Darla ficlets of yesteryear
Sep. 17th, 2009 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI unfortunately lost access to my Darla muse considerable time ago, and she refuses to come back, but going through my old entries for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
theatrical_muse tonight, I came across some ficlets that I hadn't crossposted to this journal at the time and which are still part of my Darla fanon. Mostly historicals, and one set during AtS times; the ones I'm still happiest with as a writer.
Obligatory disclaimer: characters and situations owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies.
Parents of Choice
All things considered, she is a sensible child. She knows what she can get and what she can't have, and how to work around some of the things that she can't.
Her mother tells her the same thing she tells everyone: that she was a widow when she came to London, a widow heavy with child, an honest widow, forced to become a trollop to feed the mouth of her innocent babe. Her daughter's father is some eminently respectable and deceased farmer.
This just won't do.
Besides, it probably isn't true. By the time the girl is eight, she has figured out that most of the whores tell similar stories, and usually when they want to get out of paying debts, though in her mother's case it might also be maternal kindness, the wish to give her some illusion of respectability in the past. Even if it is a past that never was. It still won't do.
If she is to have a father who is dead, the girl decides, rather than one of the many people who pay for her mother's services and thus ensure their living, it might as well be someone no one else has, someone who is different than those dead and worthy men in all the other women's stories. Her father should be a nobleman, not just any nobleman but the Queen's most beloved favourite, the Earl of Leicester, and that is why her heritage must stay secret, and she will never tell anyone.
It is a pleasant fantasy for a girl of eight.
When she is twelve, her ideas have changed. She doesn't want a dead nobleman, not even the most famous in the land. Nor does she, in fact, want her mother at times. Her mother is losing her looks, and the money is ever rarer; they don't have a room of their own anymore, because it is too expensive. No, what the girl wants now are Mr. Ashley the baker and his wife, Mistress Catherine. They have two daughters, and could easily afford a third. Their daughters are always well-fed, and they have ribbons in their hairs. When they are sick, Mistress Catherine nurses them; she has the time to do so, instead of desperately haggling with some moist-handed soldier for a penny more. Besides, Mr. Ashley always winks at the girl and occasionally gives her sweets; would he do that for a whore's daughter? Perhaps she is his own, his and his wife's, and was simply misplaced.
When she is fourteen, her mother is dead, and the rats have already started to gnaw at her by the time the girl comes home. They are brazen rats, who will not leave their new feast just because she yells at them, so she hunts them down and kills them, beats them dead with her shoes, her new shoes, paid for with her own money. Once the rats are dead, she washes her mother's dead body and covers the wounds as good as she can, but she does not cry. Nor does she go with her once the woman is taken away to a pauper's grave. She is done with her mother; she does not want her back.
She goes out again to ply her mother's trade, and catches the eye of Mr. Ashley. He draws her aside, and for a moment, she wonders whether he'll tell her she can live with him and his wife now, as their foster daughter, or, failing that, whether he'll give her another sweet.
If it hadn't been the day of her mother's death, she wouldn't have been so foolish, as she has always been a sensible girl.
She can feel the wall in her back as Mr. Ashley rutts against her, and the coins in her hand. Newly minted coins; she bit one of them when he gave them to her, and he laughed and called her a minx before putting his hands under her skirts.
After that, she is done with wanting fathers as well.
Fortune
„One little talisman,“ said the peddler in his most pleading, cajoling voice, „and your fortune is assured.“
The young whore tossed her head back and laughed, not bothering to reply. Her companion, a minor noble’s son who fancied himself a poet these days and wanted the dalliance he had bought to have some adornment of romance, said: “Oh, but it is a pretty thing, worthy of your merry eyes,” tossed a coin at the peddler and presented the talisman to the girl.
He paid, and so she smiled demurely and thanked him. Later, though, the peddler found himself cornered by her, a dagger pressed to his belly.
“That was a ducat my lord gave you,” she said. “Give it back. Here’s your trinket.”
“You did not buy it, ungrateful wench,” exclaimed the peddler. “That young fool did. What, is he sated of you already that you have the time to plague a poor tradesman?”
“We did our trade for the day,” the girl said, unimpressed. “Now I want that coin.”
“You have no heart. It was an honest bargain. He bought your fortune for you, I’ll have you know, you greedy doxy!”
She looked at the talisman, full of disdain as if she was a lady, the resentful peddler thought, and not a London streetwalker who just had made a good catch on that particular day. Or maybe not so good, given how she longed for that ducat. Maybe the young man didn’t pay that well after all.
“My mother had dozens of these,” she said in a clipped voice, “and she died of the plague. You don’t buy fortune, peddler, and you don’t give it as a present. I’ll rather have the money.”
“Oh, and you know that for certain, do you now, my duckling?” he said, feeling more at ease now that they were arguing, though she had not removed her dagger yet. “How many years have you seen, but ten and five? I walked this earth for many, many years, and I tell you, fortune can be bought, persuaded and cajoled.” He risked a wink. “Fortune, my dear, is a woman.”
She smiled at him, but there was no kindness in her eyes, no, none at all.
“Yes, peddler,” she said. “Fortune is a strumpet. And I know everything there is to know about that.”
Her dagger moved, and he gasped, but it was his purse that she had cut from his belt. His skin was unharmed. The girl took out the ducat he had received, and returned the rest to him.
“But unlike fortune, I’m an honest whore,” she said. “Take that, and your amulet as well. I don’t want it.”
With that, she turned her back on him and left. The peddler cursed after her, loud enough for her to hear, if she cared to.
“There is no such thing,” he said. “No more than there is such a thing as a grateful whore, but your stars are now fixed, harlot. You’ll see the bargain you made today, you’ll find it to be true, and you’ll wish you had kept my amulet, oh yes, you will!”
Holding it in his hand, he gave it a baleful look. It was a pretty thing, to be sure, and an unsual shape. He had gotten in cheaply from one of the Portuegese Jews who had fled here from the continent, and had claimed it was against God’s laws for him to keep it. The foreigner had called it a gryphon.
“Your fortune will catch up with you,” the peddler muttered. “And you’ll pay for it for the rest of your days.”
The Secret Reveal'd: A Jacobean Tale
It was the best kind of secret, because she had forgotten its existence, together with much of her first life. But it existed, and was spoken of once, and she was never meant to hear.
It was a tale fit for the playhouses, but not for life, as far as she was concerned: the stories of men confessing their secrets in their sleep to their doxies, who would then have a weapon to yield against any thrifty cheat. Of course, men did not exactly sleep when she was with them, and she did not wish them to. The first time one of them fell into a slumber, snoring and dribbling on her shoulder, she charged him double when he awoke. He had paid her for a tumble, not for disturbing her rest afterwards.
There were exceptions. There was that wretched boy in the colonies who only meant to quench his thirst so he would not lay a finger on his chaste bride before they were married, and who ended up asking his whore to become his mistress, only his mistress, in rhyme, no less. She should never have allowed it to progress this far. But there they were, with her awaking and him not gone from her bed these past few hours while she had slept. He was all passion and sincerity, and believed in the honour he bestowed. There would still be sin, he said, but she would not have to share her fair body with those who only lusted and paid. He would pay for her keep, and he alone.
"I love thee, truly," and such nonesense.
She could have scratched his eyes out.
When she told him not to darken her doorstep any longer, he refused to believe her.
"But," he said, "thou lovest me, too."
"Never," she said, and spoke as formal as she could to him. "I loved your money, sir. As I love food on my table. My own table, aye, and only mine."
And still he did not listen.
"I know the secrets of thine heart."
She laughed, then was surprised to find he did not scowl and curse, which was what her intention had been when laughing, for he was proud. Instead, he smiled as well.
"Thou werest most frank in thy sleep, my love."
Ice filled her veins, and terror worse than when the judge had sent her to this place.
"What?" she cried. "What did I say?"
He would not tell her unless she promised to be his mistress, his alone, and so she finally did. Then he spoke of a girl's cries for her mother, dead and eaten by rats these many years, and pleas not to be left. Not to be left, never to be alone.
There was no reason not to believe him. He had what he wanted, after all. And thus she did believe him, and her resolve became as solid as the cliffs which were the last she had seen of the island that had given her birth.
The next day, his bride's father was informed of how this young man dallied with a whore, far past any decency. The boy lost all, bride and whore and future, and turned to hate and the black cloth of the church instead. He burned many a witch before he died in the strange plague that swept Jamestown, leaving many a dried corpse.
Her secret was safe. And she would never hear of it again.
Spirit of 1789
Vampires, as a rule, are conservative. It comes with the immortality. Today's fashion is the next decade's tradition, and so forth, and most people are rather fond of their today's fashion, especially if they're among the trendsetters. Every now and then, though, they break out of the mold, or get staked. The later half of the 1700s definitely was my time for embracing the spirit of the age. As it turned out, leaving the Master with my darling boy was just the beginning. There was so much to discover, new inventions every other second - air balloons (and I so adore a view), pornography in print (who do you think inspired the Marquis de Sade?), and best of all, revolutionaries declaring the end of superstition. Which meant less and less belief in vampires (and hence more victims), and a lot less universal supply with crucifixes and holy water. Ah, France between 1789 and 1799. A savage garden of delight. We visited as often as we could.
True, there was the downside of the guillontine, which was fatal to humans and vampires alike. But people today forget that the terreur was actually a short period, starting around 1793 and ending 1794 when Robespierre rather unglamorously first got himself shot in the jaw and then beheaded. (One would think the former would have been enough, but no. They operated on him to save him from the bullet and then executed him. Don't you love due trial?) This particular time was in fact rather dangerous for vampires as well, given the universal paranoia and the inclination to suspect every body and their minion of being enemies of the people. However, as I said... we visited as often as we could in that decade. And Angelus hadn't even lived out a human lifetime yet; he was in his challenge-to-the-universe phase. So we did visit Paris in January 1793, just in time to see Louis XVI executed. Well, not literaly. They insisted on a daytime execution, after all.
This had an unfortunate side effect, as England declared war against France afterwards - given that a mere century earlier, England had gotten rid of its own example of crowned stupidity via execution, I never understood why, but then, that is true for a lot of human politics - and neither yours truly nor Angelus could deny their accents. Of course, we could kill your avarage informer or policeman, but then again, everyone has their bad days. Or nights, as it were. Ours nearly cost us our heads. As opposed to an earlier situation in Rome when my boy had gotten himself captured by Holtz, we couldn't count on local reinforcement; what French vampires were left were fearing for their heads as well. Which is where another symptom of the age came in very handily indeed.
There was, at the time, a rather amusing English aristocrat who felt it was his duty to rescue as many of his fellow nobles as he could. It didn't matter what the individual in question was like, as long as you presented him with a) a sob story and b) the idea you could bore everyone by tracing your ancestors back to some medieval battle or teh other, he came in through with the rescuing effort. As in every market, offer and customers came together happily. Which is to say: thanks to Sir Percy Blakeney, most French vampires as well as a few foreign ones, such as Angelus and myself, made it to England. Not without hindrances; some of the local law, such as one Paul Chauvelin, tried to warn him. "They're bloodsuckers, they'll drain your country just like they did ours," and so on, and so forth. Naturally, Sir Percy didn't listen. Fools, aristocrats and heroes never do, and he was all three. He didn't even question the need for coffins, on the contrary, he thought they were a brilliant idea. Mind you, England was so swamped by vampires thanks to him in those years that Angelus and I felt rather crowded and left for more interesting shores, but still, we were grateful. When we did return to Britain, after the defeat of Napoleon, I think, we paid him a visit. Yes, he was still alive, boring everyone with pointed hints about his past adventures and being rather miffed that Wellington had declined him a post in his staff. I felt gratitude enough to put him out of his misery, murmuring "a bas les aristocrats" while I was at it.
What can I say? It was the spirit of the age.
Truth be told
He's one more attempt to rid herself of her unwanted pregnancy; a Watcher. Surely they're useful for something. (There is, of course, the one Angel keeps as a pet, but she's telling herself she hasn't sunk low enough to crawl back to Angel yet.)
The man resists the usual methods of persuasion, seeming determined to die heroically without giving her any useful information, the child in her belly kicks, and she's not having the best of days. Or months. Or years, come to think of it. So Darla decides on a short cut and does something she hasn't done in eons. She sires him.
It means she's stuck with his dead body for a while, until he wakes up again, in the cheap hotel room she is hiding during the day. She wrinkles her nose. Drusilla isn't the only classicist in the family; the old ways of earth and coffin were better. But still. There he is; not nearly as beautiful as her previous choices, but hopefully smarter.
When he wakes up, she doesn't waste any time. He complains about being hungry, she tells him there won't be anything to eat until he tells her what she wants to hear.
"But I truly don't know," he protests. "There has never been a vampire pregnancy before. I can tell you something else, though. Something no vampire knows. I doubt many Watchers do. It's a new theory. Some call it heresy. A secret. The biggest secret."
Men. So eager to impress. She feels very tired; another wasted attempt. The child kicks again, and she imagines it smiling somewhere inside her, if it can. Her little parasite.
"You should know, of all the people. You sired Angelus, didn't you?"
"Yes," she says, eyes narrowing. Maybe he does have something interesting to tell after all.
"Well," says the newest addition to the line of Aurelius, "he is rather insistent on being a different entity from Angel, isn't he? And he may be right. But neither of them are the being you used to live with. And you are not Darla. We always believed that the moment a human being is killed, he or she is gone forever, and a demon inhabits the body. But the whole soul occurance has caused new theories, and some application of science. It seemed unlikely to me that the soul of that Irish boy you killed would hang around in limbo for a hundred and fifty years until the gypsies cursed Angelus. Or that the demon Darla would hang around to be returned to a human body instead of going straight to hell after Angel staked you. I think you're both dead."
"That isn't news," she says impatiently. "Of course we are."
"No, no. I mean: every time you died, you died forever, and so did he. It's just the body which remembers. The brain. Programmed with memories. We know that now; we did not before. Each time his soul returned to him, it was a different soul, a new one. Each time you got resurrected, a new being was born. You just think you are Darla because you have her memories. He just thinks he is Angel. But neither of you are anything but clones. Newborns, with old memories, nothing more than that. Copies of copies of copies."
"That isn't true," she hisses, more disturbed by this idea than by anything since she found out she was pregnant.
"Would I lie to you, my sire?"
She had been combing her hair; breaking the comb, she stakes him with one fluid motion. There is a glimmer of triumph in his eyes before he falls into dust, which makes her wonder whether he had not deliberately driven her to this, whether the Watcher in him had not scored this final victory so he would not become what he spent a lifetime in fighting.
Darla hopes so, despite the fact this would mean she has been played and manipulated like a newborn. She hopes so. Because it also means that the being waking up in that hotel room had been the same one she killed, that his tale had been nothing but a clever ruse.
It couldn't be the truth. It couldn't.
She never speaks of it to anyone. It is a secret she keeps.
theatrical_muse tonight, I came across some ficlets that I hadn't crossposted to this journal at the time and which are still part of my Darla fanon. Mostly historicals, and one set during AtS times; the ones I'm still happiest with as a writer.Obligatory disclaimer: characters and situations owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies.
Parents of Choice
All things considered, she is a sensible child. She knows what she can get and what she can't have, and how to work around some of the things that she can't.
Her mother tells her the same thing she tells everyone: that she was a widow when she came to London, a widow heavy with child, an honest widow, forced to become a trollop to feed the mouth of her innocent babe. Her daughter's father is some eminently respectable and deceased farmer.
This just won't do.
Besides, it probably isn't true. By the time the girl is eight, she has figured out that most of the whores tell similar stories, and usually when they want to get out of paying debts, though in her mother's case it might also be maternal kindness, the wish to give her some illusion of respectability in the past. Even if it is a past that never was. It still won't do.
If she is to have a father who is dead, the girl decides, rather than one of the many people who pay for her mother's services and thus ensure their living, it might as well be someone no one else has, someone who is different than those dead and worthy men in all the other women's stories. Her father should be a nobleman, not just any nobleman but the Queen's most beloved favourite, the Earl of Leicester, and that is why her heritage must stay secret, and she will never tell anyone.
It is a pleasant fantasy for a girl of eight.
When she is twelve, her ideas have changed. She doesn't want a dead nobleman, not even the most famous in the land. Nor does she, in fact, want her mother at times. Her mother is losing her looks, and the money is ever rarer; they don't have a room of their own anymore, because it is too expensive. No, what the girl wants now are Mr. Ashley the baker and his wife, Mistress Catherine. They have two daughters, and could easily afford a third. Their daughters are always well-fed, and they have ribbons in their hairs. When they are sick, Mistress Catherine nurses them; she has the time to do so, instead of desperately haggling with some moist-handed soldier for a penny more. Besides, Mr. Ashley always winks at the girl and occasionally gives her sweets; would he do that for a whore's daughter? Perhaps she is his own, his and his wife's, and was simply misplaced.
When she is fourteen, her mother is dead, and the rats have already started to gnaw at her by the time the girl comes home. They are brazen rats, who will not leave their new feast just because she yells at them, so she hunts them down and kills them, beats them dead with her shoes, her new shoes, paid for with her own money. Once the rats are dead, she washes her mother's dead body and covers the wounds as good as she can, but she does not cry. Nor does she go with her once the woman is taken away to a pauper's grave. She is done with her mother; she does not want her back.
She goes out again to ply her mother's trade, and catches the eye of Mr. Ashley. He draws her aside, and for a moment, she wonders whether he'll tell her she can live with him and his wife now, as their foster daughter, or, failing that, whether he'll give her another sweet.
If it hadn't been the day of her mother's death, she wouldn't have been so foolish, as she has always been a sensible girl.
She can feel the wall in her back as Mr. Ashley rutts against her, and the coins in her hand. Newly minted coins; she bit one of them when he gave them to her, and he laughed and called her a minx before putting his hands under her skirts.
After that, she is done with wanting fathers as well.
Fortune
„One little talisman,“ said the peddler in his most pleading, cajoling voice, „and your fortune is assured.“
The young whore tossed her head back and laughed, not bothering to reply. Her companion, a minor noble’s son who fancied himself a poet these days and wanted the dalliance he had bought to have some adornment of romance, said: “Oh, but it is a pretty thing, worthy of your merry eyes,” tossed a coin at the peddler and presented the talisman to the girl.
He paid, and so she smiled demurely and thanked him. Later, though, the peddler found himself cornered by her, a dagger pressed to his belly.
“That was a ducat my lord gave you,” she said. “Give it back. Here’s your trinket.”
“You did not buy it, ungrateful wench,” exclaimed the peddler. “That young fool did. What, is he sated of you already that you have the time to plague a poor tradesman?”
“We did our trade for the day,” the girl said, unimpressed. “Now I want that coin.”
“You have no heart. It was an honest bargain. He bought your fortune for you, I’ll have you know, you greedy doxy!”
She looked at the talisman, full of disdain as if she was a lady, the resentful peddler thought, and not a London streetwalker who just had made a good catch on that particular day. Or maybe not so good, given how she longed for that ducat. Maybe the young man didn’t pay that well after all.
“My mother had dozens of these,” she said in a clipped voice, “and she died of the plague. You don’t buy fortune, peddler, and you don’t give it as a present. I’ll rather have the money.”
“Oh, and you know that for certain, do you now, my duckling?” he said, feeling more at ease now that they were arguing, though she had not removed her dagger yet. “How many years have you seen, but ten and five? I walked this earth for many, many years, and I tell you, fortune can be bought, persuaded and cajoled.” He risked a wink. “Fortune, my dear, is a woman.”
She smiled at him, but there was no kindness in her eyes, no, none at all.
“Yes, peddler,” she said. “Fortune is a strumpet. And I know everything there is to know about that.”
Her dagger moved, and he gasped, but it was his purse that she had cut from his belt. His skin was unharmed. The girl took out the ducat he had received, and returned the rest to him.
“But unlike fortune, I’m an honest whore,” she said. “Take that, and your amulet as well. I don’t want it.”
With that, she turned her back on him and left. The peddler cursed after her, loud enough for her to hear, if she cared to.
“There is no such thing,” he said. “No more than there is such a thing as a grateful whore, but your stars are now fixed, harlot. You’ll see the bargain you made today, you’ll find it to be true, and you’ll wish you had kept my amulet, oh yes, you will!”
Holding it in his hand, he gave it a baleful look. It was a pretty thing, to be sure, and an unsual shape. He had gotten in cheaply from one of the Portuegese Jews who had fled here from the continent, and had claimed it was against God’s laws for him to keep it. The foreigner had called it a gryphon.
“Your fortune will catch up with you,” the peddler muttered. “And you’ll pay for it for the rest of your days.”
The Secret Reveal'd: A Jacobean Tale
It was the best kind of secret, because she had forgotten its existence, together with much of her first life. But it existed, and was spoken of once, and she was never meant to hear.
It was a tale fit for the playhouses, but not for life, as far as she was concerned: the stories of men confessing their secrets in their sleep to their doxies, who would then have a weapon to yield against any thrifty cheat. Of course, men did not exactly sleep when she was with them, and she did not wish them to. The first time one of them fell into a slumber, snoring and dribbling on her shoulder, she charged him double when he awoke. He had paid her for a tumble, not for disturbing her rest afterwards.
There were exceptions. There was that wretched boy in the colonies who only meant to quench his thirst so he would not lay a finger on his chaste bride before they were married, and who ended up asking his whore to become his mistress, only his mistress, in rhyme, no less. She should never have allowed it to progress this far. But there they were, with her awaking and him not gone from her bed these past few hours while she had slept. He was all passion and sincerity, and believed in the honour he bestowed. There would still be sin, he said, but she would not have to share her fair body with those who only lusted and paid. He would pay for her keep, and he alone.
"I love thee, truly," and such nonesense.
She could have scratched his eyes out.
When she told him not to darken her doorstep any longer, he refused to believe her.
"But," he said, "thou lovest me, too."
"Never," she said, and spoke as formal as she could to him. "I loved your money, sir. As I love food on my table. My own table, aye, and only mine."
And still he did not listen.
"I know the secrets of thine heart."
She laughed, then was surprised to find he did not scowl and curse, which was what her intention had been when laughing, for he was proud. Instead, he smiled as well.
"Thou werest most frank in thy sleep, my love."
Ice filled her veins, and terror worse than when the judge had sent her to this place.
"What?" she cried. "What did I say?"
He would not tell her unless she promised to be his mistress, his alone, and so she finally did. Then he spoke of a girl's cries for her mother, dead and eaten by rats these many years, and pleas not to be left. Not to be left, never to be alone.
There was no reason not to believe him. He had what he wanted, after all. And thus she did believe him, and her resolve became as solid as the cliffs which were the last she had seen of the island that had given her birth.
The next day, his bride's father was informed of how this young man dallied with a whore, far past any decency. The boy lost all, bride and whore and future, and turned to hate and the black cloth of the church instead. He burned many a witch before he died in the strange plague that swept Jamestown, leaving many a dried corpse.
Her secret was safe. And she would never hear of it again.
Spirit of 1789
Vampires, as a rule, are conservative. It comes with the immortality. Today's fashion is the next decade's tradition, and so forth, and most people are rather fond of their today's fashion, especially if they're among the trendsetters. Every now and then, though, they break out of the mold, or get staked. The later half of the 1700s definitely was my time for embracing the spirit of the age. As it turned out, leaving the Master with my darling boy was just the beginning. There was so much to discover, new inventions every other second - air balloons (and I so adore a view), pornography in print (who do you think inspired the Marquis de Sade?), and best of all, revolutionaries declaring the end of superstition. Which meant less and less belief in vampires (and hence more victims), and a lot less universal supply with crucifixes and holy water. Ah, France between 1789 and 1799. A savage garden of delight. We visited as often as we could.
True, there was the downside of the guillontine, which was fatal to humans and vampires alike. But people today forget that the terreur was actually a short period, starting around 1793 and ending 1794 when Robespierre rather unglamorously first got himself shot in the jaw and then beheaded. (One would think the former would have been enough, but no. They operated on him to save him from the bullet and then executed him. Don't you love due trial?) This particular time was in fact rather dangerous for vampires as well, given the universal paranoia and the inclination to suspect every body and their minion of being enemies of the people. However, as I said... we visited as often as we could in that decade. And Angelus hadn't even lived out a human lifetime yet; he was in his challenge-to-the-universe phase. So we did visit Paris in January 1793, just in time to see Louis XVI executed. Well, not literaly. They insisted on a daytime execution, after all.
This had an unfortunate side effect, as England declared war against France afterwards - given that a mere century earlier, England had gotten rid of its own example of crowned stupidity via execution, I never understood why, but then, that is true for a lot of human politics - and neither yours truly nor Angelus could deny their accents. Of course, we could kill your avarage informer or policeman, but then again, everyone has their bad days. Or nights, as it were. Ours nearly cost us our heads. As opposed to an earlier situation in Rome when my boy had gotten himself captured by Holtz, we couldn't count on local reinforcement; what French vampires were left were fearing for their heads as well. Which is where another symptom of the age came in very handily indeed.
There was, at the time, a rather amusing English aristocrat who felt it was his duty to rescue as many of his fellow nobles as he could. It didn't matter what the individual in question was like, as long as you presented him with a) a sob story and b) the idea you could bore everyone by tracing your ancestors back to some medieval battle or teh other, he came in through with the rescuing effort. As in every market, offer and customers came together happily. Which is to say: thanks to Sir Percy Blakeney, most French vampires as well as a few foreign ones, such as Angelus and myself, made it to England. Not without hindrances; some of the local law, such as one Paul Chauvelin, tried to warn him. "They're bloodsuckers, they'll drain your country just like they did ours," and so on, and so forth. Naturally, Sir Percy didn't listen. Fools, aristocrats and heroes never do, and he was all three. He didn't even question the need for coffins, on the contrary, he thought they were a brilliant idea. Mind you, England was so swamped by vampires thanks to him in those years that Angelus and I felt rather crowded and left for more interesting shores, but still, we were grateful. When we did return to Britain, after the defeat of Napoleon, I think, we paid him a visit. Yes, he was still alive, boring everyone with pointed hints about his past adventures and being rather miffed that Wellington had declined him a post in his staff. I felt gratitude enough to put him out of his misery, murmuring "a bas les aristocrats" while I was at it.
What can I say? It was the spirit of the age.
Truth be told
He's one more attempt to rid herself of her unwanted pregnancy; a Watcher. Surely they're useful for something. (There is, of course, the one Angel keeps as a pet, but she's telling herself she hasn't sunk low enough to crawl back to Angel yet.)
The man resists the usual methods of persuasion, seeming determined to die heroically without giving her any useful information, the child in her belly kicks, and she's not having the best of days. Or months. Or years, come to think of it. So Darla decides on a short cut and does something she hasn't done in eons. She sires him.
It means she's stuck with his dead body for a while, until he wakes up again, in the cheap hotel room she is hiding during the day. She wrinkles her nose. Drusilla isn't the only classicist in the family; the old ways of earth and coffin were better. But still. There he is; not nearly as beautiful as her previous choices, but hopefully smarter.
When he wakes up, she doesn't waste any time. He complains about being hungry, she tells him there won't be anything to eat until he tells her what she wants to hear.
"But I truly don't know," he protests. "There has never been a vampire pregnancy before. I can tell you something else, though. Something no vampire knows. I doubt many Watchers do. It's a new theory. Some call it heresy. A secret. The biggest secret."
Men. So eager to impress. She feels very tired; another wasted attempt. The child kicks again, and she imagines it smiling somewhere inside her, if it can. Her little parasite.
"You should know, of all the people. You sired Angelus, didn't you?"
"Yes," she says, eyes narrowing. Maybe he does have something interesting to tell after all.
"Well," says the newest addition to the line of Aurelius, "he is rather insistent on being a different entity from Angel, isn't he? And he may be right. But neither of them are the being you used to live with. And you are not Darla. We always believed that the moment a human being is killed, he or she is gone forever, and a demon inhabits the body. But the whole soul occurance has caused new theories, and some application of science. It seemed unlikely to me that the soul of that Irish boy you killed would hang around in limbo for a hundred and fifty years until the gypsies cursed Angelus. Or that the demon Darla would hang around to be returned to a human body instead of going straight to hell after Angel staked you. I think you're both dead."
"That isn't news," she says impatiently. "Of course we are."
"No, no. I mean: every time you died, you died forever, and so did he. It's just the body which remembers. The brain. Programmed with memories. We know that now; we did not before. Each time his soul returned to him, it was a different soul, a new one. Each time you got resurrected, a new being was born. You just think you are Darla because you have her memories. He just thinks he is Angel. But neither of you are anything but clones. Newborns, with old memories, nothing more than that. Copies of copies of copies."
"That isn't true," she hisses, more disturbed by this idea than by anything since she found out she was pregnant.
"Would I lie to you, my sire?"
She had been combing her hair; breaking the comb, she stakes him with one fluid motion. There is a glimmer of triumph in his eyes before he falls into dust, which makes her wonder whether he had not deliberately driven her to this, whether the Watcher in him had not scored this final victory so he would not become what he spent a lifetime in fighting.
Darla hopes so, despite the fact this would mean she has been played and manipulated like a newborn. She hopes so. Because it also means that the being waking up in that hotel room had been the same one she killed, that his tale had been nothing but a clever ruse.
It couldn't be the truth. It couldn't.
She never speaks of it to anyone. It is a secret she keeps.
