A/N: Different religions and cultures have varying views on the classical elements. For this story, I am going with the Bön interpretation.
Space
Over the past two years, Wesley had come to understand a fundamental truth about himself: he needed people. He didn't do well when he was alone. When he was left to his thoughts. When he didn't have the support of those he loved. His childhood had been a testament to isolation, and while he had excelled privately in all subjects, he hadn't had friends with whom to share his success. No, Wesley had always been the social outcast. He was the one who brought books with him to the playground. He was the child the stronger, meaner kids threatened when an assignment was due. He was friendless; he always had been.
It was one of the reasons he'd become so pompous. Upon reaching the academy and surviving the induction into the Watcher's Council, Wesley had silently promised to become a version of himself who would never be subject to bullying again. Someone to be taken seriously. An authority figure.
A watcher.
The truth, however, wasn't as forgiving. He could change his looks, his clothes, the people around him, but he couldn't change himself.
He was still the same little boy he'd been in school. Prefect. Head Boy. Pansy-arsed know-it-all.
Isolated.
This time because he knew he needed space.
Wesley couldn't draw his eyes away from his apartment window. He was parked in a stiff wooden chair, staring through plated glass at nothing in particular, and he had been for hours. There wasn't a muscle in his body which didn't ache, but pain was deserved, and he made no attempt to quell it with ice packs or other rudimentary healing techniques.
Where did I go wrong?
The question hadn't haunted him in years. The night following his abduction, following Faith's slow, methodical torture of his worn body, he had taken a step toward the light. Toward righting the wrongs of his past. The Council had come to him, and he had turned them down. He had proved to himself that he wasn't the man he'd once been. He hadn't allowed them to take Faith no matter what she'd done to him, what realities she'd forced him to face, because he knew what she meant to Angel.
Redemption. Faith, in many ways, was Angel's redemption.
It startled Wesley how very much he and Angel were alike. Both had perfection in the form of light, but they were both similarly drawn to the dark. Angel in the form of Buffy, whose light he'd tarnished with dark, and Wesley in Fred.
Fred. Just the thought of her made him ache. She was too pure, too bright for him. The closer he became to her, the further he felt. For a while, he thought he could fool himself into believing she could save him. Into believing he was the sort of man who could be good for her—do things right by her. He'd believed he wouldn't taint her with the inner darkness he'd fought so long to repress. He thought he'd come far enough.
He'd been wrong.
Oh, Wesley was prepared for the arguments. Cordelia had been ringing him nonstop, begging him to talk to her. Reassuring him with message after message that what had happened hadn't been his fault. It had been the touch of a callous devil who enjoyed watching humanity destroy itself. He'd touched Billy's blood, and therefore the aspect of the demon had tainted his soul.
It wasn't Wesley who had pursued Fred through the halls of the Hyperion Hotel. It wasn't Wesley who had remarked on how she adorned provocative dresses because she was a whore. It wasn't Wesley who had tried to kill her because he yearned to touch her.
It wasn't Wesley. It was Billy.
And yet Wesley was the one with the memories. With the guilt. It was Wesley who had to live with the knowledge of what he'd nearly done to the woman he knew he was falling in love with.
Fred, with her impassable perfection. Perhaps the time for when they would have been perfect for each other had already come and gone, if it had ever existed at all.
He didn't know. The only thing he knew was the thought of meeting her eyes made his soul ache.
He feared touching her, knowing what sins he'd nearly committed with his hands. He feared looking at her only to find himself locked within his own body once more, unable to do anything but watch as she screamed and ran for her life. As she trembled in fear because of him. Because of Wesley.
Prefect Wesley. Head Boy Wesley. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce of the Watcher's Council. Wes Pryce, Rogue Demon Hunter.
Wesley of Angel Investigations. He was the one who signed the paychecks. Who assigned the missions. Who called the shots. Angel had walked out and he was the boss now.
They had traded one demon for another.
He found himself inexplicably thinking of Faith. Was this how it had been for her? Falling into darkness without anything on which to hold? Nothing to break her fall? No friends to lean upon, no hope to rely on. Nothing but a predetermined path of destruction.
He remembered watching her the night she'd tortured him. The crazed gleam in her eyes, her body tight with a rampant need for destruction. She'd sizzled and fused, trying so hard to convince herself she was a creature without conscience. A creature without a soul. Someone who could do whatever she wanted, kill whoever she wanted, and destroy whoever she wanted without feeling the effects of the pain she caused.
Wesley wasn't stupid. He knew it had started like this.
Just like this. In an empty room, reflecting upon her sins. Knowing there was an answer; all she needed to do was reach out for help. Solitude, in the end, would only get her killed.
Faith was in prison, now. She'd taken the first step toward rehabilitation. There was little chance she would ever breathe free air again. And though Wesley hadn't seen her since she offered her confession to authorities, there was something which told him she was freer now than she'd ever been in the open. She was at peace with herself, or at least on the way to peace. Her demons had stopped screaming.
There were times when Wesley's own darkness scared him; during those times, he liked to think of Faith. She had gone as dark as any human he'd known, but she was saving herself. She was fighting through her darkness. She was reaching for light.
And yet, something else rang true to him. Something she'd said the night she'd ripped him apart.
Fate.
Perhaps for Faith to reach peace, she needed the darkness. She'd had little other option in her upbringing. Her mother, the state of her childhood, her lack of friends, the string of men she'd entertained before barreling into Sunnydale. Angel had told Wesley shortly after Faith's incarceration that, among other things, Faith had lost her virginity at the age of eleven while staying in a home. He never mentioned whether or not it was voluntary—if she'd wanted it in her quest to become a woman. The point didn't seem to matter. What did matter was everything which remained unsaid.
The fact was that Faith's path had virtually been constructed for her. Yes, she'd had choices and yes, she'd made the wrong ones. However, she'd similarly had little to no guidance which choice was right. She was a good person, victimized by bad circumstances.
Wesley couldn't claim the same fate. His childhood hadn't been idyllic, but he hadn't suffered through half as much as Faith had. His mother had coddled him, his father had dismissed him; he'd had every opportunity to make something of himself. From the minute he learned to walk, the lines of right and wrong, yes and no had been drawn in permanent ink. Wesley's life hadn't been constructed on a lack of discipline—rather an abundance of it.
Faith was redeemable, then. Circumstances had made her who she was.
Circumstances had made him who he was.
And yet, in so many ways, they were the same.
Someone knocked at the door. He didn't move. He'd been expecting visitors for two days.
"Wesley?" a soft voice called through the wooden barrier. "Wesley, it's me, Fred."
He turned his head slightly, his breath catching in his throat. He didn't want to see her now, but his feet wouldn't obey him. In seconds, he was walking to the door and pulling it open. In seconds, he was lost in her warm, concerned eyes.
Concern he didn't deserve.
Fred frowned immediately and raised a hand to his face. "Oh," she gasped softly, "does that hurt?"
She was referring to a bruise he'd sustained while falling through the rotted floors of one of the Hyperion's many rooms. Possessed, he'd walked into her booby-trap—thank God—and she'd managed to render him unconscious. And when he'd awakened, the spell Billy had cast over him with his murderous DNA had faded.
There was nothing left but scars.
The sort which never faded.
Nevertheless, Wesley couldn't abide her touching him. Not now. Not after what he'd done. He turned away from her before her gentle fingers could find his face, a long shudder commanding his body.
She flinched at his rejection, and while it hurt, he forced himself not to comfort her. "Sorry," she whispered. "I left a bunch of messages."
He knew. He'd listened to her over and over again all night. His answering service was a tribute to the women in his life. Cordelia and Fred. Fred and Cordelia. Both calling him nonstop. Both begging him to pick up the phone.
He hadn't. And now Fred was here.
"Yes," Wesley heard himself saying. "I meant to call you back. I'm sorry." The words served as a mental collapse and he felt something within him shatter. He looked her in the eyes and bore all. "I'm so sorry."
Fred smiled tenderly. "Wesley, you gotta come back to work."
"How can I?"
It was obviously not the answer she'd been expecting. "What do you mean?" Fred repeated, bewildered. "How can you not? You're the boss. We need you. You took a few days off—that's good. We all did. But now it's time to come back."
"Fred…I tried to kill you."
There it was. It was between them now. The thing they both knew, solidified in words.
However, it didn't haunt her as it haunted him. There was no condemnation in her eyes. There was only light and forgiveness, and trust beyond trust. Nothing he deserved. And yet it was her words which rendered him a half-man. "That wasn't you."
"How can you know that?" he countered. "Something inside me was forced to the surface. Something primal. Something…"
"Do you wanna kill me?"
The question was asked bluntly, and his reaction was instinctive. "Oh God, no."
"It wasn't something in you, Wesley. It was something that was done to you."
He looked at her and he knew she believed her words. He knew she believed them, and it made him want to collapse in awe of her. This girl he had nearly destroyed. This girl he feared he loved beyond reason.
Fred might believe in him, but he didn't think he could believe in himself. Not after what had happened. Not after what he'd nearly done.
"I don't know what kind of man I am anymore," he whispered.
He didn't mean to say it, but it was out there.
He wished it wasn't. Fred's faith, while invaluable, was likewise empty. She couldn't see inside him. She couldn't see what he saw.
Thus she had no answer to give him but, "Well, I do. You're a good man."
Her trust was precious.
"Will I see you back at the office?"
Wesley nodded, choked. "Yeah."
"Good."
And that was it. She offered a watery smile, and it was the last thing he saw before he closed the door.
Before he broke down weeping.
Before the inevitable query resurfaced.
Where did I go wrong?
He was terrified it was a question with many, many answers.
TBC