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Childish Things, Part Six

It was strange to be researching with Wesley again. Giles had surreptitiously piled a couple of cushions onto a chair so the boy could sit up to the table, and kept an eye on him to make sure the books weren’t too heavy for him to manage. Wesley looked very small to be dealing with some of the larger leatherbound volumes, having to use both hands to open them on more than one occasion, but his brain did not appear to have turned to ‘mush’ as he had phrased it, and he was an odd sort of child-adult mixture at present that made for surprisingly restful company.

 

He still seemed to have retained his academic knowledge of demons but had reverted to a child’s anxieties, making him extremely polite, quiet, and well-behaved. As a childless Englishman, Giles had to admit that he was all for children being all of those things, but as the hours ticked past and Wesley was so absolutely no trouble at all it did begin to worry him slightly.

 

“Can I get you anything, Wesley?” he asked. “A…coke? Something to eat?”

 

“I still have some left, thank you.” Wesley pointed to the Jaffa cake which he had only half eaten that was still sitting on its plate on the coffee table by the couch along with Wesley’s half drunk cup of tea.

 

“Do you want your tea up here?” Giles pressed.

 

Wesley gave him a shocked look and automatically put his hands behind his back. “Not near the books.”

 

Giles looked at the way he had clenched his right hand protectively over his knuckles and had a sudden unpleasant jolt of realization about the kind of punishment Wesley’s father had probably doled out for spillages. “Accidents happen, you know, Wesley, to everyone.”

 

“That’s why one should never have any food or drink near the books. Because little boys are too stupid and clumsy to be safe around them.”

 

Giles had never much liked Roger Wyndam-Pryce, he was too much of a cold fish to engender affection in anyone, he had always thought, except for his nearest and dearest. Now he found himself moving from indifference to positive dislike. “Shall we take a break? I’d like another cup of tea myself.”

 

He was torn between leaving the man Wesley had been his natural dignity and helping the small boy he had become to get down from his cushion-piled chair, eventually opting for the latter, murmuring, “Let me help you with that…” Lifting Wesley shocked him, as the boy seemed to weigh nothing at all. He didn’t know if all small children were as thin as Wesley was or if he was unusual but he sympathized a little more with Xander’s neurotic force-feeding regime.

 

He made more tea, throwing away Wesley’s half drunk cup and making him a fresh one, while Wesley used the bathroom again. Giles could hear him conscientiously washing his hands, something he had done after handling his Jaffa cakes and before he touched the books as well. Normally he would have been happy to have a little boy around who was so sensitive to the protection of his books but he didn’t like the way he suspected this lesson had been learned. Try as he might to tell himself that this was the adult Wesley showing an adult’s care for something valuable and useful, he felt instinctively this had a lot more to do with young Wesley’s childhood conditioning by someone who seemed to have been as fast to criticize as he was slow to praise.

 

“You were Head Boy, weren’t you, Wesley?” Giles handed him his tea as he sat down beside him on the couch, Wesley’s shoes not at any point touching the soft furnishings despite having been very carefully wiped on the mat on entering Giles’s house. “At the Academy?”

 

“Yes.” Wesley briefly lit up at the realization that Giles knew.

 

“At seventeen? That’s quite something.”

 

“It was a lot of work,” Wesley admitted.

 

“Your father must have been proud?” Giles watched him carefully.

 

Wesley looked at his feet. “He never mentioned it if he was. I expect he would have mentioned how disappointed he was fast enough if I hadn’t managed it though.”

 

For the first time Giles wondered how Wesley’s father had reacted to his being fired by the Council. Not well, he suspected. “When you left Sunnydale did your father…?”

 

Wesley looked at up him and although it was a little boy’s face, his eyes looked old. “He told me I’d made him a laughing stock and not to bother coming home.”

 

Giles picked his words carefully. “Working for Angel… for a vampire…? It’s not just a way of getting back at your father, is it?”

 

Wesley looked surprised at the question. “No. At least, I don’t think so. No, I think it’s… It just feels like the right thing to do. The best way to do good. And that’s all we’re for, isn’t it? People like you and me, with a hereditary calling, like Buffy and…Faith, and all the other Slayers that came before them and will come after them. We’re just here to do some good.”

 

“I still hope that Buffy can have a life one day. A life that isn’t just this.”

 

Wesley glanced up at him again. He seemed to need to gather his courage before talking to Giles, whereas he remembered the man he had been before being positively eager to venture an opinion, whether it was welcome or not. Giles had the unpleasant feeling that he might be reminding Wesley of his father. He wondered if he had reminded Wesley of him in the past, also, and if that was why he had been such an insufferable little shit – a way of getting at his father that hadn’t involved having to actually take on the wrath of Roger Wyndam-Pryce – or if Wesley’s reaction to him had been dictated by the total lack of cooperation or kindness he had received from Giles, Buffy and the others.

 

Wesley ventured tentatively: “And what about you? Do you think you might be able to have a life one day?”

 

“I don’t know. The one is dependent on the other. This is my life. Being Buffy’s Watcher. It’s what I do and who I am.” Giles held out the biscuit plate and smiled in a way he hoped was encouraging.

 

Although Wesley politely turned down the biscuit he did give him a tentative smile in return. “That’s how I feel about working for Angel. As if my life was just waiting to begin until I arrived in LA, and then it did.”

 

Giles sighed. “I know that devoting one’s life to the support of a young girl with a deplorable grasp of the English language who occasionally elevates frivolity in her calling to a new and dangerous level may seem a little unwise, but Buffy has at least always been on the side of the…”

 

“Angels?” Wesley smiled gently. “Angel wants to atone, Giles. Even though it was Angelus who did those things and not him, he wants to make up for what was done by the demon who stole his body. I would have liked to be a better Watcher to Buffy than I was. I would have liked to be some help to Faith before she ended up with those deaths on her conscience. But I didn’t manage to do that. I messed up.”

 

“I think we all messed up where Faith is concerned,” Giles began.

 

Wesley shook his head. “There was a moment where Angel could have reached her and I was the one who stopped that from happening.”

 

“The Council were the ones who gave you the orders, Wesley. You were raised to believe that the Council were as close to infallible as any earthly organization can be. You were young and it was your first job as a Watcher and you did what you were told. As great crimes go, that wasn’t one of them.” Giles felt a stab of guilt as he realized this must have been festering on Wesley’s conscience for all this time. They should certainly have talked about it before now, but he had been so angry with him at the time and then it would have seemed churlish to bring it up. He picked his words with care: “Whatever the outcome, your intentions were good, and if you made a mistake you were certainly made to pay for it. The Council fired you and Faith tortured you. I think that’s plenty of atonement for just doing your job. Now, drink your tea and let’s get back to our research.”

 

Wesley smiled. “You must be very eager for us to be restored. Poor Buffy. A house full of monstrous brats.”

 

“My fear is more that if the three of you stay children for too long that no one is going to want to change you back.” Giles admitted, taking Wesley’s teacup from him. “Willow and Tara are having far too much fun playing with their dress up Cordelia doll. Dawn is probably going to have to be bribed to give up Gunn at all, and you… well, you’re in serious danger of making me forget that I don’t actually like small children.”

 

Wesley looked genuinely amused as well as very surprised. “And you an Englishman and a Watcher?”

 

“Exactly.” Giles rose to his feet. “My world view is being challenged. We can’t have that.”

 

“Angel thinks he’s never going to be a father,” Wesley said sadly as he clambered back up onto his pile of cushions.

 

“Angel’s right.” Giles decided there was no point in beating around the bush. “The three of you being temporarily transformed is the nearest he’s ever going to get. Another reason why we should change you back quickly. I think it’s only going to make him melancholy for what might have been. Although it might be worth pointing out to him that he only knows Buffy at all because he was turned into a vampire two and a half centuries ago…”

 

“Two hundred and forty-seven years ago,” Wesley corrected. “He’s sensitive about his age.”

 

“My point is that if he had remained human he would be bones and dust by now and they would never have met. I'm not saying the hand Fate dealt him was a particularly kind one but it has enabled him to do things that the rest of us never will.”

 

“And things that the rest of us would never want to have done,” Wesley added.

 

Giles looked at him curiously. “You don’t see them as crimes Angel committed, do you? Just burdens he has to bear?”

 

“I think about it sometimes. What it would feel like to wake up from a long dream and realize that you’d killed hundreds of people; that you can hear them screaming in your mind even though you, the person you are now, would never have done that, couldn’t have done it.”

 

“Are you so sure that it’s that simple?” Giles asked gently. “That the darkness in Angelus isn’t also in Angel?”

 

Wesley looked up at him, those adult eyes in his thin little face very disconcerting. “I know that darkness is in Angel. He knows it too. That’s why he needs us. That’s why it’s important that we help him. Otherwise only the darkness wins.”

 

***

 

Angel had a headache. He was tempted to call it ‘Gunn’ as it seemed so appropriate. What was really bugging him the most about Gunn was that he was quite sure that the charging around and yelling, not to mention clambering on the furniture and kicking Angel accidentally on purpose every time he passed him, was something he could have switched off like that if Wesley had asked him to. He was being as naughty as he could possibly be partly because he was four years old and had been fed more sugar than an adult body was meant to hold, but also just because he could.

 

“Why don’t you just smother him?” Cordelia demanded. She held up a cushion. “Here you are. I’ll hold him down for you.”

 

Despite being very cross indeed, Cordelia was looking enchanting. She was wearing a dress of some kind of patchwork blue and green silk material with matching shoes, and her hair had been rebraided with glass beading in it in a style that looked very complicated and very pretty. The dress had a deliberately ragged edge and she looked not unlike a flower fairy. She was all huge brown eyes and unconscious preening every time she caught a glimpse of her reflection. Willow had mentioned her getting a little upset when she saw her old house but that seemed to have passed now. It probably helped that her annoyance at Gunn had drowned out almost every other emotion.

 

Angel said, “You have to remember that Gunn’s your little brother now.”

 

“I don’t want Gunn for a little brother!” she shouted. “I just want Wesley!”

 

“Were they like this…before?” Tara asked diffidently.

 

She was so shy it was difficult to get a word out of her, Angel found, although she was perfectly relaxed and happy when he saw her either alone with Willow or with the children. Only she and Angel sharing childminding duties had coaxed her out of her usual shyness into talking to him.

 

“No.” Angel picked Cordelia up and sat her down next to him on the couch, automatically offering her the jumbo sized packet of chips he’d been munching his way through on a reflex since Gunn had first started yelling at him. Even though the food didn’t satisfy him, didn’t even taste the way it was meant to, there was still something comforting about the simple act of eating it. “When they were adults, Wesley and Cordy used to fight like eight year olds, and so did Wesley and Gunn. Now that Wesley is an eight year old he acts like a grown up.” He took another handful of chips and offered the bag to Tara. “I'm never going to understand kids.”

 

“We didn’t fight all the time,” Cordelia protested, twisting around to grab some more chips.

 

“I remember a discussion about some brownies and a certain knife…”

 

“Oh, Wesley and his stupid old extinct demon knife! Saying my cooking was corrosive.”

 

Angel raised an eyebrow and looked across at Tara. “You see.”

 

Tara said gently, “Have you thought about… I just meant… If Giles can’t…”

 

“I'm trying not to,” Angel admitted.

 

“Because we’re such bratty little monsters?” Cordelia reached across to hit Gunn with a pillow as he ran past making what was presumably a fire engine noise, although Angel couldn’t be sure. It was loud anyway. “Or Gunn is anyway. Shut up, Gunn! Angel, you need to smack him!”

 

“I don’t believe in smacking small children.” Angel stuck out his leg and intercepted Gunn’s run, before grabbing him and hauling him up onto the sofa. He turned into vamp face and tried to look as scary as possible. “Eating them however…”

 

Gunn shrieked delightedly: “Angel’s a vampire! Angel’s a vampire!”

 

“And in other news, the continents drifted apart and marsupials died out in most of South America,” Xander observed, coming into the room. “Are you not keeping up on current events, Rugrat No.3? Wow, Cordy, cool threads. Willow and Tara have like totally…girly taste in clothes.”

 

Gunn was feeling Angel’s brow ridge curiously and tapping at his fangs. “You look really stupid and ugly like that,” he told him. “No one cool has yellow eyes.”

 

“No one cool is three foot six,” Angel retorted.

 

“What about Frodo?” Gunn countered. “He saved the whole of Middle Earth.”

 

“Oh, so you remember The Lord of the Rings, but you don’t remember your manners?”

 

“Do you mind?” Willow demanded of Xander. “Our taste in clothes is so much more than just…girly. It’s unique and extraordinary and oh so incredibly stylish.”

 

“They’re going to turn you into a hippy wicca, Cordy,” Angel reiterated, holding Gunn under the arms while he bounced excitedly on the arm of the couch. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He turned back to Tara, face changing back into his human countenance as he did so. “No, amazing as it must seem to anyone who has spent three minutes in the company of the Hellbrat here, I'm trying not to think about it in case I start wanting them to stay like this.”

 

Gunn abruptly stopped bouncing and Cordelia turned a shocked face on him, eyes huge and mouth open. Gunn stuck his thumb in his mouth and also gazed at Angel in surprise.

 

“I mean I love them, as adults,” Angel continued, not looking at them. “I really do. I miss having the adults to talk to. But this is the closest I'm ever going to get to having kids. And Wesley’s childhood sucked. Really, really sucked. It’s difficult not to think about how it would have been if I’d brought him up instead of his asshole of a father.”

 

Gunn took his thumb out of his mouth to look past Angel to Willow. “Angel said ‘asshole’, Willow. Tell him he can’t say that in front of us.”

 

“He would have turned out differently, Angel,” Willow said gently. “That’s the point, isn’t it? We’re what we are at least in part because of the way we were brought up. If you change Wesley’s childhood you make him someone else. Not the person you know. Not the person you love.”

 

“I'm telling Wesley that you love him,” Gunn told Angel.

 

Xander raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Wesley strikes me as the kind of kid who can’t hear that too often.”

 

Gunn glowered at Xander. “You’re no fun.”

 

“You are so wrong you are taking a wrong turning out of Wrongsville in a Wrongsmobile right now, young man,” Xander countered. “I am the most fun anyone can have in this town with their clothes on.”

 

“We’re little kids!” Gunn stamped his foot. “You can’t say things like that to us! You have to talk to us properly.”

 

“When they talk to you as if you’re little kids you complain that they’re not remembering that you’re adults,” Angel pointed out.

 

“I'm four!” Gunn shouted at him. “I don’t have to be consistent!”

 

Angel sighed and put Gunn down on the floor. “Cordelia, take your little brother away and…smother him.”

 

“He means with kindness,” Tara put her arms around Gunn hastily before Cordelia could obey. “Doesn’t he?”

 

Angel sighed under the force of Tara’s reproachful look. “Oh yes. I so do.”

 

Cordelia glared at Gunn. “You’re lucky I love you and have a mission to keep you safe from harm or I would so be beating your stupid noisy little head in with an axe right now.”

 

Gunn stuck his tongue out at her. “I bet you didn’t even remember to bring your weakass Ladysmith axe with you.”

 

“Maybe I didn’t, but at least it isn’t made out of an old hubcap…”

 

Angel rolled his eyes at Willow. “And these are the two that don’t usually fight. Cordy, try being as nice as you look. And, Gunn, try to be less of a brat.”

 

“Where’s Wesley?” Gunn demanded. “Why isn’t he here?”

 

Cordelia turned on Angel. ““Yes, he should be looking after Gunn, not me. He’s the eldest.”

 

“He’s trying to work out how to make you all big again,” Willow explained patiently. “Remember? He’s with Giles.”

 

“I want him here.” Gunn looked around plaintively. “Where’s Dawn?”

 

“You are such a spoilt cry-baby,” Cordelia told him fiercely. “You just want someone to fuss over you.”

 

“He’s only four, Cordy,” Willow reminded her gently. “Didn’t you want someone to fuss over you when you were four?”

 

“Cordy wants someone to fuss over her all the time,” Gunn muttered. “She never wants me or Wesley getting any attention.”

 

Tara picked Gunn up and placed him gently on her knee. “Are you tired, Charles?”

 

“Yes.” He laid his head sulkily against her chest. “Angel and Cordy suck. I want Wesley.”

 

“I do not suck!” Cordelia pinched him.

 

He hit her back. “You so do!”

 

“Children…” Angel growled ominously. “Stop fighting.”

 

“I want Wesley!” Gunn shouted at him. “You’re not in charge. He is. I'm only doing what Wesley says.”

 

“He’s eight years old,” Angel pointed out.

 

“I don’t care,” Gunn retorted. “I don’t take orders from people without a pulse.”

 

“I have a pulse,” Tara told him. “Listen.” She held his head gently against her heart and he listened to it beating in obvious fascination.

 

“You’re nice.” He snuggled in against her and began sucking his thumb.

 

“Spoilt little BabyGunn,” Cordelia muttered, clearly very unwilling to share Tara or Willow with anyone else.

 

Willow hastily lifted her onto her lap and straightened the folds of her dress. “What shall we do tomorrow, Cordy? Is there somewhere you’d like to go?”

 

“Can I come?” Gunn asked at once.

 

Cordelia made a face at him. “You won’t be able to keep up on your stupid little shortass legs.”

 

“Then someone can carry me,” he retorted.

 

“If he’s coming, Wesley has to come too,” Cordelia insisted. “Wesley was a Watcher. He likes doing boring responsible things, so he can look after Gunn. I have to be a free spirit.”

 

“We’ll ask him when he comes back,” Tara promised. “It would be nice to take the three of you out for the day.” She darted Willow an apologetic look but the witch only smiled tolerantly.

 

“Yes, it would.”

 

“That’s a new and different usage of the word ‘nice’,” Xander observed. “Tara, are you a secret masochist, because if so I think we should be told?”

 

“Why isn’t Wesley here?” Gunn wailed.

 

“Because he’s busy,” Angel told him. “Working hard while you goof off and watch cartoons. He’s also, I have to say, been very smart about getting himself the easy gig wrestling with research while the rest of us have to babysit you.”

 

Gunn sulkily kicked Angel on the knee. “I bet he misses me. I bet he’d like to come home now and watch cartoons with me.”

 

Angel rolled his eyes and grabbed another handful of potato chips. “I really wouldn’t bank on it,” he murmured. “I think he’s probably having a lot more fun right where he is...”

 

 

***

Comments

[peachlips.livejournal.com]

Angel sighed and put Gunn down on the floor. “Cordelia, take your little brother away and…smother him.”

“He means with kindness,” Tara put her arms around Gunn hastily before Cordelia could obey. “Doesn’t he?”


I love that. So cute and funny!