What keeps you up at night? (Ficlet)

[abetterlie]

following this and this


Click.

The sound his fingers make as he stretches them is the only one. They put him in general population at first, but now there is something about solitary and protection. Meaning they want to protect the other prisoners from him. They don't know he's been careful, but rendering people unconscious is the best thing you can do in limited space when they keep going at you and you can't permit yourself to seriously hurt or kill them.

Harry doesn't have superpowers. He's gotten good at self defense by now, but that's not the same thing, and he hates closed spaces. Something to think about when Connor doesn't think about the photos, or the other dead, the ones the police know nothing about.

Click.

He should have remained with them, that day. Made sure their ashes were dispersed in the wind, as he and Justine had done when they burned Father. And it's not like he hasn't seen dead bodies before, or burned bodies, but one of the photos showed Mere's left little finger, miraculously intact, barely blackened. Just the little finger, with a friendship ring from one of her friends at high school, and he tries to remember the name of her friend. That keeps him occupied for an hour, at least, because he always returns to "Harmony", and he knows that's not true. Harmony was Kara's friend.

Click.

"Don't you have anything to say?" the Sergeant had asked, Kathleen Fitzgerald, and her partner had added: "I wouldn't count on your boyfriend to bail you out if I were you. He's probably already cutting a deal with the NYPD and moving on to the next best thing. Hey, come to think of it, didn't he already? Wasn't there something in the papers, Kath?"

But the woman had ignored that lead and had leaned forward, across the seat on the plane where they had Connor handcuffed. He didn't mention the cuffs were redundant. "You know you do," she had said intently. "I think you know exactly what you've done, and that you want to confess. Don't you?"

The thing was, she wasn't completely wrong. He's been thinking about it intermittendly, ever since meeting Faith again. When he had gotten drunk at Peter's, he had almost spilled it out. That singularly simple idea: human justice. No, he hadn't murdered Mom and Dad and Mere, not the way the police thought, or Mario, but he was responsible for their deaths nonetheless. He had killed a man more recently, the one who had held Emily captive. and hadn't even been sorry. And he had dragged a girl to her death, kidnapped her and delivered her to be slaughtered, with her blood allowing his daughter to be born.

You still love me?

Yes.

That was the death nobody would ever hold him accountable for, because even Angel, who knew about atonment and being a killer better than anyone, thought it was a good thing that she was dead: Jasmine.

Click.

Solitary, and maybe it's not even night any more. If he called out and said he didn't want to wait for a lawyer, he wanted to confess now, someone would get in immediately. He wouldn't mention human sacrifices or mind wipes or spells or fallen powers, he'd just say what they wanted to hear. Well, almost. He'd say he killed his family because he was a psychopath and hadn't told anyone so far. While he was at it, he could throw in something about killing Mario as well, also due to being a psychopath. It would be easy. And whether he'd get a lifetime in jail or a death sentence, it would be just, wouldn't it?

Now the question is, what do you deserve? Don't get up. Daddy is not finished talking.

Except that there is no way they wouldn't use such a confession to go after Harry as well. He's not naive enough anymore to believe otherwise. Someone famous convicted is always more important than some unknown convicted. They'd insist Harry had known. So he can't confess.

Click.

Today. He found them dead today. If it is still today, and not tomorrow. He's not tired, but then again, that doesn't tell him anything about whether it's night or day or whether or not he should sleep. Angel must have felt like that under the sea.

Now the question is, what do you deserve?

Comments

At the prison

[queen-c-tm.livejournal.com]

Traveling with Darla to California had been... interesting, to say the least. But it had also been a good distraction, and that's exactly what Cordelia needed right now. Not that she'd ever wish for Connor to be in such trouble just so she could take her mind off of her own problems for a while. But then, only Connor in trouble could get her and Darla together in such a way.

When they got to the prison and asked to see him, they were told no. Repeatedly. He was in solitary, and prisoners in solitary weren't allowed visitors, not even their mothers, no matter how scary said mothers could be. And Darla, despite being human now, had not forgotten how to be frightening. The guards barely flinched. Apparently visitors of any kind went against the principle of the whole point of Solitary. Whatever, Cordelia didn't care. She hadn't flown across the country to be turned away. Connor had been there when she needed him a month ago, and no one was going to tell her she couldn't do the same.

Unfortunately, her own special brand of coercion (aka flirtation) didn't seem to be working on the guards, so around the third refusal, she decided to resort to good old-fashioned bribery.

Funny how quickly man's mind can change if you wave enough green under his nose. And maybe, somewhere deep down, it gave her a perverse sort of pleasure to know that it was Orlando's money that was paying for it.

If she were a more charitable woman, she might have stood aside after that and let Darla go in to see him, but she wasn't, so it was Cordelia that the guard finally led to the dim, grungy visitation room. Because Connor wasn't supposed to leave Solitary, she wasn't taken to the usual place, with the glass dividers and phones. Instead, she had a sneaking suspicion they were putting her in a conjugal visit room.

Well, there woudln't be any of that going on, but at lesat it was private. So she sat in the room's only chair and stared at the door so she wouldn't have to look at the bed, and waited for them to get "the prisoner."

At the prison

[abetterlie.livejournal.com]

Listen, the guard told him, since you're so good about keeping your mouth shut, don't say a word about this. Or that's the last time you'll see your - wife. You gonna get me fired, I make sure you're dog food before I leave, got it?

Wife? he thought, and then figured it might be another trick to get him to say anything. Another temptation. Something he'd believe after solitary. What he certainly didn't expect was Cordelia.

When he saw her, Connor experienced an odd mixture of gratitude, hope and anger. She had just been through hell; she shouldn't be dragged into this. He suddenly was afraid that they'd do to her what they had done to Harry, arrest her out of the blue, for the crime of being alive, perhaps. Then he told himself to be rational.

To Cordelia, he would look a bit thinner than the last time she had seen him, and due to prison hygiene or lack of some very much like the boy who lived half on the streets and half in an abandoned building when she met him. He steps towards her, looks at her and then hugs her, fiercely, whispering, since he's pretty sure the room is bugged:

"Cordy, they arrested Harry as well. They won't tell me what happened then. You have to help him."

Re: At the prison

[queen-c-tm.livejournal.com]

Cordelia hugs him back, happy to see he's more or less okay. She doesn't think about people listening, though if the room is bugged, and its purpose is what she originally suspected, she would be pretty grossed out at the idea.

Connor's request has her frowning for a moment. She's here to help him, not his boyfriend. But Connor's obviously worried, and since she actually does know something about Harry, she figures she might as well tell him. She just wishes the news was better.

"He's in New York," she says, pulling back enough to look him over. He looks thinner, tired. A little dirty, but prison's never been known for its bubble baths.

"Darla told me what she knows on the flight over here," she continues. "They put Harry in a prison there, but I guess there was... a fight. He's in the hospital, but he'll be okay. He's got money and lawyers to help him out of this. You're the one I'm worried about. She said something about a triple homicide? What's going on?"

At the prison

[abetterlie.livejournal.com]

This is getting worse and worse. He remembers Harry at the hospital, pumped with drugs, and he remembers Harry talking about how much he hated this, how he feared it. For a moment, he has the mad idea of taking Cordelia's hand and breaking out, not stopping to run until they have reached her car, and then driving all the way across the continent. But this is idiotic. It wouldn't work. He has to come up with something which will.

"They think I killed my family," he says in reply to Cordelia's question, sounding curiously calm, with the anger and self-loathing tightly kept inside. "Mom, Dad and Mere. Someone saw me there before I found the bodies or after, I don't know, they didn't tell me, and they think I killed them."

He looks at Cordelia and remembers starting the fire, together with Justine. It had seemed the only right thing to do at the time. Burn the bodies, and the home he recalls so clearly even though he never grew up there, just as they had burned Daniel Holtz.

Jasmine never had a pyre. And suddenly this seems yet another way in which he failed the people he loves most. That he left her on that street, after killing there.

"Talk about justice," he says before he can stop himself.

Re: At the prison

[queen-c-tm.livejournal.com]

"This isn't justice, it's a witch hunt," Cordelia says firmly. She doesn't know the whole story behind what happened to his other family, but she doesn't need to to know that he didn't do it. "What proof do they even have? Just because you were there doesn't mean anything. They were your family, of course you were there."

She's angry now, and starts to pace the small room. "They're totally setting you up. Throwing you in jail, putting you in solitary confinement, refusing bail... what the hell? You don't do that to someone when you have no proof!"

At the prison

[abetterlie.livejournal.com]

As opposed to Cordelia's faked death, it hasn't occured to Connor yet that this could be a set-up, courtesy of Wolfram and Hart or any other enemy he made through the years. It felt too much like retribution. Except that then it would have only concerned him, and it doesn't.

"I guess I need a lawyer," he says to Cordy, and then laughs, though it's not funny in the least, because of the irony. When he hears the sound, he stops, abruptly. Get a grip, focus, he tells himself. Who knows when you'll see anyone again?

"That detective who arrested me, she kept telling me that they could prove I burned the house."

Justine had been there, but even if he knew how to find her, which he doesn't, he doesn't want her dragged into this. If she got arrested as well, just like Harry - no. And she hadn't seen him find the bodies, so it isn't as if she could vouch for him, even though she would.

"I didn't speak with her. Or anyone else."

He remembers Harry screaming at him not to say anything, thinks of Harry locked up again and the corpse of Mario the restaurant owner, and suddenly there is another noise.

The wall is slightly dented, secure material notwithstanding, and Connor's fist is somewhat bloody. It'll heal in a short while. He wishes it wouldn't.

"Sorry," he says to Cordelia.

(There is a reason to be. The guard comes in, about to tell them that this is it.)

Re: At the prison

[queen-c-tm.livejournal.com]

In one sense, Connor's being too calm about this. In another, well, the wall can speak for that. Cordelia raises an eyebrow at him curiously. There's something off about it all. He's not reacting the way she would have expected. He's almost... resigned.

"You don't have a lawyer yet? It's good that you haven't said anything, but you really should have a lawyer. I can try to find one for you if you want."

When the door starts to open, she quickly grabs his hand so the guard won't see the injury.

"We're not done talking," she says, giving the man a cold glare.

At the prison

[abetterlie.livejournal.com]

Not by problem, the guard says. Now me getting fired because the psycho kid freaks out again, that's my problem. Time's up.

(He clearly never saw Connor freaked out, or he would know the difference.)

Connor ignores the guard. "I kind of don't know any not-evil ones," he says to Cordelia, "so, yeah."

Pulling her closer with the hand she is holding, as if for a goodbye hug, he whispers again, in her ear:

"I don't care what happens to me, Cordy, but I need to know they let Harry go, or I'm leaving here."

The not-legal way. It would mean giving up any hope of a normal existence and might get him killed, but he's not prepared to remain in prison of that means Harry is in prison as well. That is the problem of crossing dimensions and having people return from the dead: you start to think anything is possible with some superpowers and a bit of determination, even breaking out of one jail, crossing the country to affect another breakout, and then leave the country altogether.

There is one more thing which he can't mention to Cordelia: his deal with the magic shop owner, to learn what happened to Cordelia's child. If he breaks out, he'll have to make that final detour to Savannah as well.

If, on the other hand, Harry is set free, then everything is different again, because while the cops might have the details wrong, he is a murderer, and so he deserves this. It's not something he can bring himself to say to Cordelia, either: because it comes back to their daughter again, and the girl in white, and she has enough pain as it is.

Re: At the prison

[queen-c-tm.livejournal.com]

Cordelia hugs him back and whispers as well. "I'll find out what I can, but I care what happens to you, so don't do anything crazy in here, okay? Let the lawyers do their thing."

Only problem is, she doesn't really know any non-evil ones, either, unless you count Alan Shore. Not that she really knows him that well, or even knows if he handles murder cases. Maybe Darla will know of someone.

Which reminds her: "Darla's here, too," she says quickly. "She's worried about you."

She's not sure knowing his mother is here will help him at all, but she figures it can't hurt to remind him that there are other people that care about him.

At the prison

[abetterlie.livejournal.com]

His parents, both together and apart, are a subject of their own, and not just for the old reasons of being raised to be their nemesis. Between his mother having sacrificed her life for him and his father having made a deal with the devil to save him, he sometimes feels suffocated by the obligation of being somehow worthy of all this. At other times, he wants to be with them and still feels an embarassed and shamed bit of jealousy for Kara because she manages to pull that of whereas it is too late for anything but visits now, given his age, and when he is with them he sooner or later hits the point where he wants to run away. In between, you have the times where they are getting along. Yes, those exist, too. Sometimes he has nightmares of Angel turning to dust and Darla dying in front of him (again), and then when he wakes up the relief that they, alone among his relations, so far are indestructible is overwhelming. So the expression with which he responds to Cordelia's statement is rather hard to interpret.

"I know," he says, and then becomes matter-of-factly. "Tell her I won't do anything crazy. Tell Kara, too. She has this idea that I'm the most unstable guy ever."

Wonder why, says the guard. Time's up, remember?

Connor squeezes Cordelia's hand once more, and then quickly turns and walks out.

It's good neither of them can read thoughts. Because the guard's are these: if he does get fired for allowing the visit, he has a story to sell to the papers: Orlando's Ex Bangs Triple Homicide Psycho In Jail!

OOC

[queen-c-tm.livejournal.com]

Just had to say, that last part made me laugh. *g*

That seemed a good ending, so no need for Cordy to reply again?

OOC

[abetterlie.livejournal.com]

Yes, let's make it a wrap, and hey, always glad to amuse. Feel free to use the headline if you want to.*g*