Author: Kay Tee maybeshedoes@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.oocities.org/maybeshedoes//front.html
Distribution: Take it, but tell me where so I can visit.
Rated: PG-13, for gore
Spoilers: rewriting 'To Shanshu in LA.' Also, references to 'Darla,' and 'Angel.'
Pairing: Darla
Disclaimer: In my dreams I'm Joss, but during the day I have to face the cold hard truth-- I'm a hack who steals characters. But I'm not giving them back! Or I am, just don't sue me, all I have are speeding tickets and student loans.
Summary: Angel finds out what they raised in that box.
Improv: You're doing it all wrong
Author's notes: Okay, I liked the Darla arc overall, but it took too damn long to get there, and she was just annoying after a while.
Darla's first gravemarker had been a simple wooden cross stuck in the ground with her name and the year she died written across the horizontal plank.
She wondered absently what her second gravemarker would be.
***
They pulled her up out of the box, and she looked down at herself with vague disgust-- she was naked except for the filmy substance that covered her body.
Like a babe from the womb. She was going to be sick.
Then Angel was there. She was so shocked to see him again, remembering the last horrible instant of her vampire life, that she didn't see the stake as it sailed through the air, end over end, until it stopped.
Angel's aim was excellent-- he got her right in the heart.
And because the words were already on their way out of her mouth before the stake hit her, she said, "Angel?"
She fell to the floor, laughing. Dying, but laughing also, laughing hysterically, blood spitting out of her mouth, spraying across her naked and shimmering body.
And she wondered absently if she would even be given a gravemarker this time around.
***
She had pulled herself up out of the dirt under The Master's approving eye. A little disoriented, she just looked around for a long moment, trying to get her bearings. Finally, she said, "A cemetery." Just making certain.
She had looked down and seen her own name on the grave marker. Her lips curled in disgust, and she kicked out at it, totally obliterating the cross with the weight of her kick.
Her eyes widened in surprise-- she'd never been that strong before.
The Master stepped forward then. "Come, childe," he said, "you must be hungry."
***
Angel stepped toward the body in shock. "She's human?"
The lawyers around him all looked fairly disgruntled, except Holland, who couldn't have been more pleased.
Angel knelt by Darla's side, touching that soft face. "Human."
But she was dead and he'd killed her.
"What did you do?" He asked no one in particular.
Holland's coldly gentle voice answered, "No, Angel, the question is what did *you* do."
Angel didn't reply. He just scooped the body up effortlessly, and strode out of the room before any of the lawyers managed to say another word.
***
The second gravemarker was a small birch tree under which Angel buried her.
He carved into the bark: "Darla. Human."
Then he walked away-- had to get to the hospital, had to save Cordelia and Wesley.
***
After a fantastic hunt-- blood literally pouring through the streets, Darla returned to her grave. She looked at the marker that she had kicked over, and thought with distaste that the thing wouldn't have survived one winter. She may have been a whore, but she deserved a lasting tombstone.
Her hand momentarily stretched out to trace the name on the marker, but the second her flesh touched the wood, her fingertips began to burn. A cross. A holy symbol. Crap. She never would have wanted such a thing.
Darla turned away, set on finding her master and becoming, for him, something great.
The woman she had been, Prudence Thatcher, was dead. Forgotten.
***
Angel sat alone in the dark, as had become his custom.
He hadn't told the others about the box, or his human-again sire. He still didn't know what to make of it.
But she had been back, if only for a few minutes, and she had been human.
Worlds of possibilities floated to Angel, and he wanted to cry, wanted to bleed.
But he just sat there, thinking of Darla.
He had tried so hard to forget her after the Boxer rebellion.
Had deliberately pushed her out of his thoughts after he dusted her in Sunnydale.
But this time was different. This time, he would not forget.