| Losing the Path by Michelle |
| It's times like this that I'm reminded of the phrase, "Give a man an inch, he'll take a mile." Although in this case, it's more like, "Give a vamp roughly two and a half years, and he'll end up at the bottom of the ocean." Hmm, guess those two phrases aren't that similar, after all. I can't say my life was all that stellar. I screwed up. A lot. And yeah, I ended up literally going up in flames in the end. But I had turned things around as well as I could, and I saved a hell of a lot of relatively innocent beings on the way out. So I guess I didn't screw up all that bad. Now Angel, he's saved way more deserving innocents then I ever did. He's a champion of the Powers that Be, and while their motives may be . . . questionable, they usually know what they're doing. He's also got a chance at full-out redemption, a second go at it, and that's damn rare. Between the two us, he's by far the better man. Er, being, rather. What I mean is, I'm not one to judge others when I've done more then my fair share of messing up. Casting stones, and all that. It's not my place to point out another's shortcomings. But holy mother of God, he's really screwed things up. He was doing okay when I died. He was on the right path, and I like to think that I had something to do with it. I had faith that he'd be all right, and for a while he was. The Watcher guy, Wesley, came along and helped Angel continue to be a stalwart defender of the weak. Wes and Cordy kept him attached to the world and caring about what happened to those walking about in it. Then the past came back and bit him on his arse in the form of a blonde vampire-made-human named Darla. She flipped him upside down, inside out, and sideways in the blink of an eye, metaphorically speaking. In all honesty, though, he didn't fight it all that much. The thing I can't figure out is how he couldn't see the whole mess coming as soon as she started making guest appearances in his dreams. His dead sire, that he killed himself, had suddenly taken over his sleeping hours. How did the bells in his head not start going off? I knew he could be a bit thick, but I'm just astounded by his utter blindness. In all fairness, he did manage to bring himself back from the edge of the proverbial cliff. Now, he shouldn't have been at that edge to begin with, but he deserves some credit for pulling it back together. The gang patched things up, he saved the girl, and even managed not to fall apart when the ladylove of his life passed on. I had faith in him again. We all did. Now, there's no way he could have seen the kid coming. Ancient mysticism is befuddling and totally unreliable. A bunch of beings were surprised by that kid, as well as Darla's sacrifice. Oh, and Holtz. Angel couldn't have expected that blast from his past. Circumstances were less then ideal for him, so it's reasonable that he'd be a little off balance. But he allowed himself to thrown *way* off balance. He made his son his whole world life, and while understandable, it started cutting him off from everything. When Connor was taken away, he lost it. Turning to dark magic, spending endless hours in the burned out remains of his room, trying to kill Wesley and then exiling him . . . he lost sight of the mission. He reached the edge of that cliff again, and stopped caring about helping people and saving souls, even his own. Even after Connor came back, Angel remained out of focus. Instead of really trying to turn the kid around, really putting in an effort, he assumed Connor would come around on his own. They all did. He was Angel's biological son, so why would fifteen years in a hell dimension with an attentive father figure have any effect on the boy? Because of his blindness and lack of focus, Angel didn't see what Holtz was planning and allowed himself to be fooled because he wanted to live happily ever after. He couldn't fathom Connor's devotion to Holtz. Maybe that was because he never felt that way about his father, but I wasn't a psychologist and they don't implant that kind of stuff in your brain after you die. So Angel ends up, starving and hallucinating at the bottom of the ocean because the son he didn't understand locked him in a box and dropped him there. Wesley's doing the horizontal tango with one of the bad guys and has that girl of Holtz' locked in a cage in his closet. Cordy's off in a higher plane, which is actually a good thing, go figure. The AI gang is in pieces, all because the main man let himself get distracted from the bigger picture. Yeah, Wesley's going to end up freeing and healing Angel, and the AI gang will mesh back together. I do have some knowledge of the future, being dead and all. But I'd bet all the money I never had in the bank that Angel will still let his guard down when it comes to Connor. And now, with his newfound love for Cordy, he has even more to distract him from saving the world. If he's not careful, he's gonna lose his shot at redemption. That Power's could very well decide he's not worth a second chance and deny him his humanity. Angel's worked too hard for his redemption, deserves it too much to lose it. He needs someone to smack him upside the head and set him back on the right path. And I can't do it; I can't even nudge someone to do it. All I'm allowed to do is exist here, watch, and rant about it in my head. Being dead sucks. Back to the archive |