(no subject)
Oct. 29th, 2005 02:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgreyAll parts linked to from Story Notes
Temps Perdu, Part One
Rupert Giles was starting to feel that he was wasting his time. That they were all wasting their time in fact. The hotel was…unnerving. A strange old building, it was full of inexplicable creaks, although apparently – he had been blithely assured – no longer haunted. He wasn’t even sure why he was here; why any of them were here except for Buffy. The two people they were here to help had not exactly been bosom pals of his; in fact one of them had tortured him and murdered the woman he loved, and the other had stolen his job. Moreover, Angel had made it impossible for Buffy to see Xander as a romantic interest at the time when that young man had most desired it, while Wesley had cut Xander out with Cordelia. So that was two of the current chanting party with every reason to be anywhere but here. Willow had remained fond of both Angel and Wesley – despite the fact Angel had killed her goldfish and Wesley had been ready to sacrifice her to prevent the Mayor’s ascension – but then Willow had always been something of a law unto herself. Buffy had never had any time for Wesley. He had irritated her from the day he arrived in Sunnydale, and she had been ruder to him than Giles had ever seen her be to an adult before; but then it had been made clear that neither Buffy nor Faith saw Wesley as an adult; just an annoying overgrown schoolboy in dress-up clothes pretending to have some authority over them. Yet, somehow here they all were, because of Buffy’s lingering feelings for Angel, or because Angel and Wesley had apparently helped save the world and were now suffering because of it, or because, quite simply, it was the right thing to do.
None of which helped the fact that he was jetlagged, thirsty, irritable, and getting serious cramp in his knees from sitting cross-legged on a hard floor for so many hours. There was only so long one could sit around a circle painted in the mingled blood of clean and unclean alike, candles flickering as their wicks began to sputter, misshapen from a hundred drips of wax, the bird bones and nettle stalks, the yew branch and hollowed skulls; the burning herbs and scattered leaves, the bowls of oil upon which tiny flames floated; throat clogged with incense and smoke and parched from chanting the incantation over and over in Latin which only two of those intoning it even understood.... There were two tiny flames reflected in the centre of the spectacles which were so neatly folded in the centre of the circle. An old pair of Wesley’s apparently, along with a ring of Angel’s. Those were the focusing elements; the items that were supposed to ensure that the two who had been lost would be able to pass back through; to show the cosmic forces trying to keep their reality separate from the hell dimension whose boundaries they were attempting to penetrate, that these two were meant to be on this side of the gateway.
He was starting to feel that this was also a damaging futility, however. For Buffy, who was sitting beside him, willing Angel back from hell – again. And for the others, who, apart from Willow and Xander, were strangers to him for the most part, and the one who wasn’t a stranger someone he really didn’t like. The human race was barely holding its own in the numbers here. Although he, Buffy, Willow and Xander were certainly flying the flag for homo sapiens, of Angel’s crew there was only one human left, Charles Gunn, vampire slayer and also apparently vampire employee. The others were an anagogic demon; a god-king so ancient and powerful she came from the time before humans lived – someone who walked now in the stolen body of the human woman she had killed; and another demon, one all too familiar to him. William the Bloody. Spike, the second vampire with a soul. Also the second vampire to sleep with Buffy.
Looking across the circle, Giles met Xander’s gaze and saw the man was no more convinced than he was that they weren’t all engaged in an act of absolute futility. Everyone was starting to look worn thin with this; Gunn, with his eyes closed, concentrating absolutely on saying the words right, gripping Lorne’s hand in his left hand and Spike’s in his right. Spike holding onto Illyria, Willow between Illyria and Buffy, Giles between Buffy and Xander, adding what magical powers he possessed to the general mix, Xander holding - a little gingerly - to the green hand of the empath demon who was also working what ‘mojo’ he could in this strange summoning. Buffy, Spike and Gunn all had a weapon on the floor behind them, in case what came through wasn’t what they wanted; two swords and an axe, a dull gleam to their sharpened blades.
“I feel something....” Willow breathed.
“Is it them?” Gunn looked up, and, gazing at him, Giles wondered if he’d slept more than a few hours in the weeks since Wesley had sacrificed himself to close the mouth into that hell dimension and Angel had dived after him.
It was strange to think of Wesley as someone who sacrificed himself. The man Giles had known had hardly been a credit to the Council, although he had been completely a product of their training. Prim, stuffy, pompous, annoying, unprepared for what the reality of a Hellmouth really meant. Probably very like Giles had been, but he liked to think he had possessed a little more humility and a slightly greater willingness to toss aside the rulebook if the occasion demanded it – a little more courage as well. Or perhaps Buffy had just trained him well. Ultimately, he had found that was what happened, after all. Watchers were trained by their Slayers every bit as much as Slayers were trained by their Watchers. Wesley hadn’t had the benefit of a Slayer to train him, as the two allocated to him had rejected him. But Angel, of all people, had taken on his training, not to mention care and preservation. That was still a difficult concept for him to grasp. He couldn’t see anything in the man that Wesley had been to make a vampire warm to him, or believe that someone so entrenched in the Council’s training as Wesley had been would accept the friendship, let alone authority, of a vampire....
“I’m not sure....” Willow was concentrating with all her might. She was bearing most of the burden of keeping this entrance open; and if they succeeded in bringing the lost ones to the gateway, it would also fall upon her to find the strength to help them through and then close the door behind them. That was the real danger, of course – the reason why they shouldn’t be doing this – one didn’t wantonly open the doorway into a hell dimension on the grounds that they were almost sure they could slam it closed again. If Willow lost her mental balance, their own reality could start to be sucked into hell, or at the very least hell beasts could be released into this world.
“You need to be sure,” said Giles tersely. “You can’t open the doorway unless you’re certain....”
“The door is open.” Willow kept her eyes closed, still concentrating. “Payment for the door they closed. The forces of magic will support balance like that and I have to give them every chance, Giles. We don’t know what kind of shape they’ll be in. Or how long they’ve been there. It could be a day to them or a year or decades.... Time might not be the same there as here.”
“Okay for Deadboy,” Xander muttered. “Not so good for Giles Junior.”
Gunn gripped Lorne’s hand so tightly that the demon winced. “Yeah, Wes can’t take too many decades in a hell dimension.”
“It could only have been minutes to them,” Willow said reassuringly.
“That would be nice,” Lorne murmured. “I’d give a big hooray for that option and buy it a Best of Aretha CD as a thank you.”
Illyria said nothing. She hadn’t said anything for hours; not since the glasses had been placed in the circle and she had examined them curiously for a moment, head tilted like a bird of prey. “The shell remembers these. He wore them before.”
“Before what?” Giles queried.
“Laser treatment,” Gunn said at the same time Lorne said: “He had his throat slit.” Then they’d both winced at one another.
“Post-traumatic stress wotsit,” Spike had shrugged. “Didn’t want to look like a victim after being one. Makes sense.”
“Why should wearing glasses make one more likely to look like a victim?” Giles had demanded indignantly and then there had been lots of people averting their eyes from him and not saying very much while Buffy patted him reassuringly on the shoulder and said that she was absolutely certain that someone wearing glasses had no correlation at all to the amount of time they got injured, and certainly not the times they were knocked unconscious, because that would just be silly.
“Wes always did tend to be the one the demons went for.” Gunn had also picked up the glasses to examine them before putting them back in the centre.
“They can sense weakness,” Giles shrugged.
Lorne and Gunn had both glared at him then. “Wes isn’t weak,” Gunn told him shortly.
Giles decided not to argue the point, although from his experience he would have said that Wesley was the dictionary definition of the ‘weakest link’. By comparison with the ex-Watcher, Gunn looked like a person more than capable of taking care of himself in a fight and Illyria appeared to have skin-coloured armour-plating in place of a normal epidermis. Admittedly Lorne’s contribution to any fight seemed to be to offer to buy the lurking evil a drink or sing it a medley of show numbers but....
“Whoever it is, they’re coming fast....”
He was snapped back to the present by Willow’s quiet voice and realized how tired he must be to be drifting off at a time like this.
“Let it be them, let it be them....” Gunn breathed.
Throat raw from chanting Latin, Giles wished vainly for a cup of tea, trying to tell himself that he was perfectly calm, not invested in this outcome, only here out of politeness, but there was some part of him also willing them to come back, for the people trying to break out of this dimension to be the ones who had leapt into it for the common good.
Then there was a roar of light and flame, a tear in the air, and something came through, something naked and singed, and then the something was rolling across the floor, out of the circle and Giles realized it was not a something or even a someone but two people, one of which was Angel, the other clasped tightly in his arms as Angel rolled them both away from the circle and halfway to the stairs.
“Close it!” Angel shouted hoarsely. “You have to close it now!” He backed up across the floor, using his heels to propel himself and the person clasped in his arms away from the portal.
As Willow rapidly began to say the incantation, two demons leapt through the rip in the air, horned, clawed, half-furred and half-scaled, with glowing red eyes; they were huge – eight feet tall – and brandishing vicious weapons with serrated blades.
The way Gunn snatched at his sword and threw himself at them, Giles realized the man must have been wanting to kill something for some time now. He swung his axe at the first demon with such savagery that, although it was nearly two feet taller than he was, it still staggered back at the impact. Buffy and Spike had also grabbed their weapons and thrown themselves at the demons.
“You have to get out of the circle!” Giles shouted at them. Willow was still saying the incantation and the first demon seemed to realize that she was the source of power in the room. It struck Gunn a vicious blow which he barely blocked with the axe, and then elbowed him savagely in the head, knocking him ten feet across the room, down, and, Giles feared, out, at least temporarily. Buffy and Spike were still fighting the other demon as the first one turned its attention on Willow.
“No!” Xander threw himself at it and boldly shoulder charged it away from his friend.
Snarling angrily, the demon backhanded Xander into the reception desk and began to stalk back towards Willow. As Giles made to attack it, a hand calmly caught him by the shoulder and yanked him out of the circle, then Illyria, the blue-haired ancient one, held up a hand and a bubble of bluish light enveloped both the demons while leaving Willow untouched. Spike and Buffy looked like something from a museum display, warriors captured in the moment of fighting, except that they were moving, Giles noticed, albeit very slowly. Still calmly, Illyria strode to where Buffy and Spike were duelling with the demon, caught them by the back of their jackets and plucked them cleanly out of the bubble of slowed time. Then she nodded to Willow.
“Thank you,” the witch said cheerfully, and finished the incantation with a hand gesture that caused the portal to ripple and eddy before abruptly sucking the two demons back through it and closing with a last foul belch of hot air.
Giles watched Buffy speed across to Angel at a pace that suggested she had been every bit as invested in his safe return as he had feared. Lorne was already there, saying gently, “Angelcakes, is it really you?”
“Yes.” Angel was hoarse but coherent. “We made it.”
“Is Wesley…?” Lorne swallowed. “How long was it for you?”
“Alive. About eight months.” Angel reached down to the person clasped in his arms and Giles saw that they were a tangle of naked limbs, still hanging onto one another as if even now they thought they could be ripped apart.
“Not as bad as last time then.” That was Buffy and it wasn’t a question. She crouched down next to Angel. “Are you okay?”
He was looking around in confusion, flinching from the light, and Giles saw there were wounds all over his body. As he got nearer he saw that there were wounds all over Wesley’s as well; but amongst the evidence of various random cruelties there also seemed to be sigils burned into his skin. “Yes,” Angel answered Buffy distractedly, already looking around for Willow. “Can you undo these? They can track him here.”
“Yes.” She looked shocked by their condition and Giles could see everyone was wincing as they took in what bad shape these two had come back to them.
“Are we home…?” Wesley whispered.
Angel cupped his cheek gently in his hand. “Yes, Wes. We’re here.”
Wesley flinched more violently from the light than Angel had done, eyes watering at the brightness. As he raised his head, Giles saw that his face was covered in cuts and bruises, but he still had both eyes and given the way they were reacting to the light they seemed able to see. Their hair was unkempt and matted but although Wesley was unshaven he didn’t have what could have been described as a beard, only about a week’s growth. They both looked starved but although Angel appeared lean and hard, Wesley was skin and bone – and bruised, slashed and welted skin at that. Yet none of his wounds looked serious. He seemed to have been running fast through rough ground and had picked up all the bruises and cuts one would expect, but he had none of the deep bleeding wounds that Angel had sustained.
Giles crouched down by them while Spike found a blanket. “Wesley?” Giles enquired gently. “Do you know where you are?”
Wesley gave him a look of flickering panic that turned slowly into recognition. “Mister Giles?”
“Yes.” Compos mentis then as well as able to see. That was a good sign. “That’s right.”
Except Wesley was still looking somewhat panic stricken. “Did the Council send you?”
“No,” Giles assured him quickly. “Not the Council. I’m here as a friend, Wesley.” As the man still looked more panicked than not, he said, “The Council doesn’t know I’m here.”
Only then did Wesley snatch a breath and look back at Angel. “Are we in Sunnydale?”
“No. The Hyperion. L.A.” Despite having spoken with authority, Angel still looked around as if he needed to double check.
“And it’s our dimension?” Wesley’s skin was clammy-looking, Giles noticed, frighteningly pale, terrible shadows under his eyes. He looked like a fever patient and when he touched his forehead it felt hot to the touch.
Angel looked between them all. “They seem to be expecting us.”
“I don’t want to go back to England,” Wesley breathed quickly, after another panicked look in Giles’ direction. “Angel....”
“You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything you don’t want to do ever again,” Angel said tautly. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“Wes!” Gunn staggered up from the floor and ran over to them, throwing himself down next to the two. “Are you okay? Man, you had us scared!”
Wesley gazed at the man for a moment and then said, “Charles.” He smiled at Angel. “And he’s not dead.”
“Just like I told you.”
“And you’re pretty much the same age you were when you went into that place. But....” Gunn reached out to touch Wesley’s torn shoulders. “What happened to you?” His legs were bruised and cut, as were Angel’s. They could all see the claw marks across the vampire’s body now, diagonally marking his back, around his ribs, and across his upper arms, as well as numerous still-bleeding injuries from bladed weapons. If they had made a last stand, Angel had clearly taken the brunt of it defending Wesley.
“Bad place.” Wesley tried to smile but the shuddering and the flicker of raw panic behind his eyes took off any reassuring aspect he’d been trying to convey. “Very bad place. Can you get Angel some blood? He’s hungry.” He caught sight of the green demon and his face broke into another smile of relief. “Lorne.”
“Yes, crumpet, it’s me. And I’m not dead either. And very relieved to see you two are also in the land of the living.” But although Lorne’s voice was reassuring, he also looked horrified at their condition. Giles couldn’t blame him for that. He was feeling pretty horrified himself.
As Wesley shifted his position slightly they saw the bite marks on his arms and thighs and Giles looked at Angel in accusation. The vampire became aware of his gaze and said, “Yes, it was me. It was necessary.”
“He looks starved half to death,” Giles protested.
“He’s alive.” It was Spike who spoke. “Who really thinks he still would be if Angel hadn’t gone after him?”
To hear Angel defended by Spike, of all people, was enough of a shock to silence Giles at least, and he saw that Xander, now also muzzily approaching, looked equally astonished.
Wesley was still clinging to Angel who had kept a protective arm around him, not yet untangled from one another fully. Angel stroked Wesley’s matted hair back from his bruised face and said again gently, “Wes, we’re home.”
“Christ!” Xander saw their condition for the first time and recoiled.
Spike glared at him. “It was a hell dimension, not a holiday resort. What did you expect?”
Wesley had to focus on Xander for a long time before there was any flicker of recognition but then his eyes widened. “Xander. What happened to your eye?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Xander tried to find a reassuring smile and almost managed it. “It happened a while ago. You look a little rough around the edges yourself, my friend.”
Wesley turned to Gunn, apparently feeling that he should make introductions. “Xander was a friend of Cordelia’s. He bought her the dress she wore to the Prom. She looked lovely.”
“She always did.” Gunn smiled at him but Giles noticed there were tears in his eyes; relief at getting them back still hitting him hard. Gunn touched Wesley’s shoulder gently. “Good to have you home, English.”
Willow said, “Xander bought…?” Willow and Buffy both looked at Xander in surprise and Buffy said: “You bought Cordelia’s Prom dress?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Xander’s gaze was still fixed on Wesley. He crouched down next to him. “Are you okay?”
Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
Xander glanced across at Angel, who was looking, Giles thought, pale even for a vampire. He was clearly exhausted and at the end of his resources, but he was still holding onto Wesley. “Deadboy take care of you in there?”
“No…Angel.” Wesley clearly had trouble processing that and then finally got who Xander was referring to. He smiled again. “Yes…Angel - he took care of me.”
“We took care of each other.” Angel tightened his grip on Wesley.
Seeing Willow standing behind Buffy, Wesley smiled at her very sweetly. “Willow. You gave Angel back his soul.”
“Yes.” She spoke to him gently: “Are you feeling okay, Wesley?”
“I’d like a shower.” Wesley looked down at himself. “And I think some clothes would be a good idea.”
“What about a nice cup of tea?” Giles suggested. As they all looked at him in scorn, he stuck to his guns. He knew where Wesley came from; his background; what the man probably reached for in times of crisis.
Sure enough, Wesley’s face cleared. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
A shadow fell over them and Wesley flinched. Illyria said sadly: “You do not remember me?”
Wesley peered at her for a moment and then said, without accusation: “You’re the demon who killed the woman I loved.”
Seeing the hurt wash across Illyria’s face, Willow said hastily, “She helped. Illyria stopped the demons from the…bad place coming after you.”
Not looking at her, attention focused back on Angel again, Wesley said, “That was kind of you. Thank you.” But it was the reply of a child thanking his aunt for an unwanted Christmas present out of sheer politeness. Giles didn’t think anyone was surprised when Illyria turned around and walked away. Spike looked as if he would have gone after her, grimacing as he watched her retreat, but apparently his need to be near Buffy – or perhaps even to see to the two who had returned – was stronger than sympathy for her and he stayed put.
“Come on, Wes. We need to get you upstairs where the hot water and the beds are.” Angel began to rise painfully to his feet, Buffy reaching out to help him and then stopping. His nakedness did make it a little difficult to find anywhere to lend a hand without it seeming a little more intimate than one might care for, and Giles automatically took a step back. Gunn, however, was already holding Wesley by his other arm, assisting Angel in helping the man clamber to his feet. Wesley swayed, what little colour had been in his face draining out of it with the shock of being upright, while Angel also seemed to be staying on his feet only by clinging to the banister.
“You all right, mate?” Spike enquired of Angel.
Angel managed a teeth-gritted grin. “Peachy.”
“So, you booked a return flight to that hell dimension or do you think you’re going to try another one next time?”
“As soon as I’ve killed my travel agent for the last trip, I’ll let you know.”
“What do you need?” Lorne asked.
Angel looked around at them all. “To be here and not there. Thank you all for that.”
“It was nothing,” Giles shrugged.
“Just lots of mind numbingly tedious chanting and getting smacked around by demons,” Xander agreed.
“What do you need now?” Lorne persisted. “Blood? Painkillers? Some soothing music and a massage? How about a nice very alcoholic drink?”
“All of those sound good.” Angel looked at Wesley. “But first we need to undo the location spell they put on him.”
“I can do that,” said Willow cheerfully. “And being a lesbian I’m extra safe around Wesley’s naked body, so that’s a bonus too.”
Wesley looked at her curiously. “When did you become a lesbian?”
“Long story,” she assured him. “I’ll tell you later.”
His bewilderment was unexpectedly innocent. “Does Oz know?”
For some reason, Giles felt bound to follow the painfully slow procession of Angel helping Wesley up the stairs, and, as they all trooped after them, apparently so did everyone else. Spike had wrapped the blanket a little awkwardly around their shoulders but it had slipped down. Gunn and Lorne were hovering protectively while Angel took Wesley’s weight, such as it was. Angel still had his arm firmly across Wesley’s scored back, his own tattoo the only familiar markings on the vampire’s skin, that was also marked with old and new wounds, and both of them liberally dusted with bruises and dirt.
“Giles, can you…?”
Realizing what Willow was asking, he took the book from her while she juggled ingredients, flicking through the pages to try to find the most suitable spell for undoing a locator curse.
“This one should work.” He marked the page with his handkerchief. “Do you want me to do it?” He knew how much of a toll it must have taken upon her to first open the portal and then close it again.
She shook her head. “Not that you’re not extra safe around Wesley’s naked body too, but I think he associates you with the Council and England and that doesn’t seem to be a happy place for him.”
“Because they fired him?” Buffy asked in a small voice. “Because his Slayer resigned from the Council?”
“It’s his father.” Spike pressed back to let them pass him on the stairs. “Not that Giles looks like him – well, the tweed is a bit similar but – anyway, lot of history there, and he’s another Watcher, works for the Council. Bit of a red flag for Wesley.”
Giles thought of that flicker of panic in Wesley’s eyes. “I’ve met Roger Wyndam-Pryce on a few occasions, of course. Rather a cold man, I always thought, not much imagination, but I wouldn’t think he was someone who would inspire that level of fear.”
Gunn looked over his shoulder. “Think again.”
Buffy was still gazing at Angel. It wasn’t that she was unaware of Wesley or indifferent to his condition, Giles had seen her wince sympathetically at him a number of times, but it was always such a shock for her and Angel to see one another again; that soul-deep connection between them like an electric shock, so tangible it seemed to make everyone in the vicinity jolt slightly in reaction. Except this time, the current seemed to be flowing all one way. Giles didn’t know if it was a reaction to the spell or his exhaustion from all the hours of making the spell happen, hours which had followed a long flight from England and a long drive to this hotel, but he was feeling hyper sensitive to everything; the buzzing of a trapped fly by the window, the way light was swallowed by Xander’s eye patch, the streaks of mingled dirt and blood on Angel’s back, the way the sigils burned into Wesley’s shoulders were squirming slightly, like bugs under a microscope; and the broken thread between Angel and Buffy; he’d seen her this time and the jolt hadn’t been there; all his attention already diverted.
Eight months in a hell dimension, Giles thought. Presumably the person you were with became your whole world. And your cause, he guessed, when you were a protector, as Angel was; when you were someone who needed to make amends. It was strange to be surrounded by people who wanted to help Angel make amends while he was here as one of the things for which Angel needed to make amends for – one of the torture victims; one of those who had lost a loved one to the cruelty of Angelus. In that hell dimension Wesley had probably been the only thing there worth saving, the one Angel had to protect as part of his redemption. And perhaps out of simple friendship. Despite the bite marks clearly visible on his arms and legs, and the confusion in his mind, Wesley seemed completely trusting of the vampire.
Giles decided that as Willow had the sigil-removing spell well in hand, that he should see about making Wesley that cup of tea he’d offered him. And having one himself. Given Wesley’s feverish condition, a Beechams Powder would probably be more appropriate, in some hot lemon and honey, but as he doubted he would find any of these things in a place as uncivilized as LA, he thought he had better concentrate on tea. He found tea-making things in the office, even, oddly enough, some English Breakfast tea. The death date had long since passed but when he wiped off the dust from the container he found that tea bags inside still smelt fresh, and when he took a sip of his own mug of tea it tasted fine. He sloshed extra milk into the cup and drank it down in a few gulps, some feelings returning to his throat as he did so. For Wesley, however, he hunted around in the cupboards until he found a bone china cup and saucer. Somehow that seemed important – something so familiar after being somewhere so strange. He knew Angel was probably traumatized too but he couldn’t relate to the trauma of a souled vampire. An Englishman, however, particularly an Englishman trained from an early age to be a Watcher, was a very different…well, cup of tea.
As he entered the bedroom, he realized it must once have been Angel’s. A room prepared for his return, with maroon walls, and a double bed made up in readiness. Someone had put out photographs on the dresser: several of Angel, Wesley, and Cordelia from happier times which Giles found unexpectedly poignant. Wesley was bespectacled and smiling and Cordelia was dazzling the cameraman with a thousand watt smile of her own. It was difficult for him to believe that the girl he had regarded with exasperation for so long had turned into the bearer of the visions, helper of the helpless, hapless tool of a higher power, and was now dead. This life seemed to burn up the young much too fast sometimes, and he wasn’t sure that it did a lot for those in their forties either. Or their two hundred and forties....
Angel looked done in and past the point of done in. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, his gaze fixed on Wesley; Buffy, Gunn, Lorne, and Xander hovering close to him. Spike sat a little apart from the others smoking a cigarette and looking at Buffy’s back as if he could will her to look around just by concentration alone. Looking past Xander’s shoulder to see why they were converging there, Giles saw an old-fashioned bathroom with large bronze-coloured taps, the bath on clawed feet, its porcelain base slightly stained with limescale.
Willow was being endlessly patient with Wesley, who had to be distracted from looking across at Angel every thirty seconds or so to see if he was still in eyeshot. Someone had wrapped a towel around his waist and Willow was now inviting him to sit in the bath so the herbs and oils she had to pour over the squirming sigils ‘don’t make the carpet all icky’. Wesley was compliant and obedient, apparently only having good feelings about Willow. He kept looking around for Angel, but Gunn, Lorne and Willow were also clearly considered what Buffy called ‘of the good’. Buffy he seemed confused by, although he recognized her and identified her by name, and he kept looking at Xander’s eye patch as if it were a puzzle he ought to be able to solve. But on beholding Giles, Wesley instinctively flinched. As Giles was the one who had spent the most time with Wesley in Sunnydale, and as Giles had – he always thought – exercised extraordinary patience with Wesley when he was being a pompous little twerp, not to mention saving his life, it did rather hurt.
Buffy was doing her bit for the ‘desigilling’ process by holding the spell book for Willow, which at least gave her something to do that didn’t involve gazing at Angel while Spike gazed at her like a lovesick puppy.
“Your tea, Wesley,” Giles said, refusing to acknowledge the eye-rolling from Xander as he firmly handed it over in its entirely proper, entirely British, bone china cup and saucer.
Wesley seemed very gratified by both, and sipped the tea with every sign of pleasure while managing to hold both cup and saucer reasonably steady despite the whole-body trembling that was reverberating through him. There was certainly some sloshing of tea into saucer and from saucer into the bath, but Giles was glad to have it confirmed that something as reassuringly civilized as English Breakfast tea in a bone china cup and saucer was exactly what an Englishman needed most after eight months in a hell dimension.
Lorne fetched Angel a beaker of blood, ‘freshly nuked’ as Gunn phrased it, from the microwave. As the demon handed it over, he said, “Do you want some vodka with that, cupcake?”
Angel was still swaying with exhaustion but he hung onto the doorway of the bathroom around which they were all crowding to keep himself upright and managed a wan smile for Lorne. “Maybe later.” As he smelt the blood, Giles saw the hunger flicker through Angel, the vampire having to fight not to go into game face just in response.
“We don’t mind,” Buffy said gently. “We know you must be hungry.”
“He’s starving.” Wesley looked up from where Willow was pouring an incantation down his back.
Angel sipped the blood without going into game face and returned Wesley’s gaze levelly, an odd expression on his face as he said, “This is good but I’ve had better.” He didn’t look at Buffy although she immediately looked at him. He was still gazing at Wesley. Giles felt rather than saw that small slump of dejection in her slight body and had to control a flicker of anger. Angel wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. He had just forgotten in the intervening months that there had ever been a life for him that didn’t revolve around the man currently having occult sigils removed from his welted skin by a witch.
“Ah, vampire humour.” Giles couldn’t stop a grimace, but he did find the whole blood drinking thing fairly distasteful, and the victim being complicit actually seemed to make it more distasteful. “Can I ask why it was necessary to…” he gritted his teeth, “drink the blood of your friend?”
“Survival.” Angel returned his gaze levelly. “Both of ours. Humans have no rights in that dimension. They’re just food. I only got to keep my food if I fought for it. I couldn’t fight for it – for Wesley – when I was too weak with hunger to stand upright. When I killed, it was better. Then we both ate. Although Wes couldn’t always keep it down. Raw demon flesh is a bit of an acquired taste.”
Lorne pulled a face. “Sorry to hear you’ve acquired it, pumpkin.” He held out a glass. “Sure you don’t want this?” As Angel shook his head, Lorne took another deep gulp of what was apparently a ‘Sea Breeze’. “Well, as you both look in need of some serious alcoholic consumption to me, I’d better just drink for three.”
Angel continued: “After six months or so we were captured for The Games. Gladiatorial fights. They’d feed your…food – a little – but not you; you only got to drink when you killed. Wes had to feed me in the days in between the fights so we both made it to the next bout. It got to the point where neither of us would have made it any longer if we’d stayed in that place. So Wes fed another vampire in exchange for some herbs he needed to cast a spell and used it to break the lock. Then we ran and were hunted. We had no strength left when we felt you pulling us towards the portal.”
“Angel won all his fights.” Wesley obediently leant his head forward so Willow could dissolve another sigil.
Angel gazed across at Wesley. “I had to.”
Buffy said, “Because if you hadn’t Wesley would have...?”
“Been given to whoever killed me.”
She grimaced. “Well, that sucks.”
“It’s what kept me alive. I couldn’t have fought just for me. Fighting to stop Wes ending up as demon brunch – that was motivating.”
“So, you did take care of each other?” Xander looked at Angel with slightly more liking than usual.
Angel returned his gaze. “It’s what we do here. All of us.”
“Family,” Wesley supplied from the bath. “Angel Investigations. One big not very happy rather dysfunctional family. When we’re not trying to kill each other. Which we also do from time to time.” He winced apologetically at Gunn. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it, Wes.” Gunn peered at what Willow was doing curiously. “It’s just another shared experience. We’ve all had a gut wound now.”
“I haven’t.” Lorne finished another glass and reached for the vodka bottle. “And I’d just like to point out that I really don’t want one, not even to be in your exclusive little ‘oh please do use my viscera for a colander’ club.”
“We try to kill each other too, sometimes,” Willow assured Wesley comfortingly. “It’s not a good thing but I think it’s part of being a family member.”
“Like killing your father?” Wesley nodded sagely. “We do that too. Except for Spike – who killed his mother. And Charles didn’t…?” He twisted his head round to look at the man. “You didn’t, did you?”
“No, vampires did for my parents. I did kill my sister though.”
“The vampires killed her, Gunn,” Angel said at once. “What you killed was the demon who looked like her. Not Alonna.”
“And it wasn’t your real father, remember, Wesley?” Lorne observed. “Only a robot.”
“It acted just like him.” Wesley put a hand up to the back of his head. “It didn’t like me either.”
Xander grimaced. “Well, I can relate to that.”
“We don’t tend to kill our parents so much in Sunnydale,” Buffy put in. “But sometimes they die anyway.”
There was a silence in which Spike said to her quietly, “Are you all right, pet?”
“Not really, no.” Buffy looked at Angel, still propped against the wall. At some point, Giles realized, he had pulled on a pair of trousers but his torso was still bare and his wounds clearly visible. Then she looked across at Wesley, who was having another burning sigil gently erased by Willow. “I really don’t like hell dimensions. I don’t like it when they try to leak into our world or when people from our world get sucked into them, and I don’t like what gets done to people in them.”
Clearly trying to make her feel better, Wesley said, “Lorne’s sort of from a hell dimension. It’s a demon dimension, anyway. And he’s very nice. And Angel’s son was brought up in a hell dimension – one of the really bad ones – and he would probably have turned out quite well if events hadn’t conspired to make him totally psychotic.”
Giles felt a migraine begin to throb behind his temples as Xander said: “Yeah, that Angel having a son thing – never really got that on account of the whole – being dead and therefore having other things that are dead and not capable of producing.... I’ll be quiet now.”
“I always meant to ask – was this just a spontaneous gesture that arrived ready-wrapped in swaddling or did you have to do some kind of baby-making ritual first?” Buffy enquired.
Angel took a strengthening sip of blood. “There was some – baby-making involved.”
“He wasn’t himself.” Wesley nodded. “His head was…not really on top of his neck. A rogue Higher Power needed Connor to be born so Jasmine could be born, but…that’s really quite a dull story.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Giles mopped his brow. “And what mundane lives you do live here.”
Wesley considered that for a moment and then said, “I think that on average we probably live quite interesting lives, but I suppose they could seem dull to other people.”
Giles opened his mouth to explain that he was being sarcastic and decided to give up with a sigh. “Why don’t I take that teacup from you, Wesley?” he offered instead.
“That’s the last one.” Willow beamed at Wesley. “You’re all sigil-free now. Can’t be tracked. And you can have a bath, if you’d like one, not that I’m saying you need one, but if you wanted one, that would be okay. Would you like me to wash your hair for you? Not that the dreadlocks don’t suit you....”
“Thank you.” He smiled back at her and handed his teacup and saucer to Giles. “I’d like not to smell of Ertash any more.”
“Is that a person or a place?” Buffy whispered to Angel.
He grimaced. “It’s a species. Slaver demons. Nasty. You don’t want to know.” Angel elbowed himself off the wall and glanced around at all of them. “Thanks for all your help. Willow, it’s okay, I’ll get Wesley and myself cleaned up, then I really think he needs some sleep. If you’re still here when we wake up, perhaps we can talk then.”
It was a dismissal and Buffy looked a little stung, but she only nodded, said quietly, “Of course,” and turned to go.
Giles heard Spike saying to her quietly: “He’s not himself, love. He’s worried about Wes.”
“He’s moved on,” she returned.
“And you haven’t?” Spike sighed. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Look – Angel needs someone to save. You don’t need saving. Wes and the others here – they need a lot of saving. These guys are the day job. You’re the reward he doesn’t think he’s won yet.”
“Sometimes I need saving too.” Buffy looked so young to Giles he wanted to wrap her in his arms and hug her. She didn’t say it aloud: I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be born the Slayer. None of them had, of course, and when he thought of what it had cost them all he sometimes wondered if it was worth it. Of course it was, he did know that, it just didn’t always feel that way.
Willow looked a little disappointed. “Can I cut Wesley's hair tomorrow?”
“Maybe.” Angel took the shower attachment from her. “We’ll see how he’s feeling.”
“I don’t mind washing his hair,” she added hopefully.
“Willow, he’s not a stray dog,” Giles said patiently. “And although I’m sure he’ll clean up beautifully, I really think it would be better if Angel was the one who did any bathing that needs to be done.”
“Oh, okay.” Willow looked disappointed but did get out of the bath, saying gently to Wesley, “Angel’s going to wash your hair instead, Wesley, but if you want me to cut it I’d really like to. I remember how you had it before.”
“I could do Angel’s,” Buffy offered. “I remember how his was too.”
“Yes, love, I think we all remember how Angel’s was,” Spike observed. “Some of us still have nightmares.”
“Criticism of my hair.” Angel sat on the edge of the bath and looked down at Wesley. “I guess we’re really home.” Wesley leant across and took Angel’s wrist in his hands to examine a bite wound with great solemnity. Angel felt his forehead and winced. “We need to get your temperature down, Wes.”
“I know a really good herbal cure for fevers. I can make some up for Wesley if you like?” Willow called back to Angel.
“Yes, do that downstairs, Willow. I really think they want some privacy.” Giles made vague ushering motions to the loiterers, feeling that he should do his part to preserve ex-Watcher dignity by at least trying to guarantee that Wesley had a bath in peace. But when he looked back from the doorway of the bedroom, Angel was oblivious of all of them, running hot water into the bath and testing the spray of the hand held shower spray against his hand before very gently running it down the back of Wesley’s neck.
“Is that too hot?” he asked.
“No. It feels good.” Wesley closed his eyes as the water trickled down his scored back but he didn’t flinch and he seemed, for the first time, perfectly relaxed; being alone with Angel was apparently the time when he felt the most safe.
“You’ve got a temperature, but Willow’s going to mix something up for you to help with it. Then you need to sleep. Okay?”
“Okay.” Wesley gazed up at the vampire and gave him an unexpectedly sweet smile. Giles wondered if he had simply had too many braincells fried to ever be who he was again or if this was the way they were together; Wesley, trustingly childlike, Angel protective and fond. He suspected the Wesley had known would have been more likely to become increasingly brittle with the passing of time, the accumulated mental scar tissue of crises survived, the never-ending stress. This was someone else; the product of a hell dimension; the product of a mind that had possibly snapped under the strain, or at the very least was taking a short holiday from reality.
Giles backed out of the bedroom and quietly closed the door. Outside, he said, “Am I the only one who has a problem with Angel using Wesley as a packed lunch?”
“It was probably Wesley’s idea.” Gunn shrugged. “He’s done it before. Fed Angel, I mean. When Angel went three months without food he needed something richer than pig’s blood so Wesley sliced his arm open and fed him his own blood.”
“Ah.” Giles grimaced. “I didn’t need to know that.”
“You’re too squeamish,” Spike told him dismissively. “Too many years in a small town Hellmouth instead of mixing it in the metropolis.”
“Presumably they have bigger shinier demons in LA?” Buffy observed. She looked as tired as Giles felt, but there was no possibility of them getting any sleep, he realized, they were all too wired from the aftermath of magic.
Willow was looking at Lorne’s suit with every sign of approval. “We certainly didn’t get so many who wore lamé.”
The horned demon nodded sagely. “That’s probably because you were mostly dealing with evil demons – being on a Hellmouth and all – they can’t carry it off. In fact, I’ve noticed that evil demons are often fashion-challenged.”
Buffy nodded. “I’ve noticed that too.”
“Yeah, look at Spike.” Xander jerked his head in the direction of the vampire.
As they all did, the vampire said defensively: “What?”
“It’s the hair,” Gunn explained. “It’s so…not of the now. And shouldn’t vampires get some kind of make over when they get a soul anyway?”
“You’re talking to me about hair? How can you work for Angel for all this time, Captain Hairgel himself, and criticize my style?”
“Angel can carry it off.” Lorne took another sip of his refilled cocktail. “He’s always managed to make having something with hold seem like a necessity when finding the hellspawns of evil. It’s like the coat. It’s all about the coat.”
“And the car,” Gunn added.
“I miss the leather pants,” Lorne admitted.
Xander said incredulously, “Do you people work for Angel or date him?”
“What, his coat is better than mine now as well? You have got to be kidding me. This coat is way better than....”
“Do you mean the coat you took from the body of the Slayer you murdered?” Giles massaged his temples then counted to three before saying as patiently as he could: “I appreciate that after such a momentous event as getting Angel and Wesley back from the hell dimension in which they’ve been suffering for the past eight months that some discussion is necessary. However, if I’m going to have my migraine interrupted with noise I would rather it was about something rather more relevant and interesting that Spike’s appallingly obvious hair dye and poor taste in clothes.”
Xander said, “Can we talk about how everyone who works for Angel seems to be under some kind of weird hex? First Wesley and now these two. When Spike is sounding like the voice of reason, I know I’ve stepped into a parallel universe.”
Spike looked at Xander aghast. “You’re agreeing with me?”
“About Angel having scarily bad hair? Damned right.”
“Well, don’t. It just makes me question my own judgement.”
Groaning inwardly, Giles met Willow’s eye and muttered darkly, “It’s going to be a very long night.”
It was two hours later when Giles realized that his overwhelming need to go and see how Wesley was could no longer be ignored. It irritated him intensely; he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t even liked Wesley when the man had arrived in Sunnydale. He had been so arrogant, naïve, priggish, hidebound, completely unprepared for the reality of fieldwork after the theory of the Academy; emotionally immature, acting as if women were a new species he had never actually encountered before; fluttering ineffectually around Cordelia as if asking a woman to dance involved more mental effort than....
Giles winced as he realized just how many of Wesley’s annoying characteristics were ones he’d shared on his first arrival at Sunnydale. He’d been so excited by the idea of the Hellmouth; the prospect of seeing all those demons face to face that he’d only read about in books; convinced that as he’d studied how to train a slayer that meant he knew how to deal with the reality of a living, breathing, vulnerable human being and the fact of having to send her out to face death every night. That was what Watchers did, of course. They sent a young girl out to risk her life for the common good while they sat at home and studied. That was why only certain people made it as Watchers; the unimaginative ones who never let themselves feel and knew what they did was right, and the ones who cared too much, got in too deep, and either got themselves killed, got themselves fired, or had a nervous breakdown. Wesley had been no less unprepared than he had been, but Buffy had been more tolerant with Giles than she had been prepared to be with Wesley later and, as it was on Giles’ behalf that she was ignoring Wesley, Giles hadn’t exactly been devastated by it. Of course the man had been annoying. Intensely annoying but all the same....
Giles found that he had left the others still arguing over their pizza. Well, Gunn and Xander were arguing with Spike about something to do with vampires, no doubt, or possibly football; Giles hadn’t really been listening for quite some time.
He made his way cautiously to the bedroom, not wanting to wake Angel, if he were asleep, but hoping for directions as to where he could find Wesley’s room, if he were awake. The door was still ajar; and when he looked through the gap, he saw that Angel and Wesley were both in the same bed, although Wesley was asleep and Angel was awake, Angel with his elbow propped up on the pillow watching the human sleep.
“He’s going to be okay.” Angel kept his voice low but evidently knew Giles was there without looking. “He just really needs some sleep.”
“I imagine that’s true of you, too.” Giles stayed in the doorway, still a little disconcerted by the fact they were sharing a bed. Of course, with Wesley in his current mental condition it was probably inevitable that Angel would have to stay close, but he hadn’t expected something quite so intimate.
“I slept for an hour or so. I feel better now.” Angel gently stroked a hand down Wesley’s ribcage, not in the way a man touched a lover or a child, but like a part of his own body; the line between his body and Wesley’s blurred somewhere along the line. “I need to hear his heartbeat.” He dipped his head to press it against Wesley’s chest and then smiled. “It’s a good sound.”
Giles came into the room and gently closed the door. “Are you...? I mean....” He didn’t know how to say that the man he’d known hadn’t – he thought, given the girlfriends Gunn had told him about – been gay even if it had been assumed he was rather more often than not; so if Angel had made Wesley his lover it seemed to have more to do with Angel’s sheer force of personality and Wesley’s somewhat weak will than any real lifestyle choice on the ex-Watcher’s part.
Angel looked confused and then his face cleared. “No. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”
“Appropriate?” Giles couldn’t disguise his surprise at such a pompous choice of words.
“We were on the run. Lots of adrenaline. Extreme circumstances. Who doesn’t want to at a time like that? But you can’t take it back afterwards. I don’t care, but Wes might.”
“So you wanted to but you didn’t?” Giles took another step into the room and looked at Wesley. Despite the cuts and bruises, not to mention the jutting ribs, he looked oddly peaceful.
“I’m male. We always want to, don’t we? And he was all that was around. But Wes deserves better than that.”
Giles thought perhaps substituting ‘vampire’ for ‘male’ there would have been more accurate, although perhaps Angel saw no great personality difference between the man he had once been and the vampire he now was. And it was typically arrogant of Angel to assume that all it would have taken for him to seduce Wesley was for him to choose to do it, of course, but Giles suspected that it was also probably honest.
“Do you...?” Giles wasn’t sure how he, of all people, had fallen into this conversation. “Do you...love him?”
“Of course I love him.” Angel looked surprised at the question. “We’re family.”
“I mean.... I don’t know what I mean.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them to avoid making eye contact. “Not wanting to hit anyone over the head with the blindingly obvious but you are in bed together.”
“We’ve been sleeping together for – well, not warmth, I suppose, but comfort, for the past eight months. With the emphasis on ‘sleeping’.” Angel brushed a hand through Wesley’s damp tangle of hair. “We can’t sleep without the other one nearby now. We’ll get over it. Just...not right away.”
“Because you need to hear his heartbeat?”
“Yes. I need to know he’s alive. That another day is past and I haven’t got him killed.” Angel ran a hand down Wesley’s arm, turning it over to reveal the bite marks. “That I haven’t killed him.” Carefully, Angel rolled Wesley over a little so he could move his arm out from under him and then wedged a pillow behind him. Only then did he gingerly get off the bed. “I’ll be back,” he whispered to Wesley.
Angel pulled on a pair of trousers, disconcerting Giles further as he realized that Angel was not just in bed with a naked Wesley but naked in bed with a naked Wesley. Angel walked silently across the room away from the bed, but Giles could feel his reluctance, as if there was some thread between vampire and ex-Watcher being pulled tighter and thinner as the distance between them spread.
“I need to leave the door so I’ll hear him if he wakes up.”
Seeing the expression on Angel’s face, Giles thought about that ‘family’ comment and realized that this really was a family, just not the Waltons.
“Was this what you always wanted, Angel?” Giles looked around the hotel. “A family? And you at the head? What are the others to you – child substitutes?”
“Did you set out to become the good father to a bunch of American teenagers?”
Giles took off his glasses and examined them for dust. They were spotless. He put them back on again. “No.”
Angel pushed the door half across the doorway, so Wesley was still visible but slightly shielded from the noise in the rest of the hotel. “I didn’t know that what I wanted was a family until I already had one. Cordy and Wes became my kids for a time, it’s true, because that was what they needed as much as me. Her father was in prison. His was…a waste of space. They wanted someone who would love them unconditionally. I did. I do. But they grew up. That isn’t the kind of relationship we have now. It isn’t the kind of relationship we’ve had for a long time. I used to work for Wes. I used to be in love with the woman Cordelia grew up to become.”
Giles cleared his throat as they walked away from the room, with Angel still looking back over his shoulder in case Wesley should stir at all. “So, you don’t see yourself as the ruling patriarch then?”
“Well, of course. But – it was different before. When Cordelia was alive…I wanted it for all of us. Not just for me. Me and Cordy, Baby Connor, Wes, Gunn and Fred. Lorne lending a hand. That was how the family was for a while. It worked. It wasn’t just my fantasy that time.”
“Until Wesley ruined everything?”
Angel hesitated. “Yes. No. I’ve thought about it since and I think Holtz would have started picking off my people if he hadn’t been in Quor’toth. Wesley thought he was a threat....” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Connor is okay now.”
“What about Wesley? Is he ever going to be okay again?”
“What do you mean?”
“He tried to kill his friend, didn’t he?”
“I tried to kill my friend as well.” Angel looked back over his shoulder at the doorway even though they were too far down the corridor now for him possibly to be able to see inside.
“Ah, I see, not so much the Waltons as the Manson Family.”
Angel gave Giles a level look. “I’m not a serial killer. Well…not any more.”
Giles mentally counted to ten. “My point is that this is not the healthiest environment for someone to recover from terrible physical and psychological trauma, and you and your companions do not seem the most well adjusted people I’ve ever met either. This is where everything went wrong for Wesley, isn’t it? He stole Connor from here. He was banished from here.”
“And he was asked to come back.”
“And when he did come back, what was it to? Having to behead his mistress’s corpse while the person who used to be his friend tormented you all while under the control of a higher power. Oh yes, before you all fell under the sway of a rogue goddess and just before his dead mistress turned up to offer you the keys to the kingdom of Hell Incorporated. Did I miss anything?”
“Yes,” Angel told him flatly. “Everything that matters.”
Giles took a deep breath. “You don’t think he might find some peace of mind in England? With familiar things about him?”
“His father’s in England. His father hates him.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t actually....”
“Would you lock someone up in the dark if you liked them?”
Giles winced at the mental picture it gave him but then said carefully, “Watchers have to be trained from an early age to deal with their fears, some treatment that may seem on the surface to be unfeeling or....”
“Is it part of the training never to give them a kind word, or show them any affection, or to ever speak to them for any reason except to tell them how much they’re getting wrong? Wes made Head Boy of the stupid Watchers’ Academy and all his father ever said to him was that there couldn’t have been much competition that year. He spent years turning cartwheels to get that old bastard to give him the time of day and he never did. Wesley needs to be here in LA.”
Although Wesley was now suddenly making a lot more sense to him, Giles stuck to his guns: “In LA where he was tortured by Faith? Where he was blown up? Shot by a zombie policeman? Had his throat slit? Was nearly suffocated by you? Had to cut off one girlfriend’s head and have another die in his arms? Your friend, Gunn, has been filling me in on what happened to Wesley after he left Sunnydale and, frankly, I think we took better care of him than you did and we didn’t even like him.”
“Well, we like him – a lot, and we’re not giving him up. Especially not to people who don’t like him and never have.”
“I believe that you care about the welfare of your friend, Angel, but I’m looking at what Wesley is now compared with what he was back in Sunnydale and....”
Angel lowered his voice to hiss: “You think that was better – that insecure pompous Council flunky who was ignored by everyone – the butt of everyone’s jokes? Who couldn’t get any respect from anyone who mattered to him? He needs people around him who care about him – that’s us: me, Gunn, and Lorne. We’re what he needs to get better.”
Giles let it go for now. He had already decided that whatever Buffy, Xander, and Willow chose to do, he was going to be staying until he was sure that Wesley was really in the best place and getting the best care. He hadn’t asked to be put in loco parentis for another Watcher and had done his best to avoid taking on the role, but some residual sense of responsibility for the man evidently lingered, and not until he felt a lot happier about the situation could he just waltz off and leave Wesley to the possibly not very tender care of two vampires, an ancient evil demon, a singing not-evil demon, and the man Wesley had quite recently tried to murder....
***
Temps Perdu, Part One
Rupert Giles was starting to feel that he was wasting his time. That they were all wasting their time in fact. The hotel was…unnerving. A strange old building, it was full of inexplicable creaks, although apparently – he had been blithely assured – no longer haunted. He wasn’t even sure why he was here; why any of them were here except for Buffy. The two people they were here to help had not exactly been bosom pals of his; in fact one of them had tortured him and murdered the woman he loved, and the other had stolen his job. Moreover, Angel had made it impossible for Buffy to see Xander as a romantic interest at the time when that young man had most desired it, while Wesley had cut Xander out with Cordelia. So that was two of the current chanting party with every reason to be anywhere but here. Willow had remained fond of both Angel and Wesley – despite the fact Angel had killed her goldfish and Wesley had been ready to sacrifice her to prevent the Mayor’s ascension – but then Willow had always been something of a law unto herself. Buffy had never had any time for Wesley. He had irritated her from the day he arrived in Sunnydale, and she had been ruder to him than Giles had ever seen her be to an adult before; but then it had been made clear that neither Buffy nor Faith saw Wesley as an adult; just an annoying overgrown schoolboy in dress-up clothes pretending to have some authority over them. Yet, somehow here they all were, because of Buffy’s lingering feelings for Angel, or because Angel and Wesley had apparently helped save the world and were now suffering because of it, or because, quite simply, it was the right thing to do.
None of which helped the fact that he was jetlagged, thirsty, irritable, and getting serious cramp in his knees from sitting cross-legged on a hard floor for so many hours. There was only so long one could sit around a circle painted in the mingled blood of clean and unclean alike, candles flickering as their wicks began to sputter, misshapen from a hundred drips of wax, the bird bones and nettle stalks, the yew branch and hollowed skulls; the burning herbs and scattered leaves, the bowls of oil upon which tiny flames floated; throat clogged with incense and smoke and parched from chanting the incantation over and over in Latin which only two of those intoning it even understood.... There were two tiny flames reflected in the centre of the spectacles which were so neatly folded in the centre of the circle. An old pair of Wesley’s apparently, along with a ring of Angel’s. Those were the focusing elements; the items that were supposed to ensure that the two who had been lost would be able to pass back through; to show the cosmic forces trying to keep their reality separate from the hell dimension whose boundaries they were attempting to penetrate, that these two were meant to be on this side of the gateway.
He was starting to feel that this was also a damaging futility, however. For Buffy, who was sitting beside him, willing Angel back from hell – again. And for the others, who, apart from Willow and Xander, were strangers to him for the most part, and the one who wasn’t a stranger someone he really didn’t like. The human race was barely holding its own in the numbers here. Although he, Buffy, Willow and Xander were certainly flying the flag for homo sapiens, of Angel’s crew there was only one human left, Charles Gunn, vampire slayer and also apparently vampire employee. The others were an anagogic demon; a god-king so ancient and powerful she came from the time before humans lived – someone who walked now in the stolen body of the human woman she had killed; and another demon, one all too familiar to him. William the Bloody. Spike, the second vampire with a soul. Also the second vampire to sleep with Buffy.
Looking across the circle, Giles met Xander’s gaze and saw the man was no more convinced than he was that they weren’t all engaged in an act of absolute futility. Everyone was starting to look worn thin with this; Gunn, with his eyes closed, concentrating absolutely on saying the words right, gripping Lorne’s hand in his left hand and Spike’s in his right. Spike holding onto Illyria, Willow between Illyria and Buffy, Giles between Buffy and Xander, adding what magical powers he possessed to the general mix, Xander holding - a little gingerly - to the green hand of the empath demon who was also working what ‘mojo’ he could in this strange summoning. Buffy, Spike and Gunn all had a weapon on the floor behind them, in case what came through wasn’t what they wanted; two swords and an axe, a dull gleam to their sharpened blades.
“I feel something....” Willow breathed.
“Is it them?” Gunn looked up, and, gazing at him, Giles wondered if he’d slept more than a few hours in the weeks since Wesley had sacrificed himself to close the mouth into that hell dimension and Angel had dived after him.
It was strange to think of Wesley as someone who sacrificed himself. The man Giles had known had hardly been a credit to the Council, although he had been completely a product of their training. Prim, stuffy, pompous, annoying, unprepared for what the reality of a Hellmouth really meant. Probably very like Giles had been, but he liked to think he had possessed a little more humility and a slightly greater willingness to toss aside the rulebook if the occasion demanded it – a little more courage as well. Or perhaps Buffy had just trained him well. Ultimately, he had found that was what happened, after all. Watchers were trained by their Slayers every bit as much as Slayers were trained by their Watchers. Wesley hadn’t had the benefit of a Slayer to train him, as the two allocated to him had rejected him. But Angel, of all people, had taken on his training, not to mention care and preservation. That was still a difficult concept for him to grasp. He couldn’t see anything in the man that Wesley had been to make a vampire warm to him, or believe that someone so entrenched in the Council’s training as Wesley had been would accept the friendship, let alone authority, of a vampire....
“I’m not sure....” Willow was concentrating with all her might. She was bearing most of the burden of keeping this entrance open; and if they succeeded in bringing the lost ones to the gateway, it would also fall upon her to find the strength to help them through and then close the door behind them. That was the real danger, of course – the reason why they shouldn’t be doing this – one didn’t wantonly open the doorway into a hell dimension on the grounds that they were almost sure they could slam it closed again. If Willow lost her mental balance, their own reality could start to be sucked into hell, or at the very least hell beasts could be released into this world.
“You need to be sure,” said Giles tersely. “You can’t open the doorway unless you’re certain....”
“The door is open.” Willow kept her eyes closed, still concentrating. “Payment for the door they closed. The forces of magic will support balance like that and I have to give them every chance, Giles. We don’t know what kind of shape they’ll be in. Or how long they’ve been there. It could be a day to them or a year or decades.... Time might not be the same there as here.”
“Okay for Deadboy,” Xander muttered. “Not so good for Giles Junior.”
Gunn gripped Lorne’s hand so tightly that the demon winced. “Yeah, Wes can’t take too many decades in a hell dimension.”
“It could only have been minutes to them,” Willow said reassuringly.
“That would be nice,” Lorne murmured. “I’d give a big hooray for that option and buy it a Best of Aretha CD as a thank you.”
Illyria said nothing. She hadn’t said anything for hours; not since the glasses had been placed in the circle and she had examined them curiously for a moment, head tilted like a bird of prey. “The shell remembers these. He wore them before.”
“Before what?” Giles queried.
“Laser treatment,” Gunn said at the same time Lorne said: “He had his throat slit.” Then they’d both winced at one another.
“Post-traumatic stress wotsit,” Spike had shrugged. “Didn’t want to look like a victim after being one. Makes sense.”
“Why should wearing glasses make one more likely to look like a victim?” Giles had demanded indignantly and then there had been lots of people averting their eyes from him and not saying very much while Buffy patted him reassuringly on the shoulder and said that she was absolutely certain that someone wearing glasses had no correlation at all to the amount of time they got injured, and certainly not the times they were knocked unconscious, because that would just be silly.
“Wes always did tend to be the one the demons went for.” Gunn had also picked up the glasses to examine them before putting them back in the centre.
“They can sense weakness,” Giles shrugged.
Lorne and Gunn had both glared at him then. “Wes isn’t weak,” Gunn told him shortly.
Giles decided not to argue the point, although from his experience he would have said that Wesley was the dictionary definition of the ‘weakest link’. By comparison with the ex-Watcher, Gunn looked like a person more than capable of taking care of himself in a fight and Illyria appeared to have skin-coloured armour-plating in place of a normal epidermis. Admittedly Lorne’s contribution to any fight seemed to be to offer to buy the lurking evil a drink or sing it a medley of show numbers but....
“Whoever it is, they’re coming fast....”
He was snapped back to the present by Willow’s quiet voice and realized how tired he must be to be drifting off at a time like this.
“Let it be them, let it be them....” Gunn breathed.
Throat raw from chanting Latin, Giles wished vainly for a cup of tea, trying to tell himself that he was perfectly calm, not invested in this outcome, only here out of politeness, but there was some part of him also willing them to come back, for the people trying to break out of this dimension to be the ones who had leapt into it for the common good.
Then there was a roar of light and flame, a tear in the air, and something came through, something naked and singed, and then the something was rolling across the floor, out of the circle and Giles realized it was not a something or even a someone but two people, one of which was Angel, the other clasped tightly in his arms as Angel rolled them both away from the circle and halfway to the stairs.
“Close it!” Angel shouted hoarsely. “You have to close it now!” He backed up across the floor, using his heels to propel himself and the person clasped in his arms away from the portal.
As Willow rapidly began to say the incantation, two demons leapt through the rip in the air, horned, clawed, half-furred and half-scaled, with glowing red eyes; they were huge – eight feet tall – and brandishing vicious weapons with serrated blades.
The way Gunn snatched at his sword and threw himself at them, Giles realized the man must have been wanting to kill something for some time now. He swung his axe at the first demon with such savagery that, although it was nearly two feet taller than he was, it still staggered back at the impact. Buffy and Spike had also grabbed their weapons and thrown themselves at the demons.
“You have to get out of the circle!” Giles shouted at them. Willow was still saying the incantation and the first demon seemed to realize that she was the source of power in the room. It struck Gunn a vicious blow which he barely blocked with the axe, and then elbowed him savagely in the head, knocking him ten feet across the room, down, and, Giles feared, out, at least temporarily. Buffy and Spike were still fighting the other demon as the first one turned its attention on Willow.
“No!” Xander threw himself at it and boldly shoulder charged it away from his friend.
Snarling angrily, the demon backhanded Xander into the reception desk and began to stalk back towards Willow. As Giles made to attack it, a hand calmly caught him by the shoulder and yanked him out of the circle, then Illyria, the blue-haired ancient one, held up a hand and a bubble of bluish light enveloped both the demons while leaving Willow untouched. Spike and Buffy looked like something from a museum display, warriors captured in the moment of fighting, except that they were moving, Giles noticed, albeit very slowly. Still calmly, Illyria strode to where Buffy and Spike were duelling with the demon, caught them by the back of their jackets and plucked them cleanly out of the bubble of slowed time. Then she nodded to Willow.
“Thank you,” the witch said cheerfully, and finished the incantation with a hand gesture that caused the portal to ripple and eddy before abruptly sucking the two demons back through it and closing with a last foul belch of hot air.
Giles watched Buffy speed across to Angel at a pace that suggested she had been every bit as invested in his safe return as he had feared. Lorne was already there, saying gently, “Angelcakes, is it really you?”
“Yes.” Angel was hoarse but coherent. “We made it.”
“Is Wesley…?” Lorne swallowed. “How long was it for you?”
“Alive. About eight months.” Angel reached down to the person clasped in his arms and Giles saw that they were a tangle of naked limbs, still hanging onto one another as if even now they thought they could be ripped apart.
“Not as bad as last time then.” That was Buffy and it wasn’t a question. She crouched down next to Angel. “Are you okay?”
He was looking around in confusion, flinching from the light, and Giles saw there were wounds all over his body. As he got nearer he saw that there were wounds all over Wesley’s as well; but amongst the evidence of various random cruelties there also seemed to be sigils burned into his skin. “Yes,” Angel answered Buffy distractedly, already looking around for Willow. “Can you undo these? They can track him here.”
“Yes.” She looked shocked by their condition and Giles could see everyone was wincing as they took in what bad shape these two had come back to them.
“Are we home…?” Wesley whispered.
Angel cupped his cheek gently in his hand. “Yes, Wes. We’re here.”
Wesley flinched more violently from the light than Angel had done, eyes watering at the brightness. As he raised his head, Giles saw that his face was covered in cuts and bruises, but he still had both eyes and given the way they were reacting to the light they seemed able to see. Their hair was unkempt and matted but although Wesley was unshaven he didn’t have what could have been described as a beard, only about a week’s growth. They both looked starved but although Angel appeared lean and hard, Wesley was skin and bone – and bruised, slashed and welted skin at that. Yet none of his wounds looked serious. He seemed to have been running fast through rough ground and had picked up all the bruises and cuts one would expect, but he had none of the deep bleeding wounds that Angel had sustained.
Giles crouched down by them while Spike found a blanket. “Wesley?” Giles enquired gently. “Do you know where you are?”
Wesley gave him a look of flickering panic that turned slowly into recognition. “Mister Giles?”
“Yes.” Compos mentis then as well as able to see. That was a good sign. “That’s right.”
Except Wesley was still looking somewhat panic stricken. “Did the Council send you?”
“No,” Giles assured him quickly. “Not the Council. I’m here as a friend, Wesley.” As the man still looked more panicked than not, he said, “The Council doesn’t know I’m here.”
Only then did Wesley snatch a breath and look back at Angel. “Are we in Sunnydale?”
“No. The Hyperion. L.A.” Despite having spoken with authority, Angel still looked around as if he needed to double check.
“And it’s our dimension?” Wesley’s skin was clammy-looking, Giles noticed, frighteningly pale, terrible shadows under his eyes. He looked like a fever patient and when he touched his forehead it felt hot to the touch.
Angel looked between them all. “They seem to be expecting us.”
“I don’t want to go back to England,” Wesley breathed quickly, after another panicked look in Giles’ direction. “Angel....”
“You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything you don’t want to do ever again,” Angel said tautly. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“Wes!” Gunn staggered up from the floor and ran over to them, throwing himself down next to the two. “Are you okay? Man, you had us scared!”
Wesley gazed at the man for a moment and then said, “Charles.” He smiled at Angel. “And he’s not dead.”
“Just like I told you.”
“And you’re pretty much the same age you were when you went into that place. But....” Gunn reached out to touch Wesley’s torn shoulders. “What happened to you?” His legs were bruised and cut, as were Angel’s. They could all see the claw marks across the vampire’s body now, diagonally marking his back, around his ribs, and across his upper arms, as well as numerous still-bleeding injuries from bladed weapons. If they had made a last stand, Angel had clearly taken the brunt of it defending Wesley.
“Bad place.” Wesley tried to smile but the shuddering and the flicker of raw panic behind his eyes took off any reassuring aspect he’d been trying to convey. “Very bad place. Can you get Angel some blood? He’s hungry.” He caught sight of the green demon and his face broke into another smile of relief. “Lorne.”
“Yes, crumpet, it’s me. And I’m not dead either. And very relieved to see you two are also in the land of the living.” But although Lorne’s voice was reassuring, he also looked horrified at their condition. Giles couldn’t blame him for that. He was feeling pretty horrified himself.
As Wesley shifted his position slightly they saw the bite marks on his arms and thighs and Giles looked at Angel in accusation. The vampire became aware of his gaze and said, “Yes, it was me. It was necessary.”
“He looks starved half to death,” Giles protested.
“He’s alive.” It was Spike who spoke. “Who really thinks he still would be if Angel hadn’t gone after him?”
To hear Angel defended by Spike, of all people, was enough of a shock to silence Giles at least, and he saw that Xander, now also muzzily approaching, looked equally astonished.
Wesley was still clinging to Angel who had kept a protective arm around him, not yet untangled from one another fully. Angel stroked Wesley’s matted hair back from his bruised face and said again gently, “Wes, we’re home.”
“Christ!” Xander saw their condition for the first time and recoiled.
Spike glared at him. “It was a hell dimension, not a holiday resort. What did you expect?”
Wesley had to focus on Xander for a long time before there was any flicker of recognition but then his eyes widened. “Xander. What happened to your eye?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Xander tried to find a reassuring smile and almost managed it. “It happened a while ago. You look a little rough around the edges yourself, my friend.”
Wesley turned to Gunn, apparently feeling that he should make introductions. “Xander was a friend of Cordelia’s. He bought her the dress she wore to the Prom. She looked lovely.”
“She always did.” Gunn smiled at him but Giles noticed there were tears in his eyes; relief at getting them back still hitting him hard. Gunn touched Wesley’s shoulder gently. “Good to have you home, English.”
Willow said, “Xander bought…?” Willow and Buffy both looked at Xander in surprise and Buffy said: “You bought Cordelia’s Prom dress?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” Xander’s gaze was still fixed on Wesley. He crouched down next to him. “Are you okay?”
Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
Xander glanced across at Angel, who was looking, Giles thought, pale even for a vampire. He was clearly exhausted and at the end of his resources, but he was still holding onto Wesley. “Deadboy take care of you in there?”
“No…Angel.” Wesley clearly had trouble processing that and then finally got who Xander was referring to. He smiled again. “Yes…Angel - he took care of me.”
“We took care of each other.” Angel tightened his grip on Wesley.
Seeing Willow standing behind Buffy, Wesley smiled at her very sweetly. “Willow. You gave Angel back his soul.”
“Yes.” She spoke to him gently: “Are you feeling okay, Wesley?”
“I’d like a shower.” Wesley looked down at himself. “And I think some clothes would be a good idea.”
“What about a nice cup of tea?” Giles suggested. As they all looked at him in scorn, he stuck to his guns. He knew where Wesley came from; his background; what the man probably reached for in times of crisis.
Sure enough, Wesley’s face cleared. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
A shadow fell over them and Wesley flinched. Illyria said sadly: “You do not remember me?”
Wesley peered at her for a moment and then said, without accusation: “You’re the demon who killed the woman I loved.”
Seeing the hurt wash across Illyria’s face, Willow said hastily, “She helped. Illyria stopped the demons from the…bad place coming after you.”
Not looking at her, attention focused back on Angel again, Wesley said, “That was kind of you. Thank you.” But it was the reply of a child thanking his aunt for an unwanted Christmas present out of sheer politeness. Giles didn’t think anyone was surprised when Illyria turned around and walked away. Spike looked as if he would have gone after her, grimacing as he watched her retreat, but apparently his need to be near Buffy – or perhaps even to see to the two who had returned – was stronger than sympathy for her and he stayed put.
“Come on, Wes. We need to get you upstairs where the hot water and the beds are.” Angel began to rise painfully to his feet, Buffy reaching out to help him and then stopping. His nakedness did make it a little difficult to find anywhere to lend a hand without it seeming a little more intimate than one might care for, and Giles automatically took a step back. Gunn, however, was already holding Wesley by his other arm, assisting Angel in helping the man clamber to his feet. Wesley swayed, what little colour had been in his face draining out of it with the shock of being upright, while Angel also seemed to be staying on his feet only by clinging to the banister.
“You all right, mate?” Spike enquired of Angel.
Angel managed a teeth-gritted grin. “Peachy.”
“So, you booked a return flight to that hell dimension or do you think you’re going to try another one next time?”
“As soon as I’ve killed my travel agent for the last trip, I’ll let you know.”
“What do you need?” Lorne asked.
Angel looked around at them all. “To be here and not there. Thank you all for that.”
“It was nothing,” Giles shrugged.
“Just lots of mind numbingly tedious chanting and getting smacked around by demons,” Xander agreed.
“What do you need now?” Lorne persisted. “Blood? Painkillers? Some soothing music and a massage? How about a nice very alcoholic drink?”
“All of those sound good.” Angel looked at Wesley. “But first we need to undo the location spell they put on him.”
“I can do that,” said Willow cheerfully. “And being a lesbian I’m extra safe around Wesley’s naked body, so that’s a bonus too.”
Wesley looked at her curiously. “When did you become a lesbian?”
“Long story,” she assured him. “I’ll tell you later.”
His bewilderment was unexpectedly innocent. “Does Oz know?”
For some reason, Giles felt bound to follow the painfully slow procession of Angel helping Wesley up the stairs, and, as they all trooped after them, apparently so did everyone else. Spike had wrapped the blanket a little awkwardly around their shoulders but it had slipped down. Gunn and Lorne were hovering protectively while Angel took Wesley’s weight, such as it was. Angel still had his arm firmly across Wesley’s scored back, his own tattoo the only familiar markings on the vampire’s skin, that was also marked with old and new wounds, and both of them liberally dusted with bruises and dirt.
“Giles, can you…?”
Realizing what Willow was asking, he took the book from her while she juggled ingredients, flicking through the pages to try to find the most suitable spell for undoing a locator curse.
“This one should work.” He marked the page with his handkerchief. “Do you want me to do it?” He knew how much of a toll it must have taken upon her to first open the portal and then close it again.
She shook her head. “Not that you’re not extra safe around Wesley’s naked body too, but I think he associates you with the Council and England and that doesn’t seem to be a happy place for him.”
“Because they fired him?” Buffy asked in a small voice. “Because his Slayer resigned from the Council?”
“It’s his father.” Spike pressed back to let them pass him on the stairs. “Not that Giles looks like him – well, the tweed is a bit similar but – anyway, lot of history there, and he’s another Watcher, works for the Council. Bit of a red flag for Wesley.”
Giles thought of that flicker of panic in Wesley’s eyes. “I’ve met Roger Wyndam-Pryce on a few occasions, of course. Rather a cold man, I always thought, not much imagination, but I wouldn’t think he was someone who would inspire that level of fear.”
Gunn looked over his shoulder. “Think again.”
Buffy was still gazing at Angel. It wasn’t that she was unaware of Wesley or indifferent to his condition, Giles had seen her wince sympathetically at him a number of times, but it was always such a shock for her and Angel to see one another again; that soul-deep connection between them like an electric shock, so tangible it seemed to make everyone in the vicinity jolt slightly in reaction. Except this time, the current seemed to be flowing all one way. Giles didn’t know if it was a reaction to the spell or his exhaustion from all the hours of making the spell happen, hours which had followed a long flight from England and a long drive to this hotel, but he was feeling hyper sensitive to everything; the buzzing of a trapped fly by the window, the way light was swallowed by Xander’s eye patch, the streaks of mingled dirt and blood on Angel’s back, the way the sigils burned into Wesley’s shoulders were squirming slightly, like bugs under a microscope; and the broken thread between Angel and Buffy; he’d seen her this time and the jolt hadn’t been there; all his attention already diverted.
Eight months in a hell dimension, Giles thought. Presumably the person you were with became your whole world. And your cause, he guessed, when you were a protector, as Angel was; when you were someone who needed to make amends. It was strange to be surrounded by people who wanted to help Angel make amends while he was here as one of the things for which Angel needed to make amends for – one of the torture victims; one of those who had lost a loved one to the cruelty of Angelus. In that hell dimension Wesley had probably been the only thing there worth saving, the one Angel had to protect as part of his redemption. And perhaps out of simple friendship. Despite the bite marks clearly visible on his arms and legs, and the confusion in his mind, Wesley seemed completely trusting of the vampire.
Giles decided that as Willow had the sigil-removing spell well in hand, that he should see about making Wesley that cup of tea he’d offered him. And having one himself. Given Wesley’s feverish condition, a Beechams Powder would probably be more appropriate, in some hot lemon and honey, but as he doubted he would find any of these things in a place as uncivilized as LA, he thought he had better concentrate on tea. He found tea-making things in the office, even, oddly enough, some English Breakfast tea. The death date had long since passed but when he wiped off the dust from the container he found that tea bags inside still smelt fresh, and when he took a sip of his own mug of tea it tasted fine. He sloshed extra milk into the cup and drank it down in a few gulps, some feelings returning to his throat as he did so. For Wesley, however, he hunted around in the cupboards until he found a bone china cup and saucer. Somehow that seemed important – something so familiar after being somewhere so strange. He knew Angel was probably traumatized too but he couldn’t relate to the trauma of a souled vampire. An Englishman, however, particularly an Englishman trained from an early age to be a Watcher, was a very different…well, cup of tea.
As he entered the bedroom, he realized it must once have been Angel’s. A room prepared for his return, with maroon walls, and a double bed made up in readiness. Someone had put out photographs on the dresser: several of Angel, Wesley, and Cordelia from happier times which Giles found unexpectedly poignant. Wesley was bespectacled and smiling and Cordelia was dazzling the cameraman with a thousand watt smile of her own. It was difficult for him to believe that the girl he had regarded with exasperation for so long had turned into the bearer of the visions, helper of the helpless, hapless tool of a higher power, and was now dead. This life seemed to burn up the young much too fast sometimes, and he wasn’t sure that it did a lot for those in their forties either. Or their two hundred and forties....
Angel looked done in and past the point of done in. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, his gaze fixed on Wesley; Buffy, Gunn, Lorne, and Xander hovering close to him. Spike sat a little apart from the others smoking a cigarette and looking at Buffy’s back as if he could will her to look around just by concentration alone. Looking past Xander’s shoulder to see why they were converging there, Giles saw an old-fashioned bathroom with large bronze-coloured taps, the bath on clawed feet, its porcelain base slightly stained with limescale.
Willow was being endlessly patient with Wesley, who had to be distracted from looking across at Angel every thirty seconds or so to see if he was still in eyeshot. Someone had wrapped a towel around his waist and Willow was now inviting him to sit in the bath so the herbs and oils she had to pour over the squirming sigils ‘don’t make the carpet all icky’. Wesley was compliant and obedient, apparently only having good feelings about Willow. He kept looking around for Angel, but Gunn, Lorne and Willow were also clearly considered what Buffy called ‘of the good’. Buffy he seemed confused by, although he recognized her and identified her by name, and he kept looking at Xander’s eye patch as if it were a puzzle he ought to be able to solve. But on beholding Giles, Wesley instinctively flinched. As Giles was the one who had spent the most time with Wesley in Sunnydale, and as Giles had – he always thought – exercised extraordinary patience with Wesley when he was being a pompous little twerp, not to mention saving his life, it did rather hurt.
Buffy was doing her bit for the ‘desigilling’ process by holding the spell book for Willow, which at least gave her something to do that didn’t involve gazing at Angel while Spike gazed at her like a lovesick puppy.
“Your tea, Wesley,” Giles said, refusing to acknowledge the eye-rolling from Xander as he firmly handed it over in its entirely proper, entirely British, bone china cup and saucer.
Wesley seemed very gratified by both, and sipped the tea with every sign of pleasure while managing to hold both cup and saucer reasonably steady despite the whole-body trembling that was reverberating through him. There was certainly some sloshing of tea into saucer and from saucer into the bath, but Giles was glad to have it confirmed that something as reassuringly civilized as English Breakfast tea in a bone china cup and saucer was exactly what an Englishman needed most after eight months in a hell dimension.
Lorne fetched Angel a beaker of blood, ‘freshly nuked’ as Gunn phrased it, from the microwave. As the demon handed it over, he said, “Do you want some vodka with that, cupcake?”
Angel was still swaying with exhaustion but he hung onto the doorway of the bathroom around which they were all crowding to keep himself upright and managed a wan smile for Lorne. “Maybe later.” As he smelt the blood, Giles saw the hunger flicker through Angel, the vampire having to fight not to go into game face just in response.
“We don’t mind,” Buffy said gently. “We know you must be hungry.”
“He’s starving.” Wesley looked up from where Willow was pouring an incantation down his back.
Angel sipped the blood without going into game face and returned Wesley’s gaze levelly, an odd expression on his face as he said, “This is good but I’ve had better.” He didn’t look at Buffy although she immediately looked at him. He was still gazing at Wesley. Giles felt rather than saw that small slump of dejection in her slight body and had to control a flicker of anger. Angel wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. He had just forgotten in the intervening months that there had ever been a life for him that didn’t revolve around the man currently having occult sigils removed from his welted skin by a witch.
“Ah, vampire humour.” Giles couldn’t stop a grimace, but he did find the whole blood drinking thing fairly distasteful, and the victim being complicit actually seemed to make it more distasteful. “Can I ask why it was necessary to…” he gritted his teeth, “drink the blood of your friend?”
“Survival.” Angel returned his gaze levelly. “Both of ours. Humans have no rights in that dimension. They’re just food. I only got to keep my food if I fought for it. I couldn’t fight for it – for Wesley – when I was too weak with hunger to stand upright. When I killed, it was better. Then we both ate. Although Wes couldn’t always keep it down. Raw demon flesh is a bit of an acquired taste.”
Lorne pulled a face. “Sorry to hear you’ve acquired it, pumpkin.” He held out a glass. “Sure you don’t want this?” As Angel shook his head, Lorne took another deep gulp of what was apparently a ‘Sea Breeze’. “Well, as you both look in need of some serious alcoholic consumption to me, I’d better just drink for three.”
Angel continued: “After six months or so we were captured for The Games. Gladiatorial fights. They’d feed your…food – a little – but not you; you only got to drink when you killed. Wes had to feed me in the days in between the fights so we both made it to the next bout. It got to the point where neither of us would have made it any longer if we’d stayed in that place. So Wes fed another vampire in exchange for some herbs he needed to cast a spell and used it to break the lock. Then we ran and were hunted. We had no strength left when we felt you pulling us towards the portal.”
“Angel won all his fights.” Wesley obediently leant his head forward so Willow could dissolve another sigil.
Angel gazed across at Wesley. “I had to.”
Buffy said, “Because if you hadn’t Wesley would have...?”
“Been given to whoever killed me.”
She grimaced. “Well, that sucks.”
“It’s what kept me alive. I couldn’t have fought just for me. Fighting to stop Wes ending up as demon brunch – that was motivating.”
“So, you did take care of each other?” Xander looked at Angel with slightly more liking than usual.
Angel returned his gaze. “It’s what we do here. All of us.”
“Family,” Wesley supplied from the bath. “Angel Investigations. One big not very happy rather dysfunctional family. When we’re not trying to kill each other. Which we also do from time to time.” He winced apologetically at Gunn. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it, Wes.” Gunn peered at what Willow was doing curiously. “It’s just another shared experience. We’ve all had a gut wound now.”
“I haven’t.” Lorne finished another glass and reached for the vodka bottle. “And I’d just like to point out that I really don’t want one, not even to be in your exclusive little ‘oh please do use my viscera for a colander’ club.”
“We try to kill each other too, sometimes,” Willow assured Wesley comfortingly. “It’s not a good thing but I think it’s part of being a family member.”
“Like killing your father?” Wesley nodded sagely. “We do that too. Except for Spike – who killed his mother. And Charles didn’t…?” He twisted his head round to look at the man. “You didn’t, did you?”
“No, vampires did for my parents. I did kill my sister though.”
“The vampires killed her, Gunn,” Angel said at once. “What you killed was the demon who looked like her. Not Alonna.”
“And it wasn’t your real father, remember, Wesley?” Lorne observed. “Only a robot.”
“It acted just like him.” Wesley put a hand up to the back of his head. “It didn’t like me either.”
Xander grimaced. “Well, I can relate to that.”
“We don’t tend to kill our parents so much in Sunnydale,” Buffy put in. “But sometimes they die anyway.”
There was a silence in which Spike said to her quietly, “Are you all right, pet?”
“Not really, no.” Buffy looked at Angel, still propped against the wall. At some point, Giles realized, he had pulled on a pair of trousers but his torso was still bare and his wounds clearly visible. Then she looked across at Wesley, who was having another burning sigil gently erased by Willow. “I really don’t like hell dimensions. I don’t like it when they try to leak into our world or when people from our world get sucked into them, and I don’t like what gets done to people in them.”
Clearly trying to make her feel better, Wesley said, “Lorne’s sort of from a hell dimension. It’s a demon dimension, anyway. And he’s very nice. And Angel’s son was brought up in a hell dimension – one of the really bad ones – and he would probably have turned out quite well if events hadn’t conspired to make him totally psychotic.”
Giles felt a migraine begin to throb behind his temples as Xander said: “Yeah, that Angel having a son thing – never really got that on account of the whole – being dead and therefore having other things that are dead and not capable of producing.... I’ll be quiet now.”
“I always meant to ask – was this just a spontaneous gesture that arrived ready-wrapped in swaddling or did you have to do some kind of baby-making ritual first?” Buffy enquired.
Angel took a strengthening sip of blood. “There was some – baby-making involved.”
“He wasn’t himself.” Wesley nodded. “His head was…not really on top of his neck. A rogue Higher Power needed Connor to be born so Jasmine could be born, but…that’s really quite a dull story.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Giles mopped his brow. “And what mundane lives you do live here.”
Wesley considered that for a moment and then said, “I think that on average we probably live quite interesting lives, but I suppose they could seem dull to other people.”
Giles opened his mouth to explain that he was being sarcastic and decided to give up with a sigh. “Why don’t I take that teacup from you, Wesley?” he offered instead.
“That’s the last one.” Willow beamed at Wesley. “You’re all sigil-free now. Can’t be tracked. And you can have a bath, if you’d like one, not that I’m saying you need one, but if you wanted one, that would be okay. Would you like me to wash your hair for you? Not that the dreadlocks don’t suit you....”
“Thank you.” He smiled back at her and handed his teacup and saucer to Giles. “I’d like not to smell of Ertash any more.”
“Is that a person or a place?” Buffy whispered to Angel.
He grimaced. “It’s a species. Slaver demons. Nasty. You don’t want to know.” Angel elbowed himself off the wall and glanced around at all of them. “Thanks for all your help. Willow, it’s okay, I’ll get Wesley and myself cleaned up, then I really think he needs some sleep. If you’re still here when we wake up, perhaps we can talk then.”
It was a dismissal and Buffy looked a little stung, but she only nodded, said quietly, “Of course,” and turned to go.
Giles heard Spike saying to her quietly: “He’s not himself, love. He’s worried about Wes.”
“He’s moved on,” she returned.
“And you haven’t?” Spike sighed. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Look – Angel needs someone to save. You don’t need saving. Wes and the others here – they need a lot of saving. These guys are the day job. You’re the reward he doesn’t think he’s won yet.”
“Sometimes I need saving too.” Buffy looked so young to Giles he wanted to wrap her in his arms and hug her. She didn’t say it aloud: I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be born the Slayer. None of them had, of course, and when he thought of what it had cost them all he sometimes wondered if it was worth it. Of course it was, he did know that, it just didn’t always feel that way.
Willow looked a little disappointed. “Can I cut Wesley's hair tomorrow?”
“Maybe.” Angel took the shower attachment from her. “We’ll see how he’s feeling.”
“I don’t mind washing his hair,” she added hopefully.
“Willow, he’s not a stray dog,” Giles said patiently. “And although I’m sure he’ll clean up beautifully, I really think it would be better if Angel was the one who did any bathing that needs to be done.”
“Oh, okay.” Willow looked disappointed but did get out of the bath, saying gently to Wesley, “Angel’s going to wash your hair instead, Wesley, but if you want me to cut it I’d really like to. I remember how you had it before.”
“I could do Angel’s,” Buffy offered. “I remember how his was too.”
“Yes, love, I think we all remember how Angel’s was,” Spike observed. “Some of us still have nightmares.”
“Criticism of my hair.” Angel sat on the edge of the bath and looked down at Wesley. “I guess we’re really home.” Wesley leant across and took Angel’s wrist in his hands to examine a bite wound with great solemnity. Angel felt his forehead and winced. “We need to get your temperature down, Wes.”
“I know a really good herbal cure for fevers. I can make some up for Wesley if you like?” Willow called back to Angel.
“Yes, do that downstairs, Willow. I really think they want some privacy.” Giles made vague ushering motions to the loiterers, feeling that he should do his part to preserve ex-Watcher dignity by at least trying to guarantee that Wesley had a bath in peace. But when he looked back from the doorway of the bedroom, Angel was oblivious of all of them, running hot water into the bath and testing the spray of the hand held shower spray against his hand before very gently running it down the back of Wesley’s neck.
“Is that too hot?” he asked.
“No. It feels good.” Wesley closed his eyes as the water trickled down his scored back but he didn’t flinch and he seemed, for the first time, perfectly relaxed; being alone with Angel was apparently the time when he felt the most safe.
“You’ve got a temperature, but Willow’s going to mix something up for you to help with it. Then you need to sleep. Okay?”
“Okay.” Wesley gazed up at the vampire and gave him an unexpectedly sweet smile. Giles wondered if he had simply had too many braincells fried to ever be who he was again or if this was the way they were together; Wesley, trustingly childlike, Angel protective and fond. He suspected the Wesley had known would have been more likely to become increasingly brittle with the passing of time, the accumulated mental scar tissue of crises survived, the never-ending stress. This was someone else; the product of a hell dimension; the product of a mind that had possibly snapped under the strain, or at the very least was taking a short holiday from reality.
Giles backed out of the bedroom and quietly closed the door. Outside, he said, “Am I the only one who has a problem with Angel using Wesley as a packed lunch?”
“It was probably Wesley’s idea.” Gunn shrugged. “He’s done it before. Fed Angel, I mean. When Angel went three months without food he needed something richer than pig’s blood so Wesley sliced his arm open and fed him his own blood.”
“Ah.” Giles grimaced. “I didn’t need to know that.”
“You’re too squeamish,” Spike told him dismissively. “Too many years in a small town Hellmouth instead of mixing it in the metropolis.”
“Presumably they have bigger shinier demons in LA?” Buffy observed. She looked as tired as Giles felt, but there was no possibility of them getting any sleep, he realized, they were all too wired from the aftermath of magic.
Willow was looking at Lorne’s suit with every sign of approval. “We certainly didn’t get so many who wore lamé.”
The horned demon nodded sagely. “That’s probably because you were mostly dealing with evil demons – being on a Hellmouth and all – they can’t carry it off. In fact, I’ve noticed that evil demons are often fashion-challenged.”
Buffy nodded. “I’ve noticed that too.”
“Yeah, look at Spike.” Xander jerked his head in the direction of the vampire.
As they all did, the vampire said defensively: “What?”
“It’s the hair,” Gunn explained. “It’s so…not of the now. And shouldn’t vampires get some kind of make over when they get a soul anyway?”
“You’re talking to me about hair? How can you work for Angel for all this time, Captain Hairgel himself, and criticize my style?”
“Angel can carry it off.” Lorne took another sip of his refilled cocktail. “He’s always managed to make having something with hold seem like a necessity when finding the hellspawns of evil. It’s like the coat. It’s all about the coat.”
“And the car,” Gunn added.
“I miss the leather pants,” Lorne admitted.
Xander said incredulously, “Do you people work for Angel or date him?”
“What, his coat is better than mine now as well? You have got to be kidding me. This coat is way better than....”
“Do you mean the coat you took from the body of the Slayer you murdered?” Giles massaged his temples then counted to three before saying as patiently as he could: “I appreciate that after such a momentous event as getting Angel and Wesley back from the hell dimension in which they’ve been suffering for the past eight months that some discussion is necessary. However, if I’m going to have my migraine interrupted with noise I would rather it was about something rather more relevant and interesting that Spike’s appallingly obvious hair dye and poor taste in clothes.”
Xander said, “Can we talk about how everyone who works for Angel seems to be under some kind of weird hex? First Wesley and now these two. When Spike is sounding like the voice of reason, I know I’ve stepped into a parallel universe.”
Spike looked at Xander aghast. “You’re agreeing with me?”
“About Angel having scarily bad hair? Damned right.”
“Well, don’t. It just makes me question my own judgement.”
Groaning inwardly, Giles met Willow’s eye and muttered darkly, “It’s going to be a very long night.”
It was two hours later when Giles realized that his overwhelming need to go and see how Wesley was could no longer be ignored. It irritated him intensely; he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t even liked Wesley when the man had arrived in Sunnydale. He had been so arrogant, naïve, priggish, hidebound, completely unprepared for the reality of fieldwork after the theory of the Academy; emotionally immature, acting as if women were a new species he had never actually encountered before; fluttering ineffectually around Cordelia as if asking a woman to dance involved more mental effort than....
Giles winced as he realized just how many of Wesley’s annoying characteristics were ones he’d shared on his first arrival at Sunnydale. He’d been so excited by the idea of the Hellmouth; the prospect of seeing all those demons face to face that he’d only read about in books; convinced that as he’d studied how to train a slayer that meant he knew how to deal with the reality of a living, breathing, vulnerable human being and the fact of having to send her out to face death every night. That was what Watchers did, of course. They sent a young girl out to risk her life for the common good while they sat at home and studied. That was why only certain people made it as Watchers; the unimaginative ones who never let themselves feel and knew what they did was right, and the ones who cared too much, got in too deep, and either got themselves killed, got themselves fired, or had a nervous breakdown. Wesley had been no less unprepared than he had been, but Buffy had been more tolerant with Giles than she had been prepared to be with Wesley later and, as it was on Giles’ behalf that she was ignoring Wesley, Giles hadn’t exactly been devastated by it. Of course the man had been annoying. Intensely annoying but all the same....
Giles found that he had left the others still arguing over their pizza. Well, Gunn and Xander were arguing with Spike about something to do with vampires, no doubt, or possibly football; Giles hadn’t really been listening for quite some time.
He made his way cautiously to the bedroom, not wanting to wake Angel, if he were asleep, but hoping for directions as to where he could find Wesley’s room, if he were awake. The door was still ajar; and when he looked through the gap, he saw that Angel and Wesley were both in the same bed, although Wesley was asleep and Angel was awake, Angel with his elbow propped up on the pillow watching the human sleep.
“He’s going to be okay.” Angel kept his voice low but evidently knew Giles was there without looking. “He just really needs some sleep.”
“I imagine that’s true of you, too.” Giles stayed in the doorway, still a little disconcerted by the fact they were sharing a bed. Of course, with Wesley in his current mental condition it was probably inevitable that Angel would have to stay close, but he hadn’t expected something quite so intimate.
“I slept for an hour or so. I feel better now.” Angel gently stroked a hand down Wesley’s ribcage, not in the way a man touched a lover or a child, but like a part of his own body; the line between his body and Wesley’s blurred somewhere along the line. “I need to hear his heartbeat.” He dipped his head to press it against Wesley’s chest and then smiled. “It’s a good sound.”
Giles came into the room and gently closed the door. “Are you...? I mean....” He didn’t know how to say that the man he’d known hadn’t – he thought, given the girlfriends Gunn had told him about – been gay even if it had been assumed he was rather more often than not; so if Angel had made Wesley his lover it seemed to have more to do with Angel’s sheer force of personality and Wesley’s somewhat weak will than any real lifestyle choice on the ex-Watcher’s part.
Angel looked confused and then his face cleared. “No. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”
“Appropriate?” Giles couldn’t disguise his surprise at such a pompous choice of words.
“We were on the run. Lots of adrenaline. Extreme circumstances. Who doesn’t want to at a time like that? But you can’t take it back afterwards. I don’t care, but Wes might.”
“So you wanted to but you didn’t?” Giles took another step into the room and looked at Wesley. Despite the cuts and bruises, not to mention the jutting ribs, he looked oddly peaceful.
“I’m male. We always want to, don’t we? And he was all that was around. But Wes deserves better than that.”
Giles thought perhaps substituting ‘vampire’ for ‘male’ there would have been more accurate, although perhaps Angel saw no great personality difference between the man he had once been and the vampire he now was. And it was typically arrogant of Angel to assume that all it would have taken for him to seduce Wesley was for him to choose to do it, of course, but Giles suspected that it was also probably honest.
“Do you...?” Giles wasn’t sure how he, of all people, had fallen into this conversation. “Do you...love him?”
“Of course I love him.” Angel looked surprised at the question. “We’re family.”
“I mean.... I don’t know what I mean.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them to avoid making eye contact. “Not wanting to hit anyone over the head with the blindingly obvious but you are in bed together.”
“We’ve been sleeping together for – well, not warmth, I suppose, but comfort, for the past eight months. With the emphasis on ‘sleeping’.” Angel brushed a hand through Wesley’s damp tangle of hair. “We can’t sleep without the other one nearby now. We’ll get over it. Just...not right away.”
“Because you need to hear his heartbeat?”
“Yes. I need to know he’s alive. That another day is past and I haven’t got him killed.” Angel ran a hand down Wesley’s arm, turning it over to reveal the bite marks. “That I haven’t killed him.” Carefully, Angel rolled Wesley over a little so he could move his arm out from under him and then wedged a pillow behind him. Only then did he gingerly get off the bed. “I’ll be back,” he whispered to Wesley.
Angel pulled on a pair of trousers, disconcerting Giles further as he realized that Angel was not just in bed with a naked Wesley but naked in bed with a naked Wesley. Angel walked silently across the room away from the bed, but Giles could feel his reluctance, as if there was some thread between vampire and ex-Watcher being pulled tighter and thinner as the distance between them spread.
“I need to leave the door so I’ll hear him if he wakes up.”
Seeing the expression on Angel’s face, Giles thought about that ‘family’ comment and realized that this really was a family, just not the Waltons.
“Was this what you always wanted, Angel?” Giles looked around the hotel. “A family? And you at the head? What are the others to you – child substitutes?”
“Did you set out to become the good father to a bunch of American teenagers?”
Giles took off his glasses and examined them for dust. They were spotless. He put them back on again. “No.”
Angel pushed the door half across the doorway, so Wesley was still visible but slightly shielded from the noise in the rest of the hotel. “I didn’t know that what I wanted was a family until I already had one. Cordy and Wes became my kids for a time, it’s true, because that was what they needed as much as me. Her father was in prison. His was…a waste of space. They wanted someone who would love them unconditionally. I did. I do. But they grew up. That isn’t the kind of relationship we have now. It isn’t the kind of relationship we’ve had for a long time. I used to work for Wes. I used to be in love with the woman Cordelia grew up to become.”
Giles cleared his throat as they walked away from the room, with Angel still looking back over his shoulder in case Wesley should stir at all. “So, you don’t see yourself as the ruling patriarch then?”
“Well, of course. But – it was different before. When Cordelia was alive…I wanted it for all of us. Not just for me. Me and Cordy, Baby Connor, Wes, Gunn and Fred. Lorne lending a hand. That was how the family was for a while. It worked. It wasn’t just my fantasy that time.”
“Until Wesley ruined everything?”
Angel hesitated. “Yes. No. I’ve thought about it since and I think Holtz would have started picking off my people if he hadn’t been in Quor’toth. Wesley thought he was a threat....” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Connor is okay now.”
“What about Wesley? Is he ever going to be okay again?”
“What do you mean?”
“He tried to kill his friend, didn’t he?”
“I tried to kill my friend as well.” Angel looked back over his shoulder at the doorway even though they were too far down the corridor now for him possibly to be able to see inside.
“Ah, I see, not so much the Waltons as the Manson Family.”
Angel gave Giles a level look. “I’m not a serial killer. Well…not any more.”
Giles mentally counted to ten. “My point is that this is not the healthiest environment for someone to recover from terrible physical and psychological trauma, and you and your companions do not seem the most well adjusted people I’ve ever met either. This is where everything went wrong for Wesley, isn’t it? He stole Connor from here. He was banished from here.”
“And he was asked to come back.”
“And when he did come back, what was it to? Having to behead his mistress’s corpse while the person who used to be his friend tormented you all while under the control of a higher power. Oh yes, before you all fell under the sway of a rogue goddess and just before his dead mistress turned up to offer you the keys to the kingdom of Hell Incorporated. Did I miss anything?”
“Yes,” Angel told him flatly. “Everything that matters.”
Giles took a deep breath. “You don’t think he might find some peace of mind in England? With familiar things about him?”
“His father’s in England. His father hates him.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t actually....”
“Would you lock someone up in the dark if you liked them?”
Giles winced at the mental picture it gave him but then said carefully, “Watchers have to be trained from an early age to deal with their fears, some treatment that may seem on the surface to be unfeeling or....”
“Is it part of the training never to give them a kind word, or show them any affection, or to ever speak to them for any reason except to tell them how much they’re getting wrong? Wes made Head Boy of the stupid Watchers’ Academy and all his father ever said to him was that there couldn’t have been much competition that year. He spent years turning cartwheels to get that old bastard to give him the time of day and he never did. Wesley needs to be here in LA.”
Although Wesley was now suddenly making a lot more sense to him, Giles stuck to his guns: “In LA where he was tortured by Faith? Where he was blown up? Shot by a zombie policeman? Had his throat slit? Was nearly suffocated by you? Had to cut off one girlfriend’s head and have another die in his arms? Your friend, Gunn, has been filling me in on what happened to Wesley after he left Sunnydale and, frankly, I think we took better care of him than you did and we didn’t even like him.”
“Well, we like him – a lot, and we’re not giving him up. Especially not to people who don’t like him and never have.”
“I believe that you care about the welfare of your friend, Angel, but I’m looking at what Wesley is now compared with what he was back in Sunnydale and....”
Angel lowered his voice to hiss: “You think that was better – that insecure pompous Council flunky who was ignored by everyone – the butt of everyone’s jokes? Who couldn’t get any respect from anyone who mattered to him? He needs people around him who care about him – that’s us: me, Gunn, and Lorne. We’re what he needs to get better.”
Giles let it go for now. He had already decided that whatever Buffy, Xander, and Willow chose to do, he was going to be staying until he was sure that Wesley was really in the best place and getting the best care. He hadn’t asked to be put in loco parentis for another Watcher and had done his best to avoid taking on the role, but some residual sense of responsibility for the man evidently lingered, and not until he felt a lot happier about the situation could he just waltz off and leave Wesley to the possibly not very tender care of two vampires, an ancient evil demon, a singing not-evil demon, and the man Wesley had quite recently tried to murder....
***
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 04:31 am (UTC)I just wanted to point out one thing though. Only Wes had his memory of Conner returned to him. The rest of them shouldn't know because they weren't near the Window of Orlon(?) when it was shattered.
I really want to read more, but I'm afraid I really do have to study this time (That midterm I didn't study for... didn't go so well. lol).
Yay for the gang rescueing Wes and Angel!
Amy
no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 01:01 pm (UTC)You're absolutely right, but I wanted Gunn and Lorne tetchy and disillusioned so I fanficwanked it that the Senior Partners undid the memory spell when they kicked them all out of W&H in a snit. Otherwise I would have missed out on having everyone angsting about it so I thought I would just ignore inconvenient things like canon.
Ouch! Sorry about your last exam and you had definitely better go and study - I don't want you getting a lower grade on my conscience! The fic isn't going anywhere. It will be here any time!
I do feel slightly guilty about totally ignoring all the Exciting!Action!Adventure stuff that was going on for that eight months with Angel and Wesley, but I really prefer writing the comfort to the hurt so I thought I could just cover that in the summary. Imagine it as 'Previously in this fic lots of really high budget edge-of-the-seat stuff happened, honest, now read on...' *G*