Title: "One Soul For the Price of Two," or "Happy Birthday, Susi!"

Author: Kendra A. (kendraangelusslayer@yahoo.com)

Rating: R

Pairing: Darla/Angel in the most roundabout sort of way, and a very-much-so Willow/Angel

Summary: What's killing Darla in 'The Trial' isn't her heart—it's her soul.

Spoilers: S5 BtVS and S2 AtS

Distribution: STTEOT (), Bite Me… Please? (), Fanfiction.Net (), UCSL (), Temptation Embraced (), Near Her Always () and my own site, *blurry* (). Do you want this? Just ask.

Author's Notes: For her birthday, Susi (of STTEOT) issued a challenge: write her a birthday story that was Willow/Angel with smut, angst and romance (Spike can be their knight in shining armor, but not paired with Willow—that's a no-no). The story has to be three chapters at least. Here's my attempt at making her happy.

- Prologue -

Darkness had fallen, but Darla had not moved.

She sat, still and silent, before the vanity in the dim motel room. A clouded and cracked mirror was the focus of her attention; though it had been what seemed like hours since the last flash, she waited patiently.

As she waited, she studied her reflection deliberately—it had been so long since she'd seen it, after all. Four hundred years, she thought ironically, and still surprises.

Darla examined the stiff blonde hair and pouty lips with indifference; she noted the still-pale cheeks and cautious dark eyes framed with thick lashes. The straight nose and high forehead were next. Nothing much seemed to have changed.

The wristwatch given to her by Wolfram & Hart ticked gently on the vanity. It was almost hypnotic, almost enough to loll her to sleep, almost enough to make her let down her guard and miss the flash when it came, but Darla managed to keep her eyes trained steadily on the mirror, waiting.

Always, waiting…

And suddenly, after the darkness had become all-encompassing and all of her hearing trained on the delicate watch gently ticking, the flash came.

It came suddenly through the black—bright, glaring light, more strongly than it had ever come before, shining so whitely her vision glittered with tears. The soothing ticking of the watch disappeared beneath the great silent roar that overtook her, and Darla rocked dizzily on the bench in front of the vanity in the midst of the flash. Then her rolling eyes managed to focus on her reflection, and the brilliant light dimmed to a glow and the roaring to a purr.

There, writhing in the mirror where her reflection should be, was a girl—no, a young woman, long and slender. The stranger hugged herself tightly, clutching at her abdomen as she doubled over. She screamed without sound, and her chapped lips cracked and bled. Darla watched her, transfixed, until the same pain this girl was feeling swept inside her own body and tore her open from larynx to diaphragm.

Darla fell to the floor, tearing with short-nailed fingers at her stomach, screaming with a hoarse throat for the torture to stop, for it to end, she'd do anything for it to end. The flash took over again, sweeping over and under and through her, blinding and deafening, but Darla could still hear her own pleas entwining with the strangers', and then it all went black.

When Darla woke, she was not alone, and the pain had not left.

She clawed at the worn carpet on the floor of the motel room and managed to somehow get to her hands and knees. She crawled to the vanity and pulled herself up just far enough to look into the mirror.

Though the hair was still blonde, shoulder-length, stiff from a little too much blow-drying and spray—though the eyes were still dark blue and framed with thick brown lashes—though her pout was still fully functional, her skin still pale, her nose still short and straight and her forehead high—she was not alone in her reflection.

"Get out of my head!" she screamed at the mirror. Her voice barely rasped above a whisper, so hoarse was it from her earlier screams.

And from within the dark depths of Darla's eyes, Willow Rosenberg wept.

to chapters 1 -4