016: Beating to a Funeral Song [Accidental Visual / Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[hamsterbait.livejournal.com]

She could feel her heart beating.

The blood pulsed through her veins to a rhythm that, once upon a time, Drusilla would have danced along to. But she wasn't dancing today. Because it was her heart. A heart that had been silenced for centuries.

Her eyes snapped open.

No. Not her eyes. She'd fallen asleep as a vampire, safe in the forest and with Miss Edith in her arms. She'd woken up as a human. And not just any human. Somehow, she'd slipped into the skin of the Vision Girl.

For a long time, there was nothing but silence. It shattered with a scream and, for an even longer amount of time, Drusilla didn't realise that it was coming from her lips.

She screamed and she screamed and then, because there was nothing else she could do, she laughed.

The Vision Girl's heart kept on beating.

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[ location: Hyperion Hotel ]

[cealaigh.livejournal.com]

She can smell her coming, more than she can hear her or sense her in any other way. Blood and hair and cloth and sunlit morning leaves, light, all just different notes and tones in some melody bent on making her feel sick when she turns her head to look.

"Serenity," and the answer comes easy, easier than it usually would. It's tidy and wrapped up just in itself, nice and neat in a very messy package.

[Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[hamsterbait.livejournal.com]

Sunlit morning leaves? A strange smell, given that Drusilla was wrapped up in shadows and hadn't seen the true sun for centuries. Cordelia's body was masking the monster that currently lived inside it, but it would bleed through eventually. Demons always did.

"Then climb out," she said, "Go and fight it, but leave the Angel Beast here."

[ location: Hyperion Hotel ]

[cealaigh.livejournal.com]

If River was in the right body she would have been able to tell the difference much sooner. As it is, she's just shaking her head and trying again (poorly) to move down the hallway.

Only one person calls him Angel Beast, and that person isn't Cordy.

"He isn't here," in one determined, awkward and wobbling step. "Can't be left."

[Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[hamsterbait.livejournal.com]

"I want him back," said Drusilla, in a voice filled with knives and needles. She wanted him back so desperately that it hurt. And not just because it was right. Because Cordelia's chest was filled with so much love that even Drusilla, who had adored him, was startled by it.

"Who are you?" she said, taking his - but not his, not really - arm to help ease the journey through the halls of the hotel.

[ location: Hyperion Hotel ]

[cealaigh.livejournal.com]

She's trying to move fast, but everything from big toe to tendons are conspiring against her efforts. But then Drusilla is there, Cordelia-arm and Angel-arm and implications River can see but cannot understand, and the body rights itself. It's still awkward and wrong, but the gait has changed into something slightly more steady.

There's a lot to be said for muscle memory and situational connotations, and she takes advantage of it for a few quiet steps before saying, "River," and venturing out onto the limb of answering such a simple question.

[Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[hamsterbait.livejournal.com]

"River Tam."

River Tam. Clever and quick and one of the humans who had taken her Daddy away from her. Drusilla could have laughed at that. Drusilla could have split Cordelia's sides with mirth. Her speed hadn't saved her. Her brain hadn't saved her.

"Shush," she soothed, as if she was trying to coax a pet bird to sing for her, "Don't rush. You're all new."

And newborns had to learn to walk, didn't they?

[Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[cealaigh.livejournal.com]

They were all newborns, all exceptionally backward in their births. Breech.

Complications abound.

It's the gentleness that makes River stop in her tracks, stop and stiffen like so many over-dried twigs. It smells like honey on top of tar.

"Who are you?"

[Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[hamsterbait.livejournal.com]

"I don't know."

She thought she was Drusilla, but she was thinking and feeling things - kind, soft things - that the vampire had all but forgotten. There was even a heart beating in her chest, reminding her of her strangeness. Her wrongness.

She must have displeased someone important.

"I used to be Drusilla," she said, "But I used to be someone else before that. It's all tangled up."