Final gift for maharet83
Title: When Hell Freezes Over
Author: palmaceae (50thousandtearz)
Pairing/Character: Lilah, Lilah/Wesley, Lilah/Lindsey
Word Count: 1,300 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five things Lilah never expected to happen in Hell.
Spoilers/Warnings: Home
Author's Note: This is even more disgustingly late than I promised. I sincerely apologize for the delay and hope you enjoy it anyways.
1.
The pearly gates weren’t pearly at all, but then again, Lilah had never expected there to be an actual gate in the first place. There was a huge line of people waiting in front of the gates, like the line at the Wolfram and Hart cafeteria on tuna casserole day, but she wasn’t used to standing in line - she hadn’t had to stand on one since the day she was promoted to the Special Projects Team.
She mentioned this to the angel patrolling the area and kicking unruly souls back into place. He didn’t get the point until she practically grabbed him by the lapels and started name-dropping the Senior Partners.
And that only got her three-quarters of the way through the line.
“I thought all of this had been sorted out previously,” she snapped at the young guy behind the desk. She did a double take, noting the jeans, t-shirt and Red Sox baseball cap.
“Aren’t you supposed to be some old hairy geezer?”
“We’ve upgraded,” Saint Peter stated as he consulted his laptop. “Gotta keep up with the times and all. Name?”
“Lilah Morgan.”
“Morgan, Morgan… ah here we go, Lilah Morgan. Aren’t you supposed to be some decrepit mean bitch?”
“Touché.”
“You’re going to be heading to Purgatory.”
“Purgatory?”
“Yeah, we actually need some administrative help… Manners said he’d lend you to us for a while. Man, the paperwork’s a bitch.”
“Ah.” Now it made sense. They would let her out of Hell to rot in Purgatory under a pile of demonic W-2 forms. Filing tax papers was torture enough, no matter what dimension it was in.
“Office 314159265358979323,” he informed her, passing her a keycard.
“Thanks.”
Saint Peter winked at her.
“I’ll have a break in another three months,” he said. “Wanna go out for coffee or something then?”
Lilah smiled.
“Sure.”
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Who would have guessed that Saint Peter was such a hottie?
2.
As she stood there, covered in a thick layer of frost with ice cementing her feet to the floor, Lilah sincerely regretted her last words to Gavin: “When Hell freezes over, you can spank me with a nail studded paddle while I call you Bossie and make you coffee, but til then, you’re my bitch, so go meet with the Hrosh demon.” Said demon had promptly disemboweled Gavin when the negotiations turn a wrong turn, which was exactly why she’d sent him instead of her.
He was so going to collect when she defrosted enough to get back to the office.
3.
One of the mind numbingly dull tasks they had assigned Lilah was reading and summarizing what had to be the most boring and ridiculous surveillance reports in the universe. Stuff that seriously read, “Oh eight hundred hours: Subject picks nose, wipes finger on jacket, exits car and shakes hands with lawyer.” Or, “Oh ten hundred hours: Subject spent approximately three hours playing ‘Solitaire’ on laptop before deciding to take a bathroom break.”
And then she actually had to file the damned things.
The first thing she had done was check if this was a joke, but apparently Wolfram and Hart was willing to spend a good chunk of money per year to ensure that no clients chose the pin striped shirt over the red one without them noticing.
She sorted through the pile of reports on her desk, tossing them randomly aside in an attempt to see if today, something of value had found its way to her desk.
And today something had. The last report in the pile was titled Wyndam-Pryce, Wesley.
If her heart hadn’t been a dried up hunk of meat that rattled around in her rib cage, it would have skipped a beat.
She opened the file and started to read about the last three weeks of Wesley’s life: Connor and Sahjhan, the smashed box of memories, Wesley’s subsequent depression. She studied transcripts of conversations that had taken place in supposedly secure areas, courtesy of the bugs placed before handing the company over to Angel. She skimmed through addresses of bars, transcripts of psych reports and police records. She read and she read and she read and she read until the black letters began to blur together into a fuzzy gray mass and her nails punched through the creamy white paper.
He remembered her, and everything that had happened before. And he was paying dearly for it.
There was always a consequence for every action, but with the memory wipes, Lilah had been confident that Wesley would be able to skip over that nasty bit of karma. Being stalked by a murderous psycho you thought was your best friend, watching the world go to Hell, doing some rather despicable things in the name of expediency, and chopping off the head of your girlfriend tended to mess your shit up. Now he was getting hit with the guilt, self loathing and anger that had been lurking, suppressed - waiting to come out and play.
With Wesley’s memories wiped, the last living ember of their relationship had also disappeared, and somehow it had been easier to exist knowing that it was almost as if it had never happened, just a pleasant dream to fall back on during god awful coffee breaks. Nothing she could do about it. And this was the cruelest thing they could have done to her, to send this file over and sit back in their chairs, gleefully calculating her reaction to this news that reopened all the wounds and possibilities.
He remembered her, but for both of their sakes, Lilah sincerely wished that he didn’t.
4.
Lilah was condemned to spend eternity crammed in a tiny, smelly cubicle with a computer guaranteed to break down every thirty minutes, and coffee with the texture of sludge. Even worse, she had to share said office - with Lindsey McDonald. Supposedly they had made a good team when they were alive and their literally cutthroat competition had been fantastically snarky and entertaining for their bosses.
So when one day Lindsey turned to her and said he was tired of all the bullshit mind games they played with each, and considering how they were in Hell and nobody gave a damn about anybody, maybe they could cover each other’s backs… she was stunned, to say the least. Possibly grateful as well. On her own, she probably wouldn't have thought to team up with Lindsey of all people. Before Lindsey mentioned it, she would never have considered that it wasn’t such a bad idea to have him on her side - someone that she could complain to when it got too tough to bear by herself, who stood up for her at meetings, brought her lunch, nodded as she cursed the Powers That Be and added a few creative ones of his own.
She would never have thought that when Lindsey tentatively reached across the desk and touched his lips to hers, that she would welcome it.
5.
One minute, she was slogging through a pile of work, and the next minute the Senior Partners had personally called her on her extension to inform her of her new assignment. She was to report to their version of the White Room, so she could be transferred back to Earth on temporary assignment to present Angel with Wolfram and Hart, Los Angeles and try to corrupt as many of his underlings as possible. All in all, an entirely attractive and valuable proposition.
They told her she’d be there for up to two weeks. But Lilah was nothing if not creative - how else had she gotten this far? - and once she was out of Hell, she was sure she could think of a couple of ways to keep it that way.
This could be her second chance.
Author: palmaceae (50thousandtearz)
Pairing/Character: Lilah, Lilah/Wesley, Lilah/Lindsey
Word Count: 1,300 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Five things Lilah never expected to happen in Hell.
Spoilers/Warnings: Home
Author's Note: This is even more disgustingly late than I promised. I sincerely apologize for the delay and hope you enjoy it anyways.
1.
The pearly gates weren’t pearly at all, but then again, Lilah had never expected there to be an actual gate in the first place. There was a huge line of people waiting in front of the gates, like the line at the Wolfram and Hart cafeteria on tuna casserole day, but she wasn’t used to standing in line - she hadn’t had to stand on one since the day she was promoted to the Special Projects Team.
She mentioned this to the angel patrolling the area and kicking unruly souls back into place. He didn’t get the point until she practically grabbed him by the lapels and started name-dropping the Senior Partners.
And that only got her three-quarters of the way through the line.
“I thought all of this had been sorted out previously,” she snapped at the young guy behind the desk. She did a double take, noting the jeans, t-shirt and Red Sox baseball cap.
“Aren’t you supposed to be some old hairy geezer?”
“We’ve upgraded,” Saint Peter stated as he consulted his laptop. “Gotta keep up with the times and all. Name?”
“Lilah Morgan.”
“Morgan, Morgan… ah here we go, Lilah Morgan. Aren’t you supposed to be some decrepit mean bitch?”
“Touché.”
“You’re going to be heading to Purgatory.”
“Purgatory?”
“Yeah, we actually need some administrative help… Manners said he’d lend you to us for a while. Man, the paperwork’s a bitch.”
“Ah.” Now it made sense. They would let her out of Hell to rot in Purgatory under a pile of demonic W-2 forms. Filing tax papers was torture enough, no matter what dimension it was in.
“Office 314159265358979323,” he informed her, passing her a keycard.
“Thanks.”
Saint Peter winked at her.
“I’ll have a break in another three months,” he said. “Wanna go out for coffee or something then?”
Lilah smiled.
“Sure.”
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Who would have guessed that Saint Peter was such a hottie?
2.
As she stood there, covered in a thick layer of frost with ice cementing her feet to the floor, Lilah sincerely regretted her last words to Gavin: “When Hell freezes over, you can spank me with a nail studded paddle while I call you Bossie and make you coffee, but til then, you’re my bitch, so go meet with the Hrosh demon.” Said demon had promptly disemboweled Gavin when the negotiations turn a wrong turn, which was exactly why she’d sent him instead of her.
He was so going to collect when she defrosted enough to get back to the office.
3.
One of the mind numbingly dull tasks they had assigned Lilah was reading and summarizing what had to be the most boring and ridiculous surveillance reports in the universe. Stuff that seriously read, “Oh eight hundred hours: Subject picks nose, wipes finger on jacket, exits car and shakes hands with lawyer.” Or, “Oh ten hundred hours: Subject spent approximately three hours playing ‘Solitaire’ on laptop before deciding to take a bathroom break.”
And then she actually had to file the damned things.
The first thing she had done was check if this was a joke, but apparently Wolfram and Hart was willing to spend a good chunk of money per year to ensure that no clients chose the pin striped shirt over the red one without them noticing.
She sorted through the pile of reports on her desk, tossing them randomly aside in an attempt to see if today, something of value had found its way to her desk.
And today something had. The last report in the pile was titled Wyndam-Pryce, Wesley.
If her heart hadn’t been a dried up hunk of meat that rattled around in her rib cage, it would have skipped a beat.
She opened the file and started to read about the last three weeks of Wesley’s life: Connor and Sahjhan, the smashed box of memories, Wesley’s subsequent depression. She studied transcripts of conversations that had taken place in supposedly secure areas, courtesy of the bugs placed before handing the company over to Angel. She skimmed through addresses of bars, transcripts of psych reports and police records. She read and she read and she read and she read until the black letters began to blur together into a fuzzy gray mass and her nails punched through the creamy white paper.
He remembered her, and everything that had happened before. And he was paying dearly for it.
There was always a consequence for every action, but with the memory wipes, Lilah had been confident that Wesley would be able to skip over that nasty bit of karma. Being stalked by a murderous psycho you thought was your best friend, watching the world go to Hell, doing some rather despicable things in the name of expediency, and chopping off the head of your girlfriend tended to mess your shit up. Now he was getting hit with the guilt, self loathing and anger that had been lurking, suppressed - waiting to come out and play.
With Wesley’s memories wiped, the last living ember of their relationship had also disappeared, and somehow it had been easier to exist knowing that it was almost as if it had never happened, just a pleasant dream to fall back on during god awful coffee breaks. Nothing she could do about it. And this was the cruelest thing they could have done to her, to send this file over and sit back in their chairs, gleefully calculating her reaction to this news that reopened all the wounds and possibilities.
He remembered her, but for both of their sakes, Lilah sincerely wished that he didn’t.
4.
Lilah was condemned to spend eternity crammed in a tiny, smelly cubicle with a computer guaranteed to break down every thirty minutes, and coffee with the texture of sludge. Even worse, she had to share said office - with Lindsey McDonald. Supposedly they had made a good team when they were alive and their literally cutthroat competition had been fantastically snarky and entertaining for their bosses.
So when one day Lindsey turned to her and said he was tired of all the bullshit mind games they played with each, and considering how they were in Hell and nobody gave a damn about anybody, maybe they could cover each other’s backs… she was stunned, to say the least. Possibly grateful as well. On her own, she probably wouldn't have thought to team up with Lindsey of all people. Before Lindsey mentioned it, she would never have considered that it wasn’t such a bad idea to have him on her side - someone that she could complain to when it got too tough to bear by herself, who stood up for her at meetings, brought her lunch, nodded as she cursed the Powers That Be and added a few creative ones of his own.
She would never have thought that when Lindsey tentatively reached across the desk and touched his lips to hers, that she would welcome it.
5.
One minute, she was slogging through a pile of work, and the next minute the Senior Partners had personally called her on her extension to inform her of her new assignment. She was to report to their version of the White Room, so she could be transferred back to Earth on temporary assignment to present Angel with Wolfram and Hart, Los Angeles and try to corrupt as many of his underlings as possible. All in all, an entirely attractive and valuable proposition.
They told her she’d be there for up to two weeks. But Lilah was nothing if not creative - how else had she gotten this far? - and once she was out of Hell, she was sure she could think of a couple of ways to keep it that way.
This could be her second chance.