Outside The Hyperion Hotel and Beyond | Los Angeles, CA | Monday Evening Fandom Time
Having escaped the vampires from the hospital (who, for the record, weren't so much an ordinary group of vampires but rather disturbingly cult-like in the way they'd gotten on their knees, groveled to the as-yet-unborn "miracle child" and outlined their plans to protect and nourish the child by feeding it the blood of its mother and all the other humans helping with the delivery, which almost seemed worse than the ordinary vampires who just wanted to kill everyone), the Angel Investigations team and Darla now pulled up to the Hyperion with a screeching halt as Angel ran inside to gather the Nyazian scrolls.
"Five minutes," Angel said as Cordy shifted from the passenger to the driver seat. "If I'm not back by then, leave without me."
Gunn
"She's gonna pop right here," Gunn said, pacing beside the car. He had to raise his voice, mind, because being heard over Darla's screeching was kind of a challenge.
Wesley
"The contractions," Wesley said, pacing right next to him. "I think they're coming more frequently now."
Cordelia
"You think?" Cordy groused, turning a stake over in her hands. Everything in her posture conveyed impatience, but she was clearly making an effort not to vocalize it.
Wesley
Which Wesley appreciated, truly, but he still felt the need to justify his behavior. "I'd just -- I'd feel a lot better if we had the ancient prophecies to guide us," he explained. "Or Angel..."
Cordelia
"Please," Cordy scoffed, fixing an unimpressed look on him. "Women have been giving birth without ancient prophecies for years!"
Gunn
Gunn crossed his arms over his chest before weighing in, "What we could really use is some Vaseline and a catcher's mitt."
Fred
When another scream from Darla interrupted that train of thought, Fred volunteered loudly from the back seat, "Guys, I -- I don't think she's ready to deliver yet, but she's moved into the active stage of her labor."
Wesley
So much for waiting for Angel, then. Wesley took a look around the alley where they'd parked, took in how open and exposed it was, and shook his head. "All right. We have to go. We can't stay here. It's too exposed. Angel should have been back by now."
He'd really hoped it wouldn't come to this, but... "Now it's up to us to protect Angel's unborn child."
He turned around from where he was sitting in the passenger seat, addressing Darla now for the first time since they'd stopped. "Darla," he said gently, "we're trying to take care of you here. We need you to relax and breathe. A simple pant-pant-blow, something like--"
Darla
But before he could completely demonstrate the hee-hoo technique, Darla sat up sharply, smacked her hands on the seat, and sent them all flying out of the car with the force of it. "I! Don't! Breathe!"
Then, the area newly cleared of interfering humans trying to stop her from escaping, she clambored into the front seat, turned on the ignition, and sped away.
Angel
Which was right when Angel entered the alley, peering in the direction of where everyone else was now staring after the car.
"What are we all looking at?"
Cordelia
Almost the moment Angel arrived, Cordelia was smacking his arm. "What the hell took so long?"
Angel
Angel took a breath. (See, Darla, some vampires were attached to the convention.) "It was Holtz. Holtz was there."
Wesley
Cue four stares from the others, and none more horrified than Wesley's. "Holtz?" he repeated, gobsmacked. "The vampire hunter who tracked you and Darla..."
Angel
"Through the late seventeen hundreds, yeah," Angel confirmed.
Gunn
"Sure it wasn't his great-great-great-great grandson?" Gunn checked.
Angel
"No," Angel said wearily. "It was him."
Fred
"Maybe he's part of what's supposed to bring ruination down upon mankind," Fred volunteered. "The Nyazian Prophecies did say that the Tro-Clan was going to be a confluence of events."
Cordy
"And the sudden appearance of an eighteenth-century vampire hunter in the twenty first century does seem pretty confluey," Cordelia agreed.
Gunn
"You think he's here for the baby?" Gunn asked.
Angel
Angel shook his head. "I don't think he even knows about it."
Fred
"He wouldn't have to!" Fred burst out. When all eyes turned to her, she explained hastily, "Th-that's the tragic beauty of a cosmic convergence. I, I mean, he just plays his own small part. He -- he comes here looking for Angel and Darla, and in the process ends up finding Angel's unborn child, who, as it turns out, wasn't evil at all as we feared, but was actually meant to be some sort of Messianic figure. But Holtz kills it before it's even born and his vengeance somehow triggers the end of the world!"
She beamed for a moment before noticing that everyone else was looking at her with something like alarm.
"Or not! It could go either way. Have you thought of a name yet?"
Wesley
...Well then.
"We need to find Darla before Holtz does," Wesley said, shifting focus to their more important priorities.
Angel
"I can find her a lot faster on my own," Angel said, because vampire running beat cars now. "If you guys could just find some place safe for her to have this baby, we'll come to you."
Gunn
"We can do that," Gunn said, hopping back in the car.
Wesley
As Angel turned to leave, Wesley called after him, "Angel -- the scrolls, you didn't manage to...?"
When Angel shook his head and left, Wesley sighed. "I'm sure we'll be fine without them," he said, and settled back in the car.
Sure enough, Angel found Darla, and before long the two of them made their way to Caritas, where Angel laid Darla on Lorne's bed before being ushered out of the room by some of the others.
Angel
"Is she going to be okay?" he asked at once.
Wesley
Wesley hedged for a moment before settling on a very certain, and very truthful, "She's tough as nails."
Fred
"And immortal," Fred chimed in, "so that's in her favor, health-wise."
Angel
Angel nodded. "What about the baby?"
Wesley
Wesley and Fred exchanged a look.
"Angel," Wesley said carefully, "I think it's best that you prepare yourself for the worst."
Angel
Angel crossed his arms over his chest. "No."
Wesley
"The baby's heartbeat is faint," Wesley explained hastily. "Very faint. And Darla's body -- it's not a life-giving vessel. I don't know that it's equipped to do what it needs to do in order to bring a baby to term."
Cordelia
"Okay," Cordy said, throwing up her hands, "what about a C-section?"
Fred
"Normally that's exactly what we'd do," Fred said, because she was totally delivering babies all over town in her spare time, "but in this case, the mystical forces that've been protecting the pregnancy..."
Angel
"...are gonna wind up killing it," Angel filled in.
Well. That was unacceptable.
Wesley
"That's my fear," Wes confirmed.
Angel
Angel sighed, rubbing his eyes. "This doesn't make any sense," he said. "I mean, this whole thing has been a miracle, right? You don't just get half a miracle, do you? I mean, the powers -- they brought her this far, they protected the baby all this time..."
Gunn
Sensing it was time for a reality check, Gunn interjected, "We don't know that. We don't know that it's the powers that's been protecting it. Angel, I'm sorry, but what if what Darla's carrying is the thing in the prophecies? That scourge of mankind that's supposed to plunge the world into ultimate darkness? What if -- what if what's happening to Darla now, what if that's the powers? Finally stepping up to the plate and doing something for once!"
Angel
Angel's voice went calm and quiet -- almost scarily so. "How?" he asked coolly. "By killing my kid?"
Before anyone could answer, he stalked off back toward Darla's room.
Gunn
Gunn sighed, sinking into a stool. "Maybe I should go and apologize."
Wesley
"No," Wes said, holding out a hand. "Best to just stay here, wait this out."
Lorne
At that moment, though, a man entered the club. He was probably in his late forties, a bit older and less demonic than Caritas' usual clientele.
"Oh. Hello."
Lorne, who'd been doing his best to leave Team Angel to their infighting, stepped out from behind the bar. "We're not open at the moment. Why don't you come back tomorrow night?" He held out a flyer. "It's the grand re-opening. Here. Here's a flyer."
The man thanked him and turned to go, but not before beginning to hum softly to himself. Suddenly Lorne froze, his eyes going wide. "Run!" he shouted, racing toward the back of the club where Angel and Darla had set up.
Cordelia
"What's going on?" Cordelia asked immediately.
Lorne
"Just go. Run!" Lorne yelled, and as he, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Fred made it into the bedroom, a barrel tumbled down the stairs to the club and exploded, lighting up Caritas in a blaze of fire.
Angel
Angel was sitting beside the bed when the others raced inside, and the urgent looks on all their faces put him instantly on edge. "What's going on?"
Wesley
"We're being attacked," Wes said shortly.
Angel
"Attacked?" Angel demanded. "I thought you had double protection sanctorium spells?"
Lorne
"I do," Lorne retorted, sounding slightly offended. "It's a thing with the door and the stairs and the world and the thing. Never mind!"
Gunn
"Apparently you can be outside and shove stuff in," Gunn summed up concisely.
Lorne
Lorne gave him a look. "I just said that. Come on, we've got to move the bed, there's an old loading dock door. I had the whole place converted after the last disaster that happened in here. There's an alley outside if we can just knock down the wall."
Darla
As Gunn and Wesley picked up statues from the bookshelf and began hammering at the wall, Darla leaned on Angel for support, clearly becoming increasingly distressed. "I get it," she whispered. "Holtz. That's why this is happening. His family, his children... what that must have been like for him when we slaughtered them. Doesn't seem so funny now, does it?"
Angel
Angel struggled to come up with a response to that, something that would reassure her without dismissing the whole thing, but it turned out he didn't have to, because soon enough there was enough room for them to duck through the hole in the wall. "Come on," he said gently. When Darla struggled, he persisted, "I'm not leaving you, alright? Easy. Alright."
He eased Darla into the alley, where the rain promptly soaked her dress to her skin, then helped her lay down on the ground before tossed his keys to Cordelia. "Go get my car," he instructed. "It's out front."
Cordy, Gunn and Lorne departed (Lorne holding pieces of cardboard over his head to shield himself from the rain), but Wesley and Fred hovered.
"Wes, Fred, go with them," he said.
Fred
Wesley set off immediately -- something about an emergency situation of this magnitude made him that much more eager to follow Angel's commands -- but Fred stayed.
"It's all right," she said, crouching down on the wet sidewalk beside Angel. "They'll come back for us."
Angel
Angel shrugged off his jacket and put it around Fred's shoulder, then turned his attention back to Darla. "You're gonna be okay," he said gently, clearly not sure if his voice was even able to reach the level of comfort she needed right now.
Darla
"No," Darla whispered, "No, I don't think so. Once he's gone, I won't be okay. I won't be okay at all. I -- I don't know what I'll be."
She struggled to turn onto her side, the better to see Angel. "Angel... Our baby is gonna die right here in this alley." Softening, she whispered, "You died in an alley, remember?"
Angel
"I remember," Angel said steadily, not looking away from her.
Darla
"I wanna say I'm sorry," Darla whispered. "I wanna say it and mean it, but... I can't. Are you gonna say it's okay?"
Angel
Angel shook his head, but that didn't stop him from looking at her like she was all that mattered in the world right now. "No."
Darla
"No," Darla repeated, her voice cracking. She seemed to be seeing Angel in an entirely new light. "No, it's really not, is it? We did so many terrible things together. So much destruction, so much -- pain. We can't make up for any of it. You know that, don't you? This child -- Angel, it's the one good thing we ever did together."
Hand shaking, Angel took Darla's hand in his and pressed it to his lips even as she insisted, "The only good thing."
Then she squeezed her eyes shut, reached blindly for a splinter of wood from the burning building beside her, and held it to her chest. In the instant before she plunged it into her heart, she said clearly, "You be sure to tell him that."
Angel
Darla was -- Darla was gone. But in her place, instead of the usual pile of dust, lay a child -- Angel's child.
Angel picked the boy up, barely conscious of the rain or the fire, and mutely accepted his jacket back from Fred as she offered it back to him. When he finally looked up, it was to see Holtz holding a crossbow -- but after a long moment of meeting one another's eyes, Holtz stepped back and put the weapon down before disappearing into the night.
As if in a trance, Angel turned to Fred to confirm that that had really just happened, then stood up, holding his son tight in his arms. The car pulled up, Wes and Cordy stepped out, and Angel walked as quickly as he dared to the car and then got inside, gently stroking his son's head as they pulled away.
[[adapted from angel 3x09 "lullaby," and that's it for today! nfb/nfi, and warning for npc death and the birth of a truly annoying npc baby, omfg.]]
"Five minutes," Angel said as Cordy shifted from the passenger to the driver seat. "If I'm not back by then, leave without me."
Gunn
"She's gonna pop right here," Gunn said, pacing beside the car. He had to raise his voice, mind, because being heard over Darla's screeching was kind of a challenge.
Wesley
"The contractions," Wesley said, pacing right next to him. "I think they're coming more frequently now."
Cordelia
"You think?" Cordy groused, turning a stake over in her hands. Everything in her posture conveyed impatience, but she was clearly making an effort not to vocalize it.
Wesley
Which Wesley appreciated, truly, but he still felt the need to justify his behavior. "I'd just -- I'd feel a lot better if we had the ancient prophecies to guide us," he explained. "Or Angel..."
Cordelia
"Please," Cordy scoffed, fixing an unimpressed look on him. "Women have been giving birth without ancient prophecies for years!"
Gunn
Gunn crossed his arms over his chest before weighing in, "What we could really use is some Vaseline and a catcher's mitt."
Fred
When another scream from Darla interrupted that train of thought, Fred volunteered loudly from the back seat, "Guys, I -- I don't think she's ready to deliver yet, but she's moved into the active stage of her labor."
Wesley
So much for waiting for Angel, then. Wesley took a look around the alley where they'd parked, took in how open and exposed it was, and shook his head. "All right. We have to go. We can't stay here. It's too exposed. Angel should have been back by now."
He'd really hoped it wouldn't come to this, but... "Now it's up to us to protect Angel's unborn child."
He turned around from where he was sitting in the passenger seat, addressing Darla now for the first time since they'd stopped. "Darla," he said gently, "we're trying to take care of you here. We need you to relax and breathe. A simple pant-pant-blow, something like--"
Darla
But before he could completely demonstrate the hee-hoo technique, Darla sat up sharply, smacked her hands on the seat, and sent them all flying out of the car with the force of it. "I! Don't! Breathe!"
Then, the area newly cleared of interfering humans trying to stop her from escaping, she clambored into the front seat, turned on the ignition, and sped away.
Angel
Which was right when Angel entered the alley, peering in the direction of where everyone else was now staring after the car.
"What are we all looking at?"
Cordelia
Almost the moment Angel arrived, Cordelia was smacking his arm. "What the hell took so long?"
Angel
Angel took a breath. (See, Darla, some vampires were attached to the convention.) "It was Holtz. Holtz was there."
Wesley
Cue four stares from the others, and none more horrified than Wesley's. "Holtz?" he repeated, gobsmacked. "The vampire hunter who tracked you and Darla..."
Angel
"Through the late seventeen hundreds, yeah," Angel confirmed.
Gunn
"Sure it wasn't his great-great-great-great grandson?" Gunn checked.
Angel
"No," Angel said wearily. "It was him."
Fred
"Maybe he's part of what's supposed to bring ruination down upon mankind," Fred volunteered. "The Nyazian Prophecies did say that the Tro-Clan was going to be a confluence of events."
Cordy
"And the sudden appearance of an eighteenth-century vampire hunter in the twenty first century does seem pretty confluey," Cordelia agreed.
Gunn
"You think he's here for the baby?" Gunn asked.
Angel
Angel shook his head. "I don't think he even knows about it."
Fred
"He wouldn't have to!" Fred burst out. When all eyes turned to her, she explained hastily, "Th-that's the tragic beauty of a cosmic convergence. I, I mean, he just plays his own small part. He -- he comes here looking for Angel and Darla, and in the process ends up finding Angel's unborn child, who, as it turns out, wasn't evil at all as we feared, but was actually meant to be some sort of Messianic figure. But Holtz kills it before it's even born and his vengeance somehow triggers the end of the world!"
She beamed for a moment before noticing that everyone else was looking at her with something like alarm.
"Or not! It could go either way. Have you thought of a name yet?"
Wesley
...Well then.
"We need to find Darla before Holtz does," Wesley said, shifting focus to their more important priorities.
Angel
"I can find her a lot faster on my own," Angel said, because vampire running beat cars now. "If you guys could just find some place safe for her to have this baby, we'll come to you."
Gunn
"We can do that," Gunn said, hopping back in the car.
Wesley
As Angel turned to leave, Wesley called after him, "Angel -- the scrolls, you didn't manage to...?"
When Angel shook his head and left, Wesley sighed. "I'm sure we'll be fine without them," he said, and settled back in the car.
Sure enough, Angel found Darla, and before long the two of them made their way to Caritas, where Angel laid Darla on Lorne's bed before being ushered out of the room by some of the others.
Angel
"Is she going to be okay?" he asked at once.
Wesley
Wesley hedged for a moment before settling on a very certain, and very truthful, "She's tough as nails."
Fred
"And immortal," Fred chimed in, "so that's in her favor, health-wise."
Angel
Angel nodded. "What about the baby?"
Wesley
Wesley and Fred exchanged a look.
"Angel," Wesley said carefully, "I think it's best that you prepare yourself for the worst."
Angel
Angel crossed his arms over his chest. "No."
Wesley
"The baby's heartbeat is faint," Wesley explained hastily. "Very faint. And Darla's body -- it's not a life-giving vessel. I don't know that it's equipped to do what it needs to do in order to bring a baby to term."
Cordelia
"Okay," Cordy said, throwing up her hands, "what about a C-section?"
Fred
"Normally that's exactly what we'd do," Fred said, because she was totally delivering babies all over town in her spare time, "but in this case, the mystical forces that've been protecting the pregnancy..."
Angel
"...are gonna wind up killing it," Angel filled in.
Well. That was unacceptable.
Wesley
"That's my fear," Wes confirmed.
Angel
Angel sighed, rubbing his eyes. "This doesn't make any sense," he said. "I mean, this whole thing has been a miracle, right? You don't just get half a miracle, do you? I mean, the powers -- they brought her this far, they protected the baby all this time..."
Gunn
Sensing it was time for a reality check, Gunn interjected, "We don't know that. We don't know that it's the powers that's been protecting it. Angel, I'm sorry, but what if what Darla's carrying is the thing in the prophecies? That scourge of mankind that's supposed to plunge the world into ultimate darkness? What if -- what if what's happening to Darla now, what if that's the powers? Finally stepping up to the plate and doing something for once!"
Angel
Angel's voice went calm and quiet -- almost scarily so. "How?" he asked coolly. "By killing my kid?"
Before anyone could answer, he stalked off back toward Darla's room.
Gunn
Gunn sighed, sinking into a stool. "Maybe I should go and apologize."
Wesley
"No," Wes said, holding out a hand. "Best to just stay here, wait this out."
Lorne
At that moment, though, a man entered the club. He was probably in his late forties, a bit older and less demonic than Caritas' usual clientele.
"Oh. Hello."
Lorne, who'd been doing his best to leave Team Angel to their infighting, stepped out from behind the bar. "We're not open at the moment. Why don't you come back tomorrow night?" He held out a flyer. "It's the grand re-opening. Here. Here's a flyer."
The man thanked him and turned to go, but not before beginning to hum softly to himself. Suddenly Lorne froze, his eyes going wide. "Run!" he shouted, racing toward the back of the club where Angel and Darla had set up.
Cordelia
"What's going on?" Cordelia asked immediately.
Lorne
"Just go. Run!" Lorne yelled, and as he, Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Fred made it into the bedroom, a barrel tumbled down the stairs to the club and exploded, lighting up Caritas in a blaze of fire.
Angel
Angel was sitting beside the bed when the others raced inside, and the urgent looks on all their faces put him instantly on edge. "What's going on?"
Wesley
"We're being attacked," Wes said shortly.
Angel
"Attacked?" Angel demanded. "I thought you had double protection sanctorium spells?"
Lorne
"I do," Lorne retorted, sounding slightly offended. "It's a thing with the door and the stairs and the world and the thing. Never mind!"
Gunn
"Apparently you can be outside and shove stuff in," Gunn summed up concisely.
Lorne
Lorne gave him a look. "I just said that. Come on, we've got to move the bed, there's an old loading dock door. I had the whole place converted after the last disaster that happened in here. There's an alley outside if we can just knock down the wall."
Darla
As Gunn and Wesley picked up statues from the bookshelf and began hammering at the wall, Darla leaned on Angel for support, clearly becoming increasingly distressed. "I get it," she whispered. "Holtz. That's why this is happening. His family, his children... what that must have been like for him when we slaughtered them. Doesn't seem so funny now, does it?"
Angel
Angel struggled to come up with a response to that, something that would reassure her without dismissing the whole thing, but it turned out he didn't have to, because soon enough there was enough room for them to duck through the hole in the wall. "Come on," he said gently. When Darla struggled, he persisted, "I'm not leaving you, alright? Easy. Alright."
He eased Darla into the alley, where the rain promptly soaked her dress to her skin, then helped her lay down on the ground before tossed his keys to Cordelia. "Go get my car," he instructed. "It's out front."
Cordy, Gunn and Lorne departed (Lorne holding pieces of cardboard over his head to shield himself from the rain), but Wesley and Fred hovered.
"Wes, Fred, go with them," he said.
Fred
Wesley set off immediately -- something about an emergency situation of this magnitude made him that much more eager to follow Angel's commands -- but Fred stayed.
"It's all right," she said, crouching down on the wet sidewalk beside Angel. "They'll come back for us."
Angel
Angel shrugged off his jacket and put it around Fred's shoulder, then turned his attention back to Darla. "You're gonna be okay," he said gently, clearly not sure if his voice was even able to reach the level of comfort she needed right now.
Darla
"No," Darla whispered, "No, I don't think so. Once he's gone, I won't be okay. I won't be okay at all. I -- I don't know what I'll be."
She struggled to turn onto her side, the better to see Angel. "Angel... Our baby is gonna die right here in this alley." Softening, she whispered, "You died in an alley, remember?"
Angel
"I remember," Angel said steadily, not looking away from her.
Darla
"I wanna say I'm sorry," Darla whispered. "I wanna say it and mean it, but... I can't. Are you gonna say it's okay?"
Angel
Angel shook his head, but that didn't stop him from looking at her like she was all that mattered in the world right now. "No."
Darla
"No," Darla repeated, her voice cracking. She seemed to be seeing Angel in an entirely new light. "No, it's really not, is it? We did so many terrible things together. So much destruction, so much -- pain. We can't make up for any of it. You know that, don't you? This child -- Angel, it's the one good thing we ever did together."
Hand shaking, Angel took Darla's hand in his and pressed it to his lips even as she insisted, "The only good thing."
Then she squeezed her eyes shut, reached blindly for a splinter of wood from the burning building beside her, and held it to her chest. In the instant before she plunged it into her heart, she said clearly, "You be sure to tell him that."
Angel
Darla was -- Darla was gone. But in her place, instead of the usual pile of dust, lay a child -- Angel's child.
Angel picked the boy up, barely conscious of the rain or the fire, and mutely accepted his jacket back from Fred as she offered it back to him. When he finally looked up, it was to see Holtz holding a crossbow -- but after a long moment of meeting one another's eyes, Holtz stepped back and put the weapon down before disappearing into the night.
As if in a trance, Angel turned to Fred to confirm that that had really just happened, then stood up, holding his son tight in his arms. The car pulled up, Wes and Cordy stepped out, and Angel walked as quickly as he dared to the car and then got inside, gently stroking his son's head as they pulled away.
[[adapted from angel 3x09 "lullaby," and that's it for today! nfb/nfi, and warning for npc death and the birth of a truly annoying npc baby, omfg.]]