The Chronicles of Angel vol.3: New Life

5. "Hello, daddy"

It was a dismal night in LA. Angel, Cordy, Fred, Wesley, and Gunn were at the hyperion.

Suddenly, the doors opened, and in walked a six month old pregnant Darla.

She rested a hand on her stomach, as she looked at Angel.

"Hello, daddy."

She smiled.

Cordy helped her sit down in a chair, as Angel just stood there and argued that she shouldn't be helping her, in which Cordy said that he could help or leave.

"Fred, why don't you get her something to drink," Cordy suggested.

"Is water okay, or do you want some blood?" Fred asked Darla.

"Water is fine," Wesley told her.

Fred left and then came back a few minutes later, handing her a plastic cup of water.

Darla took it, and then sipped it.

Later that night, Darla lay in bed in a room, Cordy seated on her bedside.

When Cordy was in the middle of the room, Darla got hungry for blood and bit her, and Cordy tried to push her off, while the seer had a vision of Darla at a casino-like place, luring a little boy out of the crowd.

Angel arrived and through Darla off Cordy, who jumped out the window. He then picked a gasping Cordy up.

"You'll be okay," he assured her.

Not long after, when she was taken care of and was in bed, she told them what she had seen, and Angel went in search of her.

After Angel got the little boy to run off, and he had her pinned against the back of a casino machine, stake to her chest, they looked at each other.

"Do it," she encouraged.

He put the stake away, having accepted the fact that she had a soul, and he was going to be a dad.

She yelled at him to kill her, complaining that it hurt, and to put her out of her misery. He kept telling her no, no matter what though, and brushed some hair out of her face.

"Look at me, Darla."

She looked at him.

"It hurts," she sobbed.

"Listen to me. Our son is human, which means you have a soul," he explained.

She sobbed into his shoulder from the physical and mental pain.

He held her close, in comfort.

Once she was in bed, he made a trip to get her some food.

When he came back, he handed her a styrofoam cup, and she sat up in bed, before taking it and taking a sip.

"It's blood," she commented.

"You need your strength, and he's making you hunger for more blood than usual," he replied, before leaving the room so she could rest.

A few nights later, she lay in an alley, rain pouring, Angel knelt beside her, his friends standing around.

She made Angel promise not to let anything happen to their son, before grabbing Cordy's stake, and staking herself, leaving them alone with the baby that Angel named Connor.