Title: Innate Darkness, an Angel story from Lindsey's perspective
Author: Brenda Antrim
Email: bren@bantrim.net
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.

You don't learn that kind of darkness. It's innate.


She was a contradiction in terms. Lindsey stared through the shadows of his office at the ethereal beauty hiding four hundred years of experience, and wondered when the realization that she was human would kick in. If all went according to plan, Angel would crack, and Angelus would turn Darla back into the vampire she was meant to be long before her new-born soul could become a liability of any sort, either to her or to the Firm.

Things so seldom went according to plan. Especially where Angel was concerned.

He'd waited for her, as he had every night when she'd gone to visit Angel. They never spoke about what she did when she was with her wayward boy, but she was inevitably keyed up and aroused when she returned to Lindsey.

It was some of the most incredible sex he'd ever had.

The first time she'd stalked into his office after seducing Angel's dreams, she'd wrapped both arms around Lindsey's neck, straddled him as he sat in his office chair, and kissed him until he was light-headed. Then she'd reached down with one hand, unzipped his fly, done something wicked and a little painful to his penis, then sat down on him. It was wild, fast, and quickly over. He'd been in shock. She'd been extremely hungry. Neither one of them had said a word.

The second time she'd given him enough warning that he was able to clear his desk and lay her down on it. She'd put bruises over his kidneys with her heels that had taken a week to heal, and the bite marks on his neck had taken longer. Holland had smirked at him. Lilah had glowered. It had still been fast and furious. A pattern of silence emerged.

So it went. For days. After the first dozen times he lost track.

He was almost to the point of being blase about it. Darla went out, invaded Angel's dreams, whacked away at the walls holding his demon back, then slipped back into the Firm and fucked Lindsey blind at his desk. In his chair. On his carpet. Against his wall. Beside the file cabinet. If he hadn't known for damned sure that she was just working off excess energy, he'd've thought she liked him. As it was, he might as well have been an anatomically correct wind-up doll. An Angel stand-in. One more reason to want to destroy Angel. All this incredible sex, aimed at somebody else, was getting a little depressing.

Shrugging away the thought as unimportant in the grander scheme of things, he turned back toward his charge. She'd told him that Angel was close to falling apart. The plan was near fruition.

"That's wonderful," he complimented her, completely sincere in his appreciation. They exchanged some small talk about her knowledge of Angel, and he thanked her again for her help in fleshing out the file on the thorn in their side. She'd been invading Angel's dreams, chipping away at his defenses, for days now. It was only a matter of time before the plan would be launched, and Angel would be no more.

Angelus would be theirs. Or as much theirs as he had ever been anyone's.

"So, what is the plan, exactly?" Curiosity finally overcame her. He'd been waiting for it. "I tease him to death?"

She was standing very close to him now. She smelled sweet, and tempting. This time, she wasn't coming directly from Angel's bed. This time, it might be for him. He stared at her, weighing her silently. They were of a height, and she was looking directly into his eyes.

"We don't want him dead," he told her softly. "We want him dark. And there's no better way to a man's darkness than to awaken his nastier urges, is there?"

Angel had awakened his own nasty urges a long time ago. The bastard chopping off his hand had just solidified his desire to slice him into very small strips then stake each one individually.

Darla seemed to pick up on his emotion, moving closer and gesturing to his prosthetic hand. "He did that to you." Lindsey glanced down, giving a tiny nod. "What's it feel like?"

There was the edge of the sadist in her tone. He recognized it intimately. "It doesn't feel like anything." He was lying, of course. It hurt. Constantly. Not just in the hand that was no longer there. Deeper. Down to the bone.

"Can I?"

She was reaching for him even as he gave her permission with his eyes. She'd never touched anything but his shoulders and his crotch when they'd fucked. Once, she'd grabbed his hair, and held him by it while she rode him. This touch felt different. He couldn't feel her fingertips, of course, but the pressure transmitted itself through the straps to his forearm. Along his upper arm, down his shoulder into his torso. Straight to his groin.

"It's very smooth. You don't feel anything?" She sounded faintly incredulous and slightly aroused. He could feel the heat rising off her. One advantage of the human form over the vampire.

"Not in my hand," he answered honestly, his voice trailing off as he allowed her to glimpse his own arousal.

She smiled back at him, then moved away. He wasn't surprised. Whether it was teasing or building anticipation, Darla was a past master of the game. And, when push came to shove, he wasn't Angel. He watched her walk over and start fiddling with the scales hanging from the hand of the blindfolded Justice.

"How is it?" he asked abruptly, suddenly curious himself. "Seeing him again?"

Darla answered Justice, not him. "Strange."

When she didn't go on, he prompted her. "He betrayed you."

"Everyone betrays you." She sounded amused at his needling. "That's not what eats at you in the long winter's night."

"Yeah?" He didn't buy it. "What does?"

"Missed opportunities. He got a soul, and it sickened me." Her fingers pulled viciously at the scales. "All that power, wasted on a whiney, mopey do-gooder. God. I could eat his eyeballs."

The disgruntled tone, even more than her choice of words, nearly made him laugh aloud. "Our plans for Angel are a little more long-term than that." He couldn't resist adding, "but if you can't help yourself, then by all means, be my guest."

She pivoted on her heel and beamed at him briefly. "You're fun for a human!"

She'd just noticed? He ignored that errant thought, too, and tapped the manila envelope with the photograph of Angel's new abode in it, destined for a certain pawn in the police department. Time to put the denouement of the plan into action.

"I have a particular interest in this guy. A lot of people do."

Dipping his head quickly in good-bye, he walked out the door, leaving her to the shadows of his office, and the dreams of her eventual triumph.

Everything went perfectly when the time came to spring the trap. The police were primed; the background was in place; the back story was verifiable by objective witnesses; nobody would miss the actor. He listened to her screams for help over his speaker phone and took a healthy slug of fine single malt scotch.

"We should have our own series," he mused, grinning into his glass. This would do it. This would be the final thrust of the ax into the oak. Either it would fall, or it would rot.

If Angel followed his pattern, he'd not hurt the police pursuing him. If they took him into custody, maybe he'd get a East-facing cell and all their troubles would be over. If he escaped, well ... Kate the Obsessed knew where to find him. The mortals would close in on him until he turned or was taken.

There was a third possibility, of course. He could turn Darla, or kill her. In each of those scenarios, he'd still be theirs. He'd either be Angelus again, or wanted for murder and back to the cell or flight options. Lindsey had the brief thought that it would be funny if Angel ended up needing a lawyer, then toasted the air as he heard the police enter the house.

"You'll pay for this." Angel's growl was obviously ticked off and harried even over the line. It was music to Lindsey's ears. Then there was further ruckus kicked up, followed by the sincere voice of Detective Lockley promising Darla that they would find the one who'd done this, and he'd pay.

Lindsey snorted into his nearly empty glass. Pay, and pay, and pay, if he had his way.

He was reaching over to flip off the speaker when he heard a strange rustling sound, then a muffled squeak, followed by dead silence. He stared at the inanimate box for a long, hate-filled moment. He would be incredibly pissed off if Angel managed to worm his way out of this one, too. Then he realized what the rustle had been.

Leaves, or bushes, or some other sort of foliage. Cover. Angel had snatched Darla, no doubt to take her someplace quiet and 'make her pay.' Lindsey grinned ferally.

"Go, girl," he told the quiet of his office. "Take back your darlin' boy. Bring him home to daddy."

Lifting his glass in a toast, he noticed it was empty, and carefully set it back on his desk top, ignoring the part of him that wanted to throw it against the wall or keep filling it until the bottle was empty. This was what they'd been working toward. It was the way the plan should go. He should be anticipating triumph. Not sitting in the dark, desperately wanting more whiskey. Thinking about a demon with a soul.

Cradling a hand that wasn't there any more, that still hurt like hell.

He was putting the final flourishes on a brief when she stormed into the office mid-morning of the next day. Not wanting to lose four hours of hard work by being thrown across the computer peripherals and thoroughly used, he clicked 'save' and quickly pushed the keyboard tray safely out of the way. Then he braced himself for impact.

It didn't come. Instead of jumping him, as he'd expected from a victorious Darla, she paced. Snarled. Pawed at the attractive bruising along her right cheek, pulled at her tangled hair, and bitched. A low, angry hiss of invective that was as inventive as it was vituperative. He settled back into his chair, watching her warily, careful not to let the wariness show.

"He adored me! How the hell can he say that I never made him happy? The Slayer had nothing, was nothing. I was everything to him. For centuries. As if a soul could make that much difference! How dare he? That fool, that stupid, arrogant, weak, impossible, ignorant, self-righteous, ridiculous waste of potential. That boy will be sorry he ever crossed me. Sorry he ever dared turn his back on me. He will regret the day he ever laid eyes on me! He kissed me, held me, bit me, did everything but have sex with me, and then he had the unmitigated gall to tell me that I didn't have what it took to make him happy!"

Lindsey watched and listened patiently, wading through the skein of rambled words, searching for the logic beneath the rejection. Angel may not have been a mental giant, but he was cunning and had strong self-protective instincts. If he'd had Darla in his arms and hadn't turned her, he must have had a good reason.

Gradually, he began to form some hypotheses.

Angel wouldn't have sex with her, because he'd bite her, and she'd turn back into a vampire, and now that he had a soul he wouldn't make any more vampires.

Angel wouldn't turn her into a vampire, because then he'd fall back in love with her, or whatever thrall she'd had over him. Then he'd lose his fight to contain Angelus, lose his soul, and be right back where he'd been before he had it; side by side with Darla raising hell. All his efforts at redemption would be for naught.

He listened in for a few more minutes. She was still coming up with new ways to call Angel an asshole and declare war on him, so he tuned back out and returned to his heavy thinking.

She did have a point. Angel had been happy in his own nun-chomping way when he'd been Angelus and had been with her. If the conversations overheard through the bugs Wolfram and Hart had placed in his living quarters were to be believed, he still missed those days upon occasion. So he had to be lying when he said she couldn't make him happy.

A thought hit him, and he examined it from a couple different angles. What if that wasn't what Angel had meant? Lindsey had been around Darla long enough to realize how self-centered she was. Angel might well have said something else, and she could have twisted it around to make it about herself. There was a key buried in there.

He stared at her flushed face, admiring the swing of blonde hair accenting her delicate cheekbones, then blinked.

The soul.

Of course.

It wasn't that Darla hadn't made Angel happy. It was that Angel couldn't have sex with her while he had a soul, or he would be happy. Because he had loved her, or at least been obsessed with her, and obsession was a form of love. A sick form, but valid nonetheless. So, Angel wouldn't have sex with Darla because he'd lose his soul if he did.

Lindsey laughed out loud. Darla rounded on him and was over the desk with her hands wrapped around his throat before he had a chance to explain the joke. Fleetingly, he was thankful he'd taken the time to save his file and put the keyboard away. Then he removed Darla from his chest by the simple expedient of punching her in the jaw as hard as he could. She landed on the far side of the desk, unconscious.

Having only one hand, he couldn't afford to play around when attacked by someone with no conscience and four hundred years of experience. She'd be sorry she killed him, of course, once she calmed down, since he was her best and only ally. By that time it'd be too late for him, though, so he avoided the whole possibility.

When she came around, he handed her ice wrapped in a fine linen towel, and explained his deductive reasoning to her. She couldn't smile very well with a swollen jaw, but her eyes glittered. Content that she was on the same page as he, Lindsey outlined the next step in the plan to bring the innate darkness that was Angelus to the fore once again.




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