Angel / Protocol / Part Twenty-Six

PART TWENTY-SIX

Since he was a child Wesley had been trained for two jobs in life, one of which folded neatly into the other. First: to serve the one he was married to. Second: to run their household if it was required of him.

The second was a task commonly asked of spouses. It did not matter if the one they were chosen for was male or female. Had Wesley been given to a woman, his jobs would have remained the same. Spouses were never granted to those who didn't have more important tasks. Male or female didn't matter. They were rulers. They governed over land, and people, and had better things to do than to make note of whether or not the stores of wheat were going down, or if the washing had been done on time.

Thus Wesley was not thrown in the slightest when Angel demanded it of him. In point of fact he was almost happy about it. Here was something clear-cut that everyone could understand. Granted the full acceptance of the role came under difficult circumstances, but it was not Wesley's place to bemoan such things. Spouses didn't do that. They did as they were told and no more.

Once Angel was ready, things immediately fell into place. Wesley followed after him, watching as he gathered with the rest of his army - men, women, demons and all - gave a few orders, and then set out.

Wesley watched that from the safety of a balcony above, and thought to himself that it wasn't right for there to be no structure to it. Family and other loved ones had congregated in the common area as well, but they milled about without purpose, their desires and energy chaotic, and both they and the ones going off to battle seemed uncertain how to part.

It was then that Wesley understood that Angel himself truly did not understand the need for protocols. An official ceremony to send off the troops would have done wonders for all involved. It wasn't foolishness and unnecessary formality. It had a purpose, and would have served a purpose then.

But that was a critique of his husband's ways, so it was an observation to remain unuttered by him until such time as Angel himself demanded it be spoken. And even then fancy verbal tricks would be required to make sure no rules were violated.

Now left to his own, Wesley set about doing as he'd been asked.

First on the list was understanding his situation. He sat down with Gunn and learned what being under lockdown meant. Old fears stirred inside of him at the thought that *all* passageways were closed and could not be opened save dire emergency, or the need to readmit any of those who had just left to fight, but Wesley clamped them down as quickly as possible, and changed the subject of conversation so that Charles could not linger over the details of their imprisonment more than he had to.

Next was a more thorough study of their inventory, both in tangible supplies and in those left behind who would need to use them. A guesstimated census was done, and Wesley pondered the math of food for humans and blood for vampires, and wondered if the animals herded underground with them could be killed and their meat and blood parceled out in a system that worked for all parties involved.

That they would need such a system was unquestionable. Wesley asked Gunn about the possible duration for their situation and was told weeks and months were not out of the question. Wesley then decided that rationing would begin immediately, to ensure that supplies lasted long enough that no one had to do without. Also so that the new way of doing things coincided with the start of the battle, providing a clear cause and effect that anyone could understand. It was often too hard to explain to the masses why things had to change when they had worked so well before, as though sugar and flour could automatically regenerate itself.

Hand in hand with that came a new system of scheduling, which had been sorely needed even prior to the fight, as Angel's lassiez-faire attitude towards organization meant that too much went to waste as people started things that went unfinished, or kept fires going longer than they had to by cooking meals one after the other instead of two at a time. Wesley sat down with Gunn, drew up a list, then set about putting it all into place.

The reaction to this was rather predictable.

"We joined with the *vampire*," a Glik'nak demon proclaimed, the de facto spokescreature for a group which included several of his own kind, two vampires, and even a handful of humans. "Our agreement is with *Angel*."

"Yeah," Gunn retorted, "and now Angel is out there saving your ass."

"We don't serve humans," one of the vampires sneered, his affected European accent putting a double-entendre on the third word so that the concept of humans being served *to* vampires was not dismissed out of hand.

"I am in charge while Angel is away," Wesley told them.

The group as a whole chose to find that funny.

"The pretty's in over his head," the Glik'nak said.

One of the mortals, a man big enough to outweigh even Angel's bulk, gave Wesley an appraising look. "If he wants to serve *me* I might not say no."

"We could all have a go," the first vampire said. His leer included fangs. "They say his kind know how to please."

"Think his blood is sweet?" the second vampire asked.

"Not his blood I'm interested in," the Glik'nak said.

"Guys - " Charles started, but was shoved aside by a demon paw.

"Come," the Glik'nak said, reaching for Wesley's arm. "Show us what Angelus gets to -"

But the sentence remained unfinished, because the demon's claws came into point blank range of Wesley's gun.

"You could put your lips on that for a start," Wesley offered.

Looks were exchanged amongst the group.

The Glik'nak tried to smile as best as its species could. "That's an awfully dangerous toy for a pretty like you to - "

Wesley flicked the gun to the side and shot the mortal man directly in the left knee.

"Son of a - " the man cried out, then fell to the ground.

The Glik'nak refused to be swayed. "You see? It's not safe for somebody like you to - "

But that was cut off as well, as Wesley shot the demon directly in the head.

"For the record," Wesley said, keeping his gun low but at the ready, "Protocol allows for me to kill anyone who dares to make a pass. I am likewise able to do so for anyone who insults my husband. Disobeying his orders to obey *me* is an insult. Is there anyone here who does not understand what I am saying?"

The second vampire was frowning worriedly at the demon. "Is he really dead?"

"I don't like repeating myself," Wesley said, by way of an answer.

"Cold-hearted son of a bitch," the first vampire said, but this time it seemed to be a compliment.

"I believe we're done here," Wesley said.

"Uh, sir?" the first vampire asked, even raising his hand as though he were at school.

"Yes?" Wesley asked.

The vampire pointed to the pool of blood, and the whimpering mortal in the middle of it. "Can I? I mean if it's going to waste and all…"

Wesley weighed the desire to punish against the reawakening of a vampire's lust for human blood. "Take him to hospital. But you can have otter in your blood tonight. You and you - " Wesley said, pointing to one of the remaining mortals and one of the other Glik'nak demons " - clean up the mess. I won't tolerate the vampires being tormented."

"Where the Hell did you learn *that*?" Charles asked, once they had safely walked away from the group's hearing.

"Spouses are allowed to have hobbies so long as they are useful," Wesley said, reholstering his weapon at the small of his back. "I merely picked one that seemed as though it would offer the most use."

***

"So this is, like, a vacation for you, huh?" a vampire girl by the name of Harmony asked him. She was chronologically Xander's age, though in the realm of vampires she was apparently only as old as a toddler. She had a vampire's strength, but the intelligence of a particularly daft poodle. It didn't take Wesley long to understand why she had been left behind to tend to the homefront and not sent to fight in the battlefield.

Wesley paused, a sharp knife held carefully above the rosemary he'd been cutting. With Willow gone he was now the resident expert on magic. Though he can't cast a spell with enough power to even come near that of a witch, he can brew potions with the best of them. Already word of his skill had begun to spread amongst the populace, and the meager stores of fever cures, healing tinctures, and birth control powders had begun to dwindle.

Wesley had done a bit of conscripting of his own, which was why he, Charles, Harmony, and a few others were gathered at a rough wooden table in one of the fortress's classrooms, each attending to a plant of some kind. Even young Marianne was there, her tiny fingers picking apart the petals of foxglove that came from the greenhouse which Willow had bespelled to bask in sunlight even though it was deep within the earth.

Wesley thought about Harmony's question. In truth he couldn't remember a time when he has worked harder since he was in training, but then he realized what Harmony meant. "With my Lord being away?"

Harmony nodded. "Yeah. No more bowing and scraping and having to deal with - " she gave him a significant look " - ugh."

Wesley stifled a smile at that. Harmony reminded him of the girls and boys who were sent to the Council too late to ever hope to become true spouses, but who emerged with enough skill that they could be bartered off to a minor lord, or sent to someone of title but only as a mistress. The sense of familiarity made him feel as though he could gossip with her, much as he'd done when he was a child and hadn't yet learned the pain that making such noise could bring him.

Back then, when he was old enough to understand that his fate was not that of a fairy tale, yet not old enough to have wishes beaten out of him, he would have conspired privately with his peers, and agreed that the best one could ever hope for, outside of taking the love potion of course, was a husband or wife who somehow found the good grace to be elsewhere and never make it back to the marital bedroom. Rare was the husband or wife who was not too old, too feeble, or too cruel to have found a mate without political intervention. And the worst fate of all was a husband or wife who had any of those criteria - or worse still all three - and yet insisted upon sexual favors as though nothing was wrong.

It was for those exact situations that the love potions were created, and every spouse in training went through a quiet, shameful moment of disgust at the sight of the poor creatures who had once been their classmates, and who were now mindless idiots, unable to blink unless their husbands or wives bid them do so.

Then, as they grew a little older, those in training stopped looking at the potions with fear, and rather with relief. At least under the control of the potion one could hope to be oblivious to clammy hands touching you, flaccid cocks trying to penetrate you, or fetid breath bathing your body as you were taken by those who saw you not even as an animal, but as a thing.

Such was the way with classes, for of course there was no potion allowed to help students get through the practical education provided by the teachers, or to get through the parties which students were forced to go to where they were doled out to anyone, noble or otherwise, to whom the Council felt special but brief favors were due. Spouses held a certain ranking, but students held one lower still, and it was not until one successfully completed training that a certain form of freedom was found, as graduation was considered to make one clean, and therefore untouchable by anyone until the day that a husband or wife was chosen.

So yes, there was a time when Wesley would have considered this moment to be a vacation. In fact, such a time would have only been scant weeks ago, upon finding out the name of his husband. To have been told then, perhaps by singing for Lorne, that Angelus would be called away and Wesley left in solitude would have most likely been news so welcome that Wesley might even have been moved to tears of gratitude.

But now was not that time, and even though he was forbidden to say words that are anything different, he still means it when he answers, "It is only pleasurable to me when I am with my Lord."

"What if he doesn't come back?" Gunn asked. He immediately gave a look of apology. "Not that I don't *want* him back or anything, but what happens to you guys when you become a widower?"

Wesley felt a tightening around his heart. He took it out on the rosemary, cutting the resin-heavy leaves with quick, efficient slices. "I would be returned to the Council."

"To marry someone else?" Gunn asked.

Wesley shook his head. "No. Spouses who have been married do not get married again."

"So it's a retirement," Harmony guessed.

Wesley thought of the spouses who had not had the good grace to kill themselves at the moment of their husband's or wife's passing, and the looks of quiet contempt that the Council gave to those they now regarded as failures. "Something like a retirement, yes."

"What if you wanted to stay here?" Gunn asked.

"I am a spouse," Wesley reminded him. He pulled another branch of rosemary out of his basket and began to strip it down. "I do not have wants."

Gunn frowned. "But what if you - "

"I do not have wants," Wesley repeated, then turned his attention back to his work.

***

At night Wesley curls up in bed, and thinks of Angel.

The suite is heavy with the vampire's presence, even though he is not near. Sheets are changed, the rooms are cleaned, but still Wesley can tell the scent of him, even with his muted mortal abilities.

When the time comes for sleep, Wesley closes his eyes and thinks of the blanket in the living room. He thinks about his husband holding him, and calling him a diamond. No one had ever praised Wesley so highly. Not even any of his teachers, who thought Wesley to be much brighter than Wesley's father would ever give him credit for.

Wesley thinks about that, and about Angel's strong hands, because such thoughts are allowed to him. They are thoughts of his husband, and such an obsession is acceptable.

What is unacceptable is misery, and fear, and those emotions lick at Wesley's heels, thriving in the many shadows that live in what is now truly a tomb. Everything is locked shut. He has been buried alive. The reality of this threatens to overwhelm him, and sometimes it is successful. He wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping, his chest frozen. The immediacy of his own death grips him and holds him still.

Wesley fights it off as best as he is able. It is forbidden to confide about this weakness to anyone. He must handle it alone, and privately.

Some nights he can do so by lighting a candle and sitting in its warm glow until his eyes grow heavy again. Other nights the fear is so painful that he crawls out of bed, moving on his hands and knees to the fireplace, and damps down the flames so that he can lean into the ash-thick stones and suck in what he imagines to be the fresh air that seeps down to him from the chimney. On those nights he falls asleep on the floor, sprawled on the carpet, and he wakes up with his face dirty and his head throbbing with pain.

He can't touch anything of Angel's for comfort. It isn't his place to presume that he might be given such allowances. His own possessions, though, provide a lifeline. Amongst his books is a volume of history, one that Wesley suspects was snuck in to his bags by Lorne. The demon probably intended the gift to be that of a weapon, for knowledge is always the most powerful tool, but Wesley uses it for a much different purpose.

In amongst the stories, beginning on page 231 and lasting until 275, is a brief history of Angelus. It's full of horror, and myth, and newspaper accounts of dead bodies left behind and other accounts from those who wished they'd been killed and left behind, and Wesley feels horribly guilty, and sorry for their loss, but unfortunately for them there is a photo of Angelus on page 263. His hair is longer, his clothes old-fashioned, his eyes sparkle with a mischief that even Wesley can recognize as cruel, but the face is the same and at this point to Wesley that is all that matters. He whispers his apologies to those who couldn't know his husband as Wesley knows him now, and takes to falling asleep with the book by his side. He reads the stories over and over until he can see the letters whenever he closes his eyes, and when he gauges his exhaustion carefully he can lay down his head and fall asleep at the exact moment when he turns the book back to the page that lets Wesley pretend that Angel is there.

***

Wesley feels lonely. He finds himself missing Andrew and Lorne more keenly than he usually does. He missed them before, as much as he was able, but now he truly wishes that they were by his side. A spouse's personal servants are the only people that a spouse is allowed to confide in. They've sworn their own oaths, and exist to help maintain the illusion that a spouse has no needs. If a spouse falls ill, or is hurt, or simply requires a fresh shirt to be brought to him he need only whisper it to his bodymen and it shall be taken care of, the husband or wife none the wiser.

Wesley doubts he'll ever know the true reason why his father denied him this comfort. There are many that suggest themselves, and all fall under the realm of Roger Wyndam-Pryce seeming to exist only to find new ways of humiliating his only child. He never took it up with his father before he left, knowing the argument would be useless and would very likely harm Lorne and Andrew's standing besides. But he can guess what Roger would say. He would call Wesley weak, and pathetic, and point out that a *true* spouse really doesn't have needs, and would most likely go on to explain yet again why Wesley did not measure up to the ranks of a real spouse, even though the Council teachers seemed to think so. He'd graduated. He'd earned high marks. But it hadn't been good enough. Nothing ever was.

Angel's insistence on putting aside the rules had been strange, but at least it had provided Wesley with something of an outlet for communication. With him gone Wesley was muzzled once more. There was no one that he could speak even a hint of himself to. Everything he said had to be phrased properly, and by Council orders.

If Andrew or Lorne were there he could talk to them in the privacy of the suite. They could help hide his fears, as the both of them had grown used to that during their years of service to him, and he could confess to them his chaotic emotions for his husband. He missed Angel, and wanted him near, and as days passed it became more and more difficult to deal with the Council restriction against pleasuring himself. He didn't do it - the memories of punishments doled out to those stupid enough to try were still too powerful - but the *wanting* to do it was an entirely new thing, and it left him feeling at times sick, and confused. He thought perhaps Lorne might have wise counsel on the alternating guilt and wonder that this brought about in him, and if nothing else Andrew would have had a fine and fanciful story to weave out of it which would have been pretentious and silly in every aspect, but it would have still made Wesley smile.

Unable to speak with them, Wesley wrote them long letters. They took up sheets of paper, but he never sent them out. The communication lines to England were shut down, and even if they weren't Wesley now knew that nothing he sent home was considered sacrosanct. His father read the mail. It was barely worth wondering if he even deigned to pass the letters on to their intended recipients once he was done with them.

Instead Wesley wrote them, then burned them. He sat in front of the fire and thought strongly of his friends, and hoped that perhaps the emotions that he felt could somehow make their way to the anagogic demon.

***

His unique position brought him the oddest of comfort, however.

He was married, which of course he knew and he recognized that this bequeathed him a status, but he didn't realize the full impact of that until one day in the great hall when one of the wives who had sent her own husband off to fight had turned to him and said, matter of factly, "It's so hard to be without them, isn't it?"

Wesley had stopped, stunned, and then sat down. There was no Council rule which forbade him from agreeing, "Yes, yes it is."

And so he and the others who were married or otherwise significantly tied to fighters formed their own unofficial club, a group which gathered at no set time with no set purpose, save that of two or more of them being together at any particular moment to share a look or a word about what it was like to be without the one you were tied to.

Even amongst them Wesley held a ground that few others could. He was mortal. His husband a vampire. That meant that demons and humans both considered him worthy of having a place at this sometimes literal table, for his emotions were that of a living creature's, but he honored one who was far from that state. Wives, husbands, and partners of humans, vampires, and demons each included him, and at any given moment Wesley might have been nodding in sympathy with someone who had two eyes or one who had ten. This was far removed from what he'd been raised to be, but beyond the species of some of those involved there wasn't a single bit of protocol which was violated by this, and Wesley felt that since his husband was a demon himself that the rules pertaining to avoiding anyone of that nature had clearly been suspended.

It had been a long time since Wesley had felt like he belonged anywhere, and though he wasn't certain that this was the place, it came much closer than anything he'd known before.

***

The other partners, as Wesley took to grouping them in his head, were the source of ideas and inspiration that Wesley would never have imagined them possessing.

"Oh naturally," one of the wives clucked when Wesley expressed surprise that sexual wanting was not uncommon amongst their group.

"Him as well," one of the husbands - a vampire with a male vampire for a mate - assured him. "He'll come home just as hungry for it as you are."

This skirted against things he wasn't allowed to admit. "I don't know that I would call it that," Wesley tried to demur.

"Probably even more," the vampire continued. "Violence does that to our kind."

Wesley tried to imagine what Angel would be like if he were even more commanding in the bedroom than he had been previously, and found that a rapid change of subject was needed in order for him to maintain any semblance of self-control during the rest of the conversation.

***

After a time the wounded began to trickle back home, and with them came dead bodies.

Wesley registered all this, feeling the foolish icy grip in his gut as he studied all of the faces to assure himself that Angel wasn't there - as though the vampire's face would be in any way visible if he were to be killed. Then he noticed the survivors, and how they went off to their own devices, and how nothing was done by the group as a whole in any form of ceremony.

Wesley knew this was not the sort of thing which could be ordered, but he decided to try leading the way by setting an example. He tracked down the first informal gathering he could find, wearing his official mourning clothes, and quietly expressed his respect for their loss. Humans had unsurprisingly been the ones to die first, and they registered shock at the presence of a prince at such an occasion, but those who were old enough or world-educated enough understood the gesture for the honor that it was, and thanked him for it accordingly. The action caused a bit of gossip amongst those in the fortress, but when Wesley did the exact same thing to the demon funerals everyone began to notice.

It took time, but soon it became understood that this was what was done. Humans and demons alike came to join him, and by the time Wesley asked Charles to pass word on that they would at least like the names of the vampires that had died, even if their dust could not be sent homeward, there was a ceremony in place, however informal, where everyone gathered in the common area to speak, or bow, or scream, or do whatever their personal culture dictated was a way of showing respect for the fallen.

From that understanding came the other extreme. If the sorrows were shared, Wesley decided, so must be the joys. Weddings, births, and other occasions were celebrated by everyone, even if that meant humans sipped at fruit juice while in the midst of an animal blood-ridden vampire festival, or demons picked politely at cakes made with white sugar and butter rich frosting as a baby was anointed with water and oil.

Regardless of the particulars, in the end it was an excuse for music, and dancing, and distraction from the horrors that were at the same time too close and too far away.

Wesley partook of all of this as much as the Council allowed him to, and occasionally watched two people get married and wondered what it would have felt like to be in the middle of such a thing.

But in the end what mattered was the bonds, and the ties between him and Angel, and Wesley contented himself with that as he went to sleep at night with his face resting against page 263, and his thumb rubbing up against the band around his finger, and he counted the days until his husband came home.

***

And then Spike returned, and said that Angel had been taken.