AUTHOR: Eloise
TITLE: Five Colours
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Joss and ME own Wes and all things AtS. I just live in denial.
NOTES: This grew from a challenge for a drabble-sized character study. And Wesley, well, I couldn't do him justice in 200 words. So I did five drabbles, one for each season. I nicked the theme from Kieslowski's Trois Coleurs film trilogy - one colour for each season. Not too overtly, I hope, I wanted to convey the feeling of each colour, as if viewed through a tinted filter. Quotes from various AtS eps.
Blue
He had known what it was to be lonely.
Not sad, exactly, not depressed, just alone. He accepted it as a fact of his existence, like blue eyes and shortsightedness and clumsiness and linguistic competence.
Oh, but he'd been innocent, back then. For a man who had spent most of his life with an intimate knowledge of the demon-haunted world, he had been disturbingly innocent.
He had stumbled into their lives, looking to put an ocean between him and his failures. Hadn't even managed a time zone. Looking for something more than a demon when he rode into the city of angels, all wide-eyed optimism and crushing naivety. Looking for acceptance, to be asked to stay.
And they had. At first he had been a shoddy replacement, a slightly annoying presence, tolerated with patient good humour.
Until somehow, someday, in words spoken and unspoken, acceptance had become something more.
'Nice moves up there, Wes.'
Sudden warmth in his cheeks, flushing at unaccustomed praise.
A hand tight upon his, drawn back from the abyss of madness, drawing them together, years of loneliness, longing and yearning fulfilled in a single word.
He had known what it was to be family.
Green
He had known what it was to be family.
A new beginning for all of them. A passion reawakened; a resurrected life that became an obsession.
It had been a learning process. To understand that Angel was not perfect, or good, or even particularly worthy of redemption. And he had, as always, learned the lesson the hard way.
'You're all fired.'
All his trust and loyalty and hero worship reduced to inconsequence by those words. He hadn't been jealous of Darla, not really. They just didn't matter as much as her. He was used to that. He had years of practice at not mattering that much.
And so together they had formed a new bond, three against the world, fighting the good fight because no one else would.
And he had discovered hidden talents, secretly yearned for but never expected.
A confidence which began as desperate bravado, but remained as quiet self-reliance.
An ability to lead that surprised no one more than himself.
An understanding of sacrifice that would stand him in good stead for a life yet to come.
A hand on a shoulder, giving strength.
'You will come back to us.'
He had known what it was to be strong.
Red
He had known what it was to be strong.
Sure of himself in a way he had never imagined possible. And he should have realized he would be punished for that.
In the blood. Anger and hate and love combining to make a heady cocktail of despair. And he had left the imprint of it on everything he touched.
Nights bleeding into days, endlessly searching for questions he wished he didn't know the answers to. Circles within circles, spiraling down into bleak horrified resignation.
Earthquake. Fire. Blood.
There was love. In the impossibly delicate caress of a hand against a velvet-soft cheek, in the slow drip of a wound upon a blanket, in the glass at Angel's hand.
Love can be a terrible thing.
Oh, he was aware of that. Of the terrible things done in the name of love. Of a prophecy that promised pain and a book that ran with blood. Of guilty hands that raised the child to a final tender embrace.
And it had been all for nothing. He had been a trusting fool, the kiss of a treacherous blade completing his act of betrayal, worse than any Judas had committed.
He had known what it was to be lost.
Grey
He had known what it was to be lost.
He had hidden it well, deep down under a mask of indifference, but he felt the absence keenly. Enough to lie to her, and to himself.
'Wes is so apathetic, Wesley doesn't care'
And he didn't care. Told himself that as he pressed a dark wound to bloodless lips.
(This is my body broken for you.)
And he had discovered that you can't go back. He almost hated her for it, but at least she told the truth. When it suited her, of course.
He had slipped into endless night, where death and destruction were a welcome distraction from the dark part of him that twisted knives in wounds old and new.
'I remember what you did to me, Faith...the broken glass... the shallow cuts...'
Words spoken for a purpose, but he had taken pleasure in her wide-eyed look of pain. A quality in himself he did not care to examine too closely, but one Lilah had recognized as an old friend.
But he had surprised even her, remembering the soft shine in her eye as he had searched to save her soul.
And he had known what it was to fail.
White
He has known what it is to fail.
Not like that's a new experience. He has never been clever enough, strong enough, brave enough, worthy enough. Never good enough. He hadn't needed a cyborg with his father's face to inform him of that fact.
It's odd now to imagine himself a lonely little boy, looking for approval and acceptance.
Odd to see jealousy in his eyes, when he now knows the truth of Knox's perverse devotion.
Strange to remember the twist of a blade in a friend's gut; when blood sacrifice had somehow seemed the only price for betrayal, however unwitting.
He had sought the light of revelation, only to be burned by unshielded truth, damning him to darkness.
But all these things matter little now, as he lives a lifetime in a heart's beat. It's fading, all the colours combining with blinding intensity, till all he sees is light.
It's calm and peaceful and more beautiful than he deserves; and yet he knows he's wanted here, fallen friends beckon him home.
He looks back once, to his comrades in the alley, where the rain falls soft as tears upon their faces.
And he knows what it is to be loved.