Fred Burkle (crazytacolady) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-05-09 23:50:00 |
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As the sun rose on Thursday morning, so did Fred. She remembered having some very interesting, almost life-like dreams. While she had slept through the night, Fred felt like she was watching the show. Only it wasn’t what she had watched with Wes or lived herself, these seemed like the future. Fred got ready like she normally did for her job at Stark Industries and as she was getting ready to leave, she could still remember her dreams. That wasn’t right. If she remembered her dreams it was only for a few minutes after she had woken up. No, these weren’t dreams. These were memories. About a year and a half’s worth of memories. She remembered seeing Wes at the hospital and later telling him not to come back. She remembered the whole Cordy and Connor thing and then Jasmine and then Wolfram and Hart. While part of her couldn’t believe that they were all working there, a part of her also missed her lab there. There was a sarcophagus there waiting for her to examine. Fred dropped her bag, though made sure she had her key, and left her apartment. She was going straight to Wes’s. There was something she had to do first before she could think about going to work. A few minutes later, Fred was outside the door to his apartment. Before remembering that he had a roommate, Fred was banging on the door. “Wes! I need to talk to you! Please come to the door!” The pounding on the door disrupted Wesley Wyndam-Pryce’’s internal conversation that was going something like ‘you could just text her, no, texting isn’t a good way to ask her to prom. Call her. No. That’s almost as impersonal as texting her. Go talk to her in person. But if it’s in person, then what if she says no. Maybe call...’ It was a conversation that had been happening to some degree or another since the prom had been announced, spurned forward mainly by Giles’ ridiculous advice. Wesley knew that Giles’ current advice wasn’t necessarily the best in the world to follow, but at the same time - if he just let this opportunity pass by, would he ever forgive himself? The knocking interrupted all of that and Wesley looked up at the door and then when he heard Fred’s voice he started and moved quickly towards it. It sounded as if she was upset about something and the only thing that Wesley could think is that he needed to get to her quickly - to see what was wrong and if he could help her with it. He threw open the door to Fred standing outside the door and he immediately gave her a concerned look. “Fred,” he looked over at her and immediately placed a hand on her shoulder, pulling her into the apartment and towards the sofa. Almost as quickly he realized what he was doing and the instinct to remove it made him lift it for just a moment, but after a moment’s hesitation he put it back down. “Fred, what is it? What’s the matter?” Fred quickly smiled when he opened the door. “Oh it’s nothing bad! Well, there are bad things that have happened, but good things too!” She said after she walked into his apartment. “I have so much to tell you.” Fred took a seat on the sofa and patted the spot next to her. “Sit next to me and I will tell you everything.” Now she needed to decide where to begin. Probably with what he remembered last. “Now you are from a point in time later I am, right? After the whole Connor being kidnapped ordeal and you being in the hospital. That’s what I had remembered up until last night. I thought I was only dreaming but I wasn’t. I was remembering things from about a year and a half to two years in the future. A lot has happened.” Wesley couldn’t have said what he was expecting, but the words that came out of Fred’s mouth weren’t it. He stared for a moment - not trying to be rude, but just so startled that he wasn’t certain what to say. He gathered himself to his senses and stepped over to sit down to her next to the sofa. He knew they’d been close in time-line but not exact and he had been from later on. “Wait, you didn’t leave did you? You’ve been here the entire time?” Wesley knew that people sometimes left and returned at later points in their timelines, but this seemed different from that. “Sorry, you said you were remembering things from in the future - what things?” Fred shook her head. "No, I didn't leave, which I'm really glad of. I just went to sleep last night and woke up thinking I had dreamed some really real dreams," Fred told him. "It's a long story so I'll try to sum up the important parts." There was a lot and she wondered if it would be easier to just skip ahead to those episodes. "I'll start that Connor comes back as a teenager and a rather angry one at that. Cordy disappeared, I think to become a Power That Be. She comes back and has no memory. She then gets her memory back and she and Connor have sex and she has Jasmine who is a goddess and not a good one. We managed to defeat her." Fred paused. Her memories were still rather jumbled. She could follow some, like what she just told him, but others were singular events and she wasn't sure where they fell in the timeline. "I found out that my physics professor is to blame for sending me to Pylea. Gunn killed him and we broke up. And all of us now work for Wolfram and Hart." Fred took a breath and smiled, reaching for his hand. She knew he liked her and had for a long time. "We've just begun dating." Some of the things Fred was mentioning Wesley had stumbled across in his reading on the Internet, and some of the things he had not. And now he found himself actually struck speechless by her final comment, and the fact that she’d just reached for his hand. He stared down at it and at his hand and he tried to pull together something - anything - intelligent to say, finally settling on a quiet, and somewhat understated: “Wow.” He swallowed and found that his mouth and lips felt dry so he pressed them together to moisten them. “Fred -” Her hand was still on his and they were sitting on his sofa together, side by side, there wasn’t anyone around, and the woman he’d loved for years had just announced to him that she remembered them dating. They’d just started dating. If Giles were there, which thankfully he wasn’t, Wesley was pretty certain he would be making some dry comment about how Wesley was going to waste a moment handed to him on a silver platter. All of those thoughts ran around in his head in what was surely only a few seconds, but felt like moments extended out for forever. Feeling more nervous than he’d felt for years Wesley lifted his eyes to find Fred’s. She was smiling at him. The memory - or dream - or whatever it was had clearly been a happy one. Before he could second guess himself further he lifted a hand to her face and leaned forward to kiss her. Fred looked him in the eyes right before he kissed her. She only had the memory of kissing him before and the real thing lived up to her memory. “How long have you been wanting to do that?” Fred asked as she pulled back a little. “You know, I think this might get us out of future awkward conversations with Anya.” At least, Fred hoped it would. She hadn’t pushed him away, and she hadn’t been offended, and perhaps - although Wesley would never in a million years admit it to Giles - Giles had been right that he should have just kissed her a long time ago. Nervousness collapsed into a laugh, and the briefest feeling of warmth to his cheeks as Wesley ducked his head. “Yes, it might at that,” he looked at her and let out a breath. Fred was perfection, she always had been. No, she was perfect, but she was perfect for him - and that was the only thing that had ever mattered. “Let’s not talk about how long I’ve been wanting to do that,” he added with a rueful smile. “Instead let me ask you something I’ve been wanting to ask you for at least two weeks, but haven’t quite figured out the proper moment or proper avenue to do so - and I think the proper moment has presented itself. This prom they’ve got planned? Would you like to go with me?” “I suppose I could always keep watching the show to find out. Do you want to keep watching the show in the order we’ve been watching or do you want to skip any?” Fred asked cheekily in response to his answer. Fred had heard about the prom and she wasn’t sure if wanted to go or not. At least she hadn’t until Wes asked her. “This is the proper moment. I would love to go with you,” she grinned. “Too bad Cordy isn’t here to help me pick out a dress to wear. I bet she’d pick out the perfect dress for me to wear.” Oh what was she going to wear? She only had about a week or so left to get one. “I’m looking forward to going to prom with you.” Wesley flushed, suddenly aware that there were probably parts of the show he really didn’t want Anya to see. Everything that had happened recently with Josephine, or with Lilah, as a for instance. But he calmed all the parts of him that was suddenly afraid that Fred would change her mind if she saw that - or tried to - and tried to stay calm. “I think perhaps we should take a break from watching the show,” he suggested. “And we could find other ways to spend our time together,” he gave her a small smile “Then if we get bored with each other and need to return to our show we can.” “And you’ll find a perfect dress, Fred, and you don’t need Cordelia’s help with that,” he reached a hand up to touch her cheek, half afraid she might disappear like a dream when he did so, but she didn’t, and he dropped the hand but only to her hand, because he could hold it - because she wasn’t going to try to slide away or be confused that he was. “You’ve got plenty of time - you could wear anything in your closet and you would look perfect.” He leaned back against the back of the sofa, still facing her, and more content than he’d felt for months - even before arriving at Potts Tower. “Tell me a bit about the other bit? The dreams? Or the memories? How did that happen - are you certain they are memories and not just dreams?” “I’m perfectly fine with not watching the show for a while. I’ll be fine just spending all my free time with you.” Fred looked forward to it, especially since she had offered to pick up the basic math classes that Susan had left behind. What had she gotten herself into? “We’ll do fun things together as a couple.” Fred blushed when he touched her cheek. She still wasn’t much for wearing dresses and she greatly appreciated Cordy’s help picking out something to wear for the ballet. Maybe she could ask Anya or Buffy for advice. “I’ll go shopping this weekend. I don’t think there’s much of my wardrobe here that would do, but I’ll find something.” Fred was going to find something that would be perfect, although anything she bought was going to be perfect to him. “I thought it was just dreams but when I dream, I don’t remember much after a few minutes unless I’m constantly thinking about it. I didn’t really think about them until I’d been awake for a half hour and I could still remember every little detail it seemed like. They have to be memories.” Fred was sure of it. It didn’t feel like a dream either. “I haven’t watched the show save for the episodes I’ve watched with and I didn’t know my future until today. It wouldn’t make sense to dream about a future I didn’t know anything about, does it?” “I’m alright with that,” Wesley nodded in affirmation, giving her a warm smile. It was difficult to not be afraid that he would wake up and discover that this entire thing had been a dream. Maybe he was dreaming the future, which as he listened to Fred speak it brought him back to the point that they couldn’t be absolutely certain that this was the future. What he had read of the future had been brief and rather depressing. He wasn’t certain he wanted to watch that with Fred, but then again, he supposed he would rather watch it with her than without her. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “I’ve only read bits and pieces of what happens following when I came from,” he said slowly. “So most of what you’ve suggested I can’t confirm or deny. Buffy might be able to confirm some of it - depending on how much she’s learned. I know Giles confirmed some of the things I read, so he might be able to confirm some of it as well. I suppose that if we do want to know - then we would probably need to watch the show. So maybe we shouldn’t give it up entirely - if you want to know for certain that these are memories that is - because that may be the only way. “On the other hand, I’m not certain why you would dream about something that hasn’t happened - or why you would create a future when Cordelia sleeps with... Connor. You did say that, didn’t you?” Wesley frowned. The Cordelia that he knew - or thought he’d known - was interested in Angel. Connor was only a boy, even the Connor that had come back through the hell dimension - for all intents and purposes was barely legal. The Cordelia Wesley knew he couldn’t have imagined doing anything like that. And how Angel might have taken that... He shook his head. And Angel thought Wesley betrayed him. “You still have to go to work today don’t you?” He looked over at her. “Have you had breakfast?” Fred returned the smile. “How about we go out to dinner tonight?” Fred offered. It’d be nice to go out to dinner with him and not as friends. “I suppose I could ask them and see if they know anything. Or I could always look on the web to confirm for myself or have someone else outside of our world look.” Fred didn’t want to know too much about her future, especially if there was another apocalypse. Not unless she was watching the show with Wes. That would be the only acceptable time that she’d be okay with finding out about the future. “I did say that. I’m not sure why I would dream that either. If I dreamt anybody being together, it would have been Cordy and Angel. Well, she did lose her memory so maybe that had something to do with it? My memories are still a little jumbled.” Still, if it was a dream, Fred wasn’t sure why she would dream the things she dreamt. “The most disturbing part, other than Cordy and Connor, would have to be finding out that someone I trusted got me stuck in Pylea.” Fred was going to look into that, just to know if it was true or not. “Work! I forgot all about work and eating. I came straight here before I even had a chance to leave for work,” Fred told him. “Maybe I should skip going to work today. But if you are offering breakfast, I’d love some.” |