Disclaimer: I don't own Angel the Series
This was an idea that came to mind as a scene I had sort of thought I might include in some longer fic, but I decided against it – hard to imagine it fitting well into the flow of a longer work. I wrote this around the same time I wrote "Nothing Beside Remains" and "No Happy Endings", but kept it back and then forgot about it for a while.
This takes place roughly somewhere in the latter parts of the middle of season 3, but where exactly is irrelevant.
Watchers' Diaries
By Alkeni
The Watcher's Diaries went back thousands of years. Longer even, than the current incarnation of the Watchers' Council. Most organizations that had taken upon themselves to guide the Slayer throughout history had chronicled a great deal, recording in great detail the lives of each Slayer.
There were obviously gaps, especially as one went farther back. Sometimes, those lost records were retained, in excerpts, summaries, commentaries, references. Other times, whole Slayers were simply swallowed up, lost in history, the records lost, or perhaps never written – especially in cases of Slayers that arose in pre-literate cultures, or cultures without much literacy, only to certain scribal castes.
No one in known memory had read all the diaries the Council had possession of. Not even Wesley, and as far as he knew, he'd read the most of anyone alive today – the last seven hundred years worth, from beginning to end. Ever Watcher's diary for every Slayer since the dawn of the 13th century.
Well, every extant record. There still remained gaps even there.
He'd also read digests, summaries and commentaries covering nearly a thousand years more before that, and choice excerpts and passages were essential parts of the curriculum for all students at the Watcher's Academy.
Though in retrospect, those aren't the passages I've have chosen to focus on, when it comes to how to handle a Slayer.
Of course, the odds were that his opinion on the Academy's curriculum wouldn't have any effect on the way things were taught there.
About the same odds as Rupert Giles becoming Head of the Council, I'd guess.
At least Giles had a Slayer, was a Watcher.
He, at least, had an excuse to keep such extensive diaries.
Wesley, on the other hand, wasn't a Watcher. He didn't have a Slayer. Faith remained in prison and...he'd visited her a few times, exchanged a few letters back and forth, but never under any assumption she was his slayer, or he her Watcher.
And yet, he kept extensive diaries. Records not just of his official actions as part of Angel Investigations, the demons they fought, the clients they helped, the good they did. Not just of his impressions of people met, groups encountered, magics used or observed.
But his thoughts – on his friends...on Wolfram and Hart...on life. And his regrets. His turmoil...
Even the happy moments, as scant as they were these days, made it into his diaries. But they were there.
None of them would ever make it into the Council's archives. He'd made sure his will had them set to go to Giles, if the older man outlived him, or to the Council itself, if Giles didn't. Perhaps they might – but more likely, there'd be nothing but the ash heap for them.
Still – he felt a sense of obligation to write them. They were, in their own way, therapeutic, the act of writing his thoughts down allowing him the chance to organize them, deal with them...cope with them, in some cases.
Wesley knew he'd never been, never would be, the most emotionally expressive man. Not in conversation, not with others. In the journals...his thoughts were there, his mind able to unbend enough to get some of the emotions out, even if in dry, clinical terms much of the time.
Perhaps he wrote them out of a hopeless desire for posthumous redemption..that someone, someday might read them, and the Council would one day realize that he hadn't been nothing more than an utter failure. That what happened in Sunnydale was more than just his fault – and that he'd spent the years since trying to make up for that string of failures...
He didn't know why he wrote the journals so extensively, but he did. Perhaps a force of habit from his training at the Academy...perhaps..
Perhaps simple narcissism.
Wesley looked down at the pen in his hand, the half-filled diary before him, then returned to writing, abandoning his philosophical ramblings for the time being.
Perhaps he'd include them someday, if he became desperate enough.