Digressions - Nihilistbear's Writings

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Imitation Of Life Summary: “Dreams, destinies, battling memories and the vagaries of Fate. This is the fabric of his life now.” Connor after Origin. Spoilers for the Episode. Rated: R for language. Spike/Connor, if you’re looking for a driving pairing, but not in a sex way. Author’s Note: I know, so presumptuous on my part you could kill me dead for it. But this one wouldn’t leave me alone. Forgive me if the tense gets screwy; Memories and tenses are a bitch. ~~~~~~ “I really do love you, Connor.” “So what are you going to do about it?” “Prove it.” - Home “When Connor was five, he got lost in a shopping mall.” “That never happened.” “Yes… but he remembers it happening.” - Origin ~~~~~~ That sugar cane, that tasted good. That's who you are, that's what you could. - REM, “Imitation Of Life” ~~~~~~ When Connor was six, he entered first grade. He fell in love with the alphabet, and can still remember the first time he saw the letters C-A-T on the blackboard and realized they meant ‘cat’. Ever since that day, he kept a journal, and not a single one of those notebooks have been thrown away or lost. They weren’t anything special; little boy scrawl about playing baseball and wanting a puppy, but he’s kept every. single. one. He thinks now, that on some sub - cellular level, in his bones or his blood, he’s wanted to keep a record of his life because it’s already been changed once. ///shuffle/// Growing up in Quortoth, he’d learned how to read and write because (Holtz) his father had scratched Bible verses into the wall, and made him copy them out over and over in the dust floor of their mud hut. Verses about destruction and doom, twisted to suit (Holtz) his father’s purpose, and he had no idea that “vengeance is mine” had once been followed by “sayeth the Lord”. He’d learned them all, in between training to be a killer, and learning to hate (his father) Angelus with a passion only matched by (Holtz) his father’s. But he never kept a journal, then. There wasn’t any paper, and anyway, his thoughts were too filled with bloodlust and hatred to commit to permanence. ~~~~~~ It’s strange, now, as those dual memories wash over him when he relaxes enough to allow them the freedom of his mind. Tries to sort through the real and non-real, tries to decide which had more right to being. They’re both so authentic; this isn’t like science fiction, where one reality has a better hold than the other. He can smell the chalk and nervousness of his first day of school, and he can smell the burnt dust smell of Quortoth. He hears the teacher singing the alphabet even as he hears Holtz repeating the Ten Commandments and outlining how Angelus broke each one. He remembers them with equal clarity. ~~~~~~ A dream… A guy with white hair and black leather sits next to him on the couch in Angel’s office. Angel doesn’t seem to notice their presence. “There’s so much you have to know, little brother,” he says. “So much to learn.” ~~~~~~ Connor awakens, rubs his eyes. The details of last night’s dream elude him; all he remembers is watching Angel pace the floor of his office like a caged animal, like the animal (Holtz) his father had always said Angelus was. Which is, in all honesty, a little scary. Caged animals are more dangerous than anything on this planet. He knows that from the world that is. ~~~~~~ When he’d been ten, he’d fulfilled his biggest dream and become captain of his soccer team. They went on to a killer season, and he’d scored some awesome goals. His (not) dad used to go to parties and brag about his son, who was going to be as famous as they come, and bring Team USA to an astonishing victory in some far off World Cup, and he’d blushed and ducked every time his (not) dad told those stories, trying to hide how proud he really was of himself. And after he’d ducked, his (not) dad would wrap one arm around him and squeeze him briefly before letting him run away, so he could pretend that his (not) dad was embarrassing the hell out of him. ///shuffle/// He remembers the first time he’d managed to take down one of the giant bug-things in Quortoth all by himself. (Holtz) His father had been busy handling the other bug-thing, it was one of those mating pairs, looking for a substantial meal before getting down to reproducing themselves. He’d taken the scythe (Holtz) his father had fashioned and cleanly lopped off the monster’s head, then screamed in victory before running to help (Holtz) his father, slashing the thing’s legs from underneath it before taking the pointed end of the scythe’s staff -(Holtz) his father had taught him that all good weapons should serve more than one purpose – and thrusting it though the beast’s back and into the ground. He’d been nine, he thinks… yeah, nine sounds right. (Holtz) His father had sustained a nasty bite, and nearly died that day. It was the first time Stephen had realized he wasn’t like (Holtz) his father, really. That he was stronger, harder, maybe even immortal. Because of (his father) Angelus. And the victory was sour in his mouth for a long time afterwards. ~~~~~~ Soccer and demon killing. They’d called him The Destroyer in both worlds. In the world he wishes had been, he’d gotten the nickname because he was relentless on the field; he tore down defense and opposition and won, just won. Rileys always win. In the world that was, they’d called him The Destroyer because he was part of some prophesy about the end days. And because he did destroy, he tore apart everything he touched, ripped it to shreds because he’d been ripped to shreds so many times and in so many ways, until he’d been nothing but fragments held together by tattered clothes. He wonders if there’s really a difference. ~~~~~~ When he was seventeen, his parents finally gave in bought him a car. He went on a minor road trip, along the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu to Big Sur, stopping everywhere and testing out his shiny new toy. Well, not so shiny and new, a ’91 Ford Escort, that made funny coughing noises whenever he started it, and just barely made it back to Malibu before breaking down completely. But the loss of his first car hadn’t compared in the least to being on the road, all by himself, allowed to think freely, crank the stock radio so high the speakers crackled and dream about making Tracy Cummings his girlfriend for his senior year of high school. For the first time, his journal was something other than a rundown of the insignificant events of his life, but speculation on fate, and destiny, strange half-formed thoughts that he had trouble putting to paper. He realized, as the car sputtered to a stop outside his house and finally died, that over the summer, he’d become an adult. ///shuffle/// The summer he’d nailed (his father) Angel into a steel box and tossed him into the ocean for eternity had been the best summer of his life. He’d hunted demons with Fred and Gunn, honed his skills, and Fred made the best sandwiches after those patrols. After those sandwiches, after Gunn and Fred went off to have sex, he’d pore over the books Wesley had left behind, ancient diaries. It was there he learned of (his father) Angelus’ progeny; Puritanical, inadaptable Penn, who’d apparently died, according to Wesley’s fine British script in the margins; Drusilla, crazier than hell, cursed with visions and made insane by (his father) Angelus, who’d apparently sired - or resired, it was vague - (his mother) Darla; and William The Bloody, also known as Spike, who was actually Drusilla’s Childe, but part of the family nonetheless. They were called Aurelians. He’d made a vow to find and destroy all of them, wipe out what was left of these Aurelians, as a memorial to (Holtz) his father, killed by his nemesis finally. He wonders if (Holtz) his father’s blood tasted sweet going down the bastard’s (his father) throat. There were nagging worries, like where was Cordelia, and would anyone be able to reveal where (his father) Angelus was, but he had a mission now, like he’d had in Quortoth. He could do what was needed without (Holtz) his father’s guidance. He’d become an adult. ~~~~~~ It had been Spike, Angel’s strangest, darkest family member, beating on the blue haired girl Angel had called Illyria, but Connor now knew had once been Fred. Fred who smiled widely, showing all her teeth, who’d tucked him in sometimes, bandaged cuts which healed too quickly to be worth bandaging, clucked over him and made him think there was something in this world besides destruction. Except she’d been destroyed, and he thinks maybe someone, probably Wes, who got his memories back, too, still thinks of him as The Destroyer. Still blames him for her destruction. He blames himself a little, too. ~~~~~~ A dream… “It’s my fault, you know,” he says knowingly to the leather-clad demon sitting beside him on the couch in Angel’s office. They stare at Angel, unseen, as Angel paces the room, makes orders, tries to figure out how to use the war machine festering with evil. “It’s my fault he’s here.” “How’s that?” the vampire says, tapping his fingers on the arm of the couch, unable to sit still. Can vampires have Attention Deficit Disorder, he wonders. “He gave me a normal life, and as payment he took over Wolfram and Hart,” Connor replies, knowing without knowing that (his father) Angel paid this price to save him from himself, to stop him from killing all those people. All those people… God. “That’s Angel,” Spike says. “He does things like that sometimes. He’s got this need to save the world.” He chuckles hoarsely. “And he’s got a real jones for the ones who don’t want to be saved.” ~~~~~~ He wonders about these dreams, wonders why Spike - whom he’d never met before that day in the training room, and wasn’t really paying attention to, as he was staring at Illyria/Fred and her body-hugging leather - is the one he dreams about. Shouldn’t he be dreaming about Cordelia, or Angel? Or Fred, or Gunn, or even Wesley. They’re the ones in his memory, you see. The ones he knew. But Spike is the one who stares at Angel with him, and he wonders what the connection is. ~~~~~~ When he was sixteen, Connor fell hopelessly in lust with Tracy Cummings. But she never even saw him sitting at the back of their poetry class. Before grade eleven, she broke up with the guy she’d been dating since freshman year, and during the summer before grade twelve, he’d figured out a great plan to get her to go to Homecoming with him. A week before the big dance, relived to see she hadn’t said yes to anyone else yet, he puts the great plan into action. He stumbles over the words, though, and is about to give it up as a hopeless crush, but Tracy seems to like klutzy guys who stutter out requests for dates, and they end up going to Homecoming together. And months later, at the Prom, they rent a hotel and she takes his virginity; she lost hers a while back, it seems, and the strangest thought crosses his mind… he’s never first. ///shuffle/// When Cordelia gets her memories back - and Connor knows she was possessed by something at the time, but that’s the only Cordelia he actually knows, so he doesn’t dwell on it too much – she talks about high school, talks about how she was almost Homecoming queen until some girl with a ridiculous name split the vote and made her fight a bunch of demons in the process. Talks about being the May queen and head cheerleader, and a hundred other things he can’t possibly understand, because there was no Homecoming queen in Quortoth, there were no fucking cheerleaders and May Queens and no fucking high school in Quortoth, and every story drives the ice-splinter of hate towards his father deeper and deeper, until it finally pierces his heart full through, and he forgets that there was ever a time he loved Angel. Looking back, he realizes that was always her intention. ~~~~~~ In his haste to leave, he never asked Angel what had happened to Cordelia. He’d chosen then, you see. He’d picked the life Angel had picked for him, chosen to stay in the world Angel had sacrificed so much to create, and didn’t want to draw out Angel’s pain by making him think of a world where they were still father and son. He knows Angel has lost almost everything to give him this world. He didn’t see Gunn at the offices, wonders if maybe he’s dead. And of course, there’s Illyria, using Fred’s body and driving them all insane with the memories placed over the reality, much like he’s being driven insane now. See, he hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t expected the memories to fight for dominance, hadn’t expected it to be so goddamn hard. He turns restlessly in his bed, and tries to sleep. ~~~~~~ A dream… “We’re the same, you realize,” Spike says as they continue to watch Angel pace his office. “You and me.” “What makes you say that?” Connor asks curiously. Spike’s still guest starring in most of his dreams, and it’s getting a little freaky. “Blood brothers,” Spike explains as he watches Angel with something akin to pity. “You and me. His boys.” He chuckles harshly. “He always liked his boys.” “I thought you were Drusilla’s,” Connor says in response. “I thought she made you.” As always, dream-Spike doesn’t question how he knows these things. “His blood’s her blood, her blood’s my blood,” he says with a careless shrug. “And he was the one who taught me.” “He made you a killer,” Connor says flatly. “A murderer.” “And did a fairly good job of it,” Spike says calmly. “The only vampire more feared than I was Angelus himself. Then he got all soulled, and I was the scariest thing to walk the earth. It was…odd.” He frowned a little. “Did you call him dad?” Connor asks curiously. Spike laughs again. “No, that was always more of Drusilla’s thing.” He pauses, reflects. “But I did call him Sire.” Connor thinks about what he knows of vampires and realizes it’s the same thing, pretty much. “So, he would have made me a killer, too,” Connor murmured. “Holtz was right.” “No, idiot,” Spike said as he tossed him a look of pure derision. “You’re not getting the point. Angel, Angelus, doesn’t matter. He’d have made you a champion. The best of what you could be, like he made me.” Another harsh chuckle. “He was always something of an overachiever.” ~~~~~~ Connor wakes up from that one vaguely disturbed. Blood brothers. We’re the same, you realize. The laugh that was more self-mocking than humorous. He always liked his boys. That was always more of Drusilla’s thing. Sire. The best of what you could be. There are facets of Angel that Connor doesn’t fully understand, parts of his father that he isn’t privy to and never will be. But Spike knows those parts, and maybe that’s why he’s in all Connor’s dreams of late. Maybe he’s a messenger, maybe he’s going to show him why Connor made the right choice by walking away. Maybe he should get some fucking sleep before he goes out of his mind. He rolls over, punches his pillow ferociously and manages to drift off into a dreamless rest. ~~~~~~ When Connor was eighteen, he found out he’d gotten into Stanford. He’d screamed in joy, hugged his (not) mom and (not) dad, whirled his (not) sisters around the room and finally called Tracy to ask her out for dinner, amid the boos of his little (not) sister and mumbling of his (not) parents. He wants to celebrate this with just her. Tracy shows up on his doorstep, long brown hair arranged beautifully, lavender silk dress, matching shoes. She’s beatific. They have dinner at a The Piazza Rodeo, on a reservation his (not) parents made for the whole (not) family but gracefully gave him when he said he wanted some time alone with his girl. Him in a suit, Tracy in her dress, and over tiramisu, she tells him it’s over, and she’s off to NYU, with Trevor, the football player she’d dated the year before. He almost hates her. He never realized hate and love were so closely entwined. ///shuffle/// When Cordelia won’t awaken for him in the church, he gives up all hope for a world that makes sense, and decides to take as many of the wretches - so lost without (his child) Jasmine – with him. He goes to the mall, tries to imagine a world where wandering around all this bright light and these beautiful things is just another day, and not something to be marveled at. He sees young couples holding hands, and hates them so much it tears him a little more inside. He goes to a store and sees a father buying some kind of equipment for his daughter. It’s too much, the whole damn thing is all too much, and he’s got to destroy them all before they destroy him. ~~~~~~ Connor cries as he thinks about Cordelia, thinks about how close he was to killing her, killing everyone. He knows now, beyond any doubt, that his father was right to take that memory away from him, take them all away and replace them with something prettier, something better for him, better for them all, because that world… that world was hell. worse than the greatest pain he’s experienced in the life his father gave him, worse than even Quortoth. He’s made the right choice; he knows that now. ~~~~~~ A dream… Still at Wolfram and Hart, still in his father’s office, and why can’t he just fucking stop these dreams, huh? Why do they still haunt him? Spike’s staring at him mockingly. “So you think you figured it all out, yeah?” Connor shifts on the couch, frowns defensively. “He did what he had to, to make my life better.” He shrugs a little nervously. “I figure I should respect his wishes, or something.” Spike laughs so loudly then, Connor wakes up. ~~~~~~ Connor sits up in bed, rubs his eyes. He’s missing something in the equation; that’s what Spike was trying to tell him, and he long ago gave up wondering why Spike’s the one who speaks to him. Maybe because he’s figured out that Spike’s right, that they are somehow the same creature in different incarnations. He goes to the bathroom, splashes water on his face. Looks at his reflection and sees a boy with shaggier hair, rattier clothes. A boy with death in his eyes and the blood of his father more or less on his hands. This is going to drive him fucking crazy pretty soon. In fact, it already has. ~~~~~~ When Connor was three or four, he got a box of crayons from his (not) mom and a pad of paper. He was probably driving her insane with his constant questions, his incessant demands. He eyed each thing suspiciously, the separate sticks of wax, the block of paper. He doesn’t know what he should do with them. His (not) mom smiles, grabs a crayon, draws a circle, then fills it in. Repeats that with all seven crayons, then passes one to him. “Go on,” she says. “It’s fun, baby.” Connor picks up the crayon, places it against the paper, moves his hand a little. His eyes widen as a mark trails behind the crayon in his hand. He’s never been very far from a sketchbook since. ///shuffle/// Holtz never liked it when he’d pick up a stick and scratch something on the ground in the rare moments of boredom between monsters. He’d look away, or frown impatiently. One day, he walked over, grabbed the stick from his hands, snapped it in two. “Your father,” Holtz spits out, so angry he flinches from the words, “used to draw. And what an artist he was. Perfect renditions, gorgeous portraits. He’d draw all his victims, leave their pictures scattered for all to see. He drew pictures of himself and your mother doing perverse things to make everyone suffer. And he’d laugh.” He storms away, doesn’t return for hours. When Holtz returns, Stephen’s suitably chastised. He never drew anything after that. He learned to describe with words what he couldn’t describe with his hands. He forgot that he’d ever loved to make pictures soon enough anyway. ~~~~~~ He doesn’t understand why he can’t escape those other memories. He made his choice, not once, but twice. He walked away from them, and still things he can’t bear follow him like so many shadows, and he can’t get free of them. He needs to talk to Angel, and soon. ~~~~~~ A dream… “Why do you think we’re here?” Connor asks Spike. They’re sitting on the couch again, and his father looks angrier and angrier, darker and darker in every dream, looks closer to the edge. “You mean, in a philosophical sense?” Spike asks as he lights a cigarette, blows the smoke in Angel’s direction. Angel doesn’t notice. “Not something I think about much.” “You know what I mean,” Connor says angrily. “I do,” Spike says gravely. “But it’s not for me to answer.” “Fine. Why the hell are you here?” Connor explodes. “Why are you still in my dreams? Why can’t you just let me forget?” He gets up, about to walk to Angel, and a hand wraps firmly around his wrist, stops him. “Don’t,” Spike says seriously. “It’s not time yet.” Connor sighs, knows Spike’s right. He sits back down on the couch. “I hate prophecies,” he muttered, frowning a little. “I was perfectly happy before I had a destiny.” “Welcome to the life of the chosen few,” Spike says congenially. “There’s always a prophecy or a destiny attached to your ass when you’re one of Angel’s family.” ~~~~~~ Okay. He’s had enough. He’s pacing his room, and this whole crazy thing? Really could have been timed better. Like, say, not finals week of his freshman year. Just as an example. He can’t concentrate on linear algebra and the history of the United States with a vampire he doesn’t know guest-starring in half his dreams, and a war over his past going on in the others. Was Angel’s bargain really worth it, then? Because now that he knows, he’s feeling almost as edgy as he remembers feeling just before he was about to blow up a bunch of people and his father slit his throat. He looks over at his dresser, the joint he bought for five bucks sitting there, just begging him to take a hit and make it all go away. And he’s never done drugs, in either reality, not even when Sunny offered them to him in the world that was, or when his best friend stole a joint from his older brother in the reality he wishes had happened. But he’s too edgy to do anything right now, he needs to calm down, and a couple of puffs on the joint bring him down to a point where nothing matters, and a few more puffs, and it’s all so clear, it makes sense, and he falls asleep. ~~~~~~ A dream… “I figured it out,” Connor says triumphantly to Spike. They’re still watching Angel, and he’s really dark now; there’s this playful smile on his mouth that Connor remembers from when they’d hatched the ridiculous plan to free Angelus and find out about The Beast. “Oh yeah?” Spike says with apparent disinterest, but he’s very interested, and Connor wonders if maybe Spike hasn’t figured it out yet himself. “How’s that?” “Well, I know that technically, I’m here because some guy needed me to fulfill a prophecy,” Connor replies. “How’d you get here?” “Amulet,” Spike says shortly. “Then made corporeal by some guy with some issues towards Angel.” A chuckle. “He’s better at making enemies than anyone I’ve ever known.” Connor smiles at him a bit sadly; Angel and his ability to make enemies is what got him in this fucked up dreamland/mindstate to begin with. “But that’s not the real reason, is it?” Connor says after a moment. “There’s something more to it.” He frowns. “Something I can’t grab.” “You’re not wrong,” Spike says quietly, looking at him intensely, trying to will the words out of Connor’s brain and onto his tongue. Connor thinks about everything he knows about Angel, and everything he knows about Angelus, and the way they’d gotten Angel’s soul out of him the first time, and tries, ever so slowly, to put it all together in his head. Then it comes to him. He winces as the pieces fall into place, and he’s sure the clicking in his head is audible to the entire room. “We’re here to make him go evil, aren’t we?” Connor says finally, and while he’s proud of himself for figuring it out, he’s saddened that he’s breaking Angel’s heart. “Well,” Spike says, sadness in his voice. “One of us is.” He looks at some spot on the non-lethal windows and sighs. “I don’t get it,” Connor argues. “I mean, why’d they bring me back? Didn’t they already get what they wanted by getting Angel to buy my life by taking this place over?” “You’re not the temptation to evil, kid,” Spike murmurs. “You’re the Senior Partners, flaunting your perfect life to Angel, make him think he made the right choice. Tempting him to go along with whatever they say.” He runs his hands down his face, rubs his eyes, looks like a kid, not a hundred year old demon. “But you are,” Connor says slowly. “How are you supposed to tempt him?” he asks. “You’ve got a soul; it’s not like you’re going to whisper in his ear little hints about going bad again.” Spike catches his eyes, and there’s this flash, of a man moaning, and another man muttering someone’s name… William. “There are temptations and there are temptations,” Spike says flatly. Connor looks away, embarrassed. Okay, so he’d never considered that. “I see,” he says slowly. “No, you really don’t,” Spike says tiredly. And Connor wakes up. ~~~~~~ Connor sits up, groggy. No more drugs for him, dude. That dream was beyond weird. So he knew, on some level, that vampires were, well, sexual. Hell, he’s read the books in the world that he wishes was true, even asked Angel about it, who’d tacitly admitted it happened. And there was always Holtz in the world that was, telling him about the perverse nature of vampires, their strange patterns of family, and what it all meant. But he figured that Angel had made out with, y’know, female vampires, because of Darla, and the whole Cordelia thing. Angel and Spike… well, they never really struck him as lovers. But he didn’t see them interact all that much, and for all he knows, they’re just like Lestat and Louis when no one’s looking, and even though he now knows those books are so far from the reality of life it’s sad and a little ridiculous, he figures she must have gotten something right, because there’s Spike, and there’s Angel, and at some point in history, they were together, sort of. He shakes his head. Even if he’s fixated on the whole making out thing, that wasn’t the point. The point was, he gets it now. He knows why he’s still fighting the memories, knows why he’s been dreaming about Spike. See, the Powers may have given up on trying to talk to Angel, because from what he remembers and what he saw at Wolfram and Hart, Angel is a stubborn bastard with a penchant for doing as he wished and damn the consequences. But they haven’t given up on Angel all together, and that’s why they tapped him. He needs to go back to that life, the one where he killed things every night and was tougher and faster than, well, everyone. He knows that’s not what Angel wants, and to some extent it’s not what he wants either, because that life? Sucked. But one of the things he’s learned in all of this crap is you can’t escape what you are. He can’t escape being The Destroyer, and he can’t keep the life Angel lost so much to give him, because as pretty as it was, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t his life. So he throws some clothes into a backpack, leaves a note for his parents and hops into the new car they got him, heads to L.A. Dreams, destinies, battling memories and the vagaries of Fate. This is the fabric of his life now. Angel had said he was special, in a way that had made the Connor who didn’t know who he was flush with pride. And he is. Special. The child of two vampires, the unbreakable boy. The Destroyer, but this time around, maybe he won’t have to fall apart as badly, because while Angel may not have been able to protect him from his destiny, but he did give him a much more stable base from which to start it. And he thinks that maybe Angel’s gonna need him in this fight, not just to wield a sword, but to help him remember he’s doing the right thing, keep him on this side of the line. His dreams have shown him Angel’s getting too close to the darkness inside himself; he’s lost too many people that tie him to this world, and he’s sick of being the Champion. So he gets up, shoves a change of clothes into his backpack, leaves a note for his parents and leaves for L.A. Time to make those fucking dreams come true. ~~~~~~ Other Standalones Choose a Different Series 01 May 2004