Chapter Twenty-six – Explanations

As Wesley awoke, he felt a soft bed underneath his damaged body. He was warm and cocooned in soft sheets. The pain in his chest was now just a dull throb. Someone had cleaned up most of the blood that had come about from the transfer of wounds.

So he was shirtless and Faithless. He hadn't sensed her presence anywhere close. Where had she gotten herself off to? He had wanted to hold her and talk to her. Hold her was the first priority. Talk could come later.

Sunlight streamed through a large window, telling him that he had at least slept through the night. He wondered exactly how long he had been unconscious. He had remembered nothing other than Faith's body draped across his on the stage. Then he fell blessedly into oblivion.

Gingerly as he could, he raised himself out of the bed. He noticed that someone had placed his backpack at the foot of the bed. It wouldn't do to go wandering around shirtless. He might scare someone. Walking to the door, he pulled it open, with Dawn almost running right into him.

"Oops. Sorry. Just came to see if you were awake."

"Yes. It seems to be daylight. How long was I out?"

"Three days, if you count that first night."

He'd been out for nearly three days. It must have taken the slayer healing quite some time to knit the wound together. It still hurt quite a bit, but at least he was still breathing.

"Where has Faith gotten herself to? I don't remember much of what happened."

Dawn winced at the mention of Faith. "I haven't seen her today." The girl couldn't lie. Because of living with Buffy, Dawn never got the chance to even try.

"Where is she?"

"I'm not lying. I have no idea."

Wesley pushed past Dawn to stride down a spiral staircase. Whoever owned this home, it was plush and expensive. Riley's men guarded the outside, patrolling the grounds as far as Wesley could tell from looking out the window. Dawn followed behind him.

"Belongs to Columba or Amalfie, or whatever the thing's name was. The human guy was Rich Winston. That's who the human form was. Seems he's the one who let the creepy thing out in the first place."

"He resurrected Amalfie?" Wesley asked, curiosity piqued.

"Giles said. Looks as if the theory was right. He was just using the Columba name for cover."

"Why not use the human's name or his own?"

"Columba was the priest who put him in the box."

Fred had always talked about clicks and how when things fell together, everything would just click into place, like a puzzle. His brain clicked finally.

"St. Columba was a wizard."

"Apparently, from what we found from Willow's research."

"Probably why he had so much power in the region, how he could control the population. He was even said to have visions of God. A seer, no doubt."

Dawn led him through the dining room and into the kitchen. Someone had brought in some oranges and set them on the counter. Wesley's stomach growled. He hadn't eaten in over three days. Hopefully this would be the last time he would ever have to endure not eating for long periods of time. So he picked up an orange and started peeling.

"Could be some of Columba's magicks were trapped in the box with him. How else was he able to control that many demons."

"Could be," Dawn mimicked. "Giles is still researching with Willow. Cell phone service is slowly returning."

"Now that you've gotten that off of your chest, where's Faith?"

Wesley reached out to Faith, sensing her, but she was blocking him again. How come he couldn't accomplish that? He wondered how she had mastered that skill, when he barely could control himself still.

"Why don't you go ask Buffy or Connor?" Who could probably take him on if he wanted to fight. Smart girl.

"Why are you avoiding the question?" Wesley hissed, drawing closer to the girl. He didn't mean to intimidate her, but he knew that she would cave if he put enough pressure on her.

"Who me? I am not being all avoidy," Dawn said, this time huffy in her answer. "If you're not going to be nice to me, I'll just leave." Which she proceeded to do very quickly, exiting the room.

Exploring the house, Wesley found Giles cooped up in something that looked like a study. He sat behind a desk, animatedly talking on one of the military's phones. Wesley had never seen the older watcher animated about anything, unless it was to smirk at some of Buffy's more colorful uses of the English language.

"I don't think you understand the situation," Giles continued.

Wesley didn't understand the situation either. Maybe Giles could explain. But as Wesley saw Giles pound the desk with his fist, he thought he better have a decent, logic approach to asking. He remembered too well Giles's punch after he accused him of shagging his slayer. Of course, his mind was still hazy on having accused him in the first place. Who knew under that tweed the man was a pugilist?

"You do not have any control over it. Complain all you want. We'll see when I return."

Giles slammed the cell phone down on the desk emphatically, making Wesley jump just a little. He had often made Wesley jump back in Sunnydale, not because he was scared of the man, but because he knew that Giles had years of experience on him and that should be respected. And also of all the stories he had heard regarding Giles's colorful past. Maybe a little frightened then.

"Not a happy conversation," Wesley started.

"Council phonies. Sometimes I wish that they'd all been blown up. Fresh start would have been better."

Wesley winced slightly, realizing that Giles meant everyone, including his pompous father. Not that he didn't agree about the fresh start, having accomplished just that in Los Angeles. The old watchers' council was full of men who would do anything to achieve their goals. Even if it meant killing innocent people in the process, or rogue slayers when they no longer could be controlled.

"Sorry. I wasn't thinking about your father. I apologize." Giles rubbed his forehead in frustration.

"You don't have to explain. Probably would have been better, if you ask me."

Giles looked up at him, amazed. "Feeling much better, I see?"

"I'll live. Where is she?"

"Excuse me?"

"Dawn avoided the question too. Now what in bloody hell is going on? Just someone please answer a simple question," Wesley yelled.

"I'm not exactly sure where she is at the moment."

Then it dawned on Wesley what had really happened. The thing that Faith did every time there was a crisis in her life and she couldn't handle it. "She ran?"

"Yes, to put it succinctly. Seems that the military gave her a ride out of here. I don't know where she went."

Wesley eased himself down into a side chair to take it all in. She ran from him, again. Was it the connection they shared? She hadn't seemed worried about it before. Was it the fact that he had saved her, not caring for his own safety in the process? Did that scare her more?

"What am I going to do?" Great, now he was asking the older man's opinion on his love life. "What did I do wrong?"

"She's a woman. Do you have to do anything wrong? I suspect that after she came down from that slayer high that she so much likes, she couldn't cope with all that happened. Can you?"

Giles must be referring to the dark magicks that he had tapped into to save Faith. It wasn't something that he was proud of doing. And it wasn't something that he would normally do in any situation. Being linked to Faith though made his mind think a little differently. Or maybe it just brought out some latent trait that had always been inside of him. Thinking back to the incident with Billy Blim and almost killing Fred, that could be entirely true. The darkness that was within him would never go away just by him wishing it would.

"What you want to know is can I stop if something like this happens again?"

"That dark power is very seductive. Just ask Willow. Any aftereffects?"

"Really hard to tell with all the other pains my body is suffering at the moment."

Giles leaned against the desk in back of him, crossing his arms over his chest. "There could be nightmares, flashbacks, any number of things."

"Willow found anything yet?" Wesley had quickly changed the subject, wanting to drop Giles's line of questioning.

"She's making progress. But I have found the source of the linking." Giles did not look happy about this discovery.

But it brightened up Wesley's day. Whoever did this to the two of them would pay. It was cruel to have linked the two of them so closely together. His fist flexed tightly at his side.

"Wesley, I'll have you know that it wasn't malicious in any way. The linking was done, ill conceived as it was, to help the both of you. The person must not have gone about it in the right way. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong actually."

"What do you mean? Is there supposed to be a link between slayer and watcher?" All of this made his head hurt worse than before.

"Apparently, yes. Only it never happened to Faith and yourself when it should have."

Wesley stood up to face Giles. He was angry that Giles would ever withhold important information that had jeopardized his ability to do his job back in Sunnydale.

"You can sit back down," Giles said calmly. "I did not know of this either, not until that phone call. There have been rumors floating around for years that the slayer/watcher relationship was unnatural to say the least."

That made Wesley wince. Unnatural could mean many things. Thinking of girls and men old enough to be their fathers made him a bit queasy.

"You have been around Faith much too long. Not in that way. Although there have been some hints in the Watchers' Diaries. I found out that each time a slayer is chosen, her watcher has already been predetermined. They are linked."

"How so?"

"Both slayers and watchers possess a dormant gene that must be triggered at a certain moment, to link the two together to be able to fight the forces of evil."

Wesley snorted. It sounded like someone gave him a made-up story at the new Watchers' Council.

"Why do you think watchers run in families? Why vampires always seek out not only slayers to kill, but watchers also? The part I'm still a bit fuzzy about is what happens when a slayer's watcher is killed? Because both Buffy and Faith had watchers before we came on the scene. I need time to do more research."

"This is all not making any sense. My priority is to find Faith."

"I understand that, Wesley. You need to understand that we may not be able to turn this thing off. The specific recessive gene was turned on in the two of you and it somehow created these abilities in both of you. From my experience, that obviously does not happen in the normal slayer/watcher relationship."

The door behind him opened, but Wesley did not turn in his seat. He was still trying to absorb all the information that Giles imparted to him. He never knew any of this. Had his father known what would happen to him when he became a watcher?

"And you also need to understand that the stronger it gets, the harder it will be for the two of you to be near each other."

"No," Wesley swallowed.

"Believe it. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way," Cordelia said from behind him. "Doing what was supposed to be done back before you came to Sunnydale would have made the two of you a team back then. Some stupid moron made the decision that the ritual was out of date. So you suffered. And when the two of you needed it the most, well it didn't kick in how or when it was supposed to. Only right before Faith left for Sunnydale after helping you did I realize that something wasn't quite right."

"This is all your fault," Wesley realized, turning to look his friend in the eyes. "What on earth did you think you were accomplishing?"

"I was trying to save my friends," Cordelia cried. "And in the end, everything went to hell in a hand basket. I tried to fix it. I messed up."

Wesley wanted to turn away from Cordelia just like she had after he had stolen Connor. He was doing what he thought was right and so had she.

"I have to explain to you," she started to tell him.

Wesley stood up and quietly walked out the door, not looking back at the sobbing woman. She most certainly had doomed the both of them, if not to death than maybe to at least never being able to be in the same room ever again.

TBC

Author Notes: Woohoo. That was probably one of the hardest chapters that I have ever written. I know, hoky explanation (not finished by the way, more to come in the sequel) of why the two are linked. But, hey I dropped hints here and there. At least I accomplished that. To all the reviewers so far, thank you so much. This has been fun. Now the last chapter is almost finished. And then on to a mushy sequel. I want to do some fluff. We'll see if it turns out that way when I write it. Now go and review!! And not just my stuff.