The Spaces Between Us
By Vanilla Tiger
AN: Written for Doyle, who requested Warren in the Wishverse working for Wolfram
and Hart. Thanks to Emony for the beta.
Feedback to fitchers_bird@yahoo.co.uk
Warren had woken up alone this morning, as was usual these days. For lack of anything keeping him in the apartment he shared with Katrina, he had gone in early to work. He should have been on top of the world. A beautiful girlfriend, a well-paid job at the top firm around; things used to be just perfect. He hadn't expected his life to change the way it had, but nothing had been the same since Sunnydale.
Sunnydale. He'd never been there (who would willingly move to run-down vamp-infested place like that?) and it had ruined his life. Strange how one tiny town had devastated half the West Coast. With the Master in control, the vampires had slowly but surely taken control, which had been great for Wolfram and Hart who no longer had to offer many benefits beyond that of not dying.
The way things were going in the outside world, Sunnydale had been the start of the end. More importantly to Warren, part of Katrina had been destroyed there. She had never told him the details of the assignment, or why the fuck the Senior Partners had thought it would be a good idea to send a team down there. She was the only one that had come back in one piece. Physically, that is.
Now, it seemed that she was never really there.
They hadn't slept together since Sunnydale. Warren was okay with that, just fine. He was perfectly willing to give her all the space she wanted until she got better. The problem was that she didn't seem to want anything anymore. She didn't seem to react to his words, his touch, to anything around her. When they had first met she had been so full of life. Compared to how she’d been back then, Katrina just seemed empty now.
He had hit her once, desperate to provoke some kind of reaction. She just stood there and took it. She showed no hurt, no anger, not even a flicker of self-defense. What had they done to her down there? Somehow they'd managed to hollow her out, take out the essential part of her that made her Katrina while her body still moved about. She wasn't living, just functioning.
His thoughts were interrupted by a hand waving across his face. It was Knox, his self-appointed guardian angel. On any other day Warren would have marveled at his chutzpah, considering his previous attempts to hit on Katrina, but he didn't have the energy to care anymore.
"Still moping?" he asked with a disbelieving smirk. "Get your ass into gear. Today's the day."
***
Katrina came in late that day. Her unhurried manner suggested that she barely even was aware of this fact. Without a word of greeting to anyone, least of all Warren, she began to pack her things.
They hadn't always worked side by side, but that's when their best work occurred. They had worked well together before Sunnydale. The teasing and taunts that counted as foreplay between them had ended up tripling their productivity. Warren flicked through a folder containing their various designs, smiling as he remembered. They competed over everything, from warring over who could finish standard tests first to which one of them could design the deadliest weapons. Doomsday Devices, she had called them, laughing. You could blow up a planet with one of these things; decimate the population of any given area. Not they ever would, of course, it was enough to know that they could.
Now she barely seemed to notice his presence. "I've finally been reassigned," she told him coolly. "I'll be working for some time with Ancient Relics."
He'd known this had been coming. Knox's plan depended on it. Still, that didn't stop a wild, crazy notion from taking over his brain. He could stop her, Warren thought, stop all of this right now. He could plead with her to stay and maybe she would respond for once and be his girl again, just for a moment. He wouldn't need to go to such extremes just to get a semblance of what she used to be.
"Trina, don't!" The words burst out of him as he grabbed her arm. Don't go. Don't make me do this. "Please." Come back to me, to how they used to be.
Once upon a time this behavior would have enraged her. Her eyes would have flashed fire as she pushed him away, yelling obscenities, on one occasion even hurling petri dishes in his direction. She hated the idea of anyone controlling, laying claim to her body. Her body was a gift, and she gave generously but only if she wished. Today, however, she just brushed him away. Her voice sounded almost bored as she said, "I've got to go, okay?"
As she walked away, Warren stood helplessly watching, and almost didn't notice Knox coming up behind him.
"Nice work," said Knox. "I'd almost believe that you didn't want the plan to go through."
"This will help her, right?" Warren's voice was steady without a trace of the doubts he felt. They'd discussed the plan a thousand times before. There was no room left for uncertainties now, no way to change what had been set in motion.
Placing his hand on Warren's shoulder, Knox leaned in close. "You told me yourself that she's just a shell of who she was. Think of her beauty, her grace. She was born to be raised up in this way. What better way to fill her emptiness than with the power of a God? It'll be perfect."
"Perfect, yeah." April had been perfect, until he'd met Katrina. Then again, she'd served her purpose in a different way – attracting the attention of a Wolfram and Hart scout down to Dutton U, setting off a chain of events that ended up with both him and Katrina on a career path that severely lessened their chances of becoming vampire bait. There were few humans in LA, hell in all California without some links to the near all-powerful law firm. Few humans with anything that could be called a life, at any rate.
Perfect had its price, Warren knew that. But there was nothing he wouldn't do to get Katrina back.
***
The Medical Science department had kicked him out. He'd played the part of the obsessive boyfriend to perfection. He'd screeched and harangued them for not finding Katrina a cure until two rather burly demons had lifted him bodily out of there and thrown him back in his own section of the lab.
He hadn't minded staying there. They had their own still, after all, and then there was always the ethanol.
God, her face! He'd been by her side for some time, pleading with her to come through this, hating himself inside, hoping desperately what he had done would bring her back. It had worked in a way. The anger with which she had reacted to the revelation of her upcoming death, that was the old Katrina, full of fire and fury.
When she saw Warren sitting by her bed, she had begged for him to help her. In a way that was worse than the cold emptiness of before. She never begged. She teased and cajoled and wheedled her way to what she wanted, and Warren had never been able to deny her a thing. Even when he tried to imagine what had happened in Sunnydale, the image of her begging was one that had never come to him.
This was all for the best though. He had to cling to that thought.
***
Slumped over various bottles in the same spot was just where Knox found him several hours later.
He grabbed Warren's shoulder and rocked him to consciousness. "We did it! We brought back Illyria!”
Warren reluctantly opened his eyes to the light of the lab that was bright enough to pierce his brain. Slowly he turned around to see what appeared to be Katrina, but covered in a frozen blue glaze and tight red leather. "My Qwa'ha Xahn tells me that you aided him in my return."
"…Trina?" Warren was barely able to focus on the figure before him. It was her, she was back, and yet in some significant way she wasn't.
Illyria looked at Warren and his tear-stained face with scorn. "What was once Katrina has gone. Only her shell persists."
"No!" Warren cried out in shock. He reached out and pulled Illyria's head towards him, searching its eyes for the girl he loved. "Katrina, can you hear me? Are you in there somewhere?"
He was shaken off as lightly as dust. "All that was her has been destroyed. Why do you bother with this pointless display of emotion?" Illyria looked over at Knox briefly. "I have no time to waste here with this pathetic grieving fool. There are more important places for me to be. Meet me at Vahla ha'nesh, if you must follow me." With that it was gone.
Knox stared at where it had been, awe-struck. He didn't bother to look around as Warren spoke to him. "I thought… you said it would fix her. She was supposed to get better this way, damn you!"
Knox shrugged. "What can I say? I did what I had to for my God." His face took on a rapturous expression. "No one else would have been worthy. Really you should be thanking me."
Thanking him. Yes. It was all down to Knox. He had been the one, coming up a previous time to a drunk and despondent Warren, who had gone into raptures over Katrina's past glory. That was when Warren had been brought in his plan, desperate men willing to do whatever was necessary to resurrect the one they loved beyond all reason.
Only Illyria was here, and Katrina was lost forever. It hardly seemed fair. Knox had everything he ever wanted now, and Warren was alone. It just wasn't right, and it seemed to Warren that it just couldn't be coincidence that he realized this while sitting next to all his research. All his weapons research. It seemed like a sign. He felt suddenly sober and filled with a manic energy.
It seemed entirely too easy for Warren to get his hands on a fairly large and heavy bottle that once been filled with whiskey. Knox was too busy raving over the glory of his God to notice anything that Warren was doing, not until Warren hit him over the head anyway.
The bottle shattered before causing Knox too much damage, so Warren looked around and picked up the nearby fire extinguisher instead.
"Jesus!" Knox cowered back, futilely attempting to protect his hands with his face. "Warren, man, I thought we were buddies."
None of this registered with Warren. Over and over again he hit Knox in the face, on his back, wherever he could reach. He dodged any attempts at retaliation mechanically, his brain overloaded with images of Katrina's pleading face.
At some point Knox stopped fighting back, stopped pleading for his life, stopped breathing, but Warren barely noticed. Finally he stopped, exhausted, and stared down at what he had done.
It didn't make him feel better, but it didn't hurt either.
***
"My temple is in ruins." Illyria stepped over Knox's battered corpse, hardly seeming to notice that its Qwa'ha Xahn lay dead at its feet.
Warren had sat alone in the lab for some time after Illyria had left, figuring what would happen next. There was nothing left for him now. The only girl he could ever love had been utterly destroyed, and as soon as the Senior Partners worked out just who had brought Illyria back they'd take his head. It wouldn't take too long. They had a way of finding out everything that went on. Knox's murder would have been passed over by itself, but once everything was put together… These thoughts continued to preoccupy him too much for him to pay much attention to the complaints of a recently resurrected Old One.
"You brought back me here. Back to a world where all that was mine is lost. A world overrun by the filth of humanity."
Nevertheless something got through, and he began to pay attention. A new plan emerged as Warren looked at what had once been his girlfriend. It stood just where Katrina had, all those times, working their joint projects, laughing at the distant concept of destroying humanity. There was nothing left for him here, after all.
Illyria spoke on. "If I had my army, I would rid this place of all the humans and half-breeds that infest it like insects."
Warren looked into its eyes, as his mouth bent into a cold smile. "I can
help you with that," he said.