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shadowkatAfter much thought and some discussion, I decided to re-write the Prologue of my evil fanfic, develop one of the characters who appears in Chapter 1 and Chapter 3, a bit more.
So here it is - the new prologue, which is much longer and actually, ahem, does a few things I've never written or posted online in my life. Feeling a little nervous about posting this because of those little items.
Warning: graphic violence and character deaths ensue. No ships. Implied S&M sex in places. I tried to avoid doing it, but saw no way around it finally and took the plung. Ugh. Hope it works. Takes place after Season 7 BTVS. Some vague spoilers to Damage 5.11 ATS. NC-17 in sections, so if you are under 17? Sorry. Go away. The fanfic explores dark themes in Buffy and Angelverses.
Prologue – Two parts
Ashes, Ashes…we all fall down.
Florence, Italy – January 2004
The prey she’d been stalking, walked, talked, danced languidly below, whirling, thinking it was alone in this, its special place, where it came to escape, while she waited spider-like on her haunches, watching from a distance. Always from a distance, careful to pick a moment, must be careful…patient, Miss Edith, we must be patient, shhh, like its-bitsy spider creeping silently on its web.
She and Miss Edith used to watch spiders, the black and brown crawly things which kitty chased, while they sipped tea and ate cake. Spiders ugly things with tiny fangs sitting in pretty crosshatched webs waiting as she waited now…to strike. To engorge on blood. Bloody ambrosia, he called it, but that was before, before he began to taste like ashes, on her tongue, on her lips, ashes..ashes, we all fall down, down, down...She flew down. The prey alone now, in a corner, no figures guarding it. Alone. All Alone. Always Alone …they were, they, her sisters, she and Miss Edith, and all the others. But connected too, like the stars were, and the flowers rooted in the dirt, their roots connecting and chocking each other, hungry, always hungry. High slender neck exposed above the collar, hair tied back, in pretty bun like Miss Edith used to tie hers. Miss Edith guided her in her black lace cape to the prey, bright shiny red nails, chipped now, needed a re-painting, digging into the pretty thing’s tanned shoulders, pulling it to her, teeth extending into the neck like a spider. We’re spiders now, Miss Edith, all fangy, she thought with a throaty chuckle. Blood acrid, metallic, yet smooth like the bitter chocolate she drank as a child coated with spice. But richer than that, thicker, deeper, like cognac – her father’s cognac that he didn’t like her to touch. The forbidden drink, poured nightly into her father’s flask, hidden from view. Miss Edith would snatch it and they’d sip from it passing the small flat metal bottle between them in Mummy’s garden. The flask has a metallic taste to it, too, rusty, like a copper shilling if you let it rest upon your tongue. Mustn’t take too much, Miss Edith, must leave breath in the thing, we need it, part of us now, connected, part of our plan. The plan, she knew, would eventually lead to her own end, she’d foreseen it just as she’d foreseen all the ashes, but not yet, not until she got what she wanted. Not until they united all the sisters in darkness, all sleeping below the earth like the flowers, little bulbs of night blooming jasmine and deadly nightshade.
Cursed Daddy, he should have taken care of it long ago when he wasn’t cursed. They’d still be a family then. The three of them, dancing in a whirl, much rush, much crunch, and lovely poetry, like before when Grandmother left. Like Miss Edith, Grandmother was, wheat colored hair, naughty smile. Hair tied high. Liked the smell of jasmine did Grandmother. But he didn’t like Grandmother much. Her pretty one. Hoity-toity Grandmother was, with her gowns and her face paints, ordering them about. Then Grandmother tasted like dust only to be reborn as daughter, then dust again. She tilted her head listening. No one was coming. They were alone. Cursed one’s fault. No, shook her head, looking down at the prey, its eyes hazy now, but not gone, still here, not dead. Wiped her lips with her sleeve, delicately, like Miss Edith taught her. Took a nail, opened a vein along her white creamy breast, don’t cry Miss Edith, doesn’t hurt. Didn’t really hurt, much, Miss Edith told her, after Daddy leaped on Miss Edith, snapping her neck, not even bothering to drink. Wicked Daddy. She took the doll though, the one with the brown hair Miss Edith used to braid, the doll Miss Edith escaped into when Daddy snipped off her life like snipping off a candle flame. Took it and kept it close. Daddy didn’t seem to mind. As long as she was good and let Daddy do what Daddy wanted she could have Miss Edith. Daddy even let her take William. Pretty William. Blond like Miss Edith. Eyes as blue as Miss Edith’s. Soft smile, her Willy. Will, Willy, Willy-boy Spike. She held the pretty one’s mouth to her bloody breast, the blood flowing like wine. So thirsty it was, sucking, sucking, oooh…it made her sway. Oh, yes, the pretty thing sucked at her as William did, starved it was for Mother’s milk. Red and rich and tasting like cognac, forbidden. Drink, little one. Tomorrow you will be strong again and we’ll go a hunting, you, and me, and Miss Edith makes three. Turn them we will. Make them our sisters, tied to us, not her, strong, powerful like us. Connected. Not alone any more, poor things. Not many. Just enough to distract the nasty things, make them scurry, pick off their family one by one by one just as Daddy picked off ours, just as she picked off our new family – we’ll pick off hers, give Miss Edith a playmate, yes we will, then make us a new Daddy, a better Daddy than the cursed one. Then, when time is right, take the slayer, the one who broke pretty William, and make it taste like ashes.
“No more blood little one, must rest now,” she murmured lifting the new child. No longer a thing any more, now it had their blood coursing through it, now it was connected to them. She carried it over her shoulder and leapt up to the rafters and out, out the window to the star lit night sky and the lovely grape vines beyond, damp moist earth to plant her new seedling and watch it grow.
Part II: Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones But Words Will Never Hurt Me…
Outskirts of Florence – two days later
Her mind roared through dreams. Dreams of her sister prancing around their tiny flat, making sure she had every thing. ‘Did you remember to take the holy water? The stakes? And no messing about in grave-yards. Although there are no reports of vampire activity, you can never be sure. Also no playing around with Carlo..’ No worries on that score, ever since she found out that the handsome Italian Watcher Trainee was only hanging around her to score points with her sister, she’d lost interest. He only kissed her to make her sister take notice. She wanted to laugh, remembering R.J., Riley, and Xander himself…poor dear boys…maybe that’s why…they always want the unavailable ones. And as she thought of them they morphed into each other, each telling her how devoted they were and each being dusted by her sister. She forced herself awake only to find herself in the center of an olive grove, reading canto’s from Dante’s Inferno in Italian. She kept getting the pronunciation wrong on the last stanza about the man who had been sent to hell and the demon took his place – so the meaning was all screwy. Marta, Julia, and the other three who’d come along laughed, trying to correct her but each time they did, they’d suddenly vamp out like someone with the hiccups only not. The Watcher, who was an old priest by the name of Luciano, seemed oblivious and kept saying the Ave Maria… As he said it, she saw her sister dancing with her mother far from her, out of reach, with different slayers she’d met jumping in and dancing with them. ‘Choose your partner and doucy-do’ came the call from a man who stood on the sidelines, Xander with a patch doing a square dance chant just like the used to do in gym class. ‘Never chosen were you?’ said a voice, overlapping Xander’s and the Ave Marias… it seemed inside the dreams but outside at the same time, coming at her from a great distance and the dream shifted to a church, where she sat dutifully amongst all the slayers, the watchers, Giles, Xander, Willow, her entire family and one by one they seemed to disappear until she was all alone in the hard pew and there was nothing and no one, not even God present, and unlike her sister, she believed in a God, just as she believed her mother was with God. But no one was here. The church was empty and in her hands was a long black stick with a ying/yang symbol on it. ‘You were never chosen. Tsk. Tsk. But then you are something other, more, precious…’ She looked around for the voice, where was it? ‘Never chosen even after the sharing spell, yes we felt it, Miss Edith and I..” Dark eyes in a beautifully sculpted face stared into her own, then morphed into her mother’s face, with pale hair and pale eyes. “Yet you are so strong, so beautiful, more so than she…why don’t they see that? All the pretty green, like Miss Edith…pretty and powerful, yet kept contained.’ ‘Mom?’ ‘Your mum. Yes, I suppose I am your Mum now, but also sister…more than she…and we’ll make more sisters you and I. Connect them to us. Share our power, our glorious power …’ She turned around in the church, almost spinning, hunting the voice, but all she saw was a figure, dark and sleek, more of a shadow really flitting around the walls of the church, throaty voice echoing off the walls. The church melted before her eyes reminding her of a Salvador Dali painting, becoming something else, roots, dirt, bugs and nothing but dirt, bugs, plant roots, filled her senses. Clogging her mouth, filling in her eyes, her ears, her hair, under her nails, she found herself choking on it, clawing at it, kicking at it, pushing up through endless layers of it, until she rose to a field awash in moonlight, the same dark figure stared down at her, smiling. ‘Never chosen…’ it whispered. ‘ Until now.’
She jolted awake in a room covered with long black and red velvet curtains. Between the curtains she caught sight of stone walls and candles flaming from sconces bolted into them. Attempting to move she discovered her arms were chained to the wall and the rest of her body, encased in nothing but a silk negligee was splayed on a bed covered in red silk sheets and a black and red duvet. She realized, looking down at her newly pale body, that she was dead. Glancing around her, she made out a few slumped bodies or what appeared to be bodies handing from chains attached to the far wall. The floor was littered with pillows and trunks, a few overstuffed armchairs and a couch sat in the far corner where several vampires still in game face appeared to be napping. Empty wine glasses sat on the closed wooden coffin in front of them along with other various items she could not make out. Curtains hid the rest of the room from view. “No,” she corrected, with an odd sense of detachment, “worse than dead, you are undead.” And a giggle erupted from her throat at the idea of it. It did not seem all that bad when she thought of it. Better than the dreams had been, which left her feeling confused and disoriented. A vampire. Her sister was so going to kill her. No, wait, already dead. Dust her was the correct term. She giggled again. Well, her sister could certainly try.
She frowned. The memory of dirt clogging her lungs, beneath her nails, in her eyes, nose and mouth had not been a nightmare then. Nor for that matter had the hunger, which had almost consumed her. Not so bad now, she thought. Yet the craving lingered, having once tasted human blood, she craved more – the rush of it, the smooth taste, like a chocolate liquor with an ecstasy buzz. Thinking it over she wondered vaguely how Spike resisted it? Or for that matter why? Once she had fed off of…she searched her memory, everything had happened so quickly, a silly jogger – who wore tight fuchsia spandex pants, ugh, for that sin alone the bitch deserved to be eaten. And she’d always heard Italians had great fashion sense. Yeah, right. The blood though, oh it felt, she struggled to think of a way of describing it and gave up. She’d felt fantastic afterwards, powerful, connected, primal – remembering the power – she pulled at the chains again, but they held. She tried again, but the attempt only resulted in chafing her wrists. She searched her memory for clues on how she got here, wherever here was. She remembered digging her way out of the grave, biting the girl’s neck, the rush of blood, seeing her mother smiling at her – or was it her mother? She shook her head, confused. Remembered the graveyard, as bright as day awash in moonlight – the feeling of no fear. None. And no inhibitions. The desire to bite the girl had been over-whelming and for the first time in her young life, nothing held her back. She checked herself now. Was she afraid? No. Annoyed, yes. Afraid? No. Slightly curious, maybe.
“How is Miss Edith, today?” came a voice from the shadows. The same high thin slightly accented voice she’d heard in the graveyard and in her dreams, the voice that momentarily wore her mother’s face.
“Once again, the name’s Dawn. Not Miss Edith,” she said, having already corrected the odd woman at the graveyard. The force from the responding slap knocked her head against the wall and almost off her neck, leaving long red welts on her check. Pain filled her head and coursed down her neck to her right shoulder. So, she could feel pain, good to know. She wondered if this was how she had gotten here? Had the woman knocked her unconscious? “I’m not afraid of you.”
Laughter, light like bells rang around the walls. The figure, the face perfect like one of her friend Marta’s porcelain dolls, with lovely dark eyes, long lashes, and a perfectly shaped angular nose, knelt and brought its face up close to Dawn’s. The woman smelled like lilacs, Dawn thought, or night blooming jasmine – identifying perfumes had never been her strong suit. The dark woman, who seemed at first to be so delicate, lifted a perfectly shaped nail, painted a dark magenta to Dawn’s cheek. Her eyes dark, almost bird-like, peered into Dawn’s – then she smiled, the nail stroking Dawn’s cheek softly. “Not now, perhaps, little one …” Dawn felt the woman’s other hand lift up the skirt of her negligee and move along her thigh to her crotch, extending a finger to stroke her sex with one nail just like she was doing with her cheek. The smile broadened at Dawn’s gasp of surprise. “But You will be.” Dawn screamed as the woman’s nail cut across her crotch like a knife, slashing the place she’d just aroused.
An hour later.
Dawn’s throat was raw from screaming. The woman was talking again, slapping her thigh with a long thin hollow wooden stick. Dawn watched it move back and forth with masochistic fascination. The stick was new. A few moments ago the woman had left her side to go fetch it, having grown bored with the S&M finger, tongue and teeth game they had been playing. The vampires on the couch had woken up during their game and at different intervals had attempted to get the dark woman’s attention without much success. She’d shoo them away or hiss at them if they got too close. They seemed afraid of her for some reason. Dawn wondered why. They were bigger than she was. Dawn watched them with interest - one of them was nudging the woman now. She couldn’t hear much of the exchange.
“Come on, boss,” a stocky, dark haired vampire said, lisping through his fangs. Dawn didn’t fancy him having his way with her, but hey, if she could convince him to turn against her captor, it might be worth it. “Only fair – a little of the old in-out, in-out? You’ve certainly had your way with her. About time to give the rest of us blokes a chance.”
The woman sneered, then glanced with a look of almost bird-like curiosity at the other three who seemed to be asking for the same thing behind him, and with a quick violent motion staked him with her stick. He exploded into dust. Dawn winced. The three other vampires backed away, hands in the air, whimpering. “Leave us.” They did, retreating en mass through the curtains, without further argument.
Their game had also included blood. Whenever Dawn did something the woman liked, she’d cackle with glee, scratch her nipple and let Dawn suck it. Dawn’s crotch burned from being prodded, scratched, bitten and aroused. Her nipples equally burned. And it wasn’t always the woman, Dawn saw, when her body was being manipulated in this manner. The woman had a way of getting inside her head, pulling out her most perverted desires and making them real – the last one had been Xander.
The woman approached Dawn slowly with a smile, slapping the stick in her hands. “Does Miss Edith remember how the Sisters used to rap her fingers with the stick whenever she was caught playing with herself? Or the nasty things Daddy did to us with it before he turned us? Showing us how naughty we were? How we were the devil’s spawn, like Mum feared. Mum used to feed us cake, remember Miss Edith…before Daddy Angelus found a new place for us to eat it.”
“Not Miss Edith, Dawn.”
The stick rapped against Dawn’s face and she tasted blood in her mouth.
“Naughty. Dawnie.” It was Buffy’s face looking down at her. “You were watching Angel and me again weren’t you? Spying?”
“No, not spying…”
Rap went the stick this time across her breasts.
“You wanted to be with Angel didn’t you? You were jealous. You wanted to feel him touch you…” Buffy was swaying sexily in front of her. “But he wasn’t interested in you. Nor was Spike. Nor poor little…” The voice paused and Buffy tilted her head, then grinned, “R.J. You weren’t woman enough, like me…Even Carlo prefers me to you.”
“No, that’s not true, I didn’t…watch. I don’t want them.”
“Yes, you do…” The voice changed with the face. “And the most wonderful thing of all. Is You can. Have them.” It was Faith, swaggering in front of her. “You can take anything you want. Have anything. No worries. Not anymore. Do anything. Won’t be yours though. …” Faith frowned. “ No matter what you do. Still always’ B’s…” The face morphed into her mothers. “Nothing will be yours …you’re gone, gone to the world.”
“No, I’m not gone,” Dawn pulled at her chains. “I’m real and I’m here and I can have whatever I want.”
The stick slapped against her again, this time with little razor sharp burrs, which ripped across her skin. “Naughty, naughty Miss Edith. Wants what she shouldn’t have. Always did, Miss Edith. Always wanted the pretty boys, got us in trouble she did. With her visions. Seeing things she shouldn’t…took the pretty stick Miss Edith did. Stole it from Daddy.” The woman slowly took the stick as Dawn panted from the last attack and stroked Dawn’s thigh with it. “Daddy liked to punish Miss Edith with the stick, across her pretty little bum…” The woman yanked Dawn over onto her side, reaching above her to adjust the chains, then yanked her all the way, so her head was pressed into the pillows and sheets.
“What now? Are you going to spank me? Ooohh, I’m so scared,” Dawn panted into the bed. “Why? Because I’m not your precious Miss Edith? Because I’m not, you witch- Arrgh!” Dawn began to scream as the razor edge of the stick’s burrs slashed across her butt cheeks over and over again, until she passed out.
“Dawnie, Dawnie…wake up..it’s time for school, you don’t want to be late..”
“Mom?”
“Yes, it’s me, Dawn,” the soft voice of her mother, and a hand petting her head.
“My bottom’s sore.”
“Is it? Well let me see…” And slowly Dawn felt the tip of the stick nudge at her ass and sink into the hole, she screamed again. “Mom! Mom!”
“Mummy isn’t here…Daddy killed her, remember? He tore out her throat. We watched it. But first he shoved a stick up her ass, just like this. Or was it a stick…no, can’t remember.” The woman stroked her clit again, moving the stick back and forth, in a scissor-like motion, it was odd but the pain turned to pleasure after a while, and as the woman’s stroking continued, Dawn heard her screams become moans. “Like that don’t you Miss Edith? Wicked wicked little girl, always did like the wicked things. And Daddy taught us all of them didn’t he?”
What felt like hours later, time seemed to have no meaning any more, raw and bleeding, Dawn watched the woman pace the length of the room talking to herself, slapping her thigh with the stick, sliver burrs glinting in the candlelight on one side. In the midst of the last bit of torture, the woman promised to give the stick to Dawn as a sort of graduation gift. Possibly when she ceased to be Dawn and accepted her new role as Miss Edith, whoever Miss Edith was. Dawn guessed it was the woman’s dead sister. Her eyes narrowed, as she focused on the woman. The woman moved like a cat. Sleek and beautiful, it had certainly been creative – teaching Dawn things about pain and fear and pleasure she didn’t know existed. She thought the hell-god Glory had been bad. Glory had nothing on this creature. But Glory had told her something about not having a soul – something that resonated more now than it did then, what was it? Ah. “When you’re immortal, there’s no cares, no worries, it all melts away like ice cream.” She’d asked Spike to clarify that one and with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he’d said that without a soul you were free to all sensation, the more perverted and extreme the better the rush, no restrictions. She hadn’t really understood what he meant until now.
Miss Edith. Who was Miss Edith? If she could figure that out, she would know how to bend this situation to her advantage. She considered the name for a moment. Played with it. Flipped it over in her mind. Not so bad really. Might be a nice vamp name. She could just claim it until she got away from the creature in front of her. Thinking it over there was something about that name that seemed oddly familiar. A lot of things about this seemed oddly familiar, including woman in front of her. She searched her memory. Long ago. A picture. In a book she’d snuck from Giles’ store. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen at the time. Willow had mentioned that her sister’s watcher, Giles had books on all the vampires, including Spike. She’d been completely obsessed with the vampire Spike when she was fourteen. White blond hair, long leather jacket, finely toned muscles, kick ass Brit accent, snarky one-liners, and movements like a cat. According one Bronze roadie, he resembled the child of Sting and Billy Idol, assuming those two ever got together. But Buffy kept telling her to steer clear of him. He’s dangerous. Deadly. Like a chained tiger or serial killer in prison, Buffy said. So she’d hunted down the book. The picture that fell out of it was a small black and white photograph of a dark haired woman with a china doll’s face in a white negligee.
“Who is she?” she’d asked Giles, who had discovered her with the book and removed it from her grasp with an exasperated yank. She held onto the photograph.
With a resigned sigh, Giles told her everything he knew about Spike’s one-time paramour, Drusilla. He only told her because he wanted to make sure she never underestimated the female vampire. He had, she realized now, wanted to scare her. It might have worked, if the hell-god Glory hadn’t shown up, Mom hadn’t died and the world hadn’t gone to hell more than once. She’d more or less forgotten about Drusilla in the midst of all that and she had only been fourteen at the time.
Now, she felt more or less invulnerable. Very little could kill her. Except, She knew the woman could and would if provoked. “Drusilla,” Giles told her, “is over 100 years old. Created by the vampire, Angelus and…this is important, is insane. He tortured her when she was human, drove her insane, then turned her and from the little we’ve managed to glean from Spike, he continued to torture her afterwards – turning Drusilla into an expert in pain and torment. Having been,” he had paused and rubbed his glasses at this point, deliberately avoiding Dawn’s eyes. “Having been her victim, I can attest to that. If you see her? Run.”
Almost as if she sensed Dawn’s thoughts, Dru turned towards her and Dawn slid back a bit at the feral look in Dru’s eyes.
“Miss Edith enjoyed our last little bit, did she? Naughty little Miss Edith did, I could tell, she makes such a pretty little purring noise.” She tilted her head to one side. “But Miss Edith was always very naughty, liking things she shouldn’t. Liking to play with things she shouldn’t? Always getting our knuckles rapped, weren’t we, Miss Edith?”
Dawn had learned not to interrupt these ramblings, the last few times she had, she nearly dislocated her shoulder. Drusilla’s voice paused and she turned her attention fully on Dawn, sliding towards the bed, her long skirt swishing against the stone floor. She knelt beside Dawn. “Do you want to play a new game, Miss Edith? No?” Dawn wasn’t sure how to react so stayed silent. Dru frowned. “Silly Dru, not Miss Edith, still thinks its Dawn, silly kitty…wants its Mummy, but which Mummy? No, perhaps it wants to play Mummy for a change? Would you like that? To do to others what we have done to you? To teach them to want and obey? They aren’t like you yet, not powerful like you. I’ve left them alive – weak, but alive, so you can teach them and be their Mummy.”
Dawn’s eyes widened and she looked towards the far wall where the two rotting bodies still hung. Dru followed her stare. “Oh no, no…not those things. Those are for the little doggies who just left us. No, Miss Edith deserves a better dolly to play with, something belonging to her other sister, something to take and make hers. Yes?”
Dawn meet Dru’s eyes, scanning them. What was this new game?
“Here, I’ll go show Miss Edith – give her something to work up to. You like that don’t you? A goal. Always needs a goal.” Dru clapped her hands and wandered over to the curtains that covered the walls on the left side of the bed. She tugged at a hidden cord and the curtain swung aside to reveal Marta, then Julia, then…Dawn could not remember the other’s names…but chained to the wall, weak from blood loss, moaning, were the five slayers her sister had sent with her to Florence. “Naughty girls – they slayed some of my best boys, but we got them in the end. One by one, the little dollies came home with Mummy to be reborn. Aren’t they pretty?” Dru let go of the curtain and it swung back hiding them again. “But first we must show Miss Edith how to do it, train her, then she’ll get to play to with the dolls.”
“We could do it now,” Dawn offered, sort of liking this new game. She could turn each of the slayers and get rid of Dru in the bargain.
As if she read her thoughts, Dru laughed. “Oh, no, but you aren’t Miss Edith yet. Still think you’re Dawn.”
“No, no, that’s not true – you’ve convinced me.”
“Don’t lie, precious, we see your thoughts, we do. Miss Edith and I and Miss Edith wants to be with you so desperately but she knows the time isn’t right, you aren’t ready for her – you still just want to be Dawn. Silly little Dawnie. Who has no power of her own. Miss Edith has power Dawn. She’s so tired of living in the dollies you know. She’s been asking me to be in a real girly, but until we found you – there was no one good enough for her. Someone who has wicked little thoughts like Miss Edith did. Who knows what it is like to have a nasty big sister and be tossed aside like nothing even though she’s smarter and sees things,” Dru said, lifting up a doll that had been lying beside Dawn. It was an old fashioned doll with the china face, china hands, china feet and cloth body, the eyes reminded Dawn of Drusilla’s.
“Miss Edith?”
“Yes, my poor dear Miss Edith – naughty Daddy snapped her neck, but she was clever – she escaped into the dollies, didn’t you Miss Edith? Now she wants to be in you. You are the first she’s wanted and now that you have no soul crowding things up…there’s room for her. You’ll like her – she’s like your spirit was, all green and glowly, shiny pretty thing. Miss Edith loved green. Pretty green.” She tilted her head smiling at the doll. “Lovely Miss Edith. And lovely new Dawn.” She pressed the doll against Dawn’s head, almost as if she wanted them to kiss, humming. “We used to sing this song together, Miss Edith and I. Don’t you remember?” She began to sing it. And as she did the oddest thing happened, her image changed to Buffy then morphed to Dawn’s mother, Joyce. “Mom?”
“Hello, dear, won’t you sing with us? Miss Edith would so like to play with you? See here she is, singing…” Dawn looked and her mother morphed into a girl that looked just like her except with blond hair and blue eyes and lily white skin, she was so pretty, the prettiest girl Dawn had ever seen. With the prettiest voice. Light and airy. Dawn swallowed, an acrid taste in her mouth and began to sing and as she sang, the pretty voice that was overlapping with hers seemed to merge with hers and become her voice just as the face in front of her seemed to merge with Joyce and then with Dru until she could no longer tell which was which or who was who.
I tweaked a few things in Chapter 1 so it's slightly different now.
Chapter 1 : The Eyes of Xander Harris
Africa
He felt woozy and numb. Licking his lips he tasted blood, acrid and crusted over. His glass eye was gone, the one they had specially made for him in Morocco, some shaman connection of Will’s. Supposed to have mystical qualities, grant him the ability of second-sight or some such garbage. Right, not doing much good now was it? Except for whom or whatever decided to gouge it out of his socket. Will…Willow miles away in Patagonia on some retreat, even if she’d been home, she wouldn’t be much good. Oh they’d stayed in contact over the past few months, but it was becoming less and less frequent. And, he admitted, after two months cooped in a house with twenty slayers, plus the days in the school bus and hospital rooms, he’d been vehemently in favor of a little distance. No, correction, a lot of distance such as an ocean…an ocean between himself and anything that reminded him of those last few days of Sunnydale, of those who had been lost, of those who remained, most of all of she who shall not be named. He and she who shall not be named, he thought…remembering the silent pact he and the Buffster had made standing alone in an hospital corridor, a few miles outside Sunnydale, waiting to hear on the survivors, each painfully and silently aware of the ones who had not survived. Buff made it clear that they probably needed a little time and space from each other. That their resources would be better spent if they weren’t constantly in each other’s company. Odd, the symbolism of that last parting of the ways in the corridors of Sunnydale High. If he’d known that they’d literally be forking off onto different paths, he might have said something more meaningful at the time. Oh, who was he kidding? He’d thought they were all going to die, no way on earth Buff’s plan could have worked, they’d all thought that…no one, no one could have foreseen the lightshow…or Captain Peroxide’s ultimate part in it.
He coughed, attempting to clear his dry throat, which ached, feeling like sandpaper, rusty sandpaper with a faint metallic taste. He could feel the air uncomfortably pressing against the bared eye socket. His arms were sore, as if someone had bent them behind his back. Not broken, yet looking down at his right sleeve with his one good eye, he noticed it was stained and stiff with blood. He lifted his hand to the side of his neck and felt the gouges in his neck. Vampires. Great. That’s just great. All these years killing the things, and he gets nabbed by a garden variety vampire. Damn Ironic, that. So much for the superhero act. But why didn’t it just kill him?
He tried to move forward, but something hard snapped him back and the slight movement caused the oddest swinging motion. He looked down and realized that his feet were hanging in mid-air, at least five to six feet off the ground. Leaning back he felt the hard poke of metal. He reached behind with his right hand and touched the rim of what felt like a meat hook. Oh that’s original, he thought, instead of just killing me they bring me home and hang me up to dry in a meat closet. He almost gagged at the thought. Remind me, not to eat meat after this. So going vegetarian after this.
Shouldn’t be too hard to get off of a meat hook, except for the numbness and the inability to move his left arm or legs. He sighed, glancing around, which wasn’t easy to do with only one good eye. Yep, some sort of meat locker, cool but not too cold, with all sorts of dried meat hanging on hooks around him. Nothing human that he could see, which was of the good. He glanced up. The roof was dark and high-ceilinged like most of the buildings in this region of France. No hint of sunlight or any other light source emanating from it. What little light there was, came from below him, in the form of all sorts of candles. He could hear humming below him, which meant someone was down there; he wasn’t alone.
He closed his eye for a moment concentrating on placing the sound. Not far away, but also oddly familiar and not a good familiar. Actually it sent a chill up his spine, conjuring memories of things he’d forgotten, Cordy and him locked in Buffy’s crowded basement fending off monsters. They’d spent a lot of time locked in basements and closets Junior year. Good times, better even with the distance, faded old photographs he enjoyed flipping through in his head, before he’d met Anya, before life got complicated and gray, before everything got so confused. It sounded like an old English ditty, similar to something Giles or…oh god, no, not…His eye flashed open glancing with a sense of rising anxiety in the direction of the sound.
The humming came closer and with it a face, a beautiful face, white as porceline, etched with soft blue veins under the surface. She wore red with a long black lace shawl coat, her hair dark as the night sky and her eyes even darker, yet mesmerizing, he looked away, afraid of what he’d see in them. The song she was humming escaped him, but the way she tilted her head and studied him reminded him oddly of a bird contemplating a shiny bauble or treat. For a moment, he envied Anya, who had not seen death coming, he’d always wondered if that would be the better way to go. Now, now looking it straight in the face, he was certain it was. What had flashed through Anya’s brain in those final moments? He wondered. Because the only thing flashing through his…was Anya and the bleak thought that he wasn’t going to get out of this one. No Buffy to swoop in and save his sorry hide. Death had finally come for him and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop her.
She said very little that he understood, but than he’d never understood anything Drusilla said. She was crazy. A total nut-job. He used to tease Captain Peroxide about it all the time. Her words childlike gibberish as she caressed his face with her razor sharp nails and smiling, gestured to the person he had not noticed, due to the fact they’d snuck up on his blind side, feet silent beneath Dru’s humming. “Miss Edith…” Dru said in her sing-song English accent, “Miss Edith wants a bite, don’t you Miss Edith…poor little sister is sooo hungry…”, as she turned, gesturing to the one she now called Miss Edith. Talking to herself again, he thought, struggling to get free of the hook to find a way, any way to escape. “Naughty, naughty, doggie. Must stay still.” Dru swung back and slapped him, hard, nearly snapping his head back with the force of it. “Come Miss Edith, show the naughty dog, your toy.” He gasped, eyes widening with horror as the vampire Dru called Miss Edith, stepped forward, his mystical glass eye held firmly in her hand, which she tossed in front of it like a toy.
“Hello, Xan…” Dawn Summers said, playing with his glass eye while her face shifted to one he’d only seen in nightmares. His mind raced over the events of the last few days, no there hadn’t been any messages from Buffy, just something about Dawn being off at a summer camp, incommunicado, while Buffy was busy in Rome.
“Oops, almost lost it. Don’t worry Xan, I’ll keep it safe. Mustn’t lose such a pretty marble.” Tossing the eye to Dru, Dawn smiled at him, except it wasn’t Dawn, anymore, he thought. And for a split second he was reminded of Jesse. Jesse’s face before the stake went in and he turned to ash. Her felt a hand on his crotch, unbuttoning his pants, pulling him out and slowly stroking him. For a moment he wasn’t sure whose hand it was. Until he glanced up into Dawn’s face. She grinned. His remaining eye meet her’s and he realized she was enjoying it, she continued to stroke him. “Poor Xan, feels good doesn’t it …you don’t think I didn’t notice how you watched me all last year? How much you wanted me? It’s sort of hard to hide isn’t it? Good thing Buffy was ahem otherwise occupied…as was poor dear Anya, who like Buffy preferred Spike in the sack.” She gave his balls one last little twist then released him. He groaned, feeling his face grow hot under her scrutiny. For a moment, he hated her, truly hated her. But it passed, this wasn’t Dawn, he reminded himself. Not their Dawnie. Grateful he hadn’t wet himself yet, he watched Dawn tilt her head to the side, glance at Dru, and still smiling, gently reach up to his face, caressing his cheek. “Time to say goodbye, Xander. Sorry I couldn’t give you that one last thrill.” Then she dug her fingers into his eye socket and plucked out his remaining eye. The last thing Xander Harris heard was Dru humming. It reminded him of the old nursery rhyme, London Bridges falling down. Though the exact words escaped him.
For the rest you can check my past livejournal entries - here:http://www.livejournal.com/users/shadowkat67/37475.html#cutid1 (for Chapter 2 - Dana)
and here for Chapter 3 - Buffy -
http://www.livejournal.com/users/shadowkat67/38395.html#cutid1
Love feedback if you have it. My purpose for doing this is threefold:
1. deal with my frustration and writers block
2. build on my writing muscles, work out the kinks in a safe environment
3. deal with issues that have arisen in the shows and I haven't seen anyone deal with - things that bug me
Thanks muchly to those who are reading.
So here it is - the new prologue, which is much longer and actually, ahem, does a few things I've never written or posted online in my life. Feeling a little nervous about posting this because of those little items.
Warning: graphic violence and character deaths ensue. No ships. Implied S&M sex in places. I tried to avoid doing it, but saw no way around it finally and took the plung. Ugh. Hope it works. Takes place after Season 7 BTVS. Some vague spoilers to Damage 5.11 ATS. NC-17 in sections, so if you are under 17? Sorry. Go away. The fanfic explores dark themes in Buffy and Angelverses.
Prologue – Two parts
Ashes, Ashes…we all fall down.
Florence, Italy – January 2004
The prey she’d been stalking, walked, talked, danced languidly below, whirling, thinking it was alone in this, its special place, where it came to escape, while she waited spider-like on her haunches, watching from a distance. Always from a distance, careful to pick a moment, must be careful…patient, Miss Edith, we must be patient, shhh, like its-bitsy spider creeping silently on its web.
She and Miss Edith used to watch spiders, the black and brown crawly things which kitty chased, while they sipped tea and ate cake. Spiders ugly things with tiny fangs sitting in pretty crosshatched webs waiting as she waited now…to strike. To engorge on blood. Bloody ambrosia, he called it, but that was before, before he began to taste like ashes, on her tongue, on her lips, ashes..ashes, we all fall down, down, down...She flew down. The prey alone now, in a corner, no figures guarding it. Alone. All Alone. Always Alone …they were, they, her sisters, she and Miss Edith, and all the others. But connected too, like the stars were, and the flowers rooted in the dirt, their roots connecting and chocking each other, hungry, always hungry. High slender neck exposed above the collar, hair tied back, in pretty bun like Miss Edith used to tie hers. Miss Edith guided her in her black lace cape to the prey, bright shiny red nails, chipped now, needed a re-painting, digging into the pretty thing’s tanned shoulders, pulling it to her, teeth extending into the neck like a spider. We’re spiders now, Miss Edith, all fangy, she thought with a throaty chuckle. Blood acrid, metallic, yet smooth like the bitter chocolate she drank as a child coated with spice. But richer than that, thicker, deeper, like cognac – her father’s cognac that he didn’t like her to touch. The forbidden drink, poured nightly into her father’s flask, hidden from view. Miss Edith would snatch it and they’d sip from it passing the small flat metal bottle between them in Mummy’s garden. The flask has a metallic taste to it, too, rusty, like a copper shilling if you let it rest upon your tongue. Mustn’t take too much, Miss Edith, must leave breath in the thing, we need it, part of us now, connected, part of our plan. The plan, she knew, would eventually lead to her own end, she’d foreseen it just as she’d foreseen all the ashes, but not yet, not until she got what she wanted. Not until they united all the sisters in darkness, all sleeping below the earth like the flowers, little bulbs of night blooming jasmine and deadly nightshade.
Cursed Daddy, he should have taken care of it long ago when he wasn’t cursed. They’d still be a family then. The three of them, dancing in a whirl, much rush, much crunch, and lovely poetry, like before when Grandmother left. Like Miss Edith, Grandmother was, wheat colored hair, naughty smile. Hair tied high. Liked the smell of jasmine did Grandmother. But he didn’t like Grandmother much. Her pretty one. Hoity-toity Grandmother was, with her gowns and her face paints, ordering them about. Then Grandmother tasted like dust only to be reborn as daughter, then dust again. She tilted her head listening. No one was coming. They were alone. Cursed one’s fault. No, shook her head, looking down at the prey, its eyes hazy now, but not gone, still here, not dead. Wiped her lips with her sleeve, delicately, like Miss Edith taught her. Took a nail, opened a vein along her white creamy breast, don’t cry Miss Edith, doesn’t hurt. Didn’t really hurt, much, Miss Edith told her, after Daddy leaped on Miss Edith, snapping her neck, not even bothering to drink. Wicked Daddy. She took the doll though, the one with the brown hair Miss Edith used to braid, the doll Miss Edith escaped into when Daddy snipped off her life like snipping off a candle flame. Took it and kept it close. Daddy didn’t seem to mind. As long as she was good and let Daddy do what Daddy wanted she could have Miss Edith. Daddy even let her take William. Pretty William. Blond like Miss Edith. Eyes as blue as Miss Edith’s. Soft smile, her Willy. Will, Willy, Willy-boy Spike. She held the pretty one’s mouth to her bloody breast, the blood flowing like wine. So thirsty it was, sucking, sucking, oooh…it made her sway. Oh, yes, the pretty thing sucked at her as William did, starved it was for Mother’s milk. Red and rich and tasting like cognac, forbidden. Drink, little one. Tomorrow you will be strong again and we’ll go a hunting, you, and me, and Miss Edith makes three. Turn them we will. Make them our sisters, tied to us, not her, strong, powerful like us. Connected. Not alone any more, poor things. Not many. Just enough to distract the nasty things, make them scurry, pick off their family one by one by one just as Daddy picked off ours, just as she picked off our new family – we’ll pick off hers, give Miss Edith a playmate, yes we will, then make us a new Daddy, a better Daddy than the cursed one. Then, when time is right, take the slayer, the one who broke pretty William, and make it taste like ashes.
“No more blood little one, must rest now,” she murmured lifting the new child. No longer a thing any more, now it had their blood coursing through it, now it was connected to them. She carried it over her shoulder and leapt up to the rafters and out, out the window to the star lit night sky and the lovely grape vines beyond, damp moist earth to plant her new seedling and watch it grow.
Part II: Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones But Words Will Never Hurt Me…
Outskirts of Florence – two days later
Her mind roared through dreams. Dreams of her sister prancing around their tiny flat, making sure she had every thing. ‘Did you remember to take the holy water? The stakes? And no messing about in grave-yards. Although there are no reports of vampire activity, you can never be sure. Also no playing around with Carlo..’ No worries on that score, ever since she found out that the handsome Italian Watcher Trainee was only hanging around her to score points with her sister, she’d lost interest. He only kissed her to make her sister take notice. She wanted to laugh, remembering R.J., Riley, and Xander himself…poor dear boys…maybe that’s why…they always want the unavailable ones. And as she thought of them they morphed into each other, each telling her how devoted they were and each being dusted by her sister. She forced herself awake only to find herself in the center of an olive grove, reading canto’s from Dante’s Inferno in Italian. She kept getting the pronunciation wrong on the last stanza about the man who had been sent to hell and the demon took his place – so the meaning was all screwy. Marta, Julia, and the other three who’d come along laughed, trying to correct her but each time they did, they’d suddenly vamp out like someone with the hiccups only not. The Watcher, who was an old priest by the name of Luciano, seemed oblivious and kept saying the Ave Maria… As he said it, she saw her sister dancing with her mother far from her, out of reach, with different slayers she’d met jumping in and dancing with them. ‘Choose your partner and doucy-do’ came the call from a man who stood on the sidelines, Xander with a patch doing a square dance chant just like the used to do in gym class. ‘Never chosen were you?’ said a voice, overlapping Xander’s and the Ave Marias… it seemed inside the dreams but outside at the same time, coming at her from a great distance and the dream shifted to a church, where she sat dutifully amongst all the slayers, the watchers, Giles, Xander, Willow, her entire family and one by one they seemed to disappear until she was all alone in the hard pew and there was nothing and no one, not even God present, and unlike her sister, she believed in a God, just as she believed her mother was with God. But no one was here. The church was empty and in her hands was a long black stick with a ying/yang symbol on it. ‘You were never chosen. Tsk. Tsk. But then you are something other, more, precious…’ She looked around for the voice, where was it? ‘Never chosen even after the sharing spell, yes we felt it, Miss Edith and I..” Dark eyes in a beautifully sculpted face stared into her own, then morphed into her mother’s face, with pale hair and pale eyes. “Yet you are so strong, so beautiful, more so than she…why don’t they see that? All the pretty green, like Miss Edith…pretty and powerful, yet kept contained.’ ‘Mom?’ ‘Your mum. Yes, I suppose I am your Mum now, but also sister…more than she…and we’ll make more sisters you and I. Connect them to us. Share our power, our glorious power …’ She turned around in the church, almost spinning, hunting the voice, but all she saw was a figure, dark and sleek, more of a shadow really flitting around the walls of the church, throaty voice echoing off the walls. The church melted before her eyes reminding her of a Salvador Dali painting, becoming something else, roots, dirt, bugs and nothing but dirt, bugs, plant roots, filled her senses. Clogging her mouth, filling in her eyes, her ears, her hair, under her nails, she found herself choking on it, clawing at it, kicking at it, pushing up through endless layers of it, until she rose to a field awash in moonlight, the same dark figure stared down at her, smiling. ‘Never chosen…’ it whispered. ‘ Until now.’
She jolted awake in a room covered with long black and red velvet curtains. Between the curtains she caught sight of stone walls and candles flaming from sconces bolted into them. Attempting to move she discovered her arms were chained to the wall and the rest of her body, encased in nothing but a silk negligee was splayed on a bed covered in red silk sheets and a black and red duvet. She realized, looking down at her newly pale body, that she was dead. Glancing around her, she made out a few slumped bodies or what appeared to be bodies handing from chains attached to the far wall. The floor was littered with pillows and trunks, a few overstuffed armchairs and a couch sat in the far corner where several vampires still in game face appeared to be napping. Empty wine glasses sat on the closed wooden coffin in front of them along with other various items she could not make out. Curtains hid the rest of the room from view. “No,” she corrected, with an odd sense of detachment, “worse than dead, you are undead.” And a giggle erupted from her throat at the idea of it. It did not seem all that bad when she thought of it. Better than the dreams had been, which left her feeling confused and disoriented. A vampire. Her sister was so going to kill her. No, wait, already dead. Dust her was the correct term. She giggled again. Well, her sister could certainly try.
She frowned. The memory of dirt clogging her lungs, beneath her nails, in her eyes, nose and mouth had not been a nightmare then. Nor for that matter had the hunger, which had almost consumed her. Not so bad now, she thought. Yet the craving lingered, having once tasted human blood, she craved more – the rush of it, the smooth taste, like a chocolate liquor with an ecstasy buzz. Thinking it over she wondered vaguely how Spike resisted it? Or for that matter why? Once she had fed off of…she searched her memory, everything had happened so quickly, a silly jogger – who wore tight fuchsia spandex pants, ugh, for that sin alone the bitch deserved to be eaten. And she’d always heard Italians had great fashion sense. Yeah, right. The blood though, oh it felt, she struggled to think of a way of describing it and gave up. She’d felt fantastic afterwards, powerful, connected, primal – remembering the power – she pulled at the chains again, but they held. She tried again, but the attempt only resulted in chafing her wrists. She searched her memory for clues on how she got here, wherever here was. She remembered digging her way out of the grave, biting the girl’s neck, the rush of blood, seeing her mother smiling at her – or was it her mother? She shook her head, confused. Remembered the graveyard, as bright as day awash in moonlight – the feeling of no fear. None. And no inhibitions. The desire to bite the girl had been over-whelming and for the first time in her young life, nothing held her back. She checked herself now. Was she afraid? No. Annoyed, yes. Afraid? No. Slightly curious, maybe.
“How is Miss Edith, today?” came a voice from the shadows. The same high thin slightly accented voice she’d heard in the graveyard and in her dreams, the voice that momentarily wore her mother’s face.
“Once again, the name’s Dawn. Not Miss Edith,” she said, having already corrected the odd woman at the graveyard. The force from the responding slap knocked her head against the wall and almost off her neck, leaving long red welts on her check. Pain filled her head and coursed down her neck to her right shoulder. So, she could feel pain, good to know. She wondered if this was how she had gotten here? Had the woman knocked her unconscious? “I’m not afraid of you.”
Laughter, light like bells rang around the walls. The figure, the face perfect like one of her friend Marta’s porcelain dolls, with lovely dark eyes, long lashes, and a perfectly shaped angular nose, knelt and brought its face up close to Dawn’s. The woman smelled like lilacs, Dawn thought, or night blooming jasmine – identifying perfumes had never been her strong suit. The dark woman, who seemed at first to be so delicate, lifted a perfectly shaped nail, painted a dark magenta to Dawn’s cheek. Her eyes dark, almost bird-like, peered into Dawn’s – then she smiled, the nail stroking Dawn’s cheek softly. “Not now, perhaps, little one …” Dawn felt the woman’s other hand lift up the skirt of her negligee and move along her thigh to her crotch, extending a finger to stroke her sex with one nail just like she was doing with her cheek. The smile broadened at Dawn’s gasp of surprise. “But You will be.” Dawn screamed as the woman’s nail cut across her crotch like a knife, slashing the place she’d just aroused.
An hour later.
Dawn’s throat was raw from screaming. The woman was talking again, slapping her thigh with a long thin hollow wooden stick. Dawn watched it move back and forth with masochistic fascination. The stick was new. A few moments ago the woman had left her side to go fetch it, having grown bored with the S&M finger, tongue and teeth game they had been playing. The vampires on the couch had woken up during their game and at different intervals had attempted to get the dark woman’s attention without much success. She’d shoo them away or hiss at them if they got too close. They seemed afraid of her for some reason. Dawn wondered why. They were bigger than she was. Dawn watched them with interest - one of them was nudging the woman now. She couldn’t hear much of the exchange.
“Come on, boss,” a stocky, dark haired vampire said, lisping through his fangs. Dawn didn’t fancy him having his way with her, but hey, if she could convince him to turn against her captor, it might be worth it. “Only fair – a little of the old in-out, in-out? You’ve certainly had your way with her. About time to give the rest of us blokes a chance.”
The woman sneered, then glanced with a look of almost bird-like curiosity at the other three who seemed to be asking for the same thing behind him, and with a quick violent motion staked him with her stick. He exploded into dust. Dawn winced. The three other vampires backed away, hands in the air, whimpering. “Leave us.” They did, retreating en mass through the curtains, without further argument.
Their game had also included blood. Whenever Dawn did something the woman liked, she’d cackle with glee, scratch her nipple and let Dawn suck it. Dawn’s crotch burned from being prodded, scratched, bitten and aroused. Her nipples equally burned. And it wasn’t always the woman, Dawn saw, when her body was being manipulated in this manner. The woman had a way of getting inside her head, pulling out her most perverted desires and making them real – the last one had been Xander.
The woman approached Dawn slowly with a smile, slapping the stick in her hands. “Does Miss Edith remember how the Sisters used to rap her fingers with the stick whenever she was caught playing with herself? Or the nasty things Daddy did to us with it before he turned us? Showing us how naughty we were? How we were the devil’s spawn, like Mum feared. Mum used to feed us cake, remember Miss Edith…before Daddy Angelus found a new place for us to eat it.”
“Not Miss Edith, Dawn.”
The stick rapped against Dawn’s face and she tasted blood in her mouth.
“Naughty. Dawnie.” It was Buffy’s face looking down at her. “You were watching Angel and me again weren’t you? Spying?”
“No, not spying…”
Rap went the stick this time across her breasts.
“You wanted to be with Angel didn’t you? You were jealous. You wanted to feel him touch you…” Buffy was swaying sexily in front of her. “But he wasn’t interested in you. Nor was Spike. Nor poor little…” The voice paused and Buffy tilted her head, then grinned, “R.J. You weren’t woman enough, like me…Even Carlo prefers me to you.”
“No, that’s not true, I didn’t…watch. I don’t want them.”
“Yes, you do…” The voice changed with the face. “And the most wonderful thing of all. Is You can. Have them.” It was Faith, swaggering in front of her. “You can take anything you want. Have anything. No worries. Not anymore. Do anything. Won’t be yours though. …” Faith frowned. “ No matter what you do. Still always’ B’s…” The face morphed into her mothers. “Nothing will be yours …you’re gone, gone to the world.”
“No, I’m not gone,” Dawn pulled at her chains. “I’m real and I’m here and I can have whatever I want.”
The stick slapped against her again, this time with little razor sharp burrs, which ripped across her skin. “Naughty, naughty Miss Edith. Wants what she shouldn’t have. Always did, Miss Edith. Always wanted the pretty boys, got us in trouble she did. With her visions. Seeing things she shouldn’t…took the pretty stick Miss Edith did. Stole it from Daddy.” The woman slowly took the stick as Dawn panted from the last attack and stroked Dawn’s thigh with it. “Daddy liked to punish Miss Edith with the stick, across her pretty little bum…” The woman yanked Dawn over onto her side, reaching above her to adjust the chains, then yanked her all the way, so her head was pressed into the pillows and sheets.
“What now? Are you going to spank me? Ooohh, I’m so scared,” Dawn panted into the bed. “Why? Because I’m not your precious Miss Edith? Because I’m not, you witch- Arrgh!” Dawn began to scream as the razor edge of the stick’s burrs slashed across her butt cheeks over and over again, until she passed out.
“Dawnie, Dawnie…wake up..it’s time for school, you don’t want to be late..”
“Mom?”
“Yes, it’s me, Dawn,” the soft voice of her mother, and a hand petting her head.
“My bottom’s sore.”
“Is it? Well let me see…” And slowly Dawn felt the tip of the stick nudge at her ass and sink into the hole, she screamed again. “Mom! Mom!”
“Mummy isn’t here…Daddy killed her, remember? He tore out her throat. We watched it. But first he shoved a stick up her ass, just like this. Or was it a stick…no, can’t remember.” The woman stroked her clit again, moving the stick back and forth, in a scissor-like motion, it was odd but the pain turned to pleasure after a while, and as the woman’s stroking continued, Dawn heard her screams become moans. “Like that don’t you Miss Edith? Wicked wicked little girl, always did like the wicked things. And Daddy taught us all of them didn’t he?”
What felt like hours later, time seemed to have no meaning any more, raw and bleeding, Dawn watched the woman pace the length of the room talking to herself, slapping her thigh with the stick, sliver burrs glinting in the candlelight on one side. In the midst of the last bit of torture, the woman promised to give the stick to Dawn as a sort of graduation gift. Possibly when she ceased to be Dawn and accepted her new role as Miss Edith, whoever Miss Edith was. Dawn guessed it was the woman’s dead sister. Her eyes narrowed, as she focused on the woman. The woman moved like a cat. Sleek and beautiful, it had certainly been creative – teaching Dawn things about pain and fear and pleasure she didn’t know existed. She thought the hell-god Glory had been bad. Glory had nothing on this creature. But Glory had told her something about not having a soul – something that resonated more now than it did then, what was it? Ah. “When you’re immortal, there’s no cares, no worries, it all melts away like ice cream.” She’d asked Spike to clarify that one and with a glint of mischief in his eyes, he’d said that without a soul you were free to all sensation, the more perverted and extreme the better the rush, no restrictions. She hadn’t really understood what he meant until now.
Miss Edith. Who was Miss Edith? If she could figure that out, she would know how to bend this situation to her advantage. She considered the name for a moment. Played with it. Flipped it over in her mind. Not so bad really. Might be a nice vamp name. She could just claim it until she got away from the creature in front of her. Thinking it over there was something about that name that seemed oddly familiar. A lot of things about this seemed oddly familiar, including woman in front of her. She searched her memory. Long ago. A picture. In a book she’d snuck from Giles’ store. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen at the time. Willow had mentioned that her sister’s watcher, Giles had books on all the vampires, including Spike. She’d been completely obsessed with the vampire Spike when she was fourteen. White blond hair, long leather jacket, finely toned muscles, kick ass Brit accent, snarky one-liners, and movements like a cat. According one Bronze roadie, he resembled the child of Sting and Billy Idol, assuming those two ever got together. But Buffy kept telling her to steer clear of him. He’s dangerous. Deadly. Like a chained tiger or serial killer in prison, Buffy said. So she’d hunted down the book. The picture that fell out of it was a small black and white photograph of a dark haired woman with a china doll’s face in a white negligee.
“Who is she?” she’d asked Giles, who had discovered her with the book and removed it from her grasp with an exasperated yank. She held onto the photograph.
With a resigned sigh, Giles told her everything he knew about Spike’s one-time paramour, Drusilla. He only told her because he wanted to make sure she never underestimated the female vampire. He had, she realized now, wanted to scare her. It might have worked, if the hell-god Glory hadn’t shown up, Mom hadn’t died and the world hadn’t gone to hell more than once. She’d more or less forgotten about Drusilla in the midst of all that and she had only been fourteen at the time.
Now, she felt more or less invulnerable. Very little could kill her. Except, She knew the woman could and would if provoked. “Drusilla,” Giles told her, “is over 100 years old. Created by the vampire, Angelus and…this is important, is insane. He tortured her when she was human, drove her insane, then turned her and from the little we’ve managed to glean from Spike, he continued to torture her afterwards – turning Drusilla into an expert in pain and torment. Having been,” he had paused and rubbed his glasses at this point, deliberately avoiding Dawn’s eyes. “Having been her victim, I can attest to that. If you see her? Run.”
Almost as if she sensed Dawn’s thoughts, Dru turned towards her and Dawn slid back a bit at the feral look in Dru’s eyes.
“Miss Edith enjoyed our last little bit, did she? Naughty little Miss Edith did, I could tell, she makes such a pretty little purring noise.” She tilted her head to one side. “But Miss Edith was always very naughty, liking things she shouldn’t. Liking to play with things she shouldn’t? Always getting our knuckles rapped, weren’t we, Miss Edith?”
Dawn had learned not to interrupt these ramblings, the last few times she had, she nearly dislocated her shoulder. Drusilla’s voice paused and she turned her attention fully on Dawn, sliding towards the bed, her long skirt swishing against the stone floor. She knelt beside Dawn. “Do you want to play a new game, Miss Edith? No?” Dawn wasn’t sure how to react so stayed silent. Dru frowned. “Silly Dru, not Miss Edith, still thinks its Dawn, silly kitty…wants its Mummy, but which Mummy? No, perhaps it wants to play Mummy for a change? Would you like that? To do to others what we have done to you? To teach them to want and obey? They aren’t like you yet, not powerful like you. I’ve left them alive – weak, but alive, so you can teach them and be their Mummy.”
Dawn’s eyes widened and she looked towards the far wall where the two rotting bodies still hung. Dru followed her stare. “Oh no, no…not those things. Those are for the little doggies who just left us. No, Miss Edith deserves a better dolly to play with, something belonging to her other sister, something to take and make hers. Yes?”
Dawn meet Dru’s eyes, scanning them. What was this new game?
“Here, I’ll go show Miss Edith – give her something to work up to. You like that don’t you? A goal. Always needs a goal.” Dru clapped her hands and wandered over to the curtains that covered the walls on the left side of the bed. She tugged at a hidden cord and the curtain swung aside to reveal Marta, then Julia, then…Dawn could not remember the other’s names…but chained to the wall, weak from blood loss, moaning, were the five slayers her sister had sent with her to Florence. “Naughty girls – they slayed some of my best boys, but we got them in the end. One by one, the little dollies came home with Mummy to be reborn. Aren’t they pretty?” Dru let go of the curtain and it swung back hiding them again. “But first we must show Miss Edith how to do it, train her, then she’ll get to play to with the dolls.”
“We could do it now,” Dawn offered, sort of liking this new game. She could turn each of the slayers and get rid of Dru in the bargain.
As if she read her thoughts, Dru laughed. “Oh, no, but you aren’t Miss Edith yet. Still think you’re Dawn.”
“No, no, that’s not true – you’ve convinced me.”
“Don’t lie, precious, we see your thoughts, we do. Miss Edith and I and Miss Edith wants to be with you so desperately but she knows the time isn’t right, you aren’t ready for her – you still just want to be Dawn. Silly little Dawnie. Who has no power of her own. Miss Edith has power Dawn. She’s so tired of living in the dollies you know. She’s been asking me to be in a real girly, but until we found you – there was no one good enough for her. Someone who has wicked little thoughts like Miss Edith did. Who knows what it is like to have a nasty big sister and be tossed aside like nothing even though she’s smarter and sees things,” Dru said, lifting up a doll that had been lying beside Dawn. It was an old fashioned doll with the china face, china hands, china feet and cloth body, the eyes reminded Dawn of Drusilla’s.
“Miss Edith?”
“Yes, my poor dear Miss Edith – naughty Daddy snapped her neck, but she was clever – she escaped into the dollies, didn’t you Miss Edith? Now she wants to be in you. You are the first she’s wanted and now that you have no soul crowding things up…there’s room for her. You’ll like her – she’s like your spirit was, all green and glowly, shiny pretty thing. Miss Edith loved green. Pretty green.” She tilted her head smiling at the doll. “Lovely Miss Edith. And lovely new Dawn.” She pressed the doll against Dawn’s head, almost as if she wanted them to kiss, humming. “We used to sing this song together, Miss Edith and I. Don’t you remember?” She began to sing it. And as she did the oddest thing happened, her image changed to Buffy then morphed to Dawn’s mother, Joyce. “Mom?”
“Hello, dear, won’t you sing with us? Miss Edith would so like to play with you? See here she is, singing…” Dawn looked and her mother morphed into a girl that looked just like her except with blond hair and blue eyes and lily white skin, she was so pretty, the prettiest girl Dawn had ever seen. With the prettiest voice. Light and airy. Dawn swallowed, an acrid taste in her mouth and began to sing and as she sang, the pretty voice that was overlapping with hers seemed to merge with hers and become her voice just as the face in front of her seemed to merge with Joyce and then with Dru until she could no longer tell which was which or who was who.
I tweaked a few things in Chapter 1 so it's slightly different now.
Chapter 1 : The Eyes of Xander Harris
Africa
He felt woozy and numb. Licking his lips he tasted blood, acrid and crusted over. His glass eye was gone, the one they had specially made for him in Morocco, some shaman connection of Will’s. Supposed to have mystical qualities, grant him the ability of second-sight or some such garbage. Right, not doing much good now was it? Except for whom or whatever decided to gouge it out of his socket. Will…Willow miles away in Patagonia on some retreat, even if she’d been home, she wouldn’t be much good. Oh they’d stayed in contact over the past few months, but it was becoming less and less frequent. And, he admitted, after two months cooped in a house with twenty slayers, plus the days in the school bus and hospital rooms, he’d been vehemently in favor of a little distance. No, correction, a lot of distance such as an ocean…an ocean between himself and anything that reminded him of those last few days of Sunnydale, of those who had been lost, of those who remained, most of all of she who shall not be named. He and she who shall not be named, he thought…remembering the silent pact he and the Buffster had made standing alone in an hospital corridor, a few miles outside Sunnydale, waiting to hear on the survivors, each painfully and silently aware of the ones who had not survived. Buff made it clear that they probably needed a little time and space from each other. That their resources would be better spent if they weren’t constantly in each other’s company. Odd, the symbolism of that last parting of the ways in the corridors of Sunnydale High. If he’d known that they’d literally be forking off onto different paths, he might have said something more meaningful at the time. Oh, who was he kidding? He’d thought they were all going to die, no way on earth Buff’s plan could have worked, they’d all thought that…no one, no one could have foreseen the lightshow…or Captain Peroxide’s ultimate part in it.
He coughed, attempting to clear his dry throat, which ached, feeling like sandpaper, rusty sandpaper with a faint metallic taste. He could feel the air uncomfortably pressing against the bared eye socket. His arms were sore, as if someone had bent them behind his back. Not broken, yet looking down at his right sleeve with his one good eye, he noticed it was stained and stiff with blood. He lifted his hand to the side of his neck and felt the gouges in his neck. Vampires. Great. That’s just great. All these years killing the things, and he gets nabbed by a garden variety vampire. Damn Ironic, that. So much for the superhero act. But why didn’t it just kill him?
He tried to move forward, but something hard snapped him back and the slight movement caused the oddest swinging motion. He looked down and realized that his feet were hanging in mid-air, at least five to six feet off the ground. Leaning back he felt the hard poke of metal. He reached behind with his right hand and touched the rim of what felt like a meat hook. Oh that’s original, he thought, instead of just killing me they bring me home and hang me up to dry in a meat closet. He almost gagged at the thought. Remind me, not to eat meat after this. So going vegetarian after this.
Shouldn’t be too hard to get off of a meat hook, except for the numbness and the inability to move his left arm or legs. He sighed, glancing around, which wasn’t easy to do with only one good eye. Yep, some sort of meat locker, cool but not too cold, with all sorts of dried meat hanging on hooks around him. Nothing human that he could see, which was of the good. He glanced up. The roof was dark and high-ceilinged like most of the buildings in this region of France. No hint of sunlight or any other light source emanating from it. What little light there was, came from below him, in the form of all sorts of candles. He could hear humming below him, which meant someone was down there; he wasn’t alone.
He closed his eye for a moment concentrating on placing the sound. Not far away, but also oddly familiar and not a good familiar. Actually it sent a chill up his spine, conjuring memories of things he’d forgotten, Cordy and him locked in Buffy’s crowded basement fending off monsters. They’d spent a lot of time locked in basements and closets Junior year. Good times, better even with the distance, faded old photographs he enjoyed flipping through in his head, before he’d met Anya, before life got complicated and gray, before everything got so confused. It sounded like an old English ditty, similar to something Giles or…oh god, no, not…His eye flashed open glancing with a sense of rising anxiety in the direction of the sound.
The humming came closer and with it a face, a beautiful face, white as porceline, etched with soft blue veins under the surface. She wore red with a long black lace shawl coat, her hair dark as the night sky and her eyes even darker, yet mesmerizing, he looked away, afraid of what he’d see in them. The song she was humming escaped him, but the way she tilted her head and studied him reminded him oddly of a bird contemplating a shiny bauble or treat. For a moment, he envied Anya, who had not seen death coming, he’d always wondered if that would be the better way to go. Now, now looking it straight in the face, he was certain it was. What had flashed through Anya’s brain in those final moments? He wondered. Because the only thing flashing through his…was Anya and the bleak thought that he wasn’t going to get out of this one. No Buffy to swoop in and save his sorry hide. Death had finally come for him and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop her.
She said very little that he understood, but than he’d never understood anything Drusilla said. She was crazy. A total nut-job. He used to tease Captain Peroxide about it all the time. Her words childlike gibberish as she caressed his face with her razor sharp nails and smiling, gestured to the person he had not noticed, due to the fact they’d snuck up on his blind side, feet silent beneath Dru’s humming. “Miss Edith…” Dru said in her sing-song English accent, “Miss Edith wants a bite, don’t you Miss Edith…poor little sister is sooo hungry…”, as she turned, gesturing to the one she now called Miss Edith. Talking to herself again, he thought, struggling to get free of the hook to find a way, any way to escape. “Naughty, naughty, doggie. Must stay still.” Dru swung back and slapped him, hard, nearly snapping his head back with the force of it. “Come Miss Edith, show the naughty dog, your toy.” He gasped, eyes widening with horror as the vampire Dru called Miss Edith, stepped forward, his mystical glass eye held firmly in her hand, which she tossed in front of it like a toy.
“Hello, Xan…” Dawn Summers said, playing with his glass eye while her face shifted to one he’d only seen in nightmares. His mind raced over the events of the last few days, no there hadn’t been any messages from Buffy, just something about Dawn being off at a summer camp, incommunicado, while Buffy was busy in Rome.
“Oops, almost lost it. Don’t worry Xan, I’ll keep it safe. Mustn’t lose such a pretty marble.” Tossing the eye to Dru, Dawn smiled at him, except it wasn’t Dawn, anymore, he thought. And for a split second he was reminded of Jesse. Jesse’s face before the stake went in and he turned to ash. Her felt a hand on his crotch, unbuttoning his pants, pulling him out and slowly stroking him. For a moment he wasn’t sure whose hand it was. Until he glanced up into Dawn’s face. She grinned. His remaining eye meet her’s and he realized she was enjoying it, she continued to stroke him. “Poor Xan, feels good doesn’t it …you don’t think I didn’t notice how you watched me all last year? How much you wanted me? It’s sort of hard to hide isn’t it? Good thing Buffy was ahem otherwise occupied…as was poor dear Anya, who like Buffy preferred Spike in the sack.” She gave his balls one last little twist then released him. He groaned, feeling his face grow hot under her scrutiny. For a moment, he hated her, truly hated her. But it passed, this wasn’t Dawn, he reminded himself. Not their Dawnie. Grateful he hadn’t wet himself yet, he watched Dawn tilt her head to the side, glance at Dru, and still smiling, gently reach up to his face, caressing his cheek. “Time to say goodbye, Xander. Sorry I couldn’t give you that one last thrill.” Then she dug her fingers into his eye socket and plucked out his remaining eye. The last thing Xander Harris heard was Dru humming. It reminded him of the old nursery rhyme, London Bridges falling down. Though the exact words escaped him.
For the rest you can check my past livejournal entries - here:http://www.livejournal.com/users/shadowkat67/37475.html#cutid1 (for Chapter 2 - Dana)
and here for Chapter 3 - Buffy -
http://www.livejournal.com/users/shadowkat67/38395.html#cutid1
Love feedback if you have it. My purpose for doing this is threefold:
1. deal with my frustration and writers block
2. build on my writing muscles, work out the kinks in a safe environment
3. deal with issues that have arisen in the shows and I haven't seen anyone deal with - things that bug me
Thanks muchly to those who are reading.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 08:59 am (UTC)Attempting to move she discovered her arms were chained to the wall and the rest of her body, encased in nothing but a silk negligee was splayed on a bed covered in red silk sheets and a black and red duvet.
Do you think it might be better to use a more funereal word instead of "encased," like "enshrouded"?
You say Dru is going to create a new Daddy, and this touches on something I've been working on for my character post on Dru. I see Dru going through the same things as you, being systematically broken and reformed psychologically, and doing the same thing to others. I did some reading on the Stockholm Syndrome (which doesn't exactly apply) and especially behavioral conditioning, as well as the dynamics of incestuous relationships. The victim comes to see the perp as protecting them from other dangers, since they are usually brainwashed into fearing to leave.
If the abuser shows the victim some small kindness, the victim then must bond to the perceived positive side of the abuser, denying (or dissociating) the side of the abuser that produced the terror. The victim begins to work to see the world from the abuser's perspective so that they may know what keeps the abuser happy, thus helping to insure the victim's survival. As a result the victim becomes hypervigilant to the abuser's needs and unaware of their own. The victim comes to see the world from the perspective of the abuser, losing touch with their own perspective, which is unimportant or even counter-productive to their survival. With the denial of the violent side of the abuser, comes denial of the danger. It becomes progressively harder to separate from the abuser due to the fear of losing the only positive relationship identity that remains -- her/ himself as seen through the abuser's eyes (which in the case of the adult victim has replaced any previous sense of self, for a child this may be, and often is, the only sense of self known).
My question is, since Dru veers between wanting to punish Angelus for torturing her and killing her family, and wanting him back since she had bonded with him and mentally replaced her family with his, would Dru want to replace Angelus? Or would she continue to try to get back Angelus? In such situations, the perp becomes wholly larger than life, a gollum who takes over the mind of the victim. Every situation is seen through the eyes of the perp-is this what he'd want? Would he permit that? Would this please him and keep the victim safe? Or is Dru replaying her victimization with herself in Angelus' shoes? If so, how would that affect her obsession with Angelus?
Thanks..
Date: 2004-03-25 09:44 am (UTC)I truly struggled with this bit, but Dru is a highly sexual creature and how she tortures is through sex. You see it in Passion with Giles, where she pretends to be Jenny. And you see it in School Hard - where she mentions to Spike how much she misses Prague and the hot pokers (I think hot pokers) and we see it again in What's My Line.
She is big on S&M, and from the implications in both series, my gut tells me so was Angelus. Angelus enjoyed torture and torturing others. When Holtz tortures him, he's almost gleeful. He gets off on torturing Giles, etc.
So there was just no way around it. Don't worry, it's unlikely I'll go there often. Also I'm not convinced the vampires start out necessarily evil - I think they sort of become that over time.
My question is, since Dru veers between wanting to punish Angelus for torturing her and killing her family, and wanting him back since she had bonded with him and mentally replaced her family with his, would Dru want to replace Angelus? Or would she continue to try to get back Angelus? In such situations, the perp becomes wholly larger than life, a gollum who takes over the mind of the victim. Every situation is seen through the eyes of the perp-is this what he'd want? Would he permit that? Would this please him and keep the victim safe? Or is Dru replaying her victimization with herself in Angelus' shoes? If so, how would that affect her obsession with Angelus?
This is an issue I'm fascinated in as well. I like the line Darla states in Prodigal - all we were informs who we become or something along those lines. I think Angelus' abuse of Dru - which had an S&M component to it, made her over time form an odd attachment to him. Very much the attachment that you suggest in the paragraph above. She loves and hates Angelus. Unlike Dana, who was able to get away from her attacker, Dru never really did.
Angelus did to Drusilla what Walter does to Dana, the only difference being that Angelus turns Drusilla into a monster like himself and keeps her with him for over 20 years as that monster, training her to do to others what he has done to her. Together they sort of do the same thing to William - who together they mold into Spike.
I'm not saying that Spike didn't have a role in all that, he does. Just as Dawn and any of Dru's victims do.
So what is Dru's purpose? Right now she wants a Daddy like Angelus. She knows she can't get Angelus back herself, so she has come up with a plan - a way to hurt Angel (the Angelus who abandoneded her)but with methodology that would amuse and thrill Angelus and make him proud of her, by the same token, she also wants to get back at Angelus - to get a better Daddy, one she makes. One she believes can help her get Angelus back.
I honestly think the key to getting Dru is to remember she is experiencing several realities at once. Her present. Her past. And the possible futures sent to her as visions. Add to that - her own religious background, and how Angelus warped it, also her love of family and how Angelus warped that as well. Also, Angelus plays with sexuality with Dru, because Dru wanted to be celibate and enter a nunnery. So as a result of Angelus, for Dru - sex is how you hurt and pleasure someone. It's naughty. Always naughty. But that's the thrill. It's her best toy.
Fascinating character - shame ME never explored her more.
Re: Thanks..
Date: 2004-03-25 11:10 am (UTC)One she believes can help her get Angelus back.
That answers my question-I don't think Dru'd be able to separate totally from Angelus and I see you aren't going in that direction.
I agree with your take on Dru, and that Angelus would take great pride in turning a virgin who just became a nun into a sexually perverse creature, a living blasphemy. I also thought it very, very interesting that when Dru was shown having sex with Angelus, he was standing over her in a very dominant way, while she passively received him. The childishness of Dru, like that of an incest victim who can't/isn't allowed to mature, versus the ripe sexuality he deeveloped in her, is fascinating.
I wonder if nothing is entirely real or unreal with Dru. She is anchorless, all lines are blurry.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 06:31 pm (UTC)