Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns all.
A/N: This just popped into being while I was watching House, of all things, and I just couldn't get it out of my head. So I hope you like it!
Dreamer.
The wind was howling and the dark clouds scudded across the sky. Drusilla walked as though dancing, floating on air, oblivious to the storm raging around her. She was soaked through, her wine coloured dress ruined, and her ebony hair in limp curls around her pale face, but she didn't care, didn't even notice. The stars were whispering to her, speaking over the whine of the wind, telling her secrets, stories, urging her onwards. Suddenly she was gripped with a vicelike fear.
He was nearby. He was hurting.
She screamed in anguish and began to run, her heels slapping against the wet ground as she sprinted toward the brand new Sunnydale high.
'My Spike, my poor Spike, my poor, poor Spike…'
She muttered wildly to herself, before she skidded to a halt at the entrance to the school.
'A barrier…one always knows how to break these down…' she whispered to herself, slamming her delicate fist into the glass. She ignored the blood streaming from her knuckles, and wrenched the door open.
She'd returned to this place, this loathsome place, to find her boy, her childe, her love. She'd heard him calling to her, his voice carried in moonlight, every syllable a shower of delight to the girl who'd loved him for a hundred years. He'd pleaded for her to return, he could see her in his dreams. She knew he could see things she'd always known were there. The voices would talk to him now. Whisper, whisper, secrets and lies, sweet lies.
She prowled around the darkened corridors, her senses alert for any signs of her boy.
She breathed in deep, enjoying the sensation of air passing through her lifeless body, doing nothing but offering her the scents of those nearby.
He was here. But she could smell something else…Buffy. She wasn't here…but she had been, and not long ago.
Drusilla whimpered and closed her eyes. The Slayer. She was the only thing that could anger Dru in her near constant dreamlike state. She was the one thing on earth, in the whole history of the world that could make the blood that lay dormant in her veins boil.
Drusilla's head was filled with fire, burning and twisting away at her psyche, poisoning her childlike mindset, blood of innocents pouring in on all sides. The pretty dreams that always lay just below the surface of her mind began to scream in turmoil as they writhed in pain. She was filling up with hate, hate for the Slayer, who stole Spike from her.
She clutched her sides to try and soothe her screaming body. For one, vague, dreamlike second, she almost imagined that her heart began to beat once more.
From her catatonic fantasy world, Drusilla hurtled back to earth, and found herself in the same dead body she was always trapped in.
'Corpse…such a pretty word…it reeks of death, makes you picture blood, beautiful blood…' she whispered, opening her eyes, and continuing to drag her wet feet through the dark halls of the school. She stopped dead in the middle of a corridor, and turned right, finding herself face to face with a door marked Basement.
'Spike…' she pushed open the door and flew down the stairs, following his scent and stopping when she saw him, familiar yet inexplicably new, crouched on the ground, hands over his ears, his beautiful white locks matted and dirty.
A slow smile crept across her face. There he was, waiting for her, connected to her.
She reached out for him in her mind, wrapped her arms around his cold, hard body, and delved into his psyche. She sifted through the chaos within to touch the part of him that needed her, loved her. Her smile grew wider. He was thinking of her, she could feel it. She had never felt so deeply connected to him as she waded through his memories of their history. She saw something new, in the distance, hiding in the corners… something new. Still smiling, she reached out in his mind, which was so connected to hers…
Suddenly, her face slipped. She snarled.
He had a soul.
Drusilla opened her mouth and uttered a long, loud, scream of horror. He had a soul. A soul…the very affliction that ripped Angelus from her so many times…the thing she took so much pleasure in taking from him the first night they met…he had won it back. He had won it back.
Her scream rang through the basement, ricocheting off walls and echoing back to them. He didn't look up. He didn't even know she was there.
Drusilla tore open her dress and began to tear at her skin, ripping a hole right where her heart was. She grabbed a broken piece of wood from the floor and thrust it deep into her chest, right into the wound she'd created in herself. It might only have been physical now, but she had created that wound, that weakness inside herself when she'd sired William.
She saw herself turn to ashes, marvelling at the beauty of the spiralling particles of the girl she once was floating to the cement floor. As she slowly collapsed in on herself, with Spike sobbing, unknowing, in the distance, she slowly woke in a soft, dark bed.
When she became fully aware of her surroundings, she clutched at her chest, feeling for the wound she'd made there only seconds before.
There was nothing there. She'd been dreaming, she was always dreaming, and often of Spike. She knew for certain that her dream was true, and could feel her entire being shift. Her life was truly changed now. Her dear boy was gone, all gone, forever. For the first time in many years, Drusilla turned her face to the pillow and wept, lamenting the true and final loss of her only love.
Spike was lost to her, and nothing she could ever do would bring him back into her cold, dead arms.