Spoilers: Major for "Prodigal". Some others, but they aren't really important
Dislaimer: I own nothing. Joss is king. I just watch TV
Feedback: I will do the Dance of Joy if send me some. Flames will be ignored and/or mocked.
A/N: This songfic involves the song "Father of Mine" by Everclear. It is a fantastic song, and I would recomend listening to it while reading.
Angel watched his son sleep silently in his crib, tiny little hands and feet occasionally twitching as Connor dreamed his baby dreams. His son. His boy. He was a father.
Father of mine
Tell me where have you been
He didn't know what he was doing, if he was honest with himself. He was confused, not sure what a father was supposed to be, not sure how a father was supposed to act. This was probably something that happened to all fathers; all the ones that cared anyway. But in the mean, bad part of his mind, where Angelus lived, just waiting to be free, Angel thought that maybe he was at a greater disadvantage then most fathers. Because of his own father.
It didn't seem like that long ago, really. Like one moment he was holding his father against the wall, smelling fear and blood, candle wax and family, then the next minute he was here. Darla and Druislla and William/Spike, the Nazis and Hyperion and donut shop, Buffy and the Scoobies, Doyle and Angel Investigations and everything in between had all passed so quickly, sometimes. An eye blink.
You know I just closed my eyes
The whole world disappeared
It hadn't always been so bad between him and his father, not like it was during the last ten years. When Angel or Liam or whoever the hell he was had been a kid, seven or eight and still thought his father was the bravest, strongest man in the world, things had been better. Father had loved him. Father had been his friend.
Father of mine
Take me back to the day
Yeah, when I was still your golden boy
Back before you went away
But that hadn't lasted. Maybe Liam had changed. Maybe Father had. But the relationship between them had gotten worse. It had been like the father he knew, the father he'd loved, was gone. And he had never come back.
I remember blues skies
Walking the block
I loved it when you held me high
I loved to hear you talk
It was funny, Angel thought sometimes, on nights when stupid commercials and TV shows blared the perfect, happy family at him, loving father and loved son. Angel could remember everyone he ever killed. He could remember everybody he ever hurt.
The moment when Drusilla completely gave up on sanity and the last hope fled from her eyes. The way William would scream in agony when Angelus punished him. He remembered Holtz's family and Lawson's blood, Willow's fish and Buffy's choice. Darla. Nuns and rapists, rats and Slayers, the memory and blood blended together for him until it was a maelstrom he would be lost forever in. He remembered Kathy's eyes, the snap of his mother's delicate wrists as Angelus grabbed her, the scent of his father's terror. But Angel, with his photographic memory, had to try hard to remember his father, alive and well and kind. He had to work to remember when things were good. When things were happy. When he was happy.
You would take me to the beach
Take me to a place inside that's so hard to reach
Maybe Liam's father hadn't realized the power that he had held in hands that used to comfort but eventually only hit. Because when things had changed, when Liam had grown up and Father had grown older, all the love and approval seemed to go away. Liam, trying to look for something that would make this sudden loss better, turned sex and booze, trying to wash away his loneliness and insecurity and rage. But that only made Father hate him more. So in the end, with a nod to Mother, whose body also wore the marks of Father's anger, and kind words to his sister Kathy, Liam ran and let his life fall to pieces. Because of one man.
Father of mine
Tell me where did you go
Yeah, you had the world inside your hands but you did not seem to know
In the days before Liam had died at the hands of a blonde with nice curves, nice breasts, and fantastically wicked fangs, did Father ever miss him? Did he watch Kathy and Mother walk around in a daze and wish things could have been different?
Father of mine
Tell me what do you see
When you look back at your wasted life and you don't see me?
Liam, Angelus, Angel, none of the incarnations of him would ever know. And to this day, Angel/Angelus/Liam would still puzzle over what had made his father hate him so. In the end, it didn't matter. It was the right of a parent, a father especially, to hate or love, punish or comfort. But the boy who became a man who became a vampire still wished he could've asked.
Yeah I never understood you then
And I guess I never will
When a vampire fledgling had risen from beneath a stone marked "Beloved Son" and nothing else, it had taken the name Angelus, after a little girl's silly, fatal mistake. And Angelus he had become forever, until a tribe of angry Gypsies made him Angel. But he was never Liam again. Except for once.
Inside that house, with Mother leaning dead against the wall and Kathy slumped in the door like a doll, it had been an angry, hurting, suddenly powerful Liam that faced his father. Liam, high on power and ready to take back. The ironic part was, of course, that Father had been the one to name him. Part if the reason Liam had changed his name after rising was because he didn't want to remember the power that one man and a name had once had over him.
Daddy gave me a name
My daddy gave me a name
And he walked away
Out of all the names the vampire had, son, brother, Childe, Sire, Angelus, Angel, friend, enemy, lover, champion, father, Liam was still the one that hurt him the most.
Daddy gave me a name
Then he walked away
My daddy gave me a name
And with a shove and a bite, Father had died. But the man still had power over Angel and thus, inevitably, Connor. A dead man. A man who had walked away from kindness and left behind something new and cruel.
Father of mine
Tell me where have you been
You know I just closed my eyes
And the world disappeared
Father. Who had left his children to face the world on their own and never offered them one hint of advice that wasn't also a criticism and an insult. Who had hit Mother almost as much as he'd hit Liam. Who had been the backbone of a family full of people who revolved solely around him and who had never seemed to care.
Father of mine
Tell me how do you sleep
With the children you abandoned
And the wife I saw you beat
And forever after, Angel would be warped and colored by one man and that man's strange loathing of his son. He could never explain why he had been so willing to believe that Kate Lockley's father was a crook. And he would never, ever admit how disappointed he had been when Bethany Chalk had not given her father the painful death he deserved. "Finish it." But no one ever could.
I will never be safe
I will never be sane
I will always be weird inside
I will always be lame
"I hate you, Father," Angel said aloud. Admitting it, if not to the world than at least to himself. The dark haired vampire looked down into the crib, which contained his sleeping son. Connor. His redemption.
Now I am a grown man
With a child of my own
Connor woke and blinked, gurgling happily up at his father. Angel picked up his son, his own personal miracle, and held him close. Angel would be a good father. Angel would prove to Connor that he loved him, that he would give anything for him.
"I love you Connor," Angel murmured quietly, looking into the innocent eyes of his child. "And I'll never let anything happen to you. You protect and love your family when you grow up, okay? Your Grandpa taught me all about that. Don't be like Grandpa. Don't be like Daddy." Sobering suddenly, Angel stared into a face that would mature and grow and learn that the world was hard and cruel, that the endings weren't always happy. A face that hopefully wouldn't have to learn that lesson alone.
And I swear I'm not gonna let him know
All the pain I have known
"Please don't be like Daddy."
Fin.