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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the shortest update ever. I'm a bit stuck inspiration-wise and still trying to figure out the order of everything that should happen this week.

Previously, on ITWFD: Buffy had a sexual fantasy about being Darla, Angel's old girlfriend. Connor, Angel's younger brother, wanted an audience for his badminton.
Buffy stood next to her bedroom window, intermittently tracing errant patterns on the glass with her fingers while she talked to Angel on the phone. She had been torn between wanting to unburden herself by confiding in him and not wanting to make him worry about her when she knew he was preoccupied by his own fight. And today of all days she wanted to be sure they had time to talk about Darla.

As a result, she gave him a highly abridged version of everything that had happened over the past week. As Buffy talked, Angel offered the requisite agreeable expressions of support. But when she got to Rona his concern was immediate.

"I hope you’ll be careful."

"I will, Angel.”

“Because that girl is always trouble. She has it in for you, too,” he warned.

She turned away from her window and stared at the carpet. “I don’t know,” she hedged uncertainly before reassuring him, “But you don’t need to worry. I'm gonna ask the ADA to come with me. I know I need a buffer for her craziness.”

"So he'll be Buffy's buffer?" Angel asked playfully.

She smiled at him over the phone. "Yeah.”

"Good. It’s about time he did something helpful."

“He’s been fine lately,” she said, realizing how true those words were.

“Remember you don’t have to answer to the department anymore. Don’t be afraid to follow your instincts.”

Buffy felt both flattered and annoyed by his unsolicited pep talk.

“I won’t,” she reassured him again.

Buffy didn’t want to talk about work with Angel today of all days but she felt obligated to give him the chance to unload his own frustrations.

“So what’s new in the land of smiles?” she asked, trying to sound chipper.

“Not much reason to smile. But what can you do?”

Angel’s rhetorical question told Buffy he was again reluctant to go into the details of his day-to-day emotional grind. She gladly moved closer to home.

“Have you talked to Connor recently?”

“Yeah, he texted me the other day.” He chuckled derisively. “Kid told me he got a part in the school play.”

Buffy laughed. “He’s not a kid anymore, Angel. And you make it sound like he’s gonna be the ninth reindeer in Rudolph again. He told me this is cutting-edge university theatre.”

Angel snorted. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we need in the family—an actor.”

“Hey, who knows where it might take him?”

“I just don’t want to see him waste time like I did on dead-end pursuits.”

Buffy mulled over his choice of words. ”You turned out all right.”

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

After a moment of comfortable silence, Buffy tried to work up her courage. “Have you been in touch with your dad?”

Noticing his girlfriend’s unusual train of questions, Angel asked, "What's on your mind, Buffy?"

After a second’s hesitation, Buffy tentatively began, "Um, well I thought—I thought you might want to talk about Darla today.” When he didn't respond, Buffy pressed, "Since it's May 27th and it's been—"

"Oh. I didn’t even realize that." Despite his words, Angel's voice didn't betray any surprise.

Confused, Buffy blurted out, "But it’s her birthday." She didn't stop to consider how odd it was she had reminded him of that other marker of the day's significance.

He let out a short laugh. "You know how it is over here. I can barely keep track of what day of the week it is. Anyway, it’s all in the past."

"But it’s okay if--if you still think about what might have been,” Buffy said gently, a question in her voice. “I know it's hard, but if you want to talk about it—"

"Really, I came to terms with it last year."

“Last year?” Buffy echoed. All she could remember of last year's anniversary was Angel going to visit Darla's grave alone and saying very little about the experience afterward.

"Yeah. I decided I couldn't beat myself up about it forever. Even though I was a big part of her life, it wasn't my fault."

"Of course it wasn't," Buffy said firmly.

"It was her despair that led her to commit suicide and for that I have to find forgiveness."

"What?"

Angel's matter-of-fact tone surprised Buffy as much as the surety of his statement about Darla's death, which Buffy had always felt posed an unresolvable, tragic riddle for him.

Quietly, Angel said, "The priest explained to me that despair is one of the original sins. We think of it as sloth now but it's really a weakness of the will."

Though aware of Angel’s religious leanings in theory, he so seldom gave expression to them that it always unsettled her when he did. Buffy didn’t know what to make of the conclusion he reached now. The language of sin and moral failing had always seemed too abstract to her, possessing little explanatory power for the shifting mixtures of goodness and darkness she observed in others. It struck her as especially inadequate at capturing the mercurial essence of Darla, at turns so irresistibly beguiling and perilously fragile.

“I’m glad he helped you come to terms with it,” she finally said, her fingers coming up to tug on her hair.

“It feels right to move forward,” Angel said blandly, making Buffy feel like she was talking to a complete stranger.

“Right.”

Angel yawned audibly. “I’d better get some shut-eye. Let’s try to talk in a couple days, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied shakily.

“Good night, sweetheart.”

“’Night.”

Buffy hurriedly dropped the phone in its cradle and sank to the floor. Without fully understanding why, she began to cry.


Chapter End Notes:
Hope this answered some questions raised after chapter five about Darla. Sorry to those who thought Darla might be appearing in the flesh--she was already dead. There will be one more wrinkle to her story, which you’ve probably guessed now.



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