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 ]

[exvampire]

Spike wakes with a start when he hears screaming. Everything's blurry. He reaches towards the bedside table for glasses in a half-remembered gesture from back when he was human. He finds them and slips them on, then squints at the Tablet.

"Cordelia?"

...something's wrong. He feels different, and since when has he needed glasses? And where is he? It's not a room he's ever been in. And he's wearing pyjamas, which isn't normal. His body feels wrong.

Oh, and he's got a heartbeat.

"What's going on?"

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

Slowly, like a sunrise struggling to cut threw thick black clouds, the truth dawned on Drusilla. It didn't matter if the hamsters were playing a game or not. She was in Cordelia's body and, as long she was careful, nobody had to know that she'd borrowed it.

Her heart began to beat to a new rhythm. Fresh and thrilling and filled with potential.

"It was just a dream," she said. Her new voice didn't sound right. Didn't have any music to it. "It was just a dream."

She focused, at last, on the figure on the screen. The Watcher. Not the old one, the young one. (Though you wouldn't know that, from the way he smelt of dusty old books.)

"Wesley?"

[Visual]

[exvampire]

"What about him?" Spike still can't quite put his finger on what's wrong, but... he frowns and touches his face. It feels different. And his heart is beating, which... wait. He rolls out of bed and looks around for a mirror.

Wesley stares back at him.

"Oh... bloody hell."

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

She wasn't the only person who had switched, then. All over the city, people were waking up in bodies that didn't belong to them. It was an interesting game. Drusilla wondered where the dice would roll next.

"You're not Wesley," she commented. The Vision Girl might have taken longer to realise it, but not Drusilla. It was obvious.

And, although his voice was all wrong, his words were somehow familiar.

[visual]

[greenballadeer]

Lorne's first reaction to the sound of Cordelia's screams coming through the tablet is to grab it and yell, "Cordy! Are you OK?!"

Except his voice comes out completely wrong, and oh my sweet goddesses why is he in Anya's body.

"Ack!" is the only sound he can produce.

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

She recognised the face on the screen - the woman who had sold her all the pretty little trinkets in Floop's image - but, at the moment, that didn't mean a thing. It could be anyone.

(Oh, she hoped that the Angel Beast hadn't been switched. That would be terribly disappointing.)

"... did you just squeak at me?"

[visual]

[greenballadeer]

Lorne holds his hand to his throat. His feminine, not green hand. The vibrations of this new voice feel so strange. "Cordy? This... this isn't Anya. I'm Lorne."

Suddenly the scream clicks into place. "Wait a minute, did it happen to you too? Are you Cordy, or someone else?"

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

"Trust me, I'm still Cordelia. And when I find these furry little monsters, I'm going to show them that they've been messing with the wrong group of people."

It was strange, wasn't it? Drusilla could have said the same thing and they would have looked at her with fear. But Cordelia's lips gave the words a strange sort of magic. A sort of honesty that the vampire could never achieve as a vampire.

[ visual ] - timed after Willow's own awakening

[couldbeawillow]

Willow sat down to look at the tablet once she'd calmed down enough not to freak out over the fact that she was in Andrew's body.

"Cordelia?" Oh right, she might think this was Andrew, so she clarifies. "It's Willow."

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

"Willow?"

The Red Witch. If Drusilla hadn't been pretending to be Cordelia, she would have laughed at that. Laughed to see that the witch's spells and tricks hadn't been enough to protect her from the games the hamsters liked to play.

"What happened?"

She was good at the Vision Girl's shrill little shriek, but it still grated on her poor ears.

[Visual]

[couldbeawillow]

Completely oblivious, Willow just glanced around. "I-I don't know. I woke up in Andrew's body. Do you know if everyone's affected or just a few of us?"

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

"I don't know." That, at least, was true. "The Powers That Be don't exactly keep me up to date anymore."

She frowned. It hadn't crossed her mind before - she'd been distracted by her heart beat and strange warmth of her new living skin - but she didn't know what had happened to her own body. She'd want it back when she was finished with this one.

"Wait, if you're in Andrew's body, does that mean Andrew's in yours?"

That wouldn't do. The Vision Girl wouldn't look after her properly. The Vision Girl wouldn't look after Miss Edith!

[visual]

[supercompacted]

The scream made Fred startle awake. She sat up, fumbled around for the tablet, and got ready to run to Cordelia's room once she saw who it was. "Cordy, are you okay?"

The laugh at the end might've been the most worrying part about the whole thing, now that she thought about it.

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

"Just a weird dream, Fred."

(That was her name, wasn't it? Little Fred. So human and so sweet that Drusilla wanted to peel off her skin and see if she as really syrup and honey underneath.)

It was easy to pretend to be Cordelia, really. She'd watched the Vision Girl a lot during her time in Taxon. She knew her mannerisms and her tone and, even if she wasn't peeping into the main of the person she was fooling, she knew how to play pretend.

"A really weird dream."

[Visual]

[supercompacted]

"Like a vision sort of dream?" Fred asks with concern. She does settle down some, though. At least Cordelia doesn't seem to be in danger.

[Visual]

[hamsterbait]

"More of a nightmare sort of dream."

She couldn't remember when she'd last woken up and wanted food. Real food - bread and cheese and milk and the plums picked from the tree at the bottom of her parent's garden - rather than blood. Her stomach was practically growling. Her skin was too warm.

Drusilla shook Cordelia's head, brushing her anxieties aside. She needed to enjoy this.

"I'll be fine."

[ 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.