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Title: The First Day
Author: Tania
Rating: PG-13
Summary: No one's personality is formed in a single day...not even Angelus'.

It’s a frightful thing to close his eyes during the first day. His body courses with a newfound strength that he fears naming. Darla calls it vampire, demon, everything. To Liam it is something beyond name or description, save one…Need. A need to right every wrong done to him at his father’s hand and God’s.

The first day he thrashes in the bed Darla has made for them. He closes his eyes and sees a black which no man alive can fathom. The darkness that comes only a stone’s throw beneath the earth, only to those entombed beneath it. Remembered words reverberate through his mind, promises of flowers and silver lockets, nights filled with honey-dipped women, tasting so sweet and pure in his mouth, kisses at throats the color of porcelain. He sees those same throats now bloodied, the taste of honey distorted. His gut twists and clenches at the thought now, he licks at his lips, briefly feeling sharpened teeth, shocking fangs beneath his touch.

The first day he still feels his sister’s limp body in his arms. Hears his mother’s voice turn from joyful exclamation to gurgling fear as she falls to his feet. Sees his father’s confusion as he takes his place beside them. Liam’s hands clench as if their ghosts might find form between his fingers. All that comes of his daytime hauntings are Darla’s whispers to sleep, save his strength, come to her again.

The first day he asks her no questions, decides to be shown his new life not told of it. When the night comes he will be a new man, he will ask all he must, learn all she will share. Tonight he will take a new name, let the demon choose his path.

But this is only the first day, and Liam decides there’s no shame in being a little afraid that God has forsaken him at last and that his punishment has finally come in the visage of the flaxen haired lady who killed him on the Sabbath.