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 Fading Away" ("Angel"), 10 after "Chosen" (BtVS)

Beta: Dave

Chapter 5


Wesley slung the baby's overnight bag over his shoulder, and walked out of the Hyperion Hotel holding the child in his arms. When he stepped out, he was on the boardwalk outside his old apartment. He crossed the street into the park. When the blade slashed his throat the pain incapacitated him. He couldn't breathe, couldn't hold the child. The baby fell from his arms and on his way down Wesley saw it wasn't an infant, but a nine year old boy. Alex. Alex kept falling. Wesley stretched out his hands to catch him, but his fingers, red and slick with his own blood never reached the child. Alex kept falling, falling through the splitting ground, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth.

Everything faded to black and Wesley felt the soft weight of the pillow over his face pushing him into nothingness. His perspective swiveled and he was suddenly watching the scene from above, but it wasn't Angel's massive, dark figure helping him on his way to hell.

"Wesley, wake up!" a commanding voice yanked him out of the nightmare.

"Faith!" Wesley called out gasping for air.

"Do you have anything other than nightmares?" Spike asked, once Wesley was awake.

"Guess I shouldn't have slept in the office after all," he said groping for his glasses.He put them on, and ran his fingers through his hair. "What time is it?"

"Late. Or early. Almost morning."

"Dawn," Wesley said, and noticed the vampire react. "I remember her," he went on, watching Spike more carefully this time. "Dawn," he repeated the name. "I remember the same events with and without her. You know about the memory alteration, I remember both pasts. You see, I broke an Orlon Window once. And now I remember. Two timelines. Two sets of memories. Two people. One created from pure energy, one concealed."

"What are you talking about?" Spike asked worried.

"You know that your early memories of Dawn were fabricated by those monks. Angel did the reverse. He loved someone so much, he put all our souls at stake, put us all in the path of such terrible a darkness..."

"Wes, are you all right, mate?"

Wesley looked at the vampire trying to clear his mind. There was no point in talking about Connor. 'The Destroyer' would've been such an asset. But he had no way to reach him in time. A trip to Los Angeles was out of the question.

"You look like you need a coffee. Or a bottle of scotch," Spike said.

"Yes. Let's go for coffee."

"Kitchen's busted though," Spike said when they were going downstairs. "Too bad there isn't a Mystical Cleaning Crew we could call in. You think Superman ever goes back to help the townfolk with the debris? 'Hello, good people of Metropoliswould you like me to throw this huge hunk of doomsday device into outer space?' It's the sort of thing he'd do. That cape-wearing-nappy-loving ponce!"

"Superman is a fictional character," Wesley said.

"You know there's a town named Smallville in Indiana?" Spike said.

"He's still not real."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

"They make movies about vampires, and we're real. Superman could be real, too. Hey, maybe he's young. In high school or something."

"Or maybe he's not real."

On this note, they entered the kitchen where Faith was sweeping the floor. They had buried the demons in the backyard before getting to work on the last one, but when Wesley had left the kitchen a few hours earlier it was still plastered with blood and gore.

"We're gonna need new furniture," Faith said. "The fridge and the microwave oven are still ok, though."

"Faith, haven't you slept at all?"

"Also, we need a new door and we have to do something about that big hole in the back wall."

"The coffeemaker OK?" Wesley asked.

"The mug was in the washer, but I think that the machine got some blood spatter. I didn't get to that side of the room yet."

"That's all right. I drank blood once. And there was no coffee in it," Wesley said and went to put on the coffee.

"When did you drink blood?" Spike asked, amused.

"This one time, I pretended to be Angel for a case."

The three of them fell into a semi-comfortable cleaning routine.

"Do you think they'll try again?" Spike asked, pulling a blood spattered cupboard off the wall.

"Odds are they won't, but we should still be very cautious. I want to start training the girls," Wesley said.

"OK," Faith agreed.

Wesley was surprised that she didn't seem the least bit offended by his suggestion. He had half expected that she would feel undermined or downright insulted.

"You've done a good job with them, but they rely too much on their Slayer strength. Not only they don't have complete Slayer capabilities, but that's never enough. They should learn how to fight even without their powers. There was a test at the end of a Slayer's training, the Cruciamentum, when the Slayer had to face a vampire without her strength."

"I never took this test."

"I wasn't your Watcher long enough."

"Buffy told me about it. It's a horrible thing to do to the girls, Wes," Faith's tone was threatening. "Not even the Council uses it anymore."

"They have gone soft."

"Who do you think you are? Quentin Travers?"

"You said you wanted them to stay alive."

"I heard that some Slayers died during Cruciamentum," Spike said.

"The oldest known Slayer passed it, and she's still alive and kicking arse. And, Faith, I think you should intensify Alex's training."

"I was wondering if I should send him from the Hellmouth. Somewhere safe. He hasn't seen his godfather for some time now."

The note of uncertainty in her voice was worrying Wesley. He had to put an end to any doubts she might have.

"He's safest with you," Wesley said reassuringly. "Who is his godfather?" he asked, suddenly curious.

"Xander Harris," Spike answered, with a touch of contempt in his voice.

~~~~~~~~

Early that morning

When the girls came down for breakfast Spike went up to bed, and Faith was rummaging through the remnants of their supplies to find something that had survived the battle. The Slayers were showing little of the damage they had taken the night before. Wesley was more grateful than ever for the famed Slayer healing. He was even more relieved when the barrage of questions started, reassuring him that things were not as dire as he had feared.

"So, what did they want?" Eliana asked abruptly.

"Two things: to kill all of you and to get their hands on a map Faith found a few years ago. They intended to free an ancient demon trapped somewhere in the mountain."

"Why did they attack Alex?" Miranda asked.

"They were under orders to kill everyone in the house so the vampire who sent them could come in to look for the map. Faith and Spike dusted a dozen vampires who were waiting for all of us to die so they could enter."

"Was the one who sent them among the dusted?"

"Yes," Wesley answered Eliana's question without hesitation. Faith had assured him that she had recognized and dusted the old vampire their unfortunate hostage had described the night before.

"Still, it's a good thing that summer holiday starts tomorrow, isn't it? We should prepare for what's coming."

"Yes. And from now on, I'm going to be in charge of your training," Wesley said.

"You decided to be our Watcher after all," Miranda said with a smile.

Wesley was carefully hiding his surprise. They were all letting him take charge as if he had done something to deserve their trust. He was not a champion. He was a cold, calculating bastard, and not even Spike or Faith were challenging his decisions. Then again, knowing the two of them, they had not enjoyed being the adults of the group. Having a father figure around had probably been one of the reasons they had brought him back in the first place, even if they weren't aware of it.

"Good morning!" Alex said cheerfully when he came in the kitchen. "Anything left to eat? I'm starving." The boy sat across the table from Wesley beaming, and his eyes were sparkling with such unadulterated admiration, that even the worried Englishman could not help an awkward smile in return.

~~~~~~~


A week later

After an unusually peaceful week, the household was settling into a new, though still tense routine. Strangely enough, this routine was revolving around Wesley.

From his place in the corner of the large room, Alex was watching Wesley train the young Slayers. The child was so quiet that Wesley sometimes forgot he was there at all. He was therefore pleasantly surprised when the boy attempted during his own evening training sessions the moves Wesley had practiced with the Slayers. He had Faith's flexibility and quick reflexes, and yet he also had an amazing ability to absorb details and advices and then put them into practice accurately, and at the same time to combine them in intelligent and novel ways. As it happened almost every time Wesley's attention wavered from the exercise at hand, the Slayer he was sparring with managed to land more and heavier hits on him.

"I need a break," Wesley said, accepting Grace's hand to get up from the floor.

He sat down hard on a wooden bench and rested his back against the iron maiden.

"Do you want some tea, Wesley?" Alex asked.

Wesley opened his eyes and looked at the boy standing in front of him with a cup of hot tea in each hand.

"Yes, thank you," he said and took the proffered cup with a tired, yet sincerely grateful smile.

"Not at all," Alex said, sitting down next to him.

Wesley noticed the unmistakable trace of English accent in the boy's voice, but did not comment on it aloud. He studied Alex discreetly as he drank his tea in companionable silence. He was still trying to identify the air of familiarity about the boy. Wesley was fairly certain he had been able to isolate the traits he had inherited from Faith – Alex looked a lot like his mother, with the glaring exception of the blue eyes. He also had her slender frame, her energy and her fighting spirit. But the maturity of his way of thinking, his unyielding patience, and his willingness to learn, not just from his own mistakes, but to be taught, his eye for details, his propensity for languages... hard as he tried to fight the absurd notion, Wesley could not help constantly see himself in the boy.


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To be continued...