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Author's Chapter Notes:
CHAPTER PAIRING: Spike & Tara, Buffy/Spike, Drusilla/Spike

DISCLAIMERS: All BtVS characters are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions.

CHAPTER CREDITS: A few lines have been borrowed from the BTVS episodes "Flooded" and "Dead Things"; you'll recognize them when you see them. Also, Drusilla says a line from "Stanzas to a Lady, On Leaving England" by Lord Byron.

AUTHOR'S CHAPTER NOTES: This one continues the angst, since that's my favorite! I found this one a bit of a challenge to write, so I apologize if you feel any of the characterization isn't what you expected. It's based on my wishful thinking of what the series could have been like. That said, I'd also like to give a major "thank you" to ginar369, to whom this chapter is dedicated!
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"...hyacinth," Spike sighed. "Like lavender and hyacinth, she was. No matter where we went or what we'd done, Dru always smelled like that.

"I thought vamps were supposed to smell like death?" Tara replied.

"Is that what I smell like to you?"

Spike felt her shake her head against his chest.

"No, you smell like..." Her blush seeped through to Spike's skin.

"Go on, then," he urged her, feeling cheeky.

"...Sex."

The vampire laughed then, gratified. Tara followed suit, and they were back to acting like drunks.

The evening had ended on a good note, with both of them tired from dancing and chatting. Poor Willow was missing out on all the festivities, though, so Spike ventured out of Big Bad mode and got creative. While Willow was snoring away on the couch, he and Tara tossed pillows and blankets on the floor beside her. The comfy pile then became a soft nest for movie night...until Spike chose the film.

Perhaps Blue Velvet was a bad idea? Or, perhaps not, as it meant the vampire enjoyed some extra cling time. He really hadn't meant to pick something disturbing, but, hey—vampire here! Evil and all that.

How they got on the topic of Drusilla was anyone's guess, but if that kept Glinda at his side, so be it. He hadn't thought much about his dark princess in quite some time now, really. Running his hand through Tara's soft hair, he tried to imagine where Dru ended up.



It was ironic, really, that they'd both end up here, at William the Bloody's grave. Buffy hadn't paid much attention to that kind of stuff in school, but she noticed it now. A lone tear managed to gather itself in one of her eyes as Drusilla weaved silently towards her. The vampire moved without hindrance but did not strike out at her. She saw the meticulously sharpened nails that had slit Kendra's throat and hoped that would be the weapon of choice with her, too. Her slayer sister had looked so peaceful when Buffy found her in the old library. It hadn't been the kind of honorable death an incredible fighter like Kendra had deserved, but Buffy could suffer it.

Buffy knew Drusilla was an expert at thrall, but the calmness she was feeling wasn't from that. She knew what thrall felt like thanks to stupid Dracula, and this wasn't it. This was...lavender. The overwhelming lavender that scented Drusilla's impeccably white heirloom gown.

The Slayer turned her head to the side and closed her eyes, waiting. She didn't want to see the look of enjoyment or triumph on the vampire's face. Inside, quickly, a prayer fluttered through her mind and then the hope that somehow her soul would find its way to Spike's so that, at least on some plane, they could have the eternity she had denied him.

Moments passed without the shifting sound of a gameface, without the swish of nails through the air.

Maybe I'm already dead? Buffy thought.

"No, my William brought you back to life," Drusilla whispered against the girl's cheek. "I saw it, as I see everything."

Buffy opened her eyes then to find Drusilla crouched over her lap. It had been many years since the Slayer was this close to her, but she hadn't remembered the vampire being so slight. It was like she was weightless, just a waif of a thing. A porcelain doll, with her long black locks and pale white skin. Those big eyes that were, at once, both innocent and frightening. How could something this fragile be so deadly?

"Aren't you going to kill me?" the crumpled Slayer mouthed. The breath wouldn't even move past her lips.

Drusilla reached her hands up to Buffy's face, catching the tear that finally fell from her eye. She tasted it, savored it like stolen honey on her fingertip. A smile blossomed on her blood red lips. "Coo, coo, coo, little pigeon. You'll fly away soon enough. Is that what you want of me, then?"

Buffy's lips trembled. When she saw Drusilla lean in for the kill, she clenched her eyes shut, a final whimper the last sound she made.



"She must have been something, to have stayed with her so long," Tara said dreamily. Would she, herself, have 100+ years with Willow? A century...she couldn't even fathom that.

"My everything, she was." Spike smiled involuntarily at a memory of Drusilla catching fireflies in Highgate Cemetery the year he had gravestones made for himself and his mother. Dru had picked the spot for the false graves, beside her favorite tree. That night he had inspected the stones and their placement, finding his lover dancing around them. She was plucking fireflies out of the air, twirling, as though in the midst of a strange interpretive dance. As she caught one, she'd trap it in a lock of her hair and then move to fetch the next victim. The result was a macabre bouquet of twinkling curls that made her giggle.

Spike conveniently paused that memory right there, before the part where Dru suddenly became aware of the fact that those pretty blinking lights were actually bugs now buzzing to get free.

Still, whether lucid or mad, panicked or calm, hungry or sated—she had always seen him, reached out for him, needed him. She knew him so intimately, read him like an open book. Being with her for over a century must have brought him that gift, because he was able to do that with Buffy effortlessly, despite how much she might protest to the contrary.

Tara picked up on that incredible perception, too. Was it really something Spike had inherited from his sire, or was it within him all along? He was a poet, that she knew whether he wanted her to or not. Being a witch gave her access to much information; being a dead witch gave her access to so much more.

She had been asking him all these questions not only to make conversation and not only out of genuine interest, but also because she hoped it would garner some sort of clue on how to connect more concretely with Buffy. Tara knew she had found her out there somewhere, but without Willow's help she had to come up with a new strategy.



Willow finally stopped drifting. Wherever she now was, it felt eternal but unsafe—the kind of place you visited to pay your respects but didn't dare overstay. In a strange way, it made her feel the way the scythe did when she cast the spell that awoke the slayer in the potentials. There was someone here she couldn't see, someone waiting patiently for her. The room smelled of pencil lead and the fruit drinks Xander always "borrowed" from her at school. Her heart swelled with the sense of unrequited love.

What is this place?

The one hidden in the shadows spoke to Willow then, in a voice that was three voices—all recognizable but singularly unfamiliar: "YOU DARE RETURN TO ME?"

Willow shivered, reaching out to feel her way around, confused. There was a flickering light ahead, the kind that appeared when a film ended and the projector kept running.

"Please, I don't know where I am..."

Myriad laughter echoed in response.

"Please..." She felt her eyes begin to tear.

The laughter ceased as the air thinned. "AS YOU WERE, SO ARE YOU STILL. BLIND, DESPITE ALL YOU HAVE SEEN."

Willow stepped forward, but found herself invisibly blocked from going any further. She tried to think up a spell that would dissolve the barrier and let her pass.

Suddenly, the voice(s) bellowed: "YOU RANK, ARROGANT AMATEUR!"

The words made her cringe with remembrance. "W-what do you..."

"YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE."

She shivered again as she was cast out, slowly drifting back the way she came, realizing belatedly that she was no safer within her own consciousness than on the Hellmouth.



Drusilla knew what she was doing at the moment. She'd had her taste, the salty Pacific of the Slayer's tears. And though this was not what she had once anticipated, Dru's visions never failed her. This Slayer's blood would not reside within her, not like this.

Instead, she leaned in and pressed her cool lips to the frightened Slayer's warm ones and forced a breath within her.

The vampire's hands held the Slayer's face firmly, so that she could not move before the message was passed. This, Drusilla conjured while lucidity allowed her.

. . .

Instead of feeling her life draining, Buffy felt a warmth filling her throat and chest. Bright, like the fire that had consumed Spike in those last moments. Spike! In her mind's eye, this is what she saw: his face, made entirely of sunlight, mouthing the words she never allowed herself to believe—I love you. Was her soul with his now? This didn't feel like heaven, but it couldn't be hell. The sunlight morphed from Spike's face to a view of him holding her that night she was cast from her home. He placed soft kisses along the crown of her head as she slept, never once daring to move, never once daring to let her go. Before her heart could swell, the view switched again—this time to his prone form draped upon the chapel cross, burning inside and out from all he sacrificed to give her what she needed. Pain seeped into her then, and the image transformed to his battered face in the alley near the police station. Him laying there bearing the brunt of her guilt completely, selflessly. Just as she felt a scream rise within her, the image changed again. This time, her eyes finally saw what his did—her, free, alive, in the throes of ecstasy, undulating above and below him, glittering with sweat like a gemstone. The look on her face held no doubt, despite how much she tried to deny it to him. When she had gone all distant back then, she didn't see what he was actually doing. Now, with only that in her view, she saw how he worshiped every inch of her, inside and out. The way he moved in her, the way he saw her, the way he touched her—reverently, when he wasn't trying to counter the violence she threw at him and controlled him with. No, this was him making love to her, in those moments before dawn, while she was too exhausted to hurt him, before she kicked him in the head and ran out, virtue fluttering. And then the way he looked at her—even then, without the soul. It was no different than what he had done all that time later, before their final battle. No different except that she hadn't broken him back then. At that realization, the image morphed to him holding her torn hands the night she was resurrected, and then to the confession in his crypt the following day. She hadn't noticed then the overwhelming pain in his brilliant blue eyes, but she did now. It was the look of a man who didn't know how much more failure he could take. Then the image changed to Spike helping Dawn with her summer-school homework during those lost months, a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand. There was no soundtrack to these visions, but with the way Spike looked at Dawn's textbook, it appeared he was yelling at it. As she smiled at his child-rearing techniques, the image switched to the suffering he took from Glory on Dawn's behalf. How he never let her down, even when it hadn't benefited him. She was happy that she had been smart enough to give him the kiss he so deserved for that. Buffy knew she wasn't very perceptive, but looking back, that was right. Further back the visions went, to things she hadn't connected, things she hadn't even known about. Times he stepped in and assisted her in fights without making his presence known. Even back to the moments before she sent Angelus to hell—she saw now in her mind's eye how Spike had hesitated for a moment. Her mortal enemy and even then, if but for a few seconds, he had thought to help her beyond their simple truce.

At that moment, Buffy gasped, her eyes opening to see Drusilla's face mere inches from her own. The vampire's eyes were closed, but the smile playing across her lips was wide, satisfied.

"Do you understand now?" Dru's voice echoed in Buffy's head.

The vampire opened her eyes then, releasing Buffy from her hold.

"But...why show me this? You...you don't need to torture me. I'm willing to go."

Drusilla giggled then, lifting Buffy's hands to her lips and kissing each palm once. "Daddy taught us the same lesson, didn't he? Only, he left you the sun and me the moon. Poor Slayer, how is it you do not see?"

Buffy's eyes began to tear. She wished the vampire would just kill her already. She didn't understand what Drusilla was playing at, and she didn't know how to translate crazy.

Dru tried to rein herself in before the madness took over. Even after all this time, it was still so hard. Concentrate.

"Our prince, he walks," the vampire whispered.

Buffy peered at her through glazed eyes. "What?"

The vampire tried again; she was slipping. "He waits to be found by you. Needed by you. Ask the Watcher." She felt the Slayer shudder beneath her.

Gasping for unneeded breath, the vampire arched herself off Buffy's lap and did something of a glissade back towards the tree.

"Yet still he loves, and loves but one," Drusilla sang before she disappeared.

Buffy slumped against the gravestone, forgetting to breathe.





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