Conundrum by Misha

Title: Conundrum

Author: Misha
Rating: PG so far
Fandom: Angel the Series

Spoilers: Angel 4.22 – “Home”

Summary: Wesley tries to solve a conundrum
Length: 2000 words
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. own the universe and characters. I’m just playing with them.
Feedback: Relished at mishamcm@livejournal.com

Gunn sits motionless on the white floor, legs crossed. Unblinking as he stares into the panther’s eyes.

The panther lies, spine curved, front paws flat upon the floor, body twisted so her right hind leg and hip are likewise flat. A posture known to all cats, large or small, wild or domesticated. Insofar as any cat is truly domesticated.

Except her tail is not flat, nor does it wave slowly through the air. It is frozen in midair, caught like a snapshot of the motion it should have had.

She is also unblinking. And staring.

The White Room, which is never motionless, stares at them both.

Wesley sits in the library, fiddling with a pencil, deliberately not staring at the elevator. Not focusing on the book he holds in his left hand. Staring at nothing.

Staring so intently he doesn’t even notice Fred approaching.

“Wes?” she asks, quietly, as if she isn’t aware that what she’s interrupting is, literally, nothing.

He turns his head, returning his focus to the real world, albeit to someone as unreal as Fred. Unreal in her own mind. Sometimes still unreal in his.

Not so unreal that he can’t read her expression.

“You found something?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Related to the Beast?”

“Only in a second-cousin kind of way.”

Wes cocks his head, eyes narrowing slightly as he processes the words. Opening them wider as he concludes that he has no conclusion.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

She sits down, fidgeting fingers dissembling with all their might.

“What I mean is, yes, the way all knowledge of the Beast was expunged from our dimension, Wolfram and Hart does know how to do it. They didn’t do it for the Beast, but they have done it, judging from their inventory of sacrificial talismans.”

“They did it to us. Not as a side-effect of the Beast, but deliberately.”

“Does this terrify you as much as it does me?”

“More, if that’s possible,” he replies. “Do you know what they erased, and why?”

“No. Not in this dimension. And no clue as to what other dimension might have the truth.”

“Then my surmise was correct. The White Room might know.” He glances, willingly, at the elevator.

“If Charles remembers to ask. He seems so distant now. Like he doesn’t quite hear us. I wish he’d stay away from that place.”

“I doubt we could convince him to do so.”

“So as long as he’s fucked, we might as well use it to our advantage?”

“We use whatever we have to.” Then he remembers himself and turns back to her. “I’m…sorry,” he says slowly. “We all had reservations about this. Perhaps we should never have dismissed them. But we’re here now, in this situation, and we need to find out what they’ve done to us.”

The elevator dings. The door opens. Gunn steps out. He blinks, as if unaccustomed to the light. Or lack of light. Or realness of the light. Wesley doesn’t think the lighting has anything to do with the dilation of Gunn’s pupils.

He speaks before Fred has a chance to, wondering if he’s cutting her off to protect her, or himself. “Did she tell you anything?”

“Yeah.… Kinda…. Sorta.”

“What does that mean?” she asks. Unlike Wesley’s, her voice has emotion. Her voice isn’t just talking about the facts.

“She didn’t tell me how Wesley got that scar.”

“And…?” he prompts.

“And she didn’t tell me why, uh, what you did that got us so pissed at you.”

Wesley would have used stronger words than ‘pissed’ to describe Angel’s animosity.

“And she didn’t tell me why we don’t remember.”

“What did she tell you, Gunn?” Now his voice has emotion, just impatience rather than concern.

“She told me Angel knows the answers.”

Angel hears a lot of things humans can’t, even in the impressively-soundproofed offices of Wolfram and Hart. His usual response is to pretend he didn’t.

He hears Wesley and Fred arguing. He doesn’t hear much from Gunn, and he’s not sure what that means, but it makes him uneasy.

When Wesley insists on confronting him alone, he’s not sure if that’s better or worse.

“Angel.”

“Wes.” He tries to appear busy, not meeting Wesley’s eyes. “What can I do for you?”

“I think you already know why I’m here.”

“Hmm?”

“They did something to us. Erased someone. Or something. Do you know what it was?”

Angel gives up the pretense. “Look, Wes, I’m sorry. I had to.”

“You had to? It was your idea?”

“Wes, please understand—“

“That could be difficult, given that my memories have been violated. After what Wolfram and Hart did to Lorne, you could do this to us? To me?”

“Wes, I’m sorry. It was the only way.”

“The only way to do what?”

“To save my son.”

“Someone you turned?”

“No, my flesh-and-blood son.”

Wesley pauses to process, to work through the possibilities. “Your son. An illegitimate son of Liam’s, before you were turned?”

“No. My son. Mine and Darla’s.”

He pauses again. “That’s not possible. Vampires can’t have father children, let alone carry them.”

“Vampires don’t have souls, either. Somehow it happened. Skip said it was Jasmine’s doing. A miracle birth to precede her own.”

“Precede? In the sense of John the Baptist preceding Jesus, or…”

“He was Jasmine’s father.”

“You’ve had a son for decades?”

“No, just two years. He was taken to Quor-Toth, and when he returned—“

“No one returns from Quor-Toth.”

“He did. Fully grown. At least, in a teen-aged sense.”

“Why did you need to save him?”

“He was the one who ultimately killed Jasmine, not me. That was the final straw. He went berserk, took hostages.”

“Dear Lord.”

“The only way he could have a decent life was to rewrite it, give him a normal family.”

Wesley is silent.

“Wes, I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“I’m not sure. And you owe the others the truth as well.”

“Yeah, I…I know. I guess I do.”

“But tell me: my scar, our ‘falling-out’. What happened?”

“Sahjhan’s plan all along was to get rid of my son. He planted a prophecy that I would kill the baby. You…you had to get him away from me.”

“Hence the ‘falling-out’.”

“I was wrong, Wes. I see that now. You did what you had to do.”

Wesley considers. “I’m almost afraid to ask. Did you slit my throat?”

“No, Wes! It was Justine. You thought the baby would be safer with Holtz. Sort of a Gandhi thing, raising your enemy’s child. Once you delivered him, they had to get rid of you.”

“I see. I need to think about this. And you need to tell the others.”

“What are you going to do?”

“For a start, I need to do some research.”

Wesley shivers inside his coat. Five years in southern California have acclimated him to warm weather, and even the rainy British weather of his youth can’t compare to a Cleveland winter.

Fortunately, by three in the morning on an exceptionally cold night, even the denizens of this city tend to stay inside. Fewer people on the street make finding his quarry easier.

If the term ‘quarry’ is in any way applicable to a Slayer. A Slayer in the process of dusting six vampires before his eyes.

She makes short work of them.

“Well done, Justine.”

She snarls at him. “I don’t need you to tell me that. I’m in a good mood, so I’ll give you ten seconds to disappear.”

“I need to talk to you, Justine.”

In a flash she’s right in front of him. He can feel her breath on his face, breath visible in the frigid air.

“Like you talked to me a year and a half ago? You can’t control me anymore, Wesley. You can’t frighten me. You can’t break me.”

He opens his collar, damning the cold. “I need to talk about this.”

She stares at the scar for a second, but looks him in the eye as she speaks. “Want me to finish the job? I’ve gotten real good at decapitation.”

“Do you remember starting it?”

“Do I…” She trails off. He can see her memories are as foggy as his own. She brushes the confusion aside. “Maybe I did. So what? You think you haven’t evened the score yet?”

“Do you remember why?”

“Enough of your damned questions. Get out of my way before I get angry.”

“Do. You. Remember. Why?”

He’s ready for her to strike. He’s not stupid. At least, not stupid enough to be totally unprepared. He’s armed to the hilt, both knowledgeable and experienced in hand-to-hand combat. She’s mostly self-trained, except for what she learned from Holtz, which is not insignificant. And she’s new to Slayer abilities.

However, she’s still a Slayer. He knows it’s only a matter of time before she wears him down if he doesn’t subdue her.

He doesn’t.

His first thought upon awakening: being tied to a chair and tortured by a rogue slayer is not something that should happen to someone twice.

“So you’re awake.”

“So I am. Why am I here?”

“Because you’re a pain in the ass. Because I know you have a stubborn streak that would keep you pestering me forever.”

“So why aren’t I dead?”

He sees that flash of uncertainty again. “Because…because that would be too easy. Over in a flash. Unlike what you did to me.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Always a smart mouth. Okay, enlighten me.”

“You’re like me. You have to know the answers.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not again. What answers?”

“Do you remember slitting my throat?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t a memorable experience for me.”

“Do you remember?”

“Not…exactly. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. In which case I owe you a whole lot of pain. Which is why you’re here.”

“You can do better than that.”

She slashes at his throat with a knife, just grazing him, just barely drawing blood.

“Hmm,” she says, “that does seem familiar. I think I did. Happy now?”

“Do you remember why?”

Another grazing slash, this time across his cheek.

“Because you were allied with a bloodsucker. Do I need a better reason?”

“I suppose not. Do you remember dumping Angel into the ocean?”

“After three months in your closet thinking about it? Yeah, I think I do.”

“How’d you manage it?”

A slash across his arm, through his shirtsleeve, white cotton soaking up red blood.

“Think I can’t?”

“You weren’t a Slayer then. How did you do it?”

“I had help.”

“Whose?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if you can’t remember.”

She snarls, slashes his thigh.

“You remember having a partner, but you can’t remember him, isn’t that right? Doesn’t that seem strange?”

She slashes at his temple. The blood stings his eye.

“Do you remember killing Holtz?”

“Angelus killed Holtz.”

“No he didn’t. You know that. Two incisions, but no blood loss. He faked it. I’m betting you did it.”

A slash across his belly.

“Hardly matters now. Yes, I did it.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“That’s right. He broke you before I did.”

Two slashes, one on each cheek.

“But he told you, Justine, didn’t he?”

Another grazing slash across his throat.

“Why would he want to make it look like Angelus killed him? To whom would it have made a difference?”

She discards the knife and pummels him with her bare hands. He quickly loses track of time amidst the ringing in his ears and the bloody haze over his eyes.

But at some point, she stops.

“What the hell is going on?” she asks, half angry, half pleading.

He spits out blood trying to clear his throat.

“It’s…confirmation.” He shakes his head to clear it, tries to look her in the eye. “He’s been…erased.”

“Who is he?”

“Angel’s…son.”