paradisalogs | Accept this confession

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Accept this confession

Who: Elektra and Fred
What: talking about the bb! Wes situation
When: backdated to the evening after Wesley's loss starts
Where: Elektra's room
Rating: PG-ish? There will be talk of really questionable parenting.

It takes a while to square away everything perfectly. She has to be sure Wesley in his current child form is actually asleep before they got into this. Out of paranoia, Elektra shuts her eyes and focuses a moment to be absolutely certain of it. Satisfied by what she sees, Elektra reopens them and gives Fred her full attention. It might look like stalling to anyone else. The story ahead of them was far from pretty or pleasant to speak of. Truly she is protective of the information and the man (or rather boy at the moment) himself. Wesley is her friend. It wouldn't be good for him to hear the story all over again given his reaction to the small mention of it earlier.

The thought of it made her visibly on edge. Even now she cannot quite shake the feeling something bad will happen to him while he is like this even if it is something as simple as being triggered from a story. It was easy to hide when he was the one worrying earlier. Now that is just them, well, Elektra is simply too accustomed to being up front with Fred now. "I think we're alright now." Elektra takes in her surroundings one last time. She thinks adults talking in the kitchen shouldn't raise any suspicion if he does suddenly wake up. It wouldn't hurt to add a little more to the scene. She needs to be able to move a little to ease her anxiety. “I should make tea. Do you want any?”

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She left them after lunch, even though it's been the absolute last thing Fred wanted to do. As confused as she felt, there was no denying that fact she's rather been there than not. Still, even though things had been less strained after their meal, Fred couldn't help but be aware of the fact that ultimately? Wesley didn't trust her.

Not now. Not in this form.

They had a long way to go between his now, and her later. And even then a good bit more trust to be lost in between. For the moment all his faith seemed to be placed firmly at the feet of Elektra. As fantastical as they story of how her friend had met the younger Wesley had seemed, there was clearly a great deal of truth to it.

And possibly even more Elektra hadn't said.

They'd had a hurried exchange over the journals, a promise to meet after Wesley was asleep. Now she found herself standing in her kitchen. Fred could feel her own stress creeping up into her shoulders.

"Tea's probably a good idea."

Elektra gets to it without any hesitation. She always felt a little better when she could put her mind to a direct action. It was oddly comforting. "What I told you before was the truth. I was just missing some important pieces. You already knew that." There is the sound of pots clanking as she goes to retrieve the kettle. Once she has it in hand, Elektra speaks again.

"To start I was following his voice. After I got confused and ended up in the library... No. I should say Wesley's room. It just looked like a library." Elektra stands up and goes to fill it with water.

"I could hear someone crying out; a child. I kept running for it and calling out so they would know I was coming to save them. I honestly thought I was going insane until I started moving things and actually found him. Wesley... he was behind a bookcase inside the wall or crawl space." Elektra shakes her head, keeping her back turned to Fred. "I'm not sure what it was meant to be. The point is I just reached into the darkness and pulled him out. I didn't even know it was him at the time. He was just a scared kid I thought the castle was messing with." She shuts off the water and goes to set it on the stove. "All I knew for sure was that I had to protect him from what put him in that dark hole."

Elektra takes a break here to let Fred process the story so far.

Fred didn't sit as Elektra worked. She remained just as she was, standing with her eyes trained on her friends back. If possible, she seemed even less at ease than Fred. No, it was possible and Fred was watching it in action.

The natural fluidity she associated with Elektra seemed misplaced somehow. Everything felt more tightly reigned in. Was it really because what'd happened to Wesley?

She followed the story simply enough, after all Fred had already been painted an outline before. Clearly she hadn't been the only one with a painful headspace to challenge. Did Wesley even know what his looked like? Had she selfishly kept him with her, effectively preventing him from facing down whatever he had to?

"What..." Her stomach rebelled slightly at the image. Maybe tea wasn't the best idea. "You mean who put him there."

She'd met Roger, after all. If not that man himself, then -- what'd Wesley said? He was sure he was him. But that wasn't a story she'd shared with either Elektra or Wesley. Did Fred think that man was capable of doing something so unforgivable to his own son?

The answer came as a resounding yes.

Elektra nodded slowly. She still can't face her. "It was a what at first." She grips the edge of the stove now there was nothing to keep her hands busy. It should be more and more visible how personally she took this. One would almost think it happened to her instead. "Wesley's subconscious imagined him as a dark cloud. We were talking while he was guiding us out of the library to safety." A fondness comes to her voice. It almost distracts from the obvious tension. "He was so sweet even while he was scared out of his mind. I was proud of him."

She sighs, letting go of that feeling, as she continued. "That thing kept coming after Wesley to take him back to that hole. I kept hurting it, but it wouldn't stay gone. Eventually when it started to speak I realized it was his father. It was right about that point I think he decided to try to start hurting me back. He threw me into one of the bookcases and Wesley used a spell to rescue me. I thought it was over. The point should have been for him to defeat the threat on his own."

It is very clear from her tone there was no point at all. The castle or Wesley's subconscious was being as cruel to him as Elektra's was to her. They just got to relive their worst moments. Moving past them was never an option. She is upset about it for his sake. As always her friends deserved better.

"Roger."

She said the name quietly, not for anyone's particular benefit. Elektra likely doesn't know his name -- she can't imagine Wesley sharing it as a child when he would hardly even mention it now --and it wasn't especially for herself either. Naming him didn't make then man any better a father. Heck, any better a man.

He couldn't be any more different from her own dad -- who he somehow shared a name with.

Fred closed the distance between herself and Elektra, aware that her friend would likely sense the compacting space even if she couldn't see it.

"What do you mean you thought it was over?"

Elektra does not move at all minus the slight tensing of her shoulders. She was on edge, but knew to reign it. Fred wasn't her enemy. The injustice and hurt she was describing was not rightfully hers. She shouldn't even be angry about it. That is what Elektra tries to rationalize to herself at any rate. There's been no success so far.

At least she had a name to direct her hatred and disappointment at whenever this situation came up.

"I mean that we made it to the exit and Roger came back. Wesley pushed me over the threshold and told me he knew he could never escape. I think he thanked me for trying too, but who knows? It was a while ago." Or maybe the realization she came to just made it hard to process what he was saying. It could be the guilt from her failure as well.

"The point is it was a scenario that was meant to repeat over and over again. I could go in a million times and the only thing I would succeed in doing is forcing Wesley to watch me get hurt trying to save him. The child there was never real. I was bonding with a figment of Wesley's mind; the memory of himself as a child. I couldn't save him because I was never there when he was a boy."

She releases a shaky breath as the kettles goes off. She kills the flame in one easy movement. There's no move for tea bags or cups just yet. Elektra is simply standing there while holding onto a hot stove.

For a while Fred remained quiet. The silence felt like a solid, expansive thing -- to settled to fit words into. All she could do was continue you her conversation with Elektra's back. It was an exchange that had nothing to do with sound.

Her friend looked as if she would shatter if Fred touched her She couldn't bring herself to test the theory.

Fred knew Wesley's childhood was less than idea. She'd long suspected some level of abuse. But somehow the evidence still caught had at the back of her knees. She'd sit, except there was still a need to keep straight. To confront what was long gone.

"But you did succeed. You succeeded in earning his trust. At least that's how it seems. And that's no small thing, especially with Wesley.

Elektra shakes her head hopelessly. "It's not enough," she says in a voice too small to belong to her properly. She lets that sentence settle a minute before speaking again. There is little hesitation on her part to share what's next. It feels natural to explain herself to Fred no matter how painful it was to reopen old wounds that never fully healed to begin with. She needs Fred to understand why this getting under her skin when seemingly nothing does.

"When I look at Wesley as a child I see myself at his age. I was the same as him. My father pushed me just as hard without any mercy." Even now she can remember her mother arguing against it as brief as that was in the big picture of her life. Her worried glances and inability to stand up to him were etched into her mind deeply along with just how weak she perceived herself to be at the time. "There was an important difference: he loved me. Everything he did really was to make me the best I could possibly be. He never left any room for me to doubt that no matter how harsh the lesson was. With Wesley, there is no love. He is strong already, Fred. What Roger did, what he's doing... it's breaking him. That's what I can't stand. I can't stand the thought of that man ruining him."

She faces her now, lips pressed tightly together, with an obvious need for understanding shining in her eyes. "He deserves better."

To some extent, Elektra's always seemed a bit larger than life to Fred. A presence strong enough she couldn't help but fall over it. Which she quite literally did. It is similar to the feeling she once had for Angel and Cordy, a sensation that inevitably left her with the sensation of being just out reach. Of their place, even of their notice. Despite recognizing that wasn't true.

It'd been different with Elektra, somehow. Fred isn't certain what made her that odd, dynamic mix of both strong but approachable. Perhaps because of how they first started to grow close, the night Elektra stumbled across her in the kitchen still raw from Illyria's arrival and the collapse of her own lies of omission. She'd proved to be an unexpected rock, even then.

And now? Elektra seems so exposed. More vulnerable that she's ever seen her. It robs Fred of air. She tries to provide the strength her friend so clearly needs through her own gaze.

"...I know." The words are quiet and soft. Wesley will not be going back to a good place. There's no hiding from the fact. But then, he wouldn't be as an adult either. Any more than she will, one day. But there is something about sending a child into that? That seems dreadfully unfair.

"But Wesley isn't broken, Elektra. Or ruined. You've seen him. You know him. He survives. I don't know now, I can't understand how really. But he does. And he confronts Roger too, one day. He doesn't even know that...well, it's not my story to tell. Not yet. Somehow I have to find a way to tell him."

If he came back.

Elektra seems to absorb that for a long moment. She nods slowly afterward. That is satisfactory to her. Obviously she must know what becomes of Wesley. He is her friend as an adult the same as when he is a child. There are rare occasions when her heart overwhelms her common sense. This is undoubtedly one of those times. Right now all it can do is point out what this child has been through and what they will go through.

She really hates when it does that. Elektra does the only thing she knows how to do in these situations: she takes the feelings and carefully files them away. It was like turning off a light switch.

"What kind of tea do you want?" She moves toward the cabinet to retrieve some cups and bags. It is almost like the moment never even happened.

Fred, for her part, isn't having anything of it. She closes the distance between herself and the other woman, her hand closing over one wrist where it reached for the mugs. Something feels unfinished, somehow.

"Elektra."

Elektra exhales audibly. She knows where this is going. She showed something she usually kept bottled up inside so now Fred would want to see this all the way through. It should be the obvious next step in this. Elektra just never made it this far normally.

"It's fine. I was getting worked up over nothing." She chances a glance at Fred. "I'll focus on keeping him safe until this works itself out."

Fred is tempted to push past Elektra and take over the task of fixing the tea, but something keeps her back. After all, when her own head gets this busy, there's an undeniable need for her hands to be just as occupied.

"We both know this isn't nothing." She isn't going to let the conversation be completely dismissed. Still, Fred grants a small reprieve.

"You're good with him."

Elektra takes the reprieve as an opening to continue her task. She feels a little awkward hearing her say she was good with. The way Wesley behaved around her was impossible for her to dismiss. He trusted her. She must have done something right. "I have some experience. Abby, Helen, Emil..." She frowns. There is more unmentioned (Justinia, Nyuu, etc.) which is troubling to her. She hadn't given any thought to the trend before now.

"I try to tell myself not to get involved. Sometimes I can't help it. If no one else is going to what's needed..." She shrugs. It becomes her problem. "Kids are easier than adults most of the time too. That helps."

Fred had observed in the past Elektra's fiercely protective tendencies when it came to the children of Paradisa, even when they we're as close. Honestly, it was something she admired -- and something she'd always struggled with. Fred knew from the moment she chose to have her folks turn their car back towards the hotel she was likely putting any of her more traditional dreams away. Including children.

She can't think there is anything that would have made her chose differently. But that didn't prevent the occasional, wistful sense of loss.

"Is that your way of gently telling me that I'm difficult?"

Elektra smiles for the first time since they began this conversation. "No, you're one of the few I can get along with easily. I can only bear most of the others by not caring about a word that comes out of their mouths." Elektra keeps moving as she talks. She collects a variety of bags and mugs before returning to the table. She sets the bags out in a neat row beside each of their mugs before heading to grab the kettle to pour some water.

"I know that must sound cold, but it's effective."

She shouldn't be surprised that Elektra can disconnect in such a way, and that in fact she relies on it. But the image wars with the one that Fred's put together of her friend, the one that so obviously cares.

"You're doing what you have to do to survive."

Which is something Fred does understand. She glances down at the mugs.

"How long do you think he'll be like this?"

Elektra steals a glance at her mid pour for a brief second before looking back down at what she was doing. She got it in one. Apathy was one of her main survival tactics back home. She never bothered to shake it here except when it became necessary. A clearly upset woman she hardly knew in the kitchen many months ago springs to mind.

"I give it a week. Maybe two if the castle really wants to prove a point." Elektra finishes her task of pouring and take a seat. "It might be bringing him in with those memories."

Fred, quietly, continues to watch her friend. Because Elektra has tackled one of the biggest questions she's never managed to find an answer to.

"Only what's the point, exactly? Of doing that to him? He doesn't even...." What? Know her? Like her? Fred pushes past that. "I guess I'm getting tired of not understanding why."

Elektra taps her fingers against her mug thoughtfully. "We never faced down our demons properly. I like to think that was the point of being stuck in our heads. We were supposed to deal with what was inside there. If I'm right this is his chance to deal with what happened. That may also be why he remembers me. I'm supposed to help him."

Fred takes her own mug, twisting it slowly in her hands and drawing in the seeping warmth. Winter is officially behind them now. She's not entirely certain why she still feels a chill.

"But that is suggesting the castle actually wants to help us somehow."

The notion brought too many other questions on its heels. Was the castle that sentient? Did it actually communicate with them somehow, and they hadn't managed to hear? Would it stop talking to them?

The images from the expedition still haunted her.

Elektra shrugs. "Isn't it? I can't help noticing the way it's backed off." She drops the bag in her mug and stares down at it. "Maybe I'm the wrong person to judge this. This is an improvement over the situation I face at home." Elektra has only had to kill demons since her arrival. How many people would have died by now so she could keep on living there? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?

Fred pales slightly at that. Clearly, motivations of the castle aside, here is much better than there. A general thought that only becomes that much stronger with each friend that slips back home. Cordy hadn't been here nearly as long as some, and that did not protect her. How much longer did she have? Elektra? Wesley?

Still, again it came back to not understanding. To not knowing how to translate whatever the castle was trying to say. If it was at all.

My problem is I can't ever stop wondering what's next."

Elektra makes no effort to fight the amused smile that comes to her lips. "Knowing what comes next is highly overrated." She pauses briefly. "Except in the cases where it stops you from dying in some horrible way. I usually like knowing about those ahead of time."

Elektra takes a long sip from her mug. "I guess don't worry about the future is a pointless thing to ask of you."

A smile flickers, one that's long been especially tailored to Elektra.

"I don't think my head will ever not be a bit dizzy when it comes to thoughts. Sometimes it's downright hard to sleep at night."

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