Author ~ Voleuse ~ website ~ journal
Title ~ May Day
Rating ~ R
Timeline ~ Post-Origin
Author's notes ~ Headings taken from from e.e. cumming's "Spring is like a perhaps hand."Challenge:
Story written for ~ Dana E.
Required character ~ Connor
Genre ~ author's choice, it's Spring I'd even take fluff or romance
One other requirement ~ A festival of some kind (art, religious, whatever you want)
Two restrictions (optional) ~ No character death and no slash
Spoiler level ~ S5 -aired (future stories okay without spoilers)
Rating level ~ Unrestricted
May Day
i. Spring is like a perhaps hand
His parents buy Connor a day's pass to a music festival some miles away, a silent apology for lying to him about the lawyer thing. He accepts, partly because it was really nice of them, and partly because he needs to get away from...everything.
He leaves the dorm early and drives out to the grounds, and is surprised to see a sea of people swarming so early. He parks, a little farther than he'd like, but not nearly far enough that he would grow tired from the walk. (He could run for miles and scarcely pant, he thinks.) He slips his wallet into a pocket, enters the grounds, and promptly pays entirely too much for a bottle of lukewarm water.
ii. (which comes carefully
It's crowded, and he's completely anonymous. He likes it.
The people press in around him like a herd, until he finally tires of it and twitches his shoulders, tilts his head a certain way. Then, those closest to him balk and shy away, and he has to cast his eyes down to keep from smiling.
The newer part of him is hesitant to bare his teeth. The older, truer part of him yearns for it.
He keeps his head down.
iii. out of Nowhere) arranging
He's actually never paid that much attention to music, though Tracy's a big Radiohead fan. Until he catches sight of the stage, however, it doesn't occur to him that she would have liked to join him.
It's unfortunate, he thinks, but that's as far as he can bring himself to care.
He finds a relatively empty spot on the grounds, in the shade of a vendor's canopy, and drops into a crouch, feeling like a predator. He lets the heat get to him though, after a minute, and slouches like any boy his age would.
(He doesn't think about stalking after a demon, his clothing mere shreds, and the air searing his eyes.)
iv. a window, into which people look (while
The music plays on, but he doesn't hear it. He's unable to appreciate it, truly, not when he's so valued silence, and the safety in it. Music is distraction and artifice, to him, however pleasant it might seem.
He shuts it out of his mind, and thinks instead of truth.
He wonders how many people had known who he was. He wonders if his parents had any hint of it, before he was thrown through a garage by a runaway van. He wonders if he'd be happier not knowing.
The music plays on.
v. people stare
He thinks back over his memories, poking and prodding at his childhood until he can see where the seams are.
He asked his dad where Santa came from, and he's answered by a chocolate chip cookie, tossed at him like a frisbee.
(Holtz caught him, his attention wandering, and tossed a shard of stone into his arm to teach him discipline. The wound was shallow, and didn't fester.)
He tripped and fell over a plastic xylophone, scraped his knee on the driveway, and cried until his mom came and picked him up, kissed the hurt away.
(A small demon, teeth like needles, caught him unawares while he crossed a ravine. Holtz took a look at his wounds, when he returned to their camp an hour later, and asked him to explain why he had been so careless.)
He thinks back to his real childhood memories, and they eat like acid against his skin.
vi. arranging and changing placing
He recalls his first sight of Angel, although he called him *demon* at the time, and the title of father, like a true profanity.
He remembers Angel laughing as they sparred, pride rising in his eyes as Connor broke through his defenses.
And he remembers looking in Angel's eyes as the coffin sank, love and despair on his face, his shouts muffled by the iron.
What does he want to keep, and what does he want to ignore? When did he stop hating Angel, he wonders, and he can't find that memory anywhere.
vii. carefully there a strange
He thinks back to better memories, instead, and remembers, first among all, Cordelia. The silk of her hair and the warmth of her smile, and the way he felt like he belonged whenever she called him by name.
The way he had tried to kill her, once.
The night he had gorged himself on Twinkies and she had looked at him with a sad smile, and brought him a bottle full of medicine the next day, after a night of queasiness.
How she had, after a week, sniffed at his clothes with distaste and declared him ready for a trip to a mall. Then, she had attempted to explain the mall to him, and held his hand when he shied from the gaudy store lights, the neon speaking to him like demon's blood.
How, when Angel pronounced they would go see a movie together, she had pulled him aside and explained what a movie was, so that he wouldn't feel panicked when it began.
Then he wonders if any of it, any of it all, was real, because his brighter memories have nothing of her in them. He hates the unsurety of his mind.
viii. thing and a known thing here) and
He thinks back to that one summer, without Angel or Cordelia, when he hunted with Gunn and Fred. When they treated him like a friend, and taught him what this new world was like.
He had, he remembers, developed an enormous crush on Fred. She watched TV with him in the middle of the night, explaining technology and custom. The light of the television had glinted blue on her glasses, and her hair had smelled like soap and oranges. He stole glances at her profile and pretended to watch *I Dream of Jeannie* when she glanced back.
When she disappeared upstairs, to her room, and Gunn, he returned to his room. He could hear them, giggling and moaning, through the walls, half a floor away. He shed his jeans to the tune of their mattress creaking, and eased his hand into his boxers. Stroked himself, straining to catch her voice.
She had looked on him in hate, at summer's end.
ix. changing everything carefully
He remembers Jasmine, her alien face, strong and horrid.
His daughter.
Beautiful to the world, he knows, and beautiful to him, even seeing her as she was. Graceful in her power, and her voice humming something like peace. Helping him put aside the gnawing of his past.
He carefully avoids thinking about her death, then changes his mind. Thinks, deliberately, of how her skull shattered under his hands. How her body crumpled then, how she folded like a ruined doll.
Her death, like her life, could be laid at his feet, and he would have to learn to accept that, as he would everything else.
x. spring is like a perhaps
There's a brief surge in the crowd around him, as the band finishes its set, and another begins to set up. He recognizes its members, same as he could name the last one, yet they seem distant to him, of shallow importance to the roiling in his mind.
He wonders if he should return to his old life, when he's done with college. Though he loves his family now, with his memories returned, awareness of what he can do is strong, and he can't help but think back to the Spider-man cartoons he (didn't) watch as a child.
With great power comes great responsibility, and while he might not be a superhero, he's certainly not an ordinary human.
Once, in the middle of the night, he had slipped out of the dorms on a Taco Bell run, beset by a craving for tacos while he studied for a calculus test. On the way back, he had heard a scuffle down an alley, and turned to find a young woman being menaced by a man with a knife.
He had dispatched the mugger with a sloppy punch and a growl, and escorted her to the police station before disappearing into the shadows.
Was that memory real, he wonders. He might never know.
xi. Hand in a window
His cell phone rings. Connor flinches at its immediacy; he'd forgotten such things existed, for a moment. He answers after a quick fumbling.
It's Tracy, and she's cheery, as he expected her to be, despite the slight against her. He can't help but smile at her excited babbling, especially when the band on stage starts to play.
They sit in silence for several minutes, listening to the music. The band, he recalls, is a favorite of hers, and he feels a twinge of guilt, finally.
After two songs pass, she gushes envy and professes love. He chuckles as he hangs up, full of affection.
He wonders what destiny means, really, if she isn't part of his.
He wishes he could love her, too, but that feeling died when his old life was reborn.
xii. (carefully to
He'd looked up Wolfram & Hart, when he returned to school. Snuck into the law library like a usurper, doing his best to look sly and quick of tongue. They were well-respected, he learned, and each article he read was underlined in fear. It had tentacles in every stronghold, influence in every court.
He found one reference to his father, though it cloaked Angel, described him as "the mysterious CEO" of the corporation-slash-law firm. The journalist penned speculation, wondering what change the new head might bring to the company.
If he went back to his old life, joined his father at Wolfram & Hart, what would he do? He already feels himself drawing distant from Tracy, who went to a college in Boston, anyway, and he wonders about Faith, then. Remembers her fists and the swing of her leg as she kicked, the arch of her back as she threatened him.
Tracy's golden, round-cheeked and soft-skinned.
She would be easy prey.
xiii. and fro moving New and
A girl, clad only in a bikini, smiles at him, and he blushes. The old Connor, he thinks, wouldn't know how to blush. He remembers Lilah, over that summer, approaching him twice.
She had kissed him before he thought to protest, the first time, and taken his cock in hand. The second time, she had lured him to a rented room, hidden behind a pawn shop.
Both times, he had been far from Fred and Gunn, prowling downtown like his own territory. He had never wondered, then, how she had found him, but it seems fairly obvious to him now.
He wonders why she didn't find him a third time. He wonders where she is now, because he hadn't seen a trace of her at Wolfram & Hart.
xiv. Old things, while
Thoughts of the firm, however, remind him of who he *did* see, including that lithe demon wearing Fred's body like a cloak. He should be angry at that, he knows, but the older part of him is impressed at the strength contained in that once-frail body.
He thinks of the curve of her leg as she pressed her foot against Spike's head, the way her head tilted as she surveyed him. The outline of her body, slim and sharp under the shell of red leather, aside from the swell of her breasts.
He shifts uncomfortably in his spot of shade, and hopes that no one's looking too closely at him.
xv. people stare carefully
This band finishes its last song, and the crowd cheers loud and long. Finally, they break, and the stage clears for a time.
Connor stands and stretches his arms, fells his spine ripple in a satisfying manner before he relaxes his joints. He watches the crowd warily, but neglects to check his flank, his instincts dulled from months of suppression.
A drunk stumbles against him, elbow shoving into his back, and he reacts instinctively, knocking him away and through the canvas of a vendor's tent. The tent, of course, sags and falls, and its owners round on the drunk, and the friends who rise to defend him.
In the following melee, Connor slinks off, not out of cowardice but contempt, and a little bit of wisdom.
xvi. moving a perhaps
Following a happier looking group, he finds himself lurking near a smaller stage, with happier music, if less impressive. He settles himself on the grass, in full light of the sun, and tips his head to bask in the rays.
This was a pleasure denied to him, once, in a world where there was no sun but the harsh glare of two stars, large and red, and those oft obscured by a poisonous haze. Once he returned to this world, there was little enough basking, once he fell in with those who walk at night, for good or ill.
Now, in his memories, there are days like this, and picnics spread on checkered cloth. There are days spent at the beach, splashing water at his sister while his parents laugh, and tossing a football between them. There's an annual trip to Florida, when he always convinces his sister that Gatorland *isn't* as gross as she remembers, and his parents always drag him to Epcot Center in retribution.
There's playing baseball on lazy afternoons, and wandering through outdoor malls holding Tracy's hand, and a million things he's done under the sun.
He thinks he likes these memories better, but then he remembers how the moon shone as he leaped, rooftop to rooftop, beside his father. Both of them laughing, despite being chased by a cadre of vampires, because they knew they would win.
Can he have both lives, or will he ever be pushed to decide between them?
xvii. fraction of flower here placing
His cell phone rings again, and he manages to answer it before receiving too many dirty looks from those surrounding him (the only ones who could hear it, really).
"Hello?"
"Connor!"
"Mom?" Her voice is like spaghetti and birthday cake and the daisies in her perfume.
"I just wanted to see how you were doing. Did you get to the festival safely?"
He rolls his eyes, but smiles. "Obviously."
She looses an exaggerated sigh. "Obviously. Are you enjoying the concerts? Your dad and I checked your CDs to make sure bands you like are playing. Did you hear them?" The music is starting to get louder now, as the tempo picks up and the people cheer.
"Yeah." He stands and forfeits his spot, meanders to the side so that he can hear more easily. "It's been fun so far. Crowded."
"Good." He imagines her smiling at his dad. "Oh, honey?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry Tracy couldn't go." Her voice crackles over the line. "We bought your pass last-minute, and we couldn't find another one available."
"It's okay, Mom. I already talked to her, and she's fine with it." She didn't even ask, really, and she's always that cool.
"Really? Well, apologize to her anyway, later."
"I will."
"We love you, sweetheart. Stay safe."
"I will, Mom. I love you guys, too."
They say goodbyes, and he clicks off his phone with a smile.
Would he have to give them up, to become who he was? Or is there ever a happy medium?
Would "happy" even be possible, if he became the Destroyer again?
xviii. an inch of air there) and
His spot is already taken, so he stays where he is, sandwiched between two booths. The music is quick now, and light, and he realizes that he likes this band, too. The new Connor does, that is. The old one recoils in confusion.
He considers that.
He thinks of everything that is, everything that might be, and everything that could come in between.
He should have been a philosophy major, he thinks to himself with a smile. He's not being taught how to cope with these sorts of problems in "Applied Number Theory," "The Work and Life of Phillip K. Dick," or "Identity and Peoples of China."
Well, maybe in that lit class, but obliquely.
The smile feels alien on his face for a second, unusual. He didn't smile much, before, until he returned to this dimension.
They had taught him to laugh, Angel and Cordelia and Fred and Gunn and even that demon, Lorne.
Those memories feel more precious than the brighter ones, of his family's good-hearted pranks and ribbing. He remembers when he first understood one of Angel's jokes, and how the laughter sprung from him, sharp and unexpected.
He remembers the tears in Angel's eyes, which he took then as weakness, but he now understands as joy.
He needed both sets of memories to fully appreciate that, and he tucks it away carefully with the set of memories he's labeled true.
xix. without breaking anything.
His stomach growls, and he wanders over to a few food vendors to see what's available. The smell is appetizing enough, but the prices listed chase him away. Then he remembers his mom, tucking a small cooler into the back of the car, draping a towel over it to keep it out of the sun. "Just in case you get hungry," she replied to his obligatory roll of the eyes.
He escapes the grounds deftly, dodging festival attendees when they don't veer around him. Heat shimmers in waves around him, and he ambles back to his parking space slowly, remembering what heat stroke can do to him. (The pack of demons had almost killed him, then, but Holtz had arrived, and killed them.)
He gets to his car, borrowed from his dad, and slides into the seat. Sighs. Rolls down the windows, listens to the music as it echoes across the grounds. Hears the clash as four bands play at once, each equally loud. Thinks of Lorne, trying to teach his father a new song, and everyone joining in, until finally Angel muttered and stalked upstairs, everyone giggling behind him.
He reaches into the back and grabs the cooler, finds three sandwiches, orange juice, and an apple. He rips off the plastic wrap from one sandwich, bites into it and revels at the taste of food.
He can remember starving.
Foraging just ahead of demons.
The feast as he entered this new world.
The breakfasts, lunches, and dinners his mom and dad gave to him every day, without fail.
It all swirls together, suddenly, and he realizes he's known the truth since he killed Sahjahn. It's not a matter of whether he *can* live in both worlds. He already does.
It a simple matter, after that. He digs a business card out of his wallet, creased in the corners from repeated review.
He calls his father.