Note: One more post to get the story going. Warning: For all of you Wes/Fred shippers, you may not like this chapter at all. So don't kill me. Just one interpretation, OK? You'll see why later on.

Chapter Three – Dreaming

Someone yelling at him awoke Wesley with a start. Opening his eyes, he discovered that he was no longer in the quaint cottage, but a dark room, with only one light overhead. He sat in a chair, not tied down, but not being able to move. Was this a dream? Not exactly like any dream he had before, if he didn't count the nightmares that had occurred shortly after Faith had tortured him.

"Could be a dream?" Cordelia said as she walked over to him. "I just wonder if I'd been around if you would have snapped out of that insanity phase of yours. You had so many phases while you were alive."

"I'm not sure to what you're referring."

"Oh. You freaking out and leaving Angel to his own devices."

"Not like I had much of a choice in the matter."

Cordelia stood before him much like she was in Sunnydale. Long, flowing tresses, cheerleader uniform, tanned legs that went on forever. The girl that had first attracted him. A little bit of innocence and a whole lot of woman. She'd always conveyed that, until the visions had become too much for her to handle. By then she just looked tired of it all.

That was when he was in his stick-up-his-ass watcher phase. If he had been any other phase in his life subsequently, he would have had the nerve to see what was under that uniform. But now she just giggled at him, and flashed him that toothy smile that always lit up a room.

"You always had a choice. You always listened to the wrong people."

"My life is not on display for you to shred apart."

"Oh, really. Since this is your dream, not mine, buster, you might want to listen up."

"What do you want?" he asked, sarcastically.

"No, I think the question is, what do you want?" Cordelia circled him in the chair, sliding her hand down the back of his neck.

"Why am I dreaming? I'm dead. Remember that?" Her hands sent shivers up and down his spine.

"Yeah, you're dead alright. I seemed to remember the only thing you were good at was getting knocked out." That hand and especially that voice did not belong to Cordy. "Oh wait. You were also good at following orders," the woman said, bending down to speak softly in his ear.

"You know, I'm not sure why you're here, Buffy." This must be his trying to get a spine phase that he had tried on just before leaving Sunnydale.

"Oh, because you failed with me. Where Giles was the perfect watcher, you fell apart with the responsibility."

"You tried," a voice off in the distance piped up.

Buffy came around the front of him, putting her hands on his shoulders. Her slender frame was dressed in a tight white top and jeans. The all-American girl. Giles had already developed a rapport with the girl so when he had arrived in Sunnydale, his watcher status had already been doomed before he had even started.

Her attachment to her family and friends had confused him because he had been taught that slayers needed to work in secret. Then he had realized that was why Buffy was so good at her calling. Family was all-important when you fought evil. Gave you something to live for. Gave you the spark to go on when things went bad.

Buffy straddled his lap, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "So you developed another persona, becoming Research Guy."

Buffy's voice melded back into Cordelia's. The Cordelia he met when he had first arrived in Los Angeles. She sat where Buffy had vacated. Pulling back to look into his eyes, she placed her hand to his cheek and held it there. Her perfume was intoxicating. Her back was exposed because of that damned revealing top she always wore along with those low-rise pants that hugged every curve. Thank God he never had the nerve to do something about it.

"Rogue Demon Hunter Guy didn't work out too well, now did it? But the three of us made a great team. Things never work out the way you want, do they?"

His time right after joining Angel and Cordelia was happy. He had a place in the world. He was the brain, Cordelia was the beauty and Angel was the brawn, to use a cliché. Which was why he never courted Cordelia. She was family.

"Cordelia, I miss that time."

"So do I. I sometimes wish we could go back there. Before the visions took their toll. Before Angel slept with Darla. Before you took Connor."

Wesley closed his eyes at the memories, good and bad.

"You lost your way. I almost had you." Oh no, not her. Wasn't she in hell? Lilah snickered when he opened his eyes. "Hey, your dream, not mine."

"What do you want, Lilah?" he asked her, putting as much venom into his voice as possible.

"I wanted you to join me, but you didn't listen. All those people ever gave you was grief and misery. I don't know why you even tolerated being around them."

His depressed, drinking, screwing evil phase. Those phases hadn't just popped out of nowhere. He'd been through one or another at times in his life. Not all at the same time though. He tried to dislodge Lilah, but still couldn't move from his solitary chair.

"Humiliating, isn't it? To be tied to the rules, to your upbringing, to what's right. Could have freed you from that?" He could feel her breath against his cheek, then his neck.

"Don't listen to them," a different voice called from a distance.

"But you stayed with the vampire. Look what it got you."

Wesley couldn't believe what Lilah was saying. Unfortunately, it was all true. It had caused him heartache to follow the rules and fight for good.

"Even though you stuck with it, your friends turned on ya." Fred, please don't let it be Fred. "You couldn't trust 'em with the prophecy. You messed up big time. Don't think he ever forgave you for that one. Never could trust ya again."

"She's lying," the other voice said, more insistent this time.

"No one ever trusted ya. Family," Fred said, pulling away to look him in the eye, "really does suck. What's it like to have the girl of your dreams because of a lie?"

"What?"

"If our memories hadn't been erased, well, do ya think I woulda even considered ya a nice enough, safe enough guy? Hell, I only went out with Charles because he was safe. You were never safe. Always with that edge to you. I saw it."

Fred's mouth was less than an inch from his. "Edge?" he asked.

"Thank goodness no vamp ever got to you, 'cause I think you'd been even more famous than Angelus."

"Fred, it's not you. You'd never say this." Maybe she wouldn't, he thought.

"Yeah, cause I burned up when that thing took me over, right?"

"I tried to stop it."

"It's not your fault, Wes," the other, somehow familiar voice told him, moving closer.

"But you didn't. Did ya love the blue-haired bitch too? You always were a little fickle in my book. If you really loved me, ya woulda killed it."

Maybe Fred was right. He probably should have killed Illyria when he had the chance, when he took most of her power away from her. But he still couldn't get past the fact that it wasn't Illyria's fault that she had been released from the Well.

"Don't ya like me?" Fred drawled, her Texan accent thick.

"You know how much I loved you."

"Love, obsession. Didn't think ya knew the difference. I was never perfect, you silly."

"You were, for me."

"That sphere made me seem perfect. You smashed it, knowing that things would change." Fred briefly flashed as Illyria, but then came back as the Fred he knew.

"It doesn't matter what you did, Wes." That voice would not be quiet. It kept contradicting anything any of the women said about him.

"She never shuts up, does she?" Fred sneered at the voice.

"Do you have a point, Fred?" Wesley asked impatiently.

"Oh, a point. Yeah, I do. Choose wisely."

"Choose what? What choice do I have to make?"

"Between heaven and hell," Fred concluded, bringing her lips to his. He closed his eyes to soak it all in. It felt so good to feel her against him one more time. At one point in time, he would have called this heaven. So sweet, Fred was. He had never wanted to hurt her, ever.

The pressure on his mouth changed somewhat. The lips melded to his seemed hungrier, more insistent. Different. He still hadn't opened his eyes yet, thinking to prolong the moment for just a short while. When he opened his mouth to protest the increasing pressure, an even hotter mouth and tongue swallowed up any sound. No way had Fred ever kissed like this. And his arms no longer were invisibly held down.

The now free arms snaked around to hold tight. He had never been able to share anything but a few kisses with Fred because their time had been so short. But the woman pressing up against him was definitely not Fred. Much too well endowed than Fred's slight figure.

It felt good to feel something again. Anything but disgust and loneliness. Things that Illyria had made him feel every time he looked at her. He certainly had a good idea who was grinding her hips against his, who was almost devouring him whole. The only other person he had known that had felt the loneliness in her life. But this was a dream. Nothing could hurt in a dream. All his dreams lately had been filled with death. At least in this one he felt desire.

To be able to sink into that oblivion again, like he had with Lilah, should have been welcome. Someone to share his pain. When he tore his mouth away to move down her throat, she did the unexpected. She pushed him away, breaking contact and shoving his chair he was sitting in onto the floor.

Now that did hurt.

"What were you doing?" Faith asked him as he sat sprawled on the floor.

"What? It's just a dream," he told her. "Didn't you get the memo? Bash the Dead Man Day."

The look of shock on her face was unexpected too.

"You didn't know."

"No, not exactly. Where am I?"

Faith couldn't be dead too, Wesley's mind screamed. "Are you . . . ?"

"Dead? Not the last time I checked."

"Good. Didn't want to be responsible for getting anyone else killed."

"What they all said, it's not true."

"Unfortunately, it is."

"Dammit, get off your high horse, and stop taking the blame for everything bad that has happened. All of those people made their own choices. Get it through your fucking head."

Wesley sat with his head hanging between his knees. Dejected, he certainly couldn't figure out what Faith was supposed to show him. She crouched down on her knees, to his level.

"What?" he sneered at her.

The look on her face worried him. "Tell me what to do? I can't do this alone. I can't fix it alone."

Wesley snorted. "You want my help? The biggest screw-up in the Watchers' Council history."

"Hey, I think all the guys who got themselves blown up by a bunch of guys with no eyes, pretty much looks worse than anything you ever did."

"Not a comfort."

"That's not why I'm here. I don't know why I'm here. Everyone's pretty bad off. I don't know what to do." Faith wrung her hands. Wesley could see her distress.

"You're not a ghost." No, something else was up with her. Other than Buffy, who had died more than once anyway, she was the only one of the women who had appeared that was still alive.

"Hell no."

"Then this isn't a dream?"

In the wink of an eye, Wesley was back in the cozy cottage, tea still hot beside him. Did he just experience a dream or was someone trying to tell him something? None of it made any sense to his scrambled brain.

TBC

Next: Faith visits Gunn in the hospital, gets the story from Spike, and has a confrontation with Angel. Please review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!