The Subtleties of Wants and NeedsOne
They think they know what Wesley wants.
“He wants a puppy!” jokes Cordelia. “At least he’ll have something warm in bed.”
“You want to go see The Matrix Reloaded with me,” demands Gunn.
“Wesley will help me do the research. You know he wants to do that,” giggles Fred.
“Where are you, Wes? I thought you wanted to come and kill that demon with me,” calls Angel.
“He just wants a drink,” says Lorne.
“You want your friends back,” Lilah says matter-of-factly as she unbuttons her shirt, her voice drowning out the faraway memories of his ex-friends. “It’s not happening anytime soon, lover.”
Lilah’s the only one that’s right.
Oh, the others have caught onto fluttering thoughts, but Lilah, with her cutting words, pierces his core and describes his heart’s innermost desires. It’s somewhat ironic that the one person he doesn’t truly want knows exactly what he wants.
He leans in and meets Lilah’s mouth with his own, desperately trying to warm himself from her burning heat. He slides off her open shirt, letting his hands caress her soft skin and tries to think of Fred. Fred, lovely Fred, he wants her, not this harsh woman who sees everything and conquers the world with a professional smile. He prefers innocent, sweet Fred, whose smiles are never fake and always has a gentle word to say.
As if reading his mind, Lilah pulls away and glares at him. “You’re thinking of Fred, aren’t you?” she mocks.
“Yes,” he says simply.
Lilah runs her finger down his chest.
“I know everything, Wes. I know what you want.” She leans in and bites his ear. “But I also know what you need.” And with that, she pushes him back onto the bed and attacks him with her scarlet talons and sharp teeth.
He doesn’t think of Fred for the rest of the evening.
Two“How did you enjoy having Justine in your closet?” Lilah asks, stretching out on his bed and letting the sheets slip away.
“I didn’t,” Wesley grunts.
“Yeah right,” says Lilah, waving a hand in the air. “Like you didn’t want to get even with her? Make her pay just a little?” She leans over and languidly licks his scar. “For that?”
He tries to push Lilah away, but she won’t move. “Did you torture her?” she whispers. “I thought I smelled blood a few times.”
“Get out, Lilah.”
“Admit it, Wes. You wanted to take your revenge.”
“I wanted justice.” Why won’t she shut up? He likes her much better when she’s screaming incoherently.
“So you locked her in your closet? That’s not justice as much as it is sadistic satisfaction.”
“I needed to find Angel.”
Lilah cackles and tosses the sheets aside, standing up and starting to search for her clothes.
“There’s a difference between needs and wants. You didn’t need to find Angel. You were scraping along without him. You wanted to find Angel. There’s a difference, keep that in mind. You wanted to find Angel so you could prove your undying love and devotion to that big hunk of broodiness – ”
“I wanted to prove a point,” snaps Wesley.
“You keep telling yourself that, lover. He’s not forgiving you anytime soon, is he?”
She proceeds to the door, almost fully dressed.
“You just keep on trying,” she sighs. “Whenever will you learn?”
Three“You lose the bet. You called it a ‘relationship’ first,” playfully teases Lilah, lifting herself up to kiss him on the forehead.
“Damn,” says Wesley, but there’s no sting. It doesn’t bother him; in fact he’s in a rather good mood right now. They’d just spent a whole two hours in bed without one argument, which is a record. He shifts his body to grab his wallet as Lilah bounces up and down like a child gleefully waiting for a toy. He pulls out a dollar bill and stretches it between his fingertips in front of her face.
“Sign it,” she demands.
“For what?” he asks.
Lilah leans forward to kiss him again, the scent of her sweet scented hair filling his nostrils. For the first time in who knows how long, there’s no trace of animosity or deviousness in her gaze.
“As a record, as a remembrance. Of this.”
He meets her lips with his own and pulls her against his body, the dollar bill crushed between them. And there’s no ghosts with them this time, no Angel leaning over his shoulder or Fred gazing dreamily at him. It’s just the two of them and he actually likes it. When Lilah tries to be pleasant, she truly is.
Wesley’s just wanted a connection, needed a bond with someone and unlikely as it may seem, he feels like he’s starting to have one with Lilah.
Lilah pulls away and again demands that he sign the bill and he complies, prominently looping his ‘W’s and elaborately handing her the dollar.
She smiles at him again and suddenly her playful mood is gone, replaced by something more solemn. She lies down next to him and pulls him against her, seemingly lost in thought.
Wesley doesn’t mind. He drifts off to sleep, content for once with what he has.
Four“Why so glum? It is kind of what you wanted, isn't it? I mean, deep down, me out of the picture. Utterly...finally... you can't get outter than this,” says Lilah.
"I didn't want this," whispers Wesley. She thinks he wanted her lying dead and wrapped in plastic? Maybe he’d been a tad reassured when she’d supposedly fled the city – that she was gone – but he’d never wished her ill.
"Come on, what are you so worried about, Wesley? You hated yourself for being with me.” Lilah sits up and shakes her stringy hair, stiff and matted with dried blood. She’s supposed to be dead – he saw Angelus cradling her drained body, but she’s awake now, eyes wide open and voice low and tender.
“Or maybe you just hated yourself for loving being with me,” drawls Lilah. “Hey, semantics. In any case, we both knew that sooner or later it would come to a messy end. For one of us, anyway. So ease up on that furrowed brow. You're free now. No longer encumbered by the secret shame of our relationship.”
"It wasn't a relationship,” Wesley bitterly bites out.
"There's a signed dollar bill in your wallet I think proves different. You knew how I felt.” Her lips twist into a rueful smile.
"You don't feel," snaps Wesley.
"The only true thing I ever –”
He cuts her off with a desperate hiss, trying to persuade himself as much as Lilah’s ghost. He lifts the axe again, trying to persuade himself to cut off this insane argument and end it all, get closure.
"You didn’t love me! You couldn't –" and he’s left alone again, staring at her motionless body on the table, the room empty and silent. But then he feels a soft touch on his shoulder as Lilah of old with her hair fixed up and suit freshly pressed, walks up behind him and joins him in staring down at her body.
"We'll never know now, will we?"
They stay there unmoving for what seems to be forever until Lilah speaks again.
"I know what it is. The reason you're having such a hard time with this. Why you're taking so long to, you know, kkccht! The awful truth? You couldn't save me. And this is the exclamation point."
"Save you from the Beast...for all the good it did,” he mutters, the axe hanging loosely in his hands. He saved her for Angelus to kill. How cruel fate could be.
"Wesley. You know that's not what I'm talking about. You couldn't save me...from me."
"Is that what you thought?"
"Me?” Lilah chuckles humorlessly. “Lover, I'm not even here. I'm just a figment in your devilishly handsome head. So clearly, it's what you thought. For all your supposed darkness, your edge-of-the-razor mystique, there was always a small part of you that thought you could pull me back from the brink of my evil, evil ways.”
And even as a figment of his imagination, she’s right. Always tearing through the layers that shelter his innermost thoughts, cutting to one of the reasons he’d known of. She knew him too well.
Dear Lord, why is it he’s finally realizing this at the end? Lilah always knew what he’d wanted and needed more than anyone else did. She was his other half, able to finish his thoughts and predict his moves. He could’ve loved her for that, for her ability to simply understand him. But he’s been too obsessed with her evil faults to realize… If only he hadn’t tried to save her, but to just accept her as she was…
Lilah leans close and he lets his head fall back against her shoulder.
“Help me find redemption,” she murmurs.
"Redemption," he weakly repeats.
"Angel's influence, I suppose. The whole not giving up on someone no matter how far he or she has fallen. Oh well. Too late for me.” Her last words are drowned out by his long sigh.
“So lets just get it over with,” Lilah helpfully recommends, even in death knowing what he needs to do.
He doesn’t want to do this. He wants to kiss those full lips and wake her from her deathly slumber. He wants her to wake up and smile at him, a real smile just for him – a smile of love and tenderness – and he wants to put his arm around her waist and walk away from this mess he’s made of Los Angeles.
But he can’t.
“That body's not going to dismember itself, you know,” he hears Lilah say, and as usual she is correct.
He raises the axe.
“I’m sorry, Lilah.”
“Oh Wes, we don't have that word in our vocabulary. Not people like you and –”
She’s the only one who ever knew what he wanted.
And now she’s gone.
~Fin~