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He woke up in the middle of the day to music. Drusilla was always playing music, because she said it made her want to dance.
She would dance anyway, of course. She could hear music in her head even when it wasn?t playing. She woke him up sometimes to ask him if he could hear the cellos. Then she would ask him if they could dance, while she flitted about the room on her toes, in her pretty little white shoes, with ankle straps like a child's.
He wanted to dance with her. He couldn't, now, of course. It was far too late for that.
He wanted to live in her world, so that he could finally understand her. He wanted to wake up and hear music playing in his head, wanted to feel the world so sharply that it was like a thorn inside of his brain.
He didn't want her brand of pain, though. He didn't mind his own--at least it was his and he understood it, but her pain was shades deeper, and much more biting. At last, that was how it always seemed to him--that her pain was like little animals chewing on her mind. That her head was so full of her sadness that she had to scream, had to let it out through her throat. He understood that well enough. Sometimes he dreamed about her. A lot less than he thought he would, but still often enough for it to hurt. He had dreamt about her more often when she was lying next to him than when she was gone.
Sometimes he wondered if that was because of her, because she wanted always to be his Princess and she thought that his dreams were the key. But then, he thought of her as his Princess, always, anyway.
The evening he woke to find her gone was still like a dream to him. She'd left him a note. It had been as incoherent as her speech was, full of ramblings about something or another, but the thing he remembered about it most vividly was that it told him to "tell my Daddy goodbye, and his Princess will be fine."
The bitch. Of course she'd talk about Angel in the bloody note, of course there had to be one last blow to his spine.
She'd written the letter to him, but that didn't dull the pain any. She'd written, "I love you more than anything, pet, but I have to leave you. The stars are calling to me, and I need to join them."
The stars. What the hell did the stars know? Drusilla had always told him that the stars had whispered to her, but what could they have to say? They were stars.
He'd found...he'd found a pile of dust downstairs. It was her. Or so he thought, anyway. It could have been something else--some incense she had burnt, some ashes from the tiny fireplace downstairs--but the note, and then the ashes... The curtains had been open. He was a mess. He knew it; he just didn't know what to do about it. He wanted to die, but he couldn't bring himself to walk into the sun. He couldn't bring the stake all the way through his skin.
He had tried, a few times. The last time, he had filled the bed with blood because he had gone almost all the way to his heart. He'd had to get a new mattress.
Sometimes he wondered if Drusilla had really done it, had really ended it, or if she was just playing with him, the way she always had. She was insane, no way about that, but was she really suicidal?
On his darkest days, he realized that she was. She was a goddamn nutcase, and there were so many times that he had walked into their home to find her searing herself with holy water... He?d taken it away and she would cry, as though her mother had taken away a favorite toy.
The music was still playing. God, was he the one who was fucking insane?! He walked down the stairs of their apartment. It was really more a loft than anything else--tiny, two stories, with bedroom and bath upstairs and living room and kitchen downstairs. Not that they really needed the extras, anyway, they were just nice, and less conspicious. Besides, Dru could stare inside of the mirror, sitting on the bathtub for hours, staring at the empty mirror. Then she would almost cry.
The bedroom was where he had found the note, the living room was where he had found the ashes. His stereo was playing.
As he made his way down to the bottom of the stairs, still stark raving drunk, the way he preferred himself these days, the song ended, then started up again. The damn thing must have been stuck on repeat. Did he do it? Maybe. He could only remember half the things he did nowadays. Not that he did much. Kill someone, as viciously as possible, get drunk; get drunker. He didn't even recognize the music, though. Must have been one of Dru's albums.
That caught him. Dru? He never listened to the crap she played, although maybe, in a drunken fit of reminescence, he had put on the album for a good cry. This song seemed pretty good for it.
Cor, had this bloody song been playing all night? No wonder his dreams were so bloody fucked. He had dreamt about Dru, talking to Dru. Like they could ever converse sensibly. But in his dream, they had been. They'd had a good talk, like they hadn't had in centuries. He collapsed on the couch, let the words and guitar sounds wash over him. Listening closely to the lyrics, he smirked. He must have read the jacket, because this song fit him and Dru exactly.
She was gone. Dead or run away or whatever the hell she was, she was gone from him forever now. He knew it, accepted it, although whenever his next bout of sobriety came up, he'd probably cry his eyes out. Now he could feel the tears prickling at his eyes, at his lashes, but he brushed them away testily. Forget about it. Save the tears for when you want them, for when you crave them, for when coherent thought is pounding away at your brain like a sledgehammer.
He thought back, back to Sunnydale to when he was happy with his baby. Back to when he had fucked it up by helping out the Slayer, back to when he had kidnapped the little witch in a failed attempt to get back Drusilla. He should have know that it would take more than a spell to get his baby back, what with the powers she had in her own pretty little head. He'd tortured her for a good two months before she'd started to look up at him with worshipful eyes again, before she had leaned into his hand stroking her cheek.
Gone. It was such a lonely word.
God, what was he, frigging Angel? Here he was, bemoaning his kitten like some human, like eternity didn't open up a million other possibilities for happiness.
"I've got to do something about these bloody mood swings," he muttered to himself, then lit up a cigarette. Foreign brand, not his usual cheap little things. Dru had bought him a big case of them when they had gone back to London for a bit. She'd said she liked the thick, musty smell of the smoke coming out of his dead lungs. She would kiss him right as he pulled in a long drag of the cigarette, would let the smoke fill her own mouth as their tongues played and their teeth nipped at each other. Then she'd giggle like a teenager playing with an older man.
So, he was screwed up. At least he admitted it, and it was nothing special amid all the Jerry Springer guests filling the world today. Even the white hats in Sunnydale had their share of soap opera problems too, with all the love triangles and boyfriends going bad that he had observed.
He just wished that he wasn't so damned emotional. It was a rare thing among demons, to have as much feeling as he had, and he'd been both teased and berated for his wealth of emotion by everyone from Angelus to that bloody jerkoff in Germany who he'd lived with for a month before staking the bastard. But he loved it, loved being able to see the night not just as his hunting ground but as a beautiful world that he existed in, loved seeing humans not just as walking Coke machines but also as each separate personality.
It was also a problem. Dammit, he didn't care about every fucking life on the planet, but some people just fascinated him. Like the Slayer and her cronies back in old Sunnyhell. Now they were fascinating little blokes, the Watcher with all his secrets in his eyes, a dark past lingering somewhere in his head. The Slayer, in love with the man she could never touch, one of his own kind--his sire, in fact. The idiot boy, the one he'd hit with a Bunson burner, who was in love with the little witch but wouldn't admit it for the world, and the witch herself, with fire-hair and a temper to match. She'd tried to bust him with the damn thing, and stood up to him, and had actually seemd more scared for the boy's life than hers. He recognized a kindred spirit in the girl, who obviously felt and loved as strongly as he did.
And then there was the little rich princess and the werewolf kid who he hadn't had much contact with, and even they seemed to have stories in their eyes that he'd like to hear.
But screw it. What was he supposed to do, go back there and hang out with the Slayer and chums, turn on his won kind because he found their little group "interesting?" Not bloody likely. But going home, going back to Sunnydale, that was a possiblity. And maybe he could join up with the Slayer for a bit, have her protect him from the bastards back there who wanted him dead. More so, anyway.
Sunnydale. Certainly a quaint name for such a brimming pot of evil. There were more deaths in that town alone than in the rest of California overall. And he'd committed a fair amount of them.
So, back to Sunnyhell. A vacation of sorts, away from his melancholy and drunken binges and days of pacing around his huge loft. Away from his damned loneliness.
He stopped the cd, grinned at the stereo, then went upstairs to pack.
THE END
