step on the glass, staple your tongue (btvs | drusilla/willow + miss edith)

[fiachairecht]

step on the glass, staple your tongue. buffy the vampire slayer, drusilla/willow + miss edith. drusilla takes willow home and makes a friend, or something close to one. 1.8k words, rated m. for summerdayghost in agegapexchange 2019.

The graves are singing to her again.

It's a pretty song, high and dark with a little trill that Drusilla knows only comes from flutes made out of Slayer bones. She's tried to make it work with her own tongue, tried to make Miss Edith sing it for her, but it's never quite worked. The notes run away, all lavender-blue, they don't dance across the skin of her arms or brush through every hair on her head.

The wind doesn't love her, only loves the Slayer, and on these nights - well, there's nothing for it but to find the Slayer. Find the pretty girl and swallow her music down whole, teeth to the bones before she can give them back to the dirt.

There's no slayer in the graveyard, though. Just the little witch, the one who's gotten much better at killing since Drusilla first met her.

"Once upon a time there was a tree in a garden," Drusilla says, and the red hair swings around, scatters in the moonlight like dead dead leaves. "And inside that tree was a little girl with a magical black heart," she continues. The story is unfurling before her eyes, so very red.

The witch's eyes are so wide, so scared, so hungry, and Drusilla feels her insides shifting all around as she walks forward with her hands outstretched, all ready to make space for the new little witch-doll. Oh, but Miss Edith will love having a new friend, after Spike's left them alone for so long!

"Just because Buffy isn't here doesn't mean I can't stop ... whatever you're planning,"

Poor little witch, unable to understand her past or her future, her eyes are stuffed so full of stars. Drusilla wants to lick them, but she won't tell her little willow-witch just yet. She and Miss Edith are practising manners now that they have to make their own friends and find their own supper.

She'll make the loveliest of names for these new little stars.

"But don't you see, Willow-love?" Drusilla cups her face and kisses her lips, and doesn't even bite even a little bit. Willow stays more still than a doll anyway, still and hot with her eyes closed while her ugly cross burns at Drusilla's throat. "I'm not planning anything, never did. You came with me because you wanted to."

She can feel the witch's resistance, tired and soft and dull, saying no because she thinks she has to. There's magic all around and she isn't reaching for it, like she would if she really wanted to protest.

"I haven't gone anywhere with you yet." But her head drops forward, all on its own, and Drusilla carefully laces her fingers together behind her head and pulls her down, cradles her against her chest and breathes deep into the burning cross. "Why should I? Why will I?"

"Because," Drusilla whispers into all her lovely autumn-leaf hair, "I have the magic that your friends don't want you to have anymore. I have rocky skies and all the blood you could ever want. You don't have to take care of me, you just have to dream."

The wind might only love the Slayer, but the witch loves her. Will love her. Time goes strange in the graveyards, all the spider-silk wound up in knots too frustrating to pick apart.

Drusilla doesn't know when the witch agrees to come with her. She doesn't even know if she agrees at all.

All that matters is that she is red, red, magical red.

 

*

 

Time is strange and slick in the graveyards, but once Drusilla brings the willow-witch home it settles down nicely, covers them in a still secret blanket, and lets them hide. No more outside-time, not unless the hunger comes - but her pretty little witch has so much blood Drusilla knows she won't have to worry about the empty claws for a long, long time.

Maybe forever.

"People will come looking for me," the witch says, soon after she's come home. "My friends miss me."

Drusilla brushes her hair back from her face, the crimson brittle like dried blood, crackling cold over her skin. "Will they really, pet?" she asks softly. Mustn't frighten the fragile things, mustn't drop them from shelves just yet. "They're afraid of you and me. Too much magic, too much blood, too many spirals."

She cries at that, little rivers of magic leaking from her soft starry eyes. Drusilla doesn't blame her, it's so very hard to hold a whole ocean inside. Someone needs to help drink it down, share all the music in the waves.

Drusilla lays her willow-witch down in their bed, licks all her tears away and kisses her to give the magic back. She reaches under the velvety pillows to where her witch's favourite bestiary lies, presses it into her palm.

"Read to me, pet," she says, and then giggles - so naughty, to use dear Spike's name for her on the witch! "Tell me about all the friends we're going to make, all the castles we'll raze and all the adventures we'll have in the mists."

Reading is the willow-witch's very favourite thing, even more than being nice to Mummy, but Drusilla doesn't mind. When she's reading, she lets Mummy push up her skirts and lie between her legs, lets her suckle at her thighs and drink as much as she wants.

When she's reading, she doesn't mind the teeth-mark bruises on her skin or the stains on the sheets. When she's reading, Drusilla can create a whole new world out of her blood, new constellations of unnamed stars, and they all smile back at her and her head is quiet, except for the sound of the witch's voice.

Such a good willow-doll, and with a voice so much nicer than Miss Edith's, and with so much life to give as she flowers throughout the tomb. Drusilla drinks her down, hot and lively and just a little bit sad, and lets the stories fill her mind like the blood overflowing her mouth.

The only claws now are her own.

 

*

 

Miss Edith cries more, too, after the witch comes home. There's specks of blood under her eyes, bright and sweet, but she won't say who cut her open because she knows Mummy's the only one allowed to have knives. And Miss Edith is rude and jealous but she doesn't tell tales, even when Mummy wants her to.

Drusilla knows who it was, though. There's only three of them here in the tomb, and the witch moves fastest. It won't do to have the little girls fighting, though, so Drusilla had had to lay her down on the floor with all sorts of ribbons and candles tying her to the ground with not even a book for fun while she puts Miss Edith somewhere safe.

But Miss Edith is behaving just as badly, not playing nice and not letting Mummy help her and not understanding that the Willow-witch isn't going anywhere.

"You really shouldn't cry like this," Drusilla croons as she sets Miss Edith on the highest shelf, the one she has to climb three boxes and a ladder to get to, spidering across the wall because having to stay on the ground is boring. "Only bad girls cry. And bad girls have to go straight to bed without any cakes and don't get to play with the new dolls Mummy brings home."

Miss Edith stares back, blinks slowly and doesn't say a word. She's stubborn and cross and wants her cake, but Drusilla's trying to be better about sticking to punishments, now. Wouldn't do to set a bad example for the new baby, after all.

She kisses Miss Edith's nose, her bloody tears. Mummy's still nice, even when her dolls are misbehaving. They have to be very bad for Mummy to be mean.

Drusilla makes sure the ropes of Miss Edith's hammock are secure and jumps to the floor, lands hard enough that her teeth click together over her tongue. She giggles at the quick flash of pain and sticks her fingers in her mouth, feeling gently around the new hole in her tongue.

Her fingers come away covered in blood, and for a moment she wonders at the colour - had the willow-witch really given her so much blood last night?

She blows a kiss to Miss Edith and skips away to the parlour, where her willow-doll is lying nice and quiet with vacant eyes and hands full of wax. She doesn't protest when Drusilla kneels next to her, takes the burning candles and places them gently aside.

"Miss Edith's in time-out now," she says. "Can't have the dollies fighting. You're too smart for that, hm?"

"She was hiding the books from me," the willow-witch pouts, her voice high and tight and slicing through all her veins. "I just wanted to read to her."

"Kind little doll," Drusilla says thoughtfully. "But still disobedient, still fighting. Perhaps magic and a punishment, hm?"

Her little willow-tree has grown so beautifully underground, so pale she shines with it, the only sun Drusilla ever wants to see. She draws magic from somewhere deep under the stones of their home, uses it for tiny shiny things, lighting candles, crafting bells for Drusilla to use when she wants to go out to bring them something new for dessert. She doesn't use it to run away.

She's obedient, in a way Drusilla had forgotten willow-trees could be, obedient even when she isn't asleep or reading aloud in their bed. The willow-tree is a good girl, when she wants to be. She follows Drusilla out of the parlour, the wax still dripping from her hands and the ribbons trailing along behind whispering their own secret songs.

"Come to me, little one," Drusilla murmurs as she sits on their bed. "I'll make your skin sing, just like mine. I'll even leave out the knives."

The willow-witch builds a mountain with her eyebrows, and Drusilla watches them climb up her forehead like prickly little caterpillars waiting for the moon. "And then I get my books back?"

"And tea and cakes and whatever your bloody heart wants from me," Drusilla croons. She draws her little witch closer, brushes away the last of her tears and settles her across her lap, smooths her dress away.

She almost bites. She wants to bite, the skin so pale and inviting like the sweetest of pears on their dessert plates, the ones she used to love. But the song when she spanks her pretty doll is even sweeter, skin on skin crackling like the warmest candle flame, her doll's soft backside glows with the life Drusilla never gets tired of seeing in her.

Her willow-doll is so, so good. She doesn't cry at all while Mummy spanks her, and even kisses her when she gets her books just before sunrise.