Title: UnLife Crisis
Author: Clarity
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.
Summary: Three points of view at the end of the season. Part three-Angel
Rating: PG-13, but only for language
Spoilers: 'Home'; also, much of the past two seasons of 'Angel'
Author's Note: I meant to get this part out earlier, but the lightning bolt of inspiration that produced the first two sort of...fizzled. That is, until I saw tonight's episode. So this is Angel's POV, but not for 'Peace Out', for the end of the season finale, 'Home'. It had to be done.
The limo's waiting, but I don't care. Let it wait. I'm the boss, they can wait. They can wait for me to finish standing here in the dark with my eyes closed. For once, one thing, one thing, can fit itself to me, instead of me fixing things for other people.
Why is it that the one thing that always destroys the ones I love is me? Always, all the way from the beginning, I watch other people and other things get destroyed because that's the way the world works and I can handle it, but my people, my family, the ones I love, I'm the one that destroys them. I'm the one that ruins it. My sister, my little sister...he's got one now. He's got a family that's so much like mine used to be that it hurts almost as much as seeing him so happy without me. Everything I once had that made me happy is in that room, except for the girl I'm going to see once I finally go back to the limo, and I destroyed it all myself. My son, my lover, my family...and what I wouldn't give to have it back.
I named him after my father, 'Connor'. My father...God, I hated him. I spent my whole life so, so sure I hated him, because he wouldn't give me the freedom I wanted to throw my life away. Not completely different than Jasmine, actually--peace, success, and all you have to do is give away that pesky little thing called free will. Why do humans always choose what's bad for them? Why is evil so seductive? Why...I know why I went to Wolfram and Hart. Connor. For him, in the end, all for him. This is for him. But why them? 'What were the odds it would be the humans who were the corruptible ones?' Why do people go back to destruction and chaos until it seems like the only thing you can do to save someone is take away their choice?
Would he have picked this, if he had the choice? He's so happy. He has everything he ever wanted, in there, in the light, where his father is drinking red wine out of that glass instead of red blood and his little sister looks at him with those adoring eyes like he's her angel. It was the only thing I could give him, and it was the right thing. I think it was the right thing. It was right, now, it was right, just like it was right to leave Buffy in Sunnydale, but if it were really the right thing we wouldn't have spent that first year running back and forth to each others' cities, and I wouldn't have to be going there right now, because if it was the right thing to leave she wouldn't be needing me. So how can I know it's the right thing to take his choice away from him?
He's innocent in there, I get that, I spent a hundred plus years destroying innocence, I know it when I see it. But...God, what next? He can't even protect himself anymore. I know he was dying the way he was, but maybe I could have fixed it. I couldn't give him the light, but the Connor that was mine knew how to survive the dark. So is it worth it? Yeah, he's got his happy life. He's got his family. He's got his truth in there. And what happens when he goes off to his fancy college in his big city and runs into a bunch of vampires one night? When a werewolf or a pack of them decides these woods are perfect hunting territory and he doesn't have a clue how to fight them off? Or even when he runs into another bunch of humans that destroyed themselves and got themselves seduced and their own innocence destroyed by evil? He's innocent, but he's defenseless. How did I have the right to make that choice for him?
I didn't know him. That's what he was always saying, and I don't know a lot about teenagers, but I remember enough from when I was his age and Buffy was his age to realize that every kid thinks that about their parent. And maybe I didn't. I saw...there was so much of me in him. I thought I could give him all of the good and none of the bad, the strength without the pain, and then I realized I couldn't, but I figured we could still connect, because looking around at the darkness and knowing, knowing that there's not a thing you can do to fix it, that's been me for a century now. So I was sure, so sure that I knew him. That I knew what he was thinking. That I could make this choice for him.
Except that if it had been for me? I'd still be where I am right now, standing out here in the dark, thinking about vampires in alleys and werewolf packs in the woods. I would have chosen this. So why did I think I could choose for him? Why did I put him in there, in the light and the warm and the innocence? What gave me that right?
No! I'm his father. I am his father, or I was when I made that decision. It is my job to decide what is best for my son. So I will take away his free choice, I will make him hate me, I will make him not even know who I am, but he's happy. He's not happy with me, and maybe he could have been. Maybe, if I had known him the way I thought I did. Maybe I could have given him what he wanted, made him believe that I wasn't lying when I said I loved him. I have all this power now...I can do this. I can make him happy. I can even have the light, I can stand in the sun, but I couldn't give it to him the way he deserved. I don't know how. So I did this.
The universe really does love irony. Two hundred years, four periods without a soul, countless numbers of innocents and demons dead at my hands, no heartbeat, no reflection, and I've still become my father.
I wonder how they picked the name, how they think they did. The family in there, raising glasses of wine the color of blood in a toast to their son, to my son, damnit, to my son who once again doesn't even know he's my son, who grew up without knowing his father and now doesn't even know who his father is. Yet more irony, I finally prove to him that I love him and he doesn't even remember me to realize it. He thinks that man in there with the blood red wine is his father and maybe he's right. Maybe it's better this way. I hope it is.
Hope. Hope, God, what a stupid word. Entertaining the possibility that something good might be. Yeah. Something good might _always_ be, and so might something bad, and it's not about hoping, it's about going out there and making it be the good thing. It's not about thinking that someday the world is going to be the way it should be, it's about making a deal with the devil so that it is, right now, for that boy in there who's going to the college of his choice next year. So maybe I screwed up. I do that. So sue me. I just became owner of the LA branch of a huge law firm. I'll win.
Yeah, I screw up, but I'm not going to just stick around here in the shadows and hope that the boy in there never has to come back out here and find the thing that nearly destroyed him last time. I'm going to get in that limo and go back to the last place I had to leave someone I loved to protect them from me, and save her. I'm going to do something about my screw-up. And then I'm going to go back to LA and find out why everyone else was so ready to accept Wolfram and Hart's offer, and I'm not going to sit around hoping that the evil lawyers have given up on us. I'm going to figure out what they're up to, and I'm going to stop them.
Or else I'm not. I don't know. I might screw up. I've done that in the past, case in point, Darla-Connor-Holtz-Stephen-Justine-Wesley-Cordy-Jasmine. I used to be human, they have a tendency for it. I don't know. I don't know my son, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what Wolfram and Hart is up to, I don't know whether I should be going to Sunnydale or not, and I don't know what's going to happen next. It's probably going to be bad. It's always bad, one way or another. No matter what you pick, what choice or change you make, it's always bad. But I'm going to keep choosing and changing things, because the world is like that, and even if I have no idea what I'm doing it's my job to do it. Maybe I shouldn't be making any decisions, but someone has to, so I'm making them executive. There's always a choice, always, so I make the choice, and I do what I have to do. As far as I know all the local omniscient beings are dead, so no one's got the right to be telling me which way to choose. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a lot of things.
It's never certain.
Author: Clarity
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.
Summary: Three points of view at the end of the season. Part three-Angel
Rating: PG-13, but only for language
Spoilers: 'Home'; also, much of the past two seasons of 'Angel'
Author's Note: I meant to get this part out earlier, but the lightning bolt of inspiration that produced the first two sort of...fizzled. That is, until I saw tonight's episode. So this is Angel's POV, but not for 'Peace Out', for the end of the season finale, 'Home'. It had to be done.
The limo's waiting, but I don't care. Let it wait. I'm the boss, they can wait. They can wait for me to finish standing here in the dark with my eyes closed. For once, one thing, one thing, can fit itself to me, instead of me fixing things for other people.
Why is it that the one thing that always destroys the ones I love is me? Always, all the way from the beginning, I watch other people and other things get destroyed because that's the way the world works and I can handle it, but my people, my family, the ones I love, I'm the one that destroys them. I'm the one that ruins it. My sister, my little sister...he's got one now. He's got a family that's so much like mine used to be that it hurts almost as much as seeing him so happy without me. Everything I once had that made me happy is in that room, except for the girl I'm going to see once I finally go back to the limo, and I destroyed it all myself. My son, my lover, my family...and what I wouldn't give to have it back.
I named him after my father, 'Connor'. My father...God, I hated him. I spent my whole life so, so sure I hated him, because he wouldn't give me the freedom I wanted to throw my life away. Not completely different than Jasmine, actually--peace, success, and all you have to do is give away that pesky little thing called free will. Why do humans always choose what's bad for them? Why is evil so seductive? Why...I know why I went to Wolfram and Hart. Connor. For him, in the end, all for him. This is for him. But why them? 'What were the odds it would be the humans who were the corruptible ones?' Why do people go back to destruction and chaos until it seems like the only thing you can do to save someone is take away their choice?
Would he have picked this, if he had the choice? He's so happy. He has everything he ever wanted, in there, in the light, where his father is drinking red wine out of that glass instead of red blood and his little sister looks at him with those adoring eyes like he's her angel. It was the only thing I could give him, and it was the right thing. I think it was the right thing. It was right, now, it was right, just like it was right to leave Buffy in Sunnydale, but if it were really the right thing we wouldn't have spent that first year running back and forth to each others' cities, and I wouldn't have to be going there right now, because if it was the right thing to leave she wouldn't be needing me. So how can I know it's the right thing to take his choice away from him?
He's innocent in there, I get that, I spent a hundred plus years destroying innocence, I know it when I see it. But...God, what next? He can't even protect himself anymore. I know he was dying the way he was, but maybe I could have fixed it. I couldn't give him the light, but the Connor that was mine knew how to survive the dark. So is it worth it? Yeah, he's got his happy life. He's got his family. He's got his truth in there. And what happens when he goes off to his fancy college in his big city and runs into a bunch of vampires one night? When a werewolf or a pack of them decides these woods are perfect hunting territory and he doesn't have a clue how to fight them off? Or even when he runs into another bunch of humans that destroyed themselves and got themselves seduced and their own innocence destroyed by evil? He's innocent, but he's defenseless. How did I have the right to make that choice for him?
I didn't know him. That's what he was always saying, and I don't know a lot about teenagers, but I remember enough from when I was his age and Buffy was his age to realize that every kid thinks that about their parent. And maybe I didn't. I saw...there was so much of me in him. I thought I could give him all of the good and none of the bad, the strength without the pain, and then I realized I couldn't, but I figured we could still connect, because looking around at the darkness and knowing, knowing that there's not a thing you can do to fix it, that's been me for a century now. So I was sure, so sure that I knew him. That I knew what he was thinking. That I could make this choice for him.
Except that if it had been for me? I'd still be where I am right now, standing out here in the dark, thinking about vampires in alleys and werewolf packs in the woods. I would have chosen this. So why did I think I could choose for him? Why did I put him in there, in the light and the warm and the innocence? What gave me that right?
No! I'm his father. I am his father, or I was when I made that decision. It is my job to decide what is best for my son. So I will take away his free choice, I will make him hate me, I will make him not even know who I am, but he's happy. He's not happy with me, and maybe he could have been. Maybe, if I had known him the way I thought I did. Maybe I could have given him what he wanted, made him believe that I wasn't lying when I said I loved him. I have all this power now...I can do this. I can make him happy. I can even have the light, I can stand in the sun, but I couldn't give it to him the way he deserved. I don't know how. So I did this.
The universe really does love irony. Two hundred years, four periods without a soul, countless numbers of innocents and demons dead at my hands, no heartbeat, no reflection, and I've still become my father.
I wonder how they picked the name, how they think they did. The family in there, raising glasses of wine the color of blood in a toast to their son, to my son, damnit, to my son who once again doesn't even know he's my son, who grew up without knowing his father and now doesn't even know who his father is. Yet more irony, I finally prove to him that I love him and he doesn't even remember me to realize it. He thinks that man in there with the blood red wine is his father and maybe he's right. Maybe it's better this way. I hope it is.
Hope. Hope, God, what a stupid word. Entertaining the possibility that something good might be. Yeah. Something good might _always_ be, and so might something bad, and it's not about hoping, it's about going out there and making it be the good thing. It's not about thinking that someday the world is going to be the way it should be, it's about making a deal with the devil so that it is, right now, for that boy in there who's going to the college of his choice next year. So maybe I screwed up. I do that. So sue me. I just became owner of the LA branch of a huge law firm. I'll win.
Yeah, I screw up, but I'm not going to just stick around here in the shadows and hope that the boy in there never has to come back out here and find the thing that nearly destroyed him last time. I'm going to get in that limo and go back to the last place I had to leave someone I loved to protect them from me, and save her. I'm going to do something about my screw-up. And then I'm going to go back to LA and find out why everyone else was so ready to accept Wolfram and Hart's offer, and I'm not going to sit around hoping that the evil lawyers have given up on us. I'm going to figure out what they're up to, and I'm going to stop them.
Or else I'm not. I don't know. I might screw up. I've done that in the past, case in point, Darla-Connor-Holtz-Stephen-Justine-Wesley-Cordy-Jasmine. I used to be human, they have a tendency for it. I don't know. I don't know my son, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what Wolfram and Hart is up to, I don't know whether I should be going to Sunnydale or not, and I don't know what's going to happen next. It's probably going to be bad. It's always bad, one way or another. No matter what you pick, what choice or change you make, it's always bad. But I'm going to keep choosing and changing things, because the world is like that, and even if I have no idea what I'm doing it's my job to do it. Maybe I shouldn't be making any decisions, but someone has to, so I'm making them executive. There's always a choice, always, so I make the choice, and I do what I have to do. As far as I know all the local omniscient beings are dead, so no one's got the right to be telling me which way to choose. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a lot of things.
It's never certain.