Friends and Other Disasters by Jennifer-Oksana (R)

[palmaceae.livejournal.com]

Hey everyone, I'm 50thousandtearz (formerly known as missmorganpryce in this fandom), and I'll be driving the Buffy/Angelverse can this month! It's so awesome to dust off these fics and rec them, makes me all nostalgic and tingly. There will be mostly Angel recs, I'm not into Buffy as much. You can expect a lot of Wesley/Lilah (BEST OTP EVER) and season 3-4ish fic, but I'll try to throw in a couple of other things as well.

Fandom: ANGEL
Pairing: Wesley/Lilah, Fred/Other
Length: 256K (both stories)
Author on LJ: jennyo
Author Website: Jennifer Oksana's: new site, old site
Why this must be read: This is one of my favorite stories, by my favorite author in the fandom. Jennifer-Oksana has got her snark on full force as usual, and she writes a smashingly awesome Lilah. It's long and interesting and plotty and filled with a large cast of characters from both Angel and Buffy.

This fic takes place post Angel S4 and Buffy S7, in a Wolfram and Hart where Lilah might be dead, but she's kicking ass and taking names as Angel's assistant. Sunnydale has fallen, and Spike has died...or so they think. But this mystery seems to be covering up an even larger one, which I don't want to give away in the summary, but just a hint: remember how Willow activated all the slayers in Chosen? Yeah. Jennyo delves fully into the slayer situation in a must-read sequel. I love how Jennyo doesn't forget the canon of the show, and even while she's busy taking us into an all out alternate reality, she continues both Buffy and Angel's show canons. Excellent Wesley/Lilah, and Jennyo can write gay!Fred for me anyday, lol.


The resulting silence, a long and prominent silence punctuated by Fred tapping her pencil on the polished surface of the conference table and leaving rubber marks, rather firmly indicated that nobody in the conference room had a single damn plausible theory to share. After a few moments, Lilah returned to going through phone records while text- messaging her underlings to get her more information, Wesley went back to cross-referencing dusty books and scrolls, and Fred continued to stare at the briefing file and look distressed at the very implications of Billy Rebel.

"I was souled before it was cool," Angel muttered about three minutes later. The entire room jumped at the noise, and then looked ashamed about it.

"Angel, that was a whiny thing to say the first time you said it," Lilah said snappishly. "Anyway, until we get our hands on this guy and test him for the morphogenic thing--is it morphogenic or morphogenetic?--has anyone thought about the prophecies in the Scroll of Aberjian?"

"You mean how they're spattered with evil lawyer blood?" Angel asked.

"Again with the not funny," Lilah said. "I was actually thinking about that thing in the prophecy. The sans-shoe thing."

Wes, who was examining similarly obscure prophecies in similarly ambiguous languages, looked up, his glasses slightly smudged. "You mean shanshu," he corrected. "The prophecy that tells us Angel will eventually become human."

"No, as I recall, that's not exactly what it said," Lilah retorted. "Wasn't it the vampire with a soul will fulfill his destiny and shanshu? No use of the name Angel. Just vampire, soul, champion--and unless I'm very mistaken, didn't someone who fit those criteria die just recently saving the world? What was his name again? Spike?"

After everyone got done picking their jaws off the floor, there was a group glare of disapproval in Lilah's general direction. It was particularly intense from the Fred and Wesley section, and rather sympathetic from Knox's, but it remained a glaring nonetheless. Lilah shrugged in response, as it was hardly the first time she'd gotten that reaction for pointing out an unpleasant yet plausible possibility.

"That's--" Fred tried to say, trailing off in disbelief. "Um."

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Lilah said incredulously. "Are you telling me that we weren't all sitting here thinking the exact same thing?"

Fred's pencil stopped tapping and abruptly snapped in two, falling back onto the conference table with a small shower of splinters to mourn its passing. Knox and Wesley looked at Fred with some concern, but she waved them off, dusting off her hand quietly and glowering at Lilah further.

"I don't think we did, Lilah," Fred said very slowly and coldly, emphasizing Lilah's name. "Though now that you mention it, it makes a lot of sense except for the part where every time a vampire with a soul gets mentioned in prophecies, it's always referred to Angel up to this point."

Lilah smiled sweetly, one of her infamous, not-so-secretly poisonous smiles. It was rumored among the lower-level functionaries at Wolfram and Hart (and while the rumor had no basis in fact, it was entertaining enough and plausible enough to maintain its currency long after it had been proven false) that Lilah had been wearing an identical smile the day she'd told Angel that having knocked Angelus down a flight of stairs and pushed a bookcase on top of him, she couldn't believe anyone actually feared his dark avenging bullshit, and if she had to listen to 'Mandy' one more time, she'd stake him herself, even if it meant going back to the hell dimension.

The following (entirely fictional) row that followed had supposedly broken Angel's nose, fractured six of Wesley's ribs, and sent Lilah back to the hell dimension--but only to transfer the rest of her wardrobe to LA, disclaiming the whole way that men were idiots.


Friends and Other Disasters, and its sequel Reluctant the Vampire Slayer