...*Chapter IX*...
…*…
This time, when she entered the hotel, Angel was waiting for her. She made it halfway down the stairs before Angel's hand was around her throat as he backed her into the nearest wall. Angel's eyes flashed, "What are you doing, Darla?"
"Well, hello lover," Darla managed around the hand on her throat.
The hand tightened. "Enough games. This ends. Now."
Darla brought her knee to his groin in a hard jab, pushing him off of her. "Does it? Here, I thought we were just getting started." She kicked Angel in the stomach before he could recover, sending him flying across the room as she stalked after him.
But Angel's hand came up to block her next hit, and it was Darla who went flying. Angel bit out, "I'm not going to let you hurt anyone else."
Wiping blood from her mouth, Darla simply laughed, an ugly sound to go with her ugly hits as they traded blows. "What are you going to do? Fuck me and leave me again? Set me on fire? You really know how to show a girl a good time."
Angel's eyes softened in guilt, just for a moment, and Darla took the opportunity to drive him back against a wall, forcing him down to his knees. "Hate to break it to you, Angel, but you're not exactly the champion here." She sneered, "My boy couldn't have done it better."
Angel caught her next blow, kicking her legs out from under her and regaining his feet. "I'm not Angelus."
"Oh, I know." They were trading blows again, sending half of the hotel lobby into messy, broken disarray. "I guess that little cheerleader you've been hiding away just wasn't up to the task after all."
Angel drove her back, growling, "Leave Cordelia out of this."
Darla let him pin her again, wiggling suggestively in his punishing grasp. "Why, lover? Does she not know about me? Pity - I'd love to get a taste of that-"
A stake appeared out of nowhere, and Angel pressed it threateningly over Darla's heart. They were both breathing harshly, even though they had no need of the air. Angel met Darla's eyes. "If you try to hurt her, I'll kill you."
But Darla's face crumpled unexpectedly, tears shining in her wide eyes as she looked between Angel and the stake at her chest. "Just do it! I deserve to die, after what I've done."
The stake faltered and lowered slightly. Angel was torn between blind panic - it couldn't be Cordelia, he'd seen her safe to her old apartment just after dusk - and a confusing swirl of emotions. Darla didn't have a soul, but he'd never seen his sire fall apart like this before. "What have you done? Darla - what have you done?"
Darla's eyes pinned his, her hand coming up to stroke his cheek, wistful and sad. "We did terrible, horrific things together, Angel. But what I've done is so much worse." She let out a bitter laugh, "I guess I really cornered the market on evil this time."
The stake had dropped away, forgotten, as Angel shook her once, trying to snap her out of it and get her to tell him what had happened. A horrible gnawing feeling was starting low in his gut, and Angel was suddenly sure that he didn't want to know what she was going to say. "Tell me."
Darla's head ducked away from his gaze; she was shaking in his arms. "I killed our baby."
Angel froze. If he'd had breath or a heart, both would have stopped. She couldn't mean - this was a joke, a terrible, cruel joke. He shook her again. "What?"
Darla finally looked back up, meeting Angel's stunned gaze with a viciousness and barely suppressed laughter that couldn't mask the truth of her words or the slight wobble to her voice that she desperately tried to cover. "That's right Angel, The Powers That Be felt the need for us to bear the world's salvation." She paused to take in Angel's stunned and hurt face. "I didn't."
Angel dropped her like a cross, taking two steps back. "You're lying," he hissed through clenched teeth, trying to will away the hopeless fog that was engulfing him, "that's impossible."
"No? You knocked me up and left me high and dry, Angel." Darla pulled up the material of her shirt, giving Angel a good view of the ugly scar, still healing, low across her stomach. "So I took matters into my own hands."
It's another game. Angel told himself firmly, but it didn't change the sick, twisted feeling as he stared at the marred surface of Darla's once perfect body. He knew that body, knew the smooth immortal planes as well as he knew his own. And there was the lingering dark feeling of magic tugging at that ugly scar that should have healed. "No."
"Yes." Darla tugged her shirt back down, kicking the stake far away and looming over Angel, where he'd dropped heavily to the couch. Her voice was high and hysterical, even to her own ears. "That's right, Angel, I killed your only chance at a child. And I'm glad I did it! You're weak, Angel - this pitiful soul makes you weak. My darling boy wouldn't want some squalling baby any more than I. And I wasn't about to help along your delusions of humanity!"
The catch in her voice makes it through the fog. Angel's head rose to meet her eyes, a darkness seeping through the fog. "You didn't have to do that. Darla, it was a miracle. Our miracle."
"Ours?" Darla's voice was cracked and angry, "You set me on fire, Angel!" Her hands traced over her stomach unconsciously, "It was our baby," and then clenched at her sides when she realized, "What did you expect me to do - come running back to you? So I could hand my child to you and that little twit to raise after you tried to kill me again?"
"Darla," he felt trapped, like he wanted to plead with the universe and take back everything he had done from that horrible year, everything he had now, if only... If only... "It wouldn't have - I wouldn't have-" he stumbled over the words, echoing her, "our baby."
Darla met his betrayed and helpless gaze for one long moment. What-if's swirling between them. "It's too late."
The words echoed with finality long after the door slammed behind Darla. Angel sat longer still, boneless against the couch, staring unseeing at the destruction they had wrought to the hotel - his mind consumed by the destruction they had wrought together, a darkness seeping through everything.
He had to find out if it was true. That thought was finally enough motivation to drive Angel from his semi-catatonic state and to his coat. The Powers would know. And, as Angel hefted all his favorite weapons, they were going to tell him.
…*…
Angel returned to the hotel in a mindless haze of agony and rage. It dripped form him like the blood and dirt staining his clothes. It hadn't been easy, but he'd asked nicely until he got his answer. Now the words rolled around in his head on repeat, echoing back and forth and refusing to be absorbed.
Darla had been pregnant. With his child. His child. A child slated to balance the scales, a life for the life that couldn't be restored to Darla. A being of light born out of darkness to save the world.
The Powers' representative had seemed subtly surprised that Darla would have ended the pregnancy. It explained that her feelings for Angel and pregnancy-induced soul should have kept the baby safe until a more permanent protection spell could be completed. Apparently bureaucracy was a bitch, even for the Powers.
A soul. Their child had been human and that soul was supposed to infect Darla by default. Had that been the crack in her voice as she had recounted her deeds? Did she really want him to suffer so much that even a soul could not protect their child?
"Where have you been?" Cordelia's voice rang out the second Angel reentered the Hyperion, "Darla's been here again - getting seriously sick of the mess -" as Angel descended the stairs and Cordelia got a closer look at him, she gasped, "my god, Angel, are you bleeding?"
She was by his side in an instant, helping Angel to the same couch he'd sunk into earlier. Cordelia stripped off his sodden coat and he let her take his gore-covered weapons without protest. Finally, when she brought out the industrial-sized first aid kit and started to unbutton his shirt, concern radiating off her, Angel brought his hand to her wrist and stilled her. "It's not my blood, Cordelia."
Cordelia slowly sat next to him, her hands falling uselessly to her lap. Cordelia watched him for a long moment, biting her lip in an attempt to bite back the questions - Angel looked lost, and like he'd been in one hell of a fight. "Is it - did you kill her?" At his unfocused gaze, she hurried on, "Darla, I mean?"
"No."
And then Angel was up in a blink, pacing across the trashed room with long, vampiric strides that made it difficult for Cordelia to follow his movements. He laughed, low and bitter, and unpleasant echo of Darla's. "Just the Powers deciding to make me their puppet again." He met Cordelia's eyes, and she gasped at the rage simmering there, "They screwed up, and I'm paying the price."
"Angel," Cordelia kept her tone as calm as she was capable of, watching his movements like one would a caged animal, "what happened?"
Angel whipped the coffee table up and out - it hit a side wall and shattered spectacularly. "What happened?" A chair was shoved roughly out of the way, and then he was pacing away again, "Every time I think I've suffered enough. But it's never enough, is it? The scales are never going to balance."
Cordelia tracked him with wide-eyes, fingers inching towards the cell phone and stake in her purse. She'd never admit to feeling unsafe with Angel, but it was better to be safe than dead, especially when he was acting so erratic. "Angel. You're scaring me."
Angel paused for a moment, hurt and hurting; he tried to calm down. And then Angel was squatting in front of her, taking her hands in his and staring up at her with such anguish. "She won, Cordelia."
Cordelia ran her thumbs soothingly across Angel's hands, trying not to panic at how solid his grip was. "Who won?"
"Darla." His grip tightened when he said her name. "She has taken everything good from my life. Again."
His grip was too tight. Painfully too tight. Cordelia tried to tug her hands free, but Angel was looking through her, past her. "You're hurting me."
Her words snapped Angel back to the present for a moment, and he immediately freed her hands. There were dark bruises already encircling her wrists. Everything was falling apart. "I didn't mean to - I -"
He reached for her hands again, apologetic, but Cordelia's hand whipped out first, slapping him hard across the cheek. Angel let himself fall back to the floor, lost. Cordelia's voice whipped out like her hand, razor sharp and just a touch too high and shaky. "Don't you dare."
They stayed like that for a frozen moment, and then Cordelia was gathering up her purse and standing on shaky legs. "I'm going to go, Angel. I've put up with your crazy ex long enough, and I've kept it secret from our friends, because you asked me and because I love you. But I won't put up with this."
She stepped over him and moved toward the door. Angel was suddenly desperate, in the few parts of him that weren't already consumed by the darkness. He couldn't lose Cordelia too. He had to do something. To explain. "I slept with Darla." She froze by the door, and Angel hurried on, realizing that his blunt words sounded even worse than they were. "Somehow the Powers - she was pregnant, but-"
"Save it, Angel." Cordelia did not turn around as she walked out the door. "And don't follow me."
The door slammed shut like a shot. For the second time today, Angel was left feeling like his world was collapsing. Darla had taken from him one of the only things he ever wanted. Lost him Cordelia - he had no illusions that she would take him back after this when she wouldn't even let him explain. He'd been a father, for brief moments that he hadn't known, and now he wasn't. And he would never get that chance back.
He couldn't take back everything he'd done - today - in his long life - to Darla. But he could make her understand. It was not enough to simply kill Darla anymore.
He didn't have much time. Cordelia was going to tell Gunn and Wesley and they were all going to debate whether or not he still had his soul. Did it even matter anymore?
Angel grabbed his coat, shook it out once, and put it back on. No more waiting. No more brooding. He had to find Darla.
…*…
Darla had not exactly gone to any great lengths to hide herself from Angel. She sent Erik away, off on some fools' mission to find a shaman. No, this was between her and Angel - it always had been. Darla was not a fool - she knew that Angel would want to hurt her, possibly to kill her. But Darla had conquered more than her share of men and death - neither frightened her anymore.
Her boy was properly gone, and she had accepted that. Finally. Angel was a specter of his former self, and Darla did not abide ghosts. She also did not abide the sick, paralyzing weakness that he infected her with. A parasite that she had to snuff out.
So if Angel wanted to kill her, fine. He was welcome to try. It was worth it to see him suffering the way she had suffered. He'd cast her off and cast her out, and Darla had always hated being alone. She made him to keep her company, and then he'd abandoned her. She wanted him to feel nothing but pain.
When Angel appeared at her door, she knew that he believed her. It was etched into the hard lines of his face. "Come to play after all, lover?"
He's on her in an instant, tossing her back to tumble over the couch, leaping after her and pinning her to the ground, his hand dragging up her shirt to dig into the wound at her stomach. "Is this all it is to you, Darla? A game? Last time we were here, you didn't want games."
Darla gasped hard at the pain, pushing him back ineffectually. "It's not a game - it's this," she flipped him over, straddling him and pressing against his fingers, "it's pain, Angel. Can you feel it?"
She laughed at him even as she started to bleed, the thick borrowed blood coating his fingers. Angel pushed her off of him, leaving them both sprawled out on the floor and covered in her blood. "I feel it." And then he is dragging her up by her hair, tugging her back into him, hands roughly skating over her body until one pushes its way into her jeans. "You like that? You always did get off on pain, Darla."
This time, her gasp was less pained and more of a moan. She threw him back. "You're not him. You'll never be him." She followed her words with blows, letting out the months and years and decades of hatred. "I don't want you anymore."
"Are you sure about that?" He drug her mouth to his, flipping them and pinning her against the floor, desperate to feel something - anything. Desperate to forget.
It was a cold solace in Darla's arms, but she was the one who had done this to him. Who made him into a monster and then stole his happiness away. Some small part of him thought that maybe they can go back - maybe the Powers would give them a second chance. But Angel knew better. He had seen too much, watched too many chances fall away.
But Darla would fall with him. He'd make sure of it. If he couldn't have what he wanted, he could at least have her. His sire. Someone who hurt as much as he did. Someone to feed the rage and pain into.
Darla laughed at him even as they grappled. Slapped him with enough force to make his head spin, even as she helped him out of his filthy clothes. His grip was not light, but Darla reveled in the pain and gave as good as she got. Angel wanted to hurt her, but he wasn't going to win. He was already in the dark and muck with her, staining his precious soul with her blood as he bit and tore at her.
Darla dug her nails into his back and laughed.
A/N: There is one more chapter after this. Thank you to anyone who is still reading a story over a decade in the making. I shall do my best to finish it shortly. Certainly far quicker than the last update. I hope the resolution will be worth the wait.