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(O.O)
Drusilla
They were arguing again, Grandmummy and my Spike, in the room outside my own. I could hear them through the door. They always argued with each other, always disagreeing about the small things, but this fight was more heated than the usual ones about towels, or gloves, or kippers. I could hear stuff breaking in the other room. But don't you worry, I knew weren't killing each other. They were most likely just using the furniture as an outlet to release their frustrations, again. They did that sometimes.
A century and some-odd years we've spent together, I believe I can say that I knew my family well enough to tell what they were doing, even when I wasn't in the same room. Broken chairs meant it was probably a row about what happened in Czechoslovakia. I mean the Czech Republic, or whatever they were calling it now. I missed the Austro-Hungarian empire, they'd had nice hats, they did.
It wasn't very long ago when the two of them had had to rescue me from a horrible mob. A very large group of very angry citizens of in the city of Prague. I liked it there, before that, the city was pretty and my pixies had such wonderful stories to tell about the place. Yet I find it strange, why their people had come after us despite the fact we had just prevented the destruction of their lovely city, only a few days before.
Well, maybe it wasn't that strange, since as usual my Spike was to blame. He was always the reason why people came after us, both before and after we got our souls back. Though this time, unlike before, he hadn't set them off by killing someone. Nope, it wasn't like that at all. In fact, it was because he had saved a girl that that the good citizens of beautiful Prague had decided to take up their pitchforks to try to kill us.
So ungrateful! And people had the audacity to call ME insane.
William had gone out his way rescue a sweet young girl from a group of thieves and ruffians. If he hadn't, she would no longer be so sweet, nor so innocent. He had jumped into the middle of the gang of thugs, so angry that he'd forgotten to pull his punches and had sent them flying this way and that.
I was there, you see, and I really enjoyed watching the fight. It made me laugh to see one after the other of these horrible men, who thought they were so tough, go tumbling to the ground like ragdolls.
Such a funny sight that was!
Afterwards, when we had believed that all was well and William had defeated the thieves with no casualties besides a few broken bones, which they'd deserved, there wasn't anything that should've warranted retaliation. Fate, however, had other plans, and she was working against us that night.
During the fight with the gang, one of the thieves had shaken off a punch and had come after William from behind with a nasty sharp knife. William hadn't had time to evade the attack, and when the knife hit him, his demon came forth in pain making the stupid, ugly man piss trousers. He had then called my dear William a monster and ran away from us like the coward that he was. He had left the blade embedded in William's back. I tried to go to William, to help him, but he had pulled it out by himself, with a grunt and a shower of blood before I'd even been able to take three steps. He tossed the knife at my feet, his pride still intact.
"Foolish childe, " I had thought of him back then, and made a face as I pulled off my scarf to conceal the gaping wound. We didn't want to attract unwarranted attention after all.
The few remaining ruffians had scattered after seeing what they'd been fighting, but not the girl they'd been attacking. She just stood there, swaying, either too scared or too stupid to run.
"Hide your beast, my Spike." I had whispered urgently to him. "Mustn't let the poor girl be any more frightened than she already is. Miss Edith would be cross if we forgot our manners."
William had quickly changed his face back to its human visage, shame in his eyes. He doesn't like it when he loses control of his demon. But instead of lingering on his mistake, he focused his attention on the girl. He had turned and bent down to address her, saying she was safe and asking if she was alright. The girl was shaken, but not harmed. Like most that had never before seen the supernatural, she was full of questions, and as we'd walked her home she became less and less afraid, and more and more curious us.
Don't you find it strange how humans find wonder in the darkness of our world? I do, because I never understood what would make beings like us so fascinating to them. I blame those horrid vampire fiction novels for it, they had altered the truth about everything. Nasty, stupid little things.
Anyway, going back, it had been a relief to drop the girl and her questions off in here home, with a strict warning to not be out alone at night ever again, and then we had returned to our hotel and retired for the evening.
We had all thought that'd be the end of it, but it was only the next night when the door had started rattling under the pounding of a fist. I was alone, and terrified, William and grandmummy were away, you see. They went out to haunt the remaining demons who tried to destroy the city, leaving me alone tonight, unknowingly forcing me to deal with the crowd outside.
There were many angry men, baying like hounds for our blood, they barked for the monsters to come out and show themselves.
In Prague the truth was everywhere, on statues and seals. Pravda vítězí, they said, 'truth prevails'. Only not that night, and not with those men with their knives and guns and clubs- and THEY had had the nerve to call us MONSTERS.
I tell you, we hadn't done anything wrong, but they believed we did. False accusations, that was!
You see, a few days before a clan of FracTi're demons had tried to create a portal that would have sucked the entire city and all its many inhabitants off the map and into a dimension of endless fire and torment. The demons had murdered and mutilated fifteen women, posing them grotesquely around the square in preparation for its ritual. My family and I had stopped the demon just in time, but the only thing the grieving men had seen was us, standing over the bodies of their loved ones. We were blamed for what happened, so we had fled the scene, packing up our few belonging and moving to the other side of city. We could've left the city but we were not sure that we had slayed every last one of these nasty demons, so we stayed in Prague, just until we were a hundred percent certain.
Had we left the city, none of this would've happen. But instead we stayed and had kept a low profile for days, making sure we didn't get recognized as we scourged the city for the demons we sought. I had been certain that we did an excellent job at it. We made no mistakes, until last night, when William saved that girl.
From the room's tiny window, I had seen the girl we had saved, along with two of the thieves, who were worse for wear, standing amongst the crowd of angry people. They must've been the ones who had told about us. One of the gang must've followed us home the night before, wthout our notice.
Hey, don't blame us, our thoughts were very occupied back then. William had been hurting and I'd been too busy trying to keep my scarf in place to hide the wound to notice being tailed.
But I still knew it had been a foolish mistake on our part. A mistake that I would be dealing gravely.
The mob had kept banging at the door, but when I refused to open it, they had broken it down and I'd been drug out, screaming, by my hair. I had tried to fight them, I really did, but I couldn't defeat them without bloodshed. The vows that I had made when I had been alive may have meant nothing upon my turning, but the vow I'd made on the night my soul was returned to me, to never kill humans again, was sacred. I'd dust before breaking it.
So they had taken me, had hurt me, had done unspeakable things to me. I kept forgetting where and when I was, that I had started begging Angelus to stop, to leave me alone and that I'd be his good girl if he did. The men had only laughed at me, and then hurt me some more.
It was horrible, painful, and had brought back memories I still try to hide. The pixies were silent back then and I found no solace.
There wasn't much left of me when Grandmum and Spike finally found where the men had taken me. The had cried and cried over my broken and battered body, but I was all out of tears by then.
(O.O)
We'd left the Czech Republic right after that. I didn't even get to say good-bye to the pretty parts of Prague, but I'll never forget the ugly ones.
So now we sat in hotel rooms in Paris, or Geneva, or Brussels, and they argued. Grandmummy blamed Spike for what happened, and though he held himself responsible as well, he didn't like it when Grandmummy scolded him about it again and again, so they fought .
They clashed, while my body didn't heal. No amount of pig's or cow's or even human's blood would help. Even now I felt the burns from the holy water the men had poured over, and in, me.
I moaned and cried. It hurts. The pixies said I wouldn't survive this, not without my Daddy's help. But Daddy is dead. I keep on telling them that, but they wouldn't listen. Why wouldn't they listen? Why won't they keep quiet? I am in pain, yet they keep whispering in my ears, not letting me sleep. Nasty, nasty pixies! Ms. Edith is cross!
I then heard the door opening, and Grandmummy entered my room.
"Hello my sweet, how are you feeling?" She asked as she knelt down next to my bed.
"It still hurts all over, grandmummy. Where's my Spike?" I asked her, despite the fact I already knew the answer.
"He went out to get some blood for you, my sweet," she said gently as she caressed my hair.
I always loved it when Grandmummy started acting this way. She reminded me of my lost, human mum: Evelyn Joyce Mallard. After what Angelus did to me, I had lost nearly all the memories of my family, but not her. Her name was a litany I said every night, so I wouldn't forget. She was the kindest and gentlest person I had ever known. She was the only one in my family who had accepted my gift of sight, and she'd told me not to be afraid of it. She'd comforted me when the visions had become too overwhelming. She'd given me hugs, and would brush my long hair with her hands. She was special. So it wasn't a surprise that it had broken my heart when she had died of pneumonia when I was eight, but I was fiercely glad that she had, when Angelus had killed the rest of my family, when I was eighteen. I was so happy that he had not gotten her because he hadn't deserved her.
I had really, really loved my mum and missed her with all my soul. So it made me very happy when Darla started acting like her. Grandmummy didn't really do everything like mum did, of course, but she did enough. I knew for a fact she thought of us as her children, and cared and loved us as such. She would be willing to die for us, even for my William. It's strange that her soul gave her back her motherly instincts, while mine merely gave me back my mind. At least some of it, anyways.
It's not a blessing, I assure you. Having my sanity back is the worst torture that I had to experience. I saw things clearer than before, and not just in my visions, but everything I had done over my time as a vampire. I could see it all. It would get worse when I closed my eyes. I was unable to unsee a single evil thing I had done, or that had been done to me. The movie of my damnation played unceasingly behind my eyelids.
After I had been turned, the twisted evil of Angelus had seemed unimportant, and I had shoved it from my mind. He was my creator after all, and I owed him everything.
But then the soul brought it back. The mind games, the torture, the murder, and the rape that'd happened while the bodies of my holy sisters lay cooling nearby. It brought all the horrors back, but this time I couldn't escape them as I had back then. I now care about what had happened, and my mind wasn't as fragile as it had been so it didn't break under all those images and memories.
"Bad Daddy. It's all your fault. Doing all those nasty things to me. No cakes for bad little boys that break their playthings," I angrily said in my mind.
I'm so mad at him, and sometimes wish I could still hurt him, to make him suffer for not only hurting me, but abandoning me when I needed him most. But I can't. Daddy was dead. I'd felt him leave us in Romania, and also William said that he was, and so did Grandmummy, but not the pixies. No, the pixies whisper nasty lies again. They tell me Daddy was alive. They'd sent me visions of him lying in the dark alleys chasing icky rats, and him standing deep below the waves on a submarine, I also see him hiding in a hotel room much like we were.
It was all so confusing. I don't know what to make of it. I felt myself shiver. But then a strong hand took my trembling one, taking me away from my thoughts and putting me back in the present.
"Dru, sweetling, are you hurting?" Grandmummy asked sensing my distress.
"I need my Daddy." I whimpered. "The pixies tell me so. But they lie. They lie because Daddy is dead. Is he not, grandmummy?"
I saw a glint in her eyes, but I could not tell what it meant. Her fingers tightened around mine, and her eyes stared intently at me. Then they softened as she talked to me.
"Sleep my Dru. Don't think about what those damn sprites say. They lie. Angelus is no more, of that I can assure you, but I believe I now know of a way to help you." She smoothed the hair back from my forehead. "Rest. And at sundown we leave for the states, to Sunnydale in California. I heard there is an active Hellmouth there, perhaps it's mystical and magical properties can help heal you."
She kissed my head and tucked me under the sheets tighter before leaving me on my own again.
I wanted to stop her, to tell her not to take us to the mouth of hell, because I saw what will happen to my family once we get there. Grandmummy would die there by her own hand, and my Spike will not be mine anymore, he will belong to the sunshine, and Dru will be left all alone.
Only I couldn't say anything. All of it was destined, it'd all been written in the stars the moment our souls had been returned to us. It was the reason I, and by extension William, had not walked out to greet the sun that first morning. A selfish part of me still wished that we had, because I'm tired of hurting, and I knew there was only more pain awaiting me in my future. It had been so much easier to just be evil.
Anyway, it was time to sleep now, and I'm so tired. As I laid deeper on my pillow, I wondered what treats I should have with my tea tonight. Hmm, I couldn't wait. Miss Edith was excited too. Good night, or should I say good day? Hmm, it doesn't matter, I was sleepy either way. Stupid pixies, they were always talking to me in my sleep.
Ahh, it still hurts.
I need to sleep.
Sleeping now...
(O.O)
A/N: I appreciate reviews, and it makes me write some more. Thank you for reading, and see you until next time!
