Angel/Illyria: Lone and Level Sands
Jul. 26th, 2004 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleDamn, I love writing Illyria. I mean, really love it.
Title: Lone and Level Sands
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Angel/Illyria
Rating: PG
Notes: for the Illyria ficathon for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
topazangel - she wanted 'Illyria having Fred's memories, a mention (or appearance if you prefer) of Connor'. Picks up after The Girl in Question.
The half-breed returns to his living quarters, high in his citadel's keep, and he orders her to leave. Dismisses her presence as if she were a pack-slave, or a human. Once, his insolence would have bought him a slow death, his flesh carved away in slices by one of her Qwa'ha'zahn's priests, his heart and spine left to the very last so he might watch himself diminish without going to dust.
But her days are past. Her Qwa'ha'zahn is dead, her kingdom has fallen. She is confined to this fragile form, to a single world, and if Angel wishes to order her from his presence then she cannot wreak the deserved retribution.
However, she can choose to disobey.
"In your absence, the father and mother of the shell came to this place," she says. "Wesley is displeased with me. He is your subject. You will remedy this."
Humans and half-breeds wear their emotions on their faces, facilitated by a complex arrangement of muscles. When Wesley ran out of answers to her questions on this matter he gave her a grimoire detailing the body structure she had been trapped in. As Angel's expression shifts, she thinks outer frontalis. Levator labii.
Even when she restricts her vision to human limitations, infrared and ultraviolet and beyond rendered invisible, she cannot tell if he is trying to show anger, surprise, or something else entirely. She has learned the differences in upturned and downturned lips, eyes wide or narrowed, but further distinctions are more difficult.
Wesley is supposed to be her guide, but Wesley does not wish to talk to her.
"God," Angel says - she waits for him to specify a deity, and bristles at the casual blasphemy when he does not - "nobody called them. I thought Wes… I guess he thought me or Gunn did it. Where is he now?"
"In his homestead," she says, impatient. It does not matter where Wesley is, only that he must be her guide. If he will not obey her then he will at least obey his King. "In the time that has passed he has no doubt ingested enough poison to -" this is one of the concepts he has taught her. She pulls the words from her operating system, forms them carefully with her inelegant human tongue - "to send him to sleep."
"Poison?" An increase in the volume of his voice; an exclamation, then, unless he believes her auditory units have malfunctioned. Perhaps she was misunderstood.
"Alcohol," she says. "Foul-smelling liquid, fermented from fruits or crops. Your lexicon defines it to be…"
"I know what it is." His tone returned to normal, he sits on the rest-place fashioned from cowskin. For the first time, her attention is drawn to the garment in his hand - a coat, red and white, of the same material. A tribute, she surmises. A subject presenting his master with the skin of an enemy.
The faithful once built her a tower from the bones of heretics. It stretched higher than the forest's canopy, a curving mass of backbones and skulls, and it was pleasing to her sight. A scant eon later they had become complacent in their worship, and she slaughtered them all as a warning to others.
Angel says, "No point calling him now. Maybe in the morning…" He looks up at her and says, "And why are you here, again?"
She has some empathy for Angel, if not sympathy. A demon, albeit a weak one, trapped within its host's simian-brain. It sickens her. "Wesley is displeased," she repeats for the sake of his limited comprehension. "I assumed the form of Winifred Burkle, but it angered him. You will tell him his behaviour is foolish."
For a span of almost eight seconds, by the human system of measuring time, he gives no response. When he speaks again his words are slow, quiet: "Assumed her form. What does that mean?"
The modulation is simple and fast - she alters the pigmentation in her skin and eyes, forces the cortices of her hair strands to change their colour. Her protective layer becomes an approximation of natural fibres and unbidden, almost instantaneously, she thinks this was what I wore my third-and-a-half date with Charles. She twitches away from the phantom memory.
"Get out," Angel says. "Go back to being Illyria, and get out." And he stands, and crosses to his sleeping room, and slams the door behind him.
Illyria considers this for a moment, Winifred Burkle's thoughts gnawing at her from all sides, and follows him.
**
His back towards her, he is stripping himself of his clothes, perhaps preparing for sleep. He pulls his upper-body garment over his head and she thinks deltoid, latissimus dorsi, major and minor teres. On his shoulder-blade is a stylised design, tribal markings of a winged creature. If it signifies his devotion to a god, it is not one she recalls.
Strange that he should trouble himself with clothing at all, when he requires no heat nor protection from sunlight. She wonders if he clings to the peculiar human modesty, remembering their creation myth about a garden and a serpent and the birth of sin.
She will never understand these beings.
"I told you to get out," he says. The lines of his back are tense, well-defined. She reaches out to touch them but he turns, catches her wrist.
"You would dare…" she says, but he is very close to her and she stops. And allows her voice to become Winifred Burkle's. "Guess you musta had a bad trip, huh? I mean, not like drug trip-bad trip. You just seem real growly tonight. You want we should go get ice cream? 'Cause the last time you saw that girl, that helped, right?"
"Don't." He lets go of her and says, "Don't." But she lays her hand flat against his chest, feeling the texture of the skin, and he gives no protest.
"Remember Connor in his bassinet?" she asks, the smile coming easily. "He was the cutest little baby. Even when I thought he'd cry the hotel down, I could've just eaten him up."
Sadness so deep is easy to recognize. "You remember Connor."
Encouraged, she says in her own voice, "Wesley would not explore this with me. Is this form pleasing? Should I become the lycanthrope? Or another?"
He closes his eyes. For no reason she can determine, she feels him take a deep, shuddering breath, and he raises a hand to her face, barely touching her. The sensation is not unpleasant.
"No," he tells her, and that tone of defeat is another she can name. "Just… be Fred. And keep talking."
Title: Lone and Level Sands
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Angel/Illyria
Rating: PG
Notes: for the Illyria ficathon for
topazangel - she wanted 'Illyria having Fred's memories, a mention (or appearance if you prefer) of Connor'. Picks up after The Girl in Question.The half-breed returns to his living quarters, high in his citadel's keep, and he orders her to leave. Dismisses her presence as if she were a pack-slave, or a human. Once, his insolence would have bought him a slow death, his flesh carved away in slices by one of her Qwa'ha'zahn's priests, his heart and spine left to the very last so he might watch himself diminish without going to dust.
But her days are past. Her Qwa'ha'zahn is dead, her kingdom has fallen. She is confined to this fragile form, to a single world, and if Angel wishes to order her from his presence then she cannot wreak the deserved retribution.
However, she can choose to disobey.
"In your absence, the father and mother of the shell came to this place," she says. "Wesley is displeased with me. He is your subject. You will remedy this."
Humans and half-breeds wear their emotions on their faces, facilitated by a complex arrangement of muscles. When Wesley ran out of answers to her questions on this matter he gave her a grimoire detailing the body structure she had been trapped in. As Angel's expression shifts, she thinks outer frontalis. Levator labii.
Even when she restricts her vision to human limitations, infrared and ultraviolet and beyond rendered invisible, she cannot tell if he is trying to show anger, surprise, or something else entirely. She has learned the differences in upturned and downturned lips, eyes wide or narrowed, but further distinctions are more difficult.
Wesley is supposed to be her guide, but Wesley does not wish to talk to her.
"God," Angel says - she waits for him to specify a deity, and bristles at the casual blasphemy when he does not - "nobody called them. I thought Wes… I guess he thought me or Gunn did it. Where is he now?"
"In his homestead," she says, impatient. It does not matter where Wesley is, only that he must be her guide. If he will not obey her then he will at least obey his King. "In the time that has passed he has no doubt ingested enough poison to -" this is one of the concepts he has taught her. She pulls the words from her operating system, forms them carefully with her inelegant human tongue - "to send him to sleep."
"Poison?" An increase in the volume of his voice; an exclamation, then, unless he believes her auditory units have malfunctioned. Perhaps she was misunderstood.
"Alcohol," she says. "Foul-smelling liquid, fermented from fruits or crops. Your lexicon defines it to be…"
"I know what it is." His tone returned to normal, he sits on the rest-place fashioned from cowskin. For the first time, her attention is drawn to the garment in his hand - a coat, red and white, of the same material. A tribute, she surmises. A subject presenting his master with the skin of an enemy.
The faithful once built her a tower from the bones of heretics. It stretched higher than the forest's canopy, a curving mass of backbones and skulls, and it was pleasing to her sight. A scant eon later they had become complacent in their worship, and she slaughtered them all as a warning to others.
Angel says, "No point calling him now. Maybe in the morning…" He looks up at her and says, "And why are you here, again?"
She has some empathy for Angel, if not sympathy. A demon, albeit a weak one, trapped within its host's simian-brain. It sickens her. "Wesley is displeased," she repeats for the sake of his limited comprehension. "I assumed the form of Winifred Burkle, but it angered him. You will tell him his behaviour is foolish."
For a span of almost eight seconds, by the human system of measuring time, he gives no response. When he speaks again his words are slow, quiet: "Assumed her form. What does that mean?"
The modulation is simple and fast - she alters the pigmentation in her skin and eyes, forces the cortices of her hair strands to change their colour. Her protective layer becomes an approximation of natural fibres and unbidden, almost instantaneously, she thinks this was what I wore my third-and-a-half date with Charles. She twitches away from the phantom memory.
"Get out," Angel says. "Go back to being Illyria, and get out." And he stands, and crosses to his sleeping room, and slams the door behind him.
Illyria considers this for a moment, Winifred Burkle's thoughts gnawing at her from all sides, and follows him.
**
His back towards her, he is stripping himself of his clothes, perhaps preparing for sleep. He pulls his upper-body garment over his head and she thinks deltoid, latissimus dorsi, major and minor teres. On his shoulder-blade is a stylised design, tribal markings of a winged creature. If it signifies his devotion to a god, it is not one she recalls.
Strange that he should trouble himself with clothing at all, when he requires no heat nor protection from sunlight. She wonders if he clings to the peculiar human modesty, remembering their creation myth about a garden and a serpent and the birth of sin.
She will never understand these beings.
"I told you to get out," he says. The lines of his back are tense, well-defined. She reaches out to touch them but he turns, catches her wrist.
"You would dare…" she says, but he is very close to her and she stops. And allows her voice to become Winifred Burkle's. "Guess you musta had a bad trip, huh? I mean, not like drug trip-bad trip. You just seem real growly tonight. You want we should go get ice cream? 'Cause the last time you saw that girl, that helped, right?"
"Don't." He lets go of her and says, "Don't." But she lays her hand flat against his chest, feeling the texture of the skin, and he gives no protest.
"Remember Connor in his bassinet?" she asks, the smile coming easily. "He was the cutest little baby. Even when I thought he'd cry the hotel down, I could've just eaten him up."
Sadness so deep is easy to recognize. "You remember Connor."
Encouraged, she says in her own voice, "Wesley would not explore this with me. Is this form pleasing? Should I become the lycanthrope? Or another?"
He closes his eyes. For no reason she can determine, she feels him take a deep, shuddering breath, and he raises a hand to her face, barely touching her. The sensation is not unpleasant.
"No," he tells her, and that tone of defeat is another she can name. "Just… be Fred. And keep talking."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2004-07-26 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 09:32 am (UTC)Spot on Illyria voice.
I think I would have liked this one to be longer. Yea.
no subject
on 2004-07-26 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 10:12 am (UTC)You know what's coming. I wanna archive (http://lifeinwords.org/worship/). Please?
no subject
on 2004-07-26 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 11:00 am (UTC)::cuddles fic and vows to never let go::
no subject
on 2004-07-26 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 04:49 pm (UTC)You know, I have an awards site, The Dark Awards (http://www.geocities.com/thedarkawards) , and I think some of your fic would fit into the categories sooo well, I would *love* to judge your stuff...
no subject
on 2004-07-26 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-26 06:53 pm (UTC)Oh, oh, oh.
I love it when you write Illyria. You have her voice down so well. And having Angel ask her to be Fred and just keep talking...wow.
no subject
on 2004-07-27 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-29 07:55 pm (UTC)Thank you to
no subject
on 2004-11-07 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-11-07 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-12-09 03:54 pm (UTC)And your Illyria is brilliant in the details, just minor things that she misses, and the things that she has to consider. I especially loved this:
"God," Angel says - she waits for him to specify a deity, and bristles at the casual blasphemy when he does not
Neat.