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Lost and Found, Part Three

Angel had been waiting for Lorne to come marching in here demanding that he care. Because that was what he did, of course, or what they thought he was meant to do: be the flawless hero who forgave the person who wronged him, mind that he was bleeding, care that he had suffered. The truth was, he didn’t, and he damned well wasn’t going to start now just because Lorne wanted him to.

Instead, Lorne wandered in casually and held up a beaker filled with a warm golden liquid. “I borrowed one of your blood beakers. Hope you don’t mind?”

Angel rose to his feet. “Is that the throat medicine?” As Lorne nodded, Angel took it from him. “I’ll give it to him.”

Lorne said, “And I’ll come with you. Just in case you need some help.”

“I’m not going to kill him.”

“And neither am I, so all the more reason why we can do this better together.”

Angel wondered if they had been talking behind his back and had made some kind of pact whereby he was never left alone with Wesley. That was not going to suit his purposes as he had a lot of things he wanted to say to the man that could really only be said without witnesses, if he wanted Wesley to talk more or less freely anyway. He supposed he would have to play nice for a few days until everyone calmed down.

He wasn’t exactly astonished to find Groo hanging around in the corridor that just happened to guard Wesley’s bedroom either. The man made a show of twirling his sword around as if he only happened to be there to practise some moves.

“Nice blade work,” Angel observed. “Is Wesley awake?”

“I am not certain.” Groo darted a look at Lorne who must have indicated that it was okay as he moved away from the door. “Please give him my best wishes for his recovery.”

Angel grunted something non-committal and went into the room. At once the scents hit him and he had to pause for a moment as they washed over him. There was still the bitter after-tang of magic in the air, and antiseptic and arnica from the earlier attempt at tending to him, but Gunn evidently hadn’t had the heart to dump Wesley in the shower and hose him down, so the other scents were still there: sweat and pain and way too much pleasure that smelt like Angel and Gunn.

It was impossible not to be completely unaffected by what he’d seen, of course. He could tell Lorne what he liked; stay as stone-faced as he could manage it; but there had been a time when Wesley was his friend, maybe the closest friend he’d ever had, and the thought of what he had been put through for the past week would have been unbearable. Given that he still thought he wanted the man dead, and if asked would probably have said that a slow painful death would suit him fine, it was a little difficult to justify the pocket of rage he was feeling that had nothing to do with wanting to punish Wesley for stealing his son and everything to do with wanting to drive a stake through the heart of that Angelus from a different dimension. He hadn’t been able to sustain any pity for Vampire Gunn either. At first he’d been full of guilt and compassion for the man he had been, ending up like this, and then he’d had to accept that the creature currently having so much nasty fun with Wesley on the video tape had less to do with Gunn than his shadow. After half an hour of viewing he’d been ready to stake Gunn too. By the end of the four hours he had felt as if he could never get his jaw unclenched where he had been gritting his teeth for so long.

He crossed over to the bed, Lorne following him closely, presumably in case he made a grab for that pillow.

Wesley was still lying on his front, the duvet had slipped down to reveal the white bandaging Cordelia had applied so expertly. He was still unshaven and his cheekbones had hollows under them to match the shadows under his eyes. The mark on his right shoulder had bled through even the new bandaging, an ‘A’ ghosted in blood through the linen. Some of the welts had bled through as well, as had one of the bites on his arm. Angel understood the logic of only fixing the bare minimum and letting the rest heal naturally but he was still glad he wasn’t the one paying that dark mystic, because he would have been asking for a refund.

The stink of his own satisfaction all over an injured Wesley was a strange and disturbing combination. Wesley’s sweat and fear and pain and his pleasure; scents that had never been meant to go together in any dimension, yet here they were. He thought back to the hospital, the white rage in his mind, pressing the pillow down as hard as he could, spittle spraying from his mouth in fury. Had he enjoyed it? Perhaps there had been a certain malevolent satisfaction in letting the man know how very unforgiven he was and would always be. He had wanted to hurt him as much as he possibly could just for that moment; dangle an illusory forgiveness that he then snatched away and replaced with the opposite of absolution. But he hadn’t dragged him out of that hospital bed, chained him up in the basement of the Hyperion and then tortured him for fun. Even then, in that white out of righteous rage, grief, and betrayal, he didn’t believe that was something he would have enjoyed. But some darkness probably was innate, and his was darker than most, so perhaps he would have done. Perhaps, left to his own devices, with no Gunn and Fred to deal with, and no Cordelia on her way home, he would have done exactly that.

He thought of that videotape and flinched mentally. No, not like that. Not deliberately and with such sadistic inventiveness, find the worst wound and apply more pressure; the worst fear and play on it over and over again. He had been that vampire and that wasn’t who he was any more. Even with Wesley he didn’t think he was that guy.

The only reason that the other Angelus and Gunn hadn’t drained Wesley or turned him was because they didn’t want to stop playing with him. They weren’t in the business of giving such an exciting toy a quick and relatively painless death. Wesley was hard to kill; he’d proven that when Justine slashed his throat; and they’d been measured in their games; done the things that hurt the most but didn’t really break or tear. They’d cracked his bones lightly, they hadn’t shattered them; wanting the fear to build up more each day, the fear of more pain, more inventive acts of cruelty. They had been planning to keep him alive for months. By then he would have been insane, of course; still human, but no longer rational, just something gibbering in a corner, forced witness to their acts of depravity and sadism.

“Wesley…?” Angel didn’t want to touch him. Quite apart from the fear that a touch might turn into a grab and slam against the wall, he didn’t think there were many places left to touch on Wesley that wouldn’t hurt. Gritting this teeth, he lightly dabbed at his shoulder. “Wes…?”

Wesley rolled over and curled up in the same instant, one arm up to warn off the inevitable blow. For a second he stared up at Angel in wide-eyed panic and then he snatched a breath and took in his surroundings, quickly lowering his arm. His fingers went to his ribs, breathing around the inevitable pain and then snatching an extra breath in surprise when the pain wasn’t quite so bad.

“You’re in the Hyperion.” Angel realized belatedly that he’d been in the Hyperion while being tortured, albeit mostly in the basement. “In your own dimension.”

Lorne said quickly, “How are you feeling, cupcake?”

Wesley blinked again and gazed at Lorne, snatching a few more calming breaths as he did so. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and not much above a whisper but it was even: “Lorne.” His voice sounded deeper now, more grown up.

“One and the same. We brought you something.”

“Concussion?” Wesley looked up into Lorne’s face before glancing briefly at Angel. “Suffocation?”

“Maybe later,” Angel told him. “For now we thought something to help with your throat might be a better idea.”

Lorne was gently helping Wesley to sit up, putting a pillow behind his shoulders so that he could ease back against it gingerly. The sheet fell down to reveal more burns and bruises all over Wesley’s chest, his ribs bandaged and no longer broken but evidently still hurting given the way he winced as he leant back. He took a tentative breath then gazed up at Lorne. “You did something…?” He put a hand to his chest. “A spell…?”

“A friend of mine did it. Only a little one. Just to mend the cracked ribs and the internal bleeding. You still have a long way to go to be well again.”

“Thank you.” Wesley gazed up at him out of bloodshot eyes, the shadows under them shocking in the lamplight. Starvation, Angel assessed, pain, too, of course, those shadows always kicked in the fastest, and exhaustion as well; bone-deep exhaustion. “I’m grateful.”

“Well, you can pay me back by getting well.” Lorne managed a smile; trying for a poker face but the shock at Wesley’s condition still fluttering just below the surface calm.

Angel sat on the bed, still pissed enough to be glad about the way such close proximity made Wesley swallow, looking at him sideways as the mattress dipped and moved them even closer. Angel held up the beaker. “You need to drink this now, while it’s warm. It should help with the bruising and replace some of the fluids you’ve lost.”

Wesley looked warily from the dark golden liquid in the beaker to Angel’s face.

Angel gave him a mirthless smile. “If I wanted to make you drink my piss, Wes, I’d do it and tell you what you were drinking. But Lorne put this together.”

The demon said quickly, “Scout’s honour, handsome. Prepared by my own fair - well, green hands. Put your head back and let it slip down slowly.”

Wesley took the beaker and sipped it, putting his head back obediently so the liquid could trickle down his sore throat. The bruises on his neck were hard to miss as was that jagged still-healing wound. Angel watched him swallow painfully and had to grit his teeth again. It disturbed him to think that Wesley now knew how he and Gunn tasted. Just at the time when he was the most estranged from them he had been forced into a hideous intimacy with their darkest selves.

Conversationally, Angel said, “I know you can’t talk too well at the moment, and that’s okay. You’re not going anywhere until I get the answers I want anyway.”

Lorne darted him a warning look. “Angel…”

“I know.” Angel smiled mirthlessly. “My bedside manner sucks. But Wesley already knows that. Keep drinking.”

Wesley obeyed him, darting a look from under his eyelashes as he did so that let him know he was only giving in because he had to, it didn’t mean he in any way accepted Angel’s right to order him around. Angel watched him swallow another painful mouthful, and then another, could see his thirst warring with the discomfort each movement of his throat cost him.

“I watched the tape,” he observed conversationally.

Wesley immediately spluttered, choked and would have thrown up all over the bed if Lorne hadn’t grabbed a towel and held it under his mouth. The demon rubbed Wesley’s back gently as he heaved, Lorne glaring at Angel out of angry red eyes. “Angel…”

Angel was a little shocked by the violence of the reaction. “I didn’t… Christ, Wes, I didn’t mean…” But what had he meant other than that he wanted Wesley to know he knew what had been done to him and had just watched hours of it in glorious Technicolor? Did Wesley think he’d got off on it? Did he imagine Angel had been having a four hour jerking off session over the home movie of his ex-friend writhing in pain? He was two people around Wesley at the moment, one who wanted to hurt him, one who recoiled once he did so at the results.

“I was going to put it in the incinerator but I heard you come back in…” Wesley managed the sentence hoarsely. “I just didn’t want the Giles in that world to have to… I thought anything I was holding when the spell ended might come back with me so I…”

Lorne reached for another towel and wiped Wesley’s mouth with it, moving the soiled one out of sight. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk.”

“Do you need to…go…?” Angel asked, a little ashamed of himself, as he gestured towards the bathroom. “It’s probably easier for Lorne and me to help you do that than Cordy and Fred.”

Wesley looked over at the bathroom and weariness washed over his face. It clearly looked like a very long walk to him despite only being on the other side of the room.

“Come on, pumpkin.” Lorne slipped an arm under his shoulders. “Your kidneys have taken enough of a beating the past few days. Let’s be nice to them now, shall we?”

Angel gripped Wesley’s upper arm, taking some of his weight as Lorne helped him to swing his legs around and then get to his feet. They helped him over to the bathroom between them, Angel kicking up the toilet seat for him so he could urinate, Wesley having to prop himself up with one shoulder against the wall to manage even that. His body, even with all the bandaging, was a palette of cuts and bruises; bootmarks clearly visible in several places. Rings of red, blue, and mauve around his wrists and arms and ankles from the many times they had obviously tied him up, and the finger-shaped bruises that were…everywhere.

“What were you trying to do?” Angel asked, exasperated by how utterly Wesley had screwed himself with this last insane idea.

“Get… Put things back how they were…” Wesley put his palm flat to the wall over the toilet, trying to steady himself as he peed red-streaked urine into the toilet bowl. His hoarse whisper of a voice made him sound like a stranger, as did his utter exhaustion, in too much pain and too bone-weary tired to care any more what Angel thought or might be about to do. Get Connor back. That was the sentence he hadn’t finished, Angel was certain.

“Why didn’t it work?”

Lorne gave Angel a look of exasperation. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you ask him your questions when talking isn’t like gargling ground glass for him?”

“Maybe he was never meant to be born.”

Angel just knew Wesley knew how provocative a statement that was to say to him, especially now; his precious baby, warm and gurgling and trusting and loved and safe, lost in a hell dimension because of the man standing right here, an inch away from him, naked and battered to the point where he could barely even stay upright, and Wesley was telling him that maybe all Connor had ever been was a mistake. The urge to kill him was so strong that it felt like a separate entity. He almost expected to look up and see it reflected in the mirror that would have nothing to do with him.

“Or maybe something else was meant to happen and it didn’t. Maybe we screwed up earlier or later or…” Wesley swayed and Angel realized he wasn’t trying to be provocative after all, despite his obvious death wish, just thinking aloud.

“Don’t talk.” Angel caught him and held him upright. “Lorne’s right. This can wait until your throat’s better.”

As Wesley made an uncoordinated lurch, it took him a moment to realize that it was the sink Wesley was trying to stagger towards. It struck him as incongruous that after all the man had been through it really mattered to him that he should wash his hands after relieving himself but as it did, it did. Lorne took his other elbow and they helped him over to the sink, Lorne quickly turning on the taps for him and putting the soap into his hands. Then turning off the taps when he’d finished and putting the towel in his hands.

Wesley dried his hands, handed back the towel, licked his lips, swallowed painfully, and then looked at Lorne sideways out of a bloodshot eye, managing a hoarse: “Thank you, Lorne.” Given the amount of effort it took to say it, Angel appreciated that Wesley was showing Lorne better manners than Angel had in a while.

“Can I have a shower…?” Wesley glanced up at Angel.

“No.” Angel tightened his grip on his arm as he swayed again. “Not yet. You’ll get your bandages wet. In a few days.”

For a moment as Wesley looked at the shower with longing, weariness washing over his face again, and abruptly looking horribly young, Angel felt a twist of something that was definitely compassion and was trying damned hard to snake its way back into being friendship move inside him. He set his jaw. “Wes, I know you don’t like the way you smell right now. That makes two of us. But you have to heal a little first.” He looked down at Wesley’s body and saw his own hand prints on his body. Fascinated and appalled he fitted his hand to a series of bruises that curved around his waist. He placed his hand around Wesley’s throat not applying any pressure, just wanting to see if his fingers matched the marks there. They did, perfectly, finger to finger-shaped bruise. Wesley went still but said nothing. Angel took his hand away.

“Why didn’t you do some reconnaissance? At least check out what you were walking into?”

Wesley swallowed again. “I was expecting you, not Angelus.”

“The prophecy said…”

“Fred said the prophecy was a lie.” Wesley lowered his gaze, not wanting Angel to read a memory that was evidently painful.

Lorne took Wesley’s arm and began to steer him back to the bed. “I’m going to heat up that medicine for you, cupcake, because I guarantee that if you can keep it down it’s going to make your throat feel like it’s been kissed by an…by cherubs.” As he helped Wesley back into bed, Lorne gently lowering him onto the mattress to minimize the jolting of his battered body, Lorne said, “What happened to the other Wesley?”

“Giles rescued him,” Angel answered so Wesley wouldn’t have to. “But not before…”

“He’s a basketcase,” Wesley said as crisply as one could through a hoarse whisper.

“Why him and not you?” If Lorne had been hoping to give Wesley an affirmation speech reminding him of just how strong he was, it failed.

Wesley looked up at him out of those haunted bloodshot eyes and said softly, “Because I didn’t have to watch Fred and Cordelia raped to death in front of me.”

Lorne shuddered and then covered him very gently with the duvet. “That’s not going to happen. Ever.”

Wesley looked up at him hopefully. “You know that for certain?”

Lorne nodded without hesitation. “Read people’s paths, remember, sugarplum? It doesn’t happen here.”

Wesley actually smiled and Angel was taken aback by how young he looked when he did that; and how trusting he was, because it was as obvious to him as an oncoming truck on an empty road that Lorne was lying through his pearly white teeth. No one’s future was that clear; there were always different paths and that had to be a possible final outcome for both of them - hanging around with someone who could become Angelus would always make it a possibility. He had an unwanted flash of images of naïve Wesley beaming at him triumphantly after a fight, trying to dance, lighting up over that damned Shanshu prophecy because Angel was going to be a real boy some day…

“When you’re better we can talk some more,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking and dipping under his weight. “Work out what went wrong in that dimension.”

“Because everything went so well here…” Wesley murmured in his new deeper ruined voice, turning away from him as he eased himself onto his side.

“I didn’t kill Connor here.”

Wesley’s spine stiffened and Angel wondered why he’d said that; said anything that could be construed as justifying Wesley’s betrayal and deception. Nevertheless these were unavoidable truths. “I didn’t turn Gunn, kill Cordy, kill Fred, torture you.”

“And if Lorne’s right, you never will,” Wesley said hoarsely. “Well, except maybe for that last one.”

“Let me get that medicine heated up for you, crumpet.” Lorne picked up the beaker and looked at Angel expectantly.

“I can sit with him.” Angel shrugged as if he didn’t care, certainly didn’t want to, was just offering to do his share.

“No need.” Lorne opened the door and continued to look at Angel while calling across to Wesley: “You’ll be okay by yourself for five minutes while I get the microwave to work its magic, right, Wesley?”

“Yes.” A hoarse agreement from a Wesley who evidently didn’t want Angel sitting by his bedside any more than Lorne wanted to leave him there.

“Fine.” Angel got to his feet, refusing to admit that he was hurt; that no one around here seemed to remember that he had been doing vigils by Wesley’s bedside before anyone else in this hotel. Two years of taking care of the guy, protecting him, trusting him, believing in him when no one else ever had, and one moment of grief-stricken fury had him marked forever as someone who couldn’t be trusted alone with him. “You really think I’d do that?”

Wesley turned over carefully, bracing his various pulled muscles and cuts and bruises against the pillow, looking at Angel as if he were seeing him for the first time. And that was Wesley, at last, the guy he recognized, the one who looked right at him in a way no one else ever did. “Do what?”

“Torture you?”

He knew as he said it that it was a dumb question. Wesley knew better than anyone what he was capable of; not just because of all those years of studying Angelus to the point where he knew where Angel had been at any given moment of history better than the vampire himself; but because he’d just spent six days being sadistically tortured by Angelus and his acolyte.

Wesley moistened his lips and then said hoarsely, “No.”

Angel stepped back. “You sure about that?”

“You’d kill me. You wouldn’t torture me first. You don’t torture people. You’re not Angelus.”

Angel thought of what he’d just watched on that videotape, the way someone with his face and voice and body and strength had done what had been done to Wesley; the way his fingers fitted those bruises so perfectly; the way he’d deliberately made it seem as if he were going to grant Wesley the forgiveness he knew he was craving before he screamed all that hatred at him and tried to smother him. “Glad one of us is so sure about that, Wesley,” he said quietly.

Then he followed Lorne out, only pausing briefly in the doorway to find Wesley looking after him with a frown on his face, as if Angel were a puzzle he was still trying to figure out.

Outside, Lorne firmly closed the door and then said, “Let’s not tell him about Linwood, eh? Let Wesley hang onto some of his illusions.”

Stung, Angel opened his mouth to refute it and then realized he couldn’t, because he had been ready, willing and able to torture Linwood, and if torturing Wesley, even when he’d been half dead in that hospital bed, would have told him a way to get Connor back, he would have done it in the blink of an eye. He shivered inside as he thought of the madness that had gripped him, that even now was just beneath the surface of his precarious humanity: rage, despair and overpowering grief turning him into someone he would have liked to pretend he didn’t recognize. Love is a terrible thing. Wesley had known exactly what he meant when he said that. Which meant he had known how Angel was going to react. Remembering the way Wesley had just lain in that bed and looked up at him as if he knew what were coming as Angel snatched up the pillow, Angel wondered if Wesley had always expected taking Connor to lead to his death.

He remembered Wesley gazing into his eyes and saying: “We know you’re a man with a demon inside him, not the other way around.”

Thinking of those bruises that fitted his fingers so completely, of the scenes from that videotape in which someone with his face had played such a gleeful part, he closed his eyes briefly and wondered if Wesley could look him in the eye and say that now, and that even if he did it would still have the power to convince Angel.

***

Fred knew she had been right all along and if they could just stop treating Wesley like a pariah and get him to the Hyperion, Gunn and Cordy and eventually even Angel would start treating him like a friend again. She and Lorne had never really stopped treating him like a friend. She’d been a little angry - okay a lot angry with him - about what he’d done and not telling the rest of them about it and that had come out in the hospital, but pretty soon afterwards she had been thinking that everyone had yelled at him, Angel had really yelled at him and given killing him the good old college try, and worst of all he’d failed in what he’d been trying to do, which, for someone as conscientious as Wesley, must have been the worst punishment of all. And she didn’t see how they could just pretend they didn’t know this person who was their friend, or just stop caring about him overnight because he’d made a mistake - okay, a gigantimous ginormous mistake but still only a mistake - like he was a light switch they could just flick to the ‘off’ position.

He’d been at the Hyperion for three days now and she thought everyone was starting to be a little less twitchy about it. People weren’t checking with Angel and what his mood was before they mentioned Wesley’s name in something above a whisper - which she thought had to be a good sign. And Angel wasn’t getting that eye bulging thing he’d done before when Wesley’s name was mentioned. He was actually being pretty calm and just nodding when Lorne mentioned taking Wesley up some soup or some more of that honey medicine that smelt really liquoricey but apparently tasted more like very sweet fennel.

She knew things were being kept from her and she kind of resented it and was kind of relieved. She got that what had happened in that other dimension had been really bad but wasn’t quite sure how bad, as in specifics of badness, and everyone seemed to agree that Wesley wouldn’t want her to know, so although a part of her thought it was pretty dumb that everyone else could know something she couldn’t, as if she were some fragile little flower, or possibly just a really unworldly Texan, the other part did think it was kind of sweet that even after all the badness Wesley was still trying to protect her.

Charles was still having major problems about something and not talking to her about it when she tried to gently coax him. She had tried again that morning when they drove over to Wesley’s apartment. Lorne had said tentatively that he didn’t think Wesley was going to be fit to go home for a good long while and maybe they should sort of kind of acknowledge that and let the poor schmuck at least have some of his own underwear. Everyone had got really shifty when it came to mentioning Wesley’s underwear, especially Charles, and Angel had poured himself some blood straight after as if he wished it were whiskey. But the upshot was that she and Charles had driven over to Wesley’s place with the spare key to Wesley’s apartment that had been left in the Hyperion when his stuff was being packed up - and it was kind of freaky to think that key had just been sitting there when Angel was so crazy and wanting vengeance and Wesley was sitting in his apartment with that wound at his throat and no spyhole and no deadbolt on his door. Which they found out when they turned the key in the lock and went inside and found there wasn’t even a chain. She asked Charles if he wanted to talk about it and he had said he didn’t, and she’d pointed out for about the hundredth time that he couldn’t be feeling guilty about what something a vampire version of him had done in a different dimension because that was just crazy, and Charles had just looked sad and said, “Well, then I guess there’s a lot of crazy going around right now.”

It had been strange putting Wesley’s things into a cardboard box again but although she was so sorry that he’d been hurt by the spell he’d done and looked so ill and tired and with all those bruises all over him, she preferred packing his things into a box to take back to the Hyperion to leaving them for him at the hospital and warning him not to show his face again.

The first thing she’d seen on opening the door had made her stomach lurch and for a second she’d thought she had to just grab it and hide it so Charles couldn’t see it. But his legs were longer than hers and he’d gotten to it first. The letter waiting to be posted, with the stamp on it but which Wesley hadn’t dropped into the mail - on account of being busy in another dimension getting pounded half way to Abilene. The letter addressed to Lilah Morgan at Wolfram & Hart.

Charles had held it up to the light then said, “Screw it” and opened it. Which Fred would never have done but she had to admit was kind of glad he had, as she wanted to know what was in it too and whether or not it was something Angel could be told about.

Dear Mr Wyndam-Pryce,

Oh, that sounds so formal but as you’re being so stiff upper lippish with me I suppose it will have to do. This is an equally formal offer of a job, the same offer and the same job you keep turning down. My sources tell me that you’re almost out of single malt, down to your last bottle of Bordeaux, and haven’t restocked on those TV dinners that would barely feed a canary. Your rent does appear to be paid up until the end of the quarter but as you’re going to be eating the wallpaper by the beginning of next month, I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to keep being quite so Little Lord Fauntleroy with me.

As I said before, no one is asking you to betray Angel - well, no more than you already have - Wolfram & Hart just wants the use of that big brain of yours. As well as that six figure salary and full benefits package I keep telling you about - and as an Englishman, let’s face it, you are going to need the dental before too long - you would have full access to the finest mystical, occult and supernatural reference library in the world. Who knows, maybe the secret lies somewhere in our reference books as to how you could get Angel’s kid back? I haven’t checked it out myself - it is extremely extensive - so, somewhere at the back there could even be One Hundred and One Ways to Get To Quor’Toth. What do you say? Want to go on wallowing in your misery and penury as the outcast nobody loves or would you like to have a life again? Let’s face it, we both know that if you’re waiting for the good and plentys over at the haunted hotel to take you back again, hell will be freezing over first. There’s nothing so judgemental and unforgiving as the morally upright to the morally tarnished and you’re pretty tarnished these days, what with being Judas Iscariot’s understudy and all. Ninth level of hell ringing any bells with you, Mr Wyndam-Pryce?

Look at the enclosed contract, and if you’re clever - and all my sources tell me that, contrary to the appearance of recent events, you really are - you’ll sign on the dotted line, date it, and send it back in the enclosed SASE.

Yours sincerely,
Lilah Morgan, attorney-at-law

“Lilah the laywer-bitch has been trying to recruit Wes?” Gunn held the letter out to her in disbelief. “Can you believe the face of that woman?”

Fred went through the envelope and found the contract. Unfolding it with shaking fingers she was relieved to see that in the place where Wesley’s signature should have been he had written very neatly: Go to hell. If you need directions just ask the Senior Partners, I hear they own the freehold.

“He turned her down.” Sighing with relief she looked up to find Charles gazing at her in shock. “Well, I knew he would. Of course he wouldn’t ever work for Wolfram & Hart. It’s just that - I didn’t know he was going to take Connor so I’m feeling he’s a bit more of an enigma right now, and - there isn’t any food in the house, which is maybe because he knew he was going away and he didn’t want it going off or…”

“He’s flat broke.”

She followed Charles gaze around the apartment and had to admit it didn’t look like the kind of place where someone would be poor. It was full of nice things. Books and more books and yet more books and some weapons that were really interesting… and actually that was pretty much it, the books just made it seem kind of homely as they were all old and faded and leatherbound and smelt nice. It was neat and tidy too, everything folded away in the drawers, nice linen on the bed, and an apple mac laptop that looked as if it were pretty new. There just didn’t seem to be much in the way of food in the kitchen. She remembered Cordelia telling her that when Wesley had first come to LA he’d been pretty broke then and he hadn’t stinted on gasoline when chasing demons halfway across the country, but he’d been low enough on food and rent money. She wondered how poor Wesley would have to be before he’d sell one of the antique swords or that Bavarian adze or any of those musty leatherbound books, and realized that he probably would eat the wallpaper first.

“Six figures.” Charles looked at the letter again. “That’s a hundred thousand a year minimum, right?”

“The amount is right there.” Fred pointed it out to Charles on the contract. “Four hundred thousand per annum.”

“What?” Gunn looked at it incredulously. “That’s thirty thousand a month - seven thousand a week… That’s…”

Fred nodded. “Kind of makes it look as if he should maybe have been paying himself a bit more than he was when he was running Angel Investigations, doesn’t it?”

“Kind of makes it look as if Wolfram & Hart wanted the inside scoop on Angel really badly.” Charles picked up a book that had been tossed carelessly onto the couch and examined it. “Do you think this is his spell book for that hocus pocus he pulled just before he went to the other dimension?”

“No, that one’s over there on the floor where he left it.” Fred picked it up and then examined the one Gunn was reading. “Oh, that’s what she meant about the ninth circle of hell - Dante’s Inferno. You know, I really don’t like that woman. When she’s not trying to have sex with Angel on Wesley’s desk she’s comparing Wesley to Judas and trying to recruit him to her evil law firm just because he’s at a low ebb and might do something crazy just on account of being so…”

“Miserable and isolated and full of bitterness and self-loathing?” Charles sighed and tossed the book onto the couch. “Let’s not take him that one.”

Now she and Cordelia were spending a couple of hours with Wesley. He tired easily. He seemed to have had pretty much no sleep in that other dimension; some fitful dozing in between bouts of being tortured some more, as far as she could tell; so it was important that when he was awake he was encouraged to eat something and do some ‘normal stuff’ as Cordelia put it.

Today, Cordelia had decided that ‘normal stuff’ should include him eating all of the meal Fred had carried up to him on a tray in between looking through a lot of fashion magazines with her to help her choose a new dress for a networking dinner she was going to. Wesley smelt pretty bad but as it wasn’t his fault and Angel was the one not letting him take a shower, she and Cordy weren’t mentioning it and were both trying not to wrinkle their noses or anything.

It had felt at first wrong, like doing something forbidden, and then awkward, and then much less awkward, to just follow Cordy’s lead and do what she did. Cordy had grabbed the left side of the bed and patted the right to indicate that Fred should take that side, and Wesley had just had to find himself sandwiched in between them with a tray of soup and some chilled fruit and ice cream - all soft things that wouldn’t hurt his injured throat - on his lap and Fred helping him to eat it while Cordelia held open pages in front of him and said ‘What about that one?’ a lot.

Wesley had clearly found it really difficult to cope with them at first. He’d looked all deer in headlights and not been able to meet their eye, but Cordelia had just kind of ridden roughshod over all the awkwardness by not admitting it existed and after a few minutes he’d loosened up a little and even managed a few hoarse whispery derogatory comments about the more frou-frou dresses and it had been almost like old times.

“What about the dress you wore to the ballet…?” he asked at length, and that really did make him seem more normal, except for his voice being so painful-sounding still.

“Borrowed,” Cordelia explained.

“The knack is hiding the labels,” Fred confirmed.

“Can’t you just borrow another one?”

“This kind of gathering they check for labels.”

Fred leant across Wesley to examine the magazine page, pointing to something that looked classical in deep green. “I like that one.” Cordelia examined it with her head on one side and didn’t look as if she really hated it, which was good, but didn’t look as if she couldn’t live without it either.

“Don’t you already have a little black dress of some kind?” Wesley whisper-asked.

“You don’t get it, do you? For once I have the perfect excuse to buy a new dress and you’re just trying to ruin it for me. You’re supposed to be bringing a masculine opinion to the proceedings. Now, do your job and pick one.”

Wesley examined the page for a moment and then turned it over, looking at each dress closely, then he pointed to one. “That one.”

Cordelia gazed at it and then said, “Hmm, that’s scary. For a start it’s the most expensive dress there. For another, it’s the one I like best. For another, I wouldn’t be seen dead in it.”

Fred frowned. “Why not if you like it? Except maybe for only wanting to be seen alive in it?”

“Lilah Morgan has one just like it.”

“Oh.” Fred looked at Wesley who looked a little sheepish.

Cordelia said, “So, I hear she’s been trying to seduce you to the path of lawyer evil?”

Wesley shrugged. “I think she’s bored.”

“How bored?” Cordelia enquired. “Is she just trying to get you to work for her evil law firm or is she trying to get groiny with you?”

Wesley looked at her nervously. “How would I know the difference?”

“Does she offer you pots of cash and lots of benefits while looking you in the eye or looking you up and down? Is there any lip licking? Does she lean in, lower her voice, speak huskily, let you smell her perfume, and look at your mouth a lot while talking to you?” Cordelia demonstrated as she talked, dropping her voice to a husky seductive tone and flashing her cleavage. She straightened back up. “Anything like that? And are you going to eat that ice cream because it’s my favourite?”

“No, and yes. Or perhaps…yes and yes.” Wesley frowned. “I wasn’t really paying attention. If it’s normal seduction technique for a woman to act like the playground bully who keeps pulling your hair then perhaps she was trying to seduce me.”

“Wesley, why do you imagine nasty people in the playground pull your hair if not as a come on?” Cordelia demanded. “I used to pull Xander’s hair all the time and we ended up dating.”

Wesley looked appalled. “Buster Phelps pulled my hair in the playground in prep school for years.”

“Oh.” Fred was intrigued. “Did you date?”

“Certainly not.” He looked indignant and like the Wesley of old and then a shadow washed over his face and he pushed the tray away. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling a little tired.”

Cordelia looked at him anxiously but then tried to hide it behind a bright smile. “All the more ice cream for me then. Do you need to pee, because Groo is right outside the door and he would be honoured to be your bathroom escort for this meal break?”

Wesley blushed, darting a look at Fred as if he thought she didn’t know about men having to pee. “I can make it to the bathroom by myself now, thank you, Cordelia.”

Fred gathered up the tray while Cordelia gathered up the fashion magazines. Fred knew that Cordelia had told Wesley what she thought of what he’d done; not cruelly, just firmly, telling him all the reasons why he’d made the wrong choice and she was angry with him, but she hadn’t alluded to it since. Although there wasn’t the same warmth for Wesley from the others so far, Fred still hoped that people would get their old affection for him back eventually. He’d been so pounded in that other place and come back to them so close to looking dead, no resources left, all bruised and cut and hardly able to speak and not even able to stand up by himself, that she didn’t think anyone could go on being mad at him for long.

Cordelia confirmed her feelings by abruptly leaning forward and kissing him on the forehead, stroking his hair back from a bruise as she straightened back up. “Get some sleep,” she told him gently. “I’ll be in to see you later, okay?”

He kept his head bowed for a moment and it took Fred a few seconds to realize that he couldn’t necessarily deal with people being kind to him right now. He had to swallow hard a few times before he could lift his head and his eyes were bright when he did so. At the sight of his expression, Cordelia’s eyes immediately filled with tears too and she hugged him gently. “Don’t go away again, Wes,” she said. “Promise me.”

“I may not be able to stay,” he managed hoarsely. “Angel…”

“Has a lot of anger and grief to work through, I know. But he can’t stay like this forever.”

“He does have eternity at his disposal,” croaked Wesley dryly.

“Well, I don’t.” Cordelia stroked his hair back again. “I have one short human lifetime and I don’t want to lose any more friends.”

“Amen,” said Fred quietly.

Wesley snatched a quick breath and then looked up at them, eyes gentle. “You’re both very sweet but I…”

“Really do need to rest now. I know.” Cordelia rose to her feet. “Angel will come round,” she promised him. “You were his best friend. I know he misses you too.”

“So does Charles,” Fred said quickly. “He only doesn’t come in to see you more because…” She broke off because the truth was she didn’t know why Charles kept avoiding Wesley; would go out like this morning and buy him some home-made ice cream for his bruised throat but wouldn’t bring it up himself, it always being Lorne or Groo who dropped in to see if Wesley needed a hand that a woman couldn’t supply.

“I know why Gunn doesn’t want to see me right now.” Wesley looked down at his bruised chest. “It’s fine. I understand. I have a little trouble seeing him and Angel myself.”

“Well, you’re going to get over that,” Cordelia promised him. “This is a different world and I think we should decide it’s a new start as well. You could have died in that place. You didn’t. No thanks to you, of course, and your dumbass go-it-alone tactics…”

“Cordelia…” Fred murmured quickly, knowing once Cordelia got on that hobby horse she’d be riding it around for hours.

“Get some rest, Wes.” Cordelia carried the magazines to the door and gazed back at him; Fred looked at him as well and thought how fragile he looked, all bruised and thin and so tired. Cordelia held his gaze. “A wise man once told me that things are going to get better for all of us, and you know what? I think he was right.”

Wesley looked very touched for a moment and then rallied to say: “On the grounds that they could hardly get worse?”

Cordelia gave him a beaming smile. “Exactly!”

Fred also smiled at him, but more gently. “Now, don’t you feel better?”

Wesley’s smile was so faint and frail it hurt her inside but at least it was there and there was something other than sorrow lighting his face. “Indubitably.”

And then they left him to sleep and Fred found that she and Cordy were both closing the door very quietly and then leaning back against it before looking at one another sideways.

“Those big lunks are going to be friends again if I have to kill them all in the process,” Cordy observed.

Fred nodded. “Let me know if you want a hand with that.” As she followed Cordelia downstairs, Wesley’s tray held carefully so as not to drop it and wake him up again, for the first time she thought perhaps it might be possible for there to be an end to this strange enemy within feeling and just get back to Wesley being their friend. Unfortunately, like so many things, it all depended on Angel, and he was as unpredictable right now as… well, a vampire who’d lost his only child to a hell dimension…

***

Gunn kept finding himself drawn to the basement. He couldn’t explain it, and he knew it was illogical. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been around in Sunnydale that time when they’d met a Willow from a different dimension; sure, if he’d seen that, maybe, that redheaded kooky sweet little chick turned into some skuzzy vamp super villain, he could have bought the whole parallel worlds thing, but right now he was having to rely more on what seemed possible, and a hitch in the timeline felt more likely to him.

He’d seen the evidence all over Wesley; there was no question it had happened. And although he hadn’t been able to smell himself in the way Angel had - knowing exactly who it was that had scent marked all over Wesley like that - he’d certainly smelt sex all over him, and no one taking a look at those cuts and bruises and rope burns and brands all over him could think it was consensual. Maybe Wes had turned out to be not as much of an open book to the rest of them as they’d thought; maybe after all those nice surprises about Wes being a lot more use in a fight and as a leader than Gunn had ever thought, there had come the bad surprise of him being secretive and arrogant and stupid and a damned baby-napper, but he didn’t believe Wesley had been having this whole secret life going as some psycho sadist’s willing bitch.

He hadn’t been up there for a couple of days, not to see Wesley. Lorne was giving Wes medicine and Cordy and Fred were given him the TLC he certainly needed. He’d done his share on that first day when Wes couldn’t make it to the bathroom without help and as he wasn’t wearing any clothes it needed to be a male doing the helping. It had been okay at first. He’d helped him up, holding him carefully under the arms, not looking down, one arm around his back, knowing where all the worst cuts were because he’d helped bandage them, so doing his best not to hurt him as he helped him along, and then as they’d reached the bathroom, Wesley had slipped on the linoleum and he’d had to grab him fast. He’d caught him by the hips before he took a header into the bath and that’s when he’d seen the way his fingers were fitting perfectly over those deep purple-black bruises that curled around his hipbones. He’d only had an instant to stare at them in horror, this proof that his hands had been the ones holding him for so hard and so long while he was pounded against his will, and then Wesley had yanked away from him so fast that he’d slammed sideways into the tiled wall beside the sink, twisting around at once to have his back against the wall, chest heaving; and that was when Gunn had seen the panic in his blue eyes; imminent roadkill on the freeway at night with that sixteen wheeler bearing down on him and nowhere to run.

That was when he knew that he had done this to him. Charles Gunn. His damned fingerprints had proven it. And the panic in those blue eyes had been like a skewer to the guts because up until then he’d thought of the Wesley in that basement - when he thought of that scenario at all - and he’d been trying to think of it as little as possible - as quiet and bitter and untouchable, gritting his teeth when they hurt him, maybe coming up with a snappy put down that got him slapped around but proved that he was still intact. That was when he’d realized that Wesley had been dragged down there struggling and scared and not knowing what to expect. Because if one just stopped thinking about enigmatic throat-slashed baby-napper Wesley, one had to think about that guy who’d been so shocked when that bullet hit him, who was a bit of a dork, who had that silly grin, who fell asleep over his books, who was vulnerable and smart and a little bit innocent. That was also the guy who had tried to fix something he’d done wrong and had walked into a nightmare he had no preparation to deal with.

The double blow had hit Gunn so hard he’d staggered to the sink and vomited. How the hell did you deal with being beaten and tortured and… and that other thing… for days and days by two people wearing the faces of your closest friends anyway? Ex-friends. He had to keep reminding himself that they were ex-friends now. Gunn had run the water into the sink and then looked across at Wesley, who was still pressed against the wall, breathing quickly as he tried to get through the spike of panic, but looking at him with compassionate eyes as he realized that this Gunn wasn’t going to hurt him and that this Gunn was as freaked out as he was.

Gunn had walked out of the bathroom, asked Groo if he would go and help Wesley, and then basically run away. He hadn’t been back since.

And now he was in the basement again. Looking for clues as to how it could have happened. Looking for blood on the walls, he supposed. His fingers had fit into those bruises on Wesley’s hips and that meant it had been his fingers around the long slender neck of that other Fred as he throttled her slowly, choking her screams to gasps. Maybe not here, but it was here where Wesley had been found, outside this hotel in this dimension. He crouched down in the corner, wondering if there were chains here he’d never noticed, if he was going to find a stain that was Fred’s life’s blood. If it was a slip in time, not place that had happened…

“‘It didn’t happen here’.”

He looked up and there was Angel, sitting in the darkness, shrouded in shadows, a beaker of blood in his hand, looking broody and dangerous and…pretty much like a vampire.

Gunn straightened up. “We sure about that?”

“As sure as we can be.” Angel put down the beaker of blood. “It wasn’t you, Gunn.”

“You’re the one who said it was. That it smelt like me, and you know what? Looked like my initial burned into Wesley’s skin. And my fingers fit…”

“The bruises on his body. I know. So do mine.” As Gunn shuddered Angel sighed. “Except it wasn’t us and it was even less you than me.”

Gunn looked around for somewhere to sit and found an overstuffed armchair that had seen better days. Angel had a nice room upstairs and this place was something of a pit but he was spending more and more time down here recently. Gunn guessed he wasn’t the only one with avoidance issues when it came to Wesley. He sat down. “How do you figure that?”

“Because you weren’t there, not Charles Gunn. What did that to Wesley and to that other Cordelia and Fred, that wasn’t you, it was the thing that had already killed you. The other thing that had already killed you, I should say, because the first thing that killed you was me.”

“Not you.” Gunn sat up straighter. “Angelus.”

“Except I’ve been Angelus, and as well as him having all the memories of the human I used to be, I have all the memories of the vampire he still is. So, I know how it feels to hold a screaming woman down and rape her to death. Maybe not Fred and Cordy, but plenty of others. In any dimension I would have been the one giving you the good ideas about all the fun ways to hurt people.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that Darla told you some darkness was innate? That you could only become the vampire your human self could become? I followed you here, didn’t I? I’m working for a vampire with a rap sheet as long as a greyhound bus. Maybe that means I’d follow you anywhere, not because you’re my friend or even because I believe in you the way Wes always did, but because there’s something in that darkness of yours that’s in me too.”

“If Wes had believed in me he would never have stolen Connor.” Angel gazed into the darkness and when he said that, with that look on his face, Gunn felt a kind of shiver inside, felt as if he’d liked to have a crucifix to hand. And then Angel looked directly at him and what he saw in his eyes was…hurt. “He told me that he knew I wasn’t a demon. That I was a man. He always acted as if he didn’t think I was responsible for what Angelus had done.”

“He doesn’t.” Gunn wondered that Angel still didn’t know that.

“But he thought I was capable of hurting my baby son.”

“No, he thought Angelus was capable of hurting your baby son. And, newsflash, Angel, we both know he was, that he is. If Angelus came back, who do you think he’d want to hurt the most? Who does he hate the most? You. What do you - did you - love the most? Connor. Wolfram & Hart had spiked your blood. How do we know there isn’t some kind of powder out there that steals away the soul a little bit day by day? They want you dark, not dead, remember, and they were planning to cut up Connor anyway, and they never gave a damn about the rest of us. They had nothing to lose in making you your demon again.”

Angel picked up his beaker of blood again. “If he really thought it was Angelus who was going to hurt Connor and not me, why didn’t he come to me and warn me that there was a prophecy that Angelus was going to re-emerge? We could have bought a cage. Brought in some magical help. Tried to work out how it was going to happen and find a way to avoid it.”

Gunn shrugged. “Or he could have taken the baby away while he figured out what to do next, hoping that would at least stop Connor dying, if nothing else.”

Angel looked at him with those hurt eyes again. “You think he was right?”

Gunn shifted uncomfortably. “No, of course, I don’t. He should have talked to the rest of us even if he didn’t think he could talk to you. He should never have gone to see Holtz, that was just playing into the guy’s hands, giving him a chance to scope Wes out, work out what kind of man he was, come up with a strategy to trick him. And if he was going to steal Connor he should have made sure he had some back up. How far did he think he was going to get in an SUV with a revolver anyway? Half the vamp cults in the city were after that kid. There was no way Wes could keep him safe.”

“I’m going to make him tell me what was different in that other world.”

Gunn wondered if now was the time and the place to tell Angel that he wasn’t going to let Angel hurt Wesley, and then realized that the vampire already knew that. “What makes you so sure it really was another world where it happened? He was here.”

Angel shook his head. “There’s none of Wesley’s blood in this basement, I’ve checked, and if it were in the future, if Cordelia and Fred were still in danger, he would have told us that. He only stayed here to make sure they were still alive, even though he knew it was irrational, he just had to do it. He’d do or say anything that was necessary to keep them alive. If he really thought we were a threat to them, he would have got Groo to take them somewhere else.”

“Are we sure that isn’t a good idea?” Gunn enquired. “Just to be on the safe side?”

“If you really want to be on the safe side, Gunn, you could always stake me.”

Gunn snatched a breath because it wasn’t as if it hadn’t occurred to him.

Angel continued quietly: “I know what you think. That you’re working with a ticking time bomb every day, and it’s true. That’s why I have to know that you all know that. And that you’ll act accordingly.”

“What, like believing it’s possible for you to turn into Angelus and kill the baby son you love so much?”

Angel’s turn to snatch a breath even though he didn’t actually need it. “I don’t blame Wesley for taking my son. I blame Wesley for losing him.”

“That wasn’t what you were screaming at him in the hospital.”

“I didn’t try to smother him because he hurt my feelings, Gunn.”

Gunn sighed and ran a hand over his head. It felt like his palm touching his warm smooth skin, there was that familiar slight sandpapery friction of his callused palm brushing his freshly-shaven scalp. But there were those bruises on Wesley’s hips. “Maybe someone with a lot more magical mojo than us needs to go over that spell Wes cast. Check out the specifics.”

“I’ve already faxed it to Giles and Willow. Asked them to take a look at it.”

“You can use a fax machine?”

“Well, no, okay, I got Cordy to do it.”

“What did they say?”

“They’re still checking but Giles said that Wesley is probably the best source for translating that language. Apparently he got straight As in demonic linguistics from the age of thirteen up. Probably because Daddy used to lock him under the stairs if he got anything from an A minus down.”

“Giles said that?” Gunn looked up in shock.

“Wesley said that, or the demon who was reading his mind said it for him. ‘All those hours locked under the stairs and you’re still not good enough. Not good enough for Daddy. Not good enough for the Council.’“

Gunn shook his head. “Man, Wes needs therapy.”

“The Angelus on the tape said the other Wesley is beyond therapy. No way back for him. Ours is only still with us because he didn’t see what was done to Cordy and Fred.”

‘Ours’. Gunn noticed that and wondered if Angel had too. If it was a slip of the tongue or the beginning of a thaw. “When I think about that - what we could do to them - I think I should stake you and me, just to be on the safe side.”

Angel said quietly, “It’s one way to be sure. Not you. You can’t go evil unless I turn you. And I can’t turn you if I’m not here to do it.”

Gunn stared at him in disbelief. “You’re not serious? Angel, that’s crazy. We all know the risks. We’ll be on our guard.”

Angel got to his feet. “Wesley has to tell me what was different in that world. He has to tell me what made that other Angel become Angelus again. On the tape - the Angelus there, he talked about the Wesley from that dimension a lot, and he said he was sweet and innocent and he trusted Angel completely. He said it was always more fun when the victim you were torturing trusted you. If that Wesley trusted that Angel so completely then what sparked him turning into Angelus?”

“You think it was him taking Connor?” Gunn frowned. “You think losing Connor turned him into Angelus?”

Angel gazed into the shadows and there was that look again, the vampire look. “Sometimes it feels as if there isn’t that much between us. When they turned Darla right in front of me. When they damned her all over again. And when I lost Connor and I saw Wesley in that hospital bed… I think he nearly came back. Or else there is a darkness in me that is so close to being him it almost doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.” Gunn strode over to where Angel was standing. “Angel, let’s be clear about this. You doing bad things and Angelus doing bad things is the difference between someone with a conscience and a soul giving into some kind of darkness that’s maybe in all of us, and you becoming something that is entirely evil and without remorse. It’s the difference between trying to smother Wesley with a pillow and chaining him up in a basement so you can torture him for fun; it’s the difference between firing Cordy and raping her to death. Don’t ever tell me it doesn’t matter or I really will think about that stake first and ask questions later idea.”

As Angel headed for the stairs, Gunn called after him, “Where are you going?”

“To talk to Wesley.”

Gunn watched Angel walk up the basement stairs and thought how much he ought to go with him to make sure it was the reasonable Angel who went into that bedroom and not the pillow wielding one; and how much he didn’t think anything could make him go back into a room with Wesley while he still had those bruises on his hips.

***