Title: Moments
Author: Lurknomore
Posted: 07-02-2002
Rating: PG
Email:
Content:
Summary: Angel, Cordelia and Wesley. Post Loyalty
Spoilers: Through Loyalty.
Disclaimer: Mutant Enemy, Greenwalt, etc. own. I don't. Ergo, no suing.
Distribution:
Notes: Umm, drabbles. More of a literary exercise than anything else.
Feedback: Feedback mucho appreciated
Angel sketches.
Sleeping Connor. Crying Connor. Yawning Connor.
He knows sketching can't fix it. But he's tried raging, spell casting, and dimension jumping to find Connor, and none of them worked. Killing Wesley would relieve his feelings, but this would be a temporary respite. Now he is afraid. He is afraid he will forget the feel of his son's small body resting on his chest. He's afraid he'll never forget the sight of Holtz jumping through the jagged opening into a place Angel can't follow. He is afraid of what Cordelia will say when she returns. He is afraid that watching her face as he tells her that Connor is gone will be final, incontrovertible proof that Connor is gone, and that Angel can never do enough good.
So he sketches.
Laughing Connor. Laughing Cordelia.
Angel sketches to hide from the fear that he has gotten what he truly deserves.
***********
Cordelia stands on a balcony and thinks about the ocean.
At home, she doesn't have time to think about the ocean or how beautifully the sunset plays over its surface. At home she thinks about paying bills, or the best way to kill a Kranthow demon.
Things not nearly as nice as the ocean. The ocean is pretty. She worries for a moment, because she thought she'd grown past taking easy pleasure in a shiny surface. But then she decides that there's more to it than that. After all, the ocean changes constantly, and its depths hide many things, good and bad, under its sparkling surface. It reminds her of Angel, a little.
She wonders what Angel is doing at that moment. Feeding Connor, or laughing as Connor blows a bubble? Is he --
She hears Groo stirring inside the suite, and turns away from the possible to the real.
***********
Wesley watches his IV drip and concentrates on breathing evenly.
The drip is soothing; there's an inevitability to it that he finds pleasing.
He wonders if recent disasters are subject to the same inevitability, or if he did something to cause them. It must be him, after all - God knows his earliest memory is of Father pointing out his inadequacies and general incompetence. So which decision was it? To keep it all secret? To -
One of the machines beeps warningly and Wesley steadies his breathing.
He watches the drip.
And it occurs to him. Perhaps, he thinks, it wasn't actions that caused this. Perhaps it was watching.
Watching Angel's behavior change with the baby. Watching Fred make her choice. Watching Angel fall under Darla's spell. Always watching, never doing.
Watching everyone turn away, breathing sighs of relief, to return to their own, more interesting lives.
Wesley closes his eyes.
End.