Comments | atoner: cell phone post.

atoner

cell phone post.

May 24, 2010 04:28

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sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel blackeyedskank May 30 2009, 01:04:45 UTC

She had planned on going that night, lurking in the shadows and creeping along alley walls until she could smell him, until she could see him, reach out and grab a shoulder and drive her fist between his eyes and dig her knuckles beneath his ribs, her heels digging points into his feet. Ruby doesn't really want to hurt him - not that she minds it - but there is a definite perk to besting someone who is both taller and has a certain advantage on the supernatural side of things. She's never fought a vampire before, and while verbal throw downs are enough to keep her interested for a certain amount of time, there is a part of Ruby that is primitively physical, that craves violence, that wants to fight. It's the part of her that wears her eyes black when she's been pushed too far ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel blackeyedskank May 31 2009, 05:18:13 UTC

She doesn't lash out, doesn't push or move back quickly, surge forward to knock him off balance. Ruby keeps her arms crossed, the tips of her fingers sliding against the leather of her jacket as she exhales hard through her nose and actually breaks eye contact first, glancing to the side. Her tongue turns in her mouth, picking at a bit of broken flesh against her cheek. If she closes her eyes, she can be a million miles away from here, a motel parking lot with flickering neon vacancy and warm rain soaking up the air. But she doesn't close her eyes, and she only spends a moment looking anywhere else but at Angel before she's back in her skin again, in control of herself if not anything else ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel atoner May 31 2009, 05:48:27 UTC

Irritation seems to seep off her, he notices. Even if Buffy has clarified what it is like for a demon to walk the earth in the world where Ruby comes from, he finds it curious how well she wears this skin. Demons have varying different definitions, as well as the capacity to possess, but it is not like this; this is different. Though the professional curiosity and wonderment always creeps up in the company of her, he finds himself more intrigued by her as a person than her as a demon. He has solidly lent himself this position, however unwise it may be in the future ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel blackeyedskank May 31 2009, 06:32:07 UTC

From a any angle's perspective, she's an oddity. From the second that she got off of the rack in Hell and put blade to bone, she's known that. There is nothing good about her, not when every aspect and agenda is weighed. The things that she does are not good, even if the outcome that she's working toward could logically be considered good. But she isn't. She cuts the hearts out of virgins and skins live animals with her bare hands to craft dirty world witchcraft that would make most people's mothers turn violent shades of green. She kills people with little remorse or thought, and sticks her own kind with pokers and heavy punches to ensure that the human side can win this fight. Her teams are all wrong, lined up like crooked and broken soldiers on some unorthodox battlefield. Underneath her black eyes and her demonic power and her issues with blessed Evian water, she remembers enough of her humanity to make her an anomaly, to make being a demon hard. To remember all that she has, see all that she has, without giving into it. Maybe it' ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel atoner May 31 2009, 06:53:46 UTC

As patronizing as his words could have been, he does not see this as a circumstance in which he is treating her like an idiot; he had spelled out the conclusions as simple as possible. They were not meant to be taken as defining what it is for others to get to know one another, but to answer her question, to make it seem simple. A new angle would turn it into that, but that isn't Angel's intention. Their previous encounter already unveiled that he doesn't doubt her intelligence, her approach to situations, and how tangled up she really needs things to be for them to work. In order to be a demon, she must be able to manipulate. In order to manipulate, she has to understand the interrelations that people have with one another. A to B to C-they line up in a logical progression ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel blackeyedskank May 31 2009, 07:12:49 UTC

There are a lot of things that Angel gets wrong about her both at the outset and after a certain period of time, but there are just as many things that he gets right. The downfall of being in a place like the City is that it provides her no outlet. She can't hide here, can't run to another state and dig deeper into demonic circles, move with big leagues and slit the throats of underlings who squeal. At best, she can lurk in the Underground until the monsters there get stale, until she needs to pop back out to see what's happening on the surface. And the City forces her to be social, to patronize, to stick her nose into business with more bravado than she would normally, draw attention to herself. It's a jagged comparison to the world that she used to live in, and while she can maintain her swagger normally, people who look closer, like Angel, see the pockmarks in her persona easily enough ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel atoner May 31 2009, 07:31:24 UTC

"Should you be doing that?" He turns quickly, almost in a rhythmic spin, to catch her back. "You're hurt, aren't you?" It's false concern, but an obvious exit from the conversation. Angel doesn't see a point in discussing who's right and wrong any further. Her last point is unnecessary, unclear-he does see something and she knows it. It has nothing to do with him or his own perspective, and she is retreating because there is no other way to go.

Angel walks up closer to push it, stopping right behind her so that a little bit of his coat even whips forward against the back of her leg, making it possible for her to see just how close he is. "You should have walked away sooner," he continues, and he lets it hang for a moment, like it's his only thought. There is the same smile, the need for it there, because there is no denying his victory at the end of this conversation. He not only won the fight, but he wins the game that never started, her retreating so desperately clearly turning it into that. "After all, you needed to get rest ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel blackeyedskank May 31 2009, 07:48:01 UTC

Ruby stops, her head tilted slightly to the side as if she's listening to something very far away. With her head in this position, she can almost see him, and he looms like a shadow in her peripheral vision, just another dark figure on a dark night. This one is only slightly more annoying than the majority of the ones she's been forced to deal with, and he's one of the few she's walked away from without having disposed of first ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel atoner May 31 2009, 08:10:57 UTC

Angel recalls their previous way of departing, how she slipped off into the shadows. Drawing that last minute up in his memory is necessary as he stands there, considering her question, and looking down at her. The answer is clearly "no," but he finds it curious that she would even ask that. Is that what she wants? Would that be easy? Or is a throwaway one? Analyzing it doesn't benefit him as much as he would like, so he doesn't. "I didn't attack first," he tells her, simply. Matter of fact works. "So why would I attack again?" I already won. Unspoken, but it emanates in the air enough as if it is ( ... )

sometimes i dream i'm an exterminating angel blackeyedskank May 31 2009, 08:29:13 UTC

She doesn't look away when he's up in her face, though her expression changes from what it had been before to something akin to a teenager being lectured by an overbearing parent. When he's gone, Ruby lingers in the shadows for a minute after he's gone. She hadn't been given the answer that she wanted, but then that's becoming a constant with him, too, isn't it? There is a lingering buzz where his hand had settled on her shoulder, and she feels rather than knows her face is pinched both in mental discomfort at him touching her at all and confusion at the prospect ( ... )

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