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[elgrey]

Harrogate, Part Eleven

 

Dreams had never been as deep as now; there was an ocean of sleep above his head that had to be traversed for every waking; layers of pressing darkness painted in a Kandinsky blue. He slept so fitfully; the least sound disturbed him – yet there was always this long haul from unconsciousness to waking, of late. It was the vicious circle of the insomniac, Wesley knew that. In the privacy of his own mind, there was clarity; words assembled themselves in sentences that made perfect sense. There was just this grey numbness, a shore between himself and the waking world that made it difficult for him to be the man he was in his head when interacting with others. If he were honest, the only times he really felt like himself any more, was when talking to people who probably weren’t there.

 

He knew that this difficulty in awakening from dreams, this fugue state of semi-consciousness segueing into breath-rationed panic was the inevitable response of the very recently nearly-dead. Or actually dead in his case. He had been here before, after all. He had fallen asleep trying not to think about the knife slashing his throat, and the shock of that sudden cold, the strength no longer in his limbs as he fell and the blood spilled, and life began to leave him, edging further away from him with each moment, each breath, a cost in bloodloss with each heartbeat pumping it into the chill night air. He had woken up streaming with sweat, feeling the blade again, or feeling the pillow pressing down and the air not coming. This was not his first bout of post-traumatic stress disorder, but there was no Lilah this time to tease and tantalize and arouse and madden him back into the land of the traumatized but alive. Gunn was exhausted and fast asleep, still recovering from his own wound, his own near-death experience, and from the losses that were making Wesley begin to feel as pitted and fissured as Bath stone after a century of acid rain.

 

His past had lot a great deal of its clarity. It was difficult for him to differentiate between events that had occurred and dreams that he’d had. When he let his mind wander to possibilities they began to solidify; if he spent too long imagining they began to bed themselves into his mind like memories. He could ‘remember’ lives where he had married Cordelia and they had endured a disastrous wedding night in the frosty chill of the second-best guest bedroom of his parents’ house, the pipes clanking mournfully while she wept and wept for all the dreams of hers to which he would never have access but was most assuredly not fulfilling. He could remember days in Sunnydale that he had never spent; sharing a home with Giles to their mutual exasperation as he became more whiny and petulant and Giles began to drink with ever more focused concentration. And all the different days in Los Angeles that he had never lived. That time in the Hyperion after Fred had chosen him at the ballet and they had been so happy. That time when Cordelia had come back from her holiday and sought him out and made the others grant him their forgiveness. Or the emptiness of a life in which Angel had never returned from his quest to bring down Wolfram & Hart; where he and Gunn had been shredded finer and finer by too many brushes with death, too many missions only half-accomplished and their evenings spent holding a Cordelia weeping from the unending pain in her head. It required a focused effort of will to sort between the possibilities and remember the truth. The truth that had been lost to him for half a painless year, when there had never been a baby he had kidnapped; when his throat had never been slashed; but when there had been so much confusion about a time of estrangement; wondering why it was that he had slept with Lilah; wondering why Angel was so angry with him on occasion when they had so rarely ever disagreed.

 

He had not been able to indulge in sexual fantasies about himself and Fred, it was true; too much of an intrusion; but he could remember trying to imagine how it was between her and Gunn. It troubled him a little that he had known so well how Gunn looked in the instant before he pressed a kiss onto wine-reddened lips. The way his brown eyes changed from amused and fond to heated and wanting and full of something that had perhaps been very close to love. Knowing or thinking that he knew how much Gunn liked to nuzzle at a long slender throat, not the arousing crush of teeth that Lilah liked to bestow, but kisses so gentle they barely brushed the surface.

 

He had thought of the two of them through a haze of staked vampire dust, imagining the grey particles of their last kill still attached to their sweat-sheened skin as they reached for each other in Gunn’s truck; aroused by how close they had come to death; how it was adhering to them still while they pulsed with life and heat and desire. He could imagine too well the contortions one would have to undergo in the passenger seat to find a semi-comfortable position. The sound of Gunn’s zip in his imagination carried an echo in his memory from which he always shied away. He could think of Gunn’s fingers, strong and dexterous at once, and how a warm hand felt on a warm thigh, women he had touched, hands that had touched him; how a woman tasted down there, how it felt to be licked; the way the body thrilled to that unexpected flick of tongue into secret entranceways. He knew Fred could be loud and Gunn was usually quiet, fond whispers, muffled grunts; that Gunn was unselfish and liked to give pleasure while, after five years in a cave, being touched was still a novelty to Fred so extraordinary that it was sometimes enough to make her scream. Wesley had always understood that about her, because being touched was still a novelty to him, too.

 

He had spent so long wanting Gunn out of the picture; just him and Fred alone together, and yet the only time he could think of her naked, imagine the ridges of her spine a twist of desire, a pleasurable jolt along her narrow back in response to a thrust, imagine her head back and her throat exposed, her collarbone a lickable perfection, or her pelvis clenched tight with pleasure on the brink of orgasm, was if he put Gunn back into the scene. He had never doubted that Gunn knew the way to make her whimper with breathless pleasure; he was not quite as convinced that he and Fred alone would have been able to find their way. Perhaps he’d never wanted to be in Gunn’s place, after all, just somewhere in the middle, and all those times when he had tried to come between them, that was, as it turned out, exactly the place where he’d wanted to end up.

 

He wanted to wake Gunn and ask him if they had ever been lovers; not because he cared about the answer, just because he didn’t know. It felt like something a man should remember, who he had kissed and not. He was almost certain that he and Angel never had. He remembered the vampire naked and on top of him but he could also remember the circumstances, a time of Angel’s angry aroused confusion over Darla; he was pretty sure that he had been fully clothed and that the vampire’s erection, vivid though it was in his memory, had not been any fault of his.

 

Cordelia had told him that, in that other dimension where she had been an actress and Angel a madman, he and Gunn had been lovers. She had described it well enough that he had a clear picture in his head – their cluttered apartment, the main room given up to an unhinged Angel who was not always safe to approach. The two of them hanging on by their fingernails as they all edged closer to the abyss. He had wondered if he and Gunn had become lovers before or after Angel had gone insane. What the dreams of the Wesley in that world had once been; how they had foundered, or if this was a life he had found in some way satisfying.

 

He remembered feeling safe when Gunn was with them and a little anxious when he was not; that seemed to be true – there were too many memories of those feelings for it to be only a stray sensation. He remembered them staying at Cordelia’s apartment sometimes, getting drunk on occasion, falling asleep on the same bed. He didn’t remember if they had really kissed or if he just remembered dreaming that they had and the embarrassment of waking from that dream to find Gunn’s head on the pillow next to his. He remembered feeling filled with peace and contentment, of being able to love himself for the first time in his life, being able to forgive himself for taking Connor, and feeling absolutely contented in Gunn’s company, the man an extension of Jasmine, of the world, of their molecules being all connected, their souls indivisible because they were all united in their love for Her. He just couldn’t remember if they had ever really had sex or he had just tried to imagine the possibilities once and the images had lodged. It didn’t feel in any way important to him whether they had or hadn’t, which worried him a little, as he suspected it probably made a difference; there were probably things one did or did not say and do around people with whom one had once had sex that were not a cause for concern if one had only ever been friends.

 

He missed Angel and Fred the most acutely, although he also missed Cordelia, Lorne, and – bizarrely – Illyria. He missed her asking him questions and demanding his attention, a cross between a god, a child, and an impossibly temperamental cat. He worried about Spike. The vampire had seemed on the point of rediscovering some direction for his life when the Black Thorn had possibly ended it. He wasn’t sure if Spike had done enough to qualify for redemption, but he seriously doubted it, and it worried him that the Powers might decide he was unworthy of either resurrection or forgiveness and abandon him to a hell dimension. Although he had taken it for granted at the time, an irrelevance amidst so much turmoil, he had a clear memory of Spike’s anxious face, someone who had never had a family of his own, suddenly finding himself responsible for Angel’s; taking on the burden of them without any hesitation, letting Wesley make decisions while Spike watched from the sidelines, willing to put his body between a possibly evil Angel and theirs, because they were human and he was a vampire. He wondered, honestly, how souled vampires saw it – as their responsibility as stronger creatures to protect the weak, or an act of penance from the ones who had once fed on them, their lives worth less than that of the humans because the humans were less steeped in blood. He wondered if they even knew themselves.

 

As he wasn’t strictly sane any more he wondered why he couldn’t just tell himself that Fred was with Cordelia. Embrace a fantasy in which Illyria had been painlessly destroyed and Fred’s soul restored and she was happy with Cordelia in some heaven for people who had strived and struggled to do what was right at great personal cost and been rewarded in the end. He wished he could tell himself that in words that carried some conviction. But the comforting lies just washed over him like rain, and when they melted away his beliefs remained unchanged. The very best that he could hope for was that Fred was in limbo somewhere, lost and irretrievable until Illyria was gone, and he could never wish Illyria gone because she was all that remained of Fred.

 

It didn’t seem fair that with all of this mist and confusion that there should be this resolute realism too. He wanted to be lied to again. He wanted someone to tell him that all his friends were happy in the afterlife of their choosing and something lay ahead of him and Gunn except more pain and death.

 

“Sorry, Wes, no can do.”

 

He turned over in shock to find Angel sitting on the bed next to him. “Angel…?” He gaped at him in astonishment. “I thought you were…?”

 

That slow smile, like ice water melting down his spine, the surprise and relief turning to a trickle of unease. “Off on some noble mission to help the poor, oppressed and stupid? Uh…no, Wes, that was just your crushy little fanboy fantasy. I’m the morning after – the chill reality. We both know my name, and it isn’t ‘Angel’.”

 

Mixed in with the fear was a healthy dose of disbelief. “So, I’m supposed to believe that – next to Buffy – the thing most likely to give Angel perfect happiness is being set upon by thousands of demonic apocalyptic warriors in a back alley in downtown Los Angeles?”

 

Angelus leaned in close. “You always did get snippy when you were feeling defensive. And think about it for a minute… Think about what it means to wake up every morning with all those crimes in your mind that you can’t ever undo, but you haven’t earned the right to stop yet, you can’t stop trying to make amends because of all the terrible things you did – it’s not your call when the helping the helpless stops, even though you know it’s pointless, even though you know for every one you save a thousand others died, even though you know you killed too many to ever really atone. What are you really waiting for? A sign from on high that you’re forgiven? Well, the last two ones of those turned out to be lies. Or a stop sign you’re not allowed to ignore? What are all warriors of the people really fighting for except the right to get off the damned train?”

 

“If you think Angel welcomed you, that he ever wanted to give up his responsibilities and leave the path clear for you – you’re wrong.”

 

“And you’re stupid, Wes. Always have been – the kind of stupid that only really smart guys are. You think Buffy took a swallow dive to oblivion out of duty? She did it to get a rest.”

 

“It was an act of love,” Wesley told him tersely. “Something you can’t understand because you’re incapable of love.”

 

“Being incapable of it doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. I’ve been using love for centuries. It’s the best weapon of all – Holtz should have taught you that. There’s no pain without love – no point in arranging a man’s murdered children as if they’re just sleeping in their beds if you don’t know how much more it’s going to hurt him when he realizes they’re dead. That wail of anguish from the sole survivor of a massacre – that’s all about love; using it to make the game more fun. Like the way Angel used your love for him to make it hurt so much worse when he pretended he was going to forgive you before he tried to smother the life out of your scrawny throat-slit little body.”

 

That memory had kept all its clarity; fresh as a knife blade across skin; the screaming, the pillow, the breath that wasn’t coming while all that hatred and spittle and absolute rejection was rained down upon him. He tried to keep his concentration, not letting Angelus derail him from what was important – which was that Angelus could not exist. “I don’t believe that Angel wanted an end to his life so greatly that the act of his death would be enough to release you.”

 

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong. And the Senior Partners don’t have a problem with me. I’m the guy they’ve been waiting for all this time. As the sword came for Angel’s neck, he damned near came thinking about it, an end to all of it, finally getting away from all the whiny little humans demanding that he be their champion. And there I was, and the Senior Partners froze time, pulled me out of it, then sent their hordes back to hell. Think about it. They sucked Angel into their machinery – with a little help from his friends, right, Wes? – and then they set about corrupting him. But you don’t corrupt a champion with fast cars and necro-tempered glass. You corrupt him with a nice shiny battle and a nice shiny cause. You lure him in and you let him play out his own treachery, and then you give him what he’s always wanted – a hero’s death. Then you’ve got him just where you always wanted him. I’m a mercenary for the higher powers all right these days, Wesley, but the higher powers I work for run Wolfram & Hart.”

 

“I don’t believe you!” Wesley tried to push him away and Angelus caught his wrist and twisted it hard enough to make him gasp, feeling the bone grate under his fingers.

 

“Be quiet or I’ll snap your wrist like a twig.”

 

“You’re lying.” Wesley gazed at the face that was so like Angel’s and yet so unlike it at the same time. All that mockery and cruelty where on Angel’s face there had been compassion and decency. “You don’t exist. You’re just a delusion. You’re just a handful of my doubts made imaginary flesh.”

 

Angelus transferred his grip to Wesley’s throat and slammed him back against the bed head. “Hush, you’ll wake Gunn. And for imaginary flesh, don’t you think I’m kind of…corporeal?” He tightened his grip, making Wesley gasp. “Of course, this could just be a memory of how it feels to be grabbed by the throat by your noble champion and choked half to death, because, let’s face it, he did that to you a few times. Smacked you around a few times, too, didn’t he? And you just took it. The way you always do. Let your father wipe his feet on you for years, dressing up ritual humiliation as lessons you needed to learn; let the boys at school do it; let Buffy do it, let Giles do it. You had to go crazy to grow even half a backbone. How pathetic is that?”

 

“You’re not real…” Wesley managed breathlessly.

 

“That stunt you pulled with the Orpheus – you and my little Faith – that was a big mistake. Faith was meant to be mine. Buffy was fine for the sappy souled version of me but when you’re soulless you need a queen worthy, and a psychopathic Slayer would have been just the ticket. She had such a gift for darkness – so much imagination when it came to inflicting pain – well, you remember. But, no, you had to screw that up, the two of you and your nauseating little mission to put the genie back in the box you opened.”

 

“Bottle…” Wesley gasped. “Genies live in bottles. Pandora’s box did not contain any djinns.”

 

Angelus squeezed his throat harder. “You feeling it now, Wes? All the air you’re not getting – the blackness spreading from that white supernova in front of your eyes? Don’t you think it’s time we talked about my plans for you? I know you’ve wondered. The things I would have done to you – amazing things. Acts of such depravity they’d make the imagination soar and splinter into a thousand pinpoints of pain. We could have taken our time, a slow build up to the inevitable climax because, let’s face it, Wes, madness has always been your true north; it was always just a case of getting the compass needle to spin that way. And you’re dangerous when you’re insane even with a soul – ask that junkie you stabbed, that guy you kneecapped, the one you shot or – hey, we could just ask Gunn.”

 

The blackness had almost overwhelmed him when Angelus released his fingers enough to let him breath, keeping his hand in place but letting him snatch in the desperate gulps of oxygen he needed.

 

“You could have been my masterwork, Wes,” Angelus said in mock regret. “Instead of the washed up failure you turned out to be. And as for all that mooning over Fred – you want to know why she thought she loved you? Because she had no clue who you really were, that’s why. If she’d remembered that you took Connor she wouldn’t have touched you with the long end of a dirty pole, and that was a great way you chose to commemorate her death – acting like even more of a psychopath than usual. Way to honour her memory. What was stabbing Gunn really about anyway? Pissed with him because he got to pork her and you never did?”

 

Still gasping for air, he pushed Angelus’ wrist away. “Get away from me.”

 

“Sure you don’t wanna fuck? I mean – I’ve come such a long way. And it would make a change from making out with the corpse of your dead girlfriend – for both of us.”

 

“Leave me alone.” His heart was still hammering in his chest. “You’re not him and you’re not here.” He scrambled off the bed and began to back up towards the door.

 

“I was always with you, Wes. Fred walked with heroes every day and Angel walked with me. There was never that much of a difference between us.” Angelus looked down at the sleeping Gunn. “He could die so easily, couldn’t he? One snap of the neck, a sword, a gun, a stray bullet meant for someone else – Willow could tell you about that. A thousand ways that he could leave you like the rest of them did and there wouldn’t be anything you could do to stop it. Supposing he isn’t already dead, which, let’s face it, is the most likely scenario here…”

 

Wesley realized that he had let Angelus get between him and Gunn and didn’t know whether to try to lure the vampire away or attempt to get back to the bed. Angelus settled matters by standing up, smiling at him mockingly. “He did fuck you, by the way, in case you were wondering. He was too high on Jasmine at the time to know just how sick to his stomach that was going to make him feel when he was himself again. Because – trust me – it makes him want to vomit when he thinks about it now. But then you were never very good in bed with anyone who wasn’t evil, were you? No wonder Fred never wanted you the way Illyria did. You really should have let her – we both know you’d have liked it. Necrophilia’s always been your thing. That’s why you should just come back with me.”

 

Yanking open the door, Wesley backed out into the sitting room, Angelus following him with that hateful, mocking smile on his face.

 

“Come on, Wes. Let me set you free. Come and be my masterwork in hell. Let Lilah hear you scream – you know how she always enjoyed that.”

 

“Stay away from her.” Wesley backed up another pace.

 

“Don’t worry. She likes the things we do. You’d like it too. Just give into all that suppurating darkness inside yourself – embrace it – all that cruelty and self-hatred and glittering insanity. Come and scream and bleed and let me tear you into all the pieces you think you deserve to be; let me scatter you like rice at a wedding because Cordelia and Fred and Angel were champions and heroes and they’re lost forever while you were always nothing. Come and be with the other person in the world who knows you don’t deserve to be alive.”

 

“Get away from me.” Wesley tripped over something and fell down heavily. He had always stood up to Angelus in the past but this time he felt as if the grief was overwhelming, robbing him of all his defiance.

 

“Wesley…?”

 

He twisted around in shock to find Giles in his pyjamas, looking down at him anxiously from his place on the sofa.

 

“Please, make him leave,” he breathed.

 

“Make who leave, Wesley?” Giles asked, quite gently.

 

“Angelus.” Wesley gazed up at the vampire, who blew him a mocking kiss.

 

“I can’t see him. You’ll have to tell me where he is.”

 

“Don’t forget to tell Giles that I sent hugs,” Angelus added.

 

Wesley pointed at the vampire. “He’s right there.”

 

Giles sat up, reaching into the bag by his bed, took out a bottle of holy water and threw it at Angelus. It passed straight through him and the open doorway and smashed against the bed as Angelus vanished into thin air – just as Gunn jolted into wakefulness, shouting, “The hell…?”

 

“Just stay where you are,” Giles told him calmly. “I’ll come and clear up the glass in a minute.” He took Wesley’s arm and sat him down on the sofa. “Sit there and as soon as I’ve picked up the glass I’ll get us both a cup of tea – or perhaps a stiff drink.”

 

“Did you see him?” Wesley asked desperately.

 

“No, Wesley.” Giles squeezed his shoulder. “I didn’t see him.”

 

Willow came out of her room, blearily rubbing her eyes. “I heard shouting and crashing.”

 

“Wesley had a bad dream.” Giles gazed into his eyes and Wesley was surprised by how kind they seemed. Giles never looked quite the way he remembered him being whenever he got him in focus.

 

“Am I insane?” Wesley breathed.

 

There was an awkward pause before Giles found his voice again: “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I think you may be having some kind of…breakdown brought on by the shock of being brought back from the dead and grief at having lost your friends. But I don’t think you’re actually insane.”

 

“I could be dangerous.” He looked down at his hands. “When I have breakdowns I usually hurt people.”

 

Gunn limped out into the room, blood running from one foot; as if to prove that an insane Wesley had the power to lacerate him even from a distance.

 

“I told you to stay where you were,” Giles said in exasperation.

 

“Yeah, like that was going to happen.” Gunn crouched down next to Wesley. “What happened?”

 

“Angelus was here.”

 

“No, he wasn’t, cause – I would have noticed. You just had a bad dream.” Gunn squeezed Wesley’s shoulder gently. “A really bad dream.”

 

“He said you could die in so many ways and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

 

Gunn leaned forward and touched his head against Wesley’s so they could both feel the warmth of the other man’s skin. “I’m not dead and neither are you. And Angelus wasn’t here and, wherever he is right now, Angel isn’t Angelus. He could be a pile of dust or he could be on a mission for the Powers, but I will guarantee you he isn’t Angelus. But you’ve got to stop making everything about Angel – that’s not what our lives are about now.”

 

Wesley looked down at his wrist, the one Angelus had grabbed that had hurt so much while he was twisting it, upon which there was no sign of a bruise. “I’m obviously delusional. I could be dangerous.”

 

“You’re not dangerous.” Gunn’s breath tickled his face. “You’re just confused and really, really unhappy. But things are going to get better.”

 

“That’s what I told Cordelia.” Even though he was probably either dead or insane and Gunn was probably a hallucination, Wesley leant into the comforting warmth of him. “It was a lie then, too.”

 

In the background he could hear the tinkle of glass as Giles swept the remnants of the bottle of holy water into the dustpan. Willow sat on the arm of the sofa and patted Wesley gently on the back. He could feel her fingers touching him and he could feel Gunn’s breath against his cheek, his arm around him. If he listened very hard he could probably hear his heartbeat too. And they all sounded and felt and smelt exactly as real as Angelus had been when he had been sitting a foot from him on the bed with his fingers wrapped around his throat.

 

***

 

Wedged into the corner of his sofabed by the sleeping bodies of his three companions, Giles sighed and hoped he would eventually get some feeling back in his left arm. It was clear that the friendly hallucinations with which Wesley had been saying goodbye to his past life had turned against him with a vengeance tonight. He imagined that there were very few people on the planet that disliked Wesley enough to unleash a soulless sadist like Angelus upon him, but unfortunately, Wesley was apparently one of them.

 

He had given Wesley a sedative and a dash of very good scotch, but the man hadn’t wanted to go back to his room, which was why Giles was now having to sit upright at three in the morning while Gunn snored gently next to him, and Wesley slept with his head on Gunn’s chest and Willow’s head on Wesley’s shoulder, her fingers intertwined with his. Giles was glad that they could sleep in such uncomfortable positions but there was no possible chance of him being able to doze off like this.

 

Before Gunn drifted off to sleep, Giles had managed a brief conversation with him. The sedative had kicked in and Wesley had already been asleep, while Willow had drifted off halfway through a drowsy assurance to them both that everything would look better in the morning. Gunn looked down at his bandaged foot. “Why did you throw a bottle of holy water at a hallucination anyway?”

 

“I presume Wesley’s hallucinations have to conform to some kind of internal logic and it needed to be something that would get rid of a vampire.  I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’d say that on top of the trauma of being brought back from the dead, and the grief of having lost so many people that mattered to him, Wesley has a really bad case of survivor guilt.”

 

Gunn gently stroked Wesley’s hair. “You know, he used to be a pretty well-adjusted guy. This isn’t who he is. This is just… He’s not this guy.”

 

“Well, his capacity for self-loathing seems unchanged.”

 

“Wes could always beat himself up better than anyone else. But wishing Angelus on himself – that’s all kinds of fucked up.”

 

“You don’t need me to tell you how serious a development this is. If in Wesley’s mind his…delusions can talk to him and touch him and one of his delusions is now a soulless serial killer with an infinite capacity for sadistic and inventive cruelty Wesley is in serious danger.”

 

Gunn rested his head on the back of the sofabed. “I know. That shaman guy got Angel to lose his soul by putting a lot of pictures in his head that seemed real to him. The images weren’t real but Angel lost his soul for real in the real world. If Wesley thinks he can’t breathe because Angelus is choking him again, he’s still going to wake up dead…”

 

Now, as Gunn snored quietly beside him, Giles thought of Jenny lying on the bed with her neck broken; Buffy missing after the trauma of her battle with Angelus. He almost wished Angelus had been real, as staking him was looking pretty good right now. His To Do list seemed to be getting longer and longer. He was still focused on finding Alicia’s murder or murderers but he also needed to know what magic was being formulated that left no traceable impression and was of such power it could withstand even the most reliable spells; there was the small matter of trying to save any other witches who might be out there and in danger; investigating what he suspected was an area of mystical convergence under that bookshop in Knaresborough, and preventing Wesley’s delusions from torturing or killing him.

 

He looked at the whisky bottle and his glass with that faint remaining wash of amber stickiness, but as he was meant to be keeping a clear head rather than drowning his sorrows, he supposed he should resist its lure. Sighing, he snagged the nearest book within reach instead. It was the rather revolting old volume that Wesley had bought in the bookshop, and he turned the pages gingerly. It was badly foxed and smelt musty, and there was something singularly unpleasant about the cracked hide in which it had been bound. He suspected it was pigskin but his fingers prickled with distaste when they touched it. There were several places with blank paper, half a page or a whole page, or in one case a whole chapter – a printing fault presumably, which might have made the book unique or valuable if it had not been in such deplorable condition. Of the spells that remained, they were all dark magic of the nastiest kind and involving the sacrifice of live animals, but none involved the blood of witches, and he could find no real reason for Wesley’s fascination with it.

 

He did wish he could remember what the options had been when he had taken his lessons with Mrs Taschen all those years ago. Now he thought about it, he remembered having to sit with Crispin Huxley during those lessons, who was of the same priggish nature as Wesley had evidently been in his young day, and who had kept his work covered with a defensive elbow the entire time, in case Giles had tried to copy it. That was because Ben Parslow had been taking another class. There had been some folderol associated with it. Ben hadn’t been able to attend a couple of other classes that came up in later years as well and Giles had always missed him – especially when it meant he had to sit next to prats like Crispin. The Academy had been like that, though, riven with secrets and cliques; the teachers much more interested in fostering rivalry than amity; half the time Giles had thought the specialsekrit classes had no purpose other than to incite paranoia in the ones who didn’t attend. The whole world had been intensely competitive, claustrophobic and divorced from the realities of the outside world. He had never known so many socially maladjusted virgins or such a number of pushy demanding parents, always wanting to sign up their hapless offspring for more and yet more classes. Those students that weren’t orphans, of course. Sons of Watchers were often orphans. Giles, like Wesley, after him, had been fortunate in having two living parents. Although perhaps ‘fortunate’ was not the word in Wesley’s case.

 

“Giles…?”

 

He turned his head and found Wesley gazing at him blearily.

 

“You’re supposed to be asleep,” Giles told him, not unkindly.

 

“I don’t like my dreams.”

 

“Just…think happy thoughts, Wesley, there’s a good chap.”

 

“Every woman I’ve ever loved is dead, Giles. The happy thoughts are in slightly short supply.”

 

That did at least sound more like Wesley. Giles reached out for the whisky bottle, undid the top and handed it over wordlessly. Wesley took it from him, and drank deeply before nodding his thanks. “Thank you.”

 

“Do you want to see a psychiatrist?”

 

Wesley looked indescribably weary. “I think any psychiatrist worth his salt would commit me, don’t you?”

 

“I rather think he or she would.” Giles tried to see the man he had known so briefly in this wrecked remnant. “Wesley, do you understand that Angelus wasn’t really here?”

 

“Yes.” Seeing Giles’ surprise, Wesley shrugged. “If Angelus had really been here, he would have killed Gunn. I would have woken up next to his cooling corpse. That’s his way.”

 

Again, Giles remembered Jenny’s open stare. No one should be that beautiful in death. “Yes, it is. His way – I mean. Do you still think you may be in hell?”

 

“I have no idea where I am.” Wesley took another swig from the whisky bottle. “If I try to remember something it becomes real, all the possibilities, the fantasies, they solidify in my memory. I don’t seem to have any facility for separating my real past or present from all possible pasts or presents any more. I wanted Cordelia to come and visit me so much after I…took Connor that I have a memory of her doing so. There is only one part of my mind still capable of telling me that she never did, and I think it’s fading…” He glanced up at Giles. “I imagine I’m rather trying to live with at the moment?”

 

Giles half-smiled. “Just a little, yes.”

 

Wesley smirked. “No change there, then.”

 

“I want to help,” Giles told him gently. “I just don’t know how.”

 

“Well, either I’m dead, and none of you are real anyway, in which case I imagine your usefulness is limited, or I’m seriously mentally disturbed in which case…I don’t know what to do. I’m so tired, Giles.”

 

“I know.” He reached across Gunn to pat Wesley’s shoulder. “I do understand that this must be very confusing for you, but I don’t think you’re going to get better until you forgive yourself.”

 

“For what?”

 

Giles thought again how appalling he looked with those coal black shadows under his eyes. “I don’t know what you think you need to be punished for. Taking Connor, perhaps.”

 

“I’m over that.” Wesley took another swig of whisky.

 

“Are you really?” Giles gazed at him levelly. “Or do you think it’s your fault that you all ended up in Wolfram & Hart? Or are you afraid that if you stop blaming yourself you may have to start blaming Angel? He chose Connor over the rest of you. Chose the child who betrayed him and would have betrayed the world over those of you who loved him and believed in him. You shed your blood for him and in the end, what did he do for any of you?”

 

“He gave us purpose and direction and a family and a life we would never have had without him.” For once, Wesley didn’t sound defensive. He was gazing at the cracked glass of the picture on the wall. “He didn’t owe us anything. And we were supposed to help the helpless – that included Connor. He was a very damaged boy.”

 

“Thanks to you?”

 

“Yes,” Wesley answered unflinchingly. “Thanks to me.”

 

“Do you blame Cordelia for believing in Skip? For letting him demonize her in the first place? For ascending and letting Jasmine take over her body?”

 

“No. I’ve never blamed her. I told her it wasn’t her fault – I hope she believed me. She couldn’t have known. How could she have known? She was trying to do the right thing.”

 

“So were you.” Giles leaned forward. “Wesley, if you don’t forgive yourself for whatever part you think you played in recent events, I think you’re going to end up in a padded cell or as a nasty stain on the pavement. Angelus can’t come back unless you issue an invitation. Don’t invite him in. Find another way to say goodbye to the people you love that doesn’t involve punishing yourself for real or imaginary errors of judgement and move on. Come back to the real world. Quite apart from the fact that you would be very useful to Willow and me, I think Gunn really needs you.”

 

Wesley handed back the bottle. “I don’t know how – to get back. Is there some kind of map? There don’t seem to be any directions from where I am. Half the people I talk to every day aren’t there and I don’t know which ones are which and I’m so tired of…feeling like this.”

 

Giles took the bottle from him. “You have to give it time, Wesley. I know it’s a maddening cliché, but it’s also the truth. You’ve been leading a ridiculously stressful life for years now, and have lost three friends in the space of a few months – you were probably due a breakdown even without being brought back from the dead.”

 

“Six friends.” Wesley was already looking at the whisky bottle as if it might hold the answer to all his problems. “We lost Illyria, Lorne, and Spike as well as Fred, Cordelia, and Angel.”

 

“I don’t think Lorne’s dead. Willow saw much of what happened and she said he walked out of his assignment alive. He just needed some time by himself to recover. And after what Illyria did to Fred I wouldn’t have thought you would have cared if…”

 

“It wasn’t her fault.” Wesley looked so exhausted that even talking seemed to require a great effort. “She infected Fred without malice. It was just her means of coming back to life. She was learning new things – getting to grip with her feelings. And at the end, she showed me human compassion. I miss her as a complete and separate entity from Fred. I miss them in very different ways and with very different levels of intensity, but I do miss them both.”

 

“And Spike?” Giles demanded in disbelief.

 

Wesley half-smiled. “He was kind to us, and he gave up a chance to be corporeal to save Fred. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And when he thought Angel had lost his soul he put himself between what he believed to be Angelus and the rest of us. I hope he died a hero and found some reward or else was saved. He didn’t deserve to be dust.”

 

“You have so much compassion for everyone but yourself, Wesley,” Giles said wearily.

 

“Actually, I don’t.” Wesley seemed almost amused by the idea. “I’m not a particularly compassionate man. But I believe in justice. Spike was fighting a fight that didn’t threaten him, when he could have walked away unscathed, just because he thought it was the right thing to do. That ought to count for something.”

 

Giles twisted around in his place on the sofa, having to wriggle his arm out from under Gunn’s weight to do so. He poured himself a glass of whisky and drank it down, needing that familiar fiery burn on his tongue. “And what about you? How many times could you have walked away? The Council fired you. You had no further obligation to the cause, but you went on fighting demons anyway. Angel fired you, and you still kept trying to save others at great personal risk to yourself. Angel cast you out and you saved him and kept fighting the good fight. You’re allowed to make a mistake. Everyone is entitled to do that. You didn’t act cruelly or unjustly or to line your own pockets or to gain power for yourself. You did something you believed to be right and the consequences were…disastrous. Well, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Angel walked into a dark alley with a pretty woman and he walked out of it a monster, but he was still entitled to forgiveness. When he lost his soul and killed…killed Jenny, it wasn’t his fault, and he was entitled to forgiveness. So are you. Find a way to forgive yourself. There are people who need you to be sane again and I don’t think that’s going to happen until you acknowledge your right to…fuck up.”

 

Wesley gazed at him wearily. “Have you forgiven yourself for your mistakes? Has Willow forgiven herself for hers?”

 

Somewhat exasperated, Giles said: “Well, we’re not talking to dead people, Wesley, so I think that puts us at least one up on you.”

 

To his surprise, Wesley smiled and reached across him for the whisky bottle. He clanked it against Giles’s glass with a smirk. “Touché…”

 

***

Comments

[emeraldteal.livejournal.com]

past had lot a great deal of its clarity. It was difficult for him to differentiate between events that had occurred and dreams that he’d had.

Poor Wes. If I were in his shoes I wouldn't know how to act either.

Wes being able to imagine Gunn & Fred, and a possible threesome. *sigh* Now I have the urge to find Wes/Gunn/Fred fic :P

Wesley had always understood that about her, because being touched was still a novelty to him, too.

Sweet and sad.

That slow smile, like ice water melting down his spine, the surprise and relief turning to a trickle of unease. “Off on some noble mission to help the poor, oppressed and stupid? Uh…no, Wes, that was just your crushy little fanboy fantasy. I’m the morning after – the chill reality. We both know my name, and it isn’t ‘Angel’.”

Ah... enter Angelus! I love how you write him - the morning after, LOL!! I couldn't agree more :P

And that was very kind of Giles to throw the holy water. I felt so badly for Wes when he looked at his wrist and saw no marks there. My poor woobie.