Part 36
“My father is dead.” Connor’s voice, deep with newfound maturity, rang with a flat, emotionless certainty. His panic was suddenly gone, as if Angel’s words had shut off that valve in his brain and switched on the one marked “proceed with extreme caution.”
Circling the room, Connor moved himself further away from Angel as if the distance would make him safer. Angel kept the space, moving around the room with him, facing him every step of the way. Finally they stopped, halfway from where they’d began, Angel facing the door and Connor with his back to it.
Angel sighed, motioning to the seat Connor had fled. “We need to talk about this.”
Connor stayed where he was, arms crossed over his chest in a defiant stance. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
A feminine voice answered him. “There’s a lot to talk about.”
At the sound of her voice, the valve switched back and Connor’s mind flooded with panic. Every other thought fled, save a complete and utter blankness.
Whirling around to face the door, Connor stared in disbelief at Cordelia, her soft voice startling him. He felt trapped, as if he’d been caught in the end of a tunnel and his only access to the exit blocked. Like a deer caught in the glare of headlights, his eyes whipped from one to the other as he backed away, skittish and jittery.
“Y-you’re dead!” His voice was hoarse, an audible sandpaper. “I saw you, in my dream, strapped with explosives. I was going to kill you!” Connor backed up further, his shoulder blades slamming against the hard rock wall, and still, he tried to back up further, scrunching his body against the wall. He felt like a lab rat in too small a cage, desperate to escape the torture he knew was coming. He couldn’t take this.
“Connor,” Angel said softly, stepping closer to him. “Breathe. You’re safe. We aren’t going to hurt you. We’re going to explain.”
“Leave me alone!” he shouted, his eyes wide and panicked. “Just leave me alone,” he said again, sliding down the wall and into a fetal position. “Leave me alone.” His voice became a whisper, his eyes filling with tears.
Cordy walked closer to him, crouching down and making her eyes level with his. “We can’t leave you alone, Connor.” She spoke softly, putting liquid comfort into her voice. “We love you.”
He looked up at her, pain and tear-filled eyes boring into hers. “But how? You don’t exist. My dreams aren’t real. They can’t be!”
Crawling closer, Cordy reached a hand out to touch his leg. When Connor didn’t pull away, she slid beside him and leaned against the wall, her face close to his. She brought one hand up to stroke his face, pushing his hair away from his eyes, wiping his tears away.
“They’re memories, Connor.” She said it gently, apologetically. “Memories of an old life that was so painful it almost destroyed you. We have the power to restore them to you, and we may have to do it soon. They’re coming back on their own, and they’ll ruin you if you don’t face them.”
Connor only sniffled a little and running his hands over his face to dry his tears. With that, his face turned neutral again, a cold detachment that scared Angel. He knelt next to his son, longing to reach out and touch him like Cordelia had been able to, but he knew that Connor wouldn’t be receptive. And Angel wasn’t ready, either.
“We’ll give you some time,” Angel said slowly. “We’ll leave for a few minutes, then come back and answer any questions you have, okay?”
Dragging his eyes from the floor, Connor met Angel’s stare, then nodded after a brief, tense moment. He turned his expression away immediately, staring into nothingness and tightening his legs to his chest. Angel reached his hand out and brought Cordy to her feet, and they exited the room quietly.
Part 37
“Say what?” Fred’s mouth hung open in disbelief, much like that of her contemporaries seated next to her. Her boyfriend had just said something that defied any known definition of logic and her scientific mind was having a really hard time processing it.
“Angel has a son,” Wesley repeated.
“Oh that’s just lovely,” Spike complained, standing up from his perch on the edge of the chair. “Peaches not only gets his girl, he gets a son, too. Figures.” He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Always has to show me up.”
“Somehow I don’t think this has anything to do with you, Blondie Buns,” Lorne said dryly. “Methinks Wesley here has stumbled on some sort of prophetic birth that only Angel knows about.”
Gunn frowned, his arms crossed over his powerful chest. “So why didn’t the boss tell us about this? It’s not like we couldn’t have researched it for him. Or that we wouldn’t have accepted his son.”
“But Angel’s son wants to kill him.” Wesley regarded the room’s occupants thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s a good reason for keeping him a secret.”
“I just don’t get it.” Fred shook her head. “It’s scientifically impossible for two vampires to produce a child. I mean, the equipment’s there, it just doesn’t. . . function.”
“I’ll have you know it functions right proper,” Spike said, affronted. “It just doesn’t make little vampires, ’s all.”
Fred frowned at him. “I wasn’t trying to insult you, Spike. I just think that Angel might be thinking that this kid is his son when he isn’t. How did he find out?”
Wes’s frown matched hers. “He didn’t say. Angel wasn’t exactly forthcoming with meaningful information. He seemed to indicate that he would fill me in later.”
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like anything good. Sounds like we might have to beat somebody’s head in before this is all over.” Gunn’s frown had grown deeper and he dropped his arms to his sides, as if prepared to fight that very instant. Somehow, it didn’t seem out of place with his 3-piece Armani suit.
“Well, it better not be Angel’s son that gets harmed,” Spike said as Harmony walked in carrying a tray of beverages. “Peaches gets kinda tweaked when people mess with his family. Not that he ever stuck up for me,” he added as a bitter-sounding afterthought.
“Sorry I’m late, but the break room is way crowded. I had to practically behead someone to get to the microwave for Spikie’s O-pos.” Harmony set the tray down on the table and handed out everyone’s drinks. Grabbing a mug for herself, she sat in one of the swivel conference chairs and grabbed her steno pad, readying herself to take notes.
“Did you say Angel’s sun?” she asked curiously. “What, does he get to walk around outside in the day now, too? Lucky guy.”
“Not sun, Harm,” Spike said, exasperated. “Son. S-o-n. As in a rugrat. Curtain-climber. Snotty, irritating little gems that louse up your life for good.”
“Geez, somebody’s bitter,” Harm bit back. “And that’s impossible. Vampire’s can’t have children. Believe me, I know,” she said as if imparting top-secret knowledge to people who should feel privileged to be given the opportunity to hear it.
“Well, Angel did, and that’s what we’re discussing.”
“Oh.” Harmony was silent for a moment, then her eyes grew huge. “Oh! Oh, no. Oh. My. God! I just had sex last night. I could be pregnant right now! What am I going to do?” She bolted up out of the chair and began to pace, ringing her hands.
“It’s okay, Harmony,” Fred tried to reassure her. “I think this was just an accident. Well, sort of.”
Harmony whirled around and pinned Fred to the wall with her eyes. “Aren’t they all accidents? Nobody plans to get knocked up, it just happens. I’m too young to be a mother! I can’t be saddled with a kid!”
“Will you shut the bloody hell up, woman!” Spike roared at her, clutching his head and moaning. “It was a blasted prophecy, not a contagious disease. We mediocre, run-of-the mill vampires can’t have children. You’re. Not. Pregnant!”
“Oh good.” Harmony slumped into a chair, sighing with relief. “I was so freaked out there for a second!”
“I never would’ve known if you hadn’t said that.” Gunn’s face was the picture of innocence.
“No, I really was! But it’s good to know that I can act so calm in a crisis,” she added in all seriousness.
It was hard work for everyone to keep a straight face.
“So you don’t want me to take notes?” Harmony asked again a few moments later, looking a little lost.
“No,” Wesley said through clenched teeth. Harmony may just be the death of him yet. “And this should be a strictly confidential conversation, Harmony. No talk in the break room about this. If I hear anything, I’ll know exactly who spilt the beans.”
The threat in his voice made Harmony smile nervously. She backed toward the door looking at him warily. “Of course, Wesley! You can count on me to keep my lips zipped. I’ll be the soul of discretion. I mean without the soul and all. Um, bye!”
Everyone was silent for several minutes in the wake of Harmony’s departure. She had a way of sucking all of the intelligence out of the room so that everyone had to work to get it back.
“I still think that Angel’s known about this for a long time,” Fred said quietly. “and I think its way weird that he never said anything about it to Wesley. Hasn’t he told you just about everything?” she asked her boyfriend.
“He’s told me a lot,” Wesley admitted. “Sometimes more than I’d like to know. And I would think that if he had a son, Lorne would’ve seen that in at least one of the times he read him, right Lorne?”
The green demon nodded. “At least a shadow of a munchkin, if there was one. Especially back when he was going through all of that beige aura unpleasantness a couple of years ago. But I saw nothing. Angel didn’t know about a son then; I would stake my front-row Aretha tickets on it.”
“What about a memory spell?” Spike suggested. “Red liked to play around with those just before she went all wonky. We forgot who we all were with no clue as to how it happened. If she hadn’t loused up her own spell, I might still think I was Giles’ son.” He shuddered at the memory.
Wesley looked thoughtful. “That would make sense. If Angel’s son was in danger, anyone who knew him would be in equal danger. Angel might have convinced us to alter our memories for the boy’s protection. Hell, I might even have suggested it.”
Gunn frowned. “I would never agree to that, Wes. I don’t like people messing with my mind like that.”
Everyone stared at him in disbelief, and Gunn fidgeted nervously. “Okay, so I don’t usually like that. The lawyer stuff was an exception.”
“I’m sure,” Wesley said, letting him off the hook.
“So what’s the game plan, Watcher Jr.?” Spike sat back down, lighting up a cigarette and inhaling deeply.
“I say we make Angel tell us the whole story.” Gunn crossed his arms again in his decisiveness. He still didn’t like the idea of his memory being altered, despite his own choices in the same area.
Wesley shook his head. “I think we need to bide our time. Angel will tell us everything; I’m certain of it. If he had our memories altered, it was for a good reason. We just have to trust him. And without a doubt, Cordelia will know the entire story as well.”
Fred nodded, coming over to stand by Wesley and grab his hand, squeezing it in support. “Cordy won’t let Angel do anything weird.”
“I agree with the woodsprite, here,” Lorne said, standing as if to leave. “If you need me to read the kid or anything, let me know. Otherwise I’ll leave it in your efficient hands.”
The rest of the group nodded their agreement, Gunn somewhat reluctantly, then left the room. Wesley stood alone after kissing Fred goodbye, staring out the window. He hadn’t told them the whole of it: he was scared for the boy. In those brief moments he’d had with him, he had seen an instability there that was just below the surface. The kind of instability he’d seen only once before in his recollection: in the eyes of Angelus.
Part 38
“You really are my father, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
Connor seemed resigned to the fact, even though he couldn’t quite get his mind around it. From what he could tell, there were, so far, three fathers if he counted the two in his dreams and the one that had just died. Not to mention Jace, who’d tried to be like a father to him. A guy should be lucky to have so many strong men in his life. So why did he feel like he’d been given a three-for-one deal that went horribly wrong?
Angel’s dark eyes were fathomless, but Connor found he could meet them without fear. There was something comforting in them. It was as if he could sense Angel’s nervousness, and knowing that his father was just as jittery made him calmer somehow. In a flash of insight, Connor realized that Angel had a lot riding on this. If his dreams were any indication, Angel had never been given a chance to love his son in any normal way.
And Eve wanted him to kill Angel. Kill his own father. How the hell had he gotten mixed up in this nightmare?
“So are you guys going to explain this to me, or what?” Connor sat back in his chair, sipping the soda Cordy had thoughtfully brought with her when they reentered the interrogation room. “I’m kinda confused.”
Cordy raised her eyebrows at him. “You seem sorta casual about this, considering how you were a half hour ago.”
Connor shrugged. “I’m adjusting. I thought all along that the dreams felt like memories, and every minute that goes by makes it seem more plausible. I’m still totally wigged out by it, but my brain can’t process it all right now.”
“You’re on autopilot.”
“Basically,” he agreed. “I’m sure it’ll come back to bite me in the ass later when I can think about it, but right now I can’t.”
Angel nodded, twirling his pen on the table top.
“So? Where do we start?” Connor prompted again.
Angel’s eyes met his. “Maybe you should explain what your dreams were about and we can fill in the gaps.”
Connor nodded, then proceeded to explain every dream he’d had and in the order he’d arranged them. Cordy and Angel just listened, their eyes widening and meeting each other’s at sporadic intervals. Connor ignored their sideways glances, knowing that they remembered everything he was recounting and it was probably as painful for them as it was for him.
“So the way I figure it, the last one was the one with the dynamite in a mall or something. I was pretty Ted Kaczynski-ish there, wanting to blow everybody up because I couldn’t live with myself. But I wasn’t really there. I mean, the me now wasn’t there. I was just watching. I felt the pain of the other me, but I couldn’t really relate to it. I didn’t understand it.”
“You had been through a lot,” Angel said softly, speaking for the first time in several minutes. “You were in so much pain.”
Connor just stared back at him, the eyes of his mother boring into his father’s. “And then you came at me with a knife. Everything went black, like when a movie fades out, and I wake up screaming every time I have the dream.”
Angel flinched.
“Best I figure it, that’s the last dream, chronologically speaking. My dream-self’s emotions are totally wacko in that one. Suicidal. Homicidal. Psychotic. Neurotic. Take your pick. It’s a great big smorgasbord of postal.”
“That was the last one, I think.” Cordy looked at Angel. “I was in a coma by that point. I don’t remember any of it, but from what Angel tells me, it was.”
Standing, Angel walked over to the two-way mirror and stared at the place where his reflection would’ve been. Slipping his hands in his pockets, he sighed deeply and began to explain. It all came out: Connor’s conception and birth, Angel’s joy over having a child, Connor’s abduction and Wesley’s betrayal, Holtz’s revenge scheme, Cordy’s body hijacking, Connor’s downward spiral into mental breakdown. He fell silent when he remembered the day in the sporting goods store when he realized that he couldn’t save his son.
“I knew then that I would lose you again, Connor. I knew that if I didn’t give you a new life, you would die and take us all with you. You’d given up. You didn’t believe I loved you. You didn’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. Everyone you relied on had either been taken from you or abandoned you. There was nothing left.”
“So you killed me?” It wasn’t an accusation.
Angel nodded. “I made a deal with the devil to save your life. Wolfram & Hart agreed to wipe the painful memories from your mind and give you a new happy life if I agreed to head their L.A. offices.” Angel turned to face him, his deep brown eyes begging his son for understanding. “I loved you too much to say no. You deserved to be happy, Connor. This was the only way I could give it to you.”
Connor nodded, suddenly unable to speak. Everything he’d felt when he’d seen them came rushing back again and his eyes filled with tears. Leaning forward, he planted his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. He tried to control his breathing, but harsh gasps escaped him anyway, and he jerked away violently when a hand clasped his shoulder.
“Just go away, please,” he begged brokenly. Pain-filled eyes came up to meet Angel’s concerned ones. “I’m sorry, I just need time. I need to sleep, to think about this, I just can’t. . .” he stopped, his voice breaking.
Angel nodded, stepping back. Cordy stood and went to his side, clasping Angel’s arm in her hands and stroking him softly.
“There’s a bed through that door.” Angel nodded to a door that hadn’t been opened yet. “And a shower. Get some rest. We’ll come back tomorrow morning and talk through this some more, okay?”
Connor nodded again, not trusting his voice to speak.
Part 39
Connor watched as the other version of himself kissed Cordelia, his eager hands reaching for the golden flesh that was offered to him. The real Connor flinched as his dream-self deepened the passion, baring her body and his own, then lowering them to the bed. He watched with revulsion as his dream-self took pleasure in the body of the woman who should’ve been his mother, the woman his father loved more than life itself.
His real self longed to go over and yank his dream-self away and shake some sense into him. To shout to the rooftops that he was betraying his father, a father that loved him and would sacrifice his life for his happiness. But it wasn’t to be. He knew, the real Connor knew that he couldn’t change the past.
Almost against his will, his feet moved, bringing him closer to the bed. He towered over the writhing figures, Cordelia’s glazed eyes seeming to stare up at him, taunting him as she manipulated his dream-self’s young body into pleasure. He could see it there, see the evil in her eyes, see Jasmine in Cordy’s body. It sickened him. Turning his eyes away as their bodies exploded into gasps of pleasure, Connor fought to keep his stomach from retching. Time seemed to stand still and speed up all in the same moment until he was aware that they were both asleep, intertwined like stems of young ivy.
And then, his dream-self stood beside him, looking down at the woman on the bed whose eyes were closed, face flushed in sleep.
“She is beautiful.” His dream-self held a hint of pride. Of possession. Of conquer.
“She is evil,” his real self retorted. “She manipulates you.”
He could feel his dream-self tense beside him. As if drawn by the pull of a powerful magnet, Connor turned to meet the eyes of his former self.
“Maybe,” his dream-self conceded, “but she makes me feel.”
“It’s wrong,” he argued.
“I am weak,” his dream-self responded, shrugging. “I have nothing left. She gives me emotion. Gives me life. Gives me a reason for living. No one else cares like she does, even if she is evil.”
“But we aren’t like this! I’m not like this.”
His dream-self looked at him sadly, shaking his head. “Don’t you get it? I am you. You are me. This is who we are.”
“I won’t accept that,” he denied vehemently.
“You can’t change who you are. You are born with it. You become it. There is no escape.”
Connor shot up in bed, tears flowing and mixing with the salty sweat on his face.
He didn’t want to be that person again. He couldn’t. But in the back of his mind, his worst fear haunted him. What if he couldn’t change himself? What if he was destined to be alone and tormented?
What if he was, at an elemental level, wrong somehow?
The mere thought scared him to death.