[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Three 10/18 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Three 10/18

Author: Helen Raven

Email: helenraven at talk21.com

Pairing: Wesley/Gunn

Summary: The full history of the relationship between
Gunn and Wesley in the Birthdayverse. A novel in six
parts.

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, not even a blip
on the litigation radar.

The Story's Home Page: http://www.kelper.co.uk/kungai

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"Wesley?" The first sound of any kind from Angel's
room. Gunn raised an eyebrow and checked the clock
(2:38), then walked over in his own good time to check
Angelus was still in place on the bed. Angelus must
have heard his footsteps, and Gunn thought he could
see Angelus lifting his head, trying to raise himself
on an elbow. "Wesley? Wesley, please. What happened?"
Gunn went back to the computer and carried on with his
search. Nice try at anxious, but you're workin' the
wrong market. "Wesley? I can't - Wesley?" Angelus made
a big show of giving up almost the moment he heard
Gunn walk away; his voice sank so low, sounding so
hopeless like he might never speak again. Unless, of
course, Wesley came up real close, bent to listen.

"Charles?" (2:45) Seven minutes gone by. "Charles, is
it you? Is it - Has something happened to Wesley? Did
I - Please. Don't let me - Charles?"

OK. So maybe that really was Angel. If Gunn was right
about why none of the bookmarks had been about him,
then it couldn't be Angelus calling him Charles. And
if he was right then that meant the change wasn't
permanent after all, and Gunn and Wesley would be able
to take things a bit easier. Looked like the Prague
vision had only (only!) been warning that Angelus
could appear at any time, not warning that there'd
come a day when he wouldn't change back. Bad enough,
yeah, but they had experience of dealing with Angelus,
of keeping him safely chained and locked in his room;
and of sleeping soundly even while he was there.

Gunn couldn't be sure for himself if Angel was really
back. Wesley was the one who knew how to judge. But
then as long as they got him properly chained up, Gunn
didn't see any reason why Wesley should have to stand
that four-hour watch.

Wesley hadn't got into bed, was lying fully dressed on
top of the bed with a blanket bunched up around him.
He was a light sleeper, like he'd said, and he only
needed a few seconds to come fully awake and start
asking Gunn exactly what Angel had said. They armed
themselves with a crossbow and a pike, and Gunn opened
the door.

"Wesley! You're safe. But -" A long pause. "It was
bad?"

"It could have been very bad." Wesley explained what
had happened, though he left out the details of what
Angelus had said and done; when he described the
beginning, he just said he "heard Angelus talking to
himself". Angel listened without asking any questions,
hardly showed any reaction except to close his eyes
tight, then tighter, and turn his face to the
mattress. 

When Wesley finished, Angel opened his eyes, looked at
Gunn then Wesley, and said quietly, "What are you
going to do?"

"Obviously, we have to keep you locked in from now on.
We'll keep you chained. Although, if we can find a way
to monitor you, and if we can fit good locks on the
doors and windows, then we may be able to dispense
with the chains. A lot depends on what we can do to
the new apartment when we move there in two weeks
time. We'll be taking some other new precautions, but
I don't think they'll affect you directly." Angel
nodded slowly, then closed his eyes again. After about
ten seconds Wesley said, "Should we kill you?"

Angel gave no sign that he'd heard Wesley, and when he
finally opened his eyes, he said, "How could it
happen? How can my soul not matter any more?"

Wesley gave a sad, resigned sigh, then explained his
theory about Angel's memory and how it was being
broken into pieces by the brain-damage. Angel didn't
challenge any part of what Wesley said. "We could have
asked that same question every time he appeared when
you had a vision. But because the visions are so
violent - not just in their content, but in the way
they take you over... After the first time he
appeared, didn't it seem almost inevitable that
sometimes the visions would have that effect? I think
that we were, in fact, seeing the same process of
fragmentation, but now we've reached the stage where
it can happen without the violence of a vision."

Slowly, Angel nodded. "What do you think will be next?
What else could I do?"

"In practical terms, I think we've seen the worst. As
long as we can keep you locked in. In other terms..."
Wesley swallowed. "I don't know what I can say. I'm
sorry. Is there anything we can do?"

Eventually: "Do your best with the visions. Keep up
the training. Don't ever listen to him. And... can you
try to live a normal life?"

Gunn said, "Never have yet," and felt amazed when
Angel smiled.

In careful stages, covered by Wesley with the
crossbow, Gunn got Angel clear of the net, out of the
handcuffs, and into the chains. They didn't gag him;
it wasn't necessary, and besides, they needed him to
be able to speak if he got a vision. They left the
light on.

In bed they held each another tight for comfort,
neither making any move towards sex. Gunn said, "I'd
want to die. Spend the rest of my life locked up... If
you asked me like you did him, I'd've said, 'Yeah. Do
it now.' How can he face it?"

"I think... because of the visions. He thinks they're
his chance to atone. Given to him deliberately because
the Powers believe in him. Believe that he can balance
out his years as Angelus. If he took death as an
escape - when his victims had no escape - then he'd be
truly damned, he could never be forgiven. And he needs
that hope. He can't bear to... close his account, not
when there is still a chance."

"So if he stops having the visions, we kill him?"

"We could. Maybe... wait for six months or so after
they stopped. See if he started to heal."

"You think they'd do that, the Powers? Find someone
else?"

"It's possible. I don't believe, in fact, that the
Powers have any particular interest in the state of
his account. He's not a... not a project for them,
just an instrument, and they're only interested in
results. If we fail to give them results, yes, I'd
expect them to... let us go. Certainly bring someone
else in."

"Hmm. Hope the two of us are gettin' double-credit for
all this. Not like we got anythin' to atone for."

Gunn felt the gust of Wesley's amused snort against
his collarbone. "What would you use the credit for?
Save it up for the time we need to rob a bank?"

Alonna. He'd trade it in for the promise that Alonna
was at peace. Or that - somewhere - she was getting
another chance. "Well... was gonna say to buy a few
lucky breaks. But then I guess they are lookin' after
us. With the new apartment. Lots of good work. S'pose
we're about even."

* * * * *

They kept Angel chained to the bed throughout their
last two weeks in the apartment. For the first week he
was fully chained, but then the monitor and the
spyhole showed them that there were, after all, some
reliable patterns in Angel's state of mind, and they
started relaxing some of the restraints. 

Wesley was the one who noticed these patterns, since
he had the monitor by his side most of the time he was
in the apartment. Angel talked to himself a lot,
Angelus too, and this meant that Wesley was usually
fairly sure of Angel's state of mind at any time, and
could tell very easily when the state had changed.
After a few days, Wesley realised that, except when a
vision hit, he had never heard Angel switch
immediately from one state to another: there would
always be a quiet period in between. Sometimes the
quiet period was only a few minutes long, sometimes it
was several hours. Wesley started going into the room
to check on Angel at the beginning of each new quiet
period, and he always found him either asleep (eyes
closed, completely relaxed) or shut down (eyes
half-open, body still slightly tense).

By the Friday night Wesley had heard and seen enough
to be confident that Angel would always remain in any
given state until he either fell asleep or shut down,
or until a vision hit and changed his state by force;
and this meant that Angelus could not appear without
warning after all. They could enter his room when he
was Angel - either lucid or in hell or hallucinating
or in a vision - and they would be quite safe because
they would have at least five minutes to leave the
room after he fell asleep or shut down. By the
Saturday night Gunn was also convinced, and on Sunday
morning they released Angel's neck and right arm from
the restraints, which was enough that he could hold
the beaker and raise himself to drink. The relaxation
in the restraints was also enough to allow him to
read, and when he was next lucid he asked them to
bring him some magazines, and he asked for the last
two or three books that Wesley had enjoyed (or that
he'd hated - anything as long as they hadn't bored
him). They put Angel back in the restraints before
they went to bed, and then released him again in the
morning.

Most of the time Angel was in hell, which wasn't
surprising since every time he woke up, he found
himself in chains. He never spoke when he was in hell,
but he flinched and he trembled, and for Wesley the
sounds were as clear as words. Wesley and Gunn tried
to leave him alone when he was in hell, going in only
to feed him, but they couldn't do anything about the
fact that he could hear them through the door; he
reacted particularly strongly to laughter, and to
footsteps approaching his door.

After they relaxed the restraints Angel was slightly
more likely to wake up lucid, and within a minute of
waking up lucid he would usually call for Wesley. The
first few times, he called because he was anxious and
confused and needed to be reassured about Angelus. But
he soon managed to remember what Wesley had been
telling him about how reliable his patterns were, and
he also remembered that Wesley would be listening to
the monitor. After that he would still call for
Wesley, but only to ask for news of the day's work or
to compare opinions of the book he was reading.

Gunn thought Angel called for Wesley because he was
lonely, but Wesley thought he was just bored: Angel
was too much of an introvert to seek company just for
the sake of it, but he did need some variety and
stimulation. Wesley sympathised as he himself could be
sent into a mild panic at the idea of even as much as
ten minutes in a waiting-room without a really good
book to hand, and he would break off his work without
hesitation, prepared to give Angel any amount of time
he needed. Once Angel realised he was sometimes
interrupting Wesley's work, he told Wesley to bring
the work in with him, to read it out and explain what
he was doing and thinking. Sometimes he got interested
in the problem and made useful suggestions, but at
other times (especially with translations) he drifted
off to sleep, or he picked up his magazine (maybe
pointedly, maybe absent-mindedly - Wesley said he
could never tell). If Wesley hadn't been working when
Angel called, then they usually talked about books.

During the second week, Wesley discovered yet another
aspect to Angel's patterns - an exception to his tidy
rules about the changes of state, but not a dangerous
exception. Angel could switch directly from a lucid
state to a hallucination, but this only seemed to
happen while he was reading. Presumably each
hallucination was triggered by some scene or image in
the book. Wesley was hardly ever able to guess from
Angel's words and expressions what a given
hallucination was about, let alone guess what might
have triggered it. Sometimes Angel vamped up during a
hallucination, at other times he was aggressive and
hostile, but Wesley had decided by the end of the week
that he wasn't dangerous in any type of hallucination
- because he was totally absorbed by the images in his
own head, not even aware that he was chained. Exactly
like the reverberation phase of a vision, and Wesley
knew from experience that even Angelus was harmless in
that state.

Angelus appeared four times during those two weeks,
and Wesley gradually got the impression that Angelus
had also started thinking that he was back in hell -
but it sounded as if he enjoyed it there, as if he
admired the guards for the way they tortured Angel,
and he fully expected them to let him out now he was
Angelus again. He got angry (but not savage) when he
wasn't released and he would entertain himself during
the wait by planning or reminiscing. Wesley couldn't
bear to listen to what Angelus said; he turned the
monitor off and adopted a system of checking in for
five seconds every half hour.

* * * * *

Angel had two visions in the second week. The first
vision came on Tuesday afternoon and dragged Angel out
of hell and into a tunnel under a UCLA dorm. The
second vision came early the next evening, when Angel
had been quiet and asleep for half an hour. The
address was Hollywood and Wilcox, which was the same
address as that strange vision that might or might not
have been connected to the two guys who died behind
the dumpster. In this new vision there was another
"she" who needed help - "they" were after her, and
"she didn't know". This time, however, she had a face:
Angel drew a young woman running like she knew her
life depended on it. Very young she looked, all
angles. "They" weren't so clear, just two vague shapes
running after her. Two arms and two legs each, looked
like, proportions pretty-much human. Probably
vampires, though Angel wasn't saying; just "find her,
stop them, they mustn't have her". Angel was lost in
the vision and quite agitated; Gunn and Wesley had to
get him fully chained again before they could leave
him alone in the apartment, and his agitation made the
chaining more difficult than it had ever been with
Angelus.

Once again, they spent a good part of a night at
Hollywood and Wilcox, with nothing to show for it.
They gave up at three a.m. and then decided that they
needed to eat and soon settled on noodles. Soon after
the food arrived, Gunn said, "D'you think they're
about the same thing? This vision and the one back in
October. There's a nest or something in the area? We
need to check out every building? Or every manhole."

"Probably. Since we failed the first time, they would
still be there."

"Kinda slackers, though. What they been doin' between
now and October? Away on vacation? Or on some vamp
health-kick? Detoxin' on steamed vegetables or spinach
or something. Only allowed one pint of blood every
four months."

Wesley gave a brief half-smile, then shrugged. "There
might have been more killings. Maybe there's something
special about this girl." He shook his head slowly,
over and over, looked deeply uncomfortable. "I don't
know how many times I've had to tell myself that life
is arbitrary. That it's impossible for anyone to be
entirely consistent, you'd go insane if you tried." A
pause, then: "Yes, I prefer your diet theory."

"I'll get searching. Come back when it's day. Talk to
people. Unless it's something else totally and we're
missin' the point like we did before."

"That's also possible."

They ate in silence for a while, then Gunn said,
"Unless it's not a different girl. Maybe it's exactly
the same vision. Like with the three kids and the
nest. Only it looked different, because this time he
didn't vamp up and he was able to draw it." Wesley
didn't look convinced but Gunn carried on. "No, I
think that was the night it really happened, back in
October. Whatever it was with 'her'. The dumpster had
to be part of it. But tonight... Nothin' happened
tonight."

"It's hardly a precise address. We could have been
patrolling the wrong alley."

"Precise enough. We'd've heard her screaming, like we
did when that girl got dragged up the wall. I tell
you, it's all in the past. 'n' I think I've figured
out what that's about." He explained his theory that
visions set in the past were messages about Angel.

Wesley was interested in the idea, as long as they
didn't take it as a convenient excuse to give up on a
vision. When they failed, they should face that
full-on. "So what would the message be, then? Do you
think it's significant that it brought out Angelus the
first time but it didn't this time? What do we look
for?"

"Don't get the feel they can control that - if he
vamps up or not. Why would they ever make him vamp up,
make him so he doesn't draw? Same with gettin' lost in
the vision."

"But you said you thought the second vision with the
nest was a message about how often he was going to get
lost in the visions."

"Yeah, and they chose that one to repeat because it
was the first vision where he did get lost. They were
pointin' out what was different about it."

"And what's different about Hollywood-and-Wilcox?"

"Well... it was the first time since I came onboard
that we couldn't figure out the mission. If they've
been listenin' in on us, maybe they're tellin' us
that, yeah, they will stop the visions if we don't get
the results."

Wesley sighed and looked sceptical. "I don't know. It
was also the first vision where the two of us had to
deal with Angelus together. When you saw what he was
like and decided that the net wasn't good enough.
Maybe it's about how we're dealing with him now. And
if so, is it warning or congratulations?"

"Don't see them botherin' with congratulations, but,
yeah, take your point."

Wesley shook his head. "My point's just... that it's
the type of warning that you can usually only make
sense of after the event. Guessing at the meaning
beforehand, trying to fit facts around it... I think
that can be dangerous because it skews your
perceptions and it might stop you noticing something
really important. But it does make perfect sense as a
way for the Powers to try to send that type of
message. If they stopped to worry about whether or not
we'd actually understand the message... well, they'd
probably never get any visions sent."

Gunn laughed. "OK. I'll go easy on the guessin'. Check
out the area tomorrow, like we said."

On the way home they passed a movie theatre, and as
they waited at the next set of lights, Gunn said, "He
never did get to go to the drive-in." He hadn't
realised until he said the words how much it sounded
like Angel was dead.

A pause, then, quietly: "No." Wesley must have heard
the same finality in the words.

"There isn't any point in takin' him now, is there? I
mean, yeah, we were gonna chain him anyway, but..."

Wesley was shaking his head. "He'd be lucky if he
followed even ten minutes of the film. I dread to
think how many hallucinations it would trigger. Or
what he'd make of the trip as a form of torture."

Gunn nodded, then was quiet for a few blocks. "Wes?
What would you say about getting a VCR? TV, yeah, but
mostly a VCR. To rent movies."

A shrug. "Yes. Why not?" Wesley seemed slightly
surprised, and like he couldn't really see the point.

"Can't see the two of us gettin' out to the movies
again either. Know you're happy reading. I'm good with
my games and everything. But I could really cope with
goin' on a few more dates with you. Even if we have to
stay in for 'em."

Now Wesley was definitely surprised, and definitely
pleased. "I'd like that. We don't do much... relaxing
together, do we? Apart from the obvious."

"Don't do much relaxing, period. We're always on duty
'cos of him. You, especially. Time we did somethin'
for ourselves. Get the TV right after we move, yeah?"

"A house-warming present to ourselves." Wesley was
smiling. "And an incentive for me to buy that new
suit."

"A suit? You sayin' you'd get all dressed up for our
dates?"

"Of course." The shock looked and sounded genuine.
"It's how one shows the proper respect."

Gunn laughed. "Respect! English, you're somethin'
else. So what'll it show if I'm in the same old
T-shirt."

"Oh." One of Wesley's best half-smiles. "A dashing
self-assurance that promises very well for the later
portion of the evening."

* * * * *

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