SUMMARY: Darla seeks sanctuary with Lindsey after Angel's
little foray into pyromania.
SPOILERS: Nope. AtS Season 2.
CONTENT/WARNINGS: Possibly a dash of immoderate language,
but nothing too racy.
RATING: PG 13
DISCLAIMER: I am not now, nor have I ever been, Numfar.
Not even a little bit. Any text inside quotation marks inside brackets
is
from episodes & belongs to magnificent Jossverse
writers. The characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy,
Kuzui,
Sandollar, and David Greenwalt Productions, 20th Century
Fox, and whoever else may have a hold upon them. The situation is
wholly mine, and I do not mean to infringe upon any copyrights
COMMENTS: Grateful thanks to Amych and ElenaB for Beta-ing.
There were undoubtedly other places Darla could have gone
seeking solace in the dazed and painful
aftermath, but she chose the most obvious sanctuary for
simplicity's sake. She knew Lindsey wouldn't
turn her away. Sure enough, one look at the poor, bedraggled
spectacle of Darla and Drusilla scorched
and shivering wetly in the corridor and he was ushering
them into his apartment with a fine disregard for
his personal safety, the words of invitation falling
from his lips almost involuntarily at the sight of her pain.
Fool.
Darla despised the boy's weakness but was happy enough
to make use of it. She stumbled a little and
let him sweep her up like a bride and carry her tenderly
over the threshold. He ignored the cold water
seeping through his clothes as she snuggled trustingly
up against his warm chest; it was the sort of
romantic gesture that she knew would appeal to Lindsey
McDonald. He had showered and changed since
returning from the office and in his battered jeans and
innocent white T shirt he smelled enticingly of soap
and bourbon. No aftershave, but Darla preferred her victims
that way; nothing to interfere with the
appetising scent of hot blood thrumming just below the
surface as it blended with the faint whiff of other
bodily secretions too subtle yet for mortal noses. Delicious.
She had to suppress a smile as he carried
her over to the sofa, her hair sticking clammily to his
skin and her daintily-masked face dangerously close
to his jugular.
Men were so *stupid*.
Drusilla - weeping still and whimpering some tired nonsense
about "eyes like needles" trailed
disconsolately in their wake, fingering her burned flesh
with an expression of infantile incomprehension as
Lindsey deposited his burden carefully amidst the cushions.
"It wasn't Daddy, was it? It was the Angel-Beast. Was
it Daddy? Why did he do it, Grandmum?" Lindsey
dragged his gaze away from Darla and stared levelly at
the other vampire.
"Angel did this to you?" asked Lindsey, his voice a sudden
snarl of protective good ol' country boy. Darla
cast him a speculative glance through tangled, half-closed
eyelashes and nodded, watching fury distort
his pretty face. For a little moment there was silence
in the apartment, broken only by Drusilla's
woebegone sniffling, and Darla wondered whether Lindsey
might go out and try to stake her boy then and
there. That would never do.
"Lindsey, you have to help us," she said imploringly,
snaring his gaze. "You have to help *me*. You're
all I have." Which should, she hoped, be enough to keep
him from dashing out into the night straight away
to meet an untimely and inconvenient death. Right on
cue he reached out a tentative hand to brush a wet
rat's tail of fair hair tenderly from her face, glancing
from the angry wounds to her deceptively human eyes
with evident frustration.
"I can't believe he did this to you. That bastard. You're
safe now, baby," he assured her in a voice thick
with emotion; and it was all she could do to keep from
rolling her eyes in disgust.
* * *
While Lindsey was sweet-talking a thoroughly surprised
neighbour into lending him some clothes for his
Îvisiting sisters', Darla surveyed Drusilla narrowly.
She had absolutely no intention of sharing her pet
human with the other vampire. The place simply wasn't
big enough for the three of them - and besides,
the little idiot would be sure to break him in no time,
which would be a complete waste; and then she
would come running to Darla looking all surprised that
he'd stopped working once she'd pulled his head
off.
Drusilla could be quite unbelievably tiresome.
She had finally stopped snivelling and - after wandering
around the room curiously for a little while - had
settled down to a solemn game of hopscotch, using the
lawyer's car keys as a marker. At some point
that evening Drusilla had lost her shoes and her filthy,
bleeding, blackened feet were now mottling
Lindsey's characterless carpet haphazardly with grimy
wet smudges of blood and dirt. Darla, acutely
aware of the pain in her own burnt legs, wondered whether
Dru felt anything at all.
"Four," she announced with a grave expression on her ravaged
face; and Darla caught herself actually
looking down for a chalked hopscotch grid like an idiot.
"Lucky number four," added Drusilla in a tone of
quiet satisfaction as she hopped. "Four horsemen. Four
elements. Four seasons. Four vampires. Four
little duckies."
Four little duckies? *Whatever*. . .
"Dru, dear, why don't you go and find William?" asked
Darla, managing to summon something that
sounded almost like kindness. She had comforted the girl
at first, but her maternal instincts seemed to
have reached their limit already. "It could be just like
old times." For a moment Drusilla peered at her
gravely, still balanced on one leg. With her raw face,
sodden skirts and the dark, streaming seawrack of
her hair Dru resembled nothing so much as Kassandra wandering
wild-eyed from the flaming wreckage of
Ilium; a broken and murderous little Kassandra rudely
wrenched out of the choking antique smoke and
into the twentieth century. A Tarantino wet dream.
Darla wondered what the hell was going through the girl's mind.
"You are not the Virgin Mary," said Drusilla incontrovertibly,
looking rather surprised. She cocked her
head and batted cautiously at the air with one sharp-nailed
hand, like a cat watching a will'o'the wisp of
refracted light dance across a wall. "And I don't think
a stable would be very comfortable. A nursery is a
better place for magic little babies."
"Good point," said Darla, keeping her voice even with
some difficulty. Siring a lunatic had seemed like a
charmingly vicious piece of malice at the time, but Darla
found that the jest began to pall after the first few
decades. In fact, she was swiftly starting to remember
how often she'd wanted to stake her boy's mad
get in the old days. William could be a nuisance, but
at least he was sane; and once she'd sired him
Drusilla had been under Darla's feet far less than before.
"Don't you think it would be a good idea to find
William, dear? We could be a family again," she wheedled
dulcetly, just as Lindsey returned with a
bundle of clothing.
Armed with his most disarming smile and the molasses eloquence
that had convinced many a courtroom
that black was white and day was night, Lindsey McDonald
had had very little difficulty in talking his
bemused neighbour out of her panties. Several pairs,
in fact. Also some bras (although he worried they
were perhaps too large for his guests), a couple of simple
dresses, some pants and a T shirt or two. Not a
bad haul, but he had every intention of getting his girl
something more suitable in the morning.
Drusilla turned her wild gaze upon him and Lindsey visibly
became conscious of his jugular vein, but to his
credit he stood his ground.
"Grandmum wants you to herself," Drusilla said, surprising
Darla with her unwonted acuity. "She needs
some coddling. Her baby boy was naughty, so she wants
a living one instead." She reached out one
tallow-pale finger to press Lindsey's nose gently. "I'm
going to find my Spike. Goodnight, ladies.
Goodnight, sweet ladies. Goodnight!" And without further
ado she swept out of the apartment, barefoot
and bleeding and mad as a hatter, but still carrying
herself with incongruous dignity.
* * *
It was an adequate apartment. Rather bland and painfully
bourgeois, but adequate nevertheless. Darla
would have preferred something a little more overtly
opulent in an ideal world, but she was not a person
who needed luxury. She just liked it. Over the years
Angelus had given her a taste for the finer things.
With him there was no skulking in sewers or mineshafts
unless it was *absolutely* necessary; more often
than not they had been surrounded by beauty and he had
always gone to great lengths to find her
somewhere with a view.
But it was an adequate enough apartment for her present
needs. Lindsey treated her reverently and
seemed to be labouring under the foolhardy misapprehension
that she was a delicate little thing in need of
his protection, rather than a centuries-old demon strong
enough to rip out his spine. For the moment she
was content to encourage this conceit and let him pride
himself on being her protector, just as long as he
proved useful. Feigning vulnerability galled Darla, but
it was a small enough price to pay in exchange for a
safe haven and the absolute devotion that she knew Lindsey
would lavish upon her.
(Although a small voice in the very back of her mind did
ask, very softly, whether Darla was really feigning
anything. The recollection of Angel's face when he dropped
the match still provoked an involuntary
shudder whenever it invaded her thoughts; and it irritated
her to admit it, but she hurt all over. Darla had
forgotten it was possible to feel so much pain. So perhaps,
just perhaps, it wasn't Lindsey McDonald she
was fooling after all.)
* * *
Lindsey ran a warm bath for her and tested the water with
the tender skin of his bare elbow, one sleeve
rolled up, for all the world like a mother with her first-born
child. Younger siblings, Darla hypothesised idly,
faintly amused. These white trash families bred like
rats. Darla sat on the bathroom floor with her back
against the wall and her scorched legs straight out in
front of her, looking like one of Dru's accursed little
broken dolls in her ruined finery. The pain, try as she
might to ignore it, really was excruciating.
Lindsey rummaged in a little chest under the sink and
emerged with a virgin bottle of bubble bath. He
looked at her questioningly, a tentative smile unfurling
as he held it out for her inspection.
"Myrrh," he said, "I'm more of a shower guy myself, but,
y'know, Christmas presents an' all. I figure if it
was good enough for Baby Jesus it might be good enough
for you, honey."
The endearment sounded awkward on his tongue, like he
had too much invested in it. If she asked him to
jump off a bridge for her just now, Darla thought he'd
probably do it. Probably. She shrugged her
acceptance and watched dispassionately as he broke the
seal and tipped the thick, sluggish liquid into
the steaming water. The perfume that filled the room
was overwhelming to her vampiric senses it made
her weary head spin and called back far too many memories
of places long since vanished into silt or
sand.
She had been the Scourge of Europe, fearless and irresistible
with her boy at her side and his litter in her
wake. She had been truly great. Now she was reduced to
*this* and the jarring contrast left a taste of
ashes in her mouth. One of William's wretched poets had
written something like that, something about a
broken statue lying in a desert; she remembered him reciting
it drunkenly too often in the early days of his
siring and crowing about his own newfound immortality.
Angelus had beaten most of the lyricism out of
him eventually.
She rested her damp cheek against the cold tiles and closed
her eyes, feeling every bit of her four
hundred years as she listened to the thunderous racket
of the bath being run. It was pathetically typical of
Lindsey McDonald, this soothing water to contrast
with her boy's fire. Trying to make her feel better. It
wouldn't make her feel better. Like water, Lindsey was
cheap and changeable; stronger than he looked,
but easily manipulated into whatever direction one found
convenient. It would take more than Lindsey
McDonald to quench Angelus.
It had never been the same after Romania. Try as she might
to wring continued delight from her moonlit
existence, when Angelus left her all the passion was
leached away with him. Those were terrible times.
Without him she was less than she had been; and however
many mortals she swived or languidly
eviscerated, however many new fashions there were to
flatter her curves; however many distracting new
arts and artifices were conjured up by the cattle over
the decades to amuse her, Darla knew in her
unbeating heart that when Angelus left he had taken her
fire with him.
It astounded her, because she had always considered herself
the strongest of them and had always been
confident that she needed nobody else. She had gone crawling
back to The Master in the end, humbled
and penitent and eager to please. A queen fallen on hard
times, ready to don Catholic-schoolgirl gear if
her owner told her to do so. Wide-eyed. Eager. Obedient.
A play-acting whore just as surely as she had
ever been in life; it was only the costumes that had
changed.
Angelus would have staked her sooner than let her demean
herself so for anyone but him. Born-again
Angel couldn't care less.
Lindsey's hands trembled slightly as he helped her to
rise. She liked his hands. The dichotomy amused
her one soft, warm, vulnerable, flexible, a capable
tool; the other hard, cold, unyielding, perfect and
hollow. (She was seeing metaphors everywhere these days.
Perhaps resurrection did that to a person.) It
pleased her that Angel had done this to him; or Angelus,
she was no longer so sure where the division
lay. The soul cage was a flimsy little prison for her
boy, after all. She knew now that the passion, the
bloodlust; everything she had loved about Angelus, elements
of both the demon and the man, were all still
there; quiet like banked coals but searing white-hot
just below the surface. It infuriated her.
How he must have *ached* at the urgent spurt of Lindsey's
hot blood arcing redly into empty air when the
hand was severed, wasting itself in viscous crimson puddles
on the floor while Angel's every cell
clamoured for it. How he must have wanted to fling himself
down onto the cold ground and lick it all up,
yellow-eyed and snarling. Not for the first time she
wondered whether Lindsey's inscrutable employers
had consciously chosen to use the boy as part of their
plan for Angel. He was a perfect little temptation
for her darling.
But he was not her darling any longer and had not been
these many years. And he was not the spineless
do-gooder either he was neither. Or both. Darla
did not know what she was dealing with and this
disturbed her more than she would admit.
After Lindsey McDonald helped her to her feet they performed
a strange little dance, in which Lindsey in
a perverse display of chivalry tried to simultaneously
support her and help her undress without actually
ever seeing or touching her body. It was oddly sweet,
especially with the memory of how urgently he had
kissed her when she was human. Especially since she could
smell the arousal on him right now.
Idiot.
She leaned against him as he tenderly helped her peel
away the layers of fabric, letting it slip-slide down
onto the bathroom floor. Through the T shirt his body
was warm against her chest and Darla slowly inhaled
the clean, musky smell of Lindsey McDonald, licking her
lips unconsciously at the thought of his blood.
She remembered the taste of Lindsey's blood vividly.
Darla stepped out of the puddled fabric, appreciating
the coolness of the floor tiles against her aching feet
as she held onto Lindsey; and as she moved each delicate
shift of her weight brushed another part of her
body against him. He thought it was an accident of her
weakness and it was clearly driving him crazy, but
Darla was fairly sure that she wasn't going to let him
do anything about it; rather suspected that his
outmoded sense of Southern hospitality would keep him
from making any kind of attempt when he thought
her at such a disadvantage. Rape and pillage were not
Lindsey McDonald's style. More's the pity.
The vampire spared a glance for the wreckage of her dress
and pouted slightly. Playing at being a
Sunnydale schoolgirl had served The Master's purpose,
but Darla was a woman and she preferred to
dress herself accordingly; the ruined clothing had been
expensive not to her, admittedly, but it was the
principle of the matter and Darla had rather liked
it. The waste irritated her.
"Why don't you look, Lindsey?" she asked huskily as she
balanced against him, wholly naked and
shivering slightly. "Am I too ugly now? Don't you want
me any more?"
She was teasing him a little, still sure of herself
but there was a tiny trace of real insecurity in her voice,
a catch in her throat that was not calculated. Darla
was grateful for once that she had no reflection to
taunt her with the ruin of her beauty. Her skin would
be curdled and raw, as Drusilla's had been and
although she knew it would heal given a little time,
it pained her. Worse still, it stung her pride. Lindsey's
arousal was palpable now another distinct layer
of scent mingling with the olfactory chaos of myrrh,
gasoline, bourbon, soap, charred hair and crisped meat
that pervaded the bathroom and filled Darla's
sensitive nostrils. She felt dizzy and let herself lean
against him, gratified (if entirely unsurprised) to feel
his erection straining enthusiastically towards her.
"Help me?" she said in a husky little-girl voice, and watched him melt on cue.
Fool.
And then, to her own considerable surprise, Darla fainted.
* * *
She awoke shuddering on Lindsey's bed as he dabbed a cotton
ball covered in calamine lotion very
gently over her tortured skin. She could smell his tears.
The cotton sheets beneath her carried the familiar
scent of Lindsey and of fabric softener and she found
that they chafed slightly against her
overly-sensitised body. She judged that the linen had
been changed a day or two earlier; Darla had not
performed such menial tasks herself for centuries, but
during that thankfully brief period of sunlit inanity
between her resurrection and her return to full power,
the human Darla had been obliged to acquaint
herself with the working of washing machines.
Mortality was a vile business.
He had dressed her in a too-large T-shirt that reached
modestly down over her thighs; Darla wondered
whether he had tried to clothe her without looking at
her body or letting his hands roam where he wanted
them to go. Probably. She felt reasonably sure of her
hold over him and would have bet a not
inconsiderably sum that he had, in fact, been as chaste
and respectful as a priest.
The T-shirt was something she would never have worn of
her own free will the modern penchant for
androgyny was one fashion trend that Darla had no intention
of encouraging. At least the shirt was clean,
but beneath the slightly dusty bouquet of soap scented
with simulated lemons it was layered with the faint
spoor of some unfamiliar and inconsequential woman past
the first blush of youth. Darla was clad in
someone's cast-offs; and although she had happily twirled
in many an outfit stolen from a fresh kill, still
the vampire felt galled and belittled by the mundane
lending. How far now from her glory days, her
carefree, magnificent gory days with Angelus at her side.
She would far rather be naked than wake to find herself
wrapped in such an unbecoming charity rag. Darla
made a mental note to rip her benefactress limb from
limb at the first available opportunity.
Lindsey's hands were tender, almost brotherly, as they
tended her wounds; and the lotion was deliciously
soothing where Lindsey swiped it over her skin. A human
would have been in a terrible state, but Darla's
demonic flesh had already done a lot of healing. It hurt
oh, how it hurt but she knew that in time the
pain would abate and she would be left with, at the worst,
only a light tracery of scar tissue silvering her
body. She clung to this knowledge, determined to consider
her state objectively and not to give in to
self-pity. Tried to blot out the pain and calmly assess
how long it might take her to recover, how safe she
would be here while she planned an appropriate revenge.
She also attempted, a little less successfully, to forget
the utter coldness of Angel's familiar face
watching from the shadows as pain had enveloped her.
Her cool limbs were still afire, the blistered flesh
continuing to cook long after blessed water had doused
the agonising tongues of flame. He had marked
her and she still was not sure what that meant, but she
knew that he was damned well going to pay for
his insolence. After this affront Angel would have to
die by her hand, or Darla's immortal existence would
be thoroughly intolerable.
She wriggled kittenishly a little as Lindsey rubbed calamine
into her thigh; glad, on the whole, that he had
abandoned the bath idea. Darla very badly wanted to wash
the gasoline stink of humiliation from her
damaged flesh, but the truth was that she hurt; and more
than anything what she wanted right now was to
lie still and let these warm, human fingers smooth comforting
creams onto her poor, affronted skin.
More than *almost* anything.
"Lindsey?"
She skewered Lindsey McDonald with one calculated flash
of her practiced eyes, all honeyed lust and
unwilling vulnerability. He caught his breath and ventured
a reassuring smile.
"Shh, baby, I'm here now," Lindsey said. "Everything's gonna be Okay."
Could he possibly be any more banal?
He grew still under her gaze and reddened slightly. Darla
wanted to laugh at the sight; he might have
considered himself long past the age for blushing but
Darla knew her own strengths, even with her beauty
marred so badly. She could hear his pulse drumming tantalisingly
and she knew, if Lindsey did not, that
even hurt as she was Darla could still take him whether
he willed it or no.
He really was a very pretty boy, she reflected appreciatively
- and hers, body *and* soul. Which was
regrettably rather more than could be said for Angelus
at present.
"Lindsey, I'm hungry."
He blinked at her in dawning comprehension and there was
a little pause while she wondered whether he
would make it rape or give it up freely. He was very
useful, Lindsey McDonald, and Darla would be
reluctant to lose him so early in the game. But she would
cope.
"I don't have·I could go and get something from
the All-Night Pandemonium Place," he said, leaning
back slightly. "It'll take maybe half an hour. Or maybe,
uh, a cat? I mean, there's stuff at work but I
don't want them to know where you are and most of my
contacts are Wolfram and Hart suppliers - don't
want it getting back to them·" his voice trailed
off. He was trying quite hard to sound unfazed and it
wasn't working for a moment. Which was funny, because
he had already surrendered to her in the wine
cellar and here he was getting all fluttery and
virginal. She rather enjoyed it. Perhaps he thought he had
something to live for? Darla smiled at him very sweetly,
keeping her game face restrained by a sheer act
of will.
"Lindsey," she murmured in a wounded and imploring little
singsong. "I'm hungry *now*. Don't you love
me?"
And that did the trick, as she had expected it to. He
licked dry lips and yielded up his left wrist, keeping
his eyes fixed on hers as the planes of her face shifted
and her gaze yellowed.
"Just this once, then," he said with an attempt at firmness.
"I'll pick something up from the butcher's
tomorrow." But she was no longer listening. His words
trailed away.
Darla's small, cold hand closed over his arm and pulled
it sharply towards her. There was nothing soft or
vulnerable about her face as she drew his pliant hand
to her mouth and briefly pressed flaring nostrils
against the soft, flimsy skin of the wrist to inhale
his scent. She smiled. Lindsey stared down at her with
an expression of hopelessness as she sliced through the
frail outer tissue, bit into the vein and luxuriated
in the coppery rush of hot blood over her parched tongue.