Nelly Furtado - Spirit Indestructible http://youtu.be/ej3SmDScjjY

As Spike fell to the ground, Buffy’s mind whirled and her throat tightened as she looked into the eyes of the woman now standing directly in front of her. The woman she thought Spike had been kissing or killing. A very familiar woman. Linda? No. Lily? No. Lydia … Yes! Lydia. A fucking Watcher!

Buffy only hesitated a second before she swung her make-shift stake right at Lydia’s throat. The woman was surprisingly fast for a Watcher. Buffy’s moment of hesitation allowed her to block the Slayer’s blow with her forearm. Blood flew from where the jagged wood stabbed into Lydia’s arm, and Buffy instinctively knew she could take her out easily in just a few more seconds, but the large number of shapes approaching in her peripheral vision told the Slayer didn’t have any more seconds.

Buffy reached down and hauled Spike up by one arm, draping it over her shoulders, and began dragging him away as quickly as she could. At the same time she began screaming at the top of her lungs for help. Even during the slowest times, the casino had lots of security guards – she just needed to get their attention and …

**~**

BuffyBot frowned down at the noise on the street far below as she waited for Buffy and Spike to return. People were yelling – too many to make out just what they were saying.

She used her enhanced optics to zoom-in on the street below her so she could see what was happening more clearly. A group of about a dozen people, men and women alike, were running toward some vehicles parked in a service area behind the building. Most of them were carrying weapons of one sort or another, everything from stun guns, to pistols, to crossbows. She continued to watch as the people with weapons formed a perimeter around two cars and a large truck, then two men carrying a limp body followed quickly on their heels. The Bot frowned in confusion and focused in closer on the blonde that was being carried. It was the Other Slayer.

She tilted her head back and forth, still watching the street below, while scanning her memory to try and find some context for this scenario that she was familiar with. Nothing came to mind immediately, but she was certain that this was not a game. Spike had told the Bot not to let anyone harm or take Buffy – that instruction had never been countermanded – she needed to stop them.

The Bot immediately calculated the distance from their thirtieth story balcony to the street below and her chances of surviving the leap and remain undamaged enough to still function: 27,893,009 to 1. Then she calculated how long it would take her to ride the elevator down, and how long it would take to sprint down the stairs.

As she ran the possible courses of action through her microprocessors, the two men carrying Buffy tossed her unmoving form into the back of the large, square truck, then climbed into the cab. Someone fired a gun toward the door where they had all exited the casino, then the rest of the people scrambled into the two cars near the truck. Within seconds all three vehicles sped out of the service area, turned onto the main road, and moved away quickly in the light, pre-dawn traffic. Obviously neither option, stairs or elevator, would be fast enough now.

The Bot stood and waited for Spike to come out of the door below, but he never appeared. Men with guns came out of the casino after a few moments, all talking loudly and quickly, but no more shots were fired. The Bot kept waiting, but Spike never emerged from the hotel into the alley.

“I must find the Evil Dead and tell him what I have observed. He will know how to proceed,” the Bot decided as she turned on her heel and strode out of the room.

**~**

Buffy’s head throbbed with the steady beat of an enormous, demonic base drum. Her eyes felt like they might pop right out of their sockets with each thunderous strike, and she was fairly certain her brain would turn to mush soon – that was assuming it hadn’t already. She tried to reach up to her head to find the volume control, but her hand wouldn’t move – neither would the other one.  She carefully, and very slowly, cracked one eye open to try and see where she was as she tried to remember what had happened.

The first thing she saw was her right hand in a shackle. The heavy shackle was attached by a thick chain to a steel wall.

Luckily there wasn’t much light wherever she was – she didn’t think her eyes could handle a barrage of anything stronger than candlelight. She bravely opened both eyes, blinking them against the throbbing pain which she now realized originated between her shoulder blades. She slowly came to the other realization that the heavy beat that carried the agony to her brain and down her spine was her heartbeat. Great. Hard to shut that off.

She slowly turned her head the other way, which made her vision swim and her stomach roil in protest. She stopped and closed her eyes again until things calmed back down, then continued her perusal of her situation.

Her left arm was shackled the same as her right, and her feet were similarly immobilized. She realized she was laying flat on her back, spread-eagled on the floor of some sort of metal box. No, wait … a metal box with windows and a door and … shit. She gently settled her head back down onto the floor as her heartbeat and, therefore, the pulsing jackhammer in her head, sped up. It was the back of an armored truck. A rush of déjà vu swept over her: the Council’s Wet Works team had her … again.

She tried to remember what exactly had happened back at the casino, but the last thing she could remember was trying to get the attention of the security people as she dragged Spike …

Spike.

Where was Spike?

Buffy’s eyes flashed open, a painful move that sent burning hot daggers of agony stabbing in through her retinas. She blinked the pain back desperately, then scanned the area around her again through squinted eyes. Spike wasn’t there. Had he gotten away?

“Yes, Buffy, of course they caught you but he – who had already been drugged or injured and couldn’t walk – got away,” she chided herself aloud. The sound of her own voice sent more shards of pain into her brain through her ears and she winced.

“Didn’t think you’d ever wake up, toots,” a scornful male voice said from somewhere behind Buffy’s head.  She flinched again, realizing the sound must be coming from the cab of the truck through some kind of mesh opening between the compartments.

“Where’s Spike?” Buffy asked immediately. Ignoring the pain radiating through her head and body, she pulled as much as she was able on her chained arms and legs, testing the shackles. They held strong.

The man snorted disdainfully. “The vampire? Where do you think? Stuck to the bottom o’ our bloody shoes. Lydia had her fun with him, but his usefulness was over. Once you catch your quarry, ya don't really need the bait anymore.”

Buffy’s whole body shuddered and recoiled at the words. Hot tears burst from her eyes, burning as if formed from acid. “No … no … you didn’t need to…”

“I guess they were right about you,” the man said condescendingly, cutting her off. “A Slayer protecting a vampire – how bloody twisted is that? And they say I’m a sick bastard. At least I don’t protect the undead … or fuck them. You, on the other hand, aren’t dead yet. What do ya say, toots? We’ve got some time to kill. How ‘bout I show you a good time? Let you see what a real man feels like? I can make it good for you.”

“Touch me and die,” Buffy snarled, yanking harder at her chains. The pounding pain morphed back into stabbing agony shooting down her limbs and up into her brain when she did that, but she continued thrashing wildly. Her tears were still falling in waves even as her fury built. But, after several exhausting, painful minutes, the anger was replaced with genuine fear when she realized that the Council’s Wet Works/Retrieval team would not be making the same mistakes twice. She’d escaped them once before when Faith did her little body swap, but they had learned. She wasn’t getting out of this, at least not while she was chained inside this fucking armored truck.

The man laughed at her. The sound grated on her eardrums and sent a shudder of repulsion down her spine. She wasn’t sure of his name – Weathers maybe? – she recognized his voice from before, but hadn’t stuck around for formal introductions. She wondered just how sick a bastard he was; she was afraid she might soon find out.

Buffy continued to struggle against the shackles until her wrists and ankles were horribly bruised, and deep, painful cuts bloodied the floor of the armored car. Before long, the muscles of her arms and legs began to cramp from the strain of her battle against the immovable restraints. Her muscles felt like they were being wrenched from her bones as Charlie Horses galloped through her body in protest of the futile exertion she'd demanded. Buffy had no choice but to stop thrashing and try to relax her traitorous muscles – the pain of the cramps was just too much. As exhaustion closed in on her, the one thing that she’d not allowed herself to focus on flooded her mind: Spike was gone.

She fought against the tears that continued to fall, not wanting her captors to see any weakness, but it was an exercise in futility. When her body could do no more, her emotions took over and wracked her with a hopeless, desperate sadness that had become all too familiar to her of late. She’d felt it when her mom died, she’d felt it when Dawn died, and now that bone-deep, sub-arctic chill was back with a vengeance. A new guilt was added to her overwrought psyche: she’d cost another person she loved their life. Spike was gone.

“God, Spike…” she whispered through her tears. “I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.”

Buffy felt the guilt of it bearing down on her, adding its weight to all the rest, and she just let it fall. She didn’t even try to reach out for her anchor. Her anchor was a pile of dust being trampled and ground into the short pile of a gaudy, industrial carpet in a Las Vegas casino. She found it hard to care about anything else, impossible to focus on anything else. Her mind blanked, shut down; nothing else seemed to matter at that moment, not herself, not even Dawn. Spike was gone.

She was so very, very tired. She couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t fight anymore; couldn’t do anything but fall into the bloody river and sink like a stone to the bottom. She watched the bloodstained shroud flow down over her and prayed that it would drown her. She was done. She just wanted it to end, wanted everything to end. So, very, very tired… Can we rest now?

**~**

Buffy fell into a dazed stupor, and finally her mind completely shut down, retreating into fitful sleep. She woke when the door to her improvised, armored cell opened with a thunderous clang. She groggily blinked the crusty tears from her eyes to try and see what had made the noise. She tried to remember where she was to no avail. She then tried to remember when it was or who the man was who was standing over her, but the best she could do was remember who she was – and she wasn’t entirely certain about that.

“Well, we’re all loaded up on the cargo plane and headed back to the mother country. Looks like you and me got about ten hours to kill, sweet cheeks,” the man said as he pulled the door closed behind him. “Whatever could we do to fill the time?” he asked sarcastically as he bent over her prone form.

The man had a gaunt, almost skeletal face, with coal-black, sunken eyes, and a hard, angry mouth. While two or three days of stubble might make some guys look sexy and mysterious, it only made this man look like he’d been on a bender, and his 100-proof breath did nothing to assuage that notion. His thinning, dark hair was badly in need of trim … and a serious degreasing.

Buffy stared at him blankly from the floor of the metal box she was chained to, unable to comprehend his words or even try. She could barely make out his features through the veil of blood that soaked her mind – nothing could penetrate the flood of utter defeat that she was drowning in.

Spike had once told her that every Slayer had a death wish – they wished for the fight to be over. Buffy didn’t even have the ability to wish that any longer. The fight had drained out of her, leaving nothing but an empty shell that used to be the Slayer. Apparently, her spirit wasn’t so indestructible, after all.

“Gone mute on me, have you?” he continued talking as he reached down with both hands and ripped the front of her shirt open, sending buttons flying in all directions.

Buffy still didn’t react; she simply continued to stare at him with dull, empty eyes.

The man pushed her bra up, exposing her breasts, and leered at her, licking his lips. “Nice tits,” he offered as he groped them roughly. “Oh yeah, bit small, but nice and firm … Mmm,mmm … hope that cunt of yours is just as tight,” he continued as he moved his hand down and began to unbutton her jeans.

“Never fucked a Slayer before – never caught one alive before – well except for that Faith-chit. She scampered off ‘fore she could have the pleasure of my company. Unlike you, I draw the line at screwing dead things. Always wondered … does that Slayer healing grow your cherry back? I’d love to pop you over and over again … all the way to London.” 

Weatherby, the leader of the Council’s Wet Works/Retrieval team, yanked Buffy’s jeans down her hips, but with her legs shackled wide apart, he couldn’t get them down enough to do more than see her dark curls.

He took the opportunity to shove a finger between her folds and thrust it into her dry channel. Buffy didn’t react at all to the painful invasion; she remained still, silent, and unblinking.

“Bet you’ll scream when I shove my hard cock up there, toots. Never did like a girl who didn’t scream – never met a girl I couldn’t make scream,” he bragged as he moved to the shackle on her right ankle. He pulled out his keys and very cautiously unlocked it. With her foot out of the restraint, he shoved her jeans down to her ankles and off the free foot.

“You’re wanting this, aren’t you?” he asked with a lecherous grin when she didn’t fight him at all. He didn’t bother locking her leg back into the shackle – it’d be easier to fuck her with it free. “Probably never had a real man before, have you little Slayer-girl?” he asked as he began unhooking his belt. “Well we’ve got plenty of time to get you well acquainted with the feel of it. You won’t want to go back to dead meat after you’ve had mine.”

Buffy blinked up at him unseeingly; her eyes dull, face slack, and body limp with defeat and the ultimate surrender. Slowly, the red river that was finally, thankfully drowning her, faded to black.

**~**