Author's notes: In this chapter, there's a not-very-polite reference to a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. I swear I have nothing against Jehovah's Witnesses, neither any other religion, it's Darla the prejudiced one. Send her the hate mail.

Oh, and I'm going on a ten-day trip, so you'll have to wait for next episode. Sorry...

Episode 12:

'Hello my friend, we meet again

It's been a while, where should we begin?

Feels like forever

Within my heart a memory

A perfect love that you gave to me

Oh, I remember'

- 'My Sacrifice', by Creed -

It was a rather ordinary night. Slow, even. Darla had bored to death at her receptionist desk, with few guests to interrupt the monotony. Actually, the hotel, in spite of being placed in one of the most crowded streets of the West End, was deserted that night.

She'd already done nearly everything possible to entertain herself – by now, she'd learnt the old Cosmo magazine at hand by heart – and was trying to find an excuse to get away for a little while. Finally, she decided that a visit to the rest room would have to do. She called Sue, a coworker, over her shoulder and told her she'd be back in five.

Her escapade did not last, though. Within two minutes, Sue hurried into the bathroom.

'Darla, you're needed in Front Office.'

She rolled her eyes. 'God, can't Jagielski get off my back for five minutes?' Trent Jagielski was the Night Manager, and the word 'exploitative' was an understatement when describing him.

Sue shook her round head, her curls bouncing as she did so. 'Nope, it's not Jagielski. It's one of the guests.'

Darla frowned, and walked out the rest room. Usually, the guests called for the Manager to solve their problems, not the receptionist. The receptionist merely answered the phone and received the mail... which obviously wasn't much at this time of the night.

She saw the back of a man standing in front of her desk. She couldn't guess his age, but he was well-built and looked about medium height. He had light brown hair, almost dirty blonde, and his clothes, although casual, looked no cheap at all. In all, he looked exactly like the regular guest. Then why something about him made her freeze on the spot?

She stared at his back, her eyes widening. There was something about him, something that rang a bell somewhere in her brain. More than a bell: it was a fire alarm banging in her head.

As if he'd felt her pressence (and maybe, just maybe, he had) he turned around slowly, and long before she saw his familiar features, long before she saw the known blue eyes or his characteristic smile, she knew who he was, and the knowledge sent shivers down her spine.

Finally, he was facing her. His expression was unreadable as his gaze registered her, perhaps looking for changes, perhaps looking for similarities. Soon, though, the cool mask faded and a soft smile spread over his always juvenile face.

'Hello, Darla. It's been a while.'

He had been right, of course. It had been a long while since the last time they'd seen each other. In real time it had only been six years... but in their souls it had been much, much longer. So much had happened to both of them... Last time they'd seen each other, she was still soulless, still thoroughbly evil, and she'd just tore apart his heart. Last time they'd seen each other, he'd been a man who naïvely played to be evil, but was vulnerable inside, as he was slowly losing all his beliefs. She might have just shattered a few of them herself, she did not know.

Lindsey, Lindsey McDonald. It was a name that hadn't been pronounced by her lips in a long time, a name that belonged to a man she had tried not to think about, as she tried not to think about all those nameless people she'd caused so much suffering, but still haunted her sleep. Lindsey, the only who had truly cared for her during the time she'd been so weak and helpless at Wolfram and Hart's mercy – as if they could have had any mercy – the only one who had tried to reach her. Lindsey, the one she'd hurt the most without lifting a finger. Lindsey, who was sitting right in front of her at the fancy café he'd insisted on taking her to, as if no time had passed.

But what did she know about this man called Lindsey McDonald, anyway? She'd never bothered too much to find out details about his life, being engrossed as she was, first by keeping herself alive and safe, later by trying to seek the power that would prevent her from being helpless once more. He'd never been her first concern.

She recalled he'd liked to listen to country music, and that he'd had a nice voice, that sometimes sang to her softly when she couldn't sleep due to the nightmares. He could cook rather well, and he took a shower every evening after work, as though he were trying to get rid of the ethereal dirt on his soul. He had come from Oklahoma, running away from a poverished household and a miserable past; he wanted to have all the things he hadn't known when he'd been young. He wanted power, and success, and money, and he was willing to go far to get them...but not so far as he'd once thought. And he'd loved her.

She'd once known all those things. But now, now things weren't like they'd used to be. She no longer was the scared creature that had seeked for his protection, neither she was the evil manipulator that had used him to gain power. And if he wasn't the man she'd met, who was he?

'So,' she asked, trying to sound casual, 'how did you find me?'

He shrugged, giving her that cocky smile she'd almost forgotten.

'Easy. Wyndam-Pryce told me.'

Darla raised an eyebrow, surprised.

'How weird. Last time we met, you weren't exactly on speaking terms with Wesley and the others.'

'Well, no,' he admitted, 'but neither were you, right? Anyway, he owed me one, as I made him a favour with a little legal problem with one of the new Slayers.'

Darla looked apalled. 'Oh, please, tell me that's not another Faith...'

'Oh, no, no,' he hastened to reassure her, waving a hand. 'No, it was just that her parents wouldn't let her go out her country, and as she was underage...'

And so he began to explain her the problems Wesley had had with the girl in question's parents, a couple of narrow-minded Jehovah's Witnesses, according to Lindsey. They had considered a blasphemy what Wesley had told them about Slayers, and they had obviously forbidden their daughter to get involved with any of it. Darla snorted. Getting a soul hadn't changed that much the opinion she had for too ferverously religious people. Lindsey, however, had managed to solve the problem somehow, and now the girl was happily getting trained at Giles' school.

Once he'd finished his story, Darla tilted her head to one side and eyed him thoughtfully.

'I guess you know more or less what happened to me, don't you?'

Lindsey took a sip of his coffee as he nodded. He left the cup on the table and said:

'Pryce told me a little about it. And Gunn, too.'

Her eyes widened in surprise.

'Where have you seen Gunn? I haven't heard from him in ages.'

'LA. I'd heard there was some demoniac activity going on, so I went there to... well, to check whether Wolfram and Hart could be rising from its ashes or something.' He took another sip of his coffee. 'It wasn't, thanks to God. Seems that the one who blasted Wolfram and Hart's LA branch did a hell of a job.'

Darla suddenly remembered the days of The First, when dead people and mythical creatures came to hunt the living; the girls that had died during the battle; the school falling over their heads (they had been so close to die in there, so close) and shivered. Yeah, The First had done a good job, like it'd done with the old Watcher's Council.

'So we crossed paths there. He's now helping in a shelter for runaway teens, with a girl called Anne Steele... You don't know about her, do you?'

But Darla wasn't that interested in the unknown girl.

'He's in LA, you say? But what about Fred? She's living in Chicago, or so Wesley told me...'

Lindsey looked confused. 'Fred who?'

'Brunette, big brown eyes, Texan accent? Gunn's girlfriend?'

He frowned. 'I don't know, but I doubt they're still together. Anne and him seemed to be... close.'

'Oh.' So another happy couple had met their sorry end. Well, she guessed she should feel happy for Gunn, if he'd managed to resume his life. And Fred wasn't the kind of girl that died from a broken heart. However, it still disappointed her. It seemed like she was getting soft, if mere break ups got to her that way.

She shot a quick glance at her watch and was shocked to see there was almost no time left for her to get home before daybreak.

'Sorry, Lindsey, but I gotta go before I fry in the sun.'

Had it been her imagination or he'd looked, for just a second, a little disappointed? She did not know, as the next moment Lindsey said casually:

'I could give you a lift.'

She hesitated the briefest moment.

'Sure. Thanks, Lindsey.'

Once they were inside the building, right in front of her apartment's door, Darla had an impulse.

'You wanna come in? I mean, if you don't have to work tomorrow or something,' she quickly added. He looked perplexed, but then he broke in a smile.

'No, I don't have to, and yes, I'd love to.'

That morning, they talked. And talked. Darla's fears that she might have nothing to say to this man that was almost a stranger were unfounded: soon she found out that there was so much to say, so much to ask, so much to explain. And so much to apologize for.

First, she asked him how came he'd left LA and Wolfram and Hart behind. He proceeded to tell her about his new hand and where had it came from.

'I had nightmares for months. The people in those tanks...they kept haunting me for quite a while, y'know.'

Darla nodded knowingly. 'Yeah, I kinda have experience on that field myself.' Only that the list of people that haunted her dreams was much longer than Lindsey's could ever have been.

He told her he'd gone back to his hometown in Oklahoma, only to find that nothing was like he'd left it. Everything he'd known had been vanished and replaced, and the town he'd grew up in had disappeared. He realised there was nothing left for him there, and he went to New York instead. He tried to start a normal life, hoping that the files he'd stolen from W&H would keep him safe. It wasn't necessary: LA's branch got blasted, and nobody gave a damned about him anymore.

But normalcy wasn't working for him that well, not after all the horrors he'd seen.

'I realised it wasn't enough with just stopping to do evil. I needed to do something to make up for everything I'd done.'

'So you tried for soul-saving?'

He chuckled. 'That sounds so Angel-like, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't exactly soul-saving. It was more helping people who got in legal – well, as legal these things usually are – trouble because of Wolfram and Hart's wannabes: demon clans, bloodsucking firms – the usual suspects. And then, only a few months ago, I crossed my path with Pryce and I decided to lend him a hand.' He shifted in his seat and admitted: 'Honestly, I wanted him to tell me something about you. I'd gotten a little curious after what Gunn had told me – or slipped.'

She lifted an eyebrow, a gesture that'd become her trademark over the centuries, according to Spike, and smiled.

'If you wanted to know, all you had to do was ask.'

And so she told him all that had happened to her, all the things neither Wesley nor Gunn could have known. The only people she'd spoken so freely about the times right before and right after the recovery of her soul had been Faith and Spike. However, it wasn't hard at all to talk Lindsey about it. In fact, it felt liberating.

They talked and talked, but they carefully avoided the subject of Angel. Instead, Lindsey told her some things he'd found out about Sahjaan and the night Connor had disappeared.

'It seems that the demon's intention all this time was to use Holtz to get to your son, not Angel. But somewhere along the way he began to distrust Holtz, and tried to pact with the Devil – Wolfram and Hart. It didn't turn out very well, from what I've heard.'

Darla snorted. That was an understatement. Holtz had found out Sahjaan's true intentions, and he'd set out to kidnap Connor himself, supposedly in order to protect him. Sahjaan had just caught him and his second-in-command, Justine, as they ran away with Connor, and sent them to the hell dimension called Pylea, where they stayed for five years. Well, it had been five years in Pylea, but in this side of the rainbow it only had been some weeks.

According to Wesley, though, Sahjaan's original intention hadn't been sending them to a Pylea, but to a much worse dimension, one they wouldn't have been able to return. However, his plans had gone awry as he had been forced to act while the urn Justine had opened had started to capture him.

'It was a terrible blow for Wolfram and Hart.' The grim satisfaction in his voice soon faded away, and he sighed. After all, it might have been a blow for W&H, but the good guys hadn't come out very well from the whole ordeal. Darla suddenly remembered something, and she would have liked to slap herself for not thinking about it sooner.

'What about Lilah? I never heard what happened to her...'

Lindsey sighed again. 'I don't know. She might have died when W&H burnt to ashes – but if she had had something to do with the whole Sahjaan's disaster, and I suspect she had, then the Senior Partners would have taken care of her sooner than that. After all, she didn't have a clean record, and at Wolfram and Hart they don't give you much chances to screw up.'

There was sadness underlying the bitter comment, although Lindsey and Lilah had hated each other. Darla was not surprised, though. Some enmities lasted so long that sometimes you ended up feeling closer to your enemies than to your allies. You just have to take a look at Spike and I. Didn't the old saying state "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"?

After several hours, it was finally time for Lindsey to go. He gave her his cell phone number first, and she said she would call him... and this time, for some reason, she didn't feel it was a blatant lie.

When they reached the door, she grabbed his arm and stopped him.

'Lindsey, I...'

She looked right into his blue eyes and suddenly she was at a loss of words. How could she begin to apologize for all she had done? It was impossible, incommensurable...

He pressed a slender finger on her lips.

'Darla, don't. Just... Just call me, okay?'

She nodded, and he bent to kiss her cheek. And then, he just walked away in the sunshine.

Imzadi: I bet I know what was the first thing you thought when you finished reading this chapter: Finally! It was about time Lindsey showed up! Well, yes, here he is at last. Whether he is going to stay or not is another story...