Rating: FRM (Fan Rated Mature-for mature readers only)
Summary: One year to the day after she kidnapped Willow, Drusilla thinks about what she has done and what has happened to her own un-life as a result.
Feedback: Please. I really need to know that I have readers and I also like knowing just what those readers think of what I write.
Distribution: If you have permission to archive The Faceless Clock Trilogy, you may have this. Otherwise, please ask first.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to Joss and a bunch of other people who are not now and have never been me.
Author’s Notes: I would like to dedicate this trilogy to Susi, the wonderful sitemistress of Soulmates Til the End of Time and also a dear and cherished friend! Happy belated birthday! I also extend my heartfelt gratitude to Tonya who convinced me to rewrite this part twice and keep making it better...thank you, Tonya! Without you, I’m nothing!
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The stars didn’t talk to Drusilla anymore. She couldn’t remember the exact moment when their voices had grown silent and they stopped answering when she spoke to them, but it had been a very long time.
Funny how she felt about time now. Once it had seemed endless and days had seemed like minutes. Now she felt time in much the same way she must have when she had been human, a time that was distressingly easier for her to recall than it had ever been since her turning. This must be what came from living with a mortal girl, she thought as she hummed tunelessly, trying to fill the yawning emptiness where the whispers of the stars had once been.
Her Angel- no, not her Angel, not anymore-was throwing a party for the three of them that night. To celebrate the anniversary of the day Drusilla had taken the pretty red tree to lure Angel back into her garden and had wound up trapped in this barren desert instead. Trapped in a union of empty lust and endless longing, a union that left her heart as ashen as it would be the day she fell to a mortal’s stake. She wished she could talk to Miss Edith. Miss Edith would have helped her feel better, to look forward to Daddy’s party, to relish the prospect of dressing up and dancing and dining, and would have reassured her that she was still her Daddy’s Princess. But Miss Edith, like the stars, had gone silent after Drusilla had carried out her desperate plan to win back her Sire
She had tried to hate the girl, blame the girl, but that had only been possible for so long; ‘til the sight of the little tree’s eyes, ever-brimming with unshed tears, and the sound of her voice, always mournful and sad, destroyed any illusions she tried to hold onto that the human had conspired to rob Drusilla of her Daddy’s love. No, as much as she longed to despise the red-haired mortal, she couldn’t. For although she had what Drusilla so desperately yearned for, it wasn’t by any design or intrigue. Daddy’s pretty pet loathed his love as passionately as Drusilla longed for it and Drusilla found herself incapable of hating Willow.
Willow. Drusilla had never been accustomed to thinking of humans by name, her chief awareness of them coming through the voices of the stars. But now, living with one, being near one, and without the stars to act as a barrier between herself and the world, Drusilla had come to see the pixie-faced mortal as real and to think of her by name. She had even come to care about her Daddy’s precious pet, to think about her and want to reach out to her. But she knew that Daddy wouldn’t like that, wanting to keep the tree in a garden all his own. The few times she had spoken of doing something nice for Willow or expressed interest in her, Angel’s eyes had grown hard. And, while he hadn’t said anything, Drusilla had sensed his feelings and no longer spoke kindly of the girl Angel loved, terrified that her Daddy might leave her if she tried to become part of his pet’s life.
For, as lonely and barren as her life with Angel was, and as far removed from what she had imagined it would be when she had set the wheels in motion that had brought them all to this point in time, she couldn’t bear to give it up. The time she spent in bed with Angel, his cold cock buried inside her as he brought her to brutal ecstasy, was something she couldn’t give up, even though she knew that it was only his body that Angel gave her each day, and only the convenience of *her* body and the safe release it could give him that bound Angel to her now.
Someday, she was certain, her Daddy would see how unhappy his little pet was and he would let her go home. Then he would finally see how much Drusilla loved him, and she would be his Princess again. And they would all be ever so happy. Perhaps the stars would even sing for her once more.
End