alongside the Slayer and her friends. He does it because there are so many vampires and demons in the world, and the burden of dealing with them is so much more than one teenage girl should have to carry.
Battling evil gives him a purpose, a reason to exist, and a chance to strike back, in a way, against everything he hates about himself. Until he is inevitably turned to dust, he will keep trying to be the man he should have been so long ago, the kind of man who wouldn’t have given his family so many reasons to be ashamed of him.
The End
He’d been young, yes, but that was no kind of excuse. The oldest child of a man of certain wealth and standing within the community, he’d resented his father, resented being expected to work, had helped himself to his father’s money to go out drinking, gambling, and whoring, surrounding himself with people who only wanted to be his friends because he’d had money. There had been no shortage of people happy to let him buy them drinks, and food, and the company of the tavern wenches, and it had never crossed his mind that his friends would likely not stick around when the money ran out. He’d thought himself important, someone deserving of respect, when in truth he’d deserved nothing more than every one of his father’s insults, and every one of the beatings he’d earned himself.
He's older now. Not so much in years, or not in a physical sense since vampires don’t age, but older in terms of experience, with all he’s seen since having his human soul restored, and… He finds himself wishing he’d known, back when he was human, what he knows now about treating others with kindness and respect in order to earn respect in return. He wishes too that he’d understood about humility, and honesty, and doing right because it IS right rather than to win praise and adulation. How many grave mistakes might he have avoided making if he’d had such wisdom as a youth? He’ll never know.
He isn’t human, and will likely never be. He’s still a vampire, albeit one with a human soul, but for all that, he thinks he’s a better man now than he was when he was alive. If he could go back in time, revisit the family he slaughtered, his dear mother, darling little sister, and yes, even his father, he’d fall on his knees in front of them and beg for the forgiveness he knows he doesn’t deserve.
But of course, that can never happen. His mistakes, arrogance, and stupidity as a young man cannot be undone any more than the monstrous acts he committed after becoming a vampire can. He can never apologise to any of his victims; all he can do is to continue the never-ending fight against the forces of evil, in the faint hope that he might cleanse a few of the stains from his soul.
No matter what he does, it will never be enough for his soul to find rest in heaven when his existence is ended, but that isn’t why he fights alongside the Slayer and her friends. He does it because there are so many vampires and demons in the world, and the burden of dealing with them is so much more than one teenage girl should have to carry.
Battling evil gives him a purpose, a reason to exist, and a chance to strike back, in a way, against everything he hates about himself. Until he is inevitably turned to dust, he will keep trying to be the man he should have been so long ago, the kind of man who wouldn’t have given his family so many reasons to be ashamed of him.
The End
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Date: 2025-09-16 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-09-16 04:54 pm (UTC)Thank you!