Archive: Do not archive without permission.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mia McDavid for suggesting part of the ending.
Notes: This was not originally written as an AU fic. This story was started prior to the airing of "Becoming" and its flashbacks, and was my version of what exactly Drusilla had been talking about in "Lie to Me."
7 years later
Their relationship remained basically unchanged for years until the night Drusilla awoke to Angelus shaking her with a lethal violence. "Angelus?" she managed between the rattling of her teeth. "Please, you're hurting me," she said.
"Where have you been all month?" he said.
"Seashore, seashore," she said desperately. He seemed not to hear her. "The seashore."
"What?" he said, her words finally penetrating the rage in his mind. He let go and she fell back onto the bed, looking at him with huge, wide eyes.
"My family went to the seashore for a month. I would have told you, but I haven't seen you since the decision was made," she said 'What happened?' She looked at him carefully. He looked normal. The earlier violence was gone. 'No, not gone — leashed.' She ventured a comment. "You scared me just now."
"I didn't know where you had gone," he said. "Don't ever leave again without telling me."
She had never seen him like this. Usually, he acted as if he couldn't care less about her. As if his visits to her were a kindness out of his heart, as if she were a charity case. "Why do you care?" she asked.
He moved to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow evening," he said.
It was the first time he had ever told her when he would visit and she hated to say it. "I won't be here," she said. "I'm going to my first dance."
"Don't go," he ordered.
"I have to. What would I tell my parents? That the man who sometimes visits my bedroom won't let me? What do you want from me?"
"Make an excuse. Find some reason in that clever brain of yours," he said.
"Why shouldn't I go? Give me a reason. I'm not a child anymore. And you've never noticed. I can't just accept this anymore. I have to get on with my life. This can't go on. Who are you, Angelus?" she said.
"I've noticed you're not a child anymore," he said. She moved to kiss him. "Don't," he warned, pushing her away.
"I don't understand you. Why do you come here?"
He moved towards the window. "Don't go to the party." He was gone.
Afterwards, she reflected that he had neither explained nor apologized. She went to the party. ----- The next time she saw him he brought Darla. Betrayal. Drusilla stared at the blonde in shock, she had long since forgotten about her. 'This is Angelus's wife,' she thought.
"So this is what you've been up to, all the time we were fighting. How old is she now?" Darla asked.
"Fifteen," he replied. Drusilla didn't like this woman. She stared at Drusilla as if she were an odd bug that she would like to crush under her foot. There was something predatory about her and it chilled Drusilla to the bone. Angelus could be the same way sometimes, but Drusilla had long since gotten used to him. In him, she could ignore. And there was the way that woman looked at Angelus, as if she had a claim on him. 'He's mine,' Drusilla thought.
"She's still young. But you know darling, I think she thinks she's in love with you," Darla said.
'She talks like I'm not even here,' Drusilla thought.
Angelus smiled fondly at Darla. "Good, that will make this more fun." Darla smiled in return and then reached up caressing his cheek, cutting it with her razor sharp nails, drawing a bloody line. She pulled his head down and began licking at the blood. Angelus drew her wrist to his mouth, kissed it and with his teeth, pierced it and began sucking the blood from it gently, tenderly, reverently. Drusilla stared in shock, unable to move or scream. It was so surreal, her mind rejected the images her eyes were sending it. It wasn't happening. This was Angelus, her best friend and the man she had recently begun fantasizing about and he was *drinking* someone's blood. It was too much. She fainted.
"She's fainted, darling. What a pity," Darla said.
"No, it's better this way, dear. I want to draw this out for a very long time. She's so innocent, so chaste, even now. It will be so much fun to torment her," he said.
"And fitting punishment for her. Perhaps, once you've broken her, you'll lose this odd obsession you have with a human. Let's go, darling. I can think of a lot more fun things to do," she said, taking his arm. ----- Drusilla remained pale, sickly looking the next day, thinking of what she had seen. A cold fog had descended over her brain. She blocked the reality and the horror of the situation from her mind and examined it detachedly. That night he came through the window, looking normal and as handsome as ever. Not even a scratch on his face as proof of what she had seen. "Why did you bring her? To punish me? For having a life that doesn't include you? What do you want from me? A commitment? I don't even know who you are. I don't even know *what* you are. You're not human are you? That was not normal, what I saw," she said.
"You belong to me," he said.
For the first time she could ever remember she was angry at him. "You have Darla. What could you want with me?"
"Darla is my soulmate. You are my property. Don't try to confuse the two. I can be dangerous if need be," he said.
He didn't come again for several months. And she was glad of the time it had given her to think. There was an awkwardness about their interactions now. She wasn't quite as naive as she had been. There was something different about him, something dangerous and it scared her. Now she saw the rapacious way he sometimes looked at her and she was afraid. Her mind screamed at her to end their relationship. But she felt that was as possible as stopping her own heartbeat. Angelus would never hurt her. She had to believe that.
She tested the boundaries of their relationship. She tried to build a life for herself away from him. She went to parties and dances and flirted with other men, thinking seriously about getting married and starting her own family.
Often they argued. After some visits, she would be so terrified that she swore to herself that the next time she saw him she would find a way to end these clandestine visits. Like the time he described in detail the way she had danced at the latest party and who with. She hadn't even seen him. But he always seemed to know when she was feeling that way and he would disappear for months. And when he came back (with presents always) she would find herself mesmerized by him and the words would stick in her throat. It was as if he would go away to clear his head and then come to the conclusion that he shouldn't care what she did with other people and so therefore, he didn't. He would act normal then, for a time. But always, in the back of her mind, there was that fear. A day of reckoning was coming. ----- 4 years later
The party's noise had given her mother a headache. Drusilla volunteered to go home with her. She was nervous, skittish unable to enjoy any party, never knowing if Angelus was watching or what he would do. 'I used to want to waltz,' she thought. 'How silly I was.' He was certain to be watching — they had argued over her going.
The coach stopped. 'Are we home already?' But no, there was a man with a gun. He shot the driver and then pulled them out of the carriage. His hand reached up grabbing the necklace from around Drusilla's throat. She watched it all in slow motion, detached, it couldn't be happening.
A snarl. The highwayman was grabbed roughly and flung down, his head slamming into the ground. The moon came out from the clouds. 'Angelus!' Joy, they were saved, but — the face. 'It's Angelus, but it isn't. His face looks like . . .' She reached back far. Memory stirred in the depths of her mind. Awoke. 'He looks like the Master.' She froze. All thought stopped. Angelus beat the man util he was unrecognizable, dead. Her mother, shocked by the display of brutality, babbled, wanting nothing more than to get home. "Oh thank you sir, how can I repay you, no telling what might have hapened if you didn't come along. I . . ." Angelus turned to her, grabbed her by the hair, dragged her throat to his mouth and drank greedily and noisily.
Drusilla watched silently, a nightmare before her. She understood now. Her mind whispered, 'A demon from hell.' Then it began to shut down, to break, threads unraveling. Her fear was gone and replaced by the most deadly calm. 'Am I next Angelus?' she wondered.
He finished and smiled at her. "This is what happens when girls don't do what they are told," he said. dropping the body to the ground and leaving.
Drusilla stood for the longest time before she began to cry. She sat down on the ground, hugging her mother's body to her. Whispering over and over, "Oh mommy I'm sorry. Oh mommy I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I didn't know."
When they were found, Drusilla was too hysterical to answer the questions. They put it together on their own: two highwaymen killed the coachman and the mother, then they argued, one killing the other and then fleeing. When Drusilla heard the story she began to giggle hysterically. 'How do they explain that mother was drained of all her blood or that the supposed loser of the argument had all of our possessions?' she thought. She was put to bed and she stayed the next week in her room, not eating, only sleeping when she was too exhausted to dream.
The household staff and her family tiptoed around her. "Horrible thing for a 19-year old girl to witness," they said. "No wonder she's ill." ----- Drusilla awoke a week later to findAngelus in her bedroom. The windown shutter she had locked for the first time in years was broken, torn off the hinges. She stared and stared at him. 'Now I see it. He's not real, not natural.' Now that she let herself think it, the curtain was drawn back, a veil lifted and her super senses kicked in, reveraling all that she had hidden from herself and pushed back. 'He's evil.' She felt disconnected from her body, the situation; it wasn't real this *thing* standing before her. It was with detached calm that she was able to say, "Go away."
"No."
"I don't want you here."
"Too bad. You don't have a choice," he grinned, his features slowly changing to reveal his true nature, his fangs coming out.
He grabbed her roughly by the hair, pulling her to him, his fangs glinting in the moonlight. "Will you kill me now?" she whispered, wanting it more than anything. 'Then I can join mother. If they'll take me in heaven after exposing my family to such evil.'
"That would be a bit premature and completely defeat the purpose of my cultivating a friendship with you. Do you know how pretty you are, my sweet? You're beautiful — like a living doll. And so innocent, so guileless, untouched, unspoiled. I could see all that in you, all those years ago and it fascinated me. And I hated you for it. So embarrassing, for the mighty Angelus to be obsessed with a human. And nothing will give me greater pleasure then to take this sweet, innocent girl and make you a bloodthirsty, vicious killer like all the rest of us."
"I'll never be like you. I'll kill you first," she said. Faster than thought she pulled out the knife she'd kept ever since her mother's death. She plunged it into his stomach. then she watched as he pulled it out, completely unruffled. The wound began to heal.
His hand tightened around her throat. "Don't ever threaten me. You couldn't harm me if your life depended on it. There is no place on this earth you could go that I won't find you." He tilted her head back and looked deep into her eyes. "I see you still have a bit of defiance lurking in those eyes. good, something tells me when I bring you across you'll be one of the bloodthirstiest of us all. But in the meantime, I think I'll have to prove to you how completely you depend on my good graces. Perhaps, another lesson. Do you know how difficult you've made my life? I would try to stay away, but I couldn't. I always came back to you. Darla's tried to kill you three times, and I've only just been able to stop her. She doesn't understand it. I don't understand it. It's laughable, a vampire haunted by a human. I hated you for it," he said again. "Then it came to me. You were right so long ago when you said I was looking for you. I was and I didn't even know it. I had been experiencing some ennui of late. I was dissatisfied. I shall never tire of the hunt, the kill. But it had all become too easy, too predictable. Then I found you — a nice long-term project for me and a fitting punishment for you."
"How dare you talk to me of punishment? I was a child. You haunted me," she said.
He stared at her implacably.
"You're insane," she said.
"No. But you will be." ----- She wasn't to see him again, but he made his presence felt. A groomsman and a housmaid disappeared, presumably they'd run off together, but Drusilla knew better. A servant was found dead in the gardens. And then another and another. 'If I could only take it all back. I take it back. I take it back.' She became obsessed with going backt o before she had met Angelus, as if she could erase it all if only she tried hard enough. It was little things at first. She took to wearing her hair down, like a little girl's, and soon it grew worse. After two months and six deaths Drusilla's began to wander the halls of her home, singing to herself the songs her mother had sang, playing childish games and holding tea parties. The staff and her family were unnerved by the murders and Drusilla's slow descent into madness. The staff took to crossing themselves when she was around, not fully convinced she wasn't behind it all. And many of them quit.
Doctors were sent for. They would try to talk to her, but she would just sit staring blankly, mumbling, "I take it back. It didn't happen. It's nto real. You're not real. None of us is real." It had taken a liberal does of laudanum to calm her that time, after which they left her blessedly alone.
She was coming down the stairs one day when she heard a horrible commotion at the front door. She walked slowly, drawn to it, and pushed her way through the crowd of people. Her brother Robert's eviscerated body lay just outside. Her legs slowly crumpled under her and she didn't have to think of it anymore.
She awoke in her bedroom. Her lamp was burning. A bouquet of dead roses sat on her writing table with a note. "Happy Birthday, Drusilla. Did you enjoy my present? Angelus." She began to scream faster and faster, the shrieks coming one on top of the other. They couldn't get her to stop for several hours.
The funeral was sedate, calm. She didn't see Angelus until it was too late and they had all been locked into the church. Cattle for the slaughter. She could only watch as he savagely killed all her relatives and friends one by one, ripping out their throats, exposing their guts. He even drank from some. The fragile hold she had on what was left of her sanity loosened even more. When it was over he didn't say a word, simply leaving her among the carnage. ----- A distant cousing came to handle the estate and discreetly packed her off to a convent on the other side of the country. After a long time there Drusilla began to slowly recover mentally. No disappearances, no bodies and most of all, no Angelus. It began with her following along with the prayers, a ritual she performed gladly for the privelege of sitting alone in the vegetable garden, lost in her own thoughts. It was only there between the rows, sitting in the dirt, alone in the sun, not hemmed in by walls that she felt grounded and safe. After two years, she began to willfully cling to what was left of her sanity, slowly coming back to herself, losing the horror of her past in the comforting ritual of convent life. For the first time, in a long time, she felt safe. The distant cousin sometimes wrote to the sisters, checking on her progress. The deaths had stopped when Drusilla left . . .
Some years passed; she began to believe it was over. Perhaps, she could have some semblance of a normal life in the convent and live out her days in peace, atoning for the destruction she had unwittingly exposed so many people to. Mentally, she would never fully recover, but she was at peace. She asked to begin the year-long process that led up to joining the order and was accepted. ----- Drusilla walked down the long corridor to her cell, joyously. Her new life had begun. Only an hour ago she had taken her vows in the church and become a full member of the order.
It was then, as she walked down the hall, that the fire began. Surrounded on all sides, the sisters panicked, streaming out of the convent as it burned, crumbling down around them. They ran this way and that blindly to escape the falling structure. Drusilla fled to the only safe have she had known, the vegetable garden. What she saw snapped the remaining threads of sanity in her mind, one by one, forever. A voice spoke from the darkness. "Hello, Drusilla. It's time for you to come with me," Angelus said.
The End