DISCLAIMER: Considering I never saw Lindsey or Penn before (and haven't so
far, I'm on S4 repeats), it'd be safe to assume that they aren't mine.
SUMMARY: PG-13. Set in the Wishverse. Lindsey needs power. Drusilla needs
stability. And Wolfram & Hart needs them both.
WORDCOUNT: 2154
THANKYOU: To Jewels and Laura for the quick beta. Love you!
Written for the Dru ficathon
Anti-Canon Runner-Up and Vamp Winner at The Dark Awards, Sexy Stud (Lindsey) at The Potential Awards
SYMBIOSIS
by Leni
It’d been an exciting night. Lindsey McDonald didn’t court Death often, but the
woman was simply irresistible and she knew it all too well. Her frail figure, languid
looks and the innocently wrong smile, which often crossed her lips reminded him of what
he’d once wanted to protect.
Until he was corrupted too.
He got up from the bed, tossing the sheets to one side and stood up. “It’s
late,” was his only comment as the body beside him stirred.
Willow watched him dress. “So you’ll really do it?”
Lindsey smiled. “Of course. That’s what I came for,” he answered seriously.
“My job…”
“All work and no play…” Willow sing-songed.
Lindsey threw her a smirk over his shoulder. “But I did play, didn’t
I?”
But she was already admiring her nails. “She’ll be your death, you know?”
the redhead told him conversationally as she rummaged through her nightstand for some nail
polish.
“Funny, that’s what Lilah said when I came to your room,” Lindsey chuckled.
His brunette partner had indeed warned him, but he’d countered with the knowledge
that if Willow wished him harm, she’d do it anyway. Why not have some fun while she
made up her mind?
“Funny indeed.” Willow considered between the pale blue and the grass-green tiny
bottles. She finally smiled, choosing the blue one. “Especially because she went with
Xander…”
“She did?” He was just in the process of pulling on his undershirt, so the next
words came out muffled by the cloth. “How do you know?”
“You were sleeping... I was so bored.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I like
to see my boy in action and he wanted to watch me play too. Lilah’s a very pretty
girl…” A devious smile played across her lips. “I wonder though, do all
lawyers taste the same?”
Lindsey stared hard into the mirror as he knotted his tie. “You killed her?” he
asked tightly.
“The Master told us to choose.” She blew carefully over her wet nails. “Oh
Lindsey, you always knew that one of you wouldn’t leave Sunnydale.”
Lindsey nodded. It was true. When Wolfram & Hart sent them here, both had understood
that only one would come back to become a Junior Partner. “Will you kill me
too?”
Willow grinned. “I tried to convince the Master, but he and your company have a
deal.” A pout came to her lips. “He can be so very boring sometimes… I bet
you’d make a good addition to our little family.”
Lindsey didn’t offer an answer to the obvious invitation under the pretext of looking
for his socks. “But you make your own rules, Miss Rosenberg, and we both know
it.” He rescued his shoes from under her dresser. “Why am I really alive?”
“Mom used to make tomato soup. Both Xander and I hated it…”
Lindsey bent down to tie his shoelaces and rolled his eyes outside the vampiress’
sight.
“We used to play a game to see who’d eat both plates.” She moved her hands
in a quick sequence which Lindsey instantly recognized as scissors, paper and stone.
Willow shrugged. “I lost.”
If Lindsey’s hands shook a little when he shrugged his coat on, his face certainly
didn’t betray it. He headed to the door, but the redhead’s voice interrupted
him. “What if she isn’t what they want anymore?”
He was the one to shrug this time. “She’ll have to be.”
Willow shook her head as if she was talking to a slow child. “You don’t
understand. Drusilla is not as sane as before, and that’s saying a lot. She’ll
probably be a waste of time for your Senior Partners, and you’ll pay for every second
of it.”
It was a possibility, but in his line of work he faced the potential ire of his bosses
everyday. “You got a suggestion?”
She winked. “Take me.”
Lindsey laughed. “I thought you were loyal to the Master?”
Willow rolled her eyes and yawned. “Sunnydale is so… tiny. L.A, now that’d
be different.”
Lindsey cocked an eyebrow. At least now he knew why he was alive, she had believed that
she could convince him. Any other day, with no promise of this promotion, she may have
done it. “I thought you and Xander were close. Would you really leave him?”
Willow glanced up sharply, then smirked secretively. “The question is, would he ever
leave me?”
“Of course not, he loves you too much,” he chuckled. “But we know what
happens to the vampires who love too much under this roof…”
This time Willow didn’t laugh and let him go with no other word.
----
The assignment the Senior Partners had given them was simple enough.
Go to Sunnydale, enter Nest’s coven and extract his favourite seer, Drusilla. She was
known to be one of the strongest in that field, and they couldn’t forget her
connection to the prophecies. Prophecies which happened to erase themselves, and the
Senior Partners didn’t know the cause for the chaos that it was causing. In exchange
the 'Master’ would receive enough information to bring his most powerful enemy down.
After all, Mayor Wilkins had decided to ignore their services for the last decades.
The deal had gone smoothly and now, three days after they arrived to the vampire-infested
town, Lindsey McDonald was the only one left to bring the dark-haired seer back to L.A..
“Will you go willingly?”
The woman on the balcony nodded.
Lindsey offered his arm to escort her downstairs, where the celebrations were being
prepared. But instead Drusilla trapped his hand in hers. “But first I need a
favour,” she whispered.
His eyebrows furrowed. This wasn’t part of the plan. “What is it?” he asked
cautiously.
She pointed to a man downstairs.
Lindsey actually recognized him. The new-comer went by the name of Penn. From his research
about the Californian elite vampires, Penn traveled around the world, only stopping at the
Sunnydale court once every year to ‘pay his respects’. It was his duty,
especially because he’d become the Master’s favourite after Darla had been
killed in the early days of his reign. But what had surprised Lindsey the most was the
fact that Penn’s trail was always so easy to follow, the mark on his victims
unmistakable. Most vampires took major troubles to avoid that, but he seemed to revel in
it.
By now Drusilla’s eyes had turned golden, bright with vengeance and fury. Lindsey
believed to know the reason for that too.
Months ago, when Drusilla and her companion had first arrived to Sunnydale, William the
Bloody – or Spike, as he’d called himself later – had been quick to
displease the Master. It hadn’t been long before Heinrich ordered Penn to execute the
younger vampire.
Rumour was that Drusilla had pleaded with her lover to leave, but Spike had refused to go
until his petition was granted. No records stated what that petition was about, but last
night Willow had confided it in him. “Spike wanted what was mine,” she had
murmured with anger still tainting her voice, even after so much time. “But I
wouldn’t give him up. Had he trapped him? Had he trained him? Of course not! Then why
would he have him?”
A spell, Lindsey finally gathered, one to strengthen Spike’s lady. In the end, aware
of Drusilla’s weakness and afraid to lose his seer, Nest himself had performed it.
“But I interrupted their party,” Willow told him proudly, “Cost me weeks in
the dungeon and this.” She lifted her shirt to show a nasty scar on her side. Lindsey
didn’t even want to think about what could have happened to make a vampire scar so
deeply. “But I got Puppy back.”
“Should have never let you go,” Xander had muttered angrily from beside the
redhead. Willow had just scowled and threw him a look that clearly said that he had never
had any say in the matter at all.
The couple also told him about the aftermath of Spike’s execution. It had been…
enlightening. Apparently Drusilla had cursed every vampire in attendance. Death by
sunshine had been her sentence on them. Everybody had laughed at her then, which vampire
in Sunnydale would ever come close to the sun when they owned the night?
Back to the present, Lindsey studied the strength in Drusilla’s blue eyes and made
his decision. “Do you want Penn dead?” It wasn’t planned, but he was sure
that if the Senior Partners had doomed a future pure-demon for this seer, then they surely
would send a team after Penn for their newest acquisition.
“Dead? Of course not.” The smile that was born on her lips made Lindsey steel
himself not to betray his nerves. “Little Red has her puppy…" She turned
around to glare at Penn who was now mingling between the other vampires. Lindsey knew he
didn't want to ever be on the receiving end of that look. "Now I want one for
myself,” she finished.
Lindsey nodded. That could be arranged too. “Done.”
Drusilla grinned. “Alright.” She took his arm and led him downstairs. “We
have to leave now.”
“Now?” The Master had invited them to the party tonight. It would be
extraordinaire, he had said, the biggest vampire celebration a human had ever witnessed
and lived to tell. “We should stay…”
Drusilla shook her head. “Oh, but there won’t be anything to stay for,” she
said enigmatically.
Lindsey remembered the vampire’s gift and immediately nodded his assent.
They were gone long before anyone could notice them slipping away.
---
He hadn’t found his driver at his designated post, and the blood traces around the
limo led Lindsey to the conclusion that he’d have to drive himself.
“Why didn’t you warn the Master?” Lindsey asked through the screen that
separated the driver’s compartment from the one which Drusilla was currently
investigating.
Drusilla shrugged as she flicked the different lights on and off intermittently. “He
treated my boys with no mercy. There shall be no mercy for him either.”
But Lindsey still didn’t know what the vampiress had foreseen. What could be strong
enough to defeat one of the most powerful vampires on Earth? It surely couldn’t be
Richard Wilkins; Wolfram & Hart had kept close tabs on him for the past few months. He
couldn’t help his curiosity, and finally he asked, “What is it? What’s the
danger?”
“Sunshine, of course,” Drusilla answered ominously.
His eyes rolled and he sighed. Sunshine. Yeah. Right. If he hadn’t been sure about
how Drusilla’s presence would tip the balance of his future, now he was. Willow had
been right, he should have brought her instead.
“Yes,” she continued, not minding his attitude, “She doesn’t shine so
brightly anymore, but scratch a little and she’ll be all golden again. Shame we
won’t see it, I’d love the spectacle.”
Lindsey didn’t answer.
---
Three days later Lindsey discovered Buffy Summers’ picture at the bottom of the late
Heinrich Nest’s file. Her blonde hair gave him hope that maybe, just maybe, Drusilla
wasn’t the wild card he’d believed her to be.
A week later the Senior Partners sent a mind-reader to his office for the final exam. It
wasn’t official, not yet, but he still opened a bottle of champagne and his
secretary’s eyebrows shot upwards when she caught him whistling on his way out.
By the next weekend he had moved the necessary cabinets and files to his new office. The
first thing he did on his designed desk-chair was to dictate to Miss White a formal letter
asking for Penn’s custody.
---
A grinning Drusilla visited his office some days later. He wasn’t even startled when
he found a mummified finger on the little alabaster box she’d brought to show her
gratitude. But he did smile when he recognized the mark tattooed on the digit -
Penn’s digit. Lindsey watched the vampire examine the room with the same care as she
had examined the limousine before. Indeed, revenge was a meal best served cold.
“You kept your promise,” the brunette began when she finished her inspection.
“Good boy… My Spike was a good boy too.”
Her eyes were fixed on him and Lindsey didn’t need more words to know what she
intended. He shook his head but she ignored him “So many goals in your head, so much
ambition in your heart,” Drusilla smiled patronizingly at him. “A single
lifetime cannot possibly be enough.”
Lindsey smiled to himself; she was completely right. But he was careful to keep his face
expressionless.
Her finger pointed upwards. “They wouldn’t mind.” She stalked towards him
and ran that same finger over his cheeks. “Such a pretty boy, how could they possibly
mind to keep you forever? I could…”
“No,” he interrupted her softly. He could feel her eyes probing deep within his
self. Finally she smirked slowly, walking confidently back to the office door.
“I’ll convince you,” she pronounced before leaving the room.
Lindsey smiled again.
Of course she would.
The End
01/04/04
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