Home / Fan Fiction / Angel / Cat and Mouse / The First Move

Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit, amateur effort not intended to infringe of the rights of Joss Whedon, the WB, Mutant Enemy or any other copyright holders of Angel.

The First Move
by The Brat Queen

Warnings: Pre-slash, het, darkfic. Spoilers up to "Tomorrow"

Summary: First of a new series called "Cat and Mouse". Months after the events of "Tomorrow", Wesley and Angel meet up again.

Thanks to Wolfling and Mer for detailed beta-reading, and the Mystic Krewe of LiveJournal for encouragement and feedback while this was a WIP.

PROLOGUE

It wasn't pain. Hurt, yes, but not pain. Pain was loss. Weakness. Something he couldn't handle.

Hurt he could handle.

His whole damn life was hurt. Price of admission, he thought. And worthwhile, because hurt had been Buffy, and Connor, and Cordy and the familiar metallic tang of betrayal over and over again.

You had to hurt. If you didn't hurt, what were you?

Pain was for other people.

So he lived. And he hurt, but he wasn't in pain. The hunger, the darkness, the cold and pressure that even he could feel (Had a vampire ever dropped to this depth? What was this depth?) did not affect him. It couldn't. It wouldn't. He didn't allow it to.

He lived second by second. Getting through one because it meant he could get through another. He thought about Faith, and his lessons to her about how to atone one day at a time. He thought about wanting to teach Connor about morals, and rightness, and solving problems in ways that his old man couldn't.

He would not feel fear. He would not feel defeat.

He meditated. He observed. His preternatural eyes weren't equipped for the constant night of the ocean's floor - a night he knew kept him alive - but he had other senses. He could feel movement, change, temperature.

At times his mind wandered.

"Did you know there are lakes inside of the ocean?" Wesley had said once, sitting at his desk and pouring over a bright, blue-colored magazine. "Absolutely fascinating!"

Then, as now, Angel had laughed, but not so anyone could hear him. Lakes in the ocean. He had to be hallucinating. Or maybe Wesley had. Or maybe it was all a dream.

Maybe everything was a dream.

What lived in the ocean? What lived here? Dreaming-Angel reached out to ask Wesley/Fred/Willow/Giles and wonder if there were sharks. Great whites. Large enough to chew through steel. And would they come for his blood? If he struggled enough against the chains to cut himself would it release the scent? Call the predator to him, and tempt it to eat his flesh, carrion though it was?

But he couldn't die. That was impossible too. The release of death was as mythical as the lakes of the oceans. He never died. Or had he died, and this was the end? Himself, locked away and forgotten by all - God, man, Powers….

Himself.

He longed to forget himself.

He felt nothingness around him. He felt everything around him - the entire, wet world and him a part of it like Dru and her constant, dancing, singing stars. Dru of the air, him of the water, dusted Darla once again of the earth and Spike - besotted, bechipped boy - always, always fire.

How much time? How long had it been? Would it be? He knew Acathla, and the centuries that were but minutes that had felt like millennia.

It was happening again, he knew. Days upon earth, years down below. He had no watch to measure. Only himself. And his unbeating heart. Time, like him, didn't matter. But he still knew. Knew it wasn't mere minutes. Knew it was days. More than days.

He struggled. He knew the joy of oblivion, of madness. But he couldn't. That wasn't his path. It wasn't his destiny (and somewhere, in his head, Fred happily cried "Screw destiny!"). He could not, would not give in. Not again. Not as he had. Never, ever like that.

He recited Scripture. He prayed rosaries, thinking of emerald and ruby beads in his head and counting them off one by one. He kept time by a God who never loved him. Forgive us our trespasses, he thought, making himself continue on to as we forgive those who trespass against us even though part of his mind, another part, quietly whispered As we were never forgiven. As we never forgive.

And to this part, still quietly chanting his prayers, Angel replied We do. I forgive. And someday I'll be -

He was cut off by the sensation of laughter.

I will!

You won't.

Hail Mary, he thought, locking his mind to the words, full of grace, the Lord is with thee….

He continued the prayer, even though he could hear it being mocked. Hear him being mocked. Mocked as a thing which was never blessed, and would never know blessing from a child born of prophecy.

He could survive. He would survive. The time it took did not matter. He would be beyond it. Beyond time, worry, hunger or fear.

And he was.

Until nothing became something. Cold and dark and wet became bright and hot and prickly and joy and warmth and the perfect/wonderful flow of rich, red blood in his mouth and it was real and not an ocean lake and he knew he was out and saved and of course that meant he'd been forgiven and -

- there was pain -

He was empty. And hungry. He reached for more blood -

- there was pain -

Darkness came. His own, he knew. And he laughed because this was never long-lasting. He'd rise, and rise again and it would be wonderful and God-damn funny like it always was…

Wesley walked past shops, feeling the faint hint of what might be the thought of coolness in the air as the sun went down. It wasn't much, but it was the sort of thing that poked its head out once Los Angeles made its way into fall. Come November restaurants would make use of the flaming torch-lamps that provided heat so long as there was no wind, and his own flat would occasionally remind him of the one he'd kept back in Kensington, provided he didn't look out the window or notice the hulking brown air conditioner in his bedroom wall.

For now it was only the suggestion of winter, which was fair enough since actual winter in LA was little more than a strongly-worded memo.

Still, it was dry. He liked it.

The scent of oregano wafted over to him and he thought about stopping for dinner. Lunch had been… what? Six hours ago? And this particular restaurant made a stellar foccacia with sundried tomatoes. Perhaps he'd get some as take away.

He waited for the lights to favor him, feeling the tiny pang of nostalgia for zebra crossings that he always did. Los Angeles wasn't a town that catered to pedestrians. He passed time by counting the neon-colored signs that had been taped to telephone poles, alerting actors and crew members to various filming locations. Once he'd met a girl at a bar who'd convinced him to drive around on his bike and try to track one of the films down. They'd ended up at UCLA and she - slightly drunk - had clutched his arm and slurred into his ear the name of an actor he'd never heard of before nor heard of again, insisting that he was right there and didn't he look wonderful?

Wesley, not always a fool, had insisted of course he did, and he'd been rewarded for the lie with a more than pleasant shag later that night.

Miranda? he thought. No - Naomi. It had been Miranda before she'd gotten the breast implants. Then her agent suggested that she change it.

It had been a one night stand, but he'd seen Naomi-nee-Miranda a few times after that. Of course it was always after he'd rented a film which brought back rather accurate memories of the one night stand itself. Particularly the one in which she'd attempted a British accent which he flattered himself to think she'd based upon his, although the end result was actually closer to that of a drunken Cambridge student by way of Bronx, New York.

"Wesley!"

Come to think of it, it had been close to fall last year as well, when he'd met her. No wonder his mind was sauntering along that particular path in his memory lane. It had been mid-September but even still, just as now, the stores had put up Halloween decorations and he could recall the night two evenings prior to Miranda in which he'd gotten himself pissed doing body shots with a swore-she-was-21 year old girl named … D something. Debbie? Daria? And the two of them had stumbled arm in arm down the street in search of a taxi, then abandoned the search when his hand only somewhat accidentally connected with her quite real breasts through the red velvet of her Anna Sui minidress.

"Wes! Yo, Wesley!"

They'd started snogging like teenagers, which quite frankly she very possibly could have been, but he never did find out because as they kissed she fell back against a store window and somehow through the fog of tequila and thin fingers rubbing against the fly of his trousers his eyes were assaulted by orange and he'd looked up to see a banner proclaiming "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!" complete with hissing black cat, neon-yellow eyed pumpkin, and a two foot tall cartoon vampire with such a startled expression on his face that Wesley couldn't help but laugh and laugh because, honestly, the clothes and the size and the hair for God's sake.

"Wesley!"

Undoubtedly underaged D-something had tried to laugh along but it soon became clear that she, even drunk as she was, couldn't find the same humor in it that he did. Nor could she get him back in the mood, a thing which Wesley now blamed on the alcohol and his age as much as he did the fact that he couldn't stop giggling at the picture, and she'd hailed a cab for herself and left Wesley to his own devices, which that evening had been BBC news on cable and then a good, hard wank in the shower.

"Wesley!"

As he studied the list of Bella Luna's specials, Wesley wondered when Gunn was going to get it through his head that Wesley could hear him perfectly well, he was simply choosing to ignore him.

"Wes," Gunn said, jogging up to him. He panted slightly. Wesley surmised the man must have run for a few blocks. When Wesley didn't look up in response to this, Gunn took a deep breath and gasped out: "Angelus."

Wesley perused the regular menu and debated the merits of swordfish versus prawns. "Gunn," he replied, "Winifred. Are we now done listing the members of our shared past or must I listen to you recite Cordelia's name as well? No - wait, I've just done it and saved you the trouble. Good evening."

Gunn grimaced in frustration. "I'm not - man, I'm telling you. Angelus. He's back. Not so much an ex-vampire as a full-on, technicolor, THX, back in black reality."

Wesley debated asking why he should care, but another query presented itself. "How can you tell?"

Gunn blinked, as though surprised he was asked. "He - um…"

Wesley turned around, folded his arms, and waited patiently.

"He attacked Fred," Gunn admitted.

"Goodbye," Wesley told him. He turned on his heel and resumed walking. No sundried tomato was worth this.

Gunn came after. "I'm just saying - "

"Good bye, Charles."

"He was gone, okay?" Gunn said, increasing speed to catch up with him. Wesley's car wasn't far. He estimated he had about five more minutes of this to tolerate. "Couple months ago everybody went and - "

"Not interested."

Gunn tried to step in front of him. Wesley moved aside to let an elderly woman pass between them and thwart the attempt. "Will you listen?"

Some people really did need the obvious pointed out to them. "No," Wesley answered. "Now you can be on your way."

Gunn stopped, and Wesley allowed himself a moment of delusion that the annoyance was over. It gave a fleeting pleasure before Gunn spoke up again. "He didn't ask about Connor. Or Cordy."

Wesley paused. This could be evidence.

Gunn closed the distance between them, happily pouncing on the opportunity. "Me'n Fred, we couldn't find him, right? So Fred gets this idea - "

"Skip a bit," Wesley told him, a note of warning in his voice.

Gunn nodded, understanding, at least, that there were certain names best not mentioned between them. "We did this thing. This magic and I don't even know what all thing. To bring him back, 'cause we figured - "

Wesley made a rolling gesture with his hand to indicate Gunn could feel free to speed up at any time.

Gunn sighed, but got to the punchline. "He came back wrong."

Having already asked how it was possible to tell, Wesley picked up the other question which he'd abandoned in its favor. "I'm terribly sorry - I've forgotten why I care."

"He's evil!" Gunn said.

"Yes, and?" Wesley replied.

"Look," Gunn said, "I know you and Angel -"

"No, you don't know 'me and Angel'," Wesley said. "Or else you wouldn't be here jabbering at me and expecting that it's going to do you any good. And, pray tell, what exactly were you expecting to get from this, Charles? Surely a former vampire hunter like yourself can handle a pesky little problem like Angel - "

"Angelus," Gunn said.

"Angel," Wesley shot back, "without any difficulty. Or did you loose all of your vampire hunting skills when you allied yourself with one?" Wesley felt a tiny inner twitch at that and cursed himself for hitting too close to one of his own weak spots. "Whatever you are now, you're not allied with me. If you brought him back and broke him then you deal with him. The bed's made, have a good night's sleep. I daresay keep one eye open."

"He's contained," Gunn said. "We got him locked up. We just need - "

"What?" Wesley asked, letting every bit of annoyance show.

"The curse," Gunn said. "We need somebody to do the curse."

"Willow Rosenberg, Sunnydale, California," Wesley told him. "Shouldn't be hard to find."

"No good," Gunn said, which Wesley actually already knew, although he wondered how Gunn had found out. "And you're here."

"Yes," Wesley said, with exaggerated agreement. "As I always am when you need me to pull your ass from the fire, particularly in Fred's name. So glad my importance to you is so greatly dependant upon geography."

"Look," Gunn said, abandoning his attempts to find a peaceful middle ground, "I know we ain't friends, and way you been lately I'm real cool with that. But this is bigger shit than you'n me. You know the prophecies, man!"

"Those again?" Wesley asked, affecting a bemused expression.

"We need Angel on our side," Gunn said, bottom-lining it. "Angel."

"Angel, yes," Wesley murmured, thinking to himself that of all the choices "Angel" would not have been the word he would pick as being the most crucial in that statement. "Well. Quite the muddle for you then, isn't it?"

"We need your help," Gunn said.

"As I say - "

"Please."

Wesley paused. It was a rather nice moment, all things considered. In a way he savored the times like this. It reminded him why he'd left.

"No," he said, simply, and walked away.

"He's at the hotel," Gunn called after him. "We've got him locked up but - what if he gets out?"

"Stake to the heart would seem to be on order then," Wesley retorted. "Buggers up those prophecies of yours but what can one do?"

"And if we can't?" Gunn asked. "You know him, man - he'll come after you too!"

Wesley thought about it. He took a deep breath, letting the taste of Los Angeles smog wash over the memory of a suffocating pillow.

He chuckled, and pulled out his car keys.

Indian tonight, he thought, as his still-smelled-like-new SUV hove into view. Indian, and perhaps a little television. It'd be a good way to spend the evening.

This was boring.

Sure the view was different. He supposed he couldn't fault that. But one metal box for another wasn't what he'd call a big change in the grand scheme of things. Under the ocean, under the…

Oh come on.

Hyperion! Bingo, yes, we have a winner! Hyperion hotel, former home of a Thesulac demon, current home of broken furniture, Angel Investigations, and one really annoyed vampire. He was currently, his own preferences to the contrary, being held prisoner in the basement of the Hyperion hotel.

Like he said. Bor-ring.

Time was easier to count though. He wasn't near any handy windows, but he could listen and hear the pounding of feet upstairs. Or at least the pounding of one set of feet, and the tripping patter of another that hardly seemed to touch the ground.

Had they gotten a demon on the payroll?

Sort of…. Lorne! Right. Pylean-demon-thing. Not a foot-patterer. Big guy. Read auras. Currently…. ha! In Las Vegas!

Well good for him. Great gambling there, and quite a few nice brothels if you knew where to ask. Boy if there was one thing that could beat the fuck-me-now heat of the desert, it was lots of hookers.

So, not a demon. Human then.

He listened to the movement of Mr. Poundy Feet and Friend and figured out time was passing. Couple of days, maybe. Of course it was hard for him to tell what with being unconscious for at least a day and all.

Really - was that any way to treat a guest?

The whole cage thing too - seriously déclassé. In his day he never believed in cages. Oh yeah, sure, tried them out a few times. Who wouldn't? But in the end people responded better to being locked inside of rooms or steamer trunks, depending on your need for them. Cages were big and heavy. And ugly. Christ - place looked like a dungeon now. Hardly what you'd call Better Homes & Gardens.

He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the flat metal plate that covered his home. He then shifted uncomfortably because, thank you very much, nobody had thought to put two and two together and figure that a guy who'd been trapped under salt water for months could maybe use a change of God damned clothing. Nooo. Let's just shove him in the cage as-is. Don't worry about the big, scary vampire waking up in dry, scratchy cloth. Not like he has hours to spend thinking of ways to get revenge for that.

Plus he'd kinda liked the pants. Probably not salvageable, he knew, but still - couldn't hurt to at least try running them through a gentle cycle before the damage set in. Too late now.

He kept staring up. He didn't blink. Didn't have to, plus he knew that bugged people.

A door opened.

"Angel? I brought you some lunch."

Nice try, but traffic outside told him it was closer to evening.

Over the top of his head he saw the girl. Upside-down to him, but still recognizable.

She held up a bag of blood. "I thought about heating it up but then I thought you might not have recovered from being so cold and I didn't know if your internal temperature would - "

Blah, blah, blah. Know what makes a good lunch? Humans. How 'bout popping a vein, sweetheart? You're still standing, I obviously didn't drain it all out of you. If you can walk and talk you can cough up a pint. Rules of the road.

" - down here, and it's not that we don't trust you but -"

Nobody should laugh like that. A laugh that made you feel like a wet cat was just wrong.

" - any day now and I've been researching ways to safeguard the hotel, you know, like the cage? So that way you can - "

The thing about whatshername - Fred - was that it was like talking to a used condom. Sure it'd had potential once, but as soon as somebody left his imprint on it it was pretty much a waste of time for everyone else. Which, come to think of it, was the annoying thing about anybody who had their brains snapped by life. It was all messy, and amateur, and pointless. No art.

" - talking to Charles and - "

Who? Charles…. Charles…. Boy wasn't that one of those names that just lost all meaning once you said it a few times? Charles…

Oh, right. Gunn.

" - no fun being in a cage and all and I'm real sorry about the alarm but better safe than sorry, right? Or I guess that's sorry and safe, but - "

Alarm - funny word for "thing that kicks the shit out of you if you try to leave". He'd tried breaking the bars twice, got his balls pretty much zapped back into his ribcage for the trouble and had stopped trying to get out since.

At least - trying that way.

It was mechanical. He didn't know from mechanical. Side benefit of a hundred years of being a slacker. There was a whole age of electricity that had passed him by.

He figured he had plenty of time to catch up now.

" - gonna talk to Wesley - "

Weird. Wesley. Wesley. Wes… ley….

It was like waking up from a dream you couldn't really remember but damn if looking at spoons didn't make you feel all funny.

Wesley….

Watcher - no. Eyeglasses - no. Letter W? No… not really. Wesley, Wesley….

There - no. Damn. Wesley… W… white! White!

Pillow!

" - get him to help and…." Fred wound down to a close. Her face puckered. "Angel? Are you okay?"

He clutched his stomach, bent double with laughter.

"A-angel?"

Oh man. They were never gonna let him out of here if he didn't learn to control himself.

"I'll come back later."

Lilah had told him about Angel's disappearance in the middle of sex.

More accurately, near the end of sex.

He'd been deep inside of her, wet cunt wrapped tightly around him since neither one of them believed in so-called natural methods of protection.

Or, rather, he knew that a demonic bitch like her would use any method necessary to keep herself disease-free, and he himself set his store in the powders he took to keep illness from catching on to him.

They also had the wonderful side benefit of temporarily lowering his sperm count.

He trusted Lilah to take the Pill about as much as he trusted anything else.

Not that he'd cared much. Lilah, pregnant, then giving the child up for a promotion or parking space closer to the elevator, seemed like as fine an outcome to the current course of events as any. Although, Lilah being Lilah, she would undoubtedly find some surrogate mother to foist the actual nine months off on. Better that than have to buy a wardrobe with elastic waistbands in it.

So he'd thrust inside of her, feeling her grip him expertly, feeling the tightening there which indicated he was right at the moment, just on the edge, and all that was needed was one, tiny -

"They say Angel's gone," she told him, her lips rubbing against his ear. "Maybe dead. Current office pool says the kid did it."

Yes, yes - God yes! He came, gasping and thrusting and biting his lower lip and feeling his eyes wet. In his mind he replayed the image of Angel's body vanishing into dust, the first explosion timing itself perfectly with his own shuddering ejaculation.

"Okay," Lilah said once he'd finished. "My turn."

News of Angel's disappearance matched the drabbles of information that Lilah deposited in front of him in her perpetual game of I-know-something-you-don't-oh-fuck-it-not-like-I've-got-company-loyalty-anyway. Cordy was gone, although no one knew where. Lorne had left for parts neon-colored, and the Groo reportedly followed him. Fred and Gunn had stayed at the hotel, which Wesley hadn't needed Lilah to inform him of.

Justine and Connor were whereabouts unknown. Angel had vanished and was quite possibly dead.

"You care at all about Sunnydale?" she'd asked him once, holding up a file folder with the city's name on it.

He hadn't, but reading the saga of Willow's attempt to end the world had considerably brightened his day.

He thought about Lilah's revelations as he returned to his flat and pondered Gunn's words.

Angel. Back. Angelus again.

"You're home early. Here I was going to doll myself up and make a martini for you."

Wesley closed the door and didn't bother to lock it. Lilah had made herself keys anyway. He deposited his plastic bag of paratha and curry on the coffee table, then shucked his coat. "Hope you weren't expecting me to share?"

"You?" Lilah asked. She sat down on the couch, crossing her legs to reveal a faintly tanned expanse of thigh and a hint of white lace on her slip. "Share? Do you know that word?"

"Got my mail I see," Wesley said. He sat down on the couch as well - the distance of half of a person between them - and took out his food. He looked over at the liquor cabinet and decided a drink after eating would not be out of the realm of possibility.

"Told your landlord I was your sweetie," Lilah said, batting her eyes in a mock show of kitten-like flirtation. "Nothing interesting. All to 'occupant'. I don't know why I bother."

Because she persisted in the illusion that she was trying to pump him for information, Wesley knew, but he didn't say it aloud.

Instead he decided to match her fake show of normality. "And how was work, dearest?"

She flicked a hand dismissively and sipped at her scotch. "Dull. Spent half the day trying to find a secretary that can use Access. Now that's evil. Rest of the time I met with new clients. One guy came in because he wanted a lawsuit against a bakery for putting the wrong ingredients into his wedding cake, like excuse me if Ma and Pa Kettle aren't going to have Peus worms on hand. Idiot."

Wesley frowned as he tore a piece of steaming hot bread apart. "Why would they give that sort of case to you?"

"Glass ceiling, Wes," she told him. "Ugly thing."

He personally thought it was rather short-sighted of Wolfram & Hart to ignore the evil inherent in women, but then again he didn't care overmuch how stupid the whole organization was.

"You?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied. He got up and went into the kitchen for a beer, cracking it open and enjoying a few long, warm swigs before he sat down again.

Lilah rolled her eyes. "Why am I not surprised? You know you could make something up one of these days, amuse me."

"All right then," Wesley said. "Angelus is back."

She laughed. "Funny. You know I don't like joking about things that make me do paperwork."

Wesley smirked behind his beer can, then resumed eating.

The passed the rest of his supper in silence. Small talk had never been their forte, and he had gotten all the information that he'd needed. She really didn't know that Angel was back.

This magic and I don't even know what all thing.

Fred.

Wesley pondered that, letting the pieces float about in his brain until they twisted and twirled and naturally came together.

Thing. Fred. Mechanical. Fred wasn't much of a spell caster, but she knew physics, and gadgets, and had retrofitted common appliances into fantastical things before, usually with a judicious and often far too lucky application of some item out of his magic cabinet.

They'd gotten Angel back through science.

Or, he thought, mostly science. His brain helpfully piped up with vaguely remembered articles about matter transference, and even the Montauk Project, if one wanted to pick something which was comparatively local. Not that he personally cared for the science of it all, but he'd studied it in his spare time and had written articles about its relevance to one normally used to casting teleportation spells.

Not that he was strong enough to cast teleportation spells.

But if one wanted to teleport something, some kind of scientific method would be the way to do it, presuming one did not want Wolfram & Hart to be aware of it. Which one wouldn't, since one didn't want Wolfram & Hart to be aware of anything.

Angel was back. Back from where?

Part of him felt minor irritation at not questioning Gunn further. This was quickly followed by another part of him which demanded to know why he cared.

Still… knowledge was power.

"What would you do, if Angel was back?" Wesley asked Lilah. She'd finished her drink and was sitting back against the couch with her eyes partially closed. She wasn't that vulnerable to scotch, but the medication she self-prescribed sometimes made her so.

"You're really ruining my mood here, Wes," she said. She lifted her glass as though to drink from it, noticed that it was empty, and let it fall back into her lap again. "Why?"

"Just wondering if it would be the end of you," he lied, making a slight gesture to indicate that his implication was the end of their relationship.

Regardless, she missed the subtlety. "Ha. Hardly. Angel comes back to town I'm right on Special Projects again."

Wesley pondered that. "Would you be?"

Lilah opened her mouth in the affirmative, then closed it again. Her dark brows furrowed, then she stood up. "Bastards. I need another one."

Wesley stayed where he was, knowing she'd bring one to him out of habit. He thought about saying something farcical, like "But we all know he's really dead, right?" but found the whole effort to be beneath him. "They wouldn't put you back," he told her. He didn't need to explain that her failures with Angel, and her current round of failures with him made it so.

"Plenty of ways to get to the top," she told him. She came back and handed him a glass with vodka in it, clinking her tumbler against it before sitting back down again.

"Indeed," he said. He looked down into the glass then took a swallow of it. Angel. Back again. He shouldn't want to keep thinking about this.

Angel. Angelus. Prophecies.

We need him on our side.

Damn it.

Angel being dead had ended it. There'd been closure. Whatever his role in Angel's - blast! Angel's role in his life had been, it was over. No more. The stuff of maudlin "what if?" moments as he grew older and eventually made himself ready for his own grave. It was done. No questions, only conclusions.

Damn him to Hell for being alive again.

Damn him to Hell if he hadn't been dead at all in the first place.

Wesley finished off his drink and stood. He had no action to accompany that, so after a moment he picked up the remnants of his meal and crumpled them together, getting his fingers greasy but enjoying a sense of satisfaction when he dumped the lot of it into his wastepaper bin and heard it thunk at the bottom.

There. That was closure. Wash his hands of the whole, stupid, bloody -

He swallowed.

"Something on your mind?" Lilah asked. She perched herself by his small dining table.

"I want to see the girl," he said. God. What was the point of having free will if even he didn't pay any attention to it?

"Care to narrow that down for me, tiger?" she said, her unsmudged lips curling into a smile. "Because half the world is pretty much female."

"The girl," he told her. "The record-keeper. I want to see her tomorrow."

Lilah shrugged. "Fine. Drive me into work in the morning."

"Good," Wesley said. He wiped his hands clean then retreated into the bedroom. It wasn't a question that she would follow.

Files & Records was something, he knew, he would have excelled at in different circumstances. A slight change in the destiny of his own life and he might have apprenticed himself in the larger than life storage area of every bit of information Wolfram & Hart cared to collect. He might have even become Files & Records, but then again something about his near photographic memory told him that he wouldn't have to become demonic in order to remember where everything was, and the meanings of it all therein.

Lilah had brought him to the room late one evening and had been surprised, he could tell, to see the young woman sitting behind the desk. Lilah had crossly asked if the woman ever gave it a rest, and then recited along with her the statement that, as Files & Records, it was her job.

"You know," Lilah had said to him later, "I understand selling my soul for the company. But to? What a waste."

They'd spent perhaps an hour there perusing the various categories. He wasn't entirely certain why she'd done it. He'd supposed it was yet another attempt to seduce him into working for the firm - come on in, Wesley, look at all the lovely manuscripts you can get your poncy hands on - but there'd been something in her eyes. Quick, expecting looks as though waiting for him to say something, though he'd had absolutely no idea what.

He'd gone back on other occasions, however. His new career as a demonology writer (latest article: "Tryath Voltis Cross Species Relations: A Commentary On Culture And Evolution") often had him chasing down a difficult to find piece of documentation and Lilah had had no compunction about allowing him to use Files & Records whenever he cared to.

He knew that, by definition, there would be a record of every time he was there but as he'd never tracked down anything that wasn't work related, he didn't particularly mind. They'd sent Lilah to him. It probably put her in line for a bonus the more times he came in. He wondered if there was a sliding scale dependant upon frequency and visit duration.

"Good morning, Mr.Wyndam-Pryce," the record-keeper chirped at him. "What can I help you with today?"

He hesitated. His clearance was Lilah's clearance, he'd found that out the first time. But each time he came he'd had a purpose. Now, he wasn't certain.

A thought occurred to him.

"Er - how does one enter records?" he asked. "Or at least make corrections? I thought perhaps I might make myself use - "

"Form 37A, Application to Adjust Existing Records," the record-keeper happily told him. She handed him a sheaf of forms, then placed a smaller, goldenrod colored piece of paper on top of it. "Form 489-L, Outside Contractor Contact Information. You'll also need tax form - "

"I don't wish to be paid," he told her. He affected a "you know how it is" expression. "Merely - I've noticed some inaccuracies and that sort of sloppiness sets my teeth on edge."

The record-keeper nodded in agreement, although he was confident that she would have nodded in agreement if he'd just told her she was a tuna sandwich. She had that sort of helpful personality. Such as it was. "Form 998B. Donations."

He took the blue slip of paper from her. "Thank you. Should I fill these out now, then?"

She handed him a pen and he scribbled in the necessary information. He was tempted to write "You bloody well know" under "Address" and "Phone" but restrained himself. He used a false address for "E-mail". No sense deliberately signing himself up for whatever junk letters Wolfram & Hart undoubtedly sold their mailing lists to. Bad enough his inbox was besieged by viruses and the assurance that Hot Japanese Girls Want Him Now.

"Mr. Wyndam-Pryce?" the record-keeper asked once he'd handed the forms back. "You didn't sign your name."

Wesley gave her a tight smile. "Funny thing, that."

Amazingly, it looked as though she understood. She used her own pen to swirl a vaguely signature-looking line in the right spots, then put the forms away in her desk. "What can I do for you today?"

Might as well start at the beginning, he thought. "Show me my file."

Hours later he was still in the room. He'd sat down cross-legged on the floor and flipped through pages and pages of information. His folder had been first, then Cordy's, Gunn's and Fred's. They were of varying sizes of thickness. He'd felt a moment of stupidly hurt pride at seeing how Cordelia's folder was far bigger than his, but reminded himself that this was undoubtedly due to the fact that she had known Angel longer. Also, she had the visions.

At any rate, size was never an indication of quality.

The folders contained the predictable: dossiers on them all; bulleted lists of personal information; written accounts of various encounters, particularly direct encounters with the law firm. In the margins could be found notes, such as "We can use this" or "Father - look into", with the occasional "Roger?" or "2pm, don't forget laundry" from various times when the paperwork had been treated like any other piece of scrap that crossed the desk of a cubicle dweller.

What was lacking, however, was a thread. A commonality to everything being collected. Yes, they had information, but the information had no purpose.

It didn't seem quite right.

As he read he made his own notes on the forms, sometimes filling the forms in properly to correct any mistakes he found, other times using the forms for his own benefit whenever a piece of information caught his eye that he wanted to look into later. Normally he would have brought a notebook, but normally he would have known why he was here in the first place.

He folded his arms, leaned back against one of the metal shelves, and thought.

All right. He'd probably provided enough of a cover for his actions that this would seem only a morning of nostalgia on his part. Surely it wouldn't seem overly suspicious to look at Angel's files now?

Yet part of him didn't want to.

Angel was out of his life. Angel had removed himself from his life. Perhaps literally. Wesley could go on. He could do whatever he wished. He need not encounter the vampire ever again.

And yet….

"Show me Angel's files, please," he called out to the record-keeper, and he was in no way surprised when there was the click of a lightswitch and row upon row was illuminated. Cordelia's three inch thick folder was more than dwarfed by comparison.

"Fine," Wesley said, standing up and dusting himself off, "I'll skim."

He knew the record-keeper could tell him anything he wanted to know. But he also know that by asking her she would know what he wanted to know. And while Wesley himself wasn't certain of what that was, he was certain he didn't want Wolfram & Hart finding out about it.

It didn't take him long to decipher their organization system. One shelf had been dedicated to simply categorizing everything that had occurred from the early days of Liam (Liam??) to Angelus to Angel to Angelus to Angel again. After that it was a split. Evil actions on one side, good on the other, neutral in between and everything sub-divided into chronological order.

He supposed for the law firm it made as much sense as anything.

Wesley studied the files. He picked folders at random and flipped through them. He found himself learning the beginnings and middles of stories that the Council had only known the ends to. 88 dead in an incident in Bath back in 1789 transformed itself into an orgy of vampires, demons, and a whip-like toy that Angelus had apparently liked to call "Betty".

There were blank spots even still. Angel's time in America had large gaps missing from it, which underlings at the law firm had attempted to fill in with speculative reports, guessing that the vampire had done everything from lock himself away in a mountain cabin to joining a traveling circus. Newspaper clippings and pages torn from diaries suggested possible meetings, although some of the descriptions therein were so vague that they could have very well been a meeting with Wesley himself, or anyone who happened to be male, fairly tall and brown-haired.

There were reports filled with nothing but suggestions. Over the years various employees had apparently gotten it into their heads to attempt to find solutions to "The Angel Problem", all of which had either been shot down or used as a cover for whatever the senior partners of the firm really wanted. Wesley wasn't surprised to see some of the known subterfuges in the file - Darla, for instance - but his stomach gave a small twitch to see others, such as Mrs. Parkhurst who'd been a client of theirs two years back and had only needed someone to rid her basement of the rodent-like Ferras. She was elderly, and grandmotherly, and had insisted that Wesley and Angel sit for a moment and enjoy home baked macaroon cookies by way of thanks. Wesley could still remember the look on Angel's face when he'd tried to chew and swallow a cookie down.

Apparently on that day Wolfram & Hart had needed Angel to be in a certain part of town - away from them - and it had worked.

Wesley found himself feeling the tiniest moment of sympathy for the vampire's paranoia.

He shoved the folder back onto the shelf. He grabbed his glasses and began to polish them.

What was this, then? A reopening of old wounds? Had he come here for the sole purpose of reminding himself of - what? What he'd lost? What he'd been deluded into believing in, morelike.

He turned a corner and stared at the rows which contained the "evil" entries. They far outweighed the "good" and that, to Wesley, contained no surprise.

There was no "Angel the friendly vampire". The laughing, affable, sometimes even clumsy fellow which Wesley had come to believe was his friend was non-existent. A lie, constructed by none other than Angel himself.

Certainly Wesley thought it a believable lie. He even went so far as to think it had been a lie that even Angel believed in. But that didn't make it any more real.

This - the row upon row of damning evidence - that was real. There was your vampire. Occasionally trapped by Wolfram & Hart, yes, but little more than evil as the pawn of evil. Just as Angel himself cheerfully used his so-called friends and colleagues as pawns for himself if it gave him any gain.

He didn't want to be good. He wanted to help himself, which made him feel good. There was no mission. No true caring. The cries of the helpless had gone blissfully unheeded whenever Angel's hormones, or moods, or son came into play. Angel Investigations had been naught more than a hobby. Or, when it came right down to it, a dating service used first to get Darla, and then later to woo Cordy.

The mission. The good fight. Lord, what a fool he'd been.

In the end it was entirely a matter of being selfish. There was no action that did not have ulterior motives. No high road. No good fight.

No point.

He grabbed the files and brought them to the front desk. "Here," he said brusquely, giving them and the corrected forms to the record-keeper. "Best I can do."

He left before she could chirp some kind of farewell to him. He found his way to the garage, got into his car, and keyed the ignition. To Hell with it all, he thought. Leave me out. I want no part. I want -

He paused.

He turned his car off.

He sat and thought for a few moments.

"What else can I do for you today, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce?" the record-keeper asked when he returned.

"Show me the section on the curse which restores Angel's soul," he said.

"Fe, fi, fo, fum," Angelus purred. He rolled over onto his stomach and stood up to face the new visitor. "Hello, Wesley."

Shadows shifted and turned into the shape of a man. "Angelus. So, have you truly lost your soul this time or are you merely faking it again?"

"I don't fake," Angelus said. It was true enough, if you didn't count the fact that he was lying. He jerked his thumbs into dry, rough pockets and sauntered over to the bars. He got a better look at Wesley, then let out a low whistle. "Nice scar. Girlfriend give you that?"

Wesley's arms were folded. He looked… not Wesley. It was strange. Angelus felt as though he had a mental picture of what a Wesley looked like, and this wasn't it. Or it was just a little off from it. He racked his brain, trying to get it to cough up the goods. Words like leaner, stubble, and no suit suggested themselves.

Plus scar.

Angelus licked his lips.

It was a nice scar.

"You don't remember?" Wesley asked. His eyebrows quirked upwards as though he had all the time in the world for the answer.

"Gimme a break here," Angelus told him. "Been a long few months. Mem - "

"Indeed," Wesley said, his word crisp and efficient as it cut Angelus off.

His eyes kept going back to it. Right on the neck. Angled. Slow bleeder, that one. Could keep you alive for hours. Days. He wanted to touch it. Put his mouth on it. Flick at it with his tongue until the skin parted again and tiny drops began to fall.

Was he drooling? There wasn't anything more humiliating than drooling.

No, wait. There was. He'd just made a little noise. He played it back in his head and decided it sounded like a high-pitched whine.

Wesley stepped forward, keeping well away from the bars. His blue eyes were piercing. "You're starving, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he said, his voice rough. He cleared it and started again. "What do you expect? Not like Fred and Gunn are getting me a lot of take out here."

Wesley looked around. Bags of animal blood littered the floor. He'd drunk them - he'd had no choice - but it wasn't enough. He'd been down for months. There was never enough.

"When was the last time you ate?" Wesley asked. "Properly ate."

Angelus kicked the memory into gear. Properly ate? The mind threw up an image of a blond-haired cop. But Wes was asking about the starving thing, not the quality thing, so - "Five months ago."

Wes pulled back, eyebrows beetling together. "Five? Where the Hell have you been?"

Angelus made a swooshing motion downwards. "Ten thousand feet below the sea. Kid locked me up and dumped me like a pirate treasure."

"They bury pirate treasures," Wesley automatically corrected, and Angelus wondered if it was a big, fat burden to have to be so precise all the time. "The ones under the sea are from shipwrecks."

"'scuse me all to Hell," Angelus said, with exaggerated chagrin. "Sorry my metaphor's getting in the way of me starving for five months."

Wesley made a grunt that sounded like he was acknowledging the point. He stepped back and began to circle the cage slowly, studying it. "Kid? Connor did this to you?"

"No," Angelus said, speaking as though for the benefit of the brain impaired, "Fred and Gunn did this to me. Connor dumped me into the sea."

Wesley laughed. Angelus couldn't blame him.

"You have to admit it's funny," Wesley said.

"Funny is when it happens to other people," Angelus told him, and it was true enough. Part of him was a little annoyed that he'd never tried locking a vampire in the ocean. Pound for pound it was a pretty nasty piece of torture. But then again you did it and never got to see the outcome. Angelus hated missing out on the screams.

A part of his brain supplied the word webcam. He'd have to find out later what it meant.

"What made you lose your soul?" Wesley asked.

Angelus shrugged. "Like I know?"

Wesley nodded, as though this didn't surprise him. "So you can't remember the events of last year?"

"I remember," Angelus said. "Just not well. So who cut ya?"

"Justine," Wesley said.

Justine. Justine…

Flash

There it was! Red hair. Attitude. Attacking him. And -

Flash

A park. Night. And - oh god. Scent. Blood. Wesley's. Everywhere. Seeped deep down into the ground but there, still there, and his mouth tingling and dry and part of him so close to going on his hands and knees and sucking in big handfuls of bleeding, wet earth because it was human and he was so hungry, hungry like Fred and Gunn wouldn't understand and it was the earth or their necks, their necks or Connor's neck, or - god, please…

"You really are starving, aren't you?" Wesley said, his modulated voice cutting through the fantasy.

"Yes," Angelus admitted - not like it was much of an admission, really. Five months in a box - you worked up an appetite. Smart boy like Wes had to know. So yeah, no problem to tell him he was hungry, even as he blinked and shook his head to clear his vision and get the scent of…

Wait a minute.

Son of a bitch.

"I'm sorry," Wesley said, holding a bleeding finger aloft with false sincerity. "This must be maddening for you."

Angelus saw the flash of a pen knife in Wesley's left hand. Wes brought it up to his middle finger and cut a quick slice - enough to break just a few layers of skin - across the tip of it.

Wesley closed the knife and returned it to his pocket. He then wafted his fingers in the air, making the scent of blood drift in the direction of the cage.

"Asshole," Angelus said, and it was a compliment.

"I'm only trying to speak your language," Wesley threw back.

Angelus laughed. Wesley. With a pair. When had that happened? He twisted the memory banks but couldn't find the answer. Had soul boy just not noticed?

"Got my attention," Angelus told him.

"I thought I might," Wesley agreed. He looked down, holding his hand up in the air. Angelus couldn't tell why until Wesley stepped forward to the edge of dust that surrounded the cage - the line that marked where Angelus's hands could reach through the bars - and then rubbed his thumb along the underside of his fingers until thick, rich drops of blood spattered on the ground.

"You know," Angelus said, "get that in me and it's an even better souvenir."

"I wonder why I don't trust you?" Wesley mused. He scattered a few more drops along the floor, each one exploding with a wave of tantalizing scent, then brought his fingers up to his mouth and began to lick and suck them clean.

Holy Hell. When had Pryce gone fag?

"I want to make a deal with you," Wesley said.

"Okay," Angelus said. Not agreeing, just listening.

"A business arrangement, if you will," Wesley said.

Angelus nodded. Christ, Brits liked to talk. "Any part of this involve getting me out of the cage?"

"It might," Wesley said. He took out a handkerchief and pressed it to his fingers, staunching the remaining bloodflow. "If I can trust you."

Lying suggested itself, but then again considering who he was talking to -

"Not sure how to prove that one," Angelus said, thinking of pillows and Wesley's struggling body. He had a hunch Wes had a pretty clear memory of that night too.

"Well," Wesley said thoughtfully, "I could always perform your curse. That would make you trustworthy, wouldn't it?"

Not really, Angelus thought. Plus curse. He didn't like the curse. On the other hand maybe he could agree to it long enough to get out of the cage.

Except - wait.

That was sarcasm.

Angelus grinned.

"You're not gonna do it," he told Wesley.

"No," Wesley said. He crushed his handkerchief in his newly healed right hand and used the left to lift the lapel of his brown leather jacket. There was a rolled up scroll in an inside pocket. "Mind you, I could."

"Kind of a fatal habit to have," Angelus said.

Wesley's lips twitched into a grin. "I could curse you first. I could have others standing by, waiting to do it if I fall. I could have all sorts of failsafes in place so that in the event of my untimely demise your life once again becomes a living Hell."

"You could," Angelus said, weighing the word carefully and wondering if Wes meant it to be that theoretical.

"I could," Wesley repeated. He let his coat fall back into place. The smell of leather mingled with blood. He let the words stand between them, in no way clarifying their reality.

Angelus thought it over. It'd been a while since he'd played chess, but he remembered how it worked. "I could kill you anyway. I could torture you but leave you not dead."

Wesley nodded, agreeing to all of the possibilities. "You could."

An idea occurred to him. "I could turn you?" It was an offer, not a threat.

Wes made a moue of disapproval. "I wouldn't flatter yourself. I'm not inclined to become some soulless bastard."

Angelus couldn't help but gesture to indicate that Wesley was clearly offering to get him out of the cage.

Wesley smirked. "Some of us don't need to lose our souls."

Oh this had the word "fun" written all over it.

"So what's the deal?" he asked.

"You'll see," Wesley told him. He stepped back into the shadows and walked in the direction of the staircase.

Impatience crept up on him, fueled by the scent of blood on the floor. "When do I get out?"

Wesley paused. In the darkness, Angelus could see him smiling. "You'll see."

Angelus was torn between imagining Wes's throat in his mouth and… imagining Wes's throat in his mouth. Except one of those options wasn't as fatal as the other. "Soon?" he asked, thinking of both unlocked doors and gasping British men.

"Be patient," Wesley said. He balled up his handkerchief and threw it at him. Vamp reflexes alone allowed him to catch it without being zapped by the cage. "It'll do you good."

"Since when do I want to be good?" Angelus demanded.

Wesley chuckled as he went back upstairs.

There was a crack in his living room wall.

Unsurprising. Firing off a shotgun blast or two while fighting with some demons was bound to leave marks. Still, he thought he'd fixed most of them. A quick coat of spackle, a reapplication of the blue paint that he liked so much - he'd thought it would be enough to take care of things on the odd chance snowballs survived in Hell and he got his security deposit back. Assuming he ever left the flat for … well, assuming he ever left the flat.

It was fine, but just a shade too thick to be called hairline fracture. It broke like lightening from the ceiling to the floor. Somewhere in his mind Wesley thought about load-bearing walls, and improper construction, and didn't doubt that this apartment building had ignored a code or two.

He took another sip of his scotch.

He felt warm. Satisfied. No - not satisfied. Content. He felt content.

His fingers itched from where he'd cut them. He'd applied antibiotic lotion and bandages to them not long after coming home. They'd heal quickly, he knew, and he almost regretted that.

With his eyes closed he could see Angelus staring at him. Watching him enraptured in a way that Angel never had. Pale tongue licking pale lips in a sign of need.

Angel had never needed him thusly. Or if he had, he'd never admitted it.

A bubble of self-hatred went through him. Angel, Angel, Angel. God, he sounded like a petulant child. But this was different. This was entirely different. This wasn't about Angel.

Wesley opened his eyes a slit and looked at his notes.

His coffee table was covered with notebooks, leather-bound tomes, scrolls, pens and even a few Post-Its. He'd written down the encounter with Angelus, mostly out of an old habit of journaling, and then placed it with everything he had collected from Wolfram & Hart earlier in the day.

He waited. These things took time.

Patterns. Life was naught but patterns. His father had told him that once, years ago in a typical moment of cold togetherness. They'd gone riding in the silver-grey BMW that Wesley had never in his life been allowed to touch. It had been a visit to Bletchley Park that day, complete with tours of hidden rooms that only the Council had access to. It had felt important and wonderfully pretentious in its secrecy.

Everything had a pattern, his father had said. And every pattern could, in time, be discovered.

At the time of this discussion they were staring at a stolen Enigma machine. Wesley, then ten, had studied the typewriter looking device and marveled at its gears.

However, his father had continued, little more than a disembodied voice emanating from the dark-suited chest that was at Wesley's eye level, it wasn't enough to simply have the knowledge. It was what you did with it that truly mattered.

It was a lesson. All their conversations were.

They'd left the room, Wesley lingering for a moment longer to look at one of Turing's bombes. A placard beside it explained how it had been kept secret from the world until the 1970s. Everything about Bletchley Park had, in fact, been kept under wraps until decades after the war was over.

There were still things about it that some people didn't know.

Wesley finished his drink.

Liam to Angelus to Angel to Angelus to Angel to….

Wesley looked at the crack in his wall. He then looked down at his papers again. He let his eyes dart over them, catching only a letter or a phrase - "California" "head the new division" "prophecies" "Special Projects".

He saw one of his own notebooks. He turned three pages and found an entry he remembered putting there. On the top, circled and covered with stars and parallelograms and the random doodles one was apt to make while on the phone, was yet another phrase:

The Powers That Be.

Interesting choice of words, Wesley thought.

"I've been studying you," Wesley said. He perched himself on the staircase, looking out over the basement to the cage and the vampire within. Angelus was lying on the floor with his legs unbent and his arms straight out on either side. Squint a little and put two pieces of wood in the right place and he'd look as though he'd been crucified.

"I know," Angelus said. His eyes moved to meet Wesley's gaze while the rest of his body remained still. "Need some lotion and a bathroom with a door that locks?"

Wesley ignored the innuendo. "I meant your past."

"Oh, that," Angelus said, as though it explained everything.

"That," Wesley repeated. He paused a moment, casting his hearing upstairs. He'd convinced Fred and Gunn to go away, but he didn't care to bank on how long that might give him. He estimated a half hour at best. "I've come to a conclusion."

"Really?" Angelus said. He raised his eyebrows in a parody of interest. Wesley felt the strangest sense of déjà vu - as though he'd seen similar expressions on Angel's face, except he couldn't put his finger on when. "Good for you. So what's next on the Wesley free time agenda?"

"You're very stupid," Wesley told him. He stood up and walked over to the safe perimeter around the cage.

"That shirt doesn't match those pants," Angelus replied. He tilted his head backwards to maintain eye contact. "What's your point?"

Wesley laughed. "That is my point. You're phenomenally stupid. I want to make a deal with you."

Angelus rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows, transforming himself into a dark, undead Sphinx. "You know, Monty, you may want to ask for a refund on that negotiation class. I don't think it took."

"I want us to be partners."

"I see the lessons in stand-up comedy were a blast, though."

"What precisely do you intend when you get out of this cage?" Wesley asked him, gesturing broadly in the direction of the streets outside. "Murder? Mayhem? Torture? Do you know what will happen if you do?"

"We going for an answer here besides me getting a tasty inner glow of self actualization?" Angelus asked.

"You'll be cursed," Wesley said. He squatted down to make their eyes level. "The minute anyone catches hint of the fact that you're on the loose without your soul you'll be cursed before you can say 'perfect happiness'."

"So I keep a low profile," Angelus shrugged. "What's the big - "

"You're a pawn," Wesley said. He pitched his voice low, speaking simply. "Evil or good you've been at the mercy of forces outside of yourself. And you can't do a bloody thing about it because you, my dear vampire, do not think. You never have. Even during your time with Darla you flitted about like a homicidal butterfly, doing as you pleased and never giving a damn about the consequences. Well here they are, Angelus. You were cursed, sent to Hell, pursued by Holtz, dropped into the ocean and now you're locked up in a cage where you can either agree with me, get yourself cursed or be staked. Pick an option. Frankly I'm happy to help with all three."

"You want something," Angelus said. His eyes were dark and unmoving.

Wesley gave a curt nod. "Yes."

A half smile uncurled on the vampire's lips. "Okay, what?"

"My requests are simple," Wesley said, deliberately ignoring the true meaning of the question.

A black eyebrow quirked upward. "You trust me to follow them?"

"I trust you to protect your own hide," Wesley answered, then clarified. "Which means pretending that you've got a soul and absolutely no schemes of world destruction."

Angelus cupped his chin in his hand and pouted. "Gee, Dad, that's not gonna leave me with much to do besides hockey practice."

"I'll keep you busy," Wesley promised.

"With what? Choir rehearsals?" Angelus slumped down onto his back again, folding his arms over his chest as though he were in a coffin. "Man - I thought you were going to be fun."

"I'm sorry my definition of 'fun' doesn't include destroying the world that I'm currently residing in," Wesley said. "I'm afraid my goals are a bit further reaching."

"Enjoy yourself," Angelus said. He waved his left hand in the air dismissively. "Afraid my goals are a little more violent."

"You'll have plenty of opportunities for violence."

"What?" Angelus mocked. "With your permission?"

"With my planning," Wesley said. He moved forward to kneel beside the bars, looking down on the reclining vampire's face. "You've had over a hundred years of mindless destruction. I want to do something better."

Angelus turned onto his side, tilting his head thoughtfully. "What?"

"I want to be in charge," Wesley told him.

Angelus laughed. "What? Of me?"

Wesley shook his head. He knew better than to think he could ever control this vampire. "No," he said. "Everything else."

Angelus looked at him unblinking. After a moment, a smile ghosted across his lips. "So this is a world domination scheme?"

Wesley nodded. The explanation would do for now. "Something like that, yes."

Angelus sat up, leaning in close to the bars. If he'd had breath it would have fallen across Wesley's lips. "Think you can hack it?"

"Better than you ever could," Wesley replied.

Wesley could see Angelus analyzing the concept. "What do I get out of it?"

"I told you," Wesley said. "Partnership."

Angelus scoffed. "We're not partners."

"No," Wesley agreed. "But you can use me as much as I use you. I've access to things you can't imagine. You need me. Without my intelligence you'll be back here. Or souled. Or dead. It's up to you."

"Do I get to have hobbies after hours?" Angelus asked.

Wesley made a submissive gesture. "Could I stop you?"

The vampire's smile was almost feral, and passed for his reply.

"All I ask is your help," Wesley said. "I can do this without you but it's far easier with."

"You just want me on your side," Angelus said.

Wesley acknowledged this. "Yes."

Angelus chuckled. The sound was strangely warm and familiar. "Okay, sure. I'm in."

Wesley felt a surge of relief. He covered it with British stoicism. Get the vampire out of his prison first, he thought, then celebrate if he doesn't kill you.

"All right then," Wesley said, standing and walking over to the generator which powered the cage's defenses. "Let's get started."

Fin.