VII. Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards
Rating: R.
Disclaimers: Not mine.
Thanks: To Crazydiamondsue -- for beta-ness, and for suggesting English poetry as an alternative to "nice ass." However, I did go and completely rework a few parts after her comments; so any incoherency here is entirely mine. Malkingrey & smashsc also gave poetry suggestions; I ended up using John Donne's "Elegy: On his Mistress Going to Bed". And as always, to Stoney for the soundtrack.
References to: "Angel" episodes "Five by Five," "Release," and "Orpheus"
N.B: picks up right where the last one left off.
VII. Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards

"I never did put much stock in the things people said about you and that girl."

Wesley stared at his father, almost as if the man had begun to speak in a foreign language. Switching tongues mid-conversation was, in fact, an old trick of Roger's to keep Wesley on his toes. But there was hardly a dialect Wesley's father could have thrown at him where he would have absolutely no grasp on the meaning. This was different; here, he knew the words. He just couldn't make them apply to anything. "People -- " he stammered. "Me and -- what girl? Which people?"

"Come, son. The Council was very quiet about the circumstances of your dismissal. And gossip abhors a vacuum. Naturally, some of the rumors touched on your relationship with that slayer."

This wasn't much better but it gave him some place to stand in relation to the words. He choked out, "Buffy?"

"That bag of twigs?" Roger let out a dry laugh. "I don't think anyone ever impugned your taste to that degree. The one with the attitude. And the leather and the chains." Putting on a voice like a Gielgud soliloquy, he said, "Like heaven's zone glittering, but a far fairer world incompassing."

"Yes, a troubled teenager in leather pants." Wesley rolled his eyes. "That's just what John Donne was on about." To his father's disbelieving gaze, he said, "I'm not suggesting Faith is unattractive, but it doesn't mean there was anything untoward in our relationship."

"She did go a bit wild for a time."

"Did she?" Wesley tried to give a suitable impression of shock. "That must have happened when I was busy – what was I doing? Oh, I know. Trying to keep Faith from killing anyone."

"I am merely speaking to the sort of supposition that tends to be made by an uninformed mass. People see a girl that age go so terribly wrong, and rebellion against a male authority figure is a common conclusion. Then you were dismissed and later, when the slayer seemed to take a particular interest in you -- ."

"So the evidence that I harmed Faith is that she nearly killed me, and. . ." He couldn't speak the rest. Hours tied to a chair in that empty apartment. The year that went by before he could even hear the word "sharp" without wanting to vomit. "It would not surprise me to learn that any number of men did a good many horrible things to Faith. Long before I knew her. But I was never one of them."

"Never," his father repeated, a soothing note in his voice. Roger spoke deliberately, stating the next sentence as a fact. "And so you never pumped her full of a powerful narcotic and fed her to your pet vampire."

Silence dropped over them, and Wesley suddenly felt the cavelike isolation of the library. Remembering Faith, tattered and bloody in another cavernous room. When he gathered himself to reply, he started to count points off on his fingers. "Faith made that choice." Then the second finger. "Angel is not my pet. And that was a desperate situation." His words gained speed as he mounted the defense. "Not Angel, much less Angelus -- and that was Faith the twenty-year old escaped convict stone killer. Not Faith the troubled teenage slayer. And I had long stopped being her watcher –and Faith made that choice –"

"And you already said that one. . ." Roger began counting out on his own hands, imitating his son's cadence. "And hysterical recitation of loosely related excuses is not the surest indicator of a clear conscience."

"My conscience. . ." Wesley answered. Is not a place you want to visit, he started to say. But he stopped short of that, coming late to the most obvious response, the argument from results. "Faith is not on my conscience. Faith is alive and well and, if she's doing any damage at the moment, it's with Rupert Giles' credit card at the Leather Emporium."

"So it's about ends and means now."

"It's about my being in the field long enough for you not question my judgment." He shook his head, determined not to let his father determine the direction of the conversation. "But that's not what you were talking about. You were talking about Sunnydale."

"As I said. Idle gossip that I, personally, never put any stock in."

"Of course," Wesley said. "Idiotic gossip from stupid people. Just tell me what they said when you denied it." Silence hung in the air far too long. "Father?" Wesley prompted, although he had expected nothing less. "You heard all these people talking about how I raped a teenage girl and turned her into a homicidal maniac. At some point, I assume you made it clear that the rumors were unfounded. Said that your son would never do such a thing. And then. . .I don't know." Wesley slammed his glass on the table. "Threatened to take legal action for slander?"

Roger took a long sip from his Scotch. He finally spoke in an even, uninflected tone. "I don't believe anyone was throwing around words like 'rape'. With regard to Faith, I would hardly believe you capable of such a thing."

Wesley stood slowly, turned his back to the table. His heart raced, and he struggled to catch his breath before he could speak. "I don't know how you do it, Father." His voice still came out ragged. "You actually just managed to turn 'not a rapist' into an insult."

"Calm yourself, son," Roger said, as if he could hear the rapid heartbeat beneath Wesley's measured display of serenity. "It's only that I know you, and I've seen that girl. A creature like that is never innocent a day in her life. If anything, I would believe that she took advantage of you."

"There was no advantage! Taken or otherwise!" All the conversations they had been through in this library began to swirl in his head, with the sleep and the Scotch. "I didn't even think of Faith that way, remember? They may look like girls, but one day you'll have to chop her into pieces and throw her on the fire so keep a stiff upper lip and don't get attached."

"I told you what you were ready to hear. This new Puritanism, the obsession with anything that even hints of sexuality. You don't think Travers and the Council would have sent a young man to deal with those girls, do you? Unless he was a notorious prig."

"So I'm a prig or I'm a rapist." Wesley slumped down into the chair and leaned his head to stare at the ceiling. The flicker of candles in crystal chandeliers threatened to hypnotize him. He thought for the first time of how long he had been traveling, and resolved to stop snapping at whatever bait his father happened scatter on the waves. "There's no winning this, is there?"

"If you had been less of a proper Head Boy, you might have seen it for yourself. The Slayer is a primal force, Wesley. Do you believe it's a coincidence that it chooses to manifest in the host as she reaches a state of maturity? Of heightened sexual energy? The Slayer feeds on that force; throughout the Middle Ages, the dominant view was that the Watcher had a duty to understand and control it."

"Throughout the Middle Ages, the dominant view was that if somebody was sick you should stick a knife in their arteries to let out the evil spirits. It is rather astonishing how many people bled to death before it occurred to anyone to question that approach."

"Yes, it's much easier to mock than to make an effort to understand. It's much easier to deny the aspects of our heritage that strike us as unpleasant, or politically incorrect."

Wesley heard the words but kept his gaze on the candles. "I'm quite aware of the Council's history. But you're talking about is a view that has been thoroughly discredited by any reputable scholar as anything but a justification for abuse of power." He was speaking automatically, sleepwalking through a dated argument that no one he knew had seriously bothered to take the other side of. "It's exactly the sort of thing that the reforms of the 1970s were designed to eradicate. And anyone who's still spouting that rubbish in the twenty-first century . . ."

It was a trick of the light, maybe, or the alcohol settling into his brain, but for a minute, the old picture danced before Wesley's eyes. A man and a girl on a seashore, and the label: "New Zealand, 1960." His young proud father, and the girl with the braids who had followed Wesley over the years as an imaginary sister. He suddenly knew that he hadn't actually heard a word his father said all night. "Bloody hell." He sat up slowly, and craned forward for a look at Roger's deep, forbidding eyes. "Forgive me, Father," he said. "For I really am a completely crap detective." Sitting back, he steepled his fingers, consciously mimicking Roger's favorite gesture. "Now. Do you have something to tell me about New Zealand?"

TBC