“Hello,” a friendly female voice answered the phone.

Fred’s face fell, and then she giggled nervously.  “Sorry,” she told the person on the other side of the line,  “I must’ve dialed the wrong number, I was looking for someone else.”

“Oh, don’t hang up,” the woman said in a cheery voice.  “This isn’t my room.  Are you looking for Charles?”

“No,” Fred gasped.  “I mean no.  I was looking for my sister.  I’m sorry.”  She hung up the phone and started to fall to the floor.

Rain streaked down the sides of the window and she just sat there watching it.  Not thinking, not moving, her mind and body were totally numb.  Images of all the happy times that they had started to flash through her mind and made tears come to her eyes.  Fred let the tears fall, she didn’t try to stop them, nor did she try to reason with herself, she knew what was going on.  It had been going on for a while, but she had tried to ignore it.

Over the last few weeks he had been distant and non-communicative.  He had missed their daily breakfast more than once and he was always distracted at work.  When she asked him if anything was wrong he would brush her off and tell her that he was fine.  He had even stopped kissing her.

So she tried to be extra good to him.  She would bring him food, try to make him laugh, or at the least smile, but he ignored her efforts.  Nothing she’d done seem to make anything better.  Fred had tried not to worry; she didn’t want to become one of those girlfriends.  Now though, now she knew that it was hopeless.

Fred could feel herself start to become sleepy, but she didn’t move to her bed.  She stayed huddled sitting on the windowsill.  This trip that he had taken was suppose to be good from them.  Some time apart to let them both think.  After he first left she was miserable and sulked about the hotel, and she kept doing so until Cordelia yelled at her to go upstairs or do something productive.  Fred had sighed and picked up a book and started to help Wesley but her mind kept wandering to Gunn and what he was doing.

The first night she did not want to call him, she waited for him to call her.  So she went outside to the atrium and looked up the sky.  It was a great comfort to her knowing that if he looked up right now at this very moment he would be seeing the same exact stars that she was seeing, and that reminded her of how much the loved each other.

Loved, she whimpered a little.  What was love anyway?  Why did the heart go out seeking for it only to get hurt in the end, because that is always what happened, it never failed to end in pain.  The pain of losing the one you loved to someone else, to death, to anything, it always happened.  So why keep going after it?

He hadn’t called the first night.  But she didn’t worry about it.  No, she was sure he would call the next morning and explain that his flight had been delayed forever and by the time he got in he was too tired to do anything but fall into the bed.  So she went to bed only to be woken up at three in the morning by the phone ringing.  Fred had snatched up quickly praying that it hadn’t woken anyone else in the hotel.  After they talked for a few brief minutes he hung up and she went back to sleep feeling a little strange.

Now she knew why that strange feeling had come to her.  Fred had thought his voice had sounded a little different and she could swear she had heard someone in the background, but she didn’t question him.  None of that mattered now, she had found out what was going on.  Slowly she lowered her head on her knees and started to fall asleep, hoping that tomorrow when she got up everything would hurt a little less.

Angel looked up at the stairway again and then back at Cordelia.  “She hasn’t come down all day,” he told her.  “I didn’t even hear her wake up this morning.”

“I’m not saying that there isn’t something wrong,” Cordy adjusted Connor in her arms.  “I am just saying that we shouldn’t be the ones bugging her about it.  When she wants to talk she will come down.”

“But she hasn’t eaten,” Angel reminded her.

Wesley sighed and stood up, “Fine I will go talk to her.  Honestly I don’t understand why you can’t just do this yourself Cordelia.”

“She likes you better,” she shouted after him.

He pretended to ignore her comment but smiled when he was no longer facing them.  Wesley walked quietly to her door and knocked softly on it.  There was no answer.  “Fred,” he called out.  Still nothing.  He tested the knob and found that it turned.  Slowly he opened the door, “Fred?”

Fred was awake but she had not moved from the windowsill.  She heard him come in and hoped that if she kept very still he would go away.  But he didn’t, instead he came closer.

“Fred,” Wesley started.  “Are you alright?”

At first she thought about not saying anything but she knew that would do no good.  “No,” she told him simply.  Fred kept her eyes trained on the rain outside.  “It is so gray.”

“They said it would be raining until late this afternoon,” he could tell she did not want to talk.  “Then it would be cloudily for the rest of the night.”

Turning her head Fred looked at him with wide eyes.  “There won’t be any sky tonight,” she asked him tentatively.

Wesley shook his head, “No I don’t suppose there will be.”

“Okay,” she said and looked back out her window.  “I’ll come down soon,” Fred’s voice was soft.

“Good,” Wesley smiled.  “We are thinking about getting some tacos.”

“Hmm,” Fred mused.  She listened to him slip out of the room.  Well there was thing that she could thank her heart for, and that was finding people who were such good friends to her.