“Whisper of a Moment”, 8/8
Sep. 14th, 2010 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Final installment.
epilogue
I said all that so I could say this: Im not coming back.
Dont worry, you have your report, its in the attached data file: all the information I gathered since I was dropped here, along with my own observations and interpretation. I may have been working for other goals while I was here, but Ive made sure to deliver on my end of the deal.
On the whole Im okay with how things came out, but you might want to ask yourselves: did you all get maybe a little too clever? Did you and I, working as your extension contrive to create the threat you sent me to study? (It seems pretty likely that Ethan found out about the Skiraad because I called him to Oxnard, and Wonder Warthogs improbability mojo wouldnt have become near so cataclysmic without Ethans contributions.) These are supposed to be basic issues, easily addressed with the right protocols
but, hey, were not exactly a properly sanctioned organization, are we? I was always on the operations end, so I cant say just what thoroughness your planning section put into the prep work, but Ive seen enough corners cut elsewhere to have my suspicions.
Doesnt matter. I came here, I finished the assignment, Im posting the results. Oh, and consider this my resignation.
There are different reasons for me deciding to stay. Part of it, lets be honest, is Im not sure theres anything to go back to. I dont know if you had some unexpressed agenda for this mission or if you just let endemic overcaution make you play it a little too close, but the result was that I was sent in with inadequate briefing and wound up making some scary mistakes. (Plenty of my own, too, I havent tried to hide that.) Events went far enough off the line to make the final consequences a little too iffy, and Im not about to initiate the callback sequence when theres a real chance small, but solid that I could step off into a big, fat Nothing at the other end.
So, sorry. If I ever get back to you itll be the regular way, the slow way. But dont anybody hold their breath.
Then theres the personal stuff. I cant explain that very well, most of it is tied up in feelings I havent even started to sort through. For instance, why was I in such a screaming hurry to get to that chop shop? There were things I could have done first, wouldnt have taken that long and might have made a big difference. Was I really operating off that first instinct, the one warning me that Ethan would rush the sacrifices once he knew my investigations were leading me toward his pet project? Or did I just panic at the realization of how bad my blunders had made things? Was I jumping at the chance to impress Harris? Or this is a really disturbing thought did some dark corner of me set it up so hed leave me to die, thinking that would serve him right?
Too many questions, no real answers, and a lot of that is extraneous clatter Ill have to sift through when I have time. Short form, Im staying because I havent finished my own mission.
No, I wont tell him. I cant say why, I just know I never will. And I also know, with no evidence except that deep sense of destiny, that I wont have to tell him, hell come to it on his own. Eventually.
Meanwhile, theres a lot to do here. This is a crazy place, full of quests and crises and people that need saving, and Harris and his people cant catch every apocalypse. I spent too long trying to find out who I was; its time, Id say, to start deciding who Im going to be. If along the way I do a few things that are worth doing, all the better.
Were not finished, he and I. There are other chapters to be written, and I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Someday well meet again. Someday hell know the truth.
Someday, Ill make him proud.
– end –
[ A supplementary drabble for this story can be seen HERE. ]
And there you are. Don’t hesitate to offer commentary.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 07:10 pm (UTC)I appreciate your commenting as you made your way through the story’s successive chapters. Feedback is not only welcome, but loved.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 08:01 pm (UTC)He’s staring at me, eyebrows knit, and he gives his head another hard shake. “Whoa, for a second there you sounded just like … You said you’re from Philadelphia?”
Do you mean this part? That leaned me heavily towards Faith along with the past erasure and the coma but you're genetic mixing comment and the demon hints in the early part make me wonder about maybe Gwen from Angel. Not sure how much a Californian would mistake Philly for Bostonian? Unless she's somehow that final egg offspring from Praying mantis teacher which would also fit?
Her comments about Willow, Cordelia and Buffy being known quantities made me rule them out along with other things.
I'm off to read the other fic you pointed me at about FNL.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 09:02 pm (UTC)First: I don’t really know what ‘demon hints’ refers to.
Second: ‘Genetic mixing’ was my own shorthand for the fact that the offspring of two people might strongly resemble one or the other, or might have recognizable characteristics from both, or might have an appearance sufficiently individualized that the resemblance wouldn’t be noted unless it was pointed out. (For instance, my niece looks exactly like her father, but you have to look hard and long to spot any characteristics from her mother.) That was just my observation of a reason why neither Xander nor Wesley happened to recognize her.
Third: “Not sure how much a Californian would mistake Philly for Bostonian …” I have no idea what a Philadelphia accent would sound like, but 1] neither might Xander, 2] it seems fairly clear that Dina was lying about being from there (she lied about more than a few things), and 3] Xander’s question, “You say you’re from Philadelphia?” might very well have included the unspoken, And not Boston?
Fourth: Willow, Cordelia and Buffy as ‘known quantities’ could easily refer to the research materials Dina studied up on before beginning her mission.
Hope this clarifies some things.
PS: Mightn’t “cocked, locked, and ready to rock” remind someone — especially if delivered with a particular attitude and tone of voice — of “five by five”?
no subject
Date: 2010-10-04 07:02 pm (UTC)Almost as intriquing as your profile page.
I hope Ethan survived.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-04 07:22 pm (UTC)My Backstage stories are designed to fit in with canon, elaborating on it rather than altering it. Since this story took place between Seasons 3 and 4, and Ethan was back in Season 4, he clearly survived.
As to Dina’s anger, I’d say it comes down to abandonment issues.
Now I have to go check my profile page, so I can try and guess what intrigued you.