a/n – Hello all.  It was my intention to post this last month.  It resisted.  Then I got sick.  Then friends visited.  Then I got REALLY sick.  Then Thanksgiving happened.  And then I FINALLY got over being sick.  LOL.  Okay, so you got that I was sick, right?  I’m feeling better now.  The chapter rings right to me and Muse, now.  And my beta’s, Gail and Megan are, as always, wonderful to me.  Thanks ladies.

You should note, however, that the Christmas season is upon us yet again and I may not get another update out for a little while. 

Take heart.  I will not abandon the story.  It just might take time.

Thank you, in advance, for your patience.

Also, reviews are welcome. ;-)

**hugs** sfg

Who am I?
 
~~~***~~~

Chapter 15 – Torn asunder

The magic wasn’t kind.  It tore through her – again – ripping out her essence and sending it rocketing to her left with a nauseating jerk, a bad parody of an amusement park ride.  The sensation of g-force would have had her stomach in her throat – if she had a stomach.

As it was, it screwed up her equilibrium and left her fully unprepared for the screeching halt her mind came to when it slammed into its new home.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your ride on the Slutty Slayer Rollercoaster of Revenge.  Please disembark to the left.

Buffy waited for her brain to quit sparking and jumping like a firecracker in a mayonnaise jar.  When it had ratcheted down a couple of notches, she opened her eyes.

Buffy might not have been Willow-smart, but staring down at her own body while a vague sensation of Faith running off tickled her senses, she knew enough to know that the spell hadn’t worked.  At least, not properly.  One moment of shocked silence was all she needed to work it out.

No!

Buffy was the Slayer, the Chosen One, the one girl in all the world, yadda, yadda, yadda.  One might even say a superhero.  But there was only so much a girl could take, even on the Hellmouth.  And being in Spike’s body was one step beyond that point.

No, no, no, no, no!

She rolled to the side, pounding out her denial into the floor.  It only took her a few rebounds off the hardwood to equate the earthquake in her head to the pounding on the floorboards and when she did, she snatched her hands back and pressed them to her ears.

What the—?

She didn’t get far before other sounds made themselves known to her.  Loudly.

Whistling, rushing, pounding, grumbling, screeching, squealing, blowing, wheezing, weeping, an eerie keening.

God, the noise !

So much coming at her at once.  Unable to process the onslaught, she curled in on herself, whimpering in pain and confusion. 

She squeezed her eyes closed to block out the burning light and wrapped her arms around her head as she rocked back and forth, trying to shut out the chaotic sounds assaulting her.

But covering her ears did nothing to block out the panic-stricken howl of fear, betrayal and heartache that came from within and echoed through her already abused and battered mind.

They were foreign feelings, clearly not her own, and that thought chilled her.  Yet, on some level she couldn’t understand, she recognized them.  Even empathized with them, as if, they were almost hers, yet...not.

Confused, over-stimulated, in pain, and near panic, Buffy did something she rarely did.  She hid – allowing her mind to twist, to turn, to curl inward just as her outward shell had done, making itself smaller and smaller.

~~~*~~~

Once, as a fledgling, Angelus had been displeased with him for something he could only assume was his failure to follow some rule or other, and had strung him up, bled him, than flayed the skin from his chest and back, refusing him blood for three miserable, agonizing days, leaving him unable to heal.

Every breeze that drifted through that drafty dungeon scraped his exposed flesh and caused razor shards of pain in every nerve.  Occasionally, that Master-whipped whore of a great-grandsire would pass by and blow an excruciating stream of cool air across him, or Drusilla, his Dark Princess, would run a sharp nail through the oozing mess that was his flesh, making mad patterns in the gore.

Spike had thought he’d known the pinnacle of pain.

He was wrong.

The magic that ripped through him, separating his essence from his body – from his demon – trumped that hands down.

Torn asunder.

There could never be an equal to this agony.  It stole his breath, if that was even possible.  And for one flashing second that seemed to stretch to infinity, he thought he would break from the torture.

But then it ended and he found himself stuffed into a meat prison, hot and stifling and at least two sizes too small.

A vague sense of pressure across his lower legs, then a shifting and sudden release of said pressure left his legs free, and only a pressure across his torso remained.

When he opened his eyes the view that greeted him was...disturbing, to say the least.  Wide blue eyes set in the center of a face that was all angles and bone structure.  A hawkish nose, full mouth and absurdly chiseled cheekbones, made even more pronounced by the platinum hair ruthlessly slicked back to tame the natural curl.

After one hundred and twenty years, nothing of ‘William’ really remained.  Except for the eyes, though even that was wrong.  William’s eyes were always dreamy – soft, willing to romanticize anything.  These eyes wore a look of surprise that turned to utter horror before him.

He had an instant to think Hello, I am pretty, damn it before his body rolled off him and began hammering at the ground beside him.

Red’s voice was asking if everything was alright, if it worked.

The nit.

“Bloody buggering hell, Red.  Of course it didn’t work.”

The snark was out of his mouth before he even thought about it.  But it was all wrong.  Higher pitch than his own voice yet strangely flat and muffled, almost like he’d been packed in cotton.  Or worse, buried under the earth.  Again.

It occurred to him then, that his eyes weren’t working properly either, the light entirely too dim.

The lack of sights and sounds made his sense of space distorted, confusing his mind and balance and a wave of dizziness spun through him. 

The only sensation that was crystal clear was a fizzing tickle at the base of his skull, hissing like a swarm of angry bees.  It didn’t hurt like the pain that came from the chip, but it did increase his disorientation.

And, of course, the fact that he wasn’t whole anymore.  He felt as if he’d lost something crucial.  An arm.  Or a leg.  Or, Christ, half his bloody body, but just as he began to register the fact that he’d been halved, the screeching began.

“Agh!”

Agony, starting in his head, erupted through his entire body.  It wasn’t traditional pain, though it bordered on it.  It was...more like...drowning.  Yeah.  Only without water.  He clutched handfuls of hair, pressing his fists against his ears and curling in on himself, a girlie keening noise ripped from his lips. 

It was emotion .  He was awash in emotion.  Fear, anger, confusion, betrayal, disgust.  Too many emotions to properly catalogue, yet all wrapped up in the absolute knowledge that danger was close, oh, so very close .

His fingers itched for a stake.  A raging presence screamed at him to kill, to protect, to bow to duty, to do what it was created to do.

As he rocked himself on the floor trying to ignore this mental barrage, he had a moment to think how civilized the Initiative had been in comparison before he allowed his mind to slip behind the protective barrier he had once erected to shield it from Angelus’ more creative ‘lessons’.

~~~*~~~

Giles remained frozen on his hands and knees, his body unwilling to obey his commands as the last of the magic washed over him like an old lover’s caress.  There was something, something in the spill-over of the spell that was off .  He was enough of a hand in magic to know that.  All that remained was to discover just what had gone wrong.

It didn’t take long.

His Slayer hitched up on an elbow beside a weeping vampire, wide, incredulous eyes and an accent from the Mother Country. 

“Bloody buggering hell, Red.  Of course it didn’t work.”

Oh, dear lord.  Buffy in Spike’s body.  The Slayer INSIDE a vampire.  This had never before been—

Giles’ mental tirade cut off abruptly when Buffy, in Spike’s body, froze mid-pound, clutched her head and then collapsed on her side, whimpering and rocking in a futile attempt at comfort often seen in madhouses. 

Before he could scuttle to his feet and go to her, Spike, in Buffy’s body, cried out, clutched his head and collapsed in a mirror image.

The two rocked on the floor, moaning and twitching in what appeared to be agony.

Giles was at a loss as to what to do.  Was this what had happened when Faith and she had switched?  She hadn’t said, but then Buffy and details, as she would put it in her quaint little way, were ‘unmixy’. 

What he should do was unclear, but he was quite certain what he should not do.  Both vampires and Slayers were, at their very natures, fierce predators.  And predators did not deal graciously with upheaval.  At the very least, there should be no sudden movements.

“Buffy!” 

Damn Murphy and his insufferable Law!

A tear streaked Willow rushed toward the misery-wracked form of William the Bloody that now, allegedly, held the consciousness of her best friend.  “Oh, goddess, I’m so sorr—”

When she got within three feet, his head snapped back, amber eyes ablaze, fangs elongated, ridges prominent.  And the demon roared.

tbc