The one that got away...

[fredless]

Mathew? Charles? Maybe even all those memories that'll never be mine now? I guess any of those could be an answer to the implied, but it wouldn't be the answer. The one that sits heaviest with the most truth to hold it down. The fact is I held onto all of those before, as long as they were probably meant to be held on to. Time's measured in seconds and days, in weeks and years for a reason -- to divide it up and measure it out. And if there weren't things to fill up separate and distinct chunks of it, I think we would of all stopped counting a long time ago. They didn't get away from me, they simply had their time.

Or were never meant to have a time at all.

That doesn't mean nothing's ever escaped me. I'd never claimed to be not so flawed as that. I've let plenty of my own get lost along the way. memories and moments I should of held onto, and people I never should have let walk out the door. There's doors that turned the other way too, ones I never should have done the walking from. But if there has to be one, the one that got away and I never had a hope of getting back?

It would have to be him.

Professor Seidel.

There's nothing that will ever make me stop thinking that he got off easy, Charles killing him. I think he always had that wrong, Charles thinking that's what stood between us. The words got as messy as the action itself, and it never really got cleared up. He never should have been put in the position where he felt like he needed to take away that potential tarnish away from the person he thought I was, or even wanted me to be. That's true enough. But the truth is I still sometimes I wonder how much Charles really saw, or if he ever even knew how deep some of the scars went, and will always go. But what it all comes down to is the person Charles and Angel were trying to keep me from becoming stopped existing a long, long time ago. Plyea took care of that. And I'm not ashamed of that, and I wouldn't change it either. Because I survived it. I pushed through and survived and I refuse to be anything but ok with what I did there. What's done is done, and what was done to me can always be faced down later.

I never intended to kill Professor Seidel that night, and that is what lodged itself firmly between Charles and I. I was going to trick him, shove him, trip him, or push him through that portal by the tip of an arrow. But I wasn't going to kill him that night.

I wanted him to go where we had. And by go, I mean go. To all of those horrible places, most of them mental, but plenty of them real and hard enough to strip away layers of skin at a time. Let him get chained up. Let him have to run. Let him get forced into a place where you're the only weapon you have left, and you have forgotten how it works.

He sent us there, all of us, because he was afraid that we were better, or smarter than he was. Or maybe because he was so sure he was better and smarter, and he was punishing us for even hoping, and aspiring. Beyond the basic fact that he can't possibly talk through his reasoning , he lost the right to explain himself with the first life that he destroyed.

And they didn't want me to kill him, because he was human.

Angel got to be more than a vampire. Why couldn't the professor be less than a man?

All I wanted to do was send him there. Because he thought he was better than us, than all of us. He was supposed to finally have his chance to find out.

Comments

[allfor-one.livejournal.com]

This was wonderfully written. Very, very awesome. :)

OOC

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

Thank you hun!!!!

*snuggle snuggle snuggle*

[reallyoldguy.livejournal.com]

It's terribly annoying when someone deprives you of the vengeance you've got all planned out, isn't it?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

Yes. It really is. And it's one of those moments that you look back and see everything changed after it too.

[reallyoldguy.livejournal.com]

How did everything change?

ooc: god save me from Alisha?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

Well, a relationship started its ending over it, for one.

[reallyoldguy.livejournal.com]

Did it? With Charles?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

There were lots of reasons, but yes. That was one of them.

[reallyoldguy.livejournal.com]

Ah. Hard to be with someone with such mistaken ideas of who you are.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

I think we both thought we knew each other better than we did.

[reallyoldguy.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. Or, well. No, not really, because I prefer you here with us than with him, but I am sorry you had to go through that sort of disillusionment.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

There was a lot of that going on that year. Everything that happened after that though, just confirmed what we'd already figured out, but just didn't want to talk about. I'll admit I kept trying.

[reallyoldguy.livejournal.com]

Persistence is admirable up to a point.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

Well, he's the one that finally ended it for good. So I was persistant all the way to that point.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

He should have. It was yours to do as you pleased.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

You were the only one that saw that, then.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

I know something about revenge.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

You also knew a lot about what I needed just then.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

I ... I knew what I would want in your place. I didn't necessarily want you to feel that, but. You needed that. I'm sorry you didn't get it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

I'd already felt plenty of other things, most of them at his doing. And I'm sorry too.

You were the only one though, willing to help. I never really said thanks for that like I should.

In my head, I tell myself that he wasn't stronger or better, and wouldn't have made it. That what Charles did wasn't so much faster than what would have happened anyway.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

But you didn't want it to be fast.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

No.

No I didn't.

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

I know.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fredless/]

He didn't deserve fast. Did he?

[wesley-w-price.livejournal.com]

No.