(no subject)
Oct. 29th, 2005 03:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgreyAll parts linked to from Story Notes
Temps Perdu, Part Five
As he came down the stairs, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone, Gunn saw the lamp was on in the office. “Wes…?”
It was so much Wesley’s habit to be researching all night that it didn’t occur to him it could be anyone else until the man looked up and he saw to his surprise that it was Giles.
“Giles?” Gunn came on into the office and shut the door. “What’s up?”
Giles didn’t beat around the bush, Gunn could say that for him. “Are you going to be a party to this madness of Angel’s?”
Gunn sighed and sat down in the next most comfortable chair. “I want to keep Wes safe too.”
“At any price?”
“If Wesley doesn’t mind....”
“Wesley isn’t in his right mind. He isn’t capable of making a rational decision right now. He trusts Angel so –”
“He trusts Angel for a reason,” Gunn pointed out. “Angel kept him alive in that place. Angel went in there for no other reason than that he thought Wesley might have a chance with him that he wouldn’t have without him. And Wes has been crazy before, and even when he’s crazy he’s usually pretty sane.”
“Like when he stabbed you?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Because I deserved it.” As Giles still didn’t seem to get it, Gunn decided to spell it out for him. “What happened today, that wasn’t a magic trick. Under demon law Wesley willingly bound himself to Angel. You’re choking on it because you think that isn’t what happened, that Angel’s taking advantage of Wesley’s temporary dependency on him. But the truth is that Wesley did bind himself to Angel. He needed a cause and Angel was the cause he chose. He offered him an oath of loyalty and then he sealed it in blood.”
“He fed a starving friend.”
“A starving friend who the last time he saw him had tried to smother him with a pillow. Giles, don’t kid yourself. Wesley’s okay with this. Would I be happier if he wasn’t? Hell, yeah, but I’m not going to pretend things aren’t the way they are.” Gunn realized how tired he was and put a hand up to his head, feeling his shaven skull, the warmth of bare skin, proof that he was himself again.
“And you’re still in agreement that Wesley should make himself a legal possession of Angel’s?”
“He already is. Legally. Any demon court in the pan dimensional universe is going to find that Wesley has pledged himself to Angel the man and Angel the cause, because that’s the truth. All Angel is doing is making something some of us maybe find a little hard to swallow an unavoidable fact.”
“What he’s doing is claiming Wesley as his personal possession and getting Wesley to acquiesce to the plan. What he’s doing is enslaving his friend. I don’t trust Angel’s judgement the way you do, Gunn. I believe he wants to keep Wesley safe but I also believe that he has no moral objection to this morally objectionable plan because in his heart of hearts he thinks Wesley does belong to him. And that sticks in my craw more than somewhat.”
“Then take it up with Wesley because he obviously believes it too. Otherwise he’d be Katorakan’s property by now.” Gunn met the man’s eye. “Giles, face it, the problem here isn’t Angel, it’s Wesley. You’re not mad at Angel for proposing this plan, you’re mad at Wesley for going along with it. Because we both know he will. He’ll let Angel brand him with any mark of ownership he likes.”
Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. “And you’re going to go along with it?”
“I’m saying whether Angel brands Wesley with his initials or not, Wesley still belongs to Angel because Wesley made that decision a long time ago, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. One little brand of ownership doesn’t make any difference to who Wesley is or how the rest of us see him or how he and Angel behave to one another. Trust me, compared with all the rest of the shit he’s been through and will probably go through in the future, it’s nothing.”
“That’s a bleak forecast, Charles, but I fear it’s probably accurate.”
They both spun around in horror to find Wesley standing in the doorway. The smile he gave Gunn was unexpectedly sweet. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just wanted a cup of tea.” As they both kept staring at him, he edged past them to where the kettle was, picked it up to test its weight, and then switched it on. “I was thirsty,” he added.
“Yes, of course.” Giles recovered himself.
“Blood loss will do that,” Gunn added.
Giles took a deep breath. “Wesley, about this ‘ownership’ arrangement Angel seems to have his heart so set upon…?”
“I don’t care.” Wesley put a teabag into a mug. “And yes, I know I probably should, but the fact is I don’t. And whether we like it or don’t – and I think a lot of the time we really don’t – we have all nailed Angel’s colours to our mast a long time ago, and it’s too late to take them down now. We chose our path or it chose us but either way our lives are too entwined with Angel’s now for any of us to just walk away.”
“You will be legally Angel’s property.” Giles took the kettle from Wesley and poured out the tea for both of them. “Technically, I suppose you will be Angelus’s property too.”
“By demon law, yes.” Wesley shrugged. “But most of the time demon law doesn’t really impinge upon us and when it does I think it would be more to my advantage than not.”
“But how can you not mind giving up…?”
Wesley interrupted him quietly: “Because I’m tired, Giles, probably not entirely sane, and because, as I mentioned before, I don’t care. I trust Angel. Absolutely.”
“The man who stole your memories? The man who locked those lawyers in a wine cellar? This is the person you ‘trust absolutely’?” Giles handed Wesley his tea.
Wesley took the cup and gave Giles a rueful smile. “We did cover the not entirely sane thing, didn’t we?”
On the landing of the Hyperion Buffy looked across at Angel. “I suppose you can hear everything they’re saying down there?”
“Yes.” Angel added some vodka to her glass and to his own. Lorne had been kind enough to pour him and Wesley a drink before heading off to look for tylenol, but Angel had shared the Sea Breeze with Buffy instead. The last thing Wesley needed right now in his opinion was to muddle his already fragile mind with alcohol. Probably a decision he should have let Wesley make, of course. No doubt that was what Giles would say, and he would probably be right. Lorne had looked wrecked and in need of some of that vodka himself, but before Angel could ask him what was wrong the demon had told him that his head was boiling like a furnace and anyone who tried to talk to him using words that made any sound louder than a whisper would do so at his peril.
Buffy nudged him. “So, what are they saying?”
Angel shrugged. “That Wes is crazy and it’s mostly my fault. That I have no right to call him my property. That it makes no difference because Wes will always do what I want just because I want it and just because of who he is, which is just exactly what I’ve made him.”
“That isn’t true.” There was a pause before she said with less confidence. “Is it?”
He took another sip of vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice, thinking he would have preferred whisky. The good old Irish kind he’d used to drink in the good old Irish days. When he’d been human and never thought to take a minute to be grateful for that state of being because what other state was there? “I have to protect him, Buffy.”
“I know.” She spoke gently, not judging him.
“He used to be whole. He used to be sane.”
“I’ve made my share of mistakes. People have died because of choices that I’ve made. Xander has an eyepatch where his left eye used to be because of choices I’ve made. I don’t have the right to judge you or blame you. I believe you’ve done everything you’ve done because you thought it was right or because you were trying to protect the people around you. That doesn’t mean you haven’t made mistakes or that other people didn’t end up paying for them.”
“He used to have one set of memories in his head and all of them were true.”
“Why did you do it?”
“The mindwipe? I did it to protect Connor. I figured we’d all done our part to drive him to becoming the person he was, we could all pay something of the price for it. I thought we’d have to make compromises, worry about corruption. But Cordy never truly woke up from that coma, and Fred paid with her life. The decisions they made…I don’t know what they would have decided if they’d remembered everything. Part of the reason why Wesley signed up was because he thought the records might be useful, all those files, a means to investigate the Senior Partners. He didn’t remember that records can be falsified. That even prophecies can lie.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” Buffy took another sip of her drink. “He would have followed you to Wolfram & Hart whoever’s memories he had. When the last thing he remembered was you trying to suffocate him he still pulled you out of the sea. He’s bound to you. They all are. And to each other. I know how that works. I know how it sucks, too. Watching your friends get taken away in an ambulance. Watching them lose themselves. Willow started studying magic to help me. It nearly swallowed her whole. Xander could be blind now. He almost was. I don’t even want to start on what I did to Spike, because he didn’t matter, and everything inside me hurt so what did I care if he was suffering too....”
“Okay, beating yourself up about Spike – that really is ridiculous.”
She smiled despite herself. “You two have elevated petty to a whole new level.”
He shrugged. “We try.”
She paused before saying delicately: “I’m not a great thinker either, but Giles and Willow and Wesley are, so they’re going to work it out even if we don’t say anything. They probably already have. That demon guy was selling you to his enemy. An enemy who lives inside a fortress. You’d be significant. He’d look at you. Check you out. But in a world where humans don’t matter how closely would look at anyone look at Wesley…?”
“Just say it.” Angel finished his drink one gulp.
“Do you think Wesley’s a walking bomb?”
He swallowed the vodka, grateful for the burn of it on the back of his throat. He definitely missed that whisky. Not that it would taste the way it used to. Nothing did. Only blood had its full range of flavour. But he would have liked some of it all the same. “I think it’s possible.”
“We’ll defuse it.” She took Angel by the arms and made him look at her. “Angel, believe me. You’re not going to lose another friend.”
“What if that’s my real destiny? To be the cause of murdering everyone I’ve ever loved? I started off down that track when I was barely out of the coffin womb. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done. All the murder and mayhem Drusilla caused, and Spike, and Penn, as well as my own crimes. Maybe no one can ever pay for that level of bloodshed. Maybe all I’ve done by trying to atone is murder more innocents.”
She pulled his head down gently and rested her forehead against his. “That isn’t what happened, Angel.”
“Cordy and Fred used to be alive and Wesley used to be whole. And Gunn used to be so full of confidence. He knew exactly who he was like no one else walking the earth. How did I turn Wesley into a guy who wakes up screaming? Gunn into a guy who thought he was nothing without a lot of stolen knowledge in his brain? What did I do to them, Buffy?”
“In Cordelia’s vision of another reality I lost my arm to the Kungai demon.”
They turned to find Wesley slowly walking up the stairs, evidently finding the climb exhausting, particularly with his concentration fixed on his cup of tea, but doing it anyway, step by step.
“It was a lie,” Angel reminded him. “A lot of stuff made up by Skip so they could demonise her.”
“Okay then, supposing that without you I would have kept my arm after all, I would still have died in that fire.”
Angel sighed. “Wes, you only almost died in the fire because you were working for me, remember?”
“Are you saying you don’t think Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, rogue demon hunter, would have earned himself the enmity of Wolfram & Hart unaided?”
“I’m saying maybe I wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Wesley made a dismissive noise and helpfully explained, “That sound is usually denoted as ‘pshaw’. I could add a ‘poppycock’ for clarity if you like.”
Angel gazed at him fondly. “Why are you even up, crazy watcher boy?”
Wesley held up his teacup. “I have eight months of tea-deprivation to make up for.”
“How does it feel to be bonded to a demon?” Buffy asked.
“So far it seems like a sinecure to me. The hours aren’t too bad and the work is minimal. And yes, I guessed it had to be a bomb after Katorakan made such a fuss. Nothing else made sense. That’s why I sang for Lorne.”
“Singing for Lorne.” Angel nodded. “Of course. Good idea. Did he…?”
“Three days.” Wesley took another sip of tea. “I’ll spend two of those working on research but then I’m going to rent a car and drive into the desert. I’m really not interested in finding out how big a crater I can make in a densely populated area.”
“We’ll defuse it,” Buffy told him. “I promise you we will.”
“I promised Fred she wouldn’t die.” Wesley drained his tea and held out the cup to Angel who took it automatically. “Sometimes you can’t fix things however much you want to. Either way, a device powerful enough to take out a fortress is going to pack something of a punch. I imagine I won’t feel a thing. Like Lilah when I cut off her head. Do you realize, Angel, that every woman I have dated over the past six years except for Virginia, is now dead? Poor Cordy. If I’m the black widower of Angel Investigations it does seem hard that she had to pay so high a price for one measly dance and one very bad kiss.”
“Wes, they didn’t die because of you.”
Wesley glanced at Angel mildly. “Oh, of course not, because they died because of you, didn’t they? I was forgetting that everything that happens on this planet has to be your fault.”
“It was my fault.”
“They made their own choices. So did I. You didn’t manacle me to those offices. I wanted to stay. I still want to stay. If I get the chance to go on staying I’ll be grateful.”
“So will I.” Angel gazed into his eyes. “I’ll be very grateful.”
Wesley sniffed Angel’s glass and then shook his head. “We really need some single malt.”
“You really need some sleep,” Angel countered.
For the first time Wesley let down his guard enough and they both saw the flicker of vulnerability as he gazed at the open door of the room in which he had suffered so many nightmares. “Will you…?”
“I’ll come now.” Angel took his arm. “It’s past my bedtime. And ever since I passed my quarter millennium I find I really need my beauty sleep.”
Wesley looked relieved. “You don’t look a day over two hundred to me.”
“Do you want to find out what happens to my bonded human slaves who give me jip?”
“It’s oddly disturbing to find that the more time that goes by, the more often I’m forced to agree that Spike may have a point about you....”
Angel nodded to Buffy who smiled back at him a little sadly. There was no one who understood ‘love me, love my crazy friends’ better than her, but the fact remained that they were two champions needed to fight separate battles and ultimately they were going to be going in different directions. For the moment he was just enjoying the rare luxury of her being a guest in his home.
He helped Wesley over to the bed and pulled back the covers, then coaxed the man out of his robe. For all his ability to hold a conversation, Wesley looked pale with exhaustion. Angel had to catch his arm as he swayed, and then hold onto him as he more or less fell into the bed, lowering him gently. He pulled off his own clothes swiftly, refusing to think about Giles looking down his nose at him, as if this was about taking advantage of Wesley instead of taking care of him. On Askaroth in their slave cage they had curled together naked and within a short time even Wesley had thought nothing of it. He resented the soft cotton of Wesley’s pyjamas, afraid it would muffle the warmth of his body, the beat of his heart. But then he had his arms wrapped around his friend and Wesley sighed in relief, feeling safe, Angel could tell, hearing his heartbeat slow a little, calming as the sense of peace spread through him. Angel stroked Wesley’s hair absently, still finding it strange to get used to these soft clean locks after the tangled knots of before.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised him. “Because nothing and no one is going to make me lose another friend, not after Doyle and Cordy and Fred. Certainly no dumb mystical bomb.”
But Wesley was already sleep, breathing even, heartbeat regular, despite his bondage to a demon, despite the attempt to snatch him back to Askaroth, despite the bomb ticking somewhere inside him, just because he was in Angel’s arms and therefore, evidently, safe. Angel heard again Wesley saying: “Because…I trust Angel. Absolutely.” And realized once again how true that was. He just wished he could have felt as confident as Wesley evidently did that he really deserved that trust.
***
Willow could feel the bomb. When she closed her eyes she could visualize it too. It glowed with darkness, spherical, but with wires protruding from it, delicate tendrils designed to send the mystical force contained within it exploding outwards in all directions. If its intent had been less ugly she might have thought it beautiful. She held the memory of the sigils on Wesley’s body, the mark on his chest, in her mind, and examined the bomb from all angles. The markings were in a language she didn’t recognize but it no longer mattered. Her power had grown to a point where she knew what it said. Outside of Wesley’s body she could have defused it easily, but that was why it had been hidden in a warm-blooded human form. The variables of Wesley’s body temperature, his heart rate, his pulse and breath had all been incorporated into the protective spell that kept the bomb shielded. If Wesley were killed, the bomb would detonate. If any attempt was made to cut him open while his heart was still beating, the tendrils would be severed and the bomb would detonate. It could only be rendered harmless through powerful magic; magic so powerful she feared that it might drain her into unconsciousness, something very dangerous for everyone, given that, if she fainted in the middle of extracting the bomb, her magic would slip and it would explode.
It had to be done quickly, that was clear. This was a place of mystical convergence; it had been seeped in magic in the past, both good and bad; demons would always have been drawn here; it was no doubt why Angel had been drawn here. It had sufficient power of its own that a perimeter spell might work; a way to contain the blast if she failed. Wesley driving out into the desert was not an option, of course. There was a point where the suffering had to stop; where good things had to happen to good people instead of always bad, worse, worst. She had listened when Gunn had been talking earlier and heard it all; Wesley’s history, from abusive childhood, locked in the dark by a father who didn’t love him, to a lonely adolescence with no friends; to Sunnydale and rejection, to LA and acceptance, and then the prophecy, his noble but ultimately worthless sacrifice in trying to save Connor and instead condemning him to a Hell dimension. So ironic and so very unfair that the man who had been prepared to risk everything to save that baby from an untimely death had been the one responsible for setting him on the path to insanity that had so nearly claimed his life. Then had come Angel’s murderous attack on Wesley; Fred, Gunn and Cordy’s rigid drawing of lines in the sand; Wesley an outcast, sleeping with the enemy, no, sleeping with a human woman who had, Angel had maintained, come to love him, and whose head he had to separate from her corpse after death. Then Angel’s deal: Connor’s new life for their memories, a deal with Wolfram & Hart that had almost swallowed them all whole. A decision that had failed to save Cordelia, failed to save Fred, driven Wesley insane with grief, and then, after some seers for the Senior Partners had taken a look into some magic mirror, there had been their insistence that Angel had broken their agreement and been plotting against them.
Then, as Angel was still arguing with them, had come the unleashing of the apocalypse through that jagged gateway into a hell dimension, just as Wesley had translated the sacred scroll they had stolen from the Senior Partners which said that this was the Cauldron of Hell. As flame and smoke billowed through the rip between this dimension and the next, Wesley had conjured from the scroll the clue by which a ‘learnèd mortal man’ might yet close it; the word ‘Efnisien’ burning itself onto the parchment.
“Of course…!” Wesley had exclaimed. “The Cauldron exists to bring forth the dead and so can only be shattered by a live man entering it willingly.” Then he had run for the rip between the worlds, before anyone could lay a hand upon him to hold him back, just as Buffy had done to close a mouth to another dimension in her time; and, as with Buffy, he had known this was a one-way trip. But Angel, although he had been too slow to prevent Wesley throwing himself into the void, had been fast enough to throw himself after him a second before the chasm had closed and Gunn, Lorne, Spike and Illyria had found themselves on the sidewalk outside the smoking ruins of the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, owning nothing but the clothes they were wearing and the weapons they were holding. But in their own world with the gateway to hell closed again and no demon hordes overrunning the earth. Well, no more demon hordes than were already overrunning it anyway.
That made Wesley more than just a man who had spent his life trying to do what was right for the greater good, that made him a bona fide hero in Willow’s book, and heroes didn’t deserve to be ripped apart by mystical booby traps set by slave-dealing demons. They deserved to have some life and health and happiness. She just hoped there was a way that she could save Wesley that wasn’t going to involve killing herself or anyone else.
“Hey, Will…”
She looked up to find Xander standing in the doorway looking at her compassionately. “Would I be right in thinking you might like a little help?”
She gazed at her childhood friend, still not reconciled to the eye patch; she would never ever be reconciled to the eye patch, the injustice of what the good fight had cost him. Angel had told her that was an accusation a policewoman had levelled at him once, that while he and the other champions fought their grand battles of good and evil, it was the ordinary mortals who paid the price. Xander wasn’t a Slayer or a warlock or any part demon. He was just a human male, whom she loved more than she believed she could have loved any brother, would always love perhaps more than anyone else upon the planet; fragile and fallible and so horribly easy to maim.
She tossed aside her pencil. “You would be right.”
“Research help? Tea brewing help? Or just plain massage the kinks out of your shoulders help?”
“Moral support help. But I’m reserving the right to ask for all the other kinds of help as well.”
“Not looking too shiny for Wes right now?” He sat down next to her and rubbed her back comfortingly.
“I think I’ve found a spell to do it.”
“Well, that’s great.” He gave her an encouraging look and then must have read her expression correctly. “Okay, there’s a snag. What’s the snag?”
“The only safe way to do this – safe for the people in LA – is to wrap the hotel in a…”
“Super fuelled version of the Sanctuary spell?”
And there was Lorne, who Willow was already finding strangely comforting whenever he appeared, perhaps because of rather than in spite of the lamé jacket and perpetual clinking of ice cubes in his ever present Sea Breeze.
“Yes, exactly. The really safest way would be to take it out of this dimension completely, put it in a place of neutral space, so if it did explode it wouldn’t take anywhere else with it, then send the bomb back to where it came from and then return the hotel to this dimension again. But I don’t have the power to do that. The best I can do is to try to encase the hotel in an impenetrable mystical wall so that the force of the explosion can’t get through and…”
“Turn LA into Apocalypse Here?”
“Yes.”
Lorne sighed. “Time was Illyria could have managed that little dimension hop for you no trouble at all. But these days her Blueness isn’t running on the full demon-god unleaded. She can make a little time bubble, kick a few scaly beasties back to hell, but no more time bending. On the upside, she doesn’t try to kill us anything like as much these days and hardly ever throws Angel out of a thirtieth floor window.”
“How much juice do you need, Willow?” Xander enquired. “And is there a way we can jump start it to you?”
Lorne nodded. “A circle is always good. Hand holding. Maybe hold off on the singing of folk songs unless we particularly want Spike and Angel back in vamp face.”
“No.” Willow looked between them anxiously. “Everyone who isn’t absolutely necessary needs to be outside of the hotel.”
“Are you going to be inside the hotel?” Xander enquired.
“Yes, I have to do the spell from in here.”
“Then I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”
“No, you can’t, it’s too danger…”
He pointed to his eyepatch. “You’re arguing with the handicapped now? That’s low, Willow. And you may as well save your breath. You know I won’t leave you.”
“That goes for me too.” Willow looked up to find Buffy standing in the doorway, arms folded. “We do this together, the way we always do.”
“Wise words.” Giles stepped into the room. “Willow, before you waste your breath in arguing with us, you know we’re right. As you say, such a spell is going to take a tremendous concentration of energy. Buffy can lend you some of her Slayer strength. I have some magical abilities of my own, and Xander can…make his own unique contribution.”
Xander frowned. “You said that as if you weren’t being sarcastic. Are you ill?”
“Given that I’m talking to the man who once saved the world just by refusing to give up on a friend I don’t think sarcasm would be appropriate, do you? Or underestimating the power of true friendship.”
Lorne took another sip of his Sea Breeze. “Well, I can’t speak for the rest of our not so happy little family, kids, but I can tell you which side of the barrier I’m going to be on when this particular balloon goes up and, yes, it is the one with the view of the lobby. I’m not the greatest demon sorcerer in town, it’s true, but I have been known to cast the odd spell in my time and I can’t help thinking any circle that had me in it would be at least a cocktail stronger.”
“You don’t need to…” Willow began.
“Yes I do.” His red gaze met her green one. “Wes, Interrupted is my friend and – sweetheart, you hum when you’re anxious – you’re right in thinking the universe didn’t exactly usher him to the front of the queue when the breaks were being handed out. I’m alive in a world that isn’t overrun with all the wrong kind of demons right now because he was willing to give up his life for the rest of us. Seems to me it’s time the rest of us gave something back.”
“I second that.” Gunn smiled at Lorne gently. “Not saying I’ve got a lot in the mystical mojo line – that was always Wes’s area of expertise – but I can hold hands and chant with the best of them.”
Willow said urgently, “Which is all very nice and affirming and everything, except that there’s a good chance that the effort of removing the bomb from Wesley will cause me to black out and drop it, turning this hotel and everything in it into one blinding flash immediately followed by a big burning crater. If I didn’t have to be here – I would definitely want to be on the other side of that barrier and I think you all should be too.”
“I will lend you what power I still possess.” Illyria was so beautiful, Willow found herself thinking. She tried not to become hypnotized by her but it was difficult not to just stare and stare. Even though she was so inhuman, so chill and cool, like something made of marble that somehow walked and talked, there was something mesmerising in her pale blue eyes; and she liked the blue, really, as with the green on Lorne, it just suited her. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t have rather it was Fred standing here right now, because she so would a million times over, for Fred’s sake and for Wesley’s. She’d liked that sweet brainy talkative girl more than almost anyone she’d ever met. But, ironically, the strength an ancient god-king-blue-demony thing possessed might be a lot more use to her right now than even the humanity and brilliance of the fallen Fred. Illyria continued to gaze at her unblinkingly. “It is for Wesley’s sake that you risk your own life. He is…that is…he is of value to me.”
“He’s of value to all of us,” Gunn told her.
“So’s Willow,” Buffy added quietly. “And I don’t want her getting bent or broken. So, I suggest we pool our strength and our know-how and find a way to defuse Wes which doesn’t get us atomised in the process.”
Xander nodded. “I’m with Buffy on the not-dying aspects of this plan. I mean I’ll make the grand heroic gesture, certainly, but I’d quite like to get the credit for it without having to give up any body parts.”
Lorne downed his drink. “Well, I suggest a good night’s sleep, kittens. Well, okay, a few hours sleep at any rate. We’re going to need all the juice we can muster tomorrow to astrally Saran-wrap this place, not to mention making with the Rififi vibe as you Mission Impossible the nastiness out of our ticking time bomb boy.”
After a brief pause to translate what Lorne had just said into something approximating to English, Giles nodded. “Lorne’s right. Let’s grab some sleep and tackle this problem tomorrow. Willow, you’ve located the spell for the protection barrier, yes? And you know how to remove the bomb? It’s just a case of finding the inner strength and belief to accomplish those goals now. We both know you have a much better chance of succeeding if you’ve managed to replenish your energy levels.”
Buffy nodded. “Heed the brainy watcher, Will, he knows of what he speaks.”
Xander agreed solemnly: “Man in tweed speaks with tongue of truth.”
Giles looked between them resignedly. “Thank you for the – vote of confidence.”
Willow sighed and picked up the book she had been reading from which told her exactly what she needed to do while making it clear that no one witch, however powerful, could possibly do it. “I’m not going to be reading with a flashlight under the covers, I promise. But I do need to clasp this to my breast and whimper a little.”
“Whatever gets you through it,” Xander said gently.
As she passed Gunn he clasped her on the shoulder. “I know you can do this.”
“Sweetcakes,” Lorne nodded to her. “I don’t pretend my empathy is as finely tuned as it used to be before I got mixed up with this bunch of crazies, but you have to have one of the most open auras I ever encountered. Anagogic, nothing, I could pick you up on a cellphone, and let me tell you that when I tell you I know you can do this, I know you can do this. You can and you will. As long as you believe in yourself and do like the handsome Watcher told you and go and get your six hours of the dreamless.”
Willow was still clasping the book to her chest but she straightened up a little at that and nodded. “Positive thinking. I can do that.”
Lorne patted her on the arm. “That’s the spirit, little red riding hood.” Only when she was out of earshot did he pour himself a Sea Breeze that everyone noticed was very heavy on the vodka.
“When Willow was humming…?” Gunn broke off. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”
“Willow isn’t who’s twanging my radar, cupcake. It’s Wesley who’s making my fillings sing. I’d like to look into that boy’s future sometime and have it appear a little different.”
“Does it look like a big burning crater?” Xander enquired.
“No.” Lorne downed another drink with a few gulps. “It looks the way it always does – like a big ominous crossroads without a signpost in sight. I don’t know what that boy’s future is meant to be any more. Ever since Angel went off the rails with Darla, the world’s been shifted. It’s all about choices now. The ones we made, the ones still to make, and last time Wesley came up to a crossroads like this he took the wrong path.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying, pastrycakes, is that we can do this for him, sure enough, and maybe not kill ourselves in the process, but this is just the first step. There’s still a long way to go before that boy is back on his path again. I just hope he makes it.”
“And so say all of us.” They all turned in surprise to see Spike leaning in the doorway, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He leant across to chink it against Lorne’s glass. “If anyone can give him a shot it’s Red and say what you like about Watchers – and trust me, I have many a time – they can make more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. They’re like Orloi Demons. Even if you rip their hearts out, they still keep going through the motions until they get their second wind. I reckon life’s been kicking Wes where it hurts since he was barely out of nappies, but underneath the death wish I reckon there has to be a hunger for life in there somewhere. He just has to remember how it feels to be glad to be alive.”
“He says he does,” said Buffy quietly. “He says he wants to live.”
Spike nodded. “Good start then and I guess that makes it up to the rest of us to make sure he does. See you all first thing then for the hand-holding, chanting and odds on chance of getting blown to smithereens.”
“You’re staying?” Xander looked at him in confusion. “But you don’t even....”
“Wes is a mate.” Spike shrugged and then glanced across at Illyria. “And me and the blue meanie here, we’ve got kind of an understanding, shared bond if you like.”
“Based on having really freaky hair?”
“Based on wishing we’d shown more sense than to fall in love with a stupid human that could up and die on us any minute, but knowing that’s just the way it is now and as we can’t make it stop hurting we may as well embrace the pain.” He deliberately didn’t look at Buffy although she did give him a look of genuine compassion.
Illyria put her head on one side. “You mean the hollow place inside of us that feels as if it can never be filled?”
“And that damned warmth you get when they smile at you, like you’re warm again, like you’re alive, yeah, that’s the one.”
“If Wesley were to die....” Illyria flinched. “Even at the thought of such a happening the hollow feeling is there; it aches with cold, like ice upon flesh.”
“And it never goes away.” Spike glanced across at Buffy. “Not if they die on you. Never goes away. I know how it feels. Don’t want you feeling it too. Not your fault you hollowed out a human the rest of us loved and you’re all that’s left of her now. Don’t want you feeling empty for the rest of eternity. And like I said, Wes is a mate. Don’t say I can do much in the way of magic tricks but I can hold hands and look like a plonker as well as Long John Harris. Maybe some vampire strength wouldn’t go amiss either.”
Illyria put her head on one side and gazed at Xander curiously. “I think I understand this reference. You mock his infirmity?”
“It’s what we do when something hurts, Illyria. Doesn’t stop the pain but it makes it look as if it isn’t getting to you. See that eye patch of his? The son of a bitch who put out his eye did it right in front of me. I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. Was fast enough to kill I don’t know how many but I wasn’t fast enough – ”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Xander looked at him in surprise and dawning realization repeating gently: “It wasn’t your fault. You want to beat yourself up about the people you killed when you didn’t have a soul, be my guest, but this one isn’t on your conscience.”
As Spike began to shake his head, Xander cut in again: “You know I’m nothing if not honest when it comes to how I feel where you’re concerned, Spike, so believe me when I say there was nothing more you could have done than what you did. As far as I’m concerned you’re the reason I still have one eye left.”
Illyria flinched. “This room is full of pain and fear.”
“That’s what feeling means sometimes,” Giles told her. “What it means to be human or half human or once human or corrupted by humanity just because you’re capable of loving them. But there are other feelings too. There’s...”
Illyria quoted softly: “‘There’s love. There’s hope...for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy.... That your life will lead you to some joy.... That after everything...you can still be surprised.’“
They all looked at her in surprise; Lorne getting it first. “Wesley said that to you?”
“Yes.”
Lorne looked across at Gunn who smiled for the first time in what felt like a very long time. “Maybe he’s not so far off his path as you think.”
Lorne smiled back at him. “Maybe he’s not at that.”
***
Temps Perdu, Part Five
As he came down the stairs, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone, Gunn saw the lamp was on in the office. “Wes…?”
It was so much Wesley’s habit to be researching all night that it didn’t occur to him it could be anyone else until the man looked up and he saw to his surprise that it was Giles.
“Giles?” Gunn came on into the office and shut the door. “What’s up?”
Giles didn’t beat around the bush, Gunn could say that for him. “Are you going to be a party to this madness of Angel’s?”
Gunn sighed and sat down in the next most comfortable chair. “I want to keep Wes safe too.”
“At any price?”
“If Wesley doesn’t mind....”
“Wesley isn’t in his right mind. He isn’t capable of making a rational decision right now. He trusts Angel so –”
“He trusts Angel for a reason,” Gunn pointed out. “Angel kept him alive in that place. Angel went in there for no other reason than that he thought Wesley might have a chance with him that he wouldn’t have without him. And Wes has been crazy before, and even when he’s crazy he’s usually pretty sane.”
“Like when he stabbed you?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Because I deserved it.” As Giles still didn’t seem to get it, Gunn decided to spell it out for him. “What happened today, that wasn’t a magic trick. Under demon law Wesley willingly bound himself to Angel. You’re choking on it because you think that isn’t what happened, that Angel’s taking advantage of Wesley’s temporary dependency on him. But the truth is that Wesley did bind himself to Angel. He needed a cause and Angel was the cause he chose. He offered him an oath of loyalty and then he sealed it in blood.”
“He fed a starving friend.”
“A starving friend who the last time he saw him had tried to smother him with a pillow. Giles, don’t kid yourself. Wesley’s okay with this. Would I be happier if he wasn’t? Hell, yeah, but I’m not going to pretend things aren’t the way they are.” Gunn realized how tired he was and put a hand up to his head, feeling his shaven skull, the warmth of bare skin, proof that he was himself again.
“And you’re still in agreement that Wesley should make himself a legal possession of Angel’s?”
“He already is. Legally. Any demon court in the pan dimensional universe is going to find that Wesley has pledged himself to Angel the man and Angel the cause, because that’s the truth. All Angel is doing is making something some of us maybe find a little hard to swallow an unavoidable fact.”
“What he’s doing is claiming Wesley as his personal possession and getting Wesley to acquiesce to the plan. What he’s doing is enslaving his friend. I don’t trust Angel’s judgement the way you do, Gunn. I believe he wants to keep Wesley safe but I also believe that he has no moral objection to this morally objectionable plan because in his heart of hearts he thinks Wesley does belong to him. And that sticks in my craw more than somewhat.”
“Then take it up with Wesley because he obviously believes it too. Otherwise he’d be Katorakan’s property by now.” Gunn met the man’s eye. “Giles, face it, the problem here isn’t Angel, it’s Wesley. You’re not mad at Angel for proposing this plan, you’re mad at Wesley for going along with it. Because we both know he will. He’ll let Angel brand him with any mark of ownership he likes.”
Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. “And you’re going to go along with it?”
“I’m saying whether Angel brands Wesley with his initials or not, Wesley still belongs to Angel because Wesley made that decision a long time ago, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. One little brand of ownership doesn’t make any difference to who Wesley is or how the rest of us see him or how he and Angel behave to one another. Trust me, compared with all the rest of the shit he’s been through and will probably go through in the future, it’s nothing.”
“That’s a bleak forecast, Charles, but I fear it’s probably accurate.”
They both spun around in horror to find Wesley standing in the doorway. The smile he gave Gunn was unexpectedly sweet. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just wanted a cup of tea.” As they both kept staring at him, he edged past them to where the kettle was, picked it up to test its weight, and then switched it on. “I was thirsty,” he added.
“Yes, of course.” Giles recovered himself.
“Blood loss will do that,” Gunn added.
Giles took a deep breath. “Wesley, about this ‘ownership’ arrangement Angel seems to have his heart so set upon…?”
“I don’t care.” Wesley put a teabag into a mug. “And yes, I know I probably should, but the fact is I don’t. And whether we like it or don’t – and I think a lot of the time we really don’t – we have all nailed Angel’s colours to our mast a long time ago, and it’s too late to take them down now. We chose our path or it chose us but either way our lives are too entwined with Angel’s now for any of us to just walk away.”
“You will be legally Angel’s property.” Giles took the kettle from Wesley and poured out the tea for both of them. “Technically, I suppose you will be Angelus’s property too.”
“By demon law, yes.” Wesley shrugged. “But most of the time demon law doesn’t really impinge upon us and when it does I think it would be more to my advantage than not.”
“But how can you not mind giving up…?”
Wesley interrupted him quietly: “Because I’m tired, Giles, probably not entirely sane, and because, as I mentioned before, I don’t care. I trust Angel. Absolutely.”
“The man who stole your memories? The man who locked those lawyers in a wine cellar? This is the person you ‘trust absolutely’?” Giles handed Wesley his tea.
Wesley took the cup and gave Giles a rueful smile. “We did cover the not entirely sane thing, didn’t we?”
On the landing of the Hyperion Buffy looked across at Angel. “I suppose you can hear everything they’re saying down there?”
“Yes.” Angel added some vodka to her glass and to his own. Lorne had been kind enough to pour him and Wesley a drink before heading off to look for tylenol, but Angel had shared the Sea Breeze with Buffy instead. The last thing Wesley needed right now in his opinion was to muddle his already fragile mind with alcohol. Probably a decision he should have let Wesley make, of course. No doubt that was what Giles would say, and he would probably be right. Lorne had looked wrecked and in need of some of that vodka himself, but before Angel could ask him what was wrong the demon had told him that his head was boiling like a furnace and anyone who tried to talk to him using words that made any sound louder than a whisper would do so at his peril.
Buffy nudged him. “So, what are they saying?”
Angel shrugged. “That Wes is crazy and it’s mostly my fault. That I have no right to call him my property. That it makes no difference because Wes will always do what I want just because I want it and just because of who he is, which is just exactly what I’ve made him.”
“That isn’t true.” There was a pause before she said with less confidence. “Is it?”
He took another sip of vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice, thinking he would have preferred whisky. The good old Irish kind he’d used to drink in the good old Irish days. When he’d been human and never thought to take a minute to be grateful for that state of being because what other state was there? “I have to protect him, Buffy.”
“I know.” She spoke gently, not judging him.
“He used to be whole. He used to be sane.”
“I’ve made my share of mistakes. People have died because of choices that I’ve made. Xander has an eyepatch where his left eye used to be because of choices I’ve made. I don’t have the right to judge you or blame you. I believe you’ve done everything you’ve done because you thought it was right or because you were trying to protect the people around you. That doesn’t mean you haven’t made mistakes or that other people didn’t end up paying for them.”
“He used to have one set of memories in his head and all of them were true.”
“Why did you do it?”
“The mindwipe? I did it to protect Connor. I figured we’d all done our part to drive him to becoming the person he was, we could all pay something of the price for it. I thought we’d have to make compromises, worry about corruption. But Cordy never truly woke up from that coma, and Fred paid with her life. The decisions they made…I don’t know what they would have decided if they’d remembered everything. Part of the reason why Wesley signed up was because he thought the records might be useful, all those files, a means to investigate the Senior Partners. He didn’t remember that records can be falsified. That even prophecies can lie.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” Buffy took another sip of her drink. “He would have followed you to Wolfram & Hart whoever’s memories he had. When the last thing he remembered was you trying to suffocate him he still pulled you out of the sea. He’s bound to you. They all are. And to each other. I know how that works. I know how it sucks, too. Watching your friends get taken away in an ambulance. Watching them lose themselves. Willow started studying magic to help me. It nearly swallowed her whole. Xander could be blind now. He almost was. I don’t even want to start on what I did to Spike, because he didn’t matter, and everything inside me hurt so what did I care if he was suffering too....”
“Okay, beating yourself up about Spike – that really is ridiculous.”
She smiled despite herself. “You two have elevated petty to a whole new level.”
He shrugged. “We try.”
She paused before saying delicately: “I’m not a great thinker either, but Giles and Willow and Wesley are, so they’re going to work it out even if we don’t say anything. They probably already have. That demon guy was selling you to his enemy. An enemy who lives inside a fortress. You’d be significant. He’d look at you. Check you out. But in a world where humans don’t matter how closely would look at anyone look at Wesley…?”
“Just say it.” Angel finished his drink one gulp.
“Do you think Wesley’s a walking bomb?”
He swallowed the vodka, grateful for the burn of it on the back of his throat. He definitely missed that whisky. Not that it would taste the way it used to. Nothing did. Only blood had its full range of flavour. But he would have liked some of it all the same. “I think it’s possible.”
“We’ll defuse it.” She took Angel by the arms and made him look at her. “Angel, believe me. You’re not going to lose another friend.”
“What if that’s my real destiny? To be the cause of murdering everyone I’ve ever loved? I started off down that track when I was barely out of the coffin womb. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done. All the murder and mayhem Drusilla caused, and Spike, and Penn, as well as my own crimes. Maybe no one can ever pay for that level of bloodshed. Maybe all I’ve done by trying to atone is murder more innocents.”
She pulled his head down gently and rested her forehead against his. “That isn’t what happened, Angel.”
“Cordy and Fred used to be alive and Wesley used to be whole. And Gunn used to be so full of confidence. He knew exactly who he was like no one else walking the earth. How did I turn Wesley into a guy who wakes up screaming? Gunn into a guy who thought he was nothing without a lot of stolen knowledge in his brain? What did I do to them, Buffy?”
“In Cordelia’s vision of another reality I lost my arm to the Kungai demon.”
They turned to find Wesley slowly walking up the stairs, evidently finding the climb exhausting, particularly with his concentration fixed on his cup of tea, but doing it anyway, step by step.
“It was a lie,” Angel reminded him. “A lot of stuff made up by Skip so they could demonise her.”
“Okay then, supposing that without you I would have kept my arm after all, I would still have died in that fire.”
Angel sighed. “Wes, you only almost died in the fire because you were working for me, remember?”
“Are you saying you don’t think Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, rogue demon hunter, would have earned himself the enmity of Wolfram & Hart unaided?”
“I’m saying maybe I wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Wesley made a dismissive noise and helpfully explained, “That sound is usually denoted as ‘pshaw’. I could add a ‘poppycock’ for clarity if you like.”
Angel gazed at him fondly. “Why are you even up, crazy watcher boy?”
Wesley held up his teacup. “I have eight months of tea-deprivation to make up for.”
“How does it feel to be bonded to a demon?” Buffy asked.
“So far it seems like a sinecure to me. The hours aren’t too bad and the work is minimal. And yes, I guessed it had to be a bomb after Katorakan made such a fuss. Nothing else made sense. That’s why I sang for Lorne.”
“Singing for Lorne.” Angel nodded. “Of course. Good idea. Did he…?”
“Three days.” Wesley took another sip of tea. “I’ll spend two of those working on research but then I’m going to rent a car and drive into the desert. I’m really not interested in finding out how big a crater I can make in a densely populated area.”
“We’ll defuse it,” Buffy told him. “I promise you we will.”
“I promised Fred she wouldn’t die.” Wesley drained his tea and held out the cup to Angel who took it automatically. “Sometimes you can’t fix things however much you want to. Either way, a device powerful enough to take out a fortress is going to pack something of a punch. I imagine I won’t feel a thing. Like Lilah when I cut off her head. Do you realize, Angel, that every woman I have dated over the past six years except for Virginia, is now dead? Poor Cordy. If I’m the black widower of Angel Investigations it does seem hard that she had to pay so high a price for one measly dance and one very bad kiss.”
“Wes, they didn’t die because of you.”
Wesley glanced at Angel mildly. “Oh, of course not, because they died because of you, didn’t they? I was forgetting that everything that happens on this planet has to be your fault.”
“It was my fault.”
“They made their own choices. So did I. You didn’t manacle me to those offices. I wanted to stay. I still want to stay. If I get the chance to go on staying I’ll be grateful.”
“So will I.” Angel gazed into his eyes. “I’ll be very grateful.”
Wesley sniffed Angel’s glass and then shook his head. “We really need some single malt.”
“You really need some sleep,” Angel countered.
For the first time Wesley let down his guard enough and they both saw the flicker of vulnerability as he gazed at the open door of the room in which he had suffered so many nightmares. “Will you…?”
“I’ll come now.” Angel took his arm. “It’s past my bedtime. And ever since I passed my quarter millennium I find I really need my beauty sleep.”
Wesley looked relieved. “You don’t look a day over two hundred to me.”
“Do you want to find out what happens to my bonded human slaves who give me jip?”
“It’s oddly disturbing to find that the more time that goes by, the more often I’m forced to agree that Spike may have a point about you....”
Angel nodded to Buffy who smiled back at him a little sadly. There was no one who understood ‘love me, love my crazy friends’ better than her, but the fact remained that they were two champions needed to fight separate battles and ultimately they were going to be going in different directions. For the moment he was just enjoying the rare luxury of her being a guest in his home.
He helped Wesley over to the bed and pulled back the covers, then coaxed the man out of his robe. For all his ability to hold a conversation, Wesley looked pale with exhaustion. Angel had to catch his arm as he swayed, and then hold onto him as he more or less fell into the bed, lowering him gently. He pulled off his own clothes swiftly, refusing to think about Giles looking down his nose at him, as if this was about taking advantage of Wesley instead of taking care of him. On Askaroth in their slave cage they had curled together naked and within a short time even Wesley had thought nothing of it. He resented the soft cotton of Wesley’s pyjamas, afraid it would muffle the warmth of his body, the beat of his heart. But then he had his arms wrapped around his friend and Wesley sighed in relief, feeling safe, Angel could tell, hearing his heartbeat slow a little, calming as the sense of peace spread through him. Angel stroked Wesley’s hair absently, still finding it strange to get used to these soft clean locks after the tangled knots of before.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised him. “Because nothing and no one is going to make me lose another friend, not after Doyle and Cordy and Fred. Certainly no dumb mystical bomb.”
But Wesley was already sleep, breathing even, heartbeat regular, despite his bondage to a demon, despite the attempt to snatch him back to Askaroth, despite the bomb ticking somewhere inside him, just because he was in Angel’s arms and therefore, evidently, safe. Angel heard again Wesley saying: “Because…I trust Angel. Absolutely.” And realized once again how true that was. He just wished he could have felt as confident as Wesley evidently did that he really deserved that trust.
***
Willow could feel the bomb. When she closed her eyes she could visualize it too. It glowed with darkness, spherical, but with wires protruding from it, delicate tendrils designed to send the mystical force contained within it exploding outwards in all directions. If its intent had been less ugly she might have thought it beautiful. She held the memory of the sigils on Wesley’s body, the mark on his chest, in her mind, and examined the bomb from all angles. The markings were in a language she didn’t recognize but it no longer mattered. Her power had grown to a point where she knew what it said. Outside of Wesley’s body she could have defused it easily, but that was why it had been hidden in a warm-blooded human form. The variables of Wesley’s body temperature, his heart rate, his pulse and breath had all been incorporated into the protective spell that kept the bomb shielded. If Wesley were killed, the bomb would detonate. If any attempt was made to cut him open while his heart was still beating, the tendrils would be severed and the bomb would detonate. It could only be rendered harmless through powerful magic; magic so powerful she feared that it might drain her into unconsciousness, something very dangerous for everyone, given that, if she fainted in the middle of extracting the bomb, her magic would slip and it would explode.
It had to be done quickly, that was clear. This was a place of mystical convergence; it had been seeped in magic in the past, both good and bad; demons would always have been drawn here; it was no doubt why Angel had been drawn here. It had sufficient power of its own that a perimeter spell might work; a way to contain the blast if she failed. Wesley driving out into the desert was not an option, of course. There was a point where the suffering had to stop; where good things had to happen to good people instead of always bad, worse, worst. She had listened when Gunn had been talking earlier and heard it all; Wesley’s history, from abusive childhood, locked in the dark by a father who didn’t love him, to a lonely adolescence with no friends; to Sunnydale and rejection, to LA and acceptance, and then the prophecy, his noble but ultimately worthless sacrifice in trying to save Connor and instead condemning him to a Hell dimension. So ironic and so very unfair that the man who had been prepared to risk everything to save that baby from an untimely death had been the one responsible for setting him on the path to insanity that had so nearly claimed his life. Then had come Angel’s murderous attack on Wesley; Fred, Gunn and Cordy’s rigid drawing of lines in the sand; Wesley an outcast, sleeping with the enemy, no, sleeping with a human woman who had, Angel had maintained, come to love him, and whose head he had to separate from her corpse after death. Then Angel’s deal: Connor’s new life for their memories, a deal with Wolfram & Hart that had almost swallowed them all whole. A decision that had failed to save Cordelia, failed to save Fred, driven Wesley insane with grief, and then, after some seers for the Senior Partners had taken a look into some magic mirror, there had been their insistence that Angel had broken their agreement and been plotting against them.
Then, as Angel was still arguing with them, had come the unleashing of the apocalypse through that jagged gateway into a hell dimension, just as Wesley had translated the sacred scroll they had stolen from the Senior Partners which said that this was the Cauldron of Hell. As flame and smoke billowed through the rip between this dimension and the next, Wesley had conjured from the scroll the clue by which a ‘learnèd mortal man’ might yet close it; the word ‘Efnisien’ burning itself onto the parchment.
“Of course…!” Wesley had exclaimed. “The Cauldron exists to bring forth the dead and so can only be shattered by a live man entering it willingly.” Then he had run for the rip between the worlds, before anyone could lay a hand upon him to hold him back, just as Buffy had done to close a mouth to another dimension in her time; and, as with Buffy, he had known this was a one-way trip. But Angel, although he had been too slow to prevent Wesley throwing himself into the void, had been fast enough to throw himself after him a second before the chasm had closed and Gunn, Lorne, Spike and Illyria had found themselves on the sidewalk outside the smoking ruins of the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, owning nothing but the clothes they were wearing and the weapons they were holding. But in their own world with the gateway to hell closed again and no demon hordes overrunning the earth. Well, no more demon hordes than were already overrunning it anyway.
That made Wesley more than just a man who had spent his life trying to do what was right for the greater good, that made him a bona fide hero in Willow’s book, and heroes didn’t deserve to be ripped apart by mystical booby traps set by slave-dealing demons. They deserved to have some life and health and happiness. She just hoped there was a way that she could save Wesley that wasn’t going to involve killing herself or anyone else.
“Hey, Will…”
She looked up to find Xander standing in the doorway looking at her compassionately. “Would I be right in thinking you might like a little help?”
She gazed at her childhood friend, still not reconciled to the eye patch; she would never ever be reconciled to the eye patch, the injustice of what the good fight had cost him. Angel had told her that was an accusation a policewoman had levelled at him once, that while he and the other champions fought their grand battles of good and evil, it was the ordinary mortals who paid the price. Xander wasn’t a Slayer or a warlock or any part demon. He was just a human male, whom she loved more than she believed she could have loved any brother, would always love perhaps more than anyone else upon the planet; fragile and fallible and so horribly easy to maim.
She tossed aside her pencil. “You would be right.”
“Research help? Tea brewing help? Or just plain massage the kinks out of your shoulders help?”
“Moral support help. But I’m reserving the right to ask for all the other kinds of help as well.”
“Not looking too shiny for Wes right now?” He sat down next to her and rubbed her back comfortingly.
“I think I’ve found a spell to do it.”
“Well, that’s great.” He gave her an encouraging look and then must have read her expression correctly. “Okay, there’s a snag. What’s the snag?”
“The only safe way to do this – safe for the people in LA – is to wrap the hotel in a…”
“Super fuelled version of the Sanctuary spell?”
And there was Lorne, who Willow was already finding strangely comforting whenever he appeared, perhaps because of rather than in spite of the lamé jacket and perpetual clinking of ice cubes in his ever present Sea Breeze.
“Yes, exactly. The really safest way would be to take it out of this dimension completely, put it in a place of neutral space, so if it did explode it wouldn’t take anywhere else with it, then send the bomb back to where it came from and then return the hotel to this dimension again. But I don’t have the power to do that. The best I can do is to try to encase the hotel in an impenetrable mystical wall so that the force of the explosion can’t get through and…”
“Turn LA into Apocalypse Here?”
“Yes.”
Lorne sighed. “Time was Illyria could have managed that little dimension hop for you no trouble at all. But these days her Blueness isn’t running on the full demon-god unleaded. She can make a little time bubble, kick a few scaly beasties back to hell, but no more time bending. On the upside, she doesn’t try to kill us anything like as much these days and hardly ever throws Angel out of a thirtieth floor window.”
“How much juice do you need, Willow?” Xander enquired. “And is there a way we can jump start it to you?”
Lorne nodded. “A circle is always good. Hand holding. Maybe hold off on the singing of folk songs unless we particularly want Spike and Angel back in vamp face.”
“No.” Willow looked between them anxiously. “Everyone who isn’t absolutely necessary needs to be outside of the hotel.”
“Are you going to be inside the hotel?” Xander enquired.
“Yes, I have to do the spell from in here.”
“Then I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”
“No, you can’t, it’s too danger…”
He pointed to his eyepatch. “You’re arguing with the handicapped now? That’s low, Willow. And you may as well save your breath. You know I won’t leave you.”
“That goes for me too.” Willow looked up to find Buffy standing in the doorway, arms folded. “We do this together, the way we always do.”
“Wise words.” Giles stepped into the room. “Willow, before you waste your breath in arguing with us, you know we’re right. As you say, such a spell is going to take a tremendous concentration of energy. Buffy can lend you some of her Slayer strength. I have some magical abilities of my own, and Xander can…make his own unique contribution.”
Xander frowned. “You said that as if you weren’t being sarcastic. Are you ill?”
“Given that I’m talking to the man who once saved the world just by refusing to give up on a friend I don’t think sarcasm would be appropriate, do you? Or underestimating the power of true friendship.”
Lorne took another sip of his Sea Breeze. “Well, I can’t speak for the rest of our not so happy little family, kids, but I can tell you which side of the barrier I’m going to be on when this particular balloon goes up and, yes, it is the one with the view of the lobby. I’m not the greatest demon sorcerer in town, it’s true, but I have been known to cast the odd spell in my time and I can’t help thinking any circle that had me in it would be at least a cocktail stronger.”
“You don’t need to…” Willow began.
“Yes I do.” His red gaze met her green one. “Wes, Interrupted is my friend and – sweetheart, you hum when you’re anxious – you’re right in thinking the universe didn’t exactly usher him to the front of the queue when the breaks were being handed out. I’m alive in a world that isn’t overrun with all the wrong kind of demons right now because he was willing to give up his life for the rest of us. Seems to me it’s time the rest of us gave something back.”
“I second that.” Gunn smiled at Lorne gently. “Not saying I’ve got a lot in the mystical mojo line – that was always Wes’s area of expertise – but I can hold hands and chant with the best of them.”
Willow said urgently, “Which is all very nice and affirming and everything, except that there’s a good chance that the effort of removing the bomb from Wesley will cause me to black out and drop it, turning this hotel and everything in it into one blinding flash immediately followed by a big burning crater. If I didn’t have to be here – I would definitely want to be on the other side of that barrier and I think you all should be too.”
“I will lend you what power I still possess.” Illyria was so beautiful, Willow found herself thinking. She tried not to become hypnotized by her but it was difficult not to just stare and stare. Even though she was so inhuman, so chill and cool, like something made of marble that somehow walked and talked, there was something mesmerising in her pale blue eyes; and she liked the blue, really, as with the green on Lorne, it just suited her. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t have rather it was Fred standing here right now, because she so would a million times over, for Fred’s sake and for Wesley’s. She’d liked that sweet brainy talkative girl more than almost anyone she’d ever met. But, ironically, the strength an ancient god-king-blue-demony thing possessed might be a lot more use to her right now than even the humanity and brilliance of the fallen Fred. Illyria continued to gaze at her unblinkingly. “It is for Wesley’s sake that you risk your own life. He is…that is…he is of value to me.”
“He’s of value to all of us,” Gunn told her.
“So’s Willow,” Buffy added quietly. “And I don’t want her getting bent or broken. So, I suggest we pool our strength and our know-how and find a way to defuse Wes which doesn’t get us atomised in the process.”
Xander nodded. “I’m with Buffy on the not-dying aspects of this plan. I mean I’ll make the grand heroic gesture, certainly, but I’d quite like to get the credit for it without having to give up any body parts.”
Lorne downed his drink. “Well, I suggest a good night’s sleep, kittens. Well, okay, a few hours sleep at any rate. We’re going to need all the juice we can muster tomorrow to astrally Saran-wrap this place, not to mention making with the Rififi vibe as you Mission Impossible the nastiness out of our ticking time bomb boy.”
After a brief pause to translate what Lorne had just said into something approximating to English, Giles nodded. “Lorne’s right. Let’s grab some sleep and tackle this problem tomorrow. Willow, you’ve located the spell for the protection barrier, yes? And you know how to remove the bomb? It’s just a case of finding the inner strength and belief to accomplish those goals now. We both know you have a much better chance of succeeding if you’ve managed to replenish your energy levels.”
Buffy nodded. “Heed the brainy watcher, Will, he knows of what he speaks.”
Xander agreed solemnly: “Man in tweed speaks with tongue of truth.”
Giles looked between them resignedly. “Thank you for the – vote of confidence.”
Willow sighed and picked up the book she had been reading from which told her exactly what she needed to do while making it clear that no one witch, however powerful, could possibly do it. “I’m not going to be reading with a flashlight under the covers, I promise. But I do need to clasp this to my breast and whimper a little.”
“Whatever gets you through it,” Xander said gently.
As she passed Gunn he clasped her on the shoulder. “I know you can do this.”
“Sweetcakes,” Lorne nodded to her. “I don’t pretend my empathy is as finely tuned as it used to be before I got mixed up with this bunch of crazies, but you have to have one of the most open auras I ever encountered. Anagogic, nothing, I could pick you up on a cellphone, and let me tell you that when I tell you I know you can do this, I know you can do this. You can and you will. As long as you believe in yourself and do like the handsome Watcher told you and go and get your six hours of the dreamless.”
Willow was still clasping the book to her chest but she straightened up a little at that and nodded. “Positive thinking. I can do that.”
Lorne patted her on the arm. “That’s the spirit, little red riding hood.” Only when she was out of earshot did he pour himself a Sea Breeze that everyone noticed was very heavy on the vodka.
“When Willow was humming…?” Gunn broke off. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”
“Willow isn’t who’s twanging my radar, cupcake. It’s Wesley who’s making my fillings sing. I’d like to look into that boy’s future sometime and have it appear a little different.”
“Does it look like a big burning crater?” Xander enquired.
“No.” Lorne downed another drink with a few gulps. “It looks the way it always does – like a big ominous crossroads without a signpost in sight. I don’t know what that boy’s future is meant to be any more. Ever since Angel went off the rails with Darla, the world’s been shifted. It’s all about choices now. The ones we made, the ones still to make, and last time Wesley came up to a crossroads like this he took the wrong path.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying, pastrycakes, is that we can do this for him, sure enough, and maybe not kill ourselves in the process, but this is just the first step. There’s still a long way to go before that boy is back on his path again. I just hope he makes it.”
“And so say all of us.” They all turned in surprise to see Spike leaning in the doorway, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He leant across to chink it against Lorne’s glass. “If anyone can give him a shot it’s Red and say what you like about Watchers – and trust me, I have many a time – they can make more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. They’re like Orloi Demons. Even if you rip their hearts out, they still keep going through the motions until they get their second wind. I reckon life’s been kicking Wes where it hurts since he was barely out of nappies, but underneath the death wish I reckon there has to be a hunger for life in there somewhere. He just has to remember how it feels to be glad to be alive.”
“He says he does,” said Buffy quietly. “He says he wants to live.”
Spike nodded. “Good start then and I guess that makes it up to the rest of us to make sure he does. See you all first thing then for the hand-holding, chanting and odds on chance of getting blown to smithereens.”
“You’re staying?” Xander looked at him in confusion. “But you don’t even....”
“Wes is a mate.” Spike shrugged and then glanced across at Illyria. “And me and the blue meanie here, we’ve got kind of an understanding, shared bond if you like.”
“Based on having really freaky hair?”
“Based on wishing we’d shown more sense than to fall in love with a stupid human that could up and die on us any minute, but knowing that’s just the way it is now and as we can’t make it stop hurting we may as well embrace the pain.” He deliberately didn’t look at Buffy although she did give him a look of genuine compassion.
Illyria put her head on one side. “You mean the hollow place inside of us that feels as if it can never be filled?”
“And that damned warmth you get when they smile at you, like you’re warm again, like you’re alive, yeah, that’s the one.”
“If Wesley were to die....” Illyria flinched. “Even at the thought of such a happening the hollow feeling is there; it aches with cold, like ice upon flesh.”
“And it never goes away.” Spike glanced across at Buffy. “Not if they die on you. Never goes away. I know how it feels. Don’t want you feeling it too. Not your fault you hollowed out a human the rest of us loved and you’re all that’s left of her now. Don’t want you feeling empty for the rest of eternity. And like I said, Wes is a mate. Don’t say I can do much in the way of magic tricks but I can hold hands and look like a plonker as well as Long John Harris. Maybe some vampire strength wouldn’t go amiss either.”
Illyria put her head on one side and gazed at Xander curiously. “I think I understand this reference. You mock his infirmity?”
“It’s what we do when something hurts, Illyria. Doesn’t stop the pain but it makes it look as if it isn’t getting to you. See that eye patch of his? The son of a bitch who put out his eye did it right in front of me. I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. Was fast enough to kill I don’t know how many but I wasn’t fast enough – ”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Xander looked at him in surprise and dawning realization repeating gently: “It wasn’t your fault. You want to beat yourself up about the people you killed when you didn’t have a soul, be my guest, but this one isn’t on your conscience.”
As Spike began to shake his head, Xander cut in again: “You know I’m nothing if not honest when it comes to how I feel where you’re concerned, Spike, so believe me when I say there was nothing more you could have done than what you did. As far as I’m concerned you’re the reason I still have one eye left.”
Illyria flinched. “This room is full of pain and fear.”
“That’s what feeling means sometimes,” Giles told her. “What it means to be human or half human or once human or corrupted by humanity just because you’re capable of loving them. But there are other feelings too. There’s...”
Illyria quoted softly: “‘There’s love. There’s hope...for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy.... That your life will lead you to some joy.... That after everything...you can still be surprised.’“
They all looked at her in surprise; Lorne getting it first. “Wesley said that to you?”
“Yes.”
Lorne looked across at Gunn who smiled for the first time in what felt like a very long time. “Maybe he’s not so far off his path as you think.”
Lorne smiled back at him. “Maybe he’s not at that.”
***
