Title: That thin line
Fandom: Angel the series
Rating: G
Length: 846 words
Characters/Pairings: Wesley/Lilah, Wesley/Fred, hints of Angel/Wesley
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Author notes: The initial idea for this fic goes back to a few weeks ago but I only found the motivation to fully write it out thanks to the inspiring Challenge #139: Hand at fan_flashworks. <3
Summary: Season 5 AU. Lilah's fingers rise to trace a scar that's not there any more.


Lilah thought she had said her goodbyes to Wesley when he had tried to burn her contract. A noble but ultimately naive act. Much like him, thinking about it.
Except, the Senior Partner, in their infinite sadism, dragged her back from one of their Hell dimensions to act as Liaison for the new LA management.
She thought the prospect of never seeing him again was bad enough. She was wrong. When he looks at her now, she can perceive only thinly veiled contempt and disgust, held together by a coat of competent professionalism. No hints of regret, or desire.
Lilah doesn't know why, but she keeps expecting to find something different in his eyes. But that's OK, she's a professional too, and a big girl besides, and it's not like what they had ever amounted to anything more than a spot of mutual comfort. She'll just have to get used to the new state of things.
After all, she does know what she signed up for.
Sometimes, she catches Angel's eyes and wonders if he does too. She doubts that.
It's weird, but in this little fish tank of happy, oblivious people, she finds herself sharing a sort of weird kinship with the vampire.

No one missed her while she was gone. Hell, her own mother was in no condition to recognize her even when Lilah was still properly alive.
There are days, like today, when Wesley is smiling at that doe-eyed twig of a girl, his collar shirt open to expose his pale, unblemished throat. Whatever memories Wesley held of the two of them, they vanished along with his scar.
Days when her fingers itch to touch her own throat and the scar Wesley bestowed her. Another of his noble but unnecessary measures.
There are days... that she just can't stand it.

She sees Wesley fall in love once again with the Burkle girl. Her belly tingles with something like shame, remembering that time she donned glasses and a fake southern accent for him.
“You think you know me?” he had asked. “Better than she ever will.” she had replied.
Now, she knows him better than he even knows himself.

It's a scarily demeaning fixation, focusing so much on a man who'll never want her back, but it's not like she has more pleasant things to do, not any more. If anything else, it's a distraction.

Then, there's no more Winifred Burkle, only a demon inhabiting what was the girl's body, now perverted and distorted, blue and hard as diamond.
Privately, Lilah smiles.
Seeing Wesley lose himself to mad-like grief brings her no pleasure. Yet something inside her still cries out in victory: See? I am the one still standing.
It's petty of her but, after all, she is an evil bitch.
The Senior Partners, on the other hand, are none too pleased about the recent developments and aren't afraid to make their displeasure known.

Then, Wesley smashes the Orlon Window.

After, he won't look at her for longer than a few moments. But when he does, his gaze lingers on her neck.

One day, Wesley comes to see her in her office.
Unshaven and sightly dishevelled, the guilt in eyes making a hole through the sorrow and the crazy.
“Something you want, lover?” she says, hiding behind a smirk and a jaunty jut of her hip.
He moves past her desk, until he is so near she can feel his breath on her skin. Slowly, he kisses her.
For a moment, time stops and they are back at his old apartment, exchanging long kisses over damp sheets.
In all the madness that was her work, sometimes he felt like the only real thing.
Lilah's fingers rise to trace a scar that's not there any more.
Suddenly, Wesley steps back. Like she had burned him.
“For old times' sake,” he says in a rough whisper before leaving.

She should have known. Should have realized. He was saying goodbye again.
She looks out of the windows of her office, at the apocalypse exploding over the streets of LA.
Angel and the others just went after the Circle of the Black Thorn. Took them out, one by one.
The Senior Partners are going to want her head for having lost her grip of the situation so badly.
Technically, she's already lost her head once. She forcefully diverts her mind from dwelling on which punishment they may reserve her now.
Instead, her mind goes to Wesley again. His thought has been the thin line that has kept her sanity in check during this last hellish year.
She thinks: that girl didn't get Wesley in the end.
Of course, neither did Lilah.
She realizes now, she hadn't really know Wesley as well as she had believed.
It has always been about Angel.
Angel taking Wesley's memories. Angel's actions bringing on Burkle's death. Yet, even now, when Angel says jump Wesley will only ask how high.
She laughs. If anyone, Wesley had always belonged to him.
Not that it matters now. There's not much hope left for any of them.