Chapter 3: What I Remember
“The biggest lies are the little ones/when the look in your eyes is the distant one/Angel or demon/you know that they can share the same bed/I’ve laid awake so long/I’ve got them both inside my head/This is what I remember most about dying/So many moments like ghosts/slipping through my hands in vain/You were 80% angel/10% demon/and the rest was hard to explain…” ~Over the Rhine, “What I’ll Remember Most”
Fred paused outside Wesley’s office, trying to figure out how to word her question. She was dying to know who the girl was—the one she’d seen Wesley getting into the elevator with, all friendly-like. Fred was sure she’d never seen the woman before, and she didn’t know why Wesley would be with her.
Her feelings about Wes were rather mixed at the moment. Fred knew that he loved her. What he had done for her—killing the thing that wore his father’s face—without even a moment’s hesitation—
Well, it both scared the daylights out of her and made her feel stomach feel all fluttery. What did a girl do with that kind of love?
The hard part was that Fred had never really looked at Wesley that way. He’d always been Wesley—strong, dependable, sweet. Then he sprang his feelings on her, and Fred could look back and see signs that he’d had strong feelings for a while. Wes had simply hidden them from her, and Fred wasn’t sure if that made him a consummate actor or suggested that her woman’s intuition was out of whack.
For a short time there had been Knox. Fred had dabbled; she could admit it. It had become obvious that having anything other than a professional relationship with an employee could be very bad, though.
Wesley was different.
So now she wanted to know who that girl had been without letting on to the fact that she was jealous. Fred still wanted to keep her feelings close to her chest, at least until she had them figured out.
The perfect excuse finally occurred to her, and Fred wondered why she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She knocked, waiting for Wesley’s voice to call, “Come in.”
She saw it in his eyes as he looked up. He wasn’t precisely happy to see her, and she tried to hide her wince. Things had become so strained between all of them. He had hidden his emotions behind a smile in the next moment. “Can I help you, Fred?”
“I was wondering if you knew where Spike was,” she replied innocently. “I thought I might see if I could cheer him up today.”
Wesley leaned back, putting his pencil down so he could give Fred his full attention. This was the first time since the affair with the cyborg that she had visited his office. “He’s at my apartment, actually. I thought he might like to get out of here for a change.”
“Oh.” Thinking about it now, Fred felt badly that she hadn’t done the same. Not that she would have been comfortable allowing Spike to stay at her apartment, but still. She could have done something more for him. Instead, once he’d become solid, she had gotten caught up in her own life again. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”
Wesley shrugged. “I’m not certain. I imagine that would depend on what Buffy has to say.”
“Oh!” Fred exclaimed. “That was the woman you were with!” She turned bright red when Wesley raised an eyebrow, obviously catching the lingering emotion in her tone. An emotion he didn’t quite recognize. “I saw you getting on the elevator earlier,” she explained quickly.
“And you were curious?” Wesley asked quietly. “Of course. Well, Buffy was here to see Spike. I’m not sure I want to know what they’re doing in my apartment right now, whether everything is going well or not.”
Fred giggled. “Hopefully your furniture won’t suffer too much.”
Wesley’s smile was pained. “I was trying not to think about that.”
She grinned again, and then her smile faded to be replaced by a more thoughtful look. “Are you hungry?”
Wesley blinked. “What?”
“Are you hungry?” she repeated patiently. “Because I’m starving. I was thinking I might try to find some tacos.”
He frowned slightly and then decided that he didn’t have anything better to do. “I could eat.”
“Good,” Fred replied. “I hate eating alone.”
Wesley winced, the memory of eating a TV dinner alone in his apartment stark. It must have been just after Fred and Gunn started dating. “Me too.”
~~~~~
The problem with big reunions was what came after. It wasn’t like either Buffy or Spike had much to tell the other. “So that’s it, huh?” Spike asked.
“There isn’t much more,” Buffy admitted. “I haven’t been into getting the new Council up and running. It’s mostly just been me and Dawn hanging in Rome .” That reminded her. “Oh, Dawn! She sent a note.”
Spike frowned, taking the piece of paper Buffy held out to him. “She sent this?”
“Yeah, when I told her I was coming out.” At the look on his face, she quickly said, “Dawn’s completely capable of looking after herself for a while.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.” Buffy bit her lip. “I don’t have a return ticket yet.”
Spike drew in a deep, shuddering breath, opening the note and quickly scanning it. In Dawn’s familiar, untidy scrawl, he read, “I don’t hate you, and you’d better visit, or I will kick your ass.” He chuckled.
“Can I see?” He handed the note over to Buffy who read it and rolled her eyes. “That’s Dawnie,” she commented. “What do you think, Spike? You could come back to Rome with me.”
“I can’t.” The words were out of his mouth before Spike realized he meant them. And he did mean them. He couldn’t leave right now.
Buffy met his eyes, nodding slowly. “Okay.”
He was almost disappointed in how quickly she gave in. “Okay?”
“I told you I don’t have a return ticket,” Buffy replied quietly. “I can stay for a while. If you need to be in L.A. , then I’ll stick around.”
“What about Dawn?” Spike asked, confused.
Buffy shrugged. “Like I said, Dawn will be fine. If I need to go back, I will, but long distance relationships are possible.”
Spike frowned, trying to figure out exactly what she meant. “You’re staying.”
“With you,” Buffy clarified. “If you want me,” she added in a small voice. “I mean, you haven’t said if—”
Spike shut her up with a kiss. “I want you,” he said firmly. “It’s just—’m a bit aimless at the moment, pet. Don’t even have a proper place to stay.”
She leaned into him. “Then maybe that should be our first step. We can get you set up in a place of your own.”
Spike raised an eyebrow. “Apparently, Angel has a hotel. Wesley was thinkin’ I could use it. I thought—dunno. I thought maybe I could do somethin’ from there.” He sounded almost embarrassed as he added, “Help people, you know.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
Spike thought that Buffy sounded interested rather than derisive. “Dunno. What else am I gonna do?”
“Whatever you want,” Buffy replied with a smile.
He glanced over at her. “You don’t seem to have an opinion on this, pet.”
“The Hellmouth is closed, Spike. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of new Slayers ready and willing to fight the forces of evil.” She gave him a dazzling smile. “I’m retired.”
Spike grinned. “Bit young for that, aren’t you, luv?”
“I’ve died twice,” she reminded him. “So have you, for that matter.”
“They say the third time’s the charm,” he pointed out.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Buffy said fiercely. “I just got you back.”
“Buffy—” Spike had no idea what he had to offer her these days. Before he got his soul, it had been different. Spike had believed that he would be enough. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Buffy deserved so much more.
“Do you still love me?” Buffy asked point blank.
“With all my soul,” Spike confessed.
She nodded. “That’s enough.”
“Buffy, I have the clothes on my back an’ my coat. That’s it. Don’t even have a place to live. I don’t have anything to give you.”
She stared at him. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying?” she demanded. “I’ve spent the last few months believing that I would never see you again. All I want is you. The rest can wait.”
“You sure ’bout that, luv? I mean, maybe you’d rather—”
Buffy put her hands on either side of her face. “Spike. Shut up.”
“Got it.”
They didn’t say much for a quite a while after that.
~~~~~
In the end, they brought their food back to the office. Wesley had something he wanted to work on, and Fred offered to get some of her own paperwork so that she could hang out with him. Wesley wasn’t quite sure what was going on. This was the most time Fred had spent with him since—
The memories kept sliding away from him, although it wasn’t something that Wesley actually noticed. The strange sense of missing something was there and then it wasn’t—almost before he noticed. So it was that every time something jogged his memory, something else kept Wesley from looking at it too closely.
In truth, Wesley didn’t want to ask too many questions. Fred seemed to be seeking out his company. It didn’t get much better than that.
Of course, he couldn’t quite believe it was happening.
“Are you sure Knox doesn’t need any help?”
Fred looked at him with wide eyes. “Why would Knox need any help?”
“Well, I thought perhaps that he might—need help. Or something.” Wesley knew it was lame as soon as the words came out of his mouth, but it was too late to pull them back in.
Fred frowned. “It’s fine, Wesley. They know where to find me, and Knox can handle the lab on his own for a while.”
“Oh, well, that’s good.”
Wesley wished he could come up with something more to say, but he didn’t have the words. He was trying to act as though everything was normal, but it wasn’t. Fred was in his office, eating tacos, more comfortable with him than she had been in a very long time.
He frowned as he flipped open a folder. “This is interesting.”
“What is?” Fred came over to look over his shoulder. Wesley could smell her faint perfume.
Wesley moved the pictures so that she could see better. “These attacks are highly unusual.”
Fred made a face. The picture was of a man who had a rather large hole in his stomach. “The liver was cut out? That’s creepy.”
“Mmm,” Wesley said absently, looking over the pertinent information avidly. It was more than creepy really. “This is something we ought to get on,” he said. “Apparently, this is not the first time this has happened, and it most likely won’t be the last.”
Fred’s hand crept onto his shoulder of its own accord. “Absolutely,” she agreed. “We ought to get on that right away.”
Maybe it would even take all night…
~~~~~
Gunn could feel it slipping away. All the knowledge, everything that made him special—it was disappearing.
For so long, he had been the muscle, the guy with the ax. He wasn’t even unique in that area since Angel was stronger and faster. Wesley was the one with the books, and Fred was the techno-brain, and Cordy was the glue that bound everything together.
He’d just been the leftovers.
It had been Gwen that clued him in to the fact that he could be more. Even though her methods had been slightly underhanded, she’d shown him something about himself. She’d shown him that he could be smart and savvy.
No, Gwen had shown him that he was smart and savvy. There was a difference.
Then Wolfram & Hart had come along and offered him the chance to make it all real, to change his life. Gunn liked to believe that if life had been different, maybe he would have been a lawyer. He would have been the one to stick it to the Man.
Gunn would have done it on his own, if life hadn’t been such a bitch.
Now he was frantic with worry, fearing that he was going to lose everything.
There was no way he was going to go back.
~~~~~
Angel held Cordy’s lax hand in his own larger one. The machine registering her heartbeat bleeped—a constant, reassuring sound. Not even the excellent doctors at Wolfram & Hart could tell him whether or not Cordy would ever wake up.
“Buffy came by today,” he said quietly. “She was looking for Spike. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Andrew told her. It just makes it all that much more final, you know? We aren’t together anymore, and we never will be again.”
His thumb was rubbing slow circles on her hand. “I wish you could tell me what to do, Cordy. Being here—I don’t regret it. I can’t, not after what they did for Connor, but it’s all different. We’re so spread out. I never see the others anymore. I miss the days when we were a team.”
Angel rested his forehead on her bed. “I miss you,” he whispered.
He didn’t see her eyes pop open.