Disclaimer: If I owned even a tiny bit of Angel, Wes and Fred never would have died!

Author's Note: Thanks to all the reviewers, you guys are the best! Special thanks to littlesoprano!

Chapter 4: Lie to Me

Illyria's question echoed and reverberated in Wesley's mind, even though it had been barely a whisper, uttered with great effort and pain by the dying goddess.

"Would you have loved me?"

He looked at her, his face contorted with sadness and regret, knowing that whatever words he spoke would tear his own heart in two, and make him a hypocrite or a liar. However, when Wesley's eyes met Illyria's, and he saw death looming over her like a shadow, her piercing gaze brought from him nothing but the truth.

"I love Fred. I loved her and I always will love her, and nothing can change that. She is my soul mate and without her I am not complete." The look on Illyria's face told him that she knew these things better than anyone, and she still waited for the answer to her question, commanding it from him with her eyes as if she had been at the height of her power.

Wesley hesitated only for an instant. "Yes. I believe that despite everything I would have loved you. I would have loved you not because you looked like her but because you say and do the things that no one else can, and without you I would have died from grief and hopelessness. I would have loved you because you were so utterly alone, as I was. You understood my pain, and intensified it by your very presence, and I would have loved you for it. Illyria, I don't know why I can say these things to you now; I can't bring myself to lie." The look of helplessness that flashed across his face made her lips turn up in a faint smile.

"Wesley, would you lie to me, if I asked you to?" She shuddered, and he could feel the life seeping from her, even as she lay in his arms.

"What do you mean?"

"Act as if you loved me, just for a moment. Not as if you would love me, but as if you do." She closed her eyes as she spoke, the effort of keeping them open seeming to take away the energy that she needed to stay conscious and in control.

"Lie to me."

Wordlessly, Wesley held her as a lover would, and as he had held Fred in her last moments. She shuddered against him, moving almost involuntarily as death sought and reached for her. The light touch of his hand on her pallid flesh steadied her, and he brushed his lips against hers in the gentlest of kisses. She barely moved under his touch, but he could feel her hand trembling on his wrist, and her skin was moist with perspiration. He pulled away and looked at her, seeing her fragility and inexplicable innocence in a way he had been unable to before, when he hadn't know how she felt, and had only seen her as Fred's murderer. Wesley saw Illyria now, in a way that he almost wished he hadn't, and he pitied her. The desperate, frightened expression on her painfilled face hurt him in a way he never could have imagined, and he gathered her body closer to him, only thinking to ease her passing.

The next spasm caused the dying goddess to arch her back, an animal-like moan passing through her pale, cracking lips. A rasping cough weakly escaped from her mouth and her voice calling his name was barely a whisper. "It ends," she said, and Wesley could see the death in her eyes, and for a moment she was as stoic and unfeeling as ever. Then violently, he could see her falling apart, and as she deteriorated physically, her emotions were torn from her, against her will.

"Please, Wesley, why can't I stay?"

She sobbed the words, clutching his hand, then her head fell back against his arm. To Wesley it seemed as if she was flickering in between Fred and Illyria, her features changing, her skin shifting from her own powdery white to Fred's warm-colored complexion. She looked at him for a moment with such an onslaught of fear and pain, that he knew that in an instant it would be over. Illyria, the bane of his existence, would be banished from this world forever, and Fred, his true love and light of his life, would be here with him. But now, as she died, sobbing in his arms and begging not to die, it seemed so wrong, and not the triumph that he had wanted it to be. And as she died, fading from this world forever, as he held her closer in his arms, his lips pressed against her hair, he heard her whisper, again:

"Lie to me."

Author's Note: Sorry that was so short, and that it took me so long to get it up! I'm planning on making the next chapter the last, and we can finally finish this thing! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and sorry again for all the formatting errors. I think it was , but I'll be more careful uploading this time!