taxonomites | 036: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] unwelcome visitors

Buffy is washing the dishes. It's a very mundane task of course, and the broadcast isn't terribly exciting. Soap, running water, annoyed mumbling about Dawn and fossilized lasagne, a little humming to the radio - which is playing some happy-sounding salsa music, the Summers kitchen staple.

At a certain point, she pulls the rubber gloves off her hands, pausing to lean against the sink, take a deep breath and stare into the plughole for a minute or two. There's a lot on her mind, evidently. When she finally comes back to herself, she turns to leave the sink, and then there's a gasp as she stops in her tracks, paralyzed with shock.

Her mother is standing beside her. Her mother, standing there silent and pale and unmistakeably dead. She doesn't know whether to scream or to throw her arms around the apparition. "Mom...?" She asks, in barely more than a whisper. "Mom, are you really here?" Still rooted to the spot, her vision already beginning to swim with hopeful tears, she lifts her hand, about to reach out and touch the ghost. She stops, however, when she notices that her mother isn't even looking at her. No, she's looking right past her. Through her. Behind her.

With a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, she turns, painfully slowly, feeling every single hair on the back of her neck prickle with the presence of death. She turns to meet the empty gaze of... herself. Only not quite herself, exactly. A version. A version of herself in decay. In the process of decomposition - an informative insight into how she must have looked in the coffin, before her friends brought her back. Her eyes widen with horror as she just stares for a heart-stopping second, and then turns back to look at her mother, only to find her gone. Her head whips around again, back to her cadaverous double, to see that she too has vanished.

There's a moment where she teeters on the edge of sinking to the floor to just cry. Pushing down that urge and steeling herself, she instead fumbles with the tablet, her hands trembling. When she speaks, her voice is mostly level. Mostly. It's also filled with anger.

"Whoever's doing this, the ghosts? Whatever you are, whatever you want, you have no right to use her face. You want to play with me? Fine. But don't you dare use her, because I swear to god I will find you."

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Drusilla remembered Joyce's death. Buffy's mother had been inexplicably kind to her. At first, the vampire had wanted to kill her simply to silence the tumult of accompanying emotions. Eventually, she had started to content herself with watching. A lovely little family. A Slayer and a sister and a mother. A different sort of trinity. She didn't know if she should destroy it or preserve it.

She'd warned them about the growth in her head, but they hadn't understood her. Not until it was too late.

She'd joined them on the couch to watch the telly, feeling like an intruder but unable to walk away.

She'd worn black for a funeral that she hadn't been able to attend and found the coins for the boatman.

"It isn't her," she said, swiftly. Soft and sharp at the same time. "She isn't here. She's at peace."

It wasn't surprising to Buffy that Drusilla knew who she was talking about, though what was surprising was the sense of comfort that Drusilla's words brought her. She nodded, using the opportunity to blink back some tears - whatever that thing was, it wasn't her mother. This place couldn't hurt her mother. She just had to keep telling herself that.

"Thank you," she said, a little raggedly.

The words were all that Drusilla could offer. Thin scraps of comfort and a meagre - but powerful, so very powerful - truth. The vampire couldn't have chased the ghost away, even if she had been able to get out of her cell and race to the castle.

The hamsters couldn't reach Joyce. They'd taken her to a place that a part of Buffy would always remember and a part of Drusilla had once been destined to reach.

"Don't let them steal your memories," she wanted, "They'll spoil them."

"I'll do my best," she answered, wearily. The whole experience had been draining. Buffy knew she should probably question Drusilla more on the subject of the ghosts and where they were coming from, but she found that she didn't have the energy.

"You knew my mother?" She asked, the word 'memories' reminding her that Drusilla's were so different from her own. The question wasn't so much a question as a request for elaboration - she knew Drusilla must have known her mother, but she wanted to hear about it. She just wanted to hear about her mom, as if she could recapture her memories, and dispel the horror of what she just saw.

Edited 2010-06-20 22:49 (UTC)

She could have questioned her, but she wouldn't have liked the answer. Drusilla didn't know where they were coming from, or, really, what they were. She simply knew that they were flooding the city. The first arrivals. Harbingers of what she'd already seen.

"Oh, yes," she said, with a nod. "She used to call me out of the basement to watch the telly. She didn't want me to be lonely."

Only a special type of person cared about the emotional well being of an imprisoned vampire without a soul.

Buffy laughed, in spite of herself. A sad, tearful laugh. Yes, that was her mother. Kind and sweet and compassionate, and just a little bit silly sometimes.

"Bet I was the picture of approval on that, huh?"

The laugh made Drusilla - who realised, with the delight of a child constantly attempting to please, that she'd said the right thing - smile. Smile and continue with her story.

"You were terribly cross," she agreed, "You never learned to like Passions."

"That's because Passions is a wealth of stupid," she half-laughed again, shaking her head. It felt odd to say the least to be having a civil - even pleasant - conversation with Drusilla, but she wasn't in the mood to analyse that right at this minute.

"Do you get TV privileges where you are now?"

She hadn't gotten a chance to ask Spike or Angel about the particulars of Dru's imprisonment yet.

"Even when Timmy went to heaven?" Drusilla, for her part, had a soft spot for soap operas. They were melodramatic and frequently violent. The mysterious deaths and frequent lies and turbulent relationships appealed to her imagination.

"I don't have a telly," she conceded, "There's nothing to watch here."

"Especially then." Buffy replied, emphatically. She could never understand why her mother and Spike had such a fascination over that ridiculous show.

She frowned at Drusilla's answer, unsure of how to feel. On the one hand, after what happened with Angelus and then with the Master, it only made sense for her to be locked up. On the other... well, Drusilla could be strangely compassionate at times (like now), which always threw her for a mild loop.

"Maybe I'll talk to Spike," she said conservatively, after a moment. "See what we can do."

Angelus would always be Drusilla's top priority, but, even now, Spike and the Slayer followed. (In Taxon, the Angel Beast - previously hated and previously considered a lost cause unless his soul was removed - had even managed to earn a place in her affections.) Although she would never be able to pass up the sort of opportunity the Master had given, she'd still act in what she considered to be the best interests of those that mattered. She'd looked after Morgana and she'd returned Cordy alive if not well.

"You don't have to," she said, dismissively. (Though the offer, the fact that she cared, touched her despite her reserve.) "You're busy."

036: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] unwelcome visitors

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