Chapter Three:
* * * * ** * * *

Anya met her with gauze and a bottle of water. Buffy gulped down the bottle and walked straight into the dressing room. She prayed that it would be empty, but all her luck ran out on stage. Ben was there, bearing a dozen burgundy roses and a bottle of wine.
Buffy looked at him without amusement.

"Not in the mood, Wilkinson."

"Please call me Ben."

He had an all American face and he was tall and big. He is in the top five hundred wealthiest in the country and the number six bachelor in the world. Handsome and puppy eyed, Buffy originally tolerated him. It was his strong chin, and his floppy brown hair, and great arms that canceled out his arrogance. But after months of being hit on by Ben Wilkinson, she had decided that it would never happen. It didn't stop him from trying.

"Alright, Ben, I just got my ass beaten by three vamps. Please, let me clean up and do what you pay me for."

"We definitely need to talk. Not just about... us either. You are making wrong decisions when it comes to your career. The program, your outfit, and why wasn't the fourth vampire out?"

"Out!"

Anya sat down.

"Why does she get to stay?"

The woman who stayed raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow when Ben objected. Buffy rolled her eyes.

"Because she is a girl! Go away!"

Buffy slammed the door.

"Goodbye!"

The blonde sat down and the now brunette sat down next to her. Buffy pulled off her shirt and exposed her wounds. Anya winced.

"You need a doctor."

"Just clean me up enough so that I can visit the vamps without them drooling."

"What ended up happening? Normally Spike is good at keeping his temper. Unless it's got Drusilla involved, then he fights for his 'dark princess'. Now, sometimes Xander calls me honey, but if he ever started on the pookey-wookey, I swear that I would have to kill him. Pet-names make me want to throw up. I wonder if Drusilla ever feels the same—"

Buffy detected softness in the woman's voice and spun around with a shocked look.

"I can't believe that you could ever forget that Spike is a vampire! He can't harm you if you know what he is. You out of anybody should know that if you forget it, then you are as good as dead."

"I haven't forgotten," Anya scoffed, "I meant that he isn't normally the trouble. Something must have ticked him off."

"Not right now."

Buffy shook her head and stared at her arm, completely engulfed in gauze and tape and dried blood. Most of the wounds were new ones. She healed pretty quickly. But every scar she got was just another reminder that they couldn't be trusted.

"They are all the same. You can't analyze them."



* * * * * * *



The moment Buffy stepped out of the dressing room, she was bombarded with phone numbers, flowers, and... Ben.

"Who are all these from?" He demanded possessively, as Buffy just rolled her eyes at his tone.

"I don't know. People."

"No one specific?"

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Buffy, I was wondering if you would like to have din—"

"No. Next question, comment, or critique."

"Why not?"

Buffy leaned on the frame of her door. She knew that Anya was inside listening to her conversation and that Jonathon had a party of people up in the control room. She didn't want to explain but she thought that she might as well get it over with now.

"Because I don't date my bosses. I don't have dinner with people. I have a job to take care of and I don't have time for you."

"Alright. Then as your boss, why weren't you wearing your designated costume?"

"Because I can't move in a leather bustier! No matter how good I look in it. And every cut that the vamps give me would show like a neon sign. Anyways, vampires are attracted to boobs, blood, and the last thing I need is one having a crush on me."

"But can't you show a little more skin?"

"Just because you have a particular fetish does not mean that others share your personal opinion. We are constantly sold out, what more do you want? Professionally."

"I want you to consider wearing something else."

"Alright, I'll consider it. What else is wrong with my performance?"

"Why wasn't the second female vampire out?"

Buffy internally groaned. Ben would be the one to notice that there are actually four vampires. She quickly thought of something she might tell him, but she couldn't think of any good story. Vampires don't get sick, they don't throw up, they heal super quick...

"Dru got out of her cage before I went on stage."

"What!" Ben yelped. His eyes suddenly grew very large and he began to twitch nervously, checking over his shoulder to see if she was there. Buffy groaned.

"I got her back in. She will be out for a little longer and cut up for a while but nothing big."

"You hurt her? Will she heal alright?"

Buffy couldn't believe what she heard.

"Only when there are lives on the line... Yes! I cut her. And she beat the crap out of me."

"Oh. Well, as long as no one was hurt."

"It's good that she is more than a little crazy or we would have had a killing spree on our hands."

"Was that the reason why the program was incorrect?"

"Yeah. I had some trouble."

"Just as long as you are alright. I don't know what I would do without you."

His eyes softened into their signature puppy dog glaze. Ben patted her shoulder. Buffy's gaze softened too. She didn't hate the guy, she just thought he was annoying. She wished he could understand it. Buffy was on the verge of apologizing for being so snappy, when—

"Are you sure you don't want to go somewhere private?"

Buffy's eyes hardened. If he wanted to get into her pants, then he was going to have a wakeup call. These jeans were painted on.

"You know what? If you had ordered those control necklaces I had specially designed, none of this would have happened."

"I ordered them!"

"When did you order them? You were supposed to get those weeks ago!"

"I have them at my office, in Los Angeles."

"Fat lot of good that'll do me."

"What? Wait!"

"If you have any more complaints you can deposit them in my suggestion box, labeled trash receptacle."

Buffy thought as she spun on her heel and walked away. She had work to do, which included the dirty dancing this afternoon with Spike. He would have to be reminded who is boss.


Ten minutes later, Spike was chained to the wall.


* * * * * * * *


The vampire curled up next to his sire. His face was purple and black while his body was lacerated in strips. Drusilla took her Childe in her arms and slowly ran her fingers through Spike's blond hair. She would occasionally pick a lock and watch as it curled and bounced back into its original form.

"Cry out to invisible hands?"

"Yes Dru, it hurt. Excruciatingly." His words were muffled from the bruises and swelling. His left eye was closed shut from crusting blood running down from his forehead.

"Only a mind tells the body what is pain." She slithered across Spike's torso, breaking the skin and re-opening all the slits. Blood didn't ooze anymore, only a clear liquid that smelled like death. He hissed but he felt himself become aroused as Dru's silky skin caused him pain and pleasure.

"Drusilla, you're making me hard."

"Foolish Spike. You aren't hard enough."

And she crawled into the corner of her cage, staring out into time. Spike knew the look on her face. He chuckled humorlessly, letting his eyes fall from the vampire and onto the pair of grandparents shagging in the other corner of the cell. Angelus came to a climax. Darla wasn't done yet. She turned her eyes to the blond bleeding man lying on the floor.

"Want to fuck?"


* * * * * * * * *


"Tell me you love me."

"I love you. You know I do." His words were surprised. As if this request were the simplest she has ever asked. She took a step forward, as if his words of reverence fed her life.

"Tell me you want me."

He bent his head forward, as if to tell a secret. But she didn't want to give anything to him, she only wanted to take what he was always willing to give her; the momentary passion of life.

"I always want you. In point of fact—"

"Shut up. "

Buffy's confidence was falling though the roof. She looked at Spike with nothing in her eyes. But his own gaze at her was so filled with adoration, that he didn't see that she was only a shell of a woman. Then again, it didn't matter, he worshipped her in every form, and the more she needed him, the more she drowned.

She needed him, and somehow, nothing mattered anymore.


* * * * * * * * *


Buffy woke up in a pool of sweat and tears breaking at the sides of her eyes. She pealed her clothing off her damp body and breathed deeply. It was a dream, she told herself. It was a dream. But then, why couldn't she stop crying? And she didn't understand. Why couldn't she understand?

She put her head in her hands to calm the feeling of movement beneath her, but soon when she was breathing steadily, she realized that the movement under her feet wasn't her mind. Buffy was in an aluminum train and the rocking was the main cause of her sickness.

The blonde steadied herself against the wall of the vehicle. She was in the vampire compartment.

Buffy placed her damp hands on the warm metal bars of the cage and looked at the sleeping vampires. Darla was in her bunk with Angelus possessively spooning around her. Drusilla was half in her bunk and half out; she murmured things so steadily that Buffy wasn't sure if she was asleep or not. It was a fact that no one had ever seen her sleep, only stare off into space with glazed eyes. Drusilla's wounds were healing quickly and the gashes were almost completely closed. Only yellowish bruises remained upon her milky white skin.

When Buffy finally gazed upon the last of the vampires, she almost jumped when she realized that Spike was practically underneath her feet. He was half propped against the bars, one arm wrapped around the poles of the cage and the rest of his body sprawled out as far as it could go. Buffy quickly retreated back when she realized how easily he could have grabbed her and moreover, his nakedness unnerved her. But when Buffy saw how none of the vampires moved, and lay as still as the... well... dead, she moved closer, daring one to move and attack.

She knelt down next to the blond and inspected his wounds. The beating she had given him earlier was apparent. The extra amount of blood she had given the vampires last night had helped them heal quicker and their sleep aided in their regeneration. Nevertheless, Spike still had bruises and cuts that any masochist would enjoy.

Spike had surprised her with his rebellion last night even so, every time she saw one of the wounds she had inflicted, she remembered her dream and shivered. His admittance to love her shook her more than the beating she gave him. But her dream was fading, and soon she would forget about her strange, impossible dream.

He isn't breathtaking. She thought as she searched his body for the complete result of her beating. There are no complaints about his body, but his nose is too big and his hair needs dying and his skin is too pale. Although when he is asleep, he looks like a beautiful corpse. Or a fallen angel.

She touched his hair and brushed it away from his eyes and marveled how light it was.

Then the train lurched from a shift in the tracks and Spike stirred.

Buffy let go of his locks quickly and leaped back against the aluminum wall. She would rather die than admit that she had touched anything of his in any way kinder than a punch. The blond slayer silently shuffled away from the vampire cage and out the door into another compartment while the blond vampire lay still and dead asleep.

But even as Buffy left, her heady scent still lingered around Spike, causing one appendage to wake sooner than the rest.