Cracks in the mirror.
He remembers it was written by a Frenchman. He supposes that that's fitting, because the French have always thought of the most worthwhile things in life. He remembers it was known as French love back in the day.
That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about … most of the time he doesn't know. Most of the time he's not talking.
People are talking. People are even talking to me.
Most of the time he doesn't remember things, either. Doesn't remember when Cordelia had her hair cut. Doesn't remember what happened to Wesley's leather jacket. Doesn't remember if he ate any of the doughnuts Cordelia had Gunn bring. Doesn't remember what happened to that box of evidence Buffy was carrying so long ago, that day Faith shot him, the day before he drank from Buffy.
Oh, but he remembers that. Remembers blood, syrupy and beautiful … and skin, soft and warm. And knows that more than the fact that it was Buffy … golden and beautiful … it was the fact that she was the Slayer, hard-edged and beautiful, and it went deeper than Angel and Buffy, friends and lovers and everything in between, it was different – vampire to vampire slayer, a connection that was perfect in this form, perfect with his fangs buried in her neck, because only there did anything between them make any kind of sense …
Only then, and when she pushed a sword into his stomach and sent him to hell.
He has another sword wound in his gut.
… antique sword, actually. Guess who stabbed me?
Darla.
Darla.
Another blonde behind a sword, another girl whose life he's ruined. A girl who made him special – and he wanted to be special, always had, wished his father thought him special – a girl who made him. What he is.
I'm a vampire. Look it up.
Not who he is. And he'd so like to know who he is.
It was written by a Frenchman, he remembers. The name drifts in and out of his memory – Jacques, he thinks, Jacques something, but he's not sure, because there was a little boy in Orleans and his name was Jacques and when he had bent his head for better access to the blueness of the veins under his skin – he was pale, so pale – the little boy had wet himself.
He'd snapped his neck then, because the stink had put him off.
He doesn't remember when he read it. Doesn't remember how long ago, and what the book had looked like. Or if he'd even read it from a book. He remembers that the material of his shirt had scratched him the day he'd died.
Because he's dead, you see.
He always knows he's not alive. He just forgets that he's dead, sometimes.
You're handsome, brave, heroic …
The Frenchman said that everyone was fragmented. But Angel knows that already. The Frenchman said that everyone was influenced by other people. But Angel knows that already. The Frenchman said that everyone needed a mirror to complete themselves.
Angel has a mirror. It's above his sink. It's small, framed in white, and when he takes a shower it steams up and he can make marks in it.
He doesn't, because he hates touching the steam and seeing the glass beneath appearing but his finger stretching away into nothing.
His mirror shows him nothing.
Because there's nothing to see.
Cordelia has a mirror in her handbag. She takes it out when she's especially bored, touches up her lipstick or tries out different expressions. Its small, framed in grey, and it magnifies her face ever so slightly.
He supposes that's fitting. The mirror-Cordelia is always larger than life. It's the Cordelia she shows all of them.
Wesley fixes his tie in the glass of the weapons cabinet sometimes. Wesley's reflection is distorted, narrow and elongated, stretched too thin, and sometimes, when Wesley stands at a certain angle, right between the doors of the cabinet, his reflection disappears. There's only a thin blur where once there was a man.
But at least there is a blur.
He's barely ever seen Gunn take any interest in a mirror. Gunn is always self-contained, self-sufficient, self-reliant – everything centres around his 'self', for him, and maybe Gunn doesn't need a mirror to complete him. Maybe his self is complete.
But that's not true. The Frenchman said it couldn't be true.
Angel knows it isn't true. Gunn's had his share of mirrors. Just once – only once – he's seen him glance up into the rearview mirror of his pickup, and the Gunn there is smaller than the real-life Gunn, far away –
Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear.
He remembers learning how to drive.
Angel knows that Gunn doesn't like to look in mirrors. He understands that. He doesn't like to look in mirrors either.
But Gunn doesn't like the person he sees. Angel just wishes he could see somebody and decide if he likes him or not.
Sometimes, if he wakes up early enough to be there when Cordelia comes in for work, she twirls around a little and asks him how she looks. She doesn't do it often, not anymore, but when she does it he knows it means something, but he's not sure what.
He's always looking for meanings. Always looking for something profound and deep and earth-shattering that will make sense out of everything in his life.
Maybe she just values his fashion advice.
You have, like, a gay man's taste!
Sometimes he shrugs his shoulders a little and doesn't say anything, and she waves a hand and says that he knows nothing about clothing anyway … and sometimes he nods and smiles and says something complimentary – not really, but it's as close as he will ever get – and her face lights up and she walks to her desk with a little skip, and she puts cinnamon sprinkles in his blood and he hates that.
On days like that, she doesn't look in her mirror that often.
The Frenchman said that, too. The Frenchman said that other people can be mirrors. That a little bit of everyone is made up of a little bit of someone else, and that everyone is reflected in someone else's eyes.
Angel isn't.
If he stands very close to Wesley when he talks to him, Wesley's eyes are clear and blue, and his pupils can be seen, perfect circles behind his glasses. Angel never sees himself reflected in the glass. He can just see straight through.
Sometimes he wonders if one day Wesley will see straight through him.
Sometimes he wonders if his true self is nothing but dust. Ashes.
This is no mere dust. This is son of dust. This is the kind of dust that –
He wonders, if they see nothing, is all that's him only dust? In all truth, is that all he is? Now and forever, is he … nothing? Only dust?
He can't even be dirt. Can't even return to the earth, can't even be part of it. He'll just scatter into the breeze when he dies – truly dies, this time – just blow away into little particles a girl like Cordelia will sweep off the stairs one day.
His mirror shows him nothing.
You're handsome, brave, heroic …
Angel doesn't understand. He doesn't understand who it is that Cordelia sees, that Wesley relies on, that Gunn listens to. Because it's not him. He doesn't see any of what Cordelia seems to see, or Wesley, or Gunn.
He doesn't even think about Fred. He knows what she sees, and he knows that it's a lie.
The Frenchman said that everyone is reflected in somebody else.
But he has no reflection.
Appearances. Very important to you.
So he tries to create one.
Jacques – Jacques something.
He doesn't like to think of it that way. He doesn't like to think that he wears his leather jacket just to be an Angel he might not actually be, doesn't like to think that he drives a convertible because it should belong to a man who can live in the sun. He doesn't like to take off his coat (his mask) because he is afraid that he might not actually be the person the coat makes him.
He wants the coat to be his reflection. The car. The clothes.
Because he's afraid that under that … there's nothing at all.
And he wishes that that is what other people see when they look at him. The person he tries to be – and isn't he, now? Aren't the leather jacket and the black Plymouth him, now, as much as anything will ever be?
Then why isn't that what he sees in the mirror?
Why isn't that what he sees in Cordelia's eyes?
… emotionally stunted, prone to turning evil, and let's face it! Practically a eunuch.
If he stands very close to Cordelia when he talks to her, he can see her eyes, deep brown, a little hazel. Sometimes he sees warmth, sometimes he sees love, sometimes he sees pain and heartbreak, sometimes he sees –
Smell that terror.
– fear.
He never sees himself, but all that he does see – isn't that him, then? Isn't that how she sees him?
Warmth and love and pain and heartbreak and fear.
But he likes looking into Cordelia's eyes, because they're dark and brown and he doesn't feel obligated to see his reflection.
Wesley's are wide and clear and too light to not show the person standing in front of him, and its just unnatural – unholy, dirty, creature of the night – to see nothing but blue.
Angel remembers the swami. Remembers everything he said to him. But he doesn't think about that, because the swami was a murderer whose teeth he ripped out with a fishing hook.
He thinks about it now, and wonders if he should have listened to him after all.
He listens to himself, doesn't he?
You're reflected in the people around you. The way they see you. What do you think they see?
He knows what he wants them to see. He knows what they used to see.
They're getting too close, he knows. He knows that the way he knows that Angelus is Angel and Angel is Angelus and that Angel is nothing, really. They're beginning to understand. They're beginning to see past the jacket and the car –
Very slick.
– and the not-quite-funny comments. He knows they are. They're getting too close.
He can't let that happen. He can't let them see past that.
Because if they do, they'll see that there's really nothing there after all, just an empty space and a coat and some hairgel and leather pants somewhere in his wardrobe that he just doesn't throw away, even though he should.
Just an empty hole where there should be a man. Blankness.
Because he's not a man.
And when he forgets that, he becomes something. He's not nothing anymore. He's happy.
He's Angelus.
And Angelus is reflected in smeared blood and artfully arranged corpses, in the wanton cruelty of Jenny Calendar's death and the beautiful drawings of Buffy scattered around her room in the middle of the night. Angelus is reflected in the hate in Spike's eyes and the adoration in Dru's.
And Angelus is Angel and Angel is Angelus and Angel is nothing, really.
Angel is just the absence of Angelus. Nothing else.
Just a hole. Blankness.
But sometimes … sometimes Cordelia looks at him, and he thinks she sees something that he isn't seeing, something that isn't there. Sometimes he thinks she sees an Angel beyond the hair and the leather.
She sees someone. She does. She doesn't see a barrier of words and unachievable missions and fruitless quests. She sees … someone.
But there's nothing to see.
Then why does it matter? Why does it matter what she sees, apart from the persona he wants her to see – wants them all to see? Why does he try to find, within himself, the person she sees – because he has to be here somewhere if she sees him, doesn't he?
The three of us are the only thing standing between you and total darkness.
He knew, then. He knew they were. He knew that while they were there, he would try and try to be the person they saw, sometimes, and that that mattered to him, being like that in their eyes … and he couldn't handle watching his reflection change.
I know. You're all fired.
He knows, even now. He knows that he had to be someone else – not Angel and not Angelus, but someone who could walk the line between the two and not regret it – and that he couldn't do it if he could see who he had become.
And they would show him. He would see, in their eyes, who he was now … and he wouldn't be able to do it.
So they had to go.
You really hurt my feelings.
And he was her mirror, too, like she was his – he can't quite believe that, because he sees nothing of himself in her, but it must be, because he'd shattered it. Her mirror. Himself. He'd broken it, shown her that she was wrong in reflecting herself in him, for trusting him enough to influence her at all … broken it. Her. Him. Them.
He's so sorry.
And now she's getting closer again – so is Wesley, and so, slowly but surely, is Gunn – and he can't deal with this. He can't let them see him, because he might not like what he sees in their eyes and he might hurt them, again, and he doesn't want to do that –
The Frenchman said that everyone needed a mirror to complete themselves.
Angel's not quite sure he wants to be complete. Complete, he's a demon, a vampire, a cursed soul.
It's not exactly the best of combinations.
He has a mirror. It's above his sink. It shows him nothing.
Because there's nothing to see.
And he has another mirror. Many mirrors. And that scares him, because it means that he is there, and that he is something – and he wants to be a part – and that he has the capability to keep or change his reflection as he wishes, except that's a responsibility he's not sure he's willing to take on, because his mirrors have feelings, damn it, and he can't shift and change and experiment and expect them to still keep reflecting him.
He is something.
Cordelia shows him what he makes her feel: warmth and love and pain and heartbreak and fear.
You really hurt my feelings.
Wesley shows him what he makes him feel: warmth and distrust and sympathy and understanding and fear.
You walk a fine line, Angel. I don't envy you.
Gunn shows him what he makes him feel: distance and respect and discontent and belief and understanding.
How do we know he ain't just gonna epiphany back, huh?
He is all that. He is someone who can make them feel all that. But never one without the other. Never love without the heartbreak, never sympathy without the distrust, never respect without the discontent.
Never the man without the demon, never the soul without the curse.
And Angelus is Angel and Angel is Angelus and Angel is nothing really. Just the absence of Angelus.
But he wonders … isn't it better to be nothing than to be Angelus?
He's sure Giles thinks so. As does Buffy. And Cordelia. And Wesley.
Angel … Angel just doesn't know.
He doesn't want to be Angelus. God, no. He just wants Angel to be somebody.
You're handsome, brave, heroic … emotionally stunted, prone to turning evil, and let's face it! Practically a eunuch.
Is that who Angel is?
Is that who he wants to be?
He just wants to be a man.
But when he lets himself try and be one (Not a eunuch) he becomes Angelus. So he has to settle for being nothing. For his mirror to show him nothing but the wall behind him.
Cordelia, and Wesley, and Gunn … they show him something. But he's not sure if that's really him, or if that's what they want to see.
Because he just can't find it within himself.
They're all tainted mirrors. Cracked. He's broken them, shattered their belief, just like he's broken himself.
The reflection there – it's not clear.
The reflection in his bathroom mirror is clear. There is none.
Because there's nothing to see.
And Angelus is Angel and Angel is Angelus and Angel is nothing really. Just the absence of Angelus.
He supposes the Frenchman is right. Everyone has to have a mirror to complete themselves. Every person does. Except he's not a person.
A vampire's completion lies in death and blood and destruction. That is a vampire's mirror. It's what makes him whole. Except he's not just a vampire, either.
I think I love you.
So he settles for a steamed-up mirror and a smile in Cordelia's eyes every morning, and he settles for a leather jacket and a shining car, and he settles for bitter coffee and pig's blood, and he settles for using an axe instead of fangs.
Because isn't it better to be nothing than to be Angelus?
Because Cordelia can smile at anyone, and anyone's mirror can be steamed up, and anyone can wear a leather jacket and own a convertible. It doesn't mean anything.
Why do you hate yourself?
Because he deserves to be hated.
It doesn't mean anything, and he's nothing, nothing but grit in the air and dust on the floor, and it doesn't matter, as long as he doesn't let himself feel like a man.
Because he wants to feel like one.
He remembers the Frenchman's name now. Jacques Lacan.
Disclaimer:I don't own anything to do with Angel, except for a T-shirt with runny black marker that once said 'Angel' and now looks like a bad tie-dye job. So, no intent of infringement, or profit, or anything else illegal.
Author Notes:This is not my first foray into the Whedon-verse, though it is the first one posted here. This is set somewhere in early Season 3, back before Angel/Cordelia became an issue, before Connor made his appearance, and far before Season 4 killed all respect I had for this series. (And yet I'm writing, which must mean something, right?)
I think that the lack of reflection is significantly underused in most episodes – it's more a "cool" thing (Angel must be there because the poor security guard's bending in the mirror and we can't see anyone else) than something that would hurt. And the Pylea storyline dealt with it, but Angel seeing himself as a literal monster didn't show what he deals with everyday – not seeing himself at all.
And hey, the guy has tons of brooding time. I'm sure he's covered all this.
The Self and the Other theory – forwarded by Jacques Lacan – made mirrors its very basis, and I couldn't let that go. Neither could Angel – Spike decided to pass on it, because he just didn't fit. So Angel it was.