Disclaimer:These shiny objects don't belong to me, but Joss lets me hold them up to the light and see all the different facets. All rights belong to Joss Whedon and related entities.
Completed: June, 2005.

"You know this painting?" He absently feathers his fingertips over Connor's downy hair as the babe sleeps against Wesley's chest. Browsing the Vancouver Art Gallery on a rainy Saturday afternoon, they look like such a normal young family: a pretty young wife, a bespectacled man with a Snugli strapped on his chest.

"No, I mean sunshine, warmth, all that crazy stuff."

"Ah." That's all he says; they've had this conversation before. She's accused him of being happiest in the clammier climes, as she calls them. "Like all of your people." Truth be told, he misses Los Angeles as much as she does, but he rarely speaks of it. What could it possibly accomplish?

She sighs and moves on to the next grouping. "What about Mexico?" she asks. He doesn't take the question terribly seriously, prompted as it is by the Frida Kahlo self-portrait.

He answers anyway. "We'd have a rather more difficult time blending in there for the long-term."

If not for her intervention (interference), he'd be living as a single father in England. He'd arranged a position at the British Museum, where the Council has close ties. Correction: his father had arranged it all. It had galled Wesley to come to him, to crawl before the Council, but he'd known they could create a new life for him worthy of the Witness Protection Program, and use their considerable powers to shield Wesley and the boy from Angel's attempts to find them. The Council had pulled off a rather large Plan B in very little time once Lorne read his plans, especially considering Cordelia's now part of the package. British accents are unremarkable in Canada, and there is a position in the works at the anthropology museum. Until that comes open, they're on the Council dole, and the endless time together wears on their patience.

"I don't get Frida Kahlo at all," Cordy says.

"She does use a complex and highly personal iconography. Much of it is informed by her physical difficulties --"

"No, dipwad," Cordy says. "What I mean is I don't get her. If I'm a talented painter known for self-portraits, I'm not throwing in the unibrow and mustache. I'm not all that vain, but there's a minimum a girl who cares should do, right?"

He makes a noncommittal noise, although these days that's as likely to annoy her as a disagreement.

She drifts along in silence as they come to the Carrs. "A master of trees," she says dismissively.

"So it would seem."

She shifts her enormous shoulder bag. "I know you want to really look at this stuff. Why don't I go to Holt Renfrew and get out of your way?"

Only Cordelia can turn a shopping expedition into an altruistic act. But he believes that's how she meant it; she wouldn't bother with the pretense otherwise.

She reaches out and strokes her hand over the baby's head, her fingers inadvertently brushing his. "You've had him a while. Want me to take him?"

"We're fine." Wesley smiles at her. "You'll want to travel light for shopping."

She softens. "He does look happy there. Plus if I take him, the drool spot on your shirt takes a lot more explaining." She strokes the baby's hair again. "Meet you at the cafe at four?"

"Perfect. Happy hunting."

She favors him with a little Potemkin kiss on the cheek, a charade that's grown more intermittent in the last few weeks.

Once she's left him in the gallery, he returns to the beginning of the exhibit. He rests his hand lightly on Connor's back, comforting himself with the rise and fall of the baby's breathing.

He warms himself in the flat desert light of the O'Keefes. Cordelia's reaction to them wasn't foolishness at all. He stands before them, gazing intently yet not taking in the details. A tide of art lovers washes up around him, listening to the speech of a docent in a flowered summer dress. A few moments later it recedes, tugging him adrift. Pulled along in their wake, he's cast ashore in a completely different landscape, one that's strange to him, yet familiar to most of the museum-goers around him. Old-growth trees tower over the doll-sized inhabitants of Emily Carr's villages. Other paintings feature monolithic totem poles and, as Cordelia had noted, many trees.

The docent tells him there are a great deal more Carr paintings and drawings on the third floor. As he climbs the stairs Connor fusses a bit, then settles. Since Wesley took him, the only time Connor's content is when he's being held. It's the major reason for the tension between him and Cordelia, he knows, even if it's not the only one.

As he moves through the third-floor galleries, Wesley feels as though he's left civilization behind. Here are mostly landscapes, the British Columbian forests she loved. Trees seem to stretch upward and inward, their uppermost branches bending toward one another, closing off all glimpse of sky. Often there's a glimmer of light in the center of the picture, yet Wesley finds it doesn't counteract the deep feeling of claustrophobia rising within him.

His steps slow nearly to a standstill, and the child seems to grow heavier against his chest until he can scarcely breathe.

A shadow separates itself from one of the trees. He'd nearly made it; he'd opened a back door to settle the baby into his car seat.

He pulls the gun he'd tucked in his waistband, aims it at the figure. A woman. "That's close enough."

"What are you gonna do, Wes? Shoot me?"

The gun barrel dips. "Cordelia. I thought you were in Mexico."

"Yeah, well, I got an urgent message saying I was needed at home. I thought you were Angel's friend."

"I haven't time to explain."

"Sure you do. I'm coming with."

He's about to tell her that's insane, but he realizes it's the only way. If he lets her go, she'll head straight to Angel. "Get in, then."

The sound of sobs reaches him then, coming from behind him. He whirls, the babe still crooked in his arm. Another figure approaches, indistinguishable, curled in on itself, weaving across the park lawn.

"Stay back."

"Shoot the bitch," Cordelia says.

He can't breathe.

"What the hell, Wes? I've been waiting in the cafe for the past twenty minutes."

He fumbles at the Snugli. "Take the baby." His voice sounds choked.

"Not exactly empty-handed here. What's going--"

"Take the baby." He thrusts Connor toward her, and she drops her shopping bags to take him. Wesley's shirt sticks to his skin, hot and damp where the baby was nestled.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't breathe."

"That's a huge surprise. It's hot and airless up here. Plus the baby was all accordianed." Holding Connor by the armpits, she lets his limbs dangle, cooing softly. After a moment, she sets the baby on her hip. "You ready to come out of the jungle, Lord Greystoke? Grab my bags and come on." She sweeps toward the stairs without a backward glance.

Feeling a distant surprise that she knows the reference, he does as commanded.

That's been the pattern, hasn't it? Ever since that night.

"What?"

"It's Holtz's pathetic little dupe. If she doesn't back off, shoot her." The figure moves into a pool of light cast by a street lamp. It is indeed Justine, crying in a thin, high wail. She's been beaten.

"What have you seen?" he asks Cordy.

"Give me the gun. I'll shoot her."

"Justine, stay back."

She keeps staggering forward. "You were right. He's just what you said."

"She's coming too close."

He raises the gun, does as commanded.

Those landscapes fill his dreams. The dream that comes to him again and again is the one where his father locks him in the cupboard beneath the stairs. Instead of the small space he remembers, he finds himself in a forest that stretches on forever, yet conveys the same profound sense of claustrophobia. He's lost Connor in these dense woods, and tries to call out, but his throat's been cut.

He drives north more than an hour before either of them speaks. "Tell me about the vision," he finally says.

"She slit your throat and left you for dead."

"And Connor?"

"She took him to Holtz. Long story, but it involves Connor growing up in a hell dimension that makes Pylea look like a Busby Berkeley musical."

Wesley glances at her, the streetlights along this coastal highway flaring and dying across her face, a slow-motion strobelight. He isn't sure whether he believes her, but it no longer matters. If her original intent had been to stop him from taking Connor at all, it's a stunning failure.

Which makes the two of them perfect travel companions, though not exactly perfect parents.

Even after the O'Keefe and Kahlo paintings are packed up and returned to their home museums, Wesley finds himself frequenting the Gallery, standing before the Carrs.

"Why do you do this?" Cordelia keeps asking. "You know what'll happen."

It's true. The landscapes feed his dreams. But he keeps thinking that coming here is the key to making them stop. On each visit, he starts with the later paintings, the dark forests with a glimmer of light at their heart. By the time he works his way to her early villages, he feels an absurd relief wash over him, as if he's stumbled back to civilization after a long time lost. He sees her tiny villagers, as if from a great distance, and can't help heaving a relieved sigh. Finally, some people. Thank god.

What would his father think of such ludicrous behavior? He has little contact with him. Since Wesley's position at the Museum of Anthropology began, all the Council's official communications have been through an intermediary.

He walks among totem poles every working day, yet it's the Emily Carr paintings of them that haunt his dreams.

As time goes on, Cordelia comes home from her shopping trips with fewer clothes, more books on child-rearing. Every week there's a new program to adhere to, designed to stop Connor from crying. There's only one program that works: either he or Cordelia must be holding the baby at all times.

And it's not just that the baby must be held. Only Wesley or Cordelia will do. A succession of nannies has tried. Sympathetic neighbor women have tried. Coworkers have noticed his staggering exhaustion and begun weighing in with suggestions.

"You know what the problem is," the bear says. He's never encountered any living creature in these woods before, not so much as a distant bird. But this night the great wooden bear from his workplace ambles up to Wesley. He sits heavily on the ground, scratching behind his ear with a back foot, like a cat.

Wesley makes an apologetic gesture to the slash across his throat, indicating why he doesn't answer, and waits for the bear to impart his wisdom. He doesn't believe it's any kind of oracle, but he trusts its opinion. It's a great favorite of the children who come to the museum.

Rare is the adult who's quick to see the humor of this carving, while children grasp it instantly. There's a starburst-shaped hole at the center of its backside. The artist clearly saw in the timber a perfect arsehole, and set about carving a bear around it.

"You took him away from more than his old man," the bear says reasonably. "He's lost a whole family. Lorne. Fred and Charles. You and Cordy."

That makes no sense, but he can't speak to say so.

"It makes perfect sense. You were entirely different people before you took him. As far as the kid's concerned, he's living with a pair of strangers."

He hears the humid air rustle through the treetops, though none of it reaches down here. He knows this is the answer, just as he knows the air is moving above him without being able to feel it.

"Nah, that's not it," the bear says. "It's more like cosmic retribution. You decided to take him, now you've got him, 24/7." It lumbers to its feet. "I'd like to hang, but I've got to go do that thing that bears do in the woods."

He's left standing on the overgrown path, with the sticky feel of his own blood on his hands.

"You're not cracking up, are you?" Cordelia asks. Though she casts the question in the negative, it's clear which potential answer she's favoring.

"Of course not. It's a dream." Back when he was having waking conversations with giant hamburgers, that's when he was cracking up.

She seems worried, though, and he notices she goes easier on him, at least when she's not exhausted.

He'd thought that once he began working things would get better -- at least that having some time apart would ease the tension between him and Cordelia. But now, instead of passing the baby back and forth all through the day, they divide their days into three distinct parts. Cordelia takes the first shift while he's at the museum. She rarely talks about how her day has gone, but she thrusts Connor at him the moment he crosses the threshold. Often she leaves the apartment, sometimes after dinner, sometimes before. During the night, they sleep with Connor between them in the queen-sized bed.

There are stretches of days when he exchanges more words with the bear than with Cordelia. It's become a fixture in the dreams, the closest thing to a companion he's had in a very long time.

"I'm not the kind of father I'd hoped to be," he says one night. He can scarcely believe he's saying this to anyone, even in a dream.

"You were hoping not to be a father at all."

Even as he opens his mouth to protest, Wesley knows this to be true.

"Your greatest fear is that you'll turn out like him."

"I am like him. I try to love that boy, but I don't know how. That's assuming, of course, that my father also tried."

"That's not the him I'm talking about. You're even more afraid you're really like the Wesley who came out when you were infected by the half-demon. That's why you're afraid to let yourself love him."

The truth of this pierces him. It's what had made him withdraw from Fred, why he hadn't seriously considered sharing the prophecy with her. There's something dark and claustrophobic about his soul, something that mirrors the dense forests of the paintings, of his dreams. Although he doesn't believe in his case there's any mysterious light illuminating his heart.

"That's crap," the bear says amiably. "It's an excuse. You'll do more damage to the kid by holding yourself back than letting go."

He thinks of his father, who would never (could never, a small voice says) give Wesley what he needed. He wonders how far back in the family this particular failure runs.

When he looks up, the bear has disappeared. Off, Wesley presumes, to go do what bears do in the woods.

"Are you planning to sleep forever?"

On some level, he's sure that had occurred to him. He's grown comfortable in these woods, found a strange sort of companionship.

He rouses himself, blinking in the bright early autumn sunlight, and tells Cordelia no, he's getting up any moment now. He gathers the baby into his arms. "What do you think about going to Victoria for a few days? It may well be the last warm weekend, and I think Connor would like the ferry, don't you?"

She looks at him as if he's lost his mind, but after a moment, she says, "Sure. Yeah, Wes, that sounds really nice."

The ferry ride is about an hour and a half, and by the time they find the guest cottage they've booked, the salt air and the rocking motion have, as Cordelia says, put Connor in coma city. The cottage has an antique cradle, so covered with frills and lace it looks like a doll's bed. Cordelia exchanges a look with Wes, and settles the baby on the tiny mattress, hovering close by to snatch him up if he cries.

Connor utters a small sigh and sleeps on, undisturbed.

Wesley and Cordelia slide between the flowered sheets, slipping into sleep a heartbeat after Wesley switches off the bedside lamp.

Wesley finds himself again at the cupboard door.

As things happen in dreams, the door opens with no action on his part. He expects to see a dense forest, so thickly grown that no glimpse of the sky shows through. He expects to see a bear carved of wood.

What he finds is the inside of a cupboard, and a small bespectacled boy seated on a low wooden stool.

He stoops to enter the cramped space, and lowers himself to the floor next to the boy.

Quietly the two of them begin to converse.