TITLE: From L.A. With Love
AUTHOR: Eloise
RATING: PG13
DISCLAIMER: Joss and ME own Wes, and all things Angel. I'm only playing with them. I promise not to hurt them. Honestly.
SPOILERS: through episode 4.2 – Ground State
AUTHOR'S NOTES: And here we go again. Chp 1 of 8. Story begins as canon up to 'Ground State' then goes AU. Wildly AU. I have played a bit with the sequence of events in this ep. – that Wes/Lilah scene occurs before Wes and Angel's conversation in the sewer.
Some dialogue from 'Ground State'. Chapter title from Ian Fleming.
Chapter 1: You Only Live Twice
He splashed warm water over his now at least five-thirty-the-next-morning shadow, and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Too much alcohol and too little sleep had made his eyes bleary, and there was a friction burn high on his collar bone, next to the pale but permanent network of scars that Faith had so generously provided him with.
He rubbed the red mark tenderly, remembering the bite of supple leather into his skin, her sigh of satisfaction at his hiss of pain. He had given her a few friction marks of her own last night, though in slightly less conspicuous places. He blinked and rubbed the towel over his face, finishing with a light trim of the beard shadow, leaving enough to make her squirm at his touch.
She had left his apartment around three, her excuse an early morning meeting. She did not do the sleepover thing, he knew that already. Lilah liked to be in control, on her own ground, in her own space. She was not comfortable with the idea of being seen asleep; vulnerable. He was content with that. It was depressing enough to be sleeping with the enemy; he did not particularly want to be in a place where it was acceptable to wake up next to her.
He pulled away from the reflection in the mirror with an odd feeling of disquiet. Then untaped the dressing on his arm and set to work cleaning and redressing the wound. The thin knife line was healing well, he had drawn the edges together with paper stitches, and he was fairly sure there would not be a scar. There was still some faint bruising around the line, but he put that down to the strong suction which had been applied to the wound. She had laughed about it last night, picking at his scabs with subtle fingers, idly dissecting his reasons for raising Angel, the motivations for which act he had not yet truly admitted to himself.
He hated when Lilah got it right, seemed to know him too well. That was perhaps what disturbed him most about this whole sordid little mess; that this woman, the opposite of all he thought he desired, all that was good and pure and true, did in fact know him better than anyone.
He covered the wound with a smaller dressing, and slipped the charcoal grey knitted shirt over his head, carefully easing the cuff past the slim bandage. The smoky scent of strong coffee drifted into the bathroom. A habit he had picked up when he had first come to L.A.; he had always put on the coffee in their old office. Cordelia had insisted for a long time that it was the only reason Angel kept him on the payroll, as neither of them were actually capable of making coffee fit for human consumption. The practice had become a ritual, and he now automatically switched on the machine first thing after waking, even before showering. There was just something quite exquisite about the aroma of coffee in the morning.
She had picked up on that too, damn her, had sent him a wonderful selection of coffees from Fortnum's online. He had wanted to refuse them, send them back as a petulant little point of honour, but she had opened the Café Superb, wafted it under his nose. He had almost swayed on his feet as the aroma hit him. And Lilah had laughed, seductively, knowing he would not be able to resist her gift, and loving it that he wanted to.
He moved into the kitchen area and poured a cup, adding no sugar or milk. The dull ache of an almost hangover twitched behind his temples, and he swallowed a couple of Advil along with the coffee. Not the healthiest of starts to the day, but then the rest of his days weren't usually particularly healthy. And today promised to be one of those even more unhealthy than usual ones. He had finished the translations for the O'Leary case, and was not particularly relishing the idea of hand to hand combat with a sewer demon that had a taste for extortion and torture. Plus there was the ever present possibility of running into Angel on one of these operations. As Cordelia would have so succinctly put it if she were here, awkward much?
He lifted the file from his desk and slipped it into the metal briefcase. There wasn't much more he could do to find her. An approach to Dinza could only be made by the dead, and although it sometimes felt like it, he hadn't yet shuffled off this mortal coil. So it would be up to Angel to do the actual saving. As usual. What he had told Lilah last night wasn't a complete lie. Much as he hated to admit it, Angel was necessary. More so than him, at least. He wasn't necessary for much at all, other than getting shot, beat up and generally seriously injured with depressing regularity. That, and condemning his friend's infant son to a hell dimension to be raised by a man who hated Angel to the point of almost fanatical religious fervour. Mustn't forget that.
He shoved the thoughts down swiftly, no point in dwelling on the past. He had years of practice at repressing, and he wasn't about to change the habit of a lifetime. He checked his weapons bag, knowing full well that the contents would not have varied since he packed it last night, but years of conditioning could not easily be broken. Somewhere, hidden deep inside the don't give a damn rogue demon hunter, lived an uptight, stuffy and rather insecure watcher, with an obsessive compulsion for preparation. He rezipped the bag and slung it over his shoulder, and lifted the briefcase, ready to leave for the rendezvous at the sewer tunnels.
The simple inevitability of that location depressed him as much as anything else this morning. Just once, he would like to like to return home from a day's work not covered in demon slime, or smelling like he had just bathed in rat infested sewer water. Which, more often than not, was what he had just done. He breathed out a small sigh, and thought for at least the tenth time since he had woken how much he really detested his life.
*~*~*~*
He wound the rope around his arm carefully, and listened to Angel babble on about how much time he'd had to think under the sea, and how he thought that they were 'okay' again. That was laughable. He'd abducted and lost Angel's child, and Angel had attempted to smother him. It was going to be a very long time before they were okay again.
He knew the real reason for him making contact. He wanted to find Cordelia. And Angel knew that Wes, good old reliable Wesley, would have been secretly researching away, gathering details and following leads, keeping a file of the information he had garnered. Oh, he almost pitied Angel; he evidently thought he sounded convincing, when it was glaringly obvious why he was here.
Wesley took the briefcase from Hawkins, and opened it, handing the slim leather file to Angel, who accepted it with a look of patent confusion on his face.
'What's this?'
As if you didn't know, you devious bastard. He went with the slightly less offensive - 'What you came for.'
He waited until the other opened the file and then added quietly 'That is all I have on Cordelia's disappearance.'
Angel flipped through the pages, then looked up. 'You did your own investigation.' He did his best to sound surprised, but his voice lacked the conviction necessary to carry the deception off. Wesley thought about challenging him on it, but to be honest it didn't seem worth the effort. He had spent a large part of the summer gathering this information, and it would be ridiculous to now withhold it from one who could actually follow some of the leads.
'I don't think she's dead.' He swallowed down the acid sour jealousy that sparked in reaction to Angel's look of sheer naked hope. 'I can't say for certain, of course, but I don't think she's in our dimension any longer. Beyond that - is a road I couldn't follow. No living thing can.'
Angel was studying the pages intently. 'Who's Dinza?'
This was easier. He was at home here, with the questioning and the explanations, the way things had been before.
'One of the Eleusian mysteries, the dark demi-goddess of the lost.' Maybe he and Angel could become followers – they certainly fitted the criteria for Dinza worship. 'Only the dead can enter her presence, and those that do she often traps for eternity.' Only fair to warn him.
'Sounds cheery.'
Wesley continued rolling the rope. 'I managed to locate her lair, but obviously couldn't enter myself.'
Despite what your strongest efforts, Angel, I'm not dead yet.
'This Dinza can tell me where Cordy is?'
The density of the man amazed him. Since when do evil demi-goddesses do casual favours for souled vampires?
'No. The most she can tell you is where to look.' He purposely did not look at Angel, closed the briefcase and locked it. He meant to leave it there, he truly did. But something in him, some long forgotten spark of comradeship, some deeply repressed worry for the other's safety made him continue.
'Just – beware.' Tried to keep his voice flat, emotionless. 'Dinza isn't remotely trustworthy.'
And that was it. He could hear Angel's sarcastic quips as he walked towards the staircase, but he ignored the instinctive urge to help him. He wasn't going to get sucked into this again. He had chosen his path; there would be no backtracking now. Angel would have to figure this one out on his own.
He climbed to the top of the staircase, and made his way along the tunnel which would eventually lead into the main sewer system. After a few minutes, he realized that he did not recognize his surroundings. Somewhere back at the top of the staircase, back in his self-indulgently bitter little musings on the nature of friendship, he had taken a wrong turn.
Bloody hell.
He turned on his heel and began to make his way back, inwardly cursing his own stupidity. The floor here was damp; oily sewer water lapping at the soles of his boots, the acrid sulphur fumes burning in his nostrils. He was stomping morosely through the tunnel, muttering under his breath, when the skittering of claws on metal alerted him to another presence in the sewer.
Behind him.
He turned slowly, his hand automatically reaching for the axe he now remembered having given to Hawkins. Idiot.
The tunnel appeared empty. But a nasty little thought was already implanted in his mind. Did the demon he'd just dispatched have a mate? He slid his hand into his pocket and found a knife, the Murshan Dynasty dagger that Angel had brought him from his retreat in Sri Lanka. He steadfastly ignored the irony and continued deeper into the tunnel. Up ahead there appeared to be a cross section or some sort of opening in the passage. He gripped the knife tighter, and edged his way along the side of the tunnel wall, trying vainly to keep his feet from splashing too loudly.
The opening turned out to be an entrance of sorts; possibly to the demon's lair. He sucked in his breath and swung his body across the doorway, in a reasonable approximation of various American cop shows. He and Gunn had watched these avidly, ostensibly to develop a strategy for staying alive while demon hunting without Angel, but it had become a bit of a habit, TV night with appallingly fat and salt saturated snack foods and detestably ice cold lager. He missed it dreadfully.
The room was clearly the demon's home, but the skittering was not the sound of its mate. A flash of black beady eyes and a pink wormlike tail sent a shudder down his spine, but it was, after all, only a rat. Much as he disliked the creatures, a rat wasn't going to rip his head from his torso and feast on his brains.
He stepped into the room.
The tiny resistance that his foot encountered should have stopped him. But too late he heard the quiet click as a wire under tension snapped. Too late he thought of the words booby trap. Too late he remembered the weapons cabinet in Angel's basement apartment, his heart beating in rhythm with the tick of a bomb.
The blast from the device was frankly impressive. His internal organs were suddenly gripped and shaken vigorously by an unseen hand, which plucked him from the sewer floor and flung him back down the tunnel as far as the top of the staircase. He hit the wall hard and slid down into a tangle of oddly angled limbs, a discarded puppet thrown in petulance by an unknown deity.
There were a number of thoughts that crossed his mind in the split seconds before he actually hit the tunnel wall. The first was that he was probably going to survive this, as his life was not currently flashing before his eyes. He was sure that when his time came, he was going to be treated to a rerun of all his most spectacular failures, probably in alphabetical order.
The second thought was that if he did die, he was going to be rather pissed off that he hadn't experienced the life flashing before his eyes thing. It was something he'd been looking forward to viewing, and he would be writing a stern letter of complaint to whoever was responsible for these things in the afterlife.
The third thing was the thought that he might possibly have left the gas on, but obviously now was not the time to worry about that.
The fourth thought was, quite surprisingly, how much he would miss Lilah if he was actually going to die. He didn't quite manage to repress that one.
And the fifth and final thought was simply: why the hell was Angel kneeling next to him in a puddle of grimy water, his hands moving over his body in an increasingly frantic search for internal injuries, his face twisted into an expression of horrified concern.
And the last thing Wesley heard before slipping into enticing oblivion was his own name, spoken by his former friend in a voice full of anguished desperation.
