abetterlie

Time has always a been flexible thing where Connor was concerned. The summer after Connor arrived in Los Angeles, Fred tried to calculate his age. She had kept track of her years in Pylea through her scribblings on the wall; it had been her link to sanity, she said, and asked him whether Holtz had not done something similar. In truth Holtz had at first, had tried to keep adherence to a calendar, but Connor had been too young to remember by the point his father had given it up.

There were events, though, that he could use to differentiate the years. The year he first managed to track his father down within three days was a different year from the one they found the swamp with the poisonous flowers, and that in turn had been at least much later than the time Connor had made his first spear, and so on. After some recounting and a lot of frowning, Fred had worked out an equation that said he was seventeen years old, going on eighteen in November.

Fred was a mathematical genius, but to this day, Connor has no idea whether she got it right.

Cyvus Vail, who created one set of Connor’s memories, was very precise about years and dates. It helps keeping the two different timelines in his head without going crazy, though sometimes, they blur: dates, months, days, hours, those are for events which never happened. They are sharp-edged and fitting to exact moments the way photos do in an album. He is four years and seven months on the day his sister Mere is born, and it is two o’clock in the afternoon of the following day when his father brings him to the hospital to watch the new baby through the glass protecting it and the other babies. Connor stretches out a hand which presses against the glass, frustrated, and leaves a very visible thumb print because he has been eating a peanut butter sandwich before they got here. The hospital watches all show 2: 32 exactly when this happens, except it never did.

The other memories are not associated with dates in his mind; not just the Quortoth ones. He has no idea on which day he crossed dimensions, but he remembers the taste of ice cream on Sunny’s lips when she kissed him, and the sense of the sun setting down while she did. He doesn’t know on which day his father died, either, except it was two days after that, but what he can still remember is the way the stars and the neon light from the pier reflected in brittle fragments on the dark sea when Gunn and Fred talked about Angel going after Holtz behind his back. It was autumm when Cordelia returned to the Hyperion, but he doesn’t know which week; what he remembers instead is the way her hand felt when taking his and the sound her feet made on the pavement when she ran away with him.

It’s a wild mixture now. Sometimes he remembers the days on which things happened, and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he thinks “September” when recalling a drive to Monterey, an encounter in a hotel room and a flight to Boston; sometimes he recalls anger, curiosity, the taste of whiskey and intoxication.

Perhaps his two timelines are still running, and never became one. Perhaps he just keeps crossing from one to the other and back, some kind of construct of different selves. Doesn’t really matter, though, except when both timelines somehow fail to produce memories. Recently, someone asked him what he did on 9/11. Connor thought, blanked out and concluded that Cyvus Vail, sorcerer extraordinaire, did not cover that one, so he made a story up.

Later, he went back to the old equation Fred had given him, which included his actual birth date, and realized he had not even been born then. So perhaps somewhere, there was a third time line, covering the live of that baby on the photo Cordelia had, the photo that showed herself and Angel. Supposedly, there is a world without shrimp out there, so presumably there is one where that baby is still a child and actually wearing that hokey t-shirt Angel says he bought.

Perhaps. If there is, Connor can’t remember it, and he doesn’t want it, not really, because if he did, it would mean giving up his other two timelines, and whether they consist of dates or sensations, they mean too much to ever want a third.

Note to self: don't fuck this up. Because one way or the other, you'll be in a position to. Either through the bringing-a-demon-to-the-housedoor thing, or otherwise, by being you. You know, that Larkin poem I quoted to Harry the first time we met? And don't have any kids yourself? Still good advice.

Sometimes I think that what I should have told Natalie was to take her kid and run.

Except, you know. Except for one thing, it's hers and Harry's, not mine. Except for another, good advice or not, I always wanted a family, and I think, maybe being a uncle, maybe that's safe for the kid. Evan. Who's not Jasmine, or Emily for that matter. That's a trap I have to try to not fall into. He's not them. God's gift in return for my dead children. I always hated it when HE called me that. He's himself.

Who's just woken up. So much for "sleeping through the whole night". Back later.

Okay, later. Much later. Harry's with His Highness, and I didn't want to call Natalie the first time I'm supposed to take care of Evan for longer than an hour, so I got sort of a crash course in trying out various ways to put a two years old back to sleep. My mom - Colleen - she did this via singing in my memories, but how do I know that works in real life? Yes, Father did it, too, but usually he couldn't afford to because there were predators around, so he just put a hand on my mouth and said "Stephen, careful". Plus you know, I suck at singing. I tried, anyway, and Evan was more awake than ever. So next I tried the "make some hot milk with honey" method which was on the list Natalie gave me, except we didn't have honey in the apartment. (I need to buy that.) So it was just hot milk. Well, luke-warm milk, because I figured it shouldn't be too hot so he wouldn't burn his mouth. Anyway, it didn't work.

(How I learned not to touch hot things as a child: very fast. Had to, because fire is one of the few weapons you have there when you're a middle-aged man without superpowers and with a toddler to protect. So Father did what he had to teach me. But this isn't Quortoth.)

Next I tried storytelling. Which actually didn't work to for me in either memories because I paid too much attention to the stories to get tired. Judging by the way Evan started to babble, it kept him up as well.

I guess I was pretty desperate. Seriously. And I, well. Imitated the sounds of every demon I could remember, in either dimension.

That did it. He got wide-eyed, and then he got back to sleep. It looks like he's smiling. But what if he's not? What if I've just given Harry's two-years-old son his first dose of nightmares?

Note to self: don't fuck this up. Really, really don't. Also, being an uncle is hard work.

Maybe I should practice that demon sounds imitation thing some more, though. Just in case.

It's one of my favourite memories that aren't. I think it must have happened, because why would Vail make up something like that? Or maybe it didn't. At this point, I don't care.

But what I remember is this: Mom and Dad - Colleen and Lawrence Riley, if it needs to be clearer - went through a bad time when I was ten and Mere was six. They tried to keep it from us, but you notice stuff. At least when you're ten you do, and when most of the other parents of the guys you go to school with are divorced. This was when I started to have this idea of running away to the circus, or something. Anyway, Christmas came, and a visit from my grandmother - Dad's mother - and of course she picked up on something being wrong, too, and made these comments to Mom where she was saying one thing but you could hear in her voice she meant something else. And after a while, Mom just about exploded, said "it's none of your freakin' business", took the car, and drove away. She didn't come back for hours, and there was supposed to be a party for Dad's collegues at our house - every year, someone else hosted the Christmas office party, and this year it was Dad's turn. Nobody was telling Mere and me anything, still, except Dad saying I should keep Mere busy, would I do that? So I tried. And I kept imagining Mom going away, or whatever was wrong turning out to be that either her or Dad was deathly ill or something, and felt more rotten by the minute.

Mere wanted some more of the cookies, though we weren't supposed to eat any more before Christmas dinner, but I didn't care about that anymore and went down to get some. The party had already started, and nobody would notice. So I went down the stairs, and there she was. Mom. Back. And she was kissing Dad. Not a peck on the cheek kiss or a good morning darling how are you kiss or something like that - it was the kind where you feel embarassed watching when these are your parents. Except I didn't, not this time. I was just so relieved. She was glowing, and so was Dad when he came up for air, and I knew whatever the bad thing had been, it was over now. They'd stay together. Nobody was sick. Best Christmas present ever.

You can't keep track of seasons or a calendar at Quototh. My father was always frustrated about this, because he wanted to obey the holidays and teach me how to. When I first came here, Fred tried to work out how many years had passed and how old exactly I was and what happened when, but math genius or not, she could only come up with estimations. But I think I can guess what happened in Quortoth when I was ten. I nearly lost him. He was aging, you see; he hadn't been a young man when we arrived there, and now he was starting to be old. Too old to be just fast enough, strong enough to beat every creature there on his own. They nearly got his leg that one time. It had been one of our tracking exercises, that's why I wasn't with him, and when I showed up, he was already bleeding, couldn't run anymore because of the leg would, and the smell attracted even more enemies. It took me nearly two hours to kill them all. Later, I realized I was now strong enough to carry him, and we got to a cave where we could rest for the night. He was furious. Not with me, with himself, because he knew it wouldn't be the last time his body betrayed him.

"I don't need any more tracking games," I told him, which was my way of promising I'd take care of him, just as he had of me when I had been too weak to kill for myself, and that I wouldn't leave him. That he'd be safe.

"No, I don't think you do," he agreed. I was happy then. There is no kiss involved, but it's my other favourite memory of that year.

If you had asked me last week what I wanted most right now it would have been for this trip to bizarro world to be over, both for Harry and me. That the cops would somehow realize they made a mistake, or something.

(Okay, so I wanted to break some people's bones as well, but not as much.)

Now half of that has come true. And I haven't felt less like celebrating. Guess that makes me the most ungrateful whiner ever, but here are the facts:

1.) Last week I broke out of jail. There were reasons. Det. Yoon showed me some photos of Harry and what they did to him in prison. After I dealt with them, I came back. I sort of hoped that would prove I was - welll, that I hadn't done what they thought I had anyway. Didn't exactly work. I got back into solitary again.

2.) Today, they told me a few days ago some guy named Vernon Pritchard who is already serving time for drug possession, robbery and homicide confessed to having killed Lawrence, Colleen and Mere Riley. My family. They probably didn't believe him at first, but he sticks to his story. So today, they told me I was free to go but should stay in L.A. for a few more days, "for formalities".

3.) The hell?

Because I know how they died. I mean, I found their bodies. Nobody shot them or knifed them or - well, okay, that's not what this guy Pritchard says he did. He worked in a hospital at the time, so he had access to narcotics and said he just wanted to render them subconscious while robbing the house and misjudged the dose, or something like that. No way. Not the way I found them. Plus I have a pretty good idea what killed them, and it wasn't Pritchard.

Except why would he say he did? And now I'm wondering about two possibilities. One is that I was completely wrong back then about the cause, that I just freaked out because I found them all dead. I was completely wrong about why my first father died as well. And that this Vernon Pritchard did kill them. Actually, I want to believe that. And that makes me a bit sick, because the reason I want to believe it is that it would mean I didn't cause it with my request about the memories, that it wasn't my fault. I'm so good at believing lies. Lies that make everything easier. I want to.

The other possibility is that Pritchard says it because it gets me off the hook. He doesn't know me, so there's no reason why he should feel all self-sacrificial except if someone is making him to. The way they tried to make me confess. Or maybe some other way. And there is a sort of limited circle of people who'd do that. Either way, he's now in for life with no chance of getting released, and is damm lucky if they don't retry him with the death penalty in mind. For something he didn't do.

My parents and my sister - the dead ones - they lived. They existed. I'm sure they were pretty happy and would have been for the rest of their lives if I hadn't completely screwed up and Angel hadn't needed a perfect family to place me in. Then they got their brains messed with, and then I screwed up some more. And this guy Vernon Pritchard, he lives. He exists. Okay, so he was in jail before for something he did do, but that doesn't mean he should be the next one to pay the price for me.

But if he did it. If by some crazy chance he did it.

Last week I just wanted this to be over. It was so good to be out of jail again, even for a few hours, and I wanted the open sky back and to fight again, don't care whom my life back. Except I forgot my life comes complete with lies and at other people's expense, and anyway, it's just half my life until Harry can go where he wants to as well and if someone did fix this, why didn't you do it for him instead?

Guess that proves you've got to be careful what you wish for. Especially if you're a hypocrite who still hasn't figured out how to run his life without causing damage left, right and center.

I need to find out more about Vernon Pritchard.

Harry -

no idea whether this will get through, and it will be read first anyway, and maybe the reply will be a fake, but: you'll get out of this. Promise. I don't care how.

Connor


Dear Kara,

I never got to answer your last, and you probably think this is me acting out or whatever. I just wanted to say that there are some photos from Vegas you could sell on Ebay if you still need cash. They're uploaded at my photobucket account, password Manilow.

Connor


Dad Angel -

I had a job in Savannah, at a occult shop. Could you talk to the owner and explain? This is important. Also, maybe she'll tell you what she promised to tell me. I'm looking for that teenager we met at the Hyperion a year ago because she might know about what happened to Cordelia. If it turns out I can't, you have to.

Connor

"It's going to be a year, now, tomorrow," Kathleen said to her partner while they were waiting. "I can't believe it took us so long to get enough to make the arrest. That sick fuck must be so sure he got away with it."

"Temper, Kath," Jim Yoon replied. "Play it cool, remember? A clean arrest. Otherwise we have the bloody media here in no time flat."

No kidding. Still, she had waited for so long, and it had only served to make her more angry. Kathleen had been the one to take over what had been classified as a horrible accident by the original investigators: Colleen, Lawrence and Mere Riley all dying in the fire that consumed their house, probably started by old cables going haywire. Bullshit. Kathleen recognized arson when she saw it, and more careful investigation of the photos made confirmed her theory. There wasn't enough left of the bodies for the pathologist to say whether they had died through violent means before the fire struck, but either way, she knew she had a triple homicide on her hand. It had taken her ages to convince Lt. Yoon, mostly because the obvious suspect, the son, had something of a stellar record: school files describing him as a completely non-violent, helpful kid, neighbours and former classmates who swore he was basically Little Lord Fountleroy, Stanford. Then Kath dug a little deeper, and lo and behold, the picture didn't look quite so pretty anymore. There had been an estrangement during the months before the Rileys died. Some arguments. Not so many visits. He'd lost his place at Stanford. When she found out he had ended up in New York with Harry Osborn in what was obviously a gay relationship, she had a moment of uncertainty, admittedly. Maybe that had been all about some belated coming-out, with spectacular bad timing, and the fire had been set by someone else, some thief who had been surprised by the Rileys and wanted to cover his tracks. She didn't think so, but she made herself investigate other angles as well. She was a good cop.

It had been Yoon, surprisingly, who had brought the investigation back on track. Following a hunch, he had checked out Harry Osborn's record. The usual rich kid crap, and then some. What was important, though, was that Osborn was another fairly recent orphan, inheriting one of America's largest fortune after his father had been found with some ghastly wounds at the Osborn penthouse. No murder had ever been arrested, Harry Osborn was the only witness, and he claimed the vigilante Spider-man had been responsible. Who, of course, never was brought in for questioning. Nobody had ever asked Harry Osborn for an alibi, despite the fact all sources described relations between him and Osborn Senior as strained.

"And they let him get away with that?" Kathleen exclaimed in disgust when Yoon told her. Yoon shrugged, but she saw the anger in his eyes. "Money talks."

After that, the clues dropped in thick and fast. Osborn had a drug record. He and Connor Riley had met some weeks before the Rileys' death, and had been spotted at a New York club taking ecstasy. There was some hushed up business in New York in January during which Osborn had spent time in one of those fancy hospitals designed to give alibis to rich psychos who belonged in jail, and then there was another homicide, a New York restaurant owner, with the Riley kid all but caught with blood on his hand and another hospital stay for the rich boy. Apparently, the duo had thought it wiser to move to Savannah after that one, but the pattern was clear: thrill seekers, a pair of serial killers in the making.

In between, there was a P.I. investigating the case as well, on behalf of some guy in Gotham, and when his client told him to drop it, he showed enough decency to hand over his notes to Kathleen and Jim Yoon. Thus, they had been finally able to find the lacking piece: a witness who had spotted Connor Riley near his parents' house on that day, with a parcel in hand. "I thought it was pizza at the time," said witness defended herself. "And I didn't realize it was that day. But now I've checked, and it was."

As this case involved several states, they had to bring in the FBI as well as the NYPD, but Kathleen and her partner were allowed to make the actual arrest themselves, with two New York cops waiting to take Osborn off their hands. It was clear the two needed to be seperated anyway.

Their waiting was rewarded when Connor Riley and his boyfriend finally showed up walking towards the loft serving as their current address, with the Osborn boy holding a dog's leash in hand. A St. Bernard, Kathleen thought; well, Hitler had loved his German shephard. She waited till they had reached the entrance of the building and had opened the door to go in, which removed them from the crowd, then stepped towards them, presenting herself as Sgt. Fitzgerald and her partner as Lt. Yoon in a calm voice.

"There has been a new lead in your family's deaths, and we need to ask you some questions," she told Connor, still calm and polite. "Would you be willing to come to the local precint to talk about them? We'd be happy to drive you there."

Any cop had to develop a gut feeling. It wasn't infallible, sure, but she didn't even need it in this case. The boy looked at her, his face going very still. He didn't ask her what the hell she was talking about it. He just looked at her. Kathleen was forty-two years old; she had talked with a lot of killers in her time, with innocents, with guilt-ridden people, with amoral freaks, and with debatables. Those eyes did not belong to a confused kid out of his depth. She'd investigated a homicide involving a girl who killed her father once, not in a fight, not spontanously, but calculated, and that girl had shown the same stillness and far too old eyes. Guilty, Kath thought, and forced herself to remain calm and pleasant while the Osborn boy said something about coming with them.

"Absolutely, Mr. Osborn," Jim Yoon said amiably. "We have a car for you as well."

You knew, Kathleen thought, not taking her eyes from Connor Riley. You always knew this would happen. Well, time's up, boyo.

Once she had him on the plane to California, she would start by showing him the photos made of what pitiable remains had been there for the autopsy, a year ago. It was no less than he deserved.

It's the same dream, over and over again. He's a child in a department store. All the smells, all the colours, everything is new, he just has to look, and suddenly, Mom and Dada and the baby, little Mere, they're all gone. So Connor tries to find them again, but it's no good, there are just walls and walls of boxes and funny smelling fruits and endless masses of strange people. Some of them almost look like those cartoons he watches on tv on Saturday morning, except Connor is big enough to figure out those don't exist. Well, not outside of Disneyland.

He's not too sure about the Blob, though. Mom and Dad and baby Mere could have been eaten by it. Maybe the Blob does exist. He can see it, quite clearly, and the screams that fill the air as he thinks of it are loud enough to bring Mom rushing towards him, and Dad sweeping him up into his arms, safe and sound. And he's happy, so incredibly happy that he found them, or they found him.

But not in the dream. In the dream, he's the wrong child altogether. He's a child who never was in a department store, except that is where he finds himself, tied with something which should be improvised leather strings but somehow is the fishing gear Lawrence Riley will present him with on his tenth birthday. And the wrongness doesn't end there. This altogether wrong child does not scream. He gets rid of the ties, and he remains silent; in fact, everyone else is silent, too. All the many people in the department store, but you don't hear anyone talking. Instead, you hear a woman singing "We're going to the zoo" and playing the piano, and somehow, at a larger distance, the sound of beasts. The child which should not, can not be Connor Riley starts making his way through the store, silent, and there is something in his hand which is altogether wrong as well. A knife made of bones.

There is a huge mountain build of diet coke cans, a pyramid, and it should just smell of tin and metal, sugar and chemicals, but that's not what he smells. No, not at all. So he pushes the cans aside, and there they are, hidden, buried under all the diet coke: Mom, Dad and little Mere. They're cowering, which brings them nearly to his eye level, and he can see the widened pupils, the tiny drops of sweat, can smell them, too. Dad doesn't open his arms, and neither does Mom, and they have no intention of standing up. Instead, they try to rebuild the pyramid again, putting it between them and himself. Baby Mere wimpers.

"Why are you hiding?" Connor asks, and tries to change everything to what he knows it should be, the happy, happy ending, but he's the wrong child, and the knife of bones is still in his hand. He looks down on it, wishing it to go away, and that is when he notices the blood, which is wrong, because he always cleans his weapons. He's been taught to, hasn't he?

"We're hiding from you, Connor," his father says, and the wounds on his chest are wrong as well, as is the blood pouring out of a cut of Mom's throat and Mere's hands. "We're hiding from you."

The last time Connor had spent alone with his mother had been a rather uncomfortable Christmas chat. The truth was he never quite knew how to handle her. Angel, he got, whether he was angry at him or not, but he never knew what Darla was thinking, and was secretely convinced she knew what he was thinking all the time.

But when Angel, who had been his anal-retentive self about the schedule he had made, reached the "alone time with Kara" point, Connor was actually glad to take the opportunity, and for several reasons. He had successfully managed to keep the New York Times society page away from Kara and his parents, though it had taken hunting down every single copy of the dammed paper in the Pyramid hotel and tearing said page out to do so. Which had been quite cathartic, in its way. But it still left him ashamed he hadn't handled the news better, and determined to somehow find a make to make it up to Harry. Atonment, they said, happened through suffering. Though the reconstructed and on occasion slightly schizophrenic person Connor was thought suffering should not be pointless and result in something Harry would actually enjoy. These deliberations led him to one inevitable result: shopping for clothes, which he really, really, hated to do. Finding something which Harry would enjoy wearing was difficult when you considered fashion brands strange aliens from another planet. Hence the urgent need of maternal advice. Darla might have been the bloodthirsty nightmare of centuries, but even Holtz had always described her as elegant.

"Don't tell Angel and Kara, though," he implored while they headed off to the next boutique. "I mean," he said, embarassed, when she regarded him with a raised eyebrow, as if to ask what kind of fool did he believe she was, "we have to find something to tell Angel and Kara about where we were."

"No, dear boy, we don't," Darla said wryly. "Angel thinks we're off to watch the Chippendales."

By now, thanks to a lot of posters, Connor had actually figured out the Chippendales had nothing to do with furniture and stared, then was unable to prevent himself from using a Kara term.

"Gross!"

Not strippers per se, though really, Harry always excepted, the idea of guys stripping did nothing for him. But going to a strip bar, no matter who stripped, with one of his parents in tow was just wrong.

"Don't worry," Darla said amused. "I wouldn't dream of wasting the boys on you."

Yes. Atonment was suffering.

Darla suggested the Venetian, which would offer the opportunity for a gondala ride while visiting the shops there. He had never been in Venice, or Italy in general; that brief time in Rome, courtesy of being abducted for an insane ritual, didn't really count. For a moment, while helping his mother in the gondala, he remembered the sight of her in Galway, a ghost from the past made flesh, similar and yet different. But she looks at him, and her smile is a human smile, eyes crinkling with what soon will remain signs of age, and for another moment, he loves her without being ashamed of it.

"So," Darla says, while they sit in the gondola, gliding on a canal between art galleries, restaurants, apparel and jewelry shops, "first you ask your father to torment you and now it's my turn. There are easier ways to handle your love life and deal with those jealousy issues, you know."

So Angel had told her about Wednesday. Well, he would. Connor bites his lip and avoides looking into her eyes which are identical to his own. At least she doesn't know about this morning, and the papers.

"It's not about that. Not only about that. I need to take out..."

"One Tony Chilton," Darla interrupts, and her voice, usually soft and whispery, sounds rather steely. "Yes, so I gathered. And I have no doubt that you will."

This was actually encouraging.

"And what then? When the next enemy comes along? Because there always will be one. You don't always get consultation time. You certainly don't the next time Hal decides to branch out his social circle, because really, darling boy, be a little realistic and a little grateful. If you two were stuck with only each other and no one else, it wouldn't be an idyll. It would be the final five minutes of Dead Ringers, and trust me, you wouldn't pull it off as well as Jeremy."

"I already know I screwed up," he says in frustration. "Tell me something new."

Darla signals for a halt, and they exit the gondola near a shop called "Lior's".

"You'll never have an entirely peaceful relationship, not with him, not with anyone," she says. "You're your father's son. But here's the new part, because apparantly someone has to spell it out for you. You'll always be able to make him want you more than anyone else, no matter how much a shining hero the someone else is to him. Because you're my son as well." She looks at him, entirely serious. "We may never get the Madonna position in their lives, Connor. But trust me, we're the one ones they bloody well can't do without. Now let's go shopping."

Three hours of severe atonment later, during which Connor stumbled across the strange fact he had not the slightest idea what Harry's size was but that his mother didn't even hesitate to make a guess, he found himself carrying bags David and Goliath and Banana Republic in addition to Lior's, filled with what Darla had declared to be Harry-suitable casual wear for the summer. He desperately hoped she was right and figured he'd have to get rid of the bags and boxes and hide the actual shirt and trousers in his duffel before Angel and Kara returned to the hotel. He also hoped that he'd make it through the next six months or so with complete serenity, taking everything in stride, never making a single mistake in his reactions to anyone in Harry's life, because Darla had shamelessy exploited the opportunity to blackmail him into trying out some items for himself as well. It was difficult enough to distract Harry from doing that all the time, without giving his mother the opportunity to join the act.

Between carrying bag and storing them in various gondolas, between waiting in shoe stores while Darla tried on new shoes and staring at the children's toys section in a speciality shop, wondering whatever became of those legos Harry had given to Emily, he did have another idea. They were sitting in their final gondola when he cleared his throat, pulled something out of one of the bags and handed it over to Darla.

"And what's that?" she asked, sounding surprised for first time.

"A thank you," he said, blushing. He had thought about it. What would be suitable. Jewelry would probably be too much, and besides, his budget was pretty much blown apart by this trip, and he really didn't want to ask Harry for money. And he didn't want to just say thank you, he also wanted to make her smile and show her he got it, at least some of what she had meant about herself and him. So, thinking about certain recent journal entries made by Angel and ramblings made by Kara, he came up with what was hopefully just the right symbol.

The small package he handed over to Darla, beautifully wrapped up, contained a chinese laque box, and in the box, filled to the maximum, tea.

“If I told you I just found out I was adopted,” he asks his little sister, “a few weeks ago, what would you say?”

Mere is fourteen and thinks she knows everything. He is nineteen and is none too sure about that fact, either.

“Connor, you self-important freak,” she says, “you’re not adopted. Mom has all those obnoxious photos of you as a baby. Way more than she has of me. Which is so unfair. No way you’re adopted.”

In her hands, she holds the waffle with icecream he just bought her. She grins at him, sure he’s come up with a new way to tease her. It’s the same grin she had as a toothless baby, only he has never seen her then. He has never met her until about nine months ago.

It’s impossible.

“No way,” he repeats, and grins back.

“Wow, you had me going there for a moment,” she says, and after gulfing down some more of her scrawberry-flavoured icecream, confesses: “You’re getting better. So that’s what this Stanford thing is good for. You’re totally motivating me to go to college, Connor.”

“Nah, you’re too smart for college already,” he shoots back, and by the time he is on his way back to Stanford, he knows two things: she has successfully made him loan her fifty dollars for A Very Important Very Secret Don’t Tell Mom And Dad thing, and he’ll never ask her again. This is his world now, Mere and Mom and Dad and Stanford. His one girlfriend was Tracy who dumped him which he’s till sore about somewhat, but Tracy is dating some football-playing math genius now and safe and sound, and not in a coma or in a grave. He never breathed in the dust of a vampire after staking it. He never killed anyone.

He never had a daughter.

He’s just a boy.

Everything else is a dream. This is his world, and he wants to keep it.

The next day, Angel drops by for coffee, and the world ends.