Fic - All That You Break, Spike, R
Title: All That You Break
Author: Lyra Jane
Rating: R (Angst level: 4.)
Summary: Spike and Dana in the basement during "Damage," if Angel hadn't gotten there. Written for doylesb4 for the angstathon.
A/N: Thanks to serasempre for the fast, thorough beta. Another beta may be edited in over the weekend, but I wanted to post this before I went offline.
It didn't hurt.
He wasn't just playing the big man, either - his wounds really didn't hurt. Shock set in, or his undead nerves got overloaded and shut down, or something.
Spike made a mental note to tell Angel; lot of time he'd wasted on torture, back in the old days.
Once he got out of this basement, that was. If he got out. If he saw Angel again.
No. He couldn't think about that.
Lots of things not to think about.
For instance, the girl - the Slayer - who had trapped him in this sickly-sweet smelling hole in the ground. She was taking a break, hunched in a corner. She hummed a nursery ditty as she rocked, and chewed on one cuticle.
Spike kept watching her. He had already stared at his injuries for as long as he could stand. His forearms were long gone, and blood clotted in crusty sheets where his elbows had been, splashing almost up to his shoulders. The stumps itched madly, like a million mosquitoes biting him all at once, but that was something else he couldn't think about, because if he thought about it they would itch more, and what the hell could he do about that?
She had tested all of her instruments of torture on his lower legs, drawing one after another against his calf, injecting him with half a dozen brightly-colored potions that, together, made the room swirl slowly and made Spike feel like about half an inch of Vaseline gelled between him and the rest of the world. Ink-dark blood spattered his legs, running down to his feet and then to the floor in rivulets.
And he was stuck there, analyzing his injuries, while the only Slayer who made the old Faith look like a model citizen babbled to the air. "Fucking brilliant, Spike," he thought, cursing his lack of other options. Dana had fastened a length of chain around his waist, locking him to a pole. If he could get to his feet and get leverage, he might be able to pull the chain free.
If. If. Because as hard as Spike tried, he couldn't see a way to his feet with no arms, and no wiggle room in the chain, and a mad slayer who wasn't likely to give him time to flail about while he stumbled to the exit.
And then there was the little matter of opening the door. "I've been in worse spots before," Spike thought, "Secret is just to wait her out until she gets bored or someone finds me."
The girl had stopped singing now, and was huddled staring at him. "You hurt me," she said conversationally.
"Been over this before, love," he answered. "Wasn't me that hurt you. I can help you if you want. Help you find-"
And he was silenced by Dana, flying across the basement to slap him across the face, hard; his head slamming backwards into the pole.
"Shut up shut up shut up," she said. "Liar. Everything you said was a lie. You said, you said if I was a good girl, you would let me go, you would find my mommy. Liar."
"I'm sorry," Spike said, hearing the cadences of a little girl an ocean and three generations away. Her mother's blood had been rich with wine, and he had blindfolded the girl to bring her back to Drusilla in their nest.
"Your mama told me to play a game with you," he had assured the crying child as they walked through the streets of Berlin. "Follow me, and we'll go find her." She had sniffled, and slipped her small cool hand into his. He told her some kiddie stories in his pidgin German, crooned a nursery rhyme. By the time he brought her to Drusilla, he was almost sad to see the tyke gone.
Almost. Drusilla cooed, "A lovely little girl to play with. We'll have all sorts of fun with her," and her eyes shone as she stroked the girl's butter-colored braids, and Spike was proud to please his sire, proud to have stolen the child through the streets unseen. And when he took his first nip of blood from the girl's eight-year-old thighs, he felt the familiar rush of predation.
He had forgotten about the girl entirely by the time he dragged her body to the curb just before day broke the next morning, rushing a bit to get back to Dru's arms. As they curled together against the day, snug in velvet and wool, he dimly heard the ragpicker on the street above find the girl's body, cry out in horror.
It lulled him into sweet dreams, then. Now the memory seared through him, followed by ten, a hundred, five hundred other little girls and little boys and whole families he had cheerfully destroyed. At that second, he wasn't sure whether he had hurt Dana or not, and what difference it made either way.
The girl went back to her chest to pull out a weapon, stood and came toward him with an aged scalpel clutched in one fist. She loomed over him. "You hurt me. Dragged me out from under the bed, and, and ..." She tilted her head to the side, listening, and resumed speaking, a hint of New York roughening her voice. "It was in front of my son. Worse, you hurt him. Bet the kid's never recovered, you bastard," she sneered.
"He's fine," Spike said, idiotically, mouth working even as his brain sent it commands to shut. "Looking after Slayers in India, last I heard. Tried to kill me, but-"
A fist found his jaw, cracking his head backwards.
"Your words, all lies," she said, and then something in Japanese that his dim memories of WWII Tokyo couldn't decode. But she was back to English soon enough: "Stop you, stop you talking. Hush," Dana said, crouching to Spike's level. She scraped the blade over his right cheek once, twice, three times, vertical slits dripping blood, cuts almost down to his cheekbone. She raised one hand to the blood, dabbling it over his face.
And in a second, a millisecond, too fast for Spike to react at all, she had his tongue by the roots. Involuntarily, he shifted into vamp face. His fangs scraped against her left hand as her right sliced through his tongue, the muscle separating like soft cheese as his mouth filled with the iron taste of blood. He swallowed desperately, gulping, choking a bit on the flap of flesh still attached to his mouth.
And then he felt the searing pain, and, more than that, the absence. For a hundred and forty years, he had run his tongue over his teeth and lips, kissed women and men with it, lapped blood with it. Its soft weight within his mouth had been an unquestioned part of himself for every second of his existence.
Now there was nothing but a forming blood clot that threatened his gag reflex. Muted and still in vamp face, he stared at Dana as she tossed his tongue into the corner like it was so much garbage.
"You'll be quiet now," she told him. "Like I was, until the girls came to me. Maybe the girls will come to you." A pause, and then, "Or I could send you to them." And she turned, bent over her toolbox of weapons and emerged with a sharpened shard of wood.
In that instant, Spike was aware of everything: The grit on the floor, the cold of the metal against his back and around his waist, the sickening scent of blood and molasses, the blood still flooding his mouth. Anglican prayers jumbled with memories of Dru, of Buffy, or Sunnydale and London and death and sex and life, glorious life.
And then there was nothing. The Slayer brushed dust from her hands as she climbed out of the basement, her mission complete.
Author: Lyra Jane
Rating: R (Angst level: 4.)
Summary: Spike and Dana in the basement during "Damage," if Angel hadn't gotten there. Written for doylesb4 for the angstathon.
A/N: Thanks to serasempre for the fast, thorough beta. Another beta may be edited in over the weekend, but I wanted to post this before I went offline.
It didn't hurt.
He wasn't just playing the big man, either - his wounds really didn't hurt. Shock set in, or his undead nerves got overloaded and shut down, or something.
Spike made a mental note to tell Angel; lot of time he'd wasted on torture, back in the old days.
Once he got out of this basement, that was. If he got out. If he saw Angel again.
No. He couldn't think about that.
Lots of things not to think about.
For instance, the girl - the Slayer - who had trapped him in this sickly-sweet smelling hole in the ground. She was taking a break, hunched in a corner. She hummed a nursery ditty as she rocked, and chewed on one cuticle.
Spike kept watching her. He had already stared at his injuries for as long as he could stand. His forearms were long gone, and blood clotted in crusty sheets where his elbows had been, splashing almost up to his shoulders. The stumps itched madly, like a million mosquitoes biting him all at once, but that was something else he couldn't think about, because if he thought about it they would itch more, and what the hell could he do about that?
She had tested all of her instruments of torture on his lower legs, drawing one after another against his calf, injecting him with half a dozen brightly-colored potions that, together, made the room swirl slowly and made Spike feel like about half an inch of Vaseline gelled between him and the rest of the world. Ink-dark blood spattered his legs, running down to his feet and then to the floor in rivulets.
And he was stuck there, analyzing his injuries, while the only Slayer who made the old Faith look like a model citizen babbled to the air. "Fucking brilliant, Spike," he thought, cursing his lack of other options. Dana had fastened a length of chain around his waist, locking him to a pole. If he could get to his feet and get leverage, he might be able to pull the chain free.
If. If. Because as hard as Spike tried, he couldn't see a way to his feet with no arms, and no wiggle room in the chain, and a mad slayer who wasn't likely to give him time to flail about while he stumbled to the exit.
And then there was the little matter of opening the door. "I've been in worse spots before," Spike thought, "Secret is just to wait her out until she gets bored or someone finds me."
The girl had stopped singing now, and was huddled staring at him. "You hurt me," she said conversationally.
"Been over this before, love," he answered. "Wasn't me that hurt you. I can help you if you want. Help you find-"
And he was silenced by Dana, flying across the basement to slap him across the face, hard; his head slamming backwards into the pole.
"Shut up shut up shut up," she said. "Liar. Everything you said was a lie. You said, you said if I was a good girl, you would let me go, you would find my mommy. Liar."
"I'm sorry," Spike said, hearing the cadences of a little girl an ocean and three generations away. Her mother's blood had been rich with wine, and he had blindfolded the girl to bring her back to Drusilla in their nest.
"Your mama told me to play a game with you," he had assured the crying child as they walked through the streets of Berlin. "Follow me, and we'll go find her." She had sniffled, and slipped her small cool hand into his. He told her some kiddie stories in his pidgin German, crooned a nursery rhyme. By the time he brought her to Drusilla, he was almost sad to see the tyke gone.
Almost. Drusilla cooed, "A lovely little girl to play with. We'll have all sorts of fun with her," and her eyes shone as she stroked the girl's butter-colored braids, and Spike was proud to please his sire, proud to have stolen the child through the streets unseen. And when he took his first nip of blood from the girl's eight-year-old thighs, he felt the familiar rush of predation.
He had forgotten about the girl entirely by the time he dragged her body to the curb just before day broke the next morning, rushing a bit to get back to Dru's arms. As they curled together against the day, snug in velvet and wool, he dimly heard the ragpicker on the street above find the girl's body, cry out in horror.
It lulled him into sweet dreams, then. Now the memory seared through him, followed by ten, a hundred, five hundred other little girls and little boys and whole families he had cheerfully destroyed. At that second, he wasn't sure whether he had hurt Dana or not, and what difference it made either way.
The girl went back to her chest to pull out a weapon, stood and came toward him with an aged scalpel clutched in one fist. She loomed over him. "You hurt me. Dragged me out from under the bed, and, and ..." She tilted her head to the side, listening, and resumed speaking, a hint of New York roughening her voice. "It was in front of my son. Worse, you hurt him. Bet the kid's never recovered, you bastard," she sneered.
"He's fine," Spike said, idiotically, mouth working even as his brain sent it commands to shut. "Looking after Slayers in India, last I heard. Tried to kill me, but-"
A fist found his jaw, cracking his head backwards.
"Your words, all lies," she said, and then something in Japanese that his dim memories of WWII Tokyo couldn't decode. But she was back to English soon enough: "Stop you, stop you talking. Hush," Dana said, crouching to Spike's level. She scraped the blade over his right cheek once, twice, three times, vertical slits dripping blood, cuts almost down to his cheekbone. She raised one hand to the blood, dabbling it over his face.
And in a second, a millisecond, too fast for Spike to react at all, she had his tongue by the roots. Involuntarily, he shifted into vamp face. His fangs scraped against her left hand as her right sliced through his tongue, the muscle separating like soft cheese as his mouth filled with the iron taste of blood. He swallowed desperately, gulping, choking a bit on the flap of flesh still attached to his mouth.
And then he felt the searing pain, and, more than that, the absence. For a hundred and forty years, he had run his tongue over his teeth and lips, kissed women and men with it, lapped blood with it. Its soft weight within his mouth had been an unquestioned part of himself for every second of his existence.
Now there was nothing but a forming blood clot that threatened his gag reflex. Muted and still in vamp face, he stared at Dana as she tossed his tongue into the corner like it was so much garbage.
"You'll be quiet now," she told him. "Like I was, until the girls came to me. Maybe the girls will come to you." A pause, and then, "Or I could send you to them." And she turned, bent over her toolbox of weapons and emerged with a sharpened shard of wood.
In that instant, Spike was aware of everything: The grit on the floor, the cold of the metal against his back and around his waist, the sickening scent of blood and molasses, the blood still flooding his mouth. Anglican prayers jumbled with memories of Dru, of Buffy, or Sunnydale and London and death and sex and life, glorious life.
And then there was nothing. The Slayer brushed dust from her hands as she climbed out of the basement, her mission complete.