Nightmares (ficlet)
Jan. 11th, 2006 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abetterlieOoc: this is connected to a longer storyline
Most people Connor met at college on Wednesday were debating on whether or not to join the Coca Cola boycott which NYU had hooked up with on the ninth. Online, there was the double weirdness of Harmony declaring first Kara and then Darla pregnant, and the way Kara behaved when asked seemed to make it plausible the former was actually possible. Connor was torn between flashbacks to Cordelia’s pregnancy, the urge to go to Boston right away to offer Kara help, and the utterly paranoid idea that Harry upon hearing this might change his mind again. He knew Harry still had feelings for Kara. If Justine had called him and told him she was pregnant, Connor would try to be there for her, too. And Kara was just sixteen. In desperate need of someone not a parent. Plus it seemed nobody’s favourite ghost, Norman Osborne, was back, even this time Connor could neither see nor hear him, which didn’t surprise him that much; Norman just deigned to make his presence known to people he expected something from, after all. In any event, the late Osborn Senior upon learning Kara was pregnant would undoubtedly start calculating about perfect genetic combinations at once and push for Harry to marry her immediately, so a second offspring could follow. Or he could come to the conclusion the child of a Slayer was just what he wanted to be reborn as and kidnap the embryo.
Or, most forbidden thought of all, that child could be another attempt of Jasmine to come back, after Emily was gone and lost to Connor.
And then again, it might just be some craziness of Harmony’s.
All in all, Connor had better days. He had a quick dinner, and then, as it was his turn to patrol, spent some hours scouting the city, finding not a single vampire to take his mood out on, only some utterly human muggers and some drug dealers, which meant he had to wear the mask he had reluctantly agreed to with not-supernatural cases, and to hold back in terms of physical violence. Which was okay on most occasions, just not when you were looking for an outlet.
By the time he returned home, he was tired and grumpy. Harry wasn’t back from OsCorp yet, which was a bit surprising given their earlier conversation, but then Harry had started to forget things now and then ever since they returned from their skiing vacation. Nothing major, just little things. Probably due to the stress at business. Connor who in the process of catching up after starting the term late had sometimes forgotten to eat during the day could empathize. He knew how important the whole being-a-true-asset-to-OsCorp-and-putting-it-on-the-map thing was to Harry. And then there was the Norman return. At least this time, there were no manifestations the way Harry’s father used to make his presence known, no drop in temperature, no thrown objects, but once or twice, he had noticed Harry making a remark to the mirror which wasn’t addressed to himself and wasn’t meant as a joke.
It’ll change, Connor told himself, it’ll change as soon as they have some breakthrough. Or once I find a better exorcism.
Or if Kara is pregnant and Harry proposes, but that was the exhaustion talking, clearly, and waiting for Harry to return, Connor fell asleep.
His father’s voice was what woke up up, as it had done so often.
“Stephen,” Daniel Holtz said quietly, “Stephen.”
His father was sitting in an armchair Connor had not noticed in the room before, looking as he had done before his death, old and worn, not like the brief, painful and impossible apparition in Los Angeles who had resembled Connor’s earliest memories.
“I tried to warn you,” Holtz said, “but you would not listen. Now I cannot help you anymore.”
“Warn me?” Connor repeated, who would have preferred fury to the grief he heard in his father’s voice.
“The devil has many colours, and he will show you many things. You stopped believing, Stephen. Or you decided that it did not matter anymore. You decided to let Angelus go unpunished, because you believed the mask he wears. And as you wish to see only Angel, despite all the warning signs, so you wish to see only the pleasant mask of the boy you consort with, not his true self.”
“I know who he is,” Connor said, not aware whether he was talking of Angel, or Harry, or both. “I always did.”
“No,” Daniel Holtz said. “You failed, my son. You betrayed yourself, and you betrayed me. And thus you shall see the beast rise in the one you love most. I wished to spare you, but he who spares the rod spoils the child. You will see, and you will be unable to stop it.”
He nodded towards the wall, and for the first time, Connor noticed the mask which hung there. A green goblin mask.
This is impossible, he thought. There was no way Harry would keep that mask around, especially not in this room. It was behind a wall of cement in a destroyed lab.
The lab in this pent house, you mean? Angelus’ voice asked sarcastically. Or that lab on a Greek island which you left utterly undestroyed because you were too busy playing poker and flirting?
The mask on the wall started to change form, to melt into another face. Just before it became recognizable, Connor used all the will power he had and overcame the frozen state he was in, jumped up and punched the mask into the wall with enough power to make the mixture of wood, stone and cement around him crumble. As he drew back his fist for a second punch, though, he saw it was covered with maggots. Stricken, he looked down. There, lying on rubble, wasn’t Norman Osborn, or some ridiculously costumed supervillain, or Harry. It was her. Of course it was her.
“You said you loved me, father,” she whispered, and then at last he heard Harry’s voice, saying as Harry had done during Halloween, when so many things had come to surface:
“Gonna kill me, Connor? Is that what you do to everybody you love?”
“No,” Connor whispered, and woke up.
There was no Daniel Holtz, no arm chair, and no mask on the utterly intact wall. Jasmine was as dead and gone as she had been these past two years, and Harry was beside him, sleeping; apparantly, he had managed to get in quiet enough not to wake Connor up.
Connor still was not able to fall asleep again.
Most people Connor met at college on Wednesday were debating on whether or not to join the Coca Cola boycott which NYU had hooked up with on the ninth. Online, there was the double weirdness of Harmony declaring first Kara and then Darla pregnant, and the way Kara behaved when asked seemed to make it plausible the former was actually possible. Connor was torn between flashbacks to Cordelia’s pregnancy, the urge to go to Boston right away to offer Kara help, and the utterly paranoid idea that Harry upon hearing this might change his mind again. He knew Harry still had feelings for Kara. If Justine had called him and told him she was pregnant, Connor would try to be there for her, too. And Kara was just sixteen. In desperate need of someone not a parent. Plus it seemed nobody’s favourite ghost, Norman Osborne, was back, even this time Connor could neither see nor hear him, which didn’t surprise him that much; Norman just deigned to make his presence known to people he expected something from, after all. In any event, the late Osborn Senior upon learning Kara was pregnant would undoubtedly start calculating about perfect genetic combinations at once and push for Harry to marry her immediately, so a second offspring could follow. Or he could come to the conclusion the child of a Slayer was just what he wanted to be reborn as and kidnap the embryo.
Or, most forbidden thought of all, that child could be another attempt of Jasmine to come back, after Emily was gone and lost to Connor.
And then again, it might just be some craziness of Harmony’s.
All in all, Connor had better days. He had a quick dinner, and then, as it was his turn to patrol, spent some hours scouting the city, finding not a single vampire to take his mood out on, only some utterly human muggers and some drug dealers, which meant he had to wear the mask he had reluctantly agreed to with not-supernatural cases, and to hold back in terms of physical violence. Which was okay on most occasions, just not when you were looking for an outlet.
By the time he returned home, he was tired and grumpy. Harry wasn’t back from OsCorp yet, which was a bit surprising given their earlier conversation, but then Harry had started to forget things now and then ever since they returned from their skiing vacation. Nothing major, just little things. Probably due to the stress at business. Connor who in the process of catching up after starting the term late had sometimes forgotten to eat during the day could empathize. He knew how important the whole being-a-true-asset-to-OsCorp-and-putting-it-on-the-map thing was to Harry. And then there was the Norman return. At least this time, there were no manifestations the way Harry’s father used to make his presence known, no drop in temperature, no thrown objects, but once or twice, he had noticed Harry making a remark to the mirror which wasn’t addressed to himself and wasn’t meant as a joke.
It’ll change, Connor told himself, it’ll change as soon as they have some breakthrough. Or once I find a better exorcism.
Or if Kara is pregnant and Harry proposes, but that was the exhaustion talking, clearly, and waiting for Harry to return, Connor fell asleep.
His father’s voice was what woke up up, as it had done so often.
“Stephen,” Daniel Holtz said quietly, “Stephen.”
His father was sitting in an armchair Connor had not noticed in the room before, looking as he had done before his death, old and worn, not like the brief, painful and impossible apparition in Los Angeles who had resembled Connor’s earliest memories.
“I tried to warn you,” Holtz said, “but you would not listen. Now I cannot help you anymore.”
“Warn me?” Connor repeated, who would have preferred fury to the grief he heard in his father’s voice.
“The devil has many colours, and he will show you many things. You stopped believing, Stephen. Or you decided that it did not matter anymore. You decided to let Angelus go unpunished, because you believed the mask he wears. And as you wish to see only Angel, despite all the warning signs, so you wish to see only the pleasant mask of the boy you consort with, not his true self.”
“I know who he is,” Connor said, not aware whether he was talking of Angel, or Harry, or both. “I always did.”
“No,” Daniel Holtz said. “You failed, my son. You betrayed yourself, and you betrayed me. And thus you shall see the beast rise in the one you love most. I wished to spare you, but he who spares the rod spoils the child. You will see, and you will be unable to stop it.”
He nodded towards the wall, and for the first time, Connor noticed the mask which hung there. A green goblin mask.
This is impossible, he thought. There was no way Harry would keep that mask around, especially not in this room. It was behind a wall of cement in a destroyed lab.
The lab in this pent house, you mean? Angelus’ voice asked sarcastically. Or that lab on a Greek island which you left utterly undestroyed because you were too busy playing poker and flirting?
The mask on the wall started to change form, to melt into another face. Just before it became recognizable, Connor used all the will power he had and overcame the frozen state he was in, jumped up and punched the mask into the wall with enough power to make the mixture of wood, stone and cement around him crumble. As he drew back his fist for a second punch, though, he saw it was covered with maggots. Stricken, he looked down. There, lying on rubble, wasn’t Norman Osborn, or some ridiculously costumed supervillain, or Harry. It was her. Of course it was her.
“You said you loved me, father,” she whispered, and then at last he heard Harry’s voice, saying as Harry had done during Halloween, when so many things had come to surface:
“Gonna kill me, Connor? Is that what you do to everybody you love?”
“No,” Connor whispered, and woke up.
There was no Daniel Holtz, no arm chair, and no mask on the utterly intact wall. Jasmine was as dead and gone as she had been these past two years, and Harry was beside him, sleeping; apparantly, he had managed to get in quiet enough not to wake Connor up.
Connor still was not able to fall asleep again.
