And you're thinking "what's she trying to do now?" This came from me listening to the song that gave me the working title for this piece, "Whole World's Crazy" by Art of Dying. Modern Day All-Human AU Spike and Dru. Not an insane idea at all…
Notes: I had to keep Angelus realistic with human capabilities. One human versus an entire convent? I dialled that bit back, saying that there was one priest in the church she'd run to, and was sleeping in. More realistic that way. Also, ages have been changed to accommodate for the difference between times. Nineteen in 1860 was a lot different from any age in these times (in that people were a lot more naïve and child-like, but also expected to marry). I feel like I should have made Dru a little younger than I did, but my conscience didn't like that so much.
Chapter warnings: flashbacks that contain non-graphic character death and a lot of unpleasant things left implied. So why is this M, you ask? Because the implications can be construed pretty darkly, and this is really just chapter one.
Drusilla cursed under her breath as her ankle caught on something, random trash, she wasn't sure, because she just ripped past it, ignoring the sting of pain at her ankle. Drusilla winced, but by now, she was so used to pain that she could just as easily push through such a small sting, without it slowing her down. She heard a rough voice calling her name warningly, telling her that he was going to be angry if she didn't turn around. Normally she would turn around, return to her prison, spirits quashed. She sobbed a little, her vision blurring with tears, she'd made it a block before he saw her, and she wasn't stopping, she refused to. She knew she wouldn't be able to outrun him, but maybe, if she could get to a police station… Maybe then she'd be safe. No, never safe, and that was assuming she would be coherent enough to explain who she was to them, or explain what had happened. She'd done this once before, and they thought she was an addict. She spent the night in a holding cell, until her 'mother' came for her. She'd begged them not to release her, but Darla just had this effect on people. They assumed that anyone that beautiful had the purest of intentions.
She'd paid dearly for it when Darla had dragged her, kicking, screaming and sobbing, home. She still didn't know why they'd chosen her, but once they had, her life had changed drastically. She could remember it; she was sitting on the couch at home, when she got this sick feeling, a bad sick feeling. The news had told her the rest on their small television. There was a serial killer in the city. He'd been striking all over the city, and one day, she'd been cutting through the park, talking to a guy—his name eluded her now, but he was nice enough. She'd sat down on the swing, smiling up at the gradually darkening evening sky, when she saw a seemingly inconspicuous couple on a bench nearby. The woman had been wearing a tight black shirt and a scarf that had little flecks of silver white and red intermittently in the fabric. He'd been dressed nondescript, in jeans and a t-shirt, with dark sunglasses and a hat to cover his hair.
She could feel her legs ready to give out as she kept running, hearing Angelus getting on his motorcycle, the hum of the bike menacing. She wished she'd eaten this morning, but there were times when the cost of a meal—what she would have to do to be fed—was just too steep, and this morning was one of those times. Everything had changed that day, when the blonde woman on the bench had looked over at her, a smirk twisting up her painted lips as she whispered something to the man beside her. He lowered his sunglasses and for a split second, Drusilla looked into the eyes of the devil. This was the man from the news, He'd called himself Angelus, and she could see why. He had the face of an angel, hiding the soul of a demon, or so she'd described it. She'd tried to call the police, that was why her parents had given her the cell phone. It just happened that day that it was dead.
Instead of telling the other guy that she was going to leave, she'd stammered something about the stars not being right, and left. She had some sort of fancy-named anxiety disorder, that essentially meant the more upset she was, the less coherent she was capable of being. Sometimes she spoke entirely in metaphors. Angelus hadn't killed them that night, but he'd followed her home. She'd run in fast enough that she had barely seen, but the telltale glint of the silver wings on his motorcycle told her he was there. He would have lost interest had it not been for the call she'd made from home, to the police. They were very nearly caught, and Angelus didn't like close calls. She'd given him a challenge, and he'd responded. It was a week later that her sister's boyfriend had gone missing, and then Uncle Robert, and then her sister, Anne. It had only been Drusilla, her grieving sister, Cecelia and both parents that had been home when Angelus had come. He'd parked that infernal motorcycle on their drive way, and he'd come in, guns flashing.
Drusilla ran into an alley, seeing a fence separating the alley from another one, and then a street. She clawed her way up the fence, a loose link slicing into her finger as she pulled her way up the fence and swung her legs around the top of it, the folded metal at the top shallowly scratching into the skin at the top of her thigh. She didn't stop, swinging herself over the fence and throwing herself from it. A part of her wondered if that would be easier, if she landed wrong and broke her neck. She landed on her feet and kept running. She supposed she'd never know what was easier, as she kept sprinting, the sound of Angelus's motorcycle's engine ringing through the streets like a growl.
He'd first shot out the lock, broken into her house, and then started to aim. No, not to kill, just to incapacitate. He'd at some indeterminable point, shot out the numbers on the phone in the room, no one but Drusilla was even able to drag themselves into another room. He'd told Drusilla he would kill them if she called the police. He did, but more slowly, and she'd just sat there and cried, until her father had yelled for her to run, and she had, out the door and onto the motorcycle. All of his planning, and Angelus hadn't thought to take the keys out of the ignition of his motorcycle. Drusilla had been young at the time, around seventeen. She was barely able to drive the family car, but she hopped aboard that motorcycle and fought with it, driving recklessly fast down the streets on a stolen bike until a turn unseated her entirely. She'd found a church, the kind with the beautiful stained-glass windows, and hid in there, with a nice priest who'd prayed for her soul and treated her wounds. He didn't know there would soon be a devil in his church. With a bullet in his chamber, oh, this would hurt.
Drusilla continued to sprint down the other side of the dimly lit street, hearing the motorcycle's engine rev as he blew down the street, whipping down the corner and onto the same street as her. Drusilla started to scream, attracting the attention of a few people in late-night restaurants. The motorcycle cruised after her smoothly, the purple flames on the front flickering like the scales of a fire breathing dragon. Angelus had found the church, because it was a block away from where his last bike had been abandoned. She'd dubbed it the Fallen Angel, because of the silver wings that adorned the front. He'd found her, shot the priest, and punished her for escaping with his bike right there, in the church, in front of all the stained-glass windows. She'd screamed, but he'd liked it. The way the sound echoed through the all but abandoned church. Actually, Angelus had told her to keep screaming, maybe mix it up, and maybe try a prayer or two. It Drusilla had to force herself to stop thinking about it, because she knew if she did, she'd stop to cry, and she wouldn't be able to run if her sight was blurred.
Her eyes had begun to blur with tears as the memory overtook her, and she ran straight into something. He was a little taller than her, and dripping with spilled coffee, with honest blue eyes, and golden hair. The poet looked down at her, stopping the curse word before it slipped out, seeing the state of the girl who'd hit him. She looked frail, starved even, when he saw how loose her now coffee-soaked dress was. She wore no shoes, and her ankle was bleeding. Bruises bloomed on the skin her dress revealed to him, her calves and arms mostly, though there was a welt on her cheek as though she'd been slapped. But what really struck him was the fear in her eyes, the pain. She looked younger than he was, at twenty three, but he couldn't be certain. "Are-are you alright, love?" he asked gently, knowing she wasn't but wanting to address that he cared. His shirt, despite that it had been white had been mostly protected by his coat, his favourite leather coat. It was no big loss, the rest of his clothing.
She barely heard him, but she could feel something kind about his tone. "Dragon. There's a dragon, and I have to get where the cameras are," she insisted, jerking away from him and running into the coffee shop he'd emerged from. Angelus couldn't be seen on the cameras. She knew Angelus would have to get Darla and Darla would carry her out, tutting like a real mother while in the public eye, and then handing her to Angelus for whatever punishment he would mete out. It wasn't like there was a bloody thing left for him to take from her. The barista looked at her, muttering something to herself, "Miss, we have a strict 'no shirt, no shoes no service policy here," she said tiredly, not bothering to look up from the coffee she was preparing to see how upset Drusilla was, just noting her dirty clothing and bare feet. The man she'd bumped into came into the shop after her, shirt still dripping. She sighed good naturedly at him, "couldn't keep it in your cup," she teased.
He smiled at the barista, who knew him, his university was nearby. "She's with me, Shayla," he said confidently, helping Drusilla into a chair, away from the windows. Drusilla looked up at him like he was a saviour, when the barista smiled back at him and asked him if he'd be needing another coffee. He nodded, and she got started on his drink. He sat down in front of Drusilla, who was still looking at him like he was a god. He'd gotten her, at least temporarily to safety. She knew she would be punished for this greatly later, but for now, she felt safer than she had since her family was alive. "Do you want anything?" he asked, a touch of an accent colouring his words. Drusilla's family was originally from London, and his voice sounded like theirs had. It made her want to trust him a little, except that she had learned that trusting anyone was dangerous. Trust meant letting people in, and assuming they didn't run away, that's where the screaming would start. The screaming, and the pleading and the knife twists deeper.
Drusilla looked at him for a long moment, trying to unscramble the words in her mind. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself enough that she might be semi coherent. "Tea," she said softly, trying not to say anything that might frighten the man away. "I used to drink tea, and mum would make the most delightful little muffins. Sometimes we ate them with strawberries, and Cecelia would pretend she was bleeding," she paused, "And I tried to wake her, but it wasn't berries," she said softly, remembering how at first, she'd tried to drag her unconscious, possibly dead sister away from Angelus, how she'd been whispering to Cecelia about berries. The man looked absolutely horrified as he looked at her, and she realized she'd said far too much. Well done, Dru, make him run away, run and run and run and catch. Except she wouldn't catch, she wouldn't try.
The man was horrified, but not with Drusilla for saying it. "Do you want anything to eat?" he asked her softly, trying not to say anything that would hurt her. He wracked his brain for anything he'd heard in the news about murders, and came up mostly blank, but with a sick feeling. There was one article he'd read—wow; he would have still been in high school. It was five years ago, and there was a killer in the city, who'd brutally murdered a family in the north end. He looked at her for a long moment. There had been one body they never found, that of a seventeen year old girl, but they assumed her dead. He'd seen the picture, and she'd gone to the school his was rivals with. This girl could be an older, gaunter version of her. He hoped not though, who knew what she'd endured in the five years that had passed, if that was her?
She looked at him for a long moment after he asked her if she wanted something to eat. Angelus did that too, but generally, if she said yes, he would tell her what she had to do to get the food and it would be a debate for her, if the food was worth the debasement. Does the pain weigh out the pride, it was in lyrics to something. It hadn't been worth it for the past three days. She nodded tentatively, "what does it cost?" she asked him, ready to do what she had to do to get a meal. He was nice, so surely his price would be better than her captor's had been. The look returned to the man's face, and she wondered if the problem was that he was repulsed by her. Then, there may not be a price, because she didn't have anything he wanted. She prayed that there was something she could do to get the food.
He ordered food for both of them and then looked at her for a long moment as she asked him what the cost was. He was a linguist, and he didn't like the nuance there. If she was talking about money, she would have said "price" but she'd asked for the cost. He hoped she didn't think this would indebt her to him, or worse, that she would only be fed if she could… oh, lord, was that why she was so thin? He knew she would think he was being sneaky if he told her it was free, nothing in this world is in the end. He knew that. Maybe he could use this as a way to find out if she was who he'd thought she was. "Your name?" he asked, as the barista came by with her signature soup, raising an eyebrow at him, but not commenting. She liked him well enough, and he was a regular, but sometimes, she just didn't understand why he did some of the things he did.
She was confused why he cared. He captors never bothered with her real name, she'd learned to answer to all manner of insults. If that was what she had to give him for the delicious-smelling bowl of soup, she'd give it to him in a heartbeat. The way that soup smelled, a name was nothing to give, she'd sell her soul for it. "I don't have a name now," she admitted, blushing and looking down at her dirty hands, tracing a finger down the cut on her palm from the fence. "But I used to be Dru, Drusilla Keeble," she added, knowing that the first response wasn't good enough to earn her the soup in front of her. She tried to remember if she knew him, if they'd met anywhere before, but her memories were little stars, and they didn't like breaking into constellations, preferring to stay all scattered, like maddening little pinpoints of light. Only the bad memories stuck together, like clouds, obscuring the night sky she'd known before.
He looked at her, horror growing. He didn't quite remember the name of the girl form the news article, but he remembered that it was something unusual. The fact that she told him she didn't have a name now though, that was saddening. He could use that line somewhere though. He tried to put a smile on for her, offering her a spoon, "let me know if you want any more, Dru," he said, testing out her name. There was another nuance to that sentence, when she said she used to be Dru, as opposed to she used to be named Dru. He figured that was deliberate. After what he thought might have happened to her, he wouldn't be the same either. It seemed talking to her was a game of metaphors and nuances. He took a sip of his own soup, still quite hot, and pulled a pen from his pocket, writing out, "when she's found she is lost/ and she asks for the cost," in a messy, left handed scrawl. "I'm Will, by the way, William Pratt."
She looked up from her soup—it truly was delicious, despite being burning hot. "Will," she said softly, thinking about what else the word signified, freedom, determination, desire. You can have a will, free will, your will can be done. She liked that, the meaning to his name. Maybe she needed to find some will, the will to fight on, because she was so tired. She woundered if Will could give her that will to go on, "that's something I haven't had in a while."