(no subject)
Oct. 16th, 2005 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Belonging, Part One
Buffy saw him first. He stood in the doorway, blinking nervously in the light, an attaché case in one hand and what looked like a cabin trunk behind him that he had evidently dragged all the way to the library. She had never seen anyone quite that impeccably dressed or with their hair that plastered into place who wasn’t…really, really old, but he didn’t look more than few years older than Xander, so was either working for a political candidate or a Mormon. He cleared his throat and when that still didn’t get him a response, essayed: “Is Mr Rupert Giles here?”
Ah, British. Probably not a Mormon then, or did they have Mormons in Britain, and if so, would they sound like this guy? Or would that be ‘chap’? Buffy suspected this person would definitely qualify as a ‘chap’.
Giles looked up from his conversation with Willow and saw the young man standing there. He took off his glasses. “Oh – you must be Wesley?” He caught Buffy’s eye: “The Council have sent Wesley for some…field experience and to be my assistant.”
A Watchery guy then, not a Mormony guy. That actually made more sense with the whole him asking for Giles and being British and wearing a stuffy suit thing.
A smile of sheer relief flickered across the young man’s face and he hurried forward to proffer a hand. “Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Mr Giles. Yes, the Council thought I might be useful. Did they tell you I was coming?”
“They didn’t give any details about when exactly you would be arriving. I’ve been on the phone half a day trying to get some facts out of them so I could meet you at the station. Unmet strangers can too often end up as….”
“Demon kibble,” Buffy helpfully supplied.
“Oh, perhaps I should have phoned from the bus station?” Wesley’s face fell. “I didn’t want to be a nuisance. The Council was very clear that I had to help you, not hinder you. Well, actually that was my father’s phrasing, I think theirs was slightly.…” Becoming aware of everyone looking at him, he blushed, cleared his throat and said, “So, anyway, I’m here now. Demon kibble…? Oh yes, the Hellmouth…I see.”
Buffy couldn’t decide if she most wanted to kick him or give him a cookie. She found herself poised midway between the two. The accent was…grating. She felt half-inclined to go throw a box of tea in the harbour just as a reaction. Of course, it wasn’t actually that different from Giles’s accent, but it wasn’t annoying when Giles did it, well, not most of the time anyway, and even if he was a tad on the stuffy side he was her stuffy Watcher. Come to think of it, this guy was actually Giles’ problem and on another day it might have been quite amusing to watch Giles having to deal with this Watcher Wannabe but not when he’d just lost Jenny and not when they were all in the middle of the psycho funfair that was Angelus’s killing spree.
“Let me get you a cup of tea, Wesley.” Giles pulled out a chair for him. “This is Buffy, Wesley – the Slayer. She can make the introductions.”
Buffy became aware that she was just gawping and quickly sprang forward to hold out a hand. “Yes, I’m Buffy Summers – the Slayer like Giles said.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You’re awfully young. I mean – we know that the Slayer is a teenage girl but somehow the reality is....”
“So are you,” she said pointedly.
He looked a bit affronted, began to draw himself up in the manner of a toad inflating itself to scare off a predator and then deflated, shoulders slumping. “I’ve graduated from the Watcher’s Academy – with honours, actually. But it was felt I needed some experience in the field.” He murmured the last as if he thought this was in some way a failing on his part.
Giles came back out with a cup of tea. “Glad to hear the Council are finally recognizing the need for field experience. The last thing I heard they seemed to think that a few trials in controlled conditions and a lot of written work was enough.”
Giles’ tone was a little brusque and although Wesley flinched from it automatically, Buffy’s sympathy was with Giles. After all he had been through with losing Jenny, the last thing he needed right now was some wet behind the ears eager beaver Junior Watcher sent over by the Council to ask him lots of questions and generally get on his already frayed nerves. It was incidentally the last thing she needed as well. She had caused the person she loved to turn from noble hero in search of redemption to the very thing he most loathed and despised, and who was capable of picking off all her friends one by one before killing her; the last thing she needed was an extra person around to have to bring up to speed on current events.
“I’m Willow.” Willow quickly thrust out a hand.
Wesley looked relieved at the sight of a friendly face. He hurriedly put down his tea, slopping it into the saucer as he did so, then smiled at her gratefully, took her hand and shook it. “Wesley – Wyndam-Pryce.”
“Can I just call you Wesley?”
“Of course.” He was so pathetically pleased to have someone be kind to him that it looked as if Willow was never going to get her hand back again. “Please do. I’d be honoured.”
He positively bloomed in the face of any kind attention. Buffy thought that was just plain weird. Didn’t they have normal people where he came from? (And yes, she could almost hear Cordelia squawking ‘Normal? You think any of you losers are normal?’ in disbelief.)
Xander cleared his throat and Wesley seemed to realize he was still touching Willow and snatched his hand away from her as if she were burning. Giles rolled his eyes and looked even more weary than a minute before. He was already wearing a ‘please don’t show me up in public’ expression but Buffy thought he was going to be out of luck there. Wesley was so obviously what Watchers looked like when just out of their boxes. He was practically still wearing his price tag.
“Xander Harris.” Xander held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Oh, you too.” Wesley had to juggle his attaché case, which he had evidently been in the process of opening, to grab Xander’s hand, and managed to scatter papers all over the floor in the process.
Buffy saw Angel’s face looking up at her and gasped, taking a step back. Willow followed her gaze and also gasped then hurried to help pick up the papers, narrowly missing hitting her head against Wesley’s as he flopped to his knees and hurried to try to scramble the documents back together.
Giles rolled his eyes again and then in a reaching-for-the-last-of-his-patience voice, said, “Let me help you with that, Wesley.” The folder clearly had the words ‘Angelus’ written on it and Giles regarded the younger man narrowly. “Is this why the council sent you? To report back on the Angel situation?”
Wesley looked up at him in confusion in between stuffing pages back into his briefcase. “I wrote a paper on Darla and Angelus for my finals. When they received your last reports they said you might be in need of some assistance at dealing with the current…situation and as I had the most theoretical knowledge about Angelus I was the best person for the job.”
Giles closed his eyes. “The situation is very…delicate, Wesley. It’s not just a case of knowing what Angel – Angelus did when and to whom, it’s a case of anticipating what he’s going to do next and his motives for doing so.”
Wesley sat back on his heels. “That’s why they thought I might be useful – because I’ve studied his patterns of behaviour in the past and have analysed his motives for each of his various killing sprees. For instance, the Valentine’s Day mutilations seem to me to be....”
“We know him,” Buffy said tautly. “Know Angel. Knew him, I mean. He’s not just an old file and lot of dates to us.”
“He was our friend,” Willow added.
Wesley looked shocked by that, mouth opening then closing for a moment in a goldfish-like fashion. “Oh, I see.... There was a reference in Mr Giles’ previous reports to him now having a soul and working for his redemption but we assumed back at the council that this was some kind of elaborate mind game he was playing. In the past he has taken a lot of pleasure in....”
“No,” Buffy said flatly. “He was good. He had a soul. Then he lost his soul because of me, because of....”
“Because of the nature of the curse that returned his soul to him in the first place,” Giles intervened quickly. “It was supposed to make him suffer, when it became a means for him to find happiness, a clause in the curse kicked in and took the soul from him again.”
Wesley looked as if he were having trouble processing that; Buffy thought idly that he should trying processing it when the person who had lost his soul was someone that he loved.
“This is a guy we liked,” Xander spelled it out for him. “Well, actually I never did, but Buffy liked him a lot and Willow and Giles – kind of liked him too.”
“I liked him more than Giles did,” Willow supplied helpfully. “But not as much as Buffy.” She darted Buffy a look full of sympathy and Wesley seemed to get it at last.
“Ahhh...” he said with a mixture of comprehension and regret. He looked across at Buffy and winced. “I probably don’t need to tell you that the Council are unlikely to have ever sanctioned a friendship between a Slayer and a Vampire.”
“He had a soul,” Buffy said tautly. “He was good. Until I....”
Wesley grimaced sympathetically. “Yes, very distressing, I can imagine.”
“I really don’t think you can,” Giles had a definite edge to his voice. “The point is that no one hates Angel – who Angel was when he had a soul – more than his soulless alter ego, Angelus, and he has targeted Buffy and the people around her for…retribution.”
Wesley blinked. “So, you’re saying that Angelus’ main object of vengeance is…his soulled self?”
Buffy also blinked. She hadn’t thought of it like that before. It had felt as if it was all about her. “I suppose.,..”
Wesley looked the way Willow did when she had just worked out something really complicated in a research problem. “Doesn’t that suggest that either the soulled version of Angel still has a consciousness trapped within the soulless one or that Angelus fears or at least believes that his soulled self might one day return? I mean – why carry out vengeance upon someone who effectively no longer exists?”
“Angel isn’t home any more,” Buffy said quietly. “There’s nothing of him left in the person he is now.”
Wesley picked up the folder he’d dropped and put it down on the table at which they had been researching, automatically taking the chair that had belonged to Giles. “Well then, it sounds as if there is a way to reverse it. We know there must be, in fact. Angelus was once a soulless killer entirely devoid of compassion or any glimmering of conscience and yet you say he became a warrior for good?”
Buffy sat down next to him. “He was cursed by gypsies. He had his soul returned to him.”
Wesley frowned. “You know there’s no record of this in the Council file on Angelus. It just says that the trail of bodies dried up. We assumed he was dead. Well, deader than he already was. Dust really.”
It was horrible after what he’d done that the thought of Angel as dust still made her flinch.
Wesley didn’t notice, too wrapped up in his shiny new theory. “Why would the gypsies give him back his soul? If they wanted to punish him, why didn’t they kill him?”
“They wanted him to suffer,” Giles said it so that Buffy wouldn’t have to and she was grateful for that. “Wanted him to remember everything he’d done while cursed with a conscience.”
“So, when he has a soul Angel remembers everything he did without one?”
Buffy nodded. “Everything.”
Wesley tapped Giles’ pencil pensively on the folder. “Then we know that if the situation was repeated, if the soul was returned to him, that the soulled Angel would remember everything the unsoulled Angelus had done, making every action committed by Angelus since he was essentially reborn as a soulless being for the second time something done so that Angel will remember it when he returns.”
“Returns…?” Buffy looked up at him in disbelief.
“There may be a record of the curse somewhere. I wonder if it could be filed under ‘folklore and superstitious rites’ in the Council library?”
Willow said, “You’re saying we could restore Angel?”
Wesley looked up at her in some surprise. “Well, wouldn’t that be the most effective cure for the current problem? It sounds as if the best gaoler of Angelus is Angel. He went from raping, murdering, maiming and torturing every poor creature that he met to ceasing to be a blip on the Council radar. Unless there is now a very effective twelve step program for sadistic vampires that I’m unaware of then he clearly must have been terminated or had a serious change of heart.”
Giles said tersely, “Wesley, you’ve been in this building for ten minutes. I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to see the big picture.”
Wesley flinched from the criticism and then darted a look up at Giles. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to be.... I didn’t mean to....”
“It’s okay,” Willow said hastily, patting his arm. She looked at Buffy. “Isn’t it?”
Buffy wanted to say ‘No, it isn’t and someone tell this bozo to shut up now’ but she didn’t have the heart in the face of Willow’s pleading expression. But it still felt like being stabbed by red hot needles every time she thought about Angel. About what he’d had been. His lips against hers, that look in his eyes.... She turned her head away so no one could see how much everything hurt.
“You’re saying, hey presto, someone waves a magic wand and Good Angel is back and we all kiss and make up and everything’s forgotten?” Xander demanded tersely. “He killed someone we care about.”
Wesley looked very deer in headlights. “I – um – I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that...” He snatched a breath. “The killing stopped, you see.” He gave Xander a pleading look. “And if you were arguing that Angelus would in someway be getting off lightly if we gave him back his soul, if the soulled version of himself is the person Angelus most dislikes, wouldn’t that be the worst punishment for him, to be trapped inside him once again, and it’s already clear that these gypsies – who were clearly very powerful people – felt that the worst punishment for Angel was to give him back his soul.”
“So, you’re saying we should do it because it’s the nastiest thing to do to a vampire?” Buffy demanded.
Wesley flinched from her tone but she wasn’t in the mood to care. “No, I’m saying that it seems to be the best way to stop people being killed while preserving someone who appears to be a potential warrior for good. I imagine a spell of that kind could also be performed at some distance from the subject and so the risk would be a little less than attempting to…stake Angelus, even supposing people who knew him as a…friend were emotionally and physically capable of doing that.”
Buffy looked at Wesley through narrowed eyes. “You know, you’re really starting to annoy me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, backing away rapidly.
“Buffy,” Giles reproved.
“Didn’t what he say make sense?” Willow pleaded, looking around for support and clearly missing the quiet stability of Oz. “I thought what he said made sense.”
“It made perfect sense,” Buffy retorted. “But it isn’t possible. It’s just a nice theory that would solve all our problems in one stroke and give us back.... Give me back... But it can’t be done. No one knows the curse.”
“Re-research…?” Wesley quavered tentatively. “Couldn’t we…research it…?”
“Research is good,” Willow said quickly. “I’m big with the research love.”
Giles looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. Wesley, why don’t I give you a lift home. We can talk about…research tomorrow.” His grim gaze suggested they would do no such thing but rather that he would give Wesley a sharp lecture in the drive home about butting out of things he only imperfectly understood. Wesley seemed to sense that himself, immediately looking all deer in front of a sixteen-wheeler. Willow gave Buffy a pleading look and then directed one at Giles who did look slightly less grim under the influence of Willow’s irresistible ‘please don’t be mean’ eyes. Buffy almost glowered at the redhead for her typically knee-jerk protective instinct towards the annoying geeky poor widdle Watcher boy whom Buffy could just tell was going to be irritating her beyond all bearing.
Wesley seemed aware of Buffy’s thoughts, gaze darting between Buffy and Giles anxiously. “I’ll go and wait outside then,” he said awkwardly, “so you can bring the car round.
Giles said, “Yes, do that, Wesley,” crisply, without looking up.
Wesley trailed out of the library, starting to drag his big heavy trunk.
“Leave your luggage!” Giles said sharply. “Xander and I will manage it.”
Wesley came back, picked up his attaché case, fumbled the lock closed, winced apologetically at everyone, and then hurried out.
As Buffy rolled her eyes, Willow said hastily, “He’s really not so bad.”
Xander looked accusingly at Giles: “Why do we have to carry his luggage?”
“Can you imagine how long it was going to take someone apparently fashioned entirely from pipe cleaners to haul that suitcase out of here?” Giles countered.
Xander conceded it with a shrug and then looked Giles up and down. “Who knew you were the butch version of Watcher?”
“I think he’s sweet,” Willow insisted doggedly as Giles glared at Xander. “And I think you’re all being very…judgementally and…just plain mean.”
“He is just plain annoying, Will,” Buffy pleaded. She did feel a slight pang of conscience but it really was very slight indeed. “He waltzes in here and starts telling us how to get Angel back before he’s even unpacked his bags. How annoying is that?”
“He was just trying to help.” Willow could be very stubborn in her protection of the underdog sometimes, perhaps through having been an underdog herself for so much of her life.
“I can’t believe there are others like Giles out there.” Xander shook his head. “That’s a truly scary thought.”
“Wesley isn’t like me,” Giles countered shortly.
Buffy looked up. “Giles, he’s like your own personal Mini-me.”
“I’ll have you know that just because some people of similar background may conform to a similar dress code and understand correct diction it does not make them all brothers under the skin.”
“What about under the stuffy suit?” Xander countered. “And the glasses? And the faint odour of Eau de Used Teabag?”
Buffy let the bickering wash over her. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault but Wesley had made her feel as if ants were walking over her skin. It had taken her this long to accept that Angel was gone and the only thing left now was a soulless monster who took pleasure in tormenting her and her friends, and then Wesley waltzed in and started suggesting re-ensouling Angelus as if it was only a case of digging around in a few books, tossing a few herbs about and hey presto! He was just so young, even Willow felt more grown up than he did, and she wasn’t in the mood for babysitting children from some library back in merrie olde Englande when they were here on the front line, on the Hellmouth, having to deal with death every day, their own and the prospect of losing people that they loved. She had died. She had drowned and her heart had stopped beating, and she had known what it was to love someone completely and know that they loved her completely, and she had lost him, and it was her fault; her fault Angel was Angelus and her fault Jenny was dead and Giles had that look in his eyes, and she felt so old and tired and sick of it all and she was only seventeen and it just wasn’t fair.
Willow cleared her throat. “Um…guys…?”
“And another thing, Xander, I’ll thank you to keep in mind when discussing my home country is....”
“Giles!”
For Willow that was actually quite sharp and Giles broke off mid-sentence in sheer surprise. “What is it, Willow?”
She nodded her head pointedly at the cabin trunk. “How long are you going to leave Wesley out there waiting for you to take him to his hotel?”
“He doesn’t have a hotel,” Giles said wearily. “The Council expect me to have him as a house guest as they don’t see the need to pay for his accommodation when I have a house I should of course be delighted to share with a colleague whose company I neither want nor need. I’ve had to give up my study and cram a bed in there.”
“Poor Wesley,” Willow said.
Giles looked hurt. “Because I’m such an ogre?”
“Because he’s a long way from home and he doesn’t know anyone and at least if he was in a hotel room he could just read a book or watch television or something but instead he’s going to have to tippy-toe around you while you grunt at him and make him nervous.”
“I do not ‘grunt’ and I resent – oh, never mind. Let’s just get him home and installed in my study with all my best books and my second best duvet.”
“You know I’d offer to suggest to Mom that we put him up for you,” Buffy observed, “except I don’t want him in my house either. Especially being all…British and eating marmalade and talking about the weather and…stuff.”
“And I’d suggest he came and slept at my place but I didn’t actually dislike the guy enough in our five minutes of interpersonal bonding to inflict my family on him.” Xander’s bright smile had a brittle quality that made Buffy wince inside.
“I’m not allowed boys in my room,” Willow explained. “Or I suppose men either. Even British ones, which would probably be safer on the whole because of....” She turned that into a cough.
Giles gave her a Look that suggested he was going to be waspish and snarky the whole time Wesley was staying with him. Buffy didn’t blame him. They were all feeling as if they had made mistakes at the moment. Giles had permitted a friendship between the Slayer under his care and a notoriously evil vampire and it had culminated in the death of the woman he loved. No doubt he had never been less in the mood for human memos from the Watchers’ Council saying ‘we told you so’.
Nevertheless, she thought she could at least make the effort to say ‘Good night’ to Wesley and remind him about carrying a stake in this town if he planned on going outside after dark; something that at least gave the impression she gave a damn. Xander and Giles carried Wesley’s suitcase between them while Willow murmured reassuring things to Giles about how he might actually like to have some company, especially some British company, and to just think of all the interesting conversations they could have about…cricket or whatever it was British people talked about when they weren’t talking about the weather or the Queen or drinking tea.
They opened the double doors and looked for a moment at the place outside them where they expected Wesley to be standing, and then over at Giles’s car in case Wesley had worked out that it had to belong to Giles – as no self-respecting American would be caught even dead driving anything that lame – but there was no sign of him. Or his briefcase. They stood in silence for a moment, looking around and then looking at each other, and then their expressions of surprise or irritation turned very quickly to anxiety and then Willow’s eyes widened and she said, “Oh no!”
In the same instant Giles said, “Good God, what was I thinking? I can’t believe I....”
Buffy suspected it was a shock to all of them to realize how off their game they were. Just how wrapped up in misery they had become; as if they were so busy wondering which of them Angelus was going to pick off next, trying to protect their houses, their loved ones, their lacerated hearts, that they had somehow forgotten they lived on a Hellmouth, and the High School was a place where vampires came after dark in search of easy pickings. She felt as if she might be about to throw up. “We practically gift-wrapped him for them.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Xander looked around wildly. “Maybe he.... Who am I kidding? What do we do?”
“We find him.” Buffy looked across at Giles. “We find him and we…deal with it.”
“Yes.” Giles looked rocked back on his heels and she could only try to imagine how he was feeling right now, someone entrusted to his care whom he had snapped at and then practically served up to the vampires. And she was the Slayer, she was supposed to protect people like Wesley from vamps, not send him off to play with them because she couldn’t deal with him being a jerk right now.
“Giles.” She put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go and…find him.” Their eyes met and she read in his gaze her own fear that what they found was most probably going to be a corpse. He nodded wordlessly and they headed in what they hoped was the right direction, Wesley’s abandoned cabin trunk the only proof that he had ever even been here.
***
Buffy saw him first. He stood in the doorway, blinking nervously in the light, an attaché case in one hand and what looked like a cabin trunk behind him that he had evidently dragged all the way to the library. She had never seen anyone quite that impeccably dressed or with their hair that plastered into place who wasn’t…really, really old, but he didn’t look more than few years older than Xander, so was either working for a political candidate or a Mormon. He cleared his throat and when that still didn’t get him a response, essayed: “Is Mr Rupert Giles here?”
Ah, British. Probably not a Mormon then, or did they have Mormons in Britain, and if so, would they sound like this guy? Or would that be ‘chap’? Buffy suspected this person would definitely qualify as a ‘chap’.
Giles looked up from his conversation with Willow and saw the young man standing there. He took off his glasses. “Oh – you must be Wesley?” He caught Buffy’s eye: “The Council have sent Wesley for some…field experience and to be my assistant.”
A Watchery guy then, not a Mormony guy. That actually made more sense with the whole him asking for Giles and being British and wearing a stuffy suit thing.
A smile of sheer relief flickered across the young man’s face and he hurried forward to proffer a hand. “Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Mr Giles. Yes, the Council thought I might be useful. Did they tell you I was coming?”
“They didn’t give any details about when exactly you would be arriving. I’ve been on the phone half a day trying to get some facts out of them so I could meet you at the station. Unmet strangers can too often end up as….”
“Demon kibble,” Buffy helpfully supplied.
“Oh, perhaps I should have phoned from the bus station?” Wesley’s face fell. “I didn’t want to be a nuisance. The Council was very clear that I had to help you, not hinder you. Well, actually that was my father’s phrasing, I think theirs was slightly.…” Becoming aware of everyone looking at him, he blushed, cleared his throat and said, “So, anyway, I’m here now. Demon kibble…? Oh yes, the Hellmouth…I see.”
Buffy couldn’t decide if she most wanted to kick him or give him a cookie. She found herself poised midway between the two. The accent was…grating. She felt half-inclined to go throw a box of tea in the harbour just as a reaction. Of course, it wasn’t actually that different from Giles’s accent, but it wasn’t annoying when Giles did it, well, not most of the time anyway, and even if he was a tad on the stuffy side he was her stuffy Watcher. Come to think of it, this guy was actually Giles’ problem and on another day it might have been quite amusing to watch Giles having to deal with this Watcher Wannabe but not when he’d just lost Jenny and not when they were all in the middle of the psycho funfair that was Angelus’s killing spree.
“Let me get you a cup of tea, Wesley.” Giles pulled out a chair for him. “This is Buffy, Wesley – the Slayer. She can make the introductions.”
Buffy became aware that she was just gawping and quickly sprang forward to hold out a hand. “Yes, I’m Buffy Summers – the Slayer like Giles said.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You’re awfully young. I mean – we know that the Slayer is a teenage girl but somehow the reality is....”
“So are you,” she said pointedly.
He looked a bit affronted, began to draw himself up in the manner of a toad inflating itself to scare off a predator and then deflated, shoulders slumping. “I’ve graduated from the Watcher’s Academy – with honours, actually. But it was felt I needed some experience in the field.” He murmured the last as if he thought this was in some way a failing on his part.
Giles came back out with a cup of tea. “Glad to hear the Council are finally recognizing the need for field experience. The last thing I heard they seemed to think that a few trials in controlled conditions and a lot of written work was enough.”
Giles’ tone was a little brusque and although Wesley flinched from it automatically, Buffy’s sympathy was with Giles. After all he had been through with losing Jenny, the last thing he needed right now was some wet behind the ears eager beaver Junior Watcher sent over by the Council to ask him lots of questions and generally get on his already frayed nerves. It was incidentally the last thing she needed as well. She had caused the person she loved to turn from noble hero in search of redemption to the very thing he most loathed and despised, and who was capable of picking off all her friends one by one before killing her; the last thing she needed was an extra person around to have to bring up to speed on current events.
“I’m Willow.” Willow quickly thrust out a hand.
Wesley looked relieved at the sight of a friendly face. He hurriedly put down his tea, slopping it into the saucer as he did so, then smiled at her gratefully, took her hand and shook it. “Wesley – Wyndam-Pryce.”
“Can I just call you Wesley?”
“Of course.” He was so pathetically pleased to have someone be kind to him that it looked as if Willow was never going to get her hand back again. “Please do. I’d be honoured.”
He positively bloomed in the face of any kind attention. Buffy thought that was just plain weird. Didn’t they have normal people where he came from? (And yes, she could almost hear Cordelia squawking ‘Normal? You think any of you losers are normal?’ in disbelief.)
Xander cleared his throat and Wesley seemed to realize he was still touching Willow and snatched his hand away from her as if she were burning. Giles rolled his eyes and looked even more weary than a minute before. He was already wearing a ‘please don’t show me up in public’ expression but Buffy thought he was going to be out of luck there. Wesley was so obviously what Watchers looked like when just out of their boxes. He was practically still wearing his price tag.
“Xander Harris.” Xander held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Oh, you too.” Wesley had to juggle his attaché case, which he had evidently been in the process of opening, to grab Xander’s hand, and managed to scatter papers all over the floor in the process.
Buffy saw Angel’s face looking up at her and gasped, taking a step back. Willow followed her gaze and also gasped then hurried to help pick up the papers, narrowly missing hitting her head against Wesley’s as he flopped to his knees and hurried to try to scramble the documents back together.
Giles rolled his eyes again and then in a reaching-for-the-last-of-his-patience voice, said, “Let me help you with that, Wesley.” The folder clearly had the words ‘Angelus’ written on it and Giles regarded the younger man narrowly. “Is this why the council sent you? To report back on the Angel situation?”
Wesley looked up at him in confusion in between stuffing pages back into his briefcase. “I wrote a paper on Darla and Angelus for my finals. When they received your last reports they said you might be in need of some assistance at dealing with the current…situation and as I had the most theoretical knowledge about Angelus I was the best person for the job.”
Giles closed his eyes. “The situation is very…delicate, Wesley. It’s not just a case of knowing what Angel – Angelus did when and to whom, it’s a case of anticipating what he’s going to do next and his motives for doing so.”
Wesley sat back on his heels. “That’s why they thought I might be useful – because I’ve studied his patterns of behaviour in the past and have analysed his motives for each of his various killing sprees. For instance, the Valentine’s Day mutilations seem to me to be....”
“We know him,” Buffy said tautly. “Know Angel. Knew him, I mean. He’s not just an old file and lot of dates to us.”
“He was our friend,” Willow added.
Wesley looked shocked by that, mouth opening then closing for a moment in a goldfish-like fashion. “Oh, I see.... There was a reference in Mr Giles’ previous reports to him now having a soul and working for his redemption but we assumed back at the council that this was some kind of elaborate mind game he was playing. In the past he has taken a lot of pleasure in....”
“No,” Buffy said flatly. “He was good. He had a soul. Then he lost his soul because of me, because of....”
“Because of the nature of the curse that returned his soul to him in the first place,” Giles intervened quickly. “It was supposed to make him suffer, when it became a means for him to find happiness, a clause in the curse kicked in and took the soul from him again.”
Wesley looked as if he were having trouble processing that; Buffy thought idly that he should trying processing it when the person who had lost his soul was someone that he loved.
“This is a guy we liked,” Xander spelled it out for him. “Well, actually I never did, but Buffy liked him a lot and Willow and Giles – kind of liked him too.”
“I liked him more than Giles did,” Willow supplied helpfully. “But not as much as Buffy.” She darted Buffy a look full of sympathy and Wesley seemed to get it at last.
“Ahhh...” he said with a mixture of comprehension and regret. He looked across at Buffy and winced. “I probably don’t need to tell you that the Council are unlikely to have ever sanctioned a friendship between a Slayer and a Vampire.”
“He had a soul,” Buffy said tautly. “He was good. Until I....”
Wesley grimaced sympathetically. “Yes, very distressing, I can imagine.”
“I really don’t think you can,” Giles had a definite edge to his voice. “The point is that no one hates Angel – who Angel was when he had a soul – more than his soulless alter ego, Angelus, and he has targeted Buffy and the people around her for…retribution.”
Wesley blinked. “So, you’re saying that Angelus’ main object of vengeance is…his soulled self?”
Buffy also blinked. She hadn’t thought of it like that before. It had felt as if it was all about her. “I suppose.,..”
Wesley looked the way Willow did when she had just worked out something really complicated in a research problem. “Doesn’t that suggest that either the soulled version of Angel still has a consciousness trapped within the soulless one or that Angelus fears or at least believes that his soulled self might one day return? I mean – why carry out vengeance upon someone who effectively no longer exists?”
“Angel isn’t home any more,” Buffy said quietly. “There’s nothing of him left in the person he is now.”
Wesley picked up the folder he’d dropped and put it down on the table at which they had been researching, automatically taking the chair that had belonged to Giles. “Well then, it sounds as if there is a way to reverse it. We know there must be, in fact. Angelus was once a soulless killer entirely devoid of compassion or any glimmering of conscience and yet you say he became a warrior for good?”
Buffy sat down next to him. “He was cursed by gypsies. He had his soul returned to him.”
Wesley frowned. “You know there’s no record of this in the Council file on Angelus. It just says that the trail of bodies dried up. We assumed he was dead. Well, deader than he already was. Dust really.”
It was horrible after what he’d done that the thought of Angel as dust still made her flinch.
Wesley didn’t notice, too wrapped up in his shiny new theory. “Why would the gypsies give him back his soul? If they wanted to punish him, why didn’t they kill him?”
“They wanted him to suffer,” Giles said it so that Buffy wouldn’t have to and she was grateful for that. “Wanted him to remember everything he’d done while cursed with a conscience.”
“So, when he has a soul Angel remembers everything he did without one?”
Buffy nodded. “Everything.”
Wesley tapped Giles’ pencil pensively on the folder. “Then we know that if the situation was repeated, if the soul was returned to him, that the soulled Angel would remember everything the unsoulled Angelus had done, making every action committed by Angelus since he was essentially reborn as a soulless being for the second time something done so that Angel will remember it when he returns.”
“Returns…?” Buffy looked up at him in disbelief.
“There may be a record of the curse somewhere. I wonder if it could be filed under ‘folklore and superstitious rites’ in the Council library?”
Willow said, “You’re saying we could restore Angel?”
Wesley looked up at her in some surprise. “Well, wouldn’t that be the most effective cure for the current problem? It sounds as if the best gaoler of Angelus is Angel. He went from raping, murdering, maiming and torturing every poor creature that he met to ceasing to be a blip on the Council radar. Unless there is now a very effective twelve step program for sadistic vampires that I’m unaware of then he clearly must have been terminated or had a serious change of heart.”
Giles said tersely, “Wesley, you’ve been in this building for ten minutes. I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to see the big picture.”
Wesley flinched from the criticism and then darted a look up at Giles. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to be.... I didn’t mean to....”
“It’s okay,” Willow said hastily, patting his arm. She looked at Buffy. “Isn’t it?”
Buffy wanted to say ‘No, it isn’t and someone tell this bozo to shut up now’ but she didn’t have the heart in the face of Willow’s pleading expression. But it still felt like being stabbed by red hot needles every time she thought about Angel. About what he’d had been. His lips against hers, that look in his eyes.... She turned her head away so no one could see how much everything hurt.
“You’re saying, hey presto, someone waves a magic wand and Good Angel is back and we all kiss and make up and everything’s forgotten?” Xander demanded tersely. “He killed someone we care about.”
Wesley looked very deer in headlights. “I – um – I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just that...” He snatched a breath. “The killing stopped, you see.” He gave Xander a pleading look. “And if you were arguing that Angelus would in someway be getting off lightly if we gave him back his soul, if the soulled version of himself is the person Angelus most dislikes, wouldn’t that be the worst punishment for him, to be trapped inside him once again, and it’s already clear that these gypsies – who were clearly very powerful people – felt that the worst punishment for Angel was to give him back his soul.”
“So, you’re saying we should do it because it’s the nastiest thing to do to a vampire?” Buffy demanded.
Wesley flinched from her tone but she wasn’t in the mood to care. “No, I’m saying that it seems to be the best way to stop people being killed while preserving someone who appears to be a potential warrior for good. I imagine a spell of that kind could also be performed at some distance from the subject and so the risk would be a little less than attempting to…stake Angelus, even supposing people who knew him as a…friend were emotionally and physically capable of doing that.”
Buffy looked at Wesley through narrowed eyes. “You know, you’re really starting to annoy me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, backing away rapidly.
“Buffy,” Giles reproved.
“Didn’t what he say make sense?” Willow pleaded, looking around for support and clearly missing the quiet stability of Oz. “I thought what he said made sense.”
“It made perfect sense,” Buffy retorted. “But it isn’t possible. It’s just a nice theory that would solve all our problems in one stroke and give us back.... Give me back... But it can’t be done. No one knows the curse.”
“Re-research…?” Wesley quavered tentatively. “Couldn’t we…research it…?”
“Research is good,” Willow said quickly. “I’m big with the research love.”
Giles looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. Wesley, why don’t I give you a lift home. We can talk about…research tomorrow.” His grim gaze suggested they would do no such thing but rather that he would give Wesley a sharp lecture in the drive home about butting out of things he only imperfectly understood. Wesley seemed to sense that himself, immediately looking all deer in front of a sixteen-wheeler. Willow gave Buffy a pleading look and then directed one at Giles who did look slightly less grim under the influence of Willow’s irresistible ‘please don’t be mean’ eyes. Buffy almost glowered at the redhead for her typically knee-jerk protective instinct towards the annoying geeky poor widdle Watcher boy whom Buffy could just tell was going to be irritating her beyond all bearing.
Wesley seemed aware of Buffy’s thoughts, gaze darting between Buffy and Giles anxiously. “I’ll go and wait outside then,” he said awkwardly, “so you can bring the car round.
Giles said, “Yes, do that, Wesley,” crisply, without looking up.
Wesley trailed out of the library, starting to drag his big heavy trunk.
“Leave your luggage!” Giles said sharply. “Xander and I will manage it.”
Wesley came back, picked up his attaché case, fumbled the lock closed, winced apologetically at everyone, and then hurried out.
As Buffy rolled her eyes, Willow said hastily, “He’s really not so bad.”
Xander looked accusingly at Giles: “Why do we have to carry his luggage?”
“Can you imagine how long it was going to take someone apparently fashioned entirely from pipe cleaners to haul that suitcase out of here?” Giles countered.
Xander conceded it with a shrug and then looked Giles up and down. “Who knew you were the butch version of Watcher?”
“I think he’s sweet,” Willow insisted doggedly as Giles glared at Xander. “And I think you’re all being very…judgementally and…just plain mean.”
“He is just plain annoying, Will,” Buffy pleaded. She did feel a slight pang of conscience but it really was very slight indeed. “He waltzes in here and starts telling us how to get Angel back before he’s even unpacked his bags. How annoying is that?”
“He was just trying to help.” Willow could be very stubborn in her protection of the underdog sometimes, perhaps through having been an underdog herself for so much of her life.
“I can’t believe there are others like Giles out there.” Xander shook his head. “That’s a truly scary thought.”
“Wesley isn’t like me,” Giles countered shortly.
Buffy looked up. “Giles, he’s like your own personal Mini-me.”
“I’ll have you know that just because some people of similar background may conform to a similar dress code and understand correct diction it does not make them all brothers under the skin.”
“What about under the stuffy suit?” Xander countered. “And the glasses? And the faint odour of Eau de Used Teabag?”
Buffy let the bickering wash over her. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault but Wesley had made her feel as if ants were walking over her skin. It had taken her this long to accept that Angel was gone and the only thing left now was a soulless monster who took pleasure in tormenting her and her friends, and then Wesley waltzed in and started suggesting re-ensouling Angelus as if it was only a case of digging around in a few books, tossing a few herbs about and hey presto! He was just so young, even Willow felt more grown up than he did, and she wasn’t in the mood for babysitting children from some library back in merrie olde Englande when they were here on the front line, on the Hellmouth, having to deal with death every day, their own and the prospect of losing people that they loved. She had died. She had drowned and her heart had stopped beating, and she had known what it was to love someone completely and know that they loved her completely, and she had lost him, and it was her fault; her fault Angel was Angelus and her fault Jenny was dead and Giles had that look in his eyes, and she felt so old and tired and sick of it all and she was only seventeen and it just wasn’t fair.
Willow cleared her throat. “Um…guys…?”
“And another thing, Xander, I’ll thank you to keep in mind when discussing my home country is....”
“Giles!”
For Willow that was actually quite sharp and Giles broke off mid-sentence in sheer surprise. “What is it, Willow?”
She nodded her head pointedly at the cabin trunk. “How long are you going to leave Wesley out there waiting for you to take him to his hotel?”
“He doesn’t have a hotel,” Giles said wearily. “The Council expect me to have him as a house guest as they don’t see the need to pay for his accommodation when I have a house I should of course be delighted to share with a colleague whose company I neither want nor need. I’ve had to give up my study and cram a bed in there.”
“Poor Wesley,” Willow said.
Giles looked hurt. “Because I’m such an ogre?”
“Because he’s a long way from home and he doesn’t know anyone and at least if he was in a hotel room he could just read a book or watch television or something but instead he’s going to have to tippy-toe around you while you grunt at him and make him nervous.”
“I do not ‘grunt’ and I resent – oh, never mind. Let’s just get him home and installed in my study with all my best books and my second best duvet.”
“You know I’d offer to suggest to Mom that we put him up for you,” Buffy observed, “except I don’t want him in my house either. Especially being all…British and eating marmalade and talking about the weather and…stuff.”
“And I’d suggest he came and slept at my place but I didn’t actually dislike the guy enough in our five minutes of interpersonal bonding to inflict my family on him.” Xander’s bright smile had a brittle quality that made Buffy wince inside.
“I’m not allowed boys in my room,” Willow explained. “Or I suppose men either. Even British ones, which would probably be safer on the whole because of....” She turned that into a cough.
Giles gave her a Look that suggested he was going to be waspish and snarky the whole time Wesley was staying with him. Buffy didn’t blame him. They were all feeling as if they had made mistakes at the moment. Giles had permitted a friendship between the Slayer under his care and a notoriously evil vampire and it had culminated in the death of the woman he loved. No doubt he had never been less in the mood for human memos from the Watchers’ Council saying ‘we told you so’.
Nevertheless, she thought she could at least make the effort to say ‘Good night’ to Wesley and remind him about carrying a stake in this town if he planned on going outside after dark; something that at least gave the impression she gave a damn. Xander and Giles carried Wesley’s suitcase between them while Willow murmured reassuring things to Giles about how he might actually like to have some company, especially some British company, and to just think of all the interesting conversations they could have about…cricket or whatever it was British people talked about when they weren’t talking about the weather or the Queen or drinking tea.
They opened the double doors and looked for a moment at the place outside them where they expected Wesley to be standing, and then over at Giles’s car in case Wesley had worked out that it had to belong to Giles – as no self-respecting American would be caught even dead driving anything that lame – but there was no sign of him. Or his briefcase. They stood in silence for a moment, looking around and then looking at each other, and then their expressions of surprise or irritation turned very quickly to anxiety and then Willow’s eyes widened and she said, “Oh no!”
In the same instant Giles said, “Good God, what was I thinking? I can’t believe I....”
Buffy suspected it was a shock to all of them to realize how off their game they were. Just how wrapped up in misery they had become; as if they were so busy wondering which of them Angelus was going to pick off next, trying to protect their houses, their loved ones, their lacerated hearts, that they had somehow forgotten they lived on a Hellmouth, and the High School was a place where vampires came after dark in search of easy pickings. She felt as if she might be about to throw up. “We practically gift-wrapped him for them.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Xander looked around wildly. “Maybe he.... Who am I kidding? What do we do?”
“We find him.” Buffy looked across at Giles. “We find him and we…deal with it.”
“Yes.” Giles looked rocked back on his heels and she could only try to imagine how he was feeling right now, someone entrusted to his care whom he had snapped at and then practically served up to the vampires. And she was the Slayer, she was supposed to protect people like Wesley from vamps, not send him off to play with them because she couldn’t deal with him being a jerk right now.
“Giles.” She put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go and…find him.” Their eyes met and she read in his gaze her own fear that what they found was most probably going to be a corpse. He nodded wordlessly and they headed in what they hoped was the right direction, Wesley’s abandoned cabin trunk the only proof that he had ever even been here.
***
