Season 5. Begins with
‘Spiral’ in the abandoned gas station, and goes far off-canon almost
immediately.
When Dawn makes the ultimate
sacrifice to save her sister, friends, and the world, Buffy’s mind
snaps. When Buffy's friends give up hope of her ever recovering, and become
afraid that she’ll turn violent and uncontrollable, they call in the Council to help.
Fearing what the Council will do, Spike, forgotten and ignored by her
friends, steps in. Will he be able to reach the Slayer when no one else could?
Will he be able to keep her out of the hands of the Council and away
from her ‘helpful’ friends? How much heartbreak, guilt, and failure can
one girl stand before her indestructible spirit finally resigns the
fight and gives up hope?
Chapter:
12. Fade to Black
Notes:
Sorry this is
another
a short chapter. Trying to give my wonderful beta reader, PaganBaby, a
little time to catch up with my posting schedule.
Thanks to
YOU for reading and to Paganbaby for taking time out of her hectic life to beta this for me!
Her suggestions and commentary that always makes me smile! All mistakes
are mine because I can't stop fiddling right up to the last moment.
Rating / Warnings:
Warning for this chapter: There is the beginning of a rape scene here
before it all fades to black.
NC17.
Spike/Other.
Main Character Death. Implied Rape. Plenty of angst.
Content is only suitable for mature adults.
Contains explicit language, sex, adult themes, and other adult situations that
some people may find objectionable. If you are under the age of 17 or
find any of these themes objectionable – GO AWAY.
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.
**~**
Fade to Black, Metallica
Life, it seems, will
fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters, no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free
Things not what they used to be
Missing one inside of me
Deathly lost, this can't be real
Can't stand this hell I feel
Emptiness is filling me
To the point of agony
Growing darkness taking dawn
I was me, but now he's gone
No one but me can save myself, but it's too late
Now I can't think, think why I should even try
Yesterday seems as though it never existed
Death greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye, *Goodbye*
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