Title: The Ones You Love

Summary: Wesley gets a little visit from the First Evil. Can that visit push him over the edge and make him do the unthinkable? (Formerly posted as "Surprise Visit")

Spoilers: Everything up to Lineage.

Timeline: Set after Lineage, except everyone remembers Connor.

Rating: PG

Pairing: Fred/Wesley

Word Count: 1,168

Disclaimer: Pretty much everything except the storyline belongs to Joss Whedon. I own nothing Buffyverse related except for a few DVD's.

Feedback: Much appreciated, but this is my first fic, so please don't be too harsh.

Dedication: To my dad for beta reading this and for helping me with it and giving me some ideas.

Authors Note: This is just an idea that I got one day. I have a few more chapters ready to post, so please tell me if you think I should post them or not. This chapter may be a bit slow, but I promise it'll pick up soon.

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It started out a perfectly normal day. Or at least as normal as it got for them. They all got up. Got dressed. Went to work at Wolfram and Hart. And it stayed normal. Until around two that afternoon…

Wesley was working in his office. He was bent over a book, so absorbed that his office could have caught on fire and he wouldn't have noticed. But then he heard a voice that he hadn't heard in ages. "So, it's true. You're working for Hell, Incorporated." He looked up at the speaker.

"Buffy!" he said with surprise. "I didn't know you were coming here." But then he realized something. Buffy had never been here before, she couldn't know where his office was. Anyone at the front desk would have called him first. "Who told you where my office was?"

"Not to sound like a phone commercial, but I've got people."

"Oh… What kind of people?"

"That doesn't matter right now." She put down the dagger she had been toying with and walked over to Wesley's desk and stood in front of it. "I'm here about someone. You can guess who. The one person in your life who matters more than everyone else."

"Fred," he said without hesitation. Who else could she be talking about?

"That's right," Buffy said as she walked to the other side of his desk and sat down so that she was facing him. "Fred."

"What about Fred? Did something happen while I was up here?" A note of panic was in his voice. If anything had happened to her while he was up here, buried among all his books…

"No, nothing happened to Fred," she said. "At least, not yet…"

"Yet?! What do you mean? What's going to happen to her?!"

"Someone is going to hurt her," Buffy replied calmly.

"Who? Who's going to hurt her?!" He stood up suddenly, knocking some books to the floor. If anyone so much as thought of hurting Fred… He wouldn't give them a half a chance.

"Who's going to hurt her? I thought that much would be obvious."

"Who?! Will Spike hurt her? Harmony? Knox?"

"No."

"Then who?!"

Buffy smiled.

"You."

Wesley fell back into his chair.

"No. No, that can't be right. I would never hurt Fred. Never." He said quietly.

"Oh, really?" Buffy stood up and walked behind his chair. When she came into view again, it wasn't Buffy anymore. It was Billy Blim.

"What about the last time we met? You didn't seem to believe that then." He smirked and walked around Wesley's office, looking at everything.

"No. Tha-that wasn't me. It was something you did to me, something you forced upon me."

"Forced upon you?" He turned back and looked at him. "No, I didn't force it upon you. I merely opened the gates, let out something that you had inside you all along, something that's still in you now, something that will always be in you. And who says that I need to be there to activate it? It could set off at any moment, and if you're near Fred when it sets off, well, who knows? She might end up…" He walked around a few boxes, and when he emerged on the other side, he was Lilah. "…Like me" she finished. "I mean, it is your fault that I'm dead."

"What?" Wesley asked, shocked. "How did I cause your death?"

"Well, if you had just stayed away from people where you belonged, Cordelia wouldn't have had to become a Higher Power just to get away from you. And if she hadn't become a Higher Power, Jasmine wouldn't have latched on, she wouldn't have been possessed, and she wouldn't have killed me." Wesley was shaking his head, muttering. "No, No, I-I didn't… I mean, I never meant to…"

"To kill me? Well, you never meant to hurt Fred either, did you? Fred, or Cordy. But now, I'm dead and Cordy's in a coma. It's a good thing Doyle's not here, or he would…"

Suddenly there was a man with black hair and an Irish accent. Doyle, Wesley guessed, judging from pictures that he'd seen. "...Kill you. Literally." Doyle walked up to Wesley's desk. "I mean, first, right after I died, you show up and try to take my place."

"No, I never meant to take your place, Doyle!"

"Then" he continued as if Wesley hadn't spoken "You go and land Cordy in a coma. And, of course, you helped Holtz take Connor…" Now Holtz was standing there. "Which I really couldn't have done without you. If it wasn't for you, Connor would have lived a happy life, with his father. But, of course, you had to go and mess things up, per usual." Buffy again. "After all, you always hurt the ones you love. So, you see where we're heading." She said as she walked over to Wesley's desk again. "Do you want to hurt Fred?"

"No. Oh, god no."

"Well, then, I think you know what you need to do."

Wesley looked up at her. "What? What do I need to do to keep Fred safe?"

"Kill her."

Wesley stood up again, this time sending paper as well as books everywhere.

"What?! How will killing her keep her safe?!?"

Buffy looked a little surprised at his outburst. "Well, if you kill her, than it will be over with, quick and painless. But just think of what you could do to her if something happened like that thing with Billy again."

Wesley saw, clear as day, the terrified look on Fred's face when he had hunted her down, tracking her through the hotel. But no, killing her… that couldn't be the only way. Then something clicked.

"I know what you are" he said to Buffy. "The First Evil, manipulating me. Just like you've done before."

"Maybe so, but does that make what I said any less true?"

And then, with a flash, the First was gone, and Wesley was alone in his office. But the first had left something behind… Wesley walked over to it and picked it up. He felt the magic wash over him as soon as he picked it up. Dark magic. Very dark. But Wesley wondered… Why had the First left? ... Oh. Of course. He'd best put it down, then. If he allowed the magic to do what it was meant to… He needed to put it down. Yet he found he couldn't. He found himself thinking things he would never think normally. Perhaps he would hurt Fred. No, he couldn't. Well, why not? No, no! If it's between hurting Fred and killing her…No, he wouldn't, he couldn't! It would be easy. Ask Fred to come up, she wouldn't suspect a thing, no, she trusted Wesley completely. Then just aim the gun, and pull the trigger, it will be over with before she could even scream… "No!" Wesley shouted, throwing what the First had left against the wall. He sat down on the floor, trying to let his head clear. He couldn't hurt Fred… Could he?