Jane feels pretty normal carrying a pizza box across a college campus. She feels a little less so when she goes round back of the main library, behind the tall, frost-rimed hedge, and down the steps to a door that's not even marked maintenance personnel only. Her key works, though. So does the one for the padlock she encounters a moment later. But the combination lock?
A voice sounds inside her head. Nine six zero nine one seven.
September 17th, 1996. The day they had met. "Listen to the nice girl's soothing voice," Jane tells herself under her breath, and opens the lock.
Jane Lane's first few days of college have been a whirlwind of new experiences. First, vampires are real. Second, Daria Morgendorffer is in love with her. Third, Daria Morgendorffer is now a vampire, thanks to a cursed artifact of some kind. Fourth, she is in love with Daria. Fifth—and by this point in her recounting, all the points are jostling with each other for priority—Daria is trying to finish her college degree regardless.
In this whirlwind, Jane has been slower to ask questions than she guesses she should, but on the other hand, she doesn't really have a basis for comparison about any of these things. She knows that Daria doesn't ignite in the sunlight, that direct sun does knock out her dark-gift skills, that being out during the day drags her down in general....
Here, to the hole Daria had made for herself under the Raft College library, the cozy little subterranean den outfitted with a reading lamp and all the other luxuries that Daria needs, Jane has brought pizza for herself and the blood in her veins for Daria.
Daria stands up and embraces Jane before the door has quite closed. "I love you," Daria says, because she had spent too many years not saying it.
"I love you too," Jane says, likewise. In her arms, Daria feels chilled to the bone, but Jane knows that can change.
"I'm not supposed to drink from you again for another... fifty-two days."
"What?"
"Jane, I took more out of you than the Red Cross would."
"I feel fine, Daria. I stayed rehydrated, I'm not tired, I've been taking iron..." This is the most bizarre negotiation that she's ever taken part in. "Can't you take less, maybe? Like a blood test amount instead of a blood donation amount? And can you think that over while I start eating this margherita pizza?"
"Sure, sure." Daria leads her to the mat-and-sleeping-bag corner. Jane flips open the pizza box and grabs a slice for herself.
Daria has been working on her laptop. Jane can see that the title on the open document window is ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND LONG-TERM PLANNING.
Jane quips, "Looks like you're being undeadly serious."
Daria rests her arms on her knees and her head in turn upon her crossed wrists. In the light from her computer screen, she looks particularly inhuman, and particularly pleased, in her quiet way, that Jane is finally here.
"Now that I'm out to you," Daria says, "I can finally start thinking about what I'm supposed to do with all this."
"Other than drink from me at the maximum rate that is medically achievable?"
"And turn you, one of these nights." Daria accepts this as a fact. Jane isn't entirely sure why yet, but she has the distinct feeling that she'll agree with Daria's reasons when she hears them. She thinks that she should feel more trepidation about this, but again, no frame of comparison. "But outing myself to you was only the first step. I don't know what I should do... what I can do..."
"You mean," Jane says around a mouthful of pizza, "once you stop eating pigeons from the undersides of bridges, what if you run into, like, the Slayer?"
"Or the Talamasca. Or the elder council of blood-purist vampires. Or the Hellsing organization."
"Hellsing?"
"It's a manga. There's a club on campus doing a fan translation." Daria pauses. "Or... what if I don't?"
Her tone makes Jane slow down her chewing and let her half-eaten slice drop back towards the box.
"Jane," Daria begins, "when the ancient lore rattling around in my head says that I can do this," she rolls back her sleeve and flames leap into being along her arm, only to quell themselves a few seconds later. "I can do it. When it says I can do this," she stands and pushes off from the ground, and she floats over the pizza box, her Doc Martens touching down on the opposite side. "I can do that. When it says I can drain you to unconsciousness, and send my voice into your mind—"
"You definitely can."
"But when the lore says that I should be able to hold still, and look into myself, and listen outward, and hear the voices of the many, of all my kind..."
"Nothing?"
Daria laughs without humor. "Funny, how we thought I might be less alone in college than high school."
"Do you really think that you're... the only one?"
"Maybe my kind aren't any less self-destructive than humanity, and we just have the powers to go out in style. Fuck if I know. My only real lead is the thing that gave me the dark gift, and tracing the provenance of that—I could look for years and find nothing."
Jane realizes that she has an option for consoling Daria that she hadn't had in high school. "Look at me," she says, and moves in for a kiss. "I won't pretend to know," she tells Daria after they pull back apart the tiniest bit, "any more than you do about any of that. What I do know is that I've never met anyone better suited to figuring it out, and that I am in love with you."
"Appreciated on both counts," says Daria, who initiates the next kiss.
"Now," Jane says when she has a moment to draw breath. She pulls up her own sleeve. "Fangs. Please." There is a need in her tone that she did not plan for, but once she hears it, she knows she cannot suppress it.
"Thirty milliliters," Daria decides. She holds Jane's arm in both hands like it is infinitely precious to her. She extends her fangs.
"Thank you," Jane says, just before Daria bites.