Chapter 2
Lilah Morgan hit the ground in an ungainly sprawl, the usual strain of favored curse words leaving her in a painful moan.
The sun, or suns upon closer examination, were uncomfortably bright, so she curled an arm over her eyes, the other hand pressed tightly to her bandaged middle. Peering out from under her wrist she looked over to find Fred with her brown eyes fixed blankly on the sky, the lithe physicist rigid against the dirt.
And if it hadn't been for the years of desensitization and her undeniable hate of the bitch, Lilah might have felt sorry for her.
They were surrounded by trees and other vegetation, but it bore little resemblance to anything they might find in LA, or even in the US. The plants were brighter, more colorful and much stranger.
Pylea.
She'd read about it of course, in the Texan's file. Ruled by green demons, humans made slaves, the list of negatives went on. The only pleasant thing about the place that she could recall was that Wolfram and Hart had a standing there, a standing she may or may not be able to exploit.
For a long time both women lay in silence. Lilah half expected Fred to cry, or scream, or babble frantically like her file said she had when she was crazy, but she did nothing. She just stared silently at the overly-bright sky, and Lilah followed suite.
They were so incredibly fucked, but at least this fucked was figurative.
An eerie howl echoed in the distance and both women bolted into a sitting position. The motion's aftermath caused Lilah to double over slightly with a hand to her stomach, voice breaking the silence sharply, "What the-"
"Hellhounds." Fred spoke into her knees, wide eyes on the dirt.
"What?" Fuck.
"They're wild down here, I-I think." Rising to her feet, the Texan answered again without eye contact, voice faltering softly. She didn't bother to brush herself off at she stared out at nothing, face contorted into an expression Lilah was more than familiar with. It was one she'd made a career out of causing, it was pain.
"What do you mean, you think? You were here for five years." She struggled to her feet as gracefully as her recently agitated injury would permit, eyes narrowed furiously at the brunette's incompetence. The little school girl could fall apart later, when they were out of the open.
"Tiscanus, it only grows in the southern kingdom." A thin hand gestured listlessly at the patches of purple grass shooting up around them, "I was in the north."
"Fuck." And damn, and cunt, and bitch, and all the other words that once made her office-lackeys cower. Lilah glared venomously at the inside of her eyelids, eyes pressed shut as she gingerly straightened her damaged torso out.
The twig had never been to this side of Pylea - there went half of her usefulness. The remaining fifty percent was divided between her ability to get them back to LA, and her intrinsic value as meat. Though of course four-eyes was so slight, Lilah supposed killing her for food would really be a waste of effort. Not like she'd know how to cook it anyway.
Frowning, she delivered several casually place insults, none of which were reciprocated, and without further conversation the two of them tramped up the side of the mountain that the forest seemed to be scaling. Neither of them spoke, but the smaller woman took the lead, staring trance-like up the oversized hill. Once the Texan was in front of her, Lilah allowed herself to hunch over with discomfort, palm pressed tightly to her stomach as she followed Fred's pert little ass up the slope.
Why in god's name, whichever god because in her experience it really didn't matter, did it have to be her. The poster child for wholesome Texas living, a core member of the good-and-plenties, the very thorn in her metaphorical side. The women who wore those rimmed little glasses, the woman she'd worn glasses to mock. The glasses that Wesley told her to leave on.
That bitch.
Anyone else would have been more bearable, even Cordelia's incessant babble would have been preferable.
Then again, as with most subjects, Cordelia didn't know squat about Pylea. Wrong kingdom or not, Fred still knew more than her, and there in lay her value. That, and her characteristically exploitable goodness. She'd already shown an unwillingness to let Lilah bleed herself to death, and it was doubtful that Pylea would completely abolish that. Allies were allies, period.
Even if she did want to bash their dainty skulls in.
They walked, and walked, and walked some more. Up the mountain and along it's curving sides of stone. They walked until Lilah was ready to demand a rest, which was saying something since she had no interest in meeting a hellhound; when she looked up suddenly to find that the other woman was no where to be seen.
So much for Fred's exploitable goodness. She had been right in front of her ten seconds ago, if that twig left her to fend for herself-
"Here." The small voice echoed out from somewhere to her right, and pressing a steadying hand to the cool rock wall, Lilah eased her fingers along the mountainside until they fumbled into the opening the voice had echoed from. It was a thin slit in the stone that tucked back into itself, but was wide enough for her to slide through, into the darkness of a small cave.
Light poured in through a break in the ceiling, illuminating only patches of the smooth floor. The air was stuffy and stale, but not moist. The cave was dry, and felt a few degrees warmer than it did outside. Pressing her back against the nearest wall, Lilah crumpled to the floor, sparing only a brief glance of approval for the Texan, who wasn't looking anyway.
Her bony little frame was traipsing around the cave, looking into dark corners for who knows what, and Lilah didn't ask.
The sun dropped, and so did the temperature. Drastically.
It was fortunate that after Fred had bolted off towards Angelus' racket Lilah had taken the liberty of helping herself to a long sleeved shirt she found folded over the chair in the hotel office. She had no intention of putting her bloodstained rag on again, even if it was once a two-hundred dollar, designer bloodstained rag, and she could only assume it still sat on the desk where she left it. In the darkness of the cave she scrutinized her new, suitably warmer attire for the first time and concluded that it must have been Cordelia's, because her bust didn't strain the fabric.
Lilah sat with her back against the stone wall, placed strategically on the wall that had been warmed by the sun hours ago, knees tucked in close to her chest. The cold was uncomfortable enough to keep her awake, but not unbearable.
She couldn't say the same for her fellow though; who crouched against the opposite, presumable colder wall, scratching away at the stone with what Lilah could only assume was a sharp rock. Her efforts made a soft tapping, scraping noise, and left a combination of letters and numbers trailing over a good half of the cave's wall.
Lilah had watched for the first several hours, but with time the spectacle lost its appeal, and she took interest in the splinters that had pierced the soft, pampered soles of her feet. Like her original shirt, she had abandoned her heels in the office.
Stealth and heels rarely went together. Still now she wished, as unpractical as they could be, that she had them. The oddly colored shrubbery of Pylea was not all cushy leaves and purple grass, she'd spent much of their trek up the mountain dodging fallen thorns.
Once she'd pulled the prime barbs from the flushing, baby soft skin of her feet, she turned her attention to the dark spots forming on her leg. Five little finger bruises of the darkest shade of blue, bordering on black, decorated her calf where Angelus had gripped; gripped her leg, and threw her around like a rag doll.
She was going to dream about that. She was going to relive that moment over and over again.
Null and void. Destruction of the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart, courtesy of the Beast, resulted in every single contract in Lilah Morgan's name and any other becoming null and void. This included, among more important documents, the contract relieving her of her dreams.
It had been a popular company policy, the removal of dreams. People in her line of work rarely had favorable contact with their subconscious, for obvious reasons.
She knew the circles under her eyes were apparent. Where she'd been hiding out in the sewers there was the lack of safe food and clean water, but human beings perish fastest without sleep; and she was falling apart.
Every inch of her ached for reprieve, but now was not the time. The last thing she needed was Fred watching her shriek and writhe in her sleep.
"Why are you here?" The Texan's quiet voice shattered the silence. Lilah's gaze moved over her tentatively, and found Fred's arm reaching motionlessly to the top line of numbers in front of her, stretching out her torso so that her shirt exposed several inches of angular, sharply shaped hip-bone. Fred was staring at the numbers in front of her, and did not turn.
"Because as much as I dislike you," Lilah's lip twitched upward subtly as she mused on the extreme nature of that understatement, "You're still better than whatever's out there."
"The portal-" The brunette's hand twitched slightly, a motion exemplified by the stone between her fingers, "did he push you through?"
Lilah frowned at the girl's back. "Fell." It was doubtful, as ironic and, surely in his eyes, humorous of a situation her presence had caused, that Angelus would give up the chance to torture and kill her at his leisure.
"Were you trying to run?" The thin form in font of her still hadn't moved, her body stretched out into an even thinner silhouette in the dark cave.
Lilah eyed the back of the girl's tangled brown tresses with a lightly furrowed brow, before shrugging. "Trying to take the gun." It had seemed like a good idea, at the time. In the very least a weapon might've provoked him to kill her faster.
"Hm." Fred made an obscure grunting noise in reply.
And the hours ticked away, with Lilah staring at the floor and Fred scratching away at the walls.