Elements
Rating: Adult
Timeline: Throughout Angel the Series.
Summary: The further Wesley drifts from redemption, the closer he comes to the one person with the power to save him.
Warnings: Violence, torture, language, sexual content, references to underage sex.
Pairings: Wesley/Faith, hints at Wesley/Fred, references to Wesley/Lilah, Angel/Cordelia, Angel/Nina, Faith/Wood, and Spike/Buffy
Notes: There are bits of dialogue borrowed from assorted Angel episodes scattered throughout. Thanks to spikeslovebite and meganpeta for betaing, and to vampkiss for the gorgeous banner/icons.
Disclaimer: The characters herein are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. They are being used out of love and admiration, and not for the sake of profit. No copyright infringement is intended.
Earth
There was rarely a man in the world brave enough to ask the question: where did I go wrong? and genuinely seek an answer. Wesley knew, for most of his life had been spent fleeing from the truth of his shortcomings. Be it his failure to acquire his father's approval, no matter how hard he pressed onward in his studies, his failure as an expert in his chosen field, even his failure as a man of courage—Wesley had only recently taken the turn down the path which would force him to face his fears. To admit his inadequacies and attempt to win the respect of everyone he had ever disappointed.
To ask the terrifying question: where did I go wrong? without flinching.
Wesley wasn't there yet, and oddly, he had accepted this. He wasn't ready to ask the hard questions. He wasn't ready to look inside himself. He didn't want to see what remained. He didn't want any reminders of how very far he had to go until the journey was complete. For the time being, he was content to cower. To take baby steps toward the inevitable destination. To keep from seeing his own reflection.
However, it was difficult to remain detached when the embodiment of one's greatest failure was standing only feet away.
More so when said embodiment had dedicated the last several hours to making him bleed. He was tied to a chair in a dead man's apartment, a gag stuffed in his mouth and his hands bound behind his back.
His own words rang back at him with mocking irony he couldn't ignore.
I was your watcher, Faith. I know the real you.
There was no Real Faith. Not anymore. The Real Faith was dead and buried somewhere within the hollow shell of what his destruction had left behind. She was the face of his collapse, and he hated her. He hated her more than he hated the cuts in his body or the feel of blood oozing between flaps of torn skin. He hated her more than he hated the knowledge of what was to come. Five methods of torture, she'd said. Blunt. Sharp. Cold. Hot. Loud.
She had come to punish him. To do to him what he'd done to her.
Only she was going to do it in a way where the wounds wouldn't be left to fester beneath layers of skin. These weren't psychological inflictions she was leaving; these were scars she was determined would mar his flesh forever.
He hated her, because he knew, somewhere beneath his screaming subconscious, he had this coming.
He was a coward. He always had been. Faith was the result of such cowardice.
His life was one failure followed by another.
It had never, however, been like this. His failures had never before led to the ruination of a human being. And even through the blistering pain fusing his ripped flesh, through the agony he knew was to come, he couldn't help but wonder what she'd been like before.
Before he came. Before he destroyed her.
Had she ever laughed at a joke? Had she ever experienced a genuine hug? Had she ever had someone to tuck her in at night and kiss her brow, wishing her sweet dreams ahead? Had she ever loved? Had she ever truly loved?
These wounds were temporal. Skin and blood and sweat. These were things which would fade if he survived. Even if they never fully disappeared, time would weather them away until there was nothing but a glance of what had been done to him. He would heal. He would walk again. He would cry. He would feel.
He would move closer to the question. The ultimate question. The question which refused to give him reprieve even now.
Where did I go wrong?
Was it the work of his father? The man who haunted him still—who would haunt him, likely, until he was old and gray, provided he actually got there. There were moments when she moved that Faith looked like his father. Not physically, of course, but it was there. A gleam in her eyes Wesley had only seen but from one other human being.
A gleam which declared Wesley nothing more than a scab—a scab picked too many times, resulting in a mark of permanence with a lasting effect which could not be ignored or denied.
She was approaching again, this time with a jagged piece of glass in her hand. It was the same one she'd used during her demonstration of the sharp torture method, only now it was chilled. He wondered what had taken her so long, though in retrospect, it made perfect sense. Faith wanted him hurt. She wanted him hurt so badly he begged for death, such to the point that when she finally stopped one round he was so surprised he allowed for the possibility of hope.
Strangely, though Wesley knew death was imminent, he didn't expect to meet it tonight. He caught glimpses, of course. Between blackouts and sluggish climbs to consciousness, he saw the immediacy of his own mortal end quite clearly. But there was something holding him back. Something tying him to this world—this temporal plane of rage and despair. This place which would allow a girl so young to stray so far.
He saw his own blood on the glass, captured like a photograph beneath a thin layer of ice.
"Hope you're rested up," Faith said absently, rubbing the makeshift weapon against her thigh. The friction was enough to inspire a thick drop of pinkish water, and she relished in his horror as he watched it splash against the floor. "Don't want you blackin' out on me again."
No, he mused dryly, we can't have that.
She held up the piece of glass, her eyes darkening dangerously. "Let's try for cold, yeah? Tell me when it hurts."
In his mind, Wesley didn't make a sound. Out of his mind, his howls of pain were muffled by the gag. And no matter how hard he tried to swallow them, she wrenched every moan from his unwilling lips and took them between her own.
From the sparkle of her black eyes, his pain was delicious.
Wesley abhorred consciousness.
Faith was sitting in the open window of the apartment. He didn't know how long she'd been waiting or how long he'd been lost in darkness. His initial instinct was to, effectively, play dead, but the Id of his subconscious released a long-suffering moan at the first surge of agony against his earthly body.
At first, Faith made no move to indicate she'd heard him. She merely sat, tapping the bloodstained glass against her open palm. She didn't flinch when a roughened edge scraped her skin hard enough to draw blood. It was as though she was completely departed from this world. She didn't feel anymore. She didn't react. She was a woman lost somewhere no sane man would ever try to follow.
Where did I go wrong?
There must have been a moment in the beginning; a moment where he could have said no. A missed chance. An opportunity lost.
He would do better next time.
"That's refreshing," she said suddenly. "But I'm feeling a little cold."
There was a puddle around her feet. A puddle of water and blood.
His blood.
"What do you say we warm the place up?"
She was moving then. She was in the kitchen. She was flicking a lighter.
"Did you ever wonder if things would have been different if we'd never met?" she asked a second later. There was irony in her voice even if she didn't hear it. Faith might be crazy, but there was a part of her burning with intelligence. She knew he wondered. She knew the question haunted him. She knew, and this was why she threw it in his face.
It was a taunt. All of it. A glance into a world which didn't exist. A world wherein he didn't have to ask himself questions.
Where did I go wrong?
"What if you'd had Buffy—and Giles would have been my Watcher? You think you'd still be here right now?" She turned to him, her brows perked appraisingly. "Or would Giles be sitting in that chair?"
The thought of Giles gave Wesley an inexplicable rush of peace. He knew Rupert would never have allowed Faith to trap him. His dealings with the older man had proven enough. Rupert might not look much, but he was strong. He was so much stronger than anyone, even Buffy, likely knew.
"Or is it just like fate?" Faith continued. "You know, there is no choice. You were gonna be here no matter what." She bent over to her table of sadistic goodies and selected a spray can. "You think about that stuff? Fate and destiny?" Seemingly satisfied with her selection, her feet carried her back to Wesley. "I don't."
She held the lighter to the spray, igniting it. A rush of fire shot forward and the room seemed to burn as a result. A long groan filled the air—one colored in his voice—and for the first time all night, Wesley was aware of the thunderous poundings of his heart and the cold, fear-laced sweat dampening his brow.
Pain turned concrete. He realized then just how mortal he was.
How much of the earth he was.
How easily breakable. How easily he could die.
It wouldn't take much.
"Not that any of this is your own fault," Faith went on. "Since this may be the last chance we will have to unload on each other, I feel that it is kind of my duty to tell you that if you'd been a better Watcher, I might have been a more positive role model."
There was no way Faith could know her words hurt more than anything she could do to him, and he wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of knowledge.
He was, after all, only a man.
Again the lighter flicked. Again the air was scorched with fire. "Face it, Wesley, you really were a jerk. Always walking around as if you had some great big stake rammed up your English Channel." A frown befell her face and she knelt forward, jerking the gag down. "I think I want to hear you scream."
"You never will."
Where those words of bravery came from, he knew not. Certainly not himself.
Then she was talking again, but he was through listening. The dark was on its way back.
The dark would reclaim him.
And this time, perhaps, the dark would bury him in the ground.
Where did I go wrong?
Perhaps he would never know.
And strangely, painful as the question was, being denied its answer seemed to him a fate worse than death.
TBC
