Hey guys. This fic is actually a rewrite of something a friend and I wrote for a cowrite as a birthday present to a friend. IF Drusilla_theseer from like 2013 instagram sees this, Hi! We love you!
The opening lines are from Destiny-what William tells Angelus that blows up in his face. Angelus couldn't have someone love his masterpiece, and undo so much of his hard work. I hope y'all see the SALT in my tone here.
So, as anyone reading Tua Maxima Culpa (Ao3, soon to be crossposted), or who were familiar with me) know, my characterization of the dynamic between Dru and Angelus is fairly dark. I pretty much perpetually skirt around having to select the major warning for Rape/Non-con only becasue it doesn't happen on screen (and I do this in my other fandom too!) I understand that, in particular, in Season 2, she seems into Angel, but with all I know about her backstory-Stained Glass Saints-I just don't want him to have that. I don't want her to be Angel/us' willing toy after he did everything in his power to destroy her. Maybe one day, I'll stop tagging all my Dru fic with this explanation.
There will be explanations for the lines William doesn't unpack in the closing notes, to avoid spoilers here.
"She's special, isn't she? Our Drusilla."
"More than that. She brought me into this world. Where I was meant to be. It's like... she's my destiny."
William Pratt was fucked. Not literally, that was the girl he was supposed to be spending eternity with, in another room, with her sire. He should have fucking known they were setting him up. He threw his notebook across the room, watching it fall open to a random page. This was the "Dark Muse" era of his work. It was all about her. Her when she manifested in his human self's dreams. Her when he turned him into this. Half-penned lines that seemed too foolish, to vulnerable for him to tolerate reading. He got up, crossed the creaky wooden floor, and retrieved his book, flipping it open, and seeing a particularly offensive line in red pen that bled into the parchment. "Thus with a kiss I die, and with a kiss she revives me."
Romeo and Juliet. He really should have known.
He penned one line below it, scratching the original out with one neat line of black ink. "These violent delights have violent ends" there. That was what the bard had to say about his situation. Fuck. He wanted to kick something, or yell, but instead he wrote with equal violence, "for a man who on destiny depends," he improvised, his writing sharp and angry, nearly cutting through the thin paper. He stared at it a moment, the paper stretched and scratched from the tip of his pen. It didn't seem real. He muttered the words, like some kind of litany, but they didn't seem real.
"And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume," he said the rest of the original, his hand grazing the pinprick scars on his neck where her teeth sank in. His eyes flicked to the bed. He could almost see her there, splayed, fucking her sire.
He tore the pages out violently, almost taking the binding with it. He launched them at the bed, where she'd lay. It felt like that was the only place for lies like he'd written. The deep red walls of the room felt as though they were bearing down on him, all the paintings staring at him. He couldn't look at the bed, any longer, nor the glare of the lamps. In the arch in the middle of the room, he could still see her, in Angelus' arms, extending hers out to him.
William ripped the balcony door open, and slammed it behind him, before slumping against it. Only once he knew he was safely alone, he let himself cry. He was dead, and he was alone. She was a lie. He mourned himself, his mum, his life. The destiny he thought he had. His back heaved, and his lungs ached, though they didn't need breath. Everything that had mattered to him evaporated when he met her, and now there was nothing left in him. He was a shell.
He didn't want to think about how pathetic he looked, His face flushed from the friction from wiping the tears off with his sleeves, one cheekbone bruised and swollen from his fight with Angelus. It felt a little better, mostly because the emotion wasn't all locked inside him anymore. He'd go inside before the sun rose, and figure out what he was, and what he wanted to be the following night when he woke up. If he locked the door, neither of them got the satisfaction of knowing what they'd done to him.
When he entered the room, the lamps were all off. The room was lit just by the moonlight from the doorway. There was a large bathtub, marble, by the looks of it in the middle, that had been filled. A really fancy one—by the looks of it heated. There she was. Naked, silhouetted in the moonlight that spilled down her back. Her dark hair trailed down her back and shoulders, the marble obscuring her from just below her shoulder blades. Where the wet hair didn't cover, he saw finger shaped bruises on her shoulders—more irrefutable proof. She didn't have to lord it over him. Dru didn't turn around but spoke, seemingly aware he'd entered, "tried to deny thee, stars," she quoted, "it wasn't stars, see, they mustn't be so cruel, but they told me all the same nothing changed." Her voice was soft, ponderous almost.
It sounded as though this was nothing to her personally, as though she was making some kind of observation. Maybe that was normal for her, but this wasn't what he'd died for. "Can you just bloody tell me anything," he heard his voice leave his lips, not realizing it was his. He didn't recognize the edge anger in it. "You tricked me. You killed me," he accused. He was done with being lead around, and playing guessing games. He was tired of her hiding things from him. She could say what she meant, or he was going to leave, sunlight be damned.
She made a sound that sounded almost like a hiccup, her busied shoulders curling downward into her body, and then said, "Take him and cut him out in little stars, that all the world will be in love with night." Her tone was low, melancholy, "I've cut out too many stars and your name isn't the same. I can't see you into the skies, my William." She sounded mournful, as though something in what she'd said was wrong, or painful. She said his name plaintively, trying to make him understand words just out of his reach. "Perhaps it was selfish to be in love with knight, but who wouldn't take a pen for a sword?" She asked. There was a little splash in the water as she slid further into the bath.
The words had to be important to her. She was trying to tell him something, but he couldn't make sense of her explanations. He had to slow down. He'd never parse any truth if he just kept shouting. He started at the Shakespeare quote. Juliet's last words. His, that he'd crossed off were Romeo's.Fitting. He sat down in the doorway, his head in his hands, and blew out a sigh. "Right. You've cut out many stars. I'm not the first person you've killed. But I'm the first you've kept." He strung together.
She gave a hum, in affirmation, "thus with a kiss…" she trailed off, repeating his words. He wondered if he checked the bed, if the pages would be moved.
William's head sunk lower into his hands, resisting the urge to groan in frustration. This had to be the only time he'd ever been frustrated with poetry. "Night…knight," he parsed out, wondering which of them she'd meant where. Maybe it was both, maybe the quote was about a knight that got cut to stars in the night, and it was selfish to love both when it meant doing that. In which case, she was right, but it hadn't stopped her from doing it to him. "You have a lover," he rebuffed her, "you have a bloody sword, why did you need another knight?" he seethed, "that's just cruel, letting me think you'd any interest in the works of the pen," she said, rather pointedly. It sounded like she was mocking him. Calling him a lesser knight compared to the man she'd spurned him for, because he was a writer and Angelus a fighter.
"Swords are made of glass," she insisted, her voice taking on a bit of an edge, as though she couldn't believe why he'd think it was alright. "Glass and eyes, watching, watching," she rolled over and leaning against the bathtub to see him. He looked up at the sound of the splash, and there she was, eyes open, searching for something, in him. For once he didn't feel she could see through him. "The violent delights delight most in their violent ends when they can't finish. Can you not understand what swords are for?" She plead, her hands clenching around the edge of the bathtub. She'd definitely found his note—whether she found it inside his head or in the bed.
Something in her voice compelled him to try to pull together what she said. She was begging for some kind of understanding, and that was what he wanted too. He started from the start, "there are stars cut into the sky." She nodded, "by a glass sword," she nodded again, eyes downcast at the reference, as though ashamed, "you can't add me to the sky, via that glass sword. That's the real kind of death." He took a guess there—it couldn't have meant his last death, she had no problems doing that to him.
"Said you were in the sky…shouldn't've trusted the word of a sword," she mumbled, still not looking at him. Her fingers absently played with the scars on her neck. In the moonlight, when she shifted, and he looked closely, he could see she was littered with other ones. Smoothed, silvered scars that blended into her skin until he looked. That felt wrong. She was a vampire, yes, and he didn't know for how long, but it seemed even still, some weren't places he'd expect her to sustain injuries from prey. Some were too smooth, to linear. There wasn't a fight.
Words strung together faster. Angelus was the sword—he told her William was dead. She moved on fast if that was true, he thought bitterly. Glass and watching eyes didn't click. Angelus didn't seem particularly fragile. So he was the sword she wanted to trade for a pen, which William knew was the poet, if that was still who he was. If that was true, and she wasn't lying to him in intricate metaphors, she wanted him. What did that make what he'd seen? Violent delights, and violent ends that can't finish. What swords are for. It had an obvious, and perverse meaning, but He was sure there was something past it. There was no pleasure in what she'd done. Violent. Angelus' purpose, as a sword. Her eyes were glassy when he saw her. She was like her dolls, not in her body. He didn't speak, just covering his mouth to silence whatever he wasn't ready to say. Avoid a gasp. The horror was plain in his eyes. Why did he assume anyone wanted to comply with Angelus?
"Sometimes it's…sometimes it only takes parts of you, but it cuts…" a sharp breath cut her own, eyes still downcast. She couldn't look at him when she told him. William felt as though he shouldn't be hearing this, as though his presence and their circumstance forced her to speak. She shut her eyes tightly enough they furrowed, and clenched her lips together. Her shoulders tightened. She was trying not to cry. "It tries to find what it took, it's what swords are for," she slackened against the bathtub, her wet hair steaming around her. The purple marks other shoulders were unthinkable.
It made it so much worse. Parts of her. Her soul, he thought. Angelus had sired her, he knew that much. She'd asked him first, in the alley. Angelus wouldn't have shown her that consideration. It would have been violent. And it couldn't finish, because she was still here, and still subject to him. That was what they meant. She hadn't expected to come back. Probably hadn't wanted to either. The scars weren't from feeding—she had a hypnotic effect on humans. They gave themselves to her. They were from him. "Oh God," was all he got out.
"Won't hear," she warned him, her eyes now glittering with the moonlight. "He forsakes our kind, my William. It's us and the stars," she whispered, looking past him out the door, as though waiting for some sign to contradict her. He wondered if she'd been religious, if she'd tried to get some higher power to intervene. Crosses burned their kind, as he learned at the wedding. He didn't pull together quite what the stars were. The people they lost? The people they killed? That was the last thing that mattered. He came closer, crouching outside the bathtub. Close enough he could look in her eyes.
"I'm sorry, love," he kept his voice low, as though she would shatter if he spoke any louder than that. "I didn't realize," he explained, "spent so long with a pen I didn't know what swords were for," and that was true—he'd been seeing it all through the world he'd grown up in, not the distorted world she lived in. In his world, the worst case was infidelity, in hers, things unspeakable. "Did it cut you, love?" he asked, the pet name falling from his lips without a thought, "are you hurt?"
She didn't speak, but nodded, and he continued, "you needed a knight," he filled in, "but not a sword. Not bloody different anymore, if he was." He was hearing himself speak, but most of his attention was on her face. He watched her, as her eyes opened, and stared into his. They were both searching. Neither knew what words could be spoken.
She spoke first, "thus with a kiss," she reminded him, still searching in his eyes for something, fervently. He'd never seen her eyes so intense, looking within him for whatever it was he hadn't yet said.
"You chose me," he acknowledged, "that's why I saw you in my dreams before I ever met you." That or, he could see the future, but only when it involved her. That would be an odd gift, especially while he was human. It was more likely she was the one to see him. She nodded, waiting for him to say what she'd probably heard, half-formed in his head. She had an uncanny way of knowing his words, "I'll be your knight, love, it's over now."
He meant it, even if it was impossible. His eyes were earnest. She pulled him in, her arms locking behind his neck, water dripping in rivulets down his back, his arms, his chest. Tentatively, he slid his arms under her, despite the water creeping up his sleeves, and picked her up, holding her against his chest. When he stood, and lifted her, the moonlight on her body made her look although she was made of silver. He didn't look for her scars. That wasn't what he was for. He did carry her to the bed, laid her down, and then got in beside her, not taking off his wet clothes, to make clear what he didn't expect. There was no warmth in either of their bodies, even as she wrapped herself around him, in his arms, and he ran his fingers through her hair.
There was a warmth in him, for the first time since he spoke of destiny. Maybe it was still destiny, and that was why she'd found him, and not any other poet. Maybe some force knew he'd protect her. He didn't want that anymore. He preferred thinking that destiny was her design—she'd chosen him, she'd believed in him, and he'd become what she'd needed.
So thanks for reading through this. "your name isn't the same" is a reference to how she says she's "naming all the stars" in s2, but I have a head canon that everyone around her that Angelus killed while she was human is one of them. You'll see how the name comes into play later, I have to have some secrets!
Glass and eyes comes into play in the fic I mentioned above, but also, it is canon that she was sired in a church, when she was supposed to take her holy orders (Lie to Me, BTVS 2x07), after Angelus killed everyone else there, and fucked Darla (dear boy, ATS 2x05), in something I have in the works, I use the stained glass figures watching as an image, hence eyes. The sword is glass because of where she was, and how it happened. I actually didn't realize how vulgar the line about violent delights/what swords were for was until my editing, but it fit, in a kinda brutal way.
The idea for the bathtub came from something from another fic I read+my backstory fic, about how she learns Holy Water and vampires don't mix, and also because shuffle gave me Hallelujah, and I went "you saw her bathing on the roof/her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya" and went for it, so yeah. Citing my sources.