[hearts_andminds: Because she looks like me.]

[supersymmetry]

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.

Comments

[7livesatonce.livejournal.com]

"He loved you."

The words were sharp and bitter in Illyria's mouth, and she only got the tiniest bit of satisfaction from the way they stopped Winifred in her attempt to flee.

"I imagine it was only his attachment to you that made him any use to me whatsoever. Your death drove him to a curious sort of madness that I did not witness in any of the reactions of your other -- friends." She spoke the final word as though it were utterly alien to her, and, in fact, it was.

"So if you are wondering why more attempts were not made to destroy me, you have your answer. Your Wesley imagined some part of you remained, perhaps, and would not risk destroying it along with me. He was helpful to me, and I repaid the favor as I was able."

Her tone took on a coldness it hadn't held in a long time. A part of her was trying, quite deliberately, to drive Fred away with this cruelty. She'd said all that mattered to her and wanted to be done.

[supersymmetry]

It explained things. It explained... a lot. Fred was in some kind of weird shock where she was processing things on a level inversely proportional to how much they actually mattered to her. Of course if there'd been any chance at all of getting her back -- and of course it would be Wesley who would fight the hardest for her, she always knew he was just that little bit more ruthless than the rest of them and --

-- well of course he loved me, I loved all my boys and I wonder if she even knows what the word means in all contexts I mean let's not jump to wild, crazy conclusions here, Fred --

"I... have to go now."

That one phrase was all she could manage out loud. Any more information was just going to have to wait until she could handle talking to this... whatever she was, that had more knowledge about way-too-personal things that Fred would rather contemplate in private and when she was not trying to work out the question of staying alive. Except--

"You should stay away from Wesley. I don't care what else you do here, but-- if any of what you just said matters to you? Stay away from him."

With that last parting shot said, all her nerve evaporated at once and Fred fled out the door and down the hall, and didn't stop til she was back in her own room several floors away.

[7livesatonce.livejournal.com]

Illyria had no actual intention of honoring that request, and she found that it angered her more than she'd expected the more she considered it. It wasn't only that a human would be so presumptuous as to tell her with whom she should associate -- she'd been accepting all kinds of presumptuous suggestions all this time with increasingly less commentary. She'd begun to pick her battles.

This one, though, was a battle worth having.

The rest of Winifred's reaction she filed away; it was not at all surprising if she cared to examine any of it closely. At present, however, she did not wish to think of Fred at all, or of any particular emotions the entire exchange had provoked within herself.