(no subject)
Childish Things, Part Nine
Wesley was quietly insistent on their return to Buffy’s house that the first thing he wanted was a bath. Given how grimy he was, Angel couldn’t exactly object, but he was as eager to start applying ointment to Wesley’s cuts and bruises as Xander was to start shovelling food into him. “Just a quick one then,” he said. “But I get to hover anxiously outside the door.”
“Me too! I want a bath too!” Gunn said at once. “We can share.”
“Me three!” Cordelia said.
Wesley and Willow both looked at her and grimaced. Wesley said gently, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Cordy.”
“Why not?” she pouted. “Just because I'm a girl.”
“Yes,” Wesley persisted. “Just because you’re a girl. And when we’re grown up you’d be mortified about having shared a bath with us.”
Xander and Willow exchanged a glance and Willow murmured, “It’s not that embarrassing…”
Not hearing her, Wesley continued gently: “But you can have a bath first if you want and Gunn and I can go afterwards.”
“Why don’t you mind sharing a bath with Gunn? You’ll be all embarrassed about that when you grow up again, won’t you?”
Wesley and Gunn exchanged a glance of their own and Wesley sheepishly held up a toy submarine supplied from Xander’s old toy closet. “We need someone to play with.”
Gunn held up a pirate boat. “Otherwise it’s not so much fun.”
“It’s not fair!” Cordelia stamped her foot. “I want to play boats too!”
“Why don’t you come and watch a cartoon with me?” Tara invited gently. “Then Wesley and Gunn can have a very quick bath and Wesley can have some ointment put on his bruises and then we can all eat far too much food.”
Cordelia considered for a moment and then nodded. “Cartoons are better than boats anyway.”
Angel ran the bath for his two male charges and then did, as promised, hover anxiously in the doorway, while Gunn insisted on huge quantities of bubbles and lots of splashing, as well as making very loud and realistic gurgling noises every time a boat was sunk. Angel knew Wesley must be traumatized by what had happened to him but thought he was probably wise to get the dust and grime of that closet washed out of his hair as soon as possible, and Gunn was certainly diverting, although it was strange to hear a little boy making references to movies he wasn’t old enough to have seen. Angel realized that if they couldn’t reverse this spell and his ‘children’ did end up going to school again, people were going to think he was the most irresponsible father ever, one who allowed them to watch all kinds of unsuitable movies and…
…Who never met them at the school gates…
…Came to school plays held in the evening but not school sports days held during the afternoon…
There were so many things he wasn’t going to be able to do. But if Cordy, Wes and Gunn stayed children he would find a way around it; find a way to hang onto them and keep them safe even if they had to move from place to place and he had to temporarily shelve his mission to help others. Or he might have to move back to Sunnydale where there would be a support system, but he would find a way to keep them. He wasn’t giving them up to anyone or for anything.
Even as he thought it he knew it wouldn’t be best for them. They had struggled their way to adulthood, painfully and slowly, they didn’t deserve to have to go through that twice, as though their experiences didn’t count for anything, and yet it was so tempting. To put everything back to some neutral new beginning. To a place where their bad memories would fade as they became more and more the children they physically appeared to be, where Wesley might forget that he had grown up under the tyranny of an emotionally abusive father, where Gunn might not spend every day thinking about the sister he had been forced to kill, where Cordelia could learn to be carefree again. He didn’t think he was the best father in the world, but he wouldn’t spoil Cordelia the way her own father had done, or never ask her to think about others; he had no intention of leaving Gunn unprotected in a world of demons, and he would never tell Wesley that he would never amount to anything or lock him under the stairs for some imagined failure of his studies.
“What’s it like?” he asked the two splashing boys in the tub. “Being kids again? Is it fun?”
“No.” Wesley sent the submarine under the waves so it could come up under Gunn’s bobbing pirate ship.
“Why not?” Angel coaxed. “You look like you’re having fun.”
“We’re not children.” Wesley had the submarine surface dramatically, making Gunn squeal with glee. “Not really.”
Angel sighed. He was wanting them to stay like this more and more.
“Are you hungry?” Wesley asked Gunn.
“Yes!” The little boy could hardly have been more emphatic.
“We can’t eat until we get out of the bath.”
“Why can’t we stay here and have Angel bring the food up to us?” Gunn demanded.
“Because the food would get wet and you’d cry.”
Gunn splashed Wesley. “I would not cry!”
“You would if you were about to take a bite out of a really scrummy pizza and it fell into the bath and was ruined.”
“I’d cry about that,” Xander observed from just behind Angel. “Who wouldn’t?”
The vampire turned around in surprise, not realizing how caught up he’d been in watching the two of them.
Xander took out his notebook with a flourish. “I'm here to take your orders, Messieurs, on the understanding that by the time Buffy and I get back you will be dried off, in your jammies, and waiting to eat.”
“Pizza!” Gunn said at once.
“Whatever’s easiest.” Wesley’s blackening eye didn’t look any less painful when he smiled but it did take off some of the tragic aspect. “I'm hungry enough to eat anything.”
“Anything?” Gunn enquired. “What about me?”
“As long as I could cook you first,” Wesley shrugged. “I don’t like sushi.”
Xander shook his head. “Sad. A few days with a vampire for a father and the kid turns into a cannibal.”
“I'm not a fish,” Gunn protested. “Sushi is fish.”
“If you stay in that bath much longer you will be,” Xander assured him. “Take it from someone who almost turned into a fish.”
Gunn looked at him open-mouthed. “You’re making that up.”
“Nope. All true. When I was on the swimming team I started becoming a fish. All part of the whole growing-up-on-a-hellmouth experience. Ask Giles.”
As Gunn immediately scrambled out of the bath and started running towards the door, shouting, “Giles! Giles! Did Xander almost turn into a fish?” Angel grabbed him and picked him up.
“Ask Giles when you’re not dripping wet and naked.”
“I want to know now!”
“Well, the faster you get dry and get dressed in your night clothes, the faster you can add to the thumping pain in Uncle Giles’s head.”
Xander tossed Angel a towel for Gunn and held out another one for Wesley. “Mr. Wyndam-Pryce…”
Wesley grinned up at him and climbed very carefully out of the bath. Xander and Angel both saw the bruises across his back and arms where he had been manhandled and exchanged a grim look before Xander enveloped him in the warm folds of the towel. “Are you ticklish?”
Wesley darted him a wary look. “No…”
“Are you fibbing?”
“Yes…” He giggled as Xander tickled him - very gently - and wrapped the towel around him closely.
Xander picked him up and hugged him briefly. “You gave us a fright today, Wesley.”
“I didn’t do it in purpose,” Wesley looked at him cautiously from under his eyelashes.
“Well, I'm not convinced. The only way you’re going to convince me that you didn’t do it on purpose is if you eat so much food this evening that exploding is a real possibility.”
“That makes no logical sense,” Wesley observed.
Xander shrugged. “Who says adults have to be reasonable?”
Wesley sighed in a long-suffering fashion. “What is it about being around small children that makes grown ups act so immaturely?”
“Can’t imagine.” Angel observed before pretending to bite Gunn’s tummy, making him scream delightedly, while Xander tickled Wesley again.
“What are you doing?” Willow rushed up anxiously.
Xander stopped tickling Wesley, hastily setting him on his feet, while Angel looked up guiltily from making ‘arrghh!’ pretend bites at Gunn’s stomach.
“Nothing,” Xander quickly grabbed another towel and rubbed Wesley’s hair with it.
“Just getting them dried off,” Angel reassured her.
“He was eating me!” Gunn held out his arms to Willow. “Save me from the bad vampire!”
Willow got that melting look in her eyes which always happened with Gunn laid on the cute and held out her arms to him. “Do you want to come and see Dawnie, Gunn?”
“Yes!” he shouted triumphantly.
“She has your jammies waiting for you…”
“I have his jammies,” Angel held them up.
She and Gunn both looked down their noses at his choice of night attire. Willow shook her head. “It really needs a woman’s touch when it comes to hundred percent cotton and cartoon animals.”
As Willow whisked Gunn away, Xander sighed and stopped drying Wesley’s hair, giving Angel a sympathetic look. “You do know, don’t you, that you’re never getting out of Sunnydale with those kids? The only way you get to take Cordy, Wes and Gunn home is as adults.”
“But they’re my kids,” Angel protested. He shook out Wesley’s pyjamas. “These are okay, right? You’ll wear these?”
Wesley nodded and took them from him. “As Cordelia has often pointed out, Angel, I'm not as fussy about my appearance as the other two.”
“They may possibly have been ‘your kids’ before you brought them across this threshold,” Xander told him. “Now it’s a free for all. Remember there are three adult women and an adolescent girl in this household and there’s no telling when those biological clocks could kick in. You’re just lucky my Anya is away right now on a buying trip for the Magic Box and doesn’t like small children when she is here.”
“I'm not letting them be raised on a Hellmouth,” Angel protested, while automatically untwisting the sleeve of Wesley’s pyjamas for him as he pulled on the jacket.
Xander shrugged. “Willow and I were raised on a Hellmouth. Never did us any harm.”
“What about almost getting turned into a fish? Not to mention the times you’ve both ended up in intensive care?”
“I'm just telling you, what with Willow and Tara’s witch powers and Buffy’s Slayer strength you’ll be lucky to get these kids back to LA without being turned into a newt in the process.”
Angel held out Wesley’s robe for him while glowering at Xander. “I might consider some kind of shared parenting scheme.”
“Or turning us back into adults,” Wesley observed patiently, while belting his robe. “Which would solve all these problems at a stroke, and incidentally free Cordelia, Gunn and I from the spectre of having to attend school again.”
Angel and Xander exchanged another glance and Angel sighed. “Or that would work too.”
“Except there isn’t a focusing orb any more.” Wesley looked down at his small body in its tartan robe. “So that might not be possible.”
“There’s more than one focusing orb in the world, Wesley,” Giles said kindly from the doorway. He looked at Xander, “And aren’t you supposed to be driving Buffy to one of those appalling fast food places round about now so we can all fill up on stodge and starch?”
“On my way,” Xander hurried off.
“Do you still have a headache?” Wesley asked Giles.
Giles shrugged. “Several, but it comes with being a surrogate parent to a group of unruly children. Right, Angel?”
Angel scooped Wesley up into his arms and sat him on his hip. “My kids are going to turn out so much better than yours.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” Giles looked mildly amused.
“And go to much better Universities. I think Wesley should get into Oxford no trouble at all.”
“Angel, I already went to University,” Wesley pointed out uneasily. “I got firsts in everything. I don’t want to have to write all those essays all over again.”
“And I'm not going to let them risk their necks dating the undead either,” Angel added forcefully to Giles as he carried Wesley past him. “What were you thinking, letting Buffy do that?”
Giles sighed wearily. “I can’t imagine…”
***
It was gone midnight before Wesley’s eyelids finally closed. Usual sleeping arrangements had gone by the board as both Gunn and Cordelia had refused to be separated from him, so now Wesley was in Angel’s bed with Cordelia hugging him from one side and Gunn from the other. Where the sleeve of his pyjamas had been folded back, Angel could see the bruise around his painfully thin little wrist from where he had been grabbed and tied up. The bruise around his left eye and cheekbone also still looked spectacular and the cut on his forehead was now nestling amidst a purplish contusion. He was definitely not going to be able to leave the house for a few days if they didn’t want social services asking a lot of awkward questions, and although Angel knew he should feel relieved that he wasn’t ending the day with human blood on his hands, he didn’t feel glad about it. Looking at those bruises on the little kid Wesley now was, he didn’t feel glad about it at all.
“Angel…?”
He looked around to find Giles standing in the doorway, also looking at Wesley with a soft expression in his eyes.
“What is it?” Angel breathed, not wanting to wake up the children.
Giles beckoned him into the corridor. “There’s something I think you ought to see.”
Unwilling to leave the children even for a moment but knowing that they were safe and that Giles would not demand his attention for anything that wasn’t important, Angel reluctantly followed him.
On reaching the living room, Giles took the video camera from Willow and handed it to Angel. “I think you should see this.”
He pressed the ‘play’ button and looked into the viewfinder, taken aback to see that it was Wesley’s interrogation they must have filmed. It was a shock to see him sitting there, so small and scared looking.
“…I know how little action I saw when being trained as a Watcher and how much actual good I’ve had a chance to do since working with Buffy and with Angel.”
“Buffy wouldn’t give you the time of day!”
“She still saved my life. That’s what she does. Every day. Saves people. So does Angel. What do you three do?”
“He was so brave,” Willow gazed at the camera mournfully. “Even though he was so little.”
Giles looked at her affectionately. “I’ve often thought the same thing about you, Willow.”
“Oh.” She lit up at that and smiled at him.
“…We will be contacting your father. We will be taking you back to England with us. We will be handing you over to him. Perhaps this time he’ll make a better job of bringing you up as someone who shows loyalty to your own kind.”
Angel watched Wesley go pale and look as if he might be able to throw up or faint.
“I’ve got to ask what the deal is with his father?” Xander asked quietly.
“I’d like to know that too,” Buffy added.
Angel put down the camera for a moment, trying to control the anger and fear he felt at how easily Wesley had been snatched and how completely they had been able to intimidate him. “He certainly emotionally abused him for years. Told him all the things he was getting wrong. How bad at everything he was. And I know he used to punish him by locking him under the stairs. I don’t know if he hit him. I’ve never asked. I don’t think Wesley would tell me if I did. He’s too ashamed of the way his father treated him. I think he thinks it’s his fault. That if he’d been…better at everything, his father would have loved him the way fathers are supposed to.”
“Does Wesley still love him?” Willow grimaced.
“I don’t know.” Angel shrugged. “I think he still hopes he might be able to make him proud of him, show him what he’s achieved. Working with me probably isn’t doing a lot to help on that front.”
“So, if Roger Wyndam-Pryce turned up in LA…?” Giles gave Angel a searching look.
“I’d be as polite to him as I could possibly be, for Wesley’s sake. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be grinding my fangs down to little stumps though.”
“Good.” Giles nodded. “Because he is a senior Watcher and someone of some importance in the Council, Angel, and I think if you…”
“I know, and I wouldn’t care if he didn’t happen to be Wesley’s father but as he’s Wesley’s father he gets to live.” Angel looked back at the video camera. “Even if he doesn’t deserve to.”
“There isn’t a manual for childcare, Angel. It may be that Wesley’s father was just trying to prepare him for the world. Wesley did do very well at the Academy. His marks were exemplary. I don’t think he’s as natural an all-round scholar as Willow but…”
“Giles,” said Buffy fondly, “You don’t think anyone on the planet is as natural an all-round scholar as Willow is. And you’re right, because there isn’t.”
Giles couldn’t help gazing at Willow affectionately before continuing as if affronted even though he obviously wasn’t, “…but he still managed to finish top in almost every one of his classes. His maths and science weren’t quite as strong as Willow’s but as a linguist he really was quite remarkable…”
Angel looked at him in disbelief. “You’ve been comparing your kids’ marks with mine?”
“Actually, Angel, when Cordelia got her really excellent SAT scores she was one of my ‘kids’.”
Buffy looked at Willow and Xander in disbelief. “I don’t believe this. They’re going to fight over who has the most prodigal prodigy.”
“…All I'm saying is that Wesley doesn’t have Willow’s innate magical powers or the benefit of having been raised on a Hellmouth but he has still performed the spells we needed on a number of occasions with no trouble whatsoever…”
“…I don’t think it was being ‘raised on a Hellmouth’ that won Willow an acceptance from every college in the country that matters…!”
“…Gunn never got to finish High School because he was busy trying to save LA from vampires. I think he has a lot of untapped potential there and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that if I know Wesley is weaker in a couple of areas that he could have extra coaching…”
Buffy growled in a pretty good impression of Angel on a bad day and they broke off in surprise to look at her.
“You two are pathetic,” she told them. “In fact you’re beyond pathetic. Giles, stop doing the proud parent thing - it’s kinda sweet but also mucho creepy. And Angel, your kids aren’t kids, they’re adults, who we’re going to find a way to change back, remember? And even if they stay kids you are not going to spend the next ten years of their lives piling on the pressure about their SAT scores!”
Angel looked at her for a moment and then grimaced. “I'm just…thinking ahead.”
“You’re just obsessing like a maniac.”
“They’re so small.” Angel slumped onto the couch despondently. “And the world’s so big.”
“Wait until they start dating,” Buffy sat down next to him and patted him soothingly on the hand. “Then you’ll really know what stress is.”
“They won’t be dating,” Angel assured her. “Ever. Especially Cordelia. She was impregnated by a demon the last time she went on a date, and Wesley lets women pick him up in bars if he has too many Bloody Marys. The last one wasn’t even a natural blonde. And what does Gunn know about dating? He’s been killing vampires for much too long to know anything about women. Or men. Oh God, people always think Wes is gay. I bet men try to pick him up in bars too. There was that demon in Caritas that time… I can never let them go out alone.”
Buffy looked at Giles and grimaced. “You have got to find a way to reverse this spell, Giles, or those poor kids are going to have the worst adolescence ever.”
“I think that’s a given.” Giles took the video camera from Angel and held it up. “And I think we’re all agreed that the next time any representatives from the Council feel like catching up on old times with Wesley that we want him to be large enough to hold a flame thrower.”
“I'm not letting them near open flames!” Angel looked aghast.
“Angel,” said Xander patiently, “they’d be adults, remember? As adults you let Gunn and Wesley go out and mix it up with big stinky demons. Is that ringing any bells with you at all?”
“Didn’t Cordy say that Gunn as a grown up is like…six feet four?” Willow added soothingly. “And I remember Wesley being tall too. Of course I don’t remember him being able to fight at all, but I guess that’s changed now…?”
“Yes.” Angel took a deep breath. “He’s changed.”
Giles said quietly, “Those kind of changes tend to be hard won.”
Buffy looked up at the Englishman. “I think we all know Wesley doesn’t enjoy being a child again.”
“I was kind of hoping that he would,” Angel admitted. “He had such a crappy time the first time around. I wanted to make it better for him.”
“But this isn’t who he is,” said Buffy gently. “He’s a grown man with all those life experiences he fought really hard to gain.”
Xander nodded. “Angel, it’s no secret that my family wouldn’t win any good parenting prizes but that doesn’t mean I want to go back to being eight years old again. And my past is part of who I am, what’s made me…me. I'm proud of reaching this age. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back and do it all over again even if I had a chance to do it better. I want to move onto the next thing now. Wesley’s making the best of it because he doesn’t know if this is going to be his life now. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate it.”
“Gunn’s happy,” Angel pointed out.
“Was he unhappy before?”
“He was…less giggly. And he didn’t have a family.”
“Yes, he did,” Buffy put in. “He had you, Wesley and Cordelia. Aren’t you his family now?”
Angel looked around for an argument. “Well, Cordy…”
Xander held up a finger. “Just stopping you right there, Angel. Kind of an expert on Cordelia. And she was desperate to be old enough to wear designer fashions the whole time she was kid. You can’t fool me she doesn’t want to be able to get back into her grown up clothes again.”
“I think she and Gunn are okay because it’s a novelty to them and they’ve regressed further than Wesley has,” Willow added. “But don’t you think it’s going to be weird for them, being children but not? Having had a whole life before this that they have to pretend doesn’t exist but still remember? I think ultimately, having those kind of conflicts would affect their test scores.”
Angel sighed in defeat and Giles handed him back the video camera. “Tell me Wesley looks like he’s having fun as a child on this tape, Angel, and then remind yourself that as someone associated with you he’s always going to be a target.”
“I'm not saying I don’t want them turned back. I'm just trying to make the most of a bad situation if they can’t be turned back.”
“Angel, you’re picking out colleges,” Xander pointed out.
Buffy patted his hand again. “You have to let go.”
“You have to let them be who they are,” Giles looked at Angel intently. “Whoever they may happen to be. Even if that means they say and do things you don’t like. Take paths you wish they hadn’t chosen. They’re entitled to that. They’ve earned that. I’ve called Anya and asked her to bring me a selection of focusing orbs, and with Willow and Wesley’s assistance I'm sure we can work out what happened. And once we know that, I'm confident I can reverse the spell. It would be nice if you were happy for them.”
“I will be,” Angel promised. “I will. I miss them. The adult them. I just wish…”
“You could keep the child versions too?” Willow sighed. “Me too.”
Buffy looked glum. “Dawn is going to miss MiniGunn so much. I'm going to have to buy her a puppy after this.”
Angel looked up the stairs. “I’d better get back to them. Wesley might have nightmares. I should be there.”
Xander nodded to Giles, “You and I should go. I think Tara and Willow are camping out here again but we can’t really do the whole pyjama party thing.”
“Oh woe,” Giles observed.
“But we’ll be back early,” Xander added. “Just in case you need reinforcements.”
“I don’t think those Council goons will be back,” Buffy assured him.
“I meant trying to get Cordy to eat her breakfast cereal.”
“Ah.” Buffy nodded. “For that we could do with reinforcements.”
“I’ll be back after breakfast,” Giles observed. “Probably a good hour or so after just in case there are stragglers.”
“We’ll leave the washing up for you,” Buffy told him brightly then seeing his disapproving expression added, “Or not. We’ll in fact move around very quietly while you do the difficult important research so as not to make your head ache worse than it obviously already does.”
“Appreciated.” Giles headed for the door. “Good night, Angel. Try not to hyperventilate too much over your young charges. I always think that looks so foolish on an entity that doesn’t actually need to breathe.”
Angel mechanically made his good nights to everyone, hardly noticing when the front door closed behind Xander and Giles. As he climbed back up the stairs, he was thinking about his adult friends. The Wesley he had carried out of the wreckage of their first office, the Cordelia who had seen all the pain in the world, the Gunn who had been leading his own crew against the vampires. They had all paid a high price for helping Angel in his quest for redemption and he wasn’t always sure that he had appreciated them as much as he could. Them being turned into children might be a gift for him, the guy who couldn’t ever have kids of his own, but it was just another thing that hanging around with a vampire had cost them.
He went into the bedroom where Wesley and Cordelia were curled up facing one another, Gunn having wriggled his way in between them, the human hot water bottle around which they were both warming themselves. Wesley’s black eye and bruised cheekbone were clearly visible, as were the finger bruises around his thin wrist. Angel bent over them and kissed Cordelia on the forehead.
“I do want you back,” he whispered to them. “I want you all back. I miss you.”
“We missed you too, Angel,” Wesley murmured sleepily. “We’re glad you came back.”
Angel carefully moved them over a little and slid into the bed next to Wesley where he could listen to their heartbeats all night and know that however dead he might be, they were all still safe and alive and protected.
Part Ten
***
Wesley was quietly insistent on their return to Buffy’s house that the first thing he wanted was a bath. Given how grimy he was, Angel couldn’t exactly object, but he was as eager to start applying ointment to Wesley’s cuts and bruises as Xander was to start shovelling food into him. “Just a quick one then,” he said. “But I get to hover anxiously outside the door.”
“Me too! I want a bath too!” Gunn said at once. “We can share.”
“Me three!” Cordelia said.
Wesley and Willow both looked at her and grimaced. Wesley said gently, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Cordy.”
“Why not?” she pouted. “Just because I'm a girl.”
“Yes,” Wesley persisted. “Just because you’re a girl. And when we’re grown up you’d be mortified about having shared a bath with us.”
Xander and Willow exchanged a glance and Willow murmured, “It’s not that embarrassing…”
Not hearing her, Wesley continued gently: “But you can have a bath first if you want and Gunn and I can go afterwards.”
“Why don’t you mind sharing a bath with Gunn? You’ll be all embarrassed about that when you grow up again, won’t you?”
Wesley and Gunn exchanged a glance of their own and Wesley sheepishly held up a toy submarine supplied from Xander’s old toy closet. “We need someone to play with.”
Gunn held up a pirate boat. “Otherwise it’s not so much fun.”
“It’s not fair!” Cordelia stamped her foot. “I want to play boats too!”
“Why don’t you come and watch a cartoon with me?” Tara invited gently. “Then Wesley and Gunn can have a very quick bath and Wesley can have some ointment put on his bruises and then we can all eat far too much food.”
Cordelia considered for a moment and then nodded. “Cartoons are better than boats anyway.”
Angel ran the bath for his two male charges and then did, as promised, hover anxiously in the doorway, while Gunn insisted on huge quantities of bubbles and lots of splashing, as well as making very loud and realistic gurgling noises every time a boat was sunk. Angel knew Wesley must be traumatized by what had happened to him but thought he was probably wise to get the dust and grime of that closet washed out of his hair as soon as possible, and Gunn was certainly diverting, although it was strange to hear a little boy making references to movies he wasn’t old enough to have seen. Angel realized that if they couldn’t reverse this spell and his ‘children’ did end up going to school again, people were going to think he was the most irresponsible father ever, one who allowed them to watch all kinds of unsuitable movies and…
…Who never met them at the school gates…
…Came to school plays held in the evening but not school sports days held during the afternoon…
There were so many things he wasn’t going to be able to do. But if Cordy, Wes and Gunn stayed children he would find a way around it; find a way to hang onto them and keep them safe even if they had to move from place to place and he had to temporarily shelve his mission to help others. Or he might have to move back to Sunnydale where there would be a support system, but he would find a way to keep them. He wasn’t giving them up to anyone or for anything.
Even as he thought it he knew it wouldn’t be best for them. They had struggled their way to adulthood, painfully and slowly, they didn’t deserve to have to go through that twice, as though their experiences didn’t count for anything, and yet it was so tempting. To put everything back to some neutral new beginning. To a place where their bad memories would fade as they became more and more the children they physically appeared to be, where Wesley might forget that he had grown up under the tyranny of an emotionally abusive father, where Gunn might not spend every day thinking about the sister he had been forced to kill, where Cordelia could learn to be carefree again. He didn’t think he was the best father in the world, but he wouldn’t spoil Cordelia the way her own father had done, or never ask her to think about others; he had no intention of leaving Gunn unprotected in a world of demons, and he would never tell Wesley that he would never amount to anything or lock him under the stairs for some imagined failure of his studies.
“What’s it like?” he asked the two splashing boys in the tub. “Being kids again? Is it fun?”
“No.” Wesley sent the submarine under the waves so it could come up under Gunn’s bobbing pirate ship.
“Why not?” Angel coaxed. “You look like you’re having fun.”
“We’re not children.” Wesley had the submarine surface dramatically, making Gunn squeal with glee. “Not really.”
Angel sighed. He was wanting them to stay like this more and more.
“Are you hungry?” Wesley asked Gunn.
“Yes!” The little boy could hardly have been more emphatic.
“We can’t eat until we get out of the bath.”
“Why can’t we stay here and have Angel bring the food up to us?” Gunn demanded.
“Because the food would get wet and you’d cry.”
Gunn splashed Wesley. “I would not cry!”
“You would if you were about to take a bite out of a really scrummy pizza and it fell into the bath and was ruined.”
“I’d cry about that,” Xander observed from just behind Angel. “Who wouldn’t?”
The vampire turned around in surprise, not realizing how caught up he’d been in watching the two of them.
Xander took out his notebook with a flourish. “I'm here to take your orders, Messieurs, on the understanding that by the time Buffy and I get back you will be dried off, in your jammies, and waiting to eat.”
“Pizza!” Gunn said at once.
“Whatever’s easiest.” Wesley’s blackening eye didn’t look any less painful when he smiled but it did take off some of the tragic aspect. “I'm hungry enough to eat anything.”
“Anything?” Gunn enquired. “What about me?”
“As long as I could cook you first,” Wesley shrugged. “I don’t like sushi.”
Xander shook his head. “Sad. A few days with a vampire for a father and the kid turns into a cannibal.”
“I'm not a fish,” Gunn protested. “Sushi is fish.”
“If you stay in that bath much longer you will be,” Xander assured him. “Take it from someone who almost turned into a fish.”
Gunn looked at him open-mouthed. “You’re making that up.”
“Nope. All true. When I was on the swimming team I started becoming a fish. All part of the whole growing-up-on-a-hellmouth experience. Ask Giles.”
As Gunn immediately scrambled out of the bath and started running towards the door, shouting, “Giles! Giles! Did Xander almost turn into a fish?” Angel grabbed him and picked him up.
“Ask Giles when you’re not dripping wet and naked.”
“I want to know now!”
“Well, the faster you get dry and get dressed in your night clothes, the faster you can add to the thumping pain in Uncle Giles’s head.”
Xander tossed Angel a towel for Gunn and held out another one for Wesley. “Mr. Wyndam-Pryce…”
Wesley grinned up at him and climbed very carefully out of the bath. Xander and Angel both saw the bruises across his back and arms where he had been manhandled and exchanged a grim look before Xander enveloped him in the warm folds of the towel. “Are you ticklish?”
Wesley darted him a wary look. “No…”
“Are you fibbing?”
“Yes…” He giggled as Xander tickled him - very gently - and wrapped the towel around him closely.
Xander picked him up and hugged him briefly. “You gave us a fright today, Wesley.”
“I didn’t do it in purpose,” Wesley looked at him cautiously from under his eyelashes.
“Well, I'm not convinced. The only way you’re going to convince me that you didn’t do it on purpose is if you eat so much food this evening that exploding is a real possibility.”
“That makes no logical sense,” Wesley observed.
Xander shrugged. “Who says adults have to be reasonable?”
Wesley sighed in a long-suffering fashion. “What is it about being around small children that makes grown ups act so immaturely?”
“Can’t imagine.” Angel observed before pretending to bite Gunn’s tummy, making him scream delightedly, while Xander tickled Wesley again.
“What are you doing?” Willow rushed up anxiously.
Xander stopped tickling Wesley, hastily setting him on his feet, while Angel looked up guiltily from making ‘arrghh!’ pretend bites at Gunn’s stomach.
“Nothing,” Xander quickly grabbed another towel and rubbed Wesley’s hair with it.
“Just getting them dried off,” Angel reassured her.
“He was eating me!” Gunn held out his arms to Willow. “Save me from the bad vampire!”
Willow got that melting look in her eyes which always happened with Gunn laid on the cute and held out her arms to him. “Do you want to come and see Dawnie, Gunn?”
“Yes!” he shouted triumphantly.
“She has your jammies waiting for you…”
“I have his jammies,” Angel held them up.
She and Gunn both looked down their noses at his choice of night attire. Willow shook her head. “It really needs a woman’s touch when it comes to hundred percent cotton and cartoon animals.”
As Willow whisked Gunn away, Xander sighed and stopped drying Wesley’s hair, giving Angel a sympathetic look. “You do know, don’t you, that you’re never getting out of Sunnydale with those kids? The only way you get to take Cordy, Wes and Gunn home is as adults.”
“But they’re my kids,” Angel protested. He shook out Wesley’s pyjamas. “These are okay, right? You’ll wear these?”
Wesley nodded and took them from him. “As Cordelia has often pointed out, Angel, I'm not as fussy about my appearance as the other two.”
“They may possibly have been ‘your kids’ before you brought them across this threshold,” Xander told him. “Now it’s a free for all. Remember there are three adult women and an adolescent girl in this household and there’s no telling when those biological clocks could kick in. You’re just lucky my Anya is away right now on a buying trip for the Magic Box and doesn’t like small children when she is here.”
“I'm not letting them be raised on a Hellmouth,” Angel protested, while automatically untwisting the sleeve of Wesley’s pyjamas for him as he pulled on the jacket.
Xander shrugged. “Willow and I were raised on a Hellmouth. Never did us any harm.”
“What about almost getting turned into a fish? Not to mention the times you’ve both ended up in intensive care?”
“I'm just telling you, what with Willow and Tara’s witch powers and Buffy’s Slayer strength you’ll be lucky to get these kids back to LA without being turned into a newt in the process.”
Angel held out Wesley’s robe for him while glowering at Xander. “I might consider some kind of shared parenting scheme.”
“Or turning us back into adults,” Wesley observed patiently, while belting his robe. “Which would solve all these problems at a stroke, and incidentally free Cordelia, Gunn and I from the spectre of having to attend school again.”
Angel and Xander exchanged another glance and Angel sighed. “Or that would work too.”
“Except there isn’t a focusing orb any more.” Wesley looked down at his small body in its tartan robe. “So that might not be possible.”
“There’s more than one focusing orb in the world, Wesley,” Giles said kindly from the doorway. He looked at Xander, “And aren’t you supposed to be driving Buffy to one of those appalling fast food places round about now so we can all fill up on stodge and starch?”
“On my way,” Xander hurried off.
“Do you still have a headache?” Wesley asked Giles.
Giles shrugged. “Several, but it comes with being a surrogate parent to a group of unruly children. Right, Angel?”
Angel scooped Wesley up into his arms and sat him on his hip. “My kids are going to turn out so much better than yours.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” Giles looked mildly amused.
“And go to much better Universities. I think Wesley should get into Oxford no trouble at all.”
“Angel, I already went to University,” Wesley pointed out uneasily. “I got firsts in everything. I don’t want to have to write all those essays all over again.”
“And I'm not going to let them risk their necks dating the undead either,” Angel added forcefully to Giles as he carried Wesley past him. “What were you thinking, letting Buffy do that?”
Giles sighed wearily. “I can’t imagine…”
***
It was gone midnight before Wesley’s eyelids finally closed. Usual sleeping arrangements had gone by the board as both Gunn and Cordelia had refused to be separated from him, so now Wesley was in Angel’s bed with Cordelia hugging him from one side and Gunn from the other. Where the sleeve of his pyjamas had been folded back, Angel could see the bruise around his painfully thin little wrist from where he had been grabbed and tied up. The bruise around his left eye and cheekbone also still looked spectacular and the cut on his forehead was now nestling amidst a purplish contusion. He was definitely not going to be able to leave the house for a few days if they didn’t want social services asking a lot of awkward questions, and although Angel knew he should feel relieved that he wasn’t ending the day with human blood on his hands, he didn’t feel glad about it. Looking at those bruises on the little kid Wesley now was, he didn’t feel glad about it at all.
“Angel…?”
He looked around to find Giles standing in the doorway, also looking at Wesley with a soft expression in his eyes.
“What is it?” Angel breathed, not wanting to wake up the children.
Giles beckoned him into the corridor. “There’s something I think you ought to see.”
Unwilling to leave the children even for a moment but knowing that they were safe and that Giles would not demand his attention for anything that wasn’t important, Angel reluctantly followed him.
On reaching the living room, Giles took the video camera from Willow and handed it to Angel. “I think you should see this.”
He pressed the ‘play’ button and looked into the viewfinder, taken aback to see that it was Wesley’s interrogation they must have filmed. It was a shock to see him sitting there, so small and scared looking.
“…I know how little action I saw when being trained as a Watcher and how much actual good I’ve had a chance to do since working with Buffy and with Angel.”
“Buffy wouldn’t give you the time of day!”
“She still saved my life. That’s what she does. Every day. Saves people. So does Angel. What do you three do?”
“He was so brave,” Willow gazed at the camera mournfully. “Even though he was so little.”
Giles looked at her affectionately. “I’ve often thought the same thing about you, Willow.”
“Oh.” She lit up at that and smiled at him.
“…We will be contacting your father. We will be taking you back to England with us. We will be handing you over to him. Perhaps this time he’ll make a better job of bringing you up as someone who shows loyalty to your own kind.”
Angel watched Wesley go pale and look as if he might be able to throw up or faint.
“I’ve got to ask what the deal is with his father?” Xander asked quietly.
“I’d like to know that too,” Buffy added.
Angel put down the camera for a moment, trying to control the anger and fear he felt at how easily Wesley had been snatched and how completely they had been able to intimidate him. “He certainly emotionally abused him for years. Told him all the things he was getting wrong. How bad at everything he was. And I know he used to punish him by locking him under the stairs. I don’t know if he hit him. I’ve never asked. I don’t think Wesley would tell me if I did. He’s too ashamed of the way his father treated him. I think he thinks it’s his fault. That if he’d been…better at everything, his father would have loved him the way fathers are supposed to.”
“Does Wesley still love him?” Willow grimaced.
“I don’t know.” Angel shrugged. “I think he still hopes he might be able to make him proud of him, show him what he’s achieved. Working with me probably isn’t doing a lot to help on that front.”
“So, if Roger Wyndam-Pryce turned up in LA…?” Giles gave Angel a searching look.
“I’d be as polite to him as I could possibly be, for Wesley’s sake. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be grinding my fangs down to little stumps though.”
“Good.” Giles nodded. “Because he is a senior Watcher and someone of some importance in the Council, Angel, and I think if you…”
“I know, and I wouldn’t care if he didn’t happen to be Wesley’s father but as he’s Wesley’s father he gets to live.” Angel looked back at the video camera. “Even if he doesn’t deserve to.”
“There isn’t a manual for childcare, Angel. It may be that Wesley’s father was just trying to prepare him for the world. Wesley did do very well at the Academy. His marks were exemplary. I don’t think he’s as natural an all-round scholar as Willow but…”
“Giles,” said Buffy fondly, “You don’t think anyone on the planet is as natural an all-round scholar as Willow is. And you’re right, because there isn’t.”
Giles couldn’t help gazing at Willow affectionately before continuing as if affronted even though he obviously wasn’t, “…but he still managed to finish top in almost every one of his classes. His maths and science weren’t quite as strong as Willow’s but as a linguist he really was quite remarkable…”
Angel looked at him in disbelief. “You’ve been comparing your kids’ marks with mine?”
“Actually, Angel, when Cordelia got her really excellent SAT scores she was one of my ‘kids’.”
Buffy looked at Willow and Xander in disbelief. “I don’t believe this. They’re going to fight over who has the most prodigal prodigy.”
“…All I'm saying is that Wesley doesn’t have Willow’s innate magical powers or the benefit of having been raised on a Hellmouth but he has still performed the spells we needed on a number of occasions with no trouble whatsoever…”
“…I don’t think it was being ‘raised on a Hellmouth’ that won Willow an acceptance from every college in the country that matters…!”
“…Gunn never got to finish High School because he was busy trying to save LA from vampires. I think he has a lot of untapped potential there and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that if I know Wesley is weaker in a couple of areas that he could have extra coaching…”
Buffy growled in a pretty good impression of Angel on a bad day and they broke off in surprise to look at her.
“You two are pathetic,” she told them. “In fact you’re beyond pathetic. Giles, stop doing the proud parent thing - it’s kinda sweet but also mucho creepy. And Angel, your kids aren’t kids, they’re adults, who we’re going to find a way to change back, remember? And even if they stay kids you are not going to spend the next ten years of their lives piling on the pressure about their SAT scores!”
Angel looked at her for a moment and then grimaced. “I'm just…thinking ahead.”
“You’re just obsessing like a maniac.”
“They’re so small.” Angel slumped onto the couch despondently. “And the world’s so big.”
“Wait until they start dating,” Buffy sat down next to him and patted him soothingly on the hand. “Then you’ll really know what stress is.”
“They won’t be dating,” Angel assured her. “Ever. Especially Cordelia. She was impregnated by a demon the last time she went on a date, and Wesley lets women pick him up in bars if he has too many Bloody Marys. The last one wasn’t even a natural blonde. And what does Gunn know about dating? He’s been killing vampires for much too long to know anything about women. Or men. Oh God, people always think Wes is gay. I bet men try to pick him up in bars too. There was that demon in Caritas that time… I can never let them go out alone.”
Buffy looked at Giles and grimaced. “You have got to find a way to reverse this spell, Giles, or those poor kids are going to have the worst adolescence ever.”
“I think that’s a given.” Giles took the video camera from Angel and held it up. “And I think we’re all agreed that the next time any representatives from the Council feel like catching up on old times with Wesley that we want him to be large enough to hold a flame thrower.”
“I'm not letting them near open flames!” Angel looked aghast.
“Angel,” said Xander patiently, “they’d be adults, remember? As adults you let Gunn and Wesley go out and mix it up with big stinky demons. Is that ringing any bells with you at all?”
“Didn’t Cordy say that Gunn as a grown up is like…six feet four?” Willow added soothingly. “And I remember Wesley being tall too. Of course I don’t remember him being able to fight at all, but I guess that’s changed now…?”
“Yes.” Angel took a deep breath. “He’s changed.”
Giles said quietly, “Those kind of changes tend to be hard won.”
Buffy looked up at the Englishman. “I think we all know Wesley doesn’t enjoy being a child again.”
“I was kind of hoping that he would,” Angel admitted. “He had such a crappy time the first time around. I wanted to make it better for him.”
“But this isn’t who he is,” said Buffy gently. “He’s a grown man with all those life experiences he fought really hard to gain.”
Xander nodded. “Angel, it’s no secret that my family wouldn’t win any good parenting prizes but that doesn’t mean I want to go back to being eight years old again. And my past is part of who I am, what’s made me…me. I'm proud of reaching this age. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back and do it all over again even if I had a chance to do it better. I want to move onto the next thing now. Wesley’s making the best of it because he doesn’t know if this is going to be his life now. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate it.”
“Gunn’s happy,” Angel pointed out.
“Was he unhappy before?”
“He was…less giggly. And he didn’t have a family.”
“Yes, he did,” Buffy put in. “He had you, Wesley and Cordelia. Aren’t you his family now?”
Angel looked around for an argument. “Well, Cordy…”
Xander held up a finger. “Just stopping you right there, Angel. Kind of an expert on Cordelia. And she was desperate to be old enough to wear designer fashions the whole time she was kid. You can’t fool me she doesn’t want to be able to get back into her grown up clothes again.”
“I think she and Gunn are okay because it’s a novelty to them and they’ve regressed further than Wesley has,” Willow added. “But don’t you think it’s going to be weird for them, being children but not? Having had a whole life before this that they have to pretend doesn’t exist but still remember? I think ultimately, having those kind of conflicts would affect their test scores.”
Angel sighed in defeat and Giles handed him back the video camera. “Tell me Wesley looks like he’s having fun as a child on this tape, Angel, and then remind yourself that as someone associated with you he’s always going to be a target.”
“I'm not saying I don’t want them turned back. I'm just trying to make the most of a bad situation if they can’t be turned back.”
“Angel, you’re picking out colleges,” Xander pointed out.
Buffy patted his hand again. “You have to let go.”
“You have to let them be who they are,” Giles looked at Angel intently. “Whoever they may happen to be. Even if that means they say and do things you don’t like. Take paths you wish they hadn’t chosen. They’re entitled to that. They’ve earned that. I’ve called Anya and asked her to bring me a selection of focusing orbs, and with Willow and Wesley’s assistance I'm sure we can work out what happened. And once we know that, I'm confident I can reverse the spell. It would be nice if you were happy for them.”
“I will be,” Angel promised. “I will. I miss them. The adult them. I just wish…”
“You could keep the child versions too?” Willow sighed. “Me too.”
Buffy looked glum. “Dawn is going to miss MiniGunn so much. I'm going to have to buy her a puppy after this.”
Angel looked up the stairs. “I’d better get back to them. Wesley might have nightmares. I should be there.”
Xander nodded to Giles, “You and I should go. I think Tara and Willow are camping out here again but we can’t really do the whole pyjama party thing.”
“Oh woe,” Giles observed.
“But we’ll be back early,” Xander added. “Just in case you need reinforcements.”
“I don’t think those Council goons will be back,” Buffy assured him.
“I meant trying to get Cordy to eat her breakfast cereal.”
“Ah.” Buffy nodded. “For that we could do with reinforcements.”
“I’ll be back after breakfast,” Giles observed. “Probably a good hour or so after just in case there are stragglers.”
“We’ll leave the washing up for you,” Buffy told him brightly then seeing his disapproving expression added, “Or not. We’ll in fact move around very quietly while you do the difficult important research so as not to make your head ache worse than it obviously already does.”
“Appreciated.” Giles headed for the door. “Good night, Angel. Try not to hyperventilate too much over your young charges. I always think that looks so foolish on an entity that doesn’t actually need to breathe.”
Angel mechanically made his good nights to everyone, hardly noticing when the front door closed behind Xander and Giles. As he climbed back up the stairs, he was thinking about his adult friends. The Wesley he had carried out of the wreckage of their first office, the Cordelia who had seen all the pain in the world, the Gunn who had been leading his own crew against the vampires. They had all paid a high price for helping Angel in his quest for redemption and he wasn’t always sure that he had appreciated them as much as he could. Them being turned into children might be a gift for him, the guy who couldn’t ever have kids of his own, but it was just another thing that hanging around with a vampire had cost them.
He went into the bedroom where Wesley and Cordelia were curled up facing one another, Gunn having wriggled his way in between them, the human hot water bottle around which they were both warming themselves. Wesley’s black eye and bruised cheekbone were clearly visible, as were the finger bruises around his thin wrist. Angel bent over them and kissed Cordelia on the forehead.
“I do want you back,” he whispered to them. “I want you all back. I miss you.”
“We missed you too, Angel,” Wesley murmured sleepily. “We’re glad you came back.”
Angel carefully moved them over a little and slid into the bed next to Wesley where he could listen to their heartbeats all night and know that however dead he might be, they were all still safe and alive and protected.
Part Ten
***