A/N: The first section of this chapter was the very first thing that came to me, the scene that fueled this entire fic. The second section was next, and contains a few plot elements that have been bothering me for several seasons of both shows. (Chapters 1-4 updated 7/17/04).
Chapter Three: Bargaining
The first thing Wesley noticed when he opened his eyes again was the presence of light. It disoriented him for a moment; he could not fathom where it had come from, nor how he'd managed to find his feet again, when his last conscious memories were filled with darkness and pain. He blinked, taking in the blank whiteness that filled the space around him, then instinctively reached for the place where Vail's dagger had entered his stomach. He was startled further to find that the wound was still there. The pain had vanished as though it had never been, but the damage to his body had not disappeared with it.
"I don't understand," he murmured, staring down at the red stain still spreading across his shirt. "This obviously isn't Heaven ... but surely it can't be Hell?" His idea of Hell - at least, any version in which he might be cursed to spend his Afterlife - was patterned after the Quartoth of his nightmares; brimstone and agony featured high on the list of amenities.
"As if."
Wesley looked up in shock at the amused, intruding voice and found himself face to face with a woman he'd never thought to see again: his adopted sister, his confidante, the bane of his existence -- Cordelia Chase. Her avoidance of him had hurt nearly as much as Fred's dismissal in the aftermath of Connor's kidnapping; he had been almost grateful when he'd found out she had been a victim of Jasmine's plot even then. Everything she'd done after taking on the demon aspect, from blindly taking Angel's side to killing Lilah and making him think Angelus had done it, had diminished under the weight of that truth. That one last day with her in February had brought back so many fond memories of their friendship, but she'd disappeared again without even saying goodbye.
"I know you made mistakes, Wes," she said, smiling sadly at him. "And you got a little dark from time to time. But you don't deserve Hell. I know from evil, and you're not it. You've always been the guy that makes the hard decisions, who tries to do what's right, regardless of the cost. Some of us up here respect that."
He glanced away again, unable to bear the weight of her gaze. Angel had said much the same the day that Wesley had shot the robot posing as his father; it didn't make him feel any better now than it had then. Though he was touched by the affirmation -- he'd received little enough approval in his life -- he still had difficulty believing that anyone could look at the long list of his failures and conclude that he was a good man. Especially a being like ...
Abruptly, the implications of Cordelia's last statement registered, jarring him out of his introspection. "Some of us?" He raised his eyebrows at her. "I thought that business about your becoming a Higher Power was all a ruse, set up by Jasmine to prepare for her coming."
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well. It's for real this time. I guess they figured I deserved some kind of reward, like hazard pay for all of the crap they put me through."
"I can't think of anyone better," Wesley said, sincerely. As unorthodox as Cordelia was, her influence could only improve the way the Powers treated their foot soldiers. "So ... This is Heaven, then? It's ... not quite what I expected."
The blank whiteness of his surroundings had resolved itself into an enormous, flat open space, emptied of all but a warm, pure light that seemed to come from everywhere around him. The surface beneath his feet was smooth and silvery-white in color, like the surface of a dull mirror reflecting only the blank sky above. He and Cordelia were the only people present, and she stood several feet away from him; they were separated by a dark chasm dividing the floor, several yards wide and so deep that when he looked down, he could not see the bottom.
"Ah, not exactly," Cordelia said, wrinkling up her face in that familiar way that meant either 'I smell something disgusting' or 'God, this is an awkward conversation'. "You're kind of, well, stuck."
"Stuck?" Wesley blinked at her, caught off guard. It was one thing to hear that he was not destined for Hell; another entirely to be told that he had no destination at all. Surely, she was not referring to some type of purgatory? It had been his understanding that that sort of thing only existed for Catholics.
"Yeah." Cordelia nodded, wincing a little. "Your little blue friend? She did something, some mojo that froze your body before your brain cells could die off. It takes like five minutes for that to happen. But you had already kicked the bucket; it's not like someone could have given you CPR and brought you back, like Xander did for Buffy the first time. You're not alive, not really, but you're not completely dead yet either, so you can't move on."
"You're saying I'm ... mostly dead," he said slowly, suddenly besieged by memories of the last time he'd watched 'The Princess Bride', tucked up on a couch with Cordelia, Gunn, and a large bowl of buttered popcorn. He shook it off the incipient hysteria nibbling at the edges of his mind and focused, trying to put the idea into perspective. "I'm in some kind of stasis ... and Illyria is responsible?"
"Yeah. As weird as it sounds -- I think she cares for you. As a person, I mean, and not just because of Fred's memories."
Wesley flinched away from her again, unable to bear the compassion and understanding in her gaze. Ah Fred … He glanced longingly out toward the horizon, remembering one of the last things Illyria had said to him in her voice. "You'll be where I am. We'll be together."
"I'm sorry, Wes," Cordelia added, and he flinched again. "I didn't mean to upset you -- but it's true, you know, and you're going to have to face it eventually. What's left of Fred -- well, Illyria is pretty much it. If you're looking for her, she isn't here."
"I know that," said softly. He could feel the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as he looked up again, determined to keep going, to keep from breaking down entirely. He'd had a lot of practice at that, lately. "They told us ... her soul was used up, converting her body for Illyria to take residence. But I suppose ... I hadn't entirely given up hope that that it was a lie."
She paused a moment, then wrinkled up her nose again. "Well, I wouldn't say used up, exactly..."
Wesley had thought himself already too emotionally worn to bear any more, but that one word in Cordelia's hesitant voice sent a jolt of - hope? excitement? fear? - flashing through his veins. He snapped immediately to attention, like a hunting dog on point, and stared at her intently in a wordless demand to continue.
"Not so much used, as, say, fused," Cordelia finished, shrugging a shoulder at him in apology. "I'm not the best person to explain it, but ... well, it's kind of like the difference between Angel and Liam. With a millenia-old Ancient in place of Angelus, and no chance of ever separating the soul and the demon. Fred's personality is gone, Wes, but Illyria needed her soul to stick to that body, and you already know that some of Fred's memories stuck with it. I'm not sure she's even aware of it yet, but the person in that 'shell' isn't really Illyria any more than she is Winifred Burkle. She's something else, something new, and the Powers aren't quite sure what's going to happen to her yet."
"My God." He didn't know what else to say.
"Not anymore," Cordelia said, trying to lighten the mood, and gave him another compassionate smile. "She's more like a slightly over-powered Slayer these days. We're just not sure what side she'll come down on at the end."
"But if she dies in this battle ..." The unpalatable idea of something of Fred ending up consigned to Hell hardened into a cold lump in the pit of his stomach. "You can't ... You can't send her ... She was making progress, she was beginning to learn ..."
Cordelia shook her head. "Calm down, Wes. It doesn't look like it's going to come to that." She pointed down into the chasm between them, still smiling. "Don't worry. You'll have plenty of time to nudge her in the right direction."
Wesley looked down, and discovered that the chasm was neither dark nor bottomless now. He could see a scene playing out far below them -- a ragtag army of Slayers, Watchers, and the remnants of his co-workers standing in a quiet alley filled with the corpses of their enemies. There was some kind of intense discussion going on, but their side had clearly won ... and at the fringe of the crowd, striding quickly toward the front doors of the Hyperion, he could see the blue-striped form of the woman in question.
He opened his mouth to ask Cordelia another question -- how was he supposed to guide her from wherever-this-was? -- when the bright light around them suddenly flared up to blinding intensity, and he found himself sliding dizzily toward unconsciousness once again.
Angel had no idea how long he'd been fighting. It felt like it had been an eternity since he'd told his crew to get to work; Buffy's arrival with her Slayer reinforcements was a dim and distant memory. It couldn't really have been all that long, of course, since the sun hadn't yet come up, but it had been more years than he could count since he'd fought this kind of protracted battle. His world had narrowed to the next punch, the next swing of whatever weapon he had to hand, and the next column of vertebrae snapping in his overpowered grip.
What irony that was. Hamilton, mouthpiece for the Senior Partners, had given him the means to carry the battle back to them just that little bit further and just that little bit harder. The rush of power the liaison's blood had given him was even better than the legendary high that made Slayers such a tasty treat; dangerous, perhaps, since the scintillating darkness of it appealed more to the Angelus in him than his gypsy-bound soul, but that didn't matter when all he had to worry about was what he was going to kill next.
The latest ugly on his target list - of a species he didn't recognize, long on odor and short on intelligence - was in the middle of a sword-fight with him when it suddenly dropped its weapon and arched its back, choking off a strangled scream. Angel flinched in surprise, but he'd already put his full strength behind the thrust of his sword and it was too late to pull back now. The blade pierced straight through the demon's flesh, protruding from the other side to menace whatever had attacked it from behind.
"Hey, watch it!" a familiar voice complained as the demon slumped over Angel's sword arm, adding yet another splash of ichor to the various bodily fluids staining his clothes. "You almost got me with that!"
The sound of his son's voice sent a jolt of adrenaline through Angel's system, clearing away the 'fog of war' that had been clouding his thought processes. "Connor!" he yelped, then braced a foot against the corpse to dislodge it from his blade. "You could have been killed! I thought I told you to go home!"
"Aw, come on." Connor grinned cheekily at him, tossing shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. "I've survived worse. Do you really think I could just sit at home and let you have all the fun? Besides, it's not like there'd be much point in finishing that resume if the world ended before I could turn it in."
Angel shook his head wearily at the boy and dropped his sword-point to the pavement, leaning on the weapon like a cane as he cast a glance over the blood-soaked battleground. Angel and his allies been forced to retreat a few times over the course of the engagement, but each time they moved they had left mounds of rapidly-decaying corpses behind them. Those makeshift barriers had served as macabre obstacle courses for each successive wave, and every group of demons that had made it through had been smaller than the last. Finally, it seemed as though they had run out of things to fight.
Here and there, he could see - and smell - Slayer blood on a wounded young woman, and toward the rear of the group a few shrouded forms hinted that they'd lost a few warriors, but the majority of the fighters were still on their feet. They were exhausted, but they had won the battle. Against all odds, he was still standing; he, Spike, Connor - and it looked like Illyria also, hunched over a body in the triage area where the dead and wounded were being ministered to by Willow and Buffy's sister Dawn.
The slight thread of optimism that had begun to take root in Angel's spirit unraveled at that sight. With the dim lighting in the alley and the light rain still dampening everything, it was impossible to see the face clearly, but it could only be one person: Charles Gunn. Another casualty. Another member of Angel Investigations, crossed off of the rolls of the living. Doyle had been the first to go, then Cordelia and Fred, followed by Wes; Gunn was the last of them. Even Lorne, ever supportive, had left him. What had that ancient king said? 'One more such victory, and we are undone'. Despite today's success, he couldn't help but believe that they were going to lose the war.
"So, what happens next?"
Angel turned to see the weary form of his first true love brushing strands of blonde hair away from her forehead with one bruised, bloody hand. "Next?" he repeated tiredly, then sighed, glancing back toward his son. "I really don't know. We didn't expect to survive this. We took on the Circle of the Black Thorn to make a point, to show the Senior Partners they didn't own us and that we still had the ability to choose. But there will always be more minions, and I think we've pretty much put ourselves on the top of Wolfram & Hart's Most Wanted list. That's why I didn't want anyone else involved."
"Tell that to the Powers That Be," Buffy snorted, "and their full-color, surround-sound Slayer Dreams."
That startled him; he hadn't thought that the Powers might choose to get involved, after that one last vision Cordelia had passed to him and the total lack of help they'd been in other areas. He opened his mouth to ask her a question - but he was interrupted before he could even get the first word out.
"You healed the one called Charles! I saw you touch his wounds and knit the damaged flesh together. I demand that you do the same for Wesley! You will put him back the way he was!" The angry shout echoed through the alleyway, attracting everyone's attention, startlingly loud in the quiet that had fallen after the battle.
Angel immediately turned back toward the triage area. Illyria had gotten to her feet sometime during the last few minutes and apparently struck up a conversation with Willow over her healing; of course, Willow hadn't known about either Illyria's nature, or her loss, so she would have had no idea what to expect. The Ancient demon had fisted her hands in the witch's shirt and lifted her bodily from the ground, dangling her above Gunn's still-prone form.
"He wasn't dead!" Willow protested, a note of panic in her voice. "Wesley is! You said so yourself! I don't do that kind of thing anymore, and even if I did, there aren't any Urns left to cast the spell with!"
"I did not ask you for excuses," Illyria said, with a sneer of disgust. "You will make him whole again!"
"I wasn't making an excuse!" Willow responded, the panic seeping out of her voice as reflexes trained in her shy-geek days gave way to the self-assurance of the powerful young woman. "I don't know who you think you are, walking around with Fred's face and super strength and that stupid blue hair, and I don't care - you can't just go around grabbing people and demanding the impossible!" Willow reached out with both hands, latching on to Illyria's wrists, and a flash of white light flared from her palms. The two combatants were immediately flung several yards away from each other, colliding with opposing walls.
Angel winced and darted forward, slipping and sliding through the unidentifiable sludge of rainwater and less pleasant things underfoot, hoping to insert himself between the two women before things got even more out-of-hand than they were already. It was a relief to know that they apparently hadn't lost Gunn after all, but he really didn't want to see what might happen if the strongest witch in America and an embodied Ancient demon decided to settle their differences over the body of one of his colleagues.
Spike had apparently had the same thought; the younger vampire had been watching Angel's interaction with Buffy with an unreadable expression, but as soon as the argument had begun he had started threading his way through the ragged group of weary young Slayers on a bee-line for Illyria.
Another flash lit up the alley, and Angel suddenly recognized a few of the other faces he was passing. Not all of them were Slayers, after all. Faith was there, leaning heavily against a tall black man he didn't recognize, and he thought he saw Xander's eye patch somewhere back in the crowd. Some of the girls were familiar from the group Andrew had brought to fetch Dana, and he thought he'd seen another of them in a recent photo, laughing in Willow's arms. Andrew himself was nowhere to be seen, nor Giles, but Angel was willing to bet that they were somewhere nearby ... Probably handling the general public, since he hadn't yet noticed any television cameras or rubbernecking onlookers. With an event this big, someone had to have noticed, even if they thought it was just another gang war.
Spike reached Illyria's side as the flash subsided, leaving ghostly afterimages on Angel's retinas. The Old One shook him off without ceremony, eyes fixed on the witch across from her, and the look on her face would have made any ordinary human quail in terror. Before she could start another tirade, however, a voice Angel hadn't heard in eight years spoke up out of the shadows.
"Now there's a face I haven't seen in a very long time. Gotta hand it to you, Angel, recruiting an Ancient to your team? Not something anyone expected."
Angel groaned. Just perfect. As if things weren't complicated enough already.
The crowd in the alley seemed to go still at the addition of a new voice, complaining to Angel about something. Dawn had been crouched next to one of the wounded Slayers, wrapping a length of bandage around a badly gashed thigh and hoping Willow's throw-down with the blue girl wouldn't move in their direction, when something about the guy's tone of voice caught her attention. Whoever it was, he sounded strangely familiar; she was pretty sure she'd met him before, but she just couldn't place him.
"I'd applaud you," the guy was saying, "but you know, it's not like I didn't have enough to do already. Do you guys have any idea how much the lot of you have messed with the balance of things in the last three years alone?"
"Yeah, well, it's not like we had a lot of choice." Buffy spoke up next, and she sounded pretty pissed. "Would you have rather we let the world go to Hell?"
"Actually, we'd rather you hadn't had anything to do with it," the guy snapped back, and Dawn stiffened, her fingers half-way through a temporary knot. Who was this guy? She shot the young Slayer an apologetic look, then gave up on the bandage and got to her feet, craning her neck to see what was going on.
"Your coming back left a pretty big imbalance on the scales," the guy continued. Dawn could see him now; he was short and badly dressed, with a bowler hat on his head, and from the way he was standing it looked like he was squaring off with Angel and Buffy both. "It was enough to let the First get a toehold in this reality, and things pretty much snowballed from there. The First was the reason we let you Call up all those Slayers at once, you'd never have stopped it otherwise, but after the First went back underground the scales were overpowered again."
Dawn stared as recognition kicked in at last. It was that guy! The one who'd told Buffy how to kill Angel, back when Mom was still clueless and Giles was still a librarian. No wonder she'd had trouble remembering his voice; he was from one of her monk-created memories, not a real one. Most of those memories had been pretty much cloned out of Buffy's with Dawn's presence tacked on like an afterthought, and they weren't always very clear or very organized. She sure remembered his face, though. When the police had been looking for Buffy and Mom had thought she was out with Willow, Dawn had snuck out, having a pretty good idea that Giles would know where she had gone. She hadn't found Giles there, but she had seen her sister -- she'd been hiding upstairs when Whistler asked Buffy what she was prepared to do.
Angel interrupted the demon's expository musing, his mouth twisting bitterly as he spoke. "Let me guess," he said. "The Senior Partners picked up the slack."
"Got it in one, Angel, my man. You know, you're a much snappier dresser these days than the last time that I ..."
"Whistler!" Buffy growled, interrupting the balance demon before he could get off on a tangent. "Two words: Ribcage. Hat."
The nervous feeling in the pit of Dawn's stomach began creeping up the scale toward full-blown panic. In all the years they'd been in Sunnydale, with all the apocalypses they'd been through, this guy had only shown up once. If he was here, something was wrong -- something was really, really wrong.
Whistler winced at Buffy's comment, throwing a mock-glare in her direction. "You know, that threat doesn't get any prettier with repetition. How 'bout I skip right to the end, then. It's like this: we're going to take the powers back. There will be one Slayer, and one Slayer only, and that Slayer is going to be Faith."
"What?" Dawn blurted, her objection joined by a chorus of other voices. They couldn't do that!
"I don't think so!" the Boston-born Slayer's voice rang out over the crowd, and Dawn caught a glimpse of leather and dark hair as Faith pushed her way toward the center of the crowd. "The baby Slayers, I can see that. But B? She's been doing this longer than I have. You can't just take that away from her!"
"It's all or nothing, babe," the balance demon said, shrugging again. "As in, one Slayer, and the rest of you all go back to your normal lives, happy and alive; or none of you live. Even the non-Slayers. The Senior Partners will keep coming until every one of you is dead."
"I'd like to see them try." Kennedy spoke up, scowling back at him, her tone defiant and proud. For the first time in ... well, ever ... Dawn found herself agreeing with her. How could the Powers think this was a good idea?
"Believe me, you don't," Whistler argued, shaking his head. "You think this was hard? You ain't seen nothing yet. And we can't do anything to stop them as long as this imbalance continues."
"I do not understand." The blue girl, the one that had tried to strangle Willow, had got back to her feet and was staring at the demon as though he were a wad of gum on the bottom of her shoe. "You implied that my presence has altered the intended outcome, yet my return to the mortal world was foretold eons ago. I do not see how my existence could be in any way unexpected."
"Your existence, yeah, but not that you'd fight on Angel's side," Whistler pointed out. "If you had left Wolfram & Hart after they fixed your power problems, you wouldn't have been there for any of this. Cyvus Vail would still be alive, and Angel and Spike would have been dust long before the Slayers got here. Half of the girls would have gone down under the onslaught, and the ones that lived would have been a much more acceptable counterweight than the lot we've got right now. We didn't count on you starting to care."
"Nobody saw you coming," Dawn remembered, sick at heart. "Now he's a creep again. Now, what are you gonna do?"
"Do not insult me by attempting to ascribe human emotions to my actions," the blue girl snapped back, glaring at him. "I do not appreciate being blamed for your masters' inability to manage their domain properly."
"That's just the thing," Whistler said, exasperated, spreading his arms wide and raising his voice. "This ain't their domain. You know Angel's reason for fighting? To show the Partners he still had a choice? Well, that's pretty much what the battle's all about. As long as we can keep the whole mess on an even keel, people are pretty much free to choose without undue pressure from either side. Too many heroes, too many villains, and things get way out of hand."
When haven't they been? Dawn wanted to say, but the words died in her throat when she saw the look on her sister's face.
"So I give it up," Buffy said quietly, her expression a calm, resigned mask. "Period. The end. I get the normal life I used to think I wanted, and all these girls go back to Mom and Dad. So what about all the rest of them?"
"You mean Angel," Whistler said more loudly, winking knowingly at her. "Sorry, kiddo. He signed the Shanshu away. We'll glue his soul down as compensation, but he's pretty much stuck as a vampire forever."
Dawn winced at the mention of Angel's name -- honestly, didn't the Powers even keep up on their Champions' love lives? It was no wonder they kept misjudging people -- then widened her eyes at the comment about Angel's soul. If he didn't have his curse anymore, he'd be like Spike; he could ... Spike! She craned her neck again, looking for that trademark thatch of platinum blond hair, and sighed in relief when she saw him. She'd been on edge all day, ever since the Slayers started reporting their visions, not sure whether or not she wanted to believe them. In all of the mayhem, she had forgotten to check for his presence until now.
"No, I mean Spike!" Buffy spoke up, exasperated, echoing Dawn's line of thought. "He's not exactly normal. Neither is Willow, or Angel's son over there, or Dawn, or whoever this is." She pointed at the blue girl. "Are you going to neutralize the rest of them, too, for the sake of your mystical balance?"
Please, God, no, Dawn thought, startled, crossing her fingers. Things were bad enough as it was -- it had taken Buffy years to get over being called in the first place, then to recover from her second death, and now that everything was going well they were going to take it away from her. And not only that; all the Watchers and all the junior Slayers that had spent the last year settling into their new routines were going to be torn out of their places, scrambling to restructure the Council yet again. Buffy would need all the support she could get, and if all the rest of them went down, too ...
Please, God, just let her be safe and happy, Dawn added silently. If you have to take the rest of us -- I wasn't real in the first place, I always knew this might happen. I don't want to go, but if you have to take me ... please, let her be safe.
Whistler let the silence hang for a moment while he studied each of them in turn, then shrugged and turned back to Buffy. "I wouldn't worry," he said. "They all have prophesies of their own; I don't muck in that kind of thing, I just pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong. So what do you think? I need an answer in the next couple of minutes. Oh, and I ought to tell you, you might want to see to your friend in the lobby pretty soon, too. That time-out bubble ain't gonna hold him forever."
TBC (3/5)