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Shadows, Part Six

 

Giles forced himself to concentrate on the scroll. Despite half of it being written in languages with which he was not familiar, there were illustrations to give him points of reference and Wesley had brought some books with him from LA he could use to help translate the unfamiliar script. Luckily, Wesley had concentrated on the passages in Minithian code text, and he and Dawn were now using it as a reference to try to work out the passages that followed.

 

“Look.” Dawn pounced on another piece of paper slipped into the Latin translations of some ancient demonic prophecies that Wesley had been referring to. She saw some clearly printed notes in Wesley’s hand and passed it over.

 

‘In Sengalan the verb is always the last glyph in a sentence. Sentences are divided by this symbol fso the symbol preceding it will always tell you what is happening in the sentence. Concentrate on the verbs to give yourself a framework of reference. There are definite Sengalan influences on Archaic Sumerian cuneiform so look there first. This scroll appears to date from around the time of the Sargonic dynasty and was, I believe, inscribed in this dimension, probably by a scribe following the dictation of a demonic overlord. My assumption is that the scribe was actually a Semitic Akkadian who was not entirely familiar with the Sumerian script as there are several inconsistencies even in the formation of the glyphs which closely resemble the Sumerian cuneiform familiar from administrative texts of Lagash…’

 

Light dawned and Giles sat up straighter. “Of course. Perhaps not archaic cuneiform proper as it contained very few words of relevance to this scroll but if we start with Old Sumerian…”

 

Dawn held out another piece of paper, looking oddly sombre given that this was the nearest thing they had to a breakthrough in what had been looking like an almost impossible task. “He’s broken down a passage translation word by word here.”

 

Giles was delighted to see that Wesley had circled the word and its place in his translation and joined each with a line so there could be no confusion as to which symbol represented each word. “This is extremely helpful.”

 

Dawn looked tragic. “But that means he was thinking the whole time he was translating this that he was going to die.”

 

“No, Dawn,” Giles said gently. “It means he was trained by the Watchers’ Council, and that’s how we’re taught to translate – so that if some mishap does befall us, our notes will still be of value to our replacement. It really is standard procedure. Like showing one’s workings in a mathematical problem.”

 

“Yes, because you all think you might die at any minute.”

 

“Well, we do have a mortality rate somewhat higher than the national average,” Giles conceded. “But I think on the whole we manage not to dwell on it too much.” He looked across at Wesley and saw that Tara and Willow were once again attending to him instead of spell research. Tara was holding his hand and Willow mopping his brow. “Willow…” he reproved gently. As she gave him a begging look he said, “I’m sure that Cordelia or Winifred would have no objection to…”

 

Cordelia practically elbowed Willow out of the way, she was there so fast, and Winifred was only a beat behind her, saying breathlessly, “Yes, we can take care of him.”

 

“I’m not doing anything,” Gunn said quickly. “And Fred and Cordy are better at that research thing than I am.” Cordelia hit Gunn with an ‘I’ll get you later’ look that Giles recognized of old while Winifred looked tragically accusing.

 

Giles looked across at them with his own brand of accusation. “You’re in the habit of researching for Angel?”

 

“Well, only because Wesley wasn’t around…” Winifred began unwillingly.

 

“Well, he’s not around now.” Giles pointed to the books. “Amulets, preferably triadic, methods of destruction, if you please.”

 

Looking exactly like schoolgirls who did not want to do their homework, Cordelia and Winifred made vague fussing motions over Wesley, straightening his blankets and stroking his hair back from his forehead before they reluctantly picked up the books at which Giles was pointing and began to research.

 

“The fastest way to save Wesley is to destroy the amulet. As soon as it’s destroyed, we can take him to the hospital without fear of setting slavering Hukkarish upon an unsuspecting Sunnydale population.” He wondered how many times he was going to have to point it out before people stopped looking at him as if he drowned kittens for fun and grasped what he was telling them.

 

Lorne was already by Wesley’s bedside and gave Gunn a quelling look. “You go and polish your axe. I’ll do the brow mopping.”

 

“I was the one who took care of him after he got shot.”

 

“Really? I thought that was the intensive care unit.” Lorne regarded him levelly. “Move over, Florence Nightingunn and let me do some tending and mending here.”

 

 

Angel was aware of Wesley the whole time he worked on other things; the same way he was aware of Buffy; this burning place in the room which kept drawing his attention. Giles, Dawn, Willow, Tara, Cordelia and Fred were all huddled around the big table they had brought from the Magic Box. They sounded like turning pages and the scratching of pen nibs on paper; an occasional murmur of comparison, the searching for another book. Xander sounded like hammering and Gunn and Groo like people assisting, earnestly in Groo’s case, and despondently in Gunn’s. Buffy and Faith prowled quietly, testing boundaries, directing Groo, Gunn and Xander’s attention to any weak areas. Anya was in charge of replenishing the teapot and checking the provisions. But it was Lorne he was the most aware of, that quiet comforting murmur of Lorne trying to talk Wesley through his delirium, to be the safety line anchoring him to sanity and life.

 

“It’s okay, sweetpea… You’re not back there now… You’re here, and, okay, let’s not pretend being on the inside of an art deco mansion with a lot of slavering Hukkarish outside just waiting to get in is the best place on the planet to be right now, but it’s still better than inside your head…”

 

There had been a time when no one had known the inside of Wesley’s head better than Angel had. Even now, when Wesley flinched and hunched and warded off imaginary things that dwelled in darkness, Angel suspected he was the only one who knew that right now Wesley was mentally locked under the stairs and that it was his father who had put him there. No one else had heard what the Ethros demon had said but Angel was never going to forget it; that had been a moment of searing clarity for him where Wesley made the kind of sense a mathematical formula made when every number clicked into place. “All those hours locked up under the stairs and you still weren’t good enough.  Not good enough for Daddy, not good enough for the Council.”

 

He still couldn’t marry them up in his mind. The guy he had thought he knew so well; thought he was communicating with like no one else; thought he understood; thought understood him and trusted him, believed in him even; and the guy who had stolen his son from right under his nose, traded on Angel’s trust, been so convinced of the evil inside Angel that he had done something so terrible and so reckless.

 

The muttered words went straight through him, like an electric shock, he heard and spun around in disbelief.

 

“…the father will kill the son… It keeps saying that… I can’t… Must be a mistake. Angel would never. He would never…”

 

Lorne looked around at Angel apologetically, a darted glance to see how badly Angel was taking this; evidently not reassured, he mopped Wesley’s brow gently, murmuring soothing sounds.

 

Wesley jerked away from his touch, twisting his head from side to side, body rigid with fever driven spasms.

 

“Mange sec Loa, alegba, accept this offering – and open the gates of truth… How do I stop it? It has to be stopped! There must be a way!”

 

Wesley flinched so violently then, putting a hand up as if to ward off a lightning strike that Angel automatically took a step forward. “Lorne…”

 

“Not doing too well on the communication front right now, Angelcakes,” the demon said between his teeth. “On account of Wesley’s rational mind not being home to callers.”

 

Gunn said urgently: “Wes, you’re not back there. You don’t have to make that decision again.”

 

Wesley was shaking his head, whole body twisting as if trying to evade something. “…Angel would never. Not Connor. He would never… Fire. Blood. Earthquake… I can’t… Not with Holtz and Fred and Gunn… He has to know that they’re human. They’re not guilty… Angel isn’t guilty. It wasn’t him. Holtz has to see that it wasn’t him… Not Angelus. Wolfram & Hart don’t have the power. Holtz can’t… I can’t… I don’t think I can stop it… I don’t know how… I don’t know what to do…”

 

“Wesley…” Lorne took one hand in his and rubbed it gently. “Come back to me, sugarplum. The Gunnster is right – you don’t have to do this again. It’s over. What’s done is done.” He glanced around at Angel again, while still rubbing Wesley’s hand. “It’s in the past now. We need you in the here and now. Can you hear my voice, Wesley? Can you follow it back to me?”

 

“The first portent will shake the earth. The second will burn the air. The last will turn the sky to blood.” Wesley shuddered. “I saw the blood. It was on my hands. Gunn told me time was running out…”

 

“I never told him that,” Gunn protested. “I never told him anything about the damned prophecy. I didn’t even know about it.”

 

“Sing for me…” Lorne said with sudden urgency, tightening his grip on Wesley’s hand. Without looking up he said swiftly, “Giles, you know how he was raised. Tell me a song from his childhood. Tell me something he’d know? Something he’ll sing if I tell him to.”

 

“Morning assembly,” Giles said at once. “ ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’. Do you know that one?”

 

“Sing it for me.” Lorne was still rubbing Wesley’s hand, trying to keep a point of physical contact, a sensation stronger than the images in Wesley’s fever-tangled mind.

 

Angel was shocked by it. That hymn sung by Giles with such clarity, such unexpected conviction, remembering smiling to himself as he listened to the singing from the church, all those angelic voices raised in ecstatic submission to the god who wasn’t going to save any of them as he picked them off one by one.

 

“‘He who would valiant be, ‘gainst all disaster. Keep him in constancy, follow the Master. There’s no discouragement, shall make him once relent of his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim…’”

 

Lorne had the tune in an instant, and was unexpectedly familiar with the words, giving Wesley a little shake and when that didn’t jolt him out of it, nodding to Giles, who strode across the room to say sharply: “Wesley, it’s morning assembly. Why aren’t you singing? Where’s your hymn book, boy?”

 

That worked and Angel grimaced that it did; that kindness and gentle coaxing got one precisely nowhere with someone so conditioned by life as Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, but those unsympathetically clipped tones did the job in an instant, causing him to jolt and stumble from the fever place straight into a halting mumble of song.

 

“‘He who beset him round, with dismal stories. Do but themselves confound, his strength the more is. No foe shall stay his might, though he with giants fight. He will make good his right to be a pilgrim…’”

 

Not all the words were there or comprehensible. Wesley drifted in and out of the melody, trying to match his voice to Giles’ uncompromisingly loud clear singing for assembly while Wesley snatched and gasped and stuttered over the words, but there was an automatic pilot that Angel recognized. He could have said a Hail Mary even now; without a thought; all that rote and ritual from childhood buried so deep it was embedded and impossible to dislodge. Angel could be a Catholic boy afraid of damnation in one flash of a crucifix; and Wesley’s childhood self could be summoned by the few bars of a song.

 

“It’s okay…” Lorne soothed him with another stroke of the cold flannel across his forehead. “You can stop now, Wesley. You did fine…”

 

Wesley’s eyelashes flickered and he tried to make sense of his surroundings, squinting up at Lorne and flinching from the artificial light. “Where’s…? I have to get to Latin class…”

“You’re excused,” Giles said at once.

 

“No, there’s a test.”

 

“Matron is keeping you in for observation, Wesley. You have the flu. Remember now? You’re in the infirmary. You need to be a good boy for matron and go back to sleep.”

 

Wesley blinked in confusion, understandably unable to marry up his surroundings with the information Giles was giving him with such mendacious conviction. “Can I take the test next week?”

 

“The week after next, Wesley. Last period on Friday. It’s all been arranged.”

 

Wesley looked relieved but still gazed at Lorne in confusion then his mind evidently gave up trying to make sense of the situation and his eyelashes flickered closed again. He was back into his delirious murmuring before Giles could snatch a breath.

 

“I hate you lying to him,” Buffy said quietly.

 

“Well, I’m not exactly thrilled by the prospect myself,” Giles retorted. “But if it’s easier for him to think he’s ten years old and back at boarding school than surrounded by Hukkarish and being nursed by an anagogic demon, I see no reason to confuse him further.”

 

“Why did you make him sing?” Willow demanded. “I don’t think singing is the answer here. I think resting is the answer. And maybe some herbal tea.” Tara nodded an indignant agreement.

 

Angel tuned them all out, all their rustlings and chirrupings and indignation and anxiety; making Lorne keep looking at him. “What did you find out? Why did he do it?”

 

“We know why he did it,” Fred said quickly. “He thought you were going to kill Connor because of the prophecy Sahjahn changed.”

 

“But why did he believe it?” Angel kept looking at Lorne. “Why believe in a piece of paper and not believe in me?”

 

“Wesley’s a Watcher.” Buffy stepped into his line of vision, eyes holding his. “They have to believe in pieces of paper. What they are is what they do and what they do is translate prophecies and look things up in books and old musty scrolls that no one else understands. That’s their job. He was doing his job. He didn’t know some time-travelling demon had changed the rules while his back was turned.”

 

“Neither did I,” Angel told her quietly. “And I paid the price for it too.”

 

Lorne snatched a deep breath as if it hurt him and then looked up at Angel. “Angel, when Wesley made that decision… well, let’s just say that our erstwhile fearless leader was not the poster boy for good mental health. He was whacked out with sleep deprivation – and well into a full on psychedelic nervous breakdown with all the trimmings. He was dreaming…terrible things and I honestly don’t know how much of what he saw was real. His books were bleeding all over his hands. You smiled at him after you saved Connor from the fire in your room and talked about using him as snack food. You told him you were teaching Connor how to die. The Loa told him that there was no way to stop it; that you devouring your child was a certainty. He offered himself to Holtz in your place. Holtz told him how light a child’s coffin was and how he was going to find that out for himself.” Lorne reached for a glass and Fred put it into his hand. “Thank you, sweetcakes. Angel, he wasn’t in his right mind. He didn’t know what to do and everyone – well, the Loa, Holtz, and I think his own fear of failing, were telling him that if he didn’t do something it would be his fault if Connor died.”

 

“And now it is.” Angel gazed at Lorne unblinkingly. “That was his reward for everything he put himself and the rest of us through. All that agonizing and planning and all he did was kill Connor himself. If that’s some kind of cosmic joke I don’t think it was very funny.”

 

“Connor…?” Wesley’s eyes snapped open again and Angel automatically flinched at his panicky feverish gaze. Wesley grabbed Lorne’s wrist and tried to focus on him. “Where is he? Where’s Connor?”

 

“Sleeping,” Lorne lied awkwardly. “He’s asleep.”

 

“Are you sure? Have you checked?”

 

“He’s sleeping…like a baby, Wes. Scout’s honour.”

 

Angel moved closer, unable to stop himself, so conflicted he felt as if he was being torn in two. “He said life was funny and…beautiful… I know why love was so terrible now. His fear of what it would do to me if I lost Connor; of what I would do to him if he took him.”

 

“He did it because he loved you, Angel. He betrayed you because he loved you too much to let you carry the guilt for having killed your son. Better to be hated by you than to stand aside and do nothing and watch you destroy a baby and in the process destroy yourself.” Lorne took another swig of his cocktail; ice cubes clinking mournfully. Angel wondered how they still had ice that wasn’t melted. If Gunn had hacked into the power lines for old times’ sake. How long it would be before the power company noticed and shut them off.

 

“Why was life funny and beautiful?” Angel demanded.

 

Lorne looked as if he could hardly bear to look at him while even Giles was no longer pretending to do research; everyone rapt and silent.

 

“Because you loved your son, Angel, and he wasn’t going to have to take him after all. Because it couldn’t be true that you would ever hurt him.”

 

Angel had a sudden memory of Wesley just standing there while the room exploded around him; paralysed as the flames licked higher; of him crouched on the floor of the hallway gazing up at Angel as if he had never seen him before in his life. He closed his eyes. “The first portent will shake the earth. The second will burn the air. The last will turn the sky to blood.”

 

Lorne nodded as if he really didn’t want to but had no choice in the matter. “The portents the Loa prophesied all arrived like a train wreck and I think something in Wesley just snapped. No going back then. That would be cowardice. Not taking responsibility for his people. Not doing the Right Thing.”

 

Angel gritted his teeth. “Tell me again why they still let Englishmen breed?”

 

“Daddy isn’t to blame for this one. Sahjahn sowed and Wesley reaped and Holtz did his fair share of ploughing. And it probably didn’t help that you locked those lawyers in that wine cellar and slept with Darla or once turned into Angelus right in front of him, or that Wolfram & Hart had made it clear that for their plans to work you had to be darker than a condo inside a pot bellied pig.”

 

“Daddy probably had a hand in it all the same,” Angel retorted grimly. “Maybe if the guy had spent a little less time telling Wesley what a miserable failure with bad judgement he was destined to be, Wesley might not have…”

 

“Ended up proving him right?” Lorne shrugged.

 

“Wesley isn’t a failure,” Dawn said tautly. “He just made a mistake.” She gazed around at them all defiantly, daring them to argue with her; ready to take them on singly or as a group.

 

Angel saved her the trouble. “Yes, we know. He made a mistake.”

 

“Everyone does.” Dawn’s eyes were pleading with him to soften now; defiance replaced by sorrow. “Make mistakes, I mean. Everyone does it. They don’t mean to. They just happen.”

 

Angel snatched a breath he really didn’t need. “Yes. Everyone does.”

 

It was Faith who said quietly, “You and me, Angel, I figure we’ve probably made more than most.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And some of mine hurt Wes pretty badly. I seem to remember they didn’t do you much good either. And let’s not even start on Buffy and what I did to her.”

 

“You don’t need to say it,” Angel sighed, looking across at Cordelia who was watching him closely. “Any of you. I know I don’t have the right not to forgive him. I also know I really don’t want him to die. Or any of us – well, any of us who aren’t dead already, and even I would rather avoid becoming a pile of dust, so shall we try to stop that happening by finding out how to destroy the amulet, save the world, and, in my case, entirely fail to get the girl?”

 

Giles looked across the room at him with something that glimmered very close to liking. “An excellent suggestion, Angel.”

 

Angel crossed over to where Wesley was lying, Lorne still bathing his brow. Angel held out his hand for the cloth. “The boundaries are secure enough and you look as if you could do with some rest. Why don’t I take over for a while?”

 

There was a fractional hesitation before Lorne handed over the cloth and moved out of the way. “He’s all yours, Angelcakes. Just try to talk him through the worst of the fever dreams. Reassure him if he gets stuck somewhere he doesn’t want to be. Try to talk him down off the delirium ledge.”

 

Angel nodded, and as Wesley twisted his head from side to side, snatching restless breaths, thin shirt sticking to his sweat coated body Angel took one hand in his and interlaced their fingers a little awkwardly. “Hey, Wes…” he said quietly, clearing his throat self-consciously. “Let’s not go back to the Hyperion right now. Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go somewhere where there’s sea and sand and lots of sunshine and…”

 

“…the gulls crying overhead like the souls of lost children…” Wesley’s eyelashes flickered again, and he gazed up at Angel blearily.

 

Angel grimaced. “Now you’re just channelling Drusilla. Tell me about somewhere nice you want to go, Wes. Tell me about somewhere safe.”

 

Wesley’s eyes closed again. “Where Angel is,” he murmured. “It’s safe where Angel is. He helps the helpless.”

 

“Damned straight.” Cordelia took his other hand and held it against her heart, voice resolute. “And we help him, right?”

 

Wesley smiled faintly without opening his eyes. “Well, sometimes we sort of hinder him…”

 

“Hey, he’d be lost without us. Remember that meatlocker? And let’s talk about his cell phone skills, shall we?”

A definite smile and a steadying of his heartbeat, a drift towards something closer to sleep. Angel felt Wesley’s bony hand flex against his, fingers tightening. “Hush, he’ll hear you.”

 

“Tact’s just not saying true stuff – I’ll pass.” Cordelia sounded perilously close to bursting into tears but she forced that jollity into her voice with all of a cheerleader’s determination to keep the pyramid standing even when the team were losing twenty-seven nil.

 

“I think he’s depressed about Detective Lockley.”

 

“He’ll get over it.” Cordelia looked across at Angel.

 

Wesley’s eyes opened anxiously. “The Council thinks it knows but it doesn’t know. That’s why I couldn’t help them. They were on the front line and I was still in the trenches, hiding under a table.”

 

“Who, Wes?” Cordelia pressed. “Who can’t you help?”

 

“Buffy and Faith. Because I don’t know how it feels to be them. I don’t know what they know and I’m supposed to know more than them. I’m supposed to help them. I don’t know how to help them. I should know how to help them.”

 

“You did.” Faith crossed the room rapidly. “You helped me, Wesley. You helped me get better.”

 

His eyes opened again and he gazed at her warily. “I won’t scream whatever you do.”

 

She flinched. “I’m not that person any more, Wesley. I’m not going to hurt you.”

 

He arched his back in a sudden painful spasm of fever and Angel caught him by the shoulders and held him. “It’s okay, Wes. It’s okay.” He steadied his head, trying to stop him from hurting himself as the spasms tore through him.

 

“Blunt. Sharp. Cold. Hot. Loud.” Wesley gritted his teeth. “She can’t make me do loud. I’m afraid of hot. I’m afraid of her. I just want it to be over. Why isn’t it just over?”

 

“Oh God…” Faith turned away, putting a hand up to her head and Angel looked up to see Buffy put an arm around her.

 

“He doesn’t mean it,” Angel said rapidly. “Wes would never… Not on purpose…”

 

Faith swallowed hard. “I didn’t know he was scared. He never acted scared. He just… He just went to another place. What if he never came back?”

 

“He came back.”

 

“Lorne said he was half crazy. Maybe that was me. Maybe I sent him there and he never came back. When I cut him with the glass I felt something snap and I thought it was in me but maybe it was in him. Maybe I…”

“Faith…” Buffy shook her by the shoulders. “You have to keep it together. Okay? You’re strong and sane and you’re a Slayer, and right now Wesley is none of those things. And if those things come in here and we don’t protect the others all he’s going to be is a nasty stain on the floor. If you think you owe him something, you owe it to him to keep the Hukkarish the hell away from that amulet and everyone in this place. Understood?”

 

Faith snatched a breath and nodded. “Understood.”

 

“So, let’s sharpen the rest of these weapons and let Angel and Cordelia take care of Wesley.”

Faith nodded again. “Okay.”

 

Buffy led her away from Wesley as if he were a pile up on the freeway while Faith glanced back at him as if steeling herself to see something too terrible to bear. Angel and Cordelia exchanged a long look and it felt strangely right to be back like this again, just the three of them, taking care of Wesley the way Wesley had taken care of a pregnant Cordelia, bathed the wounds of a beaten up post-gladiatorial Angel.  Angel remembered Wesley taking his weight on that bony little body of his, and, looking into Cordelia’s brown eyes, could almost see the way Wesley had looked in that first wheelchair the hospital had given him; the one from which he had said the incantation to deliver her from mental hell.

 

“We’re not losing him,” Cordelia said firmly.

 

“No.” Angel laced his fingers through Wesley’s more firmly, hoping he took some comfort from the grip. “I lost my son. I’m not losing my friend as well. Wes, you have to stay with us, okay?”

 

He cried out in what sounded like fear. “I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry! Father, I’m sorry…”

 

Cordelia also tightened her grip. “We’re right here, Wes. We’re not going anywhere and neither are you, not without us. Wherever you think you are, we’re with you, okay? Angel and I are with you.”

 

Wesley opened his eyes, those thick black lashes wet with tears. “I don’t want to go in there.”

 

“We’ll come with you,” Angel promised him. “We’ll talk to you the whole time.”

 

Wesley flinched and Angel just knew the door had closed on them. He squeezed Wesley’s hand. “We’re with you.”

 

“It’s dark.”

 

“No, it’s not.” Cordelia reached around frantically and triumphantly held up a lighter. “Look, Wesley. I’m going to light a candle.” She did so and waved the flame in front of his face. “Do you see the light?”

 

He blew it out. “I’m not allowed candles.”

 

Cordelia sighed and put it down. “Okay, so you can talk to us. Tell us a story?”

 

“I’m not allowed to talk,” Wesley said fearfully.

 

“Then we’ll talk to you.” Angel grabbed a book at random with his free hand. “In fact, we’ll read to you. Nestor demons. Do you know what they are?”

 

“Yes.” Wesley looked even more frightened. “They live in dark places and they like to eat children.”

 

Angel checked the entry in the book and grimaced. “Okay, moving on from those then. Do you know what anagogic demons are?”

 

“They read people.” Wesley frowned in concentration. “They know things.” He snatched a breath. “Angel…?”

 

“Yes.” Angel put the book down with a sigh of relief. “You know who I am?”

 

“Am I fired?”

 

“No,” Angel said hastily. “Definitely not.”

 

“I thought I was. Where’s Gunn? Is Gunn here? Is he okay?”

 

“I’m here, man…” Gunn skidded across the floor in double quick time. “I’m right here, Wes.”

 

Wesley gazed at him and his face broke into a beaming smile. “I thought you were… I dreamt you were… But you’re okay?”

 

Gunn forced a smile. “Never better, English.”

 

“Did we get it?”

 

“Get what, Wes?”

 

“The thing with the two heads and the fire and… It was so big.”

 

“We got it,” Gunn confirmed quickly.

 

“Really got it good,” Cordelia added.

 

“Where’s Angel?”

 

“He’s here.” Gunn yanked Angel by the coat back into Wesley’s eyeline. “See, here he is. He’s fine.”

 

“He has to be careful. Darla’s dangerous. She’s no ordinary vampire. Cordelia…?”

 

“Here, sweetheart. I’m right here.” She tightened her grip on his hand and smiled at him; that smile full of love and warmth that concealed a deep well of fear.

 

He gazed at her in confusion. “Where are we?”

 

“Where do you want to be?” she returned, sidestepping desperately and then wincing at her own incompetence.

 

“Skilosh!” He looked at her wide-eyed. “Cordelia, you mustn’t go to the Sharps’!”

 

“I won’t,” she promised him at once. “I won’t go there.”

 

“I dreamt you went there alone and there were all dead, even the children, and…”

 

“I won’t go,” she repeated quickly. “I’m staying right here with you.”

 

He looked reassured and smiled at her and then the familiar confusion washed over his face. “Where’s Angel?”

 

“I’m here,” Angel reassured him.

 

Wesley looked at him for a moment and then frowned. “How do I know you’re Angel? What if you just look like him. I dream about you not being you all the time. You hurt us.”

 

Angel winced. “That was Angelus.”

“You sent us away. You told us we were fired. How do we know we can trust you?” Wesley spasmed again and Angel caught him and held him gently, while Cordelia helplessly rubbed his arm and Gunn squeezed his knee as if that would comfort him. He opened his eyes again and looked straight at Gunn. “Where’s Connor?”

 

The question temporarily paralysed all of them and it was Fred who said quickly, “He’s sleeping. He’s upstairs asleep.”

 

He gazed at her and his face broke into a smile. “Fred. You’re not in your room any more.”

 

“I came down.” She forced herself to smile back.

 

“Good for you.” His tone was gentle and encouraging. “That’s wonderful news.” He twisted his head round to look at Cordelia. “You said it was just a matter of time.” He frowned at her. “When did you cut your hair?” Then he noticed the ceiling for the first time and stared up at it. “I don’t know this room. I don’t remember…” He flinched violently and yanked his hand out of Cordelia’s, pressing it to his throat.

 

“No, man, no.” Gunn bent over him quickly. “It’s not happening. You’re not back there. You’re safe…”

 

Wesley looked at his hand and evidently in his mind’s eye saw blood. “She’s taking him. It’s cold. It’s so cold. I want to see them again. I need to tell them. I need to tell Angel… I need to explain… I can’t die without explaining…”

 

“You’re not going to die,” Gunn said forcefully. “You didn’t die. Okay? You didn’t die when those sons of bitches at Wolfram & Hart blew up the office or when that bastard zombie shot you or when that bitch Justine slit your throat. You’re the guy who can’t be killed and you’re not going to die on me now. So, focus, Wes. Focus on the here and now and just Keep Breathing.”