Detachment – Wesley
As I come down the stairs Angel hops to his feet, a patently innocent smile on his face, his hands hidden behind his back. I sigh at the sound of small bones crunching under his fingers.
"Give it over Angel," I command.
Dark eyes blink at me, trying to simulate confused innocence. There's a small thud as something hits the floor then he holds out empty hands to me. It would have been more convincing if one of those hands hadn't been smeared with blood. Or if his expression wasn't utterly transparent. He knows I won't approve of what he's done, I don't think he understands why.
I move him aside to see what he dropped and sigh with relief, just a rat. Once a stray cat found it's way down here, Angel killed it with the same predatory playfulness that results in the death of any rat or mouse that finds it's way into his hands. It isn't evil, no more than a cat doing the same thing. Considering that Angel would naturally prey on humans it's remarkably restrained.
He would make an interesting study; in him the demon that creates a vampire isn't obscured by the remnant humanity of the host body. Still it's tempered by his soul. I've no doubt that he still has his soul, despite everything. He seems to have some moral structure. It just isn't human. He's affectionate, even protective of those he considered friends before he was hurt. But I have no idea what he considers right or wrong.
I can hardly fault him for attacking the thug who broke into our offices and threatened Cordelia a week ago. Still if she hadn't been there to call him off, Angel undoubtedly would have killed a human being. I can't ignore that.
In the months since Kate found him Angel's steadily lost his fear. He isn't healing though. He remains more animal than person, a jaguar in human form. In the first weeks he mostly huddled in corners, nearly petrified with terror. Now he's becoming increasingly playful.
Cordelia encourages it, but it worries me. I worry if the curse will hold with Angel barely able to remember past and completely unable to comprehend the evil of what he once was. I worry that he'll forget our relative fragility in his playfulness and seriously hurt someone. I worry about what he'll do if he ever encounters someone he doesn't know without one of us to control him, or worse yet, someone he disliked.
None of my concerns have become an issue yet.
It seems perfect happiness requires something beyond contentment.
Angel does play too rough, he likes to pounce on things and people, but he controls his strength fairly well. The worst that has happened was Gunn getting a nasty bruise.
As for my last concern, so far Angel has been content to stay in the basement area below our offices. He's safe and comfortable here. There are no windows to allow the sun to threaten him. No strange people. The lights are dim enough not to bother him; I'm not sure why but Angel becomes very agitated if the lights are too bright. It may be mental associations, or there might be something wrong with his eyes, I just don't know.
Cordelia brought all of his things here. She put them in storage when we sold the Hyperion. After she found him using his books as building blocks she added a variety of children's toys to entertain him.
She also keeps looking for some toy that he'll prefer to mice. At first she thought he was killing them because we weren't feeding him enough. That theory was disproved when he stopped draining the mice. Basically the problem is Angel's a predator by nature. Before, when he was also capable of abstract thought and reason he could choose to ignore that. Now things are different. Emotion and instinct are all Angel has left.
Apparently his soul and whatever remains of his memories tell him that Cordelia, Gunn, Kate and myself are friends and not food. We have no idea if that will carry over to other humans and it obviously doesn't apply to animals. Which wouldn't be so disturbing if he wasn't so feline. Human kill animals for food or sport every day, but we don't play with them first. Angel keeps the damn things alive till he gets bored with them. Letting them almost escape just so he can catch them again, sometimes he ends up killing them during his play, other times he simply gets tired of them and crushes them. He's aware that Cordelia and I disapprove, but he keeps doing it, which makes it that much more frightening. It seems to indicate that hunting and killing are too basic to his nature to give up without a human intellect to control his behavior.
Cordelia doesn't care; she says people keep dangerous animals as pets all the time. I point out that people also get killed by those same pets on a regular basis. Afterwards the owners always say what a shock it was, the animal was always so affectionate, wouldn't hurt a fly.
This is the same situation, if Angel is hurt or believes he's being threatened he'll react accordingly, and more than likely someone will die.
If he were going to recover it would be one thing. We could manage for a finite amount of time, but it's been months. He's completely healthy physically, emotionally he seems secure and happy, and mentally nothing has changed. All the indications are that Angel will remain as he is now for the rest of his life.
To make things even worse Angel is immortal, we aren't. Even if we continue caring for him indefinitely we will age and eventually die. What happens to Angel then?
Logic tells me that the best solution is to kill Angel and do it now because it's only going to get harder.
If the Initiative were trustworthy I'd consider asking them to do to Angel what they did to Spike. It wouldn't be a real solution though. I wouldn't be comfortable with taking away Angel's ability to protect himself against a real threat. Beyond that, if something should happen to us, would the chip allow Angel to hunt animals? I don't know that it would, and if it didn't he'd slowly starve. Then there's the simple fact that I wouldn't trust the Initiative anywhere near Angel.
Our choices are so limited and given time I doubt any of us will be able to stake Angel. Gunn and I try to maintain a distance but it's hard, harder than I ever would have expected. Without his guilt and self-hatred, once he'd decided to trust us, Angel is a very affectionate creature, and so unbelievably responsive to any form of kindness. He just seems so awed by it. It makes me wonder if he ever really had a chance to become accustom to being treated with kindness.
I have to admit that in the old days Cordelia and I were so used to Angel's normal stoicism that we tended to take it for granted that he could be hurt or need us as friends. And from what I saw of his relationship with Buffy in Sunnydale I have to say that however much she may have loved him, Buffy wasn't terribly considerate of him. Although to be fair to Buffy I must say that Angel was probably partly at fault in that. Buffy was very young and Angel always acted as if he had no rights in their relationship. I rather think that her latter relationships suffered from the pattern she and Angel set. She never really expects to have to consider her boyfriend's feeling, because she didn't with Angel. His feelings were simple; he loved her and was willing to do anything for her.
Adoration is an easy addiction to develop, it's a heady feeling to realize that someone loves you that complete. It doesn't even have to be romantic love, as we've learned. Now once Angel decides it's safe to trust someone, he automatically goes to the other extreme of complete trust.
Sometimes he seems so childlike, his lack of memory creates a certain innocence. It would be so easy to forget how dangerous he truly is.