The Moons of Iego: The Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker Website

MISCELLANEOUS : PARALLEL COUPLES

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Couple: Wesley Wyndham-Price & Winifred "Fred" Burkle
From: Angel
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Like Anakin, Wesley began as a naive innocent who was eventually hardened by years of dark internal and external battles, betrayals, and being forced to make and bear difficult decisions. One thing that remained steady (though tempered by the pain from its long unrequitedness) was his feelings for fellow Angel Investigations team member Winifred Burkle, herself an intelligent, resourceful, idealistic and lovely woman.
Finding in each other a match for their own intellect, they strike up a friendship easily, forming a rapport unique among their team members. Wesley's feelings ignite quickly, but like Padmé for Anakin, for a long time Fred cares for him only as a friend, though gradually she did become aware of his feelings. His devotion at times borders on obsession, unable to completely stop thinking about her even when involved with another woman - even fantasizing that woman was Fred during sex - but to Fred he is always a gentleman.

Even in his darkest hours, when he and his former friends were at odds, he is willing to put aside the anger long enough to save her life when it's threatened. Even when the rest of the team's turned on him and he on them, she remains his strongest advocate.
His feelings for her are as quick a route to anger as Anakin's when his beloved's life is threatened. The instant Wesley's abusive father (or who he thinks is his father) threatens to shoot and kill her, Wesley empties his gun into him, though, like Anakin with the Tuskens, he's immediately repulsed by the act.
He is almost always gallant to her, reverent. He would never consciously lay a hand on her to harm her, and when the power of a demon forces his repressed anger to the surface and causes him to do just that, he is overcome by guilt and shame. Fred forgives him easily, knowing at his core Wesley is a good man. When Anakin's own uncontrolled anger causes him to harm Padmé, which he later believes to be the cause of her death, his own response is that of guilt and anguish that haunts him for the rest of his life. Padmé herself also forgives Anakin, using her last words to express the faith that good yet remains in him.
When Wesley speaks of Fred, one could almost hear Anakin saying the exact words about Padmé: eyes that make you feel like the only one in the room, graceful and full of life... a woman who he thinks about most of the time and represents what makes his world worth fighting for. And when he recognizes she does not feel that way about him, he is pained but accepts her choice. Over the next couple of years there are hints she is beginning to feel something stronger for him, but she never acts. (They do share one passionate kiss in season 4, but this seems to have been part of the memories that were wiped from most of the characters at the end of the season.) Having accepted that she will never see him that way, Wesley all but abandons his pursuit, until she drops the bombshell that she has been developing feelings for him, and the two finally embark on a relationship.
Their happiness is short-lived: soon after her revelation, infection by an ancient demon - Illyria - kills Fred, allowing it to take residence in her body. Upon her death Wesley immediately seeks deadly revenge on those he believes responsible, killing one of them and almost killing the other, who he'd long considered a friend. He almost kills the demon now in her body, but can't bring himself to because it still looks so much like and has the memories of the woman he loves. Fred is his great emotional weakness, as Anakin’s own feelings for his beloved were.
The death of Fred causes Wesley, always a relatively private person, to retreat even more sharply from the outside world; he is unable to move on from it. He spends time with Illyria, helping adjust to her new world perhaps out of guilt and trying to atone for what happened to Fred, though he does admit the main reason is because Illyria still resembles Fred. At times she will even assume Fred's physical appearance and persona, which makes Wesley ill; he begs her not to do it again.
In the final battle of the series, Wesley is mortally injured, and Illyria comes to him in his final moments. She uses her shapeshifting abilities to assume the form of Fred one last time, allowing Wesley to die in the arms of the only thing that remains of his beloved in this world - as Anakin dies in the arms of Luke, the last living remnant of Padmé.

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