Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For Drusilla, time is not a river. Rivers snap and break bones and drown. Rivers are kinder. Time is a creature that howls and twists and snaps at her when she tries to move through it. Countless eyes and faces watch her, and she’s never sure which ones she’ll get. Some whisper secrets in her ears. Some bite.

And one day, maybe when she will turn eleven and put a second ribbon in her hair like the older girls, or maybe after she has kissed her beautiful devil goodbye under dancing stars, or maybe during a wondrous night spent in a beating, breathing city she will be the one put to sleep, she’ll know.

She sees it all. She sees her knight. His body broken, twisted and pale bone shining through. Not as broken as his heart will be if he finds the girl at the foot of the tower. It saddens her, briefly, to know this is his fate. No one can ever love him like she does, but the girl can hurt him more. She sees the burning one, a flame that got too big and ate all the fuel. She clings to trembling shattered glass in her arms, like for her and her alone the world will open up and rend the pieces back together. Black blood slips from her wrist to feed the ground. Drusilla feels the world like a tender wound, ripping open to spill the innards of the multiverse. And then, for the first time, she thinks, she sees nothing at all.

An end. An actual end, so much prettier than the hell she had let the Devil sing to her of. It would be beautiful. Life and world blood and walls all crashing down. The knowledge of it is like an icepick to the eye, and it makes her laugh harder, drink more richly, and dance more fiercely than she ever has.

She burns through the world, and her dance is moth-like, drawing her to where she knows everything will die, or already has. Here, on the dusty concrete floor of a warehouse, she can feel it. The earth is strong here, wide-mouthed and full of teeth. She wants to bend down and kiss it. She wants to feed it, with blood or magic or prayers or maybe all of them at once. But now is not the time for that.

Now, she busies herself with the scattering of knucklebones. They make pretty sounds when they clack in her hands, just like the fingers she’s stolen them from. The secrets they whisper will be ones she already knows, but sometimes Drusilla would rather see the same thing twice than lose it in the noise of the rest.

“Ashes, ashes,” she says, tossing the knucklebones to the air, “When do we all fall down?”

She waits expectantly for their answer, but she never gets it. The knucklebones simply hover in the air above her head, flies caught in a web. She marvels at the sight for a moment. Then they fly through the air, back into a calling hand. 

“Wrong question,” the owner of the hand says. Burning one, all burnt out. Red to coal. Drusilla believes they’ve met before, at least that this isn’t the first time they’ve met. “A better one is: will you be enough to help me, Drusilla?” And then Drusilla is caught in the same web that held the knucklebones, flying up to the ceiling.

…

Earlier

Spike’s not sure how everything can go to hell this fast. First he’s racing up the tower, his only thoughts to protect the Little Bit, a brief triumph of relief when he slams into the demon with the knife, then he’s slipping, falling, tasting the air on his tongue on the way down.

It’s where he is now, trying not to scream. Both from the pain and his damn broken undead legs that won’t stretch taut enough to bear his weight. He hates himself for not drinking enough to heal quick earlier. Sun’ll be up soon, and all he can think about is Dawn still scared up there on the tower and a Slayer who may or may not need his help to survive the night.

He staggers up a little, using some piece of steel for support. World could be ending now for all the help he is. A glance up tells him that’s on the side of likely. You learn a lot of things from being a creature of the night as long as he’s been, and one of them is that the sky doesn’t have a bloody hole in it.

He tries to put weight on his right foot, sees the bone peeking through, shoves it back in. He has to bite his tongue to silence his scream, but he hears one loud and clear anyway. High and feminine, anguish to the right. Moving’s not likely, so he turns his head instead. 

Red’s there, holding her girl, rocking and crying. Only Glinda doesn’t look that interested in being held. Her eyes are fixed vacantly up at the tower and she’s squirming vaguely like a puppy picked up from the litter. Spike knows instantly. Mad as a lighthouse keeper, that one is. No cure to put her back together.

There’s no good road ahead for them. He knows it well. He cared always for Dru, many, many, times when she got bad. Not much he could do to help now, though. He has to focus on the task at hand. Spike feels the bone click back into place, puts a little tender weight on it. Maybe he’ll be able to walk, after all.

It’s a little hope, and he’ll take it. He adds more weight, trying not scream. Heal, he tells himself. Climb the tower again. Help the Slayer. Help the Little Bit. Ignore the tear rapidly growing in the sky or whatever uglies are rushing out of it at the moment. He breathes in. He can do this. For her, he can do this.

But then there’s a thunder, and he looks up to see the sky knitting back together in a display so fantastic he almost doesn’t notice the body diving through the air until it hits the ground. Doesn’t realize who it is. Doesn’t instantly know who it is. 

He forgets his injuries and he tries to get closer to her, to hold her one last time or to help her or to bite, cut his hand for her, regardless of what good it will do. But he’s forgotten his broken body and he can’t take that much weight so soon. So he falls. When he hits the ground, he’s rocking and screaming just as much as Red.

…

A different earlier

Spike holds the cigarette between his teeth, wondering if lighting it from both ends would numb his tongue. Now, a larger roll of tobacco could do that burn free, but he’s in a self destructive mood. It’s only when he hears the cough that he realizes the welp has asked a question.

He sighs. “Come again?” 

“Just wanted to ask if you’ve seen Willow, lately,” Harris says. There’s enough worry in his voice to quench the usual bite. Spike’s surprised. There’s a list of people to go to for a question like that, and Spike knows that however long it is, his name is somewhere in the footer. Would’ve been anyway. Nowadays he hates to admit that things have become a bit more complex, what with his promise to protect Dawn and how Harris and Anya have taken her in.

“Missing is she? Haven’t seen Red since patrol last week,” Spike says. 

Spike patrols almost every night. There’s no Slayer in town, and it seems like every baby-toothed fiend with half a brain knows it. The whole gang helps him, from time to time. Less and less now that the watcher has left. Red’s got her bird and her books and her unceasing cures that lead nowhere. Harris has a fragile but growing sense of his own mortality. Spike, meanwhile, he has a promise to a lady. And he intends to keep it.

Spikes sighs, breathing in deep to catch the first drag as he flicks his lighter. He lets out the breath before he adds, “Go find Alice. Red won’t be far.”

Harris stares at him for a moment. Better day he’d expect a sharp-tongued reprimand for using that nickname, but not today. “Yeah, well. That’s the thing,” he says, somewhat awkwardly, “She left Tara with us.”

Spike quirks an eyebrow. Now that’s interesting. “Shouldn’t be gone long then,” he says. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s that you don’t abandon your girl no matter what happens to her. He’s always thought Red was the same. But he does wonder about her, always after the power of a thousand different spells. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe they’ve reached the point where the power is more important than the purpose.

Harris looks like he’s about to ask something else, then he just shakes his head. “Just…tell me if you see her around, if you feel like it.” 

“Alright,” Spikes says slowly as he leaves.

Later he’ll go over to the Summer’s house because some part of him holds that protecting Dawn is a bit more than keeping her physically safe, and there will be dinner with Harris and Anya and Alice smearing mash potatoes on his shirt. He’ll shrug her madness off with patience and later there will be board games and stories of his long, long life, until Little Bit falls asleep and he wanders out before the sun rises, feeling a little less the Slayer-shaped hole in his heart.

…

Not earlier

“How sane do you feel today?” the voice echoes up.

Drusilla stares down at the girl whose web now holds her to the ceiling. She can see all of her, splintered and fractured with a thousand wrong choices. The younger one with fear and love in her heart, the one standing to face her on shaky legs, the spiteful one, the one with fingers of flame that lick at everything, grasping and shaping and stealing at discretion. There’s a line of brambles around her heart and black shadows blinding her eyes and a wave of power that she is trying desperately to ride.

“Crash!” Drusilla says, and she grins. “You won’t keep your head above the water.” It’s true. All she has to do is wait.

“Perfect,” the girl replies in a tone that’s had all the emotion wrung from it on the way out. There’s so much power in the air now. Drusilla keeps looking at the girl’s mouth, wondering what’s going to spill from it. The possibilities make her dizzy.

The girl is throwing a bag to the floor, scattering out dust. Pixies and winds spirits drawing out some type of circle. Four points, eight points, seven. Drusilla sees many things when she tries to interpret it, a chain, a call thudding out and rippling the ground, an hourglass with the sand all pouring from one chamber to the other. Well, not quite. It’s all on its side, all mixing together.

“It won’t steal clean,” Drusilla realizes, and it makes her want to grin even wider. “Thieving, bleeding-”

“Shut. Up.” The spirits in the air now ride the girls voice like hitchhikers. Drusilla’s grin is gone, now. She likes watching the pixies. It’s less fun to have a throat stuck with them.

There’s a roll of bearings, thunder, and one of the warehouse doors slides open. Beyond it, Drusilla can see another girl, this one as empty as a doll. Her eyes are glassy, entranced, enchanted marbles of no little luck. 

“Tara,” the girl says, soft rain in the storm. She offers her hand to the doll, and the brambles tie them together.

…

A different earlier

“Alice,” Spike says, hissed soft almost as if to not wake anyone up. Not that it matters, though. With the couple at the movies and Dawn at a friend’s, he’s the only other one in the house. He’s standing between her and the door. “Alice,” he repeats, regardless of the good it will do him. She’s taking another step forward. Full zombie. “ Tara. ”

Maybe it’s the hope talking, but for a second he swears she looks at him. Is she in there, he wonders, underneath everything that’s missing, some trace called to the surface by her name? But then her eyes unfocus, get that vacant determination that makes her look less like a person and more a thing that’s being used. She marches right past him to the door.

Damn. Spike has been tasked for looking after Alice a couple of times, but she’s never tried to leave before. The girl’s already gotten to the door knob, so he gently tries to pry her from it. Very, very gently. Chip doesn’t help him in a situation like this, now does it?

But Alice resists his grip, and his attempts to pull her back end with a world of pain for him and an escape route clear for her. 

By the time he picks himself off the floor, she’s already headed out into the night. That’s what he gets for trying to be helpful. Really, he should just let her run off for all the care he has. Thing is, he’s only seen Alice like this once before, and that night ended with a dead Slayer, a traumatized Little Bit, and a bloody hole in the sky.

He looks around. No one else here to do anything. He sighs.

“Well. Fine then,” he says, and follows her.

…

Not earlier.

There’s your missing person case solved. Spike watches from the shadows as Alice walks right up to Red like Red was the thing she was seeking all along. Red’s got a hold of her hand, smiling, and he doesn’t need to look close at her eyes to know she’s high as a kite. Judging by the magic circle on the floor, this’ll be another cure attempt. He doubts it’ll end well.

He’s about to charge in, intervene, or at least give Red a talking to, when he senses something. Something familiar, like going home, memory’s perfume. It stops him in his tracks. Because that’s not bloody likely. No. She can’t be here.

But then he looks up, and he knows he’s only got half the picture, because there’s an identical magic circle on the ceiling. Red’s reaching out with her other hand, grabbing onto a familiar wrist as the woman in the white dress falls. Drusilla . 

Past be damned, nothing can stop him from charging forward to halt this game of ritual. Nothing, that is, except the barrier that flickers out from Red’s hand as the chanting picks up. He drives his fist and body against it as hard as he can. No idea what’s happening now, only he has to make it stop. Rage turns his vision red. He hits again and again and again.

It’s no use, though. Magic builds like a crescendo in the air, and when he sees bright colors bleeding from Drusilla and Alice, rushing through Red to mix between them, he knows. It’s done. The light grows, until light is all he sees.

Chapter Text

The first thing she notices is the rhythm. There’s a drum somewhere, or a roof with rain running down and down, she thinks. It’s a beat. It rings in her ears, and only when she opens her eyes does she recognize it for what it is: a heart beat. 

Her heartbeat. She’s not sure why that knowledge seems extraordinary, but seeing as she’s waking up on the floor of some place she doesn’t know, there are quite a lot of things that might seem so.

She sits up, and her head feels odd. After a moment she remembers to breathe (had she forgotten?), and her vision clears a little. There. There’s a young woman near her, kneeling, and breathing hard. The girl’s got red hair, and something detached and elfin about her. A magic circle spreads out from beneath her feet, twisting and burnt and otherworld. She wants to ask if that means she’s a fairy, but something stays her tongue.

Her eyes follow the girl’s to the other corner of the room where a second shape rests, still as a corpse. This one’s not breathing, but twitches now. One arm unwinds like rusty clockwork and a cool gaze flicks across the room. It slides to meet the girl’s, catches, doesn’t let go. There’s something wrong about this one. 

“Willow?” the wrong one asks, pulling herself jaggedly off the floor. Her voice is rich and sweet like syrup, like the nectar of at the bottom of a fly trap flower.

“Baby?” the girl asks. She gets up too. 

The wrong one starts to glide along the dirt towards them both. Too smoothly now, a waltz, a stalk. It seems important to warn the tree girl, Willow, but something is stuck in her throat. When she opens her mouth, no sound comes out, so instead she retreats a little from the wrong one’s approach.

Willow’s eyes run like rivers. “You’re back,” she says, holding out her arms as she steps forwards. Her words run even quicker. “Oh I thought I’d lost you, oh you’re back. Tara, Tara -”

The wrong one embraces her and kisses her and she kisses back and they hold each other for a few moments. But when Willow stops kissing, the wrong one doesn’t. There’s confusion, struggle. The wrong one only pulls the girl tighter to her chest. Her mask slips off, teeth growing long, until she’s driving one final, terrible kiss into the girl’s throat.

From farther away, she watches all of this and her new heart is pounding in her chest. There’s something terrifying and familiar about the scene before her. She knows she’s seen it before. A quiet, small part of her insists she’s lived it before. For the most part, she never wants to see it again. 

Or follow it to its conclusion. She just decided this, reaching down for a wooden pallet on the floor of the warehouse and iron in her veins calling her to intervene, when a slim figure roars into view. 

He’s beautiful, pale fire hair and lit up blue eyes, wild and strong and completely surrendered to rage. She watches him, a knight, a berserker, yelling obscenities as he pulls the wrong one from the girl and casts her to the floor. The wrong one is all twisting, awkward speed, like a puppy with paws too big for it, while her knight moves with the practiced finesse of a true predator. The way he fights. It’s comforting. And she knows him, she realizes.

They’ve met before. Her dreams.

…

Spike’s been thrown, literally and figuratively. When he comes to on the ground, he catches blood in the air. He thinks Dru’s gotten to Red or Alice somehow, sunk her teeth in at the peak of the ritual haze. But when he gets to the circle its Alice who’s got a good chunk of Red’s neck in her mouth. There’s not enough time to puzzle through that one so he doesn’t, just rushes in to pull them apart.

Alice tries to fight him. That too, surprises him. With her foreknowledge and personality, he’d expected her to run, try something smart. Babble at him. Hell, even talk to him. But whatever’s happened to her, Alice has all the cocky rage of the freshly turned. Her eyes keep edging around him, seeking the red he knows must be seeping from the jagged wound in Red’s throat. There’s no vacant determination, now. It’s bloodlust. 

Lucky for them both, Spike’s a seasoned killer, and he takes her down quickly. A waltz step to side, a half twist back, a full turn forwards. Her attempts to claw at him might as well be aimed for the air. The lightning flick of his fist catches her on the jaw and Alice flies backwards, sending up a puff of dust from the floor where she lands. 

He never gives up half an advantage, so he charges to catch her while she’s down. A stake finds its way from his pocket to his hands. She’s trying to scramble up. Her yellow eyes are all bright with the knowledge of what’s about to happen, and Spike shoves her back down, raising the stake high to give it enough force to pierce her heart.

But before he can give the killing blow, something stops him. Well, couple things actually. First, Alice’s face switches back to the familiar one, and he remembers just how bloody hard he’s had to fight to protect her these past few months. Second, he realizes that letting her join the dust on the floor just now will not only leave Dawn very upset, but also the witch in the corner who’s been known to bring hellfire down on anyone who’d hurt her girl. And third, finally, is the fact that the number of beating hearts in the room hasn’t changed.

Spike slowly turns his head, listening to each one. There’s Red’s staccato and a half-step off rhythm from whatever magics are in her system. There’s absolutely no sound from Alice’s heart below him. And there’s slow, steady, off to the right. His eyes trail, trace up the familiar, impossible form before him. Dru.

She’s staring at him with a slight, half-vacant smile on her face, like he’s a street performer she might throw a wadded up bill at, if she could be arsed. She’s breathing. And her heart is beating . 

Spike wonders if the whole damn world has actually ended this time, and this is all his bloody dying dream. Maybe he’s caught a poison from one of those demons that makes you shiver up a whole new reality before you kick it, foaming at the mouth. Maybe he’s got secondhand smoke from whatever mystic Red’s been breathing and this is the most intense trip of his life. All of it’s more believable than what’s right in front of him now.

‘Course, Alice tries to use the moment. He has to fight to keep the stake in his hands as she scrabbles for it. Spike fights well, and one of the things about fighting well is that you take your brain with you. He likes to think that’s what gives him the edge to wrench it out of her grip and place it right back over her heart. 

His head’s not in the right place now, though, and Alice knows it. He stares down, trying to figure out how in the hell he going to get her to stop fighting without killing her, when there’s a flash of Latin in the air and she slumps, unmoving.

That’ll do it. Spike gets up, turns to see Red. One hand outstretched, the other clutching at her throat to staunch the blood slipping between her fingers. Her eyes are wide and black and full of fear. But she doesn’t look like she’s about to join her girlfriend in lack of life, and he has more important things to worry about. Mainly-

“Oh, my knight!” Dru cries, as her warm, alarmingly human arms wrap around his waist. She clings tightly to him, joyously, like no time and no choices lay between them. “You’ve slain the beast.”

“Dru,” he says, uncertain, and carefully he pushes her back to arms length. He takes the opportunity to search her gaze, still completely at a loss. There’s definitely recognition in her eyes. But he’s known Dru for a long time. His whole unlife, to be exact, and other than the new life about her, something else is different.

“Is that my name?” she asks, examining her just as much as he’s examining him. “Dru,” she says, trying it out on her tongue, and then she smiles slow and wicked and lazy. “It’s not fully there.”

Hearing her talk like that sends a chill down Spike’s spine. There’s more magic in the air than just a sleep spell after all, and he’s starting to make a guess at what’s happened.  “What’s the last thing you remember, love?”

Dru’s face gets very distant, which is saying something because she’s already looked a bit detached at the start. “I don’t recall. It feels very much like a dream.”

“Red,” he says carefully. He looks to find her standing above the sleeping form of her freshly vamped lover, tear-drying face an opaque window for whatever storm is brewing within. “What exactly have you done?”

Red’s fixed where she is, staring down at Alice. “It didn’t steal clean.”

Spike’s had more than a century of interpreting Dru, so he takes that one easier than your average passerby. “Well clearly fucking not,” he says, turning back to the Dru that’s right here, right now, holding onto him far gentler than she has any right to. “What else have you swapped around?”

“I don’t feel stolen.” Dru slips releases him to dance a spin back, giggling. “More given…” Centuries together and Spike has never seen her like this. She looks light, like she’ll dance up off the floor if she’s keen to. Exactly who she is and how much of her is the Dru he knows right now is up in the air. It’s a wonder, and Spike’s terrified.

Red, meanwhile, doesn’t answer the question. A little extra zip behind his eyes is his cue that the sun’ll be up soon. And, shock aside, he knows that he doesn’t want to be trapped here with her and her Alice and this woman who bears the face of his past in a dusty warehouse all bloody day. 

Worst thing is, Spike’s pretty sure he’s the only one in their right mind here. He’ll have to fall back on the past, since that’ll be easiest.

“Dru,” he says, carefully, offering his hand, “Care to head down to the mansion for a visit?”

Chapter Text

In the end, he carries Alice with him, slings her over his shoulder and takes Dru’s hand with the other. He could leave the vamp there, really. But he has a word or two for Red when she sobers up, and where Alice goes Red will follow. They make quite a gawking picture, him and Dru and Alice and Red. This is the best town for it, where no one will question a handholding couple out for a walk, one unconscious girl over the shoulder and another sleepwalking behind.

While they’re at it, he tries to figure Dru out a little more. “Do you remember my name, love?” he asks.

“No,” Dru says, “In my dreams, you’re a knight in shiny black armor and a snarling mask. You fight for me, and because you like to.” 

“Spike,” he says, “You made me.”

She just smiles back at him. “I must be an artist, then.”

For Dru, even this Dru, he has the patience of a much better man. 

When they reach the mansion, the first rays of sunlight are already starting to fall. He kicks the door in, even though he has a key, and gets everyone behind those blessed, boarded up windows. And that’s all before he could start smoking, too. 

Alice he throws straight in the basement in one of the cages, because Angelus was fond of them and they have quite a few lying around. Dru immediately wanders over to examine some of the art on the wall. No doubt a piece picked up by their sire. If Dru recognizes any of this, she doesn’t show it. He realizes he hasn’t thought about it, whether this Dru would hate Angelus or love him. He decides finding out isn’t high on his priorities. 

One such priority is figuring out what the hell happened, which means Red. As soon as he locks up Alice, she’s already trying to leave. 

Spike puts himself between her and the door. Chip won’t let him do anything, but he’s feeling like testing the limits today. “Where’re you off to?”

“Soul spell,” Red murmurs. She’s stopped holding onto her neck, and Spike sees blood but no wound. She tries to step past him.

Spike is right there with her. “No,” he says, “First, you tell me everything you know about this spell. Then, you take a breather, sober up, get all those energies in alignment or whatever the fuck witches do. All that time, we’re gonna get a clue of this mess and fix it, yeah?”

Red looks at him and through him, like she’s imagining a sizzling hole where he’s standing. Must be a real challenge, he supposes, asking her to think when she can just do magic. “Fine,” she says, “But as soon as I’m done talking, I’m gone.” She glances back at Alice, briefly.

“Done, then,” Spike says, and then to Dru, “Watch the beast for a moment, love? Me and Red are going to have a little chat.” He hates to leave her alone, but he can’t have the inevitable shitshow if Red is there, still strongly scented with blood, when Alice wakes. “Don’t get close to the bars.”

… 

Dru stares at the beast for a long time. She’s wrong, and she doesn’t breathe right. Well, she doesn’t breathe at all. Something about her is familiar, though. Something Dru can’t quite remember, like a fading dream.

A lot of things feel like a dream to Dru. She knows so little. She knows she can trust her knight, her Spike , and that his name feels right on her tongue. She knows something is wrong with Willow. And she knows she’s connected to this beast, even if she’s sure they’ve never met before. 

As if on cue, the beast stirs. She opens liquid yellow eyes that evaporate to blue as they land on Dru. The color shift seems like something half-remembered. A heartbeat later and she’s at the bars. She smiles benevolently. “Hello,” she says in the same voice that trapped the girl earlier.

“Hello,” says Dru, because it feels like it would be impolite not to. 

“Would you let me out, even how you are now?” There’s a stare to this one, like she is seeing more of Dru than Dru can see of herself at the moment. Dru wonders if it would also be impolite to ask how much she knows.

“I wouldn’t,” Dru says, “I’m not supposed to go near the bars.”

“Please let me out,” the beast says, “I just want to see her. We always find each other. I’ve been lost for so long, until she found me. Now, I just wanna talk . Is that wrong?”

Dru isn’t worried. She shakes her head. “You want to pierce her skin with your teeth, to drink fully and deeply, to hear her heartbeat flutter out beneath your tongue.” 

The beast stares at her again. “If you let me talk to her, she’ll want that too,” she says lowly, but Drusilla just goes about making herself comfortable. This place feels like it could be a home, even if it is a dungeon. She wonders what that says about who she is.

Her dreams are so muddy. She feels like she’s dreamed all her life, and has just now woken up. There’s violence in her dreams, dark swirls of viscera, and pain too, scattered and jagged. But mostly she remembers her knight, and sometimes a devil that knew her. How they’re connected to everything here is still a mystery.

The beast’s voice is like a siren’s call, impossible to ignore, even speaking this soft. “I know you. You don’t know who you are, but I do.”

Dru looks back at her. “I never dreamed of you,” she says.

The beast keeps smiling at her. “Drusilla.”

And a shiver does run down her spine, because that name, that name is all there.

…

They end up in the kitchen, of all places. Probably the least used room for all the feasting and revelry that’s run through this house. But it’s as good as a place for a chat as any. Spike lights another cig here, because he’s nervous and because he can. If Red cares about the smoke she doesn’t show it. Really, she doesn’t look as though she’d have much a reaction to anything at the moment.

“You wanna know what happened?” Red says when he asks her. “It worked. And maybe it did some other stuff, too.” 

“Well yeah,” Spike says, “Unless you always wanted a throat piercing.” 

“Do you even know how hard it was?” Red asks, “To find something like this?” She’s looking at him now. Eyes widening a fraction. It’s some of the strongest emotion he’s seen from her since they got here.

Spike shrugs. He’ll have to be careful, if he wants to get the full story from her before she rushes off again. “Been a few months. If a cure was easy, you’d have found one that works by now, wouldn’t you?”

Red’s gaze drops back to the countertop. “No. ‘Cause it was easy, Spike. I looked everywhere. Spells that cure madness? There are hundreds.”

“Ah,” Spike nods solemnly. “So you just had to find the one with the most collateral damage, that it?”

“They all work the same way,” Red continues, ignoring him. “Steal the sanity from one person and give it to another. Just like…” Her expression darkens. “Like Glory. And it’s only temporary. I mean, I could use it on myself. Or I could use someone else. But then, when Tara came back, she’d just beg me to stop.” Red looks like she’s fighting to keep distant now. Spike can hear her heart rate picking up.

“Know that from experience, pet?”

“I would never ,” Red says fervently. All around them, pots and pans rattle, knives shake in their slots, and cabinet doors open and slam shut like they’re each caught in their own personal storm. Spike understands. He slams things around too, when he’s angry. It dies quick, though, and he’s got a feeling Red’s almost out of juice. 

“That’s the point,” she continues, soft and tired. “I found an old spell, one that steals aspects, fractures the mind to pieces that can be exchanged. There weren’t many modifications needed to make it steal insanity , instead. It’s victimless, if-”

“If you use it on someone who’s already insane,” he realizes. Fuck, anyone with half a brain can see how that’s childishly simplifying things. The knowledge makes his hands close into fists. “Dru. You thought you could-”

“It must have interacted with her being a vampire somehow,” Red says quick, and he can see the darkness fading, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this! Please, you gotta understand. It was the only way! It’s the only one where Tara-” Her voice cracks, eyes like saucers that are slowly filling. “-where she still loves me, afterwards.”

…

“Drusilla,” Drusilla says, trying out the name like a coat that’s struck her fancy. It does seem to fit, doesn’t it? “How did you know my name?”

“It must be hard, not knowing who you are,” the beast says, sitting down cross-legged on the other side of the bars. The position mirrors Dru’s. “It’s just another way of losing yourself, really.”

“I still feel like myself,” Dru says, though she halfway doesn’t. “But I don’t remember…”

“I’m sorry, but you’re not yourself right now,” the beast says, “Anyone can see it.” The beast gives her sympathetic look. “Do you want to know who you really are? I could tell you.”

Drusilla meets the beast’s gaze and tries to see through it. There’s a mask there, she knows, hiding a second face underneath. “You’re a trickster,” she says. Trusting this one will not help her, but…”Tell me.”

“You’re Drusilla. Willow told me about you. You’re a very old and very powerful vampire, as dangerous as you are insane. You’ve been tortured, driven that way intentionally. You kill, and you hurt, and if you were in your right mind you would’ve let me go fifteen minutes ago just to see what I would do.” She shrugs. “I’d tell you more, but that’s all I know.”

“I’ve killed,” Drusilla says, stuck on that. In her mind’s eye, she sees the beast sink her teeth into the girl’s neck over and over again, except sometimes she’s the beast and the girl isn’t always the girl. Sometimes she’s the girl. It makes her dizzy. She doesn’t want to dream while she’s awake.

The beast nods. “You’re like me,” she says, and her mask slips off, showing off all her teeth. “Or you were, an hour ago. Something happened, and I think I’ve got the part of you that wants that, now.” Her eyes drift to Drusilla’s neck, and Drusilla swallows. “Come closer. I think I might be able to give it back.”

…

“There…there,” Spike says, awkwardly patting the mess of red hair and tears leaning against his shoulder. He owes it to her. That’s the rationalization, anyway. Comforted him when he first got his chip, hadn’t she?

“She’s a demon!” Red cries all muffled. “All she wanted, for her whole life, was t-t-to not be a demon, and now she is. Because of me!” Admittedly, his plan had been to give Red a right talking to for messing with forces she could neither understand nor control and all that. But what was he supposed to do, when she dissolved into a sobbing, sniffling thing right in front of him? Christ, the girl could cry.

“Bet she likes it a rare sight better than being mad, pet,” Spike says, “And being a demon’s not so bad, if you’ll take the word of one.”

“Really?” Red asks, raising her head. Her eyes haven’t been black for a while now, but there’s a little shake in her hands that Spike knows doesn’t come from the general loss of the evening. Spike’s seen a few witches and the like that get on the good stuff in his time. Like fresh vamps they are. They don’t tend to last long, and not just because the new power goes to their heads.

“Yeah,” Spike says, “Being a vamp is generally considered a pretty good deal, least by those of us who’ve gotten press-ganged into the ranks of evil. You’ve got your super-strength, reflexes, enhanced senses, and general loss of insecurity. Couple that with adding to any of your natural affinities, like visions, or magic. ‘Course, you lose walking out in the day and having a better grasp on life’s game of snakes and ladders, breathing, body heat, and all that.” Red’s expression is starting to fall, so he quickly adds, “But you’ll get a soul in your girl in no time, I’m sure. Regardless, she’ll still be happier than she was insane. I know, living with Dru-” He stops. Dru is still downstairs, supposedly cursed with two insanities and somehow acting free of the effects of either of them. 

Red sniffles, staring at him. She looks like she’s putting herself together, a little. “You should go to her.”

“Yeah,” Spike says. Whoever this new Dru is, she doesn’t seem to remember or care about whatever happened between them years ago. He should be there for her, not here comforting a witch of dubious foresight. “You can stay here, if you need to,” he adds, “Lay low while you get back into restoration shape.” Because like as not, Red’s probably the most trustworthy magic user he knows right now. Be good to have one of those around, for investigating and the like. Of course. And also… 

“But if it hurts her, this spell,” he adds, “Chip or no, you won’t see another day.”

“Sure.” Red nods, and there’s a glint in her eyes somewhere that makes him think out of all the little heroes running around town these days she gets this the most. “And if you hurt Tara, death will be the least of your worries, okay?”

So they understand each other. Spike smiles slightly. “Fair’s fair.”

…

“I’m not like you,” Drusilla says, curling up to tuck her feet into her chair. If she let’s her mind rest it’s filled with images of violent color and blood and rough hands that split her skin. “I don’t want to be.”

“You don’t have to be,” the beast says gently, coaxingly. She’s gotten up in that quick smooth way of hers. A smile, over easy. “It’s okay if you don’t want it.”

The beast stills, suddenly, paused right close to the bars. Listening, if Drusilla were to guess. On cue the sound of feet down the stairs hits her ears. 

“Did our guest behave, love?” her Spike asks, pushing off the last step.

“You should tell her about her past, Spike,” the beast says, casually. Her eyes flick to the ceiling like a cat tracking a mouse through the floorboards, distracted. “Is Willow going to say goodbye?”

“No,” Spike says. He looks back to Drusilla. The beast’s words are just the buzz of a fly to him and she is ever grateful for it.

“She tells stories,” Drusilla says, answering his question. And then, because she wants to know, “Are we the same?”

Her knight’s eyes look so sincere. There’s a storm of words behind them, but only a few of them are ready to pour. It feels like a long while before they do. “That depends on you.”

Chapter Text

“I want to remember,” Dru says, one day, peeling an orange out on a small dining room table, in the room Darla had always reserved for “breakfasts.” There’s something rhythmic and soothing about the way she does it, working her nail under the skin and unwinding ‘round and ‘round to expose the blood red flesh beneath. Spike watches her, watches what it calls to mind. “Tell me about dancing.”

“Dancing,” Spike repeats, entranced. Quite a few things that word could mean, especially for Dru. It’s part of a game they’ve been playing. Part of a new equilibrium. 

Strange as it is, it’s what they’ve fallen into, these past few days. Red’s got her books and an order for an Orb of Thesulah in the mail, and Spike grabs twice his usual from the butcher’s. Take out the patrolling, and all the rest of his time, he spends with Dru. This Dru is different, but in her he sees pieces of who she was, flitting like flashes under dark water. The same but…steadier. Less pain. It gives him hope. It’s an odd sort of hope, tentative and new. If she wants to remember, he knows, he’ll tell her her whole life. All she has to do is ask.

“One night,” he begins, “Me and you, danced…” He’ll pick the more literal version of the term, for now.

…

Much earlier

The air’s the first thing you noticed, walking in. The kind of draft that would have most rushing down their glasses, numbing their senses a little to dull the heat of it. Breath and sweat and people all crushed up together and dancing and living and thriving. Spike’s a little in love with it, he’ll admit. Tonight, though, he’s tracking. 

Dru’s here, he knows, somewhere among all the rest. Not where he’d be expecting her. This is more Spike’s place after all, flailing youth and razor-scarred amplifier sound, music that struggles and beats and screams. He can tell there’s a room somewhere with needle-flicks on the ceiling. He’s got a finger on the pulse of it, knows how much everything here is about living , no matter how long.

A drink liberated gently from the couple passed out in the corner, hand to hand bound together by a pilfered bath chain, and he’s making his way to the floor. The air is heavy with that relentless chug of a three chord beat. Bodies crash all around him, bump shoulders with him, so unaware of the danger in their midst. Here in the center is the wild space. Violence is the rule, constrained a little by the life of it. Everyone has to surrender to music. Close, close, as close as you can get to the ledge without falling off. A single kiss on the face of death. Spike lets it pull him along, becomes part of the throng. Alive.

The song picks up, switches to a favorite. Fast, faster, playing the crowd now. Spike washes around with it, circling the drain. A wild kick a little too close misses his ear by a beat and he laughs, wondering if a fight will find him. But then he turns around, and he sees her.

Anyone else would looks lost, wandering so serene through the flails and the two-steps. But his Dru is dancing, too. Slow, off-rhythm, but not out of place. Violence all around her, yes, but it never touches her, never reaches into her like it does Spike. Spike dances with the life. Dru dances with the spirit of this place. 

Spike dodges a drunk kid who thinks it’ll be funny to get a running start on the crowd, amusement when he trips before he reaches his destination. And then he’s there, pulling Dru into his arms from behind. Smoothly, he matches her dance.

“There’ll be trouble,” Dru says. He can hear the smile in her voice as she leans in to him, dancing slow. They make quite the pair, calm in the eye of the storm. 

“Good thing we’re here, then,” Spike says, grinning too. Pressed this close, he knows every sign and read of her. When her head tilts to the bar, Spike follows her gaze.

The bartender has a row of glasses lined up under the watching of a young man with enough hair gel to be in a band, or have aspirations of one. The high proof stuff goes spilling forth next, the most important ingredient of the mix. Then something dark and red, like blood, and the bartender gets a match out of his pocket.

“Mice in a matchbox,” Dru coos, “How they’ll squeal.”

The match strikes and…

…

Not earlier .

“And then…” Spike pauses. Dru’s finished with her orange, leaning a little closer as he tells the story.  Part way through, she even starts to sway a little. Like she’s picking up on the song again, even with all these years of the past that lay between these two versions of herself. Of him.

She’s different, now. He wants to be careful with her, with this new fragile strength the spell seems to have given her. He loved her, really and truly, back then, and a part of him will love her always. But back then…he’d be a liar if he said pain didn’t follow them. He remembers the shakes in her, the wounds Angelus had cut deep that would not leave her no matter how close he held her, how many whims he catered to for her, how much he tried doggedly to steal her away from them. 

And then there’s her soul. That is the difference in her, he thinks. More than this new thing that might be sanity, more than the new humanity, more than the muddied memories. Would she take back what she was, without the pain? Or would it awaken a new guilt in her? Spike doesn’t want to be the one to cause her pain. Well. Unless she asks it of him. 

“We danced until sunrise,” Spike continues, truthfully, watching her. Now, it’s not the whole truth. But he leaves it to Dru, how far she’ll take this tale.

“Yes,” Dru continues, closing her eyes, “I can see you…”

…

Much earlier.

Fire, bright spirit rising up from the dry tinder of the wood around them, leaping to bodies like candle wicks. It doesn’t get to spread far, but what it does do…is panic.

Her knight is there, laughing dull blade in his hands. All the mice are squealing now, rushing for the exits, but it is all crush-crush-crush and there is no way out. She laughs too.

There’s music in the air, a dozen spots of moonlight down from the ceiling that guide the sway of her, make her move with it, tremble every part of her. A mouse runs easy into her waiting arms, and she closes them, a trap. Neck snap.

The mouse is silent as Drusilla moves her hair aside to sip the wine. Heartbeat’s ghost on her tongue, warm and rich and alive. This one grew dark and ripe on the vine before falling into Drusilla’s waiting hands, singing prayers then escaping through strawberry gashes, and now all the potential of her future belongs to Drusilla alone.

When she lets go, more screams have joined the tune. She finds her knight again, pulling him into her arms. They kiss, separate, kiss again. If they are not devouring each other, they are feasting on the panic and the crush of the bodies around them. There’s the percussive snap of bone, the wilt and flail of life weakening away. They are death. Perfect and complete.

…

Not earlier.

“But then the sun came up, and the curse was upon us,” Dru continues, “And it chased us all the way underground, until it fell again.” Her knight can turn her dreams into something more solid, almost enough to stand on. More and more, it’s coming back to her.

Spike stares at her for a moment, before his face warms her with a smile. “Hell of night,” he says, then pauses. This is the hidden look now, watching her careful no matter how little the smile changes. “What do you think of it, love? Good memory?”

Dru studies him right back. She shakes her head, and answers, “When you take my mind back, it’s good and sweet and worthy…but it’s not something to repeat, without teeth as I am.” He is better with her, a knight to his lady, than the beast ever was. When she remembers from him, it is always kinder. This makes sense. Dream or not, he is hers. 

Her Spike is about to say something more when the door to the room opens slowly, and a weary face peeks in. A heartbeat later, it opens wider.

“Hey, Spike,” Willow says, stepping into the room, “Hi, human-Dru…uh, Drusilla.” She carries a stone in her hand, light slips through and distorts, sending colored shadows all around. “There’s this spell I found,” she says. Her eyes flick to Spike, briefly. “Y’know, about the whole soul situation.”

Spike cocks an eyebrow. “What’s it do? Any worries? Should we get a head start then, run away before the effects catch us?”

“Very funny.” Willow scowls. “I wouldn’t worry about anything like that. I’m staying away from the big stuff until I give Tara back her soul.” Next she’s holding up the crystal like a third eye, one that’s looking at Drusilla. “It just a basic test, detects a soul’s presence, tells us if it’s the right one, and stuff. You can think of it like a…check up.”

Drusilla tilts her head. She doesn’t like being under the gaze of the stone. “I have my soul,” she says. 

Willow smiles at her, more the dance of hidden gears than teeth. When this one is watching careful, anyone could tell. “Hopefully.”

Spike gestures forward. “Well. There you have it. Doubt a spell will tell us more than we already know, with the way both objects of it have been behaving. Then again, I never knew your girl that well.” He pauses, eyes big with false innocence. “Was she the biting type?”

Willow ignores his words, but Drusilla catches how her hand unwillingly goes to the fresh scar on her neck before her eyes narrow. “It doesn’t matter. It’s better to know,” she continues, “I mean, I have to know how I messed up. There’s no telling exactly how the spell changed, what it interacted with. It’s the only way to make sure stuff didn’t get…cut up and split.”

“It’s alright,” Drusilla says, stepping smoothly so she can place her hands on Spike’s shoulders where he sits, soothing the soft flame of rage she knows only burns on her behalf. Careful, careful. But the witch has a point. Better to see the same thing twice than lose it to the noise of all the rest. “What do you need?”

…

They end up a star with Willow and her stone eye at its head. Points flick out, Drusilla across from the beast, whom she has since learned was called many things in life, among them Tara, Glinda, Alice, pure-hearted. Four. Spike and Willow, knight and witch complete the shape on either side.

“Casting another spell so soon, lover?” Tara asks. She’s leaned up against the bars, tilted a little towards Willow like a planet’s spin, a drag of gravity. Her smile is all gentleness to Drusilla, even with the shadow of her other face lurking underneath. “I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next.”

“Pretty simple,” Willow begins her explanation, ignoring the vampire, “I’ll say a few words and the stone will change color depending on the soul or lack of soul, solid color for presence, mix of colors for, uh, pieces.” A gesture at herself, then Spike. “Me and Spike are the controls. One human with a soul intact, one soulless vampire.” She shrugs. Drusilla can see the shadow of fear has fingers on her shoulders. “Should be easy to tell.”

“It would be easy,” Tara says, nodding, and her eyes now have concern as mocking as her Spike’s false innocence, “But you’re out of alignment, honey. You let the power dance away with you that night and now…”

“Stuff it, Carmilla,” Spike cuts Tara off before her words can invite anymore fear into the witch’s heart. 

Tara backs away from the bars, chuckling. But Willow still won’t cast words her way. Won’t cast looks her way.

Soon, she’s chanting her spell, whisper of power. The air grows thick with it. Drusilla wonders if she opens her mouth just now if it will catch on her tongue like snow. But she doesn’t and next, Willow is turning the stone eye towards herself.

They all watch as it traps the light and fills with color, like the moon coming out from behind the clouds on a lake’s surface. Red, solid red, burning. But something’s wrong. Scattered flecks of pale blue, like a winter sky are trapped in the flame’s embrace.

To Willow’s credit, she only pauses for a moment before turning the magic’s gaze on Drusilla’s knight. Color drunk from the stone, filtering to black as Drusilla knew it would. It doesn’t bother her. Soul or no soul, her knight fights for her.

Next is the new vampire, thief of Drusilla’s weapons and her bloody smile, muddier of her dreams. The stone shows a similar display. Moon hidden now. Only shadow.

Finally the stone’s sight is boring into Drusilla again. There’s brilliant light, washing in like the blazing power of a thousand suns through oceans deep. She’s never seen it, Drusilla realizes. Never dreamed it, not of her soul, not after…

“Give,” Drusilla says, placing her eyes on Willow with the same weight the stone is looking at her. Wordlessly, the witch offers her her eye.

But Drusilla has always seen more than most. In her hands, the stone glows brighter, bright enough to see the flecks of lighter blue, drowned under the water.

“So that’s where it went,” Tara says, “I was wondering what you did with my soul.”

Chapter Text

Spike follows Red to a room of the house that might have once been a study, if Angelus hadn’t burned all the books after one of his games. At the best of times, the man had no respect for any literature that wasn’t cut into the victim’s skin. 

As he enters he can see that Red has populated the shelves with a scattering of magic books. Library lives once more, and all that. Though, judging by the sleeping bag on the floor, it’s not the only one living here, now.

“So you and Dru each have a piece of Glinda’s light,” Spike says casually. Of course, Tara being one of those saint types, who knows how much of that could rub off, if such a thing was possible. A thought occurs to him, Drusilla taking after the late witch. And how would that manifest? Selling all their possessions for the poor orphans? There’s something more pressing in that direction, though. The reasons he’s here. “You’re the one who’s always doing soul spells all the time. Any side effects?”

“No, yes, maybe,” Red says, splitting open one of the books on the table. If the girl was a bit nervous beforehand Spike’s sure metaphorical nails are being chewed by now. She chuckles. “It’s just a novelty in magic, splitting souls and giving them to other people. I’ll just go read an account of the last time somebody tried to fix their girlfriend’s insanity by giving it to a vampire but ended up taking her soul and swapping her humanity with said vampire instead. Happens all the time.”

Spike wanders closer to the book shelf, ignoring the sarcasm. “Well, you’re quick, Red, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He wonders if any of these are written in a language he can actually read. For Dru, maybe he’ll help with this. The book learning is mostly a thing of his past, namely a pitiful rain-soaked little thing called William that Dru so thoroughly drained all those years ago. But he’s been around for a long time, and you’re not around for a long time without learning. It’s simple. Don’t learn, you don’t make it that long.

“There’s no telling what I did,” Red says dully. Spike turns to her, sees her staring vacantly into the corner instead of at the book she’s carrying. “The consequences could be…anything. It could affect my personality, Dru’s, if it hasn’t already. Tara’s soul is split, it can’t be good to-”

“You’re soulmates,” Spike says, smiling suddenly at the absurdity of the thought. “You and Dru.”

“What?” she asks, slightly startled. But then they’re back to the serious again. “Do you even care about what this could do? Drusilla’s-her soul?’

Spike keeps smiling. “Not that much, no. Loved her long before she had a soul, and somehow she took a fancy to me before I lost mine. I hardly care if she’s got one, none, or even one and a bit, as long as she’s Dru.”

“That’s good, because it might be a little before I have any idea what I did,” Red breathes. “Tara would…”

“Can’t exactly ask the fresh vamp, can we?” Spike finishes for her.

“I can fix it,” Red says those dangerous little words again, smoothing down the leather of the spine of the book she’s worrying. “Modify the soul spell a little, make sure it calls Tara’s soul back from the right place...places. There’s gotta be a way.”

“And we’ll find it,” Spike reassures, moving to grab a title he can actually half make sense of from the shelf.

“ Don’t .” 

He pauses. For a moment, Red’s got a look in her eye like a sheepdog who’s flock’s been threatened but then she smiles and the girl in the fuzzy pink number is back. “You don’t have to…the thing that you can do to help the most right now is to give me some time to think.”

He puts his hands up defensively. Fine then. “Someone’s got to check on the girls, ensure they’re taking the news alright.” 

…

Spike finds Drusilla and Carmilla still in conversation, or maybe negotiation. 

“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” Carmilla says. She’s examining her nails, scraping one along the other over and over, like if she keeps doing it they’ll become sharp enough to cut.

Dru smiles, and it makes Spike pause. She’s got that look. Distant and glinting. The one that she uses when it’s impossible to tell how much she’s screwing with you. 

“Losing the lights in your blood would be just like losing yourself, really,” she says, the back of her hand passing against the bars somewhere in between a sweeping gesture and a caress. “Have you lost yourself?”

Carmilla sits back, like she’s genuinely considering this. Though, hard to tell with her. Spike takes the moment to interject. 

“Red’s looking into the soul business, love,” he says. He shrugs. “Doubt it’ll be anything to worry about.”

Dru spins around to him. “I’ve never had more than one soul before. I feel as if I’ve never had even one until now.”

“Been a while,” Spike agrees. He doesn’t ask her if she feels differently because of course she does. Acts differently too. They’re relearning each other, and he’s accepted that.

“The more I remember, the more I’m waking up, the more the other part’s still there. Always still there, just sleeping. Not lost,” she says glancing at Carmilla, who still looks deep in thought. 

“Reckon she’s dreaming?” Spike offers a hand to her. He’s playing along, because Dru has a way of making sense if you think about it hard enough.

“Yes,” Dru says, eyes sparking. She takes his hand and he leads her away from their resident vamp problem.

It’s interesting, how she’s dealing, to say the least. God forbid this soul, well souls, make her act like Angel, but that seems far from the case. Maybe it’s her madness or the lack of it, but the Dru he’s re-met these past few days is brooding free. 

“I could always see you, knight,” Dru continues as they walk up the stairs, out a small door and into the nighttime garden. “You were all this violence and potential, forced down and coiled up like a wind-up toy, just waiting to become.”

“Could you really see all that?” Spike asks. He wants to help her remember, but the question becomes more general in the air. Him, her knight? Buff-…the Slayer? The chip? What would happen to him? What would happen to her?

“I dreamed everything, every clock cry,” Dru continues, “Always everything. It was blinding.” She shakes her head, slightly, frowning. “It’s less now.”

They wander over to an old fountain, and Spike lets go of her hand to light a cigarette. Do you miss it? he wants to ask, but this new humanity is so…new. Might not be the time to ask. 

“I’ve a got a chip, you know,” he says, daring to venture into the recent past despite his quite recent betrayal of her. She’s remembering more and more, she should know. “Can’t kill, can’t hurt.” He watches the cigarette smoke dance up in the air between them. “I’m less now, too.” 

“Lies don’t suit you,” Dru says, surprising him utterly as she wraps her arms around his chest. Her eyes are boring into him and there is no doubt in Spike’s mind that this is the woman who has held his past, present, and future in her palm. “You are a killer, always. Whether you are a hunter of men or monsters, you are mine, always. Never less.”

Spike can’t help but smile more fully, standing a little straighter in Dru’s embrace as he matches it. Still a killer? He finds himself liking the thought. That’s right, his prey’s a little tougher now-but he’s still bad. They’re both different, now, but maybe Dru’s got into the heart of the matter. 

“The same goes for you,” he says, coming down a little from the high of the compliment. “Whatever this soul situation is, we’ll work through it, love. Together.”

…

Later, Spike heads out on a walk, mind a whirl and not too unpleasantly. The last few days have changed a lot for him, and there’s a lot he’s still trying to feel out. There’s Dru being back, albeit a bit different than before, a new vampire, and a spell-tinkering witch to deal with. Not to mention any business with souls being swapped around.

 It will be easy, so, so easy, he knows, to fall back into his old pattern with Dru. Partial amnesia and humanity aside, there’s so much of her that he just knows . Back in his Big Bad days, Dru was the only constant, and home was wherever he followed her. Right now, there aren’t many reasons he can think of to not go back to that, which in itself could be a problem.

Before he can get his thoughts in any order, though, they are interrupted. 

“Spike?” 

Spike turns to see the only demon he’s known to add former at the start. Guess that’s not necessarily true now is it, with Dru’s new situation. Anya doesn’t look the happiest to see him.

“Lovely evening for a walk,” he says casually. With a crunch of his boot, the cigarette he’s been nursing for the last quarter mile is out. 

“Where the hell have you been?” Anya demands. Back in the days the little gang was all together, he might have expected a box on the ears for not broadcasting his every move. Never from her, though. He always thought they had common ground on what it was like to be newly helpless. “Xander’s worried sick, and Dawn-What happened to Tara?”

Ah, and here’s the hard part. ‘Course they’d be more worried about the (sans) good witch going missing. Red’s gone off the magical deep end, Glinda’s grown teeth, oh- And Dru’s back. Now that he thinks about it, explaining the whole situation might be worth it just for the reaction. 

“She’s with Willow,” Spike says, knowing that to the rest Red’s also missing. “And I don’t think she’s ready to come home just yet, unless you fancy a death at dinner…” he begins.

…

 Drusilla steps through the house, knowing the past is close here, stuck to her like a shadow on the wall. People have died in these walls. Demons have thrived here. Knowing that she once danced with them makes her feel even more connected to it all, like the cobwebs on the corners are the only resistance she’ll meet if she wants to re-explore. 

And then there’s her soul. Souls. Knowing she has a piece of what the monster in the basement once was, just as she has a piece of her , makes her feel giddy and uneasy at the same time, a child with a stomach full of flickering fireflies. As pretty as those soul-flecks shone, she knows with a certainty she can’t keep them forever.

Can’t keep the vampire forever, either. Not the one in her head or down the stairs. Magic in the blood doesn’t still in death, just sings slower and lower and more stealing. It’s only a matter of time before their new vampire learns she can sing through bars or dance through flesh. She’ll have to warn the witch, Willow. 

On the matter of spells, she thinks, winding up a staircase with steps like vertebrae, the veritable spinal cord of this place, there is always going back if this one doesn’t work. Becoming what she once was seems to her like diving beneath the ice she has just pulled herself from, sinking back into the dark water of her dreams. But if she must, she knows her knight will hold out his hand, cut, for her. Oddly, it is not something she is eager for.

She pauses before the door, listening to scritch scratch of old pages grumbling about being brought into the light again. The witch, admittedly, fascinates her. There’s the power, of course, but also a sense of coiled-ness, of fumbled chaos not unlike a simpering poet she peeled off a street corner so long ago. Drusilla knows, in some dreamed part of herself, she would have liked nothing more than to wind this girl up and let her go.

But that was another time, and Drusilla has already done her part on unleashing marvels on the world. Telling the time, on the other hand, one moment to the next, is something she’s getting better at. In this moment, Drusilla lets herself into the study.

“Not now, Spi-” Willow looks up, and for an instant her eyes grow large, but she recovers quickly. “Hi, Dru.” And then, awkwardly. “Anything I can, uh, help you with?”

Drusilla doesn’t answer, despite her intention to. She’s become enraptured by a discarded text laid out on a grand table, tracing the text with eyes, then fingers. “An albatross bound to the soul, catching on and deep like burr, an eternal dearth of hope. It won’t help you.” 

Willow waves a hand dismissively. “Already knew that. The whole book’s useless. Might as well be called ‘Everything About Souls: Only if You Really Like Curses.’” Then her brow crinkles. “But how did you know that?”

“Power follows,” Dru says seriously, catching Willow’s eyes with her stare. “In my dreams, it’s there, it was there before and it follows when I wake. Once a will can bind the world, it’s stuck like shadow, in life and death.”

Willow meets her gaze for a long, steady moment, considering. Then she looks down, away. “What are we talking about?” she asks.

“Your monster will break free soon,” Drusilla tries to clarify. She can’t help but smile, because for one she’s being friendly and for another she admits the prospect of a mix up can still bring a little excitement, even as she is now. “Tara’s blood still calls to her power. She’ll find a new leash for it.”

“Okay,” Willow says, space behind her eyes whirring again. “I guess we can find something to take her power so that…doesn’t happen.” Tap-tap-tap of key-fingers on the wood table top. “How did you know? Were you like, were you a witch when you were-”

Drusilla crosses her arms in front of her chest, shaking her head. “More. All of it called to me, all time. I would walk the shops and break through the eyes of the night people like stones through windows. Like dolls, a fractal that bled when it screamed and I played with them.” Part of her wants to smile in fondness, the rest recoils, so Dru’s face twitches instead.

“Oh, okay,” Willow says again. She shivers. “Makes sense.”

“There’s much you don’t know,” Drusilla continues. She picks up another book from the pile and makes herself comfortable perched on the table across from the one in which the witch is slumped. “Paths to learn.”

Chapter Text

By the time Spike’s finished most of his recap, exaggerating some choice bits for an appreciative ear, they’ve almost reached the Summer’s house. It’s good, honestly, to have someone who won’t flinch at the more demonic aspects. No mistake, he enjoys watching the humans squirm, most of the time, but its refreshing. He’s always thought Anya one of the better ones, for that reason if nothing else.

But when they reach the familiar drive, he hesitates. 

“Should go back to Dru,” he mumbles, putting his hands in his pockets. He nods to Anya and turns to leave.

“Hey!” Anya’s shrill voice makes him pause. “You can’t just show up, explain a bunch of things, and then vanish. It’s rude.”

“Everyone’s safe, alright?” he says, shrugging. For a given value of safe, especially considering a certain captive vamp currently residing in the basement. Safe for Sunnyhell, anyway. “You know that now. You can go tell Harris and the Little Bit. And while you do that, I will be going back to-”

“Spike!” 

Damnit. Spike finds some part of his distantness shatter as a little ball of teenaged fury rushes into to him. 

“Where the hell did you go, you flake?” A fist strikes him none-too-softly in the arm as he sheepishly meets Dawn’s eyes. Like her sister, that way. He’s got a feeling he’s in for an apology by the glare. “First you don’t show up to do nails then you don’t show up at all?”

“I’ve been-” He stops short, because that’s a hard one, especially to explain. Especially to the Little Bit. Spike’s gotten his head all twisted up in Dru’s soft crooning voice again, following her around, helping her remember, protecting her, for all she needs it. Like he’s a part of her world again. Not being here for Dawn. Not thinking about the Slayer. Not thinking about his promise to her . Christ. “Been out,” he finishes lamely.

“And while he’s was out he ran into-” Anya begins, but Spike cuts her off.

“An old friend. Got caught up in a bad spell, been helping her recover. It’s why I wasn’t here.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, Spike realizes for all that’s changed in the past few days he’s not ready for them to meet. The old Dru would have cracked the Little Bit’s bones like doll’s porcelain and laughed as she cut herself with the pieces. The old Spike would’ve… But now? Spike is praying at this point that Anya, for all her beautiful, unapologetic honesty, will back him up here. She’s the only one that might.

“And the good news is,” Anya says, shooting him a strange look, “Is that he found Willow and Tara too. They’re trying out another cure.”

“Really?” Dawn asks, anger vanishing from her face for a moment. Her and Glinda always did get along. Come the madness, she was one of the ones who helped care for her the most, what with Red after the magic.

Spike shrugs again. “Who knows, could be this one actually works.” If they can get the soul situation cleared up, that is. 

“I kept her books, if she needs them…” Dawn says with that hope that only the newest generation ever seem to keep. That the lost someone’ll come back. Come home. It makes Spike feel odd, hearing it. He was like that, once.

“I’m sure she’d want you to keep those safe, pet,” Spike says, shrugging. He finds himself reaching for another cigarette, despite the company. He’s realizing how little he wants the girl to find the witch she misses. Least of all right now. And that’s not even counting the other half of that equation…

A moment of silence passes, then Dawn seems to snap out of her grief just as quick as they both fell into it. “You do know what this means, right, though? You owe me.”

Spike scoffs. “Do not,” he says, flicking the lighter. Though he probably does.

“Do too,” Dawn says.

“Owing a debt to someone is very serious,” Anya chimes in sagely.

“See!” Dawn gestures at Anya now her points been proven by somebody a thousand years her senior. “Don’t show up for a couple days, you have to help me with my history homework. That’s just how it works.”

“Only if we focus on the bloodier bits,” Spike says. Despite himself, he stomps out the unfinished smoke and follows the Bit inside. Fair’s fair.

…

It’s hours before he heads back, enough to worry about sunup if he stayed any longer. It was good, he thought. To spend a little time with Anya and Harris and Dawn. Harris missed him. Couldn’t even bother with a jibe. They’ve made some odd sense of normalcy in that old house, so much as a former demon, carpenter and Key could ever. When he’s there, there’s no Slayer, or worry over souls, or any such. It feels like a path forward, only…

“Dru,” Spike calls. She looks over to him from where she sits in the courtyard, at once focusing on him with those wide and languid eyes that are as all-seeing as they are devastating. This look he recognizes, but there’s something new about it. Something softer? More restrained?

“If I wait here, knight, will I see the sun?”

Chills run down Spike’s spine, as cold as it already is, before he realizes that this Dru isn’t saying it the way the old Dru would. She’s human now. Of course she’d want to see the sun. Can’t say he misses it or the way it heats up leather, but…

He takes her hand, in some small part to reassure himself that the woman before him has a heart that still beats. One that won’t turn to ash in the morning light.

“Sun’ll be up soon, if you want to see it. Though can’t say I’ll be joining you.”

She smiles slightly. “I remember. Vengeful God’s arrows striking us for our wickedness. It seems something that should be defied.”

Spike finds himself matching her smile. “There is a certain poetry to it.”

“Mad knight,” she giggles, “Did you bring me anything?”

“Not this time, love,” Spike says, though a part of him would still promise her anything at all. He releases her hand slowly. “Just a little walk.”

“Not even a story?” Dru asks.

Once upon a time, I loved someone who was not you, and she died. It feels like a part of her is still alive in me, somehow. I made promises to her, promises to others I have to keep. But a side of me still wants to say fuck everything and run away with you forever, because you make it so easy.  

Spike clears the thoughts. Couldn’t be thinking thoughts like that, not with someone here to hear them. Instead, he thinks back to the past. “Only if you want to hear one,” he replies.

…

Much earlier .

It’s back in those first heady days, when Angelus is just some prick he doesn’t understand and Darla some bitch he doesn’t know. Back when it’s just the two of them riding up and down England’s coast and playing merry hell with whatever and whoever strikes their fancy.

Spike finds he is occasionally separated from Dru in the chaos of it all, and now is one of those times. Dragging himself from one bar, one fight, and one red bursting mess from the other, he winds up drawn to the distant fire outside of town much like a moth to flame. Vampires are like moths, in a way. They’ll always be too interested in what’s no good for them.

As he gets closer, his new sharp senses reveal the jagged monoliths, circle of stones with a bonfire in the center. They stand like silent sentinels silhouetted against the night. Old Will considered such places barbaric, haunted, overrated or a mix of all three. Spike finds he cares…less.

There’s an enticing mix of scents bubbling up from the fire and the cauldron at its base. Absinthe and yarrow and sharp, fresh, blood. A figure, a giant, really, hulks over the pot to stir it.

The giant looks up as he approaches.

“Beheading contest?” he rumbles.

“Don’t think you’ll find too many green knights for that out here,” Spike shrugs. “Been itching for a fight, though.”

The giant shrugs. “I’ll go first,” he says.

And with that, the giant reaches up likes he’s about to take off a helmet, though he’s wearing none. His hands cup around his ears and with a light tug, it’s his head that comes off, easy as that. The thing goes hurling towards Spike a second later.

“Fuck!” Spike cries, scrambling out of the way. This is a creature then, a demon like him. And it’s not friendly. Oh well. He did want a challenge. 

Spike recoups, after a moment, squaring up against the headless giant. He lets the face come in then. “Rude,” he says, wagging a finger “Lobbing heads at people.”

The giant roars, seemingly growing larger before his eyes, but Spike ignores the whole display. He rushes for the bonfire at the center, like moth to flame, and draws the great roasting spit the cauldron is dangling on. A second later, he’s driving it right up into great beastie’s chest in a shower of sparks.

Or, he would be. Instead of the beautiful rain of blood and guts he’d been expecting from gutting a giant supernatural man with iron, all he gets is a disappointing whoosh as his weapon passes harmlessly through. What?

The “giant” fades out with a wisp of smoke. Suddenly, Spike watches woozily as the circle of stones become a circle of chanting robes. The smell of magic seems to thicken the air as they advance upon him. He whirls, snarling, but finds his strength leaving him.

Some kind of trap? The indignity of it all makes him struggle against this growing weakness even more. With a snarl, he lashes out. His clawed hand strikes one of the closest figures, splitting a vibrant red line from shoulder to hip before he too falls to his knees like he was the one struck.

The ranks close around their fallen friend, towering above him, closing out the starlight as their chanting swallows up the night. He sees one hefting a rod of mistletoe. It levels at his chest. Spike struggles as arms grab his own, wondering if he really is going to meet his end to the sappiest looking of all stakes.

But then a song cuts through it all, and Spike finds himself dropped to the ground as the figures turn towards the sound.

That’s when he sees her, ethereal in white, drifting towards him like a ghost on the moor. Dru’s hands hang at her sides like she’s running them through tall grass that isn’t there, or air currents that are there for only snakes’ tongues and her to notice. He’s just as entranced as the gibbering cult as she approaches.

He watches, as her voice grows louder. Singing some language he doesn’t know. It’s hard to parse, but feels like the most haunting sound he’s ever heard, distant cries and children’s sing-song, forgotten things and an insurmountable feeling of loss. 

Dru reaches the first figure in robes. Tenderly, she reaches up as if to pull his face down for a kiss. His neck snaps a moment later. It’s a stark sound that rings out along the silence of the moor.

The other figures begin to flinch, slowly breaking out of the undertow of the spell like sleepers waking. But they’re slow, and Dru reaches another, and another before the screams start.

It’s then that Spike feels his strength return to him. He kicks up his feet, grabbing the nearest. Out rips the throat in his fangs, down goes the body to trip up the next as she runs away. Simple as that the tide is reversed and him and Dru make a mockery of whatever ritual was being conducted here.

When they are full and lazy and wandering back to some shelter somewhere afterwards, and Spike has almost forgotten what it’s like to be helpless and stupid, Dru will pick him up and slam him against the wall. She’s older than him, and if they are equally strong she has spent a lot more time understanding that. It takes him by surprise.

“Don’t go into the stones,” she says sternly. 

“Well…alright,” he says. 

In the next moment, her lips meet his.

…

“First time you ever got me out of a bit of trouble,” Spike says, “If it helps, I don’t think I’ve ever set foot in a stone circle since then.”

Drusilla’s eyes are lost again. He’s helped her remember, he supposes. “You weren’t fully made yet. So reckless.”

He sits down beside her even though he can feel in the air the sun will be reaching the high rises by now. “Gotten me this far, hasn’t it?”

Dru leans against him. It’s still a bit of a shock to feel her. Warm . Alive. He never could have pictured this future for her. Or for himself, for that matter. But she’s here now, and he finds it as undeniable as the sunrise slowly encroaching from the east.

“I always saved you, even from that wreck of sniveling man they laughed at,” Dru says. There’s almost a sadness, a wistfulness to her voice that he finds unlike her. “Now I’m glass. Clearer, weaker. I won’t be able to-”

“Now don’t say that,” Spike says, boldly, but gently, placing a hand on her cheek and guiding her face to his. “Thought we went over this. If I’m still a warrior with this tech in my head, you’re damn still a force to be reckoned with without fangs.”

Dru smiles at him slightly. No wickedness there. “Go inside, knight. Before you burn up.”

But Spike doesn’t go. Not right away. Instead, he leans in further, planting a single kiss on Dru’s forehead. “So long as you stay out here,” he says, voice low, “And spit defiance at the sun that would do you in.”

Dru smiles back at him more fully now, and he extricates himself from her embrace to head inside.

As the sun shoots arrows of light down in the courtyard, he’ll linger. He watches from the shadows as the woman who he shared them with for so long tilts her head up into the sun. 

It’s something he’s never seen, he realizes, her face aglow in the dawn light. She looks innocent somehow, or at least more free of a lifetime of hurt. His heart aches to see it. Any desire of joining her vanishes, swallowed up by how happy he can see this makes her.

Spike watches from the shadows and smiles.

Chapter Text

Drusilla wakes up with sunrise. It’s something she’s still growing accustomed to. Underneath all the layers of her vibrant, violent life, carved out in night colors awash in red, is there a remnant of her that loved the feeling of the sun on her skin? If there is, she can’t remember. Not yet, at least. 

She goes over to the window and lifts it open with the same soft touch she knows has split skin. Thinking beyond those flashes is hard. There’s so much to sift through. The pain she wrought, her knight at her side, her devil and her queen there to egg her on. When she thinks back on it she often sees their faces leering, dance callers for the slaughter. But before that…

She lets the warmth of the sun fall across her, going no farther. Her knight would help her remember. He was hers to make, always. He had held such contempt for his past, before she changed him, but Drusilla  saw his humanity shining through from the start. Dark and twisted thing! Her pride and joy. It was the demon that gave him power, a shining sword in the lake, but it was the man that made the monster, a knight to wield it in her name.

After a moment, she abandons the sun to trace a winding path down the stairs. The wood-creak reminds her of the screams she drew from the victims of this place. This house was once a beast, dragging them in with gnashing teeth. An odd refuge, but she is grateful all the same.

She passes the cage that holds a more literal beast. The vampire is sleeping in, still in time with the hours of the night. Curiosity overtakes her. It kills the cat but Dru has always been lighter on her feet.

“Tara?” she asks a few steps before the bars. The unfamiliar name feels awkward on her tongue. Did layers of peace and calm once weigh on that name just as her knight and the witch suggest? If so, they’re gone now.

The vampire’s eyes open, and she pulls herself up in that quick slow way that marks her as forever changed. The witch insisted on giving her a cot, even if she still refuses to share space with her. 

“Dru,” the vampire says. “Need anything? I’m always happy to help here.” Her eyes flick around the cage. “I’m always here, anyway.”

“Tell me who you were, before you grew my teeth,” Drusilla says easily. 

Tara just laughs. The question might as well be air.  “Me.”

“You can remember the change in you, before the demon took root.”

Tara avoids the truth of her words. “Is Willow ever going to talk to me? This silent treatment is driving me insane .” She swirls two fingers near her head, open smile hiding how her fingers close into a fist. “Watch me. I’ll turn into you soon.”

Drusilla smiles slightly. “The sun would bleed and fall before you dance and break the world as I have.”

Something new shines in Tara’s eyes. Admiration and calculation in equal measure. One of her devil’s children looked at her like that once. She can’t recall how he ended up. It was all a jumble of dull doe-eyes and nails scrabbling at her as she brought the flame closer.

“But there’s something missing,” she says, “You can’t remember being human, can you? That’s why you asked me.”

“I can’t,” Dru admits, “It’s fading now, I’m awake.”

“If you really want to know,” Tara says, getting up from her cot and walking over to the bars so she can lean against them. “Sure. I can help. Hunted. Tortured.” Her nail scrapes against the rough iron. “That was you. I’m not entirely sure of the specifics of what Angelus did to you, but, if you want to relive it, I’m sure I could make a good guess.”  

Drusilla’s eyes drift closed, trying to remember if there was a time when she scurried like a mouse before a cat, but there’s nothing, just a white hot hole in her mind, painful to the touch.

“It hurts,” Dru says. Her eyes open, and she regards the beast before her. “Did it hurt?”

“For me?” Tara asks. She stretches her arms out, relieving tension even as she reaches through the bars. But Dru is not entranced enough to be caught by her. “No, I don’t think so. It felt cold.”

“Not when you woke up. Tell me about the dreams.” A half step closer and they are circling each other in a dance, a game.

Tara blinks. “I can’t remember.”

Lies , Drusilla thinks, but what she says is “There was water over my head. Always. It pressed and pressed. Everyone else had a diving suit. Each passing second crawl into their lungs. The night was living in skin, pushing stolen blood beneath doll flesh.”

“Alright,” Tara says. Her hand sweeps lazily along the bars. “It hurt.”

“I’ve woken up, but I need to know what it was like, even if it was pain,” Dru says. She wants to see into her past. What crime is it to understand herself? “He’ll help.” 

“No, let me,” the beast says. Her eyes flicker, mirth and hunger. “All you have to do is ask. You can live what its like to be cold and wrong and hated. We’ll remember together.”

Dru smiles. “You can’t remember what you’ve never learned.” With that, she turns and leaves, searching for her knight, and if not, the witch. She can feel the power behind the desperation in the beast’s words. The bars will bend soon.

…

“Hi Dru,” Willow says. Her fingers pluck at feathers arranged on the tabletop after most of the books have flown away. The air smells like blood and old magic. Dru knows this. It’s a current on the air, of sacrifices and bargains made. The ancient faith understands this better. Blessings are an open exchange.

“Building a cage for the beast?” Dru greets her. The face of her knight had not been forthcoming among the halls of this place. So instead, she seeks the witch, and with good reason too. “This will bend beneath her hands like cobwebs.”

“Really?” Willow asks. A little challenge there, of someone who learned too much too early. “It should be powerful enough to contain any vampire.”

“Bars contain any vampire,” Drusilla says, “Her blood sings softer than yours but it still sings.”

“With magic?” Willow asks. She lets go of the feather and the heavy feeling of spellwork fades from the air. “I’ve read about things that could take it from her. But I don’t…Would it hurt? Would I be clipping her wings? And it doesn’t just go away. The power has to go somewhere…”

“Yours sings too much.” Drusilla hums, considering. “Greedy to pull her soul in as well.”

“It’s not like I meant for this to happen,” Willow says. 

Dru pulls a familiar tome from the shelf. Convents, old houses used to store magic as much as obedience. “Walking blind into the sea. Temperance will keep your head above the water. Ground the lightning before you become a lightning rod..”

“Ground it?” Willow thinks about this. “You mean store the power in some way. It’s possible, I guess.”

“Your Lenore is a vampire now,” Dru says. She opens up the book. “Many more than slayers have tried to fight the things that lurk in the dark. Weaken the vessel and the magic can no longer be contained. Just as how a knife-kiss could puncture the dam you’ve built to hold your power and drown you in the flood.”

“Here’s hoping I got a better handle on it than that,” Willow says. Then she breathes out, eyes flicking to the paper. “Weaken the vessel,” she repeats. “You mean I…use a spell to weaken a vampire?”

“We’ll need a branch on a tree,” Dru says. “Mistletoe, before you sing the power somewhere safe.”

…

Spike isn’t planning on stopping by the Harris and Demon residence (nee Summers), but he finds himself their anyway. A pause before he knocks on the door. This is patrol time. But lately, there aren’t as many winged or fanged things out there ripe for the killing. Either news of the Slayer’s death isn’t the morale boost it used to be, or something big is coming. Hell if Spike knows. The apocalypse is the problem of some new girl somewhere.

Yeah, time to check in with the rest of the gang. He promised Dawn, and if he was being honest, even with everything new in his life these past few days, a part of him couldn’t do wrong by a little history homework. Maybe a dinner with Harris and Anya fumbling through quasi-married with adopted kid. 

He knocks. The door opens just as he does, quick in the way that he almost expects a fellow vamp on the other side, someone capable of hearing his approach. But instead, its Anya.

“Is Dawn with you?” she asks. One of the things he’s always liked about Anya is that she’s straight and to the point. The worry is clear in her voice.

“No,” Spike says. “Not with you lot either, I’m guessing.”

Anya grabbed her coat from the side. It’s late at night and they both know as brave as she’s been these last few months Dawn’s wearing a sign around her neck saying ‘free sample.’

“When’d you last see the Bit?” Spike asks, stepping away from the door. She can’t have been gone long. Neither Harris nor Anya are inattentive types.

“I found a note, just before you arrived,” Anya says. “She said she was going to find you.”

“Fuck,” Spike says. “I’ve got a good bet where she’s gone. You call Harris. Check the crypt for me.” And then he leaves without saying anything else, because he can’t bear to waste any more time.

…

When Spike gets back to the mansion, he sees Dawn right away. What a bloody relief, excluding the rest of the picture. Sitting beside her on an antique sofa somehow free of bloodstains, is Carmilla.

Carmilla’s got a book spread across her lap. Must have magicked herself out of the bars while he was away. Bloody witches and their bloody lack of following a bloody reasonable schedule. Heartwarming scene, for all it makes his reflexive breath stop.

“Aren’t you a little old for storytime, pet?” Spike asks. A step and he’s in the room. Enough distance and he’ll be able to grab Little Bit before Carmilla does.

“I thought Tara could use some reading while she recovers,” Dawn says.

“She kept all my books,” Carmilla says warmly, putting hers down. 

“How about you come over here? Me and…Tara are due for a talk.” Spike’s fingers twitch.

“You don’t need to be worried,” Dawn says. “Tara is a good vampire, like you and Angel.”

Spike takes a step closer. “Sure she is.” Carmilla’s eyes are smiling at him. It’s bad because he remembers being like that, young and cocky and full of power for the first time. There’s no telling if she won’t snap Dawn’s neck just for the hell of it. “Angel’s got a soul, and I’ve got a chip. Tell me what she’s got.”

Little Bit’s brow wrinkles slightly. The expression only really seen on newbie vamps and teenagers when they realize they just might be in actual danger. And then things turn ugly quick.

The first thing that happens is a creak in the staircase. Red and Dru are on their way down. There’s a book in Dru’s arms and Red’s got some sprigs that look like they were clipped from the things growing outside the upper-story window. He forgets that Dru is missing her keen hearing. The situation down stairs is hitting them just as the next thing happens.

The second thing is Carmilla lunges for Dawn. Spike is quick, quicker than her, but she’s  closer. He comes to a mere step away. Then stops, because Carmilla has a pen-knife to the Bit’s throat.

“Why’d you have to ruin a moment like this?” Carmilla asks. “I missed spending time with Dawnie.”

“Keep this up and she’ll feel close to your ashes on the mantel,” Spike says. They’re face to face, with the Little Bit held between them.

“I think you should think long and hard about your promises,” Carmilla says back. 

Spike barks a laugh, stepping to the side as Carmilla turns to follow him. “Is that what you prefer? You kill her, I kill you, Red over there kills me, then Dru kills her , and we’re all a neat cycle of revenge laid out on the floor. Just as you like it, dramatic as the soaps.”

Behind them, Red has begun saying something softly under her breath. Carmilla’s eyes flick that direction, and Spike steals another step ever so slightly closer.

“It’s not that complicated. Stop your fucking spell or dolly dies,” Carmilla says, raising her voice.

“Tar-” Dawn tries to say, but the knife dips close to her throat.

“Shh, don’t let the adults talking into your silly head,” Carmilla whispers. 

Why can’t Red just do the sleep spell from earlier? Spike wonders. He’s almost close enough to grab Carmilla now. There will be no contest, if he does it right. He’s stronger, quicker, and older than her. Only worry is from Dawn getting hurt in the process.

Blame their old connection. His eyes flick to Dru, silent on the stairs, maybe for luck, maybe for habit, and he catches her stare. Once he has it, he knows all he needs to.

Spike’s fingers wrap around the blade of the knife while his other hand grabs onto Carmilla’s wrist. It’s just as well ‘cause the resistance she puts up against him isn’t as much as he expected, not at all. In fact, it wanes by the second. Dawn ducks away and Spike shoves Carmilla down.

Red’s chanting seems to fill up the whole room as she raises the plants from earlier. In the midst of it, Carmilla falls on her knees with her head lolling back and her arms slack at her sides. Don’t look like she can hold them up. The spell is taking effect.

“Stop,” Carmilla says. Her voice comes out thin. “I can’t go back. I can’t survive on microwave food. It’s not healthy…”

If the witch can hear her lovers pleas, she doesn’t show it. Spike pulls the knife from where it slid up against the bones of his fingers, seeing blood seep from the wound as the Little Bit cries silent tears into his side. It’ll be luck if he’ll have full use of the hand again this week but he still tucks her under his arm. Won’t let anything with teeth this close to her again.

The chanting changes, the air crackles, and a thin line of energy thrums into place between Dru and the vampire. Spike blinks watching as power hits her. That’s the woman he loves and she takes it in stride, it makes her eyes shine in the same way he’s seen her after a fight. She’s beautiful.

Carmilla falls to the floor. Red falls to her knees. Dru steps confidently towards Spike, her eyes on the Little Bit attached to his side.

“What the fuck? Is that Drusilla?” Harris says from the entry way. Anya is right behind him.