Her first inkling comes when she can't zip her leather pants. At first she thinks she's just got blood bloat; that pizza-delivery boy definitely tasted high-fat.
But it keeps happening, and one day she notices her bra is uncomfortable; stranglingly tight, in fact. She's never been skimpy in the shirtfront; that served her well, in her original profession. And sometimes, after her rebirth at the hands and teeth of the master, she'd amuse herself by vamping out mid-conversation with a man and waiting to see how long it took him to look far enough up to notice. Sometimes they'd talk to her tits for ten minutes.
But now these assets are… lush. What the hell?
The thing that finally tips her off is the nausea. She's just finished off a nice meal, a chubby middle-aged moron who invited her in to use the phone because she'd run out of gas. And suddenly it's all coming back up, still hot, and when the guy's wife steps into the room it's everywhere, all over Darla, all over the remains and the carpet; and Darla smiles red at her and says, "Never tastes as good coming up as going down, does it?" and then there's screaming and an entertaining chase.
And that's all fun. But when the adrenalin has subsided she puts it all together and just knows, that it's impossible but it is. The Powers That Be are fucking with her, again. So, what is she going to do about it?
She thinks it over for a couple of weeks, drifting through California, not toward anywhere but away from LA, and finally settles on trying a human doctor first. Because this is a human problem; she's never heard of it happening to a vampire before. And because it's a human's fault. She'd thought it was so clever at the time, sleeping with Lindsey just the once; kept him off balance, off kilter, stupidly helpful. But now she's polluted with a piece of him, and the humans can damn well get it out.
She has a hell of a time finding a doctor who's willing to do something for her at night, and without anesthesia. (Put herself, asleep, at the mercy of one of them? No thank you.) She tries babbling something about bad reactions to drugs, allergy to sun, on and on, and finally just offers him a ridiculous stinking amount of the money she picked up in a well-stocked wine cellar.
And when he's finally gotten started on his examination, he looks up at her from between her legs, stupid face gone all slackjaw, and stammers, "There's something—there's this rigid—membrane, here, it looks very thick, I've never—"
"Cut it," she says.
"It seems to have healthy vessels, I'm afraid I couldn't control the bleeding, and"
She vamps out, grabs him by the neck and squeezes. "Cut. It."
"Okay," he wheezes, and raises a scalpel, and at the first nick she screams because the pain is bigger than her whole body, bigger maybe than the world, and she's crushed in it; worse than being staked, worse than being set afire, worse than anything.
When she comes through the pain and lands back in her body she's ripped the doctor's head clean off.
" Shit!"
Okay, she thinks, walking out of the clinic, leaving a mess behind her. Apparently the Powers have installed some sort of magical protection. Plan B: find out what the fuck is going on.
She walks until she hits an artsy district, with its little neighborhood of palm readers and fortunetellers, feels the vibrations of a bit of genuine mojo from one, walks in, grabs the current client who's blithering about her cheating sumbitch dawg babydaddy and tosses her out the door. Looks at the fortuneteller, a weedy little guy, and says, "What the fuck is going on?"
He blinks at her from behind his white-boy dreads, then his nostrils flare and she can smell his coppery fear, and he babbles, "Something's wrong with—you're dead."
"Good job!" she says, and claps politely. "Now, tell me what this IS and how to get rid of it, and YOU get to stay NOT dead."
"What?" he says. There seems to be too much white around his pupils all of a sudden—the idiot is about to pass out from fear. She leans next to his ear, whispers, "Read me. Advise me. Live to bathe in patchouli another day."
He comes around a little, taking deep ragged breaths and looking her up and down. Then he blinks in surprise. "That's not supposed to happen. Two of you dead people made a life. Where'd the spark come from?"
"What? Two of us—ANGEL? But that's—extra impossible."
"There's really only one level of impossible," he says.
"So, how do I get rid of it?" He stares for a long time at hertiny belly bump, forehead furrowed, and finally says—"It's all—blurry and strange and there's a weird light and—I can see it leaves this world but I can't see how."
"Well, that's encouraging, anyway. Any suggestions?
"Maybe you should—"he cocks his head at her, "be with family?"
She laughs. "Hardly."
"No, really, there's someone who'd like to see you in—" he blinks, "Demon Gullet?"
"In—oh, the Hellmouth, hah. Could be Spike or Dru…"
"This person's dead too."
"You're not really narrowing it down for me, sweetie."
"This person is—writing epic poetry," he says. "Wow, and it's really bad."
"Now you're helping."
"Wow. Trying to rhyme "sacrifice" with 'in a trice.' Talk about bathos."
"Yeah," she says. She throws some dead-lawyer money on the table and walks out, letting the little psychic live. Because, secretly, she kind of likes patchouli.
I might as well go, she thinks, as she walks down the crowded avenue, casually keeping an eye out for dinner. Perhaps Spike knows of a shaman who specializes in impossible pregnancies. No Wolfram and Hart mage is likely to help here, and all her other contacts seem to have dried up. That kind of thing happens when you're dust for a few years.
She makes it to Sunnydale a couple of weeks later, and by that time she's visibly pregnant. Her center of gravity has shifted and she's gotten awkward in combat; her martial arts moves are shit, and she's started having to pick weak, slow little people out of the herd, like she was some sort of dying lioness. And any kind of binding across the belly drives her completely crazy. She's shoplifted some overalls and is grimly pleased that she can't see how they look.
Entering Sunnydale is a rush, though; the Hellmouth starts a pleasantly itchy little buzz all over her skin, like eating a raver. She walks through the town drinking in the energy, taking in the sights, but avoiding the Bronze; not sure how seeing that would feel. She hopes to just randomly catch a whiff of Spike, old leather and fresh blood with a slight edge of peroxide; but there's nothing. Finally she starts canvassing the graveyards, one by one; boy always liked a tomb.
At graveyard number three she hears familiar noises, shrieks and the solid whumpf of fists into dead flesh, and she surges with joy at the thought of taking on the Slayer again. Yes, that's why she's really here, to take out this--inexperienced, unprofessional little girl who'd somehow done for Angel what she couldn't. And then she remembers that she's awkward and tired and off-balance.
She sighs and tries to circle around the fighting, maybe catch a glimpse and get a little vicarious gore, but she comes around a tall headstone just as the Slayer dispatches someone into a glittering column of dust, beautiful for a second in the moonlight and then gone.
And then the Slayer whips around and stares at her. Darla tenses to run, but finds herself standing still instead. Maybe this is easier. Just stand here, just close my eyes, be a sparkly dustdrift for a second and then no more struggle.
"HI!" the Slayer says.
Darla opens her eyes. "What?"
"Hello!" and the Slayer BEAMS at her. "Isn't it a lovely night for a stroll? I am also enjoying the night air! There is nothing unusual happening here. But you should probably go home and be safe with your loved ones."
Darla gawks at her. Slayer's gotten skinny; no more of that puppy fat that Angel apparently found irresistible. But she's also acquired a maniacally cheerful gaze that reminds Darla of nothing so much as those flower sellers in airports.
"Are you a Moonie now?" she says.
"Why, yes!" says the Slayer. "I am fond of the moon." The wattage of her smile dims for a second. "I have suggested moonlit walks to Spike but he doesn't want my company."
"Spike—he—you—WHAT?"
The astonishing smile is back. "You know Spike? Doesn't he have AMAZING pectoral muscles?"
"I dimly recall," Darla says. She's beginning to wonder if she's dreaming. She walks, slowly, up to the Slayer, sniffing, waiting for her remembered smell—an odd mix of suntan oil, Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, bleached-out bloodstains and vampire dust. But it's gone—there's a peculiar new swirl of smells, vinyl and metal and—
"You're not human," Darla and the Buffy-thing say, simultaneously.
"What?" Darla adds, and the thing says, "You are too cool on my infrared scanners. I have to kill you now. Sorry."
"Wait!" Darla says, surprising herself, and realizes that she actually wants to stay alive for a while now, if only to find out what this thing IS. "Spike—Spike will be unhappy if you kill an old friend of his."
"Oh." The thing looks at her in confusion, nose creased in a manner that men probably find adorable. "I'll take you to him, and he can decide what to do. He is just as brilliant as he is gorgeous."
"No argument there," Darla says, and follows.
The thing natters endlessly as they walk through Sunnydale, pausing only on occasion to dust a vampire and then yelp something about marzipan before slipping back into her Many Virtues of Spike monologue. Darla tunes out somewhere around the fifth iteration of the Perfection of Spike's Penis, but she snaps back to attention when the thing says, wistfully, "But he got angry when I tried to go with him to the other Buffy's grave."
"The other Buffy?" Darla says.
"Yes, the crankier, squishier one. She suffered a fatal systems error, and is recycling into organic material."
Darla sorts through that. Ah, DEAD. Of course. This thing is a replacement, not a backup.
She stands there for a moment, trying to summon up the energy, the passion of the old Darla. Slayer down, Hellmouth unprotected; a perfect opportunity for world domination, or at least a blood-soaked blowout, party town for the undead.
She tries, she really does, for the Big Evil Plan. But she's huge and clumsy and nauseated, and her ankles are so swollen she can actually leave dents in them with her fingertips, and her feet are killing her.
"Fuck it," she says, and stomps off after the Buffy machine.
Finally they come to a familiar house, and the thing skips up the stairs and knocks.
And Spike opens the door.
They look at each other for a moment, and then a tall gangly brown-haired girl comes up behind Spike and says, "Who's that?" The machine chirps, "Hi, sis!" and the brown-haired girl flinches. Then Spike steps out onto the porch and makes little shooing motions, herds machine and girl into the house, closes the door behind them.
"You could invite me in," Darla says.
"I could," he says.
They stand there a while longer, and then she just can't bear up under her own weight any longer and drops gracelessly onto the top step. Spike sits down beside her, not too close.
"Who was the teenybopper?" she says.
Spike gives her a surprised look, and then says, "Ah, right. You were dust during that whole—whatever that was. Guess you missed the spell. She's the slayer's sis."
"I don't remember her having a sister. A mother, yes. A tasty mother."
He flashes a look of—is that anger?—why?—but simply says, "Long story. But she is the sis. And the Slayer is—Buffy's dead."
"And you're boning this—auto-Buffy?" There's that flash again.
"No," he says, "I'm not. She—it's confused." He's quiet for a moment. "I was in love with Buffy. I am, still."
And she can't help it, she bursts out laughing. "What is WRONG with you men? She's—she was this dim little blonde with bad clothes! What is this obsession with her? Is fucking the enemy some kind of macho thing?"
"You would do well to drop this," he says, in a heavy, tired, OLD voice. She looks him over, more intently this time. He was always the temperamental little brother, when they'd been a family. He'd always flushed with— something at the sight of Darla; fear of her, lust, anger, something. Now there's almost nothing there—the little flashes of anger, on behalf of humans?—but other than that, he's…diminished.
"You seem," she picks at her ugly overalls, thinks how to explain, settles for "smaller."
He eyes her belly. "You don't."
"I could rip your head off for that," she says. "Not an idle threat, sweetie. I've done it. Recently."
"Don't doubt it," he says, pulls out his cigs, offers her one. She takes it and he cocks an eyebrow at her. "Bad for—it IS a baby, isn't it?"
"Best guess," she says, and they smoke for a while.
"That's not supposed to happen," he says.
"A lot of things aren't."
By the end of her cigarette, she's figured something out. "You weren't thinking aboutwanting to see me again,were you?"
"Honestly, pet, no."
She sighs. Little hippy psychic picked up on an old connection—but he'd gotten her mixed up with another dead blonde.
"When you were—extra dead," Spike says.
"Yeah?"
"What was it like?" He says it casually but the orange flow of his cigarette tip is trembling.
She opens her mouth with every intention of saying something like, "Oh, it was HELL! And I saw Buffy, and I'm SURE she'd have said to tell you 'hi 'if she hadn't been choking on a giant demon cock!" But for some reason what comes out is the truth.
"I don't know," she says. "When I came back—I felt like a lot of time has passed, but I didn't remember anything." Nothing but the stake going through my heart. Nothing but the smell of Angel all around me.
"So," she says, "do you know any warlocks, wizards, shamans, witches, anybody who'd be willing to magic this thing out of me?"
"Sorry, love," he says. "My demon contacts have dried up considerable, since I started killin' 'em."
"Oh, now YOU'RE fighting alongside the humans, too?" she rages; she can feel her teeth growing. "Killing our kind for them? You're a little attack dog, a little mascot?"
He faces her and in the cigarette light she sees no anger in his face, just weariness. He doesn't even care enough about her to hate her, to kill her, and he's about to tell her to go, isn't he? About to just DISMISS her without love, hate, fear, anything, with that flat dead look in his eyes just like Angel's when he sent her off. When she'd failed to live up to what he'd gotten from a stupid, little, teenaged—
And suddenly she's crying. Loud, wailing and keening and she can't stop. It goes on and on.
Finally Spike pats her on the back, stiffly, twice. She snuffles to a stop and they sit silently together for a long time, littering the steps with cigarette butts and watching the moon set, until it's almost morning and she stands and walks off without a word, to go try something else, anywhere else, any place where she's still frightening.