Saying Goodbye, A Fallen Angel 'Verse Fic
This story takes place many years after the ending of Fallen Angel...
Title: Saying Goodbye
Pairing: Angel/Wesley
Rating: PG
Setting: Set in the Fallen Angel 'verse, far into the future.
Spoilers: Vague spoilers for the "Fallen Angel" though this stands alone.
Disclaimer: If wishes came true, Angel and Wesley would live in my closet, and I would play with them mightily...but alas...they do not
Feedback: gladly accepted...
Summary: Wesley is dying and his friends gather to say their final farewells while Angel tries to cope with the idea of being alone after all the years they've been together.
Angel had never thought he would find himself in this moment. It was never supposed to be like this. He stared into the mirror over the dresser, watching Wesley slip back into his dreamless sleep. So much time had passed since they had come to be together that it no longer bothered Wesley that Angel’s reflection was pointedly missing from the mirror.
Angel kissed Wesley’s forehead gently. The last years had not been kind to the former watcher. He tried to remember when it had started, the stomach pain, the headaches. His fingers brushed over Wesley’s hair, once dark and thick…now thinned by the chemo and years, and long since gone to gray.
In sleep, Wesley’s face lost many of the lines and wrinkles that marked more than thirty years of fighting…but Wesley’s last battle was nearly over. Angel closed his eyes against the thought and lay down beside his lover. If he lay close enough and still enough, he could feel Wesley’s heart beating in his own chest. It was comforting. He couldn’t think about how he would face this room, this bed, without that comfort.
Wesley shifted in his sleep and Angel’s stomach roiled with an echo of Wesley’s pain. The bond between them had never waned, in fact had grown over the years. Like an old married couple they didn’t need to talk to know when the other was in pain or angry. Angel had finally convinced Wesley to seek medical aid when his stomach pain kept Angel awake. Neither of them had expected the outcome.
He could hear voices in the next room, but wasn’t ready to give Wesley back to them just yet. It was selfish, and he knew it, but if this was going to be the end, Angel wanted the time, a few more minutes alone.
They had been through so much together, survived more than most people would ever know existed. They had fought the forces of evil, killed demons, averted apocalypse after apocalypse…and through it all Wesley had grown old while Angel watched. Somehow Angel always assumed it would be one of these enemies that finally took Wesley from him, not something as common as cancer.
An image flashed through his mind, an old memory from days nearly forgotten, when he and Wesley were first learning how to be with one another. The dream/memory of Angel turning Wesley had spurred Wesley to a confession. The image and its matching sensations played out in his mind repeatedly over the last two years, more so in these last weeks as Wesley called off the treatments and asked to go home.
There was a light rap on the door and Connor peeked in. “Dad? They’re here.”
Angel nodded and cleared his throat. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Conner pulled the door shut and Angel sat up. He felt old. He snorted at that. He was old. He felt like a little old man. He stood up and tried to sort out his emotional state. By now the living room was filled with those who had come to say goodbye, and Angel had to put on his strong face.
He shuffled to the door and opened it, squinting into the light. Willow had been there for a few days. She had come to help Connor bring Wesley home from the hospital, and offer what she could magically to ease Wesley’s pain. Wesley had thanked her profusely, and Angel didn’t have the heart to tell her how little it had actually helped. He couldn’t meet her eyes.
Sitting behind Willow, holding Willow was Faith. Angel hadn’t seen her in years. She was thinner than he remembered, her pretty face accented now with a long scar that traveled out of her hairline, down over the bridge of her nose and under her right eye. He hadn’t expected her to come. Last he had heard she was in China training Slayers. It was easy to see that she and Willow had become close. Willow sighed and lay her head on Faith’s knee.
Dawn was already crying, but trying hard not to show it. She hadn’t known Wesley as long as the others, but she and Xander had spent the last four years in LA handling watcher affairs and the four of them hand spent many hours together in both work and play. Xander held her protectively, murmuring in her ear. He met Angel’s eyes and wordlessly Angel thanked him.
Angel’s eyes swung around to the last person in the room, the newest arrival. Buffy met his eyes with her teary ones and came to him immediately, wrapping her arms around him and holding him and offering him the strength he would need to get through this.
More than those in the room, Angel was struck by the missing faces. The ones who had fallen along the way…the way Wesley was meant to…the way they had all been meant to. Slayers don’t live into their thirties, yet here in his living room sat two slayers not far from turning 40.
Angel closed his eyes and pictured them. Kennedy, the wise cracking slayer who had fallen in love with Willow had been a frequent guest when she traveled with Willow. She fell from a forty story building while fighting a Bulari demon five years after they had sunk Sunnyvale to close the hellmouth. Gunn, went out a hero, taking the entire LA office of Wolfram & Hart with him that same year.
Giles had gone the following year, in a plane crash on his way back to London. The loss had hit Buffy hard. As he let go of Buffy, his eyes fell on the picture of he and Wesley and Cordelia. He missed her most maybe. He’d had the longest to grieve for her, but somehow he still expected her to come through the door at least once a day.
Connor was at his elbow as he turned. “Fred called, her plane’s been grounded. She’ll be here as soon as she can.”
Angel nodded with a slight smile. After Gunn’s death, Fred had left them for a teaching position in Chicago. She’d made a good life for herself. One that no longer included finding new ways to clean demon blood out of her clothes. “Okay. Thanks.” He sat slowly onto the couch. “He’s resting right now. He-“ He didn’t know what to say. How do you talk about someone who is the very anchor that keeps you connected to the world?
Buffy sat next to him, held his hand. He closed his eyes, covered them with his other one. He wanted to block it all out. The image came again, Wesley drinking from his wrist, Wesley strong and healthy…if one considers being dead healthy. He shook it off. He wouldn’t…couldn’t do that.
One by one they went in that room. Angel felt Wesley’s love for them, the nausea from the drugs…the pain as they wore off…the exhaustion. He moved from place to place in the house, trying to escape it…to offer them some modicum of privacy, ending up in Wesley’s study. It smelled like Wesley. Long bookshelves covered two of the walls. A third held a display of weapons from across thousands of years and more than one dimension. Angel ran his hands across the wood of the desk as he sank into the chair. Many hours had been spent in this room since they had bought the house.
The desk was a simple one, heavy oak. Wesley didn’t like it cluttered, except when he was working. A single book lay on the desk, a book he remembered giving Wesley the year before. It was open to a picture of a demon that looked vaguely familiar. Other than that book there were a few scattered pictures. Connor as a baby, Connor’s senior prom, the three of them at Xander and Dawn’s wedding. Snapshots of the normal moments in their lives. Little lies to leave behind when they were gone.
Dawn appeared at the door, looking like she didn’t want to interrupt his private moment, and like she had only wiped her face of tears for him. “He’s asking for you.” She said it softly, but he flinched anyway.
He nodded and got up, following her down the hall to the bedroom that he and Wesley had shared for the last fifteen years. No one looked at him as he passed through the living room. It was better that way. Angel wasn’t sure he could handle the feeling of their eyes on his back.
Connor rose from the bed as Angel entered. There were tears in his eyes as he came to offer Angel a hug. “I’ve said my goodbyes,” he said. “He’s waiting for you.”
Angel clung to his son for a long moment, before letting him go. “Why don’t you…check on the others. I-I”
Connor nodded and moved past him, softly closing the door. Angel raised his eyes to the bed, surprised to see Wesley’s blue eyes open and watching him. “We’ve raised a good man.” Wesley said with a slight smile.
Angel pushed back the tears and moved to sit beside him, taking his hand. “Yes, we have.”
Wesley winced, then coughed and Angel could feel the pain despite Wesley’s best efforts to hide it from him. “I thought we agreed you would stop shielding me from it.” Angel said, one hand caressing Wesley’s face.
Those startling blue eyes closed and Wesley nodded. The pain in Angel’s stomach doubled as Wesley stopped holding it to himself. Angel had been witness to a lot of death in his unnaturally long lifetime, but it had never ripped him apart…not like this. The image came again, the taste of Wesley’s blood filled his mouth, the sensation of his own blood flowing from his wrist…he could keep Wesley...he could…Wesley’s eyes opened again and Angel knew.
“I do love you, you know.” Angel murmured. Wesley had moved beyond the ability to speak, but Angel felt his response. He didn’t make a move to wipe away the tears as they started. Instead, he moved to lay beside Wesley, his head on Wesley’s shoulder. As he stilled he could hear the soft, slow beat of Wesley’s heart. He closed his eyes and sank into it, until he could feel it in his own chest.
His perception shifted, as it always did when he entered that strange space they shared between them. It wasn’t in his own mind, nor Wesley’s but somehow was a part of them both. Here Wesley wasn’t so frail, so small…so… “Angel, what are you doing?”
There was a vague amusement in Wesley’s voice, even as his hands found Angel’s chest and roamed up to his face. Angel nearly choked on the emotion as he clung to Wesley. It wasn’t real, not physically real…but his body would never know that. Their kiss was passionate, desperate. Angel never wanted to let the moment pass…but even so he could feel the slowing of Wesley’s heart. He held Wesley even tighter, drinking in the essence of his closest friend, his lover…the man who had saved him from oblivion.
“Saying Goodbye,” he whispered fiercely into Wesley’s ear. Wesley’s lips moved across Angel’s chin, up to his mouth. Angel could taste the sadness, the regret.
“Will you be okay?” Wesley whispered, though his mouth hardly moved from Angel’s.
Angel moaned, cut deeper than he had thought possible. He knew there was more to the question than a simple need for reassurance. He nodded, feeling Wesley’s head move with his own. He couldn’t find the words.
“If you asked-“
Angel closed his eyes. “I can’t.”
“I know.”
Angel could feel their space closing around them, Wesley slipping from him, even as he held him tightly to him. “I don’t know how.” He didn’t have to finish the thought.
Angel closed his eyes and Wesley slipped out of their space. His heartbeat was so slow Angel almost couldn’t feel it. His face was wet with tears as he kissed Wesley’s cheek one final time. “Goodbye.” He could feel the lingering presence, but it was diminishing. His chest no longer beat with Wesley’s heart. The pain in his stomach and head were gone. The quiet strength of knowing Wesley was near gave way to the pain of knowing he had let Wesley leave.
Angel got up off the bed, smoothing the blankets around the still body. He could already feel the coolness of death setting in. He picked at some lint that had found its way onto the blanket, moved Wesley’s head just a little more center on the pillow, arranged his hands in the traditional pose of death, then moved them back to Wesley’s sides. He wiped his hands on his jeans and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do next.
He should tell the others. Angel nodded to himself and went to the door. He couldn’t look at them, most especially not Connor…how could Connor ever forgive him for not saving Wesley? “He-He’s gone.” Angel said into the stillness of the room.
His knees buckled and the room swam. Wesley was gone. Nothing would ever be the same again.
For the first time since Naan and her sisters had left them, Angel felt the despair that had driven him to the brink of self destruction. His flesh burned as if she were carving that spell into his skin all over again. The gypsy’s curse may have taken away his chances at true happiness, perfect bliss, but Naan’s curse was far worse. Naan’s curse ensured that he would live forever, always saying goodbye to someone he loved. Angel wasn’t sure how much more of it he could stand.
Title: Saying Goodbye
Pairing: Angel/Wesley
Rating: PG
Setting: Set in the Fallen Angel 'verse, far into the future.
Spoilers: Vague spoilers for the "Fallen Angel" though this stands alone.
Disclaimer: If wishes came true, Angel and Wesley would live in my closet, and I would play with them mightily...but alas...they do not
Feedback: gladly accepted...
Summary: Wesley is dying and his friends gather to say their final farewells while Angel tries to cope with the idea of being alone after all the years they've been together.
Angel had never thought he would find himself in this moment. It was never supposed to be like this. He stared into the mirror over the dresser, watching Wesley slip back into his dreamless sleep. So much time had passed since they had come to be together that it no longer bothered Wesley that Angel’s reflection was pointedly missing from the mirror.
Angel kissed Wesley’s forehead gently. The last years had not been kind to the former watcher. He tried to remember when it had started, the stomach pain, the headaches. His fingers brushed over Wesley’s hair, once dark and thick…now thinned by the chemo and years, and long since gone to gray.
In sleep, Wesley’s face lost many of the lines and wrinkles that marked more than thirty years of fighting…but Wesley’s last battle was nearly over. Angel closed his eyes against the thought and lay down beside his lover. If he lay close enough and still enough, he could feel Wesley’s heart beating in his own chest. It was comforting. He couldn’t think about how he would face this room, this bed, without that comfort.
Wesley shifted in his sleep and Angel’s stomach roiled with an echo of Wesley’s pain. The bond between them had never waned, in fact had grown over the years. Like an old married couple they didn’t need to talk to know when the other was in pain or angry. Angel had finally convinced Wesley to seek medical aid when his stomach pain kept Angel awake. Neither of them had expected the outcome.
He could hear voices in the next room, but wasn’t ready to give Wesley back to them just yet. It was selfish, and he knew it, but if this was going to be the end, Angel wanted the time, a few more minutes alone.
They had been through so much together, survived more than most people would ever know existed. They had fought the forces of evil, killed demons, averted apocalypse after apocalypse…and through it all Wesley had grown old while Angel watched. Somehow Angel always assumed it would be one of these enemies that finally took Wesley from him, not something as common as cancer.
An image flashed through his mind, an old memory from days nearly forgotten, when he and Wesley were first learning how to be with one another. The dream/memory of Angel turning Wesley had spurred Wesley to a confession. The image and its matching sensations played out in his mind repeatedly over the last two years, more so in these last weeks as Wesley called off the treatments and asked to go home.
There was a light rap on the door and Connor peeked in. “Dad? They’re here.”
Angel nodded and cleared his throat. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Conner pulled the door shut and Angel sat up. He felt old. He snorted at that. He was old. He felt like a little old man. He stood up and tried to sort out his emotional state. By now the living room was filled with those who had come to say goodbye, and Angel had to put on his strong face.
He shuffled to the door and opened it, squinting into the light. Willow had been there for a few days. She had come to help Connor bring Wesley home from the hospital, and offer what she could magically to ease Wesley’s pain. Wesley had thanked her profusely, and Angel didn’t have the heart to tell her how little it had actually helped. He couldn’t meet her eyes.
Sitting behind Willow, holding Willow was Faith. Angel hadn’t seen her in years. She was thinner than he remembered, her pretty face accented now with a long scar that traveled out of her hairline, down over the bridge of her nose and under her right eye. He hadn’t expected her to come. Last he had heard she was in China training Slayers. It was easy to see that she and Willow had become close. Willow sighed and lay her head on Faith’s knee.
Dawn was already crying, but trying hard not to show it. She hadn’t known Wesley as long as the others, but she and Xander had spent the last four years in LA handling watcher affairs and the four of them hand spent many hours together in both work and play. Xander held her protectively, murmuring in her ear. He met Angel’s eyes and wordlessly Angel thanked him.
Angel’s eyes swung around to the last person in the room, the newest arrival. Buffy met his eyes with her teary ones and came to him immediately, wrapping her arms around him and holding him and offering him the strength he would need to get through this.
More than those in the room, Angel was struck by the missing faces. The ones who had fallen along the way…the way Wesley was meant to…the way they had all been meant to. Slayers don’t live into their thirties, yet here in his living room sat two slayers not far from turning 40.
Angel closed his eyes and pictured them. Kennedy, the wise cracking slayer who had fallen in love with Willow had been a frequent guest when she traveled with Willow. She fell from a forty story building while fighting a Bulari demon five years after they had sunk Sunnyvale to close the hellmouth. Gunn, went out a hero, taking the entire LA office of Wolfram & Hart with him that same year.
Giles had gone the following year, in a plane crash on his way back to London. The loss had hit Buffy hard. As he let go of Buffy, his eyes fell on the picture of he and Wesley and Cordelia. He missed her most maybe. He’d had the longest to grieve for her, but somehow he still expected her to come through the door at least once a day.
Connor was at his elbow as he turned. “Fred called, her plane’s been grounded. She’ll be here as soon as she can.”
Angel nodded with a slight smile. After Gunn’s death, Fred had left them for a teaching position in Chicago. She’d made a good life for herself. One that no longer included finding new ways to clean demon blood out of her clothes. “Okay. Thanks.” He sat slowly onto the couch. “He’s resting right now. He-“ He didn’t know what to say. How do you talk about someone who is the very anchor that keeps you connected to the world?
Buffy sat next to him, held his hand. He closed his eyes, covered them with his other one. He wanted to block it all out. The image came again, Wesley drinking from his wrist, Wesley strong and healthy…if one considers being dead healthy. He shook it off. He wouldn’t…couldn’t do that.
One by one they went in that room. Angel felt Wesley’s love for them, the nausea from the drugs…the pain as they wore off…the exhaustion. He moved from place to place in the house, trying to escape it…to offer them some modicum of privacy, ending up in Wesley’s study. It smelled like Wesley. Long bookshelves covered two of the walls. A third held a display of weapons from across thousands of years and more than one dimension. Angel ran his hands across the wood of the desk as he sank into the chair. Many hours had been spent in this room since they had bought the house.
The desk was a simple one, heavy oak. Wesley didn’t like it cluttered, except when he was working. A single book lay on the desk, a book he remembered giving Wesley the year before. It was open to a picture of a demon that looked vaguely familiar. Other than that book there were a few scattered pictures. Connor as a baby, Connor’s senior prom, the three of them at Xander and Dawn’s wedding. Snapshots of the normal moments in their lives. Little lies to leave behind when they were gone.
Dawn appeared at the door, looking like she didn’t want to interrupt his private moment, and like she had only wiped her face of tears for him. “He’s asking for you.” She said it softly, but he flinched anyway.
He nodded and got up, following her down the hall to the bedroom that he and Wesley had shared for the last fifteen years. No one looked at him as he passed through the living room. It was better that way. Angel wasn’t sure he could handle the feeling of their eyes on his back.
Connor rose from the bed as Angel entered. There were tears in his eyes as he came to offer Angel a hug. “I’ve said my goodbyes,” he said. “He’s waiting for you.”
Angel clung to his son for a long moment, before letting him go. “Why don’t you…check on the others. I-I”
Connor nodded and moved past him, softly closing the door. Angel raised his eyes to the bed, surprised to see Wesley’s blue eyes open and watching him. “We’ve raised a good man.” Wesley said with a slight smile.
Angel pushed back the tears and moved to sit beside him, taking his hand. “Yes, we have.”
Wesley winced, then coughed and Angel could feel the pain despite Wesley’s best efforts to hide it from him. “I thought we agreed you would stop shielding me from it.” Angel said, one hand caressing Wesley’s face.
Those startling blue eyes closed and Wesley nodded. The pain in Angel’s stomach doubled as Wesley stopped holding it to himself. Angel had been witness to a lot of death in his unnaturally long lifetime, but it had never ripped him apart…not like this. The image came again, the taste of Wesley’s blood filled his mouth, the sensation of his own blood flowing from his wrist…he could keep Wesley...he could…Wesley’s eyes opened again and Angel knew.
“I do love you, you know.” Angel murmured. Wesley had moved beyond the ability to speak, but Angel felt his response. He didn’t make a move to wipe away the tears as they started. Instead, he moved to lay beside Wesley, his head on Wesley’s shoulder. As he stilled he could hear the soft, slow beat of Wesley’s heart. He closed his eyes and sank into it, until he could feel it in his own chest.
His perception shifted, as it always did when he entered that strange space they shared between them. It wasn’t in his own mind, nor Wesley’s but somehow was a part of them both. Here Wesley wasn’t so frail, so small…so… “Angel, what are you doing?”
There was a vague amusement in Wesley’s voice, even as his hands found Angel’s chest and roamed up to his face. Angel nearly choked on the emotion as he clung to Wesley. It wasn’t real, not physically real…but his body would never know that. Their kiss was passionate, desperate. Angel never wanted to let the moment pass…but even so he could feel the slowing of Wesley’s heart. He held Wesley even tighter, drinking in the essence of his closest friend, his lover…the man who had saved him from oblivion.
“Saying Goodbye,” he whispered fiercely into Wesley’s ear. Wesley’s lips moved across Angel’s chin, up to his mouth. Angel could taste the sadness, the regret.
“Will you be okay?” Wesley whispered, though his mouth hardly moved from Angel’s.
Angel moaned, cut deeper than he had thought possible. He knew there was more to the question than a simple need for reassurance. He nodded, feeling Wesley’s head move with his own. He couldn’t find the words.
“If you asked-“
Angel closed his eyes. “I can’t.”
“I know.”
Angel could feel their space closing around them, Wesley slipping from him, even as he held him tightly to him. “I don’t know how.” He didn’t have to finish the thought.
Angel closed his eyes and Wesley slipped out of their space. His heartbeat was so slow Angel almost couldn’t feel it. His face was wet with tears as he kissed Wesley’s cheek one final time. “Goodbye.” He could feel the lingering presence, but it was diminishing. His chest no longer beat with Wesley’s heart. The pain in his stomach and head were gone. The quiet strength of knowing Wesley was near gave way to the pain of knowing he had let Wesley leave.
Angel got up off the bed, smoothing the blankets around the still body. He could already feel the coolness of death setting in. He picked at some lint that had found its way onto the blanket, moved Wesley’s head just a little more center on the pillow, arranged his hands in the traditional pose of death, then moved them back to Wesley’s sides. He wiped his hands on his jeans and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do next.
He should tell the others. Angel nodded to himself and went to the door. He couldn’t look at them, most especially not Connor…how could Connor ever forgive him for not saving Wesley? “He-He’s gone.” Angel said into the stillness of the room.
His knees buckled and the room swam. Wesley was gone. Nothing would ever be the same again.
For the first time since Naan and her sisters had left them, Angel felt the despair that had driven him to the brink of self destruction. His flesh burned as if she were carving that spell into his skin all over again. The gypsy’s curse may have taken away his chances at true happiness, perfect bliss, but Naan’s curse was far worse. Naan’s curse ensured that he would live forever, always saying goodbye to someone he loved. Angel wasn’t sure how much more of it he could stand.