What It Means To Be Alive
By Hephaestus
Page 5 of 7
Disclaimer: Joss owns all. No copyright infringement is intended.
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Chapter 21
Fred put Allyson in her crib. The infant had ceased her crying and settled down long before Fred had felt any kind of calm. The baby did not seem any the worse for wear.
Fred felt like an emotional punching bag. She wondered if their marriage could survive the past day. Remembering everything he had done, and the reasons behind his actions, she found sympathy within her. He was not a bad man, he loved too much and he did not rely on others as he should. Everyone she loved was guilty of those same crimes.
Turning to her husband, she watched him drink in the view before him. The look on his face conveyed all she needed to know. Going to him, she wrapped her arms around him. She could not convince herself that she did not love this man.
"Am I inherently bad?" His voice was a whisper.
She answered him quietly. "We all are. No one is inherently good, if they were, they wouldn't be human."
"I've made so many mistakes."
"Who hasn't?"
They stood in silence for a long time. He wondered if he should leave. If he should go far away, where no one knew him. Perhaps, if he no longer existed, the pain he had caused the people he loved would be lessened. The woman sitting next to him, leaning in the crook of his arm, convinced him he couldn't run away.
"Fred... where do we go from here? How can we move on from... from finding out the last four years were predicated on a lie?"
She took the time to answer his question with the weight it deserved. "Wesley, it's not a lie. The lives we saved, the lives we will save, are not a lie. The people we help are not a lie.
Angel didn't tell us the real reason why he was joining Wolfram and Hart, but he didn't ask us to come along either. We made that choice and that choice was not predicated on a lie. We joined to destroy the beast from the inside out. We did, and we rebuilt it and made it into something good.
I can't miss Connor because I don't know him. I knew a baby and I knew a very dangerous teenager. I don't know who he is today. I can't feel sorry for him, because... I think I would do the same thing for Allyson. If she was in so much pain that the only way to take it away would be to erase everything she had ever known... I would do it.
We will move on. We have never faced anything so bad that we could not move on from it. This will not be set that precedent."
They sat in silence for a while longer. Wesley wanted to respond, but his mind was shutting down. He was so tired, he admitted, that he could no longer think. Sensing this, Fred rose and took his hand. They walked to bed together, hand in hand.
Wesley was not the man who had stolen Connor based on a false prophecy. That was a man from a long time ago, Fred thought. This man is the man I love, the man who would do anything to save those he loves, she thought. This man defends his family to the ends of the Earth.
Wesley wondered if he could repair what he had done. He wondered if Angel would have the family he so wanted. The last thought in Wes's mind as he drifted to sleep was if he could keep the family he had now.
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Chapter 22
She sat, exhausted. She had expended more energy with her powers in the past few hours than she had in the past year. Using the connection between Buffy and Angel to pull him from hell had sucked her dry, and she hadn't been able to stop there. Now, she was in her house on the bluffs, listening to the breakers far below. It was her favorite sound, she realized.
It was now the very early hours of the morning, but Cerise had still come when Willow had called her. Looking towards the bedroom, she heard Cerise rustling around in the sheets. Willow had called her lover soon after her return, needing the comfort of human companionship after her trying late night activities. Cerise had been there in mere minutes.
Wondering if she would ever get to see her friends when it was not a dire emergency, she sat down in the living room and sipped her tea. On her desk, under the piles of slayer files, was the letter she had been working on for two weeks. It was the letter that would propose that Wolfram and Hart bear half the responsibility for the American Academy of Slayers.
It had taken months to work up the courage to write it, and it was taking her weeks to phrase it correctly. Giles would balk at it, and he was the one that had to approve it. Her arguments had to be perfect and unimpeachable. Angel would be difficult to convince, but she was sure Buffy would approve. Willow was counting on Buffy being the liaison for the Council and Wolfram and Hart.
It was a partnership Willow could see no way around. Wolfram and Hart was working to create a balance in this dimension, and the Council had the largest army of people who could help in that process at their disposal.
The two organizations were working towards the same conclusion; it seemed ludicrous that they should not do it together. Willow knew that if they could join forces, the Council would have the financial backing they sorely needed and the respect of the demon community in spades.
Wolfram and Hart had been in existence for centuries. They were perhaps the most powerful single entity in their dimension. The Council was still struggling to regain its stature and power. What they lacked in gravitas, they made up for in soldiers. They commanded five hundred slayers, and the number seemed to be growing daily.
The thirteen hundred slayers not affiliated with the Council were starting to consider joining, one by one. They all needed leadership. Willow and Giles had been at a loss as to how to give that leadership to such vast numbers. The watchers they employed were of the caliber Wesley had been when he had been assigned to Faith.
They were too green, too naïve. The Council could not survive if they did not have help. The best form of help Willow could see was Wolfram and Hart. She and Giles had been trying to single handedly lead the Council, but she had begun to realize that they were not keeping their heads above water. Financially, they were fairly secure, but opening a third school was not going to be monetarily easy.
She and Giles knew how they wanted to run their organization, but they didn't quite know how to get to the point where they could run it as they wished. The rebuilding phase was still ongoing, and she wondered how long they could continue without enough capable leaders.
A few of the slayers that had trained with Buffy in Sunnydale were teaching classes and acting as mentors, but Willow had been hard pressed to find instructors for courses that were beyond the kin of those slayers. They themselves were still a little green.
Angel would be able to find people to teach tactics, weaponry, and other courses. They needed experts to teach these new slayers. The Council had only been operational for a little over two years, before that there had been a hodgepodge of small groups that trained together lead by inexperienced fighters and teachers. Giles had tried to unite the slayers, but it had proved difficult.
They were now at a point that they could become successful with the right backing. Willow was sure that they could get that backing if Giles and Angel could come to some kind of agreement. That would be hard, she knew, they still were not on the best of terms. They had forgiven each other for past wrong doing, but only to a certain extent.
Smiling, she looked into the bedroom at a beautiful and naked woman standing in the doorway. Putting her plans aside for the time being, she decided there were better things to do with the rest of the time she could stay awake.
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Chapter 23
Angel was still tired. He had woken up to Buffy pacing in and out of the bathroom under the premise of showering and dressing. She had showered and dressed much quietly before, and he suspected she just wanted him to wake up.
They would all have to go to work, but before anyone did that, they were meeting at Angel and Buffy's home in the hills. Angel dreaded the coming encounter. Now, he knew he was going to have to talk to Buffy as well, in private. She looked like she was going to be in rare form today.
He rose, exhausted and sore, and dragged himself to the bathroom. Splashing cold water on his face did not have the desired effect of waking him up. It just made his face cold.
Buffy had made coffee, and pushed a mug into Angel's hand before he could greet her. Oh yes, he thought, she is ready to get to it. Indeed, she wasted no time before launching into a verbal tirade on messing with memories and betraying friends' trust.
He let her continue unbridled, sipping his coffee and trying to look half awake and maybe a quarter of the way intelligent. He wondered if he was actually doing either. There were moments he could swear his eye lids closed for longer than a few seconds without him explicitly telling them to so.
She snapped her fingers in front of face, obviously upset he wasn't paying attention. "Are you listening to me? Angel, what you did was so wrong I can't even comprehend it. But... I understand. I think I understand. You need to explain it me. Please."
Taking a deep breath, he started into the story of Connor. He started at the beginning, him trying to lose his soul by sleeping with Darla, and continued through Connor's short life with him. He skimmed over the parts where Connor locked him a steel coffin and sent him to the bottom of the ocean. By the time he reached the part where Connor strapped a bomb to himself and took civilians hostage in a mall, Angel was fairly sure she understood his decision a little better.
She stayed quiet for a while. She wanted to cry for both father and son. Knowing her hormones were making her a little emotional, she stayed quiet for a long time. When she was sure she could control her emotions, she faced Angel again and spoke.
"I get it. He was... he was too damaged. I understand a little better. But... Angel, you can't just erase people when things get hard. I mean, you basically took the most shattering thing to ever happen to you and pretended it didn't. And then you wonder why your friends don't get you."
"I never wondered that. I always knew why they didn't get me."
"Angel! Don't be obtuse! You and Wesley were not okay, and your idea of making it all okay was to erase it from ever happening. What will you two do now? Now that he remembers?"
That gave him pause. He didn't know what to do with Wesley. He understood his actions in relation to Allyson, but he could not bring himself to forgive Wesley for the man's mistakes with Connor. Wesley had screwed up so much... he stopped himself. Gunn had screwed up with Fred, too, resulting in the death of their friend.
They had somehow found a way to forgive Gunn; even Fred didn't hold a grudge. Angel reasoned that they all believed Wolfram and Hart had corrupted Gunn somehow. They had never truly dealt with the idea that Gunn had acted independently of then-evil company.
Angel knew he had made mistakes. He had dealt with Connor poorly, and had regretted that every day of his life since then. He had made mistakes with Kate, with Cordy. Most of all with Buffy. He wondered if he could blame Wes, for doing something stupid but which he thought was right, knowing that he, himself, had made so many glaring mistakes.
The nature of being human, he thought. Even those who weren't technically human. They all made mistakes. Wesley's mistake had cost him his son, though, and he wasn't sure he could get over that, especially now that Wesley knew what had happened.
"Buffy... I don't know what to do with Wesley. I know... he regrets what happened. So do I. I don't know if I can ever get over it, though. I still miss Connor. Every day. How can I get over that now, with everyone knowing?"
"You can't let the fact that your friends remember their own lives stop you from moving on with yours."
"I have moved on!" He stood, his anger rising. "I moved on! You're here, and I'm not a drunk anymore, and the company is doing better than it ever has! I'm moving ahead with my life..."
"And yet, here we are, you still not dealing with the loss of your son. Angel, I can't imagine..." Her hand was on her belly; her thoughts were with her child. The pain she felt was real and very pronounced at the thought of someone taking her baby from her. And she hadn't even really met her baby yet.
She couldn't imagine holding and caring for and loving a child for as long as Angel did only to have him snatched away. She wanted to cry, she wanted to beat Wesley up, but she understood he hadn't meant for it to happen that way.
The doorbell interrupted her thoughts. Smiling at Angel, she assumed it was someone arriving early for their family meeting. When she opened the door, a young man around Dawn's age with mid length brown hair swept out of his face was standing in front of her.
Buffy's jaw dropped.
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Chapter 24
He had Darla's eyes, Angel's lips and nose, and a combination of his parents' hair. It was fine and smooth like his mothers' and dark like his fathers'. He was a beautiful young man, Buffy decided. There was a mischievous intelligence in his eyes, and a slight upward curving smirk on his lips. He looked like the kind of man that had a brazen sense of courage but a very sensitive soul. Buffy decided all this in the minute she stared at him in the doorway.
"Is Angel home?" His voice was smoother and lighter than Angel's. It had a tint of mirth to it.
Nodding, she motioned for him to come in and pointed towards the kitchen. She watched as he walked through her home in blue jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. His frame was thin but he was muscular beneath his slight build.
Angel turned towards the living room in time for him to see his son walk through the foyer and right towards him. He froze, his mind stopped working, and his stomach started to flip flop inside his body. His son was standing in front of him. His adult son, whom he had not seen in almost four years, was standing in his living room.
His voice was dry when it escaped his body. "Connor."
Nodding slowly, Connor took his biological parent in. The man looked a little worse for wear. There was a large cut above one eye; he was wearing a robe that did not hide the dark discolorations of skin on his chest. There were long, thin, cuts on this abdomen, and his lip was split in the middle. Connor noticed lastly the fact that his fathers' heart was beating.
His heart's beating, Connor thought. That can't be right, Angel's a vampire. A vampire standing in a sun filled kitchen slicing fruit. This can't be right, Connor thought.
Angel saw the look of confusion on the young man's face and guessed what had caused it. "I'm human, now."
"I noticed. When did that happen?"
"After the final battle with Wolfram and Hart."
"Good for you."
Their taciturn tendencies made Buffy wonder if the conversation would progress to anything resembling constructiveness. They stood there staring at each other for a long time. They probably wouldn't have moved for a few more minutes if Buffy had not cleared her throat.
"I'm Buffy." Extending her hand, the young man shook it with a grin. The grin widened to a smile as he looked at her. Buffy's eyes narrowed at that look. She did not want to know what he was thinking, she decided. That look could not mean good things.
"Cordy told me about you. She didn't tell me you were this beautiful. And... uh... congratulations."
Angel scowled at the flattery of his girlfriend. His son had turned into Casanova, he reflected wryly. He waited for Connor to turn back to him when Buffy said nothing in return to his compliment. Angel was not going to be the first to speak, he vowed.
Connor had no problem speaking first. "So... make up your mind, why don't you. I mean, you either want me to remember what I was or you don't. Stop f*king around."
"Watch your language."
"Don't tell me to watch my language, I'm not thirteen. Seriously, don't erase my memories again; this yo-yo thing is not healthy."
"You don't seem any worse for it."
Connor took a deep breath. They weren't getting anywhere. He briefly thought about hitting Angel. That had been the plan when he first collapsed in his apartment after a bright blue wave of light hit him. When he had been able to think again, he decided he would track Angel down and beat the living hell out of him.
It had taken him most of the afternoon to find out where Angel lived. He wasn't listed in the phone book, and Wolfram and Hart would not give out that information. The witch he went to in Santa Monica said that she would need something that once belonged to Angel in order to do a locating spell. Reluctantly, Connor had admitted that he was Angel's son, but didn't have anything else that Angel once had. The witch said that Connor was good enough, and had used him to do the spell.
It had taken Connor most of the night to get up the courage to go find his father. The memories were still raw. He also remembered getting his memories the first time. What had happened to erase them again, he wondered. Did Angel get nervous for his sanity yet again? He hadn't thought he had done anything to warrant those concerns.
Driving into the hills, he had planned to hit Angel a few times, and yell a little, and then leave. It wasn't fair to continually toy with his reality. Connor needed to know, for sure, that he was going to keep the knowledge of who he had been in his past life.
"Are you going to mind-wipe me again or not?"
"No."
"Good." Turning on his heel, he headed for the door but was stopped by a very irate looking slayer. He couldn't bring himself to push a pregnant woman out of his way, so he crossed his arms and tried to look menacing. She laughed at him.
"Yeah, that look doesn't work on me. Especially since you're just about as cute as a kitten. Turn around before I turn you around. Now."
He thought about going for the door for a second and then realized she could probably take him, pregnant and all. He hadn't really been training during the past four years. He had played around a little in a gym, but he hadn't gotten serious. Buffy looked like she took her training very seriously.
There had been inklings. The few times he had trained seriously, he had felt as if he had never been alive before that moment. Playing football and hockey had come as second nature, but he had to be careful not to hurt other players. His teammates often joked he wasn't made of much, but what he was made of was all power. His slight build did not betray the power he knew lurked just under the surface.
His parents knew nothing of their son's instincts, his senses. He had never told them and didn't plan to. In his fake memories, he had taken martial arts classes as a child, up until he was sixteen. He had always explained away his acute knowledge of how the body could move in a fight with those classes. Now, he knew there were no martial arts classes.
Last year, he had gone to the bar for his twenty-first birthday. His friends had started a fight with two big guys, and even half drunk, Connor had floored them before they could think about throwing another punch. They had all laughed nervously afterward, and no one ever brought it up again. It was too weird to think about. Or, it had been too weird to think about. Now, he knew the real explanation behind his prowess.
"Totally human? No more blood or fangs?"
"Not totally. I have my senses, my strength. All the good things about being a vampire and all the good things about being a human. The scientists call us hybrids."
"You're like me?" The words were out of his mouth before he had truly thought about what he was saying.
Angels' throat closed a little. His son was in front of him, his brain kept repeating. He wanted to hug him, to hear everything Connor had done and been through since he had last seen him. Finally, he made himself speak. It was time to be honest, he told himself.
"Yeah, I'm like you. Connor... I won't erase your memories again. I just wanted... I just wanted you to have a life. A real life. I could never give you that. If you want to remember, that's fine. I'll respect that."
Nodding, Connor wondered at the man in front of him. Angel had always been strange, but this man was different in ways he couldn't explain to himself. The woman behind him was odd too. His senses told him she was human, but he could sense a power inside her that was anything but human. He wondered about he baby inside of her that was making his senses tingle. That baby wasn't human, not entirely. Connor thought briefly that his half sibling would be like him, not quite human.
"I want to remember. It's important I remember. It explains a lot."
Wanting to continue their conversation, Angel motioned to the living room and they moved to the couches. Angel sat in an overstuffed armchair, Connor sat on the couch. They only looked at each for a moment, Connor was still deciding if he liked the older man in front of him. He was having a hard time reconciling the man he had known with the man he was speaking to now.
Angel was the first to break the silence. "What do the memories explain?"
"I feel alive when I fight. More alive than I feel any other time. It's like I'm asleep through life and then I just wake up and everything makes sense. Anyway, I haven't been training lately; I've been kind of busy. When I did, though, it was like nothing else mattered. Now I know why I feel like that. I was born a warrior."
Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Angel drew a slow breath before answering. "You aren't just a warrior, Connor. You're more than that."
Shaking his head, Connor replied, "I know I'm not a killing machine, but I was born to swing a sword. I know that for sure."
"So what are you going to do now? Now that you remember?"
"I'm going to kill demons. I'll start training again, I'll patrol. I want to do all that, but I still want to live my life. I have a girlfriend, I have a family, I have a job. I need to keep all that going. You know? Like, I have a secret life now. But... it makes more sense to me now, too."
Nodding, Angel wondered what he was going to do with his son. The younger man needed training, he didn't look combat ready. In addition to training, he needed someone to confide in. Angel knew Connor would not be able to lead a double life without confiding about it to anyone.
"Connor, you could train with me. With my friend Will. With Buffy, after the baby's born, if she agrees to it. You need to train with someone that has the strength to challenge you."
Connor considered that, but wasn't able to answer his father. The doorbell was ringing.
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Chapter 25
The light didn't blind her anymore. She was almost used to it by now, and the years had been kind to her. Her life hadn't been easy; it was difficult to watch and be able to do little. They sent her to Earth sometimes, as a guide. She was able to help people; though it sickened her that she had to give such cryptic advice to the champions she was sent to.
They had even sent her to a few slayers. She had questioned the wisdom of what she was telling them, but months later, sometimes years later, she saw that The Powers were mostly right.
Being forbidden to see her friends had hurt her. She understood the reasons for that, though. She couldn't trust herself to give them cryptic information. Knowing that she would want to help them as much as she could, The Powers had confined her to another corner of the globe. They had forbidden her from seeing them, even in a disguised form.
She was often in disguise. It was rare that she showed her true face to people. There was little chance she would be recognized, but it was almost fun to look like other people when she was allowed to walk among the living.
Her death hadn't been fun. She hadn't gone quietly; not her. Queen C never went quietly. She understood though, after a while. So many horrible things had been done in her name; she was ashamed that her friends had thought she had conceived a hell god with a child.
Sighing, she watched her friends down below. At least, she thought it was down below. The relationships between space and three dimensional objects here were odd. She could look anywhere and see anything she wanted. Any part of the globe she could imagine was open to her.
So, when she glanced around and thought of Angel, she was greeted with a sight that made her heart stop. He was screaming. She felt a tug on her heart and knew he was calling to her. Focusing a little more, she gasped when he heard what Angel was asking of her.
It took her only a few moments to go to The Powers. They would not listen to reason. A baby, a newborn, was going to die, and her mother along with her, and they were not going to do anything about it. The Powers assuring her all would work out did not assuage the fears raging in her mind.
Angel was in pain, and when she focused in on Fred, the emotional torment she felt was too great to ignore. Her friends had suffered too much. It was time they had some kind of break. If she had to be the one to give that break, she would suffer the consequences later.
It was forbidden for her to have contact with them. She could not go to them; she could not interfere in their lives in any way. She was going to be in big trouble. All that meant nothing at that moment. Damning the consequences, she focused as much as she could.
Putting her hand on Angel's head, she breathed a bit of the power into him that she had years before. Leaning back and fading into her world once again, she watched the vision ravage his mind. He hadn't been expecting it, she knew.
It took only a fraction of a second for her world to shake and crumble. Screaming, the pain flowing through her like an avalanche, she almost begged for forgiveness. She managed to hold back before she felt herself plummeting.
It was like being dropped from a building with a seventy ton weight on her back. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't open her eyes; all she could do was hope and pray that she didn't land back in her body.
The consequences of her actions had crossed her mind, but the thought of revoking her status had never entered her thoughts. She was de-ascending, she realized. She was going to join the living again.
Panic flooded her mind for a brief second, when the yellowed and decaying material of the inside of the coffin flashed in front of her. The Powers weren't that cruel, though, and she quickly realized that she was lying in the damp grass, her hair becoming wet with dew.
The sun blinded her. It was too bright, everything was too green. The brightness of the grass hurt her eyes. Shielding herself, she tried to get into a better position, lying on her face in the grass wasn't very comfortable.
She wouldn't let herself cry. Choking back sobs, she got onto her hands and knees and stared at the gravestone in front of her.
The gravestone had the name Cordelia Chase engraved on it.
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