Burns Like Sunshine

AN: Characters belong to ME and co. I'm just playing in their sandbox.

**

Drusilla liked the star-splatter of blood on the walls. It reminded her of closing her eyes after staring at the sun, back in the days that she could stare at the sun. She doesn't know why she remembers it still, only that it was warm and bright, just like blood. Her life is defined by bright red drops raining and deep red rivers streaming. Her life is filled with flickering candles and shiny dolls and pretty dresses. Her mind is filled with the night and the sky and the future, all intertwined into a gruesome, beautiful mess. It's all she needs to know. It's all she wants to know.

She drifts through the world, now. She used to be anchored to the earth by her shining knight, until she felt him slip away like butter from a child's hands. She briefly was with her grandmother-turned-child, but Darla had never cared for her like her knight had. She was left, forgotten by her knight and ignored by her daddy and inconsequential to her grandmamma.

She felt the need to do something now, though. She wanted to have a party, but she had no one to invite. Miss Edith was gone. She supposed that she had forgotten Miss Edith somewhere while she wandered, but could not remember where. Her Spike had always kept up with her dollies during travel. Her Spike hated her now. He had pointed a nasty bit of wood at her and had yelled, and had given his shining love to the gleaming slayer. She had known he would, but it didn't make it any easier to bear.

She needed a new love, mate, child, protector. She wasn't made to be alone. Her thoughts do not offer her guidance, but she does not fret. She will recognize them when she sees them.

Her wanderings are suddenly in brighter focus as she looks at the faces she passes in the night, searching for the spark. She knows that the spark will burn her like sunshine when she sees it burning in the one who will burn brightly in her unlife. She will cherish the one who possesses the spark, and she will make them her own.

All that is left is finding the one out there.

One beautiful, dreary night, she catches a glimmer out the side of her eye, and drifts towards it. She likes to move slowly, gracefully, in tune with the night that hums and the stars that sing to her. Sometimes Angelus would speak crossly with her over it, telling her to hurry, but she didn't want to break the rhythm. She was afraid of losing the lovely dark song she so adored.

Now, she sways down a street, following the young man who has glimmered in her eye and now sizzles in her mind. He has blond hair and is wearing a suit, and his lamb-like movements remind her of her knight when he was still just a squire. She sees him pause, looking at the street sign confusedly, and she approaches him.

"Has the lamb lost its way?" she asks. "There, there."

He looks up, startled, and begins to stutter something out. She lays a finger on his lips, takes him by the arm and murmurs, "Shhh. We're going to find your way."

He's still talking frantically and trying to pull away from her as she slips him into a dark alley, and allows the demon to steal her face. The world is bright and clear and dark and beautiful, and so are his eyes as she leans forward and reassures him that the hurt won't last forever.

"I told you," she mumbled into his fresh, punctured neck. "It only burns for a little while. Then, things will be new and beautiful."

He struggles and does not believe her. She does not wish to be cross with her new boy, who feels like buttercups drenched in dew, but a slight stirring of frustration is blossoming within her.

"Please, oh please," says her new boy as she draws away from him. She cannot tell if he wishes for mercy or for her embrace. She decides they are one and the same, and carefully draws her beautiful nails across her chest the way Darla had shown her, and then she fed her sparkling boy everything she held inside her- all the magic and stars and bright ruby drops of life. He sputtered, tickling her, but soon he embraced her waist and accepted the only milk she had to give.

He thanked her later.

She buried him shallow. She did not want to lose him. He rose, sputtering and spitting mud, and then looked around and breathed, "Holy eternal life, Batman."

She touched his cool hand, and nodded. She led him away from his final resting place, and whispered to him what he needed to do. He turned and said, "I d-don't think I can do that."

She turned her head at him, perplexed.

"I stabbed someone, once, and I didn't like it at all. I think biting someone would be just as squelchy and not fun."

"The rose drops will make you whole, buttercup," she said sternly.

"B-but--"

She laid a finger across his lips. "Hush."

She held his arm as they walked through the grass and across the street and into the room where the jaded, painted girl stood impatiently tapping her foot and had one hand resting on a jutted hip.

"She's a treat for my shining boy," Drusilla announced grandly, twirling happily and laughing. Her shining boy looked at the girl, and seemed frightened. "She can't hurt you, go on," Drusilla urged her baby on.

He stepped closer to the jaded girl stood, and his features melted into the predator's smile, and then he moved faster than he had ever managed in life and growled as his teeth ripped into paper thin skin and released blood in a beautiful mess. Hungry newborn slurping followed, and she laughed and cooed as her baby did everything right.

"Wow, oh, wow," he said when he came up for an unnecessary breath. "I'm a Vampyre. I live off the innocence and life force of the weak and powerless, as I stalk the streets and become a true Childe of the Night. The darkness is in my veins and in my head and this is so much cooler than summoning demons and inventing freeze rays!"

Drusilla laughed at the bright babble coming from her shining boy, and led him further into the night. He would be grand one day, when his newness wore off and his babble turned menacing and deadly. She knew it. But she was happy with him being sweet as a pit bull puppy, just learning to latch onto the throat and discovering the deep growl that lies within all killers.

She drifts with him now. He doesn't anchor her like her Spike had for all those years, doesn't pacify and coddle and control her. He doesn't hurt and beat and please her like her Daddy had, or treat her like a child as Darla had been wont to do. He cheerfully accepts her, listening to her stories with rapt attention and learning what he can from her. He helps her paint walls with blood and he no longer cringes away from knives.

Her lamb is comforting. She plays, and laughs, and smiles. She creates rivers of blood to play in, and he frolics with her.

She doesn't miss the sunshine as much, because her shining boy lights up everything he touches, including her.

Fin.