Title: Epiphenomenon a Lindsey story
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Author's Note: Concurrent with the episode 'Epiphany.'

He didn't know what the hell she'd been trying to do with the gauntlet. Hadn't worked, whatever it was. Angel barged in, like he always did, fucked things up royally, nearly got Darla staked. Dusted a senior partner. Stole the ring. Put the kibosh on the seventy five year review.

Lindsey couldn't help but be a little thankful about the last.

A review right about now was the very last thing he needed. Well, maybe the second to last thing. Right behind a sudden reappearance of Angel. Okay, maybe a third. Right behind Darla acting independently. Not to mention crazily.

Incense stung his eyes, but he blinked them clear and intoned his chorus of the chant in appropriately somber Latin. Since Angel'd taken both the ring and the gauntlet with him in his plunge down the side of the building draped in the remains of the senior partner, they'd had to call an emergency Ritual. Couldn't let the idiot bastard make it to the Home Office. Especially not with a gauntlet Lindsey'd been key in bringing to the field of battle. He started to shiver.

Damn fool woman. She should've told him.

Glaring eyes brought him back to the present and he inserted the next three lines seamlessly into the tapestry of the spell. The incense smoldered. The chant continued. His temples ached and his phantom hand itched.

He really needed a drink.

They took a much-needed break after the Ritual. He ignored Lilah's killer stare and, instead of joining the herd at the bar, ducked into his office. Pulled out his cell. Punched the speed dial for his home number. Lifted it to his ear and listened to it ring twenty eight times. Very slowly he lowered the phone and flipped it shut.

Where the hell could she possibly be? It was the fourth time he'd tried to call her in the last five hours, and three of those hours he'd been in Circle chanting like a maddened monk. No answer. No hints. No goddamned idea what hair she'd got turned crosswise this time and where it had taken her. He was worried.

He was more than a little pissed.

It was getting harder and harder to remember that he loved her. Harder and harder to forget that she was, in the end, a tool. Of the Firm, of Special Projects, of himself. Harder and harder to think of her and not of Angel.

Hardest of all to be certain which one he wanted to kill, and which one he simply wanted.

Stuffing the phone in his pocket, ringer carefully turned to vibrate, he headed back into the meeting room. Time to salvage what, if anything, was left of his career. They might decide to rip his internal organs out and feed them to him tonight. Wouldn't be the first time personnel decisions had been made on the fly in reaction to an attack. Wouldn't even be the first time somebody'd died a bad unnatural death as the result. It'd just be the first time it was him.

Didn't bear thinking on.

Blanking his mind as best he could, Lindsey put on his professional, damned good, poker face and went out to meet his fate.

Lilah had a triumphant look on her narrow face. Lindsey ignored her. Mr. Hart stared at him. He went over to stand beside the apparently-human representative of the senior partners.

"How much did you know, Lindsey?"

Arctic question. He could feel his skin goosebump. "Nothing, sir," he answered. God's honest truth, closer than he'd come to it in a long time, anyway. A rippling sensation cascaded through his brain, and the shiver intensified to a shudder. Mind readers. Hart looked away then looked back. The ice didn't thaw, but at least it was no longer an active weapon aimed at him. Lindsey didn't bother looking innocent or sincere. He could do either, and do them well, but there was no point. They were all lawyers. They each knew all the tricks. Hart nodded shortly.

Lilah looked disappointed. Lindsey didn't smile, outside or inside. It was too serious. Too close to the edge. He could've ended up dead here tonight. Messily dead. Because of Darla. Because of Angel, yeah, but he was used to that. This time, it was because of Darla.

He hadn't realized he was still capable of feeling betrayed. It felt strange. Unsettling. He'd let her in too far. Had from the moment he'd fought so hard to resurrect her. Since he'd done everything he had to do to keep her from dying. Since he'd realized he couldn't have her. Just like Angel.

There was still a tiny flicker of hope there. He hadn't realized until that moment that he was so damned stupid.

Shaking off thoughts of his own failure, knowing it was a bad idea to bleed visibly in the middle of a shark tank, Lindsey forced himself to concentrate on the moment. Get through the next few hours. Make it home before he started to crack. Lick his wounds in private.

Find out where the hell Darla had got herself to. Stop her. Help her. Kill her. Love her. Something. He didn't know what.

He hoped he would when the time came. Helluva good thing he was so good at improvising.

It was still dark when he got home. On the far horizon of his exhaustion it surprised him. It felt like it had been days, not hours, since the fiasco of the Manifestation.

Fiasco. Wolfram and Hart. Angel. A progression of terms that kept repeating again and again. He'd really like to stake the son of a bitch. Smiling over the thought, he leaned against the side of the elevator and took a deep breath. The smile faded.

Maybe not.

Maybe.

Hell, he didn't know. Didn't know anything lately. Had no goddamned clue what was going through Darla's head. No idea, as always, what Angel was up to and where it was headed. No way of knowing what tomorrow would bring, although he'd made it through the disaster that night by sheer bravado and actual lack of direct wrong-doing. They'd figure out soon enough that Darla was with him. Hopefully not before the kill order was revoked.

Tomorrow's business.

His key scrabbled at the door for a second before he was able to get it into the lock. There were times when he missed his right hand more than others. He was always aware of the lack, but when he was tired his clumsiness overwhelmed him. He felt out of balance. Inept. Ineffectual.

Not a feeling he enjoyed. Helplessness sucked. He'd had too much vulnerability too often in his life. He didn't deal well with powerlessness.

So the wave of weakness that rode through him when he saw her standing at the window only served to make him mad. He fought both reactions, striving to keep his voice calm.

"Darla." She kept staring out over the lit skyline that defined LA. The city that never turned its lights off, even in the middle of a power shortage. Conspicuous consumption personified in a place. He took a deep breath and moved into the room, kicking the door shut gently behind him.

"I've been calling here all night. Why haven't you answered?" She didn't answer him in person either. Didn't even look at him. He reached past her and closed the curtains. "Get away from the window. It's not safe." He couldn't quite keep the harshness from his voice. Was she trying to die? Was that it?

Forcing a moderate tone, stepping behind her, he breathed in deeply. She smelled of musk and shampoo. Freshly showered. "They called an emergency meeting tonight." He explained why it had taken so long to get home, although she hadn't asked. "After what happened, the official order on you is to stake on sight." He ran the tips of the fingers on his prosthetic hand from her shoulder to her elbow. He couldn't feel the softness of her skin, but he could feel the pressure where they touched. A barrier between them, sensations gathered second-hand. The story of their relationship.

She walked away. The rest of the story of their relationship.

"You should have told me what you had planned." A sudden burst of anger shot through him and he used its energy, walking over and twitching more curtains closed, his movements sharp and precise. "I would've talked you out of it. Helped you. I don't know." He honestly didn't. Giving up on staying away from her, he turned and walked back to her, staring down at her averted face. "Things are getting complicated for us now." As if it had been a cakewalk before.

"Yes." She finally spoke, but she still sounded very far away. It unnerved him. "Yes, I believe they are."

Not sure how to bridge the distance between them, he busied himself with details. How to keep her safe. For as long as possible. "We should probably clear your stuff out of here. Move it into my bedroom. I just think it's best for us …" His voice petered out. Us? What us? There wasn't any us. He bit down the thought and asked with all the tenderness he could muster, "Darla, what's wrong?"

She didn't answer. Again. Sat there in the chair, a million miles away, and played with a bauble, slipping it between her fingers. His gaze sharpened.

"What is this?" He reached for it. She didn't stop him. His breath stopped in his throat when he recognized the ring he'd first seen on the senior partner's hand, and last seen going through a fifteenth floor window along with the remains of that senior partner and Angel. "Where did you get this?"

"What's the difference? It doesn't work anyway." She sounded bored. He couldn't keep the fury out of his response.

"No, of course it doesn't work, because after Angel stole it there was a disenchanting ceremony. It took half the meeting. How did you get this?" His voice broke a little, gravel spilling out. There was that betrayal again. He knew the answer before he asked the question, but he had to hear her say it.

"It was my payment."

Bile rose up, made his chest hurt, made his mouth sour. He swallowed hard. "Your payment. What are you talkin' about?" He heard the drawl crawling through the cracks in his composure, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

"What do you think I'm talking about, Lindsey?" Touch of sarcasm, enough dismissal to burn like fire, the sophisticate talking down to the redneck. He barely stopped himself from screaming at her, and the muted yell that escaped finally brought her attention directly to him.

"I don't know!"

She stared at him, seeming to see him for the first time since he'd walked in the door. He stared back, unsure what he was trying to tell her, even less sure what he wanted to hear. Only knowing that he had to hear it. Had to know. The intensity choked him. He glanced away, fighting to keep from screaming again, fighting to stop himself from throwing the fucking ring in her face, fighting not to break down and cry and completely humiliate himself. Forcing himself away from the brink, he looked over at her.

"What happened?" His voice sounded like broken glass.

"Nothing. Nothing happened." She looked like she really meant it, and it was tearing her up inside. "My god, nothing at all."

"Darla." He hated to beg but he couldn't stop himself. "Tell me. I have to know."

"You want details, Lindsey?" Now she sounded amused. Scornful and amused. "Is that what you want?"

"Yes," he snarled back at her. Her eyes widened. "I want details. I need to know everything. All of it." He glared at her. Her face abruptly drained of expression, and for the first time since he'd known her, he could see all four hundred years of experience showing in her eyes. "What'd he do to you?"

There was a very long silence. He refused to yield. She refused to answer. After what felt like forever, she answered with cold precision, "Nothing I didn't want him to do."

He took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Eventually she looked away from him, staring back into the distance, shutting him out. Quietly she added, "It was perfect. Absolutely perfect."

Lindsey froze. Did she mean what he thought she meant? If that was the case, then had Angelus returned? And why was she here, if so? If not … his brain was spinning. He had to know.

"Perfect." He'd never heard so much desolation in a single word.

Eventually he got tired of standing, and moved over to sit beside her on the sofa. She folded in on herself, keeping to the edge, wedged against the arm cushions, looking away from him. He waited. She sat. He fidgeted. She didn't.

He prided himself on his patience, but she could out-wait the end of time. She'd made up her mind that he'd gotten all he was going to get out of her, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

Not that he'd gotten anything from her.

Ever.

Rage that had been building for hours suddenly exploded in him. His tie was strangling him. His suit was suffocating him. He had to find answers, and if Darla wouldn't talk, Angel sure as hell would. Even if Lindsey had to beat them out of him. Maybe 'specially if Lindsey had to beat 'em out of him. Lindsey the lawyer hadn't had any luck at all with Angel.

Lindsey the sharecropper's boy would.

It had been a long while since he'd been hunting. The boots were perfect to kick the shit out of Angel. The jeans and sheepskin jacket fit like his own skin, in a way the Armani never did, no matter how much tailoring he had done. This was Lindsey at his core, the core of red-hot fury that had sustained him through the long winters that had killed first his mother, then his sister, then his little brother. It had fueled his rise to a place where he'd never have to stand in the wind and the cold while some bastard from a bank took every single thing he owned, like had happened to his Daddy. He'd learned his lessons young and learned them hard. He'd thought he'd left what he'd been behind him. It would have shocked him to discover how close to the surface the past still lived, if he'd stopped to think about it.

Didn't matter. He was on auto-pilot. Thinking didn't factor into his actions at all.

He peered intently through the windshield of his three-quarter ton Ford at the new offices of Angel Investigations. He'd seen his prey go in earlier with Wesley, still in a wheelchair from his latest wounds. Shortly afterward Gunn had joined them. Very shortly after that all three had come out, climbed into Angel's convertible and headed off toward Brentwood.

Lindsey was just out of eyeball range behind them.

He didn't want Gunn or Wes. Didn't give a shit about 'em. Wanted them out of the way. Wanted everybody out of the way but Angel. Shit was gonna be stomped and he was gonna be the one doin' the stomping. Fate, in the form of a tribe of three-eyed demons, stepped in. Gunn and Wes drove away. He stepped on the gas.

The demons scattered.

Angel stood there. Silhouetted perfectly by the streetlight. Standing in the middle of the street. Perfect, all right. Perfect target.

He made a real satisfying thump as he hit the hood and went under the body of the truck. Missed the tires, though. Damn. Better luck on the next pass.

Lindsey was barely aware that he was growling as he rammed the truck into reverse with his plastic hand and backed over Angel's sprawled body. Vampiric reflexes kicked in and Angel managed to get out of the way of the tires again. Frustration bubbled through Lindsey. He wanted blood. Mangled, crushed and severed limbs. Incredible pain. All the things Angel had visited on Lindsey, with answers thrown in for good measure. And he wanted them all now.

By the fourth time he ran over the undead son of a bitch and still couldn't get the cold body under his tires, Lindsey's patience, stretched to breaking point already, thinned to nothing. Punching the truck into a tight three-sixty, he penned Angel in the middle of the street, running him in circles, trying to run him into the ground so Lindsey could literally run him into the pavement. Even that didn't work, because Angel slipped the trap and headed for the side of the road. Lindsey clipped him with the edge of his bumper and knocked him on his belly in the middle of the street.

Pulling to a stop, breathing hard and sweating harder, Lindsey jumped lightly from the truck and reached into the bed for the sledgehammer he'd tossed in before leaving the garage. This was gonna hurt. And how. Even better, Angel was gonna talk. He swung the hammer like a baseball bat, long-unused skills coming back to him as he brought the weapon down in a graceful arc directly between Angel's shoulder blades.

"You're gon' tell me everything!" He could feel a snarl on his face that could almost pass for a smile. His accent was thicker in his ears than he could remember in decades. He felt freer than he had since as far back as he could remember. The solid thud of the hammer recoiled through his shoulder and back as he brought it down on Angel's body again. "Everythin' you did with her." Another solid thwack. Angel grunted. "All of it." To the spine, to the belly, to the jaw. "You're gonna tell me."

Angel looked up at him, too goddamned cool and collected for a guy who was getting the shit whaled out of him with a sledgehammer by a terminally-pissed off farm boy. "Why?"

What a stupid question. Lindsey nearly growled, "'Cuz I wanna hear it from you!" She wouldn't tell me. You will. I couldn't hurt her like she hurt me. I can hurt you and I will. The hammer slammed into Angel's belly again and it was a tough pull to haul it back out again. "Tell me." An order. A demand. A plea. Another blow with the hammer. "Tell me!" Harder now, the hardest Lindsey'd hit him so far. Mortal man'd be dead by this time, but Angel was neither. Lindsey wasn't sure Angel'd been a mortal man even when he'd been alive. "Tell me!" The scream broke through his clenched teeth.

"No," Angel told him calmly.

The sledgehammer made a complete circle in the air, gathering momentum in a roundhouse swing before connecting with Angel's jaw. His skull made a satisfying crunching sound as it hit the pavement. Lindsey glared down at him for a second, seeing no movement. It was enough.

He'd had enough.

Nothing from Darla. Nothing from Angel. Nothing left.

Reaching into the bed of his truck again, his fingers closed around the rough surface of a stake. It was time for it to end. It had to end, because he couldn't take any more of it. Before he could bring the stake up and go back to Angel to finish it, he felt something at his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Lindsey."

He had just enough time to think, 'Shit!' and to realize Angel actually did sound sorry, before a ton of bricks slammed into the side of his face and he reeled. Lindsey hit the side of the truck and slid toward the street.

"I really am."

Inhumanly strong hands grabbed hold of his jacket and yanked him around. He barely registered the cold of the night air against his shoulders as his jacket was pulled nearly off him, then another lead fist smacked him back down.

"I'm sorry she'll never" a knee caught him in the belly, bending him over and taking his breath, "love you. I'm sorry you're going to have to" another punch caught him across the cheek, "live with that. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to help you," the world swung crazily, pain exploding in his head and along his back as he bounced face-first into the side of his truck again, "when you came to me. I'm sorry you made the wrong choice."

The next punch landed Lindsey flat on his back. He didn't have the wind to say anything, but he still had some fight left. Inching along the pavement with his false hand, he tried to grab hold of the stake. Had to kill him. Couldn't lose again. Before he could reach it, the sledgehammer came out of nowhere. The shock of the hard plastic of his hand being pulverized jolted through the cup against the stump, wrenched the straps, sent shock waves into his shoulder and clear down his spine. He stared in rapt disbelief at the yellow shards littering the street.

"Coulda been the other one." For a second, he could hear Angelus in Angel's voice. That fucking Irish lilt. "Just be glad I had an epiphany."

God damn him to hell. Lindsey stared, feeling his stomach drop, feeling every ache in every muscle, and knowing for the last time he was a loser. Out-matched, beaten down, not a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Ever. From far away Lindsey heard Angel say, "Mind if I borrow your --" and turned to look at him just in time to have a foot connect with his jaw.

" -- truck?" sounded in his aching head as everything went dark. It was a relief.

He didn't know how long he was out, but it was dawn when he pulled himself off the sidewalk and began the long walk home. He had money, could call a cab, didn't bother. He knew he looked like shit. Knew no cabbie'd pick him up, and didn't want to call the Firm for a driver. This had been personal. Still was. A personal quest, a personal failure.

At the first dumpster he'd found, he unstrapped the remnants of his prosthetic and tossed it in the trash. His stump was sore, scored red and bleeding in spots from the pounding it had taken when Angel'd smashed the hand. The air hurt against it. Too cold. Like everything else about him except the blood dripping down his face.

His boot heels echoed on the sidewalk. He knew he had a ferocious scowl on his face but there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. Angel had taken everything that Darla had left. Even Darla hadn't managed to break him so completely, but Angel had reduced him to his component parts, then managed to shatter those parts as thoroughly as he'd shattered that plastic hand. He slowed as he neared his apartment building, then walked slowly forward.

Parked neatly exactly three inches from the edge of the curb was his truck. He looked it over quickly. Looked like somebody'd used it for a battering ram. A headlight was crushed. Fender was bashed in. Grill was busted. So was the windshield.

For some reason, seeing his truck in such a sorry state hurt worse than his own injuries.

There was a piece of paper stuck to a jagged point of broken glass. He reached forward and plucked it off. Unfolding it, he stared uncomprehendingly at the single word written across it.

"Thanks."

Thanks. Great. Bastard beats the holy hell out of Lindsey, takes away his manhood, leaves him with not a fucking thing … then thanks him for the use of his truck. Lindsey shook his head. Made no sense. None of it made any sense at all.




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