Warning: this chapter goes into Darling's far past which is…unpleasant…and graphic...and depressing. You've been warned...but if you read The Remnants, then you already knew that.
Shahrazád's Ghosts
Chapter 11: Darling (Bella) Part I
"Dear Peter," [Wendy] said, "with such a large family, of course, I have now passed my best, but you don't want to [ex]change me, do you?"
"No, Wendy." Certainly he did not want a change, but he looked at her uncomfortably, blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he was awake or asleep.
"Peter, what is it?"
"I was just thinking," he said, a little scared. "It is only make-believe, isn't it, that I am their father?"
"Oh yes," Wendy said primly.
"You see," he continued apologetically, "it would make me seem so old to be their real father."
"But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine."
"But not really, Wendy?" he asked anxiously.
"Not if you don't wish it," she replied; and she distinctly heard his sigh of relief.
"Peter," she asked, trying to speak firmly, "what are your exact feelings to [about] me?"
"Those of a devoted son, Wendy."
"I thought so," she said, and went and sat by herself at the extreme end of the room.
"You are so queer," he said, frankly puzzled, "and Tiger Lily is just the same. There is something she wants to be to me, but she says it is not my mother."
"No, indeed, it is not," Wendy replied with frightful emphasis. Now we know why she was prejudiced against [Tiger Lily].
"Then what is it?"
"It isn't for a lady to tell."
"Oh, very well," Peter said, a little nettled. "Perhaps Tinker Bell will tell me."
"Oh yes, Tinker Bell will tell you," Wendy retorted scornfully. "She is an abandoned little creature."
Here Tink, who was in her bedroom, eavesdropping, squeaked out something impudent.
"She says she glories in being abandoned," Peter interpreted. He had a sudden idea. "Perhaps Tink wants to be my mother?"
"You silly ass!" cried Tinker Bell in a passion. She had said it so often that Wendy needed no translation.
"I almost agree with her," Wendy snapped. Fancy Wendy snapping! But she had been much tried, and she little knew what was to happen before the night was out. If she had known she would not have snapped.
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
2177 A.D.
With a burning throat, the newborn Darling sprinted through the world "Outside," searching for what would quench the fires within her. She followed her senses, which were now so acute they nearly scorched her mind with their piercing clarity, and she gave herself over to her newly birthed instincts completely.
She had only emerged from Edward's underground fortress a handful of times before this. Most of the time, Edward had been the only one to go Outside. He carried in deliveries, tended to the self-driving truck, checked on the security perimeter fencing, and disposed of all waste generated within the bunker, human or otherwise. But, after Badiyah's death and the further fracturing of his consciousness, he became less dependable. When Edward's more impulse-driven alter ego (who Darling dubbed Peter) ruled his body, he had no desire to clean up after himself. This led to a sort of stale-mate, because neither did Darling.
The first time Darling ever went Outside, it was the stench which forced her into it. It wafted down the halls until she could no longer stand to let it stay. She covered her nose and mouth with a towel and tried to take care of Edward's discarded meal herself. Her creator lay as naked as the day he was born, covered in blood, and entirely unresponsive to anything around him. Darling wrinkled her nose in disgust while she counted the number of bodies she would have to drag out the back door herself. While the exsanguinated clones were slight of weight, Darling was not particularly strong herself, and she was sweating and panting before she even got the first one out the back door.
When she managed to pry open the huge metal door, she nearly screamed. It felt like the heat from the flames of the stove when she cooked her meals, except it was everywhere - above her, below her, radiating from the sand and the very walls of the bunker. She had to squint to keep her eyes from being blinded by the intense light which was so much brighter than anything she had ever seen within her underground home.
The rays of sun burst their way into Edward's research lab, chasing out shadows and revealing forgotten and untended secrets in each corner and cobweb. Darling stared in fascination when she saw the sun reflect off of his skin in a thousand pinpricks of light. She considered her own hands, but the only glimmer they gave off was from the rivers of sweat now soaking through her shirt. He would have been beautiful, and perhaps he still was, but it was hard to appreciate his physical charms when he was soaked in blood. Her blood. Or, rather, what would have been her blood, if these clones had not taken her place.
One by one, she pulled the dead clones out behind her, their bloated bodies leaving sticky trails of fluids in their wake, until they were ten feet outside the door. Then, Darling left them out for the sun to burn and the animals to deal with. She would not be digging any holes or taking them any farther into the fierce and hungry desert.
She poured disinfectant all over the floor and mopped as quickly as she could. Then she poured disinfectant and water all over Edward as well, not caring if the harsh chemicals could injure him or not, but wishing it would discolor his prismatic skin or leave some painful burn as evidence of the blood she was washing off of him. Instead, it was her hands that felt permanently disfigured from contact with Edward's human detritus.
When she could finally breathe again, she went into her bathing room and washed herself over and over and over again in the hottest water she could get. She scrubbed her skin till it was worn and raw, but she still felt like her hands were sticky and stained.
She dreamt of the horrified faces on each of those corpses that night.
And the night after that.
Edward woke without noticing a thing, but she could not remove the ingrained memory of that day from her now tarnished mind.
She decided then and there that she would not be taking that task upon herself again. Edward was going to have to take care of his own messes, whether he wanted to or not, even if it meant she had to wait till Edward was in his right mind. She didn't want to wait that long, though, or tolerate the stench, and so she bribed his other self into obedience instead.
"I don't wanna," Peter protested with an obstinate toss of his head and all the stubborn mischief of a small child. "You can't make me."
Her eyes flashed at the challenge. "You are right, Peter. I can't. It's too bad, really. I was going to make you more blood today. I suppose I will be too busy now."
Her carrot dangled over his face and she saw his eyes light up with a ruby gleam. He could not run fast enough to do her bidding, then.
The only reason she went Outside, afterwards, was to make sure he had dug deep enough holes to keep the flies away and he did not leave any visible evidence remaining on the surface.
Now, she pried open the same door, but she would not take care of his mess again. She could feel the strength and power flow through her transformed body and she reveled in the truth that Edward could not make her clean up after him, ever again.
But she was also completely and utterly alone. She had never been farther than ten feet outside the bunker. She had no idea what she was supposed to do or how to quench the fires in her throat, but she could not determine what her next path should be unless she could stop the burning.
Edward, in his days of grief when his regret corroded his heart like water on iron, had babbled nearly incoherently. Darling listened, as she always did, and heard him speak to the ghosts that haunted him and the dreams which were far worse than ghosts. Long ago, he gave his soul in exchange for the souls of his retinue, and now they reaped their long-awaited revenge on their murderer, driving him ever deeper into madness. In those half-conscious moments, Edward spoke openly of his past life more than he ever had before, or ever would again.
Sometimes he mistook Darling for Badiyah and crooned to her with all the words of adoration he had never actually spoken aloud to the object of his affection. Sometimes he mistook her for Badiyah's ghost and he cursed at her and begged for her forgiveness and wished to exorcise her from his consciousness and his halls and walls. Sometimes he did not even know Darling was there, but he still he spoke to her with all the last verbal entrails of a dying man until Darling felt like she knew him better than she knew herself.
"I have failed them. I have failed everyone," he cried out, his head hanging in his hands. "My father was the epitome of goodness. He gave his entire life to preserve life and heal and to help. He wished for me to follow in his footsteps. I have done the opposite and everything I have touched, I destroyed. The world would have been better if I had never been born.
"Did you know my family never drank the blood of humans? Well, they made mistakes when they were newborns and could not control themselves, but they survive hunting animals. They have learned to control their bloodlust and so they can live among humans. They pretend to be human so well that the humans accept them into their lives and they coexist together.
"They would be ashamed, so ashamed, to even know me now. I could not even save the life of the woman I loved. Hang it all, I could not even recognize that I loved her until she was gone. Now it is too late. I tried. I tried to go back to hunting animals and I failed. I failed at everything worth living for, everything that mattered.
"I could read their minds. Did you know that? Of course, you didn't. I can read the mind of every other living being except you. Except you. How you have tormented me with your silent mind! How I have delighted in your silent mind! You are the one mystery I failed to solve. Why you? Why, of all the billions of people on this planet, was it you who are immune to my gift? Oh, what I would have given to see into your mind! But I suppose that would have been my own worst punishment…to listen to you despise me and loathe me and fear me as I deserve! Perhaps, your silent mind was my own gift. The one person in the world who I could not listen to as they died and so I could kill you without remorse, but oh, how I long for that remorse now! I wish you had made me hear every one of your tortured, angry thoughts and so inflicted upon me the pain I so deserved! But, no, you veiled everything in the best and worst of all silences and made it all the easier for me to become the monster I am now."
Darling had hoped that when she became "like Edward," she would have erased her memory of her past life. There was very little from that life she wished to remember. She was right. It did erase some of it, but not anywhere near enough. She could not remember Buffy's favorite kind of ice cream or the color of Badiyah's bangles. She did not remember how long she had been alive for or the name of the last TV show Buffy made her watch. She did, however, remember Edward. It didn't help that her final memory of her creator had been with her newly resurrected and emboldened senses or that the first intake of sensory input to initiate her enhanced senses exposed her to a massacre. She could see each broken vein, splatter of blood, and bruised artery. She could smell the putrid flesh and coagulated blood in exquisite clarity. Every broken bone and glazed eye was now hers forever.
Edward was permanently burned into her mind as a destroyed man, burst open by his own unquenchable thirst, and his arms clinging desperately to the corpse of a woman who should have been his mate, a woman who could easily have been Darling.
"I will see you again, soon, Peter," she whispered into his unhearing ears. She knew of his euphoric delight in the carnage around him…and she hated him. Oh, she hated him.
She hated that he longed for her blood more than he longed for her life. She hated that he could drink enough blood to fill all of his temple twice over and still never have enough. She hated that he could claim to love Badiyah, and in the next breath, brutally ingest her exact replica without remorse.
She hated that, despite all this, she still longed for him to worship her with the same zealous devotion with which he worshipped her blood.
All those effusions of adoration he spouted for Badiyah should have been for Darling, and only Darling. All his single-minded focus should have been to please Darling. He should have longed to treasure her and protect her instead of pouring her blood into the ground as a drink offering to the hedonistic deities he worshipped.
She hated how her heart clenched at the thought that, if he ever woke from this final slumber, his first thought would only be for a resumption of her eternal cycles of death and not for the preservation of her life.
Thus, she left Masen's Temple with her own train of ghosts clinging to her shadow, her empty heart burning right along with her throat.
When her newborn senses directed her to the pulsing, thrumming heartbeats of a human encampment, she crouched to make her attack, every instinct propelling her towards what she knew would quench her thirst. In the dim twilight, she could see the silhouette of a woman standing by a herd of camels. Darling crept closer and watched as the woman peered deep into the darkness beyond, instinctively sensing danger nearby. The danger would have been upon her in a moment, if it was not for the flash of silver bangles on wrists that first stayed Darling's lunge and woke her memories. A memory from her past life flashed through her…of a woman's silver bangles, of tears and laughter, of wonder and hatred, of guilt and relief, and Darling saw Badiyah's face in the woman's.
The woman did not resemble Badiyah at all, except in the scarf covering her twin braids and the bangles on her wrists, but that was enough to make Darling see the face of the first Guardian of Masen's Temple. The face of the woman that Buffy loved, that Edward loved, that a family of humans loved, and that Darling had murdered. The fire in her throat was suddenly swallowed up by the flood of guilt in her belly.
I did not kill her. It was Edward. He killed her. She countered to herself.
You are lying and you know you are lying. Another part of her whispered.
Visions of the piles of corpses in Edward's lab filled her mind, their glazed eyes all staring at her, pointing their own broken fingers at her in accusation.
You killed her. You killed them. You made them and fed them to him.
So I could live, Darling rationalized. I killed them so that I could live.
Which is exactly what Edward would have said. Now you will murder her again. Now you will kill more so that you can live. Exactly like Edward.
Darling felt so sick that she could not even consider hunting there again. She fled the sight of the Toubou woman as quickly as she could. She ran from that woman, from her past life, and as far from the scent of humans as she could get. If it was human blood that led to Edward's madness and enslavement, she would not follow that path.
But she was still so very thirsty.
"I tried to hunt animals, but I failed," Edward had said. "My family survives on the blood of animals. They do not hunt humans."
If there was one goal worth pursuing, it was to succeed where Edward had failed. The antelopes she came upon next were not as fortunate as her human prey and she easily quenched her thirst.
Oooooo
When the fires in her throat were calmed and quieted, Darling was left with the dilemma of what she should do next. When she had begged the ravenous vampire to change her, it was a last-minute desperate grab for survival, though one she had pondered for some time. Edward was set on killing himself. She knew that. He determined to ingest every last clone he had and then set himself on fire. There was really no way this could end well for Darling.
If he succeeded, then Darling was stranded in the underground bunker in the desert, without connections, money, or any knowledge how to survive outside of Edward's temple. At least, as a vampire, Darling did not have to worry about dying of heat or thirst or starvation or animal attack. If he failed, Edward would wake and eventually grow thirsty again. Every last clone was gone and only Darling remained. She knew how that would end. She would be dead within a month.
She was now immortal, impenetrable, impermeable. This was preferable to being weak and disposable. But what was she to do now? Where was she to go?
In the entire world, she only knew two other people. Buffy and Anthony were somewhere in London, far to the north, but Darling did not want to find them.
She could live in the desert or travel farther south where game was more plentiful, but then what? She looked down at her stained, torn clothes and thought of her drawers of clothes back at the underground fortress…and the copy of Peter Pan she had taken from Edward's library. No, she would need to return to gather her belongings. Perhaps she could find a map or something which would give her a better idea of where to go. She first needed to go "home" before she could decide where to create a new home for herself.
Oooo
Inside Barzakh, Darling walked through the silent catacombs, fragrant with untended death, and saw herself in every shadow and smear of dried blood her supernaturally attuned senses could now trace. She held her breath and went straight to the old store room where her and Buffy had once hidden their cots and took turns keeping watch over each other as they slept, hoping to survive another night and keep their lascivious vampire captor away.
There, under her cot, she kept a box filled with her few possessions. Some soap, spare clothes that once belonged to Buffy, a broken comb, and a harmonica were all that she called her own. She grabbed a knapsack from the shelf and shoved it all inside before searching the room for anything else she could possibly need. She remembered how Buffy had used Edward's wallet to make purchases and she wondered if it would still work after he was dead. She decided to search around for his wallet, hoping against hope that it wouldn't be on Edward's unconscious body.
When she neared the generation lab, she stopped in her tracks and listened. Thus far, the entire temple had been as soundless as the crypt it had become and she had been the only moving, living being within. Now, the silence was broken by the faintest whimper. At first, she thought she imagined it, but then she heard it again.
Darling crept down the hall to find the source of the sound. A sudden spike of fear filled her when she realized it came from Badiyah's room. Perhaps the former guardian's ghost truly did haunt these halls, as Edward had believed, and she would now be coming for Darling. Darling swallowed sharply and tried to calm her sudden spike in fear with the knowledge that no ghost could harm her, even if they tried, since she had already died and returned as something even a ghost would fear.
Darling opened the door, and it was not a ghost who lay within. There, stretched out on the hard floor, lay another Bella. Darling gasped in surprise. How long ago had she brought this woman to fill Edward's many appetites? It must have been weeks. How did she still live? By the empty bags of food and water scattered around the room and the skeletal appearance of the woman, she would not have survived much longer.
The woman was so weak, she could not lift her head to see Darling enter. Blood trickled down her mouth and weeks old yellow bruises mottled her naked body. The woman gave another whimpered cry and Darling noticed movement. Her eyes fell upon the distended, freshly bruised abdomen that swallowed up the woman like boiling milk overflowing a saucepan. Within, the room sang with two separate heartbeats instead of one. Darling knelt on the floor beside the Bella and placed her hand on the clammy forehead.
Edward had forgotten about her once her usefulness to him expired. He had sated his lust and left the package to rot and wither away. Here, Darling again saw the fate that should have been hers. Yet this was a fate she could not have anticipated. Those Bellas suffering from the illness never lived long enough to progress to the state she now found this bedraggled creature in - emaciated, unmoving, but reverberating with another creature's movements stronger than the dying lethargy of its mother.
This Bella was a mother. Darling was shaken to her core with the implications. How many others were there?
"Oh," was all she could say.
Darling knew if she did not intervene, the woman and, most likely, her child would die. Darling ran to the kitchens and brought back all the supplies she thought would be helpful. Then, she bathed the matted filth from the woman and started tending her myriad of wounds. She found a sheet and covered her. Then she coaxed food and water down the woman's throat. She struggled to keep food down, so Darling brought the special concoction Buffy had developed when this "illness" plagued Edward's "zombie brides," as Buffy had called them. The woman regained brightness in her eyes almost immediately and began to gain both strength and consciousness. Darling stayed by her side to take care of her, reading to her out loud whenever the woman woke.
"Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought not to be written in ink but in a golden splash. She was called Jane, and always had an odd inquiring look, as if from the moment she arrived on the mainland she wanted to ask questions," Darling read. Then she dropped her book and stared at her silent companion.
"Yes. I believe I will call you Jane," she said. She took Jane's hand in her own and smiled. "It's you and me now, Jane. We are survivors. Don't worry. I can tell you stories and be your mother. We will have our own family, now. You, me, and this will be Margaret." Darling placed her hand on the growing baby and crooned to the unborn child within, for the first time feeling like she had a purpose and something to live for. "You aren't alone, anymore, Jane, Margaret. I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner. I'm sorry I forgot you. You should not have been forgotten. You are important. You saved my life, you know. Without you, this would have been my fate, instead of yours. I don't take that for granted. I'll do everything I can to take care of you and to take care of Margaret. You will never be forgotten again, I promise."
Within a few days, Jane's color improved, her breathing eased, and she became coherent enough to notice Darling's presence. The child within her also grew in strength, causing Jane to experience other difficulties and more bruises. Darling left Jane's side long enough to search the library for a book which would speak on the intricacies of pregnancy and childbirth. When she found one, it only confused her more.
Nine months? Darling thought. Jane was barely alive nine months ago. Conception occurred only a matter of weeks ago. How can she survive another eight months of this?
She didn't know how much longer Jane and Margaret could go on growing as they were. They already seemed about ready to burst. Darling's fear spiked when she realized she did not know how to deliver a baby or how to care for one once it came or what Jane would require to survive it. The charts and pictures in the book she found did not help much. When would it need to occur and what if something went wrong?
Worse, what if Edward woke, after all? They were still trapped within this sepulcher of an underground fortress, and they could not stay here. They were starting over, they were bringing in a new life, and forming a new family. They could not do that surrounded by reminders of death. They needed to find a new place to go.
"I will find us a home, Jane," she told her. "I don't want to leave you, but I have to. We can't stay here. I will be back soon, I promise."
She left Jane with what she hoped would be enough food and water and she left, travelling south, in hopes of finding a place they would be safe.
ooooo
It was the smoke she saw first. After Darling found a little abandoned homestead, she ran as quickly as she could to return to her little family. Her heart nearly burst in panic when she saw the plume of smoke billowing into the sky. She sprinted as fast as she could and gave a startled cry of despair when she saw the flames.
She ran straight into the burning bunker without pausing to consider her own safety, until she came to Badiyah's old room. It overwhelmed her and made her survival instincts scream to run. The entire way, she prayed that Jane was still safe and not beyond rescuing. Smoke filled her nostrils and choked her eyes and overwhelmed her. She threw open the door, hoping beyond hope for a miracle.
The room was empty.
"Edward!" she cried in furious anger. Darling sank to her knees, sobs wracking her frame. She picked up the discarded sheet from the ground…and found it covered in blood.
He found her. He woke and he found her and he killed her. I should have killed him first. I should never have left them. I should never have left him alive.
The flames in the far end of the bunker were so fierce she knew that any once living creature had been scorched. At first, she considered throwing herself into the inferno, but her eyes fell onto that sheet again and her heart burned within her.
If she wasn't certain that her sire had already killed himself, she would have found him and killed him again. She determined, then and there, that she would still make him suffer. For each and every one of the Bellas he murdered, she would make him pay. He would live. Again and again and again, he would live, but his life would not be his own. He would get what he always wanted - eternity with his "beloved." Forever. And he would help ensure that no other woman ever succumbed to the same fate as Isabella Swan…or Jane…or Margaret.
Oooo
Blinded by her grief, Darling fled from the only home she had ever known, without paying attention to her surroundings. She ran as far and as fast as her legs could carry her until her heart grew so heavy, she stopped running. Instead, she stood as still as a date palm and stared into nowhere and nothing and felt herself crushed from the inside out.
She did not know how long she stayed there or what occurred around her. All she knew was that she quickly discovered the vampire world had both "rules" and "rulers"…and she had unintentionally crossed both.
If she had been any other vampire, she would have joined her beloved Jane and Margaret in flames, but she was not so fortunate. She joined her predecessor, Isabella Swan, in that. Neither of them could only die once and their very genetic code ensured both their longevity and their captivity to another's will.
ooooo
The Volturi grey of her cloak hid her in the deep shadows cast by the moonless night. She climbed up the fire escape and carefully, so carefully, pried open the window over the balcony. It was a warm night and the city of London was awake with all the hoots and bustle and noise of the lively urban street. She kept watch to ensure none could see her entering into the fourth story flat. She nearly knocked over a vase with a single, wilted sunflower in it when she entered, but she caught it in time to keep it upright and replace it on the windowsill. She leapt over the sink full of dishes to land noiselessly on the kitchen floor.
The flat was dark save for the flashing lights of a television in the sitting room, though the volume was so low, it would not cover her sounds if she happened to make any. She followed the shadows of the wall towards the light. A low, garbled snore sounded louder than the news anchors. There, on a worn, burnt orange recliner the man she sought was outstretched to face the large screen television fixed to the wall overhead.
The balding head in the recliner reflected the blue light of the screen, except where a thin shag of grey hair interrupted it. She crept closer. His shoes had been kicked off onto the floor next to his chair and his woolen-socked toes pointed towards the ceiling. The man more than filled the entire recliner, his stomach folding over his trousers and ensuring no parts of the cushions beneath him could be seen. Khaki trousers were kept loose around a green and grey checkered polo shirt that folded into the many creases of the man's girth. The man's clean-shaven face revealed layers of jowls brushing over his shoulders and dark red, bushy eyebrows mottled with grey and white. His black-rimmed glasses fell low onto his nose under which, his eyes remained closed. His chest rose and fell with his rumbling snores. The man's heart gave the sluggish, tired beat of long years of overwork through such a large body and she could tell it would not be long before it gave up completely.
She would not have recognized him at all if not for the scent. It was aged and stale and corroded with long years, but she could have recognized it anywhere.
"Hello, Anthony," she whispered into the darkness, so low his human ears could not hope to pick it up. "Have you missed me?"
What infuriated her the most was that he hadn't. Photographs around the room showed him in years long past, spending his days with another. He still wore his wedding ring, though his bride was the first of the pair to give up the ghost and had left him alone twenty years earlier.
In those early days, Darling had nearly single-handedly created Anthony. Edward was so far gone and mentally fragmented by then that Anthony was completely dependent on her. From his first cells to his first breaths to his first steps to his first words, Darling was there, teaching Edward's human clone everything, putting him together for his new life.
She had made the mistake of growing attached to Anthony. She couldn't help it. When those bright green eyes fixed on her for the first time and he smiled, she all the sudden understood why Badiyah had stayed with Edward as long as she did and forgave so many of his unforgiveable sins.
But Anthony was not made for Darling, he was made for Buffy. Darling wept for a week in the quietest most hidden parts of the fortress after he was sent away to her. All of Darling's work…all for Buffy's benefit. And Darling was forgotten.
Allowing herself to grow attached had been a mistake. One she would not make again.
Framed on the mantle was a photograph of Buffy as Darling remembered her, young and vivacious, holding a sign in memory of Badiyah. Darling gazed at the memorial to Badiyah, with equal parts jealousy and guilt.
Badiyah should have been there, next to Buffy. The only reason she is missing is because of Darling.
Anthony had never even met Badiyah, and yet her picture was on their wall. Darling had saved Buffy's life more times than she could count, putting her own life in danger, and yet there was no single memento to remember her by.
Had Buffy even once wondered what her fate had been?
Yet Badiyah, the one who willingly helped create and destroy hundreds upon hundreds of clones, she was immortalized and remembered. And Anthony? Darling had created Anthony and not even he had anything to remember her by. This bitter draft almost helped alleviate the sense of guilt which burned in her belly like a flame.
Edward wept at the grave of his Badiyah. Anthony wept at the grave of his Buffy. And Darling walked the world alone, wanted by no one, remembered by no one, loved by no one.
She hated them all for it.
She hated them because she loved them and it was this one-sided love that pierced her soul like a blade, leaving her to bleed out and fester and curse at everyone she ever once loved.
"Come to me soon," she whispered again to the sleeping man. She would not have long to wait. The bug she placed on his phone and computer informed her of all his communications so she would know when it was over and then she could follow and get the gift she needed from him.
He was never meant to rest in London. He belonged in Barzakh.
He belonged in the desert with Darling.
Forever.
Oooooo
Author's notes: Well, welcome to Darling. I had to split Darling's chapters in half, too.
