fandomtownies | The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

It was a rainy afternoon, and Angela settled in at a corner table in the Perk with a cup of chai and a muffin. Talking to her friends the night before had made things seems slightly less dire, but there was still a lot to think about. She wondered what would have happened without slayers in Fandom.

Realizing she hadn't seen Anakin in person yet, she left him a message then waited, staring at the rain.

[OOC: For Anakin, but open if you don't mind SP.]

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Anakin walked into the Perk and gave Angela a small smile. "Rory said I just missed you at Caritas," he said, sitting down with a large mug of coffee.

"Yeah, I had to get back to Marty," Angela answered. "I think he's too pissed off to be social. Did you guys have a good time? All things considered, I mean."

"We'd had an extra day to try to adjust," Anakin said, nodding, "and I still spent most of yesterday in the gym blowing off steam." He took a sip from his mug and gave Angela a slightly shy smile. "Rory and I don't get enough time together not to take advantage of it when we do."

Angela blushed. "I get that," she said hastily. "So do you think you'll ever move nearer to her? Or are you here until Luke graduates?"

"We haven't really talked about it," Anakin replied. "My family makes things...complicated. My daughter's daughter is here now, too." He rolled his eyes. "Though she at least had the sense not to go talk to the evil vampire."

"More sense than I had, then," Angela said ruefully. "But at least this time he was in jail. He wasn't just walking around free, like last time he was evil."

"He was for a little while," Anakin said, making a face, "but fortunately he didn't have the sense to get off the island. The amount of damage he could've caused with a portal..."

Angela shuddered. "He'd either try to rule the world, or destroy it. Or maybe both."

"First one, then the other," Anakin said, burying himself a little more into his robes. "I still don't know why I can't just kill him now. It's what Angel asked for the last time and clearly his soul didn't take."

"Because the worse you are, the more this town protects you," Angela said with real anger. "Angelus, Dru, that Ethics teacher who blew up a whole planet. I'm not like yay capital punishment, but it's strange who they let run around."

Wow, that cup of coffee was fascinating suddenly. "It's not like the Ethics teacher was winning major popularity contests," Anakin said quietly.

Not that he should know...

"Maybe not, but the point is, they let him stay here most of a year and teach kids," Angela said, then gave Anakin a puzzled look. "Didn't the guy kill you in a different timeline?"

Anakin lowered his voice. "Um, sort of?"

Angela blinked, and lowered her tone to match his. "How do you sort of get killed?"

Anakin drew useless patterns on the table. "Make a mistake so terrible it was easier to have people think you were dead?"

"You faked - " Angela squeaked, then remembered herself. Whatever had happebned, it must have been bad, not something the Perk clerk needed to be educated about. "You faked your own death?" she hissed.

[OOC: Sorry for not mentioning that I was going to my parents' for Christmas.]

"I wasn't really myself any more," Anakin replied, still looking into his coffee mug. "I certainly didn't want to be Anakin, that was for sure. Anakin wouldn't do what I had done."

He took a deep breath. "Vader, on the other hand? No problem."

Angela opened her mouth to say something, then realized she had no idea what it would be. She hoped he was lying, making some sick joke, but she knew that wasn't it. Anakin was her friend, one of her closets friends' boyfriend; Vader was a symbol of everything wrong and evil in Fandom. Angel/Angelus came close, but at least the soul made the difference, there. This was just random and cruel and ...

"I thought he was taller," she said weakly.

"New legs," Anakin said, still not making eye contact. "My real ones had been cut off by Obi-Wan's lightsaber. He...wasn't pleased with me."

And there went the last shadow of a thought he was, could be, might be, joking.

"I can't imagine," she said. Her mouth was dry; she gulped at her tea and felt as though the world was tilting slightly.

"Rory has to know, right? All the time I spent being afraid of Vader, afraid of you ... and she never said a word."

"She didn't know for half of the year, and afterwards, well, would you have been particularly inclined to tell people what an evil wreck your ex-boyfriend had turned into?" Anakin asked, finally looking up.

Angela bit her lip. "Not if he didn't want me to," she agreed. "Which I'm guessing you didn't. I know I was lucky Marty never hid anything."

"I destroyed an entire galaxy," Anakin said. "It's not something I exactly advertise, no."

Angela just stared for a moment. "Yeah, um." she said, intelligently. "About that. Was there a reason? It's not like I ever asked you, when you were him."

"I was trying to save my wife," Anakin said softly. "It didn't work."

"Ohhhh," Angela said softly. Now she was the one who couldn't make eye contact as she pushed her cup of tea around the table.

"It's so, so much more complicated then I thought it was," she said. "I guess ... thank you for telling me. It's weird, I'm still kind of mad I didn't guess or get told or something."

"It's not to say that wallowing in my failure for almost twenty years wasn't a complete waste of my life," Anakin said, "or that anything I did in that time should be forgiven or forgotten, but around here..." he shook his head. "People are much too quick to forgive, and it's very easy to forgive atrocities you've never seen or lived through. So I'll work on making the scales balance just a little bit by trying to stop some of the more headstrong students here from making my same mistakes in a fit of misguided pride."

"I never said I forgave you," Angela pointed out. "I'm mad that you pretended to be dead, I'm mad I was afraid of you, and I'm mad you're telling me a year later." Her hand tightened on her cup.

"But what you did as Vader? It's like you said. I wasn't there, I didn't live through it. It's so not mine to forgive or not forgive. It's too huge, too, like -- I couldn't say I forgave Hitler, even if he had n incredibly sad story. I guess I'm happy you have a plan for making up for it, but ... that's just words."

"I don't expect you to forgive me," Anakin said. "What I did was unforgivable. I made Rory's life a misery, and terrorized classrooms full of students, and pretty much guaranteed that my daughter will never talk to me."

Angela fidgeted with her cup some more, adding the feelings of being small and petty to her crazily mixed emotions. After a moment, she spoke. "So do you want me to throw my drink at you? It's getting cold, and it would make exactly no difference except you'd have to mind-trick it into the trash, but I could." She pushed her hair back. "I can't forgive, I won't forget, and it is horrible, but no, I don't wanna sit here and yell at you over the past."

Anakin gave her a very small smile, a tiny bit of hope flickering in his eyes. "You can yell at me about the present if you'd prefer. I'm sure I've done something boneheaded."

"All I can think of is not killing Angelus, and it's Christmas, maybe he should get a third chance." Angela said, her tone indicating she did not quite believe this. "I think I mostly just need to think about all of this. Make it make sense to me."

"If I'd slid back, I wouldn't want a third chance," Anakin said quietly, pushing back from the table. "I'd want people to kill me like they promised."

He stood up and gave Angela a nod. "Take all the time you need. If it's forever...I'll understand."

Angela gave a half-shrug. "I don't know yet. And on Angelus ... I don't think he would want one either. To be fair." She sighed. "I'm going to go back to the hotel and take a long shower. Tell Rory I said Merry Christmas."

And she picked up her bag and left, feeling like she was coming through a hangover.

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The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

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And here is where we go NFB...

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Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...

Re: And here is where we go NFB...