The Borogoves Rating: PG Disclaimers: Not mine.

Wesley had hardly spent any of the money that he made from Wolfram & Hart. He had paid off a few, not close to all, of his credit cards, kept the seedy walkup flat in the rat-infested building, fixed the scary rattle in his third-hand Pathfinder and hoped the vehicle would last out the year. "There's no point in letting money confuse the issue," he said once. This was early on, when he and Fred and Gunn, steeped in the habits of less crowded days, still bothered to make a point of sitting down together and touching base. "We're here to do a job. May as well keep things as pure as we can."

Gunn jerked to his feet. Wes had seen the man angry but he had never seen anything like the calm, focused fury of that moment. "Happy slumming, Richie Rich," Gunn said, before he banged out of the conference room. "But some of us figure if we gonna sell our souls, we might as well get a taste of the spoils."

Wes stared after him, stunned. He hadn't meant anything in particular by it. He was just thinking out loud, as he often did, and he had no idea that Gunn had already put a down payment on a townhouse, and another on a new SUV. He had grown so used to seeing Gunn as an equal, it didn't occur to him how different the situation looked from his friend's point of view.

He got a further shock when Fred spoke up. "That was cold, Wesley," she said. "There's no call for you to preach at him."

Caught off guard, Wes snapped, "Maybe you hadn't noticed, but for the past three years, we've all been poor together."

"Charles has been poor," Fred shot back. "You and me have been broke. You and me can always give up and go home."

And now, seven months into their tenure at Wolfram & Hart, Wesley was testing out that theory. Not that he was going home for money, of course. That he had always refused to do. Besides, he didn't need it now. And he wasn't at all certain that it would be forthcoming if he did. But Wesley had his own reasons for needing to go home, and Angel had accepted without question the statement that his mother was ailing. Actually, the word Wes had used was "bedridden," and he had neglected to mention a few facts. First, that Caroline Wesley Wyndam-Pryce had not voluntarily left her bedchambers since her only son was thirteen. Second, that every doctor in the Home Counties seemed to agree that there was nothing physically wrong with her.

Not that he should have had to make up a story to tell Angel. After all, why couldn't he be honest with his most intimate associate about the real reasons for the trip? Especially after last month's events, when even Angel -- as willfully dense as he could be when it came to personal matters -- must at least have gotten a hint of the gaping psychic wound that Wesley needed to cauterize. Fred certainly wasn't fooled, and maybe that was the force that was really driving him out of L.A. After all this time fearing Fred's indifference, maybe he had to flee in the face of her understanding. Because he still loved her, still imagined he might have a prayer that she could love him too. But if she ever really understood him, she might be able to see through all of his masks. And he couldn't imagine how any kind of love could survive that. And so when it came down to facing his father or facing Fred, all it took was a red-eye flight to Heathrow, into a London that was darkening just as he entered it. Only then did he place a call, not giving them enough time to make an excuse. "Mother, I'm sorry about the hour. I'm getting on the train, and then I'll take a taxi out to the Borogoves. It may be late but --"

"Of course," she said. "If we're sleeping, just come in. Ring the bell and the boy will open the door."

The boy, Wesley reflected, during the last leg of the cab ride. My family has a boy, and never mind that he's actually a former Council operative with four black belts and seven grandchildren. He tried to imagine what Charles Gunn would think of that.

Wesley had never thought of himself as a rich boy. Out of the families with access to the Watchers' Academy -- St. Wilberforce's Latin Preparatory to the outside world -- the Wyndam-Pryces were likely in the bottom economic quartile. And there was an added discount to their status forced by the ugly and semi-open secret that the money was almost all on the Wesley side, that it had been earned in the past two generations through business and -- the ultimate indignity to end all indignities -- business in America. In fact, Caroline's withdrawal into her own society had coincided with the emergence of a rumor that her Middle Atlantic accent was in fact Mid-Atlantic. Specifically, wagging tongues had it, the Wesleys and their money were minted in Baltimore, Maryland. And before that, God only knew. So by Council standards, Wesley was anything but Richie Rich. Still, he could understand why it might seem that way from the outside. He was, after all, riding in a taxicab on a private route to see a family with its own boy in a house with its own name. The Borogoves. Wesley had once let that fact slip in front of the others, and he wasn't half as unsettled by Gunn's superior amusement as he was by Fred's delight. "All mimsy were the borogoves!" she giggled. "Like in the Jabberwocky. I love that poem."

"My father was fond of Lewis Carroll," Wesley said, and quickly changed the subject before he had to admit how utterly he loathed and detested Carroll's work. This was probably unusual, especially for an Englishman and a scholar. But then, it was also unusual for a ten year old to spend summer holidays locked in the study under the stairs until he could produce a translation of Jabberwocky into ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Merouitic, and several demon tongues. "It's impossible, Father!" Wesley would call. "It's nonsense!" And his father would bark, "There is no nonsense! Only sense you haven't found yet!"

Wesley thought he had his revenge a decade later, when his undergraduate thesis used Carroll's poem as the framework of an elaborate allegory demonstrating the common threads of verb tense conventions in seven ancient languages. The paper received the highest possible grade, which was a given. The grade was followed by very credible rumors that one master had referred to its author as "Possibly the finest and most creative linguistic mind in the history of Kings' College." The finest, most creative linguistic mind presented the paper to his father, shyly but hopeful of success. "I think you'll find some of the reasoning familiar, Father. I think you might enjoy it."

Roger Wyndam-Pryce flipped through the first several pages as his son watched, then snapped the binding shut. "Theorists always overcomplicate things. You may blind your dons with fancy metaphors, son, but it's all Humpty-Dumptyism. The truth is that Merouitic rarely uses the subjunctive for a very simple reason. Ancient Sudanese holy men were incapable of abstract thought. Trust me on this. I've talked to a few."

That spring, the offers came in from doctoral programs in Zurich, Cairo, Berlin, America. Wesley tossed all the envelopes, and presented his father with an accomplished fact. "I've decided to accept a job offer from the Watcher's Council."

Roger gazed at him over a volume that he was reading in the original Fyarl. "Really? I'd think they have enough bloody linguists."

"You don't understand, Father. They've invited me to be a proper Watcher."

"Bloody hell, that's appalling." He slammed down the book. "It's nothing personal son. But in my day, the Council used to have certain standards."

Wesley looked up as the cab stopped at the house's massive gates. Mimsy bloody borogoves indeed. He hoped they all went to hell.