The days bled into each other. Angel couldn't really remember all the
places they'd been in the week since they'd left Los Angeles. Willow
generally decided. He thought they'd gone north after Wichita, then east
again, but he wasn't sure.
Cordelia had yet to call them again due to another vision, and they were reluctant to stop running. Willow had put aside the database on Dev's system for the moment to concentrate on finding a way to get the healing spell to work. So far she hadn't attempted any of the options she'd come up with, wanting to research them a bit more.
They were all feeling the pressure and strain of staying on the move. Angel's nerves were on edge, and his temper was barely leashed. The only good thing about their wanderings was that it gave Spike neither the time nor the opportunity to rethink the understanding they'd come to, for which Angel was eternally grateful. If he'd had to deal with standard Spike behavior, he didn't think the brat would still be alive, Dev or no Dev. All right, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but at the very least Spike would have been restrained and gagged.
Drusilla stayed calm throughout it all, and Angel was fully aware it was because location was irrelevant to Drusilla. With the same people around her each night, Drusilla was at ease. She'd even continued to keep her distance from Willow, though there'd been times when Angel had looked up to find her at the door to whatever room he and Willow were sharing, watching Willow intently. Not in a predatory manner. It was almost as though the vampire was trying to figure something out, but couldn't.
Each time he'd witnessed that, Angel had flinched, because he would then think of the night Dev had somehow gotten into Willow and then gently led Drusilla back to the land of the sane. Her eyes that night.they'd been clear and intelligent. God, that had given him nightmares.
At those times he knew why Dev had never told him about that particular parlor trick of hers. Other times he was pissed, because he'd mostly come to terms with what he'd done to Drusilla, and he should never have been allowed to do so. Which he recognized as the same self-flagellating sentiment that had caused him to reduce the Gem of Amarra to bits, much to Cordelia and Doyle's dismay, but which he still felt was appropriate.
Willow, on the other hand, had the luxury of distraction. She had several tasks on which to focus her thoughts. Yet, often, Angel would see her lapse into long bouts of frowning silence, and she'd mention Buffy and the others, how worried they must be, and how hard it was going to be to catch up on all of her classes. He thought she might have seen him flinch once, feeling guilty that he'd gotten her involved, because she'd abruptly stopped saying anything of the kind two days before.
The entire group was barely speaking to each other. There just wasn't time. When they were on the road, Willow was either driving by herself up front, or sleeping while he or Spike drove. In the back of the van, the last of the Order of Aurelis had settled into a perpetual grim silence as idle chatter didn't seem appropriate, and they'd exhausted all topics of discussion when it came to what had happened to Dev.
Currently, they were in yet another motel room. Willow had hunkered down with the spell books from her trunk, and her laptop. Angel met Spike's eyes, wondering which of them would be getting blood at this stop. Willow noticed.
"Look, why don't you all go?" she said to the room at large. "You both look like you could use some prowling time, and Dru's been cooped up since we left Angel's; I'm sure she'd appreciate going out."
Angel shook his head, glad that Drusilla was in the next room with Dev, and hadn't heard the idea. "Someone has to keep an eye on Dev," Angel reminded her.
Willow set aside the book and turned calm eyes on him. "I'll do it."
"No." That was Spike, whose voice was like a whip. He had been pacing the room, and came to a stop to glare at Willow.
"Quick talk time," Willow said decisively, leaving the desk to sit on one of the double beds. "I'm going to have to see Dev eventually, for one reason or another. I'd prefer it to be on my terms. So, I'll move my books and laptops into the other room, and the three of you can be the creatures of the night that you are."
"Willow, there's no reason you have to see her," Angel said slowly. "Plus, I don't want you here alone. You and Dev will be too vulner--" Angel froze and his eyes widened dramatically. There were two stakes pressed against him, one in front, and one in back, of his heart. He turned his head cautiously and saw Willow watching him sedately, her eyes slightly narrowed. She smiled, and the stakes hurtled through the air and came to rest next to her.
Angel heard Spike chuckle. "Good to see I'm not your only victim."
"I'm not saying I'm super-mojo ninja witch," Willow told Angel, ignoring Spike's amusement. "But I'm not *entirely* helpless, and you won't be gone long. I can call your cell if I need you."
"All right," Spike said right away.
"Spike?" Angel asked, confused as to why the blond had changed his mind.
Spike shrugged, his eyes guarded. "She wants to do it, let her."
Angel wanted to know what exactly was going on in Spike's mind. He tilted his head, studied Spike more closely, and came up empty-handed. Whatever Spike was thinking, he was keeping it close to his chest.
"Fine," Angel agreed reluctantly. He walked to Willow and crouched down in front of her, meeting her eyes. "But if something happens, call us. And if you.don't want to be here alone anymore, call us. We'll only be gone an hour or two."
Angel saw Willow take a deep breath. Her eyes closed as she exhaled, and then opened again. He noted the shade that had been pulled, and it nearly broke his heart. She was steeling herself. He'd seen her do it before, in Sunnydale, but never so effectively. Never so completely. Never so steadily.
Standing up, he saw that Spike had stilled, a deep frown settling on his face when he caught sight of Willow. It was time they had a talk.
Angel gestured at the books and laptop. "Gather your things."
A minute later, the three of them left the room and turned right. At the very next door, Angel knocked. Drusilla opened it, surprise lighting her features when she noticed Willow.
Her wide grin faltered almost immediately, to be replaced with twist of her lips that Angel recognized meant she was concentrating. She reached out and touched Willow's hair gently. "Such a brave one, you are," she whispered.
Angel tensed, but didn't intervene. They were going to have to find out just how effective Dev's mind game had been if they were going to continue being in such close proximity with one another. He noticed that Spike had leaned against the doorjam, one eyebrow raised in curiosity.
"Brave like our Devil. So much of our Devil in you. Your mind rings like hers; a terrible cacophony of flashing lights, too bright for my eyes. You are both coins, winning and losing yourself with each flip in the air you take." She grinned slyly. "Oh, and the secret--I'm not supposed to know and I shan't tell you before you realize it." A red tipped finger pressed to her lips. "Shh."
Willow grinned a little uncomfortably. "Yeah, well, she did that mojo and all."
Dru shook her head, laughing lightly. "You smell like dark poisonous berries because she wishes you to." Her eyes drifted shut and she swayed forward and backward. "But the rest.that has nothing to do with pretty words and a taste of blood. It's all to do with you, precious."
Angel forcibly restrained himself from looking surprised at Drusilla's endearment. She didn't bestow them lightly, and he didn't know what it boded for them.
"Um," Willow muttered, blushing. "The guys are going to take you out. Do you want to go?"
"Will you come with us?" Dru asked hopefully.
"No, I'm going to sit with Dev while you're all out. Maybe next time?" Willow added at Drusilla's disappointed pout.
"Promise?"
And Angel saw the small, indulgent smile that came and went quickly from Willow's lips. "Promise. Now, all of you, go on." She made a shooing motion with her hand. "Get."
They got.
Outside, Spike lit a cigarette and they both watched Drusilla spin in circles. "Where the bloody hell are we, anyway?"
Angel shrugged, moving closer to Drusilla. She'd be teetering in a minute from the motion. Spike had the same idea, and they grinned slightly at each other, Spike exhaling a plume of smoke as he did so.
"You think Willow will be all right?" Angel ventured as Drusilla tippled into their arms, giggling like a girl.
Spike snorted. "Not even a little."
They righted Drusilla and walked down the street. She was practically skipping ahead of them and singing sweetly about blood and bones. Eventually, Angel asked, "Why did change your mind about her staying with Dev?"
"Because she was right," Spike told him. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug and tossed his cigarette aside. "Much as we'd all like her to not have to see Dev, it's not realistic."
"Daddy," Drusilla trilled, falling into Angel's arms and letting him take all of her weight. "Can I kill something? Can I? Please. I've been good, like you wanted."
Twin responses warred at the tip of Angel's tongue, and he looked helplessly at Spike.
"Maybe. If we can find a demon bar, or something, luv. You can pick out a real nasty morsel and go to town. How's that sound?"
She sighed deeply and spilled from Angel's arms into Spike's, pressing her body against him as her fingers danced along his chest. "Wonderful, Spike. It sounds wonderful."
"I thought it might."
They continued on, and Angel let them get a few steps ahead of him. Their heads were pressed together, arms entangled. Soft murmurs of endearments and violence wafted back to Angel every so often. No matter how long he lived, he didn't think he'd ever see a pair of vampires like Spike and Dru.
Spike had changed his hair, his accent and even his name so that nothing had remained of the supposedly pathetic human he'd started life as. Yet, a coy plea from Dru would have him spouting poetry like the man named William he'd once been. And whether Spike believed it or not, Drusilla was devoted to him. Even when Angelus had been playing with their heads in Sunnydale. Even now that they had parted ways as a couple.
That was the basis for all the pair's problems. Spike thought her devotion should be more like his, meaning that no one else should garner her attention. For Drusilla, devotion meant that Spike always had her attention, no matter what else or who else also got it, however fleetingly. Neither of them would change their basic view on that point.
He hoped that Spike realized this, that he wouldn't see this little.interlude in reality as anything else. The thought of Spike and Drusilla together again was enough to make Angel scream in a combination of rage and sympathy.
"Seems a likely spot, huh?"
Angel looked up. They were in an alley, and his children were in front of him, Spike gesturing to the unmarked door just behind him. Angel studied it, his nod letting Spike know that he agreed it was probably a demon haunt.
"Dru, come here," Angel called quietly. She sailed over to him on weightless legs, looking up expectantly. "We don't need to get the wrong kind of attention. Anything you.play with tonight shouldn't be missed. That means no humans, and no demons of the good or neutral variety. You understand?"
"Yes." She nodded for emphasis, her eyes beginning to sparkle in anticipation. "Nothing gooood," she hissed. "Might cause a curious cat to wonder what killed the dog."
Oh, he was so very out of practice with Drusilla. It took years in her company to reliably understand her.
"She understands," Spike assured Angel. He joined them and placed a kiss on top of Dru's head. "Have fun, pet. Make sure you keep our presence here discreet." He wiggled his fingers next to her head. "Play some mind games to keep them going in circles, eh? We'll get you in an hour, whether you're done or not."
With another smile, Drusilla hurried to the door and knocked. Spike and Angel stepped into the shadows, emerging only after a scaly demon had let her inside.
"Hit the local blood bank?" Spike asked diffidently.
They trolled the streets until they found a payphone with a phone book, then did their best to find the address that had been listed for the blood bank. Spike was unnaturally quiet, which reminded Angel about his earlier decision to find out what was occupying the other vampire's mind.
"You worried about Dev?" Angel hazarded to guess.
Spike threw him a sidelong glance, eyebrow cocked in a way that let Angel know he thought that was a given. "Well, yeah," he answered in confusion.
"Has it been hard to be around Dru?"
Spike stopped walked and turned a searching glance on Angel. "What's with the twenty questions? You want to know something, ask."
"Fine," Angel said with a sigh, not sure how to begin approaching the topic. He settled on an indirect route. "Willow." Before Spike could reply, Angel continued with, "Why aren't you baiting her? Why isn't she afraid of you?"
Rolling his eyes, Spike lit another cigarette. "Obsessed about that, are you?"
"Tell me while we walk. We need to get the blood."
They crossed a street and turned left. Spike flicked ash from his cigarette and lifted one shoulder. "Nothing to tell, really. The baiting--yeah, I did my share when I first got 'recruited' by.the Slayer." A smirk played on Angel's face at Spike's hesitation and non-insulting reference to Buffy. Spike noticed, and curled his lip in silent response. "As for her not being afraid, she hasn't been for a while."
"Why not?"
Spike shrugged again, and Angel saw that a very different smile was on his face now. The brat was grinning. "She wasn't the same girl I terrorized before, and she let me know it."
"The stake trick?" Angel guessed, his own lips twisting.
"Pinned me to a wall with a bit of wood," Spike laughed. Angel peered closely at his face as they hooked a left onto the street the blood bank was on. "Meanwhile, the chit's sitting across the room and there's not a whiff of fear coming my way."
"She took her power back," Angel said slowly, realizing that the look on Spike's face was respect. Nothing rueful in Spike once someone earned his respect. "Good for her."
"Yeah. After that, we pretty much left each other alone." He tilted his head and amended that statement, "Well, except the one thing."
"What thing?" Angel asked suspiciously. The sign for the blood bank was half a block down, and they picked up the pace.
"You think I left the others alone? Not likely. So, I'd do my bit, piss them off. Every once in a while I'd pick on Red, but she never took it like the others."
Angel stared into an alley next to the blood bank and saw the back door. Once they reached it, Spike put his cigarette in his mouth and pulled on the doorknob with both hands, then tossed the butt aside.
"What did she do instead?" Angel asked once they were inside.
Spike found the door to the storage area and shouldered it open. Angel preceded him in and went right for the refrigerator. The pad lock was gone an instant later.
"Turned it around," Spike answered, offering him a cooler he'd snagged from a lab table. "Did her best to either make me yell or laugh. Then she played dumb about it when everyone else noticed. Pretty soon, it got to be a challenge between us: see who'd get the other to make an arse of themselves."
"Interesting," Angel commented. They filled the cooler, and another one that Angel found in the next room and left the building.
The conversation had given him the opening he'd been looking for, and Angel took it as they started back to the demon bar. "Seems a little out of character for you, doesn't it?" Angel said non-committaly.
"Which part? Knowing that I should make the best of a shitty situation, or actually doing it?"
Angel came to a dead stop, narrowing his eyes on Spike, who had also paused. The blond was staring away, a cooler dangling from his left hand, and a cigarette being mangled by his right. "The doing it and what's going on with you lately?"
Spike had always been better than anyone at avoiding both Angelus and Angel's eyes, and his expertise was still intact.
"I don't suppose you'd drop this?" Spike asked gruffly.
Angel waited a beat and then walked on. "I would and I am."
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Willow closed the door to the room, and stood facing it for a long while before taking a breath and stepping away. She put her computer and books on the desk, carefully averting her eyes from the occupied bed.
The primal part of her that was responsible for survival instincts was screaming like a banshee, telling her to stop being stupid and run like hell. It said this wasn't worth it. Willow emphatically agreed, but she didn't leave.
"Okay, Dev," she breathed. "I swear I'll turn around any minute now. Don't rush me, all right? Thanks."
The banshee was about to pierce Willow's ear drums with its noise, so without giving herself time to think, Willow spun on her heel and stared at the bed. There was nothing there at first, then slowly she saw Dev. Blood rushed from her head and Willow clenched her fists to keep from passing out.
*She has no back. No back. None at all.*
What had she thought "flayed" meant, anyway? That a strip or two of skin had been carved away? A broken laugh sobbed its way out of her. Every bit of skin had been peeled away from Dev's back, leaving a shiny, translucent white film, which Willow supposed was the first layer of skin growing back. Beneath it, Willow could see muscles. Tendons. Bones--oh, god, she could see Dev's spine. The banshee had fallen silent, too horrified to even utter a perfunctory "I told you so".
The vampire was naked, lying on her stomach on a plastic sheet that had been placed over the bedding. Finally moving her eyes, Willow saw that the back of Dev's legs were just as bad, but in a different way. Holy water and cross burns abounded, a busy crowd of which littered her inner thighs. Willow's mind balked when she distantly wondered what had been done between Dev's thighs, at that vulnerable juncture.
Stumbling forward, Willow went to Dev's side, refusing to look away. It was almost a matter of respect for Dev, for what she'd endured, and for what Willow could only imagine at the vee of her legs.
"Oh, God," she whispered, kneeling by the bed. Dev's left arm had been used as some sort of canvas whose brush had been a razor blade. An intricate latticework had been fashioned into Dev's arm from shoulder to wrist, detailed swirls that weren't very deep and should have healed. A horrified intake of breath. Holy water. The blade had been soaked in holy water, Willow realized when she saw the melted edges of the pattern.
A shaking hand rose to Dev's head, where it lay on the mattress. A shock of dark purple hair--and it did look like a crayon color --was splayed across Dev's face. Gently, so gently, Willow smoothed the strands away, holding her breath to prepare herself for what she would find.
She exhaled harshly. Bruises covered most of the vampire's face, but there was no sign of cuts, burns, or anything besides the results of a serious beating. There was little comfort in that fact. Her face was swollen, distorted, like a bloated corpse that Willow had once seen in the morgue when she was in high school; the man had drowned in his bathtub, and she'd accidentally opened the wrong drawer looking for the victim of a demon attack.
Tears were streaming down Willow's face, but she wasn't yet done, so she wiped them away and stood up on trembling legs. A deep inhale, forced concentration, and then Dev was moving. Her body lifted several inches from the surface of the bed, then rotated so that her front was facing Willow. If it hadn't been for the fact that she was desperate not to hurt Dev and more than she'd already been hurt, Willow's focus would have faltered when she saw the front of Dev.
It was one thing to hear that her breasts had been sliced open--a rather vague phrase that could be taken in its most simple connotation to mean a few cuts--but it was quite another thing to see what had actually been done. It was as if someone had inserted a knife into Dev's nipples, then torn through the tissue and come to a rest at her armpits.
And beneath that, at her abdomen, was a gaping hole that Willow could have fit both her fists into, and still had room to spare. Organs, long since unnecessary and dormant, were on display. Just under that gaping maw, Willow saw dark black curls, and she froze. She'd done what she'd intended, which was to see Dev so that she could be in the same room with her without freaking out. There was no reason to look further, no need to invade the last bit of privacy that was still allotted Dev.
Yet, it was blasphemy to turn away, to protect herself from what this vampire, this *woman* hadn't been able to defend against. Did Spike and Angel realize? Did their eyes scurry to another part of Dev's body when they tended to that area? Did they tell themselves it was out of respect for Dev's dignity, rather than due to their inability to comprehend?
Because, they couldn't, no matter what lies they told themselves. Only another woman could appreciate that *this* was worse than exposed vertebrae and intestines. Because the rest, that had been about strength. Even if Dev had been drugged and restrained, everything else had been about who was stronger. This, though, this had been about power, about taking even the remotest semblance of power from Dev. And even if both men had used this particular method of breaking someone, and had seen the results of their handiwork, they still didn't understand the enormity of it. They couldn't.
Drusilla understood, of that Willow was quite certain. Willow knew that Angelus had done this to Drusilla, before and after she had become a vampire. The Watcher journals had been clear and clinical about that. It was highly likely, considering what Willow had read, that Drusilla had been conditioned to it by Angelus, had eventually come to associate it with affection from him. Still, if she felt for Dev even an inkling of what Willow thought she did, then Drusilla understood. She knew that her darling Devil had been reduced to a piece of meat.
Willow's eyes lowered. Dev's legs were closed, and she had no intention of changing that. Nestled in the curls between Dev's thighs was the top of a cross burn, the bottom disappearing threateningly out of Willow's sight. Her tears starting anew, Willow carefully turned and lowered Dev to the bed once again.
Back on her haunches, Willow laid her hand upon Dev's, then leaned down to her ear. "I'll find a way to help you," she whispered tearfully.
She knelt by the bed a little longer, crying. Then, gathering her resolve, Willow made her way to the bathroom and washed the tears away. For the rest of the time before the trio returned, Willow read through her spell books. She sat in a chair that had been moved to Dev's bedside, not wanting to sit across the room and leave Dev alone.
She was still studying her books when the vampires returned. Spike and Angel entered the room first, cautiously, Drusilla trailing behind.
"Are you okay?" Angel asked, that searching gaze of his hunting down her eyes and refusing to let them escape.
Smiling softly, Willow nodded and closed the book. "Would you and Spike mind sitting in the front of the van?"
As she knew they'd be, the men were shocked speechless. Drusilla, however, flitted across the room, sitting on the floor between the chair and bed. One hand took Dev's, the other took Willow's, and she squeezed gently.
"You have no place with us tonight, among our strength," Drusilla told the men, her lilting voice deeper than Willow had come to expect. "
Willow squeezed back. They *were* stronger. They knew the reality that belied the intention.
Perhaps the men realized that much, because they acquiesced to Willow's request without a word, and loaded Dev into the van after they fed her. But they didn't understand it all, because they didn't look at the women as they closed the van doors.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Spike and Angel relinquished the front of the van to Willow at dawn. She'd been awake when Spike had opened the rear doors, her hand soothingly stroking Dev's hair. Drusilla had been asleep next to Dev, their hands joined.
As Willow climbed out of the van, Angel steadying her with a grip on her arm, Spike marveled at how relaxed she was. He'd expected her to be a mess when they got back to the motel, but instead she'd relegated him and Angel to the front of the van, not taking the chance to remove herself from Dev. And she still seemed no worse for the experience.
"Do you think it's safe for us to circle our route a bit?" she asked Angel. "Wide circle, of course. I just don't want to end up in New York," she added wryly.
"Uh, that's fine," Angel responded, sounding as disconcerted as Spike felt. "Head south for a while."
"All right. See you at dusk." She turned around, then stopped and turned back. "Oh, and I put a salve on Dev's wounds. It should numb the pain a bit."
Silence reigned in the back of the van. It was the same thick quiet that had hovered around Spike and Angel when they'd been up front, after having been excommunicated by the women. They knew why the women had closed ranks, but there seemed to be nothing to say about it.
Spike fell into a fitful sleep, was awoken by Angel a while later to feed Dev, then drifted back to sleep again until the van came to a halt shortly after sunset. The backdoors opened, and Spike saw Willow standing there, a little more tired than when he'd last seen her.
"Did you get any sleep while we were driving?" Angel asked her with concern. "And have you eaten anything?"
"I slept until just before I took over driving, and I stopped for food while we were on the road," Willow assured him. Spike saw her gaze fall on the sleeping vampires, and she smiled. Her hand danced along Drusilla's calf, ending with a light slap. "Wakey wakey, Dru."
Drusilla stretched languidly, lifted Dev's hand to her mouth to place a gentle kiss on it and then crawled out of the van.
"I just got one room," Willow informed them, her eyes on Dev. "I think you guys are okay with blood?"
"Yeah," Spike grunted. He wrapped his arm around Dru's waist, pulling her tightly to him.
Willow nodded. She reached into the van and took the coolers in hand, setting off for the room while Spike and Angel gathered Dev up. Willow passed them as they were carrying the injured vampire in, indicating that she was going to get her stuff. Inside the room, Drusilla had turned down the bedding on one of the beds. She took the plastic sheet that Spike handed her, and spread it out. Willow returned as they were positioning Dev.
"I'm going to grab a shower," Willow told them. "Would you guys mind not going out? I kind of need to talk to you," she explained.
They agreed to wait, and Spike found his eyes meeting Angel's several times during Willow's shower. Angel appeared to have no more of an idea of what Willow wanted than Spike did. "Dru, luv, what does Willow want to talk about?" Spike queried.
Dru looked up from her position on the bed next to Dev. "So very much is easy to see in her, Spike, but much more is fuzzy and tilted."
Which meant she had no bloody idea. Spike found himself in an unusual position of not knowing how to act. It had knocked him off kilter, being kicked to the front of the van. Balances had shifted, and he wasn't sure in what manner. Were he and Angel supposed to stay away from them now? Or was it that Willow was no longer on the fringe of the horror, and wouldn't return there? Hell if he knew, that was for sure.
Angel passed him, walking to the windows and then spinning around to retrace his path. Pacing. Normally Spike's gig. That night, though, he didn't want to pace. He just wanted to do what he'd normally be doing, even if it was just sitting in the Watcher's living room, listening to him pontificate about the newest nasty. Because, none of this felt real. It was like a really crappy vacation to a place he really hated, and he wanted to go home.
Never mind that it wasn't bad being with Angel and Drusilla again. Didn't make up for the shitty circumstances, the shitty motels and the shitty van. Or for Dev, whose condition had improved only minimally. Seemed like they'd done nothing but wait and run since Dev had gotten to Angel's, and it was wearing thin, not having any action to take. That, rather than the travel, was probably what was getting to them all the most.
He was leaning against a wall, glowering at his thoughts, when the bathroom door opened. A cloud of humid air preceded Willow's entrance. Her clothes clung to her in places as she raised her arms and dried her hair with a towel.
"Well, what did you want to talk about?" Spike jeered. "Is it time for a Scooby pep session, then? Maybe you're gonna call the cheerleader and have her rah-rah-siss-boom-bah it all better?"
Willow froze, and then Angel was in front of him, towering like a dark shadow. "You need to vent?" he growled, twisting his hands in fistfuls of Spike's shirt and slamming him back against the wall. Hell. He'd forgotten that he wasn't the only one whose temper was frayed. "To throw some punches? Rip someone to shreds with that poison tongue of yours?"
Angel's human visage disappeared and Spike heard how Angel's yellow eyes were silently finishing that speech: *"Need a reminder of who you should be listening to?"* And it was a promise, not an offer or threat.
Their eyes stayed locked for a long moment, and then Angel loosened his grip on Spike's shirt. "You take your frustrations out on her again," Angel hissed, "and you'll damn well regret it." His hands fell away, along with his ridges and fangs.
As if Spike wasn't fully aware of that fact that it had been a shitty thing to do. "Right," Spike said quietly. "Got it."
He looked away, only to find Drusilla glaring prettily at him and Willow studiously folding the clothes she'd changed out of, devoting all of her attention to the task.
"Willow." Angel said softly.
Closing the lid of her suitcase, Willow shook her head. "I get that it wasn't about me," she assured him, her voice distant. She zipped the case shut and perched on the empty bed. In a lightning change of subject she said, "I've found several promising spells, but I'm honestly afraid of attempting them. I need to know more, which means I need to know what Drusilla saw."
Angel pulled a chair from a desk by the window and set it so that it was in front of and between the two beds. Then he turned it around and straddled it, putting his back to Spike. Running his hands through his hair, Spike looked around the room. He didn't seem to be welcome at either of the beds, and Angel had taken the only other chair.
"Sit down," Angel said coldly, one arm extending to point at the floor next to him.
Spike was about to tell him where he could shove that order, when he noted the slight difference in Angel's posture, which turned it into a bearing that told Spike he wasn't talking to just any vampire, but the vampire who had been as much, if not more, his sire as Drusilla had been.
Tricky situation, this. If he obeyed, took a submissive position to Angel, he'd be taking this game past the boundary that he himself had set. But if he didn't, then he knew that Angel wouldn't give him another reminder about his place in the hierarchy. And Spike wanted him to, because it was so bloody familiar, so everything he seemed to have been lacking recently, and just the thought of it all--everything that had once been--made him feel *right*.
Staring at Angel's back, Spike wondered just how far this could all go without putting him under the other vampire's thumb again. The answer, he realized, was as far as he wanted because this wasn't actually Angelus. It was Soul Boy, and none of it would have happened when it was all over. Spike found that not only could he live with that, but he welcomed it.
Spike was aware of Angel relaxing when he sat beside the chair, next to the bed Drusilla and Dev were on, his shoulder brushing Angel's leg.
"All together again," he heard Drusilla coo.
Willow was silent, and Spike looked up at her. Her face would have been expressionless to someone else, but Spike was all too familiar with the ghost in her eyes: she felt left out, in the way. Extraneous. Angel had to have noticed it as well, but he didn't do anything. Didn't break the spell by giving Spike his seat. The knowledge that Angel wanted this as much as Spike did made him lean a little more against Angel.
"What do you need to know about Dru's vision?" Angel asked Willow, his voice unapologetic but kind at the same time.
She folded her hands until Spike could see them whiten in pressure. "I need details, not a recap," she answered calmly. "It'd be better if Dru could tell me."
Angel shifted until he faced Drusilla. "Tell Willow about what you saw."
Drusilla's hands waved through the air, tracing something only she could see. "It's not in my eyes, Daddy."
"What she means," Spike began.
"She can't tell us anything because she's not seeing it," Willow finished, a touch of frost in her voice. "So, you two need to tell me everything she said."
"Might not be much," Angel replied, shifting back. "With everything that was going on, I didn't press her for details."
"Same here," Spike chimed in, pulling his legs to his chest and resting his wrists on his knees. "I remember she said that Dev was running--like fleeing for her life. Then something happened--"
"The tree," Angel interjected. "Drusilla said that Dev ran to a tree."
"A willow tree," Willow drawled wryly.
Spike snickered. "Dru rambled on about a crying tree with red blossoms and magic sap." He winked, glad to see that Willow smiled slightly. "Thought of you right away, Red."
Then her brows drew together. "She ran to it? That's not quite what happened. I mean, I came to her, not the other way around. What else?"
"Nothing much else," Angel said regretfully. "Like we told you, all she said next was that the tree would heal and protect Dev. Then it.left her eyes."
Willow continued to look thoughtful, her hands untying from each other and plowing through her hair. "Is there--can we get it back in Dru's sight somehow? Get her to see it again?"
Angel looked down at Spike questioningly. "It's possible," Spike said with a shrug.
Nodding, Willow turned to Drusilla, who had sprawled across every inch of bed that Dev wasn't using, her head at the foot of the bed near Spike and Angel. For a long moment, she was quiet, her eyes shifting across Dru's features rapidly. Eventually, she nodded again. "Dru, can I ask you something?"
Drusilla rolled her head to the side. "Of course, precious."
"Before a vision comes to your eyes," Willow said very slowly, as though she was putting a great deal of thought into every single word. "Where is it?"
Spike knew this tactic; he'd seen Willow use it when the Slayer rushed into Giles', ranting about finding "the demon", or when Xander babbled incoherently from panic, or when Giles forgot that the rest of them hadn't read the same texts he had. She was getting the story from the beginning, understanding the genesis so that she might figure out the revelation. He glanced up at Angel and saw the same knowledge in his eyes.
"It comes from the outside and mates with the noise and swirls," Drusilla answered. "Then it's born, all blood and screams."
Willow's lips twisted. No doubt the illogic of something mating and then being born as a result of its own mating was causing her distress. She visibly shook it off and continued. "Does it go directly to your eyes after it's, er, born?"
Definitely distressed.
Drusilla spilled upright, in that liquid way of hers. "Oh, not always. Sometimes it hides, and I have find it and punish it for being naughty. And sometimes it runs past me, rabbit-quick, and I have to set a trap to catch it. One of those metal mouths, that cuts through the flesh."
As Willow fell silent, no doubt pondering her next question, Spike realized that there was no one better equipped to follow Drusilla down winding path. Not even himself or Angel. She had the patience Spike didn't, and the lack of guilt that Angel didn't. But more than that, her intelligence and unusual experience with such matters gave her the ability to learn the path rather than be left to Drusilla's caprice.
"When it leaves your eyes, where does it go?"
"Back to the noise and swirls. It dances there. A lovely minuet, but only it can hear the music," she said sadly. "I try, but it's just to quiet for me."
"That's too bad," Willow commiserated. "After it goes back to the noise and swirls, does it ever come back to your eyes again?"
Drusilla sighed, dreamy. "Yes, sometimes it visits again. I offer it a cup of tea and we talk about the dancing."
Another long silence, then Willow left her perch and kneeled in front of Spike to look up at Drusilla. "Why does it sometimes visit you?"
"Well," Dru said, conspiratorially, "because it knows I miss it. Doesn't like me to feel sad. Or if I've forgotten, it knows it has to remind me. We're great friends."
Ah, a fork in the road. Two paths to investigate. Spike found himself leaning towards Willow and Dru, could feel Angel doing the same.
"Has it ever not visited you when you miss it?"
Drusilla frowned. It was Willow's first misstep; negatives had to be handled just right, or they confused Drusilla. Willow pursed her lips and tried again. "Did it ever choose to stay in the noise and swirls when you missed it?"
"Why, of course not," Drusilla hissed, drawing back from Willow and glaring. "I told you, we're great friends."
Second misstep: never, ever imply that someone wasn't totally devoted to Dru's every whim.
"She didn't mean anything by it, pet," Spike comforted Drusilla. "Her friends aren't as nice to her as yours are."
That had Willow glaring at him, but he just smirked. Drusilla, on the other hand, flowed towards the red head again, her face troubled. "You should have great friends, precious," she murmured, one of her fingers caressing Willow's cheek. "Shall I kill these people who aren't good to you?"
"No!" Willow practically shouted. Spike burst out laughing, and didn't stop until Angel smacked the back of his head lightly. Willow took a deep breath. "I mean, it's, uh, very.sweet of you, but I'll, er, take care of them myself. Okay?"
"Very well," Drusilla pouted. "If you change your mind--"
"You'll be the first to know," Willow promised vehemently, then brought the conversation back around again. "So, I suppose that every time you've forgotten your vision, it reminded you."
The look Drusilla turned on Willow could only be deemed pitying, and Spike covered his mouth and laughed into his hand. "Yes, precious," Drusilla said simply.
"Do you remember having a vision after you got to Angel's?" Willow asked carefully, seemingly watching her words even more vigilantly now.
Drusilla whimpered. "Yessss," she moaned.
"Has that vision come to your eyes again?" Willow pushed on, studying Dru carefully.
"No! Stay away, I said," Drusilla shouted, her hands grabbing frantically at the hair at her temples.
Spike moved to take her in his arms, but Willow was there. She covered Drusilla's fists with her hands and ran her thumbs soothingly across her hands. Spike settled back, staring with wide eyes.
"Drusilla," Willow breathed. "I can *not* help Dev, and I can *not* make her safe."
"But you have to!" Drusilla wailed, tears pooling in her eyes.
"I don't know how," Willow said intently. "Your vision knows, but I don't."
With that, Willow released Drusilla and stood up. "I'm hungry," she said aloud. "Will someone take me out to get some food?"
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Angel and Willow walked to the van in silence. She handed the keys to him and got in the passenger seat. Angel watched her, tossing the keys up and down a few times before getting behind the wheel.
They found a fast food restaurant, and Angel pulled into a drive-thru, relating Willow's order to the big, smiling burger. She really must have been hungry, because she ordered two hamburgers for herself.
Angel didn't speak until they'd gotten back to the hotel. Half of Willow's fries had already been eaten, and she was chewing when he placed a restraining hand on her arm.
"What--" He broke off, not really sure what he was trying to ask her, or rather, which of eight million questions he wanted answered.
She took pity on him. Bless her. "Last night--in the van--we talked a lot," she said quietly. "Gave me *quite* the migraine, I tell you. But, I did figure out one thing." Angel waited expectantly and she smiled. "Dru's not a direct critter, you know? So--direct isn't the route to take."
For what felt like the hundredth time that night, Angel looked at Willow as though he'd never seen her before. She'd asked direct questions then interpreted Dru's indirect answers. In her piece de' resistance, she'd planted the seed, in an indirect manner that would click with Drusilla. Willow had told Dru she couldn't help Dev and implied she couldn't do so without the information in the vision.
Willow shrugged then sighed hugely. "Hopefully it'll work and it'll come to her eyes again. To tell you the truth--I don't know what the heck to do. I'm crossing my fingers that her vision will give me some direction. And, I'm kind of ticked that whoever gives Cordy her visions didn't giver her *this* one. Much prefer Cory's to Dru's."
"I know the feeling," Angel commiserated. "They like to keep us on our toes."
"I guess they kind of have to." At Angel's frown, she expounded. "Well, we *are* talking about *you*, Angel." She raised her brows drolly. "Same guy who smashed the Gem of Amarra because it made things too easy for him?"
And he had to smile, because hadn't he recently thought the same thing? One would think that Willow would be ignorant of a great many things, since she was often on the sidelines. But, no, she used that opportunity to learn objectively, then put that knowledge to terrifically cunning use.
"I wish we'd gotten to know each other better over the years," Angel sighed.
"In a way we did, it just was via the Buffster," Willow reminded him. "Now, can we get inside? I really want to dig into this burger."
So inside they went. Spike was sprawled on the empty bed, Drusilla on top of him. He was running a hand through her hair, the other tracing circles on the small of her back. Comforting her. Angel was on guard instantly, knowing full well how protective Spike was of Dru. To his surprise, Spike didn't say anything to Willow, just looked at the fast food bag with one raised brow.
Willow's lips twisted wryly, and she reached inside and pulled out one of the burgers, setting it on the desk. "Not that you deserve it," she told Spike petulantly. "But there you go."
"Fries?" Spike asked hopefully, but Willow shook her head. "Damn. I guess I know better than to tick you off, eh?"
"And don't you forget it," Willow replied.
It was as close to an apology as Spike would ever get, and Angel was relieved that Willow had recognized that and forgiven him without acknowledging either part.
"We need to feed Dev," Angel told Willow softly. "Do you.?"
He saw Willow take a deep breath. It seemed she wanted to leave the room, but then she looked at Dev and shook her head. "I'll stay."
She moved the chair back to the desk, and sat facing them, watching closely as each of them bled themselves into the copper bowl. As Angel was moving Dev, turning her over so that they could get her to drink the blood, the injured vampire whimpered.
"Wait," Willow gasped. "Don't. I can help."
Angel stared at her. "How?"
"Set her back down and get off the bed," was all Willow said.
Angel looked questioningly at Spike, but he looked just as clueless as Angel felt. Drusilla made the decision before the rest of them did, crawling off the bed and taking a step back, Angel and Spike followed suit.
Curiously, Angel looked at Willow. She was standing now, closer to the bed, and her face was scrunched up in concentration.
"Bloody hell."
Angel's head pivoted back around and his eyes widened. Dev was floating a good six inches from the bed. Then, slowly, she began to turn over. Her head lolled back, then came up. Slanting a glance in Willow's direction, he saw that she was shaking slightly with the exertion.
"Feed her," Willow bit out.
Angel lifted the bowl to Dev's mouth. It took a few minutes for her to reflexively swallow it all, and when he was done, he thought Willow would lower her back to the bed.
"Spike. My trunk."
Spike went directly to the trunk by the desk and opened it. "What do you need?"
"Green jar," Willow said in a shaky voice.
Spike rummaged around and then held up a jar for Willow to look at. She nodded. "Salve. Put it on her."
Willow turned Dev, with apparently great effort, once Spike had finished her front. After he was done with the back, Angel saw Willow look to Drusilla, who took the jar from Spike and applied it between Dev's legs. Angel's eyes flew to the floor and stayed there for several long moments. Drusilla was done when he looked up again.
Dev was lowered gently to the bed, Willow going so far as to shift the vampire's head to the right so that her face wasn't pressed against the mattress. He heard Spike curse, caught a glimpse of a blur of motion, and saw Willow falling to her knees only to be jerked upright by Spike's arms around her waist.
"Warn a vampire, Will," Spike drawled as he took the few steps to the unoccupied bed and sat her down. She was shivering now, yet beads of sweat were running down her face.
"S-s-s-sorry," she said between chattering teeth.
Angel grabbed the discarded blanket from Dev's bed and wrapped it around Willow's shoulders. "Is there something we can do, Willow?"
"I just need to rest. Told you, not super-mojo ninja witch."
"We have to get back on the road," Angel said quietly. "But you can lay down in the back of the van if you feel up to it?"
"Okay."
Willow remained on the bed while the vampires fed from the bags in the coolers, and broke camp yet again. When she tried to stand, she plopped back on the bed, her eyes wide and annoyed. Ignoring her protests, Angel lifted her in his arms, blanket and all. "Spike, go check us out," he said over his shoulder as he carried Willow from the room.
She was asleep before they reached the van.
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Cordelia had yet to call them again due to another vision, and they were reluctant to stop running. Willow had put aside the database on Dev's system for the moment to concentrate on finding a way to get the healing spell to work. So far she hadn't attempted any of the options she'd come up with, wanting to research them a bit more.
They were all feeling the pressure and strain of staying on the move. Angel's nerves were on edge, and his temper was barely leashed. The only good thing about their wanderings was that it gave Spike neither the time nor the opportunity to rethink the understanding they'd come to, for which Angel was eternally grateful. If he'd had to deal with standard Spike behavior, he didn't think the brat would still be alive, Dev or no Dev. All right, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but at the very least Spike would have been restrained and gagged.
Drusilla stayed calm throughout it all, and Angel was fully aware it was because location was irrelevant to Drusilla. With the same people around her each night, Drusilla was at ease. She'd even continued to keep her distance from Willow, though there'd been times when Angel had looked up to find her at the door to whatever room he and Willow were sharing, watching Willow intently. Not in a predatory manner. It was almost as though the vampire was trying to figure something out, but couldn't.
Each time he'd witnessed that, Angel had flinched, because he would then think of the night Dev had somehow gotten into Willow and then gently led Drusilla back to the land of the sane. Her eyes that night.they'd been clear and intelligent. God, that had given him nightmares.
At those times he knew why Dev had never told him about that particular parlor trick of hers. Other times he was pissed, because he'd mostly come to terms with what he'd done to Drusilla, and he should never have been allowed to do so. Which he recognized as the same self-flagellating sentiment that had caused him to reduce the Gem of Amarra to bits, much to Cordelia and Doyle's dismay, but which he still felt was appropriate.
Willow, on the other hand, had the luxury of distraction. She had several tasks on which to focus her thoughts. Yet, often, Angel would see her lapse into long bouts of frowning silence, and she'd mention Buffy and the others, how worried they must be, and how hard it was going to be to catch up on all of her classes. He thought she might have seen him flinch once, feeling guilty that he'd gotten her involved, because she'd abruptly stopped saying anything of the kind two days before.
The entire group was barely speaking to each other. There just wasn't time. When they were on the road, Willow was either driving by herself up front, or sleeping while he or Spike drove. In the back of the van, the last of the Order of Aurelis had settled into a perpetual grim silence as idle chatter didn't seem appropriate, and they'd exhausted all topics of discussion when it came to what had happened to Dev.
Currently, they were in yet another motel room. Willow had hunkered down with the spell books from her trunk, and her laptop. Angel met Spike's eyes, wondering which of them would be getting blood at this stop. Willow noticed.
"Look, why don't you all go?" she said to the room at large. "You both look like you could use some prowling time, and Dru's been cooped up since we left Angel's; I'm sure she'd appreciate going out."
Angel shook his head, glad that Drusilla was in the next room with Dev, and hadn't heard the idea. "Someone has to keep an eye on Dev," Angel reminded her.
Willow set aside the book and turned calm eyes on him. "I'll do it."
"No." That was Spike, whose voice was like a whip. He had been pacing the room, and came to a stop to glare at Willow.
"Quick talk time," Willow said decisively, leaving the desk to sit on one of the double beds. "I'm going to have to see Dev eventually, for one reason or another. I'd prefer it to be on my terms. So, I'll move my books and laptops into the other room, and the three of you can be the creatures of the night that you are."
"Willow, there's no reason you have to see her," Angel said slowly. "Plus, I don't want you here alone. You and Dev will be too vulner--" Angel froze and his eyes widened dramatically. There were two stakes pressed against him, one in front, and one in back, of his heart. He turned his head cautiously and saw Willow watching him sedately, her eyes slightly narrowed. She smiled, and the stakes hurtled through the air and came to rest next to her.
Angel heard Spike chuckle. "Good to see I'm not your only victim."
"I'm not saying I'm super-mojo ninja witch," Willow told Angel, ignoring Spike's amusement. "But I'm not *entirely* helpless, and you won't be gone long. I can call your cell if I need you."
"All right," Spike said right away.
"Spike?" Angel asked, confused as to why the blond had changed his mind.
Spike shrugged, his eyes guarded. "She wants to do it, let her."
Angel wanted to know what exactly was going on in Spike's mind. He tilted his head, studied Spike more closely, and came up empty-handed. Whatever Spike was thinking, he was keeping it close to his chest.
"Fine," Angel agreed reluctantly. He walked to Willow and crouched down in front of her, meeting her eyes. "But if something happens, call us. And if you.don't want to be here alone anymore, call us. We'll only be gone an hour or two."
Angel saw Willow take a deep breath. Her eyes closed as she exhaled, and then opened again. He noted the shade that had been pulled, and it nearly broke his heart. She was steeling herself. He'd seen her do it before, in Sunnydale, but never so effectively. Never so completely. Never so steadily.
Standing up, he saw that Spike had stilled, a deep frown settling on his face when he caught sight of Willow. It was time they had a talk.
Angel gestured at the books and laptop. "Gather your things."
A minute later, the three of them left the room and turned right. At the very next door, Angel knocked. Drusilla opened it, surprise lighting her features when she noticed Willow.
Her wide grin faltered almost immediately, to be replaced with twist of her lips that Angel recognized meant she was concentrating. She reached out and touched Willow's hair gently. "Such a brave one, you are," she whispered.
Angel tensed, but didn't intervene. They were going to have to find out just how effective Dev's mind game had been if they were going to continue being in such close proximity with one another. He noticed that Spike had leaned against the doorjam, one eyebrow raised in curiosity.
"Brave like our Devil. So much of our Devil in you. Your mind rings like hers; a terrible cacophony of flashing lights, too bright for my eyes. You are both coins, winning and losing yourself with each flip in the air you take." She grinned slyly. "Oh, and the secret--I'm not supposed to know and I shan't tell you before you realize it." A red tipped finger pressed to her lips. "Shh."
Willow grinned a little uncomfortably. "Yeah, well, she did that mojo and all."
Dru shook her head, laughing lightly. "You smell like dark poisonous berries because she wishes you to." Her eyes drifted shut and she swayed forward and backward. "But the rest.that has nothing to do with pretty words and a taste of blood. It's all to do with you, precious."
Angel forcibly restrained himself from looking surprised at Drusilla's endearment. She didn't bestow them lightly, and he didn't know what it boded for them.
"Um," Willow muttered, blushing. "The guys are going to take you out. Do you want to go?"
"Will you come with us?" Dru asked hopefully.
"No, I'm going to sit with Dev while you're all out. Maybe next time?" Willow added at Drusilla's disappointed pout.
"Promise?"
And Angel saw the small, indulgent smile that came and went quickly from Willow's lips. "Promise. Now, all of you, go on." She made a shooing motion with her hand. "Get."
They got.
Outside, Spike lit a cigarette and they both watched Drusilla spin in circles. "Where the bloody hell are we, anyway?"
Angel shrugged, moving closer to Drusilla. She'd be teetering in a minute from the motion. Spike had the same idea, and they grinned slightly at each other, Spike exhaling a plume of smoke as he did so.
"You think Willow will be all right?" Angel ventured as Drusilla tippled into their arms, giggling like a girl.
Spike snorted. "Not even a little."
They righted Drusilla and walked down the street. She was practically skipping ahead of them and singing sweetly about blood and bones. Eventually, Angel asked, "Why did change your mind about her staying with Dev?"
"Because she was right," Spike told him. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug and tossed his cigarette aside. "Much as we'd all like her to not have to see Dev, it's not realistic."
"Daddy," Drusilla trilled, falling into Angel's arms and letting him take all of her weight. "Can I kill something? Can I? Please. I've been good, like you wanted."
Twin responses warred at the tip of Angel's tongue, and he looked helplessly at Spike.
"Maybe. If we can find a demon bar, or something, luv. You can pick out a real nasty morsel and go to town. How's that sound?"
She sighed deeply and spilled from Angel's arms into Spike's, pressing her body against him as her fingers danced along his chest. "Wonderful, Spike. It sounds wonderful."
"I thought it might."
They continued on, and Angel let them get a few steps ahead of him. Their heads were pressed together, arms entangled. Soft murmurs of endearments and violence wafted back to Angel every so often. No matter how long he lived, he didn't think he'd ever see a pair of vampires like Spike and Dru.
Spike had changed his hair, his accent and even his name so that nothing had remained of the supposedly pathetic human he'd started life as. Yet, a coy plea from Dru would have him spouting poetry like the man named William he'd once been. And whether Spike believed it or not, Drusilla was devoted to him. Even when Angelus had been playing with their heads in Sunnydale. Even now that they had parted ways as a couple.
That was the basis for all the pair's problems. Spike thought her devotion should be more like his, meaning that no one else should garner her attention. For Drusilla, devotion meant that Spike always had her attention, no matter what else or who else also got it, however fleetingly. Neither of them would change their basic view on that point.
He hoped that Spike realized this, that he wouldn't see this little.interlude in reality as anything else. The thought of Spike and Drusilla together again was enough to make Angel scream in a combination of rage and sympathy.
"Seems a likely spot, huh?"
Angel looked up. They were in an alley, and his children were in front of him, Spike gesturing to the unmarked door just behind him. Angel studied it, his nod letting Spike know that he agreed it was probably a demon haunt.
"Dru, come here," Angel called quietly. She sailed over to him on weightless legs, looking up expectantly. "We don't need to get the wrong kind of attention. Anything you.play with tonight shouldn't be missed. That means no humans, and no demons of the good or neutral variety. You understand?"
"Yes." She nodded for emphasis, her eyes beginning to sparkle in anticipation. "Nothing gooood," she hissed. "Might cause a curious cat to wonder what killed the dog."
Oh, he was so very out of practice with Drusilla. It took years in her company to reliably understand her.
"She understands," Spike assured Angel. He joined them and placed a kiss on top of Dru's head. "Have fun, pet. Make sure you keep our presence here discreet." He wiggled his fingers next to her head. "Play some mind games to keep them going in circles, eh? We'll get you in an hour, whether you're done or not."
With another smile, Drusilla hurried to the door and knocked. Spike and Angel stepped into the shadows, emerging only after a scaly demon had let her inside.
"Hit the local blood bank?" Spike asked diffidently.
They trolled the streets until they found a payphone with a phone book, then did their best to find the address that had been listed for the blood bank. Spike was unnaturally quiet, which reminded Angel about his earlier decision to find out what was occupying the other vampire's mind.
"You worried about Dev?" Angel hazarded to guess.
Spike threw him a sidelong glance, eyebrow cocked in a way that let Angel know he thought that was a given. "Well, yeah," he answered in confusion.
"Has it been hard to be around Dru?"
Spike stopped walked and turned a searching glance on Angel. "What's with the twenty questions? You want to know something, ask."
"Fine," Angel said with a sigh, not sure how to begin approaching the topic. He settled on an indirect route. "Willow." Before Spike could reply, Angel continued with, "Why aren't you baiting her? Why isn't she afraid of you?"
Rolling his eyes, Spike lit another cigarette. "Obsessed about that, are you?"
"Tell me while we walk. We need to get the blood."
They crossed a street and turned left. Spike flicked ash from his cigarette and lifted one shoulder. "Nothing to tell, really. The baiting--yeah, I did my share when I first got 'recruited' by.the Slayer." A smirk played on Angel's face at Spike's hesitation and non-insulting reference to Buffy. Spike noticed, and curled his lip in silent response. "As for her not being afraid, she hasn't been for a while."
"Why not?"
Spike shrugged again, and Angel saw that a very different smile was on his face now. The brat was grinning. "She wasn't the same girl I terrorized before, and she let me know it."
"The stake trick?" Angel guessed, his own lips twisting.
"Pinned me to a wall with a bit of wood," Spike laughed. Angel peered closely at his face as they hooked a left onto the street the blood bank was on. "Meanwhile, the chit's sitting across the room and there's not a whiff of fear coming my way."
"She took her power back," Angel said slowly, realizing that the look on Spike's face was respect. Nothing rueful in Spike once someone earned his respect. "Good for her."
"Yeah. After that, we pretty much left each other alone." He tilted his head and amended that statement, "Well, except the one thing."
"What thing?" Angel asked suspiciously. The sign for the blood bank was half a block down, and they picked up the pace.
"You think I left the others alone? Not likely. So, I'd do my bit, piss them off. Every once in a while I'd pick on Red, but she never took it like the others."
Angel stared into an alley next to the blood bank and saw the back door. Once they reached it, Spike put his cigarette in his mouth and pulled on the doorknob with both hands, then tossed the butt aside.
"What did she do instead?" Angel asked once they were inside.
Spike found the door to the storage area and shouldered it open. Angel preceded him in and went right for the refrigerator. The pad lock was gone an instant later.
"Turned it around," Spike answered, offering him a cooler he'd snagged from a lab table. "Did her best to either make me yell or laugh. Then she played dumb about it when everyone else noticed. Pretty soon, it got to be a challenge between us: see who'd get the other to make an arse of themselves."
"Interesting," Angel commented. They filled the cooler, and another one that Angel found in the next room and left the building.
The conversation had given him the opening he'd been looking for, and Angel took it as they started back to the demon bar. "Seems a little out of character for you, doesn't it?" Angel said non-committaly.
"Which part? Knowing that I should make the best of a shitty situation, or actually doing it?"
Angel came to a dead stop, narrowing his eyes on Spike, who had also paused. The blond was staring away, a cooler dangling from his left hand, and a cigarette being mangled by his right. "The doing it and what's going on with you lately?"
Spike had always been better than anyone at avoiding both Angelus and Angel's eyes, and his expertise was still intact.
"I don't suppose you'd drop this?" Spike asked gruffly.
Angel waited a beat and then walked on. "I would and I am."
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Willow closed the door to the room, and stood facing it for a long while before taking a breath and stepping away. She put her computer and books on the desk, carefully averting her eyes from the occupied bed.
The primal part of her that was responsible for survival instincts was screaming like a banshee, telling her to stop being stupid and run like hell. It said this wasn't worth it. Willow emphatically agreed, but she didn't leave.
"Okay, Dev," she breathed. "I swear I'll turn around any minute now. Don't rush me, all right? Thanks."
The banshee was about to pierce Willow's ear drums with its noise, so without giving herself time to think, Willow spun on her heel and stared at the bed. There was nothing there at first, then slowly she saw Dev. Blood rushed from her head and Willow clenched her fists to keep from passing out.
*She has no back. No back. None at all.*
What had she thought "flayed" meant, anyway? That a strip or two of skin had been carved away? A broken laugh sobbed its way out of her. Every bit of skin had been peeled away from Dev's back, leaving a shiny, translucent white film, which Willow supposed was the first layer of skin growing back. Beneath it, Willow could see muscles. Tendons. Bones--oh, god, she could see Dev's spine. The banshee had fallen silent, too horrified to even utter a perfunctory "I told you so".
The vampire was naked, lying on her stomach on a plastic sheet that had been placed over the bedding. Finally moving her eyes, Willow saw that the back of Dev's legs were just as bad, but in a different way. Holy water and cross burns abounded, a busy crowd of which littered her inner thighs. Willow's mind balked when she distantly wondered what had been done between Dev's thighs, at that vulnerable juncture.
Stumbling forward, Willow went to Dev's side, refusing to look away. It was almost a matter of respect for Dev, for what she'd endured, and for what Willow could only imagine at the vee of her legs.
"Oh, God," she whispered, kneeling by the bed. Dev's left arm had been used as some sort of canvas whose brush had been a razor blade. An intricate latticework had been fashioned into Dev's arm from shoulder to wrist, detailed swirls that weren't very deep and should have healed. A horrified intake of breath. Holy water. The blade had been soaked in holy water, Willow realized when she saw the melted edges of the pattern.
A shaking hand rose to Dev's head, where it lay on the mattress. A shock of dark purple hair--and it did look like a crayon color --was splayed across Dev's face. Gently, so gently, Willow smoothed the strands away, holding her breath to prepare herself for what she would find.
She exhaled harshly. Bruises covered most of the vampire's face, but there was no sign of cuts, burns, or anything besides the results of a serious beating. There was little comfort in that fact. Her face was swollen, distorted, like a bloated corpse that Willow had once seen in the morgue when she was in high school; the man had drowned in his bathtub, and she'd accidentally opened the wrong drawer looking for the victim of a demon attack.
Tears were streaming down Willow's face, but she wasn't yet done, so she wiped them away and stood up on trembling legs. A deep inhale, forced concentration, and then Dev was moving. Her body lifted several inches from the surface of the bed, then rotated so that her front was facing Willow. If it hadn't been for the fact that she was desperate not to hurt Dev and more than she'd already been hurt, Willow's focus would have faltered when she saw the front of Dev.
It was one thing to hear that her breasts had been sliced open--a rather vague phrase that could be taken in its most simple connotation to mean a few cuts--but it was quite another thing to see what had actually been done. It was as if someone had inserted a knife into Dev's nipples, then torn through the tissue and come to a rest at her armpits.
And beneath that, at her abdomen, was a gaping hole that Willow could have fit both her fists into, and still had room to spare. Organs, long since unnecessary and dormant, were on display. Just under that gaping maw, Willow saw dark black curls, and she froze. She'd done what she'd intended, which was to see Dev so that she could be in the same room with her without freaking out. There was no reason to look further, no need to invade the last bit of privacy that was still allotted Dev.
Yet, it was blasphemy to turn away, to protect herself from what this vampire, this *woman* hadn't been able to defend against. Did Spike and Angel realize? Did their eyes scurry to another part of Dev's body when they tended to that area? Did they tell themselves it was out of respect for Dev's dignity, rather than due to their inability to comprehend?
Because, they couldn't, no matter what lies they told themselves. Only another woman could appreciate that *this* was worse than exposed vertebrae and intestines. Because the rest, that had been about strength. Even if Dev had been drugged and restrained, everything else had been about who was stronger. This, though, this had been about power, about taking even the remotest semblance of power from Dev. And even if both men had used this particular method of breaking someone, and had seen the results of their handiwork, they still didn't understand the enormity of it. They couldn't.
Drusilla understood, of that Willow was quite certain. Willow knew that Angelus had done this to Drusilla, before and after she had become a vampire. The Watcher journals had been clear and clinical about that. It was highly likely, considering what Willow had read, that Drusilla had been conditioned to it by Angelus, had eventually come to associate it with affection from him. Still, if she felt for Dev even an inkling of what Willow thought she did, then Drusilla understood. She knew that her darling Devil had been reduced to a piece of meat.
Willow's eyes lowered. Dev's legs were closed, and she had no intention of changing that. Nestled in the curls between Dev's thighs was the top of a cross burn, the bottom disappearing threateningly out of Willow's sight. Her tears starting anew, Willow carefully turned and lowered Dev to the bed once again.
Back on her haunches, Willow laid her hand upon Dev's, then leaned down to her ear. "I'll find a way to help you," she whispered tearfully.
She knelt by the bed a little longer, crying. Then, gathering her resolve, Willow made her way to the bathroom and washed the tears away. For the rest of the time before the trio returned, Willow read through her spell books. She sat in a chair that had been moved to Dev's bedside, not wanting to sit across the room and leave Dev alone.
She was still studying her books when the vampires returned. Spike and Angel entered the room first, cautiously, Drusilla trailing behind.
"Are you okay?" Angel asked, that searching gaze of his hunting down her eyes and refusing to let them escape.
Smiling softly, Willow nodded and closed the book. "Would you and Spike mind sitting in the front of the van?"
As she knew they'd be, the men were shocked speechless. Drusilla, however, flitted across the room, sitting on the floor between the chair and bed. One hand took Dev's, the other took Willow's, and she squeezed gently.
"You have no place with us tonight, among our strength," Drusilla told the men, her lilting voice deeper than Willow had come to expect. "
Willow squeezed back. They *were* stronger. They knew the reality that belied the intention.
Perhaps the men realized that much, because they acquiesced to Willow's request without a word, and loaded Dev into the van after they fed her. But they didn't understand it all, because they didn't look at the women as they closed the van doors.
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Spike and Angel relinquished the front of the van to Willow at dawn. She'd been awake when Spike had opened the rear doors, her hand soothingly stroking Dev's hair. Drusilla had been asleep next to Dev, their hands joined.
As Willow climbed out of the van, Angel steadying her with a grip on her arm, Spike marveled at how relaxed she was. He'd expected her to be a mess when they got back to the motel, but instead she'd relegated him and Angel to the front of the van, not taking the chance to remove herself from Dev. And she still seemed no worse for the experience.
"Do you think it's safe for us to circle our route a bit?" she asked Angel. "Wide circle, of course. I just don't want to end up in New York," she added wryly.
"Uh, that's fine," Angel responded, sounding as disconcerted as Spike felt. "Head south for a while."
"All right. See you at dusk." She turned around, then stopped and turned back. "Oh, and I put a salve on Dev's wounds. It should numb the pain a bit."
Silence reigned in the back of the van. It was the same thick quiet that had hovered around Spike and Angel when they'd been up front, after having been excommunicated by the women. They knew why the women had closed ranks, but there seemed to be nothing to say about it.
Spike fell into a fitful sleep, was awoken by Angel a while later to feed Dev, then drifted back to sleep again until the van came to a halt shortly after sunset. The backdoors opened, and Spike saw Willow standing there, a little more tired than when he'd last seen her.
"Did you get any sleep while we were driving?" Angel asked her with concern. "And have you eaten anything?"
"I slept until just before I took over driving, and I stopped for food while we were on the road," Willow assured him. Spike saw her gaze fall on the sleeping vampires, and she smiled. Her hand danced along Drusilla's calf, ending with a light slap. "Wakey wakey, Dru."
Drusilla stretched languidly, lifted Dev's hand to her mouth to place a gentle kiss on it and then crawled out of the van.
"I just got one room," Willow informed them, her eyes on Dev. "I think you guys are okay with blood?"
"Yeah," Spike grunted. He wrapped his arm around Dru's waist, pulling her tightly to him.
Willow nodded. She reached into the van and took the coolers in hand, setting off for the room while Spike and Angel gathered Dev up. Willow passed them as they were carrying the injured vampire in, indicating that she was going to get her stuff. Inside the room, Drusilla had turned down the bedding on one of the beds. She took the plastic sheet that Spike handed her, and spread it out. Willow returned as they were positioning Dev.
"I'm going to grab a shower," Willow told them. "Would you guys mind not going out? I kind of need to talk to you," she explained.
They agreed to wait, and Spike found his eyes meeting Angel's several times during Willow's shower. Angel appeared to have no more of an idea of what Willow wanted than Spike did. "Dru, luv, what does Willow want to talk about?" Spike queried.
Dru looked up from her position on the bed next to Dev. "So very much is easy to see in her, Spike, but much more is fuzzy and tilted."
Which meant she had no bloody idea. Spike found himself in an unusual position of not knowing how to act. It had knocked him off kilter, being kicked to the front of the van. Balances had shifted, and he wasn't sure in what manner. Were he and Angel supposed to stay away from them now? Or was it that Willow was no longer on the fringe of the horror, and wouldn't return there? Hell if he knew, that was for sure.
Angel passed him, walking to the windows and then spinning around to retrace his path. Pacing. Normally Spike's gig. That night, though, he didn't want to pace. He just wanted to do what he'd normally be doing, even if it was just sitting in the Watcher's living room, listening to him pontificate about the newest nasty. Because, none of this felt real. It was like a really crappy vacation to a place he really hated, and he wanted to go home.
Never mind that it wasn't bad being with Angel and Drusilla again. Didn't make up for the shitty circumstances, the shitty motels and the shitty van. Or for Dev, whose condition had improved only minimally. Seemed like they'd done nothing but wait and run since Dev had gotten to Angel's, and it was wearing thin, not having any action to take. That, rather than the travel, was probably what was getting to them all the most.
He was leaning against a wall, glowering at his thoughts, when the bathroom door opened. A cloud of humid air preceded Willow's entrance. Her clothes clung to her in places as she raised her arms and dried her hair with a towel.
"Well, what did you want to talk about?" Spike jeered. "Is it time for a Scooby pep session, then? Maybe you're gonna call the cheerleader and have her rah-rah-siss-boom-bah it all better?"
Willow froze, and then Angel was in front of him, towering like a dark shadow. "You need to vent?" he growled, twisting his hands in fistfuls of Spike's shirt and slamming him back against the wall. Hell. He'd forgotten that he wasn't the only one whose temper was frayed. "To throw some punches? Rip someone to shreds with that poison tongue of yours?"
Angel's human visage disappeared and Spike heard how Angel's yellow eyes were silently finishing that speech: *"Need a reminder of who you should be listening to?"* And it was a promise, not an offer or threat.
Their eyes stayed locked for a long moment, and then Angel loosened his grip on Spike's shirt. "You take your frustrations out on her again," Angel hissed, "and you'll damn well regret it." His hands fell away, along with his ridges and fangs.
As if Spike wasn't fully aware of that fact that it had been a shitty thing to do. "Right," Spike said quietly. "Got it."
He looked away, only to find Drusilla glaring prettily at him and Willow studiously folding the clothes she'd changed out of, devoting all of her attention to the task.
"Willow." Angel said softly.
Closing the lid of her suitcase, Willow shook her head. "I get that it wasn't about me," she assured him, her voice distant. She zipped the case shut and perched on the empty bed. In a lightning change of subject she said, "I've found several promising spells, but I'm honestly afraid of attempting them. I need to know more, which means I need to know what Drusilla saw."
Angel pulled a chair from a desk by the window and set it so that it was in front of and between the two beds. Then he turned it around and straddled it, putting his back to Spike. Running his hands through his hair, Spike looked around the room. He didn't seem to be welcome at either of the beds, and Angel had taken the only other chair.
"Sit down," Angel said coldly, one arm extending to point at the floor next to him.
Spike was about to tell him where he could shove that order, when he noted the slight difference in Angel's posture, which turned it into a bearing that told Spike he wasn't talking to just any vampire, but the vampire who had been as much, if not more, his sire as Drusilla had been.
Tricky situation, this. If he obeyed, took a submissive position to Angel, he'd be taking this game past the boundary that he himself had set. But if he didn't, then he knew that Angel wouldn't give him another reminder about his place in the hierarchy. And Spike wanted him to, because it was so bloody familiar, so everything he seemed to have been lacking recently, and just the thought of it all--everything that had once been--made him feel *right*.
Staring at Angel's back, Spike wondered just how far this could all go without putting him under the other vampire's thumb again. The answer, he realized, was as far as he wanted because this wasn't actually Angelus. It was Soul Boy, and none of it would have happened when it was all over. Spike found that not only could he live with that, but he welcomed it.
Spike was aware of Angel relaxing when he sat beside the chair, next to the bed Drusilla and Dev were on, his shoulder brushing Angel's leg.
"All together again," he heard Drusilla coo.
Willow was silent, and Spike looked up at her. Her face would have been expressionless to someone else, but Spike was all too familiar with the ghost in her eyes: she felt left out, in the way. Extraneous. Angel had to have noticed it as well, but he didn't do anything. Didn't break the spell by giving Spike his seat. The knowledge that Angel wanted this as much as Spike did made him lean a little more against Angel.
"What do you need to know about Dru's vision?" Angel asked Willow, his voice unapologetic but kind at the same time.
She folded her hands until Spike could see them whiten in pressure. "I need details, not a recap," she answered calmly. "It'd be better if Dru could tell me."
Angel shifted until he faced Drusilla. "Tell Willow about what you saw."
Drusilla's hands waved through the air, tracing something only she could see. "It's not in my eyes, Daddy."
"What she means," Spike began.
"She can't tell us anything because she's not seeing it," Willow finished, a touch of frost in her voice. "So, you two need to tell me everything she said."
"Might not be much," Angel replied, shifting back. "With everything that was going on, I didn't press her for details."
"Same here," Spike chimed in, pulling his legs to his chest and resting his wrists on his knees. "I remember she said that Dev was running--like fleeing for her life. Then something happened--"
"The tree," Angel interjected. "Drusilla said that Dev ran to a tree."
"A willow tree," Willow drawled wryly.
Spike snickered. "Dru rambled on about a crying tree with red blossoms and magic sap." He winked, glad to see that Willow smiled slightly. "Thought of you right away, Red."
Then her brows drew together. "She ran to it? That's not quite what happened. I mean, I came to her, not the other way around. What else?"
"Nothing much else," Angel said regretfully. "Like we told you, all she said next was that the tree would heal and protect Dev. Then it.left her eyes."
Willow continued to look thoughtful, her hands untying from each other and plowing through her hair. "Is there--can we get it back in Dru's sight somehow? Get her to see it again?"
Angel looked down at Spike questioningly. "It's possible," Spike said with a shrug.
Nodding, Willow turned to Drusilla, who had sprawled across every inch of bed that Dev wasn't using, her head at the foot of the bed near Spike and Angel. For a long moment, she was quiet, her eyes shifting across Dru's features rapidly. Eventually, she nodded again. "Dru, can I ask you something?"
Drusilla rolled her head to the side. "Of course, precious."
"Before a vision comes to your eyes," Willow said very slowly, as though she was putting a great deal of thought into every single word. "Where is it?"
Spike knew this tactic; he'd seen Willow use it when the Slayer rushed into Giles', ranting about finding "the demon", or when Xander babbled incoherently from panic, or when Giles forgot that the rest of them hadn't read the same texts he had. She was getting the story from the beginning, understanding the genesis so that she might figure out the revelation. He glanced up at Angel and saw the same knowledge in his eyes.
"It comes from the outside and mates with the noise and swirls," Drusilla answered. "Then it's born, all blood and screams."
Willow's lips twisted. No doubt the illogic of something mating and then being born as a result of its own mating was causing her distress. She visibly shook it off and continued. "Does it go directly to your eyes after it's, er, born?"
Definitely distressed.
Drusilla spilled upright, in that liquid way of hers. "Oh, not always. Sometimes it hides, and I have find it and punish it for being naughty. And sometimes it runs past me, rabbit-quick, and I have to set a trap to catch it. One of those metal mouths, that cuts through the flesh."
As Willow fell silent, no doubt pondering her next question, Spike realized that there was no one better equipped to follow Drusilla down winding path. Not even himself or Angel. She had the patience Spike didn't, and the lack of guilt that Angel didn't. But more than that, her intelligence and unusual experience with such matters gave her the ability to learn the path rather than be left to Drusilla's caprice.
"When it leaves your eyes, where does it go?"
"Back to the noise and swirls. It dances there. A lovely minuet, but only it can hear the music," she said sadly. "I try, but it's just to quiet for me."
"That's too bad," Willow commiserated. "After it goes back to the noise and swirls, does it ever come back to your eyes again?"
Drusilla sighed, dreamy. "Yes, sometimes it visits again. I offer it a cup of tea and we talk about the dancing."
Another long silence, then Willow left her perch and kneeled in front of Spike to look up at Drusilla. "Why does it sometimes visit you?"
"Well," Dru said, conspiratorially, "because it knows I miss it. Doesn't like me to feel sad. Or if I've forgotten, it knows it has to remind me. We're great friends."
Ah, a fork in the road. Two paths to investigate. Spike found himself leaning towards Willow and Dru, could feel Angel doing the same.
"Has it ever not visited you when you miss it?"
Drusilla frowned. It was Willow's first misstep; negatives had to be handled just right, or they confused Drusilla. Willow pursed her lips and tried again. "Did it ever choose to stay in the noise and swirls when you missed it?"
"Why, of course not," Drusilla hissed, drawing back from Willow and glaring. "I told you, we're great friends."
Second misstep: never, ever imply that someone wasn't totally devoted to Dru's every whim.
"She didn't mean anything by it, pet," Spike comforted Drusilla. "Her friends aren't as nice to her as yours are."
That had Willow glaring at him, but he just smirked. Drusilla, on the other hand, flowed towards the red head again, her face troubled. "You should have great friends, precious," she murmured, one of her fingers caressing Willow's cheek. "Shall I kill these people who aren't good to you?"
"No!" Willow practically shouted. Spike burst out laughing, and didn't stop until Angel smacked the back of his head lightly. Willow took a deep breath. "I mean, it's, uh, very.sweet of you, but I'll, er, take care of them myself. Okay?"
"Very well," Drusilla pouted. "If you change your mind--"
"You'll be the first to know," Willow promised vehemently, then brought the conversation back around again. "So, I suppose that every time you've forgotten your vision, it reminded you."
The look Drusilla turned on Willow could only be deemed pitying, and Spike covered his mouth and laughed into his hand. "Yes, precious," Drusilla said simply.
"Do you remember having a vision after you got to Angel's?" Willow asked carefully, seemingly watching her words even more vigilantly now.
Drusilla whimpered. "Yessss," she moaned.
"Has that vision come to your eyes again?" Willow pushed on, studying Dru carefully.
"No! Stay away, I said," Drusilla shouted, her hands grabbing frantically at the hair at her temples.
Spike moved to take her in his arms, but Willow was there. She covered Drusilla's fists with her hands and ran her thumbs soothingly across her hands. Spike settled back, staring with wide eyes.
"Drusilla," Willow breathed. "I can *not* help Dev, and I can *not* make her safe."
"But you have to!" Drusilla wailed, tears pooling in her eyes.
"I don't know how," Willow said intently. "Your vision knows, but I don't."
With that, Willow released Drusilla and stood up. "I'm hungry," she said aloud. "Will someone take me out to get some food?"
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Angel and Willow walked to the van in silence. She handed the keys to him and got in the passenger seat. Angel watched her, tossing the keys up and down a few times before getting behind the wheel.
They found a fast food restaurant, and Angel pulled into a drive-thru, relating Willow's order to the big, smiling burger. She really must have been hungry, because she ordered two hamburgers for herself.
Angel didn't speak until they'd gotten back to the hotel. Half of Willow's fries had already been eaten, and she was chewing when he placed a restraining hand on her arm.
"What--" He broke off, not really sure what he was trying to ask her, or rather, which of eight million questions he wanted answered.
She took pity on him. Bless her. "Last night--in the van--we talked a lot," she said quietly. "Gave me *quite* the migraine, I tell you. But, I did figure out one thing." Angel waited expectantly and she smiled. "Dru's not a direct critter, you know? So--direct isn't the route to take."
For what felt like the hundredth time that night, Angel looked at Willow as though he'd never seen her before. She'd asked direct questions then interpreted Dru's indirect answers. In her piece de' resistance, she'd planted the seed, in an indirect manner that would click with Drusilla. Willow had told Dru she couldn't help Dev and implied she couldn't do so without the information in the vision.
Willow shrugged then sighed hugely. "Hopefully it'll work and it'll come to her eyes again. To tell you the truth--I don't know what the heck to do. I'm crossing my fingers that her vision will give me some direction. And, I'm kind of ticked that whoever gives Cordy her visions didn't giver her *this* one. Much prefer Cory's to Dru's."
"I know the feeling," Angel commiserated. "They like to keep us on our toes."
"I guess they kind of have to." At Angel's frown, she expounded. "Well, we *are* talking about *you*, Angel." She raised her brows drolly. "Same guy who smashed the Gem of Amarra because it made things too easy for him?"
And he had to smile, because hadn't he recently thought the same thing? One would think that Willow would be ignorant of a great many things, since she was often on the sidelines. But, no, she used that opportunity to learn objectively, then put that knowledge to terrifically cunning use.
"I wish we'd gotten to know each other better over the years," Angel sighed.
"In a way we did, it just was via the Buffster," Willow reminded him. "Now, can we get inside? I really want to dig into this burger."
So inside they went. Spike was sprawled on the empty bed, Drusilla on top of him. He was running a hand through her hair, the other tracing circles on the small of her back. Comforting her. Angel was on guard instantly, knowing full well how protective Spike was of Dru. To his surprise, Spike didn't say anything to Willow, just looked at the fast food bag with one raised brow.
Willow's lips twisted wryly, and she reached inside and pulled out one of the burgers, setting it on the desk. "Not that you deserve it," she told Spike petulantly. "But there you go."
"Fries?" Spike asked hopefully, but Willow shook her head. "Damn. I guess I know better than to tick you off, eh?"
"And don't you forget it," Willow replied.
It was as close to an apology as Spike would ever get, and Angel was relieved that Willow had recognized that and forgiven him without acknowledging either part.
"We need to feed Dev," Angel told Willow softly. "Do you.?"
He saw Willow take a deep breath. It seemed she wanted to leave the room, but then she looked at Dev and shook her head. "I'll stay."
She moved the chair back to the desk, and sat facing them, watching closely as each of them bled themselves into the copper bowl. As Angel was moving Dev, turning her over so that they could get her to drink the blood, the injured vampire whimpered.
"Wait," Willow gasped. "Don't. I can help."
Angel stared at her. "How?"
"Set her back down and get off the bed," was all Willow said.
Angel looked questioningly at Spike, but he looked just as clueless as Angel felt. Drusilla made the decision before the rest of them did, crawling off the bed and taking a step back, Angel and Spike followed suit.
Curiously, Angel looked at Willow. She was standing now, closer to the bed, and her face was scrunched up in concentration.
"Bloody hell."
Angel's head pivoted back around and his eyes widened. Dev was floating a good six inches from the bed. Then, slowly, she began to turn over. Her head lolled back, then came up. Slanting a glance in Willow's direction, he saw that she was shaking slightly with the exertion.
"Feed her," Willow bit out.
Angel lifted the bowl to Dev's mouth. It took a few minutes for her to reflexively swallow it all, and when he was done, he thought Willow would lower her back to the bed.
"Spike. My trunk."
Spike went directly to the trunk by the desk and opened it. "What do you need?"
"Green jar," Willow said in a shaky voice.
Spike rummaged around and then held up a jar for Willow to look at. She nodded. "Salve. Put it on her."
Willow turned Dev, with apparently great effort, once Spike had finished her front. After he was done with the back, Angel saw Willow look to Drusilla, who took the jar from Spike and applied it between Dev's legs. Angel's eyes flew to the floor and stayed there for several long moments. Drusilla was done when he looked up again.
Dev was lowered gently to the bed, Willow going so far as to shift the vampire's head to the right so that her face wasn't pressed against the mattress. He heard Spike curse, caught a glimpse of a blur of motion, and saw Willow falling to her knees only to be jerked upright by Spike's arms around her waist.
"Warn a vampire, Will," Spike drawled as he took the few steps to the unoccupied bed and sat her down. She was shivering now, yet beads of sweat were running down her face.
"S-s-s-sorry," she said between chattering teeth.
Angel grabbed the discarded blanket from Dev's bed and wrapped it around Willow's shoulders. "Is there something we can do, Willow?"
"I just need to rest. Told you, not super-mojo ninja witch."
"We have to get back on the road," Angel said quietly. "But you can lay down in the back of the van if you feel up to it?"
"Okay."
Willow remained on the bed while the vampires fed from the bags in the coolers, and broke camp yet again. When she tried to stand, she plopped back on the bed, her eyes wide and annoyed. Ignoring her protests, Angel lifted her in his arms, blanket and all. "Spike, go check us out," he said over his shoulder as he carried Willow from the room.
She was asleep before they reached the van.
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