If you could pick anyone in the world, alive or dead, to be your parents, who would it be?
Okay, there are two ways of answering this, love declarations or rants, and I don't want do do either.
Also? The whole question is wrong. If I could choose, I wouldn't be me.
And how the hell am I supposed to know how other people were/are as parents? You look at some families and you think "oh, great" or "wow, they're so screwed up", but as long as you're not part of that family, you have no way of really knowing, do you. But even if. Even if I could know - look, I already have more than my share of parents, and I don't want to choose between them, so why should I want to pick even more?
*locked from everyone but Harry*
Sometimes I think you pick those who need you the most, if that makes the best sense. Mom and Dad loved me - they were made to - and sometimes I wonder why this Cyvus Vail guy picked them to be my parents. Maybe they wanted another child, maybe Angel just asked for two great people, which they were, I don't know. But now I remember them as my parents, and if I could wish them back to life, of course I would. They weren't geniuses or superheroes or anything, and they weren't saints, either; I guess if I had come clean and told them the truth instead of getting them killed doing what I did, they'd have been angry, they'd have felt violated by the whole mindwipe thing, and once they'd have gotten over that, if they had, Mom would have insisted on group threrapy. And self help books. She was really into those. Dad would have - I don't know. Probably wondered if they could hire someone to sue Wolfram and Hart, not because of money but because it was the principle of the thing.
I miss them.
But you know, their lives were pretty good without me. Actually way better without me, at least during the last year. Mere as an only child, I don't know how that would have turned out, except she must have been, pre-memory wipe, so I figure that would have been fine as well.
My father, now. I know people think I'm brainwashed or something when it comes to him, but I was with him for seventeen years, and I think that's more than anyone else can say. Even his wife and his other family, centuries ago. And so I think that gives me the right to say I knew him best. My father - Daniel Holtz - he needed me. I don't mean for vengeance, though obviously, yes. I'm not blind, okay? Or for survival. He kept me alive during the first years before it became a mutual thing. But you see, what happened to his first family, and the quest, that had become everything, and he had given everything else up - so he couldn't let anyone in anymore before God gave me to him he stole me God gave we ended up in Quortoth. I guess Justine came close - I couldn't ask - but ultimately, he left her behind. And then there were our seventeen years together, and he loved me, and I loved him. He wasn't alone anymore. He did let me in. That was such a major thing for him, and there is no way I could wish that away from him, or him away from me.
I miss him, too.
So I remember an entire life with Mom and Dad and Mere, and I remember an entire life with my father, and none of them actually produced me in the biological sense. You could still count the time I spent with my biological parents and it wouldn't even add up to a year, I think. Cordelia once gave me a present - a dvd with a film on it that showed Angel and a baby. Actually, Angel, Wesley, Cordy, Fred and Gunn with a baby. They're all happy and goofy like you wouldn't believe, and I can't watch that film without feeling about a hundred things at once, some of which make me sappy like a wet towel and some make me want to smash the tv. Darla isn't there on the film, of course; she was dead. Still, sometimes I wonder. What it would have been like. To be that child, still growing up in the Hyperion - I would be what, six or so? Sometimes I want that. Sometimes I want that desperately.
The thing is, I can never quite believe that baby was me. Except for one scene in the entire movie. Which is when the baby starts to cry, and Angel gets into game face for some reason, and the baby stops crying. Because - I remember that. The sense of it at least. I remembered when I first saw his face again. His true face. Which isn't the game face, and it's not the human one, it's both, one shifting into the other.
Both.
I never saw Darla as a vampire weird time travel occasions excluded; when I saw her the first time, she was dead and I thought I was going crazy. But I never doubted it was her, either. She doesn't need the vampire thing to be - well, her. I can't imagine her raising me at all, either in Quortoht or in an L.A. suburb, or in the Hyperion, and yet I can imagine her pregnant, which is all kinds of weird, I guess. Sometimes I think I don't get her at all, that she's alien in a way Angel isn't, and sometimes I think I understand her way better than I want to, but either way - I can't look at her without knowing she died for me. How can you ever be possibly worthy of that? It drives me crazy.
They're not normal parents; they're not the parents who need me most. (They need a child, which isn't necessarily me. Say Wesley suddenly comes forward and declares he switched babies before my father took me, and that their son Connor is somewhere in Los Angeles as a child and I'm some changeling he got elsewhere to fool Holtz - I think that would make the difference to them. Not that they'd suddenly stop talking to me or something, of course not, but they'd feel differently, and I think after a while, they would stop bothering.) And they're definitely the only parents I hated for being my parents, for being their son, when I was a child and a good while after. But even then I was curious about them in a way I never was about Mom and Dad, who were just Mom and Dad, or Father, who was beginning and end, but you didn't question him, you didn't wonder about him. I never stopped wondering about them, being curious - okay, make that obsessing - though the hate factor kept changing, obviously. Now I'm an adult, and I have adult responsibilities, so it's far too late to be a child anyway. Anyone's child.
Last night I dreamt they were both dead, truly dead, and I thought: I can't live like that.
They're not the parents who need me. But they're the parents I need.
Also? The whole question is wrong. If I could choose, I wouldn't be me.
And how the hell am I supposed to know how other people were/are as parents? You look at some families and you think "oh, great" or "wow, they're so screwed up", but as long as you're not part of that family, you have no way of really knowing, do you. But even if. Even if I could know - look, I already have more than my share of parents, and I don't want to choose between them, so why should I want to pick even more?
*locked from everyone but Harry*
Sometimes I think you pick those who need you the most, if that makes the best sense. Mom and Dad loved me - they were made to - and sometimes I wonder why this Cyvus Vail guy picked them to be my parents. Maybe they wanted another child, maybe Angel just asked for two great people, which they were, I don't know. But now I remember them as my parents, and if I could wish them back to life, of course I would. They weren't geniuses or superheroes or anything, and they weren't saints, either; I guess if I had come clean and told them the truth instead of getting them killed doing what I did, they'd have been angry, they'd have felt violated by the whole mindwipe thing, and once they'd have gotten over that, if they had, Mom would have insisted on group threrapy. And self help books. She was really into those. Dad would have - I don't know. Probably wondered if they could hire someone to sue Wolfram and Hart, not because of money but because it was the principle of the thing.
I miss them.
But you know, their lives were pretty good without me. Actually way better without me, at least during the last year. Mere as an only child, I don't know how that would have turned out, except she must have been, pre-memory wipe, so I figure that would have been fine as well.
My father, now. I know people think I'm brainwashed or something when it comes to him, but I was with him for seventeen years, and I think that's more than anyone else can say. Even his wife and his other family, centuries ago. And so I think that gives me the right to say I knew him best. My father - Daniel Holtz - he needed me. I don't mean for vengeance, though obviously, yes. I'm not blind, okay? Or for survival. He kept me alive during the first years before it became a mutual thing. But you see, what happened to his first family, and the quest, that had become everything, and he had given everything else up - so he couldn't let anyone in anymore before God gave me to him he stole me God gave we ended up in Quortoth. I guess Justine came close - I couldn't ask - but ultimately, he left her behind. And then there were our seventeen years together, and he loved me, and I loved him. He wasn't alone anymore. He did let me in. That was such a major thing for him, and there is no way I could wish that away from him, or him away from me.
I miss him, too.
So I remember an entire life with Mom and Dad and Mere, and I remember an entire life with my father, and none of them actually produced me in the biological sense. You could still count the time I spent with my biological parents and it wouldn't even add up to a year, I think. Cordelia once gave me a present - a dvd with a film on it that showed Angel and a baby. Actually, Angel, Wesley, Cordy, Fred and Gunn with a baby. They're all happy and goofy like you wouldn't believe, and I can't watch that film without feeling about a hundred things at once, some of which make me sappy like a wet towel and some make me want to smash the tv. Darla isn't there on the film, of course; she was dead. Still, sometimes I wonder. What it would have been like. To be that child, still growing up in the Hyperion - I would be what, six or so? Sometimes I want that. Sometimes I want that desperately.
The thing is, I can never quite believe that baby was me. Except for one scene in the entire movie. Which is when the baby starts to cry, and Angel gets into game face for some reason, and the baby stops crying. Because - I remember that. The sense of it at least. I remembered when I first saw his face again. His true face. Which isn't the game face, and it's not the human one, it's both, one shifting into the other.
Both.
I never saw Darla as a vampire weird time travel occasions excluded; when I saw her the first time, she was dead and I thought I was going crazy. But I never doubted it was her, either. She doesn't need the vampire thing to be - well, her. I can't imagine her raising me at all, either in Quortoht or in an L.A. suburb, or in the Hyperion, and yet I can imagine her pregnant, which is all kinds of weird, I guess. Sometimes I think I don't get her at all, that she's alien in a way Angel isn't, and sometimes I think I understand her way better than I want to, but either way - I can't look at her without knowing she died for me. How can you ever be possibly worthy of that? It drives me crazy.
They're not normal parents; they're not the parents who need me most. (They need a child, which isn't necessarily me. Say Wesley suddenly comes forward and declares he switched babies before my father took me, and that their son Connor is somewhere in Los Angeles as a child and I'm some changeling he got elsewhere to fool Holtz - I think that would make the difference to them. Not that they'd suddenly stop talking to me or something, of course not, but they'd feel differently, and I think after a while, they would stop bothering.) And they're definitely the only parents I hated for being my parents, for being their son, when I was a child and a good while after. But even then I was curious about them in a way I never was about Mom and Dad, who were just Mom and Dad, or Father, who was beginning and end, but you didn't question him, you didn't wonder about him. I never stopped wondering about them, being curious - okay, make that obsessing - though the hate factor kept changing, obviously. Now I'm an adult, and I have adult responsibilities, so it's far too late to be a child anyway. Anyone's child.
Last night I dreamt they were both dead, truly dead, and I thought: I can't live like that.
They're not the parents who need me. But they're the parents I need.