Chapter Nine
"There's nothing to talk about, Angel," Wesley tells him, arms crossed as he stands in Angel's office doorway. Angel called him here, insisting they had to talk about what happened. Wesley disagrees.
"Sit down, Wes. We need to--"
"There is no 'we', Angel. Not any longer."
"Let me explain."
"Explain what? How I'm supposed to trust you? When you stole my fucking mind?" Wesley can't keep the pain, the anger, the contempt out of his voice.
"You weren't supposed to find out," Angel replies.
Wesley lets out a harsh bark of bitter laughter. "No, I don't suppose I was. I was supposed to trust you blindly, is that it? While you molded my mind to suit your needs?"
"It wasn't..."
Wesley is tired. He doesn't want to have this argument. He wants to go upstairs and pack his things, get out, once and for all. Get out of Angel's life, like he did before. Like he didn't remember. Knowing now, it makes him dizzy, and he sits heavily on Angel's sofa.
"You took that away from me, Angel. My past. Gone, just like that, with the snap of your fingers, so I didn't know any better than to trust you."
"You can trust me," Angel replies.
"Trust you? Trust you? You stole my mind. You tried to kill me! You bloody well--" Wesley's rant is cut off as the air in the office seems to wink, just for an instant, like the lights have flickered.
"You rang?" she says, bored, suddenly in the room. Immediately, Angel's in front of her, leaning in, menacing, as though he'd like nothing more than to slam her against a wall, but being that he can't actually touch her, he's settling for taking as intimidating a stance as possible.
"What are you doing here?" he growls.
"Wesley's memory woke up; that was my wake up call. Think of me as your Svengali."
"What the fuck did you do?"
"What do you mean?" Lilah asks him, head cocked slightly to the right.
"He remembers. Wesley remembers."
Lilah nods sagely, as though she were expecting that to be the explanation. "Probably has something to do with the loophole I gave him." It's in a mocking tone, one eyebrow quirked slightly as she fights back a small smile.
If anything, Angel's stature becomes more intimidating.
"What loophole?" he grits out behind clenched teeth.
She turns to Wesley, who's sitting on the sofa, looking emotionally battered and bruised.
"Why'd you do it, Lilah?"
She turns back to Angel. "Maybe I just wanted to mess with you one last time."
"Why?" Wesley asks, standing.
Lilah seems to think on it for a moment, glancing at Angel, then back again. "You deserve to know what kind of man you are; good and bad. And why."
Wesley sits down again.
"How?" from Angel.
Lilah shrugs.
"I made that deal with the Senior Partners. Not you. How'd you make the loophole?"
"What are they going to do? Fire me? Send me to Hell? Shaking in my Blahniks."
"They could have found a way to punish you," Wesley replies.
She turns back to Wesley, and her face softens almost imperceptibly. "It was worth it, either way."
"How did you go behind their backs, Lilah? They're a hell of a lot more powerful than you. They wouldn't have let you get away with it in the first place."
Lilah snorts delicately. "What, you think the Senior Partners are the only ones who make deals with devils?"
"What did you give up?"
Lilah turns back to Wes at the question before turning a defiant glance on Angel. "What it took."
There's a moment of silence. "What set it off?" Wesley finally asks, eyes finally meeting hers.
Another shrug. "Time. Sense memory."
"Sense memory?" Angel asks.
Lilah ignores him, keeping her eyes on Wesley. "When you cut yourself shaving? The sketch of Connor, the smell of jasmine bothering you, the baby in the rain, all sense memory. The memories stayed in you. Angel's spell just put them to sleep; I woke them up." She walks away from Angel, standing in front of Wes, her hand up in a ghostly mockery of sliding across his cheek.
"I wanted to show you, we weren't so different. You wouldn't have remembered why if I hadn't."
"You didn't love me." Not a question.
"No less than you loved me."
"It's bullshit." Wes and Lilah turn to look at Angel at the outburst. "She didn't want to show you anything. This was all just to turn you against me."
"I couldn't have known he was going to start fucking you," Lilah scoffs. "For once, Angel, it's not all about you."
"What did you give up?" Wesley asks again, and Lilah turns back to him with a sigh.
"This, right now? This is it for me."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't get to come back. You can summon me, you can subpoena me, it doesn't matter. I don't get to know what you're doing, how you are, where you are, anything. The mystical post office is no longer delivering to my P.O. Box."
Wesley takes a few moments to digest this. "You're to sever any and all contact with the world, then? That was your sacrifice."
"That about covers it. Which is why Angel knows I'm not screwing with him. I wouldn't give up the chance to watch him squirm." She glances at the clock on the wall. "Speaking of which, my train's leaving."
"Lilah..."
"Don't worry about it, Wes." Another ghostly almost-caress, and she's gone.
"So now what?" Angel asks after a few minutes of tense silence.
Wesley whirls around, fire in his eyes.
"Now I leave."
"Wes, can't we talk about it?"
"More talk about trust, Angel?"
"Look, Wes, I understand..."
"Do you really? You ask me to trust you, to trust that you knew what was best, but you don't trust me, do you, Angel?"
"I..."
"No, you don't. You didn't trust me enough to let me remember the past." Wesley's face pales slightly as he realizes more. "That's why you wouldn't let me fuck you, isn't it? Because you don't trust me. After everything that happened, you don't trust me, but you expect me to trust you now? I know what happened last year. I know just how well I can trust you."
"You didn't see him, Wes. Before...he was going to kill people. He was going to kill Cordelia, himself, innocents, because he couldn't live in my world. I had to let him out. He was my son."
"Did you kill him?" Wesley wonders why he dreads the answer to this question.
"Yes."
Oh, that's the answer.
"And then you made everyone forget him."
"And gave him a new life. With a real family, where he didn't grow up in Quar-toth, where he's going to college. Nobody remembers him because he no longer exists."
Wesley digests this.
"And you've always known."
"Yes."
"Then why?" Wesley asks. Angel stares at him for a long moment, until Wes elaborates. "Why did...with me?"
Angel sits on the sofa beside him, reaches for Wesley's hand. Wesley pulls it away. He can't let Angel touch him.
"Mo grá..."
"Stop it. Just tell me why."
"Because I got over it."
"You got over it?"
"Look, Wes, we had our differences. But I can look past them, and love you. Why can't you do the same?"
"You stole--"
Angel cuts him off by taking the same posture as he had when Lilah showed up. "You stole my son!"
Wesley doesn't flinch back. He raises his eyebrows. "Over it, are we?"
"I forgave you."
"Well, Angel, you've also had several more months than I have to do so. And as I recall, I had my reasons."
"Which I didn't know, when I tried to..."
"Say it, Angel. When you tried to kill me. Everything I did, I did out of love. I thought you were going to kill him. Which, as I know now, wasn't wrong."
"Wesley, I..."
"Stop, Angel. It's over. I won't do this." Wesley stands, moves toward the door. He knows he's walking out of Angel's life forever; it hurts.
"Wesley... Do you love me?"
Wesley stops at the door, but can't turn around. "I love you, Angel. But I can't trust you, and I can't ever forgive you."
He walks out.
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