Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Rupert Giles was starting to feel as if he were wasting his time. As if they were all wasting their time in fact. The hotel was…unnerving. A strange old building, it was full of inexplicable creaks, although apparently – he had been blithely assured – no longer haunted. He wasn’t even sure why he was here; why any of them were here except for Buffy. The two people they were here to help had not exactly been bosom pals of his; in fact one of them had tortured him and murdered the woman he loved and the other had stolen his job. Moreover Angel had made it impossible for Buffy to see Xander as a romantic interest at the time when that young man had most desired it, while Wesley had cut Xander out with Cordelia. So that was two of the current chanting party with every reason to be anywhere but here. Willow had remained fond of both Angel and Wesley – despite the fact Angel had killed her goldfish and Wesley had been ready to sacrifice her to prevent the Mayor’s ascension – but then Willow had always been something of a law unto herself. Buffy had never had any time for Wesley. He had irritated her from the day he arrived in Sunnydale and she had been ruder to him than Giles had ever seen her be to an adult before; but then it had been made clear that neither Buffy nor Faith saw Wesley as an adult; just an annoying overgrown schoolboy in dress-up clothes pretending to have some authority over them. Yet, somehow here they all were, because of Buffy’s lingering feelings for Angel, or because Angel and Wesley had apparently helped save the world and were now suffering because of it, or because, quite simply, it was the right thing to do.

None of which helped the fact that he was jetlagged, thirsty, irritable, and getting serious cramp in his knees from sitting cross-legged on a hard floor for so many hours. There was only so long one could sit around a circle painted in the mingled blood of clean and unclean alike, candles flickering as their wicks began to sputter, misshapen from a hundred drips of wax, the bird bones and nettle stalks, the yew branch and hollowed skulls; the burning herbs and scattered leaves, the bowls of oil upon which tiny flames floated; throat clogged with incense and smoke and parched from chanting the incantation over and over in Latin which only two of those intoning it even understood… There were two tiny flames reflected in the centre of the spectacles which were so neatly folded in the centre of the circle. An old pair of Wesley’s apparently, along with a ring of Angel’s. Those were the focusing elements; the items that were supposed to ensure that the two who had been lost would be able to pass back through; to show the cosmic forces trying to keep their reality separate from the hell dimension whose boundaries they were attempting to penetrate that these two were meant to be on this side of the gateway.

He was starting to feel that this was also a damaging futility, however. For Buffy, who was sitting beside him, willing Angel back from hell – again. And for the others, who, apart from Willow and Xander, were strangers to him for the most part, and the one who wasn’t a stranger someone he really didn’t like. The human race was barely holding its own in the numbers here. Although he, Buffy, Willow and Xander were certainly flying the flag for homo sapiens, of Angel’s crew there was only one human left, Charles Gunn, vampire slayer and also apparently vampire employee. The others were an anagogic demon; a god-king so ancient and powerful she came from the time before humans lived – someone who walked now in the stolen body of the human woman she had killed; and another demon, one all too familiar to him. William the Bloody. Spike, the second vampire with a soul. Also the second vampire to sleep with Buffy.

Looking across the circle, Giles met Xander’s gaze and saw the man was no more convinced than he was that they weren’t all engaged in an act of absolute futility. Everyone was starting to look worn thin with this; Gunn with his eyes closed concentrating absolutely on saying the words right, gripping Lorne’s hand in his left hand and Spike’s in his right. Spike holding onto Illyria, Willow between Illyria and Buffy, Giles between Buffy and Xander, adding what magical powers he possessed to the general mix, Xander holding a little gingerly to the green hand of the empath demon who was also working what ‘mojo’ he could in this strange summoning. Buffy, Spike and Gunn all had a weapon on the floor behind them, in case what came through wasn’t what they wanted; two swords and an axe, a dull gleam to their sharpened blades.

“I feel something…” Willow breathed.

“Is it them?” Gunn looked up, and gazing at him Giles wondered if he’d slept more than a few hours in the weeks since Wesley had sacrificed himself to close the mouth into that hell dimension and Angel had dived after him.

It was strange to think of Wesley as someone who sacrificed himself. The man Giles had known had hardly been a credit to the Council, although he had been completely a product of their training. Prim, stuffy, pompous, annoying, unprepared for what the reality of a Hellmouth really meant. Probably very like Giles had been, but he liked to think he had possessed a little more humility and a slightly greater willingness to toss aside the rulebook if the occasion demanded it – a little more courage as well. Or perhaps Buffy had just trained him well. Ultimately, he had found that was what happened, after all. Watchers were trained by their Slayers every bit as much as Slayers were trained by their Watchers. Wesley hadn’t had the benefit of a Slayer to train him, as the two allocated to him had rejected him. But Angel, of all people, had taken on his training, not to mention care and preservation. That was still a difficult concept for him to grasp. He couldn’t see anything in the man that Wesley had been to make a vampire warm to him, or believe that someone so entrenched in the Council’s training as Wesley had been would accept the friendship, let alone authority, of a vampire…

“I’m not sure…” Willow was concentrating with all her might. She was bearing most of the burden of keeping this entrance open; and if they succeeded in bringing the lost ones to the gateway, it would also fall upon her to find the strength to help them through and then close the door behind them. That was the real danger, of course – the reason why they shouldn’t be doing this – one didn’t wantonly open the doorway into a hell dimension on the grounds that they were almost sure they could slam it closed again. If Willow lost her mental balance their own reality could start to be sucked into hell or at the very least hell beasts could be released into this world.

“You need to be sure,” said Giles tersely. “You can’t open the doorway unless you’re certain…”

“The door is open.” Willow kept her eyes closed, still concentrating. “Payment for the door they closed. The forces of magic will support balance like that and I have to give them every chance, Giles. We don’t know what kind of shape they’ll be in. Or how long they’ve been there. It could be a day to them or a year or decades… Time might not be the same there as here.”

“Okay for Deadboy,” Xander muttered. “Not so good for Giles Junior.”

Gunn gripped Lorne’s hand so tightly that the demon winced. “Yeah, Wes can’t take too many decades in a hell dimension.”

“It could only have been minutes to them,” Willow said reassuringly.

“That would be nice,” Lorne murmured. “I’d give a big hooray for that option and buy it a Best of Aretha CD as a thank you.”

Illyria said nothing. She hadn’t said anything for hours; not since the glasses had been placed in the circle and she had examined them curiously for a moment, head tilted like a bird of prey. “The shell remembers these. He wore them before.”

“Before what?” Giles queried.

“Laser treatment,” Gunn said at the same time Lorne said: “He had his throat slit.” Then they’d both winced at one another.

“Post-traumatic stress wotsit,” Spike had shrugged. “Didn’t want to look like a victim after being one. Makes sense.”

“Why should wearing glasses make one more likely to look like a victim?” Giles had demanded indignantly and then there had been lots of people averting their eyes from him and not saying very much while Buffy patted him reassuringly on the shoulder and said that she was absolutely certain that someone wearing glasses had no correlation at all to the amount of time they got injured, and certainly not the times they were knocked unconscious, because that would just be silly.

“Wes always did tend to be the one the demons went for.” Gunn had also picked up the glasses to examine them before putting them back in the centre.

“They can sense weakness,” Giles shrugged.

Lorne and Gunn had both glared at him then. “Wes isn’t weak,” Gunn told him shortly.

Giles decided not to argue the point, although from his experience he would have said that Wesley was the dictionary definition of the ‘weakest link’. By comparison with the ex-Watcher, Gunn looked like a person more than capable of taking care of himself in a fight and Illyria appeared to have skin-coloured armour-plating in place of a normal epidermis. Admittedly Lorne’s contribution to any fight seemed to be to offer to buy the lurking evil a drink or sing it a medley of show numbers but…

“Whoever it is, they’re coming fast…”

He was snapped back to the present by Willow’s quiet voice and realized how tired he must be to be drifting off at a time like this.

“Let it be them, let it be them…” Gunn breathed.

Throat raw from chanting Latin, Giles wished vainly for a cup of tea, trying to tell himself that he was perfectly calm, not invested in this outcome, only here out of politeness, but there was some part of him also willing them to come back, for the people trying to break out of this dimension to be the ones who had leapt into it for the common good.

Then there was a roar of light and flame, a tear in the air, and something came through, something naked and singed, and then the something was rolling across the floor, out of the circle and Giles realized it was not a something or even a someone but two people, one of which was Angel, the other clasped tightly in his arms as Angel rolled them both away from the circle and halfway to the stairs.

“Close it!” Angel shouted hoarsely. “You have to close it now!” He backed up across the floor, using his heels to propel himself and the person clasped in his arms away from the portal.

As Willow rapidly began to say the incantation, two demons leapt through the rip in the air, horned, clawed, half-furred and half-scaled, with glowing red eyes; they were huge – eight feet tall – and brandishing vicious weapons with serrated blades.

The way Gunn snatched at his sword and threw himself at them, Giles realized the man must have been wanting to kill something for some time now. He swung his axe at the first demon with such savagery that although it was nearly two feet taller than he was it still staggered back at the impact. Buffy and Spike had also grabbed their weapons and thrown themselves at the demons.

“You have to get out of the circle!” Giles shouted at them. Willow was still saying the incantation and the first demon seemed to realize that she was the source of power in the room. It struck Gunn a vicious blow which he barely blocked with the axe, and then elbowed him savagely in the head, knocking him ten feet across the room, down, and, Giles feared, out, at least temporarily. Buffy and Spike were still fighting the other demon as the first one turned its attention on Willow.

“No!” Xander threw himself at it and boldly shoulder charged it away from his friend.

Snarling angrily, the demon backhanded Xander into the reception desk and began to stalk back towards Willow. As Giles made to attack it, a hand calmly caught him by the shoulder and yanked him out of the circle, then Illyria, the blue-haired ancient one, held up a hand and a bubble of bluish light enveloped both the demons while leaving Willow untouched. Spike and Buffy looked like something from a museum display, warriors captured in the moment of fighting, except that they were moving, Giles noticed, albeit very slowly. Still calmly, Illyria strode to where Buffy and Spike were duelling with the demon, caught them by the back of their jackets and plucked them cleanly out of the bubble of slowed time. Then she nodded to Willow.

“Thank you,” the witch said cheerfully, and finished the incantation with a hand gesture that caused the portal to ripple and eddy before abruptly sucking the two demons back through it and closing with a last foul belch of hot air.

Giles watched Buffy speed across to Angel at a pace that suggested she had been every bit as invested in his safe return as he had feared. Lorne was already there, saying gently, “Angelcakes, is it really you?”

“Yes.” Angel was hoarse but coherent. “We made it.”

“Is Wesley…?” Lorne swallowed. “How long was it for you?”

“Alive. About eight months.” Angel reached down to the person clasped in his arms and Giles saw that they were a tangle of naked limbs, still hanging onto one another as if even now they thought they could be ripped apart.

“Not as bad as last time then.” That was Buffy and it wasn’t a question. She crouched down next to Angel. “Are you okay?”

He was looking around in confusion, flinching from the light, and Giles saw there were wounds all over his body. As he got nearer he saw that there were wounds all over Wesley’s as well; but amongst the evidence of various random cruelties there also seemed to be sigils burned into his skin. “Yes,” Angel answered Buffy distractedly, already looking around for Willow. “Can you undo these? They can track him here.”

“Yes.” She looked shocked by their condition and Giles could see everyone was wincing as they took in what bad shape these two had come back to them.

“Are we home…?” Wesley whispered.

Angel cupped his cheek gently in his hand. “Yes, Wes. We’re here.”

Wesley flinched more violently from the light than Angel had done, eyes watering at the brightness. As he raised his head, Giles saw that his face was covered in cuts and bruises but he still had both eyes and given the way they were reacting to the light they seemed able to see. Their hair was unkempt and matted but although Wesley was unshaven he didn’t have what could have been described as a beard, only about a week’s growth. They both looked starved but although Angel appeared lean and hard, Wesley was skin and bone – and bruised, slashed and welted skin at that. Yet none of his wounds looked serious. He seemed to have been running fast through rough ground and had picked up all the bruises and cuts one would expect, but he had none of the deep bleeding wounds that Angel had sustained.

Giles crouched down by them while Spike found a blanket. “Wesley?” Giles enquired gently. “Do you know where you are?”

Wesley gave him a look of flickering panic that turned slowly into recognition. “Mister Giles?”

“Yes.” Compos mentis then as well as able to see. That was a good sign. “That’s right.”

Except Wesley was still looking somewhat panic stricken. “Did the Council send you?”

“No,” Giles assured him quickly. “Not the Council. I’m here as a friend, Wesley.” As the man still looked more panicked than not, he said, “The Council doesn’t know I’m here.”

Only then did Wesley snatch a breath and look back at Angel. “Are we in Sunnydale?”

“No. The Hyperion. L.A.” Despite having spoken with authority, Angel still looked around as if he needed to double check.

“And it’s our dimension?” Wesley’s skin was clammy-looking, Giles noticed, frighteningly pale, terrible shadows under his eyes. He looked like a fever patient and when he touched his forehead it felt hot to the touch.

Angel looked between them all. “They seem to be expecting us.”

“I don’t want to go back to England,” Wesley breathed quickly, after another panicked look in Giles’ direction. “Angel…”

“You don’t have to go anywhere or do anything you don’t want to do ever again,” Angel said tautly. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

“Wes!” Gunn staggered up from the floor and ran over to them, throwing himself down next to the two. “Are you okay? Man, you had us scared!”

Wesley gazed at the man for a moment and then said, “Charles.” He smiled at Angel. “And he’s not dead.”

“Just like I told you.”

“And you’re pretty much the same age you were when you went into that place. But…” Gunn reached out to touch Wesley’s torn shoulders. “What happened to you?” His legs were bruised and cut, as were Angel’s. They could all see the claw marks across the vampire’s body now, diagonally marking his back, around his ribs, and across his upper arms, as well as numerous still-bleeding injuries from bladed weapons. If they had made a last stand, Angel had clearly taken the brunt of it defending Wesley.

“Bad place.” Wesley tried to smile but the shuddering and the flicker of raw panic behind his eyes took off any reassuring aspect he’d been trying to convey. “Very bad place. Can you get Angel some blood? He’s hungry.” He caught sight of the green demon and his face broke into another smile of relief. “Lorne.”

“Yes, crumpet, it’s me. And I’m not dead either. And very relieved to see you two are also in the land of the living.” But although Lorne’s voice was reassuring, he also looked horrified at their condition. Giles couldn’t blame him for that. He was feeling pretty horrified himself.

As Wesley shifted his position slightly they saw the bite marks on his arms and thighs and Giles looked at Angel in accusation. The vampire became aware of his gaze and said, “Yes, it was me. It was necessary.”

“He looks starved half to death,” Giles protested.

“He’s alive.” It was Spike who spoke. “Who really thinks he still would be if Angel hadn’t gone after him?”

To hear Angel defended by Spike of all people was enough of a shock to silence Giles at least and he saw that Xander, now also muzzily approaching, looked equally astonished.

Wesley was still clinging to Angel who had kept a protective arm around him, not yet untangled from one another fully. Angel stroked Wesley’s matted hair back from his bruised face and said again gently, “Wes, we’re home.”

“Christ!” Xander saw their condition for the first time and recoiled.

Spike glared at him. “It was a hell dimension, not a holiday resort. What did you expect?”

Wesley had to focus on Xander for a long time before there was any flicker of recognition but then his eyes widened. “Xander. What happened to your eye?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Xander tried to find a reassuring smile and almost managed it. “It happened a while ago. You look a little rough around the edges yourself, my friend.”

Wesley turned to Gunn, apparently feeling that he should make introductions. “Xander was a friend of Cordelia’s. He bought her the dress she wore to the Prom. She looked lovely.”

“She always did.” Gunn smiled at him but Giles noticed there were tears in his eyes; relief at getting them back still hitting him hard. Gunn touched Wesley’s shoulder gently. “Good to have you home, English.”

Willow said, “Xander bought…?” Willow and Buffy both looked at Xander in surprise and Buffy said: “You bought Cordelia’s Prom dress?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Xander’s gaze was still fixed on Wesley. He crouched down next to him. “Are you okay?”

Wesley nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

Xander glanced across at Angel, who was looking, Giles thought, pale even for a vampire. He was clearly exhausted and at the end of his resources, but he was still holding onto Wesley. “Deadboy take care of you in there?”

“No…Angel.” Wesley clearly had trouble processing that and then finally got who Xander was referring to. He smiled again. “Yes…Angel. He took care of me.”

“We took care of each other.” Angel tightened his grip on Wesley.

Seeing Willow standing behind Buffy, Wesley smiled at her very sweetly. “Willow. You gave Angel back his soul.”

“Yes.” She spoke to him gently: “Are you feeling okay, Wesley?”

“I’d like a shower.” Wesley looked down at himself. “And I think some clothes would be a good idea.”

“What about a nice cup of tea?” Giles suggested. As they all looked at him in scorn, he stuck to his guns. He knew where Wesley came from; his background; what the man probably reached for in times of crisis.

Sure enough, Wesley’s face cleared. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

A shadow fell over them and Wesley flinched. Illyria said sadly: “You do not remember me?”

Wesley peered at her for a moment and then said, without accusation: “You’re the demon who killed the woman I loved.”

Seeing the hurt wash across Illyria’s face, Willow said hastily, “She helped. Illyria stopped the demons from the…bad place coming after you.”

Not looking at her, attention focused back on Angel again, Wesley said, “That was kind of you. Thank you.” But it was the reply of a child thanking his aunt for an unwanted Christmas present out of sheer politeness. Giles didn’t think anyone was surprised when Illyria turned around and walked away. Spike looked as if he would have gone after her, grimacing as he watched her retreat, but apparently his need to be near Buffy – or perhaps even to see to the two who had returned – was stronger than sympathy for her and he stayed put.

“Come on, Wes. We need to get you upstairs where the hot water and the beds are.” Angel began to rise painfully to his feet, Buffy reaching out to help him and then stopping. His nakedness did make it a little difficult to find anywhere to lend a hand without it seeming a little more intimate than one might care for and Giles automatically took a step back. Gunn, however, was already holding Wesley by his other arm, assisting Angel in helping the man clamber to his feet. Wesley swayed, what little colour had been in his face draining out of it with the shock of being upright, while Angel also seemed to be staying on his feet only by clinging to the banister.

“You all right, mate?” Spike enquired of Angel.

Angel managed a teeth-gritted grin. “Peachy.”

“So, you booked a return flight to that hell dimension or do you think you’re going to try another one next time?”

“As soon as I’ve killed my travel agent for the last trip, I’ll let you know.”

“What do you need?” Lorne asked.

Angel looked around at them all. “To be here and not there. Thank you all for that.”

“It was nothing,” Giles shrugged.

“Just lots of mind numbingly tedious chanting and getting smacked around by demons,” Xander agreed.

“What do you need now?” Lorne persisted. “Blood? Painkillers? Some soothing music and a massage? How about a nice very alcoholic drink?”

“All of those sound good.” Angel looked at Wesley. “But first we need to undo the location spell they put on him.”

“I can do that,” said Willow cheerfully. “And being a lesbian I’m extra safe around Wesley’s naked body, so that’s a bonus too.”

Wesley looked at her curiously. “When did you become a lesbian?”

“Long story,” she assured him. “I’ll tell you later.”

His bewilderment was unexpectedly innocent. “Does Oz know?”

For some reason, Giles felt bound to follow the painfully slow procession of Angel helping Wesley up the stairs, as apparently did everyone else, as they all trooped after them. Spike had wrapped the blanket a little awkwardly around their shoulders but it had slipped down. Gunn and Lorne were hovering protectively while Angel took Wesley’s weight, such as it was. Angel still had his arm firmly across Wesley’s scored back, his own tattoo the only familiar markings on the vampire’s skin, that was also marked with old and new wounds, and both of them liberally dusted with bruises and dirt.

“Giles, can you…?”

Realizing what Willow was asking, he took the book from her while she juggled ingredients, flicking through the pages to try to find the most suitable spell for undoing a locator curse.

“This one should work.” He marked the page with his handkerchief. “Do you want me to do it?” He knew how much of a toll it must have taken upon her to first open the portal and then close it again.

She shook her head. “Not that you’re not extra safe around Wesley’s naked body too, but I think he associates you with the Council and England and that doesn’t seem to be a happy place for him.”

“Because they fired him?” Buffy asked in a small voice. “Because his Slayer resigned from the Council?”

“It’s his father.” Spike pressed back to let them pass him on the stairs. “Not that Giles looks like him – well, the tweed is a bit similar but – anyway, lot of history there, and he’s another Watcher, works for the Council. Bit of a red flag for Wesley.”

Giles thought of that flicker of panic in Wesley’s eyes. “I’ve met Roger Wyndam-Pryce on a few occasions, of course. Rather a cold man, I always thought, not much imagination, but I wouldn’t think he was someone who would inspire that level of fear.”

Gunn looked over his shoulder. “Think again.”

Buffy was still gazing at Angel. It wasn’t that she was unaware of Wesley or indifferent to his condition, Giles had seen her wince sympathetically at him a number of times, but it was always such a shock for her and Angel to see one another again; that soul-deep connection between them like an electric shock so tangible it seemed to make everyone in the vicinity jolt slightly in reaction. Except this time, the current seemed to be flowing all one way. Giles didn’t know if it was a reaction to the spell or his exhaustion from all the hours of making the spell happen, hours which had followed a long flight from England and a long drive to this hotel, but he was feeling hyper sensitive to everything; the buzzing of a trapped fly by the window, the way light was swallowed by Xander’s eye patch, the streaks of mingled dirt and blood on Angel’s back, the way the sigils burned into Wesley’s shoulders were squirming slightly, like bugs under a microscope; and the broken thread between Angel and Buffy; he’d seen her this time and the jolt hadn’t been there; all his attention already diverted.

Eight months in a hell dimension, Giles thought. Presumably the person you were with became your whole world. And your cause, he guessed, when you were a protector, as Angel was; when you were someone who needed to make amends. It was strange to be surrounded by people who wanted to help Angel make amends while he was here as one of the things for which Angel needed to make amends for – one of the torture victims; one of those who had lost a loved one to the cruelty of Angelus. In that hell dimension Wesley had probably been the only thing there worth saving, the one Angel had to protect as part of his redemption. And perhaps out of simple friendship. Despite the bite marks clearly visible on his arms and legs, and the confusion in his mind, Wesley seemed completely trusting of the vampire.

Giles decided that as Willow had the sigil-removing spell well in hand, that he should see about making Wesley that cup of tea he’d offered him. And having one himself. Given Wesley’s feverish condition a Beechams Powder would probably be more appropriate, in some hot lemon and honey, but as he doubted he would find any of these things in a place as uncivilized as LA, he thought he had better concentrate on tea. He found tea-making things in the office, even, oddly enough some English Breakfast tea. The death date had long since passed but when he wiped off the dust from the container he found that tea bags inside still smelt fresh and when he took a sip of his own mug of tea it tasted fine. He sloshed extra milk into the cup and drank it down in a few gulps, some feelings returning to his throat as he did so. For Wesley, however, he hunted around in the cupboards until he found a bone china cup and saucer. Somehow that seemed important – something so familiar after being somewhere so strange. He knew Angel was probably traumatized too but he couldn’t relate to the trauma of a souled vampire. An Englishman, however, particularly an Englishman trained from an early age to be a Watcher, was a very different…well, cup of tea.

As he entered the bedroom, he realized it must once have been Angel’s. A room prepared for his return, with maroon walls, and a double bed made up in readiness. Someone had put out photographs on the dresser: several of Angel, Wesley and Cordelia from happier times which Giles found unexpectedly poignant. Wesley was bespectacled and smiling and Cordelia was dazzling the cameraman with a thousand watt smile of her own. It was difficult for him to believe that the girl he had regarded with exasperation for so long had turned into the bearer of the visions, helper of the helpless, hapless tool of a higher power, and was now dead. This life seemed to burn up the young much too fast sometimes, and he wasn’t sure that it did a lot for those in their forties either. Or their two hundred and forties…

Angel looked done in and past the point of done in. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, his gaze fixed on Wesley; Buffy, Gunn, Lorne, and Xander hovering close to him. Spike sat a little apart from the others smoking a cigarette and looking at Buffy’s back as if he could will her to look around just by concentration alone. Looking past Xander’s shoulder to see why they were converging there, Giles saw an old-fashioned bathroom with large bronze-coloured taps, the bath on clawed feet, its porcelain base slightly stained with limescale.

Willow was being endlessly patient with Wesley, who had to be distracted from looking across at Angel every thirty seconds or so to see if he was still in eyeshot. Someone had wrapped a towel around his waist and Willow was now inviting him to sit in the bath so the herbs and oils she had to pour over the squirming sigils ‘don’t make the carpet all icky’. Wesley was compliant and obedient, apparently only having good feelings about Willow. He kept looking around for Angel, but Gunn, Lorne and Willow were also clearly considered what Buffy called ‘of the good’. Buffy he seemed confused by, although he recognized her and identified her by name, and he kept looking at Xander’s eye patch as if it were a puzzle he ought to be able to solve. But on beholding Giles, Wesley instinctively flinched. As Giles was the one who had spent the most time with Wesley in Sunnydale, and as Giles had – he always thought – exercised extraordinary patience with Wesley when he was being a pompous little twerp, not to mention saving his life, it did rather hurt.

Buffy was doing her bit for the ‘desigilling’ process by holding the spell book for Willow which at least gave her something to do that didn’t involve gazing at Angel while Spike gazed at her like a lovesick puppy.

“Your tea, Wesley,” Giles said, refusing to acknowledge the eye-rolling from Xander as he firmly handed it over in its entirely proper, entirely British, bone china cup and saucer.
Wesley seemed very gratified by both, and sipped the tea with every sign of pleasure while managing to hold both cup and saucer reasonably steady despite the whole-body trembling that was reverberating through him. There was certainly some sloshing of tea into saucer and from saucer into the bath, but Giles was glad to have it confirmed that something as reassuringly civilized as English Breakfast tea in a bone china cup and saucer was exactly what an Englishman needed most after eight months in a hell dimension.

Lorne fetched Angel a beaker of blood, ‘freshly nuked’ as Gunn phrased it, from the microwave. As the demon handed it over, he said, “Do you want some vodka with that, cupcake?”

Angel was still swaying with exhaustion but he hung onto the doorway of the bathroom around which they were all crowding to keep himself upright and managed a wan smile for Lorne. “Maybe later.” As he smelt the blood, Giles saw the hunger flicker through Angel, the vampire having to fight not to go into game face just in response.

“We don’t mind,” Buffy said gently. “We know you must be hungry.”

“He’s starving.” Wesley looked up from where Willow was pouring an incantation down his back.

Angel sipped the blood without going into game face and returned Wesley’s gaze levelly, an odd expression on his face as he said, “This is good but I’ve had better.” He didn’t look at Buffy although she immediately looked at him. He was still gazing at Wesley. Giles felt rather than saw that small slump of dejection in her slight body and had to control a flicker of anger. Angel wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. He had just forgotten in the intervening months that there had ever been a life for him that didn’t revolve around the man currently having occult sigils removed from his welted skin by a witch.

“Ah, vampire humour.” Giles couldn’t stop a grimace, but he did find the whole blood drinking thing fairly distasteful, and the victim being complicit actually seemed to make it more distasteful. “Can I ask why it was necessary to…” he gritted his teeth, “drink the blood of your friend?”

“Survival.” Angel returned his gaze levelly. “Both of ours. Humans have no rights in that dimension. They’re just food. I only got to keep my food if I fought for it. I couldn’t fight for it – for Wesley – when I was too weak with hunger to stand upright. When I killed, it was better. Then we both ate. Although Wes couldn’t always keep it down. Raw demon flesh is a bit of an acquired taste.”

Lorne pulled a face. “Sorry to hear you’ve acquired it, pumpkin.” He held out a glass. “Sure you don’t want this?” As Angel shook his head, Lorne took another deep gulp of what was apparently a ‘Sea Breeze’. “Well, as you both look in need of some serious alcoholic consumption to me, I’d better just drink for three.”

Angel continued: “After six months or so we were captured for The Games. Gladiatorial fights. They’d feed your…food – a little – but not you; you only got to drink when you killed. Wes had to feed me in the days in between the fights so we both made it to the next bout. It got to the point where neither of us would have made it any longer if we’d stayed in that place. So Wes fed another vampire in exchange for some herbs he needed to cast a spell and used it to break the lock. Then we ran and were hunted. We had no strength left when we felt you pulling us towards the portal.”

“Angel won all his fights.” Wesley obediently leant his head forward so Willow could dissolve another sigil.

Angel gazed across at Wesley. “I had to.”

Buffy said, “Because if you hadn’t Wesley would have…”

“Been given to whoever killed me.”

She grimaced. “Well, that sucks.”

“It’s what kept me alive. I couldn’t have fought just for me. Fighting to stop Wes ending up as demon brunch – that was motivating.”

“So, you did take care of each other.” Xander looked at Angel with slightly more liking than usual.

Angel returned his gaze. “It’s what we do here. All of us.”

“Family,” Wesley supplied from the bath. “Angel Investigations. One big not very happy rather dysfunctional family. When we’re not trying to kill each other. Which we also do from time to time.” He winced apologetically at Gunn. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Wes.” Gunn peered at what Willow was doing curiously. “It’s just another shared experience. We’ve all had a gut wound now.”

“I haven’t.” Lorne finished another glass and reached for the vodka bottle. “And I’d just like to point out that I really don’t want one, not even to be in your exclusive little ‘oh please do use my viscera for a colander’ club.”

“We try to kill each other too, sometimes,” Willow assured Wesley comfortingly. “It’s not a good thing but I think it’s part of being a family member.”

“Like killing your father?” Wesley nodded sagely. “We do that too. Except for Spike – who killed his mother. And Charles didn’t…?” He twisted his head round to look at the man. “You didn’t, did you?”

“No, vampires did for my parents. I did kill my sister though.”

“The vampires killed her, Gunn,” Angel said at once. “What you killed was the demon who looked like her. Not Alonna.”

“And it wasn’t your real father, remember, Wesley?” Lorne observed. “Only a robot.”

“It acted just like him.” Wesley put a hand up to the back of his head. “It didn’t like me either.”

Xander grimaced. “Well, I can relate to that.”

“We don’t tend to kill our parents so much in Sunnydale,” Buffy put in. “But sometimes they die anyway.”

There was a silence in which Spike said to her quietly, “Are you all right, pet?”

“Not really, no.” Buffy looked at Angel, still propped against the wall. At some point, Giles realized, he had pulled on a pair of trousers but his torso was still bare and his wounds clearly visible. Then she looked across at Wesley, who was having another burning sigil gently erased by Willow. “I really don’t like hell dimensions. I don’t like it when they try to leak into our world or when people from our world get sucked into them and I don’t like what gets done to people in them.”

Clearly trying to make her feel better, Wesley said, “Lorne’s sort of from a hell dimension. It’s a demon dimension, anyway. And he’s very nice. And Angel’s son was brought up in a hell dimension – one of the really bad ones – and he would probably have turned out quite well if events hadn’t conspired to make him totally psychotic.”

Giles felt a migraine begin to throb behind his temples as Xander said: “Yeah, that Angel having a son thing – never really got that on account of the whole – being dead and therefore having other things that are dead and not capable of producing… I’ll be quiet now.”

“I always meant to ask – was this just a spontaneous gesture that arrived ready-wrapped in swaddling or did you have to do some kind of baby-making ritual first?” Buffy enquired.

Angel took a strengthening sip of blood. “There was some – baby-making involved.”

“He wasn’t himself.” Wesley nodded. “His head was…not really on top of his neck. A rogue Higher Power needed Connor to be born so Jasmine could be born, but… that’s really quite a dull story.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Giles mopped his brow. “And what mundane lives you do live here.”

Wesley considered that for a moment and then said, “I think that on average we probably live quite interesting lives, but I suppose they could seem dull to other people.”

Giles opened his mouth to explain that he was being sarcastic and decided to give up with a sigh. “Why don’t I take that teacup from you, Wesley?” he offered instead.

“That’s the last one.” Willow beamed at Wesley. “You’re all sigil-free now. Can’t be tracked. And you can have a bath, if you’d like one, not that I’m saying you need one, but if you wanted one, that would be okay. Would you like me to wash your hair for you? Not that the dreadlocks don’t suit you…”

“Thank you.” He smiled back at her and handed his teacup and saucer to Giles. “I’d like not to smell of Ertash any more.”

“Is that a person or a place?” Buffy whispered to Angel.

He grimaced. “It’s a species. Slaver demons. Nasty. You don’t want to know.” Angel elbowed himself off the wall and glanced around at all of them. “Thanks for all your help. Willow, it’s okay, I’ll get Wesley and myself cleaned up, then I really think he needs some sleep. If you’re still here when we wake up, perhaps we can talk then.”

It was a dismissal and Buffy looked a little stung, but she only nodded, said quietly, “Of course,” and turned to go.

Giles heard Spike saying to her quietly: “He’s not himself, love. He’s worried about Wes.”

“He’s moved on,” she returned.

“And you haven’t?” Spike sighed. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Look – Angel needs someone to save. You don’t need saving. Wes and the others here – they need a lot of saving. These guys are the day job. You’re the reward he doesn’t think he’s won yet.”

“Sometimes I need saving too.” Buffy looked so young to Giles he wanted to wrap her in his arms and hug her. She didn’t say it aloud: I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be born the Slayer. None of them had, of course, and when he thought of what it had cost them all he sometimes wondered if it was worth it. Of course it was, he did know that, it just didn’t always feel that way.

Willow looked a little disappointed. “Can I cut Wesley’s hair tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” Angel took the shower attachment from her. “We’ll see how he’s feeling.”

“I don’t mind washing his hair,” she added hopefully.

“Willow, he’s not a stray dog,” Giles said patiently. “And although I’m sure he’ll clean up beautifully, I really think it would be better if Angel was the one who did any bathing that needs to be done.”

“Oh, okay.” Willow looked disappointed but did get out of the bath, saying gently to Wesley, “Angel’s going to wash your hair instead, Wesley, but if you want me to cut it I’d really like to. I remember how you had it before.”

“I could do Angel’s,” Buffy offered. “I remember how his was too.”

“Yes, love, I think we all remember how Angel’s was,” Spike observed. “Some of us still have nightmares.”

“Criticism of my hair.” Angel sat on the edge of the bath and looked down at Wesley. “I guess we’re really home.” Wesley leant across and took Angel’s wrist in his hands to examine a bite wound with great solemnity. Angel felt his forehead and winced. “We need to get your temperature down, Wes.”

“I know a really good herbal cure for fevers. I can make some up for Wesley if you like?” Willow called back to Angel.

“Yes, do that downstairs, Willow. I really think they want some privacy.” Giles made vague ushering motions to the loiterers, feeling that he should do his part to try to preserve ex-Watcher dignity by at least trying to guarantee that Wesley had a bath in peace. But when he looked back from the doorway of the bedroom, Angel was oblivious of all of them, running hot water into the bath and testing the spray of the hand held shower spray against his hand before very gently running it down the back of Wesley’s neck.

“Is that too hot?” he asked.

“No. It feels good.” Wesley closed his eyes as the water trickled down his scored back but he didn’t flinch and he seemed, for the first time, perfectly relaxed; being alone with Angel was apparently the time when he felt the most safe.

“You’ve got a temperature but Willow’s going to mix something up for you to help with it. Then you need to sleep. Okay?”

“Okay.” Wesley gazed up at the vampire and gave him an unexpectedly sweet smile. Giles wondered if he had simply had too many braincells fried to ever be who he was again or if this was the way they were together; Wesley, trustingly childlike, Angel protective and fond. He suspected the Wesley had known would have been more likely to become increasingly brittle with the passing of time, the accumulated mental scar tissue of crises survived, the never-ending stress. This was someone else; the product of a hell dimension; the product of a mind that had possibly snapped under the strain, or at the very least was taking a short holiday from reality.

Giles backed out of the bedroom and quietly closed the door. Outside, he said, “Am I the only one who has a problem with Angel using Wesley as a packed lunch?”

“It was probably Wesley’s idea.” Gunn shrugged. “He’s done it before. Fed Angel, I mean. When Angel went three months without food he needed something richer than pig’s blood so Wesley sliced his arm open and fed him his own blood.”

“Ah.” Giles grimaced. “I didn’t need to know that.”

“You’re too squeamish,” Spike told him dismissively. “Too many years in a small town Hellmouth instead of mixing it in the metropolis.”

“Presumably they have bigger shinier demons in LA?” Buffy observed. She looked as tired as Giles felt, but there was no possibility of them getting any sleep, he realized, they were all too wired from the aftermath of magic.

Willow was looking at Lorne’s suit with every sign of approval. “We certainly didn’t get so many who wore lamé.”

The horned demon nodded sagely. “That’s probably because you were mostly dealing with evil demons – being on a Hellmouth and all – they can’t carry it off. In fact, I’ve noticed that evil demons are often fashion-challenged.”

Buffy nodded. “I’ve noticed that too.”

“Yeah, look at Spike.” Xander jerked his head in the direction of the vampire.

As they all did, the vampire said defensively: “What?”

“It’s the hair,” Gunn explained. “It’s so…not of the now. And shouldn’t vampires get some kind of make over when they get a soul anyway?”

“You’re talking to me about hair? How can you work for Angel for all this time, Captain Hairgel himself, and criticize my style?”

“Angel can carry it off.” Lorne took another sip of his refilled cocktail. “He’s always managed to make having something with hold seem like a necessity when finding the hellspawns of evil. It’s like the coat. It’s all about the coat.”

“And the car,” Gunn added.

“I miss the leather pants,” Lorne admitted.

Xander said incredulously, “Do you people work for Angel or date him?”

“What, his coat is better than mine now as well? You have got to be kidding me. This coat is way better than…”

“Do you mean the coat you took from the body of the Slayer you murdered?” Giles massaged his temples then counted to three before saying as patiently as he could: “I appreciate that after such a momentous event as getting Angel and Wesley back from the hell dimension in which they’ve been suffering for the past eight months that some discussion is necessary. However, if I’m going to have my migraine interrupted with noise I would rather it was about something rather more relevant and interesting that Spike’s appallingly obvious hair dye and poor taste in clothes.”

Xander said, “Can we talk about how everyone who works for Angel seems to be under some kind of weird hex? First Wesley and now these two. When Spike is sounding like the voice of reason, I know I’ve stepped into a parallel universe.”

Spike looked at Xander aghast. “You’re agreeing with me?”

“About Angel having scarily bad hair? Damned right.”

“Well, don’t. It just makes me question my own judgement.”

Groaning inwardly, Giles met Willow’s eye and muttered darkly, “It’s going to be a very long night.”

It was two hours later when Giles realized that his overwhelming need to go and see how Wesley was could no longer be ignored. It irritated him intensely; he had to keep reminding himself that he hadn’t even liked Wesley when the man had arrived in Sunnydale. He had been so arrogant, naïve, priggish, hidebound, completely unprepared for the reality of fieldwork after the theory of the Academy; emotionally immature, acting as if women were a new species he had never actually encountered before; fluttering ineffectually around Cordelia as if asking a woman to dance involved more mental effort than…

Giles winced as he realized just how many of Wesley’s annoying characteristics were ones he’d shared on his first arrival at Sunnydale. He’d been so excited by the idea of the Hellmouth; the prospect of seeing all those demons face to face that he’d only read about in books; convinced that as he’d studied how to train a slayer that meant he knew how to deal with the reality of a living, breathing, vulnerable human being and the fact of having to send her out to face death every night. That was what Watchers did, of course. They sent a young girl out to risk her life for the common good while they sat home and studied. That was why only certain people made it as Watchers; the unimaginative ones who never let themselves feel and knew what they did was right, and the ones who cared too much, got in too deep, and either got themselves killed, got themselves fired, or had a nervous breakdown. Wesley had been no less unprepared than he had been, but Buffy had been more tolerant with Giles than she had been prepared to be with Wesley later and, as it was on Giles’ behalf that she was ignoring Wesley, Giles hadn’t exactly been devastated by it. Of course the man had been annoying. Intensely annoying but all the same….

Giles found that he had left the others still arguing over their pizza. Well, Gunn and Xander were arguing with Spike about something to do with vampires, no doubt, or possibly football; Giles hadn’t really been listening for quite some time.

He made his way cautiously to the bedroom, not wanting to wake Angel if he was asleep but hoping for directions as to where he could find Wesley’s room if he was awake. The door was still ajar; and when he looked through the gap, he saw that Angel and Wesley were both in the same bed, although Wesley was asleep and Angel was awake, Angel with his elbow propped up on the pillow watching the human sleep.

“He’s going to be okay.” Angel kept his voice low but evidently knew Giles was there without looking. “He just really needs some sleep.”

“I imagine that’s true of you, too.” Giles stayed in the doorway, still a little disconcerted by the fact they were sharing a bed. Of course, with Wesley in his current mental condition it was probably inevitable that Angel would have to stay close, but he hadn’t expected something quite so intimate.

“I slept for an hour or so. I feel better now.” Angel gently stroked a hand down Wesley’s ribcage, not in the way a man touched a lover or a child, but like a part of his own body; the line between his body and Wesley’s blurred somewhere along the line. “I need to hear his heartbeat.” He dipped his head to press it against Wesley’s chest and then smiled. “It’s a good sound.”

Giles came into the room and gently closed the door. “Are you…? I mean…” He didn’t know how to say that the man he’d known hadn’t – he thought, given the girlfriends Gunn had told him about – been gay even if it had been assumed he was rather more often than not; so if Angel had made Wesley his lover it seemed to have more to do with Angel’s sheer force of personality and Wesley’s somewhat weak will than any real lifestyle choice on the ex-Watcher’s part.

Angel looked confused and then his face cleared. “No. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.”

“Appropriate?” Giles couldn’t disguise his surprise at such a pompous choice of words.

“We were on the run. Lots of adrenalin. Extreme circumstances. Who doesn’t want to at a time like that? But you can’t take it back afterwards. I don’t care but Wes might.”

“So you wanted to but you didn’t?” Giles took another step into the room and looked at Wesley. Despite the cuts and bruises, not to mention the jutting ribs, he looked oddly peaceful.

“I’m male. We always want to, don’t we? And he was all that was around. But Wes deserves better than that.”

Giles thought perhaps substituting ‘vampire’ for ‘male’ there would have been more accurate, although perhaps Angel saw no great personality difference between the man he had once been and the vampire he now was. And it was typically arrogant of Angel to assume that all it would have taken for him to seduce Wesley was for him to choose to do it, of course, but Giles suspected that it was also probably honest.

“Do you…?” Giles wasn’t sure how he, of all people, had fallen into this conversation. “Do you…love him…?”

“Of course I love him.” Angel looked surprised at the question. “We’re family.”

“I mean… I don’t know what I mean.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them to avoid making eye contact. “Not wanting to hit anyone over the head with the blindingly obvious but you are in bed together.”

“We’ve been sleeping together for – well, not warmth, I suppose, but comfort, for the past eight months. With the emphasis on ‘sleeping’.” Angel brushed a hand through Wesley’s damp tangle of hair. “We can’t sleep without the other one nearby now. We’ll get over it. Just…not right away.”

“Because you need to hear his heartbeat?”

“Yes. I need to know he’s alive. That another day is past and I haven’t got him killed.” Angel ran a hand down Wesley’s arm, turning it over to reveal the bite marks. “That I haven’t killed him.” Carefully, Angel rolled Wesley over a little so he could move his arm out from under him and then wedged a pillow behind him. Only then did he gingerly get off the bed. “I’ll be back,” he whispered to Wesley.

Angel pulled on a pair of trousers, disconcerting Giles further as he realized that Angel was not just in bed with a naked Wesley but naked in bed with a naked Wesley. Angel walked silently across the room away from the bed, but Giles could feel his reluctance, as if there was some thread between vampire and ex-Watcher being pulled tighter and thinner as the distance between them spread.

“I need to leave the door so I’ll hear him if he wakes up.”

Seeing the expression on Angel’s face, Giles thought about that ‘family’ comment and realized that this really was a family, just not the Waltons.

“Was this what you always wanted, Angel?” Giles looked around the hotel. “A family? And you at the head? What are the others to you – child substitutes?”

“Did you set out to become the good father to a bunch of American teenagers?”

Giles took off his glasses and examined them for dust. They were spotless. He put them back on again. “No.”

Angel pushed the door half across the doorway, so Wesley was still visible but slightly shielded from the noise in the rest of the hotel. “I didn’t know that what I wanted was a family until I already had one. Cordy and Wes became my kids for a time, it’s true, because that was what they needed as much as me. Her father was in prison. His was…a waste of space. They wanted someone who would love them unconditionally. I did. I do. But they grew up. That isn’t the kind of relationship we have now. It isn’t the kind of relationship we’ve had for a long time. I used to work for Wes. I used to be in love with the woman Cordelia grew up to become.”

Giles cleared his throat as they walked away from the room, with Angel still looking back over his shoulder in case Wesley should stir at all. “So, you don’t see yourself as the ruling patriarch then?”

“Well, of course. But – it was different before. When Cordelia was alive… I wanted it for all of us. Not just for me. Me and Cordy, Baby Connor, Wes, Gunn and Fred. Lorne lending a hand. That was how the family was for a while. It worked. It wasn’t just my fantasy that time.”

“Until Wesley ruined everything?”

Angel hesitated. “Yes. No. I’ve thought about it since and I think Holtz would have started picking off my people if he hadn’t been in Quor’toth. Wesley thought he was a threat…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Connor is okay now.”

“What about Wesley? Is he ever going to be okay again?”

“What do you mean?”

“He tried to kill his friend, didn’t he?”

“I tried to kill my friend as well.” Angel looked back over his shoulder at the doorway even though they were too far down the corridor now for him possibly to be able to see inside.

“Ah, I see, not so much the Waltons as the Manson Family.”

Angel gave Giles a level look. “I’m not a serial killer. Well…not any more.”

Giles mentally counted to ten. “My point is that this is not the healthiest environment for someone to recover from terrible physical and psychological trauma, and you and your companions do not seem the most well adjusted people I’ve ever met either. This is where everything went wrong for Wesley, isn’t it? He stole Connor from here. He was banished from here.”

“And he was asked to come back.”

“And when he did come back, what was it to? Having to behead his mistress’s corpse while the person who used to be his friend tormented you all while under the control of a higher power. Oh yes, before you all fell under the sway of a rogue goddess and just before his dead mistress turned up to offer you the keys to the kingdom of Hell Incorporated. Did I miss anything?”

“Yes,” Angel told him flatly. “Everything that matters.”

Giles took a deep breath. “You don’t think he might find some peace of mind in England? With familiar things about him?”

“His father’s in England. His father hates him.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t actually…”

“Would you lock someone up in the dark if you liked them?”

Giles winced at the mental picture it gave him but then said carefully, “Watchers have to be trained from an early age to deal with their fears, some treatment that may seem on the surface to be unfeeling or…”

“Is it part of the training never to give them a kind word, or show them any affection, or to ever speak to them for any reason except to tell them how much they’re getting wrong? Wes made Head Boy of the stupid Watchers’ Academy and all his father ever said to him was that there couldn’t have been much competition that year. He spent years turning cartwheels to get that old bastard to give him the time of day and he never did. Wesley needs to be here in LA.”

Although Wesley was now suddenly making a lot more sense to him, Giles stuck to his guns: “In LA where he was tortured by Faith? Where he was blown up? Shot by a zombie policeman? Had his throat slit? Was nearly suffocated by you? Had to cut off one girlfriend’s head and have another die in his arms? Your friend Gunn has been filling me in on what happened to Wesley after he left Sunnydale and, frankly, I think we took better care of him than you did and we didn’t even like him.”

“Well, we like him – a lot, and we’re not giving him up. Especially not to people who don’t like him and never have.”

“I believe that you care about the welfare of your friend, Angel, but I’m looking at what Wesley is now compared with what he was back in Sunnydale and…”

Angel lowered his voice to hiss: “You think that was better – that insecure pompous Council flunky who was ignored by everyone – the butt of everyone’s jokes? Who couldn’t get any respect from anyone who mattered to him? He needs people around him who care about him – that’s us: me, Gunn, and Lorne. We’re what he needs to get better.”

Giles let it go for now. He had already decided that whatever Buffy, Xander, and Willow chose to do, he was going to be staying until he was sure that Wesley was really in the best place and getting the best care. He hadn’t asked to be put in loco parentis for another Watcher and had done his best to avoid taking on the role, but some residual sense of responsibility for the man evidently lingered, and not until he felt a lot happier about the situation could he just waltz off and leave Wesley to the possibly not very tender care of two vampires, an ancient evil demon, a singing not-evil demon, and the man Wesley had quite recently tried to murder…

***

No! No! No…!”

They all jolted out of bed at the sound of those screams. Giles flinging himself halfway across the room before he realized the world hadn’t come into focus and had to stumble back to snatch up his glasses.

By the time he’d pulled on a robe and made his way blearily down the corridor, the others were either already there or still arriving. It was strange to see Spike sprinting up anxiously when it wasn’t Buffy who was the one who was in danger. Giles had presumed the peroxide vampire was incapable of feeling concern for anyone but her.

The door to Angel’s bedroom was open, Lorne inside the room along with Gunn, who were both watching anxiously as Angel tried to soothe Wesley.

“Wes, it was a lie. It didn’t happen…”

Wesley stopped twisting about in Angel’s grip and opened his eyes, focusing on him. “They said you were dust.”

“It was a lie, remember? They were just trying to break you.”

“They said you’d lost the fight. They said you were dead. They said you were in hell.”

“We were in hell.” Angel took the damp cloth Lorne handed to him and pressed it gently to Wesley’s forehead. “We were both in hell together. But we didn’t die. And we got out. Remember, Wes?”

Wesley gripped his hand tightly. “But what if this isn’t real? What if I'm just dreaming it? What if you’re dead?”

“You’re awake.” Angel stroked the wet tangle of hair back from his face. “This isn’t a dream. This is real. The nightmare was the lie and what they told you when we were trapped back on that place.”

“They said you were burning. They said you’d burn for eternity because of what you’d done.”

“Do I feel hot to you?”

Wesley touched his chest and then his face. “No. You’re…room temperature.”

“See any flames?”

“No.” But Wesley still looked unconvinced that this world was the real one.

“Want me to pinch you to prove you’re awake?”

“But I dreamt I was back in the Hyperion all the time when we were in that place. And that Gunn and Lorne were alive and well.”

“They are alive and well.”

“Am I the proof you need?” Illyria walked into the bedroom, graceful and powerful and decidedly blue around the edges. “In your dreams of happiness I would not exist, would I? Fred would stand where I stand.”

Wesley looked up at her and his face cleared. “Yes, that’s true. You were never in my dreams.”

Spike winced. “Poor cow,” he murmured.

“Then this must be real,” Illyria told him. “And the vampire is telling you the truth. You are home again. Now you must learn how to be Wesley again.”

Wesley gazed at her curiously. “Do you know how to be Illyria?”

“I am not what I was. Illyria had its own form. Illyria was not contaminated with human weakness. But you have returned in your own body. You can be who you were.”

“I don’t know who I was.” Wesley looked down at himself in confusion. “I think I never did.”

“We know who you are.” Gunn wrapped his arms around himself as if it was chilly even though the room was perfectly warm. “You’re our friend. We got you back. And we’re keeping you here, okay? You’re not going anywhere else. Not to any hell dimensions or demon worlds or anywhere else. You’re staying here with us in LA.”

“And he doesn’t mean that as a threat, my lamb. That is supposed to be reassuring.”

Wesley smiled at Lorne. “Fred always said that sometimes it was better to be green.”

Giles saw that the green demon jolt a little at that but he managed a smile for Wesley. “We all miss our Fredikins, crumpet, but if she were here right now I just know she’d be telling you to make like a sequel that bucks all the trends and get better.”

Wesley blinked in confusion as he noticed the people in the doorway. “Why are the people from Sunnydale here if it’s not a dream?”

“Do I look a German Shepherd to you?” Xander demanded. “We’re real.”

“If you’re real why are you dressed as a pirate?”

Angel pressed a hand to Wesley’s forehead and winced. “You’ve got a fever again, Wes. I’ll get you something for it.”

“Don’t go.” Wesley caught Angel’s wrist and gripped it. “Angel…”

“I’ll stay,” Angel said at once. “I’ll stay right here.”

“I’ll get the fever medicine.” Willow reassured him. “I’ll get it now. Giles?”

“I’ll help.”

As they both turned away, Buffy and Xander fell into step behind them. Xander grimaced “So every time Deadboy fought they told Wesley the guy had been dustified?”

Buffy looked back over her shoulder. “Just once there should be a hell dimension where everyone hands out leis and asks you to have a nice day. Is he going to be okay?”

Willow nodded. “We just need to keep giving him the fever medicine. It’s only been a few days, we can’t expect him to throw off that kind of temperature right away.”

Lorne and Gunn caught up with them. “Wes is burning up and he’s still having the nightmares.”

Willow gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, we know, don’t worry, Gunn. He is getting better, you just have to give him time.”

Gunn looked unconvinced and Lorne handed him his drink. “Eight months in a hell dimension, cupcake – forty-eight hours back home…you do the math.”

Gunn surprised Giles by taking a gulp of the cocktail. “Okay, maybe he isn’t dying.”

“He really isn’t,” Giles reassured him. “And he probably needs people around him who…”

“Aren’t totally paranoid?” Gunn finished off Lorne’s drink and then handed him the empty glass. “Maybe some of us are still working on that.”

It was Xander who slapped Gunn gently on the shoulder. “Hey, you lost almost everyone you knew who wasn’t a god-king or Spike in the space of three months. Trust me, you’re allowed to be paranoid about the one human friend you have left. If it was Willow who’d been lost in a hell dimension and I’d just got her back I’d probably want a baby monitor wired up to her room that I could carry around with me even if Buffy was taking care of her twenty-four-seven.”

Gunn looked at him. “Yeah, that’s a little crazier than even I’d wanna be. Thanks, man, that helped.”

Xander nodded. “That’s what we’re here for and – any time.”

By the time Giles took Wesley the fever medicine, he was dozing in Angel’s arms, the vampire murmuring something to him that sounded a little like a bedtime story, until Giles realized that he was actually talking about past cases.

“And then there was Jhiera and the whole Ko on the back of the neck thing…”

“Did you have sex with her?” Wesley murmured drowsily. “Because Cordy bet me ten dollars that you did and I don’t think I ever paid her.”

“That’s none of your – you two used to take bets on whether or not I slept with the clients…?”

“I always defended your honour,” Wesley insisted, still not opening his eyes. “Of course, I insisted that you would never sleep with Darla however dark you got. I think I still owe Cordelia money for that little wager…”

Angel took the bottle of medicine from Giles and shook it up. “You need to drink this.”

“I don’t want any more demon monkey meat, Angel. I can’t keep it down.”

“This is medicine. It’s nice.”

“You always say it’s nice and it’s always revolting and I’m not hungry. I just want to go to sleep.”

Angel held the bottle to his lips. “Drink it and then you can go to sleep. Come on – two mouthfuls, that’s all.”

Wearily Wesley opened his eyes and then blinked in confusion at their surroundings, but he took the bottle and obediently swallowed down two gulps of medicine, grimacing at the taste. “That’s worse than demon monkey meat.” He looked at Giles warily and then said: “Why do I have to keep dreaming about Sunnydale? I never even liked Sunnydale. Next time I want to dream about Madam Dorion's…”

“Yeah, you and me both, Wes.” As the man slumped asleep against his chest, Angel pulled up the coverlet and then took the bottle from his fingers before he spilled its contents. He handed it back to Giles. “Thank you.

Although Wesley undoubtedly looked very peaceful as long as he was snuggled up against Angel while he slept, Giles still didn’t like this situation. He didn’t like the way Wesley was so dependent upon Angel or how much the vampire seemed to like Wesley being that way; how Angel didn’t think anyone else could look after Wesley and wouldn’t share his care with the rest of them, however many times they offered. If Gunn was paranoid then Giles personally thought that Angel was a candidate for a wraparound jacket and a rubber room. “If you want a break…?” he offered. “I know that Gunn or Lorne would be very happy to watch over him.”

“No, I’m the one he needs.” Angel didn’t even attempt to sound as if he didn’t like things that way.

Giles nodded and left them to their – apparently – platonic bed-sharing but he did wonder if they were ever going to get the real Wesley back while it suited Angel quite so well for him to stay the man he was at the moment.

***

Wesley awoke to a strange almost-silence. Not the silence of rustling undergrowth in a thorny jungle or the hissing plop of lava pits bubbling; not the screech of alien birds or monkey-like demons with red eyes and curving fangs. There was the tick of a clock; the drip of a tap; and – just too far away to make out any words – the murmur of conversation.

Possibly a fever dream. He put a hand to his forehead and it was cool. None of his wounds were throbbing with any particular intensity either. They ached, certainly, the welts and burns and cuts and bruises and the wincing sear of claw wounds, but there wasn’t that inescapable pulse of infection.

He blinked a few times and looked around the room. It looked like Angel’s old bedroom back in the Hyperion, but a lot of his fever dreams were centred around the Hyperion so that didn’t really prove anything.

“Angel…?” he whispered the name cautiously. If they were still on the run in the jungle, it might alert a predator, of course, but it wouldn’t matter if he were in their shared cage while Angel was fighting yet another bout. And if Angel were already dead and he was about to be tossed to some scaly demon as a not very substantial meal then it was never going to matter again.

“Angel…?”

He heard running footsteps, someone moving upstairs at speed, then the pound of feet on carpeted corridor. If this was a fever dream, the sound effects were very good; none of that muffling of the soundtrack that usually accompanied in his dreams; or the weird echo effect.

“I’m here, Wes. I’m here.”

Angel was across the room in a couple of strides and Wesley found himself gazing up into a familiar face. It was reassuring that Angel still had healing wounds on his face. If he’d been wearing a white suit and was entirely unmarked he would have been forced to assume this was a hallucination. They had both done their share of hallucinating over the past few months; starvation, exhaustion, infected wounds in Wesley’s case, the mindfry of blistering pain, had both sent them right to the edge of sanity more than once.

“Wes.” The bed creaked just the way a bed would and the mattress dipped in a manner that was comfortingly mundane as Angel sat on it. The hand on Wesley’s forehead was cool and familiar. “We’re home. We’re in the Hyperion. There was a portal. Do you remember running for it?”

“Have we had this conversation before?” Wesley asked.

Angel smiled. “A few times.”

“How long has it been since we came back?”

“Couple of days. You had a fever. But you’re getting better.”

“So, it’s real?” Wesley cautiously plucked at the sheets and then reached out to touch Angel’s hand. The vampire was wearing black trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt; he was barefoot and looked as if he had thrown on his clothes casually. Wesley folded back Angel’s left cuff carefully to look for the bite mark Angel had sustained in his last fight. It was almost healed but there were still indentations where the fangs had gone in. If this was a fever dream it deserved to win an award for attention to detail.

“It’s real.” Angel cupped his face in his hand. “I’m real. You’re alive and I’m no deader than I’ve been all the time you’ve known me.”

“Where did the portal come from?” Hope rose in his breast that as this impossible thing was possible perhaps all impossible things were possible. “Did Fred…?”

The flash of pain in Angel’s eyes that turned at once to a flash of pity, told him that some things remained unchanged. “It was Willow,” the vampire said gently. “Fred’s…”

“Still dead.” It always hurt so much worse after confusion or fever led him to believe she was still alive. But there was clarity here now. He could remember her death. Remember her convulsing in his arms. Remember Illyria rising up. “I think I may be sane again.” He licked his lips cautiously, the aniseed aftertaste of fennel unmistakable. “I drank something.”

“From Willow. To combat the fever.” Angel touched his forehead again. “It seems to have worked.”

“Willow’s here?” That was too confusing for him to make sense of at the moment.

“And Buffy, Giles, and Xander. They all came to help get us back. It needed a lot of mojo to get the portal open apparently. Lucky for us that Willow’s a very powerful witch these days.”

“Buffy?” Wesley realized what Angel had said. “Buffy’s here?”

“Yes.”

“Is she okay?” Wesley scanned his face anxiously. “Are you okay?”

Angel nodded. “We’re fine, Wes. Everyone’s fine. You just need to concentrate on getting well.”

“I think I am well,” Wesley admitted. “I’m just not sure if I like it.”

Angel pulled the coverlet over him and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down. “You’re not ‘well’, Wes. You’re just not running a temperature of a hundred and four any more. If I get you some soup can you keep it down?”

“I can try. As long as it’s not Heinz tomato soup. I hate that stuff.”

Angel grinned at him. “Oxtail? Minestrone? Leek and potato?”

“Are you mocking my national cuisine?”

“If I was mocking your cuisine I’d be talking about toad in the hole. Gunn got the soup. I think it’s chicken. Can you stay awake long enough for me to get it?”

Wesley could feel exhaustion pressing on his eyelids again but there was also a hollow in his stomach that was demanding his attention. “Yes.”

“I’ll be quick.” Angel got to his feet, crossed the room and went out of the door.

At once Wesley felt an overwhelming sense of loss. He had to stop himself from calling him back, not caring about the food, just wanting Angel to stay with him. Panic was flaring as he listened to the footsteps disappearing into the distance. Images flashed into his mind of nets cutting into their skin, the slash of demon claws, clubs beating them into submission and in his case unconsciousness. Waking to a dagger-sharp pain in his head, blood in his eyes, tied up naked on a dirt floor with no Angel to be seen, panicking and being struck again for calling out to the vampire; then the sigils being cut and burnt into his skin. Trying not to scream. Failing. More beatings, then finally being dragged by the hair back to a filthy cell and thrown into it. Rolling over to find Angel there, cold and still and bleeding, but not dust, not gone…

“Soup…”

He smelt it before he saw it, opening his eyes to the realization that he was starving. Seeing Angel, he smiled in relief. “You were quick.”

“I ran.” The vampire smiled back at him gently. “Can you sit up?”

Wesley managed to do so, a little taken aback by how weak he felt, what an effort it was to move.

“Let me help you.” A strange voice.

He started in confusion and then the woman spoke again. “It’s me, Wesley. It’s Buffy. I’m the official tray holder for this meal.”

“Oh.” He became aware that he was naked and quickly checked to see where the sheet was. The coverlet came up to his chest so that wasn’t too bad, he supposed, although he was still disconcerted to have a third person there. It had been just him and Angel for so long that it was difficult to adjust to a world with other people in it who weren’t enemies.

“I can go if you don’t want me to…” She looked at him uncertainly and he focused on her properly, remembering how young she was, and how pretty. She had a nice face. He’d forgotten that in the intervening years. Just remembering her as sarcasm and anger. But her eyes were kind.

“No. It’s fine. Thank you.”

“I get to do the feeding,” Angel said. “Buffy just attends us both.”

“I give good attendance,” she confirmed.

“I can feed myself,” Wesley protested, sitting up a little straighter in the bed, then tugging up the coverlet hastily.

“You can?” Angel looked unconvinced. “Would that be without spilling soup in my bed?”

Wesley raised a hand and noticed how shaky it was, thought about the liquid constitution of soup. “Oh. You wanted a soup-free bed then?”

Angel dug the spoon into the soup which Buffy obligingly held for him. “Smartass, eh? You must be feeling better. Do I need to do the whole little train going into the tunnel thing or are you going to open wide without me needing to ask?”

“That sounds so dirty,” Buffy murmured.

“Filthy,” Wesley agreed.

“Get your minds out of the gutter,” Angel returned easily. “And you, Wes, open your mouth and swallow when I tell you to.”

Wesley decided there were worse things than being sane. If Angel was able to make jokes then they were either imminently about to die and he was trying to keep Wesley’s mind off things – which didn’t seem likely – or the danger was really past. “Are you going to run this pervert routine with everyone?”

Angel scooped the spoon back into the soup. “Yeah, I was planning to make Gunn hold the tray next time. But, hey, Giles would be the funniest.”

“Giles might tell my father.” Wesley opened his mouth for the next spoonful of soup.

“Giles wouldn’t dream of it.”

For a moment he thought it was his father in the doorway. Wesley swallowed the soup hastily, torn between sitting up straighter and sinking down into the bed and looking as ill as possible in the hope that he could avoid punishment. Then the man stepped out of the contre jour of the doorway and into the room and he saw that it was Rupert Giles.

The man continued easily: “But I have to tell you that we can hear every word downstairs and you’ve even succeeded in ‘grossing out’ Xander and Spike. So, I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“It was nothing.” Angel inclined his head modestly and held up another spoonful of soup. “You have to eat all of this, by the way, as Gunn went out especially to get it and will be sure to tell you that if you don’t finish it.”

“I wasn’t gonna say a word.”

Wesley recognized that silhouette straight away. Unmistakably Gunn. And although he was feeling slightly panicked by having so many people around him, it was also comforting to see so many people he at least knew, and in Gunn’s case, liked. “Thank you for the soup, Charles.”

“You’re welcome. Just make sure you eat it.”

Angel took the opportunity of Wesley opening his mouth to answer to shove another spoonful of soup into him. Wesley swallowed it quickly. “I’m not a toddler, you know. I like soup. I’m hungry and I want to eat it.”

“Good.” Buffy smiled at him. “Because we don’t get our chocolate cake until you do.”

“There’s chocolate cake?” Wesley had thought about chocolate a few times while lost in that hell dimension, but he had almost forgotten how it tasted. Now, he suddenly remembered the exact texture of the thick chocolate on a Mars bar from his tuck box. “I want cake.”

“Soup first,” Angel held out another spoonful.

“But chocolate cake…” Wesley gazed up at him imploringly.

“Oh let him have the cake, Angel,” Gunn said at once. “I hate it when he looks like that.”

“Please, Angel…” Wesley could almost smell the icing on the cake; that thick American frosting that stuck to everything and which he’d always complained about so bitterly in the past when Cordelia let it get dangerously close to his books. Now he wanted to feel it melt on his tongue.

“Okay.” Angel sighed in defeat. “Enough with the eyes, Wes. You can have cake.”

“I’ll get the cake.” Buffy leapt to her feet with alacrity. “And I get to watch him eat it.”

Wesley gazed at her in confusion. “Is there some reason why you would want to…?”

“It’s the stray found in the gutter complex. All women have it,” Giles explained. “Willow wanted to bathe you and now Buffy wants to feed you. Tomorrow they’ll fight over who gets to buy you a new basket.”

“Yes,” Buffy agreed. “But I’ll win because Willow isn’t allowed to use witchcraft on us and I’m stronger than she is.”

As Buffy sped out of the room, taking the tray with her, Wesley felt somewhat exhausted. He slumped back on the pillows and looked up at Angel. “They’re quite…tiring, aren’t they?”

“The Sunnydale crowd?” Angel nodded. “Like watching squirrels do the cha-cha.”

“I remember never really understanding most of what they said.” Wesley laid his head back on the pillow. “It sounded like English but it never seemed to mean what it appeared to on the surface.”

“Well, Americans and teenagers,” Giles conceded with a shrug. “The English language was always going to be an inevitable casualty.”

“We heard that!” Chorused from downstairs.

Wesley closed his eyes and for a moment the jungle loomed, the slash of claws, the bite of the net, but when he opened them again he was still in Angel’s bed, not being dragged anywhere, the sheets cool and clean against his sore skin. “I’m just going to close my eyes…” he murmured.

As he drifted into sleep he heard Buffy say in a disappointed voice: “I wanted to feed him cake.”

“Tomorrow.” Someone who sounded strangely like Rupert Giles from Sunnydale said, “You can feed him cake tomorrow, Buffy.”

As he slipped back into his tangled dreams, Wesley wondered why Buffy would be fighting Ertash demons in a hell dimension instead of minding the Hellmouth in Sunnydale, and what cake had to do with anything.

***

Xander had to admit this place was kind of growing on him. The idea of having a whole hotel at one’s disposal was rather cool, and he liked Gunn. The guy was scarily normal and seemed to understand very well the whole not-having-super-powers-when-everyone-around-you-did thing. Not that Giles had super powers, of course, except for remaining resolutely English in the face of all temptation to be otherwise, but even he could do the occasional magic trick. Today Lorne, Spike and Illyria were all where Illyria was. Not that he was certain where that was but it was perhaps just as well it wasn’t in the lobby as the blue-rinsed demon apparently looked on Wesley as more or less her personal property and at the moment Buffy seemed to be doing the same thing. A cat fight between a slayer and a demon over a convalescent Watcher might well turn ugly.

He had to admit, too, that it was kind of fun to watch Buffy and Willow doing their ‘he followed us all the way home, can we keep him?’ thing with, of all people, stuffy pompous Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Except that Wesley was neither stuffy nor pompous these days; just a little confused and lost, and scarily thin.

It was probably just as well that Buffy had intervened because Angel had been creepily possessive for nearly a week until Buffy had pretty much marched into that bedroom and insisted that Angel shared the taking care of Wesley duties and she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Angel had sulked a little but, as he got Wesley at night, he was letting the rest of them spend short supervised time periods with him during the day, pleasing Buffy and Willow who could then tend to a healing Watcher in a smothering and equally creepy way that neither Giles nor Xander would have tolerated for five minutes.

Angel was healing fast, Wesley a great deal slower, but that just meant he had a longer convalescence and so more time for the women to fuss. Normally, Xander would have baulked at women fussing so much over someone who wasn’t him, but for once he had to admit that Wesley really seemed to need it, and more importantly he seemed totally unused to it. It had been a slow process building up his strength enough for him to be able to get out of bed, but from there he had progressed to a slow struggle down the stairs of the Hyperion to the lobby and the semblance of some normality. Xander liked to think they had all done their bit to try to help him get over his jumpiness. Wesley was still having nightmares about Angel being dead and dusted but although he and Angel were still – rather weirdly – sharing a bed, it was clear that nothing mattress-springy was going on between them. Wes was just kind of disorientated when he came out of a nightmare and Angel was kind of insanely clingy and protective twenty-four-seven. Wesley’s temperature was still inclined to spike back to fever levels, especially if he didn’t get enough rest, but he could keep down his meals much better, and although whenever his temperature went up he had to be reassured all over again that he was back in LA, for the most part he was fairly normal.

Being in bed had afforded him a little bit of protection from the excesses of the female fussing but it had only been a matter of time before they went to full strength mother hen mode, and now that he was convalescent, getting saner every day, and strong enough to be benevolently tyrannized, there was nothing to hold them back. Wesley seemed bewildered by Buffy’s attitude to him, giving her a deer in headlights look that unfortunately – as it made his eyes look even bigger in his thin face – made her crank up the protective fussing thing to Mach Ten.

Every time Buffy made Wesley a sandwich he looked at it as if he’d never seen one before in his life, turning it over cautiously on the plate as if he was expected to perform a ritual before tasting it.

“Um…”

“It’s food, Wesley,” Buffy said helpfully. “As in for eating. You put it in your mouth and chew on it until swallowing feels like the next logical step.”

“Has it occurred to you he might not actually be hungry?” Giles looked up from his book. He had taken over the office in the Hyperion and seemed to be enjoying reading his way through all of Wesley’s books, a pile of which he now had at the front desk. “It was only two hours ago that Willow spoon fed him something gooey and chocolatey with no apparent food value.”

“Devil’s Food Cake is all food value,” Xander assured the man. “It’s the ultimate food.”

As Buffy continued to coax Wesley into taking a bite out of the sandwich she’d made him, Giles added, “I’m not clear why Angel isn’t getting an equivalent amount of fussing.”

“It’s the blood.” Xander explained. “It isn’t interesting enough. You want to feed up Angel or Spike you get a choice of offering them blood or…blood. With Wesley there are an infinite variety of sticky foodstuffs to tempt him with.”

“This is a chick thing, right?” Gunn came to join them by the reception desk.

“Definitely,” Xander confirmed. “They almost came to blows yesterday about who got to cut his hair.”

“Who won?” Giles enquired.

“Buffy is cutting Angel’s and Willow is doing Wesley’s. They have this afternoon scheduled for it. Then they get to buy Wesley clothes.”

Wesley evidently heard that because he looked around in confusion. “I have clothes. Gunn, don’t I have clothes?”

“No jammies,” Buffy explained. “Convalescing people need jammies. Navy blues ones, preferably.”

“Or tartan.” Willow came into the room with a towel and a pair of scissors. “And there is the whole robe question.”

“This is ridiculous.” Giles marked the page in his book with a neatly folded kleenex. “Everyone knows that pyjamas should be striped.”

“But I don’t think I need…” Wesley noticed the scissors. “Is that for cutting my hair…? Because I used to go to a hairdresser on Fifth and…”

“You can’t walk that far,” Willow reminded him. “And you don’t want to go on having the hippy hair, do you? I bet it tickles your ears.”

“These women are unbelievable,” Xander observed. “Someone really needs to buy them a puppy and soon.”

“I dunno. It’s kind of cute watching Wes get fussed over.” Gunn leant back against the reception desk and grinned. “He hasn’t had that since Cordelia…”

“I never really pictured Cordelia as the fussing type,” Giles admitted.

Gunn shrugged. “Well, you know. It was kind of tough-love fussing. ‘Eat something, Wesley, now, I mean it, because you looking like that is just going to make my hips look wide’, ‘Do you have any clothes that don’t make you look gay?’, ‘Okay, no more fighting big stinky clawed demons for Wesley until he learns not to bleed on my blouse afterwards. Is that clear?’”

“That’s my girl,” said Xander fondly.

“Those two fought like cat and dog. Drove me buggo.”

“They were all smoochy and ‘oh Wesley you have the sexiest accent’ when I knew them,” Xander observed.

“Yeah, well, they were well over that when I knew them and definitely into the brother-sister thing, only with added squabbling.”

“Sit back, Wesley,” Willow said in the kind of soothing voice that would personally have sent Xander scampering for cover. Wesley didn’t look too soothed either, but he had come back so spacey, starving, and used to doing what Angel told him that he hadn’t really regained the knack of rebellion yet. The women, of course, were exploiting that ruthlessly.

“Angel!” Buffy was using her best ‘brooking no argument’ tone and Xander wasn’t exactly surprised when the vampire sloped out of the office, looking trapped.

“Yes. What?”

“You know what. Now sit down next to Wesley.” She pointed to the chair that had been placed next to the ex-Watcher.

“I can pay for a haircut,” Angel protested.

“You can pay me in chocolate cake.” Buffy pointed at the chair. “Sit.”

Willow said, still-soothingly, “I’ll have you looking just the way you used to in no time, Wesley, I promise.”

“And she can actually make good on that,” Xander promised. “Because if she snips off part of your ear she can repair it with a superglue spell.”

“Don’t listen to Xander,” Willow reassured him. “There will be no snippage of ears. Or other body parts in fact.”

Willow dipped the comb she was holding into the bowl of warm water placed between her and Buffy, ran it through Wesley’s hair and then began snipping.

“Poor Wes,” Gunn sighed. “That was definitely a flinch.”

“Well, let’s face it, it would be difficult for Buffy and Willow to make those two look worse than they do now. Although it could be fun to see if they can manage it.” Xander passed Gunn a beer and they clashed the bottles together idly.

“You don’t mind your friends being ritually humiliated in the front lobby then?” Giles enquired.

Gunn shrugged. “I figure if your friends are going to be around for a while, my friends had better get used to it. Wes has never learned how to stand up to women – he was trained up by Cordelia that way. And as Buffy’s a slayer and Angel’s a vampire I figure he doesn’t do what she says he gets dusted.”

“So you were all aware of Angel’s history with Buffy?”

“Oh yeah.” Gunn took another sip of beer. “Cordy and Wes actually acted it out for us.”

The sudden cessation of snipping made Xander, Gunn and Giles look up. “Did you get a main artery already?” Xander enquired.

“‘Acted it out for us’?” Buffy echoed in a dangerously calm sort of voice. “Would you happen to remember any of it?”

“Wes?” Angel looked at him. “Want to share with the nice slayer?”

“Memory loss,” Wesley said hastily. He twisted his head round to give Willow a full on puppy dog eyes look that Xander had to admit had his own and Angel’s beaten hollow. “Don’t remember.”

Willow said hastily, “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, Buffy. And it was probably Cordelia’s idea anyway.”

Xander took another sip of beer. “Sucker.”

Gunn cleared his throat before saying melodramatically: “‘Oh, Buffy – I love you so much I almost forgot to brood…!’ Wasn’t that how it went, Wes?”

“Sorry. Still drawing a complete blank, I’m afraid. Thanks very much for the haircut, Willow. It’s awfully kind of you.”

“Yeah, keep sucking up to Willow, Watcher Guy,” Xander told him. “You’re going to need a witch to hide behind any minute now.”

Buffy said fiercely to Angel: “You let them make fun of…?”

“I wasn’t around. And when I walked in on them doing their little play, I told them to bite me. And I wouldn’t share with Cordelia even though she really wanted me to.”

“Then he demanded ice cream,” Gunn confirmed. “It was very manly.”

“You’re pathetic,” Buffy told Angel. She pointed her scissors at Wesley. “And you’re lucky I don’t take you for a slayer workout reminder course.”

Wesley gave Buffy a ‘poor scared little just back from a hell dimension me’ look that Xander suspected was only half real, but it worked. Buffy looked at Wesley for a moment and then sighed. “I’ll let you off just this once as I was pretty much a total bitch to you the whole time you were in Sunnydale. But, Willow, make sure you get his hair to do that spiky thing you said was so cute when you saw him last time.”

“You thought Wesley was cute when you saw him before?” Xander demanded in disbelief.

“That unshaven insomniac just-been-thrown-out-of-a-window look does it for you then, does it, Willow?” Gunn enquired.

“It was a spasm,” she insisted. “It passed.”

“Why do women like skinny guys anyway?” Xander looked down at his own not-skinny frame. “I mean, they’re skinny, so you’d think they’d want a contrast.”

“Skinny?” Buffy demanded frostily.

“Slender and perfectly formed was what I said, Buff,” Xander assured her hastily. “I don’t know where you’re getting ‘skinny’ from. Wes is skinny. You’re so not.”

“So, now you’re saying I’m fat?”

Xander darted Giles a ‘help me’ look but the man shrugged. “You dug yourself into that pit all by yourself. You get yourself out.”

“Buffy, you’re a vision of radiant loveliness,” Xander said hastily. “And I worship at your feet.”

She smiled triumphantly. “That’s better.”

Buffy concentrated on Angel’s hair for a moment, eyes narrowed as she assessed it. Xander thought it was downright disturbing that Buffy had evidently memorized Angel’s hair so completely that she could not only picture it in her mind she could actually recreate it. Because that was what she was doing. Turning it back from scary wild hair into even scarier sticking up fashionably hair. She even had the mousse there ready, he noticed.

“So, you actually liked Angel’s hair then, Buff?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “There are people who don’t?”

Angel looked impossibly smug and Xander rolled his eyes. “Love really is blind, isn’t it?”

Willow was looking anxious as she worked on Wesley’s hair. “Gunn, do you remember what Wesley’s hair was like before?”

“Short,” Gunn supplied helpfully.

She gave him a panicked look. “That’s it?”

“Brown?” Gunn offered.

“Do you need mousse?” Buffy asked.

“Wesley’s doesn’t need to stick up.”

“To stop it sticking up.”

Willow looked at Wesley’s face. “It would look kind of cute if it did.”

Buffy also gazed at him for a moment. “It would look so cute.”

Giles rolled his eyes. “Oh for goodness sake, you two. Could you leave the poor man the tattered remnants of some dignity?”

“Later we get to buy him clothes.” Buffy apparently had no shame – or mercy. “And to make ‘aww’ing noises in the store where complete strangers can hear us.”

Xander took a swig of beer before giving Wesley a sympathetic look. “I bet that hell dimension’s not looking quite so bad now, is it?”

“You can’t take Wesley out the way he looks right now,” Angel said with authority. “Wait until the bruises fade or people will assume you’re perverted sadists.”

Xander looked at Gunn. “Buffy and Willow, Bondage Mistresses of Pain. I kind of like it.”

“I’m kind of right there with you,” Gunn admitted. “Do you think they have handcuffs?”

“Buffy did used to keep Spike chained up in her basement. I always suspected she was a spanker too.”

Gunn was looking at Buffy with renewed interest. “She did. Wow. That’s…Is it me or did it just get hot in here?”

“I still don’t understand why I need more clothes,” Wesley put in plaintively. “Did you burn my clothes when I was away? Because some of them were very expensive.”

“No, we kept them, Wes,” Gunn assured him. “But the girls don’t want to dress you up in Ralph Lauren polo shirts. They want you to wear jammies so they can ‘aww’ over you.”

“We don’t really need Wesley along to buy those do we?” Buffy turned to Willow triumphantly. “We just buy ones in the right size and then make him wear them. Same with the robe.”

“But I’m convalescent now,” Wesley insisted. “I’m wearing normal clothes.”

“But you shouldn’t be. Because you still have all your owies.”

Giles ran a hand through his hair. “What is it about an attractive man having injuries that makes women respond to him as if he’s two years old? It is the most inexplicable phenomenon.”

“You think Wesley’s attractive?” Xander put his head on one side to look at Wesley. “Don’t you think he’s kind of skinny?”

“The girls at Wolfram & Hart all thought he was a looker,” Spike offered, coming in, sipping a cup of blood. “They were always saying what a pity Wes was gay.”

Wesley looked at him in shock. “I’m not gay.”

“Well, they thought you were.”

“Why didn’t you tell them I wasn’t?”

“How was I supposed to know? Every time I saw you, you were with Angel, and with him being such a big nancy I assumed you were too.”

“Sitting right here,” Angel pointed out indignantly.

“The girls said that ‘poor Nina’ was wasting her time with Angel because everyone knew he and Mister Wyndam-Pryce were an item and what a pity it was that Mister Wyndam-Pryce batted for the other team when he had such lovely dress sense. I thought they had inside information.”

Angel and Wesley exchanged an indignant look. “Well, they didn’t,” Angel said shortly. “And where’s Illyria?”

Spike waved a hand. “Lorne’s trying to get her to dig Aretha – I tried to tell him he was wasting his time but he’s convinced she’s got to have some soul-sister vibe in there somewhere.”

“They did sound very sure,” Gunn admitted apologetically. “The girls in the office. A couple of times I tried to correct them on the whole Wes being gay thing but they just laughed at me and said I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said the only people who didn’t know Wes was gay were the men who wanted to sleep with him, which was when I started worrying about that time when we were wrestling and how I maybe enjoyed it a little bit too much… And then I decided not to think about any of those things ever again.”

Wesley rolled his eyes at him. “Good move, Charles. Could you try not talking about them either?”

Spike held up a hand. “See, I knew Wes was gay straight off, so that proves I’m not one of the ones who wants to sleep with him. I knew Angelus was too. The first time I met him I thought ‘what an unbelievable ponce’ – I remember it distinctly.”

“But you did have sex with Angelus,” Giles pointed out. “On numerous occasions. There are several eye witness accounts – from survivors of your various massacres – of your Bacchanalian revelries after you’d all sated yourselves on the blood of innocents.”

Spike blanched. “That’s invasion of privacy, that is. I could sue. And you can’t believe eyewitness accounts anyway. Everyone knows people are too traumatized to remember anything accurately after a vampire attack. Me and Dru, and Angelus and Darla, that’s what they would have seen – they were just confused and probably hysterical.”

Angel grimaced apologetically at Wesley. “I did some bad things in my time.”

“Well, yes.” Wesley nodded sagely. “Darla for one, and Spike apparently for another.”

Buffy was still looking between Gunn and Wesley with great interest, apparently oblivious to the rest of the conversation. “You wrestled? Proper sweaty wrestling? Was there oil?”

“No,” Wesley protested. “We were fully clothed, unoiled, and under the influence of a spell of Lorne’s which made us think we were seventeen.”

“So, you used to wrestle with guys a lot when you were seventeen?”

“No…” Wesley gave Gunn a reproachful look. “This conversation is entirely your fault.”

“It’s one of Buffy’s core fantasies,” Willow explained. “Angel and Spike wrestling naked. There’s usually oil. Sometimes mud. Once…jello. It’s another of those mental images that occasionally makes me question my lesbian credentials but only for a moment.”

Angel and Spike looked at one another before both scowling at Buffy who showed no signs of shame at all.

“Pervert,” Xander told her loftily.

“You and Angel are actually sleeping together,” Giles pointed out to Wesley. “Is it really so surprising that people might jump to…certain conclusions?”

“We’re only sleeping together in a non-sexual way,” Angel retorted.

“There’s a non-sexual way to sleep together?” Gunn enquired.

Spike gazed across at Buffy. “Yes, there is. And it’s the best way sometimes. Comforting. Makes you feel like you matter as a person. Like you’re someone.”

Xander looked at him sideways. “Man, Spike, you’ve been out of the dating game for a while, haven’t you?”

“Isn’t it ironic that with all this talk about sex there is no way any of us are going to be getting any from any of the people here?” Willow observed.

“You had to say that out loud?” Xander demanded.

“I could have said something about Buffy indulging in a naughty threesome with Angel and Spike, but I didn’t. That would have been wrong.”

“Angelus was always looking for a threesome with Faith and Wes,” Gunn observed conversationally.

“No, he wasn’t,” Angel said quickly.

“Oh, my mistake. That ‘It’s never just about you and me, Faith, Wes’ll always be in the middle’ was about something else, was it?”

“He meant as a bargaining chip in hostage negotiations.”

“Funny how Angelus always got a hard-on during the kind of hostage negotiations that involved pulling Wes in really tight against his body…” Gunn murmured innocently.

“Was that what that was?” Wesley looked at Angel in surprise. “I really did think you had a gun in your pocket.”

“I knew it!” Gunn punched the air. “The real reason Angelus never killed Wesley confirmed.”

Angel narrowed his eyes. “You’re so close to being dead right now.”

Buffy and Willow exchanged a guilty look. “You too?” Buffy offered quietly.

Willow nodded. “‘Fraid so.”

“What?” Xander enquired.

Buffy grimaced. “It’s just… Angel, Wesley and Faith… not entirely lacking in hotness as a concept. Not that I would… There would be no peeking, of course, because that would be wrong but as mental images go….”

“It was Angelus, Wesley, and Faith,” Angel pointed out grimly. “So step one in that little ménage a trios would have been Angelus turning Faith into a vampire and step two would have been him doing lots of very non consensual things to Wesley, probably before peeling his skin off slowly with a razor blade.”

“You’re really killing the mood,” Buffy told him. “Let me have my fantasies and you have yours. It’s just that mine would be…better.”

Giles looked at her in disbelief. “Are there any males in this room you don’t want to see naked, covered in oil and doing something sticky to another equally naked and oil-covered male?”

“Well, you, of course. That would be squicky on so many levels.”

Spike shrugged. “I dunno. Giles and Wes – gotta lot in common, haven’t they? They’re both kind of boring and tweedy and a bit mentally unstable and don’t get laid very often. That would give them some common ground. I could see them as a couple.”

“Me too,” Willow admitted. As both men glared at her she amended quickly. “Not for the reasons Spike said. Just because… You’re both Watchers and…English so you could talk about…cricket together and things and it would be sweet.”

“If this conversation doesn’t end now I’m going to put out my other eye myself,” Xander exclaimed. “No more of the homo-enough-already. You girls are sick!”

Buffy said: “I have four words for you, Xander – Willow. Kennedy. Tongue. Stud.” She snipped at Angel’s hair triumphantly, put down the scissors, picked up the mousse and ran her fingers through his dark locks with what looked like professional aplomb. Xander had to admit that the end result was Angel with the same scary hair he’d always had. She whipped off the sheet around his shoulders and invited applause. When no one did she rolled her eyes impatiently. “Come on. It’s a masterpiece.”

“You made it look like it did before,” Spike pointed out. “No one here likes the way it looked before except for you and Angel.”

“I like it,” Wesley said hastily.

“You’re just scared of Buffy,” Spike said.

“Yes,” Wesley admitted. “But at least I’m man enough to admit it.”

“Wesley gets a cookie,” Buffy said smugly. “Because sometimes it’s smart to be scared. No cookie for Spike.”

Xander held up a hand. “If I say that you made it look just the way it used to look and don’t add that I always thought Angel’s hair made him look like a complete freak, do I get a cookie?”

Buffy considered the point for a moment. “No. Will, have you finished?”

“I’m not sure.” Willow examined Wesley’s hair anxiously. “Do you think I could use a little spell to tidy it up?”

“How many ears does he have left, Willow?” Xander enquired comfortingly. “That’s the main thing.”

“Gunn?” Willow gave the man a begging look. “Does this look right?”

“Looks short and brown to me, Willow. I think you got it.”

Buffy gave Wesley a cookie and a mirror, putting the first into his hand and holding the other in front of him. “It’s perfect. It’s all interestingly tousled in an ‘I’m too cool and rogue demon huntery to run a comb through it or shave’ kind of way.”

Willow beamed. “That’s just the look I was going for.”

“Well, you’ve got it.” Buffy held the mirror up for Wesley. “Didn’t Willow get it right, Wesley? And remember who supplies the cookies around here.”

Wesley darted a fearful glance at his reflection and then looked relieved. “Oh. That actually looks like me again. Thank you, Willow.” He felt his chin. “And I do shave. Just…not every day.”

Xander nodded sagely. “Probably saw Miami Vice at an impressionable age.”

“I told Wes and Gunn that they looked like Crocket and Tubbs and they just looked blank,” Spike complained.

“We didn’t know what you were talking about. We still don’t. Gunn was fighting vampires from the age of twelve and I was studying to be a Watcher. We didn’t get a lot of time for popular culture.”

Willow turned to Buffy. “He even sounds just like Giles. Do you think we should matchmake?”

“Willow…” Giles warned ominously. “Remember I still have a direct line to a very powerful coven of witches.”

“That sounds very Devil Rides Out, doesn’t it?” Spike observed to Angel. “I can just see Giles summoning the Goat of Mendes while witches cavort around naked.”

“It’s not that kind of a coven,” Giles said wearily.

Xander sighed. “That’s a pity because the image of witches cavorting around naked…” Catching Willow’s eye he amended hastily: “…is just so stereotypical and wrong. I never believed those engravings. And the woodcuts on pages 57, 296, and 531 of that book of Giles’, I never believed those either on any of my numerous viewings of them.”

Gunn raised an eyebrow. “Having the Sunnydale crew to visit really does up the pervert ratio, doesn’t it?”

“The IQ level is taking a bit of a beating though,” Angel murmured.

“Oh, so you don’t think Giles is smarter than Spike?” Buffy demanded.

“The waffle iron is smarter than Spike. That isn’t the point. You and Willow may have aced your SATs but all you’ve done since you got here is fuss over Wesley like the poor guy is a cocker spaniel.”

Buffy pouted. “It’s fun.”

“Not for him.”

“He’s not here to have fun. He’s here to be fussed over – whether he likes it or not. And anyone who gets between me and my fun gets no cookies and possibly a stake in the heart. Is that clear?”

Angel and Spike exchanged a worried look. “Very clear.”

“Couldn’t be clearer.” Spike gave Wesley an apologetic look. “Sorry, mate, you’re on your own.”

“But I’m better now. I’m well again. I’m…”

“Still owied up.”

Wesley looked at Buffy in disbelief. “You can’t possibly think that’s a verb?”

She folded her arms. “Let’s recap, shall we? Who in this room has Slayer strength and who has lots and lots of bruises?”

“Angel…” Wesley cast a begging look at the vampire who automatically took a step forward.

“Buffy, couldn’t you let him…?”

“No. He has to do as he’s told and be fussed over until he’s better. It will be character building for Wesley and fun for me and Willow.” She pointed at Wesley imperiously. “You need to go to bed now and rest and Willow and I need to buy you jammies.”

Wesley looked up at the ceiling and sighed in resignation. “Does anyone know how to open a portal to a hell dimension?”

“You do need to rest,” Angel told him gently.

“Nonsense, I’m…” Wesley got to his feet and swayed, face paling to an even whiter shade. Buffy caught his arm at once. “Perfectly well,” he finished unconvincingly.

“Wes, Angel has more colour than you do and he doesn’t have a pulse,” Gunn pointed out.

Angel was already looping Wesley’s arm around his shoulders and supporting him with an arm around his waist, expression anxious. “Are you getting that sloshing sound in your ears again? Do you need glucose? Iron?”

“Lying down isn’t sounding like such a bad idea,” Wesley admitted faintly.

Angel helped him up the stairs while they all watched their slow progress. Xander shook his head and took another swig of beer. “It’s all fun and games until someone breaks a nail.”

“See, still convalescent,” Buffy said triumphantly. “The man needs jammies.”

Angel took most of Wesley’s weight as they made their way back to the bedroom. It was a little scary, although not unexpected, the way Wesley’s energy tended to run through the soles of his feet after about an hour of being up and about. It was frustrating for him, but it did at least prevent him from overtaxing himself, his body’s way of insisting that he rested.

“Is Illyria…?” Wesley winced. “I have a feeling I treated her rather badly. There were so many gaps in my memory.”

“She claims not to have human feelings, remember?” Angel had never liked Illyria and he wasn’t going to start changing his mind now. “Humans are dust motes and mayflies and she’s so far above them that they’re just ants to her. Except for you, who, for some reason, she has a bit of a thing for.”

“That’s not very grammatical,” Wesley murmured.

“You need to undress.” Angel arrested his graceful fall towards the bed. “You don’t have to sleep in your clothes anymore, remember?”

“Oh yes.” Wesley looked down at his shirt and jeans and sighed. “Perhaps Buffy has a point about those pyjamas.”

Angel had to unbutton and unzip him and more or less peel him out his clothes, so low had Wesley’s energy levels fallen during his time up. “From now on, you can stay up for an hour at a time and that’s it.”

“Don’t you start nagging, too.”

“Hey.” Angel gazed intently into his eyes. “Remember, I know what you went through in that place.”

“It wasn’t so bad.” Freed from his clothes, Wesley crawled gratefully under the covers. “You were there…”

He was asleep as his head hit the pillow. Angel bent down and stroked a hand through his hair; it felt strange to feel it clean and short again after so long that it had been tangled and too long; he almost missed the familiar texture of those dreadlocks at the back. He suspected Willow had worked some kind of untangling spell on them when she’d been removing the sigils; a pain relief spell as well.

“How is the one called Wesley?”

He felt that familiar chill at Illyria’s presence. This must be what it was like for humans when he showed up without a reflection to announce him – a demon with no scent, no warmth, no sound. But when he turned to look, her gaze was fixed on Wesley wistfully.

“Still tired but getting better.”

Illyria came into the room, head tilted, unblinking pale blue eyes always focused on Wesley; her thin body in its leather clothing even less of an indicator of her true strength than Buffy’s slender form.

The glance she darted at Angel was suspicious and hostile. “Why do you share a bed chamber with him? Is he your catamite now? Do you use him for your pleasure?”

Angel glowered at her, not troubling to hide his dislike. “I share a bed with him because he has nightmares that only I can help him with, because only I was there with him and understand what his nightmares are about.”

She flinched. “It is wrong that demons should be trapped inside the heads of humans.”

“In this world they’re not.” Angel was glad to see Giles in the doorway, as he had often been glad to see Giles in recent days, the man quietly intervening when Wesley had truly had enough, or being there to lend a hand or a word of advice when Angel was fretting over his recovery. “In this world they’re our way of working through the conflicts in our subconscious mind, dealing with grief and fear and love and hate.”

“Then these nightmares are unstable and deceptive.” Illyria crossed to the bed and gazed down at Wesley with something that was almost tenderness. “We were not enemies when he left.”

“We’re not enemies, Illyria,” Wesley murmured, although Angel wasn’t sure if he was even awake. “We’re allies of a sort.”

She sat upon the bed and reached out tentatively to touch his face. “There is heat where the skin is discoloured; you heal so slowly. How could you ever have come to rule this world?”

“A mass extinction wiped out our nearest competitor leading to the rise of the mammals,” Wesley mumbled into the pillow, going into auto-teach mode apparently even from the depths of sleep. “And changes of habitat caused the ape-like ancestors of homo erectus to make their way down from the trees, the need to see approaching predators leading to walking upon two legs, freeing up the hands to increase dexterity, the fashioning of tools leading to…”

She bent and pressed her mouth against his, fierce and yet still tender. Angel barely resisted the urge to punch her hard in the head, because it might feel like Fred’s lips against his, rather than the demon who had killed her, and it might undo all that careful sanity he had worked to keep inside Wesley’s occasionally fragile head. She pulled away from the kiss as if ashamed. “Is this all you have evolved to become?” she whispered angrily. “Unstable creatures, driven by hormones and strange fancies? Your weakness is a contagion. It contaminates even the strong.”

Angel took her by the arm and pulled her away from him. “Illyria. Get over yourself. You stole a human body when you decided to come back into the world, of course it’s going to affect the way your…essence manifested itself this time around. Just as Wesley in a hell dimension couldn’t hang onto everything he was in this world. We adapt to survive. He needed to be a little insane over there just as he needed to be a little insane after you killed the woman he loved and he found out I’d taken away half of his most important memories. Now he needs to be normal. He needs people who want to fuss over him and give him cookies. He doesn’t need the blue-haired god-king of the universe pontificating at him while wearing his dead lover’s corpse as a skin. Got it?”

She looked down her beautifully proportioned nose at him. “You speak out of jealousy. You have always wanted Wesley as your own. Your disciple. Your follower. Yours to command. Always you have desired that he should love only you.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from ‘bow down before me, o minions of the earth’ girl. In case it’s slipped your mind, you killed Wesley; stabbed him in the back when he was trying to save your life.”

“And it bothers you, doesn’t it? That he lied to you to protect me…?”

“Now isn’t the time,” Giles said sharply. “And it certainly isn’t the place. Wesley needs his sleep.”

“Giles is right,” Angel told her shortly. “Get out.”

“Why may you watch over him but I may not?”

“Because – news flash – this is my bedroom, not yours.”

“It is because you desire to make him entirely yours. Your motives are not disinterested.”

“Out!” Giles said. “Both of you.”

“It’s my bedroom!” Angel protested.

“I don’t care. Wesley’s my responsibility. He’s exhausted and he needs to rest. Something he can’t do while you two are playing the Caucasian Chalk Circle over his head.”

Illyria rose to her full height, gazing at Giles disdainfully. “What is this circle you speak of? Is there a ritual that needs to be performed?”

Giles ushered them both out of the room, Illyria lofty, Angel sulky, closed the door on Wesley and said quietly, “It’s a play by Brecht. Two women dispute over which should keep a little boy they both love, one of them his true mother. It’s agreed that they place him in a chalk circle upon the ground, each takes hold of him and whoever pulls him from the circle can keep him. The mother, however, loves him too much to pull him with all her strength, fearing he will be torn in two.” He looked between them. “Wesley is slowly getting better but he has enough conflicts of his own to process without having to deal with yours as well.”

“You speak like him. Are you of the same tribe?”

“You could put it like that, yes.”

“And as an elder of his tribe you consent that this vampire should be his protector and bedmate?”

Giles looked at Angel and said quietly, “I consent.”

Illyria turned away. “Wesley has told me that I must accept the customs of this world even when they are foolish. If even the elders of his tribe think the vampire is trustworthy then I may concede my claim to his. But it should be remembered that Wesley himself lost his trust for you after you betrayed him to the Wolf Ram and Hart for the sake of your own kin.”

She moved away, decisive and graceful, and Angel rolled his eyes. “As demons go I really wish Illyria would.”

“What did she mean?” Giles demanded. “When did you betray Wesley?”

“I was trying to protect him as well as Connor. There were memories that weren’t doing him any good.”

“Of when he tried to save your baby and ended up losing him? I remember you didn’t take it well.”

“I’d lost my son, Giles. I was mad with grief. My baby boy had just been taken into a hell dimension from which as far as I knew there was no coming back.”

“I wish Wesley had contacted me over that business. I’m sure it wasn’t good for him to be alone. These are the memories you took from Wesley? This is the betrayal Illyria speaks of?”

“Those and a whole lot more. Everything to do with Connor I took from him. No guilt, no responsibility, no memory that he and I were ever anything except friends.”

“A lie,” Giles said coldly.

“A kind lie.” Angel shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand. Connor had lost it. He was over the edge. He was going to kill himself, Cordelia, and a whole lot of innocent bystanders. I couldn’t let that happen. I made the deal with Wolfram & Hart and…”

“I lost my integrity, Wes lost his sanity, and Fred lost her life.”

They both turned to find Gunn standing in the corridor. “The only winner from that deal was Connor, Angel. That’s the reality. When it came to him or us, you chose him. And I don’t even blame you for wanting him to have a new life at any cost. But I still don’t get why you couldn’t let us keep our memories of him.”

“It sounds as if Illyria isn’t the only one around here who likes to play god.” Giles gazed at Angel levelly. “Perhaps you were trying to protect them from themselves, but also from the memories of how you had ill-used them.”

“I told Wes things were okay between us,” Angel told him shortly. “I sought him out and I told him that. I never mentioned what he’d done again. We’ve never discussed it since. He never told me he was sorry for taking Connor and I never told him that I was sorry for trying to kill him. It’s water under the bridge.”

Gunn met his gaze. “We are our memories, Angel, and you left us floating in hostile waters without a compass. We lost ourselves because we weren’t ourselves any more; only the parts of us you chose to leave.”

“Wes went crazy after he got his memories back.”

“He’d already worked through those events, Angel. You weren’t protecting him. Just laying up trouble. But that’s the past and in the present you’re the guy who kept him alive in a hell dimension and who he needs now more than he needs the rest of us.”

“Hey…” They turned to find Willow and Buffy standing at the end of the corridor weighed down with shopping bags. The redheaded witch was frowning. “We leave the hotel for a few hours and when we come back it’s all angry and accusations –”

“Illyria was here,” Angel said. “She’s always bad news.”

Giles said, “It seems Angel and Illyria have a grudge match over Wesley. Both think the other is an evil bitch with a god complex. Both have something of a point.”

“Hey!” Angel protested.

Gunn reached out and hit his fist lightly against Giles’ hand in approval, before heading off.

Willow glowered at Angel. “Well, I don’t think you should be filling the hotel with bad vibes when Wesley is so sensitive to his surroundings. He needs to be recovering in a place of positive energy and…”

“Good vibrations,” Buffy supplied.

Giles looked at her in disbelief. “You think playing old Beach Boys hits is going to be just the tonic he needs?”

“You could be quiet now,” she told him. “In fact there could be no one speaking but Willow and I for quite long periods of time and that would be only of the good.”

“Someone else with a god complex,” Giles murmured. “I wonder if it’s contagious?”

As they headed for Angel’s bedroom, Angel caught Willow’s arm. “He’s asleep.”

She held up their shopping bags. “But we have jammies!”

“He can wear then when he wakes up. I promise I’ll even make him wear the robe that you’re bound to have bought to go with them – as long as it isn’t pink or in any way fluffy.”

“It’s blue and warm,” Buffy returned. “And he’ll look really cute in it.”

Giles sighed. “Do try to remember he’s a grown man, Buffy. The poor chap has enough identity and self-esteem issues as it is without you entirely undermining his sense of self.”

“I’ll put up with you buying him clothes,” Angel added. “But you don’t get to dress him.”

Buffy pouted. “Angel gets all the fun.”

“One of the benefits of being sent to hell twice. I get to see my friend’s scar tissue before anyone else, not to mention count every rib. Lucky me.”

Buffy and Willow looked at one another and sighed then handed over the shopping bags.

“We were in a happy pyjama-buying place,” Willow reproached him.

“Yeah, you really know how to bring the brood in,” Buffy added.

“He’s a vampire with a soul, Buffy,” Giles sighed. “What do you expect from him? A cabaret act?”

“Lorne’s a demon. He can still mix a neat cocktail and perform a rousing medley of show tunes.”

“I suspect that as demons go, Lorne is probably a one-off.”

“I certainly am and accept no substitutes.”

Turning around once again, Giles thought he was going to get a permanent crick in his neck if people kept arriving from different ends of the corridor.

Lorne plucked the shopping bags from Angel. “I’m going to check on Wesley. I may sing him a lullaby. Either way I’ll be sending out positive vibes, a total absence of brooding, and, unlike some people in this corridor who really ought to know better, I won’t be trying to sneak a peek at his naked body.”

“I don’t –” Angel began and then realized that it was Willow and Buffy who were shuffling their feet and looking guilty under the force of Lorne’s glare. “Fine.” He shrugged. “Knock yourself out. You go and keep watch over Wes – just don’t let Illyria in there or she’ll be pawing at him again.”

As Angel went off, Lorne shook his head. “Those two have serious sharing issues.” He held up the shopping bags. “I’m sure you’ve shopped wisely and well, my cherubs. And in a few short hours you get the pay-off of seeing Wesley all warm and clean and snug in his jammikins. Until then, this corridor is a no fly zone. Wes needs his sleep and you all need to leave him the hell alone.”

Giles found himself shooed back down the corridor in the company of a despondent Buffy and Willow; Gunn, Illyria and Angel presumably all having taken themselves off to other parts of the Hyperion to brood. Thinking of the various conflicts he’d just witnessed, Giles shook his head. “I swear these people make even the Scoobies look sane…”

***

Illyria had been gazing at Wesley fixedly for at least ten minutes. Gunn had been surreptitiously timing her. Angel was aware of her doing it too and, unlike Gunn, was getting increasingly irritated by her. Angel had got way too used to having Wes all to himself, in Gunn’s opinion, and needed to learn how to share. Gunn was more fascinated by the way Illyria didn’t seem to need to blink. Perhaps it was just because Illyria had saved him from a hell dimension, just to get in good with Wes, or maybe because, despite wearing the face of their dead friend, it felt like there was an important part of Illyria, not just Fred, that had the hots for Wesley, but either way he didn’t see her as an enemy, definitely an ally of sorts. In which case she could stare all she liked; it wasn’t hurting anyone. Wesley hadn’t even noticed.

Buffy had insisted that they were going to have a proper Thanksgiving dinner in the dining hall, so although Angel and Gunn had tried to tell her that they didn’t like the dining hall as it always reminded them both of The Shining, she had bulldozed their objections with the skill of long practice. So, here they were, all seated around a dining table in the middle of a score of others under eerie dust sheets, dining by candlelight because Buffy had insisted on that as well, passing hot rolls and cranberry sauce and sweet potato pie and in the case of Gunn trying not to stare at Illyria while she stared at Wesley.

Wesley had, at Buffy’s insistence, come down to dinner wearing his convalescent ‘uniform’ of new blue cotton pyjamas and matching robe. “It makes me feel like Arthur Dent,” he protested.

“But at least it’s honest about your physical fitness,” Buffy countered. “You’re not going to get better by pretending to be well when you’re not. You’re going to get better by resting, eating, and doing what Willow and I tell you. So there.”

Apart from being forced to wear jammies to the dinner table, Wesley was appearing more normal. He was still thin and pale and bruised, and certainly tired very quickly, but he seemed to be enjoying the Thanksgiving Dinner, asking Buffy what the dishes were and tasting them cautiously while Willow surreptitiously increased the portions on his plate.

“How are you feeling?” Angel asked him.

Wesley looked at him sideways. “Pretty much the same as I did ten minutes ago when you asked me that question.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Angel reached out and put a hand across his forehead. “Just checking.”

“Man, you’re paranoid,” Gunn told Angel loftily, before turning to Wesley. “But you’re really okay, right? You feel okay?”

Wesley tactfully suppressed a smile. “I feel much better, thank you. Clearly I’m a credit to your doctoring.”

“What about upstairs?” Spike tapped his temple.

“Are you asking about my level of sanity, Spike? If so, it’s slightly more precarious than when Angel and I left this dimension and slightly more stable than when we first returned to it.”

“Still pretty much only a nodding acquaintance with Mr Good Mental Health then?”

“Do you still crave death?” That was Illyria.

Wesley looked across at her. “I wasn’t aware that I ever did.”

Angel and Gunn exchanged a glance and Lorne hastily proposed a toast. “To – not being dead, pumpkins. I think we can definitely give thanks for that.”

“We don’t aim that high here,” Gunn explained to Xander. “Not being dead or irredeemably corrupted is pretty much a good day’s work for us.”

“And sometimes we even help the helpless,” Angel added dryly.

Gunn nodded in Angel’s direction as he added to Xander: “Of course, some of us can’t really manage the not being dead thing too well.”

“I still don’t understand why Buffy wanted to risk something icky happening by making a big deal out of Thanksgiving.” Xander heaped some more food onto his plate. “Last time she made a fuss about it, I got comedy syphilis and we were all nearly killed by the enraged spirits of dead Native Americans.”

“And I got shot full of arrows,” Spike pointed out.

“Yes, but that was funny.”

Seeing Illyria still gazing at Wesley, Angel closed his eyes in irritation. “Okay, what is it?”

Illyria turned her pale blue gaze on him. “I have sensed the power of another since the return of Wesley and yourself. A power which does not originate in this dimension.”

“And you were going to mention this when exactly?” Angel demanded.

Illyria regarded him dispassionately. “When a portal to another world is opened there will always be an imbalance created. I was waiting to see if it dispersed. It has not.”

“What are you saying?” Spike asked.

“That you are still connected to that world.”

Angel glowered at her. “No, we’re not.”

Wesley touched himself across the chest and arms. “I don’t feel connected. Illyria, do you mean because of the memories we carry with us of that place?”

“There is a link between this world and that one. I believe it comes from you.”

“The sigils.” Willow started up out of her chair. “I must have missed one.”

“You didn’t miss any. We checked. Thoroughly.” As everyone looked at her Buffy rolled her eyes. “For Wesley’s own good.”

Wesley pulled the robe around himself a little more tightly. “How…reassuring.”

Illyria still gazed at Wesley unblinkingly. “You were a chattel in that world, were you not?”

“No,” said Angel tersely. “He wasn’t.”

“The dimension you entered sounds to me like Askaroth. No human has the right to be anything but a possession in such a place. Legally he must have belonged to another.” She looked at Lorne. “You know how this works.”

“Well, Your Rhythm’n’Blueness, not wanting to disagree with you, but I see a big difference between something being legally the case and morally the case. Wesley might legally have been a ‘chattel’ in Askaroth but morally he was always a free agent…”

She waved that aside impatiently and turned to Angel. “Did you have legal possession of him in that world? Or as a half-breed were you also unable to own property?”

“Wes isn’t ‘property’,” Angel snapped at her.

Gunn was feeling a little uneasy; relevant information lining up in his mind to make itself known to him. “Legally, he may be. You said you were sold by slavers to some demon who ran fights, right? Did he get some kind of bill of ownership?”

“Why are we even talking about this?” Buffy demanded. “Wesley was there. Now he’s here. He’s never going back there. End of story.”

“Not necessarily.” Gunn turned to Wesley. “Wes, do you remember any kind of…branding ceremony?”

“I remember them…burning the sigils into my skin. It hurt. I passed out.” Wesley poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table. “Is there a problem?”

“There could be.” Gunn looked at Angel’s angry face. “Look, I don’t like saying this any more than you like hearing it, but Illyria could have a point. When you were in Askaroth you were subject to its laws. There’s a chance that the demon who bought the two of you over there may be able to take some steps to reclaim his property. I was figuring as the portal had closed and the sigils were gone there was no way he’d be able to find you but if he’s got some kind of extra mojo working to keep tabs on Wes…”

“There really weren’t any sigils left.” Willow fiddled with her napkin anxiously. “We did check and check.”

Illyria put her head on one side. “Some brands of ownership are not disclosed by human magic.”

“Meaning…?” Giles demanded.

“It may be that he can be drawn back there.”

Willow stared at her in horror. “No! That is not happening.”

Illyria gazed at her intently. “You have proof that my assumptions are incorrect?”

“No, I mean – we won’t let that happen to Wesley.”

“You have a means to prevent it?”

“We’ll find one,” Buffy insisted. “He’s not going back there. He is never going back there. Willow…?”

The red headed witch was already on her feet. “Giles, we need to research binding spells. We need to keep Wesley bound to this dimension and this world.”

Giles also nodded and got to his feet. “Of course.”

“Can’t you do it after dinner?” Wesley asked. “Buffy went to so much trouble.”

Buffy gazed at him. “Wes, do you really…? Never mind, we don’t have time – short version: turkey getting cold – on a par with a broken glass or maybe a persistent stain in the couch cushions. You getting dragged back to a hell dimension – worst enemy just stole your best guy, your hair frizzed, every nail got broken, you flunked math and have to take summer school to make up your grades, and your puppy died, essentially a happening that would seriously ruin the thanksgivingy vibe of my day. In short – best way for Buffy to have a good Thanksgiving – you not being reclaimed by evil demon slave owner guy. Got it?”

Wesley glanced across at Giles. “I think at least some of that was in some form of English, yes. But I don’t understand how that was the short version.”

“You will just have to take my word for it that it was and to be grateful for it,” Giles reassured him.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about…” Wesley broke off to clutch at his chest.

Buffy pushed her hair chair back hastily. “Oh God, I saw that movie.”

Willow darted her a frightened look. “Me too.”

Through gritted teeth, Wesley said, “I assure you have I have nothing gestating in my chest.”

“Are you sure about that?” Xander demanded. “Because I can’t help remembering how everyone died except Sigourney Weaver. Well, and the cat. And we don’t have an airlock here to be blowing any nasties out of.”

Wesley doubled over, still clutching a hand to his chest and Angel knocked over his chair in his anxiety to get to him. He took Wesley by the shoulders and made him sit up. “Wes? Wes, what is it?”

“Burning…” Wesley managed through gritted teeth. “More like…searing. Very painful. Would really like it to stop now.”

Angel pulled back Wesley’s robe and ripped open his pyjama jacket, scattering buttons across the table. Spike picked one off his plate. “Drama queen.”

“Willow!” Angel shouted for the witch before he realized she was already standing by his left shoulder trying to get a look. “What is it?” he demanded.

Gunn also peered over Angel’s shoulder to look. There was a pentagram glowing on Wesley’s chest, a line of light beneath the skin that burnt brighter, and then abruptly broke the surface in line of fresh dark blood. Wesley clutched at his chest, exclaiming with the pain while Angel hastily snatched up a napkin from the table and held it to the fresh wound.

“Let me look,” Willow protested. “Giles…? Do you recognize it?”

“Not out of hand.” The man peered at it closely through his glasses.

“It is a brand of ownership,” Illyria said calmly.

Wesley looked up at her. “Whose brand?”

“It says ‘Katorakan’. He must have considered you of some value. The brand is one that carries a penalty of death for those who steal you or abet those who try to sell you to another. Such a brand is expensive. Strong magic was used to create it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Angel was still mopping at the blood on Wesley’s chest, while the man breathed shallowly through the pain. “Wes was treated like garbage in that place. He was demon food. Nothing else. Katorakan was the demon who made money from the fights.”

“Perhaps he knew if he had hold of Wes you’d stick around and keep pulling in the punters?” Spike shrugged.

“But he wasn’t intending to keep us.” Wesley gritted his teeth as the blood welled up again. “We were being sold on. That’s why we had to escape. Katorakan’s fights took place in the open – his people were nomadic, travelling from township to township – there were possibilities for escape as long as we had access to open land. But we were being sold to a kind of demon sultan who kept his fighters in pits within a heavily guarded fortress.”

“Nashan-arel.” Angel grabbed another napkin and poured some of the water from his glass onto it before sponging Wesley’s chest. “A big demon with a lot of enemies – including Katorakan. He bid for us through an intermediary. We only found out because Katorakan captured one of his slaves and tortured him a bit too vigorously and the guy screamed loud enough for everyone to hear who he was working for. Katorakan cranked up the price after that but Nashan-arel had a boredom problem and he really wanted some new fighters.”

“Bid for you,” Wesley corrected. “I was what got tossed in free for the same price.”

“The point is that this Katorakan legally branded Wesley with his ownership.” Gunn wondered if he could impress upon them just how serious this is. “If this goes before any demon court in any dimension, they’re going to find for Katorakan. Most of them don’t admit human rights. It’s debated in a lot of worlds whether or not humans, as primarily a food source, are capable of sentient thought or can feel pain.”

“I can confirm the pain part.” Wesley dabbed at his chest again.

“If Katorakan comes here we kill him.” Buffy shrugged.

“It may not be that simple.” Gunn turned to Giles as the one most likely to grasp what he was talking about. “If he has the full weight of a demon court behind him they may have the power to take Wesley into custody – mystically. I think Angel should be safe enough. He’d count as a race that can’t be branded – that’s one of the differences between demonic and slave races in demon lore. If you can’t self-repair; if you can be easily scarred; you’re a lesser caste. Although vampires are only half-breeds they do have more demonic than human traits. I don’t think Katorakan can lay any kind of legal claim to Angel as all he did was pay money for him.”

Angel looked up at Gunn, dawning realization on his face. “You’re saying we may not be able to kill this guy?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And he has a legal right to…repossess Wes?”

“Yes.” Gunn took the bloodied napkin from Wesley’s fingers and examined the mark on his chest again. The bleeding had almost stopped now and where it was drying the symbol was very clear. “This is a very powerful brand of ownership.”

“What about legal mojo, lawyerboy?” Lorne poured himself a sea breeze as if he really needed one.

“I’m thinking…”

Willow said to Giles, “We need to work on that binding spell.”

“I don’t think it’s going to help,” Gunn admitted. “Demon courts have a lot of power.”

“Well, we need to find a really powerful binding spell then.” Giles and Willow went over to where the research books were but although Willow had sounded determined, she looked pale and anxious.

Xander looked from Buffy to Angel and then back to Gunn. “Tell me this isn’t going to happen? Tell me there’s a way to stop this happening?”

Gunn gazed at the brand again but it bore all the seal markings of the most powerful demon law and wished he could give him that assurance.

“What about Katorakan’s right to brand him in the first place?” Angel demanded.

“A human in Askaroth has no rights.” Illyria also gazed at the symbol, face unreadable although Gunn suspected she was as anxious about Wesley as any of them.

“Couldn’t we set up a challenge to that position?” Giles called across from the books. “Try to get the demon courts to accept that humans aren’t chattels?”

Lorne nodded. “That sounds like the best approach to me. And a legal point that is well worth making not just for Wesley’s sake but for the sake of humans the pan-dimensional soup kitchen over.”

Angel seemed to be working along his own lines. “What if Wesley wasn’t a free agent when Katorakan claimed him? What if Wesley was already someone else’s property?”

Wesley looked up. “I’m not.”

“Legally you could be.” Angel turned to Gunn. “If Wesley was already owned at the time Katorakan claimed ownership that would make him stolen goods and Katorakan legally powerless to reclaim him, right?”

Gunn nodded. “Theoretically, yes. But Wes would have to be the property of someone regarded as able to own property under demon law. And in Askaroth that can’t apply to a human. Wesley’s father couldn’t claim him if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Angel stepped back, that set look on his face that sometimes meant he’d had a good idea and sometimes meant he was going to go and lock a bunch of lawyers in a wine cellar with a couple of homicidal she-vamps. “Legally, I think Wesley belongs to me.”

Giles and Buffy both looked at him sharply. Giles said, “What makes you think that?”

Spike also looked unconvinced. “Why? Because you say so?”

“No. Because he said so – five years ago – without coercion and of his own free will. He said he was my faithful servant. That’s a pledge of loyalty. Under the demon law of our world that does accept the rights and choices of a human that means he is my property and therefore under my protection.”

Gunn flicked through the information in his mind. “A verbal pledge isn’t enough. You need proof of ownership. Your mark on Wesley or a blood oath or claiming ritual, preferably carried out according to demonic law.”

“There was.” Angel wheeled around triumphantly. “Wesley chose to give me his blood as further proof of his loyalty and reaffirmation of his allegiance.”

“Actually it was because you were hungry,” Wesley pointed out.

Angel still had that look that always made Gunn nervous. “But legally it could count as a blood oath, right?”

Gunn grimaced. “It would have been better if there was an existing brand of your ownership.”

“But do I have a case for prior ownership even without a brand?”

“You have something. You can point to a verbal oath of allegiance backed up by a blood offering.”

“What about the ‘claiming ritual’?” Buffy pressed. “Is there time for Angel to do that instead? That’s not going to be as bad as branding Wesley, is it?”

There was an awkward silence in which Angel and Gunn pointedly didn’t meet each other eyes, broken by Spike saying, “I’d lay good money Wes has already been ‘claimed’ by Angel anyway. Just pretend you said some demonic mumbo jumbo while you were doing him – it – doing it.”

“I haven’t done…that to Wesley,” Angel insisted.

Spike looked unconvinced. “Not even once?”

“No.”

“Not even when he was drunk?”

“No.”

“What about Angelus? He’d have…claimed Wes as soon as looked at him. That would count, wouldn’t it?”

“It didn’t happen,” Angel retorted.

Spike turned to Gunn. “What about now? If the big poof leaves out all the bondage and torture it usually only takes him about three minutes so he could probably have Wes all nice and legal by eight-thirty.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Gunn said hastily. “Like Angel said, Wesley offered him an oath of loyalty and sealed it with his blood before they went to Askaroth. It may be enough.”

“I’m not denying its effectiveness.” Giles came back over. “But am I the only one disturbed by using this argument? It’s effectively compromising Wesley’s rights as an individual to prop up a legal system that is immoral and racist.”

“I don’t care.” Angel glared at him. “If it keeps Wesley out of Askaroth I’ll use any means necessary.”

“You’re not the one being turned into someone else’s legal property.”

“Supposing Willow got sucked into a hole in time and you got sucked in right along with her. You’re back in the Middle Ages and they’re going to burn her as a witch. They know God thinks it’s right for them to burn witches and that she’s in league with Satan or else she wouldn’t have the powers she does. Do you waste your time pointing out to them that burning witches is futile and immoral or do you find whatever legal loophole you can within their own crazy witchfinder general system to stop them setting that brush on fire? Think fast, Giles, because they’re lighting the torches right now.”

Giles looked at Angel’s angry intent face and nodded. “I see your point.”

“Good. Because right now it’s my friend tied to the brushwood. Why ever Katorakan may want Wesley back in his hell dimension it’s not going to be to Wesley’s advantage. If they take him back there he isn’t going to make it. He’s going to be made a demon chew toy and there is nothing I won’t do to stop that happening.”

“Angel,” Wesley said gently, “it’s okay. No one here is trying to send me back there.”

“We don’t even know they want him back there,” Xander protested. “Isn’t everyone going a little crazy for no good reason right now? Just because Madam Smurf Demon has a feeling in her water does that really mean anyone is going to come here to reclaim Wesley? Like Angel said they didn’t seem to want him when they had him so why should they care now?”

“That’s what I don’t understand.” Wesley cautiously ran his fingertips across the bloody mark on his chest. “Katorakan didn’t know my name. He had no interest in me at all. Why would he bother to go through the expensive business of branding me with his symbol and making sure that he could track me even to a different dimension?”

“Because you were valuable to him.” Illyria regarded him curiously. “There can be no other explanation.”

“But I wasn’t. I was about as valuable to him as a ham sandwich and a slightly mouldy ham sandwich at that.”

“Hey.” Buffy looked at him. “I thought you were working on those self esteem issues?”

“I’m just being realistic.”

“Willow got rid of the sigils.” Xander looked around at everyone. “How can Wesley still be tracked here?”

As a distant roaring began to manifest itself as a whole building shaking of the Hyperion, Gunn said, “I’m not sure, but I’m thinking that’s what’s happening.”

Before the words were out of his mouth a red-skinned demon dressed in rich fabrics and hung around with chains of power, and two massive stone seats of justice with armoured dignitaries seated upon them appeared in the lobby of the Hyperion.

“Bugger,” said Spike distinctly.

“There it is.” The red-skinned demon pointed imperiously at Wesley. “I reclaim my property under the laws of Askaroth.”

“He’s not your property.” Angel stood in front of Wesley while Spike crossed over to where the weapons cabinet was and began to break out axes and swords to the assembled Scoobies and Hyperion residents.

“That one is mine as well.” Katorakan pointed to Angel. “I paid a good price for that vampire.”

With his heart beating fast, Gunn stepped in front of Angel. “We dispute that claim under article 108 subsection 26 of Earth Demon Law. A vampire is an unbrandable being and for the purposes of ownership disputes shall be judged as if it were a full demon. As a vampire Angel cannot be owned by man or demon or any other breed.”

The two dignitaries inclined their heads majestically. “We find in favour of the vampire. He cannot be owned. He is not your property.”

Katorakan showed no particular displeasure, only the mildest of irritation. He turned his attention back to Wesley. “I concede the vampire – despite the considerable sum I paid for it – and submit myself to the ruling of this noble court. But as to the human there can be no dispute. It is my property, bought and marked as mine.”

As Gunn took a deep breath, Angel stepped forward. “Stolen goods,” he said flatly.

Katorakan gazed at him in disbelief. “This is absurd. The creature was unbranded.”

“I didn’t need to brand him. He was bound to me by a vow of fealty and a blood oath. Given freely, which in this dimension makes him my property by Demon Law.”

“I don’t believe it,” Katorakan retorted. “If that were so you would have legally removed my brand and yet you have not done so.” He pointed to Wesley and his scored chest.

Gunn said quickly, “We would not presume to tamper with a legal document recognized by so ancient and noble a court as the one in which we now find ourselves. But we do dispute the legality of Katorakan’s claim to ownership. The human known as Wesley had already given a vow of loyalty and fidelity to the vampire known as Angel. We know that this court recognizes the right of a vampire to have full ownership of a human, and that such an owned human cannot be claimed by another unless it is with the vampire’s consent.”

“And for the record,” Angel put in. “I didn’t consent. My consent wasn’t asked and if it had been I wouldn’t have given it. At the time when Katorakan was paying money for Wesley he was already owned by me. So, like I said – stolen goods.”

Glancing across at Giles, Gunn could see the Englishman gritting his teeth over the word ‘owned’ and he was having a little trouble saying it himself, but on this Angel was right, this was not the time or the place to start disputing the morality of humans having no rights in an Askorathan demon court. This was the time and the place to hang onto Wesley by any means possible and to debate the ethics of it later.

“Is there a signed document of this ownership?” the first dignitary enquired.

Angel shook his head and Gunn said quickly, “As the defendant was not anticipating leaving this dimension he saw no reason to register an ownership which at that time and on this world was not disputed.”

“Why is Angel the defendant?” Xander murmured. “Isn’t Wesley the guy in the dock…?”

“No,” Giles said tautly. “Wesley has no rights except as something owned by Angel. Think of Margaret Garner, the escaped slave who killed one of her children to prevent her from being returned to slavery when recapture became inevitable, and the case of ‘destruction of property’ brought against her.”

“Does he carry any mark of ownership?” the second dignitary pressed.

“Only the mark erroneously affixed to the disputed human property by Lord Katorakan when he was unaware of the disputed human’s true ownership.”

“I am its true owner,” Katorakan retorted fiercely. “There was nothing erroneous in its branding. It was carried out exactly according to the laws of Askaroth. This vampire’s claim is spurious and false.”

“I really don’t like him,” Buffy observed to Willow.

“I hate this legal mumbo jumbo,” Spike growled. “Why can’t we just kill the slave-owning bastard and be done with it?”

Gunn said rapidly in an undertone: “Katorakan is under the protection of the court. Any move against him will be contempt of court and it could cost Wesley his life.” Turning back to the dignitaries he said, “With all due respect to Lord Katorakan, the vampire’s ownership of the human called Wesley is indisputable under Earth Demon Law. According to Article 9176, an oath of fealty by a lesser being to a demon shall be accepted as binding and cannot be broken except by the consent of that demon – a consent that in this case was clearly not given. The oath was given many years prior to the human’s arrival in your dimension and was ratified by a second oath of fealty, made in blood, as laid down in clause 584 subsection 929 of the Articles of Bondage.”

“‘Articles of Bondage’?” Xander looked across at Spike. “That sounds like so much less fun than you’d expect.”

“What proof is there of this oath of fealty in word or blood and how can it compare with a legal branding?” Katorakan demanded.

“You have my word as a…demon,” Angel said.

The two dignitaries conferred quietly and then the first looked up. “If this oath is truly binding by the laws of this dimension then it shall prove sufficient to overwrite the claim made by Katorakan. In your world, your laws shall prove the stronger. But there must be proof that such an oath was made.”

“What proof do you need?” Angel enquired.

“The branding of the human is a legal document, signed in the blood of the one who claimed him as a chattel. If in truth this human was already your property then your blood shall be enough to overwrite the signature of Katorakan. If not, then your claim was not properly binding even in your own world and the human shall pass back to Katorakan.”

Gunn said rapidly to Angel: “Your blood should dissolve the brand on Wesley’s chest. If it doesn’t, Katorakan’s claim stands and we have a very bloody probably very futile fight on our hands.”

Looking as though he were not in any doubt as the outcome, Angel picked up a knife from the table, walked over to where Wesley was still sitting and stood over him. The two exchanged a glance and then Angel slashed his palm and held it over Wesley’s chest. There was an endless pause before the first drop of blood splashed down onto Wesley’s skin and for a terrible second nothing happened. Gunn was mentally working out how best to utilize what assets they had in the inevitable fight when there was a sizzle and Angel’s blood began dissolve the edge of the brand. Angel squeezed his hand so more blood fell and where each drop landed, Katorakan’s brand was dissolved and unmarked skin left beneath it.

Angel closed his eyes but gave no other outward sign of his relief but Gunn had difficulty stopping his knees from sagging. Xander was not exactly wearing his best poker face either, and Willow put her arms around Buffy to hug her. Wesley gazed down at his chest and the vanishing brand as if fascinated by it.

Illyria stepped into the breach. “The court accepts the vampire’s ownership of the human called Wesley? They concur that the vampire had a prior claim and that Katorakan’s branding was unlawful and unbinding?”

The dignitaries consulted for a moment and then gravely inclined their head. “We do. We would suggest that the vampire should affix his own mark to his property so that no further confusion arises as to this human’s bonded state.”

“I paid money for that slave in good faith.” Katorakan was far more hot and bothered than Gunn would have expected. He had barely looked at Wesley; only at the brand on his chest which Angel’s blood had now completely dissolved; yet it seemed to be of an entirely disproportionate importance to him that he should be able to take Wesley back with him.

The second dignitary said gravely: “The court accepts that no wrong doing was intended by Katorakan and that he had no reason to assume the human was already owned. In this we feel the vampire was negligent and has only himself to blame for the confusion.” He looked at Angel directly. “You will see to it that in future all slaves of your possession are properly branded with your mark?”

“Of course.” Angel’s face didn’t so much as flicker whereas Gunn could hear Giles grinding his teeth from twenty feet away.

“Then this court finds in your favour. The slave is yours. Katorakan’s claim is disallowed. If however you come before this court a second time and are proven to be negligent in the correct marking of your property it may be deemed necessary to confiscate your goods. In this instance we accept that you were not attempting to deceive anyone. Next time we may not be so lenient.”

“You don’t understand. I have to have that slave!” Katorakan glared at Wesley.

Illyria put her head on one side, like a bird of prey sighting a rabbit a long way below her. “You are not welcome here. The court will not protect you if you argue with its findings.” She tilted her head the other way, subtly inhuman.

Spike was already twirling an axe in his hands, while Buffy was holding up her sword. As the ground began to rumble once again, Katorakan looked at Wesley again, very obviously weighed up the chances of successfully snatching him, looked from Spike to Buffy to Illyria, snarled and then backed up. “You’ll regret this,” he told him.

“Really doubt it,” Spike retorted.

“The decision of the court is final.” The first dignitary lifted a hand and the rumbling became louder and then the dais, the two dignitaries, and Katorakan disappeared in a cloud of smoke

“That was cool.” Buffy sheathed the sword. “As dramatic mystical exits go anyway.”

Wesley looked up at Angel. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.” Spike tossed the axe down onto the lobby couch and strolled across. “For once, being an arrogant possessive megalomaniac control freak actually worked out for someone other than you. Kudos.”

Wesley looked past Angel to Gunn. “And thank you, too.”

“You rocked.” Xander slapped Gunn on the shoulder.

“You are Perry Mason, Petrocelli and Clarence Darrow rolled into one, my legally enhanced slice of cherry pie.” Lorne reached across to high five Gunn.

Gunn looked at Illyria. “Well, I paid a high enough price for this ability. It’s something to be able to use it for good.”

“You saved my life, Charles.” Wesley gazed at him intently. “If you didn’t have all that demon law in your brain I would be on my way to being very dead right now. And I am truly grateful to you.”

Gunn reached out and for the first time in a long time he and Wesley touched their knuckles together and then shared their old familiar handshake. “You’re welcome, English, just don’t go diving into any more hell dimensions.”

Giles nodded. “Yes. I hate the way we won this one, but I’m glad it was won nevertheless.”

Angel looked at Gunn. “Now what do I need to do to prove to the demon courts of this dimension that Wes is my property?”

Gunn cleared his throat. “Like I said, your…mark has to be mystically burnt into Wesley’s skin.”

“That isn’t an option.” Giles took in Angel’s expression. “You can’t be serious?”

“Of course he isn’t serious,” Xander reassured everyone. “Angel…? You’re not serious, right?”

“Whatever Wesley is or has it’s important to Katorakan. I don’t trust him to leave matters like this. We need some really unanswerable proof that Wesley is my property.”

“But he isn’t your property,” Giles said intently.

Angel glanced at him. “He’s alive because that’s exactly what he is. And I’m keeping him that way.”

“Alive or yours?” Spike enquired.

“Both.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “You are such a drama queen.”

“I keep my people safe.” They all knew that was a lie but no one quite had the heart to contradict it. Certainly, Angel always wanted to keep his people safe even if he didn’t always manage it.

“And enslaved apparently.” Giles met Angel’s eyes. “This is wrong and you know it.”

“I don’t care if it’s wrong or right. I care about keeping Wesley away from Katorakan and I’ll use any means available to do that.”

“Why don’t you just do as Spike suggested and rape him then?” Giles demanded.

Wesley held up a hand. “I’d like to vote against that option.”

“Yes, but your opinion doesn’t count for anything, Wesley,” Giles told him tersely. “Remember you’re just a demon chattel now. Angel will do what is best for you whether you want him to or not.”

Spike also held up a hand. “I was gonna knock Wes out so he wouldn’t be conscious for it. And it’s not like it would be the first time Angel’s done someone when they’re…”

“Shut up, Spike.” Angel turned back to Giles. “Wesley is my responsibility, not yours. I’m older than him and I’m older than you.”

“Daddy knows best, eh?” Spike observed. “Actually I think you’ll find her blue rinseness has the drop on you when it comes to seniority. You going to let her choose who Wesley belongs to on that account?”

“He is not your property,” Giles told him through gritted teeth.

“I’m keeping him safe. And I’m keeping him here.” He turned to Wesley and at once his eyes were kind and anxious. “Wes, we get the binding spell up and running, we cover all the angles; then we work out what the hell Katorakan wanted you for. You don’t need to worry. I’m going to take care of this. I’m going to take care of you.”

“I know.” Wesley looked at him anxiously. “Angel. You don’t need to…”

“Yes, I do.” Angel stroked Wesley’s hair back from his face. “You look tired and you lost more blood. Let me help you upstairs.”

As Wesley obediently stood up and let Angel support him, Gunn said quietly to Giles, “Angel is only trying to…”

“He’s trying my patience, I can tell you that much.”

“He just wants to keep Wesley safe.” But Buffy was also watching Angel’s departure a little anxiously.

Spike shook his head. “The guy has lost it and I don’t mean somewhere in the immediate vicinity, I mean lost it way way over there somewhere. Not going to be found without a major expedition lost it.”

“He’s worried about Wesley.”

Willow looked pretty worried herself, and Xander put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.

“He’s scary, I grant you, and I’m not sure those two have half a healthy psyche between them, but the point is Wesley is still here and the bad demon guy isn’t, so let’s chalk one up for the good guys and go eat pie.”

***

As he came down the stairs, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone, Gunn saw the lamp was on in the office. “Wes…?”

It was so much Wesley’s habit to be researching all night that it didn’t occur to him it could be anyone else until the man looked up and he saw to his surprise that it was Giles.

“Giles?” Gunn came on into the office and shut the door. “What’s up?”

Giles didn’t beat around the bush, Gunn could say that for him. “Are you going to be a party to this madness of Angel’s?”

Gunn sighed and sat down in the next most comfortable chair. “I want to keep Wes safe too.”

“At any price?”

“If Wesley doesn’t mind…”

“Wesley isn’t in his right mind. He isn’t capable of making a rational decision right now. He trusts Angel so –”

“He trusts Angel for a reason,” Gunn pointed out. “Angel kept him alive in that place. Angel went in there for no other reason other than that he thought Wesley might have a chance with him that he wouldn’t have without him. And Wes has been crazy before and even when he’s crazy he’s usually pretty sane.”

“Like when he stabbed you?”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Because I deserved it.” As Giles still didn’t seem to get it, Gunn decided to spell it out for him. “What happened today, that wasn’t a magic trick. Under demon law Wesley willingly bound himself to Angel. You’re choking on it because you think that isn’t what happened, that Angel’s taking advantage of Wesley’s temporary dependency on him. But the truth is that Wesley did bind himself to Angel. He needed a cause and Angel was the cause he chose. He offered him an oath of loyalty and then he sealed it in blood.”

“He fed a starving friend.”

“A starving friend who the last time he saw him had tried to smother him with a pillow. Giles, don’t kid yourself. Wesley’s okay with this. Would I be happier if he wasn’t? Hell, yeah, but I’m not going to pretend things aren’t the way they are.” Gunn realized how tired he was and put a hand up to his head, feeling his shaven skull, the warmth of bare skin, proof that he was himself again.

“And you’re still in agreement that Wesley should make himself a legal possession of Angel’s?”

“He already is. Legally. Any demon court in the pan dimensional universe is going to find that Wesley has pledged himself to Angel the man and Angel the cause, because that’s the truth. All Angel is doing is making something some of us maybe find a little hard to swallow an unavoidable fact.”

“What he’s doing is claiming Wesley as his personal possession and getting Wesley to acquiesce to the plan. What he’s doing is enslaving his friend. I don’t trust Angel’s judgement the way you do, Gunn. I believe he wants to keep Wesley safe but I also believe that he has no moral objection to this morally objectionable plan because in his heart of hearts he thinks Wesley does belong to him. And that sticks in my craw more than somewhat.”

“Then take it up with Wesley because he obviously believes it too. Otherwise he’d be Katorakan’s property by now.” Gunn met the man’s eye. “Giles, face it, the problem here isn’t Angel, it’s Wesley. You’re not mad at Angel for proposing this plan, you’re mad at Wesley for going along with it. Because we both know he will. He’ll let Angel brand him with any mark of ownership he likes.”

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them. “And you’re going to go along with it?”

“I’m saying whether Angel brands Wesley with his initials or not Wesley still belongs to Angel because Wesley made that decision a long time ago and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. One little brand of ownership doesn’t make any difference to who Wesley is or how the rest of us see him or how he and Angel behave to one another. Trust me, compared with all the rest of the shit he’s been through and will probably go through in the future, it’s nothing.”

“That’s a bleak forecast, Charles, but I fear it’s probably accurate.”

They both spun around in horror to find Wesley standing in the doorway. The smile he gave Gunn was unexpectedly sweet. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just wanted a cup of tea.” As they both kept staring at him, he edged past them to where the kettle was, picked it up to test its weight, and then switched it on. “I was thirsty,” he added.

“Yes, of course.” Giles recovered himself.

“Blood loss will do that,” Gunn added.

Giles took a deep breath. “Wesley, about this ‘ownership’ arrangement Angel seems to have his heart so set upon…?”

“I don’t care.” Wesley put a teabag into a mug. “And yes, I know I probably should, but the fact is I don’t. And whether we like it or don’t – and I think a lot of the time we really don’t – we have all nailed Angel’s colours to our mast a long time ago, and it’s too late to take them down now. We chose our path or it chose us but either way our lives are too entwined with Angel’s now for any of us to just walk away.”

“You will be legally Angel’s property.” Giles took the kettle from Wesley and poured out the tea for both of them. “Technically, I suppose you will be Angelus’s property too.”

“By demon law, yes.” Wesley shrugged. “But most of the time demon law doesn’t really impinge upon us and when it does I think it would be more to my advantage than not.”

“But how can you not mind giving up…?”

Wesley interrupted him quietly: “Because I’m tired, Giles, probably not entirely sane, and because, as I mentioned before, I don’t care. I trust Angel. Absolutely.”

“The man who stole your memories? The man who locked those lawyers in a wine cellar? This is the person you ‘trust absolutely’?” Giles handed Wesley his tea.

Wesley took the cup and gave Giles a rueful smile. “We did cover the not entirely sane thing, didn’t we?”

On the landing of the Hyperion Buffy looked across at Angel. “I suppose you can hear everything they’re saying down there?”

“Yes.” Angel added some vodka to her glass and to his own. Lorne had been kind enough to pour him and Wesley a drink before heading off to look for tylenol, but Angel had shared the Sea Breeze with Buffy instead. The last thing Wesley needed right now in his opinion was to muddle his already fragile mind with alcohol. Probably a decision he should have let Wesley make, of course. No doubt that was what Giles would say, and he would probably be right. Lorne had looked wrecked and in need of some of that vodka himself but before Angel could ask him what was wrong the demon had told him that his head was boiling like a furnace and anyone who tried to talk to him using words that made any sound louder than a whisper would do so at his peril.

Buffy nudged him. “So, what are they saying?”

Angel shrugged. “That Wes is crazy and it’s mostly my fault. That I have no right to call him my property. That it makes no difference because Wes will always do what I want just because I want it and just because of who he is which is just exactly what I’ve made him.”

“That isn’t true.” There was a pause before she said with less confidence. “Is it?”

He took another sip of vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice, thinking he would have preferred whisky. The good old Irish kind he’d used to drink in the good old Irish days. When he’d been human and never thought to take a minute to be grateful for that state of being because what other state was there? “I have to protect him, Buffy.”

“I know.” She spoke gently, not judging him.

“He used to be whole. He used to be sane.”

“I’ve made my share of mistakes. People have died because of choices that I’ve made. Xander has an eyepatch where his left eye used to be because of choices I’ve made. I don’t have the right to judge you or blame you. I believe you’ve done everything you’ve done because you thought it was right or because you were trying to protect the people around you. That doesn’t mean you haven’t made mistakes or that other people didn’t end up paying for them.”

“He used to have one set of memories in his head and all of them were true.”

“Why did you do it?”

“The mindwipe? I did it to protect Connor. I figured we’d all done our part to drive him to becoming the person he was, we could all pay something of the price for it. I thought we’d have to make compromises, worry about corruption. But Cordy never truly woke up from that coma, and Fred paid with her life. The decisions they made… I don’t know what they would have decided if they’d remembered everything. Part of the reason why Wesley signed up was because he thought the records might be useful, all those files, a means to investigate the Senior Partners. He didn’t remember that records can be falsified. That even prophecies can lie.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” Buffy took another sip of her drink. “He would have followed you to Wolfram & Hart whoever’s memories he had. When the last thing he remembered was you trying to suffocate him he still pulled you out of the sea. He’s bound to you. They all are. And to each other. I know how that works. I know how it sucks too. Watching your friends get taken away in an ambulance. Watching them lose themselves. Willow started studying magic to help me. It nearly swallowed her whole. Xander could be blind now. He almost was. I don’t even want to start on what I did to Spike, because he didn’t matter, and everything inside me hurt so what did I care if he was suffering too…”

“Okay, beating yourself up about Spike – that really is ridiculous.”

She smiled despite herself. “You two have elevated petty to a whole new level.”

He shrugged. “We try.”

She paused before saying delicately: “I’m not a great thinker either, but Giles and Willow and Wesley are, so they’re going to work it out even if we don’t say anything. They probably already have. That demon guy was selling you to his enemy. An enemy who lives inside a fortress. You’d be significant. He’d look at you. Check you out. But in a world where humans don’t matter how closely would look at anyone look at Wesley…?”

“Just say it.” Angel finished his drink one gulp.

“Do you think Wesley’s a walking bomb?”

He swallowed the vodka, grateful for the burn of it on the back of his throat. He definitely missed that whisky. Not that it would taste the way it used to. Nothing did. Only blood had its full range of flavour. But he would have liked some of it all the same. “I think it’s possible.”

“We’ll defuse it.” She took Angel by the arms and made him look at her. “Angel, believe me. You’re not going to lose another friend.”

“What if that’s my real destiny? To be the cause of murdering everyone I’ve ever loved? I started off down that track when I was barely out of the coffin womb. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done. All the murder and mayhem Drusilla caused, and Spike, and Penn, as well as my own crimes. Maybe no one can ever pay for that level of bloodshed. Maybe all I’ve done by trying to atone is murder more innocents.”

She pulled his head down gently and rested her forehead against his. “That isn’t what happened, Angel.”

“Cordy and Fred used to be alive and Wesley used to be whole. And Gunn used to be so full of confidence. He knew exactly who he was like no one else walking the earth. How did I turn Wesley into a guy who wakes up screaming? Gunn into a guy who thought he was nothing without a lot of stolen knowledge in his brain? What did I do to them, Buffy?”

“In Cordelia’s vision of another reality I lost my arm to the Kungai demon.”

They turned to find Wesley slowly walking up the stairs, evidently finding the climb exhausting, particularly with his concentration fixed on his cup of tea, but doing it anyway, step by step.

“It was a lie,” Angel reminded him. “A lot of stuff made up by Skip so they could demonise her.”

“Okay then, supposing that without you I would have kept my arm after all, I would still have died in that fire.”

Angel sighed. “Wes, you only almost died in the fire because you were working for me, remember?”

“Are you saying you don’t think Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, rogue demon hunter, would have earned himself the enmity of Wolfram & Hart unaided?”

“I’m saying maybe I wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Wesley made a dismissive noise and helpfully explained, “That sound is usually denoted as ‘pshaw’. I could add a ‘poppycock’ for clarity if you like.”

Angel gazed at him fondly. “Why are you even up, crazy watcher boy?”

Wesley held up his teacup. “I have eight months of tea-deprivation to make up for.”

“How does it feel to be bonded to a demon?” Buffy asked.

“So far it seems like a sinecure to me. The hours aren’t too bad and the work is minimal. And yes, I guessed it had to be a bomb after Katorakan made such a fuss. Nothing else made sense. That’s why I sang for Lorne.”

“Singing for Lorne.” Angel nodded. “Of course. Good idea. Did he…?”

“Three days.” Wesley took another sip of tea. “I’ll spend two of those working on research but then I’m going to rent a car and drive into the desert. I’m really not interested in finding out how big a crater I can make in a densely populated area.”

“We’ll defuse it,” Buffy told him. “I promise you we will.”

“I promised Fred she wouldn’t die.” Wesley drained his tea and held out the cup to Angel who took it automatically. “Sometimes you can’t fix things however much you want to. Either way, a device powerful enough to take out a fortress is going to pack something of a punch. I imagine I won’t feel a thing. Like Lilah when I cut off her head. Do you realize, Angel, that every woman I have dated over the past six years except for Virginia, is now dead? Poor Cordy. If I’m the black widower of Angel Investigations it does seem hard that she had to pay so high a price for one measly dance and one very bad kiss.”

“Wes, they didn’t die because of you.”

Wesley glanced at Angel mildly. “Oh, of course not, because they died because of you, didn’t they? I was forgetting that everything that happens on this planet has to be your fault.”

“It was my fault.”

“They made their own choices. So did I. You didn’t manacle me to those offices. I wanted to stay. I still want to stay. If I get the chance to go on staying I’ll be grateful.”

“So will I.” Angel gazed into his eyes. “I’ll be very grateful.”

Wesley sniffed Angel’s glass and then shook his head. “We really need some single malt.”

“You really need some sleep,” Angel countered.

For the first time Wesley let down his guard enough and they both saw the flicker of vulnerability as he gazed at the open door of the room in which he had suffered so many nightmares. “Will you…?”

“I’ll come now.” Angel took his arm. “It’s past my bedtime. And ever since I passed my quarter millennium I find I really need my beauty sleep.”

Wesley looked relieved. “You don’t look a day over two hundred to me.”

“Do you want to find out what happens to my bonded human slaves who give me jip?”

“It’s oddly disturbing to find that the more time that goes by, the more often I’m forced to agree that Spike may have a point about you...”

Angel nodded to Buffy who smiled back at him a little sadly. There was no one who understood ‘love me, love my crazy friends’ better than her, but the fact remained that they were two champions needed to fight separate battles and ultimately they were going to be going in different directions. For the moment he was just enjoying the rare luxury of her being a guest in his home.

He helped Wesley over to the bed and pulled back the covers, then coaxed the man out of his robe. For all his ability to hold a conversation, Wesley looked pale with exhaustion. Angel had to catch his arm as he swayed, and then hold onto him as he more or less fell into the bed, lowering him gently. He pulled off his own clothes swiftly, refusing to think about Giles looking down his nose at him, as if this was about taking advantage of Wesley instead of taking care of him. On Askaroth in their slave cage they had curled together naked and within a short time even Wesley had thought nothing of it. He resented the soft cotton of Wesley’s pyjamas, afraid it would muffle the warmth of his body, the beat of his heart. But then he had his arms wrapped around his friend and Wesley sighed in relief, feeling safe, Angel could tell, hearing his heartbeat slow a little, calming as the sense of peace spread through him. Angel stroked Wesley’s hair absently, still finding it strange to get used to these soft clean locks after the tangled knots of before.

“It’s going to be okay,” he promised him. “Because nothing and no one is going to make me lose another friend, not after Doyle and Cordy and Fred. Certainly no dumb mystical bomb.”

But Wesley was already sleep, breathing even, heartbeat regular, despite his bondage to a demon, despite the attempt to snatch him back to Askaroth, despite the bomb ticking somewhere inside him, just because he was in Angel’s arms and therefore, evidently, safe. Angel heard again Wesley saying: “Because… I trust Angel. Absolutely.” And realized once again how true that was. He just wished he could have felt as confident as Wesley evidently did that he really deserved that trust.

***

Willow could feel the bomb. When she closed her eyes she could visualize it too. It glowed with darkness, spherical, but with wires protruding from it, delicate tendrils designed to send the mystical force contained within it exploding outwards in all directions. If its intent had been less ugly she might have thought it beautiful. She held the memory of the sigils on Wesley’s body, the mark on his chest, in her mind, and examined the bomb from all angles. The markings were in a language she didn’t recognize but it no longer mattered. Her power had grown to a point where she knew what it said. Outside of Wesley’s body she could have defused it easily, but that was why it had been hidden in a warm-blooded human form. The variables of Wesley’s body temperature, his heart rate, his pulse and breath had all been incorporated into the protective spell that kept the bomb shielded. If Wesley were killed, the bomb would detonate. If any attempt was made to cut him open while his heart was still beating, the tendrils would be severed and the bomb would detonate. It could only be rendered harmless through powerful magic; magic so powerful she feared that it might drain her into unconsciousness, something very dangerous for everyone, given that, if she fainted in the middle of extracting the bomb, her magic would slip and it would explode.

It had to be done quickly, that was clear. This was a place of mystical convergence; it had been seeped in magic in the past, both good and bad; demons would always have been drawn here; it was no doubt why Angel had been drawn here. It had sufficient power of its own that a perimeter spell might work; a way to contain the blast if she failed. Wesley driving out into the desert was not an option, of course. There was a point where the suffering had to stop; where good things had to happen to good people instead of always bad, worse, worst. She had listened when Gunn had been talking earlier and heard it all; Wesley’s history, from abusive childhood, locked in the dark by a father who didn’t love him, to a lonely adolescence with no friends; to Sunnydale and rejection, to LA and acceptance, and then the prophecy, his noble but ultimately worthless sacrifice in trying to save Connor and instead condemning him to a Hell dimension. So ironic and so very unfair that the man who had been prepared to risk everything to save that baby from an untimely death had been the one responsible for setting him on the path to insanity that had so nearly claimed his life. Then had come Angel’s murderous attack on Wesley; Fred, Gunn and Cordy’s rigid drawing of lines in the sand; Wesley an outcast, sleeping with the enemy, no, sleeping with a human woman who had, Angel had maintained, come to love him, and whose head he had to separate from her corpse after death. Then Angel’s deal: Connor’s new life for their memories, a deal with Wolfram & Hart that had almost swallowed them all whole. A decision that had failed to save Cordelia, failed to save Fred, driven Wesley insane with grief, and then, after some seers for the Senior Partners had taken a look into some magic mirror, there had been their insistence that Angel had broken their agreement and been plotting against them.

Then, as Angel was still arguing with them, had come the unleashing of the apocalypse through that jagged gateway into a hell dimension, just as Wesley had translated the sacred scroll they had stolen from the Senior Partners which said that this was the Cauldron of Hell. As flame and smoke billowed through the rip between this dimension and the next, Wesley had conjured from the scroll the clue by which a ‘learnèd mortal man’ might yet close it; the word ‘Efnisien’ burning itself onto the parchment.

“Of course…!” Wesley had exclaimed. “The Cauldron exists to bring forth the dead and so can only be shattered by a live man entering it willingly.” Then he had run for the rip between the worlds, before anyone could lay a hand upon him to hold him back, just as Buffy had done to close a mouth to another dimension in her time; and, as with Buffy, he had known this was a one-way trip. But Angel, although he had been too slow to prevent Wesley throwing himself into the void, had been fast enough to throw himself after him a second before the chasm had closed and Gunn, Lorne, Spike and Illyria had found themselves on the sidewalk outside the smoking ruins of the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, owning nothing but the clothes they were wearing and the weapons they were holding. But in their own world with the gateway to hell closed again and no demon hordes overrunning the earth. Well, no more demon hordes than were already overrunning it anyway.

That made Wesley more than just a man who had spent his life trying to do what was right for the greater good, that made him a bona fide hero in Willow’s book, and heroes didn’t deserve to be ripped apart by mystical booby traps set by slave-dealing demons. They deserved to have some life and health and happiness. She just hoped there was a way that she could save Wesley that wasn’t going to involve killing herself or anyone else.

“Hey, Will…”

She looked up to find Xander standing in the doorway looking at her compassionately. “Would I be right in thinking you might like a little help?”

She gazed at her childhood friend, still not reconciled to the eye patch; she would never ever be reconciled to the eye patch, the injustice of what the good fight had cost him. Angel had told her that was an accusation a policewoman had levelled at him once, that while he and the other champions fought their grand battles of good and evil, it was the ordinary mortals who paid the price. Xander wasn’t a Slayer or a warlock or any part demon. He was just a human male, whom she loved more than she believed she could have loved any brother, would always love perhaps more than anyone else upon the planet; fragile and fallible and so horribly easy to maim.

She tossed aside her pencil. “You would be right.”

“Research help? Tea brewing help? Or just plain massage the kinks out of your shoulders help?”

“Moral support help. But I’m reserving the right to ask for all the other kinds of help as well.”

“Not looking too shiny for Wes right now?” He sat down next to her and rubbed her back comfortingly.

“I think I’ve found a spell to do it.”

“Well, that’s great.” He gave her an encouraging look and then must have read her expression correctly. “Okay, there’s a snag. What’s the snag?”

“The only safe way to do this – safe for the people in LA – is to wrap the hotel in a…”

“Super fuelled version of the Sanctuary spell?”

And there was Lorne, who Willow was already finding strangely comforting whenever he appeared, perhaps because of rather than in spite of the lamé jacket and perpetual clinking of ice cubes in his ever present Sea Breeze.

“Yes, exactly. The really safest way would be to take it out of this dimension completely, put it in a place of neutral space, so if it did explode it wouldn’t take anywhere else with it, then send the bomb back to where it came from and then return the hotel to this dimension again. But I don’t have the power to do that. The best I can do is to try to encase the hotel in an impenetrable mystical wall so that the force of the explosion can’t get through and…”

“Turn LA into Apocalypse Here?”

“Yes.”

Lorne sighed. “Time was Illyria could have managed that little dimension hop for you no trouble at all. But these days her Blueness isn’t running on the full demon-god unleaded. She can make a little time bubble, kick a few scaly beasties back to hell, but no more time bending. On the upside, she doesn’t try to kill us anything like as much these days and hardly ever throws Angel out of a thirtieth floor window.”

“How much juice do you need, Willow?” Xander enquired. “And is there a way we can jump start it to you?”

Lorne nodded. “A circle is always good. Hand holding. Maybe hold off on the singing of folk songs unless we particularly want Spike and Angel back in vamp face.”

“No.” Willow looked between them anxiously. “Everyone who isn’t absolutely necessary needs to be outside of the hotel.”

“Are you going to be inside the hotel?” Xander enquired.

“Yes, I have to do the spell from in here.”

“Then I’ll be right next to you the whole time.”

“No, you can’t, it’s too danger…”

He pointed to his eyepatch. “You’re arguing with the handicapped now? That’s low, Willow. And you may as well save your breath. You know I won’t leave you.”

“That goes for me too.” Willow looked up to find Buffy standing in the doorway, arms folded. “We do this together, the way we always do.”

“Wise words.” Giles stepped into the room. “Willow, before you waste your breath in arguing with us, you know we’re right. As you say, such a spell is going to take a tremendous concentration of energy. Buffy can lend you some of her Slayer strength. I have some magical abilities of my own, and Xander can…make his own unique contribution.”

Xander frowned. “You said that as if you weren’t being sarcastic. Are you ill?”

“Given that I’m talking to the man who once saved the world just by refusing to give up on a friend I don’t think sarcasm would be appropriate, do you? Or underestimating the power of true friendship.”

Lorne took another sip of his Sea Breeze. “Well, I can’t speak for the rest of our not so happy little family, kids, but I can tell you which side of the barrier I’m going to be on when this particular balloon goes up and, yes, it is the one with the view of the lobby. I’m not the greatest demon sorcerer in town, it’s true, but I have been known to cast the odd spell in my time and I can’t help thinking any circle that had me in it would be at least a cocktail stronger.”

“You don’t need to…” Willow began.

“Yes I do.” His red gaze met her green one. “Wes, Interrupted is my friend and – sweetheart, you hum when you’re anxious – you’re right in thinking the universe didn’t exactly usher him to the front of the queue when the breaks were being handed out. I’m alive in a world that isn’t overrun with all the wrong kind of demons right now because he was willing to give up his life for the rest of us. Seems to me it’s time the rest of us gave something back.”

“I second that.” Gunn smiled at Lorne gently. “Not saying I’ve got a lot in the mystical mojo line – that was always Wes’s area of expertise – but I can hold hands and chant with the best of them.”

Willow said urgently, “Which is all very nice and affirming and everything, except that there’s a good chance that the effort of removing the bomb from Wesley will cause me to black out and drop it, turning this hotel and everything in it into one blinding flash immediately followed by a big burning crater. If I didn’t have to be here – I would definitely want to be on the other side of that barrier and I think you all should be too.”

“I will lend you what power I still possess.” Illyria was so beautiful, Willow found herself thinking. She tried not to become hypnotized by her but it was difficult not to just stare and stare. Even though she was so inhuman, so chill and cool, like something made of marble that somehow walked and talked, there was something mesmerising in her pale blue eyes; and she liked the blue, really, as with the green on Lorne, it just suited her. Which wasn’t to say she wouldn’t have rather it was Fred standing here right now, because she so would a million times over, for Fred’s sake and for Wesley’s. She’d liked that sweet brainy talkative girl more than almost anyone she’d ever met. But, ironically, the strength an ancient god-king-blue-demony thing possessed might be a lot more use to her right now than even the humanity and brilliance of the fallen Fred. Illyria continued to gaze at her unblinkingly. “It is for Wesley’s sake that you risk your own life. He is…that is…he is of value to me.”

“He’s of value to all of us,” Gunn told her.

“So’s Willow,” Buffy added quietly. “And I don’t want her getting bent or broken. So, I suggest we pool our strength and our know-how and find a way to defuse Wes which doesn’t get us atomised in the process.”

Xander nodded. “I’m with Buffy on the not-dying aspects of this plan. I mean I’ll make the grand heroic gesture, certainly, but I’d quite like to get the credit for it without having to give up any vital organs or extremities.”

Lorne downed his drink. “Well, I suggest a good night’s sleep, kittens. Well, okay, a few hours sleep at any rate. We’re going to need all the juice we can muster tomorrow to astrally Saran-wrap this place, not to mention making with the Rififi vibe as you Mission Impossible the nastiness out of our ticking time bomb boy.”

After a brief pause to translate what Lorne had just said into something approximating to English, Giles nodded. “Lorne’s right. Let’s grab some sleep and tackle this problem tomorrow. Willow, you’ve located the spell for the protection barrier, yes? And you know how to remove the bomb? It’s just a case of finding the inner strength and belief to accomplish those goals now. We both know you have a much better chance of succeeding if you’ve managed to replenish your energy levels.”

Buffy nodded. “Heed the brainy watcher, Will, he knows of what he speaks.”

Xander agreed solemnly: “Man in tweed speaks with tongue of truth.”

Giles looked between them resignedly. “Thank you for the – vote of confidence.”

Willow sighed and picked up the book she had been reading from which told her exactly what she needed to do while making it clear that no one witch, however powerful, could possibly do it. “I’m not going to be reading with a flashlight under the covers, I promise. But I do need to clasp this to my breast and whimper a little.”

“Whatever gets you through it,” Xander said gently.

As she passed Gunn he clasped her on the shoulder. “I know you can do this.”

“Sweetcakes,” Lorne nodded to her, “I don’t pretend my empathy is as finely tuned as it used to be before I got mixed up with this bunch of crazies, but you have to have one of the most open auras I ever encountered. Anagogic, nothing, I could pick you up on a cellphone, and let me tell you that when I tell you I know you can do this, I know you can do this. You can and you will. As long as you believe in yourself and do like the handsome Watcher told you and go and get your six hours of the dreamless.”

Willow was still clasping the book to her chest but she straightened up a little at that and nodded. “Positive thinking. I can do that.”

Lorne patted her on the arm. “That’s the spirit, little red riding hood.” Only when she was out of earshot did he pour himself a Sea Breeze that everyone noticed was very heavy on the vodka.

“When Willow was humming…?” Gunn broke off. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“Willow isn’t who’s twanging my radar, cupcake. It’s Wesley who’s making my fillings sing. I’d like to look into that boy’s future sometime and have it appear a little different.”

“Does it look like a big burning crater?” Xander enquired.

“No.” Lorne downed another drink with a few gulps. “It looks the way it always does – like a big ominous crossroads without a signpost in sight. I don’t know what that boy’s future is meant to be any more. Ever since Angel went off the rails with Darla, the world’s been shifted. It’s all about choices now. The ones we made, the ones still to make, and last time Wesley came up to a crossroads like this he took the wrong path.” He shrugged. “All I’m saying, pastrycakes, is that we can do this for him, sure enough, and maybe not kill ourselves in the process, but this is just the first step. There’s still a long way to go before that boy is back on his path again. I just hope he makes it.”

“And so say all of us.” They all turned in surprise to see Spike leaning in the doorway, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He leant across to chink it against Lorne’s glass. “If anyone can give him a shot it’s Red and say what you like about Watchers – and trust me, I have many a time – they can make more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. They’re like Orloi Demons. Even if you rip their hearts out, they still keep going through the motions until they get their second wind. I reckon life’s been kicking Wes where it hurts since he was barely out of nappies, but underneath the death wish I reckon there has to be a hunger for life in there somewhere. He just has to remember how it feels to be glad to be alive.”

“He says he does,” said Buffy quietly. “He says he wants to live.”

Spike nodded. “Good start then and I guess that makes it up to the rest of us to make sure he does. See you all first thing then for the hand-holding, chanting and odds on chance of getting blown to smithereens.”

“You’re staying?” Xander looked at him in confusion. “But you don’t even…”

“Wes is a mate.” Spike shrugged and then glanced across at Illyria. “And me and the blue meanie here, we’ve got kind of an understanding, shared bond if you like.”

“Based on having really freaky hair?”

“Based on wishing we’d shown more sense than to fall in love with a stupid human that could up and die on us any minute but knowing that’s just the way it is now and as we can’t make it stop hurting we may as well embrace the pain.” He deliberately didn’t look at Buffy although she did give him a look of genuine compassion.

Illyria put her head on one side. “You mean the hollow place inside of us that feels as if it can never be filled?”

“And that damned warmth you get when they smile at you, like you’re warm again, like you’re alive, yeah, that’s the one.”

“If Wesley were to die...” Illyria flinched. “Even at the thought of such a happening the hollow feeling is there; it aches with cold, like ice upon flesh.”

“And it never goes away.” Spike glanced across at Buffy. “Not if they die on you. Never goes away. I know how it feels. Don’t want you feeling it too. Not your fault you hollowed out a human the rest of us loved and you’re all that’s left of her now. Don’t want you feeling empty for the rest of eternity. And like I said, Wes is a mate. Don’t say I can do much in the way of magic tricks but I can hold hands and look like a plonker as well as Long John Harris. Maybe some vampire strength wouldn’t go amiss either.”

Illyria put her head on one side and gazed at Xander curiously. “I think I understand this reference. You mock his infirmity?”

“It’s what we do when something hurts, Illyria. Doesn’t stop the pain but it makes it look as if it isn’t getting to you. See that eye patch of his? The son of a bitch who put out his eye did it right in front of me. I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. Was fast enough to kill I don’t know how many but I wasn’t fast enough – ”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Xander looked at him in surprise and dawning realization repeating gently: “It wasn’t your fault. You want to beat yourself up about the people you killed when you didn’t have a soul, be my guest, but this one isn’t on your conscience.”

As Spike began to shake his head, Xander cut in again: “You know I’m nothing if not honest when it comes to how I feel where you’re concerned, Spike, so believe me when I say there was nothing more you could have done than what you did. As far as I’m concerned you’re the reason I still have one eye left.”

Illyria flinched. “This room is full of pain and fear.”

“That’s what feeling means sometimes,” Giles told her. “What it means to be human or half human or once human or corrupted by humanity just because you’re capable of loving them. But there are other feelings too. There’s…”

Illyria quoted softly: “‘There’s love. There’s hope...for some. There’s hope that you’ll find something worthy... that your life will lead you to some joy... that after everything... you can still be surprised.’“

They all looked at her in surprise, Lorne getting it first. “Wesley said that to you?”

“Yes.”

Lorne looked across at Gunn who smiled for the first time in what felt like a very long time. “Maybe he’s not so far off his path as you think.”

Lorne smiled back at him. “Maybe he’s not at that.”

***

Wesley woke to an empty bed. The panic flared at once; a spike of fear in his chest; perhaps more like a stake. They’d told him so many times in that hell dimension that Angel was dead. Sometimes they sprinkled dust on him while he snatched one of his fitful hours of sleep; mostly they just smeared blood across the bars of the cage and told him to guess who had lost the last fight. Some of the demons found humans fuckable in that dimension and told him so in great detail; what they’d do to him the day his protector was dead; as if he’d care if Angel was dead anyway; as if anything would matter then. He’d shrugged at them, making them angry and spiteful; one had grabbed him through the bars and pulled him up against them, clawed hands exploring. Wesley had elbowed it hard in the chest but he’d been weakened by starvation, lack of sleep, and too many beatings, and the blow had only made it grunt and tell him that he liked it when they wriggled. Angel had finished one bout so fast the impatient one had still been groping him through the bars as Angel was marched back to the cage. Angel had snapped the demon’s neck so fast it had never had time to finish its sentence. Angel had been grabbed back by the shocked guards, beaten to the ground, but he’d still been smiling as he licked the demon blood from his fingers, eyes yellow as he gazed at them all with awful promise.

“You’d better make sure I’m dead and dusted before any of you ever even think about touching Wes again...”

But it hadn’t been in a bed with clean sheets, in a room in the Hyperion, so even though Angel wasn’t here, this instant, as he awoke, that didn’t mean he was dead. Wesley snatched some deep breaths, calming his heart rate. Angel was fine. He just wasn’t here. He couldn’t always be here, babysitting his crazy friend, telling him everything was okay, that the world was still round, well – an oblate spheroid – that night still followed day; that they weren’t in a hell dimension any longer. Wesley needed to take on that task himself.

Today he was going to get up unaided and not whimper for Angel. That would be a start.

He didn’t remember the bomb until he was showering. He was halfway through his checklist at the time: Angel – still undead; Cordelia – dead; Gunn – alive; Fred – dead; Lorne – alive; Lilah – dead; Illyria – technically alive, he supposed, although he wasn’t sure if she had a heart that beat, not of her own, it would be Fred’s heart. Fred… He started crying. It always shocked him how the tears came so hot and fast of their own accord. A quick gush of grief and then they dried to a salt sting on his face. It was better when it happened in the shower; he could wash away the evidence quickly. He snatched a breath and continued doggedly. Spike – undead; Giles – alive; Buffy – that took some thought. Dead? Alive? He was sure he remembered her being dead. Oh, that was right, she’d been resurrected by Willow. Willow who was also – alive…

And that was when he remembered the bomb. He put his fingers to his chest and tried to feel it, but there was nothing, no scar where the mark of ownership had been, no pulsing tick of an explosive device. A mystical bomb, of course, but it was still difficult not to imagine it as two sticks of dynamite attached to an alarm clock. To wonder how there was possibly room for it inside of him.

“Wes…? Wes…!”

Panic from Angel. Absurd because he had vampire hearing and could surely hear the shower was running.

“I’m in here.”

“Oh.” Angel yanked back the curtain to look at him sheepishly. “I was scared you’d run out on us – pulled one of those stupid self-sacrificing stunts you’re so full of.”

“I only just remembered the bomb. I haven’t had time to do anything stupid about it yet.” Wesley waited for Angel to apologize for interrupting his shower and then realized he wasn’t going to. That was pretty…typical. “As you’re here could you hand me a towel?”

“Oh – sure.” Angel handed one over, still very comfortable with Wesley being naked. It was a little disturbing to find that it didn’t bother Wesley either. Even though he distinctly remembered being the boy who had gone to all kinds of contortions behind his towel to get into his swimming trunks without anyone else seeing him naked at school. Apparently Angel didn’t count as someone else now; Angel was just an extension of himself.

Wesley frowned. “Does that mean I’m half dead?”

Angel made a little gesture with his finger, the ‘run back the reel’ motion. “I didn’t get the first half of that conversation.”

Wesley wrapped the towel around his waist. “Just thinking that it’s strange we’re so connected.”

“Not really. Most married couples don’t get to go through what we’ve been through together.” Angel said it with a shrug, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Wesley realized he was more than comfortable with their togetherness, he was proud of it.

“You like it.”

Angel handed him another towel for his hair. There was that sheepish look again. “Yeah, well… you ran off.”

“What?”

“With Lilah. Then there was the Fred thing. And Illyria. You started hanging out with Spike more than you did with me.”

“That was me punishing you for stealing my memories,” Wesley pointed out. “You didn’t notice the pursed lips?”

“I did. I hate the pursed lips. You’re my best friend, Wes. I like that you’re my best friend. I don’t like it when you act like someone else is your best friend, or as if you don’t need me.”

Wesley blinked in surprise. “You must love this version of me. Super-Dependent Wesley.”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t expected that level of honesty and gaped at Angel in shock.

Angel sighed. “I hate what was done to you. I hate what that place was like. But I like you needing me.”

Wesley remembered for the first time in perhaps a very long time that Angel was as vulnerable as he was underneath that swift-healing skin. “Angel, I’m not going to be this clingy and needy forever, perhaps not even for very much longer – well, not for longer than a few hours if this bomb goes off – but that won’t mean I don’t need you. The problem has always been how much I need your friendship, not how little.”

“It felt…wrong when we weren’t friends. Like a part of me was missing. I never really had a friend before Doyle. Losing him hurt so much I thought it had to be a mistake. Then you came along – I was so determined not to go down that road again, but you made me care way too much way too fast. And you’re so fragile, you humans, so breakable. I knew it was a bad idea.”

“While, of course, I knew that working for a vampire was the bestest idea ever.”

Angel grinned at him. “Hey, you’re all…snippy – you’re you again.”

They smiled at one another and Wesley felt the skittery feeling in his heart get less. That was always the trouble with Angel, the way he could make everything feel right and safe. He and Cordelia had discussed that problem more than once. How Angel could say something or just look at them sometimes and suddenly everything felt all right again. It was a terrible power. He opened his mouth to tell him that he didn’t regret any of it; not the crazy-making things, the pain and the separation, the losses, because it had been the right road he’d taken after all, when he’d told Angel he was his faithful servant; that for all their betrayals and disagreements, their times of estrangement and anger with one another, they had given each other purpose and direction and a path to follow that led to something meaningful. They had given each other hope when no one else could have done. Perhaps most of all they had given each other the kind of friendship that only came along once or twice in a lifetime and should never be given up without one hell of a fight.

Then he realized he didn’t need to say it because Angel must know it too; how good he’d been for him; how much better Wesley’s life was because of knowing him; the feeling of purpose and accomplishment, not to mention feeling loved by people whose opinions he cared about and respected, but most of all the belonging.

“Willow thinks she can defuse it. The bomb.” Angel nodded awkwardly at his chest. “She’s going to put a protective barrier around the Hotel first. Spike and Illyria are investigating portals.”

“I’m good with portals.” Wesley tossed the towel with which he’d been drying his hair onto the old fashioned radiator and went back into the bedroom. He could dress himself. That was something he hadn’t been able to do a week ago. Feed himself. Knew who he was, where he was. Okay, not first thing after waking up, but within ten minutes or so all the memories were back in pretty much their correct order. “I could help.”

“Illyria says she knows – that she…” Angel broke off awkwardly.

“She has Fred’s memories, of course.” Wesley tried to wrench his face out of that tight hurting expression it was determined to set into. “A powerful god-king with the knowledge of a brilliant physicist. Quite a warrior for the forces of good. How ironic when she was brought back to destroy the world with her legions of doom.”

“She’s only a warrior for the forces of good because of you, Wes. Because of her…feelings for you.”

Wesley pulled on his jeans, liking the feel of them against his bare, slightly wet skin; sensation was still a pleasure, any sensation that wasn’t pain or hunger or being dirty or cold or bruised or branded. He liked the way the denim felt so clean, the way it wanted to cling to his wet legs, the snug way it could be pulled over his ass, buttoned up, making him feel efficient, protected. He noticed the way Angel was looking at him, that pleading look again. He sighed. “I’m not in love with Illyria, Angel. I am in love with Fred. I do have feelings for Illyria but they’re too complicated for me to understand, let alone explain. She needs me.”

“I need you,” Angel countered at once, sounding petulant and childish, which, for some reason, Wesley found only endearing. “She and Spike have been bonding.”

“We were only away three weeks in their time.”

“They’ve been bonding a lot.” Angel sighed. “She can’t be who she is around you, Wes. You won’t let her be Fred but Fred is who she knows you love and it’s there, in her power to look like the woman you love, sound like her, be the shell of her, and know that you’ll look at her the way you used to look at Fred. When she’s with Spike, she’s Illyria. She can learn to be the Illyria she is now – the one with lessened powers and a human body and these human emotions she can’t really understand.”

“You think she’s better off without me?” Wesley felt hurt by that. He liked to think he’d been good for Illyria, and being with Illyria had made him feel like a Watcher again; someone to guide and teach; someone so powerful, incapable of inflicting such great harm or doing so much good, and him trying to show her why doing good was better.

“No, of course not…” Angel rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean… Wes, do you remember everything now?”

“Yes. Or rather…” Wesley conceded the point with a shrug. “I don’t know what I’ve forgotten but it feels as if all the pieces are more or less in place.”

“How useful were you, how good was your judgement, when you were in love with Fred and she was dating Gunn? Wasn’t it only when you got over it that you got your clarity back?”

“But I didn’t ‘get over it’, Angel. I just learned to live without hope.” He snatched a breath. “Actually, that’s overly melodramatic. I learned to accept that her friendship was very valuable to me – having lost it, I was grateful to have it back again, to be someone she trusted again. I found comfort in trying to be a good friend.”

“Well, Illyria isn’t at that stage yet. She’s never been in love before. She’s still in the burning fiery furnace of first infatuation and she doesn’t know how it can be that she feels like this when you’re supposed to be an ant she hardly bothers to step on and yet every waking minute is spent thinking about you.”

“It’s not a real feeling,” Wesley pointed out. “She was just…contaminated by human emotions when she stole a human body. She needs to find a way to separate herself from…her body’s previous owner.”

Angel shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think she got whammied by Fred’s emotions, yes, but I also think she’s the pupil with a crush on her teacher and Galatea in love with Pygmalion.”

“I didn’t shape her. Knox did.”

“She got hit by Fred’s neurons at the moment of her…resurrection, didn’t she? Fred was good. Fred cared about right and wrong. I think it’s buried in Illyria now – an unwanted conscience.”

Wesley’s eyes widened. “He said Fred’s soul was destroyed at the moment when she was taken over by Illyria. What if it was absorbed?”

Angel nodded. “I think that’s her problem. She’s been contaminated by humanity. She’s more ancient than anything still walking the earth, and newborn a few months ago. She’s a sweet brilliant good human being and a conscienceless predator who knows we should all bow down before her. Knox was her servant – of no interest to the god-king part, and he betrayed Fred and all humanity to try to suck up to a demon destroyer – not likely to win him too many cool points with what’s left of Fred.”

“There’s nothing left of Fred.” Wesley turned away.

“Wes…? The point I was making is that Knox is nothing. But you – you risked your life to try to stop Illyria and then you showed her kindness because it was the right thing to do. And Fred would be moved by that. The parts of Fred that survived…”

“Angel, nothing of Fred survived. You can’t be half-alive.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. Let’s be honest. You’re not Liam. Liam was human. You’re a vampire. You’re not Angelus. Angelus was a soulless killer. You have a soul. You’re only Angel. However much you may remember how it felt to be Liam, how it felt to be Angelus, you’re not those people any more. Fred was what she was, and what she was is gone. There’s only Illyria now, even if Illyria may have some lingering echoes of Fred.”

“I think she’s like Darla was in the hours before she gave birth to Connor – contaminated by a human soul. She’s capable of love. Darla was. And self sacrifice. She’s just confused and bothered by these feelings she has no experience of feeling. You’re the first thing she’s ever loved in her millennia of existence. You’re her first crush.”

“And you think she needs to get over it?”

“I’m not sure she can be who she is until she has. At some point she has to want to do good because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s what she thinks you want her to do. Otherwise she’s only ever going to be…well...Spike.”

Wesley looked at him for a moment. “This wouldn’t be due to you not liking to share your friends and wanting all my attention fixed on you so I’m always there at your beck and call to do your research and bind up your wounds and tell you how wonderful you are, would it?”

Angel licked his lips reflexively. “No. Well, okay – yes, but it’s still sound reasoning.”

Wesley half-laughed and pulled on a t-shirt and then a sweater. They were clothes Gunn had put there for him, he remembered; clean and well pressed, but not new; he remembered this t-shirt, this sweater; he remembered the snagged thread there… He examined it and was reassured by it. His life was still intact and there had been so many good moments as well as bad ones. He looked up at Angel in surprise. “I can remember Cordelia without it hurting. I remember her smile. Do you remember?”

“I remember.” Angel looked fragile, liable to fragment, voice wistful. “She could light up a room.”

“I remember her drinking tequila and telling me I got the blame. I miss her.” Seeing Angel’s expression he swallowed the rest of what he was thinking. How glad he was that he’d got to know her, even if her time on the earth had been much too short; how much he would have hated to go through life and not know Cordelia Chase. Wesley frowned. “Our lives are…”

“I’m sorry,” Angel said awkwardly. “For what was done to you both. The visions and the pain and…everything.”

“She could have died during the Mayor’s Ascension, Angel,” Wesley reminded him gently. “And never found a purpose.”

“Her purpose got her killed.”

“Perhaps she died contented. Perhaps she’s still doing good work somewhere.” There was so much more he wanted to say but Angel’s attention was straying, his superior hearing evidently picking up sounds of activity downstairs. “Is it time?”

“Time for you to have breakfast.” Angel took him by the elbow. “Do you want eggs?”

Wesley looked at him sideways. “Is this a condemned man thing?”

“No, it’s an ‘I cook great eggs’ thing. So – do you want eggs?”

“Is there toast?”

“There can be. And tea made in the pot. And proper silverware and napkins.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Wesley admitted. He let Angel lead him down to breakfast, thinking as he did so that he really hadn’t managed to convey to Angel at all that he didn’t regret the life he’d had, despite the physical pain and the sanity-crushing misery that had afflicted him at times; the sense of purpose had been there every day except when he’d been cast out from this dysfunctional family of theirs. My friends forsake me like a memory lost. That had been like Sunnydale again, only so much worse, because those people had simply failed to warm to him, they hadn’t loved him once then ceased to care. But as long as he was part of the mission, part of Angel’s mission, he was happy; even when he was miserable there was a part of him that had always felt fulfilled. That was why he’d never nagged Cordelia to try to get rid of the visions, because he understood only too well how one could be in physical pain and yet still feel as if this was the only right and fitting path to follow. He was starting to suspect Angel didn’t really understand that. Well, if they survived Wesley having a bomb removed from his chest, British reserve or no British reserve he was definitely going to have to find a way to tell him. It seemed important that he should know.

***

“Do you understand?”

Willow looked so young, Wesley found himself thinking, intrigued. Amongst this circle of people sitting cross-legged in the lobby of the Hyperion all holding hands, she seemed positively childlike. She certainly looked no older than when he’d seen her in Sunnydale all those years ago, and even then she hadn’t looked even as old as the eighteen-year-old Buffy or Cordelia. He wondered if people like Willow were the reason humans had invented the concept of elves. She had that little upturned nose, and those huge green eyes. He couldn’t see her ears under her hair but he wouldn’t have been surprised to find they were small and pointy. He didn’t know if he was just feeling warm and fuzzy towards all humanity at the moment, due to him probably being about to take his leave of it in a big white flash, or if everything had just come into focus in a way it never had before. Either way her hair really was the most splendid colour.

“Wes, mate? You okay?”

He turned his head to see Spike looking at him curiously. He looked odd sitting there cross-legged, holding Buffy’s hand in one hand and Xander’s in the other, a candle in front of him with a wan flame sputtering a little wax and smoke. The hair dye he could understand – sort of, but why was Spike wearing eyeliner? Did Buffy like it? Surely she was a little young to have witnessed the Glam Rock age?

Angel squeezed his hand gently. “Wesley, did you understand what Willow told you?”

Wesley looked at the vampire on his left. “Willow’s really pretty.”

Xander grimaced. “You know, ordinarily, I’d be right there with you on thinking that was definitely a point worth making, but just at this moment in time –”

“And her hair is really…super.”

Everyone looked at Willow who shifted self-consciously. “Thanks, I think. But, Wesley…”

He nodded in acknowledgement. “I get it. You’re all staying. I can’t make you leave. And if I try to make a run for it I’ll be pulled down like a – what was it again…?”

“Wounded gazelle,” Spike supplied helpfully.

Wesley sighed and looked around at them, wondering as he did so if Angel and Gunn felt as silly holding hands with Lorne as they looked. “But I don’t want you all to die. I checked my To Do list very thoroughly this morning and it definitely doesn’t say ‘get half the world’s champions killed so evil can have free rein’.”

“We’re not going to die.” Buffy leaned forward to gaze intently into his eyes. “We’re going to give Willow enough of our power and know-how so that she can do this without anyone dying – including you.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense.” He wondered why they couldn’t get it when it was so obvious. “There are –” He had to pause to count them: Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Illyria, Spike, Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, that made: “Nine of you. And one of me. And I’m not even sane. Giles, tell them.”

Giles sighed wearily. “I agree with them, Wesley.”

Wesley rolled his eyes. “Well, someone who doesn’t agree with them, tell them.” He looked around at them hopefully.

Lorne said gently: “We all agree with them, crumpet. Kind of why we’re all here.”

“But it’s stupid,” he pointed out.

“Hey – ” Willow pointed a finger at him imperiously. “A bit more faith in my super witchy powers, Watcher guy.”

“Sorry.” He gave her an apologetic wince. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re the best witch ever, it’s just that I don’t think it can be done.”

“Still not with the positive thinking,” she protested.

“I noticed your hair,” he offered in mitigation.

“You’ve known her for six years and you just noticed her hair?” Xander enquired.

“I noticed it at Sunnydale. I just – forgot to mention it.”

Gunn looked across at Angel. “I thought you said he was saner today?”

“Do you not like my hair?” Illyria enquired.

“Yes, of course, I do. It’s…very nice. Very…blue.”

Buffy looked at Giles. “So, now I’m the only one whose hair Wesley doesn’t like?”

“I like your hair too,” Wesley protested. “I just…like Willow’s best. Because of the red and the colour and the being that shade.”

“He was pretty sane upstairs.” Angel shrugged. “I think it’s the rest of you who confuse him.”

“Wesley!” said Willow as sharply as she was capable of saying anything.

He sat up straighter at once. “Yes?”

“Do you understand what we’re going to do now?”

“We’re going to hold hands and help make a sanctuary spell to surround the hotel and stop the rest of LA getting destroyed when I go kabloom.”

“No, there will be no kablooming!”

Wesley looked across at Giles. “Remind me again what the current watcher to slayer ratio is before you explain why you think risking your life for a lunatic is a good idea?”

Giles looked smug. “As you’re one of the few fully trained watchers left in the world, Wesley, that just makes for an even stronger argument for saving your life.”

“Gunn…?”

“Save your breath, English. I ain’t going anywhere unless you’re going there too.”

“Sanctuary spell!” Willow said sharply.

Everyone started guiltily.

“You have to concentrate,” she reminded them.

“We’re right there with you on the concentrating,” Buffy assured her.

“Oh, and the candle lighting!” Xander noticed that his was the only one not yet lit and leant across to do so hastily, using Spike’s candle as a match.

“Are you sure Wes doing the mojo isn’t going to set off his inner nitro?” Gunn enquired.

“Pretty sure.” Willow smiled a little wanly. “And we do need his um…mojo.”

Illyria said, “Fred liked to watch Wesley perform magic spells, she found it…what is that emotion humans feel when they become warm throughout all of their body and with heightened awareness of all physical sensations, particularly their proximity to another?”

“Horny.” Spike grimaced at her. “And thanks for sharing but maybe another time with the reminiscences, pet?”

Wesley looked at Illyria in confusion. “Fred – what…?”

Lorne sighed. “Think of the effect it used to have on Gomez when Morticia spoke French, cherry pie, then adapt to Fred watching you do magic.”

“Who’s Gomez?” Wesley asked in bewilderment.

“And we would all be concentrating now, yes?” Willow said frostily.

“Wait, is it a side effect of Wesley doing magic?” Buffy demanded. “I mean is anyone sitting near him going to react like that? Because I have a thing about not being attracted to Watchers – because of the supremely high squick factor.”

“He’s only an ex-Watcher,” Gunn offered.

“Once a Watcher always a Watcher,” Buffy insisted. “I don’t want to be sitting here feeling all…lustified about Wesley.”

Wesley darted a nervous glance in her direction. “I really don’t think that’s likely to be a problem.”

“I’m changing places. I should be holding Willow’s hand anyway. In case she needs Slayer strength.”

“I was lending her magical assistance,” Giles protested.

“Well, lend it to Spike instead.”

“It was a Fred thing, Slayerlicious,” Lorne assured Buffy.

“I also feel it when I witness Wesley performing magical rites,” Illyria observed.

Gunn held up a hand. “I don’t.”

“Me neither.” Spike moved over so that Giles could take Buffy’s place. “And I’d like to go on record on that.”

“A Fred and Illyria thing then.” Lorne rolled his eyes. “Have we finished playing non-musical non-chairs yet?”

“And concentrating would be a good idea around now unless people are particularly eager to be blown into a million billion itsy bitsy pieces!”

Everyone looked sheepishly at Willow and muttered apologies.

Willow took a deep calming breath, told everyone to clear their minds, concentrate, and then repeat after her the following words.

She knew the spell so well it was difficult to remember to wait for them to repeat it after her. Make of us the world within. Make the walls of this building as the walls between the worlds. Let nothing pass between them, no light, nor fire, nor breath, nor sound. Make this a true sanctuary from the world without, and protect the world without from the world within….

She could feel it, the flow of power; not just her own, but the Slayer strength of Buffy, so positive, so free of doubt, the ancient darkness of Illyria with that golden thread twisted within it; that was what she was now; a thing of darkness wrapped around a thread of light, the light bleeding into the darkness more and more. Was that what humanity looked like – a beautiful infection? There was Giles. He had so much strength of purpose. And Wesley – he was powerful; he felt tangled but the power that he was lending her was focused as light through a crystal; oh, that was Angel, demon power, heavy as tar, and Spike, lighter, sort of tinny, but still strong; and Lorne, oh how sweet that his power was green too, or perhaps she was just picturing it that way? Either way she could feel it; a pulse of energy from someone who knew instinctively the ins and outs of magic. And Xander and Gunn, they were sending her human strength, the perfect balance to all this demonic power; warm and unblemished. This was a colossal spell; she could feel it building, its demand building also, sucking in energy greedily as it prepared for that whiplash of light and blue and…

Willow gasped and felt herself enveloped in light, white and searing yet not painful at all; and then the ground shimmered and shuddered and she felt the spell work. She snatched a breath and opened her eyes.

“It’s done.”

They were all gazing at her open mouthed. She blinked. “What?”

“That was awesome,” Gunn said.

Wesley looked at her curiously. “I had no idea you were so powerful.”

Willow inclined her head. “Kind of a side effect of trying to destroy the world – well, of letting all the magic flow into me and it sort of – stuck. Giles can explain it better.”

“You rule,” Buffy told her.

“Does anyone else need a cigarette?” Spike enquired reaching for one.

Looking around the circle, Willow noticed that they all looked a little flushed and breathless. “It was a group spell, not group…other thing.”

“All the same – most fun I’ve had in a while,” Xander admitted. As Spike offered him a drag on the cigarette he said, “I don’t… oh, okay…” He took a deep drag and then offered it to Giles who looked distinctly tempted but shook his head.

“No, thank you, I really have given up.”

“If I’d known we were doing these kind of spells I’d’ve got in some Mary Jane and snacks,” Spike observed.

“Who’s Mary Jane?” Wesley asked.

Gunn sighed. “Not ‘Who?’ ‘What?’ And it’s weed, Wes.”

Wesley blinked in confusion. “Dill? Sage? What?”

Willow looked across at Buffy. “Isn’t that sweet?”

“It’s adorable,” Buffy admitted. “They have like – no life at all at that Watchers’ School place, do they?” Seeing Giles’ expression, she said quickly, “Not that I know what Spike’s talking about either, because I so don’t.”

“None of us do,” Willow assured him. “Because…”

“Because you went to the only university on the planet in which there was no recreational drug-taking of any kind,” said Giles wearily. “Yes, Willow, I know.” He held a hand out to Xander. “I’ve changed my mind about that cigarette.”

“I would like to try human sexual intercourse,” Illyria observed to no one in particular. “It was an experience which Fred regarded as being most pleasurable but I have not yet been able to sample it for myself.”

“Wes still not putting out, love?” Spike accepted the cigarette back from Giles and leaned across to offer it to her. “He can’t help it. He’s English.”

“Given his condition, it wouldn’t exactly be a good idea even if there wasn’t the off the scale weirdass factor,” Gunn pointed out.

Spike shrugged. “That would certainly be going out with a bang anyway.”

“You’re English,” Angel pointed out to Spike. “That’s why you have that horrible accent.” He added quickly to Wesley: “Not that your accent is horrible. It isn’t. It’s…nice. But Spike’s is horrible.”

“Different era though. I’m from the days when being English meant you got to rule the world and oppress the natives, not that you were a tea-drinking nancy boy who didn’t know which way of a girl was up.” Spike glanced across at Giles and Wesley. “No offence. Well, not much.”

Illyria tentatively tried smoking the cigarette, coughed and handed it to Gunn. “I do not care for this pastime.”

“Very wise.” Gunn looked at the cigarette and then shook his head. “I don’t smoke and spells don’t make me horny – although as spells go, that one was pretty tight.”

Angel took it from him. “Well, give it to those of us who do. Smoke, I mean. Or – used to anyway.”

“Do you mind?” Lorne snatched it back. “I still do. And am about to. You can have a cigarette when you’re wearing leather pants and minus a soul, just – not one of mine.”

Willow pointedly waved the smoke away from where she was sitting. “If everyone has finished being all…post-coital we need to do the next spell on account of Wesley exploding if we don’t. Which, in case anyone isn’t really sure on that issue, would not be a good thing.”

“You had me with ‘exploding’,” Gunn assured her.

Wesley shrugged. “I’ve never exploded before. If you think about it, you’re denying me a unique experience.”

“Have you ever been hurt by a really pissed off witch before?”

He looked at Willow’s expression and hastily took Angel and Spike’s hands in his. “And I’m concentrating. And shutting up. I hope you’re noticing the shutting up.”

“Perhaps if you shut up for long enough, I might.” As Wesley opened his mouth to say something else, Willow added: “Remember when I told you about the time I flayed a man alive…?”

Wesley closed his mouth again with an audible click and everyone hastily held hands.

“Now, if I have your attention….”

Willow felt Buffy tighten her grip on her hand; a sympathetic squeeze to let her know that she at least knew how dangerous this was, and how difficult.

“I don’t have a death wish,” Buffy whispered to her. “And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know you could do this.”

It was a surprise to feel Illyria also tighten her grip on Willow’s hand a careful fraction. Willow glanced at the blue eyed god-king and the gaze that looked at her was unblinking as ever but by no means emotionless. There was absolutely no fear of death there for herself – himself? itself? She would stick with ‘herself’ as Illyria certainly looked female whatever her essence might be made from. But there was anxiety all the same. Willow squeezed Buffy’s hand back and let it flow into her again, Slayer power, god-king power, then the connection was taken up, and there was Giles, half-Watcher power, half-Witch power from the coven. Xander’s humanity, that was an extra warmth; she almost smiled as she felt it flow into her, and Spike – chilly and still a little tinny but powerful all the same, the strength of a soul and a demon combined. Then Wesley – he really did have some powerful mojo there, enough to tip the balance perhaps; it didn’t matter that his mind was all woolly and fragmented or that he didn’t even seem to much care if he lived or died; inside there was all that strength and power and knowledge – just as well he was on the side of the good guys, really. Then Angel – oh and that was strong – so powerful, that soul of his all dark and treacly and golden, and the demon strength of Angelus buried within him, raw energy; that appealed to her in particular, using evil rocket fuel to jet propel that bomb out of Wesley. Lorne, definitely green, those tendrils of subtle power from him, good to the core; and Gunn, pure humanity again, concentrating so hard on trying to lend her his strength she could feel it flowing from him. And Illyria again, and Buffy, still, and it was flowing into her, power and more power. She had to dismiss her instinctive fear that the power might prove too much, might find a way to corrupt her. This was good magic for a good purpose and she was a good witch and –

There was the bomb. She could see it so clearly now. Even though the air around her was shimmering, within herself everything was still, focused. There was a raindrop poised on the very end of a leaf, the ground was shaking but she was keeping the leaf still; the tree was waving in the breeze but she was balancing the leaf and the raindrop didn’t fall. No need to fight the earthquake or the deep roots of the tree, just to lend a little power to the leaf. This was all she had to do here. The bomb was glowing; silvery white; and there was its delicate heart so perfectly balanced.

It had come to her this morning that she needed to enlist the bomb’s aid in defusing it. Not take it to a place it had never meant to be or try to freeze it while it struggled against its bonds; but to nudge it to remember the way it had been before; like reminding a full grown man holding an armalite that he’d once known the safety of his mother’s womb; play on the yearning of every evolving thing to return to that earlier state of being. The heart of the bomb, the beating, ticking, dangerous heart, could remain still as the tendrils slid back in, just like that, as they had been before; that was all it needed to do to pass from one state of readiness to another earlier one. And now the tendrils were out of Wesley’s body and back inside the bomb and she was holding the heart still so it felt exactly as it had done when the tendrils were connected; she was singing it a mystical lullaby and it was returning now, the heart slowing and then stopping as it became what it had been before; something in readiness, something waiting to be activated; now it was sleeping. It was ready to become what it had briefly dreamed it was. She just needed to nudge it to make it remember that it didn’t belong here; not yet. Not in this form. It needed to remember further back, much further back to what it had been before even this; to a time when it had been incomplete. For a moment everything wavered; she felt the power source from Wesley falter for just an instant and she saw the leaf almost shake, a pre-motion when the raindrop might fall, but then the power flickered back on again, like a light bulb in a thunderstorm, and she had the bomb firmly within her spell. It was whole, it was components, it was the metal and magic from which those components were made. It was atoms. It was the dust of life and death and other matter tossed upon the wind. It was scattered into space….

Willow gasped and fell forward, Buffy and Illyria both catching her. She heard Angel say: “Wes? Wes?” And tried to open her eyes. Unfortunately someone seemed to have cemented them closed at the same time they had bathed her in grey sweat and pulled the bones out of her arms and legs. She slumped against Buffy and smelt her familiar scent, heard her whisper: “I’ve got you, Will, I’ve got you,” and then everything went peacefully dark for a while.

“Is she okay? Is she breathing?”

Giles checked Willow’s pulse and hastened to reassure Xander. “She’s quite well. Just – recharging her batteries.”

“Wes?” Angel was anxiously cradling Wesley and Giles hurried over to check on him too.

The ex-watcher was unconscious and a little clammy, but his heartbeat when Giles listened to it was steady and regular.

“Is it a coma?” Gunn demanded. “Man, I hate comas.”

“I think it’s a deep sleep.” Giles checked Wesley’s pulse and it was a little rapid at first but then slowed to normality. “We’re all a little drained but it would have hit him harder because of his less than tip top physical shape.”

Willow gasped and woke up to find Buffy and Xander gazing at her anxiously. For a spit second she wondered where Oz was, then Tara, then, as she groped her way back to consciousness, Kennedy, before she remembered that she had been needed in Cleveland with Faith and Wood to guard the second Hellmouth and take care of Dawn. “Is Wesley okay?” she said hoarsely.

“He didn’t blow up.” Xander glanced over at him. “Hence the not deadness of us.”

“He’s fine, Willow. He’s asleep.”

Willow looked at him anxiously. “I drained his batteries.”

“They weren’t exactly charged up that high to start off with,” Spike shrugged. “You did it, Red. Got rid of the bomb.”

“I just need to check.” She staggered to her feet, very grateful to find herself being steadied as she swayed. It was a shock to find it was Illyria’s hand on her arm, those unblinking blue eyes gazing into hers intently.

“You have saved Wesley. I am experiencing feelings of gratitude and liking for you,” she said.

Willow managed a wan smile, hoping that as well as inheriting Fred’s crush on Wesley Illyria hadn’t inherited Fred’s brief crush on her because, unlike Buffy, she wasn’t really into making out with the undead. “Oh, you’re welcome. All in a day’s…witching. Can I see?” She tottered over to where Angel was cradling him anxiously.

“Angel, he really is okay,” Giles assured him, with more resignation than impatience.

Willow was grateful for the hand Lorne held out to her. “His aura’s kind of cloudy,” the green demon frowned. “As much as I can tell without him singing for me anyway, but I’m not sensing an about-to-detonate vibe any more, are you?”

Willow concentrated, closing her eyes and feeling her way inside Wesley, searching for anything magical concealed within him. She should have done this before, of course, instead of just assuming those sigils were his only connection to the dimension from which he’d escaped. It had just seemed so…intrusive, and he’d already had to be looked at by everyone when he was naked, and Angel wasn’t really being big on the letting him have personal space issue, and it just seemed important somehow that she didn’t go poking around inside him. She wasn’t making that mistake again. She concentrated harder and found nothing of the bomb remaining; not even a memory. She sighed in relief.

“It’s gone. No more kabloom. He’s safe.” She swayed again and found Lorne holding her upright.

“Easy there, my red hot chilli pepper of witchery. That was quite a spell you cast, and I don’t mean just the one over my heart, although I have to tell you, sweetness, you ever decide to stray towards a wailing for a demon lover place, my ass is yours.”

“That’s sweet,” Willow told him, wondering if all of Angel’s people were just really…sex-starved. “I think. And I didn’t do it. We did it. All of us. And I’m not just saying that to be all modest, I’m saying you should probably go eat a Snickers bar, all of you, or drink blood or eat a nice petrie dish, if that’s your preference, because I think I probably drained you all pretty flat.”

“You may have a point.” Spike tossed aside the cigarette he’d lit. “It’s been a long time since Gunn looked tasty to me.”

“Back off, blondie bear,” Gunn told him witheringly. He bent over Wesley, whom Angel was still cradling. “We need to get him to bed, Angel. Let him sleep it off. Recharge his mojo juice.” Then put a hand to his head and staggered. “And – Willow may have a point about the Snickers bar.”

“If you’re human, sit down,” Lorne suggested. “If you’re possessed of super Slayer strength or demon power – can you get me another Sea Breeze? I’m right out.”

Angel rose to his feet with Wesley clasped in his arms. “I’ll stay with him. Make sure he’s okay.”

“Yeah, because that’s just what he needs right now.” Spike rolled his eyes. “Nothing like a psychotically over-protective blood sucker watching over you when you’ve just had some mystical TNT yanked out of your wotsit.”

Angel didn’t deign to reply, carrying Wesley up the stairs as if he was auditioning for a role in a bad Gothic novel. Gunn looked after them and shook his head. “Angel really needs to get a life.”

“Or a pet,” Buffy suggested brightly. As they all looked down their noses at the suggestion, she pouted. “I wasn’t suggesting a puppy.”

“If you gave Angel a cyber pet he’d break it,” Spike told her.

“You should know,” Xander observed.

“I was never his ‘pet’, all right? Him and Darla – me and Dru. Okay – and him and Dru, and Darla and Dru from time to time, but apart from that never the twain shall – well, except for that one time and I don’t think that counts on account of the…okay, maybe it was more than once but it was never when I was sober and…” Spike noticed them all looking at him expectantly and broke off. “Not a pet.”

“Is Wesley going to be normal now?” Buffy looked at Giles for enlightenment.

“No, he’s just not going to explode,” Giles reassured her.

“Good, because I kind of like him like this. And he seems quite happy. Not maybe too big on the whole sane thing but…happy.”

“He can be happy and sane,” Gunn observed from his place on the floor. “I remember it.”

“When was that then?” Spike enquired. “I think I missed it.”

“He was sane when you first came to Wolfram & Hart,” Gunn protested.

Spike gave him a look of disbelief. “He shot his father nine times at close range. He got drunk on suggestion. And when he wasn’t doing that he was looking at Angel like he was the Second Coming.”

“Oh, he always does that.” Lorne waved a dismissive hand. “And Robopop had had it coming for a long time.”

“What, so you’re saying when he’s normal he still does the ‘oh Angel, you’re like the noblest champion in the whole wide world’ thing?”

“Oh yeah.” Gunn shrugged. “He’s always done that.”

Illyria observed: “Fred regarded Wesley as the sanest person she knew.”

“Well, for a start I think that says more about the kind of people Fred hung around with than Percy’s mental health and…”

Gunn frowned. “Fred did smoke an awful lot of weed growing up.”

Spike tossed his cigarette on the floor and trod on it. “That explains a lot.”

“Now he’s not going to explode we could maybe reintroduce him to society,” Buffy suggested. “Take him out. Show him the sights.”

Giles looked at her down his nose. “You cannot go on a shopping spree on the grounds that it would be good for Wesley’s rehabilitation.”

“You’re planning to take him into every public library and museum.”

“That’s different. Wesley likes libraries and museums.”

“Oh! Rare book stores!” Willow looked around at them with renewed enthusiasm. The exhaustion was still there and she really was going to get some sleep in about five minutes time. But she was also starting to realize that she had actually done it. She really had defused the bomb and Wesley really was safe because of her. “He’d love to go to some magic shops.”

“They were on my list,” Giles said in mild disappointment.

Xander looked across at Gunn. “Porn cinemas and sporting events. That’s what the guy needs. And tacos.”

“Given the fact Angel won’t let him out of his sight even to take a leak, kind of a moot point, isn’t it?” Spike observed.

Illyria gazed up the stairs. “The vampire is unhealthily obsessive and jealous.”

They all looked in the same direction and then Giles sighed. “Never mind. The main objective is accomplished. Wesley is not now likely to explode even if left unattended. His previous ‘owner’ has had his very expensive mystical device banished back into the ether from whence it came and is we sincerely hope sadly out of pocket. Wesley will hopefully wake up soon, none the worse for his experience, and Angel…” He shrugged. “Well, we can worry about that later. For the moment, I really need a cup of tea.”

“Beer.” Xander looked at Gunn.

“Food,” the man countered.

They slapped hands. “We’re on it,” Xander told the others. “Give us money and we will provide you with tasty and unhealthy food and beverages specifically designed to cause irreparable damage to your internal organs.”

“Don’t forget the booze,” Spike reminded them. “Whisky, not just beer. And some lager wouldn’t go amiss. Angel got any blood in the fridge I can nick?”

“I bought more blood this morning,” Buffy told him. “Seeing as how Angel was too obsessed and you were too lazy.”

“Thanks, pet.” Spike headed off there, swaying a little still.

“Heck of a spell, Will,” Xander told her. “Lucky you’re such a heck of a witch.”

Willow looked up the stairs again. “I just hope he’ll be okay.”

Buffy hugged her. “He’ll be fine. And it’s all because of you and your super wiccan super powers. Now, we just need to sit around and eat ourselves stupid until Wesley wakes up again.”

Willow felt reassured by Buffy’s confidence. It had felt like a normal sleep Wesley had lapsed into, it was true, and not a mystical coma, but after what had happened to Cordelia she really couldn’t bear it if she’d ended up putting Wesley into the same condition, and she thought Angel would go completely insane if he had to go through that again. She managed a smile. “You’re right. Everything’s fine. Wesley’s fine. And we should eat candy.”

“That’s my girl.” Buffy steered a wavering Willow over to the office where Giles and Spike were already arguing about whether or not a man carrying a cup of tea or a vampire carrying a cup of blood had priority passing rights. Gunn and Xander were both searching their jacket pockets for the car keys to Gunn’s truck while insisting the other one had had them last. Illyria had struck an attitude of immobile beauty at the foot of the steps and was gazing up them, presumably waiting to hear if Wesley stirred at all. Lorne was humming a pleasing ditty while mixing himself another Sea Breeze.

“You know what’s really freaky?” Buffy whispered to Willow as she helped her along.

“What?”

“The way this place is starting to seem like home.”

***