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

[hamsterbait]

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

Comments

[ visual ]

[cealaigh]

Somewhere else in the Hyperion, and after some awkward scrambling (screaming is so startling in the absence of other noise) with vague self-assessment, River is in a very familiar body backed up against a corner. By the time she clicks her (his) tablet on to respond, she's looking at her hands (Angel's hands) in horrified wonder.

"Cordelia?" If Drusilla notices a familiar Irish accent, it is entirely not River's fault. Bodies are strange things. "I think I'm wrong."

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

The disappointment was palpable. She'd hoped that the Angel Beast had kept his own body. She'd wanted to see how far they could go before he realised she wasn't really the Vision Girl. She'd wanted to play.

(And to wound. Because little Cordelia would have been terribly upset to let that Angel hadn't noticed the change until much, much later.)

"You are," she replied, "We all are. We're not who we're supposed to be."

[ visual ]

[cealaigh]

There's the smallest pause as River considers whether or not this is some kind of punishment for the time she beat Angelus up, but it passes with a frown and furrowed brow. If this is punishment, it's too belated and widespread for her to particularly care.

"I need to go," out of this body, this building, this situation.

Please ignore that in her attempt to leave she's walking knees out; this body has parts she's not ready to manage in any direct capacity yet, and walking like she just hopped off a horse is her way of avoiding the issue.

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

"Where can you go?"

Did the person in the Angel Beast's body think that they could run right out of his skin? Back into her own body? No. The game had rules that couldn't be broken.

She left Cordelia's bedroom to search for the speaker. This body felt graceless and heavy, but it did what she wanted it to. Eventually.

[ visual | location: Hyperion Hotel ]

[cealaigh]

"Home," and maybe she can. Maybe it's just a matter of momentum, friction, and physics that's keeping her in this body.

Not that she's building up much momentum now. River has barely made it out of Angel's room and is stuck in the hallway, hobbling awkwardly and bracing herself against the wall (the shift in her center of gravity is steadily moving up on the list of Most Disturbing Things About This Body), looking absolutely unsure of where to go. Left? Right? Are there even stairs?

Navigation without heightened psychic awareness is hard.

[Location: Hyperion Hotel]

[hamsterbait]

Well, the little thief wasn't going to get anywhere like that. Drusilla found the Angel Beast's body in the hallway and, before she really knew what she was doing, rested a hand on his arm. Not for hunting, but because she cared.

She shook her head at that, trying to brush away her conscience. Cordelia's conscience. It was buzzing around her head like a troublesome fly. She only cared because it was the Angel Beast. That was all. Just him. She wasn't being nice.

"Hush," she said, "Where is home?"

[ location: Hyperion Hotel ]

[cealaigh]

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]

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]

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]

"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]

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]

"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]

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]

"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."