Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Lorne: “If Sahjhan and that lady lawyer pulled off their feeding plan, you’d have Connor’s blood on your hands.”
Angel: “Don’t I anyway?”
Lorne: “No! You think there is something more you could have done? You did everything you could with the knowledge you had. Just like Wesley. You know, maybe the way to start forgiving yourself is by starting to forgive him.”
From ‘Forgiving’ Written by Jeffrey Bell

Part One

As they approached the Hyperion, Gunn couldn’t believe his eyes. He, Groo, and Angel had dealt with a nest of uberskanky Skeltor Demons, the kind of gut-wrenching, wing-it-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth-and-last-lucky-swing-with-an-ax battle that had left them all cut, bruised, and none too good-tempered. They had sent Angel home as soon as the fight was over, pointing out to him that the sun was going to be up any minute and he needed to get back to the sewer route before that happened unless he was really eager to make like a pile of burning dust. Gunn and Groo had done the clean up and were now wiped and aching; Angel was presumably already back in the hotel and probably also wiped and aching; vamp super-strength or no vamp super-strength. And now here was the last person on the planet who ought to be outside the Hyperion, sitting by the doors, apparently waiting for them.

What part of ‘You’re a dead man, Pryce!’ had Wesley, the multi-linguist, failed to understand?

“Damn!” Gunn shouldered his axe and sprinted up the stairs, Groo following him in some confusion. Sharply, Gunn said to Wesley: “You’ve got to get away from here before Angel sees you – ” As he drew closer he noticed that there were several things wrong with this picture; like the fact that Wesley’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t so much sitting outside as slumped against the doors, and the fact he was wrapped in a stinking blanket like a wino.

The concern was instinctive, something that no amount of telling himself this man was no longer his friend, could suppress. “Wes…?” Gunn crouched down by him and put his hand on his shoulder. Wesley’s head lolled back, revealing a face that had taken the brunt of someone’s fists. His skin was greyish white under bruises, cuts, and stubble, with terrible shadows under his eyes. “Wes!” he repeated urgently, but the man’s eyes didn’t open, and for a second he thought he was dead. The not yet entirely healed wound at Wesley’s throat stopped Gunn from putting a hand there to feel for a pulse, but he put his palm in front of Wesley's mouth and felt warm air tickle his skin.

“Is he yet breathing?” Groo enquired.

“Not for much longer if Angel finds him. What in hell made him come here?”

“Does not his appearance suggest that Angel has already found him?” Groo suggested reasonably.

Gunn folded back a corner of the blanket and winced. Wesley seemed to be naked under it and he’d taken what looked like one hell of a pounding. If this was Angel’s handiwork then he’d worked fast and real thoroughly before dumping him out here like so much trash. But that still didn’t explain why Wesley had come here in the first place; unless he’d been jonesing for a quick death or at least serious amounts of pain.

The door from the hotel opened; Angel saying in confusion, “What are you two –?” Then his gaze fell on Wesley and he got a look that was way more serial killer than champion of the people. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“You don’t know?” Gunn demanded. “You didn’t talk to him?”

“Why would I talk to him?” Angel was looking dangerous. “Why is he here, Gunn? Did you invite him here? Is this some attempt to –?”

“No.” Gunn held up a hand. “I told him to stay away. He knows what you’d do to him if… I don’t know why he’s here.”

Groo gazed up at Angel in confusion. “If it is not you who has reduced Wesley to this condition then who has done so?”

“Maybe he got drunk, walked into the wrong bar. Maybe he was trying to get himself killed.” Gunn shrugged. “Someone’s done a number on him. Angel, why don’t you just go back inside and I’ll call a cab, get Wesley taken home, and I swear I’ll tell him if he ever shows his face here again….” He looked up at Angel, wondering what he was going to do if Angel couldn’t restrain himself. He and Groo between them might be able to hold him off, but it only took a second or so to snap a human neck when you had all that freaky vampire strength.

Angel’s expression was wavering between murderous and confusion. “Why is he wrapped in a blanket?”

“I don’t know. We just found him a few seconds before you did.”

Angel took a step closer and Gunn braced himself, waiting for that lash out of insane violence again. Angel sniffed the air curiously, then abruptly bent over Wesley and sniffed him again, then recoiled. He looked at Gunn in disbelief. “Christ, Gunn – why did you –? How could you…? Even I wouldn’t….”

“What are you talking about?” Gunn demanded. He looked back at Wesley who was still slumped unconscious against the doors, left eye swollen closed, cheekbone bruised, cuts everywhere, forehead, bridge of his nose, mouth, cheekbone, bruises around his throat. When he lifted back the blanket tentatively, definitely not up for seeing Wesley in the altogether but wanting to know just how far those bruises extended, he saw that they were everywhere, ribs, arms, legs, and the ones on his arms were brutal, deep cuts and bruises as if he’d been tied up, and teethmarks, those unmistakable dual puncture holes that could only mean one thing. He hadn’t been turned – too warm for that, and his pulse was still…pulsing, but he’d been up close and personal with vampires recently and there was only one in the city of Angels that Gunn knew of who would beat him and feed from him but leave him alive afterwards.

“You fed from him?” he demanded of Angel in shock.

“How could you…?” Angel was still gazing at Gunn as if he were some kind of monster. At that accusation, he looked back at Wesley in disbelief. “No, of course, I didn’t. I haven’t touched….” As Gunn showed him the bite marks on his arms, he crouched down next to him and sniffed him again, grimacing as a wave of odour hit him like someone had just reached out and punched him. It occurred to Gunn that he couldn’t smell any alcohol, just sweat and…Oh no, no, no – that was what Angel was recoiling from.

Angel sniffed again and then looked back at Gunn in confusion. “It’s definitely you.”

“It definitely isn’t,” Gunn told him forcefully. “I haven’t touched him. You were with me all night until you came back here, and Groo was with me from then on. I’ve seen Wesley once since… since it all went down, and I never laid a finger on him. And, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m not a vampire.”

Groo was examining Wesley’s bruises carefully. “I think that his ribcage may have suffered some injury. There is heat here.” Gunn looked down at Groo’s hand on Wesley’s side and felt something flicker inside him. The bruising was particularly bad there, black and midnight blue, and his ribs looked lumpy and out of shape. He could see the top of his scar, where he’d been shot, the edge of the scar those stitches had left, the ones he’d popped in the office that time when Angel had… Groo added quietly: “Some of these injuries are older than others. No one could have done this to Wesley over the course of only one hour of your time. And, look here –” He held up Wesley’s thin wrist and displayed a circle of bruises that went all the way around a deep cut, the skin swollen. “He has been bound.”

Gunn kept looking at that arm, so damned skinny, so damned…fragile. That was what he’d always thought about English. Maybe because the first time he’d laid eyes on him he’d been lying in a hospital bed hooked up to all kinds of machinery that they only saved for the serious patients; the ones no one was too sure were ever going to be waking up. Too fragile to be useful had turned into just fragile enough to get himself shot saving Gunn’s ass, and then he’d become something it was Gunn’s job to protect, to keep safe. His clever skinny white friend in a wheelchair, who had to be carried in and out of cars and in and out of buildings and who always said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and liked his tea out of a teapot and could always tell if you cheated and used a teabag, but who would take on a demon from his wheelchair if he had to and who could always do the research, however hard it was. He had loved that guy like a brother. Then they’d gone to another world and the guy who needed protecting had turned into the guy who was in charge, who made his own decisions, sent men to die if he had to; someone Gunn wasn’t so sure he knew, but still loved, still wanted to keep safe. Except that guy had betrayed them all when it mattered most, and wrecked everything they’d all worked so hard to build up and was gone now; lost. Lost for good. Except he was here, where he had no business being, smelling like he had no business smelling, and someone had hurt him real bad and then dumped him here for them to find. Was Wes a message now? Kind of ironic if they were trying to send Angel a warning by beating half to death the guy he’d tried to kill. Or was this some kind of freaky demon offering? Don’t stake us and we’ll take care of your problems for you? Here’s one we did earlier….

“Maybe someone with a grudge against the firm didn’t hear that he’d left it,” Gunn said helplessly. “Decided to take their problem out of Wesley’s hide.”

“You don’t understand,” Angel said tautly. “I can smell who did this to him. It’s all over him. He stinks of it.”

“Stinks of what?” Gunn demanded, even though he knew what Angel was going to say, knew it exactly, because he could smell it, too. Come. He smells of come. That was what Angel was going to say, throwing the word out like a challenge so Gunn couldn’t go on in denial.

Instead, Angel looked him in the eye and said: “You.”

“No way!” Gunn rose to his feet furiously, hands balling into fists, because how dare Angel even suggest that he would ever do that to Wesley; not the sex, fuck the sex, and yeah, he knew Cordy would be all over that statement, but this wasn’t about sex, this was about making him…holding down and hurting and…no way, just no way, ever, would he…. He wasn’t the guy Billy Blimm’s blood had made him and he didn’t do that; didn’t have a murderous fury inside him that could only be doused by someone else’s pain. He wasn’t one of the monsters they went out there to fight, and he would never do that to another living thing, let alone someone who had once been his best friend. Then his anger cleared enough for him to see that Angel wasn’t throwing out accusations. Angel was kind of in shock.

“And me.” Angel looked down at Wesley in confusion, his anger if not evaporated at least temporarily in abeyance. “We did this to him, Gunn, you and I. Except….”

“Except we didn’t,” Gunn finished, now as confused as Angel.

“Shall I send for some conveyance to have him removed from Angel’s sight?” Groo suggested. “Although I grieve that his actions have caused you and my princess so much distress, I do not share your anger towards him. Perhaps you would permit me to accompany him to some place of healing?”

Gunn reached up to wrap the blanket around Wesley more warmly, not sure why he was doing it, just finding that he had to. Hearing the shot in his head; Wesley asking him if anyone else was cold. But, no, that was the past, and nothing was owed now. All debts were cancelled; all loyalties and all friendship as well, because Wes had crossed a line when he took Connor that could never be uncrossed. “Maybe that would be a good idea. Take him to the hospital. Let them patch him up.”

“No.” Angel was implacable and his expression was hard to read. “There’s something wrong here. Something that doesn’t make sense.”

“He needs medical assistance,” Groo said reasonably. “I do not think it would be humane of us to ignore his injuries.”

“I’m with Groo.” Gunn gave Angel a look that he hoped told him he wasn’t going to be swayed on this. Despite what Wesley had done; despite how badly he’d fucked up; he was hurt and he needed some care.

“He’s been tortured,” Angel said it flatly. “And it happened over days, not hours. Maybe a week.”

Gunn realized he hadn’t been letting himself think about what this meant; Wesley looking and smelling like this, but now Angel had spelled it out it was making him feel sick. Tortured for a week. The words were banging around in his skull like a fly inside a locked room; the second they started to make sense was the second he was going to have to barf. “I’m calling 911.” Gunn reached for his cellphone.

Angel grabbed it from his hand. “And not just tortured. I can smell it on him. Smell your come and my come. All over him, Gunn.”

Groo looked shocked. “You are honourable men. I do not believe that you would…”

“I’m telling you, he was –”

“No way in hell!” said Gunn forcefully. “Neither of us touched him. Your spider sense is off, Angel. You’re – smelling him wrong.” And don’t say that word; not about him, and not about me. Not ever.

Wesley’s eyelashes flickered and he opened his eyes. He looked even more crappy with his eyes open, they were bloodshot and the expression in them was so haunted it took all the self-control Gunn had not to start telling him that everything was okay, they were going to take care of him, he was among friends. Except he wasn’t; he was among ex-friends and the vampire who had recently tried to make him eat a pillow and probably still wanted to.

The man cradled his obviously very painful ribs, even breathing in and out clearly hurting. “Is Fred okay…?” Wesley croaked hoarsely. His voice was barely above a whisper, his breathing sounded laboured, like there was stuff in his lungs that had no business being there, and Gunn looked again at the bruises marking his slashed throat. They were bad. It was all bad. They had taken on two-headed fire breathing sewer dragons and come away looking a lot better than Wes looked right now.

“Yes, the vodka worked. She’s fine. Why are you here? And what the hell happened to you, man?”

“Not the – Angelus…? Did Angel become Angelus…?”

“We already covered that at the hospital, Wes,” Angel said crisply. “If you remember, I told you I was still me just before I gave smothering you to death my best shot.”

Wesley licked his cut lip. “If you’d given it your best shot, I would be dead by now.” He focused on Gunn again. “Is Cordelia…? Is she alive? Is Fred alive?”

“They are both alive, Wesley,” Groo told him earnestly. “Can you tell us how you came to be in this condition?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Wesley darted a haunted look at Angel, flinched as Gunn automatically reached out to offer him a hand. “I need to go home.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” That was Angel and Gunn was right there with Wesley’s shiver of instinctive fear. When Angel spoke in that I’ll-pull-your-goddamn-head-off-if-you-even-think-about-arguing tone it was difficult not to just give in, particularly if you were Wesley and Angel had already demonstrated he was more than happy to kill you.

“Angel…?” Gunn gave him a warning look, hoping he wasn’t going to have to fight him because although he would put up a good showing they both knew Gunn couldn’t take him if Angel really meant it. “Wes has been through enough. Let’s just get him….”

“Upstairs.” Angel jerked a thumb at the hotel. “In a bed with no fire damage. We need to find out what happened.”

“No.” Wesley flinched away from Angel’s hand.

“It’s not up for discussion,” Angel told him flatly. “You’re staying here until you tell me what happened to you. And if you give me any argument you are going to be meeting Angelus.”

Wesley gazed up at him, looking scared and defiant at the same time. Hoarsely, he croaked, “I already have.”

Angel nodded. “That’s what I figured.” He caught Wesley under the elbow and hauled him to his feet.

Gunn hastily took his other arm and held up a hand. “Groo and I can handle it.”

“That’s okay.” Angel opened the door and gave Wesley a rough tug inside. “I can manage.”

Wesley stumbled but stayed on his feet, trying to pull the blanket around himself while the world obviously swooped and swayed all around him.

“What is this object?” Groo asked Gunn quietly and Gunn looked down to see a plastic bag lying close to where Wesley had been slumped.

“Bring it,” Gunn suggested, then hurried after Angel, who was still yanking Wesley along by one arm at a pace that had the obviously dazed and battered Wesley stumbling in confusion. Gunn took Wesley’s other arm and glared at Angel; kind of hating him a little right now although he would have been hard put to say why. “Careful.”

“He can walk.” Angel hauled Wesley towards the staircase. “Right, Wes?”

Gunn saw Wesley duck his head, clearly unable to meet Angel’s eye. His ‘yes’ was a hoarse whisper, contradicted a moment later when his legs gave out and he would have hit the ground hard if Angel and Gunn hadn’t both instinctively tightened their grip. The pain of that near-fall tugging on his cracked ribs made him choke down an agonized whimper and Angel gritted his teeth before saying more reasonably, “Can you walk?”

“Yes.” Wesley kept his head ducked and Gunn didn’t need to have vampire senses to feel the confusion and pain coming off him in waves. This close up too, he had to admit, that Wesley smelled a lot like sex; the way Gunn smelt when he masturbated; like old come and fresh come and sleeping on the damp patch stinky. Unless Wesley had been moonlighting as a renter on Sunset Boulevard there couldn’t be a good reason for him to smell like that. And, come to think of it, that wasn’t a very good reason either.

Angel said conversationally, “You’re not leaving here until you tell me what happened to you.”

Gunn darted a worried glance at him. He couldn’t read Angel right now and didn’t know what he was likely to do next. That had happened to most of the people he knew recently. Wesley had gone from being Old Reliable to secretive psycho Lorne-bashing baby kidnapper boy; Angel had pretended to be willing to forgive Wesley just so he could get him alone in that room and try to smother him. Even Cordelia had gone all demon floaty super powers girl on them. Groo and Lorne were making more sense to him, and they were from a demon dimension. No wonder he was loving Fred so much more than the rest of them.

Wesley said hoarsely, “You have no right to keep me here.” Speaking was obviously hurting him, hurting his ribs, hurting his throat.

“Tough.” Angel yanked him on up the staircase.

“Angel…!” Gunn hurried to take Wesley’s weight on the other side. The man couldn’t make the stairs; that was pretty obvious, so he either let Angel haul him up them or he helped carry him, which at least gave Wesley some kind of illusion of control over the situation. “You can’t keep him prisoner.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised what I can do.” Angel looked at Wesley again. “Right, Wes?”

Wesley shivered but didn’t answer.

Angel continued with a horrible cheerfulness that wasn’t fooling anyone, “Back in the day….”

“But you’re not ‘back in the day’,” Gunn told him flatly. “And if you start acting like you’re ‘back in the day’ you’re going to find yourself on the pointed end of a stake.”

“I don’t have a son right now because Wesley has a problem with communication. That’s a problem I’m going to help him solve.” Angel hauled him around the corner and up into the first floor corridor; Gunn having no option but to help support Wesley’s other side.

“Slow down,” he hissed at Angel, adding a mental you son-of-a-bitch. Wesley’s feet were trailing along the carpet and he was shaking with exhaustion and pain.

“Yes. I think that’s a very good idea.” Gunn looked up to find Cordelia and Fred standing in their path, arms folded, Cordelia looking implacable and Fred looking worried.

Angel faced her without a flicker of shame. “It isn’t what it looks like.” His tone suggested that even if it were he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

“Good,” Cordelia retorted. “Because what it looks like is you and Gunn kidnapped Wesley and then beat the crap out of him.”

“That is not true, princess,” Groo assured her earnestly. “Your friend Gunn and I found Wesley together already in this condition.”

“Oh, we did much worse to him than that.” Angel faced her implacably. “Just not yet. That’s why I need to know what happened.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Fred told him. “Did you and Charles…?” The look she darted at Gunn pleaded with him not to have been a party to this.

Gunn said, “I didn’t touch him.”

“Not yet.” Angel hauled Wesley up as the man slumped against him. “Stay awake, Wes. You’ve got some ‘splaining to do.”

Cordelia didn’t step aside. “I need to hear it from you, right now. Did you or did you not do this to Wesley?”

“No,” said Gunn.

“Yes,” said Angel.

Wesley raised his head with an effort, saying wearily, “It wasn’t them, Cordelia. Please, can you make them let me go home?”

Angel gave him a little shake that made him clutch at his side and gasp with pain. “If you’re the ghost of Christmas future, Wes, you’re damned well going to tell me how I avoid spoiling life for the Cratchits.” He jerked his head at Cordelia and Fred.

“Not future,” Wesley slumped in his grip, head hanging, words barely managed through gritted teeth. “Different world…. Didn’t happen here.”

“Didn’t or hasn’t yet?” Angel demanded. “You did a spell, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Angel shook him as Wesley’s eyes closed, making him flinch. “Stay with me.”

“Cut it out!” Gunn told him shortly. It was too much, seeing Wes like this, not the guy in his apartment, all bitter and angry, a stranger who stank of whisky and self-loathing, and flat out invited Gunn to see him as the enemy; this was vulnerable, in-pain-but-trying-not-to-show-it Wes; this was someone with his friend’s face, hurting.

“Yes.” Cordelia stepped forward, eyes blazing. “I’m as angry with Wesley as anyone else here for what he did. If he wasn’t bleeding all over the carpet I’d be happy to kick his ass straight out of this hotel and to tell him to never show his face here again. But as he is bleeding all over the carpet, I suggest you start showing some humanity right now or I may have to start glowing in a bad way.”

Fred gave Gunn a look that made him feel snail-size. “I can’t believe you dragged him all the way up here in this condition.”

“This is where the beds are.” Angel looked between them without a flicker of guilt. “I thought he’d rather lie down than fall down.”

“He should be in a hospital,” Fred told him.

“He can sign himself out of a hospital,” Angel said it as if it were obvious. “And he would do three seconds after we dropped him off there. He’s not letting any doctor examine him, are you, Wes?” He gripped the man by the shoulders and gave him another shake that made him flinch and barely stifle an exclamation of pain but did jolt his eyes open. “Now, how about you all get out of our way and let us get Wesley to a nice soft bed?”

“If you hurt him….” Fred was trembling with indignation and Gunn felt a spasm of something that felt like jealousy. He had a sudden memory of Fred clinging so tightly to Wesley’s hand in Caritas.

“I can’t hurt him,” Angel told her quietly. “There’s nothing left to do to him that hasn’t already been done.”

That made Wesley make the effort to haul his head back up. “No,” he said hoarsely. “You haven’t –”

“Haven’t turned into Angelus and killed Fred and Cordy?” Angel demanded. “Because that’s kind of what I’m hoping to avoid, Wesley, so I’d appreciate some help with that.”

“It didn’t happen here,” Wesley whispered again; voice a soft croak.

“You already said that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“Came with a timeline, did it? Your trip to the wrong side of reality?”

Wesley gazed up at him out of bloodshot eyes. “Yes.” He coughed, putting a hand up to his mouth. Blood spattered on his palm but he didn’t seem surprised, more interested in clutching at his ribs as each cough tore through him. Gunn exchanged a horrified look with Cordelia.

“We need to call an ambulance,” Gunn said urgently.

“Now!” Cordelia agreed.

“It looks worse than it is,” Angel insisted brutally. He hauled him down the corridor, not seeming to care that Wesley’s feet were trailing. Gunn hastily caught his other arm and held him up, darting Angel a look that he hoped made his feelings clear – not that Angel seemed to give a crap about anyone else’s opinion right now. “What aren’t you telling me?” Angel enquired.

“You don’t need to know.”

Angel looked across Wesley’s hanging head to meet Gunn’s eye. “Gotta say I don’t appreciate you still being such a stubborn little son-of-a-bitch, Wes. I was hoping trying to make you eat a pillow might have made my feelings about that pretty clear.”

“I’m not your problem any more.” Wesley seemed to be clinging to consciousness by a fingernail but there was something resolute even in his exhausted body and hoarse whisper of a voice. “You’ve all made that abundantly clear.”

Angel hauled him over to the bed and dumped him unceremoniously on the mattress. Wesley cried out at the contact and Fred said reproachfully, “Charles!”

“It’s not me.” He elbowed Angel, hard. “Cut it out, you bastard.”

“Guess what?” Angel ignored them all to address Wesley, who was trying to keep the blanket wrapped around him as he struggled to turn over onto his side. “You’re in luck. I just made you my problem all over again. And you don’t get out of here until you tell me what you did and what I did and what Gunn did, and why we did it, and how we stop any of it happening here.”

Wesley gazed up at him, blood trickling from his mouth where his lip had broken open again. He wiped his blood-stained hand on the stinking blanket wrapped around him, his gaze defiant. “Already taken care of.”

Angel gazed at him for a moment and then pulled back the duvet on the bed, tipped Wesley unceremoniously under it, then yanked the blanket out of his grip, rolling him over onto his back as he did so. Wesley cried out again and Cordelia marched forward to give Angel a look that was far from friendly.

Angel met her gaze levelly. “If we let him go home he’ll take an overdose. If we take him to the hospital he’ll sign himself out and walk under a bus. If you want him dead then call him that ambulance.”

“If you weren’t the only person in this hotel who really wants him dead, I might be more convinced you have Wesley’s welfare in mind,” she retorted.

“I don’t,” Angel assured her. “I have yours and Fred’s, not to mention Gunn’s. Because, last time I checked Gunn wasn’t a vampire, and he didn’t fuck his friends for fun. Not against their will anyway. And not after burning his initials into them with a hot – what was it, Wes? Coat hanger?” He lifted up a corner of the duvet and Gunn saw the ‘G’ on Wesley’s right ass cheek; his very bruised ass.

Seriously worried he was going to hurl, Gunn quickly yanked the duvet out of Angel’s hand and over Wesley and turned to Fred; wondering if what she was seeing right now was the guy she’d had to hit with a chair leg to stop him from killing her. “I didn’t do that. I would never do that.”

“Not while you’re human and have a soul.” Angel reached down and hauled Wesley up the bed, stuffing a pillow under his head and covering him with the duvet in a way that seemed as uncaring as possible yet nevertheless meant that Wesley was arranged a little more comfortably than he had been before.

“You don’t need to worry.” Lying on his front, Wesley pressed his bruised cheekbone against the cool linen of the pillow as if he hadn’t felt anything soft touch his body in a very long time. “It was a different world and we’re already past the point where it diverged from ours. I just needed to be sure....” And then his eyes closed and Gunn saw him slip into something that was either sleep or unconsciousness from sheer exhaustion.

Gunn turned to Angel in angry confusion. “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know.” Angel nodded at Wesley. “But he does. And I’m going to make him tell me.”

Cordelia was gazing at Wesley as if everything hurt. “What do you think happened?”

“I think he tried to undo what he did. Tried to go back to a time before he took Connor but something went wrong with the spell and he ended up somewhere else instead.”

“Another dimension?” Cordelia’s eyes widened in understanding. “Like the one that skanky evil Willow came from that time?”

“Maybe.” Angel continued to gaze at Wesley with an unreadable expression on his face. If he hadn’t known better, Gunn would have said that was a flicker of concern in his brown eyes. “Or he went forward instead of backwards, and the dimension he visited was the future. Either way I need to know for sure.” He reached forward and lifted the duvet off Wesley’s now naked body; letting them all get a good look at the mottling of bruises, the burns and welts across his back, the grip marks on his hips. “Because this looks like a future worth avoiding to me, wouldn’t you agree?” He covered him back up and Gunn looked around to see Cordelia, Fred, and Groo all with their eyes averted and grimacing.

“He needs to sleep,” Cordelia said stoutly. “Whatever happened to him, and wherever it happened to him, it clearly wasn’t a day at the funfair. If you won’t let him go home and you won’t let us call him an ambulance, the least you can do is leave him alone.”

“Sure.” Angel shrugged, face still unreadable. “I’m good at that.”

“So, get out of here and leave him alone.” Cordelia marched to the door and held it open.

Gunn was positively eager to get away from his battered and naked once-friend and especially that incredibly disturbing ‘G’ on his ass. Fred gave Wesley a look of such compassion and anxiety that he was torn between loving her more for being so loyal to the screw-up that was Wesley, even after what he’d done, and getting another twinge of anxiety about her maybe having more in common with Wes than him. Groo had already politely taken his leave, but when Gunn looked back, Angel was still standing by the bed looking at Wesley’s bruised cheekbone and black eye with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Angel…?” Cordelia warned.

Angel abruptly spun around and walked out of the room. “You might want to get him some painkillers,” he said as if he didn’t care. “Some bandages might not be a bad idea either.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Cordelia looked across at the man on the bed and her face softened. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Yes, we will.”

Gunn found that Fred was standing there with her arms wrapped around her chest, looking at him and Angel as if she didn’t like them very much. He tried to take her hand, “Fred, we didn’t do anything to Wesley.”

“We did everything to Wesley,” Angel returned.

“Not this version of us,” Gunn retorted.

“Not yet,” Angel said enigmatically.

Angel walked away and left Gunn feeling sick inside and wondering why he was now having to carry the guilt for something he didn’t have any memory of doing and as far as he was concerned hadn’t done. Then he realized it wasn’t that which was making him feel guilty; it was what he had done, which was leave Wesley alone when he evidently needed them all the most; an isolation which had obviously led to…this. Whatever this was.

Thinking of the bruises all over Wesley’s body, the ribs that Groo had thought might be broken, Gunn turned to Fred. “Those bandages could be a good idea.”

She nodded. “I’ll get them.”

He caught her hand. “Fine, but you shouldn’t be the one to – Cordy and me can do it. Wes wouldn’t want you to. He wouldn’t want you seeing.…”

She looked at him in dismay for a moment and then stepped back. “I’ll get them.”

Cordelia looked back at the man on the bed. “Do you understand any of this?”

“Angel thinks Wesley is a big flashing warning light. Wesley thinks whatever happened where he was isn’t going to happen here. Angel isn’t so sure.” Gunn swallowed. “I don’t want to think about it.” He really didn’t. He was like the guy with the Midwich Cuckoos right now and all he wanted to be seeing was a blank wall. Not that ‘G’; definitely not that ‘G’. It was what he’d do; in some part of his mind, he knew it; could glimpse it anyway, how the darkness would take him. Remind Wes he was the alpha male and Wes was his property; the way things had been before. Come on, English, you know you’re my man... Who’s your ruler, baby? Say it. Say my name. That was what happened when you became a vampire, all the good impulses in you got twisted into bad ones, so that protective became possessive, people changed from what you loved to what you owned; and the darkness already in you bubbled to the surface, scum rising to the top. Maybe what that other Gunn was from that other world or time was in him somewhere; buried deep. No, he wasn’t going to do this; wasn’t going to feel guilty about something someone had done who wasn’t Charles Gunn.

“If it leads to Fred and I being dead and you and Angel being soulless vampire killers, I think maybe we should think about it,” she countered.

“Angel said we…What those versions of us did to Wesley – I would never do that. I could never do that to anyone.” Gunn wondered if this was just a bad dream he could wake up from; still remembering the shocked accusation in Angel’s eyes for those first seconds when he had really believed that Gunn would do that.

Cordelia sat on the corner of the bed and gently stroked Wesley’s hair. Gunn had a sudden flashback to her being in the hospital after he’d been shot by a zombie policeman. The expression in her eyes was just the same now as then.

“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce,” she told him softly. “You really are an idiot.”

“I think that’s a given,” Gunn shrugged.

“Why didn’t he tell anyone?” She looked across at Gunn as if he could somehow answer what they had all been trying to answer without success.

“He was trying to protect us.” Fred sounded close to tears. Gunn looked around to see her in the doorway with the first aid kit in her hand. “Trying to protect Connor, trying to protect Angel, trying to protect the rest of us. So busy trying to keep us all from danger that he walked straight into it and took Connor with him.”

“No, why didn’t he tell us he was going to try to change time?” Cordelia demanded. “Hello? Demon powers here. Lorne – more demon powers. Angel – kind of invested in wanting to get his son back. Wouldn’t you think a phone call saying ‘Hi, sorry I totally screwed up all our lives and by the way I’m trying to fix it with some incredibly dangerous dark magic mojo,’ might have been a good idea?”

Gunn edged a step closer to the bed. “Look, Cordy, if you think Angel’s dangerous to Wesley I’m cool with taking him to the hospital. I don’t give a damn what Angel says. He can’t keep Wes here against all our wills. Groo would help me. We could manage him between us. Get Wesley some proper medical attention.”

Cordy stroked Wesley’s hair again, gently, easing it back from the bruise on his forehead, eyes distressed as she looked up at Gunn. “And what if Angel’s right? What if he checked himself out and walked under a bus?”

Sighing, Gunn took the first aid kit from Fred and opened it. “Then I guess we try it Angel’s way, but if he –”

“We won’t let Angel hurt him.” Cordelia was still stroking his hair. “Whatever Wesley did, however badly he hurt us all, no one else gets to touch him while I’m here.”

Gunn felt reassured, not by demon powers Cordy, or landline to the Powers That Be Cordy, but by the Cordy he remembered meeting all those months ago, the one with her dumb little ladysmith axe, the one who wouldn’t give up whatever you told her. She was about as pissed with Wesley as it was possible for a human being to be, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still love him, and if she said she wasn’t going to let anyone hurt him, then that was about the best protection Wesley was going to get that didn’t involve a foxhole and a tank, and even then he wasn’t sure that the Chase protection method wouldn’t be better.

Gunn took out the iodine, poured some onto a pad of lint and handed it to Cordelia, then they were gently peeling back the duvet and both trying not to flinch at what had been done to their friend…

***

Six Days Earlier

Wesley took a deep breath and went through it again. Logically, how could he make things worse than they already were? The time surrounding his translation of the prophecy had already taken on the aspect of a nightmare. From that first terrible night of fitful dozing at his desk, to visiting the Loa, to trying to reason with Holtz, to deciding that the prophecy had to be a lie because Angel would never hurt this child, to being sledgehammered by those portents of earthquake, fire, and blood, to bludgeoning Lorne, taking Connor, looking into Angel’s trusting face and lying to him, to making that last fatal misstep that had led to him lying on the ground with the blood oozing from his slashed throat and Connor being carried into a hell dimension and inevitable death, what could he have done that would have had a more wretched result for everyone concerned? Angel had lost the baby he loved so much. Connor had lost his life anyway. And he had ended up an outcast for no reason, having achieved nothing except to earn the undying enmity of people who had loved and trusted him.

He looked at the spell again. Yes, it was dark magic; darkest of dark magic. Entirely demonic and written in a demonic tongue which he had been wrestling with for days. Time or place? Every source he looked at slurred the definition. Was this a spell that took one back to a time before a particular event or to a place where it had not yet occurred? Such a small difference that he wondered it if mattered. Were they not even one and the same? Had it not been for his encounter with that vampire Willow from a different dimension he would have thought nothing of it. But that had come about due to a wish. A wish that was in effect a spell.

However much he told himself he could not make matters worse than he already had, he needed to accept that there was an outside possibility that this time or place, that the choice he made, could have serious repercussions for people other than himself. Cordelia had almost destroyed Sunnydale with her careless wish, but she had been a teenage girl, slighted in love. He had no such excuse.

Wesley turned back to the small box for which he had paid so much money. Poisonous to one in every fifty humans, it said in every source he’d read. And if poisonous the death would be agonizing and slow. However, the geshurnik nut of the lower regions did have the property of reversing a spell; once its shell was penetrated, the inner core of the nut was effectively an antidote to magic. If a human swallowed it, the nut would lodge in the gut and within a few days the acids of the stomach would eat through to the core and release the antidote. Or the poison. Depending on whether or not one turned out to be the unlucky one in fifty. However, if he swallowed the nut, in five or six days the spell would be reversed. He should be pulled back to this time, and presumably place – the spell was not too clear about that – and the effects of the spell would be undone. He could effectively make a reconnaissance mission of his own spell, try it out, see how making that other choice had worked out for everyone, and then – if his suspicions were confirmed and this other route was better – he could cast the spell a second time, without swallowing the geshurnik antidote and let this second way take its course. Within a fortnight then, it might be possible to undo what he had done permanently, to still be one of the family in the Hyperion and for Angel to still have the baby son he loved. Certainly there was a risk but Wesley was in no doubt that he no right not to take the risk, given how completely he had ballsed everything up before.

He had killed the baby he was trying to protect. That was the truth of the matter. All that effort and agonizing to save something so fragile and so precious, and then he had been tricked like a rank amateur and the baby snatched from him, dragged into Quortoth, the darkest of the dark worlds. Everything ruined because of his stupidity and incompetence in believing a false prophecy; all those lives wrecked, including his own.

He owed Angel the child that he had stolen from him. He had arrogantly assumed that he knew best, that he could keep Connor safe when no one else could, and he had been wrong. The baby was better off taking his chances with Angel and the outside possibility that he might revert to Angelus – which, as the prophecy was false anyway, was seeming less and less likely.

Wesley snatched another breath. He was scared, he had to admit it. This was exactly the kind of spell that he had spent his whole life being told no sane man would dabble in. When one was tossing the talons of a sea eagle into the cauldron, not to mention the blood of a phoenix and the feathers of a creature never found in this world, adding the scales of rare snakes and the eyes of a demon that had presumably not wanted to give them up without a fight; when even the dark shamans from whom one obtained the spell and its ingredients made protective passes around themselves to keep you and your spell separate from them, well, there were probably a few clues right there that this wasn’t the best idea you’d ever had. Unfortunately when the last idea you’d had had been as spectacularly ill conceived as his plan to steal Connor and ‘save’ him, even a plan as bad as this one became a step up.

Breathing deeply, Wesley picked up the geshurnik and tossed it into his mouth. It wasn’t easy to swallow and he had to wash it down with the tumbler of whisky he’d poured earlier. He noticed that his fingers trembled on the glass he downed it. Then he prepared his cauldron and began to toss in the ingredients, reciting his Ashkalavan spell as he did so. The mist became purple and then green, he said the word that was either time or place, slashed his arm to let the blood flow, there was a flash of white light, and then everything went dark, and then it was dawn and he didn’t know if he’d passed out or time had just sped a little.

With his heart in his mouth, he picked up his coat, pulled it on with fingers that still trembled, and then walked outside and began to make his way to the Hyperion.

A few things were possibly subtly different, but he couldn’t remember which car had been parked where three weeks before when he had made his decision; or what colour was the front door of the apartment building across the way. There were no great changes, nothing to reassure him that something had actually happened. He drove through traffic that looked the same as any other early morning traffic. Perhaps he was driving not to a hotel where the kidnap had not yet taken place but to one where he would be killed as soon as he put his head through the door. Thinking of his constant feeling of guilt and crushing failure, all that betrayal and torment for no reason, to no end except to kill the innocent he had been trying to protect, he wondered if he even cared. Either he would find himself in a world where he had not yet sinned or where he would be punished for his sin; he almost didn’t care which it turned out to be.

He parked outside the Hyperion, snatched another deep breath as if he thought it would be his last, and then opened the front doors. There was no Cordelia behind the front desk. That was possibly a hopeful sign as he had heard she was back from her trip by now so perhaps he was arriving at a time while she was still absent. Or perhaps he was just desperate to believe that his mistake was fixable; that there was still something that could be done that didn’t involve taking a handful of pills and a bottle of whisky and going to sleep forever.

The sound of the baby crying made his heart turn over with joy. It was a wail of misery reverberating throughout the entire hotel, an infant sounding lost, lonely, and afraid, but for him it was the most wonderful sound in the world. Connor was alive. He had undone what he’d done. The spell had worked.

“Wes…?”

He turned to see Angel standing by the front desk drinking a beaker of blood. At once he remembered the vampire screaming hatred at him, pressing the pillow over his mouth, and his heartbeat increased. But he managed to go forward as if nothing was different.

“Angel. How are you?”

Right now the vampire would either be wondering why on earth he was so tense this morning or thinking that he did at least have courage in coming here, to a place where he had been told he would return on pain of death.

“Pretty good. Yourself?” No threat. No violence. Just an expression of curiosity on Angel’s face.

“Fine.” Wesley realized he hadn’t checked to see if the scar was still there. He put a hand up to his throat and felt the contours of it. Did that mean the spell hadn’t worked or he was simply a traveller in this time line? Of course, he was a traveller, otherwise he would know nothing of the past events and would make the same mistake forever.

“Didn’t expect to see you in today.” Angel put down his beaker of blood and began to walk towards him.

Wesley’s heart began to pound faster, still not sure if this was the Angel who had tried to kill him on their last meeting or the one who was his friend; the one who trusted him so much he’d let him take his baby son home with him.

“Well, you know… research…” Wesley kept searching Angel’s face for clues, but the man was curiously impassive; unreadable. As he opened his mouth to say something else, the crying abruptly stopped. Too abruptly. He looked up the stairs anxiously. “Do you think he’s okay…?”

Angel put his head on one side, still advancing, still examining Wesley with an odd light in his eyes. “Gunn…?”

“Connor.” Wesley turned and found that Angel was suddenly very close to him indeed. He could hear the creak of his leather coat, see the strange light in the brown eyes gazing intently into his.

Angel’s expression changed; thoughtful, fascinated, almost amused. “Connor?”

Wesley faltered. “Isn’t that…? The baby crying…?”

Angel shook his head. “No, Wesley.”

I’m dead, Wesley thought with an odd calm to his acceptance. I’m alone in the hotel with the vampire whose child I killed; the vampire who warned me what he would do to me if he ever saw me again.

“Is that…?”

Wesley turned around and saw Gunn coming down the stairs, wiping his mouth. His eyes widened as he saw Wesley. “It is. Well, English, how the hell are you?”

“I’m…fine.” Wesley looked between Angel and Gunn and wondered why they were smiling. Gunn had pulled Angel off him in the hospital; had clearly only let Angel into his room because he’d assumed that Angel would forgive him. And certainly he had turned his back on Wesley very emphatically since then but Wesley had not thought he would be a party to any plan of Angel’s to murder him. “Yourself…?”

“Never better,” Gunn assured him, walking over to where Wesley was standing; no, not walking, swaggering; a roll to his step that Wesley had never seen before; athletic and poised at the same time; like he was high on life and could tango with it until dusk.

Angel put his head on one side and it reminded Wesley uncomfortably of some bird of prey sighting something furry a long way beneath it. “You’re not him, are you, Wes?”

“Not…who…?” Wesley had no idea what he was talking about; just a feeling that he should be backing for the doors and that he would never reach them. Gunn was his best chance here. If Angel sprang, started choking the life out of him, Gunn was his only hope of not dying.

Angel smiled, and it went nowhere near his eyes. “The sweet trusting little Wesley I know and love.”

“One way to find out,” said Gunn and then grabbed Wesley by the arms and yanked him back hard against his body.

As Wesley struggled in confusion, Gunn said, “Hush, Wes. No reason to be scared. Well, okay maybe a few reasons….”

“What are you doing?” Wesley demanded.

“Just…enjoying your company.”

Angel had plucked the phone from the front desk and something about the way he moved was ringing all kinds of warning bells. Angel didn’t move with that careless grace; not usually, tapdancing his way around the place, practically purring with the pleasure of his own speed and fitness; like he was revelling in being a…vampire. Angel stabbed a button on the phone to speed-dial someone and then smiled at Wesley. “Be with you in a minute, Wes.”

As Wesley tried to pull loose from Gunn’s grip he found he couldn’t shift the man’s fingers. There were digging tightly into his arms, while Gunn, bizarrely had his mouth next to Wesley’s ear. Wesley jolted with shock as the man licked his earlobe, and Gunn pulled him back tighter against him. With a sense of complete disbelief, Wesley felt something hard rubbed against his ass.

“Giles…!” Angel spoke as if the Watcher was his favourite person on earth. “How are you, old boy? Still Watching that Slayer of yours? And she pays for Watching, doesn’t she? And I mean from all angles… Tsk, tsk, no need for that kind of language. One quick question and then I’m out of your hair. The Watcher you stole from me – my favourite pet – is he still with you? Oh, don’t worry. I won’t try coming after him. I know you’ve got him locked up where the big bad boogie man can’t make him squeal any more. Bet you’re making sure the bed bugs don’t bite, too. Squirms really well, doesn’t he? And tight…oh boy, gotta love a virgin with a schoolgirl crush – I’ve had two of them so far and I can’t decide if Buffy or Wesley was the most delicious….” Angel held the phone away from his ear and shrugged at Gunn. “He hung up. How rude.”

Not time then, Wesley thought dully. The spell had taken him to a place where events had happened differently; where he had presumably not stolen Connor but something else had taken place which had led to…Angel losing his soul, and Gunn… Wesley looked up at the man who held him and realized there was nothing in those brown eyes of the man he knew, the friend he had loved; these were the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Looks like we’ve got a replacement for the toy Giles took away from us.” Gunn smiled a smile as cold as heartbreak.

“Well, be fair, Gunn, we did break that particular toy, and now all the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put poor ickle Wesley together again. Too busy screaming and rocking and trying to get the nasty bad pictures of the nasty bad vampires out of his pure clean dumb little mind.” Angel danced back across the room, as if he were hearing music in his head or playing a game of invisible hopscotch. “Poor Wes. He always had a problem with reality.” Angel peered at Wesley closely. “What about you, Wesley Number Two? You look like a Watcher who knows all about reality.” Angel put his hand between Wesley’s legs and squeezed.

Bringing up his knee hard and fast was instinctive, as was slamming his head back with everything he had; trying to break Gunn’s nose and Angel’s balls simultaneously. But his head made contact with nothing and although Angel crumpled and staggered for a moment, he straightened up within seconds. Gunn yanked Wesley’s head back hard by the hair, almost breaking his neck. “Naughty, naughty, Wes. You’re going to have to be punished for that later.”

Angel rubbed his groin and grimaced. “Oh boy, yes. Daddy’s going to have to put you over his knee and spank you really hard for that.” He came in fast, pressing his body against Wesley’s, forcing Wesley’s jeans-covered ass back against Gunn’s cock, and then cupped Wesley through his jeans and groped him.

“Get off me!” Wesley snapped, panicking.

“Sorry, Wes, no can do,” said Angel with mock regret. “On account of us needing to take you downstairs, strip you naked, and make you scream for mercy.”

Cold with horror, Wesley could not restrain a shudder. “What happened to Connor?”

“Connor?” Angel licked a finger with relish. “He tasted just like chicken.”

As they dragged him towards the basement stairs, Wesley found his mind was jamming like a stuck record, repeating over and over again that perhaps after all there was something worse than his reality, after all.

***

Outside in the corridor, Angel noticed the plastic bag Groo was still holding so awkwardly and nodded at it. “Was that with Wesley?”

“Yes. I have not looked inside it.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Angel took it from him; not too bothered about showing good manners right now. Wesley being back in the hotel was making him feel as if ants were walking over his skin. He had trusted him completely, believed in their friendship absolutely. And Wesley had looked him right in the eye and told him he was taking Connor home for the night while all the time he was planning to give him to Holtz. Actually, no, Gunn and Fred had told him that wasn’t what had happened. Wesley had been planning to take Connor away to a place where Angel could never find him; to steal his son and Angel’s time with his son; all because of a stupid prophecy that was a lie anyway. Holtz had just set up an ambush and Wesley had been dumb enough to stroll straight into it. What really bothered him the most was that perhaps for the first time in his life he had really tried to be there for Wesley. He’d seen how rough he looked, made a point of telling him he appreciated all the work he was putting in, told him he was a good friend….

It choked him up too much to think about it. That was when the anger just built to a point where it could only be alleviated by going up there and holding that pillow over Wesley’s face again, and this time keeping it there until the job was done.

With a huge effort, Angel made himself go downstairs instead. He looked in the bag and saw the padded envelope, not sealed, but with Giles’ name and address scrawled across it in what it gave him a jolt to recognize was his own handwriting. A second jolt to realize it was written in blood. He sniffed it. Wesley’s blood. He looked inside the envelope and there was a videocassette. Stuffing tape back into envelope and envelope back into bag, he said briefly to Fred, “I’m going out.”

She said, “I called Lorne. He was meeting with a client but I thought he should come back so he’s coming back.”

He was feeling in a mood where he didn’t want anyone doing anything without triple checking it with him but he bit it down, recognising he was being unreasonable, and just nodded. “Good.”

“He’ll be here soon.” Fred sounded wistful and Angel noted without a pang the way Lorne had evidently become the guy the others looked to for comfort and commonsense now that Wesley was an outcast and Angel was… He wondered what they called it in their heads: ‘grieving’ in Fred’s case, he suspected; ‘batshit’ possibly in Gunn’s.

“Good.” He opened the door to the basement, remembered in time that he couldn’t actually go out and do this himself, and sighed. “I’ll wait until he gets here. I need him to do something for me. Tell him I’ll be downstairs.”

Lorne arrived in a flutter of agitation and raw silk; too flustered to even tie his cravat properly, hurrying down to the basement in a way that seriously risked scuffing his shoes. “Angelcakes, is it true…? Is Wesley…?”

“Upstairs. Asleep. Or unconscious. Hard to tell which.”

“Fredikins said he looked really bad. Does he need a doctor?”

“I don’t know. Gunn and Cordelia are seeing to it. I need you to do something for me.”

Lorne was already reaching for his cellphone. “Get him a mystic to help with the healing process? I know just the one and he owes me for…”

“No.” Angel took out his wallet and handed the contents to Lorne. “I need one of those little TV sets with a VCR. Colour if possible.”

“They’re all colour now, cupcake. And can I ask why?”

Angel regarded him levelly. “You can ask.”

It took Lorne a moment to get it and then he nodded. “Oh, I see. We’re in brood mode. Won’t that be a nice change for everyone.”

“He stole my son.”

Lorne took a step back at the quiet savagery of Angel’s words. “And bludgeoned me unconscious, which, trust me, I’m not going to be forgetting any time soon. And no one is denying your right to be miserable, vindictive or generally unpleasant, sweetpea, I’m just saying there are other people in this hotel who are suffering as well; people who also loved Connor, people who also feel betrayed by what Wesley did. You could think about sparing a thought for –”

“I don’t have any thoughts to spare.” Angel turned away. “Now get me that TV set, will you? And some honey.”

Lorne frowned. “Sorry, I think one of us skipped a track…?”

“I need a jar of honey. The good stuff. Royal jelly. And some Canterbury Bells.”

“The kind you ring?”

“The kind that’s a herb. Ask in Meg’s Magicals. Also some Colt’s-foot, Maiden-hair, Hyssop, and liquorice.”

“If you have a sore throat, pumpkin, I know a better remedy than that Culpepper’s Herbal schtick.”

“Good. Bring it with the things I just asked you to buy.”

Lorne backed up. “You don’t have a sore throat, do you?”

Angel just looked at him balefully. “And you’re still here because?”

“I’m not your paid lackey? Just your semi-invited houseguest?” Seeing Angel’s expression, Lorne headed up the stairs. “And I’m lackeying….”

It was an hour before Lorne returned which was an hour later than Angel wanted him to be and an hour earlier than he had realistically expected him to be.

“…Take it down there to the dungeon. Don’t worry about the dragon. He only tries to burn you alive if he’s slept with you first….”

Well, that was another thing Lorne was going to get old waiting for Angel to feel guilty about. Setting Darla on fire was up there with smothering Wesley with a pillow on his ‘Don’t give a damn and I’d do it again’ list.

Angel watched the two delivery men struggle down the stairs with the TV and realized that Lorne had managed to stretch his wallet to something a lot more impressive than the 14” screen he’d been expecting. He watched them set it up on the stand and then edge out of the basement without saying a word to them. He felt as if he were having to hold himself away from humanity right now, as if he were dangerous and might bite. There was the evidence all over Wesley upstairs of what he was capable of; right now it felt like there was thin ice beneath his feet and any minute it might crack. He knew he ought to get the man out of the hotel before the urge to kill him became too overpowering to ignore or else not killing Wesley spilled out into him killing someone else.

“Ex-display,” Lorne indicated the monster screen proudly. “And it has a scratch and a burn on the casing. Doesn’t affect the picture, though, which is flat, wide, and crystal clear. Couldn’t let our fearless leader settle for some squintasonic. Especially if it’s a sign that you’re trying to rejoin the human race.”

“It isn’t.” Angel saw the hurt on the demon’s face and sighed. “Thanks, Lorne. It’s a great TV set. Much better than I could have got for the price.”

Lorne nodded. “Well, that was almost civil.” He held up a bag that clinked and rustled. “Want me to mix this up for you? I bought molasses too and a few other things that I guarantee will take the spike out of any throat germ.”

“More like…severe bruising. In the back of the throat.”

Lorne went a little greener. “It’s for Wesley.”

“Yes.”

Lorne sat down on the stairs. “He told you what they did to him?”

Angel snorted. “Wesley doesn’t tell me anything, remember? Wesley does his own thing because it’s for everyone’s good – even when it isn’t – and gets to screw up in his own uniquely damaging way. But I know Angelus, and going by the pretty artwork on Wesley’s ass it seems as if he trained up Vampire Gunn to be a real chip off the old block.”

Lorne sighed and got to his feet, looking sick and weary. “I’ll make up any potion you like if you think it’ll do any good. Try not to make it a waste of my time though, honeybuns.”

“What do you mean?” Angel frowned.

“I know you still want to kill him. It’s pretty much what your aura is wearing for a hat, right now. But, trust me, it won’t make you feel any better, and if you cross that line the people who follow you now won’t be able to follow you afterwards. Think about that when you’re thinking about the transitory pleasure it would give you to feel Wesley dying. Not to mention the fact that misguided, idiotic, arrogant, and stupid as it was of him to do what he did, he didn’t do it for any other reason than to save your son’s life, and he got his throat cut and lost the friendship of everyone that mattered to him trying to do it.”

“I don’t need a lecture, Lorne,” Angel warned him.

“Glad to hear it. Just get that this is a deal breaker. No one is saying you don’t have a reason to be pissed with Wesley but champions don’t smother people in hospital beds who can’t call for help or have the strength to fight back, Angel. At least, they don’t get to do it twice and still call themselves champions.”

Then Lorne was gone and Angel was left unsure whether he wanted to put his fist through the TV to make a point about how much he did not appreciate being told what to do or just so he wouldn’t have to watch what was on this videocassette.

“Knock knock…?”

Angel was still staring at the screen, even though the tape had finished and there was just the crackle of sound, the hiss of those white lines. He looked up with an effort to see Lorne standing at the top of his staircase.

“Can I come in?” Lorne asked.

Angel nodded. “Of course.”

“No, I don’t mean, will you let me, I mean is that tape over, finished, not paused so I’m going to see a part of it or still in any way running?”

“It’s finished.” Angel switched off the TV set, then realize that Lorne was still looking extra green. “You saw Wesley.”

“Yes. I also saw Cordelia and Gunn after they’d finished trying to patch up Wesley. Gunn’s trying to drink his way into amnesia, Cordy’s crying in her room. He needs a doctor, Angel. Some honey and lemon and a Band Aid are not going to fix this.”

“He doesn’t want a doctor seeing him like this.”

“Not really the point, Your Broodiness.”

“I know Angelus. If he wanted Wesley dead, he’d be dead, which means he wanted him alive, which means he was careful not to…do anything that meant he had to find someone else to play with. Wes isn’t going to die from what was done to him, whereas he’d probably rather die than have a stranger examining him right now.”

“Well, not wanting to diss your soulless alter ego’s efficiency as a precision sadist, but Wesley’s looking way too Camille for comfort, and I care rather less about what Wesley wants right now than what’s going to stop him haemorrhaging to death from internal bleeding. He needs a doctor and he needed one ooh…about six days ago, which was probably around the time when the first of his ribs got cracked.”

Angel had a brief unwanted memory of how much a cracked rib hurt; of how much everything else hurt every time that rib was touched, of how a vampire always knew where the broken bones were, the extra painful places that could be pressed a little harder to make the victim writhe and scream.

“There’s someone I know who’ll come because he owes me and he owes me big. I’m not saying he’s a warm and fuzzy guy –”

“You mean a dark mystic?” Angel glared at him. “You want to bring a dark mystic into my hotel?”

“I want Wesley to stop coughing up blood, and Cordelia and Gunn would really like that, too. Dark mystics aren’t party people, I admit, but the one I know is good at what he does, and he can fix the worst of it.”

There was a pause as Angel saw it all, Wesley walking out of the hotel with Connor in his arms, telling Angel that it was just for one night, that the local hospital was so close…ironic really, if it had been another five minutes away they wouldn’t be having this conversation because Wesley would never have survived the ambulance journey; that was how close he had come to not having to be holding this conversation right now.

Lorne seemed to be reaching for the last of his patience. “You watched the tape?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know he didn’t spend the last six days playing Scrabble so will you please let me call a doctor?”

Angel shrugged, trying to make this concession seem a little bit less like him giving in, or as if he gave a damn. “Fine, send for the mystic. It’s no skin off my back.”

Lorne turned away and made the call in a language even Angel didn’t know, something sibilant and softly spoken. “He’s on his way.” He steeled himself to look at the television screen. “The tape…? Was it…?”

“I can see why Wesley didn’t want Giles to have to watch it. I expect they made a copy, though, so Giles will probably still get one. I gather he got a copy of all the others.”

“Other tapes?”

“The Fred tape. The Cordy tape. The first Wesley tape. They’re proud of their work. Like to share it. Angelus would have done the same in this dimension, if they’d had videotape in his day.”

Lorne gestured towards the TV set. “Does it change anything? I mean…?”

Angel faced him levelly. “Nothing’s changed. I need Wesley to tell me what it was that the other Wesley did differently from him. I need to make sure it doesn’t happen here. Wesley is going to have to break the habit of a lifetime and actually talk to me, using whole words.”

Lorne sighed. “Not exactly the habit of a lifetime, cupcake. It was the only thing he ever kept from you.”

“It was the one thing that really mattered.”

Lorne looked into his eyes. “Perhaps that was why he kept it from you.”

The dark mystic came almost as soon as Lorne called him. Angel stayed in his office, wrapped in a brood blanket of anger and resentment as the man was ushered past. The mystic was wearing purple robes and had odd sigils smeared onto his forehead, straight-backed and almost floating as he ignored Gunn, Cordelia, and Fred – who were waiting in the lobby – to drift eerily up the stairs to the room in which Angel had so unceremoniously dumped his patient. Lorne went with him. Angel guessed Wesley had to be sleeping or unconscious because although he listened for it there was no protest as the incantation sounded; Angel did recognize some of those words – the mystical equivalent of a general anaesthetic. Then there was the unpleasant odour of magic in the air, sharp as coin warmed against skin, metallic as fresh blood. He wondered if that was how bones smelt when they knitted; a body groaning with the effort, as it was forced to heal itself too fast. Angel presumed the dark mystic knew that Wesley didn’t have enough left in him to heal everything; after six days of torture and starvation, Wesley had been free-falling without a parachute, nothing in reserve. There was no other time but now when Angel wouldn’t have been in that bedroom, demanding that Lorne’s creepy shaman did this right, telling him what would happen to him if he screwed up, because Wesley was fragile and human and precious to the people in this place….

Angel turned away from that thought, hating himself for the part of him that was relieved Lorne had sent for the mystic, feeling as if he were betraying Connor with even a spasm of concern for the man upstairs. The grief had become too much to bear recently. He wanted to help others, although it took more energy than he sometimes thought he still possessed to overcome the deadening exhaustion of his sorrow and do something else except grieve, but the anger, the anger he could sustain. The anger helped. It was the flashfire he needed sometimes, to get through the day. He could stoke it like any other blaze, feed off it for another hour that wasn’t just about grief.

Foul-smelling green smoke drifted out of the room and down into the lobby, a neutral place between the mystic upstairs and Angel in his office, Gunn waved the tendrils away absently, Fred coughing without ever taking her gaze off the stairs. Groo was gazing at Cordelia tenderly while she looked like the warrior she had become, staring steadfastly up those stairs as if steeling herself for another battle. Angel wondered if he was the battle she was thinking she was going to have to fight.

Then the mystic floated back out again, still without acknowledging any of them, and the hotel was left with the afterburn of his spellcasting, a smell like singed flesh in the air. Lorne came down the stairs slowly, taking the Sea Breeze Gunn wordlessly handed him and downing it in one gulp before he met their eyes. “Thank you.”

“Is he okay?” Cordelia pressed.

Lorne grimaced. “Well, dark magic has its own rules. He can only fix what Wesley has the resources to mend, and, frankly, Wesley – not so much with the resources right now. My dark mystic friend felt it was in the best interests of the patient’s long-term recovery, to deal with the serious stuff and leave the surface stuff to heal naturally. Unfortunately there’s a whole lot of surface stuff, and those resources he had to use to fix the broken bones and the internal bleeding mean that Wes is pretty much running on fumes right now. He’s going to need a lot of TLC and he’s not going to be getting out of that room any time soon. We’re talking weeks, cupcakes, maybe months.”

“But he’s going to be okay, right?” Gunn pressed. “He’s not going to be coughing up blood any more?”

“His ribs are mended and no longer poking through his lungs. They’re still bruised, but they’ll heal by themselves, and nothing’s broken any more. Well, nothing physical. As to the inside of Wesley’s head – I don’t even want to take a guess.”

“What can we do?” Fred asked.

Lorne shrugged. “Whatever you want, sweet thing. Wes is going to be sleeping off that mystical surgery for an hour or so, and then I’m going to take him some medicine. There’s nothing the rest of you need to do except calm your shattered nerves with a nice alcoholic drink.”

Angel had been waiting for Lorne to come marching in here demanding that he care. Because that was what he did, of course, or what they thought he was meant to do: be the flawless hero who forgave the person who wronged him, mind that he was bleeding, care that he had suffered. The truth was, he didn’t, and he damned well wasn’t going to start now just because Lorne wanted him to.

Instead, Lorne wandered in casually and held up a beaker filled with a warm golden liquid. “I borrowed one of your blood beakers. Hope you don’t mind?”

Angel rose to his feet. “Is that the throat medicine?” As Lorne nodded, Angel took it from him. “I’ll give it to him.”

Lorne said, “And I’ll come with you. Just in case you need some help.”

“I’m not going to kill him.”

“And neither am I, so all the more reason why we can do this better together.”

Angel wondered if they had been talking behind his back and had made some kind of pact whereby he was never left alone with Wesley. That was not going to suit his purposes, as he had a lot of things he wanted to say to the man that could really only be said without witnesses, if he wanted Wesley to talk more or less freely anyway. He supposed he would have to play nice for a few days until everyone calmed down.

He wasn’t exactly astonished to find Groo hanging around in the corridor that just happened to guard Wesley’s bedroom either. The man made a show of twirling his sword around as if he only happened to be there to practise some moves.

“Nice blade work,” Angel observed. “Is Wesley awake?”

“I am not certain.” Groo darted a look at Lorne who must have indicated that it was okay as he moved away from the door. “Please give him my best wishes for his recovery.”

Angel grunted something non-committal and went into the room. At once the scents hit him and he had to pause for a moment as they washed over him. There was still the bitter after-tang of magic in the air, and antiseptic and arnica from the earlier attempt at tending to him, but Gunn evidently hadn’t had the heart to dump Wesley in the shower and hose him down, so the other scents were still there: sweat and pain and way too much pleasure that smelt like Angel and Gunn.

It was impossible not to be completely unaffected by what he’d seen, of course. He could tell Lorne what he liked; stay as stone-faced as he could manage it; but there had been a time when Wesley was his friend, maybe the closest friend he’d ever had, and the thought of what he had been put through for the past week would have been unbearable. Given that he still thought he wanted the man dead, and if asked would probably have said that a slow painful death would suit him fine, it was a little difficult to justify the pocket of rage he was feeling that had nothing to do with wanting to punish Wesley for stealing his son and everything to do with wanting to drive a stake through the heart of that Angelus from a different dimension. He hadn’t been able to sustain any pity for Vampire Gunn either. At first he’d been full of guilt and compassion for the man he had been, ending up like this, and then he’d had to accept that the creature currently having so much nasty fun with Wesley on the video tape had less to do with Gunn than his shadow. After half an hour of viewing he’d been ready to stake Gunn, too. By the end of the four hours he had felt as if he could never get his jaw unclenched where he had been gritting his teeth for so long.

He crossed over to the bed, Lorne following him closely, presumably in case he made a grab for that pillow.

Wesley was still lying on his front, the duvet had slipped down to reveal the white bandaging Cordelia had applied so expertly. He was still unshaven and his cheekbones had hollows under them to match the shadows under his eyes. The mark on his right shoulder had bled through even the new bandaging, an ‘A’ ghosted in blood through the linen. Some of the welts had bled through as well, as had one of the bites on his arm. Angel understood the logic of only fixing the bare minimum and letting the rest heal naturally but he was still glad he wasn’t the one paying that dark mystic, because he would have been asking for a refund.

The stink of his own satisfaction all over an injured Wesley was a strange and disturbing combination. Wesley’s sweat and fear and pain and his pleasure; scents that had never been meant to go together in any dimension, yet here they were. He thought back to the hospital, the white rage in his mind, pressing the pillow down as hard as he could, spittle spraying from his mouth in fury. Had he enjoyed it? Perhaps there had been a certain malevolent satisfaction in letting the man know how very unforgiven he was and would always be. He had wanted to hurt him as much as he possibly could just for that moment; dangle an illusory forgiveness that he then snatched away and replaced with the opposite of absolution. But he hadn’t dragged him out of that hospital bed, chained him up in the basement of the Hyperion and then tortured him for fun. Even then, in that whiteout of righteous rage, grief, and betrayal, he didn’t believe that was something he would have enjoyed. But some darkness probably was innate, and his was darker than most, so perhaps he would have done. Perhaps, left to his own devices, with no Gunn and Fred to deal with, and no Cordelia on her way home, he would have done exactly that.

He thought of that videotape and flinched mentally. No, not like that. Not deliberately and with such sadistic inventiveness, find the worst wound and apply more pressure; the worst fear and play on it over and over again. He had been that vampire and that wasn’t who he was any more. Even with Wesley he didn’t think he was that guy.

The only reason that the other Angelus and Gunn hadn’t drained Wesley or turned him was because they didn’t want to stop playing with him. They weren’t in the business of giving such an exciting toy a quick and relatively painless death. Wesley was hard to kill; he’d proven that when Justine slashed his throat; and they’d been measured in their games; done the things that hurt the most but didn’t really break or tear. They’d cracked his bones lightly, they hadn’t shattered them; wanting the fear to build up more each day, the fear of more pain, more inventive acts of cruelty. They had been planning to keep him alive for months. By then he would have been insane, of course; still human, but no longer rational, just something gibbering in a corner, forced witness to their acts of depravity and sadism.

“Wesley…?” Angel didn’t want to touch him. Quite apart from the fear that a touch might turn into a grab and slam against the wall, he didn’t think there were many places left to touch on Wesley that wouldn’t hurt. Gritting this teeth, he lightly dabbed at his shoulder. “Wes…?”

Wesley rolled over and curled up in the same instant, one arm up to warn off the inevitable blow. For a second he stared up at Angel in wide-eyed panic and then he snatched a breath and took in his surroundings, quickly lowering his arm. His fingers went to his ribs, breathing around the inevitable pain and then snatching an extra breath in surprise when the pain wasn’t quite so bad.

“You’re in the Hyperion.” Angel realized belatedly that he’d been in the Hyperion while being tortured, albeit mostly in the basement. “In your own dimension.”

Lorne said quickly, “How are you feeling, cupcake?”

Wesley blinked again and gazed at Lorne, snatching a few more calming breaths as he did so. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and not much above a whisper but it was even: “Lorne.” His voice sounded deeper now, more grown up.

“One and the same. We brought you something.”

“Concussion?” Wesley looked up into Lorne’s face before glancing briefly at Angel. “Suffocation?”

“Maybe later,” Angel told him. “For now we thought something to help with your throat might be a better idea.”

Lorne was gently helping Wesley to sit up, putting a pillow behind his shoulders so that he could ease back against it gingerly. The sheet fell down to reveal more burns and bruises all over Wesley’s chest, his ribs bandaged and no longer broken but evidently still hurting given the way he winced as he leant back. He took a tentative breath then gazed up at Lorne. “You did something…?” He put a hand to his chest. “A spell…?”

“A friend of mine did it. Only a little one. Just to mend the cracked ribs and the internal bleeding. You still have a long way to go to be well again.”

“Thank you.” Wesley gazed up at him out of bloodshot eyes, the shadows under them shocking in the lamplight. Starvation, Angel assessed, pain, too, of course, those shadows always kicked in the fastest, and exhaustion as well; bone-deep exhaustion. “I’m grateful.”

“Well, you can pay me back by getting well.” Lorne managed a smile; trying for a poker face but the shock at Wesley’s condition still fluttering just below the surface calm.

Angel sat on the bed, still pissed enough to be glad about the way such close proximity made Wesley swallow, looking at him sideways as the mattress dipped and moved them even closer. Angel held up the beaker. “You need to drink this now, while it’s warm. It should help with the bruising and replace some of the fluids you’ve lost.”

Wesley looked warily from the dark golden liquid in the beaker to Angel’s face.

Angel gave him a mirthless smile. “If I wanted to make you drink my piss, Wes, I’d do it and tell you what you were drinking. But Lorne put this together.”

The demon said quickly, “Scout’s honour, handsome. Prepared by my own fair – well, green hands. Put your head back and let it slip down slowly.”

Wesley took the beaker and sipped it, putting his head back obediently so the liquid could trickle down his sore throat. The bruises on his neck were hard to miss as was that jagged still-healing wound. Angel watched him swallow painfully and had to grit his teeth again. It disturbed him to think that Wesley now knew how he and Gunn tasted. Just at the time when he was the most estranged from them he had been forced into a hideous intimacy with their darkest selves.

Conversationally, Angel said, “I know you can’t talk too well at the moment, and that’s okay. You’re not going anywhere until I get the answers I want anyway.”

Lorne darted him a warning look. “Angel….”

“I know.” Angel smiled mirthlessly. “My bedside manner sucks. But Wesley already knows that. Keep drinking.”

Wesley obeyed him, darting a look from under his eyelashes as he did so that let him know he was only giving in because he had to, it didn’t mean he in any way accepted Angel’s right to order him around. Angel watched him swallow another painful mouthful, and then another, could see his thirst warring with the discomfort each movement of his throat cost him.

“I watched the tape,” he observed conversationally.

Wesley immediately spluttered, choked, and would have thrown up all over the bed if Lorne hadn’t grabbed a towel and held it under his mouth. The demon rubbed Wesley’s back gently as he heaved, Lorne glaring at Angel out of angry red eyes. “Angel!”

Angel was a little shocked by the violence of the reaction. “I didn’t… Christ, Wes, I didn’t mean….” But what had he meant other than that he wanted Wesley to know he knew what had been done to him and had just watched hours of it in glorious Technicolor? Did Wesley think he’d got off on it? Did he imagine Angel had been having a four hour jerking off session over the home movie of his ex-friend writhing in pain? He was two people around Wesley at the moment, one who wanted to hurt him, one who recoiled once he did so at the results.

“I was going to put it in the incinerator but I heard you come back in.” Wesley managed the sentence hoarsely. “I just didn’t want the Giles in that world to have to… I thought anything I was holding when the spell ended might come back with me so I….”

Lorne reached for another towel and wiped Wesley’s mouth with it, moving the soiled one out of sight. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk.”

“Do you need to…go…?” Angel asked, a little ashamed of himself, as he gestured towards the bathroom. “It’s probably easier for Lorne and me to help you do that than Cordy and Fred.”

Wesley looked over at the bathroom and weariness washed over his face. It clearly looked like a very long walk to him despite only being on the other side of the room.

“Come on, pumpkin.” Lorne slipped an arm under his shoulders. “Your kidneys have taken enough of a beating the past few days. Let’s be nice to them now, shall we?”

Angel gripped Wesley’s upper arm, taking some of his weight as Lorne helped him to swing his legs around and then get to his feet. They helped him over to the bathroom between them, Angel kicking up the toilet seat for him so he could urinate, Wesley having to prop himself up with one shoulder against the wall to manage even that. His body, even with all the bandaging, was a palette of cuts and bruises; bootmarks clearly visible in several places. Rings of red, blue, and mauve around his wrists and arms and ankles from the many times they had obviously tied him up, and the finger-shaped bruises that were…everywhere.

“What were you trying to do?” Angel asked, exasperated by how utterly Wesley had screwed himself with this last insane idea.

“Get… Put things back how they were.” Wesley put his palm flat to the wall over the toilet, trying to steady himself as he peed red-streaked urine into the toilet bowl. His hoarse whisper of a voice made him sound like a stranger, as did his utter exhaustion, in too much pain and too bone-weary to care any more what Angel thought or might be about to do. Get Connor back. That was the sentence he hadn’t finished, Angel was certain.

“Why didn’t it work?”

Lorne gave Angel a look of exasperation. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you ask him your questions when talking isn’t like gargling ground glass for him?”

“Maybe he was never meant to be born.”

Angel just knew Wesley knew how provocative a statement that was to say to him, especially now; his precious baby, warm and gurgling and trusting and loved and safe, lost in a hell dimension because of the man standing right here, an inch away from him, naked and battered to the point where he could barely even stay upright, and Wesley was telling him that maybe all Connor had ever been was a mistake? The urge to kill him was so strong that it felt like a separate entity. He almost expected to look up and see it reflected in the mirror that would have nothing to do with him.

“Or maybe something else was meant to happen and it didn’t. Maybe we screwed up earlier or later or – ” Wesley swayed and Angel realized he wasn’t trying to be provocative after all, despite his obvious death wish, just thinking aloud.

“Don’t talk.” Angel caught him and held him upright. “Lorne’s right. This can wait until your throat’s better.”

As Wesley made an uncoordinated lurch, it took him a moment to realize that it was the basin Wesley was trying to stagger towards. It struck him as incongruous that after all the man had been through it really mattered to him that he should wash his hands after relieving himself but as it did, it did. Lorne took his other elbow and they helped him over to the basin, Lorne quickly turning on the taps for him and putting the soap into his hands. Then turning off the taps when he’d finished and putting the towel in his hands.

Wesley dried his hands, handed back the towel, licked his lips, swallowed painfully, and then looked at Lorne sideways out of a bloodshot eye, managing a hoarse: “Thank you, Lorne.” Given the amount of effort it took to say it, Angel appreciated that Wesley was showing Lorne better manners than Angel had in a while.

“Can I have a shower…?” Wesley glanced up at Angel.

“No.” Angel tightened his grip on his arm as he swayed again. “Not yet. You’ll get your bandages wet. In a few days.”

For a moment as Wesley looked at the shower with longing, weariness washing over his face again, and abruptly looking horribly young, Angel felt a twist of something that was definitely compassion and was trying damned hard to snake its way back into being friendship move inside him. He set his jaw. “Wes, I know you don’t like the way you smell right now. That makes two of us. But you have to heal a little first.” He looked down at Wesley’s body and saw his own hand prints on his body. Fascinated and appalled he fitted his hand to a series of bruises that curved around his waist. He placed his hand around Wesley’s throat not applying any pressure, just wanting to see if his fingers matched the marks there. They did, perfectly, finger to finger-shaped bruise. Wesley went still, rigid and shuddering at his touch, but said nothing. Angel took his hand away.

“Why didn’t you do some reconnaissance? At least check out what you were walking into?”

Wesley swallowed again. “I was expecting you, not Angelus.”

“The prophecy said…”

“Fred said the prophecy was a lie.” Wesley lowered his gaze, not wanting Angel to read a memory that was evidently painful.

Lorne took Wesley’s arm and began to steer him back to the bed. “I’m going to heat up that medicine for you, cupcake, because I guarantee that if you can keep it down it’s going to make your throat feel like it’s been kissed by an…by cherubs.” As he helped Wesley back into bed, Lorne gently lowering him onto the mattress to minimize the jolting of his battered body, Lorne said, “What happened to the other Wesley?”

“Giles rescued him,” Angel answered so Wesley wouldn’t have to. “But not before –”

“He’s a basketcase,” Wesley said as crisply as one could through a hoarse whisper.

“Why him and not you?” If Lorne had been hoping to give Wesley an affirmation speech reminding him of just how strong he was, it failed.

Wesley looked up at him out of those haunted bloodshot eyes and said softly, “Because I didn’t have to watch Fred and Cordelia raped to death in front of me.”

Lorne shuddered and then covered him very gently with the duvet. “That’s not going to happen. Ever.”

Wesley looked up at him hopefully. “You know that for certain?”

Lorne nodded without hesitation. “Read people’s paths, remember, sugarplum? It doesn’t happen here.”

Wesley actually smiled and Angel was taken aback by how young he looked when he did that; and how trusting he was, because it was as obvious to him as an oncoming truck on an empty road that Lorne was lying through his pearly white teeth. No one’s future was that clear; there were always different paths and that had to be a possible final outcome for both of them – hanging around with someone who could become Angelus would always make it a possibility. He had an unwanted flash of images of naïve Wesley beaming at him triumphantly after a fight, trying to dance, lighting up over that damned Shanshu prophecy because Angel was going to be a real boy some day….

“When you’re better we can talk some more,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking and dipping under his weight. “Work out what went wrong in that dimension.”

“Because everything went so well here….” Wesley murmured in his new, deeper, ruined voice, turning away from him as he eased himself onto his side.

“I didn’t kill Connor here.”

Wesley’s spine stiffened and Angel wondered why he’d said that; said anything that could be construed as justifying Wesley’s betrayal and deception. Nevertheless these were unavoidable truths. “I didn’t turn Gunn, kill Cordy, kill Fred, torture you.”

“And if Lorne’s right, you never will,” Wesley said hoarsely. “Well, except maybe for that last one.”

“Let me get that medicine heated up for you, crumpet.” Lorne picked up the beaker and looked at Angel expectantly.

“I can sit with him.” Angel shrugged as if he didn’t care, certainly didn’t want to, was just offering to do his share.

“No need.” Lorne opened the door and continued to look at Angel while calling across to Wesley: “You’ll be okay by yourself for five minutes while I get the microwave to work its magic, right, Wesley?”

“Yes.” A hoarse agreement from a Wesley who evidently didn’t want Angel sitting by his bedside any more than Lorne wanted to leave him there.

“Fine.” Angel got to his feet, refusing to admit that he was hurt; that no one around here seemed to remember that he had been doing vigils by Wesley’s bedside before anyone else in this hotel. Two years of taking care of the guy, protecting him, trusting him, believing in him when no one else ever had, and one moment of grief-stricken fury had him marked forever as someone who couldn’t be trusted alone with him. “You really think I’d do that?”

Wesley turned over carefully, bracing his various pulled muscles and cuts and bruises against the pillow, looking at Angel as if he were seeing him for the first time. And that was Wesley, at last, the guy he recognized, the one who looked right at him in a way no one else ever did. “Do what?”

“Torture you?”

He knew as he said it that it was a dumb question. Wesley knew better than anyone what he was capable of; not just because of all those years of studying Angelus to the point where he knew where Angel had been at any given moment of history better than the vampire himself; but because he’d just spent six days being sadistically tortured by Angelus and his acolyte.

Wesley moistened his lips and then said hoarsely, “No.”

Angel stepped back. “You sure about that?”

“You’d kill me. You wouldn’t torture me first. You don’t torture people. You’re not Angelus.”

Angel thought of what he’d just watched on that videotape, the way someone with his face and voice and body and strength had done what had been done to Wesley; the way his fingers fitted those bruises so perfectly; the way he’d deliberately made it seem as if he were going to grant Wesley the forgiveness he knew he was craving before he screamed all that hatred at him and tried to smother him. “Glad one of us is so sure about that, Wesley,” he said quietly.

Then he followed Lorne out, only pausing briefly in the doorway to find Wesley looking after him with a frown on his face, as if Angel were a puzzle he was still trying to figure out.

Outside, Lorne firmly closed the door and then said, “Let’s not tell him about Linwood, eh? Let Wesley hang onto some of his illusions.”

Stung, Angel opened his mouth to refute it and then realized he couldn’t, because he had been ready, willing and able to torture Linwood, and if torturing Wesley, even when he’d been half dead in that hospital bed, would have told him a way to get Connor back, he would have done it in the blink of an eye. He shivered inside as he thought of the madness that had gripped him, that even now was just beneath the surface of his precarious humanity: rage, despair and overpowering grief turning him into someone he would have liked to pretend he didn’t recognize. Love is a terrible thing. Wesley had known exactly what he meant when he said that. Which meant he had known how Angel was going to react. Remembering the way Wesley had just lain in that bed and looked up at him as if he knew what were coming as Angel snatched up the pillow, Angel wondered if Wesley had always expected taking Connor to lead to his death.

He remembered Wesley gazing into his eyes and saying: “We know you’re a man with a demon inside him, not the other way around.”

Thinking of those bruises that fitted his fingers so completely, of the scenes from that videotape in which someone with his face had played such a gleeful part, he closed his eyes briefly and wondered if Wesley could look him in the eye and say that now, and that even if he did it would still have the power to convince Angel.

***

Fred knew she had been right all along and if they could just stop treating Wesley like a pariah and get him to the Hyperion, Gunn and Cordy and eventually even Angel would start treating him like a friend again. She and Lorne had never really stopped treating him like a friend. She’d been a little angry – okay a lot angry with him – about what he’d done and not telling the rest of them about it and that had come out in the hospital, but pretty soon afterwards she had been thinking that everyone had yelled at him, Angel had really yelled at him, and given killing him the good old college try, and worst of all he’d failed in what he’d been trying to do, which, for someone as conscientious as Wesley, must have been the worst punishment of all. And she didn’t see how they could just pretend they didn’t know this person who was their friend, or just stop caring about him overnight because he’d made a mistake – okay, a gigantimous ginormous mistake but still only a mistake – like he was a light switch they could just flick to the ‘off’ position.

He’d been at the Hyperion for three days now and she thought everyone was starting to be a little less twitchy about it. People weren’t checking with Angel and what his mood was before they mentioned Wesley’s name in something above a whisper – which she thought had to be a good sign. And Angel wasn’t getting that eye bulging thing he’d done before when Wesley’s name was mentioned. He was actually being pretty calm and just nodding when Lorne mentioned taking Wesley up some soup or some more of that honey medicine that smelt really liquoricey but apparently tasted more like very sweet fennel.

She knew things were being kept from her and she kind of resented it and was kind of relieved. She got that what had happened in that other dimension had been really bad but wasn’t quite sure how bad, as in specifics of badness, and everyone seemed to agree that Wesley wouldn’t want her to know, so although a part of her thought it was pretty dumb that everyone else could know something she couldn’t, as if she were some fragile little flower, or possibly just a really unworldly Texan, the other part did think it was kind of sweet that even after all the badness Wesley was still trying to protect her.

Charles was still having major problems about something and not talking to her about it when she tried to gently coax him. She had tried again that morning when they drove over to Wesley’s apartment. Lorne had said tentatively that he didn’t think Wesley was going to be fit to go home for a good long while and maybe they should sort of kind of acknowledge that and let the poor schmuck at least have some of his own underwear. Everyone had got really shifty when it came to mentioning Wesley’s underwear, especially Charles, and Angel had poured himself some blood straight after as if he wished it were whiskey. But the upshot was that she and Charles had driven over to Wesley’s place with the spare key to Wesley’s apartment that had been left in the Hyperion when his stuff was being packed up – and it was kind of freaky to think that key had just been sitting there when Angel was so crazy and wanting vengeance and Wesley was sitting in his apartment with that wound at his throat and no spyhole and no deadbolt on his door. Which they found out when they turned the key in the lock and went inside and found there wasn’t even a chain. She asked Charles if he wanted to talk about it and he had said he didn’t, and she’d pointed out for about the hundredth time that he couldn’t be feeling guilty about what something a vampire version of him had done in a different dimension because that was just crazy, and Charles had just looked sad and said, “Well, then I guess there’s a lot of crazy going around right now.”

It had been strange putting Wesley’s things into a cardboard box again but although she was so sorry that he’d been hurt by the spell he’d done and looked so ill and tired and with all those bruises all over him, she preferred packing his things into a box to take back to the Hyperion to leaving them for him at the hospital and warning him not to show his face again.

The first thing she’d seen on opening the door had made her stomach lurch and for a second she’d thought she had to just grab it and hide it so Charles couldn’t see it. But his legs were longer than hers and he’d gotten to it first. The letter waiting to be posted, with the stamp on it but which Wesley hadn’t dropped into the mail – on account of being busy in another dimension getting pounded half way to Abilene. The letter addressed to Lilah Morgan at Wolfram & Hart.

Charles had held it up to the light then said, “Screw it” and opened it. Which Fred would never have done but she had to admit was kind of glad he had, as she wanted to know what was in it too and whether or not it was something Angel could be told about.

Dear Mr Wyndam-Pryce,

Oh, that sounds so formal but as you’re being so stiff upper lippish with me I suppose it will have to do. This is an equally formal offer of a job, the same offer and the same job you keep turning down. My sources tell me that you’re almost out of single malt, down to your last bottle of Bordeaux, and haven’t restocked on those TV dinners that would barely feed a canary. Your rent does appear to be paid up until the end of the quarter but as you’re going to be eating the wallpaper by the beginning of next month, I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to keep being quite so Little Lord Fauntleroy with me.

As I said before, no one is asking you to betray Angel – well, no more than you already have – Wolfram & Hart just wants the use of that big brain of yours. As well as that six figure salary and full benefits package I keep telling you about – and as an Englishman, let’s face it, you are going to need the dental before too long – you would have full access to the finest mystical, occult and supernatural reference library in the world. Who knows, maybe the secret lies somewhere in our reference books as to how you could get Angel’s kid back? I haven’t checked it out myself – it is extremely extensive – so, somewhere at the back there could even be One Hundred and One Ways to Get To Quor’Toth. What do you say? Want to go on wallowing in your misery and penury as the outcast nobody loves or would you like to have a life again? Let’s face it, we both know that if you’re waiting for the good and plentys over at the haunted hotel to take you back again, hell will be freezing over first. There’s nothing so judgemental and unforgiving as the morally upright to the morally tarnished and you’re pretty tarnished these days, what with being Judas Iscariot’s understudy and all. Ninth level of hell ringing any bells with you, Mr Wyndam-Pryce?

Look at the enclosed contract, and if you’re clever – and all my sources tell me that, contrary to the appearance of recent events, you really are – you’ll sign on the dotted line, date it, and send it back in the enclosed SASE.

Yours sincerely,
Lilah Morgan, attorney-at-law

“Lilah the laywer-bitch has been trying to recruit Wes?” Gunn held the letter out to her in disbelief. “Can you believe the face of that woman?”

Fred went through the envelope and found the contract. Unfolding it with shaking fingers she was relieved to see that in the place where Wesley’s signature should have been he had written very neatly: Go to hell. If you need directions just ask the Senior Partners, I hear they own the freehold.

“He turned her down.” Sighing with relief she looked up to find Charles gazing at her in shock. “Well, I knew he would. Of course he wouldn’t ever work for Wolfram & Hart. It’s just that – I didn’t know he was going to take Connor so I’m feeling he’s a bit more of an enigma right now, and – there isn’t any food in the house, which is maybe because he knew he was going away and he didn’t want it going off or…”

“He’s flat broke.”

She followed Charles gaze around the apartment and had to admit it didn’t look like the kind of place where someone would be poor. It was full of nice things. Books and more books and yet more books and some weapons that were really interesting… and actually that was pretty much it, the books just made it seem kind of homely as they were all old and faded and leatherbound and smelt nice. It was neat and tidy too, everything folded away in the drawers, nice linen on the bed, and an apple mac laptop that looked as if it were pretty new. There just didn’t seem to be much in the way of food in the kitchen. She remembered Cordelia telling her that when Wesley had first come to LA he’d been pretty broke then and he hadn’t stinted on gasoline when chasing demons halfway across the country, but he’d been low enough on food and rent money. She wondered how poor Wesley would have to be before he’d sell one of the antique swords or that Bavarian adze or any of those musty leatherbound books, and realized that he probably would eat the wallpaper first.

“Six figures.” Charles looked at the letter again. “That’s a hundred thousand a year minimum, right?”

“The amount is right there.” Fred pointed it out to Charles on the contract. “Four hundred thousand per annum.”

“What?” Gunn looked at it incredulously. “That’s thirty thousand a month – seven thousand a week… That’s….”

Fred nodded. “Kind of makes it look as if he should maybe have been paying himself a bit more than he was when he was running Angel Investigations, doesn’t it?”

“Kind of makes it look as if Wolfram & Hart wanted the inside scoop on Angel really badly.” Charles picked up a book that had been tossed carelessly onto the couch and examined it. “Do you think this is his spell book for that hocus pocus he pulled just before he went to the other dimension?”

“No, that one’s over there on the floor where he left it.” Fred picked it up and then examined the one Gunn was reading. “Oh, that’s what she meant about the ninth circle of hell – Dante’s Inferno. You know, I really don’t like that woman. When she’s not trying to have sex with Angel on Wesley’s desk, she’s comparing Wesley to Judas and trying to recruit him to her evil law firm just because he’s at a low ebb and might do something crazy just on account of being so –”

“Miserable and isolated and full of bitterness and self-loathing?” Charles sighed and tossed the book onto the couch. “Let’s not take him that one.”

Now she and Cordelia were spending a couple of hours with Wesley. He tired easily. He seemed to have had pretty much no sleep in that other dimension; some fitful dozing in between bouts of being tortured some more, as far as she could tell; so it was important that when he was awake he was encouraged to eat something and do some ‘normal stuff’ as Cordelia put it.

Today, Cordelia had decided that ‘normal stuff’ should include him eating all of the meal Fred had carried up to him on a tray in between looking through a lot of fashion magazines with her to help her choose a new dress for a networking dinner she was going to. Wesley smelt pretty bad but as it wasn’t his fault and Angel was the one not letting him take a shower, she and Cordy weren’t mentioning it and were both trying not to wrinkle their noses or anything.

It had felt at first wrong, like doing something forbidden, and then awkward, and then much less awkward, to just follow Cordy’s lead and do what she did. Cordy had grabbed the left side of the bed and patted the right to indicate that Fred should take that side, and Wesley had just had to find himself sandwiched in between them with a tray of soup and some chilled fruit and ice cream – all soft things that wouldn’t hurt his injured throat – on his lap and Fred helping him to eat it while Cordelia held open pages in front of him and said ‘What about that one?’ a lot.

Wesley had clearly found it really difficult to cope with them at first. He’d looked all deer in headlights and not been able to meet their eye, but Cordelia had just kind of ridden roughshod over all the awkwardness by not admitting it existed and after a few minutes he’d loosened up a little and even managed a few hoarse whispery derogatory comments about the more frou-frou dresses and it had been almost like old times.

“What about the dress you wore to the ballet…?” he asked at length, and that really did make him seem more normal, except for his voice being so painful-sounding still.

“Borrowed,” Cordelia explained.

“The knack is hiding the labels,” Fred confirmed.

“Can’t you just borrow another one?”

“This kind of gathering they check for labels.”

Fred leant across Wesley to examine the magazine page, pointing to something that looked classical in deep green. “I like that one.” Cordelia examined it with her head on one side and didn’t look as if she really hated it, which was good, but didn’t look as if she couldn’t live without it either.

“Don’t you already have a little black dress of some kind?” Wesley whisper-asked.

“You don’t get it, do you? For once I have the perfect excuse to buy a new dress and you’re just trying to ruin it for me. You’re supposed to be bringing a masculine opinion to the proceedings. Now, do your job and pick one.”

Wesley examined the page for a moment and then turned it over, looking at each dress closely, then he pointed to one. “That one.”

Cordelia gazed at it and then said, “Hmm, that’s scary. For a start it’s the most expensive dress there. For another, it’s the one I like best. For another, I wouldn’t be seen dead in it.”

Fred frowned. “Why not if you like it? Except maybe for only wanting to be seen alive in it?”

“Lilah Morgan has one just like it.”

“Oh.” Fred looked at Wesley who looked a little sheepish.

Cordelia said, “So, I hear she’s been trying to seduce you to the path of lawyer evil?”

Wesley shrugged. “I think she’s bored.”

“How bored?” Cordelia enquired. “Is she just trying to get you to work for her evil law firm or is she trying to get groiny with you?”

Wesley looked at her nervously. “How would I know the difference?”

“Does she offer you pots of cash and lots of benefits while looking you in the eye or looking you up and down? Is there any lip licking? Does she lean in, lower her voice, speak huskily, let you smell her perfume, and look at your mouth a lot while talking to you?” Cordelia demonstrated as she talked, dropping her voice to a husky seductive tone and flashing her cleavage. She straightened back up. “Anything like that? And are you going to eat that ice cream because it’s my favourite?”

“No, and yes. Or perhaps…yes and yes.” Wesley frowned. “I wasn’t really paying attention. If it’s normal seduction technique for a woman to act like the playground bully who keeps pulling your hair then perhaps she was trying to seduce me.”

“Wesley, why do you imagine nasty people in the playground pull your hair if not as a come on?” Cordelia demanded. “I used to pull Xander’s hair all the time and we ended up dating.”

Wesley looked appalled. “Buster Phelps pulled my hair in the playground in prep school for years.”

“Oh.” Fred was intrigued. “Did you date?”

“Certainly not.” He looked indignant and like the Wesley of old and then a shadow washed over his face and he pushed the tray away. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling a little tired.”

Cordelia looked at him anxiously but then tried to hide it behind a bright smile. “All the more ice cream for me then. Do you need to pee, because Groo is right outside the door and he would be honoured to be your bathroom escort for this meal break?”

Wesley blushed, darting a look at Fred as if he thought she didn’t know about men having to pee. “I can make it to the bathroom by myself now, thank you, Cordelia.”

Fred gathered up the tray while Cordelia gathered up the fashion magazines. Fred knew that Cordelia had told Wesley what she thought of what he’d done; not cruelly, just firmly, telling him all the reasons why he’d made the wrong choice and she was angry with him, but she hadn’t alluded to it since. Although there wasn’t the same warmth for Wesley from the others so far, Fred still hoped that people would get their old affection for him back eventually. He’d been so pounded in that other place and come back to them so close to looking dead, no resources left, all bruised and cut and hardly able to speak and not even able to stand up by himself, that she didn’t think anyone could go on being mad at him for long.

Cordelia confirmed her feelings by abruptly leaning forward and kissing him on the forehead, stroking his hair back from a bruise as she straightened back up. “Get some sleep,” she told him gently. “I’ll be in to see you later, okay?”

He kept his head bowed for a moment and it took Fred a few seconds to realize that he couldn’t necessarily deal with people being kind to him right now. He had to swallow hard a few times before he could lift his head and his eyes were bright when he did so. At the sight of his expression, Cordelia’s eyes immediately filled with tears too and she hugged him gently. “Don’t go away again, Wes,” she said. “Promise me.”

“I may not be able to stay,” he managed hoarsely. “Angel….”

“Has a lot of anger and grief to work through, I know. But he can’t stay like this forever.”

“He does have eternity at his disposal,” croaked Wesley dryly.

“Well, I don’t.” Cordelia stroked his hair back again. “I have one short human lifetime and I don’t want to lose any more friends.”

“Amen,” said Fred quietly.

Wesley snatched a quick breath and then looked up at them, eyes gentle. “You’re both very sweet but I –”

“Really do need to rest now. I know.” Cordelia rose to her feet. “Angel will come round,” she promised him. “You were his best friend. I know he misses you too.”

“So does Charles,” Fred said quickly. “He only doesn’t come in to see you more because –” She broke off because the truth was she didn’t know why Charles kept avoiding Wesley; would go out, like this morning, and buy him some home-made ice cream for his bruised throat but wouldn’t bring it up himself, it always being Lorne or Groo who dropped in to see if Wesley needed a hand that a woman couldn’t supply.

“I know why Gunn doesn’t want to see me right now.” Wesley looked down at his bruised chest. “It’s fine. I understand. I have a little trouble seeing him and Angel myself.”

“Well, you’re going to get over that,” Cordelia promised him. “This is a different world and I think we should decide it’s a new start as well. You could have died in that place. You didn’t. No thanks to you, of course, and your dumbass go-it-alone tactics…”

“Cordelia…” Fred murmured quickly, knowing once Cordelia got on that hobby horse she’d be riding it around for hours.

“Get some rest, Wes.” Cordelia carried the magazines to the door and gazed back at him; Fred looked at him as well and thought how fragile he looked, all bruised and thin and so tired. Cordelia held his gaze. “A wise man once told me that things are going to get better for all of us, and you know what? I think he was right.”

Wesley looked very touched for a moment and then rallied to say: “On the grounds that they could hardly get worse?”

Cordelia gave him a beaming smile. “Exactly!”

Fred also smiled at him, but more gently. “Now, don’t you feel better?”

Wesley’s smile was so faint and frail it hurt her inside but at least it was there and there was something other than sorrow lighting his face. “Indubitably.”

And then they left him to sleep and Fred found that she and Cordy were both closing the door very quietly and then leaning back against it before looking at one another sideways.

“Those big lunks are going to be friends again if I have to kill them all in the process,” Cordy observed.

Fred nodded. “Let me know if you want a hand with that.” As she followed Cordelia downstairs, Wesley’s tray held carefully so as not to drop it and wake him up again, for the first time she thought perhaps it might be possible for there to be an end to this strange enemy within feeling and just get back to Wesley being their friend. Unfortunately, like so many things, it all depended on Angel, and he was as unpredictable right now as…well, a vampire who’d lost his only child to a hell dimension….

***

Gunn kept finding himself drawn to the basement. He couldn’t explain it, and he knew it was illogical. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been around in Sunnydale that time when they’d met a Willow from a different dimension; sure, if he’d seen that, maybe, that redheaded kooky sweet little chick turned into some skuzzy vamp super villain, he could have bought the whole parallel worlds thing, but right now he was having to rely more on what seemed possible, and a hitch in the timeline felt more likely to him.

He’d seen the evidence all over Wesley; there was no question it had happened. And although he hadn’t been able to smell himself in the way Angel had – knowing exactly who it was that had scent marked all over Wesley like that – he’d certainly smelt sex all over him, and no one taking a look at those cuts and bruises and rope burns and brands all over him could think it was consensual. Maybe Wes had turned out to be not as much of an open book to the rest of them as they’d thought; maybe after all those nice surprises about Wes being a lot more use in a fight and as a leader than Gunn had ever thought, there had come the bad surprise of him being secretive and arrogant and stupid and a damned baby-napper, but he didn’t believe Wesley had been having this whole secret life going as some psycho sadist’s willing bitch.

He hadn’t been up there for a couple of days, not to see Wesley. Lorne was giving Wes medicine and Cordy and Fred were given him the TLC he certainly needed. He’d done his share on that first day when Wes couldn’t make it to the bathroom without help and as he wasn’t wearing any clothes it needed to be a male doing the helping. It had been okay at first. He’d helped him up, holding him carefully under the arms, not looking down, one arm around his back, knowing where all the worst cuts were because he’d helped bandage them, so doing his best not to hurt him as he helped him along, and then as they’d reached the bathroom, Wesley had slipped on the linoleum and he’d had to grab him fast. He’d caught him by the hips before he took a header into the bath and that’s when he’d seen the way his fingers were fitting perfectly over those deep purple-black bruises that curled around his hipbones. He’d only had an instant to stare at them in horror, this proof that his hands had been the ones holding him for so hard and so long while he was pounded against his will, and then Wesley had yanked away from him so fast that he’d slammed sideways into the tiled wall beside the sink, twisting around at once to have his back against the wall, chest heaving; and that was when Gunn had seen the panic in his blue eyes; imminent roadkill on the freeway at night with that sixteen wheeler bearing down on him and nowhere to run.

That was when he knew that he had done this to him. Charles Gunn. His damned fingerprints had proven it. And the panic in those blue eyes had been like a skewer to the guts because up until then he’d thought of the Wesley in that basement – when he thought of that scenario at all – and he’d been trying to think of it as little as possible – as quiet and bitter and untouchable, gritting his teeth when they hurt him, maybe coming up with a snappy put down that got him slapped around but proved that he was still intact. That was when he’d realized that Wesley had been dragged down there struggling and scared and not knowing what to expect. Because if one just stopped thinking about enigmatic throat-slashed baby-napper Wesley, one had to think about that guy who’d been so shocked when that bullet hit him, who was a bit of a dork, who had that silly grin, who fell asleep over his books, who was vulnerable and smart and a little bit innocent. That was also the guy who had tried to fix something he’d done wrong and had walked into a nightmare he had no preparation to deal with.

The double blow had hit Gunn so hard he’d staggered to the sink and vomited. How the hell did you deal with being beaten and tortured and…and that other thing…for days and days by two people wearing the faces of your closest friends anyway? Ex-friends. He had to keep reminding himself that they were ex-friends now. Gunn had run the water into the sink and then looked across at Wesley, who was still pressed against the wall, breathing quickly as he tried to get through the spike of panic, but looking at him with compassionate eyes as he realized that this Gunn wasn’t going to hurt him and that this Gunn was as freaked out as he was.

Gunn had walked out of the bathroom, asked Groo if he would go and help Wesley, and then basically run away. He hadn’t been back since.

And now he was in the basement again. Looking for clues as to how it could have happened. Looking for blood on the walls, he supposed. His fingers had fit into those bruises on Wesley’s hips and that meant it had been his fingers around the long slender neck of that other Fred as he throttled her slowly, choking her screams to gasps. Maybe not here, but it was here where Wesley had been found, outside this hotel in this dimension. He crouched down in the corner, wondering if there were chains here he’d never noticed, if he was going to find a stain that was Fred’s life’s blood. If it was a slip in time, not place that had happened….

“‘It didn’t happen here’.”

He looked up and there was Angel, sitting in the darkness, shrouded in shadows, a beaker of blood in his hand, looking broody and dangerous and…pretty much like a vampire.

Gunn straightened up. “We sure about that?”

“As sure as we can be.” Angel put down the beaker of blood. “It wasn’t you, Gunn.”

“You’re the one who said it was. That it smelt like me, and you know what? Looked like my initial burned into Wesley’s skin. And my fingers fit –”

“The bruises on his body. I know. So do mine.” As Gunn shuddered Angel sighed. “Except it wasn’t us and it was even less you than me.”

Gunn looked around for somewhere to sit and found an overstuffed armchair that had seen better days. Angel had a nice room upstairs and this place was something of a pit but he was spending more and more time down here recently. Gunn guessed he wasn’t the only one with avoidance issues when it came to Wesley. He sat down. “How do you figure that?”

“Because you weren’t there, not Charles Gunn. What did that to Wesley and to that other Cordelia and Fred, that wasn’t you, it was the thing that had already killed you. The other thing that had already killed you, I should say, because the first thing that killed you was me.”

“Not you.” Gunn sat up straighter. “Angelus.”

“Except I’ve been Angelus, and as well as him having all the memories of the human I used to be, I have all the memories of the vampire he still is. So, I know how it feels to hold a screaming woman down and rape her to death. Maybe not Fred and Cordy, but plenty of others. In any dimension I would have been the one giving you the good ideas about all the fun ways to hurt people.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that Darla told you some darkness was innate? That you could only become the vampire your human self could become? I followed you here, didn’t I? I’m working for a vampire with a rap sheet as long as a greyhound bus. Maybe that means I’d follow you anywhere, not because you’re my friend or even because I believe in you the way Wes always did, but because there’s something in that darkness of yours that’s in me, too.”

“If Wes had believed in me he would never have stolen Connor.” Angel gazed into the darkness and when he said that, with that look on his face, Gunn felt a kind of shiver inside, felt as if he’d liked to have a crucifix to hand. And then Angel looked directly at him and what he saw in his eyes was…hurt. “He told me that he knew I wasn’t a demon. That I was a man. He always acted as if he didn’t think I was responsible for what Angelus had done.”

“He doesn’t.” Gunn wondered that Angel still didn’t know that.

“But he thought I was capable of hurting my baby son.”

“No, he thought Angelus was capable of hurting your baby son. And, newsflash, Angel, we both know he was, that he is. If Angelus came back, who do you think he’d want to hurt the most? Who does he hate the most? You. What do you – did you – love the most? Connor. Wolfram & Hart had spiked your blood. How do we know there isn’t some kind of powder out there that steals away the soul a little bit day by day? They want you dark, not dead, remember, and they were planning to cut up Connor anyway, and they never gave a damn about the rest of us. They had nothing to lose in making you your demon again.”

Angel picked up his beaker of blood again. “If he really thought it was Angelus who was going to hurt Connor and not me, why didn’t he come to me and warn me that there was a prophecy that Angelus was going to re-emerge? We could have bought a cage. Brought in some magical help. Tried to work out how it was going to happen and find a way to avoid it.”

Gunn shrugged. “Or he could have taken the baby away while he figured out what to do next, hoping that would at least stop Connor dying, if nothing else.”

Angel looked at him with those hurt eyes again. “You think he was right?”

Gunn shifted uncomfortably. “No, of course, I don’t. He acted like an idiot. He should have talked to the rest of us even if he didn’t think he could talk to you. He should never have gone to see Holtz – that was just playing into the guy’s hands, giving him a chance to scope Wes out, work out what kind of man he was, come up with a strategy to trick him. And if he was going to steal Connor, he should have made sure he had some back up. How far did he think he was going to get in an SUV with a revolver anyway? Half the vamp cults in the city were after that kid. There was no way Wes could keep him safe.”

“I’m going to make him tell me what was different in that other world.”

Gunn wondered if now was the time and the place to tell Angel that he wasn’t going to let Angel hurt Wesley, and then realized that the vampire already knew that. “What makes you so sure it really was another world where it happened? He was here.”

Angel shook his head. “There’s none of Wesley’s blood in this basement, I’ve checked, and if it were in the future, if Cordelia and Fred were still in danger, he would have told us that. He only stayed here to make sure they were still alive, even though he knew it was irrational, he just had to do it. He’d do or say anything that was necessary to keep them alive. If he really thought we were a threat to them, he would have got Groo to take them somewhere else.”

“Are we sure that isn’t a good idea?” Gunn enquired. “Just to be on the safe side?”

“If you really want to be on the safe side, Gunn, you could always stake me.”

Gunn snatched a breath because it wasn’t as if it hadn’t occurred to him.

Angel continued quietly: “I know what you think. That you’re working with a ticking time bomb every day, and it’s true. That’s why I have to know that you all know that. And that you’ll act accordingly.”

“What, like believing it’s possible for you to turn into Angelus and kill the baby son you love so much?”

Angel’s turn to snatch a breath even though he didn’t actually need it. “I don’t blame Wesley for taking my son. I blame Wesley for losing him.”

“That wasn’t what you were screaming at him in the hospital.”

“I didn’t try to smother him because he hurt my feelings, Gunn.”

Gunn sighed and ran a hand over his head. It felt like his palm touching his warm smooth skin, there was that familiar slight sandpapery friction of his callused palm brushing his freshly-shaven scalp. But there were those bruises on Wesley’s hips. “Maybe someone with a lot more magical mojo than us needs to go over that spell Wes cast. Check out the specifics.”

“I’ve already faxed it to Giles and Willow. Asked them to take a look at it.”

“You can use a fax machine?”

“Well, no, okay, I got Cordy to do it.”

“What did they say?”

“They’re still checking but Giles said that Wesley is probably the best source for translating that language. Apparently he got straight As in demonic linguistics from the age of thirteen up. Probably because Daddy used to lock him under the stairs if he got anything from an A minus down.”

“Giles said that?” Gunn looked up in shock.

“Wesley said that, or the demon who was reading his mind said it for him. ‘All those hours locked under the stairs and you’re still not good enough. Not good enough for Daddy. Not good enough for the Council.’ ”

Gunn shook his head. “Man, Wes needs therapy.”

“The Angelus on the tape said the other Wesley is beyond therapy. No way back for him. Ours is only still with us because he didn’t see what was done to Cordy and Fred.”

‘Ours’. Gunn noticed that and wondered if Angel had too. If it was a slip of the tongue or the beginning of a thaw. “When I think about that – what we could do to them – I think I should stake you and me, just to be on the safe side.”

Angel said quietly, “It’s one way to be sure. Not you. You can’t go evil unless I turn you. And I can’t turn you if I’m not here to do it.”

Gunn stared at him in disbelief. “You’re not serious? Angel, that’s crazy. We all know the risks. We’ll be on our guard.”

Angel got to his feet. “Wesley has to tell me what was different in that world. He has to tell me what made that other Angel become Angelus again. On the tape – the Angelus there, he talked about the Wesley from that dimension a lot, and he said he was sweet and innocent and he trusted Angel completely. He said it was always more fun when the victim you were torturing trusted you. If that Wesley trusted that Angel so completely then what sparked him turning into Angelus?”

“You think it was him taking Connor?” Gunn frowned. “You think losing Connor turned him into Angelus?”

Angel gazed into the shadows and there was that look again, the vampire look. “Sometimes it feels as if there isn’t that much between us. When they turned Darla right in front of me. When they damned her all over again. And when I lost Connor and I saw Wesley in that hospital bed…I think he nearly came back. Or else there is a darkness in me that is so close to being him it almost doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.” Gunn strode over to where Angel was standing. “Angel, let’s be clear about this. You doing bad things and Angelus doing bad things is the difference between someone with a conscience and a soul giving into some kind of darkness that’s maybe in all of us, and you becoming something that is entirely evil and without remorse. It’s the difference between trying to smother Wesley with a pillow and chaining him up in a basement so you can torture him for fun; it’s the difference between firing Cordy and raping her to death. Don’t ever tell me it doesn’t matter or I really will think about that stake first and ask questions later idea.”

As Angel headed for the stairs, Gunn called after him, “Where are you going?”

“To talk to Wesley.”

Gunn watched Angel walk up the basement stairs and thought how much he ought to go with him to make sure it was the reasonable Angel who went into that bedroom and not the pillow wielding one; and how much he didn’t think anything could make him go back into a room with Wesley while he still had those bruises on his hips.

***

The phone was ringing as Angel reached the lobby. Lorne picked it up, saying cheerfully, “Angel Investigations. We help the helpless. How can I help you, cherub?”

Angel wondered in passing if Lorne called everyone who phoned them ‘cherub’ and if so how much business it was costing them.

Lorne glanced across at him. “Yes, he’s here. Mood…? Kind of auto-brood for the most part. With occasional segues into gloomy or morbid.”

Angel took the phone from him. “Thank you, Lorne.”

“It’s Giles. Play nice.”

Angel waited pointedly for Lorne to move away and then put the phone to his ear. “Angel here.”

It was always strange to hear Giles’s voice; he was part of the life that was Buffy; the life he’d had to give up. He was also one of the few people left alive whom Angelus had tortured.

“How’s Wesley?”

Those clipped tones, so dispassionate and British.

No one else would have asked him that straight out of the starting gate. Angel got that Giles sympathized with what Wesley had done; would probably have done the same thing; that he decidedly did not approve of Angel bearing a grudge because a man with his best interests at heart had tried to save his child. Fine. In Giles World, Angel should never have tried to suffocate Wesley, and was being immature or unreasonable in continuing to bear enmity towards him. And there reasoned a guy who had never had a child gaze up at him from the comfort of a crib and who he’d promised he would always keep safe, only to have to watch him whisked into a hell dimension thanks to the intervention of a betraying friend.

Angel gritted his teeth. “As well as can be expected.”

“And how well is that?” Oh, Giles really wasn’t going to let it go, was he?

Angel could feel his brow furrowing with anger; knew Lorne was watching him from a safe distance. “Well, how well did you feel after Angelus tortured you, Giles?”

A silence that was possibly a little shocked. Giles took a moment to recover before saying quietly: “I had friends to take care of me after that unpleasant event.”

“Wesley’s being taken care of.”

“Yes, I can hear you’re welling up with compassion for him.”

Angel counted to ten before managing to say evenly: “Did you get a chance to look at the spell yet?”

“That’s mostly why I’m calling. But first we need to get something else out of the way. If you have no further use for Wesley in Los Angeles then I think it would be better if he came back to England with me. Far too many years have been invested in his training for him to be wasting his time in a country that doesn’t want him.”

“I’m not my Watcher’s keeper, Giles. Wesley can walk out of this hotel as soon as he can…walk out of this hotel.”

“And how soon is that likely to be?”

Angel felt his anger beginning to wind down; the way it kept doing recently, and he almost missed that simplicity of rage; when everything was a white hot blade in his mind. Apart from anything else it did at least help to dull the pain of his grief over Connor. “A few weeks, I would think. He’s in pretty rough shape.”

“Perhaps I should come and fetch him?”

Angel thought about Giles’s car. Thought of it outside the Hyperion. Wesley in the passenger seat; suitcase in the trunk. Giles driving away and taking that particular problem with him. In some ways it was very appealing. Wesley would be out of his hair and Wesley would also be safe from his wrath. And it would probably be good for Wesley to get away from this place of failure and pain as well. He had escaped to the scene of the crime when he’d got away from that other dimension. At the same time he felt a pang; because that would be it then, the story over, and perhaps there was a part of him that wanted them to go through this, come out of the other side. He had thought things were over between them, that they would never see each other again and if they did his only response would be to snap Wesley’s neck. But now they had been forced to interact again, he could see a time when he might be able to, if not forgive him, at least forget about it for a few hours; find some method of co-existing.

He stalled. “Wolfram & Hart offered him a job.”

“What? Did he take it?”

“No. But if they offered him a job it makes sense someone else might. He could start up again by himself, hire some people who don’t have a problem with what he did. Which would be most of the population of this city. He’s been here for three years now. He has a life here.”

Giles was crisp. “You were his life there, Angel. Just as Buffy was my life in Sunnydale. Wesley needs a cause. You were it. As you are no longer it, he needs to find another one, and for the sake of his mental health I think it would be a better idea if he found it in England.”

Angel could not have said why he liked the sound of this proposal so much less with each passing minute, but he did. “Wesley isn’t who you think he is.”

“No, I was forgetting he’s the evil monster who tried to save your son from being killed and who nearly lost his own life in the process.”

Angel gritted his teeth, knowing there was no way to explain how much it hurt that Wesley had looked him in the eye and lied to him, that all his caring words and support had meant nothing at all. He had trusted Wesley in a way he had never trusted anyone and that was how he’d repaid him. “I mean he’s not the guy you knew. Not…” Helpless. Useless. Pompous. “He’s much more capable.”

“Very capable of getting himself almost killed by you and then brutally tortured in an alternate dimension, as I understand it. He’s a brilliant researcher. Perhaps field work isn’t his forte.”

That stung him and he had no idea why it should but it did. “Wes is good in the field. He can handle himself.”

“Isn’t it all academic now anyway? The point is, you don’t want him, the Council do.”

“The Council fired him,” Angel retorted.

Giles was still crisp. “What do you care?”

“I don’t,” Angel said quickly. “I’m just acknowledging that whatever my personal gripe with Wes might be, he’s an asset in the battle against evil and in my opinion if you take him back to England you’re not using him as effectively as if you let him stay here.”

“So noted. Is there possibility of me being able to talk to him myself?”

Angel looked at the phone. “Not yet. We don’t have phone points in the rooms. It’s an old hotel. He can’t get downstairs yet.”

“And none of you possess a mobile phone of any kind?”

He hated that withering tone Giles used sometimes. No wonder the Irish had never liked the English. “Yes. Okay. I could lend him my cellphone. I’ll tell him you want to talk to him. Just leave it a few days, will you?”

“Why?”

He nearly told him, just spelled it out to stuffy, pompous Giles exactly why talking was a problem for Wesley at the moment. Then he remembered torturing the man; snapping the neck of the woman he loved, and the old familiar guilt kicked in. He sighed. “His throat was…bruised. It still hurts him to talk. Lorne’s been giving him some treatment for it. A couple of days it should be easier for him to talk. I’m not sure you’re going to be able to hear him on a cellphone anyway, he can pretty much only whisper right now.”

“Perhaps I should come up to LA?”

Angel decided to stop being defensive and snappy and look at it from Giles’ point of view. “He’s in no danger from me, Giles, but if you want to visit him you’re welcome to stay here. There are plenty of rooms. Just leave it a few days until he’s had a chance to recover from the worst of it. He’s not really up to seeing anyone right now.”

There was a pause before Giles said, “How bad was it, Angel?”

“Pretty bad.” He didn’t know how to put it. Wesley wouldn’t want Giles or anyone else to know. Giles wouldn’t want to know either. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

“I still don’t understand why he isn’t in a hospital.”

“Because he’s better off here.” Angel waited for a moment and then said again, “What about the spell?”

There was another pause while Giles obviously thought about whether or not to keep arguing for Wesley to be admitted to a hospital but then let it go. Angel suspected he was only letting it go because he was planning to come up here before too long and see how Wesley was for himself. To Giles he presumed Wesley was now the equivalent of a prisoner trapped behind enemy lines. Making Angel the enemy. He didn’t know if that was a human thing, a Watcher thing, or an English thing. When Giles spoke his voice was matter-of-fact, as if they weren’t also having this verbal tussle about What To Do About Wesley. “Well, it’s as you suspected – very dark magic indeed, the kind that he really shouldn’t have been dabbling in.”

“Wes doesn’t ‘dabble’. He knows what he’s doing.” And he had no idea where that came from; the same defensive unreasonable place that his other comments had come from, out of the blue, because who cared what Giles thought of Wesley these days when he was nothing to Angel any more?

It obviously surprised Giles almost as much as it surprised him. There was a longer pause before Giles said, quite gently, “I’m sure he does. But so do I and this is still not a spell I would have any business casting. No one would. It’s fraught with danger. Could cause irreparable damage to the fabric between our reality and a parallel one and runs a serious risk for whoever casts it. It’s magic used by vengeance demons and warlocks, Angel, not Watchers and wizards. Do you have any idea how he ended the spell and found his way back to this reality?”

Angel looked across at Lorne who was hovering shamelessly within earshot. “Did you ask him?”

“Tell Giles it was a geshurnik nut.”

Angel dutifully repeated the information only to have Giles hiss “The bloody fool!” down the phone at him.

“Not recommended by the Watchers’ Council?” Angel essayed.

“Not recommended by anyone human who doesn’t have a death wish. Those things are poisonous to one in fifty – some reports say one in thirty. I need to do some more research, Angel, but so far Willow and I are finding a few things that are worrying.”

“Worrying how exactly?” Angel looked at the pentagram on the floor of his hotel. He probably knew better than anyone how dangerous dark magic didn’t look so bad when you were desperate. He just hadn’t realized how desperate Wesley had been feeling.

“It’s very difficult to punch your way into another reality. It takes a spell of extraordinary power and, as I said before, it’s not recommended that anyone attempt it. A spell like that, however, leaves a kind of mystical vapour trail, and there’s a chance that someone could, with far greater ease, follow it back to this reality. Essentially, a doorway was created when Wesley cast that spell and although he has been pulled back through it and the door is now closed, it still exists where no doorway existed before. Willow and I want to look into ways of permanently sealing that doorway so nothing from the alternate reality can find its way into this one.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Angel looked up the stairs. “This nut thing – how does it work?”

“It’s an antidote to a spell. It will undo any spell someone has cast but it has to be ingested by the spell caster. Once the outer husk dissolves and the core of the nut is exposed, the spell is undone.”

“But it’s poisonous?”

“It can be. Taking one as a spell antidote is a little like playing Russian roulette.”

“But if Wesley hadn’t done that he would never have been able to get back. He wasn’t free to cast any spells. He was tied up in the basement of the Hyperion being –” Angel broke off. “Giles, I need to go. Let me know what you find out.”

“I’ll be sure to keep you informed.” There was a pause before Giles added smoothly, “I know how important that is to you.”

Grimacing, Angel replaced the receiver. He supposed there had to be someone out there who was entirely on Wesley’s side and not at all on his and it made sense it would be Giles. Then he was heading up the stairs two at a time.

There was no Groo in the corridor. Perhaps they’d decided Angel was no longer a threat or perhaps Groo was just taking a break. Angel didn’t care. It just made it easier. He didn’t bother knocking, it was his hotel and Wesley was here on sufferance, being fed and kept warm with food and heating paid for out of his pocket; he figured that was enough civility being shown to someone who had stolen his son.

Wesley started as Angel appeared in the doorway; easing himself into a sitting position and waiting there, silently, pressed against the pillows, for Angel to do or say his worst.

Angel went on into the room and closed the door behind him. “That nut thing you took? Why that way of reversing the spell and not a book?”

Wesley blinked at him in confusion. “What?”

“Were you trying to kill yourself or did you know what was waiting for you?”

“No. On both counts.” That hoarse whisper of his made him sound like someone else but when he didn’t make the effort to come across as the new tough Wesley who didn’t care any more what Angel thought of him, he looked just tired and bruised and remarkably like the old Wesley.

“So, why no spell book?”

“I wasn’t sure I’d be in a position to cast a spell and if by some chance that reality turned out to be worse than our own and was one I had somehow created I wanted to be sure it would be undone.” Wesley put a hand to his throat and Angel found himself automatically crossing to the bed and pouring him a glass of water. He handed it to him.

“So, is it undone?”

“Thank you. No. I don’t think I created that reality. I think I accessed it. Apparently parallel universes aren’t just theoretically possible.” Wesley sipped carefully and then looked around for somewhere to put the water.

Angel took the glass from him and put it back on the bedside table. “Still don’t understand why you didn’t think you’d be able to cast a spell if you thought you were coming to an earlier version of this world. What was the problem?”

“The spell not taking me back far enough and you killing me for stealing your son.” Wesley looked up at him defiantly. “But even if I were dead, the nut would have rotted down inside me eventually and the spell would have been undone.”

That hit him harder than he’d expected. He rocked a little and took a step back. “Oh. I see.” He didn’t sit on the bed this time, turning around to find a chair, giving Wesley a few feet of personal space. “Giles wants to take you back to England with him. Deprogram you as a vampire groupie and retrain you as a Watcher.”

Wesley moistened his lips. “I wasn’t aware that being your groupie was part of the job description.”

Angel waved a hand. “Figure of speech.”

“I’d prefer a different one.”

Angel looked him in the eyes. “You’re not in a position to have preferences, Wesley.” It didn’t feel anything like as good as he’d hoped when the man shivered. Angel sighed. “I need to know what was different there from here. I need to know why I turned back into Angelus in that world.”

“I told you, we’re already past that point here.”

Angel gazed at him intently. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

“Because I don’t like being called a liar.”

Angel gritted his teeth. “You are a liar, Wesley. You told me you were taking my son home with you for the night so he could play in the park when you had no intention of ever bringing him back here.”

Wesley faced him unflinchingly. “Would you mind people calling you a serial killer if you hadn’t, in fact, been one in the past?”

“Okay, I won’t call you a liar. Just tell me.”

“The Wesley in that dimension didn’t take Connor. He told Angel about the prophecy. He thought they could work it out together. The Angel in that reality lost his soul and became evil but disguised it at first. Well enough to fool the Wesley in that reality anyway. He killed Lorne – who overheard him humming. Turned Gunn. Took the other three prisoner. Killed Connor. With the now soulless vampire Gunn’s assistance he murdered Cordelia and Fred, and kept the Wesley from that reality a prisoner in the basement – where he was found and rescued by Giles, who had become concerned when Fred didn’t answer any of her daily emails from Willow – apparently in that reality the two were in regular contact. End of story until I arrived. The rest you know.” Wesley looked around for the water and Angel handed it to him, waiting while Wesley drank, wincing as he swallowed.

Angel shook his head in confusion as he put the glass back down on the table. “It doesn’t make any sense. What triggered me becoming Angelus?”

Wesley looked up at him, eyes a little less bloodshot now, and the left one opening better, but the bruises and shadows underneath them still noticeable. “It wasn’t ‘you’, Angel. It was another version of you in another version of reality.”

Angel abruptly put his hands on the bed head each side of Wesley, making the man press back against the wall as Angel gazed into his eyes. With his mouth only a few inches from Wesley’s, Angel breathed: “So, tell me the truth, Wes. Right now what are you afraid I’m going to do to you? Suffocate you with a pillow or make you bite it?”

Wesley faltered, face paling under his stubble and bruises. He licked his lips and then said hoarsely, “I’m not sure.”

Angel straightened back up and took a step back; hearing the thumping of Wesley’s heart from here and not enjoying playing the bully with this beaten up Wesley anything like as much as he would have thought he would a few days before. “Okay, so let’s drop the bullshit about it not being me. Why didn’t you taking my son turn me into Angelus but you not taking my son made me lose my soul?”

Wesley gazed up at him, swallowing painfully, voice that unfamiliar whispery rasp: “Perhaps because my taking Connor didn’t exactly make you happy.”

Angel thought back to how he’d been feeling the night before that terrible day; talking to Wesley in his bedroom, trying to express just how much Connor meant to him, how joyful it made him to have this gift from the powers, like a form of forgiveness. How perilously close to perfect happiness had he been before his world had gone to hell in a hand basket?

He looked across at Wesley again, really looked at him this time, and couldn’t help seeing the guy who had been his friend, who he’d pulled out of that burning basement, who had been there for him so many times in the past. “What were you planning to do? If the spell had worked the way you hoped and had taken you back to a time before you took Connor, what were you going to do?”

“Tell you.” Wesley looked down at the coverlet as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world, his voice that damaged whisper. “Tell you about going to see Holtz and translating the prophecy. Try to come up with a solution between us.”

Angel thought back to Wesley smiling at him from the bed, talking nonsense, looking so wrecked and so happy at the same time. “You almost told me in this reality.”

Wesley nodded. “Yes. Then the earthquake hit. It was the first of the portents the Loa had told me would let me know when you were going to kill Connor. Earthquake. Fire. Blood.”

Angel remembered the room shaking, the gas oven exploding, the beam falling and Connor trapped on the wrong side of it. Wesley just standing there in shock. Yanking him out of the room to safety and then Wesley gazing up at him as if he’d never seen him before in his life while Angel held Connor tightly and thought how close he’d come to losing him but hadn’t, and how maybe nothing was ever going to be able to hurt Connor, maybe he was still protected by the Powers.

He started to pace around the room, hating the unfairness of it. “Maybe you were right. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be born. Or maybe what I thought was a reward was actually a punishment. Maybe in every single reality I lose him. Maybe all he was ever meant to do was make me feel this bad.”

He turned to find Wesley watching him warily from the bed. “I don’t think Connor was a punishment, Angel.”

“Well, what else was he? You took him from me, Wes. You were my friend and I trusted you and you stole my son. How could that happen unless I was only meant to have Connor for long enough for me to suffer like this when I lost him?”

“I think life is complicated but we all have free will. There were a number of choices I could have made at various points along the path that led to Connor being taken in Quor’Toth. It just happened that the one I chose ended there.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what choice you made, it would still have ended there, did you ever think about that? I killed Holtz’s son. I killed so many men’s sons. I thought I was – not forgiven, never forgiven, but I thought I was being given some time to try to make amends. I thought Buffy was the proof that I could one day make up for what I’d done, and it cost me my soul. I thought Connor was here for a good reason; something wonderful to make up for all the horror Darla and I caused. Something to help make the world a better place.” Angel turned to look at Wesley, still feeling as if the man on the bed could have some of the answers. “But Buffy sent me to hell and you sent my son there. Maybe there is a God, after all, and he hates me.”

“Angel, there isn’t and He doesn’t.” Wesley’s blue eyes were unexpectedly filled with compassion for him; just the way Wesley had always looked at him in the past while trying to make him feel better.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Angel pointed out to him.

“I had no idea making sense was on the agenda for this conversation.”

Angel opened his mouth to retort and realized with a stab of painful disloyalty to Connor that he liked to see that half-smile on Wesley’s face; it made him look more like himself despite the raspy whisper of a voice. “You know there’s a good reason why we Irish never liked you English. You were always namby-pamby land-grabbing pompous little asses.”

“Why would a just god make your infant son pay for the crimes committed by the demon who stole your body?”

“Who said anything about a just god? I was raised as a Catholic, remember? The only God I ever heard tell of handed out punishment unto the seventh generation.”

“I think that was a metaphor for syphilis actually, Angel.”

He looked and sounded like Wes when he spoke like that. Angel couldn’t help a part of him thawing, the old affection he had for this man constantly threatening to break through. “You were the one who told me there was a design and that I had my place in it.”

“I didn’t mean that your place in it was to suffer for all eternity. To have things you wanted more than anything offered to you only to be withdrawn again.”

“But isn’t that what my life is? Whistler showed me Buffy. Said I could help her. Said that was my purpose. I looked at her and I felt something in my soul – a recognition. I knew I was meant to help her, to be with her. Have you seen much of me being with her in the past few years? And the same with Connor. I held him in my arms and I knew there was something better and greater than me that made my life worthwhile after all. And now he’s dead and what was the point in him ever being here if it wasn’t to punish me?”

“I made a mistake.” Wesley gazed up at him. “Connor is dead because I made a mistake.”

“But it was the same in that other world. You made a different choice there but the end result was even worse. You believe in higher powers, don’t you, Wes? You must do or you wouldn’t believe in prophecies. They send Cordy the visions. They pretend to be helping me find redemption. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re just part of making me suffer.”

“Maybe you’re paranoid,” Wesley countered.

“Maybe you can’t read a message when it’s right in front of you in letters of holy fire. You tried to change what you’d done, to undo me losing my son – do you want to talk about how that turned out?” Wesley flinched and Angel sat down on the bed, sighing. “Wes, if the Powers didn’t want you to try to change what happened to Connor how much clearer a message could they have sent you? Or do you think being chained up in a basement for six days as the plaything of two sadistic vampires is a good conduct prize?”

“I used the wrong spell. Or if you want to be Catholic about it, I’m not allowed to change what I did because I have to live with it as part of my penance.”

Angel reached across and moved the sheet down so he could look at Wesley’s body; the fading bites and bruises discolouring his skin, the now rather grubby bandages. He thought about the videotape he’d watched and closed his eyes. “Wes, I believe in paying for past sins. I’m still Catholic enough for that. I can’t forgive you for taking Connor, but I can tell you that I think you’ve suffered way more than enough for doing it. And I don’t ever want you trying that spell again.”

“I wouldn’t try that spell again.”

“Or any other spell to try and change what happened. You’re only alive this time by the skin of your teeth.”

“And Connor is dead.”

“Giles says you could have opened a door into another reality. What if you screw up and you end up getting this world sucked into a hell dimension? I used some dark magic to try to get him back and now so have you. We can’t do it again.” He gazed into Wesley’s face intently. “He was my son and I loved him more than anything in the world but he’s gone now. I live with mistakes I can’t ever fix every day. You’re going to have to do the same. I killed a lot of babies in my time. You’ve only killed one so far. If I can try to make amends for all the ones I killed; you can try to make amends for the one you killed. And I don’t mean the grand gesture that gets you sucked into another reality and tortured half to death, I mean getting up every morning and trying to do some good.”

Wesley swallowed hard and dropped his gaze and it was so hard not to feel those old emotions – protective and compassionate. “I could be lying,” Wesley said hoarsely. “About what happened in that other dimension.”

“You don’t tell lies to help yourself. You never have.” Angel got to his feet. “Do you want that shower?”

Wesley looked up at him in surprise. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll get some fresh bandages afterwards. I should change these sheets too.” Angel was almost glad to have something to do that wasn’t just about anger and grief. “Maybe a bath would be easier. You can sit down in it. I’ll run you a bath.”

Wesley kept gazing up at him in confusion. Angel thought about his baby and that empty cot. Thought about that videotape. Thought about Wesley in that hospital bed and the pillow pressing down on his face. “It’s going to take a while,” he said quietly, not looking at him as he moved towards the bathroom. “You know that, right?”

“Yes.” Wesley pulled the sheet up a little higher. “I know.”

Angel wondered if Wesley thought he meant running the bath or repairing their friendship – supposing it was possible to repair something so utterly wrecked.

He wondered which one he meant himself.

On some level he supposed this was another power trip; and the evidence that he liked power trips was what he was examining right now. Wesley couldn’t really hide it – or anything else – from him at the moment. But he wasn’t exactly getting off on the proof that without a soul he was an inventive sadist, or on this cataloguing of Wesley’s wounds.

Like the way Wesley’s chest hair was missing. It had been sparse before but there had been some of it; now there were shiny red patches of skin and those small circular burns, they went well with the smaller burns, the marks from lighted cigarette ends being held against the skin and the marks where they’d spread-eagled Wesley supine on that stinking mattress in the basement and dropped lighted matches on him. And on some level what had those two been except nasty little boys revelling in their own strength? It didn’t exactly take a lot of mental agility to hold down someone weaker and hurt him. No doubt Angelus would claim it was an art form – torture without maiming; the maximum pain for the minimum serious injury. He’d even signed his name with a flourish, that elegant ‘A’ he’d cut into Wesley’s skin. The vampire Gunn’s branded ‘G’ was crude by comparison.

He knew Wesley didn’t want to be alone with him and particularly not alone with him in the bathroom with Wesley naked and Angel looking. But even leaving aside the balance of power issues, Wesley wasn’t well enough to take a bath without supervision. So he had run the water, tested it, added more cold because even though Wesley was skin-deep dirty he was also covered in all those little cuts and burns and bites that weren’t going to be able to take really hot water touching them without hurting like hell; then escorted Wesley over to it and helped him to get in and sit down.

Wesley was sitting sort of hunched, knees up, arms around them, head lowered, trying not to act coy yet still having the body language of a teenage nun. He was clearly uncomfortable with having Angel around, which was only one of the reasons why Angel was currently sitting on the edge of his bath with a sponge in his hand.

He’d peeled off the bandages carefully, dumping them, all those soiled pieces of lint, mirror images of wounds now a few days further down the path of healing. Most of it was superficial, it was true; surface cuts and bruises and burns and welts; the lasting damage was more likely to be psychological; being made a victim for so long and so completely was bound to leave all kinds of mental scarring.

Sitting on the edge of the bath he began to sponge Wesley clean; justifying it to the angry murderous part of himself by pointing out that Wesley really didn’t like him doing it and it was a form of intimidation, and to the caring friend part of himself by pointing out that Wesley was too muscle torn and bruised to be able to sponge himself, and that Angel could see the wounds on his back more easily and so avoid them.

“I need to wash your hair.” He didn’t mention how dirty Wesley’s hair was, what unmentionable substances it was sticky with, or how there were dried flakes of cream-coloured residue in all kinds of places they had no business being, like behind his ears.

Wesley just nodded, hunching up a bit more. Angel ran the hand spray, testing it carefully to make sure it wasn’t too hot and then began to wet his hair, wondering if Angelus had water-tortured him; held his head under the water in one of the upstairs bathrooms of that other Hyperion. If they’d taken him from room to room or just kept him in the basement. The videotape had only shown the basement but perhaps that was where those home movie fans had set up the camera. And it had only shown four hours, of course, out of a possible hundred and forty four…. He couldn’t stop the shudder then, knowing how much pain Angelus could inflict in a fraction of that time.

Wesley looked up at him in confusion. “What is it?”

“Close your eyes.” He saw a flicker of panic in those blue eyes and added quietly: “So the shampoo doesn’t get in them, Wes.”

“Oh.” Wesley snatched a breath and then closed his eyes. His nerves were on edge; Angel could feel that in the accelerated beat of his heart.

He wet his hair thoroughly and then reached for the shampoo, hoping it wouldn’t sting any of the cuts on his back, focusing on what needed to be done as if Wesley wasn’t someone he’d recently tried to kill, as if doing this wasn’t reminding him of bathing Connor and the baby gurgling at him delightedly. He shampooed his hair; worked it in carefully, lathered, rinsed, repeated, just like it said on the bottle, keeping the spray ready in one hand to rinse away any white foam that might sting those open cuts. Wesley submitted to it, not really having any choice in the matter. It kept the balance of power between them weighted on Angel’s side; kept Wesley guessing; that helped offset some of his feeling of betrayal at being here in this bathroom with the man who had stolen his son. It wasn’t as if Wesley was enjoying the experience in any way. Wesley jumped like a nervous cat when Angel lathered his hands and began to soap his back; shuddering with reaction as hard male hands touched his skin. He was like someone in the dentist’s chair who’d had his nerve touched by the drill one too many times.

Hearing the hitch of Wesley’s breath, the flinch as Angel sponged his shoulders, Angel said, “Am I hurting you?”

“No.” A small hoarse gasp of a reply.

“Just scaring you.”

Wesley looked up at him in mingled apology and something that looked a lot more like submission than defiance. Being here, like this, stripped and exposed and wet, seemed to be giving him too many flashbacks for him to hang onto his brittle coping façade. For all the bruises and the stubble and the shadows under them, the eyes were too much Wesley’s eyes; the hero-worshipping boy looking up to him a little shyly and hoping he wasn’t going to be yelled at or fired or told he was doing something wrong; and his friend’s eyes, the man who had grown into a leader and yet still devoted himself to Angel’s cause, who told him he was as unique as a rare book – the highest praise Wesley, the bibliophile, could bestow. This was the person whose body was an emaciated welted mess of recent pain; deep inside him something still shivering faintly with the shock of all the horror he’d experienced; as if a part of him were still in denial.

Angel tossed the sponge into the bath and handed him the hand spray. “Here, you deal with those hard-to-reach places while I change the sheets.”

“Angel, you don’t need to…” Wesley swallowed. “I can do it myself.”

“Yeah. But I can do it more easily.” He went back into the bedroom, not exactly surprised to see that the door he’d closed had been pushed open a crack. He wondered how many of them were out there monitoring the situation; Lorne would have followed him up, perhaps fetching some reinforcements on the way. Groo? Cordy? Gunn? Everyone was still trying to protect Fred from the Too Much Information monster and naked Wesley would definitely come under that category.

He thought about humming while he stripped the bed to give an impression of enigmatic insouciance but realized in time that it would just give Lorne a chance to read how conflicted he was. The bed linen stank of the events of that other dimension; Wesley had carried the stench home with him along with the mental and physical wounds and that video record of his degradation. It had seeped into Angel’s sheets, like a crime coming home to rest, blood and the various bodily fluids that had been smeared on him. He couldn’t help breathing it in as he wrenched the sheets from the mattress; and it still smelt as if he and Gunn were the ones that had done this.

Even as he dumped the dirty linen and tucked in the fresh sheets, he kept seeing the bruises and cuts and burns, and it didn’t help that he’d also seen the video tape of Angelus with a cigarette between his fingers, blowing on the tip to make it flare orange before he pressed it into vulnerable skin, that expression on his face, concentration and a mild gratification at the way the body twisted in pain, the skin sizzled, and Gunn with a knife, slicing shallowly before licking off the blood, then slicing again, and again, letting the blood build up before he ran his tongue across Wesley’s wounds; a good flow that Angel could almost taste in the back of his throat; the two of them smiling at one another in smug satisfaction over Wesley’s shivering, sweat-drenched, shock-shuddering body.

With Wesley naked in the bathtub there had been no escaping any of it. He’d looked at the bruises, the earlier ones starting to fade slightly, the later ones still blossoming through the shades of mauve, blue, and yellow, ringing Wesley’s painfully thin wrists, and seen the cords cutting into his skin, his body twisting in helpless reaction, unable to bite down the cry of pain as Angelus sank his teeth into his thigh, or prized him open, or brought that belt down across his naked skin just for the fun of watching Wesley jolt in reaction.

They had done that to his friend; not for a few hours, like Faith; not for any purpose except that they enjoyed it; done it for days; trapped Wesley in that fire and blood nightmare where the only thing that ever followed pain was more pain, rape and torture and burnings and beatings; like an Inquisition victim that refused to confess. He wanted to stake them. No, that wasn’t entirely honest. He wanted to torture them first. He had his own demon, after all, he was the mirror image of that Angelus in the other world, of his own Angelus in this one, and he hadn’t entirely lost his willingness to inflict pain. So he wanted to stick a knife in that vampire Gunn’s guts and twist it slowly, wanted to break that other Angelus’s legs and toss him into a pit with a bunch of hungry dogs. And do it at night so he’d be alive for hours. Then he wanted to stake them. Or cut off their heads. Or set them on fire. And he couldn’t even admit it and so let some of the steam threatening to blow off the top of his head find a release. He wasn’t supposed to care, after all.

He channelled his rage into the wholly unsuitable task of straightening pillows and changing every single piece of linen so that nothing that had touched the body they had touched before their traces were washed from it remained. He even wrestled with the duvet cover, though he hated those things, missing the simplicity of blankets, changing that too, then gave him a coverlet so it looked like an old-fashioned bed, still, the kind that Angel preferred. Only after he’d finished did he realize he’d not only changed Wesley’s bed linen, he’d upgraded it. Done what he would have done if they’d still been friends, and given him the Egyptian cotton sheets and pillowcases; the red tasselled coverlet with the mirrors sewn into the crimson cloth.

On some level he didn’t want to access, in some part of his mind he didn’t want to visit, he knew that what Wesley had done when he stole Connor had come from a place of loyalty not betrayal. That it had been an act of love. Angel had always told him that he had to be willing to accept what Angel truly was; to keep a stake in a drawer; to protect the public from what he could become. Wesley had given up everything to try to save Angel’s son and it had almost cost him his life. And he had been staggeringly incompetent about it; but then he’d been running on no sleep and a nervous breakdown. Angel had stood there and watched him having the breakdown right in front of him, trying to help him and never glimpsing even for an instant the true cause of Wesley’s shadowed eyes and hysterical laughter. He’d had to make the Wesley who’d taken Connor someone else, a stranger he didn’t know, a monster he could kill with impunity; but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t witnessed half the steps that had taken Wesley to that place; finding him asleep at his desk, aware of Wesley locked into that office checking and rechecking his findings, more and more ground down and solitary and looking as if the weight of the world were resting on his shoulders. The uncomfortable truth was that the Wesley he had loved and trusted had done this; the Wesley who loved him enough to risk everything to try to save him from carrying the guilt of his son’s murder.

There was no way back for the Angel in that other dimension; he realized that too; there were crimes you could never come back from; the murder of innocents and family was terrible enough, but he had turned Gunn into the thing he most hated; killed Lorne, killed Groo; bestially murdered Cordelia and Fred, tortured two Wesleys half to death, and snapped the neck of his own son. Giving that Angel back his soul would be an act of cruelty only another Angelus could enjoy. The stake was the only thing left for him. Well, the hideous torture and then the stake were still looking good. He pulled back the coverlet and spread a clean towel on the bed so the ointment and opened cuts could ooze onto something that was easier to wash than his sheets.

Angel went back to the bathroom and found Wesley trying to sponge himself while also trying not to wince at how much it hurt. He flinched when Angel appeared on the periphery of his vision; a microsecond of sheer panic followed by that look of apology and embarrassment. Angel took the hand spray from him, squeezed shower gel onto his shoulders and then rinsed it off with the spray; repeating the process on his back and chest and those thighs with the bite wounds marking them; until Wesley began to smell less like a victim and more like – bizarrely – apricots and peaches.

“Who bought this wussy showergel anyway?” Angel looked at it in confusion.

Wesley glanced up at him, still trying to assess his mood. “I think it’s Cordelia’s. Apparently this shower has the best pressure.”

“You’re going to smell like a girl.” He finished rinsing him off then sniffed him again, Wesley flinching as he did so. “Yep. You smell like a girl. Which is still an improvement.”

“Can I go home?”

Angel was wrong footed by that, feeling stung until he realized how absurd that was. He regarded Wesley gravely. “No. You’re not well enough to go home. How would you buy groceries? You can’t walk further than ten feet. If by some miracle you made it downstairs and stepped outside your apartment building everyone would stare at you. A child of six could mug you with a water pistol. And what if you passed out and hit your head?”

“I’m not your problem.”

Angel kept gazing at him. “Yes, you are, Wes. Taking my son made you my problem. And even if I wanted to dump you in the nearest garbage disposal, Cordy and Fred and Gunn and Lorne all have different ideas. Just because it’s called ‘Angel Investigations’ doesn’t mean I get the casting vote. This is a democracy.” Something you could have remembered before you decided you were the only guy qualified to decide what had to be done about that prophecy.

“I thought it was more of a benevolent tyranny.”

Angel darted a look at him and once again there was his friend looking at him; under the cuts and bruises; behind the raspy voice and haunted eyes, there was a man he recognized. “Well, right now I’m benevolently tyrannizing your skinny English ass back to bed. You want to formulate an escape plan, you need to talk to the others; maybe they can smuggle you out in a laundry basket.”

“My last bid for freedom didn’t really go too well.”

He didn’t know if Wesley was throwing a challenge at him or just insisting Angel kept it at the forefront of his mind, that he was talking to the man who had taken Connor, so there would be no remembering it later, no sudden withdrawal of civilities, renewal of hostilities. No, Wesley, I haven’t forgotten.

“Well, that was back in the day when I let you use the front door. Now you have to state your reason for leaving in triplicate and apply three weeks in advance. All part of the whole ‘trying to avoid being stabbed in the back by my trusted friends’ new office policy.”

He almost admired and almost disliked Wesley for not flinching at that. The man just gazed at him before saying hoarsely, “Is that what I was?”

Angel returned his gaze unblinkingly. “You know that’s what you were. Do you think anyone else would have been able to walk out of here with my son in his arms? That’s what you took advantage of.”

Wesley dropped his gaze. “That would explain why it was such an easy decision to make.”

Angel left a few seconds before answering, trying to find a place of calm between that pendulum swing of recrimination and anger and something beginning to tug at him that felt like a traitorous impulse to forgive. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

Wesley gripped the edge of the bath, trying to get enough purchase to stand upright; doggedly stubborn about it. Angel stepped back and let him try; watched as Wesley lurched and staggered to his feet, then turned pale and flinched from what was clearly a very loud hissing in his ears. He’d caught his elbow before he could stop himself, holding him steady for the moment he needed to snatch a breath and the dizziness to pass. Angel snagged a towel from the radiator and wrapped it around his waist, knotting it above the bruise over his left hipbone; the towel went around him easily with room to spare. He put an arm around his back and lifted him out of the bath then set him on his feet because it was basically just easier, and the same went for helping him into the bedroom.

Wesley looked at the made bed and said hoarsely: “Coals of fire?”

Angel felt an unwilling spasm of liking for this new in-your-face Wesley. He wondered if it was as much of an act as that pompous little know-it-all thing he’d had going in Sunnydale to hide his deep-seated insecurities; if this was Wesley’s way of preventing himself from falling on his knees and begging for forgiveness. There was something in the tilt of his head that said he was damned well not going to ask any of them to forgive him for something that he thought he’d been morally justified in doing. And as long as he didn’t come right out and articulate that, Angel could probably keep the anger with him under control and even – yes, there it was again – feel that little twinge of admiration for this Daniel in the lion’s den.

“Yeah. I changed the bed linen to make you feel bad. Is it working?”

Wesley looked at him sideways, an under the eyelashes glance that was unexpectedly vulnerable, as was that whispered: “Yes.”

Angel automatically tightened his grip on his shoulders and found himself helping him to the bed with a gentleness that probably surprised both of them.

“I’ll get the first aid kit.” He didn’t meet Wesley’s eye.

“You don’t have to. I’m – healing.”

Angel still kept his gaze averted. “I’ll be right back.” As he headed for the door he heard a scrambling sound of people who had evidently been peering through the crack scattering into other rooms so he wouldn’t see them.

“Angel…?”

How many times had he heard Wes say his name? It still had power to move him; still made his name sound like someone who had all the answers, who could solve any problem.

“You don’t have to say it,” Angel said, not looking back.

“Thank you.”

He’d said it anyway. So softly perhaps only someone with vampire hearing could pick it up. Angel wondered how words could still have so much power between them; after the lies and the betrayal and the pillow how could two words still matter? But they did. He snatched a breath he didn’t need and opened the door into the corridor. Almost against his will he found himself saying, “You’re welcome.”

***

Gunn was waiting for him in the lobby – hanging around by the front desk looking simultaneously furtive and as if he were steeling himself to some great and difficult task. Angel checked the message pad for calls, saying over his shoulder: “That mystic guy must have done his stuff because his ribs aren’t broken any more, just bruised. I’ve strapped them up again. His lungs are fine, no coughing. The rest seems to be healing okay. Probably best if he sleeps for a few hours then try him with some more of that soup, maybe some ice cream.”

He noticed Gunn’s face; the expression of someone about to tell him something he wasn’t going to want to hear.

“What?” Angel demanded.

“I’ve been thinking, if Wes wants to go back to his place, I could go with him.” Gunn evidently expected Angel to say something and when he didn’t, plunged on: “He doesn’t want to be here and you don’t want him here so why don’t I take him home and stay there a few days until he’s back on his feet and –”

“Because it won’t be a few days until he’s back on his feet. It will be weeks. And what happens if we get a client? I call you, you have to come over here instead of being on the spot and meanwhile Wes is left by himself. If he’s here and we have a case, Lorne or Fred or Cordy can take care of him while we’re out.”

“I don’t like him being a prisoner.” Gunn faced him. “I’m not sure I can go on being a party to him being a prisoner, Angel.”

“He’s not.”

“What else do you call it when the guy wants to be someplace other than here and you’re not letting him go there?”

“It’s for his own good.” As Gunn looked unconvinced, Angel said, “So, you’re seriously going to spend the next month babysitting Wesley in his place when he’s better off here? It’s crazy.”

“Is he safe here?” Gunn gazed at him intently.

“Are you talking about earthquakes? Subsidence? Roof falling in? Demons invading? Wolfram & Hart trying to kill us all or…?”

“You. I’m talking about you. Is Wesley safe from you?”

Angel took a moment before answering, not sure he wanted to give up his current position as angry enigma, then he had to concede the point. “Yes. He’s safe from me, Gunn. I’m not over what he did but I’m over wanting to kill him for it. The moment’s passed.”

“I need to know you’re telling me the truth.” Gunn gazed at him intently.

“And when did I ever lie to you?”

“When you pretended you cared about Wesley’s welfare to get into that hospital room.”

Angel sighed. “Fine. Be like that. I’ve told you the truth. I’m no threat to him. And it’s all academic anyway. Giles is coming to fetch him home to England so the Council can reprogram him as a research assistant to some stuffy old fart of a Watcher.”

“What?” Gunn looked dismayed, and Cordelia, coming out of the office, shared his expression. “Is that what Wes wants?”

“I don’t think Giles is consulting him. He’s going to do what’s best for him. That’s what Watchers do, you know. Take it on themselves to do what’s best for others.”

Cordelia put her hands on her hips. “Giles can’t just take Wesley back to England like he’s lost luggage or something. And why would Wesley want to go back to England anyway? The food’s terrible, so is the weather, and his father’s there.”

“Well, tell Giles that because he’s sure he knows best.”

“Well, he’s not going,” said Cordelia in her best brooking-no-argument tone. “He’s staying right here.”

“Or at his place,” Gunn suggested. “His place would be good.”

“Were you planning to take Fred with you or just have conjugal visits?” Angel enquired. “And were you planning to share the one bed with Wesley or sleep on the couch?”

Gunn looked at him narrowly. “You know, sarcasm from a vampire – not a good look.”

“And if Wolfram & Hart want him as badly as their thousand dollars a day pay offer suggests what were you planning to do if they decided to just extract him to their offices?”

Cordelia looked at Gunn. “Much as I hate to agree with Angel when he’s in sarky bitch mode – he does have a point. Wesley knows a lot about Angel Investigations and Wolfram & Hart have evidently noticed. I wouldn’t put it past Lilah the evil bitch queen to decide that if Wesley won’t go willingly they’ll just kidnap him anyway. And right now – Wes not exactly in a position to put up much of a fight.”

“So, he stays here then.” Gunn looked across at Angel. “But I meant what I said, Angel. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’ll cut your damned head off.”

“And as I said, it’s all academic anyway as Giles is going to take him back to England.”

“No, he isn’t,” Cordelia said shortly. “There’s nothing for Wesley in England. This is where his life is.”

“What life?” Gunn countered. “As someone who used to work for Angel and used to be our friend?”

Cordelia looked across at him. “He made a terrible mistake and I’m not saying that anyone should just forget what he did, but he’s still my friend. I forgot that for a while because I was so upset about what he did, but him being back here has made me realize that I can’t just stop caring about him just because he did something that makes me want to –” She sighed. “And I don’t even want to do that any more. He’s paid for what he did and paid way more than anyone here – even Angel, if he’s honest – would want him to pay. If he goes running back to England it’s just going to make everything he did here worthless and a failure. I had to go back into high school and face everyone after Xander cheated on me with geek girl – well, Wesley has to stay here and work through his redemption like everyone else in this place.” As Gunn looked at her cynically, Cordy poked him in the chest. “And yes, those two things are comparable, smarty pants. Do you know how much of a plummet in popularity I took dating Loser Harris? And getting cheated on by Loser Harris that was like, social death. By the time my father lost all his money and they took my pony away, I was already on social skid row. So, don’t give me that what do you know about hitting rock bottom look, because I so do.”

Gunn sighed. “I don’t want Wes going back to England. He screwed up here. Everyone agrees he screwed up as much as anyone can – well, that means he has to fix it, and he can’t fix it if he’s in England. And I don’t mean getting Connor back. We know that can’t happen.” He glanced at Angel as if to check if this was news to him and Angel conceded the point with a shrug. “Any more than Angel can undo what Angelus did. But running away to England to escape from what he did, that’s not going to solve anything.”

“Tell Giles,” Angel countered. “Maybe he’ll listen to you. He certainly wasn’t listening to me.”

***

“Wakey, wakey, pumpkin pie. It’s the jolly green…demon with the soup of the day and something Cordelia made that actually smells quite edible.”

Wesley blinked at Lorne in confusion for a moment and then began to painfully attempt to sit up; his muscles still ached whenever he tried to move, his ribs creaking a protest while every burn and cut and bruise complained at him bitterly. Things were getting better; it didn’t feel as if he were going to throw up every time he breathed in; swallowing wasn’t quite so much like gargling with razor blades, and the internal bruising was starting to ease off, but he still felt kitten-weak after a sleep and his spine still seemed to have been put together wrong. Lorne seemed to know all that, immediately putting down the tray to catch him gently under the arms and help him to ease him into a sitting position.

Lorne slipped a pillow behind his back and took him by the shoulders, helping him sit back.

“Okay, sugar plum? Ready for your latest snackette?”

“Lorne.” Wesley gazed at the demon. “I never said sorry for… I am sorry…”

“That’s okay. I get that you were in a panicking place. Not to mention a stressed halfway to insanity’s parking garage place.”

Wesley thought back to that day and flinched. “Yes. I’d say that was a fair assessment. But I’m still sorry for knocking you out.”

Lorne put the tray on his lap, sat on the bed next to him and held out a spoon. “Apology accepted. For my part I’m sorry I didn’t read you a little better and give Angel a rather fuller explanation of what you’d been up to. I was a little freaked by the whole ‘running away with Connor and not coming back’ vibe.”

Wesley nodded. “Understandable.”

“You just weren’t the one anyone was expecting to go snap, crackle and pop, crumpet. We expected that to be Angel’s preserve. Guess we kind of took you being the sane one for granted.”

Wesley sighed and took the spoon from Lorne. “Well, that’s a mistake no one else will be making in a hurry.”

Lorne let him drink some of his soup, holding the tray steady for him as he did so, although Wesley appreciated that it wasn’t so much the practical use of the demon sitting on his bed that was so healing, as him sticking around to make friendly small talk. He appreciated that more and more, the way they could have just dumped the food on his lap in the manner of jailors with a criminal guilty of a particularly repellent crime whom common decency demanded they must still nevertheless feed; but no one had treated him like that. Cordelia had certainly told it like she saw it, in the manner of someone who needed to blow him up once and then turn a new page, and he’d appreciated her honesty and her willingness to move on, and Angel had certainly made no secret of how angry he was initially, but Groo, Lorne and Fred had all been careful of his feelings and gentle towards him.

Gunn, of course, had been freaked. And Wesley had been equally freaked. He hadn’t really expected that. Hadn’t really expected to be having this much contact with them ever again for one thing. He’d found himself in a basement with no blood and no mattress and no ropes or chains or unpleasant implements scattered around and realized that the strange sensation he’d felt which had seemed to be the gershunik nut doing its job at last had indeed been the ending of the spell; which meant he was in the Hyperion in his own time with an Angel who wanted to kill him; an Angel he thought he could hear approaching along the sewer route. He’d staggered up the stairs, clutching that stinking blanket to him, dragging his beaten shaking body by sheer willpower alone, still keeping a hold of the carrier bag the Angelus of the other dimension had put ready to take to the nearest mailing point, which he’d snatched at as soon as he felt his body beginning to undergo some cataclysmic change. He still didn’t know how he’d made it across the lobby and outside, only that he had been fuelled by a combination of the need to survive that avoiding Angel finding him here demanded, and the equally strong compulsion to know that Fred and Cordelia were still alive. He hadn’t expected that he would be having to gaze into Gunn’s eyes, or feel the man touch him, his face suddenly changed not just from that of a friend to an ex-friend, but from an ex-friend to a sadistic tormentor and back again.

“What happened to the blanket?”

Lorne looked at him for a moment and then got what he was talking about. “It’s incinerated. Burnt to the crispiest crisp and now the ashiest ash you can imagine. We figured you probably wouldn’t want it for a keepsake.”

Wesley nodded. “You figured right.”

As he went to put down his spoon, Lorne said, “Uh-huh, muffin. You need to eat all of those or there’s no extra tasty fruit sorbet for you today. And did I mention that Cordelia made the sorbet?”

“You’ve all been very…” He felt abruptly choked up. He didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to sit here and feel that he wasn’t worthy of anyone’s regard, or so painfully grateful for their kindness to him; didn’t want to get himself into a place where all he did was look at them with apologetic eyes and try to excuse himself for breathing while they rained their lofty beneficence down upon him, but he couldn’t pretend that they weren’t being kinder than he not only expected but felt that he deserved. And they weren’t doing this to make him feel bad or because common humanity dictated that they should; they were doing this because on some level they still thought of him as a friend.

Lorne said, “Guess what they’ve all been doing downstairs?”

Wesley looked at him in confusion. “Killing demons?”

“Nope. Arguing over who gets to keep you. Giles wants you for – well, not a sunbeam, it being England and all and so seriously lacking in the sunbeams, but to whisk you away from all this. Gunn thinks you’d be better off at home, with him guarding the door against incoming vampires with possible grudges. And Cordy wants you here where she can take care of you.”

Wesley moistened his lips. “What does Angel want?”

Lorne smiled, red eyes kinder than any horned demon’s had the right to be. “Well, let’s just say he wasn’t exactly dancing a jig about Giles’s proposal – or Gunn’s. And whatever he’s saying in public his aura is saying – well, pretty much ‘hands off my Watcher’.”

Wesley felt a terrible pang for what might have been – what had been for the best part of two very good years. “I can’t ever be that again, Lorne.”

The demon took the soup bowl away and put the sorbet in front of him, gently tugging the soup spoon out of his fingers that he was holding so tightly, and putting the clean one into them in its place, red eyes wise and kind as he said gently: “You may be surprised.”

***

The next few days mostly consisted of everything beginning to hurt a little less: physically, emotionally, mentally. Wesley realized just how badly he had been doing in isolation, when the only human contact he had was with Lilah Morgan turning up to remind him how alone he was these days. The way no one was talking to him had made it impossible to believe that what he had done was anything other than unforgivable. Even though he knew intellectually that he had been trying to save Connor from being murdered by a man he admired above all others, and saving Angel from carrying the possibly unbearable guilt of having killed his much-loved son, the fact that it had ended in such disaster would have been difficult to bear even without Angel’s murderous fury making it clear that, yes, he was being blamed for what had happened, that no allowances were going to be made for his intentions, his actions judged entirely on their end result.

Things were now very different. A day didn’t go by when he didn’t get at least one visit from Cordelia, Lorne and Fred. Groo daily stuck his head around the door with a bright smile for him and some halting greeting and question about his health. Gunn also tended to hover in the doorway, saying, “So, how are you feeling?” and then edging away quickly as soon as Wesley said he was feeling a lot better, thank you. Making eye contact still seemed to be off the agenda as far as he and Gunn were concerned but the man was being kind to him albeit usually before ducking and running. Cordelia and Lorne usually brought him his meals while Fred had taken to almost bouncing onto his bed to show him a paper she was mulling over that seemed to be a new and exciting attempt to explain sub-dimensional physics. She also had a few gadgets she was making that she suggested they could work on together when he was better, to add a mystical element to her practical know-how.

He’d been mildly amused by that. “You really want me adding a magical element to your working model given the way my last spell turned out?”

She grimaced and unexpectedly bent and kissed his forehead. “Don’t let’s talk about that, Wesley. I’m just glad you’re back.”

Cordelia had turned up with scissors, saying that he needed a haircut. “In fact, let’s be honest here, Wes, you’ve needed a haircut for six months. I just haven’t been brutal enough to tell you your hair looks like crap.”

“But I don’t want…”

“And what makes you think you get a choice? What’s the point in having a friend under house arrest if you can’t give him a make over he doesn’t want but really needs?” She dropped a couple of magazines open on his lap. “As a special concession, I’ll let you pick which style you want but it has to be one of these.”

Remembering her affection for Jude Law, he thought it would be most tactful to pick that style; it was also short and spiky and didn’t look too unmanageable. He had evidently made the right choice as she beamed at him, giving him the full thousand watt smile he had certainly never expected to see turned in his direction again. Pointing quickly, he said, “I like that one best and that one second best.” He didn’t recognize the second actor but his style was similar, just with a straighter line across the brow although still doing strange sticking up things that he couldn’t really imagine his hair doing. Cordelia, however, seemed to think differently.

“Right, I’ll improvise. Now – sink, so I can dampen it down.” She practically hauled him out of the bed, and he tried not to lean on her as she tugged him in the direction of the bathroom. An hour of spraying him with warm – and sometimes cold – water, snipping of scissors and much Cordelia walking around him gazing intently at her work while frowning in a way that made him nervous, and she declared her work done. She gave his hair a quick rub, flicked the towel around the back of his neck, and then took him by the elbow and pushed him in front of the mirror. “Tell me what you think.”

He glanced at her warily. “Don’t you mean tell you that I like it?”

She grinned. “Damned straight. And a ‘thank you, Cordelia’ would also be a good idea.”

Dutifully, he said, “Thank you, Cordelia.” They smiled at each other and it was momentarily just like old times.

Angel was still taking responsibility for helping him bathe, and changing the dressings on his wounds, although each time they were changed there were less that needed to be re-applied. They weren’t communicating much but Angel was being distantly civil to him. There was a sense with Angel that there wasn’t with anyone else that Wesley was not only here on sufferance but also not entirely safe, but Angel’s sometimes brusque manner was contradicted by his unexpectedly gentle handling of Wesley’s cuts and burns, applying ointment and bandages with as deft a touch as Lorne or Cordelia.

“Giles wants you to go back to England with him.”

That came out of the blue after a particularly long and awkward silence as he sat in the bath once again as Angel washed his new, shorter and, according to Cordelia, very fashionable, hair.

Wesley blinked water out of his eyes. “Oh.”

“Is that an ‘oh, how jolly, I can’t wait to pack my toothbrush’ or an ‘oh, I have to think about that’?”

“It’s just an ‘oh’ really.”

“Do you want to go back to England?”

“Not particularly. But if Giles thinks I can be useful there…” He didn’t meet Angel’s eye. “I’d like to be useful.”

“What’s stopping you being useful here?” Angel sounded positively belligerent and Wesley darted him a somewhat nervous glance.

“I don’t know.” That seemed the safest answer.

Angel finished rinsing off his hair before abruptly switching off the flow again. “Gunn wants to take you home.”

“I don’t mind going home.” Wesley cast around for the right thing to say. “Get out of your hair.”

Angel got up; movements still quick and more angry than not. “So, you want to go home?”

Wesley licked his lips nervously. “I know I’m taking up a lot of everyone’s time. I don’t have the right to expect… You’ve all been very…forgiving but I don’t…”

Angel wheeled around. “You fucked up, Wes. Big time.”

“I know. I know that.”

“And you did it here. To us. Don’t you think you ought to make amends to us, not the Watchers’ Council?”

“Yes, of course, if…” Wesley realized he had no idea what Angel wanted from him. He gazed up at him in confusion, aware of being naked, and wet, droplets cooling rapidly on skin still marked with yellowing bruises, healing cuts, still-shiny burns.

Angel turned around and looked into his eyes for a long moment; the connection between them like some tangible presence that had come into the bathroom with them. “If you go home someone’s going to have to go with you – take care of you. That’s one less person around if something comes up.”

“I can manage by myself.”

“No, you can’t.” Angel picked up a towel. “And let’s review the last two things you tried to do by yourself, shall we, Wesley?”

Wesley flinched and ducked his head. He could imagine standing up to Angel and sometimes even managed it, but he couldn’t look at the man now without seeing the way he had smiled at Connor, the love he’d had for that baby; the baby Wesley had lost.

“Come on.”

Wesley looked up to see Angel shaking out the towel and obediently tried to struggle to his feet. Angel’s fingers closed on his arm to steady him, helping him step out of the bath, and then the towel was wrapped around him. It was soft and warm from the radiator and felt so good against his still tender skin. Angel gave his hair another rub with a different towel. In a different tone, he said, “I’m just saying that if you’re here we can take care of you without splitting our forces. And why can’t you be useful in LA?”

“I’ll do whatever you want.” That came out much too breathless and spineless but he couldn’t help himself; sometimes the urge to grovel for forgiveness could only be beaten down by a tremendous effort of will.

“What do you want, Wesley?”

He took a deep breath and faced the man. “If I thought it were possible for you to ever…take me back, I’d like to stay here and be useful. I know it can never be the way it was before.”

“No. It can’t.” Angel seemed to be trying to pick his words with care. “But it can be what it is from now on. Which is – whatever we choose to make it, I suppose.”

Wesley wasn’t sure what Angel meant by that and didn’t feel quite prepared to ask. He wondered if they would ever feel like equals again; almost wishing that he had just gone to England, severed all ties with these people; walked off in high dudgeon and told himself that he didn’t owe them anything any more. Except he owed Angel the son he’d stolen and that was something he could never replace.

Angel helped him limp back to the clean bed with the clean sheets and the fresh towel on it, the first aid kit laid out next to it ready for Angel to strap up his ribs again and put ointment on the stubborn last few cuts and burns.

Wesley darted a glance at him. “I want to be useful.”

As if he hadn’t spoken, Angel said, “We’re still doing the same things here. Cordy gets the visions. Gunn, Groo and I go out and slice and dice it. A few times it would have been useful to know what we’re up against. Fred’s been trying but – half your books aren’t even in English, Wes. What language is that old red one with the weird pictures?”

“Geshundi.”

“Just saying, there’s a few times we could have done with your help. What’s the deal with Tharlock demons and the spitting in your eyes thing?”

“It’s a venomous bile, not unlike the poison of the spitting cobra. It can cause blindness if it’s not washed out quickly with condensed milk.”

“Condensed milk?” Angel looked at him in disbelief. “We paid fifty bucks in Meg’s for some special de-blinding lotion she said Gunn needed.”

“Condensed milk is actually better. I always kept a tin of that and black treacle in the back of the cabinet in the office. The treacle is the best antidote to a Hefraxan bite. Magic shops will always try to sell you that overpriced Guntorian Night – “

“Nightshade Elixir.” Angel pulled a face. “Meg stung us for a bottle of that as well. Said there was a nest of Hefraxans down by the railway.”

“They usually nest near running water. Interestingly it appears to be due to a superstition on their part about vampires not being able to cross it. If you put black treacle on a Hafraxan bite it works as an antidote to the poison. It usually reduces the swelling within an hour or so.” Wesley sat down on the bed carefully. “In the back of Coolidge’s Common Demonic Remedies I’ve written down a list of the household supplies one can use as an antidote to common venomous or semi-venomous bites.”

“Okay – and this is why you’d be more useful here than over in England where they don’t even fight demons, they just…read about them.”

“We do have demons in England, Angel.”

“So, how many demons had you killed before you came to Sunnydale?”

Wesley conceded the point with a shrug. “None.”

“We have more demons than we know what to do with here and we need informed…information about them.”

“If I can be useful here of course I’ll stay.” Wesley wondered if Angel really did not know that.

Angel walked over to the sideboard and moved some of the ornaments around. “I’m not going to hurt you. Gunn thinks I’m…just biding my time.”

Wesley watched him carefully. “Well, revenge supposedly is a dish best eaten cold.”

Angel spun around. “I was angry, Wesley. You stole my son. He ended up in a hell dimension because of you. I wanted to hurt you as much as you’d hurt me. I wanted to do what you’d done and look into your eyes and pretend to be something I wasn’t…” He looked away. “But, that was then – this is now. I have people I’m responsible for. If you stay here I need to know that you’re going to be looking out for them. That I can trust you to try to keep them safe.”

“I will certainly do my best.”

Angel looked at him again. “I trusted you with my son. That’s more trust than I have left. But despite everything that’s happened I do believe you’d do what you could to keep Cordelia and Fred safe.”

Wesley inclined his head. “I would. But I can understand you not believing that after what happened.”

“So, will you do it?”

Wesley wondered if he had missed a page of this conversation. “Do what?”

Angel rolled his eyes. “Research, Wes. For us?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay.” And that actually looked like a hint of a grin from Angel, and there was something almost jaunty about his step as he came back to the bed. “Let’s get these ribs strapped up.”

Wesley couldn’t help thinking that if what Angel was aiming for in their interaction with one another at the moment was to constantly wrong foot him and keep him guessing that he was certainly managing that very well indeed.

***

It was strange how easy it was to fall into this new pattern. The office was no longer his, of course, even supposing he had been strong enough to walk to it. Nothing here was ‘his’. His books had been pretty much confiscated and as he’d bought them as research tools for Angel Investigations, and Angel Investigations was still continuing without him that seemed fair enough. He was most certainly no longer the man in charge; just the resident patient. But as well as feeding him and helping him to shower and binding up his healing wounds, the others were also starting to allow him to be useful.

“Wes – five claws, dorsal ridge, three horns and really big… any ideas?”

That was Gunn, carrying a selection of books which he offered to Wesley hopefully as he burst into his door without knocking.

Wesley was more pleased than not about the ‘without knocking’ thing; it suggested Gunn was getting slightly less freaked about the prospect of being around him.

“Between six and eight feet or between eight and ten feet tall?” He helped Gunn to stack the books on the bed around him, reaching for a pen and the notebook Angel had left for him a few days earlier.

“Cordy…?” Gunn went to the door to shout down the question then came back to the bed. “She says her visions don’t actually come with a measuring stick, dumbass.”

Wesley barely concealed a grin. “Let’s start with the Gefryllg family and see if anything matches her description. Worry about whether we’re dealing with the major or minor sub-species after we’ve identified it.”

“If that means I don’t have to ask her any more questions when she’s crabby, I’m all over that idea.”

“Are she and Groo not…?” Wesley asked diffidently. He wasn’t sure if he was still included in talking about their private lives. He was certainly very careful never to ask Gunn or Fred anything about their love life.

“Damned vision turned up on her day off just before the moment of truth. You bet she’s crabby.” Gunn held out a book pathetically. “Where do I look?”

Wesley took it from him, turned to the section that would deal with the most likely demons and then handed it back.

They researched together, occasionally calling down to Cordelia to ask her questions about her vision, Wesley neatly listing the demons that were possibilities and then crossing them off as their research revealed them to have the wrong physical characteristics or habits to be a threat.

After about an hour of passing books between each other, turning pages, cross-referencing, mostly in a surprisingly companionable near-silence, Gunn got up and closed the door then came back to the bed.

Wesley wondered if he was now going to hear from Gunn all the reasons why Wesley was a screw-up.

“Wes, are you okay staying here?”

Wesley blinked at him in confusion. “In the hotel?”

“In Angel’s hotel. After what he nearly did to you in the hospital. Would you rather be home?” As Wesley didn’t immediately say anything, Gunn said, “Because I can take you home. If that’s what you want. Stay there with you until you’re back on your feet again. If you don’t want to be here. If Angel’s…” He gritted his teeth. “Is he bullying you?”

“No.” Wesley’s eyes widened. “He’s – been very kind to me.”

Gunn looked at him sadly. “Are you just saying that because you don’t trust me? Do you think I’m going to report back to him?”

“No.” And the thought had never crossed his mind. “Of course, I trust you, Gunn, it’s just that… He’s angry, yes. He doesn’t pretend otherwise. But he hasn’t… I want to stay here. I want to be useful.”

“I know he can threaten you without laying a finger on you. We both know how long he needs to snap someone’s neck. I need to know you’re not a prisoner. That I’m not just going on downstairs answering the phone like nothing’s wrong when all the time… Like some spineless son-of-a-bitch neighbour not calling social services when the kid next door never stops crying.”

“Gunn, I swear it isn’t like that. He asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to stay here and help. Is that okay with you…?” He looked at him uncertainly; not really sure about Gunn’s opinion of the proceedings.

“Yeah. Of course.” Gunn sighed in relief. “Okay, just needed to know…”

“It’s appreciated.” Wesley swallowed, any talk of that night making his throat hurt, as if the gash were going to open up again, his blood spill. “I never thanked you for saving my life. You and Fred – you found me.”

“Yeah. Took too damned long. That bitch Justine…” Gunn shook his head then glanced at Wesley. “About what went down in that other dimension…? Are we…? Are we good?”

“Of course.” Wesley had to admit Gunn was surprising him today. “It was nothing to do with you. The Gunn in that dimension was already dead before I got there.” He snatched a breath and then made a vague gesture between his chest and Gunn’s. “Are we…okay?”

Gunn nodded. “Yeah, English, we’re good. You fucked up. You nearly died. You tried to fix it. You nearly died again. Shit happens. I’m sorry so much of it happened to you. Just don’t be going too…you know…brainy boy around Fred. Makes me look bad. Could you at least pretend you don’t know what she’s talking about when she’s spouting all that physics trans-dimensional sub-space stuff?”

Wesley smiled faintly. “I really don’t understand all of it.”

Gunn sighed and straightened up. “I guess I’ll just have to hope she ain’t dating me for my mind.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your mind, Charles.” Wesley frowned at the thought that he didn’t know that. It stung that Fred had picked Gunn. It had felt wrong to him and it still did; it probably always would; if he were honest; but it still bothered him to hear Gunn talking about himself as if he lacked intelligence. Book-learning was something Wesley and Fred had in common and Gunn and Fred did not; intelligence was common to all of them. “The fact you’re still alive when you were living on the streets fighting vampires at an age when I was worrying about getting all my prep done rather proves it, I would have thought.”

Gunn made to answer and then noticed the page upon which the book had fallen open. “Hey – is this…?”

Wesley craned his neck to look and then beamed at Gunn. “Five claws. Three horns. A Xakanal Demon – extremely violent and aggressive, the horns are venom-tipped and the claws can rip apart metal, feeds on human flesh, particularly the young. As candidates go for a demon that’s nesting by a primary school… I think you’ve found it. Can you take the book to Cordelia?”

Gunn grabbed the book and was halfway to the door before he said, “You okay? You need anything?”

“Gunn, I can get to the bathroom by myself now.” Wesley didn’t add that he sometimes had to sit down halfway when the buzzing in his ears became too loud and certainly did a lot of clinging to walls. The fact was he could do it and he was proud of it.

“Okay – maybe tonight we can have take out? You want a game of Risk?”

Wesley realized there was a real chance he was going to get teary-eyed if Gunn didn’t leave soon. “That would be…fun.” As Gunn headed for the door he felt a terrible pang of loss and anxiety; realizing that this was how it must have been for Cordelia when he and Gunn were going off to fight the monsters in her visions together. This, too, had been his inheritance, because this was what Watchers did, waited to find out if when the dawn came around again, they would still have a Slayer to Watch for. “Be careful,” he added quickly. “They’re very nasty creatures. Be sure to read everything it says about them in Rheinhardt’s. I think some ground up ivy leaf toadflax may be efficacious in confusing it when you first enter its lair. Check in Rheinhardt’s – oh, and there’s some of the powder you’ll need in the back of the cupboard in the office…”

Gunn paused in the doorway to give him a fond smile. “Hey, a few more weeks and you’ll be out there mixing it with us again.”

Wesley had to swallow a lump in his throat at the look on Gunn’s face. “Won’t that be jolly?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t miss the entrails splattering on your favourite shirt? Not to mention the many opportunities demon hunting presents for dying a horrible painful death?”

“Well, when you put it like that… I’ll be counting the days.” Wesley realized that losing any of these people would be unbearable; and that was also what had turned that other Wesley in the other dimension into a basketcase. Not just witnessing what had happened to Cordelia and Fred, but losing Gunn and Angel. There had been no one left for him at all by the end of it. “You will be careful? Xakanals are…”

“Not going to invite us in for milk and cookies? Don’t tend to go in much for the rescuing of fluffy kittens? You think I’m not safe without you there to nag me on the job, Wes?”

Wesley conceded the point with a sigh. “No. I admit you are fully able to dismember scaly demons without me holding your hand.”

“Cause I was thinking if you did think that, the best way to help me out would be to get better so you can come along, right? So, why don’t you work on that while I go get me a Xakanal horn for my collection.”

“You can’t touch the horn, it’s poisonous!”

Gunn grinned at him, a real old-fashioned wind up grin. “Your buttons are so easy to push.” He held up the book, with his finger marking the page, showing he was indeed intending to do a little research. “I’ll be back later – in one piece – and you are so going to get your ass kicked at Risk.”

Then Gunn was gone, the door closed gently behind him, and Wesley was left alone in a room that somehow didn’t feel anything like as lonely as it felt even an hour before.

***

Angel had to admit he was feeling hurt. It wasn’t that he wanted everyone to hate Wesley forever, but the man had stolen his son. He knew everyone hadn’t just forgotten about Connor, but he did worry that the baby had maybe receded for them a little, like a dream.

This morning as he came into the lobby he found Fred preparing Wesley’s breakfast tray. And he was glad the man was getting breakfast, he really was. He’d always been too skinny and six days of being starved by sadistic torturers hadn’t done a lot to help with that problem. So, it was fine that Wesley got the cloth napkin and the good cutlery, and the wholemeal toast he liked best, all six slices of it – so he guessed Fred was planning to have breakfast with him – and it was even okay about the little pot of English marmalade and the pat of butter and English Breakfast tea – made in a pot because the flavour was so much nicer according to Wesley although frankly Angel had never been able to tell the difference – but did he really need that little vase with the flowers in it as well?

He tried not to look too hurt and reproachful but Fred must have seen his expression because she immediately looked guilty and tried to shield the tray with her arm. “Oh, I was just… you know… because his room is kind of dark and he can’t… get out much…” she trailed off lamely.

“It’s fine.” Angel tried not to sound as if he’d just been kicked, despite feeling that way. “You could try eggs another day. He likes eggs.”

Fred wordlessly lifted up the top of the little metal covered platter he hadn’t noticed until then with the scrambled egg in it. She gestured vaguely at the kitchen. “There’s all those little pans and things and it seems a shame to waste it…”

“You should take it to him while it’s hot.” He forced a smile onto his face and then went into the office, feeling unloved. It wasn’t as if he could really enjoy scrambled eggs or marmalade on toast or freshly-brewed tea anyway; and it wasn’t as if people hadn’t been full of sympathy for him over the loss of Connor. Everyone knew what it had done to him and –

He found Fred squeezing his arm. “Angel, you know we haven’t forgotten about Connor, don’t you? That everyone knows you’re still hurting? And how much we appreciate you not… you know, how much we appreciate you being good to Wesley. It’s just that he’s our friend too…”

He felt a lot better. “It’s fine.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Take him his breakfast.” It was only once she was out of earshot that he found himself thinking ‘our friend too’? As if you’re my friend and his friend but I’m not his friend? He was my friend first. He wasn’t quite sure when Wesley had been hijacked by everyone else. Okay, Cordelia had liked him first, but Wesley and Gunn hadn’t even liked each other the first time they met – well, not the first time because Wesley had been unconscious then –

Flip side of vampire perfect recall; the way the bad memories could just come rushing back in full sensaround just when you wanted them least. Smoke and flames and Wesley lying there so scarily still. The spike of terror at the thought that he’d lost him too. Turning him over to look at his blood-stained face, listening for a heartbeat and hearing it, faint but there.

He was still reeling from that unwelcome memory as Gunn walked into the lobby, whistling and carrying a bundle of mail, some of which actually looked interesting. Angel looked up hopefully. “We’ve got mail? Mail that isn’t just bills?”

Gunn came over to the front desk. “No, this is Wes’s mail. Thought I may as well pick it up for him on my way to work. He gets cool stuff, look – weapons catalogue, musty old book catalogue, musty old book auction catalogue, magic ingredients catalogue, another weapons catalogue, another book catalogue, and something that looks like it could be an invitation to a seminar on something about crypto-zoo-something or other.”

“How can you tell?” Angel took the mail from him and noticed that most of the catalogues were in see-through plastic cases or had a stamped return address on the envelope usually with a little logo showing a book or interesting weapon of some kind. For a moment there he’d thought Gunn’s detective abilities had just sky-rocketed.

“Held it up to the light,” Gunn admitted. “Hey, I needed to check it wasn’t from Lilah the bitch lawyer from hell. Last thing he needs is her getting at him.”

“No bills? No circulars? No ‘you may have already won ten thousand dollars’?” Angel felt a little miffed.

“Guess he pays his bills by direct debit or something and bothered to fill in one of those forms that means people can’t send you junk mail.”

Angel held one of them up to the light. “Why don’t we get weapons catalogues?”

Cordelia paused in her elegant breeze past to say coolly, “Because I told Wesley he couldn’t have those come here on pain of me kneecapping him with a Bavarian fighting adze.”

“Why?” Angel complained.

“Because you and Gunn would spend all our meagre income buying cool new weapons if you knew they were out there and available by mail order.”

Gunn took the mail back from Angel. “I’ll just take these up to him. Help him look through them.”

“I manage the finances around here and you’re not ordering any more weapons,” Cordelia warned him.

Angel looked at her reproachfully. “They may have special offers.”

“I don’t care,” Cordelia assured him, before heading off.

Angel gave it ten minutes before just happening to wander in the direction of Wesley’s room; the hurt feeling coming back when he looked in through the half open door and found Fred, Gunn and Groo all sitting on Wesley’s bed, having apparently already helped him to eat his breakfast and now being very proactive about assisting him with opening his mail.

“…how come you never told me about these catalogues, English? They’ve got pictures and everything. Look how cool this one is!”

Wesley looked suitably apologetic. “Cordelia threatened to do some very nasty things to me if I did and I never felt it was an empty threat.”

Groo also looked fascinated. “We have a number of these weapons on Pylea although their names are very different. This, for instance, is called a laksunika and this one is a nergurnak-iknikital.”

Gunn looked at him sideways. “I gotta say, Groo, I wouldn’t feel too smart calling for one of those in the middle of a battle.”

Fred was avidly reading another catalogue. “Did you know the noise a bullwhip makes is caused by a mini sonic boom?”

“I want a sappara. How come we don’t have a sappara?”

Wesley looked over Gunn’s shoulder. “Because we have a kopesh.”

“So, why don’t we have a shamshir?”

“Because we have a tulwar.” Wesley pointed it out in the catalogue.

“Shamshir sounds cooler.” Gunn turned a page and gasped. “Oh man, will you look at these war axes…?”

Wesley, Fred and Groo all gazed at them with suitable reverence while Gunn got the look of a man who had just fallen in love.

“That one is just so…it’s so…”

Fred peered closer. “Expensive?”

Gunn pointed at the page triumphantly. “Ten percent discount if you buy two weapons at the same time – and free shipping. And look at that – a free tigerclaw with every broadsword.”

Fred brightened. “Is that like a bearclaw? Because I’m still hungry.” She looked guiltily at the empty plate on the tray on Wesley’s lap. “Even though I did kinda…eat everything.”

“It’s a bagh nakh – a favoured weapon of assassins throughout India and the Middle East, an artificial claw, hence its name, easily concealed within the clothing.” Wesley pointed to the entry in the catalogue. “It’s really more of a weapon for a brawl. But I see they’re offering thirty crossbow bolts free with every arbalest. We can never have too many of those.”

“Axes are always useful,” Gunn said emphatically. “Wes, what say you and me wait until Cordelia’s out of earshot and then ask Angel if we can get a new war axe?”

Groo said regretfully, “I cannot be party to any deception that may cause my princess unhappiness.”

“You’re not going to rat us out to Cordy, are you?” Gunn pleaded.

Unable to bear any longer being left out of what was actually looking like a pretty interesting conversation, Angel cleared his throat. “So, what are we looking at?”

“Wesley’s weapons’ catalogues.” Gunn held one up. “And all the reasons why I need one of these war axes – and I mean yesterday.”

Angel came into the room, aware that everyone was acting a little more awkward as he did so, and also aware that it was totally unfair he should be the one having that effect on people instead of Wesley; what with it being his hotel and all. He sat on the bed next to Fred and held his hand out for a catalogue. Wesley handed him one, looking up at his face as he did so in a way which, after his memory of their first office blowing up, was way too reminiscent of that bespectacled boy always needing to check if Angel was mad at him.

Angel flicked through the pages. “Maybe we can spring for something. But no more knives for killing Kek demons.”

Wesley looked up at him in surprise, relieved and touched at that reference to a time when it had just been the three of them. He rallied with a conscious imitation of his earlier self. “You know I still say one could be hibernating somewhere.”

“In your dreams. Great falchion.” Angel examined the picture and then winced at the price. “Or maybe I could just get a new wetstone for sharpening the one we already have.”

“Page sixty-two.” Gunn pointed to the entry. “Right next to the really cool two-handed war axes that we so need to buy.”

Angel glanced at the toast crumbs that were all that remained of Wesley’s breakfast. “Did Wesley actually get to eat this or did the rest of you help him out?”

Fred looked guilty. “I may have helped a little – okay, a lot. I don’t always notice right away how much I’m eating if I’m reading. And this conference on crypto-zoology – it looks really interesting.”

“Why are you turning the page?” Gunn demanded of Angel. “The axes are right there.”

“We have axes.”

“Not like that. Look at that one. That is so cool.”

Angel sighed, feeling parental again and rather enjoying it. “Let’s order in some breakfast before Fred goes into hypoglycaemic shock and maybe this time Wesley will actually get to eat some of it. And then see if we really do have any gaps in the weapons cabinet.”

“And research books,” Fred added kindly, evidently seeing Wesley’s wistful expression. “We can always do with those as well.”

“Yeah, sure, but the axe takes priority, right, Angel?”

“One book, two weapons, and only if we really need them. What about magical supplies, Wes?” He tried to make it sound casual, as if everything were okay between them, and though it still came out a little awkward, the look Wesley gave him made it clear that he really appreciated the effort.

“We can always do with twice-blessed sage and chicken feet,” Wesley admitted. “But given the price of shipping it’s not really worth putting in a small order.”

“Okay, make a list of the stuff we use all the time. Check with Lorne. See if he has any suggestions. Gunn, I counted twenty-seven different axes in that catalogue. You get one.”

“Yes!” Gunn punched the air and then seeing everyone looking at him, grimaced. “I just…really want a new axe.”

“What about Ironheart?” Fred asked.

Angel gazed at him. “You named your hubcap axe?”

“No.” Seeing their expressions he said defensively, “Okay, yeah. But it’s not like I called it ‘Gerald’ or something. And I’m just thinking a back up would be a good idea.”

“And you’ll explain that to ‘Ironheart’, will you?” Wesley murmured innocently. “Wouldn’t want you to hurt its feelings.”

Gunn pointed a finger at him. “Yeah, and let’s see how much fun you’re having when I’m kicking your ass at Risk tonight, Mr Irkutsk & Nowhere Else By Nine pm.”

“In Pylea it is also the custom to name one’s weapon,” Groo observed helpfully. “My princess has suggested several titles for mine.”

Angel found that he and everyone else was now looking at Groo’s groin; Fred positively peering as if compelled by forces beyond her control. With a conscious effort Angel looked elsewhere. “Okay – breakfast and then a shopping list.”

“Are you talking about weapons again?” Cordelia demanded, sticking her head around the door.

“Just what you call Groo’s,” Gunn observed innocently.

Cordelia looked at him narrowly, said, “You get one lousy axe and that’s it,” and stalked away.

As Angel watched, a beaming Gunn held up his hand for Wesley to high five it, which, after a fractional hesitation the man did. Gunn grinned at Wesley and then swept Fred into an embrace as he rose to his feet. “Okay, look out Taco Bell, here we come. You want tacos, Wes? Or pancakes? Don’t even try telling me you want oatmeal.”

“Pancakes would be very nice, but…” Wesley looked awkward and Angel knew he was worrying about the money he was costing them.

“Don’t worry, we’re going to make you work it off in research,” he assured him.

Wesley gave a faint smile of relief. “I’d be happy to.”

Angel reached across the bed to snag the notebook and pen and put them into Wesley’s hands. “Ingredients list and one book, remember?”

Wesley nodded and smiled again, less faintly. “Thank you.”

“Hey, I didn’t say it would be an expensive book.” Angel briefly touched his shoulder and then picked up the tray. “And next time Fred brings you breakfast, grab some of it before she does. That girl is a human gannet. Where she puts it is one of the great unanswered questions of our time.” As he headed back downstairs to find Lorne, he realized this was a better way to get through this without feeling hurt and as if his pain was being passed by unnoticed, to try to move on, not without the ever-present sorrow for the son he would always love, but at least in the hope that he could still do some good, and some of that good could perhaps be aimed at the people around him, even Wesley.

***

It had taken him most of the day, but he had achieved his goal. Wesley dressed, slowly and carefully – but he did it without assistance. He put clean clothes that belonged to him on a body he had showered without anyone needing to hold him upright. Okay, after the shower he then had to sit on the edge of the bath and put his head between his legs to stop the sloshing sound in his head, the hissing in his ears. But it was an accomplishment nevertheless. He still ached, muscle ache, deep bruising that must have come perilously close to breaking his bones, contusions still flowering from deep heat to palettes of colour. He had looked at himself in the mirror this morning; made himself look at what was now healing. The bruises really had been everywhere; as had the cuts, grazes, burns, scratches and welts. Despite the days of healing, he still looked like an ‘after’ photograph from an S&M manual.

He examined his wrists, tracing the bruises that circled them. They were yellowing finally and the deep cuts had healed to scabbed lines. There was still a bruise on his cheekbone, forehead, and his jaw, but at least both of his eyes opened and his lip was no longer cut. Even though he knew it was irrational he still couldn’t stomach the thought of anything resembling a blade anywhere near his throat and so had used some nail scissors to cut back his beard to a faint dark stubble which did at least blur the bruising on his jaw. He was still having to do a double-take every time he saw himself in the mirror – that vivid wound at his throat making him look like a stranger even without the bruises, the new haircut, the stubble. But he did look tougher. Ironically, if he’d looked like this perhaps Justine might have thought twice about taking him on armed with only a knife.

He was getting vivid flashbacks to what had happened in that other dimension, of course, but the entire experience had been so nightmarish from start to finish that it was surprisingly easy to convince himself that it had never in fact been real. Intellectually, yes, he knew it had happened, but it could easily have been a bad dream he’d had. There were spells that could make a dream have the unfortunate effect of reality – if someone dreamed of death while under its influence, they would die in the dream. Was it so impossible to believe that his spell had made some fear from his darkest psyche manifest – or at least manifest to him? And it wasn’t true. He still knew that. But it was a way of slurring those events, and he found he needed to do that. Opt for a ‘nothing that didn’t happen here matters’ attitude, to get through it. Otherwise he was going to have to spend the rest of his life being someone who had not just lost Angel’s child to a hell dimension and had his throat cut by Justine, but someone who had been brutally tortured by vampires wearing the faces of men who had once been his friends, and he simply wasn’t ready to carry any more baggage right now. He wanted to remove those events from his past; slice them away cleanly as something he could forget. Enough things had happened in this dimension that he was still having to process without dealing with the extreme trauma of alternate worlds.

He had asked Fred to leave his door open earlier so he could listen to the sound of clients coming in and the daily round of Angel Investigations happening downstairs. He might not be well enough to manage the stairs yet, but he liked to feel less cut off from what was happening down there. Throughout the day there had been murmurings of conversation, some laughter, some self-conscious shushing once Fred had admitted to a headache of pyrotechnic intensity, and what had sounded like a client at one point. It had all sounded so reassuringly…normal, and yet Connor was gone and Wesley knew that it must be difficult for Angel to have them all going about their business as if nothing had changed, the baby had never existed. He hoped people were remembering to tell the vampire that they hadn’t forgotten what he’d lost. Wesley certainly never would. Until his dying day he was going to carry the memory of Angel’s expression as he held that baby in his arms and told Wesley how happy Connor made him; knowing that he was the one who had wrecked that happiness forever.

He had heard Fred come upstairs earlier even though it was still only early evening, persuaded by Gunn to try to sleep off the throbbing in her temples; but since then it had been oddly silent down there. It did not say much for the current state of his nerves, that even that perfectly unthreatening quiet was making him uneasy; as if he could close his eyes for a moment and end up back in the wrong dimension. Yes, he definitely needed to start thinking of that place as just a nightmare he’d had. As soon as the bruises had faded completely it would be a great deal easier, of course.

“Pumpkin?”

He looked up to find Lorne standing in his doorway, looking at him critically.

“Yes, Lorne?”

“The fearless demon hunters are out fearlessly demon hunting.”

“I thought it was quiet down there.” He couldn’t help that smile of relief, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the silence.

“Fredikins has the migraine to end all migraines and is lying down in a darkened room. I’m not feeling too well myself – imagine a razor blade wrapped in velvet slicing through cross-sections of the grey matter in time to your heartbeat and you’re halfway there, so I’m going to take a couple of well…bottles of aspirin and lie down for an hour or several myself. Do you need anything first?”

Wesley looked at him in concern. “You don’t think it’s a gas leak, do you?”

“I think it’s more likely to be mystical, cherry pie. Could be an aftershock from that pentagram His Broodiness painted on the floor. The hotel is still trying to get over that little debacle. Or it could be that last client who dropped in. When an empath demon hits ‘transmit’ instead of ‘receive’ and has a nest of Glurgs barring his sewer access… Well, I think the pot was calling the kettle black when he said that we were sending out a bad vibe.”

“Can empath demons transmit?” Wesley was intrigued.

“Some strains can. If they don’t sleep for worrying about the Glurgs in their backyard, for instance, and think the best way to get through a crisis is to crank up the alcohol intake.” Lorne looked at the glass in his hand. “Immoderate consumption, of course.”

Wesley hid a smile. “Oh, of course. Are Angel and Gunn off dealing with the Glurg problem?”

“Angel, Gunn, Groo and Her Demon Glowiness. I warned her about the serious pus factor she was going to be looking at but would she listen? No. All fired up to be Cordelia, Warrior Princess. Groo’s not helping with all the admiring ‘oh fire of my loins’ looks every time she picks up something big and pointy. Can you keep a listen out for clients and come and tap on my door if anyone dings the bell downstairs?”

Wesley nodded. “Of course, Lorne. Is Fred…? You don’t think it’s meningitis, do you?”

Lorne gave him a pitying look. “Tell me, do you and Gunn time-share the same paranoia? You know, sometimes a headache is just a headache. Talking of which…” He clutched a hand to his forehead. “I really need to go and lie down.”

It was perhaps an hour later or a little less when Wesley heard the telephone ringing. He was halfway across the room before it occurred to him that he couldn’t really do this; but the thought of how bad a headache both Fred and Lorne must have to admit defeat and take to their beds made him want to still the ringing of the bell before it dragged them out of sleep. He found himself clutching the banister and essaying the stairs while the phone rang and rang; a noise that grew louder with every stair he managed to struggle down. Sweat began to pour down his back halfway down, a combination of fear and his body reacting to exertion it was out of practise at coping with. He gripped the banister harder but the stairs seemed endless for a while and the possibility of blacking out and just plummeting to the bottom more and more pressing. The ringing of the telephone gained in urgency the longer it went on also, adding to the feeling of tension in the air which he could feel twanging at his temples as he landed, flat-footed, breathless, and shaking, in the lobby of the Hyperion. Then there was the endless expanse of floor to cross before he could lean against the desk and snatch at the phone, managing a breathless: “Angel Investigations?”

“Good lord, Wesley, is that you?”

It was a shock to hear Giles’ voice. Wesley shrunk inside immediately; knowing a lecture must be about to follow. “Yes, Giles. How can I help you?”

“You can start by telling me how you are?”

“A lot better, thank you.” Wesley paused awkwardly. “And yourself? How are you?”

“Very relieved to hear your voice. I was afraid Angel had buried you under the floorboards and was stalling me.”

Wesley straightened up. “Angel has been very…forgiving. Given what I did to him…”

“You were trying to stop him becoming the murderer of his own child.”

“Whatever my intentions, the result of my actions was disastrous for Angel, Connor, and everyone here. Given the circumstances I don’t think anyone could have been more magnanimous than Angel.”

“Did he or did he not attempt to suffocate you in the hospital?”

“He’d just seen his child carried into a hell dimension by his sworn enemy, Giles. I think his reaction was understandable.”

“Are you calling from Los Angeles or Stepford? And do you know how worried I’ve been?”

Wesley found Giles’ exasperation difficult to deal with. His own emotions were too tangled for him to be able to deal with the raw cheese-grater impact of another’s. He cast around for words, stumbling a little: “Sorry, Giles. I – didn’t know you were concerned. If I had I would… I should have written, but this is the first time I’ve been downstairs since… Since I came back here.”

“You do know you were a bloody fool to cast that spell, don’t you?”

“I admit that it wasn’t one of my brighter ideas.”

“Quite apart from how you were nearly killed, you opened a gateway between this dimension and one with which we were never meant to have any contact. You weakened the walls between two worlds which should never meet.”

“I won’t be trying it again.” Wesley eased himself into a chair, legs still feeling like jelly from his recent exertions. “Connor is gone. I recognize that. I lost him and I can’t get him back. There is no…reversal for this particular sin. I just have to live with it and the consequences of it. Like Angel. Like Faith.”

“You’re not a murderer, Wesley,” Giles said gravely. “They chose to take human lives. You were trying to save one.”

“But the end result was the same.”

Giles sighed. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation either when I arrive with Willow or perhaps back in England…?”

“I won’t be going to England.” That sounded as panicked as he felt. Wesley softened it by adding: “But it would always be a pleasure to see you and Willow.”

“What’s left for you in LA?” Giles demanded.

“People I want to do my part in trying to keep safe.”

“What? Angel lets you stay in a broom closet and throws you scraps three times a week while you say ten Hail Marys a day and beg him for forgiveness?”

“Actually they bought me Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade, and English Breakfast tea. And need I remind you that Angel has been keeping me since I crawled back from that other dimension.”

Another sigh from Giles. “I wish you’d reconsider, Wesley, I really do. I’ve never been happy about your role in LA. If Angel wants to try to work off his redemption, I can only admire his dedication to the cause of humanity and his genuine desire to make amends for some of the things he did. But you and Cordelia have nothing to atone for.”

“We feel we can do some good,” Wesley told him gravely. “And that’s what we want – all of us here – to try to do some good.” He felt frustrated by how much he and Giles were not communicating. That was their role in life, after all. They were linguists. They spent their time translating, researching, discovering information that could be the difference between life and death to a vulnerable invulnerable champion and finding a way to communicate that information in terms the champion could understand. Yet, here they were entirely failing to find the right words to make their feelings known. That had always been a problem for him and Giles and if one of them didn’t do something about it, it always would.

He snatched a deep breath and plunged awkwardly into the truth: “Giles – these people are my family. When I lost them. When I took Connor. No, before then, when I knew I was going to have to take Connor, that it was one possible option and the one that was going to suck me in like a black hole I couldn’t avoid. It was like being dead. You don’t know what it’s like to have been – unimportant to everyone you’ve ever met since…forever. And then have people show you – warmth and friendship and respect and affection, and know you’re going to lose it. And lose it. And have the person you owe everything to be the one you’ve wronged the most and who…hates you now. If I leave here, I…”

“I understand.” Giles sounded gentle; so unlike himself. “Wesley, it’s all right. I understand now.”

“He and Cordelia were so kind to me. They took me in and trusted me and I betrayed them…” The water spattering onto his hand was a shock. Wesley hadn’t intended to cry about any of this; especially not to Giles; one of those authority figures he was still hoping one day to impress. The man would be able to hear that he was crying, his voice was tremulous with tears.

“You didn’t betray anyone. You just made a mistake. You had to make a choice, Wesley. You tried to do the right thing and it didn’t work out. And I’m very sorry for all of you – Angel and you and everyone who loved that baby – that it didn’t work out as you hoped it would. But it wasn’t a betrayal. Not by any reading of that word that I recognize.”

Embarrassed by his own weakness, Wesley wiped his eyes on his sleeve, seeing that he hadn’t buttoned the cuff properly, that his wrist was visible, the ring of fading bruises where the ropes had bitten deep. “She said I was Judas Iscariot.”

“Cordelia?”

“Lilah Morgan from Wolfram & Hart.”

“Do you need a holiday, Wesley? I understand you want to go on working with Angel in LA. I do understand that now. But would it help to go somewhere else for a little while? Somewhere that doesn’t look exactly like the place where…? You had to wrestle with that decision and where you were…”

Their Englishness would never be able to bridge the gap of what had been done to him. Wesley wondered who had told Giles and how much he’d been told. If Angel had punished Giles for his interference by spelling it out. His own voice sounded hoarse and faint, a stranger’s voice, pleading for permission: “I want to stay here.”

“We’ll come to you. Willow and I. Tomorrow. Is Angel there?”

“He’s out on a case. He’ll be back soon.” He hadn’t meant to say it so wistfully. The throbbing in his head was getting worse. It couldn’t be the residue from that visiting demon; it must be something in the hotel; or something near the hotel.

“Can you ask him to call me? When he gets back? To confirm that it’s all right for Willow and I to come up tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” The panic spiked briefly at the thought of Giles seeing him, while the bruises were still there to tell their story. “Why so soon?”

“You may have an open door to another dimension. We need to close it. In view of what’s in that dimension, I feel it should be sooner rather than later. In fact, don’t bother getting him to call us, he won’t. We’ll just turn up.”

Wesley thought of what had been waiting for him in that other world; what they had told him they had done to Cordelia and Fred. Perhaps Anne would have been tricked by them. Oh God, Virginia. They could lure people into that place. Clients. So much cruelty in them both; such pleasure in inflicting pain, an insatiable appetite for chaos.

“If we close it we can’t stop them.” He snatched a breath. “If there’s a way to stop them – don’t you think we should?”

“They’re not our problem.” Giles spoke firmly. “There is a Buffy and a Watchers’ Council and a Rupert Giles in that dimension who are aware of the problem and can solve it themselves.”

“The Giles there is looking after a Wesley who has to be sedated. He can’t be left. They broke him into very small pieces. I imagine he’s something of a full time job for the people in Sunnydale.”

Angelus had described to him in great detail the process of the other Wesley’s nervous breakdown, but he had found himself imagining him like the Angel in Cordelia’s vision; the one where she had visited that other possible life in which her happiness had come at the price of Angel’s sanity and his left arm. A wrecked mind scrabbling for some pitiful remnants of clarity; a fragmented life viewed through a chill blue lens. By the end, Angelus had said, whispering it softly in Wesley’s ear, he’d felt so tender towards him; his masterwork; had murmured sweet nothings in his ear before he bit gently into the soft vulnerability of his slender throat. He’d licked Wesley’s mouth afterwards so he could taste his own ebbing life, holding him against his body, that tantalizing warmth of thin-skinned human with the blood pulsing just beneath the surface inviting him to lick and bite and drink. The sweet trusting Wesley who had set him free. They’d drunk from him over and over but never let him sink too far; although he’d begged them to just let him slip into quiet darkness; they’d always pulled their fangs out in time and licked the blood from the puncture wounds, using their saliva to seal up the flow of blood. Like having your head held under water, Wesley supposed, shown death, taken to the brink; exposed to the raw nerve of your own terror and then yanked back, knowing the nerve was going to be scraped again and again and again.

“Then they know the full extent of the evil of which those two vampires are capable and they should respond accordingly.” There was something utterly implacable about Giles when he was in this mood. “Our obligation is to protect this world. Not to save all possible worlds from their own tragedies. Wesley, ask Angel if it’s all right for Willow and I to visit tomorrow. Tell him that if I don’t hear anything to the contrary we’ll be with him by lunchtime. And now I suggest you go and get some rest. You sound tired.” There was a pause before Giles sighed and added, “No one is going to take you away from the Hyperion, I promise. We just need to close the gateway and then we’ll go again and we’ll leave you with your friends.”

“I’ll tell Angel.” Wesley waited for Giles to replace his receiver first and then slowly put down his own.

“Tell him what, sweetpea?”

Wesley looked up to find Lorne coming towards him, a hand still pressed to his head. Wesley winced. “Is that where I…?”

Lorne looked at him in confusion for a moment before his face cleared. “Good grief, no. Are we guilt-tripping for Jesus tonight, handsome? This skewer in the brain headache has nothing to do with a month old concussion and everything to do with something being badly out of alignment in the mystical ionosphere around here.”

Wesley grimaced. “That may be my fault. Giles says I may have weakened the barrier between this world and that – other dimension. There could be some spillage. He and Willow are coming here tomorrow to deal with it.”

Lorne put a hand back to his head. “That could explain a lot. But, cupcake, how about you try to remove the words ‘my fault’ from your vocabulary for say…a month? Not asking the impossible here, just a thirty day moratorium on self-flagellation.”

“But I…” Wesley broke off at a very straight look from those red eyes. “Won’t finish that sentence.”

Lorne beamed at him. “Now, see, that’s what I…” He broke off as they both felt something ripple through the hotel; Lorne clutching violently at his head in response.

Wesley staggered and caught at the counter top to hold himself upright, then looked at Lorne who was stumbling backwards, still holding his head.

“It’s not an earthquake, is it?” Wesley felt the floor ripple, an epicentre with aftershocks, but an earthquake wouldn’t have Lorne reeling in pain like that. “Something mystical. Something…” As Lorne straightened up, still pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, Wesley heard it, the sound of something downstairs in the basement. His heart turned over but his brain become abruptly clearer than it had in weeks. He felt as if it had just been slashed with a knife and the sting of it clarified everything. He caught Lorne by the shoulders and whispered rapidly: “Go upstairs. Get Fred out by the fire escape. I’ll stall them.”

Lorne’s eyes widened in comprehension and then horror. “Wesley, come with me.”

“I can’t walk that far.” Wesley gave him a little shove. “Please, Lorne. Just get Fred out of here.”

Lorne gazed at him for one more second and then at another sound from downstairs, he turned and sprinted silently up the stairs.

Heart hammering, Wesley stumbled over to the banquette in the middle of the lobby and sat on it. He could feel the air crackling; a thickness to the atmosphere, as if there were a storm in the hotel with him and he sat just beneath the cloud bank; not so much magic as inevitability. He had always known that he would be required to pay for what he’d done. Everyone seemed to think it was enough that he’d had his throat cut and to have suffered as he had at the hands of the Angelus and the vampire Gunn but he had never quite been able to believe that he should only be required to pay with pain and near-death for what he’d done. Abandonment, rejection, becoming an outcast; that had felt more appropriate; but there had been the fear that taking Connor would have to be paid for with the lives of Fred and Cordelia. That was the compulsion that had made him huddle outside the Hyperion waiting to see them or someone who could tell him if they still lived. But now he’d been taken back into the fold did that mean that a new price had to be exacted? By forgiving him had Fred and Cordy damned themselves to the same terrible death as their counterparts in the other dimension?

He had to prevent that somehow. There must be a way. He was physically close to helpless right now, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. He needed to find a way to reason or scheme his way out of this.

It was only later that it occurred to him how strange it was that he had never doubted for an instant who was coming up those stairs. It could have been the Angel he knew coming back from that Glurg hunt; could have been Groo and Gunn and Cordy all spattered with demon pus and arguing about how long the hot water would stand up if they all bathed at the same time. But it wasn’t.

He raised his head as the basement door opened and the fear went straight through him. As if someone had rammed an icicle into the back of his neck and the chill had gone into his spine. He’d forgotten the fear. Odd that. It had been such an important part of his captivity. Feeling terrified all the time. Of pain, of death, of being turned, of fear itself. But perhaps it was a good thing; one of those things you couldn’t fake in front of a vampire because they needed to smell it on you, hear your accelerated heartbeat as you looked up and saw them, the things out of your nightmares, with those horrible smiles on their still-human faces. So, yes, this was something to be grateful for, the way that as Angelus and Gunn began to walk towards him, his body tried to turn itself inside out; because although he wasn’t moving; his spine and his kidneys and his skin all wanted to be somewhere else and were trying to slither away and leave him and his trembling legs behind.

“Wes, Wes, Wes…” A dazzling smile from Angelus. “Well, look at that. Here you are again and now Gunn owes me first go with the next virgin we find because he bet me you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month.” Angelus didn’t come over to him at first, moving gracefully to the front desk, all his weight so perfectly balanced, like a prey animal confident of the kill, with all the time in the world to enjoy the chase, the capture, the hot warm succulence of jugular blood. He stood something on the desk, something small and box-like and silver but Wesley couldn’t get it into focus, the world was receding to a small circle of light in the centre of his vision and Angelus was occupying all available space. He was having trouble breathing around the hyperventilation; his heart hammering so fast no amount of oxygen could keep up. Not fainting was the real challenge because he couldn’t stall them while he was unconscious.

Gunn gave him a nasty smile. “Have to see what we can do about that sitting down thing. Can’t have you making me look inadequate.”

Which was when the lightbulb went off in Wesley’s head; not much of a bulb, really, more of a forty watt illumination, perhaps even one solitary Christmas light, but something to break the short circuit between his terror, his brain and his mouth. Angelus nodded at the stairs and said to vampire Gunn, “Go and look upstairs. See if you can’t find something juicy for us to share.” Which was when the all-engulfing fear of them finding Fred managed to overwhelm his brain-paralysing instinctive and learned fear of the two vampires who had tortured him for so many endless hours before, and that small illumination jolted the right words into his mouth.

“It’s really the other Gunn that makes you look inadequate.”

There, it was said. Words scraped out of the lodged place in his throat, and thanks to that new hoarse lower timbre his voice had post-throat-slash, it didn’t even sound as if he were terrified. He sounded almost calm, in fact. Reflective.

Gunn stopped in his tracks, his foot not even touching the first stair as he turned around with a really ugly look on his face. It was difficult to believe someone as handsome as Gunn could even wear that expression, but the vampire version could. Wesley felt that calm which he’d also forgotten about; the one that followed the brain-jamming fear; the terror static flickered through him like a lightning flash and then there was the moment of stillness afterwards when the terror underwent a brief evolution into the centre of the whirlwind. It was the pockets of calm that helped you reason and the spasms of terror that helped you stay alive; either because it galvanized you into the risk-taking actions necessary to escape or because the smell of the fear on you was so intoxicating that the vampires draining you didn’t want to give it up and pulled their fangs out, as if your death was an orgasm they didn’t quite want to reach.

“What you sayin’?” Gunn swaggered towards him, angry and threatening.

Angelus was grinning. That was their flaw, of course, the reason why vampires never worked well together, because most of them couldn’t feel loyalty or affection, and in Angelus’ case he just liked the air fizzle that came from strong emotion, anger and humiliation or fear or pain; even if it were an ally feeling it, it was still a buzz for him.

Wesley moistened his lips, snatching a needed breath, something to slow the hammer of his heart.

“It surprised me – at the time, I mean. I always assumed vampires had more stamina than humans. Not less.”

Angelus snorted. “Oh, Wes, you are so going to regret saying that to Chuck here.”

Wesley ignored Angelus because Angelus wouldn’t go upstairs and look for Fred; not when there was a show right here to hold his interest; and Gunn wouldn’t go upstairs while someone was challenging him who needed to be punished for it. That was something Angel and Gunn both had – even the good versions – the alpha male thing that could be tapped into, sometimes. Wesley had always tried to be tactful about it, with Gunn, to make it clear that he understood that Gunn was making a concession when he took orders from Wesley; that it didn’t make Wesley better or Gunn lesser, they were just allotted roles they had taken on to do with their individual skills. Wesley had the research and strategy know-how so he would decide on their plan of attack but once they were in the field, Gunn was the one who would probably have to deliver the killing blow, the one who had the superior height and strength and speed. It wasn’t discussed, it was just accepted by them both, without the need for muscle flexing. He couldn’t imagine challenging Gunn like this, just throwing an inadequacy in his face, because you couldn’t be male and not know where you fitted into a group of other males, strength and speed wise, and he was weaker and slower than both Angel and Gunn; he didn’t need to delude himself about that any more, not the way he had done in the past. Angel had demonstrated it to him on their first meeting in LA, the lion slapping down the cheeky cub, but then turning around and shoving the cub behind him when the first aggressor turned up. So, he would never have thrown down a challenge to Gunn unless he was prepared to take the consequences, and know that they would probably be physical and painful.

This Gunn was different, because this Gunn didn’t have any compassion for him or a sense of fair play, or that sweetness that was in the human Gunn that gave him that boyish smile and made him so gentle with Fred; that had made him, in the past, be very gentle with Wesley too. Wesley flinched inside and blocked that; hating to do this to their friendship, to turn it into something Gunn would probably be disgusted by, but knowing that this might at least stall the vampire Gunn for long enough to let Lorne get away with Fred. It was such a long trip, though, that was the problem. All those clunky metal echoing stairs to get down to end up twenty feet away from where Angelus was right now.

Wesley shrugged, averting his gaze. “It just surprised me. But then when I thought about the biology of it afterwards, it made sense. With the blood in your bodies being entirely borrowed, it’s probably inevitable that you can’t stay hard for as long as a human.”

Gunn loomed over him, eyes colder than hate. “You want to say that to me again, you snivelling little fuck? Maybe I should give you something to jolt your memory because you seem to be forgetting just how many times I made you squeal.”

Wesley swallowed hard, forcing his voice to stay even: “The lack of imagination was a surprise as well. I always found the Gunn in this dimension extremely…inventive. Whereas you…” He shrugged as gracefully as he could. “Well, it’s not really my place to criticize. I’m sure as mass murdering rapists go, you and Angelus are probably in the top ten percentile of your graduating class, but it did seem strange that an ordinary human with a soul could find all those different ways to make me lose consciousness just through…skill.”

Angelus whistled. “Well, well, well, Wes and Gunn from bizarro world sitting in a tree F-U-C-K-I-N-G.”

Wesley knew if he looked at Angelus the fear was going to make him trip, stumble, something in his brain short circuit again, but although vampire Gunn was frightening he wasn’t quite as bad. He answered Angelus without looking his way. “Not in trees. Too risky. But in his truck. And my apartment. And once in that little room downstairs where the janitor used to keep his mop and bucket... And, as I said, Gunn’s stamina was really extraordinarily impressive. Now, when he decided to fuck me, I really knew I’d been fucked.”

Gunn grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him forward. “And you knew it when I was doing you, too. Maybe your memory’s playing up? Is that it? Maybe I should remind you what you seem to be forgetting, right now. Like how I made you scream so loud your throat would bleed…”

Angelus grinned. “You’re so impatient, Gunn. We’re going to take Wesley back home with us and play with him all over again. You really need to christen this couch too?”

“Not the couch.” Gunn’s face changed, ridged brow, yellow eyes. “Maybe over the front desk.”

Wesley thought he heard something upstairs or outside, or perhaps it was just a manifestation of his own throttling fear that he was going to have to go through what that other Wesley had been forced to endure, and see Fred killed right in front of him; listen to her screaming for hours, murdered by people with the faces of men she trusted. The Gunn who was perhaps her first real love and the Angel who had been the knight without shining armour who had saved her from the monsters. No. Anything was better than that. He kicked out with everything he had, catching Gunn high up on the inside of his thigh, clipping his testicles with his heel in a way that was probably more painful than direct contact.

Gunn howled with pain and fury and Wesley threw himself at the weapons cabinet, not even because he truly believed there was any chance of getting there before them, but because it was the noisiest thing in the room, and if he could just yank some of those axes out…

Angelus was there before him; that terrifying vampire speed; smiling at him from in front of the weapons cabinet, shaking a finger at him in mild reproach. Wesley did the only thing he could do and threw himself at him, slamming the vampire into the glass. All sleight of hand and desperate sleight of hand at that; trying to keep them here, deafened to those sounds that their superior hearing might otherwise be able to pick up of Lorne’s shoes on the metal fire escape. It didn’t matter because the glass smashed and the weapons fell down; a glorious clatter of metal and glass; feeding the echoes of the Hyperion’s perfect acoustics.

Angelus grabbed him by the shirt and flung him away from him, Wesley skidding across the floor to slam into the front desk. Gunn pounced on him like a terrier on a rat, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck to throw him back at the weapons cabinet. A stupid thing to do, but vampires were mostly pretty stupid. That was what had made Darla and Angelus so dangerous; the way their human cunning had outlived the loss of their souls. Wesley snatched up an axe and Angelus backhanded him extravagantly, sending Wesley spinning in one direction and the axe in the other, but not actually breaking his neck. He slammed into Gunn’s legs this time, and found himself gazing up at that fanged face.

“That was dumb,” Angelus told his companion. “Don’t throw the human into the weapons rack. It’s elementary.”

“Do they have a whip in this dimension?” Gunn asked coldly.

“Didn’t see one.” Angelus still sounded cheerful, but he was crunching over broken glass, which was good as it was more noise; more of that covering fire Fred and Lorne needed to make their getaway. “Got a nice flail though. That should peel off his skin nice and slow. Or the handle’s a good shape for…” Angel smirked at Wesley. “Actually lots of things are a good shape for that. Good length too. Tell me, did the Gunn in this dimension measure up a little longer too? Or thicker? Or was it just…”

Wesley licked the blood from his lip. “What he did with what he has. Yes, more that really.”

He was yanked to his feet so fast his stomach felt as if it were still on the floor while he was upright. Gunn growled ominously: “This time I get to go first. And by the time I’ve done with him he’s going to be begging you to kill him.” Wesley felt Gunn’s hand on his belt buckle and couldn’t help the bone deep shudder of horror at being back in this place, being touched like this again, because this time the panic was inside him like a virus; every cell in his body seeming to remember at once that it couldn’t take this again; couldn’t bear to be touched in those places…

“Where do you want it?” Gunn snarled at him. “Over the desk? How about at the foot of the stairs? Or maybe I’ll just do you here…” He slammed Wesley down across the banquette. “The acoustics are good here. When Cordy was screaming in the lobby I swear I could hear it all the way up…”

“Fuck!” Angelus’s eyes turned gold and he turned on Wesley with a snarl of his newly ridged face. “Little girls upstairs, are they?”

Gunn yanked Wesley’s head up. “Were you trying to stall, you worthless little shit?”

Angelus was already marching towards the staircase. “This time you don’t just have to watch, Watcher. This time I’m going to make you fuck them too…”

“Or you could die.”

Wesley twisted his head round with difficulty, shock coursing through him, as he hadn’t even for a moment thought there was any possibility of rescue for him, only a slender chance of escape for Lorne and Fred.

“Oh wait,” Gunn continued evenly – the human Gunn with no brow ridge and brown human eyes that right now were looking cold with anger. The Gunn with a crossbow pointed straight at the vampire holding Wesley down. “You’re already dead. My mistake. Guess that means killing you doesn’t count as murder – just my good deed for the day.”

And there was Angel standing next to Gunn, black coat rippling in the faint breeze they’d brought in with them from the outside world; a long shining sword in his hand that could look as phallic as it liked, Wesley was still extremely pleased to see him and it. “Now get the hell away from Wesley and just maybe I’ll give you a ten second start to get back home.”

The vampire Gunn bared his teeth and pulled Wesley in front of his body. “I’ll snap his neck.”

Angel swung the sword, a few swishes through the air that made it sing along the blade. “The only way you get out of this dimension in anything except a dustpan is if you let him go, right now.”

Gunn’s attention was focused on his vampire counterpart. “You have no idea how much I want to kill you, do you?”

“You didn’t like me sharing your little fuck-toy?” Gunn sneered and tightened his grip on Wesley’s throat. “Come upstairs now and we can take turns with him.”

“I know you want to,” Angelus purred to Angel. “I mean, why wouldn’t you? You’ve had enough ass in your day to recognize a good one. But you wouldn’t believe how clueless the one in my dimension was. All those years at boarding school and he didn’t know a damned thing. That’s why mine was better. He was all sweet and new and fresh and innocent. Not so worn out as yours. Not that yours wasn’t tight too. I never would have known about him and Chuck. But, unlike yours, mine trusted me. Okay – not me, exactly, but the soul boy with the keys to my cell. Know what let me out?”

Angel and Gunn were moving carefully, blocking the exit to the front but advancing as Angelus and Gunn backed up. Wesley was pretty sure that even with his vampire speed and strength, vampire Gunn couldn’t make it to the door to the basement before Angel could get there, not encumbered by a hostage. He would know that too. Which would mean he probably would snap Wesley’s neck. Which was still much better than getting taken back to their dimension.

“Tell me,” said Angel conversationally. “I’m curious.”

“Wes did. Soul Boy was already dangerously near the brink. Thought the Powers had forgiven him because there was that baby all perfect and human and going to be the saviour of the world. And didn’t he love his big sappy fantasy of the perfect family gathered all around him. All those people he’d saved. Cordy and her visions she was keeping just for him because she believed in him and that was so special – yeah right, a cheerleader thinks you’re the champion of the universe and that means something? Does getting a soul just wipe out half the IQ points? Oh yes, and there was Gunn rescued from his deathwish. The guy who hated all vampires but he was working for Angel – didn’t that just prove how special Angel was? And sweet little Fredikins saved from the big bad scary horned jobs on Pylea. Handsome man who saved her from the monsters. She had the crush to end all crushes. And then there was Wesley – the Watcher who turned down the Council because he believed in Angel and his redemption. An educated man; trained since birth not to trust vampires and yet… He believed in Angel so completely that when he translated a prophecy that said Angel was going to eat the wailing brat in the crib next door he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. He did all this cross-referencing and got shamans to throw their chicken bones around and talked to the big scary Loa, and they all told him the same thing – that he had to snatch the brat or it was going to end up as vamp chowder. And he was almost going to do it, too, but then he spent one last evening with Angel. The bestest champion that had ever lived who’d taken in poor hungry little Wesley from the streets and trained him and fed him and never even made him give him one solitary blow-job in compensation even though – if someone could just draw Wes a diagram of what a blow-job actually was – Wes would really have liked to give him one. Or anything at all because he had the sweetest most innocent little crush a schoolgirl ever had on his noble champion boss. And, of course, once Wesley saw Angel with his wailing snot-nosed baby and heard how much Angel wuvved the puking mewling little brat and how he was so happy that he had him, Wesley just couldn’t bring himself to do the terrible deed.”

Angel flinched; eyes closing briefly while Wesley winced in vampire Gunn’s grip.

“Wesley told you.” Angel briefly lowered his sword. “Told the Angel you were before – the one in your dimension – about the prophecy.”

“Yes, he did.” Angelus grinned in delight. “And oh dear – too much happiness – knowing that the last piece was in place and his dear little friend trusted him completely and there was now nothing that could ever come between him and his darling baby son…Except me. Oh yum – baby blood, nothing like it. Remember how that tasted? And the smell of their neck just before you bite in…” Angelus licked his lips theatrically. “Kept Wesley alive though. I’m not the unreasonable type and he had just broken me out of jail. Not sure he was really grateful though. Even though I taught him so many fun new games…”

Wesley kept his eyes closed because he knew what Angel was thinking; about the dumb wide-eyed Wesley who’d first arrived in LA, from whom this Wesley now felt so separated that he could almost think of him as a separate entity. A separate entity Angelus had tortured and raped and driven mad.

“You’re going to die, you sick fuck,” Gunn said hoarsely. “And this time you’re going to stay dead.”

Wesley opened his eyes in surprise and saw the murderous look on Gunn’s face. That was the reckless look he got sometimes when he’d just rush in because he wanted to spill demon guts or dust a vampire. “Charles…” he warned.

Vampire Gunn smirked at his human counterpart nastily. “Yeah, Charles, better stay away or I’ll make your boyfriend pay. And pay. And pay. Don’t you love the way his spine arches when you drive into him in one deep hard stroke…? Bet he used to scream when you did that too…”

Gunn levelled his crossbow. “Keep talking, fangboy. It’s just going to make sweeping you up off the floor later that much less of a chore.”

“We’re going now,” Angelus said coolly. “And we’re taking your Watcher with us. Although I have to ask, Gunn, before I go – did you get off on his scar? Because I got to tell you – turned me the hell on all right; the way you can work your tongue in there and lick and lick. Maybe that didn’t do it for you as much as his tight little… but, Angel, buddy, I just know it was making your rod want to conduct a recital. Think about that when I’m…”

Angelus exploded into a swirl of dust. Wesley gaped at the place beside the vampire holding him in disbelief, because he’d been watching Angel and Gunn the whole time and Gunn’s finger hadn’t moved on his crossbow and Angel was still holding that sword and…

Vampire Gunn spun around, still holding Wesley in front of him as a human shield against this new threat. Wesley’s heart flip-flopped painfully in his chest as he saw Cordelia, Fred, and Lorne all holding crossbows; the two women both reloading. Cordelia said coolly, “That was for the Cordelia and Fred in your dimension, scumbag.”

Then the Gunn holding him jolted at some impact and Wesley was suddenly breathing in dust. And falling. Backwards. As he toppled over he realized that human Gunn must have just killed the vampire version of himself with a perfectly placed crossbow bolt through the back straight into the heart and he was now falling through his dust. Wesley tensed in readiness, squeezing his eyes closed for the impact with the floor and then he felt strong arms gripping him and Angel saying, “I’ve got you.”

He opened his eyes and stared up into the vampire’s face in disbelief. Angel smiled at him gently and said again, “I’ve got you, Wes.”

Wesley smiled back, seeing a blurry Gunn looming up somewhere very far away as the ocean rolled into some place around the back of his head. “I have to pass out now,” he said apologetically, and then everything was blissfully quiet for a while.

Wesley woke up to find himself still in the lobby of the Hyperion, now transferred to the banquette, still being held by Angel and with Gunn gazing at him anxiously.

“He’s back…” Gunn took his hand and squeezed it gently. “How are you doing, English?”

“Oh, fine, thank you.” Wesley tried to sit up and Angel and Gunn helped him to do so. He blinked in confusion and looked around the lobby. The first odd thing was the sight of Fred in knitting needle-heeled shoes of impossible impracticality in which she was deliberately stomping backwards and forwards on what appeared to be the contents of a Hoover bag. “Um, why is…?”

“She’s just being vengeful,” Angel explained. “I think Cordy lent her the shoes.”

Wesley noticed that Cordelia was holding a broom in one hand and the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner in the other. “So, which do you think would be the most demeaning way to have someone handle your ashes?” she enquired. “Swept or sucked?”

“I was gonna piss on them,” Gunn admitted. “But Lorne thought it was unsanitary.”

“And it would be – as well as being unworthy of you. Here you go, sugarplum – painkillers for that brand new vampire smackdown you received and a nice hot cup of tea.”

Wesley turned his head to find Lorne proffering two white tablets and a bone china cup. He took both automatically. “Um – thank you.”

“Well, thank you, crumpet, for the whole heroic stalling of the bad guys while I got myself and Fredilicious to safety. Luckily, our fearless demon hunters were just returning from their pus-a-thon with the Glurgs and so were in place to lend a helping hand.”

Fred beamed at Wesley from mid-stomp. “We were the real rescue committee. Gunn and Angel were the diversion.”

“They were very…diverting,” Wesley admitted.

“Betcha didn’t know we were there until evil ass went all dustbunny, did you?”

“I was as surprised as he was.”

Cordelia leant the broom against a pillar and beamed at him. “See, for standing around looking all menacing and keeping the bad guys talking, Angel and Gunn are just dandy, but when you need some real vampire slaying done, you gotta go for the feminine touch.”

In light of his hereditary calling as a Watcher to just such a Slayer, not to mention recent events, Wesley could hardly argue with that. “Well, thank you. I’m very grateful for the rescue.”

Cordelia gave him another dazzling smile. “You’re welcome.”

Fred stomped a little more while Wesley watched her deliberately grinding her tiny pointy heels into the dust. There was something hypnotic about it and he noticed that Angel had to give himself a little shake before he could look away as well. “How are you feeling?” the vampire enquired.

“Oh, quite well, really. All things considered. Particularly pleased about the not being dragged back to another dimension to be horribly tortured part of the proceedings.” Wesley would have said more but he noticed what Gunn was holding in his hand and felt a wave of dismay wash over him. He straightened up, murmuring, “Oh dear…”

Gunn held up the mini video camera which Angelus had placed on the front desk, presumably to record their kidnap of their runaway victim. He looked very ominous.

“Gunn, I…” He swallowed quickly, darting a glance at Fred, and adding in a rapid undertone: “I hope you won’t be offended by what I… I was trying to stall and…”

Gunn grinned at him. “Offended? I already made ten copies and mailed them to my nearest and dearest. Ain’t every day someone tells the world I’ve got more stamina in the sack than an evil dead vampire.”

As Wesley evidently blanched in horror, Gunn sighed. “Joke, Wes. I’m not offended and I didn’t tell anyone. But I will be keeping this video in case I need it. Because I’m thinking you wouldn’t want me to show this to some girl you were trying to impress or mailing it to your Aunty Flo.”

“However did you guess…?” Wesley murmured faintly. He darted another glance at the man, wincing apologetically. “I really am sorry for what I said.”

Gunn slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, you were saving my girl. You could have told them I ate live newts for all I care if it kept them the hell away from her.”

Wesley blinked in confusion. “You think that’s worse?”

“Sure. That’s…ewww. Doing you really well and often in lots of places around the hotel – kind of sleazy, but also sort of cool.”

Wesley looked at him sideways. “I can’t tell if you have hidden depths or hidden shallows. Either way I think you’re scaring me a little.”

Gunn held up the tape again. “One thing I have to ask you though, Wes. What was Plan B?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t…?”

“Plan A was obviously – stall the Evil Dead until Lorne could get Fred out of the hotel. What was Plan B? You know, the part of the plan that stopped you getting dragged back to that other dimension by Vampy and Skanky?”

Wesley frowned at him. “I don’t know what you…”

Gunn sighed. “You know, I’d love to think the reason you had no Plan B was because you had so much faith in us playing the seventh cavalry and saving your skinny white ass in the nick of time. But I just know it was because you didn’t think that it mattered what happened to you as long as Lorne and Fred were okay.”

“Well…” Wesley couldn’t see the point in denying it. “Yes, but…”

Angel and Gunn sighed and exchanged a long look. Angel shrugged. “Looks like we’re back to the drawing board with this project.”

Gunn nodded. “Better get those old blueprints out and start over.”

“Start what?” Wesley wondered if those painkillers Lorne had given him were going to kick in any time soon. “What project?”

Gunn cuffed him very gently around the back of the head. “Operation Get Wes Some Self-Esteem And I Mean Yesterday.”

Fred paused in her stomping to come over and put her hands on Wesley’s shoulders, gazing into his eyes in a way that made his heart do that familiar flip-flop. “Thank you for what you did, Wesley. It was incredibly brave.”

“And incredibly stupid.” Cordelia also cuffed him around the back of the head, a lot less gently than Gunn. “Don’t ever do that again – the stupid spell, the stupid heroics – any of it.”

Wincing and holding the back of his head, Wesley murmured, “Yes, Cordelia.”

“You didn’t think we were brave and heroic?” Gunn enquired. “Not to mention kind of manly and impressive?”

Cordelia shrugged. “As decoys go you were relatively…big and shiny. But I think when Groo was guarding the basement single-handed so they couldn’t take Wesley away with them he was probably wielding his weapon in a slightly more heroic way.”

“You know, some of us are awfully sick of hearing about Groo’s weapon-wielding abilities,” Angel told her.

She just smiled at him. “And some of us are just going to have to get over it.”

“Princess…” Groo smiled at her tenderly. “Lorne and I agree that your vanquishing of the evil counterparts of Angel and Gunn should, in the tradition of your world, be commemorated in song.”

Cordelia stretched out a shapely ankle. “Well, that sounds like a very good idea to me. Just be sure to mention the new shoes I was wearing at the time. What rhymes with Balenciaga?”

Lorne looked at her shoes and raised an eyebrow. “You bought a pair of Balenciaga leather and crocodile trim zip up sandals on what we earn?”

“Well, they’re new to me.” Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Okay, I took them in payment for a case but it wasn’t as if the wife was going to miss them. She had like…five hundred pairs of shoes.”

“How come she gets a song?” Gunn demanded of Angel. “Weren’t we there being all manly and heroic? And wasn’t Wes the one risking his ass?”

Shifting uncomfortably, Wesley thought there had been quite enough discussion of his ass for one day and really hoped they could not mention it for at least five years.

Cordelia glanced across at Lorne. “What do you say? Do you think they should get a mention in the chorus? I don’t know you need to use their names or anything, but you could maybe say there were a few other people there apart from me, Fred and Groo.”

That was when the floor rippled again. There was an uneasy silence as Wesley and Lorne exchanged a glance. Lorne said, “That was what happened just before…”

Angel stood bolt upright and said, “Hush.”

There was a long breathless silence and then Cordelia said, “What?”

But Angel was already sprinting for the smashed cabinet and the weapons still littering the floor.

“Oh no…” Lorne shook his head. “No. No. And how about a resounding ‘No’?”

“But they’re dead.” Fred looked down at the dust beneath her heels as if she needed the reassurance it was still there. “We killed them.”

Groo held his sword at the ready, gently pushing Cordelia behind him, and Gunn had also snatched up a crossbow, moving in front of Fred. Angel stood in front of both of them, throwing axe in one hand and a sword in the other.

Even Wesley could hear it now, the faint sound of footsteps on the stairs up from the basement. His heart began to hammer a little faster and he saw Angel turn and give him a quick glance of mingled compassion and reassurance before turning back to face this new threat.

The door opened slowly to reveal…Faith and Giles.

Angel lowered his sword. “Faith? I thought you were still in prison…”

Wesley wondered if it was possible to pass out from sheer relief. “Giles, I thought you were coming tomorrow?”

Giles and Faith exchanged a glance and then spread out, advancing cautiously, both with weapons in their hands, Wesley noticed now. Crossbows.

“Oh!” said Fred abruptly, and she darted in front of Gunn. “It’s not them! I mean – this Angel and Gunn – they’re not the ones you’re looking for.”

Groo and Cordelia both grabbed Angel and yanked him behind them, Cordelia holding up her hands to say, “Your guys are dead and dusted.”

Fred pointed to the pile of dust. “See. Right there. Literal dust.”

Giles and Faith exchanged another glance and then much to Wesley’s relief, Giles lowered his crossbow. “Then, this Angel and Gunn are…?”

Faith marched up to Gunn and splashed something in his face. He flinched, wiping his face. “What the…?”

She showed him the bottle of Holy water. “Just checking.”

Angel backed up another pace. “I’m still a vampire. I just have a soul.”

“Yeah, bet you say that to all the Slayers.” She glanced at him appraisingly but didn’t splash him with Holy water.

“Generally only the ones he puts out for,” Cordelia assured her.

Faith shrugged. “Yeah, well, that’s why I’m here instead of B. Didn’t want her to have to stake the son-of-a-bitch – and there was the little matter of me wanting to do it myself just for the fun of it.”

Giles looked across at Wesley, his gaze compassionate and searching. “As you appear to have gathered, we’re from a different…reality, I presume. I don’t really understand how that works but I have to accept that it does as we’re here, and you were…where you were. We came here to dispose of…” He examined the dust. “But you already seem to have done it for us.”

“Which I’m still pissed about, by the way.” Faith looked down at the dust, face unreadable, then cleared her throat and spat with great accuracy into the centre of it; eyes murderous. “No one does that to my Watcher.”

“They were kind of holding Wesley hostage,” Fred explained apologetically. “And we really didn’t like them much either.”

“No, I imagine that you didn’t.” Giles was still looking at Wesley who felt exposed by the concern in the man’s eyes. “Are you all right?” Giles asked him gently.

Wesley nodded. “I had – good aftercare.”

“What about the other Wesley?” Angel pressed. “The one from your dimension. Is he…?”

Faith glared at him. “Insane? Yes, he was, pretty much. Luckily, after the last bout of fever he stopped remembering…anything – who we were, who they were – Fred and Cordy, Angel and Gunn. Willow did a cleansing spell, got rid of the last few cobwebs, which stopped most of the nightmares. Still wakes up screaming sometimes, of course, but he doesn’t know why. Can’t stand the sound of crying babies. They scare him. Apart from that he’s pretty much normal for someone who is twenty-nine and has no idea of anything that happened to him up until a month ago. Now he’s learning everything again, making good progress too – he can spell his own name, tie his own shoelaces. He can even read – as long as the print’s nice and big and there are pictures.”

Wesley was taken aback by the raw grief on her face. He had never expected to see any Faith looking like that because of some harm done to him. If the kernel of viciousness he had witnessed in Angelus was buried somewhere in Angel then presumably this ability to care for others must be somewhere in Faith too.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently.

She snatched a calming breath. “You don’t look too good either.”

“I was lucky. They didn’t kill anyone in front of me.”

“Wesley is re-learning things,” Giles sounded tired but determined. “He lives with me now – as does Faith. We share his care between us. He can manage simple lessons. He’s not unhappy. And he shows signs of having the same interests.” He removed his glasses so as not to meet any of their eyes. “I’m confident that he can learn to read to an adult level again, and perhaps even to translate, given time. It’s just a matter of not rushing him. There was no actual…brain damage. His mind just needed a…rest. Willow and Xander are taking care of him today. He feels quite safe with them – although we’d better be heading back as soon as possible.”

“I’m sorry,” Angel said. “Truly. We know we were lucky to get Wes back in even the bad shape he was in. At least he was still…Wesley.”

Giles looked across at Wesley again. “I am terribly sorry for what was done to you. I should have realized when Angelus phoned but I thought he was just calling to…gloat. It wasn’t until the tape arrived that we… Well, you can imagine how we felt when we realized that you’d been there with them for all that time.” He looked very tired, shadows under his eyes and grey at his temples that Wesley suspected had not been there a few months before. “We did try to kill them on our first visit, but once we’d lost the advantage of surprise we got into a siege situation where they could hold us off almost indefinitely. Getting Wesley away from them seemed more important, so we beat a strategic retreat and left them to the Hyperion. And once we had Wesley back in Sunnydale he was so…ill that it was several weeks before I felt able to leave him even for… We tried to warn everyone in our reality that Angelus was back and Gunn was now a vampire. I didn’t expect someone to…”

“Punch their way in from another dimension like a big suicidal dork?” Cordelia enquired. “Hey, guess what? Who the hell would?” She reached out to smack Wesley around the back of the head again, then taking in Faith’s brooding expression, settled for an admonitory tap on the shoulder.

Giles said wearily, “I imagine it’s already been pointed out to you how incredibly stupid an idea that was?”

“Several times actually,” Wesley assured him.

Faith gazed into his face then looked at the scar at his neck. “Saw the tape. You already had that wound. How did that happen?”

Wesley swallowed. “Long story.”

Faith gave him a moment to tell it and then as he clearly wasn’t going to, nodded; respecting his privacy. She looked around at the others then looked back at him, ducking her head to keep eye contact. “They treat you okay here? Cause I’m a Watcher short. And I was thinking maybe it would be good for Wesley to…”

“Wouldn’t it just confuse him?” Angel said quickly.

“Freaked me out seeing another version of me here and I don’t have the whole brain trauma thing,” Gunn added.

“If Wesley was your Watcher why was he off with Angel and the rest of us?” Cordelia enquired.

“Cutbacks,” Faith shrugged. “The Council always were cheap bastards. They sent Wes to replace Giles but Wes sent them a report saying that they’d made a mistake and no one could do a better job of being Buffy’s Watcher than Giles. He was very earnest. Cited a lot of precedents – gave lots of examples of how good a Watcher Giles was and how an hour of practical experience in the field was worth a hundred hours of theory. So, they send in an assessment team to look at the whole Sunnydale situation. I’m not even thinking I’m going to be affected. We’re just all crossing our fingers for B and Giles that they can go back to being the way they were. Meanwhile, I’ve got my own Watcher.” Noticing Giles, she sighed. “Nothing against Giles – he knows I love him – but Wes was doing a good job. Taking a lot of crap from me, too, and not whining about it. Well, not much.” For a moment she almost smiled and then the reality of the situation came back to her and she sighed. “He was the rookie. Still had a lot to learn but I was training him up just fine and then the Council sends back a report saying, okay, Giles is reinstated but by the way Wes is fired because you don’t need ‘two Watchers for two Slayers in the same geographical location’. I think it was spite, you know? Because he questioned them. B and Angel are having the big angsty break up and there’s a lot going down, and before we can find Wes another berth he’s headed off on his rogue demon hunter thing. It was just lucky Angel took him in before he starved to death in some…” Again a smile threatened and then was banished. “Funny – I still can’t get out of the habit of thinking it was a good thing he ended up with Angel.”

Fred said compassionately, “But he still has you, doesn’t he? And Giles? And the people in Sunnydale?”

“Yeah, he has us.” Faith gritted her teeth. “And nothing bad any side of hell is getting within spitting distance of him this time.”

“I imagine he can sense that,” Wesley said quietly. “That you care about him. It would mean a lot to him to have people caring for him – showing him affection. He probably wasn’t used to…” Aware of the others all around him, he cleared his throat. “I imagine it’s probably enough for him now.”

“I have high hopes of his eventual recovery,” Giles said. “And in the meantime he is receiving the best possible care that we can provide between us.”

“I suppose the Council don’t pay the medical bills for fired Watchers, do they?” Cordelia enquired.

Giles looked up at her. “No. The Council consider Wesley none of their business any more. Which is why I’m not informing them of his current condition.”

“You know about his father?” Wesley asked. “That he – wouldn’t be good for him.”

Faith said, “Yeah, I know all about the emotionally abusive son-of-a-bitch on account of our Wes getting drunk under the table by me, one time, and us doing the sharing thing.”

Wesley tried to imagine ever having done that with the Faith in his dimension, feeling a pang for what might have been. “You must have been good for him.”

“Damned straight I was good for him. That was what got me so pissed with the Council. I was halfway through my uptight English Guy rehabilitation program and they closed the damned class.”

“And we Watchers are brought up to think that we’re the ones doing the training.”

Faith shrugged. “Yeah, never got that. B didn’t either. It so doesn’t work that way.” She glanced at him. “So, what do you say to the being my Watcher thing?”

Wesley took a deep breath. “Thank you for the offer, Faith. But I really do want to stay in my own dimension from now on. And although I think the chances of my ever being the Watcher for the Faith in this dimension again are slim to non-existent, I…”

“Can’t be spared,” Angel said emphatically. “Needed here.”

“Yes, sorry.” Cordelia folded her arms. “We have a hotline to the Powers here and we need our demon researcher guy.”

“Definitely needed here,” Gunn said. “Because, you know – research is really boring and how many guys are you going to find who actually like it? And ones that can do that and know how to cross-section a Slarkal demon with a katana – don’t exactly grow on trees. And, besides, sometimes you just really need a stuffy English guy around the place. Just because.”

“And we like him.” Fred put her arms around Wesley from behind him and beamed down at him. “So we want to keep him.”

Faith gazed at Wesley. “You really want to stay with the freak show here?”

“Yes.”

“Even after what went down in my dimension?”

“It won’t happen here.” Wesley gazed at her intently. “And this is where I want to be. These are the people…” he broke off in embarrassment.

Cordelia glared at him. “Say it.”

“I’m English,” he protested.

“Say it anyway. We all did.”

Sighing he admitted, “These are the people I want to be with.”

Faith glanced around at them. “Well, no accounting for tastes, but it’s cool.”

As another fizz and crackle rippled through the hotel and Lorne put a hand to his head again, Faith and Giles exchanged a glance. “Better catch that dimensional sewer tunnel, home, Boss,” Faith observed. She nodded to Wesley. “Take care of yourself, Wes. And if that vampire so much as looks at you funny, soul or no soul, you stake his ass.”

Giles nodded to Wesley. “I’ll save the lecture as I presume my counterpart in this dimension has either already delivered it or is en route to, but I do wish you a speedy recovery and good luck to you and your friends in – helping the helpless.”

“We’re all very sorry about your Wesley,” Fred told Giles gently. “We hope he gets better soon. I wish we could… Actually, can you wait just a…?” She kicked off the stilettos and ran barefoot up the stairs.

Cordelia looked after her in some perplexity. “She hasn’t been writing on the walls again, has she?”

Gunn also gazed after Fred. “No, she’s…sane.”

“It’s so hard to tell with the people around here somedays.”

They waited in slightly awkward silence while there was the sound of Fred scampering about upstairs, and then she was running back downstairs. Wesley saw in some surprise that she was carrying a copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and a rather tatty-looking soft toy that appeared to have once been a rabbit. She jumped down the last three stairs and shoved the book and toy at Giles.

“These always made me feel better when I was feeling ill. The book’s even better if someone reads it to you, and Feigenbaum is just…well, he’s the master of chaos so he makes everything else calmer, because all the crazy things they go to him and he controls them.”

Giles opened the book. “It has your name in it.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t remember the Fred in… You can tell him I was a girl he went to school with.” She beamed suddenly. “You can tell him I had a crush on him, if you like. Because I think if I had been at school with Wesley I would definitely have had a crush on him on account of him being so smart.”

Giles smiled at her very gently. “If you’d been at school with Wesley in our dimension, you would have been a boy.”

“Maybe I would have been a girl just pretending to be a boy to go to that school because they had the best teachers in the world or something. Or it could have been all part of the crush. I could have been the world’s first eight-year-old stalker; and we could have had secret meetings in the boiler room because he was the only one who could know my true identity. I think it would have been very romantic.”

Giles looked at her for a long moment and then said, “I imagine you get on very well with the Willow in your dimension?”

“I was thinking of emailing her,” Fred admitted.

“You should do that,” Giles told her. “I’m sure you’ll find you have a lot in common.” He nodded to her and held up the book and toy. “Feigenbaum, yes? As in Mitchell Feigenbaum, presumably? I’ll see that Wesley gets these. And – thank you.” He said it quietly but with great feeling as he gazed into Fred’s eyes and squeezed her hand gently. “I think he’ll like them very much.” As Fred looked so touched that Giles wasn’t making fun of her gift, for the first – and hopefully only – time in his life, Wesley felt a strong urge to hug Giles. He resisted it, however.

Angel caught up with Giles and Faith just before they headed down into the basement. “I won’t let what happened in your world happen here, I promise. And – I’m sure your Wesley’s going to make it. They’re – tougher than they look.”

“Have to be the way life keeps kicking them in the teeth,” Faith muttered, but she nodded to him. “Just take care of the one you’ve got. And don’t think me being in a different dimension is going to stop me hearing about it if you don’t.”

Angel nodded. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

And then they were gone, and a moment later the hotel rippled again, the light fizzed and Lorne sighed and looked around for a sea breeze. “Inter-dimensional portals,” he sighed. “Not friendly to the empathic amongst us.”

Fred wrapped her arms around Wesley again, hugging him as if they were both listening to far off music. “But look what we’ve got – our very own Wesley who isn’t insane or in a different dimension being horribly tortured. I think we should celebrate, don’t you?”

“Presumably this celebration would involve tacos of some kind?” Gunn enquired.

She nodded cheerfully. “Well, now you mention it… There are some occasions that really need tacos.”

“Okay, sweetlips.” Lorne refilled Wesley’s teacup for him and sat down next to him with a bottle of aspirin and what looked like a triple strength drink. “Why don’t you and the Gunnster go and rustle up enough food to feed a small army of scarily thin women from Texas while Wesley and I sit here and let our painkillers work their magic, and think about how dead we’re not?”

Wesley exhaled and looked at the dust on the floor; realizing that it really was over and that other reality could now get on with being just a nightmare which some other people had temporarily shared with him. “That sounds like an excellent idea to me.”

They all jumped as there was the sudden roar of an engine at close quarters and turned to see Cordelia triumphantly holding up the nozzle of the Hoover. “Well, I feel the urge to vacuum coming on. This place is just so darned…dusty.”

With the painkillers kicking in and his eyes almost closing, Wesley slumped against an equally groggy Lorne, distantly aware of a scramble for coats and car keys and demands being made on Angel’s wallet, and then he was watching the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner magically whisking away the last grey remnants of Angelus and the vampire Gunn as Cordelia hummed cheerfully all the while.

***