In Memoriam

Notes: this is more Wesley POV stuff, a sequel to "All Upstream from Here" and "Watchers." We're in England, at the Watchers' Compound, right after the events of "Helpless."

Here, in the small separate country we call The Compound, we make little show of grief, and our chapel reflects that fact. The oldest structure on our grounds, a single gray room of Norman austerity, it's a place where one experiences little comfort, in senses either spiritual or physical. The uncushioned benches within, apparently constructed of the hardest substance known to humankind, always seem at least twenty degrees cooler than the surrounding air.

What one does experience, in abundance, is the weighty sense of one's duty.

We had come together not so much to mourn the passing of two from our company, but to note that passing, to make it part of the Chronicle of Events: these two died, these words were spoken, in witness sat these Twelve of the Council. It's more or less what we do on every occasion: note, analyze, catalogue. We are Watchers. We take classes in logical thought, resisting emotion. We meet the world with calm, seemingly friendly faces.

At the end of my Second Year, that particular class came directly before my training for resisting torture. Both are considered Old Disciplines, though the torture's done with electricity now, and both Handler and Candidate receive the shocks. It amazes one to see how impassively the Handlers take it--at a certain point I always began to yell, and once I insisted Lady LeFaye trade electrodes with me, convinced she could not possibly feel what I felt. She smiled a little, and told me, "Actually, Wesley, it's doubled on my side, to be sure no one gets carried away."

Unbelieving, I flipped the toggle. What she said was true. I screamed, I believe the phrase is, like a little girl.

But I digress.

At the memorial for Malcolm Blair and Peter Hobson fils, the Twelve, robed and hooded, filled the first two rows. From behind, gazing upon that line of broad shoulders draped in heavily pleated black crepe, one could not tell them apart. Each robe concealed a man of middle to later years, every one of them, beneath an outwardly pleasant exterior, as dry, ironic and unbending as my Uncle Quentin.

I'd miscounted, I realized. Only eleven Councilors occupied the front benches. The twelfth of their number, Lady LeFaye, sat a row behind, still gripping the hand of Hobson pere as the older man trembled, wept, and moaned. The passion of his grief embarrassed me, yet I could not look away. In that moment it seemed real, as nothing else did. Her Ladyship bent close to the bereaved father, and her face, in profile, resembled that of one of the more experienced and yet sympathetic of the female saints, as depicted by the painters of old--St. Elizabeth, or St. Mary Magdalen at the cross.

The hood had fallen back from Her Ladyship's auburn hair, and her skin appeared ethereally pale in the candlelit gloom. For some reason, which I could not understand, I'd difficulty looking away--Miss Del Ciello, to my right, noticed my stare and elbowed me sharply in the side, but I would not acknowledge her insinuating grin. I loathe insinuation, and of course she understood nothing at all. She never does. I returned my attention to the front of the chapel.

Blair's mother, a powerfully built, horse-faced woman in a proper dark suit sat stonily silent to Her Ladyship's other side. Mr. Tsu and Mr. Palmer, in academic robes, filled in the remainder of that bench, while the other six Handlers, similarly robed, occupied the pew across the aisle. Behind them sat the four fully-trained Actives currently in England. Council Functionaries: Guards, Technicians, Researchers filled four rows entire. Not all of us who undergo training are able to pass through every one of the Trials; many more possess specific talents or interests and never wish to become Active at all. It was this bleak fate that Her Ladyship had suggested to me, several months before, on a riverbank in the Cotswolds. As I recall, I begged to differ with her opinion.

Last of all, crammed into the back of the chapel, were the Candidates. We twelve of the Third Year had at least been granted seats; while the remaining twenty-plus of the First and Second Years had to lean up against the walls, cramming their bodies into whatever remaining space they might find.

A wine-red cloth clad the stone altar, the only spot of color in the room, and before that, in their stands, stood the two pewter urns containing the last mortal remains of the deceased. We Watchers are always cremated, never buried entire, for obvious reasons. A Watcher taken by the enemy is nearly always turned. Blair, rumour stated, had in fact been turned, only to be staked not by Miss Summers, the Slayer, but by Mr. Giles, the Active Watcher, who of course, during Cruciamentum, ought not to have been anywhere near the testing ground.

The funeral ceremony itself began without warning, dry words spoken in a thin, dry voice by our chaplain, the aptly named Reverend Mr. Doddering, surely the dullest man in England. He'd packed his sermon full of phrases about honour, courage and duty, but his delivery robbed every syllable of meaning. Our eyes, collectively, glazed.

No eulogies followed. Blair and Hobson might have been friendless unknowns, and we a group of utter strangers drawn to the funeral by morbid curiosity or driven indoors by some threatening storm. Yet, I had known Blair, who'd been a Special Assistant of my uncle's, and thought him a decent enough chap. Up front, Hobson's father continued to sob, his loud cries only somewhat stifled by the press of bodies and the thick stone walls.

At the end of it all, we rose to sing "Jerusalem," and then recited by rote our Watchers' oath:

We side with Her against the night
Against the powers of darkness and of chaos.
Knowledge is our lantern, valour our sword.
We shall Watch, and shall not turn,
But stand unbending for as long as we draw breath
Tenax et fideles, ut quocunque paratus.

Miss Del Ciello stumbled over the Latin, and whispered to Quartermass, "I've never understood what that means."

"Steadfast and faithful, prepared on every side," he whispered in return, as row by row we withdrew, none of us the wiser about the manner of our comrades' demise.

By force of habit, the three of us: Miss Del Ciello, Quartermass and I, huddled to the chapel's leeward side. The morning's grey clouds had, in fact, begun to deliver snow, just as Her Ladyship predicted. Our breaths steamed in the air, to mingle with the smoke from Miss Del Ciello's foul American cigarette. How can one actually place in one's mouth any object called a "Camel?"

"Those will kill you, Maria," Quartermass informed her, with real concern.

"After that farce, Simon, I deserve a smoke. What's up with them? Do they think we'll lose our nerve if we know what really happened?"

"Perhaps we would," Quartermass said, shivering. His pallid skin had turned blue almost immediately upon exiting the chapel. "Oh, Maria, how are we to tell Her Ladyship we're sorry?"

Personally, I wondered why he insisted on making such a row. Earlier, we three had watched one of the Slayer tapes, placed in the Archives for exactly that reason, as a learning tool. Though Lady LeFaye had taken the film afterward, to be recatalogued--it was rather an upsetting one, and contained information of a fairly shocking personal nature regarding Watcher and Slayer--Her Ladyship hadn't seemed unduly upset.

"God," Miss Del Ciello groaned. "When I realized she was there, I couldn't believe it. Am I pond scum, or what?"

"No worse than I," Quartermass responded. "I never wished quite so fervently for the earth to open and swallow me whole." He turned to me. "Wyndham-Price, you lingered after. Whatever did Her Ladyship say?"

"Nothing in particular, only that she intended to have the tape reentered as a Special Request to protect the Slayer's memory. What else should she say?"

Both stared at me with incredulity.

"Ya know, Windy--" Miss Del Ciello ground out the spent end of her Camel beneath the toe of one high-heeled shoe. "Just when I start to give you credit for being human, there you go showing total lack of soul again. I hope you never, ever get turned, 'cause whatever Slayer tried to stake you would have a hell of a time finding that pea-sized heart of yours." She began to circle, her manner quite reminiscent of a ravening wolf. "Hell, I could forgive you for looking like the stiff little plastic groom from the top of a wedding cake, but do you have to act so completely plastic too?"

"Maria," Quartermass cautioned, "That isn't fair. Wyndham-Price had no way of knowing--even for ourselves, it's all surmise. Only--" he concluded plaintively. "We'd hoped, rather, that you'd remained to pour oil on troubled waters, as it were."

"What," I said, attempting to keep my voice civil. "Have you, in fact, surmised?"

"Why--" Quartermass appeared astounded. "That the unfortunate young woman on the tape was in fact Helena, Her Ladyship's Slayer. Not Em for Emily, but M for Moira, don't you know?"

"Ah." Things like sharp-edged blocks began to shift about in my mind. "I never knew she was--" And why had I a strange feeling of disappointment? Why should it matter to me?

"I don't think she is," Miss Del Ciello said. "God knows, I've tried her a couple times and got nothing. Not even a glimmer--though I guess that could be rules or ethics, or--"

"Or something else you know absolutely nothing about." I could not help from interjecting. "Such as good taste on Her Ladyship's part."

"I didn't know you were, Maria," Quartermass told her, perhaps in a vain attempt to intervene.

"What, I'm supposed to wear men's clothes and ugly shoes? Nobody here but Windy's out to perpetuate any stereotypes. Back home we say, 'Don't ask, don't tell.' You, Simon, don't ask. And you, Wes, do not tell. You'll live to regret it if you do."

"Shall I, then?" I turned upon her my mildest and most infuriating expression. I've a thousand of them--each, I'm told, more insufferable than the last. I could swear Miss Del Ciello's eyes actually flashed red.

"Though I've no doubt these rounds of bear-baiting amuse you greatly," Lady LeFaye said from behind me. She has a way of seeming to materialize, like a Genie--and always directly at my back, "I should think you three would like to get indoors, out of the snow. I believe there's some sort of wake in the Junior Common Room. Why don't all of you go? Drink an excess of dreadful plonk. Wear lampshades on your heads."

"Pardon?" Quartermass asked, flustered.

"It's an American expression, Simon--one that connotes having rather too much of a good time, the sort one regrets in the morning." Her Ladyship gave that contained, feline smile, the one that does not reach her ice-green eyes. "Only remember, examinations start at seven AM."

Miss Del Ciello groaned. "I'll never make it."

"That's rather the point," Lady LeFaye reminded her.

"Will Mr. Hobson be all right?" Quartermass asked quietly.

"Mr. Blakeney's given him a sedative. He ought to sleep quietly through the night, and Mr. Tsu will sit with him this evening." Her shoulders tightened beneath the sweeping black robe. She turned the odd-looking bracelet round and round on her wrist. I wondered why she wore it at all: as an adornment, the bracelet was an ugly thing, quite in contrast to her usual good taste, yet, inside the compound, she never seemed to be without that particular piece of jewelry. "The security cameras caught a bit of his entrance into the compound, I'm afraid," she continued. "I wasn't quick enough with my spell. We're not, I'm sorry to say, particularly forgiving of our own. At the least, he's likely to be sacked."

"We can't afford to--" I began, but stopped abruptly as the back of her hand tapped sharply against my cheek.

"I've no gauntlet to throw down," Her Ladyship said, with eyes locked to mine, her breath, the warmth of her, terribly close. "But one more word, one syllable, Mr. Wyndham-Price, and it's crossed swords behind the gymnasium." Her hand lingered on my shoulder, applying a pressure that, to my distress, I found in no way unpleasant.

"Ah. Yes. Certainly." I swallowed what I'd meant to say.

"Go, you lot, and have fun. I quite expect to hear drunken snowball fights beneath my window this evening, and for at least one of you to carry the day. Make me proud."

"How old do you think we are?" Quartermass asked, smiling.

"All young enough, still, to wrest a bit of enjoyment from life." Her Ladyship moved away from me to squeeze Quartermass's arm affectionately. "'Night, loves, see you tomorrow." With that, she strolled away from us, shrugging out of her all-encompassing robe as she went, heedless of the snow, her movements powerful, catlike, dangerous. A dangerous woman, I reminded myself. A sorceress.

"Can I marry her when I grow up?" Quartermass asked wistfully.

"Stand on line," Miss Del Ciello told him.

Though meant harmlessly, I supposed, their words irked me. Neither noticed when I left their company.

At Uncle Quentin's insistence, I have rooms on Compound, instead of keeping a flat of my own in town. It's more convenient, I suppose, and spares expense, yet the rooms have thick stone walls that seem to shed a particularly bone-chilling brand of cold when one stands too close, and no amount of draperies or cushions can make the windowseat habitable, except in the very warmest days of high summer. What natural light manages to penetrate possesses an odd, subterranean quality that reminds one of January in the Middle Ages. The windowpane, for security, is caged in iron bars.

If I wrote verse, which of course I do not, I shouldn't even be able to state--as did Richard Lovelace, the courtly poet--that "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." I've no beloved Althea to warm my thoughts, as the poet did, nor never have had. My rooms might just as well be a gaol, my family and tradition more effective gaolers than any in Her Majesty's prisons.

Upon entering my room, through force of habit, I glanced about: bed, desk, chair, a wardrobe of nearly identical dark suits, a bookshelf packed with reference volumes of esoteric lore. No intruders, no danger here.

A formal portrait of my mum and sisters, taken two years previously, hung on one wall. They all wore hats, like the women of the Royal Family, and appeared vaguely disapproving--the broad Travers face lends itself well to just such looks. I didn't love them, never had, I realized, not even the middle one, Anthea, who, being merely blandly stupid, is somewhat less beastly than cruel Caterina or horrid Honoria. In a fit of pique, I nudged the picture off its hook. Glass shattered as its frame hit the stone floor, but I didn't clean it up. The way I felt, it could lie there forever, but I supposed one of the scouts, our servants, would attend to it presently.

For no more than an instant, I contemplated joining my teammates at the end-of-training-year party currently masquerading as a wake, then discarded the idea--why should I sit silent in their midst or, worse yet, languish up against one wall, to be jostled and laughed at, ignored by the gregarious, half-drunk, irrepressibly-snogging lot of them?

I might as well have been a monk, bound by vows of chastity. There was nothing for it, I decided, but to go for a run. A run in the snow, just the thing to clear one's head and torture one's body until all disturbing thoughts were safely driven back by the pain, to lodge in one's subconscious where they belonged.

Once out of doors, however, I regretted the notion almost immediately. Directly I left the dormitories, in fact. Even with gloves and a polar fleece jacket over my tracksuit, the cold had become intense, and my breath created great gusts of steam in the air. Still, I made myself stretch carefully. Cold was only cold; I could bear it, as I'd been trained. In the course of my career I ought to expect, often, to be cold.

I crossed the grounds at a slow jog, the exercise, in fact, serving to warm me slightly, although my trainers slipped a bit on the accumulated snowfall. We'd an actual running track tucked between the gymnasium and the back wall--my fellows ran there in nearly all weathers, but this afternoon, between the snow and the approaching darkness, I expected to have the course to myself.

I wasn't alone. Some hardy soul had beat me to the track and was running its circuit at prodigious speed. Oh, God, a hurdler. I have a secret horror of hurdles, though I'll run them when required--but like a horse shying from a jump, I've always the premonition that I'm bound to fall. Ten years ago, such active coursework wasn't part of our curriculum--one can hardly imagine any of the Council themselves running laps or jumping hurdles, and that goes for the better part of the Handlers and Active Watchers as well. It all seems a bit too much for me, what we're expected to be and to know, and I wonder, sometimes, who we have to blame for yet another "New Discipline."

As I ran, though, it struck me again what we'd viewed on the tape, and began to shiver in earnest. All that we learned, all we were able to master, New Disciplines or Old--in such our situation, our skills could never be enough. A thorough knowledge of ancient languages and good aerobic fitness provide little enough protection against large numbers of evil demons panting for one's death.

The hurdler lapped me, going hard, though I couldn't even hear the sound of his breath--or hers, like me, the figure was bundled into tracksuit and fleece, rendering gender indeterminate. The inky black of its clothing made its shape indistinct, a phantom.

I plodded along in the spectre's wake, hoping something would kick in--the endorphins, or runner's high one is promised. It never does. I merely felt out of sorts, and sore, quite unloving of everyone and everything, like the unrepentant Mr. Scrooge at Christmas.

Today's Memorial had indeed been a farce. In that, for once, I would have to agree with Miss Del Ciello. Pity about Blair, certainly, but the younger Mr. Hobson, I recalled--though well-spoken enough and possessed of a Cambridge degree--had the native intelligence of a kumquat, and as a Third Year to my First, had never missed a chance to speak disparagingly of me.

I would, I decided, show them all. I would.

The hurdler, going like fire, lapped me a second time. I ground to a halt. Oh, Lord, why bother? I watched my silent companion reach the next set of jumps a quarter-turn of the track ahead. Rather a pleasure, really, to observe his form, the way those long, black-clad legs tucked up without conscious thought to clear the bar.

One jump, two, three--and disaster struck. The legs tucked up, but not correctly, and the runner came down, half tangled in the missed hurdle, his body, with the momentum, flung hard across the top bar of the fourth.

"My God!" I heard myself shout, and took off toward the accident with a speed I might well have been proud of earlier. The other wasn't moving, and I'd visions of some terrible injury--paralysis, a damaged spine.

I skidded to my knees in the snow, laying my hand across the other's brow. "Lie quite still now. Can you tell me where you're hurt?"

"In the dignity, mainly, I should think," answered a familiar voice. "Give me a moment, though, to take stock."

"Your Ladyship?" Quite unconsciously, my hands unzipped her jacket and moved down her body, seeking, I think, for broken bones, encountering, instead, firm breasts, a trim waist, the soft curves of hip and thigh.

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "Please don't."

"Oh!" I all but shrieked, mortified by what I'd done. "I...please don't imagine...I beg your pardon, Ma'am."

"Wesley," she said to me, laughing, "It's quite all right." She made as if to roll away from the damaged hurdle. Gently as I could, I untangled its framework from her legs. "Though it appears that I owe the Council a new piece of equipment."

"Yes, dead loss, I'm afraid." I showed her the top bar, bent to the shape of a boomerang.

She laughed again, the sound ending in a gasp. "Oh, Lord, what poetry in motion I am!"

"But you were!" I exclaimed. "Quite lovely, it...er..." I cleared my throat, realizing what I'd begun. "It was beautiful, the way you ran."

"Why, Wesley, thank you." The smile she turned upon me was one I hadn't seen before; I began to shiver rather violently. "I always thought you considered me--I don't know--an ogress? A harridan?"

"Your Ladyship!"

"And that's another thing, Viscount Henton-on-Rowe."

"I'd...ah...prefer you did not call me by that name."

"Just as I'd prefer you called me Moira, or Guv'nor, or Ms. Bannister-St. Ives, but you don't now, Wesley, do you? Do you imagine I'm any fonder of my family that you are of yours?"

"But we all call you that."

"Yes, you all do, because you began it, and the others listened and took their cues from you. Simon's family spent all their money to send him to a good school. They're middle class, at best, and he wants to be correct. Poor Maria is entirely out of her element and trying to brazen things out the best she can. You've listened to your uncle, who is so damnably old-school traditional it makes my blood run cold. My title only matters to men like him, and I prefer to only use it in that context."

"I never knew."

She made as if to sit up, but fell back again. "I believe I shall need you to help me. You've good strong hands, haven't you, Wesley?"

"Strong enough."

"My hip's come out of joint, and I need you to pop it back in for me."

"Ma'am--" The mere thought made me queasy. "Oughtn't I call Dr. Blakeney, fetch help--"

"Yes, please, Wesley. I should quite like to lie out here for half an hour in the snow, whilst you try to discover which of your fellow Candidates the aptly named Roger Blakeney's shagging this week--and by the by, don't repeat that bit of intelligence, if you'd be so kind."

"Certainly not, but Ma'am--"

"It's my left leg--no, love, that's your left, my right, other one, please. Grasp it firmly at ankle and knee, that's it. I warn you, it'll be dead heavy, but this is easy, it's just a knack. Bend the knee up toward my chest, now to the side--" She talked me, step by step, through what I needed to do, but on the first go, I merely heard bone grate over bone, and Her Ladyship muttered, almost reflectively, "Dear merciful God in heaven."

"I'm dreadfully...I can't do this...Ma'am..."

"You can do it love, just give it another go. Hurry now."

Desperate, I tried again, twisting and pushing according to her directions as hard as I could, and was rewarded with an audible "pop."

"There, that's done it. Nicely managed. I knew you wouldn't fail me."

I ducked my head, a little dizzy, blushing furiously at her words, which were quite unlike anything that had ever been said to me. I touched her hip lightly. "Is it still very painful?"

"Mmn, not bad. Help me up?"

I helped her to sit, and then rise to her feet, seeing at once that it was still quite painful for her to put any weight at all on that leg. "Please do lean on me, Ma'am," I offered.

"Since you put it so chivalrously, I shall. Thank you, Wesley."

We made our slow way across the grounds, arms about each others' waists, like lovers. I tried to ignore her nearness, the long thigh bumping mine, the way her breast nudged against my chest, the mere fact of her nearness. I hadn't been so close to a woman in such a long time, since before I began my training in fact, that it went right through me. To my horror, I felt my body begin to respond.

"Let's go to my study," said Lady LeFaye. We had reached the front steps of Main, where all the Handler's studies are located, in a sort of sub-level.

I gasped, attempting vainly to put my mind back on track. "As you wish."

Her Ladyship laughed, and I looked at her quizzically.

"It's an American film--" She gasped as well, taking one step, then another. "Bloody hell, that hurts!" At last we made it to the top, and I opened the door. "An American film that I particularly like, called The Princess Bride. In it there's a farmboy named Wesley, who loves a beautiful girl, and every time she asks something of him he answers--" We came to the end of the corridor, and descended the five little twisting steps. "'As you wish,' which is finally how she realizes that he loves her."

"Ah."

She located a key pinned inside her pocket, and unlocked the door, which swung inward. "So, my Wesley, will you enter, or must you leave me here?"

I've no idea what made me say it--loneliness, I suppose, or the strangeness of the night. For a moment, I could not make myself remember what she was: my superior, a member of the Twelve, my Handler. A sorceress, and a woman who continually went against our traditions, flouted our rules. My Uncle Quentin's mortal enemy. I couldn't consider that she must have been thirteen years older than I, chronologically--centuries older in experience. I had every reason to distrust and suspect her--every reason but for Moira herself, and so I found that I could not. She was an astounding woman, standing extremely close to me, intelligent, complex, capable of laughter and anger and passion--in short, everything the bevies of shopworn debutantes my mother paraded before me would not and could never hope to be.

In this fit of madness, I laid my hand lightly upon her back, just at the curve of her waist, and looked down into her eyes--only a little, tall as she was. Such an amazing green, those eyes, with circles of true gold around each iris. "As you wish," I told her then, softly, so softly I almost wondered if she'd hear.

Moira jerked away from me, back into the shelter of her doorway, a wild glare in her eyes. Even though she balanced on one foot after her accident at the running track, the impulse toward flight showed in every line of her body.

"I--ah--er--Ma'am--" I stammered. "I never meant..."

"It's that bloody tape, isn't it? Another Goddamned thing to use against me." The glare had become a dark, burning look that truly frightened me. I stepped backward, adding distance. "Why don't you see if your uncle's still up?" She lurched into her study, took the video from her desk and flung it at me. "I don't know how he missed it. Gross negligence. Gross immoral conduct. Gross something."

Suddenly boneless, she sank to the floor, her body rocking, head clutched between her hands. "He's been trying to dispose of me for years. Go on, bugger off. Bring the bastard his ammunition."

"Your Ladyship," I said formally. "Did you learn such appalling language from your Slayer, or she from you?"

She glanced up, her face streaked with angry tears. From that, I knew her to be a natural redhead, for her fair skin, normally so flawless, blotched most alarmingly.

"Come now." I stepped into the room and bent to lift her to her feet. Astonished by the act, nearly dead weight, she was amazingly heavy. For a moment I feared I'd drop her and complete our mutual humiliation. "Come now, Ma'am." Having finally stood her upright, I wrapped my arms around her body, holding her close, her form fitting so well against mine we might have been meant to stand together. I'd held few enough women for a man my age, truth be told, never one so...I can't even think of a word, only that she excited me with all the deliciousness of her experience, her danger, the promise of the forbidden. A woman whom, I suspected, would truly stop at nothing, as free in herself as I was bound.

"Not just now, Wesley," she told me, kindly enough--and I realized that one hand had strayed to her uninjured leg, to caress her long firm thigh, to travel over the lovely hard roundness of her bum--and that the door to the corridor stood wide open for all to see.

"Of course," I responded, and removed myself to a respectful distance, helping her to lie on the sofa as one might help an infirm aunt. Attempting to hide my disappointment, I shut the door before I sat on the other end to unlace her trainers and slip them from her feet, while Her Ladyship watched me with those remarkable, unreadable green eyes.

"You quite meant to do that, didn't you?" she asked, after a passage of time. "Not for the reasons stated earlier, but for yourself."

"It was foolish of me, I know." I felt my face burning. "Quite contrary to our training." God, what a twit I was! What an utter, irredeemable twit. How she must be laughing at me inside, though too well-bred to show any exterior sign.

"For how long, Wesley?" Her Ladyship asked. Her eyes looked pitying. I could not stand the look, and yet I could not lie--I'd always been nearly as poor at falsehood as I had at romance.

"Since the river," I told her simply, and took a handkerchief from my pocket, reaching up to remove my spectacles and polish the lenses.

Her Ladyship laughed softly. "You're wearing your contact lenses, Wesley."

"So I am." I laughed a little with her, however falsely, and contented myself with wiping my hands on the cloth.

"Rupert always did that," she told me, "When he was nervous, or upset, or stalling for time. One of his little habits. Wesley, say no."

"No, Ma'am? To what?"

"The Council intends to send you to California, to take over Rupert's place. You could write 'I love evil demons and wish to help their increase in every way possible' on your examination paper tomorrow, and nothing else, and you'd still be sent on your way." She reached for my arm, running her thumb down the soft inner skin--a remarkably sensual touch, that sent shivers of pleasure through my body, yet I pulled away, suspicious now of her as she'd been previously of me. "You don't want it, do you, not that way? Through nepotism, rather than merit?"

"You believe I have no merit?"

"I believe you aren't yet ready to step into this assignment. It's a difficult situation as it is: civilians involved, a powerful bond between Watcher and Slayer, a bloody dangerous killing ground. A second Slayer in the picture, who by all accounts is, at least, unstable, and ought to have been sent back here for evaluation."

"But to have a Slayer of my own..." I glanced at her, knowing that my eyes must be shining, ecstatic at the prospect, that I'd not expected to come for another ten years, if at all. "Ma'am, to be given a Slayer of my own. Two Slayers!"

"Wesley," she said quietly, but with a Handler's authority. "Buffy won't be your Slayer. She will never be your Slayer. No matter how many regulations you quote to her, no matter what orders you issue, she will never be yours. And Faith will be no one's. She watched her last Watcher die, and she ran. Do you want it to be this way? Think of what I told you by the river. Think of your vow: can you honestly say you're 'prepared on every side?'"

"Were you?" I answered in return.

"One never can be," she answered, leaning back against the armrest, laying an arm across her eyes.

"There you are," I told her.

"We'll see how you do on the Slaying run tomorrow night. If you do well, I'll retract everything I've said, and give you my blessing."

"Fairly spoken, " I answered, but the mood had long since been destroyed between us. I got to my feet. "I ought--"

Lady LeFaye did not move her arm.

"Will you be all right? Can I--?"

"Just go," she told me. "It's late, and I've no doubt you've revision to do before tomorrow's examinations."

"I suppose I ought--"

"There are a great many things you ought to do, Wesley. But you don't, do you?" Again, she sounded angry, disappointed in me.

I left without another word.