Warped Reflection
Part Nine: Damage Control
by Ruth Quist
SUMMARY: What would happen if you looked in the mirror and you weren’t there?
RATING: FRT [V] [L] [A] [AU]
DISCLAIMERS: This fan fiction is copyrighted (2004) by the author. No infringement on the rights of Mutant Enemy, Inc., Greenwolf Corp., Lazy Dave, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, Twentieth Century Fox Television, UPN or The WB, or any other legitimate holders of copyright for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, or any other characters contained therein is intended. This material is produced entirely for the entertainment of fans. No profit is made.
SPOILERS: Spoilers for up to the end of Season 4 (In fact, it is assumed that you’ve seen Season 4. It will be hard to read this if you haven’t.). Minor spoilers for Season 5. Mostly related to characters introduced this season.
DISTRIBUTION: Please ask if you want it.
ASSUMPTIONS: (Spoiler warning!) They still haven’t explained how the Connor related mind wipe works. For the purposes of this fiction, it is assumed that all the events that happened are remembered exactly how they happened. Conner was simply edited from those memories. (i.e. Justine cut Wesley’s throat and he remembers that, but he doesn’t remember the baby being in his arms or her taking Conner.) As you can imagine, this leave’s weird gaps in everyone’s memory. People don’t question this because, as a part of the magical process to create the mind wipe, they were told not to question it. This also means that everyone’s emotional state is pretty much the same as it was before the mind wipe. Aren’t I nice to tell you? Now if Joss would just tell us!
Buffy leaped down and knelt by Willow and Giles. Willow was unconscious and no amount of shaking would wake her, but her breathing was strong and regular. Wesley was checking Giles over and pressed a handkerchief against the cut on the man's forehead.
Buffy said worriedly, “How is he?”
Giles' voice was thick with pain, but clear, “He is fine. However, he has one bloody hell of a headache. Again. Why do they always insist on hitting me on the head?” He groaned as he attempted to sit up. Wesley assisted him and supported his back, as Giles raised a hand to his forehead holding the makeshift bandage in place and clearly tried to regain his wits. The injured man spoke haltingly, “Willow should be…alright. They just used some soporific spray to put her to sleep. I…recognized a brief whiff of the smell as they used it so I held my breath long enough for it to clear away.” Giles gritted his teeth as the pain throbbed in some kind of increasing reverberating echo throughout his head, “It's very fast acting, but it dissipates just as fast, and it's perfectly harmless. She should…uh…come around in a few minutes.”
Buffy sighed in relief and smiled. Giles continued grimly, “They dumped Kennedy outside. I'm not as sure about her condition.”
Faith, who'd appeared suddenly with her group said, “I'm on it,” and ran out followed by her team.
Giles slowly turned his head to look at Wesley, while obviously trying to avoid sudden movements, and then Giles said, “That was a damned stupid thing to do. I was sure he was going to kill you just from bloody-minded pigheadedness. He always was a single-minded bastard.”
Wesley lowered his eyes briefly, but said nothing.
Giles looked up at Wesley from under the now reddened cloth and smiled his gratitude despite the obvious pain, “Thank you. That was bloody brilliant.”
A small smile briefly came and went on Wesley's face and then he said seriously, “I'm sorry you were hurt trying to help me. I think we should probably get you to hospital.”
Faith ran in. There was a little blood on her hands and shirt, “I think Kennedy's five-by-five. They used some kind of tranq gun. Her arm was bleeding like a stuck pig, but I think we got it stopped and she's breathing okay.” Slayers followed Faith in; they carried their unconscious sister-in-arms carefully past the wreckage of the demolished opening and tenderly laid her on the couch.
Fred stepped up behind the group gathered around Giles with a cell phone in her hand, “Three ambulances are already on their way. They should be here in a couple of minutes to take you all to Wolfram and Hart's medical center.”
Giles grimaced and Wesley said quickly, “We could take you to a regular hospital if you'd prefer, Giles. It's just that there won't be any difficult questions at Wolfram and Hart.”
“No, no, I might as well go to the medical center. Besides, I'd like to see how Xander is doing. Although, with my luck, we'll be in beds right next to each other.” He paused for a second, obviously considering his last statement. “Wait! Can I change my mind?” Giles looked around in consternation at the concerned but somewhat amused faces surrounding him.
“Nope,” Buffy said firmly. “I want all my wounded Scoobies in one basket where I can keep an eye on them.” She gently took over pressing the bandage to his head and he dropped his hand gratefully. She spoke brightly, “You'll just have to suffer the wonderfulness that is Xander.”
Giles gave her a look that spoke of the many times he'd been forced to put up with Xander's questionable conversational skills. She grinned at him, just happy he was alive. He smiled back, winced briefly, and then smiled up at her again. He was pretty happy about being alive too.
Minutes later, paramedics pulling ambulance gurneys between them began efficiently bundling up their patients and taking them out to their respective ambulances.
Wesley's ribs stabbed sharply every time he moved. He really shouldn't have gotten involved in the melee. But like Buffy, he just couldn't stand by while others risked their lives in what was essentially his fight. Making slow careful movements, Wesley gathered up his crossbow and started to move out towards the shattered remains of the front of the hotel when Buffy grabbed his arm. He looked warily at her, “I am sorry about Giles, Buffy. I would never have allowed Angel to ask for your help if I'd realized…”
Buffy interrupted the former watcher, “You are unbelievable!” Wesley tensed in preparation for the verbal attack he saw coming. “How did a man as good as you, come from as big a sleeze as that? And I thought my Dad was useless! At least he had the good taste to stay out of my way. And that brother of yours! Reminds me a lot of that whole incompetent Spike-a-rama we had before Spike joined the good side of the force.”
Buffy stopped to think for a minute. Wesley just looked at her dumbfounded. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “If you guys sicced Harmony on him, he'd probably turn himself in for staking. She's mostly dangerous to the side she's on.” Wesley and Buffy shared a small smile of understanding at that. Her voice grew deadly serious, “You just let us know when round two comes up. If we're still around, I'd love a rematch.”
Wesley sputtered, “O-Okay.”
Buffy smiled and gently squeezed his arm, “Giles was right by the way, that was totally of the brilliant.” She walked away, a gaggle of slayers following. Several of the slayers smiled at him as they passed. Faith grinned and punched at Wesley's arm as she walked by. Wesley frowned and rubbed his arm absently. He was definitely getting a bruise there. Then he grinned widely, slung the crossbow casually over his shoulder, and trailed the crowd.
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Angel stood with his hands on his waist looking with dismay at the huge hole that was formerly the front entrance. Gunn, standing behind him and hanging onto his axe with both hands as it lay over his shoulders, casually surveyed the entire lobby with broken glass strew across the floor from all the windows and then back to the rubble leading to the shattered front and commented, “Now that's gonna cost to fix.”
Angel looked back at Gunn and heaved a sigh, “I'm thinking evil lawyer money myself.”
They both looked again at the gaping hole.
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Dave had parked in a darkened alley beyond normal human visual range of the hotel. Of course, he wasn't human anymore. He was acting as ‘Two' on the radio for tonight's little ambush. He had the receiver beeping away merrily on the seat beside him indicating the tracer was close by. The tracer was hidden in the walkie-talkie they'd left for the Dummy-Do-Rights to find. He hadn't really needed it. By the time the tracer started beeping, indicating their approach, they were in plain sight (from his angle anyway) and obviously gearing up to go inside. He said the prearranged codeword ‘firefly' which warned his sire about mouse and company, so Winston had told everybody to ‘switch' which meant to change to another frequency on the radio. So far, so good; but things seemed to go sour after that.
Dave saw the attack on the van and the van's subsequent careening crash through the front of the hotel. Based on the radio transmissions Dave overheard, things were not going well at all. No one was answering his call. He pulled up to the front of the Hyperion in the stolen silver viper GTSR he had acquired for tonight's operation. The wealthy owner wouldn't be reporting it missing any time soon. The guy was a little past worrying about his car. Anyway, a great car like this was really wasted on an ugly moron like that. Hmmm, Dave really enjoyed rich food.
He supposed he should have gotten something a little more inconspicuous for the job, but he worked like a dog to scrape together the payments for that piece of junk second-hand Escort when he was alive and damned if he was going to be caught dead in another cheap car. Or maybe he should say undead. He grinned.
Winston ran out of the ragged front entrance at full speed and flung himself into the passenger seat. Dave smiled in pleasure at the opportunity to put the car through its paces as he revved up the engine and squealed away. Winston spoke over the powerful engine, “Thought I was going to be staked there for a minute. But my idiot of a father showed up and convinced them to let me go. He actually thought I would go with him! Ludicrous old man!” Winston chewed his lip as he looked contemplatively out the window. Nonetheless, I learned a valuable lesson tonight. My brother is a lot more dangerous than I gave him credit for. I greatly underestimated Wesley. I won't make that mistake again.” Winston looked over at Dave again, “It was an expensive lesson. We lost a lot of people. But it was worth it. After all, they were expendable.” He smiled expansively at Dave and then looked out the window with relish, enjoying the car's power and speed.
Dave smiled back at his sire, but inwardly he was seething. He was tired of all the time, effort, and resources wasted on this useless brother of Winston's. All those people were expendable? Dave was beginning to suspect that he too was expendable in his sire's eyes. The vampire looked speculatively at his sire. Dave was thinking that with a little judicious quiet conversation with some of the remaining ‘expendables' he could show his sire just who was expendable and who wasn't. Dave was starting to think that mouse would make a great minion—for Dave. Nothing would please Dave better than to have the face that was starting to grate on his nerves following his every order, instead of the other way around. Yep, that would be fine indeedy. Of course, that meant his sire would have to go. Dave grinned again. Two for the Pryce of one. How he loved being a vampire!
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Angel arrived at Wolfram and Hart and went to his office briefly to drop off his weapons. He wanted to get down quickly to Buffy and the rest in the Medical section and make sure everyone was okay. He set the bloodied sword and a couple of back-up daggers down on his desk for later cleaning and turned to leave, but found Danvers, the security team leader standing in his way.
“How'd it go? Heard you had a few problems.” The man looked and sounded smug, “Probably could have used a little help.”
Angel was irritated by this pompous prig. He was about to push past angrily without bothering to reply when he suddenly got a whiff of something unexpected. He grabbed the man's throat and slammed him against the wall, holding the man a foot off the ground. “You want to tell me why I smell old watcher guy all over you? The same watcher that somehow knew where we were? What our plan was? And that Winston would be there?”
The man choked, his eyes bugged out in fear, unable to reply because of the steely hand gripping his throat. His pants developed a wet stain in the front and liquid dripped down his legs and the wall to soak the carpet below.
Angel looked down at the carpet in dismay, “Do you know how hard it is to get urine out of a carpet? Now I'm going to be smelling useless security team leader and Fabreeze for weeks.” He leaned forward until he was only an inch from the gasping man's frightened face, “I wonder if the smell of blood would cover it up? Wanna find out?”
They looked at each other for a second when a second smell wafted up to Angel's nose. He wrinkled his face in disgust, looked down briefly, and then looked back up, really annoyed now, “You know, I've tortured people for hours that had more control than you.”
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Giles was nicely settled, grousing good naturedly the entire time as his fears of being bedded next to Xander turned out to be true. Xander was in fine form. His two eyes shone brightly as he babbled happily about his new eye and made terrible jokes about his now defunct eye patch. The unneeded eye patch lay carelessly abandoned on the nightstand beside his bed. Dawn stood at his bedside with her hand on his shoulder and laughed at every joke—no matter how dumb. Everyone else was gathered around smiling broadly. Even a drowsy, pain-medicated Giles smiled at the sight of his young friend's two working eyes. Buffy sat contentedly between the two men, looking back and forth in simple amusement.
In the same room, but beyond a drawn screen to give them some privacy, Willow sat next to a bed, tightly holding the hand of the now awake Kennedy. Kennedy's left arm was swathed in white bandages and a couple of band-aids covered cuts on her face. Like Xander, Willow's eyes shone brightly too, but with grateful tears that showed how she felt. Kennedy, understanding the similarity of the attack on her to the attack on Willow's murdered love Tara, just hung on reassuringly and quietly let Willow work through her feelings.
Wesley and Fred stood along the wall next to the door at the back of the crowd of people. Wesley wrapped one arm surreptitiously around his overworked and continuously aching ribs while leaning back against the wall. He then quietly asked, “Where did they get the eye, Fred?”
She leaned towards him, causing him to feel a momentary catch in his throat making it impossible to breathe because of the swelling of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. He tried to control his reaction so she wouldn't see it. He'd been embarrassed enough lately by his clearly unreciprocated feelings.
She spoke softly, her breath against his throat sending concurrent tiny shock waves through his beleaguered system, “We got an unclaimed body from the morgue. Apparently, Wolfram and Hart can use cadaver parts; they just don't like to because it costs more. Imagine bean counting on somethin' like this!”
She moved away slightly in her indignation over Wolfram and Hart's evil practices. He wasn't sure whether he was more disappointed that she was no longer close enough to cause this electrifying effect or glad he could breathe again. Of course, his ribs protested at the reestablishment of lung activity.
She said sadly, “The city was going to bury him as a John Doe. We're going to cremate him and give him a nice burial. We're also trying to identify the man in order to notify his relatives of his death. We owe him that at least.”
Wesley winced slightly as he tried to shift to a more comfortable position. Fred eyed him appraisingly, “You're in pain.” Then her voice rose anxiously, “Did you get hurt in the fight?” The others in the room looked around at her words.
He tried to stand straighter and lowered his arm, “I'm fine.” He looked around the room of concerned eyes that pinned him to the wall, uncomfortably making him the center of attention, “Really.”
Faith moved over to the two of them and crossed her arms stubbornly, “You gonna give me some more of that ‘took some work home' crap? You look like the Leaning Tower of Pizza.”
He smiled despite the regular throbbing ache in his ribs, “That's ‘Pisa,' Faith, not Pizza. It's a town in Italy. It's called the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
“Yeah, whatever. Although, I'm thinking, Italy—pizza makes more sense.” Faith's eyes twinkled a little and then she grew serious again, “Anyway, you look terrible.”
Wesley smiled at her concern, “I'm alright, Faith. Honestly.”
“It's your ribs, isn't it?” Fred's surprisingly accurate input startled Wesley. She continued worriedly, “Did you get hit?” She reached over unexpectedly to gently but firmly feel his side. He jerked away at the unforeseen touch that set his heart to pounding. But the suddenness of his action sent an intense pain stabbing into his side from his damaged ribs and he involuntarily grimaced and grabbed at his side again.
Faith said sharply, “That's it.” She took his arm supporting him, ignoring his protests, and practically dragged him to an adjoining room. She sat him down on an examining room table. He tried to get up and she pushed him down again carefully avoiding his ribs, “Sit down, ya' big liar.” She frowned with displeasure as she repeated with disgust what he'd just said to her (with embellishment), “‘Honestly,' my ass!”
Fred, looking grim, said, “You keep him here. If he tries to move again, hit him.” The next thing Wesley knew, Fred had roped the same doctor who'd seen him before into examining him again. The man was much gentler this time and obviously nervous of the two women who, despite their misleadingly slight appearances, stood with perfectly believable menace on either side of the doctor.
However, after some inevitable x-rays, the doctor agreed with Wesley's finally admitted assessment. He'd just overworked his damaged ribs. After some mild scolding about taking it easy, Wesley meekly took the two pain pills and drank from the paper cup the nurse handed him under the unnerving eagle eyes of the two dark haired women. He hadn't felt like this since his nanny had caught him finishing off an entire tin of biscuits in the kitchen when he was four and then efficiently, but unsympathetically, dealt with the inevitable tummy ache he'd experienced later for what seemed like an eternity afterwards.
He was sent to bed without his supper this time too.
© October 2004
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