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Choice and Consequences	By : QueenB Category: Angel the Series > Slash - Male/Male > Angel(us)/Lindsey > Angel(us)/Lindsey Views: 2642 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Angel: The Series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
The metallic smoke flows out of the urn like liquid silver and Connor watches curiously as it coalesces and forms into the demon. although Angel had warned him about the monster’s size, Sahjahn’s ultimate appearance still makes him swallow nervously. Standing more than a head taller than Connor and at least a hundred pounds heavier, the creature looks like he could flip a car with his bare hands.
Sahjahn flexes those same meaty hands and rolls his shoulders as if the urn had been a tight squeeze. Then he looks around and sees Connor. “Thank you, mortal, for releasing me from my cursed prison. In gratitude, I grant you three wishes.”
Well, this is unexpected. And, if this thing is a genie, he’s butt ugly, his burnt face, gray skin and stringy hair making him almost as repulsive as the burnt lobster outside the room. “Really?” Connor replies.
Sahjahn smirks. “Nah. I’m just messing with you.”
Connor grits his teeth. Great, he’s facing a demon with crappy taste in jokes. What’s next, card tricks? Sahjahn continues, unaware of the boy’s irritation. “I do appreciate it, though. That urn wasn’t exactly a day at the spa. I owe you one.”
“Right. Well, before you start trying to kiss me, I should probably tell ya… You and I, we’re, uh…supposed to fight.” Connor hefts the sword and tries to look threatening.
Sahjahn raises his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Now why would you want—” His eyes narrow as he takes a closer look at Connor. “Ah…you’re him.”
“Yeah, I’m me.” Shoot, guess the demon already knows about the destiny thing. Maybe Connor shouldn’t have given him a warning.
Sahjahn stretches and rubs out a crick in his neck. His appraisal of Connor hasn’t wavered and he shifts closer to the table covered with the weapons. “You’re a lot bigger than when I saw you last. Being in a hell dimension does that for you. The young uns, they grow up so fast. So how’d the Quortoth work out for you?”
Huh? What the hell was this guy talking about? Connor has never seen him before in his life. And what was the Quortoth? Sounded like something out of Lord of the Rings. Was this the distracting chatter Angel had told him to watch out for? “Uh…worked out great. Thanks for asking.”
“Really? I would have thought being in a hell dimension would be hard on the pores for a human. Me, I’ve had work done—mostly around the eyes.” Sahjahn gestures at his scarred face. “Couldn’t tell, could you?”
Connor isn’t sure whether he should make the first move. But all this confusing talk is starting to get on his nerves. “Look, not up for going over old times or whatever with you. So let’s finish this?”
From the confines of the other room, Angel watches the two of them anxiously. “No, he’s talking to him. Why is he talking to him? I told him not to talk to him.”
Sahjahn clucks his tongue. “C’mon, kid. Where’s your sense of tradition? This is the ‘amusing banter’ part of the fight. You know, the part where the good guy and the bad guy trade barbs and quips before getting down to the serious business of kicking each other’s asses. Gotta tell ya, you’re letting down the side here.”
“Yeah, well fresh out of late night patter.” Connor angles the sword in his direction, hoping his hands don’t break out into a sweat. “Besides, you look more like a circus freak type than a Jay Leno stand-up.
“Ooh, see? Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about: good old-fashioned insults.” Without warning, Sahjahn shoots out with his fist, getting past Connor’s defenses. “Followed by the ass kicking I mentioned.”
The blow to the face catches the teenager completely off guard, sending him skidding across the table. He drops the sword and lands on to the floor on the other side, the weapons falling around him with a clatter. He notices distractedly that none have pierced him, even with the points and sharp edges landing on his skin. But he doesn’t think that good luck is going to last too long.
Sahjahn pulls up the table and smirks at the prone teenager. “You know, I’ve had a long time to plan for this moment. I figured you’d be a lot more…intimidating.”
Connor rolls to his feet, grabbing up an axe on the way. “And I figured I’d be facing some kind of badass not a sissy demon who hits like a girl.”
A flicker of annoyance crosses the demon’s face before he shrugs again. “Hey, what do you expect? I’ve been locked up in an urn! It’s gonna take me a while to get back on the top of my game. Like, two seconds.”
He throws another blindingly fast punch but this time Connor is ready for it. He backpedals out of reach and then wades back into the fight. He feints a swing at Sahjahn with the axe and then follows up with a roundhouse kick. The demon catches it on the chest and staggers slightly. Then he recovers and retaliates with a malicious blow to the teenager’s head.
It seems as if Connor is holding his own. But then Sahjahn bends and effortlessly picks up a throwing axe. The weapon goes flying through the air and Connor ducks to avoid it. Before he can regain his balance, Sahjahn grabs the axe handle and punches Connor hard in the jaw. He wrests the axe out of his hand and sends it spinning across the room.
From then on, Connor is fighting a losing battle, doing his damndest just to keep out of Sahjahn’s reach and prevent his head from being removed from his shoulders. He tries to get to the scattered weapons but Sahjahn is on to him, managing to maneuver him neatly away from the weapons just when he thinks he’ll get his hands on one.
The teenager is getting desperate. His head is ringing and various parts of his body ache from the continuous blows Sahjahn keeps doling out. He’s not cut or bleeding but he’s exhausted from the beatings and the blows hurt even if they’re not doing any outward damage. The demon is wearing him down and doesn’t seem the least bit tired.
The hulking monster flexes his fists almost playfully. Connor is ducking his blows but the kid’s definitely on the defensive. Not a good way to fight a winning game. Connor avoids another swipe and punches him in the face. Sahjahn returns the favor, decking Connor and knocking him to the floor.
Angel watches all this anxiously, his fingers splayed against the barrier. “Open the doorway. Right now.”
Vail has regained his confidence. He has the upper hand here and he knows it. “Or you’ll what? Relax. Your son has to grow up sooner or later. Sit back and watch his future unfold.”
Angel is very much afraid Connor might not have a future if this continues. He winces in sympathy as Sahjahn twirls around and fetches Connor a spinning kick to the ribs. The boy’s body is sent across the room to hit the wall. He staggers up but he’s moving too slowly and it’s painfully clear he won’t be able to mount another attack.
As Sahjahn closes in on him, Angel turns back to Vail. “Open the—” But Vail doesn’t answer. He’s slumped sideways in his chair, a somewhat surprised look on his face. There’s a trank dart sticking out of his neck and his hand is empty.
Angel has been so absorbed in the fight he hadn’t noticed Lindsey sneaking into room. Now the ex-lawyer is holding the cube and gazing at the vampire with an unreadable expression. Angel stretches out his hands towards him. “Lindsey, give me that. You don’t know what that is.”
“On the contrary. I know exactly what this is, Angel. It’s an Orlon Window.” He cups it in one hand, much as Vail did. The trank gun is held firmly in his other hand, pointed with unwavering steadiness at the vampire in the room with him. “Fascinating little spell, isn’t it? It allows warlocks like Vail to see the past as it really was—before any mind alteration.” He steps farther away, out of Angel’s reach, still watching the vampire warily. “You have to be very careful with it, though. If the thing breaks around someone whose mind has been altered, then all the old memories come rushing back.” A hard light gleams in Lindsey’s eyes. “My old memories, as a matter of fact.”
“Lindsey, this isn’t about you. This is about Connor. If you care about him at all, you’ll put that down.”
“Then I was right. This is all part of something you set in motion a long time ago. And this cube holds the answer.” The Oklahoman’s stance is tense, wired with desperation and a new trace of strain that Angel is only just now noticing. “Angel, Connor could be my son.”
Angel shakes his head, his hands still outstretched for the cube. “No. Lindsey, we discussed this. Connor isn’t yours. Get that out of your head.”
Lindsey ignores him as if he hadn’t spoken. “He might be my only chance for a child in this life.”
The vampire is clearly baffled by the fierceness of this statement. “What? Lindsey, you’re still young. If you wanted you could have a child of your—”
Lindsey interrupts him. His voice is toneless like it was in Angel’s office earlier. “I had another vision this evening while you were gone having a chat with Cyvus here.”
“What?” Lindsey hadn’t told him this before and Angel asks himself if he could be lying. He recalls Wesley’s admonition not to trust the ex-attorney and now wonders if he has indeed fallen into some elaborate trap.
“I saw you, Connor, Vail, Sahjahn, this room and the Orlon Window. That vision was a real mother, Angel. I was bleeding from the nose when it finished. Connor’ll tell you that once he’s through with Sahjahn.”
Angel remembers all too well what the visions were doing to Cordelia. It looks as if the same thing was happening to Lindsey. “Oh Christ, Lindsey.”
Lindsey shrugs off the vampire’s pity. “That’s why I have to do this. I’m definitely living on borrowed time here. Angel, I have to know. One way or the other.”
Angel grits his teeth. He’s not certain he can leap over the intervening space and grab the cube before Lindsey can crush it any more than he could have wrested it from Vail. He’s almost willing to take the chance.
Then Lindsey glances into the other room and Angel can’t resist looking back. Connor has managed to dodge Sahjahn’s latest attempt but it’s clear that he’s fighting a losing battle. His old combat skills simply aren’t there and, without them, he’s dead meat.
The vampire is torn. He doesn’t want to do this; it will only mean pain and suffering for the young man he’s worked so hard to save. He’d done all this, sold out his friends, risked his own soul, to ensure a better life for the teenager battling so frantically in the next room. But what does all that matter if Connor dies?
Angel recalls Vail’s final words to him and turns back to Lindsey. Maybe Lindsey isn’t the only one who needs to remember. “Do it.”
Lindsey is startled. “What?”
“Break the cube. Break it, Lindsey.” When the man hesitates, he roars, “NOW!”
Lindsey lifts the Window above his head and throws it hard on to the floor. It shatters with a shrieking sound of glass breaking. Then there is a bright flare of light and the backlash knocks both men and the fighters in the other room to the floor.
Being demons, Sahjahn and Angel are the first to recover. The burnt-faced fiend shakes his head. “Whoa, nelly. What the hell was that? You become some sort of junior sorcerer in your spare time or you taking up a course in fireworks, boy?”
He gets to his feet only to see Connor rising and gripping one of the battleaxes. “The name is Connor, asshole.” The boy twirls the weapon with a newfound confidence, bouncing on the balls of his feet. When Sahjahn charges, he neatly sidesteps, bringing the butt of the axe down on the demon’s head. There is an audible cracking sound and Sahjahn staggers, shaking his head from the impact. He snarls at the pain and his fist snakes out in another of his lightning strikes.
But Connor is already in motion again, dancing out of harm’s way and then darting back, under Sahjahn’s reach. The axe comes up in a deceptively lazy arc and the sharp edge slices a smooth tear into the demon’s forehead just above the pale eyes. The demon roars with the pain and swipes viciously at his eyes. But now there’s blood pouring into his vision and he can’t focus on the small, darting human in front of him. “When I get my hands on you—”
“Sorry. I’m not really into dudes,” Connor drawls. The axe comes up again and bites into the demon’s neck.
“Oh, sh—” The word goes unfinished as the axe completes its sweep, taking his head with it. The demon’s skull thumps on the floor, shortly followed by the hulking torso.
Angel has watched all this with mounting pride. When the demon’s body totters and crashes to the floor, he smirks and whispers, “That’s my boy.”
There is a strangled gasp behind him and Angel turns to see Lindsey staring at him. The Oklahoman has a stricken look as he murmurs, “Oh Jesus. He-he really is yours, isn’t he?”
Angel stares back at him, watching the play of emotions on his face. He can guess what Lindsey must be going through right now. In spite of his arguments back at Wolfram & Hart, Angel had understood the man’s elation and wild hope that Connor might be his, that a moment of fleeting tenderness or lust between him and Darla might have resulted in a child of his very own.
Angel recalls all too well the pride he’d experienced when he’d discovered that he was going to have a son. The subsequent exasperation, terror and anguish he’d known trying to rear Connor in the face of insurmountable odds had done nothing to destroy the joy of cradling his little boy’s sweet smelling body and seeing the tiny babe gaze without fear on his demonic face.
Lindsey had known something of that joy. And now the possibility of it was stripped from him. “Lindsey, I’m so sorry.”
The man doesn’t speak. He only rushes out of the room without another glance at the young man beyond the invisible barrier. Angel frowns and is about to go after him when he feels a tap on the shoulder. Connor is standing behind him with the bloody axe held loosely in one hand. He stares curiously at the slackened figure of Vail, still draped sideways in his chair. “Angel? What are we looking at?”
“Uh. Nothing,” Angel mutters. He surveys Connor grimly. “Connor, about the flash…”
“Oh yeah. That. Was that a distraction you were pulling on that Sahjahn? ‘Cause, thanks. It really worked. I didn’t really need it, though; I was just biding my time until I got my second wind and could take out that jerk. But, seriously, can we get out of here? I’d like to go back… see my parents.” He tosses the axe so it lands at Vail’s feet. The unconscious demon doesn’t react.
Connor hugs himself around his body. “This whole fighting thing, I’m not… I’m not really sure it’s for me.”
Angel watches him. Connor’s demeanor is subdued but not particularly cowed. Angel is glad he hasn’t been hurt much by his ordeal. “I guess it does taking some getting used to,” he replies softly.
“Well, someone else can get used to it. I’m going back to Stanford and leaving the heroing to you guys.” He looks around. “Hey, did Lindsey ever show up? That’s his trank dart in that Vail guy’s neck, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is,” Angel mutters. “Let’s see if we can catch up with him.”
And that was that. Angel and Connor walk out only to discover the company car is gone. “Dude, where’s the car?” Connor frowns, looking around for it.
“Lindsey,” Angel growls.
The boy’s eyebrows shoot up towards his forehead. “Shit, Lindsey took our ride? Why would he do that?”
Angel shrugs uncomfortably. Connor’s memories don’t seem to have been affected by the breakage of the Orlon Window and he’s at a loss to explain why. Maybe he wasn’t close enough to the magical cube when it broke. In any case, he’s shown no sign of his former antagonism against Angel and the vampire is pathetically grateful for that. Yet he’s briefly touched by the same despair that gripped Lindsey. Connor still has no clue what Angel’s true role in his life is and the vampire can’t bring himself to reveal it. Connor wants to return to normalcy; he might as well let him do it.
Angel uses his cell phone (he’s remembered to take it with him this time) to call a cab. He can bring the boy back for him to get a shower and sleep beside his mother. Hopefully, when she wakes up tomorrow morning, she’ll be none the wiser about what her son has been up to all night.
Belatedly remembering the other members of his team, Angel rescues Fred and Wesley from their confinement. As Connor had predicted, they aren’t truly angry although Wesley doesn’t look as satisfied as Angel might have expected. Fred flushes when Connor asks them about what the two of them have been doing the whole time they’d been gone and Wesley snaps that it’s none of his business. There’s a definite sex scent though; maybe they had to cut things short due to lack of protection. It would explain Wesley’s crankiness.
__________
The vampire hovers uneasily outside the suite door until Connor barks that he can smell the vampire lurking. Then Angel shoves his hands deep in his pockets and decides it’s best to let the teenager get a night of solid, uninterrupted sleep.
Angel is tempted simply to retire for the night as well. But he’s desperate to find Lindsey before the other man decides to blow out of town. They haven’t had a chance to talk properly. The last few hours spent with him have been too hectic and frantic for them to connect on any kind of meaningful level and the revelation from the Orlon Window might have been enough to drive them apart forever. Angel doesn’t want that, not before he has a chance to explain.
But finding Lindsey is going to be trickier than last time. Thanks to the tracking device in each company car, locating the vehicle is a snap. But the ex-lawyer was smarter than the last time he was in Los Angeles. He drove the car back to the parking lot where he’d left the rental. There he’d ditched it and driven off in his leased Focus. In the midst of battle, Angel hadn’t done anything so practical as checking the license plate of the hired car. How was he going to find him now?
Fred. If anybody can locate a needle in a haystack, it’s her. Angel stops pacing in his suite and pulls out his cell phone. A quick flick of a button and Fred’s familiar Texan twang, slightly blurred from fatigue, comes on the line. “Hmmm, Angel? That’s your cell number I’m looking at, isn’t it? What do you want?”
“Hey. Fred, I know it’s late but I was wondering if you could do a favor for me.”
Her voice sharpens as alertness comes rushing back. Years of living on the run in Pylea have made the Texan a very light sleeper. “You want a favor? I’m thinking I don’t owe you any favors, Angel. You’ve been less than open during this whole Reilly business and I’m kinda ticked off about it.”
“So you’re upset about being locked up with Wesley, are you?” Angel asks with a definite smugness.
There’s a moment’s silence on the other end. “Okay, not so ticked off about that. So what do you want?”
“I was wondering if you could find out where Lindsey McDonald is staying. He…got upset during the battle with Sahjahn and took off. I want to see if he’s all right.”
Fred is immediately alarmed. “He was in the battle? I thought you said Connor faced Sahjahn alone!”
“He did. Lindsey, he just came in and attacked Vail and then he took off.”
“Is he hurt?” Fred asked. Her solicitude is genuine. She isn’t as hostile about Lindsey as Wesley is and Angel hopes she’ll be amenable to his request.
“Nooo, I don’t think so. It’s just, well, Vail had this magical cube thing and it went off and Lindsey was caught in the blast. After that, he acted a little strange and then he drove off with the company car. I haven’t seen him since then and I want to be sure he’s all right.” That’s close enough to the truth not to be outright lying. Angel is tired of lying to his crew and makes a vow to himself to come clean about everything that’s happened—when the time is right.
Fred yawns before responding. “Well, I’ve still got his cell phone number that he gave me.”
“He gave you his cell number?”
“When he was pretending to be Mr. Reilly.”
“Oh. And you can try using that to find him?”
“Actually, I already did. I got a message that it’s no longer valid. He must have changed it not too long ago. Look, Angel, is this really necessary? You don’t think Lindsey was physically hurt and he certainly doesn’t sound it, not if he was able to drive away in the car. So can’t this wait until morning?”
The vampire is noticeably exasperated. “Fred, I can’t get to him in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. With all the necro-tempered windows we got, I guess I forgot the rest of the world isn’t Tefloned that way. Chalk it up to lack of sleep.” A loud yawn comes over the phone.
“Fred, this is vital. I-I can’t fully explain. But Lindsey has been a big help during this whole thing and I want to make sure… I mean, we weren’t friends two years ago and I want to let him know bygones are bygones. I want him to know how much all his help has meant to me.”
“Oh, Angel, that’s sweet. But like I said, cell number’s been changed. So that’s a dead end.”
Angel slumps into one of the stuffed black leather chairs in his suite. There had been several scattered throughout the place before he’d had it stripped down to the Spartan means that is his preference. He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it in mismanaged clumps. “So you’re saying you can’t find out where he is.”
“Not through that. But maybe I can tap into the feed from security cameras at the restaurant parking lot and pick up the license plate number of the rental car from that.”
Angel’s eyes narrow. Something about that sounds fishy. “Is that entirely legal?”
“Um, not entirely. But we’re not checking anybody else’s numbers. So I won’t tell if you don’t. After that, it should be a snap tracing the number back to its source.”
“What good would that do? We already know Lindsey is the one who has the car.”
“Yesss. But, if Lindsey was sticking close to this case, that means the rental car and his probable lodgings are somewhere within the immediate area. I can triangulate an area and, within that area, look up the various hotels and motels where he might be staying. Any idea of what his income is?”
“Uh…”
“Never mind. I got an address in Oklahoma when I checked out his cell phone earlier. I’ll look up a map of Oklahoma, check out the various boroughs and extrapolate his likely income range from the neighborhood he’s living in. After I’ve got that, it should be a cinch to figure out where he’s staying.”
Angel rubs his temples. Once Fred got into full “geek mode,” as Cordelia used to call it, she could chatter on for ages. “Right. You do that.”
“You got it, boss. Hey, I’m glad you got me up for this. This could be fun.” Fred hangs up.
Angel stares at the phone in his hand. “Fun?”
__________
Lindsey lies on the bedspread, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the ceiling. Earlier he had ducked out to pick up a bottle of the strongest, cheapest tequila he could find: good old-fashioned rotgut, as the boys down home would say. He would have preferred Scotch, the single malted variety, the kind he used to drink when he was living large and in charge nestled in the bosom of Wolfram & Hart. But those days are long gone and a man has to take what he can get.
Then he’d stripped down to a short-sleeved T-shirt and his plain black boxer shorts. The regular shirt he placed strategically over the bedside lamp to soften the glow and ward off the pain from the hangover that’s sure to come. All the meager preparations made, the ex-lawyer settles into the grim business of getting well and truly plastered.
The liquor has barely begun to touch his brain, though. He feels only mildly woozy. Guess the demon strength must be keeping the effects at bay for the moment. “Damn. Should have bought another bottle,” he grouses. “Well, why not? I think there’s enough left in the till for one more run for liquid refreshment.”
He sits up and the room spins a little. “Okay. That’s a start,” he mumbles. He plops back on the bed, feeling the alcohol sloshing around in his stomach.
His eyes drift shut. But, the moment they do, the memories come racing back. God, he’d connived his way into getting those memories. He’d risked Angel’s anger, put his flesh and bones at stake fighting Kith’harn demons, destroyed that fucking cube for these lost thoughts and now all he wants to do is smother them under a blanket of booze.
There’s a faint sting under his closed eyelids and he clenches them tighter. That would be the final humiliation and he can’t bear it.
The memories play again behind his closed eyelids, more painful than any vision.
Darla, helpless and seemingly so fragile, railing against her human condition. The sights of people she’d tortured, murdered and butchered for fun, food and the luxury of a view were driving her crazy. The nightmares were horrific and she woke up screaming. She wanted nothing to do with mere humans who did nothing but reminded her of the awful crimes she’d committed against humanity.
She broke mirrors so she didn’t have to face herself in them: she, a woman so beautiful many a Los Angeles women would have killed for her face and figure. She cut her wrists open and her mood swings ranged from chilly silence to screaming defiance. She resisted all Lindsey’s attempts to comfort her—probably because she knew deep down his attentions weren’t meant for her.
“It’s not me you want to screw.” How right she was. But when she bit him with too-blunt human teeth and demanded to know whether he cared then about who she was, he showed her how little that meant. He forced her down onto the desk. But she had rejected him. She could tell his attention wasn’t on her and that made her rather pissed. Not that he could blame her. She wasn’t what he wanted and they both knew it.
After that Darla had pushed him away, fleeing to his apartment. He’d called her on his cell phone but gotten no answer. He had wanted to run after her but duty came first even if part of it meant watching over her. When he’d finally come home, Lindsey had heard the shower running and, when it continued, he’d realized that she must have been in there for hours. He’d knocked on the door, wondering if she’d hurt herself. If so, he could only hope it wasn’t deliberate. He’d tried opening the door but she’d locked herself in and yelled at him to go away.
Typical. She didn’t want him any more than he’d wanted her. Neither of them had felt right to the other. It was a kind of using; that was all.
Then there was the evening she’d come back from Angel’s place. The ring had been clenched in her hand like a parody of a lover’s gift. Her clothes had been ripped and her skin black and blue and bleeding in places: a testament to the violence of their coupling, given a vampire’s remarkable abilities of healing. And he could smell the muscular vampire all over her. Angel’s unique scent lay on her skin and in her hair. The bitch had sat there, covered in the mute evidence of the temptation Angel had at last yielded to—with Darla not him.
“You want…details, Lindsey? Is that what you want?” Of course he did. When had he ever told her to stop when she talked about her sexual diversions? But she wouldn’t tell him what she’d done with Angel that fateful night—a first, given her usual chattiness where their sordid history was concerned. In the past, Darla had been all too forthcoming on the wildness of her nasty little games with Angelus. There was that one time when he’d fucked her after daubing her body with the blood of five separate victims as if she’d been a paint-by-numbers kit. They’d taken turns licking the gore off their bodies and biting one another while screwing each other senseless.
The worst part—or best, depending on your point of view—was that each of the five sufferers had been alive throughout the entire ordeal, maintained deliberately by an Angelus who knew how to keep prey conscious and kicking for days on end. The whole scenario had been kept going for over a week before Darla grew bored and killed the unfortunate victims.
Darla’s voice had grown thick with longing when she recounted that particular tale and Lindsey could have sworn he’d smelled the lust peeling off her skin. The story and others like it should have repulsed him. But she was always so specific about the feel of Angelus’s hands, his formidable strength, the scent of his skin and hair, the way his clothes clung to his body and the things he did to her in bed. Lindsey had hung on every word. If he had imagined himself in Darla’s place, that was something he’d never admit to her.
That was why he’d gone screaming after Angel. After everything that the lawyer had done, the brunette vampire had given it up to her, had fucked her and she wouldn’t even tell him what he’d done to her. So he’d plowed into Angel with a truck, beat him with a sledgehammer (and wasn’t Lindsey happy to have those memories returned to him?) and demanded the truth. What could Darla have given Angel that Lindsey couldn’t?
Darla wouldn’t let Lindsey touch her even after she’d been turned for the second time. As a vampire she had been spectacularly indifferent to Lindsey as anything but a pawn to be used for her plans with Wolfram & Hart. That’s why she’d kept him alive after all—him and Lilah. That ensured the two rivals would be too much at each other’s throats to band together and formulate a devious plan against her and Drusilla.
That’s why the other lawyers in that locked room had been reduced to bloodless kibbles and bits. They were older, cunning and more patient than the relatively youthful Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan. They would have bided their time and found a way to double cross the two vampire women sooner or later. Hadn’t they done that when they brought Darla back with the disease that had nearly killed her on her first go around? Surely Lilah and Lindsey would prove to be more biddable. And if one of them killed the other, then there would be just the sole attorney for the two vampire women to handle. Keeping both of them alive had been simply a way to hedge their bets.
So Darla had used him and cast him aside after getting what she really wanted from Angel. And Angel had had his one-night stand with Lindsey and forgotten him. His one chance at fatherhood had amounted to nothing more than a sparring match with Connor. He’d tried and failed to make the connections and come up empty each time.
The sting behind his eyes grows hotter. In spite of himself, blistering fluid makes fiery trails down his cheeks to puddle in his ears. Lindsey sniffs and scrubs angrily at his face. He hates the emotion breaking through him. He’s too close to Angel; that’s the problem. Him, the visions, Connor and the memories have all served to break down the barriers Lindsey has worked so hard to erect over the years. He should have just stayed the hell out of Los Angeles and put the squeeze on Francis Gumm to follow up on the omen long distance.
Lindsey turns on his side, ignoring the scratchiness of the sheets against his skin. Who is he kidding? Staying away probably wouldn’t have worked either. The visions simply would have continued until his head exploded.
Lindsey sighs and rubs absently at the scar alongside his neck. It has started itching again. It has been doing that for the last few minutes. The itching spreads until his whole skin is humming. There is a familiar sensation accompanying it, one he feels only around one person in the world. He sits bolt upright in bed, his head snapping towards the open doorway. “Angel?”
The vampire is standing in the doorway. “Lindsey.”

TBC
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Choice and Consequences