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Notes: Dark AU, Spander with Wesley.
The Assistant part 7
"Clothes," Wesley says unnecessarily, handing them through the bars. "And to clean up..." He has a bottle of hot water from the tap and a stack of soft towels. They're too big to fit between the bars, so Spike walks over to the door and punches in the combination, shielding it from Xander with his body.
"I could use a shower," Xander says, without much hope. He hasn't bothered to get up off the bunk; it's hard to imagine him trying to force his way out. Still, Wesley feels a frisson as long as the door's open, and relief when Spike closes it again.
"Later," Spike says, without specifying exactly what that means. "Here." He tosses the clothes over, and Xander catches them neatly. The movement of his hand is fast and accurate. Wesley remembers watching Xander try to shoot hoops, once upon a time. He'd been awful.
"I don't know if it's what you'd prefer," he says, stepping away from the bars. "I just took what I found first. If there's something you'd rather have--" He can't imagine going back up to Xander's room again right away, but he still feels he should offer. It would be unbelievably childish to let his own emotion stand in the way of any small comfort for Xander.
"Nah," Xander says. "This is fine." He yanks his shirt off over his head, and for a moment Wesley just stares at what's beneath. Xander's side and back are a mass of bruises and welts. He looks like he's been beaten within an inch of his life. Which is a ridiculous thing to think, when in fact he's been beaten well past that. Wesley's throat closes up, and he turns away.
"Here." He can hear movement, little exhalations of effort and pain, the creak of the bunk, clothes falling. The cap comes off the bottle. He can't turn around just yet. His vision is blurring. And it seems wrong not to give Xander some privacy while he washes. Spike isn't intruding, he's helping. Wesley knows that without looking, because he's starting to understand some of the broad outlines, even if the details still escape him.
"A shower isn't out of the question," he says hoarsely, hating himself. How noble of him, to offer the dead man a shower.
"Later," Spike says again. "This'll do for now."
"Easy for you to say," Xander says. "You're not the one smelling like three days inside a dead horse. I could--goddammit, ow."
"Sorry."
"Take it easy on the flesh wounds, will you?"
"Any more blood in the fridge, Wesley?"
Wesley comes back to himself, trying to remember. "I...don't know. I'll go and see."
"I'll take whatever you've got," Xander says. "Because frankly, if we're thinking Angelus is going to show up here again sometime soon? I want to get back on my feet a little faster than this."
That makes Wesley turn around. Xander's standing with one hand clamped to the cage bars, holding himself upright. He's naked. His clothes lie in a crumpled, blood-stained heap at his feet. It's easier to look at them, as awful as they are, than it is to look at his body. His body is a garish record of everything Angelus did to him. Dried blood and bruises and little cylindrical burns, cuts that look as if they were made by a razor in a patient hand, strange dents where no dents should be.
"You're gonna have to feed another quarter into the slot," Xander says, ignoring the fact that Spike is swabbing dried blood off his belly. "The show's not free, you know?"
"I'm sorry," Wesley says automatically, dropping his eyes. "I'll see what kind of blood we have left."
Walking away, he hears Xander say in a low, conversational tone, "I could get used to this, you know?"
"Hold on," Spike says grimly. "This bit's going to hurt."
There's nothing left in the fridge but a few pints of ferret, which Spike dismisses as the weak tea of mammal blood. "Like drinking rat."
"Mmmm," Xander says, from his bunk. "Rat."
Wesley puts in an order for delivery, goes to the library, and stares blankly at the wards he can't figure out how to counter. After a while he gets up and wanders through the halls to his office. On the security camera, he can see Xander sitting on his bunk with his back against the bars of the cage, facing Spike. Spike is sitting in the metal folding chair, his feet on the bunk beside Xander. They're both smoking. Xander appears deep in thought. As Wesley watches, Xander's face shifts from human to demon, then back. Spike doesn't seem to notice.
Wesley checks the security logs, finds nothing unusual, then goes to the labs and collects a needle, a length of tubing, and a blood bag. Lying on the examination bed while the blood feeds into the bag, he tries to see what he's been missing. There must be something. There always is.
When it comes to him, he sits bolt upright and feels a wave of dizziness. He's still bleeding, he realizes. Stupid.
It only takes a minute or two to disengage from the bag, clean the puncture, and seal it with a neat wad of gauze and a strip of tape. Then he picks up the bag, barely noticing its disturbing warmth, and starts for the elevators.
"This is for Xander," he says, passing the bag through the bars. Spike takes it, starts to hand it to Xander, then stops short and pulls it back. "Spike, I need you in the library." He's already turning to go, his mind running ahead of his body.
"Hang on," Spike says, staring at the blood bag. "This is--"
"Library," Wesley says, walking away.
"That wasn't very bright," Spike says, pulling out a chair and surveying the books Wesley has pulled to the long table. "Last thing we need is you keeling over with Angelus in the lobby."
"I have an idea," Wesley says, walking back to the table with the second volume of Ffolkes in his hand. "Will those cells downstairs hold Angelus?" Spike frowns. Wesley hands him the Ffolkes and says, "Page one hundred and eighteen."
Flipping pages, Spike says, "Not much room at the inn, down there."
"There are several empty cells. Would they hold him?"
"In theory, yeah." Spike spins Ffolkes around and pushes it across the table to Wesley. "But who's going to put him in there?"
"He is," Wesley says.
Semper and Riegel's Fifth Achievement is a complicated glamour to cast, but with Wolfram & Hart's labs and library to call upon, it's also remarkably quick. They use some items from Angel's apartments to focus the illusion--a glass taken from his night table, a few hairs from the carpet. There's a tenth-century astrolabe in stores that Wesley takes no pleasure in burning, given that it's irreplaceable and quite beautiful. When the ashes are cool, he says the words over them and seals them in a clear glass vial with the elevator key.
"Abracadabra," Spike says.
The waiting is the most difficult part, in a way. Wesley sends everyone home, even the security staff, and weakens the wards on the main entrance. Not too much, not enough to cause suspicion. Just enough to make that the easiest way in. To stack the deck in their favor.
"What if it doesn't take?" Spike asks, lighting yet another cigarette and staring at the bank of security screens. They're all empty except for the one trained on the cage in the basement. Xander's in his bunk, unmoving. Asleep, or lost in thought.
"Then we seal the building," Wesley says, more calmly than he feels. "In fact, I'll be doing that as soon as he enters. We're not letting him loose again."
"So we get sealed in with Angelus."
Wesley doesn't bother to answer that. He's adjusting camera angles, not because there's any need but because there's nothing else to do.
"Don't love this plan," Spike says, fidgeting with his lighter and staring at the screen showing Xander's still body.
"Then give me something better."
Silence.
He arrives around midnight, straight through the front doors without hesitation, the weakened wards snapping under the force of whatever he's cast on himself. It makes the security screens jump, but doesn't blow them out, thank God. It also sets off the little alarm clock Wesley's spelled into the system, the one on the long table between him and Spike. They both sit bolt upright and stare at it.
"Angelus," Wesley says, and shoves his chair back.
They go straight to the security consoles, and spend a taut few seconds searching the screens for any movement.
"There," Spike says, pointing at the main hallway, down on the first floor. Angelus is just walking into frame. He smiles up at the camera, and sketches a little wave. He's heading for the elevators. "Seal the building, right?"
"It's already done," Wesley murmurs, staring at the screen. The moment the wards over the main entrance were broken, the no-exit policy fell into place. The only way for Angelus to leave now is for Wesley to remove the policy. He has no plans to do that.
"Right," Spike says. "When does he start seeing things funny?"
"He already is," Wesley says, watching Angelus pause at the elevators, study the panel, and hit the call button. He's pressed the down button.
"Could be just doing something new. Something we don't expect."
"Yes. He could be."
The elevator arrives, and Angelus waves good-bye to them on the lobby camera, then steps inside. He smiles up at the camera in there, fishes something out of his pocket, and holds it up so they can see what it is. It's a key.
"What's that?" Spike asks.
"A key to the elevator," Wesley says. "To take him to the White Room."
"Where'd he get that?"
"I have no idea." Wesley leans closer to the screen, as if that will help make the next few seconds more bearable. "It doesn't matter."
"It'll matter if he uses it," Spike says.
Angelus puts the key into the elevator slot, turns it, and presses a button. It's the button for the basement level. The elevator door closes, and the car starts down.
"He's going to notice he's going down," Spike says.
"It doesn't matter," Wesley says again. "It's part of the glamour."
"You know that, or you think that?"
"I know that," Wesley says, with more conviction than he feels. In fact, he doesn't know it, and he watches Angelus with his fingers wrapped tightly around the edge of the table, unable to make himself let go. If it doesn't work, and they really are sealed in here with Angelus... He doesn't want to think about that.
The elevator stops at the basement level, and Angelus grins up at the camera. Hi, he mouths.
"Sound?" Spike asks.
"Not in the elevators."
"What about in the cages?"
"Yes."
This is it, the moment that will decide everything. What is Angelus seeing, when the elevator doors open? Impossible to say. If the glamour works, he sees a long hallway leading to a single door. Not what the White Room actually looks like, Wesley knows, but appearances aren't fixed. If Angelus thinks he's used his key correctly, he should believe he's in the right place, no matter what it looks like.
The elevator doors open, showing a slice of the basement hallway. Angelus pauses a second longer, then steps out. Spike cranks the knob on the basement sound.
There's no carpet down there, so they sit listening to Angelus's footsteps walking slowly down the hall toward the cages. He should see only one door. Nothing else. Not the empty cells he walks past, not the metal folding chair, not Xander sitting on his bunk in his own locked cage, watching Angelus approach.
"Fucking sadistic," Spike says, watching Xander's screen.
"He's in no danger," Wesley says. "Angelus can't reach him as long as he's in the cell."
"Angelus doesn't have to reach him."
"Just a few more seconds," Wesley says, keeping his eyes on Angelus's screen. That's all they need. Angelus walks straight down the hallway without speaking, without pausing. He walks past Xander's cell. Xander shrinks back against the bars.
"What did you tell him?" Wesley asks, not looking up.
"That Angelus wouldn't see him. And that if he did, I'd get down there."
"You can't go down there."
Spike chooses not to answer that. They both watch Angelus pass Xander's cell and continue on to the larger cage at the end. The door to that one is ajar, but not locked. Angelus stops in front of it. The camera only shows them his back.
"Wes," he says, "it's been great working with you all these years. Looking forward to bringing you into the family, just as soon as I take care of a little business with the Powers."
He opens the door to the cage, steps inside, and swings it shut behind him. The lock engages with a loud click.
On the table between Wesley and Spike, the clear glass vial cracks in two.
Angelus stands stock-still for a moment, then whips around and throws himself against the door of the cell. It sounds like a large animal being hit by a car. The bars don't bend or break. He does it again, and again, and again.
In his own cage, ten feet down the hallway, Xander tries to disappear into his sheets.
"Wesley!" Angelus is bellowing, game-faced, bull-like. "Spike!"
"Turn that down," Wesley says, nodding at the volume control. His palms are sweating, and he feels clammy all over. He pushes off the table and starts to collect his things.
"It worked," Spike says, in a tone of mild amazement. He dials the volume down, so they can't hear the things Angelus is shouting at them. "Actually fucking worked."
"Yes," Wesley says. "And now we have to decide what to do with him."
