Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

The plan for dealing with the enemies while also not giving away any information unduly to Wolfram and Hart was executed flawlessly, with Cordelia claiming perhaps more credit for it than she truly deserved, and finally evening came and they were in-character and ready to carry it out.

( The Act )

( The Aftermath )

[[once again from angel 3x10 "dad," nfb, aaaand that's it for plot (probably) until "waiting in the wings" in february, hooray!]]

Having escaped the vampires from the hospital (who, for the record, weren't so much an ordinary group of vampires but rather disturbingly cult-like in the way they'd gotten on their knees, groveled to the as-yet-unborn "miracle child" and outlined their plans to protect and nourish the child by feeding it the blood of its mother and all the other humans helping with the delivery, which almost seemed worse than the ordinary vampires who just wanted to kill everyone), the Angel Investigations team and Darla now pulled up to the Hyperion with a screeching halt as Angel ran inside to gather the Nyazian scrolls.

"Five minutes," Angel said as Cordy shifted from the passenger to the driver seat. "If I'm not back by then, leave without me."


( Twelve minutes later... )

( Their 'safe place' to hide out at was, of course, Caritas. Not like they were getting predictable or anything. )

[[adapted from angel 3x09 "lullaby," and that's it for today! nfb/nfi, and warning for npc death and the birth of a truly annoying npc baby, omfg.]]

A day after Wesley and Gunn had -- successfully, thank you very much -- retrieved the Nyazian scroll from that man's home, the two of them were working on translating the text at the hotel's front desk when loud voices could be heard from downstairs. As far as Wesley knew, Cordelia and Angel were just sparring as usual, though he thought Fred might have gone down to watch this time, but it certainly shouldn't be an activity that required shouting.

He glanced at Gunn. "Nah, this is on you, man," Gunn said at once.

( Wesley sighed, and went downstairs to investigate. )

--

( In which there is translation, exposition, and a visitor. )

[[also from 3x07 "offspring." nfb, nfi!]]

Wesley had only ever really had one coping mechanism. Just one, and not a very good one, either.

It involved sitting and drinking expensive scotch in the dark. It wasn't healthy, but it was what he did.

He had never considered that it might be interrupted by someone knocking on the door, though; for a brief moment, he thought of Karla, and the time she'd interrupted his grief over the Hunger Games. That was ridiculous, though. No one was going to do that now. Not unless it was Charles coming up to ask him to find someplace else to live from now on.

The voice wasn't Gunn's, though. It was Fred's.

( ''Wesley? Wesley, it's me.'' )

[[last one from 3x06 "billy." OW OW OW.]]

After implicating Billy Blim as responsible for that woman's murder, the next logical step was for Angel to trek out to the Blim estate and stop him from doing it again. Or, well, actually Wesley and Gunn went along as well, but only Angel had been able to hop the fence.

What he ended up stumbling upon was Billy getting arrested -- by two police officers, a man and a woman -- for supposedly phoning in an unexplained tip for another crime, this one a woman's drowning.

Back at the hotel, the team was piecing that together.

"My contact at the city morgue confirms it," Wesley said, hanging up the phone. "Her body was discovered earlier tonight. A young woman was reported missing three days ago. Someone phoned in a tip."

( What's that saying about three times making a pattern? Yeah... )

[[nfi/nfb, 3x06 "billy" again, and another mild mention of violence under the cut.]]

Technically speaking, Wesley had left Fandom as soon as he could on Saturday afternoon. Practically, however, it wasn't until Tuesday morning that, exhausted, he stepped back into the hotel with exactly half of his original luggage in hand.

And he was promptly nearly tackled by a wall of energy in the form of Fred. Despite everything, he had to smile -- it was endearing, even as tired as he was.

"Wesley!" Fred squealed, hugging him with surprising force before bouncing backward to look up at him. "You'll never guess what happened this weekend. Go on, guess, I'll wait."

She actually did seem to be waiting. Wesley paused. "Er," he said. "Killer... lobster demons?"

He wasn't really sure why that of all things had popped into his head.

"No, silly!" Of course. How could he have been so foolish. "My mom and dad showed up!"

Well. That was certainly significant. "Really?"

"Yuh-huh!" Fred agreed. "And at first I was scared 'cause I didn't want 'em to see me an' know all about what happened to me, so I tried to run away and there was this icky bug demon tryin' to attack everyone so we got sidetracked, and my mom killed it, or at least we thought she killed it. And then we went back home, I mean here to the hotel, and everythin' was good for a while until I kept thinkin' about how it didn't make sense for me to be here, not when there's already you and Gunn and Cordy, so I started to leave with my parents until I realized there had to be more of the bug things, and that goes all the way back to when Angel took me for ice cream the other night, but anyway I came back and I catapulted it with a thing I made and I decided to stay after that and here I am."

Wesley blinked. "Here you are," he echoed, fixing her with a sincere smile. "I'm glad you decided to stay."

"I'm glad too," Fred said, looking up at him with that oddly intense gaze of hers.

There was a moment's pause. Wesley wondered -- would now perhaps be a good time to--

"Well," he said. "Since I seem to have missed all the action, how would you like to go out for some pizza, Fred?"

Her eyes lit up. "Sure!"

"Excellent," Wesley said, and it actually really was.

"Let me just go get Cordy and Gunn," Fred said, before sticking two fingers in her mouth and whistling sharply. Then she set off toward the stairs to the basement, where they were probably fighting over setting the rat traps again. "Cordy! Gunn! There's gonna be pizza!"

Wesley exhaled slowly, suddenly re-feeling that exhaustion that had gone away once Fred had started talking. Then he set down his bags and started rummaging for his wallet.

[[NFB/NFI/OOC-okay! i totally made this up because i didn't want to do a catchup for this episode and brat_inslayage agreed it was unnecessary, but holy crap fred is hard to write from scratch. events taken from angel 3x05 "fredless," la la la.]]

As it turned out, the news that the excruciatingly painful and physically-manifested visions currently plaguing Cordelia were not, in fact, coming from the Powers That Be, but rather from the malevolent forces at Lilah Morgan's disposal at Wolfram and Hart was... both a relief and an additional problem. It was a comfort to Cordelia, who no longer had to worry that the Powers were punishing her somehow or using the physical manifestations to express the urgency of a problem she was failing to solve. But it was also problematic in that they now appeared to be well and truly trapped in working for their decidedly evil mortal enemies.

( Phase one )

After Angel set off to help the evil lawfirm release a dangerous prisoner back onto Earth, it was only a short while before Wesley's phone rang to alert him to the fact that Angel was back, had the prisoner with him, and needed a meeting set up with Lilah. Wesley took care of the arrangements very quickly, which was how he found himself in Angel's car along with Angel, Gunn and a convicted evildoer in the middle of the highway, parked opposite two Wolfram and Hart limousines as they prepared to make a trade.

( Oooh, a standoff on a highway. Fun! )

[[once again adapted from angel 3x02 "that vision thing," part three of three. done with another week of spam yay!]]

It was another ordinary Monday night in Los Angeles, this time featuring Chinese take-out in lieu of a recent demon attack. This time, though, everyone wasn't so much bored as on-edge, and it was... possible that that might be showing. Just a bit.

It had been a full week since Cordelia's last vision, you see, so tensions were running... a bit awkward.

( Oooh, dinner and a vision )

( Proactivity: Always a valued trait in demon detectives. )

[[la la la usual weekly spam. 1/3 for today, and adapted from angel 3x02 "that vision thing."]]

Generally speaking this summer, evenings at the Hyperion were fairly noisy. After all the demonic activity had been dealt with for the day, dinner had been brought up to Fred's room for her to pick at and leave outside the door when she was done, and any slime from the aforementioned demon encounters had been washed off, Wes, Cordelia and Gunn would collapse in the chairs in the lobby with take-out containers and just talk at each other until they were too tired to stay up. Then, more often than not, Cordy and Gunn found themselves claiming rooms upstairs for the night -- driving on LA freeways after a day of demon-fighting was hard -- and Wes retired to his usual room, and sleep came really, really quicky.

It was a good system.

Tonight, though, it was quiet. There hadn't really been much demonic activity today, and as a result Cordelia and Gunn had gone home at a reasonable hour. Fred was... doing whatever she did on nights like these, and Wesley was left sitting by the desk with Chinese take-out and one hand halfway to the phone in case any calls came in.

Look, after a while the quiet just got eerie.

[[open for phone calls!]]