The Sick Rose
by Pandarus

17. The beginning

"I'm back, kitten. I brought you a snack."

He closed the door softly and paused for a moment on the threshold to pull a hipflask from his back pocket. The sting of slivovice on his lips was too familiar. Ineffectual. While he stood in the hallway Spike clung to the belief that she might breeze through the archway from the bedroom at any moment, her cheeks flushed with borrowed life and the tang of fresh blood metallic on her tongue when she kissed him hello. The vision faded further with each unsteady step towards the bedroom, and when he reached the archway it vanished altogether, leaving him trapped in this miserable reality.

She looked better than she had done. Blood had helped; it always did. But it hadn't been enough. Fat foreign tourists, unripe local virgins, whimpering infants with milk still on their lips - he had tried everything and none of it had been enough to effect a proper cure. She was Dru, and yet not Dru. Some days were better than others. He had to believe she was improving. She had shown a faint interest in Miss Edith and had seemed to recognise the little painted eggs that she had been carrying around since Easter, and this had given him hope. When he returned to the house the day before he found that she had crushed the coloured shells into rainbow-bright powder, and was crying with childlike incomprehension. Sometimes he despaired.

"We've got to get out of town, princess," he said, helping her to sit up. She smiled at him with a blankness that broke his heart into ever tinier pieces, and let him tuck a clean towel tenderly into the collar of her nightgown. "You need your game face, love." He didn't want to have to hit her again to bring it on, and he was inexpressibly relieved when this time she remembered what to do. He pulled a pack of blood from his pocket and passed it to her. Watched her frown with concentration as she bit through the plastic and sucked the dead blood down. It would have to do for now. He stroked her dark hair cautiously, reassured to feel it softer and thicker than it had been, and tried not to think about anything but her restoration.

Prague's demon population was still a-buzz with the news of the witches' defeat, but Spike hadn't the heart to swagger around town. He had scoured the city for Mrs Gwendolyn Post, but she had pulled a very effective vanishing act. Bitch. Spike wasn't unduly worried, though; he had an eternity to think about vengeance. He wasn't getting any older, after all. In the meanwhile he was aware that the city was growing more dangerous as the witches regrouped and pulled in favours from other humans in Plzen and Brno and Vienna; and he had heard a rumour this evening that the Watchers' Council were on his tail. Turning that little Watcher Martina Whatsername really hadn't gone down well at all.

Time to find somewhere safe, where Drusilla could recover in peace; and tonight the Metamorphosis's Kankanath bartender had suggested the very place.

"We're going to Sunnydale, sweetheart," he said, stroking her shoulder through the thin fabric. "Going to find you a cure at the Hellmouth they've got there. You're going to be all better, baby. Spike will see to it."