TITLE: Reconstruction
AUTHOR: zero ([email protected])
RATING: PG-13 for violence
CLASSIFICATION: Trio
SUMMARY: "He thinks often of reconstruction: starting from scratch, building up again, trying again. Second chances, but he's beyond that now, past the second and the tenth and the hundredth chance; there's no more left." Centered on Warren.
SPOILERS: Up through sixth season 'Buffy' episode "Seeing Red".
DISCLAIMER: I wish they were mine. I want to put them in my pocket and take them home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't know what this is. It just sort of came out, so I thought I'd share it. It's unbeta'ed, and written at work when I surely had better things to do. I wrote it after "Seeing Red", and I realize it doesn't really fit with the preview for the next episode, so I'm sure it'll be AU pretty much immediately. Oh well.
RECONSTRUCTION
by zero ([email protected])
His memories of childhood are faint and far away. He remembers Legos scattered on the floor, and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots that he played with by himself. A set of Voltron figures, but he'd lost the blue lion, so it didn't stand up. A stuffed Ewok on the bed, a gift from a far-away father who didn't know, couldn't know, that even as a boy Warren realized that Ewoks were lame.
The action figures in the thrift store window take him back, and there's a sinking feeling in his stomach, like he's just remembered something that he forgot to do ten years ago. Something important. Something that changed everything, for the worse, and he thinks if only he'd done that unknown, indescribable thing, that he could have that feeling back. He dreams of recapturing that wide-eyed niavete, but things are different now. If he thought it was possible to build a time machine, he might've tried it, but he worries about paradoxes and temporal folds. He's seen too much of Star Trek and Back to the Future and Dr. Who and he doesn't think it's a wise idea at all. Still, it's on his mind sometimes.
But the freezing wind pushes through his jacket, and he shakes his head, casting one last glance at the Thundercats action figures in the store window before continuing on down the street. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunches his shoulders against the wind. His hair, longer now, tumbles over into his eyes, but he doesn't bother to push it away. It isn't long enough to tuck behind his ears, and if he sweeps it aside it'll just fall again.
Warren has become familiar with gestures of futility, and he tries not to bother with them much anymore.
Self-delusion isn't a habit he's managed to break, though, and when he stops by the coffee shop on the way home, he tells himself that it's just because he's craving caffeine. He tries not to think about what's waiting at home, or what he might do about it, or how many times he's been through all this already. He knows now what it must've felt like, an eternity ago, when three foolish little boys trapped Buffy in their games. He knows how it feels to repeat the same mistakes, in different ways, with no hope of escaping them. He's not as strong as she was, and he knows he's not strong enough for this.
He regrets the pain they put her through. But he regrets many things, and that happens to be one of the smaller ones. He puts it out of his mind as he accepts a steaming cardboard cup from a bored-eyed girl in an apron. He doesn't speak to her, and he pauses only long enough to take a deep, bracing breath before he slips out the door again, back into the wind and weather.
The apartment is four blocks from here, but by the time he arrives, he's walked twice that distance. Any other day, he might've been able to fool himself into thinking that he'd done it for the exercise, or that he'd just had an urge to explore the little side streets and alleyways around his building. But today even he doesn't believe the lie, and he knows that his stroll around the neighborhood is designed to delay the walk up the steps and into his building.
The coffee cup is empty, and it can't warm his hands anymore. He stands at the bottom of the steps until his fingertips start to tingle, and when it begins to snow, he finally stops stalling and takes the five small steps, one at a time, until he's standing in front of the doors, opening them, stepping through. He tosses his cup into the trash can in the lobby, watches it settle on top of his neighbors' junk mail, and presses the call button for the elevator. He can hear the echoes of its wheezing and clunking descent, and for a long moment he thinks that this is his chance to escape. He can take the subway south, then catch a bus; go someplace warmer, leave all of this behind him. He thinks often of reconstruction: starting from scratch, building up again, trying again. Second chances, but he's beyond that now, past the second and the tenth and the hundredth chance; there's no more left. He's been running on credit for a long while now, and he wonders what the universe will demand in interest.
But even as he thinks it he's stepping into the cab of the ancient elevator and it's carrying him, slowly but surely, toward the sixth floor.
He's three hours late, and they're expecting him. He can't leave them here, by themselves in New York. He's tried leaving before, and it never has worked out quite like he wanted.
They're there, just as he expected, when he enters the apartment. Andrew is falling off the couch, one arm stretched out as far as it'll go and clutching at the remote control; Jonathan's on top of him, scrambling and reaching for that Holy Grail of the digital era, but he's always been too short to win this fight. The both of them pause comically as Warren enters, and then resume their scuffle. They land on the floor with a thud, and roll right into the beat-up little coffee table. Warren walks around them to the mostly ineffective heater mounted on the wall, cranks it up. It makes the apartment smell like burning asbestos, but the room is freezing cold, and he decides it's a sacrifice that must be made.
Behind him, Andrew stumbles up from the floor with the remote still grasped in his hand. He aims it at the television, punches in a few numbers, and crows with triumph as Gillian Anderson's serious face fills the screen.
Warren stares out the window at the street. There's a woman walking her dog down there -- Warren sees her often, but he doesn't know her name -- and a couple climbing into a car. He desperately wants the normalcy of their lives, and knows that it would never satisfy him, anyway. A powerful craving twists in his gut, but he isn't quite sure what it is that he's lacking.
"Make him change it," Jonathan says, and his voice sounds too sharp and loud. "He's trying to make me watch an 'X-Files' marathon."
Warren frowns, gives the woman with the dog another glance, draws the blinds a bit and turns away from the window. "So? You like 'The X-Files'."
Jonathan rolls his eyes and makes a disgusted gesture with one hand, waving his fingers at the television as if he's tempted to magic it out of existance. "Season seven? *Please*. I wouldn't watch that crap. Especially not when they're airing 'The Thing' on the SciFi Channel."
Warren quirks his brows in agreement, but when he takes the remote from Andrew, he doesn't change the channel; he flicks the set off instead. "'The Thing' gives you nightmares," he points out to Jonathan. Andrew's wail of disappointment as the screen goes dark is cut off by a significant look, and Warren points at the couch. "Sit," he orders, and they both do, without question.
Sometimes he misses the questioning. The arguments about James Bond and whether Vampirella could take Aeryn Sun in a cage match. They agree and obey too easily now. He wonders what he did wrong.
"We need to talk, fellas," he says. "I don't think this is working out."
Their expressions are shocked, but he's used to this. He doesn't let himself notice that Jonathan's jaw has dropped, or that Andrew looks like a dog who's been kicked once too often.
Then Andrew says, "But we can't get rid of the digital cable!" Jonathan elbows him sharply in the ribs, and Andrew falls silent again, dawning comprehension on his face. "Oh," he mutters. "You're not talking about the cable." His voice trails off, and he looks down at his lap.
Warren's face cracks a sad half-smile at his friend's familiar body language, but he forces the expression from his own face. "It's my fault," he says. "I can't seem to get it right. But I'm starting to think that maybe it's best if we just... stop now. Part ways. Move on. I'm almost out of money, and the landlord caught up with me this morning. He knows you guys are here and he says the rent's more if I have roommates. I really can't afford the cable, and Jonathan already blew half of next month's rent on a new DVD player."
"It's not region-encoded," Jonathan argues, miserably. "It'll play DVDs from anywhere in the world and sometimes in Europe they get the good stuff first."
Warren exhales, sharply, almost a hiss, and Jonathan falls silent again as Warren rises to pace the floor. "That's not important. Christ, some days I wonder where I went wrong and some days I think I got you guys a little too *right*. You're too much like them. You're not them at all, and I don't know if I'd want them here anyway. And it *hurts*."
The two boys on the couch glance at one another nervously, and Jonathan says, "We'll figure out why my magic isn't working, and we'll figure out why Andrew can't summon demons anymore, and then we'll rob a few more banks and be rolling in green. Nothing to worry about. Right?"
Warren's pacing takes him to the far wall, and he pounds a fist against the brick in frustration. "Magic only works for living things, and things that lived once. It won't work for you. It won't ever work for you." He leans his forehead against the wall, and glances sidelong out the window. It's snowing harder now, and it suddenly strikes him that tomorrow is Christmas. He'd forgotten. "This isn't real," he says, and when he turns to face them they're both standing there in the middle of the floor, confusion written on their faces. "It isn't real, so it doesn't count. Maybe I'll try again one day, but I'm getting tired of building you up from nothing. Because you always seem to stay that way. Nothing." The last word is whispered, and he can't stand to look at them anymore; has to stand up and go back to the window.
It's snowing harder now, and the world outside is muffled. In his head the sound is muffled, too, and the panicked protests of his compatriots are as faint and far away as childhood. Just whispers and echoes from another time, and he wonders if maybe he doesn't need to build a time machine at all. He's already living in the past.
He feels the air shift when Jonathan steps up behind him, but the other boy's words are drowned out by the roaring in Warren's ears. The fireplace poker is in his hand, and then it's swinging up and crashing into Jonathan's head, and the shorter of the two staggers under the impact.
Warren's tried this before, too. Catharsis, he always thinks, is just out of his reach, and each time he kills them he does it differently in the hopes that this time, it'll work. It never does, but by now he can't think of anything else to do with them. Just turn them off, throw them in a dumpster? No. That's too real, and this rush of violence can remind him of everything he's lost, and gained, and lost again. The first time, they actually fought back. They were stronger than him -- so much stronger -- and he'd only survived because of the remote override he'd programmed for his laptop.
One hand idly slips under his sweater and scratches at his back, and he can feel the long, thin scars through his undershirt. Remembers another Jonathan, in another city, digging super-strong fingers into Warren's back as he crawled for the computer, stretched one hand out desperately for the 'enter' key. Looks at the Jonathan on his knees on the floor, and swings the poker again. Again. Again. He doesn't stop until one of his blows misses its mark, and the metal poker buries itself in the robot's power supply; then he drops the weapon, a curse on his lips, his hands tingling from the jolt of electricity.
He isn't too worried about Andrew -- he never is, because he programmed that one accurately, and the real thing wouldn't have stopped him, either. And just as he expected, Andrew stands across the room, staring and open-mouthed, eyes fixed on the twisted jumble of machinery on the floor that used to look like a boy.
"Jonathan was a robot?" he squeaks. Then he looks up at Warren, and even poor, oblivious Andrew can see the truth in that grim face. "How many times have you done this?" he asks, and there's a new roughness in his voice, like he's just swallowed his own shattered illusions and the sharp edges have cut his throat.
"A lot," Warren answers. "I lost count."
"You should stop," Andrew says, taking a step backward.
"Yeah," Warren agrees. "I'm trying."
Andrew is harder. There's a quality about him like a timid pet -- a frightened rabbit, a nervous guinea pig, an exuberant puppy -- and it always makes Warren hesitate to strike. It's a weakness he acknowledges and can do nothing about, but Andrew never runs, either, so eventually Warren tends to get over it, just enough to finish things.
"Are you going to do that to me, too?" Andrew asks, and his eyes are impossibly wide as he waves one shaking hand at the wreckage of his friend.
"I have a few times. I probably should. I need the closure, you know? This is the last time. I know it."
"It's not," Andrew argues. "You'll build us again. I know you. You'll do it again, and again, and you'll kill them all, but I hope one day one of them kills *you* first. I hope some other me will get the satisfaction." The sneer sits uneasy and unnatural on Andrew's youthful face.
Warren wipes it away with the souped-up taser he's been carrying in his pocket. The robot is rigid, unmoving, and smoking as it clatters loudly to the floor. From downstairs there's an answering noise, as his downstairs neighbor raps furiously at her ceiling with a broom-handle. Andrew's face has melted, a little, stretching with heat to fill the dips of the metal skeleton beneath the skin. He's not really recognizable anymore, but Warren goes for the toolbox anyway, brings it out from the kitchen, along with a couple of trash bags, and starts taking his creations apart, one piece at a time.
He can feel himself breaking down sometimes, too. He thinks often of reconstruction -- starting from scratch, building up again, trying again -- but he knows it's easier to rebuild them than it is to rebuild himself. He's tried, and he's not strong enough, not skilled enough, to work in blood and bone instead of circuits and wires. Still, it's on his mind sometimes.
THE END
------------------
See that little button down there? Push it. Please, for the love of all that's holy, feedback me.
AUTHOR: zero ([email protected])
RATING: PG-13 for violence
CLASSIFICATION: Trio
SUMMARY: "He thinks often of reconstruction: starting from scratch, building up again, trying again. Second chances, but he's beyond that now, past the second and the tenth and the hundredth chance; there's no more left." Centered on Warren.
SPOILERS: Up through sixth season 'Buffy' episode "Seeing Red".
DISCLAIMER: I wish they were mine. I want to put them in my pocket and take them home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't know what this is. It just sort of came out, so I thought I'd share it. It's unbeta'ed, and written at work when I surely had better things to do. I wrote it after "Seeing Red", and I realize it doesn't really fit with the preview for the next episode, so I'm sure it'll be AU pretty much immediately. Oh well.
RECONSTRUCTION
by zero ([email protected])
His memories of childhood are faint and far away. He remembers Legos scattered on the floor, and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots that he played with by himself. A set of Voltron figures, but he'd lost the blue lion, so it didn't stand up. A stuffed Ewok on the bed, a gift from a far-away father who didn't know, couldn't know, that even as a boy Warren realized that Ewoks were lame.
The action figures in the thrift store window take him back, and there's a sinking feeling in his stomach, like he's just remembered something that he forgot to do ten years ago. Something important. Something that changed everything, for the worse, and he thinks if only he'd done that unknown, indescribable thing, that he could have that feeling back. He dreams of recapturing that wide-eyed niavete, but things are different now. If he thought it was possible to build a time machine, he might've tried it, but he worries about paradoxes and temporal folds. He's seen too much of Star Trek and Back to the Future and Dr. Who and he doesn't think it's a wise idea at all. Still, it's on his mind sometimes.
But the freezing wind pushes through his jacket, and he shakes his head, casting one last glance at the Thundercats action figures in the store window before continuing on down the street. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunches his shoulders against the wind. His hair, longer now, tumbles over into his eyes, but he doesn't bother to push it away. It isn't long enough to tuck behind his ears, and if he sweeps it aside it'll just fall again.
Warren has become familiar with gestures of futility, and he tries not to bother with them much anymore.
Self-delusion isn't a habit he's managed to break, though, and when he stops by the coffee shop on the way home, he tells himself that it's just because he's craving caffeine. He tries not to think about what's waiting at home, or what he might do about it, or how many times he's been through all this already. He knows now what it must've felt like, an eternity ago, when three foolish little boys trapped Buffy in their games. He knows how it feels to repeat the same mistakes, in different ways, with no hope of escaping them. He's not as strong as she was, and he knows he's not strong enough for this.
He regrets the pain they put her through. But he regrets many things, and that happens to be one of the smaller ones. He puts it out of his mind as he accepts a steaming cardboard cup from a bored-eyed girl in an apron. He doesn't speak to her, and he pauses only long enough to take a deep, bracing breath before he slips out the door again, back into the wind and weather.
The apartment is four blocks from here, but by the time he arrives, he's walked twice that distance. Any other day, he might've been able to fool himself into thinking that he'd done it for the exercise, or that he'd just had an urge to explore the little side streets and alleyways around his building. But today even he doesn't believe the lie, and he knows that his stroll around the neighborhood is designed to delay the walk up the steps and into his building.
The coffee cup is empty, and it can't warm his hands anymore. He stands at the bottom of the steps until his fingertips start to tingle, and when it begins to snow, he finally stops stalling and takes the five small steps, one at a time, until he's standing in front of the doors, opening them, stepping through. He tosses his cup into the trash can in the lobby, watches it settle on top of his neighbors' junk mail, and presses the call button for the elevator. He can hear the echoes of its wheezing and clunking descent, and for a long moment he thinks that this is his chance to escape. He can take the subway south, then catch a bus; go someplace warmer, leave all of this behind him. He thinks often of reconstruction: starting from scratch, building up again, trying again. Second chances, but he's beyond that now, past the second and the tenth and the hundredth chance; there's no more left. He's been running on credit for a long while now, and he wonders what the universe will demand in interest.
But even as he thinks it he's stepping into the cab of the ancient elevator and it's carrying him, slowly but surely, toward the sixth floor.
He's three hours late, and they're expecting him. He can't leave them here, by themselves in New York. He's tried leaving before, and it never has worked out quite like he wanted.
They're there, just as he expected, when he enters the apartment. Andrew is falling off the couch, one arm stretched out as far as it'll go and clutching at the remote control; Jonathan's on top of him, scrambling and reaching for that Holy Grail of the digital era, but he's always been too short to win this fight. The both of them pause comically as Warren enters, and then resume their scuffle. They land on the floor with a thud, and roll right into the beat-up little coffee table. Warren walks around them to the mostly ineffective heater mounted on the wall, cranks it up. It makes the apartment smell like burning asbestos, but the room is freezing cold, and he decides it's a sacrifice that must be made.
Behind him, Andrew stumbles up from the floor with the remote still grasped in his hand. He aims it at the television, punches in a few numbers, and crows with triumph as Gillian Anderson's serious face fills the screen.
Warren stares out the window at the street. There's a woman walking her dog down there -- Warren sees her often, but he doesn't know her name -- and a couple climbing into a car. He desperately wants the normalcy of their lives, and knows that it would never satisfy him, anyway. A powerful craving twists in his gut, but he isn't quite sure what it is that he's lacking.
"Make him change it," Jonathan says, and his voice sounds too sharp and loud. "He's trying to make me watch an 'X-Files' marathon."
Warren frowns, gives the woman with the dog another glance, draws the blinds a bit and turns away from the window. "So? You like 'The X-Files'."
Jonathan rolls his eyes and makes a disgusted gesture with one hand, waving his fingers at the television as if he's tempted to magic it out of existance. "Season seven? *Please*. I wouldn't watch that crap. Especially not when they're airing 'The Thing' on the SciFi Channel."
Warren quirks his brows in agreement, but when he takes the remote from Andrew, he doesn't change the channel; he flicks the set off instead. "'The Thing' gives you nightmares," he points out to Jonathan. Andrew's wail of disappointment as the screen goes dark is cut off by a significant look, and Warren points at the couch. "Sit," he orders, and they both do, without question.
Sometimes he misses the questioning. The arguments about James Bond and whether Vampirella could take Aeryn Sun in a cage match. They agree and obey too easily now. He wonders what he did wrong.
"We need to talk, fellas," he says. "I don't think this is working out."
Their expressions are shocked, but he's used to this. He doesn't let himself notice that Jonathan's jaw has dropped, or that Andrew looks like a dog who's been kicked once too often.
Then Andrew says, "But we can't get rid of the digital cable!" Jonathan elbows him sharply in the ribs, and Andrew falls silent again, dawning comprehension on his face. "Oh," he mutters. "You're not talking about the cable." His voice trails off, and he looks down at his lap.
Warren's face cracks a sad half-smile at his friend's familiar body language, but he forces the expression from his own face. "It's my fault," he says. "I can't seem to get it right. But I'm starting to think that maybe it's best if we just... stop now. Part ways. Move on. I'm almost out of money, and the landlord caught up with me this morning. He knows you guys are here and he says the rent's more if I have roommates. I really can't afford the cable, and Jonathan already blew half of next month's rent on a new DVD player."
"It's not region-encoded," Jonathan argues, miserably. "It'll play DVDs from anywhere in the world and sometimes in Europe they get the good stuff first."
Warren exhales, sharply, almost a hiss, and Jonathan falls silent again as Warren rises to pace the floor. "That's not important. Christ, some days I wonder where I went wrong and some days I think I got you guys a little too *right*. You're too much like them. You're not them at all, and I don't know if I'd want them here anyway. And it *hurts*."
The two boys on the couch glance at one another nervously, and Jonathan says, "We'll figure out why my magic isn't working, and we'll figure out why Andrew can't summon demons anymore, and then we'll rob a few more banks and be rolling in green. Nothing to worry about. Right?"
Warren's pacing takes him to the far wall, and he pounds a fist against the brick in frustration. "Magic only works for living things, and things that lived once. It won't work for you. It won't ever work for you." He leans his forehead against the wall, and glances sidelong out the window. It's snowing harder now, and it suddenly strikes him that tomorrow is Christmas. He'd forgotten. "This isn't real," he says, and when he turns to face them they're both standing there in the middle of the floor, confusion written on their faces. "It isn't real, so it doesn't count. Maybe I'll try again one day, but I'm getting tired of building you up from nothing. Because you always seem to stay that way. Nothing." The last word is whispered, and he can't stand to look at them anymore; has to stand up and go back to the window.
It's snowing harder now, and the world outside is muffled. In his head the sound is muffled, too, and the panicked protests of his compatriots are as faint and far away as childhood. Just whispers and echoes from another time, and he wonders if maybe he doesn't need to build a time machine at all. He's already living in the past.
He feels the air shift when Jonathan steps up behind him, but the other boy's words are drowned out by the roaring in Warren's ears. The fireplace poker is in his hand, and then it's swinging up and crashing into Jonathan's head, and the shorter of the two staggers under the impact.
Warren's tried this before, too. Catharsis, he always thinks, is just out of his reach, and each time he kills them he does it differently in the hopes that this time, it'll work. It never does, but by now he can't think of anything else to do with them. Just turn them off, throw them in a dumpster? No. That's too real, and this rush of violence can remind him of everything he's lost, and gained, and lost again. The first time, they actually fought back. They were stronger than him -- so much stronger -- and he'd only survived because of the remote override he'd programmed for his laptop.
One hand idly slips under his sweater and scratches at his back, and he can feel the long, thin scars through his undershirt. Remembers another Jonathan, in another city, digging super-strong fingers into Warren's back as he crawled for the computer, stretched one hand out desperately for the 'enter' key. Looks at the Jonathan on his knees on the floor, and swings the poker again. Again. Again. He doesn't stop until one of his blows misses its mark, and the metal poker buries itself in the robot's power supply; then he drops the weapon, a curse on his lips, his hands tingling from the jolt of electricity.
He isn't too worried about Andrew -- he never is, because he programmed that one accurately, and the real thing wouldn't have stopped him, either. And just as he expected, Andrew stands across the room, staring and open-mouthed, eyes fixed on the twisted jumble of machinery on the floor that used to look like a boy.
"Jonathan was a robot?" he squeaks. Then he looks up at Warren, and even poor, oblivious Andrew can see the truth in that grim face. "How many times have you done this?" he asks, and there's a new roughness in his voice, like he's just swallowed his own shattered illusions and the sharp edges have cut his throat.
"A lot," Warren answers. "I lost count."
"You should stop," Andrew says, taking a step backward.
"Yeah," Warren agrees. "I'm trying."
Andrew is harder. There's a quality about him like a timid pet -- a frightened rabbit, a nervous guinea pig, an exuberant puppy -- and it always makes Warren hesitate to strike. It's a weakness he acknowledges and can do nothing about, but Andrew never runs, either, so eventually Warren tends to get over it, just enough to finish things.
"Are you going to do that to me, too?" Andrew asks, and his eyes are impossibly wide as he waves one shaking hand at the wreckage of his friend.
"I have a few times. I probably should. I need the closure, you know? This is the last time. I know it."
"It's not," Andrew argues. "You'll build us again. I know you. You'll do it again, and again, and you'll kill them all, but I hope one day one of them kills *you* first. I hope some other me will get the satisfaction." The sneer sits uneasy and unnatural on Andrew's youthful face.
Warren wipes it away with the souped-up taser he's been carrying in his pocket. The robot is rigid, unmoving, and smoking as it clatters loudly to the floor. From downstairs there's an answering noise, as his downstairs neighbor raps furiously at her ceiling with a broom-handle. Andrew's face has melted, a little, stretching with heat to fill the dips of the metal skeleton beneath the skin. He's not really recognizable anymore, but Warren goes for the toolbox anyway, brings it out from the kitchen, along with a couple of trash bags, and starts taking his creations apart, one piece at a time.
He can feel himself breaking down sometimes, too. He thinks often of reconstruction -- starting from scratch, building up again, trying again -- but he knows it's easier to rebuild them than it is to rebuild himself. He's tried, and he's not strong enough, not skilled enough, to work in blood and bone instead of circuits and wires. Still, it's on his mind sometimes.
THE END
------------------
See that little button down there? Push it. Please, for the love of all that's holy, feedback me.