Wherein Buffy and Quinn bond, and Wesley confronts his father.

Previous parts can be found here.


Chapter 25

“Because I do not hope to turn again/Because I do not hope/Because I do not hope to turn/Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope/I no longer strive to strive towards such things/(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)/Why should I mourn/The vanished power of the usual reign…Because I know that time is always time/And place is always and only place/And what is actual is actual only for one time/And only for one place/I rejoice that things are as they are and/I renounce the blessèd face/And renounce the voice/Because I cannot hope to turn again/Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something/Upon which to rejoice/And pray to God to have mercy on us…” ~T.S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”

“We have a meeting set up,” Wesley confirmed. “In a few hours. We’ll have dinner with my parents, and I’ll try to find a way to get him alone.”

“Are you going to try convincing him that you want back in to the Council?” Spike asked.

“I don’t think that’s even a possibility.” Wesley rubbed his forehead wearily. “He’ll demand that I cut ties with you.”

“So tell him you will, tell him we had a fight.”

“He’s not going to believe me, Spike.”

“He will if you sell it.”

“Spike—”

Willow came up beside him and pulled the phone out of his hand. “Hey, Spike.”

Wesley couldn’t hear Spike’s response, and he collapsed on the bed. After telling Willow what his father had done to him, he hadn’t been able to sleep. It was like opening a door that he’d slammed shut and locked a long time ago.

When Willow hung up the phone, she turned to Wesley. “I’m going to arrange a meeting with your father myself,” she announced. “You’ll need to keep your mom entertained while we speak privately tonight.”

“What?” Wesley sat up straight. “Why?”

She ran a hand over his cheek. “Because your parents know you, and they’ll know if you’re lying. They don’t know me, and I don’t care what they think of me. You still do.”

He hated to admit it, but she was right. “And Tara?”

“She’ll back me up. Your dad won’t recognize her. I was thinking maybe we could convince him to meet us in the café downstairs, and when he gets woozy, we’ll invite him upstairs until it passes.”

“And why would he be woozy?

“Because either I’ll slip something in his tea, or Tara will cast a spell, whichever works better at the time.”

Wesley frowned. “So, you have your plan all set?”

“Do you have a better one?”

He put his head in his hands. “No.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Wes. That’s why we’re here, to take some of the burden.”

“You have to carry my weight now?” Wesley asked, angry. “That bastard stole my childhood from me, and now he’s robbing me of my revenge?”

“This isn’t about revenge.”

“It is for me.” The confession felt as though it had been ripped out of his lips. “Bloody hell.”

Willow snaked an arm around his waist. “I knew that.”

“I can’t forgive him for what he did to me.”

“Neither can I.” Willow rose, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I need to get changed, and Tara’s going to be here in a few minutes.”

Wesley nodded, feeling helpless as he always did when faced with his father. He had hoped that this trip would alleviate that; by getting some of his own back, subjecting his father to a taste of his own medicine, he would be able to move on from that period of his life.

And yet he felt himself balking now, refusing to do what it took to make this plan work. Willow had to be the one to step up to the plate. The self-loathing rose up and nearly choked him. He was a coward, and his father had been right about him.

Wesley just wished that it was over and done, and he could put it all behind him.

~~~~~

“Here’s one,” Quinn announced, tossing a book on the “keep” pile. “Looks like there’s something in there about creating serious weaponry, anyway.”

Buffy sighed as she shut her book. “Nothing in that one. When was Willow going to call?”

“They know to call here, Buffy,” Spike said soothingly. “We just have to wait. They’re seven hours ahead.”

Buffy hated being patient at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. “What if the truth spell doesn’t work? Or they get caught? We’re not there to back them up.”

“It had to happen sometime.” Spike’s total reasonableness was pissing her off. “Let’s focus on finding something that’s going to help us create a weapon to kill Glory. We have an appointment with Robert tomorrow.”

“I don’t like leaving town with Glory running around,” Buffy grumbled.

Quinn cleared her throat. “I’ll be here.”

Buffy winced. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I shouldn’t have—”

“I’m not a vampire, and I’m not a Slayer,” she said. “I get it.”

“No, really, I’m glad you’re sticking around. I wouldn’t have agreed to leave otherwise.” Buffy smiled, then slammed her book closed. “This isn’t working, Spike. We’re not going to find the solution here.”

Spike gave her a look that told Buffy he was nearly out of patience himself. “Then why don’t you take Quinn, and you can burn off some energy. I’ll stay here.”

She looked at the Watcher, who shrugged. “Yeah, sure. More looking through books will probably make my head explode.”

They were out the door in five minutes, and Buffy heaved a huge sigh of relief. The books weren’t taking her mind off of her worry, but a trip to the mall might.

“We’re going shopping?” Quinn objected. “Shouldn’t we be doing something—productive?”

Buffy flashed her a grin. “This is productive. First, Mom and Giles are at work, Tommy is at daycare, and Dawn is at school. Second, I’ve caught a few enterprising vampires at the mall during daylight hours.”

“Both very fair points,” Quinn admitted. “And you need to get your mind off of things.”

“I do. I know it’s stupid, and Willow and the others are more than capable, it’s just—”

“You’re the Slayer, and you want to be where the action is. I get that.”

Buffy suddenly remembered that Quinn had been a potential. “Do you wish it had been you and not your sister?”

Quinn blinked. “You don’t pull your punches, do you?”

“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.” Buffy glanced over at her. “You have to know that I didn’t trust you.”

“But you do now?”

“You’ve proven yourself.” She smiled. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Quinn ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah, I do wish it had been me. Brynn wanted to be a vet, you know? She loves animals of all kinds, and she was already getting tired of the demon stuff.”

“Tell me about it,” Buffy murmured, remembering her initial reaction to Giles and his insistence that she had a duty to perform. “I had no idea about being the Slayer until Merrick showed up.”

“You didn’t have any training before you were Called?”

“I had no idea. One day, when I was fifteen, Merrick just shows up out of nowhere, tells me I’m the Slayer, and I have a destiny.” Buffy sniffed. “I hate destiny.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Buffy glanced at her. “How do you feel about shoes?”

Quinn raised a dark eyebrow, then smiled. “I have very positive feelings about shoes.”

~~~~~

Willow forced herself to eat as though nothing was wrong, as though she wasn’t nervous as all hell. She had to somehow convince Roger Wyndam-Pryce that she wasn’t content in Sunnydale, and that she thought it would be better for Wesley to go back to the Council.

She had never been good at lying, but Wesley needed her to do this.

Wesley was engaging his mother in conversation at the moment, making her laugh at some story he’d told. Willow had caught enough to know that he was spinning a story that had nothing to do with any touchy subjects, like Spike or Buffy.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said to Roger in a low voice.

“About what?” He matched her tone, leaning in closer.

Willow schooled her expression into one of annoyance. “It’s about Wesley. I’m tired of him always rushing into danger, but he doesn’t think that he has another choice. If he could get his job back with the Council, I could get out of Sunnydale, and I could stop worrying about him. A researcher’s position, perhaps?”

Roger’s expression sharpened, and Willow could see the avarice in his eyes. “And what would you give me in exchange?”

“I think I know where Buffy put the Key.” Willow swallowed the bile that rose at the thought of betraying her friend. “I can tell you where it is.” She smiled. “But not here.”

“Of course.”

“There’s a café in the hotel. Shall we meet there at seven tomorrow morning?”

He nodded. “I’ll see you then.”

Willow met Wesley’s eyes across the table. He patted his mother’s hand. “I think we should be going. Willow had some sightseeing that she wanted to do tomorrow.”

She knew the signal for what it was. Willow still needed to work out the sleeping draught with Tara, the one that would go into Roger’s tea, and they needed to be sure they had both the truth spell and the spell of forgetting ready to go. If Tara hadn’t been able to find the Lethe’s bramble they needed, they would have to do a search themselves, after Wesley’s parents had gone.

And they still needed to call Spike and give him an update.

“I’m still jetlagged.” This wasn’t a lie, and she knew that she looked tired, which gave verisimilitude to her statement.

They said their goodbyes. Willow shook hands with Roger and kissed Rose on the cheek, feeling soft skin and noting faded blue eyes that probably been as bright as Wesley’s once upon a time. She kept the smile on her face steady with some effort as they welcomed her into the family with varying degrees of sincerity.

Something in Roger’s face told Willow that he was still suspicious of their motives, and might be expecting a trick. She would have to be very cautious at the meeting, but that was what Tara was there for—so she could have backup not easily recognizable by Roger.

~~~~~

Tara thought that she’d probably had the best deal of the three of them. While Willow and Wesley had been stuck meeting with those people Wesley had judged most interested in knowing he was engaged, she had been free to explore London. No one was supposed to know that she was there with the two of them, and so Wesley had given her some tips on the best places to go as a tourist, and Tara had spent two days exploring London.

A year ago, Tara wouldn’t have been brave enough to go by herself, never mind that she’d moved across the country to escape her family. That had been a move of desperation; this was pure pleasure.

She’d nearly worn her shoes out, traveling all over the city, seeing the sights that Wesley had recommended, collecting the ingredients they needed for the truth spell and memory spell.

And now she was going to head back to the hotel to soak in a hot bath with room service. Tara was loving this trip, but it was about to get a lot more serious.

When she opened her door, Willow was waiting for her, sitting on the single bed with her legs crossed and her laptop open in front of her. “How was dinner?” Tara asked, immediately concerned.

Willow shrugged. “It went as well as can be expected. I gave Wesley some of that tea to help him sleep. He was pretty wound up.”

Tara winced in sympathy. “Families can do that to you. Are we prepared for tomorrow?”

“We have an early meeting,” she confirmed. “I think that Roger might suspect something.”

Tara plopped down on the bed next to Willow, considering their options. “I’m assuming that you don’t want to call it off.”

“We can’t. We’re too far into it.”

Tara grabbed the tote bag with her mother’s books. There were a lot of spells she’d found in there that she hadn’t seen referenced anywhere else. “Here. I can do a spell to make him more receptive, more pliable. That will work better, I think, given what you’ve told me about him. From there, we get him upstairs and do the truth spell, then we do the memory spell.”

Willow raised her eyebrows. “Do you think we could maybe turn him into a toad when this is all over?”

“The Council would come looking for him,” Tara said practically. “This plan is only going to be successful if they don’t find out what we did.”

Willow let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. Be practical.”

“Did Wes tell you about what his dad did to him?”

Hurt flashed across Willow’s face. “You knew?”

“I guessed,” Tara corrected her. “We talked about fathers long before mine actually showed up in Sunnydale, and he’s said a few other things that gave me a pretty good idea of what went on.”

“I knew it was bad,” Willow said quietly. “But not how bad. He shut Wesley in a closet. For three days.”

Their eyes met, and Tara put an arm around Willow’s shoulders. “It sucks to watch the people you love hurting.”

“Tomorrow isn’t going to be easy.”

Tara shook her head. “No, it won’t.”

~~~~~

Wesley paced the length of the room nervously. Whatever Willow had given him to help him sleep the night before had prevented the nightmares he’d expected after seeing his father. He hated that Willow was meeting with Roger alone, however, and he hated the fact that Tara was the one to play backup.

But if he went down to the café, it would give the game away.

Glancing at the clock, which read half past seven, Wesley ran through the plan in his head once again. Willow would meet with Roger to try and sell him on how much she wanted Wesley to get his position with the Council back because she wanted out of Sunnydale, and that she wanted him out of the line of fire. That story would fit nicely with his father’s vision of him as a bumbling idiot.

Once Willow had him on the hook, Tara would do her spell, and they would bring Roger upstairs, where he had the truth spell ready. It was a piece of cake, as Willow often said.

He just wanted this over with already.

A brief knock came on the door, and Wesley quickly opened it. “Come in.” Willow and Tara entered sideways, supporting Roger’s weight between them. “Is everything okay?”

“Your fiancée wants me to offer you a job,” Roger replied jovially. “A researcher’s position, which would suit you. You might not be good at much else, but you’re a competent researcher.”

Wesley winced at the backhanded compliment, thinking that it was possibly the nicest thing his father had ever said to him. “I don’t want a researcher’s position,” he replied, watching as Tara and Willow sat him down in one of the two straight-backed chairs in the room. “I’m happy in Sunnydale.”

“With that vampire?” Roger scoffed. “Fighting demons? You’re nothing more than a burden there, Wesley. It’s time to grow up.”

Tara spoke two quiet words that Wesley didn’t quite catch, and Roger slumped sideways. “I’m sorry, Wesley,” she said. “I should have performed the spell faster.”

“It’s not your fault.” He forced a smile. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.” Wesley regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, as both Tara and Willow had identical pitying expressions.

Wesley grabbed the handcuffs to secure his father to the chair. “Never mind. What did you do to him?”

“We basically made him drunk,” Willow admitted. “We thought it would make him easier to deal with.

“Do you want one of us to do the truth spell?” Tara asked.

Wesley shook his head. “No. I want to do this.”

“He’s all yours,” Tara said. “I’ll wake him when you’re ready.”

He had performed a truth spell before, and while under more pressure—at least in theory. For the moment, Wesley tried to forget that he was facing his father.

The words came easily, and when the spell was in place, he nodded to Tara, and she took the sleep spell off. When Roger opened his eyes, Wesley could see that whatever magic Tara had worked to make his father more amiable was gone. Roger’s eyes were hot with a hatred Wesley had never seen aimed at him as his father tested his bonds.

“What have you done, Wesley?”

“I’m giving you a taste of your own medicine, Dad.” Wesley spat the word out. “Were you involved in putting the geas on Spike?”

“Yes.” The surprise showed on Roger’s face immediately after he answered the question. “What have you done?”

“You have to tell the truth.” Wesley smiled cruelly. “And I’ve made it slightly easier for you.”

“Wesley—”

“What do you want with the Key?” Wesley asked before Roger could finish his question.

Roger glared impotently, and the realization that his father was at his mercy filled Wesley with a cold satisfaction. “There is power there. We want it.”

“Why? What can you do with it?”

“We can control worlds.”

“What do you mean by that?” Wesley pressed.

“The blood of the Key can open doors to other dimensions.”

“Do you want to expand your base of power?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Other organizations have done so.”

“Is there another reason?”

“We would no longer need the Slayer.”

That was the bombshell that Wesley had been waiting for. He knew that there had to be more to it than just power—the Council already had plenty of that. Wesley had been certain that the Council had a bigger goal.

“What is the Council without the Slayer?” It was a rhetorical question to which Wesley wasn’t expecting an answer.

Roger offered a thin smile. “We are free of the constraints training and shepherding headstrong brats requires.”

Wesley swallowed his anger, seeing Willow and Tara do the same. “And the Knights?”

“A tool for our use.”

“To what end?”

“They will keep the Slayer busy, or find the Key for us.”

“And what other tools do you have in your arsenal?” Wesley asked.

Roger’s eyes glowed with an unholy fire. “We have sent our best fixers.”

Wesley glanced at Tara and Willow to see if they had any questions, but both women shook their heads. “Were you ever proud of me?” Wesley blurted out, unable to resist the urge to ask a question he’d had since he was very young.

“Not since the day you were born.”

Wesley felt the words as a blow, and he hissed out a breath. Tara whispered the words that would put Roger to sleep. “That’s enough.”

Willow put her arms around him, offering comfort, but Wesley felt numb, unreachable.

“Wesley—” she began.

He cut her off. “I don’t have a father.” Meeting Tara’s eyes with difficulty, he asked, “Can you handle the memory spell?”

“We’ll take care of it, Wesley,” she promised.

And he left the room, his only thought to get as far away as possible.