The Artifact: Chapter Seventeen
This chapter came out a bit long and info-dumpy, but, well, time's a wasting!
<-- Previous Chapter
Chapter One Here
Chapter Seventeen: Debriefing
Xander had just enough spare thought to pick Spike up from the floor as they fled Glory’s stronghold. Spike looked like hell, and barely got his feet under himself as Xander pulled him forward.
He kinda didn’t want to think about the weird ways he was injured, or the fact that Glory had seemed… well, more than seemed. She was satisfied. She looked relaxed and lazy and rather than come at them full-force had mostly sent her minions. Xander knew that look. Xander had had that look.
He really hoped that moisture on his shirt was blood.
Buffy ran in front of him. “Wait.”
“How about not waiting? We barely got out of there.” Xander said.
Buff picked up Spike’s sagging head by the chin. “Did you tell her anything? Answer me!”
Spike’s shifted against Xander. “No,” he said.
“Spike, I order you to tell me if you told her anything.”
Spike stiffened in Xander’s arms. He pulled himself upright. “Didn’t tell her anything. I kept her from asking. You think I would lie to you? Now?”
“We have to be sure,” Buffy said. She was crying. Xander tried to say something, but all he could do was open and shut his mouth a few times.
Buffy ran. Like she was running away from them.
Spike sagged again. Xander nearly dropped him. “Little help, G-man?”
“Of course,” Giles said, and hurried to take up a position on Spike’s other side.
Together they got Spike up on the sarcophagus in his tomb. The guy looked, paradoxically, less dead than usual, what with all the very living-colored blood on him.
So maybe things weren’t as sexy as Xander initially thought. “Did you have to poke the hell-god?” Xander asked.
Spike laughed brokenly. Xander wanted badly to wipe his hands, but didn’t see anything available other than Spike. He knew from sadly specific experience that whipping your hands on a tomb just got them dirtier. “Let’s go. I need to wash my everything.”
“In a moment, Xander,” Giles said. He was looking very intently at Spike.
“Oh come off it, watcher,” Spike said, his laugh sobering.
Giles asked, “What did they do to you, exactly? The artificers?”
“What do you care? Made me even more helpless, didn’t they? Perfect for you and your white hats.”
“If what Buffy said is correct, all Glory had to do was ASK and you’d betray us.”
“Oi! Not…” Spike groaned in pain after trying to sit up. He fell back, eyelids fluttering. “Not willingly. Wouldn’t do that to her.”
Giles was starting to look downright scary. “Yes, but we’ve quite established it doesn’t have to be willing.”
Xander was shocked to see the stake in Giles’ hand. He was more shocked that Spike looked at it resignedly and fell back, like he was going to let Giles stake him.
Xander grabbed Giles’ arm. “Hey - he endured torture for us.”
Giles turned the scary-as-heck face on Xander then. “Which is why I asked first.”
“I don’t bloody know,” Spike said. He threw an arm over his eyes. “Fuck, if I knew what they did, I’d undo it.”
“Giles.” Xander stopped Giles from striking once, then again. “Listen… I was ready to stake him myself, but now… it doesn’t feel right. If he’ll follow any order, order him to stake himself before he tells who the key is.”
“Stake himself?” Giles looked horrified, suddenly, but he also stepped back and stopped trying to make with the dusting. “No. No I’m not thinking clearly.”
Look at that, Xander Harris, you just saved Spike.
It was hard to hold the sarcastic quip in, lest it ruin the moment.
“Very well,” said Giles. It was his patented decision voice. He tucked the stake back into his coat. “We can’t leave him here. Help me get him to my car.”
“And then where?”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there.”
***
For lack of a better plan, Giles brought Spike back to his home, bandaged him up and gave him blood. Just to keep him from bleeding on the upholstery.
The children all gathered. Spike sat on the sofa in Giles’ living room, still looking raw, but his wounds weren’t actively bleeding anymore. He held a mug of blood in both hands.
“Are you finally settled enough to talk?” Giles asked. “I’m getting tired of your petulance.”
“Oi. Just been tortured, remember?” Spike sighed. “First thing you need to understand is… Glory is Ben.”
He said something odd that seemed to slip right off Giles’ ears. “Ben is involved with Glory somehow?”
“No! Ben IS Glory. Glory IS Ben.”
The individual words made sense, but Giles was having a distressing time piecing meaning from them.
“Look, Glory is inside a human body, get it? One body, two completely separate beings. It’s like a bloody sitcom.”
Giles nodded. “Yes. Of course. The beast requires a host.” That was what he’d just learned in his researches a few days ago. Spike must have read it as well. “But who?”
“BEN! And, apparently, if you make her very VERY happy, she can have trouble keeping control. As it where. Hence: Ben is Glory, I nearly had my eye poked out by an unexpected cock, and Glory was none too pleased about the whole business. Also, Ben is straight, if any of you had designs on him.”
“Wait,” said Willow. “I’m confused. You’re saying Ben was with Glory?”
Spike put down his mug. He looked as confused as Giles felt. “Are you all very stoned? Glory is Ben, Ben is Glory.”
Giles shook his head. He felt like he was about to grasp something important. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Enough of this nonsense. You were going to tell us what the artificers did to you.”
“Where to start? The feet? I’ll start at the feet.” He flexed his toes and leered.
“Dawn, go to your room,” Buffy said.
“We aren’t even at home.”
“Go to Giles’ room, then!”
Giles couldn’t begin to ponder how dreadful that idea was, however... “This might be… not exactly suitable for minors.”
“What about me?” Xander raised a hand. “Can the over-18 be excused on account of trauma?”
“If I have to stay, you do,” Buffy said. Then she looked guilty and went back to leaning against the wall and chewing her nails.
Spike rolled his eyes extravagantly. “For fuck’s sake, I’ll keep it kiddie-friendly.”
Dawn smiled delightedly.
“You clearly have no idea what those words even mean,” Giles said.
“You want to hear this or don’t you?” No one moved. Giles had to admit he did want to hear. He nodded.
For some odd reason, Spike got up, wrote a note, and slammed it into Giles’ hand before resuming his seat on the couch.
“Ben is Glory” the note said. What on earth did that mean? Giles tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Spike looked down at his feet. “Apparently, my feet weren’t 100% as attractive as they could be. They carved out my bunions and re-shaped my crooked pinky toe. That’s the level of detail these wankers operate at. They plumped up my calves a little, I think. Lost some feeling on the backs of them, anyway. Then it was my knees. A bit of de-knobbification, I guess, or some knee cap reinforcement for long periods on ‘em. I didn’t exactly get briefed by my health care provider. Then they moved on to the not-safe-for-Dawn areas. That was a long and detailed procedure, you can imagine.”
Giles said, “There must have been something they did which was the last thing before you started obeying every order. THINK.”
Spike scowled. “Am thinking. Berk.” He drained off the last of his mug of blood. “Chip,” he said. “All right? Happy, everyone? There’s my one secret I was trying to keep from you all and I had better just say it and escape the humiliation of being ordered. It was after they took out the chip.”
Willow and Xander, who were on the sofa on either side, moved a little further away from Spike.
Giles pressed forward. “The government microchip in your head? Why would they take it out?”
“Dunno. Said they just found it there.”
Giles took off his glasses. “They found it.”
“And major wigging for the elective brain surgery?” Buffy asked. “Or is that just me?”
“Of course,” Giles said. He ran to his desk and started pawing through books. The Codex of Wallandra… had he put it away? No, there it was.
Xander asked, “Uh, Giles? Want to share with the rest of the class?”
Giles ignored him, flipping frantically through pages, his glasses in one hand. “Ah! Here it is. Among the talismans frequently crafted by the Artisans of the City of Wallandra, The Artifice of Obedience, an amulet carved from the bone…” he looked up at Spike, “Of a human skull.”
“Which means?” Spike asked.
Willow got a sick look on her face and cringed against the sofa arm. “We’re going to have to cut his skull.”
“But I’m not… well, I guess my SKULL is human.” Spike looked thoughtful and amused.
The drawing indicated the back of the skull, right where the curve was deepest. “With artifacts of this complexity, merely disrupting the design should suffice.” He looked up. “Well, of course, we would need to cut the skull, but then, we just have to, well, scratch out part of it, I guess.”
“Lovely. Let’s get skull-scraping.” Spike set his mug down on the coffee table. “Want to do this in the bathroom? Less blood everywhere.”
“Woah. WOAH.” Xander held out both hands. Everyone looked at him. “Guys? Are we forgetting something? The chip?”
“Oh dear,” Giles said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Buffy said. “We need to protect Dawn, no matter what the price.” She frowned. “Spike… if there were any other way…”
Spike jumped away from her. “So kill Glory, then! You know she’s Ben, he’s a human, a bullet from a nice safe range and the universe is safe for kittens and puppies!”
Giles was horrified. “Why are you talking about killing an innocent human? No, Buffy, Xander is right - we can’t risk unleashing an evil vampire.”
Spike groaned. “I pretty please promise not to bite any of you.”
Spike looked genuinely confused that they would find his casual assumption that their own safety was all they cared about horrifying. “What?”
Giles closed his book. “We’ll have to stake him.”
Spike bolted over the back of the couch and out Giles’ back door, narrowly missing Xander, who fell onto the floor to avoid him.
“Wow, even injured, that guy can move really fast,” Xander said.
Buffy smacked Giles on the arm. Not lightly.
“Yes, I suppose it was rather thick of me to up and say that in front of him,” Giles said, and sighed. “I suppose you ought to chase after him before he does something foolish or ends up captured again.”
“Ya think?” Buffy said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and grabbed a crossbow from beside the end table with all the drama only she could summon.
Giles sat down to read the complete description of the talisman.
Continued -->
<-- Previous Chapter
Chapter One Here
Chapter Seventeen: Debriefing
Xander had just enough spare thought to pick Spike up from the floor as they fled Glory’s stronghold. Spike looked like hell, and barely got his feet under himself as Xander pulled him forward.
He kinda didn’t want to think about the weird ways he was injured, or the fact that Glory had seemed… well, more than seemed. She was satisfied. She looked relaxed and lazy and rather than come at them full-force had mostly sent her minions. Xander knew that look. Xander had had that look.
He really hoped that moisture on his shirt was blood.
Buffy ran in front of him. “Wait.”
“How about not waiting? We barely got out of there.” Xander said.
Buff picked up Spike’s sagging head by the chin. “Did you tell her anything? Answer me!”
Spike’s shifted against Xander. “No,” he said.
“Spike, I order you to tell me if you told her anything.”
Spike stiffened in Xander’s arms. He pulled himself upright. “Didn’t tell her anything. I kept her from asking. You think I would lie to you? Now?”
“We have to be sure,” Buffy said. She was crying. Xander tried to say something, but all he could do was open and shut his mouth a few times.
Buffy ran. Like she was running away from them.
Spike sagged again. Xander nearly dropped him. “Little help, G-man?”
“Of course,” Giles said, and hurried to take up a position on Spike’s other side.
Together they got Spike up on the sarcophagus in his tomb. The guy looked, paradoxically, less dead than usual, what with all the very living-colored blood on him.
So maybe things weren’t as sexy as Xander initially thought. “Did you have to poke the hell-god?” Xander asked.
Spike laughed brokenly. Xander wanted badly to wipe his hands, but didn’t see anything available other than Spike. He knew from sadly specific experience that whipping your hands on a tomb just got them dirtier. “Let’s go. I need to wash my everything.”
“In a moment, Xander,” Giles said. He was looking very intently at Spike.
“Oh come off it, watcher,” Spike said, his laugh sobering.
Giles asked, “What did they do to you, exactly? The artificers?”
“What do you care? Made me even more helpless, didn’t they? Perfect for you and your white hats.”
“If what Buffy said is correct, all Glory had to do was ASK and you’d betray us.”
“Oi! Not…” Spike groaned in pain after trying to sit up. He fell back, eyelids fluttering. “Not willingly. Wouldn’t do that to her.”
Giles was starting to look downright scary. “Yes, but we’ve quite established it doesn’t have to be willing.”
Xander was shocked to see the stake in Giles’ hand. He was more shocked that Spike looked at it resignedly and fell back, like he was going to let Giles stake him.
Xander grabbed Giles’ arm. “Hey - he endured torture for us.”
Giles turned the scary-as-heck face on Xander then. “Which is why I asked first.”
“I don’t bloody know,” Spike said. He threw an arm over his eyes. “Fuck, if I knew what they did, I’d undo it.”
“Giles.” Xander stopped Giles from striking once, then again. “Listen… I was ready to stake him myself, but now… it doesn’t feel right. If he’ll follow any order, order him to stake himself before he tells who the key is.”
“Stake himself?” Giles looked horrified, suddenly, but he also stepped back and stopped trying to make with the dusting. “No. No I’m not thinking clearly.”
Look at that, Xander Harris, you just saved Spike.
It was hard to hold the sarcastic quip in, lest it ruin the moment.
“Very well,” said Giles. It was his patented decision voice. He tucked the stake back into his coat. “We can’t leave him here. Help me get him to my car.”
“And then where?”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there.”
***
For lack of a better plan, Giles brought Spike back to his home, bandaged him up and gave him blood. Just to keep him from bleeding on the upholstery.
The children all gathered. Spike sat on the sofa in Giles’ living room, still looking raw, but his wounds weren’t actively bleeding anymore. He held a mug of blood in both hands.
“Are you finally settled enough to talk?” Giles asked. “I’m getting tired of your petulance.”
“Oi. Just been tortured, remember?” Spike sighed. “First thing you need to understand is… Glory is Ben.”
He said something odd that seemed to slip right off Giles’ ears. “Ben is involved with Glory somehow?”
“No! Ben IS Glory. Glory IS Ben.”
The individual words made sense, but Giles was having a distressing time piecing meaning from them.
“Look, Glory is inside a human body, get it? One body, two completely separate beings. It’s like a bloody sitcom.”
Giles nodded. “Yes. Of course. The beast requires a host.” That was what he’d just learned in his researches a few days ago. Spike must have read it as well. “But who?”
“BEN! And, apparently, if you make her very VERY happy, she can have trouble keeping control. As it where. Hence: Ben is Glory, I nearly had my eye poked out by an unexpected cock, and Glory was none too pleased about the whole business. Also, Ben is straight, if any of you had designs on him.”
“Wait,” said Willow. “I’m confused. You’re saying Ben was with Glory?”
Spike put down his mug. He looked as confused as Giles felt. “Are you all very stoned? Glory is Ben, Ben is Glory.”
Giles shook his head. He felt like he was about to grasp something important. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Enough of this nonsense. You were going to tell us what the artificers did to you.”
“Where to start? The feet? I’ll start at the feet.” He flexed his toes and leered.
“Dawn, go to your room,” Buffy said.
“We aren’t even at home.”
“Go to Giles’ room, then!”
Giles couldn’t begin to ponder how dreadful that idea was, however... “This might be… not exactly suitable for minors.”
“What about me?” Xander raised a hand. “Can the over-18 be excused on account of trauma?”
“If I have to stay, you do,” Buffy said. Then she looked guilty and went back to leaning against the wall and chewing her nails.
Spike rolled his eyes extravagantly. “For fuck’s sake, I’ll keep it kiddie-friendly.”
Dawn smiled delightedly.
“You clearly have no idea what those words even mean,” Giles said.
“You want to hear this or don’t you?” No one moved. Giles had to admit he did want to hear. He nodded.
For some odd reason, Spike got up, wrote a note, and slammed it into Giles’ hand before resuming his seat on the couch.
“Ben is Glory” the note said. What on earth did that mean? Giles tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Spike looked down at his feet. “Apparently, my feet weren’t 100% as attractive as they could be. They carved out my bunions and re-shaped my crooked pinky toe. That’s the level of detail these wankers operate at. They plumped up my calves a little, I think. Lost some feeling on the backs of them, anyway. Then it was my knees. A bit of de-knobbification, I guess, or some knee cap reinforcement for long periods on ‘em. I didn’t exactly get briefed by my health care provider. Then they moved on to the not-safe-for-Dawn areas. That was a long and detailed procedure, you can imagine.”
Giles said, “There must have been something they did which was the last thing before you started obeying every order. THINK.”
Spike scowled. “Am thinking. Berk.” He drained off the last of his mug of blood. “Chip,” he said. “All right? Happy, everyone? There’s my one secret I was trying to keep from you all and I had better just say it and escape the humiliation of being ordered. It was after they took out the chip.”
Willow and Xander, who were on the sofa on either side, moved a little further away from Spike.
Giles pressed forward. “The government microchip in your head? Why would they take it out?”
“Dunno. Said they just found it there.”
Giles took off his glasses. “They found it.”
“And major wigging for the elective brain surgery?” Buffy asked. “Or is that just me?”
“Of course,” Giles said. He ran to his desk and started pawing through books. The Codex of Wallandra… had he put it away? No, there it was.
Xander asked, “Uh, Giles? Want to share with the rest of the class?”
Giles ignored him, flipping frantically through pages, his glasses in one hand. “Ah! Here it is. Among the talismans frequently crafted by the Artisans of the City of Wallandra, The Artifice of Obedience, an amulet carved from the bone…” he looked up at Spike, “Of a human skull.”
“Which means?” Spike asked.
Willow got a sick look on her face and cringed against the sofa arm. “We’re going to have to cut his skull.”
“But I’m not… well, I guess my SKULL is human.” Spike looked thoughtful and amused.
The drawing indicated the back of the skull, right where the curve was deepest. “With artifacts of this complexity, merely disrupting the design should suffice.” He looked up. “Well, of course, we would need to cut the skull, but then, we just have to, well, scratch out part of it, I guess.”
“Lovely. Let’s get skull-scraping.” Spike set his mug down on the coffee table. “Want to do this in the bathroom? Less blood everywhere.”
“Woah. WOAH.” Xander held out both hands. Everyone looked at him. “Guys? Are we forgetting something? The chip?”
“Oh dear,” Giles said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Buffy said. “We need to protect Dawn, no matter what the price.” She frowned. “Spike… if there were any other way…”
Spike jumped away from her. “So kill Glory, then! You know she’s Ben, he’s a human, a bullet from a nice safe range and the universe is safe for kittens and puppies!”
Giles was horrified. “Why are you talking about killing an innocent human? No, Buffy, Xander is right - we can’t risk unleashing an evil vampire.”
Spike groaned. “I pretty please promise not to bite any of you.”
Spike looked genuinely confused that they would find his casual assumption that their own safety was all they cared about horrifying. “What?”
Giles closed his book. “We’ll have to stake him.”
Spike bolted over the back of the couch and out Giles’ back door, narrowly missing Xander, who fell onto the floor to avoid him.
“Wow, even injured, that guy can move really fast,” Xander said.
Buffy smacked Giles on the arm. Not lightly.
“Yes, I suppose it was rather thick of me to up and say that in front of him,” Giles said, and sighed. “I suppose you ought to chase after him before he does something foolish or ends up captured again.”
“Ya think?” Buffy said. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and grabbed a crossbow from beside the end table with all the drama only she could summon.
Giles sat down to read the complete description of the talisman.
Continued -->