Title: Healthy Attachments Author: Dolores Labouchere E-mail: dolores_l@hotmail.com Summary: The Mayor writes one last letter. Dead Letters challenge. Rating: PG-13 Distribution: List archives, Dead Letters. Notes: A strange thought that came to me whilst watching me some season 2 Angel last night. I'm aware I'm weird. Thanks to Kate for being beta extrodinaire. "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." - Dorothy Parker *** My dear Holland, The foresight your company has! This letter-from-the-dead idea is wonderful, and only Wolfram and Hart could make it happen; I chose my lawyers well. However, I didn't think I'd have to be writing it so soon. Sadly, despite all the help you and your wonderful legal firm tried to give me the ascension didn't quite go to plan. On the bright side, I did get to eat that horrible school principal I mentioned. Nasty little man. He never washed his hands after going to the bathroom, you know. Terribly unsanitary. He also had no control over his students. You know they all attacked me at their graduation? After I gave them such a nice speech, too. They've even wrecked the school I built in 1953 in order to kill me, and that was supposed to be one of the enduring monuments to my enlightened administration of the town. Now we're both burnt to a cinder. Of course, I'm still burning. Although down here's not nearly as bad as the brochures make out. I probably have the senior partners to thank for that I'd imagine. They're lovely people, actually, and they think very highly of you. I know you were all worried they'd frown upon our relationship, but they're very keen for you to have healthy attachments outside of work. You have your trophy wife to keep up appearances (and please do pass on my fondest regards to darling Catherine), and you had me to keep your heart. Funny that. Never thought of myself as the sugar daddy type. Of course, it looked worse when you were 24 and I looked the same as I would 30 years later: 30 years your senior. But even then you were a young man of both promise and good taste, so I shouldn't be too shocked, now should I? And like a good Bordeaux, you only improved with age. Gosh, I remember when we first met like it were yesterday. You were just a young thing, a junior partner in your illustrious organisation, helping me sort out the irksome California press when they were reporting the death rate in Sunnydale rather too accurately, putting off potential residents. We bought off a few reporters, arranged the unfortunate imprisonment of another, I took you out for dinner, we went back to your hotel room, listened to some Bacharach, and well, that turned out to be quite the night, didn't it? Now look at you. Executive Vice President of Special Projects, no less. Still on Earth whilst I start to smoke around the edges down here. I guess with me turning into a giant demonic lizard things were never going to be the same anyways, but that's hardly the point, now is it? Though I also guess it won't be too long before we're reunited. You're no longer a spring chicken, and I don't think you'll being going upstairs, no offence. Does that sound a little morbid of me? You can't blame me for being impatient. And you shouldn't worry about it. Your senior partners tell me you'll be very well catered for. Gee, if it wasn't for the fact that they need you to stay up there for the moment, I'd be urging you to stick your head in that oven right now. So we wait, and remember the good times. Paris, Acapulco, Disneyworld... you know there's a replica down here? Less water, more lava for sure, but the parade's still as beautiful. Remember I love you, and as a last piece of advice, I'd keep out of the way of blonde slayers, 'cause they're more trouble than they're worth. Till we're attached again, Richard x