Before Wesley could reach out and pull Regan to him, make sure that she was okay, he heard Chris and Jonathan and the others coming into the warehouse. He turned to see them looking at him questioningly, their eyes taking in the sight of the dead demon and him and his daughter.
"What the hell happened here?" Jonathan asked.
He didn't get a change to answer before he heard Regan running. He turned and cursed as she disappeared. "Regan!"
"Wesley? Wha--?"
"The Io'ic's dead. Take care of the body and tell the warehouse owners that we'll be billing them as agreed. Make sure you burn that; otherwise, we're going to be in for some more problems."
With that, he took off in the direction that Regan had gone and out into the alley. Fear gripped his heart as he worried that she might have run off into the night, and God knew that an upset eleven-year-old would be a beacon for every vampire within a five-mile radius. He ran for his Jeep, intending to drive the streets until he found her, but when he reached it, he noticed that the lock stubs were up.
"Regan?" he asked. He looked into the windows and saw the dark figure in the back seat. Opening the door, he felt relief, anger and about a hundred other emotions flow through him. "Regan, what the--I thought--you could have--do you know how worried I was just now when you took off? You could have been killed in there, and then you take off again, and for all I know you could have ended up caught by a vampire! I could have lost you tonight! Why did you disobey me when I told you I didn't want you here?!"
Regan stayed curled up in the little ball. She didn't even move when she heard her dad outside the Jeep. She almost got him killed. She could've been an orphan without anyone to turn to. Going to stay with Spike wasn't an option since that thing was with him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered as she looked at her dad with tears streaming down her face. She wanted to yell back but she didn't have to energy. "Don't you think I feel that way every time you leave to go fight demons? I don't want to lose you like I lost mom! And I'm sorry I came here. You could've died because of me just like mom died because of me!"
She angrily wiped away her tears and curled up more. Part of her knew she'd have to tell her dad what happened. She had practically told him already. Looking over at him, her bottom lip started to quiver and she wrapped her arms around her body.
"Mom told me to stay in her office when it came in. Knox kept telling her she should come out and look at it. I stayed in there and watched her from the window, and Knox was acting weird and I remembered what you said about how Knox couldn't be trusted so I went down into the lab. I was standing behind her, wondering how it opened. Sometimes when I think about things, they happen. I didn't mean to open it. It...it opened and mom pulled me out of the way and inhaled the dust. She told everyone she did it because she didn't want all of you mad at me. But, when she was in the hospital, she told me we would tell you when she got better. But she never did."
Regan looked at her dad, and waited for him to call her a murderer. She was the one who'd killed Knox, and she should've been shot and stabbed, not Knox and Gunn. "I'm sorry, daddy. I wanted to tell you but I was so afraid you wouldn't want me anymore," she cried. "I'm sorry I killed her and ruined everything."
When Regan said she was sorry and starting talking about being afraid of losing him the was they had lost Fred, Wesley found himself deflating. They hadn't spoken of her death since they had moved out to New Haven, and to hear her talking about it now...to hear that she blamed herself...
"Regan, love, it's not your fault. It was Knox - he was the one..."
But then his daughter started telling him what had happened that day in the lab. How her thoughts had opened the sarcophagus and Fred had saved her, then told everyone she had done it. Wesley felt his chest and throat tightening as tears came to his eyes. Fred had died saving their daughter, and he hadn't known.
"Oh, love," he managed to finally say when she apologized again, telling him that she had been afraid he would want her anymore. Getting into the backseat of the Jeep, he pulled her to him, holding her tightly and rocking her a bit. "It was an accident. You didn't know."
Knox knew. Knox had wanted her to open it, and in the end, even if it had been Regan who had done it on accident, he had got what he wanted. Even with Gunn, his part in it had been accidental. Wesley would always regret his reaction though he hadn't been able to think of anything other than revenge at the time. He understood why Regan had kept quiet. She knew what he had done, all in her mother's name.
"I can't...I'd never not want you," he told her, resting his head against her hair. He closed his eyes for a moment and drew in a shuddering breath. Regan wasn't the only one with secrets. Regan hadn't been in the house when Fred had died, so she hadn't known...
"I tried to kill her...Illyria, I mean," he said softly. "Before I knew that your mother was actually truly gone, I tried to cut her head off. I...I wasn't thinking straight, and I just wanted to take out the thing that had taken her from us. I didn't even think about trying to get her back. So...I could never...don't ever blame yourself for what happened."
Everything Regan had been holding inside of her came rushing forth as she clung to her dad and cried. She had been so alone over the past year, and so afraid. Every time her powers would go haywire, she would become afraid she would hurt her dad. She never wanted to lose him like she'd lost her mother.
When her dad said he still wanted her, Regan's body slowly started to relax. Her fingers were still digging into his arm as he told her about what he had tried to do with Illyria. "I'm not mad," she whispered. "A couple weeks after mom died, Illyria was in the hallway and I tried to hurt her but I couldn't. She started using mom's voice, and I knew it wasn't real but I couldn't hurt it."
She allowed her father to hold her for a few more minutes but, when Regan was finally able to curb her tears, she noticed the demon blood on her jacket. The smell was awful and she gave her dad a sheepish look. "I think I want to go home now. I kind of stick," she said, giving him a small smile. "Thanks for coming to save me, dad."
Regan removed herself from her dad's arms and pulled the seatbelt over her and gave him a look. "I'm going to be grounded for a while, aren't I?" she quietly asked with a small sniffle.
The way Regan's fingers were digging into his arm was starting to hurt, but Wesley didn't care. He would put up with all kinds of pain for her, no matter where it came from.
He hadn't known about her run in with Illyria in the hall at the firm, though. If he had, he would have done something right then and there, got her out of that place long before he had. He knew how hard it had been to see Illyria using Fred's voice and then using her visage. It had been so hard to deny her, but both of them had, knowing that...thing was not the Fred they both loved so much.
"Illyria screwed both of us up," he whispered. "It's a good thing we got out of there when we did. I shudder to think what might have happened had we stayed."
When Regan pulled back, staying that she wanted to go home, he nodded. They both definitely needed to clean up.
"You never have to thank me, love," he told her. "I'm your father. And as for grounding...I think you'll be using the computer supervised for your schoolwork for a while, but we'll discuss that more later."
He didn't want to really leave her, but he had to so he could drive them home. He kissed her forehead and then slid out from the backseat and got behind the wheel, heading home.
The ride home was done in silence as Regan looked out the side window of the Jeep. It wasn't until they were pulling into the driveway when she remembered she'd ridden her bike there. but she didn't say anything because they had been through enough already. She would just mention it over breakfast.
When they walked inside, with blood on them, Kelly's eyes went wide. "Mr. Pryce! I didn't know she'd snuck out!" the young woman said to Wesley.
Regan took this as her cue to slip out of the room and get cleaned up. She went into the bathroom and pulled her dirty clothes off, and placed them in a bag of clothes that needed to be burn. There was a few items inside of it from her dad's last hunt. She then go into the shower and scrubbed herself down.
Once she was finished, Regan dried herself off and wrapped the large towel around her small frame. She padded to her room and knelt down in front of the bottom drawer of her dresser. Her pajamas were on top and Regan took them out. It was then that the white lab coat caught her eye. She'd taken it from her mom's office shortly after she'd died.
Taking the coat out, Regan pressed it to her face, smiling a bit when she could smell the faint scent of her mother's perfume. Setting the coat down, she unfolded it. Inside was a framed picture of Regan and her parents. She'd had Spike take it a week before Fred had died, and she was going to give it to them but...things happened.
Her finger traced over his mother's figure in the picture. It was the first time she'd look at a picture of Fred since they'd moved to New Haven. It was then that Regan realized a part of her had started to forget what her mother looked like. Her heart clenched in her chest and she put the coat back into the drawer before standing.
Regan went over to her CD wallet and pulled s disc out. She padded to the living room, noticing Kelly was gone. She figured her dad was in the shower. Picking up the remote, she turned the television and then the DVD player. Carefully, she placed the disc in the tray and pushed it back in.
Sitting on the couch, she pushed play and a video she'd shot a few days before her mother's death. They had went on a midnight picnic to a local park. She smiled as she watched her mom pull her dad up on the merry-go-round, telling him to stand in the middle as she pushed it. She clenched the picture against her chest harder and continued to watch.
Regan blinked her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she started to laugh at the image of her dad falling off the merry-go-round, while she and her mother laughed at him.
At Kelly's words when they walked into the house, Wesley felt the anger that been pushed aside during his heart-to-heart with his daughter rising again. He held his tongue, however, until Regan had disappeared to her room. Once she was gone, he turned on Kelly, his eyes blazing.
"You didn't know she was gone?" he asked, his voice a low growl. "She's been gone long enough to get down to the warehouse district where my meeting was and for me to find her and bring her back, and you didn't know? What the bloody hell were you doing?"
"I...I..." she stuttered.
"I pay you to watch her! At least I did. I don't believe I'll be calling you again, and considering the circumstances, you won't be paid tonight since you didn't do your job."
"Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, I'm so sorry. I just--."
Wesley opened the door. "Goodbye, Kelly."
Once the girl was gone, Wesley shut the door and locked it, leaning against it for a moment and taking a deep shuddering breath. He had almost lost his daughter tonight. Again. They had managed to clear the air about some things, but the knowledge that she could have died, so soon after Fred, still hurt.
Pushing away from the door, he went into his bedroom and took a shower. Once he was cleaned up and changed into a pair of pajamas and his dressing gown, he opened the door to go make sure that Regan was all right. It was then that he heard the sound of the television and...Fred's voice. Walking into the lounge, he found Regan sitting on the couch and watching one of her discs.
The picnic. He remembered how much his bum had hurt after he had fallen off that damn roundabout, but the memory of Regan and Fred's laughter...that had been the last time they had been happy together.
Circling around the couch, he sat down next to Regan and silently pulled her into his arms, embracing her tightly. "I'm sorry, love. I've been so worried about losing you the way I lost your mother, I didn't think about the fact that you might be worried about me too." He sighed and looked at his wife's image on the screen. "It's not the same without her, is it?"
Regan snuggled against her dad and continued to watch the screen. She was relieved that her dad finally understood how she felt. It'd been so hard on her ever since they'd moved to New Haven, but now he understood and hopefully things would change for the better. Maybe now they could properly heal.
When her dad asked his question, Regan slowly nodded. "It won't ever be the same again," she whispered as she pulled away from him. "I miss her a lot and sometimes I think I might forget what she looks like or what she sounded like. But, I'm glad you're still here, daddy. Even though it hurts sometimes, I know you'll be here to help."
She suddenly realized she still had the picture against her chest. Regan pulled it back and looked at it for a moment. "I think I want this to be on the mantle," she said before slipping off the couch and placing it above the fireplace. It was the only picture they had out in the house.
Regan went back to the couch and curled up beside her dad. It'd been a long night and she was starting to feel exhausted. "Will you tuck me in and read to me?" she asked, looking up at him.
"I'll always be here," Wesley promised Regan - and it was a promise that he was damn well going to keep, no matter what it took. They had lost Fred. They weren't going to lose each other now. Regan was all he truly had left in the world. She was everything that really mattered to him.
Sitting back, he watched her as she stood and walked over to the mantle to put the picture on it. He hadn't been able to bring himself to put out any pictures since they had moved into the house. The ones with Fred had always hurt too much to look at, and the ones without her...well, there were no ones without her, and seeing those would have hurt just as much.
But now, looking at the picture of them, the last one that had ever been taken, Wesley felt something aching inside him, something that would always ache, but at the same time, it wasn't as painful as he had feared. Tonight had been a good thing, it seemed. For the first time since Fred's death, Wesley actually felt like they might be able to live their lives.
"It'll stay there as long as we live here," he promised Regan a she settled back down next to him. "And anywhere else we might end up living."
When she asked if he'd read to her, he smiled, remembering how he had done that when she had been a baby and barely able to understand anything other than his voice. They hadn't really had time for anything like that since then, since she had returned to them.
"Of course I will, love," he told her, drawing her up and walking with her into the bedroom. He looked over the selection of books that she had while she crawled into bed and chose one before crossing over to the bed. Once he had tucked in the sheets, he sat down with her and showed her the book. "How about this?"
Regan smiled when she saw the book her dad was going to read to her. "That's mom's copy. Grandma gave it to me when we visited them," she explained as she watched her dad open the book and started to read to her.
It didn't take Regan long to feel herself falling asleep. It'd been an exhausting night. Her body was still recovering from all the energy she used to suspend the demon above her, plus, it'd been an emotional night too. Her dad was barely through the second page when she felt herself slip into sleep.
Like some nights, she dreamt of her mother. Usually it was things they'd done before Fred had died. But that night, she dreamt of a book and Illyria. Waking up with a start, Regan looked around and noticed it was dark in her room, and that her dad was gone.
With a small yawn, she slipped out of her bed and walked down the hall to her dad's room. She quietly slipped into the bed with him and fell asleep again. When morning came, she woke up and stretched out, her body a little sore from the night before.
"Dad?" she said, reaching over to shake his shoulder. "Can we have donuts for breakfast?"
Wesley had always known that A Little Princess had been Fred's favorite book, and sitting here, reading it to their daughter, actually filled him with a sense of peace. Maybe because even though Fred wasn't there, and never would be again, he was finally beginning to realize that there were pieces of her still around that they could share. Her books, her images, her music. All of her belongings were packed away upstairs because while he hadn't been able to look at her things in a while, he hadn't been able to get rid of them either. Perhaps he could share them with Regan now.
After he had read to Regan for a bit, he looked over and saw that she had fallen asleep. How long ago, he wasn't completely sure. Closing the book, he set it on her nightstand and leaned over to kiss her forehead.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he whispered before heading to his room and getting ready for bed.
Sometime during the night, he woke up briefly, suddenly aware of someone in the bed with him. "Fred?" he murmured, only half awake.
Then he looked over and saw the small figure next to him and smiled softly, reaching over to brush his daughter's hair back from her face. She definitely reminded him of her mother at times like this.
He fell asleep again after that and didn't wake until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Blinking, he raised his head to look at Regan. "You're definitely your mother's daughter," he muttered with a laugh. It felt good to be able to say something like that without feeling like he was going to crack apart.
He sat up and got of the bed, pulling her up. "Come on. I think we have chocolate and strawberry milk as well. You can take your pick."
Once they were in the kitchen with their donuts and milk, Wesley looked over at Regan. "I've been thinking - even though you're grounded, we should still go to Boston. I still need to do that pick-up, and I figure that even though a library visit is your idea of fun, it would do us good to get out of here for a bit. Do something different."
"What the hell happened here?" Jonathan asked.
He didn't get a change to answer before he heard Regan running. He turned and cursed as she disappeared. "Regan!"
"Wesley? Wha--?"
"The Io'ic's dead. Take care of the body and tell the warehouse owners that we'll be billing them as agreed. Make sure you burn that; otherwise, we're going to be in for some more problems."
With that, he took off in the direction that Regan had gone and out into the alley. Fear gripped his heart as he worried that she might have run off into the night, and God knew that an upset eleven-year-old would be a beacon for every vampire within a five-mile radius. He ran for his Jeep, intending to drive the streets until he found her, but when he reached it, he noticed that the lock stubs were up.
"Regan?" he asked. He looked into the windows and saw the dark figure in the back seat. Opening the door, he felt relief, anger and about a hundred other emotions flow through him. "Regan, what the--I thought--you could have--do you know how worried I was just now when you took off? You could have been killed in there, and then you take off again, and for all I know you could have ended up caught by a vampire! I could have lost you tonight! Why did you disobey me when I told you I didn't want you here?!"
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"I'm sorry," she whispered as she looked at her dad with tears streaming down her face. She wanted to yell back but she didn't have to energy. "Don't you think I feel that way every time you leave to go fight demons? I don't want to lose you like I lost mom! And I'm sorry I came here. You could've died because of me just like mom died because of me!"
She angrily wiped away her tears and curled up more. Part of her knew she'd have to tell her dad what happened. She had practically told him already. Looking over at him, her bottom lip started to quiver and she wrapped her arms around her body.
"Mom told me to stay in her office when it came in. Knox kept telling her she should come out and look at it. I stayed in there and watched her from the window, and Knox was acting weird and I remembered what you said about how Knox couldn't be trusted so I went down into the lab. I was standing behind her, wondering how it opened. Sometimes when I think about things, they happen. I didn't mean to open it. It...it opened and mom pulled me out of the way and inhaled the dust. She told everyone she did it because she didn't want all of you mad at me. But, when she was in the hospital, she told me we would tell you when she got better. But she never did."
Regan looked at her dad, and waited for him to call her a murderer. She was the one who'd killed Knox, and she should've been shot and stabbed, not Knox and Gunn. "I'm sorry, daddy. I wanted to tell you but I was so afraid you wouldn't want me anymore," she cried. "I'm sorry I killed her and ruined everything."
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"Regan, love, it's not your fault. It was Knox - he was the one..."
But then his daughter started telling him what had happened that day in the lab. How her thoughts had opened the sarcophagus and Fred had saved her, then told everyone she had done it. Wesley felt his chest and throat tightening as tears came to his eyes. Fred had died saving their daughter, and he hadn't known.
"Oh, love," he managed to finally say when she apologized again, telling him that she had been afraid he would want her anymore. Getting into the backseat of the Jeep, he pulled her to him, holding her tightly and rocking her a bit. "It was an accident. You didn't know."
Knox knew. Knox had wanted her to open it, and in the end, even if it had been Regan who had done it on accident, he had got what he wanted. Even with Gunn, his part in it had been accidental. Wesley would always regret his reaction though he hadn't been able to think of anything other than revenge at the time. He understood why Regan had kept quiet. She knew what he had done, all in her mother's name.
"I can't...I'd never not want you," he told her, resting his head against her hair. He closed his eyes for a moment and drew in a shuddering breath. Regan wasn't the only one with secrets. Regan hadn't been in the house when Fred had died, so she hadn't known...
"I tried to kill her...Illyria, I mean," he said softly. "Before I knew that your mother was actually truly gone, I tried to cut her head off. I...I wasn't thinking straight, and I just wanted to take out the thing that had taken her from us. I didn't even think about trying to get her back. So...I could never...don't ever blame yourself for what happened."
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When her dad said he still wanted her, Regan's body slowly started to relax. Her fingers were still digging into his arm as he told her about what he had tried to do with Illyria. "I'm not mad," she whispered. "A couple weeks after mom died, Illyria was in the hallway and I tried to hurt her but I couldn't. She started using mom's voice, and I knew it wasn't real but I couldn't hurt it."
She allowed her father to hold her for a few more minutes but, when Regan was finally able to curb her tears, she noticed the demon blood on her jacket. The smell was awful and she gave her dad a sheepish look. "I think I want to go home now. I kind of stick," she said, giving him a small smile. "Thanks for coming to save me, dad."
Regan removed herself from her dad's arms and pulled the seatbelt over her and gave him a look. "I'm going to be grounded for a while, aren't I?" she quietly asked with a small sniffle.
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He hadn't known about her run in with Illyria in the hall at the firm, though. If he had, he would have done something right then and there, got her out of that place long before he had. He knew how hard it had been to see Illyria using Fred's voice and then using her visage. It had been so hard to deny her, but both of them had, knowing that...thing was not the Fred they both loved so much.
"Illyria screwed both of us up," he whispered. "It's a good thing we got out of there when we did. I shudder to think what might have happened had we stayed."
When Regan pulled back, staying that she wanted to go home, he nodded. They both definitely needed to clean up.
"You never have to thank me, love," he told her. "I'm your father. And as for grounding...I think you'll be using the computer supervised for your schoolwork for a while, but we'll discuss that more later."
He didn't want to really leave her, but he had to so he could drive them home. He kissed her forehead and then slid out from the backseat and got behind the wheel, heading home.
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When they walked inside, with blood on them, Kelly's eyes went wide. "Mr. Pryce! I didn't know she'd snuck out!" the young woman said to Wesley.
Regan took this as her cue to slip out of the room and get cleaned up. She went into the bathroom and pulled her dirty clothes off, and placed them in a bag of clothes that needed to be burn. There was a few items inside of it from her dad's last hunt. She then go into the shower and scrubbed herself down.
Once she was finished, Regan dried herself off and wrapped the large towel around her small frame. She padded to her room and knelt down in front of the bottom drawer of her dresser. Her pajamas were on top and Regan took them out. It was then that the white lab coat caught her eye. She'd taken it from her mom's office shortly after she'd died.
Taking the coat out, Regan pressed it to her face, smiling a bit when she could smell the faint scent of her mother's perfume. Setting the coat down, she unfolded it. Inside was a framed picture of Regan and her parents. She'd had Spike take it a week before Fred had died, and she was going to give it to them but...things happened.
Her finger traced over his mother's figure in the picture. It was the first time she'd look at a picture of Fred since they'd moved to New Haven. It was then that Regan realized a part of her had started to forget what her mother looked like. Her heart clenched in her chest and she put the coat back into the drawer before standing.
Regan went over to her CD wallet and pulled s disc out. She padded to the living room, noticing Kelly was gone. She figured her dad was in the shower. Picking up the remote, she turned the television and then the DVD player. Carefully, she placed the disc in the tray and pushed it back in.
Sitting on the couch, she pushed play and a video she'd shot a few days before her mother's death. They had went on a midnight picnic to a local park. She smiled as she watched her mom pull her dad up on the merry-go-round, telling him to stand in the middle as she pushed it. She clenched the picture against her chest harder and continued to watch.
Regan blinked her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she started to laugh at the image of her dad falling off the merry-go-round, while she and her mother laughed at him.
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"You didn't know she was gone?" he asked, his voice a low growl. "She's been gone long enough to get down to the warehouse district where my meeting was and for me to find her and bring her back, and you didn't know? What the bloody hell were you doing?"
"I...I..." she stuttered.
"I pay you to watch her! At least I did. I don't believe I'll be calling you again, and considering the circumstances, you won't be paid tonight since you didn't do your job."
"Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, I'm so sorry. I just--."
Wesley opened the door. "Goodbye, Kelly."
Once the girl was gone, Wesley shut the door and locked it, leaning against it for a moment and taking a deep shuddering breath. He had almost lost his daughter tonight. Again. They had managed to clear the air about some things, but the knowledge that she could have died, so soon after Fred, still hurt.
Pushing away from the door, he went into his bedroom and took a shower. Once he was cleaned up and changed into a pair of pajamas and his dressing gown, he opened the door to go make sure that Regan was all right. It was then that he heard the sound of the television and...Fred's voice. Walking into the lounge, he found Regan sitting on the couch and watching one of her discs.
The picnic. He remembered how much his bum had hurt after he had fallen off that damn roundabout, but the memory of Regan and Fred's laughter...that had been the last time they had been happy together.
Circling around the couch, he sat down next to Regan and silently pulled her into his arms, embracing her tightly. "I'm sorry, love. I've been so worried about losing you the way I lost your mother, I didn't think about the fact that you might be worried about me too." He sighed and looked at his wife's image on the screen. "It's not the same without her, is it?"
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When her dad asked his question, Regan slowly nodded. "It won't ever be the same again," she whispered as she pulled away from him. "I miss her a lot and sometimes I think I might forget what she looks like or what she sounded like. But, I'm glad you're still here, daddy. Even though it hurts sometimes, I know you'll be here to help."
She suddenly realized she still had the picture against her chest. Regan pulled it back and looked at it for a moment. "I think I want this to be on the mantle," she said before slipping off the couch and placing it above the fireplace. It was the only picture they had out in the house.
Regan went back to the couch and curled up beside her dad. It'd been a long night and she was starting to feel exhausted. "Will you tuck me in and read to me?" she asked, looking up at him.
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Sitting back, he watched her as she stood and walked over to the mantle to put the picture on it. He hadn't been able to bring himself to put out any pictures since they had moved into the house. The ones with Fred had always hurt too much to look at, and the ones without her...well, there were no ones without her, and seeing those would have hurt just as much.
But now, looking at the picture of them, the last one that had ever been taken, Wesley felt something aching inside him, something that would always ache, but at the same time, it wasn't as painful as he had feared. Tonight had been a good thing, it seemed. For the first time since Fred's death, Wesley actually felt like they might be able to live their lives.
"It'll stay there as long as we live here," he promised Regan a she settled back down next to him. "And anywhere else we might end up living."
When she asked if he'd read to her, he smiled, remembering how he had done that when she had been a baby and barely able to understand anything other than his voice. They hadn't really had time for anything like that since then, since she had returned to them.
"Of course I will, love," he told her, drawing her up and walking with her into the bedroom. He looked over the selection of books that she had while she crawled into bed and chose one before crossing over to the bed. Once he had tucked in the sheets, he sat down with her and showed her the book. "How about this?"
A Little Princess.
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It didn't take Regan long to feel herself falling asleep. It'd been an exhausting night. Her body was still recovering from all the energy she used to suspend the demon above her, plus, it'd been an emotional night too. Her dad was barely through the second page when she felt herself slip into sleep.
Like some nights, she dreamt of her mother. Usually it was things they'd done before Fred had died. But that night, she dreamt of a book and Illyria. Waking up with a start, Regan looked around and noticed it was dark in her room, and that her dad was gone.
With a small yawn, she slipped out of her bed and walked down the hall to her dad's room. She quietly slipped into the bed with him and fell asleep again. When morning came, she woke up and stretched out, her body a little sore from the night before.
"Dad?" she said, reaching over to shake his shoulder. "Can we have donuts for breakfast?"
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After he had read to Regan for a bit, he looked over and saw that she had fallen asleep. How long ago, he wasn't completely sure. Closing the book, he set it on her nightstand and leaned over to kiss her forehead.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he whispered before heading to his room and getting ready for bed.
Sometime during the night, he woke up briefly, suddenly aware of someone in the bed with him. "Fred?" he murmured, only half awake.
Then he looked over and saw the small figure next to him and smiled softly, reaching over to brush his daughter's hair back from her face. She definitely reminded him of her mother at times like this.
He fell asleep again after that and didn't wake until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Blinking, he raised his head to look at Regan. "You're definitely your mother's daughter," he muttered with a laugh. It felt good to be able to say something like that without feeling like he was going to crack apart.
He sat up and got of the bed, pulling her up. "Come on. I think we have chocolate and strawberry milk as well. You can take your pick."
Once they were in the kitchen with their donuts and milk, Wesley looked over at Regan. "I've been thinking - even though you're grounded, we should still go to Boston. I still need to do that pick-up, and I figure that even though a library visit is your idea of fun, it would do us good to get out of here for a bit. Do something different."
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