Dreams of the Dead
Wesley hadn’t recognized him at first, the tall man with the modern hair in the billowing coat, so very attentive of the Slayer. He never would have guessed he was Angelus, the vampire he’d researched, studied with such absorbed fascination.
After all, Angelus had killed his father. He’d killed his entire family. Such a horror to strike fear in Galway and its legends for centuries.
Only sometimes Wesley dreamed he was Angelus. He was a dark, soulless creature and he crept up on his father in the darkness.
His father looked so outraged that his weak little boy would dare to grab him, to dare to attack him, to defy him.
“The fear doesn’t come until later,” Angelus would whisper into his dream. “Wait for it. Savour it.”
And there it was, the arrogance in the weathered face melting into fear right before Wesley sank his fangs into his neck.
Wesley woke up sweating, in a pile of books to see Angel leaning over him. Not Angelus, the darkly promising creature of his dreams who whispered promises of revenge, of terrifying Daddy which Wesley never, ever told a single soul about. No, this was the Slayer’s lover, a creature who was frankly an enigma, whom Wesley Wyndam-Price couldn’t understand. How had the gleefully irreverent Irish vampire transformed into this cool, distant, dark-clad champion? It was a mystery.
Only Wesley recognized Angel's smile, the same smile he’d seen a thousand times following him through his house or guiding him down to his father’s study, where his father sat, surrounded by a fortress of books, not allowing anyone to get close to him.
“You know what to do,” Angelus would whisper, touching Wesley’s shoulder.
Wesley would turn, smile, feeling his face morph into a demon’s. After all, no one could blame for what he did here. It was only a dream and he was a demon.
“Enjoying your dream, Wes?” Angel asked playfully in a tone he’d never used around the new Watcher, the outsider. Angel would have never spoken him this way outside a dream. This wasn’t Angel. This was the other. The one who could take on many forms. The one who was in every man’s soul.
Wesley shuddered, closing his eyes tight, pretending he didn’t hear.
****
Giles dreamed, free of tweed, ties, and responsibility. He was the Ripper again, riding high on the rush of black magic. He turned and kissed Deirdre, almost devouring her hungrily as she laughed into his mouth, only to turn and kiss Ethan as well, pulling them both down onto the grass. The night was theirs and the demon was loose and prowling the world. Soon all the pompous pratts like Quentin Travers and their like would get what was coming to them, for trying to cage him with family traditions, for trying to control him.
“And what about me?” Jenny Calendar’s soft sad voice dispelled the sensuous images of past piles of lovers. She stepped forward to stand over Ripper kneeling on the grass, just as she leaned over his sleeping form in the Sunnydale High library.
“Do I deserve to suffer? Do I deserve to pay for what you’ve done?” Jenny looked down at him with huge, sorrowful dark eyes, dark eyes gazing through Eygon’s distortion of her face. “Rupert, am I not your child? Is this how you treat all your children?”
Jenny/Eygon shrank into Buffy, Buffy with a pinched, bruised face after facing the Watchers’ Council’s brutal test. “You sent me out to die, Giles. I was only sixteen and you sent me out to die. You sent me out again and again.”
Buffy became Kendra, bleeding from a hole in her neck. Kendra became Nikki, head lopside because her neck had been snapped. Girl after girl appeared, wearing the wounds of their deaths, an army of dead faces in different times and places.
“That’s what you Watchers do.” The girls spoke as one, dead eyes staring at Giles from an ink-black abyss. “You sacrifice us. You throw us into the darkness again and again while you plot and scheme.”
“How many have died from your scheming?” Two young men, the builders of a cage for a deranged vampire, part of a Slayer’s test, walked out of the abyss. Both of them were bleeding from their necks. “It doesn’t matter who gets caught in the middle of your game. After all, you’re fighting a war and we’re just casualties.”
“No.” No longer in the past, no longer Ripper, Giles lifted his head from the pile of books to stare into the darkness. He wasn't wearing a tie, his tweed jacket had been discarded, and he was so very tired of all this. “I’m no longer one of them. They’ve discarded me and I no longer believe in their ways.”
“Then what are you?” A little girl walked out of the darkness, dressed in an old-fashioned, ruffled frock. She gazed at him with his own eyes. He recognized her from an old family album, even if he never met her at that age. His grandmother. “Generation after generation we’ve been Watchers. If you’re not a Watcher, what are you? Nothing.”
“No!” Giles gasped, shaken awake, glad to be shaken out of the dream, to return to his books.
“Giles!” It was Xander, standing over him, sweat beading on his brow, although his hand was surprisingly cool. “Giles, snap out of it!”
“Xander,” Giles managed to gasp, looking over at Wesley. Willow was tugging at his shoulder. Wesley whimpered himself whimper awake, only to stare at her as if he didn’t quite see her or believe she was there. “Willow.”
“You were crying in your sleep.” Willow glanced from him to Wesley. The young Watcher was surprisingly pale. For one moment, Giles almost imagined puncture wounds, dripping blood from his neck, but no, it was only his overwrought imagination.
“Hopefully you’ve been doing more than having nightmares.” Xander could always been counted upon for a little adolescent sarcasm. Right now Giles was only too grateful to have been awakened to be sarcastic in turn.
Right now it was the right thing to snap Wesley out of his nightmare and restore him to his regular state of pomposity.
“As a matter of a fact we have.” The young Watcher drew himself up like a ruffled bird, smoothing the lapels of his suit. “We have discovered the identity of the entity that’s been stalking us all as well as many of the high school students here.”
“It’s the First.” Giles opened the book which had shut in front of him, opening it to several enigmatic drawings. They could have been succubi, incubi, vampires, or the humanoid incarnation of a hellmouth. They were obviously all demons.
“The First what?” Xander asked, drawing closer, attracted by the drawings.
Ah, the ever present distraction of a teenage boy’s hormones and anything that looks like frontal nudity. Giles supressed a sigh.
“The First Evil,” Wesley said with solemn, dramatic emphasis. “The source of all wickedness that’s been around from the very beginning.”
“You mean like the Devil?” Xander asked, cocking his head, still studying the drawings intently.
“Or Lillith?” Willow attempted a smile. “If you ask me, she gets a bad rap.”
“Older than either. Older than just about anything.” Giles removed his glasses. “The First can take on the forms of the dead, appear in multiple locations at the same time, but it cannot touch the living it manifests for.” He rubbed his eyes. “Faith was right. It can’t actually attack us directly, only manipulate its agents into doing so.”
“Maybe but why is it appearing now?” Willow frowned, moving away from Wesley and the table to approach the center of the library where the Hellmouth was located. “Why do something as petty as start rumours?”
“The First may not have been the one to start the rumours, Will.” Xander moved over to stand next to his friend, but he was looking at Giles. “It’s just using them to get us all riled up.” He smiled a little bitterly. “Who knows what we’ll do when we’re really riled up?”
“Xander, there is no point to making obvious, snippy remarks-“ Wesley began, looking down his nose at the boy.
“-actually there might be.” Xander allowed his smile to grow, cutting Wesley off. “Angel and I just crossed this thing’s path in a bad way and it got us thinking.”
“You and Angel?” Willow looked up at her friend, surprised. “You were together?”
Wesley also looked up sharply, cheeks coloring in an almost guilty way.
“No, we weren’t together!” Xander turned on Willow, smile disappearing. “It was just a coinicidence I met Angel while I was walking alone at night. It’s not like I was following him home and could we return to the point?!”
“I’m sorry,” Willow dropped her head, looked away. “I was just surprised, considering how not a fan of Angel you’ve always been.”
“Look, forget me and Angel.” Xander’s cheeks turned bright red. “The point is we met this thing. It became all kinds of dead people, including Jesse and Darla.”
“You saw Jesse?” Willow’s eyes softened, gazing at her friend.
“Darla?” Wesley frowned. “You mean Angel’s sire?”
“Yeah, I saw Jesse. Not at all happy with me as you might expect." Xander smiled, although it didn't reach his eyes. He turned his attention to Wesley rather than meet Willow's. "And yeah, it was that Darla, Wes. Angel dusted her a couple years back when she tried to kill Buffy but she was here again. Looking very much as she probably looked when she and Angel were together.” He glanced over at Giles. “Jenny made an appearance as well. This thing clearly wanted to mess with our heads.”
“Clearly,” Giles echoed, trying not to wince at the mention of Jenny. Trying not to think of his own recent dreams of her, only it hadn’t been the Jenny he wished to remember. “What did you learn?”
“Like I said, it’s trying to mess with us, make us feel guilty about all sorts of things. All of this started, though, with a rumor.” Xander turned his attention back to Willow. “Maybe we need to find the source of the rumors. Maybe they’re the ones that summoned the First.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Xander.” Giles began to polish his glasses. “Evil is a part of everyone. It’s always here. It’s not something you can summon and dismiss.”
“Maybe not.” Xander never looked away from his best friend. “Maybe someone drew it here along with the rumors they were spreading.”
“Scott Hope.” Willow’s eyes turned cold, colder than Xander had ever seen them before.
“You mean the same Scott Hope that dated Buffy and dumped her?” Xander scowled a bit. “One would think Buffy would be the one with the grudge if there was any justice.”
“He was telling everyone that Buffy and Faith were an item.” Willow’s lower lip trembled. “He’s the one who spread the rumors. He’s the one who attracted the First.”
“What?” Xander and Wesley looked at Willow in complete shock.
“Buffy and Faith are an item?!” Xander turned bright red. “Wait a minute, I thought the rumors were about Buffy and Cordelia, not Buffy and Faith!”
“Yes, this is news to me as well. The Slayers, my Slayers are dating?” Wesley drew himself up stiffly. “I did not sanction this.”
“It’s more of what Buffy, Faith, and Cordelia were talking about earlier, you git.” Giles decided he’d had enough of Wesley. “It’s the First, although why it’s using such tacky methods as gossip-“
“-why not?” Willow gazed Giles with bright eyes filled with more challenge than they’d ever held. “Much as I hate to agree with Cordelia, rumors have been known to destroy people. And why not use tacky methods if it’s using tacky vessels?”
“I’m right with you on the tacky, Will.” Xander lay a hand on her shoulder. “I’m just not sure you should be pointing the finger at Scott Hope, even if he is a doof. Harmony seemed to be the one at the grinder for the mean-spirited rumor mill.”
“Please.” Willow gave Xander a look a sheer scorn. “You think Harmony could mastermind a school project, let alone anything involving the First Evil?”
“Willow, Xander, there may not be a mastermind,” Giles protested, returning his glasses his face. “The First is most likely the mastermind and it’s using both Scott and Harmony to do what it does best.”
“It’s spreading discord. It’s stirring up violence.” Wesley removed his glasses and began to polish them. “You may well be right in how it’s preying up the guilt of the humans around it, but it has many weapons it can use against those it wishes to corrupt or destroy.”
“Well, it doesn’t have much left to corrupt if it’s Harmony, although Willow has a point.” Xander shrugged and smirked. “If Harmony is its ultimate tool, the First sounds like it’s something of a tool itself.”