"What do you seek?"
Fred did not answer but instead glanced out at the city, the haze of smog in the air causing the neon and streetlamps in the distance to blur, to glow waveringly like a mirage.
The steps came closely behind her. "There exists nothing in that world that I cannot provide you. Your attention should be focused upon me. You have not provided a satisfactory answer to the question I asked you previously."
"Yeah?" Fred whispered, folding her arms around herself and leaning over the ledge of the building. "So what are you gonna do about it?"
"Merely restate my position," he answered and she felt one leather-clad thigh leaning impudently against her left buttock. "Recall that in my previous reign, I did not condescend to that so lowly as a request and never to a common beast such as a human. You are afforded a respect of which you misunderstand and disadvantage."
Fred puffed out a small laugh. The audacity of men made exponentially worse by a billion-year death sleep. Yet she cherished moments like these because they served as more evidence of something close to what she knew of Spike, his aura of arrogance, some hint that a remnant of him must still reside within. Illyria had taken Spike's qualities, warped them, and mutated them. Fred would separate them somehow; unravel the coils of Illyria from Spike, creating two unique wholes. No one, nothing, would have to die. Perhaps…ever…
"I grow weary of your silence, scientist."
She smiled wistfully. Returning Spike to himself would even top her near miss at making him corporeal. It would be, she realized, like separating a molecule of water.
Suddenly, Illyria spun her around to face him.
"You try my tolerance!" he spat. "You will receive no more equitable of an offer from me. I will allow you to study me, learn from me, as I in turn will learn from you. We have much to afford one another."
"Stop it," she muttered and pulled away from the "god-king," as he'd taken to calling himself.
"You presume to deny me a place in this world, one I have rightfully earned? After all," he purred, a calculating look spreading across his face. "I took this body in error, if you recall. You have been spared the flames of my rebirth. While one close to you, did not."
Pained by the guilt he awakened in her, she squinted in the moonlight. "You don't need to remind me."
"On the contrary, your behavior proves to me that I must indeed do just that," he said softly. "It appears to be the only power I hold over you at present. And the reminder of suffering is a powerful one, is it not?"
Fred shuddered in the humid air. It was.
"You crave the company of the other human. You may converse with him in my presence if you wish."
"No," Fred sighed, thinking about Wesley. Five days since he'd shucked her away from him, three days since their last encounter. "You have to remember. We decided that we didn't work so well together, after all."
"Whatever did he mean to you?"
On day five of Illyria-Watch, Wesley had finally asked the question that Fred had seen brewing in his desperation and misunderstanding: why the long-awaited girl of his dreams suddenly made it her mission in life to spend every waking moment with this aberration. Spike, with whom Fred hadn't shared as much as a meal, their ways effectively parted when the end of his ghostliness ceased their necessity to one another. Now this interest, this obsession with returning him to life, this person that she barely knew herself. Fred couldn't begin to explain.
"We can't kill it," Fred began weakly and Wes' eyes changed immediately from despair to cold calculation.
"Who says that we can't?"
She looked at him in alarm. From the circles under his eyes, the overgrowth of beard on his jaw, he looked like he had been the one running countless rounds of tests, answering all of the thing's questions, enduring all of its complaints, the agent of its every whim. That's when she realized she'd become that to him. Nights spent up, waiting for a call or a visit that never came. All this time, still waiting - it had to be a kind of torture for him. Even together as a couple, in this relationship, still he pined for her.
"I believe, I still think...that there's something left of Spike in there."
Wesley dragged his eyes away from her to look at the figure waiting in the chamber. "You believe with your heart or you have some basis in fact?"
"I know," Fred grabbed his arm. "I know with every part of me that's a person. He wouldn't give up on me - my God, Wesley. He gave up his chance to become corporeal to save my life, he didn't even hesitate."
Wes whipped his head to face her. "You owe him nothing."
"It's not him!" Fred cried. "And it's not about obligation, either. It's..." She looked into the chamber helplessly. "It's just something that I have to do, is all. Wesley, I-I've just never seen anything like him."
Her words came pouring out, released from the barrier of her clinician's mind at the chance to have something resembling a real conversation. "Did I tell you how I brought him out into the sunlight? It was like the burning bush all over again – the exposed skin burst into flames but the fire didn't consume him. And the stake-through-the-heart test? Couldn't even get it past the breastplate, just gave myself a few nasty splinters. I wonder how the battle-axe decapitation will go?" she flipped a few pages on her clipboard. "Probably all I'll decapitate is another blade. So far, he's pretty much invincible. He doesn't even need to eat anything, which would suggest an inherently sustaining fuel source and who knows where that might reside…" She trailed off, realizing that Wesley had been watching her with increasing bewilderment. "What?" she asked.
"My God," he murmured. "This isn't even about Spike anymore, is it? Whenever did that happen?"
"Sure it is," she said, more crossly than she intended. "It's just that in the meantime, we've got a walking and talking piece of natural history here. He knows more about our world, our origin, than we do. Who wouldn't want to take advantage of that?"
"Everyone outside of you, apparently," he answered. "Illyria's the very quintessence of unpredictability. A ticking time bomb, if you will."
"All the more reason for me to be the bomb squad," Fred said mildly. "Have diffuser, will travel."
A few silent minutes passed and then she felt Wesley's hand reach for hers. "I'm waiting for you, you know."
Her heart sunk into the pit of her stomach, bringing a wash of acid to her throat. The image of Illyria through the glass blurred through her tears.
"I know." She squeezed back. "That's what you've always done."
"I suppose the question becomes if I'm waiting in vain. Although I'm not sure that's something that you can answer honestly, I'd appreciate it if you could try."
Fred turned to look at him slowly, confronting the pained face of her old friend with whom she had experienced and seen so much, who held the possibility of becoming so much more. Maybe that's all he would ever be, she thought, a possibility.
"The tests on Illyria will end, eventually," she said. "Then the analysis will take some time..."
Wes smiled sadly. "Then it will be on to the next specimen."
"Oh, gosh. I can't even think about that now. I could spend years with Illyria and never find out enough," Fred blurted and his hand froze in her palm before quickly slipping away. She tried to smile. "I didn't...oh Wes, don't take it that way. You know what I meant."
"I know too well, actually," he replied, the same bitter twist to his mouth. "In the end, after all we've been through… you're just curious. I think I hate you a little for that."
"Wesley," she tugged on the crook of his elbow, as though pulling him to her side, her reasoning. "Please."
"Give me a date when you'll be finished," he said quietly, pressing her hand into his skin. "Tell me when it will be that you've seen enough. When every morning you awake isn't consumed by the thought of what Illyria will show you, and every night isn't spent wondering what you haven't yet learned, what you can experiment with next. Tell me when and I'll wait."
"Wesley," she whispered, feeling the weight of what he wanted from her bearing down upon her like the most oppressive of burdens - one that she could never have anticipated and one that he, even in his misery, seemed prepared to remove. Remove the bulk of his wants and himself along with them, leaving plenty of room for work, for science, for discovery. For Illyria.
Her next breath caught in her throat. "I don't want to lose you," and as she spoke the words, she knew of course that they were true. Moreover, she recognized why they were true: Wesley represented so much of herself – her humanity, really. His love for her meant that she had a chance not to grow old and gray in the dry corner of some laboratory, chattering to white rats for company. His love gave her hope for herself that this incessant need to know would not rule her, that she could give and receive and in the end, that she could be whole.
"Then tell me, Fred," he pleaded. "Tell me, my love. Tell me when all this will be finished and we can be together. Us. Just us."
One tear slid out of the corner of her eye. Impossible, this thing he wanted, and horrible of him to ask because he already knew the answer.
"I'm sorry, Wesley," she heard the words come out of her mouth. "But I just don't know."
He watched her for a moment more, then nodded and took a deep breath, exhaling its release in a small sigh. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips.
"Then I wish you the best," he breathed. "In this and in all of your future endeavors." He turned to the door of the observatory and closed it softly behind him.
The sobs erupted out of her chest like hiccups, hysterical and involuntary spasms of longing and grief, and she forced them out viciously, squeezing one last tear out of her eyes to get those horrid emotions out of her more quickly. He wished her well, of course he did. They worked for the same firm and would continue to sit across the same conference table at weekly staff meetings. Besides, they'd gone along this way much longer than they had at the other. Going back to their usual association could be a relief. Wiping her cheeks, she opened the door and entered the chamber.
Illyria turned to face her. "Have you removed the interloper?"
Fred nodded. "More than you know. Are you ready to go on?"
"Of course," he replied in his clipped practicality. "I do not require the requisite dormant period following exertion that so many of your species do. This form is most efficient in the expense and conservation of energy. For that, I am pleased." He took a step towards her and sniffed the air. "I sense the unmistakable odor of brine. On you."
"It's nothing," she smiled grimly and shrugged. "Tears. Humans excrete them in expressions of sadness or anger or frustration."
"The labels for your emotions are meaningless to me," he answered. "Who caused this reaction?"
Fred hesitated and for a moment, she wondered if she'd be able to say his name without weeping. "Wesley." The name felt acetic on her tongue.
"Do you wish me to inflict retribution upon him?"
Fred sniffed and blinked back her tears. "You'd do that?"
"Of course," he sniffed. "An affront against my Qwa'ha Xahn is an affront against me, my rule, my kingdom. It should not be left unpunished."
"Right," she sighed. Faced with Wesley's needs, she found Illyria suddenly a refreshing change – a creature so obvious in his intent, so upfront about the fact that everything was all about him. "It's okay. You don't have to do anything to him."
Illyria cocked his head at her and leaned closer. With a fluid motion, he brought one finger to his mouth, licked it, then brushed it against her cheek and returned the fingertip back to his mouth again. He sucked thoughtfully. "Will these tears inhibit your ability to serve me?"
His touch caused a jolt in her body, a simultaneous attraction and aversion like the warring sides of a magnetic pulse, which caused the grief and sadness in her to withdraw for a brief moment.
"No."
"Good," he straightened up and handed her a battle-axe from the case of weapons in the middle of the chamber. "You may begin."