Home   Fanfiction   Resources   Extras   Updates   Essays   Betas   Links   Contact

Title: Death Becomes Her
Author: Selena
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Three deaths, three Darla's.

She is dying, and death does not come as a surprise to her. It has been clawing at her, eating her from the inside out, for a long time now. First she had hidden it from herself. Then from her customers.

Her friends she would not have bothered to hide it from, but then, she didn't have any.

Look at the people now, waiting for her to die so they can use the bed for someone else. The women, shrouded in white, about as comforting as those long, white altar candles she remembers from her childhood. She saw them burning but could never feel any warmth, so she tried to touch them. The priest slapped her hands.

No such candles here, in the New World. But these women. She didn't bother to find out their names, as they never spoke to her. Standing left and right at her bed now, candles burning for a waking. But she isn't dead yet. Is she?

If she were, she wouldn't feel the terrible dryness in her mouth, the heat which seems to take every last but of humidity, and turn every breath she takes into dust. Dimly she is aware the leech is draining her again. She doesn't know how many leeches Forrester the barber has foisted onto her so far. He isn't a bad man, Forrester, but not a real doctor, if there is such a thing.

She asks them to close the shutters, as the sun is hurting her eyes and she has the vague hope that without the sun's beams to burn it, the air won't be quite so dusty anymore.

"You will not see it again," a new voice says, and she looks at the figure entering the room. A stranger, though there is something familiar about his voice. An odd voice, bringing to mind things growing in the earth where it is covered with ruins and decay. She cannot see his face, but his robe tells her what he is, at least.

"By the time it sets, you will have left this life," he continues, and she refuses to acknowledge him.

"I didn't ask for a priest. Who invited him in here?"

Not for a priest, not for a clergyman. Hypocrites, the lot of them. When her mother died, they did not come. But then, she had been a whore as well. At least there is no daughter to be bewildered and angry and secretly relieved now. We come on to this earth alone, and we leave it alone.

"You did. You cried out for me last night in your delirium."

"I do not remember," she protests, aghast that she should have done such a thing. And yet, and yet, here he is, and at least he talks to her, unlike her silent attendants who count the hours until they can turn their care to worthier patients. "Do you even know what I am?"

"A woman of some property. No husband. No inheritance. Yes. I know what you are. As does God."

Ah. So it is her money he is after, and disappointment changes the taste in her mouth from dust to bile. So he thinks she will attempt to buy her way into the kingdom of heaven, trying to please God by leaving what possessions she has to his servants. He is about to be disillusioned.

"I'm a whore."

A whore, and a whore doesn't give anything for free. Not that she has much left; she is sure that whatever there is has long been shared among whoever found it first. But still, she has her pride.

"That, too," her visitor replies, sounding almost amused, and somewhere at the back of her neck, there is a strange, stirring sensation. Something is not right here.

"You should have asked for a priest long ago, child. Your life may have turned out the better for it."

"And you should have paid me a visit before this day, Father. Your life might have been the more interesting because of it," she retorts, the words coming out of her like an echo to the banter she used to attract men who wanted their hunger for flesh shrouded with some wit so they could feel better about satisfying themselves. This one, though, refuses to spar.

"Are you prepared to renounce Satan? Beg God for his forgiveness?"

She laughs, or tries to.

"Why? God never did anything for me."

The cloaked figure makes a commanding gesture, and the walking altar candles disappear, rush away like distraught birds. The barber at her side hesitates a bit, and the priest adds, "You can't save her life. Perhaps I can still save her soul."

Then she is left alone with him, and she can feel her heart beat, loud enough to drown out some of what he says next. Something about her being prepared to renounce Satan and all his works, undoubtedly. Suddenly she is tired, so tired.

She only wants it to end.

"My soul is well past saving. Let the devil take me if he'll have me. It doesn't matter. Either way, I die."

He comes closer, and she smells the earth on him, not the fresh earth of the fields and gardens outside, but old earth, mold fit to cover dead bodies with, such as she will become in a very short while.

"No, you will not die. You will be reborn," he claims, pulling back his hood, and she sees his face. Sharp angles and teeth, nothing human about it. But she is not afraid. She has seen all kinds of faces, twisted in lust, greed or pain, below her, above her, as this one is right now, breathing down hard, as this one is not, and there was not much human about them, either.

"I know you...

"I came to last night," he says, with an oddly comforting tone, as if speaking to a child. "Sang to you from that window...

She sighs. Men. They all expected to be remembered. She should have known Death would be a man, too.

"I remember now," she admits, granting him the favor. "You're Death."

"No," he returns, and this startles her as his features did not.

"What, then?"

"Your savior. God never did anything for you, but I will."

There is a sharp pain in her neck, and the draining sensation from the leeches again, only tenfold more. In a flash of recognition, she realizes what he is doing to her and wonders whether he'll find any blood at all, considering what has been taken out already.

Somehow she knew it would end like this. Dying alone, with a stranger on top of her. If only, she thinks, but does not know how to continue the thought as her heart beats faster and faster and drowns out everything else with a dark, rolling flood which takes her away.

***

She is dying, and death surprises her. Of course she had always been aware it might happen, even to her. But the final death happens so quickly to her kind that she assumed there would be no time for thoughts and sensations, if it were ever to catch up with her again. Instead, time freezes, and she is aware of everything. The girl, at that moment helpless and at her mercy. A Slayer, no less. Small and blond like herself, as if to add injury to insult. An insolent child, staring wide-eyed, for once bereft of quips.

Herself, and the garments she got from a nameless victim which had struck her fancy and occasional taste for the bizarre.

"What's up with the Catholic school girl look?" he had asked. "The last time I saw you, it was kimonos."

"And the last time I saw you, it wasn't high school girls," she had retorted, enjoying the flare in his dark eyes which told her the barb had hit home. It is true, this disguise isn't up to her usual standards of elegance. But it is very appropriate for the Master's plans, and Darla has had to buy her way back into the Master's good graces for a long time now.

His fault, in a way, but then, she can't bring herself to regret the results which her decision to defy her Sire for her fledgling's sake had wrought. The Master had made her, and so she was a part of him. But she had made Angelus, and the Master should have known that a woman always prefers what was made from her body.

Angelus. Most of all, she is aware of him, her greatest joy and greatest disappointment. Darling boy, made out of an Irish brawler with arrogance and anger and an intriguing hint of despair which settled her decision to sire him, instead of use and discard what she had found in that village. She had not known, could not have known, that he would become an addiction.

She tried to kick it more than once, leaving him behind when her own survival was at stake in France - and oh, the splendid fury he was in about that when he caught up with her again in Vienna -, again when the ever-accursed gypsies gave him a soul, and for the third time when he made her take him back and then betrayed her. But in a secret corner of her heart, which no longer beats, she has continued to hold out hope that one day, he will return to her as his old self, soul or no soul. That they would have the whirlwind again, together for eternity.

So close. They are so close now, and yet so far apart. They had been close the other night, when he had pinned her against the wall of his apartment and she had felt the darkness in him answering her, as it had always done.

Now he is not in front of her, but behind, and the stake in his hand has unerringly found her heart.

Weak, she rages at herself, and does not mean him. She should never have involved him at all, just gone on with killing the girl. Then would have been time enough to confront him again. But no, her vanity had not permitted that, had driven her into a contest with this new infatuation of his. Angel and his obsession with innocence.

She doubts this one will be a Drusilla, though. California girl, all light and sunshine, no fragility laced with pain as the young woman haunted by the sight whom she had found for her boy had possessed.

And yet, this new one might learn about pain, too. Angelus is the unsurpassed master of the art, after all. He has even found a new pain to teach her, who has woven this particular tapestry for centuries.

As she half turns to look at him one last time, in utter disbelief on what he just did, the walls seem to echo her words to the girl earlier. Do you know what the worst thing in the world is? To love somebody who used to love you.

"Angel?" she whispers, in the endless second she has wrestled away from the final death, but for the first time, she cannot read his eyes anymore, and she realizes that once again, she dies alone.

***

She is dying, and Death has wrapped itself all around her. Ever since they brought her back, she could feel herself dying, but never until now could she see a sense in it. Sitting on an old bed, in a shabby room where the walls breathe failure and disappointment, she can feel herself reborn when she hears his voice.

Maybe... maybe it would be different. I mean, we don't know. Maybe... because I have a soul… if I did bite you...

It is what she was waiting for ever since her memories had returned, but now that he has said it, she doesn't want it anymore. As a human, she has been a pathetic failure. And yet, there are things she has learned, things which had escaped her for four centuries, which even the Master would not have known.

"No," she replies gently, and she feels his surprise. She has not stopped feeling his emotions since that bizarre creature with the British accent touched her forehead and connected her to him. So strange, that, and so fitting. It used to thrill her to no end, seeing her boy inflicting pain on others and experiencing it himself. But when he went through torture and death this time, she found it unbearable. Yet he bore it, as he has endured everything, ever since she sent him away.

"Angel, I see it now," she continues, and the brief flicker of hope from him among all his grief soothes her like the cool winter air she has longed for more than once in this country of eternal heat and sunshine. "Everything you're going through, everything you've gone through. I've felt it. I've felt how you care - in a way no one's ever cared before. Not for me."

Not for her. Not for the nameless woman, dying all those centuries ago in bitterness and rage. Not for the vampire, dissolving in front of him. She had asked Lindsey who she was, whom they brought back, and he had not been able to reply. At last she had found her own answer, though. She was somebody who could be loved, and who could love in return. Not as a part of a long, twisted game of expectations and manipulations. Not to get something for herself. Such a new, strange sensation. She takes a breath and arms herself to set him free.

"That's all I need from you."

"It's not enough," he protests, and she shushes him with "It is."

Still the grief and unfocused anger in him is overwhelming.

"How could the Powers allow you to be brought back - dangle a second chance - then take it away like this?"

"Maybe this is my second chance," she answers, wonderingly, as the idea is still new to her, and not at all easy to accept. But it will give him peace at last, and that is what she wants more than anything else.

"To die?" he asks, full of disbelief.

"Yes. To die. The way I was supposed to die in the first place."

They look at each other, and as the anger dies in his eyes, the fear starts to clutch at her again. To die. To simply stop. Regardless of what he said about there being a hell, she does not remember a thing. There is probably nothing. She will become nothing once more. She tries to push the fear back, to concentrate on the peace she wants to give him, but it is hard, so hard.

He comes to her, takes her into his arms and whispers, "I'm not going to leave you. Every moment you have left, I'll be by your side. You'll never be alone again."

In a way, it was better when he had been angry. Now she isn't able to hold it together any longer. The tears come, and while he holds her, she cries, for her first life which she can only remember in brief flashes of sensation, for four hundred years full of destruction and little wisdom, for a century away from him because she did not understand what a soul could be, and for the torment he went through, all because of her.

And yet, dying like that, being held like that… it is what she has never had before. It is peace, and finally, she feels it coming from him as well. He is battered, and she is dying, but they are together.

It is his shock she experiences first, even before her own, as the door is kicked open, as men rush in and grab her while they zap Angel with sharp, electric shocks. After the holy water and the crosses, this is simply too much, and he goes down. She struggles against the two men who hold her, but this human body is weak, weak, weak, and so she is unable to help him. Quickly, the ones holding him down tie him up, and her own disbelief and rage starts to choke her as Lindsey enters.

"Everyone betrays you, sooner or later," she had told Lindsey, and yet she had not expected it from him. She doesn't know when she crossed the line from seeing him as a useful ally to manipulate and flirt with to seeing him as a friend, but she must have done so. Otherwise she would have expected this, Lindsey pointedly not looking at her, going to Angel, pulling Angel's head up by the hair and saying in triumph:

"How did you think this was going to end?"

So Angel had been right after all. Mind games, it had all been one long mind game by Wolfram and Hart, and Lindsey and his gentleness had been a part of it, just as the medical files they showed her. A tool is a tool is a tool, and will never be allowed to escape its purpose. The purpose of bringing Angel down. The flame of rage burning in her quickly becomes a fire, until it is suddenly halted and frozen by utter horror, as she and Angel follow Lindsey's gaze to the broken door.

Darla has not seen Drusilla for more than ninety years. After China, she had left the children to their own devices, unable to bear their happiness in each other after losing her boy for the second time. And yet, there is nothing alien or strange about the girl who enters, for Darla never could think of her as a woman.

Death is not male after all; Death is female, in a red dress, Ophelia out for murder, the graceful end of all hope. Darla continues to struggle, but knows it is in vain, and the merciless justice of it takes away what little breath she has left. Pictures of the girl's own turning come to her, those desperate cries for mercy and death which at the time only irritated and amused her, though even she had been a bit shocked by Angelus' idea of making this broken thing into a vampire, of prolonging her torment into eternity. Now herr they are again, Angel and Darla and Drusilla, but this time Dru is in control, and they are reduced to horror, hopelessness and desperation.

Darla feels the bite, feels the coldness of the girl's body pressing against her, the drowning, swooning sensation she had longed for until this night, and she tries to cling to what rage she has left, to at least stop what will come next. But it is hard, so hard, as she desperately longs for some fluid to fill her again, to stop the terrible thirst and dryness which rises as she feels herself lowered on the bed where she had sat with Angel only a brief while ago.

She tries to sense him again, to find some strength, but there is only horror and despair to match her own.

Death embraces her again, pressing against her, wrapping herself around her, and it comes, the flood, the dark, rolling flood.

And Darla is taken away.