Disclaimer: Oh, how I wish the characters were mine. Alas, no. They belong to Mutant Enemy and 20th Century Fox.
Chapter Two: The Price of Pryce
Wesley didn't know he was currently residing in a jar, amorphous and whirling. His soul was, in fact, trapped in an empty peanut butter jar. Wesley had always despised peanut butter.
He felt certain he was in Hell. He had known the day would come.
Wesley was standing at the small table, the pen lingering hesitantly in his hand. Gunn, Fred, and Lorne stood behind him, watching and waiting. It had been an unspoken conclusion among them: Wesley would go first. Even if Angel hadn't disappeared to who-knew-where, Wes would have been expected to approach the stack of papers before anyone else. Why was that?
Lilah was on the other side of the ornate little desk. "I must say," Lilah said, with the slightest hint of a grimace (or was he imagining it?), "I didn't think you'd even get this far. We all have our price, though. Who would have thought you'd sell your soul for a few extra resources?"
Wesley kept his voice low enough so that the rest of the gang behind him couldn't hear. "Would you really define it as 'selling', Lilah? 'Lending' would be a more accurate term, I think. Wolfram and Hart can't keep our souls forever. I've gone over the contracts a dozen times--"
"And the agreement only extends to five hundred years after your death," Lilah finished for him. "Not indefinitely. Very true. So five hundred years of agonizing torment is worth the chance to save an extra few hundred lives?"
Wesley met her eyes. "You thought the torment was worth it just to make your own life a little more comfortable. Given the choice all over again, would you still sign?"
Lilah grinned, but didn't answer.
This was Wesley's existence, and the reason he thought he was in Hell: memories. A continuous flood of memories, drowning him, crushing him, pulling him deeper and deeper.
His mother stood over him with a warm, damp washcloth. Blood was dribbling down his chin and onto his grey tweed suit. Nothing short of the deepest magiks would be able to remove the stain. Ironic, really, considering the prudish outfit was the reason the older boys had attacked him as he innocently walked home from school. Four burly fifteen-year-olds against one scrawny third-grader.
"Does the widdle kiddy think he's a lawyer?" one of them had teased as the others laughed and let loose with more punches and kicks. "Or a bleeding businessman, maybe! Where's your briefcase, you ponce? Eh?"
The boy's face melted away, and in its place was Fred, smiling at him, sweetly as ever.
"We should all go out tonight! To celebrate!" she exclaimed, looking around at the rest of the team.
"Hell, yeah," answered Gunn. "I think I definitely deserve a reward after spending eighteen hours scoping out the place--"
"Excuse me," interrupted Angel from across the room, "but I believe I killed the most vampires in that nest, so if anyone deserves a reward--"
"Come on, guys, it was a team effort. And there's no 'I' in 'team'. So let's hear it: who's up for Indian?" asked Fred.
Lorne groaned. "Sorry, darling. My stomach just can't take anymore spicy foods tonight. There's bound to be some embarrassing noises and smells."
"We haven't had Italian in weeks," said Cordy, not even bothering to look up from her magazine.
"But we always have to get dressed up for Italian," whined Gunn. "How about some place where we don't risk dripping marinara sauce onto a fifty-dollar shirt?"
Wesley spoke up. "You know, there's a terrific British eatery just down--"
"No," said everyone else all at once. Then they were all, even Wesley, laughing about the quality (or lack thereof) of British food, and Gunn was giggling at the term 'spotted dick' while Lorne stood at the counter, making himself a sea breeze.
And as they all sat around, arguing about where they should go for the celebratory dinner (they'd eventually decide on McDonald's), Wesley knew he had finally found a place where he belonged, among a family of people who loved him and loved each other. And nothing could ever change that….
But something had changed it. Wesley had changed it.
The words had become a sort of mantra to him, repeated over and over inside his head: The Father will kill the Son. The Father will kill the Son. The Father will kill the Son. More constant than a heartbeat.
Wesley watched across the room as Angel tossed Connor gently into the air, laughing as the baby gave the slightest giggle. But Wesley found no happiness in the situation. Instead, all he could do was think about how easy it would be for Angel to wrap his hand around the tiny neck and snap.
And though Wesley kept pushing the feeling to the back of his mind, he knew, deep down, that the only choice was betrayal.
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Lilah leaned back in her office chair and rubbed her eyes. A dead end. That's where everything was leading her.
The LA branch of Wolfram and Hart had yet to be reconstructed, and so Lilah was currently working in its neighboring division in San Francisco. She had known it was smaller, but Lilah had at least expected the services to be comparable to those of her old office. No such luck.
The psychics were completely stumped. They had no more clue than she did as to the whereabouts of Wesley's soul. The head of Mystical Studies had been almost as unhelpful. The only thing he had been able to offer her was a list of witches and warlocks.
According to the list, there were thirty-six real witches (or warlocks) in the state of California. Only eight of them possessed enough power to rip a soul out of the netherworld. Of those eight, only one, as far as Lilah knew, would have any reason to rescue Wesley's essence. But Willow Rosenberg was currently residing in Rio, and Lilah's sources informed her that Ms. Rosenberg had been in a state of astral projection at the time of the soul-heist. Suspect Number One was scratched off the list.
So Lilah demanded a more extensive register. The Mystics Department in turn sent her a list of all witches on the west coast. None checked out.
The list of witches residing on the entire North American continent had seemed promising for a time. It included a cult of warlocks in Denver that specialized in draining the essences of the dearly-departed and using the energy the souls provided for high-level Dark Spells.
When Lilah sent in Retrieval for questioning, however, the gang had provided a solid alibi. All fourteen of them were involved in an attempt to blackmail one of the areas wealthiest entrepreneurs by threatening to curse his family and his business. On the night Wesley's soul had vanished, they had been casting a vicious enchantment around the capitalist's home. Suspect Number Two was crossed off the list.
It would have been impossible to find a potential soul-thief on the list of witches in the entire world. There were several thousand, and quite a few of them had crossed paths with Wesley at one point in time or another. Several had even gone to boarding school or university with him.
Lilah had held out hope for somebody in the Watchers' Council, but everyone who might have had the manpower had met a crispy end when The First blew up their headquarters. Another dead end. Literally.
Lilah was quickly becoming frustrated. It was times like these that she almost wished Gavin were around, just so she'd have someone she could abuse. But, from what she heard, the Senior Partners had sent him to a hell-dimension where he was stranded on an island with a loving spouse and an enormous monster.
Personally, Lilah found the thought of a loving spouse more horrific than the monster.
Lilah had never been one for the study of classic mythology. She felt school time was better spent learning how to sweet-talk the professors and administrators. But as she drove downtown to the symposium that was hosting Winifred Burkle's lecture on super-symmetry, hopelessly wishing Wesley wouldn't be there, one particular Greek myth surfaced in the corner of her mind.
It was the only myth that had ever really piqued her interest. It was the story of Medea, the witch princess of Colchis. When Lilah had heard that Medea meant 'cunning one', she had instantly identified with the Greek sorceress.
Medea eventually fell in love with Jason, the leader of the legendary band of Argonauts and a fighter for honor and justice. So profound was her passion for Jason that she betrayed her father and her countrymen, just to help Jason steal the legendary Golden Fleece.
As Medea, Jason, and his crew fled from the Colchians by way of ship, Medea killed and dismembered her brother, casting the pieces into the sea. The Colchians were forced to stop and retrieve the body portions from the water, so as to give him a proper burial. Thus, Medea saved the Argonauts. All for love.
But Jason abandoned her. Betrayed her for another woman. He fell in love with the princess Glauce and discarded Medea as if she were a vague, worthless memory.
And as Lilah watched Wesley gaze ardently at the puny Texan up on the dais and listen to the mind-numbing prattle about physics, humiliation pulsed through her veins like so much poison. Lilah knew she'd been discarded. And she hated them both as she'd never hated before.
But if she remembered anything about the myth, she remembered one thing: Medea had her revenge in the end.
"Ms. Morgan!" called a sing-song voice. Lilah shook herself from her reverie, and looked up to see the cheerleader-turned-secretary skipping into her office. "Oh, Ms. Mooorgaaan! The psychics say they have something for you."
Lilah was out of her chair in an instant, unceremoniously knocking the walking pom-pom (as she'd taken to calling the secretary) to the floor as she hurried to the elevator. After banging on the 'up' button about fifteen times, the doors parted and Lilah stepped inside. Several people marched forward as if to join her on the elevator. Lilah shot them the sort of look that kills, and they all mumbled that they would take the next one.
The psychics always insisted on being stationed on the top floor. Some garbage about "extending the clairvoyant vibes." So Lilah had to ascend fourteen stories before reaching their department.
When the elevator doors parted ever-so-slowly, Lilah stepped out into the hallway and strode to the office where she knew the chief psychic worked. She threw the door open without knocking.
"This had better be good," she said succinctly.
The psychic looked up from the map she had been studying, her eyes wide.
"We found him, ma'am."
-----More to come soon-----
A/N: Anyone care to guess who stole Wesley's soul? And for what purpose? Not that I've left many clues, but I'm sure someone could get it.
Reviews make me happy! Many thanks to cursedgirl, Rissa Rose, Ruth Quist, gopie, -J, irishred, and kittyge for the reviews thus far!
-J brought up a very interesting point. Would the Fang Gang have sold their souls? I tried to explain more about the contracts in this chapter, but out of curiosity, does anyone think the gang would have sold their souls for eternity?
Personally, I think Angel and Gunn would have. Angel for his son, and Gunn... well, we've already seen that Gunn would sell his soul for a truck (see "Double or Nothing"). I don't think he'd have any qualms about selling his soul for the chance to be the man he's always dreamed he could be.
I don't know about Wesley or Fred. I think they were probably smart enough to realize the full implications of an eternity of torture. But they were also very noble people, and they may very well have considered their souls a small price to pay for the lives of millions. Lorne is the only one I'm fairly certain wouldn't have sold his eternal soul, mainly because he was raised in his own version of Hell. I don't think he'd be willing to go back there forever. He's probably the only one who realizes that a life is less important than a soul.
Wow, this was a very long Author's Note.