WIP, part 2
Aug. 7th, 2002 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenOkay, here's the next two scenes for you crazy kids. Maybe more later!
Indian tonight, he thought, as his still-smelled-like-new SUV hove into view. Indian, and perhaps a little television. It'd be a good way to spend the evening.
***
This was boring.
Sure the view was different. He supposed he couldn't fault *that*. But one metal box for another wasn't what he'd call a *big* change in the grand scheme of things. Under the ocean, under the…
Oh come *on*.
Hyperion! Bingo, yes, we have a winner! Hyperion hotel, former home of a Thesulac demon, current home of broken furniture, Angel Investigations, and one really annoyed vampire. He was currently, his own preferences to the contrary, being held prisoner in the basement of the Hyperion hotel.
Like he said. Bor-ring.
Time was easier to count though. He wasn't near any handy windows, but he could listen and hear the pounding of feet upstairs. Or at least the pounding of *one* set of feet, and the tripping patter of another one that hardly seemed to touch the ground.
Had they gotten a demon on the payroll?
Sort of…. Lorne! Right. Pylean-demon-thing. *Not* a foot-patterer. Big guy. Read auras. Currently…. ha! In Las Vegas!
Well good for him. Great gambling there, and quite a few nice brothels if you knew where to ask. Boy if there was one thing that could beat the fuck-me-now heat of the desert, it was legalized prostitution.
So, not a demon. Human then.
He listened to the movement of Mr. Poundy Feet and Friend and figured out time was passing. Couple of days, maybe. Of course it was hard for him to tell what with being *unconscious* for at least a day and all.
Really - was that any way to treat a guest?
The whole cage thing too - seriously declasse. In his day he never believed in cages. Oh yeah, sure, tried them out a few times. Who wouldn't? But in the end people responded better to being locked inside of rooms or steamer trunks, depending on your need for them. Cages were big and heavy. And *ugly*. Christ - place looked like a *dungeon* now. Hardly Better Homes And Gardens.
He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the flat metal plate that covered his home. He then shifted uncomfortably because, thank you *very much*, nobody had thought to put two and two together and figure that a guy who'd been trapped under *salt water* for *months* could maybe use a change of God damned clothing. *Nooo*. Let's just shove him in the cage as-is. Don't worry about the big, scary vampire waking up in dry, scratchy cloth. Not like he has *hours* to spend thinking of ways to get revenge for that.
Plus he'd kinda liked the pants. Probably not salvagable, he knew, but still - couldn't hurt to save a label, get the designer and the inseam. Too late now.
He kept staring up. He didn't blink. Didn't have to, plus he knew that bugged people.
A door opened.
"Angel? I brought you some lunch."
Nice try, but traffic outside told him it was closer to evening.
Over the top of his head he saw the girl. Upside-down to him, but still recognizable.
She held up a bag of blood. "I thought about heating it up but then I thought you might not have recovered from being so cold and I didn't know if your internal temperature would - "
Blah, blah, blah. Know what makes a good lunch? Humans. How 'bout popping a vein, sweetheart? You're still standing, I obviously didn't drain it *all* out of you. If you can walk and talk you can cough up a pint. Rules of the road.
" - down here, and it's *not* that we don't trust you but -"
Nobody should laugh like that. A laugh that made *you* feel like a wet cat was just wrong.
" - *any day* now and I've been researching ways to safeguard the hotel, you know, like the cage? So that way you can - "
The thing about whatshername - Fred - was that it was like talking to a used condom. Sure it'd had potential once, but as soon as somebody left his imprint on it it was pretty much a waste of time for everyone else. Which, come to think of it, was the annoying thing about *anybody* who had their brains snapped by life. It was all messy, and amateur, and *pointless*. No *art*.
" - talking to Charles and - "
Who? Charles…. Charles…. Boy wasn't *that* one of those names that just lost all meaning once you said it a few times? Charles…
Oh, right. *Gunn*.
" - no fun being in a cage and all and I'm real sorry about the alarm but better safe than sorry, right? Or I guess that's sorry *and* safe, but - "
Alarm - funny word for "thing that kicks the shit out of you if you try to leave". He'd tried breaking the bars twice, got his balls pretty much zapped back into his ribcage for the trouble and had stopped trying to get out since.
At least - trying *that* way.
It was mechanical. He didn't know from mechanical. Side benefit of a hundred years of being a slacker. There was a whole age of electricity that had passed him by.
He figured he had plenty of time to catch up now.
" - gonna talk to Wesley - "
Weird. Wesley. *Wesley*. Wes… ley….
It was like waking up from a dream you couldn't really remember but *damn* if looking at spoons didn't make you feel all funny.
Wesley….
Watcher - no. Eyeglasses - no. Letter W? No… not really. Wesley, Wesley….
There - no. Damn. Wesley… W… white! White!
Pillow!
" - get him to help and…." Fred wound down to a close. Her face puckered. "Angel? Are you okay?"
He clutched his stomach, bent double with laughter.
"A-angel?"
Oh man. They were *never* gonna let him out of here if he didn't learn to control himself.
"I'll come back later."
***
Lilah had told him about Angel's disappearance in the middle of sex.
More accurately, near the *end* of sex.
He'd been deep inside of her, wet cunt wrapped tightly around him since neither one of them believed in so-called natural methods of protection.
Or, rather, he knew that a demonic bitch like her would use any method necessary to keep herself disease-free, and he himself set his store in the powders he took to keep illness from catching on to him.
They also had the wonderful side benefit of temporarily lowering his sperm count.
He trusted Lilah to take the Pill about as much as he trusted anything else.
Not that he'd cared much. Lilah, pregnant, then giving the child up for a promotion or parking space closer to the elevator, seemed like as fine an outcome to the current course of events as any. Although, Lilah being Lilah, she would undoubtedly find some surrogate mother to foist the actual nine months off on. Better that than have to buy a wardrobe with elastic waistbands in it.
So he'd thrust inside of her, feeling her grip him expertly, feeling the tightening *there* which indicated he was right at the moment, just on the edge, and all that was needed was one, tiny -
"They say Angel's gone," she told him, her lips rubbing against his ear. "Maybe dead. Current office pool says the kid did it."
Yes, yes - *God* yes! He came, gasping and thrusting and biting his lower lip and feeling his eyes wet. In his mind he replayed the image of Angel's body vanishing into dust, the first explosion timing itself perfectly with his own screaming ejaculation.
"Okay," Lilah said once he'd finished. "My turn."
News of Angel's disappearance matched the drabbles of information that Lilah deposited in front of him in her perpetual game of I-know-something-you-don't-oh-fuck-it-not-like-I've-got-company-loyalty-anyway. Cordy was gone, although no one knew where. Lorne had left for parts neon-colored, and the Groo reportedly followed him. Fred and Gunn had stayed at the hotel, which Wesley hadn't needed Lilah to inform him of.
Justine and Connor were whereabouts unknown. Angel had vanished and was quite possibly dead.
"You care at all about Sunnydale?" she'd asked him once, holding up a file folder with the city's name on it.
He hadn't, but reading the saga of Willlow's attempt to end the world had considerably brightened his day.
He thought about Lilah's revealations as he returned to his flat and pondered Gunn's words.
Angel. Back. Angelus again.
"You're home early. Here I was going to doll myself up and make a martini for you."
Wesley closed the door and didn't bother to lock it. Lilah had made herself keys anyway. He deposited his plastic bag of paratha and curry on the coffee table, then shuked his coat. "Hope you weren't expecting me to share?"
"You?" Lilah asked. She sat down on the couch, crossing her legs to reveal a faintly tanned expanse of thigh and a hint of white lace on her slip. "Share? Do you *know* that word?"
"Got my mail I see," Wesley said. He sat down on the couch as well - the distance of half of a person between them - and took out his food. He looked over at the liquor cabinet and decided a drink after eating would not be out of the realm of possibility.
"Told your landlord I was your sweetie," Lilah said, batting her eyes in a mock show of kitten-like flirtation. "Nothing interesting. All to 'occupant'. I don't know why I bother."
Because she persisted in the illusion that she was trying to pump him for information, Wesley knew, but he didn't say it aloud.
Instead he decided to match her fake show of normality. "And how *was* work, dear?"
She flicked a hand dismissively and sipped at her scotch. "Dull. Spent half the day trying to find a secretary that can use Access. Now *that's* evil. Rest of the time I met with new clients. One guy came in because he wanted a lawsuit against a bakery for putting the wrong ingredients into his wedding cake, like excuse *me* if Ma and Pa Kettle aren't going to have Peus worms on hand. Idiot."
Wesley frowned as he tore a piece of steaming hot bread apart. "Why would they give that sort of case to you?"
"Glass ceiling, Wes," she told him. "Ugly thing."
He personally thought it was rather short-sighted of Wolfram & Hart to ignore the evil inherent in women, but then again he didn't care overmuch how stupid the whole organization was.
"You?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied. He got up and went into the kitchen for a beer, cracking it open and enjoy a few long, warm swigs before he sat down again.
Lilah rolled her eyes. "Why am I not surprised? You know you could make something up one of these days, amuse me."
"All right then," Wesley said. "Angelus is back."
She laughed. "Funny. You know I don't like joking about things that make me do paperwork."
Wesley smirked behind his beer can, then resumed eating.
The passed the rest of his supper in silence. Small talk had never been their forte, and he had gotten all the information that he'd needed. She really didn't know that Angel was back.
*This magic and I don't even know what all thing.*
*Fred.*
Wesley pondered that, letting the pieces float about in his brain until they twisted and twirled and naturally came together.
Thing. Fred. Mechanical. Fred wasn't much of a spell caster, but she knew physics, and gadgets, and had retrofitted common appliances into fantasical things before, usually with a judicious and often far too lucky application of some item out of his magic cabinet.
They'd gotten Angel back through science.
Or, he thought, *mostly* science. His brain helpfully piped up with vaguely remembered articles about matter transferance, and even the Montauk Project, if one wanted to pick something which was comparatively local. Not that he personally cared for the science of it all, but he'd studied it in his spare time and had written papers about its relevance to one normally used to casting teleportation spells.
Not that he was strong enough to cast teleportation spells.
But if one *wanted* to teleport something, some kind of scientific method would be the way to do it, presuming one did not want Wolfram & Hart to be aware of it. Which one wouldn't, since one didn't want Wolfram & Hart to be aware of anything.
Angel was back. Back from *where*?
Part of him felt minor irritation at not questioning Gunn further. This was quickly followed by *another* part of him which demanded to know why he cared.
Still… knowledge was power.
"What *would* you do, if Angel was back?" Wesley asked Lilah. She'd finished her drink and was sitting back against the couch with her eyes partially closed. She wasn't that vulnerable to scotch, but the medication she self-prescribed sometimes made her so.
"You're really ruining my mood here, Wes," she said. She lifted her glass as though to drink from it, noticed that it was empty, and let it fall back into her lap again. "Why?"
"Just wondering if it would be the end of you," he lied, making a slight gesture to indicate that his implication was the end of their relationship.
Regardless, she missed the subtlety. "Ha. Hardly. Angel comes back to town I'm right on Special Projects again."
Wesley pondered that. "Would you be?"
Lilah opened her mouth in the affirmative, then closed it again. Her dark brows furrowed, then she stood up. "Bastards. I need another one."
Wesley stayed where he was, knowing she'd bring one to him out of habit. He thought about saying something farcical, like "But we all know he's really dead, *right*?" but found the whole effort to be beneath him. "They wouldn't put you back," he told her. He didn't need to explain that her failures with Angel, and her current round of failures with *him* made it so.
"Plenty of ways to get to the top," she told him. She came back and handed him a glass with vodka in it, clinking her tumbler against it before sitting back down again.
"Indeed," he said. He looked down into the glass then took a swallow of it. Angel. Back again. He shouldn't *want* to keep thinking about this.
Angel. Angelus. Prophecies.
*We need him on our side.*
Damn it.
Angel being dead had *ended* it. There'd been closure. Whatever his role in Angel's - blast! *Angel's* role in *his* life had been, it was over. No more. The stuff of maudlin "what if?" moments as he grew older and eventually made himself ready for his own grave. It was done. No questions, only conclusions.
Damn him to Hell for being alive again.
Damn him to Hell if he hadn't been dead at all in the first place.
Wesley finished off his drink and stood. He had no action to accompany that, so after a moment he picked up the remnants of his meal and crumpled them together, getting his fingers greasy but enjoying a sense of satisfaction when he dumped the lot of it into his wastepaper bin and heard it *thunk* at the bottom.
There. *That* was closure. Wash his hands of the whole, stupid, bloody -
He swallowed.
"Something on your mind?" Lilah asked. She perched herself by his small dining table.
"I want to see the girl," he said. God. What was the point of having free will if even *he* didn't pay any attention to it?
"Care to narrow that down for me, tiger?" she said, her unsmudged lips curling into a smile. "Because half the world is pretty much female."
"*The* girl," he told her. "The record keeper. I want to see her tomorrow."
Lilah shrugged. "Fine. Drive me into work in the morning."
"Good," Wesley said. He wiped his hands clean then retreated into the bedroom. It wasn't a question that she would follow.
Perhaps he'd even fuck her properly, if she kept her mouth shut.
Indian tonight, he thought, as his still-smelled-like-new SUV hove into view. Indian, and perhaps a little television. It'd be a good way to spend the evening.
***
This was boring.
Sure the view was different. He supposed he couldn't fault *that*. But one metal box for another wasn't what he'd call a *big* change in the grand scheme of things. Under the ocean, under the…
Oh come *on*.
Hyperion! Bingo, yes, we have a winner! Hyperion hotel, former home of a Thesulac demon, current home of broken furniture, Angel Investigations, and one really annoyed vampire. He was currently, his own preferences to the contrary, being held prisoner in the basement of the Hyperion hotel.
Like he said. Bor-ring.
Time was easier to count though. He wasn't near any handy windows, but he could listen and hear the pounding of feet upstairs. Or at least the pounding of *one* set of feet, and the tripping patter of another one that hardly seemed to touch the ground.
Had they gotten a demon on the payroll?
Sort of…. Lorne! Right. Pylean-demon-thing. *Not* a foot-patterer. Big guy. Read auras. Currently…. ha! In Las Vegas!
Well good for him. Great gambling there, and quite a few nice brothels if you knew where to ask. Boy if there was one thing that could beat the fuck-me-now heat of the desert, it was legalized prostitution.
So, not a demon. Human then.
He listened to the movement of Mr. Poundy Feet and Friend and figured out time was passing. Couple of days, maybe. Of course it was hard for him to tell what with being *unconscious* for at least a day and all.
Really - was that any way to treat a guest?
The whole cage thing too - seriously declasse. In his day he never believed in cages. Oh yeah, sure, tried them out a few times. Who wouldn't? But in the end people responded better to being locked inside of rooms or steamer trunks, depending on your need for them. Cages were big and heavy. And *ugly*. Christ - place looked like a *dungeon* now. Hardly Better Homes And Gardens.
He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the flat metal plate that covered his home. He then shifted uncomfortably because, thank you *very much*, nobody had thought to put two and two together and figure that a guy who'd been trapped under *salt water* for *months* could maybe use a change of God damned clothing. *Nooo*. Let's just shove him in the cage as-is. Don't worry about the big, scary vampire waking up in dry, scratchy cloth. Not like he has *hours* to spend thinking of ways to get revenge for that.
Plus he'd kinda liked the pants. Probably not salvagable, he knew, but still - couldn't hurt to save a label, get the designer and the inseam. Too late now.
He kept staring up. He didn't blink. Didn't have to, plus he knew that bugged people.
A door opened.
"Angel? I brought you some lunch."
Nice try, but traffic outside told him it was closer to evening.
Over the top of his head he saw the girl. Upside-down to him, but still recognizable.
She held up a bag of blood. "I thought about heating it up but then I thought you might not have recovered from being so cold and I didn't know if your internal temperature would - "
Blah, blah, blah. Know what makes a good lunch? Humans. How 'bout popping a vein, sweetheart? You're still standing, I obviously didn't drain it *all* out of you. If you can walk and talk you can cough up a pint. Rules of the road.
" - down here, and it's *not* that we don't trust you but -"
Nobody should laugh like that. A laugh that made *you* feel like a wet cat was just wrong.
" - *any day* now and I've been researching ways to safeguard the hotel, you know, like the cage? So that way you can - "
The thing about whatshername - Fred - was that it was like talking to a used condom. Sure it'd had potential once, but as soon as somebody left his imprint on it it was pretty much a waste of time for everyone else. Which, come to think of it, was the annoying thing about *anybody* who had their brains snapped by life. It was all messy, and amateur, and *pointless*. No *art*.
" - talking to Charles and - "
Who? Charles…. Charles…. Boy wasn't *that* one of those names that just lost all meaning once you said it a few times? Charles…
Oh, right. *Gunn*.
" - no fun being in a cage and all and I'm real sorry about the alarm but better safe than sorry, right? Or I guess that's sorry *and* safe, but - "
Alarm - funny word for "thing that kicks the shit out of you if you try to leave". He'd tried breaking the bars twice, got his balls pretty much zapped back into his ribcage for the trouble and had stopped trying to get out since.
At least - trying *that* way.
It was mechanical. He didn't know from mechanical. Side benefit of a hundred years of being a slacker. There was a whole age of electricity that had passed him by.
He figured he had plenty of time to catch up now.
" - gonna talk to Wesley - "
Weird. Wesley. *Wesley*. Wes… ley….
It was like waking up from a dream you couldn't really remember but *damn* if looking at spoons didn't make you feel all funny.
Wesley….
Watcher - no. Eyeglasses - no. Letter W? No… not really. Wesley, Wesley….
There - no. Damn. Wesley… W… white! White!
Pillow!
" - get him to help and…." Fred wound down to a close. Her face puckered. "Angel? Are you okay?"
He clutched his stomach, bent double with laughter.
"A-angel?"
Oh man. They were *never* gonna let him out of here if he didn't learn to control himself.
"I'll come back later."
***
Lilah had told him about Angel's disappearance in the middle of sex.
More accurately, near the *end* of sex.
He'd been deep inside of her, wet cunt wrapped tightly around him since neither one of them believed in so-called natural methods of protection.
Or, rather, he knew that a demonic bitch like her would use any method necessary to keep herself disease-free, and he himself set his store in the powders he took to keep illness from catching on to him.
They also had the wonderful side benefit of temporarily lowering his sperm count.
He trusted Lilah to take the Pill about as much as he trusted anything else.
Not that he'd cared much. Lilah, pregnant, then giving the child up for a promotion or parking space closer to the elevator, seemed like as fine an outcome to the current course of events as any. Although, Lilah being Lilah, she would undoubtedly find some surrogate mother to foist the actual nine months off on. Better that than have to buy a wardrobe with elastic waistbands in it.
So he'd thrust inside of her, feeling her grip him expertly, feeling the tightening *there* which indicated he was right at the moment, just on the edge, and all that was needed was one, tiny -
"They say Angel's gone," she told him, her lips rubbing against his ear. "Maybe dead. Current office pool says the kid did it."
Yes, yes - *God* yes! He came, gasping and thrusting and biting his lower lip and feeling his eyes wet. In his mind he replayed the image of Angel's body vanishing into dust, the first explosion timing itself perfectly with his own screaming ejaculation.
"Okay," Lilah said once he'd finished. "My turn."
News of Angel's disappearance matched the drabbles of information that Lilah deposited in front of him in her perpetual game of I-know-something-you-don't-oh-fuck-it-not-like-I've-got-company-loyalty-anyway. Cordy was gone, although no one knew where. Lorne had left for parts neon-colored, and the Groo reportedly followed him. Fred and Gunn had stayed at the hotel, which Wesley hadn't needed Lilah to inform him of.
Justine and Connor were whereabouts unknown. Angel had vanished and was quite possibly dead.
"You care at all about Sunnydale?" she'd asked him once, holding up a file folder with the city's name on it.
He hadn't, but reading the saga of Willlow's attempt to end the world had considerably brightened his day.
He thought about Lilah's revealations as he returned to his flat and pondered Gunn's words.
Angel. Back. Angelus again.
"You're home early. Here I was going to doll myself up and make a martini for you."
Wesley closed the door and didn't bother to lock it. Lilah had made herself keys anyway. He deposited his plastic bag of paratha and curry on the coffee table, then shuked his coat. "Hope you weren't expecting me to share?"
"You?" Lilah asked. She sat down on the couch, crossing her legs to reveal a faintly tanned expanse of thigh and a hint of white lace on her slip. "Share? Do you *know* that word?"
"Got my mail I see," Wesley said. He sat down on the couch as well - the distance of half of a person between them - and took out his food. He looked over at the liquor cabinet and decided a drink after eating would not be out of the realm of possibility.
"Told your landlord I was your sweetie," Lilah said, batting her eyes in a mock show of kitten-like flirtation. "Nothing interesting. All to 'occupant'. I don't know why I bother."
Because she persisted in the illusion that she was trying to pump him for information, Wesley knew, but he didn't say it aloud.
Instead he decided to match her fake show of normality. "And how *was* work, dear?"
She flicked a hand dismissively and sipped at her scotch. "Dull. Spent half the day trying to find a secretary that can use Access. Now *that's* evil. Rest of the time I met with new clients. One guy came in because he wanted a lawsuit against a bakery for putting the wrong ingredients into his wedding cake, like excuse *me* if Ma and Pa Kettle aren't going to have Peus worms on hand. Idiot."
Wesley frowned as he tore a piece of steaming hot bread apart. "Why would they give that sort of case to you?"
"Glass ceiling, Wes," she told him. "Ugly thing."
He personally thought it was rather short-sighted of Wolfram & Hart to ignore the evil inherent in women, but then again he didn't care overmuch how stupid the whole organization was.
"You?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied. He got up and went into the kitchen for a beer, cracking it open and enjoy a few long, warm swigs before he sat down again.
Lilah rolled her eyes. "Why am I not surprised? You know you could make something up one of these days, amuse me."
"All right then," Wesley said. "Angelus is back."
She laughed. "Funny. You know I don't like joking about things that make me do paperwork."
Wesley smirked behind his beer can, then resumed eating.
The passed the rest of his supper in silence. Small talk had never been their forte, and he had gotten all the information that he'd needed. She really didn't know that Angel was back.
*This magic and I don't even know what all thing.*
*Fred.*
Wesley pondered that, letting the pieces float about in his brain until they twisted and twirled and naturally came together.
Thing. Fred. Mechanical. Fred wasn't much of a spell caster, but she knew physics, and gadgets, and had retrofitted common appliances into fantasical things before, usually with a judicious and often far too lucky application of some item out of his magic cabinet.
They'd gotten Angel back through science.
Or, he thought, *mostly* science. His brain helpfully piped up with vaguely remembered articles about matter transferance, and even the Montauk Project, if one wanted to pick something which was comparatively local. Not that he personally cared for the science of it all, but he'd studied it in his spare time and had written papers about its relevance to one normally used to casting teleportation spells.
Not that he was strong enough to cast teleportation spells.
But if one *wanted* to teleport something, some kind of scientific method would be the way to do it, presuming one did not want Wolfram & Hart to be aware of it. Which one wouldn't, since one didn't want Wolfram & Hart to be aware of anything.
Angel was back. Back from *where*?
Part of him felt minor irritation at not questioning Gunn further. This was quickly followed by *another* part of him which demanded to know why he cared.
Still… knowledge was power.
"What *would* you do, if Angel was back?" Wesley asked Lilah. She'd finished her drink and was sitting back against the couch with her eyes partially closed. She wasn't that vulnerable to scotch, but the medication she self-prescribed sometimes made her so.
"You're really ruining my mood here, Wes," she said. She lifted her glass as though to drink from it, noticed that it was empty, and let it fall back into her lap again. "Why?"
"Just wondering if it would be the end of you," he lied, making a slight gesture to indicate that his implication was the end of their relationship.
Regardless, she missed the subtlety. "Ha. Hardly. Angel comes back to town I'm right on Special Projects again."
Wesley pondered that. "Would you be?"
Lilah opened her mouth in the affirmative, then closed it again. Her dark brows furrowed, then she stood up. "Bastards. I need another one."
Wesley stayed where he was, knowing she'd bring one to him out of habit. He thought about saying something farcical, like "But we all know he's really dead, *right*?" but found the whole effort to be beneath him. "They wouldn't put you back," he told her. He didn't need to explain that her failures with Angel, and her current round of failures with *him* made it so.
"Plenty of ways to get to the top," she told him. She came back and handed him a glass with vodka in it, clinking her tumbler against it before sitting back down again.
"Indeed," he said. He looked down into the glass then took a swallow of it. Angel. Back again. He shouldn't *want* to keep thinking about this.
Angel. Angelus. Prophecies.
*We need him on our side.*
Damn it.
Angel being dead had *ended* it. There'd been closure. Whatever his role in Angel's - blast! *Angel's* role in *his* life had been, it was over. No more. The stuff of maudlin "what if?" moments as he grew older and eventually made himself ready for his own grave. It was done. No questions, only conclusions.
Damn him to Hell for being alive again.
Damn him to Hell if he hadn't been dead at all in the first place.
Wesley finished off his drink and stood. He had no action to accompany that, so after a moment he picked up the remnants of his meal and crumpled them together, getting his fingers greasy but enjoying a sense of satisfaction when he dumped the lot of it into his wastepaper bin and heard it *thunk* at the bottom.
There. *That* was closure. Wash his hands of the whole, stupid, bloody -
He swallowed.
"Something on your mind?" Lilah asked. She perched herself by his small dining table.
"I want to see the girl," he said. God. What was the point of having free will if even *he* didn't pay any attention to it?
"Care to narrow that down for me, tiger?" she said, her unsmudged lips curling into a smile. "Because half the world is pretty much female."
"*The* girl," he told her. "The record keeper. I want to see her tomorrow."
Lilah shrugged. "Fine. Drive me into work in the morning."
"Good," Wesley said. He wiped his hands clean then retreated into the bedroom. It wasn't a question that she would follow.
Perhaps he'd even fuck her properly, if she kept her mouth shut.
