Liebestod, Part II
From the final chapter of the Scrolls of Marius:
"And so it came to pass that in the land of eternal twilight, the disciples assembled to set their path to the future. And the signs they did take onto themselves were those of the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart...."
Wesley read that, and the passages which followed it, two hours and a bottle of scotch ago. He really has no business being surprised, but scotch is too easy to come by here, and he sees no reason to deal with this sober. At least until Bar cuts him off.
But he should have known. The scrolls had been tormenting him for months now. At first, there was the struggle just to translate them. And then the sudden discovery of that first message from Cyvus Vail, addressing him directly from a document at least four thousand years old. Taunting him. Mocking him.
Then followed days of feverish obsession. Translating line after line, until the agony of Vail's scorn became too much, and he shut the scrolls away for months. And finally, his change of heart only a few days past, which took him back to the scrolls' final passages. Where the connection was made between his presence here in Milliways and the earliest days of Wolfram & Hart.
He had suspected the Circle of the Black Thorn. He had never suspected their Masters.
Is the Landlord himself one of Them? Who better to be a Senior Partner, after all? Perhaps, even the Senior Partner. No one could deny the possibility.
And yet, no. Probably not. Surely if the Senior Partners had arranged for his passage here, They wouldn’t have made it so obvious as to place him under the thumb of one of Their own. That would have made it too easy. Disoriented as he was, he would have guessed the truth after only a matter of days. Instead, it has taken him nearly two years.
And so. Wolfram & Hart. What role, then, for Cyvus Vail? Is he their collaborator? Or had he discovered Wesley’s presence here by other means? Is he a distraction? Hired by Wolfram & Hart to keep him preoccupied so he wouldn’t discover Their part too soon? But why bother? He hadn’t been able to do anything to them when he'd been in L.A. and alive. What good could he do here, and dead?
Why not let him know? Why deprive themselves of a chance to gloat? Of the chance to show him They could move him about the multiverse at will, deprive him of any hope of determining his own destiny?
....Or is he missing the point? Does this mean he isn't so helpless, after all?
And now Wesley begins to wonder if, perhaps, he's been reading the wrong texts all along.