Title: That Very Special Hell (series)

Chapter Title: Welcome and Farewell
First of a series – it may be a while before I get back to this, but the bunny was gnawing too ferociously to resist.

Disclaimers: Not mine – except for Nathalie, a little bit. Also, I'm sure that Cleveland has a very fine symphony orchestra, and many other cultural attractions; any aspersions on the quality of such establishments are attributable to the uninformed attitudes of foreign elitists.

Thanks: To Selena K for suggestions about German poetry and profanity -- all the good ideas are hers, and all the mistakes are mine; Viciouswishes for suggesting "Wish"verse Wes/Buffy (which, this isn't, but it sort of got me there.) Also, Franka Potente for saying "Scheisse, Scheisse!" so memorably in "Run Lola Run," and thus convincing me that was Wesley really needed in his life was a profane German girlfriend.

Premise: Set in the "Wish"verse – that is, this occurs in the alternate universe created in the BtVS episode "The Wish," when Cordelia wished that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale. Tried to figure out the implications of that change for Wes.

Rating: R for language & mild sexiness.

Characters: Wes/Other Character (Het) who is in no way a Mary Sue. Seriously, don't laugh.

"Welcome and Farewell"

ihr Götter! Ich hofft es,/ ich verdient es nicht!
Oh God! I had wanted this, but never deserved it – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Welcome and Farewell"

Nobody became a Watcher so that he could go to Cleveland.

Wesley had heard about potentials in Jamaica and Boston, the newest Slayer in Southern California. Those were the sorts of locales where Watchers expected to end up. Culture if not sunshine, sunshine if not culture. But truthfully, he didn't expect to go anywhere any time soon. He had just turned twenty-seven, and by the typical path of a Watcher's career, could plan to spend at least two decades paying his dues in the Research Division, buried in manuscripts and translations, before he even thought about a field assignment.

Until the morning Quentin Travers called him into the office, personally, and explained that there was a situation. Everyone had understood that the Slayer's family was taking her to Sunnydale. Rupert Giles was stationed there, and everything seemed under control. But at the last moment, her parents had changed their minds and enrolled her in school in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

"That sounds nice," said Wesley, still uncertain what it had to do with him. "Mr. Giles should enjoy it there."

"Don't let the name fool you, Pryce," said Travers. "It's just another name for bloody Cleveland. And you're the one who'll be enjoying it there."

"I'm sorry?" Wesley stammered.

"For God's sake, don't apologize so much. The Slayer will eat you alive."

"But Mr. Giles --?"

"Giles is working on some daft theory about a Hellmouth in Sunnydale. He claims that something enormous is about to happen there and he can't leave until. . .well, everything's an apocalypse to Rupert Giles, he can become quite hysterical on the subject. We'll bring him around, but until then we need an interim watcher."

"Interim?" he asked. "For how long?"

"Six months. A year. It's not as though you had anything better to do."

"Well, actually my translation of the G'Nalthar Codex is nearing completion. . ."

"Oh, bugger the Codex. It's been gathering dust on that shelf for six hundred years, I hardly think that it's going to grow legs and walk away. Unlike the last volume you left lying around."

"Once again, sir. I'm very sorry about that. I know the draperies were quite valuable and I appreciate the expense not coming out of my salary."

Travers frowned and made a note on his pad that Wesley, reading it upside down, thought he could make out as, "Call payroll re: draperies, Pryce." Then he looked up and said. "Cleveland. It's not so terrible. Well, actually it is. Quite apart from the Hellmouth, I shudder to think of what passes for a symphony orchestra. But you know how it is, Pryce. Ours not to make reply, ours not to reason why. . ."

"Tennyson," Wesley agreed. "Always appropriate." Actually, Wesley could have wished for Travers to choose an allusion more auspicious for the occasion – something that would end with "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," perhaps, rather than ". . .but to do and die." But it wasn't his superior's choice of poetry that had his stomach in knots. It wasn't even the prospect of spending evenings at the Cuyahoga County Wind Ensemble. The problem was that, for the first time in his life, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce had something in England that he didn't want to leave.

Nathalie Reinhardt worked behind the desk at a bookshop that stood between Wesley's flat and the nearest Underground station. Although he didn't like to think much on what it meant to leave a home full of musty books for a workplace full of musty books, and stop to look at musty books on the way, his feet took him there almost every day. There were plenty of bookshops in London if it came to that, but he told himself that this one had the most interesting and varied selection of occult holdings. But he had lived and worked in the same place for almost five years, and the store hadn't turned into an everyday routine until the girl came there. She had long wild hair that was a different color every week and a sylphlike body that never seemed to be wearing quite enough clothing. They never spoke except in changing money, but her blazing blue eyes always seemed to be watching him. He wasn't sure what it meant, whether she was mocking or interested, of if that was just her way.

The shop owner was from Weimar, and the employees always spoke to each other in German. From overhearing, Wesley knew Nathalie's name, that she was the owner's niece, and studying viola at the London Conservatory. Wesley's normal inclination would have been to practice his own German on her, but instinctively he held back. He didn't even look at German books when she was there, let her get by on the assumption that most Englishmen couldn't be bothered to learn a language not their own, and loitered near the front of the shop many days, scanning the shelves of English poetry.

And one day, three months before his unexpected summons to Travers' office, Wesley's lurking paid off. Nathalie sat at the desk, openly drinking a beer and talking to another employee, a slim boy who had spiked hair and metal all over his ears. Wesley might have translated the conversation, loosely, like this:

The boy said, "Nice ass on that one. Too bad about the stick he's got up it." Wesley blushed and bent closer to his book.

And then the girl said, "You just don't know a thing about those laced-up Oxbridge types. There's a whole mess of shit going on under the stuffed shirt. That one? I'd fuck his brains out in a minute. He wouldn't know what hit him, but he'd beg me for more."

The boy shrugged, "If you really think he plays on your team."

"By the time I was done with him, he'd play whatever team, whatever sport I told him to."

It sounded even dirtier in German.

Wesley took a few minutes to calm himself, allowing his breathing – and other reflexes – to return to a resting state. Then he picked a copy of Wordsworth's Preludes to the register, handed it to Nathalie and asked her, making it sound almost like an afterthought, "I don't suppose, some evening after work, you'd fancy a curry?"

She raised an eyebrow at the boy beside her and, answered, in gorgeous English, "It happens I'm getting off right now."

It took about forty minutes. I took two pints and a serving of Tandoori chicken, listening to Nat rave about her love for Rilke, London Arsenal, and the last movement of Schumann's Marchenbilder, her hatred of stupid customers, Manchester United, and Berlioz's Harold in Italy. It took about that long to convince Wesley that Nathalie was the most beautiful, intelligent, passionate, (and had he already been through beautiful?) woman he would ever be lucky enough to meet, and to transform an undirected desire to take a pretty and apparently willing girl to bed into the brain-numbing, fine motor-function impairment of absolute and utter love. The immediate fallout of this transformation was to make him suddenly cautious about rushing things. Because there might be something here that he would hate to screw up.

And so he walked her home, followed her to her flat, and together they hung in the doorway. Wesley ached to touch her but wasn't even sure if he should kiss her good night.

"It's a beautiful night," she said, and then. "Come closer. I have something to tell you." Her lips brushed his ear as she whispered, "Dich sah ich, und die milde Freude, Floß von dem süßen Blick auf mich."

Wesley's breath caught as he recognized the lines from Goethe, and he leaned in toward her as he completed the verse, "Ganz war mein Herz an deiner Seite; Und jeder Atemzug für dich." Swelling violins (violas?) couldn't have made the moment more perfect.

Nathalie slapped him in the face. "You asshole!" she cried. "You complete and utter asshole!"

"What?" he gasped, gripping his jaw.

"You're fluent. You heard what I was saying to Manni in there, and then you come on all Hugh Grant with . . ." And she imitated his tone far too well for his comfort. "If you're not ever so busy this evening, perhaps you'd fancy a curry."

"I might have understood you a little," he admitted, moving back a safe distance before she could hit him again.

"I might have understood a little," she mocked. "Of course, this just means that I was right about you." And then she smiled. And then he smiled. And then they went inside. And then she fucked his brains out.

The evening of the day that he talked to Travers, Wesley walked all over London, in the mist, trying to construct a story for Nathalie that wouldn't sound like an excuse. Explaining his everyday job to most people was easy enough. He just told people he was a research linguist, endured the inevitable jokes, and watched their eyes glaze over with boredom -- he could create this effect easily enough by accident, and when he was actually making an effort to be boring, the results were quick and brutal. Since Nathalie knew books, including occult books, he needed to tread a little more carefully. But she generally seemed uncurious, and they had better ways to pass the time than talking about his work.

But he couldn't just tell her he was going to an unspecified location for an undefined length of time. He needed a way to tell her that it wasn't his choice, that he was being called away by the force of an unshirkable duty – without, of course, telling her what that duty was.

It wasn't fair. Of course, he had always known that the life of a Watcher required sacrifices, and secrecy. He knew that a man couldn't bring in people from the Outside and ask them to stand in harm's way. He had always known that some day he might be required to put away childish things and even make the ultimate sacrifice in the service of his sacred duty. But not now. He was young and, when he met Nathalie, he thought they had time. Now he would have to tell her – what? That he was going on field assignment in Swaziland and it was all very secret and they wouldn't have phones? Whatever he came up with was going to be a stupid lie, and after growing up around so many lies, he hated that he would have tell more of them to her. He supposed he could tell her that he might be back soon, that the position wasn't forever. But that was an even more appalling alternative. It meant wishing for the Slayer's death.

When he got to her flat, he was soaked and tired, almost in tears, and no closer to a cover story. She opened the door, tilted her head at him and smiled. "Where you been, soldier? I burned dinner. Might have burned it even if you weren't late, but you would at least have been here to smell it." She leaned closer to him. "Is there something in your eye?"

And all the lies leaked out of his brain, and Wesley blurted, "I have to go to Cleveland to fight vampires."

He had no idea what reaction to expect – disbelief, anger, shock, laughter. What he certainly didn't expect was for her to squeal, "I knew it!", throw her arms around his neck, then press her mouth to his for a warm kiss that tasted like clove cigarettes.

After a few minutes of not entirely diligent effort to untangle from her, Wesley tried to explain. "I don't think you understand. In Cleveland, there's a girl –"

"The Slayer!" she said. "You're Watcher's Council. I knew there was something about you. That or MI-5, and this I frankly prefer. Makes the politics less complicated." She squeezed his shoulders, "Wesley, I'm so fucking happy for you!"

"Happy?" he repeated and decided, for the moment, to completely bypass the question of how his girlfriend knew about the existence of his ancient, secret Order without it ever coming up in conversation. "Yes, it is an honor, but I'd at least like to think –." He swallowed. "At least a little bit. With it being so far away, an indefinite assignment. I'd like to think you had a few reservations about -"

She waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, fuck the conservatory. I bet I could get an audition with the Cleveland Symphony just off the training I already have."

"Oh -" Wesley said, as her meaning slowly dawned on him. "You're thinking that you'd like to. . .of course."

"Of course," she said. "When do we leave?"

He was in no position to give a coherent reply, and so he just kissed her again, and as they kissed, he thought of another line from Goethe. ihr Götter! Ich hofft es,/ ich verdient es nicht! "Oh God!" he would have translated, " I had hoped for this grace, but never deserved it."

TBC in some form?

The Goethe quotes are from "Wilkommen und Abschied" ("Welcome and Farewell" or "Meeting and Parting"); translation is -- Nat: It was you I saw, and the mild joy/Floated from your sweet looks on me;Wes: My heart was completely yours/My every breath was drawn for you. Quentin Travers paraphrases Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," which is not the thing a man about to go out in the field wants to hear; the lines Wesley wished he had used are from "Ulysses" (though really? that one ain't much better; Tennyson dug the suicide missions in one form or another and would have gone into raptures about "Not Fade Away").