Essay; 'That Vision Thing'

[janedavitt]

This is my essay for ats_endofdays I signed up for it in the summer and I've finished barely within the deadline of tomorrow which is a lesson to me that I don't do well if you give me too much time to do it in ::g::. It started out as a fic (special hugs to wesleysgirl) became an essay, briefly a series of linked drabbles and possibly a haiku. No. I'm probably just hallucinating that last one.

It ended an essay, just over 2,600 words. Here it is.



That Vision Thing

This episode is one that I always think of as a two-parter, though there’s a cushion of three episodes before the second part, ‘Billy’. The two are linked because of the fact that in ‘Billy’ all the chickens let loose in ‘That Vision Thing’ come home to roost.

Or maybe they’re vultures.

The idea that actions have consequences and payback’s a bitch with a very long memory is intrinsic to the Buffy/Angelverse, so it’s no surprise that when Angel does something as momentous as helping Wolfram& Hart, the fallout’s catastrophic.

He knows this before he does it -

Wesley: "I don't need to explain to you that if Wolfram and Hart are behind this mission it can't be good."

Angel stops to look back at Wesley, then continues out of the office.

Wesley gets up to follow him.

Angel is looking through the contents of the weapons cabinet.

Wesley: "Just because Lilah tells you that this man is wrongly imprisoned doesn't make it so."

Angel: "You're right."

Wesley: "Nor do I have to explain to you that helping them violates everything you stand for."

Angel grabbing some weapons: "Right again."

Wesley: "Good. Then I don't need to convince you to let me go with you."

- and he does it anyway.

We’re not surprised of course, by either of them being willing to do this; nor are we – then – disapproving. Perhaps we never are, even as the death toll mounts in ‘Billy’ and, more important to us because we’re invested in them, the cost to the characters rises. We know, as Angel did, that there’s no other choice given who they are.

It all starts with Lilah. She’s the one who chooses Angel for the mission. She’s the one – and I can’t help thinking there’s a certain malicious, gleeful smile on her face as she dreams it up- who decides that if Billy Blim needs rescuing (and we’re not entirely sure why his family even wants that, but still, it’s enough that they do, that they’re powerful, that it’s in Wolfram & Hart’s best interests to have him freed) then who better than Angel to do it?

Angel: "So, where is this jail?"

Lilah smiles and walks up behind him.

Lilah: "This is exactly why I chose you for the mission, Angel. I needed a man of character, a champion of good, a warrior, and I needed someone who could travel in and out of a fortressed demon dimension."

Except...why? Angel’s good, but that’s just it; he’s good. She has to know he’ll figure out that Billy’s hardly an innocent victim... could it be, that as she’ll later do with Wesley, this is a nudge of Angel into the grey area of compromise? And, as Illyria will tell Angel, much, much later, compromise is not something a leader even considers;

You learn to destroy everything that's not utterly yours. All that matters is victory. That's how your reign persists. You're a slave to an insane construct. You are moral. A true ruler is as moral as a hurricane, empty but for the force of his gale.
But you... trapped in the web of the Wolf, the Ram, the Hart. So much
power here, and you quibble at its price.
(looking Angel in the eyes)
If you want to win a war, you must serve no master but your ambition.

‘Time Bomb’ 5.19

So Angel goes, completes his mission, and returns with Billy in tow. Naked, scorched by hellfire, freed Billy.

Because it’s Cordy. Because she’s suffering. Because she’s part of the team, part of his quest for redemption, part of his family, and Wesley, Gunn, Lorne and Fred rally around too, though with the latter two, the motivation is less personal at that point.

It’s worth looking at who suffers most because of what happens in this episode. It’s not those who do the most, necessarily, which doesn’t seem fair. Except, very often, there is no ‘fair’ in their world, any more than there is in this.

Lorne

Lorne? Gets a headache. He gets thrown across the room, slammed into a wall, and suffers a psychic backlash of epic proportions as he reads Cordelia at the same time as she gets the false vision, but that, surprisingly enough, qualifies as getting off lightly. His part in this is to alert them to the fact that the visions are not official; he brings light to the darkness, replaces Cordelia’s pitiful bewilderment that the Powers are hurting her, with the cold comfort that no, they’re not, but someone else is, someone who doesn’t care about consequences any more than Angel does.

Lilah

And that person would be Lilah. In a brutally biblical way, she ends up with her face as ruined as Cordelia’s, her body damaged, feeling the same fear and anger.

As Cordelia will tell her,

"It's not the pain. It's the helplessness. The certainty that there is nothing you can do to stop it, that your life can be thrown away in an instant by someone else. He doesn't care. He'll beat you down until you stay down because he doesn't even *think* of you as alive. - No woman should ever have to go through that, and no woman strong enough to wear the mantle of 'vicious bitch' would ever put up with it.”

Lilah, in a way, redeems herself. She’s the instigator of all this; she started it, and she finishes it, firing bullets into Billy until he goes down and stays down. Her motives are personal, her actions, as far as we know, bringing no comeback. Hardly seems fair, now does it?

Cordelia

Innocent victim. She’s unaware of Angel’s actions and it’s safe to say that had she known what he planned to do, she would have argued against it. She goes through a day of hell as her body and spirit are attacked again and again, leaving her sobbing helplessly, leaving her weak – but it’s nothing compared to her feelings later, when she has a vision of the murder Billy instigated.

But she’s no longer weak. And she’s clear-headed enough to tell Lilah,

"Angel feels responsible for this guy because he brought him back from hell. I feel responsible because he did it to save me. You, who are actually responsible for the entire thing, feel nothing at all, because *you* are a vicious bitch."

Her suffering doesn’t end. She’ll always feel a responsibility for the deaths Billy caused after he was released, because her life was bought with those deaths, but she ends ‘Billy’ 3.6 with her equilibrium restored.

Angel

Angel, the complement to Lilah, is the prime mover in this. He’s the one who attacks the guardians of the key components, the one who fights Skip, the one who, even before he knew what was going on, went to Lilah to cut a deal with her; the key pieces for Cordelia. He’s too pragmatic not to deal in the grey.

And, in some ways, very little happens to him. He’s unaffected by Billy’s touch, emerging unscathed, protected by his lack of humanity:

Cordy: "So why didn't Billy's touch affect you?"

Angel: "Well, maybe because - I'm not human."

Cordy chuckles: "Oh, right. And a *vampire* could never be turned into a monster."

Angel: "Well, that thing that Billy brought out in others? - The hatred and anger... that's something I lost a long time ago."

Cordy: "Even when you were evil?"

Angel: "I never hated my victims, I never killed out of anger, it was always about the - pain and the pleasure."

Cordy: "Huh. - So I guess you could say that your demoness makes less petty than humans. Almost noble - I mean, in a twisted, dark and *really* disturbing kind of way."

He has too many deaths to his name that he’s fully responsible for, to be overly guilt-ridden about Billy’s victims.

But if he cares about anyone, it’s his ‘family’ and they end up paying, which, in some ways, hurts Angel worse than anything else could.

Gunn

Gunn is involved in one fight; with the herbalist shopkeepers who are, as Wesley discovers, aligned with good. He does no more than that, and, in comparison with Wesley, he gets off lightly. He has a headache to equal Lorne’s but the comfort of knowing that even as he succumbed to Billy’s influence, he was able to fight it off long enough to help Fred by orchestrating his own defeat.

And I’ve always thought that this was a pivotal moment in the Fred/Gunn relationship, making her see him as a replacement for Angel as a rescuer, as a protector. In the end, when she’s stronger, she doesn’t want that, but there’s miles to go before that...

Fred

Fred is still very much new to all this; barely emerged from her self-imposed isolation, still painfully socially unaware. She comes up with the insight that allows them to establish where the visions are from and that’s her sole involvement. It’s enough though to make her something that up to now she’s not been’ a contributing member of the group. And Wesley, already attracted, is positively entranced by her intelligence.

Wesley: "Why would the Powers choose to communicate with Cordy in this way?"

Fred: "Maybe we could ask them. (Everyone turns to look at her) Y-you used the word 'communicate' which got me thinking - everything's made of energy, right? Light waves, radio waves, x-rays, even brain waves are all electric energy. If Cordelia is receiving visions from the Powers That Be they're being communicated somehow. Maybe we could figure out the frequency and trace the calls."

Wesley: "Yes. Of course. Well done, Fred. - Gunn, I need you and Fred to go to the hotel and get me some books. I'll make a list. We need to research that Chinese coin. Angel, you find that demon and get the key."

For Fred, the consequences are terrifying and yet strangely therapeutic. She has to suffer the nightmare of realising that Wesley is affected by Billy’s power and is lost to reason – and coming after her with an axe and a heartful of hate. And she likes Wes; likes, trusts, admires... it’s a chilling, truly scary moment when the truth dawns on her. However, resourceful and intelligent as she is, and above all a survivor, she defeats him, unaided. That’s got to be a confidence-booster.

She also gets the chance in ‘That Vision Thing’ to find out how Gunn feels about her, when he goes back to the hotel with her.

Fred: "I know that you're probably disappointed that you couldn't go fight that thing with Angel."

Gunn: "Right. Because why would I wanna walk with a cute, young woman on a beautiful night when I could be out hacking and slaying an ugly, boil-covered demon monster and getting myself killed."

Fred: "I can't apologize enough."

Gunn: "Hey, I just follow orders. No matter how tough the job."

And this insight is reinforced in ‘Billy’ when Gunn shows himself willing to be knocked unconscious rather than hurt her.

So maybe Fred doesn’t do too badly...

Wesley

Wesley, with Angel, is perhaps the most involved in the freeing of Billy. Like Angel, he’s ready to go into the demon dimension, and he’s the one who does the research and activates the key, as well as fighting the herbalists.

And he’s arguably the one who suffers the most, without any amelioration of that suffering.

He’s turned into his worst nightmare; there’re hints that he’s acting like his father, though taken to extremes. This, in particular, sounds almost like something a young Wesley could have overheard and remembered,

Fred runs to the side doors, but before she can get them open, Wes grabs her by the hair from behind.

Wes: "What do you tell a woman who has two black eyes? (Pulls her back then pushes her down onto the steps leading up beside the doors) Nothing you haven't already told her twice."

Fred picks herself up and runs upstairs.

Wes: "No sense of humor."

He’s forced into a position – and at this point he’s still the putative leader of the group – where he’s a danger to a member of it; more than that, a danger to a woman he’s got romantic feelings for, though they’re not articulated at this point. Certainly he feels protective towards her, as we see at the start of the episode when Gavin Park visits.

Wesley: "He's not a client. He's Gavin Park, attorney with Wolfram and Hart."

Park: "Pleased to meet you. (Sees Fred) New player?"

Wes walks over to stand in front of Gavin, blocking his view of Fred.

Wesley: "Well, now that we've had this lovely reintroduction - I suggest you piss off."

So Wesley loses control, loses Fred, loses, I think, his grip on the leadership of the group – never all that secure once Angel was re-integrated – and gains nothing but a glimpse into his own darkness of spirit.

This episode is, as I started off by saying, the beginning of something, rather than being complete in itself. It’s an episode that shows how far the group will go to protect one of their own; it’s an episode that shows how far Wolfram & Hart will go when it comes to pleasing a client. We have Angel doing what he does best; taking direct action, and we have a brutally satisfying instant retribution, not for Lilah, not yet, but for the amoral psychic who inflicted the visions on Cordelia with a cheerful insouciance.

The main part of the episode ends, I think, on an apprehensive note, and the introduction of a major arc in the tag scene; Darla’s pregnancy and her final words:

Darla: "Yeah, yeah. Like I haven't heard *that* before. (Looks down at her belly as she strokes it with her hands) I guess there is only one thing left to do. Time to go visit daddy."

continues that feeling. Bad things are about to happen.

So what’s new?

[All quotations are from the transcripts found here http://www.buffy-vs-angel.com/guide_ang.shtml

Many thanks to the people involved and to doyle_sb4 for organising this project.]