Title: His Place in the World, an Angel story from Lindsey's perspective
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Spoilers: For the episode Blind Date

He had them in the palm of his hand. Then that undead do-gooder pain in the ass stepped in, slung her glasses at her like a weapon, and proved to the jury beyond the shadow of a doubt that regardless of what their eyes told them about her eyes, this was not a woman to take lightly. It was a damned miracle and one hell of a tap dance on his part to wring a hung jury out of what could so easily have been another Angel-provoked fiasco.

By the time they got back to the Firm, he still hadn't stopped shaking. Only iron will and sheer terror kept it from showing. When she took his hand and caressed it, his will nearly broke. He couldn't do a thing to stop his eyes from widening. He knew for certain Holland saw the sweat on his upper lip. There wasn't any way he could completely suppress the shiver that went over his spine when she left. It took every ounce of his hard-won composure to look out the window and shake unobtrusively like a leaf.

Then Holland had to go and start talking about choices. Figuring out how the world worked, and what sort of cog he, Lindsey McDonald, was in the big machine. Like he had no idea what the world was like. Bullshit. He'd had his nose rubbed in the dirt that made up the world before he was big enough to know anything, and by the time he'd learned to kick before he was kicked, he'd learned one whole hell of a lot about just how the world worked.

'Til Holland mentioned Brewster's next job.

Everything he thought he'd known, about the world, about himself, tilted and fell over sideways.

Kids.

She was going to kill kids. He was going to make up a damned good horrible background for her to explain why she would. Then he was going to convince a jury that he was right, and she would take his hand again, and take his clothes off with her blind eyes, and make him itch right through to whatever shreds were left of his soul.

He didn't remember leaving the boardroom. Barely was conscious of the drive across town, past the high rise buildings, through to the West Side, all the way to the ocean. He stared at the water as the sun went down, until his own eyes felt seared blind. He tried very hard to think, but his brain, for the first time in his life, betrayed him. Instead of cutting to the heart of the problem and finding the best solution for his own ends, it kept circling back, over and over. Her hand, as it caught the glasses. The smile on her face as she touched him. The death that was her enlightenment.

The kids.

He didn't plan to go to his nemesis, but he had nowhere else to go. It couldn't happen. And if it didn't happen, he was dead. So he had to get out, and he had to make sure it didn't happen. The only man who could help him make sure that both those things happened was the one man on earth who had the least reason to help him.

He'd beg, if he had to. Wouldn't be the first time, although it had been a damned long time. But it would be the highest stakes he'd ever begged for. His life.

And the kids'.

The woman, Chase, and the man, Wesley, had stared at him as if he was some kind of cartoon villain, dropped in from another dimension. They weren't important, and he ignored them. The vampire, though ... Angel was a different story.

Angel closed the door behind his friends, and Lindsey stood very still, listening to the near-silent tread behind him. The vampire asked if Lindsey was afraid that Angel would kill him. He answered, quite truthfully, that he wasn't. Angel wouldn't hurt him. Not yet. Not now.

Knowing the enemy was a solid strategy. Angel's soul came in handy, instead of being the nuisance it usually was.

For such a cold body, it felt like a furnace behind him when Angel stopped and scented him. He heard the air rush in through Angel's nose, felt more than heard the soft rumble of his voice as he spoke of Lindsey's terror. God, yes, of course he was terrified. He was putting his life, his soul on the line here. He tried to tell Angel, tried to pry the words out of himself, spilled more about his wretched childhood to the uncaring vampire than he had to anyone since he'd turned his back on the squalor he'd grown up in and left it behind himself. Permanently.

Angel feigned boredom.

What had Angel ever known of true privation? A rich man's son, then a demon who could take whatever he wanted. Even after he'd been cursed with a soul, he hadn't ever known what it was like to be powerless. To be a child, watching the father he adored try to put a smile on when he was getting spat on. He'd never lost everything, had nothing, wanted anything. He'd never put out his five year old arms and wrapped them around his one year old sister, who should've been burning up with fever, and instead was cold as a stone. He'd rocked her in his arms all night long, until his mother had come in early the next morning and cried out, a soft little scream that stuck in her throat. His daddy'd had to pry his arms away from his little sister. That was the first time he'd ever seen a dead person.

He'd seen a lot of them since. None of them children. If there was any justice in the world ... no, there wasn't, and he knew that. But there was Angel.

By the time he finished talking, he knew that Angel would help him. Angel didn't want her to kill any kids, either.

They made plans, ignoring Chase, roping in Wesley. His heart was in his throat, and something Angel'd said to him about panic teased at the edge of his mind. Did he really want to walk away?

Well, no.

But he couldn't stay, either.

So he'd stick with betrayal, and hope like hell Angel was good enough to get them both out in one piece.

He was preternaturally aware driving away from the run-down building where the vigilante lived. He watched each shadow like a hawk, took a circuitous way home, triple checked security when he did lock himself in. He didn't sleep much. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his sister's body, only in the pictures painted behind his eyelids, her eyes were white, and she was smiling. There was blood on her lips, and her face was faintly blue. The images of the past combined with the fear of the future kept him awake all night.

The next day at work, he did his damnedest to look his normal laid-back self. He smiled at the guards, tossing them a careless salute. He tried not to jump out of his skin when Lilah startled him in the records basement, even managing to make a joke about not letting the amoebas know the brass could read, or they'd never get anyone to do their research for them. The echo of her footsteps had barely died away before he was moving again.

His fingers were slick with sweat when he hid his identity card for Angel to use. The noise it made as it slapped against the metal sounded like a cannon shot. When he went in to distract the guard watching the security cameras, he was acting the role of his life.

The shaman started to wail about the presence of the vampire and he nearly yelped himself, but he held it in. Flicked the camera off. Covered Angel's trail. Slipped out, easy as could be, almost ready to draw a clear breath when he got the all-clear over his cell phone. Then hell yawned open before his feet.

Mind readers.

He hadn't been exaggerating when he'd told Angel that while other firms had random drug sweeps, Wolfram and Hart had random mind reading sweeps. And his luck was complete shit that one should come down when he had betrayal on his mind and the only thing he could think about was escape. The next several moments were the longest in his life up to that point.

When Holland stalked up to him, and the guard moved behind him, Lindsey swallowed and tried very hard not to think at all. He was dead, and he knew it. Then the unthinkable happened, and Lee started babbling with an inane sense of pride about being head-hunted, and the next thing he knew, there was an explosion next to his left ear and he flinched away instinctively. Not fast enough. A splash of hot blood painted his cheek and jaw, soaking into his collar. For an instant, he thought it was his, thought for certain it had been a diversion and he was the one being targeted, knew without a doubt that the bullet had taken off the back of his head and he was dead.

Except he wasn't.

His knees were shaking, but he was still upright, staring down in numb shock as guards dragged Lee's body out the door. He turned to leave, almost missing the soft-voiced, "Lindsey. Stay a minute," from behind him.

Then he knew it had been a diversion.

The next few minutes were even slower than the eons he'd spent in the line-up. Lilah patted him gently on the shoulder as she left, support or goodbye, he didn't know, and figured she didn't either.

He'd been certain sure Holland was going to kill him. He almost dredged up a smile, almost managed banter, forced his exhausted, confused, and fucking terrified mind around the concept that Holland wasn't going to kill him. Holland was giving him time to think. Holland was going to let him walk out the door.

It took a bit to solidify his muscles, but he managed it. He walked out that door, alright, expecting every second, every footstep, to hear another explosion, this one ending it all.

The door closed behind him with a sound like a sigh.

This time, he drove directly to Angel's offices after a short stop in the men's room to clean the blood off his face. The vampire's eyes went right through him, burning into him, and he managed to take a light tone, although he had no idea where it came from. "Sorry I'm late. I hope I didn't worry you."

"We just thought you were dead," Chase answered him perkily, which seemed perfectly suitable, in a bizarre sort of way.

Not yet, but soon, he thought but didn't say. Then one of them, maybe himself, he was so catawampus by that point he didn't know, pointed out an address. They had no time. Angel headed off to fight Brewer for the children, and he found himself doing the driving, as Wesley and Chase went off in Angel's car to find the children's caretaker. It was a fast, furious, tense drive. The car was nearly silent, and Lindsey concentrated wholly on not crashing into anyone or anything on the way. They were almost there when Angel finally said something. It wasn't what he expected to hear.

"I smell fresh blood." Lindsey jumped, but didn't look away from his intense focus on the street in front of them. "And brains. Not yours, you're still walking."

He grunted, a noncommittal sound, and hoped Angel would let it drop. Then a cold touch against the side of his jaw made him jump. "Jesus! What the hell're you doin'?" As always when he was afraid, his accent thickened, and equally the norm, he hated it. He glanced over and saw Angel delicately licking at a dark smear on the tip of his finger.

"Missed a spot when you were washing up."

Lindsey's stomach nearly revolted. Not from the pensive look as Angel was sucking Lee's blood off his finger, but because of the sharp flash of remembrance of how very near his own death had been. "Yeah. Well. One of the guys got fired today. Literally. I just got too close."

He didn't hear Angel move, but suddenly that not-heat not-cold too-close presence crowded him again, and Angel's breath was soft in his ear. "How close, Lindsey?"

He shuddered. He wanted to turn his head, wanted to look at Angel's face, wanted to spit in it. Wanted to crawl across the seat and disappear into him, wanted to feel safe again as he hadn't felt since he was little. A tiny voice was laughing hysterically someplace deep inside his brain, but he didn't listen. He didn't look.

"We're here." He jerked the car to a stop and nearly fell bolting out of the car, getting away from that closeness. Denying that safety that was just an illusion. Went forward to do the only thing he knew for damned sure had to be done, save the kids from Brewer. The rest could wait until he could think again. Until he could hear something besides his own blood rushing in his ears.

Angel went first, and Lindsey let him, not as if he could stop him. He had no scruples about letting the vampire lead the attack, just as he had no scruples about hitting a woman, especially a woman who was a homicidal freak, and most especially when that woman hit him first. Until the previous day he'd've been pretty certain he had no scruples about anything, but something about murdering children had caught on the one moral he hadn't purged. Once the woman in question started beating the holy crap out of him, he really had no scruples about doing his best to kill her.




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