Eternal Return

Author: Seraphcelene

Written for thawrecka as part of lafemmedarla's Darla ficathon.
Request: romance, violence
Restriction: Pet Names

Archiving: Essential-Imperfect. Everyone else please ask.
A/N: post-Angel, pre-To Shanshu in L.A.
Feedback: Is like air and highly addictive. In other words, yes please!
Disclaimer: Angel the Series belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, The Warner Co., et al. I’m just taking them out for a little exercise.
Summary: In Hell no one can hear you scream.

**

Eternal Return

"I want to eat his heart," Darla growls, and then she blinks. Blinks back the moisture in her eyes because vengeance cannot be accomplished if she is tear-blinded. Lashes flutter against her cheeks and her memory falls away like dust. "I want to eat his heart," she mutters vaguely into the empty room, and something scrambles in the back of her mind desperate to be remembered.

Her world is dimming, narrowing. Nothing is as bright or as sharp as it was yesterday except there is anger deep in her heart, the seat of memory, the house of love and hate. Darla imagines herself biting down hard and tearing through muscle and vein. Eat it raw like a rotted apple, bruisedsoftmealydark.

Darla likes to think of his heart heavy with bloodlovelust, throbbing even though she knows that it can’t, and how she can break it, smash it, hold it between her hands and pop it like a ripe tomato. Or, maybe, it’s more like a fig, a dry nugget rattling around in his weary chest because a soul isn’t something to be consumed and he doesn’t love her because he can’t. And suddenly Darla misses Drusilla with a keenness that makes her belly ache. Drusilla would know, she thinks, the right sort of spells to bring Angel to his knees. To make his wilted heart pump full as a perfect summer peach and then Darla would sink her teeth into it and suck it dry.

She wants to swallow what remains of Angel’s heart, the centuries old blood and the new. She wants to hurt him, to consume and reclaim him. Twist him like a pretzel or a bar of iron back into what he was, bend him back and make him submit to what he was meant to be.

Darla misses Angel, and she wants to make him scream.

Deep in her belly and blossoming from her chest, Darla wants.

Curled in upon herself – knees to chest – she is colder than she can ever remember being. Writhing on the perspiring floor of a dank and empty room, dying, she thinks. Dying, again, and this time it seems to take so much longer.

Huddled on the floor, her fingers and toes turn blue and then purple. They tingle, pins and needles, and lose feeling completely. She has forgotten what it is like to be warm. Darla has been cold for an eternity.

Darla lies on the cold, stone floor of her cell and freezes to death every night for forever.

And every night, after her fingers and toes are numb, he comes and gathers her close. His dark eyes are soft and concerned and he whispers into her ears silly, meaningless things about safety and warmth and love. He whispers promises and apologies and lies about tomorrow, forever and never again.

Every night, Darla believes him.

She forgets that she hates him. He is so very strong. She forgets that she loathes him. He is so very tall. She forgets that she and Dru are going to make him beg. He is so very, very warm.

"Angel," she whispers each and every night, and, as always, Darla drifts into sleep, warm for the first time as he lifts her and carries her away.

She wakes, always, in a room filled with white roses and the tiniest lights she’s ever seen. Naked and warm on a wide bed covered with silk and fur, she feels new again. Reborn. Forgiven. Loved and cherished.

"Darla." She is warmed by the sound of her name on his lips. "Darla," he says as if she is his anchor. "Darla." She is his center, his everything.

Each and every night, Angel leans over, eyes smiling into hers, and kisses her. It is a kiss for his one true love and maybe it is a mistake because, after all, they are both blonde.

Darla relaxes into his arms, letting the covers fall away as she slides her hands over his shoulders and along the smooth curves of his back. Every night, his tongue slips easily past her lips, strokes the roof of her mouth, along the edges of her teeth. Darla tastes his warmth, swallows his breath, and hums her pleasure against the fullness of his lips.

Each and every night, Darla stretches into his caresses, opening her arms and her thighs, arching her back and pressing up into the unyielding press of his chest.

A crawling ache stretches along her spine and teases an arch into her hips. He presses her into the bed and she is lost to herself, undone by the way that he skates his hands and mouth along the nerves in her neck, the insides of her thighs, across the gentle swell of her belly.

She craves the feel of him inside her, stretching her. Wanting her. Needing her. Loving her.

Every night, Darla forgets that she wants him dead. She forgets about wishing for his head on a platter - the image of herself as Judith hanging in a gallery somewhere in Italy. She forgets vengefully yearning for his heart in a bowl, dressed with white wine and salt.

In that moment, as she arches against him, all Darla remembers is that she wants him. She remembers that she owns him, body and soul. She never remembers anything else.

Each and every night, Darla forgets to remember what happened the night before.

And every night, Angel leans in, kisses her softly, deeply, wetly and changes. Every night, his face - his beautiful, angelic, dreamyhandsome face - shifts into a nightmare face with yellow eyes and too many teeth. Darla starts, touches his mouth and begins to remember. This is her lover, too. Angelus. Liam. Not just an angel.

Every night, this demon lover grins over her and peels back the skin on her breast. He pins Darla to a fairy tale bed, groin shoved into the cup of her thighs, and splits open her chest.

Darla screams and screams beneath him.

The bed, warm and wide and white, darkens with her blood and the roses everywhere begin to wilt. Through the tears in her eyes and the burning in her chest, Darla sees the room darken and redden. Her blood is everywhere.

"Angel," Darla screams. "Angelus," Darla whispers.

"Lover," he says with a smile and kisses her sweetly. Darla twists and turns but he holds her down, pressing her into sticky wetness, her blood on the mattress. The invasion of his tongue brings with it the bitter, metallic flavor of old pennies and she gags. Angel bites down and splits her tongue in two.

Darla. Screams.

Lying on a bed, red with blood and roses wilting everywhere, Darla wants. She begins to want revenge and his heart on a plate.

Angel smiles, demon eyes and too many teeth, and pulls out her heart.

Darla watches it beat. Surprised at the sight of her red and throbbing heart. Slowly, right before her eyes, it begins to slow, pulsing a little less passionately. And Darla begins to remember what it means to be cold. She remembers what it means to die. She remembers a cell with a stone floor and she begins to remember that this happens each and every night.

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