Chapter 9: Let's get back to L.A!
"Three days after the last events"
Wesley was sitting in the lobby with an obscure demonology book on K're'tech demons on his lap and a cup of tea waiting on the little table to his right. He was basking happily in the silence for the first time in three days, three days which had felt like pure hell on earth. Everyone was now in his or her bedroom, after Giles had finally emerged from his drunken state this morning, and her highness Buffy had came back from her two days killing spree. She had not been there for five minutes, when Giles had come in the lobby, freshly showered and shaved with Drusilla on his tail, babbling about some pretty tree, when Buffy had begun to shout orders at the older watcher, which then led to a screaming match between her, Giles and surprisingly, Dru. After an hour, Drusilla apparently decided to bash Buffy on the head with one of Angel's precious antiques, namely a fifty-pound Sumerian hammer. She had dropped stone cold on the floor, to the watcher's horror, and had not woken up since then. After Angel took care of the urgent call the powers had sent him, Angel had locked himself in his room for more than a day, before getting back to work after Cordelia had another vision. Fred had been Fred, and Gun had been at Fred's side or with his friends, and Faith, being the only sane senior slayer left, had taken the junior Slayers patrolling, or had them training. She made sure that the streets of L.A were demon-free, only asking Wes for some tips on Klug'g'g demons and the way to kill them.
A light hand on his shoulder and a cold body, taking place beside him, made Wes turn his eyes from his book, to look into the dark brown ones of Drusilla. She had taken place on the couch cuddling him lightly, her children at her feet, purring like giant cats.
"Hunter?" she asked with a childish voice.
"Yes?" inquired Wes.
"We need to talk, Hunter, it's important! It's about Daddy and the nasty slayer," She said with a disturbingly almost sane expression.
"What about Angel?" he answered in his best watcher voice, and Dru chuckled lightly.
"Not the Slayer?"
"I don't care what is going to happened to that bottle blonde, Angel on the other hand is my friend."
"The stars have talked to me and they said that you and Daddy have a destiny!"
"Of course Angel has a destiny, he must redeem his sins and save his soul, until his shanshu-"
"No, no, no, the stars sing that the oracles are liars, they promise Shanshu but they send Daddy to death. They gave him nasty surprises, they Raised grand-mum from her ashes, and made her give a baby to Daddy. A baby born damned, who tried to kill Daddy. They wanted him insane and for that they brought the old Christian hunter. He wanted vengeance so badly; you could have tasted it! He took the baby and you helped him, Hunter. The Powers that be with the Wolf, Ram, and Heart made sure that you brought the child to him, by tricking you with a false prophecy. They don't want a safe world; they want a world of pure light, like the Wolf, ram and heart want a world of pure darkness, but that kind of world can't exist, not without killing life itself! They made an alliance to trick Daddy again by giving him the bad Wolf Californian division, to shut you all away from the fight. Daddy wanted his little baby child to be happy so much, for him to have a normal life like every normal human child, that he sold himself and your memories of the events who brought Connor to life, for that. And once again, the Power that be lead the dance, they have done that since the moment they made Darla give the gypsy girl to Daddy. They don't want the two of you to be able to accomplish your destinies." She continued to nuzzle his neck tenderly, sniffing to know his emotions and his state of mind. "The stars said to me that yours and Daddy destinies are behind the ocean, in the land of ancient magic, with my kitten and his new family. Your future mates are waiting for you there! But before that you must remember Hunter, because without those memories, you can't fully understand your future role in the game you are going to play; you can't understand what lives between the candle and the wall." And with that, she touched his head murmuring a low chant. Wesley cried out as all his memories came back at once, flooding his mind with images and sensations while Dru held him and her childer and purred, trying to help calm and soothe the distraught Watcher.
"What have I done, Merlin, what have I done?" he continued to ask in a never ending litany.
"What you were thinking was the right thing to do, Hunter. You had no other choice at that moment; all had been done to lead you to the conclusion that Daddy would kill his child. Your love for the child and your fear for my Daddy's well being were the keys to your actions. And you must forgive yourself for what happened because it was not your fault, nor was it Daddy's. You all were puppets in the hands of higher being," she said caressing his hair.
"How can Angel look at me every day and not want to kill me?" he asked in a sob.
"How can you forgive him, when he tried to kill you in your hospital room?" she answered
"I understood why he wanted me dead. His son, an innocent baby had been sent in a hell dimension because of me. I betrayed him, how could I not forgive him?" said Wes with a more calm voice, his tears silently rolling on his face.
"Well, don't you think that after Daddy began to think of what happened, with his mind not clouded by grieving thoughts, he could have seen that you only acted with Connor's well being in mind?" asked the vampiress looking at him. "If you could see it, why not him?"
"So, he gave me a guilt free life, and a sorrow free one to the others, but he has to grieve alone, with no one else to help him all this time..."
"Yes, Hunter, but now you remember, and now you can help him. You must convince him to close W&H, and to accept his new path." She said with a gentle smile, and she began to rock him again, letting him think on his own for a long moment, giving a tender smile to her beautiful boys, who were still purring, to help her.
When Wesley, began to talk again, it was to ask a question, because in all of Dru's speech, something was disturbing him. He could understand the PTB and W&H plans, he could see that he had been manipulated and he could begin to forgive himself, he could even understand that he and Angel needed to talk about what happened with Connor, they needed to make their peace. And, well, being part of a prophecy was something, which really disturbed him. After all, when you are part of the 'we safe the world' club, you are bound to be part of one of them once in your life, but…
"Mates, Dru?" asked Wes with disbelief in his voice.
"Yes, mates, one for you and one for Daddy! They are powerful, a dark protector and a badly hurting little snake," she said with a little voice, looking to Wes with sorrow in her eyes. While gesturing a move to make her children stop purring.
"Is …is my mate the hurting one?" question Wes to the vampire with an angel face. A strange feeling was beginning to grow in him, a little bit of fear for the man who could become his future husband eventually. Because, from what Dru had just said he was going to mate with a male, not that he had a preference when it came to gender. It had been a long time since is last male lover, not since his last year at Hogwart, when he had had a love affair with his head of house. They had wanted the story between them to continue after he had left school, but his father had put him in the hand of the council only a few hours after graduation. He just had had the time to send a letter explaining everything to his lover, before they took him to Cairo. He had loved since that time, but never another man, because he could not forget a pair of deep brown eyes full of love and lust, because no woman could compare to his proud Slytherin.
"I can't tell you; only the snake of light knows the truth when it comes to you and Daddy. He will tell you, when the time is right," she said with a look of understanding, she knew, but she could not tell; the time was not right. "But before that, you and I have to play a little game. We must make Daddy whole, and we must do it before Christmas. Miss Edith knows the ritual-" she was finishing in an almost sane tone, when the ex-watcher interrupted her.
"Dru, I'm not going to help you, restore Angelus, not even to please your bloody stars!" said Wesley with a very serious expression.
"I know that, Hunter, and the stars don't want Daddy back the way he was the last time. Beside, that thing was not my Daddy; it was a mad demon on a vengeance path. Angelus was caged for more then an hundred years, forced to endure the torments his soul was feeling for all he had done in his past, for what was just natural instinct. How do you expect him to be sane, well as sane as he had been before the curse. He was mad and he let my Spiky suffer in that well-chair so much, my sweet William was Daddy's favourite childe, My real Daddy would never have refused him his blood, not for healing purposes, never! No, we must do the ritual to merge Angel and Angelus together, to anchor the soul definitively or his union with his future mate can not happen!" said Dru, who was now sitting at the other end of the couch caressing her children, petting their heads lightly, and seeming as sane as Wesley himself for the first time since her turning.
"You want to merge them together?"
"Yes, we need them whole! Our family has a role to play and Daddy has a major part in it, but he can't do it, while fighting with himself," she answered.
"Dru, something has been bothering me since the beginning of this discussion. Would you answer just one question for me?" said Wes. She looked at him, before giving him a little node of agreement. "You seem as sane as me, almost like you must have been before Angelus turned you, how can it be?"
"When I was eleven, I received a letter attached to a pretty white owl." She answered with a smile.
"You were a witch?" concluded a stunned Wesley.
"Like you, and my kitten, and my sweet William! When my parents learned that I was a witch, they though that the devil was possessing me, that I was, like every witch, Satan's future bride. You see, we were very religious and my father, after reading Hogwarts missive, decided that I would not become a shame for our family. So, he put me in a convent until I was eighteen, then I would pronounce my vows. Angelus found me before that, I feared god, and it took only a look at Daddy's demon face to convince me that Satan had came to claim his bride. That tought and Angelus drove me insane quickly, so, when he turned me I choose not to fight the demon, after all I was damned since my eleventh birthday. My soul is weak and I can't take control over the demon for long, but I was a true seer and I could influence her. So, I began to talk to her, and soon my voice became the voice of the stars or the voice of Miss Edith when she would not listen to them. I will try to take control more often until the day of the ritual, but you must keep that secret," she said with a gentle smile, and Wes could see for the first time in more then an hundred years the woman she had been.
"Why keep it secret, Angel would be delighted!"
"Angel, yes, but Angelus would fight us, and we can't afford that if we want to be ready to make the ritual five days before Christmas," she answered with a serious look in her eyes. "Besides that, with the slayer walking on the path of madness, we can't be too prudent."
"Do you know what's happening to her?" asked Wesley.
"Too much power pressuring a body, which was not made to receive it!"
"The Squib theory?" asked Wes.
"Yes, we must find a way to drain a part of the power. So, the other slayers won't go to that point."
"And for her?"
"It's already too late, she has begun to break. She will die or become totally mad soon. If it comes to the latter, we will need to kill her or she's going to be a danger to us and the ones we would protect. The demon is starting to regain control now, I need to know if you are going to help me," she finished with an urgent tone.
"I will help you."
"You can trust my demon; she knows that our place is in England with you and Daddy. She also knows that we will merge, like Angel, eventually and she accepts it." After that last word, her calm face was replaced by the loonier one of the mad demon. She looked at him a moment, giggle and "You had a nice talk with the stars?"
"Yes,………, yes Dru, I had had an interesting talk with a shinning star." Answered Wes with a gentle voice, taking her body in his arms and keeping her there. It was his turn to rock and comfort the beautiful woman.
"Tomorrow the stars and Miss Edith will explain the ritual!" she said while falling asleep on him, drained by the energy the soul had consumed to talk with him.
"Yes, tomorrow!"
And at their feet, Riley and Graham began to purr once again, to soothe their mother and the man, she had instructed them to protect with their unlives.