She felt it.
Lying in bed, dozing as the midday sun blazed outside her lair, her current lover curled against her side, she felt it.
Burning.
Gasping for unneeded air, she rose, clutching her chest. Her heart felt singed, and the sensation of flames flickering down her extremities sent her screaming from her bed to the shower where she huddled nude beneath a spray of cold water.
As she trembled and moaned, images burst behind her eyes and she saw him, burning.
Dying.
Whimpering, she slid to her knees and began to cry.
Her boy was dead.
*****
It took her a month to find the courage to return to the City of Angels. She'd been banished from her sire's grace and she knew she was disobeying by coming back, but she needed to see him, talk to him.
Spike had died six months before. She knew this in her heart even though she'd never received confirmation. For the first three months she'd mourned as much as one such as she could, spreading death and mayhem across Central America. It was in Costa Rica that the first vision came, and she didn't understand it.
She saw Spike alive again, fighting, winning, celebrating.
She put it off to grief and went off to find someone to kill. Discovering a nun out past curfew made her forget all about the vision.
Until two nights later when she saw him again. After that, the visions began to come nightly, confusing her, frightening her. She'd managed to accept his death, move past it, and now it was if he was haunting her.
Finally, unable to take it anymore, she made up her mind to seek out her sire for answers. Angel had always known the answer to all her questions, even when he the wrong daddy.
It took her nearly a month to make her way north, and for nine days she hovered on the outskirts of Los Angeles, afraid to enter, needing to see him but fearing his wrath at her disobedience.
This disobedience wasn't one of the small ones they'd used as play, where she'd break a rule and he'd flay the skin from her back and fuck her until she screamed with pleasure.
No, this could get her killed.
But finally the visions of Spike drove her into the city and straight to the doors of Wolfram & Hart.
***** Harmony looked up a bright, welcoming smile on her face, which quickly disappeared as she recalled the identity of the vampire standing before her. "Great." She quickly debated calling the guards, knowing the momentary joy of watching Drudzilla get her bony ass staked would keep her happy for at least a week, but decided against it. Spike's ex was her boss's kid, after all.
"I remember you. The silly little unicorn girl."
Punching a button on her phone, Harmony snapped, "Boss," then scowled back up at her unwelcome guest.
Drusilla was looking around, confusion on her face. "Why is daddy here?"
"Yeah, that's a question we've all been asking ourselves," Harmony muttered.
"Dru." Stepping out of his office, Angel stared, stunned at the sight of his childe standing before him.
"I'd be happy to call the guards and have her staked, boss," Harmony suggested cheerfully.
"I don't like you anymore," Drusilla said over her shoulder as she walked towards Angel.
"I never liked you," Harmony called back before picking up her romance novel and burying her nose in it.
Stopping before Angel, Drusilla looked up hesitantly. "I promise to behave."
Sighing heavily, Angel took her arm and tugged her into his office. "What are you doing in L.A., Dru?" he asked, releasing her and leaning casually back against his desk, arms crossed over his chest.
"The visions made me come back. I never would have disobeyed, but they wouldn't leave me alone and you were always the one to interpret them for me." As she spoke, her voice pleading, she shifted from foot to foot, wringing her hands. She felt his eyes on her, watching her closely, weighing her words, her actions. Judging her, as he always did.
And she felt as inadequate as she always did.
"What do the visions show you?"
Her voice came out in a dry whisper, one word. "Spike."
"What about him?"
She heard the change in his voice and her eyes narrowed as she gazed at him, unblinking. "He was dead. Now he's alive. Or so my visions tell me, but I don't understand them. I know he died," she whispered. "He burned like a candle's flame, gold and beautiful. I mourned him, and then I went on without him."
"You lost him years ago, Dru," Angel interjected, not unkindly.
"I know, but he was always there ready to be recalled to my side. My only childe, Angel. My own. And then he was gone. I learned to accept it. It hurt, more than I thought it would, but I got beyond it. And then the visions began, night after night, haunting me, hounding me, telling me things that couldn't be true until I began believing they could be. After all, you came back from hell, Darla did, why not Spike?"
She looked at him with such need in her eyes that Angel felt the customary pang of sympathy he always felt for her expand into something real, and he asked in a soft voice, "And, if he was alive, Dru? What would you do?"
Drusilla stopped wringing her hands and cocked her head, thinking about his question. It was one she hadn't given any thought to. Her goal had been to come here, talk to Angel and have him...do what? She frowned in confusion and rubbed her hands over her thighs, her fingers clenching into the soft fabric of her skirt. "I don't know," she finally admitted. "I'm so confused."
Sinking into a chair, she buried her face in her hands, running them up over her eyes into her hair, pulling on the long strands. "Is he alive? Do you know? Can you find out? I need to know, not to do anything, just to know. And to see him, just to see him and confirm with my own eyes that he's still here. Can you understand that?"
Pity suffused his face and he dropped into a crouch beside her chair, silent until she looked at him with unsettled eyes. "Yeah, I understand that need, Dru." Angel took a deep breath and continued softly, "And Spike is alive."
*****
She stood before the door to the basement apartment, hands clenched in her skirts, lower lip caught between her teeth, her sire's tales spinning in her head. Of chips and souls and amulets and destinies and the fall of a hellmouth and the resurrection of her childe.
She could feel him behind the door, unknowingly waiting for her. Her souled boy. Not cursed like daddy, but with a soul won and earned.
For her. The Slayer.
The bitch.
That thought infuriated her as it had when Angel had told her in halting terms why Spike had regained his soul. Everything was always for Buffy.
But...in the end Spike hadn't won the Slayer. The bitch was alive and well and, as of a month before, according to a Vroninish demon Drusilla'd briefly had as a lover, living it up in Rome.
So, had Spike's devotion been for naught? Had he fallen out of his unnatural love for the Slayer? Had she rejected him one time too many?
But, did it really matter? In the end, he would always be her childe, always be hers.
With renewed confidence Drusilla rapped sharply on the door.
*****
She'd surprised him, even more than daddy. Perched on his sofa, she watched him hovering across the room, staring at her, continuously puffing on a cigarette. He hadn't exactly invited her in, but, since they were both vampires, she didn't need an invitation, so she'd marched past him and taken a seat.
He'd been watching her for a good ten minutes, not saying anything, waiting for her perhaps?
"You should be punished for dying without my permission, and saving the world by doing so?" Shaking her head in bewilderment, she tsked loudly and primly folded her hands together in her lap. "I'm sure I taught you better than that."
"Dru, why are you here?" Spike finally got out, his voice strangled with emotion.
"I had visions of you alive. I needed to see for myself. It's important to know that one's legacy is still in existence."
His eyes widened and he nearly choked on his cigarette. "I'm your legacy."
"You're my only childe." She sighed heavily and raised stricken eyes to his. "Souled as you are, in love with our mortal enemy, a disgrace to our race, you are my only childe. After you daddy told me not to make more, so the rest are minions, and one should never rely on minions to be ones legacy. So, it is you, and I have come to see for my own eyes that you are no longer dead and burning."
"How'd you know I was dead in the first place."
She replied matter-of-factly, "I felt it," and the demon in her relished the look of horror spawning on his face.
"Dru...I didn't...I didn't know."
"We have a special bond, my William."
"You threw me over for a chaos demon."
"Because you were in love with the Slayer, but she is mortal, and your love, like she herself, won't last. When she's dead and gone and you are free from her spell, I will be there. I will always be there."
"Dru...I don't love you anymore," Spike said softly, almost sadly.
"You just think you don't. It's all right." Rising to her feet, Drusilla drifted across the room to him. She stopped just outside his personal space but close enough to raise one soft hand to his cheek. She felt him flinch at her touch, saw his eyes drop away from hers, but persisted. "You are mine, Spike. I gave birth to you, both demon and man. The soul means nothing to me. I can see the darkness in you, the darkness that lurks in the soul of every man. When you are ready, you will be wicked again."
Her hand patted his cheek, then fell away as she stepped back. "One day you will be my wicked boy again."
End