Half the way back to L.A., Gunn never shuts up.

Xander knows it's about Wes, because that's the one thing he doesn't mention.

"Damn, this is the whitest place I've ever been in my life," is where he begins.

Xander would have to agree; Gunn's the only person with brown skin he's seen for a few days, but then, they haven't been getting out and pressing the flesh, other than one evening in a pub in the next little town down 95. They hadn't felt unwelcome at all, but they'd been left alone. Not that either one made himself exactly approachable. They each sampled an area favorite -- Fat Tire for Gunn, and Xander had been daring enough to go for the Moose Drool -- nodded to a few of the locals, and waited for Faith to make the scene. The job's over now, and Faith's split off again to finish her part of it.

"Ain't this the home turf of the Aryan Nation?"

"Not anymore," Xander says. "There was a lawsuit. They lost the right to call themselves that."

"They lost the name? To who?"

"A woman and her son, I think. One of their soldiers shot at them, and they sued."

"So what's she planning to do with it? Start selling Aryan Nation candy bars? That would be with nuts, of course."

"Personally I'd go with Aryan Nation hair care products for skinheads."

Gunn takes his eyes off the road to shoot him an evil look.

"Not like you. I'm talking about political skinheads."

"Pinhead skinheads."

"Yeah. Plus most of them actually have some small amount of hair. Anyway, they're not planning to use it."

"Your hair products?"

"The name. The people who won the lawsuit, I mean. The verdict prevents the actual Aryan Nation from using the name, which was the point."

"Except you just called them the Aryan Nation."

"Well, yeah. I mean, how else do people know who you mean? But they can't call themselves that."

"You could call 'em the The Hate Group Formerly Known as Aryan Nation."

Xander scratches above his knee, the long-healed lightning bolt of a claw scar. "I could."

"Weird," Gunn says. "To think you could have your name taken away from you. I mean, that's your identity."

"What, you're sticking up for the skinheads now?"

"Please."

There's a pause during which Xander finds himself thinking about the job they've just done. The kid, walking off with Faith, turning back to look at Wes. Though he's not small for his age, the boy looked so young with his hand in hers. Gunn's remembering the same thing, he'd lay money on it, because the next thing he knows, Gunn's talking again.

"Pretty here. Never been in the mountains before."

"Me either." Considering how different their lives were growing up, it's funny how much they have in common. Gunn growing up in the ghetto, Xander in his white little town up north, yet they'd both spent most of their lives without seeing anything of the world outside their homes. Other than the Great American Road Trip (Around Oxnard in 80 Days), it had taken a not-so-natural disaster to pry Xander loose from Sunnydale. He doubts he'd ever have left California if he hadn't married Beth. Not such a successful experiment on either count.

The kid nearly tripping over his own feet as he looks back at Wes. "Dad?"

He'll never see a young boy without wondering how his own would have turned out. He'd never even gotten to hear Robbie call him Dad. Their son had reached the age most kids start babbling, but Robbie's energies had all been consumed with fighting for his next breath.

Xander had thought this would feel different. The kid he had managed to save.

"What's the attraction, anyhow?" Gunn asks.

"What?"

"I knew you wasn't listening. I'm trying to foster understanding between the races here. I'm asking what's the deal with this thing white people have for strapping boards on their feet and flying down mountains."

"How long did you know Wes?"

Gunn shoots him a look even more evil than his response to Xander's skinhead crack. The question is a serious breach of post-job etiquette. Xander regards him without comment.

"Couple of years, I guess," Gunn finally says. "Funny. Seems like longer."

"I guess it would. The know-it-alls are always a trial to be around."

"Who, Wes? Where'd you get that idea?"

"From him. He was a world-class pain in the ass when I knew him. You couldn't tell him anything; he already knew the answers."

"He's smart, sure. But this other stuff, I don't know where you're getting that."

"Ask Faith. She's lucky she's even alive after what he did to her."

Gunn shakes his head. "The way I heard it, it's the other way around."

"With her he found himself in a situation that needed delicate handling, and he charged in like nobody knew shit, except for him."

"That's not --" Gunn abruptly stops.

"You were saying?"

"It's not like him. That's why this thing he did is so hard to understand."

"Then he must've changed a lot since I knew him." Xander rummages in the briefcase they'd found at the cabin, filled with papers in half a dozen different names. He flips through a stack of I.D.s, idly checking the names. "Because prophecy or not, I'd say this is exactly like him."

Again, Gunn shakes his head. "Wes I knew, he was someone I could count on. There were a few months there when Angel lost sight of the mission, but Wesley never did. He took a bullet for me."

"You two were tight."

"Yeah." When he says yeah again a second later, it's like he's trying to convince himself.

"What?"

"Things changed a little. Just before." He pauses before adding, "There was a girl."

"No need to say more," Xander says, even while hating himself for sounding like a cynical asshole.

"Yeah, there is." Another pause. "Also around that time, he was ... kind of possessed. By this part-demon who infected any man he touched with rage and hate against women. It really threw him. He always questioned himself, after that."

A memory comes knifing through Xander, like a cold wind blustering through an empty alley. He slams the door on it, hard. "So that explains it, then. Whatever it was never left him --"

"No," Gunn says flatly. "It possessed me too. It let us go when the bastard that was the carrier died."

Xander chucks the deck of I.D. cards back into the briefcase, more than content to let the subject drop. Gunn's got no complaints. Neither of them speaks until they're getting close to the neighborhood, and Gunn asks, "Blue Note, or home?"

He knows what it'll be if he goes to the Note. He'll get trashed on Johnny Walker Red on the rocks, find himself any warm body.

Hell, a cold one works just as well. A fucking or a staking, pretty much the same in style and intent.

If he goes home, the outcome's just as certain. He'll get trashed on Johnny Walker -- neat, because his ice maker's broken -- and he'll call Beth. She won't have the strength to hang up on him, and he won't have the strength to quit tearing at old wounds, not until they're both bleeding and weeping.

"Blue Note," he says.

Maybe, if he's really, really lucky, the warm body will be Faith's.

"Thought I'd find you here." Faith slides into the back booth, next to Xander, not across. She refuses to sit with her back to a room. She sets a JWR in front of him, places a beer in front of herself. Sam Adams, no doubt.

"Well, it's the in place to go after a job," he says. Gunn, though, has gone home after one beer.

She ignores him, bunching her hair in her hands and then letting it loose, to the soft creak of her leather jacket. She's changed back into her leathers after delivering Connor to Angel. She'd toned it way down for the job, not wanting to scare the boy, or alarm any onlookers. Not that she'll ever be taken for a soccer mom.

"How'd the transfer go?" Xander asks.

"Good," Faith says. "Everything came off without a hitch."

Which hadn't been precisely what he'd been asking. "As the actress said to the bishop."

She's too focused on the job to offer a smirk. "I wish you and Gunn could've been there. I've never seen Angel look like that. He was keeping his feelings under wraps so he didn't overwhelm the kid, but he was still kind of shining. I've never seen him that happy."

"You say that like it's a good thing." Not that he has leftover hostility issues with Angel. Water under the bridge. It's just the whole curse angle.

Faith shakes her head. "He's missed nine years with his son. You think he'll ever have a moment of perfect happiness without feeling that loss?"

At least he got him back. Xander downs half his drink. "What about the boy?"

She sips her beer. "It's gonna take a while. He's confused. It's a lot to take in."

"How was he?"

"On the way down? Real quiet some of the time. Other times asked a lot of questions. He's not a kid you bullshit. Smart."

Xander finds himself turning his glass on its coaster, rotating it slowly with small movements of his thumb and middle finger, as if tuning a radio dial. It seems to take all his concentration to do this.

"This was a righteous job," Faith says.

He doesn't look up. "Sure."

"It was."

"So why does it feel all wrong?"

"Doesn't, to me. It was a righteous job."

"Why do I have a hard time believing you?"

"You tell me."

He finally looks up at her. "Normally you don't have to keep telling me a job's good."

"Normally your personal shit isn't clouding your vision."

It feels like a slap. "Fuck you, Faith."

Faith lets it lie there between them for a moment. "If you want."

He tells himself he doesn't. But he wants even less to find himself in a dark living room, thumbing Beth's number on the glow-in-the-dark keypad of the phone.

Xander tosses back the rest of his drink. "Anytime you're ready."

They go back to her place. It's always on her turf, but he doesn't mind. He admires the simplicity of her surroundings -- Spartan, to use her word. Xander's always seemed to attract clutter, and since his marriage fell apart, he supposes this tendency borders on pathological. He hates it, but it would require an enormous amount of energy to change.

Things are clean between them, too. Simple. They don't have to pretend this is about love, or that it means anything at all. Xander isn't forced to act like he's capable of being happy, which absolves her of any self-assumed responsibility for his emotional state. He won't be faced with the realization someday that she's been pretending he can make her happy. It's just easier all around. Even meaningless sex, he knows from experience, generally comes with a lot more expectation and pressure than you'd think.

He's glad, despite his anger with her, that it's Faith instead of someone new.

Xander doesn't even have to hide his anger. On the drive back to her place, she pokes at it with little comments, the way you poke at a fire to keep it going. He wants to tell her to stop, but as he opens his mouth he realizes it's not really what he wants. They've had a healthy share -- or maybe not so healthy -- of anger-fueled sex over the years, and it's always hot. Strangely enough, it also makes a kind of quiet space deep inside him, gives him something that's a little bit like peace.

Tonight, not so much.

Once they've come together with an almost fierce passion, they lay with their limbs intertwined, listening to the harsh sound of their breath and the distant whine of the trucks out on the highway. Xander feels as bleak as he had when he came here.

"What was he like?"

Groaning, she rolls onto her back. "Ah, shit, Harris. Don't start."

"What the fuck do you care if I do or don't?"

"Hey, flay yourself alive if you want to. Just don't ask me to be your whip caddy."

"You said he's smart."

"Goddamn bulldog."

"I thought that was what you admired about me."

She shifts next to him. "Not just smart. He doesn't miss a thing, this kid. Asked really sharp questions."

"What did you tell him?"

"Mostly I left it for Angel to tell. It's his kid. It should be his story."

Xander lies in the dark, watching shadows and light play across the ceiling as cars travel down Faith's street. "You notice how we can't say his name? It's just 'the kid.' Maybe it's because, deep down, we know he's really Matthew."

Irritation flares up in her voice. "Or Jonah or Brice or Alec. And maybe that's why no name feels right. Wesley stole that kid. Connor. He took it on himself to remake reality, and you're just going to fall in line with that?"

"He's the only father that boy's ever known."

"Like that means anything. Your old man was the only one you ever knew. That make him father of the year?"

He throws back the sheets. "Screw this. I have better things to do."

"Yeah." Faith reaches for her lighter and cigarettes. "You tell Beth I send my regards."

Xander clears a space on the sofa and settles in for a phone call. He dials the number from memory, taking a sip of his drink as he waits for the answer. It always takes a while at this hour before he hears the phone fumbled off the cradle. "It's Xander."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"No. That's why I called you. You always know."

Gunn mutters a curse, but doesn't tell him the hour.

"Something about this job is bothering me," Xander says.

"No, really? Cause I'd never have been able to tell. Certainly not from all the questions about Wes and Connor." Gunn has no trouble calling Connor by the name his original father gave him. Xander wonders what, exactly, this means.

"Why didn't Wes come after us? Why'd we have clear sailing all the way back to California?"

"You woke me up for this? We had the protection spell. You're the one who set it."

"Shit, Charles, that wouldn't have kept someone like Wes away. Didn't you say he was your demon and mojo expert? And look how long he managed to keep us off his trail, how many times he managed to give us the slip. Me, I'm sounding out Latin words on a piece of paper, and only because Latin is a language even a remedial can work out phonetically. Someone like me is no match for someone like him."

"It's not you, then. It's the words."

"Let me tell you something. If it was my kid, there's no words that would stop me. Wes said he'd die for that boy, remember? I get that, I do. Well before that, I'd have killed for him."

Gunn's voice is low and quiet. "Wasn't anything supernatural about what happened to your boy, was there?"

Not unless Xander and everyone he loved was cursed because he'd been unfortunate enough to be born in Sunnydale. Not unless you counted all the "God's will" stuff Beth's family kept spouting. "We're not talking about Robbie."

"Funny, I think we've been talking about Robbie for the last couple of days. I might even go so far as to say we've been talking about him ever since you joined Angel Investigations. That's what? Five years?"

"Charles, you and Faith? You can both go fuck yourselves." He thumbs off the handset -- no more satisfying slamming of a phone into the cradle, that's what progress has brought -- and tosses it into the corner. It takes a great effort of will, but he doesn't go and pick it up and call Beth. Instead he shoves the rest of the clutter on the sofa onto the floor, stretches out and waits for sleep.

He finds himself mulling it over during the long nights. The thing is, he knows Faith and Gunn are right. Whatever his reasons, the life Wesley gave his son is no kind of life for a child. Never setting down roots, never knowing when you'd have to abandon your latest home, change your name, start over. What do you tell a kid who's too young to understand? When does that kid start to look around and see this is not how his friends live? As adept as Wes is with his mojo there's no way a life like this can be made to seem normal.

The thing is, Xander knows he's right, too. He's seen Wes with that boy, the rare times they've gotten close. At a baseball game in Philadelphia once, just before Wes looked up suddenly, his gaze burning right through Xander's binoculars, and the two of them vanished into the crowd. Can you see love through a set of high-powered field glasses? Xander knows you can, knows that Wesley is that boy's father, just as sure as Angel is.

Does wrenching a child away from his father repair the wrong of wrenching him away from his original father? There is no answer to this that feels right.

Not once, over all the years they followed what few leads they found and busied themselves with cases in between, not once had this truth about Wes and the boy made itself clear. He had never questioned their right to take Connor back, not until it was done. Xander shakes his head. Right is exactly the wrong word. No one would challenge Angel's right -- moral, legal -- to have his son back. But Xander had never considered that the kid's best interests could be separated from Angel's.

Why are these questions nagging at him now? It's not like Faith dragged the boy kicking and screaming from Wes's side. Just that one word. Dad? Just a questioning look, then he'd walked off, his hand in Faith's.

Xander can't remember when a job went this smoothly.

Why, then, does it feel so wrong?

He glances out his window, sees the faint glimmer that means dawn is coming. Rising, he finds his errant phone and punches in another number he knows by heart.

The observation "Life can be funny" inspires nothing in Xander beyond homicidal urges toward anyone stupid enough to say it. As far as life cliches go, "cruel" works better for him. Or "Pointless." "Fucked up." "Strange" is as benign as he's willing to go.

The thing with Angel, he can't deny that it falls into the "Life is strange" category of banality. They'd been enemies in part because of something they shared, their attraction to Buffy. (That had been the first of a variety of reasons for Xander's big Angel hate.) Now here they are more than a dozen years later, Angel the only person he's remotely close to, and again, it's because of something they have in common.

Doesnt matter that the circumstances could hardly be more different.

As Angel noted during one of their many conversations in the wee, small hours, the joy in Robbie's birth had all come in the anticipation. Once he was born, it was clear his short life would be nothing but struggle. The time leading up to Connor's birth, on the other hand, had been filled with tension and uncertainty. Only after Angel had held his son had he felt the usual joy (however demonstrably imperfect) of fatherhood.

The differences are unimportant. They both had a son and lost him, and that's what created a bond between them once Faith pushed Xander into joining AI.

Xander gets an answering machine at the Hyperion, so he dials the cell. When Angel answers he identifies himself. "I thought I'd check in, see how things are going with you and Connor."

Angel's voice is subdued, and Xander suspects it's not just to avoid waking the boy. "It's going to take time," he says. "I didn't let myself think about that so much, you know? The goal was getting my boy back, and that would be the happy ending to all of this. He's here, but I don't have him back. He's not my son, not yet. It's not an ending."

"He's having a tough time with it?"

"Not in a major way. It's not like he's making me feel like a kidnapper. He understands all this, that I'm his real father and he was taken away when he was too young to remember. But he's upset about the way he left Wes. He'd been mad at him, said some things he's fretting about now."

Xander shifts in his chair. Maybe this is the answer, what he needs to put his mind at ease. "What was he angry about?"

"His birthday. They'd made plans with some of his friends, a party, and then they had to run. Connor was angry that his birthday was ruined." Angel clears his throat once and then again. "Christ, Xander, I hadn't even remembered that it was his birthday."

He closes his eyes. "You can't blame yourself for that."

"Maybe I should give him a party. Maybe that would make him feel --"

"I don't think that's such a great idea. He doesn't know any of us yet. Don't take things too fast."

"You don't think that --"

"Wes had years to build a relationship with him. Don't try to replace him overnight."

After a pause, Angel says, "That makes sense. It's damn hard, but it makes sense. I guess I should stick with my original plan, go off somewhere with him and give him time to get to know me."

"Sure. Just make sure there are things to do, maybe some other people if that feels safe. Don't make it too intense."

"Yeah. Yeah, that seems wise. Listen, how are you doing with all of this?"

"What do you mean?"

"This must be kicking up a lot of shit for you."

"Christ, what is it with everyone? I'm fine, my past isn't clouding my vision on this, I don't have a problem. If everyone could just get off my ass --"

"Hold on, hold on, that's not what I'm saying. Do you have a problem with this?"

"I just said I don't," Xander says. It's not precisely a lie. "I wonder about Wes, that's all. Why he hasn't made an attempt to get him back."

"That spell I gave you was a powerful one. I don't anticipate any problems from Wes."

Xander doesn't like this. In his experience, it's never a good idea to get cocky about magic. "You're sure."

"Completely." Another pause, then Angel says, "Listen, I know this has been an intense time for you, too. Why don't you take a few days off, get out of the city for a while? Consider it a paid holiday. If you feel like taking Faith, I'm fine with that. What do you say?"

He'd rather plunge himself into work, actually, but something stops him from saying so. "I might take a couple of days," he ventures. "Thanks."

"You deserve it -- you all do. In fact, I'll call Gunn and Cordy too, tell them to take a week off. The demons seem like they're taking a breather lately."

Angel hears Connor shuffling around then, and winds up the conversation. Just what Xander needs, the whole damn crew at loose ends just at the same time he is. After he hangs up, the grabs his go-bag, freshly repacked after the trip to Idaho, and slings it in his car.

He's getting tired of this fucking drive. Yeah, the scenery up in North Idaho is nice and all, but by the time he makes it up there, it's already dark. He takes a room in a funky-smelling motel up near the town where he and Gunn drank in the pub, and when he lies down and turns off the light his body still seems to be traveling those winding mountain roads.

It's too late to find alcohol, and he's too tired to sleep, a combination which never bodes well. Xander tries drugging himself with infomercials, but he can't find any of the real numbness-inducers. There's a hierarchy for him. The ones related to personal appearance -- miracle weight loss products, inexplicable hair gizmos, acne cures and hair removal or replacement -- work the best. Unnecessary kitchen appliances are up there too. The ones that don't work -- that actually make him edgier -- are the exercise contraptions and the personal wealth systems. Money and movement convey a kind of perkiness that he can't channel into sleep.

Tonight it's real estate that's going to make him rich and Bowflex (a real golden oldie) that's going to make him fit, and after two cruises around the dial, he clicks off the TV and picks up the phone.

Beth picks up on the second ring. She's never been a deep sleeper. "Where's 208?" is how she greets him. That's just the thing. She has caller ID, but it's never stopped her from picking up the phone.

"Idaho. I came out for a job." Not precisely untrue. It's just that the timeline's a little shaky.

"You're still working for that private detective." She's convinced Angel must be a sleaze. Not to mention she hates the thought that she might have to tell someone her ex has a low-rent occupation like private detective. It brings in enough to pay the installments to the hospital, though.

"Yeah. We've been working a custody case."

There's a pause -- there's always a pause when the topic of kids comes up -- then she says, "Let me guess. Dad tries to leave the country with the kids to spite his ex."

"No," he says. "The boy belonged with the father." The only question is which father.

"Why were you involved? Isn't that sort of thing the police's business?"

"The father wanted it low key. Where there are cops, there's press."

"Are you sure the father had legal custody? Because if he wanted it quiet --"

Xander rubs his brow above the prosthetic eye. "Christ, Beth. I've known the family for years, all right? The mother's dead, and someone else in the family took the kid because he thought he knew better how to raise him." It's bad enough calling her when he's drunk. He should never do this sober.

"It was just a question. I know it's important to you to be on the right side of something like that. Of anything, really."

Olive branch. Huh. He hasn't seen one of those from Beth in a really long time. "Then maybe I thought those issues through before the job."

She doesn't rise to take the bait, also unusual. "What was he like?"

This is an impulse he understands. "I didn't spend much time with him. It was someone else's job to take him back to the father. The boy just turned nine. Whip-smart, I heard. Doesn't miss a thing."

There's a long silence. Their son, if he'd lived (but he wouldn't have lived), would not have been whip-smart. Robbie probably would never have known them. At last Beth says, "He must have been glad to be back with his dad."

Someone in this deserves to hear a happy ending. "Yeah. I talked to the father. They're doing great, the boy's settling in fine."

"He's okay?"

"He was very well treated. Look," he says abruptly. "I think I should go now. I've got another job starting in the morning."

"You take care, Alex." She'd never called him Xander; she didn't think it sounded like a grown-up name. That alone should have been warning enough.

"I always do." What's one more lie, in the string he's told tonight?

He hasn't yet turned over the pictures of Wesley they used to track him. He's got the whole range with him: grainy surveillance pictures taken moments before an unsuccessful attempt to surprise him, old snaps Photoshopped to age him, with every possible hair and eye color, multiple configurations of beard, mustache, sideburns. Xander shuffles through the deck until he finds one that most closely resembles the Wesley they'd encountered in the diner up in Naples.

See Naples and die... He wonders how suicidal it is to chase Wes after what they've done to him. Won't be the first time he's been accused of that -- usually by Beth, now and then by Cordelia. Faith doesn't diagnose, she just smirks at him knowingly.

He's not chasing death. He just doesn't mind taking a stroll in its neighborhood.

Xander finds an espresso shack and has a triple shot of breakfast, then drives back to the diner off the main road to Canada. The slashing rain from the night they took the boy has ended, but the sky is piled with clouds so dense they have an architectural sense of solidity.

He pulls into the dirt parking area and heads inside. To his surprise, the waitress working the morning shift is the one who was on duty that night.

He smiles, makes a stab at charm. Tells her he remembers her from the night he was here with his friend. Flashes the picture of Wes. Does she happen to know where he could have been staying around here?

"The English guy," says the waitress. Her name tag identifies her as Vaughnie. "I've heard some local gossip that says he was up at Deep Creek, but I don't know if he's still around."

"Where's that?"

"About five miles up this road. There's a restaurant, some cabins. If he's not there, he might be in one of the house trailers across the way. If not, he's probably moved on."

"Thanks. I'll give that a try."

She smiles. "I wish you luck finding him."

The skin prickles at the base of Xander's neck. He can't say what he wishes for. He hasn't let himself wish in a long damn time. For all kinds of reasons.

Xander nods and leaves.

It's not quite the middle of nowhere, but it's close. The road winds through a valley and under a train trestle, and after a final bend in the road, he finds the place. He catches a glimpse of cabins as he crosses the bridge over the creek, but then they're hidden again. The main building, a wood frame structure that's been added to over the years, looks like a roadhouse. He parks in the restaurant lot, by a nondescript late-model car he suspects is Wes's rental. He cuts behind the building, across the deck for outdoor dining, back toward the cabins.

Walking toward him is a woman in a loose cotton dress that falls below the knee, her hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. She reminds Xander of one of those serving girls that Dutch guy painted, only older. When she asks if she can help him, her faint accent -- something European, but his ear isn't finely tuned enough to pin it down -- furthers the illusion.

"I'm looking for a friend of mine." He extends the picture to her. It's an old shot of Wes and Cordy, all smiles, one which makes Xander look more like a friend and less like a P.I. "I heard down the road that he might have been staying here."

"He still is. I'm glad someone's come, he needs to be looked after." She gestures with the plate she's carrying with an extremely bedraggled half pastry on it. "He won't come to the door when I take him his breakfast. He never touched yesterday's -- I left it on the porch and the cats got into it."

"Has he been out at all?"

"Once, I think, though I didn't see him go or come back. For supplies. And some alcohol. He set out a few empties."

Xander gestures in the direction she came from. "Mind if I try?"

"Not at all. It's the last cabin." She starts to walk away, then turns back. "I hope your friend is all right. He seems like a nice man. A good father."

"His boy?"

"I saw him go with his mother. These things are never easy -- and I'm talking entirely too much." She smiles apologetically, wishes him luck, and goes.

Xander takes his time heading up the path, wondering how he's going to approach the cabin. He'd rather not have to kick the door in. By the time he reaches the place, he decides on the straightforward approach. A series of loud, brisk knocks that make it clear he's not going to tire and leave anytime soon.

His hand is well on its way to being scraped raw by the time there's any reaction. The door opens a crack, and the smell of stale air and unwashed male and alcohol almost make him step back. "Wesley," is all he has time to say.

A hand shoots out and takes him by the neck, dragging him inside, where he's slammed back against a wall. The barrel of a pistol is jammed hard into the soft flesh under his jaw. "You took my son," Wes says.

"He's Angel's son," Xander responds, because that's what he's believed these past nine years.

Wesley tenses his thumb on the hammer to pull it back and cock the gun.

Xander works to keep his breath steady. "Wesley. You don't want to do this."

The gun barrel bites deeper into his neck. "Actually," Wes says in an even voice, "I'm fairly certain that I do."

He waits to have his brains blown out, but Wes seems content to tunnel his way there from the underside of Xander's jaw, using the gun barrel.

He's looked at so many faked pictures of Wesley that he couldn't have named Wes's true eye color. The intensity of this blue surprises him. Wes studies him for what seems an eternity, his gaze sharp, missing nothing, yet crazy as fuck.

You'd think he'd have remembered that blue. Back in the day, though, he'd seen Wes as completely nondescript. English guy in a suit with glasses, but in no way a replacement for Giles.

Now he's going to die thinking inane thoughts about the color of this asshole's eyes.

"I remember you now," Wes says at last. "I knew you in Sunnydale. You were the rich girl's boyfriend."

The movie star ... and the rest. He's always known he was the most forgettable of the Scoobies, but it startles him that Cordy doesn't get any more notice than "the rich girl," after the three years she and Wes worked together at AI. She'll be beyond pissed to be demoted to Mary Ann status. But she'll never know. It's not like Xander's going to live long enough to deliver that news.

"So are you killing me already, or are we going to stand here jawing all --" Xander cuts his gaze to the right, just behind Wes's shoulder, and pathetic as that gambit is, it works just enough to distract him and win Xander a fractional easing of the pressure of the gun barrel. In a move possibly as suicidal as pounding on the door in the first place, he thrusts his elbow into Wes's chest, drives his knee up toward his groin. But Wesley sidesteps that last attempt. Xander barely has time to register a motion from the corner of his eye before the world explodes in pain and blackness.

The pain is the first thing he becomes aware of, even before any sense of himself returns. It's so overwhelming at first that it takes a while to localize it. Head. Right half. A smorgasbord of pain, offering sharp and stabbing and dull and throbbing, kept piping hot, all you can eat. The skin itches, sticky with dried blood.

For the longest time he doesn't want to surface. Once he's irrevocably back in the land of the living, he keeps his eyes closed, trying to sense as much as he can about his surroundings before tipping Wesley to the fact that he's conscious. But Xander hears nothing besides his own breathing, the rushing waters of the stream outside the cabin.

He opens his eyes, and discovers two things.

The first is that he's totally blind.

The second discovery comes when he tries to reach toward his right eye and learns that his hands are bound to the bedposts. He struggles, but the knots are secure.

"Ah, you're awake," Wesley says. It's the just-an-ordinary-dayness of his tone that creeps Xander out, makes him go still. "Good. I'd hate for you to miss this."

He hears the metallic sound of the gun being cocked, and he flinches.

There's a pause then, and time stretches out to an unbearable slowness. The carpeted floorboards creak as Wesley comes closer. He senses some kind of movement near his face, and hates himself for the naked fear he knows must show there. Another click of the hammer being eased down, and Xander flinches again. Just get on with it. He doesn't say it, because he knows his voice would betray him.

"You're quite blind in your left eye, aren't you?"

Xander refuses to answer, but there's more movement near his face, and he's sure his lack of appropriate response gives him away.

"How very unfortunate," Wesley says.

Yeah, that's the word, all right.

"You won't make much of a witness in your current condition."

Witness? The stale smell of alcohol intensifies as Wesley leans in to peer at him. Not just from his breath, but from every pore. Xander understands this kind of drinking, though it's been a while since he's been on a days-long bender like Wesley's.

"This is very good work. And you've adapted extraordinarily well. I'd never have suspected, if not for the vision in your right --" Cool fingers light on his right cheekbone, a hair's breadth from the eye socket.

Xander erupts now, howling curses and thrashing against the ropes. His ankles are bound, too -- together, leaving him in a classic crucifixion pose.

"Be still, let me take a look." Wes speaks with calm patience, as if to a child and not a guy he's tied up and waved a gun at.

The crazy thing is, this works. Xander stills for a moment, though his heart beats erratically as Wes's hand moves over his face -- not exactly gently, but with clinical attentiveness.

"I don't believe your vision is damaged," he finally says. "Your eye has swelled shut. I suspect it will get worse before it gets better. A shame, since it delays my plans for you."

"What, you can't torture me unless I'm looking you in the eye?"

Soft laughter is his only response as he withdraws. Xander hears running water, then a moment later Wesley returns with a damp washcloth, which he uses to wipe the dried blood from Xander's face. It takes several passes, and despite Wes's light touch, it awakens nerve endings that had dulled.

"There's no point," Xander adds. "Angel never told me where he took him."

There's a strange pause then, a preternatural sense of stillness as Wesley stops dabbing at his face with the cloth. "Say that again."

"I don't know where Connor is. Angel didn't say. Torture me all you like, it won't get you answers."

"Perhaps I'm not expecting answers. There's still always revenge. So I appreciate the invitation."

Nice going, Harris. Wes withdraws again, and makes a fair amount of noise across the room. Xander would swear he's preparing to fix himself a drink. Well, sure. Important to get himself fortified for whatever he's planning to do.

He returns and places something on the damaged side of Xander's face. It burns, and he chokes back a cry of pain.

"It's merely ice," Wes tells him. "For the swelling. It's funny how the nerve endings confuse extreme heat and cold, isn't it?"

Yeah, hilarious. So this is the plan? This crazy fuck is just going to nurse him to death?

"Why are you here?" Wesley asks in a conversational tone.

"Why are you? Why the fuck aren't you out looking for Connor? That's what I can't figure out. I came up here looking for a trail, not expecting to find you homesteading it up here in militia land. Though I gotta say, it suits you here."

The sound of the hammer being drawn back again cuts his monologue short.

"Perhaps it's time we set a few ground rules," Wesley says.

The gun barrel finds its accustomed spot beneath Xander's jaw. "Don't ever mention my son's name again. I can't stress enough how very important this rule is."

"But how can you --"

Fingers wind into his hair, jerking his head toward the sound of Wesley's voice. "Rule Number Two: There will be no further questions from you. If the idea of having your brains blown out doesn't serve as a disincentive, don't forget guns can also be used as clubs. It's not how I like to treat my weapons, but tools must sometimes be adapted to circumstance. The consideration for you is whether this time the bone structure surrounding your remaining eye will withstand the blow. So many variables, with the potential to combine in so many different ways. I don't much believe in it myself, but I suppose most people would say how those variables fall into place really comes down to luck."

Xander's not surprised how much this casually delivered commentary unnerves him. After all, losing his other eye has been a long-running favorite of his subconscious, a cult classic that screens a couple times a week, even now. What does startle him is the intensity of the anger this fear brings up, and how easily it bubbles forth from his mouth. "That's just how I remember you, Wes. You always caused more damage inadvertently than you ever did with a battle plan."

"You're not so different yourself. Still reckless. Though I think the suicidal component is new."

Psychological diagnostics from an obvious wackaloon piss him off even more. "Blow it out your ass."

Quiet laughter is the unexpected response to this. Wesley releases Xander's hair and moves the gun away from his neck. The hair pulling has set his nerve endings on fire where Wes clubbed him, causing his left eye to water copiously. The tears tickle as they slide down his temple to his hair, and it's torment not to be able to rub at them.

"In some respects you've hardly changed at all," Wes goes on. "You still work with the dark-haired Slayer. You still fuck her, don't you?"

That's a strange interpretation to put on their past, that they were fucking. Or at least that he was the fucker, and not the one-time fuckee. Xander keeps his silence.

"We never fucked," Wes says. "She did torture me, however, which I think gave her as much pleasure. Almost everything I know about torture, I learned from her. She introduced me to several of the basic torture groups. Blunt, sharp, hot and loud, as she categorized them. Though I take issue with the narrow limits she placed on her options. I rather think that's a consequence of the impoverished upbringing she had. Her capacity for imagination was irrevocably stunted. For example, I'd think her attempt to kill you, back when I was her watcher, could be nicely adapted to torture." Wes's hand wraps around his throat, and though he applies no pressure, Xander finds it nearly impossible to breathe. "Don't you think?" The hand moves away. "But perhaps you'd like to try one of the others. Tell me, do you have a preference?"

It's equal parts rage and fear that quiver through his muscles. "I'm partial to the quiet torture. Could I get some of that?"

"Ah," Wesley says, like there's a whole new world to consider. "I'm not quite certain what you're getting at. Are you asking me to destroy your hearing in some way, or is it that you want me to cut out your tongue?"

This is what he gets for playing the game of snark with a crazy man. His tongue has never been his friend. Maybe he should -- "Don't. Please. Don't."

"Relax. I have no interest in torturing you. Not even this schoolboy variety of torture."

If this is what Wes considers schoolyard games, Xander's grateful he grew up in the US of A with unimaginative Larry and his ilk.

"You've no information that's useful to me now, and I never was the type to pull the wings off flies. But I would like to talk. Perhaps come to some understanding of one another."

Relief shudders through his body and his breath, after all this, turns ragged. He hates himself for the tears that leak from his left eye, searing the skin at his temple, but he can't stop them.

He's right about that. Nothing short of a gunshot would penetrate the wall of sound surrounding the cabin. It obliterates the birdsong and the passing of cars from outside, and it's bound to work the opposite way as well.

He tests his bonds while Wes is out of the room, though the result is what he expected. Wes is a guy who leaves nothing to chance. The stiffness of the ropes tell Xander that they're new, and suddenly a whole lot of elements fall into place. The failure to make even an attempt to get Connor back. The gun, the ready availability of rope -- sure, doesn't everyone buy a length of rope when they're out buying large stocks of booze? (Out here in the sticks, you probably get them in the same store.) You won't make much of a witness in your current condition.

He doesn't know whether to be relieved or even more frightened. Wes is a man whose destructive impulses are turned on himself. But he's also a man who feels he's got nothing to lose. When the bathroom door opens on a breath of humid air, Xander almost flinches. But Wes moves past the bed to open the cabin door briefly then softly close it again. Xander catches the scent of soap overlaying the still-present odor of alcohol clinging to Wes. The air in the cabin is less oppressive now, but Xander wonders if that only means he'll die in a more pleasant place.

Wes takes the improvised icepack away, and Xander shudders as icewater trickles down his neck. When he returns, he dabs carefully at Xander's face with a cloth damp with tepid water. He wipes away the runoff from the ice, then switches sides and brushes the cloth over the dried tears tightening the skin by his left eye. Wes's attentions are matter-of-fact, without comment, even when he swaps a dry pillow for the damp one and the sudden cramp in Xander's shoulders brings a sharp gasp.

"Are you hungry?" he finally asks. "The lady of the inn is quite well known for her pastries."

Xander shakes his head and instantly regrets it as fire races through nerves and muscles along his shoulders and outstretched arms.

Wes pulls up a chair and sits, so close that Xander can hear the soft creak of old wood over the rushing waters outside. "Who is Beth?"

Xander's breath catches somewhere in his chest. "What do you know about Beth?"

"Only that you called her name when you were blacking out. That you wanted her to know that you're sorry."

The pain in his arms and back settle into a dull throb. He's not so much crucified, he realizes, as pinned to a dissection board, laid open for study.

What's that word? Vivisection. Cutting into a still-beating heart to gain understanding of its workings.

"Tell me about her," Wes urges, and the chair creaks as he leans forward.

He gives himself up to the scalpel. He doesn't expect it to hurt as much as it does. "She was my wife."

"Ah," Wesley says. "That's not a name I ... remember hearing. She wasn't a member of your little tribe in high school. She was one of the new girls, then? The ones you lot created, back when Sunnydale was destroyed."

"No. She was outside all that."

"I tried that once. How did it work out for you?"

"How do you think? I did say was."

Another subtle creak of the chair. "She's dead."

"Jesus. No."

"Ah, I see. She couldn't handle it, then. What you do, the things you face."

What she couldn't handle was who he is. "I was out of it by then. I walked away because I wanted to have a normal life."

"How remarkable."

"What's so remarkable about it?" He ran from things he was tired of dealing with and ran straight into something just as bad and a lot more meaningless.

"It's not a life that tends to let people go. Tell me about her."

His initial impulse is to tell Wes to get fucked. But he's so lost the thread of who they were in those early days, of what brought them together, that he finds himself wanting to talk about her. God knows he can't with any of his friends. It's easier to speak freely in this false nighttime, the way he and Jesse used to exchange secrets in the dark when Xander used to sleep over at his place. "She was pretty. Coppery red hair and green eyes. China-doll skin that freckled up in the summer. Curvy. But it was more than her looks. She had this ... a lightness, I guess. None of us had that after Sunnydale, and it was so appealing. She laughed a lot. The first time I ever noticed her, it was because I heard her laughing and looked over to see who it was."

"Tell me about your first meeting."

Some part of him still resists being treated as some kind of jukebox. But his mouth opens and the story emerges, as if he's under a spell. "I saw her every morning before work, at this little cafe. I won her with my superhuman powers of slowness. Smiled at her for weeks. Spoke to her about the weather and shit for weeks more. Finally got there earlier and ordered her coffee drink for her and handed it to her when she walked in the door. A very bold statement, if you're Incredible Amazing Slow Man. She had a complicated formula."

"I'm quite familiar with that particular superpower," Wes says softly, a hint of ruefulness in his voice.

"I didn't have such a great track record with the speed-wooing. When you've dated more than one demon, you get careful."

"Did you find what you were looking for? Did you make yourselves a normal life?"

"Yeah, sure." Just like that, the illusion of confiding in the dark has vanished. He's just a hapless asshole, tied up and temporarily blind, spilling his guts to a nutcase who could decide to kill or maim him on a sudden whim. "We were two completely normal people with completely normal lives, until some rare and random but still completely normal shittiness happened."

"But not to you, and not to her."

"That's all you're getting."

"Why do I suspect it has something to do with why you came here?"

"Go to hell."

"Would I find the answer if I rifled the contents of your wallet?"

"You'd find my knee in your balls. Go ahead and try."

Wes chuckles. "I rather doubt that." Under the guise of checking the ropes, he digs a thumb into a pressure point on Xander's ankle, sending a white-hot spear of pain shooting clear to his armpit. The chair emits a sharp noise as Wes rises and looms over Xander.

"Fuck you, Wesley."

Wes stumbles then, thrusting a hand out to catch himself, planting it right on Xander's left shoulder.

His yell of agony is swallowed up by the sound of the stream just feet from the door.

"Forgive me," Wes says. He sounds distracted, almost as if he's listening for something. "I -- I'll be back in a while."

Over his own gasps he hears Wes's unsteady footsteps hurrying toward the door, then he's left alone with his memories and the searing pain in his shoulders and arms.

After a time, the pain settles into a duller agony. Xander's almost grateful for it. A physical expression of what's been inside for so many years now. He gives himself up to it, in penance for giving so much up to Wes. How had he so easily let himself be sucked into talking about Beth? Wes doesn't want to know because he's interested in being his friend.

Xander's taken his son, destroyed the life that he had. He's not the only one, but he's the on-site representative. He's almost surprised this inquisition-lite has been the worst Wesley's thought to deal out to him.

Of course, Wes isn't done with him yet.

The heat of the day has cooled when Wesley returns. That's one thing he's noticed in this mountainous area: Even in high summer, the temperature drops twenty to thirty degrees once the sun goes down. Cool air drifts over his damp shirt, making him realize he's coated with a thin film of sweat. He wonders if Wesley smells the fear clinging to him.

Once Wes nudges the door closed, Xander can hear the telltale clink of bottles among the rustle of grocery bags. From the sound of his movements, Xander would say he's gotten a head start on them. The first thing he does is pour himself a stiff drink, and then he slams something heavy against the small wooden table, a sharp noise that makes Xander start and sends fire roaring through his muscles. When the sound repeats, there's a slightly different quality to it, and Xander manages, through the haze of pain, to identify it. The time-honored method of breaking up a store-bought bag of ice.

The cubes rattle as Wes plunges his hand in the bag, then the sound is muffled. Cold fingers touch his jaw, turning the damaged side of his face upward, then positioning the towel-wrapped ice over his eye. Wes is none too gentle about it.

His voice, however, is. "Do you speak of your son still?" His weight settles onto the wooden chair. "It was a boy, was it not? What else would bring you back here, make you ask the questions you have?"

He channels Spike, from the old days. "Sod off."

"Is there anyone you trust with that part of yourself? Or have you sealed it off beyond everyone's reach?"

"Die in hell."

"Does it give you comfort to speak his name, even just to yourself? To remind yourself that he really did exist? Or have you buried his name along with your boy?"

"You do whatever the fuck you want to me, but we are not talking about this."

The chair gives a sharp crack as Wes rises, and then he's hovering over Xander, fingers working at the ropes binding his left wrist. When the tension releases and his arm drops to the mattress, a wave of pain surges through Xander worse than any he's yet endured. He bites back a yell.

Wes retreats. "Ice?"

"What?"

Wes doesn't answer. Instead Xander hears the clink of a bottle against the lip of a glass, and a moment later, Wes nudges a tall glass into his free hand. Xander's able to close his fingers around it, but his shoulder and arm muscles are unwilling to raise it. He laughs. "What's the plan? Get me drunk so I'll talk about my son?"

"It gets tiresome drinking alone."

"While it's much more convivial raising a friendly glass with the guy you've got blinded and tied up in your cabin twenty miles from East Buttfuck, Idaho."

"I'd say it's more Outer Buttfuck."

"Happen to have a three-foot straw? Because I can't lift my arm right now."

Wesley takes the glass back and brings it to Xander's lips, using the other hand to help him raise his head. His touch is so matter-of-fact, it makes Xander flash on the years Wes must have spent bringing Connor a glass of water in the middle of the night, or nursing him through the standard childhood diseases. This is something he'll never have. He got to hold his son sometimes, but little else, and always through a tangle of tubes and wires.

He jerks away, and scotch spills down the front of his shirt.

Wes readjusts the icepack and withdraws without comment, placing the glass back in his hand. "What was his name?" he asks softly.

"Go fuck yourself."

"Does the pain lessen with time, or does it only grow sharper? Each year that passes brings another stage that you'll never get to witness, to guide him through."

Xander wants to throw the glass at the sound of his voice, but all he can manage is to flick it onto the floor. It strikes the carpet but does not break.

Wes ignores this. "So very frightening, holding the life of a child in your hands. Every fear or bad habit you find in him, you're certain came from your own bungling. Each strength, each moment of kindness or grace or courage, you look on with awe and ask yourself Where did that come from?" The bottle kisses the edge of the glass, and the sound of splashing liquid follows. "I have no way of speaking about my son. No right."

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" He almost does, that's the fucked-up part.

"I really couldn't give a rat's arse how you feel."

"Why did you take him?"

"I believed his father would harm him. There was a prophecy."

"Yeah, there's also a prophecy about how Angel's going to become a real boy someday. So far the Blue-Haired Fairy hasn't put him on her route."

"Both things could happen still."

"No. The prophecy you tried to thwart was a fake. Some time-jumping demon with a stake in the real prophecy went back and changed the texts. Angel found that out shortly after you took off with Connor."

Wes makes an low noise in the back of his throat, and a moment later he seizes Xander's forearm, giving it a vicious twist. "I believe I warned you not to say the name of my son."

For a guy who's not interested in torture, Wesley has a natural-born talent. Xander gives him nothing. When he can speak, he asks, "Why aren't you fighting for him?"

"Why did I take him? Why did I let him go? You have no clue how to feel, do you? Did you fight? Was there anything you could even fight against?"

Yes and no, are the answers to that. There's a doctor in Texas with a permanent restraining order against him.

"You've really no idea, have you?" Wes goes on. "You haven't the slightest understanding what you and your employer did to me."

Wes splashes more liquor into his glass, and Xander wonders if by the end of this, he's going to wish he'd not been so quick to throw away his own.

"You ask why I don't go after my son. Why I don't fight for him. Tell me, what tools do I have for the search? What weapons for a fight? The spell that you cast the night you took him, do you even know what it was?" After a pause, he says, "Of course not. You're such a loyal soldier. Why burden your leader with questions, and yourself with answers? So much simpler to do as you're told."

"I trust him. And he's the one with the rights here."

"Yet you keep asking me why I don't fight for something I have no right to. The spell you cast that night. It rummaged through my memory, tore out certain details. Quite selectively -- I remember our life together, every detail of the boy's personality, what makes him such a remarkable child. But his name -- it's lost, along with any of the false names he's had over the years. The name of his true father, or anyone connected with him who could potentially lead me to him -- all gone. Your name, for example."

"So? You didn't know it when we found you the other night."

"The man with you. For a time, he was the closest friend I had. That bitch you run with. One would think one would always remember the name of one's torturer. Strange to feel a sense of loss over that one, but I do. I suppose it's the historian in me, so ingrained during my training. But the best part of the joke -- and contrary to popular opinion, your employer does have a particular fondness for certain forms of humor, especially when it comes to revenge -- the absolute killer part of the joke is that my own name is lost to me as well."

Xander thinks of losing his own name. He wonders if he'd miss it, but Robbie's -- "Easy enough to work around that. Especially now." Is he offering himself up to be some kind of resource? Wesley was right -- he doesn't know anymore where his sympathies lie.

"Yes, quite a gift, your appearance. There's just one small problem. Each time you say my name and that of my son, it widens the gaps your spell created in my mind. The damage is a bit more random than that caused by the original attack."

Your spell. "Doesn't every spell have a counter-spell? I know they don't let you out of the Watcher's version of Hogwart's unless you can cast spells in forty-seven different languages."

Wesley laughs softly. "Providing I can still speak or read those languages. I'm afraid those bits were taken as well."

Christ. What had Angel -- scratch that, what had he done to Wesley? "Then we find someone who can. Giles." It's been years since he talked to Giles, but he might help, especially after he'd been so spectacularly useless in saving Robbie. He hadn't even tried. This time it is mystical, and he owes Xander one.

"It's touching that you're so eager to repair the damage you've created. Really. But do you honestly believe your employer would have left such a large loophole in such a carefully-crafted spell?" His speech has begun to slur. "I'd love to know who created that for him. Whoever it is, they're as good as I am. As I was."

"Why the fuck don't you fight?" Xander shouts.

"I fought for nearly nine years," Wesley says calmly. "And I've lost. I know that as surely as you knew it when you lost your battle." He rises and grasps Xander's free wrist, bringing it back to the bedpost.

Xander resists, but mostly because it's expected, and a well-placed thumb on a pressure point brings his struggle to an quick end.

Wesley finishes adjusting the knots. "What was his name?" he asks softly.

"Robert," Xander says into the dark, barely above a whisper. "We called him Robbie."

"Tell me about him." It sounds more like a request than a demand, though.

Xander actually thinks about it for a moment. But what is there to tell? He was tiny, and he fought unbelievably hard for each moment of life. His name was a compromise; Beth hated "Rupert". Just as well she won that debate, considering how things went with Giles after the baby came. "No." It takes some effort to push the refusal past the knot in his throat.

"Which is easier to bear, do you think: deeply personal, vengeful cruelty, or random, impersonal cruelty?"

The left eye is about to start streaming; he's well acquainted with the signs. "When I learn to bear it, I'll let you know."

"You realize he's using you. Your pain and rage at losing a son. He used that to bind you to him, used your desire for a different outcome to fuel this quest, to bring about his revenge."

"Do you think I'm stupid? I knew that from the start. Same as he knows I've been using him." Strange to think that plunging into demon hunting a second time actually saved his life, but he's certain that it did. Not that he'd joined AI with that in mind. When Faith had brought him in, he'd have been just as okay with getting himself killed.

"So now you've fulfilled the task that's given you purpose for the past several years. What comes next?"

It's a question he suspects he's been avoiding with this chase to find Wesley. He avoids it again with snark. "I could go back to the Shire, where things have fallen completely to shit while I've been gone. Or I could go to Disney World. Or I suppose there's a chance you'll blow my brains out right here."

"I was thinking more along the lines of blowing out my own -- or what's left of them -- while you watch. Which is why we have this opportunity to get to know one another better." He leans over Xander, removing the ice pack. "I believe the swelling has gone down some, but it will still be a while."

"It doesn't have to be this way." Xander doesn't even know why he says this stale bullshit. He doesn't believe it. Too many movies, he guesses.

"That's true," Wesley says, his tone thoughtful. "Sometimes we attach too much importance to sight. If I were to do it now, you'd still hear the gun blast. If I stood in the right place, I could even be certain you'd feel the spray of blood and brains and bone fragments. But those effects are rather abstract, from my point of view. I'd prefer to die watching you watch as I pull the trigger. I want to see you witness the literal expression of what you've done to me. I want you to go back and tell your employer what you saw."

He doesn't know that he wants to see Angel again. But that's part of the punishment. It's what he deserves. Especially since he knows he would do the same or worse, if it would bring his own son back.

"What was he like, your Robbie?" Xander hears it in his voice, how Wes savors the sound of a name he can say, a stand-in for the name of his own lost son.

He was like a punch-drunk fighter, reeling and staggering but refusing to fall. He was like the small living core at the heart of a vast complex of machines -- like Adam in reverse.

"He wasn't like anything. He was too small, too sick to have a personality." Silence stretches out between them, underlaid by the blank noise outside. "I dream about him. A lot. We fly kites, fish, tinker with cars. He asks me why the sky is blue." Xander has never told anyone this, other than Angel. Angel has them too, these dreams. He and Connor play hockey, in Angel's dreams; they go to games. "They're all generic in a way, gauzy. Like I picked up the outlines from movies I've seen -- from goddamn commercials -- but not the details. I don't even care about fishing, or cars. The only one that feels real is the one where we're building a treehouse. His tiny fingers, sorting nails into the different sizes. I was a carpenter, you know. I can imagine that in detail, showing him how to use a hammer."

"My son loved museums," Wesley offers. "I remember him dragging me through the Field Museum, on a mission to discover just when evolution bestowed kneecaps on dinosaurs and mammoths. We were going to spend his birthday at the Shedd Aquarium with a few of his friends."

He's never been able to envision this -- a fascination Robbie developed on his own, independent of Xander's own interests.

"He has such a sharp eye for detail," Wes murmurs. "He showed me so many things I would have missed."

Robbie, on the other hand ... All Xander had let himself gain from Robbie was tunnel vision. "Stop," he says. "Just -- I can't do this anymore."

"Would you like another drink?"

"Yes," he says softly. "I'd like that very much."

Wesley doesn't untie Xander this time, just holds the glass to his lips, supports his head as he drinks. This time Xander doesn't let difficult associations get in the way. He drinks until a soft haze settles over his mind, obscuring pain the way the curtain of white noise from the stream masks other sound.

Wes settles back into his chair and refills his own glass. They share a bizarrely companionable silence, until Wesley asks, "Do you carry his picture with you?"

Fuck off, he wants to say, but the scotch talks instead. "My wallet."

Rising, Wesley delicately excavates his back pocket. Xander knows when he finds the picture because of the soft, involuntary noise Wes makes in his throat. As far gone as he is, he's capable of pity for a long-dead child, curled in a nest of tubes and wires. He stands, unmoving, for a long time. At last, he shakes off the spell. "And this must be Beth."

Those are the only pictures he has. The rest of the plastic sleeves are taken up with credit cards, driver's license, P.I. license, an expired union card.

Wes utters a soft exclamation and bends down to the floor, reaching for something that must have fluttered out of the wallet. "I remember this paper. You were reading from it, the night --" It seems like a thunderclap shatters the small cabin, a sound that's a physical force. Xander hears Wesley slam into a wall, upending a small table as he falls. A lamp hits the threadbare carpet and smashes.

He hears a rasping, shuddering breath. "Wes! For Christ's sake, Wesley!" Xander realizes then that he's probably making things much worse by calling his name. "Are you all right?" Fucking inane question, but at least it's probably harmless.

Wes doesn't answer, and though he listens for breathing as hard as he can, all Xander hears is the rush of water from a mountain stream.

It's a real handicap, not having a name that he can call out. He almost slips a couple of times, as it becomes increasingly clear that Hey! isn't going to cut it. He comes up with Hey, Watcher!, which actually gets a response -- if the thrashing sounds of a possible seizure can be termed a response. Wes was right -- whoever concocted this spell created an absolute beauty, in an evil sort of way. One that cuts Wes off completely from who he was, blows up any bridge back from this isolation.

"Don't die, you crazy asshole," he finally says. "How stupid would that be, dying because you hogtied the one person who can get you help? Just come out of it. I'll go to An-- my boss. We'll work out some kind of agreement, get him to undo this."

Nothing.

Not that he's sure there's any kind of possibility of an agreement. Work it out like a pair of reasonable men? Who on either end of this is a reasonable man? Wesley has spent the past nine years on the run to keep a child who never belonged to him. Angel has used every weapon available to him in the struggle to regain his son. Both men have been single-minded, ruthless when they thought it was required. There's nothing Xander can safely promise on Angel's behalf, except a never-ending supply of misery to anyone who tries to separate him from his son again.

"C'mon, man. Find your way back. If for no other reason than I'm starving and I need to piss. Just follow my voice." He babbles on for a long time, saying whatever comes to mind. He talks about the things that meant something to him once -- the satisfaction of creating something from wood, the laughter of his wife, the insubstantial weight of his child in his arms. He talks about the meaningless -- his hierarchy of infomercials, the new car he has his eye on, baseball, which he follows in a half-assed way. The scandal with J.J. Grimaldi of the Bosox, and his idle suspicion that she's a lost Slayer.

Periodically he stops to listen for Wesley's breath, but he can make out nothing above the sound of moving water.

Eventually Xander begins drifting in and out of sleep. He can't always tell which state he's in at any given moment; most of the really bizarre shit he discounts as a half-dream. Though really, what could be more bizarre than being tied to a bed in the middle of nowhere, at the mercy of a crazy child abductor? Who's dead or incapacitated at that.

Finally he drifts into real sleep. He's not sure if it's the morning light -- and it takes a moment for it to register that he can actually see a sliver of room from his right eye -- or Wes that wakes him. Wes's voice almost blends in with the stream, a soft murmur that never lets up: I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry ...

Wes's name is halfway out of Xander's mouth before he remembers he shouldn't say it. He stumbles to a halt, revises it to "Hey, English."

I didn't mean it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

"English. Are you all right?"

"I found it on a paper. I didn't mean anything by it."

"I know. It's all right. Just tell me if you're okay."

"My head."

"Does it hurt?"

"Feels ... It feels ... not-okay. Want to sleep."

"Listen, if you untie me, you can have the bed. Get some real sleep."

"It's not allowed."

Out of all the shit that's happened in the last day, this transformation creeps him out the most. "I won't tell. I promise."

"Stop talking." He curls into a tight ball on his corner of the floor, and gives himself up to sleep.

It's an hour or two before Wes stirs again. "Christ," he mutters. Laboriously he shoves himself into a sitting position, his knees drawn up to his chest.

Xander lets his good eye close. "Are you all right?"

"No. Things are ..." His attention drifts for a while, then he brings it back to Xander. "Gone. That paper. Torn out."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know it was there."

"Father's going to be so angry."

"I'll tell him it was an accident. It's okay."

"'There are no accidents. Only carelessness.' Told me not to touch, but I did."

"You didn't mean to. We'll find someone to fix it. Just untie me so I can help."

"It's never coming back. Same as the boy."

"We'll find a way. Spells can be undone."

"No." There's a long pause. "He made a wish. Just before you came."

Ah, shit. Xander was certain there was no way this could get worse. Which of course was a guarantee that it would. "We would have found you anyway. He'd been after you for nine years. Whatever your son said, it didn't mean anything. It didn't change anything. Kids get mad, they say dire shit."

"It meant something. The last thing that did." He hears Wes pull himself to his feet, unsteadily approach. He presses something into Xander's hand. "Take this."

It's warm, slightly rough. He can't quite make out its shape, because it's a little too big to turn over in his hand without dropping it. "What is it?"

"A stone. He gave it to me. Left it here. For me."

"Ah, man. You don't want to give this away."

"Tell yourself it's from him. The boy in your dreams."

"You should keep it."

Wes presses his hands against his temples. "Christ, I wish --" He cuts himself off with a sharp laugh. "We don't do that anymore, do we? Much too dangerous."

Xander starts to urge him again to take back the stone, but before he's two words in, the sound of crashing, splintering wood shatters the morning. He tries to see, but the glare from the doorway forces him to shut his injured eye.

"Ah, here you are," Wes says, as if to a long-delayed guest.

"Drop it, you fucker," Faith shouts. "Drop it now."

Overwhelming relief sweeps through Xander, along with a new kind of dread. "Faith --"

"Drop it, drop it, drop it now, Wesley, don't make --"

A gunshot rips the air of the small room, the sound itself an assault. Two more shots follow in quick succession, and a hot spray of blood scalds Xander's face and neck. The sharp smells of blood and gunpowder bloom in the cabin.

"Fuck," Faith says softly, shock and outrage and somehow a sense of distraction mingling in her voice.

Then the sounds of another shot and a body falling heavily to the floor.

"Faith? Wes?" Blood runs in his mouth and he twists to rub his face against his shirt, but that only makes matters worse.

"You stupid asshole," Faith murmurs. He can barely hear her over the ringing in his ears. "What the fuck were you trying to do?"

He's not quite sure whether it's Wes she's talking to, or him.

He's in the shower, rinsing away Wesley's blood, when the shakes hit.

The cops have come and gone, and Wes has been carried off. After extensive interviews, Xander and Faith have been told they can go, that the shooting was clearly justifiable. Xander's physical condition contributed to this, along with his collection of surveillance photos and fake IDs for Wes -- not to mention Faith's own official-looking phony ID. Probably the biggest factor, however, was the mistaken impression the local cops seemed to have of the kind of child-kidnapper they were zipping into a body bag. Neither Xander nor Faith corrected their assumption.

When the shakes overtake him, he slides to the floor of the bathtub, letting the water run over his battered face. It hurts, but he doesn't care.

Abruptly a draft chills the bathroom, accompanied by Faith's voice. "You're gonna need help scrubbing that dried --"

She peeks inside the curtain, then pulls it aside, turning off the shower knobs. Without a word, she flips the tub drain closed and turns on the tub faucet. She wraps a towel around Xander to warm him until the tub fills, then spills a little shampoo into the tub to produce some foam.

Once she shuts the water off, she uses a succession of rough motel washcloths to wash away the dried blood that clings to his skin and hair. When she needs to scrub, she does so as gently as she can, and she takes special care around his face and wrists and ankles.

It's the tenderest thing anyone has done for him in his life, including the years he was married to Beth.

She doesn't speak at all until she comes to the fist made by his clenched left hand. Gently she tries to curl his fingers open. "What's this?"

He sees for the first time the oval rock that Wes had pressed into his hand. "Wesley gave it to me. It was Connor's." He lets her take it and place it in the soap holder.

A shadow crosses her face. "Why'd he fuckin' do that? Nobody had to get shot."

"His gift to you," Xander says. "A clean kill."

"What?"

"He was going to die, one way or the other. He was only waiting until I could watch it." He touches her left wrist. "How's your arm?"

"Stings like a bastard, but it's not much worse than a graze." She's lying a little, he knows. The paramedics had wanted her to get to the hospital to get it properly taken care of, but she'd scoffed. "Be healed in no time." This, he also knows, is the truth.

When Faith's satisfied with her handiwork, she steadies him as he stands and towels him off. Xander doesn't insist on doing it himself. It's important to her to do it. It's important to him to let her.

Once everything's completely dried but his hair, she drops the towel and says, "What do you say we get the fuck out of Idaho?"

As they're leaving the room, he remembers to dart back to the bathroom to retrieve the rock. Stepping into the sunlight, he examines it, still forced to squint through his damaged eye. When he turns the rock in the light, sparkles of pale color shimmer across its surface.

Tell yourself it's from him. The boy in your dreams.

"Oh, that's what he was talking about," Faith says beside him. "Connor was asking after that rock. I can get it to him for you."

"No." Xander looks up at her. "I can't say why, but no."

His fingers tighten around it once more.

He wants to believe in something again. He thinks it's okay if he starts out by believing in this, even if it's a lie.