Needed

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or the setting of the story. All things I borrowed from the Buffyverse are a creation of and belong to Joss Whedon.

Timeline: about 9years after "Not Fade Away" ("Angel"), 10 after "Chosen" (BtVS)

Beta: Dave

Chapter Three



It was long past midnight, and Wesley needed another drink. He looked at the empty bottle on the desk. Why wasn't Spike there to make a nuisance of himself? Why wasn't Faith there to glare at him? He needed something to take his mind off... off... everything.

Why had they left him alone?

He walked slowly to the bookshelves, hoping against hope that he would find something engrossing to read. He knew why they had left him alone.

He wondered if they were somewhere close, so that Spike could keep tabs on him with his preternatural senses. He imagined the vampire giving Faith a play-by-play account of his movements. 'He opened a book. He stood up. He went to the bookshelf. He tripped. He took three books off the shelf, no, four books, no, three. He's gone back to the desk. He threw the bottle in the wastepaper basket. He opened another book. He's not doing anything interesting, Faith! Are we going to do this all night? I want to go out. Hey, wait, he's… he's… he's OPENED ANOTHER BOOK. Faith, I'm bored out of my mind!'

His mouth formed a smirk of self loathing as reality reasserted itself. They were not following his every move. They had left him alone for a reason. They were letting him decide which way he wanted to go with his afterlife; uselessly wallowing in grief, or tormented and guilt ridden, but marginally useful, and based on the way he looked in the morning, they'd take him in, or dispatch him back into the nothingness from which they had conjured him. That was the way he would handle the situation. Out of all the people he had worked with, Spike and Faith were the ones more likely to see things as clearly as that.

Maybe it was the three hours of sleeping with his face on the books, but he didn't find the oblivion of death as attractive as he had a few hours earlier.

They probably needed him. Raising him from the dead certainly seemed to support that theory. Needed. He was needed again. Not wanted. Not even liked. Just needed. He had come a long way since the Sunnydale days. At least he was needed now.

They probably expected him to act as Watcher for the girls. He knew he could do a better job this time around. He had done such a rotten job with Faith; it was a testament to Angel's dogged savior complex that she had come back from the dark.

He could feel dawn approaching. He took another look through the file Spike and Faith had prepared for him. Apart from the 'pending Apocalypse' part, it contained information about the three young Slayers. It was so like them to take in broken Slayers. The second souled vampire and the second string Slayer were perfect parents for incomplete Slayers. Somehow, that seemed appropriate for him. The sort of team he could belong to. He made his way to the couch, lay down on it and covered himself with the blanket Spike had brought earlier.

Wesley fell asleep thinking about the people who needed him.

~~~~~~~~

The next morning

He made up his mind to revert to a previous personality. He considered and rejected the tweed clad Watcher persona, the rogue demon hunter, the 'Pryce, here' phase - Lilah's Wes, the brain of Angel Investigations, Wolfram and Hart's Head of Research and Development - Fred's Wesley. He decided to stop at the man he had been during those strangely happy few weeks when Angel had fired his staff. The time he had spent with Cordelia, Gunn and Virginia had been by no means boring, but he hadn't experienced great loss or great happiness. He wished he could keep his afterlife within those parameters. Besides, he couldn't possibly have the emotional resources to care about anyone ever again.

He walked purposefully downstairs, completely clothed in his chosen identity.

"Good morning," Wesley greeted the kitchen assembly.

Faith, Spike, the three young Slayers and Alex answered him with various degrees of enthusiasm from their places around the breakfast table. Wesley sat on the empty chair between Spike and Alex, and reached for a piece of toast. He was doing his best to fight the rising nausea. He could see Faith watching him for signs of the massive hangover she knew he could not have possibly escaped.

"I'm Eliana. That's Grace, and that's Miranda. You must be Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. When are we getting the whole story?"

Wesley smiled. He was expecting Faith to assert her status as authority figure, but she didn't say anything.

"Nice to meet you all. Ask me anything you want to know," he said, and took a bite of toast.

"What are you? You don't seem to be a ghost or a zombie. You were dead, right?" Eliana asked.

"Yes, I was. As far as I can tell, I'm human, exactly as I was before my death."

"How come?"

"Magic," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Well, that's not very illuminating," Miranda interjected. "We thought you were the guy who knew everything."

He shrugged again and took a drink of orange juice. It tasted like bile in his mouth but he made sure he didn't let it show. He didn't have to look at Faith to know that she was enjoying his discomfort.

"So, you were a Watcher? Before the Council blew up ten years ago?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to be our Watcher?" Eliana asked.

"We'll see," he answered noncommittally. He had to have a talk with Faith and Spike before making any plans or promises.

"But you'll help with our training?"

"Probably."

"You don't look like much of a fighter," Grace commented. "Could you stake Spike?"

Spike snorted.

"If I have to," Wesley answered calmly.

He was all too familiar with the constant threat of working side by side with a vampire. Angel had once told him it was a good thing that he was willing to stake him if he reverted to his evil alter ego. This had been one of the first and most important proofs of confidence Angel had ever showed him.

"Oh, dream on, Percy!" Spike retorted.

"Could you hand me the jam, please," Wesley asked Alex.

The boy obliged every bit as controlled and courteous as Wesley remembered himself to be at that age. He made the effort not to stare at the child. He had read Faith's medical file when she had been his Slayer, and he remembered clearly that it said she could not have children. Who was that boy? He stacked the mystery away for later snooping.

"Thank you," he said when Alex handed him the jar.

He was aware of Faith suddenly tensing up at this brief interaction. Something was definitely strange.

~~~~~~~~~


Faith accompanied Alex and the girls outside to wait for the school bus, leaving Wesley and Spike alone in the kitchen. Wesley stood up and began to clear up the table.

"It's Faith's week," the vampire said, as an explanation for not helping.

There it was again. The routine of an established couple. He went on washing the dishes, waiting for Faith's return. It was time to have the talk.

"Let's go in the office," Faith said poking her head in the kitchen.

Wesley wiped his hands and followed Spike. They went to an office at the top of the stairs that linked the first floor with the large hall where they had resurrected Wesley. He took in more details at this second glance, and guessed that the space served mostly as training room. He climbed the stairs laboriously, fighting exhaustion, nausea and stores of bad memories.

Faith was sitting at the computer and Spike had bent over to read what she was showing him. They looked up when he finally arrived. They had their heads together when they were reading the information that was flooding the computer screen, and now they were almost cheek to cheek looking at him.

They appeared so comfortable with each other that it grated on Wesley's battered soul. The only thing missing from the family picture was Alex. The boy had brown hair, like Faith, and blue eyes, like Spike. The hypothesis that he was their son was going against a double impossibility: she was barren, and he was a vampire. Still, Wesley had seen, hell, he had done far stranger things to discount it.

Spike's hair seemed to glow in the morning sun.

"Necro-tempered glass," Wesley commented. "You're doing well."

"We were very successful demon-hunters," Spike answered.

"Are you staying to help us, Wes?" Faith asked abruptly.

He looked at her, disbelieving.

"Where else could I go?"

"Watchers' Council, Buffy, your parents, anywhere but here..." she said.

"Do any of them need me?" he asked wryly.

"I'm sure they could use you," she said.

"What's going on, Faith? After messing with the immutable laws of nature to get me here, you act like you want me to leave."

"Here's the thing, mate. We need your help, but the catch is we're at odds with pretty much everyone else. When I said we parted ways with the Council, I didn't give you the clearest picture. They hate us. They only talk to us because the Summers' girls trust us. Sort of."

"The point is... we have to be sure you won't run to them. We're isolated as it is."

"I don't want to sound stupid, but you're not evil by any chance, are you?" Wesley asked, only partly joking.

They smiled, but they were taking an uncomfortably long time to answer.

"Riiiight?"

"We don't think we're evil. The Council on the other hand... Well, they may have a different opinion."

"And they still let you guard a Hellmouth?"

"Oh, they check up on us regularly, but as long as we keep down the Apocalypse count, they don't actively act against us."

"They did however manage to steer people away from us. No wiccas, no shamans, no access to Watchers' files, no Watchers, no books."

Wesley looked around the room. There were book laden shelves from floor to ceiling on the two largest walls of the room.

"We stole them," Spike said nonchalantly looking at the books.

"We have more contacts among demons than humans."

Wesley thought back at the file.

"And all this started because of the girls?" he asked, disbelieving.

"Yes. They found a way to measure Slayer strength, and the ones who were considered too weak were to be stripped of all Slayer abilities." Spike said, his voice lacking any trace of his usual flippancy.

"Like anyone could go back to being normal after seeing what's really out there," Faith added.

"And you two decided to do something about it?"

"Yes. And for the past six years we did the best we could. But things are changing. Something big's coming."

"Do you really think that no one will help you if something really bad happens?"

"They won't believe us. They never do. Last time there was a threat like this, we lost almost everyone. All the girls that were training with us, and Graham – Riley Finn's colleague in the Initiative, and..." Faith's voice broke.

Wesley saw Spike's hand disappear under Faith's hair. She seemed to relax under the familiar feel of the vampire's hand on her neck.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but the last Apocalypse I remember, I died."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but if you die this time, I'm bringing you back and kill you myself," Faith's voice had lost its frailty.

"I'll keep that in mind. Until then, what do you expect of me?"

"Help us teach the girls. Train them. Do whatever the fuck it takes to keep them alive."

Spike slapped her gently on the back of her head.

"You said the f-word!" he chided.

Faith elbowed him in the gut playfully.

"I want to read everything you've got about... everything," he said, interrupting their all too cozy interaction.

"This is all we have. You get reading 'til the girls come back. I have to get into town now. If you have any questions, ask Spike."

"Actually, I gotta catch up on my beauty sleep anyway. You can have the office all to yourself and I'll take questions later," Spike said, and was out the door before he could say anything.

~~~~~~~~


Wesley felt a sudden pain in his stomach. He read two more chapters before he stopped to investigate. He realized it was hunger. He decided to look through one more file before going into the kitchen.

The drawer was full of files. He let his long fingers dance through them. He stopped when he saw a cover with no label. He took it out, on an impulse. All the papers were in Faith's hand writing.

My darling son,

If you read this letter it means I died before having the conversation I promised you since you were six. Even then, I had already lived many years over the life expectancy of a Slayer. My deepest regret is that I'm not with you anymore. You have been my light, my joy and my hope from the moment you came into my life. I love you so much, Alex. I love you more than I have even imagined possible before having you."

Wesley slammed the file shut. That was not something he was supposed to have seen. He put it back exactly how it had been, knowing perfectly well that he was going to go back to it someday.


To be continued…