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Closing the Cupboard Door, Part Three


It was eight hours later when he returned to the hospital. He hadn’t meant to sleep for so long; hadn’t expected to sleep at all, despite being exhausted, but as soon as his head hit the pillow he was out for the count and if he dreamt of demons and bleeding Watchers it faded as soon as he opened his eyes.

He showered, shaved, and dressed in a strange state of disconnection. It felt as if his life was on hold until he knew whether or not Wesley was going to live, and yet it wasn’t as if the man was a bosom friend; it had nothing to do really with his feelings for Wesley – which were mild annoyance most of the time – just a very strong feeling that if Wesley were to die now then his would truly be a painfully wasted life.

When he reached the hospital room he paused in the doorway. Buffy, of all people, was sitting by Wesley’s bedside, with a damp cloth in her hand actually mopping his brow. Of all the sights Giles had been expecting to see this year, Mayor’s morphing into demons, vampires turning to dust, and possibly the world being swallowed into a hell dimension as everything turned to fiery Armageddon, had all seemed like imminent possibilities, but Buffy mopping Wesley’s fevered brow had definitely not featured anywhere.

Wesley was turning his head from side to side, murmuring something, while Buffy said a little helplessly: “Wesley, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand you. Do you want me to get you a priest?”

Giles stepped closer and understood why she was making the connection with the Catholic church, but he wasn’t saying ‘in nomine Patri, et filii, et Spiritus Sancti’ although it probably sounded a little like it to Buffy’s resolutely modern ear.

“He’s conjugating Latin verbs, Buffy,” Giles said quietly. He went closer and winced at the truly feverish rapid murmuring, breaths snatched in between, anxiety in every word. “He seems to be particularly worried about the passive plural in the pluperfect subjunctive.”

He bent over Wesley as the man muttered: “… abstinuissem, abstinuissémus, abstentus essem, abstentí essémus. Abstinuissés, abstinuissétis, abstentus essés, abstentí essétis. Abstinuisset, abstinuissent, abstentus…abstentus....”

Giles winced at the desperation in the man’s tone. “Abstentus esset, Wesley. Remember? Abstentus esset, abstentí essent.”

“Giles....” Buffy said reproachfully.

“What?” he looked up.

“Why aren’t you telling him to stop…conjugating?”

“Because I don’t think it would work. And if he can’t move onto the next thing before he finishes this one....”

As Wesley began to conjugate another verb and Buffy gave him a begging look, Giles grimaced. “How long has this been going on?”

“Hours. Oz took Willow to get some coffee. She was getting upset. He gets so panicky when he can’t remember one of them.”

He tentatively took Wesley’s hand in his. “Wesley? Can you hear me? It’s Rupert Giles. You’re not in school any more. You’re in the hospital. You’re not taking Latin right now.”

Wesley opened his eyes and looked at him for a brief instant when Giles thought he might have got through to him, and then gasped and began muttering again. Different words now but the same panic behind them.

“What’s he saying now?” Buffy looked at Giles anxiously.

Giles sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat. “It’s Hebrew. He’s translating something: ‘ma’owr’ – shining lights, ‘me’uwrah’ – long ago....” Wesley twisted his head away, still murmuring rapidly but Giles could only make out the occasional word: ge’ah – pride, mo’zen – scales, ga’ah – triumph, habal – act foolishly, hagah – expelled. Giles shook his head. “It’s a passage of some kind but I don’t recognize it.”

“Willow said he was trying to remember a spell earlier. She recognized some of it.” Buffy mopped Wesley’s brow again. “I knew Wesley was nerd of the century, but isn’t this a little…crazy even for him?”

“He seems to have been a very conscientious scholar, but....”

Wesley twisted away from Buffy’s forehead mopping and gave Giles an imploring look. “I’m sorry. I’ll do it again. I’ll get it right this time. I was stupid. I wasn’t concentrating. Please, don’t.... Please, I’ll do it again....”

Giles felt cold and tightened his grip on Wesley’s bony hand. “Wesley, listen to me. You’re not in school or –” he glanced briefly at Buffy but felt there was no hope of sidestepping this, “at home. You haven’t done anything wrong and you’re not going to be…punished.”

But Wesley was already crying in what seemed to be sheer fear. “Please, father, please, I don’t want to go in there.... Please....” Then Wesley flinched and looked around with a helpless blankness that made Giles wince inwardly. He whispered: “I’ll be very quiet and then they won’t hear me....” as if he were talking to himself.

“Wesley...?” Buffy took his hand in hers. “Listen to me. You’re not anywhere…horrible. You’re in a nice clean shiny hospital with all the lights on. And there are people with you, and we’re not going to leave you, okay? You’re not by yourself.”

Giles snatched a deep breath. “Does this happen…?”

“Pretty much every hour on the hour.”

At the sound of Xander’s voice, Giles looked up to see Xander, Willow and Oz in the doorway.

Oz was gazing at Wesley expressionlessly as he handed Buffy a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “We think it was dark. Wherever he was. He shuts his eyes when he’s in there.”

“And then we can’t reach him.” Willow went to stand by Oz who put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I think when he’s outside that place that he can hear us sometimes, but once he’s in there....”

“Any idea where he is?” Giles smoothed out Wesley’s disordered sheets while Buffy sighed and went back to mopping his brow. Before, Wesley had been twisting restlessly in the bed, feverish and confused and yet with a horribly self-destructive logic to his madness, but now he was very still, eyes closed tightly, head ducked, body language tense and small.

“Somewhere he doesn’t want to be.” Xander looked unusually grim. “Somewhere his father used to put him.”

“We don’t know that.” Willow looked distressed.

“Yes, we do, Will,” Buffy sighed. “He always asks Daddy not to just before Daddy obviously does.” She looked up at Giles, eyes hard. “I’m really not liking Wesley’s Daddy very much.”

When Wesley started to cry, very still and almost silent, the tears just trickling down his face, in what seemed to be sheer terror, yet too frightened to make any sound, Giles found himself not liking Wesley’s Daddy very much either.

“Wesley…?” Xander grabbed his shoulder and gave him a little shake. “Snap out of it. You’re not in there. You’re safe in the hospital. Wesley…?”

The man gave a gasp and then started muttering feverishly in Greek. Xander rolled his eyes. “Great. He’s out of the bad dark place and back in detention.”

“I don’t imagine Wesley was ever given detention.” Giles gratefully accepted the coffee Xander handed to him. “He probably just took a lot of extra classes. You can do that at the Academy, if you want to. Ancient languages. Demonic languages. Spellcasting. History of Magic. Every teacher wants the best pupils for their classes, obviously, so they’re not always as conscientious as they should be about ensuring students don’t over-enrol. And, of course, as a Watcher you can never exactly know too much. Everything could come in useful.”

“I don’t think he’s remembering the Academy.” Oz tightened his grip on Willow. “I think he’s remembering being at home before he went there.”

Buffy grimaced. “I can imagine Wesley’s father making him conjugate Latin verbs for hours and hours and hours. Isn’t there some kind of law about doing that to a little boy?”

“Not that I’m aware of, Buffy.” Giles looked down at Wesley restlessly turning from side to side as he translated a passage out of the Iliad in halting nervous Greek. “Although perhaps there should be.”


Giles had needed all his powers of persuasion to get the children to leave, Willow in particular had looked as if nothing was going to move her from that bedside. She looked up at him aghast when he said firmly that they really needed to go home now. She was holding Wesley’s hand and had been murmuring to him quietly every time he started work on another spell that they weren’t doing that one today; a few times she had managed to head him off into something easier, but sometimes it just seemed to derail him in the direction of the ‘bad dark place’.

“I don’t want to leave him.”

Giles sighed. “Willow, your mother is going to be worried and you can’t stay here all night. Why don’t you go home and get some rest, and Angel and I will watch over him tonight.”

“Giles is right,” Xander told her gently. “You need to get some rest. We can take over tomorrow.”

Willow looked at Wesley anxiously. “You’ll keep telling him he hasn’t done anything wrong?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“And don’t let him finish the spell. It’s for resurrecting dead things and I think it might be dangerous. Also, I think something horrible happened to him when he was trying to say it so it’s good if you can distract him from that one. And there’s a passage in Hebrew or something that upsets him. And he makes a mistake in the Iliad and that makes him cry and....”

“I know.” Giles squeezed her shoulder gently. “I’ll tell him he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Pity his father didn’t try that technique.” Xander gazed at Wesley, face grim. “But then Wesley wouldn’t be the guy he is today if Daddy had done that, would he?”

“Some people ought to be able to put their parents up for adoption.” Buffy put the damp cloth in Giles’s hand. “I don’t think it makes much difference to the fever but it helps with the whole…feeling useless and not knowing what else to do thing.”

He more or less shoved them out of the room, Willow still gazing back at Wesley anxiously, while Oz gently urged her away, and Giles thought how odd it was the way Wesley had gone from unwanted Watcher to…not friend, perhaps, but at least injured pet.

It was a little less chaotic without them, although Wesley was still murmuring quietly to himself, and tossing and turning in the bed. The next cycle of the resurrection spell caught him by surprise and he wasn’t quick enough to head it off, the words spilling from Wesley’s mouth in a panicky tumble before he flinched and cowered at what seemed to be a violent interruption.

“Wesley, it’s all right.” Giles tried to take his hand but Wesley thrust both hands behind his back, flinching as he did so, one shoulder raised, head ducked. “It’s all right, Wesley. No one’s angry with you.”

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry.... I knew I shouldn’t but I didn’t know what else to.... I promise I’ll never.... I won’t ever....”

Giles had that cold feeling flood through him again, sure now that the man had hit Wesley or at least laid angry hands upon him with such violence that Wesley had thought he was going to be struck. He mistrusted the way Wesley thrust his hands out of sight every time he made a mistake. There certainly hadn’t been any corporal punishment at the Watcher’s Academy. It was stuffy and backward and hidebound but it wasn’t impossibly Victorian. The way Wesley tried to protect his palms suggested that he had been caned or strapped across them at least once. Perhaps for some particularly grievous transgression for which shutting a frightened little boy into some dark cubbyhole was not considered a severe enough punishment?

“What did you even have a bloody son for?” Giles muttered as he coaxed Wesley’s hand out from under the sheets and held it gently.

“Duty?”

Giles looked up to see Angel in the doorway, the vampire gazing at Wesley compassionately.

Giles shrugged. “Perhaps. It certainly didn’t seem to be out of any overpowering paternal instincts. He seems to have taken Wesley being a child as a personal affront. As if Wesley only didn’t know everything an adult would know to be annoying.”

“Some fathers are like that.” Angel put his palm across Wesley’s forehead. “His temperature’s dropped a couple of degrees.”

“It has?” Giles looked at Angel hopefully.

Angel nodded. “He’s a little better than he was. Wesley must be tougher than he looks.”

They both looked in silence at the fine bone of his wrist, the thin arms, the impossibly narrow bump under the covers that was the rest of his body.

“I presume he was sent to bed without supper rather too often,” Giles said grimly.

“There wasn’t any food in his place.” Angel looked at the chart on the end of Wesley’s bed, although Giles doubted he understood it any better than the rest of them did, but he looked grave and imposing when he read it, rather than confused and anxious like the rest of them. “Not much money in his wallet either. I think he may have blown his budget on that suit.”

Giles wondered who spent hundreds of pounds they clearly couldn’t afford on having a suit made to measure to disguise one’s true size rather than budgeting for the food that might do something about that size – and then realized that someone as insecure about his ability to inspire respect in others as Wesley would do exactly that. Had Wesley thought that those few extra inches of breadth across the shoulders would make the difference between success and failure? How could someone who had never been allowed to take a day off or apparently to be a child, someone so relentlessly trained from birth to be a Watcher, a whole Watcher, and nothing but a Watcher, be so ill-equipped to deal with the task?

“I went through his suitcase, but he only has the one good suit. The other clothes look at least two sizes too big for him. I guess he wears layers underneath to look bigger.”

Giles was surprised by the lack of judgement in Angel’s tone. He would have thought that being immortal, not to mention having the kind of physique that Angel possessed, would make it very easy to sneer at some skinny Englishman with delusions of biceps; but Angel’s expression was entirely compassionate as he looked at Wesley.

“I suppose we all have our coping mechanisms.” Giles got to his feet. “Would you mind…? Just while I get some coffee.”

“You can go if you like.” Angel sat down next to Wesley as if it were the most natural thing in the world for the vampire to keep watch over the Watcher who had been instrumental in him being bludgeoned and trapped in a net. “I’ll watch over him.”

“No, I’d like to stay a little longer.” Giles could not exactly have explained why; some residual sense that only he could really understand Wesley’s delirium, having been trained in something of the same way – although, not, thank god, by the methods Wesley’s father had employed.

He could hear the Latin as he reached the room, coffee trying to burn its way through to his fingertips through the Styrofoam.

Calm quiet Latin, this time. Angel prompting Wesley gently in a way reminiscent of kindly old Latin masters from Giles’ childhood lessons:

“‘Flamma fumo…’?”

“‘Est proxima’,” Wesley said quickly.

“Very good. Okay, next one. Are you ready? This is from the Bible. ‘Margaritas ante…’?”

“‘Porcos’!”

“Well done, Wesley. Right, more Plautus: ‘Aquam e pumici…’?”

“‘…nunc postulas’.”

“ Good work. ‘Vanitas vanitatum…’?”

“‘…et omnia vanitas’.”

“ Perfect. ‘Timeo Danaos…’?”

“‘…et Dona ferentes’.”

Giles sat back and watched as Angel fed Wesley the first half of easy Latin proverbs and phrases that even a seven year old, raised as Wesley had been raised, would have no trouble finishing correctly, praising him warmly each time he answered. Wesley’s eyes were closed but he looked calmer than Giles had seen in a while, Angel’s voice evidently reaching him through the tangle of his fever dream in a way that was lucid and comforting. After a few more Latin questions, he drifted into what seemed to be the closest he had come to normal sleep. Angel sat back.

“Well done,” Giles said quietly.

“It was Willow’s idea. I met them on the way in. It occurred to her that if he were given easy lessons to do he would be too busy doing those to remember the ones he’d got wrong in the past. I promised her I’d try it out for her.”

“She really is better than any of us.” Giles exhaled. “Of course, I suspect that Wesley’s fever would not be taking such a direct route to his past self-esteem issues if we hadn’t all done quite such a bang up job of shredding his self-confidence.”

Angel shrugged. “All Watchers probably make mistakes when they start off. They’re just not usually having to make them in front of a hostile public. He was expecting to just have Buffy and Faith to deal with, not…all of us. Of course, Buffy and Faith would always have eaten him for breakfast, but....”

Giles nodded. “I take your point. I just wish I could trust Wesley’s judgement, but the fact is I can’t and even if I could, Buffy doesn’t. I could leave the country and let him just get on with it, but I think it would be a very bad idea, not least because I have so far managed to prevent Buffy from completely dismissing him out of hand. I shudder to think what would happen if I’m not there to referee.”

Angel glanced back at the man on the bed. “I imagine Buffy and Xander would probably bury the body under the library and hope no one noticed he’d gone.”

Giles gave him a look of disapproval. “Angel....”

Angel shrugged. “Just being realistic. Buffy isn’t going to accept Wesley as her Watcher any time soon, Giles. Not while you’re around and probably not if you were gone. Wesley’s been trained to deal with a little girl and she’s more grown up than he is. He really needs a chance to do the same.”

“Do what?”

“Grow up. Be allowed to screw up in a supportive environment where he isn’t expected to be perfect.” Angel looked at the man on the bed again. “Or allowed to go off and do his own thing for a while. Work out who he really is. Who he wants to be.”

“Well, he probably could have done with a gap year but I think it may be a little late for that now.”

“It’s never too late.” Angel straightened Wesley’s sheet with a gentleness that was almost paternal. “He can make it in Sunnydale if people are willing to help him. Or he can make it somewhere else. I have a feeling we haven’t even met the real Wesley yet.”

Giles frowned. “What do you mean?”

“All he’s done since he got here is react to situations he didn’t expect and can’t control. He’s still trying to find a way the world makes sense viewed through the…appendix to the Watcher’s Handbook. He has to start dealing with the world he’s actually living in as himself, not what he thinks he ought to be or his father has told him to be.”

Giles thought of Wesley’s disastrous essays into the field so far. “Are we sure that’s a good idea?”

Angel picked up the cloth and dabbed it across Wesley’s forehead. “Lot of evil out there and Wesley’s been trained since he could crawl in ways to deal with it. So far it’s all academic but it’s a waste of a potential resource not to find a way to get all the useful stuff in Wesley’s brain being used for the greater good. He’s an asset, he’s just not been realized yet.”

Giles looked at Angel in dawning comprehension. “He doesn’t annoy you, does he?”

“Not particularly. I don’t expect every human I meet to be perfect.”

“Cordelia doesn’t annoy you either, does she?”

Angel looked surprised at the question. “She’s a teenage girl, Giles, who’s been spoilt rotten since birth. Of course she’s going to be a little shallow. Doesn’t mean she’s not a good person underneath.”

Giles sat back in his chair. “Sorry, I just need a moment to digest the idea that there could be someone in the world who doesn’t find Cordelia or Wesley annoying.”

Angel half-smiled and shook his head. “They’re children. It’s difficult not to make allowances.”

Giles wondered if this was a superhero thing, that Buffy was a grown-up because she was a Slayer, whereas a girl the same age as Buffy and a young man eight years her senior were both paternally dismissed and excused as ‘children’. He looked back at Wesley and wondered how he must look to Angel, for the vampire to be so resolutely unbothered by him. “What about him taking Faith?”

“Misguided, ineffectual, not at all the right thing to do for Faith, but kind of brave – given the fact I scare him spitless but he did it anyway.”

“He did it because the Council told him to. I suspect if the Council told him to go jump in a lake he’d do that too.”

Angel shrugged. “Well, his father didn’t exactly seem to encourage independent thought, did he?”

“I wonder if the Council would give him a grant to study you.” Giles sipped his coffee innocently. “Going by his notes, he’d love a chance to ask you hundreds of deeply personal and entirely tactless questions about all your worst experiences....”

Angel grimaced. “He has a folder on me already. Everything I ever did when I was Angelus. He must have sent for it when he found out who I was.”

“I have a folder on you too.”

“I know.” Angel looked at him sideways. “You should do. We both know what the demon inside of me is capable of.”

“You do realize you were probably the bedtime story used to frighten Wesley off to sleep every night?”

“I know. Makes him stealing Faith even braver really, doesn’t it?”

“You really think Wesley can overcome his inherent cowardice?” Giles automatically lowered his voice so Wesley wouldn’t overhear.

“I overcame wanting to rip people’s throats out and drink their blood. I’ve always thought the first time Wesley really got hurt we’d find out what he was made of. He’s never really been hurt, that’s pretty obvious, and he’s scared of the unknown. Now he knows, it may never be as bad again. He did the right thing when it mattered over that demon. Under all the posturing and the fear of looking stupid, I think there’s someone who wants to do what’s right.”

It struck Giles for the first time that Angel would have been a good father. Something he could never be now, of course, but there was a terrible irony that this vampire was prepared to make so many allowances for the very human Watcher on the bed, while the humans who had been spending time with Wesley for the past few months were nothing like as tolerant.

“Why didn’t you say something to him? Something…nice?”

Angel looked surprised. “He’s afraid of me, Giles. I can smell it on him every time we’re in a room together. Anyway, I’m not the one whose approval he needs.”

“I don’t think Buffy is going to....”

Angel shook his head. “Giles, you’re the one whose approval he wants.”

“He’s my replacement and he’s made it very clear that he thinks the change was long overdue....”

“He still needs you to pat him on the head and tell him he’s doing a good job.”

Giles sighed. “If he’d just do something right, I would.”

Angel nodded at the bed. “Well, he did something right, and Willow’s still alive because of it. So, when he wakes up, there’s your chance.”

As Angel went off to get something that Giles thought could possibly be blood but that he hoped was coffee, it struck him again how very strange it was that the Irish-American vampire was the one amongst them with the most tolerance for the very English, very human Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. He suspected that he was never going to understand Angel or the way his mind worked. Wesley, however, in the light of his father’s clearly very harsh treatment and impossible demands was starting to look more and more explicable. And yes, in this case, to understand was definitely to forgive. Or as no doubt Wesley’s father had made him write out a hundred times on more than one occasion without ever appreciating the irony: Errare humanum est.

***