Warning: violence, disturbing content, implied rape.

SPIKE: It was an accident. It just happened.
BUFFY: Nothing just happens!
        Dead Things
 

    “Don’t do this,” Buffy told him.

    They were back in the kitchenette. Spike had pretty much ignored her as she got herself dressed, and he finished up the candles and caught up the blanket and wine glasses. She’d demanded details as she followed him down the stairs, and she didn’t like them when she got them.

    She was to be tied up, raped by Drusilla’s blood doll, and fed from by both of them. For starters. It was appalling. It was horrifying. It was completely evil. And Buffy hated herself for not expecting it.

    She still had hope that she could talk him out of it. A hope that was growing smaller by the second.

    Spike looked at her, suspicion in his face. “You said you’d do anything I wanted you to do.”

    Buffy swallowed, and steeled herself. “I will,” she said evenly. “But you don’t want me to do this.”

    Spike cocked his head, but it was scorn, not wonder. “Oh, really. And you know me so well, you know what I want in this.”

    “Yes,” Buffy said.

    Spike lunged forward and grabbed her by the hair. “What makes you think I don’t want this?” he hissed into her face.

    It hurt, and tears stabbed her eyes, she hoped only from the pain. He was gone, he was almost completely gone. The man who had curled up to be comforted the night before, the man who had spent the early part of that evening preparing a romantic evening straight out of a cheesy movie, the easy companion who watched melodramatic supernatural soap operas and would rather brush her hair or rub her back than shag her senseless, he had all but disappeared.“You like to own,” she said, reaching for a logic she thought he could understand. “I’m supposed to be yours.”

    “You are mine,” Spike growled. “I can only give away that which is mine.”

    Buffy choked on a sob and sagged under his punishing grip. “You can fuck me,” she said to him. “You can beat me, chain me, bite me, even kill me, for crying out loud, use me for whatever pleasure you like, but if you hand me over to this man for one of Dru’s games, you will regret it.”

    “You think you’re going to make me regret it?” Spike asked.

    “I didn’t say anything about me,” Buffy told him. “I can’t make you do anything, not like this.” Contempt for her current form poisoned her words. God she wished she could be a slayer again! Spike let go her hair, and she gasped with relief. Sarah’s pitiful body wanted to run from him, but she knew how that would play out. Forcing herself to remember him as he was – or as he would be – she pushed herself to her feet and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Please, Spike,” she said. She lay her head on his chest. “You don’t want me to do this. If you make me do this, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

    Spike did not push her away, but he didn’t embrace her, either. “You think I’m suddenly going to grow a conscience?”

    “I didn’t say that,” Buffy said. She looked up at him, unable to hide the tears in her eyes. “I can handle Dru touching me, because you love her. And I want you to touch me, because I do love you. But I do not want that killer anywhere near me. Please. Please don’t make me bow under him, feel him violating me, please.” She choked. “Please!” she whispered.

    There was a long silence. “Dru gets what she wants,” Spike said.

    Buffy felt like she was talking to the wall. “Well, what do you want, Spike? You, just you. What is it that you want? To fight, to kill, to feed, to torture? Is that all of it? Because if that’s all of it, then why even stay with Dru? Why take me on? Why try to make me happy? Why aren’t you like those boys in the corridor, alone, empty, brutal?” She grabbed his jaw and made him look at her. “You can’t want this, I know you don’t. Stand up! Don’t just fall under the evil, think about it!”

    “I am thinking about it,” Spike said.

    “Then let this go!”

    He tensed. “It’s Drusilla.”

    “And that’s a cop out. It’s her idea, but you’re doing it as much as she is! Is this what you want?”

    “It’s Drusilla,” he said again. “I owe her. You can’t understand. She is everything. She is love, life, passion, everything. Do you hear me? I adore her.”

    “So adore her some other way!”

    “I can’t,” he snarled. “I will give Drusilla everything, my life, my heart, my blood. I will always – always – give her what she wants.”

    Buffy almost screamed with frustration. She knew they wouldn’t survive this. Even if she made it back, if Spike did this thing to her... if he ever found out... No. He’d find out. She couldn’t keep it a secret if she got back, and the whole thing would destroy them. Lock her up, chain her, drink from her, hurt her, share her with Drusilla, all of that and she could endure it, she could treat it as a game, forget she couldn’t say no. She could blame the demon, dismiss it as the evil itself, not him. She could forgive him for all that. He could forgive himself for that. But to tie her up to be raped by a human child killer...? No. If this happened, all they had been through, all they had fought for, their passion and their trust, his soul and his sacrifice, her acceptance, and their love, all of that would die. She would hate him, and he’d hate himself, and there could be no forgiveness. It would all end. She buried her head in her hands.

    “But that’s not actually you,” he said then.

    “What?” Buffy looked up.

    Spike gazed down at her, and then kissed her cheeks, twice, once under each eye, catching her tears as they fell. “It’s all right,” he said. “You really don’t want to?”

    “No. God, no.”

    “All right then, pet. I don’t have to give you to him.”

    She swallowed, hope glimmering. “Really?”

    “Yeah, it’ll be fine. I’ll just go out and get another girl.”

    Buffy blinked. “What?”

    “You don’t want to do it, I’ll pick up someone else. Someone random, Dru’s probably not picky. It makes sense, there’s really not much blood in you, little bit. How’s that?” He actually smiled. “Feel better about it?”

    She could tell he thought this was a kindly and generous offer. He really, really didn’t get it. At all. Buffy felt as if she were burning from the inside out. Rage ripped through her, and she slapped him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she demanded.

    He looked bewildered. “Hey, it leaves you off the hook.”

     “How can you say that!” she screamed at him. “That doesn’t leave me off the hook, it makes me into a monster, as surely as if you’d gone and turned me. Make it my choice whether you let him rape me, or go and slaughter some innocent girl? That is completely sick! Just tell Dru no! Just let her sulk, let her scream, let her rage, it doesn’t fucking matter! What are you, her fucking thrall?”

    “Now you wait–” he snarled.

    “Wait, hell, you know what you’re doing. You’ve got to. If you want to kill me, kill me. Because that’s what you’ll be doing, if you do this. You’ll kill me, you’ll kill this, you’ll kill everything between us, and if that doesn’t matter to you, then do it clean!”

    “Fine then, I won’t,” he said. “Just quit bitching and do what I say. It won’t be so bad. He won’t hurt you. I’d see to it.”

    “Fuck you, there are ways and ways of hurting, and you already know it, you bastard! You wouldn’t be trying to torment me with making an impossible choice if you didn’t. If you want to break me, break me. If you want to kill me, kill me. If you want to hand me over to the two of them to be raped, then do it, but that’s what you’re doing, and it’s nothing to do with me! And you can’t blame them for it, either, because you’ll have done it, as surely as if the whole sick game was your vile idea.”

    “You don’t get a say–” he began.

    “Well, what about you?” Buffy yelled. “Do you get a say in what you do?”

    “Of course I do.”

    “Then think about what the hell that is. If you’re ready to end this, then end it, and good fucking riddance to you, and to me, and to this sick, soulless, impossible helltrip!” She hit him again, as hard as she could, and it hurt her hand, and she didn’t care. “God I wish I was home! Just kill me already!” she demanded. “If this is what you do with love, you don’t deserve it. And I don’t deserve it, either. No one could deserve this shit. I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve you, good or bad. I don’t care how many inner demons you or I have to contend with, I can’t take this! I should burn, I should die, heaven, hell, it doesn’t even matter anymore, it’s fucking over!” She hit him. “I take you to bed, and I try to find you inside the demon, and it doesn’t fucking matter, because there’s nothing left in you! There is no heart in you! I was insane to think there was. Just kill me! Do it! Kill me!” She hit him over and over and over, pushing him back against the wall, and her hand went numb with the pain, and it didn’t even matter. She was done.

    She already wasn’t sure if she could forgive him for this.

    Spike grabbed her, held her, glared down at her. “I am not ready to kill you yet!”

    “You already have!” Buffy yelled at him. “Even by offering me that sadistic choice, you’ve killed everything you know of as me. It’s not just cruel, it’s insane! You knew I couldn’t do it. If you didn’t, you weren’t paying any attention. Just fucking kill me! ” She tried to struggle out of his grip. “Or I’ll do it myself. Let me go, I’ll go to Dru, or your boys out there, just let them rend me limb from limb, it’ll be better than dealing with your sadistic idea of...”

    Spike hit her with the side of his arm. It wasn’t that hard for him, she knew, but it dazed her anyway. “Shut up!” he said. “Just shut up! Keep your bleeding knickers on and let me think dammit!”

    “Fuck you!” Buffy yelled.

    Spike picked her up, and she beat at his head as he carried her to the closet. He dumped her down on her dog bed and slapped her. “Keep your fucking mouth shut!” he yelled. “Over, is it? It’s never over, not until I say it!”

    “Just kill me already!”

    “No!” His yell made her ears ring. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his handcuffs. He struggled her hands behind her and pushed her down onto her face, so he could lock her up. She struggled, hard enough to hurt herself, and he abandoned the attempt. He pushed her down into the pillow with a final shove and pulled away, slamming the door closed on her, and he left.

    He hadn’t hooked her collar back on, so Buffy stood up and kicked at the door. The closet door was locked. She hadn’t known it did that. “Go to hell!” she yelled at the door.

    She only heard another door slam.

    She sank onto the dog bed, and fell into angry, rage stoked tears. This was insane. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be happening, it wasn’t fair. After all they’d been through, all the sacrifice, all the forgiveness, none of it mattered. She knew it was over. Spike didn’t know it. Her own Spike didn’t know it, but in her heart she’d just ended everything. She wrenched off the motorcycle jacket – his lying gesture of gallantry – and wrestled the collar off her throat. She couldn’t forgive him for this, not for this.

    And what the hell makes the difference? asked a voice in her head. Just because it was herself he was torturing this time, just because she was the one who endured it. What made him doing this sort of thing to all his other victims any better? She should never have been with him at all. Hell, even he knew that; he’d abandoned his pursuit of her after he’d gotten his soul. Their being lovers had ultimately been something he’d let her pursue, and win. He’d only wanted to be a help. He didn’t think he deserved her.

    And he thought that, because... Buffy groaned as the memories cut her. The pain of him. In her own time, Spike hated himself for all of this. He looked back and wept and screamed and woke from horrified nightmares of doing exactly these things. There was some part of him even now that didn’t want to look, let himself forget, bathed in the pleasure but wouldn’t allow it to be real. Once he could actually feel it completely, the memories of it had actually driven him mad. Spike, or William, to be more precise, the man he had been... he was just as unwilling a participant in all this horror as Buffy.

    That was the nightmare of it all, she realized. That was the creature who curled up beside her in her prison, and begged for her hands to comfort him. Not this twisted hell-creature who gleefully tortured human beings beside his mad lover. William was stuck there, shadowed, bound. He didn’t even have the strength to struggle. Even if the depravity felt good to him inside the demon... it wasn’t what he really wanted.

    It was as if he himself were being raped, every day, every hour, over and over and over again.

    Buffy was torn. The tears of anger turned into sheer misery, and she banged her head against the wall to try and make sense of it.

    And then she heard the door open. And a voice.... A girl, begging – Buffy couldn’t make out words in her terrified gasps. Then Drusilla’s voice. Buffy put her hands over her ears, but it didn’t block out the sound. Spike had gone to get another girl, just as he’d said he would. Buffy hadn’t made the choice. It had nothing to do with her. He was still the evil one, and she’d been left out of it. But she couldn’t ignore it when the girl started to scream.

    Buffy cursed him, loud, through the door. The only result was that the girl’s screams became muffled as someone closed the door to Drusilla’s room.

    Buffy wanted to scream herself. What was happening? Not what was happening in the other room; she knew that, all too well. What was this insane experience? Why had fate – which she knew had a pretty sadistic sense of humor when it came to her life – made her go through this horrible moment, endure this time in Spike’s life, put her in this position? It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.

    Or maybe it was. Maybe she’d needed her eyes opened.

    What was it that made it okay to her? What was it that had drawn her from the beginning? What was it that made her turn to Spike, and to Angel, and to bloody Dracula for god’s sake? She was even a little drawn to Drusilla, if she was honest with herself. What the hell was it? It wasn’t a thrall. They weren’t exacting magic on her. But why was it that vampires drew her, when Riley and every other human man on earth all seemed... pale. Wrong. Like they weren’t really made for her. It was like human food to a vampire; she could eat it, but it didn’t taste right.

    It wasn’t the evil. She knew it wasn’t. That horrified her. It didn’t excite her, or draw her, like Drusilla’s evil little doll, wanting to bask in Dru’s gruesome depravity, be as evil as she was. And it wasn’t the blood games, as hot as they could be. She hadn’t really played those with Angel, and she’d loved him like it was a sickness. It was something else. It was something more innate.

    It was the vampires themselves. Their flesh and their scent and the way they moved. Spike had always known that about her. Vampires get you hot, he’d said. She’d been insulted at the time, insisted it was only Angel that had done it to her, his tormented soul and his desperate need for forgiveness. But that wasn’t it. Though her soul needed another soul to be close to, just as all humans did, her body ached for the touch of the demon. It seemed she didn’t have a choice about that. Though at the same time, she was very much repulsed by the evil.

    She’d been able to ignore it with Spike. She’d dismissed their first relationship as self-destructive depression, and by the time they’d gotten together again, he’d had a soul and was one of the most self-sacrificing creatures she’d ever known. Just as she was. But right now, there was none of that. She wasn’t in a hell of depressive grief. He wasn’t a sacrificing champion. She didn’t even have the excuse of being a slayer, and liable to break a human man. He was just a vampire, and she was just Buffy, and she wanted his touch even though she knew he was steeped in blood. The fact that she needed him now, needed his blood to get home, to live, that was just window dressing. She still wanted him – had always wanted him – whether it was right or not.

    Ugh, she couldn’t think about this anymore. The noises were growing louder, and she hated herself for them as much as she hated Spike. This Spike. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her own Spike, in the future. She couldn’t think about that right now. All she knew was, she wished he was here.

    “Spike,” she whispered to herself, trying to drown out the noise. She covered her ears tightly with her hands. “Spike, I’m coming back to you. I know what you are. I know what you’ve been. I know what you’re trying to be. I know what you’ll do – oh, god, get me out here! Please! Please let me go back to you soon! I miss you. I miss all the rest of you. Please!” She wept into the blanket he had given her – the small show of humanity that he had offered that first day. “Either end this nightmare for good, or fight your damn demon, just for ten minutes. One way or another. Please get me out of this soon.”