Author ~ ros_fod ~ journal
Title ~ Reassembly
Rating ~ PG-13
Timeline ~ Everything up to and through Home.
Author's notes ~Challenge:
Story written for ~ Jane Davitt
Two requirements ~ Wesley & Someone from Wesley's past comes to visit
Two restrictions (optional) ~ Wes can't die
Spoiler level ~ unresticted
Rating level ~ NC-17
Reassembly
When it rained towards the end of August, Southland residents started nervously joking that it was the final sign of the Apocalypse. Even the quinquagenerian weatherman on Channel 7 was beginning to look a bit uncertain. People at the office scoffed at this, of course, in the confident tones of those who knew for certain that the next apocalypse wasn't scheduled to occur for at least another year.
No, the unusual humidity was just another factor of a rapidly changing global environment, both the LA Times and the Orange County Register were quick to inform us. It took me some time to realize that they meant to be reassuring. Ice-caps were melting somewhere in the artic, but it wouldn't affect anyone's power-lunch plans at the Ivy.
Somewhere in Borneo, a meleageria daphnis flaps his wings…and the AC goes down in UCLA's Powell Library. Which meant that I was sweating through my dress shirt as I sat in one of the Powell's back room during the zenith of a Saturday afternoon.
Wolfram & Hart's abundantly stocked literary resources lay in between the bindings of five similarly aged kid covers, which were themselves located in a temperature controlled environment that could only be described as "pleasant." Short of a nuclear detonation, the firm's AC would go on working, with nary a glitch, until the end of the world finally blessed us with its arrival, and perhaps even after that.
The firm's 'library' worked in a similarly hiccup-free fashion. Additionally, there were no reference catalogs to futz with, no interminable searches through unwieldy stacks of all the wrong books. The mystical texts at my disposal ran on a fully automatic, voice-activated system. If they had come with GPS and power windows, the would have rivaled the latest fleet of German luxury vehicles.
And using them was about as satisfying as having someone else shag your lover while you got a full night's rest.
In the event of a time constraint or other extenuating circumstances that required expedited action, I usually chose to rely on Wolfram & Hart's generosity. But those cases were rare. In fact, cases were rare, full stop. So, in the downtime, I often found myself in the Powell's Special Collections department, thumbing through the thin pages of a dusty tome, in search of answers to a question that even the firm's vast resources and financial backing had proven no match against.
***
I leaned back in the faux-vintage chair and removed my glasses to clear my vision. Dull pain followed in the wake of my pressing fingers as I sought to relieve my eyes of some of the tension pulsing behind them. I stopped only when bright flares began to go off beneath my closed lids.
I heaved a heavy sigh which the rows of packed bookcases around me slowly absorbed. In front of me, eleven texts lay scattered and akimbo on the desk's wide surface. Opened and waiting, all of them, with the words on the pages seeming to taunt me. The characters shifted within my bleary vision, and sometimes I could swear that they changed to different words, different meanings, right in front of my eyes.
These were, give or take a volume, the same collective of books I had searched through repeatedly over the course of the last month. Any level of optimism I maintained rested cautiously on the potential for incompetence. For the first time in my life, the thought that I had perhaps mistranslated a text buoyed my hopes.
I slid the thin legs of my glasses over the base of my ears, and the words sharpened along their edges.
"Comas, Mystically Induced," I translated the title of the section in question aloud from the Sanskrit. I picked up my pen again and pressed the tip to my notebook in a prayer.
Some time passed, and several useless paragraphs later, I was back to harassing my closed eyelids. The shuffle of footsteps and mumbling voices sounded to my left, and I sat upright with some degree of surprise. The Special Collections department was rare to see visitors, and certainly not in groups. And most assuredly not during the summer holiday. I peered around the periphery of one of the bookcases, to see that "group" was hardly an appropriate moniker. Just three people, in fact, but making a considerably elevated amount of noise for their numbers.
Two male students and their female companion entered the room from the entrance off the main corridor. From my position at the desk angled behind the bookcases, I could see them in slivers and glimpses , but they hadn't yet spotted me. One of the young men lead the meandering charge, with his two mates tagging behind him, embroiled in a rather heated discussion. They seemed to be arguing about the military campaign in the Middle East, but it was difficult to tell for certain. Hardly a sentence was completed before it was interrupted, and it seemed a miracle that they could understand each other at all.
As a non-participant, the young man in front began to wander further away from the discussion, if it could be termed such a thing, and towards the reference shelves. At which point the young lady raised her palm towards her debate partner in the universal gesture of "shut up."
"Sean, let's go," she called out to the more taciturn member of her set. She waved her signaling hand in front of her flushed face, and managed to generate enough of a breeze to stir her forelocks, which were dampened from the library's overheated state. The object of her dissatisfaction didn't turn around, but picked up one of the books he'd been contemplating instead.
"You guys go ahead," he replied distractedly. The low tones in the reply surprised me into giving him a more scrutinizing look. I could only see a portion of the side of his face, but he didn't look much older than fifteen, no matter how much his voice seemed to belie my deduction.
There was a stretch of silence, during which time I assumed his two friends were trying to come to terms with Sean's illogical and unhealthy interest in spending more time in the library.
"What're you gonna do? Spend the whole day in here?" The incredulity in her voice was enough to make me smile. As someone who often spent his whole day within these walls, I idly wondered if I should take offence.
"We've been here for five minutes," Sean calmly pointed out.
"And that," the last member of their trio responded, "is five minutes too long. Listen -we're not in high school anymore. You can stop being a nerd, already."
Sean emitted a low chuckle in response to the genial ribbing.
"I promise, we'll hit all the hot spots where all the cool kids hang out…later. I'm just gonna spend a few more minutes in here. I'll catch up, if you wanna split," he offered.
There was a long exchange of some protesting, followed by acquiescent murmuring, and then I heard exiting footsteps followed by blessed silence.
So Sean's friends had convinced him to leave this hot-house for better times someplace else after all. Good friends, then. He was lucky.
The distraction over, I turned back to my books and felt the jovial atmosphere fade. I was lucky, too, I reminded myself. I was also blessed with good friends. And one of them needed my help to wake up from a coma that was pulling her closer to a permanently catatonic state every day. Somewhere in these garbled and often indecipherable passages lay the key towards waking Cordelia. I didn't care what the firm's team of expert translators told me. There had to be a way.
Looking at my notes, I felt the heavy weariness that so often preceded a growing sense of hopelessness. I wanted to lay my head down on the surface of the desk and give up. Or perhaps to press the precious, wrinkled pages to my chest and vent my fear and frustration in a long, shameful surge of tears, right here, in this public place.
With a slight scoff at my thoughts, I chose to forgo the melodrama and took the more practical route of a good stretch instead. Rolling my head in a slow circle, I heard the pleasing 'pop' as some of the tension left my neck, then rotated my head all the way to the left, extending the sore muscles as best I could.
And that's when I saw Sean, standing not ten feet away - watching me with an inscrutable expression on his face.
I was startled enough to rear back, and the chair groaned as it tried to accommodate my full weight on just its one side. Instinctively, I shot a quick glance at the window, to assure myself that it was indeed still daylight outside. Shaking my head a little, I turned back to see that his expression had shifted into an easily recognizable brand of benign humor, and no wonder. He's just a kid, I berated myself. A human kid. Probably wears some kind of fancy basketball trainers that keep him from squeaking on the court and cost more than my monthly rent.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he offered in apology, and I sensed the sincerity in his voice.
"That's all right." I assured him as I leaned over to casually flip the more obviously questionable books closed. I supposed I could always profess to researching 'mythology' if pressed to answer for them, but I was in no mood to deal with a stranger's curiosity right now.
Thankfully, he'd lost interest in both me and my books, and had returned to perusing the references on the shelves instead.
It was my turn to watch him surreptitiously as he traced the embossed titles on the covers here and there. Thin and pale, he was almost as rare a specimen in this town as the copy of Chisolm's Anthology resting under my hand. His shaggy hair fell in front of his face as he bent to peer closely at something that had caught his interest. Likely an out of towner, then. Even secondary school students in LA tended to be clean cut, tanned and toned, leaving the grungier portions of the style spectrum to their more northern counterparts.
I thought his inquisitiveness might reflect the tendencies of a born scholar. Or a born hunter, I amended, as he continued to move down the row without making even the slightest noise.
He looked up to find me still watching him. I winced, but he seemed unperturbed by my rudeness. Instead he smiled at me with an open demeanor that I gathered bespoke of a life that needn't involve a fear of strangers.
I thought grimly that that sort of trust would eventually end up getting him hurt, or dead, in this town.
Sean had stopped his inspection of the books, and now stood leaning languidly against one of the bookcases. He crossed his arms loosely in front of his chest, and took in my no doubt ragged appearance.
A slow smile tugged at the edges of his mouth, and he ducked his head a little under my interested gaze.
"I have a confession to make," he finally said.
I smiled back. What could somebody like him possibly be guilty of? Even at the Council's academy, we'd had our share of ne'er-do-wells, and he definitely didn't fit the type. After a moment, I concluded that he must be skipping a class. And he'd mistaken me for a professor, probably.
Leaning back, I began to appreciate the situation a bit more. It felt good, to converse with a stranger without the specter of demons and the pervading spoil of evil between us.
And it was atypical for my daily rituals to include someone his age. Which was, I realized, probably the same as Buffy's when I'd first met her.
I became conscious of the fact that I hadn't said anything for quite some time. Sean didn't press, though, and unexpectedly, I started to feel the beginnings of what could be affection for this young man I'd only just met. "You've some over-due fines?" I joked in answer to his last statement.
His smile grew a little wider, and he seemed to relax a bit. Funny - I hadn't noticed that he'd tensed up.
"I thought I might find you here" he admitted, shyly.
Internally, I groaned at the thought that this was just another instance of work following me around, after all. He didn't fit into Wolfram & Hart's normal client profile, but I'd seen stranger things. And then some.
Sean pointed. "These are the same books you were looking through the last time," he said casually.
Deliberately, he raised his eyes to look into mine and I could make out a shuttered quality to his expression that hadn't been there before.
Despite the heat, I felt a cold shiver of warning travel down my back.
"How could you possibly know that?" I made sure my tone was sharp.
"It's not a big deal. I just…have great eyesight," he assured me in a measured tone that I suspected he had practiced and relayed often.
At this point, he started to make his way, very slowly, towards the desk. There was less than seven feet separating us, now.
The reassuring scrape of the armed devise wrapped around my wrist gave me some comfort, but I still shifted slightly in my chair to make sure my weight was balanced properly, in case I should need to move quickly.
Sean inched closer, but he wasn't really looking at me. In fact, he seemed more fascinated by the books.
Perhaps he was just nosing around for an interesting read, after all.
"Well…and that would be fine," I said, experimentally. "Perhaps even commendable. Except that I most certainly do not recall ever seeing you before."
Whatever the game was, I was growing tired of it. At this point, he was either going to give me a reasonable explanation, or he was going to assault me. Either way, I just wanted it over with.
Focused as I was on an potential attack on my bodily person, I didn't realize he was reaching out to pick up the copy of Reinhardt's Compendium until it was almost too late. I snatched the text out of his hand, and jumped up at the same time. Grabbing his wrist, I twisted his arm and turned our bodies, slamming him face down on the desk with enough force for some of the larger stacks of books to topple over. I pressed his upper body to the surface with my other hand at his neck, and he squirmed as I tightened my hold. He cried out in alarm, and I knew the panic I heard was real.
I also knew that I had been able to subdue him far too easily. He most definitely wasn't a vampire. He wasn't even a threat.
I twisted his arm a little further, and pressed down on him a little harder than I ought to have done. He made a small sound of pain, and his body trembled beneath my hands, but he didn't try to fight back.
Having gotten my answer, I abruptly let him go, and stepped several paces back from the table. I fought to bring my breathing under control. Bleakly, I realized that this was the most excitement I'd had in months.
Sean emitted a low moan and pressed his freed hands on the desk to hoist himself slowly back up. Turning around, he faced me with something that was satisfyingly close to uncertainty.
I could see bruises forming already along the pale skin where he was rubbing his sore wrist. I began to feel some regret at my rough behavior.
Sighing, I sat back down and took another try at reigning in the situation.
"You don't know who I am." It was a statement, and I knew it as fact. But I still wanted to hear the words. "Do you?"
"No," he grimaced. Then he raised his chin in an impressively haughty gesture. "But I'm interested in finding out."
With a small chuff of impatience, I picked up the Reinhardt and used it to gesture towards the other texts laying on the desk.
"Let me do you the favor of clueing you in right now. You see these books?" He didn't try for bravado this time, but nodded slowly in answer.
"These are ancient texts - texts that contain information for mystical phenomenon throughout history. My friend was attacked by a demon, and now she's in a coma as a result of the injuries she sustained during that attack. I'm using these texts in a currently still fruitless attempt to find a way to break the spell."
I sat back and stared him down, daring him to call me crazy. Or to laugh.
He looked back at me, with that unnervingly open expression. He seemed to be calculating the odds that I was joking, and I set my own expression into a grim resolve.
Silently, cautiously, he took the seat next to mine and reached towards the Reinhardt. Giving me ample time to stop him, he wrapped his hand around the worn cover, and waited to make sure I was okay with it.
Accepting my continued silence as an invitation, he took the book from me and began to flip slowly through the pages. I felt an uneasy quiver of anticipation. Surely, he had some sense of self-preservation. I knew from years of experience that normal people did not face the subject matter discussed within that text head-on. I was confident - he'd leave at once. And he'd conveniently forget this encounter had ever happened.
Instead, he lingered on an image on one of the pages and I looked down to see what, specifically, had caught his attention.
To my shock, he was staring down at the pictured rendition of The Beast. My hands itched to grab the book from him again, and for a moment I thought wildly that perhaps I should be the one to do the fleeing.
He dragged his eyes away from the page, and for a split second I thought I saw something familiar in his dull stare.
"Who are you?" I could hardly hear my own voice over the pounding in my ears.
He blinked slowly at me and closed the book, but held on to it, stroking the red binding thoughtfully.
"Maybe -" he hesitated. Taking a deep breath, he gestured towards the rest of the text in the same manner I had just a minute ago. "Maybe I'm somebody who could use your help."
He leaned forward, and pitched his voice into a whisper. And as he gave me his confession, I picked up the yellow pages of my notes and began to tear them into irreparable shreds.