He was right, you know - the realization - suddenly - of what it is exactly that you've done over the centuries...let's just say that I am lucky suicide for a human is a tad more difficult than for a vampire. All a vampire need do is step into sunlight, or fall onto a stake....For all their seeming frailty and fragility, humans are tougher than I remember. I am tougher, stronger than I remember.

I can still remember those four hundred and some years, all that I did. I remember being turned, turning a drunken lout of a boy named Liam into the monster Angelus. I remember Drusilla's insane ramblings as he turned her - "snakes in the woodshed, snakes in the woodshed," she said - and I remember her bring home this scrap of a boy with crystal blue eyes and tattered clothes. She called him William and said that the stars had told her his secrets. I remember it all, even dying at the hands of my own dear, sweet boy.

Of course, he's not my boy any longer, hasn't been for a long time. He's grown-up  now, a man; the soul has changed him.

As mine will change me.

I've felt it there, in the hidden recesses of my mind; I've felt it the whole time I've been back on Earth. I didn't know what it was; I thought I was going insane, which was no problem. Evil and insanity go hand-in-hand among vampires; I welcomed it as my dark-haired grandchilde did before me. When I finally realized what it really was, it was too late.

The guilt. Remorse. Agony. Self-hate. They all claimed me as my soul, my conscience, slowly made itself known again.

There was only one thing I could do, and I'd already learned that death wasn't the answer.

I would have to visit my boy.

He was thoroughly shocked. But as we stood there in the lobby and stared at each other, I knew that he understood. He could see, in a simple glance, that I was not the Darla he knew before. He ordered his companions to leave, and leave they did.

I collapsed into a heap on the floor and cried.

I heard him move, felt his arms around me within moments. He held me as I cried.

"I understand now," I told him once I'd calmed somewhat, "I understand."

"Sh," he whispered, "I know."

"I'm so, so sorry," I cried suddenly. "And now...it must seem a wasted gift. I have no one to share it with, and you've desired it for so long..."

"What is it?" he asked softly.

"My humanity," I whispered and began crying again.

He says it gets better in time. And I trust him. But he's had a good century or so to deal with it.

I will be long dead by the time my century's come and gone.

"I'm sorry," I said in a whisper, turning to him so that the others couldn't hear.

"For what?" he asked.

"What I did to your beloved."

He frowned. "To Buffy?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was jealous. I'm sorry." I paused. "I don't love you like that any more," I admitted.

He smiled. "I fogave you a long time ago," he told me, "for everything. It's a matter of forgiving yourself now - that's what we both have to work at." He paused as well, and then said, "I still love you, I will always love you, but that love that I have for you has changed as well.

"Who?"

"Drusilla," I tell him. A rush of sadness covers his face.

"Something about snakes," he tells me.

"'Snakes in the woodshed, snakes in the woodshed,'" I say, remembering her words. "I've finally understood. We're the snakes, you and I, Angel. We would lay in wait, striking the innocent when we could, but now-" I pause, thinking things through.

"Now we have shed that old skin and are learning to live with this new one," he finishes for me.

"Exactly," I tell him.

He smiles, but it does not reach his eyes.

I think it all over and over; I contemplate it.

We are the snakes in the woodshed.