Connor/Lindsey: Nothing In This World
Apr. 30th, 2004 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleIf anybody's wondering, I'm posting so much fic lately due to backlog of ficathons... this is my late entry for the Connorficathon. Next up, Riley/Ethan.
(crap, the Angel/Oz deadline's today, isn't it? I have about 4 due tomorrow, none done yet because I suck at organization...)
Title: Nothing In This World
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Connor/Lindsey
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They're all Joss's. Couple of lines near the end are direct from the episode Darla.
Notes: Connor ficathon for [Unknown site tag]: request was angst.
"Sit down. You're gonna wear a hole in the floor."
Connor kept pacing, worry outweighing the upbringing that told him to defer to his elders. "This is supposed to be the worst part, right? The waiting. Not knowing. Okay, that's stupid, the worst part's when whatever's on the other side of that portal comes through."
"Portal takes a good ten minutes to open," Lindsey reminded him. "Anything's on its way through, we'll be ready."
He was glad somebody had been listening at the briefing. He'd been too busy worrying about whether his parents had gotten to Aunt Lara's in Cleveland okay, and if Tracey had managed to persuade her mom and dad to get out of the state.
Outside the big windows, the city was dark. It didn't look bad, though, aside from the power cut. Last apocalypse, he'd stood at a window like this while fire rained from the sky, and at the same time he'd been doing something dull and normal like studying for a geometry test at his girlfriend's house.
Losing his virginity to Cordelia as the world fell apart. Necking with Tracey for the first time on her bed, because her brother was out of town and it was her parents' movie night and they had the house to themselves. When he tried to make his two sets of memories match up he found a bunch of odd synchronicities like that. Some day he was going to write his autobiography while listening to Dark Side of the Moon and watching The Wizard of Oz, because he just knew there was some spooky message there.
Lindsey said, "Seriously, kid, just take it easy. They'll do fine."
He was sat on the floor in front of the couch, sword laid across his knees with one hand resting on the blade. Connor's weapon, the katana he'd grabbed from Angel's collection, hung at his side, the tip swishing the air as he paced.
"What if they're already dead?" he asked, and found himself pleased that Lindsey didn't instantly give him false reassurances that Angel and the others would be fine.
"Then they're dead. We wait till we get word from Wesley and then we regroup, see what we do next."
It wasn't a comforting, pat answer. But it was an answer, and that was all he'd wanted. He lowered himself to the ground beside the other man, laying the sword reverently beside him, the hilt within easy reach. Ten minute margin or not, if something stalked or slithered or shot from the portal, he wanted to be holding a really big sword.
Right now doorway was invisible. They probably looked like stoners staring at the empty wall, he thought, like JC and Patty and the others from his dorm. If he ever saw them again he'd tell them about leather-wearing god-kings with blue hair and green-skinned demons who liked Barbra Streisand, watch their heads spin.
He'd never been good at sitting quietly. His first grade teacher, Ms. Peterman, had kept threatening to tie him to the chair. He was desperate to squirm around in place, or get up again, only Lindsey might get mad and try to kick his ass, and he didn't want to have to hurt him.
"What are you doing, anyway?" he asked. Lindsey's eyes were closed and he was sitting straight, like Tracey had the two weeks when she'd tried transcendental meditation.
"Preparation," he said, grinning a little without opening his eyes. "Some of us had to learn our superpowers."
"You can learn it?"
"Found me some shamans. Wasn't easy, but I know a couple tricks."
But Connor had learned it, too, in a way. Years of training, to track, to fight. They'd called him The Destroyer.
That was what they used to call me, he recited in his mind, passing his hand gently over the sword beside him. Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
"So you're not a demon or a vampire or anything," he said. "How come you're even here? Fighting and stuff?"
Lindsey opened his eyes, slouching into a more casual pose. Connor felt guilty for disturbing him if he wanted to do the Force-channelling thing, but he needed to talk. He was beginning to get that war movie cliché about the worst part being the waiting.
"Long story," he said. "Short of it is, I used to work here."
"You were a lawyer?" He promised himself he'd somehow get a picture of Lindsey as proof for his mother that, yes, you could do law and still have long hair. "That's cool. I'm thinking about law school. Or medicine, but then I… what?"
It took a minute for Lindsey to stop laughing. "Nothing. Just - we're waiting to go against the Senior Partners, the world's probably ending, and I'm paired up with a kid who's thinking about what his major's gonna be."
"Maybe I just think we'll win," he shrugged.
Lindsey ran his thumb over the blade of his sword, grimacing with satisfaction when it opened up a slice of red across the skin. He brought his hand to his mouth to suck the blood away. "How about you? Why are you here? Kinda young to fight the good fight."
"Nearly all vampire slayers are called when they're younger than me," he pointed out, sidestepping the question. It was a good one, though.
Why are you here?
Because Angel's only here because of me.
Because Mom and Dad and Ellen and Tracey and everybody at school and Ms. Peterman and a bunch of people who I don't know have to wake up tomorrow and not know about any of this.
Because I can't walk away from this. Not till we save the world.
The air around the closed office door thickened and distorted. T minus six hundred.
"Showtime," Connor said.
**
Someone had boarded up the windows. He was glad; he'd rather look at the stark planks across the frame than watch the city light up again, block by block. The mattress was still there, littered with broken glass. There were Hershey wrappers on the floor from the last day he and Cordelia had been here, before the Beast came looking for him.
Downstairs, he heard a door swing open, a man's footsteps echoing on the hard floor. He closed his eyes, his tracker's instincts taking over. Too far away to tell the scent but the tread sounded human, male, not Gunn or Wesley.
"Connor?" The door swung slowly open, silhouetting Lindsey against the flickering hallway light. "You here?"
"Yeah." It was the first thing he'd said to anyone since… His own voice sounded scraped raw, like he'd been crying.
Lindsey searched around for the light switch, flipped it a couple of times. The bulb stayed dark. Connor couldn't remember if it had been broken in that last fight with the Beast, or some time before that. He couldn't even remember how things like electric lights worked - Fred had tried to explain it to him that summer when he'd lived at the hotel and later she'd jabbed something beneath his ribs, electricity in a box, and she'd tried to kill Jasmine and he'd killed Jasmine without having to try at all.
"Looks like we won," Lindsey said. He'd propped the door open with a shard of wood jammed beneath it, and now he stepped slowly into the room. "Gunn said he figured how this'd be where you'd go." Unasked question in the voice.
"Why didn't he come?" he asked, almost to himself. "Or my… or Angel?"
A human, a normal human, wouldn't have heard the intake of breath. "Connor, Angel's dead."
"I know that," he said, and then, working it out: "Oh."
A couple of steps closer, hands loose and slightly ahead of his body, proper body language for approaching a wounded animal. Maybe Lindsey was a hunter after all.
"Him, Spike, the Host and - what was her name, Illyria? - they never made it out." He was close enough to catch his scent now, blood of at least three people mixed with the sharp, unpleasant smell left behind by gunfire. "Just me, you, Wesley, Gunn, Eve."
The humans had all escaped alive. Did that mean he was one of them?
Backlit by the stairwell, Lindsey's face was shadows and angles. "Wesley took off, too. Same time you did. What did that… thing mean? What it said, about stripping away all the lies?"
"Nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter now."
"You know who you are?"
That brought his head up in surprise. "You know who I am." He hadn't known Lindsey before things changed. He'd suspected that, but with two sets of memories tangling he hadn't remembered for sure. Now there was just one history, painfully clear, and he knew he'd never seen this man before tonight.
"Eve knew. She told me." Very slowly, carefully, he brought up his hand. Connor flinched as it passed his neck, but Lindsey stopped before he touched him. "Angel ever say how much you look like your mom?"
Darla - gone to dust long ago. Like Angel, now. He shook his head, enough to brush his cheek against the other man's fingers.
"You do. Same face. Eyes."
"She was beautiful," Connor whispered, remembering. Whatever she'd been, a ghost or something he'd imagined, she'd been beautiful, untouchable.
Unreal. Like Cordelia saying she loved him, like the false parents and sister and that pretty girlfriend whose name he couldn't remember any more.
"What am I, Lindsey?"
The kiss pressed against his mouth was gentler than he'd expected. Lindsey tasted of blood, regret, layered on a sickly sweetness that had to be Eve. "I don't know," he sighed when he pulled away, resting his forehead against Connor's. The contact was warm and solid and real. "And I don't care."
.
END
(crap, the Angel/Oz deadline's today, isn't it? I have about 4 due tomorrow, none done yet because I suck at organization...)
Title: Nothing In This World
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Connor/Lindsey
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They're all Joss's. Couple of lines near the end are direct from the episode Darla.
Notes: Connor ficathon for [Unknown site tag]: request was angst.
"Sit down. You're gonna wear a hole in the floor."
Connor kept pacing, worry outweighing the upbringing that told him to defer to his elders. "This is supposed to be the worst part, right? The waiting. Not knowing. Okay, that's stupid, the worst part's when whatever's on the other side of that portal comes through."
"Portal takes a good ten minutes to open," Lindsey reminded him. "Anything's on its way through, we'll be ready."
He was glad somebody had been listening at the briefing. He'd been too busy worrying about whether his parents had gotten to Aunt Lara's in Cleveland okay, and if Tracey had managed to persuade her mom and dad to get out of the state.
Outside the big windows, the city was dark. It didn't look bad, though, aside from the power cut. Last apocalypse, he'd stood at a window like this while fire rained from the sky, and at the same time he'd been doing something dull and normal like studying for a geometry test at his girlfriend's house.
Losing his virginity to Cordelia as the world fell apart. Necking with Tracey for the first time on her bed, because her brother was out of town and it was her parents' movie night and they had the house to themselves. When he tried to make his two sets of memories match up he found a bunch of odd synchronicities like that. Some day he was going to write his autobiography while listening to Dark Side of the Moon and watching The Wizard of Oz, because he just knew there was some spooky message there.
Lindsey said, "Seriously, kid, just take it easy. They'll do fine."
He was sat on the floor in front of the couch, sword laid across his knees with one hand resting on the blade. Connor's weapon, the katana he'd grabbed from Angel's collection, hung at his side, the tip swishing the air as he paced.
"What if they're already dead?" he asked, and found himself pleased that Lindsey didn't instantly give him false reassurances that Angel and the others would be fine.
"Then they're dead. We wait till we get word from Wesley and then we regroup, see what we do next."
It wasn't a comforting, pat answer. But it was an answer, and that was all he'd wanted. He lowered himself to the ground beside the other man, laying the sword reverently beside him, the hilt within easy reach. Ten minute margin or not, if something stalked or slithered or shot from the portal, he wanted to be holding a really big sword.
Right now doorway was invisible. They probably looked like stoners staring at the empty wall, he thought, like JC and Patty and the others from his dorm. If he ever saw them again he'd tell them about leather-wearing god-kings with blue hair and green-skinned demons who liked Barbra Streisand, watch their heads spin.
He'd never been good at sitting quietly. His first grade teacher, Ms. Peterman, had kept threatening to tie him to the chair. He was desperate to squirm around in place, or get up again, only Lindsey might get mad and try to kick his ass, and he didn't want to have to hurt him.
"What are you doing, anyway?" he asked. Lindsey's eyes were closed and he was sitting straight, like Tracey had the two weeks when she'd tried transcendental meditation.
"Preparation," he said, grinning a little without opening his eyes. "Some of us had to learn our superpowers."
"You can learn it?"
"Found me some shamans. Wasn't easy, but I know a couple tricks."
But Connor had learned it, too, in a way. Years of training, to track, to fight. They'd called him The Destroyer.
That was what they used to call me, he recited in his mind, passing his hand gently over the sword beside him. Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
"So you're not a demon or a vampire or anything," he said. "How come you're even here? Fighting and stuff?"
Lindsey opened his eyes, slouching into a more casual pose. Connor felt guilty for disturbing him if he wanted to do the Force-channelling thing, but he needed to talk. He was beginning to get that war movie cliché about the worst part being the waiting.
"Long story," he said. "Short of it is, I used to work here."
"You were a lawyer?" He promised himself he'd somehow get a picture of Lindsey as proof for his mother that, yes, you could do law and still have long hair. "That's cool. I'm thinking about law school. Or medicine, but then I… what?"
It took a minute for Lindsey to stop laughing. "Nothing. Just - we're waiting to go against the Senior Partners, the world's probably ending, and I'm paired up with a kid who's thinking about what his major's gonna be."
"Maybe I just think we'll win," he shrugged.
Lindsey ran his thumb over the blade of his sword, grimacing with satisfaction when it opened up a slice of red across the skin. He brought his hand to his mouth to suck the blood away. "How about you? Why are you here? Kinda young to fight the good fight."
"Nearly all vampire slayers are called when they're younger than me," he pointed out, sidestepping the question. It was a good one, though.
Why are you here?
Because Angel's only here because of me.
Because Mom and Dad and Ellen and Tracey and everybody at school and Ms. Peterman and a bunch of people who I don't know have to wake up tomorrow and not know about any of this.
Because I can't walk away from this. Not till we save the world.
The air around the closed office door thickened and distorted. T minus six hundred.
"Showtime," Connor said.
**
Someone had boarded up the windows. He was glad; he'd rather look at the stark planks across the frame than watch the city light up again, block by block. The mattress was still there, littered with broken glass. There were Hershey wrappers on the floor from the last day he and Cordelia had been here, before the Beast came looking for him.
Downstairs, he heard a door swing open, a man's footsteps echoing on the hard floor. He closed his eyes, his tracker's instincts taking over. Too far away to tell the scent but the tread sounded human, male, not Gunn or Wesley.
"Connor?" The door swung slowly open, silhouetting Lindsey against the flickering hallway light. "You here?"
"Yeah." It was the first thing he'd said to anyone since… His own voice sounded scraped raw, like he'd been crying.
Lindsey searched around for the light switch, flipped it a couple of times. The bulb stayed dark. Connor couldn't remember if it had been broken in that last fight with the Beast, or some time before that. He couldn't even remember how things like electric lights worked - Fred had tried to explain it to him that summer when he'd lived at the hotel and later she'd jabbed something beneath his ribs, electricity in a box, and she'd tried to kill Jasmine and he'd killed Jasmine without having to try at all.
"Looks like we won," Lindsey said. He'd propped the door open with a shard of wood jammed beneath it, and now he stepped slowly into the room. "Gunn said he figured how this'd be where you'd go." Unasked question in the voice.
"Why didn't he come?" he asked, almost to himself. "Or my… or Angel?"
A human, a normal human, wouldn't have heard the intake of breath. "Connor, Angel's dead."
"I know that," he said, and then, working it out: "Oh."
A couple of steps closer, hands loose and slightly ahead of his body, proper body language for approaching a wounded animal. Maybe Lindsey was a hunter after all.
"Him, Spike, the Host and - what was her name, Illyria? - they never made it out." He was close enough to catch his scent now, blood of at least three people mixed with the sharp, unpleasant smell left behind by gunfire. "Just me, you, Wesley, Gunn, Eve."
The humans had all escaped alive. Did that mean he was one of them?
Backlit by the stairwell, Lindsey's face was shadows and angles. "Wesley took off, too. Same time you did. What did that… thing mean? What it said, about stripping away all the lies?"
"Nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter now."
"You know who you are?"
That brought his head up in surprise. "You know who I am." He hadn't known Lindsey before things changed. He'd suspected that, but with two sets of memories tangling he hadn't remembered for sure. Now there was just one history, painfully clear, and he knew he'd never seen this man before tonight.
"Eve knew. She told me." Very slowly, carefully, he brought up his hand. Connor flinched as it passed his neck, but Lindsey stopped before he touched him. "Angel ever say how much you look like your mom?"
Darla - gone to dust long ago. Like Angel, now. He shook his head, enough to brush his cheek against the other man's fingers.
"You do. Same face. Eyes."
"She was beautiful," Connor whispered, remembering. Whatever she'd been, a ghost or something he'd imagined, she'd been beautiful, untouchable.
Unreal. Like Cordelia saying she loved him, like the false parents and sister and that pretty girlfriend whose name he couldn't remember any more.
"What am I, Lindsey?"
The kiss pressed against his mouth was gentler than he'd expected. Lindsey tasted of blood, regret, layered on a sickly sweetness that had to be Eve. "I don't know," he sighed when he pulled away, resting his forehead against Connor's. The contact was warm and solid and real. "And I don't care."
.
END
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on 2004-04-30 01:46 pm (UTC)Ok, now I'm broken and about to cry. That was - that was amazing. It was - it was like a reversal of Home, of Origin. Early Connor, so - focused and yet still happy and absolutely confident that they're going to win. Broken Connor, after so much loss, determined to survive and then the hope among the wreckage. You constantly amaze and astound me and I absolutely adore this.