Darla expected to have to spend several days creeping around town, creating or coercing minions, and gathering intel before she'd even be ready to start forming a plan, but instead, she struck gold towards the end of the very first night. Walking along the forested outskirts of Sunnydale Cemetery, she could hear a fight in progress. A few yards ahead, two greasy, diseased-looking creatures in brown robes stood peering through a gap in the bushes. Darla wouldn't have cared, except that they happened to be standing at just the spot that was most ideal for seeing without being seen, so she sneaked up behind them and snapped their necks before they could so much as turn to face her.
She looked out over the graveyard. Buffy was there, along with a pair of sidekicks, and they were fighting four vampires, one of whom was Spike.
"No, get away from him!" Buffy cried. Darla blinked, hard. What the hell? She looked again and actually processed what she was seeing this time. Not only was Spike fighting on Buffy's side, but the Slayer was protecting him, even though her human friends were clearly struggling with their one vampire opponent. After using it on the vampire she'd been fighting, she tossed him her stake to use on another.
Drusilla had, in one or two more lucid moments, hissed and ranted about Spike going soft, but fighting fellow vampires alongside the Slayer? What happened to all his bluster about being William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers? No wonder she'd dumped him—but then, Darla had never understood why she'd chosen him out of all the men she could've sired in the first place, let alone held onto him for so long afterward.
The humans finished off their vampire at roughly the same time Spike staked his. Darla narrowed her eyes. Now that the noise level had died down, she could hear gentle mechanical hums, whirs, and ticks, and they sounded like they were coming from the Slayer. What was more, Darla had been able to recognize the scent of Buffy Summers on Angel from yards away, but here was the girl herself, and Darla now realized that the only things she smelled like were plastic and...no. Surely not. No vampire in her own line could possibly have this little self-respect.
Darla inhaled deeper and had to clap a hand over her mouth to hold in a burst of incredulous, derisive laughter. It was true. That wasn't the Slayer at all. It was Spike's high-tech sex toy, and he had most definitely been using it. So, Spike was in love with the Slayer and was having so little success there that he'd somehow acquired a robot version of her to console himself? His interest in her actually surprised Darla less than Angel's did, considering his long-running obsession with Slayers.
She was already glad she'd decided to make this trip. Next to Spike, she didn't feel quite so pathetic anymore. At least she had actually managed to get the real Angel, even if it had only been for one night of what he'd decided was despair-sex. She ground her teeth. Men were such idiots.
"I think that was probably the big action for the night," said Spike to the humans, plainly eager to get rid of them. "You two can toddle on home if you want."
"Uh...Buffy?" said the young man. What, had he not noticed that "Buffy" was a robot?
"Yes. Spike and I will do it alone. You guys head home."
Darla wrinkled her nose. The voice was so perky and mechanical. How was that thing fooling anyone? Presumably these people hadmet the Slayer before. Maybe they were just stupid, though, because they left after offering nothing more than a strange look by way of protest.
As fascinating as Spike's sorry little obsession was, Darla thought she'd learn more about what the real Slayer was up to if she stuck with the humans, so she slipped through the woods, keeping them in sight.
The girl coughed. "Ugh, I breathed in like a quart of vampire dust. That can't be good."
"I wish Giles told us they were back from the desert," said the boy. "I wish I knew what went on there."
"Oh, you know, Slayer/Watcher stuff. Probably some silly ritual with an enchanted prairie dog or something."
"Whatever it was, I think she's still a little spacey."
The girl shrugged. "She fought okay."
"Hey, she didn't ask about Dawn."
"That's true."
Darla was growing impatient. There hadn't been much time to learn details about the Slayer's life in the brief window she'd had between that humiliating first encounter and the deadly final one, so she couldn't remember which names attached to which people. There had been the Watcher, the mother, the bratty kid sister, and the gaggle of misfit friends, including the boy Darla had brought to the Master and the one she was now eavesdropping on. Giles was clearly the Watcher, and she thought Dawn had to be the name of the sister, unless there were now more people in her circle aside from this girl here.
"Something's wrong," the boy concluded, and they headed back in the direction of Spike and his toy.
So did Darla, and they were all treated to an eyeful of the robot straddling Spike, though everything was covered up by its skirt. "Oh, Spike. You're the big bad," it called out in its perky voice. This just kept getting sadder and sadder, and judging from the humans' looks of disbelieving horror, Darla had been right in thinking that the real Buffy had never deliberately given Spike so much as a shred of encouragement. "You're the big bad."
Oh, there was no way Darla was leaving that one lying there. The humans were headed out again. She could've followed them, but she'd already learned from them that Buffy was out of town with her Watcher, which meant she had some time to prepare.
Careful to time things just right so as to ruin Spike's fun, she emerged from her hiding place, clapping slowly. "What a moving scene," she said. "It must be love."
"Darla! Bloody hell!" Spike yelped, jumping and shoving the robot away from him, holding his coat up to preserve his modesty now that the tacky pleated skirt wasn't doing the trick, and awkwardly zipping up his pants. "I thought Dru said you were in L.A.!"
"And I thought Dru came back here for you. What does she think about all this?" she said, waving her fingers at him and the robot, which was frowning at Darla.
"I'm done with her," he said, jutting out his chin and looping an arm around the robot's shoulders, causing it to smile very brightly and abruptly. "She's nothing on my Slayer here, so I sent her packing."
"Yes," said the robot matter-of-factly. "Spike offered to stake Drusilla for me. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but was very moved because of their long history together, and Drusilla ran away because she was jealous." Darla raised an eyebrow as it planted a smacking kiss on Spike's cheek. She was very interested to know what had actually happened, not just the Spike-filtered version of events, but she obviously wasn't going to hear that from either of the available sources.
"That's right," said Spike.
"Don't embarrass yourself, Spike," said Darla. "Whoever made your little toy might've done a good enough job to fool those idiots, but I'm harder to get past. You fell for the Slayer and she rejected you, didn't she?"
"She'll come around," he said, scowling. "It's only a matter of time, now that soldier boy is gone and she's all grief-stricken over her mum. She wants me, she just won't admit it to herself. Besides, you're probably only here because you failed to wrap Angel around your finger. Hello, pot. I'm kettle. Nice to bloody meet you."
"Oh, you'd be surprised what I was able to wrap around Angelus," said Darla with a wicked grin. She looked at the robot. "You don't know what you're missing out on, sweetie."
"But I'm not missing out," it said. "Spike is a very good lover. Much better than Angel, who is lame and bloody stupid. And his hair sticks straight up."
Darla burst out laughing. "Did you come up with those lines yourself? I didn't think it was possible to write something worse than that so-called poetry you were always spouting at Dru."
"Sod off, Darla. Angelus only ever put up with your nagging because you shagged him. Why should I get the drawbacks with none of the perks?"
"That would be because I have standards," said Darla scornfully. "Besides, you apparently prefer to get your perks from a blow-up doll like some pimply thirty-year-old living in his mother's basement. But that's pretty much what you were doing when Dru turned you anyway, wasn't it?"
"Don't talk to Spike that way!" said the robot in a poor approximation of an indignant tone. "He is sexy and confident and very intimidating."
Darla was torn between amusement and annoyance on being scolded by that thing, but watching Spike's growing mortification tipped the scales towards amusement.
"Er, Buffy, go in the crypt and power down for a bit, would you?" he said, glaring daggers at Darla. The robot walked off and disappeared inside the cement structure next to them. "What do you want, Darla? Or did you just come here to ruin my night?"
"How is it that the Slayer and her friends haven't disposed of you? And don't give me more of that 'Buffy wants me, she just won't admit it to herself' bullshit."
"What, you think I wouldn't have preferred to be on the other side of that fight a few minutes ago?"
"Then why the hell weren't you?" said Darla.
"Because I don't have a sodding choice! The military stuck a bloody shock collar in my skull last year. It goes off whenever I try to hurt a human. At least I can still get in a spot of violence here and there killing demons, and I've made myself an indispensable part of the Slayer's circle. I give them information, they give me cash. Everybody's happy."
That certainly made Darla feel better about being used by the lawyers, though she was sure she'd have found a way to get rid of this shock collar device and punish those responsible if she'd been in Spike's place. "Well, I think you and I have a similar problem," she said. "Angel recently came back from a mysterious two-day absence positively reeking of little Miss Summers."
Spike's lip curled. "Yeah, Captain Forehead swooped in the night of her mum's funeral, the opportunistic bastard, and she fell right back into his arms like he'd never broken her heart and abandoned her." His voice positively dripped bitterness. Perfect.
"What would you say if I told you that you could get what you really want instead of that mechanical imitation, and I could make Angel wish he'd never met the Slayer, all at the same time?"
His eyes narrowed. "I'm listening."
I have no intention of ever writing anything M-rated, but for some reason, this chapter was actually difficult to keep at T. Still a blast to write, though. Darla and Spike know how to throw some serious shade.