Private Entry: Coming to Terms (for angel_ceo_)

The entire flight home, I kept switching between two thoughts, pretty much. She's safe. And she's gone. She's gone. And she's safe.

It's probably one reason why I did what they told me - getting into the jet, getting out, following Angel and Darla. There was some stuff with Cordy in between - I had to tell her what Emily had said - and I think I asked Buffy about Justine after she told me stuff about Reloin, the dimension they said Emily went to, but the rest is pretty much a blur. I just did what I was told and sat there and switched. About half way across the Atlantic, thought three and four and five showed up.

They're still dead. All three of them.

But Kara isn't, and that other girl who seems to be called Brooke isn't, either. Heartbroken and pissed off respectively, but not dead. And neither is Harry.

It doesn't always end the same way.

So she's safe, and I didn't kill her, and nor did anyone else. And she's gone. In the end, hearing that she was once a part of Jasmine after all wasn't so important; I knew she was my daughter long before that, in every way that mattered. I just wish I would have known about her years ago. Because of what she went through with that bastard, and because we would have had more time together.

But maybe she'll be back some day. I was. They were all so sure nobody could return from Quortoth, but I did. And she has that dimensional key. At least if Reloin isn't like Buffy and Angel said it was, she won't be trapped there. She'll never be trapped anywhere again.

It's night here, now. They put me in a room this guy Spike used to crash in; I think that's what it smells of. It's odd, being with them. But when they told me to get into the car, I went, and it wasn't just because I was still on automatic drive. They were basically the only people who registered, other than Cordy now and then. And they - they're alive. I can't bring Mom and Dad and Mere back. I guess I knew that even when I asked Darla. Father is gone again. And I can't protect Emily anymore. But they are there, and they - I don't know how much any of this was their idea. I don't think I'll ever trust them completely. I don't think they should trust me.

But I guess there are some things I want to say.

Facing Facts (for livingtwin)

Two days in Boston, and the oddness of living with both of his parents at the same time hasn’t lessened. It reminds him of swimming in cold water. The water carries you, and flows everywhere around you, it makes you believe that you belong to it in a way you do not belong on land, and it nourishes you. But you still know it can’t last. You have get out sooner or later, or you drown.

So far, Connor has avoided arguments. He has managed to say what he wanted to say to Angel, and he is glad about it. But after the second breakfeast and Darla looking at him with her too familiar eyes while she asks Angel something, or rather starts and then stops, and Connor finishes her sentence without a thought, he knows he has to get out soon, or he won’t be able to any more. They are his parents, all the parents he has left; he has accepted that now. They just can’t be his life.

Emily was supposed to be his life, or at least the next twenty years of it, and she’s gone. So are Mom and Dad and Mere, but apparantly Connor Riley is not, because Connor finds himself missing Stanford when that Spike guy shows up with a few pointed quotes from some Victorian tripe about faithless lovers until Angel snaps at him. Which would have been unnecessary. Connor doesn’t know Spike, and consequently, Spike’s opinion doesn’t really affect him. But the quotes which he can’t identify – because sure, some of the Victorians were bad, but did someone actually publish that stuff? – remind him he used to enjoy his English literature classes. And the psychology classes. College in general. Back when he wanted more than demon fighting. Even further back when he didn’t want any demon fighting at all.

So Connor calls the TA of his favourite professor, mostly because it’s better than another round of wondering what Emily is doing right now in Reloin, and hears what he has already suspected: he has lost his place at Stanford. It’s been a minor miracle they didn’t chuck him out after all the absences last term due to travelling with Justine. His most recent flight did it. It shouldn’t matter, not with everything else that has happened, but somehow, it does.

“Look, I know your parents died,” the TA says. “They still haven’t caught the arsonist, right? Has to be brutal. But rules are rules. If I were you, I’d audit classes and try for readmission next term.”

“Thanks,” Connor replies, and hangs up. It’s amazing to think he could actually do that. Try and pick up his old life again. A part of it.

Then Harry's email arrives, and he wonders whom he was kidding. He’s not going to return to California. The realisation that he wants to finish college remains acute, though. New York has universities. He could try to get admitted there. His grades are still impressive enough.

A child laughs in the streets, and he’s back in Greece again, watching her become light. Go through the portal.

Following an impulse, he announces he’s going out, and predictably enough, Angel and Darla look at each other, and Angel obviously is on the verge of saying he’ll come along, but Darla puts her hand on his, and he refrains. It’s one of her more obvious strategems, a gesture of trust that demands repayment in the form of returning.

After walking for a while, Connor decides to visit Buffy Summers, both because he doesn’t think he thanked her back in the plane for her part in getting Emily to safety, and because she’s the only person here who could tell him how Justine is. She had promised to keep in touch with her, after all. Connor knows that sooner or later, he’ll contact Justine directly. The letter he had left her had been a goodbye, but he can’t let her believe he’s still wandering through the wilderness somewhere, trying to be a hermit or trying for an early death. Maybe by now, she won’t think of him as anything but a soldier who deserted his post anymore, but she needs to know he’s alive, and that his reasons for leaving are not the same as his reasons for not returning. He can’t stand the idea of her imagining him as some sort of suicidal martyr. Being despised as a deserter will be better. And he worries about her. With Buffy here, does she have anyone who could be her friend back in L.A.?

Because he’s thinking of Justine and Los Angeles, he first assumes what he sees when he turns around a corner is a trick of the imagination. Angel’s old car, the Plymouth, the one Angel had given him and which he has left behind together with everything else. Standing parked near a bar. But it’s still a coincidence, and so he walks over to check. The license plate is the same.

He doesn’t have time to think about the implication, though, because the door of the bar opens, and out in the cold November night, wearing clothes that are clearly more fit for California, comes Justine.