Enough To Live On
Illyria: But you will. If I abide, you will help me.
Wesley: Yes.
Illyria: Because I look like her?
Wesley: Yes.
Illyria: We cling to what is gone. Is there anything in this life but grief?
Wesley: There's love. There's hope… for some. There's hope that you'll find something worthy… that you life will lead you to some joy… that after everything… you can still be surprised.
Illyria: Is that enough? Is that enough to live on?
- Shells
He shakes his head as he watches Illyria, trailing her hand with a feather-light touch over a plant. He shuts his eyes and turns away, his body shuddering as he remembers his dream from the night before:
The body's previous owner was there. She was laughing, curled against him on a rug in a sunlit park. In the odd way that dreams have, he knew she was dead and knew none of it was real, yet he couldn't seem to care.
When he told her this, she laughed. Told him nothing mattered beyond the moment, he should know that by now. He conceded to that point, nodding and smiling.
"Perhaps I ought to," he had said to her. "But you aren't here to remind me, so I forget sometimes. There was still so much you had to teach me."
"No," she had shaken her head. "You already knew all I could teach you. You already knew how to laugh," she had cast him a glance then, a sad look, the very reality of the word bittersweet. "You already knew how to love. No, Wesley, you had a lot to teach me. You still have, honey."
"Would you have called me 'honey' if you had lived?" he had asked softly.
"Yes," she had replied gently. "Yes, I would have called you honey. What would you have called me?"
"Sweetheart. Darling. Love. Pet," he gave her a gentle, teasing poke in the ribs. "Babe."
She laughed then and her head tilted back, the long curve of her neck welcoming the tips of his fingers as he brushed them against her soft, warm, living flesh, following the trail of his fingers with his lips.
"What else would you have said or done had you lived?" he asked.
"Mmmm," she hummed, her voice low as she straightened up so that he had to stop kissing her neck. "I would have done a lot of things. I would have kissed you every day. I would have worn your shirts and if my feet were cold, your socks too. I would have played with your hair and held your hand. I would have taken you to the cinema and made out with you in the back row. I would have made love to you, I would have learnt every inch of your body and helped you learn every inch of mine," she turned then in his arms. Her eyes were gentle and her hand was cool as she reached up and touched his face, cupping it, her thin, fragile fingers ghosting along his cheekbone. "I would have fallen even more in love you than I already was. And I would have told you. Every day."
He had sighed then, turning his face away.
"I'm going to lose you all over again when I wake," he whispered.
"But that's why I'm here," she told him. "To show you that you'll never lose me."
"You don't exist. There is no afterlife for you. Your soul was destroyed to create -" he stopped, unable to go on, even in a perfect, green world with the woman he loved in his arms. Perhaps that was why he couldn't go on.
"I exist," she whispered. "There was something left. Not enough to make a ghost, not enough to enter into whatever afterlife there may or may not be. Just enough to hover around you, so that when you thought of me, I was slightly more tangible. So than when you remember brushing past me in my lab to reach for something, you would be able to smell my hair and feel the ghost of a touch against you. There's just enough of me so that I can exist in your dreams. That's where I still exist. I exist with you."
"You should have told me before you died," he answered, lowering his head in defeat. "If you loved me, you should have told me. Then at least I would have something. Some… evidence that you and I weren't… nothing."
"I planned to tell you," she told him. "But there was no rush. I wanted it to be perfect. I was a young woman with my whole life ahead of me – a life I was going to live with you. There was going to be days, months, years for me to tell you. If I had known, I would have told you," she shot him a wry, yet sad smile. "If I had known, I would never have gone near that sarcophagus in the first place. Anyway, I'm telling you now."
"This is a dream," he reminded her, trying his best not to be sharp with her, but the aching was starting up inside his chest and he couldn't help it. "Just a dream. You aren't her. What you say is just what my sub-conscious knows I want to hear. That's all."
"If that's what you want to believe," she shrugged and her tone was slightly huffy. "But tell me, Wesley, can your sub-conscious do this?"
She caught his chin and turned his face gently but firmly to hers and guided his lips to hers. The kiss ought to have been gentle, a soft, dreamy kiss that fitted in with the coolness of the park around them. Instead, as soon as their lips met, he caught her round the waist, pulled her close and buried his other hand in her hair, pressing her as close as she could get. She returned his kiss with the same heated fervour.
But even in dreams, people need to breathe. They pulled apart, breathing heavily. His eyes remained closed and he leaned his forehead against hers. She made a happy sound as she smiled and moved her head from side to side, rubbing her nose against his.
"You see, honey," she whispered. "You still have so much to teach me."
He opened his eyes then, but it was not the soft, warm brown of her eyes that met his. It was the cut glass, cold blue of Illyria's eyes. The warm skin now tinged blue and the hair was shot with blue too. Her clothes – her short ruffled skirt and peasant blouse – were replaced by the leather of Illyria's outfit.
He recoiled, but her gaze remained coolly levelled at him and suddenly, heat exploded in his abdomen, along with the recollection of another cool beauty who had ignited such violent lust within him. There was something about her that hit all his kinks and in his raging, desperate grief, he clutched hold of her hair viciously, pressed her back and kissed her.
He kissed Illyria violently, not with the hot, yet gentle passion he had kissed the body's previous owner. This kiss was to hurt her, to punish her for taking the woman he loved, for looking like the woman he loved, but not being the woman he loved. Yet it was to comfort himself too. To stop him feeling while making him feel something beside the gaping emptiness.
"You are thinking too much again."
He jumps, startled out of the memory at the same moment he had woken, gasping for breath at the depravity of it that morning. He turned and saw Illyria eyeing him from the door.
"Yes," he replied. "Yes, I am."
Some things, he knows, just happen.
And this thought makes him choke up inside, like he'll never be able to think of events in the same way again. Like everything that just happens will lead him to wonder how she would have reacted, what she would have said, what she would have done.
And it sickens him that though he can imagine it, he'll never really know. The thought makes him want to scream, throw himself from the nearest rooftop and drown in whiskey.
But he knows he can't do any of these things.
Because the body's previous owner wouldn't want him too. Because she wouldn't be there in whatever afterlife there is waiting for him because she doesn't even exist anymore. And because a Smurf has taken up residence in a body that belonged to someone who he thought would one day be able to love him. And that particular Smurf needs him. That's all that's really keeping him going at the moment.
He shakes his head. His life has become one twisted, screwed up, fucked up, sick joke.
He fell in love, lost the woman he loved first to Gunn, then to his own stupidity and for a short while, to Knox.
Then, when he was finally with her, he lost her completely. She was no longer lost in the sense that she was there, but not with him, no longer lost in the sense that he could talk to her, but not kiss her.
This time, she was lost in the complete way, in the way where he'd never see her, never touch her, never hear her.
But that's where it got truly twisted. Because when a loved one dies, the only time you have to see them is in photographs and memories. But for Wesley, whose life has never been straightforward, his loved one continues to walk around the offices, come home with him, talk to him.
And the fucked up thing is that he needs this. In order to get over losing her, he has to take care of Illyria – the very reason she died.
It's enough to make him chuckle.
"You laugh," Illyria states. "This is evidence of happiness, of joy. What makes you laugh, Wesley?"
"Irony," he replies.
She cocks her head to the side in a sharp motion that is birdlike. He mimics her, tilting his head to the side more slowly, meeting her eyes. This always infuriates her. He imagines that when she last walked the earth, no one dared meet her eyes, yet now he does, this small human meets her eyes and reminds her that she needs him.
Again, he notes the irony that she needs him and he needs her to need him so he can get over needing her. He smiles again, shaking his head with a smaller laugh. Even he doesn't quite understand what he means by that. His life is, as ever, complicated, a tangled mess he hasn't the strength to untangle nor the will to find out where to begin.
"You are laughing at me," she says, her eyes narrow and her voice is cold in accusation.
"No," he assures her. "I am laughing at our situation. I am laughing at us."
His smile fades then.
Us. A term used to describe a group of people, most probably friends as it suggests camaraderie. It is also a term lovers use to describe themselves when they become so entwined they become two people living as one. Or one person living as two.
It is hardly a word he thinks appropriate to use in relation to himself and Illyria. He is still trying to work out what they are. She can't be the enemy, if she was, he'd be trying to kill her rather than help her. And despite his statements to the contrary, the way in his head, he blames her, the truth is what he said to Angel is true. She was a virus; she couldn't help who she infected. It wasn't her fault that it was her body's previous owner who was taken. Wesley can't blame her for it, no matter how hard he tries.
Yet he doesn't think they are friends. Illyria has no concept of what the word truly means and he doubts she would be willing to offer him what he has come to expect from his friends. Anyway, while he does not blame her, he holds her presence against her because she has taken the place of his lover. This alone means they could never be friends.
So he does not know what they are. He hasn't a clue what she is to him or what he is to her. He's not sure he wants to know. He knows she needs him. She needs him to explain this world to him; the little things that seem so important to humans, yet to her seem inconsequential.
"What are you thinking?" she asks, taking a step towards him.
"I am wondering if there is a word, a phrase, something that can describe you and I and our situation," he tells her.
"Is there?"
"No. I think we are the first to be in such a situation."
"What is our situation?"
"You wouldn't understand," he sighs and turns away from her.
"You say that when you don't want to explain," she snaps, following him. "You say that because you yourself find it hard to understand, therefore harder to convey."
"Perhaps you're right," he concedes with a shrug. "But you don't know enough of the world to truly grasp how… ridiculous our situation is. You know nothing of love, hate, loss and grief, you know nothing of friendship."
She freezes, eyebrows pulled together in a frown as she studies him.
"Are we not friends?" she asks and, if he didn't know any better, he would have said she sounded hurt.
"How can we be?" he replies, rather than denying it. "You… You are an idol, millennia old. Worshipped by countless millions in your day, still worshipped by a few today. You had power beyond my wildest dreams. I am just a man. I have no special power. My only skills are my intelligence – which was thrust upon me, so I can hardly take credit for it – and my passable prowess as a fighter. I am not a legendary vampire, nor an empathy demon, nor a lawyer. I am decidedly average, you are not. And it is because of you that she is gone."
"You mean Fred," she says softly.
He winces. He has come to a point where he doesn't like to say her name unless he has to and he hates to hear the name on Illyria's lips, which aren't really her lips at all.
"Based on all that," he goes on, as though he didn't hear her. "How can we be friends?"
"You think I do not understand, that I have not learnt anything," Illyria says, coming to stand at his side, but without looking at him. "You are wrong. I will not admit to completely understanding human emotions, especially that of love – I do not. But I understand why you humans put so much store by them. Your emotions – love and hate mainly – are the largest things you can conceive of. They are bigger than you, though you cannot see them. Love and hate instigate passions which have started wars, it has always been so. I understand why you believe so thoroughly in them.
"But I was bigger than emotion. I transcended it. Love between two people does not last, it may last until the death throes of one and the last breath of another, then it is gone. I transcended love and hate in space, time and dimension.
"But now I do not," she turns, leaning back against the wall and gazing upwards. Her hair falls back, revealing her long, cold blue neck. "I am as small as you. In time, perhaps I will come to understand the emotions of the human heart through feeling them myself. But until then, I have you. From you I have realised just why love is so powerful for humans. You have given me that understanding and I find myself pondering it because it is fascinating," she glances at him. "You taught me that. You still have a lot to teach me. You may not consider us friends, but I consider you my guide and I hope you will teach me more, Wesley."
She meets his eyes with her last line and it is her eyes that make this a request. He gives the barest inclination of his head to indicate a yes. Her gaze remains level with his for a moment longer, then she gives him a curt nod and strides away.
"You see, honey, you still have so much to teach me."
Illyria: Your world is so small. And yet you box yourselves in rooms even smaller. You shut yourselves inside… in rooms, in routines.
Wesley: There are things worse than walls. Terrible… and beautiful. If we look at them for too long they will burn right through us. Truths we couldn't bear. Not every day.
Illyria: We are so weak.
Wesley: Yes. Yes, we are.
- Underneath
The End.