A Failure of Diplomacy - Chapter Two (Spike/Drusilla)
A Failure of Diplomacy
By Femailofthespecies (cafedemonde)
Spike/Drusilla, others
FRAO
Warning: death, angst, violence, blood. All the fun things for good vampires.
Disclaimer: All canon characters belong to Joss and ME. The _end_of_days RPG was created and moderated by claudia6913 and emeraldswan.
Word count: This chapter 2326, total for story 4770/10000 min words
Author’s Notes - This takes place two days after what I envision as the final battle of the RPG _end_of_days In that world, NFA occurred as in canon. Spike, Illyria and Angel (Angel was in a coma for days) survived, but the city was in shambles, overrun with evil. Most people left or were staying inside so the vampires were not too keen to hang around. This left L.A. ripe for the taking. Drusilla came, called to the town by the evil and by a sense of things to come. Dawn, Xander, Oz, Amy, Willow, Kennedy, Giles and finally Buffy showed up as well to fight the new big bad. Drusilla lured Spike away from the side of good and with the help of one Ethan Rayne removed his soul. Now he was back to his evil ways with a few soft spots for a few people. One being Dawn, but his brand of love was not something she could handle and she ended up a very unhappy girl, almost getting killed in the process. Willow also tried her hand with the undead by getting involved with Drusilla’s newly made childe, Garrison. That went a little badly when she discovered that his family obligations were a bit more intimate than she expected. She ran off, got herself caught by a powerful soldier for the big bad, tortured to near death and resorted to using black magic to get free. It also turned her into that dark Willow that we all loved to hate and she tried to kill Buffy.
In the end, Angel made a deal with Spike and Dru and allowed them to continue their territorial pursuit of power in exchange for their help in fighting the Oriki, a group of hundreds of powerful demons from another reality that came through the portals opened by the senior partners originally, and were slowly picking them off and turning them against each other, using the First as its emissary. Desperate times called for desperate measures and with the help of Wesley’s notes found in his apartment and a device found buried in the ruins of Wolfram and Hart, Giles and Ethan managed to reboot Illyria with the powers of a god.
This was written for the joss10k
Thank you to jennillu for the beta and encouraging words.
If you like it, please let me know. If you don't, really let me know!
Previously ...
Chapter Two - It’s raining, my soul
The garden of the Hyperion had once been a beautiful showpiece. In the days when the place had been a flourishing hotel, guests often took their meals out there, soaking in the warm California sun during the day or letting the Santa Ana winds cool them in the desert-like nights. Now it was a craggy weed haven, the once lush, green plants having long dried up and died from lack of care.
April stood under the portico watching as two fellow slayers took turns shoveling, both wiping sweat from furrowed brows. Grave-digging was morose work, even in the bright light of a noonday sun.
Earlier, while scouting the area for survivors, they found two bodies and were preparing to bury them next to the others that had been laid to rest yesterday morning. It was Amy who recognized them. One was a slayer. April felt it, that kindred energy; even in death there was power, stagnant and unrealized, floating around her remains. The other one looked to be just a girl, but she knew that nowadays looks deceived.
She frowned, her eyes drifting upward, feeling a vampire in motion above her. Once upon a time, when all this was new, her slayer senses just weren’t that good and young fledglings slid in under her radar frequently.
Angel was not likely to sneak up on her.
Sighing, she took one last look at the two still forms on the terracotta flooring. Despite the blanket over them, she still saw their faces … bluish, distorted … and did not look forward to sharing this news with Angel. She went inside, closed the door behind her, and gave the vampire descending the stairs a dimpled smile.
“Hey, Ang. You’re up early.” She stated the obvious while she tried to think. She had hoped to have a few more hours, perhaps get them buried first, although she wasn’t too sure that he wouldn’t dig up the grave once she told him. Amy was conveniently out looking for supplies.
He trotted down the stairs. “I couldn’t sleep.”
She laughed. “You mean you came to sooner than you thought you would. Illy’s not packing a punch like she used to, huh?”
Shrugging, he headed for the office behind the unused registration counter and the small dorm refrigerator there. “I don’t think her heart was in it. It was kinda disappointing. I had to practically throw my face on her fist.”
There were only five packets of blood remaining. If he got injured, those would pretty much be gone in one go, otherwise he could stretch them to last nearly three days without becoming weak. He knew where he could get more, or at least who could get more, but thought he wasn’t really welcome there now. His last words with Drusilla had been somewhat harsh and he was still more than angry that she had stood up to him, defiant while Spike stood by her side, glaring at him with calculated neutrality.
“… are you even listening?”
“What?” he asked, coming back to the conversation. “I’m sorry, April. You were saying?”
“This is hard for me, you know? I’ve never had to do this, much less feel like, I don’t know, mourning.”
Angel’s forehead scrunched up and he bent a little at the waist, like getting closer to her height would help him understand. “What are you talking about?”
“God, Ang. Vi and …” her voice dropped to a whisper. “Vi and Nina. We found them…”
“Is she okay? Are they okay, I mean,” he added quickly, but he really didn’t mean that at all. His main concern was for Nina. He felt responsible for her being here in the first place, her desire to stand by him driving her decision. He hardly knew Vi, and the young slayer had put herself in danger by taking drugs purchased in a demon bar, drugs that were tainted. She was almost killed by his new grandchilde Garrison. Ironically, the drugs that condemned her - a mixture of heroin and Orpheus - actually stopped Drusilla’s childe from draining her completely. He wasn’t completely immune to the idea of losing her, but he wasn’t surprised by anything involving her now. Her fate had been sealed the night she fell victim to a vampire’s charms. Garrison would eventually come after her anyway. She was marked.
She shook her head and walked over to him before speaking. “No. Both of them died. Cassie and Mina are burying them.”
He was still, amazingly so, except for that tick below his left eye and April got nervous.
“We …we can have a small service later if you want. Ya know, to say goodbye.” She wanted to tell him there was too much work to do to spend more than a few hours letting grief take hold. She wanted to smack Vi for being weak and Nina for being naïve - Amy told her how the girl insisted on fighting even though she wasn’t really trained for it. She wanted to wrap her strong, skinny arms around him and tell him to let it out and let it go.
Instead she did what any good slayer does and peered up at him with hard grey eyes. “Someone’ll pay, Ang. Big time.”
~~~*~~~
They thought it was all them.
He was sweating profusely, and if there had been time Giles would have been deeply bothered by it. As it was he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about his personal hygiene. One look at Amy and Ethan and he knew they were feeling it too. That cold dread slipping down and wrapping around his spine was causing him all sorts of panic, but he held on, feeling the pull of Ethan’s hectic magic and something foreign, quiet, but shockingly powerful as well …Amy.
Dragging his eyes open, he saw the portal. It was still as large as it had been when they started, but the boundaries were quivering, like it wanted to close in on itself, but something just that much stronger thwarted the attempt. He was beginning to believe they would fail. It was a daunting thought because at this stage of the game failure would mean the destruction of most of their rag-tag army. Too much depended on them getting the job done.
His head was pounding now, his own magic emitting from him in painful pulses and he needed to back off some, breathe a little, rest a bit. He was wavering. They all were when suddenly he felt power shooting through him, instinct and the desire to survive kicking in he supposed. It was the last thought he had as he stumbled forward and fell to the ground, gravelly rocks digging in his face where he landed.
Expecting the worse, he lifted his head slowly and stared at the portal, only there wasn’t one.
They had done it.
With a sigh, he closed his eyes again, and let the inviting darkness of exhaustion enfold him in its warm, floating embrace.
Willow wasn’t sure why she decided to help them. That they needed it desperately was evident, and she stood on that rooftop watching Giles, Ethan and Amy struggle against the magic of that other place for what seemed like hours. It had, in fact, been less than ten minutes, but when she saw them waning, weakening, and she saw what stood on the other side, just salivating to get here, she knew she was not going to allow it to happen. As angry as she was with almost everyone, she was not interested in her world being overrun by the evil waiting for them.
So she did what she could, shoved her considerable power through Giles, and that surprise boost of magic was enough to overpower the spell that held the portal open. After it was done, she took off immediately, not wanting to risk discovery, because like it or not, she had done some pretty bad things … again … and her friends were not likely to be as forgiving this time. She expected Buffy might just want to kill her.
Stumbling across a bleeding and broken vampire had been by chance, but considering whom he was, she took it as a good sign and got him away from the fighting and to safety, or what passed for it in Los Angeles.
Several days later, Willow watched from the second story window of an abandoned apartment building that she had fled to as two truckloads of workers arrived. They stopped down the street, got out and began milling around in the intersection, staring at the destruction, clearly not knowing where to start. The city and outlying areas were in shambles and this little corner of Madison and Chestnut was no exception. The side of one truck sported the logo for Southern California Edison, the area’s power company. Hopefully, this meant she would have some light and could maybe cook something on the stove. It also meant that people were returning, and she frowned suddenly, turning away.
It was cool and dark where she was; the only light coming in was through the opening she created in the draperies. It had to be; her guest was allergic to the sun.
A voice, something so much a part of her being that she almost mistook it for her own thought, told her that she was being stupid and to make her own power, use her own power. Shaking her head, she backed away from the window, letting the material fall back in place as she turned to the sleeping form.
Garrison had been bleeding out when she found him, but she fed him the blood of a recently dead girl and the wounds had closed within a few hours. Since then he’d not had anything else to eat. That was almost two days ago. As soon as the workers were gone, she planned to go back out and find him something, dead or dying.
Until then, she hoped he stayed asleep.
~~~*~~~
Most nights, Spike could not be found in the lair unless Dru specifically requested his presence. His demon was like an old friend returning from a trip that had lasted too long and the blond was testing it out. It was safe to say that he had thoroughly examined all aspects of his evil very quickly, but he could not get enough of the freedom he felt since losing the burden of his soul.
Unlike his grandsire, he did not feel the need to hunt down and kill every human that he’d taken the time to know while chipped and/or soulled, but he did want to screw with them. Especially Xander Harris. The man never, ever gave him a break; he hated him until his dying and resurrecting day, and Spike never forgot his enemies.
The current enemy was in the form of a vampire with stringy, black hair and an over-inflated ego. Denton was gathering forces, bringing in help, fresh fighters from the outside, to eliminate them.
“I say we dust them all now. Should have slaughtered his runts.” He was pacing. The scouts he had sent to follow Denton back to his new lair had seen the vampire meeting with the head of another clan out of Santa Cruz. They were a small family, but old and powerful. Nothing good would come of it.
Drusilla watched as he stormed back and forth across the carpet of their bedroom, her eyes following his every move, noting the tension in him. He was upset. Things seemed to be going against them, but she knew better.
“No,” she shook her head with a toothy smile. “We'll leave them be, Spike.”
He frowned. “What? The git’s a bloody snake, Dru.” He pointed an accusing finger her way and she raised an eyebrow. “You kept his childer safe and he’s betraying us first chance.”
“I know, dearest. And Meissa took his sweet babies on a hunt. They ate very well. A Slayer and the Wolfgirl. Daddy’s crying out his soul,” she whispered, but it might as well have been a roar.
He stopped moving when she mentioned Angel, but came to kneel between her open legs soon enough, his fingers caressing the silk of her thighs. The cunning sparkle in her eyes told him that she was up to something. He enjoyed it when she had a plan, but hated being left in the dark about it. “What did you do, pet?” he asked grinning at her.
“They needed help over the edge. I only pushed. Now the general will kill Denton long before his paper soldiers can load their guns.”
~~~*~~~
He cried holding her close to him for comfort. His, of course, because she no longer needed it. When she was alive, he had given it, not as freely as he’d done with Buffy or Cordelia, but Angel had been there for her. He hoped.
Now Nina was cold, her body riddled with vampire bites, and he smelled the stench of an old enemy. Vi was in the same state, only more so, as if they took great pleasure in debasing her corpse. A finger was missing, a trophy, only now it didn’t mean so much. There were thousands of slayers all over the world, still a miniscule percentage of the population, but the chanced of finding an untrained one and taking her down had increased to the point where it was no longer something to brag about.
Somewhat cried out, he slipped her body into the waiting grave. There were no coffins here, but they did what they could with what they had. He then turned and lowered Vi into her own place of rest, tossed a few handfuls of dirt into each hole, and walked away, shoulders tight and tense.
Casey, Mina and April gathered around and began to refill the graves with the displaced soil.
April shook her head, already tired. “I did not sign up for this shit.”
~~~*~~~
TBC
By Femailofthespecies (cafedemonde)
Spike/Drusilla, others
FRAO
Warning: death, angst, violence, blood. All the fun things for good vampires.
Disclaimer: All canon characters belong to Joss and ME. The _end_of_days RPG was created and moderated by claudia6913 and emeraldswan.
Word count: This chapter 2326, total for story 4770/10000 min words
Author’s Notes - This takes place two days after what I envision as the final battle of the RPG _end_of_days In that world, NFA occurred as in canon. Spike, Illyria and Angel (Angel was in a coma for days) survived, but the city was in shambles, overrun with evil. Most people left or were staying inside so the vampires were not too keen to hang around. This left L.A. ripe for the taking. Drusilla came, called to the town by the evil and by a sense of things to come. Dawn, Xander, Oz, Amy, Willow, Kennedy, Giles and finally Buffy showed up as well to fight the new big bad. Drusilla lured Spike away from the side of good and with the help of one Ethan Rayne removed his soul. Now he was back to his evil ways with a few soft spots for a few people. One being Dawn, but his brand of love was not something she could handle and she ended up a very unhappy girl, almost getting killed in the process. Willow also tried her hand with the undead by getting involved with Drusilla’s newly made childe, Garrison. That went a little badly when she discovered that his family obligations were a bit more intimate than she expected. She ran off, got herself caught by a powerful soldier for the big bad, tortured to near death and resorted to using black magic to get free. It also turned her into that dark Willow that we all loved to hate and she tried to kill Buffy.
In the end, Angel made a deal with Spike and Dru and allowed them to continue their territorial pursuit of power in exchange for their help in fighting the Oriki, a group of hundreds of powerful demons from another reality that came through the portals opened by the senior partners originally, and were slowly picking them off and turning them against each other, using the First as its emissary. Desperate times called for desperate measures and with the help of Wesley’s notes found in his apartment and a device found buried in the ruins of Wolfram and Hart, Giles and Ethan managed to reboot Illyria with the powers of a god.
This was written for the joss10k
Thank you to jennillu for the beta and encouraging words.
If you like it, please let me know. If you don't, really let me know!
Previously ...
Chapter Two - It’s raining, my soul
The garden of the Hyperion had once been a beautiful showpiece. In the days when the place had been a flourishing hotel, guests often took their meals out there, soaking in the warm California sun during the day or letting the Santa Ana winds cool them in the desert-like nights. Now it was a craggy weed haven, the once lush, green plants having long dried up and died from lack of care.
April stood under the portico watching as two fellow slayers took turns shoveling, both wiping sweat from furrowed brows. Grave-digging was morose work, even in the bright light of a noonday sun.
Earlier, while scouting the area for survivors, they found two bodies and were preparing to bury them next to the others that had been laid to rest yesterday morning. It was Amy who recognized them. One was a slayer. April felt it, that kindred energy; even in death there was power, stagnant and unrealized, floating around her remains. The other one looked to be just a girl, but she knew that nowadays looks deceived.
She frowned, her eyes drifting upward, feeling a vampire in motion above her. Once upon a time, when all this was new, her slayer senses just weren’t that good and young fledglings slid in under her radar frequently.
Angel was not likely to sneak up on her.
Sighing, she took one last look at the two still forms on the terracotta flooring. Despite the blanket over them, she still saw their faces … bluish, distorted … and did not look forward to sharing this news with Angel. She went inside, closed the door behind her, and gave the vampire descending the stairs a dimpled smile.
“Hey, Ang. You’re up early.” She stated the obvious while she tried to think. She had hoped to have a few more hours, perhaps get them buried first, although she wasn’t too sure that he wouldn’t dig up the grave once she told him. Amy was conveniently out looking for supplies.
He trotted down the stairs. “I couldn’t sleep.”
She laughed. “You mean you came to sooner than you thought you would. Illy’s not packing a punch like she used to, huh?”
Shrugging, he headed for the office behind the unused registration counter and the small dorm refrigerator there. “I don’t think her heart was in it. It was kinda disappointing. I had to practically throw my face on her fist.”
There were only five packets of blood remaining. If he got injured, those would pretty much be gone in one go, otherwise he could stretch them to last nearly three days without becoming weak. He knew where he could get more, or at least who could get more, but thought he wasn’t really welcome there now. His last words with Drusilla had been somewhat harsh and he was still more than angry that she had stood up to him, defiant while Spike stood by her side, glaring at him with calculated neutrality.
“… are you even listening?”
“What?” he asked, coming back to the conversation. “I’m sorry, April. You were saying?”
“This is hard for me, you know? I’ve never had to do this, much less feel like, I don’t know, mourning.”
Angel’s forehead scrunched up and he bent a little at the waist, like getting closer to her height would help him understand. “What are you talking about?”
“God, Ang. Vi and …” her voice dropped to a whisper. “Vi and Nina. We found them…”
“Is she okay? Are they okay, I mean,” he added quickly, but he really didn’t mean that at all. His main concern was for Nina. He felt responsible for her being here in the first place, her desire to stand by him driving her decision. He hardly knew Vi, and the young slayer had put herself in danger by taking drugs purchased in a demon bar, drugs that were tainted. She was almost killed by his new grandchilde Garrison. Ironically, the drugs that condemned her - a mixture of heroin and Orpheus - actually stopped Drusilla’s childe from draining her completely. He wasn’t completely immune to the idea of losing her, but he wasn’t surprised by anything involving her now. Her fate had been sealed the night she fell victim to a vampire’s charms. Garrison would eventually come after her anyway. She was marked.
She shook her head and walked over to him before speaking. “No. Both of them died. Cassie and Mina are burying them.”
He was still, amazingly so, except for that tick below his left eye and April got nervous.
“We …we can have a small service later if you want. Ya know, to say goodbye.” She wanted to tell him there was too much work to do to spend more than a few hours letting grief take hold. She wanted to smack Vi for being weak and Nina for being naïve - Amy told her how the girl insisted on fighting even though she wasn’t really trained for it. She wanted to wrap her strong, skinny arms around him and tell him to let it out and let it go.
Instead she did what any good slayer does and peered up at him with hard grey eyes. “Someone’ll pay, Ang. Big time.”
~~~*~~~
They thought it was all them.
He was sweating profusely, and if there had been time Giles would have been deeply bothered by it. As it was he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about his personal hygiene. One look at Amy and Ethan and he knew they were feeling it too. That cold dread slipping down and wrapping around his spine was causing him all sorts of panic, but he held on, feeling the pull of Ethan’s hectic magic and something foreign, quiet, but shockingly powerful as well …Amy.
Dragging his eyes open, he saw the portal. It was still as large as it had been when they started, but the boundaries were quivering, like it wanted to close in on itself, but something just that much stronger thwarted the attempt. He was beginning to believe they would fail. It was a daunting thought because at this stage of the game failure would mean the destruction of most of their rag-tag army. Too much depended on them getting the job done.
His head was pounding now, his own magic emitting from him in painful pulses and he needed to back off some, breathe a little, rest a bit. He was wavering. They all were when suddenly he felt power shooting through him, instinct and the desire to survive kicking in he supposed. It was the last thought he had as he stumbled forward and fell to the ground, gravelly rocks digging in his face where he landed.
Expecting the worse, he lifted his head slowly and stared at the portal, only there wasn’t one.
They had done it.
With a sigh, he closed his eyes again, and let the inviting darkness of exhaustion enfold him in its warm, floating embrace.
Willow wasn’t sure why she decided to help them. That they needed it desperately was evident, and she stood on that rooftop watching Giles, Ethan and Amy struggle against the magic of that other place for what seemed like hours. It had, in fact, been less than ten minutes, but when she saw them waning, weakening, and she saw what stood on the other side, just salivating to get here, she knew she was not going to allow it to happen. As angry as she was with almost everyone, she was not interested in her world being overrun by the evil waiting for them.
So she did what she could, shoved her considerable power through Giles, and that surprise boost of magic was enough to overpower the spell that held the portal open. After it was done, she took off immediately, not wanting to risk discovery, because like it or not, she had done some pretty bad things … again … and her friends were not likely to be as forgiving this time. She expected Buffy might just want to kill her.
Stumbling across a bleeding and broken vampire had been by chance, but considering whom he was, she took it as a good sign and got him away from the fighting and to safety, or what passed for it in Los Angeles.
Several days later, Willow watched from the second story window of an abandoned apartment building that she had fled to as two truckloads of workers arrived. They stopped down the street, got out and began milling around in the intersection, staring at the destruction, clearly not knowing where to start. The city and outlying areas were in shambles and this little corner of Madison and Chestnut was no exception. The side of one truck sported the logo for Southern California Edison, the area’s power company. Hopefully, this meant she would have some light and could maybe cook something on the stove. It also meant that people were returning, and she frowned suddenly, turning away.
It was cool and dark where she was; the only light coming in was through the opening she created in the draperies. It had to be; her guest was allergic to the sun.
A voice, something so much a part of her being that she almost mistook it for her own thought, told her that she was being stupid and to make her own power, use her own power. Shaking her head, she backed away from the window, letting the material fall back in place as she turned to the sleeping form.
Garrison had been bleeding out when she found him, but she fed him the blood of a recently dead girl and the wounds had closed within a few hours. Since then he’d not had anything else to eat. That was almost two days ago. As soon as the workers were gone, she planned to go back out and find him something, dead or dying.
Until then, she hoped he stayed asleep.
~~~*~~~
Most nights, Spike could not be found in the lair unless Dru specifically requested his presence. His demon was like an old friend returning from a trip that had lasted too long and the blond was testing it out. It was safe to say that he had thoroughly examined all aspects of his evil very quickly, but he could not get enough of the freedom he felt since losing the burden of his soul.
Unlike his grandsire, he did not feel the need to hunt down and kill every human that he’d taken the time to know while chipped and/or soulled, but he did want to screw with them. Especially Xander Harris. The man never, ever gave him a break; he hated him until his dying and resurrecting day, and Spike never forgot his enemies.
The current enemy was in the form of a vampire with stringy, black hair and an over-inflated ego. Denton was gathering forces, bringing in help, fresh fighters from the outside, to eliminate them.
“I say we dust them all now. Should have slaughtered his runts.” He was pacing. The scouts he had sent to follow Denton back to his new lair had seen the vampire meeting with the head of another clan out of Santa Cruz. They were a small family, but old and powerful. Nothing good would come of it.
Drusilla watched as he stormed back and forth across the carpet of their bedroom, her eyes following his every move, noting the tension in him. He was upset. Things seemed to be going against them, but she knew better.
“No,” she shook her head with a toothy smile. “We'll leave them be, Spike.”
He frowned. “What? The git’s a bloody snake, Dru.” He pointed an accusing finger her way and she raised an eyebrow. “You kept his childer safe and he’s betraying us first chance.”
“I know, dearest. And Meissa took his sweet babies on a hunt. They ate very well. A Slayer and the Wolfgirl. Daddy’s crying out his soul,” she whispered, but it might as well have been a roar.
He stopped moving when she mentioned Angel, but came to kneel between her open legs soon enough, his fingers caressing the silk of her thighs. The cunning sparkle in her eyes told him that she was up to something. He enjoyed it when she had a plan, but hated being left in the dark about it. “What did you do, pet?” he asked grinning at her.
“They needed help over the edge. I only pushed. Now the general will kill Denton long before his paper soldiers can load their guns.”
~~~*~~~
He cried holding her close to him for comfort. His, of course, because she no longer needed it. When she was alive, he had given it, not as freely as he’d done with Buffy or Cordelia, but Angel had been there for her. He hoped.
Now Nina was cold, her body riddled with vampire bites, and he smelled the stench of an old enemy. Vi was in the same state, only more so, as if they took great pleasure in debasing her corpse. A finger was missing, a trophy, only now it didn’t mean so much. There were thousands of slayers all over the world, still a miniscule percentage of the population, but the chanced of finding an untrained one and taking her down had increased to the point where it was no longer something to brag about.
Somewhat cried out, he slipped her body into the waiting grave. There were no coffins here, but they did what they could with what they had. He then turned and lowered Vi into her own place of rest, tossed a few handfuls of dirt into each hole, and walked away, shoulders tight and tense.
Casey, Mina and April gathered around and began to refill the graves with the displaced soil.
April shook her head, already tired. “I did not sign up for this shit.”
~~~*~~~
TBC