Pretenses
A/N: Newbie here again! This is set during the summer between Season 3 & 4. Please r & r and there may be more! Enjoy!!
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, nor do I claim any affiliation with Joss Whedon, "Angel: The Series", Mutant Enemy, Fox, it's subsidiaries, or affiliates. Please don't sue me!
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At night, when they're not together, she knows where he goes.
He thinks she doesn't know about the woman in the closet. The woman he keeps tied and chained. But she knows. And pretends not to. Almost everything between them is pretentions. Even now, as her cheek rests on his shoulder and his chest rises up and down evenly under her hand, they both pretend to be asleep. Better sleep than to talk. That's what got them into this situation in the first place.
He thinks she can redeem herself. Or he can redeem her for her. He doesn't know about her contract, not yet. He doesn't know the web she's caught in with the firm, the plans she's made that never reach far into the future. Most of all, he doesn't know the reason it all started. How it began. Who started it all. The one person who's ever met anything to her, until now. Until him.
At night, when they're not together, he knows what she's doing.
Working against him. Working for him. Her actions contradict themselves every time she does something. If one accused her of doing something good, she'd laugh them off and point out the evil side of it.
He doesn't know she's been keeping the harbor patrol away from his ship, at night, while he searches. And she doesn't know that he goes to her apartment, when she's not there. And he keeps a picture of her as a little girl that he found. A beautiful, smiling, eight year old, in the arms of her mother, wearing a gold necklace that spells "Lilah".
Everything between them was make-believe. They each tried to make themselves believe that, even when the thought in itself was another pretention.