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Oct. 16th, 2005 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Belonging, Part Five
Giles woke with a jolt, blinking from the low lamplight he had left on so that Wesley wouldn’t awaken in the dark, and wincing from the painful crick in his neck. He fumbled for his glasses and then peered down at the man on the bed who also blinked in first-waking confusion and then focused on him.
“Wesley…?” Giles collected himself. “You’re safe, Wesley. Do you remember me?”
Wesley squinted at him. “Mr – Giles…?”
“That’s right. You’re in my house.”
Wesley put a hand up to his jaw and then his neck. “Am I…human…?”
“Yes. You have a heartbeat and a reflection.” Giles reached for the hand mirror he’d put ready for exactly this eventuality and held it in front of Wesley.
The younger man tentatively touched the bruises on his face, squinting at his reflection, and then gave Giles a look of relief. “Thank you.”
Giles opened his mouth to ask him how he was and then faltered. “Would you – like a cup of tea?”
He half expected the younger man to either start talking in tongues or to tell him not to be such a fucking idiot but Wesley brightened. “Yes, please, that would be lovely.”
Giles paused in the doorway. “Was it…? It was vampires that took you…?”
“Angelus,” Wesley supplied, bizarrely enough, without a shudder. “He’s quite the character, isn’t he?”
Thinking that was probably the understatement of the century, Giles went into the kitchen and began to make tea. As he did so, he could see the contents of the carrier bag that had been on the back of Wesley’s wheelchair which he had spread out on the coffee table. Some very ripped and stained clothing. A dissertation on Angelus which had been annotated by someone Giles very much feared was its subject, several rewrites of that dissertation in a scrawling incoherent hand, a tape recorder, several tapes labelled in the same weird straggling handwriting that had rewritten the dissertation, and a paper bag, containing several pills, on which had been written in a third person’s handwriting: ‘If he freaks give him these’.
He helped Wesley to sit up, and then handed him his tea, sipping his own awkwardly as Wesley gulped down one cupful in seconds. He made him another and then another and then Wesley sat back and looked at him apologetically. “Sorry. Thirsty. Alcohol, I suppose. You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin, would you? I think I’ve been hungover for the best part of a week.”
“Of course.” Bewildered but eager to do anything to make the younger man feel better, Giles fetched him yet more tea and some extra strength Tylenol.
“Would it be all right if I…?” Wesley had swallowed the pills and finished his tea and now pulled the sheet up a little higher. “I’d really like a bath.”
“Of course….” Giles repeated automatically. “Are you able to…manage…?”
“I think so.” Wesley tentatively climbed out of bed, pulling the sheet around himself modestly, and swaying a little. He put a hand up to his head. “Yes, a bit dizzy, but not serious, I don’t think. Perhaps if I leave the door open…?”
“Yes, yes, do that.” Giles hovered around him anxiously as he showed Wesley where the bathroom was, told him that he would find him some of his own clothes from his suitcase and put them out for him. The younger man gave him a reassuring smile that looked odd against his bruised cheekbone and jaw.
“You’re sure you’re…?” Giles didn’t know quite how to phrase it.
Wesley paused in the act of disappearing into the bathroom and looked over his shoulder. “I’ll let you know,” he said.
And then Giles heard the sound of the water running and sat down rather heavily on the couch wondering if Wesley could possibly be as sane and undamaged as he appeared given Angelus’s reputation, not to mention those…bruises that he was quite sure Xander and Oz had seen as clearly as him. And not just bruises, those creamy flakes of dried…substance on his buttocks and the backs of his thighs which certainly seemed to suggest that something extremely unpleasant had been done to Wesley while he was a prisoner of the most notoriously sadistic vampire in the annals of Council history.
The day took on a strange dreamlike quality from then on. All those days and nights of anxiety, remembering Angelus’s previous crimes, pictures and descriptions of the most appalling atrocities, remembering Jenny lying dead in his bed with her neck broken, and no sleep for so many nights that Giles wasn’t sure if he was awake or sleep half the time. And there was Wesley, hair slightly damp from the bath, tousled and uncombed and making him look so much younger than when he had first arrived with it brylcreemed into submission, still barefoot but dressed in a pair of jeans and a pale blue heavy cotton shirt that Giles had helped him unearth from his suitcase, drinking cup after cup of weak tea, while sitting on Giles’s couch. Each time Wesley picked up or put down his cup those bruises around his wrists that proved he’d been bound for hour after hour were revealed, and Giles would stare at them and then look back at Wesley’s bruised face and cut lip and think how something here definitely did not compute. No one was captured by a sadistic vampire for so many days, and then just had a cup of tea, gave himself a little shake and said that the weather in California really was very mild compared with England, wasn’t it?
In between making tea and soup and persuading Wesley to please drop the ‘Mister’ and just call him ‘Giles’, Giles wondered if he had simply cracked up. The strain of losing Jenny and then so irresponsibly mislaying his new assistant causing his mind to jump a couple of tracks and, as in Gilliam’s Brazil, simply construct a happy place for himself in the comfort of his own insanity. Perhaps he had opened the door to a pile of mangled body parts and the shock of it had sent him scurrying to this parallel world in his mind where Wesley was a little cut and bruised but otherwise unhurt.
It was a relief when Buffy arrived, all imperfectly applied make-up and anxious eyes, saying, “Is he…?”
Wesley rose to his feet politely when Buffy came into the room and she stopped and gaped at him then said, “Are you…?”
Seeming to think that she either didn’t know who he was or had forgotten his name, Wesley held out a hand. “Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Ms Summers, we met briefly before....”
And then Buffy threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly, whispering: “We thought you were dead.”
Wesley looked shocked, then pleased, then extraordinarily touched. Giles gently put a hand on Buffy’s shoulder, realizing that Wesley was not the sort of young man to simply take having a girl throw her arms around him in his stride, recent vampire kidnapping or no recent vampire kidnapping, and she reluctantly released him.
Wesley half-smiled at her shyly. “That’s very.... I mean.... I’m sorry to be a nuisance. I’m afraid I just didn’t see him until he was right in front of me and then I was too…shocked to do anything except stand there rather foolishly until he turned into…vampire face whereupon I’m very ashamed to say that I think I may have fainted.” He gave Giles an embarrassed look. “I’m afraid you were right about the field work. It’s very different meeting vampires under controlled circumstances, isn’t it? And although they tell us about the shock of meeting one’s first bona fide demon, they don’t really convey the paralysing fear very well. I suppose they think it would be bad for morale.”
“Do sit down, Wesley.” Giles took his shoulders and gently steered him back to the sofa. Having seen the man naked he knew how extraordinarily fragile he was. He had thought he was skinny and insubstantial-looking on their first meeting but that had been under the relatively concealing bulk of a good bespoke suit. Naked, Wesley was really just skin, bones, and bruises.
Buffy sat down opposite Wesley and gazed at him fixedly. “Are you…? I mean... Did he…?”
“I’m still me,” Wesley said gently. He looked between them. “That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it? Not just – am I a human still but am I still the human I was before he captured me?”
“Yes,” Buffy admitted. “Are you?”
Wesley looked down at his bruised wrists and flexed his fingers. “I appear to be, yes. I think I am. A little…shaken up, and certainly with a great deal to think about, but on the whole, yes, still who I was before.”
“ ‘Shaken up’?” Buffy gazed at him in disbelief. “You know I’ve heard of stiff upper lips but this is just…insane.”
“Oh, it’s not…backbone or breeding or conditioning or anything,” Wesley assured her. “It just didn’t exactly happen to me.”
“What didn’t, Wesley?” Giles pressed.
“Any of it. Well....” Wesley collected himself. “I should say that the kidnapping did, and my first meeting with the others and – oh yes – the dolls, and, let me think…yes, the – I think quite unwarranted – criticism of my dissertation and so on, but from then on, it wasn’t really me until just before I was knocked unconscious.”
Buffy looked at him warily. “Are we talking scary Sybil time here? Are we going to start having a conversation with the Wesley it did happen to in a few minutes time?”
He blinked at her in confusion. “Um…sorry…what…?”
“Do you have a split personality?” she demanded. “How many of you are there in your head?”
“Just me, I think.” He looked at her a little anxiously. “Does it say something on my personal record…? Because that business when I was fourteen definitely wasn’t a breakdown. I just had flu and it affected my marks and I was a little concerned because my father....” Seeing their expressions, he moistened his lips. “Not a split personality. No.”
“What did Angelus do to you?” Buffy pressed and then paled and said quickly: “Or don’t answer that if you don’t want to because when you come right down to it it’s really none of my business.”
Wesley’s eyes widened as he evidently remembered something and he turned to Giles. “Apologising in advance for making references to…events that must be very upsetting for you, but Angelus mentioned murdering a Jenny Calendar who I understand was someone…close to you?”
Giles felt himself close down. “Yes.”
Wesley nodded. “I don’t know if you know this, but the reason Angelus murdered her was because she was in the process of researching the spell to re-ensoul him. So apparently it does exist and she had found it.”
Buffy looked up at Giles wide-eyed. “That’s why he destroyed her computer.”
Wesley’s face fell. “He destroyed it? Oh, I was hoping.... Oh, well, even so perhaps there might be…?”
“I’ll call Willow.” Giles went off to do so, still torn between his grief over Jenny and confusion at Wesley’s disturbing normality. It helped that Jenny had been trying to help but hurt that it was what had killed her. She had betrayed her people for the sake of him and Buffy and it had cost her her life.... And although he would have loved to believe that Wesley was the one person that Angelus decided to just keep around for some mild bondage and groping games as he took a break between torture and maiming, it made no sense. Angelus wasn’t a vampire who did ‘mild’ anything. He lived for extremes, and yet there was Wesley with all his fingers and toes and limbs and eyes and ears and tongue.
Mechanically, Giles passed on what Wesley had told him to Willow who promised that she and Oz would take another look through everything they had managed to find in Jenny’s office, and check through her desk one last time just in case something had been wedged in a drawer at the back.
Cordelia and Xander arrived before Willow and Oz, Wesley once again politely rising to his feet at the sight of a young woman and proffering a hand which was spurned in place of a hug from Xander, who then fell back in some embarrassment. Wesley stuttered a bit and then they shook hands in a manly fashion and Wesley politely offered Cordelia his place on the couch, whereupon she turned to Xander and said: “Shouldn’t he be…gibbering or something?”
“Apparently he doesn’t do gibbering,” Buffy explained.
Cordelia looked at him wide-eyed as she took his place on the sofa and then glanced across at Giles. “Who knew English guys could be cool?”
Xander introduced himself and Cordelia, and Wesley looked at Xander in some surprise and said, “Oh, of course. Drusilla mentioned you on a couple of occasions. Apparently she’s very eager to um…reacquaint herself with you.”
Xander paled. “Oh happy day.”
“It’s a matter of some conflict between Drusilla and William the Bloody.”
“Spike and Dru were there?” Buffy demanded sharply, a moment before Giles could do so. “And yet you’re all…not dead…?”
Wesley gazed into his teacup. “Drusilla is really the vampire who contradicts many of the teachings that are at the heart of the Council’s belief in what a vampire really is.”
“Because the Council thinks vampires are sane…?” Buffy enquired.
“I was always haunted by her story.” Wesley looked for the first time as tragic as circumstances suggested that he should be. “That poor girl, cursed with second sight, made the object of Angelus’s twisted obsession, stalked by him for so long, her family killed all around her, and then when she fled from him to a convent, all the nuns murdered also, and then her soul taken from her so she couldn’t even find peace with the family she loved in the arms of the god in which she believed so fervently.”
“That was who she was when human, Wesley,” Giles reminded him quietly. “And what was done to that poor girl was indeed tragic and appalling, but you need to remember that was she is now is a soulless killer.”
Wesley looked up at him. “But it isn’t that simple, Giles. We’re taught that a body is vacated and then taken over by a demon and that the demon has access to the memories of who the human must be but isn’t that human. But, if that’s the case, why is the vampire Drusilla as insane as the human one was after Angelus had mangled her poor mind? Why does she still remember her brothers and sisters with affection? Why does she still mourn her mother? Why does she still have the gift of second sight? On some level she still is who she was, but without a soul. But there is some…humanity there. I think there must be, in all of them, I think that may be what keeps them here, where we are, not just because of the blood in our veins but because we remind them of what they used to be, of what a part of them still is.”
Cordelia said tentatively, “Did she do horrible things to you, Wesley?”
“She taught me to waltz and she invited me to tea with her dolls.”
“She kills people,” Buffy reminded him tautly. “Kills children. Eats babies.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes. “She told me.”
The frantic hammering on the door interrupted any further discussion or Giles would certainly have taken Wesley to one side and given him a top up lecture on the danger of forgetting that vampires weren’t the humans they had once been any more; even if they had their memories, they weren’t what they appeared, especially not as someone as dangerous as Drusilla.
As he opened the door, Willow almost fell across the threshold, holding up a yellow floppy disk as she did so. “I found it!” she gasped.
Giles looked past to her to Oz who said quietly: “The spell.”
Buffy rose to her feet as if pulled by strings. “For re-ensouling Angel?”
Willow gulped and nodded. “I loaded the disk onto my laptop and it’s all there. We just need an orb of Thesula and some herbs and things. I can do it. I know I can. I want to try. Please, Buffy.”
Xander held up his hands. “Hey, slow down. The guy out there right now is the one who killed Miss Calendar, the one who.... The one Buffy can kill. Turn him back and we have someone who....”
“Is Angel again.” Buffy swallowed.
Xander nodded. “And then what? We’re supposed to say ‘welcome back’?”
“I don’t think that really relevant,” Wesley put in. As they all turned to look at him in surprise, he shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I think, all personal feelings aside, Angelus is too dangerous to leave at large, and as you have presumably tried and failed to…contain or terminate him on more than one occasion without success, if a method presents itself to render him harmless, I think you have no choice but to at least attempt it.”
Xander looked at him in disbelief. “Wesley, you, of all people, know what Angelus is.”
Wesley returned his gaze levelly. “Exactly why I think he’s too dangerous to leave at large without a soul.”
“But he....” Xander broke off, looking at the audience, and took a step back, inclining his head. “And I guess you know that without me telling you.”
Wesley nodded. “He killed at least seven people in the short time I was…with him. The important thing is for the killing to stop. We can deal with the…emotional fallout afterwards.”
“Wesley’s right,” Giles heard himself say hoarsely. “We need to at least attempt it. Buffy, can you go with Willow and Oz to the magic shop? Xander, perhaps you would be kind enough to drive them?”
Willow said, “I don’t know if we have enough money for an orb of Thesula. In fact unless one can buy them for thirty three dollars and seventy two cents I know we don’t.”
“I have one.” Giles picked up the orb. “Was using it as a paper weight.”
Wesley looked at him in surprise. “Aren’t they rare and valuable?”
Giles shrugged. “They also make good paperweights.”
And then there was a general flurry of teenagers heading for Xander’s car and he was left alone with Wesley and Cordelia and his orb of thesula and the yellow disk which contained Jenny’s last actions before Angelus had snapped her neck and left her corpse on his bed.
Giles knew he should absolutely not be permitting Willow to attempt a spell of this magnitude, but he also knew that the girl was probably their best shot at it. Wesley had murmured something about being willing to help and Giles had very firmly sent him to sit back on the couch out of the way. It was enough of a miracle that the man was still walking and talking after what had been done to him, but he certainly couldn’t be in the right physical or mental condition to be dealing with such powerful magic.
“I got an ‘A’ in Mystical Studies....” Wesley offered from the couch until a look from Giles made him fold his hands in his lap and say meekly: “I’ll just sit over here then.”
“Do you think Angelus can sense what we’re planning?” Buffy asked Giles in an undertone as Xander, Oz and Cordelia helped Willow to set out her ingredients in the appropriate pattern.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But he can’t get in without an invitation. I revoked it after....” And there was Jenny lying dead on his bed and he flinched and closed his eyes.
Buffy touched his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he said automatically.
She glanced back across at Wesley. “I keep waiting for him to…break.”
“I’m rather afraid of that myself,” Giles admitted. “He’s tried to talk to me a few times about what happened and I’ve tended to head him off as I can’t believe he’s really ready to address the…reality of what was done to him. At the moment I presume he’s still in a state of denial.”
Buffy grimaced. “You don’t think maybe Angelus just…played tiddleywinks with him for a few days then?”
Giles sighed. “Much as I would like to believe that all Wesley did was take tea with Drusilla’s dolls and learn the art of ballroom dancing, I’m afraid there is clear evidence he was subjected to considerably more unpleasant....” He just looked at her and she nodded.
“I know.” She snatched a breath. “I’ve read Angel’s file. I know his idea of a fun night in.”
“I must admit to being completely bewildered by Wesley’s current state of apparent…calm, but I suppose he’s just finding a way to get through each hour. I would be less worried if he was ‘gibbering’ as Cordelia put it. I can’t help feeling that his subconscious is saving up some kind of horrible…reality check.”
They both looked at Wesley again, who was now politely answering questions Cordelia was asking him about England while he looked rather wistfully across at Willow’s spell preparations. Giles thought it rather brave of him to admit to fainting at his first sight of an uncontrolled vampire in game face, although it also had to be said that it didn’t bode particularly well for his time on the Hellmouth or say a lot for the Council’s training methods. He was still bewildered by the lack of physical damage Wesley had suffered. Under normal circumstances one would not, of course, think it a matter for celebration that a colleague had been kidnapped, beaten and – Giles very much feared – sexually assaulted; but given Angelus’ sickeningly sadistic imagination that really did add up to getting off so lightly as to require an explanation.
Thinking of Angelus, Giles nodded to Willow to begin the spell and then took up a position by the window. It seemed likely that Jenny’s attempt to re-ensoul him had brought about her death, suggesting that Angelus could in some way sense that the spell was being carried out, and he had no intention of letting any harm come to Willow. Buffy followed his lead, while Willow began the spell, both of them waiting for what felt like the inevitable appearance of Angelus.
Except it was Spike that Giles saw out of the window. He blinked and then looked again, but there was no doubt that was who was out there, the vampire inching his way towards the house in a manner that was presumably supposed to be covert. Giles pointed him out to Buffy and then nodded at the back door. They had collected stakes and headed out in a moment.
Giles nodded to Buffy to indicate that he would take the left set of bushes while she took the right. It was clear that Spike wanted to get a look inside the house, all his attention focused on the window, darting towards it a little unsteadily. As Giles kept a look out for Angelus, Buffy slipped from bush to bush until she was within easy striking distance of Spike and then stepped forward, stake raised.
The mournful wail came at the same moment that someone threw themselves at Buffy and knocked her away from Spike. Giles spun around to find Drusilla running towards Buffy, and stepped in front of her with his stake at the ready, fearing that it must then be Angelus who was grappling with Buffy, until she threw the person off so easily and dragged him to his feet to reveal –
“Wesley!” Buffy said in disbelief.
“I’m terribly sorry but please don’t kill them,” he said breathlessly.
Spike had spun around and was standing by the window, clearly undecided as the best thing to do when Buffy was so close and still had a stake and Giles had hold of Drusilla.
Buffy let Wesley go as if he burned her fingers. “What were you thinking?”
“They saved me,” Wesley panted. “Please, Buffy. I don’t know why they did it, but they did it. If it wasn’t for Spike I’d be…someone else by now, supposing I wasn’t nailed to Angelus’s walls.”
“Watcherboy’s telling the truth,” Spike said rapidly. “We saved him from the big poof. Who do you think wheeled him here – in my bloody wheelchair, too?”
“Why are you here?” Giles demanded.
“Wanted to know if he was safe,” Drusilla admitted. “He saves my Spikey. Can’t do that if he’s dead.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Didn’t it occur to either of you that he wouldn’t have needed to save your ‘Spikey’ if you hadn’t been stupid enough to come here in the first place?”
Drusilla and Spike exchanged a glance that made it clear that, no, they hadn’t thought of that until Buffy pointed it out.
Giles was still looking between them and Wesley in confusion. “How did they save you from Angelus? I mean – you were his captive, weren’t you?”
“Yes and no,” Wesley brushed some of the mud from his shirt. He looked into Buffy’s eyes. “Please let them go. Tell them to leave Sunnydale. Tell them you’ll kill them the next time you see them but she’s suffered so much and I owe Spike more than my life.”
Spike looked across at Drusilla who was gazing at Wesley lovingly. Giles stepped back cautiously and lowered his stake and Drusilla stroked a finger along Giles’s jaw. “So handsome.” Then she was gliding across to Wesley who gazed at her with eyes full of compassion. She stroked his hair back from his face and murmured, “You shouldn’t be sad for me, pretty one. I like the pictures in my head now. Never used to. Used to frighten me. I can talk to the stars now. Live forever. Blood in your mouth doesn’t taste the same when you’re human. Shall I come back for you one day? Make you one of us?”
“Get out of Sunnydale,” Buffy said tautly. “Both of you.”
“Can I have my chair back?” Spike demanded plaintively.
“No,” Buffy told him.
Wesley was still gazing at Drusilla. “I can’t be what you are, Drusilla. It isn’t my destiny.”
She stroked his hair again and kissed him on the mouth. “Love Daddy. That’s what you’re meant to do. Save him from the monsters. All the monsters in his head. Like my Spike saved you from the ones Angelus wanted to put there.” And then she was gliding past Buffy giving her a contemptuous toss of the head as she said, “Slayer. Her. Don’t like her. Bad for Daddy. Makes him soul sick. Bad Slayer.” Then she had grabbed Spike’s hand and they were running into the darkness.
Wesley took a rapid step backwards looking between Buffy and Giles anxiously and holding up his hands. “I know you must be very angry, but, please, before you – ”
“I’m not angry, Wesley,” Giles said quietly. “Now let’s go inside.”
Buffy took Wesley by the arm leading him into the house and closing the front door before saying, “I’m not angry either, no, really, but if you ever do that again I will be forced to do some very bad things to you with – ” she held up her stake: “…anything that comes to hand.”
Wesley gave her a nervous smile, shoulders dropping submissively. “Understood.”
“Ever again.”
“Absolutely understood. Thank you. Sorry.” He gave her another placatory smile, the picture of meek obedience, and, after another narrow-eyed look, Buffy pointed to Giles’ couch. Wesley went to it wordlessly and immediately sat down, elbows in and knees together so that he would take up as little room as possible.
Buffy turned to look at Giles confusion. “Do you think he was just really…well behaved for Angelus?”
“I’m wondering,” Giles admitted, eyeing his colleague uneasily. “Some of the tutors at the Academy can be a little…taxing. I suppose one would evolve strategies for dealing with them, but…I’ve never heard of anyone surviving a vampire attack through consistent punctuality and always bringing a pen to class.”
And then Giles turned around to see Willow’s eyes black and Latin bubbling from her mouth and the air was charged with the fizz of unmistakably powerful magic and then no one was thinking of anything except that it was here, the power to re-ensoul the damned, and Willow had summoned it and Jenny had died for it and then the room was quiet and still and everyone snatched a much-needed breath.
There was a long silence and then Cordelia said, “So, did it work?”
Giles and Buffy exchanged a glance and he saw how much she wanted Angel back; her first love, the one she looked to in times of crisis; the one who still wore the face of the demon who had killed the woman he loved, and he snatched another breath and said wearily: “I’m sure we’ll find out before too long.” And then sat down on the couch next to a still very quiet Wesley and needed to think about nothing at all for quite some time.
***
Giles woke with a jolt, blinking from the low lamplight he had left on so that Wesley wouldn’t awaken in the dark, and wincing from the painful crick in his neck. He fumbled for his glasses and then peered down at the man on the bed who also blinked in first-waking confusion and then focused on him.
“Wesley…?” Giles collected himself. “You’re safe, Wesley. Do you remember me?”
Wesley squinted at him. “Mr – Giles…?”
“That’s right. You’re in my house.”
Wesley put a hand up to his jaw and then his neck. “Am I…human…?”
“Yes. You have a heartbeat and a reflection.” Giles reached for the hand mirror he’d put ready for exactly this eventuality and held it in front of Wesley.
The younger man tentatively touched the bruises on his face, squinting at his reflection, and then gave Giles a look of relief. “Thank you.”
Giles opened his mouth to ask him how he was and then faltered. “Would you – like a cup of tea?”
He half expected the younger man to either start talking in tongues or to tell him not to be such a fucking idiot but Wesley brightened. “Yes, please, that would be lovely.”
Giles paused in the doorway. “Was it…? It was vampires that took you…?”
“Angelus,” Wesley supplied, bizarrely enough, without a shudder. “He’s quite the character, isn’t he?”
Thinking that was probably the understatement of the century, Giles went into the kitchen and began to make tea. As he did so, he could see the contents of the carrier bag that had been on the back of Wesley’s wheelchair which he had spread out on the coffee table. Some very ripped and stained clothing. A dissertation on Angelus which had been annotated by someone Giles very much feared was its subject, several rewrites of that dissertation in a scrawling incoherent hand, a tape recorder, several tapes labelled in the same weird straggling handwriting that had rewritten the dissertation, and a paper bag, containing several pills, on which had been written in a third person’s handwriting: ‘If he freaks give him these’.
He helped Wesley to sit up, and then handed him his tea, sipping his own awkwardly as Wesley gulped down one cupful in seconds. He made him another and then another and then Wesley sat back and looked at him apologetically. “Sorry. Thirsty. Alcohol, I suppose. You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin, would you? I think I’ve been hungover for the best part of a week.”
“Of course.” Bewildered but eager to do anything to make the younger man feel better, Giles fetched him yet more tea and some extra strength Tylenol.
“Would it be all right if I…?” Wesley had swallowed the pills and finished his tea and now pulled the sheet up a little higher. “I’d really like a bath.”
“Of course….” Giles repeated automatically. “Are you able to…manage…?”
“I think so.” Wesley tentatively climbed out of bed, pulling the sheet around himself modestly, and swaying a little. He put a hand up to his head. “Yes, a bit dizzy, but not serious, I don’t think. Perhaps if I leave the door open…?”
“Yes, yes, do that.” Giles hovered around him anxiously as he showed Wesley where the bathroom was, told him that he would find him some of his own clothes from his suitcase and put them out for him. The younger man gave him a reassuring smile that looked odd against his bruised cheekbone and jaw.
“You’re sure you’re…?” Giles didn’t know quite how to phrase it.
Wesley paused in the act of disappearing into the bathroom and looked over his shoulder. “I’ll let you know,” he said.
And then Giles heard the sound of the water running and sat down rather heavily on the couch wondering if Wesley could possibly be as sane and undamaged as he appeared given Angelus’s reputation, not to mention those…bruises that he was quite sure Xander and Oz had seen as clearly as him. And not just bruises, those creamy flakes of dried…substance on his buttocks and the backs of his thighs which certainly seemed to suggest that something extremely unpleasant had been done to Wesley while he was a prisoner of the most notoriously sadistic vampire in the annals of Council history.
The day took on a strange dreamlike quality from then on. All those days and nights of anxiety, remembering Angelus’s previous crimes, pictures and descriptions of the most appalling atrocities, remembering Jenny lying dead in his bed with her neck broken, and no sleep for so many nights that Giles wasn’t sure if he was awake or sleep half the time. And there was Wesley, hair slightly damp from the bath, tousled and uncombed and making him look so much younger than when he had first arrived with it brylcreemed into submission, still barefoot but dressed in a pair of jeans and a pale blue heavy cotton shirt that Giles had helped him unearth from his suitcase, drinking cup after cup of weak tea, while sitting on Giles’s couch. Each time Wesley picked up or put down his cup those bruises around his wrists that proved he’d been bound for hour after hour were revealed, and Giles would stare at them and then look back at Wesley’s bruised face and cut lip and think how something here definitely did not compute. No one was captured by a sadistic vampire for so many days, and then just had a cup of tea, gave himself a little shake and said that the weather in California really was very mild compared with England, wasn’t it?
In between making tea and soup and persuading Wesley to please drop the ‘Mister’ and just call him ‘Giles’, Giles wondered if he had simply cracked up. The strain of losing Jenny and then so irresponsibly mislaying his new assistant causing his mind to jump a couple of tracks and, as in Gilliam’s Brazil, simply construct a happy place for himself in the comfort of his own insanity. Perhaps he had opened the door to a pile of mangled body parts and the shock of it had sent him scurrying to this parallel world in his mind where Wesley was a little cut and bruised but otherwise unhurt.
It was a relief when Buffy arrived, all imperfectly applied make-up and anxious eyes, saying, “Is he…?”
Wesley rose to his feet politely when Buffy came into the room and she stopped and gaped at him then said, “Are you…?”
Seeming to think that she either didn’t know who he was or had forgotten his name, Wesley held out a hand. “Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Ms Summers, we met briefly before....”
And then Buffy threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly, whispering: “We thought you were dead.”
Wesley looked shocked, then pleased, then extraordinarily touched. Giles gently put a hand on Buffy’s shoulder, realizing that Wesley was not the sort of young man to simply take having a girl throw her arms around him in his stride, recent vampire kidnapping or no recent vampire kidnapping, and she reluctantly released him.
Wesley half-smiled at her shyly. “That’s very.... I mean.... I’m sorry to be a nuisance. I’m afraid I just didn’t see him until he was right in front of me and then I was too…shocked to do anything except stand there rather foolishly until he turned into…vampire face whereupon I’m very ashamed to say that I think I may have fainted.” He gave Giles an embarrassed look. “I’m afraid you were right about the field work. It’s very different meeting vampires under controlled circumstances, isn’t it? And although they tell us about the shock of meeting one’s first bona fide demon, they don’t really convey the paralysing fear very well. I suppose they think it would be bad for morale.”
“Do sit down, Wesley.” Giles took his shoulders and gently steered him back to the sofa. Having seen the man naked he knew how extraordinarily fragile he was. He had thought he was skinny and insubstantial-looking on their first meeting but that had been under the relatively concealing bulk of a good bespoke suit. Naked, Wesley was really just skin, bones, and bruises.
Buffy sat down opposite Wesley and gazed at him fixedly. “Are you…? I mean... Did he…?”
“I’m still me,” Wesley said gently. He looked between them. “That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it? Not just – am I a human still but am I still the human I was before he captured me?”
“Yes,” Buffy admitted. “Are you?”
Wesley looked down at his bruised wrists and flexed his fingers. “I appear to be, yes. I think I am. A little…shaken up, and certainly with a great deal to think about, but on the whole, yes, still who I was before.”
“ ‘Shaken up’?” Buffy gazed at him in disbelief. “You know I’ve heard of stiff upper lips but this is just…insane.”
“Oh, it’s not…backbone or breeding or conditioning or anything,” Wesley assured her. “It just didn’t exactly happen to me.”
“What didn’t, Wesley?” Giles pressed.
“Any of it. Well....” Wesley collected himself. “I should say that the kidnapping did, and my first meeting with the others and – oh yes – the dolls, and, let me think…yes, the – I think quite unwarranted – criticism of my dissertation and so on, but from then on, it wasn’t really me until just before I was knocked unconscious.”
Buffy looked at him warily. “Are we talking scary Sybil time here? Are we going to start having a conversation with the Wesley it did happen to in a few minutes time?”
He blinked at her in confusion. “Um…sorry…what…?”
“Do you have a split personality?” she demanded. “How many of you are there in your head?”
“Just me, I think.” He looked at her a little anxiously. “Does it say something on my personal record…? Because that business when I was fourteen definitely wasn’t a breakdown. I just had flu and it affected my marks and I was a little concerned because my father....” Seeing their expressions, he moistened his lips. “Not a split personality. No.”
“What did Angelus do to you?” Buffy pressed and then paled and said quickly: “Or don’t answer that if you don’t want to because when you come right down to it it’s really none of my business.”
Wesley’s eyes widened as he evidently remembered something and he turned to Giles. “Apologising in advance for making references to…events that must be very upsetting for you, but Angelus mentioned murdering a Jenny Calendar who I understand was someone…close to you?”
Giles felt himself close down. “Yes.”
Wesley nodded. “I don’t know if you know this, but the reason Angelus murdered her was because she was in the process of researching the spell to re-ensoul him. So apparently it does exist and she had found it.”
Buffy looked up at Giles wide-eyed. “That’s why he destroyed her computer.”
Wesley’s face fell. “He destroyed it? Oh, I was hoping.... Oh, well, even so perhaps there might be…?”
“I’ll call Willow.” Giles went off to do so, still torn between his grief over Jenny and confusion at Wesley’s disturbing normality. It helped that Jenny had been trying to help but hurt that it was what had killed her. She had betrayed her people for the sake of him and Buffy and it had cost her her life.... And although he would have loved to believe that Wesley was the one person that Angelus decided to just keep around for some mild bondage and groping games as he took a break between torture and maiming, it made no sense. Angelus wasn’t a vampire who did ‘mild’ anything. He lived for extremes, and yet there was Wesley with all his fingers and toes and limbs and eyes and ears and tongue.
Mechanically, Giles passed on what Wesley had told him to Willow who promised that she and Oz would take another look through everything they had managed to find in Jenny’s office, and check through her desk one last time just in case something had been wedged in a drawer at the back.
Cordelia and Xander arrived before Willow and Oz, Wesley once again politely rising to his feet at the sight of a young woman and proffering a hand which was spurned in place of a hug from Xander, who then fell back in some embarrassment. Wesley stuttered a bit and then they shook hands in a manly fashion and Wesley politely offered Cordelia his place on the couch, whereupon she turned to Xander and said: “Shouldn’t he be…gibbering or something?”
“Apparently he doesn’t do gibbering,” Buffy explained.
Cordelia looked at him wide-eyed as she took his place on the sofa and then glanced across at Giles. “Who knew English guys could be cool?”
Xander introduced himself and Cordelia, and Wesley looked at Xander in some surprise and said, “Oh, of course. Drusilla mentioned you on a couple of occasions. Apparently she’s very eager to um…reacquaint herself with you.”
Xander paled. “Oh happy day.”
“It’s a matter of some conflict between Drusilla and William the Bloody.”
“Spike and Dru were there?” Buffy demanded sharply, a moment before Giles could do so. “And yet you’re all…not dead…?”
Wesley gazed into his teacup. “Drusilla is really the vampire who contradicts many of the teachings that are at the heart of the Council’s belief in what a vampire really is.”
“Because the Council thinks vampires are sane…?” Buffy enquired.
“I was always haunted by her story.” Wesley looked for the first time as tragic as circumstances suggested that he should be. “That poor girl, cursed with second sight, made the object of Angelus’s twisted obsession, stalked by him for so long, her family killed all around her, and then when she fled from him to a convent, all the nuns murdered also, and then her soul taken from her so she couldn’t even find peace with the family she loved in the arms of the god in which she believed so fervently.”
“That was who she was when human, Wesley,” Giles reminded him quietly. “And what was done to that poor girl was indeed tragic and appalling, but you need to remember that was she is now is a soulless killer.”
Wesley looked up at him. “But it isn’t that simple, Giles. We’re taught that a body is vacated and then taken over by a demon and that the demon has access to the memories of who the human must be but isn’t that human. But, if that’s the case, why is the vampire Drusilla as insane as the human one was after Angelus had mangled her poor mind? Why does she still remember her brothers and sisters with affection? Why does she still mourn her mother? Why does she still have the gift of second sight? On some level she still is who she was, but without a soul. But there is some…humanity there. I think there must be, in all of them, I think that may be what keeps them here, where we are, not just because of the blood in our veins but because we remind them of what they used to be, of what a part of them still is.”
Cordelia said tentatively, “Did she do horrible things to you, Wesley?”
“She taught me to waltz and she invited me to tea with her dolls.”
“She kills people,” Buffy reminded him tautly. “Kills children. Eats babies.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes. “She told me.”
The frantic hammering on the door interrupted any further discussion or Giles would certainly have taken Wesley to one side and given him a top up lecture on the danger of forgetting that vampires weren’t the humans they had once been any more; even if they had their memories, they weren’t what they appeared, especially not as someone as dangerous as Drusilla.
As he opened the door, Willow almost fell across the threshold, holding up a yellow floppy disk as she did so. “I found it!” she gasped.
Giles looked past to her to Oz who said quietly: “The spell.”
Buffy rose to her feet as if pulled by strings. “For re-ensouling Angel?”
Willow gulped and nodded. “I loaded the disk onto my laptop and it’s all there. We just need an orb of Thesula and some herbs and things. I can do it. I know I can. I want to try. Please, Buffy.”
Xander held up his hands. “Hey, slow down. The guy out there right now is the one who killed Miss Calendar, the one who.... The one Buffy can kill. Turn him back and we have someone who....”
“Is Angel again.” Buffy swallowed.
Xander nodded. “And then what? We’re supposed to say ‘welcome back’?”
“I don’t think that really relevant,” Wesley put in. As they all turned to look at him in surprise, he shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I think, all personal feelings aside, Angelus is too dangerous to leave at large, and as you have presumably tried and failed to…contain or terminate him on more than one occasion without success, if a method presents itself to render him harmless, I think you have no choice but to at least attempt it.”
Xander looked at him in disbelief. “Wesley, you, of all people, know what Angelus is.”
Wesley returned his gaze levelly. “Exactly why I think he’s too dangerous to leave at large without a soul.”
“But he....” Xander broke off, looking at the audience, and took a step back, inclining his head. “And I guess you know that without me telling you.”
Wesley nodded. “He killed at least seven people in the short time I was…with him. The important thing is for the killing to stop. We can deal with the…emotional fallout afterwards.”
“Wesley’s right,” Giles heard himself say hoarsely. “We need to at least attempt it. Buffy, can you go with Willow and Oz to the magic shop? Xander, perhaps you would be kind enough to drive them?”
Willow said, “I don’t know if we have enough money for an orb of Thesula. In fact unless one can buy them for thirty three dollars and seventy two cents I know we don’t.”
“I have one.” Giles picked up the orb. “Was using it as a paper weight.”
Wesley looked at him in surprise. “Aren’t they rare and valuable?”
Giles shrugged. “They also make good paperweights.”
And then there was a general flurry of teenagers heading for Xander’s car and he was left alone with Wesley and Cordelia and his orb of thesula and the yellow disk which contained Jenny’s last actions before Angelus had snapped her neck and left her corpse on his bed.
Giles knew he should absolutely not be permitting Willow to attempt a spell of this magnitude, but he also knew that the girl was probably their best shot at it. Wesley had murmured something about being willing to help and Giles had very firmly sent him to sit back on the couch out of the way. It was enough of a miracle that the man was still walking and talking after what had been done to him, but he certainly couldn’t be in the right physical or mental condition to be dealing with such powerful magic.
“I got an ‘A’ in Mystical Studies....” Wesley offered from the couch until a look from Giles made him fold his hands in his lap and say meekly: “I’ll just sit over here then.”
“Do you think Angelus can sense what we’re planning?” Buffy asked Giles in an undertone as Xander, Oz and Cordelia helped Willow to set out her ingredients in the appropriate pattern.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But he can’t get in without an invitation. I revoked it after....” And there was Jenny lying dead on his bed and he flinched and closed his eyes.
Buffy touched his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he said automatically.
She glanced back across at Wesley. “I keep waiting for him to…break.”
“I’m rather afraid of that myself,” Giles admitted. “He’s tried to talk to me a few times about what happened and I’ve tended to head him off as I can’t believe he’s really ready to address the…reality of what was done to him. At the moment I presume he’s still in a state of denial.”
Buffy grimaced. “You don’t think maybe Angelus just…played tiddleywinks with him for a few days then?”
Giles sighed. “Much as I would like to believe that all Wesley did was take tea with Drusilla’s dolls and learn the art of ballroom dancing, I’m afraid there is clear evidence he was subjected to considerably more unpleasant....” He just looked at her and she nodded.
“I know.” She snatched a breath. “I’ve read Angel’s file. I know his idea of a fun night in.”
“I must admit to being completely bewildered by Wesley’s current state of apparent…calm, but I suppose he’s just finding a way to get through each hour. I would be less worried if he was ‘gibbering’ as Cordelia put it. I can’t help feeling that his subconscious is saving up some kind of horrible…reality check.”
They both looked at Wesley again, who was now politely answering questions Cordelia was asking him about England while he looked rather wistfully across at Willow’s spell preparations. Giles thought it rather brave of him to admit to fainting at his first sight of an uncontrolled vampire in game face, although it also had to be said that it didn’t bode particularly well for his time on the Hellmouth or say a lot for the Council’s training methods. He was still bewildered by the lack of physical damage Wesley had suffered. Under normal circumstances one would not, of course, think it a matter for celebration that a colleague had been kidnapped, beaten and – Giles very much feared – sexually assaulted; but given Angelus’ sickeningly sadistic imagination that really did add up to getting off so lightly as to require an explanation.
Thinking of Angelus, Giles nodded to Willow to begin the spell and then took up a position by the window. It seemed likely that Jenny’s attempt to re-ensoul him had brought about her death, suggesting that Angelus could in some way sense that the spell was being carried out, and he had no intention of letting any harm come to Willow. Buffy followed his lead, while Willow began the spell, both of them waiting for what felt like the inevitable appearance of Angelus.
Except it was Spike that Giles saw out of the window. He blinked and then looked again, but there was no doubt that was who was out there, the vampire inching his way towards the house in a manner that was presumably supposed to be covert. Giles pointed him out to Buffy and then nodded at the back door. They had collected stakes and headed out in a moment.
Giles nodded to Buffy to indicate that he would take the left set of bushes while she took the right. It was clear that Spike wanted to get a look inside the house, all his attention focused on the window, darting towards it a little unsteadily. As Giles kept a look out for Angelus, Buffy slipped from bush to bush until she was within easy striking distance of Spike and then stepped forward, stake raised.
The mournful wail came at the same moment that someone threw themselves at Buffy and knocked her away from Spike. Giles spun around to find Drusilla running towards Buffy, and stepped in front of her with his stake at the ready, fearing that it must then be Angelus who was grappling with Buffy, until she threw the person off so easily and dragged him to his feet to reveal –
“Wesley!” Buffy said in disbelief.
“I’m terribly sorry but please don’t kill them,” he said breathlessly.
Spike had spun around and was standing by the window, clearly undecided as the best thing to do when Buffy was so close and still had a stake and Giles had hold of Drusilla.
Buffy let Wesley go as if he burned her fingers. “What were you thinking?”
“They saved me,” Wesley panted. “Please, Buffy. I don’t know why they did it, but they did it. If it wasn’t for Spike I’d be…someone else by now, supposing I wasn’t nailed to Angelus’s walls.”
“Watcherboy’s telling the truth,” Spike said rapidly. “We saved him from the big poof. Who do you think wheeled him here – in my bloody wheelchair, too?”
“Why are you here?” Giles demanded.
“Wanted to know if he was safe,” Drusilla admitted. “He saves my Spikey. Can’t do that if he’s dead.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Didn’t it occur to either of you that he wouldn’t have needed to save your ‘Spikey’ if you hadn’t been stupid enough to come here in the first place?”
Drusilla and Spike exchanged a glance that made it clear that, no, they hadn’t thought of that until Buffy pointed it out.
Giles was still looking between them and Wesley in confusion. “How did they save you from Angelus? I mean – you were his captive, weren’t you?”
“Yes and no,” Wesley brushed some of the mud from his shirt. He looked into Buffy’s eyes. “Please let them go. Tell them to leave Sunnydale. Tell them you’ll kill them the next time you see them but she’s suffered so much and I owe Spike more than my life.”
Spike looked across at Drusilla who was gazing at Wesley lovingly. Giles stepped back cautiously and lowered his stake and Drusilla stroked a finger along Giles’s jaw. “So handsome.” Then she was gliding across to Wesley who gazed at her with eyes full of compassion. She stroked his hair back from his face and murmured, “You shouldn’t be sad for me, pretty one. I like the pictures in my head now. Never used to. Used to frighten me. I can talk to the stars now. Live forever. Blood in your mouth doesn’t taste the same when you’re human. Shall I come back for you one day? Make you one of us?”
“Get out of Sunnydale,” Buffy said tautly. “Both of you.”
“Can I have my chair back?” Spike demanded plaintively.
“No,” Buffy told him.
Wesley was still gazing at Drusilla. “I can’t be what you are, Drusilla. It isn’t my destiny.”
She stroked his hair again and kissed him on the mouth. “Love Daddy. That’s what you’re meant to do. Save him from the monsters. All the monsters in his head. Like my Spike saved you from the ones Angelus wanted to put there.” And then she was gliding past Buffy giving her a contemptuous toss of the head as she said, “Slayer. Her. Don’t like her. Bad for Daddy. Makes him soul sick. Bad Slayer.” Then she had grabbed Spike’s hand and they were running into the darkness.
Wesley took a rapid step backwards looking between Buffy and Giles anxiously and holding up his hands. “I know you must be very angry, but, please, before you – ”
“I’m not angry, Wesley,” Giles said quietly. “Now let’s go inside.”
Buffy took Wesley by the arm leading him into the house and closing the front door before saying, “I’m not angry either, no, really, but if you ever do that again I will be forced to do some very bad things to you with – ” she held up her stake: “…anything that comes to hand.”
Wesley gave her a nervous smile, shoulders dropping submissively. “Understood.”
“Ever again.”
“Absolutely understood. Thank you. Sorry.” He gave her another placatory smile, the picture of meek obedience, and, after another narrow-eyed look, Buffy pointed to Giles’ couch. Wesley went to it wordlessly and immediately sat down, elbows in and knees together so that he would take up as little room as possible.
Buffy turned to look at Giles confusion. “Do you think he was just really…well behaved for Angelus?”
“I’m wondering,” Giles admitted, eyeing his colleague uneasily. “Some of the tutors at the Academy can be a little…taxing. I suppose one would evolve strategies for dealing with them, but…I’ve never heard of anyone surviving a vampire attack through consistent punctuality and always bringing a pen to class.”
And then Giles turned around to see Willow’s eyes black and Latin bubbling from her mouth and the air was charged with the fizz of unmistakably powerful magic and then no one was thinking of anything except that it was here, the power to re-ensoul the damned, and Willow had summoned it and Jenny had died for it and then the room was quiet and still and everyone snatched a much-needed breath.
There was a long silence and then Cordelia said, “So, did it work?”
Giles and Buffy exchanged a glance and he saw how much she wanted Angel back; her first love, the one she looked to in times of crisis; the one who still wore the face of the demon who had killed the woman he loved, and he snatched another breath and said wearily: “I’m sure we’ll find out before too long.” And then sat down on the couch next to a still very quiet Wesley and needed to think about nothing at all for quite some time.
***
