After The Storm
Chapter 19
By Vixen
All night they had searched throughout the city for Connor. No luck. The boy seemed almost better at hiding than he was at tracking things. Every time Faith through she had picked up the trail and was headed the right way, the clues would lead to a dead end. Willow had even tried doing a locator spell, but she'd been too weak from the fight to effectively use her magick. The sun had risen an hour ago, and they had decided to recuperate at the hotel for a short break, and then go back out searching again.
Walking into the hotel, Willow noticed the lights were on again and there was a faint smell of pancakes wafting through the lobby. It was coming from the small kitchen in the back. Connor entered the room a moment later, carrying a plate of food with him. He tried to downplay the whole incident, giving them an innocent grin that belied his true feelings, "Hi, guys."
"They're always in the last place you look, aren't they," Faith spoke with an edge of sarcasm.
Connor didn't know how this conversation was supposed to work, and figured that anything he said at the moment would just sound dumb. Anxiously, he put his breakfast on the counter, turning his back from the two of them. He could barely face them, didn't want to be there, but there was still a job to do. "So, um, how was your night. I made breakfast if you.. want some."
"Uh, uh," Faith told him, walking over to the counter, "You don't get out of this that easy. Sit." She pointed to the couch sternly, and he complied with her order. Standing there with her arms crossed over her chest, Faith starred down at him, "What the hell happened to you last night? You go off on Willow, knock me around, and then you're all fine this morning."
"I'm not fine, okay," Connor spoke the truth forcefully, they needed to know that much at least. That they couldn't trust him, that he couldn't trust himself. He hadn't been fine since the memories came back. It was only a small tear in his mental reasoning back then, only throwing him off balance. Crawling back to who he wanted to be had only taken a few hours the first time, by the time he left Wolfram and Hart he thought he was better. Then getting back into the fighting gig, and the new figment of his imagination, he didn't know if he'd make it back to being happy and carefree Connor again. He looked away, not knowing how to explain himself without sounding like a crazy person. "I'm not fine.. he's just, not here anymore."
"Who's not here anymore," Willow asked as she picked up a photo album from off the couch, Connor's baby album. It appeared he had been going through it before Faith and her had come back to the hotel. Closing it, she gently put the photo album on a nearby end table. Sitting across from Connor, she asked, "Who were you talking to?"
"I don't know." He pulled away from her touch when she reached out comfortingly for his hand. She still had that concerned expression on her face, like she still cared about him. Even though he had tried to kill her only hours ago. Connor couldn't take it, knew he didn't deserve it, "There was someone in my head, talking to me, and if only I could see him than that means I'm like a psycho or insane or something, doesn't it?"
"Not necessarily," Willow reassured him and tried to find the right words, "There are lots of reasons why you would think you might see someone.. um.. bad lighting for example?"
Those were very much not the right words.
Connor jumped up from the couch, "Oh god, I knew it, I am insane." He began rambling and pacing, too scared he was losing his mind to calm down, "Wait, if I were insane would I think I was insane. Or would I think I was sane and think everyone else was crazy.. Or—"
"Whoa, hold on there before you blow another brain cell," Faith said, grasping his shoulders and stopping him in mid-pace. He looked coherent, a little jumpy, but still not like he had the night before. There had to be an explanation to all of this. Getting to the bottom of it, Faith asked, "What did this 'someone' look like?"
Connor grew quiet and serious, his uneasiness starting to fade. Letting the truth come out a little bit more, he said, "Me. He looked like me. Or who I used to be."
Something clicked in Faith's brain, "Remember when I first came here and you told me that whole story about how you got your new life. You said you were kinda reborn into this whole new human family of yours, well.. I'm thinking rebirth doesn't happen without a little bit of death. You didn't.. die, did you? Before that all happened."
"Kinda," He didn't want to get into that here, but if it would make him any less crazy Connor might as well talk about it, "Angel. We um.. fought. And then.. my dad.. he kinda killed me." He could remember it all, vivid imagery and all. The pain he had felt when he slipped away, the darkness just before waking up with a bright and sunny outlook and a new life. Feeling sick from going over it in his mind, Connor sat back down on the couch. Looking back up at Faith, he asked, "But what does that have to do with anything?"
"So, death and someone that no one else can see drivin' you crazy. Add it up, it all equals.."
"The First." Willow finished Faith's sentence. She sat a little further back in her chair, the full ramifications of that kind of evil being back in the game were disastrous. It had come to her after Tara had died, almost convinced her to kill herself. Meeting the first was not something she would wish on anyone, especially not someone with so many issues already. Already gearing up with battle plans, she commented, "It is possible that its back, feeding off the dark energies the vortex is producing."
Connor watched the whole conversation between Faith and Willow not saying a word until Willow was done, "The First? Care to clue me in on this 'the first' thing? Like for starters, what it is."
"The First is the root of all evil," Willow explained. As Connor's eyes grew dark and shadowy again, she hoped he would be able to take it all in when his sanity was still on the brink. "It can take the shape of any person who has died, so that it can taunt people who are living into doing what it wants. Being incorporeal really doesn't matter when you can torture people into obeying you." Noting how he had grown quiet again and his lost ambience had come back, she rubbed his shoulder lightly. This time he didn't flinch away, "What did it say to you?"
"Just.. stupid things," He shrugged, but warmed to her touch, needing a friend more than anything else at the moment. Summing the First's words up he paraphrased, "'I'm evil, my father's evil, we're all gonna die.. blah, blah, blah..' You know, I really hope I wasn't that annoying back then." He finished with a small grin, falling back on his humor defense.
"Good news though, Connor," Willow said as Faith grabbed a spot on a chair across from the both of them. The witch pulled the orb they had found the night before out of her coat pocket, "First of all, we found the orb for the spell that will open the portal. Second of all, once Faith stops the vortex, the bad vibeage will cease and desist. And the First doesn't have enough power to stay in this world without feeding off of something. It'll be gone, and everything will go back to normal. Well, relatively speaking."
"How soon can we go," Connor shot a look at Faith. The sadness and lost look he had was shaken off, as he started going over battle schematics in his head. He stood up and walked over to retrieve the weapon he had stored behind the front desk, "If we leave now, we could get there and back by nightfall."
Faith sauntered over towards the front desk, putting her hands on it. She starred over the countertop at the boy, and addressed him with sternness that only came from being a slayer for so many years, "Uh, uh, you're not coming."
"What, why not," Connor was thrown off by her command. They'd been planning this even since finding out about the vortex, they were going to do it together. She needed back up, which he would provide whether she liked it or not. He couldn't just let Faith go alone, sure she was the slayer, but that thing was huge. Placing the sword down on the counter between them, he gave her an equally unrelenting order. "I'm coming, so get over it."
"I can't have you going all psycho on me, okay." Faith realized she hurt Connor's feelings with that remark and tried to smooth things over again, "We don't know what the First will try or whether you can handle it if the First does try to get to you again."
"I can handle it. The quicker we get this over with, the quicker the First will leave me alone. Then we can open the portal, and I can go home." Connor's voice softened, the need to be a champion coming back to him. "Please, Faith. Let me do this."
Faith sighed exasperatedly. It was a crazy plan, why didn't he see that it was a crazy plan. The slayer looked back at Willow and gestured to Connor, "Maybe you can talk some sense into him."
"I don't know, Faith. He might be right." Willow joined them by the counter, once again cast as the mediator in the discussion. Considering the facts carefully, she dolled out her sage advice, "There's a full moon out tonight. It'll be the perfect time for casting the spell. That is, if we're able to close the vortex and stop the magicks from mixing. I can't go with you, because I'm not strong enough to go near the area the vortex is in without getting deathly sick, but you two are stronger than the average human and.. well.. I think he should go with you, Faith."
Two against one. Connor knew he had Faith beat.
"And what if he goes psycho and tried to kill me again," Faith complained. Though she knew she was strong enough to take him on normal terrain, once they got into the area the black clouds covered her strength would be zapped. Plus, it was the only card she had still could play.
"Well," Willow patted her on the back, "That's just part of the wacky fun."
It was only in jest, since they had gotten past their differences lately, and all Faith could do was roll her eyes even though she felt like hurting them all. The slayer really didn't like when things didn't go her way. "Sure, make jokes about the girl who had a raving lunatic for a partner."
The slayer walked away, headed for a quick shower to get ready for the big day that lay ahead. Watching her go, Connor glanced back at Willow, "Thank you, for that. Sticking up for me after everything.. just, thank you."
"Before you go, Connor," Willow began, "I just to tell you something. I'm not exactly sure what you did in your past, but I want you to know that it doesn't matter. The past is the past. Everyone's got some skeleton hanging in their closets. I skinned a man once, Faith slayed a human. You don't have the corner covered on regret." She rarely talked about the black-eyed time of her life, but he needed to hear it from someone. The way he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders these days, it pained her to see someone in so much distress.
He nodded, the words sinking in. Neither of the girls looked like the murdering type, neither looked like they needed redemption; they had fought their way back, brazing a path down the road to recovery. They had come through it all, and they had survived. He'd always have them in the back of his mind as role models for his own journey.
"I'm leaving, when this is all over." Connor disclosed the decision he came to that night, after he came back to the empty hotel. "I'm going to go back home, and things are going to be better. I'm going to be better. Could you just not tell my father what happened when he gets back here? He already worries too much about me, one more reason to brood and I swear that man's going to have a hernia."
"If that's what you want." Willow returned the boy's smile, "And I'll make sure Faith doesn't say anything either." As an afterthought she added, "Just don't think that by going home it'll make all the pain go away. You carry a lot of grief around. I can see it in your aura. I went all the way to England and it didn't stop the hurt, but you know.. one day at a time, that's our motto."
"I'll deal with it, I will." He promised her, "I'm not running away. Just getting some time off from the constant fighting. My new mom, she's a psychologist. She's knows people who can help. Of course I don't know what I would say to them. They'll be like 'What's your earliest childhood memory' and I'll be all 'I slayed a yort when I was five in a hell dimension. It was bloody.' See, it just wouldn't work."
"You'll think of something," She said kindly and patted his head.
.....................................................................
Because I have nothing else to say today, I will pimp a fic by someone I don't even know. The piece was just too fricken funny not to mention somewhere. Oh how I love sometimes. (Angel Season Five: Recap by Oceana. Located at: )
Chapter 19
By Vixen
All night they had searched throughout the city for Connor. No luck. The boy seemed almost better at hiding than he was at tracking things. Every time Faith through she had picked up the trail and was headed the right way, the clues would lead to a dead end. Willow had even tried doing a locator spell, but she'd been too weak from the fight to effectively use her magick. The sun had risen an hour ago, and they had decided to recuperate at the hotel for a short break, and then go back out searching again.
Walking into the hotel, Willow noticed the lights were on again and there was a faint smell of pancakes wafting through the lobby. It was coming from the small kitchen in the back. Connor entered the room a moment later, carrying a plate of food with him. He tried to downplay the whole incident, giving them an innocent grin that belied his true feelings, "Hi, guys."
"They're always in the last place you look, aren't they," Faith spoke with an edge of sarcasm.
Connor didn't know how this conversation was supposed to work, and figured that anything he said at the moment would just sound dumb. Anxiously, he put his breakfast on the counter, turning his back from the two of them. He could barely face them, didn't want to be there, but there was still a job to do. "So, um, how was your night. I made breakfast if you.. want some."
"Uh, uh," Faith told him, walking over to the counter, "You don't get out of this that easy. Sit." She pointed to the couch sternly, and he complied with her order. Standing there with her arms crossed over her chest, Faith starred down at him, "What the hell happened to you last night? You go off on Willow, knock me around, and then you're all fine this morning."
"I'm not fine, okay," Connor spoke the truth forcefully, they needed to know that much at least. That they couldn't trust him, that he couldn't trust himself. He hadn't been fine since the memories came back. It was only a small tear in his mental reasoning back then, only throwing him off balance. Crawling back to who he wanted to be had only taken a few hours the first time, by the time he left Wolfram and Hart he thought he was better. Then getting back into the fighting gig, and the new figment of his imagination, he didn't know if he'd make it back to being happy and carefree Connor again. He looked away, not knowing how to explain himself without sounding like a crazy person. "I'm not fine.. he's just, not here anymore."
"Who's not here anymore," Willow asked as she picked up a photo album from off the couch, Connor's baby album. It appeared he had been going through it before Faith and her had come back to the hotel. Closing it, she gently put the photo album on a nearby end table. Sitting across from Connor, she asked, "Who were you talking to?"
"I don't know." He pulled away from her touch when she reached out comfortingly for his hand. She still had that concerned expression on her face, like she still cared about him. Even though he had tried to kill her only hours ago. Connor couldn't take it, knew he didn't deserve it, "There was someone in my head, talking to me, and if only I could see him than that means I'm like a psycho or insane or something, doesn't it?"
"Not necessarily," Willow reassured him and tried to find the right words, "There are lots of reasons why you would think you might see someone.. um.. bad lighting for example?"
Those were very much not the right words.
Connor jumped up from the couch, "Oh god, I knew it, I am insane." He began rambling and pacing, too scared he was losing his mind to calm down, "Wait, if I were insane would I think I was insane. Or would I think I was sane and think everyone else was crazy.. Or—"
"Whoa, hold on there before you blow another brain cell," Faith said, grasping his shoulders and stopping him in mid-pace. He looked coherent, a little jumpy, but still not like he had the night before. There had to be an explanation to all of this. Getting to the bottom of it, Faith asked, "What did this 'someone' look like?"
Connor grew quiet and serious, his uneasiness starting to fade. Letting the truth come out a little bit more, he said, "Me. He looked like me. Or who I used to be."
Something clicked in Faith's brain, "Remember when I first came here and you told me that whole story about how you got your new life. You said you were kinda reborn into this whole new human family of yours, well.. I'm thinking rebirth doesn't happen without a little bit of death. You didn't.. die, did you? Before that all happened."
"Kinda," He didn't want to get into that here, but if it would make him any less crazy Connor might as well talk about it, "Angel. We um.. fought. And then.. my dad.. he kinda killed me." He could remember it all, vivid imagery and all. The pain he had felt when he slipped away, the darkness just before waking up with a bright and sunny outlook and a new life. Feeling sick from going over it in his mind, Connor sat back down on the couch. Looking back up at Faith, he asked, "But what does that have to do with anything?"
"So, death and someone that no one else can see drivin' you crazy. Add it up, it all equals.."
"The First." Willow finished Faith's sentence. She sat a little further back in her chair, the full ramifications of that kind of evil being back in the game were disastrous. It had come to her after Tara had died, almost convinced her to kill herself. Meeting the first was not something she would wish on anyone, especially not someone with so many issues already. Already gearing up with battle plans, she commented, "It is possible that its back, feeding off the dark energies the vortex is producing."
Connor watched the whole conversation between Faith and Willow not saying a word until Willow was done, "The First? Care to clue me in on this 'the first' thing? Like for starters, what it is."
"The First is the root of all evil," Willow explained. As Connor's eyes grew dark and shadowy again, she hoped he would be able to take it all in when his sanity was still on the brink. "It can take the shape of any person who has died, so that it can taunt people who are living into doing what it wants. Being incorporeal really doesn't matter when you can torture people into obeying you." Noting how he had grown quiet again and his lost ambience had come back, she rubbed his shoulder lightly. This time he didn't flinch away, "What did it say to you?"
"Just.. stupid things," He shrugged, but warmed to her touch, needing a friend more than anything else at the moment. Summing the First's words up he paraphrased, "'I'm evil, my father's evil, we're all gonna die.. blah, blah, blah..' You know, I really hope I wasn't that annoying back then." He finished with a small grin, falling back on his humor defense.
"Good news though, Connor," Willow said as Faith grabbed a spot on a chair across from the both of them. The witch pulled the orb they had found the night before out of her coat pocket, "First of all, we found the orb for the spell that will open the portal. Second of all, once Faith stops the vortex, the bad vibeage will cease and desist. And the First doesn't have enough power to stay in this world without feeding off of something. It'll be gone, and everything will go back to normal. Well, relatively speaking."
"How soon can we go," Connor shot a look at Faith. The sadness and lost look he had was shaken off, as he started going over battle schematics in his head. He stood up and walked over to retrieve the weapon he had stored behind the front desk, "If we leave now, we could get there and back by nightfall."
Faith sauntered over towards the front desk, putting her hands on it. She starred over the countertop at the boy, and addressed him with sternness that only came from being a slayer for so many years, "Uh, uh, you're not coming."
"What, why not," Connor was thrown off by her command. They'd been planning this even since finding out about the vortex, they were going to do it together. She needed back up, which he would provide whether she liked it or not. He couldn't just let Faith go alone, sure she was the slayer, but that thing was huge. Placing the sword down on the counter between them, he gave her an equally unrelenting order. "I'm coming, so get over it."
"I can't have you going all psycho on me, okay." Faith realized she hurt Connor's feelings with that remark and tried to smooth things over again, "We don't know what the First will try or whether you can handle it if the First does try to get to you again."
"I can handle it. The quicker we get this over with, the quicker the First will leave me alone. Then we can open the portal, and I can go home." Connor's voice softened, the need to be a champion coming back to him. "Please, Faith. Let me do this."
Faith sighed exasperatedly. It was a crazy plan, why didn't he see that it was a crazy plan. The slayer looked back at Willow and gestured to Connor, "Maybe you can talk some sense into him."
"I don't know, Faith. He might be right." Willow joined them by the counter, once again cast as the mediator in the discussion. Considering the facts carefully, she dolled out her sage advice, "There's a full moon out tonight. It'll be the perfect time for casting the spell. That is, if we're able to close the vortex and stop the magicks from mixing. I can't go with you, because I'm not strong enough to go near the area the vortex is in without getting deathly sick, but you two are stronger than the average human and.. well.. I think he should go with you, Faith."
Two against one. Connor knew he had Faith beat.
"And what if he goes psycho and tried to kill me again," Faith complained. Though she knew she was strong enough to take him on normal terrain, once they got into the area the black clouds covered her strength would be zapped. Plus, it was the only card she had still could play.
"Well," Willow patted her on the back, "That's just part of the wacky fun."
It was only in jest, since they had gotten past their differences lately, and all Faith could do was roll her eyes even though she felt like hurting them all. The slayer really didn't like when things didn't go her way. "Sure, make jokes about the girl who had a raving lunatic for a partner."
The slayer walked away, headed for a quick shower to get ready for the big day that lay ahead. Watching her go, Connor glanced back at Willow, "Thank you, for that. Sticking up for me after everything.. just, thank you."
"Before you go, Connor," Willow began, "I just to tell you something. I'm not exactly sure what you did in your past, but I want you to know that it doesn't matter. The past is the past. Everyone's got some skeleton hanging in their closets. I skinned a man once, Faith slayed a human. You don't have the corner covered on regret." She rarely talked about the black-eyed time of her life, but he needed to hear it from someone. The way he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders these days, it pained her to see someone in so much distress.
He nodded, the words sinking in. Neither of the girls looked like the murdering type, neither looked like they needed redemption; they had fought their way back, brazing a path down the road to recovery. They had come through it all, and they had survived. He'd always have them in the back of his mind as role models for his own journey.
"I'm leaving, when this is all over." Connor disclosed the decision he came to that night, after he came back to the empty hotel. "I'm going to go back home, and things are going to be better. I'm going to be better. Could you just not tell my father what happened when he gets back here? He already worries too much about me, one more reason to brood and I swear that man's going to have a hernia."
"If that's what you want." Willow returned the boy's smile, "And I'll make sure Faith doesn't say anything either." As an afterthought she added, "Just don't think that by going home it'll make all the pain go away. You carry a lot of grief around. I can see it in your aura. I went all the way to England and it didn't stop the hurt, but you know.. one day at a time, that's our motto."
"I'll deal with it, I will." He promised her, "I'm not running away. Just getting some time off from the constant fighting. My new mom, she's a psychologist. She's knows people who can help. Of course I don't know what I would say to them. They'll be like 'What's your earliest childhood memory' and I'll be all 'I slayed a yort when I was five in a hell dimension. It was bloody.' See, it just wouldn't work."
"You'll think of something," She said kindly and patted his head.
.....................................................................
Because I have nothing else to say today, I will pimp a fic by someone I don't even know. The piece was just too fricken funny not to mention somewhere. Oh how I love sometimes. (Angel Season Five: Recap by Oceana. Located at: )