Title: The Outing

Author: mispel

E-mail: mispel@email.com

Rating: PG13

Summary: Willow searches for a missing Drusilla. Tara makes a special appearance. Part four in the Waiting Room series.

Spoilers: not really

Disclaimer: Joss, ME, and Fox own everything.

Feedback: Feedback is very much appreciated.

The Outing

Tara undressed slowly. When Willow tried to grab at her clothes to make her hurry up, Tara moved out of reach. Next she undressed Willow, slowly too. Lying on the bed, Willow dissolved into giggles at the excruciatingly soft touch of Tara's fingertips here and there on her skin, like feathers.

Drusilla appeared in the doorway of their room. She stared down at the two of them.

"No threesomes!" Willow snapped.

The interruption couldn't have been less welcome. But it was only a ghost - Drusilla hadn't spoken and she had been there only for a second.

"How did you know I was thinking about a threesome?" Tara asked, shifting a little on top of Willow.

"What?!"

Willow was sitting alone in a room with peeling yellow paint. There were scorch marks around one barred window and two ripped up sofas plus the chair Willow was sitting in, still in decent shape, but plaid. Drusilla hated the new place. Willow didn't know how long it had been, but she knew that Drusilla should have been back.

Willow wondered what had possessed her - Willow was out again, and she didn't need to refuel. She was searching for Drusilla. She had roomed with her, allowed her into her fantasies, created ones especially for her. And usually tuned her back so she wouldn't have to watch.

Willow knew Drusilla's mother almost as well as her own. She was pretty, with dark eyes like Drusilla's only smaller, not so spooky. Her dark brown hair was carefully swept up, unless Drusilla imagined her in her bedroom. Then it fell past her shoulders and Drusilla would comb it with fancy combs. Sometimes Drusilla pushed the hair away from her mother's neck and let it drape down her back. Left with little bloody kisses on her throat, her mother would smile indulgently. Other times, Drusilla just wanted to watch her mother sleep.

Drusilla liked to sweep through the crowded streets of old London. Taking her pick of victims, settling only for the prettiest girls in the finest clothes and the handsomest boys who sneered a little at her accent.

Willow wasn't walking through a fantasy. The smoke, the dead demon hacked to pieces days ago, now being eaten by two smaller, scavenger demons, all were pretty convincing signs. Even Drusilla's fantasies weren't this unpleasant. She like her air clear and clean - smoke only reminded her of fires.

Drusilla's fantasies always started out pretty. She had a memory that she liked to play with. While hiding inside an old farmhouse somewhere in Europe, she watched a girl in a long, frilly dress walk down a meadow on a beautiful, sunlit day. The path went down a small hill and the girl's steps quickened. Then she tripped and fell. Drusilla giggled. The girl scraped her knee. It bled a little. As the girl walked by the house, Drusilla bit her lip in frustration. That night, she went to look for her but couldn't find her.

In Drusilla's fantasies, the girl didn't turn toward the village. She went inside the house where Drusilla waited to welcome her. Alternately, there would be a convenient eclipse. The girl would look up frightened and then Drusilla would appear in front of her with a sympathetic smile.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

Willow didn't like to watch what happened next.

As much as she wanted to, Willow couldn't shut out the acrid smell of burning, or what she saw around her. Barely glimpsed shapes moved fast inside half demolished buildings. Unburied bodies of demons were propped up as a warning. Human bodies, pulled out of the earth, lay dirty and decomposed. She heard screams and demon howls in the distance. Worst of all, if she wanted to find Drusilla, she couldn't keep out the cries she heard inside her head. After years of cutting off all that noise and need, she was putting out feelers, opening up her mind so she could find a vampire.

She could sense the general direction where Drusilla was but not why. Drusilla was crazy but she had a perfectly sound sense of self-preservation and never ventured too far or stayed out too long. Now, Willow, on the other hand, was walking around, looking for a demented vampire. She should be home living out a juicy fantasy where Tara nibbled her from head to toe and then they took a bubble bath together, afterward falling asleep in warm sheets, cuddled into a soft, naked bundle. Instead she was prowling around and endangering her limited supply of magic. She was going to rescue a vampire while people who are the closest thing to human died all over the world and she did nothing.

More than once, Drusilla had asked her to lure victims to their place. But she knew that even if Drusilla had appeared right then, she would still refuse. Drusilla had laughed at her squeamishness. Willow's reasons were leftovers from another time. She wasn't sure why she still clung to them. They all picked sides and Willow was left out. Everything she had tried to do made things worse. She had to turn away from the world. Lose herself. So she fiddled while the world burned.

Her eyes stinging from the smoke, Willow squinted across an open area that might have been a field once. Drusilla was somewhere on the other side. Not trusting her eyes, Willow used magic to make sure that it was safe to go forward.

She didn't remember when the sky filled up with black clouds. It happened slowly, gray turned to black until the sun was shut out. The cults sprung up out of nowhere. The war between the demons and the cults had been going on for decades. No one won.

Things only seemed to get worse in those days when Willow still got her hands dirty trying to help. You don't save the world with a few words in a Latin and some herbs. But you know just how badly you screwed up when you are glad your friends are dead so they can't see the mess you've made. Pulling all that magic out the world had changed things.

In the middle of the field Willow stopped. Something was moving toward her fast. Willlow closed her eyes and made herself disappear. The thing passed so close to her that she felt the air move when it went by, but it never saw her. Willow opened her eyes and breathed. What the hell was she doing out here?

At one time, she had tried to be everywhere. She followed the screams and came to the rescue until she didn't recognize human beings any more - and they looked at her with fear and didn't recognize her as one of them. After that, the cries for help were just background noise, and not even that when she buried herself in a memory.

Drusilla had invited her along.

"Come. You need magic, I need blood. We'll hunt together."

Willow just shook her head.

"Two fiends, we'll be a terror to them."

"I'm not a fiend, Drusilla."

"You're a witch. Your blood is like copper wires, stringing and stinging. Humans have proper blood, blood you can drink."

Willow didn't wish her luck as she left.

They used to be trees, a whole forest of them. Now only bare, blackened branches reached out to a sunless sky. It was a wooded area a few miles away from their house

"Maybe Drusilla is stuck up a tree," Willow thought.

"By hook or by crook," it was Drusilla's voice.

It reached Willow suddenly, filling her head. After she oriented herself, Willow could tell that the voice had come from somewhere underground.

The cave was small. Its entrance was hardly big enough to crawl through. Not that it mattered - Willow wasn't going inside. Drusilla didn't like fires, Willow didn't like caves.

She could sense them even though they wore charms that would have hidden them from most witches - four vampires in addition to Drusilla. Because of the charms they wore, they were like ghosts to her. One of them moved around a lot, pacing.

It took only a little magic and she could hear their voices echo.

"Are you sure she can find us?" It was the nervous one who couldn't stand still.

"Well, if she can't, what good is she to us?" The second voice was gruff, sounding impatient.

"What do we do with this one after."

Willow guessed that they were talking about Drusilla.

"We'll see how cooperative she is."

"Where's your witch, huh?"

"Gravediggers coming and going. That's not the job. They won't earn their wages going in reverse," it was Drusilla's voice, and her patented gibbering.

"Why do you bother asking her?" A third vampire spoke.

"Are you sure the witch will come for her?"

"How would I know?"

"Are you sure this circle, the Witch's Hook thing, will work on her?"

"It will work, now shut up!" It was the gruff voice again.

"It better work or the witch will kill us," a new voice warned them wisely.

Willow couldn't sense the spell circle, a Witch's Hook. But then that was the whole point. Drusilla had tried to warn her about it in her usual, cryptic way. "By hook or by crook". If Willow entered it, she would have been trapped, their personal genie in a bottle. Drusilla's voice came up to her.

"The canary has stopped singing. Helmets will do no good."

"Can't we gag her?"

"You want to go over there and try?"

"I'm not scared."

"You're an idiot."

"That witch must be something if the cults didn't get a crazy one like this yet. We'll be set."

The ground rumbled. Drusilla laughed as dirt and rocks rained down.

Willow stepped a few yards away and then destabilized the ground using magic. It didn't take much before the cave ceiling collapsed on their heads. A burial. She waited for the ground to settle. There was no hurry. They couldn't dig themselves out so soon. She closed her eyes and found Drusilla. She pulled her out of the ground bloody and dirty, her skull crushed a little in one place. On anyone else that might have been a concern. Willow fixed it anyway. But not any of the other wounds. A crushed skull is just so grisly. She slapped Drusilla to make her wake up so they could leave.

"Mommy?"

"You start calling me that and I'll bury you again."

"I'm a bad girl, wandered off the path."

"Yes you are. Now, move before we get cleansed."

"They didn't play nice."

"The cults will get them, don't worry."

Drusilla didn't look mollified. Maybe it was the mention of the cults. Willow could hear them coming closer. They had pursued the fast thing that ran past Willow. Now they turned. They must have heard the cave in. They'd mop up. No point wasting more magic.

Willow got Drusilla on her feet. She didn't have to tell her that the cultists were close. Drusilla almost ran even though there was something very wrong with one of her legs. Willow hurried after her. The cults didn't like witches either.

Drusilla crashed through the front door, shaking. Willow closed the door behind them.

"They aren't following. Calm down."

"Cradle to grave. Grave to grave. Digging them up. Dust to dust," Willow limped around the room and talked fast. She went in and out of game-face making Willow feel dizzy.

"Drusilla, cut it out!"

At that, Drusilla went over to a ripped up couch and curled herself into it.

"You have to be more careful, next time..." Willow started to lecture.

"It's all crossed. Good night, good night."

"Shhsh, Willow is talking," she said more sharply, "The next time you get yourself kidnapped, don't send an SOS to my brain. I won't be listening."

"It's breakfast time."

Willow had kneeled by Drusilla to try and keep her attention. Now she got up exasperated.

"Hey, the door is right there. Go wander off, get killed," Willow snapped.

Drusilla didn't move. Willow's head was swimming. She went over to sit in her chair and closed her eyes.

The vampires at the cave-in crawled out of the ground only to be dusted. Somewhere in the distance, demons gathered around a small cult enclave. They closed in slowly, tightening the circle. Willow thought about warm sheets and warm limbs entwining with hers. And she hardly heard the screams.