Disclaimer: This is part of Facing The Music timeline, taking place after Circle of Friends. Tony Longhair is copywrite of me. Rahne is owned by Marvel. The Powers That Be claim to be responsible for Angel. Please feedback.

   One nice thing about not drinking is I don't feel like a failure or that I've let everybody down. It's been so long since I've felt that way I've almost forgot how it feels. It feels like I'm a no-good injun so addicted to firewater that I couldn't stop myself. Like a child on the streets. Again.

   I've fallen off the wagon recently. The books all said that relapses were part of the path I have to travel to recover from this disease. They never talk about the two battles I have to fight now, addiction and pain. They circle around me like DNA strains, trying to suffocate my will. Not sure what else to do, I focus on the red package on the table.

   The cigarettes are so tempting, so familiar. Seems like everybody at AA smokes, holding on to the thin tubes like a baby holds on to a pacifier after being weaned. It is comfort. Secure. Everything forbidden wrapped into one quasi-socially acceptable package.

   My fingers literally ache with the need to reach out to the unopened package. The need, the absolute, total need for a smoke is finally drowning out the soul deep want for another drink. It is an unwelcome favor.

    I am the Dragon. I am stronger than my disease. People fear me. I force myself to remember these hollow words as I stare at the black writing on the wrapper, proudly proclaiming WIN. More than that, these were the cheap kind. If I'm going to sell out, it should be worth more than that.

    After all, I've traded my soul for a way to survive the streets. When I joined the Kings, I took the first step on a long road that led me to the highest level of leadership in a cartel that rivals the Mob when it comes to selling drugs, guns, and people. If you want something done and done right, those that are really in the know turn to the Guild of Thieves, the Guild of Assassins, or the Network. The Dragon rules in Hell.

    With a disguised sound, I turn away from the package and shake my head, remembering a story I once heard about a vampire who was cursed with a soul. Who would have thought a demon could possess a heart? Could feel agony for what he had done? Once upon a time, the Dragon had laughed at the story, believing it to be a joke.

    I, Tony Coyote Longhair, haven't been cursed by a gypsy. I've only fallen in love. Knowing how the vampire must feel, I can only shake my head. I know how Angel must feel, the way he'd trade anything to lose his humanity and the desperate way he tried to hang on to the thing he most hated the most.

    I know. I know the pain I've caused, the lives I've torn apart, how worthless my soul is. And it isn't because I fell in love. Loving Celeste has been so natural, so easy that I've done it for months before I realized I really did love her. I didn't change because I fell in love. Seeing myself through another's eyes changed me. Where I hurt her, even in passing, I worked to erase the pain.

   It took her sister admitting she needed help for me to start to understand how bad I am, how many million people are being hurt because of who I am. So I, quite premeditatedly, allowed myself to fall off the wagon the night we came back from the rehab center.

   What an absolute pile of shit. The leader of the Network, responsible for addicting many, was himself an addict. If I were in a thinking mood, I would have laughed at the irony. I've done it a hundred times before.

   Instead, I gave in that night and woke up next to a very old, very discreet bed buddy curled up beside me. The type who was along for the ride, not caring that I mistook her short, silky black hair for long, satiny blonde, not caring whose name I called out. It wasn't until Celeste freely offered me what I took from Silver that I understood I love her.

   Celeste is like a package under a Christmas tree, something to be anticipated and dreamed about. Something so wonderful that unwrapping it before Christmas morning would cheapen both the day and the gift. Little boys from the reservation never get to have Christmas.

   I know what I have to do to be in a position to tell her how I feel about her. Free from the Network. Sober. Those two were interwoven, I've discovered. I used to hide from what I was in an alcohol induced haze. Within days of giving up drinking, Emma had offered me a chance for redemption by combining her underground for mutants with my criminal underground. And she had offered me a way to be around Celeste.

   But I destroyed it all a week ago, when I lost the last illusion of being a semi-decent person. Ariel had gotten addicted to what I helped supply and, when Celeste turned to me in lust, needing comfort, I pushed her away. I... wanted someone to love me, not to use me. All my life, I've wanted that.

   And she knew about Silver. She had seen enough to know just about all. It wouldn't matter to someone as proud as her that I've made a mistake. Nothing I could say or do could mentally push her past that moment that Silver had opened my door. The promise of Christmas had been shattered by that one moment of failure.

   Reality was too harsh for me. But I'm proud. Proud enough to stay sober. Too proud to explain what had happened. And proud enough to try and become the kind of man she deserves, even if she'll never allow me to tell her how I feel about her.

    Not sure what else to do, I grab the Bible Rahne had given me when I asked her some questions about Augustine and the early Christian philosophy. At the time, I tried to resist the gift. Easier said than done. For all of Rahne's sweetness and light, she had a will of iron. Each attempt to return the book had resulted in her giving me another book on apologetics, her way of trying to answer the questions I somehow blurted out. Books by Josh McDowell, CS Lewis, Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft and Charles Colson line my bookcases. I wonder what she would say if she ever saw the well worn spines of the books.

   Tracts from groups who specialize in what they called ministering to the Native Americans spilled out of the Bible, reassuring me that I could be a Cherokee and a Christian, that a choice like that wouldn't mean I was turning my back on the old ways. I slipped them back in the book of Isaiah, and read for the thousandth time the verse she had underlined for me. "In the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes." A note in the margin in Rahne's cheerful handwriting reads "See, God can fix everything."

   It isn't that I don't want to believe. My gods have let me down so many times, abandoned and kicked me to the curb so many times that I want to trust in something different. I believed in a Higher Source. It was the first rule of AA.

   Rahne knew who I am, what I did and could make an educated guess as to my past. And she forgave me for that. That kind of forgiveness is something I long for more than I do for that package of cigarettes or the trouble in my cabinet. But... what if Rahne's God isn't real? What if it doesn't matter what He promises, because He doesn't exist?

   For all I've done and for all I am, I need forgiveness. But by the same token, I can't just reach out to this person Rahne told me about. Because, if I took a chance on God, and He didn't really exist, it would shatter the last ounce of strength I have to carry on.

   Some people walk around blind to the damage they do, like an erratic tornado. Other people do what they do willingly. And still others, the scales fall from their eyes and they are forced to see the utter destruction they cause. People like that need every last ounce of strength they have not to take the easy way out. They try to force themselves to live with what they've done. People like me can't place their hope in foolish dreams like forgiveness.

   We can only pray for a bullet in the night to end our struggles.