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Whisper of a Moment
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part VII
Take the worst headache of your life. Triple it. Rub camphor into your eyes, pour hot grease into your ears. Inject Epsom salts into your muscles and ground glass into your joints. Squirt gasoline up your nostrils and gargle with ammonia. Scour your skin with steel wool, and then rinse it off with rubbing alcohol.
Now: imagine wishing you felt anywhere near as good as that.
My head slides off the curb and bounces on the pavement. I barely feel it, but Wesley lets go of my ankles with a little cry of dismay and jumps over to pull me up to a sitting position. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he babbles. “Here, perhaps if I reach under your arms and lift —”
I try to say something, and cough out blood instead. Wesley dabs at my lips with an indecently starched handkerchief, and I give it another shot. “Can’t walk,” I gasp. Pain, pain, dying would hurt less. “And you can’t … carry me. Think of something.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He lays me down carefully and dashes back into the building. The sirens are closer, along with the occasional heavy freight blast that says fire engine instead of police car. If they’d started that sooner, or been another minute’s distance from us, the remnants of the Pig Posse would have finished kicking me to death before jumping to their getaway. And it would have felt SO good to just stop breathing …
Maybe my luck’s improving, I hear the burring snarl of a big bike cranking up, and if the rider emerges at just the right angle, one of the wheels might break my neck. No, the machine eases out in hesitant little spurts of acceleration, and parks well short of me, and “Here, perhaps this will serve,” Wesley again, and he hauls me up with soft little hands that wrench at my ravaged flesh.
God, this is worse, at least when he was dragging me I could look forward to the chance of unconsciousness. I can only summon the lung control for a half-second’s laugh, but that one carries all the bitterness and hopelessness and derision I can pack into it. I can’t see Wesley’s face but the stiffening is transmitted to me through his hands; he sets me down again, and a moment later he pulls my hands out in front of me, crosses them at the wrists, and ties them together with a couple of quick knots in that crisp handkerchief.
Wes, you dog, I didn’t know you had it in you. That’s what I’d say if I had the voice, or, Wow, does this mean we’re going steady? I’m a real cutup when I’m semiconscious. He lifts my bound wrists and wriggles his head and one shoulder in through the circle of my arms, and then he’s turning and getting his legs under him, and he heaves upright, hoisting me up over his back like some lumpy, aching sling-sack. He gives the impression of puny but he’s muscled like a greyhound, once he’s got a good position and leverage he moves me along readily enough, and the jolt as we start off on the motorcycle is only a small agony.
The next blast of the fire engine almost splits my head open, though, and I feel Wesley cringe at the sound I make. “Hold on, I’ll have you to hospital in a few minutes —”
“No,” I croak. That costs me almost the total of my energy, but I push out just a bit more. “My place.”
“Very well,” he replies, and then I let myself sink into an undifferentiated haze of pain. I don’t pass out, that would be too much to hope for, but for awhile there’s nothing but red ache and roaring.
I’m barely aware of our arrival at the hotel, but enough seeps in that I can tell he skips the main lobby (good call, they’d have to notice one of their guests being carried, bound and bleeding, to the elevators); he uses my card key to get in one of the rear entrances, and then lugs me up the stairs. I’d be impressed if I had the concentration for it; my room is only on the third floor, and even with my increased muscle density I barely top sixty kilos, but I still would have expected Wes to end up prostrate, whinnying and palpitating from the strain of such a task. He bears up, puffing at intervals but never flagging, and then we’re inside my room and it’s time for me to come back for a bit.
“Bag,” I croak to him, rolling my eyes toward the dresser. “Second drawer.”
He extracts the emergency pack I put together a couple of days ago, and begins to pull out supplies. “Which one —?”
“All of ’em,” I say. Again it requires almost all my strength, and again I can call up just barely enough to add, “IV first.”
He laid me out on the bed when we first came in, unknotting the handkerchief and letting me slide off his shoulders with an unWesleylike grunt of relief, and now he hangs the fluid bag from the wall lamp and swabs my arm in preparation for the needle. His movements are fussily precise, but he wastes no time, probably the Watchers run their trainees through a combat medic course. He has to try twice before he catches the vein, but that can be tricky for anyone, then he fastidiously tapes down the line before adjusting the drip rate. The bag is dextrose solution, the highest concentration a human body can tolerate, and he apparently knows how fast that can be fed in because he sets it without asking for guidance.
My bloodstream latches on avidly to the simple sugars, and within a minute I have the energy to say, “Green syringes. One directly into the line, then add one to the bag.” He complies while I recover my breath, and then I proceed to more comprehensive instructions.
Minerals and trace metals, originally in tablet form but crushed to powder for faster absorption; these I wash down with warm Gatorade. Herbal supplements in specific unconventional combinations. B-12 booster into the buttock. Over-the-counter bronchial inhalers, I suck down two and then settle into periodic pulls from a third one, of a different type. Wesley passes over whatever I request, without asking for any explanation and only occasionally for clarification.
These are stopgap measures only; I’ll spend the next two days in bed, bruised and throbbing and miserable, popping Centrum and swilling V-8 and monitoring my ketone and potassium levels while my non-Slayer body recovers from the drain of being run at Slayer speed. My people could have me back at baseline in four hours with the right mix of corticosteroids and compounded glycogenates, but those don’t exist here and I couldn’t bring them with me.
So, one makes do. Suck it up and drive on.
I’ve done all I can, it’s down to maintenance and I’ve got a couple of hours of careful activity before my capacity plummets again. I look to Wesley. I’d rather not, I don’t like owing people, but that doesn’t make it go away. “Thanks,” I say. “I guess it’s pretty obvious I couldn’t have made it without you.”
He waves it off and says, “I took it on faith that you would know better than I what were your most pressing needs, but shouldn’t we do something about your injuries?”
I haven’t forgotten them, but it looks a lot worse than it is, and can’t compare to the total crashdown that hit me when my personal octane boost sputtered out. Bruises fade, cuts heal, bones knit; the trick is staying alive long enough for it to happen. “I’ll be okay,” I tell him. “The double-muffler crew, what was left of them, got spooked by the sirens before they could get down to serious payback.”
He studies me, lips pursed, and at last he sighs. “Very well. Normally I would insist on professional medical care, but I’ve learned that it’s pointless to press against this brand of stubbornness. I’ll do what I can with materials available, and we shall have to hope it will suffice.”
That wasn’t what I meant, or wanted, but it’s easier to accept it than to argue. He’s at once gentle and carefully, distantly clinical, and I lie passive (and in the end, I’ll admit, grateful) as he cleanses and tapes and applies antibacterial ointments. The ribs are a problem, I have to raise myself clear of the mattress so he can get the elastic wrap around my torso, plus the IV line crosses my body and he has to work around that. At last he’s done and I really do feel better, along with being able to breathe without having little knives jab into me.
I’ve also had time to think, and as he steps back, cautiously satisfied, I say, “Wondering about something here, Wes. How exactly did you wind up at that chop shop? It doesn’t strike me as being one of your normal haunts.”
“In that you would be entirely correct,” he says. “If you must know, our conversation piqued my interest, especially when I began noticing little oddities chronicled by the local news outlets.” He essays a small chuckle. “Perhaps I myself have an avocation for this ‘demon hunter’ business.”
Right, like that’s gonna happen. “So you showed up there on your own? You weren’t, say, following me?”
He shakes his head. “Most certainly not. The private occult community here isn’t as extensive as you would find in older or larger cities, but it can be navigated by one with the proper background. I was seeking the Skira’ad of whom we spoke; to find you, in such an alarming state, was unexpected and quite unwelcome.”
“Okay.” I don’t like it, but Oxnard has been brimming with coincidences for the past week or so, and I don’t have the energy to follow it further. “Like I said, it’s a good thing you were there, I was kinda overextended about then.”
“Indeed.” He takes a seat in the armchair — oh, cralphet, Wes, you’ve done your good deed, can’t you just leave? — and gives me a glance that looks like it’s meant to be severe. “Are all your … projects … as strenuous as this has been?”
I’m not up for being chided by the king of wimps, but I’m still in his debt, so I swallow my irritation and say, “Every job has its days. This one was a day and a half.”
“Clearly.” He leans forward. “When we parted, you had been at the edge of believing the Skira’ad was harmless, or largely so. How did you come to feel otherwise?”
Lord love a duck, another interrogation. I waggle my fingers at him, almost catching them on the IV line, and say, “One thing and another, Wes, probably something like the way you landed there yourself.”
“Ah, but I had only just got past the level of opening enquiries.” That scholar-on-the-hunt look is starting to come over his face. “You obviously had progressed further, and how you reached this point is of pronounced interest to me.”
I reach up to let my hand rest over my eyes (a broad hint, but I really am a bit tuckered right now), tchah!-ing with annoyance as I once again have to twist clear of the IV. “There was no single thing, okay? I just kept asking around, and it all started to come togeth–”
I stop, and remove my hand to look at him straight on. He waits, feeling something in the air but apparently willing to let me get to it on my own schedule. I look at my left arm — yep, three-quarter sleeves, just like I remember, going halfway down the forearm — and very softly I say, “Why that arm?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You reached clear across me to put the IV into my right arm, the far arm, instead of taking the closer one. Why’d you do that, Wes?”
If his expression could be trusted, I’d believe he was genuinely puzzled. “At our informal tea the other day, I noted that you were left-handed.” Tolerant, polite tilt of the head. “Most people prefer that injections or infusions be administered to their non-dominant arm.”
“Maybe.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed, sit and then stand. (Whoa, dizzy, don’t let it show.) “Or maybe somebody told you I’d already taken a needle in the other arm. Maybe somebody sent you to do a little follow-through questioning after she came up short.” My legs will barely hold me, but I freight my glare with all the menace I can. “How’d you know my room number, Wes? I’m positive I didn’t tell you. Hell, how’d you know the address of the hotel?”
“I confirmed your location as soon as I arrived in this city,” he says, and is that a thread of nervousness running through the well-bred patience? “Your room number was incorporated into the telephone number you gave me for contact. These are elementary measures, not at all remarkable.”
He has an answer for everything, but I’m not buying it. Wrath and strength are rising together, and I say, “I think we’re done talking here, Wes. I think it’s time for you to step out before I throw you out.”
The threat brings him to his feet. “Please, calm yourself. Your condition is still precarious —”
“Yeah?” I take a step toward him, stretching the IV line; I’ll walk right out of it if I have to. “So imagine how bad it’ll tax my system to have to beat you to death right now.”
The little muscles around his eyes tighten, and he sets his jaw with all the firmness it will hold; maybe he thinks he could take me in my current state. In thin, precise tones he says, “I’ve seen this type of anger before: molten, irrational, uncontrollable. The last young woman who exhibited such a trait, rode it to her own destruction … and if she ever wakes again, I may be forced to order her death.” He stops, seeming a bit surprised at his own words, then forges on. “You exhibit more personal discipline than she, so it is with your own welfare in mind that I say this: learn to hold that inner violence in check. Otherwise it will consume you.”
“So? I got some advice of my own.” I point at the door. “Hit the road. Keep the bike or trade it in or run it off a cliff, I don’t care. Find a new job or beg for your old one back or, hey, walk off that cliff, again not caring. But leave, now, or one of us dies.”
Breath and resolve sigh out of him, and he shakes his head. “Very well. I leave you to such recovery as you may effect.” At the door he stops long enough to say, “Even if you are truly convinced that I somehow conspired against you, please believe that I never intended you harm.” He seems to be searching for something more, but gives it up, and at last he leaves as ordered, dutifully pulling the door closed behind him.
I should go set the dead bolt. I should check to be sure he didn’t palm my card key.
Screw it. I sag back onto the bed, too spent to care. Maybe I overreacted, maybe the entire sudden conviction that the pale woman had recruited Wesley, to finish out what she’d had to leave uncompleted, was just my brain on post-Slayer withdrawal. What does it matter? It’s not like Wesley was someone I needed to handle with care. He wants so badly to amount to something, and he never will. There’s just something missing from the man, an inner vein of steel, and he may crave it but he’ll never find it. Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, born to be mild.
I pull the IV needle from my arm when the last of the spiked dextrose runs in, by which time I’ve exhausted the third inhaler and slugged down four protein shakes. I still feel like death straight from the freezer, but I can actually function with some semblance of normality. Not that I have any use for that capacity, except to prepare myself for forty-some hours of aching, enervated convalescence …
A knock at the door. Naturally.
I could ignore it, I could yell at the caller to puddle off, I could phone the police and report a flasher outside my door. What would be the use? It’s him, it’s always him, there’s just no escaping it. On steady-for-now legs I cross to the door, and pull it open. “Yeah? What?”
Harris, lest there be any last lingering doubt. “Wow. I mean how, how really good it is to see you’re all right.” I watch his eyes take in the bruises, the little strips of tape, but he holds the smile. “I mean, I wasn’t worried or anything, I saw the way you cut loose on those goons, and may I be the first to say good rubbish to bad riddance?” Some of the studied nonchalance slips, and he adds quietly, “You sure everything’s okay?”
“I’m fine.” I remember the look on his face, back in the bay, and go on, “I just need to rest up some. It’s a, a glandular thing, ever since I hit puberty, when the adrenaline really starts pumping I just go crazy, and then I have to spend a couple of days recovering.”
“Good. That’s good.” There’s no mistaking his relief at hearing an explanation that doesn’t involve dead Slayers. “I just, uh, you told me to take off so I did, I figured you knew what you were doing and …” He’s put himself on the defensive, but for once he doesn’t need to worry; after seeing him on his own for the few seconds I was down, I know he didn’t run due to cowardice but because he’s accustomed, in the midst of the fray, to following orders from powerful women. He stumbles to a halt, unaware of my knowledge, and holds up my keys. “Anyway, I brought your car back. Showroom fresh and unbled-on.”
That must have been good; now that I think about it, him and five others squeezing into the Hyundai must have been something out of a Paulie Shore classic. I take the keys, saying, “So the would-be sacrifices all got clear?”
He nods with grinning eagerness. “I got a quick word with Dorrie, asked her to keep mum, and the others didn’t know me, so maybe I won’t have to try to explain everything to the gendarmes. Still, I think it’s about time I pointed myself back to Sunnydale and the ever-so-dysfunctional bosom of my family. I just … first I had to make sure.”
“And return my car.” I lean against the door frame, casually propping myself up. “Look, I’ve been meaning to ask: how did you ever find me in the first place? You tracked me down at that breakfast hutch, and you’d already left messages here before then. We’d only met the night before, how’d you do that?”
“Oh.” Another grin, the one that comes whenever he speaks of certain people. “I called up a friend of mine, she’s a wizard with the old keyboard, she did some kind of online thingy and told me where you were registered.” (Really? That would be some sophisticated work, considering the speed of it, the very few traces I’ve left, and the fact that he wouldn’t even have been able to provide a name; I’d definitely want to know more about this, if I didn’t want even more urgently to wrap a blanket around myself and never wake up.) “And the waffle house, I saw your motorcycle there and it looked like the one you rode away the night of the scuffle, so I peeked in and yeah it was you.”
“Right.” I’m starting to fade again, just a bit, and it undercuts the little politeness I can call up. “Okay, you came, you saw, you handed over the keys. Anything else?”
It comes out sharper than I meant, I won’t pretend to like him but I’m honestly not trying to pick a fight. He draws himself up, something flat and bleak coming into his eyes, and says, “No, that’s all. I came to you for help, and you delivered it in spectacular Sigourney Weaver style, no complaints on that score. There’s something you might tell me, though.” He locks eyes with me. “Why are you always so mad?”
I can’t stop the laugh, but it’s not a happy sound. “Are you serious? We’ve crossed paths four times, and three of them put me in danger of my life. You think I should be grateful?”
“No, I don’t.” He’s still bowed up, even though he’s not actually piling on the aggression. “I’ve messed up big-time in my life, and the last few days weren’t my finest hour, exactly, but that’s not what’s going on and we both know it. You’ve had some kind of grudge against me since the first time we met, and I can’t figure out why. What did I ever do to you?”
I tried, I really did, but now the slow boiling rage is building up in me again, and I feel my muscles tighten with the urge to maim. He’s like some designer disease, this boy … no, you can build up immunity to diseases, he’s an allergic reaction, every recurrence more severe, and this one is ready to blow a blood vessel in my head. “Do? What did you do?” The voice is as alien as the come-kill-me croon of two hours ago, and just as much out of my control. “Nothing, nothing at all. You’ve never done anything.” I stalk forward, and he gives ground, more perplexity in his eyes than fear, and I don’t care, that hard deadly voice is still grating out of me. “Why should you? You don’t know me, you never did, I don’t count for anything. Save the Slayer, sure, go ahead. Save the school, save the city, save the world, you can do all that. But nothing for me, nothing ever for me, I never existed for you, you were never THERE —!!!”
There is no way he could understand any of this, the situation itself is crazy and he’s not dealing with a rational person, but he looks to me with an eerie, impossible understanding, something he can’t even know he knows, and his hands are hanging at his sides and he turns them toward me, palms out, and says, “I’m here now.”
Just like that, I’m gone.
I fly at him in a blind rush, mouth stretched wide, and the sound coming out isn’t a scream or a shout or a snarl or anything, just a huge wordless roaring. I’m going to break the ribs loose from his spine, I’m going to crack his skull open against the walls, I’m going to rip him to pieces and stomp on the bits and screw the future of humanity! He doesn’t step back or dodge, just braces himself and throws his arms around me as I plow into him, still making that vast formless inchoate roaring, and he lets out a hiss of pain as my nails dig into his back but he just squeezes me tighter, pulling me in and clutching me close, smothering a lifetime of fury in the wholeness of himself.
My strength is gone, my voice is gone, mind and will and memory are gone. I’m coming apart, I can’t see through the tears or speak through the sobs, and he holds me up as I cling to him, shaking and howling and broken. Weeping for something I lost without ever having it, needed without ever knowing it, found without ever seeking it.
Safe, finally, in his arms.
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