Time Turner
. . . fiction by Odyssea
. . .Blue. . .
Wesley thinks of blue - a deep, artic blue, like water so cold it kills in minutes, a sinking death - like falling asleep, they say.
When Wesley sleeps, he does not die; rather, he dreams of paralytic blue seeping into everything, every person, every image like a sepia tint. Instead of aging, it kills everything it touches.
An image, of all of them, everything tinted that lifeless blue - except him, though he sees it slip ever closer, until he is surrounded like a barren isle in the heartless sea.
The darkness is pierced, painfully, until a slim figure appears, like some fallen angel. It is not-Fred, anti-Fred, a nightmare brought to life in a frame of blue.
This bodes ill, a fact confirmed by the disappearance and subsequent failure to reappear that had befallen his former comrades in arms. Like the Ten Little Indians, all in a row...
Two burly demons, which Wesley classifies deep in his distracted brain as Ta'Kith, strong but not too smart, kill with a sharp blow to the kneecap where their (infinitesimally small) brains are located, drag him out in front of a pillar of blue.
Wesley drowns.
Illyria stares down at him, regal and deadly. Her form, Fred's form, disguises power like an iceberg, and he feels, oddly, like the Titanic, sinking slowly beneath the surface of still blue.
"You are the primitive they call Wes-ley," she says, a statement, not a question, with an odd pronunciation like his name is something both foreign and disgusting. "Well, Wes-ley, are you wiser than your friends? Will you forsake your false idols to worship at the altar of a true god?"
"My friends?" asks Wesley, hoarse and scratchy. "Are they..."
Illyria stares at him, head tilted ever so slightly. Unbelieving, he thinks as she replies, "They refused to reject their traitorous beliefs and bow down like the vermin they were. They were...expendable."
Wesley is lost in the whirlpool, seeking desperately for something to cling to.
"You have a choice, Wes-ley - and you should feel honored that I would give a muck like you such a choice. You are not unintelligent for one of the ooze that eats itself and you could prove useful to me." Illyria's words sweep over him like waves, leaving him struggling to breathe.
"Help you?" Wesley laughs, though it sounds more like a croak. "I'd sooner offer a vampire a free drink." He tries to be defiant, but Illyria's unblinking stare makes his knees feel like they are made of water and he sinks to the ground.
"I did not think you would be so defiant, little vermin - the half-breeds, perhaps. How...amusing." Illyria walks toward him, like Fred, but not Fred, until his vision fills with a blur of blue.
"Little vermin, trying so hard to be your own gods, thinking you can control your own fates. What you don't know is that you need us, as you scurry around," she says, gripping his chin and tilting his head up to meet her eyes, pale and piercing. "Scurry, scurry, thoughtless and drifting - you need me, to worship me, to give meaning and order to your pointless little lives, for there to be some cause for your existence on this planet, which is rightfully mine. So, Wes-ley, choose your allegiance, either with your foolish, fallen friends, or for the glory of my kingdom."
She is so close to him, that for a half-second, less than a heartbeat, through eyes blurred by the bright light, he can imagine she is Fred, come back to take him away. His illusion is shattered by the smell of it, of Illyria, of this long-dead god thing. She smells like empty tombs and stagnant water, of cities long crumbled into dust beneath the pounding seas. It disgusts the thinking parts of his brain, as much as some primitive part of him longs to surrender and be swept under.
"Fuck you." Wesley mutters, grating in his own ears. "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on." He feels like an actor in some bad World War Two movie, mouthing defiance at his heinous captor, and thinks vaguely that the Nazis would probably have liked Illyria a lot.
Frankly, he'd like Illyria a lot more if she wasn't staring at him, head tilted ever so slightly to the side, like he was some kind of fish gasping for breath on the beach. Most people - though, he amended, she wasn't exactly a person, more like a pillar of ice in human form - would either laugh or be offended. They'd do something. It was like being stranded in the middle of the sea; there were no signs to tell you what to do next, just a still wasteland.
Wesley thought vaguely that he was somewhere in the midst of delirium or hallucination, as his thoughts were flashing by him like tiny fish, slipping just out of grasp in the depths of blue that surrounded him.
A sharp slap to the face snaps Wesley out of his hypnotic reverie, though the shock comes not from the force of the blow, but rather the icy coldness of the hand. Illyria appears angry, though no flush darkens her white cheeks.
"He's no use to me like this. Stupid vermin, so easy to break. Find someone to fix him, then bring him to me." Illyria is imperious, her voice glacial. She leans once more over Wesley, who shudders at her closeness. "You are lucky, little ape. I need someone versed in the ways of the old ones, in the time when I ruled over the muck. You shall be my Qua'Ha Xahn, my priest, my servant, and my guide. You shall be mine, and you will bow to my will and be grateful for my mercies."
Wesley is defeated by the unrelenting waves of Illyria's power, unable to speak or move. To serve her? To serve the thing that has killed anyone he ever cared for? He is dragged back into the dark cell by the demons, still lost in thought. They close the door.
And in the darkness, all Wesley can see is blue.
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