Reconstruction

See Chapter 1 for notes and disclaimer.


5.

The radio was a low hum in the background as Lilah sat stiffly, allowing Fred to peel off the bandaging on her face and examine the jigsaw of cut flesh underneath. Fred dabbed a clean cloth into the antiseptic appropriated from the motel and she cleaned the cuts gently, with concentration, her teeth sunk into her lower lip and small creases cascading down her forehead, racking up between her brows.

Lilah was grateful for the brandy sloshing around in her gut, warming her inside. She'd been cold since the night before, since the last drink had worn off.

The radio aired the President's speech again in the background, returned presently to strains of country music that rang a sad and plaintive sound through the night air.

"Am I hurting you?" Fred asked, pausing in her ministrations.

"Yes." Lilah's fingers stabbed all the harder into the mattress, and it was as well she'd remembered to take off the weapons harness before they did this, otherwise she would've killed the bed about fifteen times over by now. "Get on with it already."

They were both wearing towels, both damp from the shower. Lilah hadn't bothered to point out that Fred's was slipping, and Fred was too buried in concentration to realise a pink nipple peered over the fluffy towelling. Lilah focused on it as Fred's dabbing opened up something on her face that wept red and dripped to stain the white of her own towel.

"I'm sorry." And Fred was backing away, looking like she didn't know what to do with her hands. "I shouldn't do this. I'm so clumsy - and there are other recourses open to us now. I can get-"

"No," Lilah said with vehemence. It was enough that the Twig should see her like this. That fact, it was too late to help. She wasn't about to invite any others to partake of it. "I want you." She swallowed hard, and jerked her chin up to square her face back in readiness. The setting of her jaw made Angelus' masterwork sting like fuck. The pain forced her to relax the muscles again almost at once. "I want you to," she grated, somehow forcing down the howl battling for release from her throat.

But Fred didn't resume her unpleasant chore - not immediately. Instead, she crossed to the cheap dresser, caught up the bottle of brandy, and returned to hand it over.

"Thanks." Lilah knocked back enough to stop her shivering before she relinquished it. She glared as the Twig lingered over by the dresser. "Are you planning on finishing this today?"

"Y-yes. I'm sorry."

Crossing back to the edge of the bed, it finally came to Fred's attention that the towel had slipped. She awkwardly adjusted it, reddening. Lilah expelled air from her nose in a cross snort.

Damn it.

The motel was located some one-hundred-and-fifty or so miles down the trail from where they'd stopped to call in on the oracles. Its owner had greeted their arrival in the early hours of darkness with a shotgun, but upon being assured they were human (they chose not to draw attention to Spike) he had welcomed them, after a fashion. With a bark of inappropriate laughter at their explanation of where they'd travelled from and what they'd seen, and a brusque remark to the effect that he'd run this motel twenty years, his father twenty more before that, and he was damned if he was going to pick up and run and piss the business away because of some lousy apocalypse.

Because, outside of those areas worst hit, it seemed the world continued to turn almost as normal.

Almost.

There was no secret any more about the existence of magic or demons. Nor was it any secret that the events of the last few days were portents spelling a slow doom for the world. The President had made a speech on it. The hysterical authorities were working flat-out to try to calm public hysteria.

But still, the world turned. Businesses kept running, people went to work and to school, the economy somehow limped on (Garth had grumpily paid their motel bill by card, so it looked like American Express, at least, had weathered the apocalypse) and the greater chunk of society took the readjustment in its stride and continued as normal, if nobody could deny the fact that the sky above shone down on them a fiery red.

The army was mobilised, and just beginning to start the gruesome task of salvaging what they could from the areas worst hit. There was a move being made towards demon control by law enforcement agencies. The scientists of the world were trying to figure out what had made the climate go insane and how to stop it.

The voice on the radio station wormed its way into her concentration. "So tell us, Clifford. Have all of these phenomena really 'appeared overnight'? Or is it rather as the stronger factions claim, and much of this is due to the emergence of a vast underground population that has always existed on the fringe of human society?"

Cliff the demon answered with a casual Californian twang. "Oh, yeah, these things always existed, dude. You just didn't see them. This whole thing has been, like, a wake-up call for the demon population, you know?"

Fred finished applying clean, and somewhat less bulky and restrictive, bandaging to Lilah's face even as the radio presenter wound up with a, "Thanks for coming onto the show to enlighten us with your thoughts, Cliff," and the media-hungry demon, whom Lilah suspected wouldn't be long for the altered world once the novelty wore off, gave his own profuse thanks and lapped up the audience applause.

Lilah was thankful for the return of the country music.

"I guess it sucks to be you, huh?" she said to Fred with half-hearted venom, as the other woman cleared the medical gear away.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, there you thought you'd found some folks you could go do your thing with. You could get shot of me. Now it seems fucking destiny wants us in this together."

"I hadn't really thought about it." Fred's forehead creased, and she looked anywhere but towards Lilah. "I was more preoccupied with the part where they said there was a chance we could save the world."

"Oh, yeah. The part where we save the world. Well, hoo-rah," Lilah drawled.

"Don't." Fred hurled the remnant of the bandages back into their box.

"Still, you'll have to say goodbye to your little friends. Don't tell me you didn't want to stay with them. Lead your own merry band of men..."

Fred jerked and stiffened her bent poise as though every muscle inside her body had locked. "I'm not any kind of leader. The way they looked at me... I don't want to be relied upon. I don't want to be looked to. My skin crawls just thinking about it. I was insane. For five years, I was insane... and I don't want to be responsible for looking after those people, Lilah." Her voice was an odd mix of anger and relief.

Lilah, surprised, stopped, swallowed and re-evaluated before she squeezed a response from her croaky throat. "Well, they do have Sarah-Jane, not to mention crazy-souled-vampire protection. And, by the way, I'll never get over the sight of PsychoSusie Homemaker hugging Spike. Who'd have thunk it? Still, I hear tell there've been a few other people haven't done too bad out of that kind of protection in the past. Maybe there's a bright future out there for the Bleached Avenger after all. To that matter, why the hell didn't they land him with this job?"

"Because they wanted two of us." Fred looked up, finally. Her face was flat, and Lilah realised that, good-and-plenty or not, the Twig didn't want this. She'd been expecting to be handed an outside solution, some other Champion they could find and pass the mission on to. "One from each side. Nothing else would have worked. Can't you see that? This is chaos - nobody wins. I don't know what the Beast's and the First's agenda was, but it wasn't the same as that of Wolfram and Hart. You know that. And Angelus... Angelus is mad. Last time he was around he tried to destroy the world and himself in it. This wasn't all about good and evil. This was just about... I don't know, screwing over everything and spitting on the pieces."

Fred walked across and flopped down on the bed. On the bed, lay and stared up at the ceiling, looking drained. "We should go down and watch the television with everyone else."

Lilah leaned back and wrinkled her nose. "Or not."

"Or not."

The minutes drifted past.

"You heard the last thing the oracles told us?" Lilah asked finally. "When they sent us back. Something about... how there'd be signs? ...about knowing what to do?"

"They said we'd know what to do when the time came. And that we'd have help when we needed it. That we had to find... something."

"'Something' having of course the potential to be fucking anything, thanks to the PTB really vaguing that one up for us," Lilah said. "We don't even know where to start looking." She let herself relax completely, and rolled onto her side, next to Fred.

They lay opposing each other on top of the covers, towels extra. The Evil-Lawyer-Bitch and the Texas Twig. Another day it might have been almost funny.

"Spike knew," Fred said presently. "When he looked at us... he saw... something. He knew."

"Spike's off his fucking rocker."

Fred shrugged her shoulders, a small retreat in her face. The movement, lying down, made her whole body give a tiny jump, and Lilah felt the reverberations through the mattress.

"So we are doing this?" she asked. "You and me... we're really gonna...?"

"From where I'm standing," Lilah replied with abrupt enthusiasm. "I don't see any point in not." Impelled by alcohol and desperate whim, she rolled over and straddled the Twig.

"What the hell-?" The abrupt sullen tone and the flinch and the shifting of the skin-and-bones form beneath her reminded keenly of Wesley.

Lilah ignored the sting and the blurring of her eyes, and shifted her hips, rubbing her crotch into Fred's thigh. She rasped, "We could die tomorrow. I don't want the last touch I remember to be Angelus'. I don't want as many scars on the inside as he left me on the surface. Besides, we seem to be stuck with each other. Might as well make the most of it." She blinked her eyes, but she still couldn't see clearly. Wesley, Fred and Angelus blurred.

Her voice lowered to a growl as she crawled up Fred's body. When Fred moved her elbows to back away, the ends of the towel escaped her grasp. Lilah pinned them and prevented their reclaiming. Fred backed up further against the pillows, pretty much exactly where Lilah wanted her.

"Don't pretend you don't want this too," she hissed, gliding her fingernails down Fred's small breast, lowering her mouth to briefly savage a hard, cold little nipple with her tongue. Fred wriggled and let out a muffled noise. Lilah's other hand slid down, tracing the sharp body under hers from shoulder down to thigh, divesting it of the last annoying clutches of the towel on the way, negotiating the concertina edges of ribs and the soft shallow of what she supposed ought technically be called a stomach before sliding into the crease between Fred's pelvis and thigh and following it down.

Fred's thighs clamped shut, catching her fingers short. "If we're stuck with each other," she said, her voice a breathy gasp, "I really think... this is exactly what..." Lilah's fingers strained harder. "...nnnh... what we shouldn't do."

Lilah worked her lips against their captive breast, teasing and prodding the nipple with her tongue, closing her teeth to deliver the gentlest of nips.

A soft gasp and a surrendering from the body under her, and she gained entry. She explored soft, feebly protesting depths. Dizzy elation twisted her mouth almost to the point of ineffectiveness at the thought of having, at her fingertips, the power to make the Twig squirm.

And like Wesley, once the innocence and the reserve had been bypassed, Fred's responsiveness could almost be characterised vicious in its intensity. Lilah might be doing the work, but the needy body she played took as though it was the one in control, and made nothing of effort to give anything in return.

Lilah didn't want anything. She threw herself into the task with savage fervour, letting lose the coiled pressure of the last few days with a callous disregard for the comfort of her nominal partner. Fred's hips twisted and her leg crooked up and around, allowing, inviting - challenging. Her heel planted in Lilah's back, pressed hard enough into her bruised body to make her cry out. The cry twisted, and embraced Fred's own cry in the air. Lilah punished Fred with her fingers and her teeth, making her scream and buck, and damn but that had to hurt, but apparently it hurt good-

It wasn't then - it wasn't the moment after - the one after that-

Abruptly, though, Lilah's face was shoved into the sheets and she almost tumbled off the bed and onto the floor as Fred kicked away from her and bolted up the pillows, skinny knees bending so like violated innocence that Lilah would have laughed if she hadn't been distracted by the pain of her face. Fred scooted off the bed and away. She hung at a safe distance, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"No... I know why you want this." Her voice was harsh and accusing. "You just hate what it is we've been chosen to do so much that you'll taint it any way you can. Any way."

She sounded close to tears. Lilah was in too much pain to give a crap.

"You little bitch," she rasped, writhing on the sheets, hands stalled inches from the bandages covering her face, not daring to touch.

Fred's hurt fury collapsed. A squeak escaped her and she rushed forward, helping Lilah up. Hands that hadn't given a damn a minute before weow fow fussing wildly, soft touches picking at Lilah's shoulders, soothingly brushing at her breasts, smoothing her hair, easing her back against the pillows.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't realise... I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't mean to hurt-"

"Stop whimpering." Lilah drew her arm back to put all her strength behind a slap that filled the room with its crack!

Fred silenced, the hand print newly adorning her cheek red and angry. She stared, and gulped in a breath that might've been a half-formed sob but Lilah. Did. Not. Care.

The sting in her own face was subsiding. The sting of being discarded like so much trash was not. She glared balefully at the Twig.

Fred, crouched on all fours on top of the blankets, breasts drooping under their own admittedly not-too-significant weight, looked down. "I wasn't wrong, though," she said, belligerence underlying the words. "I wasn't wrong. You don't want me. You just want to... to prove a point." her head swung up,r slr slapping wetly back against bare skin, against the pronounced ridge of a collarbone. "You. Angelus. I've heard the belittlements. I know I'm not... someone that's wanted, in that way. Not for any reason that's real. Just a bone to be fought over. Angelus... Wesley... Gunn."

Lilah started to laugh.

Fred stared back at her, eyedeyed skinny-bodied freak who didn't see what the fuck they all saw in her either.

"You t..."..." she managed to choke out, and it wasn't funny, so she hadn't the first idea why she was asphyxiating herself in her mirth "...that I'm... any great prize... now?"

And Fred, at that, reacted like she'd been slapped again.

"I just wanted to forget," Lilah said savagely. "Who the fuck cares if we use each other? At least we've got each other to use."

"Oh." And Fred's sigh was soft, and in expelling it all the energy seemed to drain out of her. She flopped limply back against the pillows, and curled uneasily at Lilah's side.

She stared off into space so long Lilah was half convinced she'd fallen asleep there, with her eyes open and that vacant expression painted on her features.

"Well... we could try again?" she finally suggested. Tentatively, but - goddamn, was that a hint of hopefulness in her voice?

"Tomorrow," growled Lilah. "I'm too fucking tired."


END