Crazy Madcap Redemption - 9
In this chapter Dru meets the incomparable Dr. M. Stopheles. (Friend of Dr. M. Phisto.)
Okay, he's actually boring - it's not his story! But things are not going so smooth for our dear old couple. (Surprised?)
Previous Parts in Memories
Chapter Nine: Going to the Doctor
Drusilla had been tricked into chains a time or two, by Daddy or Grandmummy or even Spike. They would lock her up because she had fits and they wanted Peace and quiet.
Drusilla knew this and resented it. And she knew that was what was happening here, when she woke up in the pretty jail cell.
Her Spike was with her, though, looking well-ravaged, prone and supple. He hugged the large soft pillow to his face like he had held her hips the night before. She stroked his smooth skin and he made a soft noise into the down. She couldn’t be cross with him. She knew that she loved him, even if sometimes she forgot everything else, she knew this, and Spike was there, with her, no golden girl floating around his head with her impossible goodness, grail-like unobtainable.
But this didn’t make sense. Wasn’t the quest to prove her faithfulness? How could she be virtuous with no temptations to overcome?
The only explanation, of course, was either the evil fairies were confusing dear Spike yet again, or it was Daddy’s fault.
Since this was Daddy’s castle, she strongly suspected the latter. She looked up at the ceiling, where she could feel secret eyes gazing on her and made her prettiest cross expression, just so the evil eyes would know with whom they were dealing.
A voice called through the air. “Spike? Spike, man, wake up!”
It wasn’t a fairy or a star, that was for certain, this voice was in the air but not carrying portents, so Drusilla ignored it.
“Come on, Spike. I don’t have all morning. I gotta be in court!”
Her prince woke, lifting himself on his arms, his chest revealed to her in shadow - yummy!
He squinted up at a little grate by the door. Oh, that’s where the voice came from. “Charlie? Wot?”
“Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing in there? Look, put some clothes on and step over here so I can let you out of the cell. We have to meet before your girlfriend’s little psych appointment.”
Drusilla didn’t like the way the voice said ‘girlfriend’. She growled at it.
“Bugger,” Spike said, and held his head in that way he had when he didn’t understand things.
He started hopping into his jeans, covering all that lovely skin with harsh denim. Drusilla caught the waistband with her fingertips to stop him.
He twisted out of her reach. “Sorry, love. Time to go to work, I guess.”
“And leave princess in her tower.”
“No, not for long, love. Just temporary.”
His eyes were lying.
He slipped out the door, which only opened the barest moment for him.
Drusilla sat on the bed. “But I haven’t any music,” she said. The voice didn’t answer.
***
“What can you possibly be thinking? You’re as insane as she is, as is Angel for agreeing to this!”
Spike finished drinking down the mug of blood he held before saying, “And good morning to you too, Wes.”
Wesley paced the break room. “I made allowances for Darla, and that was a mistake. This cannot go on.” He stopped, planting his fists on the table in front of Spike. “Your sire is mad, incurably so. She should be put down, not treated!”
“Milk of human kindness, you are.”
“The firm will not accept these expenses. We had a hard enough time justifying the operation to re-attach your hands. She is not on payroll and neither are you. Do you understand?”
“I understand that her sire agreed to try, and he out-ranks you, so you can piss off.”
Wesley sat down in the opposite chair, his hands clasped almost as if in prayer before him. “It’s you I’m concerned for, Spike. Darla very nearly convinced Angel to give up everything, his redemption, his very soul. And she was far, far from that ruined creature you brought in to us.”
Spike shoved the table back hard as he stood. “What did you just call my girl?”
“Be reasonable,” Wes said.
“What, like you? Here’s a hint, mate: reasonable and love don’t share a tube stop. Your reasonableness is what’s keeping you sad and lonely.”
“My private life is none of your business.”
“I wish I could ignore it! You all but conceding Fred to that Knox wanker. I don’t like him - he smells too clean.”
Wes raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Thank you, Spike, once again, for ignoring my reasonable warning about a mad, evil creature, and presuming to warn me about office romance. Yes, I see, the situations are completely equal.”
Spike sauntered to the break-room fridge. “Bugger off. I have another quart of otter to polish off - drinking for two, you know.”
“I’m aware I can’t stop you - not while Angel is convinced this is worth doing. But I am not going to help, and I’ll be damned if I let this project consume more of his time.”
“Good. Don’t want the poof involved anyway.” Spike emerged with a new thermos and tilted it in salute. “He makes her crazy.”
***
“Tell me why you call him ‘daddy’.”
Drusilla squished up her features. She didn’t like this doctor at all. She was told she was going to see a doctor and had actually gotten a little excited. Doctors had stirrups and ropes and mmmm scalpels! This doctor only had a quiet little room with pictures of roses on the walls and a box of disposable tissues on his desk. No tongue depressors or examinations at all!
He tapped his pen against his hand and then asked, “Tell me about your real father. Do you remember him? How do your feelings toward your biological father relate to your vampiric sire?”
Drusilla didn’t like those questions at all. She squeezed her eyes shut to make them go away and hummed. Sometimes pixies and fairies were silent, not in evidence at all, but humming could bring them back.
“Drusilla? Drusilla, stay with me. Let’s try a less alarming subject, shall we? Tell me if you know why you’re here.”
She slit one eye open. The fairies had not come, the office was still boring and the doctor was looking at her expectantly. “You sang a Phil Collins song to the green demon,” she said. “He found you without destiny, a void. It hurt his mind more than your flat notes.”
“Do you often see past episodes when you converse with someone?”
“I want to go home.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. I won’t keep you long. But you must answer some of my questions. Can you see anything else, about me? How much control do you have over your sight?”
Drusilla raised her eyebrow. “Do you control what you see?”
“No. But I’m not special, like you.”
“I’m a princess.”
The doctor wrote something down and nodded. “What does it mean, to be a princess?”
Dru scowled. “You must know that. What silly questions you ask! Like you don’t know anything at all. But your eyes are naughty, they say you know many, many things. You think you know more than princess. But if I wanted I could take it all from you, your past and future and your bland little mind.” She straightened in her chair, enjoying the flicker of discomfort that came to him. “Would you like to learn? Look into my eyes. Deep. In me.”
The doctor looked only at his notepad, writing again. “I’m familiar with your power of mesmerism. And yes, I know what a princess is, but I want to know what being a princess means to you. We are talking here, Drusilla, so that I can learn about you, and how you see the world.”
“I see it with my eyes, silly man.”
“Princess. Please. Let’s just start there. When did you become a princess?”
Drusilla wrapped her arms around one knee and rested her cheek on top of it, enjoying the feel and smell of the velvet skirt as it spread over her skin. “I became a princess when I gained a knight errant. My beautiful William, all heart and yearning. I saw it, you see. I saw his quests and triumphs and the beautiful way he breaks and comes back together again. He fell into my hands like a baby bird from the nest. Daddy said I could have a companion of my own, you know, and he just fell, right there where the fairies promised, an angel he was, so innocent, delicious. Mmmm… a taste I will always want anew.”
“Have your visions always been useful?”
She blinked in wide-open amazement. “You really always ask exactly the wrong questions. Poor man, it must be a terrible handicap. Let mummy into your mind; I’ll blank it out and make it all better.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, and answer with my own, no.” The doctor shifted nervously in his chair, not wanting to look up at her anymore but unsure where to rest his eyes otherwise. “Are you happy, Drusilla, with how your life is?”
“I want to go home. There’s no music here and it smells of frustration and scrubbing powder.” She wrinkled her nose. “I could just kill you. Snap your thick neck,” she made a disturbing demonstrative finger-snap. “Oh, but it is bothersome! Spike wouldn’t want me to.”
“Yes. Let’s talk about that some more. Your motivation for getting better is for him, isn’t it? Many patients find they can achieve great things, if they only have someone encouraging them.”
Drusilla sank back in her chair, looking tired and wan as a fainting victim. “It is getting to be an awful lot,” she said, “What Spike wants and wouldn’t want. But I must bear it. Princess must endure, for the Prince’s sake. He bore so much for love, though not for me. My tests were hardly effort compared to hers.” She grimaced spitefully.
“This is good. Tests, quests, knights. It’s all very Milton, isn’t it? But as a seer, can you see the outcome? Do you know already if your treatment will be successful? Or can you understand enough to know what sanity entails?”
She sat up sharply. “Another wrong question! You really are quite mad!”
***
Spike returned as soon as he could to the holding cell, to find it empty. The guards wouldn’t open it for him. “This isn’t a hotel,” they said.
He stomped and stormed his way through the building then, looking for someone to intimidate. As luck would have it, Harmony was at her desk. “Harm. Be a love and get those Neanderthals to let me in to my fuckin’ guest room.”
“You don’t have a guest room,” she said, with the thick annoyance of one being interrupted from legitimate work. A fat “Cosmopolitan” magazine sat under her freshly-painted nails.
With slightly less bravado, Spike shrugged. “Where me an’ Dru are stayin’.”
“You mean the jail cell? Yeah. The things you get away with around here pretty much make me think there’s nothing you could do to get put in there.”
“C’mon, Harm! You’re not still sore!”
“Ha! As if you could make me sore.” She flipped the pages of her magazine with vicious flicks. “When I think of how broken up you were, the mess you were when I found you…”
“Yeah. Yeah. You made me a new man. And I thought we agreed that I wasn’t worth getting upset about.”
“Oh you so aren’t.”
“So don’t be upset. Just help me get into the room an’ I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Oh you so aren’t even IN my hair. You aren’t even near it.”
Spike sighed heavily. He put his elbows on the counter, his hands together. “Please. Gorgeous Harmony, goddess of administration, for everything that we shared, please just point me toward the blokes who make the fuckin’ keys.”
“Mm-hm,” she said, and finally gave up pretending to read her magazine. “They won’t let you back in there. Executive decision was to keep you out of the holding cell. Executive means Angel, and I don’t cross bossy. I like existing.”
Spike felt, well, frankly betrayed. “Why would he do that?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Anyway, Droodzilla isn’t even up there. She’s in testing still and you’re not going to get to see THAT, either. That’s science division’s decision. That’s Fred.”
His shoulders slumped as he straightened away from the desk. “Thanks, Harm.”
“Are you out of my hair yet? I have calls to make.”
***
Spike stood alone in the apartment he had lived in, alone, up until she came. All around him was evidence of her touch, her flair for life. He gathered up her doll, some more clothes and the prettiest of the scarves. He set them on the sofa and started shuffling through the CDs, picking out her favorites.
There was no music. He sat down on the television table, not looking at the plastic cases in his hands. The only sounds he could here were Mrs. Haverstrom’s television set, next door, and the endless, monolithic hum of the refrigerator. All that was personal, all that was homey in the apartment, he was packing up for Dru, because it was all hers. He had no music, without her. Never had.
Continued -->
Okay, he's actually boring - it's not his story! But things are not going so smooth for our dear old couple. (Surprised?)
Previous Parts in Memories
Chapter Nine: Going to the Doctor
Drusilla had been tricked into chains a time or two, by Daddy or Grandmummy or even Spike. They would lock her up because she had fits and they wanted Peace and quiet.
Drusilla knew this and resented it. And she knew that was what was happening here, when she woke up in the pretty jail cell.
Her Spike was with her, though, looking well-ravaged, prone and supple. He hugged the large soft pillow to his face like he had held her hips the night before. She stroked his smooth skin and he made a soft noise into the down. She couldn’t be cross with him. She knew that she loved him, even if sometimes she forgot everything else, she knew this, and Spike was there, with her, no golden girl floating around his head with her impossible goodness, grail-like unobtainable.
But this didn’t make sense. Wasn’t the quest to prove her faithfulness? How could she be virtuous with no temptations to overcome?
The only explanation, of course, was either the evil fairies were confusing dear Spike yet again, or it was Daddy’s fault.
Since this was Daddy’s castle, she strongly suspected the latter. She looked up at the ceiling, where she could feel secret eyes gazing on her and made her prettiest cross expression, just so the evil eyes would know with whom they were dealing.
A voice called through the air. “Spike? Spike, man, wake up!”
It wasn’t a fairy or a star, that was for certain, this voice was in the air but not carrying portents, so Drusilla ignored it.
“Come on, Spike. I don’t have all morning. I gotta be in court!”
Her prince woke, lifting himself on his arms, his chest revealed to her in shadow - yummy!
He squinted up at a little grate by the door. Oh, that’s where the voice came from. “Charlie? Wot?”
“Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing in there? Look, put some clothes on and step over here so I can let you out of the cell. We have to meet before your girlfriend’s little psych appointment.”
Drusilla didn’t like the way the voice said ‘girlfriend’. She growled at it.
“Bugger,” Spike said, and held his head in that way he had when he didn’t understand things.
He started hopping into his jeans, covering all that lovely skin with harsh denim. Drusilla caught the waistband with her fingertips to stop him.
He twisted out of her reach. “Sorry, love. Time to go to work, I guess.”
“And leave princess in her tower.”
“No, not for long, love. Just temporary.”
His eyes were lying.
He slipped out the door, which only opened the barest moment for him.
Drusilla sat on the bed. “But I haven’t any music,” she said. The voice didn’t answer.
***
“What can you possibly be thinking? You’re as insane as she is, as is Angel for agreeing to this!”
Spike finished drinking down the mug of blood he held before saying, “And good morning to you too, Wes.”
Wesley paced the break room. “I made allowances for Darla, and that was a mistake. This cannot go on.” He stopped, planting his fists on the table in front of Spike. “Your sire is mad, incurably so. She should be put down, not treated!”
“Milk of human kindness, you are.”
“The firm will not accept these expenses. We had a hard enough time justifying the operation to re-attach your hands. She is not on payroll and neither are you. Do you understand?”
“I understand that her sire agreed to try, and he out-ranks you, so you can piss off.”
Wesley sat down in the opposite chair, his hands clasped almost as if in prayer before him. “It’s you I’m concerned for, Spike. Darla very nearly convinced Angel to give up everything, his redemption, his very soul. And she was far, far from that ruined creature you brought in to us.”
Spike shoved the table back hard as he stood. “What did you just call my girl?”
“Be reasonable,” Wes said.
“What, like you? Here’s a hint, mate: reasonable and love don’t share a tube stop. Your reasonableness is what’s keeping you sad and lonely.”
“My private life is none of your business.”
“I wish I could ignore it! You all but conceding Fred to that Knox wanker. I don’t like him - he smells too clean.”
Wes raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Thank you, Spike, once again, for ignoring my reasonable warning about a mad, evil creature, and presuming to warn me about office romance. Yes, I see, the situations are completely equal.”
Spike sauntered to the break-room fridge. “Bugger off. I have another quart of otter to polish off - drinking for two, you know.”
“I’m aware I can’t stop you - not while Angel is convinced this is worth doing. But I am not going to help, and I’ll be damned if I let this project consume more of his time.”
“Good. Don’t want the poof involved anyway.” Spike emerged with a new thermos and tilted it in salute. “He makes her crazy.”
***
“Tell me why you call him ‘daddy’.”
Drusilla squished up her features. She didn’t like this doctor at all. She was told she was going to see a doctor and had actually gotten a little excited. Doctors had stirrups and ropes and mmmm scalpels! This doctor only had a quiet little room with pictures of roses on the walls and a box of disposable tissues on his desk. No tongue depressors or examinations at all!
He tapped his pen against his hand and then asked, “Tell me about your real father. Do you remember him? How do your feelings toward your biological father relate to your vampiric sire?”
Drusilla didn’t like those questions at all. She squeezed her eyes shut to make them go away and hummed. Sometimes pixies and fairies were silent, not in evidence at all, but humming could bring them back.
“Drusilla? Drusilla, stay with me. Let’s try a less alarming subject, shall we? Tell me if you know why you’re here.”
She slit one eye open. The fairies had not come, the office was still boring and the doctor was looking at her expectantly. “You sang a Phil Collins song to the green demon,” she said. “He found you without destiny, a void. It hurt his mind more than your flat notes.”
“Do you often see past episodes when you converse with someone?”
“I want to go home.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. I won’t keep you long. But you must answer some of my questions. Can you see anything else, about me? How much control do you have over your sight?”
Drusilla raised her eyebrow. “Do you control what you see?”
“No. But I’m not special, like you.”
“I’m a princess.”
The doctor wrote something down and nodded. “What does it mean, to be a princess?”
Dru scowled. “You must know that. What silly questions you ask! Like you don’t know anything at all. But your eyes are naughty, they say you know many, many things. You think you know more than princess. But if I wanted I could take it all from you, your past and future and your bland little mind.” She straightened in her chair, enjoying the flicker of discomfort that came to him. “Would you like to learn? Look into my eyes. Deep. In me.”
The doctor looked only at his notepad, writing again. “I’m familiar with your power of mesmerism. And yes, I know what a princess is, but I want to know what being a princess means to you. We are talking here, Drusilla, so that I can learn about you, and how you see the world.”
“I see it with my eyes, silly man.”
“Princess. Please. Let’s just start there. When did you become a princess?”
Drusilla wrapped her arms around one knee and rested her cheek on top of it, enjoying the feel and smell of the velvet skirt as it spread over her skin. “I became a princess when I gained a knight errant. My beautiful William, all heart and yearning. I saw it, you see. I saw his quests and triumphs and the beautiful way he breaks and comes back together again. He fell into my hands like a baby bird from the nest. Daddy said I could have a companion of my own, you know, and he just fell, right there where the fairies promised, an angel he was, so innocent, delicious. Mmmm… a taste I will always want anew.”
“Have your visions always been useful?”
She blinked in wide-open amazement. “You really always ask exactly the wrong questions. Poor man, it must be a terrible handicap. Let mummy into your mind; I’ll blank it out and make it all better.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, and answer with my own, no.” The doctor shifted nervously in his chair, not wanting to look up at her anymore but unsure where to rest his eyes otherwise. “Are you happy, Drusilla, with how your life is?”
“I want to go home. There’s no music here and it smells of frustration and scrubbing powder.” She wrinkled her nose. “I could just kill you. Snap your thick neck,” she made a disturbing demonstrative finger-snap. “Oh, but it is bothersome! Spike wouldn’t want me to.”
“Yes. Let’s talk about that some more. Your motivation for getting better is for him, isn’t it? Many patients find they can achieve great things, if they only have someone encouraging them.”
Drusilla sank back in her chair, looking tired and wan as a fainting victim. “It is getting to be an awful lot,” she said, “What Spike wants and wouldn’t want. But I must bear it. Princess must endure, for the Prince’s sake. He bore so much for love, though not for me. My tests were hardly effort compared to hers.” She grimaced spitefully.
“This is good. Tests, quests, knights. It’s all very Milton, isn’t it? But as a seer, can you see the outcome? Do you know already if your treatment will be successful? Or can you understand enough to know what sanity entails?”
She sat up sharply. “Another wrong question! You really are quite mad!”
***
Spike returned as soon as he could to the holding cell, to find it empty. The guards wouldn’t open it for him. “This isn’t a hotel,” they said.
He stomped and stormed his way through the building then, looking for someone to intimidate. As luck would have it, Harmony was at her desk. “Harm. Be a love and get those Neanderthals to let me in to my fuckin’ guest room.”
“You don’t have a guest room,” she said, with the thick annoyance of one being interrupted from legitimate work. A fat “Cosmopolitan” magazine sat under her freshly-painted nails.
With slightly less bravado, Spike shrugged. “Where me an’ Dru are stayin’.”
“You mean the jail cell? Yeah. The things you get away with around here pretty much make me think there’s nothing you could do to get put in there.”
“C’mon, Harm! You’re not still sore!”
“Ha! As if you could make me sore.” She flipped the pages of her magazine with vicious flicks. “When I think of how broken up you were, the mess you were when I found you…”
“Yeah. Yeah. You made me a new man. And I thought we agreed that I wasn’t worth getting upset about.”
“Oh you so aren’t.”
“So don’t be upset. Just help me get into the room an’ I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Oh you so aren’t even IN my hair. You aren’t even near it.”
Spike sighed heavily. He put his elbows on the counter, his hands together. “Please. Gorgeous Harmony, goddess of administration, for everything that we shared, please just point me toward the blokes who make the fuckin’ keys.”
“Mm-hm,” she said, and finally gave up pretending to read her magazine. “They won’t let you back in there. Executive decision was to keep you out of the holding cell. Executive means Angel, and I don’t cross bossy. I like existing.”
Spike felt, well, frankly betrayed. “Why would he do that?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Anyway, Droodzilla isn’t even up there. She’s in testing still and you’re not going to get to see THAT, either. That’s science division’s decision. That’s Fred.”
His shoulders slumped as he straightened away from the desk. “Thanks, Harm.”
“Are you out of my hair yet? I have calls to make.”
***
Spike stood alone in the apartment he had lived in, alone, up until she came. All around him was evidence of her touch, her flair for life. He gathered up her doll, some more clothes and the prettiest of the scarves. He set them on the sofa and started shuffling through the CDs, picking out her favorites.
There was no music. He sat down on the television table, not looking at the plastic cases in his hands. The only sounds he could here were Mrs. Haverstrom’s television set, next door, and the endless, monolithic hum of the refrigerator. All that was personal, all that was homey in the apartment, he was packing up for Dru, because it was all hers. He had no music, without her. Never had.
Continued -->