So What Happens Now?
As soon as Spike had mentioned his own fatigue, I took a quick look around and realized that we were all looking more than a little weary. More than unerstandably, none of us was at our best, physically or mentally, and some rest would almost certainly be the right thing to do
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I watched in silence as Cordy and Spike made their way upstairs, only slightly surprised at how much a 'their' was...there. Once upon a time the diary full of differences between them would have carried my thoughts on for hours, but now it was simply another foriegn thing in increasingly foriegn world.
The more I was in it, the less I knew.
"It is a good idea," I finally answered Wesley, taking in a deep breath as an accepting look passed over my features. "In theory."
I was developing a deep dislike for the sound of my own voice, or better yet what it was saying. Five words here, two more there...my self-admitted long lost rambles might have been hard for even me to follow, but at least the were filling. And alive. What's worse is that everything I might, or would have said was still in my head ( ... )
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Nodding, I began to more fully recognize the kind of fatigue that was written on Fred's face. Like the dull ache that had set up shop inside my head, and the chain-dragging heaviness that was pulling down at my shoulders and back, it was a tired beyond mere physical exhaustion. It was the fatigue that came from every last bit of a person's being having been tasked past the point of reason.
And the worst part of that kind of tired was that there was no escaping it, and almost no way to rest until at least some of the causes were addressed. We had all been there before, but perhaps never quite so badly. I'd known this feeling during my exile from Angel Investigations. We'd all reached this exhaustion after Jasmine and all that had come before. But this, I think, was the worst ever.
"We keep trying though, right?"I looked at Fred, wondering which of the many, many ways in which that question could be taken that she intended for it to be. Whatever she'd meant, though, there was, I knew, a ( ... )
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Settled into my chair, I rested there for several moments, right where I landed...before pulling my legs up beneath me in a mindless motion. Whatever functioning thoughts I had were focused on Wesley's words. I wondered if, and how much he really meant them. Was he really that sure right now? Maybe...perhaps Wesley was saying what he felt I wanted to hear? Or could the idea of make believe appeal to him as well?
I...I think that he truely meant them. I think that after everything he had been through, both in the before and after sense, he really did. This was who Wesley was, and what he believed in. And even while he shared that knowledge with me, ready and willing I think to help me relearn my way, it was just as much a place that was all his own too.
We keep trying.
Wesley believed that.
The idea of such a thing was..less cold. Warmer even, than I had known all day. All of this lifetime.
"I don't know about you, but after all this? I need a drink."Through the dim light provided by the small lamp just behind ( ... )
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"So it either goes the way of a bad penny, or an old friend, turning up and all," I nodded towards the flask, watching the the practiced way Wesley handled it. "I guess it is up to us to work through exactly which one that may be."
It was rather a good string of words, and I settled even deeper into the chair as a form of personal reward. But I couldn't seem to rest there, and I sat back up, leaning towards the small table ( ... )
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I smiled ruefully at the thought Fred had posited. We'd both been in more than our share of situations where we'd had to deal with one or the other of the possible outcomes.
"Speaking as someone who's been considered both? I have no doubt we can adapt to whichever it proves itself to be."
"Bad pennies turning up? I have always wondered what that could possibly mean. Bad things, they doesn't tend to rise, more... settle. Bad pennies, no sense."My mouth was moving before the thoughts that spilled out of it had a moment to register with my conscious intentions ( ... )
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I nodded, taking his words and curling them up inside me, somwhere just above that part of my chest that ached. Every thing was different, and just inside that simply-structured thought were a whole lot of heavy spaces. I was different, Illyria was hurtfully so...even the hotel couldn't feel the same. No matter how much we might wish otherwise.
But somehow I couldn't direct that sentiment towards Wesley. Just across from me, there seemed a sense of acceptance settled about his shoulders...or at least the understanding that we would have to ready ourselves for whatever was next. Because, well, 'that is what we do'. Once upon a time, a part of me had felt betrayed by the changes I witnessed in Wesley...I was sure that he was leaving us behind. But sitting here now? I could finally see that the change was who he wasA bit of Darwin shadowed the eyes I couldn't look away from, a reminder that to survive, we must adapt. It ( ... )
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"Good to know," I responded. A weak offering, but about all of the mirth I had the ability to summon at the moment.
The entire room still seemed to exist under some somber, weary weight. We were still illuminated only by a small light, leaving us surrounded by darkness, and everything was quiet, except for the brief and intermittent attempts on our parts to speak. The slow, steady tap of the flask against the table, the almost imperceptible movement of my wrist I barely noticed.
I'd asked the question that seemed to hang heaviest and most unspoken between Fred and I. A bold gambit for me, in this situation, involving this person-- I was the one who tended to be the reticent. Fred seemed startled, and took a moment to leave whatever thoughts she'd been gathering and address the question.
"Well... You are sitting right there, and I am..."It began as a typically Fred, strictly literal interpretation of the query, but I watched the wheels turn behind those impossibly wide brown ( ... )
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Once Wesley leaned in to meet my kiss, granting a certain permission I didn't even know I was waiting for, I finally felt a little of something inside me let go. All day -all of this life- had been about taking in. Holding in...the words and the thoughts and the hurt my heart couldn't let go of.
Until now. He tasted like the whiskey we had shared, only different. Not like that different that was surely me...the one that was so frightening. Sharp and bittersweet on my tongue, this was a different I wanted to explore. Reaching up with the hand that had once held his, I felt the table shift, and the sound of the flask tilting down onto its side seemed very, very far away.
And I was willing...desperate even...to leave it unnoticed and abandoned until Wesley pulled away. Almost immediately the cold began to settle back in, starting right in the middle of my chest, like before.
"Wesley?"
It was all I could manage to say. It was all I really had the courage to say. And then it was all I had to say because then he was there, just ( ... )
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