I would have been her anything, her everything. Anything she wanted. Anything she needed. Man, woman. But she couldn't...she could only be one thing. Mortal. Bloody. Dying. Dead.

No one for me, no one for poor little Dru. No Spike to run back to, no Spike to forgive me. No Faith to love. No chaos demon to make anyone jealous. No one to make jealous.. no one to love me...no one to dance with.

Hang it up, hang it up, let it drift off: sound of static in the wind, sounds of night in the day. Hot sun washing over my shoulders, exquisite burn. Come inside just when it starts to curl the skin.

Night, club, music, dance. Names to learn, names to whisper, names to scream. Leave the bodies in the hotel room, leave before dawn. A trail if anyone's looking. Pray someone finds me. Run away, but always, always return.

I smelled her when I walked into town, a familiar smell. It was always on my little china girl's mouth and quim. Faintly...but here it was strong, potent, and edged with disease. A dizzying smell. I had to dance around it for days, getting used to it. Slowly, slowly, I crept up on it, walked right into the hospital where she was.

Silence in those cold, sterile halls; I can hear the echoes of those who had known me before I was his. Black death, they called me, Beautiful demon. Dozens of languages, but the words were always the same. I was going to prove them right again. I could feel the blood of the centuries inside me, but hers most of all. I am Faith, I whispered deliriously. I am Faith and I am Drusilla, and I am coming for you.

Small tan body in the hospital bed, sunshine girl. I can smell the scent of rotting lavender around her, stale vanilla. Too ripe, too old. Girls like her, Slayer girls, not meant to live this long. I knew a Slayer girl once. Someone changed her and she drifted around, torn between two impulses. Starved to death, probably, poor thing. Faith wouldn't have been like that. She was hungry.

"Faith?"

Don't even have to try hard, she sees what she wants to see. I sidle up to the side of the bed and look down at her thin, shadowed face. Just like Faith's, hollow and empty.

"This is weird, huh?" she says bitterly. "Turn of the old tables."

"I missed you." My little girl missed you, she always did. You got there first.

"I missed you too." Coughs. Thin body shakes with it. I love the feel of human disease, the too ripe, rotten scent of it. "I'm sick. Something about the Slayer thing...my metabolism."

Her hands squeeze mine weakly when I slide my hand into hers. She doesn't protest when I climb up into the bed, my body half on top of hers. I'm crying. Faith is crying. I'm all mixed up, can't remember anymore who I am, who I'm crying for.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "For everything." She closes her eyes and I can see her thoughts, the cold smooth knife sliding into my Faith's stomach. Pain. One of her hands drifts up and strokes my hair. "Do you remember that night? I did want it to happen...I lied."

"Faith loved you." All those nights when Faith looked up at me with that slight disappointment in her eyes, like a cold wind. She looks confused, but I lean down and brush my lips across hers, sighing at the touch of her soft, kittenish tongue.

"You're cold..."

"Shhh..." She wraps her arms around me and I slide my hand around her neck and start to squeeze, not stopping until I feel her body go slack beneath me. I place one last kiss on her cooling lips and rise up, testing my steps on the wavering floor of the hospital room. I think...

Arms lifting, feet floating, eyes closed as the music caresses me.

I can dance again.