Fic: Control

[clockwork_hart1]

Title: Control
Rating PG13
Prompt: for femslash minis on LJ and Brutti ma Buoni who wanted elevators, elemental powers and gingerbread with no Fred or Wesley, and who got something with a whole lot more angst that she probably intended (and the sugary treat used in a very loose sense)...
Summary: All that power trapped in such a teensy shell, ripping you at the seams...

Originally posted here

When she got the call from Lindsey begging for her services, Gwen wasn't surprised. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten her work.

She was surprised when he wanted her to spy on Wolfram and Hart.

That had been his gig, the Hell Inc. Golden Boy, if memory served. But Gwen was well aware of how time and people changed, and she’d learned a while back not to ask questions, especially when she was getting half the cash up front. Especially when it had that many zeroes.

Finding out she was spying on Angel only made things more fun. Mr Deeds working for the Root of All Evil? That was new.

Loyalties are a fickle mistress, so as per Lindsey's request, she'd been scoping out WR&H for the last three weeks, using her special talents to go unnoticed. Then he'd broken contact, but she couldn't quite drag herself away.

She'd seen some weird-ass stuff, not least of which was herself, pant-suited up with a French twist in her hair, sneaking into just about any room Angel wasn't in at any given time. And god bless electricity for swallowing up her scent from Vampire's prying noses. This whole spying thing was fun.

In a dirty, skin itchy, clinging and dangling on the edge of being caught kind of way.

Speaking of…

"You wear a mask." Voice like an executioner, sending sparks of static rolling up Gwen's spine.

At her bristling back stands one of the more harrowing secrets Angel and Co. had been hiding. The God King of the Primordium.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Gwen refuses to face the creature. The God.

"You wish to appear fragile yet you ooze with power. Reek of it. I cannot presume to understand this." Illyria moves closer to Gwen, circling accusatory, like a beast to its prey.

"I'm not meant to be in here." Gwen struggles against the shudders. Since she arrived and set her frosty gaze on world domination, Gwen couldn’t help but bristle when Illyria was around, something about the God blowing apart her circuits. Literally.

Her fingertips sizzle with electricity, hairs along her arms and neck standing like soldiers, begging for orders. She's never allowed herself to get this close.

Illyria faces the mortal now, feeling the electrical shift in the air, mixed with the intoxicating warmth of fear.

"I, I uh, have a meeting in ten. Need to grab some lunch before the cafeteria runs out of gingerbread." She stumbling backward, groping desperately for the door handle, the air having all but ignited in the desolate office.

She's pinned against the door now, Illyria staring through her to a realm far beyond Gwen's comprehension, "power is like breath. Without it we are little more than dead. For what do we exist if not to gain the most, control the most? Yet you hide from it, bury it deep within yourself. Afraid of your strength if it becomes unbidden."

"What would you know about it?"

"I can feel the thump of your heart quicken in fear and unknowing. You act afraid of me, but it’s yourself you fear above all else."

Gwen's sweating, hot little pinpricks sliding down her back, down her neck, along her fingers. Her hand slips, the door falls open, and Gwen with it.

She scrambles away, making for the elevator with little less than passion, hair falling from it's neat twist into vibrant disarray, crimson bleeding through mousy brunette.

She's running and she doesn’t care, breath like fire in her lungs. Her cover’s blown and it can’t matter less. Lindsey can shove his cash up his ass.

She’d prayed for some excitement in a suddenly monotonous life. She loved the LISA, she really did, but the lack of instant power, this deadly uncontrollable force at the mercy of her emotions was a hard change to accept. And a life without constant danger didn't seem so blissful after all.

But that was before she was being chased down the hallway by an ancient God that murdered her finger-tip hold on control. So she tumbles pretty violently through the waiting doors, zapping the control pad with an icy hope that it shuts right behind her.

And they begin to slide shut, her stomach fluttering with blessed relief. Gwen clamours from the floor, penetrating blue eyes a long distant memory, until time grows still round her; doors freezing mid-shut, and a savage smile surfaces through the crowd of halted lawyers.

Illyria wades through the mortals with stormy grace until she's standing before Gwen, eyes impenetrable. Her face is fixed with a sneer.

"You are bold. Your insolence does not impress me." Illyria raises her hand and time falls back into place around them, elevator doors pulling shut with a pronounced "ding." Illyria walks ever closer, until the handrail digs deep into Gwen's spine, and Gwen braces herself against the wood and grips it tightly.

She knows she has to reply, if only to save face. So Gwen does what she does best. "But I do impress you, don't I? And you impress me. All that power trapped in such a teensy little shell, ripping you at the seams. And you want me to do the same, don't you?" She leans forward, breath brushing warm against Illyria's face as one hand ventures from the rails insulating safety to slip over the God's. "You want to watch me shatter into a million tiny pieces." And it bubbles free, electricity spilling bountifully from Gwen and into the God.

It hurts. It burns. It sears. And it's exquisite. This is the first instance of pain she's felt since waking in this form and it borders so precariously with pleasure that she daren't ask it to stop. Her face flutters between passive and blissful, the insolent ape grinning at the effect of her power. That will not do.

Illyria snatches her hand away with a vocal snarl and sends Gwen careening backward into the elevator walls. Without so much as a flick of her wrist, she makes the human collide with the wall, bones making an audible snap, before she slides bonelessly downwards to slump on the floor.

"I have more power than you can comprehend," Illyria bends to meet Gwen's weary, fearful eyes, "and I have no desire to watch you break. Already you are broken."

The doors spring open, the God struts out and eyes fasten to the fallen girl huddled within.

Gwen gives a vicious sneer to everyone that looks by, and mutters, almost silent, "so much for the goddamn gingerbread."