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: Angelus/Darla
Spoilers: Based loosely on events in Becoming and The Prodigal
Short Summary: In pursuit of Anna... a letter is written. Darla decides not to dust Angelus at birth and he makes it through the first weeks of his unlife relatively unscathed. But Angelus is still obsessed with Anna. Darla helps him find her, but will there be a price for her assistance? Darla's POV.
Comments: Follows on from "Echoes (I) - Caught Red-Handed". Second in the "Echoes" series. The "Echoes" series is a sequel to Pen Pictures, and the whole lot starts from the premise that Liam was having an affair with Anna (the servant who appears in a flashback in AtS) before he was turned. [ There will be three more in this series shortly: "Chosen" from Anna's POV, "The Wheel's Kick" from Angelus' POV and "Kaleidoscopic" from everyone's POV. ]
I asked him where we should look for Anna, and he said he didn't know. She had no family. The last person who saw her was Molly and she didn't say where Anna was heading.
"Didn't? Be more precise. Couldn't or wouldn't? Or did you even ask?"
After some discussion it transpired that Molly had a relative in a village close by, and accordingly I ordered the carriage be turned back.
So began the trail that led us here, to this bustling thoroughfare in London. One of my favourite cities: the buildings range from the palatial to the squalid within a few feet, the people are so very numerous that I only have to reach out a hand to take a meal, and morals are as loose as befits a great city dedicated to the pursuit of power and money. Everyone is catered for in London, even vampires.
It is years since I first came, but I regularly return. Even so, the visit has an extra charm this time because I see it through the eyes of Angelus, who has never dreamed of such buildings, such people and such moral laxity. His wide-eyed delight is an entertainment in itself, and he sets about the removal of London's prostitutes with a fervour that threatens to put the floggers at Bridewell out of business. Mother Whybourne must be spinning in her pox-ridden grave.
The girl was not difficult to trace. Molly's aunt was a toothless old crone, with so little life in her it hardly seemed worth the energy it took to snuff it out. She told us, tearfully, that the precious Anna stayed only one night before departing for Dublin to look for work, and gave us the address of a boarding house there where we'd be most likely to find her. By the time we arrived, she was aboard a boat for London, under the protection of a Lord Rianey and his elegant family. I smelt a seduction, but the girl obviously is a trusting sort. We take a boat ourselves, and learn that she departed the protection of his Lordship shortly after disembarking. There is a rumour that he tried to welcome her to London behind a coil of rope, presumably in the traditional way a leech of that kind welcomes a penniless young woman under his protection.
I watched Angelus closely as we heard the boatmen toss the name and reputation of his sweet Anna around. They drank her health as a wench of some spirit, and, the story goes, a mean right hook and a sharp knee. When I asked him if she treated his advances in a similar way, he turned on me, yellow-eyed and snarling.
I was not afraid of him, and he knew it, but this is not the point. He lost control. For the first time, he found he could not subdue it, that thing within, and it exploited his anger, used his human body for entirely its own will. Young vampires frequently believe that their turning is merely a way to greater freedom, sensuality and strength. When they realise there is a price to pay...
Angelus' shock was palpable. He plunged off into the bowels of the vessel, and I didn't see him for several hours. When he returned, he was apologetic and smooth-faced, but underneath? I sensed firecrackers, gunpowder, volcanoes on the verge of erupting. A bonfire, on which I intend to roast the last shreds of his humanity to crisp blackness. All this for a servant girl, a person so lowly she has to accept help from Molly and her aunt. I know he feels the absurdity; I equally know he is powerless to confront it.
This meeting between them may well be the making of him, and I am so keen to hasten it that I risked the early dusk to bring him to the place. The last link in the chain was the hardest to forge, but we were lucky. One of the waggoneers at the port remembered her.
"O yes, Sir. Lovely girl. Irish, like yourself, as you say. One of the other girls took pity on her and offered to introduce her at a public house in the Temple. She was easy on the eye, it's odds on she'll have gotten a job there. Those girls are ten-a-penny but this one had a spark about her, I wouldn't have minded a bit of it myself..."
Angelus grabbed the man by his throat and squeezed.
"My love?" I intervened. "There are several hundred taverns in London. Let the nice man tell you which one, and then you can take his head off."
Earlier this evening, we walked in, both scanning the bawdy crowds for her. Five paces, and I had to stop, dead in my tracks. (SHE is here.)
My charge was in mindless pursuit of his desires by this time, and under any other circumstances I would have been royally entertained. But then, it was dangerous to have him acting so wildly. He began seizing anything feminine by the arm and yanking it into the field of his tunnel vision before discarding it and moving to the next. I forced myself to follow him in, and gave him a taste of his own medicine. I flattened him against a wall and made him attend to me.
"Angelus. We can't stay. Not tonight."
There was a minor struggle and, for his own good, I took his hand, and twisted a finger hard enough to snap the bone. He yelped, but stopped writhing and listened.
"We have to go. NOW."
"Why?" He growled at me. (Again! Bless him, how he'll suffer, before he learns. I twisted the finger a little further.) He changed, just briefly, and then regained his composure just enough to spit out the words, "She's HERE. I can feel her."
I smiled at him and raised the fractured digit to my lips. "That's good, my love. It shows you are learning. But you misread the signs." I used the finger to draw him close to me and the nearness of the pain forced him to follow, like a ring through the nose may force obedience from a bull.
As we reached the door, I looked back and tried to sense where she was hiding. Meanwhile my clever lad was also learning that nothing felt as bad as he expected it would, and he was capable of ignoring pain when there was an important matter to provide distraction. He stopped again by the door, and when I turned to him, his face was petulant. In order to remain in control, I had to throw him a scrap of an explanation.
"It isn't Anna you sense, boy. It's the Slayer."