Title: Genetrix
Author: Bree
Rating: PG
Summary: Connor dreams of his mother
Note: Just a short one I poured out. My take on the current Connor situation.



“You have to take it when it comes to you. And never mind all that garbage about deserving it or not deserving it. You just take it. No matter if you think your brain will explode from all the loathing and the misery that’s been stuffed into it. No matter if it kills you. Take it.”

It took a while for her words to register. He had been busy watching the white curve of her jaw flash up and down as she spoke. Memorizing the way her long fingers nervously twisted her skirts into knots. The way her stocking-clad knees rocked back and forth.

“Take what?” he finally said.

She looked up at him, surprised. The blinding yellow lights of the cars, those big, awkward monstrosities, flashed endlessly over the streets below. But they made no noise. That’s how he knew they weren’t real.

“Your chance.”

Connor frowned at that word. What chance did he have? What chance had he ever had? But she smiled at him so lovingly that he wanted to encourage her, to pacify her. She looked like an angel, in her funny long dress with silk ruffles underneath the skirt. Her hair was so beautiful and golden. He never saw anything like her in his life.

“I knew it wasn’t true,” he said. “Mother. I knew you weren’t a beast like him.”

She was his mother. From the smallest animal in a ditch to the ugliest, most evil demon--everything had a mother to love it. Even an abomination like him. And she was more than he hoped for.

But her peaceful face grew somber. “Yes I was. I was every bit your father’s equal for a great many years. I’ve killed more people than you’ll ever meet. Make no mistake.”

Connor felt tears rising up in his eyes. You can’t trust appearances, isn’t that what Holtz always said? Holtz had loved him, even though he was bred of demons. He no longer wished to be deceived by her beauty.

“I’m leaving,” he whispered, stepping onto the ledge to leap into the blackness.

“Connor,” she said. No plea, no warning. Just his name.

He did not answer. But he did not jump.

“When your father . . . when Angel got his soul back, he was given years . . . a century in fact . . . to find redemption. And he still hasn’t gotten it quite right. I didn’t have those years. I had a few months, if that, and then a moment. One single moment. And then I found it.”

He turned back to look at her.

“It was you.”

She rose to her feet and came toward him, illuminated by her own light. When she reached out her hand to help him down from the ledge, her grip was firm and warm.

“Me?” he asked.

“Yes. You were my chance. And I wouldn’t be what I am now if it weren’t for you.”

“And what are you now, Mother?”

She raised her eyebrows, as if she thought he was being presumptuous. He had to grin at that.

“Forgiven,” she answered. “And believe me, Kid, if you don’t get to that point in exactly the right way, it’s a world of trouble.”

Connor nodded, though he wasn’t quite sure he understood. “What do you want me to do?”

“You’ll know what to do,” she said. “You’re no stranger to the dark side. You would have made old Holtz a mountain of proud, which kind of makes me a mountain of nauseous, but what’s done is done. It’s not often you get a chance to make it right.”

The anger hardened him again, and he shrank from her touch. “You want me to be--”

“Forgiven,” she said again, only this time the word was firmer, more ominous.

“I don’t need a father,” Connor muttered to himself.

“No, but he needs you. He’s going to need you. And he’s the only one.”

The only one. In all the dimensions, good or bad, no one cared that he existed except a solitary, dark-eyed animal that looked like a man.

“Not true. If I help people survive. If I help them face evil. If I . . . save them. Then they’ll need me too. They do need me.”

She chuckled to herself. “If I was alive, I would probably fall over laughing right now.”

Connor frowned. “Instead?”

“Instead I’m not!” she threw her arms out wildly and smiled. “Instead I’ll say take it, Connor. Take it and run.”

He leapt back onto the ledge and toppled over into the darkness, but as he fell it all melted away. He was shrouded in terrifying, breathtaking light.


The end.