Author's Name: Soo W
Disclaimer: These characters belong to WB/Joss/Fox etc etc, but certainly not to me. I'm only writing this for fun and therapy. And because there are NEVER, ever, enough flashbacks.
Pairing: Liam/Anna
Spoilers: Based loosely on events in Becoming and The Prodigal
Short Summary: The newly risen Angel and Darla have run amok in Liam's village. As they try to hide the evidence, Angel is obsessed by memories of a recent event in his human life.
Rating: [R]
Comments: This is a follow-up to Pen Pictures, but I don't think you need to have read that to read this, so don't worry. It's based on the premise that Liam was having an affair with Anna, the servant who appears in flashbacks in AtS, before he was turned.
Echoes (I) Caught Red-Handed 1/3
"A penny for those thoughts."
I gawk at the sight of the child in Darla's grip. He's already been bitten, and as he wriggles piteously she holds on tighter so he won't escape. She gives me a sickly-sweet smile.
"Tell me! I want to know. You looked... quite lost for a moment."
I relax back against the tombstone and recall the details. It was one time when she didn't keep our appointment, so I came into the kitchen looking for her. Some kind of jam or jelly was in the making: a row of scrupulously clean jars stood at the ready. A large pot of sticky concoction was already boiling away, and our large kitchen table was half covered in bunches of red-currants.
Anna sat at the far side of the room in one of the wooden kitchen chairs. Her hands hovered above a large white bowl, and she was quickly and expertly stripping the tiny carmine berries from the sprigs. The currants were ripe to the point of bursting, but they fell from her fingers and bounced off the white glaze, whole and unharmed.
The object of the work didn't interest me, but the worker held my attention, and as a way into a conversation I reached for a handful of the fruit. She studiously ignored me. I skirted the room, until I stood directly to her left, and then came over to the bowl, and watched her technique for a moment. She picked up a sprig by the central twig without touching the currants, threaded her fingers through its tiny, hair-like branches and, with a quick, downwards pull, detached the fruit from the remains of the plant. They dropped into the bowl, rolling down the sides of a small mountain of their kind, and settling for a brief moment, before being knocked further from the apex by another handful of berries. She then discarded the empty twig and picked up another. The entire process took but a second or two.
I twirled the bunch of red-currants in my hand, and leaned against the table a few inches away from the point where her browned forearm touched the wood. Still, she would not look at me, but I studied her. A white handkerchief adorned her hair, pulling it back from her face and keeping it away from her work. She had attempted to roll the bulk of it away neatly, but at some time the knot had come loose and it now lay down her back in a half unravelled twist. A single lock escaped the tyranny imposed on the rest, and lay forward, following the line of her neck and curling in the hollow of her throat. I reached across into her line of vision and she started slightly, then went back to being an automaton as my finger glided down her soft skin and under the wisp of hair. I lifted it away and tucked it behind her ear, and then went back to spinning the currants back and forth, twisting the stem between my forefinger and thumb.
There was a pleasing hitch in her breathing as I touched her, and her hands froze momentarily above the bowl, but then she returned to her task as if nothing had happened, except that a tinge of colour not unlike that of the rubied berries appeared in her cheeks.
After a minute more of watching I turned to face the same way as her and stood behind her chair. Reaching over the top of her head, I tried to mimic her actions, envisaging a small shower of berries falling like rain onto the back of her hand. Sadly, I was not up to the task; I can't explain what I did differently from her, it seemed the same, but the berries would not detach themselves from their tracery of stalks, and when I tried to force them, they were crushed under the pressure of my fingers. Instead of a red-currant shower, a smattering of soft pulp and juice fell on her hands and immediately spread, following the lines of least resistance. The redness ran along the valleys created by her veins, into small creases in her skin and between her knuckles.
She scolded me. "Master Liam!" I could not get her to stop saying that first. Every conversation we began would commence with me urging her to drop the "Master" and call me just "Liam". As if, each time, she didn't truly expect me to be her lover again; as if she considered it to be a thing of the past; or thought I would turn into a monster overnight.
But, after all, the object of this particular exercise was to get her to speak first, so call it a success. I took the stained hand in mine and raised it to my lips. I barely touched it before she took it back and shook her head at me, then returned to the red-currants, as if they were the most important thing in life.
We had a brief parley.
"Anna... you promised."
"Well, I can't help it. The Mistress..."
"What of her?"
"She's in the garden, picking fruit. She says it must be done today."
I smiled at her, and tipped her head up to make her look at me. I waited while she refused to do any such thing. She looked to one side, closed her eyes, and then finally, exasperated, glanced up at my face.
She said, "Oh!" Then she stood and fumbled in the pocket of her apron for something, eventually bringing forth a cloth. She put a hand on the back of my neck to prevent me from pulling away, and, as if I were Kathy and she were cleaning my face in the morning, made to dab at my mouth.
I caught the hand and the cloth and twisted the arm gently behind her. "What?"
"Juice! On your mouth."
"Better do something about that then."
I bent down and kissed her, gently, hardly touching her at all, and then straightened up again. Her mouth was stained with juice like mine. "Dear me," I said, "Now you've got juice on your mouth too."
She took her free hand from my neck but I imprisoned that one too and told her, "No, not that way."
"Liam, your mother... she'll be back any moment..."
"Better hurry then." I remember I smiled at her.
She stole a nervous glance at the door, and then reached up, offering her mouth to me. I immediately abandoned her hands and pulled her into my arms. The redness of the juice and the trace of berry sweetness were obliterated in moments. I had a feverish need for the taste of her.
"And what made you think of this, my love?"
Darla still holds the child fast in her arms, but I can tell he's dead now. While I was speaking, she must have drained his blood.
Thinking about it, I probably knew the boy. I knew all the children in the village. I hold out my hand and she drops the body to the floor and steps over it to reach me. I stare at the thing that caught my eye. Not the child, but the back of her unnaturally white hand, criss-crossed with rivulets of his blood.