BtVS songfic: Hunter
Title: Hunter
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: “I want to be a hunter again . . . “
Feedback: Comments? Questions? Complaints? scwlc@yahoo.ca
Notes: This is a repost, so if you’ve read it, know that I’m just seeing if I’ll get more reviews here than in the BtVS section.
Spike settled down in the basement for the day. He could hear Dawn’s radio blasting from upstairs, every word clear to his enhanced senses. Buffy was in the kitchen making some adorably normal supper for her sister, chatting with the witches, laughing at her friends’ jokes. It made him sick.
*With one light on in one room*
*I know you're up when I get home*
*With one small step upon the stair*
*I know your look when I get there*
It was just so bloody domestic.
***
*If you were a king up there on your throne*
*Would you be wise enough to let me go*
*For this queen you think you own*
Buffy stood and laughed at the jokes Xander made, smiled as Tara and Willow did something adorable, and chastised Anya when she stepped out of line. She could also hear the song pounding on the radio in Dawn’s room.
The others didn’t know. How could they? None of them had ever felt this itch beneath their skins, clamouring for them to go out. She felt restless, on edge, she needed to move. She quelled her urge to go out on the hunt. When she tried to explain things to the others they just told her she should get more in contact with her humanity. Humanity wasn’t the answer
As the chorus swelled she felt something in her cry in answer.
*Wants to be a hunter again*
*Wants to see the world alone again*
*To take a chance on life again*
*So let me go*
***
Angel paced the length of his room, anxious for the sun to set. Cordelia had the radio on too loud downstairs and the driving beat matched his urgent steps. He scented the air. Too long until sunset.
Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Fred had all made it their mission to bring him into lockstep with humanity. even if it drove him mad. It well might. The incessant nagging to lighten up, to stop being so dark, to stop stalking, to move out of the shadows, it brought the madness closer to the surface. He was forced to play a role that he could never relish.
He was an ambush predator. He stalked his prey through the night. Powerful senses and perception, an understanding of the prey’s mentality through the lens of a killer. Just because his conscience made him feel guilt for the killing of an innocent human didn’t take away the longing for the blood of a clean kill to appease the anger that grew daily.
How could a hunter be told to stop hunting?
***
*The unread book and painful look*
*The tv's on, the sound is down*
*One long pause*
*Then you begin*
*Oh look what the cat's brought in*
Spike got up and began to pace. He was trapped in this small room filled with the useless trappings of humanity and he could do nothing. He was impotent. His purpose taken away from him by pathetic creatures who knew nothing of being a predator. They thought they were the most important creatures on the planet and all he could think was how good it felt when one of them slid down his throat.
He shook his head to clear it, to calm the impulse that told him to tear through the people upstairs like a hurricane. They all mocked him. Even the Slayer, and Spike could see the need humming beneath her skin.
He was caged and hobbled. Like a tiger in a Victorian zoo.
***
*If you were a king up there on your throne*
*would you be wise enough to let me go*
*for this queen you think you own*
Faith paced her cell. She had already asked the guards to turn down the damn music, but they had just laughed and ignored her. It was moments like this one, as the sun set, and every fibre of her body screamed for her to get out into the cool night air and find a vampire to stake, that she could not stay still. She slammed her fists against the wall and then leaned against it. Only for a moment though, then she was pacing again, more furiously than ever.
When they let her out to have dinner with the rest of the prisoners her every move was a study of controlled violence. She stalked down the hallway after the guard who kept looking at her as though expecting an attack. It soothed the Slayer’s irritation slightly. The fear was a tease, but it was better than nothing.
No one sat near her.
***
*Wants to be a hunter again*
*Wants to see the world alone again*
*To take a chance on life again*
*So let me go*
*Let me leave*
Angel was vibrating in his suite, waiting for the sun to set so he could escape into the night. The others couldn’t follow him, and tonight he needed to be alone. To run with the lunacy the moon gave him. Tonight he would send the others away. He needed to feel the adrenaline burst of flushed prey, scent the fear on the night air and feel the life fade out under his hands. He also needed to glut on the blood of his kill and play with it until the terror overwhelmed its senses.
He could at least do some of that.
***
*For the crown you've placed upon my head feels too heavy now*
*And I don't know what to say to you but I'll smile anyhow*
*And all the time I'm thinking, thinking*
Buffy could hardly wait until the sun was fully down and she was free to go hunting. The others had placed her on this pedestal of righteous goodness, pretending that she wasn’t called the Slayer because of a feeling buried in her blood. They pretended she was just like them, that she did not embody the Celtic goddess the Morrigan.
Raven of battle, blood, death and war. She was destruction. Caged and taught that her very essence was wrong. Her needs to be unfulfilled.
***
*I want to be a hunter again*
*Want to see the world alone again*
*To take a chance on life again*
*So let me go.*
*Let me leave*
*Let me go*
Faith struggled to control the need that had only swelled with each passing moment following sunset. The dark looks she sent around the dining hall only served to intensify the smell of fear in every corner of the room.
Not that she could go anywhere.
***
*I want to be a hunter again*
Spike stalked to the door, followed by the Slayer.
*I want to to see the world alone again*
Angel found himself roped into helping Gunn against a pack of fledges. They were dust in the wind far too quickly, then he had to ‘celebrate’ with the others.
*To take a chance on life again*
Buffy couldn’t shake her friends even as she and Spike took on a pair of huge demons. The rush was destroyed when her friends watched her back and took one of them out with the crossbow, and injured the other too badly to fight back. Her teeth clenched as she thanked them.
*So let me go*
Faith clung desperately to her resolution to amend in prison. She shuddered in solitary confinement where they had put her after the fight with the new bitch had been broken up.
*Let me leave*
Trapped, there was no way to ease the restlessness that throbbed in the veins and sent anticipation of an event that would never happen thrumming through the body.
*Let me go.*
The hunt, denied.
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