Acts of Kindness
Everyone knows that relying on the kindness of strangers gets you eaten. Or should know, at any rate. Relying on a this for that trade with strangers and aquaintances alike, on the other hand, is good for your continued survival, especially if you manage to keep the advantage in said trades. That's how I lived as a human and as a vampire for eons, and quite well, thank you. And then that most altruistic of law firms, Wolfram and Hart, brought me back as a human dying of syphilis. I had been there before. Let's just say that ideal of illness enobling the character or causing repentance of one'd deeds which was quite popular in my day and in the present as well, if a lot of mediocre movies are anything to go by? Never has been true before.
I didn't want to die. I did everything I could to make Angel sire me. And when he didn't, I went to bars to pick up the dumbest vampire I could find, someone I could control even as a human. Probably would have worked, too, which would at least been a pay off for having to endure his innane utterings, but my darling boy dusted him. We had one of our more vicious arguments then. I was more angry than I ever had been since I found out he had been saving missionaries while Spike was ought killing a Slayer.
What all of this led to was some strange place, accessible through a leap in an empty swimming pool - don't ask - and some entity dressed up as a butler who told Angel that he'd have to go through three trials if he wanted to help me.
"Should you complete all three trials, she will be made - whole," he said, and when Angel asked what would happen if he didn't pass even one trial, he replied: "She dies instantly."
Thanks, I thought. Did I mention I did not want to die? On the other hand, dying instantly was better than dying slowly from syphilis. Trust me, I know. Still, I couldn't stand the idea of just waiting until Angel did whatever he was doing, or not, so I asked the butler imitation to allow me to watch. Which he took as an invitation to connect me to Angel, so that I didn't just see what he saw but felt was he felt, and that -
Nobody had cared for me that way before. Because you see, he wasn't going through various stages of torture by higher beings because I could blow the top of his head off when we had sex. He wasn't even doing it for all our years together, or because I had made him immortal (or "dammed him" as he had put it some weeks earlier). He was doing it because I needed help and he wanted to save me, and he would have done it if he had met me on the street a day earlier while being blissfully (but not too blissfully) happy with Ms. Summers in Sunnydale.
(And that, of course, was the difference to Lindsey, and a certain Immortal friend of mine, both of whom did care as well, but in a way I could understand; I never would have bothered with helping strangers, either. I still don't.)
He passed the trials, and then the Powers screwed us over anyway. Or not. What the butler creature had said was that I would be made whole, and you know, maybe I had never been before, immortality or not. Four hundred years, and it still hadn't been enough; I was still running away from that ugly, mortal death. But after what Angel did, what I felt him doing, I finally was able to stop running. Kindness? I'm not sure it's the right term, but whatever it was, it had been the one thing he could never have given me without his soul, and which I wouldn't have understood without mine.
It didn't last, naturally, courtesy of Lindsey, Holland Manners and Drusilla, and maybe that's just as well. I do like opera, but Violetta isn't a role I was ever suited for. I am far better at things like reducing the W&H staff in a charming little wine cellar as a reward for all their troubles. But even without a soul, I could never forget what I had felt, what he had felt, and it maddened me through flames and fights and other pecadillos until the night we made Connor. Afterwards, I had other things to be mad about.
It took me until my fourth death to realize that I never had started running again. When it came down to it, his act of kindness had changed me for good.
I didn't want to die. I did everything I could to make Angel sire me. And when he didn't, I went to bars to pick up the dumbest vampire I could find, someone I could control even as a human. Probably would have worked, too, which would at least been a pay off for having to endure his innane utterings, but my darling boy dusted him. We had one of our more vicious arguments then. I was more angry than I ever had been since I found out he had been saving missionaries while Spike was ought killing a Slayer.
What all of this led to was some strange place, accessible through a leap in an empty swimming pool - don't ask - and some entity dressed up as a butler who told Angel that he'd have to go through three trials if he wanted to help me.
"Should you complete all three trials, she will be made - whole," he said, and when Angel asked what would happen if he didn't pass even one trial, he replied: "She dies instantly."
Thanks, I thought. Did I mention I did not want to die? On the other hand, dying instantly was better than dying slowly from syphilis. Trust me, I know. Still, I couldn't stand the idea of just waiting until Angel did whatever he was doing, or not, so I asked the butler imitation to allow me to watch. Which he took as an invitation to connect me to Angel, so that I didn't just see what he saw but felt was he felt, and that -
Nobody had cared for me that way before. Because you see, he wasn't going through various stages of torture by higher beings because I could blow the top of his head off when we had sex. He wasn't even doing it for all our years together, or because I had made him immortal (or "dammed him" as he had put it some weeks earlier). He was doing it because I needed help and he wanted to save me, and he would have done it if he had met me on the street a day earlier while being blissfully (but not too blissfully) happy with Ms. Summers in Sunnydale.
(And that, of course, was the difference to Lindsey, and a certain Immortal friend of mine, both of whom did care as well, but in a way I could understand; I never would have bothered with helping strangers, either. I still don't.)
He passed the trials, and then the Powers screwed us over anyway. Or not. What the butler creature had said was that I would be made whole, and you know, maybe I had never been before, immortality or not. Four hundred years, and it still hadn't been enough; I was still running away from that ugly, mortal death. But after what Angel did, what I felt him doing, I finally was able to stop running. Kindness? I'm not sure it's the right term, but whatever it was, it had been the one thing he could never have given me without his soul, and which I wouldn't have understood without mine.
It didn't last, naturally, courtesy of Lindsey, Holland Manners and Drusilla, and maybe that's just as well. I do like opera, but Violetta isn't a role I was ever suited for. I am far better at things like reducing the W&H staff in a charming little wine cellar as a reward for all their troubles. But even without a soul, I could never forget what I had felt, what he had felt, and it maddened me through flames and fights and other pecadillos until the night we made Connor. Afterwards, I had other things to be mad about.
It took me until my fourth death to realize that I never had started running again. When it came down to it, his act of kindness had changed me for good.