How Did You Think This Would End
by Tara Ann Stridh
rated NC-17
Darla/Lindsey
Lindsey's fantasy becomes a reality.
spoilers - Reunion
feedback - DarlaAnn400@aol.com
*Characters do not belong to me:(
she laughs at all the boys
He watched her sleep before, always mystified by the way her chest never slightly rose and never fell. Sometimes she even wore his shirt because it carried his mortal scent she said. Warm. Sometimes he pressed his small ear to her chest and listened to her silence. Blood and jasmine. Yes, that was what Darla was made of - jasmine and blood. Blood that gave her life but didn’t seem to touch her heart. He wondered if a vampire’s heart would be like ice or defrosted meat.
Against her pallid skin her lashes were like dark velvet. Her straight blonde hair seemed brushed even when it wasn’t. Watching her made him remember her. When she lay in the greenhouse under Drusilla’s whispering stars. Her cheeks falsely blushed, her lips painted in deception. Her petite body straight and still and beautiful in the white dress. Her feet bare. Finally at peace, her soul, but the dainty wound in her neck told the ugly truth. Her soul taken from her, her life taken from her. No, she taken from life. No one got to have as many lives as Darla, and hers were always different. Darla - betrayed by love and life. In the greenhouse Lindsey tried not to stare at her, but he couldn’t look anyplace else. He even got there early, before Holland and Lilah so he could have his time with her. To wish upon her lips for the things between them that could have been. To harbor the foolish idealistic hope that things still would.
They didn’t let him stay for her “birth.” Drusilla never said he couldn’t. If he had would Darla have killed him right there and then, her wine lips tasting of perfumed dirt? Would he have even cared? All he wanted was to see her eyes open again. Her voice purring again. Looking at him again. How could someone so beautiful be delivered into death so many times? It seemed cruel to him.
Drusilla’s wound in grandmother’s neck seemed empty to him. Lonely. He saw the look in Darla’s eyes, the despairing resistance as she struggled in the men’s arms. So frail and powerless as a human and the defeat in her pained face because she knew that being human made her so feeble. Afraid even. So ready to accept death, to accept that life had played with her for four hundred years and before, then to realize that it would start all over again. Angel stunned in her hotel room as Drusilla in red approached, Darla looked at Lindsey once, her hazel-violet eyes seeking out his soul to save her. He brought the men, he brought Drusilla, he pulled back Angel’s head, relishing the power, “How did you think this would end?” Could it be that Darla saw Lindsey as her tormenter then? Wasn’t it he who resurrected her, cared so profoundly for her during her first weeks, then months, courted her with his own loneliness, pain, vengeance, and interest in Angel? Angel took Lindsey’s hand; Angel took Darla’s love. The human soul was always searching for another soul to share, and wasn’t it Lindsey’s who matched hers so deeply? The first to bond with her strange human self? And he let her die again only so she wouldn’t. It was the last thing he did to her. After tossing her around from Angel’s Spanish-fly laced dreams to Angel’s harsh rejection, Lindsey gave her back to the darkness where Angel could never love her. And in the greenhouse all Lindsey thought of was Darla. That she would be Darla again. To Lindsey she was everything an angel was supposed to be - small and fair and strong and tempting. All the while in the greenhouse Lindsey tried not to look at the wound in her neck because he envied it; he wished he could have given it to her.
He didn’t really know what to expect when she woke. Maybe he thought she’d kiss him and whisper “I love you” before she twisted his neck in her tiny cold palms. How he wanted to bring his lips to that wound, trying to make it go away. Or how beautiful she was in death, more than in life. And when she did wake and found him she tossed him aside. It pissed him off because he wanted her. The tingling within and below he felt when she inhaled his scent, the determination in her piercing eyes, the predacious way she said his name. The primal instinct with which she held his face in her hands, his blood slumbering for her. Warm. Even in the greenhouse his eyes held her in an intoxicated gaze, his lower half bewitched by her. He wanted to fuck her or he wanted her to kill him, he couldn’t decided which would have been more sublime.
Now as she slept his senses were frenzied. Asleep in ivory silk sheets she looked the way she did in the greenhouse and Lindsey’s strengths, weaknesses, urges possessed him. He realized he was moving inside her, her inner self-cold and tight around him as it always was. He didn’t know how much time had passed; he didn’t even remember doing what he was doing. His first instinct was to stop, but as he looked upon her face she neither moaned nor stirred. His imagination almost conjured up the wound in her neck, but Darla was flawless. Lindsey didn’t want to stop.
All the while he didn’t close his eyes; he always wanted to look at her. Lindsey thought he saw her move a finger or maybe her hand, but he didn’t desist. Then she opened her eyes with a silent gasp and looked into his smooth face. She laughed. She just laughed, her mouth that hideous mocking sweet smile he knew so well. He continued still, and she didn’t stop laughing. Darla’s lips were bare, but he smelled the lipstick. Her Chanel metal garnet. The defining scent of her mockery over him. I’m in love with you, that scent, the laughter. Whether heartless or heartfelt was never to be decided.
Lindsey could feel his head begin to throb because of that imaginary scent and her laughter. He kissed her to drown her laughter, feeling the smile on her lips as she kissed him back. Her laughter would have made him retreat and apologize except she kissed him back, was kissing him back, still laughing, still smiling. And that cold place between her thighs was warm now. Warm as she laughed. He was going to quiet her. It was as if she knew everything now. Everything he thought, felt - if she figured everything out then they would have no hope of ever being together.
“What’s the matter, Lindsey?” she said, “you didn’t know you’d fall in love. Thought because you work at an evil law firm you’d be safe?”
Her laughter became stronger and he whispered, “Shut up.”
Darla brought her hand to his cheek, and he grabbed her wrist softly, pinning her hand beside her hip.
“Even evil-doers fall in love,” she said.
Then she smiled, lifting her head up to catch his mouth.
Lindsey realized in life Darla was a doll. A tattered doll carried around by the hair by a little peasant girl. As a vampire Darla was queen; in death she was queen, and it was why she could mock him. Why she would mock him and why he would let her.
After she vented an orgasmic shriek Lindsey realized what he had done. After Darla wondered what else he could do because she knew that if ever she died again it would be his face she saw in a blissful dark hell.
