Ashes in Between
by Lilian.
Written for the HetFicathon at the HetFic LJ community.
Disclaimer: BTVS and A:TS are not mine. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: In the aftermath of NFA, Wesley struggles to come to terms with his past-- and his present. (Obviously set in an AU world, where Wesley survived)
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He is not her Watcher and she is not his Slayer.
Although he once was. Her Watcher, that is. A lifetime ago, that whole thing was, when the town of Sunnydale was still on the map, when the Slayer was still one girl in the entire world instead of hundreds.
They are still seeing the ramifications of Willow's spell. Dana was only the first of many, girls driven mad by the sudden burst of power they received that fateful August day. For every sane, happy young girl they train, there are five others who have already killed a loved one because they couldn't measure their own strength.
They try to teach them, to train them, to make them understand—some of them don't seem to. Some plain old don't want to. It's their power, they say, their speed; why shouldn't they use it for their own good? Why should they patrol every night, save the world from the things that go bump in the dark, when there are a dozen others who'll do it instead?
They called him because he has 'experience'. He has dealt with rogue Slayers before – and failed spectacularly, he might add, but what's left of the Council seems to have selective memory where he is concerned. Might have something to do with his father, he thinks, but he doesn't dwell on it much – and so he is the only one qualified enough to train the rebellious, brash young women of San Quentin.
That's not the town's real name, of course. The sign he saw on his way in said 'Everton, Home of the Warmest Sunrise in California', but the girls – and Buffy – have come to call it San Quentin, in some sick, twisted homage to a man who never really understood what the Slayer really was. It's quite fitting, actually, Wesley muses, letting the dry wind of the afternoon brush against his skin, that that dreadful little man would still haunt the hordes of girls that now hold the mantel of Slayer.
In the distance, he can see about a dozen of them, loitering about, spending the precious few leisure hours they have doing what they would be doing if they couldn't bend steel with their bare hands. They smoke, and laugh, and pretend there are boys who like them in a town where the female population is officially 99,9 of the total. He is the only man there, after all… driven out by a clan of Tiyamen demons about three months ago, the twenty or so families that had called Everton home are now long gone. In their place, thirty-seven young girls remain. Oh, and Buffy and himself of course.
Giles drops by every now and then, but he never stays long. He is always been called away to one branch or another of the Slayer Council: it seems that emergencies pop up the way Potentials do: unsuspected and everywhere. But when Giles comes, Wesley feels he can breathe a little bit lighter, stand up a little bit straighter, as if by just by being there, Giles is somehow helping him share the burden. Which is strange, because despite their many collaborations, he and Giles really don't talk much. Yes, there are both British – as many of the girls like to point out – and yes, they are both part of the original few Scooby Gang. But the similarities end there.
As far as Wesley is concerned, Rupert Giles and him parted ways a long, long time ago.
And if they hadn't, what Wesley has done now certainly would have.
The door opens and a whiff of coffee spills out from inside the house. His stomach growls in response: when was the last time he ate anything? He can't really say. As Buffy makes her way towards him, that tumbling, slow gait that pregnant women have making him more and more uncomfortable as she approaches him, he tries to pretend it doesn't bother him. But pregnant women have a certain—air about them, some sort of saintliness that makes the very hair on his arms stand on end.
Or perhaps there are other, darker reasons why he cannot stand to look at her. It is a difficult question to ponder, one he has been asking himself for about eight months now and he is nowhere near the answer as of yet.
"Are you feeling well?" he asks her, because he cannot bear the silence a second longer. His voice cuts through the air and she winces, but nods anyway. She is always doing that, he muses, always reacting as if struck. The most powerful girl in the world – not any more, he reminds himself, not alone any longer – behaves as if a mere strong wind would knock her down.
Was it the death of Angel? Was it the destruction of LA? Or did her change begin a long time before that; right under the eyes of the people she loved? Wesley can't bring himself to care. He finds it immensely difficult to do that these past few months—it's as if every inch Buffy's belly grows, is an inch of his interest that is lost.
The metaphor that Buffy's pregnancy might be sucking morality out of him is oddly fitting… didn't all of this mess start because of a serious lapse in his judgment?
She came to him one night, and Wesley was too tired/angry/spent to deny her. She called out the wrong name with she came, and so did he. But it didn't matter—nothing mattered, because even then, they both knew that what they had done would bring consequences. Everything they did always had consequences… it just happened to be that this last one had proven to be extremely heavy to bear.
Perhaps more so to her than to him, he thought, watching her sit on the recliner to his left with slow moves, clumsy, hesitant moves that belie her past as a Slayer. She is not fast, and she is not strong—she moves as if walking through cotton, and Wesley can't help but wonder if every pregnant Slayer is like this.
Of course, there are no records to compare her with. Of course Buffy would be the first Slayer in history to reach this advance stage of gestation—she always does things first, doesn't she? So it didn't come as a surprise when she reached her third trimester and showed no signs of stopping, as if bent on proving the world that this baby – their baby – was coming out of her no matter what.
"I was thinking Alexandra if it's a girl, William if it's a boy."
Wesley catches both references but is too tired to point them out to her. Besides, she probably already knows—choosing the name of her best friend and once-lover couldn't possibly pass unnoticed, not even to her. But it is interesting that she shies away from that third name, the one she murmurs in her sleep when the nights are cold enough to remind her of him. He wants to ask her, wants to see the pain in her blue-green eyes at the mention of Angel, but even the thought of doing it suddenly becomes too much.
Why does he feel such animosity towards her? Why does he treat her with such contempt? And most important of all, why does she allow all of this? Why does she remain by his side when he does the impossible to push her away?
He knows the answers to the first two questions. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out, really: it's a reflection of his own self-loathing, a way to vent his anger and release the demons that chase him in his dreams. She represents everything Angel once fought for, and exactly like Angel did in those last few months at Wolfram and Hart, she became a corrupted, twisted version of herself. Darkened by age, a brittle ghost of what she once was.
He hates her because she is the living, breathing proof that they failed. And still, he took her to his bed, wanting to touch that smooth skin, to grasp at the last remnants of her innocence, only to discover she didn't have any left. He wanted to relive his few, happy days with Fred in her – same slight build, same blue eyes; different accent – but instead he got a load of tears and fears and screams. And a baby.
"Whatever you feel like, Buffy", he answers her, closing his eyes against the onslaught of memories that threaten to consume him. A few yards away, the Slayers-in-training begin their katas, and their shouts fill the air with hard echoes.
He doesn't have to look at her to see her rubbing a hand across her distended belly. She does that a lot lately, and for a few days he thought she might be in pain. He learned quickly enough it was a maternal instinct, the need to protect the unborn running strong through her veins. It doesn't run in his.
He doesn't care what happens to that child—doesn't care if it lives or dies. Doesn't care if it has his eyes or his nose, doesn't want to see if it has blonde hair or black. He doesn't want to know anything about that baby, and yet still there he is, right beside her, loving her and hating her all at once.
He once thought he was fighting the good fight. Doing something for the greater good.
He knows better know. He has long being cured of his silly obsessions with good and evil—there are no extremes. Just a big, gray area in the middle where everyone – humans and demons alike – try to survive. He doesn't give a rat's arse what happens to the world: he just wants to stay alive.
So when Buffy softly calls out his name, he turns, chasing away the darkness inside his mind.
He needn't have to. Because the same shadows that lurk inside his soul are now looking at him from behind Buffy's eyes.
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The End.