The Last Virtue by Yahtzee
Summary: Gunn has always considered Kwanzaa severely suspect, a fake holiday that has less to do with being black than it does with selling crap like the kente-cloth table runners. In darker moments, he thinks it's probably the result of an evil collaboration between Al Sharpton and Hallmark.
Spoilers: Rain Of Fire, Season Four.
Notes: This is a response to a challenge I set myself on the ACAngst Yahoogroup: the holidays, 2002, accepting all onscreen canon as fact. I said that people could do Christmas, Hanukkah, the Solstice, New Year, Kwanzaa, whatever. Then I thought, "Like anybody would actually do Kwanzaa." And then this happened. Be careful what you challenge. All thanks to Rheanna and Corinna for the encouragement, as well as everyone at the Angel Fanfic Workshop.
Part
One: Unity
"You have got to be kidding me," Gunn says.
Mama Jeane gives him the look that means, not only is she not kidding, but he
better not start either. Therefore Gunn is forced to keep a straight face.
On the coffee table is a candleholder that, at first glance, Gunn took for a
menorah. But the candles are red, green and black. A kente-fabric runner is
beneath it, and a matching cloth is laid out over the dinner table. He tries to
keep his voice halfway respectful as he says, "We're doing Kwanzaa?"
"I thought it might be nice for the children," Mama Jeane says,
nodding at Martha and Cedric, splayed out in front of the TV. They both appear
far more absorbed in the tape of "Monsters Inc." than in African
history.
Pseudo-African history, Gunn thinks sourly. He's always considered Kwanzaa
severely suspect, a fake holiday that has less to do with being black than it
does with selling crap like the kente-cloth table runners. In darker moments, he
thinks it's probably the result of an evil collaboration between Al Sharpton and
Hallmark. He thought the rest of his adopted family felt more or less the same.
So far as he knows, Mama Jeane has never given the holiday a second thought
until now.
What the hell is the point of starting a new tradition this year? Gunn thinks.
Fire rains down on the world more nights than it doesn't. Earthquakes shake them
weekly. Omens and portents aren't whispers reported to Lorne in back alleys
anymore; they lead the Nightly News. The anchormen don't know how to spin this;
their faces are uncharacteristically uncertain and open. Gunn thinks Tom Brokaw
has started drinking. He wouldn't be the only one.
The world's ending. Everyone knows it. Everyone, that is, except fools, children
and Mama Jeane.
Christmas was yesterday, and it was as completely depressing as Gunn had thought
it would be. Nobody's in the spirit for even the traditional holidays, the ones
that mean something, or at least meant something. Debra is tense and withdrawn,
entirely unlike herself. One of the house's new residents -- you never know when
Mama Jeane is going to add to her family, or whether the additions will be for a
day or forever -- is Anthony, a man just a few years older than Gunn himself.
His wife died when his house burned in the first rain of fire. He's still in
shock; when Anthony walks around the house, he bumps into the furniture and the
doorjambs, like he can't quite see where he's going. His daughter, Brandy, is a
little more than a year old; she's bouncing on a sofa cushion on the floor,
staring wide-eyed at the flickering colors on the screen. Brandy, Martha and
Cedric are the lucky ones.
Mama Jeane takes her place at table, leaning her cane against the wall and
carefully lowering herself into a chair. At this unspoken signal, Debra gets up
and starts hustling in the kitchen, preparing to bring dinner to the table.
"Charles, come sit by me," Mama Jeane says. "It's good to see
you. I'm glad you've been visiting us more lately."
Guilt punctures Gunn's shell of despair. He makes himself stop brooding and
smile. "I'm sorry, Mama Jeane," he says as he takes the chair next to
hers. "I oughta visit y'all more."
"Of course you shouldn't," Mama Jeane says, looking at him sternly.
"You're a young man. You have better things to do than hang around with an
old woman and little children. I had better things to do when I was your age,
believe you me."
Gunn has seen an black-and-white picture of Mama Jeane in the 1950s, with a
tight sweater and pedal pushers and a smile on her face that almost turns the
photo into color all on its own. He smiles ruefully. "I don't doubt
it."
"I'm always glad to see you, baby," Mama Jeane says. "But I'm
wondering if maybe you're here more these days because you don't want to be
somewhere else."
The Hyperion Hotel is Gunn's office and home and fortress and prison. He's
forgotten how to live anywhere else -- who he would have to be to make that
happen -- and so he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that the walls are
closing in on him, a little closer every day. A place that big shouldn't feel
like that. Gunn can't say this to Mama Jeane, not straight out, so he answers as
simply as he can. "Things are tense with my friends at the agency."
Tense. Gunn knows he's never had much talent for understatement, but maybe he's
picking it up.
Mama Jeane folds her hands in front of her, a sign that the questioning has only
just begun. "You and Winifred haven't split up, have you?"
He's glad she asked it that way. "Me and Fred are still together."
"Good. I like that girl." Mama Jeane has doted on Fred ever since the
day that Fred became the very first person to polish off every serving of food
Mama Jeane could press on her.
"I like her too," Gunn says quietly.
"So what is it that's making things so hard for you all?"
What is he supposed to say to that? He could tell her that Wesley, his one-time
best friend, loves Fred too and is after her bad. Wesley gave Fred the tools to
make herself a murderer, knowing it would drive her mad. He's even counting on
it, because her madness would send her tumbling out of Gunn's arms.
He could tell Mama Jeane that he killed a man to save Fred from madness, buying
her sanity at the potential cost of his own. Gunn doesn't like knowing what a
human's spine sounds like as it breaks. He hears that sound a lot now, when he
dreams and sometimes, terrifyingly, when he's awake.
He could tell her that Fred may keep her sanity and still ditch Gunn, because on
one level, she hates him for taking that burden from her. She probably would
have hated him for not doing it if he hadn't; Gunn is becoming very aware of the
many facets and permutations of the no-win situation. Fred loves him, too --
loves him a lot more than she hates him. But he's afraid the balance is
shifting.
Finally he could tell her that for the past few years, he has been fighting to
save the world itself, and he has finally, irrevocably, lost.
Of course, Gunn isn't going to tell Mama Jeane any of this. Instead he blurts
out something else that's been freaking him out: "Cordelia slept with
Angel's son." The idea of those two together weighs on Gunn's mind a lot.
Too much, in Fred's opinion, but Gunn has lot track of the last time he did
something right in Fred's opinion.
Mama Jeane draws herself upright. "Is this the boy who --" She pauses
as Debra comes into the room and sets down the sweet-potato casserole. Once
Debra's back in the kitchen, she continues, "It this the boy who was a baby
last year? Who came back older?"
Gunn's never told Mama Jeane word one about the supernatural. He has no idea how
much she knows or suspects. But when he tells her the bare-bones outlines of
their lives -- "Cordelia has amnesia," or "Wesley kidnapped
Connor" -- she never asks the inconvenient questions. "Yeah, that's
the one. Cordelia used to fix bottles for him, and now she's all hot and heavy
with him."
"I thought you said she and Angel were quite the pair," Mama Jeane
says. Angel came to the house a couple times and passed inspection with flying
colors. The word "vampire" has never been spoken in Mama Jeane's
presence, but Angel is the only houseguest she never offered food to.
"He must be torn up."
"You ain't lying," Gunn says. "He's a wreck. Cordelia and Connor
don't come around anymore. You got that much unhappy under one roof, ain't
nobody happy." So far as it goes, this is the truth.
"Lord bless him," Mama Jeane says. Gunn wonders if she has any idea
how unlikely that is. "See if you can get him over here one night."
There was a period of time, right after he saw them together, that Angel didn't
get out of bed for two days. "I'll try," Gunn says. "It might be
a while."
"Well, then, bring Fred by here first," Mama Jeane says. "Sunday
night would be just fine."
Gunn had forgotten how good Mama Jeane is at laying traps. "We'll be
here," he sighs, wondering if they'll make it.
Debra finishes setting out the dishes and, over protests, shuts off the tape.
Martha and Cedric sulkily come to the table, though they cheer up at the aromas
of the food. Anthony picks up Brandy, puts her in her highchair and fiddles with
her bib, all as slowly and uncertainly as though he were sleepwalking. They all
say the blessing, but when Gunn gets ready to drop Mama Jeane's hand, she holds
on tightly. "Now, children, this is the first night of Kwanzaa. Each night
we celebrate one of the traditional virtues of African culture. The first night
is dedicated to unity," Mama Jeane says. "How we all try to love each
other and work together, no matter what."
Gunn sees Debra roll her eyes. He tries not to laugh. Martha and Cedric are
mostly interested in the ham.
Part 2: Self-Determination
"Happy Kujichagulia Day," Fred says as Gunn comes downstairs.
She's smiling at him very sweetly, which almost makes up for the fact that she
slipped out of bed long before Gunn woke up. Again.
"Happy Kajagoogoo Day to you too," he replies, scratching his head as
he comes toward her. He grins back at her; Fred's good moods are too rare these
days to waste. "What is it we're celebrating?"
"It's a Kwanzaa day," Fred says. "I looked it up on the internet,
so, you know, when we go to Mama Jeane's, I'll kinda know what's going on.
Today's about kujichagulia -- and I have no idea if I'm pronouncing it right --
but it means self-determination."
"Great," Gunn says, trying not to be sarcastic. He is thoroughly sick
of being polite about Kwanzaa, and it's only day two. "You want to grab
some breakfast?"
Her smile fades a little. "I, uh, already ate." Gunn keeps his own
smile on his face through some effort. Fred never used to let a little thing
like one breakfast stop her from having another with him. Quickly she adds,
"Besides, the phones are already going nuts. Apparently that tremor last
night got the demons out and running. Lorne managed to get Angel out of bed so
they could go after some Cuzfau beasts, and I'm going to try and get some Tuipi
demons out of this lady's basement."
Gunn would like to protest that she shouldn't go alone, but he can't: A
three-year-old with a Nerf football would stand a decent shot against a few
Tuipi demons, which are pretty much identical to those things in
"Gremlins," before the whole feeding-after-midnight screwup.
"That's got me on the phones, huh?"
"Nope," Fred says, handing him a note pad with a few jotted notes;
fortunately, he's learned to decipher her scrawl. "Universal Studios is
having a problem with Velga demons. Apparently they're nesting in the Jaws
tank."
He sighs. "Guess I gotta go make the world safe for the Terminator
ride."
Fred laughs, and Gunn's heart leaps at the sound. It's been so long since he
heard her laugh. The moment's gone almost as quickly as it came, but he feels
better all the same as he starts locking up the place, waves goodbye to her and
sees her wave back. At least she was watching him as she went out the door.
It's Gunn's first trip to Universal. Alonna used to want to go, when they were
young, but the tickets were $25 each. They would have needed bus fare, too. The
little money Gunn could make doing odd jobs had to pay for things a lot more
important than amusement parks -- shoes, raincoats, Sucrets. Gunn doesn't feel
any particular pain about this memory: On the list of things he failed to give
Alonna, Universal Studios ranks pretty low. Besides, from the look of things, it
would have been a let-down anyway.
Instead of happy little children and Japanese tourists, Gunn sees a bunch of
Velga demons running around, mostly going after the vending machines. Wrappers
litter the ground: Baby Ruth, PayDay, Butterfinger. So, he thinks, these things
have a sweet tooth. Gotta remember that later on.
Then he remembers there's not going to be a later on, and there's nothing to do
but start killing stuff. The Velga demons don't fight hard; these days, the
demons don't fight much. They just run, because there's so many opportunities to
strike that they don't care about any one place, any one victim. Angel
Investigations is now largely a group of people who shoo demons away. Gunn only
manages to take down about four before they take off, headed back for the ocean.
They live to fight another day.
Gunn knows he should probably go back to the office, take more calls, Help more
of the Hopeless, but if he goes there, Fred will probably be back. Things were
nice between them when she left, and he'd like to savor the moment a while
longer.
So he instead heads for the beach, telling himself it's a patrol. These days,
it's as good a place to patrol as any. But he doesn't seriously count on finding
anything dangerous.
Of course, he does.
Gunn's eyes narrow as he recognizes the figure standing at the water's edge. To
anybody else, that boy looks like any other young man in his late teens, wearing
faded jeans and a battered corduroy jacket, with hair that needs cutting. But
Gunn knows that this is Connor, aka Stephen, aka one punk-ass son of a bitch.
"Where's a tidal wave when you need one?" Gunn says. He's standing
several yards away and the wind is blowing, but he doesn't raise his voice. He
knows he doesn't have to.
Connor half-turns so that he meets Gunn's eyes. Gunn's expecting to see
belligerence. Instead, Connor looks -- not afraid, not that exactly, but
uncertain. He looks like he'd like to run, but he also looks like he'd like to
talk. Gunn remembers that expression too; he saw it every once in a while, last
summer.
Suddenly, it's July again. Fred's laying out like she's tanning while coated in
SPF45 sunblock, for reasons only she could name, while Gunn teaches Connor how
to play volleyball. Connor's spiking it within about five minutes, and Gunn is
running and sweating and cussing and generally getting his ass kicked, and the
only person laughing more than Fred and Connor is Gunn himself --
Gunn forces himself back into the here and now, takes a deep breath and walks
over to Connor.
"Why are you here?" Connor says by way of greeting.
"I was killing stuff in the neighborhood," Gunn says. "Thought
I'd drop by. Why are you here?"
Connor shrugs, his response to any four out of five questions. "There were
demons here. I killed some. Others will come." Gunn doesn't know how Connor
knows this, but he doesn't doubt that he's right.
They stand together for a while, looking out at the water. It's a warm enough
day, but it's windy, and the breezes coming in off the waves are cold. Connor
shivers, and before he can stop himself, Gunn thinks, We gotta get that boy a
coat.
Though nobody talks about it -- not Fred, not Angel, not Connor and especially
not Gunn himself -- there was a period of about four months when Gunn was the
closest thing Connor had to a father figure. Gunn held his head when the boy
came in, throwing up and miserable, from his first experience with alcohol. Gunn
taught him the slang he needed to get by; he remembers grinning the first time
Connor said, "Cool." Gunn even tried to teach him how to drive, but
they were only one lesson in when the truth came out.
A chill goes through Gunn as he looks out at the waters. The truth about Connor
has that effect on him.
"So, Cordy wise up and throw you out on your ass yet?" Gunn says.
Connor's body goes rigid, and the vulnerability that flickered across his
features a few moments ago is gone now. "Cordelia and I live
together," he says. "We don't care what you think. Tell him we don't
care what he thinks, either."
Like Gunn would tell Angel one damn thing about this. But he can tell his words
struck a little too close to home -- Cordelia may still be living with Junior,
but he's apparently not feeling that welcome around the house. Gunn knows how a
man acts when he feels that way, sees it in Connor, uses it. "Only a
matter of time," he says, shrugging. "Cordy's gonna figure out what
you are, sooner or later."
"What are you talking about?" Connor says. Those words affected him
more than Gunn had anticipated. His eyes are wide, and the anger seems almost
lost in fear. "Figure out what?"
"That you're a liar," Gunn says. "That you'll say anything to
anybody to get what you want, and as far as I can tell, what you want is mostly
to hurt people, Angel more than anybody. Is that why you're screwing her? To
hurt Angel? Good way to combine the two things you get off on."
Gunn says it expecting -- maybe even hoping -- to make Connor even madder. He'd
love to punch this kid in the mouth; Connor might be supernatural, but Gunn's
willing to bet his teeth aren't. Instead, Connor's shoulders sag as he sighs.
What Gunn said, in some weird way, was a relief.
Why a relief?
"Or maybe she'll really figure it out," Gunn continues, his voice low.
"Maybe she'll figure out that the only prophecies that tell us jack shit
about what's going on are the same ones that talk about the son of a vampire
being the end of the world. Cordy's a smart girl, Connor. Sooner or later, she's
gonna figure out -- you're evil."
Connor smiles at him, the tightest, angriest smile Gunn's ever seen. "Cordelia
says I'm not. She says what's happening doesn't have anything to do with
me."
"What the hell would she know about it? Most of this year, girl ain't even
known her own name. And that suited you just fine. Her ignorance is your bliss,
huh?" Gunn half-punches, half-shoves Connor's shoulder. "Cordy got her
memories back. She's gonna get her sense back, too. And then she ain't gonna
want to have a damn thing to do with you ever again. Count on it."
Now, now, NOW, Connor's going to punch him, and it's going to feel so damn good
to hit him back, and it doesn't even matter if Connor beats the shit out of him.
Gunn's been wanting a good fight for too long, and shooing Velga demons away
from the seal tank doesn't cut it. He bounces on his heels in the sand, waiting
for the blow.
It doesn't come. Connor's mad, but more than anything else, he just looks
bewildered. "What do you care?" he yells. "Why does it matter to
you who Cordelia's with?"
This is a pretty damn good question; Gunn doesn't like seeing Angel so
depressed, but that doesn't explain the fury boiling inside him. It doesn't
explain why his fists are clenched and his stomach is churning. It doesn't
explain the fact that, out of all the shit that's gone wrong for Gunn and
everyone else in the world this past month, the thing that's tearing him up is
something that Connor and Cordelia did in their own bed.
He doesn't much care about the explanations, though. He just repeats,
"You're evil. And she's gonna know it."
"I'm not," Connor says. "I don't have to be. It doesn't matter
what the prophecies say, or, or, or what happened with the Beast -- it doesn't
matter. I don't have to be evil if I don't want to be."
The waves lap over Gunn's feet, so cold. Angel was in that box for four and a
half months. The taser burned Fred's skin, so badly she'll probably have a scar
forever.
"You can't escape destiny," Gunn says. "Nobody can." He
turns his back to Connor and stalks off, expecting at any second to be attacked
from behind. But Connor lets him walk away.
Part
3: Collective Responsibility
"Ah," Wesley says. "It's you."
At any time before last March, this would have been a very cold and angry way
for Wesley to greet Gunn at the door. As matters stand, though, this is an
improvement: Wesley's being borderline polite, giving his guest a half-smile,
and Gunn nods quickly before coming inside.
Wesley's apartment, once a model of orderliness, invariably pine-scented and
lemon-fresh, is a dingier place these days. Gunn notices that the floor hasn't
been swept in a while, that the newspapers are all over the coffee table and the
sofa. He doesn't usually notice stuff like this -- Gunn's own housekeeping
skills leave much to be desired, as Fred was inclined to point out even during
the good times. But he's watching Wesley carefully now.
"You've got the tablet?" Wesley says, businesslike and quick.
"In the bag," Gunn replies, swinging the heavy backpack from his
shoulders and unzipping it. The tablet is pure silver; it burned Angel's hands a
little when they first found it in the rubble of one of the quakes. What's
written on it has got to be important, which does make Gunn wonder why the
Powers wrote it in proto-Bantu instead of English. Fred can recognize
proto-Bantu now, but she can't read it, which is why Angel called Wesley. The
original plan was for Fred to bring it by. Gunn said he'd do it instead. Fred
stomped upstairs. Angel was too zoned to notice the tension in the room, which
Gunn thinks is for the best. Like the man needs any more stress.
"Hmmmm," Wesley says. "This is a very particular dialect. I'll
need a while with this one." Gunn recognizes the tone in his voice -- it's
puzzled and enthusiastic at the same time, the sound of Wesley finding a fat,
juicy mystery to sink his teeth into. Apparently even the end of the world
hasn't killed Wesley's interest in his books and languages and arcana.
"'A while' as in, I should get comfortable for a couple hours, or 'a while'
as in, I should come back next week?"
Wesley almost smiles at that; Gunn sees him catch himself, try to look official.
"I won't know until I've looked a little closer. Until then -- ah -- feel
free to stay."
Gunn knows Wesley's half-hoping he'll walk on out of there -- but only half. So,
awkward as it is, he stays.
When the Beast rose and brought the first rain of fire, that first night when
they knew the world would end, he and Wesley fought side-by-side again. It felt
good; Gunn's not very good at denial, so he just has to accept this. When he
came to after the fight, bruised and bloodied, his arm was draped over Wesley's
shoulder. They staggered through the streets together, taking in the sight of
Los Angeles aflame. They spoke of Fred only to wonder where she was and worry
for her. Jealousy and betrayal and loss -- those things hadn't mattered that
night.
Since then, though, it's become apparent that the world is ending by degrees. No
one cataclysm will wash them clean; they have weeks or months or maybe even
years to watch the demons claim the earth. Their truce has held; everyone
involved agrees that their personal problems have to take a back seat to the
work they're doing. If this world has a chance in hell, they can't afford to
waste it over a kidnapping or a suffocation, much less over a girl.
But jealousy and betrayal and loss all seem real again.
Betrayal works both ways, and Gunn knows it. The day they found out that Wesley
had taken Connor, Gunn believed in Wesley's motives, totally and completely.
When he saw Angel go berserk and try to kill Wesley, helpless in his hospital
bed, Gunn used every bit of his strength to pull Angel away. Only later, after
they emptied bottles of formula out of the fridge and pretended not to see
Angel's hands shaking and had to tell Cordelia about it while she sobbed -- only
then did he get angry.
What if he'd stuck with his first instinct? What if he'd heard Wesley out from
the beginning? Gunn is still really, really clear on the fact that Wesley should
have told them about the prophecy, and even clearer on the fact that Wesley's
not telling them revealed some pretty ugly things about Wesley's opinions of
them. With the world on fire, however, Gunn's closer to believing that they
should have defied those opinions instead of confirming them.
It would be easy to pin it all on Angel, to say Angel was the one who threw
Wesley out. As far as the agency goes, that's true. But for all his fury at
Wesley, his refusal to even have Wesley's name spoken in his presence, Angel
never forbid the others to see him or speak to him. He never even suggested it
-- maybe only because it would have involved saying Wesley's name, but the fact
remains, he didn't. Gunn and Cordy and Fred could have called him, gone by,
written. They didn't. That's on nobody but them.
What happened to all of us -- it's everybody's fault, Gunn thinks. He's known
this for a long time, deep down. Accepting it is easier than he would have
thought.
Gunn watches Wesley, bent over his books, tongue in the corner of his mouth as
he fiddles with a tricky word or two. He remembers that expression well. It
makes him smile a little.
As if he senses the attention, Wesley looks up. Gunn doesn't stop smiling.
Wesley looks uncertain, but not exactly displeased. "I think this is going
to take a couple of days," he says. "You might want to come back
tomorrow night."
Before the rain of fire, Wesley would have offered to bring it by, the better to
get a chance with Fred. Now he's inviting Gunn over instead. "Might be
late," Gunn says. "We're having dinner over at Mama Jeane's."
"Mama Jeane," Wesley says. He looks uneasy and wistful all at once.
"Is she -- how is she?"
Gunn took Wesley to Mama Jeane's for the first time not long after Wesley had
been shot. Wesley had taken antibiotics and done physical therapy, but it wasn't
until Mama Jeane offered her own medicines -- food, church and affection -- that
Wesley really seemed to recover. "She's great," Gunn says. "Still
cooking up big meals. She's even making us do Kwanzaa this year."
"Kwanzaa?" Wesley looks down at the silver tablet, probably wondering
if this is a proto-Bantu word he'd missed.
"Black people's Christmas," Gunn says.
"I thought that was Christmas," Wesley replies.
"See, that's my point exactly." Gunn's glad to see Wesley smile.
Should he invite Wesley along? He's still not easy about the thought of Fred and
Wesley being together, but Mama Jeane's house is Gunn's turf; he feels safe
about anything that would happen there. And Mama Jeane sees into people in a way
Gunn has never mastered. She'd know what the deal was with those two instantly,
and she'd tell Gunn, and then, good or bad, he'd finally know.
Beyond that -- Mama Jeane would like to see Wesley, and Wesley would like to see
Mama Jeane, and maybe that ought to be an end to it.
Wesley's clearly thinking the same thing. He says, very carefully, "I
suppose when you say 'we,' you mean you and Fred -- and Angel? Has -- has
Cordelia perhaps returned?"
Wesley has no idea how wrong that picture is. Angel didn't get back to the hotel
until long after Wesley had left. He was beat-up and bloody, an open wound
gaping in his neck. Lorne and Gunn had watched, exhausted and horrified, as
Angel staggered to the trash can and threw up. Gunn had gone to his side and
seen the blood in the trash; of course, blood is all Angel would ever throw up,
but it still looked awful. Angel blurted out what he'd seen, and Gunn and Lorne
had said all the cuss words they ever knew, and that had been it for
conversation for a few hours.
What would Wesley think if he did know? Gunn is seized by the sudden sure
knowledge -- Wesley would laugh. He might wait until Gunn left, but he'd laugh
all the same. The truce is on the surface; the bitter runs deep, and it's the
bitter side of Wesley who'd be perfectly happy to see the people Angel loved --
the ones he loved more than Wes -- cut him even deeper than Wesley did.
This shit with Cordy and Connor -- that's Wesley's fault too, Gunn thinks. The
fury is building inside him again, making his temples pulse and his muscles
tense. If Wesley hadn't let that boy be stolen, then he woulda grown up with
Angel and Cordelia, and none of this would've happened.
Responsibility shifts again, and as soon as it had let go of Wesley, it has him
back up in its claws again.
"Just me and Fred," Gunn says shortly. "That's all."
"Ah," Wesley says. "I see."
The silence that follows doesn't last that long, but it's still too long.
"I'll send somebody over for the tablet," Gunn says, going to the
door.
"You do that," Wesley says distantly, the moment before Gunn shuts the
door behind him, hard.
Part 4: Cooperative Economics
Fred puts on makeup he bought for her at the drugstore. He's learned what to get
her -- the palest foundation Cover Girl makes, the palest powder, the clear
mascara. She says regular mascara burns her eyes. Fred doesn't cover up her face
much, doesn't do a lot to her hair; what once seemed like refreshing honesty and
naturalness now seems to Gunn like pure lack of effort. But she's still pretty.
That doesn't change.
They drive to Mama Jeane's with gasoline Fred put in the truck earlier that day.
Gunn was out patrolling late, her cue to get up in the morning, restock the
stake cannon, refill the tank. The patterns of their relationship still hold
true, even now when silence hangs between them like a curtain, heavy and opaque.
Gunn and Fred have learned to live together in all the practical little ways
that usually come a lot later in the relationship -- she balances his checkbook,
he buys the tampons that come in a blue box, and neither of them really thinks
about it anymore. Earlier this morning, when Fred made the mistake of asking
once too often about his trip to see Wesley, they had a blistering fight while
making up the bed, their hands folding hospital corners in perfect concert as
their voices got louder and louder.
The mood is better now. The prospect of dinner at Mama Jeane's appears to have
cheered Fred up a lot, and that means Gunn can relax a little. Fred made some
banana pudding and balanced the tray carefully in her lap during the drive over;
now, as Gunn opens the truck's door for her, she holds it out, an offering.
"I hope you didn't make too much dessert!" she calls by way of
greeting.
"I was just thinking we needed more," says Mama Jeane from the porch.
Gunn knows full well that there are probably two pies and a cake in there
waiting on them, but Mama Jeane's beaming like Fred's banana pudding is all she
could have hoped for. "Come here, girl. Give your Mama Jeane a hug."
Fred's arrival seems to shake the household from its earlier gloom. Martha and
Cedric like Fred, who will sit on the floor, Indian-style, and play as many
board games as they can drag out of the hall closet. Debra is always tense when
Fred is over, but her animosity is directed at Gunn, not Fred: Gunn is the one
who is dating a White woman and betraying his Black sisters. Debra has opinions
about this. Fred's willingness to help in the kitchen and general good humor has
earned her Debra's politeness, and perhaps even some reluctant liking. Gunn's
not sure, because he's never really dared to raise the subject. Brandy attaches
herself to Fred almost immediately, wraps her teeny hands around the ends of
Fred's long braids. When Fred asks the silly questions people ask about babies
-- is she walking, is she talking, isn't she big for her age? -- Anthony manages
to rouse himself from the stupor of grief and answer. All in all, this is the
liveliest, most relaxed night at Mama Jeane's in a long time, and the best time
Gunn and Fred have had together in even longer. When Debra tells a long story
about her work at the salon and a permanent gone horribly wrong, Gunn joins in
the laughter and realizes his cheer is genuine. Maybe Mama Jeane had the right
idea with this Kwanzaa thing after all, he thinks.
"So what's tonight's virtue?" he says as he helps himself to some
barbecued chicken. "Gotta know what we're celebrating before we
celebrate."
Fred raises her hand, just like the overeager girl she probably was at school.
Mama Jeane laughs. "Why don't you tell us, baby?"
"Today's virtue is ujamaa," Fred recites. "It's about cooperative
economics."
"Cooperative economics?" Gunn decides to have a little fun. "I
don't know, Mama Jeane. That sounds like communism to me."
Mama Jeane frowns, her gray eyebrows knitting together. As Gunn well knows, she
retains a lively, Eisenhower-era suspicion of communism and all its works; in
the closest thing to mean-spiritedness he's ever seen in Mama Jeane, she still
roots for the Eastern Bloc figure skaters to fall. "I'm sure it's not
communism," she says. "They wouldn't put that in a holiday."
"Sure they would," Gunn says, winking at Debra as she passes him the
mashed potatoes. "The guys who came up with Kwanzaa weren't all into the
white-bread American way, you know."
"It might be communism," Debra says solemnly. Apparently she's willing
to help him needle Mama Jeane. "I'm not sure this is a patriotic holiday.
Maybe Americans should think about this more carefully."
"Y'all stop prepping," Mama Jeane huffs. "You are just trying to
stir up trouble."
"What's communism?" Cedric says through a mouthful of roll.
"It's a very bad thing," Mama Jeane says solemnly. "Chew with
your mouth closed, baby."
As Mama Jeane launches into a slightly warped history of the Cold War for Martha
and Cedric's benefit, Gunn whispers to Fred, "Way she carries on, you'd
think Nikita Kruschev was gonna climb outta his grave and come back to get
her."
Fred smiles, then looks worried. In all seriousness, she says, "He hasn't,
has he?"
"I HOPE not," Gunn says. The absurdity of it -- of their lives, where
absolutely anybody might show up at any time, dead, Red or both -- makes him
start laughing, and Fred giggles too. She looks so pretty, so happy, that it's
all Gunn can do to stop himself from kissing her right there at the table.
Fred's cheeks are pink from laughing, and her eyes are bright as she looks at
him. For the first time in way too long, Gunn thinks there's a chance they might
do more in bed tonight than pretend to sleep.
Fred might be thinking the same thing; she's blushing a little bit as she ducks
her head away from him. She wants to talk about something else at the table and
casts around for a subject, for someone else to talk to. "I can't get over
how big she is," she finally says, looking at Brandy.
Anthony realizes the words are meant for him, smiles with a shadow of a new
father's enthusiasm. "She's growin' like a weed."
"Just past a year old?" Fred says. Anthony smiles a little more;
Gunn's not sure why every parent is thrilled that a baby's bigger than it's
supposed to be, but they always are. He's glad Fred's drawing the guy out; no
doubt Anthony needs it. "When was her birthday?"
"November 16," Anthony says. "We had us a nice little
party." His face clouds over, perhaps remembering his wife holding a cake
with one candle.
November 16. November 16. There's something about that date, something Gunn
remembers --
And then it hits him. November 16 is Connor's birthday too. He stares down at
Brandy, who has a mixture of mashed potatoes and gravy all over her face from
her clumsy attempts to eat with her hands. She's still in diapers. She and
Connor are the exact same age.
All Mama Jeane's good cooking churns uncomfortably in Gunn's stomach, and he
leans away from the table, the better not to even have to smell it. Fred looks
uncomfortable -- she's remembered Connor's birthday as well -- but when she
recognizes Gunn's disgust, it makes her angry. She doesn't say anything, doesn't
do anything besides start eating her corn, but Gunn can tell.
They don't talk about it until later, when the two of them are doing the dishes
and can hiss at each other beneath the sound of the rushing water. "Don't
tell me I'm weird for thinking it's gross. I'm not weird. It is gross," he
says, scrubbing furiously at a casserole dish.
"Yes, it's gross," Fred says, drying a plate. "I don't like
thinking about Connor and Cordy either. That's why I don't dwell on it, Charles.
I guess it's normal to wonder why -- I mean, why in the world -- but the way
you're brooding about them is just weird. I swear, I think Angel spends less
time freaking out about it than you do, and it happened to him, not you."
Technically, it happened to Connor and Cordelia, but that's kind of beside the
point. Gunn keeps scrubbing, welcoming the bite of the Brillo pad against his
skin. "Excuse me, but I have been up and dressed and washed and making
conversation every day since," Gunn says. "That puts me way ahead of
Angel."
"He's doing way better," Fred insists. "He was only scary those
first couple days. I think he's trying not to think about it. Why can't
you?"
The truth slips out before he can stop it. "I'm trying not to think about
something else."
Fred's lips press together, blanching them. She tosses her dishrag beside the
sink. "I'll let you finish up," she says, disappearing into the living
room.
So much for sex tonight. Gunn sighs and starts on the glasses.
By the time he's done with the mountain of dishes, he's calmed down some and
hopes Fred has too. Sure enough, when Gunn goes into the living room, he sees
her sitting on the floor, happily playing Memory with Martha and Cedric on the
floor. Brandy has been given a couple of the cards to chew on. Anthony, Debra
and Mama Jeane are all watching the tape of "Monsters Inc.,"
apparently not fully realizing that the children's distraction has set them free
to look at something else for a change.
Fred flips over a card. "A tulip," she says. The flower is brilliant
pink in her hand. "Now, I know I saw that other tulip around here someplace
--"
She knows where it is. Gunn doesn't doubt that. He has learned what a fine,
strong thing Fred's mind is. When she works on the agency's books, she
multiplies four-digit numbers together in her head. She can read a long novel in
one sitting and have half the dialogue memorized before she closes the cover.
When she looks at Gunn, she is analyzing, comparing, categorizing, all the time.
She can't stop herself. Gunn loved that about her, back when she liked what she
saw in his eyes.
Her hand hovers over what is no doubt the correct card, then reaches over to
scoop up a different one. "A teapot?" she protests as Martha and
Cedric start to giggle. "Oh, no!"
Fred flops sideways onto the floor, kicking her feet in mock despair. She's
wearing her oldest blue jeans and a green T-shirt, her hair yanked back in
braids, and for one instant, she is again the most beautiful woman he's ever
seen.
Gunn loves her still. He thinks he will love her always, no matter what. He
can't imagine living without her, and before he can stop himself, he thinks that
if the world has to end, it should get a move on. He doesn't think he can handle
Armageddon and breaking up with Fred both.
"That Sully needs to get himself together," Mama Jeane says, shaking
her head at the TV screen.
Part 5: Purpose
Angel ends up being the one to go pick up the tablet and its translation from
Wesley. Fred gives him a couple of oven mitts to handle the silver, and Angel is
attentive enough to thank her before he goes out the door. Gunn sort of feels
like somebody should be with him -- they've tried not to leave Angel alone any
more than he insists upon -- but calling attention to Angel's mental state is
probably a bad idea. All the same, Fred, Lorne and Gunn all walk out to the
sidewalk and watch Angel start the car, back out, drive off.
Lorne claps his hands together. "Well, I think we can pronounce Lambchop
well on the road to recovery," he says. "Another five or six decades,
and he'll be right as rain."
"I need food," Fred says with a sigh. Gunn doesn't know if her
melancholy is for Angel's plight or the fact that she's not going to see Wesley
herself. "Can we go get some food?"
Gunn doesn't answer. At the moment when the silence would become awkward, Lorne
jumps in. "Fab suggestion. What do you say we make a Taco Bell run? I
haven't seen you put away a half-dozen enchiladas in at least a week."
"Do you want something?" Fred doesn't exactly look at Gunn as she says
it. Her hands are tucked in her pockets, her arms bent, her shoulders in a
perpetual shrug. She assumes he's not going to go with her and Lorne, and she's
right.
"Enchiladas would be great," he says, turning to go back in the hotel.
"Y'all hurry back." He doesn't look over his shoulder, just closes the
front door behind him.
Gunn doesn't get the Hyperion to himself much, what with four permanent
residents and no end of visitors. For the first couple of minutes, this seems
like a pleasant luxury -- he can go to his room and turn the stereo up full
blast, Outkast blaring from the speakers with nobody to object. Then he realizes
he's not in the mood for Outkast, or really for any music at all, and the empty,
quiet hotel quickly begins to seem a little creepy. He makes himself feel both
more secure and more useful by going to the weapons cabinet and selecting a few
swords for sharpening. They need to do this more often, these days.
He works for a while -- it feels like a long while, though he's engrossed enough
to lose track of the time -- until he hears the door open. "'Bout time you
got back," he says, trying to be more cheerful than he was when they left.
"I'm starving."
"It's me." Gunn looks up to see Cordelia standing there, shifting
uncomfortably from one foot to another.
Cordelia's hair is pulled back in a clip, awkwardly and unattractively, the way
girls will to wash their faces. She doesn't seem to have on any makeup, and her
outfit is loose enough that Gunn can't be sure, but he also thinks she might
have gained a little weight. Savagely, he wishes Angel were here, that he could
see her like this. All Gunn's ex-girlfriends have an annoying tendency to show
up thinner, happier and better-dressed; it would have soothed his spirit
considerably to see even one of them in this condition. He knows he is a
vengeful man.
"What do you want?" he says. He doesn't say it to make her feel
uncomfortable; he literally can't imagine what she's doing here. Then a possible
answer occurs to him. "If it's a vision, tell me and get gone. In the
future, just call."
"I haven't had a vision," Cordelia says. "Not in a while. I just
-- I came to see Angel."
Of all the damn nerve. "Angel's out," Gunn says. When her eyes narrow,
he adds, "Search the hotel if you don't believe me."
She sighs heavily. "I believe you. Is he -- will he be back soon?"
"Don't think so," Gunn says. The lie sounds more plausible in his
voice than the truth did. "Far as I'm concerned, that's for the best. Cordy,
he doesn't need to see you. I think he's seen enough already."
Her cheeks flame scarlet, and Gunn doesn't look away, doesn't spare her a moment
of it. Angel's description of events didn't include any particularly gory
details -- thank God -- but she doesn't know that. Then again, she has other,
simpler reasons for shame.
She doesn't act ashamed, though. Cordelia tosses her hair, looking for an
instant like her old, prideful self. "Excuse me, but first of all, this is
none of your business. Second of all, if Angel had explained to you what I
explained to him --"
Explain. Yeah, you could explain something like that. Uh-huh.
"-- then you would understand, even if Angel --" Her voice catches for
a moment, and Gunn thinks she won't be able to keep it up. Instead she squares
her shoulders. "Finally, it's not like it's the worst thing anybody could
ever do. Angel's done worse -- and I don't mean back in the
creepy-evil-knee-breeches days. I mean, two years ago. Or what about Wesley last
year, with the kidnapping?"
"We didn't cut those guys a whole lot of slack either," Gunn says.
"Why should I treat you any different?" They're quiet together for a
while before he adds, "I'm waiting for a reason."
Cordelia bites her lip for a moment. She doesn't give him the reason; she
doesn't have one. She just says, "Things between me and Angel -- they don't
have to be like this."
"Shoulda thought of that before," Gunn says easily, turning back to
his work. Metal scrapes against metal as he adds, "Say, did that nasty
diaper rash of Connor's ever clear up? Guess you're in a position to know."
Cordelia sucks in her breath, so sharply he hears it over the grind of metal.
Gunn looks up to see her blinking back tears. He knows he ought to feel bad for
humiliating her, but he doesn't. She sits down heavily on the circular sofa, as
if her embarrassment has robbed her of the ability to stand.
After a moment, she blurts out, "I don't know who I am anymore."
That makes two of us, Gunn thinks. But he doesn't say anything, just stares at
her, hoping she'll get uncomfortable enough to leave.
Instead, she keeps talking. "I used to know. I was Vision Girl. I saw the
future, and I told Angel what was coming, and he went out there and stopped
it." Gunn's part in stopping evil does not appear to be worthy of mention.
"I was Angel's best friend, and he was mine. It felt like nothing could
stop us if we were together. Like we were two halves of one whole. All the
stupid stuff I'd ever done -- the stupid person I used to be -- it didn't
matter, you know? And now I'm never going to get that back."
"If you think talking to Angel is going to help," Gunn says, "It
won't. What happened has happened, Cordy. You can't erase it, much as I wish you
could."
"The world is ending," Cordelia says quietly. "I don't want the
last things Angel and I say to each other to be, well, what we said. I never
wanted to hurt him, and I hurt him -- so bad --" She gulps down a sob and
keeps talking. Gunn can tell she's counting on him reporting this to Angel
later. She's betting on the wrong horse, yet again. "I can't sleep. I can't
eat. I feel like hell, and if I go on another couple days like this, I'm gonna
die. I just want to talk to Angel. Just talk. I don't know if that's going to
make anything better, but, God, it can't get any worse."
"And just what do you want him to say, Cordy?" Gunn lays the sword
down, giving her his full attention at last. "Yeah, it was great, glad you
broke my heart into a thousand little pieces? That oughta set everything
straight."
She shakes her head. "What's happening around us is bigger than what
happens between me and Angel."
"True." Gunn doesn't like granting her the point.
"We have to be able to fight on the same side. If there's any way we can
still fight and win -- then we're going to have to be in this together. What I
did ruined too much already. I don't want it to cost us the one chance we might
have left."
Dammit, he hates that she's making this much sense. He glances surreptitiously
at his watch; if Angel doesn't linger at Wesley's, and Gunn can't imagine that
he would, then he will be back in a half-hour or so. Maybe Gunn should tell
Cordelia she can stay. Even let her go upstairs and take a shower, because from
the look of things, she could use one.
Cordelia senses the shift in his mood, presses her luck. "I need
Angel," she says. "I need to know how I can help. I need to feel like
I've got a reason to be here again. Then maybe I can finally figure out what I'm
supposed to do."
Something snaps. Gunn stands up so quickly that Cordelia shrinks back. "I
can tell you what you're NOT supposed to do," he says. "You're not
supposed to be in love with one guy and fucking another guy. How did that one
get past you?"
She wants to get mad at him, but she's too mad at herself. Cordelia only manages
to say, weakly, "Gunn -- don't."
But he has to. "If you ain't in love with somebody, then screw whoever the
hell you want to. Ain't nobody's business but yours. But if you're in love with
somebody -- then you owe that person something, don't you? Don't you owe 'em --
just the truth?" He doesn't know why Cordelia doesn't understand this. He
doesn't know if Fred understands it.
And finally, at long last, Gunn realizes why Cordy and Connor gets under his
skin so bad. He has told himself, over and over since last February, that he's
the one Fred really loves, because he's the one she chose to be with. He's the
one who goes grocery shopping with her, who listens to her music in the
mornings, who sleeps beside her every night. In the end, love is an intangible
thing -- you know it only by its tracks, the patterns it creates in the world
around you. Fred chose to live her life with Gunn, and he has taken this to mean
that she loves him.
Now here he is, looking at one woman who loves Angel desperately -- and he has
never doubted for a minute that Cordy loves Angel -- but is going home to
share her bed and her body with somebody else. Cordelia is the proof that Fred's
place in Gunn's life may mean nothing, nothing at all.
"I'm going," Cordelia says. She's desperate to get away from Gunn, not
that he can blame her. Not for this, anyway. She smoothes her hair back with one
hand, as though it could possibly look better in its present state. "Will
you tell him I was here?" She's not asking Gunn to do it, just wondering if
he will.
Gunn shrugs. "Depends on how he is."
Cordelia's eyes are dark as she pauses at the door. "Gunn, is Angel -- is
he doing okay?"
It feels better than it should to tell her the truth. "No."
Part 6: Creativity
New Year's Eve. When they rang in 2002, they were all together, laughing and
happy, in the Hyperion's lobby. Fred had a glittery cardboard tiara in her hair,
and at midnight she'd pressed her lips to Gunn's cheek. Cordelia wore a short
little satin dress and hung on Angel the whole night. Angel had a sleepy Connor
in his arms; they all called him Baby New Year. Wesley popped the cork, sending
a flume of $5 champagne into the air.
Tonight, Fred went to bed at 10:30, claiming she was too tired to stay up.
Angel's holed up in his room, his standard operating procedure these days. No
telling what Connor or Cordy or Wesley might be doing. Gunn figures only one of
them is likely to have a good time tonight --
"You can only rent tuxedos for so long, you know?" Lorne says, smiling
at his reflection in the windows of the weapons cabinet. "Buying one is an
investment. Particularly since the world is about to end and take my American
Express balance with it."
"You look great," Gunn says. Truth is, he does; the green skin is a
nice counterpoint to the black-and-white of the tux. He wonders if Mr. Blackwell
has ever pondered this. "You gonna be back before dawn?"
"Not if I do it right," Lorne said. "Days of auld lang syne are
pretty much all we've got left, compadre. I intend to make a few memories before
we go."
"Got a hot date, then?" When Lorne waggles his eyebrows, Gunn asks
himself the usual question -- then decides the time has come to finally ask it
out loud. "Lorne, this date of yours -- not meaning to be personal --"
"Of course you do," Lorne said. "But ask away. We have no
secrets, more's the pity."
Gunn sucks up his courage and says, "Is this date a she or a he?"
Lorne shakes his head sadly. "See, you ask that like it's an either/or
question," he says. "There are more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio." He's swung an opera cloak over
his shoulders and gone out the door long before Gunn's sure what that means.
Eleven-thirty p.m. on New Year's Eve, and the woman Gunn loves is in bed, hoping
he won't join her. Nobody else he knows would welcome his company. And yet he
can't quite bring himself to spend what promises to be his last New Year's Eve
alone. So he goes to Angel's door, knocks quietly. If Angel ignores him, he'll
leave.
Instead, Angel says, "Come in."
Angel's propped up on the bed watching television -- in itself odd, because
Angel still seems to think of television as some newfangled fad whose day will
soon pass. He has his back against the backboard, his sketch pad propped against
his legs. A bottle of Scotch is open on the bedside table, a glass by Angel's
side, but he doesn't seem to be drunk. Thank God. Gunn's not good at dealing
with Angel when he's out of control.
"You staying up for New Year's?" Gunn says.
"I'm staying up," Angel says. He doesn't expressly invite Gunn in, but
when Gunn comes in and sits on the foot of the bed, Angel pours him a glass of
the Scotch.
Angel is watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. It's inside Madison
Square Garden this year; Times Square fell prey to one of the early rains of
fire, and it's not really in any shape for partying. Neither are the crowds, it
looks like; they're more frenzied than happy, shrieking at the camera with faces
that look angry behind their glittery 2003 novelty glasses. If Angel's thinking
of last year's party at the Hyperion, how happy they all were, how pretty
Cordelia looked in her little short dress, he doesn't say. He watches the screen
glassily as Dick counts down the Year's Top Hits. Gunn sighs: It figures the
world wouldn't end before he had to hear that damn Avril Levigne song again.
At a commercial break -- even at the brink of Armageddon, Bill Gates is pretty
sure somebody else will want to sign up for MSN -- Gunn figures he ought to try
and make some conversation. "Whatcha drawing?" he says.
Angel hesitates, then holds out the sketch pad. Outlined in pencil is the face
of a woman Gunn doesn't know. She's pretty, but there's something in her eyes he
can't define -- something that can look loving or deceptive, by turns. Her mouth
is partly open, as though she's about to speak, but there's no telling what she
might be about to say. It's an expressive portrait of whoever it is. No way this
is just a drawing -- this is a picture of someone real. "What's her
name?" Gunn says. "Looks like you two have a story."
After a moment, Angel shakes his head. "I can't draw her anymore," he
says. "I always could. I could have done it in my sleep. And now I
can't."
Gunn looks down at the sketch again, turns it slightly, realizes with a shock
that this is a picture of Cordelia. The shape of the face is wrong, the tilt of
the eyes, the cut of the hair -- he can see it now that he knows, but only
now.
"Her face changes," Angel says. "I try to remember it, and I
can't."
"I'm sorry, man." Gunn hasn't said that before. Now it seems like
something he should have said a long time ago.
"I try to remember why I'm here," Angel says. "What I'm supposed
to be doing. I'm supposed to be fighting to save the world, but I can't. Nothing
makes a difference anymore. There's nothing left to fight. Nobody left to care
about. Just -- nothing."
Angel's words scare Gunn because he thinks they're true.
Gunn always figured that if you broke Angel, really broke him, that demon would
come crashing out, destroying everything in its path. Back two years ago, he saw
some shadows of that when Angel lost it -- the demon was close to the surface
then, and Gunn has lived with the memory of what that was like, even in the good
times. But he never counted on this possibility -- that if you broke Angel, you
wouldn't be left with anything but a broken man. Because that's all that's
staring back at Gunn now: a broken man, his spirit even deader than his body. He
knows Angel feels rage, betrayal, fury. He knows some part of Angel wants to
lash out -- and that wouldn't even have to be the demon. Given what happened, it
could just be the man. But the demon's down deeper than it's ever been; it's
wrapped inside so many layers of suffocating, immobilizing despair that it can't
ever break free.
The sight of Angel like this unnerves Gunn more than he would ever have guessed
it could. It unnerves him even more now that he's figured out why.
Gunn's sunk pretty low in his own day. He's been homeless. He's been hungry.
He's taken his one shower a week at the YMCA. He watched his sister be snatched
away from him and murdered, and he staked the thing that wore her face when he
saw it again. He sacrificed the best friendship of his life for love. Then he
sacrificed his moral code -- the one thing he always had, when he didn't have a
house or food or a second pair of shoes -- for love too. Finally he realized he
was probably going to lose that love anyway.
But in the back of Gunn's mind, there's always been this one fact: Angel's sunk
even lower. Gunn took one life for a reason that at least seemed good at the
time; Angel took thousands of lives for fun. Gunn knows he may yet lose Fred,
but he is pretty damn sure he ain't gonna lose her to his own son, less than a
year out of diapers. Gunn knows what Wesley's friendship meant to him, but even
if Angel never got as close to Wesley, he somehow thinks Wesley's friendship
meant even more to Angel. A vampire doesn't make that many friends. And at
least, whatever happens in the future, Gunn had nine months with Fred --
days of fun and freedom and hungry-man skillet breakfasts, nights filled with
passion and tenderness. Angel never even got one night with Cordelia, and he
wouldn't ever have, even if she hadn't gone ho-bag on him.
("Let me get this straight," Gunn said, as they drove along Melrose in
his pickup truck. "You can't ever have sex with a woman you love as long as
you live."
"Right," Angel said. The ash from the vampires they'd slain was all
over his jacket, and Gunn was drinking a Big Gulp while Angel had a beer. Angel
was listening to Snoop without complaining, and Fred had held Gunn's hand for
the first time earlier that day, and everything was right with the world.
Gunn said, "And you're gonna live forever."
"Right," Angel said again.
Gunn shook his head. "Man, it sucks to be you." And the night was so
good that, somehow, Angel laughed.)
All these years, Gunn's known -- no matter how bad he had it, Angel had it
worse. Despite all that, Angel was making it. And if Angel could make it, Gunn
could too. Wherever rock-bottom was, Angel hadn't gotten there yet, so Gunn
couldn't even be close.
Angel's not making it anymore.
The ball -- or, at any rate, a recently constructed facsimile -- begins dropping
into the center of Madison Square Garden. The crowds shriek, Ten, Nine, Eight. A
new year is beginning. The last year of all.
The ball drops. 2003 lights up in neon. Confetti drops. Happy New Year.
Angel and Gunn look at each other. Angel sighs, then tries to smile. "I'm
not kissing you."
Gunn thinks about that for a moment, and the next words slip out before he can
think better of it: "It would serve 'em all right if they saw THAT through
the window, huh?"
Angel stares at Gunn. Just as Gunn opens his mouth to apologize, Angel starts to
smile. Then Gunn thinks about it, really thinks -- Fred and Wesley and Cordy and
Connor, all slack-jawed in horror as he and Angel make out --
They burst into laughter at the same moment. Gunn grips the side of the bed,
guffawing so loud he's probably waking Fred up, and who the hell cares? Angel's
not making any sound, but he's clutching his gut, shaking throughout his body,
grinning for the first time since the rain of fire.
Gunn finally gasps, "You -- you ever see that -- then you KNOW the world is
ending."
"Not one minute too soon," Angel agrees, and they keep on laughing.
Part 7: Faith
On the first day of what promises to be the last year of his life, Gunn camps
out at Mama Jeane's. He sits at the kitchen table and polishes off a helping of
black-eyed peas. If you eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day, you'll have good
luck.
Luck. Gunn sops his cornbread in the gravy, wondering what luck is, how the hell
he'd recognize it if it even came his way.
"I want to watch Sleeping Beauty!" Martha insists. She's finally
gotten sick of Monsters Inc. Cedric hasn't, and the ensuing battle is loud and
long. Brandy wails throughout -- whatever's troubling her isn't her diaper or
her strained apricots or desire to nap, because all Anthony's efforts to soothe
her fail. Debra takes herself off to the corner store early, and she doesn't
return.
As for Mama Jeane, she's in one of her rare bad moods. She doesn't snap at them
or yell; that's not really her way, unless you push her, and nobody in the house
is fool enough to do that. But she's critical of the cooking, worried about
sounds outside. She insists that Gunn check the burglar bars. Her reedy voice
has an uncertain, querulous sound to it: Mama Jeane sounds like an old woman,
and it's both so appropriate and so wrong that it drives Gunn up the wall.
But he keeps his peace. He's quiet and respectful. No point in making trouble.
God knows that none of the stuff that's going wrong is Mama Jeane's fault.
Angel's down patrolling in the sewers today; the man can't expect his new year
to get any better than his day today, fighting monsters alone in raw filth. Fred
was hung over this morning. Gunn was shocked to realize that she'd gotten into
bed and drunk herself insensate. It's so unlike her. But who knows how anybody's
supposed to act, these days? When Gunn left the hotel, Lorne was still passed
out on the circular sofa, his cummerbund missing and a very strange smile on his
face. At least somebody had a Happy New Year.
Gunn looks at the wall: He's seen it hundreds of times, so often that he almost
doesn't really see it anymore. But he does now. There's Derris, for too brief a
time Gunn's stepfather, in his high-school football uniform. He's trying to look
stern in his shoulder pads and #52, but he can't quite repress a grin. There's a
picture of Gunn, Angel and Wesley, taken on the front porch, an artifact of
another time. There's Debra's senior photo, a white-lace drape making her look
unexpectedly elegant. There's Cedric, age three, chubby hands in the air as
though he's cheering.
And then there's Alonna. Seventh grade. A purple T-shirt, her best, something
Gunn had managed to buy for her new instead of at the Salvation Army. He never
bought his own stuff new, but sometimes he splurged on pretty things for her.
Her hair is up in braids, the way she liked then. Seventh grade was the year she
broke two of her fingers in gym class. Gunn had to splint them up himself; by
that time, he knew how. What he didn't know was how to fix her hair in those
little braids. She couldn't do it herself with a broken hand, but when she went
to school with her hair unfixed, the other girls made fun. Gunn is well-versed
in cruelty, and he knows plenty of monsters who don't have anything on little
girls. He and his sister would get up early in the mornings, and Gunn would
carefully, patiently braid Alonna's hair, try to weave in the beads the way the
other girls did. Alonna would sit very still, both of them prayerful that their
efforts would look right, that Alonna would be safe from teasing for one more
day.
Her braids don't quite look right in the photo, but they look okay, and Alonna's
face is alight with her little crooked grin. Her big brother helped her out. She
could trust her big brother to take care of her.
"Charles?" Mama Jeane's voice is plaintive and needy. It makes Gunn
shiver like fingernails on chalkboard. "You come here and help me."
Robotically, Gunn gets up and joins her at the hall closet. Mama Jeane has one
hand on her cane, the other up high on a shelf, trying to pull down a milk
crate. In it, Gunn can see the candleholder, the kente-cloth table runner.
"You puttin' this stuff out again?" he says.
"Of course I am," Mama Jeane says, still tugging at the crate despite
Gunn's availability to help. "This is the last day of Kwanzaa. We have to
do it up right."
"Do it up right? Hell, Mama Jeane, do you even hear yourself?" Gunn is
yelling -- yelling at Mama Jeane, something in its way more unthinkable than the
end of the world. She's staring at him aghast, but he can't stop. He can't stop.
"What the hell does it matter what we do? The whole world is going to hell,
for REAL, and the damn candles and African crap doesn't change that. It doesn't
change anything! Instead of facing facts, you've got us all here celebrating
what has got to be the goddamned stupidest holiday in the whole goddamned world
--"
He runs out of breath at the same moment he runs out of anger. Mama Jeane's eyes
are wet with tears, and Gunn is left with the pure horror of having made her
cry. He turns on his heel and walks out of the house. Tears fill his own eyes,
and he can't drive yet, so he just sits on the edge of the porch.
Quiet night in the neighborhood. Ironically, it's been safer here since the rain
of fire. The gangs declared a kind of cease-fire, and the low-rent petty
criminals kinda figure there's not much point. Gunn's alone outside, looking at
darkness that city lights don't do anything to dispel.
Inside, Martha and Cedric continue fighting. Brandy continues crying. It seems
like none of that will ever end.
Then the screen door swings open, and Gunn doesn't even have to turn around to
know that Mama Jeane is coming outside. He hears the soft rubber pads of her
cane against the concrete porch. Aware that he richly deserves the lecture
that's coming, he squares his shoulder and makes himself ready.
At last, Mama Jeane says, "It's not THE stupidest holiday." After a
moment, she adds, "That's got to be Groundhog Day. What's that about? A rat
down a hole."
"Okay," Gunn says. "Groundhog Day is worse. At least with
Kwanzaa, we get to eat."
"Glad we got that straight," Mama Jeane says. She doesn't sound hurt
-- if anything, she sounds wryly amused. Sure enough, when Gunn looks over his
shoulder, she's smiling.
He says, "So, you know this whole Kwanzaa thing is crap."
She shrugs. "Christmas didn't quite feel right this year. And so many
things are going so wrong, Charles." Mama Jeane looks up at the sky, as if
searching for fire. Many people look upwards like this, these days. "I
wanted us to have one more celebration together as a family. If Christmas didn't
work, I thought maybe this would. We had seven tries. At least a few of them
turned out okay."
Why didn't he understand this? At this point, Gunn ought to know to at least
give Mama Jeane credit for some sense. "I'm sorry," he says. "I
shoulda tried harder."
"These are hard times," she says. "I don't pretend to understand
what's happening, but I know it's nothing good."
Nothing good. All the good things Gunn's ever known -- Fred's love, Wesley's
friendship, Angel's struggle, Cordelia's humor, Alonna's crooked little smile --
they're not just going. They're already gone.
"What's the matter, baby?" Mama Jeane's weathered hand is soft against
his scalp. "I know it's frightening. It is for all of us --"
Gunn laughs, a broken sound. "It ain't that the world's ending. It's --
it's thinking that maybe it needs to end."
"Charles, don't you talk that way." She sits by his side, old bones
creaking. "This world is God's creation, both the good and the bad of it.
It's hard to love what you don't understand, but that don't change the fact that
it's your job to love it anyway."
"What if you do understand it?" Gunn says. "What if that's the
reason you can't love it? Because you really do understand it?"
"You have to try," Mama Jeane insists. He doesn't know if her words
are the wisdom of a good woman or the blindness of a fool. He's not sure if
there's a difference anymore.
"We oughta set the table," he says. "We feed those children, and
they might stop crying."
"That would be a mercy," she says. She's still studying his face, and
he knows she senses how much pain is still lurking there, how many secrets he
still hasn't told. Mama Jeane looks frightened. She looks old. She is the one
true power Gunn's ever known, and she's as lost as he is. When she doesn't ask
him any more questions, he starts helping her back up to her feet.
"What's tonight's virtue?" he says, just to have something to say.
Mama Jeane smiles at him softly. "Faith," she says. "The last
virtue is faith."
Despite her fear, her understanding of what's going on around them, Mama Jeane
still has her faith. Gunn would give anything to be able to share that with her,
at least. But when he digs down deep, trying to answer her faith with his own,
he finds nothing.
End.
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