(no subject)
Oct. 21st, 2005 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Lost and Found, Part Eleven
They burned Holtz’s body in a quiet clearing on soft grass and beneath tall trees, the sound of water close by. His ashes rose and scattered, flickering like fireflies as they glowed and then were whisked away by the heated air. Connor wept, the tears on his skin glittering in the firelight. Wesley bowed his head respectfully, and inwardly felt only relief that Holtz was dead. He liked to believe that the man had found redemption through Connor; in being given back the son of his enemy to replace the one that Angelus had murdered found that there was something greater than vengeance, but he didn’t trust what Holtz had become. The man had walked into Caritas, seen for himself that there were four humans in the place he was about to torch, two of them unarmed women, and done it anyway. Had he accompanied Connor back to this world as a living man instead of a corpse, Wesley suspected he would have found a way to do Angel more harm somehow. But as things were his death had afforded Connor the excuse to punch his way back into his home dimension, to visit the father he claimed to deny. Wesley knew Angel was the real reason Connor was here, and he knew that if Connor spent time with him he would come to see his nobility and goodness.
Thinking of Holtz’s ashes trying to find their way back to England and the overgrown graves of his wife and children had made Wesley think of it too, that green and pleasant land to which he had no desire to return. Tara had gone with Willow and Giles and apparently the two witches were making great progress at the coven Giles had recommended, Willow learning to control her power so that she was in charge of the magic within her and not the other way around. In their absence, Buffy had been shot by a gunman who had apparently attended High School with her. He had been arrested but Buffy had undergone six hours of surgery before she had been saved. Xander and Dawn had sat out those lonely hours clinging to each other in the waiting room.
“Been there, done that…” Gunn and Cordelia had exchanged a glance before looking across at Wesley.
The gunman was being charged with the murder of an ex-girlfriend and the attempted murder of Buffy. Two of his friends were currently being held on charges of conspiracy to commit murder but seemed likely to get suspended sentences.
Her close brush with death seemed to have given Buffy back the vital spark Giles had so missed seeing in her. It had made her decide that she did want to live after all, and the world was a far more beautiful place than she remembered it being. Giles, Willow and Tara were going to fly back to Sunnydale for a reappraisal of their lives, and there was talk of leaving the Hellmouth to its own devices for a while, perhaps even taking a group holiday. Buffy had spoken to Angel on the phone for the first time in a long time and sounded ‘connected’ as he put it, stronger, more vivid, not that exhausted wraith Giles had described. He had told her about Connor and she had said she’d like to meet him, like to visit all of them, just not yet quite yet. In a few months perhaps. It was the first time in a very long time that Wesley had seen Angel put the phone down after a conversation with Buffy and smile.
For the moment Connor was being cared for equally by all of them. Angel was afraid of pushing himself on the boy, trying to make him acknowledge a relationship he was sure Connor disliked, and so hung back, giving Connor soulful looks from the across the lobby and beaming like an overgrown schoolboy every time Connor grudgingly admitted that he wouldn’t mind another training session.
Fred had taken it upon herself to introduce him to all the different foods Los Angeles had to offer. Cordelia had taken charge of buying him some clothes, and Gunn and Groo helped him with his weapons training. Wesley had been excused training with Connor on the grounds that he was still recovering, but, although he had strongly refuted that he was not back to normal fitness, after seeing the way Connor threw Gunn and Groo around he had decided there were worse things than convalescence. Angel had been forced to take over the training sessions, as the humans were just getting too badly bruised, and had come up with a scenario where the others took it in turns to be play vampires and vulnerable humans, so that Connor could not just attack everything in sight but had to learn how to switch from protective to offensive within seconds. Wesley had been delighted to see Angel and Connor fighting together as he knew from past sessions with Gunn that, whatever gulf of differences appeared to exist between you, once thrown into a combat situation a few times – or even a simulated combat situation – you simply became allies. The man whose culture you didn’t understand metamorphosing into the man who had your back when that last vampire attacked.
Connor had also learned that humans were far more breakable and bruiseable than he was, and was now taking care to pull his punches; he had also been completely thrown by the concept that vampires could be women, despite having known it intellectually. When Cordelia or Fred played the vampires his natural chivalry put them at a serious advantage, and it had taken him a while to overcome that. As Wesley had pointed out to Angel there were worse faults a boy of his age could have, but they decided that Buffy really did need to come and pay a visit so he could find out all about females of the species occasionally being a great deal deadlier than the male.
Connor regarded Lorne with deep hostility until the day he heard Lorne humming the lullaby he had used to sing to him. He charged into the green demon’s room to find Lorne packing his suitcases while looking sadly at a teddy bear, the discovery of which had sparked the lullaby.
“Sing that again,” Connor demanded breathlessly.
Lorne looked at him in surprise. “What do you want?”
“Please – sing it again, that music you were singing before. Please…”
It was certainly the first time Connor had said ‘please’ to Lorne, or anything that wasn’t prefaced by a muttered ‘filthy demon’. Lorne did as he asked and Connor sank onto his bed, taking the teddy bear from him and gazing at it fixedly. “That music was in my dream.”
“Not a dream, hellspawn, just your super-charged memory going back a little further than most of us can manage. I used to sing you to sleep with it.”
Connor gazed up at Lorne with something that was almost apology in his eyes. “The demons on Quor’toth – they don’t sing lullabies.” He noticed the suitcase. “You’re leaving? Why?”
“Well, one guess why, Junior demon killer who calls me ‘filthy demon’ every time he sees me. I don’t want a stake in the back. Quite apart from the imminent death part, I can never get blood out of silk.”
Connor began to unpack the suitcase. “No. You’re one of the pieces of the puzzle in my mind. You’re the music that I used to hear. I used to look for it. I thought it was playing on Quor’toth. It took me many years to realize it was only a memory.”
“Oh, I know how that feels.” Lorne opened his mouth to protest about the forced unpacking and then shrugged. “Music in your mind when you don’t know where it comes from? There wasn’t any music on Pylea either. That’s why I came here. There shouldn’t be any worlds without music.”
Connor looked up at him in surprise. “I suppose that’s why I came here too. To look for the music in my mind.”
Lorne shrugged. “And it turns out all the time it was filthy demon music, after all.”
“It made me feel safe.” Connor looked at the teddy bear again. “Whenever I heard the music in my memory, I knew that I was safe.”
Lorne took a deep breath and then decided to be as big a demon as he was. “You ever heard Aretha, sugarplum? Because, I’m thinking until you have, your life hasn’t really started…”
So, Lorne had stayed and become Connor’s official guide to all things musical in his new world. Wesley had suggested perhaps letting him follow the score of Benjamin Britten’s ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ while it was playing so he could see for himself how the notes represented the sounds made by the different instruments but everyone had looked at him as if he were slightly insane. Lorne had countered by suggesting that they dusted off the piano in one of those cobwebby back rooms and showed Connor how music was made in a much more real and immediate kind of way. They had done so and Connor had enjoyed himself immensely. Wesley feared it was only a matter of time before he asked for a guitar. He had unfortunately inherited Angel’s singing voice so they were all rather dreading that day.
By a process – as far as Wesley could tell – of no one else wanting the job, Wesley had been given the role of Connor’s tutor. Angel would hover around, looking over his shoulder and asking how Connor was doing, did he understand things, how well could he read? And Wesley would try to reassure him that Connor was very intelligent, had been well taught by Holtz, had old-fashioned views about science and geography and the like, of course, but Fred was teaching him maths and science while Wesley was working on his English and history and – most importantly – ethics. They had a lot of discussions about philosophy and theology, and some spirited arguments about it, too, as Wesley often didn’t agree with Holtz, and so far all of Connor’s opinions came directly from Holtz.
Connor had demanded to see the full history of all Angel’s past crimes, of course. Wesley had stared him down on that one and handed him an assignment on vampires which he gave him a week to complete, detailing all the different theories various scholars had come up with over the centuries explaining exactly what happened when a human was turned into a vampire. Showing the ingenuity of all teenagers, Connor had gone directly to the source, and asked Angel to tell him exactly how it felt when one became a vampire, if you had the memories of the person you’d been before, why didn’t you have the same morality, the same compassion, the same feelings of attachment to the humans you had loved when your heart had still had a rhythm?
“Because you’re not really who you were…” Angel explained. “You look the same way and you have those memories but all the things that bind you to humanity, the things that made you who you were, they’re not a part of you any more. You don’t feel pity or remorse or compassion or love or tenderness. You just feel the hunger all the time, the hunger for blood and pain and the suffering of others. You feel more alive than you ever did before, so free because you don’t have all those petty little spasms of conscience that make being human such a misery… but you’re dead, you’re dead inside, because all those things that make you human, they’re the only things that matter, and being human it’s a gift you never even think about until you don’t have it any more…”
Only after Connor had handed in his paper – with lots of inkblots and so many loops and swirls from his copperplate handwriting that Wesley decided Cordelia definitely needed to step up those typing lessons – did Wesley agree to discuss Angelus with him. Wesley had certainly given him more assistance with the assignment than he would have done with a boy of Connor’s age who had a more ‘normal’ upbringing, giving him the pages in the books he wanted him to reference rather than just a bibliography, but Connor had at least read the chapters he’d given him and seemed to have thought about the different theories in some detail. He’d also added a conclusion about the importance of the human soul that was half Holtzian eighteenth century Christianity and half completely Connor. He had touched briefly on free will and how there was still no proof that an evil creature had no choice but to be evil but that if someone who had never committed a truly evil act before they became a vampire acted evil afterwards then it seemed to be the fault of the vampire nature, not the original human. He had concluded that as a vampire was a demon inhabiting a human corpse then it was entirely a demon, as the human had no control over what was done with its dead body.
Wesley had read it with close attention while Connor fidgeted anxiously in the doorway. Wesley had made mild questioning comments in the margins whenever he found a piece of lazy thinking or something that felt as if it had come from Holtz unquestioningly instead of directly from Connor, but he had also gone out of his way to find things to praise, relieved that Connor did indeed have a good mind and a knack of expressing himself clearly and intelligently that truly merited praise.
He had finished with a summary of the reasons why Connor’s essay was well-reasoned but asked him to consider other questions in the future. Was it possible that the natural human condition tended towards evil, for instance? Did becoming a vampire free up a human to indulge himself in cruelty which he would otherwise be unable to enjoy because of the promptings of his conscience? Were the rules of God and Man that humankind had dreamt up to keep itself in check the only thing preventing every human from acting like a soulless vampire? Was it their feeling of disassociation from society and humanity that gave vampires their feelings of superiority? And how had both vampirism and the thin veneer of civilization that bound society together been addressed in human literature? Then he had handed Connor a copy of Dracula and Lord of the Flies and asked him to write about how reading them had made him feel about the questions they’d been discussing.
After a few weeks of getting Connor to ask himself questions about the nature of good and evil and nudging towards him a place where he could accept that life was not perhaps quite as black and white as Holtz had painted it to him, he told him that he could read everything Wesley had on Angelus – on condition that he first read through all the Angel Investigations files first so he could see for himself the difference in the way a vampire functioned with and without a soul.
Wesley had done his best to make it appear that this was just part of their philosophy lessons – the best example they had to hand to see the result of the soul in action. But inwardly he was crossing every finger and toe he possessed that he was handling this situation correctly. He wanted above all things for Connor to see the good in Angel and to allow himself to love his father without feeling that he was betraying Holtz. To be able to do that Connor needed to see that the demon who had murdered Holtz’s family was not the father who had held Connor in his arms as a baby.
Connor read through both files with interest and then looked up at Wesley. “You always want me to tell you what I think but you never tell me what you think.”
“Okay.” Wesley took a chair and sat on it. “What do you want to ask me?”
“What do you think the relationship is between what my father is now and what he was before?”
For a moment Wesley thought Connor was asking him some philosophical question about Holtz’s place in the afterlife, and whether or not he had won himself a place in heaven, but then he realized he meant Angel. He had to think that was a good sign in itself.
“I think that just as the demon who killed the human being that Angel used to be had access to his memories without ever having lived his life, so Angel has access to the memories of being Angelus without being the person who performed those deeds. I think that the person he is now was born when Angelus, the vampire, had Liam’s human soul forced back inside him. I think that who Angel is now is neither Angelus nor Liam but a third and separate entity who shares their memories.”
“What else do you think?” Connor pressed.
Wesley shrugged. “That Angel is noble and good and has done more to make the world a better place for humanity than anyone else I know.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Connor put his head on one side. “You’re a strange man.”
Dryly, Wesley said, “Thank you.”
He was surprised to see Connor smile. After a pause the boy said, “Could you kill Angelus? If he came back?”
“If he was threatening Fred or Cordelia, yes.”
Connor examined him closely. “What if he was threatening you?”
Wesley had to stop and think about that one. He remembered Angelus in that darkened office advancing towards him, and in between the fear, the terrible anxiety for Cordelia and Miss Lowell the realization that Angel was still in there somewhere; that this was the moment Angel had told them to be ready for and he wasn’t, because there was a stake in that drawer and he was trying to think of every way he could not to have to pick it up. “I – don’t know. Angel does so much good. More than I ever could. He has an eternity in which to assist mankind – and there’s the prophecies and…”
Connor patted Wesley gently on the shoulder. “It’s okay. He’s told me what to do. If he turns, stand behind me. I’ll do what has to be done.”
Wesley didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, or what to make of Connor’s fascination with the Doximoll incident. Connor reread that file again now and after demanding that Wesley clarified a few things about what had happened, what exactly had been said and done, went off to talk to Angel about it, cornering the vampire in his room where he had sneaked off to try to drink some blood unseen.
“Did you want to say those things to Wesley and Cordelia when you were…you…?”
“No.” Angel looked surprised at the question. “I didn’t.”
“But you hadn’t really lost your soul, you just thought you had. So Angelus couldn’t really have been there, could he?”
“It felt as if he was.” Angel sat down on the bed with a sigh.
“Do you think you want to do bad things but you have to stop yourself all the time?”
“I’m not sure. I remember doing them. I remember enjoying them. But I hate myself for doing them and for enjoying them.”
Connor sat on the bed next to him. “Wesley says the person who committed those crimes wasn’t you.”
“That’s what Wesley believes.”
“What do you believe?”
Angel looked at his hands. “I know the demon is still in me. I’m not human. I’m a vampire. I can access that demon to make myself stronger, to heal faster, to jump higher, kill better. Angelus is always with me. He’s always there. I just can’t afford to let him take control.”
Connor considered that for a long moment. “But what about the humans with souls who commit murders? Do they have demons inside them as well?”
“I think there is darkness in every one. I think there was a darkness in me before I became Angelus. Maybe if someone had a completely pure soul a vampire wouldn’t be able to make it like itself. I don’t know. I don’t have any more answers than some of the people who wrote those books.”
Connor sighed. “Wesley says you’re good.”
“Wesley believes that. Wesley believes a lot of things. He’s a clever guy but he’s not right about everything. And in the end it doesn’t matter what anyone else believes, it’s what you believe that counts.”
“I think you killed a lot of people. I think you’ve saved a lot of people. I think the world doesn’t make any kind of sense. And if the soul is our connection to God and now you have one why can’t you touch a crucifix without it burning you?”
“Because I’m still a demon? Or because I believe it can hurt me? Because I believe God hates me? Because he really does?” Angel shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“The vampires who fed on Wesley? Who were they? What happened to them? Why didn’t they kill him?”
“They didn’t kill him because they liked hurting him too much to want to give that up. They came here after him, and Cordelia and Fred and Gunn killed them.”
“If they’d turned him into a vampire what would you have done?”
Angel closed his eyes. “When your mother was turned into a vampire I thought if I staked her it would give her some peace, stop her killing again. But now I wonder if I’d done that would I have sent her to hell? She would have died damned. The way she died, she was sharing your soul. Maybe she didn’t go to hell this time. If they’d turned Wesley and I killed him would I be condemning him to hell? Should I try to get his soul back? And if I did that, then I’d be condemning him to a life like this, drinking blood, living in the shadows, spurned by humanity, but wanting to help them, and the hunger with you all the time…”
“Would you do it?” Connor demanded. “And if he was dying, if there was no other way to save him, would you make him like you?”
Angel grimaced. “I don’t know, Connor. And I really don’t want to think about it.”
“Wesley said vampires think they’re better than humans. Don’t you think that?”
“No.” Angel looked aghast. “Of course not. Maybe vampires only tell themselves that to block out how cold they feel.”
“I think there’s a darkness in me,” Connor said thoughtfully. “I enjoyed killing on Quor’toth.”
Angel looked into his eyes. “Did you enjoy hurting Wesley? When you cut him with the knife and he bled did you enjoy that?”
Connor frowned. “No. I don’t think so. I remember being angry with him because he wouldn’t fight back and I wanted to kill someone because my father was dead.” He looked at Angel sideways. “Both of them, actually.”
“If you’d been a vampire it wouldn’t have mattered if he fought back or not, you would still have gone on hurting him. That’s the difference between being angry and grieving and not having a soul. I hurt him too when I was angry and grieving. I tried to kill him.”
Connor half-smiled. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“If you’d tried to kill him he’d be dead.”
Wesley heard that as he came to look for Connor, for a moment he stood in the corridor outside Angel’s room, knowing Angel could hear his heartbeat and Connor could probably pick up his scent. For a second he was back in that hospital with the pillow over his head and Angel screaming all that hate and anger at him.
“I was lucky,” Angel said quietly. “There are some things you can never put right again. If Gunn hadn’t been there… It’s too easy for people like us to kill, Connor. Because we’re stronger and faster and we’re harder to really injure. But that just means we have to be extra careful, because it’s something you can’t ever undo, you can’t ever take it back. You just have to live with it, even when you can’t live with it, but you don’t have the choice not to because there’s no way to make amends if you’re dead.”
Wesley knocked on the door. “Connor, you left half my files scattered over the office floor and Fred wants to show you how gravity works.”
Connor sprang to his feet. “I know how gravity works. She told me all about Isaac Newton yesterday.”
Wesley shrugged. “I suspect this lesson will involve eating large quantities of tacos and then dropping things from a great height to see what kind of a splat they make.”
“Cool!” Connor slapped Wesley on the shoulder as he went past. “I can pick up those files later, yes?”
“No,” Wesley assured him. “You can pick them up now and put them back in the right order.”
Rolling his eyes and muttering something under his breath about the anal retentiveness of certain skinny white Englishmen that sounded as if it was copied verbatim from Gunn, Connor sped off at a sprint before leaping gracefully over the banister to land in the lobby with perfect balance. Wesley and Angel both watched him springing over to where Fred and Gunn were waiting for him.
“You’re really going to let him touch your files?” Angel enquired in surprise. “Because last time I checked he learned his filing system from Cordelia.”
“Good point.” Wesley darted to the head of the stairs and hastily shouted down to Connor that he could leave the files, just this once, as he didn’t want to stop Fred getting her lunch.
“Did someone say lunch?” Cordelia appeared from the office, looking very over-dressed for filing and with Groo on her arm. “How about we take Connor somewhere swankier than Taco Bell? I was just thinking I haven’t really shown Groo any of the nice places in LA, only the – alleys that smell of urine and have rats in them, which all those squishy demons seem to like so much. Lorne? Do you want to come with us for lunch?”
“No, thank you, pumpkin,” Lorne assured her. “I’m planning to take Junior out to some sleazy demon bars later this week and need to pace myself hangover wise.”
“You’re planning to what…?” Angel demanded.
Connor waved a hand at him. “Cool it, Dad. Gunn’s coming too. They’re going to show me the seamy side of LA.”
Angel started at that ‘Dad’ but managed to get his voice under control enough to say: “And this is supposed to reassure me, why exactly…?”
“Can we argue about it later?” Connor pleaded. “My stomach’s rumbling and you know how dangerous Fred gets when she’s hungry.”
Angel waited until they were outside of the doors and definitely out of earshot before he grabbed Wesley by the shoulders. “He called me ‘Dad’.”
“I know.” Wesley beamed back at him.
Then Angel enveloped him in a hug that made his ribs ache but not with pain. “We got him back, Wes,” he breathed. “We got him back.”
Wesley looked after the departing group in happy bewilderment. Connor was play-punching Gunn in the ribs and Fred was pretending to pull his ear in reprimand. Cordelia was laughing at something Groo had said. “I never thought for a minute that… I really think we did, Angel. I think he wants to be here.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go to my place – I have some books I think he’d find interesting and I need to get some more clothes.”
“You should give up that apartment,” Angel said unexpectedly.
Wesley gaped at him. “What?”
“Well, we have a limited income. It doesn’t make any sense for you to be paying rent for an apartment when we’re already paying rent on this place and there are all these rooms standing empty. I know Cordy needs her own place because of Groo and – Dennis and being a girl and everything but as Fred and Gunn and Connor and Lorne are already here and you…”
“…have no life?”
“Exactly.”
“I – don’t know what to say.”
“I’m suggesting you move in, Wes, not that we get married and buy a dog.”
Wesley feigned disappointment. “We can’t have a dog?”
“Look, if you hate the idea of not being able to get away from the rest of us...”
“Oh, I definitely hate that idea,” Wesley assured him. “But you’re right about the limited resources. And I suppose we do make ourselves vulnerable by having separate places...” He remembered the knife flashing, the sensation of the blade cutting his throat, that second when he didn’t realize what had happened until the pain hit and he felt the blood spilling. He didn’t even know he was stumbling until Angel caught him by the arms and held him steady.
“Wes…?”
He collected himself with an effort. “Groo escorts Cordelia home and I hope the visions would warn her if she were in any serious danger, but perhaps it might be more cost-effective for me to move in here, and it would solve that problem of the books I want always either being in the office when I’m home or at home when I’m in the office.”
“I could come with you now. Help you get stuff?” Angel suggested.
“It would make more sense for Gunn to take me in his truck. And there is the whole – daylight issue as well.”
Angel seemed to notice the sunshine for the first time. “Oh yes. Okay. But do it soon.”
Wesley frowned at him. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Angel sighed. “No, yes… It’s just – Wolfram & Hart were sniffing around your place a couple of weeks ago. Wanted to ask Gunn some questions when he was picking up some of your stuff. It’s probably nothing but I’d feel happier if you were staying here every evening and not going off by yourself to an empty apartment.” There was a pause before Angel said intently, “I don’t want anything else happening to you. Connor isn’t the only one I just got back.”
They burned Holtz’s body in a quiet clearing on soft grass and beneath tall trees, the sound of water close by. His ashes rose and scattered, flickering like fireflies as they glowed and then were whisked away by the heated air. Connor wept, the tears on his skin glittering in the firelight. Wesley bowed his head respectfully, and inwardly felt only relief that Holtz was dead. He liked to believe that the man had found redemption through Connor; in being given back the son of his enemy to replace the one that Angelus had murdered found that there was something greater than vengeance, but he didn’t trust what Holtz had become. The man had walked into Caritas, seen for himself that there were four humans in the place he was about to torch, two of them unarmed women, and done it anyway. Had he accompanied Connor back to this world as a living man instead of a corpse, Wesley suspected he would have found a way to do Angel more harm somehow. But as things were his death had afforded Connor the excuse to punch his way back into his home dimension, to visit the father he claimed to deny. Wesley knew Angel was the real reason Connor was here, and he knew that if Connor spent time with him he would come to see his nobility and goodness.
Thinking of Holtz’s ashes trying to find their way back to England and the overgrown graves of his wife and children had made Wesley think of it too, that green and pleasant land to which he had no desire to return. Tara had gone with Willow and Giles and apparently the two witches were making great progress at the coven Giles had recommended, Willow learning to control her power so that she was in charge of the magic within her and not the other way around. In their absence, Buffy had been shot by a gunman who had apparently attended High School with her. He had been arrested but Buffy had undergone six hours of surgery before she had been saved. Xander and Dawn had sat out those lonely hours clinging to each other in the waiting room.
“Been there, done that…” Gunn and Cordelia had exchanged a glance before looking across at Wesley.
The gunman was being charged with the murder of an ex-girlfriend and the attempted murder of Buffy. Two of his friends were currently being held on charges of conspiracy to commit murder but seemed likely to get suspended sentences.
Her close brush with death seemed to have given Buffy back the vital spark Giles had so missed seeing in her. It had made her decide that she did want to live after all, and the world was a far more beautiful place than she remembered it being. Giles, Willow and Tara were going to fly back to Sunnydale for a reappraisal of their lives, and there was talk of leaving the Hellmouth to its own devices for a while, perhaps even taking a group holiday. Buffy had spoken to Angel on the phone for the first time in a long time and sounded ‘connected’ as he put it, stronger, more vivid, not that exhausted wraith Giles had described. He had told her about Connor and she had said she’d like to meet him, like to visit all of them, just not yet quite yet. In a few months perhaps. It was the first time in a very long time that Wesley had seen Angel put the phone down after a conversation with Buffy and smile.
For the moment Connor was being cared for equally by all of them. Angel was afraid of pushing himself on the boy, trying to make him acknowledge a relationship he was sure Connor disliked, and so hung back, giving Connor soulful looks from the across the lobby and beaming like an overgrown schoolboy every time Connor grudgingly admitted that he wouldn’t mind another training session.
Fred had taken it upon herself to introduce him to all the different foods Los Angeles had to offer. Cordelia had taken charge of buying him some clothes, and Gunn and Groo helped him with his weapons training. Wesley had been excused training with Connor on the grounds that he was still recovering, but, although he had strongly refuted that he was not back to normal fitness, after seeing the way Connor threw Gunn and Groo around he had decided there were worse things than convalescence. Angel had been forced to take over the training sessions, as the humans were just getting too badly bruised, and had come up with a scenario where the others took it in turns to be play vampires and vulnerable humans, so that Connor could not just attack everything in sight but had to learn how to switch from protective to offensive within seconds. Wesley had been delighted to see Angel and Connor fighting together as he knew from past sessions with Gunn that, whatever gulf of differences appeared to exist between you, once thrown into a combat situation a few times – or even a simulated combat situation – you simply became allies. The man whose culture you didn’t understand metamorphosing into the man who had your back when that last vampire attacked.
Connor had also learned that humans were far more breakable and bruiseable than he was, and was now taking care to pull his punches; he had also been completely thrown by the concept that vampires could be women, despite having known it intellectually. When Cordelia or Fred played the vampires his natural chivalry put them at a serious advantage, and it had taken him a while to overcome that. As Wesley had pointed out to Angel there were worse faults a boy of his age could have, but they decided that Buffy really did need to come and pay a visit so he could find out all about females of the species occasionally being a great deal deadlier than the male.
Connor regarded Lorne with deep hostility until the day he heard Lorne humming the lullaby he had used to sing to him. He charged into the green demon’s room to find Lorne packing his suitcases while looking sadly at a teddy bear, the discovery of which had sparked the lullaby.
“Sing that again,” Connor demanded breathlessly.
Lorne looked at him in surprise. “What do you want?”
“Please – sing it again, that music you were singing before. Please…”
It was certainly the first time Connor had said ‘please’ to Lorne, or anything that wasn’t prefaced by a muttered ‘filthy demon’. Lorne did as he asked and Connor sank onto his bed, taking the teddy bear from him and gazing at it fixedly. “That music was in my dream.”
“Not a dream, hellspawn, just your super-charged memory going back a little further than most of us can manage. I used to sing you to sleep with it.”
Connor gazed up at Lorne with something that was almost apology in his eyes. “The demons on Quor’toth – they don’t sing lullabies.” He noticed the suitcase. “You’re leaving? Why?”
“Well, one guess why, Junior demon killer who calls me ‘filthy demon’ every time he sees me. I don’t want a stake in the back. Quite apart from the imminent death part, I can never get blood out of silk.”
Connor began to unpack the suitcase. “No. You’re one of the pieces of the puzzle in my mind. You’re the music that I used to hear. I used to look for it. I thought it was playing on Quor’toth. It took me many years to realize it was only a memory.”
“Oh, I know how that feels.” Lorne opened his mouth to protest about the forced unpacking and then shrugged. “Music in your mind when you don’t know where it comes from? There wasn’t any music on Pylea either. That’s why I came here. There shouldn’t be any worlds without music.”
Connor looked up at him in surprise. “I suppose that’s why I came here too. To look for the music in my mind.”
Lorne shrugged. “And it turns out all the time it was filthy demon music, after all.”
“It made me feel safe.” Connor looked at the teddy bear again. “Whenever I heard the music in my memory, I knew that I was safe.”
Lorne took a deep breath and then decided to be as big a demon as he was. “You ever heard Aretha, sugarplum? Because, I’m thinking until you have, your life hasn’t really started…”
So, Lorne had stayed and become Connor’s official guide to all things musical in his new world. Wesley had suggested perhaps letting him follow the score of Benjamin Britten’s ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ while it was playing so he could see for himself how the notes represented the sounds made by the different instruments but everyone had looked at him as if he were slightly insane. Lorne had countered by suggesting that they dusted off the piano in one of those cobwebby back rooms and showed Connor how music was made in a much more real and immediate kind of way. They had done so and Connor had enjoyed himself immensely. Wesley feared it was only a matter of time before he asked for a guitar. He had unfortunately inherited Angel’s singing voice so they were all rather dreading that day.
By a process – as far as Wesley could tell – of no one else wanting the job, Wesley had been given the role of Connor’s tutor. Angel would hover around, looking over his shoulder and asking how Connor was doing, did he understand things, how well could he read? And Wesley would try to reassure him that Connor was very intelligent, had been well taught by Holtz, had old-fashioned views about science and geography and the like, of course, but Fred was teaching him maths and science while Wesley was working on his English and history and – most importantly – ethics. They had a lot of discussions about philosophy and theology, and some spirited arguments about it, too, as Wesley often didn’t agree with Holtz, and so far all of Connor’s opinions came directly from Holtz.
Connor had demanded to see the full history of all Angel’s past crimes, of course. Wesley had stared him down on that one and handed him an assignment on vampires which he gave him a week to complete, detailing all the different theories various scholars had come up with over the centuries explaining exactly what happened when a human was turned into a vampire. Showing the ingenuity of all teenagers, Connor had gone directly to the source, and asked Angel to tell him exactly how it felt when one became a vampire, if you had the memories of the person you’d been before, why didn’t you have the same morality, the same compassion, the same feelings of attachment to the humans you had loved when your heart had still had a rhythm?
“Because you’re not really who you were…” Angel explained. “You look the same way and you have those memories but all the things that bind you to humanity, the things that made you who you were, they’re not a part of you any more. You don’t feel pity or remorse or compassion or love or tenderness. You just feel the hunger all the time, the hunger for blood and pain and the suffering of others. You feel more alive than you ever did before, so free because you don’t have all those petty little spasms of conscience that make being human such a misery… but you’re dead, you’re dead inside, because all those things that make you human, they’re the only things that matter, and being human it’s a gift you never even think about until you don’t have it any more…”
Only after Connor had handed in his paper – with lots of inkblots and so many loops and swirls from his copperplate handwriting that Wesley decided Cordelia definitely needed to step up those typing lessons – did Wesley agree to discuss Angelus with him. Wesley had certainly given him more assistance with the assignment than he would have done with a boy of Connor’s age who had a more ‘normal’ upbringing, giving him the pages in the books he wanted him to reference rather than just a bibliography, but Connor had at least read the chapters he’d given him and seemed to have thought about the different theories in some detail. He’d also added a conclusion about the importance of the human soul that was half Holtzian eighteenth century Christianity and half completely Connor. He had touched briefly on free will and how there was still no proof that an evil creature had no choice but to be evil but that if someone who had never committed a truly evil act before they became a vampire acted evil afterwards then it seemed to be the fault of the vampire nature, not the original human. He had concluded that as a vampire was a demon inhabiting a human corpse then it was entirely a demon, as the human had no control over what was done with its dead body.
Wesley had read it with close attention while Connor fidgeted anxiously in the doorway. Wesley had made mild questioning comments in the margins whenever he found a piece of lazy thinking or something that felt as if it had come from Holtz unquestioningly instead of directly from Connor, but he had also gone out of his way to find things to praise, relieved that Connor did indeed have a good mind and a knack of expressing himself clearly and intelligently that truly merited praise.
He had finished with a summary of the reasons why Connor’s essay was well-reasoned but asked him to consider other questions in the future. Was it possible that the natural human condition tended towards evil, for instance? Did becoming a vampire free up a human to indulge himself in cruelty which he would otherwise be unable to enjoy because of the promptings of his conscience? Were the rules of God and Man that humankind had dreamt up to keep itself in check the only thing preventing every human from acting like a soulless vampire? Was it their feeling of disassociation from society and humanity that gave vampires their feelings of superiority? And how had both vampirism and the thin veneer of civilization that bound society together been addressed in human literature? Then he had handed Connor a copy of Dracula and Lord of the Flies and asked him to write about how reading them had made him feel about the questions they’d been discussing.
After a few weeks of getting Connor to ask himself questions about the nature of good and evil and nudging towards him a place where he could accept that life was not perhaps quite as black and white as Holtz had painted it to him, he told him that he could read everything Wesley had on Angelus – on condition that he first read through all the Angel Investigations files first so he could see for himself the difference in the way a vampire functioned with and without a soul.
Wesley had done his best to make it appear that this was just part of their philosophy lessons – the best example they had to hand to see the result of the soul in action. But inwardly he was crossing every finger and toe he possessed that he was handling this situation correctly. He wanted above all things for Connor to see the good in Angel and to allow himself to love his father without feeling that he was betraying Holtz. To be able to do that Connor needed to see that the demon who had murdered Holtz’s family was not the father who had held Connor in his arms as a baby.
Connor read through both files with interest and then looked up at Wesley. “You always want me to tell you what I think but you never tell me what you think.”
“Okay.” Wesley took a chair and sat on it. “What do you want to ask me?”
“What do you think the relationship is between what my father is now and what he was before?”
For a moment Wesley thought Connor was asking him some philosophical question about Holtz’s place in the afterlife, and whether or not he had won himself a place in heaven, but then he realized he meant Angel. He had to think that was a good sign in itself.
“I think that just as the demon who killed the human being that Angel used to be had access to his memories without ever having lived his life, so Angel has access to the memories of being Angelus without being the person who performed those deeds. I think that the person he is now was born when Angelus, the vampire, had Liam’s human soul forced back inside him. I think that who Angel is now is neither Angelus nor Liam but a third and separate entity who shares their memories.”
“What else do you think?” Connor pressed.
Wesley shrugged. “That Angel is noble and good and has done more to make the world a better place for humanity than anyone else I know.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Connor put his head on one side. “You’re a strange man.”
Dryly, Wesley said, “Thank you.”
He was surprised to see Connor smile. After a pause the boy said, “Could you kill Angelus? If he came back?”
“If he was threatening Fred or Cordelia, yes.”
Connor examined him closely. “What if he was threatening you?”
Wesley had to stop and think about that one. He remembered Angelus in that darkened office advancing towards him, and in between the fear, the terrible anxiety for Cordelia and Miss Lowell the realization that Angel was still in there somewhere; that this was the moment Angel had told them to be ready for and he wasn’t, because there was a stake in that drawer and he was trying to think of every way he could not to have to pick it up. “I – don’t know. Angel does so much good. More than I ever could. He has an eternity in which to assist mankind – and there’s the prophecies and…”
Connor patted Wesley gently on the shoulder. “It’s okay. He’s told me what to do. If he turns, stand behind me. I’ll do what has to be done.”
Wesley didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, or what to make of Connor’s fascination with the Doximoll incident. Connor reread that file again now and after demanding that Wesley clarified a few things about what had happened, what exactly had been said and done, went off to talk to Angel about it, cornering the vampire in his room where he had sneaked off to try to drink some blood unseen.
“Did you want to say those things to Wesley and Cordelia when you were…you…?”
“No.” Angel looked surprised at the question. “I didn’t.”
“But you hadn’t really lost your soul, you just thought you had. So Angelus couldn’t really have been there, could he?”
“It felt as if he was.” Angel sat down on the bed with a sigh.
“Do you think you want to do bad things but you have to stop yourself all the time?”
“I’m not sure. I remember doing them. I remember enjoying them. But I hate myself for doing them and for enjoying them.”
Connor sat on the bed next to him. “Wesley says the person who committed those crimes wasn’t you.”
“That’s what Wesley believes.”
“What do you believe?”
Angel looked at his hands. “I know the demon is still in me. I’m not human. I’m a vampire. I can access that demon to make myself stronger, to heal faster, to jump higher, kill better. Angelus is always with me. He’s always there. I just can’t afford to let him take control.”
Connor considered that for a long moment. “But what about the humans with souls who commit murders? Do they have demons inside them as well?”
“I think there is darkness in every one. I think there was a darkness in me before I became Angelus. Maybe if someone had a completely pure soul a vampire wouldn’t be able to make it like itself. I don’t know. I don’t have any more answers than some of the people who wrote those books.”
Connor sighed. “Wesley says you’re good.”
“Wesley believes that. Wesley believes a lot of things. He’s a clever guy but he’s not right about everything. And in the end it doesn’t matter what anyone else believes, it’s what you believe that counts.”
“I think you killed a lot of people. I think you’ve saved a lot of people. I think the world doesn’t make any kind of sense. And if the soul is our connection to God and now you have one why can’t you touch a crucifix without it burning you?”
“Because I’m still a demon? Or because I believe it can hurt me? Because I believe God hates me? Because he really does?” Angel shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“The vampires who fed on Wesley? Who were they? What happened to them? Why didn’t they kill him?”
“They didn’t kill him because they liked hurting him too much to want to give that up. They came here after him, and Cordelia and Fred and Gunn killed them.”
“If they’d turned him into a vampire what would you have done?”
Angel closed his eyes. “When your mother was turned into a vampire I thought if I staked her it would give her some peace, stop her killing again. But now I wonder if I’d done that would I have sent her to hell? She would have died damned. The way she died, she was sharing your soul. Maybe she didn’t go to hell this time. If they’d turned Wesley and I killed him would I be condemning him to hell? Should I try to get his soul back? And if I did that, then I’d be condemning him to a life like this, drinking blood, living in the shadows, spurned by humanity, but wanting to help them, and the hunger with you all the time…”
“Would you do it?” Connor demanded. “And if he was dying, if there was no other way to save him, would you make him like you?”
Angel grimaced. “I don’t know, Connor. And I really don’t want to think about it.”
“Wesley said vampires think they’re better than humans. Don’t you think that?”
“No.” Angel looked aghast. “Of course not. Maybe vampires only tell themselves that to block out how cold they feel.”
“I think there’s a darkness in me,” Connor said thoughtfully. “I enjoyed killing on Quor’toth.”
Angel looked into his eyes. “Did you enjoy hurting Wesley? When you cut him with the knife and he bled did you enjoy that?”
Connor frowned. “No. I don’t think so. I remember being angry with him because he wouldn’t fight back and I wanted to kill someone because my father was dead.” He looked at Angel sideways. “Both of them, actually.”
“If you’d been a vampire it wouldn’t have mattered if he fought back or not, you would still have gone on hurting him. That’s the difference between being angry and grieving and not having a soul. I hurt him too when I was angry and grieving. I tried to kill him.”
Connor half-smiled. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“If you’d tried to kill him he’d be dead.”
Wesley heard that as he came to look for Connor, for a moment he stood in the corridor outside Angel’s room, knowing Angel could hear his heartbeat and Connor could probably pick up his scent. For a second he was back in that hospital with the pillow over his head and Angel screaming all that hate and anger at him.
“I was lucky,” Angel said quietly. “There are some things you can never put right again. If Gunn hadn’t been there… It’s too easy for people like us to kill, Connor. Because we’re stronger and faster and we’re harder to really injure. But that just means we have to be extra careful, because it’s something you can’t ever undo, you can’t ever take it back. You just have to live with it, even when you can’t live with it, but you don’t have the choice not to because there’s no way to make amends if you’re dead.”
Wesley knocked on the door. “Connor, you left half my files scattered over the office floor and Fred wants to show you how gravity works.”
Connor sprang to his feet. “I know how gravity works. She told me all about Isaac Newton yesterday.”
Wesley shrugged. “I suspect this lesson will involve eating large quantities of tacos and then dropping things from a great height to see what kind of a splat they make.”
“Cool!” Connor slapped Wesley on the shoulder as he went past. “I can pick up those files later, yes?”
“No,” Wesley assured him. “You can pick them up now and put them back in the right order.”
Rolling his eyes and muttering something under his breath about the anal retentiveness of certain skinny white Englishmen that sounded as if it was copied verbatim from Gunn, Connor sped off at a sprint before leaping gracefully over the banister to land in the lobby with perfect balance. Wesley and Angel both watched him springing over to where Fred and Gunn were waiting for him.
“You’re really going to let him touch your files?” Angel enquired in surprise. “Because last time I checked he learned his filing system from Cordelia.”
“Good point.” Wesley darted to the head of the stairs and hastily shouted down to Connor that he could leave the files, just this once, as he didn’t want to stop Fred getting her lunch.
“Did someone say lunch?” Cordelia appeared from the office, looking very over-dressed for filing and with Groo on her arm. “How about we take Connor somewhere swankier than Taco Bell? I was just thinking I haven’t really shown Groo any of the nice places in LA, only the – alleys that smell of urine and have rats in them, which all those squishy demons seem to like so much. Lorne? Do you want to come with us for lunch?”
“No, thank you, pumpkin,” Lorne assured her. “I’m planning to take Junior out to some sleazy demon bars later this week and need to pace myself hangover wise.”
“You’re planning to what…?” Angel demanded.
Connor waved a hand at him. “Cool it, Dad. Gunn’s coming too. They’re going to show me the seamy side of LA.”
Angel started at that ‘Dad’ but managed to get his voice under control enough to say: “And this is supposed to reassure me, why exactly…?”
“Can we argue about it later?” Connor pleaded. “My stomach’s rumbling and you know how dangerous Fred gets when she’s hungry.”
Angel waited until they were outside of the doors and definitely out of earshot before he grabbed Wesley by the shoulders. “He called me ‘Dad’.”
“I know.” Wesley beamed back at him.
Then Angel enveloped him in a hug that made his ribs ache but not with pain. “We got him back, Wes,” he breathed. “We got him back.”
Wesley looked after the departing group in happy bewilderment. Connor was play-punching Gunn in the ribs and Fred was pretending to pull his ear in reprimand. Cordelia was laughing at something Groo had said. “I never thought for a minute that… I really think we did, Angel. I think he wants to be here.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go to my place – I have some books I think he’d find interesting and I need to get some more clothes.”
“You should give up that apartment,” Angel said unexpectedly.
Wesley gaped at him. “What?”
“Well, we have a limited income. It doesn’t make any sense for you to be paying rent for an apartment when we’re already paying rent on this place and there are all these rooms standing empty. I know Cordy needs her own place because of Groo and – Dennis and being a girl and everything but as Fred and Gunn and Connor and Lorne are already here and you…”
“…have no life?”
“Exactly.”
“I – don’t know what to say.”
“I’m suggesting you move in, Wes, not that we get married and buy a dog.”
Wesley feigned disappointment. “We can’t have a dog?”
“Look, if you hate the idea of not being able to get away from the rest of us...”
“Oh, I definitely hate that idea,” Wesley assured him. “But you’re right about the limited resources. And I suppose we do make ourselves vulnerable by having separate places...” He remembered the knife flashing, the sensation of the blade cutting his throat, that second when he didn’t realize what had happened until the pain hit and he felt the blood spilling. He didn’t even know he was stumbling until Angel caught him by the arms and held him steady.
“Wes…?”
He collected himself with an effort. “Groo escorts Cordelia home and I hope the visions would warn her if she were in any serious danger, but perhaps it might be more cost-effective for me to move in here, and it would solve that problem of the books I want always either being in the office when I’m home or at home when I’m in the office.”
“I could come with you now. Help you get stuff?” Angel suggested.
“It would make more sense for Gunn to take me in his truck. And there is the whole – daylight issue as well.”
Angel seemed to notice the sunshine for the first time. “Oh yes. Okay. But do it soon.”
Wesley frowned at him. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Angel sighed. “No, yes… It’s just – Wolfram & Hart were sniffing around your place a couple of weeks ago. Wanted to ask Gunn some questions when he was picking up some of your stuff. It’s probably nothing but I’d feel happier if you were staying here every evening and not going off by yourself to an empty apartment.” There was a pause before Angel said intently, “I don’t want anything else happening to you. Connor isn’t the only one I just got back.”
