Wesley scrubbed his hands over his face and looked up at Fred as she took one. He then looked over at Rupert, shaking his head.
"I...I don't know. But obviously, there's something," he said softly. "Whatever it is you're right - the Council isn't involved in this. I...have no idea what, though."
Sighing, he squeezed Fred's hand back and leaned against her, letting out a snort when she insulted a father. "Love, you have no idea." As he said that, though, he realized that given what had happened, she needed to know. So did Rupert since they were going to be marrying him. He had never spoken of it, wanting to forget about it, but now he realized he needed to.
"I don't even know where to start with this," he said. "I always said I left England because I was thrown off the Watchers Council, but that's not completely true. I...I left England to finally get away from him."
Opening his hand, he stretched out his fingers for a moment, a ghost pain he hadn't felt in a long time suddenly shooting through them. "You both know about my sister Regan and how she was Slayer. After she died, my dad was so upset with her Watcher that he had him thrown off the Council. Then....then he turned on me, swearing that I wasn't going to end up the same kind of Watcher. He...if I didn't do something right, he'd lock me under the stairs. At least to start with. It--as time went on, the punishments became worse. When I was accepted to the Watchers Academy, it was actually a relief.
He looked up at Rupert. "What he did to me wound me up so tight, though, that I thought I had to everything by the book, and as a result, I screwed up badly in Sunnydale. At least up until the point when I realized that he was wrong. I was just glad you didn't totally write me off and let me stay to help." He turned his head to look at Fred again. "When I was thrown off the Council, after watching him throw me over and call me a disappointment, I...realized that I had to get away, so I returned to America. And I'm glad I did because I found something I was good at." He reached up to touch Fred's face. "I found you. And you, Rupert. It let me believe that what my father said about me...wasn't true."