Green Eyed Monster
Mar. 24th, 2004 02:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethOkay, so I decided to get over my thing for actually finishing stories before I show them to anyone and just post what I got. It doesn't add up to a story yet. But it does add up to more words in a row than I've actually put on a page since the last Highlander fic I finished, and that was a very long time ago. Well, most words of a fic, I can babble at length. See?
Buffy fanfic, follows 'A New Man', features Ethan. Unfinished, may never be finished, because I start waaaaay more than I finish. This part lacking sex or violence, but I intend to make up for that if I ever finish it.
So:
Green Eyed Monster
One of his captors had green eyes.
His world was full of eyes now- electronic eyes staring down from the ceiling, cold eyes looking in through the glass of the door. Boredom or anger from the green coats, clinical detachment from the white. Mostly their eyes looked ugly, dirty, dead. One pair just looked green. It caught his attention, though the soldier boy in question might have wished it didn’t. Attention from a chaos mage could lead to anything. When the mage in question was already near terminally bored... anything would be something special.
Outside the glass his captors felt quite safe. Nothing got out. He’d tried. An enchanter needed tools, herbs, potions, and they’d left him with nothing but his own self. His own body, scarred, tattooed and naked. Stuck behind glass, no physical threat. They only watched as he moved around the cell, graceful movements, not quite dancing. They wouldn’t recognise the forms- chaos kata, never twice the same. Complex poses, yoga or just a way to pass the time. Old fashioned exercise, even sit ups. Pretty soon he was in the best shape he’d been in his life. They just watched, eyes cold, or green.
They never bothered with questions any more. They had, once. Tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him, make him over in their image. Tried to break him at first. Old tricks were the best- take away timepieces, keep him from sleeping, don’t let him get in any kind of routine. They tried all that, on a child of chaos, while he just smirked, or played along a while and babbled for them crazily. They put drugs in his food but he’d long since learned to ride his altered chemistry. Eventually they tried what would have worked best from the first- repetition, endless, boring, always the same. “Were you involved in the Sunnydale incidents? What did you put in the candy? The spell or formula, the details, please. We can’t help you if we don’t know what you’ve done. It’s in your own best interests. Tell us what you know and you’ll be free to go.” Sometimes he gave them an answer, sometimes he didn’t. Once they’d been excited, taken his words like they meant something, gone off to work out the alchemy and poetry and strings of dead languages until they had some kind of potion to use. Last time they’d unwrapped one of his gifts like that they’d found a perfectly ordinary laxative. The time before that it was a Sumerian formula for beer. Good beer, but not quite what the government wanted from him. “How did you enchant the costumes? How did you change that civilian into a sub-T?”
Whatever words they wrapped around it, his own good, his country’s interests, it always came back to that.
“I know what you want from me.” He said conversationally to the air one day, quite sure those eyes on him could listen, check the playback, show someone in control. “Riots on command. Tame little terrors. And I know you know you’re not going to get them. What would be in it for me? My freedom? We know better. What you have so far failed to notice is that I am an artist. Teaching you my art interests me not at all. But working it...”
He closed his eyes and waited, and after a while some cold familiar voices did reply.
“Which art would that be?”
“The art of transformation.” he replied, looking out past the glass to the white coat that stood there and the green that guarded him. “To take someone and change them, turn them inside out and set them free. What every art form seeks to do, and cannot. Change a man utterly.”
“And these changes- they’d be lasting?”
“Permanent. And transient. Depends on how you look at them. Physical change takes a lot of power. It tends to wear off. But emotional- what’s done to a man stays with him forever.”
“That doesn’t sound like something we could use.” Said white coat and stepped back as if to walk away.
“So speaks a man of little imagination. What I can conjure up for you is a creature such as could make every red blooded man a craven fool, make every last soldier boy scared that such a thing could be hiding in their bed. I can make a monster of any one of you. Bring out the darkness and let it play. Doesn’t that sound like something the military could use?”
It took more words than that of course, but he had them then. After all, what did it cost them? Supplies from a supermarket, incense sticks from a market stall, some silk, some stones, a little silver... and one soldier boy. With green eyes.
Buffy fanfic, follows 'A New Man', features Ethan. Unfinished, may never be finished, because I start waaaaay more than I finish. This part lacking sex or violence, but I intend to make up for that if I ever finish it.
So:
Green Eyed Monster
One of his captors had green eyes.
His world was full of eyes now- electronic eyes staring down from the ceiling, cold eyes looking in through the glass of the door. Boredom or anger from the green coats, clinical detachment from the white. Mostly their eyes looked ugly, dirty, dead. One pair just looked green. It caught his attention, though the soldier boy in question might have wished it didn’t. Attention from a chaos mage could lead to anything. When the mage in question was already near terminally bored... anything would be something special.
Outside the glass his captors felt quite safe. Nothing got out. He’d tried. An enchanter needed tools, herbs, potions, and they’d left him with nothing but his own self. His own body, scarred, tattooed and naked. Stuck behind glass, no physical threat. They only watched as he moved around the cell, graceful movements, not quite dancing. They wouldn’t recognise the forms- chaos kata, never twice the same. Complex poses, yoga or just a way to pass the time. Old fashioned exercise, even sit ups. Pretty soon he was in the best shape he’d been in his life. They just watched, eyes cold, or green.
They never bothered with questions any more. They had, once. Tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him, make him over in their image. Tried to break him at first. Old tricks were the best- take away timepieces, keep him from sleeping, don’t let him get in any kind of routine. They tried all that, on a child of chaos, while he just smirked, or played along a while and babbled for them crazily. They put drugs in his food but he’d long since learned to ride his altered chemistry. Eventually they tried what would have worked best from the first- repetition, endless, boring, always the same. “Were you involved in the Sunnydale incidents? What did you put in the candy? The spell or formula, the details, please. We can’t help you if we don’t know what you’ve done. It’s in your own best interests. Tell us what you know and you’ll be free to go.” Sometimes he gave them an answer, sometimes he didn’t. Once they’d been excited, taken his words like they meant something, gone off to work out the alchemy and poetry and strings of dead languages until they had some kind of potion to use. Last time they’d unwrapped one of his gifts like that they’d found a perfectly ordinary laxative. The time before that it was a Sumerian formula for beer. Good beer, but not quite what the government wanted from him. “How did you enchant the costumes? How did you change that civilian into a sub-T?”
Whatever words they wrapped around it, his own good, his country’s interests, it always came back to that.
“I know what you want from me.” He said conversationally to the air one day, quite sure those eyes on him could listen, check the playback, show someone in control. “Riots on command. Tame little terrors. And I know you know you’re not going to get them. What would be in it for me? My freedom? We know better. What you have so far failed to notice is that I am an artist. Teaching you my art interests me not at all. But working it...”
He closed his eyes and waited, and after a while some cold familiar voices did reply.
“Which art would that be?”
“The art of transformation.” he replied, looking out past the glass to the white coat that stood there and the green that guarded him. “To take someone and change them, turn them inside out and set them free. What every art form seeks to do, and cannot. Change a man utterly.”
“And these changes- they’d be lasting?”
“Permanent. And transient. Depends on how you look at them. Physical change takes a lot of power. It tends to wear off. But emotional- what’s done to a man stays with him forever.”
“That doesn’t sound like something we could use.” Said white coat and stepped back as if to walk away.
“So speaks a man of little imagination. What I can conjure up for you is a creature such as could make every red blooded man a craven fool, make every last soldier boy scared that such a thing could be hiding in their bed. I can make a monster of any one of you. Bring out the darkness and let it play. Doesn’t that sound like something the military could use?”
It took more words than that of course, but he had them then. After all, what did it cost them? Supplies from a supermarket, incense sticks from a market stall, some silk, some stones, a little silver... and one soldier boy. With green eyes.
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Green Eyed Monster
Date: 2004-03-24 06:08 am (UTC)Re: Green Eyed Monster
Date: 2004-03-24 08:35 am (UTC)Ethan is known as a mage for hire (Band Candy) but if he only does such work 1/4 of the time then a lot of his purpose is his own, yes?
'REopen the Hellmouth' is a bit of a vague phrase- if you mean open a portal into Hell, I wouldn't reckon Ethan to be up for that. Chaos is change, but not plain destruction, and he'd have to live with the results too. If you mean re-establish a magical nexus such as existed there while the Hellmouth was present but closed, then that sounds more like a laugh.
The thing about Band Candy is that the whole spin changes depending on how much of the poetry Ethan is aware of. The candy made everyone irresponsible- but it also should have made them better able to connect with teenagers, to pay attention to them, and who was it who knew which way was up last time he was in town? Yup, the kids. So it would be actually helpful to people to get them to hear the kids. Actually Ethan can be seen to be about breaking down barriers to communication and understanding every time. If that is his actual intent, it changes things rather.
Of course he *also* likes to watch them run round in circles. But he might, possibly, have a purpose beyond that.
Thinking aloud and not entirely about your point.
More Chaos, more good, Hell on Earth, not good. Collateral damage happens, but human sacrifice would be new if Ethan himself were part of it. As far as we know, he honestly didn't know what he was providing a distraction for in Band Candy, so didn't know about the babies. Burning people would be a lot different than letting them mess themselves up.
Spike's new order would be on the one hand order, therefore unfun, but on the other hand new, so fun. And it is so very two faced, and the Slayer/Vampire relationship breaks all the rules. Being hired could tip the balance, but Ethan might actually like Spike's game. Funnest would be to do what he was hired for but have it work out to help the locals, like Band Candy (because no babies were sacrificed).
But one of my favourite fanfic quotes about Ethan, I can't find the exact source now, something like Buffy saying to him 'You planned all this, didn't you?' and Ethan replies 'Plan? You went to college, do you not know the definition of Chaos?' I think Ethan thinks of fun things to do and lets the consequences roll out as they will. Because often more amusing than anything he can think of himself.