Los Angeles, the Offices of Wolfram & Hart, Attorneys at Law

[bitchy_smurf]

"Along with her apparent age," Wesley said to the green one, as if because Illyria could no longer hear the singing of the plants, she couldn't hear him, "her powers -- the ones we were ever able to catalog in the first place -- have been greatly reduced. She still has an unusual level of strength, but is no longer invulnerable or able to alter time."

"You revel in my defeat," she spat at him, gloved fingers tracing the tips of silent bamboo. "You cast me from this place when you promised to help me live."

"We only seek to ascertain your current condition, for your good as much as ours," he corrected her -- dared to correct her. "And I'm keeping my promise, Illyria. I'm sending you to a place of education. A special school that teaches --"

Children. The word he wasn't saying was children, and she was never a child. She wasn't one now.

"--entities from many dimensions. To interact with each other, and to learn what they can do with what they have. That's why you need to go -- to help you survive in this world."

"To help you survive," she corrected him haughtily back. To keep Fred's face from his sight until he could bear to look on it again. A human -- a rock -- could smell the stink of his pain every time he came near her, let alone Illyria.

The one called Lorne fiddled with the cloth at his throat. "She might be be a tiny blue sassypants, but she's not --" The elevator dinged. "Burkles!"

Voices in the lobby. Faces in a sea of sparkling memory. Lullabys. A touch. Her hands on the wheel of a car. No, not hers. A battered stuffed rabbit, shoved in a box on the desk that used to be Fred's. No. She was never a child.

"Burkles?" Wesley gave only one moment to surprise before stepping in front of her. "Illyria, you should go. They mustn't see you."

"I go where I please. I do not bow to your demands." She stepped out from behind him, and into the eyes of Fred's parents. Mother. Father. I was spawned from the chaos of Time. I was never a child.

"....Fred?" Whites around their eyes as they stared at her, smiles turned to shock. Wesley spinning far too slow to grab her arm.

"Mom? Daddy! Oh my God, what're y'all doing here?" She tossed dirt-brown hair from her face and ran to them. Spread pale arms wide to throw about their necks.

Behind her, Wesley's heartbeat boomed like thunder. "Roger. Trish."

"Honey, what?" Her mother -- her mother. Mother of the shell. Voice bewildered, arms still warm around her. Safe. Protected. Caged. Touched by humans. Like they knew her.

I was NEVER a child! "Oh, right." Illyria pulled back to look at them with warm brown eyes, and smiled her brightest smile. "I had a little problem in the lab. Just think of it as a lucky break, I guess? Not everybody gets an extra ten years to live!"

Behind her, Wesley swore in Sumerian. If she listened hard, she could hear his spirit crack.

**

"Your grief," she said when they were gone, "hangs off of you like rotted flesh. I couldn't tolerate it from them as well."

"You need to go," he answered, not looking at the face that wasn't hers.

"This is her face." She raised her voice, let the twang slip in. "It should make you happy. It made them happy. I'm tired of everything bein' sad, Wes."

"Stop it."

She walked closer. Reached out to touch him even as he shrank away. "You loved this. And part of you still does. I can feel it in you." His hand, warm against her skin, and even in this form, she shuddered again. "I... wish to explore it further."

He jerked his hand away. "Never. You... like this? It sickens me. You're--"

I was never a child.

"Not her. Stop it. Turn back. Be blue, be anything, just don't be her. Don't ever be her. Not in front of me."

She dropped her hand as if she had never extended it, and threw back her head. When she looked at him again, it was with eyes of frozen blue. "As you wish."

"You--" Wesley said again, a tangle of fear and hate and want. "Should go." But it was he who stalked from his office.

She watched him go, a stone, unbattered by the sight of his back. Untouched. Not abandoned, not rejected, not alone.

Not hurt.

At all.

I was never a child.

"Perhaps I should."


[NFI distance, OOC welcome, mmm, fishcakes. Large portions of dialogue taken from Angel 5x20, The Girl In Question.]