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Title: Beginnings and Endings
Author: Forget Yesterday
Rating: R
Written for: lafemmedarla(gah, I hope you don't hate it!)
Request: Angel/Darla, the phrase "still in love with all your sins"
Feedback: Is my crack.
Warnings: Darkness, creepiness, bloodplay. It's Angel/Darla, guys, what do you expect?
Author's Notes: This turned out much more Darla-centric than Angel-centric... but, oh well. And it's my first time writing Darla, so I apologize if it's somewhat terrible. And while I'm on a self-disclaimer roll... I have been insane with homework, so I also apologized if it's terrible in manner of being rushed. [/gratuitous disclaimer of all responsibility for own writing]

Remember how it began, with Angel? Allowing him the occasional glimpse of you - only ever a fleeting vision in the periphery of his sight. He wasn't quite sure, for the longest time, whether you were real or some figment of his beer-fogged imagination. He wasn't much of a prize, to the untrained eye. Drunken, lazy, given to fighting.

Completely, entirely lacking in any sort of subtleties. On the other hand, he was beautiful, your boy. And beneath all the world saw of him, you could see potential. All that self-loathing, all those daddy issues… the bent for violence… you know, given time, you could mold all that, shape it into something beautifully cruel and twisted. Something to while away the dull hours (remember, that's how he said it, your darling boy). But even then, you have to admit, you never quite imagined just how far he would exceed your expectations.

That night when you finally let him see you, he was yours. One full view of your delicate features - wilting flower, you do it so well - and he was yours, body and soul. Literally.

Oh, those years, they melted together, didn't they? Fire and death, that lovely bloody trail you left behind, you and your dear boy. Prague and Paris and Stockholm… beautiful dresses, nights at the opera, high-class sophisticates drained and bloodied and left in ballet-house allies to be found when they would. It nearly broke you to see him with a soul. The pathetic human smell to him. That sickening, haunted way he looked at you. Such a waste, such a pitiful waste of so much glory…

That final night together, nine months ago. What should have been the last time you had to lay eyes on him. His hand softly brushing your breast, as he murmured sweet nothings in a post-coital haze. The horror of the next morning, as you tried to shut out his apologies, his regrets for not having saved -saved- you. Disgusting.

You've come a long way from that, haven't you? Caring for - loving, even - this sweet parasite he left inside you. Being calmed by that human heartbeat, comforted by the presence of a soul inside you. But for all the grace and warmth that baby's soul has given you, you're still in love with all your sins.

You love your child now. You would give anything for its sake… but you know, the instant it's born, the instant that its soul leaves your body… you will forget. You'll hate it with a passion greater than you have hated anything before. You will take its mewling head in one delicate hand, and crush it in an instant. Tear it from the loathed, pudgy, warm little neck, and…

Weakness. You loathe nothing more than weakness. Angelus always held a certain… soft spot, as it were, for it. He found no greater pleasure than breaking it. Those slender, pale-skinned girls, with their wide and frightened eyes. Their tears and pitiful shrieks. He would see how close he could bring them to the edge of death, before they couldn't scream anymore.

Prague. You brought him that tender young thing - a virgin, naturally - you knew that would please him. He found her sleeping sweetly on the rich carpet before the fire, and he smiled his wicked little smile that suggested a thousand dirty, lovely things. He could always set you on fire with a single look, your boy. That smile always made the anticipation ever so much more exquisite.

You remember him waking her with the most saccharine of tender kisses. Gentle as the most earnest of trembling schoolboys. Her brown doe-eyes fluttered open and he lay a gentle finger on those rosy lips. Kissed her again, too sweetly. You have to admit, you felt a little thrill of pride at the finesse with which he turned that kiss into a bite, sinking cruel fangs into her lip, smothering her cry with his mouth as warm blood gushed from her mouth.

Still, the watching became tiresome. Torment was not a spectator sport. Her sad pleas for mercy, which enthralled Angelus to no end, soon bored you. The ache for him between your thighs would not settle, and so you swept out the door to find yourself some young neck to snap, a pool of eager blood to warm you.

You came home to those same pathetic moans. The girl, in shredded clothing on the floor, struggling like some weak, trapped animal as your boy moved inside her, whispering words like lovely, and hush now, and break you. Your need for Angelus grew inconceivably stronger, accompanied now by more than a flicker of annoyance. Why must he waste all those lovely torments, all of his cruel patience, on breaking this fragile, fleeting mortal? Why, why, when he could be inside you, hurting you, feeling you writhe and beg? No human girl could ever satisfy him like you could.

You swallowed your anger and spoke with practiced coolness and nonchalance.

"Angelus?"

With what amounted, you suppose, to a truly admirable bit of fortitude, he paused, pulled out, and turned to acknowledge you with a lust-filled glance. "Hello, lover,"

"Are you nearly through?" You tried to keep the frustration from your voice.

"Nearly."

He smiled his wicked little smile, and you felt that familiar burning spread throughout your body. His eyes burned into yours, the way they always did, and you felt a nearly-human trembling inside of you.

The silly girl chose that unfortunate moment to beg for her life. With a swift and singular motion, you swept across the room, and with a careless twist, you broke her slender neck

Mmm. Your boy was angry now.

"Why did you do that, Darla?"

You always did love it when danger crept into his voice. You let out an unnecessary sigh, well aware of the rise and fall of your bosom, and the focus of his gaze. "She tried my patience, Angelus. Besides," you laughed as he slammed you roughly against the hearth, knocking a vase to the floor, "I've earned your attentions more dearly than she could have."

He kissed you hard enough to bruise a human's lips, tasting the faint hint of blood still in your mouth from your earlier kill. You both tumbled to the floor, and you moaned and purred as his rough hands pushed your thighs apart.

"It wasn't your place," he hissed against your mouth. You pressed one hand softly against his firm stomach.

"Then show me my place," you dared him. He made a sound, something like a growl, one hand still bruising your inner thigh as the other tore at your corset. That other hand still worked its way up your thigh -

After that, you remember only senseless, lustful joy. There, nails, hands, teeth and flesh, bruises, kisses, bliss. When you came to your shuddering climax, you victoriously met the dead girl's glossy eyes.

These are the memories you and Angel built together. All blood and death and beautiful, terrible sin.

For centuries of murder and torture, Angel was punished with a soul. Guilt, love - weakness. A slave to his wasteful need to atone.

But this? You wonder, now, if perhaps it might be worse. To feel love, without a soul of your own. Love, for the first, and only time in the many lives you have lived. To know what it is to be willing to die for some creature other than yourself, and to know that that feeling will be taken away.

As your hand absently rubs slow circles over your pregnant stomach, you realize with a detached, mild sort of interest that while your child's soul allows you to feel love, it forces no guilt upon you. There is still no twinge of conscience or regret for all those memories.

Yet still, at the thought of what you know you are capable of doing to this baby, your heart leaps painfully to your throat. You can feel Angel's baby kicking. Feel that tiny, persistent little heartbeat that speaks of possibilities and that strange, human courage against all odds that you never quite understood.

The child kicks again. Somehow, you already know how this is going to end.