lmx_v3point3

Fic Collection (Theme - Hands)
Part 6, 40 Points: Goodbye, Weapon, Betrayal, Love

Author: LMX
Fandom: Angel the Series
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Lindsey/Eve (Goodbye), Holland/Catherine (Love)
Spoilers: All of Angel The Series, up to and including the finale
Warnings: Inaccurate timelines
Edit: Betaed by chokolattejedi, despite other far more important demands on time ;) Thank you hugely.
Continuity Warning: Goodbye and Betrayal tentatively fall into the same continuity.



023. Goodbye (Extended Team Post-finale, 589)

Spike stoped, finally; hurting and aching and broken in so many ways it was hard to catalogue. Illyria was picking her way carefully through the bodies and rubble with the air of one completely dissociated from what she was seeing, and Angel was slumped - tangled with the body of the slain dragon - on the other side of what remained of the alleyway. The apartment blocks on either side were barely still standing, and Spike was aware that they should probably get out of here before they started to come down.

He gave himself a minute to think 'It's over', and then worried there would be another wave, another assault. He got close enough to see that Angel wasn't moving, his arm thrown over the dragon's neck in an almost affectionate gesture, and then stumbled away again. If there was more then it was over and that was that. Nothing more to it.

He spotted Gunn just as Illyria did, her screech of rage sounding far too loud against the falling silence. Spike forced his body back into movement and moved to investigate. Ever so gently, Illyria reached out and closed Gunn's eyes.

"Going down with an axe in your hand," Spike mused, surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. "That's a death worthy of a song or somethin'."

Then Angel's rough, raw coughing reached them, and that was as much of a goodbye as they got.

-

Eve was tentative as she pushed in through the door. She was still half expecting that last strike. Expecting the senior partners to yank her out of her eternal life and deposit her in some place of infinite torture. Or just kill her outright.

There were bodies inside, enough that she knew she was in the right place. Precise blade-marks decorated all of them, and even if she didn't know Lindsey's neat signature she could have worked out that it was him. The place was empty, silent. There wasn't anyone alive here any more.

She was most of the way to the idea that maybe Angel was being defeatist; that maybe she should already be there waiting at their rendezvous point, when she found Lindsey's body, still and cold. She sat down beside him, staring at his averted face for a long minute, just breathing.

When she felt ready, and she wasn't sure how much time had passed before that was true, she reached out and closed his eyes, and pulled one of his arms over her shoulder, settling into the false embrace.

-

Afterwards, Angel had time to seek them out. Most of LA was deserted by then, and those who hadn't fled tended not to leave their houses. The small pockets of magic and brimstone still remaining erupted from time to time, and it seemed like as many lives had been lost that way as in the original apocalypse.

Wesley, he found in the mansion, exactly as Illyria had said. He was surrounded by the proof of his victory in death, and Angel hoped that he was proud. The ex-watcher had every right to be.

Angel slumped inelegantly at his side, Wesley's blood tacky under his knees, feeling nothing but hollow. Someone - maybe Illyria - had straightened Wesley's clothes and crossed his hands over his chest, his eyes shut. Slowly, with a sigh, Angel reached out and touched the other man's cheek, a silent apology for everything that had happened between them.

Angel burned the building to the ground on his way out. No one would think anything unusual in a burning house in LA these days.



075. Weapon (Lindsey, McDonald Family 'Verse, 743)

His family had been defenceless when he was young, and Ernie had told him with big serious eyes that sometimes the monsters came for families when they were defenceless. Sometimes those were ice monsters who took away all the heat and they all had to hide underneath a big pile of blankets, sharing body heat and lighting fires in the fireplace with scavenged wood to scare them away. And sometimes those were smoke monsters, attracted to the lights and turning them all dark in the night so they had to carry candles with them round the house. And sometimes it was the flu monster, who crawled up your nose and down your throat and wrapped itself around your brain 'til you were too hoarse and snotty and sluggish to move.

Lindsey had been terrified when Jamie had started to get ill - not just 'cause that meant there were 'flu monsters in the house, but because suddenly Ernie had stopped telling him all of the stories about the Prince who came and saved them with magical potions, 'cause he was too busy trying to make sure the 'flu monster didn't get Jamie.

Lindsey thought - a couple of days into Jamie being sick - that maybe Ernie might have been the Prince in secret, especially when he started mixing up hot drinks for Jamie to try, like he was trying to make magic potions, but then Ashley got sick and then Lindsey got sick too and Ernie and Eliot started fighting even more than usual and Francie started crying more, like maybe she was sick too. Lindsey decided that Ernie wasn't great at being a Prince, that maybe they needed someone more qualified.

When Jamie and Ashley died, Lindsey was fairly sure the fairy tale was over. There were adults all in and around their house, crying and fussing and making noise that didn't help the headache he'd had for weeks now, and none of them looked anything like a Prince. And then he was too sick to move, limbs like lead and thoughts like swimming through treacle, breathing just as much of a challenge. He thought he might die too, because now he knew what the 'flu monster did to little kids like him. He spent six weeks in the hospital, because the adults didn't know about magic potions, and the others weren't allowed to visit because they were all sick too, and the thing that had bothered him the most while his fever made him hallucinate all kinds of terrifying things, was worrying that with so few people in the house they wouldn't be able to keep the ice monster away.

There was a new person in the house when he came home. Ernie told him he'd come to make it all right. He sat in their kitchen and asked Francie and Ernie questions while Lindsey sat with Eliot on the bed in the other room and tried not to think about how he was the youngest now, with Jamie and Ashley gone. And the man asked his Daddy questions too, thought his Daddy didn't say much about anything and wasn't much use to anyone. That was just the truth, and has been as long as Lindsey could remember.

When the man left, Francie sat him down and told him: "We're not defenceless any more Lindsey. That man's gonna be our Prince."

Lindsey had thought about this very hard, because he wasn't sure he wanted to be in the fairy tale anymore and Francie hadn't seemed happy the Prince had arrived and that was supposed to be pretty important to the story. "He didn't have a sword," he'd objected, because that was the only thing in his head that had seemed a serious problem.

Ernie had done something with his face that Lindsey would learn much later was him trying to smile when he was sad. "Well, you see," he told him seriously. "A lawyer slays all the monsters with his pen."

-

Lindsey understands everything a lot better by the time he's eighteen. How the world works, why you should never allow yourself to be put in a position where you're defenceless, and what his sister had done to get the lawyer's attention. But that grander truth remains somehow lodged in his brain.

When he sits down for his first lectures in law, he looks at the pen in his hand and sees a weapon. He'll never be defenceless again.



091. Betrayal (Angel, Lindsey, 725)

"I would have died by your side; you realise that, don't you? I might have even been able to help."

Lindsey's voice sounds distant, but when Angel manages to open his eyes he finds him sitting opposite him on an ash-stained couch, those incongruous boots propped up on one arm of the chair carelessly. He has his arms crossed over his chest, but there are two bullet holes in his shirt, still bloody, and he's only got one hand. Angel gets caught on that fact for some reason, and perhaps he sees him staring because Lindsey explains: "They only had a contract on me, my body parts, not anything else I might have picked up along the way." He shrugs carelessly.

Angel opens his mouth, thinks about saying something. Realising he hasn't got anything to say, he shuts it again.

"I probably wouldn't have made much of a difference, sure," Lindsey continues his earlier gripe. "But Wolfram and Hart is still standing, Angel. I could have stayed there and been safe. I'd still be *alive* now. I put myself on the line for you."

Angel has dreamt about recriminations like these before, but he's never had someone he got killed actually point out his failings to him in a scenario he couldn't wake up from. Maybe Spike... He'd never really listened when Spike said anything anyway...

Lindsey stands all-at-once and moves sluggishly around behind Angel, out of sight for a minute. The dull candle flickers faintly in the dark at his passing and Angel gets a half-lit view of the ground-floor condo the others dragged him into. The curtains are drawn shut, but the ash outside probably covers the windows anyway.

When Illyria went to look for supplies and survivors a couple of hours ago - providing he's tracking time more successfully than conversations - she had been forced to clear herself a path out, leaving with a torn shirt covering her mouth and nose to protect against the general fire and brimstone going on. He only worries about her until Lindsey grips the dragon's tail-spike where it's stuck in his back and *twists*.

"Expanding stakes," Lindsey mused. "Fucking ingenious idea. Wish we'd come up with them."

Angel is still trying to get his breath back without moving, his hands clenching futilely in the covers beneath him. He is suddenly very aware that he's alone and mostly incapacitated with someone he had tried several times and eventually succeeded in killing.

"Couple more inches and I'll have a go at getting it out. I think all the spiny bits are clear of your heart now."

"You think?" he wheezes in reply.

"You want me to find you a surgeon to check?" Lindsey shoots back facetiously. "Maybe an MRI facility?"

"Maybe someone better than a one-handed ex-lawyer," he gasped back, and then stilled as he felt something inside shift with his breathing. He's still not sure how they managed to get him out of that alleyway and into the building without the damn thing piercing his heart.

"Do you know how easy it would be right now for me to kill you?"

Angel can hear the sneer in Lindsey's voice. He goes back to studying the condo. A family had lived here once, toys hidden behind the sofa, baby pictures on the wall. He wonders absently about Connor. Oh God, Connor.

"It would matter less if I thought I'd ever been more to you than a nuisance," Lindsey continues from behind him.

There is a moment when the spike shifts purposefully and he wondered if this is it; the betrayal he'd been expecting all along. Stabbed in the back by the man he would never be able to trust.

The pull backwards feels somewhat like you might expect a splintered spiny bone spike being pulled out of an open wound to feel, but there was no burning consummation. No dust.

"A little warning!?" he demands as soon as he has his breath back, heaving and choking on air.

"I didn't want you to tense up," Lindsey replies blandly, tossing the spike onto the table in front of him.

"I thought you were going to kill me," Angel adds, honestly.

There's a moment's silence, followed by a quiet "I know", before the door behind him opened and shut and Lindsey followed Illyria out into the ash-borne night.



096. Love (Holland Manners, 559)

Holland Manners knew he had blood on his hands. From the moment he realised he could have blood on his hands and the police would still come if he called, and the law would still protect him and the company would protect him where the law couldn't... well, he was perfectly happy with that. It didn't affect his sleep at night.

When he'd been younger, Holland had excelled at everything he did. He'd come from a background devoid of creature comforts and had seen education as his way out. He achieved a scholarship for a mid-league university and powered through the first year of his courses with a true thirst.

At the start of his second year, Holland met Catherine.

She was all the kind of curves he'd never given himself the opportunity to look at before, sweet smile and her gentle, caring hands always in motion, reaching, tugging and caressing. He was smitten, adoring, reverent. He would have done anything for her. By the end of his second year they were engaged, and his grades were only scraping passes. In the summer of his third year, Catherine shot two men in cold blood in a car park behind their favourite bar.

Without voicing any of the horror, frustration or pain he was feeling, Holland carefully doctored the evidence, coached Catherine in her defence and hand-picked her lawyer. Every cent he had went into protecting her, and when they walked away together - pausing to give a carefully measured statement to the press - there was an attorney from Wolfram and Hart waiting for him.

He finished his studies in law and passed not far off the top of his class. Wolfram and Hart paid his way, ensured that he had every resource he needed, and every time Catherine had one of her little indiscretions, Wolfram and Hart looked after it. Holland held her close to him every night, her hands stroking soothing lines down his back, and wondered how far this could go before he started to go insane.

On the day she started to escalate out of control ("They were demons, Holland. Why can't you see that!?" Her hands are fluttering against his collar as he holds her close against his side, restraining her as her most recent victim chokes on his own blood at their feet.) three men from Wolfram and Hart took her away, and two weeks later they brought her back.

She was quieter than before, less prone to the outbursts of laughter he had loved her for, and she kept her beautiful, gentle hands close to herself, as though holding on to something that was trying to escape from her chest. She was different. And perhaps he was a little less smitten, but she was still his, and he knew they could not have continued as they were.

They married the year they moved to L.A., and the year Holland signed his first full contract with Wolfram and Hart. It was more a formality than anything else. The weight of Catherine's sins sat on his shoulder with more solidity than any contract.

Not many years after that moment, Holland Manners stood staring down his first demon client, wondering how he could look so human and yet do such inhuman things. Absently, he wondered if his wife might have been the sane one after all.