WARNING: This chapter is incredibly, intensely dark and violent and includes graphic torture and m/m non-con. Please avoid it if you do not want to read these things.
However, keep in mind that this chapter is about as bad as the fic will get in the "disturbing" area, and it will get better from here :)



Spike stopped struggling, deciding that it would be best to endure the punishment Siron had planned for him, rather than to simply earn more punishment with a futile struggle that would end no differently than the path of submission – with pain.

Siron pushed him down face first across a narrow operating table that he had often been strapped down to over the course of the past few months – though, never in quite this awkward position.

With brutal, pitiless force, Siron wrenched his bound arms up over his head, holding them there despite the sickening cracking sound of their dislocation, despite Spike’s moan of shocked agony. Smiling grimly, he connected a tiny ring in the shackles at Spike’s wrists to a chain that was attached to a similar ring under the side of the table, thus binding his damaged arms in that painful, helpless position over his head, and leaving the back side of his body exposed and vulnerable to whatever he might choose to do to him.

“Now,” he said softly, one strong hand at the small of Spike’s back pinning him down, despite his desperate struggles to move, to ease the excruciating pain shooting down his arms and through the rest of his body. “For your punishment.”

“You bloody soddin’ bastard!” Spike snarled in frustrated pain through gritted teeth, between gasps for breath, his determination to take what was dished out fading in an instant. “I’ll soddin’ kill you! Why don’t you just bloody kill me, you sick, sadistic wanker? Let me up, or I’ll…”

His words were suddenly cut off in an indignant, muffled yelp, as Siron shoved a large, thick rag into his mouth, following it up with a tight leather muzzle of sorts to hold it in, a device that was both blindfold and gag, covering Spike’s eyes with thick dark leather, and pressing the rag further down his throat with a tight leather strap across his lips.

The suddenly panicking vampire still struggled to voice his protest, but his attempts were useless, as Siron moved around the table to secure his legs, spreading them slightly and fastening his ankles into restraints bolted into the floor to hold him in place.

Spike froze suddenly, when he felt the tight leather shorts that he wore – the only garment he was allowed to wear these days – opened, and pulled down as far as they would go on his spread legs, coming to rest restricting around the middle of his thighs. As Siron’s warm hand slid suggestively up the inside of his thigh, edging toward far more personal territory which was, at the moment, humiliatingly exposed, Spike swallowed back a sick wave of shame, as his master spoke softly.

“Perhaps you’re not in a position that yields itself well to your insolence, Spike,” he observed thoughtfully, mildly, as his fingertips brushed lightly, teasingly up the line of Spike’s buttocks. “Perhaps it’d be better if you watch that smart mouth of yours, unless you want me to take more permanent action to ensure that you do. Do you understand me?”

As he spoke the soft, deceptively quiet threats, Siron’s hand shifted to cup Spike’s bound genitals in a frighteningly tight hand – just barely beginning to be painful. Spike swallowed hard, feeling his stomach fluttering nervously, as he nodded rapidly in response, suddenly desperate to evade the fulfillment of that wordless threat, almost more than he wanted to avoid the spoken one.

Admittedly, neither scenario seemed like much fun.

“Good,” Siron remarked with an audible smile, running his hand possessively over Spike’s firm but slightly trembling rear. “Then we’ll get started. You must be reminded, Spike…” he went on, crossing the room to a table laden with various vicious implements, most of which he had already used on Spike at some time or another, “…who is in control here – and what is your proper place…”

His breath came fast and shallow, as Spike struggled to keep control of his warring impulses, the fight or flight response in him that demanded action from him – action that he knew would only make his situation worse.

*Just get through it,* he told himself firmly, trying to slow his wild breathing, to calm the violent shaking that was beginning in his limbs. *Just let him do what he wants to do, give him what he wants, and get through it. It can’t last forever. It’ll be over, and you can wait for another chance…*

“You won’t get a chance to escape me, Spike,” Siron spoke softly from a place much closer to him than the place where his voice had come from mere moments earlier – and Spike jumped instinctively, prompting a soft, smug laugh from his captor’s lips. “This was a test. And it was not the last time you will be tested. Remember that, Spike.”

The vampire tried not to let his courage fade with those words, though he felt his heart sink with the realization that he really had no way of knowing what was a test and what was not – not until it was too late to do anything about it. And how was he supposed to find a way to escape, if…?

His thoughts were suddenly, violently torn away from that particular line, as he felt the brush of cool, impossibly thin metal along his thigh, and heard a slight rustling that was more than a little unsettling, as his mind tried to place what sort of object might be creating that sound.

“So you know what I’m doing to you, Spike, as I do it,” Siron spoke again with that uncanny, unsettling knack he seemed to have for guessing what Spike was thinking, a cruel smile in his voice, “because it seems so very much more effective when you can imagine what I’m about to do to you, before I do it – I’m holding a very special sort of whip in my hand. It’s strands are made of the very finest, needle-thin steel wires. Very flexible, very light – but very sharp, and deadly if used properly. Well – on a human. You won’t have the mercy of death, slave.”

Again, Spike felt the humiliating, invasive caress of Siron’s hand over his most intimate parts, as the demon growled softly, possessively, leaning over Spike’s bent body so that he could feel the oppressive heat against his cool, trembling flesh, as Siron gripped his hair with the same hand that held the whip, yanking his head back to snarl in his ear.

“You will learn that you -- *this*…” He clutched painfully at Spike’s manhood, causing his back to arch with agony, as he continued, “…is mine, and mine alone – and I will do with it what I wish. I will do whatever I want to do to you, and there is nothing for you to do but to submit. Do you understand?”

His throat dry with fear, his stomach sick with dreadful anticipation of the pain he knew his captor was about to inflict, Spike nodded hurriedly, a soft, pleading moan escaping his throat, though the gag would not allow him to plead for mercy.

“No,” Siron shook his head in mild denial, as he stood up straight again, brushing the fine metal strands across the pale expanse of Spike’s back as he did, trailing it down over his butt and legs. “I really don’t think you do, Spike. Which is why this is necessary – because, when we are finished here tonight – you *will* understand, with perfect clarity.”

The first blow sent a blinding fire of agony through the tender flesh at the tops of Spike’s thighs, shredded instantly by the force of the strike, and the hundreds of needle-like metal strands that sliced into his skin. An anguished cry of pain, muffled by the gag, escaped Spike’s lips against his will – but it earned no mercy from his tormentor.

By the time the fortieth blow had fallen, Spike was barely conscious of the low, piteous moaning sounds that were issuing from his bound mouth, without any conscious effort of his own. The whip, the table, and Spike’s devastated body were drenched with his blood, the backs of his legs, his buttocks, his lower back, shredded by the whip’s cruel bite.

Spike nearly wept with relief as he heard the whip being set down on the table near the bed, his breath coming in deep, frantic puffs through his nose, tears streaming from his blinded eyes. He did not resist as Siron’s large hands manipulated his body, twisting his torso so that he was lying on his back instead of on his stomach, without unchaining the bonds at his ankles.

The chain attached to his wrists rotated freely, not presenting a problem – unless one considered the pain of his weight being pressed against his dislocated shoulders a problem…and Siron clearly did not. However, the unnatural twisting of his legs caused an unbearable tension in the already taut muscles, which were now cramping viciously, unable to find relief – not to mention the unbearable pressure of his twisted thighs against his groin area, thrusting it forward, making him even more vulnerable to Siron’s cruel designs.

But Spike had no idea until that moment, just how cruel he could be.

When he heard him pick up the whip again, Spike almost could not believe that it was possible. Surely…surely he wouldn’t…

But all doubts were stripped violently away from his mind, with the first fall of the cutting lash across his exposed, sensitive flesh.

And with the second fall – and every one after that, for another thirty-eight blows – Spike was beyond conscious thought, consumed only by his own agony.

********************************

By the time Siron finally tossed the whip down for good, Spike was barely conscious, his arms pulled taut with the effort of holding up the rest of his body, which had long since collapsed, no longer able to stand for the pain and blood loss of the beating.

When the demon general abruptly unfastened the chain that held his arms to the table, the shock of his battered body’s crumpling to the floor sent fiery tingles of pain shooting along his every nerve ending -- and immediately brought him around to full, glaring consciousness.

Spike instinctively shied back away from Siron, as he reached down and jerked him up by the collar around his throat, slamming him down on his back on the table, then grabbing his legs and slinging them up onto it as well, so that this time, he was on the table as it was intended to be used -- not that that was necessarily a good thing.

A weak moan of pain was barely audible behind the gag Spike wore, as Siron swiftly strapped his arms and legs down to the table, effectively immobilizing him again, and taking great care with his ankles especially, making sure that he could not move his feet. Once he was sure that Spike would not be able to pull free, Siron moved back to the head of the table and roughly tore the leather contraption free from Spike’s face.

The blond vampire winced at the sudden brightness of the light above his head, turning his head away with his eyes shut tightly against it.

Siron grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head up, snarling a command, “Look at me.”

Spike obeyed immediately, knowing better than to do anything to further anger his already cruel, volatile captor -- and found himself once again caught in that fathomlessly black, cold, terrifying gaze, as the demon general smiled down at him, a cruel satisfaction in his expression.

“You won’t try to run again, Spike,” he informed him softly. “At least,” he shrugged as he released his hair, “not anytime soon.”

“Wh-what…” Spike mumbled, struggling to raise his head as the demon moved toward the foot of the table again. “What -- please…”

In an instant he was back at the head of the bed, his hard hand coming down across Spike’s face in a breath-taking backhand blow. “Shut up!” he snarled, leaning down over him, one hand on either side of his face in an oppressively close, intimidating gesture. “You will not speak unless you are spoken to, given permission. Is that clear -- *slave*?”

Spike nodded without hesitation, biting down on his lip to keep back the bitter, angry response that rose up in him, mostly a reaction to his own helplessness and terror.

“Good,” Siron muttered, moving back to the foot of the table, and farther, and then returning with a strange device on wheels, which he carefully lined up with the foot of the bed.

Struggling to look up at it, apprehension rising in him as he tried to figure out what his master had in mind next, Spike saw that it looked a bit like the frame of a television with the insides hollowed out -- an open square made of stone, and on a raised, wheeled platform, level with the bed -- with a large solid stone square of nearly the same size above it.

Siron lifted the thin mattress up off its metal frame, sliding the bottom side of the stone square under it, far enough that Spike’s restrained feet were resting on the mattress, over the stone slab. Smiling coldly at Spike, watching his reaction, Siron flipped a switch on the side of the strange device -- and Spike watched with rising, horrified understanding, as the large stone block began to slide slowly down into the hollowed square beneath it -- inching steadily nearer to his bare, bound feet.

“N-no,” he whispered, breathless with terror, shaking his head and staring up at Siron with wild, panicked eyes. “No, don’t do this…”

Strolling casually back toward the head of the bed as the heavy stone block continued its gruesome path downward, Siron picked up the leather muzzle and gag again, raising an eyebrow as he met Spike’s eyes again.

“Perhaps I ought to gag you again,” he suggested softly, “before you find it impossible not to scream.”

Spike shook his head frantically, pleadingly, and opened his mouth to protest -- but Siron merely shoved the gag back in, firmly fastening the leather straps over his face again, so that he was once again both mute and blind.

Leaning down close to him, now with his eyes fastened eagerly on the descending stone block, Siron whispered in a tone of dark anticipation, “Tell me, Spike -- does this make it better, or worse? Not being able to see it coming, yet knowing exactly what is coming? Can you imagine how near it is by now? How soon it will be crushing your flesh and bones beneath its weight?” He paused, edging nearer as he sneered softly, “How long it will be before you are able to move of your own volition again?”

A stifled sob left Spike’s lips, a pleading moan that would have been words, had words been allowed him, and he shook his head despairingly.

“It’s not far now,” Siron told him with a smirk. “Not much farther…”

When Spike felt the cold stone first brush against his toes, he jerked reflexively in the bonds, though he could not pull free from them, a strangled, desperate cry of terror choked off in his throat as the stone block continued relentlessly downward.

And then there was pressure, steadily increasing until Spike was certain he could not bear it another moment.

And then -- he *couldn’t* bear it, as pressure began grinding, agonizing pain, crushing bone and skin and muscle into a mangled mass of useless tissue, nerves screaming out in flames of anguish up and down Spike’s body, as he moaned pitifully, wordlessly pleading for a mercy that did not exist.

The scraping of the stone across his tortured flesh was a fresh torment, as Siron carelessly raised the stone just slightly, and slid it back away from the table, examining the vampire’s injuries with a cool detachment.

“Yeah,” he remarked with a satisfied nod, as he removed the gag again, allowing Spike‘s soft, plaintive sobs to escape into the silence around them. “It’s gonna be a while before you’re going anywhere, Spike.”

Spike barely began to dare to believe that Siron might be finished with him -- only to have those fragile hopes dashed, as the demon general moved another strange medical-looking device on wheels to hover right over his face. Spike’s eyes widened with fear, and he shook his head pleadingly, but Siron placed a hand at his forehead, holding his head firmly in place, and Spike soon discovered what the strange, clawed contraption was.

Four biting metal clamps held his mouth painfully far open, relentlessly stretching his jaw so that he could not even begin to close it. Straps at his brow and his chin held his head still, as Siron moved about at a small table to the side of the bed, moving metal implements that clinked ominously in the silence, just outside of Spike’s view, striking fresh terror into his heart at the unknown threat of just what they might be.

But the reality was worse than anything he had imagined -- a horror that even his sadistic sire, in the worst days of his fledging training, would never have considered taking any further than threatening. No human, or even vampire, would ever have inflicted such a cruel fate on a vampire under their power.

But Siron was neither human, nor vampire -- and he simply did not care.

“Change,” he ordered softly, a cruel glint in his dark eyes as he held up the tiny pair of sharp steel tongs in his hand. “Now.”

Of course, Spike refused.

There was no punishment, no torture Siron could devise, that could be worse than what he wanted to do to him now.

“You know it’s pointless to resist, Spike.” Siron’s voice was sadly sympathetic, as he shook his head in disappointment at his reaction. “I can make you do whatever I want you to do -- but it will be so much easier for you if you simply obey.”

Spike did not obey.

Siron returned to his equipment table, and returned with a hypodermic needle. Once he had injected the gold-colored fluid inside into Spike’s body, the struggle was finished. Whatever it was, Spike’s demon responded to it immediately, coming to the fore as he strained uselessly against the bonds, trying to snarl at his enemy, though it was impossible with the painfully tight clamps on his mouth.

“There he is,” Siron sneered softly, advancing toward his mouth with the tongs. “Let’s see who’s the bigger, badder monster, shall we?”

In Spike’s mind -- there was no question.

And with the brutal rape of his identity, of who and what he was, the removal of his most natural weapon from his mouth, came an overwhelming sense of shame, loss, and utter terror. The demon that had snarled and struggled now whimpered, shuddering and cowering away from the other one, the one who had bested it.

When Siron released the bonds that held Spike to the table, he did not even try to move, to fight, his demon face receding silently, retreating in defeat. Tears of trauma and fear streaked his face, as Spike waited in quiet, terrified submission for whatever his master would next see fit to do to him.

With that simple, profoundly devastating act -- Siron had broken his slave.

And when he roughly turned him over on the bed, heedless of the agony in his twisted, mangled legs, Spike did not resist, did not protest in any way. When he took him brutally, with nothing for preparation but the half-dried blood that coated the back of his body, Spike allowed it passively, with only a quiet whimper of pain to betray his distress.

When Siron asked him softly, a low growl in his ear as his hand clutched his throat and dragged his head back against him, “Who do you belong to, vampire? Whose are you?” -- Spike’s response was not in question.

In a barely audible whisper of broken defeat, he replied as Siron desired.

“Yours…”