Flashfic Challenge

Wes/Connor, for moonlettuce. Spoilers through last week's Angel. 1055 words.

North Northwest

Wesley glared through the cage bars. Angel: unconscious, chest riddled with darts. Gunn and Fred: tied, gagged, and heavily concussed. Only Wesley was awake, and relatively unconfined. He wondered why. Why were they still alive?

"If you were my son, I'd spank you till you learned some sense," he snapped.

"You’re not my father," Connor replied. Considering how often he said it, Wesley wasn’t surprised at how easily it rolled off the tongue. He didn't sound sulky. Or gloating, despite the ease with which a hundred religious fanatics overcame four disheartened warriors.

He looked... speculative. Connor's gaze lingered on Wesley’s hands where they gripped the steel, and Wesley remembered the boy's reaction to Faith. It would be disturbing, if Wesley had time or patience to be disturbed.

"Connor, I don't know why the blood --" he couldn't quite say, Cordelia's -- "didn't work on you, but she's --"

"Killing people," Connor interrupted placidly.

"This doesn't give you the slightest cause for unease?"

"Why?" Connor shot back. "It runs in the family. My father ate people, and you treat him like the Second Coming."

"He stopped."

"Did he? Or did he just stop leaving bodies around? How many lives has he sucked dry?"

Without his permission, Wesley's mind traveled back. Last year. Lilah, dead. Unfair to blame Angel. Holtz, Justine, Connor, Cordelia. Lindsay and Faith, left halfway along the road to redemption. Lorne, club in ruins. Names he scarcely remembered: Doyle, Kate --

"He does good," he said firmly.

"So does Jasmine -- more than Angel. She's brought peace and joy to the city, and soon the world. A few deaths are a small price to pay. The greatest good for the greatest number, right? Sometimes you need a sacrifice." But Connor sounded merely defiant, and afraid.

"You don't believe that." Wesley sounded calm, rational.

"You do. I’ve been watching you."

Wesley was silenced. Cheap irony aside, he was the one who watched, put the pieces together. How had he not noticed Connor’s eyes hot on his skin?

Wesley hardly knew how to say what he believed. He must do what’s necessary. He’d know it when he saw it, probably by how much it hurt. He’d called himself a fool for mistaking pain for a moral compass, when there was love. Now, Jasmine’s magnetism lost to him, that needle pointed true again.

"I don't believe Jasmine's intentions are benevolent," he said carefully. "Her concealment --"

"Keeps people from running before they've heard her message."

Wesley blinked. "You can see her?"

Connor gave the fatuous, beatific smile that Wesley remembered stretching his own cheeks. "I've always seen her as she is."

"What is she?"

Connor stalked closer. His breath warmed Wesley's skin. "My daughter," he said fiercely.

For the first time when he wasn't fighting, Wesley saw Angel in the lines of Connor's face. It was too adult an expression for lanky limbs, floppy hair.

“She’s a monster.”

“Aren’t we all? I'm not gonna let her be killed, or sent off to some demon dimension without me." Like you did to me, unspoken, hung in the air.

"Even after what she did to Cordelia?"

"I killed my mother too."

Connor's hand shot through the bars and jerked Wesley forward until they stood eye to eye. Wesley dropped his gaze and fixated instead on the gash he'd made in Connor's narrow chest.

"Listen, Wesley. None of you listen to me. This isn't about magic, or champions. It’s about blood.”

Connor’s hands were too big for his body. His fingers laced through Wesley’s and pulled them through the bars to touch the cut.

“This is the only thing that’s real.”

There was contempt in Wesley’s voice. It felt good not to hold back. “Ah yes, adolescent solipsism, very impressive. Next you’ll discover moral relativism and then look out, world.” His dry laugh subsided into a cough.

Contempt was one lesson Connor had learned. “Big words. Does it help?”

Wesley’s fingers were wet. Shouldn’t it have closed by now? Perhaps Cordelia’s blood had slowed the process. “Not particularly.”

Nothing helped. Not even that Angel had trusted him, nor that he and Fred were reunited and he hadn’t, this time, done something unforgivable. Jasmine was gone, and the world was dark again. His mind raced as though pain could be controlled if it were understood.

Billy, touching, changing. Medieval symmetry. Something niggled at Wesley’s memory.

Connor’s eyes burned. “Forget it. I should’ve known it was useless to talk to you. You just don’t understand.”

Connor’s words echoed in his head, but the order had shifted, and with it the meaning.

Listen to me. This is about blood. Not “I won’t let you send her.” I won’t let you send her without me. You don’t understand. Sometimes you need a sacrifice.

Jasmine watching through Connor’s eyes. Connor’s blood, still inexplicably wet on his fingers. Wesley, awake in a cage with three unconscious forms. Connor knew he didn’t believe in family.

For the first time, Wesley saw Connor in Connor’s face, and not merely the lines of his guilt. They weren’t so unalike. If Wesley had raised him…

“I’m sorry I didn’t save you,” Wesley said, the first time he’d said the words aloud, the first time he’d thought it for Connor’s sake and not Angel’s.

He wondered if Connor would defend Holtz, but he seemed unoffended. Perhaps he thought Wesley meant from Angel, or Jasmine. It scarcely mattered.

“I’m not sorry, I’m not your son.”

There were too many ways to take that. Better to leave it. Connor licked his lips. The boy needed a peer group his own age, to socialize, learn earth customs, form a normal relationship… you could cane him all night came the reptilian hiss… bent over your desk like a schoolboy, that lip would tremble when he cried….

“If we live through this…”, Wesley started.

“If we live through this, we’ll be enemies.” Connor said flatly. He let go and turned to climb the stairs.

Connor knew how he felt about enemies. He’d been watching. Wesley glanced over at the table where Lilah’s body had lain.

He shook his head to clear it, and knelt by Fred, careful to keep his bloodied hand clear of skin as he worked the ropes. Not yet. There were things he had to do, and not much time.