"Um, crumpets?" Lorne interrupted. "Can we angst later? After the Old Time Gospel Hour's rendition of Great Balls of Fire?"
Gunn shrugged and turned away. Wesley found his shotgun near one of the charred bodies. He pulled a long board out of the rubble and began dragging the body away from the others. Not all the parts followed.
"Ah, hell, what are you doing, Wes?" Gunn protested, looking ill.
"I'm breaking the circle. Better late than never, I suppose. I don't know that it will make much difference, but one shouldn't leave portals intact if one can help it." He clamped his jaw shut at the smell of the distintegrating, leaking body.
After a moment, Gunn found another board and went to the other side of the formation, pulling a body out of line over there. Several minutes later, the diagram was thoroughly disrupted.
"Now can we go?" Gunn said impatiently.
"Yes." Wesley paused, though, to pull a vial of holy water from his pocket and sprinkle it over the area. The bodies hissed where the drops fell. "It's the best we can do. I should have been faster," he muttered. "I should have seen--"
Gunn came over and nudged him. "Not your fault, Wes. We were all looking at it."
"Well, it's hardly the first time I've fucked up something important, now, is it." He pulled away and headed across the roof as fast as his own injuries would let him. "Aren't you in a hurry?"
"Yeah."
Lorne followed them to the elevators. "You two are off after Fred?" Wesley nodded. "Even though you don't know where she is." Gunn nodded. "Yeah. OK, while you two are looking for the yellow rose of Texas, I'm going to see if I can find Angel. And then I'm headed back to the hotel--if I can get there."
"Good idea," Wesley said. "Someone should check on Connor and Cordelia."
"Angel won't let anything happen to his boy," Gunn said. "I think we can leave them to him."
"You're right."
They parted ways on the street, Lorne hugging the side of the building as he worked his way to the alley in back where Angel would have landed.
Wesley and Gunn stared at the street. The fireballs were mostly burnt out before they hit the ground, but some small fires smouldered in cars and trash piles. Down here at street level screams could be heard, along with distant sirens.
"Looters'll be out," Gunn observed.
"And worse." Wesley pulled out a pistol and offered it to Gunn, who thought a moment then took it. "Which way?"
"There's this diner we go to, she loves their pancakes, she likes to go and think . . ."
Wesley studied the agonized look on the face of his former brother-in-arms. "She does love you, you know. That's why she came to me."
Gunn glared at him, then headed down the street, staying close to the buildings.
"She wanted revenge," Wesley continued, following, "and I asked her why you weren't with her. She said it wasn't in you, and that was one of the things she loved about you." Gunn stopped, his head bowed. "She knew you're not that cold. That's why she came to me. Because she knows I am."
He reached Gunn, and they stood in silence for a moment.
"I killed him, Wes," Gunn finally whispered. "I couldn't let her do that to herself. She wanted his death, one way or another, and I gave it to her. And now she can't stand to look at me."
Carefully Wesley put a hand on Gunn's shoulder. "I asked her to let me do it. She wouldn't let me. I should have insisted and spared you both. It could hardly matter to me, I'm already lost--"
Gunn whirled. "If you're lost it's because you want to be. Man, you just walked away, didn't even look back, didn't even say you were sorry--"
Wesley took two deliberate steps back. "I didn't say I was sorry? Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I believed the carefully orchestrated prophecy that I confirmed probably half a dozen times before I could bring myself to accept it. I'm sorry I believed the beaten and bloody woman who had a knife behind her back. I'm sorry I believed any of you might just possibly trust that I had a reason. I'm sorry I believed my friends would pause long enough to let me fucking *explain*! And yet I am probably the single most naive person in the entire city of Los Angeles, because I continue to believe in the things and people I shouldn't, and all I've done is be just exactly too late to stop the end of the world." He managed to catch himself, to fight back the tears that burned his throat. "I hope you find her and that she's all right."
He got barely three steps before a hand wrapped around his arm. "Let me go, Charles."
"Not again, Wes. Not again."
He managed not to break down until the arms pulled him in. He held Gunn just as tightly, and both were too busy with their own tears to comment on the other's.
"I can't do this alone, Wes," Gunn whispered. "Hell is falling on my city, and the people we love are out there in it. God knows what's gonna show up next. I'm not going to let the world end with you looking at me like you hate me."
"It would be easier if I did. But I don't. I can't."
They were both close to saying words that, while appropriate to say when the sky rains fire and the Horsemen the Apocalypse are climbing into the saddle, are not the best thing to say when you have to focus on the job and keep the distractions to a minimum. So they only looked at each other, letting what truths show that would in their eyes.
And then they put some distance between them, reminded themselves of the locations of their weapons, and went out to save the world or die trying.