Author: Morgan R.
Email: Lshallot@juno.com
Summary: Random stream of consciousness, Angel POV
Disclaimer: Joss made them up, I didn't
Spoilers: 'To Shanshu in LA'
Rating: PG
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Roll the scroll...
Lock it up tight in its fancy case, lock my face frozen like before. They can be sad for me, but I'll just lock myself up in this weapons cabinet like a tightly rolled piece of parchment that is older than nature should allow.
Nothing of paper and ink could have lasted this long without sorcery. My papery white skin with ink of blood was buried once already- rolled up like a scroll, bound in a shroud, put in a carved coffin like the cylindrical container for this ancient prophecy of the end of me.
Black can cover up the white and red of myself, and the shadows will hide this scroll if it is laid just so in the back behind the knives and the chains that guard my violence. These words of ancient people that I cannot read. Wesley will do it, but what if he reads the words written on me?
What if she does?
Her quick eyes sometimes skim me like an article in one of her magazines, but sometimes she devours me beneath her lashes, speaking on and on and her eyes so intent all the while. She is determined to make sense of me- to make me more real, to make me fit. If she has to smooth my edges-
Shut the scroll away in its cabinet, in the dark corner where it will hide, red words on white skin until Wesley comes back to bring it out, to make it almost alive like me like the scroll could be. If he reads the scroll, if he smiles at me, he is spanning centuries with gestures so simple as to be magical. The scroll comes out of its cabinet, and he turns lights on when he walks down the stairs.
The phone is a distinguishing feature of this moment in time. Scroll and phone, phone in my hand where it was, I must speak even if the mysterious words don't yet make sense. I'm not gone just yet, and so I can still answer a phone. My ending is a long way off, and the thoughts of 'finish' continue as the voice that does not sound interesting speaks into my ear-
My ending is here, did she say Cordelia?
I will run.
A scroll cannot move this way- a scroll cannot predict the pounding of my feet on pavement, the way the keys tremble in my paper hands as I try to start this car. A scroll cannot tell me the quickest way to the hospital, because Saint Matthew found his destiny with the Lord, and now Cordelia lies that apostle's house of healing getting worse until I can come.
Red lights stop me like blood thrown in my face. This is not about blood, for once. She is more than blood.
Running, cold white walls envy my cold white skin, signs pointing me to her room as the scroll points me to death- please, let the correlation be false, let her room contain her uncontrollable life and not her shadow empty body.
Where? This woman, this curly woman must help me, the signs only take you so far towards destiny- it takes a companion to make signs mean something. She will help, she will tell-
There is a scream, and I realize that the death predicted has happened already. I am back in hell, because where else would I hear such a scream?
No, the scroll promised I would die, and if I am dead, then she must be alive, and that cannot be her, so I am running through hell to make sure that she is safe.
But look-
Struggling against her bonds- that was me. Screaming, it is as if I gave her lessons in pain, and I never wanted to be reflected in a Cordelia mirror- seeing myself in her slim body.
Am I family? Isn't it obvious that she is becoming me? Soon her skin will fade to paper like mine, of course we are family, we are pages of a scroll, we will tell your future if you let go and let me touch her.
She has taken my strength, because I cannot stop her spasms. My large hands will tear like translucent fluttering sheets if she thrashes a bit more. They have chained her- not with metal but with padding and drugs and why didn't Wesley mention they were taking Cordelia into hell? I will help, I will save, scrolls have some power-
Then her skin has touched me, and paper burns so easily, and the fire that is within her will consume me totally. My cold parchment hands give her no ease, they take none of the fever away. She cannot remember what fever is- this is flame and brimstone barely contained by her strained skin. It is hell inside of her and around her and she is forgetting that heaven is something to dream about. Her blood used to taunt me, but it has forgotten my existence in the agony of melting-
Will she char, will she turn to dust?
Fire cannot hear paper, it will not heed parchment, and rolled scrolls are as helpless in hell as kindling. She is a vessel for flame, but I was sure of the contents she originally held, she originally was made of something just as strong, but even more beautiful-
The minions of this paper building must save a paper man and they pull me away, promising to stop the fire. What if she is burned away, but they are pale white emptiness of professionalism, perfect creamy stationery that will not burn so easily.
Walk away, paper fluttering white moth determined to help fire. Cold dark night- fingertips still smoldering from her heat. Drive with wind blowing always, scattering sparks but never touching the inferno she is trapped in the paper walls. Drive in darkness that denies the existence of white paper it is so proud of since the first sheet was made.
Slower, slower, stop. Walk towards those walls- not made of paper, made of something solid to hold an ancient scroll. Walls to hold an incomprehensible paper creature of no particular language. No one has read me yet, not all the way through, but she had finished many chapters.
Wesley will help bring her back. He will never tell me what I am made of, he will glance at the script written on my long white self and mask the confused pity, and he will put out her fire, and he will bring her back, and perhaps the translation will begin.
I look at my feet, not ready to look at my box, my specially designed container-
-when suddenly her fire is everywhere, hell is home for us all, and crumpled paper ball me is thrown aside to make way for new ideas.
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The mark on her hand is not in red, because she is no scroll, and fires can only be marked by black soot and night.
But even that can be cured, however neverending fires may be.
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A scroll on either side as she flickers in the paper dusk.
Eyes open, flames damped, unfurled paper, smooth edged hands reaching out. Unmarked flesh of a trembling hand, and we are neither of us an object after tonight. The pain in her eyes, I can see, will always keep an ember of that fire. My whiteness of touch is smooth and cool, but too soft to be all paper.
"We have to help them."
Flesh- white, hot- each of us one, but willing to share. Her pale is an imitation of mine, and her heat seeps into me with a fragile smile soft cheek.
"We will."
You could never read a scroll without the light of a slender, tapering candle.
"We will."
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