(no subject)
Title: Scorned
Characters to include: Lilah, Eve & Tara
Prompt: 86 - Choices
Words: 1296
Rating: R
*
The nice thing about hell was that if you kept yourself busy and made sure that you were useful, for the most part they would leave you alone. Lilah Morgan had understood that concept in life, and in death she was both busy and useful. Work kept her sane, even while the difference between immortality and perpetuity began to truly sink in.
Given the sheer size of the underbelly of the afterlife, the novelty of seeing a familiar face among the rabble hadn’t quite worn off yet. (Cyrus Vail, for instance, a wizard to the very last, had gone and gotten himself trapped in a kind of screaming limbo due to one last mystical bid for life. That one still made Lilah smile.)
She walked past the brimstone fields where the low level shmucks were toiling away, defining eternity. Sometimes she saw Gavin down there. Once she even saw Lee, blank-eyed and broken. She bet that neither one of those boys had read enough Dante to recognize the cliché that they’d gotten themselves stuck in.
Today (She still clung to the old words… ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’… even though this wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five gig) Lilah hurried past without really looking. Her self was starting to come apart. Little memories and things that she had known kept drifting away from her every time that she breathed. If she ever really forgot and lost her sense of purpose here, she’d find herself down in the fields with Gavin and Lee without the passion to even care that she was there.
So she forced herself up the long steep hill to the private places, away from the baking heat of the fields, but never above the permeating stink of sulfur. Even her memories of her time spent down here were starting to fray and it took her a few minutes to locate the cave that she visited when things started to fall apart like this. Taking a few steps into the darkness, Lilah let her eyes adjust, making out the shape of a person sitting motionlessly on the stone bench hewn into the far wall of the cave.
“Hi,” she said. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”
“Go away,” said the girl in the cave. “I don’t want you today.”
Lilah smiled and walked over to the rough bench. She’d had a lifetime of convincing people who said that they didn’t want her that they, in fact, needed her. Eve was no exception.
“So, what are we watching today?” Lilah asked. She made only the most preemptory effort to hide her impatience. Eve didn’t blink, lost in the hell that they had designed for her.
It wasn’t really fair, Lilah decided as she took a seat on the bench beside Eve, close enough that she should smell the heat and salt of her tears. They had created Eve, after all. And now they had the nerve to make her suffer because of a flaw in her programming that had been overlooked in the process. (Life had never been fair. Lilah wasn’t sure why she’d ever assumed that death would have a better handle on justice.)
“May I look?” Lilah asked.
Eve shrugged lethargically. “I don’t care,” she murmured. “Do what you want. You always do.”
“Just thought I’d ask.” Lilah drew her legs up and shifted over to sit behind Eve, squeezed between the raw stone wall and the girl’s back, her legs on either side of Eve’s waist. She tried to take a moment to enjoy Eve for Eve, to feel the steady rise and fall of her ribcage as she put her arms around the girl, pressing a light kiss to the vulnerable bare skin at the back of Eve’s neck where her hair had fallen forward. But Lilah had let it go too far already and she was too desperate to do much more than that. She brought her fingers up to Eve’s temples, struggling through that metaphysical trick of opening her inner eyes as she looked over Eve’s shoulder to see what the girl always saw.
The muted clink of dishes being washed met Lilah’s ears first, instead of the screams that had grown to be the norm lately, and Lilah smiled. “Feeling nostalgic, huh?” she commented to Eve, watching as the picture sharpened, the well-lit and Mr. Clean-approved kitchen taking form.
“That’s the last of them,” Lindsey told the blonde woman, handing her a small china plate and shooting her a shamefully blatant come hither look. The woman smiled and took it from him, her hand lingering when they touched. (Lilah rolled her inner eyes.)
“And Zach’s already asleep,” the woman posing as Lindsey’s wife said, playing along with his flirting. “What are we going to do for the rest of the evening?”
“I’ve got a couple ideas,” Lindsey said with a grin, pulling her close with a playful growl.
“You dork,” Lilah murmured fondly, although she had long since memorized the script.
Having gotten her bearings, she let her hands fall from Eve’s temples, wrapping her arms lightly around Eve’s waist and resting her chin on the girl’s narrow shoulder as they watched together. With more than a little bit of relief, Lilah could already feel her sense of self returning. It usually worked wonders, visiting Eve in her personal hell as she watched Lindsey in his. (The Partners never had been ones to waste resources. Just look at the way they’d recycled Lindsey’s old holding cell into something a little more permanent.)
In the beginning, Lilah still had enough energy to puzzle out why it had worked out like this. She knew damn well that the worst torments were reserved for the traitors and Lilah had been an employee of Wolfram & Hart to the bitter end, while Eve had committed treason. It made sense that Lilah would have a bit more freedom, even if she was slowly losing her mind. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of gratitude that she hadn’t earned the same fate as Eve. She understood relationships like that, fine balances of people using one another, with words like ‘love’ hanging around the borders like a mangy dog whining and scratching to be let in.
She also found herself clinging to the hope that Wesley, perhaps, was not down here at all.
“Who is she?” Eve asked, as they watching Lindsey tug his laughing wife towards the stairs. Eve’s voice didn’t rise above its usual sleepy monotone, but the question itself was unexpected.
“She’s Tara,” Lilah answered, mildly concerned. Was Eve’s memory slipping? Hadn’t Eve heard Lindsey saying that name every single day that she’d been forced to watch him living his almost-perfect life without her?
“But who is she?”
Lilah frowned. “Nobody. Someone he saw once, I guess. It’s just a random image, Eve.” She’d never tell Eve that Lindsey would almost certainly have been responsible for subconsciously shaping the image of the shadow that played his wife. Eve was the last thing keeping Lilah sane down here. She couldn’t afford to break the girl.
This new curiosity did explain why Eve had changed up her pattern today. Usually it was the basement that they watched. Usually it was the lines of dark blood and Lindsey’s shallow pained gasps that got Eve shuddering. Usually it was the pure fierce hatred that a lover’s betrayal evokes and the skilled teasing of Lilah’s fingers under her skirt that could bring Eve out of her perpetual hell for a few precious moments. (Watching Lindsey smile and flirt and make gentle love to this blonde shadow, perfectly oblivious of his fate… that was true hell.)
“She’s nobody,” Lilah repeated with a little more confidence this time, even as Lindsey led the woman that he’d chosen into the bedroom.
*
Characters to include: Lilah, Eve & Tara
Prompt: 86 - Choices
Words: 1296
Rating: R
*
The nice thing about hell was that if you kept yourself busy and made sure that you were useful, for the most part they would leave you alone. Lilah Morgan had understood that concept in life, and in death she was both busy and useful. Work kept her sane, even while the difference between immortality and perpetuity began to truly sink in.
Given the sheer size of the underbelly of the afterlife, the novelty of seeing a familiar face among the rabble hadn’t quite worn off yet. (Cyrus Vail, for instance, a wizard to the very last, had gone and gotten himself trapped in a kind of screaming limbo due to one last mystical bid for life. That one still made Lilah smile.)
She walked past the brimstone fields where the low level shmucks were toiling away, defining eternity. Sometimes she saw Gavin down there. Once she even saw Lee, blank-eyed and broken. She bet that neither one of those boys had read enough Dante to recognize the cliché that they’d gotten themselves stuck in.
Today (She still clung to the old words… ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’… even though this wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five gig) Lilah hurried past without really looking. Her self was starting to come apart. Little memories and things that she had known kept drifting away from her every time that she breathed. If she ever really forgot and lost her sense of purpose here, she’d find herself down in the fields with Gavin and Lee without the passion to even care that she was there.
So she forced herself up the long steep hill to the private places, away from the baking heat of the fields, but never above the permeating stink of sulfur. Even her memories of her time spent down here were starting to fray and it took her a few minutes to locate the cave that she visited when things started to fall apart like this. Taking a few steps into the darkness, Lilah let her eyes adjust, making out the shape of a person sitting motionlessly on the stone bench hewn into the far wall of the cave.
“Hi,” she said. “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?”
“Go away,” said the girl in the cave. “I don’t want you today.”
Lilah smiled and walked over to the rough bench. She’d had a lifetime of convincing people who said that they didn’t want her that they, in fact, needed her. Eve was no exception.
“So, what are we watching today?” Lilah asked. She made only the most preemptory effort to hide her impatience. Eve didn’t blink, lost in the hell that they had designed for her.
It wasn’t really fair, Lilah decided as she took a seat on the bench beside Eve, close enough that she should smell the heat and salt of her tears. They had created Eve, after all. And now they had the nerve to make her suffer because of a flaw in her programming that had been overlooked in the process. (Life had never been fair. Lilah wasn’t sure why she’d ever assumed that death would have a better handle on justice.)
“May I look?” Lilah asked.
Eve shrugged lethargically. “I don’t care,” she murmured. “Do what you want. You always do.”
“Just thought I’d ask.” Lilah drew her legs up and shifted over to sit behind Eve, squeezed between the raw stone wall and the girl’s back, her legs on either side of Eve’s waist. She tried to take a moment to enjoy Eve for Eve, to feel the steady rise and fall of her ribcage as she put her arms around the girl, pressing a light kiss to the vulnerable bare skin at the back of Eve’s neck where her hair had fallen forward. But Lilah had let it go too far already and she was too desperate to do much more than that. She brought her fingers up to Eve’s temples, struggling through that metaphysical trick of opening her inner eyes as she looked over Eve’s shoulder to see what the girl always saw.
The muted clink of dishes being washed met Lilah’s ears first, instead of the screams that had grown to be the norm lately, and Lilah smiled. “Feeling nostalgic, huh?” she commented to Eve, watching as the picture sharpened, the well-lit and Mr. Clean-approved kitchen taking form.
“That’s the last of them,” Lindsey told the blonde woman, handing her a small china plate and shooting her a shamefully blatant come hither look. The woman smiled and took it from him, her hand lingering when they touched. (Lilah rolled her inner eyes.)
“And Zach’s already asleep,” the woman posing as Lindsey’s wife said, playing along with his flirting. “What are we going to do for the rest of the evening?”
“I’ve got a couple ideas,” Lindsey said with a grin, pulling her close with a playful growl.
“You dork,” Lilah murmured fondly, although she had long since memorized the script.
Having gotten her bearings, she let her hands fall from Eve’s temples, wrapping her arms lightly around Eve’s waist and resting her chin on the girl’s narrow shoulder as they watched together. With more than a little bit of relief, Lilah could already feel her sense of self returning. It usually worked wonders, visiting Eve in her personal hell as she watched Lindsey in his. (The Partners never had been ones to waste resources. Just look at the way they’d recycled Lindsey’s old holding cell into something a little more permanent.)
In the beginning, Lilah still had enough energy to puzzle out why it had worked out like this. She knew damn well that the worst torments were reserved for the traitors and Lilah had been an employee of Wolfram & Hart to the bitter end, while Eve had committed treason. It made sense that Lilah would have a bit more freedom, even if she was slowly losing her mind. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of gratitude that she hadn’t earned the same fate as Eve. She understood relationships like that, fine balances of people using one another, with words like ‘love’ hanging around the borders like a mangy dog whining and scratching to be let in.
She also found herself clinging to the hope that Wesley, perhaps, was not down here at all.
“Who is she?” Eve asked, as they watching Lindsey tug his laughing wife towards the stairs. Eve’s voice didn’t rise above its usual sleepy monotone, but the question itself was unexpected.
“She’s Tara,” Lilah answered, mildly concerned. Was Eve’s memory slipping? Hadn’t Eve heard Lindsey saying that name every single day that she’d been forced to watch him living his almost-perfect life without her?
“But who is she?”
Lilah frowned. “Nobody. Someone he saw once, I guess. It’s just a random image, Eve.” She’d never tell Eve that Lindsey would almost certainly have been responsible for subconsciously shaping the image of the shadow that played his wife. Eve was the last thing keeping Lilah sane down here. She couldn’t afford to break the girl.
This new curiosity did explain why Eve had changed up her pattern today. Usually it was the basement that they watched. Usually it was the lines of dark blood and Lindsey’s shallow pained gasps that got Eve shuddering. Usually it was the pure fierce hatred that a lover’s betrayal evokes and the skilled teasing of Lilah’s fingers under her skirt that could bring Eve out of her perpetual hell for a few precious moments. (Watching Lindsey smile and flirt and make gentle love to this blonde shadow, perfectly oblivious of his fate… that was true hell.)
“She’s nobody,” Lilah repeated with a little more confidence this time, even as Lindsey led the woman that he’d chosen into the bedroom.
*