Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns all.
I hope you enjoy.
Darling
Most people die once. Vampires, twice. Some things are immortal. But I think I'm the only person, the only creature, that's ever died four times.
The first time, I welcomed it. I was already dying of syphilis, trapped in a decaying body, and there was nothing I wanted more than to escape, to live any way I could, and be beautiful again. When the Master came for me, he was like the salvation I never received in life. When I awoke after my siring, I felt more alive than I ever did in life. It was awe-inspiring, beautiful and terrible, confusing and thrilling. I was in a whole new world.
The second time, centuries later, when I felt myself crumble to dust, I was consumed with hate. My darling boy, my stallion, thrusted an arrow through my heart, the same heart that had loved him for two hundred years.
My world came crashing down that day. Sunnydale. Where the slayer roamed freely, killing my kind, living, breathing, when I could do neither. Angel killed me for her.
When I died the second time, I was finally at rest, after four hundred years. I should have died in 1609, when Satan rightfully claimed me as his own. When I died in 1997, I came to be in a place the likes of which I have never seen, before or since. I walked in shadows then, with other lost souls who should have been able to rest but were forced to continue, wearing another face. We were vapour, shifting around in a world we couldn't see. There were clouds, and storms, and sometimes, someone would be ripped out, taken somewhere else. I never knew where. I couldn't ask anyone because I didn't know how to talk to the other misty forms in that place. After five years I think I forgot anything before that place.
Of course, those lost memories came back, after Wolfram and Hart ripped me from where I lay.
I was angry, and confused, when I arrived once more in that world. Shivering, naked, in a box, with strangers peering in at me. I was devoid of anything they deemed as intelligence for the first few days. Then I began to talk again. I never talked much sense, sometimes I reminded myself of Drusilla, whom I'd had so much trouble understanding when we'd hunted together hundreds of years ago. It made me laugh to think of her, which worried the people at Wolfram and Hart. I was laughing hysterically at ghosts from my past. Truthfully, I was a little insane. I had been torn from the only place I knew anymore. I was haunted, and every night I would dream of Angel, or Angelus. Sometimes Liam. Then they made me visit him when he slept.
At first, it was a game. Taunt him, hurt him. Confuse him. Then it all became horribly real and I found myself dragged deeper into darkness, as my human soul reawakened from it's four hundred year long slumber.
I couldn't take it, my heart was hurting and my head was filled with images of the hundreds, the thousands of people I'd killed. Most prominently; Angel.
I'd condemned him, just like the Master condemned me. I'd forced him to live an unlife he'd spend eternity atoning for.
That's when I learned that I was dying again. Of the same damn thing that the Master had saved me from all those centuries ago. Only he hadn't saved me, not really. He'd made sure I could never be saved. Still, Angel tried, he tried so hard to grant me another life, only to find all was for nothing.
Then, as I finally laid my human head to rest on Angels shoulder, feeling that the game was up and it was time to bow out gracefully, in walked Drusilla.
She killed me like Angel killed her, like I killed him. She drained my blood and forced me to drink hers, and then the granddaughter became the grandmother.
My third death was not as easy as the first two. I found it hard to accept, after realising so much about my human self. But after a while, I began to enjoy myself again. I was killing for the beauty, and the fun, to please myself and Dru and for no other reason. I was Darla again, not that stranger with no name. The girl I didn't know anymore. I was feared and respected, I was all powerful and immortal. I was beautiful and young, and would be forever. I wasn't like Angel, I didn't care for sunlight, sunsets, saving the world or being a Hero. I was happy being happy, and at that point, I was.
When I slept with Angel, I was euphoric. Then came the crushing blow when I realised he still had a soul. I was hurt like I'd never been before. In a way, it was like dying again. My only childe, my greatest love, told me I brought him only despair. I was angry, and my non-beating heart was breaking.
I fled Los Angeles, the City of Angels, and that foul, loathsome creature who'd clung to his soul even when it should have been ripped from him. I never wanted to return to the place of my humiliation, my heart-wrenching failure to turn Angel back into Angelus.
When I discovered my impossible impregnation, I visited every shaman in the Western Hemisphere. They all told me the same useless monotonous fact. That my pregnancy was impossible yet impossible to abort. This in mind, I return one last time to L.A, where, after a fashion, I was sheltered by Angel and his friends. Angel was good to me, too good after the things I'd done to him. Because I knew what I'd done now. I felt the most horrible, gut wrenching remorse. I wished more than anything I could just be a normal loving woman giving birth to her baby boy. But I wasn't, and the story could never end that way.
When I went into labour could feel the baby dying inside of me. As Angel kept me safe at Caritas, I realised there could be only one conclusion. It wouldn't hurt, and the baby I loved so much would be saved.
Suddenly, we were moving very fast, and I was lying down on hard, wet ground. Angel was gripping my hand, and I looked deep into his eyes as I spoke my final words to him. My final words to anyone.
'This child – Angel, it's the one good thing we ever did together.'
He kissed my hand and gripped it tighter.
'The only good thing.'
He buried his face in his hands, still holding mine. I saw he was sobbing, his tears were mingling with the heavy rain falling all around us. I reached out and grabbed a splinter of wood from the broken back doors of the club.
'You make sure to tell him that.'
Never taking my eyes off him, I brought the stake to my chest and plunged it deep into my heart, into the core of me. I felt myself become detached from the tiny human inside me, saw my ashes melt quickly into the rain soaked ground, disappearing forever. I saw Angel's hands close in on themselves as I disappeared from his world. I saw his face when he first laid eyes upon his son. His eyes told stories then, portraying sadness, horror, and something else less easily definable, almost childlike itself. It was wonder, and as I drifted away, a mere memory on the wind, it's the wonder in his eyes that night that I'll never, ever forget.
I did something wonderful that night. I did what any mother has the right to do. I died to save my child. And I believe, in doing so, I saved Angel, and sometimes, in this place I'm in that's neither solid or vapour, but made merely of thoughts, I like to believe I saved myself.