Author: Karen U
Email for feedback: Yes, please revivingophelia13@yahoo.com
Summary: Gunn wakes up after the events of the episode
Billy. Rated: PG.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the WB, Joss Whedon, and other entities that are not me.
Distribution: Ask first
Author's Notes: This is actually the first time I've written a story with Fred in it...
The first thing he was aware of was pain. It was a
throbbing, nasty pain that ached to the point that he
would have been almost thankful had his head suddenly
decided to explode right then and there. He would
have been dead, sure, but his head would no longer be
throbbing. Frowning, he reached up to touch his head,
his fingers brushing over what could only be a
bandage. His brow wrinkled up slightly at the
realization, and that was when he felt the hand on his
face, stroking his cheek. Quickly, he shifted his own
hand and touched the one on his face, feeling it draw
back hurriedly, skittering over the skin, but not
before he felt delicate, slender hands that quite
obviously belonged to a rather small female.
Opening his eyes slowly, Gunn peered up at Fred,
squinting a little as he focused on her, taking in her
pale, drawn features, the look of worry in her wide
eyes. “What... What happened?” he asked, but even as
the words slipped from his lips, it came back to him,
and if it wouldn’t have hurt his head far too much to
do so, he would have shot up in bed... And how in the
hell did he get in a bed? Last he remembered, he was
on his knees on the floor of some broken-down old room
in the Hyperion, and he knew damn good and well that
Fred was too much of a little bitty thing to handle
dragging his butt out of that room and to... Well,
this room. Not to mention actually putting him on the
bed. She would have definitely had to have help.
“Fred, are you okay?”
The slender brunette looked a little surprised at his
question. “You’re the one with a bandage on his
head.” She made a surprised sound, looking up at
something and shaking her head. “*I* hit him, and he
asks *me* if I’m okay...”
“Fred, are you?” he asked again, reaching up and
lightly gripping her hand, drawing her attention back
to him.
She looked down at him again, shifting a little in her
seat on the edge of the bed. “Me? I’m fine Gunn-”
“So Wesley didn’t get to you? What happened then?
Did it wear off before he could-”
“I hit him with a fire extinguisher, and he kind of
went through a hole in the floor,” Fred broke in, and
Gunn’s eyes widened slightly at the revelation.
“Oh, well... I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Well, I’m sorry I hurt you... Wesley, too, but he’s
not awake just yet, and well, I just never got why
people on television would always apologize and stuff
to unconscious people. They are unconscious! It
makes it very doubtful that they will hear you, much
less remember it when they wake up-”
“I think maybe that’s why they do it,” Gunn replied,
effectively cutting off her little rambling before it
became a big one. Usually he found Fred’s musings
pretty amusing - when they weren’t about quantum
physics or something else he didn’t understand - but
his head was still pounding something awful, and there
were more questions he needed to ask her. “They don’t
want the person to know they said it.”
“Then why do it?”
“Gets it off their chest, and no one knows about it,”
he replied, unwilling to just ignore her questions
despite his own pressing curiosity, then shifted to
what he wanted to know. “Fred, do you know where
Billy is?”
“Dead,” came the brief answer, and Gunn frowned.
“What?”
“Cordelia went to find her, and so did Angel.”
“So they killed him.”
“Actually, Lilah did.”
Gunn frowned, wondering if maybe Fred had hit him even
harder than he’d thought with that chair leg, because
that didn’t make any sense at all to him. “What?
Wolfram and Hart’s Lilah killed their own boy? Didn’t
Cordelia get tortured by that woman so Billy would get
freed from demon hell?”
“Something like that... But while Angel was busy
moving you and Wesley to rooms that had good beds and
no holes in the floor - or ceiling,” she added, since
in the end, the room Wesley had fallen into had had a
hole in the ceiling rather than the floor, “Cordelia
told me that Billy’s touch had tainted a guy at
Lilah’s office, so-”
“So she’d been hurt, too. And she killed him.”
“Shot him dead while he and Angel were fighting.
Cordelia only had a crossbow, and she couldn’t get a
clear shot, so...”
“Since she didn’t want to accidentally shoot Angel,
she didn’t get a shot off,” Gunn said with a vague nod
before falling into silence. They sat in the quiet
for a few minutes, and when Fred seemed like she might
be about to get up and leave, he reached out, taking
her hand and keeping her there. “I want you to know
that I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For what happened, Fred.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t hurt me, Gunn. Not a
bit. You felt it comin’, the badness from Billy, and
you wouldn’t let yourself hurt me. *I* hurt you,
remember.”
“I told you to.”
“And I’m sorry-”
“Don’t feel sorry, Fred,” he instructed, forcing
himself to sit up so that he was on level with the
slender brunette. “You don’t need to feel sorry for
what you did tonight. I told you to do it, because I
knew that if you didn’t... Fred, I knew I would hurt
you.”
“Because of Billy.”
“Because of Billy or not, you still would have gotten
hurt. Fred, I’m bigger than you, and I’m stronger.”
“Well, duh.”
He smiled a tiny bit at that. “The point is, I would
have hurt you so bad tonight if you hadn’t done what
you did. That man killed his wife - the woman he
loved enough to marry - because of this guy. I don’t
want to think about what could have happened to you if
Wesley or I had... If you hadn’t been smart enough to
get yourself out of it.”
“You’re the one who gave me the chair leg to hit you
with. Not a lot of smarts there.”
“Two angry men who are a lot larger than you were
basically gonna come after you, and one of them had an
ax. Getting through that is brave, and it was smart.”
Fred chewed lightly on her lip. “I didn’t really feel
so brave,” she admitted, and Gunn sighed, reaching out
for the slender woman and pulling her into his arms.
She felt so tiny against him, so delicate. The
thought that his hands could have been raised to her
in violence if he had been given another minute -
another *minute* - tore at him, making his stomach
twist with fear and self-loathing.
“Sometimes that means you’re even braver. You’re
scared, but you do it anyway, and that makes it worth
even more. You did good tonight, Fred. You saved
yourself, and that’s the bravest, best thing you could
have done. Got it?”
“Got it. I’m still sorry I hurt you, though,” she
said, her words muffled slightly since he still held
her against his chest, and he closed his eyes, rocking
her a little.
“I’m not.”
The End
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