Title: If That's Destiny On The Phone, I'm Not Home! 6/7
Author: BuffyAngel68
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, holy lord of all creative, intelligent minds, (may we worship him always!) owns all of them, not me. TYVM Joss, for creating characters with such depth and heart. I had a marvelous time making them speak and can only hope I captured their spirits. Yada-Yada-Yada- not making money- will return them in a much happier state than I found them, emotionally and otherwise.

This one is a PG-13, maybe a mild R for a bad word or two, violence and such. It isn't unbearably graphic, just mildly icky, and involves implied main character death. Thanks for the inspiration, E.A.P. Classic horror fans will know who that is. Any who don't, e-mail me. Also, I would appreciate any feedback. Just a chapter and a half, and an epilogue to go, people! These last two are proving difficult and time consuming, so please be patient. Thanks!)

{Damn. My head hurts. My mouth tastes like I've been chewing my socks and chasing them with used motor oil. Good Lord. I'm hungover! The question is, what sort of place am I hungover *in*? Powers That Be, my ass! Powers that torture and abuse mortals for their own amusement is more like it.....}

Struggling to sit up, Wesley blinked rapidly several times, trying to clear his vision. Even before the bleariness left his eyes, he realized he was outside, and it was most decidedly not summer. There was a tinge of warmth in the night air, but only that much.

As he gingerly found his way to his feet, Wes gazed at his surroundings anxiously, knowing that the sooner he deduced where he was, the sooner he could get inside and out of the damp, chilly evening. It took a few moments for him to realize he was in the middle of a park, and a few more before he noticed the structure in the distance and knew which park.

"That's the Griffith observatory. Therefore.... I am in Griffith park." {Oh, brilliant Wesley. If one plus one logic is the best you can do, you'd better shelve any further thinking until you sober up completely. Griffith park..... long haul back to the Hyperion. Too long, in my state. I'll find a hotel for the night, then head back tomorrow morning. Maybe my head will feel a bit less like a medicine ball by then.}

Stumbling only a little, Wesley slowly made his way toward the streetlights that he assumed marked a road. When he finally arrived, he was stunned to find Angel's car parked there, as if waiting for him to return. At that moment, it seemed a godsend, and his weary brain didn't allow him the luxury of wondering how it had gotten there. He would be able to save himself the trouble of finding a cab, and the expense of cabfare he wasn't even sure he possessed.

This thought, vague as it was, led him to reach back and search for his wallet. He found it in his rear pocket, precisely where it should have been, still containing all the cash he remembered having as well as all his credit cards. The world being what it was, he knew he was either very lucky, or he hadn't been unconscious very long. Grateful that he would be able to pay for a place to sleep once he found one, Wesley slid into the drivers seat and began to search for the keys. Once again, he found them in his pocket, this time the left front. Once again he lacked the vigor to question his amazing good fortune as he should have; as he automatically would have, had his head been even a small percentage clearer.

His luck continued unabated when he started the convertible and realized the car's fuel gauge read very close to the full mark. As he pulled away from the curb, he began to blink again as he battled vainly to keep his mind at least somewhat alert.

Fatigue threatening to overwhelm him, he focused his mind only on driving and searching for a place to stop for the night. He found a small, pleasant looking hotel only ten minutes later.

Within an hour, he had bathed, dropped his clothes into the bag the hotel had provided for laundry service and fallen into bed already nearly asleep, there to remain blissfully unaware of the world or its myriad concerns until early the following morning, when a few of the world's more serious concerns became his own.

"It may be blood and it may not. The lab will tell us that. Our only job is to find out what room this guy's in so he can tell us what the whole right side of his car is doin' covered with it..... whatever it is. So?" the cop demanded, turning from his partner to confront the clerk behind the check-in counter.

"I can't. It would mean my job. If you had a warrant, that would be a different story...."

"Look. You called us. You're the one that freaked when you saw the car. If that.... substance is what all three of us suspect it is, you could be letting a pyscho back on the street. You really wanna be responsible for that?"

"Great. Guilt. I'm no good at fighting guilt trips. He's in 208, around the back. Just leave my name out of it from here on in, okay?"

"Sure," the detective assured him as he and his partner walked away. "until we need you to testify."

The clerk scowled, shook his head, and returned to his work.

Wesley woke reluctantly several minutes later, fumbled his way out from among tangled bedsheets, and wrapped a towel around his waist before answering the insistent knocking and overly loud voices on the other side of the door.

"Yes? What can I do for you this.... painfully bright and garish morning?"

"First off, you can tell us your name."

"You tell me yours, I might tell you mine."

"He's Detective Marsh, I'm Detective Smalley. I'd suggest you change that 'might' to a 'Yes, officer. Of course, officer'."

"Oh. Quite right. Wesley Wyndham Pryce. What's the problem?"

"If you wouldn't mind getting dressed and following us, we'll show you."

"Well... I can't exactly.... all the clothes I have with me are more than ready for the laundry...."

The detectives shot each other a look that said that bit of weirdness was something they'd discuss with him later, in a small, quiet room, in the back of the station house.

"Put them on anyway. A pair of pants and your shoes will do."

"Yes. Will you come in? I'll only be a moment..." he assured them, grabbing the laundry bag and heading for the bathroom, leaving them on their own to examine the room, which they did immediately, though it was only a visual inspection, and disappointing, as the only thing in sight was his wallet on the night-stand.

When Wesley began to pull his clothes out of the bag and separate them out, all the seemingly innocent, fortuitous events of the night took on a much darker cast. Performing his own swift examination, he realized that every article of clothing smelled virulently of kerosene or gasoline, underlaid with alcohol and something else he couldn't identify. There were dark smudges on the cuffs of the shirt and the pants, and scattered red-brown spots on his shoes and socks that he didn't want to think about.

Abandoning the socks, he furiously brushed the shoes and was relieved to see the spots flake off, proving, to his mind, that they must have been only mud. His only recourse with the other garments was to shake them vigorously and pray some of the odor would fade before slipping them on and emerging to face the officers. From the way they instantly wrinkled their noses, he knew it hadn't been enough.

"I beg your pardon. I spilled a good bit of petrol, apparently, when I was refueling the car last evening. It should be a bit easier to breathe outside. Shall we go?" he offered, disconcerted that the detectives seemed content to hold their ground for the moment.

"Any reason why you'd end up with that much gas all over you?"

"I believe... I was intoxicated. That was the indication my body gave when I woke up, at any rate."

"Is that so?"

"I don't know for certain, of course. I don't really recall.... Look. You did say there was something you wanted to show me?"

"Oh, yeah. Definitely." the taller of the two responded, chuckling under his breath as they led Wesley out to the parking lot to view Angel's convertible in the harsh light of day. To their chagrin, the sight of what was, most likely, blood covering most of the right front and rear seats of the vehicle didn't have half the impact on the former Watcher that they'd expected.

"Good Lord. What's gone on here, I wonder?" he responded, moving forward to smell the substance before being yanked back by one of the detectives.

"Evidence. Don't touch."

"You want us to believe you drove this car to the motel last night.... and never had a clue that any of this mess was here?"

"There isn't anything on the driver's side to have a clue about, and it was dark. Night often is, or so I'm told."

"Very funny, wise-guy....."

"This isn't even, technically, my vehicle. I usually ride a motorcycle, but there must have been some need for me to borrow the car from my employer last night..... I can't seem to remember any reason..... can't remember much of anything, actually...." he mumbled, more to himself than to the police.

"Okay. That's enough." the taller detective said, shoving Wesley in the direction on his partner. "Get him down to the station for questioning. I'll call for a tow on the car."

"Right. Let's go, pal."

"Wait just a minute! You have no cause to arrest me...."

"You aren't under arrest. Not yet anyway. We just need to know more about how the car got this way. Once we find that out.... maybe then you'll be under arrest."

Realizing he had no options open to him, Wesley meekly waited for the patrol car to arrive, then quietly slid into the rear seat when told to do so, praying for his memory to return, certain that beyond the residual alcohol haze and the pounding headache he was suffering, lay the answers to everything.

"I've already explained this to you ten times over. Now, I want my clothes back and I want to go back to my hotel."

"Not just yet. You've explained everything, but half of it doesn't make sense. So tell me again."

"No."

"No?"

"No. You've kept me here for a number of hours, how many I can't say because you took my watch, and you've refused me food, water or any other physical comfort. I won't be treated in such a shabby manner, when I've done nothing wrong."

The second detective simply stared at Wesley for several seconds, trying to unnerve him, unaware that the man he was confronting had faced far more frightening creatures than a frustrated policeman. Realizing his ploy wasn't going to work, he retreated to the door where his partner was talking to another officer.

"He's not budging. Barely changes a word from one telling to the next."

"Yeah, well, these will shake him up. Guaranteed. L.A. just sent them down" the other smirked, fluttering the stack of pictures in his hands.

"What are.... Hail Mary full of grace..... you sayin' he.... did this?" he whispered, only able to stand looking at the first picture or two before his gag reflex forced him to cease.

"That what L.A. thinks, but before they could prove it, he vanished. Between his clothes and the car, I'd say we're about to make their case, wouldn't you?"

"Man, I hope so. Sick son of a...."

"Chill, Smalley. Go get a drink of water, take a walk outside and breathe the smog for a while. I'll handle the rest of this."

"Thanks, Marsh." the other acknowledged harshly, swiftly walking out of the room and putting distance between himself and the genuinely evil entity he now perceived Wesley to be.

His partner moved back to the table where Wesley sat waiting and began to spread the pictures out on the table, one beside the other, until the entire surface was covered. He left the worst, most graphic photos until last, so they would end up in the row directly in front of Wesley.

"Tell me your story again, Pryce. Tell me how you just... woke up hungover in Griffith park, with no memory of having torched your workplace.... your friends.... and your boss. Explain it to me..... if you can."

For a long stretch of minutes, Wesley could not move, could not produce words equal to what was laid out before him, so he didn't try. When the memories began to crash into his mind, wave after unspeakable wave, he tried to remind himself they weren't real, that the thoughts were nothing but Oracle created illusions, but the ferocity of the visions crushed him.

Screaming, moaning and wailing incoherently, he tumbled from his seat, crawled into a corner and huddled there, face buried in his hands, until they realized he was not going to speak to them anymore, and came to drag him into a holding cell.

It took several hours for Wesley to return to his senses enough to respond to the people who periodically appeared at the door of his cell to try and draw him out. When he finally looked up again, the woman standing in front of him smiled gently, and passed a pen and paper through the bars.

"Just write it down. It won't be easy, we understand that, but you have to get this off your heart. Just write down everything that happened, exactly the way you remember it."

"I can't. You don't understand at all.... the memories.... they aren't mine. They aren't real...."

"It's okay. Write down what you recall anyway. We'll straighten everything else out later."

Slowly, Wesley stretched out a hand, took the items she offered, stumbled to the small bench in the rear of the room, and began to write. The female officer walked away.

WESLEY'S MEMORIES:
WYNDHAM-ANGEL INVESTIGATIONS
ONE WEEK EARLIER

/// I didn't hurt the most important people in my life. What the police are claiming just isn't true. Perhaps I simply don't want it to be. I don't want to believe I could have committed this..... horrific act. I could never be capable of of such violence. I know that as instinctively as I know these memories aren't real. I'm a gentle, quiet, intelligent man. I don't understand why every moment is so clear..... if I didn't really hurt them, why is it all so clear? This makes no sense. I can remember conversations, fights. I remember Angel and Cordelia talking about my drinking and how depressed I'd been lately. I never drink more than a beer a week. Recently..... something came over me. I can't explain it better than to say that a darkness descended on my spirit. I couldn't find joy in much of anything but a bottle, the contents of which gradually sapped my natural good humor and my self-control, leading me to lash out in response to the most innocent inquiries and statements, most especially those meant to help or cheer me. I can remember being so under pressure to feel better, pressure to get back to my normal work, that I stopped speaking at all. Angel knew better than to smother me with good wishes. It was Cordy that wouldn't leave well enough alone. Most days, I love the woman, but sometimes she doesn't know when enough is too much. It came to a head three days ago. Her concern and her love and even her mere presence became overwhelming. I finally struck her. I balled up my fist.... and I struck her in the face. I can see her lip bleeding.... the stupefied expression..... then she ran from me, and I felt the darkness take complete hold. It seized me, urging me to do its will. I needed no urging, as I recall. I chased her outside, out to the car, but I have no earthly idea whether I had a weapon. I must have, as I remember striking her down, but not with bare hands. I have a memory of red everywhere. Red clouding my vision, red pools spreading to cover my feet..... I hesitate to describe the emotion I connect with that image. I want very badly to say I was disgusted, or enraged.... but the opposite was true. The black scourge that clutched my soul was pleased, even excited. So, therefore, was I. My feeling is that the burning was done not only to conceal my crime, but to please the.... perverse spirit that had assumed my form. Are all of them gone? Angel, and Cordelia, and Gunn..... Fred. Oh, dear God in heaven, not sweet, bright, lovely, delicate Fred. If I have done this, I ask no forgiveness of my friends or of the world. I'm not worthy of it..... What am I saying? There is no if. I did do this. My life is over. They're going to execute me, and I wouldn't raise a hand to stop them, even if I ///

When he heard a shoe scrape the cement by his cell door, Wesley looked up, expecting to find that the woman who had given him the writing material had returned to retrieve it. What he found instead, shocked him nearly beyond the capacity of his mind to register.

"Father?!"

"Come, Micheal. It's past time to go home. I can't lolly-gag around here all day. I have important work. Are you coming or aren't you? I can easily leave you behind."

At these last words, the cell door swung slowly open, and Wesley, still in shock, slowly stood and moved out to join his father, only to find, once he'd exited, that he was no longer in a prison. He was, indeed, no longer even indoors. He was standing at the end of the flagstone walk that led to his boyhood home, watching his father's thin, reedy form disappear into the house.

For a long time, Wesley simply stood before his old home, unable to make his feet move the rest of his body forward . He tried, but his shell- shocked brain would not function, would not perform it's job when he asked.

All he could seem to focus on was that, only a few moments before, he had been locked in a prison cell in San Francisco, certain he was headed for execution. Now he was standing in front of his boyhood home, in a village a little over one-hundred miles outside London. Abruptly, his heart began to thunder in his chest, dizziness assaulted him, and tension in his head made him feel as if it would explode off his shoulders. Even as he battled the all too familiar signs of emotional collapse, he also faced down the darkness and taint he could feel rushing out to greet its favorite victim and welcome him back to the wretched house of horrors he believed he'd escaped so long ago.

"Micheal Evan Adams! You march your worthless little behind into this house right this minute! Do you hear me, boy?! Do as I say, and do it now!"

That was his mother; a glut of stridency and surface emotion, shielding a heart corrupted by want and frustration and envy, a heart that often surrendered to violence in it's desperation to release volcanic pressures that had no other outlet. Unconsciously, he flinched from the malevolence behind the words, turning his head away, and immediately despised himself for doing so. He hated that, so many years removed from the reality of his struggle for survival, if not from the memories of it, he still reacted instinctively to his mother's harsh, jarring tone.

The brief burst of self-loathing finally broke his paralysis, returning his freedom of movement, but he was left with a decision he did not want to face; move into the house, or walk away. Away was clearly the choice his fear and anger were dictating, but it was equally as clear that the Powers That Be intended him to go inside, therefore making that the only option that offered a possible exit from the hellish morality play the Powers had dropped him into.

His decision made, Wesley squared his shoulders, gathered around him as a shield all the courage and raw fury he could muster, and strode up the walk toward the one place he could ever remember making a vow over, a vow that he had never broken.

{I swore if I got out with my body and my sanity intact I would never return here. I can't actually believe I'm doing this.... but it seems like the only way out.} "Alright, you.... you wankers. I'm going, but there better damn well be a purpose to this...."

At that moment, a breeze swept past his ear, creating itself out of utterly still air, and he thought he heard words on that breath of wind, but dismissed it a moment later as a product of his over-stimulated mind.

<Be patient. You will understand....>

"Micheal."

Standing in the foyer just beyond the front door, Wesley fought off the nerve impulses surging through his body and did not flinch, nor turn away. Making his dry palate and tongue function was the work of a few more moments, however.

"Yes, father."

"Come in here."

After a breath to steady himself, Wes moved into the house proper a few feet, than turned left and stepped over the threshold into his father's study. To his surprise, he still felt as much in genuine fear of his life in that darkly paneled chamber as he ever had as a boy. His father stood bare inches back from the door, glowering and trying to relax tightly clenched fists as his son entered the room. "You will explain yourself."

Wes waited patiently, assuming the Powers would simply drop the answer into his brain as they had before, but to his consternation, the oracles were silent, unwilling to provide him the requisite memory that would allow him to make an appropriate response.

{This is just marvelous! You'll shove all that false blood and gore into my head on a moments notice, but won't tell me which of my thousand and one failures he currently wants to hear about! Fat lot of help you are!}

"I.... I'm not sure precisely what you're asking me, father."

"You know better than to try and be humorous with me son, and you *surely* know better than to attempt to lie your way out of a punishment."

"Of course I do, father."

"I thought you would remember the last time you lied to me. I made it rather difficult to forget the lesson, as I recall."

"You did, father. I haven't forgotten."

"And still you stand there and insist you don't know what I'm talking about."

"I would not lie to you, father. I require more information. That's all."

"More information. Let's see what help I can give, hmm? Something to *jog* the memory, perhaps?" he growled, slapping Wesley viciously in the right ear. "Where were you supposed to meet your mother and I this afternoon? Where, exactly, did we wait for you for three hours?"

Without any help from the Powers, the memory suddenly burst on Wesley's conscious mind like a nuclear warhead, and he struggled to control the trembling it engendered.

The summer he'd turned twelve, his parents announced that, come the new school year, he would be entering the nation's top military academy, instead of returning to private school with his friends. The news brought out in him the first emotions anywhere close to rebellion he'd ever experienced, but he knew enough to keep his disagreement to himself. Holding in his resentment only caused it to fester and transmute into rage, which went from an internal flame to a very public bonfire the late August day that the academy held its annual gala luncheon for the parents and interviews for the new students. He had made a very deliberate effort to be elsewhere that afternoon, and had paid dearly when his father finally caught up with him.

Recalling that evening almost against his will, Wesley felt his heart sink into his bowels, and his hope for somehow getting out of the room unharmed diminished considerably. "You humiliated us in front of some of the most important people in this country! How dare you! Did you really think I would let you get away with such a blatant act of disrespect?! Did you think I would do nothing?!"

When his father came for him, fairly exploding with his anger, Wesley prepared to defend himself, but found, to his utter horror, that the Powers had reversed the illusion they had perpetrated in the prison. Instead of giving him memories that weren't his, they stole abilities that were. He suddenly could not remember any of the self-defense techniques or fighting styles that the Council had taught him. Movements that were once automatic were now unfamiliar and unknown, vanished along with a great deal of his physical strength. Faced with a man utterly out of control, Wesley was left with no protection, no way to stop what was happening.

It was nearly an hour before his father regained some semblance of lucidity. By this time, Wesley was on the floor, battered almost beyond the point of no return, without even enough breath to whimper or cry in expression of his agony.

When a trio of male servants was called in to remove him to his room, away from his father's presence, he was barely aware even of the movement. Once in his room, the three attempted to remove at least some of his clothing before helping him into bed, but his grimaces and silent tears of pain disabused them of the notion, so he was left on top of the comforter, blood-spattered clothing and all, to sleep, if indeed he could.

It was a shock to him when he woke several hours later and realized that, despite the bruises, scrapes and various injuries, he had fallen into a deep sleep. Vaguely, the thought worried him, but he put it aside in favor of overall assessment of his condition. Sitting up slowly, he grasped a corner of his shirt in tender, abrased fingers, and cleaned a few spots of his own dried blood off his glasses, allowing him to clearly see the extent of the damage. The inspection did absolutely nothing for his morale.

Eyes falling on the bedside table, he started in surprise. Laying there was the same type of writing pad that had been presented to him at the prison, and the same pen lay across it.

"Oh. So I'm expected to do some more writing, am I? And what should I write, exactly?"

The whisper in his ear was back, and this time he couldn't ignore it. This time he knew the oracles were communicating.

<only the contents of your heart.....>

"I don't hate him. He was a bastard that night, but it was the first time he'd ever laid a hand on me. Before that, it was always her. Her beatings I could handle. She was weak in more ways than one and she never did learn that using something other than her hands would have been far more effective..... and more deadly, now that I think of it.... damn. As Cordelia says, old boy; don't go there."

Staring at the pad and pen, Wesley sighed, lifted them carefully into his lap, settled the pen in the less damaged hand and began to write.

///The truth. That's what this is about, yes? The truth. Alright, so I hated him after that night, but I still loved him too. Couldn't help it. My twelve year old brain rationalized it away. I had sorely disappointed him after all, embarrassed him as well, and he simply lost his temper and his control... and his mind. Other than that, he'd never done anything to physically hurt me. I told myself he only wanted the best for me, wanted me to follow family tradition straight into the RAC, even though, or perhaps especially because, he didn't. It just wasn't what I wanted. I suppose even then I had an idea I was meant for something.... unusual. What a moderate word for the life I've come to know, fear and sometimes love! I'd have told him something, I suppose, but he never would have understood. I just know it wouldn't have registered. He was basically a good, hard-working family man. Strict, yes, but I///

"No. This is about the truth. Write the contents of my heart, they said. Alright."

Moving a line or two down the page, Wes began again.

///I'm not that boy. I don't have to rationalize his behavior anymore. His hands never touched me before that night. That is the truth, but he never missed an opportunity to put the fear of God in my heart, with himself in the role of God, of course. Verbally, mentally, emotionally he terrorized me most of my life until I moved to the Watcher's Council facilities at fifteen. Those last three years were pure hell. He tasted blood that night. My blood. After that he couldn't get enough, and I could never find a hiding spot he wasn't able to ferret out and drag me away from. I did hate him. I still hate him. I hate him with all the passion anyone ever possessed. I shouldn't. It's been almost twenty years since I even saw his face. He hasn't done me any wrong in all that time. He doesn't call or try to contact me, and I certainly haven't written or spoken to him. I should be light-years past being twelve years old.///

"So why am I not?" Wesley questioned himself quietly, the pen dropping from his black and blue fingers as he looked up from his writing. "Just because the oracles of idiocy threw me back into the lion's den and made me relive it? Just because I was as powerless this time as I was then? No. There can be no legitimate reason for what I'm thinking. I don't want to hurt him. This isn't real. It isn't real, and if I refuse to play their games long enough, they'll take their ball and go home.... and let me go home too."

Eyes heavy-lidded with exhaustion and aching in more places than he knew had the capacity to ache, Wesley lifted the pen once more, wrote a few words, then dumped both items unceremoniously over the side of the bed, turned the light off and lay down to try and get a little more sleep.

///Even if I'm not beyond it, even if I haven't moved past it, I won't hurt him. I won't.///

The next time his eyes flickered open, Wes automatically lifted a hand to shield them against the daylight he expected. It took a few extra seconds for his slowly engaging brain to comprehend that it was still pitch dark, and another moment or two for the 'drop it' message to run from brain to hand.

"Dark? That makes no sense. I feel I've been asleep at least ten or eleven hours all totaled. How can it be.... Oh. Right. The Trojan Horse gifts of the Powers. If they want it dark, it's dark." Wesley groused, swinging his legs out of bed and standing before his brain could remind him he should barely have been able to move. "And if they want me flexible and pain free.... I become so. That's one whim I won't reproach you for.... probably the last one, ever."

Eyes as yet unadjusted to his lightless surroundings, his first cautious step away from the bed proved mildly costly as the toes on his left foot made solid contact with something hard and unyielding, bringing forth a quiet stream of verbal inappropriateness from his lips as he fell back to sit on the bed again.

Once the sting and ache had subsided, and he had assured himself nothing was broken, he reached out to switch on the bedside lamp, berating himself for not doing it *before* he'd been foolish enough to temporarily hobble himself. Despite his best efforts, the light refused to work, frustrating him a little bit more. "Alright, damn it. What the hell do you want from me?" he forced through clenched teeth. "I am not a blasted mole! Turn the light on! I can't do anything in the bloody pitch blackness now can I?!"

The room remained as dark as it had been when he'd awakened earlier. Sighing heavily, Wesley reached out and felt near the floor until he encountered the object he'd struck his foot on. On the top of what ever it was he discovered a small box that rattled reassuringly, and he prayed it was matches. A few moments of experimentation answered his prayer in the affirmative.

The first match he extracted, amazingly, lit on his initial strike and showed him what had bruised his foot; an antique cage-type lantern. Like most he'd seen, it was squat, heavily built, and wide, but unlike some, the sides were solid iron, not wrought-work or filigree.

Before his first light abandoned him, he slid out another match, lit it from the dying remains of the first, and used the second to find the door of the lantern, which he opened, carefully pushing the wooden stick through the door and holding it there until the stub of a candle in the center took the flame.

With the return of light in at least some small respect, and in the absence of any other immediate crisis outside of his faintly throbbing toes, Wes found the intense animosity toward his father returning to fill the void. "No! I won't acknowledge that. I won't! Stop it.... please stop it...."

Grabbing up the lantern, Wes stood and moved toward the door to the hallway. "If I see him.... if I watch him sleep, I can't hurt him. Asleep he's no threat to me, and.... and this horrid.... obsession will break . It must. I won't surrender to this....."

As he turned away from the bed, the lamp's pale light splashed over the writing pad, still lying on the floor where he'd discarded it earlier. Annoyed, but unwilling to abandon his tidiness principles, he bent and retrieved it, but was trapped by his own, barely recalled, thoughts of just a few hours before, and, in the process of replacing the pad on the table, he froze.

*terrorized me...... three years.... hell...... I still hate him.... with all the passion anyone ever possessed...*

As if it had burned his fingertips, Wesley suddenly dropped the pad on the bed, turning and fleeing the room, running the reassurance over and over in his head that seeing his father, his tormentor, innocently sleeping would easily overcome the voice of rightful vengeance screaming ever-louder in his heart. Stepping into the hall, he paused, eyes half shut, waiting until his breathing and rapid heartbeat eased before moving on.

The dim, night-lights in the passage, he was thrilled to discover, still worked, removing the threat of stumbling on something unseen and waking the entire household. "Alright, so I've one more bit of whimsy to be grateful for. Let's not make this a habit shall we? I'll end up owing you 'till my children's grandchildren go the way of all flesh.... oh, yes. Except for mine. That little stunt evens us eternally, and no hope of appeal on your part. Forget I said anything." he whispered harshly.

Once at his parent's door, however, his forced self-confidence utterly failed him, leaving him afraid to make the attempt. As was the pattern after he had survived a confrontation with his father, he knew, from the snoring and occasional garbled sleep-talk, that his mother slept in the guest bedroom far down the hall from where he stood. There existed no danger of him accidentally waking her, resulting in her waking his father. He could have his glance, the fearful thoughts would leave his mind and he could return to cajoling, petitioning and threatening the Powers to release him from their twisted chess game. All this he understood and desired fervently, but the courage to open the door came only slowly.

At last, long minutes after bolting from his room in order to no longer occupy the same space with written words he couldn't reconcile with his true heart, Wesley managed to push open his father's door and slip quietly inside, easing the gap closed again

Praying the door to the lantern had been oiled, Wesley tensely worked the small iron flap open only the tiniest crack, revealing only the thinnest beam of light. To his shock, though it had worked flawlessly and silently in his room, it now emitted a horrifying screech that Wes was sure had been heard by every member of the household, but only his father was alerted. Just as Wesley extinguished the meager light again, the older man shot upright, ears searching the room for the intruder, eyes active and fearful. His son held his breath for long periods, releasing and drawing air again only at a painfully slow speed, and he remained absolutely still, screaming at the other only in his head.

{Damn you, you paranoid bastard! Lay down! Go back to sleep! This isn't the way this was supposed to work! You have to go to sleep or I'll never get out of this nightmare..... Go to sleep!}

But his father would not relent, and in a flash, his panic and rage grown beyond his control, Wesley was at the bedside, the lantern forgotten on the floor, his mother's pillow in his hands. One knee on the bed, the other foot on the floor, he propelled the pillow into his father's face and held it there with arms that suddenly possessed all the strength they needed; strength born of years spent holding others up, pushing others into the spotlight, and battering himself senseless, as he had been to taught do by those who claimed to love him.

When, finally, his father's struggles faded, then ceased, Wes released his grip, then slid from his position and collapsed into a trembling, shuddering heap on the carpet. He couldn't bear to raise his head again, wasn't even fully aware of what he'd just done. He was aware only of his own breathing. He felt that was enough to focus on for the moment. He was in no shape to feel, or act, or comprehend anything more. Reality could wait.

"Wesley. Wesley, stand up. I know there isn't much room in there, but try. Can't have the future archeologists find you on you knees, can we? You've lived that way. Die on your feet, as a man should."

The soft voice, hollow and somehow distant, yet vaguely familiar, echoed somewhere above Wesley's head. The realization he'd been transitioned again, was followed swiftly by the meaning of the words that had been spoken.

Lifting his head slowly off his bent arms, he craned his neck upwards and saw a small area of bright light a few feet above him. Carefully uncurling his body in what he now realized was indeed quite a tight space, Wesley stood, and examined the area around him in what little light he had. He was standing in what appeared to be a small, shallow alcove, the entrance to which was a narrow, flat-bottom, oval archway, or had been before someone had decided to close that entrance up. Raising his eyes, Wes faced the gap the light emanated from and found a familiar face grinning back at him.

"Angel? What.... what is this? I don't understand...."

"This, Wesley, my boy," Angel informed him lightly, as he laid the final brick in the layer at the level of his friend's adam's apple, "is the end result of living a life that.... well, wasn't much worth living."

"What?! What are you saying?! Angel, stop this, please...."

"I can't, Wes. I mean, look at what you've wasted. With your soul, and a decent game plan, somebody else could have made something. Something great. You..... you had no game plan, no ideas, not even a plan to have an idea!" Angel laughed, pausing, trowel in mid-air, then continuing to lay the bricks. "You had to be pushed before you'd stand up for yourself, endlessly encouraged before you defended your thoughts, even the good ones. What would it have taken, the energy you need to open a can of soda? You couldn't even spare that, 'cause you were spending all your precious, non- renewable resources on self-pity, a self-examination trip that never stopped, and self-criticizing when noone else would do it for you. I thought you could be something. I gave you a shot, but it's all too apparent that you are a waste of space, my time.... and air." he said, his voice growing serious, now, as he laid the next to last brick in place. "Therefore, it's time you stop taking up at least the last two. Oh, you'll be taking up less space, too, I suppose.... as the years go on. That was a good, one Angel. Rather sick, but still an honorable mention...." the vampire congratulated himself, humming as he mortared the final brick.

"Angel, please.... God, Angel, don't do this, I beg you...."

"No reprieves, no do-over's, Wes. You had a fantastic soul, and *way* more chances than most people get to make good. You blew it. Nite-nite."

As the last of his wan light vanished, Wesley went mad with fear, pounding and screaming, his mind refusing to accept that the Powers That Be would do this to him. When his throat became raw, and he began to taste blood, he merely pounded. When his fists were useless and bloodied, he succumbed, dropped into a crouch, allowed his head to fall forward, and wept.

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