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Twilight Quietly Fades
by Dale Edmonds
Email: dale@oggham.com
Disclaimer: Yadda, yadda
Rating: R
Feedback: Public, yup.
Spoilers: All the way to Reunion
Notes: Violent, death of characters and abusive sex.
Thanks to: All the lovely LindseyMcdonald people
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"And you don't care."
"I care. I guess I just don't mind."
He wonders, as he leans against the wall in the cellar, watching Darla skin
Lilah with a cheese-knife, if he does care.
It's quiet in the cellar now. The shifting of bodies, slow bubbling sound of
broken voiceboxes trying to plead. Dru's humming under her breath to
Holland, and in the dark, lit only by candles he found in an emergency
fusebox, her voice is soothing.
He can't smell the blood any longer; the room's too swamped with it.
There're new acrid scents, people loosing their last dignity as they die,
the roasting of skin and flesh, but those fade too. He's tired, stiff from
leaning on a brick wall. He could sit but that would mean shifting one of
his co-workers, and Dru spent a lot of time arranging them. He'd rather
stand anyway. If he sat, he might sleep and his clothes are drenched in
blood. Dru might get confused between corpses.
The door is locked. When daylight comes, he'll have to help get the two
women out, find clean clothes for them all and take them to a safe place.
Then negotiate in daylight with the Senior Partners, on behalf of his new
clients. He's not really worried about that. Nothing seems frightening, not
even the ninth floor. He's not afraid anymore. That's gone, like his hand.
Fear and doubt, sliced off permanently They'll kill children soon enough;
Darla doesn't much care for them, but Dru likes her babies. He'll help
arrange for that, retrieval and disposal. He doesn't mind anymore.
If the guards hadn't escorted them down. If Holland hadn't been in his
office when Angel arrived. If he'd stayed at the nursery with the women. If.
What would he have said? Here I am. I'll help you again. Passed him the
files, the access codes, the locations. He's got two cellphones, one for
work, one that gets changed every week, with just three numbers programmed
in. There're email accounts but he doesn't trust them. Codewords on
webboards are safer, swapping reviews of crummy tv shows which Cordelia
tracks religiously. No contact that might be traced by the firm.
All that ended when he realized Darla was dying. She's beautiful. In
gameface, even more so. Delicate little ridges and golden cat-like eyes. And
she knows Angel. It wasn't difficult to fall in love with her.
She'd come back to his apartment at dawn, restless from a night of
tormenting Angel, and expend all her energy on him. She smelt like him,
tasted like him. She would bite him, tear at his shoulder while they fucked.
She taught him how to use a knife and while he worked, she would close her
eyes and whisper memories of her Angel, her Angelus. What he'd done that
night, in his sleep. How he felt inside her, how Lindsey felt. In return he
would whisper his name when he came, and Darla would laugh or cry, tangle
herself closer and echo the name. Angel.
That stopped when Lindsey ran into Angel. He hadn't meant to. Ifs and maybes
again.
Friday afternoon. The Kramer job had been pulled off perfectly, with the
slight problem of Darla disappearing midway. Lindsey had gone back to his
apartment to wait. The same feeling he got before a verdict was delivered.
He'd done all he could, and now all he could do was drift in the afternoon,
ignoring the clock and letting his mind go blank. If he was a good lawyer,
he'd be planning the next step, but he was better. Every contingency planned
for already, and these moments of possibility, the world about to choose one
way or another - he liked to just drift through them.
Darla came back in a rage. Bite marks down her neck and she ripped off her
underwear as she walked in. Kicked off her heels and pushed him down,
climbed onto him. Panting his name, how much she hated Angel. Lindsey
scraped his nails down her back, slapped her and pushed her under him,
ground her against the floor. It usually worked.
Only she didn't stop crying. So he gathered her up in his arms, smoothed her
hair and told her how much he loved her, how beautiful she was, how
wonderful. She calmed down enough to take a shower, but he had to help her.
Soap that lovely bruised and battered skin. Every scratch a reminder of her
mortality. Dry her off and then lead her to bed, tuck her in. She was
distant, her eyes blank while he did that. Only when he sat down next to her
pillow and began to talk again of how much he loved her, how beautiful she
was, did she wake up.
"You don't love me," she said. "You love him. He doesn't love me anymore,
Lindsey." She started crying again, great tears rolling down her face. "But
he did love me. He did once."
"Yes," Lindsey agreed, wiping her face with the sheet. "He did."
"He doesn't love us, Lindsey. We're not good enough."
When she was asleep, he changed and went out. Friday night and he should've
gone to the office but he didn't want to see Holland or Lilah, tell more
lies about Darla. He left a message with his secretary that she'd come back,
the Kramer plan had carried through.
Friday night and all the clubs in L.A. were alive, people dancing, laughing,
living. He wanted to find somewhere he could get some of that, loose himself
in a crowd and have their energy, their passion rub off on him. Drink enough
that the control he'd kept this past month could slide for a night. Fuck
someone who didn't remind him of Angel, who didn't want to be ripped up and
hurt. He wanted to kiss someone, to flirt and dance.
Friday night and the Chase girl had a vision in the same nightclub Lindsey
ended up in. As soon as he heard the ruckus, he knew he should go. But the
brunette he was talking to was cute and funny, and he was having a good
time. A really good time.
Then Angel leaned against him and murmured, "I can smell her on you, Linds."
He managed to stammer out an excuse to the girl but he needn't have
bothered. When Angel started licking his neck and Lindsey groaned, she left.
"Where are the others?" he managed as Angel led him out of the club.
"Gone back to the office." Angel held the car door open and when Lindsey
slid in, he bent and kissed him.
He'd kissed plenty of people. Chaste first kisses, long talented tonguing,
messy enthusiastic smacks, the savage half bites with Darla. This was like
being a teenager again. Before sex, before blowjobs, when all you had were
mouths and tongues. Hands wrapped round each other's shoulders and all the
pent up hunger and desire spelt out with kisses, breathed into another's
mouth.
Angel sucked his lower lip, touched the tip of his tongue against Lindsey's,
then past to graze the roof of his mouth, lips moving wet and slow against
lips. Heaven in seven minutes all over again.
They went to a hotel. Lindsey paid with his credit card. Angel held his hand
in the elevator, running his thumb in circles against Lindsey's palm. Kissed
him again in the doorway, all that height and strength enfolding him. The
scent of leather and Angel, Darla a faint trace below. Kissing until Lindsey
stumbled in.
A mirror over the dresser, and Lindsey saw himself standing there alone.
Drunken smile on his face, and he'd had one beer. Drunk on hope and desire.
He remembered that. Everything he felt risen up and cresting like an orgasm,
only higher, harder. All his life peaking in one moment of sublime joy. He
was loved.
Then Angel raped him.
He couldn't sleep with Darla again. He was glad she was human, without her
vampire senses and lost in her own misery. He loved her more after that
night. He could see the breaklines in her, the tiny hairline cracks across
her mind, echoing in her tattered skin. The scars he'd made were still
there, little silver bracelets around her wrists.
When Angel turned her down, he went looking. One late night flight to
Mexico, and Druscilla was waiting for him in a crumbling hacienda guarded by
local werewolves. She'd besotted one of the pack leaders, but she tore out
his throat while Lindsey watched and ate most of him. Picked the fur out of
her teeth the whole ride back, in between trying to suck Lindsey's tonsils
out with her tongue.
He liked her. Once he'd manacled her and used the knives Darla had left
behind, she'd stopped trying to seduce him. It took a while to get her to
remember the plan, but when she was called on, she was perfect. Bent but not
broken.
In the car outside the motel, listening to Angel and Darla talk inside, Dru
had turned to him, placed her cool hands on his cheeks and said seriously,
"It's not too late, Lindsey. We can go home now."
If.
He remembers the feel of Angel's cheekbones breaking under his fists. Maybe
beating a man held down by four others and tazered near unconsciousness
wasn't exactly fighting fair. But there'd been such perfect happiness in
breaking that perfect face. Smashing the nose, bloodying the mouth. Just the
face. He knew if he let himself go, he'd break Angel's ribs, his legs, rips
his skin off with his fingernails.
When he was out of breath, Darla was dead and Dru was kneeling next to him.
The special ops waited patiently, and all he could hear was his own
breathing, ragged and desperate, but still in time with Angel's. Dru licked
the blood away from Angel's face and kissed him, then kissed Lindsey. Blood
smeared on his lips, and still he couldn't look away. Angel looked at him,
and he looked at Angel, and he wanted to fall down, to kill him, to curl up
again in those arms. To die.
And that's the answer, he realizes. Darla's finished with Lilah. Her hair's
still clinging to her scalp. She stands up and crosses over to Lindsey.
"Your turn," she says and holds up the knife.
He cares. About Angel, about Darla, even mad Dru. He just doesn't mind what
happens. There's nothing he can do anymore. He's lost and Angel's gone. It
doesn't matter if he walks out of this cellar or rots in it. He's still
lost.
Darla presses the knife into his hand and points to the woman tied to the
chair. Someone's date, Janice from Records. Pretty in a little emerald green
dress that brought out the colour of her eyes. She's almost drained and
slumped in the chair. The bloodloss gives her skin a translucent glow.
Beautiful. He can see the blue veins in her wrists. She's half-awake and
when he slices through her bonds, she focuses on him.
"Lindsey?" she whispers. Her voice is cracked and her lips are dry. "Help
me."
He cuts the nape of her neck, a long shallow curves that drips bright beads
down her breasts. Kisses her there and then wets her lips.
Darla watches while he kills Janice.
"Angelus would've liked that," she says at the end. He nods. He doesn't
mind.
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