Crazy talk
Mar. 19th, 2004 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThe other day I was talking about feeling doubts over this fic that I'm working on. I keep writing away, but feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. I'm especially not sure if I'm any good at slightly less than crazy talk -- a very slightly saned-up Dana's interior voice. Not that she had enough presence on the show for us to know her voice, but still...
If anyone wants to rip and shred, feel free -- I'm pretty sturdy under crit. (Though, keep in mind, this is truly raw, and unedited as of yet). I could use the shreddy input, because I'm just not sure what I'm thinking about this one, and especially if her reason for being there is plausible. Oh, and it's got spoilers through Shells, and takes place about six months down the line (even knowing Joss & Co will probably make all this moot).
The wind like the rush off an engine, warm air lifting her hair to trail out behind her. She closed her eyes against it, against the sun, and felt them slither into the pores of her skin. Home now, though the daylight was never her home before, always the night and the dark, cold wet and moldy or industrial gray and white padded walls. Down black hallways that were other people’s minds.
The city sounds, bleating of panicked animals as these people pass her on the street with phones held to their ears, and the din makes her jaw twitch; something could be stalking her, pacing behind and she wouldn’t hear it in all the crying. (Everyone cries for something but Daddy’s gone, he can’t hear you anymore.)
No.
She squinched her eyes closed harder and let the words they’d taught her wash her through with calm. It wasn’t that place she was going to anymore, she’d met her ghosts and slayed them (a slayer, wasn’t she?). But you can’t really kill them all till you face them all, that’s what they said and it made sense. Now she was strong enough to face them. Him.
He killed them both. But I killed them all.
The high glass building gleamed in the bright (too bright) light and she looked at the note in her hand, shielded her eyes as she stared up to the top. Wolfram & Hart, yes, that’s it. In England, they said they weren’t on our side anymore, but she wasn’t sure whose side she was on anyway, so what did it matter? She walked tentatively in through the front doors, along with a small group of men and women who smelled too clean and wore crisp clothing and hair. She looked down at the ground, reminding herself over and over that she was chosen. (Chosen by who? but no one ever answered that question, just looked away like they were embarrassed.) She asked directions to the main office with halting voice, still so uncomfortable in this skin. With words that come out of your mouth if you think them hard enough. These things that tell of being human.
At the top of the stairs there was a desk like a wall and a blonde girl behind it. Vampire, her nose told her, and the hand twitched inside the pocket. But she had to be careful now; they’re not all evil, was what they insisted. Evil isn’t always so obvious. Still, they told the vampire no when he asked for their help.
She tried to find the words in the jumble of her mind, but the girl looked up then and said, “whoa.” Command or surprise? (Don’t stake first, ask questions was the big lesson she’d learned.) The girl shot up behind the desk and scurried toward the doors before she had time to think what to do. Instinct is dangerous. It’s the little brain. You need to use the big brain in the real world, Andrew said.
He also said he wouldn’t see her.
The big wood doors opened fast and she felt the air whoosh over her again. Closed her eyes. Everything solid now that once was a dream. She opened her eyes. The big one who’d come to her that night, behind him the ones who shot her. They looked... different. The girl had blue hair and eyes. Another demon among them. The muscles in her arms pulled fingers tight into fist. Breathe and relax. Remember the words.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here like this. After disremembering Spike like that, when all he did was try to help you!” She turned to see the blonde girl off to the side, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping on the floor.
She took a step forward and the blonde jumped back, but the big one, Angel, took a step forward. Him she had never dreamt of.
“Dana,” he said. “It’s all right. No one wants to hurt you here.” The blonde sputtered, and Angel cut her off with a quick, “Harmony.” His voice was like the saw blade. “You must have known that, or you wouldn’t have come here.”
She smiled. She’d been practicing that so they wouldn’t act scared when she did it, the way they did in England. Teeth are dangerous, teeth can kill. (The mouth is in the head. Get the head and it all turns to dust.)
“I’m better now.” She’d thought it would be an explanation but the words just hung there like dust motes in the air, floating and lifeless and brown. Brown is the color of dirt and the brown makes you sleepy.
No, no.
Angel twitched his head sideways and said, “Come into my office, won’t you?” He’s polite like the English, she thought, and then remembered, he was English too. (Different English but he had that accent and she could hear it in her head with the Chinese and the sassy talk.)
“I won’t hurt anyone,” she said to the others, because she could see their panic. Knew panic like a favorite dress or lines from a song. “I’m better,” she said again, hoping they would believe her. There was necessity now, it welled up inside her, a foreign body within but she didn’t want to lose it.
He made another motion with his hands and they all fell behind as he took her into the office. She’d learned that a closed door wasn’t always prison. (Still not always buying that.) Angel didn’t touch her, but his hand hovered behind her shoulder, and he motioned to the chair.
“Why did you come here?” he asked, and she looked around the big office but didn’t see him. There were weapons on the walls and masks and other things that felt like they had life of their own. All of them belonged to blood. “They didn’t want you to be here, you know. They didn’t think we could help you. I was hoping you’d find that... find some help, with them.”
She tried not to look at the weapons and listen to the bloody stories they told. “They did.” She opened her palms toward him and stretched the fingers. The gesture of behaving, of giving up. “They said I can face the past now, that I’m ready. But... maybe I can’t face that one. Not ready yet.”
Angel stared back at her, confused, or angry. Hard to tell which.
“Dana. I’m sorry, he’s not here. Even if he was, I don’t know that it’d be a good idea to see him.”
“I have words to say.”
“Some things are better left unsaid. He understood why you did it. He’s inflicted enough damage in his time, he understood yours.”
“But they’re my words.” It had taken her all these long months to find them, she couldn’t just let them sit in there, tied up and forgotten.
“If I call him and ask, will that be enough? If he says no... will you go back to Giles and the Council and let them help you?”
“Or he could make up his own mind,” the voice said from behind her, and she turned to see him there now. The yellow-white hair that glows like a basement light. He wasn’t wearing his demon face.
Angel stood and stuck his hands into his pockets. “Spike. You remember Dana.”
She’d practiced but the words had left now. The only things left were the pictures -- the girl in his arms with a broken neck, the girl on the floor as the lights flash by. She stood, head down, trying to darken the pictures. Fade to black.
“Come to finish the job?” he asked. That was sarcasm, if she remembered right. It was not like the movie she had in her head. (In the movie, there was kindness.) She should have known better.
Loping along through the storm drains, Spike turned the corner near one of the offshoots of the rail line. The back of his neck started to itch, eerie familiar feeling of being tailed, and he stopped, sighed deeply, and said, “Come on out. You’re too clumsy at this to hide.”
She peered around the corner, her dark hair in tangled skeins that hid most of her face except those burning eyes. It would be half an eternity before he’d ever forget those eyes.
He’d listened to her halting apology and then pushed her to the door, sending her on her merry way. Said he accepted it, he was sorry too, and closed the door behind her. They’d all come in then from the other door, and everyone had held their collective breath, waiting for her to knock the door down.
Spike had expected Angel to regale him with a list of all the many things that made him a moron, but instead the poof had just looked sadly at the door. They were all out of their league with that girl, and they all knew it. Even Mr. Save A Soul couldn’t’ save that one. But Wes had tried, of course.
“She came a long to way to apologize. Perhaps we could --“
“What?” Spike had snapped. “Coddle her and tell her the psychosis will get better with a spoonful of sugar and some bed rest? It’s not curable, you git. Keep her around and something dangerous is bound to happen. They’ve made progress with her, that’s clear, so she should just leg it home and find more of the help she needs. It won’t happen here. Think what she’ll do when she begins to understand who’s really inside Angel, or what this thing is--“ he waved a hand at Illyria-Not-Fred, who seemed lately to go wherever Wes went, day or night “or what you two have done in the name of fighting the good fight.”
He glared at Wes and Gunn.
They’d both stared down at the floor, knowing that for once, Spike was the right one. Still, Illyria-Not-Fred, in her constant confusion over the secrets and hidden meanings of the human heart and mind, said, “She is a warrior. A true warrior.”
“Yeah, right,” Spike. “Whatever you say.”
Wes had looked at her and said quietly, “She is a warrior, but... her mind is damaged.”
“You are too fragile.”
Helpful as it had turned out to be having a super-demon in the remnant of Fred, listening to her had long since begun to send all of them round the bend. Only Wes was able to keep a lid on the thing.
Angel just sat behind his desk and stared balefully up at Spike. “I understand why you don’t want to deal with Dana. But... I don’t think you can get rid of her that easily. She wants something from you.”
“She apologized, I accepted, and I apologized too. Everybody’s sorry, boo-hoo, group hug, time to move on. Don’t see what else she could want unless it’s to kneecap me this time.”
“She wants forgiveness.” Wesley’s face was as dark and hard as a stone. “And you’re the only one who can give it to her.”
There was nothing Spike could say to that except the obvious -- that she’d cut off his fucking hands and was well on her way to cutting off his head. But that didn’t seem to matter. Angel said, quietly, “Once upon a time, Spike.”
He’d just turned and left, but hadn’t even been remotely surprised when the lass had followed him. She was better than he was giving her credit for; she had a demon radar second to none. She just didn’t know the finer points of hunting yet, was all.
She stopped just outside a shaft of light coming in through a street grating, and held her arms out to him. For a moment he didn’t understand what she was getting at, but when he did, it left him nauseated and angry.
“Are you really that daft still? You think it’s better if we play an eye for an eye till everyone’s blind, or limb for a limb till we’re all hobbling round on stumps?”
Dropping her hands to her sides, she stared up at him with such hopelessness that he felt his heart going out to her, despite his best defenses.
“That’s not forgiveness or apology, Luv, that’s retribution. Won't be having any of that, all right?”
“I wanted to make it better.” Her voice was a worn-out thing, weak and quiet from disuse. She’d been locked in that room for fifteen years, they said. Only a child when she’d been tortured. He thought of all the families he’d killed, or what he could remember, at least. Of the children whose lives he’d stolen. They were all come back to haunt him in the form of this girl with the crumbled soul.
“It is. The important thing is they’re helping you.”
And still she didn’t move.
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why?”
“Well, because.”
“Because why?”
He felt as if he were trapped back in the Summers house with all the wannabes and Andrew. “Because...because it’s not healthy for you here. It’s... LA’s a bad place for you emotionally, you’re... fragile, and you should be back with the watchers and the slayers. I’m a demon, remember?”
With lightning speed, her left hand came up and he leapt backwards, ready for the stake. But she just reached behind her and pulled up on a tiny blue leather backpack that seemed incongruous with her flannel shirt, jeans, and electrician’s boots.
“Look, Dana.” At the sound of her name she seemed to close in on herself, as if she wasn’t certain it belonged to her. “I forgive you. If that’s what you needed, to set things right and be forgiven, then you have that. But you have to go back to the Council. You need them far more than you need anything from me.” He turned and strode away. Behind him came the plash-plash-plash sound of her big boots in the little puddles of water. When he got to his crap flat, he left the door open for her.
****
Usage post to follow, today, I hope!
If anyone wants to rip and shred, feel free -- I'm pretty sturdy under crit. (Though, keep in mind, this is truly raw, and unedited as of yet). I could use the shreddy input, because I'm just not sure what I'm thinking about this one, and especially if her reason for being there is plausible. Oh, and it's got spoilers through Shells, and takes place about six months down the line (even knowing Joss & Co will probably make all this moot).
The wind like the rush off an engine, warm air lifting her hair to trail out behind her. She closed her eyes against it, against the sun, and felt them slither into the pores of her skin. Home now, though the daylight was never her home before, always the night and the dark, cold wet and moldy or industrial gray and white padded walls. Down black hallways that were other people’s minds.
The city sounds, bleating of panicked animals as these people pass her on the street with phones held to their ears, and the din makes her jaw twitch; something could be stalking her, pacing behind and she wouldn’t hear it in all the crying. (Everyone cries for something but Daddy’s gone, he can’t hear you anymore.)
No.
She squinched her eyes closed harder and let the words they’d taught her wash her through with calm. It wasn’t that place she was going to anymore, she’d met her ghosts and slayed them (a slayer, wasn’t she?). But you can’t really kill them all till you face them all, that’s what they said and it made sense. Now she was strong enough to face them. Him.
He killed them both. But I killed them all.
The high glass building gleamed in the bright (too bright) light and she looked at the note in her hand, shielded her eyes as she stared up to the top. Wolfram & Hart, yes, that’s it. In England, they said they weren’t on our side anymore, but she wasn’t sure whose side she was on anyway, so what did it matter? She walked tentatively in through the front doors, along with a small group of men and women who smelled too clean and wore crisp clothing and hair. She looked down at the ground, reminding herself over and over that she was chosen. (Chosen by who? but no one ever answered that question, just looked away like they were embarrassed.) She asked directions to the main office with halting voice, still so uncomfortable in this skin. With words that come out of your mouth if you think them hard enough. These things that tell of being human.
At the top of the stairs there was a desk like a wall and a blonde girl behind it. Vampire, her nose told her, and the hand twitched inside the pocket. But she had to be careful now; they’re not all evil, was what they insisted. Evil isn’t always so obvious. Still, they told the vampire no when he asked for their help.
She tried to find the words in the jumble of her mind, but the girl looked up then and said, “whoa.” Command or surprise? (Don’t stake first, ask questions was the big lesson she’d learned.) The girl shot up behind the desk and scurried toward the doors before she had time to think what to do. Instinct is dangerous. It’s the little brain. You need to use the big brain in the real world, Andrew said.
He also said he wouldn’t see her.
The big wood doors opened fast and she felt the air whoosh over her again. Closed her eyes. Everything solid now that once was a dream. She opened her eyes. The big one who’d come to her that night, behind him the ones who shot her. They looked... different. The girl had blue hair and eyes. Another demon among them. The muscles in her arms pulled fingers tight into fist. Breathe and relax. Remember the words.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here like this. After disremembering Spike like that, when all he did was try to help you!” She turned to see the blonde girl off to the side, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping on the floor.
She took a step forward and the blonde jumped back, but the big one, Angel, took a step forward. Him she had never dreamt of.
“Dana,” he said. “It’s all right. No one wants to hurt you here.” The blonde sputtered, and Angel cut her off with a quick, “Harmony.” His voice was like the saw blade. “You must have known that, or you wouldn’t have come here.”
She smiled. She’d been practicing that so they wouldn’t act scared when she did it, the way they did in England. Teeth are dangerous, teeth can kill. (The mouth is in the head. Get the head and it all turns to dust.)
“I’m better now.” She’d thought it would be an explanation but the words just hung there like dust motes in the air, floating and lifeless and brown. Brown is the color of dirt and the brown makes you sleepy.
No, no.
Angel twitched his head sideways and said, “Come into my office, won’t you?” He’s polite like the English, she thought, and then remembered, he was English too. (Different English but he had that accent and she could hear it in her head with the Chinese and the sassy talk.)
“I won’t hurt anyone,” she said to the others, because she could see their panic. Knew panic like a favorite dress or lines from a song. “I’m better,” she said again, hoping they would believe her. There was necessity now, it welled up inside her, a foreign body within but she didn’t want to lose it.
He made another motion with his hands and they all fell behind as he took her into the office. She’d learned that a closed door wasn’t always prison. (Still not always buying that.) Angel didn’t touch her, but his hand hovered behind her shoulder, and he motioned to the chair.
“Why did you come here?” he asked, and she looked around the big office but didn’t see him. There were weapons on the walls and masks and other things that felt like they had life of their own. All of them belonged to blood. “They didn’t want you to be here, you know. They didn’t think we could help you. I was hoping you’d find that... find some help, with them.”
She tried not to look at the weapons and listen to the bloody stories they told. “They did.” She opened her palms toward him and stretched the fingers. The gesture of behaving, of giving up. “They said I can face the past now, that I’m ready. But... maybe I can’t face that one. Not ready yet.”
Angel stared back at her, confused, or angry. Hard to tell which.
“Dana. I’m sorry, he’s not here. Even if he was, I don’t know that it’d be a good idea to see him.”
“I have words to say.”
“Some things are better left unsaid. He understood why you did it. He’s inflicted enough damage in his time, he understood yours.”
“But they’re my words.” It had taken her all these long months to find them, she couldn’t just let them sit in there, tied up and forgotten.
“If I call him and ask, will that be enough? If he says no... will you go back to Giles and the Council and let them help you?”
“Or he could make up his own mind,” the voice said from behind her, and she turned to see him there now. The yellow-white hair that glows like a basement light. He wasn’t wearing his demon face.
Angel stood and stuck his hands into his pockets. “Spike. You remember Dana.”
She’d practiced but the words had left now. The only things left were the pictures -- the girl in his arms with a broken neck, the girl on the floor as the lights flash by. She stood, head down, trying to darken the pictures. Fade to black.
“Come to finish the job?” he asked. That was sarcasm, if she remembered right. It was not like the movie she had in her head. (In the movie, there was kindness.) She should have known better.
Loping along through the storm drains, Spike turned the corner near one of the offshoots of the rail line. The back of his neck started to itch, eerie familiar feeling of being tailed, and he stopped, sighed deeply, and said, “Come on out. You’re too clumsy at this to hide.”
She peered around the corner, her dark hair in tangled skeins that hid most of her face except those burning eyes. It would be half an eternity before he’d ever forget those eyes.
He’d listened to her halting apology and then pushed her to the door, sending her on her merry way. Said he accepted it, he was sorry too, and closed the door behind her. They’d all come in then from the other door, and everyone had held their collective breath, waiting for her to knock the door down.
Spike had expected Angel to regale him with a list of all the many things that made him a moron, but instead the poof had just looked sadly at the door. They were all out of their league with that girl, and they all knew it. Even Mr. Save A Soul couldn’t’ save that one. But Wes had tried, of course.
“She came a long to way to apologize. Perhaps we could --“
“What?” Spike had snapped. “Coddle her and tell her the psychosis will get better with a spoonful of sugar and some bed rest? It’s not curable, you git. Keep her around and something dangerous is bound to happen. They’ve made progress with her, that’s clear, so she should just leg it home and find more of the help she needs. It won’t happen here. Think what she’ll do when she begins to understand who’s really inside Angel, or what this thing is--“ he waved a hand at Illyria-Not-Fred, who seemed lately to go wherever Wes went, day or night “or what you two have done in the name of fighting the good fight.”
He glared at Wes and Gunn.
They’d both stared down at the floor, knowing that for once, Spike was the right one. Still, Illyria-Not-Fred, in her constant confusion over the secrets and hidden meanings of the human heart and mind, said, “She is a warrior. A true warrior.”
“Yeah, right,” Spike. “Whatever you say.”
Wes had looked at her and said quietly, “She is a warrior, but... her mind is damaged.”
“You are too fragile.”
Helpful as it had turned out to be having a super-demon in the remnant of Fred, listening to her had long since begun to send all of them round the bend. Only Wes was able to keep a lid on the thing.
Angel just sat behind his desk and stared balefully up at Spike. “I understand why you don’t want to deal with Dana. But... I don’t think you can get rid of her that easily. She wants something from you.”
“She apologized, I accepted, and I apologized too. Everybody’s sorry, boo-hoo, group hug, time to move on. Don’t see what else she could want unless it’s to kneecap me this time.”
“She wants forgiveness.” Wesley’s face was as dark and hard as a stone. “And you’re the only one who can give it to her.”
There was nothing Spike could say to that except the obvious -- that she’d cut off his fucking hands and was well on her way to cutting off his head. But that didn’t seem to matter. Angel said, quietly, “Once upon a time, Spike.”
He’d just turned and left, but hadn’t even been remotely surprised when the lass had followed him. She was better than he was giving her credit for; she had a demon radar second to none. She just didn’t know the finer points of hunting yet, was all.
She stopped just outside a shaft of light coming in through a street grating, and held her arms out to him. For a moment he didn’t understand what she was getting at, but when he did, it left him nauseated and angry.
“Are you really that daft still? You think it’s better if we play an eye for an eye till everyone’s blind, or limb for a limb till we’re all hobbling round on stumps?”
Dropping her hands to her sides, she stared up at him with such hopelessness that he felt his heart going out to her, despite his best defenses.
“That’s not forgiveness or apology, Luv, that’s retribution. Won't be having any of that, all right?”
“I wanted to make it better.” Her voice was a worn-out thing, weak and quiet from disuse. She’d been locked in that room for fifteen years, they said. Only a child when she’d been tortured. He thought of all the families he’d killed, or what he could remember, at least. Of the children whose lives he’d stolen. They were all come back to haunt him in the form of this girl with the crumbled soul.
“It is. The important thing is they’re helping you.”
And still she didn’t move.
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why?”
“Well, because.”
“Because why?”
He felt as if he were trapped back in the Summers house with all the wannabes and Andrew. “Because...because it’s not healthy for you here. It’s... LA’s a bad place for you emotionally, you’re... fragile, and you should be back with the watchers and the slayers. I’m a demon, remember?”
With lightning speed, her left hand came up and he leapt backwards, ready for the stake. But she just reached behind her and pulled up on a tiny blue leather backpack that seemed incongruous with her flannel shirt, jeans, and electrician’s boots.
“Look, Dana.” At the sound of her name she seemed to close in on herself, as if she wasn’t certain it belonged to her. “I forgive you. If that’s what you needed, to set things right and be forgiven, then you have that. But you have to go back to the Council. You need them far more than you need anything from me.” He turned and strode away. Behind him came the plash-plash-plash sound of her big boots in the little puddles of water. When he got to his crap flat, he left the door open for her.
****
Usage post to follow, today, I hope!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-19 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-19 05:34 pm (UTC)It has a lot to do with silly little Andrew -- but the surface part is what Wes and Angel see her doing, and the stuff about Andrew doesn't really come in until later. Which is partly my concern, but I guess if it's enough to keep a smart reader like you going till I get there, then that should be okay.
Everything I write's an AU -- the danger of the current ongoing fandom. Sigh. I've just gotten used to the whole idea of realizing that no matter what I do, it's an AU because the show always goes in a different direction. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-03-19 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-20 03:16 pm (UTC)I loved the scene in Wolfram & Hart, with her need to reassure everyone that she's better, and them not really buying it. I think you conveyed her frustration there...
“I won’t hurt anyone,” she said to the others, because she could see their panic. Knew panic like a favorite dress or lines from a song. “I’m better,” she said again, hoping they would believe her. There was necessity now, it welled up inside her, a foreign body within but she didn’t want to lose it.
What I got from that is that she's unused to needing to please; hasn't even been on her radar before, but along with all the other things she still hears inside, she's now got some empathy, and she wants them to feel better, while at the same time accepting and making her feel better... am I on the right track?
no subject
Date: 2004-03-21 12:19 pm (UTC)Absolutely, yes -- I actually knew someone who'd had a horrific trauma not unlike Dana's and had been in a state of catatonia for years, then eventually got to a place where she was functional, but deeply divorced from reality and normal behavior. It was a constant struggle for her, and she fixated on the few of us who were friendly to her and wiling to overlook her lapses. And I think that's what I wanted to write Dana like.
What I got from that is that she's unused to needing to please; hasn't even been on her radar before, but along with all the other things she still hears inside, she's now got some empathy, and she wants them to feel better, while at the same time accepting and making her feel better... am I on the right track?
Yes! And I'm trying (though the writing is a bit of a struggle) to make sure that everyone around her has this idea of what she wants, but she's not so certain herself. It seems natural that she'd want to atone to Spike, but that would probably just freak him out totally, though being Spike, he'd just accept what's there and do whatever he wants. He seemed to really *get* her on a fundamental level that no one else did, and in some ways, his lack of empathy and unwillingness to coddle might be just what she needs. Or, in my world, it is.
Thank you for the comments -- I'm feeling iffier about this than normal, so it's nice to have some input before i continue!
no subject
Date: 2004-03-21 01:53 pm (UTC)I agree that Spike seems to *get* Dana better than anyone else seemed to, although I always see him as empathetic. He doesn't always act on it, in order to protect himself (and because he can be a bastard), but I think he's able to see what's going on with just about anyone he focuses on. It's what makes him so good at driving people crazy. I agree he'd be completely unwilling to coddle her, and that would be very good for her.