Angel Season 5 - episode 15 - A hole in the World (part 3)
Angel and Spike exit together. Words are unnecessary to organise roles or delegate duties, to ask for or offer assistance. It’s instinctual.
Wesley goes to check on Fred but her bed is empty. She is in her lab trying to work the damn problem
Fred: I have to work.
Angel: You have to lie down.
Fred: I am not…I am not the damsel in distress. I am not some case! I have to work this. I lived in a cave for five years in a world where they killed my kind like cattle. I am not going to be cut down by some monster flu. I am better than that! - But I wonder…how very scared I am
That was always her job, to be ‘science girl’. She doesn’t want to let the team down they need her brains. She needs her brains! She wants to be pro-active about saving herself - who better to find a solution than her? But Wesley suggests there are other ways of fighting, like lying down, resting, conserving her strength. She collapses, her energy sapped by her scientific exertions. She senses the inevitability of her situation:
Fred: This is a house of death. That can be any book you need?
Wesley: Every one.
Fred: Then bring it. Take me home.
In the jet Spike fidgets with his seatbelt. While Angel looks out the window with hesitation. Neither looks particularly happy or comfortable with the situation. Spike admits that he has never flown in a plane before. The derogatory comment expected after such a frank admission of fear never eventuates. Instead, Angel answers with empathy by conceding that he’s been in a helicopter only once but it didn’t go this high. It’s encouraging, so much so that Spike suggests a date, a visit to the West End to take in a show once Fred is ‘rescued’. The conversation is at odds with the seriousness of their journey but it is an expression of support and innate belief, at least on Spike’s part, that they’ll get it done. Angel accepts the offer, suggests a particular show then confides his deepest fear in his newly re-discovered pillar of strength:
Angel: Can’t lose her Spike.
Spike: We won’t.
Angel: I lost Cordy.
Spike’s recent experience has been with a team that wins whatever the odds. He brings that expectation with him. Angel knows otherwise. He knows you don’t always win and that there is loses; he’s had some big ones. It’s all too eerily familiar.
Back at the office Gunn is trying to get some powerful mystical healers on board to help Fred. They are reluctant, they fear the Old Ones. By threatening a ‘world of hurt’ Gunn is utilising his inner caveman to try and force cooperation. It’s not too successful. Caveman Gunn and his tactics are closely related to ‘old’ Gunn and ‘old’ Gunn simply doesn’t belong in the corporate world of astronaut Gunn. Ironically, it is once he confirms that he’s not talking about slamming them with legal action that his contact hangs up the phone in his ear. Once they know it is just an empty threat of physical violence they metaphorically laugh in his face. Knox arrives with the suggestion that they should freeze Fred at their cryogenics department. He theorises that this would stop the infection in its tracks and this will buy them time to figure out how to save her. It sounds absurd of course but at this point Gunn is getting desperate, he’s willing to try anything and Knox, well he’s a true astronaut isn’t he? Scientific, knowledgeable; what’s not to trust?
Fred wakes in her own bed. It was a short nap but she’s mildly indignant at the precious hour of life that she has lost. She wants noise to keep her anchored to life but Wes is confident that Angel and Spike will prevail; he shouldn’t like to be the thing that stands in their way. Spike and Angel, in that moment seem larger than life, like legendary heroes of myth and antiquity but it was Wesley, it was ‘book man’ who provided the map for their quest. Suddenly Fred gets anxious:
Fred: I - I have to find him. He’s the master of-I have to have Feigenbaum here!
But when Wes asks who is Feigenbaum, she can’t answer because she doesn’t remember. She’s starting to lose connections to herself. She is worried about how she looks and Wesley assures her she’s beautiful, the most beautiful thing in the world. So she calms down and Wes reads to her, not from Dread host’s Compendium of Immortal Leeches but from The Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson-Burnett. Research and higher thinking and looking for a solution to an unsolvable problem are abandoned in favour of instinctual comfort and respect for the sanctity of coming death. That’s not to say that there is no hope or that Wes has given up, no far from it, he’s placed his faith in the ‘champions’, in Angel and Spike but he recognises that his job in this is not to look for intellectual reasoning but to offer instinctual emotional support to the woman he loves.
Angel and Spike walk through a foggy parkland in the Cotswolds looking for the entrance to the Deeper Well. They come across a large tree with an twisted, misshapen trunk and Angel is sure that it’s the doorway they are looking for (well, either that or Christmas Land says Spike and Angel is completely clueless as to the reference being made. Which one of them is championing modernity again?) As they approach the door they are attacked by ogres, the guards of the Well:
Spike: And they even bought us weapons. Strategy?
Angel: just hold my hand
(Spike does as requested without hesitation)
Spike: St. Petersburg
Angel: I thought you’d forgotten.
Old habits die hard and see, they can be transferred to the new regime. Angel and Spike work together very effectively and very efficiently. Angel hasn’t forgotten how they used to combine forces back in the day, only now he’s prepared to accept that their vampire tactics, their shared history can be put to good use once more now that they are on the same side again. In his pocket he had a length of wire, all he had to do was ask Spike to hold his hand to unleash a tried and true stratagem that has worked for them in the past (though one can only wonder with horror exactly what they were doing in St. Petersburg that necessitated the use of the wire). It works wonderfully this time too; when they pull the wire tight it allows them to decapitate the first rush of guards and to appropriate their weapons.
Knox’s idea is a bust. Even freezing won’t stop this virus. And even though we know the scientist is somehow involved in the whole plot (because of that ‘missing’ invoice thing) he does seem genuinely conflicted, like he would like to be the ‘white knight’ in the scenario, reverse everything that is happing to Fred if it were to mean that she would return his affections. But he can’t and she doesn’t. So he settles for allowing his ‘God’ to re-birth itself through Fred so he can love it in her image. Gunn catches the word ‘it’, Knox said “I practically worship it” and it makes all the difference. His suspicions are aroused. He’s on red alert.
Knox tries to explain, he chose Fred because he loved her, because she was worthy. Would he want his God to hatch out of some schmuck? Gunn wants him to stop it, taunts him that Angel will stop it but Knox is dubious:
Knox: This was all set in motion millions of years ago Charles, and there’s just no way to stop it.
Gunn: Angel and Spike?
Knox: Oh, they’re really on the right track, but it doesn’t matter. Angel’s not gonna save her
Gunn: You don’t know Angel
Knox: I’m not being clear. I don’t mean that Angel gonna fail to save her, I mean he’s gonna let her die.
Knox is excited now. His plans are coming to fruition. He’s all too willing to share details with the dumbfounded attorney. Illyria was a great power, so great that after millions of years it still has loyal acolytes in the world. Knox certainly qualifies as such. The land on which Los Angeles now stands was its primordial kingdom and in a pre-ordained plot to return to power the tomb teleported out of the Well back to the geographic location of the seat of its power. But continents shift and where it ended up wasn’t where it needed to be to complete its plan. Knox, Illyria’s faithful servant, sought out and returned the sarcophagus to the kingdom only to get caught out by a twenty-first century hurdle; getting the ancient relic through customs.
Knox: But you took care of that. You signed the order to bring it into the lab so you could get another brain boost. Like I said, I’m just one small part of a great machine.
Gunn is thrown, devastated, disgusted that he is implicated, that he is up to his neck in this. Consequences; his actions, his decisions have dealt a death sentence. He is revolted but clings to the increasingly unlikely hope that Angel can save her, that Angel can save him from this burden. Yet, amidst all this the primal sense of self-preservation is strong; as Knox excitedly expounds the enormity of the event they are both part of Charles grabs a heavy metal canister and swings it into Knox’s head, knocking him out cold. He then hoists the cylinder high over his head, pauses, looks sideways, first one way then the other, then brings the improvised weapon crashing down in an attack that is both brutal and primitive. Nobody need know anything of his part in this now.
Spike and Angel finish off the last of the guards
Angel: Is that all? We haven’t even started!
And a man appears saying that it’s enough. Angel knows him; his name is Drogyn. He is the keeper of the Well, has been for decades.
Spike: Well who in the bloody-
Drogyn: Do not ask me a question! If you ever ask me a single question, I will kill you outright. Don’t think for a moment that I can’t
Spike’s question never gets answered. We don’t ever discover the history of Drogyn or how he and Angel knew each other, or how he came to be caretaker of the Well. The most we get is mutual surprise at the others circumstances:
Drogyn: I would never have thought you’d end up here Angel.
Angel: I could say the same.
Perhaps Drogyn was evil once too, knew Angelus back in the day. Perhaps he’s seeking redemption as well, serving his penance by guarding the long dead demon overlords. Perhaps. Even though we know nothing about him we trust him; he cannot lie. Only truth passes his lips. Maybe he was cursed too.
Drogyn leads the boys into the Well he knows they are there about Illyria so gives them some insight:
Drogyn:…The Old Ones were demons pure. They warred as we would breathe - endlessly. The greater ones were interred, for death was not always their end. Illyria was feared and beloved as few are. It was laid to death in the very depths of the well…until it disappeared a month ago.
Spike: Someone took it from under your nose a month ago and you didn’t miss it till now? That makes you quite the crap jailer, doesn’t it… Also a statement!
Drogyn: Your friend likes to talk.
Angel: So much he’s even right sometimes. The man I remember couldn’t be stolen from so easily.
It’s quite a contrast from earlier in the season (think of when they were both talking to the doctor in Damage), where once Angel might have said something along the lines of “don’t mind the idiot” now he gives Spike unqualified support. But Drogyn says the tomb wasn’t stolen. It was a pre-destined escape plan (as Knox explained). Once the trio enter the well chamber, Drogyn can easily be forgiven for not noticing the absence immediately; his charges are not few. An endless pit is lined with thousands upon thousands of tombs, sarcophagi and coffins. It goes all the way through, all the way through to the other side of the world. Bloody hell indeed.
Angel and Spike discover that the power to draw Illyria back to its proper resting place is some kind of ancient magic that requires a champion who has travelled from where it resides to where it belongs.
Angel: You got two of those right here.
So Spike gets the recognition, the affirmation that he’s wanted for so long as Angel finally admits what he’s known since Spike emerged from the amulet and it didn’t hurt a bit. But it’s not enough to save Fred. The essence of the demon has already been released:
Drogyn: If we bring the sarcophagus back to the well it will draw Illyria out of your friend…and into every single person between here and there. It will become the mystical equivalent of airborne. It will claw into every soul in its path to keep from being trapped. Entire cities, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands will die in agony if you save her.
It’s madness and Spike and Angel are floored. It’s a horrible, impossible choice; their beloved Fred or thousands of nameless strangers. Drogyn says he’ll prepare the spell, pretends they’ve got a choice. Angel goes along with the charade, just for a moment, out of sheer anger:
Angel: To hell with the world!
Poor Angel, reason and rationality desert him temporarily because he’s sick to death of losing the people he loves and he’s tired of thinking about ‘everyone’ when all he wants to do is protect what’s left of his family. In the world of the caveman it’s each man for himself. It’s brutal and unforgiving. Rational thought has no place.
Spike is looking down into the well trying to understand the incomprehensible. Angel turns to him, all he says is “Spike” but it overflows with vulnerability and resignation; he knows there is know way they can save her, that they have no right to sacrifice so many to salvage one. He turns to Spike to try and explain…but Spike already knows, never pretended it was otherwise. Yet he doesn’t let Angel say the actual words. He protects Angel with lyrical thought that he speaks with sad awe and wonder:
Spike: This goes all the way through to the other side. So, I figure, there’s a bloke somewhere around New Zealand standing on a bridge like this one, looking back down at us. All the way down. There’s a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.
Things are getting worse for Fred the light hurts her eyes but it’s proof she’s alive. She struggles with delirium and it’s bright and hollow and the cavemen win, of course the cavemen win! Pain grips her; her skin is hardening squeezing the life out of her. Wesley tries to administer relief but the needle won’t pierce, it bends and snaps. She recoils from Wesley’s comforting touch. He feels helpless. Once the spasm of pain passes she calms, is weak but lucid. She is able to identify the root of the problem:
Fred: Why did we go there? Why did we think we could beat it? It’s evil Wesley. It’s bigger than anything.
And suddenly she’s terrified and she’s crawling up the bed as if trying to escape, stave off capture. She begins talking, almost like she’s communicating with the thing that is slowly taking over her body:
Fred: I’m with him! He won’t leave me now. We’re so close
Wesley will not leave until it’s done. They were so close to love and a future. So close but yet so far. Illyria will not leave either. It is so close, oh so close to achieving it’s destiny.
Wesley holds Fred and they kiss and share words of love. Fred is scared, petrified, though determined to be thought of as otherwise. She wants her parents told that she wasn’t scared. She wants them to know she was brave. She repeats the words “I’m not scared”, trying desperately to will them to be true. As she slips away her fight and bravado flags. She goes limp in Wesley’s arms and asks piteously:
Fred: Please Wesley, why can’t I stay?
And stillness descends as death comes. Wesley cries and holds Fred’s body close, mourning her loss. While she’s cradled in his arms ice sets across Fred’s still open hazel eyes. They crystallise and crack and turn blue. The body shudders to life with violent spasms throwing Wesley off the bed and flinging itself backwards onto the floor where it continues to convulse. Wesley is horrified. ‘Fred’ stands up; but it is not Fred. It’s hair is blue, it’s skin is tinged azure too, it’s eyes are cold. It looks at its hand experimentally flexing the fingers and gives its verdict:
Illyria: This will do.
Wesley goes to check on Fred but her bed is empty. She is in her lab trying to work the damn problem
Fred: I have to work.
Angel: You have to lie down.
Fred: I am not…I am not the damsel in distress. I am not some case! I have to work this. I lived in a cave for five years in a world where they killed my kind like cattle. I am not going to be cut down by some monster flu. I am better than that! - But I wonder…how very scared I am
That was always her job, to be ‘science girl’. She doesn’t want to let the team down they need her brains. She needs her brains! She wants to be pro-active about saving herself - who better to find a solution than her? But Wesley suggests there are other ways of fighting, like lying down, resting, conserving her strength. She collapses, her energy sapped by her scientific exertions. She senses the inevitability of her situation:
Fred: This is a house of death. That can be any book you need?
Wesley: Every one.
Fred: Then bring it. Take me home.
In the jet Spike fidgets with his seatbelt. While Angel looks out the window with hesitation. Neither looks particularly happy or comfortable with the situation. Spike admits that he has never flown in a plane before. The derogatory comment expected after such a frank admission of fear never eventuates. Instead, Angel answers with empathy by conceding that he’s been in a helicopter only once but it didn’t go this high. It’s encouraging, so much so that Spike suggests a date, a visit to the West End to take in a show once Fred is ‘rescued’. The conversation is at odds with the seriousness of their journey but it is an expression of support and innate belief, at least on Spike’s part, that they’ll get it done. Angel accepts the offer, suggests a particular show then confides his deepest fear in his newly re-discovered pillar of strength:
Angel: Can’t lose her Spike.
Spike: We won’t.
Angel: I lost Cordy.
Spike’s recent experience has been with a team that wins whatever the odds. He brings that expectation with him. Angel knows otherwise. He knows you don’t always win and that there is loses; he’s had some big ones. It’s all too eerily familiar.
Back at the office Gunn is trying to get some powerful mystical healers on board to help Fred. They are reluctant, they fear the Old Ones. By threatening a ‘world of hurt’ Gunn is utilising his inner caveman to try and force cooperation. It’s not too successful. Caveman Gunn and his tactics are closely related to ‘old’ Gunn and ‘old’ Gunn simply doesn’t belong in the corporate world of astronaut Gunn. Ironically, it is once he confirms that he’s not talking about slamming them with legal action that his contact hangs up the phone in his ear. Once they know it is just an empty threat of physical violence they metaphorically laugh in his face. Knox arrives with the suggestion that they should freeze Fred at their cryogenics department. He theorises that this would stop the infection in its tracks and this will buy them time to figure out how to save her. It sounds absurd of course but at this point Gunn is getting desperate, he’s willing to try anything and Knox, well he’s a true astronaut isn’t he? Scientific, knowledgeable; what’s not to trust?
Fred wakes in her own bed. It was a short nap but she’s mildly indignant at the precious hour of life that she has lost. She wants noise to keep her anchored to life but Wes is confident that Angel and Spike will prevail; he shouldn’t like to be the thing that stands in their way. Spike and Angel, in that moment seem larger than life, like legendary heroes of myth and antiquity but it was Wesley, it was ‘book man’ who provided the map for their quest. Suddenly Fred gets anxious:
Fred: I - I have to find him. He’s the master of-I have to have Feigenbaum here!
But when Wes asks who is Feigenbaum, she can’t answer because she doesn’t remember. She’s starting to lose connections to herself. She is worried about how she looks and Wesley assures her she’s beautiful, the most beautiful thing in the world. So she calms down and Wes reads to her, not from Dread host’s Compendium of Immortal Leeches but from The Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson-Burnett. Research and higher thinking and looking for a solution to an unsolvable problem are abandoned in favour of instinctual comfort and respect for the sanctity of coming death. That’s not to say that there is no hope or that Wes has given up, no far from it, he’s placed his faith in the ‘champions’, in Angel and Spike but he recognises that his job in this is not to look for intellectual reasoning but to offer instinctual emotional support to the woman he loves.
Angel and Spike walk through a foggy parkland in the Cotswolds looking for the entrance to the Deeper Well. They come across a large tree with an twisted, misshapen trunk and Angel is sure that it’s the doorway they are looking for (well, either that or Christmas Land says Spike and Angel is completely clueless as to the reference being made. Which one of them is championing modernity again?) As they approach the door they are attacked by ogres, the guards of the Well:
Spike: And they even bought us weapons. Strategy?
Angel: just hold my hand
(Spike does as requested without hesitation)
Spike: St. Petersburg
Angel: I thought you’d forgotten.
Old habits die hard and see, they can be transferred to the new regime. Angel and Spike work together very effectively and very efficiently. Angel hasn’t forgotten how they used to combine forces back in the day, only now he’s prepared to accept that their vampire tactics, their shared history can be put to good use once more now that they are on the same side again. In his pocket he had a length of wire, all he had to do was ask Spike to hold his hand to unleash a tried and true stratagem that has worked for them in the past (though one can only wonder with horror exactly what they were doing in St. Petersburg that necessitated the use of the wire). It works wonderfully this time too; when they pull the wire tight it allows them to decapitate the first rush of guards and to appropriate their weapons.
Knox’s idea is a bust. Even freezing won’t stop this virus. And even though we know the scientist is somehow involved in the whole plot (because of that ‘missing’ invoice thing) he does seem genuinely conflicted, like he would like to be the ‘white knight’ in the scenario, reverse everything that is happing to Fred if it were to mean that she would return his affections. But he can’t and she doesn’t. So he settles for allowing his ‘God’ to re-birth itself through Fred so he can love it in her image. Gunn catches the word ‘it’, Knox said “I practically worship it” and it makes all the difference. His suspicions are aroused. He’s on red alert.
Knox tries to explain, he chose Fred because he loved her, because she was worthy. Would he want his God to hatch out of some schmuck? Gunn wants him to stop it, taunts him that Angel will stop it but Knox is dubious:
Knox: This was all set in motion millions of years ago Charles, and there’s just no way to stop it.
Gunn: Angel and Spike?
Knox: Oh, they’re really on the right track, but it doesn’t matter. Angel’s not gonna save her
Gunn: You don’t know Angel
Knox: I’m not being clear. I don’t mean that Angel gonna fail to save her, I mean he’s gonna let her die.
Knox is excited now. His plans are coming to fruition. He’s all too willing to share details with the dumbfounded attorney. Illyria was a great power, so great that after millions of years it still has loyal acolytes in the world. Knox certainly qualifies as such. The land on which Los Angeles now stands was its primordial kingdom and in a pre-ordained plot to return to power the tomb teleported out of the Well back to the geographic location of the seat of its power. But continents shift and where it ended up wasn’t where it needed to be to complete its plan. Knox, Illyria’s faithful servant, sought out and returned the sarcophagus to the kingdom only to get caught out by a twenty-first century hurdle; getting the ancient relic through customs.
Knox: But you took care of that. You signed the order to bring it into the lab so you could get another brain boost. Like I said, I’m just one small part of a great machine.
Gunn is thrown, devastated, disgusted that he is implicated, that he is up to his neck in this. Consequences; his actions, his decisions have dealt a death sentence. He is revolted but clings to the increasingly unlikely hope that Angel can save her, that Angel can save him from this burden. Yet, amidst all this the primal sense of self-preservation is strong; as Knox excitedly expounds the enormity of the event they are both part of Charles grabs a heavy metal canister and swings it into Knox’s head, knocking him out cold. He then hoists the cylinder high over his head, pauses, looks sideways, first one way then the other, then brings the improvised weapon crashing down in an attack that is both brutal and primitive. Nobody need know anything of his part in this now.
Spike and Angel finish off the last of the guards
Angel: Is that all? We haven’t even started!
And a man appears saying that it’s enough. Angel knows him; his name is Drogyn. He is the keeper of the Well, has been for decades.
Spike: Well who in the bloody-
Drogyn: Do not ask me a question! If you ever ask me a single question, I will kill you outright. Don’t think for a moment that I can’t
Spike’s question never gets answered. We don’t ever discover the history of Drogyn or how he and Angel knew each other, or how he came to be caretaker of the Well. The most we get is mutual surprise at the others circumstances:
Drogyn: I would never have thought you’d end up here Angel.
Angel: I could say the same.
Perhaps Drogyn was evil once too, knew Angelus back in the day. Perhaps he’s seeking redemption as well, serving his penance by guarding the long dead demon overlords. Perhaps. Even though we know nothing about him we trust him; he cannot lie. Only truth passes his lips. Maybe he was cursed too.
Drogyn leads the boys into the Well he knows they are there about Illyria so gives them some insight:
Drogyn:…The Old Ones were demons pure. They warred as we would breathe - endlessly. The greater ones were interred, for death was not always their end. Illyria was feared and beloved as few are. It was laid to death in the very depths of the well…until it disappeared a month ago.
Spike: Someone took it from under your nose a month ago and you didn’t miss it till now? That makes you quite the crap jailer, doesn’t it… Also a statement!
Drogyn: Your friend likes to talk.
Angel: So much he’s even right sometimes. The man I remember couldn’t be stolen from so easily.
It’s quite a contrast from earlier in the season (think of when they were both talking to the doctor in Damage), where once Angel might have said something along the lines of “don’t mind the idiot” now he gives Spike unqualified support. But Drogyn says the tomb wasn’t stolen. It was a pre-destined escape plan (as Knox explained). Once the trio enter the well chamber, Drogyn can easily be forgiven for not noticing the absence immediately; his charges are not few. An endless pit is lined with thousands upon thousands of tombs, sarcophagi and coffins. It goes all the way through, all the way through to the other side of the world. Bloody hell indeed.
Angel and Spike discover that the power to draw Illyria back to its proper resting place is some kind of ancient magic that requires a champion who has travelled from where it resides to where it belongs.
Angel: You got two of those right here.
So Spike gets the recognition, the affirmation that he’s wanted for so long as Angel finally admits what he’s known since Spike emerged from the amulet and it didn’t hurt a bit. But it’s not enough to save Fred. The essence of the demon has already been released:
Drogyn: If we bring the sarcophagus back to the well it will draw Illyria out of your friend…and into every single person between here and there. It will become the mystical equivalent of airborne. It will claw into every soul in its path to keep from being trapped. Entire cities, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands will die in agony if you save her.
It’s madness and Spike and Angel are floored. It’s a horrible, impossible choice; their beloved Fred or thousands of nameless strangers. Drogyn says he’ll prepare the spell, pretends they’ve got a choice. Angel goes along with the charade, just for a moment, out of sheer anger:
Angel: To hell with the world!
Poor Angel, reason and rationality desert him temporarily because he’s sick to death of losing the people he loves and he’s tired of thinking about ‘everyone’ when all he wants to do is protect what’s left of his family. In the world of the caveman it’s each man for himself. It’s brutal and unforgiving. Rational thought has no place.
Spike is looking down into the well trying to understand the incomprehensible. Angel turns to him, all he says is “Spike” but it overflows with vulnerability and resignation; he knows there is know way they can save her, that they have no right to sacrifice so many to salvage one. He turns to Spike to try and explain…but Spike already knows, never pretended it was otherwise. Yet he doesn’t let Angel say the actual words. He protects Angel with lyrical thought that he speaks with sad awe and wonder:
Spike: This goes all the way through to the other side. So, I figure, there’s a bloke somewhere around New Zealand standing on a bridge like this one, looking back down at us. All the way down. There’s a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.
Things are getting worse for Fred the light hurts her eyes but it’s proof she’s alive. She struggles with delirium and it’s bright and hollow and the cavemen win, of course the cavemen win! Pain grips her; her skin is hardening squeezing the life out of her. Wesley tries to administer relief but the needle won’t pierce, it bends and snaps. She recoils from Wesley’s comforting touch. He feels helpless. Once the spasm of pain passes she calms, is weak but lucid. She is able to identify the root of the problem:
Fred: Why did we go there? Why did we think we could beat it? It’s evil Wesley. It’s bigger than anything.
And suddenly she’s terrified and she’s crawling up the bed as if trying to escape, stave off capture. She begins talking, almost like she’s communicating with the thing that is slowly taking over her body:
Fred: I’m with him! He won’t leave me now. We’re so close
Wesley will not leave until it’s done. They were so close to love and a future. So close but yet so far. Illyria will not leave either. It is so close, oh so close to achieving it’s destiny.
Wesley holds Fred and they kiss and share words of love. Fred is scared, petrified, though determined to be thought of as otherwise. She wants her parents told that she wasn’t scared. She wants them to know she was brave. She repeats the words “I’m not scared”, trying desperately to will them to be true. As she slips away her fight and bravado flags. She goes limp in Wesley’s arms and asks piteously:
Fred: Please Wesley, why can’t I stay?
And stillness descends as death comes. Wesley cries and holds Fred’s body close, mourning her loss. While she’s cradled in his arms ice sets across Fred’s still open hazel eyes. They crystallise and crack and turn blue. The body shudders to life with violent spasms throwing Wesley off the bed and flinging itself backwards onto the floor where it continues to convulse. Wesley is horrified. ‘Fred’ stands up; but it is not Fred. It’s hair is blue, it’s skin is tinged azure too, it’s eyes are cold. It looks at its hand experimentally flexing the fingers and gives its verdict:
Illyria: This will do.