From: "macha" To: Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 9:42 PM Subject: Darla's redemption lullaby, and a matched set of second chances Angel: "You love it." Darla: "Completely. I love it completely. I-I-I don't think I've ever loved anything as much as this life that's inside of me." Angel: "Well - you've never *loved* anything, Darla." Darla: "That's true. Four hundred years and I never did - till now. - I don't know what to do." Angel: "Well, you-you'll do the only thing that you can do. - You'll have it. You'll have it and then..." Darla: "What? We'll raise it?" Angel: "Why not?" Darla: "It's impossible." Angel: "This whole thing is impossible, Darla, but it's happening." Darla: "What do I have to offer a child, a *human* child, besides ugly death?" Angel: "Darla." Darla: "You know it's true." Angel: "No. What I do know is that you love this baby, our baby. You've bonded with it. You've spent nine months carrying it, nourishing it..." Darla: "No. No, I haven't been nourishing it. I haven't given this baby a thing. I'm dead. It's been nourishing me. These feelings that I'm having, they're not mine. They're coming from it." Angel: "You don't know that." Darla: "Of course I do! We both do. Angel, I don't have a soul. It does. And right now that soul is inside of me, but soon, it won't be and then..." Angel: "Darla..." Darla: "I won't be able to love it. I won't even be able to remember that I loved it. (Starts to cry) I want to remember." Angel pulls her against him. Angel: "Shh..." Angel closes his eyes as he holds a crying Darla. (transcript from Psyche's site, AtS 3.09 Lullaby, written by Tim Minear) mmm,... Darla. one of the best characters in the buffyverse, and for a year now i've been so trying to think how they could bring her back, but she's already been there & done all of that, which i guess is a thing about 400 years of unlife, so i fear the only hope is flashbacks. we havent had a single one this season on AtS, so i continue to hope. it was evil of Tim Minear to kill her off this time so decisively. but i have to forgive him because: at this time last year i spent two whole months muttering to myself: wow. a noble death for DARLA! I've been around long enough to know when something's a lost cause. (Darla human to Angel, AtS 2.09 The Trial, screenplay by Doug Petrie & Tim Minear, story by David Greenwalt) Julie Benz did such a fine job with that part. vamped, human, revamped, ensouled or not, evil or (momentarily) not, the character was of a piece (usually, in the sense of a piece of work, but not always). in the long quotation above from the rooftop scene in Lullaby, the last ep of a trilogy, the temporarily ensouled Darla feels things she never wanted to feel. she is so close to the human Darla of The Trial, we already know it's bound to end as badly as that one did. she knows it too. she's been as evil as Angelus ever was for 400 years; she doesn't even remember her original human name. so who is that looking at Angel, standing there with his stupid ridiculous hopefulness, making her tell him the facts of unlife one more damned time. yep, that's still Darla, impatient as ever with the moral quagmires Mr Champion of Good likes to wallow in. Angel's in denial, like he's always in denial. so she feels, probably for the first time ever, love, and she can't even savor the moment because she has to explain to him instead exactly why he's not coming from Planet Earth. you gotta love her. he never loved her, she never loved him, he staked her, he tried to save her, and season 2 is entirely driven by a fundamental misunderstanding between their points of view: but whatever the situation, it's only Darla who's ever been able to get him to talk about any of it. and the conversations they have in Lullaby, with Holtz coming, and the baby coming, have a raw wintry beauty to them, so bleak, they're a match for anything in BtVS. because Darla always cuts to the unbeating heart of the matter. and she never lets Angel, or Angelus, look away. season 2 of AtS was about atonement, the impossibility of atonement, the impossibility of changing fate, of paying back in any meaningful way, and why (and how) you still go on helping after you understand that. it's the stark bittersweet answer to the mission first Buffy gave him in BtVS 3.10 Amends. "the road to redemption is a rocky path", as Faith tells him in Judgment: A: I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, that someday I might become human. That light was so bright, I thought I was already out. C: Yeah, we all got a bit cocky, didn't we? (Angel & Cordelia, AtS 2.01 Judgment, written by David Greenwalt & Joss Whedon) it isn't as simple as he thought it was, the redemption thing. he tries to save Darla, whom Wolfram & Hart have returned as human, and he can't. she doesn't want to be saved anyway, till the very end. Darla mostly addresses her variety of home truths to the Angelus inside: D: There was a time, in the early years, when you would have said I was the definition of bliss. Buffy wasn't happiness. She was just new. A (laughs:) You know, you're getting awfully bent about this, Darla. I couldn't feel that with you because I didn't have a soul. But then I got a second chance. Just like you have. D (with scorn:) What a poster boy for soulfulness you are.. This is no life, Angel. before you got neutered, you weren't just any vampire, you were a legend. Nobody could keep up with you, not even me. You don't learn that kind of darkness. It's innate. It was in you before we ever met. Now, you say you can smell me. Well, I can smell you too. And my boy's still in there. And he wants out. .... A: Darla, you hurt anyone else I'll kill you. D: Will you? Isn't that against your cub scout code? A: I'll make an exception. D: You're gonna miss those dreams, honey. You should've heard the things you said in your sleep. Nasty things, Angel. Things that.... A (grabbing her throat:) Stop. D: No, you stop. (burns cross into his chest:) You see, no matter how good a boy you are, God doesn't want you. (Pause) But I still do. (Runs for the stairs, pauses in the sunlight:) What? No goodbye kiss? (Darla human & Angel, 2.05 Dear Boy, written by David Greenwalt, but the fabulous waterworks speech above was apparently written by Marti Noxon). he tries, in his turn, kind of endearingly, always to deal with her as Angel. he almost manages to grab hold of her and pull her up, just once, in The Trial, when she's dying of the syphilis she was dying of back in 1609 before the Master turned her. Lorne thinks Angel should just let go: Lorne: You wanna save the girl. And I can see why. But you're missing the crucial point here. Things fall apart. Not everything can be put back together. No matter how much you want it. Angel: She's not gonna die. Lorne: Why do you care so much? She had more than most of us, already 400+ years. Angel: As a vampire. Before that, she was.... She never had a chance. (The Trial) so he offers to exchange her life for his, and the Master of the Trials demurs: Do you mind if I ask you a question? Isn't the world a better place with you in it? You can save so many people. It seems she can barely save herself. You know better than anyone the world can be a very bad place. Take yourself out, put her in, and how long will it be before she stumbles, before she falls. Angel doesn't know the answer. but he tries anyway. and he loses. in the fine print it turns out the human thing already counts as Darla's second chance. he finally offers to turn her, and amazingly she turns him down. they actually reach an understanding of sorts, maybe for the first time. and then in comes Lindsey with henchmen: he says to Angel, "How did you think this would end?" and Dru floats in to revamp Grandmama [for which, amazingly, she apologizes later to Darla, telling her that she was led to understand that was what Darla wanted]. and Angel goes on a kamikaze quest, trying to kill Dru and Darla revamped, trying to bring down Wolfram & Hart. and he learns in 2.15 Reprise, from Holland in the elevator scene, that he can never ever win, and revamped Darla's right there to finish him off in the bedroom (she thinks that one little moment will bring back Angelus), and instead he pulls back and goes to save the ones he can. a really interesting study, that year. okay, cross off atonement. so in season 3, when Holtz comes stalking from two hundred years back and Darla returns 9 months pregnant with Connor, Angel has kind of lost the redemption mantle. now he's working for the Fang Gang, instead of the other way around. he's a bit chastened, possibly even humble when he remembers to be. but here's evil Darla, the mother of his impending child, and because of that both Angel and the gang at Angel Investigations have to deal before/until they can stake. and here's Holtz, bent on killing them both, and killing them all's okay with him too. Angel has no high ground any more on which to deal with the belated consequences of all his acts, both as Angelus and as Angel. he goes for acceptance, the trademark stoicism thing: he sees Holtz (wrongly) as a good man, with a just cause. he offers himself up, in probably the only crucifixion scene (it's a motif, Gavin mentions crucifixion too) he's ever gonna get, when Holtz pounces. they're all working off their second chances, Darla and Angel and Holtz, and Angel still tries to save Holtz's soul while hanging from his torture cross: A: What'd you have to give up for this second chance? H: Give up? I had nothing TO give up. You saw to that. A: We took a lot from you, that's true. But we didn't get everything. We couldn't take your soul. H: What do you know of the soul? A: I know that yours will be destroyed if you allow yourself to be used in the service of evil. You're a good man, Holtz, a righteous man. And you're being used for some purpose other than justice. H: Could it be you really have changed? I don't remember you ever pleading so cravenly before. A: And I remember you used to work with men. H: Are you still concerned about my soul, Angelus, my vampire priest? Angel never tries to excuse himself: it's Lilah who tells Holtz Angel has a soul. but if he lets Holtz kill him, who other than Angel is equipped to protect the human baby that's coming. so his ethical choices are existential, as in The Trial: is Angel responsible and therefore culpable for Angelus' actions (yes, seems to be his answer), and is he responsible for the world (the argument for exception on Champion grounds)? that's not in the same ballpark as totting up the good stuff till hopefully someday it cancels out the bad (the atonement thing of season 2), but it's all he's got left. and then Darla complicates the matter when her hormonal count rises with the contractions and she is able to share briefly the soul of the unborn child. the human Darla of the last part of The Trial reemerges (which has in itself some implications for the nature of the soul, seems to me) and her and Angel have very some interesting conversations, about what is owed to Holtz, and what can be repaid. Angel hates all of what she has to say, but Darla does like a view and she never backs off when she decides to share it, and she makes him swallow all of it: A: You always did love a view. D: Look at it. Listen to it. Can you smell it? This world. This horrible world. Why would anyone want to bring a baby into it? A: To make it better, maybe? D: Or to destroy it finally. this is Darla's view of the world he has pledged to protect. in a way she's right, but it's a nifty illustration of the gap between their worldviews. Darla's view of the world, and the value it offers, and the shelter it offers, is essentially the same as that of the forever nameless human she was in 1609, a prostitute dying of syphilis. Dear Boy, in fact, shows us a flashback to 1860, the beginning of the plan to turn Drusilla, in which she kills a gentleman because he tried to haggle with a streetwalker over her fee. it's the combination of gaining power but never hope that made her such a lethal vampire. but Angel is so often guilty of hope, usually at inconvenient moments. in some ways the Darla trilogy of season 3 is the defining moment for the series. Angel has sort of come to terms with his own poor chances for redemption: only the prophecies pertaining to a vampire with a soul seem to suggest he may have a destiny that takes him beyond damnation (heh heh). Holtz has a right to what he calls justice, and Angel cannot truly atone, so his choices to fight on the side of good are now finally without ulterior motive. and even to Darla Angelus never shows his face (it's later in the season, in the blood motif before Connor is stolen from him, and in his actions with Wesley and Linwood afterwards, that we clearly see Angelus peeking out). but Darla, now, is another matter. he still hopes for redemption on her behalf: this tendency in him, which even squicked Lorne in The Trial, is interesting in itself. he doesn't love her, but they were together a long time, and he sees something in her she does not see in herself. he treats her always with a curiously dated (so unusual for him, he generally doesn't date himself) tender respect, kind of courtly, amazingly intimate. he'll even make silly jokes with her, which is remarkable considering that he knows perfectly well what evil Darla's idea of a good joke might be. it's pity he feels for her in a way; even the third chance he would have died to give her was taken away. but also i think that even evil, he sees a kind of purity in her: maybe he longs for the clarity of the cold eye that always drives her sharp tongue (maybe, in fact, that's what he likes so much about Cordy, but let's not tell Cordy that ). but he always seems to deal with Darla as some odd combination of vulnerable and priceless. and she often tries to use it as leverage, but she never succeeds: in that sense he is impervious to her charms. but in the human Darla of The Trial, and later in the vamped but temporarily ensouled Darla of Lullaby, i think we can see for a little while why Angel always tries so hard to save her, whether or not she wants to be saved, always in the teeth of impossible odds. and in Lullaby she has the strength not to let him: "You won't let me hurt it, will you? You'll protect it, right, from me I mean?" she asks him on the roof, but he doesn't answer. she gives him the unvarnished truth, and it's pretty bleak: D: He's dying. Isn't he? A: No. D: You lied much better when you didn't have a soul. I can feel the life slipping away from me. A: Then don't let it. You have to fight for this. Please. D: I don't know how. (Pause, then looking at Angel:) My boy. (caressing the baby inside her:) My darling boy. Told you I had nothing to offer this kid. Some mother. Can't even offer life. and Holtz floats up the stairs, singing the lullaby he sang to his daughter Sarah before he threw her off the porch into the sunlight, where she burned: "Sleep, my love, and peace attend thee, all through the night". And he blows up the nightclub. and Darla, who is never in denial, has no difficulty at all in making the connection between what they did to Holtz's family and what is happening now: she even understands it morally: A: It's Holtz. D: What? How is that possible? A: He's here. I would have mentioned it before, but it didn't seem like the right time. D: No. No, it's the perfect time. My god. What we did to him. A: I know. D: That's why this is happening. His family. His children. What that must have been like for him. Doesn't seem so funny now, does it? A: Darla... (interrupted. Holtz enters the conflagration, looking for them, and they retreat to the alley. It's pouring rain. Darla can't go any further and sinks down. Angel won't leave her and kneels beside her. Fred chooses to stay and kneels behind them, holding Angel's coat over Darla as her only shelter. shelter from the storm. It looks exactly like a creche scene.) A: You're gonna be okay. D: No. No, I don't think so. Once he's gone I won't be okay. I won't be okay at all. I don't know what I'll be. (pause) Angel, my baby's gonna die right here in this alley. (Beat) You died in an alley, remember? A: I remember. D: I want to say I'm sorry. I want to say it and mean it, but I can't. Aren't you gonna tell me it's okay? A: No. D: 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? A: Yeah. D: This child, Angel, it's the one good thing we ever did together. (He takes her hand in both of his, as though he was praying.) The only good thing. (He's crying.) You make sure to tell him that. (And she stakes herself, dusting between Angel's hands, and there's the baby crying on the ground, with Angel and Fred kneeling there in the rain. Angel picks up the baby, and stares Holtz down. He lowers the crossbow and Angel and Fred walk past him with the baby to the car.) incredible scene, which Tim Minear directed. the dusting itself is an amazing image. And I think it's the bleakest exchange ever written in the buffyverse: "You died in an alley, remember? I remember." Darla does Angel the honor of understanding that he will try to do the best he can with what he's got. she knows just how it has to end, if the baby is to live. she relieves Angel of responsibility for protecting Connor from her, at least, and she exchanges her life for that of the child, fulfilling as a vampire the hope she never had (but borrowed from Angel for the occasion) about the value of her second chance at being human. wow. a noble death for Darla. yeah, it's about redemption. will Angel do as well as that with his second chance? You have a soul now. And pretty soon those memories are gonna start eating away at you. No matter how hard you try, you won't be able to escape the truth of what you are. Believe me, I know. (Angel to Darla human, AtS 2.05 Dear Boy) Jasmine. It blooms at night. I remember what that was like. (Darla human to Angel, The Trial) Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee, all through the night. (Daniel Holtz to his daughter Sarah, 1764 York England, in Lullaby) macha unspoiled all the transcriptions, except the one at the beginning, are mine. first time i've ever been able to write anything about that episode, a whole year later, so thanks to nichols101 for getting me started. (wow. a noble death for Darla.)