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TITLE: She’s No Eurydice
AUTHOR: Appomattoxco
FEEDBACK/EMAIL: Please let me know how you like this I’m very needy.
DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere you like just let me know.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not making any money off this or anything
else actually so don’t sue.
CHARACTERS: Spike, Lilah
RATING: FRT
SUMMARY: juliet42’s request for the Day they Never Met
Ficathon. AU of early Season 5 of AtS.
Lilah, being very good at what she does, has negotiated her
way out of hell and into purgatory. When Spike is being dragged into hell by
Pavayne she snatches him away because she’s found a loophole in that pesky
contract of hers.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to JaneDavitt and Pinkdormouse
who beta’d and critiqued this. I’m an idiot when it comes to punctuation so the
deserve a lot of credit.
The way into kingdom of heaven might be through the eye of a
needle, but Lilah’s going to need a loophole to get out of hell.
She’s No Eurydice
Spike had started out in the fiery pit he’d expected hell
would be, and then it took a more personal turn. The dark hall looked like
bastard child of the Initiative and the Hellmouth. It was lined with unmarked
gray doors and the walls seemed whisper and shift. No light was visible under the doors, and no
sounds could be heard on the other side. For all he knew they were all bricked
over. He resisted the urge to find a corner to curl up in; he’d done more than
enough of that before he incinerated closing the Hellmouth. He felt the nearest
door to see if it was hot, and was about to turn the knob when the sound of a
throat clearing made him jump back like a highly strung Potential seeing her
first vampire.
“That’s not the way out of here, Spike.”
Spike turned to look right into a pair of cool gray eyes.
The brunette would’ve been beautiful in full light, but the shadowed grayness
of the place suited her. Dark hair or not, Hitchcock would’ve loved her; she
looked completely comfortable in hell.
Her relaxed manner inspired him to scrape together a little
of his own battered cool and say, “If you know so much about getting out of
here, why aren’t you gone? Are you the tour guide or something?”
“I’m sorry, how silly of me; you’re absolutely right. You go
ahead and go though that door, just give me a moment to get my earplugs; the
screaming tends to give me a headache.” She made a show of looking through her
purse.
“Now I’m really regretting my un-lifestyle choices. If I'd
known that you actually can take it with you, I might’ve tried to save
something.”
“You keep that sense of humor, William.”
“You’ve used two of my names now, and I can’t recall even
one of yours. Mind giving me one?” He eyed the scarf around her neck, trying to
remember if she was one of his victims.
“You can have both.
Lilah Morgan, I work for Wolfram & Hart.,” Lilah introduced herself
as if she were making a business contact at a company party. “We’ve never met
but I’m a big fan.”
Spike grinned wickedly. “Don’t tell me you wrote your thesis
on me?”
“Do I look like a Watcher to you? It’s your skill at
annoying Angel I admire, but that’s not why I’ve studied you. You’re my
loophole; if a redeemed soul finds me worthy, I can break my contract and get
back to the land of the living for another chance.” She nodded at the doors and
said, “We have to go through them, but the doors aren’t the way out of here;
you are, at least in my case. And if you get me out of here I’ll bring you with
me.”
“As my beloved would say, that makes the kind of sense
that’s not.”
“The Slayer talks like that?” Lilah asked incredulously.
“She hides a sharp intellect behind deliberate solecisms, bad puns and a
bubbly personality or well… at least the bad puns,” Spike admitted with a
grimace. “How ‘bout you start explaining
things in plain English.”
“Because someone who uses the words ‘deliberate solecisms’ in a sentence needs things explained in
plain English; your inner William is showing.” Lilah rolled her eyes and tried
a door. When the knob turned she moved on to the next without entering.
“I hate to disappoint a lady but you’ve got the wrong
vampire. I’m no poncy redeemed soul.” Spike didn’t like this one bit. It might
look like hell’s hallway was better than being roasted but something about the
place was stripping away his defenses. If he didn’t get out soon, he’d start
writing poetry about voices as cool and silky as the hair that whispers against
her neck. That was too bad; he started to look in his duster pockets for a pen
and scrap of paper. When his hand found the pack of Marlboros, he stopped and
looked for his lighter. It wasn’t there.
“All part of the hell experience, Spike,” she said,
continuing to test doors while Spike followed her. “You get the cigarettes, but
no lighter and oddly enough, they seem to like honesty. Who would’ve guessed
it? I suppose it’s because the truth tends to hurt more.”
The hall was getting darker and warmer with each step. The
walls seemed to be shifting and crowding in on each other more. “Decide on a
door already, duchess.” Spike didn’t need to breathe, but he always hated it
when he felt like he didn’t have room to do so.
Lilah moved as far to the side as she could in the close
quarters and said, “Here, you try this one. If it doesn’t open, it’s the one we
want, so kick it in. I’m counting on you to get me out. Just keep kicking the
doors down, and don’t leave me.” Then Lilah very literally faded into the
woodwork.
Spike had the feeling that this wasn’t going to end well but
he didn’t have a lot of choices. Well, technically there were a lot of doors to
choose from, but they all looked the same. He wasn’t fond of taking orders but
he was even less fond of standing around doing nothing. Besides, she said she
was counting on him, so he kicked the door in and hoped that it wasn’t sunny on
the other side.
It turned out to be dimly lit, but not at all hellish. In fact,
the smell of ribs and deep fried onions had Spike thinking he might have ended
up in the opposite of hell.
“Welcome to the Patio Grill; are you ready to order?” the
waitress said, a false smile plastered on her familiar face.
“
“Are you ready to order, or can I can I get you something to
drink first?”
“What I want is you. Come to
“I want out, but not your way, Jimmy. It’s not good enough
just to get somewhere else-I want to get somewhere better.”
That’s me, always beneath the girl even when I’m not me,
Spike thought. He tried his best to focus his will, so he could control his
speech and movement but he couldn’t manage it. “So I’m not good enough for you
all of a sudden. You may be a straight A student but it’ll never get you what
you want. You’re still a part-time waitress living in a trailer park.”
“You’re wrong, Jimmy, I don’t think I’m too good for you- I
know it. And just so you know, the name is Lilah.”
This event was plucked from Lilah’s past not just to cause
her pain but also to get Spike to leave her here, he realized. Lilah might be
the kind of woman who had rejected him in the past but Spike didn’t like being
anyone’s puppet. Besides, the way that Lilah stood taller when she declared her
name reminded him of the Slayer and stirred his soul.
Spike grabbed Lilah’s arm and, feeling like he was trying to
run under water, he headed for a door marked ‘employees only’. An ‘employee’
tried to bar the way and, when Spike kept going the waiter, turned into an
impish-looking red demon. Spike was suddenly free of the underwater feel, and
he shifted into game face and gleefully broke the demon’s neck.
Lilah said, “That was too easy.”
~*~*~*~
What did she have to go and say that for? Now the gray
around him had a green institutional tint to it and he had a bad feeling he was
on the wrong side of the security glass of a prison. “You’ve got to get me out
of here, sis!” Just to make it more hellish he was a girl!
“I don’t have to do anything for you anymore; you’re 18,
Melanie,” Lilah said flatly.
He found himself forced to whine, “Is this some kind of
tough love?”
“Oh, please.”
“But you’ve got it made now. The firm you work for
practically runs the world and you set your mom up in that hospital.”
“Yes, one as far away from where I am as possible.”
Spike could almost hear a voice whispering the words in his
ear. The bitch just put her sick mother away in a home so that she could have a
career, and she left her sister to rot in jail. Just leave her here; she
deserves it. “I thought you cared about me.” The whine quavered at the end, and
he thought he’d be forced to cry.
“You’re the last person I’ll ever love, cookie.” The real
Melanie might have been convinced by the cold tone of Lilah’s voice, but Spike
wasn’t so sure. Something about her eyes made him think that maybe she was
separating herself from her family to keep them safe. The woman was no saint or
she wouldn’t be here, but she wasn’t as selfish as the puppet masters here
would like him to think.
“Don’t look me up when you get out of here,” Lilah said,
pulling Spike out of his thoughts.
Spike struggled with his will, and decided to stage a little
re-enactment of his own. He’d feel like a fool if it didn’t work but sometimes
a man had to take a leap of faith. When he laughed out loud at his own silent
joke, it broke the spell. “I won’t have
to; you’re coming with me. Move away from the window.” Lilah scooted away just
in time to avoid the broken glass, and took his hand as the headed out the door
once more.
~*~*~*~
“You should’ve left me.” They were in the hall again and
Lilah didn’t seem happy about it. In fact, she seemed to have an idea of what
was behind the next door and whatever it was, it wasn’t the exit.
“Thought you wanted out.”
“I did, I do. Look- I can see that you’ve built up sympathy
for me, and I don’t deserve it. I’m not who you think. I’ve done things.”
“Well, were you lying when you said we’d be able to get out
of here together?”
“No.”
“Then it’s settled: we get out together. All for one…unless
you got some plan to end the world when we get home, because I just went to a
lot of trouble to stop the last apocalypse.”
“Actually I was hoping I could keep Angel from turning
“Open the bloody door.”
This time Lilah looked nearly the same as she did in the
hall, and Spike was a different teenaged girl. Lilah appeared to doing the
right thing at first by giving
He felt every bit of
Once they were back in the hall Lilah said, “I really
thought that was where you’d leave me. I guess you’re convinced that I’m your
only way out now, huh?”
“No, but I’m fairly certain that I’m your way out.”
“That matters to you?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want Angel to upstage me. Any idea if ‘the
next leap will be the leap home’?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
~*~*~*~
Being Wesley had very little in common with being a teenaged
girl, and too much in common with Spike’s own past with the Slayer. Whoever was
in charge tried to make it look like a cut and dried case of Lilah trying to
seduce the good Watcher over to the dark side, but Spike knew better. It took both parties to twist love into
something this ugly. Wes could love Lilah if he let himself and it was plain to
Spike that Lilah loved Wesley.
The whole thing was embarrassing too- being someone else
while he shagged. And it was embarrassing to admit to being embarrassed. He was
a vampire for God’s sake-even with a soul he should be past blushing.
But somewhere in the middle of Wesley giving Lilah a speech
about choosing sides Spike metaphorically clicked his heels. He realized that
if he was indeed a redeemed soul with more than a century of blood on his hands
then Lilah was redeemable as well. As soon as he thought it, he and Lilah were
standing in front of a door marked exit.
Lilah said, “Thank you for your help, I’ll see you soon.”
“Wait! After all that trouble you’re not coming with me?”
“I’m not going to get my second chance wearing the same
body.”
“So you’ll be reincarnated,” Spike had expected Lilah to be
brought back to life as is, or as was. He never really thought of reincarnation
as a good deal in the afterlife. In his opinion, most people would only be
stuck making the same mistakes over and over.
“Well, going through puberty again isn’t going to be a bed
of roses for either of us, Dad, but it’s better than roasting in hell. Just
remember to get
“Black Thorn?” Spike didn’t even want to think about the
rest of it. If he thought about Lilah coming back as his daughter his head
might explode.
“You’ll understand when you need to …” She shocked him by
giving him a little peck on the cheek. Then Lilah whispered in his ear, “And
for the record, I think Joan’s a good middle name; don’t give her a hard time
over it.” Lilah faded away for the last time.
Trembling with joy and fear, Spike opened the door to the
world of the living.
