Author's Note: Thank you all for the wonderful reviews! Keep them coming! Enjoy !

5. 1000 Reasons or More

'What are you doing here!', Gabrielle exclaimed, not only shocked to find her mother here, also kind of afraid for what would follow because now Lilah knew she had been lying. And not exactly about a little thing.

'I could ask you the exact same thing.', Lilah returned the question. She still looked stunning after all those years, and Wesley wasn't blind to that, of course. She was one of the women on who ageing seemed to have none or very little effect.

The comparison between Lilah and Gabrielle was obvious as well. They had the same hair colour, the same figure, and the same face, although Gabrielle's expression was different from her mother's.

Gaby stood up and crossed her arms. 'I'm pretty sure you already know the reason why I'm here. Else you wouldn't be in LA, now would you mom?'.

Wesley interrupted the conversation that was turning into a fight by mixing himself into it. He got up and stood by Gabrielle's side. 'Hello Lilah.'.

She turned to him, facing him for the first time. 'Wesley.'. She looked him up and down.

'I heard from my sources you were here, Gabrielle.', she turned the attention back to her daughter. 'I have to say I wasn't surprised.'

'I have the right to know who my father is.', Gabrielle defended herself.

'I never said you didn't. So, Wes, you know the 'big secret' now. Never thought this would happen, did you?'. Lilah took off her coat and put it over a chair.

'You never gave me a reason to expect this, Lilah.', Wesley said. He wasn't going to pretend he was happy to see her. She had kept him away from his only child, the one thing that could have made him happy.

'I'm not going back to New York with you!', Gabrielle said, interrupting the two ex-lovers.

Lilah raised an eyebrow. 'I know...'.

'You know? Is that why you never told me, because you knew you would lose me!', the teenage girl exclaimed, getting upset.

'Maybe. But you know, I'm not going back to New York either. Not for a while, anyway. I have business to do here.'.

'Of course, business. That's all you ever do don't you! Strange I even thought you were afraid to lose me, but you're not afraid at all! You know what 'mother'? You already lost me a long time ago. '. And with that, Gabrielle ran upstairs, into the room that would now belong to her, and slammed the door shut loudly.

Lilah watched Wesley for a while. 'Well?', she eventually asked.

'Well, what, Lilah? What exactly do you expect me to do, or say?'.

She shrugged slightly. 'It's not like 'I' do this every day. I don't know what to do either. I do, however, know you hate me. You have thousands of reasons for it too, or more.'.

'I never said I hated you.'.

Wesley confused her. This wasn't the conversation they've had in her mind so often the past seventeen years.

'Don't you?'.

'I never said I didn't hate you either. There's such a thing as grey, Lilah.', he told her as he thought back to the speech she once gave him about black and white.

'Oh, I get it. I bet she told you the worst, horrific stories about me as a mother, but the 'hero', the ' do-gooder' inside of you is looking for a reason. That's it, isn't it? You're looking for a reason, looking for evidence to prove that I'm not as soulless as I appear to be, but you know what, Wes? Maybe I am just evil.'

17 years earlier, 2003

Lilah stared at the newborn baby in her arms. The nurse had told her this was her daughter, and so she waited for that mother love everyone had told her about to arrive. Not that Lilah had many friends with children, though. Actually she didn't have many friends at all, but that was a part of having a full-time job at Wolfram & Hart. She dealt with the consequences.

Lilah now had a good job with Wolfram and Hart in New York. It didn't differ a lot from the one in Los Angeles. She had accepted her new life, just like she had accepted everything else in her life. That was probably also the reason why Lilah had kept this baby. She could have easily had an abortion. That would have simpled things up so much. But something inside of her had stopped her from doing so. She didn't know what it was.. Maybe the memory of Wesley told her not to do it. Whatever it was, she'd accepted that too. And so, like every other mom-to-be she had gone baby shopping and prepared herself for the delivery to come. She read things about it on the internet, watched documentaries on tv, and read books. What she learned wasn't exactly fun, but it was better than spending eternity in hell.

Oh how she was wrong about that, though.

The delivery itself took almost 48 hours, and where every other woman had a nervous husband, or at least a friend or relative by her side all Lilah had was a hyper gynaecologist and some overworked nurses. The pains during and after the contractions were a 'lot' worse than hell. And if it wasn't then Lilah would seriously consider going to church again.

Of course Lilah knew she was pretty lonely. That again, was something she could only accept. After the definition of hell was over, she had a chance to look around without getting dizzy from the pain. All other women seemed really disgustingly happy. They couldn't stop cooing over how cute and perfect their son/daughter was and how good a help their husband. Lilah knew better. She had enough people skills to know that in a few weeks time their cute little baby would turn into a screaming brat and their husband would have an affair with his secretary. That would piss the no-longer happy mommy off and soon a divorce would follow. The o-so sensitive child would turn into an even worse brat and eventually end up in either jail or as a junkie.

All the father's fault.

Things like that wouldn't happen to this baby. Lilah had never met her own father, and she didn't feel the need to, either. Men are jerks, she had learned that the hard way when she was still very young. Her father who never felt the need to get to know her was a jerk, her uncles who had never done a damn thing to help her mother were jerks, and her mother's boyfriend was a jerk. Probably the worst of all. He seemed to love dominating people. And so did Lilah, which was why they didn't exactly match. She didn't let him say the things he said to her mother and older sister Tamika to her. She stood up. Even if that meant she got beaten up the most. She was only a child back then, couldn't really fight back yet. Another thing she could only accept.

As Lilah looked at the baby girl in her arms, all those hidden memories came up again.

20 years earlier, 1985

'Tammy you can't let him talk to you like that! You're almost 18 years old, you have all the right to date that guy!'. The two sisters were sat in Tamika's room, discussing the boyfriend their stepfather didn't approve of.

'No! I'm not like you, all right! I don't want to risk him beating me up again, Lilah.'

'But he'll beat us up anyway. There's such a thing as self-respect, you know. Don't you want to show him you're not as weak as he assumes?', Lilah asked, angry her sister couldn't be more like her.

'No. No, I don't, Li. I'm not as strong as you are. I'm too weak to stand up. Maybe if you weren't so selfish and blinded by all your dreams and impossible ambitions you'd see that not everyone is born to be like you. I'll tell you what,', Tamika continued before her little sister had a chance to interrupt. 'Next month I'll be 18. Then me and Tom are going to run away, and get married.'

Lilah stared at her for a moment. Her sister, the only friend she had in this world was going to leave her alone with two alcoholics? Two 'aggressive' alcoholics? That wasn't fair! She felt like she was choking when she thought of being all alone in the world, without an older sister who, so far, had done the best she could to protect her. Even though Lilah was a pretty tough girl and hardly let her emotions control her, this was really a moment by which the tears welled up in her eyes.

'You're.. leaving?'.

'I am, and no one's going to stop me. Not mom, not Adam, and not you.', Tamika said.

'But you can't just leave me here! He'll kill me! He's come close enough to it before, and you know it!', Lilah pleaded.

'Look, you and all your dreams, and ambitions, you're going to get out of here by yourself one day, but not me. I need this opportunity, Lily. Don't make this any harder than it is already, ok?'.

Lilah nodded timidly. 'All right.'

A month passed by and on the night before she knew Tamika would leave Lilah did something stupid. It was a decision probably made in her choking panic. She would regret it for the rest of her life, but back then it seemed like the right thing to do.

Lilah told Adam about her sister's plans...

If she'd known at that moment how bad this would end she would have kept her mouth shut, but unfortunately what's done cannot be undone.

She stood in the doorway as he beat Tamika up, down in the basement so there wouldn't be any blood spilled on the carpet.

Lilah felt powerless. She wanted to do something as he hit her sister's head into an iron pole repeatedly, but it was like she was paralysed . She wanted to intervene, or run away, but something stopped her. Her conscience, perhaps. Maybe it wanted this image to torture her for the rest of her life.

It would.

It was worse than usual this time. Adam had, apparently, had more than a few drinks. He didn't stop as he noticed Tamika had stopped moving, and he still didn't stop as he had gone to kicking her in the stomach instead and she no longer opened her eyes as the next kick hit her. It just seemed to go on forever... When finally, after at least an hour, he took Tammy's still body upstairs, Lilah was left to clean up the blood. She kneeled down and let the large pool of blood mix with her tears.

'I'm sorry...', she whispered as if Tamika was lying there herself. 'I'm sorry...'.

After the funeral several days later Lilah stayed behind at the grave for a moment. She stared at the grave stone and the epitaph on it.

Tamika Elizabeth Morgan

1967- 1985

Beloved daughter and sister

Gone, but not forgotten

Lilah tried to cry. She hadn't let a single tear slip from her eye before or during the funeral, so now she had finally a moment for herself.

But the tears didn't come...

It was like a voice inside her told her that this was all her fault, so she didn't deserve to cry. At that moment, Lilah decided that she never would. She didn't deserve to, and she didn't need to, either.

That morning was the first time she played her role. She got so lost in it that eventually, she didn't know who she was anymore.

Not at all.

Present, 2020, Hyperion Hotel

All those memories floated through Lilah's mind as she repeated that one sentence to Wesley.

'Maybe I'm just evil'.

'Maybe you are, indeed, Lilah. And maybe you're not , and I'll never find out'.

'I'm not here to let you play the shrink on me or discuss the 'good old times' of our relationship', Lilah said, rather annoyed.

'It was never a relationship, Lilah.'.

'You signed a dollar bill as prove', she then grinned. 'Are we done now? I'm in a hurry.', she then added.

'I thought we agreed there are things we need to discuss, and I supposed now would be a good time to do so', Wesley told his ex-lover with a light frown.

'I didn't think so. I have to attend a meeting now.'.

She started heading towards the hotel's exit.

'Lilah...', he called after her. 'Have you got a place to stay?'. It was out before he knew it. Wesley wasn't even sure 'why' he had said it. Did he want her to stay, was that it? Did he miss her? Had he loved her? All questions that would really hurt his head to think about. The most simple reason for why he had said it was probably that he missed to have someone living with him. He couldn't be with Fred, so he wanted to be with Lilah now? Wasn't that just repeating of t he past? Wasn't that how this whole thing started in the first place?

Lilah turned to face him again.

'Not yet. But I'll find something.', she replied, turning him down coldly as he had done to her so many times before.

Much to Wesley's surprise, it hurt quite a bit. Not that he had expected her to say yes, but still... He watched as she departed and noticed again some strong similarities between her and Gabrielle. She looked a lot like her mother, but did she look like him, too? Wesley wished every time he looked at her it would be like he was looking through a looking glass. Not particularly on the outside, but on the inside. Only at certain points, of course.

Wesley headed upstairs to his daughter's room and knocked.

'Gabrielle? It's me'.

'Is she gone?', the reply sounded through the closed door.

'Yes. She left to attend a meeting.', he assured her.

'Of course.', Gabrielle said, somewhat angry.

Wesley let out a sigh. 'May I come in? This doesn't talk very easy.'

A pause.

'Fine.', she eventually gave in and unlocked the door.

Wesley entered. 'You picked a very decent room. We can still decorate it, of course. It's still quite empty.'

'I don't need a lot of stuff'.

Her reaction did slightly disappoint Wesley. He just thought she'd started opening up a bit to him and now she was so distant again.

Gabrielle noticed the disappointment in her father's eyes and her expression softened a bit. Strange, because usually she would never really do that. She was starting to care about Wesley. Not just because he was family and she was therefore supposed to, but for who he was. Who he really was.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so rude'.

Wesley's face cleared up a little. 'That's quite all right, don't worry about it. I know this is a rather difficult time for all of us. But we'll get through it. '.

'Together.', Gabrielle added with a smile. 'I know, dad... Can I call you dad? '.

Wesley smiled.

'Of course'.