nobody said it was easy

Fred had been incredibly tempted to march herself right to Wesley's room and ask him why he thought keeping vital information from her was a good idea. It wasn't that she didn't understand the impulse to keep the truly alarming knowledge away from her at first -- heaven knew if their positions had been reversed she'd have flailed for an appropriate reaction. She also probably would've held it together a lot less convincingly, so she had to give credit where credit was due. And she didn't want to cause him any more pain. She wondered, idly, if she'd managed to get up the nerve to ask him out for coffee before she died. Or if she'd ever do so now, knowing what she knew.

It was too much knowledge for one girl to deal with on her own, but it was no one else's to deal with, either.

Well, maybe one person's. Demon's, she amended in her head the minute she caught herself thinking about having the conversation. She couldn't start thinking about this Illyria as a person - down that road lay madness, and there was enough madness running around this place already.

It took Fred only a few minutes of deliberation before she looked up Illyria's name in the directory and found the room she was staying in. It took her another whole day of changing her mind back and forth before she firmly decided that her only option was to confront this thing head-on before that choice was taken away from her, too.

She had her hand raised to knock firmly when the door swung inward, robbing her of even that much power.

It was time. More than time, if Fred were honest with herself, which she tried to be. It was hard not to be when you'd had all that time with just yourself (future versions of that self nonwithstanding.) It was time, and she'd made her peace.

Just one or two things left to do.

Three letters, to be left with Bar on her way out:

( For Wesley. )

( For Illyria. )

( For anyone else who knew her. )


And on the wall (the perfect, pristine wall -- she'd never taken to writing on it here, not even the days she was sorely tempted), in slightly loopy and messy handwriting, said with a whispered almost-prayer to whatever magic kept this place running to let it stay for a while, just long enough that someone would know, and remember an existence that had been lead quietly and often incredibly strangely, but lead nonetheless:

Winifred Burkle was here.

Somewhere, outside the Bar, in the world that Fred left behind somewhere vaguely near to a year ago, a Slayer dreams.

Fred dreams as well, though hers do not usually carry the same significance.

"Head," the girl says, reaching a bloodied hand out to touch Fred at the temple, "and heart," she continues, clasping one of Fred's hands and drawing it to herself to feel the wild racing heartbeat beneath the skin. Fred pulls away, startled, stares down at her own now similarly bloodstained right hand.

(A flash of before -- Pylea -- a girl lures a demon who was once a man away from men who are just men.)

"Head and heart. You'll need them. She'll need them for what comes later."

"I remember." Fred replies, remembering in that way you do in dreams. All at once, and apropos of nothing, she remembers. "I remember you. You're that girl. We helped you. Dana, was it?"
(Things have names.)

"Shh. Listen."
(For the click?)
Dana presses a (perfectly clean, now) finger to Fred's lips. Fred doesn't back away. Personal space is something you lose concept of, she supposes, if you've had enough of it. She'd had enough of it, but she filled hers up with numbers because there weren't any people left to fill it.

Dana smiles, a smile that's almost kind though it overlays something dark and feral. She's not scared, Fred notices. The Dana she'd met had been scared. Fred guesses it's been a while. Time enough for a scared, violent, insane girl to be none of those things any more. Dana smiles, and Fred's pretty sure the violence has stayed even if the fear is gone, but she doesn't back away when the Slayer moves her hand again to brush a piece of hair out of Fred's eyes.

"Let's try the blue one this time."

Fred flinches, just a little, but the Slayer ignores it, lets Fred reclaim her personal space as she takes off the jacket she's wearing. It's red, Fred notices, dark red, and she can't tell if it started that color or not. She holds it out to Fred, scolding.

"Yellows make you weak."

Fred's shirt is yellow. She's worn it a hundred times, and she's always thought it made her feel more alive, more happy, more there. But she takes the offered jacket anyway, slips it on if only to appease the madwoman.

"Um... thanks, I guess. Look, Dana, I..." she fumbles for an excuse, a reason to leave, and she's not sure why she's so certain this girl's going to rip her to pieces if she takes a step back.

" Brown makes you sleepy," Dana replies, placidly, as though Fred has not spoken at all. "It's just like falling asleep."
"Is that true?" Fred asks, suddenly sure of what Dana's talking about, in the way that words make sense in dreams even when they don't.
Dana shrugs, and there's that feral smile again.
"No."

It's not a comforting thought, Fred thinks, and as if in reply the Slayer speaks words that don't sound as though they're meant to be comforting.

"You aren't like them. Like us. We didn't choose this, either."
"What?" Fred asks, knowing the answer.
"Destiny."
(Screw destiny.)

Blood on Dana's face, blood on Fred's hand.
"You're not like us."
(You always know your place.)

"So what is this?" Fred asks, in a moment of clarity. "A dream? A vision? Like your Slayer stuff, or Cordy's...?"
"One time only." The Slayer snaps, insistent. "Not like us. Head and heart. You have friends in high places."
"Don't I know it." Fred cracks a smile.
"This isn't your power." Dana's scolding again, and Fred thinks it's because she smiled.

"What is?" It's the most important question, it's the one that will make the numbers work, and the dream's slipping already, slipping away from her because this was never her gift.
"You'll know. This is only the first layer. Don't be scared."

"I'm not scared!" Fred calls out into the darkness, into the space the strange wild girl had been, and wakes up breathing hard, heart racing, words echoing in a dark room as the dream already begins to fade from memory.

I'm not scared.

[after this thread and Illyria's subsequent return to Milliways.]

It's late - late enough that she should be sleeping. Wesley'd insisted that she get some sleep after the lights came back on, after the most immediate evidence of the threat had passed for another night. She would have argued, but they'd come to some understanding and she didn't want to ruin that. Besides, it was just sleep. She'd instructed him to get some, as well, knowing full well that he wouldn't just as much as he ought to have known full well that she wouldn't. They were both just about equally stubborn in that regard.

In most regards, really. Maybe that was why--

Why what? Why they hadn't been able to connect again in this place like they almost had back at home? Why they'd been attracted to each other in the first place? You couldn't pin a why on things like that. She knew it, even for all her wanting to know the reasons behind every last action and reaction in the universe. This place wasn't conducive to those types of questions; nearly a year here had taught her that this place didn't often offer answers. And now it needed them, itself, if it was going to keep existing.

If she was going to keep existing.

She wasn't quite sure what leaving this place would do. Presuming she could get to another world, somewhere outside of time, like Milliways. Somewhere that her continued existence wouldn't create a temporal paradox.

Would that matter? If I wasn't on my Earth any more, would a world-ending paradox matter? Whose world would I end?

More impossible questions. Some days she was selfish and felt like risking it. If Wesley could exist as a corporeal dead person then she could exist as a paradox. Maybe not even that. She and Illyria had barely interacted. Was it a paradox just to know about the existence of a future version of yourself who wasn't really yourself to begin with? If she learned a way to willfully avoid Illyria's resurrection, then yes. That would have been the kind of thing that made your brain hurt to think about too closely, because knowing to undo it means it had to have happened to begin with. But just escaping? Just being elsewhere, not avoiding, just... not meeting that end. Not willfully undoing it. Not using any knowledge learned from Illyria to undo it. That wouldn't end the world.

It would just end one blue ex-goddess who Fred had only spoken to a grand total of maybe five times in the entire time she'd been here. Fred wondered if she ought to care about that.

Some of those times she helped you.
Only because helping me helps her. Can't have the Shell destroyed.
Then where is she now? Why isn't she helping stop the impending destruction now?

That question had an answer.

And it was in search of that answer that Fred found herself knocking on the door of the room that she realized upon further reflection suited Illyria far better than it ever would have suited her, despite its mathematical interest. Anything called a perfect number wasn't something she wanted to associate with herself. She didn't aspire to those kind of heights.

But if Illyria did, and if she'd gotten the powers back to prove it, Fred wanted some answers about why a goddess wasn't helping stop this thing.

And maybe some other answers, besides.

She's alone again. She'd gotten used to it, had more than enough time to get used to it back in that cave. She should have known she'd end up that way again, no matter what the pretty redhaired girl had said. She'd said a lot, but she'd gotten bored easily. She didn't have the kind of patience that Fred had, and it had killed her in the end. Fred could have warned her about that, if her opinion had ever been asked.

The girl who had once been Fred wanders the alleys of a town that had never been hers. Sunnydale, Willow had called it. Places had names. She had to remind herself. This was Sunnydale, and the one she'd left was Los Angeles, and the names seemed all wrong for what she was now. They didn't fit. Pylea hadn't fit, either, but she'd been lucky. No, she corrects herself. She'd been strong, and now she would be strong forever.

Alone or not.

She's still lost in thought when she spies a place up ahead, a bar that was still in operation in spite of the fear these humans dwelled in. It would be fully of pretty helpless things like she'd been, and the men who made themselves feel stronger by thinking they could protect them. She could slip right in and take home a nice strong protective type, take him back and show him what weakness really was. Make him pay for not being able to keep himself safe. She didn't need anyone to keep her safe, not now.

(Handsome man saves me from the monsters.)

It had been her dream, once. A child's dream, the dream of a foolish weak girl that she'd never be again.

Absently, with a half-smile on her lips as she thinks of how much better than tree bark and berries her dinner would taste, she pushes the door open.

Fred was more than a little frazzled.

It had been some number of days that she'd lost count of, but definitely more than was normal for Wesley, even with the distance that they still gave each other. They didn't necessarily see each other every day, if one or the other got wrapped up in something interesting. They were both rather prone to forgetting the passage of days in this place. But he'd been gone for a while and she knew because she'd been looking. Looking everywhere. His room, the library, all around the bar itself. Even the infirmary, on the considerable likelihood that he'd annoyed something more powerful than himself.

It was on that last thought that she felt her blood run cold and her mind finally gave voice to the sneaking suspicion that had been trying to work its way into being all week.

Illyria.

Just a few weeks ago she'd asked that Wesley stop offering his assistance to the demon goddess. It just wasn't right on pretty much any level, she thought. And sure, Illyria wouldn't harm her, but that wasn't to say that she wouldn't harm anybody. Hadn't she gotten into constant violent fights with that vampire friend of hers? Come to think about it, she hadn't seen him around in a good long while, either, but missing vampires were less her concern than her own missing boyfriend.

That was the heart of the matter.

Wesley was missing, and she didn't know how to find him. But someone might. Someone who would likely get offended at the accusations that Fred was likely to make, but who could not, in the end, do anything too harmful. And at present Fred was still intent on dealing with things peacefully.

She could do that. Hopefully.

She hadn't quite been intending on doing so quite as immediately as she found herself at the door to room 496, but once there, she found that she could not let hesitation stand in the way of solving the problem. It was a simple enough matter. Raise your hand and knock. She'd answer, words would be traded, and at the end of everything perhaps she'd know --

"Make your inquiry."

Her thoughts were interrupted by this sudden command, and she startled at finding herself face to face with Illyria, whose expression was as unreadable as it had ever been. She certainly didn't sound very friendly, but that wasn't new, and Fred didn't care. She had to remind herself of this fact, but she wasn't here because she wanted to be, and she didn't care if the goddess wanted her to be, either.

"... hi."

Well, that was lamer than she'd planned. But it was a start. She took a deep breath and met the impatient goddess's gaze with a equally unwavering one of her own.

"I'm sure you know what I'm here to ask, so why don't we just skip the small talk?"

"You wish to know where Wesley is." the goddess replied, and Fred couldn't remember if she'd sounded that cold the time that she'd come to deliver the information that Wesley was dead. She didn't want to remember that.

Fred nods, and starts to say yes, and perhaps explain herself in some way, but realizes too late that it isn't necessary, as Illyria spoke again.

"And you think I have something to do with his disappearance."

"I--" she hesitated, not sure if answering was the wisest course when dealing with someone who could deal out considerable amounts of pain without ever actually killing Fred. But she couldn't lie, either. She hated that she didn't even get the choice, but it made things easier.

"Yes. I think you might have had something to do with it."

When she was met with only silence, Fred added, "Or that you might at least know what happened."

"I neither know nor care." Illyria replied, and this time Fred was certain that her tone was deliberately cruel. "You recall as well as I do the conversation in which he agreed not to associate with me any more."

Something about the way she says it made Fred wince internally. As if it were now her fault that she couldn't find Wesley, or as if she should feel guilty for making the request in the first place. Refusing to be cowed into feeling either of those things, she pressed on.

"I do. But I also know the likelihood of you taking no for an answer."

"You know nothing." Illyria snapped back, with enough venom in her voice to make Fred take a step back. "You wish to know what happened? Wesley and I spoke once more after the conversation in which you demanded that he cease associating with me. He made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing more to do with me, and then the Slayer interrupted the argument which had devolved into the trading of petty insults. I know nothing more of his whereabouts after, nor do I wish to. He has proven himself as untrustworthy as all the rest of your species. You are welcome to him, should he ever return."

Fred opened her mouth to shoot back some angry reply, some defense of Wesley, or perhaps just some petty insults of her own, when she found the door abruptly slammed in her face.

She glared at the closed door for a few moments, restraining herself from walking in there and giving the goddess a piece of her mind just because she could. But in the end, rationality won out. Standing her arguing with her evil clone wasn't going to find Wesley, as much as she'd hoped it would. She'd been stupid to think that Illyria would be of any help. She never had been yet.

So Fred turned around and headed back the way she came, but could not quite resist one parting shot. She was thinking it anyway, so it wouldn't hurt anything more to actually say it, even over her shoulder to the still-closed door several feet behind her.

"... stupid blue bitch."

Ahem.

Vamp!Fred, for when I app her at Otherways, and for another player of Vamp!Fred. And for anyone else who wants them, really, just please credit to viridian.



There will be others for snagging as I finish them.

Random OOC ramblings here, too.

So, was just rewatching the end of Season 3, and the Fred/Gunn relationship still annoys me to death, but there are at least funny parts, like in Double or Nothing where she honestly and with an appropriate expression of horror says "Oh my God, Charles, do you have leukemia?!" in such a hysterical manner that even Gunn laughs at her. However, this entire plot is made stupider by the fact that Gunn's actual problem is that he sold his soul for a truck. Yeah, I don't know either. The crack that infiltrates these episodes makes me want to put a brick through the tv. Or, computer screen, as the case may be.

It also strikes me that Fred gets herself into mortal peril more often than anyone I've ever seen, so at least I'm playing her right. In the first one that I watched tonight, The Price, she gets possessed by some water-seeking demony slug thing and almost dies, and is saved by the amazing power of alcohol. No, I'm not making this up. The worst part is that they had to go to Wesley in order to get, not any magic, but the bottle of vodka that they then make Fred drink. I hate this show so much that I love it, seriously.

What else? Oh, various Lilah ramblings, but I'll put those in Lilah's journal when I app her. I've already got some screencaps that I want to icon from the last two episodes, both of her in a bar.

EDIT: OH RIGHT. Now I know what I was going to ask. Post Season-4, what memories, exactly, replaced those that happened during the Connor episodes? Why does Fred think that she and Gunn spent pretty much the whole summer running Angel Investigations without the help of Angel (who was at the bottom of the ocean), Cordy (who was off being a higher power), and Wesley (who was off fucking Lilah)? I've already made it Millicanon that she knows about Cordy having been a higher power for a while, but she doesn't know about Wes/Lilah after the mindwipe even though she found out about it just before, because that was more directly tied into the betrayal involving Connor. But still, there's a period of time that they would have had to like, totally swap in new memories for. I guess it was just la la la business as usual for those few months, with the direct effects of the Connorplot erased, so Angel never spent that time at the bottom of the ocean and Wes never left, but all the other stuff that happened still happened. That makes the most sense. I'm sure when I watch Season 4 I'm going to have to come up with my own version of the new memories until I decide to let her get the real memories back, because Connor's around for a lot of Season 4, and I've also made it Millicanon that Fred remembers Jasmine, but THAT at least was true anyway, she could see through Jasmine's spell or whatever before the mindwipe, so it makes sense that she would remember her after and I guess she just thinks Cordy was mystically impregnated instead of factoring Connor in.

Oh my God this makes my head hurt, and they didn't address it AT ALL on the show, just la la oh PS they all forgot Connor but we're not going to deal with Connor's nonexistence having other implications that they also would have to forget. And of course, for everyone who's still ALIVE by the finale, they fix it, but not for Fred because she's not around then.

[The following takes place just after Wesley's entrance.]

She doesn't know how to explain, or if she even should explain. She's fairly sure she didn't, at any rate. Not yet. All she knew was that at some point they'd gotten from the booth to her room. As if she'd have let him be anywhere else this night.

The next thing she knew, she was kissing him like she'd never kissed anybody else in her life -- her blushing shyness with everyone else was the mask she wore to stay out of trouble. Her weakness had always been trouble. She'd been saving this welcome for him alone, ever since she'd learned there was a chance of saving him. Before, really. She'd never believed his death could be real, never accepted it, never truly grieved even when she was terrified to hope.

Now faced with him, real and here but here forever, unable to be anywhere else but gone, her tears flowed freely for all they'd lost and all they now regained. Grief mingled with inexpressible gratitute toward whatever force of fate had let them have this.

He kisses away her tears and she finds herself apologizing for being such a mess but she can't help it, her world hasn't made sense in so long. This place was like being back in Pylea at times, such was the strangeness of it all. But now he's here and somehow that makes sense even though it shouldn't. Even if it's only for right now.

So of course she asks him to stay. She's not worried about anything else. There would be time to deal with everything else later - for now all she wanted was sleep, nothing more. There was no need to rush things when both were grateful enough just to be near the other again. She knew there would come a time when she'd have to address the more troublesome details, like the strange pattern burned into the skin of her chest or the memories that she now shared with Illyria, but for tonight she would know peace.

Tonight they both would.