[Milliways: Fred's Room]
Jun. 24th, 2006 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supersymmetryIt had been a while.
Fred didn't even know what that meant. Why she'd been keeping to herself so much more of late, why she'd been so oddly quiet since (and during, if she was honest with herself) Faith's wedding.
Getting out had been a relief, even if it was getting out to some place that was equally strange as this one. And this place had never stopped being strange. Even after so many months - over half a year, and she still hadn't started to regard this place as home. This room whose walls she'd never written on, the downstairs full of strange people and strange not-people... it shouldn't have been so different from home. Shouldn't have been that much stranger than the Hyperion had been when she'd arrived there. It had taken her months to start considering that place home, too. But it was different there. There she'd had a purpose, and a center, and ...
Something this place lacked.
Plenty of people found happiness here. Plenty of people she knew, people from her own world, had found something to make this place click.
And she hadn't.
All she'd found were myriad impossibilities. She felt a pang of guilt at thinking that, of counting that as a negative when she was one such impossibility and Wesley was another. But that was part of the problem. Words like death had so little meaning here. How was she supposed to reconcile the fact that back in their own world, Wesley was dead, and so was she? That latter part was a little easier, except how could it be? What was dead when the so-called proof was walking around and occasionally looking and acting just like her?
So many questions, and no answers forthcoming, not in all the months she'd spent going through every book she could get her hands on to try to explain the physics of it all.
And in all that time she'd never really talked about it, not in the kind of depth she needed to to understand. Partially because she didn't want to burden people with the difficult questions, and partially because the one person who might have given her answers wasn't someone she could bring herself to ask. Not when they both worked so hard at pretending to be normal, at ignoring the facts because the facts didn't make sense.
So if she hadn't seen Wesley much since they'd gotten back from Faith's wedding, if she'd been purposefully distant, it was no different than how willfully distant he'd been all along.
All the same, she finds herself contemplating the door, wondering if maybe tonight she should just go upstairs and knock on his door and ask some of the difficult questions after all.
Fred didn't even know what that meant. Why she'd been keeping to herself so much more of late, why she'd been so oddly quiet since (and during, if she was honest with herself) Faith's wedding.
Getting out had been a relief, even if it was getting out to some place that was equally strange as this one. And this place had never stopped being strange. Even after so many months - over half a year, and she still hadn't started to regard this place as home. This room whose walls she'd never written on, the downstairs full of strange people and strange not-people... it shouldn't have been so different from home. Shouldn't have been that much stranger than the Hyperion had been when she'd arrived there. It had taken her months to start considering that place home, too. But it was different there. There she'd had a purpose, and a center, and ...
Something this place lacked.
Plenty of people found happiness here. Plenty of people she knew, people from her own world, had found something to make this place click.
And she hadn't.
All she'd found were myriad impossibilities. She felt a pang of guilt at thinking that, of counting that as a negative when she was one such impossibility and Wesley was another. But that was part of the problem. Words like death had so little meaning here. How was she supposed to reconcile the fact that back in their own world, Wesley was dead, and so was she? That latter part was a little easier, except how could it be? What was dead when the so-called proof was walking around and occasionally looking and acting just like her?
So many questions, and no answers forthcoming, not in all the months she'd spent going through every book she could get her hands on to try to explain the physics of it all.
And in all that time she'd never really talked about it, not in the kind of depth she needed to to understand. Partially because she didn't want to burden people with the difficult questions, and partially because the one person who might have given her answers wasn't someone she could bring herself to ask. Not when they both worked so hard at pretending to be normal, at ignoring the facts because the facts didn't make sense.
So if she hadn't seen Wesley much since they'd gotten back from Faith's wedding, if she'd been purposefully distant, it was no different than how willfully distant he'd been all along.
All the same, she finds herself contemplating the door, wondering if maybe tonight she should just go upstairs and knock on his door and ask some of the difficult questions after all.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 03:21 am (UTC)It sounded too much like another cold recall of facts.
You are the vessel for my reincarnation. This is all that remains of Winnifred Burkle.
Wesley's dead.
"Not like this. Not... I can't listen to it like that, words that don't mean anything, that don't match up to what I know. I don't know how to react to it like this. Angel has a son... I feel like I should be surprised, but I'm not. I feel like there should be some big reaction here, some shock, some anything, but there's not. There's nothing, and it's just like everything else I've been told since I got here. It's just words."
She takes a deep breath, fixes him with a level, unwavering gaze, and wills him to understand why it can't be like this.
"I have to remember. Whatever happened, somehow I have to find a way to remember, or it'll never mean anything."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 03:46 am (UTC)"I could try consulting the library. Cyvus Vail was responsible for restoring our memories before. But perhaps I could find the ritual he used. Or one of the other mages here might be able to help."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 04:16 am (UTC)"That thing you do, you just go right into all-business mode whenever things get a little unclear, or hard to handle. You start talking to me like this is a case, like I'm a case. It always comes back to that. Saving Fred. Because that's what you do."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 04:24 am (UTC)"I am sorry, Fred. I did try, for a while, to be like we were before. Please believe me, I did try. But it was a lie. This 'all-business mode'--. It's all I have left to give."
"Watching you.... leave. Those memories--."
Wesley shakes his head.
"They're too strong. Too... vivid. I can't pretend they simply aren't there."
I said goodbye to you. Held you in my arms, and said goodbye...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 04:46 am (UTC)She's not surprised, but this hurts.
"So, what? What are you saying? 'Like we were before' -- what before? We never got a chance to find out. There wasn't any time, before..."
Unwilling tears prick at the corners of her eyes, but she blinks them away, refusing to be the fragile little girl this time.
"I don't want the lie any more than you do. I think we both know that. I think we've known that for longer than either of us cares to admit. But I don't think that's all your're saying, is it?"
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:01 am (UTC)"That's not dodging your question," he adds quickly. "It's just... being in this place has changed more things than I realized when I first came here. Things I'm still trying to grasp myself."
"You and Illyria.... Both of you here..."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:13 am (UTC)"She's the one who told me you died, Wesley. Nobody else would do that. Nobody else would even tell me that I died. Except I didn't. That's the point you're all missing. I'm not dead, but everyone just wants me to accept that in some future that I haven't lived yet, I'm going to be. And I'm supposed to understand words like dead when the so-called dead man is walking around and talking and breathing and whatever else it is you do when you're avoiding me!"
It's not fair, she knows it's not fair to blame him, that none of this is fair. But she wants to know what he's getting at, wants him to stop being evasive and distant and just communicate with her and she doesn't know any other way to get them to that point without a little yelling.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:26 am (UTC)"Yes, we expect you to accept it! Because we had to, and then find some way to live with it!"
"Find some way to deal with the pain, to deal with your loss, and the realisation that that empty space within me would never be filled again!"
"So, yes, I 'expect' you to accept it!"
Wesley is surprised to find himself standing. And he has no idea how he could possibly have said what he just did. He can only stand there now, horrified.
But, try as he might, he can't convince himself what he said isn't true.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:42 am (UTC)But they'd never really had it.
She realizes that, and just stares at him in shocked, saddened silence until her mouth catches up with her brain and she finds the words to say so.
And what she finds herself saying surprises her.
"I'm sorry."
The words strike her as hollow, devoid of the feeling she'd have said them with if she were less shocked, less angry, less hurt. She thinks he blames her for it a little, and more than that, she thinks he's probably right. Curiosity was her downfall -- wasn't that what Illyria had told her once?
"I didn't mean to... this isn't how I pictured this conversation going. Here we are yelling at each other and I'm not even sure how we got to that from where we started."
The words themselves were peaceful enough, but there's a hard edge under them, anger held in check only because she doesn't want to end whatever's ending like this.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:45 am (UTC)"No, you shouldn't--. You shouldn't apologize."
"You--. You're--."
Your death was--will be--far too painful, far too horrible for you to apologize.
"...You shouldn't."
"I should never have said that."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:53 am (UTC)"Maybe you should have said it a long time ago."
She doesn't look away, doesn't waver in this, won't let herself retreat back into something more comfortable but less true.
"Maybe I should have asked. We just fell into this... whatever this is, whatever we were, without ever stopping to ask whether or not it was a good idea."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 05:58 am (UTC)"Are you sure you want--?"
Silence.
No. Admit the truth. To yourself and to her.
"You have to do this. We both do."
It's almost posed as a question. But not quite.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 06:09 am (UTC)"I don't think it's a question of what I want. I don't think we get what we want, not like this, anyway. Not the way we've been."
This isn't easy, but there's a note of certainty in her voice that hasn't been there in ages.
"We make the best choices we can. I chose when I walked back into the Hyperion that day, and again when I walked into Wolfram and Hart. At some point it stops being about what you want."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 06:32 am (UTC)He can't help thinking it. But try as he might, he can't bring himself actually to say it, at least now that the flash of anger has passed.
"No. Not the way I wanted it either. But I couldn't bring myself to admit that until tonight."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 06:43 am (UTC)But this time she thinks she has to say it. That there needs to be clarity here where there hasn't been all along.
"So. I guess, this feels like..." as much as she wants to say it, the words keep tripping her up.
"You and I. Are we... not us any more? Together, I mean?"
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:01 am (UTC)"Have we ever been?"
"Really?"
Saying it seems to scar his soul anew.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:10 am (UTC)No.
They'd never really been able to reach each other through the walls they'd kept in place. Whatever spark was there -- and it still was there, whatever genuine feeling had drawn her to him -- had been smothered by the weight of all that had been left unsaid.
There's a part of her that wonders, still. That asks a silent question.
(Would you have loved me?)
But a bigger part of her is saying no. That whatever might have been, couldn't be.
Through no fault of their own, the answer was still no.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:17 am (UTC)But it was much too late for different paths. It had been too late before he had ever come to this place.
They hadn't even been able to make it a convincing illusion, which seemed especially unfair to them. But, as more than one person here had reminded him, Milliways had never claimed to be Utopia.
"So what will you do now?" he asks quietly.
Because he has no idea what he will do.
And there never was a "we."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:27 am (UTC)"What I always do. Whatever I can. This doesn't change... it's not like I'm going anywhere."
Not yet, anyway. One day that door would open, but she didn't think it would do so before she was ready. Whatever ready meant, whether she would be walking out to freedom or to... something else.
"I'm still here. And there are still a lot of things I need to find out. Those lost memories, whether or not there's a way for me to get out of here without undoing things that've already been done. Lots of things. Lots of work to be done."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:38 am (UTC)Well, after all, wasn't it their similarities that had made people think they belonged together? Ignoring the real possibility that those similiarities had not been enough to carry a relationship.
But that was all useless speculation now.
"Well. Perhaps I should go."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 07:54 am (UTC)She feels like she missed the mark somehow, that she failed to communicate what she meant underneath the words. That she was still here. Whatever else they weren't, there was still room for them to find out what they were.
As much as she hates to see him just leave like that, it's something of a relief that she has that way out, that she can just let him go, and that's okay. That she can have time to sort this through alone.
"Goodnight, Wesley." she says, with genuine warmth underneath the sadness. It didn't say half of what she wanted to, but maybe it said enough.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 08:04 am (UTC)"Goodnight, Fred."
And there is warmth there too. Of friendship only? Perhaps, but like hers, genuine, and maybe for that reason, more meaningful than groundless dreams of something more.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-25 04:58 pm (UTC)Because that can't be how it was supposed to go.
Can it?
She's still wondering when she gets up to turn off the light, and when she falls asleep counting digits of Pi (never anything so ordinary as sheep) she thinks maybe that it's going to have to join the list of problems she'll never be able to answer.