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Oct. 29th, 2005 04:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgreyAll parts linked to from Story Notes
Temps Perdu, Part Fifteen
Angel looked in the open doorway of the bedroom and saw Buffy bend and kiss Willow on the temple. The redhead gave her an exhausted smile, but she could hardly keep her eyes open, she was so drained from her tussle with the demon court earlier.
He was feeling as churned up as a millpond at the moment. Still getting sick-making flashbacks to pressing that mystically white-heated ring into Wesley’s skin; feeling his flesh sizzle, the pain whiplash through him. Too similar to those victims he’d stalked in the old day, holding them still as he let them gaze into his yellow eyes, see those fangs that were about to claim their gulping throats, silent screams lodging somewhere in windpipes jammed with terror as he cut an upside-down cross into their cheeks. There were so many people who’d writhed in his grip in the past. Unlike Wesley, he could remember Angelus slowly choking him into unconsciousness; using him as a human shield, taunting Faith with her new weakness, wanting her to realize that this was what a conscience did to you, made you so much less than you could be; getting off on the feel of Wesley’s weakening struggles, his head on his shoulder as he slumped into dizzying darkness. And Wesley had been one of the lucky ones; one of the ones he hadn’t actually raped, tortured, maimed or mutilated before bringing him a slow unpleasant death or a viciously fast one. So, it hadn’t been a fun event for him; branding Wesley with his ownership. However, it had been worth it as it had meant Katorakan had gone away empty-handed once again. The judges had examined the mark on Wesley’s shoulder which Lorne’s magic ointment had not only managed to soothe but had also made look as if it had always been there; conferred amongst themselves, nodded intently, then told Katorakan that the previous judgement of the court had been upheld. There could be no further appeal upon this subject. The human slave was the property of the vampire. Case closed.
“You did it, Will,” Buffy whispered to her. “You helped save Wesley. Katorakan can never make another claim on him.”
“And when I get my bones back, I’ll be really happy about it,” Willow whispered back. “Right now, I have to make like a jellyfish – a really sleepy jellyfish.”
“Why don’t I stay here with you for a while?” Buffy took Willow’s hand in hers and held it; Angel knew she was trying to invest her with some Slayer strength to replenish some of her scarily depleted energy.
“You don’t have to…” Willow’s ever-expressive eyes however were saying ‘Please, don’t go’.
Buffy smiled at her and then gave her a gentle shove. “Move over. I need to lie down too. It’s tiring watching other people work.”
“Thank you, Willow,” Angel said softly.
Willow’s eyelids flickered and she gave him a sleepy smile. “You’re welcome.”
As he backed away, Xander passed him. “How is she?”
Angel grimaced. “Tired.”
“I thought we’d…” Xander shivered and Angel remembered going into the office to find Willow clammy and shaking in Giles’s arms, neither of them wanting to make any sound while the tribunal was still debating the merits of Katorakan’s case. Then Xander was plastering a cheerful smile on his face. “Room for one more?”
Willow smiled at him in relief and he lay on the bed next to her, stroking her hair back from her brow. Buffy snuggled down next to Willow and put her arms around her, while Xander took Willow’s hand in hers and spooned up against her. Angel briefly remembered him and Cordelia drifting off into sleep in his bed, Connor between them, contentedly sucking on his bottle. He wondered just how close he’d come to perfect happiness back then, or if just knowing that nothing could ever be perfect for him would be enough to stop him ever reaching that point again.
He pushed the door almost closed and left the three of them to sleep. He had heard what Lorne said to Buffy about her not having lost her friends while Angel had lost his, and no one was more aware of his failures in that area than him. Doyle. Cordelia. Fred. All people who had trusted him to keep them safe. People he’d rescued and each time he’d saved them it had felt as if he had not just saved them on that occasion but for eternity; as if it could never happen again because it had happened this once. Cordelia never again be lost to the visions or Fred to the monsters that had driven her to hide up here. He passed her old room and touched the door gently, remembering her drawing on the walls, so brave and scared at the same time. Fred dying in Wesley’s arms and him left with a dead friend, a friend in the hospital, and Wesley about to fragment. Not knowing how to help him. How could you put your arms around someone who was liable to break into a thousand pieces from one careless pressure? Spike saying that what Wes needed was time, and Angel knowing there wasn’t enough time in the world, and long before Wesley was over it his liver would have given up the ghost if someone didn’t tough-love that bottle out of his hand.
Wanting Illyria dead for what she’d done to Fred, was still doing to Wesley. A part of him still did. Another part had to accept that she was an ally now. That all that pacing and flouncing and pontificating might make her annoying but it also meant she had an emotional commitment to a member of his team; a member of his family. She was the unwanted in-law. Buffy had been landed with enough of those over the years: werewolves and witches and vengeance demons she’d had to take a deep breath and accommodate because someone she loved loved them. Not to mention the small matter of having to accept a vampire as an ally because she’d been so unwise as to fall in love with one. At least Wesley wasn’t in love with Illyria, he could be grateful for that small mercy; but she was still one of them now.
He made his way downstairs to where his people were still clustered protectively around Wesley. Spike had reclaimed his precious single malt but was sharing it with everyone except Angel.
“So, how does it feel to be a demon chattel, crumpet?” Lorne asked him.
Wesley shrugged. “So far, not very different from – not being a demon chattel. Does it come with a wage by the way?”
“It’s a privilege,” Angel told him. “You should really pay me.”
They grinned at one another and for a moment there it was almost like having the real Wesley back.
“And he’s really tight,” Spike added helpfully. “You’ll know that – when you get your memories back. All those restaurant bills he passed to you – all come flooding back.”
Giles looked up at Angel, saying quietly, “How is she?”
“Sleeping.” Angel glanced up at the room. “I hope she knows how much we owe her.”
“I’ll be sure to keep reminding her,” Giles assured him. “And you.”
“I heard what you said to Gunn that time you were discussing the branding question, so why did you…? Why didn’t you tell him not to…?”
Giles sighed. “Because it’s about free will, like Gunn and Xander said, and when Wesley had possession of all his memories – including his memories of you casting him out and betraying him and him losing his trust in you – that was the decision he made. It wasn’t my place to influence him. It was my place to let him decide for himself. Something you could perhaps try in the future from time to time.”
Angel appreciated that Giles was a lot of things but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. He certainly hadn’t wanted Wesley to agree to get that brand, and it was probably still annoying him on all kinds of levels that he had, but he hadn’t said any of it aloud. “Well, I’m grateful that you kept your…doubts to yourself.”
“Just don’t start treating him like a possession or I’ll hear about it.”
“I would never do that.” Angel’s automatically gaze went to the mark on Wesley’s shoulder. He tried not to like it; but now it wasn’t actually hurting he had to admit that there was something satisfying about it.
Gunn said, “Don’t even think it.”
“What?”
“That it would be nice if we all got one. Because – not happening this side of hell.”
Angel shrugged. “Hey, it’s a privilege. What makes you think I’d want to own any of the rest of you anyway?”
“Oh, so I should be flattered then?” Wesley turned around carefully, still not able to put his shirt back on but definitely in a lot less pain than when it had been sizzling its way into his skin.
“Of course.” Angel snaffled the whisky from Spike and took another sip. “I don’t go around just putting my mark on any Tom, Dick or Harry, you know.”
“Actually, as far as I remember from reading about Angelus in the past, you did.”
“Well, that’s just one of the many benefits of having a soul. It makes you more discerning. Talking of which…” Angel looked at the whisky in dislike. “Don’t we have any wine?”
Wesley looked hopeful. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Or a nice Bordeaux.”
Spike gave him a pitying look. “It’s a miracle you ever made it through puberty without the other kids scragging you to death, Percy.”
“Excuse me for having a palate,” he returned with a flex of the shoulders that would have been vintage Wesley Wyndam-Pryce if he had only been wearing a shirt at the time.
“If Wesley is your bonded slave now, shouldn’t you feed him?” Connor suggested.
“Couldn’t I just throw him a few scraps?”
Giles reached across to the front desk and picked up a menu that looked worryingly classy, all burgundy and shiny with gold calligraphy. “Under the circumstances I think you could really spring for something a little more…appropriate. And I see that this restaurant has rather an impressive wine list.”
“Good restaurants never deliver,” Angel said quickly, relieved that it was the case. “And eating out would be selfish when Willow is too tired to come with us.”
“This one does.” Giles handed it across to Wesley. “And they do indeed appear to have a very nice cabernet sauvignon. And I suspect that Buffy and Xander at least would be very capable of eating something and we could save something for Willow to heat up later.”
Angel gave him a sickly smile. “I see you’ve thought this through.”
Giles gave him a beaming smile back. “Well, I’m sure you didn’t spend a year as a corporate sell out without squirreling away a little money, Angel. And it’s not every day that someone who barely knows you trusts you with his liberty, is it?”
Angel just knew he wasn’t looking any more thrilled than he felt at the prospect of feeding the five thousand who appeared to be clustered around his hotel lobby. It was difficult not to remember with longing the day when everyone else had gone home at night and left him with the place to himself and he only had to buy Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn dinner when he’d fired them and slept with his old vampire lover. Then he had a sudden vivid memory of that hallucination with them all sitting around the table, everything so perfect except for the fact that he was starving and none of it was real.
He took the menu from Wesley and looked at it himself. “Tomorrow, when Wesley gets his memory back. Connor…?” He looked at his son. “Can you make it tomorrow? Do your parents have anything planned?” He refused to stumble over that ‘parents’ and he saw Connor give him a look of gratitude and compassion for doing so. As they looked at him in surprise, he said, “I want Willow to be here. I want everyone to be here who can be. Some of us never can be, after all. Let’s make sure everyone who can…is.”
Spike looked at him sideways. “And this isn’t just a ploy to get out of paying the bill?”
Angel handed the menu back to Wesley. “I’m happy to pay the bill, and, Wes, you can have as much wine as you like – just remember what you’re like when you’re drunk.”
Wesley’s confusion was evident. “What am I like when I’m drunk?”
“Easy.” Angel grinned again, unable to repress it, because Wesley was safe, and, tomorrow, with any luck and a great deal of magical skill on Willow’s part, he would also be whole. “You know how we keep telling you that you being in bed with me was just because of the nightmares…?”
Wesley hastily shoved the menu at Giles. “Perhaps some mineral water.”
“He’s lying, Wes,” said Gunn kindly. “He just doesn’t want you ordering any wine.”
Wesley said quickly, “I knew that…”
“I’d better go.” Connor looked at his watch. “It’s late – I mean early. There should be a bus.”
“You’ll be here tomorrow? I mean today – later today?” Angel tried to keep the eagerness from his voice but he couldn’t entirely suppress it. It was so strange to look at the Connor of his hallucination and have him be real; well-adjusted and calm and good-humoured.
Connor nodded. “Sure.” He patted Wesley gently on his unbranded shoulder. “It was good to see you again, Wesley, and I look forward to meeting the Wesley who remembers me later today. When are you doing that, by the way?”
“When Willow’s rested.” Giles looked up. “She thinks about four in the afternoon. The idea is that we will all sensibly sleep through the morning and emerge with our batteries recharged and able to assist her.”
“You should probably do that then,” Connor said cheerfully. “What with Willow being a witch and able to turn you into newts if you don’t do what she says.” He turned back to Lorne and gazed at him for a moment.
“Something on your mind, cupcake?” Lorne enquired with a frown.
“I should have said before – when the Orlon window smashed, I got all my memories back. Even the things you wouldn’t usually remember. What it was like in the womb. What it was like being born, when everything just…vanished all around me. And what it was like having lullabies sung to me. I can sometimes still hear them – I especially liked the one about you selling me to the vampire cults; that was kind of catchy.” He smiled at him gently. “I remember being a kind of racist thug when I turned up from Quortoth too. I never thanked you for the lullabies. Just wanted you to know I appreciated them.” He glanced across at Wesley. “And before you have kids, Wesley, you really need to learn how to hold them, because that unexploded bomb grip – not big on making a baby feel safe.”
“You remember everything?” Angel was dazed by that; thinking his own memory recall was bad enough, but even he didn’t remember the sounds of the womb, his mother’s heart beating with the life he had later stolen from her.
“Everything.” Connor smiled at him. “Kind of cool, isn’t it? Apart from all the psycho crazy stuff. And even that’s – well, maybe it will save me having to have a rebellion this time around, what do you think?”
“Well, Wesley never had a teenage rebellion,” Angel observed. “And look how he turned out.”
They both looked at Wesley. Connor nodded. “I see your point. Okay, I’ll schedule one in for later this year. See you all later.” He waved and left.
Lorne shook his head. “Nice kid. Amazing what not being brought up in a hell dimension can do for you.”
Wesley took the whisky bottle from Spike. “And later today all that guilt will be mine again.”
“There’s still time to stay how you are,” Angel said hastily.
Wesley shook his head. “No, we’re way past that point. I’m ready to be crazy, and, I trust you all to pick up the pieces.”
He’d spoken lightly but there was nothing frivolous about the way Gunn said, “We will, Wes.”
Angel felt his heart tighten again; it seemed all wrong he should be getting what he wanted after what he’d done to these people; that they should forgive him for what he’d done to their memories, to their sanity; to their lives. But there was a brand on Wesley’s back which now told the world that they trusted him, despite everything, they trusted him. And try as he might to feel otherwise, he couldn’t help being glad that it was there.
***
Wesley looked around the circle and took a deep breath. It was ironic that what was really frightening him now wasn’t remembering so much as forgetting. He knew there was a risk, Willow had told him, quietly and gently, that she wasn’t entirely sure that she could do this and put things exactly back the way before. She would try her best but there was a chance that something might go wrong. He had nodded and said he understood and he wanted her to try anyway but now as he looked around these people he thought about how it would feel to forget them again. What if in trying to remember what he’d forgotten he ended up forgetting what he currently remembered? He didn’t want to lose these last few weeks. He didn’t want to wake up and not know who he was or who they were.
Buffy had refused to even admit the possibility of failure and had banned everyone else from voicing it either. She had spent the day shopping and then cooking, not, as she had assured everyone, because she wanted to save Angel’s wallet – she had made him pay for the ingredients and made Giles drive her to the store so he could pick out the wine – but because if they were going to have a celebratory dinner then she was going to cook it, and the first person to mention syphilis or vengeful Shumash would be peeling all the potatoes with a spoon. She had press-ganged Xander and Gunn into helping her with the food preparation, told Angel and Spike to take their blood out of her fridge and thrown herself into full-on manic Homemaker Buffy mode. The hotel had been filled with the dual scents of delicious food and pungent herbs all day as Lorne and Willow made preparation for the memory restoration spell in the lobby while Buffy took over the kitchen. Wesley and Giles had both claimed that they were needed for the magic side of things to avoid becoming unpaid sous-chefs for Buffy and had won themselves a number of dirty looks from Gunn and Xander because of it.
“She’s made me peel every potato in Los Angeles,” Gunn hissed at Wesley as he passed him in the lobby, his arms full of hotel linen that Buffy had decided needed another wash before it was suitable to be spread on the dining table.
“You don’t even want to know what she’s made me do to an inoffensive turkey,” Xander added.
“Hurry up, you two!” Buffy called out to them from the bowels of the kitchen. “I need you to wash up some of these pans.”
“What did her last slave die of?” Gunn muttered as he disappeared into the basement in search of better whiter soap powder to vanquish those extra stubborn stains.
Wesley had tried to look as busy as possible as he ground herbs with a pestle and mortar whenever Gunn and Xander passed by for the rest of the day, but had not been fast enough to warn Connor as he walked into the lobby.
“Just who I need!” Buffy grabbed the boy by the arm, and dragged him away towards the kitchen. “I need you to mash for me.” Wesley noticed that Connor didn’t look exactly unhappy about being manhandled by Buffy and presumed that was probably genetic.
In some ways the preparation for the spell had felt divorced from the spell itself. He and Giles had reminisced about the Academy and its more eccentric teachers; Lorne had told tales about Pylea and Willow had filled them in on the situation in Cleveland. It had been a nice quiet day, only occasionally pierced by Buffy shouting at Spike for smoking in her kitchen or at Angel for not exercising better control over Spike. “He’s your grand-thing!” had floated up to them at one point.
“Well, if you’d staked him in Sunnydale instead of sleeping with him he wouldn’t be in ‘your kitchen’, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is actually my kitchen…”
“I wasn’t the first person in this room to sleep with Spike.”
“I didn’t have a soul when I did it. What was your excuse?”
“I’d just come back from the dead!”
“I was dead!”
“I was traumatized!”
“Oh yes, because sleeping with serial killers is always such a cure for that!”
“I don’t remember you telling me that when I was sleeping with you!”
But Willow had quickly remedied that by getting up and shutting the door to block them out. Apart from that it had been a very pleasant day, just as long as Wesley didn’t think about what they were really making these preparations for, and how, if something went wrong, he could end up a basketcase…
“Okay, crumpet. Step one.” Lorne held out the spoon with the dab of something mystical and honey-flavoured on it. Not that the spell needed honey, apparently, it would just taste too bitter to stomach without it. Lorne’s red eyes were anxious but he gave Wesley a reassuring smile. “Got your memory back with this before, so, Willow and I are thinking it can’t do any harm this time. It should make your mind more receptive to the spell Willow needs to do. And it tastes nice.”
Wesley obediently opened his mouth and let Lorne feed him the odd-tasting dollop of mystical medicine. Underneath the sweetness there was a truly bitter core and he grimaced. “‘Tastes nice’ in what world?”
Lorne shrugged. “Well, okay, not actually this one…”
There was a mixture of bones, claws, feathers, crystals, bowls of various liquids, and various herbs within the circle they had all formed, Willow sitting directly opposite Wesley, and Gunn and Angel each side of him. That hadn’t been discussed; for once, even Illyria seeming to accept that those were the hands he needed to be holding. Connor smiled at him encouragingly across the circle. Wesley suspected the real reason Connor had arrived early was so that he could reassure Wesley, when his memories kicked back in, that he hadn’t done anything wrong in stealing him when he was a baby. He suspected nothing was ever going to stop that memory stinging like a whiplash but it was still a kind thought on Connor’s behalf.
“You’ll be fine, Wes,” Buffy assured him.
Wesley tightened his grip on Gunn and Angel’s hands, looking around the circle of people, trying to fix their faces and names too securely for any mere spell to dislodge them: Angel, Connor, Lorne, Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander, Illyria, Spike, Gunn, thinking Don’t let me forget them and then looked up sharply. “Good grief – of course I wouldn’t have wanted to forget Fred and Cordelia.”
“You remember?” Gunn demanded.
“No, I just…” He looked around at them all, the faces he was trying to imprint into his memory clearly enough that they couldn’t be shaken loose even by Willow’s spell. “I just know.”
“It’s going to be okay, Wes,” Angel told him quietly.
“Yeah, English. No worries.” He felt Gunn tighten the grip on his hand and tightened his own grip in response; for once in his life, really not giving a damn about how it looked to be holding hands with another man.
Willow took a deep breath. “Everyone hold hands and concentrate. Close your eyes if it helps you to focus.”
Wesley closed his eyes, trying to think about the spell, only about the spell, when what he really wanted to think about were the people in this circle, and how these were the first people he remembered being kind to him, friends he didn’t want to give up. Then he wrenched his mind back to the words Willow was chanting, and felt the air crackle and then there was that extraordinary sensation of being in his body and yet it not being entirely under his control, feeling the magic moving through his veins, his bones, his mind – his breath hitched in panic and Gunn and Angel both tightened their grip on his hand. He concentrated on that, the warmth of Gunn’s skin, Angel, room temperature, but both of them holding him as if nothing could ever tear him loose. He realized then that it would be okay whatever happened. He would remember them or he would forget them, but they would hold onto him whatever happened, keep him safe, keep him with them until they came back to him; and they would come back to him because he couldn’t be separated from these people. It would just be…wrong, an imbalance in the world that couldn’t be permitted. Too frightening to remember that the world had permitted it for two and a half decades, of course, before he’d come here, and found them, but at least he had found them… The magic coursed through him, the air alight with power, his skin tingling with it; and then the world became warm and dark and silent and he slipped into it quite willingly.
He woke to the sound of Angel saying his name. He opened his eyes and the room spun so fast he wondered if he were on a roundabout. He saw a blur of faces, pale-ish, pinkish, greenish, bluish and brownish skin, red hair, blue hair, blonde hair, black hair, brown hair, toxic hair. Then the carousel slowed a little and he could make out details. Anxious Willow. Anxious Giles. Anxious Lorne. He remembered their names. He looked down at his right hand and saw Gunn’s hand gripping it. The man was saying gently:
“Wesley, are you okay? Wes?”
He turned his head which made the room lurch sickeningly, as if he were on the deck of a boat in a storm, the same unmanageable swell. But once the urge to hurl passed he could focus again and there was the face he was looking for. Someone else gazing at him anxiously.
“Wes…?”
Wesley grinned at Angel; the vampire with the soul whom he clearly remembered meeting in the Bronze in the days when he hadn’t known his name; clearly remembered being branded by the day before, too. “No one calls me that.”
Angel must have recognized his smile for what it was as he grinned like a dork. “I do.”
“English…?”
He managed the difficult manoeuvre of turning his head back to look at Gunn again and grinned at him too. “Charles, you peed on my shoes.”
“Yes!” Gunn pulled him into an embrace that was as careful as it was warm. The man always did that, Wesley remembered, acted as if he still had a healing gunshot wound in his gut. One day Gunn really did need to let that particular memory go.
“You peed on his shoes?” Xander echoed.
Wesley remembered meeting Xander too. They’d never liked each other – he remembered that, too – which was odd because he was now filled with warm fuzzy feelings where he was concerned.
“Territorial marking,” Wesley explained. “Gunn took it a little too far.”
“It was an accident. I wasn’t actually claiming Wesley for the legal department. You remember?”
Wesley beamed at him. “I remember everything.” Then he looked around the circle at Connor and Illyria and his face fell. “Everything.”
Angel tightened the grip on the hand he was still holding. “Are you okay?”
Wesley slowly looked around the circle again; everyone was now trying not to look anxious but to give him reassuring and encouraging looks instead. It was just as well he wasn’t feeling ready to be measured up for a strait jacket or their expressions would undoubtedly have sent him bounding for the nearest padded cell. He remembered trying to remember them, fearing to forget them, trying to imprint their faces in his memory. He remembered the first time he had met each one of them. He remembered Cordelia in the library at Sunnydale, the first beautiful woman to ever look at him as if he were something desirable and suave and handsome and clever, and so drained and lost-looking in that hospital bed as he sat in a wheelchair and tried to incant around the pain that made speaking such an effort, and Cordy stroking his hair in the hospital as everything swirled around the edges of the morphine in his veins, and the empty place in his flat she hadn’t filled after he’d stolen Connor, when he’d waited for her to come back from her holiday in the hope that she at least might visit him, could yell and scold all she liked as long as she came to see him. And he remembered her in that final hospital beaming with life and vitality that was just another illusion, but the most wonderful illusion yet.
He gasped and looked across at Illyria, remembered Fred, so astonishingly brave, luring the beast Angel had turned into away from him and Gunn with the blood on her hand; sitting under the table eating lunch with them; and himself transformed into a monster who hunted her through the hotel with an axe in his hand… Fred so beautiful in evening dress that he had known that he would have to say something to her, finally, tell her how he felt, only to lose her to Gunn, her cold words to him at the hospital, and then the surprise and pleasure in her eyes when she realized he was still the man she had known, that he still cared what became of her. And then… And then there was so much. Hope and desire and confusion and longing and jealousy; that stolen kiss; the heat between them that tangible dangerous guilty thing; Lilah a pale corpse beneath the blade of his axe; putting that look on Gunn’s face; moving on and finding he hadn’t moved anywhere except in a neat circle to a place where he was looking at Fred looking at another man again. Drunken confidences and the exquisite warmth of her trust. Gunshots. The robot fizzling. The taste of bile in his mouth. Fred walking away with Knox even though he’d just killed his father for her sake, because he’d just killed his father for her sake and that was too unbalanced a devotion for her to deal with right now. Deciding there was no more hope now; that he would never be anything other than her friend; and then that sudden kiss out of nowhere, her telling him that she had been trying to tell him for weeks and weeks that things were different while he sighed in oblivious stupidity. And then… And then… And then.
“Illyria.” He looked into her eyes and she gazed back at him. Not Fred’s eyes, thank god. Very much her own. Which was what she was now. A separate entity. Not human. Not demon. A strange hybrid marooned in a strange dimension, an outcast of her own kind and his, and he her only anchor to this less than brave new world.
“Do you remember me now?” She threw it out like a challenge but behind the defiance in her pale blue eyes there was something that looked remarkably like fear of rejection.
“I remember you, Illyria. I remember you stayed here to help me when the bomb was inside me at the risk of your own life.” He looked around them, Buffy and Willow and Xander and Giles, Spike and Lorne and Gunn and Angel. “I remember that you all did that. Thank you.”
“You really remember?” Willow gazed at him anxiously.
“Yes, Willow, the spell is reversed. Thank you.”
“Oh…” She gave a shivering sort of semi-collapse of relief, and Buffy rubbed her back comfortingly. “Oh, I’m… I’m glad…very, very glad. Kind of overwhelming…actually… on account of thinking I’d mushed your brain even more. But I didn’t, right…? Tell me I didn’t…?”
“Unmushed,” he promised her. “I remember everything. I remember arriving in Sunnydale and you all unaccountably not being pleased to see me.” He could barely restrain a grin as Willow, Xander, Buffy and Giles exchanged guilty grimaces. “And I remember meeting Angel for the first time and totally failing to remember his name.”
“Hey, I didn’t tell you my name,” Angel insisted, still holding onto his hand. “If I had, you would have remembered it.”
“Doubtful.” Wesley looked at him sideways.
“Didn’t forget my name,” Gunn said smugly.
“I didn’t tell him my name.”
“Which was just as well really as it delayed me being able to give you up to Balthazar like the craven coward I was back then.”
“You weren’t a coward, Wesley,” Giles said at once. “You were just – unprepared.”
“And terrified of physical pain,” Wesley reminded him.
Connor scratched his jaw thoughtfully, distracted by the new itch of first stubble. “You’re afraid of pain? Because I’m wondering if you’re in the right line of work.”
“I’m sort of used to it now, I think. Five years of working with Angel will do that to a man.”
“Hey!” Angel gave him a reproachful look.
Wesley squeezed his hand gently so Angel would look down and see whose fingers he was still clinging to.
Spike lit a cigarette. “So, are you three just going to sit there like a bunch of nancies, holding hands all day or do we get a celebratory drink?”
“We’re just going to hold hands,” Gunn assured him.
“I was rather hoping for a cup of tea,” Wesley murmured to him.
Gunn slipped his fingers loose to pat him – gently – on the back. “Coming right up, English.”
As Wesley climbed to his feet – the room still swaying a little – Angel hung onto his elbow to steady him and he was immediately surrounded by more of those anxious – familiar – faces.
“Do you need a Sea Breeze, crumpet? Or a nice Bloody Mary?”
“How about a scotch, mate? I’ve still got some left that old Broodypants didn’t snaffle.”
“I really think a cup of tea would be more appropriate given the hour.”
“I remember a time when you weren’t waiting for the sun to be over the yardarm, Giles.”
“Thank you, Buffy, and would you like me to recount all your less than shining moments to Wesley now? I believe he missed quite a few of them.”
Willow hugged him – gingerly – albeit with great warmth and affection.
“May I embrace you also – in the custom of your race?”
Wesley turned to find Illyria looking at him with a plaintive expression on her beautiful blue-toned face. He was suddenly reminded of Cordelia trying to find the courage to ask him out in front of everyone, so breathtakingly beautiful while he was so breathtakingly inept that he had no idea how to respond, only knowing that it was wrong to date a student, probably wrong to be so aware of the warmth of her body and the invitation of her glorious mouth, and those incredible breasts, and definitely very confusing and bewildering and causing all kinds of heat in places where it really had no business being. He hadn’t even noticed her vulnerability at the time, or her courage; that had come later, when he’d thought back and realized that she had been a truly remarkable young woman and he had been humiliatingly useless around her.
Illyria seemed to feel some face-saving excuse was necessary. “I feel I should explore more facets of the odd behaviour of your species.”
Wesley nodded. “Yes, Illyria, thank you, I’d like a hug.”
Spike shook his head in disgust. “Call yourself an Englishman.”
“Well, I have been in LA for five years.”
Illyria enclosed him in her arms tentatively, reminding him of himself and his first attempt to kiss Cordelia. Then she tightened her grip cautiously and pulled him against her. It was extremely awkward but as she laid her cheek against his he couldn’t help remembering Fred in his arms, her hair against his skin. He gave a little gasp and Illyria sprang back from him.
“I have injured you!”
“No,” he quickly reassured her. “It was – very nice.”
“You are very thin,” she observed.
He looked at her incredibly slender body pointedly. “Are you familiar with a certain saying about pots and kettles, Illyria?”
“Are you really okay?”
He turned to find Connor looking at him in concern.
Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you. I’m – sorry about everything. How it turned out. How you…”
“Turned out?” Connor half-smiled. “So much of my life seems to have been pre-destined – maybe I was always slated to go to Quor’toth. I appreciate you trying to save me when I was a baby, Wesley, and I’m sorry for what it cost you.”
Wesley ran his fingers along his throat. He wasn’t sure if the scar had faded naturally or if something to do with the memory wipe had altered it but it was barely visible now, and yet he clearly remembered it being that terrible jagged gash. He closed his eyes and remembered Justine bleeding, feeling sorry for her, letting his guard down, then feeling Justine grab him, the blade across his throat, not the pain so much as the weakness that went through him as the blood suddenly spilled, and the baby, seeing the baby being taken by her to Holtz.
He swayed and opened his eyes to find Connor holding his arm. “I remember it, too,” Connor said. “I know I shouldn’t be able to, but I can. It was one of the memories taken – the buried ones, the ones so far back they shouldn’t even exist any more, but they’re there and they were taken from me by Vail and given back to me when you broke the window.”
“I’m sorry…”
“So, I remember, being held by you, and then her taking me from you. I remember the smell of your blood. And I remember when I was an adult you cutting my chest…”
“I’m sorry…”
“And the way you looked at me when you put your hand against my face, with such pity for me, and such love.” Connor looked into his eyes. “And stop saying sorry. I’ve done – terrible things, Wesley.”
“Because of me, because I let Holtz…”
“No. Because of me. Because of who I was. Because of who I let myself become. If you want to carry all the guilt for every single mistake you’ve ever made, that’s your choice, and I can’t stop you, but me – you don’t need to feel any guilt about me. I absolve you. Or if you prefer – I forgive you. Absolutely. I’m glad you got your memories back, and I think you made the right choice, and what we did shapes what we are, but some things you just need to let go of and move on from, and, taking me, that’s one of them.”
Wesley snatched a breath and looked up to find Angel right there beside him, fingers a fraction of an inch from his elbow in case he needed the support. He gazed into Angel’s eyes and Angel gazed back, those brown eyes more familiar than his own reflection.
Connor added gently: “And Angel forgave you a long time ago, Wesley.”
“I tried to tell you that, remember?” Angel said. “That I was grateful I hadn’t killed you. Very grateful. That while I was under the ocean I was thinking about how glad I was that we could still be a family again, all of us.”
Wesley frowned. “I don’t remember you telling me that.”
“Well, okay, maybe I didn’t exactly articulate it as clearly as I could have done, but you didn’t exactly give me a lot of time. You were all covered in demon gloop and you kept looking at me like…that and I sort of thought you’d be glad to see me and instead you were… So, okay, maybe I could have been clearer, but I did forgive you. I just wasn’t sure if you’d forgiven me for the whole…pillow thing.”
“I never blamed you.” Wesley lowered his gaze. “I thought I deserved it, too.”
Connor looked at Angel pointedly. “You have so much more work to do on Wesley’s self-esteem.”
“I know,” Angel protested.
“Work in progress.” Gunn held out a cup of tea. “We’re on it.”
“Could you not talk about me as if I’m a…walking therapy case?” Wesley pleaded.
Connor patted Wesley gently on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Wesley, we don’t judge. We know you’re English.”
Wesley looked after the boy with a frown. “For someone who wasn’t raised by you, he’s horribly like you at times.”
“Annoying?” Gunn enquired.
Wesley looked into Angel’s eyes again. “Comforting.”
Temps Perdu, Part Fifteen
Angel looked in the open doorway of the bedroom and saw Buffy bend and kiss Willow on the temple. The redhead gave her an exhausted smile, but she could hardly keep her eyes open, she was so drained from her tussle with the demon court earlier.
He was feeling as churned up as a millpond at the moment. Still getting sick-making flashbacks to pressing that mystically white-heated ring into Wesley’s skin; feeling his flesh sizzle, the pain whiplash through him. Too similar to those victims he’d stalked in the old day, holding them still as he let them gaze into his yellow eyes, see those fangs that were about to claim their gulping throats, silent screams lodging somewhere in windpipes jammed with terror as he cut an upside-down cross into their cheeks. There were so many people who’d writhed in his grip in the past. Unlike Wesley, he could remember Angelus slowly choking him into unconsciousness; using him as a human shield, taunting Faith with her new weakness, wanting her to realize that this was what a conscience did to you, made you so much less than you could be; getting off on the feel of Wesley’s weakening struggles, his head on his shoulder as he slumped into dizzying darkness. And Wesley had been one of the lucky ones; one of the ones he hadn’t actually raped, tortured, maimed or mutilated before bringing him a slow unpleasant death or a viciously fast one. So, it hadn’t been a fun event for him; branding Wesley with his ownership. However, it had been worth it as it had meant Katorakan had gone away empty-handed once again. The judges had examined the mark on Wesley’s shoulder which Lorne’s magic ointment had not only managed to soothe but had also made look as if it had always been there; conferred amongst themselves, nodded intently, then told Katorakan that the previous judgement of the court had been upheld. There could be no further appeal upon this subject. The human slave was the property of the vampire. Case closed.
“You did it, Will,” Buffy whispered to her. “You helped save Wesley. Katorakan can never make another claim on him.”
“And when I get my bones back, I’ll be really happy about it,” Willow whispered back. “Right now, I have to make like a jellyfish – a really sleepy jellyfish.”
“Why don’t I stay here with you for a while?” Buffy took Willow’s hand in hers and held it; Angel knew she was trying to invest her with some Slayer strength to replenish some of her scarily depleted energy.
“You don’t have to…” Willow’s ever-expressive eyes however were saying ‘Please, don’t go’.
Buffy smiled at her and then gave her a gentle shove. “Move over. I need to lie down too. It’s tiring watching other people work.”
“Thank you, Willow,” Angel said softly.
Willow’s eyelids flickered and she gave him a sleepy smile. “You’re welcome.”
As he backed away, Xander passed him. “How is she?”
Angel grimaced. “Tired.”
“I thought we’d…” Xander shivered and Angel remembered going into the office to find Willow clammy and shaking in Giles’s arms, neither of them wanting to make any sound while the tribunal was still debating the merits of Katorakan’s case. Then Xander was plastering a cheerful smile on his face. “Room for one more?”
Willow smiled at him in relief and he lay on the bed next to her, stroking her hair back from her brow. Buffy snuggled down next to Willow and put her arms around her, while Xander took Willow’s hand in hers and spooned up against her. Angel briefly remembered him and Cordelia drifting off into sleep in his bed, Connor between them, contentedly sucking on his bottle. He wondered just how close he’d come to perfect happiness back then, or if just knowing that nothing could ever be perfect for him would be enough to stop him ever reaching that point again.
He pushed the door almost closed and left the three of them to sleep. He had heard what Lorne said to Buffy about her not having lost her friends while Angel had lost his, and no one was more aware of his failures in that area than him. Doyle. Cordelia. Fred. All people who had trusted him to keep them safe. People he’d rescued and each time he’d saved them it had felt as if he had not just saved them on that occasion but for eternity; as if it could never happen again because it had happened this once. Cordelia never again be lost to the visions or Fred to the monsters that had driven her to hide up here. He passed her old room and touched the door gently, remembering her drawing on the walls, so brave and scared at the same time. Fred dying in Wesley’s arms and him left with a dead friend, a friend in the hospital, and Wesley about to fragment. Not knowing how to help him. How could you put your arms around someone who was liable to break into a thousand pieces from one careless pressure? Spike saying that what Wes needed was time, and Angel knowing there wasn’t enough time in the world, and long before Wesley was over it his liver would have given up the ghost if someone didn’t tough-love that bottle out of his hand.
Wanting Illyria dead for what she’d done to Fred, was still doing to Wesley. A part of him still did. Another part had to accept that she was an ally now. That all that pacing and flouncing and pontificating might make her annoying but it also meant she had an emotional commitment to a member of his team; a member of his family. She was the unwanted in-law. Buffy had been landed with enough of those over the years: werewolves and witches and vengeance demons she’d had to take a deep breath and accommodate because someone she loved loved them. Not to mention the small matter of having to accept a vampire as an ally because she’d been so unwise as to fall in love with one. At least Wesley wasn’t in love with Illyria, he could be grateful for that small mercy; but she was still one of them now.
He made his way downstairs to where his people were still clustered protectively around Wesley. Spike had reclaimed his precious single malt but was sharing it with everyone except Angel.
“So, how does it feel to be a demon chattel, crumpet?” Lorne asked him.
Wesley shrugged. “So far, not very different from – not being a demon chattel. Does it come with a wage by the way?”
“It’s a privilege,” Angel told him. “You should really pay me.”
They grinned at one another and for a moment there it was almost like having the real Wesley back.
“And he’s really tight,” Spike added helpfully. “You’ll know that – when you get your memories back. All those restaurant bills he passed to you – all come flooding back.”
Giles looked up at Angel, saying quietly, “How is she?”
“Sleeping.” Angel glanced up at the room. “I hope she knows how much we owe her.”
“I’ll be sure to keep reminding her,” Giles assured him. “And you.”
“I heard what you said to Gunn that time you were discussing the branding question, so why did you…? Why didn’t you tell him not to…?”
Giles sighed. “Because it’s about free will, like Gunn and Xander said, and when Wesley had possession of all his memories – including his memories of you casting him out and betraying him and him losing his trust in you – that was the decision he made. It wasn’t my place to influence him. It was my place to let him decide for himself. Something you could perhaps try in the future from time to time.”
Angel appreciated that Giles was a lot of things but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. He certainly hadn’t wanted Wesley to agree to get that brand, and it was probably still annoying him on all kinds of levels that he had, but he hadn’t said any of it aloud. “Well, I’m grateful that you kept your…doubts to yourself.”
“Just don’t start treating him like a possession or I’ll hear about it.”
“I would never do that.” Angel’s automatically gaze went to the mark on Wesley’s shoulder. He tried not to like it; but now it wasn’t actually hurting he had to admit that there was something satisfying about it.
Gunn said, “Don’t even think it.”
“What?”
“That it would be nice if we all got one. Because – not happening this side of hell.”
Angel shrugged. “Hey, it’s a privilege. What makes you think I’d want to own any of the rest of you anyway?”
“Oh, so I should be flattered then?” Wesley turned around carefully, still not able to put his shirt back on but definitely in a lot less pain than when it had been sizzling its way into his skin.
“Of course.” Angel snaffled the whisky from Spike and took another sip. “I don’t go around just putting my mark on any Tom, Dick or Harry, you know.”
“Actually, as far as I remember from reading about Angelus in the past, you did.”
“Well, that’s just one of the many benefits of having a soul. It makes you more discerning. Talking of which…” Angel looked at the whisky in dislike. “Don’t we have any wine?”
Wesley looked hopeful. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Or a nice Bordeaux.”
Spike gave him a pitying look. “It’s a miracle you ever made it through puberty without the other kids scragging you to death, Percy.”
“Excuse me for having a palate,” he returned with a flex of the shoulders that would have been vintage Wesley Wyndam-Pryce if he had only been wearing a shirt at the time.
“If Wesley is your bonded slave now, shouldn’t you feed him?” Connor suggested.
“Couldn’t I just throw him a few scraps?”
Giles reached across to the front desk and picked up a menu that looked worryingly classy, all burgundy and shiny with gold calligraphy. “Under the circumstances I think you could really spring for something a little more…appropriate. And I see that this restaurant has rather an impressive wine list.”
“Good restaurants never deliver,” Angel said quickly, relieved that it was the case. “And eating out would be selfish when Willow is too tired to come with us.”
“This one does.” Giles handed it across to Wesley. “And they do indeed appear to have a very nice cabernet sauvignon. And I suspect that Buffy and Xander at least would be very capable of eating something and we could save something for Willow to heat up later.”
Angel gave him a sickly smile. “I see you’ve thought this through.”
Giles gave him a beaming smile back. “Well, I’m sure you didn’t spend a year as a corporate sell out without squirreling away a little money, Angel. And it’s not every day that someone who barely knows you trusts you with his liberty, is it?”
Angel just knew he wasn’t looking any more thrilled than he felt at the prospect of feeding the five thousand who appeared to be clustered around his hotel lobby. It was difficult not to remember with longing the day when everyone else had gone home at night and left him with the place to himself and he only had to buy Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn dinner when he’d fired them and slept with his old vampire lover. Then he had a sudden vivid memory of that hallucination with them all sitting around the table, everything so perfect except for the fact that he was starving and none of it was real.
He took the menu from Wesley and looked at it himself. “Tomorrow, when Wesley gets his memory back. Connor…?” He looked at his son. “Can you make it tomorrow? Do your parents have anything planned?” He refused to stumble over that ‘parents’ and he saw Connor give him a look of gratitude and compassion for doing so. As they looked at him in surprise, he said, “I want Willow to be here. I want everyone to be here who can be. Some of us never can be, after all. Let’s make sure everyone who can…is.”
Spike looked at him sideways. “And this isn’t just a ploy to get out of paying the bill?”
Angel handed the menu back to Wesley. “I’m happy to pay the bill, and, Wes, you can have as much wine as you like – just remember what you’re like when you’re drunk.”
Wesley’s confusion was evident. “What am I like when I’m drunk?”
“Easy.” Angel grinned again, unable to repress it, because Wesley was safe, and, tomorrow, with any luck and a great deal of magical skill on Willow’s part, he would also be whole. “You know how we keep telling you that you being in bed with me was just because of the nightmares…?”
Wesley hastily shoved the menu at Giles. “Perhaps some mineral water.”
“He’s lying, Wes,” said Gunn kindly. “He just doesn’t want you ordering any wine.”
Wesley said quickly, “I knew that…”
“I’d better go.” Connor looked at his watch. “It’s late – I mean early. There should be a bus.”
“You’ll be here tomorrow? I mean today – later today?” Angel tried to keep the eagerness from his voice but he couldn’t entirely suppress it. It was so strange to look at the Connor of his hallucination and have him be real; well-adjusted and calm and good-humoured.
Connor nodded. “Sure.” He patted Wesley gently on his unbranded shoulder. “It was good to see you again, Wesley, and I look forward to meeting the Wesley who remembers me later today. When are you doing that, by the way?”
“When Willow’s rested.” Giles looked up. “She thinks about four in the afternoon. The idea is that we will all sensibly sleep through the morning and emerge with our batteries recharged and able to assist her.”
“You should probably do that then,” Connor said cheerfully. “What with Willow being a witch and able to turn you into newts if you don’t do what she says.” He turned back to Lorne and gazed at him for a moment.
“Something on your mind, cupcake?” Lorne enquired with a frown.
“I should have said before – when the Orlon window smashed, I got all my memories back. Even the things you wouldn’t usually remember. What it was like in the womb. What it was like being born, when everything just…vanished all around me. And what it was like having lullabies sung to me. I can sometimes still hear them – I especially liked the one about you selling me to the vampire cults; that was kind of catchy.” He smiled at him gently. “I remember being a kind of racist thug when I turned up from Quortoth too. I never thanked you for the lullabies. Just wanted you to know I appreciated them.” He glanced across at Wesley. “And before you have kids, Wesley, you really need to learn how to hold them, because that unexploded bomb grip – not big on making a baby feel safe.”
“You remember everything?” Angel was dazed by that; thinking his own memory recall was bad enough, but even he didn’t remember the sounds of the womb, his mother’s heart beating with the life he had later stolen from her.
“Everything.” Connor smiled at him. “Kind of cool, isn’t it? Apart from all the psycho crazy stuff. And even that’s – well, maybe it will save me having to have a rebellion this time around, what do you think?”
“Well, Wesley never had a teenage rebellion,” Angel observed. “And look how he turned out.”
They both looked at Wesley. Connor nodded. “I see your point. Okay, I’ll schedule one in for later this year. See you all later.” He waved and left.
Lorne shook his head. “Nice kid. Amazing what not being brought up in a hell dimension can do for you.”
Wesley took the whisky bottle from Spike. “And later today all that guilt will be mine again.”
“There’s still time to stay how you are,” Angel said hastily.
Wesley shook his head. “No, we’re way past that point. I’m ready to be crazy, and, I trust you all to pick up the pieces.”
He’d spoken lightly but there was nothing frivolous about the way Gunn said, “We will, Wes.”
Angel felt his heart tighten again; it seemed all wrong he should be getting what he wanted after what he’d done to these people; that they should forgive him for what he’d done to their memories, to their sanity; to their lives. But there was a brand on Wesley’s back which now told the world that they trusted him, despite everything, they trusted him. And try as he might to feel otherwise, he couldn’t help being glad that it was there.
***
Wesley looked around the circle and took a deep breath. It was ironic that what was really frightening him now wasn’t remembering so much as forgetting. He knew there was a risk, Willow had told him, quietly and gently, that she wasn’t entirely sure that she could do this and put things exactly back the way before. She would try her best but there was a chance that something might go wrong. He had nodded and said he understood and he wanted her to try anyway but now as he looked around these people he thought about how it would feel to forget them again. What if in trying to remember what he’d forgotten he ended up forgetting what he currently remembered? He didn’t want to lose these last few weeks. He didn’t want to wake up and not know who he was or who they were.
Buffy had refused to even admit the possibility of failure and had banned everyone else from voicing it either. She had spent the day shopping and then cooking, not, as she had assured everyone, because she wanted to save Angel’s wallet – she had made him pay for the ingredients and made Giles drive her to the store so he could pick out the wine – but because if they were going to have a celebratory dinner then she was going to cook it, and the first person to mention syphilis or vengeful Shumash would be peeling all the potatoes with a spoon. She had press-ganged Xander and Gunn into helping her with the food preparation, told Angel and Spike to take their blood out of her fridge and thrown herself into full-on manic Homemaker Buffy mode. The hotel had been filled with the dual scents of delicious food and pungent herbs all day as Lorne and Willow made preparation for the memory restoration spell in the lobby while Buffy took over the kitchen. Wesley and Giles had both claimed that they were needed for the magic side of things to avoid becoming unpaid sous-chefs for Buffy and had won themselves a number of dirty looks from Gunn and Xander because of it.
“She’s made me peel every potato in Los Angeles,” Gunn hissed at Wesley as he passed him in the lobby, his arms full of hotel linen that Buffy had decided needed another wash before it was suitable to be spread on the dining table.
“You don’t even want to know what she’s made me do to an inoffensive turkey,” Xander added.
“Hurry up, you two!” Buffy called out to them from the bowels of the kitchen. “I need you to wash up some of these pans.”
“What did her last slave die of?” Gunn muttered as he disappeared into the basement in search of better whiter soap powder to vanquish those extra stubborn stains.
Wesley had tried to look as busy as possible as he ground herbs with a pestle and mortar whenever Gunn and Xander passed by for the rest of the day, but had not been fast enough to warn Connor as he walked into the lobby.
“Just who I need!” Buffy grabbed the boy by the arm, and dragged him away towards the kitchen. “I need you to mash for me.” Wesley noticed that Connor didn’t look exactly unhappy about being manhandled by Buffy and presumed that was probably genetic.
In some ways the preparation for the spell had felt divorced from the spell itself. He and Giles had reminisced about the Academy and its more eccentric teachers; Lorne had told tales about Pylea and Willow had filled them in on the situation in Cleveland. It had been a nice quiet day, only occasionally pierced by Buffy shouting at Spike for smoking in her kitchen or at Angel for not exercising better control over Spike. “He’s your grand-thing!” had floated up to them at one point.
“Well, if you’d staked him in Sunnydale instead of sleeping with him he wouldn’t be in ‘your kitchen’, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is actually my kitchen…”
“I wasn’t the first person in this room to sleep with Spike.”
“I didn’t have a soul when I did it. What was your excuse?”
“I’d just come back from the dead!”
“I was dead!”
“I was traumatized!”
“Oh yes, because sleeping with serial killers is always such a cure for that!”
“I don’t remember you telling me that when I was sleeping with you!”
But Willow had quickly remedied that by getting up and shutting the door to block them out. Apart from that it had been a very pleasant day, just as long as Wesley didn’t think about what they were really making these preparations for, and how, if something went wrong, he could end up a basketcase…
“Okay, crumpet. Step one.” Lorne held out the spoon with the dab of something mystical and honey-flavoured on it. Not that the spell needed honey, apparently, it would just taste too bitter to stomach without it. Lorne’s red eyes were anxious but he gave Wesley a reassuring smile. “Got your memory back with this before, so, Willow and I are thinking it can’t do any harm this time. It should make your mind more receptive to the spell Willow needs to do. And it tastes nice.”
Wesley obediently opened his mouth and let Lorne feed him the odd-tasting dollop of mystical medicine. Underneath the sweetness there was a truly bitter core and he grimaced. “‘Tastes nice’ in what world?”
Lorne shrugged. “Well, okay, not actually this one…”
There was a mixture of bones, claws, feathers, crystals, bowls of various liquids, and various herbs within the circle they had all formed, Willow sitting directly opposite Wesley, and Gunn and Angel each side of him. That hadn’t been discussed; for once, even Illyria seeming to accept that those were the hands he needed to be holding. Connor smiled at him encouragingly across the circle. Wesley suspected the real reason Connor had arrived early was so that he could reassure Wesley, when his memories kicked back in, that he hadn’t done anything wrong in stealing him when he was a baby. He suspected nothing was ever going to stop that memory stinging like a whiplash but it was still a kind thought on Connor’s behalf.
“You’ll be fine, Wes,” Buffy assured him.
Wesley tightened his grip on Gunn and Angel’s hands, looking around the circle of people, trying to fix their faces and names too securely for any mere spell to dislodge them: Angel, Connor, Lorne, Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander, Illyria, Spike, Gunn, thinking Don’t let me forget them and then looked up sharply. “Good grief – of course I wouldn’t have wanted to forget Fred and Cordelia.”
“You remember?” Gunn demanded.
“No, I just…” He looked around at them all, the faces he was trying to imprint into his memory clearly enough that they couldn’t be shaken loose even by Willow’s spell. “I just know.”
“It’s going to be okay, Wes,” Angel told him quietly.
“Yeah, English. No worries.” He felt Gunn tighten the grip on his hand and tightened his own grip in response; for once in his life, really not giving a damn about how it looked to be holding hands with another man.
Willow took a deep breath. “Everyone hold hands and concentrate. Close your eyes if it helps you to focus.”
Wesley closed his eyes, trying to think about the spell, only about the spell, when what he really wanted to think about were the people in this circle, and how these were the first people he remembered being kind to him, friends he didn’t want to give up. Then he wrenched his mind back to the words Willow was chanting, and felt the air crackle and then there was that extraordinary sensation of being in his body and yet it not being entirely under his control, feeling the magic moving through his veins, his bones, his mind – his breath hitched in panic and Gunn and Angel both tightened their grip on his hand. He concentrated on that, the warmth of Gunn’s skin, Angel, room temperature, but both of them holding him as if nothing could ever tear him loose. He realized then that it would be okay whatever happened. He would remember them or he would forget them, but they would hold onto him whatever happened, keep him safe, keep him with them until they came back to him; and they would come back to him because he couldn’t be separated from these people. It would just be…wrong, an imbalance in the world that couldn’t be permitted. Too frightening to remember that the world had permitted it for two and a half decades, of course, before he’d come here, and found them, but at least he had found them… The magic coursed through him, the air alight with power, his skin tingling with it; and then the world became warm and dark and silent and he slipped into it quite willingly.
He woke to the sound of Angel saying his name. He opened his eyes and the room spun so fast he wondered if he were on a roundabout. He saw a blur of faces, pale-ish, pinkish, greenish, bluish and brownish skin, red hair, blue hair, blonde hair, black hair, brown hair, toxic hair. Then the carousel slowed a little and he could make out details. Anxious Willow. Anxious Giles. Anxious Lorne. He remembered their names. He looked down at his right hand and saw Gunn’s hand gripping it. The man was saying gently:
“Wesley, are you okay? Wes?”
He turned his head which made the room lurch sickeningly, as if he were on the deck of a boat in a storm, the same unmanageable swell. But once the urge to hurl passed he could focus again and there was the face he was looking for. Someone else gazing at him anxiously.
“Wes…?”
Wesley grinned at Angel; the vampire with the soul whom he clearly remembered meeting in the Bronze in the days when he hadn’t known his name; clearly remembered being branded by the day before, too. “No one calls me that.”
Angel must have recognized his smile for what it was as he grinned like a dork. “I do.”
“English…?”
He managed the difficult manoeuvre of turning his head back to look at Gunn again and grinned at him too. “Charles, you peed on my shoes.”
“Yes!” Gunn pulled him into an embrace that was as careful as it was warm. The man always did that, Wesley remembered, acted as if he still had a healing gunshot wound in his gut. One day Gunn really did need to let that particular memory go.
“You peed on his shoes?” Xander echoed.
Wesley remembered meeting Xander too. They’d never liked each other – he remembered that, too – which was odd because he was now filled with warm fuzzy feelings where he was concerned.
“Territorial marking,” Wesley explained. “Gunn took it a little too far.”
“It was an accident. I wasn’t actually claiming Wesley for the legal department. You remember?”
Wesley beamed at him. “I remember everything.” Then he looked around the circle at Connor and Illyria and his face fell. “Everything.”
Angel tightened the grip on the hand he was still holding. “Are you okay?”
Wesley slowly looked around the circle again; everyone was now trying not to look anxious but to give him reassuring and encouraging looks instead. It was just as well he wasn’t feeling ready to be measured up for a strait jacket or their expressions would undoubtedly have sent him bounding for the nearest padded cell. He remembered trying to remember them, fearing to forget them, trying to imprint their faces in his memory. He remembered the first time he had met each one of them. He remembered Cordelia in the library at Sunnydale, the first beautiful woman to ever look at him as if he were something desirable and suave and handsome and clever, and so drained and lost-looking in that hospital bed as he sat in a wheelchair and tried to incant around the pain that made speaking such an effort, and Cordy stroking his hair in the hospital as everything swirled around the edges of the morphine in his veins, and the empty place in his flat she hadn’t filled after he’d stolen Connor, when he’d waited for her to come back from her holiday in the hope that she at least might visit him, could yell and scold all she liked as long as she came to see him. And he remembered her in that final hospital beaming with life and vitality that was just another illusion, but the most wonderful illusion yet.
He gasped and looked across at Illyria, remembered Fred, so astonishingly brave, luring the beast Angel had turned into away from him and Gunn with the blood on her hand; sitting under the table eating lunch with them; and himself transformed into a monster who hunted her through the hotel with an axe in his hand… Fred so beautiful in evening dress that he had known that he would have to say something to her, finally, tell her how he felt, only to lose her to Gunn, her cold words to him at the hospital, and then the surprise and pleasure in her eyes when she realized he was still the man she had known, that he still cared what became of her. And then… And then there was so much. Hope and desire and confusion and longing and jealousy; that stolen kiss; the heat between them that tangible dangerous guilty thing; Lilah a pale corpse beneath the blade of his axe; putting that look on Gunn’s face; moving on and finding he hadn’t moved anywhere except in a neat circle to a place where he was looking at Fred looking at another man again. Drunken confidences and the exquisite warmth of her trust. Gunshots. The robot fizzling. The taste of bile in his mouth. Fred walking away with Knox even though he’d just killed his father for her sake, because he’d just killed his father for her sake and that was too unbalanced a devotion for her to deal with right now. Deciding there was no more hope now; that he would never be anything other than her friend; and then that sudden kiss out of nowhere, her telling him that she had been trying to tell him for weeks and weeks that things were different while he sighed in oblivious stupidity. And then… And then… And then.
“Illyria.” He looked into her eyes and she gazed back at him. Not Fred’s eyes, thank god. Very much her own. Which was what she was now. A separate entity. Not human. Not demon. A strange hybrid marooned in a strange dimension, an outcast of her own kind and his, and he her only anchor to this less than brave new world.
“Do you remember me now?” She threw it out like a challenge but behind the defiance in her pale blue eyes there was something that looked remarkably like fear of rejection.
“I remember you, Illyria. I remember you stayed here to help me when the bomb was inside me at the risk of your own life.” He looked around them, Buffy and Willow and Xander and Giles, Spike and Lorne and Gunn and Angel. “I remember that you all did that. Thank you.”
“You really remember?” Willow gazed at him anxiously.
“Yes, Willow, the spell is reversed. Thank you.”
“Oh…” She gave a shivering sort of semi-collapse of relief, and Buffy rubbed her back comfortingly. “Oh, I’m… I’m glad…very, very glad. Kind of overwhelming…actually… on account of thinking I’d mushed your brain even more. But I didn’t, right…? Tell me I didn’t…?”
“Unmushed,” he promised her. “I remember everything. I remember arriving in Sunnydale and you all unaccountably not being pleased to see me.” He could barely restrain a grin as Willow, Xander, Buffy and Giles exchanged guilty grimaces. “And I remember meeting Angel for the first time and totally failing to remember his name.”
“Hey, I didn’t tell you my name,” Angel insisted, still holding onto his hand. “If I had, you would have remembered it.”
“Doubtful.” Wesley looked at him sideways.
“Didn’t forget my name,” Gunn said smugly.
“I didn’t tell him my name.”
“Which was just as well really as it delayed me being able to give you up to Balthazar like the craven coward I was back then.”
“You weren’t a coward, Wesley,” Giles said at once. “You were just – unprepared.”
“And terrified of physical pain,” Wesley reminded him.
Connor scratched his jaw thoughtfully, distracted by the new itch of first stubble. “You’re afraid of pain? Because I’m wondering if you’re in the right line of work.”
“I’m sort of used to it now, I think. Five years of working with Angel will do that to a man.”
“Hey!” Angel gave him a reproachful look.
Wesley squeezed his hand gently so Angel would look down and see whose fingers he was still clinging to.
Spike lit a cigarette. “So, are you three just going to sit there like a bunch of nancies, holding hands all day or do we get a celebratory drink?”
“We’re just going to hold hands,” Gunn assured him.
“I was rather hoping for a cup of tea,” Wesley murmured to him.
Gunn slipped his fingers loose to pat him – gently – on the back. “Coming right up, English.”
As Wesley climbed to his feet – the room still swaying a little – Angel hung onto his elbow to steady him and he was immediately surrounded by more of those anxious – familiar – faces.
“Do you need a Sea Breeze, crumpet? Or a nice Bloody Mary?”
“How about a scotch, mate? I’ve still got some left that old Broodypants didn’t snaffle.”
“I really think a cup of tea would be more appropriate given the hour.”
“I remember a time when you weren’t waiting for the sun to be over the yardarm, Giles.”
“Thank you, Buffy, and would you like me to recount all your less than shining moments to Wesley now? I believe he missed quite a few of them.”
Willow hugged him – gingerly – albeit with great warmth and affection.
“May I embrace you also – in the custom of your race?”
Wesley turned to find Illyria looking at him with a plaintive expression on her beautiful blue-toned face. He was suddenly reminded of Cordelia trying to find the courage to ask him out in front of everyone, so breathtakingly beautiful while he was so breathtakingly inept that he had no idea how to respond, only knowing that it was wrong to date a student, probably wrong to be so aware of the warmth of her body and the invitation of her glorious mouth, and those incredible breasts, and definitely very confusing and bewildering and causing all kinds of heat in places where it really had no business being. He hadn’t even noticed her vulnerability at the time, or her courage; that had come later, when he’d thought back and realized that she had been a truly remarkable young woman and he had been humiliatingly useless around her.
Illyria seemed to feel some face-saving excuse was necessary. “I feel I should explore more facets of the odd behaviour of your species.”
Wesley nodded. “Yes, Illyria, thank you, I’d like a hug.”
Spike shook his head in disgust. “Call yourself an Englishman.”
“Well, I have been in LA for five years.”
Illyria enclosed him in her arms tentatively, reminding him of himself and his first attempt to kiss Cordelia. Then she tightened her grip cautiously and pulled him against her. It was extremely awkward but as she laid her cheek against his he couldn’t help remembering Fred in his arms, her hair against his skin. He gave a little gasp and Illyria sprang back from him.
“I have injured you!”
“No,” he quickly reassured her. “It was – very nice.”
“You are very thin,” she observed.
He looked at her incredibly slender body pointedly. “Are you familiar with a certain saying about pots and kettles, Illyria?”
“Are you really okay?”
He turned to find Connor looking at him in concern.
Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you. I’m – sorry about everything. How it turned out. How you…”
“Turned out?” Connor half-smiled. “So much of my life seems to have been pre-destined – maybe I was always slated to go to Quor’toth. I appreciate you trying to save me when I was a baby, Wesley, and I’m sorry for what it cost you.”
Wesley ran his fingers along his throat. He wasn’t sure if the scar had faded naturally or if something to do with the memory wipe had altered it but it was barely visible now, and yet he clearly remembered it being that terrible jagged gash. He closed his eyes and remembered Justine bleeding, feeling sorry for her, letting his guard down, then feeling Justine grab him, the blade across his throat, not the pain so much as the weakness that went through him as the blood suddenly spilled, and the baby, seeing the baby being taken by her to Holtz.
He swayed and opened his eyes to find Connor holding his arm. “I remember it, too,” Connor said. “I know I shouldn’t be able to, but I can. It was one of the memories taken – the buried ones, the ones so far back they shouldn’t even exist any more, but they’re there and they were taken from me by Vail and given back to me when you broke the window.”
“I’m sorry…”
“So, I remember, being held by you, and then her taking me from you. I remember the smell of your blood. And I remember when I was an adult you cutting my chest…”
“I’m sorry…”
“And the way you looked at me when you put your hand against my face, with such pity for me, and such love.” Connor looked into his eyes. “And stop saying sorry. I’ve done – terrible things, Wesley.”
“Because of me, because I let Holtz…”
“No. Because of me. Because of who I was. Because of who I let myself become. If you want to carry all the guilt for every single mistake you’ve ever made, that’s your choice, and I can’t stop you, but me – you don’t need to feel any guilt about me. I absolve you. Or if you prefer – I forgive you. Absolutely. I’m glad you got your memories back, and I think you made the right choice, and what we did shapes what we are, but some things you just need to let go of and move on from, and, taking me, that’s one of them.”
Wesley snatched a breath and looked up to find Angel right there beside him, fingers a fraction of an inch from his elbow in case he needed the support. He gazed into Angel’s eyes and Angel gazed back, those brown eyes more familiar than his own reflection.
Connor added gently: “And Angel forgave you a long time ago, Wesley.”
“I tried to tell you that, remember?” Angel said. “That I was grateful I hadn’t killed you. Very grateful. That while I was under the ocean I was thinking about how glad I was that we could still be a family again, all of us.”
Wesley frowned. “I don’t remember you telling me that.”
“Well, okay, maybe I didn’t exactly articulate it as clearly as I could have done, but you didn’t exactly give me a lot of time. You were all covered in demon gloop and you kept looking at me like…that and I sort of thought you’d be glad to see me and instead you were… So, okay, maybe I could have been clearer, but I did forgive you. I just wasn’t sure if you’d forgiven me for the whole…pillow thing.”
“I never blamed you.” Wesley lowered his gaze. “I thought I deserved it, too.”
Connor looked at Angel pointedly. “You have so much more work to do on Wesley’s self-esteem.”
“I know,” Angel protested.
“Work in progress.” Gunn held out a cup of tea. “We’re on it.”
“Could you not talk about me as if I’m a…walking therapy case?” Wesley pleaded.
Connor patted Wesley gently on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Wesley, we don’t judge. We know you’re English.”
Wesley looked after the boy with a frown. “For someone who wasn’t raised by you, he’s horribly like you at times.”
“Annoying?” Gunn enquired.
Wesley looked into Angel’s eyes again. “Comforting.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Ch. 15
Date: 2006-03-21 06:29 pm (UTC)Wesley noticed that Connor didn’t look exactly unhappy about being manhandled by Buffy and presumed that was probably genetic. Lol
What a great chapter. Hope I have enough time to read the next two today *g*
Shakatany
no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 12:55 pm (UTC)