A/N: Okay, so [starting now] every summer I'm going to have a "Summer Collection" for all of the different series (is there a plural? I don't know) that I've written for in the past year. So basically it's a review of everything I've done. So this year's categories ARE: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Technically I should do a Twilight collection too, but I just wrote a one-chapter spoof-y thing, so I don't feel like it counts as an actual fic. They will basically just be a collection of one-shots because I've discovered that I fail at keeping up with an actual story. I have so many ideas! Anyhoo, this takes place while Lilah is dying. From Lilah's point of view. Yeah.
Angel Summer Collection 2010: Number One
A Song Within Him
No.
No.
I can't. Can't die. I have to stay. I have to be there for him. Wesley loves me. I have to be there for him once I'm not there. He'll need me to survive my death. There's no one else that can help him through it. I can't just go and leave him here. Here with Cordelia. They won't figure out that it was her until Angel's just about died of brooding. All of them will think it was him, and they'll all blame him. No matter how much they claim that they know Angel and Angelus are separate people - or entities, I suppose. That would be the proper lawyer term - they believe, deep in their hearts, that they're the same.
And they're right.
Angel is a smart guy. He knows that Angelus is a part of him. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't brood so much.
But Wesley.
No matter how cynical he pretends to be, I know the true Wesley. I might well be the only one that does. He believes in the good of humanity; knows the strength of love and trust and friendship. Why else would he punish himself the way he did? He betrayed Angel in the worst way imaginable: took the thing he loves the most besides Buffy. Put it in an unreachable alternate dimension. He knows what he did; the wrongness of it, and hates himself for it.
Wesley is a champion.
I would put him right up there with Angel and Buffy. Wesley has nothing physical going for him, no real extraordinary brain power like Fred, even, and yet he always tries. He never stops. Even when he wants to quit; when simply giving up looms on the horizon, more glorious than the purest, most beautiful sunset, he keeps going. No matter what the outcome might be.
How funny.
I said already that Wesley loves me, but I haven't yet said that I love Wesley.
Fine, then. I, Lilah Morgan, head of Special Projects Department at Wolfram and Hart, one of the main sources of primary evildoing in the world, love Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, champion of the good, more than anyone or anything else in the world.
And that is why I have to die.