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Oct. 16th, 2005 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Belonging, Part Six
Giles had been waiting for this moment with a terrible sense of inevitability. He had dreamt of vengeance, of driving a stake into the heart of Angelus, or setting him on fire; but he had known that somehow it wasn’t going to be permitted. Something to do with lessons learned and the price one paid for being a teacher. So, he had waited for the inevitable while the others had sat around talking quietly, Oz with one arm protectively around Willow, Wesley patiently answering Cordelia’s occasionally vapid questions about life in England – where on Earth had Americans got the impression that they were still living an existence of 50s austerity anyway? Did they still think they had ration books? And, of course, they had bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses. There would be people peddling The Watchtower on the farthest reaches of the most distant Polynesian islands, it wasn’t really such a miracle that they also found their way to Hampshire.
But Wesley didn’t seem to mind Cordelia’s questions. In fact he didn’t seem to mind Cordelia full stop, and it was a shock to glance across at the girl and see what Wesley was seeing: a remarkably pretty dark-haired girl in a blue dress and a white cardigan who spoke softly to him and seemed to care about his pain.
Of course they were all waiting for him to shatter; for the moment to come when Wesley remembered something or processed something that would send him to the bathroom to matter-of-factly slit his wrists or abruptly have him skittering for the darkest corner of the room and that long-expected gibbering. Cordelia was probably giving him her ‘talking to crazy people’ manner or perhaps she was just feeling genuinely sorry for him because he had a black eye and a cut lip and bruises circling his wrists and wasn’t complaining about it or apparently expecting anyone to show him any sympathy.
Xander, immature jealous Xander, kept making Wesley cups of tea. Giles wondered if they were bribes of a kind, a tacit plea to the man not to talk about what Angelus had done to him, ever, or else a show of sympathy or perhaps even gratitude because the stranger to Sunnydale was the one upon whom Angelus had inflicted his most recent games rather than anyone Xander loved.
Giles thought of his earlier awkward phonecall to Wesley’s father to appraise him of the situation and the man’s gruff: “Well, I’m sure he’ll turn up. One way or another. I trust as you’ve been careless enough to lose him that you’ll do what’s necessary when the time comes?”
Giles had put the phone down in a state of shock, the anger a slow burn after it, thinking of all the ramifications of that ‘do what’s necessary’ – presumably, staking the man’s son if he had been turned into a vampire or sending his corpse home if he had only been horribly murdered. Son of a bitch. But, of course, he should have phoned the man back at once, last night, when he was sitting next to Wesley’s bed. He had called Travers to notify him that they were not, after all, a Watcher down and to make it very clear that yes he absolutely did want to keep Wesley as his assistant if Wesley should want to stay in Sunnydale so no further action was necessary by the Council, and they would deal with Angelus, have no doubt of that.
Grimacing, Giles turned to Wesley. “Would you like to phone your father, Wesley? Let him know you’re…as well as can be expected?”
Wesley paled. He’d been pale before. Naturally the pasty kind and that not improved by several days of being kept in the basement of an abandoned building somewhere where he had been as deprived of regular meals as he was of sunlight. But this was even paler. Nevertheless he only nodded meekly and accepted the phone Giles handed to him.
Giles was on the point of suggesting that he had some privacy but Wesley didn’t seem to think that was an option and was already dully dialling the number. Giles pointedly glared at everyone who was openly eavesdropping and they hurriedly resumed their conversations again. Under cover of making yet more tea, he watched as Wesley smiled nervously as someone who seemed to be his mother answered the phone. She, at least, seemed to be relieved to hear from him and he smiled with more confidence as he assured her of his perfect health and lack of injuries. That won him a quick look from Oz and Xander who then looked at one another and then hastily looked away; Oz tightening his grip on Willow as he did so, while she rested her head against his shoulder, still exhausted from the soul summoning spell she had cast earlier.
“Oh…hello Father....” Wesley turned an even sicklier shade of pale as he changed the phone from his left ear to his right. “How are you? Oh…yes, quite well, thank you. Well…yes.... I’m sure he didn’t mean to disturb you – I think he was just trying to keep you informed.... No, definitely still human, I assure you. Yes, I see, well, I know but.... I didn’t mean to get captured. It just happened so fast. A Good Watcher is a Prepared Watcher…yes, I remember. It was just.... I wasn’t ready. Yes, I know I should have been but I’d only just arrived....” He flinched and Giles heard the muted version of that whiplash Stop making excuses, boy! “I don’t mean to....” Wesley sounded whiny and defeated, his body a squirm of embarrassment and misery. “No, I don’t think I have to come home again.” He looked up at Giles, blue eyes pleading. “I don’t think Mr Giles is going to send me away.” He flinched again. “Yes, I’m sure he probably would prefer an assistant who doesn’t get himself captured by vampires five minutes after he gets off the bus but he hasn’t said....”
Giles’s determination to stay out of this conversation come what may was promptly superseded by his fingers wrenching the phone out of Wesley’s hand.
“Good morning, Mr Wyndam-Pryce. I’m sure you’re as thrilled as we are that Wesley managed to survive his kidnap by Angelus. That he did so is a great credit to his ingenuity and strength of character – ”
Wyndam-Pryce snorted in his ear: “Don’t talk rubbish, man. The boy doesn’t have any strength of character. If Angelus didn’t kill him it was because he didn’t think he was worth bothering with.”
Giles bulldozed him relentlessly: “Naturally, we want to keep Wesley here with us in Sunnydale. Not many people can keep a cool head in a crisis, and thanks to him keeping his wits about him we have been given access to important information that may make it possible to neutralize Angelus within a few hours.”
“Well, of course, if you hadn’t mismanaged that business with your Slayer so badly in the first place there wouldn’t be an Angelus running around to neutralize, would there?”
Giles dropped the phone onto the floor and kicked it hard into the couch. Buffy wordlessly retrieved it and held it up. As the children and Wesley all watched him wide-eyed, Giles took it from her, said flatly: “My apologies, Mr Wyndam-Pryce, we seem to have a bad line. I’ll be sure to pass on your good wishes for his speedy recovery to your son.” Then he slammed the phone down into the handset and looked across at Wesley who was already leaning as far away from him as he could without actually getting up and moving. “I’m not angry,” Giles reassured him in his most even tone. “I am, in fact, perfectly calm. But as a matter of public record, your father is the biggest asshole on the planet.”
Wesley grimaced apologetically. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. We’re not responsible for our parents.”
“Thank God,” Xander observed.
Wesley gave everyone another apologetic half-smile. “He just – doesn’t like me very much. Bit of a disappointment, you see. Line of Watchers, old family, high expectations.”
“Wesley, the man’s a wanker of the first order,” Giles pointed out. “You graduated with honours, you were sodding Head Boy at seventeen for Christ’s sake, and you’ve managed to survive capture by the most notoriously evil vampire in the annals of history. What more does he want from you?”
Wesley had his shoulders hunched against the force of Giles’s anger. “I don’t know,” he murmured apologetically, as if Giles’s rhetoric question was something he should actually be able to answer.
Xander gave Giles a pointed look. “Just a suggestion, but, speaking as someone who also has an asshole for a father, can I just point out that it’s tough enough to have to live with without third parties beating you up about it?”
“I wasn’t....” Giles looked around at a series of shocked little faces including Wesley’s own big blue eyes and trembling lower lip, not to mention the wide-eyed disbelief on Willow’s elfin face and realized that he could perhaps have controlled his temper a little better. “Well, anyway. Perhaps a cup of tea would be in order…?”
“I’ll get it!”
And that was Buffy, Willow, Cordelia and Xander all leaping to their feet at the same time as they grabbed an excuse to escape to the kitchen and not be in the room with the scary Librarian.
Giles took a deep breath and turned to Wesley with what he hoped was a reassuring expression on his face. “Some more soup, Wesley…?” Which was when he saw him through the open window, a tall dark shadow in the gathering dusk, staggering across the street as if he was drunk – or else newly burdened with the crushing weight of a soul.
Wesley saw his expression and spun around to look out of the window. Giles hastily planted his hands on the young man’s shoulder and said firmly. “Stay here. Everyone stay indoors. Wesley, it may be necessary to invite him in but I promise you I won’t let him harm you. Buffy…?”
But she was already there, grim faced and as pale as Wesley but resolutely handing out stakes while loading a crossbow for herself. “We’re ready,” she said quietly, and Giles wondered how true that was; how likely it was that if the person outside that door should turn out to be a soulless killer yet who still had the face of an Angel if she was now capable of taking his life.
Then Giles snatched another breath, saw a brief flash in his mind’s eye of Jenny lying there with her eyes open and her neck broken, and then opened the door.
He found Angel crouched under his window, one hand up to his face and when he looked up at Giles there were tears in his eyes. Giles gritted his teeth. “Hello, Angel.”
“I’m sorry,” Angel said desperately. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know I could lose.... I would never have.... The last thing I wanted to do was hurt any of you. Is Buffy…?” And either Angelus was the best actor in the world or else this was Angel again and that tremble of sheer agony was all his. “Is Buffy…okay…?”
“She’s surviving.” Giles regarded him coolly.
Angel looked up at him again and his eyes filled with tears once more. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “I know I can never.... I’m so sorry for what I did to Miss Calendar.”
“So am I,” Giles said tautly. “Why are you here?” Perhaps it was an unfair question. They had been waiting for him, after all. Sitting here all day since the spell had hit, waiting for night to fall and Angel to arrive exactly on cue.
Angel clutched at the sill of the window, dizzy with his soul or lack of blood or the sheer weight of his crimes. “The English boy – Wesley. I – I – ”
“Kidnapped him.” Giles kept his tone crisp. “Yes, we know.”
Angel closed his eyes. “I did – terrible things to him. I made him crazy. Too crazy even to be scared. Dru took a fancy to him – same shattered mind. I think she and Spike took him. I think Dru wants to turn him but she might wait for the new moon. There might be time to find them, get him back, what’s left of him back.”
Giles frowned in confusion. “What…?”
Angel ran a through his hair. “Oh God, what I did to him....”
“You tortured him.” Giles thought of Wesley’s body and all those bruises, but that was all there had been; bruises, a few cuts and welts; it still made no sense to him that Wesley should have escaped so lightly.
“I – frightened him and he shattered and then I played with the pieces. I liked the pieces. Dru did too. I don’t think Spike liked him much but he’d let Dru keep him for a while if she wanted a pet. You need to hurry though. She’s unpredictable.” As Giles made no move, Angel gazed at him in disbelief. “Giles, he’s just a boy. He can’t be much older than Xander.”
Giles was peripherally aware of a flutter of indignation from Wesley somewhere in the house because he was actually twenty-five and therefore eight whole years older than Xander.
“Is that what you would have done to Xander if you’d captured him?” Giles asked grimly. “Broken him into pieces and then played with what was left?”
Angel shuddered. “I don’t want to think about what I would have done to him, or to any of you. Stake me if you want to, we both know I deserve it, but, please, try to find him. If Spike doesn’t kill him Dru will damn him. He’ll end up like....”
“Like you?” Giles demanded.
Angel put his hands up to his face. “Please. I can’t undo any of it but there might still be time to stop someone else from dying....”
And despite his absolute determination not to feel even a twinge of pity for the creature with the face of Jenny’s killer, there it was, a spasm of compassion. Giles snatched a breath. “Angel, if I invite you in it will be on the understanding that if you take one step sideways that I don’t give you permission for, you will be staked. Do you understand me?”
Angel climbed to his feet clumsily, confusion on his face. “Will you look for Wesley?”
“We’ve already found Wesley.” Giles backed into the house and beckoned to the vampire grimly. “I invite you in, Angel.”
He heard Buffy gasp and that frozen instant when they gazed at one another with so much yearning and misery and then there was a shuffling of feet and Angel turned his head and saw:
“Wesley…?”
Giles was watching to see if there was a flicker of irritable or satisfied Angelus showing through but this was pure disbelief, rapidly turning to pure relief. Angel took a step towards the young man and then stopped abruptly. “Are you…? Did you…? How did you…?”
Wesley took a pace towards him of his own. “Are you…? Is your soul…?”
Angel put a hand over his heart. “Yes. It came back. I don’t know how....” He looked around the room and saw the others, Willow, Oz, Cordelia and Xander all pressed up against the wall, pointing crossbows at him. His gaze travelled to the candles and herbs. “You did it?” He looked at Willow as if he had never seen her before, lowering his voice to not much more than a whisper: “You saved me?”
“Is that how you think of it?” Wesley asked curiously, taking another pace forward as Willow nodded mutely. “Salvation?”
“It feels like the opposite. But that’s the point about being damned. Then you don’t feel anything. You just…enjoy the moment.” Angel gazed fixedly at Wesley. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Wesley.”
“If you’re truly the soulled version of Angelus then it wasn’t really ‘you’ that did anything to me, was it?” Wesley returned, still gently. “That was done by someone else.”
Angel frowned at him in confusion. “But they were done to you so how come you’re…?” He took another pace and Xander cranked back his crossbow in warning. Angel stopped dead and held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I just.... You sound…normal.”
“I am.” Wesley grimaced. “Well, I suppose that’s relative really. Certainly there were comments passed when I was at school but on the whole I do think that I’m as well adjusted as the next…slightly neurotic public schoolboy.”
“But you were....” Angel shook his head. “You were...I mean.... You were definitely…in no way sane.”
“I wasn’t there,” Wesley explained.
Angel stumbled forward another step and Buffy pointed her crossbow at his chest. Wesley darted her an anxious look and held up his hand. “It’s all right.”
“I could still be Angelus,” Angel pointed out. “There isn’t a test for a soul. Crucifixes still burn me. So does holy water. I’m still damned.”
“Yes, and that’s certainly one for the Theologians to chew over, isn’t it, if the soul is really supposed to be the fragment of the deity embedded in us all and yet you’re still a demon…?” Wesley gazed into Angel’s eyes. “But I spent a week with Angelus. You’re not him.”
Angel gazed back at him intently. “And you’re not.... You’re not the person I....” He gave his head a shake and turned to Giles for an explanation. “I can’t talk about this in front of....” He nodded his head at Xander and the others.
“We’re not leaving Wesley and Giles alone with you,” Xander said flatly.
“Not happening,” Buffy confirmed.
Giles indicated the other end of the room. “You’d still be in crossbow firing range if you were a few feet further back. Just – try not to listen.”
Angelus was still gazing at Wesley. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, but I don’t understand how you can be....” He darted a glance over at the teenagers and then lowered his voice to hiss: “I did things to you. I mean....” He glanced back at Buffy and then grimaced. “What I did to you was pretty…extreme and you…giggled. You’d lost it. You were....”
“Drugged.” Wesley handed over the paper bag, moving slowly so that no one got trigger happy, as he deposited it into Angel’s hand.
Angel looked at Wesley in confusion and then went through the contents of the bag. “Spike’s painkillers. But why…? I mean how did you…?”
“I didn’t, Spike did.” Wesley kept gazing at him, his expression gentle, as if Angel was someone who was also a victim of what had happened in that room. “Whisky and pills. Very…Valley of the Dolls. I giggled because it didn’t hurt me. You didn’t hurt me.”
Angel held his gaze. “I know what I did. No way did that not hurt you.”
“And if I hadn’t been watching the wallpaper change colours and the pillow covers dissolve into lots of sparkly pixie dust I would certainly have been screaming until my throat bled, but I didn’t fight Angelus because what he was doing to me wasn’t hurting me.” Wesley added gently: “You didn’t…break me, Angel. I wasn’t in pieces I was just…having a really good trip. Most of the time I didn’t even notice what you were doing.”
And finally Giles understood why Wesley had come back to them more or less intact. While he had floated above reality, Angelus had played with a body that didn’t resist him, abused a victim who had no idea that was what he was. Wesley, the real compos mentis Wesley, hadn’t even been present by the sound of things. He turned to Angel in surprise. “It didn’t make you – make Angelus – angry that Wesley wasn’t begging and screaming in the prescribed fashion?”
Angel shook his head. “Angelus thought he’d broken him. He thought the lack of screaming was a triumph. Proof of his victory. Spike played me.” He looked down at the drugs again. “He kept saying I should ‘off’ you, that you were just a nuisance. He knew Angelus would believe that he had mangled Wesley just the way he – I – mangled Drusilla. He probably gambled I’d get fond of you then. Angelus likes the crazy ones. And it worked. I liked my little human pet with his scrambled little mind.” Angel gritted his teeth. “I was proud of my latest creation.”
Wesley gave Giles a beseeching look. “You see? Spike and Drusilla saved me.”
“But why?” Buffy took a step forward. “Not wanting to rain on your parade, Wes, but those two wouldn’t exactly be on the short list for any Humanitarian of the Year awards. Spike isn’t big on the helping little old ladies across the street.”
“More like tripping them and stealing their purses,” Xander confirmed. “Not to mention the whole – drinking their blood thing.”
Angel half-smiled. “Because it was a way of getting one over on me. A little win for Spike in the middle of all those defeats.”
“And because Dru saw Wesley saving Spike,” Buffy remembered.
“You’re going to save Spike?” Angel looked at him in disbelief.
“He already did,” Giles sighed.
“Spike and Drusilla helped me,” Wesley offered apologetically.
Angel looked down at the bag of pills. “What they saved you from – doesn’t even bear thinking about. But I still.... Whether you were home or not I still did…those things to you.”
Wesley murmured quietly: “‘Things with ice cubes and body parts and things that take batteries.’ Yes, I remember. Intellectually, I remember you telling me that you did those things to me. I even remember some of them being done, but they don’t have the…normal associations. It’s the fear, isn’t it? Or the pain or the humiliation or the defeat. Not the action but the way the action makes you feel. That’s what makes you a victim. And what Angelus did made me feel…ticklish. No amount of retroactively telling myself that what Angelus did to me was indescribably invasive is going to make me feel it, because I can’t. I wasn’t even that afraid of him. He was this strange capricious person who I knew, intellectually, was terribly evil, but in my confused version of reality was actually rather good fun except for his occasional bouts of smacking me around for reasons I never fully understood.”
“There were no reasons, Wesley. He did it because he liked doing it. That’s always the reason why bullies hurt people who can’t fight back. It’s never you. It’s always them.”
Angel gazed at him tragically and Giles thought wearily that they were never going to be free of this; Angel and his terrible crimes and his mythic destiny and his and Buffy’s star-crossed love; and he really was going to have to see this person again; this person who had killed the woman he loved.
Buffy said faintly: “‘Things that take batteries…?’ Okay, so not wanting to know right now.”
“Let’s not go to that place,” Xander added. “Ever.”
“But Angelus did go to that place.” Angel gazed tragically at Wesley. “He went to every place.”
Wesley sighed. “And it tickled, Angel. Remember?”
“No one ever giggled when I did that to them before.” Angel looked at Wesley curiously, the small part of his mind not overwhelmed with guilt clearly wondering if the Watcher was even wired up right. “And why did you like it when I…?” He broke off as he remembered their audience and shuffled his feet uncomfortably.
Wesley shrugged in embarrassment, giving Angel an apologetic grimace. “Well, it was all very…new to me.”
Giles looked between the embarrassed Englishman and the guilt-ridden vampire and wondered if Angel had ever had to socialize with one of his victims before. Perhaps it was the pressure of the past few days, the misery of Jenny’s death, the constant waiting for the next horror to happen, the kidnapping of Wesley and the searching that had led nowhere, but he found himself wondering if there was something in the Council notes about the correct procedure for socializing with one’s evil vampire attacker after they had been re-ensouled and were now taking tea with you.
Reality clicked back in and he looked at Angel sharply. “You must be hungry.”
Angel looked at him sadly. “We’re always hungry, Giles.”
“Don’t do that,” Buffy said quickly. “Don’t start just lumping yourself in with every other vampire on the....”
“I think recent events have proven that’s what I am,” Angel retorted. “I kill people – for food, for fun. That’s what I do. That’s what I am.”
“It’s what Angelus is,” she insisted.
“Buffy’s right,” Wesley put in, nodding. “You’re not him.”
“But he is me.” Angel leant back against the wall and gazed up Giles’s stairs, evidently seeing what Giles saw every time he looked that way, the candles burning and the rose petals and Jenny upstairs. “He’s in me. And while I’m…here, there’s always a chance he can get out again.”
“And if you’re not here how can you ever make amends for what he did?” Wesley countered, surprising Giles, who hadn’t though the boy had the self-confidence to say ‘boo’ to a goose, never mind a vampire, but he supposed in some ways the person Wesley knew best of all of them in the room right now was…Angelus. He had only spent a few hours with the rest of them but had lived on terms of what could certainly be considered ‘intimacy’ with Angelus.
Angel looked at him sadly. “There can never be amends for what I did. I’ve done so much…harm, hurt so many people, ruined so many lives....”
“Perhaps that’s why you have to be what you are,” Wesley said gently. “Perhaps it takes an eternity to make up for what you did. Perhaps you never will. But don’t you think you must have been given that soul for a reason?”
Angel kept gazing at him. “I know Angelus is still in me because I remember how it feels to enjoy doing the things he did, Wesley. That includes the things I did to you.”
Wesley shrugged. “As I recall I rather enjoyed some of them too. I don’t think that defines me as someone who enjoys autoerotic asphyxia games with soulless killers, but someone who…wasn’t himself at the time.”
“Or you could just be a really weird pervert and not have known it until then,” Cordelia pointed out helpfully.
Wesley and Angel exchanged a glance of mingled embarrassment and then some amusement – Giles presumed there was a point when you could not get any more embarrassed and so could only start to find the situation funny – and Wesley inclined his head. “That, of course, is also a possibility.”
Angel looked across at Buffy with all that love and yearning in his eyes. “I can’t.... I don’t deserve.... It can’t be what it was. I don’t expect…trust from anyone here. I don’t even trust myself.”
“No,” Buffy admitted quietly. “It can’t ever be what it was.” She looked across at Giles. “You hurt the people I care about too much for that. I can’t…forget that happened.”
There was another awkward pause while everyone looked at Buffy and then looked away because there were just some things that were too painful to look at and a seventeen year old girl having her heart broken all over again right in front of him was certainly something Giles didn’t think he could watch twice.
“What do you propose?” Giles turned to Angel. “Are you going to stay in Sunnydale?”
Angel nodded. “For the moment, yes. I need to – I’ll move into the empty mansion on the edge of town. Work out what I’m going to do next.” With an effort he wrenched his gaze from Buffy to Willow. “Thank you.”
Willow gave him a bright anxious smile while still holding onto Oz’s hand. “You’re welcome.”
Angel headed for the door, pausing to look at Giles. “I know there are no words – ”
“There aren’t,” Giles told him grimly.
Angel nodded and then looked back at Wesley, saying again: “I’m sorry.”
Wesley nodded. “Well, I suppose if one is to meet one’s first vampire it might as well be a really famous one. And the Council did tell me I needed some field experience.” He gave a wan smile. “I suppose I’ve definitely had some of that now.”
Angel looked as if he would have liked to say a lot more, but the enormity of his crimes seemed to still the words in his throat. He gave Buffy a last look of agonizing longing, a last look of apology at Wesley, and then walked back out into the night.
Everyone snatched a breath and Giles turned to see Willow breathing fast, holding Oz tightly. “Was it wrong to be so scared?” she breathed. “Because – I know he’s Angel again and everything, but I was just so…scared.”
“Me too,” Xander admitted. “As in – paralysed with terror level scared. I mean – I don’t even know who that guy is. He’s not the Angel we first knew – because we knew that guy and he wasn’t…scary. And he’s not Angelus because – we’re not all dead. So, who is he?”
Wesley looked out of the window. “I think that’s what he’s trying to work out.”
Buffy was gazing after Angel but at the sound of Wesley’s voice, turned to him, anxiously. She had her mouth open when Wesley said compassionately to her: “Are you all right?”
She swallowed. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He looked into her eyes and for the first time Giles realized that he wasn’t a ‘boy’ at all, but an adult, after all, because his gaze was gentle and sympathetic and entirely grown up. “If I made things better or worse by coming here.”
Buffy snatched a breath and then said, “Better.”
“You don’t have to lie.”
“He was gone and now he’s back and maybe we won’t be…together, but I don’t have to kill him.” Buffy wrapped her arms around herself and Giles realized belatedly that she was shaking violently. “Oh God, I don’t have to – kill him....” Wesley looked anxiously at Giles who hurried over to wrap his jacket around her shoulders and then steer her to the couch.
“Do you have any brandy?” Wesley whispered and as Giles pointed him to the drinks cabinet, hurried over to fetch it.
Willow and Xander clustered around her, Willow putting out her hand so Buffy could hold onto it. She looked up at Willow, tears in her eyes. “He was really here, wasn’t he? And he was…he was…Angel…?”
“Yes, he was.” Willow sank down next to her, still gripping her hand. “He was Angel again.”
“Thank you.” Buffy burst into tears and Willow hastily put her arms around her, rubbing her back gently.
Wesley turned around with the brandy and looked stricken at the scene on the sofa. He looked at Giles who took the brandy from him gently. “It’s all right, Wesley. She really is happy. It’s just been something of a…strain.” Giles picked up two brandy glasses, put a splash in both and handed the second glass to Wesley. “Cheers.”
Wesley looked over at Buffy in surprise. “Should I…?”
“They prefer ice cream,” Giles explained. He could see that Buffy was getting what she needed most, which was Willow holding her and Xander gently rubbing her back, while she finally let go of her fear and allowed herself the luxury of realizing that Angel really was back again. Thinking of Jenny, he downed his own brandy in a few gulps and was not surprised when Wesley did the same.
The young man looked towards the window through which they had last seen Angel. “Do you think he’ll be…all right…?”
Giles glanced at him in surprise. “Do you care?” He frowned. “You’re not a natural Stockholm Syndrome candidate, are you?”
Wesley looked affronted. “No, of course not, well…possibly, but it was.... I can’t really explain what it was like.”
“A complete nightmare from beginning to end, I imagine.”
“Actually it was....” Aware of the other people in the room, Wesley dropped his gaze and looked awkward.
Giles took him by the elbow and led him into the kitchen. “Tell me.”
Wesley darted a look into the living room. “It was…a little like belonging. Being part of a family. I don’t know if it was the drugs or not but I was…touched that Angelus got me some human food when he was getting Drusilla and Spike their…dead people. In fact, I don’t think it can have been the drugs because I’m not on them now and there is a part of me that’s…still touched by that.”
Giles looked at him for a moment, opening his mouth to ask what the hell kind of background did Wesley come from if he thought being the victim of a vampire kidnap was a family-bonding experience, and then he remembered the dismissive indifference of Wesley’s father, and snatched a breath before he said something he regretted.
He had read the reports too, of course, and knew they had been a family of sorts: Darla, the evil matriarch who slept with her evil ‘son’ who in his turn slept with and abused his insane ‘daughter’ and evil ‘grandson’. A twisted incestuous family based on murder, cruelty, madness, and lust, but a family of sorts, and one in which there was probably plenty of anger, lust, and betrayal, but absolutely never the crushing coldness of indifference.
He turned away. “I promise you, Wesley, there really are better approximations of family life than anything you may have experienced while a prisoner of Angelus.”
Wesley looked back to where Buffy was sobbing into Willow’s neck, what seemed to be the stress of several months of suffering finally let out. Willow was crying, too, in sympathy for Buffy’s tears, and Oz and Xander both looked as if they were pretty close to joining them. As they watched, Cordelia took the brandy bottle from Giles and his glass, giving him a glare as he did so, and carried it over to where Buffy was crying, pouring her a generous measure, and stroking her hair to get her attention before putting the glass in her hand.
Willow and Xander were saying comforting things, even Oz chiming in with the occasional pithy word of comfort, Xander still rubbing Buffy’s back.
“I’m beginning to see that,” Wesley said wistfully.
Giles half-smiled. “I really need to introduce you to them all properly at some point. Buffy, of course, you know is the Slayer. She’s also a seventeen year old girl who likes make up and shopping and those other entirely pointless things that teenage girls like to waste their time with. Willow, as I’m sure you’ve realized, is a promising witch. Cordelia is um…well, generally considered a vapid airhead, but she has in her time displayed a certain steely resolve and strength of character that will certainly make any future husband of hers a very…obedient man. Xander is…well, you really do have to get to know him to know what Xander is but I assure you that underneath the drivelling idiocy and inappropriate joking there is someone um…else. And Oz is…well, he’s actually a werewolf but only for three nights a month and we’re working on ways to deal with that.” Giles looked up at him. “I know that you’re not exactly one of us yet, Wesley, but....”
“I promise not to get kidnapped again,” Wesley said quickly. “I really will be much more careful in future. Honestly. If you’d just give me a second chance I promise you I really could make myself useful....”
Giles looked into his anxious blue eyes and half-smiled. “Wesley, in the short time you’ve been here you’ve managed to drive a wedge between Spike, Drusilla, and Angelus, discover the means to re-ensoul Angel, and show yourself to be a person of considerable…compassion and integrity. If you want to stay in Sunnydale you’d be very welcome.”
Wesley looked as if he was about to faint with relief. He swallowed hard and then said, “I’d like that very much. I know you didn’t ask for an assistant, but I promise I’ll work very hard at learning the ropes and, despite what Angelus said about my dissertation, I am actually very good at research.”
Giles could no longer hide a smile. He patted the younger man on the arm. “I’m sure you are, Wesley. Would you – like a cup of tea?”
“I’d love one.” Wesley smiled back at him.
When Giles handed them both their tea and looked back at the scene in the sitting room, Buffy was wiping her eyes and smiling and Willow was straightening her hair and Cordelia offering her a compact so she could ‘do something about the mascara because really you know it’s high time you switched to something waterproof....’
He thought of Jenny and it still hurt. It would always hurt. And then he thought of Angel and his weight of grief and guilt, and thought about what Wesley had said about him having a purpose, and although he had to admit that he hoped his mythic destiny took him away from Sunnydale and Buffy, he could recognize that Angel probably did have it in him to do as much good in the end as he had done harm. And then he looked at the nervous young man next to him who had looked so entirely useless when he stood in the door of the library and had achieved and withstood so much in the short time he had been with them and for the first time let himself think that perhaps, after all, it might be nice to have some company; someone from the same background as himself with whom he could utter the occasional complaint about America and Americans and the Council and the lack of cricket.
“Wesley....” he said gently.
Wesley turned to look at him, still automatically anxious, that ‘what have I done wrong and how angry are you going to be with me because of it?’ expression in his eyes that Giles was definitely going to have to work to eliminate so that this young man could achieve his full potential. Giles smiled at him and touched their cups together again.
“Just…welcome to Sunnydale.”
And then Wesley was smiling back at him and Buffy laughed at something Xander had said and Giles felt that fist that had been clenched around his heart relax its grip a little and something fill him that felt very like…peace.
The End
Giles had been waiting for this moment with a terrible sense of inevitability. He had dreamt of vengeance, of driving a stake into the heart of Angelus, or setting him on fire; but he had known that somehow it wasn’t going to be permitted. Something to do with lessons learned and the price one paid for being a teacher. So, he had waited for the inevitable while the others had sat around talking quietly, Oz with one arm protectively around Willow, Wesley patiently answering Cordelia’s occasionally vapid questions about life in England – where on Earth had Americans got the impression that they were still living an existence of 50s austerity anyway? Did they still think they had ration books? And, of course, they had bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses. There would be people peddling The Watchtower on the farthest reaches of the most distant Polynesian islands, it wasn’t really such a miracle that they also found their way to Hampshire.
But Wesley didn’t seem to mind Cordelia’s questions. In fact he didn’t seem to mind Cordelia full stop, and it was a shock to glance across at the girl and see what Wesley was seeing: a remarkably pretty dark-haired girl in a blue dress and a white cardigan who spoke softly to him and seemed to care about his pain.
Of course they were all waiting for him to shatter; for the moment to come when Wesley remembered something or processed something that would send him to the bathroom to matter-of-factly slit his wrists or abruptly have him skittering for the darkest corner of the room and that long-expected gibbering. Cordelia was probably giving him her ‘talking to crazy people’ manner or perhaps she was just feeling genuinely sorry for him because he had a black eye and a cut lip and bruises circling his wrists and wasn’t complaining about it or apparently expecting anyone to show him any sympathy.
Xander, immature jealous Xander, kept making Wesley cups of tea. Giles wondered if they were bribes of a kind, a tacit plea to the man not to talk about what Angelus had done to him, ever, or else a show of sympathy or perhaps even gratitude because the stranger to Sunnydale was the one upon whom Angelus had inflicted his most recent games rather than anyone Xander loved.
Giles thought of his earlier awkward phonecall to Wesley’s father to appraise him of the situation and the man’s gruff: “Well, I’m sure he’ll turn up. One way or another. I trust as you’ve been careless enough to lose him that you’ll do what’s necessary when the time comes?”
Giles had put the phone down in a state of shock, the anger a slow burn after it, thinking of all the ramifications of that ‘do what’s necessary’ – presumably, staking the man’s son if he had been turned into a vampire or sending his corpse home if he had only been horribly murdered. Son of a bitch. But, of course, he should have phoned the man back at once, last night, when he was sitting next to Wesley’s bed. He had called Travers to notify him that they were not, after all, a Watcher down and to make it very clear that yes he absolutely did want to keep Wesley as his assistant if Wesley should want to stay in Sunnydale so no further action was necessary by the Council, and they would deal with Angelus, have no doubt of that.
Grimacing, Giles turned to Wesley. “Would you like to phone your father, Wesley? Let him know you’re…as well as can be expected?”
Wesley paled. He’d been pale before. Naturally the pasty kind and that not improved by several days of being kept in the basement of an abandoned building somewhere where he had been as deprived of regular meals as he was of sunlight. But this was even paler. Nevertheless he only nodded meekly and accepted the phone Giles handed to him.
Giles was on the point of suggesting that he had some privacy but Wesley didn’t seem to think that was an option and was already dully dialling the number. Giles pointedly glared at everyone who was openly eavesdropping and they hurriedly resumed their conversations again. Under cover of making yet more tea, he watched as Wesley smiled nervously as someone who seemed to be his mother answered the phone. She, at least, seemed to be relieved to hear from him and he smiled with more confidence as he assured her of his perfect health and lack of injuries. That won him a quick look from Oz and Xander who then looked at one another and then hastily looked away; Oz tightening his grip on Willow as he did so, while she rested her head against his shoulder, still exhausted from the soul summoning spell she had cast earlier.
“Oh…hello Father....” Wesley turned an even sicklier shade of pale as he changed the phone from his left ear to his right. “How are you? Oh…yes, quite well, thank you. Well…yes.... I’m sure he didn’t mean to disturb you – I think he was just trying to keep you informed.... No, definitely still human, I assure you. Yes, I see, well, I know but.... I didn’t mean to get captured. It just happened so fast. A Good Watcher is a Prepared Watcher…yes, I remember. It was just.... I wasn’t ready. Yes, I know I should have been but I’d only just arrived....” He flinched and Giles heard the muted version of that whiplash Stop making excuses, boy! “I don’t mean to....” Wesley sounded whiny and defeated, his body a squirm of embarrassment and misery. “No, I don’t think I have to come home again.” He looked up at Giles, blue eyes pleading. “I don’t think Mr Giles is going to send me away.” He flinched again. “Yes, I’m sure he probably would prefer an assistant who doesn’t get himself captured by vampires five minutes after he gets off the bus but he hasn’t said....”
Giles’s determination to stay out of this conversation come what may was promptly superseded by his fingers wrenching the phone out of Wesley’s hand.
“Good morning, Mr Wyndam-Pryce. I’m sure you’re as thrilled as we are that Wesley managed to survive his kidnap by Angelus. That he did so is a great credit to his ingenuity and strength of character – ”
Wyndam-Pryce snorted in his ear: “Don’t talk rubbish, man. The boy doesn’t have any strength of character. If Angelus didn’t kill him it was because he didn’t think he was worth bothering with.”
Giles bulldozed him relentlessly: “Naturally, we want to keep Wesley here with us in Sunnydale. Not many people can keep a cool head in a crisis, and thanks to him keeping his wits about him we have been given access to important information that may make it possible to neutralize Angelus within a few hours.”
“Well, of course, if you hadn’t mismanaged that business with your Slayer so badly in the first place there wouldn’t be an Angelus running around to neutralize, would there?”
Giles dropped the phone onto the floor and kicked it hard into the couch. Buffy wordlessly retrieved it and held it up. As the children and Wesley all watched him wide-eyed, Giles took it from her, said flatly: “My apologies, Mr Wyndam-Pryce, we seem to have a bad line. I’ll be sure to pass on your good wishes for his speedy recovery to your son.” Then he slammed the phone down into the handset and looked across at Wesley who was already leaning as far away from him as he could without actually getting up and moving. “I’m not angry,” Giles reassured him in his most even tone. “I am, in fact, perfectly calm. But as a matter of public record, your father is the biggest asshole on the planet.”
Wesley grimaced apologetically. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. We’re not responsible for our parents.”
“Thank God,” Xander observed.
Wesley gave everyone another apologetic half-smile. “He just – doesn’t like me very much. Bit of a disappointment, you see. Line of Watchers, old family, high expectations.”
“Wesley, the man’s a wanker of the first order,” Giles pointed out. “You graduated with honours, you were sodding Head Boy at seventeen for Christ’s sake, and you’ve managed to survive capture by the most notoriously evil vampire in the annals of history. What more does he want from you?”
Wesley had his shoulders hunched against the force of Giles’s anger. “I don’t know,” he murmured apologetically, as if Giles’s rhetoric question was something he should actually be able to answer.
Xander gave Giles a pointed look. “Just a suggestion, but, speaking as someone who also has an asshole for a father, can I just point out that it’s tough enough to have to live with without third parties beating you up about it?”
“I wasn’t....” Giles looked around at a series of shocked little faces including Wesley’s own big blue eyes and trembling lower lip, not to mention the wide-eyed disbelief on Willow’s elfin face and realized that he could perhaps have controlled his temper a little better. “Well, anyway. Perhaps a cup of tea would be in order…?”
“I’ll get it!”
And that was Buffy, Willow, Cordelia and Xander all leaping to their feet at the same time as they grabbed an excuse to escape to the kitchen and not be in the room with the scary Librarian.
Giles took a deep breath and turned to Wesley with what he hoped was a reassuring expression on his face. “Some more soup, Wesley…?” Which was when he saw him through the open window, a tall dark shadow in the gathering dusk, staggering across the street as if he was drunk – or else newly burdened with the crushing weight of a soul.
Wesley saw his expression and spun around to look out of the window. Giles hastily planted his hands on the young man’s shoulder and said firmly. “Stay here. Everyone stay indoors. Wesley, it may be necessary to invite him in but I promise you I won’t let him harm you. Buffy…?”
But she was already there, grim faced and as pale as Wesley but resolutely handing out stakes while loading a crossbow for herself. “We’re ready,” she said quietly, and Giles wondered how true that was; how likely it was that if the person outside that door should turn out to be a soulless killer yet who still had the face of an Angel if she was now capable of taking his life.
Then Giles snatched another breath, saw a brief flash in his mind’s eye of Jenny lying there with her eyes open and her neck broken, and then opened the door.
He found Angel crouched under his window, one hand up to his face and when he looked up at Giles there were tears in his eyes. Giles gritted his teeth. “Hello, Angel.”
“I’m sorry,” Angel said desperately. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know I could lose.... I would never have.... The last thing I wanted to do was hurt any of you. Is Buffy…?” And either Angelus was the best actor in the world or else this was Angel again and that tremble of sheer agony was all his. “Is Buffy…okay…?”
“She’s surviving.” Giles regarded him coolly.
Angel looked up at him again and his eyes filled with tears once more. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. “I know I can never.... I’m so sorry for what I did to Miss Calendar.”
“So am I,” Giles said tautly. “Why are you here?” Perhaps it was an unfair question. They had been waiting for him, after all. Sitting here all day since the spell had hit, waiting for night to fall and Angel to arrive exactly on cue.
Angel clutched at the sill of the window, dizzy with his soul or lack of blood or the sheer weight of his crimes. “The English boy – Wesley. I – I – ”
“Kidnapped him.” Giles kept his tone crisp. “Yes, we know.”
Angel closed his eyes. “I did – terrible things to him. I made him crazy. Too crazy even to be scared. Dru took a fancy to him – same shattered mind. I think she and Spike took him. I think Dru wants to turn him but she might wait for the new moon. There might be time to find them, get him back, what’s left of him back.”
Giles frowned in confusion. “What…?”
Angel ran a through his hair. “Oh God, what I did to him....”
“You tortured him.” Giles thought of Wesley’s body and all those bruises, but that was all there had been; bruises, a few cuts and welts; it still made no sense to him that Wesley should have escaped so lightly.
“I – frightened him and he shattered and then I played with the pieces. I liked the pieces. Dru did too. I don’t think Spike liked him much but he’d let Dru keep him for a while if she wanted a pet. You need to hurry though. She’s unpredictable.” As Giles made no move, Angel gazed at him in disbelief. “Giles, he’s just a boy. He can’t be much older than Xander.”
Giles was peripherally aware of a flutter of indignation from Wesley somewhere in the house because he was actually twenty-five and therefore eight whole years older than Xander.
“Is that what you would have done to Xander if you’d captured him?” Giles asked grimly. “Broken him into pieces and then played with what was left?”
Angel shuddered. “I don’t want to think about what I would have done to him, or to any of you. Stake me if you want to, we both know I deserve it, but, please, try to find him. If Spike doesn’t kill him Dru will damn him. He’ll end up like....”
“Like you?” Giles demanded.
Angel put his hands up to his face. “Please. I can’t undo any of it but there might still be time to stop someone else from dying....”
And despite his absolute determination not to feel even a twinge of pity for the creature with the face of Jenny’s killer, there it was, a spasm of compassion. Giles snatched a breath. “Angel, if I invite you in it will be on the understanding that if you take one step sideways that I don’t give you permission for, you will be staked. Do you understand me?”
Angel climbed to his feet clumsily, confusion on his face. “Will you look for Wesley?”
“We’ve already found Wesley.” Giles backed into the house and beckoned to the vampire grimly. “I invite you in, Angel.”
He heard Buffy gasp and that frozen instant when they gazed at one another with so much yearning and misery and then there was a shuffling of feet and Angel turned his head and saw:
“Wesley…?”
Giles was watching to see if there was a flicker of irritable or satisfied Angelus showing through but this was pure disbelief, rapidly turning to pure relief. Angel took a step towards the young man and then stopped abruptly. “Are you…? Did you…? How did you…?”
Wesley took a pace towards him of his own. “Are you…? Is your soul…?”
Angel put a hand over his heart. “Yes. It came back. I don’t know how....” He looked around the room and saw the others, Willow, Oz, Cordelia and Xander all pressed up against the wall, pointing crossbows at him. His gaze travelled to the candles and herbs. “You did it?” He looked at Willow as if he had never seen her before, lowering his voice to not much more than a whisper: “You saved me?”
“Is that how you think of it?” Wesley asked curiously, taking another pace forward as Willow nodded mutely. “Salvation?”
“It feels like the opposite. But that’s the point about being damned. Then you don’t feel anything. You just…enjoy the moment.” Angel gazed fixedly at Wesley. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Wesley.”
“If you’re truly the soulled version of Angelus then it wasn’t really ‘you’ that did anything to me, was it?” Wesley returned, still gently. “That was done by someone else.”
Angel frowned at him in confusion. “But they were done to you so how come you’re…?” He took another pace and Xander cranked back his crossbow in warning. Angel stopped dead and held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I just.... You sound…normal.”
“I am.” Wesley grimaced. “Well, I suppose that’s relative really. Certainly there were comments passed when I was at school but on the whole I do think that I’m as well adjusted as the next…slightly neurotic public schoolboy.”
“But you were....” Angel shook his head. “You were...I mean.... You were definitely…in no way sane.”
“I wasn’t there,” Wesley explained.
Angel stumbled forward another step and Buffy pointed her crossbow at his chest. Wesley darted her an anxious look and held up his hand. “It’s all right.”
“I could still be Angelus,” Angel pointed out. “There isn’t a test for a soul. Crucifixes still burn me. So does holy water. I’m still damned.”
“Yes, and that’s certainly one for the Theologians to chew over, isn’t it, if the soul is really supposed to be the fragment of the deity embedded in us all and yet you’re still a demon…?” Wesley gazed into Angel’s eyes. “But I spent a week with Angelus. You’re not him.”
Angel gazed back at him intently. “And you’re not.... You’re not the person I....” He gave his head a shake and turned to Giles for an explanation. “I can’t talk about this in front of....” He nodded his head at Xander and the others.
“We’re not leaving Wesley and Giles alone with you,” Xander said flatly.
“Not happening,” Buffy confirmed.
Giles indicated the other end of the room. “You’d still be in crossbow firing range if you were a few feet further back. Just – try not to listen.”
Angelus was still gazing at Wesley. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you, but I don’t understand how you can be....” He darted a glance over at the teenagers and then lowered his voice to hiss: “I did things to you. I mean....” He glanced back at Buffy and then grimaced. “What I did to you was pretty…extreme and you…giggled. You’d lost it. You were....”
“Drugged.” Wesley handed over the paper bag, moving slowly so that no one got trigger happy, as he deposited it into Angel’s hand.
Angel looked at Wesley in confusion and then went through the contents of the bag. “Spike’s painkillers. But why…? I mean how did you…?”
“I didn’t, Spike did.” Wesley kept gazing at him, his expression gentle, as if Angel was someone who was also a victim of what had happened in that room. “Whisky and pills. Very…Valley of the Dolls. I giggled because it didn’t hurt me. You didn’t hurt me.”
Angel held his gaze. “I know what I did. No way did that not hurt you.”
“And if I hadn’t been watching the wallpaper change colours and the pillow covers dissolve into lots of sparkly pixie dust I would certainly have been screaming until my throat bled, but I didn’t fight Angelus because what he was doing to me wasn’t hurting me.” Wesley added gently: “You didn’t…break me, Angel. I wasn’t in pieces I was just…having a really good trip. Most of the time I didn’t even notice what you were doing.”
And finally Giles understood why Wesley had come back to them more or less intact. While he had floated above reality, Angelus had played with a body that didn’t resist him, abused a victim who had no idea that was what he was. Wesley, the real compos mentis Wesley, hadn’t even been present by the sound of things. He turned to Angel in surprise. “It didn’t make you – make Angelus – angry that Wesley wasn’t begging and screaming in the prescribed fashion?”
Angel shook his head. “Angelus thought he’d broken him. He thought the lack of screaming was a triumph. Proof of his victory. Spike played me.” He looked down at the drugs again. “He kept saying I should ‘off’ you, that you were just a nuisance. He knew Angelus would believe that he had mangled Wesley just the way he – I – mangled Drusilla. He probably gambled I’d get fond of you then. Angelus likes the crazy ones. And it worked. I liked my little human pet with his scrambled little mind.” Angel gritted his teeth. “I was proud of my latest creation.”
Wesley gave Giles a beseeching look. “You see? Spike and Drusilla saved me.”
“But why?” Buffy took a step forward. “Not wanting to rain on your parade, Wes, but those two wouldn’t exactly be on the short list for any Humanitarian of the Year awards. Spike isn’t big on the helping little old ladies across the street.”
“More like tripping them and stealing their purses,” Xander confirmed. “Not to mention the whole – drinking their blood thing.”
Angel half-smiled. “Because it was a way of getting one over on me. A little win for Spike in the middle of all those defeats.”
“And because Dru saw Wesley saving Spike,” Buffy remembered.
“You’re going to save Spike?” Angel looked at him in disbelief.
“He already did,” Giles sighed.
“Spike and Drusilla helped me,” Wesley offered apologetically.
Angel looked down at the bag of pills. “What they saved you from – doesn’t even bear thinking about. But I still.... Whether you were home or not I still did…those things to you.”
Wesley murmured quietly: “‘Things with ice cubes and body parts and things that take batteries.’ Yes, I remember. Intellectually, I remember you telling me that you did those things to me. I even remember some of them being done, but they don’t have the…normal associations. It’s the fear, isn’t it? Or the pain or the humiliation or the defeat. Not the action but the way the action makes you feel. That’s what makes you a victim. And what Angelus did made me feel…ticklish. No amount of retroactively telling myself that what Angelus did to me was indescribably invasive is going to make me feel it, because I can’t. I wasn’t even that afraid of him. He was this strange capricious person who I knew, intellectually, was terribly evil, but in my confused version of reality was actually rather good fun except for his occasional bouts of smacking me around for reasons I never fully understood.”
“There were no reasons, Wesley. He did it because he liked doing it. That’s always the reason why bullies hurt people who can’t fight back. It’s never you. It’s always them.”
Angel gazed at him tragically and Giles thought wearily that they were never going to be free of this; Angel and his terrible crimes and his mythic destiny and his and Buffy’s star-crossed love; and he really was going to have to see this person again; this person who had killed the woman he loved.
Buffy said faintly: “‘Things that take batteries…?’ Okay, so not wanting to know right now.”
“Let’s not go to that place,” Xander added. “Ever.”
“But Angelus did go to that place.” Angel gazed tragically at Wesley. “He went to every place.”
Wesley sighed. “And it tickled, Angel. Remember?”
“No one ever giggled when I did that to them before.” Angel looked at Wesley curiously, the small part of his mind not overwhelmed with guilt clearly wondering if the Watcher was even wired up right. “And why did you like it when I…?” He broke off as he remembered their audience and shuffled his feet uncomfortably.
Wesley shrugged in embarrassment, giving Angel an apologetic grimace. “Well, it was all very…new to me.”
Giles looked between the embarrassed Englishman and the guilt-ridden vampire and wondered if Angel had ever had to socialize with one of his victims before. Perhaps it was the pressure of the past few days, the misery of Jenny’s death, the constant waiting for the next horror to happen, the kidnapping of Wesley and the searching that had led nowhere, but he found himself wondering if there was something in the Council notes about the correct procedure for socializing with one’s evil vampire attacker after they had been re-ensouled and were now taking tea with you.
Reality clicked back in and he looked at Angel sharply. “You must be hungry.”
Angel looked at him sadly. “We’re always hungry, Giles.”
“Don’t do that,” Buffy said quickly. “Don’t start just lumping yourself in with every other vampire on the....”
“I think recent events have proven that’s what I am,” Angel retorted. “I kill people – for food, for fun. That’s what I do. That’s what I am.”
“It’s what Angelus is,” she insisted.
“Buffy’s right,” Wesley put in, nodding. “You’re not him.”
“But he is me.” Angel leant back against the wall and gazed up Giles’s stairs, evidently seeing what Giles saw every time he looked that way, the candles burning and the rose petals and Jenny upstairs. “He’s in me. And while I’m…here, there’s always a chance he can get out again.”
“And if you’re not here how can you ever make amends for what he did?” Wesley countered, surprising Giles, who hadn’t though the boy had the self-confidence to say ‘boo’ to a goose, never mind a vampire, but he supposed in some ways the person Wesley knew best of all of them in the room right now was…Angelus. He had only spent a few hours with the rest of them but had lived on terms of what could certainly be considered ‘intimacy’ with Angelus.
Angel looked at him sadly. “There can never be amends for what I did. I’ve done so much…harm, hurt so many people, ruined so many lives....”
“Perhaps that’s why you have to be what you are,” Wesley said gently. “Perhaps it takes an eternity to make up for what you did. Perhaps you never will. But don’t you think you must have been given that soul for a reason?”
Angel kept gazing at him. “I know Angelus is still in me because I remember how it feels to enjoy doing the things he did, Wesley. That includes the things I did to you.”
Wesley shrugged. “As I recall I rather enjoyed some of them too. I don’t think that defines me as someone who enjoys autoerotic asphyxia games with soulless killers, but someone who…wasn’t himself at the time.”
“Or you could just be a really weird pervert and not have known it until then,” Cordelia pointed out helpfully.
Wesley and Angel exchanged a glance of mingled embarrassment and then some amusement – Giles presumed there was a point when you could not get any more embarrassed and so could only start to find the situation funny – and Wesley inclined his head. “That, of course, is also a possibility.”
Angel looked across at Buffy with all that love and yearning in his eyes. “I can’t.... I don’t deserve.... It can’t be what it was. I don’t expect…trust from anyone here. I don’t even trust myself.”
“No,” Buffy admitted quietly. “It can’t ever be what it was.” She looked across at Giles. “You hurt the people I care about too much for that. I can’t…forget that happened.”
There was another awkward pause while everyone looked at Buffy and then looked away because there were just some things that were too painful to look at and a seventeen year old girl having her heart broken all over again right in front of him was certainly something Giles didn’t think he could watch twice.
“What do you propose?” Giles turned to Angel. “Are you going to stay in Sunnydale?”
Angel nodded. “For the moment, yes. I need to – I’ll move into the empty mansion on the edge of town. Work out what I’m going to do next.” With an effort he wrenched his gaze from Buffy to Willow. “Thank you.”
Willow gave him a bright anxious smile while still holding onto Oz’s hand. “You’re welcome.”
Angel headed for the door, pausing to look at Giles. “I know there are no words – ”
“There aren’t,” Giles told him grimly.
Angel nodded and then looked back at Wesley, saying again: “I’m sorry.”
Wesley nodded. “Well, I suppose if one is to meet one’s first vampire it might as well be a really famous one. And the Council did tell me I needed some field experience.” He gave a wan smile. “I suppose I’ve definitely had some of that now.”
Angel looked as if he would have liked to say a lot more, but the enormity of his crimes seemed to still the words in his throat. He gave Buffy a last look of agonizing longing, a last look of apology at Wesley, and then walked back out into the night.
Everyone snatched a breath and Giles turned to see Willow breathing fast, holding Oz tightly. “Was it wrong to be so scared?” she breathed. “Because – I know he’s Angel again and everything, but I was just so…scared.”
“Me too,” Xander admitted. “As in – paralysed with terror level scared. I mean – I don’t even know who that guy is. He’s not the Angel we first knew – because we knew that guy and he wasn’t…scary. And he’s not Angelus because – we’re not all dead. So, who is he?”
Wesley looked out of the window. “I think that’s what he’s trying to work out.”
Buffy was gazing after Angel but at the sound of Wesley’s voice, turned to him, anxiously. She had her mouth open when Wesley said compassionately to her: “Are you all right?”
She swallowed. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He looked into her eyes and for the first time Giles realized that he wasn’t a ‘boy’ at all, but an adult, after all, because his gaze was gentle and sympathetic and entirely grown up. “If I made things better or worse by coming here.”
Buffy snatched a breath and then said, “Better.”
“You don’t have to lie.”
“He was gone and now he’s back and maybe we won’t be…together, but I don’t have to kill him.” Buffy wrapped her arms around herself and Giles realized belatedly that she was shaking violently. “Oh God, I don’t have to – kill him....” Wesley looked anxiously at Giles who hurried over to wrap his jacket around her shoulders and then steer her to the couch.
“Do you have any brandy?” Wesley whispered and as Giles pointed him to the drinks cabinet, hurried over to fetch it.
Willow and Xander clustered around her, Willow putting out her hand so Buffy could hold onto it. She looked up at Willow, tears in her eyes. “He was really here, wasn’t he? And he was…he was…Angel…?”
“Yes, he was.” Willow sank down next to her, still gripping her hand. “He was Angel again.”
“Thank you.” Buffy burst into tears and Willow hastily put her arms around her, rubbing her back gently.
Wesley turned around with the brandy and looked stricken at the scene on the sofa. He looked at Giles who took the brandy from him gently. “It’s all right, Wesley. She really is happy. It’s just been something of a…strain.” Giles picked up two brandy glasses, put a splash in both and handed the second glass to Wesley. “Cheers.”
Wesley looked over at Buffy in surprise. “Should I…?”
“They prefer ice cream,” Giles explained. He could see that Buffy was getting what she needed most, which was Willow holding her and Xander gently rubbing her back, while she finally let go of her fear and allowed herself the luxury of realizing that Angel really was back again. Thinking of Jenny, he downed his own brandy in a few gulps and was not surprised when Wesley did the same.
The young man looked towards the window through which they had last seen Angel. “Do you think he’ll be…all right…?”
Giles glanced at him in surprise. “Do you care?” He frowned. “You’re not a natural Stockholm Syndrome candidate, are you?”
Wesley looked affronted. “No, of course not, well…possibly, but it was.... I can’t really explain what it was like.”
“A complete nightmare from beginning to end, I imagine.”
“Actually it was....” Aware of the other people in the room, Wesley dropped his gaze and looked awkward.
Giles took him by the elbow and led him into the kitchen. “Tell me.”
Wesley darted a look into the living room. “It was…a little like belonging. Being part of a family. I don’t know if it was the drugs or not but I was…touched that Angelus got me some human food when he was getting Drusilla and Spike their…dead people. In fact, I don’t think it can have been the drugs because I’m not on them now and there is a part of me that’s…still touched by that.”
Giles looked at him for a moment, opening his mouth to ask what the hell kind of background did Wesley come from if he thought being the victim of a vampire kidnap was a family-bonding experience, and then he remembered the dismissive indifference of Wesley’s father, and snatched a breath before he said something he regretted.
He had read the reports too, of course, and knew they had been a family of sorts: Darla, the evil matriarch who slept with her evil ‘son’ who in his turn slept with and abused his insane ‘daughter’ and evil ‘grandson’. A twisted incestuous family based on murder, cruelty, madness, and lust, but a family of sorts, and one in which there was probably plenty of anger, lust, and betrayal, but absolutely never the crushing coldness of indifference.
He turned away. “I promise you, Wesley, there really are better approximations of family life than anything you may have experienced while a prisoner of Angelus.”
Wesley looked back to where Buffy was sobbing into Willow’s neck, what seemed to be the stress of several months of suffering finally let out. Willow was crying, too, in sympathy for Buffy’s tears, and Oz and Xander both looked as if they were pretty close to joining them. As they watched, Cordelia took the brandy bottle from Giles and his glass, giving him a glare as he did so, and carried it over to where Buffy was crying, pouring her a generous measure, and stroking her hair to get her attention before putting the glass in her hand.
Willow and Xander were saying comforting things, even Oz chiming in with the occasional pithy word of comfort, Xander still rubbing Buffy’s back.
“I’m beginning to see that,” Wesley said wistfully.
Giles half-smiled. “I really need to introduce you to them all properly at some point. Buffy, of course, you know is the Slayer. She’s also a seventeen year old girl who likes make up and shopping and those other entirely pointless things that teenage girls like to waste their time with. Willow, as I’m sure you’ve realized, is a promising witch. Cordelia is um…well, generally considered a vapid airhead, but she has in her time displayed a certain steely resolve and strength of character that will certainly make any future husband of hers a very…obedient man. Xander is…well, you really do have to get to know him to know what Xander is but I assure you that underneath the drivelling idiocy and inappropriate joking there is someone um…else. And Oz is…well, he’s actually a werewolf but only for three nights a month and we’re working on ways to deal with that.” Giles looked up at him. “I know that you’re not exactly one of us yet, Wesley, but....”
“I promise not to get kidnapped again,” Wesley said quickly. “I really will be much more careful in future. Honestly. If you’d just give me a second chance I promise you I really could make myself useful....”
Giles looked into his anxious blue eyes and half-smiled. “Wesley, in the short time you’ve been here you’ve managed to drive a wedge between Spike, Drusilla, and Angelus, discover the means to re-ensoul Angel, and show yourself to be a person of considerable…compassion and integrity. If you want to stay in Sunnydale you’d be very welcome.”
Wesley looked as if he was about to faint with relief. He swallowed hard and then said, “I’d like that very much. I know you didn’t ask for an assistant, but I promise I’ll work very hard at learning the ropes and, despite what Angelus said about my dissertation, I am actually very good at research.”
Giles could no longer hide a smile. He patted the younger man on the arm. “I’m sure you are, Wesley. Would you – like a cup of tea?”
“I’d love one.” Wesley smiled back at him.
When Giles handed them both their tea and looked back at the scene in the sitting room, Buffy was wiping her eyes and smiling and Willow was straightening her hair and Cordelia offering her a compact so she could ‘do something about the mascara because really you know it’s high time you switched to something waterproof....’
He thought of Jenny and it still hurt. It would always hurt. And then he thought of Angel and his weight of grief and guilt, and thought about what Wesley had said about him having a purpose, and although he had to admit that he hoped his mythic destiny took him away from Sunnydale and Buffy, he could recognize that Angel probably did have it in him to do as much good in the end as he had done harm. And then he looked at the nervous young man next to him who had looked so entirely useless when he stood in the door of the library and had achieved and withstood so much in the short time he had been with them and for the first time let himself think that perhaps, after all, it might be nice to have some company; someone from the same background as himself with whom he could utter the occasional complaint about America and Americans and the Council and the lack of cricket.
“Wesley....” he said gently.
Wesley turned to look at him, still automatically anxious, that ‘what have I done wrong and how angry are you going to be with me because of it?’ expression in his eyes that Giles was definitely going to have to work to eliminate so that this young man could achieve his full potential. Giles smiled at him and touched their cups together again.
“Just…welcome to Sunnydale.”
And then Wesley was smiling back at him and Buffy laughed at something Xander had said and Giles felt that fist that had been clenched around his heart relax its grip a little and something fill him that felt very like…peace.
The End
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-16 11:17 am (UTC)he found himself wondering if there was something in the Council notes about the correct procedure for socializing with one’s evil vampire attacker after they had been re-ensouled and were now taking tea with you.
I was laughing out loud, then suddenly feeling the breath catch in my chest. I loved Dru and Spike in this - and of course the Wes Dad angst. Dru seeing how Wesley just wanted to be loved, and poor Wesley finding a family with them. So sad, yet almost sweet.
And you've set up a nice situation within canon - Wesley is going to be the one who saves Angel. Perfect. I go now to read your next Wesley fic!
Stunning writing!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-21 05:12 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed this fic. I wanted a way for S1 Angel Wesley to be in Sunnydale, and I always thought that if the Scoobies had just treated him as nicely as Angel and Cordy did in LA, they would have met a very different Wesley. I was also trying to cheat and have Innocent!Wesley have sex with Angelus without it being horribly traumatic. I did start a Wes/Giles slash sequel but then got stumped.