This story is a work of original fiction; however, it is set in the universe of Angel, created by Mutant Enemy productions and the Warner Brothers Television Network. I make no claims to any copyrights regarding these characters. This work is written entirely for my enjoyment and the enjoyment of friends. Please e-mail the author with comments.

Please do not reproduce or copy without the author's permission.

Author's note: This story is set between the episodes "Double or Nothing" and "The Price" ... and is Part 1 of a two-part story arc (which ends with "Burn").   Don't worry, it's not a cliffhanger.  But it is faithful to its title ... slightly darker than black.

DEDICATION:  To the fearsomely talented starlet2367@comcast.net, who not only endured the evolution of these stories but understood them far better than I did, soup to nuts.  It they're good, they're good because of her input.  If they're bad, it's my bad.  Totally.

Check out her work:  http://www.nothing-fancy.com/justfic/index/s.htm - look under Starlet2367.

It really was amazing how quickly they turfed people from the hospital these days, Wesley mused. Doctors slapped a bandage over your sliced throat, pumped a few pints of blood into your depleted veins, prescribed weak tea and Tylenol, and toddled you on your merry way.

Only his way, he'd found, wasn't very damned merry.

The police hadn't seemed interested in how he'd come to have a gaping throat wound. Attempted murder in LA? Hardly newsworthy. Hardly worth their effort, given that he was still breathing, albeit with difficulty.

He had expected that he would find his friends waiting for him when he clawed his way back from the brink of death. His friends. Family, more like. But he had better reason than most to understand how treacherous family ties could be.

You could strangle yourself on family ties, if you weren't careful.

He'd expected anger from Angel, even blame; he'd well earned it. His only thought had been the safety of an innocent child, but he'd let Connor be stolen as he lay bleeding out his life in the dark. He'd known from the second he felt the cold hissing invasion of knife across flesh that he'd been royally tricked, and dear God he had so bitterly despaired.

He understood that Angel would hate him for what he'd done. He had needed the rest of his family – Cordelia, Gunn, Fred -- to understand, and to help him take the guilt and horror and make something useful of it that he could abide living with.

But when he opened his eyes on bright white hospital light, they hadn't been there at all. He'd had a lot of time alone to meditate on that, and wonder what they were doing. Searching for Connor, of course; he understood he would not be included in that, not after failing so miserably. Cordelia had, at last report, been vacationing in Mexico and shagging her new love. Well, naturally she shouldn't be bothered with his personal issues, like getting his throat cut.

When they had finally showed their faces, they'd been wearing matching expressions of distrust, anger, contempt. Even Fred had railed at him like a fishwife. And Angel ...

He would not think of Angel. Angel -- whose life he had saved countless times -- had tried to kill him when he was barely clinging to life. The thought of Angel did not inspire guilt, surprisingly enough. It inspired rage cold and powerful enough to make Wesley shiver.

No more Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Rogue Demon Hunter. No, he was now Wesley the fool, Wesley the goat, Wesley the contemptible traitorous coward. He had a choice to make, he supposed. An important choice that would dictate the course of the rest of his life, for so long as he was fortunate enough to survive. He contemplated it carefully, staring into space, and then stood up and shuffled into the kitchen, where yesterday's plates and glasses lay drowned in cold dishwater. He ignored them and opened the cabinet above the bar.

Yes, he had a choice to make.

Upon reflection, he chose the scotch.

Self-pity was, Wesley found, bruisingly tough work. He positioned the third bottle over his long-ago-smeared glass, and just managed to get most of the scotch inside instead of out. And then inside his mouth, where it burned like untrue friends and self-loathing. Down his throat, into his chest, expanding like a nuclear fire in his stomach.

His throat pulsed with agony every time he swallowed. He expected over time that it would either stop or kill him. He didn't much care which came first.

Another shot of scotch, this one flavored with an interesting burnt-penny tang of blood. He was a connoisseur of his own blood, he'd swallowed bitter mouthfuls of it as he lay there bleeding to death on the grass.

Oh, bugger it, he'd dropped the bottle. It bled a pale amber stain onto the carpet. A little alcoholic atmosphere for a room that, after two solid days of self-pity, stank of unwashed skin and unshed tears.

Dear God, he wished that bitch Justine had killed him in the park.

The phone rang. Force of habit, he supposed; the next thing he knew it was at his ear and he was saying, blearily, "Lo?"

Static. Silence. A hitch of breath on the other end. A woman; he could feel it.

"Fred?" he whispered. He closed his eyes.

"No." Her voice, his personal angel of death. Holtz's little minion Justine. He'd felt so sorry for her in the park, with her bruised face and tear-filled eyes. He hadn't understood that the tears were from sheer joy. She loved to kill, his deathangel. He'd felt the thrill in her trembling hand as she pulled the knife across his throat. "They told me you were still alive."

What did one say to one's killer? "In some sense," he croaked. He sounded miserable, felt worse in spite of the numbing effects of the drinking. The room might be spinning, but she was a fixed point in space, like a black hole sucking in everything around it. "You did a poor enough job of it. I suppose you'd better ask Holtz to brush you up on your throat-cutting."

"Holtz is gone." She was crying. The bitch had the temerity to cry to him, over Holtz. "He left me. He lied to me."

"Shocking." A harsh rush of sound that didn't seem to come from his throat, but it left a scraped feeling behind it, as if he'd birthed the word instead of spoken it. "Holtz, lie? Who could have guessed?"

"To me. He lied to me. I would have done anything for him. Died. Killed. Anything. How can he leave me?"

He knew the sound in her voice, because he could feel it vibrating in his chest, a tuning-fork of devastation. Angel had tried to kill him. Cordelia, Gunn and Fred had all turned away. Even Lorne, who forgave everything and everyone, had left him well alone.

How can they leave me?

She was still speaking, but he was no longer listening. "Where's the baby?" he whispered. He listened to the liquid silence on the other end, heard her catch a shuddering breath.

"Don't you know? Holtz took him. To the demon dimension. They're never coming back." Another sob. She was, he realized, as drunk as he was. "Dead, or might as well be."

So. Blind stupidity had won out, and Connor was gone, gone forever. A sudden sensation came over him, as if he held Connor in his arms; the soft caramel-sweet smell of a clean child was so real it hurt. He remembered Connor's laugh, his soft, unmarked skin, the strong grip of tiny fingers.

Gone. Good as dead, or worse. Surely things ate children in the demon dimension -- in spirit and mind, if not in body.

Without warning, he felt a burn in his throat that was exactly, exquisitely the way the knife had felt, and could hardly stop himself from vomiting.

Incredible. The bitch was still talking, as if his last chance at redemption had not been ripped away.

"Why did you call me?" he asked. His voice sounded as he had gargled nails. His mouth tasted sour and foul, and he ached for more scotch, for anything that would make this moment less sharply hurtful.

"I wanted to -- to tell you it wasn't -- "

"Personal?" he finished. Ice closed around him, shock or rage or something worse. Something strangely liberating. "Oh, my dear, you're so very wrong. Why don't you come over. I'll make the bruises Holtz gave you look like a weekend at the spa."

If she spoke again, he didn't hear it; he dropped the receiver in the cradle and reached for his drink.

When the phone rang again, he didn't answer.

When Wesley turned fifteen, he'd finally understood that his father was a wife-beater, his mother, a victim. It had changed deep and secret things in him.

He had never seen his father strike his mother, but he had seen her flinch in unguarded moments when his father touched her in public, and there had always been that fear in her eyes, incipient shame and panic and a desperate longing for someone, anyone, to save her. Silent, screaming confessions.

The worst part of it was that Wesley had always secretly blamed her for it, as if her fear had been a breach of faith. He had rarely hated his father, but he had often hated her -- for weakness, for showing him the truth, for destroying his child's view of a perfect world.

Wesley considered that, and drank again.

He had taken such great care as he grew to a man to be reasonable, to be kind, to be considerate of others, and now he knew why. It was not just that he had been determined to avoid becoming what his father had been ... it was because he had feared, deep inside, that he was not reasonable, or kind, or considerate. That whatever that evil seed had sprouted in his father also lay buried in him.

The small blessing was that now he didn't have to fear that anymore.

"Bloody right," he whispered. His lips were dry and cracked, his throat still acutely painful. It had been -- how long? Three days? A week? An eternity? Sleep held no allure. There was something to be said for the mundane when the extraordinary had turned out to be so extraordinarily awful. Drinking was terribly, terribly mundane. Also terribly effective.

He wondered how Fred was sleeping. He wondered if she thought of him, and if she did, what she thought. Was he a monster? A fool? A betrayer? There hadn't been enough time for him to redeem himself from that awful day when he'd hurt her so badly. True, he'd been under demonic influence, but really he'd just become what he'd always been in secret, inside. Fred didn't trust him. Couldn't. He could hardly blame her. He'd made her crawl. He could still feel the hot burn of triumph and pleasure, it was inextricably linked to the memory.

He wondered if she was consoling herself in Gunn's arms, and waited for the pain to come. It didn't. Wonderful stuff, alcohol.

The phone rang. It grated harshly on his silence-adjusted ears, and he thought again that he ought to turn it off, unplug it, sever his last connection with the world outside. Instead, he picked it up. The plastic felt cold and strange in his hand, like an artifact from an alien planet where people actually lived instead of existed.

"Yes?" he rasped. Silence on the other end. He wondered if it was her again, decided he didn't care. He felt what little curiosity he'd felt bleed out. Started to hang up.

"Wesley?"

He hesitated. The voice was faint, but definite. It was Cordelia's.

"Wesley?" Two silent heartbeats. He moved the phone back to his ear. "Please answer me. If you don't answer me, I'm coming over there."

Well, that was a threat that could make him respond. "Don't."

A breathy gust rattled the phone's speaker. "Still not the boss of me, Wes, except -- well, okay, when you were the boss of me. That's not why I'm calling." She waited. He didn't comment, but he didn't hang up, either. "Waiting for the why, Wesley."

"Why what?" he asked. It felt like a long speech, and left him exhausted. Talking to Cordelia was a tremendous effort. Trying to sound normal was utterly beyond his power. "Why did I take Connor? Please. You know by now."

She made no answer. He pulled in a painful breath that stitched hot along his ribs and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. There was an indefinable warmth that came from Cordelia; even at her very worst, her most selfish, she still gave off that strange sense of comfort. The goodness in her went very deep.

He had never realized it before, but it was like choking on honey.

"You thought Angel was going to kill him," she said. "Yeah, I know that. But why didn't you ask for help, dammit? Why did you let me go la-laing off to the land of sand and sex when you knew things were about to explode? Why didn't you trust me?"

"Oh," he croaked, and tasted blood and ashes. "Again, it seems to be my fault. So sorry."

"Hey, wake up and smell the badness, you kidnapped a baby! Yes, it's your fault, Wes. Get over that. Now tell me why you thought you couldn't trust me."

"Me. Me me me. Cordelia, I thought you'd actually changed, but how quickly you revert to the same selfish little high school drama queen you always were. And the reason I failed to trust you is that lately you've hardly been trustworthy. You've been too busy thinking about men."

"What?"

"Groosalugg," he said. "And Angel, of course. Your time has mostly been spent trying to land one of them in your bed."

It must be the liquor, he thought. He had never in his life sounded so light, so cold, so utterly devoid of empathy. Well ... he had once. Standing there, saying to Fred, You're practically daring me to take it. Is that what you want? Such cold, light, effortless cruelty.

No. It wasn't the liquor. It hadn't even really been Billy Blimm, although his blood had been the key that turned the lock. This thing was within him, in that deep and secret place he'd always tried to deny. Worse ... he'd found an accommodation with it. He'd looked it in eye, stared it down, and found it not to be so very awful after all. It was a tool, that was all. A horribly effective tool that left inoperable scars behind.

She was quiet for a few seconds. Touch, he thought. Triumph brought as little warmth as self-pity.

"I see you went in for an attitude adjustment while I was gone. Word of advice, I'd take them up on that 90 day guarantee," she said. "Save the spite. You pulled away, Wes. You pulled away from all of us. You didn't want to do that."

"Cordelia, Cordelia," he whispered, and closed his eyes. Dark there. Darker inside. "How the bloody hell could you possibly know what I want?"

He hung up.

Cordelia hung up the phone and swiveled in her chair to look at Gunn. He was standing at what had been the check-in area for the hotel back in the day, slogging through reference books. He was looking for some kind of slime monster that had a taste for human body fat, and he was in a bad mood. Charles Gunn liked research a lot less than he liked killing things.

"At least he answered the phone," Gunn said without looking up. "That's an improvement. Best leave him alone, unless you get a vision that he's about to go kidnap another baby."

"Ha ha," she said sourly. That worried her. After all the pain, all the sacrifices, after becoming demonic, for goodness sake, the Powers That Be hadn't thought it was important to let her know that Connor was in danger. Or that Wesley was the Big Bad responsible.

Not that she would have believed that last part until it actually came to be an icky but unavoidable truth.

Gunn closed the book, and said, "Hey, not having any luck with demonic liposuction here, how about I -- "

She knew where he was heading, and got there first. "Don't think so. If you can't crack that book code thing, get Fred to help you."

"I just want to talk to him."

"Well, he doesn't want to talk to you," Cordelia said, and shrugged on her black jacket, which was now two seasons out of date, and God, when had she stopped caring? Her shoes were for the yack, too -- Mexican knockoffs of Kenneth Cole. Groo and sexual satisfaction had definitely not been good for her fashion sense.

"How do you know?"

She picked up her purse and looked at Gunn as if he was out of his mind. "Because he doesn't want to talk to me, and hey, it's me!" It made perfect sense to her. Gunn did the eye-roll she expected. "Because something's going on with him. Something bad. And I've known him the longest, so I have the best shot. See you."

"Wait a minute, you're going over there? Don't you think -- "

A new voice interrupted, soft and level and cold. "Going over where?"

They both turned, too quickly, and it took Cordelia a second to spot Angel standing in the shadows under the stairs. Her first sight of him when she'd arrived back from vacation bronzed and lazy and happy had been shocking enough; he'd never looked more like a walking corpse.

Well, no longer true. He looked more like a walking corpse now. He was holding something in his hand -- a little yellow knit cap, one of Connor's. He did that now. Carried Connor's things around. It was heartbreaking and creepy at the same time.

She could tell from the bleak, black anger in his eyes that the question was a trap; he already knew who had been on the phone. So she pulled in a quick breath and said, "I'm going over to Wesley's."

The name bounced off of the room as if she'd shouted it. Nobody had spoken his name around here for a long time, and when she saw Angel's face shift to vamp and back, she knew why.

Not feeling the love, Cordelia thought. In fact, feeling the demonic hatred.

"I'll go," he said. He sounded normal. Creepy-normal. Kneading Connor's cap in his hand.

"Uh -- no."

"Why not? Nobody's better equipped than me to have this conversation. I'm the world's expert in betrayal." God, he could be so reasonable. She was the only one of the group who had been around for the great Angelus disaster of 1998, and once she remembered that the creep-factor doubled. Angel was acting like Angelus. Looking like him, too. No humanity in that cold, white face, nothing but emptiness and rage in his eyes. Angelus lived in the face differently.

She remembered something important from those way-back days of terror. Don't show fear. Angelus was a sadistic nightcrawler, but he liked his fun, and nothing was more fun to him than fear. She had to pretend she hadn't opened her heart to him if she expected to play this game.

"Yeah, you're a real cheerfest," she snapped back. "Couple of hours with you, he won't have to drink the purple koolaid, you'll just depress him to death. Hey, remember that Italian guy who wrote all those circular hell stories?"

The ghost of Angelus actually blinked, and for a split second she saw Angel in his place. Searching for the key to the Cordelia code. "You mean Dante? It's circles of hell, not circular."

"Whatever. He doesn't need Dante -- which would be you. He needs Dante's girl."

"Beatrice," he said softly. "Why?"

"Because he didn't go to hell, Angel ... hell came to him. Wherever he is right now, it's as bad a place as -- as the place where you were."

"I think the word you're looking for is still hell." Angel's lips smiled. Angel's eyes didn't. "Wesley chose where he is. Let him burn."

His stare hadn't left her face. She could feel all of the strength of the demon inside, and she wondered if he knew his grief and the aching need for revenge were just feeding it. Having a soul didn't mean you couldn't be a complete asshole when you wanted to, after all. Or a murderer.

"No," she said, and held the stare. "Stop me if you want. You know you can. All you have to do is hit me hard enough."

She was afraid for a second that he might actually take her up on it, but after a few seconds he gave her a strange little smile of respect and surrender and turned and walked into the dark. The shadows swallowed him up immediately, except for the tiny pale cap that he held in his hand. He turned it over and over in his fingers as if he was a blind man searching for a clue.

She waited until she heard the door close behind him, then let out a breath and looked at Gunn, eyebrows raised. He did the eyebrow exercises too. By mutual agreement, they didn't talk about how much Angel was scaring them.

Gunn cleared his throat. "Hey. What about this fat demon guy? Fred's asleep, I don't want to get her up. She's exhausted."

Fred hadn't been sleeping well. Who had? Cordelia, after examining the devastation of her face, had troweled on enough foundation and cover-up on to melt like a candle in the California sun, which luckily wasn't up.

"Do I have to do everything?" she asked, came over, grabbed the book and flipped through page after page of gross dusty demon portraits. Wesley's books. Wesley's specialty. She couldn't even read Shakespeare, much less whatever language this one was written in.

"Here." She handed him back the book, page open to the illustration of a fat-sucking monster, and put a business card on top of it that she'd dug out of her purse. Gunn looked at it, looked back at her.

"The hell?"

"Listen, do you know how expensive cosmetic surgery is in this town? You have to shop around."

"This fat-sucking demon guy has a clinic?" Gunn studied the card.

"Great rates, too. I was thinking of having a little work done on my thighs ... " She held up a hand when he looked as if he might actually let loose an opinion. "Kidding. Actually, believe it or not, I got the card from somebody who wanted to hire us to look into malpractice."

"Yeah?" Gunn looked at the card again. "Did they pay us?"

"They will," she said. "As soon as you take down the fat-sucker."

He honestly thought that he'd begun to hallucinate when he heard the voice, and his first reaction was to drop the mostly empty glass he was holding. Which was unfortunate, because he dropped it on the coffee table and broken glass shot everywhere. He was barefoot. Didn't matter. He stood up anyway.

Someone was calling his name. Wesley. How unusual. He had a lot of ghosts to placate, but he didn't think Connor was old enough to talk, and the others –

Then the voice said, open the goddamn door and he realized with a rush of disappointment that he hadn't been hearing voices at all.

Just nosy intruders.

Cordelia Chase to the rescue, he thought sourly. So long as she doesn't chip a nail or muss her hair. Which he knew to be unfair, or at least mostly unfair, but he was not feeling charitable, these days. She had, after all, been the only one who'd tried, other than homicidally, to reach him. He supposed he had to give her credit.

"Go away," he said, not loudly enough to be heard. She would go away, when she realized the futility of it.

The door flew open with a loud, sharp bang, and he turned to look. The woman standing there stopped the door's backswing with one hand and stood there staring into the darkness. He had no doubt she could see him. Her eyes were well adapted to the dark.

"You said come on over," Justine said.

Wesley felt the effects of the alcohol burn off in the blue-white flame of rage. He stepped on glass and ignored the sharp bite of pain. Came toward her. She held her ground.

"I meant every word," he whispered.

"Good." When she moved her hand from the door she left a smear of blood behind. He wondered who she'd killed on the way here, decided he didn't really care.

Even if she killed Cordelia?

The thought flickered in him, made him feel for a second like the old Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, the one who was capable of love.

When he hit Justine he felt all of that go away.

Wesley's apartment building was quiet as a mausoleum, and Cordelia wished she hadn't made the comparison, because her experience with mausoleums was not of the good. Nobody in the lobby. Nobody in the elevator.

Quiet as the grave. She didn't like that comparison either. Things came out of graves pretty damn often, both on the Hellmouth and in L.A.

The elevator dinged arrival and she got out, mainly because staying in sounded pretty cowardly. This had all sounded like a good idea back at the hotel, surrounded by homey things and big strong ass-kicking guys.

Not so much now.

"Freaking much?" she asked herself, just in a whisper. That didn't help. Her voice sounded breathless and, well, freaked. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the carpeted hallway, looking at numbers. She'd been to Wes' apartment once or twice, but not recently. Doors were not memorable.

Except that his was open about an inch, and had a big red bloody smear in the general shape of a hand on it. Cordelia stopped in her tracks and felt her skin try to crawl off her body. Angel? Had Angel gotten here ahead of her?

"Wes?" she whispered, and tried again, louder. "Wesley?"

She eased the door open, a bit at a time, peering inside. Darkness. Complete darkness.

Noises, though. Somebody -- somebody was --

She hadn't quite identified it as crying before a hand fastened around her throat and yanked her inside, slammed her violently against a wall that vibrated like a bass drum. She clawed at the hand and felt warm skin.

Glasses glinted in the light from the door.

Wesley. It was Wesley.

"Cordelia," he said, or at least rasped. He leaned closer and she caught the full sensory experience. Alcohol, sweat, bad breath, body odor, you name it, he smelled of it. His beard was coming in heavy and untrimmed, and his hair looked flat and in great need of a good shampoo and a monster-class conditioner.

He didn't let go of her throat. His eyes were bloodshot and still the most perfect blue she'd ever seen.

Whatever was happening in her throat, it wasn't good; she felt things creaking and pressing together and it was hard to breathe. She managed a squeak.

He let her go, and she swallowed and heard things clicking that probably shouldn't be making percussion noises. Perfect, now I'm Raspy Girl. Wes and I should get along great.

Except he didn't look hospitable. He slammed the door and locked it.

"Might want to wipe the bloody handprint off of the outside; it doesn't really go with the wallpaper," she said.

"Shut up." He grabbed her elbow and hustled her through the darkness, banging into furniture without much regard for the flawless complexion of her legs. "Sit."

She did. Something clinked next to her on the couch cushions. Empty bottles.

"Wow, you threw a party for you and all your friends," she said. Which was maybe a little too much the Old Cordelia and not the New, Enlightened, Tact-Enabled Cordelia. Well, she was scared, but thank God Wesley didn't seem to notice. He was wiping his hands on a kitchen towel and leaving dark smears behind. Cordy reached up and felt her neck. Ewwwww. She groped around and found what looked -- and smelled like -- a rumpled shirt, and wiped the blood away from her skin.

"I told her," he said. "I told her not to come here."

He was talking about her like she wasn't here. The significance of the third-party wasn't lost on Cordelia; she started planning a quick exit. Wesley was standing near the small kitchen, which housed some big knives. Time to rethink her Beatrice-leading-Dante-out-of-hell scenario. Even Buffy would bug out of this one, blonde though she was.

"I told her," he said. It was almost a whisper. He raised his head and looked straight at her, and Cordelia realized something infinitely worse than Crazy Wes the Stalker-Boy.

Wesley wasn't crazy.

And he wasn't talking about her at all.

Justine was lying on the floor in Wesley's bedroom, and she was still breathing. Barely. Cordelia checked for any major blood-losing wounds and didn't find any, but the range of cuts and bruises was scary. Maybe broken ribs.

"Hey," Cordelia said to her. "You awake?"

No response. She peeled back an eyelid, but hey, she wasn't MedGirl, the pupil response looked normal to her. A familiar smell clung to Justine. Alcohol. Boy, didn't anybody rely on ice cream in a crisis anymore?

"Justine?" She tried a gentler tone. "Can you hear me?"

Justine's eyes fluttered open and she drew in a sharp breath. It sounded wet. That wasn't so good. Internal bleeding wasn't something the Cordelia Emergency Room could deal with. But, true to form, the tough girl rolled over to her hands and knees and tried to get up.

She was making a strange rasping noise, and it took Cordelia a few seconds to identify it as ... laughter.

"Well," Justine croaked. "I just make friends everywhere I go, don't I?"

"Yeah, you're a people person." Cordelia helped her up, then let go as if whatever Justine was might be contagious. "You'd better get the hell out of here."

"Or?" Justine was swaying on her feet, half-conscious, and still fully capable of beating the everloving crap out of anybody short of Angel or a Slayer. Which begged the question ....

"Why did you let him win?" she asked aloud. Justine blinked. She shook sweaty auburn hair out of her eyes, then wiped her forehead with a bloody hand. Not a great look for her. "Is this your idea of some kind of weird apology?"

"Penance," Justine corrected. Now she looked tired, and ragged, and all too human. "We like to call it penance, down in the gutter where you've never been. We don't fucking apologize."

The light dawned. "You gave Wesley the chance to kill you."

"Why the hell not?" Justine shrugged. "Not like I've got anything to live for. Holtz is gone, my sister's still dead. Besides, it might do him good."

Cordelia's brain vapor-locked on the concept. "Do him good? To beat you to death? Did they teach you that in Psycho 101, or is this just another loving instruction from Holtz?"

Justine's eyes went flat and cold. "Don't talk about him."

"Delighted, believe me, because Obsess-O-Boy is better gone and forgotten, but have a little self-respect, Justine. Is this the only way you can get a guy to talk to you? Get him to black-and-blue you first?" Cordelia was working herself up to a good solid mad, based on the solid foundation that she was scared for Wesley. "Don't you understand how screwed up that is? What is this for you, foreplay? You expecting Wesley to knock you senseless and then have some really great sex? So many things wrong with that picture, starting with you."

Justine laughed again. Right in her face. And said, "What makes you think he didn't?"

Cordelia stood there frozen as Justine limped past her, out the bedroom door. She moved only when she remembered that she'd left Wesley out there in the living room, but Justine didn't stop, didn't pause to taunt, didn't do anything but limp right through to the door, open it, and close it behind her. The broken lock didn't hold. It creaked open an inch and stopped.

Wesley was sitting on the couch staring down at his hands. If he'd noticed Justine's departure, he hadn't given any sign.

I don't want to be here, Cordelia complained to The Powers That Be. I don't want to know. Please. Send me a vision. Get me out of here.

But of course they weren't that accommodating. They never were.

Wesley was trembling all over. She knew shock when she saw it; so did anybody who came from Sunnydale. She went back in the bedroom, got a blanket, and came to drape it over his shoulders.

"You know what?" she asked him, and crouched down to eye level. "You reek."

He stared at her indifferently, but when she stood up and hauled on his arm, he stood up too. She led him into the bedroom, left him sitting on the edge of the unrumpled bed, and went in to turn on the water in the shower. When she came back he was standing up again, staring down at the bed. It was neatly made, she realized. Which made no sense in the current World of Wesley.

"I haven't slept here," he said remotely. "Since it happened. I haven't slept at all."

Cordelia let out her breath in a sigh. "If I tell you to strip and get in the shower, are you going to do it?"

His eyes wandered her way, and from some huge distance he seemed to remember who she was. "No."

"Didn't think so," she said, and yanked the blanket away. "Okay, you've got a choice. You take 'em off or I will."

"Can't wait to see me naked, can you?" he whispered. As humor it was lame, but at least it was a step. She flashed him a smile and hoped it didn't show him how sick at heart she was.

"Can't wait to see you clean," she shot back. She reached out for the buttons on his shirt. He let her undo enough of them that she was actually starting to think he'd called her bluff, but then he caught her hands in his and held her still.

She looked up into his eyes, and felt that old electric jolt, the one that had sizzled down her spine the first time she'd ever seen Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, way back in Sunnydale High.

"I'll do the rest," he said.

She was halfway to the bedroom door when he said, softly, "Thank you."

She heard cloth hit carpet, and didn't look back.

An hour later, she heard the shower stop. Unless hot water was a hell of a lot better in Wesley's apartment world than her own, it had been running cold for at least half an hour, but she supposed he had a lot of scrubbing to do. Anyway, it had given her time to do what she needed to do, and that was all of the good.

He came out of the bedroom in some kind of stripey bathrobe with a towel around his neck. He blinked in the blaze of light, and stood staring at her handiwork.

"Well," she said, and put her hands on her hips to survey it too, "it's not exactly Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but at least it doesn't put out so much of a stench."

"What did you do?" he asked. His hair was wet and standing up in funny little spikes, and he looked tired and vulnerable, and in the merciless light she could see the hot, ugly scar on his neck.

"Cleaned up the empties and broken glass, did your laundry, took out the trash, washed the dishes. Because, well, yuck. Also did this thing with these light switches where you make light. Cool, huh?"

His lips tried to make a smile. "Cool."

He sounded so – defeated. That hurt. Not that she expected amazement and gratitude, but, well, yes she did. Plus she did not want to see him like this. Not dead inside.

"It smells – "

"Less like body odor? Yeah, I cracked some windows. Plus there was some air freshener under the cabinet. You know, you're the only guy I know who actually has air freshener that isn't sitting on the back of his toilet?"

He sat down on the couch. He looked lost.

"I hit her," he said. He looked down at his hands, and Cordelia saw the raw skin across his knuckles. "I lost count how much I hit her."

"She tried to kill you, Wesley."

"Not tonight," he whispered. "Tonight she just wanted me to kill her. I could see it in her eyes. She only hit me once, just to get me – "

"Angry?"

"Afraid." Wesley's eyes filled with tears. "I was so bloody afraid of her. All I could think of was the knife. Isn't that stupid?"

"No. No, it's not stupid."

"Do you think that's why we do it?" Wesley's reserve was gone now, broken, lost. "Do you think that's why we hit you, because we're afraid of you? It's something I said when I was – when I was under Billy Blimm's influence." He was shaking again. The blanket was back in the bedroom; she didn't want to leave him to get it, so she leaned closer and wrapped her arms around him. He clung to her like a life preserver in choppy seas. "Just because you can create life – I think that's what we fear. Men like me. Men like my father. Because you have the power to do that, to love so intensely, and all we can do is – "

"Shhh," she whispered. "Please don't, Wes. Please."

"No, this is important, it's important. All my life I tried to deny what I'd learned from him and all I did was – become – what I – "

He was crying now, couldn't get the words out. She held him and he wasn't cold anymore, he was fever-hot, burning up, as if his body was trying to reject something terrible growing inside of him.

"You didn't," she told him. "You haven't. You won't. Wesley, you're a good man, do you hear me, you're a good man. It's Justine that's derange-o, don't let her do this to you. You didn't flash over and hit her for no reason, she tried to kill you! She tried to kill all of us, even Connor. Or at least she didn't care if he died."

He sucked in a trembling breath and said, "She did care. That's why she came. Because she did care."

What an ugly dance, Cordelia realized. Justine's need for punishment. Wesley's terror of his own capacity for cruelty. Justine had come to scrub guilt out of her soul, and what she'd done to Wesley's was nothing short of inhuman.

He was quiet now, and she could feel his heart beating fast. He smelled of soap and herbal shampoo and clean male animal, and she wondered how she smelled to him. Sweaty, probably. She'd been working like a field hand out here while he was getting clean. She hated being at a disadvantage on the clean scale.

"Cordelia," Wesley whispered. She felt his breath against her cheek, felt his hand stroke her hair gently. "You shouldn't have done this. Angel will be – "

"Screw Angel," she said flatly. Although she didn't mean it. Not really. "You needed me. If you need me, Wes, I'll come. That's how it is."

"No matter what?" he asked.

"You go all Evil Wesley, and I'll reserve the right to change my mind, but short of that, yeah. That's how it is." She pulled back a little and looked up at him. "Because I love you."

He stared at her in silence for three, four, five seconds, and then he kissed her. Not the kind of kiss she remembered from high school, desperate and uncool; this was a different Wesley, and she was a different Cordelia. Not the same kind of kiss at all.

It went on for a while. When she finally pulled away, she did it with regret. She touched his face, his lips, then put her hand flat against his chest where the robe gaped. Not holding him back, exactly; Wesley had too much strength for that. But letting him know where the limits were.

"I love you," she repeated. "I'm just not in love with you."

The life faded out of his eyes and left them cold and blue and empty.

"No," he said. "I didn't think you were. I'm sorry." Polite, distant, nothing of Wes in it at all. "Perhaps you should go, Cordelia."

She'd screwed it up, after all. Cordelia Chase, professional breaker of hearts. She'd hurt him, and she never meant to do that, not tonight, not after everything that had already been done to him.

"Wesley – "

His face didn't change, his eyes didn't flicker, but she felt a pulse of menace so strong that it made her get up off the couch and back away from him.

"I'm done," he said in that polite, distant, awful voice. "I'm done with all of the guilt and anguish and game-playing. If you want to play Our Lady of Immaculate Mercy I suggest you go try it with Angel; he's not likely to disappoint you by becoming human."

She picked up her purse and walked to the broken door, shaking, confused, sick with guilt. Cordelia Chase, guilty, there was something Buffy Summers would have paid to see. Or Xander. She'd made the same mistakes she always made, caring too much, not caring enough, loving and not loving enough --

He cut her off, grabbed her, slammed her hard into the door. Cordelia drew breath to scream and Wesley kissed her, hard, brutally, desperately. The heat of his body against hers was stifling, and when she tried to twist free he held her like a toy.

Menfolk not always around to protect the womenfolk, she'd said to Angel once, only half-jokingly. What she'd meant was that it was often menfolk the womenfolk needed protection from.

"Don't go." He whispered the words into her open mouth. "Dear God, Cordelia, please don't go, I'll die tonight if you go."

A bright, clear morning in Los Angeles, one of the rare clear days with a vault of blue stretching over the city. Wesley knew it because the window blinds were open, and he was lying on his side, staring out at that clear, cloudless, conscienceless blue.

Cordelia was still lying beside him. Warm but separated from him. Always separated. He had never in his life felt more alone, not even when he'd been dying.

"I have to go," she said. She sounded dull and beaten. Beaten. What a strange choice of words to describe her, considering he'd not left a mark on her. "Groo will be worried."

He didn't turn over. He felt the bed shift as she got up and walked into the bathroom; she closed the door quietly and locked it. He wished she'd slammed it. That would have been better, somehow. But she was so quiet, so controlled.

What's done is done. Except he wasn't sure exactly what he had done. He'd physically kept her from leaving, yes, but he hadn't forced – hadn't –

Say it, for God's sake.

He hadn't raped her. Not precisely. Because she had never said no, he'd never allowed her to say no. I'll die tonight if you leave me. What was that except an ultimatum, as clear as if he'd said, I'll kill you if you walk out that door? Fear was fear. He'd used her fear for him as a weapon.

And then he'd used her as a weapon against herself.

He heard the shower begin its steady low roar. Was it rape if she felt such pity for him that she would allow herself to be used? Was that better or worse?

He'd been lucky, he supposed, that Gunn or – God forbid – even Angel had not come looking for her.

I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.

He watched the brilliant L.A. morning float like an impossible dream outside the window and listened to the sound of the shower washing away the night.

She ought to have felt worse. Or better. Or something.

Cordelia turned her face up to the stinging hot spray and felt the pain echo up into her sinus cavity; a little pain was what she needed, right now. A little sense of the world outside of her skin.

What was inside it right now was sick with guilt and remorse. She'd just cheated on Groo. With Wesley, who she'd never felt any real – well – hotness for, until she'd seen him so completely vulnerable. Wesley had always been so careful, so polite, so controlled, and the Wesley that had pinned her to the door had been raw and painful and totally out of control.

She was trying to figure out how she had found that a serious turn-on. Because, no question, she had. She'd been a willing equal partner, from the second her back had hit the bed, and she'd done things with Wesley that she'd never done with anyone else, including Groo. Things she'd been surprised Wesley knew, and that she was very willing to learn.

Today she felt weirdly empty, overamped, circuits blown. All her preconceptions about who Cordelia Chase was and who Cordelia Chase loved had gone in the trash. For the space of a few hours in the night, she had loved Wesley, loved him intensely and passionately and completely.

But now it was morning, and Groo was waiting, and Wesley wouldn't even look at her. Ashamed of her, probably. He'd never wanted her, either, just the sex, and on the heels of Justine's mind-trip he probably just wanted to forget and move on.

She wasn't sure if she wanted to move on. If she could. Because right at this moment she wanted nothing more than to go back to that bed, roll him over, and start again

Wow, sex-addicted much? She squinched her eyes shut and rinsed conditioner from her hair and tried to think about personal grooming with her usual championship intensity.

She remembered that she'd locked the bathroom door. He probably needed in – everybody needed bathroom access first thing in the morning, and besides, seeing him pee probably wouldn't be much of a shock, considering. She squeezed water from her hair, grabbed a towel and stepped out of the shower to unlock the door. When she opened it, no Wesley on the other side, just a depression in the bed where he'd been. The sky outside the windows looked clear and beautiful.

"Wesley?" she called. He was probably making coffee. What if he's at the booze again? she thought suddenly, and wrapped the towel around herself to walk out into the living room.

Wesley had a gun, and as she watched, he opened his mouth and shoved it inside.

Tear-tracks on his face as he stared out at the beautiful L.A. morning.

He had a gun in his mouth.

She screamed. He flinched and took the gun out, and she rushed over and knocked it to the ground, screaming at him, screaming things she couldn't even understand except that it was her whole soul rushing out.

He stood up. She threw her arms around him and held him, held him, held him in the world.

"I'm sorry," he said to her. "I didn't mean for you to see that."

"Didn't mean for me to see it?" she repeated, and shoved him, hard enough to make him sit down on the couch in a controlled fall. "Just meant for me to find the blood-spattered body? Wow, way to care, Wes!"

She was as angry as she'd ever been, flushed, shaking, ready to claw his eyes out. How dare he? After all this, how dare he give up?

And then she knew, because of the way he was looking at her. Because of the incredible guilt written all over his face and the way he really wasn't looking at her at all.

"No," she said, and went to her knees next to him. "You think I didn't want to? You think you made me stay?"

"Seemed that way."

"You know, you may be way wicked as a demon-killer, but you don't know much about women. Did you hold me down? Tie me up? Beat me?"

"No," he whispered. "I just made you pity me."

That stopped her for a second, because it was true. And not. "Hey, I feel sorry for lots of people. Scabby homeless people. Do I sleep with them? No, and ick, thanks. I made love with you because I love you, and you needed to be loved. Get it? Besides, you know me. Do you really think you can make me do anything I don't want to do without a fight?"

She won a faint, fragile smile. "No."

"Well, thank God, sanity returns." She picked up the gun. "I'm taking this."

"I have more," he reminded her. "Also knives, crossbows, swords, daggers – "

"Potato peelers, cheese graters, toenail clippers, blah blibbidy blah. I can't keep you from killing yourself if you really want to do it, Wesley. But you don't. Not really."

"I don't?"

"You don't," she confirmed.

"And you know that because ... ?"

"Because no man who has just had great sex with Cordelia Chase wants to kill himself."

She got a full smile this time, not so fragile, more of Wesley in it. And he touched her face, gently, with the hands that still showed scars.

He said, "I couldn't bear it if I hurt you. I really couldn't."

"You didn't. You won't."

"You seem ridiculously sure of that."

"Am I ever unsure?"

He thought it over. "No."

"Well then." She pulled in a breath. "So, no gun, no crossbow, no potato peeler. What's next?"

"I love you too," he said. And kissed her gently, lingeringly. "But I'm not in love with you."

"Hello, knew that already."

Their smiles faded at the same time. Such a beautiful morning, outside. And the room still smelled, to her, of despair.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked him. He looked better, anyway. Tougher. Clearer.

"Okay? No, I doubt that I'll be okay. But I won't kill myself, and I promise that I if I decide to become Evil Wesley I'll at least send a post card first."

"Send a post card anyway," she said, and pushed herself back to her feet. The towel slipped. She caught it, not sure why she was so modest except that they'd already moved past that, and she didn't want to go back now. "Send lots of them."

As she was dressing, she heard the phone ring. Wesley answered. She couldn't hear the words, but the raspy strength of his voice comforted her.

He knocked gently on the bedroom door. She yanked her shirt over her head and said, "I'm not finished dressing!"

Ten seconds later she yanked open the door. He was standing there dressed in a pair of blue jeans, no belt, no shoes, no shirt. Probably no underwear, either, which made her feel a flush of heat right up from the roots.

He looked over the crop-top shirt and thigh-length skirt, and said, "Are you finished now?"

"Fun-ny. Boy, give you a reason to live and you're just full of the yuks, aren't you?"

"That was Gunn. He was looking for you."

She paused in the act of swinging her purse onto her shoulder. "What did you tell him?"

"That you'd been here," he said neutrally. Back to neutral, controlled, opaque Wesley, which was okay, really. She knew what was back there, behind the guarded blue eyes. "That you'd left."

"Guess I'd better move it before the cavalry rides in."

"For the cavalry's sake," he said, and she caught a trace of chill behind the words. So. Still not fixed, the whole Wesley-Angel-Gunn-Fred thing. But she couldn't fix everything.

She met his eyes. "Call me if you need me," she said.

"Shall I ask for Our Lady of Immaculate Mercy?" He stepped closer, into her space. She wanted to kiss him, and didn't dare. Not as sexy as he looked right now, not with his eyes that blue and dangerous.

"Better use my undercover name. Watch your back," she said, and opened the door, which Wesley had sometime during the night fastened shut with a chair jammed under the knob.

Angel was standing outside. Right outside.

He was chalk-white in the glow of the hallway lights, cold and inhuman, bled dry of color. Even his clothes were all black.

Oh God, she had time to think, and stood there frozen like a mouse in front of a cobra. The look on his face ... in his eyes ...

Rage dancing in those dark, flickering eyes.

"Well," he said, so softly it was like a caress. "I must have missed the main course, but it smells delicious. Maybe I'll have a little dessert."

And he reached out, lightning fast, to grab her by the throat.

And ran into a barrier that stopped him like plated steel. He slammed against it, clawed, snarled in full vamp-face. She couldn't think, she could only feel a skin-crawling terror and an awful pain in her heart where her trust for him -- her love for him -- was dying.

He can't get in, she realized. But he's been here before, why ...

Wesley's warm hands pressed on her shoulders and moved her out of the way to come face to face with Angel. Nothing between them but the invisible barrier.

"Sorry," Wesley said. His voice sounded even harsher than before. "I took precautions. I thought you might drop by, after."

"Invite me in," Angel growled.

"No, thank you," Wesley said. "Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to be eaten by it."

"Cordelia! Invite me in!"

She didn't say anything. His yellow demon-eyes shifted to her and she felt the burn of his hate, his betrayal, his need for revenge. There was a promise there, too, and she really couldn't think about what it meant.

"It wasn't his fault, Angel," she said. "He made a bad decision, but he made it for the right reasons. He loved Connor. He still does. Please don't do this. Holtz is the enemy, not Wes."

Angel dismissed her and focused back on Wesley. Studying him. Eating him with his eyes.

"You're a dead man," he said. "Understand that. Live with it until I catch up to you."

"You're beginning to repeat yourself. It's getting old."

"Don't worry. You won't have to hear it much longer." And then Angel was gone in a swirl of black coat and menace, and Cordelia turned back to Wesley. Nothing to say, really. Nothing to promise.

"Don't," Wes said in that raw, wounded voice. "Don't go back there. He'll hurt you, you know that."

She reached in her coat pocket and found the jewelry she'd taken off last night. The cross glittered as she held it out to Wesley.

"You need it," he said.

"Not as much as you do. Put it on. I've got the complete Sunnydale collection of crosses, believe me."

He took it without comment and fastened it around his neck. Plain silver. She decided it looked good on him.

"You planned it," she said. "You did the magical lock thingie because you knew he was going to come after you when you took Connor. You really did mean to do it."

He didn't answer. She managed a thin smile and wished she hadn't known. It didn't change anything, but it made the betrayal more real.

"Gotta go," she said, and headed for the doorway.

"Cordelia," he said. Just her name, and the fear underneath it.

"I have to. Somebody has to get between you."

"Not you."

"Yeah? Who else?" She held his eyes just a second longer than was wise for either of them, and then checked the hallway. No sign of Angel. She took a deep breath and stepped out into the open, all safety left behind. Wesley moved to the doorway, and his eyes were as blue as the sky beyond the windows.

"Don't trust him," Wesley said. "Even if you do love him."

She had to smile at that. "He'd say the same thing about you. And you know what? You'd both be right."

She went down the hall, down the elevator, out into the brilliant new morning.

-end-

-- story arc continued in the sequel "Burn