ROTM 1.47.2 - "If Those I Loved Were Lost"
1.47.2 - "If Those I Loved Were Lost" by Emily Dickenson
If those I loved were lost
The Crier's voice would tell me --
If those I loved were found
The bells of Ghent would ring --
((Locked to _wiccabuffy_))
I guess this is confession time. Now that it's all said and done with Wolfram & Hart, and because I'm not sure what you might or might not remember now, I think you deserve to know the truth.
I have a son. His name is Connor, and his story's, well, quite a story.
A few years ago, Wolfram & Hart brought Darla back to life. Mostly, they wanted to distract me and maybe make me a little crazy. Once she got Dru to sire her, she was hoping that she could get Angelus and the bad old days back again. I got... obsessed with her. With saving her; and after she was turned, with destroying her.
I wanted to destroy her and everything evil in the city, no matter what I had to do. Those were dark, cold times. I remember being so angry and so frustrated at all the things that I'd tried to do right and never could that I stopped caring about helping people and only concerned myself with the punishing. I pushed-- no, I threw-- out of my life everyone I should have been turning to for help.
It wasn't until I woke up with Darla in my bed that I realized just how far I'd fallen. Darla had expected that I'd become Angelus. Instead, I had a moment of clarity, realizing what I'd done and how I needed to turn back before it was all over for me. It was a hard road getting back to myself, but I walked it.
Nine months later, Darla showed up again. Pregnant. I don't know how, and nobody's ever been able to explain. But she ended up giving up her own life-- such as it was-- so that the baby could live. Connor. Human, innocent and beautiful Connor.
The weeks I got to care for baby Connor were, as dumb as it sounds, magic. They were definitely the closest I've ever been to perfect happiness as... well, anyway... I was a father, and happy. So, of course, since the past can never leave me be, one of Angelus' old adversaries, a vampire hunter named Holtz, kidnapped Connor and took him into a hell dimension called the Quor'toth.
I thought I'd lost my son. Not long after, Connor came back. You remember how time passed for me in my trip to hell? Same for Connor. He was seventeen, and angrier and more bitter and poisoned a soul than I'd ever met. Holtz and his childhood in that dimension had turned him into a killing machine, full of rage and all of it directed at me.
Not that I could completely blame him. If it weren't for me, none of it would have happened.
Connor was a lost person, and so broken that there was no way to save him. When Wolfram & Hart made their offer, I only made one demand: to save Connor's life. More specifically, I guess, I wanted them to give him a life.
So, they changed the world. Every memory of Connor's existence the way he was got erased and altered. No one but me ever knew that I'd had a son, or about what Holtz had done, any of it. Connor was "adopted" into a normal family here in L.A., where for all he knew, he'd grown up in a typical Southern California family into a typical Southern California teenager. He was happy and content and had a future that didn't include vampires or demons or killing. Or me, especially, after all I'd done to him.
The spell got broken. Connor remembers, but he remembers his "new" life, too, and was wise enough to choose that over my world. He's amazing. He's going to college here, and the last I heard, was on an internship somewhere. I've seen him, but I won't be part of his life-- I can't do that to him.
So there it is. And I'll just be, uh, somewhere else... if and when you want to talk.
Angel
'Angel' the series
Word Count: 668, not counting excerpt of poem
If those I loved were lost
The Crier's voice would tell me --
If those I loved were found
The bells of Ghent would ring --
((Locked to _wiccabuffy_))
I guess this is confession time. Now that it's all said and done with Wolfram & Hart, and because I'm not sure what you might or might not remember now, I think you deserve to know the truth.
I have a son. His name is Connor, and his story's, well, quite a story.
A few years ago, Wolfram & Hart brought Darla back to life. Mostly, they wanted to distract me and maybe make me a little crazy. Once she got Dru to sire her, she was hoping that she could get Angelus and the bad old days back again. I got... obsessed with her. With saving her; and after she was turned, with destroying her.
I wanted to destroy her and everything evil in the city, no matter what I had to do. Those were dark, cold times. I remember being so angry and so frustrated at all the things that I'd tried to do right and never could that I stopped caring about helping people and only concerned myself with the punishing. I pushed-- no, I threw-- out of my life everyone I should have been turning to for help.
It wasn't until I woke up with Darla in my bed that I realized just how far I'd fallen. Darla had expected that I'd become Angelus. Instead, I had a moment of clarity, realizing what I'd done and how I needed to turn back before it was all over for me. It was a hard road getting back to myself, but I walked it.
Nine months later, Darla showed up again. Pregnant. I don't know how, and nobody's ever been able to explain. But she ended up giving up her own life-- such as it was-- so that the baby could live. Connor. Human, innocent and beautiful Connor.
The weeks I got to care for baby Connor were, as dumb as it sounds, magic. They were definitely the closest I've ever been to perfect happiness as... well, anyway... I was a father, and happy. So, of course, since the past can never leave me be, one of Angelus' old adversaries, a vampire hunter named Holtz, kidnapped Connor and took him into a hell dimension called the Quor'toth.
I thought I'd lost my son. Not long after, Connor came back. You remember how time passed for me in my trip to hell? Same for Connor. He was seventeen, and angrier and more bitter and poisoned a soul than I'd ever met. Holtz and his childhood in that dimension had turned him into a killing machine, full of rage and all of it directed at me.
Not that I could completely blame him. If it weren't for me, none of it would have happened.
Connor was a lost person, and so broken that there was no way to save him. When Wolfram & Hart made their offer, I only made one demand: to save Connor's life. More specifically, I guess, I wanted them to give him a life.
So, they changed the world. Every memory of Connor's existence the way he was got erased and altered. No one but me ever knew that I'd had a son, or about what Holtz had done, any of it. Connor was "adopted" into a normal family here in L.A., where for all he knew, he'd grown up in a typical Southern California family into a typical Southern California teenager. He was happy and content and had a future that didn't include vampires or demons or killing. Or me, especially, after all I'd done to him.
The spell got broken. Connor remembers, but he remembers his "new" life, too, and was wise enough to choose that over my world. He's amazing. He's going to college here, and the last I heard, was on an internship somewhere. I've seen him, but I won't be part of his life-- I can't do that to him.
So there it is. And I'll just be, uh, somewhere else... if and when you want to talk.
Angel
'Angel' the series
Word Count: 668, not counting excerpt of poem