She sits in a garden of ice. Snow falls softly, sparkling in her dark hair, dampening her lace dress. It is bitterly cold.
She feels none of it. The cold fails to bring color to cheeks unnaturally pale. The damp will never make her ill.
She is as cold as the ice-covered trees and the snow covering the ground and she always will be.
The only thing she feels is the single tear freezing a streak down one white cheek.
~~~~~
When she truly lost him, Drusilla felt it all. Writhing on her bed, screaming to the stars, she suffered his trials and suffered even more his reward.
Reward. The thought of what he gained twisted her stomach, made her heave up the children she'd eaten the night before. Blood spattered her bed, her body, matted in her hair and ran down the walls. She screamed until her voice broke and in silence destroyed everything in the room.
When she returned to her senses she found her companion dismembered on the floor at her feet and gazed dispassionately down at him.
She hadn't even noticed his attempts to stop her.
A few hours before dawn she was clean and dressed in the only clothes remaining to her. She hitched a ride out of Rio and when the driver tried to slide his hand up her skirt, she snapped his neck, tossed him out of the truck, and drove northwards.
No more heat for her. Heat and passion made her heart ache. She wanted the cold to chill her to the bones and drive all memory of his betrayal from her.
*****
It took Drusilla nearly a month to wind her way at nights though South and Central America. Everywhere she went the demon community whispered about the first in a millennia to win the challenges and earn his reward. None knew what the reward was and Drusilla never enlightened any of them.
That humiliation would have destroyed her. It was difficult enough living with the knowledge.
As she drove through Texas, heading to the mountains that would take her to Canada, Drusilla wondered if she was cursed.
First her sire, now her childe. Both hideous to her.
Both leaving her behind.
When the thought came to her the first time and the pain became too much, she slaughtered an entire trailer park outside of Pecos.
She was alone now.
By the time she reached Colorado she was convinced the entire family was cursed. Hadn't the grand dame Darla herself sacrificed her life for her squalling brat?
And she began to wonder when she might become infected with the need for salvation or redemption as well.
The fear of salvation kept her awake during the days, curled in a trembling ball in whatever hole she managed to find. Whimpering and mewling, she tugged at her hair, scratched at her skin, praying that she would remain as she was.
Vampires weren't meant to feel. They weren't meant to change. They weren't meant to love so much they sought out souls.
They weren't meant to love their mortal enemies.
And if her childe was meant to love than he should have loved only her, and he hadn't. He'd left her behind, abandoned and betrayed, and the loss drove her even more mad.
The vampiress who made her way into the Rockies and heard the first rumors of a matching insanity in her childe was completely broken. Only her need for cold drove her on. She went without food, without grooming herself, without companionship. Driving at night, eyes glued to the road, she muttered snippets of childhood rhymes and songs to herself, and stopped only to steal gas and hide from the sun.
By the time she reached Canada, Drusilla was a shell of her former self. Her dirty gown hung on her skinny body. Her hair was lank and tangled. Her skin was bruised and scratched from her own hands.
Only her burning eyes showed any life.
And then the first snow fell, and she felt a minute sense of relief that she had finally found the cold she sought. Leaving the truck, she danced through the woods beneath a snow cloud laden dark sky. She recognized hunger for the first time in weeks and a forest ranger sated her for the moment. The woman's cabin held clean clothes, and Drusilla bathed and changed into a long black knit dress and clean black boots.
Feeling more herself, she returned to the truck and pointed it northward once again. This wasn't the place to forget. Not quite.
Finally, after nearly two months of driving, Drusilla stopped on the edge of a small, isolated town. On a hill above the town sat an old mansion that reminded her of the glorious townhouses in London and New York and happier times. It didn't take long to eliminate the family that lived there. She kept a teenage girl as a pet and occasional snack, and burned the rest in the large furnace.
After a day of rest, she awakened to a world of white. A blizzard was in progress, blanketing the town and the surrounding woods, blinding everything to the world.
Smiling for the first time in too long, she dressed and ventured out to sit in her new garden and revel in the icy cold. It was here she would forget him. The cold and the snow and the wind would drive all thoughts of his betrayal, his soul from her. She would find renewal here in the eternal winter.
She would not think of him. Would not weep more than one tear for him. For Spike, who left her behind, who fell so much in love with his mortal enemy that he sought to redeem himself through earning the return of his soul.
The repugnant knowledge burned like ice in her breast and she cursed his name and that she had ever made him.
*****
She sits as the snow dusts her hair and wets her gown and she stares unblinking into the starlit sky. She has become the cold and it has driven away the pain. Memories remain, good ones but they are distant to the touch. She no longer hates him.
She no longer loves him.
She no longer cries for him.
End