[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Four 4/11 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Four 4/11

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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That evening, over dinner, Gunn said, "Who's Drusilla?
What did Angelus do to her? 'n' I know I'm gonna wish
I never asked."

"He tormented her until he drove her insane. Killed
everyone she cared about and then he turned her into a
vampire."

"Is she still alive? Or - Y'know what I mean."

Wesley nodded. "Angel met her again quite recently.
But she's supposed to be in South America now. She's
still insane."

"Well, y'don't get over..." Gunn swallowed. "I
thought... When you said, I just thought she might
have been his sister."

A long, pained pause, then Wesley said, "He did have a
sister. He killed her. He killed all his family."
Another pause. "He didn't turn them."

"I figured. That he killed them. You think there's
somethin' tells a vamp to start with family?"

"I don't..." A sigh. "Maybe it's part of discovering
that you don't feel guilt any more. The ultimate
proof. I don't know how much they get from instinct."

"Yeah. Makes sense." Gunn's turn to pause. "You've
never... What about your family? You got any sisters?
You'd've told me already if they'd been -"

A very difficult question for Wesley: guilt, pain,
embarrassment, and more, all tightly-drawn. But not
grief. Gunn wished he'd found a better way to ask. But
now he was really wondering, he really did want to
know.

Eventually, gaze fixed on his hand around his glass of
water, Wesley said, "I never had a sister. Although I
was always going to have one, until it was finally too
late. A particular type of sister, of course." A deep
sigh, then Wesley raised his head. "I was supposed to
be a girl. They were so certain. The right type of
girl."

Supposed to be a girl? Wesley? Gunn shook off the idea
briskly and said, "What type? Like... Liz Hurley or
something?"

"A slayer. A vampire slayer. It's..." Wesley closed
his eyes briefly, dragged his hand back through his
hair, and then started to tell Gunn about ancient
prophecies and forces in balance, and this
one-and-only superchick. Who was in Sunnydale and
wouldn't you know it?

Wesley supposed to be a superchick? Nope, idea still
bouncing straight off. "So that's why you came here?
To... I dunno... take her back to meet your family?
Guess it's a big deal over there."

"In my family it is. The last two English slayers were
both in my family. And a large proportion of potential
slayers. It gives my family... It gives them a
position to which they have become accustomed."

"And you were letting the side down?"

"Not so much that as... irrelevant. Though, yes, there
was a lot of planning done for 'the girl'. For when
she arrived. When they got good luck."

"Man. Finally gettin' why you were OK with bein' sent
to that school. That's wrong, Wes. That's so wrong."

Wesley shrugged and sighed. "I tried to make up,
but... how do you make up for being the wrong person?"
He sounded sad, but calm, like he'd sounded sometimes
in the last lucid days with Angel. When Angel had said
he didn't want Wesley "either", had he known about all
this? Gunn wasn't going to ask.

"But you went to Sunnydale for them?"

"Not for them. Not directly for them. But definitely
because of them. Their influence got me the job. I was
qualified. On paper. But hardly suitable. I knew that
but... I didn't know what to do about it. I never have
known."

Angel had thought he was useless. That's what Wesley
had said about him and Angel and how they'd known each
other in Sunnydale. Apart from the crush on Cordy,
that was almost all he'd said about the time in
Sunnydale. "Well, why would you even want the job?
Being around one of those girls after what you'd grown
up with?"

"Because I believed in what we were all doing. I'd
always believed in it. It was... a privilege to be
involved, as it is here with the visions. I didn't see
myself on the front line then, I was happy doing
research. Studying languages wouldn't... I was good at
it. The people there even liked me. But my family
didn't... It was just like when they moved me from my
school to the Watcher's Academy and used their
influence. When it was obvious..." Wesley shook his
head, voice becoming ragged. "How do you convince
people that you're not a management spy? That you know
you don't deserve... You want to do better and you
want to ask for help, but they've all agreed not to
talk to you." A long sigh. "I shouldn't even have
cared about that, when you consider what a slayer
faces."

"Course you should care!" Gunn reached across the
table and clamped his hand around Wesley's wrist. "Did
Angel treat you like that? In Sunnydale?"

"Angel didn't really talk to anyone except Buffy. And
he didn't know about my family, none of them did. They
might not even have cared. They gave me more chance
than - It could have been a fresh start for me but I
did everything wrong. You would have... disowned me."

Gunn swallowed. "Y'can't go home?"

A shrug. "They fired me but they didn't get my Green
Card cancelled. I don't know how they've been dealing
with my failure between them. How much it's damaged...
It was my father's birthday on Thursday. Last year I
sent a card but this year... I think I did believe
that I would call him. But then I couldn't imagine him
even letting me get the words out. I should have asked
you to make me call him."

"Y'wanna call now? Few days late is better than
nothing." Part of Gunn wanted to tell Wesley to just
forget about his family, that they didn't deserve him.
But you didn't badmouth a man's family, even if he was
standing there begging you to do it. You'd never come
out of that clean, 'cos it always went deeper than
you'd ever guess. And if you loved him and believed in
him more than his family did (more than anyone had?),
there were a hundred better ways of proving it. If
Wesley needed to try to make things right, then Gunn
would help him; and help him too if that family still
wanted things to stay wrong.

"It's five o'clock in the morning. Yes, I could call
tomorrow. I'll be awake all night, though, trying to
decide what to say."

Wesley did call the next day but Gunn never knew what
Wesley managed to say, because they'd agreed that Gunn
would go out to buy breakfast while Wesley was making
the call. Wesley didn't look up from his translation
when Gunn got back, which pretty-much answered Gunn's
question but he went ahead and asked it anyway.

"Oh. He had a speech prepared. Quite short. He must
have used it on half the council already. So routine
he hardly even raised his voice. 'After all they'd
done for me.' 'They'd always spoiled me.' 'If only
he'd done more to teach me some real character.' As I
said, it was short." A shrug and a brief sound that
might have been a laugh. "But before he hung up he did
remind me about my mother's birthday in July. And told
me to send a card and to call on the right day. She'll
probably give me the same speech."

Gunn put his hand on Wesley's shoulder. "You did a
brave thing, Wes."

Wesley shook his head. "I'd heard most of that before.
The Council gave me a backlog of sixteen years of bad
reports. With detailed comparisons. I was expecting
the other sixteen years."

Yeah, that was why it was brave. "Be easier next time.
You tell him about the survey? How much you're doing
here?"

"I mentioned that I was calling from L.A. He didn't
really ask anything. He assumed I'd be staying away
indefinitely."

Gunn nodded, then tightened his grip on Wesley's
shoulder. "You OK?"

"Shaky, even if most of that's relief. I'll be better
after a few hours' hard work. Especially if I can look
forward to a date this evening."

"You can choose the dinner and the movie."

Gunn wished he could ask Angel what Wesley had really
been like in Sunnydale. Had it been that obvious that
he'd spent most of his life with people who didn't
trust him, that he'd learned to expect that he
wouldn't be wanted anywhere? And had Angel seen him
change? The change must have come with getting fired.
Finally free of all that slayer crap that he'd been
born into, that he'd really believed in, the poor
bastard. Finally able to make some choices of his own.
Well... able to make them till the Kungai had taken
his arm, and the Powers had given him to Angel. But
that was only how Angel had seen it. Wesley had had a
choice, and he'd made it. And then he'd chosen Gunn.

It was kind of a pathetic story. Spoiled rich boy.
Parents didn't care enough but they still got him
chances other people had been trying to earn for
years. Yeah, you could drown in the tears at that
Support Group.

But Wesley didn't tell it like he was sorry for
himself. Sure it'd been tough and he wouldn't wish it
on anyone, and he didn't hide from Gunn how much it
could still hurt him. But he didn't think it made him
special or gave him an excuse. He hadn't made any
habit of dragging around all the things that would've
been better "if only". He'd decided what he believed
in and he'd done what he could with what he'd been
given. Like Gunn with his family and then with the
streets and the crew.

Gunn didn't like to think how lonely Wes must have
been. Not totally lonely for every day of those
sixteen years - he'd been happy, hadn't he? when
they'd left him alone to be with books and book-people
- but bad enough for long enough to drive most people
crazy. That was all over, thank God, it was long past.
Wesley was happy now, and from much more than just
books.

* * * * *

Angel was going through a phase of complaining about
his food. Pig's blood wasn't good enough for him any
more, and by the middle of May he was refusing more
than half of his meals. Even with Wesley ordering him
to drink (and Wesley could be chilling when giving
orders), he'd take at most two mouthfuls and act like
it was choking him. Wesley got him some calves' blood
then some goats' blood and then some lambs' blood, but
Angel was anything but grateful for the change.

They already knew, though, that Angel wasn't just
looking for some variety. No. Angel was yearning for
human blood. They'd suspected from the way he'd
started staring at the veins on Wesley's wrist, from
the way he was following their scent; but they knew
for sure on the day Wesley went in with a paper-cut on
his hand. Yearning really was the word: a hopeless
longing. Even when the sight or the smell made Angel
vamp up, he didn't act threatening or demanding, he
acted like he knew he was never going to get anything.
But the animal blood was so much less than what he
needed, and since he had no memory, he had to
experience the same tragic disappointment over and
over again. "Tragic" was Wesley's word, added after
the lambs' blood (which had been expensive and not
exactly easy to find).

They had to assume he'd get over it when he got hungry
enough, but that might take months and they also had
to assume he could turn dangerous at any moment.
Angelus seemed to be going through the same phase,
though the effects were less obvious since they never
tried to feed Angelus and he was always openly
thirsting for blood; but since Angel had started this
yearning, Angelus had been savage, loud enough to wake
them some nights.

Wesley thought it must be the interns: having the
scent of new people in the apartment after his world
had closed down to just Wesley and Gunn. Wesley
watched Angel on the screen while Gunn opened the door
to the night's intern, and there was definitely... an
awareness. Quiet and hopeless from Angel, loud and
demanding from Angelus. And wasn't he at his worst on
the days immediately after?

On the third Tuesday of Wesley's watching, when it was
Newton at the door, Wesley saw Angel vamp up, and he
and Gunn spent the drive to the portal wondering if
Angel would ever adjust and take the new scents for
granted, or whether it would be safer (and kinder) to
stop using the interns. Wesley didn't think it would
be awkward telling Lilah they'd changed their minds;
he'd tell her they'd realised that new people made
Angel disturbed and they'd offer to take them all out
for a meal, as a small way of thanking them.

That evening's duals were in a sociable mood, enough
to talk at length over noodles and then to choose a
bar that tolerated humans. Wesley asked them about
their experience of prisoners adjusting to new guards,
and they soon guessed he was asking for a reason, and
asked him in turn what was happening with his sick
friend.

Suddenly: "Is he a demon?" Gunn thought Wesley had
been doing a smooth, blood-free translation, but maybe
they'd picked up something about Angel's sense of
smell.

"Half demon." Still smooth. "He's half Brachen. He
usually appears entirely human except in times of
stress."

"So you know he's stressed-out by these people?"
Wesley nodded, and the duals spent most of the rest of
the meal trying to find a fair comparison to Angel.

"Why d'you make him a Brachen demon?" It was nearly
eleven and they were on their way home, with the duals
still in the bar.

"Doyle was half Brachen. I learned something about
them. And in a way Angel is half demon. It seemed the
simplest way to explain him."

Newton wasn't at the apartment when they got home, and
instead they found themselves talking to a man twice
Newton's age who introduced himself as Holland Manners
and looked like he should've been playing the kindly
uncle on some hokey sitcom. Turned out he was the head
of Lilah's section but he'd been glad to help out when
Newton had called around ten to say his mother had
just been rushed to hospital and he needed to find one
of the other interns to cover for him. Manners said
he'd just arrived and he'd been about to call them to
tell them what had happened.

"He could have called us. We would have come straight
back." Wesley wasn't happy, but Manners seemed to hear
it as concern for Newton.

"I don't think he was thinking clearly. In fact, I
told him not to call you. I thought his tone would
worry you, when there really was no need." Manners
apologised again for the intrusion but without any
hint that he would ever have handled things
differently. Still the kindly uncle, but easier now to
imagine him as Lilah's boss. "So that's Angelus."
Manners nodded at the screen, though Angelus wasn't in
view at that moment: he was at the door, and his
snarls sounded like he had teeth all along his throat.
He was clawing and kicking and using his full weight
and they could hear that he was getting burned and
that he didn't seem to care. "How long did it take you
to get used to this?"

Gunn shrugged. "Nothin' to get used to. Door's bolted.
Windows're solid. Complainin's the most he can do."

Manners soon left and they showered and went to bed.
Wesley was really annoyed about Newton and Manners,
seemed tense enough that he'd be losing sleep over it.

"We'll have to wait for... oh, at least another two
weeks now. Until well after Newton's next shift. Or
it'll look as if we're stopping it because they
screwed up. Lilah's intern and Lilah's boss. We can't
afford to end it like that. We can't afford to put her
on the defensive."

"I know, Wes. But it's only a couple more weeks.
Angel's not gonna starve. Not even showin' his
cheekbones yet. Day Five of the diet. Max." 


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