Fic: Victim
Title: Victim
Creator: drizzlydaze
Rating: PG
Setting: NFA battle
Word count: 979
Prompt: Bombsite Boys
A/N: Fourth instalment in my reunion verse. Parts One ( Chapters), Two ( Like Old Times, But Not), Three ( Help).
There is a lot of red. There’s a lot of black, too. There’s also a surprising amount of blue. And flashes of gold.
Everything is blurry.
There is noise, an indistinguishable roar that pounds at his ears.
There is pain. It’s a very usual pain as of late, but he’s passed the horrifying mark a few pints of blood ago.
Then.
Then.
“…death. You cannot pass over when I command…” His broken ears, more like holes than appendages, catch brief refrains of some kind of litany. “…Mend as I…”
Something stirs within him.
It doesn’t feel like a spell-not like the usual magic-but it feels… mystical. Otherworldly.
And suddenly, a word echoes through his mind, strong and clear-Mend!
He gasps, sucks in a ragged breath.
Mend!
He feels his shrivelled body, his hollowed and broken body, filling out and sealing up.
Mend!
His vision is clearing, and the formless colours now sharpen into real shapes. Past the smoke, the greying skies-he thinks they’re skies, but he’s not too sure-there are two faces in the foreground. One is talking.
A whisper. “Spike.”
He can hear his breathing. Tries to talk back. Buffy. A raspy breath is all he can manage.
He’s a little busy trying not to pass out.
He feels strong hands gripping him, gently but firmly, but he can’t be certain if it’s Illyria or Buffy. His restored vision is fighting with the darkness of unconsciousness. His sides ache with the light pressure of the fingers, the rocking motion of being moved like a sack of potatoes. At least he has sides now.
“Okay, I’m going to keep talking, but you don’t have to answer. You shouldn’t answer.” Buffy’s voice rises over the sounds of battle. Buffy’s the one who’s carrying him, he realizes. “So, I’m going to try get you to safety.” She laughs. “I know that sounds stupid. LA’s a living hell. There’s no safety. But I’m going to try find some anyway. There has to be some medical bay somewhere-or something, I don’t know. But right now, we’re pretty safe with both me and what’s-her-name covering you.”
He focuses on her voice. His vision keeps shifting as Buffy adjusts her grip every five paces or so-sometimes, he glimpses the gold of her hair, her actual face; the next moment, Illyria’s profile captures his sight; just as often, he finds himself looking at the grey battlefield or smoky skies that don’t seem much different to the black unconsciousness he’s struggling against. Her voice is worth staying awake for.
“You gotta hang on. You have to hang on long enough for me to kick your ass all the way back to… I don’t know, Budapest… because why are you still undead and kicking? And I don’t mean right now. I don’t mean in this giant battle. I mean from the Hellmouth. Do you remember any of it? At all? You can’t. Because you didn’t find me. You know, I was just moving on… grabbing the… gift of life… and… I know you came back after the summer. Don’t know if you heard smurfette, but she told me. Don’t even know if you can hear me right now… And now, I find you, and you’re split open, and I don’t know if you’re…”
Her voice trails off, or perhaps it is his extreme fatigue that makes it fade-in any case, he soon falls into unconsciousness.
When he next wakes up, he’s on the hard ground. He feels significantly better. He can move his fingers now, which is a distinct improvement. He can feel the shape of his own body, feel that it’s his own body, because it’s not falling apart anymore. He coughs, and there’s only an ache from his ribs, not a jarring pain. He moves his eyes round the dark room, then his head, but sees no one. He crunches into vamp vision with a bit of a wince, and still nothing.
So he sits up slowly, carefully. It’s a blank dim room with no one in it but him. It’s cold. Made of stone, he figures. He can’t smell anyone but himself. He can’t hear any fighting from outside.
He limps to the latched door, fumbles a little, then opens it slightly. A jet of flame shoots past the tiny crack, singeing his fingers as he hastily slams it shut. He’s feeling better, but not apocalyptic battle better.
So he slumps back down, back against the door, and runs through the howwhenwhywherewhatwho questions that circle his mind. Where’s Buffy? Where’s Blue? Maybe they just… left him here to heal while they went back off to battle. But he can’t even smell the slightest trace of them having been in the room in the first place. In that case, how did he get here? No clue. Why is he here? To be safe, he supposes. But how in the world has this room been kept safe? Magic is the only possible answer here, especially if the room is under the protection of the PTB or Wolfram and Hart. How long has he been here? Long enough for his wounds to heal substantially. He has nothing else to go on, time-wise, except that the war is still ongoing, even though he can’t hear the sounds of battle from inside the room.
“Oi!” he shouts angrily, his throat burning. “What the bloody hell is this?”
His voice echoes around the room before it settles back into silence.
Then he hears a strange ringing sound in answer, a deep rattling breath that chills him to the bone. There’s something else in the room-someone else he can’t see. But he can hear that someone; not a pulse or a movement, but a clear deliberate voice.
“You’re a hostage. Now do be quiet or I shall be tempted to eviscerate you again.”