Chasing the Demons Away

[da_lilah]

Continued from here

Why'd I have to do it? Open my big mouth and say something that sent Wesley off the deep end again?
And everything had been going so well.

"And thank you. That's probably the closest I’m ever gonna get to those pearly white gates.” It had been meant as a compliment, a throw-away line, not some portent of doom. But as soon as I

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[_wes_pryce_]

Automatically I flinches when there was a sudden touch. No! They're not supposed to touch me! They never touch. Only talk. Talk, talk, accuse, yell, curse. But they never touch. Why were they touching? Did they finally come to drag me away into hell? Where I belong. I should be in hell. I've failed them all. Fred, Cordy, Angel, Gunn, Lorne, Connor, Faith...all of them.

Lilah.

"Wesley, it's just us here. No one else. We're alone, safe. Come back to me, okay?" Lilah is talking to me? She never talked to me. When the others did, she was silent. She never accused or yelled. Though I did fail her as well. I couldn't save her. The flames they burn, but they do not cleanse. They burn and burn but never burn away what needs to be removed. Damn flames only hurt

[da_lilah]

Wesley flinched away when I touched him, his arm coming up as if to ward off a blow. What the hell? but I perservered and it seemed as though my words were getting through to him. I continued to stroke his head and run my hands along the tops of his arms.

After a while, Wesley raised his head tentatively to look at me, was he back?

"Lilah?"He closed in on himself even more, hunching over his knees. I hated this, how helpless I felt. Give me a case involving hard-nosed negotiations and thinly veiled threats, the applying of subtle and not so subtle pressure and I'd be your woman, but this

[_wes_pryce_]

Tiling my head, I kept staring at her. Watching her lips move before the words finally reached my eats. She had not run, like she had done before. I scared her. I had not meant to scare her, but those voices kept talking and talking. Accusing. But not Lilah and it had scared her

[da_lilah]

"Our dollar bill."

I was going to get off the bed and put it back in the jacket when he snatched it away from my hands and crumpled it up like it was just a piece of trash.

"It's meaningless now. Meaningless. This is not us anymore." Then he shucked it into the can near the bed.

I bit down hard on my lip, trying to stop myself from saying something I'd regret. Was that what the dollar meant to him now? Nothing? Everything we'd had was symbolised in that tiny scrap of paper he'd just tossed in the bin. I'd thought it meant as much to him as it had to me. And what the hell /was/ us anyway? I glanced at him and he was smiling a small crooked smile at me. I tensed up at that, suddenly unsure of where I stood.

Then Wesley gathered me into his arms, and I let him pull me close, even though I was still feeling hurt at his actions. He planted a soft kiss on my brow, which seemed an odd gesture for someone who'd just dismissed what we'd had as meaningless.

"We'll get a new one. And we'll sign it both. It'll be like a new start." I felt