Report and Accounts
Mr Suvarta's smile is freezing on Gunn's warm lips, but she's pleased him - or at very least, ensured she's not being sent to burn right now. Lilah only has right now. She knows what she's got for eternity, so that works fine for her. She's always made the most of what she's got, and then gone for more. A little thing like death's not going to change that.
Brown eyes narrow at her. "You have a Form Thirteen. Use it wisely. He's not expendable." He doesn't need to tell her just how expendable she is; she knows. If she didn't realise before she died - and, boy, did she know - what happened next made it abundantly clear. Gunn's hand waves as she hears, "Wake him." The next thing Lilah knows, the White Room's faded away and she and her naked mission are in the medical wing facing Fred.
"Oh my!"
"Oh mine." Lilah can't help the pun. No reason being dead means a girl has to lose her sense of humour along with her head. "If we can wake the poor boy up, that is. He needs your help." Head-games on Fred, and being able to use the 'massively sincere' voice on her, are merely optional extras. Lilah likes bonuses, and she's getting a few on this business trip.
The two women look down at the naked figure, then at each other and share a purely feminine moment of solidarity, before Lilah smirks at Fred - who remembers she's supposed to be better than Lilah, and the 'good girl'.
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Sometimes Fred hates being thought the 'good girl', when she lives with the guilt that 'good girls' don't kill their professors - even if they did send them to a hell far worse than mid-terms. Fred envies Lilah that she can look, and glory in her evil, while Fred's supposed to be the good dispassionate science nerd - answer girl with a test tube. The scientist in Fred can't wait to hook Lilah up to the machines and see what makes her walk, talk, and tempt Wes. Personal gratification and the great paper she'd get from cutting up Lilah - all in the name of science - Fred can't think of much she'd enjoy better.
In the meantime she has a new puzzle to solve, so she calls and her new minions come running, led by Knox. They prep the empty bed and lift the still unconscious figure into it, before running off for toys to test to see what they've got. Fred likes her new toys. Some of them are darker and scarier than she's come across before, but Fred is adaptable - she's had to be to survive, and she can't stop now.
She knows she's got darkness in her. Wesley and Gunn know she's got it in her, and that she's abundantly capable of doing what a gal's gotta do - whether it's to survive in a Hell dimension or to free her friends from a mind-controlling Power-that-was. Fred knows that Wes knows she has it, and was willing to pay the blood price on her soul - but he's still got both her and Lilah firmly locked in their 'Good' and 'Evil' boxes, and he thinks she defaults to 'Good'. Fred's not so sure sometimes. It's the very reason that she knows she and Wes will never get together; the man who's accepted his own darkness and made it serve his cause will always see her as the one that shouldn't do the same - not take that same corruption into herself. Well, that's one reason, the other is the woman - dead but animate thing - opposite her.
Fred asks Lilah, "Who is this poor man? Some information would be really helpful, you know, cos otherwise, stumblin' in the dark here, which is a never good thing. A gal could stub a toe, though the boots should help stop that from doing breaking a bone, but it could still do some real bad strain to the tendons."
Lilah stops the ramble with an Executive Summary. "Used to be a vampire with a soul. Now? You tell me. That's your job. I'm just looking after his interests." She does the Lilah shimmy/purr combo - slightly stiffly due to the neck issues - on the last word.
Lilah's got the figure Fred always wanted, and she's got the too knowing eyes to go with it. Fred hates being caught looking at the cute naked blond by those eyes. She's never had girl friends she could talk boys with. Girls like Fred write boys' papers for them, and talk about homework with the other smart girls in glasses, but the boys never look at them. Certainly not in Texas - home of the big hair girls. Fred wanted the boys to look at her, and they never did. The Freds of the world are always the 'you're such a good friend' to the hot boys like this one. Popular guys like him wouldn't look at her - they'd look at Cordelia, or Lilah, never her, and they still do. Sometimes she so wishes they'd look at her.
She misses having that from Charles, and it's one of the reasons Wes looking at her was so irresistible. She'd never really had that before Pylea, and she spent the five years there desperately trying not to be noticed, but so desperate to be loved and wanted, so not alone. After she came back, and put her head back on straightish, Charles and Wes' notice had been balm to her wounds. But men always go back to the Gwen and Lilah's of the world - they always want them. She's never enough. She's always tried so hard to be enough, smart enough for school, loving enough to her friends, street smart enough for Gunn and his world - so foreign to her own, and even the hell she survived but which broke part of her - and it's never enough.
When she thinks of Pylea, she wishes she still smoked pot; she'd give anything for it to dull that pain. It gave her the break she needed from her own too busy head back in school, and the pain of not being the popular girl. She wonders if she had a plate of brownies big enough she wouldn't keep seeing the portals - either of them, or live in dread of another opening up and swallowing her whole.
Lilah looks up from the motionless blond, as Knox hooks him up with monitors and scanning devices that look like something from a science fiction epic, and which have the unfortunate side-effect of covering up the more interesting areas of study. All business now, she asks, "So, that big brain of yours able to tell us what we've got, and when Sleeping Beauty's going to wake up?"
Fred glares, and mutters, "I'm working on it. It's not like it's not something that's never happened before in the whole history of vampires and the world. I need Wesley to tell me if there's anything in the prophecies that's not about Angel but another vampire with a soul - and is that really possible? And he's not here yet." She looks over to Knox, and says more loudly, "Can you go get someone to get him, coz I'm sorta thinking this is far more his field than mine, thanks." Before turning back to the patient without drawing breath, "And, heck, I don't know what I'm looking for."
Lilah smirks, "Other than the obvious?"
Fred blushes and buries herself in the safety of monitors, measures, and numbers. She doesn't deal with this sort of talk too well. She wishes she could, but she never did too well before Pylea, and since then she's been starved for a gal pal, and now she doesn't speak the language. She wishes she did; there's some things a guy can never understand. It's too complicated to talk about some things to Wes or Charles, and Angel's not even in the ball-park when it comes to talking about feelings; after all he couldn't even finish his sentences about Cordy when he set off to kill her. Fred misses Cordy; she almost met the gal pal bill for a while, but when she changed on her birthday she became more of a mom than a friend, and Fred so wanted a friend.
Cordy's in the adjoining bed, having tests run as part of the mission to try and bring her back.
Fred remembers the return of her friend pregnant and amnesiac. Angel's pain at that still makes her wince. Then the whole drama: the memory spell, Angel driven off balance by what they thought were hormonal mind games, the rain of fire, the beast, Angelus, Jasmine, even what came earlier. Wes blaming himself for Cordy taking on becoming part demon and the transformation going wrong, until finally she disappeared - with Angel blaming Wes for not finding the answers in his books. Charles too threatened by the signs of Wes's interest in her she hadn't seen, and her too caught up in having a hunky boyfriend to be a friend to Wes. She remembers everything, and she shudders.
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Lilah sees Fred shudder, and it tickles at the shudder fighting to get out of her, which self-betrayal she's only holding in by force of considerable willpower. It's not everyone who has to stand there next to the comatose figure of their own murderer. It's an interesting feeling. She knows Cordelia was under the influence of the opposition when she stabbed that thing into her throat. It doesn't matter. It's the same hands lying there like puddings, the same face, and for all the horrors she's done, seen, and experienced first hand, nothing stings like your own death, and nothing's more attractive than some payback. Lilah analyses her feelings. She loathes the visceral horror that stabs into her throat. She delights in the thought that Cordelia's in her power now. Change a few IV's, pull some plugs, creativity with scalpels - so many delicious means to pay-back, and so much time now to get it. The thoughts help.
So does another thought.
She's watched the science geek fitting his electrical toys to her shanshued vampire. She's looked at all the state of the art medical devices filling the room. She's going to be here for some time - as long as she can actually. Why shouldn't Lilah Morgan get something out of it for her? She can sell it to the Senior Partners as a necessary business expense, something she needs to achieve her mission, and there's a warm feeling filling her cool flesh - something she needs so she can have Wesley.
Lilah's not going back to Hell until she's had Wes.
And Lilah can't have Wes if her head's going to come off at an inopportune moment. She's got the authority to get anything she wants to get the job done. Some 'reinforcement' for her neck's easy and she wants it. The fact she's going to need it makes it an essential requisition, and the fact it'll give her something she'll enjoy is just another performance bonus.
She draws the returned Knox aside before he sticks more needles into the still motionless blond, and tells him what she needs done for her neck. His qualms about the expense and difficulties at doing it speedily are washed away with her mention of Form Thirteen. Lilah loves the way his face blanches as she mentions it. Knox almost breaks the hundred metres record running over to brief the medical team standing over an experimental heart procedure patient. They call an intern to sew up the victim, and one moves over with a portable scanner for her throat, while the others move over to the computers to work on solving Lilah's little problem. The sound of a flat line gives her a delicious frisson of delight as it confirms how important she is. She's always wanted to be important.
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Spike feels like he's drowned in blankets. He's numb, smothered, feels nothing, hears nothing, sees nothing from his body. His mind's racing with re-runs of everything that ever made him love Buffy, which he's trying to use to re-light the fire. He can't face whatever this is without it; she's been there for so long, he's lost without her. So he clings to the edited highlights of his love for her. Her face fighting Angelus with a sword a lifetime ago. Telling him she wouldn't forget when Glory trashed him. Her torn hands - so reminiscent of his own pains. Her trusting him with Joyce and the Bit always made his heart melt. Her eyes when she jumped his bones in that abandoned house. That stupid cow-hat, and her taking crap from the plebs to feed the Bit. Believing in him, and coming for him through that thing. Trusting him with taking out the chip. Being there with him. Those last few days getting closer. The words he'd have died to hear - and ultimately did.
None of it means a damn. It's gone. He doesn't love her anymore.
It's made his inner-self scream, rail, howl to the moon and God, and there's nothing. He's trapped inside his body, but inside he's still himself and he never gives up. This is no exception. But he's tried everything he ever loved about her and she's still burnt out of his heart. The love's melted away like old film stock, gone in the flames. He can't recapture her. She's gone.
He can't even lust after her. He's tried that. A little mental tour of his favourite photo shoots from over a century of every carnal delight known to man and vampire has confirmed that his inner Spike is still fully functional. Since love followed on from lust the first time round it was worth a try, and no-one has ever denied that he's a persistent bastard. Dancing with her little friends, with that ripe little body showing what she'd got. Tempting him with that succulent neck, then snogging him silly during their engagement. The things those muscles could do to him - no matter who was in the driving seat. Shagging like rabid weasels on her grave. Doing her at The Bronze, and again in the alley afterwards. Finally having her under the tree where he'd waited so patiently. Hours of keeping each other on the diamond corona of a pain/pleasure eclipse. Everything that used to have him hard enough to hammer in nails with his dick - and there's nothing.
He doesn't even want her anymore. This must be hell. He knows he's done really bad things, but the sarcastic bastard in him can't help but think it's a bit bloody unfair that a bloke saves the world and still ends up in the worst hell he can imagine.
He knows he can still love. The other memories of love are there. Mum, his little sister - taken before her time, Joyce; they're all safe and warm in his heart. He'd put that down to their being safely dead, but his feelings for Dru are still the same. The love for his dark princess remains. He knows their time's past. He knows he can't ever be with her, even if he can fight his way to the surface, but the part of him that will always love her still does. The logical side of his brain, which he's trying to use in the absence of the action he usually defaults to, wonders if that's because she's technically dead too.
So he looks to the living, to his Nibblet, and finds she's gone too. That restarts his screams.
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The lumbar puncture goes smoothly into the still unconscious patient. They've taken enough blood samples to feed a small army of vampires, and with the hair, skin and muscle samples they're all going through the best machines money and a lack of ethics can provide. Fred and her team will solve this puzzle if it kills them, and Lilah will if they don't.
Wes observes all of this, before stepping into the view of his engrossed-in-numbers-and-solving-the-mystery Fred, and his clearly-plotting-something Lilah.
He wishes he didn't love Lilah. He never expected to. He most certainly never wanted to. He'd never have started with her if he thought he'd ever care for the evil bitch. When he realised he did but she'd never change sides he broke up with her, and since she died he's never forgiven himself for it. It's odd really, death's supposed to be a release from the pain of loving someone you can't allow yourself to have. Yes, there's grieving, and pain, and regrets - so many regrets, so much wasted time, but there's an end; the loved one's gone and healing can begin. His loved one's standing there, still beautiful, still the only woman he's ever found that can both keep up with his brain and screw like a thousand dollar whore - and still dead.
He finds it ironic that Buffy's love for a dead man cost him the calling he'd been trained to since birth. Every Watcher fibre of his being never understood, or approved, of a slayer loving and having sex with a vampire. The whole concept of the living and the dead actually having sex made the ice-brain of the trained and bred Watcher shudder, and repress the far more pleasurable shiver of the man underneath. Getting to know Angel, sullying his own soul to get the mission done, finding the world far messier than the Watcher's Council training manuals ever portrayed; all of that meant he understood more of Angel and Buffy's predicament. But he still used to get a smile thinking of his little skit on it with Cordelia. He doesn't now. He understands only too well. He loves a dead woman, and he can't have her; it would be wrong, so very wrong.
And so much of him doesn't care that it is.
He wants her. He needs her. He hates that he only realised too late what she meant - no, means - to him. He loves her. He knows she's evil. He knows she's dead. He knows it's doomed. He knows she's not here long, that he's going to lose her again, and that she's not come back from hell unscathed. The Watcher in him can see that she's moving without all her usual feline grace, and he blames himself for that. He relives decapitating her nightly in his dreams. He's not sure he'll ever forgive being put through that; he'll certainly never forget. He can't forget the feeling of her around him and the taste of her skin. He needs that.
He knows he shouldn't have it. He knows that he should want to save her. He does want to save her. He tried to, after all. He knew that if he did destroy the contract that bound her he'd lose her. It nearly killed him to do it. Wes really doesn't want to lose her again. But he also really wants to save her from that contract. He knows it's impossible. He knows she made her choices of her own free will. He's absorbed tomes that tell him that his mission to save her is impossible, and why he shouldn't waste his time. He can't help it. He loves her; he wants to save her. If he saves her, maybe, just maybe he can save himself.
But looking at her, all he wants to do will damn him.
So Wesley puts on his cloak of knowledge, armour of duty, and rather wishes he had the helmet she gave him on him. He nods and plays the polite Englishman with a, "Fred, you called." And a more painful, "Lilah." Then he takes a look at the figure on the bed with wires and needles sticking on and out of him, does a double take, blinks a few times and says, "Spike?"
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Fred looks up at him. "That's his name? I thought that was the dog in Tom and Jerry."
Lilah smirks, "I always liked Tom."
Wes tries to ignore the urge to smile at the picture of a little Lilah cheering on the cat, and sticks to the job in question, telling Fred, "Yes, also known as William the Bloody."
Fred tucks a loose tendril of hair behind her ear and muses, "William? Like Prince William? That was so sad about his mom, but that's life, and death sorta, I guess. But it is a nice name, though maybe not the whole 'the Bloody' thing. Coz that's just kinda gross."
Wes can't help a small smile when Lilah interjects, "Could be worse. Could be called Liam."
Fred's still rambling when Gunn joins them, looking strangely taller than Wes is used to, but sounding like himself when he asks, "Yo, English, go on with the story."
So Wes does. When he gets to Spike being made by Drusilla Gunn exclaims loudly, "Not again! Coz Angel's family and us, always turns out so good."
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But when Gunn turns round and looks at Lilah she feels the knives slipping into her flesh. So she puts on her best courtroom manner and asks Fred about the test results.
Fred puts her head together with Knox for some time, talking some gibberish Lilah has a horrible feeling that Wes understands and actually is interested in. She's interested only in fulfilling her mission. Lilah's got a great mind, and she can write killer papers - which makes her smile at the thought of the real killer papers she has written - but she's only ever been interested in what those papers can do for her. The search for knowledge for its own sake's never been of appeal to her. It's pointless. All that matters is getting the goal accomplished. But for that she needs information, so she listens to the Twig lecture. Though
she could really do without the annoying gesturing and pushing up of the glasses.
"We've only got the preliminary tests run, and there's more we're doin', so this isn't anyplace close to a conclusion, 'cause we'd sorta need to have a full data set and the results through, the T-Statistics analysed and predictions tested out so they'd reach a ninety-five percent confidence interval. But right now I can sorta give you some real, real basic facts and a rough hypothesis, though I shouldn't really be drawing a hypothesis at this stage. 'Course, to have a
hypothesis you need a have thesis and an antithesis..."
Lilah's voice slices into the ramble, "Um... those facts, before those of you that are still alive, like die?"
Fred blushes, "Sorry. The facts. He has a pulse. He's breathing. His body temperature is 98.6."
Wes jumps in, "So he's human?"
Fred shakes her head. "That's what's causing us some problems, and why we're waiting for more results to come through. Not exactly. His bone mass is that of a vampire that's more than a century old, and the muscle fibres match that definition too." At the word 'definition' both women can't resist checking it out, before returning to the issues in question. "The interesting thing is that his immune system seems hyper-efficient and that his cells seem to be dividing with no errors. That's got huge implications for if he can age, or even die, and we think the healing factor may be the same as for a vampire."
Knox can't help but point out, "The commercial possibilities alone of that are huge, massive."
Lilah glares at the man pointing out the obvious in front of the newbies, and he shuts up.
Fred takes another look at her notes and continues, "There's limited checks we can do right now on his hearing and sense of smell, but the nose seems to have retained the extra receptors, and we think the ears are the same. We'll know more when he's conscious. Same with the eyesight."
"He needs glasses." Angel's voice made them all jump. "Not that Mr Vain'd ever admit it. He's taken my shanshu, hasn't he?"