Author: Holly (holly.hangingavarice@gmail.com)
Rating: PG (For mildly
violent imagery and a few sketchy words)
Timeline: Immediately post-NFA.
Spoilers throughout.
Summary: Upon witnessing a tearful reunion of lovers,
Illyria reflects upon Wesley's last minutes. And in reevaluating her emotions,
she at last realizes how it feels to have loved...and grieved.
Pairings:
Illyria/Wesley (implied), Spike/Buffy
Disclaimer: The characters herein
are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. They are being used out of
love and respect, and not for the sake of profit. No copyright infringement is
intended.
*~*~*
Pain was such a foreign sensation. Her human skin
hummed with awareness, sharp pangs seizing her hardened lungs and sending echoes
of hurt through her body with every intake of breath. The muscles in her
compact, human-clad form were tense with anger which demanded an outlet. Her
nerves were strangled with a bizarre tingling sensation she didn’t know how to
label. In the shadows surrounding her, she kept seeing his face. The widened
shock of his eyes and the oddly serene look which had overcome him in those
final moments. She kept seeing him, and it was driving her mad.
Illyria
had forgotten how mortal men felt. With as much time as she’d spent with Wesley
in the past few weeks, a part of basic understanding had forced itself to the
back of her complex mind. She knew he was breakable, of course. Those who
surrounded her now were all too fragile. These people who walked the earth with
no true understanding of it; the vampires who bore faces of men but lived the
lives of demons. Just weeks ago, she would have annihilated them without a
thought. With nothing more than a casual flick of her wrist. Now she was staring
down the path of hell—a road divided by the Legion and fueled with a foolishly
heroic notion that were she to die, it wouldn’t be in vain.
Illyria
wasn’t one for selflessness, but she could appreciate strength. And despite her
better judgment, the strength she saw in those around her—in Angel, Spike, Gunn,
and Wesley—had filled her frozen veins with something akin to warmth. They were
ready to die for this cause. And she would be there with them as they
fell.
After all, she’d been there with Wesley as he took his last breath.
If she lost the others she’d grown to tolerate and, against her better judgment,
admire, she would be there to watch them die as well. She would be Fred if they
wanted it of her. In one’s final minutes, appeasing whatever requests they made
was the least a godlike entity could do.
However, it didn’t last.
Nothing lasted. Within minutes of the Legion’s charge, a thunderous explosion
disguised in a human voice resounded through the alley with a deafening crash.
And before Illyria could blink, she felt the cells in her too-human body tighten
with awareness she’d thought she no longer possessed. The air around her sparked
with whispers of power. Illyria blinked numbly and, along with every other body
filling the alley, stopped in astonishment and glanced up.
There was a
witch. A witch and perhaps a dozen others behind her. Her hair was white in the
after-effects of her spell, her eyes black with magic, and at her side stood one
Illyria would have recognized anywhere in time. Not for her face or anything
otherwise remarkable about the way she carried herself. No, it was the power she
knew. Power older than any force on this world—older, even, than herself.
Illyria had seen it form and shape itself over generations. She’d seen it define
itself time and time again. She’d seen power, and no matter the package, she
would always know it for what it was.
The Slayer. The original. Not the
first, but the original. The one whom had fed her power to all the slayers
behind her. The balance was shared among many now—something Illyria still had a
time comprehending. There was the Original Slayer and the slayers behind her.
And the Original Slayer was the one who wielded the most power.
Buffy
Summers. The Original Slayer. The one whose name struck fear into the blackest
of demon hearts. This was the Slayer the vampires loved. Angel and Spike. This
was the Slayer which dominated their thoughts.
She was here. In this
alley. And she’d brought reinforcements.
Too late. They were too late.
Wesley was dead.
Thunder cracked and lightning blinded the night sky.
And it was over before much of a battle could be made. The dragon Angel had
claimed as his own fell with an unceremonious plop to the hard cement ground,
the hands of Hell itself prying through the pavement to gather its followers
before the witch’s magic could blink them out of existence. Where there had been
thousands just seconds before, there was now nothing. Nothing but the empty
echoes of demon snarls and roars.
It was all so anticlimactic. Illyria
found she was disappointed.
After witnessing the life leave Wesley’s
eyes, she’d prepared to channel her unspoken outage and conflicting emotions
into the slaughter of many. She’d prepared for so much.
Rain soaked her
hair and ran rivers down her pale cheeks.
“Buffy!”
Illyria
turned, her wintry eyes immediately finding Angel. The look on the vampire’s
face was almost comical. Were she in the mood, and should she understand the
mechanics of it, she might have been moved to laugh. As it was, the former god
stood idle as the alley filled with the reinforcements no one had expected. She
watched as the one called Buffy ran forward as though the battle hadn’t already
ended, her eyes searched the alleyway with desperation Illyria found perplexing.
Desperation implied the immediacy of loss. What was there to lose now
that the battle was over?
“What the hell are you doing here?” Angel
growled, seizing the Original Slayer’s arm. “What the hell,
Buffy?”
“Saving your ungrateful ass!” she spat, jerking away from him
with a move saturated in animosity. “Do you mind? Where is
he?”
“Who?”
“Don’t give me that, you jackass! Where is he?”
The Original Slayer didn’t wait for a response. Her eyes had already
found the one she was looking for. The other one—Spike—sprawled on the ground.
Illyria blinked. She hadn’t seen the bright-haired one sustain injury. Then
again, she hadn’t seen much of anything. Just the charge of the demons and their
quick defeat. It wasn’t a surprise, she supposed. Not much of anything was
anymore.
“You beautiful, arrogant, pigheaded, lovable
moron!”
Except perhaps that.
The Original Slayer was crouched
beside her vampire in an instant, the ferocity of her words countered by the
tender way her hands slid under his head and the emotion pouring through her
eyes. She was shaking as though cold, and though the rain was rather chilly, the
heat steaming from the ground made shivers implausible.
Spike blinked
dazedly. “Buffy?”
The Original Slayer huffed indignantly and slapped his
chest. “Don’t you ‘Buffy’ me!” she screamed, her body trembling so hard it was
impossible to tell if her cheeks were wet from rain or tears. “Nine months?
Nine months? Y-you’ve been back and—”
The vampire released a small
groan, pressing a hand to his stomach. “Not that I don’ appreciate the
sentiment, ducks,” he murmured gently, “but I don’ think this is the right time
for this.”
Though the words he spoke were light, Spike’s eyes blanketed
with adoration. It was a look Illyria had never seen before. At least, not
outside Fred’s memories of Wesley.
“You don’t get to make decisions, you
jackass! Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through? Do you have…have
any idea of how much—”
“Sweetheart, everyone’s
lookin’—”
“Let them!” Buffy spat. “Nine months. Nine long months,
and this is how I find out? Some stupid seer in Giles’s stupid coven
telling me I better haul ass to save your stupid self? And a quick post-script:
you’re alive?! Let’s hear it.”
What ensued was something between a
screaming match and a symphony of tears. Illyria watched, perplexed, as the
Original Slayer screamed and pounded on her vampire’s chest. As rivers streamed
down her red, swollen face. There was such emotion in something so ostensibly
joyous. So much happiness in the guise of sorrow. People cried in times of
elation? This was something Illyria would never understand. Nor would she
understand how one’s feelings of love could be conveyed through tearful screams
and other actions typically regarded as hostility.
She didn’t understand
it; perhaps she wasn’t meant to understand it.
She didn’t remember
feeling this when Wesley died. Wesley hadn’t wanted to look at her face. He
hadn’t wanted to view the creature who had come to feel something in the
vicinity of human emotion. She’d asked him if he wanted her to be someone else,
and he’d said yes. His last moment’s on earth and he hadn’t wanted to spend them
with her.
All in all, Illyria couldn’t say she didn’t understand.
Wesley’s grief following her invasion of the shell she now wore was never
something he’d attempted to hide. He’d loved the one who had come before her.
He’d loved Fred in every feasible interpretation of the sentiment. He’d loved
her so much, and he’d felt her loss with every wake. Seeing Illyria day after
day had been the perpetual salt in the open wound. It was no wonder he’d wanted
Fred in those final moments.
It was impossible to ignore, however, that
Wesley’s grief had transformed into something else as time attempted to heal the
wound Fred’s death had inflicted on his weary soul. Toward the end, Illyria
could’ve sworn Wesley was beginning to see her as more than the parasite who
murdered his love. He was beginning to talk with her as though. Confess things
to her. Relate stories about himself. Occasionally, he would share his memories
of Fred. Memories Illyria already knew, of course, but it was fascinating to
hear events she was familiar with recited in a different voice. Offered a
different perspective. And while it pained Wesley to speak of Fred, Illyria
reasoned it to be somewhat therapeutic as well.
She’d offered once to
become Fred for him—once before his death—and the offer was met with hostility
and disgust. Her interest in Wesley had begun as fascination with the residual
human feelings her mortal host had left behind, though had rapidly spurned into
something gods only dreamed of experiencing.
And when the time came to
grieve for him, he hadn’t let her. Only then had he wanted to see Fred. See the
girl Illyria wasn’t, and could never be.
Why it mattered what a lowly
human thought of her was beyond her reasoning. But watching the Original Slayer
and her vampire, having melted from the screaming match into sobbing confessions
of love and kisses right out of the hands of poets, an alien wrench struck the
hollow chamber Illyria guessed to be her heart.
The Original Slayer
called Buffy and Spike sobbed because they were reunited. The love between them
was thick and overwhelming. And it reminded her of Wesley.
Of Wesley’s
love for the girl who used to live in Illyria’s body.
How could tears of
joy outweigh tears of grief? The battle was over, and they were still standing.
And yet the people around her were sobbing. People she didn’t know. People she
didn’t want to know. Angel was speaking with a man she’d never met. The witch
she’d seen earlier was studying Gunn’s mortal wound. Buffy and Spike remained on
the pavement, their lips meshed together in a passionate frenzy, confessions of
love pouring between their kisses and their faces soaked with a combination of
rainwater and tears.
Illyria had not wept for Wesley. She’d held him as
he died, but she had not wept for him. Not as herself, anyway. The tears she’d
cried as Fred hadn’t been hers. Not entirely. And yet if happiness could bring
with it such pleasure, what was there to say for sorrow?
She’d assumed
the visage of Fred to say her goodbyes. Had she done it for his benefit or her
own?
Had she wanted to remain impassive and distant?
Admitting
affection for a human meant owning up to weaknesses she hadn’t believed she
possessed. Affection for a lesser being. For a man whose veins pumped blood.
He’d lived, breathed, eaten, slept, drank, and lived every day as someone
beneath her in the cosmic food chain.
He hadn’t stood in awe of her. He
hadn’t cared.
And yet, against all odds, she ached in the echoes of his
loss. She grieved. The world wasn’t as interesting. Not without Wesley.
Spike was wrong. Wishes weren’t horses today. She’d been cheated out of
the violence she’d longed for in the immediacy of Wesley’s death. And while the
heroes cried over themselves—as Angel faded into the distance, as Gunn collapsed
to the ground, as Spike reclaimed the love he’d spent the year mourning, Illyria
felt nothing but vacant.
She wanted Wesley.
*~*~*
His body was as she’d left him. A look of peace
graced his face. The remnants of the tears she’d cried as Fred hung thick in the
air. She’d never seen him look at her as he had tonight. When her face was no
longer her own. When the blue from her hair faded into brown and the pallor of
her skin tanned into the form of her body’s first owner.
Fred…I’ve
missed you.
Illyria blinked hard, a storming, painful sensation
gathering in her gut. Every inch of her body hummed in sorrow. Her feet seemed
to grow heavier the closer she got to Wesley’s still body. His hand was soaked
in blood. His eyes were closed.
He was at peace.
And Illyria
stood, for the first time, a broken entity. A god without a following. A warrior
without a country.
A woman without the man she loved.
Love. Was
that what this was? Was that what she was feeling?
Illyria didn’t know.
But if this was love, she wished never to feel it again.
It was hard to
imagine being close to another human as she’d been close with Wesley. Feeling
things for a human as she’d felt things for Wesley. Touching a human with her
lips as she’d touched Wesley.
Somehow she ended up on her knees at his
side, her hand finding his cold cheek.
I—I love you.
A
strange sensation formed behind her eyes. Illyria blinked hard and wiped the
damp feeling away with her free hand. She found herself wondering if she’d been
truthful with him before. If the girl he’d known and loved was indeed waiting
for him wherever his soul had vanished. She hoped so. She hoped Wesley found the
love he’d lost in life in the after-plains of death. The world could not be so
cruel as to deny him that.
Then again, she was a god. The world could
indeed be that cruel, and much crueler.
At once, she felt nothing like a
god.
She felt helpless.
She felt human.
Illyria inhaled
sharply and her chest ached. She looked at Wesley, and the air around her felt
unreasonably cold.
And when at last she wept, she found she had no desire
to stop.
FIN