fast track
The wisps of smoke outside are the only sign remaining.
He's not entirely certain what it is that keeps him by the window, looking out. After all, the blazes, the magnificent flames and colors and the billowing clouds of what looked more like something of body, of menace in itself, are gone. All that's left behind are these thin, simple trails, outlining the afterimages in the air outside, like the lines all around where a dead body once laid.
He can't quite sum up the urge to tear himself away from this dead vista, can't quite make himself concentrate hard enough to call a name to the force keeping him frozen to that glass-and-frame spot. Can't be terror, certainly; the danger has passed, and from the very start he was strangely, dimly aware of the pointlessness of being frightened. After all they have been through.
This change in the constant, this lack of fear, just like the yawning lack of his inability to analyze this minute, of his will to try his hardest and reach a conclusion, should be what disturbs him most. Instead, they just feel distant, alien. In a mirror-in-mirror-in-mirror image, not even the recognition that they should have disturbed him, and how strange it is that they fail to, manages to bring forth a reaction.
He wonders if this is shock. But surely not, not really.
Shock would be a nice name to it, though. A comfortable box to lay down in. it would save him the trouble of finding the energy to pursue this further.
And the strange guilt this thought brings, the guilt all of this calls, day and night, like an old familiar blanket; not trying hard enough. Not being all he could be, not harassing his battered mind until it coughs and jolts and throws up answers.
And yes, self pity, and isn't that a pleasant sight.
It was Rupert Giles, once, who commented on this. Rupert Giles, with the mocking tone which had seemed, back then, to have been invented just for Wesley, from this man who should have been his compatriot; who should have been his like in this strange land. Rupert Giles, and it was a while before he, aided by a letter from an old school friend who didn't keep in touch long, recognized the connection between this name and the old legends.
Once renegade, always a renegade, perhaps. And Wesley Windham-Pryce, a former rogue demon hunter who, like another man before him, needed the assistance of others outside himself to remind him who he truly was, feels he has grown enough to smile a little at the old remains of horrified and offended dignity that come with that thought.
More his compatriot, more his like than either of them had realized, after all.
What was it that Rupert had said. How they all live their lives according to this guilt, this faceless guilt of not doing what was expected of them, not standing up to their own impossible standards? Or was it he who had thought this, much further down the line?
His memory – plays games and tricks on him, lately. This place, this world, is a children's storybook turned a child's nightmare, and his head sometimes seems to have turned into a fairy land and follow it.
Why is he standing here?
And still, no will to leave. No will to turn around. The smoke outside disperses.
Slowly. Slowly. No telling whether any of it will still be out there when the next wave comes.
Why is he still watching it. Can't be mourning. None of their number has died this time. Not this time.
It has a certain beauty, these ghostly forms drifting lazily in the frozen air. It was so hot before. He can still feel the memory of it in his cheeks, on his arms where the shielding cloth had torn. Now he touches the glass, fleetingly, and it is as though he is touching solid ice.
Can't be wonder, for he has seen many a thing that exceed this view, and many many things that had touched him deeper. He closes his eyes against the flash of dark bare skin in his mind's eye, and breathes pain. Lets go. Looks out.
Surely it can't be loss.