Title: Poker : Sacrificed Hands
Author: BJC (Natauni)
Posted: 08-09-2003
Email:
Rating: R defintely, for language, adult situations
Category:
Content:
Summary:
Spoilers: through Angel S5: I dabble in anything out there including rumors for season 5. BEWARE. Be warned.
Disclaimer: The characters in the Angelverse were created by Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: NF, the rest just ask
Notes: Okay I haven't had the time (nor the urge) to write for MONTHS but I'm sitting on my computer harmless surfing the net when BOOM this hits me, so I thought I'd give it a go and hope sharing it with ya'll force the muse to stick around. I'm suspecting more within a day or so (cause I'm literally forcing myself to stop and go to bed) but let me know if you're interested...
Feedback:Part 1
The sad truth is that most days the pathetic dork doesn't even have an inkling that I'm still around.
To say this is depressing would be the understatement of the century. I mean yes, I don't deny that despite the infamous Chase sense of style and ever increasing kick-ass attitude of the past two years or so, some things in my life have changed very little, no matter what level - or plane; stop being such a butthead about the specifics - one happens to be on. It's funny really in that half sick, half ironic way you come to view the world when you realise how absolutely screwed up you supposedly 'with it' life suddenly ended up being.
I used to be the bitch of Sunnydale and then I was the Seer of LA; both jobs were mostly thankless and based upon a common misconception that I understood my place and role in the world. Unfortunately I grasped pretty much squat.
I was happy - happier than I've ever been in my life, and then it all fell apart.
Why? How? You're asking me? I didn't exactly purchase a ticket for this ride you know. More like got dragged onto the vehicle at gunpoint. One minute I was a member of a (fairly) sucessful investigative agency with good friends, a vampire I was possibly-in-love-with and a cute baby turned sulky-teen, and the next I was up here - living on tidbits as they came in from the front, my inter-dimensional vid-link, and this really BAD stuff that I suppose is this place's version of coffee.
My life lately has been a mishmash of 'catch-up-time.' I hit the files each morning, than head for Wolfram and Hart with two or three others assigned there on guard-duty.
Let me tell you - when we manage to screw them over - despite their wards, I feel like life may eventually get somewhere back around worth living.
Living. Well sort of. Hard to say you're living when you're really more a sentient consciousness than anything else. I asked one of the others once if I'm a ghost - they said only way to do that would have been to shut off all the machines to my body - not so great an idea - so I'll accept 'temporarily non-corporeal presence.' It's funny - how BADLY I want my body back. Even if I'm likely gonna have to spend the next ten years doing purification rituals before I'll feel completely clean in it.
Yeah. That. I know about what happened. To 'me.' Because of 'me.' If I'd had the faintest clue when Skip first offered me the choice on my birthday...well I'd have gotten a whole lot more drunk. Lots more tequila.
I wouldn't change it. That's the kicker. Even now - knowing what was done I wouldn't change my demon aspect or the resulting afteraffects...because it IS possible for a situation to be even more screwed up than it is at present.Angel tried to tell the Powers I was 'weak' that day. He wanted to save my life. I never told him I saw of course... If I live through this I'll have to.
So ironic - so many paths - if he only knew that he effectively pissed me into making a choice that everyone, even the powers, had assumed was an absolute gamble.
So yeah - life bites right now. BIG TIME. Helpless are waiting, they're using CHEAP shampoo on my hair and right now AI is spear-heading a corporation so drenched in evil that feng can be shui-ed to the end of time and they're still gonna take ten steps back for each totter forward. I realise that I probably should be furious, or possibly catatonic with the sheer level of *bad* that's been done to me and mine in the past night-worthy course of months, and let me tell you if I ever suceed in getting back to the mortal coil I fully intend to have that full scale nervous-breakdown-followed-by-massive-hissy-fit that the situation calls for...
Right now though, I'm practising the oldest rule of all in the Cordelia-rulebook for survival. Find whoever is writing this *@&^# I call my life, dung-bomb their offices, and GET BACK MY BODY.
That's not too much to ask is it? Really? I'm not being at all unreasonable in my take on things - my assertion that having my fair self taken care of by the law firm that made a career out of torturing me is more than a little..well... squicky. I'm not going to ask what Angel and the others were possibly thinking because the problem was they *were* - they just weren't thinking with an accurate picture of reality.Skip really managed to screw their heads over. Of course I know he had to but he could have been a little less gleeful in his whole 'double agent' spiel...there's convincing AI (the former) that you're an actual minion of satan, and then there's doing it convincingly. Yes, I know long run he's still on our side and yes, the whole you're-nothing-but-pawns routine left him nauseous, drunk and disgustingly soppy.
You should have seen him the night he told me what he'd had to do. I swear I thought he was as crushed as the average six-year old who got told that there'd be no more Christmas or fun-time ever again cause Santa left Mrs Claus for the Tooth Fairy.
That was a good two months ago...right after I got back. "In there but not driving" my ass.
That's the only good thing, or as close to that word as exists at this point in time, about the situation. The whole 'evil, incestuous, HOW IN THE HECK DID YOU NOT KNOW IT WASN'T ME' phase was happily ex-cheerleader free. Cordelia had left the building. Tah-tah, buh-bye, see you later. The whole 'sharing a mind with a demon/slash world savior who likes to snack on people as part of her utopian society' - not so happening. Apparently the Powers assumed -correctly - that I would have lost it or managed to hissy-fit my way back into control. So they decided to schedule a little 'extended education' coursework for me instead. It was my body yes, and there's gonna be hell to pay for both the trauma and the stretch marks, but at least I only had to live it in a kind of video-fast-foward.
I've got the memories yes, but they're all disconnected emotionally. Hey it's something.
I still remember the day I got here - it seems like a lifetime ago. I was so excited till I woke up after 'a short-little nap' and the Powers called me in for my first situation briefing.
I'll tell you this - I'm glad they let me take that rest. I haven't closed my eyes since that evening.
So fragile - the worlds we hold in our hands. The bones we break - or re-break to correct bad healing.
"It's necessary." That's what they've said time after time after time since this started. Words meant to reassure that were in fact the biggest load of bull-hockey I've ever heard. Not because they weren't true mind you, but more because I don't care how 'necessary' something may be, it doesn't change the fact that it's completely horrible.
I cried for twenty-four hours straight the first time I really understood. I don't cry anymore.
I'm the 'last, best hope.' How Star Trek is that? They took me when I did because I was to be the wild card of Angel Investigations. You see that little speech Gunn made around the time Skip showed up and started playing Dr Jeckyl to his Mr Hyde about there always being a crap-shoot? He nailed it in one. We're embroiled in the deadliest poker game of all existance and 'saving me' from all that happened - even in this form - was the one way for the good guys to bend the rules.
My real role in this is to get Angel's attention long enough to tell him the Powers (or at least the ones on his team) CHEAT at poker.
Now if the Butthead would just stop whining about Spike and playing boss-man to 'the law offices of all evil' long enough to PAY ATTENTION we might just get somewhere.
TBC