Homepage: http://personal.sdf.bellsouth.net/sdf/j/k/jknuss01
 
 

"You don't pay me enough to do this," she said with disgust, wiping vampire dust off the shoulders of her French silk suit.

"Lilah. Honey... Everybody has to pull case duty sometime. Lindsay's got a gig. Besides...it'll help you keep your edge.

She looked daggers at Angel. " My edge is fine, thank you."

He swiped at a charcoal smudge on her porcelain beauty. "You've got some on your nose." She harrumphed at him, and stalked off. He watched as she picked her way daintily out of the alley behind the Los Angeles public Library, heading back around to fifth street. He trotted behind her, keeping her in sight.

She always did this, hurried up in order to wait. He could see her now, as he wound past the dumpster, leaning up against her car, tapping a foot impatiently.

He had the keys. She'd just have to wait a little longer.

She'd insisted he drive. She always did, when they were out together. Lilah held very modern, feminist political viewpoints, but culturally, she was an old-fashioned girl. She expected him to relay her order to the waiter at Diaghilev, and to pay for her at the movies. Currently, she was making him drive her about in the sissified girly car she'd convinced him buy for her last summer. A nice white Lexus convertible, with grey interiors.

"Again. What possible reason did you have for dragging me along on a routine seek and destroy? Am I to at least receive a rationale for my next exorbitant dry-cleaning bill?"

As if she ever paid them.

He clicked the door unlocked, and held it open for her. With a customary smirk, she slid into the seat. He shut the door behind her, and went round to the driver's side.

His smile grew wide. "Can't I just want to spend a little time with you?" he asked.

Again with the eye-rolling. "No." She laid her handbag across her lap and slid the shoulder strap seat belt into place. "What are you really up to, 'Grandad'?"

He sighed as the lexus wiggled out of its parking spot. He hated this damn car.

"I just wanted you for backup tonight. Besides, Lin had a gig."

She regarded him with suspicion. "Angel, if this was another half-assed attempt to get me to go to work on the dirtier end of the family business..." she let her voice trail off, before shaking her head softly and continuing. "You're wasting your time."

"Why is it so bad, what we do?" he asked her. "Why do you hate it so?"

"I don't. I just don't want to be part of it." She had on her lawyer-voice now, the one that said, "be calm, Angel, be reasonable, Angel,"

The one she used to get around him. Regularly.

Her voice was soothing. "I have enough to keep me occupied with the legal work at Angel Investigations. I don't feel the need to go out and smash heads among the peasants. Furthermore, I don't find it necessary to learn the finer arts of nose-breaking and interrogation techniques."

He allowed himself to enjoy the sound of her elegant bitching. No one could bitch quite like she could.

"Lilah," he began, "It's important you be able to defend yourself."

She was indignant. "I took self-defense courses. I will have you know I'm a black belt in tai kwan do."

He shook his head.

"I don't mean physically." He lowered his voice a little. "You've got to learn how to control your anger, how to manage your demon."

She wrinkled her little nose at him.

"I think I've adjusted admirably to this life, this lifestyle." She gave him a look, and he winced. There was guilt here, waiting to be tapped. She was what she was because of him, and because of Lindsay.

He pulled into the garage, and decided to be blunt. Lilah respected honesty, at least.

She reached for the car door, and he stopped her with a hand on her arm..

"Wait a second, honey." She turned big eyes upon him, question in her gaze. "What I'm getting at...What I mean..." He paused, putting the words together. "An ordinary vampire kills and destroys. It wreaks havok and terror. These things feed the bloodlust, they sate the demon."

She looked at him in confusion.

"The street work, the fighting that you shy away from... it's the way we feed the demon. It wants more than blood, it needs the violence as well. So we channel it into something constructive, something useful."

Her stare was blank. " What is your point?" she asked.

He shrugged. "We are worried about your dark side."

She broke into peals of laughter.

"What? What? Lilah, this is serious," he insisted. But she was gone now, laughing uncontrolled. The tears poured out of her eyes, and she gasped for air like a human. "Great. I open up, talk about my feelings...And you have a giggle fit. Go on, laugh it up. Let me know when you're finished."

Angel glared, as she choked and giggled. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting. Finally she regained control.

"I'm sorry. Really." The muscles around her mouth danced as she tried not to go off again. "But you are such a man sometimes." She opened the car door.

He opened his, and climbed out. He gave her a dirty look over the roof of the car. "What does that have to do with anything? I'm trying to"-

She cut him off as some of the amusement left her eyes. "Have you even listened to yourself?" she asked. "You're going on about sating the demon, about keeping your dark side in check." She shook her head. "You still don't get it. Two hundred years and you're still a pig."

He opened his mouth to correct her about his age, but the 'pig' comment stole his attention. "A pig?" He was irate.

She slammed her door. "You're not worried about Lindsay. He's your bar brawl buddy. But you have different expectations when it comes to me, don't you?"

He grimaced. "Lilah, I just want to find you some constructive ways to channel your natural aggression."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Because you think I'm dangerous? Why am I more dangerous than Lindsay?"

He opened his mouth, but again she interrupted. " Or is the female always the more dangerous of the species?"

An image of blonde curls and ice-blue eyes flitted across his mind. Darla.

"Yes. At least, in our case," he ran thick fingers through his wavy brown locks. "In your case in particular." His voice softened. "Honey, you're lethal because you're brilliant. It's not that I think you're going to wake up evil one day- It's not like that. But you don't...You don't..."

"I don't what, Angel? Get off on fistfighting and hand to hand? I don't like interrogating suspects or dispatching demons?" She gave a cynical and ugly laugh.

"I'm sorry. I just don't see those as admirable character traits."

He sighed. He should have let Lindsay discuss this with her. He handled her so much better, really. "It's not about that." He sighed, and tried again. "It's just...honey, I am seeing things in you. Things that worry me, make me afraid for you."

She adopted a seductive tone and manner. "What? Are you frightened now of my Eve-like wiles? Think I'm going to lead you and your 'golden' boy to wickedness?" she dropped the act and added icily, "I guess the two of you can have the big bed to yourselves tonight." She crossed her arms over her chest and set her jawline.

"If I have learned anything since you and Lindsay were made, it's that the past is always with me. I can't escape it. Just when I think I've moved on, it worms its way back into my life. And I've learned that the evil in us, it's not just from our demons...Lilah, the demon just wants to eat, to hunt and kill and feed. It's our human intelligence that sharpens that appetite and makes it into something more."

A glimmer in her eyes told him that she was listening to him, paying him attention. It was a novel experience, and he opted not to waste it.

"Angelus lives inside me, and who you were at Wolfram and Hart lives inside you. I know how it is, when you wake up from those dreams and you're shaking. When me and Lin can't help you. I know"-

"No," she stated. Her interruption was curt and cold, and intended to squelch this conversation entirely. Her entire body changed its expression, tightening up, adopting a more daunting pose.

"I don't think about it, Angel. And I forbid the two of you to either."

"Lilah, we need to get this out in the open, we need to discuss it."

Her voice was calm, reasonable. "No. We Don't. Please don't bring it up again."

She turned her back on him and headed into the hotel.

He caught up to her in the elevator. She pushed her back up against the rear wall, and set her eyes firmly on the numbers above the door as it climbed. One. Two. Three.

He pressed the button, and the lift stalled between floors. She turned angry eyes on him. "That was uncalled for."

He raised eyebrows at her. "Was it? I don't think so."

She looked away from him. He decided to take a different tack, and spoke softly. "Do you look like your mother?"

She looked back at him distrustfully. In a hesitant, suspicious tone, she made her answer. "Actually, most people say I look like my father," she said.

He smiled. "I look like my Grandfather on my Da's side." Then the smile melted slowly away. "But I take after my grandsire a lot."

The confusion was back in her eyes.

He shrugged. " The older I get, the more I realize how much like the Master I really am. It's a struggle every day, not to take it all for granted, not to get too comfy with my place in the world. The Master...His fatal flaw was pride. I inherited it from him."

She snorted. "Prideful, I can see that." She gave a sly smile. "Where'd you get your vanity then?"

He grinned wryly. "The same place you got yours, I expect." He watched as she bit her lips and uncertainty flitted across her face. "You're so like her, Lilah. I think we tend to forget how much of who we are is in the blood, and in the bloodline. But you have her wit, her cunning."

She spat the words at him as comprehension came. "I am nothing like your precious Darla." Her laughter in his ears sounded like the tinkling of breaking glass. "I saw her when she was a sniveling animal in a cage, covered in her own filth. I saw her when she was mad and dying." He smile grew even more bitter. "The bitch nearly killed me in her asinine stunt in Holland's wine cellar. No Angel. I'm nothing like your dam. You insult me by the implication."

He shook his head. "No. I don't. Lilah, my sire was the smartest woman I've ever met. Until Lindsay made you."
 

*************************************************************************

"Buffy, it's me. She's all right. She's beat up pretty badly, but she's all right. She wants to go to Sunnydale. I'm going to fly over with her tonight, and we'll spend the weekend in the house. I think she thinks it'll be comforting. Bein' able to go see your mum's grave, and all that. We're flying out again on Monday morning at nine a.m, so we'll be home then. Give you a call when we make the house. Kiss the kids for me, and tell 'em we'll be home on Monday."

She listened to it play back. Nothing new in it, no sliver of overlooked information in the tone of his voice, or the choice of his words. Thirty seconds on an answering machine were all she was entitled to now?

Buffy hit the playback button and listened to the message again.

Willow tiptoed softly into the room. "Buffy? Buffy, how is she?"

The blonde hit off the answering machine and bit back a caustic comment. She wasn't angry with Willow, it wasn't fair to vent on her right now.

"Spike says she's beat up pretty bad. They're going to Sunnydale to see mom's grave, and will stay there for the weekend. They should be home on Monday." She pushed a lock of sweaty hair back out of her eyes, and tried to reassure Willow with a smile. It failed. Willow's eyes were dark and shadowed, and her nose was a little red. Buffy patted the bed invitingly. "Come sit down with me for a minute," she asked.

The redhead sank onto the flowered bedspread, and lowered her face into her hands. Buffy thought maybe she was crying, but after a moment Willow raised up her head, and rubbed her fingers against her forehead.

"You okay?" Buffy asked. Willow nodded.

"Just an argument with Tara. We don't fight very often, but when we do- It's a doozy," she explained. Buffy noted with some concern the tightness around Willow's eyes, the obvious strain she was working under. Tentatively she reached out.

"You guys'll make it up. You always do." She squeezed Willow's hand affectionately. "You're the perfect couple- you hardly ever fight, you have loads in common. You're so cute together you make me heave- and hey, you wear the same dress size, so there can be much sharing of the wardrobe, and that's always a goodness."

But Willow just looked over at her with a terse smile, her eyes unnaturally old, and sad. Then she changed the subject. "I'm really sorry about Dawnie, Buffy."

The blonde shook her head. "I should have gone to get her, Willow. I mean, I know I can't leave the babies, but still"- she broke off with a sigh. " She's my sister, Willow. She's even more than that. She's like another one of my kids. It feels wrong to be here, while my husband and my baby sister are half a world away."

Willow sat up straighter. "Then why don't you go after them?" she asked quietly.

Buffy shook her head. "Wills is too small to be left. He still nurses every two hours. And Joycie would be freaked if both of us were gone." She suddenly reached back over to Will's hand, grabbing it. "Not that she doesn't love you guys to pieces, but still... she's just a baby, really."

Willow seemed to be thinking intensely. "I could probably do a little sleeping spell, something mild, to help the kids relax on the plane..." she began.

Buffy looked up. "Do you think it'd work? I mean, would be it safe for the baby?'

Willow fixed her with a disdainful look. "Buffy, I wouldn't risk hurting that sweet lil boy for all the world.'

Buffy shook her head. "You're right. Of course you wouldn't. I'm just being "-

" A mother," Willow interjected kindly, a sympathetic look in her eyes. "Look, I can have sleeping draughts ready in a couple of hours. You go ahead and make arrangements, I'll get started downstairs." She stood up and headed for the door, but Buffy stopped her.

"Willow? Will you come with? You and Tara?" she asked. "I think I might need a little bit of, erm.. moral support."

Willow smiled indulgently. "I'll go ask Tara if she feels up to it. But you can count on me, I will be right there with you."
 

***********************************************************************************