011 ♠ VISUAL ♠ Old Skill

[ironfright]

[ The backdrop of sakura trees and manicured shrubbery indicate that Puck's found his way to one of the themed parks that dot the city. It seems for a moment like he might be sleeping, but then his eyes open and they're a little more luminescent than normal. He touches the base of the tree and from that spot, a sudden sprout of flowering vines

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[a_pretty_fire]

The flowers dwindled away until they were nothing but hollow shells. The ghost of what they'd been and what they could have grown up to be hovered in the air. Even from a distance, it was intoxicating.

She'd never been able to make them grow either. Not for long. Only her Spike had remained young and fresh and perfect forever and he was an entire world away.

(Her daughter, when she was finally born, would be perfect as well. More beautiful than any vampire before and more beautiful than any vampire that would come again.)

"It'll find you again. It finds all of us."

[ironfright]

Puck viciously grabs the wilting vine and crushes them into the dirt. "Then I will have to be more creative."

[a_pretty_fire]

He'd forgotten, of course, that the dirt remembered. It provided the seeds with a solid foundation and, sometimes, whispered up to them as they grew. Too soft for most people to hear, but loud enough to rot them deep inside.

"Will you run? There's nowhere to go."

[ironfright]

Puck drew in a long breath and then let it out slowly. He knew that he could not escape the city any more than the rest of them could. "I will outlast it."

[a_pretty_fire]

Drusilla nodded. He was older than the rest of them - old in a way that she could only guess at - and he had plenty of experience with waiting. What he didn't have was the art behind it.

"You're not patient."

Just in case he'd forgotten.

[ironfright]

"That has nothing to do with it, not really," he scoffs, and flicks a bit more dirt at the dead vines. "And if this is supposed to be a session of sound advice, you're not very good at it."

[a_pretty_fire]

"Advice?" The idea - the sudden image of herself sitting in an soft armchair while Miss Edith divulged her deepest and darkest thoughts - was laughable. She'd only met a psychiatrist once. The woman had stuck between her teeth. "I'm not here to make it better. I like to watch."

And, if she made it better, there would be nothing worth watching.

[ironfright]

"Perhaps you'd like to watch me make you wither like this vine?" Puck asked calmly.

[a_pretty_fire]

"Would it make me tingle?" she asked, largely calm but with a characteristic sort of dangerous mischief sparkling in her eyes. She wriggled excitedly at the memory and the prospect. "I used to enjoy it when Daddy made me hurt all over."