01 | holo | location: sanctuary | ARRIVAL

[freaks-myword.livejournal.com]

Death felt hot, and dark, and loud and silent all at the same time.  And it kind of tickled. 

It wasn’t over like all the storybooks said it would be. There was no warm wash of air, or pretty clouds or glowing white light and the smiling face of her dead grandfather.  It wasn’t even close to falling asleep.  It was too bright for that.  It was too much pain, too much pain to go gently into that good night.  Electricity snaked through the sky, jagged scars ripped through the air and lit her up like a goddamn Christmas tree.  So many metaphors, so little time.  It was all of these things and more, and Gwen Raiden didn’t have the time to reflect. She didn’t even have time to be dead, apparently. 

All of that—betraying Angel and Connor and Nina and Spike (well...okay, she didn't really care about Spike) and the rest, fighting the dragon Cordelia (which just might have been more forthcoming than the real Cordelia), her decision to die the way she always imagined it—all that was snuffed out with her life and now it rushed back.  Here she was, in all her glory, surrounded by metal walls and a strange ceiling.  She surveyed the close space, breathing hard from that whole noble sacrifice thing which tended to take a lot out of a girl.  "Okay,” she said, and the word escaped her wrapped in a big, exhaled breath.  “Not gonna lie.  I thought heaven would be a little more…Feng Shui.” 

And as death faded away like a dream, her body felt real and solid again.  There was the hard steel floor underneath her boots, the silken feel of her gloves on her fingers, and finally, the dull pain in every muscle of her body that had been electrified just moments ago.  Gritting her teeth and shoving it down and away, where she did not have to dwell on it, she noticed the pedestal in front of her holding a fancy little gadget on it.  It looked like something once upon a time she would have been paid billions to steal.  She looked at it now with uninterest and unease.  “Or…not heaven.  Mars, huh? Interesting choice.”

There was no door, no way out and no cool breeze she’d felt just moments ago on the rooftop...

Connor, she thought, struck suddenly with a pang of sadness and guilt that gutted her.

“Okay, I get it!”  Her call echoed out to empty walls.  This was Wolfram and Hart's doing.  And if she had to claw her way out of here, literally striking down every cheap suit in this place to do it, she would.  “And not to be dramatic, but I had a thing I was doing with...the dying.  Don’t you people have better things to do than stick me in a box?  Filing briefs, or something?  Not a big, brooding vampire here.  Just a normal, law-abiding citizen."

A fib, and not even a subtle one, but she was getting testy.  She scratched at her gloved wrist, absentmindedly, and felt something like a bracelet under the fabric.  “Sorry I killed your dragons?”

Comments

[freaks-myword.livejournal.com]

"Okay. I'm just having a mental image problem here."

She looked around the room. No furry little creatures scurrying about, let alone giant ones. "Like, giant . . ." she paused and failed to make a gesture of...whatever the hell her mind was struggling to conceive. "Hamsters?"

Tell her you're kidding, DG. You must be kidding.

[tothelightshown.livejournal.com]

"Hamsters," DG repeated again, patiently and almost apologetically. "The kind that have little wheels in their cages and fill their cheeks with food. There are others too, but the hamsters are the ones that we met first."

And they were obviously the ones that people remembered.

[freaks-myword.livejournal.com]

"Wow, you people really are living the high life, aren't you?" she remarks, just a little bitterly. Because it sounds like it really isn't you people anymore. It sounds like it's we people, and it cements the reality that she's not in her world anymore, and that she's stuck.

Like a hamster in a cage. Go figure.

"So what's up with this place, then?" she asks with a sigh. Time to set her mind to something real.

[tothelightshown.livejournal.com]

DG tried not to rise to the first comment, responding with nothing more than a dark look. Taxon was a fairly luxurious prison, but it was still a prison. None of them were happy to be here. They fought the hamsters every step of the way.

"Some kind of experiment?" she suggested, "A game. We don't know. They seem to think that they're doing us a favour."

The expression of disgust that crossed DG's face made it clear that she didn't believe them.

[freaks-myword.livejournal.com]

She frowned, and something in this woman's expression told her this game was not a bucket of fun. Luxurious prison was surely better than one with steel bars and a bucket, but it was still a prison. And DG's acceptance of the situation made it clear that there was no way out.

That she would have to see to believe. "That's great, really. Wish I knew who to show my appreciation to," she muttered.

[tothelightshown.livejournal.com]

"We all do." And they were all waiting for the opportunity to give their captors a piece of their mind. Not that the aliens ever listened to what their captives had to say. DG had argued with them on more than one occasion. She'd never come close to winning.

"You should talk to Willow. Willow Rosenberg. She's got a lot closer to them than most of us."

[freaks-myword.livejournal.com]

"Sounds like a lucky gal," she said, and the thought was creepy enough in itself. After all, Gwen wasn't sure she wanted to get closer to them, whoever them really was.

She was thinking more along the lines of...showing her appreciation from afar. Close enough to fry their furry asses, far enough to not be eaten.

[tothelightshown.livejournal.com]

"Determined, actually." Luck hadn't come into it. "She put a lot of work into setting up the traps and keeping them locked up when they'd been caught."

There was more than a little pride in her voice. There weren't many people who could have pulled it off. Her friend had done brilliantly.