There wasn’t much to do in town if one was fond of living. Sure, there were entertainments for all sorts of fancies, but most of them had the severe downside of being fatal.

Jewels of paste gleamed attractively on the sleeves of her dresses, and one noted the economizing effect, and found it pleasant.

At five in the morning, after pizza, caffeine and Perfect Blue, there was no spoon. And the walls won’t be nice and stay immobile, they undulated, so as to warn a body that if there was any attempt at contact, everything will dissolved away into a nothingness too vast for a human to comprehend.  

The others had not measured up, none could really Lead; Talker is too much of Winter, and her chill envelops all who are under her grandiose gestures, and from that silent contempt, Fred understood that she was one considered to be an upstart, unfit to be a part of the group, or too insolent for anything but discipline. Fred hated that blond/brown sweep of hair, the regal chatter that she cannot penetrate, not with thought shards or tongue.

And the jagged edges of the Protector were tested secondly, he would only tolerate so much, then there is a chance of a reckoning through violence, because she is a ready-made killer, just add blood and stir as those midnight commercials proclaim, that threat unto death will be visited upon her young flesh. He had another family to watch over, and there was no time to be gentle to a threat, so there would be quick consequences for misdeeds. That tempted her a little, but that was not for now, she had too much to do, to glean from these combinations of strength and stupidity- above ground- lovers of the daytimes. Still, she wanted to have someone else. A dominant; maybe, or just another to quarrel with. She liked to follow dark hair around the hotel, flitting was not within her sphere of capability, she can slink or skulk, all reptilian qualities, she thinks. Cool rocks, dark hollows where she could sleep and hide, storing up all of her anger and taking out those packets of hatred, ground up and held under by the small amount of social necessities forced on her.

She wanted to be needed, and that was softness, too human to think about such a chink in her armor, stuffs cottonball silence down into that hollow and hoped that the blood would congeal over the spot, hiding it from those around her who look for some way to make her beholden to them.

‘Rewards and punishments’, the discipline can only shore up her core with hot rage, makes it hard to tell what is. ‘Separate event makes a bigger impression. The timeframe reduces the value of the punishment.’ But it's not necessary within the punishment structure to give examples of good behavior, they expect that she can see that around her and follow the proper laws.  

She’d heard what they thought of her: ‘Secondary gains, obtaining attention that she was denied as a child, by striking out, liking attention from negative actions’ and she doesn't care. Has and does want the snarl of power, the heat of being watched closely, taught, given notice for being something other than annoying.

That's why she had decided to not pretend to hate him, - he was interesting, broken bottle edges on him the smell of bruised terror lingering after his soundless passage through the hallways. So she stands behind the stupidly designed vases that dot tables all over the mansion-geometric pinks and blues, makes her think of those plastic dolls that were thrown down the gutter rates to her playground when she was very small. Dumb, emotional human loving weakling, with better prospects to be touched on. Words of her mother- ‘survival of the fittest.’

The one she watched willingly had taken her out of blood and guts and feartime, got himself bloodied up, was responsible for the stench that came down to kill her quiet existence. He hasn’t ever complained, not even a bit when the others rubbed his failures up against him. He was placid, mostly. But there was discontentment there, and some portion of exhaustion. He sat at the kitchen table at impossibly late hours, while the rest of them went on missions, or simply go 'out.' Anything to avoid the unwanted one, who they were afraid to face, too chickenshit, as she heard them say, to face the evidence of their cowardice returned from the snowy hell where they left heroic dreams and promises of justice.

She crouched nightly by the refrigerator, did not move as he slowly mixed the contents of an orange juice container and a clear bottle containing what looked like water, and then carefully tested the result. Satisfied, he swigged the result in the manner of long practice. The bottle left rings on the table, she knew that, had watched the ritual before many times, runs fingers through the circles of moisture. And she likened this to touch, vicarious contact with his skin.  The dreams had gone bad, wasn't that what the song had said?

Curdled by the hot polluted sun. All that had sustained lay on the ground, reckless living a lie exposed.

She only screamed without opening her mouth. If she did that, they might be able to use it against her. They were that way: good intentions that sickened her. All sweet 'n happy, falseness crystallizing till they landed and cleaned themselves in the bowl. Flies.

During the day, and some nights, she found that she liked to take long walks. By the bookstores; and to that very tacky Mexican restaurant that she had fallen in lust with. The owner was a woman of indeterminate age who took the briefest glance of her and then bustled up with a tray of samples. The bliss on that tanned face cemented their friendship of food. She ate there every third night- the others, Cordelia tried to wean her off the tacos and onto something of a wider palette. She tolerated it, lets the chow mein and hash browns cover her plate, but she was back to that small booth in the corner that had been dubbed 'hers' through all of the experiments.

She was aware of Gunn following her around the city sometimes. Undoubtedly Wesley, the Englishman suggested that she be given some leeway, but still 'kept under supervision'. Richer than a goldmine, as her grandmother used to say. That woman was mad too. And the good folks of their little town locked her away too. So she put on the pretty face and looked into those eyes everyday, knowing that they consoled themselves. That they were not like her made them feel a bit better about their lives. Not that she would ever confront them about such pettiness, that would strain things, and she was fond of their arrangement.

Angel didn't care what she had been doing, with her equations all over the walls, at night, she checked to make sure that all the doors are shut tight, and then she pulled out the bodes of chalk that she hid from the rest of them. They believed that she was doing some kind of therapy, to compensate for isolation, and she refused to disabuse them of the notion. The notebooks were nice, thick covers that she could tear and hurl around when she was unable to remember the right sequences of numbers or letters.

She knew that he had noticed the words that have begun to twirl over the old wallpaper, and has not commented. She’d seen his room, and under the new, soft blue swirls of the sea lay a woman's face, over and over. She wondered why he didn’t tear the walls down, take the entire floor for his longings, and not care what the others think. But she understood that they feed him, without opening a vein, they kept him from becoming something that would be hunted for following its instincts.    An animal was supposed to hunt, that was what the blood told it, she had read so much since she found out what he was and came back to a place where the enchiladas are made out of cheese. He sampled them with her several times, being kind to her and her desperation, the need to fill up all those gaps left by the time away.

And he never asked how it was to never see another person who didn't think that she needed to conform. A rebel or a slave, all of them had something that they had decided was the best way. Ethnocentrism, she thought, and laughed, and they went away, every time. Here, there were more people to get away from.

Fred wasn't fond of the traffic. Hustle. bustle, 'rah, rah, rah,' she considered it, and didn't smile when Cordelia could not explain the exact reason for so loving the busy city. So she stayed indoors, pallor increasing as she feigned excitement as events were explained to her; in terms that the others felt appropriate, or rather, such baldly offensive dilutions of facts that she was annoyed by their temerity. They assumed that there was nothing to understand about absent time- except that she lost her mind, and therefore degenerated from relative genius into an individual who needed cosseting and a state of perpetual observance.  

Even Gunn stared as she explained things; clearly believing that the only way to get around her was to affect some impairment, deafness, muteness, and then look directly through her to an obviously fascinating wall or sign. She was doubly insulted when there wasn't anything behind her and they made excuses so impossible as to be unbearable. But Angel was an exception.

He watched her in a way that none of the others dared; possessively, with eyes that had tasted a spice that was enough to encourage further observation.

Not making any attempts to reform her. She knew what Wes called her; a 'refractive patient'. She wasn't stupid; she'd been around long enough to understand what such a label meant. 'Stumped the doctors.' She would have smiled if there hadn’t been a chance that he might interpret the expression as something strange. She 'got worse with help.' The more Cordelia and Wes prodded at her to get out in the world, the more she pulled back and stared at them. They would have sent her into some nice hospital had she not made an attempt to get off the track that had been set down. So she took music as her refuge.  She listened to oldies and the hotel reverberated with their melodies. Having had little in the way of tunes while in that Other Place, she longed for voices raised joyfully in familiar patterns. Wes only insisted that there be some Bach in the evenings.  

Cordelia told him to humor her, and she knew what they meant was 'the crazy'. That gave her leeway, and she could thank the girl for it really. So she was able to wander the long hallways without anyone commenting on the way that she examined each inch of paint for cracks, there couldn't be any, and when she tapped her fingers a precise number of time son each doorknob, they all turned and walked away-that wasn't bad either. 

All that it meant was that she had peace to herself to count the doorknobs in. And she had to count them; the nausea stayed high in he throat until she'd reassured herself that she had not been transported back to that cave and this time there would be no way to get out. It had never been this bad before. When she had been in elementary school, there hadn't been this bad need, things hadn't disappeared around her, and there had been plenty of tacos. She didn't mind if they thought she was helpless, it was easier for her to surprise them. As she grew increasingly less patient, that event was only waiting on ‘When.’ And the first thing to go, she thought and giggled at her Grinchiness, will be my morali-ty, she drew out the last syllable and hummed it, bouncing on her toes.

‘shalalalala’.  

Tap-tap-tap.’

Fin