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Nothing To Be Ashamed Of

by Maureen Wynn
Copyright © 1998

All right, please don't hurt me! I'm not trying to mock anyone's pain, I'm just... dealing with "Passion", and my own pain, as best I can. Really. It's just that I prefer to deal with pain by laughing, if I can. :-S

Unashamedly stolen from Pirandello (and not to forget Elaine, for inspiring me with her Mock-ficcing! grin).

"AAAaaaarrrghhhhhhhh!"

Everyone in the room jumped as the scream rang out... and went on, and on...

"What?!"

"Good grief!"

"Huh?"

"What's going on? Is it time for lunch yet?"

"Xander!"

"Well, I'm hungry," Xander explained, as they all converged on the sound of the scream.

"You're always hungry," Willow said.

They all gathered around the woman huddled in the chair, going silent one by one as they saw what she was holding. It was a bound script, with the words "Advance Copy" stamped in large, blood-red letters on the front cover.

"Oh, dear," Rupert sighed. "What now?"

"He's killing me!" Jenny said.

"Wh... bu... He... He can't do that! We're on the verge of a reconciliation!" Rupert complained, taking the script out of Jenny's hands and frantically paging through it.

"Oh, man, that bites," Angel commiserated, trying to read over Rupert's shoulder. When he realized that everyone was looking at him, he blushed, then went white. "It isn't... a bite, is it?" he cautiously asked Jenny.

"No," she said, and he started to look relieved. "More of a... snap."

"Nooooo...!" he groaned, putting his head in his hands, "What is he doing to me?"

"To you?! What about me? I'm dead. I've got a grave and everything!"

"Oh, look, I get a fight scene!" Rupert said, having gone a little too far in the script.

"Rupert!"

"What? Oh, sorry, Jenny. But I never get to do anything interesting! Read this, research that, sit in the Library, la di dah. But here I get to bash someone... Oh, good, it's you, Angel."

Angel moaned again.

"At least you get a grave," Jesse said, taking the script away from Rupert. "I didn't even get a corpse to bury. How fair is that?"

"Excuse me, but did anyone else get eaten?" Flutie asked.

"Well, as a matter of fact..." Mark the zookeeper started to say.

"Oh, be quiet! You deserved it, you started the whole thing..." and they went off on their usual round of argument, which neither ever won.

"Hey, at least you all get names," Elizabeth complained, pointing to a line in the script that read "girl, drained of blood, drops at Angel's feet." "I don't even get a name, let alone any lines. And why is it always some nameless girl who gets drained, anyway? Why isn't it ever some nameless boy?" she said, glaring at Angel. "What, does our blood taste better or something?"

"Hey, don't blame me," he said, backing away from her. "I didn't want to be a blood-sucking fiend from hell. It's the Writer's fault. I just say the lines, and do what I'm told."

"Hey, sometimes it's a nameless boy!" Peter exclaimed. "Both Toby and I, uh, bit it. And they didn't even turn us into vampires like they were supposed to."

Everyone sighed, having heard Pete's complaint endless times.

Jesse had been reading the script, and now he snickered. "Well, Angel, you may have some trouble saying some of these lines." He snickered again, and started to read from the script: "Passion... is born... And though uninvited, unwelcome, unwanted... like a cancer... it takes root." He grinned at Angel, while Angel looked at him in amazement and growing horror. Xander joined Jesse in reading: "It festers... it bleeds... it scabs... only to rupture."

Xander and Jesse looked at each other, then said, in unison, "Eeeewwwwww!" and completely broke up. Laughing hysterically, they leaned against each other, then fell to the floor, dropping the script to flutter down, pages sprawled out.

Angel picked up the script almost gingerly, and checked the scene for himself. He gave a long-suffering sigh, and said, "Why do They always give the vamps such silly monologues? This... this is even worse than what They had LaCroix doing!"

Dru snorted, and said, "You think you have it hard, do you? Try saying some of my lines with a straight face."

"Well," Ethan joined in, "half the time, your face isn't straight, is it, ducks?"

Dru changed her face and growled at Ethan, then started giggling. The boys on the floor started laughing again at this, and so did most of the rest of the people in the room.

Jenny tried to frown at them, but their laughter was infectious, and her lips started to quirk into a smile, which quickly became a grin. Smiling, Rupert sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm around her shoulders, giving her a warm hug.

"Come on, chin up," he said encouragingly. "You'll always be here, and who knows, maybe the Writer will give us some flashbacks with you."

"Ohhhhh, no," she sighed. "Anything but flashbacks! They've been done to death!" Everyone groaned at her inadvertent pun, and she added, "You know what I mean! They introduce a character for the express purpose of eventually killing them off, then too late they realize the Audience actually likes the character, and they spend the rest of the series resurrecting them over and over again, completely sacrificing continuity for the sake of pandering to the Audience. Look at Highlander," she added, and everyone nodded, remembering poor Fitz.

"No," she said, with a determined look on her face, "This is for the best. Dead and gone, but not forgotten. And maybe He'll let Rupert or Buffy avenge me."

"You better believe we'll avenge you!" Buffy said valiantly, and Rupert squeezed Jenny's shoulders again, offering what support he could. "At least this Writer seems to care, right? So far, he hasn't made us do things completely out of character, the way some do."

"And even if He doesn't do anything about it, the fan Writers will," Cordelia added. Everyone tried to shush her, and Marcie put her hand over Cordy's mouth, but Cordelia pushed the invisible arm away, and continued talking. "Hey, we all know they're out there, right?"

"We're not supposed to talk about them!" Willow hissed at her. "What they write isn't... canon." She blushed, thinking of some of the things the fan Writers had her and the others doing.

"Well, canon or not, at least they give us something to do, other than sitting around here, and changing my clothes half a dozen times an episode, and never getting to do any of the cool action scenes..."

"Uh, Cordelia, sub-text is rapidly becoming, uh, text," Rupert delicately hinted.

"Hmmmpppphhh!" she snorted, stalking off to a corner to enjoy her snit in peace. Jesse quietly followed her, just in case she decided she needed some comforting, a shoulder to cry on... or maybe to nibble.

"I say we rent ourselves out to whatever Writer wants us!" declared Snyder. "Once we're written, we exist, and nothing will ever change that. If we need to go off somewhere else to find something to do, well, that's the Writer's loss!"

"Well, but..." Buffy started to say, when she was interrupted by the soft ding! of the bell that announced Character Call. The anciliary characters wandered off, knowing they weren't in this call. Jenny started to get up, then suddenly looked upset when she realized that this might be her last call.

Rupert put his arm around her again, saying, "We'll be here for you, Jenny, not to worry."

"Yeah, and I'll... I'll try not to... to..." Angel tried to say something comforting, but didn't quite know how to put it.

"That's all right, Angel," Jenny said bravely, "I don't blame you, it's the Writer. May he rot in the Hellmouth!" she added bitterly.

"Writing is nothing to be ashamed of. But do it in private, and wash your hands afterward." — Robert A. Heinlein

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