![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
|
productiveNo idea where this came from! I was feeling in a stressed-out crazy state of mind and it translated to a Drusilla point of view.
Title: Cassandra
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel, pre-series
Characters: Drusilla/Spike, Angelus, Darla
Prompt: Suspension of disbelief
Rating + warnings: Teen+ (violence, language, sex, horror)
Word count: 1979
Summary: Drusilla's visions, much like Cassandra's, do nothing but torture her.
"Get one of the bloody minions to do it! Oh! That's right, we didn't bring any. Well, that was your idea. Build the fucking fire yourself."
Angelus didn't say anything; he just slammed a fist into William's face, quite casually. It was casual really. A regular occurrence. At the desk in the corner Darla sighed over her book.
"Spike, don't make Daddy angry. He'll just have to punish you." Dru reached from her armchair beside the empty fireplace and brushed her fingers through William's hair as he picked himself up from the floor. He shrugged her off.
Angelus was brandishing the poker when William turned back to face him, blinking the haze from his eyes and licking the blood dribbling from his nose.
"You'll build us a fire, lad, or I'll shove this poker so far up yer arse, ye'll have to fish it out yer nostrils."
William snatched the poker from Angelus who held onto it while they stared each other out over their white knuckled hands. William looked away first and Angelus let go of the iron. William began to slam about with the coal scuttle and grate: petulant in defeat as always.
Dru hummed the tune the stars were playing as she watched her boy build a slapdash fire. He glanced her way with a soft smile and a slow blink and she shivered with pleasure.
"Make me warm, Spike, light me up inside," she murmured.
"Always, my princess."
Dru drew her legs up onto the chair and laid her head on the armrest, watching him happily. On the opposite side of the fireplace Angelus leaned on the corner of the mantle, overseeing William's work. He threw a box of matches onto the hearth; William snatched them up and gingerly struck one, using it to light a twist of paper that he held at arms length as he placed it into the heart of the coals. He built a decent blaze, tending the fire cautiously until he finished the hazardous task. Then he stood well back with blatant relief, wiping his hands on his trousers and glaring at Angelus, who studiously ignored him.
Dru stretched her hands out to the warmth and watched the flames dance like the souls of dead children, penned in by the grate and reaching for freedom up the chimney.
"No escape pretty ones, no escape."
"What's that, pet?"
Dru watched as a burning cinder rolled from the badly cleaned grate onto the rug. Angelus swiftly stamped it out. He turned to William and started gesturing at the fire and berating him, but Dru didn't hear the exchange over a sudden roaring in her ears: a thousand whispering susurrations combining to a hurricane wind. She watched the ember rise from the rug, float in the air like a lazy insect, then swoop and burn a hole through Angelus's waistcoat and shirt. She clutched her hands in her skirts and stared in fascinated horror as it started to eat into the flesh above his heart without him even noticing.
"Daddy?"
He ignored her, grabbing William by the back of the neck and forcing him to kneel on the hearthrug and look at where the cinder had landed, "It's scorched the carpet."
"What the bloody hell do you care, it's not your house anyway!"
He backhanded William, who fell in a heap at the feet of Dru's chair. She continued to stare at her daddy, the light was spreading, burning fast through his body, leaving black cracked skin in its wake. She moaned in fear.
"Why is she making that awful noise?" Darla's book snapped shut in her annoyance.
"Dru? What's wrong?" Angelus asked, he reached hand to touch her cheek and she recoiled, howling, from the writhing light and dark that wreathed his shape.
"Leave her alone you, bastard," William struggled to his knees and pushed Angelus making him stumble back into Darla.
Angelus snarled. The darkness around him coalesced into a fearsome shape which seemed to struggle against the bright flames coiling around it. As Angelus lunged for William again, the shape appeared to solidify, consuming him. Dru wailed.
"Stop fighting! Deal with her before I have to," Darla commanded. All eyes turned to her.
Dru saw another pin bright light hovering around Darla, now penetrating her skin and making her shine serenely from within, now blazing bright, too bright. She screamed as her grandmama turned to an ashen replica before her eyes. Dru scrabbled with her hands and feet, trying to push herself deeper into the armchair, away from the visions. Why couldn't they see what was happening? Why could they never see?
"Embers and sparks, the little girl she's stamped out on the hearth and everyone burns. Don't anger the witch, she's Snow White's mummy after all."
Darla threw her hands up in despair, "Riddles! It's always nonsense. Spike, shut her up. Gag her, or fuck her to unconsciousness if you have to, I don't much care which. Angelus, come. I want to hunt."
"You high-and-mighty bitch. Maybe if you suspended your disbelief once in a while, you'd find out something useful from her."
William rounded on Darla, then cowered back as Angelus stepped between them. A great black leonine creature weighed down by myriad burning chains, it snarled at William, then bounded over to Dru. Scents of burning flesh and acid filled her nose, catching in her throat. She struggled to look away or close her eyes but remained transfixed.
"Best be quiet by the time we come back, like a good little girl, Dru, or daddy will punish your Spike," the creature growled.
She quaked and nodded: a low, distressed wuthering the only noise she dared make. The creature slunk back to the endlessly crumbling, never dissolving woman that stood in the doorway holding her hand out to it in command, then both diabolical figures swept from the room. William watched them leave, his fury like an aura around him.
"Spike, Spike, Spike, Spike…" she whimpered, closing her eyes and rolling her head back and fore along the chair back.
He turned, "Damn it, pet, what have you done to yourself?"
He grabbed her wrists and dragged her hands away from her chest. She looked in fascination at her red-stained nails and fingertips, then down at her chest where the remains of her blouse revealed her shredded skin.
"Come on. Upstairs. We'll take off those spoiled clothes and bathe you."
He swept her up in his arms and she clutched his shirt with her bloodied hands, burying her eyes in the crook of his neck as he carried her from the room and up the stairs.
"You smell of flowers, Spike."
He laughed, "I doubt that, pet."
"Flowers and salt-air and warm sunshine. I can hear waves, and birdsong. All summer long we'd stay by the sea."
"Is that a pretty memory, Dru? Hmm?" he kicked open the door to their room and manoeuvred them through.
"Memories lie like cards on the table. Shuffle them and play. The Hermit and the Beast do battle, the Fool seeks the Queen of Batons, she has golden hair."
"Does she now. Like Grandmama?"
"No." Dru frowned to herself, then started licking her fingers clean, inspecting them carefully after each lick.
William set her down on the bed and went to the washstand, pouring some water from the jug, and gathering up cloths and a towel.
Satisfied with her cleaned hands Dru sat up and stripped off her blouse, she looked into the cheval mirror in the corner of the room. William stared back from the glass, his chest covered with the same deep scratch wounds as hers. She slid from the bed and crouched down in front of the mirror. His hair was curly and tangled and strangely coloured with white ends. He sat huddled in darkness, bare-chested, hugging his knees. He flinched as Dru reached for the reflection.
"Spike, my darlin', what have you done to yourself?" she pleaded, but he turned away and curled into himself further.
"I haven't done anything, love," William answered confused, "Come up off the floor. Let me see your skin."
Dru let herself be settled on the bed again, still staring at the shivering figure in the mirror. William fussed about her, needlessly cleaning the cuts on her chest and washing her hands. He passed between her and the mirror and the other William was gone, only the room was reflected. Dru looked at him and her earlier fear clawed its way back, he was illuminated inside like Daddy and Grandmama had been, but the light seemed to ebb and flow with his movements rather than consuming him as it had them.
"Wwwwwwww, Spike," she grabbed at him as he tried to put the washbasin away, spilling the palely bloodstained water on the floor.
"Careful, pet," his expression was kind, but the light blazed from his eyes and mouth as he spoke and she started back away from him, though with a conflicted stretch of her arms she still reached for him.
"Permeated. Infused. Nooooooooo. Cinderella doesn't want the glass slipper, she wants to stay in the cinders where it's warm. She'll brush your ashes away like dirt. Don't burn, Spike, please!"
"Sweetheart, I'm not burning. We'll find a minion to make the fires for us, yeah? It's ok, love. It's alright." He wrapped her in his arms and she buried her face in his chest, screwing her eyes shut tight so she didn't have to see the light. Effulgent. He always wanted the brightness. But he mustn't have it. "Mustn't. Mustn't."
"Mustn't what, Dru?" he held her face in his hands and forced her to look him in the eyes, though she tossed her head and fought him.
"Don't leave me, Spike. Don't go, not even when I tell you."
"I'll never leave you. We're forever. My goddess, my love. Why would I leave you?"
"Show me, Spike." She grabbed his hand and forced it between her legs, hitching up her skirts; she struggled to undo the hooks on her corset. Maybe if he fucked her, he could share the light with her, and it wouldn't matter if her family was all consumed by fire - she'd be there burning with them.
"No Dru, not when you're like this. I never know if it's me you're seeing and feeling, or some imagined thing."
"I'll scream and wail when Grandmama and Daddy come home, there'll be hell to pay. Oh, there will. You don't want that, William," she goaded.
William looked away, scowling, then grabbed her and threw her flat on the bed. He tore her corset half off, not bothering with the fastenings. His face shifted, the yellow of his eyes a pale comparison to the blaze of light burning around him. Dru pulled at his clothes; she laughed desperately as he stripped them both roughly, rending her clothes and leaving bruises; she arched her body up to his as he pinned her; she hooked her legs around his hips and moved with him. Still the fire refused to meet her, flowing out of reach of her hands even as her boy pressed into her touch.
"Light me up, Spike. Please, Spike." she pleaded and sobbed. He bit her as he came, and she scrammed his back in response, melting at the feel of him biting down harder with the pain.
He pulled the covers over them both and murmured soothing nonsense to her as she lay quiet beside him, tears rolling silently down her cheeks as, behind her closed eyelids, she watched a thousand images she could neither understand nor communicate flit across her mind's eye.
She felt none of the burning she wanted, her body didn't crumble to ash where she lay, and as the scents and sounds and sights of her vision faded, she was left feeling only the cold.