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Shame (ficlet)
Oct. 22nd, 2005 09:34 pmShame, Daniel Holtz once said, was different from guilt, although the two were related. Connor had not understood this until he came to Los Angeles.
The actions he felt guilty for started to accumulate, though they weren’t always what people wanted or supposed they were. Still, guilt was something he could easily define and identify. Guilt was connected to violations of commandments – his fathers’, or God’s. Shame was different. It had to do with other people’s expectations, and your own. He never understood why his feelings for Cordelia or the fact she had slept with him was supposed to be a shameful thing, but everybody acted as if they were. His own experience of shame had come earlier and had nothing to do with Cordelia. In retrospect, it came with the first sensation of being someone other than Stephen, or in addition to Stephen.
There was no excuse for it. He had been warned. The devil will show you many things. And Connor hadn’t meant to do anything but fulfill his father’s command and observe the beast in its habitat when he returned to the hotel, when he followed Angel to the night club and fought at his side.
Outside the club, though. He was still full of the rush of the fight, but that was no excuse, either. Not for feeling recognition and joy, as Angel ducked his moves, as Connor did the same, as they began to spar for nothing more than the play of it. Only a day and a night since Quortoth, and he was exchanging a smile with the monster he had been raised and trained to destroy, and not to deceive the monster, either.
He knew better. Of course he did. But there was something in him, some kind of hunger that until know he had not realized he possessed, and that was suddenly being fed. Stephen had never felt it. It was a sensation that belonged to the non-existant cleature the vampire labeled Connor. Returning to the motel his father had chosen, he was determined to hide this betrayal. When he found out that Holtz had observed the entire event, he felt it: pure, unadulterated shame.
It never quite left him, though he used the ocean to drown it in. That was something Holtz had forgotten to teach him, and Connor found out on his own: guilt could be appeased. Shame was forever.
The actions he felt guilty for started to accumulate, though they weren’t always what people wanted or supposed they were. Still, guilt was something he could easily define and identify. Guilt was connected to violations of commandments – his fathers’, or God’s. Shame was different. It had to do with other people’s expectations, and your own. He never understood why his feelings for Cordelia or the fact she had slept with him was supposed to be a shameful thing, but everybody acted as if they were. His own experience of shame had come earlier and had nothing to do with Cordelia. In retrospect, it came with the first sensation of being someone other than Stephen, or in addition to Stephen.
There was no excuse for it. He had been warned. The devil will show you many things. And Connor hadn’t meant to do anything but fulfill his father’s command and observe the beast in its habitat when he returned to the hotel, when he followed Angel to the night club and fought at his side.
Outside the club, though. He was still full of the rush of the fight, but that was no excuse, either. Not for feeling recognition and joy, as Angel ducked his moves, as Connor did the same, as they began to spar for nothing more than the play of it. Only a day and a night since Quortoth, and he was exchanging a smile with the monster he had been raised and trained to destroy, and not to deceive the monster, either.
He knew better. Of course he did. But there was something in him, some kind of hunger that until know he had not realized he possessed, and that was suddenly being fed. Stephen had never felt it. It was a sensation that belonged to the non-existant cleature the vampire labeled Connor. Returning to the motel his father had chosen, he was determined to hide this betrayal. When he found out that Holtz had observed the entire event, he felt it: pure, unadulterated shame.
It never quite left him, though he used the ocean to drown it in. That was something Holtz had forgotten to teach him, and Connor found out on his own: guilt could be appeased. Shame was forever.
