Title: Odi et Amo
Author: Corinna
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It's a mighty thin line. Wesley, Connor, and the
days after "Tomorrow."
Spoilers: Massive spoilers through the end of S3 Angel.
Archive: List archives; otherwise, ask.
Feedback: Welcomed at [email protected]
Disclaimer: None of these people belong to me.
Notes: The title comes from Catullus, poem 85, and means "I hate and I love."
Thanks to Christine for the best joke in here, to the Green Chick for betarrificness, and to H. and E. for the seed of the idea.
******
When the knock came at the door, Wesley was quick to come out of the kitchen to answer it, but not quite quick enough.
"Look," Lilah said. "You have a visitor. Isn't that a nice change of pace?"
"Get out," Wesley replied, and for once he didn't have to repeat himself. Lilah smiled almost sweetly as she swept up her jacket and left. Fred stayed out in the hallway until she was gone.
Fred was wearing a sleeveless pink top that made her look even slighter than he'd remembered, and she shifted back and forth on her feet. "Wesley? Uh, I'm sorry if this is a bad time."
"I told Gunn that none of you were to come here again. I would have thought he would mention that. Or do the two of you not…talk?" He put all the insinuation he could into that last word and was grimly satisfied when she blushed and looked down.
"I thought you'd want to know," she said, her voice careful and small. "I didn't think it would be right just to not tell you."
"What do you want, Fred? I haven't got all day."
"It's Cordelia," she said. "Cordelia's dead." And she began to cry, her hands flying to her face as the sobs shook her.
Wesley stood at the far end of the living room, watching her, for a long moment. Finally, he returned to the kitchen and put the kettle on. When he came back with the tea tray, Fred had stopped crying, but was still standing awkwardly in the same spot, arms wrapped around her torso.
"Sit down," Wesley said. "Tea?"
She smiled at him: not the sweet grin he remembered, but the small guarded smile she gave to Angel Investigations' new clients. He turned and looked out the window.
"Now, tell me what happened."
In between sips of Fortnum & Mason's Earl Grey, she told him the story. A highway accident. Witnesses said that Cordelia had lost control: her car had hit the median and exploded. He'd told her not to buy the thing; it handled like a tank. She'd just laughed. Now she and the car were ash. There'd been nothing left of her in the wreckage, not even enough for dental records: another side-effect of her demon aspect, it seemed. The official police report had to list her as "missing, presumed dead."
"There'll still be a memorial service, I presume."
She had the decency to look embarrassed. "There… there was one. Last week, in Sunnydale."
"Was there."
"It's a pretty town. I mean, except for the Hellmouth and all, and you can't really blame the town for that, now, can you."
"No," Wesley said. "Well, thank you for letting me know, Fred. It was… considerate of you." He stood up to end the conversation. As she stood up in turn, she started to cry again.
"It's all just so wrong, Wesley! It's all wrong now. Angel's gone, and oh, Connor, Connor came back except he's gone too and I don't think they went together because I think they would have called, and Lorne said he was going to Vegas but he didn't say where and we can't find him either and it's just Charles and me, and we're not enough. Wesley…" Her voice was ragged and pleading.
"It will all work out, Fred. These transition periods are always difficult." His chin pointed up just a bit, towards the door. "Good night."
It was a few days later that the closeness of his apartment in the hot Los Angeles night became too much, and Wesley went for a walk. As usual, the sidewalks were deserted, and he walked till he lost track of how long he'd been walking, all of his thoughts caught up in the night and the cars driving by and the neon of the storefronts. When he saw some slight form streak down the street ahead of him and into an alley, he thought it was just a trick of the light, or his overactive imagination. But as he got further down the block, he heard the thudding sounds of a fight in the alley, and the unmistakable growl of a vampire. Wesley sighed and reached into his pocket for the stake he always carried.
He paused at the mouth of the alley, hiding himself in the shadow of a faceless brick building to size up the situation. A fight between demons didn't concern him, and there wasn't much he could do against more than one vampire on his own -- even then, he'd have to hope for a dumb one. He craned his head around the corner to see.
There were two humans fighting four vampires. The taller one, further back in the alley, was grappling with one opponent: both demon and human were female and long-haired, but Wesley couldn't tell much more, other than that the woman was struggling just to stay alive in the fight. The human man was a different story. The man -- no, boy -- looked like the frailest of the six of them, all loose-limbed adolescent unformedness, but he was taking on three large vampires. As he jumped into a familiar spinning kick that knocked one of his opponents into the far wall, Wesley recognized him, and retreated another half-step into the dark. Connor.
Wesley had only seen the boy once since he'd somehow returned to L.A., at that ridiculous dance club Lilah had dragged him to. He'd left almost as soon as he'd seen Connor and Angel there, relieved that their appearance had taken Lilah's sordid little game decisively out her hands, but thrown off-balance by the boy's appearance, by what he knew must have happened to him. Angel wasn't with his son tonight, and the woman Connor was fighting with wasn't someone Wesley knew.
Or rather, he corrected himself as her struggle with the vampire brought her under a white building safety lamp, she wasn't someone he'd ever liked. Justine, Holtz's thug. Connor dusted the last of his opponents and pulled Justine's assailant off her. She put her stake through the demon's heart with a grunt. After the creature was dust, she lifted one hand experimentally to her face. "Ouch."
"You shouldn't have gone after them alone," Connor said. "If I hadn't followed you, you'd be dead by now."
"Dead's just a matter of degrees," she replied. "Besides, if I hadn't let you spend so long setting your trap, they might not have gotten away in the first place."
The boy raised himself to his full height, so they stood almost eye-to-eye. "The Enemy has many snares and stratagems. We must be always on guard."
"Steven, these were just a couple of dumb vamps. It's not like fighting Angelus again."
"And these dumb vamps." Wesley's stomach turned as he heard Holtz's voice in Connor's scornful overemphasis. "They nearly killed you. Risking your life so casually risks the entire cause. I need everyone who fights with me."
"With you? This isn't just your mission, you know. You didn't train this crew."
Wesley backed away as Justine went into what sounded like a well-worn argument. He retraced his steps as quietly as he could to the corner, where he turned left, and ran right into Lilah Morgan, opening a dumpster at the side of a building.
"Revisiting your roots, are you?"
She'd startled at the sound of a voice, but by the time she turned to face him she was smirking. "Stalking me already, Wes?"
"Don't flatter yourself."
She laughed. "You expect me to believe you just stopped by my building because you're --what? Taking a tour of the neighborhood?"
Wesley looked up. The brick building they stood in front of might once have been another warehouse, but now it was obviously an apartment building. Windows on the lower floor had heavy white curtains, or showed glimpses of the lives lived inside.
"Not that I mind the company," she continued. "I have a whole set of prophetic scrolls that were just delivered to the office this morning, and my Ga-shundi's kind of rusty."
"Not even you could be stupid enough to still think I'll do your dirty work," he scoffed.
"Oh, I know just how dirty you work, Wes." Lilah's voice was a purr, insinuating and overconfident. Wesley felt a familiar rush of rage in his sternum as he pushed her, hard, against the building wall.
"Do you, now?" His mouth was at her ear, and he could feel her shaking against him. "Just what is it you think you know?"
"Wesley…," she said, and it wasn't knowing at all. Her hands reached around him, pulling him closer, and he kissed her, falling into the taste and the heat of her, grabbing handfuls of her perfectly tailored silk shirt out of her waistband and running his hands up to the satin bra beneath. "Oh. Oh, we -- Wesley, the co-op board will throw me out if anyone sees us do this here."
"Let them. You shouldn't be living among decent people anyhow." His hands had moved down to the eyelet hook at the top of her skirt's zipper, but she pushed them away.
"If they do, I promise you, I'll come stay at your place."
"What floor are you on?"
"Just one flight up."
"All right. I suppose I can buy some sort of decontaminant on the way home." He kissed her again at that, harder, shutting out the boy and the fight and the ache in his throat, kissed her till the whole world was lips and teeth and tongue and their feet climbing up the stairs and the way that silk and smooth ivory flesh made his entire body hum.
******
The most difficult part of this new world had been adjusting to how different the sounds were. Steven had found the machines strange and wondrous, and the press and stench of so many people overwhelming, but not knowing what the sounds around him meant, or even what to listen for: that had thrown him utterly off-balance. The ocean had roared like some gigantic beast. The beast had smiled and called him son. He'd had to learn everything over again.
Even the buildings had their own sounds: things in the walls clicked and hissed and sighed as he traveled down the street, hugging the shadows. They hadn't seen any vampires on these streets in over a week, since they'd cleared out the nest below the carpet store, but Father had taught him to be careful, and he would not fail again. Father said that if you missed even one member of a pack, he'd be back with new forces for revenge. There were no vampires in Quor-toth, but Steven had never doubted that the time would come when he could use every lesson his father taught him.
A footstep cracked hard on the ground behind him, and he turned.
"For a hunter, you're far too easy to track." The man stepped out towards the streetlights so Steven could see his face. He looked amused.
"Why are you tracking me?" Steven shifted his stance, brought the knives in his arm braces to the ready.
"You might say I have a vested interest in you, Steven," he replied. "I'm the reason you ended up with Captain Holtz."
"God gave me to him."
"Then I must be God's emissary." The man made a strange sound in the back of his throat. "A ministering angel."
Steven tensed at that, waiting for him to strike, but the man just stood there, arms held loosely at his sides. That the man had surprised him, that his look was so intent: these were reasons for Steven not to underestimate him. But there was nothing about him that suggested he meant danger, either. Steven frowned and leaned back on his heels. "Did you work for my father?"
The man blinked twice, hard, then said in a careful voice, "I ran a detective agency, before you were taken to Quor-toth. I work -- worked -- for the higher Powers."
"A detective agency." Steven reached for his knives again. "Angel Investigations."
"Yes."
"You're Wesley."
His eyes narrowed. "What did they tell you about me?"
"Nothing. I heard the girl Fred mention you once to Gunn. She was concerned about you."
Wesley's face darkened. "She should be."
"You're not with them now."
"No. I left. With you. And the mortal enmity of the Scourge of Europe." Wesley laughed softly at that. "Makes life interesting."
"You don't have to worry about Angelus."
"You've killed him?"
"No." Steven smiled. "That would have been too quick."
All of Father's lessons were useful ones.
******
Wesley had learned how to keep a proper Watcher's diary during his training, and had kept the habit long after he stopped thinking of himself as a Watcher at all. When Connor was born, he'd had three separate notebooks, all the same perfect-bound black ones his grandmother had bought him at Smythson's before he first went up to Cambridge, all flawlessly cross-referenced. Mother, father, and inexplicable child. He'd thrown the books in the trash when he ran.
Now he kept his notes on a Macintosh PowerBook. The search function was no replacement for a well-prepared index, but the digital typeface was easier to read than his own hand, and working on the laptop from the couch brought back fewer memories than his notebooks had of his schooling. Of his father and his teachers, watching him over his shoulder, waiting for him to fail. He hit 'save.'
A knock came at the door, and Wesley checked his watch. Ten-thirty: later than she usually showed up. He sighed, quit out of his files, and locked the computer's desktop. But Lilah wouldn't be guessing at his passwords tonight -- a look through the peephole showed Connor waiting warily in the hall.
"You're far too easy to track," the boy said when he opened the door, and he smiled. The first real smile Wesley had seen on him, and it broke open his face, transforming his perpetual careful squint for just a moment into an open glow. Wesley saw Angel's grin in it, and his temples clenched.
"I'm not trying to hide," he said, and let him in.
Connor stepped across the threshold with the same predatory slide Wesley had seen on the street. "This is a dangerous place. You should be more careful."
"Yes. Well, there have been three attempts on my life in the two years I've been in Los Angeles, and I haven't died yet. Perhaps I've become overconfident."
Connor was at the tall built-in bookcases on the living room's outer wall, looking intently at all the titles. The Augurii Prodigique. Of Demonology. Earnshaw's Supernatural History of the Far East. And a few that hadn't been on the Council's required-reading list as well.
"I know this one," he said, taking a squat blue book off the shelf. "Father told it to me. What he could remember." He stared glassily across the room as he began to recite. "The world was all before them, where to choose/ Their place of rest, and Providence their guide./ They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,/ Through Eden took their solitary way." He shook his head and focused back on Wesley. "It's pretty."
"Steven. What happened to Holtz?"
"Angelus." He spat out the name like a poison.
You're a dead man, Pryce! You hear me? Dead!
"He killed Holtz?"
The boy nodded and looked down at the book turning over and over between his hands. "My fault. I was... deceived. I was too slow."
Wesley knew that look, knew that emotion, and God, had he looked so pathetic when he'd tried to be brave? No wonder the boys at school had ragged on him. "Whatever may have provoked him, Angel's actions are his own, and not your fault. You don't have Holtz's blood on your hands."
Connor's gaze flew up to meet his, shocked. "His blood? There was blood all over. His throat was red."
"Angel bit him?"
Connor nodded. Wesley went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of Scotch. After a moment's consideration, he went to the kitchen for ice and water, and poured another more diluted one for his guest. This isn't Angelus talking to you, it's me, Angel. You know that, right? "Here," he said. "Drink this. Slowly." Connor took one tentative sip, then another. "Now," he continued, settling back on to the couch, "tell me what happened."
******