Banner by dawnofme

A/N - Thanks to Carol and dawnofme for their beta work.


Chapter Five


Confusion


Spike woke at 6 AM, as he had every day for the past year. He leapt to his feet as soon as he opened his eyes, the unfamiliar surroundings making him nervous. He looked down at the blankets that had fallen as he’d stood up.


“I didn’t touch them. Why are they there?”


He kicked them away from his feet. He looked down at his body; the clothes he was wearing felt strange against his skin. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had clothes on. He knew they weren’t for his ‘kind’.


“Professor told me to wear them, so it must be right, mustn’t it?”


He closed his eyes and shook his head at the confusion in his mind.


“Where am I? Where’s the professor? Have I done something wrong? I obeyed the people last night. Should I have? Was that the test? Have I failed? But they told me properly, like the professor does.”


He sat on the floor and drew his knees up to his chin and waited.


Ooooooo


They all woke fairly early despite the late night they’d had. They were gathered round the kitchen table by seven thirty, eating breakfast and discussing what was to be done.


Willow and Giles were to research the mind control techniques and find out what data was stored in the computer they’d stolen, so they could begin to help Spike. Buffy had elected herself as the person dealing with Spike, when Giles had suggested he might respond best to just one person.


Dawn protested that she hadn’t gotten to see him properly yet, not telling of her little nocturnal visit; so Buffy promised she could see him later that day if all went well. Xander was so relieved not to have to deal with Spike that he actually volunteered to help with the research.


“So we’ll do what Willow suggested yesterday, and leave his food there for him to get it without being told. I know it just got dropped in to the cells and he can’t have been ordered to eat it, every single time. I still don’t understand – how will this help?” asked Buffy.

“If he takes it immediately, it won’t. But I’m pretty sure that, because he’s not in the same routine, he’ll expect to be told exactly what to do. There’s going to be no definites here, Buffy, we’ll just have to feel our way around,” said Giles.


Buffy got the blood warmed up and went down into the basement. She saw Spike sitting on the floor, the bed pushed away and the blankets on the floor near it. He was watching her intently. When she got near him, he stood up. She’d noticed that once he was standing he never met her eyes. He hadn’t in The Initiative, even when they’d been fighting.


She held out the blood. He didn’t move so she put it on the bed just within his reach and went to sit on the bottom step to see what happened. It took over two hours before he took it. He looked at it, then at her a few times to begin with, and then he sat down and ignored it.


“It’s a test. They want to see if I disobey. But professor said to eat all I was offered. But that was in my cell. Does it still count here?”


She could literally hear his stomach growling with hunger, when he tentatively reached out to get it, touching it and looking at Buffy a couple of times before he picked it up. It then took him another half hour before he actually ate it, turning his back to her as he fed.


“Yes!” said Buffy when he’d finished.


Spike leapt up and stood with his back to the wall, facing her. He dropped the empty bag as if it had scalded him. He looked around the room, shaking.


“Bad. Shouldn’t have done it; should have waited. Will be punished.”


Buffy could see the fear in his eyes. She cursed herself for speaking out loud and startling him


“It’s OK. It’s OK,” she soothed.

He looked at her, not quite meeting her eye, but continued to tremble.


“Number Seventeen,” said Buffy. “It’s OK. You did well. It’s finished. It’s over. You’ve done what I wanted."


As she said the last few words, he visibly relaxed. She realised that by saying he’d ‘done what she wanted’, she was using a phrase that he was familiar with.


“Why didn’t you sleep on your bed last night?” asked Buffy.


Spike started to fidget, moving from foot to foot.


“Why is she asking a question? Never to answer back. Can’t anymore.”


His life had gotten a little easier when he didn’t speak.


“Crap! I’ve done it again,” thought Buffy. “How can he answer me if he can’t talk?”


“Number Seventeen.”


The fidgeting stopped.


“Put the bed up against the wall. It’s where you will sit or lay down from now on. Understand?”


He nodded slightly and went to pull the bed back. It was awkward with the chain on his wrist so Buffy went forward to help him. Once the bed was back in its place, she put the blankets back on it.


Spike was looking at her, with a slightly amazed expression on his face.


“Why is she helping me? She helped me dress, too.”


He touched his left hand with his right then touched his t-shirt. Buffy noticed the gesture but didn’t know what he meant by it.


“We’re going to try to fix that as soon as we can,” said Buffy, unaware that she’d accidentally used another familiar phrase from The Initiative. The last time that he’d heard it was when he’d been taken and operated on, and woke up with his left arm paralysed.


“Oh God, does that mean they’re going to do the same with my right?”


She left the room and went up to join the others. Spike sat huddled on the bed, holding his left arm in his right hand.


“What if fixing it was taking it away?” He’d seen plenty of amputations in his time at The Initiative. “Oh, I must have been bad to make her say that.”


When she came back at lunchtime, she just left the blood but didn’t stay. Spike stood up as she approached, but once she’d gone he just sat down again, and despite the hunger, he didn’t take the blood. Before they’d developed the gas, they used to knock him out with drugged blood. Since he wasn’t in the cells, he decided he wasn’t going to take the blood unless he had to, unless he was told to.


“That’s why they’re going to fix me. I took the blood without being told.”


Oooooooo


Dawn pestered to be allowed to take Spike his evening’s blood. In the end, it had been easier to let her than to stop her. With strict orders to give him the blood and leave, she stepped down in to the basement. Spike was huddled on the bed, right hand holding left wrist so he had his arms around his knees. She saw the untouched blood on the floor near to the bed. As she got closer, he got up and stood eyes averted in front of the bed, keeping hold of his left wrist.


“Sit down,” said Dawn. “No need to get up.”


Spike didn’t move. “Another test, trying to make me do things without proper instructions. Not going to fail. Don’t want to be fixed.”


Dawn remembered what Buffy had said, that he only responded if you used his ‘name’ first.


“Number Seventeen,” said Dawn, “sit down. You do not have to stand when we come in.”


Spike obediently sat down. “OK, so not a test.”


“Number Seventeen, drink this now.” She held out the still warm bag of blood she’d brought with her.


Despite his conditioning, he hesitated very slightly before taking it, certain that it would be drugged, but since he couldn’t disobey an order, he took it. He turned to the wall to change his features and drink it. He’d barely nicked the bag when Dawn spoke.


“Number Seventeen, turn back around. Don’t hide your face.”


He slowly turned round. “Why is she saying that? Professor said never to show my face like this. But it was an order.”


So he kept his face with his vampiric features showing, keeping his eyes on the ground and draining the bag of blood. He glanced at the other bag he’d refused to eat earlier.


“Oh, you want more?” said Dawn. “Take it, Number Seventeen, take it.”


He quickly grabbed it and drank it; so fast that Dawn thought he must be afraid it would be taken away. As soon as he’d fed, he faded back into his human features. Dawn almost preferred his demonic ones at the moment; seeing him as ‘human’ Spike was just so painful. He bore no resemblance to the Spike she knew; who’d cared for her when Buffy had died. She never would have believed that he could be like he is now. He’d been so strong, so passionate, about everything. Now he just seemed like a shell, unable even to talk. It was so cruel.


Without even realising she was crying, tears ran down her face as she knelt on the ground near Spike. They dropped on to the dusty floor. She didn’t wipe them away, just let them fall.


Spike saw the marks the tears made on the floor. He reached out and could just touch them with his fingers. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Dawn grasped his hand and held it to her face. He felt the tears running over his hand but didn’t know what to do. After a few minutes Dawn sniffed a couple of times, let go of his hand and raced up the stairs without a backwards glance.


Spike sat looking at his hand expecting something to happen to it. He’d had liquid poured on him before that had burned, but this had come out of the girl and didn’t seem to do anything. He wiped his hand on his jeans and lay down on the bed.


“I want my cell. Too confusing here, don’t know what to do.”


Ooooooo


“Dawn, are you OK?” Buffy asked, as her sister came out of the basement and ran straight upstairs. When she didn’t reply. Buffy followed her up to her bedroom.


“Dawnie?” she said softly, as she pushed the door open.


Dawn was lying on the bed; sobbing. Buffy went to her and put her arms around her little sister.


“Shh, Dawnie, what’s wrong? Did Spike do something?”


“No,” said Dawn between sobs. “That’s the trouble; he didn’t do anything! He hadn’t eaten the blood you left at lunchtime. He was just sitting there. It was awful, so I told him to drink the blood. I know you said I shouldn’t but I couldn’t let him be hungry. He’s too thin already.”


“It’s OK, I know it’s hard but we’re going to help him Dawn. We’re going to try to make him better.”


“Like he was before?” asked Dawn.


“I don’t know. All I can say is we’ll do the very best we can, but he’s had so much done to him, Dawnie, that we’re not sure if we can undo it all. But we’ll never stop trying.”


Dawn sat up and the sisters hugged tightly, both crying at Spike’s situation. Buffy went back down alone. Dawn decided to stay in her room, not wanting to hear all the talk about Spike. The others were in the lounge, Willow on the computer, with Giles and Xander looking through the books. She told them about Dawn’s experience, and they agreed that they’d better order him to eat from now on.


“You said he reacted badly when you spoke as he’d finished eating,” said Giles. “Can you remember anything else you said?”


“I dunno. I told him he was OK; that he’d done what I wanted. Oh, yes, then he sort of touched his left arm then his t-shirt. I wasn’t sure what he meant so I told him that we were going to fix it.”


“Fix it?” said Willow. “You said ‘fix it’, not ‘make it better’?”


“Huh? No, I’m sure I said ‘fix it’. Why?” answered Buffy.


“Well, I’ve been hacking into The Initiative’s files and whenever they came across a problem and solved it, they put on the records that it was ‘fixed’. The last entry on Spike’s record that was ‘fixed’ was when they crippled his arm.”


Everyone was silent for a long time.


“Oh, my God! He must have thought that I meant to do something else to him because he took the blood. That’s why he wouldn’t take more until he was told, he was afraid to,” cried Buffy.


“Before they developed a gas as a means of anaesthetising their captives, with vampires they used to drug their blood,” said Willow.


“We’ve got to undo this stuff, Willow, it’s just horrible,” said Buffy.


“I know, but it’s hard to work out exactly how to reprogram the chip. I think I need to hack into other files for that. These just say what was done to him. Before they upgraded the chip a few times, their main method was torture. For example, to stop him talking, he was beaten, starved, forced to drink blood laced with holy water and more. You don’t want to know. He fought them in the early days of his recapture. Maggie Walsh noted that he was the strongest she’d ever had to deal with, but once the new chip was implanted, it was over. He couldn’t resist if he wanted to. If it was programmed for him to do something, or not do something, he had to obey. Then she discovered that even orders he hadn’t been programmed with were followed with total obedience. She said he was compliant to whatever they wanted him to do; that he’d finally given in.”


Again, everyone was silent as they digested Willow’s words. Xander looked green, Giles sat with a very grim expression, and Buffy was struggling to hold in yet more tears.


“Um, right,” said Giles. “Can you get into these other files, Willow?”


“I’m sure I can. I’m almost in now. Just another couple of hours and I should have access to all the programming the chip has ever had.”


Buffy stood up.


“I’ve got an idea of how he might be able to communicate. I know he won’t be able to write until we get his left arm mended, but what about moving letters with his right hand? He should be able to do that, shouldn’t he?”


Without waiting for an answer, she got out an old ‘Scrabble’ word game set from the closet and went to the basement.


Spike started to stand when he saw her, then stopped himself as he remembered his previous orders. So he just sat on the bed. He watched as she pulled out a couple of stools from a corner of the room. She put one in front of him and sat on the other one. She put a box on the stool between them. Spike slightly drew back, as he didn’t know what it was, and nothing good had ever happened when he saw things he didn’t know.


Buffy took the board out of the box and put it on the stool upside down so it was plain green and not covered with the grids for the game itself. She then took out all the letters and placed them on the board, making sure they were the right way up for Spike to read and upside down for her.


“Number Seventeen,” she said to get his attention. “This is my name.”


She slid the letters out from where she’d lined them up and in the centre of the board, she placed the letters B U F F Y.


“That is my name - Buffy.”


He looked at the letters and looked at her. She pushed the letters back with the others. When she saw Spike’s blank expression, she pulled them out again.


“Buffy,” she said.


She jumbled them up.


“Number Seventeen, now you write my name.”


Spike looked at her, for once meeting her eyes, as she gestured to the board.


“Do it, Number Seventeen.”


He put his right hand out and slowly selected five of the letters. He put them together in a line like she had then looked up at her. She looked at the letters he’d selected D O T E U.


“No, that’s not right,” she said impatiently.


He shrank back from her.


“No, it’s OK, don’t worry, we just need to practice,” she soothed.


After several more attempts, he still couldn’t get it right; even when the only letters she left on the board were the five of her name. He couldn’t manage to get them in the right order. She stopped when she realised that he was getting stressed and panting a little. She understood why - if he failed a test he, was punished, so although it was still wrong she told him he’d done well and he visibly relaxed. She left him to go and get him some more blood.


Spike looked at the board and touched the five little plastic squares. He didn’t know why this was right and all the others were wrong. The markings on the squares all seemed alike, so why did she keep moving them around? He pulled his hand back quickly as he heard her come back down the steps. She gave him his blood and told him to drink it. He turned away as he started to drink it, then remembered the other one’s orders earlier and turned back around. He glanced at Buffy to gauge her reaction.


“That’s OK, that’s good,” reassured Buffy. She cleared away the letters and left him to go back upstairs.


“Night, Spike,” she whispered.


“Spike? Spike?” He looked around fearfully. “Where was the spike?” His hand went to the back of his head. He could feel the tiny soft spot where the chip was situated, where the ‘spike’ was put in. He shuddered.


To be continued…….