Wesley
You have a choice, he thought. You always have a choice. Keep your eyes closed and leave yourself in the power of vivid, random, and increasingly merciless visitations from your young, beautiful, and very very permanently dead lover. Or open them and face a pissed-off vampire.
He knew which he preferred, so he pressed hands to his forehead, kept his elbows on the desk, and lay there, in his mind, with the soft calming radiance of Fred. This was beyond memory now. This was a summer afternoon in a park in Cambridge -- a mild afternoon with the birds chirping and sun out, and how many of those had there been? Quite aside from the obvious and indisputable truth that he had never been there with her. But they were there now. She sunk down in his arms, and the sun was warm on his skin, and her laugh played with the music of the birds, and if it was so real, so present, who was he to deny that it had happened? He was getting better with these images, learning to control and invent them, and if he could just bring it to a place where he never had to wake up, would that after all be such a terrible thing?
He wasn't fooling anybody, least of all himself. It was no good. As tight as he wanted to close his eyes, he couldn't drown out the voice that was coming at him, louder and louder, a very real voice in his very real office. He tried imagining, maybe I'll open my eyes and he won't be here, maybe out there and not just in here, there might a little bit of peace. There was just no way it was going to happen. And so slowly, with a muscular effort that felt like it should have been enough to push a small vehicle out of a deep ditch, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce opened his eyes. "I'm sorry, Angel. Were you saying something?"
"Was I --? Was I --?" Angel stammered and stared down at him. "Wes, you just let him go? With the firm's jet, three days ago, and I'm just finding out now?"
Jealous vampire crap, Wesley thought. The barriers of the world are crashing in on me, the apocalypse may soon be upon us, and I'm here in a corner office at the devil's law firm in this week's edition of Dawson's Undead Creek. "Need I remind you," he sighed, "That this William-the-Bloody-as-roving-world-agent setup was your idea?"
"But just a couple weeks ago," Angel sputtered, "he wanted to stay. He was all on about how we've got a mission, and the big fight's coming, and now he's run off to --what was it, Naples?"
"Pompeii," Wesley repeated. "And if you cared so much where he was, I'd think you'd have asked before now. And no, I don't know why he came to me instead of you. I assumed you were having one of your ridiculous arguments."
"Wesley," Angel groaned. "I've been very busy exploring possible new conduits to the Powers that be, which may prove to be extremely valuable to this big fight, and can it really not be obvious to anyone but me that Spike manipulated this trip so that he could see Buffy?"
Should it bother me, Wesley wondered, to lie to my boss and old friend about something so trivial? Somehow, once you'd shot your lover's murderer in cold blood, in plain sight and in defiance of the same boss-and-old-friend's orders, it became hard to care very much. And besides, the next part was true. "It really wasn't any of my business. And just by coincidence, I believe that characterization would apply to you as well."
"None of my business? It's Buffy. And -- Spike."
And how could you argue with that kind of logic? The old college try -- "True. The romantic lives of two individuals with whom you have no fixed personal or professional relationship is clearly your business. What was I thinking? Please, do carry on."
"Dammit, Wesley, do you have to be so English?"
Watch it now, you bloody mick, he thought, but what was the point? Anyway, thinking about Spike didn't exactly fill him with pride in Ye Olde Albion. Best to pick his battles. So he sighed. "Now, Angel. What is it, exactly, that worries you about Spike's relationship to Buffy?"
Angel waved his hands in the air. "Spike's obsessed with her. He has been for years. Totally hung up. He's corporeal now, he doesn't have a chip, who can tell what he's capable of?"
"He has a soul, Angel, and he's come a long way. Surely you don't think he intends to harm her?"
"Harm her?" Angel repeated. "It's not a question of harming. It's just that -- Spike is completely incapable of rational behavior when Buffy is in the picture."
"Yes." Wesley suddenly wished he still wore glasses, so he could use an old Rupert Giles trick and start cleaning them. "Spike is clearly incapable of rational behavior when it comes to Buffy. That explains why, with all the serious problems and impending crises that we are charged with handling, he is in his colleague's office at this very moment, ranting with wild speculations about Buffy's love life --" And this would be the place to put the glasses back on. "No wait. That's not Spike." He picked a file up from his desk, hoping to signal an end to the conversation. Angel could move without a sound, but Wesley knew he was still there, pacing, reluctant to let it go. Don't look up, don't look up. Now, whatever you do, don't close your eyes. He let his lids drift shut, forcing his mind into a blank, allowing the image to surprise him and show him Fred wherever it would. And there, dammit all, the smile that blossomed over her face as he walked into the lab, back when he still had to wonder what it meant, and she stood there beside the ghost of a vampire that everyone else, secretly or not, hoped would simply fade away. Spike's words before leaving came back to him, ". . . treated me like a man. Fred Burkle. Buffy Summers." Don't get involved, Wesley, don't make it worse.
"Angel --" Wesley let out a breath and looked up, and even though he hadn't heard a thing, Angel could hover like that. Of course the vampire, the colleague, the old friend still loomed there. "Angel, if I cared very much about my status at this firm right now. . . If, frankly, I cared about anything, I might not venture to ask such an outrageous question but -- Do you have any idea how Buffy feels about Spike?"
From the way Angel's mouth hung open, this was clearly the last question he had expected. "How could she feel about him? He's Spike. She's Buffy and he's just -- he's just Spike."
"Well. I'm not sure if that's the teleological argument from design or the ontological argument from the very fact of existence, but you're clearly working at such a dizzying level of philosophy that my poor human brain can't follow it. So I have to keep it simple. Have you ever, and forgive me for advancing such a radical suggestion but it's so crazy that it just might work, discussed the subject with Buffy?"
"Yes!" Angel held a finger in front of him and followed it with his eyes as though he were pointing at a clue. "Yes, we had exactly this conversation, not one year ago, in Sunnydale, and which point Buffy said to me that she -- wait, I'm getting this -- he's in her heart and -- there aren't any fat grandchildren in her future and -- something about, well," he swallowed. "Cookie dough."
Wesley could have driven Angel's old convertible through the silence. "I'm sorry," he finally said. "Cookie dough? You mean there was some kind of spell involved? Some baking material with magical properties?"
Angel shrugged. "No, I think it was actual cookie dough. Well, actual metaphorical cookie dough. Wes, I swear! That's what she said, and -- I was listening very carefully but honestly --." He swallowed. "It was an emotional time. And Buffy. She can kind of be hard to understand like that."
"So I recall," Wesley sighed. "So if the girl herself is a dead end -- barring that you might actually have picked up the phone at some point and asked her what she meant. Sometime before she got the idea that just because we're working for the primary organizational front for the forces of evil since the beginning of recorded history, we might not be trustworthy. In that case, let me just venture a suggestion. Spike is a vampire. Buffy is a vampire slayer. Spike lived and worked near her, and fought by her side, for, dare I say, at least as long as you ever did. Don't you suppose that if he were a real threat to Buffy, he'd be dust?"
"We keep coming back to this! Buffy has no judgment where Spike is concerned."
"Goodness," Wesley spread his hands and looked at the ceiling, "No judgment where Spike is concerned. I wonder what that would sound like."
As if on cue, the doors to Wesley's office sprung open, and Spike stormed through. "Thanks a mil, Pryce!" He pointed at Wesley. "Happy to report, success on nearly all fronts. The vampires of Pompeii are no more and -- 'ello, Angel."
Angel whirled on Spike and stabbed a finger at him. "I'll get the flightlogs from the jet. If you were in Rome, you're peroxide on toast."
"Pryce!" cried Spike. "You told him that I went to see Buffy?"
And this is what I get for intervening on behalf of the braindead undead. Wesley slammed a palm to his forehead. "No, you stupid git. But you just did."
"So Spike," Angel whirled on him. "On this little personal side trip that was so important. What did Buffy have to say?"
"Well, first of all." He pointed a stern finger at Angel, shook his head and clucked with his tongue. "She's not very happy with you."
"Oh," Angel gulped. "Um, you explained about the circumstances? The extenuating circumstances, because we do have circumstances."
"And what --" Wesley said, remembering 'nearly all fronts,' and detecting something other than total triumph on the younger vampire's face, "What about you?"
"Well the gist of it was --" Spike glanced at Wes, then Angel, and put a hand to his forehead. "Let me see if I can come up with the exact words. 'Crawl into a hole. Curl up and die. Never come out, unless -- it's a very sunny day, and you end up as a big pile of dust." He spread his hands. "Happy?"
Angel rocked back on his heels, and a smirk crept onto his face. "Happy does not even begin to describe --"
Spike stepped forward and jabbed a finger at Angel. "It wasn't a final settling of affairs, all right? Believe you me. There are gonna be more chapters in the story of Buffy and Spike before it's set and done. But both of us," He turned to Wes now, including him as he settled into a more legalistic explanation. "Me and the slayer, we thought that this was the time for a temporary hiatus or, as it were, a cooling off period. Considering all of the various emotions inevitably stirred up by such a momentous reunion as well as, in addition, certain concerns on her part, not entirely unjustified, that various pieces of information might have been withheld which, if presented to her knowledge at a certain time, might have affected her decisions to --"
"What the hell?" Angel demanded.
Spike shrugged. "Girl thought I should have told her I'd thrown my lot in with a bunch of demon lawyers before moving in for the smoochies."
This was the first thing to actually pique Wesley's interest. "Does this mean you're serious about joining Wolfram and Hart?" he asked.
Angel grabbed Spike's shoulder and pulled the other vampire to face him. "There were smoochies?"
Spike arched his eyebrows. "Now wouldn't you just like to be a vampire bat on that wall?"
"I doubt I would've seen anything worth seeing."
The blood pounded in Wesley's ears.
"Oh, is that a fact?"
Wesley closed his eyes, sneaking the tiniest look. The shore at Brighton, where he had summered as a child. She was there, the wind teasing her long messy hair. Fred, give me strength.
"Not that you'd know a bloody fact about the Slayer if it grew fangs and bit you on your lazy deskbound ass but --"
Wesley opened his eyes and drew in a breath. Now or never. "Oh, for the bloody sodding love of every single Goddamn thing that is holy!"
The words came out louder than he intended, with such force that Spike and Angel stopped in mid-shout, backed away from each other and turned to him.
Room in this silence for Angel's old car and a few of the new ones. "Pryce?" Spike ventured, at the same instant Angel said "Wes?"
"You're fighting about a bloody girl. Do you get it? A bird, a bint, a piece of ass."
"Hey!" said Angel.
"What's your point?" said Spike.
"Granted, she's a girl who could kick all the pieces of either of your asses to a bloody pulp on a bad day and who, save for loving either one of you, has more sense than both of you put together. The thing about this particular girl is that she is out there for the two of you to fight about, but she's only going to keep being out there if the two of you can put this nonsense aside and focus on the mission." The words pounded behind his temple, Whatever that may happen to be.
"The mission," murmured Angel. "And I guess it is pretty insensitive of us to be in here arguing about Buffy after you've lost --" Something in Wesley's eyes gave Angel the wisdom to stop.
"Right," said Spike. "I can just present a bit of debriefing on the mess in Pompeii and --" He touched a finger to his lips and said to Angel, "With the smoochies, you understand I was just talking about saying hello to an old friend. Some of us use our lips for that."
"A debriefing," Angel repeated. "Absolutely. And Wes, I'm sorry for any unpleasantness this confrontation may have caused so --" He backed toward the door and, when he must have thought Wesley couldn't see, mouthed "I'm not done with you" at Spike.
"Angel!" Wesley called after him, marveling, as he did, at the new veneer of moral authority brought on him by exactly the events that had kept him from caring if he had it.
As the door swung shut, Spike barked a brief burst of laughter. Wesley looked up at him and said, curtly, "Liar."
Spike shrugged. "Well, yeah. You good as told me to lie about it. So, for that matter, did Buffy. And besides, you're right. Soldier's pleasures can keep. The mission is what matters."
Wesley leveled a cold gaze on him. "Assuming that we have a mission."
Spike stared. "We - do - have one? Right? Fight for good in the name of evil? Infiltrate the dark side from the inside out? Ain't that what we're about? Ain't I the man -- anyway, the animal, vegetable, or mineral -- for that kind of job? Because let me tell you I just walked away from a girl, and you would not believe what she can do with her -- um, stakes. Fighting evil, you know. Very good at it, that one is. But the thing you have to understand, Pryce, is, a bloke's heart? It's like a chipmunk. . ."
You have a choice, he thought. You always have a choice. Keep your eyes closed and leave yourself in the power of vivid, random, and increasingly merciless visitations from your young, beautiful, and very very permanently dead lover. Or open them and face a pissed-off vampire.
He knew which he preferred, so he pressed hands to his forehead, kept his elbows on the desk, and lay there, in his mind, with the soft calming radiance of Fred. This was beyond memory now. This was a summer afternoon in a park in Cambridge -- a mild afternoon with the birds chirping and sun out, and how many of those had there been? Quite aside from the obvious and indisputable truth that he had never been there with her. But they were there now. She sunk down in his arms, and the sun was warm on his skin, and her laugh played with the music of the birds, and if it was so real, so present, who was he to deny that it had happened? He was getting better with these images, learning to control and invent them, and if he could just bring it to a place where he never had to wake up, would that after all be such a terrible thing?
He wasn't fooling anybody, least of all himself. It was no good. As tight as he wanted to close his eyes, he couldn't drown out the voice that was coming at him, louder and louder, a very real voice in his very real office. He tried imagining, maybe I'll open my eyes and he won't be here, maybe out there and not just in here, there might a little bit of peace. There was just no way it was going to happen. And so slowly, with a muscular effort that felt like it should have been enough to push a small vehicle out of a deep ditch, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce opened his eyes. "I'm sorry, Angel. Were you saying something?"
"Was I --? Was I --?" Angel stammered and stared down at him. "Wes, you just let him go? With the firm's jet, three days ago, and I'm just finding out now?"
Jealous vampire crap, Wesley thought. The barriers of the world are crashing in on me, the apocalypse may soon be upon us, and I'm here in a corner office at the devil's law firm in this week's edition of Dawson's Undead Creek. "Need I remind you," he sighed, "That this William-the-Bloody-as-roving-world-agent setup was your idea?"
"But just a couple weeks ago," Angel sputtered, "he wanted to stay. He was all on about how we've got a mission, and the big fight's coming, and now he's run off to --what was it, Naples?"
"Pompeii," Wesley repeated. "And if you cared so much where he was, I'd think you'd have asked before now. And no, I don't know why he came to me instead of you. I assumed you were having one of your ridiculous arguments."
"Wesley," Angel groaned. "I've been very busy exploring possible new conduits to the Powers that be, which may prove to be extremely valuable to this big fight, and can it really not be obvious to anyone but me that Spike manipulated this trip so that he could see Buffy?"
Should it bother me, Wesley wondered, to lie to my boss and old friend about something so trivial? Somehow, once you'd shot your lover's murderer in cold blood, in plain sight and in defiance of the same boss-and-old-friend's orders, it became hard to care very much. And besides, the next part was true. "It really wasn't any of my business. And just by coincidence, I believe that characterization would apply to you as well."
"None of my business? It's Buffy. And -- Spike."
And how could you argue with that kind of logic? The old college try -- "True. The romantic lives of two individuals with whom you have no fixed personal or professional relationship is clearly your business. What was I thinking? Please, do carry on."
"Dammit, Wesley, do you have to be so English?"
Watch it now, you bloody mick, he thought, but what was the point? Anyway, thinking about Spike didn't exactly fill him with pride in Ye Olde Albion. Best to pick his battles. So he sighed. "Now, Angel. What is it, exactly, that worries you about Spike's relationship to Buffy?"
Angel waved his hands in the air. "Spike's obsessed with her. He has been for years. Totally hung up. He's corporeal now, he doesn't have a chip, who can tell what he's capable of?"
"He has a soul, Angel, and he's come a long way. Surely you don't think he intends to harm her?"
"Harm her?" Angel repeated. "It's not a question of harming. It's just that -- Spike is completely incapable of rational behavior when Buffy is in the picture."
"Yes." Wesley suddenly wished he still wore glasses, so he could use an old Rupert Giles trick and start cleaning them. "Spike is clearly incapable of rational behavior when it comes to Buffy. That explains why, with all the serious problems and impending crises that we are charged with handling, he is in his colleague's office at this very moment, ranting with wild speculations about Buffy's love life --" And this would be the place to put the glasses back on. "No wait. That's not Spike." He picked a file up from his desk, hoping to signal an end to the conversation. Angel could move without a sound, but Wesley knew he was still there, pacing, reluctant to let it go. Don't look up, don't look up. Now, whatever you do, don't close your eyes. He let his lids drift shut, forcing his mind into a blank, allowing the image to surprise him and show him Fred wherever it would. And there, dammit all, the smile that blossomed over her face as he walked into the lab, back when he still had to wonder what it meant, and she stood there beside the ghost of a vampire that everyone else, secretly or not, hoped would simply fade away. Spike's words before leaving came back to him, ". . . treated me like a man. Fred Burkle. Buffy Summers." Don't get involved, Wesley, don't make it worse.
"Angel --" Wesley let out a breath and looked up, and even though he hadn't heard a thing, Angel could hover like that. Of course the vampire, the colleague, the old friend still loomed there. "Angel, if I cared very much about my status at this firm right now. . . If, frankly, I cared about anything, I might not venture to ask such an outrageous question but -- Do you have any idea how Buffy feels about Spike?"
From the way Angel's mouth hung open, this was clearly the last question he had expected. "How could she feel about him? He's Spike. She's Buffy and he's just -- he's just Spike."
"Well. I'm not sure if that's the teleological argument from design or the ontological argument from the very fact of existence, but you're clearly working at such a dizzying level of philosophy that my poor human brain can't follow it. So I have to keep it simple. Have you ever, and forgive me for advancing such a radical suggestion but it's so crazy that it just might work, discussed the subject with Buffy?"
"Yes!" Angel held a finger in front of him and followed it with his eyes as though he were pointing at a clue. "Yes, we had exactly this conversation, not one year ago, in Sunnydale, and which point Buffy said to me that she -- wait, I'm getting this -- he's in her heart and -- there aren't any fat grandchildren in her future and -- something about, well," he swallowed. "Cookie dough."
Wesley could have driven Angel's old convertible through the silence. "I'm sorry," he finally said. "Cookie dough? You mean there was some kind of spell involved? Some baking material with magical properties?"
Angel shrugged. "No, I think it was actual cookie dough. Well, actual metaphorical cookie dough. Wes, I swear! That's what she said, and -- I was listening very carefully but honestly --." He swallowed. "It was an emotional time. And Buffy. She can kind of be hard to understand like that."
"So I recall," Wesley sighed. "So if the girl herself is a dead end -- barring that you might actually have picked up the phone at some point and asked her what she meant. Sometime before she got the idea that just because we're working for the primary organizational front for the forces of evil since the beginning of recorded history, we might not be trustworthy. In that case, let me just venture a suggestion. Spike is a vampire. Buffy is a vampire slayer. Spike lived and worked near her, and fought by her side, for, dare I say, at least as long as you ever did. Don't you suppose that if he were a real threat to Buffy, he'd be dust?"
"We keep coming back to this! Buffy has no judgment where Spike is concerned."
"Goodness," Wesley spread his hands and looked at the ceiling, "No judgment where Spike is concerned. I wonder what that would sound like."
As if on cue, the doors to Wesley's office sprung open, and Spike stormed through. "Thanks a mil, Pryce!" He pointed at Wesley. "Happy to report, success on nearly all fronts. The vampires of Pompeii are no more and -- 'ello, Angel."
Angel whirled on Spike and stabbed a finger at him. "I'll get the flightlogs from the jet. If you were in Rome, you're peroxide on toast."
"Pryce!" cried Spike. "You told him that I went to see Buffy?"
And this is what I get for intervening on behalf of the braindead undead. Wesley slammed a palm to his forehead. "No, you stupid git. But you just did."
"So Spike," Angel whirled on him. "On this little personal side trip that was so important. What did Buffy have to say?"
"Well, first of all." He pointed a stern finger at Angel, shook his head and clucked with his tongue. "She's not very happy with you."
"Oh," Angel gulped. "Um, you explained about the circumstances? The extenuating circumstances, because we do have circumstances."
"And what --" Wesley said, remembering 'nearly all fronts,' and detecting something other than total triumph on the younger vampire's face, "What about you?"
"Well the gist of it was --" Spike glanced at Wes, then Angel, and put a hand to his forehead. "Let me see if I can come up with the exact words. 'Crawl into a hole. Curl up and die. Never come out, unless -- it's a very sunny day, and you end up as a big pile of dust." He spread his hands. "Happy?"
Angel rocked back on his heels, and a smirk crept onto his face. "Happy does not even begin to describe --"
Spike stepped forward and jabbed a finger at Angel. "It wasn't a final settling of affairs, all right? Believe you me. There are gonna be more chapters in the story of Buffy and Spike before it's set and done. But both of us," He turned to Wes now, including him as he settled into a more legalistic explanation. "Me and the slayer, we thought that this was the time for a temporary hiatus or, as it were, a cooling off period. Considering all of the various emotions inevitably stirred up by such a momentous reunion as well as, in addition, certain concerns on her part, not entirely unjustified, that various pieces of information might have been withheld which, if presented to her knowledge at a certain time, might have affected her decisions to --"
"What the hell?" Angel demanded.
Spike shrugged. "Girl thought I should have told her I'd thrown my lot in with a bunch of demon lawyers before moving in for the smoochies."
This was the first thing to actually pique Wesley's interest. "Does this mean you're serious about joining Wolfram and Hart?" he asked.
Angel grabbed Spike's shoulder and pulled the other vampire to face him. "There were smoochies?"
Spike arched his eyebrows. "Now wouldn't you just like to be a vampire bat on that wall?"
"I doubt I would've seen anything worth seeing."
The blood pounded in Wesley's ears.
"Oh, is that a fact?"
Wesley closed his eyes, sneaking the tiniest look. The shore at Brighton, where he had summered as a child. She was there, the wind teasing her long messy hair. Fred, give me strength.
"Not that you'd know a bloody fact about the Slayer if it grew fangs and bit you on your lazy deskbound ass but --"
Wesley opened his eyes and drew in a breath. Now or never. "Oh, for the bloody sodding love of every single Goddamn thing that is holy!"
The words came out louder than he intended, with such force that Spike and Angel stopped in mid-shout, backed away from each other and turned to him.
Room in this silence for Angel's old car and a few of the new ones. "Pryce?" Spike ventured, at the same instant Angel said "Wes?"
"You're fighting about a bloody girl. Do you get it? A bird, a bint, a piece of ass."
"Hey!" said Angel.
"What's your point?" said Spike.
"Granted, she's a girl who could kick all the pieces of either of your asses to a bloody pulp on a bad day and who, save for loving either one of you, has more sense than both of you put together. The thing about this particular girl is that she is out there for the two of you to fight about, but she's only going to keep being out there if the two of you can put this nonsense aside and focus on the mission." The words pounded behind his temple, Whatever that may happen to be.
"The mission," murmured Angel. "And I guess it is pretty insensitive of us to be in here arguing about Buffy after you've lost --" Something in Wesley's eyes gave Angel the wisdom to stop.
"Right," said Spike. "I can just present a bit of debriefing on the mess in Pompeii and --" He touched a finger to his lips and said to Angel, "With the smoochies, you understand I was just talking about saying hello to an old friend. Some of us use our lips for that."
"A debriefing," Angel repeated. "Absolutely. And Wes, I'm sorry for any unpleasantness this confrontation may have caused so --" He backed toward the door and, when he must have thought Wesley couldn't see, mouthed "I'm not done with you" at Spike.
"Angel!" Wesley called after him, marveling, as he did, at the new veneer of moral authority brought on him by exactly the events that had kept him from caring if he had it.
As the door swung shut, Spike barked a brief burst of laughter. Wesley looked up at him and said, curtly, "Liar."
Spike shrugged. "Well, yeah. You good as told me to lie about it. So, for that matter, did Buffy. And besides, you're right. Soldier's pleasures can keep. The mission is what matters."
Wesley leveled a cold gaze on him. "Assuming that we have a mission."
Spike stared. "We - do - have one? Right? Fight for good in the name of evil? Infiltrate the dark side from the inside out? Ain't that what we're about? Ain't I the man -- anyway, the animal, vegetable, or mineral -- for that kind of job? Because let me tell you I just walked away from a girl, and you would not believe what she can do with her -- um, stakes. Fighting evil, you know. Very good at it, that one is. But the thing you have to understand, Pryce, is, a bloke's heart? It's like a chipmunk. . ."