In the Darkness
Floating.
That's what it felt like when he was with her.
Not in some esoteric manner, not as if he were suspended in air and buffeted by clouds or other manner of heavenly imagery.
No, it was more like he was detached from physical engagement. As if she brought out sensation in him and that one bodily response trounced any other that she could elicit.
He would feel the sweat bead at his temples, watch it trickle from his heaving chest, feel the heat rise in the corners of his body and surge to the centre.
Disconnected from thought, trapped in the physical.
It was nearly dawn and this was the most immediate bit of information tapping its way into Angel's brain. Despite the fact that even his bones felt like they could no longer hold up the mass of screaming muscle that constituted his body, he knew he had to keep going. Nearly dawn and that meant he and Spike didn't have much time. After all that they'd been through he wasn't about to let the goddammned sun get to him too.
It seemed Spike was on the same page, and he wasn't stopping to enjoy that moment, as Angel saw him running toward the heap of blood and body tissue that appeared to be Charles Gunn, propped up against one of the dumpsters at the entrance to the alley, still breathing, in shuddering, stilted bursts.
Illyria was seeing to the rest.
"The rendezvous point!" yelled Angel and Spike nodded at him. He tossed Gunn's body over his shoulder and began loping toward the hotel's back entrance. Angel kicked and punched at a few Kravlak demons that were impeding his exit before he too turned and ran for shelter.
As they stood in the doorway, they watched in bewildered amazement as the battle played out before them, tips of sunlight illuminating their view.
At some point between the beginning and the, now inevitable, end the demons had stopped attacking Angel, Spike and Gunn. Stopped attacking was perhaps a misnomer, for they had certainly shifted and pitched and forked and dusted their fair share, but there had been a tilt and a moment at some point in the centre of the fury when the attack had shifted its focus away from razing the earth and all its ensouled vampire contents.
The horde had one target and that was Illyria.
Perhaps in some instinctual way the demons knew that she was the most competent fighter, the one being able to destroy them outright and thus had focussed their entirety on her. But it made no sense to Angel, no sense at all. Not when he thought he had been the main target.
Watching now he could appreciate that she was liquid blue wrath in motion. She more than held her own, but she was weakening, as she had been since she had destroyed Fred, trapped inside a vessel much weaker than the contents it housed. Unable to fulfil her potential for mayhem because of humanity.
Beside him, Angel could feel Spike twitching. He was a loyal beast, this Angel knew and nearly always exploited, and he had somehow developed a sense of chivalry for the Blue God. Whether or not his sappy soul couldn't quite shake the memory of the dearly departed Texan Girl he wasn't sure. Angel'd long since managed to differentiate emotion from end-result and right now he didn't care if the world ended, as long as he, and those he cared about, survived.
"Angel," Spike muttered, "we gotta help Blue. It ain't right. We can skirt around the edges of the building, use the shadow as protection and knock off a few of the number attacking her that way."
Angel stared at Spike, long and hard, using his most effective tool, silence, to persuade Spike 'No', picked up Gunn, and walked further into the Hyperion Hotel.
"Board up the doors, Spike," were the only words he flung over his shoulder.
When he reached the lobby, two men paused, turned and looked at him. Lasered him with intense mirroring blue gazes that pitched and heaved him to the floor, invoking the memory of emotion, and causing Gunn's still-barely-breathing body to sprawl out underneath him.
"Dad!" exclaimed one and rushed forward grabbing him up and he did the first thing he could think of which was to hug him back. Behind him he heard Spike's footsteps stop and over the top of Connor's head he caught Wesley's bewildered look.
"You survived," he heard Connor breathe into his ear, in a wonderment that would have stopped his heart had he had one. "You survived."
It was easy to figure out why he might engage in shagging her if you knew nothing about her. If you saw them together, laughing over fruity cocktails in some swanky L.A. bar, you would say to yourself, "She's hot."
And you'd be right in that summarisation.
Legs that went to infinity, tits primed and perky, long brown hair cut to reveal her perfectly shaped face, her strong and intelligent grey eyes.
There was nothing about her that wasn't hot.
But the moment you saw an inkling of her personality you might waver, ever so slightly. A tiny frown might crease in the centre of your forehead and you might alter your original assertion to, "Too hot." And then, belatedly think, "And what the devil is he doing with her?"
The first thing after that that Angel registered was Wesley bending down to examine Gunn. He caught Angel's eye and said, "We need to get him to a hospital, Angel. Immediately."
"Can't go anywhere with the demon bender party out there," retorted Spike, jerking his thumb and looking glumly between Angel and Connor.
"What is going on out there?" said Wesley, walking toward the exit.
"Wes … wait … no … Illyria," Angel stuttered, realising too late that for Wesley witnessing the second death of the body of the woman he'd loved might destroy him.
Wesley turned slowly around and looked at Angel, blinking rapidly. Angel walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Spike," he said maintaining eye contact with Wesley, "report back." Spike huffed and puffed and left the room.
Wesley fluttered his eyes to a close, blocking off any entry Angel could get to his emotions. "Angel. It's imperative we get Gunn to a hospital."
"I know, but Spike and I … we'll be stuck here. Can you?" Angel heaved the words from his body, too tired to think beyond them.
"Of course," said Wesley, smoothly, calmly. Angel took a moment to take in his appearance, to take a closer inspection. He was well-dressed – dark pants, brown leather jacket, dark blue turtleneck jumper. Clean-shaven, hair immaculate, face set to steel.
"Wesley," Angel began, turning to look at Connor, "Illyria said something before the battle … that you had-"
Spike seized the moment to interrupt the question by bursting back into the room and exclaimed, "They're all bloody gone."
"What!" Angel retaliated, swinging his gaze on Spike who was now fumbling for a cigarette, hands tremouring in uncontrollable shock.
"Angel," Wesley interrupted, while Spike at the same time said, "Gone! What part of that don't you understand?"
Wesley walked to the door, and peered outside it. "Seems Spike is right. Now would be an opportune moment for me to take Gunn to the hospital. Connor, will you help me?"
Angel felt a wave of unease subsume his body as he watched Wesley take control of the situation. If he thought about it rationally, it did make sense that Wes, calm and in command, having not just fought the hounds of hell, would be able to make a better judgement call on the most important issue in the room. But the problem was that for once Angel wasn't in control of his emotions. He couldn't fathom why or what or how, let alone who.
"When you return," Angel said, as Wesley shook his hand before leaving, "you'd better have a good explanation for why Illyria said you were dead."
"Of course," Wesley nodded, then departed, leaving the unanswered threat hanging between them. Connor followed in his wake.
Angel collapsed onto the poof, beside Spike, "Gone then."
"Yup."
"How?"
"Dunno. The alley was completely wiped of … everything. But I walked around for a bit, and the air felt like electricity. Like a sizzling portal had whammied itself open and sucked the contents of the alley straight down into its belly." Spike punctuated each of his words with a fizz and wheeze as he sucked in and blew out on his cigarette.
"Illyria?" Angel asked.
"Dunno," Spike answered, and spoke no more words except for the puff of his cigarette.
When you die, it is true that your whole life flashes in front of your eyes. You see the moments that have crystallized what you were. The people that filled your life, the ones that stayed in your heart, the ones that healed you, and the ones that sought your destruction.
But if you happen to gasp and squirm and convulse with your dying breath, it is not because of the pain of the wound, or the rush of those memories. Instead, it is the knowledge of all that you could have been. The future that was to be yours had fate not dealt you the hand of death.
And when you wake and you see her, you alter those limits, you change your perspective. You begin to see reality.
When Gunn woke, the first thing that registered was pain. Searing pain. In and out and all around his body. Memories came back, fatigue surged through him, and he felt like he was going to die all over again. He was fighting, forever fighting – kicking and punching and carving through demon after demon. Only this time the demon seemed to be the shard-like line that connected him between life and death.
He coughed, then, because the pain was shattering at his nerves and he just wanted to eject it from his body. He felt a cool hand on his forehead, and he blinked his eyes open.
"Hey."
He blinked some more and wondered if it really was Wes staring back at him.
"Illyria said you were dead." He didn't know why these were the first words his brain communicated to his mouth, but once they were out there he didn't feel shy of them. He wanted to know. He wanted to believe that someone else he cared about hadn't been sacrificed.
"Well," returned Wesley, his voice dipping slyly out the comforting tones he had begun with, "she was wrong."
Gunn wanted to say something more, but his body had other more pressing matters and he passed once more into the blackness.
When he woke again, hours, days, even years later, the pain had gone, and his first thought was, 'I've finally kicked the bucket.'
But when he turned over in his bed, he saw Wesley slumped in the seat, reading a trashy magazine. Gunn grunted and tried to sit up.
Wesley reacted immediately, and got out of his seat. "Easy, easy," he said, gently, positioning his hands beneath Gunn's feather-light body and helped him move up the bed.
"Pain's gone," Gunn observed.
"That's possibly because they've just injected you with the next round of morphine."
Gunn nodded. That made sense. Much more than the fanciful idea he'd come up with that Wes had magicked away the pain, just by his maybe-dead, maybe-alive presence in the room.
"What're you …?" Gunn began, leaving the sentence open with a possibility he couldn't face.
"Just rest up, Charles. Rest up, I'll explain everything when I don't run the risk of you collapsing back into unconsciousness the moment I begin the exposition." Wesley smiled gently, and Gunn wondered if he was speaking from experience. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've just gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali, George Foreman and Mike Tyson."
Wesley's smile deepened. "But not Lennox Lewis?"
Gunn grunted in laughter. "Nah. Piece of limey chicken …" He started coughing again and took some time to recover.
Wesley turned from him and poured water into a plastic cup. "Here. Drink this."
Gunn gripped Wesley's outstretched hand. "Is it really you, man? You're not just a figure my whacked out imagination has dreamed up?"
"Real as the hand you're holding on to," Wesley replied, even though Gunn no longer had the stength to grip, but whose fingers grazed over Wes' hand. "Drink up," Wesley urged again.
Gunn took a long draught but fixed his eyes intensely on Wesley.
"Will you rest, you think?" Wesley asked gently, once Gunn had relaxed back into the pillows, his nostrils caught with the surrounding ambience of hospital sterile.
"Yeah. It's what I do best, right about now."
Wesley smiled at his joke. "It's just … I should get back … Angel and Spike … and … the others, they'll be wondering how you are. I have a cellphone. I'll leave the number at the hospital front desk. In case there's anything. Anything you need, Gunn, and I'll be back. And I'll bring the others with me."
Wesley stopped and contemplated Gunn for a moment. "Is there anyone I should contact … that would be missing you? I know that we should have continued to share these things … and I'm sorry that we stopped that. I want to make amends for that. Restore the balance."
Gunn stared at Wesley, trying to fathom the meaning and portent of his hesitating speech. He felt the tiredness take him over again, and could only manage to answer, "No. No-one."
He never knew why she didn't turn and walk out of the bar. Why she didn't laugh in his face, or tip her glass filled with Scotch across his trousers. Fight back with a jagged curse that would wound him far more effectively than severing her neck from her shoulders.
Why, indeed, she returned the feelings so fervently. Why she strove to impress when he advocated indifference.
Perhaps they were both lost, and seeking a redemption for past sins and misdemeanours. But in all the wrong places. Two wrongs make an even worse complication.
No matter how delicious they are.
When Wesley walked back through the front doors of the Hyperion Hotel, he was greeted by three intense faces regarding him with different expressions – one open, one ambivalent and one very, very guarded. He shifted uneasily at the entrance, wondering about the validity of his welcome.
"Gunn is still alive, but slipping in and out of consciousness. He's recovering, but the prognosis looks more positive than twelve hours ago," he informed them, taking the opportunity of the message to step further into the room. "I have asked the hospital to keep me primed with information, should his status change."
Connor smiled at him. "That's good to know. Thanks Wes." Then as if reciting his lines from a transcript, he turned to Spike. "Wanna come and find some food, Spike?"
"Sure thing," Spike agreed, nodding his head and striding from the room. He passed by Wesley, but the look he gave him inspired a shiver to pass up Wesley's spine. Vampires, remember, not the most accommodating of creatures.
"So, Wes," Angel murmured, after Connor and Spike had left, leaning against the front desk, "alone at last."
"Indeed," replied Wes, rocking back on his heels.
"Wanna explain this whole, coming back from the dead gig? I've had some experience with it. Hoped we could compare notes. There's an air about you … like … you're off."
Wesley shifted his weight from foot to foot, then moved and sat down on the poof. He calculated in his mind that this deference to Angel's standing position might soften Angel somewhat, give him the illusion of power he might think he still had over Wesley.
"I'm not dead, Angel. I don't know what gave you that impression. Whatever Illyria told you was wrong."
"Come on, Wes," replied Angel not moving from his position. "You can do better than that."
"Frankly, Angel, I'm somewhat distressed you would take the advice of a Hell God you feared and despised over a trusted colleague and -"
"Why would Illyria lie then?"
"I cannot presume to understand the workings of her mind. Whilst I did spend long hours researching all and every last scrap of information I could find, one thing I did learn was that one could never predict the unpredictable." He splayed his hands flat across his lap in a gesture of pacification. "But I do reassure you, Angel, there's no trickery, I am not dead."
"Say … I was to believe you," Angel began noncommittally, "what do you want from me?"
Wesley paused and then looked at Angel with an expression of unreserved honesty. "What have I ever wanted from you, Angel, but to serve you."
"I'm not your master," Angel rebutted, thrusting his hands into his pockets, as if the double implication unnerved him.
"But you always were the one I looked up to. The one I wished above all others would be my friend, my greatest ally." Wesley stopped and looked beyond the French doors to the outdoor conservatory. "The rift that fractured and widened between us, Angel, caused me the greatest pain in my life. More so than the ignominy of my disgrace after Sunnydale. More so than any words my father threw at me. More so than the moment I realised Fred loved Gunn, with a greater depth of feeling than she would ever feel for me. If I were able to turn back the hands of time, more than anything, I would take back that event."
"But you can't, Wes," Angel replied, his eyes hard on Wesley's when he sought his again.
"No, I can't. But that doesn't mean the desire isn't there."
"To right a wrong?" Angel asked. Wesley nodded but the silent pause stretched between them. Time moved through molasses and Wesley could decipher little of what passed across Angel's thoughts from his stone-sealed expression.
When he finally realised that Angel was waiting for him to begin the next round of negotiations, he started to frame it in his mind, but was suddenly stopped by a need to tell the truth. To impart any and all information to Angel. To save him.
"Do you trust me, Angel?"
Angel jerked his head back slightly as if stunned by the question. "What sort of question is that?"
"One that I hope you'll repay with an honest answer," Wesley kept his voice smooth and soft, but inside his feelings were roiling with anticipation and fear.
"I … don't know, Wes. It takes me time to form trust. Years. Decades, sometimes."
"Unfortunately, we don't have time for that. We may not even have time for this." Wesley got to his feet and began pacing, not being able to contain his nerves.
"It will never be over," he continued, watching as his feet pounded across the floor of the lobby. His voice grew tighter, stranger and sped to a velocity that was hard for Angel to comprehend. "This is just the lull in the storm. You think you have won. You think the Powers have granted you victory because you are their chosen champion. The victory is not yours, will never be yours. There will always be someone … somewhere coming after you. They may be underhanded, they may not strike at you specifically, they will always attempt the weakest link in your chain of networks. They will - "
His liturgy was interrupted by an electronic beeping. Wesley cursed loud and long into the gap in conversation.
He rushed toward Angel, and grasped him by the collar. "From inside it devours you, Angel. From the inside, it overpowers you."
In their pressed position, Angel could discern a vibrating against his chest. It could have been Wesley's heart which was pounding in and around his senses, flooding his demon with bloodlust, the fear, the intensity of his words overwhelming.
Wesley jumped away and stamped his foot. "Bastards!" he shouted to the ceiling, it seemed to no-one in particular.
Then he subdued, allowed his body to go limp, reached inside his upper coat pocket and withdrew a ringing cellphone. Flipping it open, he answered in his most cordial tone, "Wyndham-Pryce."
He never thought himself in love with her. Whenever she was near him, he registered nothing but the need to fuck her. Or fuck her over. One or the other, he could never quite make up his mind. But love, he had experienced once, and with Lilah it never touched that.
He often wondered, after she died, whether he could have loved her. Somewhere, somehow. If they had all been college school mates, he the bookish nerd and she the head of the Gamma Rays Sorority. Except, even then, a sea of experience would have separated them.
In his office, in his bed, but most disconcertingly in his head, she sometimes lingered. And he wondered if it could ever be possible again.
Wesley took his sweet time but finally he walked out of the Hyperion Hotel and around the corner into the shadow of the neighbouring building. Walking inside the doorway, and pausing just a few feet within, he announced, "Hello Lilah."
"Well, well," she replied, stepping out of the shadows, "someone's been very naughty."
She discerned a sigh from his body, a minor victory to her. Finally he said, "I thought this was to be done on my terms."
"Nuh-uh. Not when naughty Mr Wyndham-Pryce starts batting for the other team." She let the double entrendre hang in the air. "Thought you cared for me, Wes. Can't tell you how disappointed I was to hear you had your tongue all the way up Angel's ass."
"Mission one was completed," he bit back at her.
"No thanks to you. I think a whole lotta demons would be banging down your door arguing that they'd wiped out the blue-tinged priority first." She strolled toward him, and licked her tongue up his face. "Don't you?"
It intrigued her after all this time, that she still couldn't get a rise out of him. She could sense that he wanted her, that his body was humming for hers, and yet he kept that cool, calm and collected exterior icy cold and instead just glared at her.
"Awww, baby, don't fret," she cooed. "Your Lilah-kins still thinks the world of you."
"What happens now?" He stepped away before her tongue probed further and she pouted at him.
"No fair," and she stamped her foot with mock impertinence, "we ain't never done it this close to your buddies."
He was on her then, his hand at her throat, his body slammed on top of hers and her back against the wall. "Don't you ever speak like her …"
She got what she wanted and he fucked her good and hard against that wall. Well, it started off good and hard, but like she knew he always would, he found his rhythm which turned to sinuous, relaxing rocking as their bodies strummed together. He let her come first, which was a plus and a rarity, and must have meant he was feeling bad. He'd let her down. She could almost forgive him.
He pulled out of her and she licked her lips at him. "That was good, baby."
"Of course," was his pre-emptive, arrogant reply, "I know how to please you. Now, I want to go back."
He turned and strode away from her but found himself stopped by an imaginary shield at the door's entrance. Turning around, he looked at her, eyes narrowed, and then kicked at the shield. And kicked and kicked and kicked.
"Sorry, Wes. There's been a change of plan. You're to come back with me. You're my Special Project now. Seems we rushed the training and you didn't take in some of the vital elements of the plan."
He turned toward her again, and began laughing. Wild, raucous laughing that overwhelmed his body.
She thought she could have said something further, then. Something like, 'Pulled all sorts of strings, Wes. So that you wouldn't be sent to a Hell dimension. That I could keep you with me and keep you safe from them. Because you mean enough to me that I would do that for you. So I could protect you and look out for you and make sure you were mine. So that you were never his. Again.'
But she didn't.
Instead she walked over to him, and slapped his face. "Cut it out, Wes. Sucks to be dead, doesn't it? Now get over it."
And she turned and walked away from him. Within moments he was following the clacking of her high heels all the way back to Wolfram and Hart.
He remembered the moment when he'd stared at her corpse, willing some sort of animation from it. Willing anything for a rosy glow to paint her cheeks, like the ones she'd always exhibited when she came, calling his name, slumping from the ecstasy into his body.
But she was cold, her skin ashen, and he swore she could have been a vampire. Angelus' revenge on him. To kill his desire.
Only Angelus – or even Angel – hadn't cared enough about him to even do that.
In the way that grief overcomes your soul, he wept for her, and sent a silent prayer out into the stratosphere that she would be safe and cared for in the afterlife. That one day they might meet again, and make peace with each other.
But in the darkness, in the depths of depravity he met her again. His soul was covered in a blood oath that bound them together. And nothing ever became possible again.
Finis