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Oct. 21st, 2005 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Lost and Found, Part Six
It had taken him most of the day, but he had achieved his goal. Wesley dressed, slowly and carefully – but he did it without assistance. He put clean clothes that belonged to him on a body he had showered without anyone needing to hold him upright. Okay, after the shower he then had to sit on the edge of the bath and put his head between his legs to stop the sloshing sound in his head, the hissing in his ears. But it was an accomplishment nevertheless. He still ached, muscle ache, deep bruising that must have come perilously close to breaking his bones, contusions still flowering from deep heat to palettes of colour. He had looked at himself in the mirror this morning; made himself look at what was now healing. The bruises really had been everywhere; as had the cuts, grazes, burns, scratches and welts. Despite the days of healing, he still looked like an ‘after’ photograph from an S&M manual.
He examined his wrists, tracing the bruises that circled them. They were yellowing finally and the deep cuts had healed to scabbed lines. There was still a bruise on his cheekbone, forehead, and his jaw, but at least both of his eyes opened and his lip was no longer cut. Even though he knew it was irrational he still couldn’t stomach the thought of anything resembling a blade anywhere near his throat and so had used some nail scissors to cut back his beard to a faint dark stubble which did at least blur the bruising on his jaw. He was still having to do a double-take every time he saw himself in the mirror – that vivid wound at his throat making him look like a stranger even without the bruises, the new haircut, the stubble. But he did look tougher. Ironically, if he’d looked like this perhaps Justine might have thought twice about taking him on armed with only a knife.
He was getting vivid flashbacks to what had happened in that other dimension, of course, but the entire experience had been so nightmarish from start to finish that it was surprisingly easy to convince himself that it had never in fact been real. Intellectually, yes, he knew it had happened, but it could easily have been a bad dream he’d had. There were spells that could make a dream have the unfortunate effect of reality – if someone dreamed of death while under its influence, they would die in the dream. Was it so impossible to believe that his spell had made some fear from his darkest psyche manifest – or at least manifest to him? And it wasn’t true. He still knew that. But it was a way of slurring those events, and he found he needed to do that. Opt for a ‘nothing that didn’t happen here matters’ attitude, to get through it. Otherwise he was going to have to spend the rest of his life being someone who had not just lost Angel’s child to a hell dimension and had his throat cut by Justine, but someone who had been brutally tortured by vampires wearing the faces of men who had once been his friends, and he simply wasn’t ready to carry any more baggage right now. He wanted to remove those events from his past; slice them away cleanly as something he could forget. Enough things had happened in this dimension that he was still having to process without dealing with the extreme trauma of alternate worlds.
He had asked Fred to leave his door open earlier so he could listen to the sound of clients coming in and the daily round of Angel Investigations happening downstairs. He might not be well enough to manage the stairs yet, but he liked to feel less cut off from what was happening down there. Throughout the day there had been murmurings of conversation, some laughter, some self-conscious shushing once Fred had admitted to a headache of pyrotechnic intensity, and what had sounded like a client at one point. It had all sounded so reassuringly…normal, and yet Connor was gone and Wesley knew that it must be difficult for Angel to have them all going about their business as if nothing had changed, the baby had never existed. He hoped people were remembering to tell the vampire that they hadn’t forgotten what he’d lost. Wesley certainly never would. Until his dying day he was going to carry the memory of Angel’s expression as he held that baby in his arms and told Wesley how happy Connor made him; knowing that he was the one who had wrecked that happiness forever.
He had heard Fred come upstairs earlier even though it was still only early evening, persuaded by Gunn to try to sleep off the throbbing in her temples; but since then it had been oddly silent down there. It did not say much for the current state of his nerves, that even that perfectly unthreatening quiet was making him uneasy; as if he could close his eyes for a moment and end up back in the wrong dimension. Yes, he definitely needed to start thinking of that place as just a nightmare he’d had. As soon as the bruises had faded completely it would be a great deal easier, of course.
“Pumpkin?”
He looked up to find Lorne standing in his doorway, looking at him critically.
“Yes, Lorne?”
“The fearless demon hunters are out fearlessly demon hunting.”
“I thought it was quiet down there.” He couldn’t help that smile of relief, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the silence.
“Fredikins has the migraine to end all migraines and is lying down in a darkened room. I’m not feeling too well myself – imagine a razor blade wrapped in velvet slicing through cross-sections of the grey matter in time to your heartbeat and you’re halfway there, so I’m going to take a couple of well…bottles of aspirin and lie down for an hour or several myself. Do you need anything first?”
Wesley looked at him in concern. “You don’t think it’s a gas leak, do you?”
“I think it’s more likely to be mystical, cherry pie. Could be an aftershock from that pentagram His Broodiness painted on the floor. The hotel is still trying to get over that little debacle. Or it could be that last client who dropped in. When an empath demon hits ‘transmit’ instead of ‘receive’ and has a nest of Glurgs barring his sewer access… Well, I think the pot was calling the kettle black when he said that we were sending out a bad vibe.”
“Can empath demons transmit?” Wesley was intrigued.
“Some strains can. If they don’t sleep for worrying about the Glurgs in their backyard, for instance, and think the best way to get through a crisis is to crank up the alcohol intake.” Lorne looked at the glass in his hand. “Immoderate consumption, of course.”
Wesley hid a smile. “Oh, of course. Are Angel and Gunn off dealing with the Glurg problem?”
“Angel, Gunn, Groo and Her Demon Glowiness. I warned her about the serious pus factor she was going to be looking at but would she listen? No. All fired up to be Cordelia, Warrior Princess. Groo’s not helping with all the admiring ‘oh fire of my loins’ looks every time she picks up something big and pointy. Can you keep a listen out for clients and come and tap on my door if anyone dings the bell downstairs?”
Wesley nodded. “Of course, Lorne. Is Fred…? You don’t think it’s meningitis, do you?”
Lorne gave him a pitying look. “Tell me, do you and Gunn time-share the same paranoia? You know, sometimes a headache is just a headache. Talking of which…” He clutched a hand to his forehead. “I really need to go and lie down.”
It was perhaps an hour later or a little less when Wesley heard the telephone ringing. He was halfway across the room before it occurred to him that he couldn’t really do this; but the thought of how bad a headache both Fred and Lorne must have to admit defeat and take to their beds made him want to still the ringing of the bell before it dragged them out of sleep. He found himself clutching the banister and essaying the stairs while the phone rang and rang; a noise that grew louder with every stair he managed to struggle down. Sweat began to pour down his back halfway down, a combination of fear and his body reacting to exertion it was out of practise at coping with. He gripped the banister harder but the stairs seemed endless for a while and the possibility of blacking out and just plummeting to the bottom more and more pressing. The ringing of the telephone gained in urgency the longer it went on also, adding to the feeling of tension in the air which he could feel twanging at his temples as he landed, flat-footed, breathless, and shaking, in the lobby of the Hyperion. Then there was the endless expanse of floor to cross before he could lean against the desk and snatch at the phone, managing a breathless: “Angel Investigations?”
“Good lord, Wesley, is that you?”
It was a shock to hear Giles’ voice. Wesley shrunk inside immediately; knowing a lecture must be about to follow. “Yes, Giles. How can I help you?”
“You can start by telling me how you are?”
“A lot better, thank you.” Wesley paused awkwardly. “And yourself? How are you?”
“Very relieved to hear your voice. I was afraid Angel had buried you under the floorboards and was stalling me.”
Wesley straightened up. “Angel has been very…forgiving. Given what I did to him…”
“You were trying to stop him becoming the murderer of his own child.”
“Whatever my intentions, the result of my actions was disastrous for Angel, Connor, and everyone here. Given the circumstances I don’t think anyone could have been more magnanimous than Angel.”
“Did he or did he not attempt to suffocate you in the hospital?”
“He’d just seen his child carried into a hell dimension by his sworn enemy, Giles. I think his reaction was understandable.”
“Are you calling from Los Angeles or Stepford? And do you know how worried I’ve been?”
Wesley found Giles’ exasperation difficult to deal with. His own emotions were too tangled for him to be able to deal with the raw cheese-grater impact of another’s. He cast around for words, stumbling a little: “Sorry, Giles. I – didn’t know you were concerned. If I had I would… I should have written, but this is the first time I’ve been downstairs since… Since I came back here.”
“You do know you were a bloody fool to cast that spell, don’t you?”
“I admit that it wasn’t one of my brighter ideas.”
“Quite apart from how you were nearly killed, you opened a gateway between this dimension and one with which we were never meant to have any contact. You weakened the walls between two worlds which should never meet.”
“I won’t be trying it again.” Wesley eased himself into a chair, legs still feeling like jelly from his recent exertions. “Connor is gone. I recognize that. I lost him and I can’t get him back. There is no…reversal for this particular sin. I just have to live with it and the consequences of it. Like Angel. Like Faith.”
“You’re not a murderer, Wesley,” Giles said gravely. “They chose to take human lives. You were trying to save one.”
“But the end result was the same.”
Giles sighed. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation either when I arrive with Willow or perhaps back in England…?”
“I won’t be going to England.” That sounded as panicked as he felt. Wesley softened it by adding: “But it would always be a pleasure to see you and Willow.”
“What’s left for you in LA?” Giles demanded.
“People I want to do my part in trying to keep safe.”
“What? Angel lets you stay in a broom closet and throws you scraps three times a week while you say ten Hail Marys a day and beg him for forgiveness?”
“Actually they bought me Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade, and English Breakfast tea. And need I remind you that Angel has been keeping me since I crawled back from that other dimension.”
Another sigh from Giles. “I wish you’d reconsider, Wesley, I really do. I’ve never been happy about your role in LA. If Angel wants to try to work off his redemption, I can only admire his dedication to the cause of humanity and his genuine desire to make amends for some of the things he did. But you and Cordelia have nothing to atone for.”
“We feel we can do some good,” Wesley told him gravely. “And that’s what we want – all of us here – to try to do some good.” He felt frustrated by how much he and Giles were not communicating. That was their role in life, after all. They were linguists. They spent their time translating, researching, discovering information that could be the difference between life and death to a vulnerable invulnerable champion and finding a way to communicate that information in terms the champion could understand. Yet, here they were entirely failing to find the right words to make their feelings known. That had always been a problem for him and Giles and if one of them didn’t do something about it, it always would.
He snatched a deep breath and plunged awkwardly into the truth: “Giles – these people are my family. When I lost them. When I took Connor. No, before then, when I knew I was going to have to take Connor, that it was one possible option and the one that was going to suck me in like a black hole I couldn’t avoid. It was like being dead. You don’t know what it’s like to have been – unimportant to everyone you’ve ever met since…forever. And then have people show you – warmth and friendship and respect and affection, and know you’re going to lose it. And lose it. And have the person you owe everything to be the one you’ve wronged the most and who…hates you now. If I leave here, I…”
“I understand.” Giles sounded gentle; so unlike himself. “Wesley, it’s all right. I understand now.”
“He and Cordelia were so kind to me. They took me in and trusted me and I betrayed them…” The water spattering onto his hand was a shock. Wesley hadn’t intended to cry about any of this; especially not to Giles; one of those authority figures he was still hoping one day to impress. The man would be able to hear that he was crying, his voice was tremulous with tears.
“You didn’t betray anyone. You just made a mistake. You had to make a choice, Wesley. You tried to do the right thing and it didn’t work out. And I’m very sorry for all of you – Angel and you and everyone who loved that baby – that it didn’t work out as you hoped it would. But it wasn’t a betrayal. Not by any reading of that word that I recognize.”
Embarrassed by his own weakness, Wesley wiped his eyes on his sleeve, seeing that he hadn’t buttoned the cuff properly, that his wrist was visible, the ring of fading bruises where the ropes had bitten deep. “She said I was Judas Iscariot.”
“Cordelia?”
“Lilah Morgan from Wolfram & Hart.”
“Do you need a holiday, Wesley? I understand you want to go on working with Angel in LA. I do understand that now. But would it help to go somewhere else for a little while? Somewhere that doesn’t look exactly like the place where…? You had to wrestle with that decision and where you were…”
Their Englishness would never be able to bridge the gap of what had been done to him. Wesley wondered who had told Giles and how much he’d been told. If Angel had punished Giles for his interference by spelling it out. His own voice sounded hoarse and faint, a stranger’s voice, pleading for permission: “I want to stay here.”
“We’ll come to you. Willow and I. Tomorrow. Is Angel there?”
“He’s out on a case. He’ll be back soon.” He hadn’t meant to say it so wistfully. The throbbing in his head was getting worse. It couldn’t be the residue from that visiting demon; it must be something in the hotel; or something near the hotel.
“Can you ask him to call me? When he gets back? To confirm that it’s all right for Willow and I to come up tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” The panic spiked briefly at the thought of Giles seeing him, while the bruises were still there to tell their story. “Why so soon?”
“You may have an open door to another dimension. We need to close it. In view of what’s in that dimension, I feel it should be sooner rather than later. In fact, don’t bother getting him to call us, he won’t. We’ll just turn up.”
Wesley thought of what had been waiting for him in that other world; what they had told him they had done to Cordelia and Fred. Perhaps Anne would have been tricked by them. Oh God, Virginia. They could lure people into that place. Clients. So much cruelty in them both; such pleasure in inflicting pain, an insatiable appetite for chaos.
“If we close it we can’t stop them.” He snatched a breath. “If there’s a way to stop them – don’t you think we should?”
“They’re not our problem.” Giles spoke firmly. “There is a Buffy and a Watchers’ Council and a Rupert Giles in that dimension who are aware of the problem and can solve it themselves.”
“The Giles there is looking after a Wesley who has to be sedated. He can’t be left. They broke him into very small pieces. I imagine he’s something of a full time job for the people in Sunnydale.”
Angelus had described to him in great detail the process of the other Wesley’s nervous breakdown, but he had found himself imagining him like the Angel in Cordelia’s vision; the one where she had visited that other possible life in which her happiness had come at the price of Angel’s sanity and his left arm. A wrecked mind scrabbling for some pitiful remnants of clarity; a fragmented life viewed through a chill blue lens. By the end, Angelus had said, whispering it softly in Wesley’s ear, he’d felt so tender towards him; his masterwork; had murmured sweet nothings in his ear before he bit gently into the soft vulnerability of his slender throat. He’d licked Wesley’s mouth afterwards so he could taste his own ebbing life, holding him against his body, that tantalizing warmth of thin-skinned human with the blood pulsing just beneath the surface inviting him to lick and bite and drink. The sweet trusting Wesley who had set him free. They’d drunk from him over and over but never let him sink too far; although he’d begged them to just let him slip into quiet darkness; they’d always pulled their fangs out in time and licked the blood from the puncture wounds, using their saliva to seal up the flow of blood. Like having your head held under water, Wesley supposed, shown death, taken to the brink; exposed to the raw nerve of your own terror and then yanked back, knowing the nerve was going to be scraped again and again and again.
“Then they know the full extent of the evil of which those two vampires are capable and they should respond accordingly.” There was something utterly implacable about Giles when he was in this mood. “Our obligation is to protect this world. Not to save all possible worlds from their own tragedies. Wesley, ask Angel if it’s all right for Willow and I to visit tomorrow. Tell him that if I don’t hear anything to the contrary we’ll be with him by lunchtime. And now I suggest you go and get some rest. You sound tired.” There was a pause before Giles sighed and added, “No one is going to take you away from the Hyperion, I promise. We just need to close the gateway and then we’ll go again and we’ll leave you with your friends.”
“I’ll tell Angel.” Wesley waited for Giles to replace his receiver first and then slowly put down his own.
“Tell him what, sweetpea?”
Wesley looked up to find Lorne coming towards him, a hand still pressed to his head. Wesley winced. “Is that where I…?”
Lorne looked at him in confusion for a moment before his face cleared. “Good grief, no. Are we guilt-tripping for Jesus tonight, handsome? This skewer in the brain headache has nothing to do with a month old concussion and everything to do with something being badly out of alignment in the mystical ionosphere around here.”
Wesley grimaced. “That may be my fault. Giles says I may have weakened the barrier between this world and that – other dimension. There could be some spillage. He and Willow are coming here tomorrow to deal with it.”
Lorne put a hand back to his head. “That could explain a lot. But, cupcake, how about you try to remove the words ‘my fault’ from your vocabulary for say…a month? Not asking the impossible here, just a thirty day moratorium on self-flagellation.”
“But I…” Wesley broke off at a very straight look from those red eyes. “Won’t finish that sentence.”
Lorne beamed at him. “Now, see, that’s what I…” He broke off as they both felt something ripple through the hotel; Lorne clutching violently at his head in response.
Wesley staggered and caught at the counter top to hold himself upright, then looked at Lorne who was stumbling backwards, still holding his head.
“It’s not an earthquake, is it?” Wesley felt the floor ripple, an epicentre with aftershocks, but an earthquake wouldn’t have Lorne reeling in pain like that. “Something mystical. Something…” As Lorne straightened up, still pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, Wesley heard it, the sound of something downstairs in the basement. His heart turned over but his brain become abruptly clearer than it had in weeks. He felt as if it had just been slashed with a knife and the sting of it clarified everything. He caught Lorne by the shoulders and whispered rapidly: “Go upstairs. Get Fred out by the fire escape. I’ll stall them.”
Lorne’s eyes widened in comprehension and then horror. “Wesley, come with me.”
“I can’t walk that far.” Wesley gave him a little shove. “Please, Lorne. Just get Fred out of here.”
Lorne gazed at him for one more second and then at another sound from downstairs, he turned and sprinted silently up the stairs.
It had taken him most of the day, but he had achieved his goal. Wesley dressed, slowly and carefully – but he did it without assistance. He put clean clothes that belonged to him on a body he had showered without anyone needing to hold him upright. Okay, after the shower he then had to sit on the edge of the bath and put his head between his legs to stop the sloshing sound in his head, the hissing in his ears. But it was an accomplishment nevertheless. He still ached, muscle ache, deep bruising that must have come perilously close to breaking his bones, contusions still flowering from deep heat to palettes of colour. He had looked at himself in the mirror this morning; made himself look at what was now healing. The bruises really had been everywhere; as had the cuts, grazes, burns, scratches and welts. Despite the days of healing, he still looked like an ‘after’ photograph from an S&M manual.
He examined his wrists, tracing the bruises that circled them. They were yellowing finally and the deep cuts had healed to scabbed lines. There was still a bruise on his cheekbone, forehead, and his jaw, but at least both of his eyes opened and his lip was no longer cut. Even though he knew it was irrational he still couldn’t stomach the thought of anything resembling a blade anywhere near his throat and so had used some nail scissors to cut back his beard to a faint dark stubble which did at least blur the bruising on his jaw. He was still having to do a double-take every time he saw himself in the mirror – that vivid wound at his throat making him look like a stranger even without the bruises, the new haircut, the stubble. But he did look tougher. Ironically, if he’d looked like this perhaps Justine might have thought twice about taking him on armed with only a knife.
He was getting vivid flashbacks to what had happened in that other dimension, of course, but the entire experience had been so nightmarish from start to finish that it was surprisingly easy to convince himself that it had never in fact been real. Intellectually, yes, he knew it had happened, but it could easily have been a bad dream he’d had. There were spells that could make a dream have the unfortunate effect of reality – if someone dreamed of death while under its influence, they would die in the dream. Was it so impossible to believe that his spell had made some fear from his darkest psyche manifest – or at least manifest to him? And it wasn’t true. He still knew that. But it was a way of slurring those events, and he found he needed to do that. Opt for a ‘nothing that didn’t happen here matters’ attitude, to get through it. Otherwise he was going to have to spend the rest of his life being someone who had not just lost Angel’s child to a hell dimension and had his throat cut by Justine, but someone who had been brutally tortured by vampires wearing the faces of men who had once been his friends, and he simply wasn’t ready to carry any more baggage right now. He wanted to remove those events from his past; slice them away cleanly as something he could forget. Enough things had happened in this dimension that he was still having to process without dealing with the extreme trauma of alternate worlds.
He had asked Fred to leave his door open earlier so he could listen to the sound of clients coming in and the daily round of Angel Investigations happening downstairs. He might not be well enough to manage the stairs yet, but he liked to feel less cut off from what was happening down there. Throughout the day there had been murmurings of conversation, some laughter, some self-conscious shushing once Fred had admitted to a headache of pyrotechnic intensity, and what had sounded like a client at one point. It had all sounded so reassuringly…normal, and yet Connor was gone and Wesley knew that it must be difficult for Angel to have them all going about their business as if nothing had changed, the baby had never existed. He hoped people were remembering to tell the vampire that they hadn’t forgotten what he’d lost. Wesley certainly never would. Until his dying day he was going to carry the memory of Angel’s expression as he held that baby in his arms and told Wesley how happy Connor made him; knowing that he was the one who had wrecked that happiness forever.
He had heard Fred come upstairs earlier even though it was still only early evening, persuaded by Gunn to try to sleep off the throbbing in her temples; but since then it had been oddly silent down there. It did not say much for the current state of his nerves, that even that perfectly unthreatening quiet was making him uneasy; as if he could close his eyes for a moment and end up back in the wrong dimension. Yes, he definitely needed to start thinking of that place as just a nightmare he’d had. As soon as the bruises had faded completely it would be a great deal easier, of course.
“Pumpkin?”
He looked up to find Lorne standing in his doorway, looking at him critically.
“Yes, Lorne?”
“The fearless demon hunters are out fearlessly demon hunting.”
“I thought it was quiet down there.” He couldn’t help that smile of relief, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the silence.
“Fredikins has the migraine to end all migraines and is lying down in a darkened room. I’m not feeling too well myself – imagine a razor blade wrapped in velvet slicing through cross-sections of the grey matter in time to your heartbeat and you’re halfway there, so I’m going to take a couple of well…bottles of aspirin and lie down for an hour or several myself. Do you need anything first?”
Wesley looked at him in concern. “You don’t think it’s a gas leak, do you?”
“I think it’s more likely to be mystical, cherry pie. Could be an aftershock from that pentagram His Broodiness painted on the floor. The hotel is still trying to get over that little debacle. Or it could be that last client who dropped in. When an empath demon hits ‘transmit’ instead of ‘receive’ and has a nest of Glurgs barring his sewer access… Well, I think the pot was calling the kettle black when he said that we were sending out a bad vibe.”
“Can empath demons transmit?” Wesley was intrigued.
“Some strains can. If they don’t sleep for worrying about the Glurgs in their backyard, for instance, and think the best way to get through a crisis is to crank up the alcohol intake.” Lorne looked at the glass in his hand. “Immoderate consumption, of course.”
Wesley hid a smile. “Oh, of course. Are Angel and Gunn off dealing with the Glurg problem?”
“Angel, Gunn, Groo and Her Demon Glowiness. I warned her about the serious pus factor she was going to be looking at but would she listen? No. All fired up to be Cordelia, Warrior Princess. Groo’s not helping with all the admiring ‘oh fire of my loins’ looks every time she picks up something big and pointy. Can you keep a listen out for clients and come and tap on my door if anyone dings the bell downstairs?”
Wesley nodded. “Of course, Lorne. Is Fred…? You don’t think it’s meningitis, do you?”
Lorne gave him a pitying look. “Tell me, do you and Gunn time-share the same paranoia? You know, sometimes a headache is just a headache. Talking of which…” He clutched a hand to his forehead. “I really need to go and lie down.”
It was perhaps an hour later or a little less when Wesley heard the telephone ringing. He was halfway across the room before it occurred to him that he couldn’t really do this; but the thought of how bad a headache both Fred and Lorne must have to admit defeat and take to their beds made him want to still the ringing of the bell before it dragged them out of sleep. He found himself clutching the banister and essaying the stairs while the phone rang and rang; a noise that grew louder with every stair he managed to struggle down. Sweat began to pour down his back halfway down, a combination of fear and his body reacting to exertion it was out of practise at coping with. He gripped the banister harder but the stairs seemed endless for a while and the possibility of blacking out and just plummeting to the bottom more and more pressing. The ringing of the telephone gained in urgency the longer it went on also, adding to the feeling of tension in the air which he could feel twanging at his temples as he landed, flat-footed, breathless, and shaking, in the lobby of the Hyperion. Then there was the endless expanse of floor to cross before he could lean against the desk and snatch at the phone, managing a breathless: “Angel Investigations?”
“Good lord, Wesley, is that you?”
It was a shock to hear Giles’ voice. Wesley shrunk inside immediately; knowing a lecture must be about to follow. “Yes, Giles. How can I help you?”
“You can start by telling me how you are?”
“A lot better, thank you.” Wesley paused awkwardly. “And yourself? How are you?”
“Very relieved to hear your voice. I was afraid Angel had buried you under the floorboards and was stalling me.”
Wesley straightened up. “Angel has been very…forgiving. Given what I did to him…”
“You were trying to stop him becoming the murderer of his own child.”
“Whatever my intentions, the result of my actions was disastrous for Angel, Connor, and everyone here. Given the circumstances I don’t think anyone could have been more magnanimous than Angel.”
“Did he or did he not attempt to suffocate you in the hospital?”
“He’d just seen his child carried into a hell dimension by his sworn enemy, Giles. I think his reaction was understandable.”
“Are you calling from Los Angeles or Stepford? And do you know how worried I’ve been?”
Wesley found Giles’ exasperation difficult to deal with. His own emotions were too tangled for him to be able to deal with the raw cheese-grater impact of another’s. He cast around for words, stumbling a little: “Sorry, Giles. I – didn’t know you were concerned. If I had I would… I should have written, but this is the first time I’ve been downstairs since… Since I came back here.”
“You do know you were a bloody fool to cast that spell, don’t you?”
“I admit that it wasn’t one of my brighter ideas.”
“Quite apart from how you were nearly killed, you opened a gateway between this dimension and one with which we were never meant to have any contact. You weakened the walls between two worlds which should never meet.”
“I won’t be trying it again.” Wesley eased himself into a chair, legs still feeling like jelly from his recent exertions. “Connor is gone. I recognize that. I lost him and I can’t get him back. There is no…reversal for this particular sin. I just have to live with it and the consequences of it. Like Angel. Like Faith.”
“You’re not a murderer, Wesley,” Giles said gravely. “They chose to take human lives. You were trying to save one.”
“But the end result was the same.”
Giles sighed. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation either when I arrive with Willow or perhaps back in England…?”
“I won’t be going to England.” That sounded as panicked as he felt. Wesley softened it by adding: “But it would always be a pleasure to see you and Willow.”
“What’s left for you in LA?” Giles demanded.
“People I want to do my part in trying to keep safe.”
“What? Angel lets you stay in a broom closet and throws you scraps three times a week while you say ten Hail Marys a day and beg him for forgiveness?”
“Actually they bought me Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade, and English Breakfast tea. And need I remind you that Angel has been keeping me since I crawled back from that other dimension.”
Another sigh from Giles. “I wish you’d reconsider, Wesley, I really do. I’ve never been happy about your role in LA. If Angel wants to try to work off his redemption, I can only admire his dedication to the cause of humanity and his genuine desire to make amends for some of the things he did. But you and Cordelia have nothing to atone for.”
“We feel we can do some good,” Wesley told him gravely. “And that’s what we want – all of us here – to try to do some good.” He felt frustrated by how much he and Giles were not communicating. That was their role in life, after all. They were linguists. They spent their time translating, researching, discovering information that could be the difference between life and death to a vulnerable invulnerable champion and finding a way to communicate that information in terms the champion could understand. Yet, here they were entirely failing to find the right words to make their feelings known. That had always been a problem for him and Giles and if one of them didn’t do something about it, it always would.
He snatched a deep breath and plunged awkwardly into the truth: “Giles – these people are my family. When I lost them. When I took Connor. No, before then, when I knew I was going to have to take Connor, that it was one possible option and the one that was going to suck me in like a black hole I couldn’t avoid. It was like being dead. You don’t know what it’s like to have been – unimportant to everyone you’ve ever met since…forever. And then have people show you – warmth and friendship and respect and affection, and know you’re going to lose it. And lose it. And have the person you owe everything to be the one you’ve wronged the most and who…hates you now. If I leave here, I…”
“I understand.” Giles sounded gentle; so unlike himself. “Wesley, it’s all right. I understand now.”
“He and Cordelia were so kind to me. They took me in and trusted me and I betrayed them…” The water spattering onto his hand was a shock. Wesley hadn’t intended to cry about any of this; especially not to Giles; one of those authority figures he was still hoping one day to impress. The man would be able to hear that he was crying, his voice was tremulous with tears.
“You didn’t betray anyone. You just made a mistake. You had to make a choice, Wesley. You tried to do the right thing and it didn’t work out. And I’m very sorry for all of you – Angel and you and everyone who loved that baby – that it didn’t work out as you hoped it would. But it wasn’t a betrayal. Not by any reading of that word that I recognize.”
Embarrassed by his own weakness, Wesley wiped his eyes on his sleeve, seeing that he hadn’t buttoned the cuff properly, that his wrist was visible, the ring of fading bruises where the ropes had bitten deep. “She said I was Judas Iscariot.”
“Cordelia?”
“Lilah Morgan from Wolfram & Hart.”
“Do you need a holiday, Wesley? I understand you want to go on working with Angel in LA. I do understand that now. But would it help to go somewhere else for a little while? Somewhere that doesn’t look exactly like the place where…? You had to wrestle with that decision and where you were…”
Their Englishness would never be able to bridge the gap of what had been done to him. Wesley wondered who had told Giles and how much he’d been told. If Angel had punished Giles for his interference by spelling it out. His own voice sounded hoarse and faint, a stranger’s voice, pleading for permission: “I want to stay here.”
“We’ll come to you. Willow and I. Tomorrow. Is Angel there?”
“He’s out on a case. He’ll be back soon.” He hadn’t meant to say it so wistfully. The throbbing in his head was getting worse. It couldn’t be the residue from that visiting demon; it must be something in the hotel; or something near the hotel.
“Can you ask him to call me? When he gets back? To confirm that it’s all right for Willow and I to come up tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” The panic spiked briefly at the thought of Giles seeing him, while the bruises were still there to tell their story. “Why so soon?”
“You may have an open door to another dimension. We need to close it. In view of what’s in that dimension, I feel it should be sooner rather than later. In fact, don’t bother getting him to call us, he won’t. We’ll just turn up.”
Wesley thought of what had been waiting for him in that other world; what they had told him they had done to Cordelia and Fred. Perhaps Anne would have been tricked by them. Oh God, Virginia. They could lure people into that place. Clients. So much cruelty in them both; such pleasure in inflicting pain, an insatiable appetite for chaos.
“If we close it we can’t stop them.” He snatched a breath. “If there’s a way to stop them – don’t you think we should?”
“They’re not our problem.” Giles spoke firmly. “There is a Buffy and a Watchers’ Council and a Rupert Giles in that dimension who are aware of the problem and can solve it themselves.”
“The Giles there is looking after a Wesley who has to be sedated. He can’t be left. They broke him into very small pieces. I imagine he’s something of a full time job for the people in Sunnydale.”
Angelus had described to him in great detail the process of the other Wesley’s nervous breakdown, but he had found himself imagining him like the Angel in Cordelia’s vision; the one where she had visited that other possible life in which her happiness had come at the price of Angel’s sanity and his left arm. A wrecked mind scrabbling for some pitiful remnants of clarity; a fragmented life viewed through a chill blue lens. By the end, Angelus had said, whispering it softly in Wesley’s ear, he’d felt so tender towards him; his masterwork; had murmured sweet nothings in his ear before he bit gently into the soft vulnerability of his slender throat. He’d licked Wesley’s mouth afterwards so he could taste his own ebbing life, holding him against his body, that tantalizing warmth of thin-skinned human with the blood pulsing just beneath the surface inviting him to lick and bite and drink. The sweet trusting Wesley who had set him free. They’d drunk from him over and over but never let him sink too far; although he’d begged them to just let him slip into quiet darkness; they’d always pulled their fangs out in time and licked the blood from the puncture wounds, using their saliva to seal up the flow of blood. Like having your head held under water, Wesley supposed, shown death, taken to the brink; exposed to the raw nerve of your own terror and then yanked back, knowing the nerve was going to be scraped again and again and again.
“Then they know the full extent of the evil of which those two vampires are capable and they should respond accordingly.” There was something utterly implacable about Giles when he was in this mood. “Our obligation is to protect this world. Not to save all possible worlds from their own tragedies. Wesley, ask Angel if it’s all right for Willow and I to visit tomorrow. Tell him that if I don’t hear anything to the contrary we’ll be with him by lunchtime. And now I suggest you go and get some rest. You sound tired.” There was a pause before Giles sighed and added, “No one is going to take you away from the Hyperion, I promise. We just need to close the gateway and then we’ll go again and we’ll leave you with your friends.”
“I’ll tell Angel.” Wesley waited for Giles to replace his receiver first and then slowly put down his own.
“Tell him what, sweetpea?”
Wesley looked up to find Lorne coming towards him, a hand still pressed to his head. Wesley winced. “Is that where I…?”
Lorne looked at him in confusion for a moment before his face cleared. “Good grief, no. Are we guilt-tripping for Jesus tonight, handsome? This skewer in the brain headache has nothing to do with a month old concussion and everything to do with something being badly out of alignment in the mystical ionosphere around here.”
Wesley grimaced. “That may be my fault. Giles says I may have weakened the barrier between this world and that – other dimension. There could be some spillage. He and Willow are coming here tomorrow to deal with it.”
Lorne put a hand back to his head. “That could explain a lot. But, cupcake, how about you try to remove the words ‘my fault’ from your vocabulary for say…a month? Not asking the impossible here, just a thirty day moratorium on self-flagellation.”
“But I…” Wesley broke off at a very straight look from those red eyes. “Won’t finish that sentence.”
Lorne beamed at him. “Now, see, that’s what I…” He broke off as they both felt something ripple through the hotel; Lorne clutching violently at his head in response.
Wesley staggered and caught at the counter top to hold himself upright, then looked at Lorne who was stumbling backwards, still holding his head.
“It’s not an earthquake, is it?” Wesley felt the floor ripple, an epicentre with aftershocks, but an earthquake wouldn’t have Lorne reeling in pain like that. “Something mystical. Something…” As Lorne straightened up, still pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, Wesley heard it, the sound of something downstairs in the basement. His heart turned over but his brain become abruptly clearer than it had in weeks. He felt as if it had just been slashed with a knife and the sting of it clarified everything. He caught Lorne by the shoulders and whispered rapidly: “Go upstairs. Get Fred out by the fire escape. I’ll stall them.”
Lorne’s eyes widened in comprehension and then horror. “Wesley, come with me.”
“I can’t walk that far.” Wesley gave him a little shove. “Please, Lorne. Just get Fred out of here.”
Lorne gazed at him for one more second and then at another sound from downstairs, he turned and sprinted silently up the stairs.
