Chapter One: Twilight Falling

"Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose
Il me dit des mots d'amour
Des mots de tous les jours
Et ça me fait quelque chose"
-Edith Piaf, La Vie En Rose



The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and the club's dim lighting filled the room with shadows. Most of the tables were filled, and the stage was occupied by a slender blonde girl in green sequins crooning a love-song into a microphone. The spotlight threw sparks from her dress, and the piano accompanied her from the near darkness beyond the circle of light. Her voice was sultry and compelling, and wound though the babble of conversation like smoke through the air, rising occasionally above the hum of noise.

Drunken laughter crescendoed occasionally, and both men and women floated between tables, greeting and flirting and eying one another, drinks firmly in hand. There was a somehow frantic underlay to the scene; men spoke a little too quickly, women laughed a little too loudly, and the dim lighting served to conceal the worn state of most of the evening wear on display, as well as softening the hints of age beginning to carve themselves into young faces.

Spike was sitting at a back table, one arm slung casually around Drusilla's shoulders, a cigarette burning in his free hand. They'd only been in Berlin a week, but he was definitely enjoying himself. He'd found them a house on Friedrichstrasse, right in the belly of the glittering, desperate beast of the city, and he and Dru had spent the past seven nights roaming clubs and cabarets and bath-houses, feasting on the youth of the crumbling Weimar Republic.

They'd taken meals from wet streets and smoke-filled rooms with obscene ease: society girls, cabaret dancers, too-thin hustlers, and over-educated, well-dressed young men that reminded Drusilla of the man Spike had once been. The taste of them made Spike think of cherries gone bruised and over-ripe, sweet and bitter and rotten all at once, and he'd spent the week buried to the fangs in a whirlwind of blood and gaiety and despair, loving every minute of it.

At the moment, however, he was getting bored and irritable – and that, he decided moodily, taking a drag off of his cigarette, was Schroeder's fault. The other vampire had accosted them on their way to the table, then had the nerve to sit down unasked and yammer on at Spike like they'd been mates for years. Spike would gladly have staked him moments after making his acquaintance, and had refrained only because he didn't want to get thrown out of the club. Drusilla had said something about meeting someone there, and he generally went along with her visions. Still, if Schroeder kept yapping, he was liable to end up dust.

“My Master is very interested in meeting you,” Schroeder was saying. “The chaos in the city presents an unparalleled opportunity-”

“For you to bore us to death?” Spike turned unimpressed eyes on the other vampire. “We've no interest in local politics.”

He put as scornful a spin as he could manage on the last two words. Schroeder opened his mouth to protest, and Spike cut him off with a sharp gesture.

"I'm going to say this once, mate, and once only. Go away. Bugger off. Run home to your Master. Dru an' I don't make nice with anyone but each other. And don't come back to pester us, either. If I ever see you again, I'll rip your liver out an' make you eat it.”

Spike's German was deliberately ungrammatical, but functional, and he got his point across. Schroeder sputtered indignantly, but got up quickly and walked away. Spike watched his retreat with narrowed eyes, then turned back to Drusilla.

“Was that our surprise visitor, pet? 'Cause I have to tell you, I didn't fancy him much.”

“He wasn't nice at all,” Drusilla agreed. “Our visitor shall bring us sweetmeats, and a lovely dance with a man who is not a car at all.”

“Spike, you never learn,” said a woman's voice. Spike recognized the steel-and-velvet tones at once. He looked up, startled.

“Darla!?” he exclaimed. Beside him, Dru laughed softly, delighted.

“Grandmama's come back to us!”

Darla continued her lecture as if they hadn't spoken. “There are benefits to playing nicely with the locals.” She came up to the table and looked at him, clearly waiting for the courtesies.

“Have a seat,” he said, inclining his head. He wasn't about to get to his feet for the bitch. She'd left him and Dru to their own devices the night after he'd killed his Slayer, and he hadn't so much as heard a whisper from or about her since. Darla rolled her eyes at his rudeness, but she sat down anyway.

“This is a surprise,” he said. “We haven't seen you in what – thirty years?”

“Almost,” Darla agreed, waving one languid hand at a passing waiter. She looked good, there was no denying that. Unlike Dru, she was dressed in the height of current fashion, and her blonde hair had been bobbed short, cut by an expert hand. Spike wondered idly if she still kept human maidservants. “Vodka, double,” she said, and the waiter hurried off.

Spike pulled his cigarette case out of his pocket and opened it before offering it to her. She took one, and he offered it to Dru, who ignored him. She was humming happily to herself, staring into her drink and swaying slightly. Spike shrugged and lit Darla's cigarette before taking one for himself.

“You're looking fancy,” Darla said. “Less like a dock hand than you did in China.”

Spike looked down at his suit. It was one of five he'd had made in an exclusive Savile Row shop. The tailor had been particularly inspired, as he'd been promised his life in exchange for good work. He hadn't gotten it, of course, but the hope of it had, in Spike's opinion, made him do a better job.

“I'm playing the gentleman now, aren't I?” he asked.

“Not with that accent,” she said nastily. “Nor with that scar through your eyebrow. Where did that come from?”

“That's the Slayer's work,” he said. “You were there that night, remember? Or were you too busy spreading your legs for the prodigal Angelus?”

“Watch your tongue, boy,” she said evenly. “I can still rip it right out of your head.”

He sneered at her. “And a minute ago you were telling me off for threatening the locals. Thought you wanted to play nice.”

“That doesn't mean that I'll tolerate your insolence.”

“Tolerate it or shove off,” Spike said. “I'll not be bear-led by you again.” She gave him a narrow-eyed look.

“Drusilla may have chosen better than any of us realized when she turned you.”

“Yeah?” he said lazily. He liked hearing his own praises sung, particularly by Darla, who'd always been a cold-blooded bitch, but that didn't mean he was fool enough to believe she meant it. “What do you want?” he asked bluntly.

She exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke through her nostrils, like a small blonde dragon. “Someday, William, someone will teach you patience. I hope I'm there to see it.”

“Get to the point, Darla,” Spike told her.

“Fine,” she said, her eyes narrowing in irritation. “Have you ever heard of Charles de Renault?”

“French vamp, right? Hangs about with Dracula's crowd?” He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and lit another. “I've run into him before. We didn't get along.”

“I'd have been surprised if you had,” Darla said dryly. “Charles has manners.”

“He's a stuck-up, irritating tosser,” Spike translated. “All of Dracula's mates are.”

“Where did you meet – never mind.” Darla rolled her eyes. “I'm sure you were as much of a disgrace to your lineage and rearing as you always are in anything resembling polite company.”

“What can I say?” Spike shrugged. “All of that 'children of the night' bollocks makes my fangs itch.”

“Such language,” Darla murmured. Spike smirked at her, but as the waiter chose that moment to return with her drink, she chose to ignore the expression with the icy dignity she'd always been so good at. Once the waiter was gone, she continued: “Charles has something of mine, and I want it back.”

“It's Charles, is it?” Spike chuckled. “Just how friendly did you get with this Frog, then?”

The shift in Darla's expression was minute. It was also the only warning that Spike got before her hand shot out and caught him by the collar.

“Don't make me warn you again,” she said, etyes glittering dangerously.

“Urk,” he answered.

Darla apparently took that for consent, because she let go of him. He glared balefully at her as he straightened the mangled lines of his collar.

“What's he got of yours, then? And why don't you just go take it from him?”

“Starlight,” said Drusilla. “Starlight caught in stone. He's run off with your pretty gift, hasn't he, Grandmama?”

"Make her stop calling me that,” Darla said automatically. Spike had lost count of the number of times he'd heard her order Angelus to break Dru of that particular habit.

“You do it,” he said, “if you think you can. What's this bugger run off with, then?”

“My diamonds,” Darla said. “I'd get them myself, but he has security, and they'd recognize me.”

“Which is where I come in?” Spike asked. “I don't bloody think so. Why don't you find a nice society lady, kill her, and take her jewels?”

“It's the necklace Luke gave me,” she snarled. “It's got protection spells on it, and I want it back.”

“Luke?” Spike arched his scarred eyebrow. “Not that Cro-Magnon stuffed shirt! Trying to get back into old Bat Face's good graces, are we?”

“I'm not sure why you care, Spike. You've never taken any interest in politics.”

“Oh, I don't. Care, that is. Just find it amusing, 's all.”

“He's taking a trip,” Drusilla said. “Poof! Like a cork into a bottle.”

Darla rolled her eyes.

“This is wonderful," she sighed. "The two most powerful descendants of my direct line are a thug and a madwoman. You probably wouldn't be able to help if you wanted to.”

“Nice try,” Spike told her, "but I'm not stupid enough to fall for that old gag."

Her eyes flashed dangerously, and he was bracing for her to come after him again when Drusilla spoke.

“Don't fuss, Grandmama. We'll go and find your pretty stones. Spike is cranky because the worms are nattering at him again, but he is my Knight of Wands, and will be good and chivalrous and true.”

“Bugger,” Spike muttered, settling unhappily back into his seat. “I guess that settles it, then.”

***

Notes: First, many thanks to the wonderful debris4spike, who provided beta services. Any remaining errors are mine, and mine alone.

As far as Spike's ability to speak German is concerned, I have broken with canon, partly for plot reasons, but mostly because a classically educated English gentleman of Victoria's day would have been expected to know not only Greek and Latin, but French and/or German as well.

I find it difficult to believe that as scholarly a man as William was would not have picked up all four languages -- especially given Spike's canonical linguistic abilities.

I do, however, find it easy to believe that Spike would have kept up the pretense of being uneducated. It is a pretense that would have been extremely difficult to keep up when conversing in other languages -- especially those languages he studied as a human, when he would by default have been taught the dialect, grammar, and accent of the upper classes.