Rating: R.
Disclaimers: Not mine.
Clarifications: This section (along with the last passage of chapter 5) follows up on chapter 3, continuing the December 2003 post-"Lineage" conversation of Wes & his father.

N.B: At this point, discussion of Wesley's love life starts to come into the picture. Now, I see Wes as shippable with many many different characters, but this chapter sticks to canon, and to my own primarily het reading of Wes: ie, Wes flirted with Cordelia in Sunnydale, dated/ slept with Virginia & Lilah in LA, and currently crushes hard on Fred. I'm also assuming that, although the mindwipe is still in place, Wes remembers everything we're not explicitly told by canon that he's forgotten. (Connor stuff and the reasons he was with Lilah, but not the relationship itself.)

Also? Anyone who thinks I'm slightly obsessed with a certain scene in "Salvage"? You're not wrong. (The title is a Wes-quote from "Birthday"; one line is quoted from "Lineage.")

VI. A Forced Death-March Down Memory Lane

"And when will we be meeting the young woman in your life?"

Wesley frowned at the glass, unaccountably empty. He shook out a drop and handed it to his father. "A little more, what do you think?" Roger poured, and handed back the full glass. Wes took a large mouthful, and let it burn down his throat before he finally looked up and said, "Who do you mean?"

"When you called out of the blue, after all this time, your mother and I imagined there might be a young lady in the picture. We thought you might even bring her to meet us."

"Was this before or after you decided I was coming to suck your blood?" He saw the glare in his father's eyes, and decided to give that one a rest. "No, father, I'm not seeing any woman. Any women."

"Well. That was another thing we thought you might want to talk to us about."

"That's not what I meant, either." Wesley sighed. "I'm simply not seeing a particular girl, at the moment. I have in the past." He let himself think about Fred, the last look they had shared which might not have been entirely in his imagination.. "Maybe I will again soon."

"You mother showed me a picture of you with the last one."

Wesley choked on his drink. "I doubt it." Certain events of the previous year were not exactly clear in his mind. But he did think he would have remembered sending his mother lovey-dovey snapshots of himself and Lilah Morgan.

"Redhead. Looked expensive."

"Oh," Wesley recovered. "Virginia Bryce. Yes, she was very posh." He breathed deeply and made an effort to drain the sarcasm from his voice – not for his father's sake but because he had cared for Ginny and she deserved better. "Wonderful in fact." He swirled the glass and stared at the play of the dim light in the amber liquid.

"What happened to her?" Roger prompted.

"I have no idea," he said, and realized as he spoke that it was true, and it was probably a good thing. News of the chocolate-and-puppies variety didn't tend to trickle his way these days. But he could be fairly certain she hadn't been devoured by a demon or caught in the crossfire of a family Wizards' Feud. If she had he would have heard. "Understand -- I met Ginny in the process of keeping her father from using her as a human sacrifice. It turned out she'd had enough of that. She kept setting me up for interviews as a private security consultant. It seems she wanted to make me into a respectable husband – which, apparently, I was not cut out to be."

"That's nonsense," Roger answered. "It's simply a matter of the right woman. I certainly thought of myself as a confirmed bachelor until I was forty years old. And then I met your mother." And look how well that turned out, Wesley thought, although he didn't have enough Scotch it him to actually say it. "It always seems impossible until it happens. But you'll meet the right woman, and you'll want to marry her, and it will be the most natural thing in the world."

Wesley tried to smile indulgently, but it turned into a real smile as he found himself slipping into a vision of Fred Burkle in a white dress with flowers in her hair. The sun was out and Angel was the best man. . .and OK, maybe a moonlight ceremony and. . . Good God, Pryce. For a Watcher turned rogue demon hunter turned private detective turned second-in-command of a major office of a demonically influenced law firm, you make an awfully convincing twelve-year-old girl.

He looked up at Roger, the warmth of the liquor hitting him. He remembered something he had said to the creature that posed as his father back in Los AngelesA thing that he never spoke of to anyone, and yet it had slipped out then. He thought it had just slipped out. Yet he now had another chance not to say it to his father, and the urge was there again. "There was a woman," he began. "Not that long ago. You and mother wouldn't have approved of her, though. Hell," he laughed, "I didn't approve of her."

"Oh, but son --" Roger leaned close, knowledgeable, man to man. "Those can be the hardest to get over. What was she -- sorceress? Siren? Vampire, perhaps?"

"Lawyer."

"Oh dear. One of your new associates?" He gave the last word an icy inflection, but Wesley let it go. That wasn't the argument he was ready to have.

"In a manner of speaking. Only, she died."

"And if I had to guess, I would rule out 'peacefully in her sleep'"?

"Good guess." Wesley gave a hollow laugh. "And if your next guess involves gaping neck wounds, and me with a bonesaw." He met his father's eyes and a long moment passed between them. He had told much the same story to the impostor in Los Angeles . The last girl I was with I had to chop into little tiny pieces because a higher power saw fit to stab her in the neck. . The creature had taken it for sarcasm, or had pretended to. Another clue, Wesley now thought, that he should have seen. Roger Wyndam-Pryce would have to know that his son could not make that joke. .

Roger finally averted his eyes and said, "I always thought the unit on dismemberment at the Academy should have been more practical. But the trustees got squeamish at the idea of cadavers."

"I'd say that I managed the practical part reasonably well," and in his mind he was back in that basement, his hands on Lilah's bloodless flesh. But not bloodless enough, he realized. Remembering the crimson on his hands. I should have known Angelus didn't try to turn her. If he had, there would never have been so much blood. His mind must have been clouded by emotion. It often was, where Lilah was concerned. He just had no idea which emotion it was. Quite possibly, he had invented an entirely new one, previously unknown in the history of humanity, just to fit the occasion.

"Yes," his father said, "As tragic as it may be, a Watcher often finds himself in such a position regarding his slayer. I myself, in New Zealand --" He looked far off, let the sentence die, until Wesley said:

"I remember." He remembered the photograph of Roger and Mina now, realizing with a flash of guilt that he had no idea what had become of it. "Of course, this was not actually my slayer but in fact my lover --"

Roger looked up, absently and said, "So you make a clear distinction. Interesting." He leaned closer, studying Wesley's face, for a clue to God-knew-what. "I never did put much stock in the things people said about you and that girl."

TBC