Wesley sat behind his desk, because that was what he did. He made no pretence of working. The only things in front of him were a bottle of Highland Park eighteen-year-old single malt, and a glass murky with his fingerprints. Every morning he would arrive, hung over, to find that his pending jobs were back on the desk, along with his telephone and calendar. Every morning he would sweep them all onto the floor. It was uncertain who replaced them, but he suspected it was Illyria.
No doubt it was also she who kept the calendar up-to-date. He had begun to notice a daily change in the tear-off sheet with its discrete Wolfram & Hart logo in one corner. Illyria was obsessed with such rituals, though she denied it. This morning, the day and date had told him that he'd been back in the land of the living for over a fortnight. He felt like a new man.
Sometimes Angel left him alone for days at a time; sometimes he was a frequent visitor, always knocking on the door. It was a hateful sound. Wesley remembered Fred's initial three months at the Hyperion, how strangely she would react when he brought her food and drink or something to read. Her words had been polite but her voice indicated she was stressed and interrupted. Right now he had an idea of how she must have felt. Fred…
And it all fell on him again, not that it ever went away. The pain of her absence. It was beyond endurance. It lanced through him. By comparison, Vail's knife wasn't even a bee sting. How could he possibly exist without her in the world, his dearest, his light in the shadows? The very idea of it was a sick joke. It was obvious Angel thought he understood. Wesley despised the vampire for that. Angel almost certainly believed that recent events had made the process of grieving more difficult. Filling his glass, Wes barked a laugh. This wasn't grief; this was infinite nightmare. Because she was gone.
Fred was gone.
"Wesley?"
He had been deep in the study of his whisky, seeing the void that was his universe in it. The voice, Illyria's voice, made him return to reality, or as close to it as he could get. How long had she been standing there, that mockery of her that was lost? He should have raved at her, but he was compelled by something he didn't understand to offer support. "Can I help you with something, Illyria?"
There was a difference. She seemed slightly nervous, like a pupil sent to the headmaster's office. Her body language was uncharacteristically distracted; she was avoiding his gaze, and – was that a magazine she was holding? "The toxic effects of the poison you ingest are cumulative. I would not see you come to harm."
Had she actually told him to lay off the booze? Illyria was a bundle of laughs. He put down the glass. "What's that you have?"
It might have been his imagination, but there seemed to be a hint of shyness in the way she placed the magazine on his desk. He half expected her to stand back and start wringing her hands. Wesley looked down. Not a magazine, he realised, an academic journal.
"It is Modern Physics Review," Illyria said. "The current edition."
Oh. Oh, God. It was in an earlier number of this journal that Fred's last, her last, paper had been published. In some ways it had ultimately brought the two of them together. He waited a moment. When he trusted himself to speak, he said, "I can see that. What's it doing on my desk?"
No, he wasn't imagining it. Illyria was worried. "Publication signifies acceptance and honour, does it not?"
"I suppose it can, yes."
"Then I have acceptance and honour."
"I don't understand."
Now she turned away and then back in two swift movements. "It was approved for publication. The thing I created."
Some time passed before he could comprehend what she was saying. "You wrote something, Illyria?"
"Yes."
Wesley glanced at the journal. "Using Fred's memories, her knowledge?"
"Yes."
The journal lay there, strangely threatening. He opened the cover, knowing what he would find. Her name was at the top of the list of authors. Winifred Burkle.
It was a remarkable achievement. The time taken for peer review and the publication process meant that Illyria must have written and submitted the piece months ago. Why she had worked on it in the first place he couldn't say. He couldn't even think about it. He could only think one thing. "You stole her body, you stole her memories, and now you steal her name? How dare you?"
"I thought you would be pleased." Her head cocked to one side faster and farther than usual, as if he'd slapped her.
He gritted his teeth, fighting back both anger and tears. Sometimes she could be so human. Sometimes it was as if a part of her… No. No, he mustn't think that, ever. There was nothing left of Fred. Nothing. Illyria called his scotch poison? Hope was poison.
Finally, he said, "I'm intrigued. You've accomplished something extraordinary, and you deserve to feel proud. Now I want you to leave and let me have some time alone."
A few seconds passed. She hadn't moved. "Will you read it?"
"Of course. Don't use her name again."
"Very well." The door closed softly behind her.
Wesley read for an hour. He didn't make it past the contents page of the journal. Winifred Burkle, Winifred Burkle, Winifred Burkle. His eyes moved across the letters over and over, caressing them. "Fred," he murmured, "Oh, Fred." Sobbing, he bowed his head, lowering it to rest against the desk. Eventually the shaking subsided and he slept, his tears slowly drying on her name.
- - -
"So, how's Wes?"
The smile fell from Angel's face. How was he supposed to answer that? Gunn looked at him expectantly. For the second time in three months, the attorney was returning to work after a stint in Medical. The last time, it was Wesley who'd put him there.
"It's been hard for him. Terrible. He's having trouble adjusting."
"To what, exactly?"
"To life," Spike said, catching them up. "Welcome back, Charlie boy." The three of them walked from the Medical corridor.
Gunn shook his head. "When did anyone last check on him?"
Angel remembered the times he'd been to that office recently. He tried to keep his voice light. "Wes? No one's been to his door in three days."
"Except Blue. She always goes to him, no matter what." As he often did now, Spike sounded depressed when Wesley was mentioned.
"Man shouldn't be left to rot like that," Gunn said. "He's had his private time, now he's gonna be needing people. Let's swing by his office."
It sounded like a good idea, like the right idea, but it wasn't. Wesley was in a fit of grief and desolation like none Angel had seen before. It made his own feelings following Buffy's death seem like a mild case of glumness. Wes had been given a spiritual check-up by the team of mages Wolfram & Hart contracted for such purposes, and passed easily. Had that not been the case, Angel would have suspected that the resurrection spell wasn't fully successful.
Part of Wesley was dead. Whatever had kept him going in the days, weeks, and months after Fred's demise wasn't there now. Angel was actually frightened of the man's wretchedness – it was more than any being should have to bear, like the torments of the damned. "Honestly, Gunn, I don't think we should disturb him. I've tried talking to him a few times, and they were all bad." The sounds in that office, the sounds of anguish.
"We can't just leave Wes. I'm going up there." Gunn's expression became subtly challenging. "You coming?"
Spike walked slightly ahead. "I'll come."
"We don't have to go crashing in; we'll just see how things are," Gunn said.
Angel shrugged. They would all regret this.
- - -
In his dream, Wesley was in the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. It was a dream he knew well; he'd had it repeatedly since that unspeakable February day. The time of the dream was a happy one, a time of hope for him. It was before he'd taken Connor, before the ballet, before Billy. Fred was with him, recently returned from her abortive escape to Texas with her parents. She'd surprised them all, coming back to help and then asking to stay. Except that something in Wesley hadn't been surprised. The first time he'd seen her, she'd saved his life.
The dream differed from reality somewhat. Angel, Cordelia, and Gunn weren't present, and neither were Roger and Trish Burkle. There was just Fred and him. She was beautiful. He always forgot how the hotel's subdued lighting brought out the tones of her skin, eyes, and hair. This was the time when he'd begun to admit to himself that he had feelings for her. As he watched, a mosaic of character – from innocence to wisdom, from compassion to resolve, from sunlight to rich and vital darkness – shifted almost imperceptibly in her clever eyes. She opened her mouth. Oh, no. Please don't say it, Fred.
"I belong here. Un-unless I don't. Which if-if you don't wanna put up with me, I completely understand..."
He knew the words he should say, and, God, he tried to say them – he tried with every shred of his will. But they were obscured in his mind by Father's growing laughter; braying, mocking, drowning his hope in its callous sound. And the laugh took hold of him, and became who he was, and he walked to Fred, arms outstretched as if to embrace her. But he knew he wouldn't do that. Instead, he gripped her shoulders and began to shove her backward up the steps to the doors.
She smiled uncertainly. "Whatcha doing, Wes?"
Stop, he tried to order himself. For God's sake, stop this time, please. Of course, he didn't. The laughter wouldn't let him.
The Hyperion's doors drifted open. Beyond was purest emptiness; lightless, formless, nothingness. Fred was framed against it. She didn't resist as he once more pushed her toward her doom, but her face was sorrowful and uncomprehending.
They were on the threshold. She was on the edge of the end. Now it came.
"Please, Wesley, why can't I stay?"
Had she been hallucinating something like this in her final moments, living this event gone so hideously wrong? His broken heart tore again. She'd died in his arms, but she'd died thinking he'd rejected her? Please, I'm begging you, don't send her away. He knew it didn't matter how much he pleaded. In a second he would cast her out into nonentity.
However, this time she grabbed his arms before he could throw her from him. Quickly, seriously, she said, "Read my article. Hear me speaking. It's an excellent piece." Then he pushed. And she was gone.
"Please!" he shouted. Too late. He knew it was too late. "Please stay, Fred! Please!"
Wesley was still uselessly begging when the hotel dissolved around him.
- - -
His head sprang back as he dropped howling into wakefulness. An impressive whisky hangover beat away behind his temples, but he hardly felt it. The twisting agony in his soul easily blotted it out. It sounded loud in his office, his screaming.
Gunn, Spike, and Angel leapt through the door and into the room so fast they almost fell over one another. Funny. The Three Stooges. His scream went on and on, and he looked straight at their horrified faces. He didn't stop until his lungs were empty.
"God," Gunn said. "Wes, what is it?"
Wesley took a breath, and then spoke. He thought his voice sounded cloying and sick, and didn't care. In fact, he was glad. "Well, Charles, I just stubbed my toe. What else could it be?" Slowly, he swivelled his gaze at the blonde vampire. It was time. "You asked where I was during my tenure as a dead man. Would you like to know now?"
Spike looked taken aback for just an instant, and then nodded once, his face unreadable.
Gathering his thoughts, Wesley spoke slowly. "It's difficult to explain. I both was and was not myself. You three, this place, this world, this existence – none of it was important. Though I didn't know who I was, or even what 'I' meant, I was still Wesley. It was very human. Warm, nurturing, and kind. Presumably a paradise dimension of some sort."
Seconds passed while Spike just stared. He looked down and frowned. Then, meeting Wesley's eyes, he said, "You were taken from heaven. This dump is hell for you."
You think you understand. Is that it? The guttural laugh that Wesley had somehow acquired snapped from his mouth. "Heaven? There's no heaven for me, Spike. I'm sorry – I think I misled you. One thing was important. She wasn't there. I felt it, the hole where she should have been, the incompleteness of myself without her. It was hell there, too. Everywhere is hell. There's no end to it, not even in oblivion."
The Three Stooges were now comically gaping at him. Wesley stood and moved around the desk. "Her soul is gone. Her soul!" He picked up a chair and threw it against the wall violently enough for one of the hardwood legs to shatter. His dartboard fell and rolled across the office, stopping at Angel's feet. "Do you understand what that means? She isn't anything. Do you understand?"
"Of course we do," Spike said gently.
"I think a part, a stupid, childish part of me had hoped that she still existed in some way. I had to die to find the truth." And the truth was that she had been burnt out of existence. So, there was no heaven for her, either. There was nothing for her. What had Angel called it? Another random horrible event in another random horrible world? Angel was mistaken. It was more than cruel and unjust – Wesley was intimately familiar with both of those things. It was wrong, deeply and profoundly wrong, as if some idiot god of fate had turned its baleful gaze upon Fred and destroyed her for the strange, bitter pleasure of slowly breaking its prettiest toy.
Narrowing his eyes, Wesley moved closer to Angel. "It rather makes me wonder exactly what I've devoted my whole life to. This is what she received for fighting on the side of righteousness? Snuffed out? Unmade? After-" A sob was wrenched from him. "After all the suffering she'd been through, the struggles she'd overcome? She was the most moral and good person I've ever known. We all die. We all expect to die. She, uniquely, was annihilated!" He shouted the last word.
What a face Angel had. There was pity, revulsion, and anger, all at war with each other. "Wes, I know," he said. "It isn't fair."
The laughter, Father's laughter. He remembered now when he'd first heard it. He'd been a very small boy and something had happened, some disappointment. He couldn't recall what it had been; probably it was the minor sort of frustration that seems like the end of everything to a child. Father had reacted by mocking him for his tears and asking him if he thought the world was a fair place. Wesley had replied that, yes, the world was like that, amazed such a thing could be questioned. And father had begun to laugh at him, and laugh and laugh, crushing the innocence of his inadequate son.
Over the years Wesley had tried to ignore that sound and have hope, but every time the laughter had proven to be right, hadn't it? When Fred and he had become lovers he'd felt certain that Father was finally silenced, that hope had ultimately prevailed. What a pathetic child of a man he was.
And so now Angel had taken on the role of telling him that life was unfair, had he? Pointing out that it was juvenile to believe otherwise? Wesley's rage suddenly slipped its chains.
"You," he hissed at Angel through clenched teeth. "You brought us here. She was surprised that I thought the offer had some merit. And then you made the decision, your executive decision, so you could help Connor."
Slowly, Spike's head turned in Angel's direction. "So that's what you meant."
Angel's eyes closed and his head lowered.
"Connor?" Gunn said.
Might as well move to the next in line. "Spike, Angel told me what happened at the Deeper Well." Wesley was gratified to see Spike flinch. "She believed in you. She did everything she could to help you. You let her die."
Spike looked at the wall. "Thousands dead? She wouldn't have wanted it. You know that."
"Thousands, millions, billions of lives – what do they matter when set against a soul? Her soul?"
The vampire's voice shook very slightly. "We didn't know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Gunn's eyes were scared when Wesley looked at him. You think I'm going to bring up your little deal with Sparrow? Oh, you're in for a surprise, Charles. "You kept us apart."
"Wh-what?"
"You knew how I felt about her. You knew we were right for each other. Remember when you said that she and I were kindred souls?"
The other man mumbled something.
"Pardon?"
"Don't. It's like you said, she chose."
Another wave of anger broke within Wesley. "Did you think I was suggesting that you'd stolen her, like an object? Is that what you thought?" Gunn didn't answer. A tear rolled down his cheek. Wesley was softened slightly. "I had feelings for her and she had feelings for me. I'm not going to rehash the past, but you know exactly what I'm talking about. Perhaps you seemed like the right person for her at that point, perhaps the events at the ballet simply took over, or perhaps she found you more palatable than the man who had recently been doing a bad Jack Nicholson impression and chasing her around the Hyperion with an axe. But then and after, you knew she and I had a special bond. Had mine and your positions been reversed, I would have behaved differently."
Another silent tear fell.
"Stop it, Wes," Angel said. "You're being unreasonable." There wasn't very much of the moral high ground in his tone of voice, however.
"Oh, am I? Then perhaps you should leave."
They stared at each other for something like a minute. Angel broke eye contact and moved to the door.
"Yes, go," Wesley said. "Leave me like you always do."
Shaking his head, Spike followed Angel. Gunn looked appealingly at Wesley for a moment, and then he too left.
Wesley walked back behind his desk and sat down, because that was what he did. As he refilled his glass, his eye caught Modern Physics Review. Ah, yes. The article Fred, no, Illyria had wanted him to read. With an effort of will he was able to turn to page four and begin the piece. He started to read the title and only half understood it. It became clearer on the second attempt, but his attention was riveted on the final word, a word that had become ghastly to him:
On P-dimensional Space Dynamics Concerning Compactification and Virtual Particles
in the Production and Transformation of the Atomic Shell
Soon, he was engrossed.