DISCLAIMER: I own Danni. Joss owns all else.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I just updated Cheaper, and Throwback and SP are shortly on the way. I was feeling a little darker than usual, and this wanted to be written. Please don’t yell at me. I almost didn’t post yet, just because I know that most people would probably rather have a Small Packages, Throwback, or Cheaper chapter than the beginning of a new fic, but I figured it was a waste to write it and not post it.
It’ll probably be confusing, but then again, it does star Dru. Anyway, just know that, for this chapter at least, any scenes with Danni take place in an alternate Universe, and that the fic begins as Holtz is kidnapping Connor.
RATING: PG-13
THERE BE DRAGONS: Chapter One
The little girl smiled up at her mother and father. “Mummy, the stars want to play,” she said.
“Not until Princess has eaten dinner,” her mother replied, a soft smile settling over her lips.
A small pout settled over the child’s face. “Daddy,” she said, “the weapons want to play. They want me to stab something.” She gave him her best tough girl face. “Something eeeeeviiiiiiiil.”
“After dinner, pet,” her daddy replied, chuckling. She was strong for her age, his Danni. And feisty.
Danni wrinkled her nose and tried one more time. “The ice cream wants to play,” she said seriously. To Danni, ice cream was infinitely preferable to dinner. “It wants me to eat it. It told me so.”
Her daddy narrowed his eyes at her, and Danni let a small pout settle over her mouth.
She sighed the aggrieved kind of sigh that only four year olds could manage. “Princess will eat,” she said finally, adopting her mother’s form of speaking. “But the stars do want to play. They really do.”
As her daddy swept her up onto his shoulders, Danni tilted her head to the side.
Listen.
Listen. Listen. Cracking. Leaving now. Red and rage and the pale, pale baby.
Drusilla tilted her head to the side, her eyes wide, and a half smile playing on her lips. She drew one finger slowly down the man-boy’s cheek. “So hungry,” she said, her voice taking on a sing-songy quality. “Hell hungers for him.” She dragged her lips across the male face in front of her.
“The stars are singing tonight,” she whispered into his hair. “Do you hear them?”
“You are one whacked out chick,” the guy responded. He smirked at her. “I think I like it.”
“No,” she said softly, listening to something he couldn’t hear. “That won’t do at all.”
He gave her his patented pensive look. The girls went crazy for it.
Listen. Listen. Dru licked his face. Red, red, red.
“A river of blood,” she said under her breath. “Such pretties for a wicked, wicked man.” She glanced at the boy-man. “Are you wicked?” she asked.
Wicked, wicked. The voices from her past sounded different than the stars and she pushed them out of her head.
Gone.
Drusilla gasped. “Daddy,” she breathed.
The man pushed her onto the bed. “That’s right,” he said. “Who’s your daddy?”
Father. Daddy. Father. Hands.
“The little one is gone,” she said. “Hell has eaten him right up.”
“Little one?” Her lover wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or confused.
“Poor, lonely Daddy,” Drusilla said, her lips puckered into a pout as she leaned toward the man.
Angel watched helplessly, his jaw clenched and his stomach wrought with fury and pain, as his son was carried into the very worst kind of hell. He could still feel the child’s heartbeat next to his own.
“Connor.”
“Connor,” Danni said decisively, a world away. “That’s a funny word. Is that another name for Poof, Daddy? Or maybe bullocks?”
“What now, little luv?” her daddy asked.
Danni didn’t reply. The stars were singing. They wanted her to come. Come where? She wondered.
Dru leaned towards her would-be lover and dragged her tongue across his face. The stars were sad tonight, so sad, and so ready. Ready for what?
She felt her sire’s pain and looked down at the person in front of her.
“You aren’t my prince,” she said in a low, almost hushed voice.
Jezebel, the voice from her past echoed in her mind and Dru pushed it down. The stars were so much nicer than the ghosts of what had been.
“Forgive me, Father,” she said, swallowing the pain she felt for her sire whole, an odd smile on her face.
“Huh?” the man-boy looked up at her, confusion on his face.
She snapped his neck in one smooth movement, and as her face morphed and she brought her fangs to his neck, she whispered into his still warm ear. “For I have sinned.”
As the words left her mouth, she felt a pull in her stomach, and the stars sang one clear, high note as she collapsed onto the corpse.
Danni.
Danni.
“Yes, stars?” Danni answered them cheerfully.
“What’s that, Bit?” her daddy asked, and in the next instant, he was gone.
One second she was on her daddy’s shoulders, and the next, Danni was standing in the middle of a street she had never seen. Her mummy was gone. Her daddy was gone. There wasn’t any ice cream, either.
“Bloody hell,” she said, quoting her father. “Bloody bullocks poof wanker sodding hell...” The little girl trailed off, running out of curse words. “Bint,” she added. That sounded about right. “Bloody bullocks poof wanker sodding hell bint,” she said, stringing them altogether in a sing-song voice that trembled just a bit.
She felt the people’s eyes on her before she noticed them. Sometimes, Danni was a little space cadet, like Mummy.
There were so many people, and the air was so angry, so hurt, so red-red-red that she wanted to cover her eyes and her ears.
“Mummy?” she whispered. “Daddy?”
They all stared at her, all of the angry-hurt-hungry people. They stared at her like she’d crawled out of hell.
She scuffed her foot into the ground and looked up at the sky, her little hands on her hips. “If you wanted to play,” she told the stars crossly, “all you had to do was ask.”
TBC… I know that bit was a bit confusing, but now that Danni’s in the actual world, it shouldn’t be that bad. Next up, grief-stricken Angel discovers who Danni really is, and Danni decides to find her this-world Daddy all on her own.
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