Human Weakness

Illyria: It can't be. It's gone. My world is gone.
Wesley: Now you know how I feel.

- Shells

Wesley is a puzzle to her and she is enraged by this. She, who has lived for countless centuries, who watched as mankind tried to drag themselves up from the gutter they were born in and deserved to die in, she cannot understand one human.

This means she does not understand the entire race. But it is not the entire race of humans that Illyria wishes to understand.

She understands the weak parodies of humans, the vampires, Angel and Spike and the demon, Lorne. She understands the only other actual human she knows – Gunn. She can understand their actions, their surface feelings; though she knows that what goes on beneath their skin she will never understand. They all pretend not to grieve for Winifred Burkle and she can understand why they don't grieve, the shell was only one single life. Yet she does not understand why they do grieve and why they feel the need to hide this grief. It makes her head ache trying to decipher their actions.

It is not their actions she cares about. It is Wesley she wishes to understand, unlike the others, he does not pretend to move on, he does not pretend to have forgotten. He is a broken man, trying to claw himself back into some semblance of his former self and he does not try to hide this. Illyria wonders why. She thought appearances were all to humans, yet he does not care if he goes to the office dishevelled and unshaved, reeking of whiskey.

Is this grief?

She could leave. She knows he would like her to. Then there would be no reminder of the life he lost when the woman he loved died. She knows her absence would probably make things easier for him.

Yet she stays. In the company of a man whose attitude toward her has only just mellowed and who doesn't see her as the god she is.

She cannot understand why she stays, why she remains with Wesley. The only answer is that she wants to solve the puzzle. She wants to understand why he puts on no front to the outside world like the others. She wants to understand the feelings that cause his actions. She wants to understand how love causes grief which itself causes hate. He is the only way to answering these questions; he is the only way to helping her fit into a world that she will be trapped in forever.

There is no inner peace for her now. She remembers the days when she could tear through armies, kill thousands with a snap of her jaws, yet despite her outward appearance of rage, there was always peace and calm within her.

Now there is none. Where her peaceful centre once was there is turmoil, an odd tugging sensation that she thinks the humans have a name for.

She doesn't know the name. She calls it Wesley, because before Wesley, there was only peace and now, there is only chaos.

Illyria tires quickly of Spike these days. He holds no answers for her. She has had her fun with him and now she leaves him abruptly to find Wesley.

She goes directly to Winifred Burkle's former lab. It is where he can always be found, staring out of the window, cupping a Petri dish in his hand in the vain hope that he is holding something she once touched. Illyria finds this irritating, yet fascinating. He tortures himself continually, yet in his eyes, she sees he hates the pain.

"You are working," she blurts in surprise, when she finds him sitting at Fred's old desk that is now free from her comfortable clutter.

He looks up at her and gives her a wry smile.

"It's what I do," he replies. "What do you suggest I do instead?"

"Does this mean you are finished with your grief?"

To the average eye, he would not have reacted. But Illyria sees his knuckles flash white as he tightens his grip on the pen for a second. She sees his eyes shimmer before he gains control of himself. She almost feels satisfied at this power she has over him.

"No," he replies, but does not elaborate.

"Does everyone in this world grieve this long?" she asks and sits herself down so that he knows she wants to learn, not just torment him.

"That all depends on what is lost," he says, putting down his pen and looking at her. "Why do you want to know?"

"I wish to understand. I think that grief is linked to love and hate and therefore passion. I wish to understand how such varying emotions are inextricably entwined."

He raises an eyebrow at this.

"And you are to write a thesis on this, are you?" he asks, his voice as wry as his earlier smile.

She is surprised that he is capable of enraging her so easily with so little effort on his part. He teases her with things she doesn't know the meaning of, with things that she doesn't understand and he mocks her with her past. He doesn't fear her at all.

It is in that moment that she realises. It is not she who has the power over him. It is Fred. Still Fred. Someone who is gone, who is not even a ghost, has complete power over him while Illyria, the all powerful god, has no power except in the fact that she wears the slightly altered face of his lover.

She glares at him.

"You mock me, despite your promises to help me fit in with your world," she hisses. "You tease and taunt and you wonder why I will never fit into your world. I wish only to see what it is you humans see. Then perhaps we shall both be a little happier."

"I didn't realise you weren't happy," he answers in a low voice.

"How can I be happy in a world that is not my own? Trapped in this one space and time until I wither and die. Or perhaps I won't and the release of death will never come and instead I will remain alone in a world I cannot understand. You are not happy because you have lost the person that made your life complete, the person that made your future bright. I have lost my world, my identity. I have lost myself."

"You must be very lonely," he says.

"Lonely?" she asks, coming toward him. "What is this word, 'lonely'?"

"Lonely is when you feel completely alone," he explains. "When you feel there is nothing in the world for you to cling to. No one in the world who will comprehend what you are going through."

"I do not feel that," she replies loftily. "I am not alone. I am surrounded by people. The people in these offices who know who I am, who whisper of my power when they think I cannot hear. The people in the street who do not see me watching them as they scurry about their silly little lives. I am surrounded by people."

"Yes," he nods. "But does anyone identify with what you are going through?"

"You do," she states. "I lost myself and so did you."

He stares at her blankly, eyes widening in horror as he realises she has compared herself to him. She sees in that moment that they are alike.

He no longer knows what kind of man he is; he can find no foothold in a world that no longer contains the woman he loves. She does not know what she is because she has never had to be a human. She can find no grip in a world that she mocked as inconsequential. She can find no foothold in a world where people give her no passing thought, where in their lives she does not matter, even if their lives revolve around Little League and the weekly trip to the grocery store. To so many she is nothing.

"You don't know who you are anymore, where you fit in. I find I am nothing in millions of lives. I am no longer revered or feared. I am nothing," she shudders. "I am another one of the cattle."

"You are not," he counters. "We cattle as you so eloquently put it, have feelings. We love and hate. We create and we kill."

"You live, you die and others take your place. You do not matter," she sneers.

"Perhaps not in the great scheme of things," he shrugs and comes to join her by the window. "But one person always matters to someone. To one person at least, you are beloved. If you are lucky, more than one. To one person at least, the loss of you would shatter them."

"Like your loss would have shattered Fred, like it may one day do to Angel, Gunn and Lorne?" she asks, looking at him. "You are beloved by them and one day you may become so to Spike. The way you were with the woman in the photo in your wallet."

He gives her a sharp look at that, places his hand protectively over the wallet in his pocket in which he keeps an ancient picture of himself with Angel and Cordelia with a newer photo of everyone crowded on the stairs in the Hyperion.

"Yes. I suppose so," he answers stiffly. He doesn't like it when she sees his point and compares almost ruthlessly to his own life. It makes him feel small.

"Then you are lucky," she tells him. "If you say that a person always matters to one person at least and you mattered to around five people, you are one of the lucky ones. Others are not so fortunate."

"I don't feel lucky," he answers.

"You feel empty. You cannot console yourself with the love of your friends because of what you have lost. Is this the source of your grief?" she cocks her head to the side and he avoids her inquisitive gaze.

"Yes," he answers.

"What you have lost is love," it is a statement, not a question. She is saying like it is the answer to a question in class. Something real that cannot be changed, not by any interpretation.

"Yes."

"So grief is another version of love," this is almost a question. She is trying to make sense of things, lay it all out in her mind. But she is almost sure what she says it true.

He glances at her and answers her anyway, despite the fact that what she said lacks the need of an answer.

"You could say that. But if so, it is a darker, harder kind of love."

"And grief leads to anger and anger to hatred."

"In some cases, yes."

"If you hate me so much, why not kill me? I have been sufficiently weakened, you could kill me. Or banish me at the very least," she is studying him now, head on the side, trying to interpret his reaction.

He is startled by her statement and he wonders how she will interpret his obvious surprise.

"What gives you the impression that I hate you enough to kill you?" he asks her. "Did I not demonstrate quite recently that I do not want you dead?"

"Then what do you want from me?" she asks.

He turns away from her sharply and she tails after him, unaware of how much she looks like a child desperate for affection.

"Nothing," he answers and his voice is hoarse. "I want nothing from you and I never will. I try to help you because it helps me…concentrate on something else. I don't need you to do anything for me and I don't want you to. I want you to live in this world and perhaps do some good, maybe in some way it will help me comes to terms, if something good comes from it. Maybe. That is all you can offer me, Illyria; a sliver of hope. A maybe. Now, please, I have work to do."

He sits down again, his body heavy; she blinks at him for a moment, then calmly leaves the room. But like him, she is in turmoil.

Illyria makes her realisations quickly. She is slowly, but surely unravelling him, understanding him bit by bit. Perhaps she could work faster, but she knows that when she finally understands what's going on with him, she will have to leave because understanding the puzzle that is Wesley is what she has told herself she is staying for.

Understanding him means she understands humans and will be able to fit into this world without his help.

So she works slowly, not ready to leave yet. A fact that makes her disgusted with herself.

Illyria knows now that there was only one reason he didn't want her dead and that had nothing to do with her, it was because of who she looked like. He could not kill her when she looked like Fred. He is a strong man, but Fred is his weakness, his Achilles heel. Fred, Illyria is learning, is the reason for everything.

He has done all he has for her because she looks like Fred.

He has no feeling for Illyria. Indifference is not a feeling. All he feels is love and that is not for her, it's for the shell, for Fred.

The feeling in her once peaceful centre starts again. The churning, unsettled feeling that she has decided is her human weakness.

Wesley's human weakness can be traced back to Fred.

Illyria's human weakness always leads back to Wesley.

Illyria: All I am is what I am. I lived seven lives at once. I was power and the ecstasy of death. I was god to a god. Now… I – I'm trapped… on a roof. Just one roof… in this time and this place, with an unstable human who drinks too much whiskey and calls me a Smurf. You don't worship me at all, do you?
Wesley: And you really can't leave.

- Underneath

The End.