Trick For Your Treats: A Maypole Dance Around Spike

October 31st, 1997

Part 10: Unfettered

22

Spike: Dru, pet… What're you doing up there?

Drusilla: My bodice came unfettered…

Spike: So'd your knickers, from the looks of it.

Drusilla: I felt fettered.

Spike:I'm sure you did. Now hold on tight while I climb up.

Drusilla: Spike?

Spike: Yes Dru?

Drusilla: It shan't be long before we're all unfettered.

"And a bloody lovely bunch o' nudists we shall be," Spike agreed beneath his nonexistent breath. "Angel will be thrilled. Can't wait to tell the magnificent poof."

Pause. "On the other hand, never mind that. He might take it to heart, then I'd have to gouge my own eyes out."

"Where'd your nanny get to, love? You're not supposed to be alone," he said.

"I sent her on an errand," Drusilla replied primly. It is none of his business. She, like him, has secrets to keep.

Spike reached the top of the ladder, and stepped out onto the catwalk. With deft steps, he moved toward where Drusilla precariously perched upon a cable as if it were a swing, swaying pedantically to and fro.

"It burns, it burns," Drusilla's complaint ended in a plaintive whimper as Spike brought his brilliant soul into physical proximity. She cried out in pain, and cringed from his touch. In her weakened state, it hurt her like sunlight, searing her flesh from the bone.

Spike's soul offends more than Angel's, and it is not because one is nobler or purer than the other. The mortal slight lies in the method of acquisition. Spike's soul is a choice, a burden willingly assumed, and deliberately incorporated into his identity. He wears it like a suit of armor.

Angel's soul is inflicted, rather like a disease, and Drusilla can almost forgive him for having fallen victim to the curse. Angel wears his soul like a hair shirt, and just beneath the surface Drusilla can always sense her daddy, yearning for his freedom with savage passion.

"Course it does, pet. Price one pays for being stupid enough to get a soul just to impress a girl," Spike said with a weary sigh, gathering Drusilla into his arms in spite of her weak struggles.

Violent, excruciating pain defined her entire existence on the short trip down the ladder. Somehow, Spike kept them both from plunging off the precipice of reality. Time bent like a windy serpent, enwrapping them in its coils. Tighter and tighter the crushing spiral, sucking her downward, outward, inside and out.

Spike lowered Drusilla to the leather sofa, and pulled a blanket over her. She shivered and curled into a fetal position as violent chills ravaged her ruined body.

"Spike, I am gruel – made of mush. I am a desiccated husk. Soon I shall turn to dust," Drusilla said, able to manage coherent speech once he'd removed his burning hands.

Spike stood frozen over her, helpless and indecisive. His wretched failing: the guilt and the less-than-love concern. It turned her gut, tasting worse than the vile pig's blood that Angel and Spike occasionally force down her throat.

Ashes in her mouth, clogging her throat with their ineffectual weakness. The two of them kept a deathbed vigil, hovering constantly, staring with expectant gazes, for her to die. Her only remaining family…both of them smothered beneath cloying souls, drowning in the putrid pus of the serpent.

"You stink of her," Drusilla whispered, opening her eyes in order to stare up at her lost childe. He gazed down at her with his false love bleeding from his eye sockets, falling upon her like dead rose petals.

Spike sniffed himself in self-inspection. "Right. Had a bit of a scuffle with the slayer. I'll have to shower and change before Angel gets back."

"You've gone all away. To her." Drusilla laughs, bitterly, because Angel bears a nearly identical taint. Both her sire and childe, so completely different, and yet they are the same.

"Now Dru, you know that's not true." Spike's blue eyes are guarded. He keeps secrets from Angel, from the mother, from the slayer, and even the one who will worship at the moon. He keeps secrets from everyone, including himself. Lies.

Drusilla laughed: low, deep, and rich. He thinks he can deceive her. But she knows better.

"The slayer. Your heart stinks of her. Poor little thing. She has no idea what's in store." Drusilla can see the future: clear, bold, and bright. She has a vision of the torment and suffering to come. It is a rare delight, an epiphany of suffering and misery, and great great loss.

Spike's gaze sparked with raw defiance. "She might not, but I do, cause I know the future better even than you," he said. His fists are balled, but he is ineffectual and helpless before his uncertainty. "And I intend to stop it. To change it."

Drusilla rolled her head toward the ceiling, and brought her hands to rest upon her tummy, composing her corpse into the traditional posture of eternal slumber.

"You'll try," she replied sweetly, causing him to scowl.

Concern. Worry. Doubt. He is scared.

"I won't allow it to happen again," he said, trying to convince himself more so than Drusilla. "They can't go on like this forever. I can see that. It's gotta end."

"Poor poor Spike. You jump through her hoops, trick for your treats, but she doesn't see you, does she? Never has, never will. No treats for you, bad dog. It is all for him." She growled at Spike, flashing her fangs.

"His soul is the morning mist, burning before the light of her love," Drusilla whispered. The exertion of changing to game face has left her terribly weakened.

There is a boom inside of her skull.

"Daddy is home," Drusilla predicted with uncanny certainty just seconds before Angel strolled through the factory doors.

Spike's entire body convulses as a leap of paranoid suspicion overtakes him. Drusilla giggled, delighting in the aggressive display as Spike's eyes flash golden and game face overtakes his countenance. A challenging growl rolls forth from the back of his throat, and his muscles bunch in readiness for combat.

His expectation of Angelus is paramount.

End Part 10.