Disclaimer:I don't own Merlin or Angel the Series. Not exactly sure who owns Merlin, and Joss, et al, own Angel.

Thanks to deitclast, my beta-reader

Short chapter, yes, but I think you'll agree the ending was a fitting place to end the chapter.

Ruins of My Kingdom to Come

By Alkeni

Chapter 23: Composite

To Wesley, the events in the weeks since Morgause's visit went by largely unnoticed and almost entirely unregarded. Wesley noticed in passing an estrangement between Morgana and Merlin...but he couldn't spare the concern for it. There were...other things on his mind.

Well, to be more accurate, it was one thing: Illyria.

At this point, Wesley was quite confident he had developed...feelings, for her.

The idea would have repulsed him at one point...and in some ways, it still did. Illyria killed Fred – wore her body, mocked everything she'd ever represented, everything she'd lived for, by walking around in that stolen form.

But as he'd said himself – Illyria had had no malice when she'd killed Fred...the guilt could only be laid at the feet of Knox.

But still...the very idea of...feeling anything but contempt for her...

It was an attack on Fred's memory.

Or so he'd told himself, time and again. Yet he'd kept her around, because she was all he had of Fred. Because in trying to help her, in trying to understand her...he had something to do. Some purpose. Something to hold on to.

And then...

Wesley wasn't sure if he loved her. He doubted it. But there was...something. Over time, the contempt had passed, and he'd come to regard Illyria almost as a friend...and then had come the discovery of her emotions. The "leakage" from the shell, as she had called it.

Helping her cope with her emotions, learn to process them, accept them...it had shown him a new side of Illyria. She could be...almost vulnerable. Illyria was more than she'd been when she'd taken over Fred's body. She would disagree, he knew.

To Illyria, she was on a continuous downward slide from her once greatness. She had...compromised with her current reality, but she still didn't like it.

But...she also had...thrown herself into the lessons, over the last few weeks. He was...as he'd said once, a terrible person to teach her how to be human, how to understand her emotions. But he was all that she had...

And she was what he had. The only person from his own time. The anchoring purpose. Illyria wanted to stay here in Camelot. She wanted to build a new Kingdom for herself. He wasn't sure what he thought about that, but, well...Humanity could probably do worse, it was true.

Sometimes, in their sessions, she was almost endearing. She had developed a...need to touch things with bare hands. The sense of touch was not new to her, exactly. But her appreciation for it was.

"Wesley." At the sound of Illyria speaking his name, Wesley looked up, drawn from his thoughts. Usually he went to her. This was...unexpected.

"What is it, Illyria?" Wesley stood from the table, setting his quill down. He'd been keeping a journal, as best he could. Both as a Watcher and for his own mind, it was...important to record his thoughts and observations. His...considerations.

Illyria arms were, as was becoming increasingly common around him, bare almost to the shoulder. What was also becoming common around him was a dropping of all pretense. Around others – even Morgana and Merlin – she kept the mostly human appearance she'd first adopted when they'd met Arthur.

But around him, more and more, she'd let her eye appear their natural crystalline appearance, the patches of blue around her skin visible once more.

Illyria didn't answer him immediately, instead looking at him. It was an...expression he'd never seen on her, and he couldn't place it – its intent, its meaning.

"While you ponder your answer to that," Wesley continued while walking a few steps towards her, "there is a question that I've been meaning to ask you."

Detecting the unspoken request for permission in his tone, Illyria nodded after a moment. "Ask."

"Why have you been...adopting your true form around me recently?" Wesley had wracked his mind for some sort of answer, and hadn't come up with one that made even a small amount of sense, to his mind.

"No matter that I am...more human now, that I experience emotion...I am not human." Illyria began.

"I've never claimed or thought that you were 'human'." Wesley pointed out, wondering just where it was she was going.

Illyria turned slightly from him, looking towards a window. "True. There is more...the more human I look, the more I resemble the sh-" She cut herself off a moment, then turned just hear head to look him in the eye. "The more human my appearance, the more I resemble Winifred Burkle."

It wasn't a question...but Wesley felt the need to answer it nonetheless. "That...that is true." Her choice to use the name of 'the shell'...she rarely, almost never, did that.

It was something he tried to avoid thinking about – but whenever he'd seen her in her almost human guise, even if she was wearing the armor and had her hair and eyes blue...she really still did look too much like Fred. He'd managed to repress that well...

But when she was like this, with her eyes so inhumanly alien, her skin like this...the whole way she carried herself...there was little of Fred there. Still some – a lot even, in a sense. But it...it wasn't as painful, or as noticeable. Especially not now.

"My resembling Winifred Burkle causes you pain." Illyria's tone was matter of fact, no question in it, and Wesley could hardly argue with her comment. "These emotions I feel come from...come from having a form such as this. Some are likely even from Winifred herself – left over fragments of her firing synapses." She looked away from him, her voice suddenly lower and far distant.

"That they didn't originate from me doesn't change their potency. They are mine now...as much as it displeases me." She turned back towards him.

"With you, I am what I am, because there is no risk. Could I remove a form that looks akin to that of Winifred Burkle now, I would. Parts of herare in me, but I am not her. I am not a replacement, not a substitute, not a remnant. I am a composite. My essence and being have been made one with scattered fragments of her, wrapped in a far too fragile casing taken from her."

"I'm still not sure I am following you," Wesley admitted softly. But he grasped...a bit of her meaning, he thought. She wanted her own, unique identity made clear and established. But why was it so important to her now? Was it merely an extension of her grappling with her emotions, the bits of humanity within her?

As Illyria, God-King of the Primordium, Shaper of Things, Illyria's identity was that.

You want to take my power...to let me live. But I am my power.

But now...she wasn't that person. Her identity had shifted – she had a need to develop a new personality. A new sense of herself.

"I shall endeavor to explain it to you," Illyria said softly, stepping closer to him. The distance between them now was little more than two feet, maybe even a bit less. Before he realized what was happening – before he could say or do anything, Illyria had closed the distance between them even more, and then, her eyes on his, took his hand and pulled him to her.

It took Wesley's mind almost a second to register that the icy sensation he was feeling was Illyria's lips on his.