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Jan. 3rd, 2006 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supersymmetryIt's nighttime, and Fred is in her room. She's been reading for a few hours -- more than a few, really. She tends to get lost in her own world so easily that she'd barely realized that it was late.
When she does realize, she only takes the time to shower and change into pajamas, not taking very much notice that she's done so. After all, it is not as though she has anyone to impress.
That thought makes her frown slightly without realizing that she's thinking about Wesley, vaguely wondering where he is, perhaps thinking briefly of wandering down to his room to say goodnight. Things had been good, but slightly strained, she thought. The strange situation had been so odd that it was a wonder they'd managed to find their bearings at all. So they tended to give each other a bit of distance now, never really having fallen into the ease of interaction that she'd shared with Gunn.
Stop that, it's not fair to compare.
Of course it wasn't, and she didn't compare them, not really. This place was perhaps less conducive to relationships than their old job had been.
All of these thoughts cross her mind as she turns the pages of her book, a volume on the theories of interdimensional spaces, but she soon finds herself absorbed in the pages too completely to think of anything else but the text.
When she does realize, she only takes the time to shower and change into pajamas, not taking very much notice that she's done so. After all, it is not as though she has anyone to impress.
That thought makes her frown slightly without realizing that she's thinking about Wesley, vaguely wondering where he is, perhaps thinking briefly of wandering down to his room to say goodnight. Things had been good, but slightly strained, she thought. The strange situation had been so odd that it was a wonder they'd managed to find their bearings at all. So they tended to give each other a bit of distance now, never really having fallen into the ease of interaction that she'd shared with Gunn.
Stop that, it's not fair to compare.
Of course it wasn't, and she didn't compare them, not really. This place was perhaps less conducive to relationships than their old job had been.
All of these thoughts cross her mind as she turns the pages of her book, a volume on the theories of interdimensional spaces, but she soon finds herself absorbed in the pages too completely to think of anything else but the text.
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Date: 2006-01-03 09:58 am (UTC)"Can you maybe react a little better to this? You asked, you wanted to know, I knew it wasn't a good idea because this? This is exactly what I was afraid of."
She sounds more than a little angry right now, mostly because she's scared of his reaction.
"What was I supposed to do? Can you tell me that? I was trapped here for months, I couldn't leave, I couldn't go back home even if Bar would let me out, and I'm trapped here with a freakish blue version of me who knows my every thought and who occasionally sees fit to yell at me for endangering her future body. So someone nice and mostly normal comes along and offers to let me look at books. Just BOOKS, not demon specimens or robot ninjas or ghost vampires or evil puppets! What else was I supposed to do?"
She sounds very near to tears by the end of her long tirade.
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Date: 2006-01-03 10:14 am (UTC)But today is not that day. And the laughter soon subsides to a still silence in the room.
He forces himself to look up at her, and then slowly rise to his feet.
"I'm sorry," his voice a quiet monotone. "You're quite right, of course. I'm not helping."
Wesley wasn't always able to do this. To bind his heart in chains. But they're back in place, where they almost feel natural.
"You've been here longer than I have. I should have considered that: how difficult it would be to be trapped here for some time. I'm sorry, Fred. It was wrong of me to--. I'm sorry."
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Date: 2006-01-03 10:28 am (UTC)"Don't be sorry. You have a right to be concerned. I would be."
She sighs, and stands as well, taking a step forward to bridge the distance between them and then taking his hands in her own, forcing some contact between them to anchor them both to this reality, no matter how strange it was.
"The truth is that every day here I am terrified, and nobody ever sees it. I'm scared to death both of staying here any longer, and of what's waiting for me if that door ever opens and I'm somehow forced to go back through. I'm worried that when the day comes they won't have to force me because I'll be so tired of this place that I'll take my chances against her.
She's faintly trembling now, because this is the most honest she's ever been about what she actually thinks of this place.
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Date: 2006-01-03 11:04 am (UTC)And he closes the rest of the distance between them. Gently embracing her, careful not to press against her burns. He simply holds her, trying to make the trembling go away.
Because Wesley knows how fleeting moments like this really are. They shouldn't be here at all, really. Not together again. And the irony of Fred seeing him this way, the way he is after--no, because of--her death, is so cosmically absurd, he has no business worrying her with it.
He should instead be grateful, if he can. Grateful for these moments which Fate--perhaps, after all, merciful, in its way--has given them both to share a little longer.