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applecameronTitle: Going On
Author: Apple Cameron, 2004
Fandom: Angel, the series
Pairing: Angel/Wes, gen
Spoilers: After the series finale
Keywords: Wes Lives!
Dedication: The Versaphile Birthday Project 2004
From a two-line fixit to a few-paragraph longer fixit, to this longer version.
Consider it variations on a theme, if you want.
"Going On"
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce opened his eyes.
"Hi," said Willow Rosenberg. Her hair was white.
His mouth tasted like copper. "What?"
She shrugged, then looked to the other end of the room? hall? Wes had no interest in turning his head to find out. Which was good, since he wasn't up to moving anyway. Willow's hands were on his chest and stomach.
"We're good, Wil." That was Xander Harris's voice. "All clear."
He caught the view of a her smile from the bottom, an odd perspective, that, then Willow looked back down at him.
"I see...the cavalry arrived after all."
"Yep." She took her hands away, and plucked away some magical items from a spot just above the base of Wes' sternum. Or maybe it was lint. "But no horses. Everyone's off slaying." She perked. "There was a dragon."
"Fascinating."
Willow's over-expressive face took on a jovial cast. "And you..." Mockingly stern, "were you trying to kill yourself?"
"Yes," he told her. Short. Honest.
Her face fell. Faces really fall, did you know that? Illyria's never moved. Fred's could open up like spring, at a kind word. The sudden reminder put tears on his cheeks.
A hand dabbed at the moisture. He ignored it, attention focused on an unavoidable question.
"How do you keep going?" She was the right woman to ask, after all.
But it was Xander's voice that answered, softly. "You just keep going. Or, you die. But that doesn't always help." There was the sound of a door opening. "I'll leave you kids for a while."
He cried.
***
Even with magic on his side, coming back from the dead took some doing. Near-dead, Willow had insisted. When he told her Illyria had said his wound was fatal, she just looked a little smug and commented, "maybe it just looked that way to her".
Polite, surely. But a trifle smug.
He hadn't seen Angel. He hadn't seen anyone. Just one or two of what Xander had always referred to as the Scoobies, and the baby Slayers. Baby Slayers only in experience, now.
Wes lay in his bed, in a room in a hospital he was pretty sure had been completely taken over by their side during the most recent Apocalypse and not given back, and pondered.
The Slayers. Plural. What Willow had done, was, simply, a miracle. Bringing him back from the near-dead was barely a blip on her personal radar. If he'd felt any better, the knowledge would have made him incredibly intrigued, not to mention, perhaps, frightened.
Of course, he had nothing to be frightened of, anymore. (One could only die so many times before it became passe. Near dead. Dead. Willow Rosenberg with white hair.)
Everyone he loved, his past, his present, his future. Gone.
Not true, said the little voice, there's always Angel.
Angel, who hadn't come to see him. Nor Gunn. Nor Lorne, who'd said he wouldn't come back. Nor...Illyria. And Wes didn't know if that made him -- he had no idea what that made him feel.
Most of the time, he just felt numb.
The rest of the time, he waited for whatever happened next.
***
What happened next was Xander Harris. The young man - who walked like an old one, these days - young no longer, but weren't they all aged by what they'd seen and done? Strolled into his room and said, "Moving day, Wes". Two interns in white packed Wes and the equipment to which he was connected (almost as passe as dying. Near-dying. Willow Rosenberg with white hair) up onto a roof and Wes learned it was twilight.
The copter waited for them, when Wes put his hand out and asked to stop. "Xander."
"It's okay, Wes. It's only sunset."
"So long as it still rises."
That got a half-smile. "It does."
They shared a look, and Xander shook his hand, Wes flat on his back in a gurney on the helipad. "It does. Have a nice flight, Wes."
"Where am I going?"
Xander just shook his head. "I don't need to know."
***
From the helicopter to an unmarked jet to where? Wes fell asleep before he could find the answer.
***
Approximately two weeks later. Wes could walk, some, around his room. Nothing extensive, but improvement.
The young lady in the Motley Crue t-shirt pushing the wheelchair didn't look familiar, but she moved, Wes surmised, like a slayer. "Good morning, sir."
It hadn't failed to escape his notice that Wes was "sir", here. No one ever used his name.
She hefted him from bed to chair with efficiency, grinning at his noise of protest. "It's okay, I used to be a nurse."
Wes let himself be womanhandled. Slayer-handled? Bemused, "And what do you do now?"
"I'm a Faith girl." Then there was a flash of smile. She wheeled him out the door. "But I find I'm doing a lot of nursing."
They were moving through either the halls of a private hospital that worked hard at looking like something other than a hospital, or a very antiseptic residence. He couldn't tell which.
Wes worked on patience. "Faith girls?" Then they were in an elevator. "Does that mean you're with the", self-editing, not knowing where they were, loose lips do sink ships, no names, was 'Faith' a slip? An instruction? "...Salvation Army?"
From above and behind him she made an 'hm' noise. "We're smaller. More like the Marines."
Wes was acutely aware that a great many things had been going on in his absence - and more so, during his convalescence - of which he was not aware. So. Faith was running an adjunct to the Slayer Army. Whose orders did she follow? Buffy's? Angel's? Where was Angel?
They emerged some floors down, and Wes, finally, finally, saw Angel, at which point his heart nearly leapt out of his mouth. He tried to stand up but fell out of the wheelchair instead.
Faith's girl said nothing, just helped him back up and settled him by Angel's bed, then turned and left the room.
"One receives such excellent service here." Wes's heart was beating so fast he could hear it. To Angel it must be a loud drum sounding in his body.
"I pay highly for it."
There was a mess of papers in Angel's lap, and a stack of books on the table nearby.
Wes resisted the urge to brush them all aside. The need to touch something familiar was nearly overwhelming. To verify they really were both alive. Or un-alive, in Angel's case.
He settled for toying with the edge of a blanket, and asked, "What happened?"
"Got burned." There was a dragon. Angel's hair was a dusting on the top of his head, skin red and puckered. He rubbed one scarred hand against the other, drawing Wes's attention deliberately.
Giving him time to react. Then those eyes - which were unchanged - caught his. "It'll grow back." The palms of his hands were already healed. "I'll be fine."
Wes was silent. Finally, "Where's everyone else?"
"Don't know. Don't need to." Angel held up a hand. "Ever been to a revolution?"
Wes raised his brows. Angel raised his almost non-existent ones back. "I see."
"Thought you might."
No one had said his name since Xander put him on the helicopter. He never touched anything long enough for it to be imbued with his presence. To name a thing, after all, many cultures believed, was to invoke it. They weren't far off. To be nameless, made it just that much harder for someone to track him. Them, now, it seemed.
Angel sat still, letting him think.
Finally. "Why are we here?"
"Hiding."
"Hiding?"
"Just for now. The Partners aren't done, you know. And the Powers, they're never done."
Wes made a polite noise.
"I'm going to be one."
"What?"
"It's the only way. Either we destroy them, or we become them. It doesn't matter to me which."
Wes was almost speechless. (Willow Rosenberg. With white hair.)
"It's my planet, W--" Angel stopped himself. "It's mine. It's yours. It's ours. I'm tired of demon this and hell that and pissant gods who think they can play us. It's time for humanity to stop with the holding actions and play to win."
He swallowed. "That's quite an astonishing scope of action, A--" Angel held up a hand and Wes turned 'Angel' into a noncommital noise, then, "I-I don't know what to say."
"Yeah." Angel shuffled the papers in his lap into some sort of order significant to him, and set them aside. "Well, my best general just came back from the dead. C'mere." An arm snaked out and wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling him onto the bed.
It felt like being home. Wes lay on his good side, tucked his slippered feet under the folded blanket at the foot of the bed, his head on Angel's shoulder. And heaved an immense sigh, as if something in him had been waiting for this moment since he woke up to Willow's face, peering down at him.
Angel gripped him tight for a moment and then relaxed. "I'm glad you're not dead."
Wes said nothing.
Angel picked up the top paper from his mysterious stack. It wasn't written in English.
Wes did a little fast translation work. "The...uh...Salvation Army?"
Angel made an 'mmmm' noise that rumbled through his chest. "The Marines are at your disposal. The Army...is another matter. We can work together, but their core mission is different. If you want them on a given front, we'll have to negotiate."
Your disposal. "I won't be running a cell when I leave here?"
"No." Angel rumbled. "I need you with me." He handed over the rest of the stack of papers. "You'll be running the war."
Wes took a deep breath, and held it. "All right."
They huddled together, that first real night of the war, nameless. But together.
Author: Apple Cameron, 2004
Fandom: Angel, the series
Pairing: Angel/Wes, gen
Spoilers: After the series finale
Keywords: Wes Lives!
Dedication: The Versaphile Birthday Project 2004
From a two-line fixit to a few-paragraph longer fixit, to this longer version.
Consider it variations on a theme, if you want.
"Going On"
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce opened his eyes.
"Hi," said Willow Rosenberg. Her hair was white.
His mouth tasted like copper. "What?"
She shrugged, then looked to the other end of the room? hall? Wes had no interest in turning his head to find out. Which was good, since he wasn't up to moving anyway. Willow's hands were on his chest and stomach.
"We're good, Wil." That was Xander Harris's voice. "All clear."
He caught the view of a her smile from the bottom, an odd perspective, that, then Willow looked back down at him.
"I see...the cavalry arrived after all."
"Yep." She took her hands away, and plucked away some magical items from a spot just above the base of Wes' sternum. Or maybe it was lint. "But no horses. Everyone's off slaying." She perked. "There was a dragon."
"Fascinating."
Willow's over-expressive face took on a jovial cast. "And you..." Mockingly stern, "were you trying to kill yourself?"
"Yes," he told her. Short. Honest.
Her face fell. Faces really fall, did you know that? Illyria's never moved. Fred's could open up like spring, at a kind word. The sudden reminder put tears on his cheeks.
A hand dabbed at the moisture. He ignored it, attention focused on an unavoidable question.
"How do you keep going?" She was the right woman to ask, after all.
But it was Xander's voice that answered, softly. "You just keep going. Or, you die. But that doesn't always help." There was the sound of a door opening. "I'll leave you kids for a while."
He cried.
***
Even with magic on his side, coming back from the dead took some doing. Near-dead, Willow had insisted. When he told her Illyria had said his wound was fatal, she just looked a little smug and commented, "maybe it just looked that way to her".
Polite, surely. But a trifle smug.
He hadn't seen Angel. He hadn't seen anyone. Just one or two of what Xander had always referred to as the Scoobies, and the baby Slayers. Baby Slayers only in experience, now.
Wes lay in his bed, in a room in a hospital he was pretty sure had been completely taken over by their side during the most recent Apocalypse and not given back, and pondered.
The Slayers. Plural. What Willow had done, was, simply, a miracle. Bringing him back from the near-dead was barely a blip on her personal radar. If he'd felt any better, the knowledge would have made him incredibly intrigued, not to mention, perhaps, frightened.
Of course, he had nothing to be frightened of, anymore. (One could only die so many times before it became passe. Near dead. Dead. Willow Rosenberg with white hair.)
Everyone he loved, his past, his present, his future. Gone.
Not true, said the little voice, there's always Angel.
Angel, who hadn't come to see him. Nor Gunn. Nor Lorne, who'd said he wouldn't come back. Nor...Illyria. And Wes didn't know if that made him -- he had no idea what that made him feel.
Most of the time, he just felt numb.
The rest of the time, he waited for whatever happened next.
***
What happened next was Xander Harris. The young man - who walked like an old one, these days - young no longer, but weren't they all aged by what they'd seen and done? Strolled into his room and said, "Moving day, Wes". Two interns in white packed Wes and the equipment to which he was connected (almost as passe as dying. Near-dying. Willow Rosenberg with white hair) up onto a roof and Wes learned it was twilight.
The copter waited for them, when Wes put his hand out and asked to stop. "Xander."
"It's okay, Wes. It's only sunset."
"So long as it still rises."
That got a half-smile. "It does."
They shared a look, and Xander shook his hand, Wes flat on his back in a gurney on the helipad. "It does. Have a nice flight, Wes."
"Where am I going?"
Xander just shook his head. "I don't need to know."
***
From the helicopter to an unmarked jet to where? Wes fell asleep before he could find the answer.
***
Approximately two weeks later. Wes could walk, some, around his room. Nothing extensive, but improvement.
The young lady in the Motley Crue t-shirt pushing the wheelchair didn't look familiar, but she moved, Wes surmised, like a slayer. "Good morning, sir."
It hadn't failed to escape his notice that Wes was "sir", here. No one ever used his name.
She hefted him from bed to chair with efficiency, grinning at his noise of protest. "It's okay, I used to be a nurse."
Wes let himself be womanhandled. Slayer-handled? Bemused, "And what do you do now?"
"I'm a Faith girl." Then there was a flash of smile. She wheeled him out the door. "But I find I'm doing a lot of nursing."
They were moving through either the halls of a private hospital that worked hard at looking like something other than a hospital, or a very antiseptic residence. He couldn't tell which.
Wes worked on patience. "Faith girls?" Then they were in an elevator. "Does that mean you're with the", self-editing, not knowing where they were, loose lips do sink ships, no names, was 'Faith' a slip? An instruction? "...Salvation Army?"
From above and behind him she made an 'hm' noise. "We're smaller. More like the Marines."
Wes was acutely aware that a great many things had been going on in his absence - and more so, during his convalescence - of which he was not aware. So. Faith was running an adjunct to the Slayer Army. Whose orders did she follow? Buffy's? Angel's? Where was Angel?
They emerged some floors down, and Wes, finally, finally, saw Angel, at which point his heart nearly leapt out of his mouth. He tried to stand up but fell out of the wheelchair instead.
Faith's girl said nothing, just helped him back up and settled him by Angel's bed, then turned and left the room.
"One receives such excellent service here." Wes's heart was beating so fast he could hear it. To Angel it must be a loud drum sounding in his body.
"I pay highly for it."
There was a mess of papers in Angel's lap, and a stack of books on the table nearby.
Wes resisted the urge to brush them all aside. The need to touch something familiar was nearly overwhelming. To verify they really were both alive. Or un-alive, in Angel's case.
He settled for toying with the edge of a blanket, and asked, "What happened?"
"Got burned." There was a dragon. Angel's hair was a dusting on the top of his head, skin red and puckered. He rubbed one scarred hand against the other, drawing Wes's attention deliberately.
Giving him time to react. Then those eyes - which were unchanged - caught his. "It'll grow back." The palms of his hands were already healed. "I'll be fine."
Wes was silent. Finally, "Where's everyone else?"
"Don't know. Don't need to." Angel held up a hand. "Ever been to a revolution?"
Wes raised his brows. Angel raised his almost non-existent ones back. "I see."
"Thought you might."
No one had said his name since Xander put him on the helicopter. He never touched anything long enough for it to be imbued with his presence. To name a thing, after all, many cultures believed, was to invoke it. They weren't far off. To be nameless, made it just that much harder for someone to track him. Them, now, it seemed.
Angel sat still, letting him think.
Finally. "Why are we here?"
"Hiding."
"Hiding?"
"Just for now. The Partners aren't done, you know. And the Powers, they're never done."
Wes made a polite noise.
"I'm going to be one."
"What?"
"It's the only way. Either we destroy them, or we become them. It doesn't matter to me which."
Wes was almost speechless. (Willow Rosenberg. With white hair.)
"It's my planet, W--" Angel stopped himself. "It's mine. It's yours. It's ours. I'm tired of demon this and hell that and pissant gods who think they can play us. It's time for humanity to stop with the holding actions and play to win."
He swallowed. "That's quite an astonishing scope of action, A--" Angel held up a hand and Wes turned 'Angel' into a noncommital noise, then, "I-I don't know what to say."
"Yeah." Angel shuffled the papers in his lap into some sort of order significant to him, and set them aside. "Well, my best general just came back from the dead. C'mere." An arm snaked out and wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling him onto the bed.
It felt like being home. Wes lay on his good side, tucked his slippered feet under the folded blanket at the foot of the bed, his head on Angel's shoulder. And heaved an immense sigh, as if something in him had been waiting for this moment since he woke up to Willow's face, peering down at him.
Angel gripped him tight for a moment and then relaxed. "I'm glad you're not dead."
Wes said nothing.
Angel picked up the top paper from his mysterious stack. It wasn't written in English.
Wes did a little fast translation work. "The...uh...Salvation Army?"
Angel made an 'mmmm' noise that rumbled through his chest. "The Marines are at your disposal. The Army...is another matter. We can work together, but their core mission is different. If you want them on a given front, we'll have to negotiate."
Your disposal. "I won't be running a cell when I leave here?"
"No." Angel rumbled. "I need you with me." He handed over the rest of the stack of papers. "You'll be running the war."
Wes took a deep breath, and held it. "All right."
They huddled together, that first real night of the war, nameless. But together.
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no subject
on 2004-09-12 05:21 pm (UTC)The urge, it seems, has struck. See new post.