Solamente y Solamente
Alone and Alone
Charles Gunn stands above the make-shift funeral pyre of his friend George, and thinks.
Whack. It was like the sound made when the bigger guys held your five-year-old body down and let you have it. Like the sound you unleashed at thirteen when you'd more than had enough and could almost hold your own. And it was the word that explained what your life had veered off into at twenty-two, after a lot of abuse given and taken, and you maybe, maybe, had almost convinced yourself you'd come around a corner--you'd accomplished something, you were on top.
But instead, there was that sound again--only this time it was the sound of rounding that corner and having your confidence--your, whatever--smacked out of you as you slammed straight into a wall you never allowed yourself to believe was there--not there for you, anyway. You were above it. King of the Hill--you wrestled your way up there with no thought to the blood or sweat or long nights, or anything. You were tops. Head dog.
And then, "whack." Antithesis was, you weren't straddling the top of the heap, and what you were looking down at--surveying--wasn't the peaceful kingdom you fought to create, defended to live. No, you were standing on top of graffitti-scarred walls, watching what should have been a block-party bonfire engulf the exsanguinated body of one of your peeps.
That was whack. Knowing the word exsanguinated. Standing removed, off in the distance--the complete apogee of where you'd always known you belonged. A stranger among your own. And knowing there was no explaining it away. No defense, no strategy or confrontation, no vindication. Might could only make so much right, and sure, it could make your crew shut up and follow you, and swallow back their objections out of fear, but if you couldn't sell yourself on it, it got you nowhere. It pulled you apart like a shredding rope that couldn't be tied to anything because there was too little of its own strength left.
And then what?
Miss Lyyah, back in the day, she had known. "Charlie-boy," she had told you often enough when you was coming up, "Take care yo'self, and the Good Lord look after the rest."
And you had assumed when she said yo'self that it just naturally included Alonna--who was as much a part of you as your hand or your ear--or your heart. You believed Miss Lyyah, had faith in her words. If you took care of Alonna, and had a care for Charlie-boy, things around you both would work out--whether by the grace of Miss Lyyah's Good Lord or someone else, you didn't look too closely into the nature of said grace. And you didn't question its existence. No more than you investigated finding a ten on the sidewalk in the better part of downtown, or interrogated a chick who was particularly fly about how she came to be so. You smiled for the pleasure of her company, or the feel of the bill in your fold, and accepted fact as fact. The world was what it was. It gave what it gave, and took what it took, and your job was not to critique it, not to question it, or inspect its motives. Your job was to take care yo'self. Because no one else was gonna do it for you.
And when exactly did you notice how many depended on you to be taken care of? Or didn't you? Didn't you ever realize that the initial yo'self, made up of Alonna and you, had grown to so many? She lost the fight when your back was turned away from watching hers, and sure, you went back in for her--risked yourself, but TOO LATE. There was nothing left to claim but the sour memory of wood on cold flesh--dead on dead, your mouth dusty with its ashes.
Was it better to be Angel, then, after all? To throw it all out when you knew--when you decided it was too much? "You're fired." But Rondell and Cassy and Luckas and George's girl, Poniya--they weren't here for the pay or the glory. They were here to fight for living--to push against darkness and--whatever wanted to take that life away. Telling them they could all go now, you were moving on, closing time, wouldn't accomplish anything. Telling them that you were sorry you hadn't been stand-up for them wouldn't either. They knew that--they were standing aroung the results of that.
People died, you told yourself. Always, always, people died. But not because of you, because you weren't minding the store, because you had failed to represent. Was that the fear in you Cordelia had seen? Was this night--this fire before you (and inside of you) something her vision gift could have warned you off? Why didn't she ever--couldn't she ever--put things into succinct directions as a result of what she saw? Miss Lyyah had had the sight--of some sort--and she had had no trouble offering some guidance--some shout-out of warning when necessary. But what had Cordy told you? That she would protect you. Could she have even imagined tonight? Could the dying-to-be-famous, without-responsibility Ms. C. Chase have possibly had the capacity to understand what you could feel inside you on a night like this? Disgust with yourself burrowing like termites in your bones, rivers of hot rage scalding your eyes? And sadness, like a quicksand you could drown in. Could she have understood?
Could you?
Fear had been something to handle, to control, to attack. Fear had always death. And winning against it had been knowing that it was something you had the power to prevent--to decide--to fight--as long as you had the 411. But tonight, tonight it had changed into a new pair of trous (or were you just noticing it for the first time?). Tonight fear was their deaths; Cushia's, Phaison's, Rika's. George's. Tonight fear was knowing that you couldn't fight it for all of them.
And fear was knowing that you would have to tell them so.
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DISCLAIMER: The characters/plots/etc. of Angel are not my property, nor should they be, though they would make an excellent Solstice gift. No harm or monetary profit is intended or anticipated by their use here.
This interior monologue is set during the episode, Belonging.
Many, many, many blessings on all of you who reviewed my first Angel monologue, The Main Dish. Your responses overwhelmed me--and I'm not that easily whelmed. Here's hoping you enjoyed this, too.
Cheers.
