She wrapped both her hands around the one squeezing hers as she sat down, watching him. The few months difference between them couldn't have been easy. They never were for people like them, especially while they were running Wolfram and Hart. But the way he was acting worried her much worse. Something horrible had happened to him and already she wanted to hug him, tell him that everything was fine.
Instead she listened. The horror of the truth was worse than she imagined. Fred's eyes widened and her grip tightened on his hand. An Old One, the most powerful of the demons, had killed her, taking what didn't belong to it for its own and further tortured her friends by walking around looking like her. Her chest tightened and she felt breathless, as if someone had sucked it out of her. She had died. A few more days, weeks, months after where she had come from, she would've died.
She wanted to call someone on it but this was Wesley telling her. He was one of the few people she trusted so implicitly that she would believe anything he said without a second thought. Oh god. A fresh wave of horror took hold as she realized what he must have gone through. Angel, Charles, Lorne. She raised a hand to wipe away the tear as she tried to make sense of everything.
Finally, she just did what she had first wanted to. Fred climbed onto her knees on the couch and leaned forward, putting her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. "I'm so sorry, Wesley," she whispered against his neck. "I'm sorry you had to go through that." That he said he'd failed her haunted her the most, that it had changed him as much as he claimed. "You could never fail me."
Fred pulled back, taking his face in his hands. "What happened, Wesley, I know you would fight for me as hard as you could and..." Her voice hitched in her throat. It sounded like a careless dismissal, what she was about to say, but it was the truth. As terrifying was it was that she had died, she knew in her heart that he would have made every attempt to save her. Even if he hadn't, that was not failure. "Sometimes we lose. We've lost before." Cordelia. We lost Cordelia.
In a rush, the pain of the lifestyle they had hit her full force. They fought for the safety of others, the well being of the world. They became a team and then a family, watching the backs of one another. And then they lost, and after the bonds formed, it hurt so bad it was like losing a piece of their soul. "I love you, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, and that is never going to change."