Relativity (Team Slayer R)
Title Relativity
Author Brutti ma buoni
Rating R - lots of passing violence, gore, killing of non-Spuffy characters
Words c1200
Setting Alternate season 5, branching off from season 4
A/N Follows Devil's Bargain and the later parts of this AU, most recently The Princess in the Tower
Spike would never claim to be a long-term master strategist, but a poor tactician, he isn't. So his thoughts are working overtime as he considers the situation. Buffy has found her sister within the evil Initiative. Her sister is some kind of massive energy matrix which every demonic and human nutjob this side of the Mississippi seems to be hunting down with evil intent. Or good intent, whatever, it's unnerving stuff. Buffy knows this. Dawn does not. They're hugging. Buffy is - quite clearly - no longer planning to stab Dawn through the heart and save the world from Key energy, whatever the fuck that is.
None of this is a huge surprise. Slayer may be way, way away from her past - may indeed have killed more people than Spike's quite comfortable with, rivalry-wise - but he always thought she'd baulk at the knife-through-her-sister part of the plan. Which is why he was gonna do it for her. Now it's pretty clear Buffy will simply kill him straight afterwards, which would be very self-sacrificing of him if he were a good guy but is a pretty fucking massive disincentive since he isn't.
They are now officially in need of a Plan E.
The thing that Spike's pretty sure of, and on which their lives depend, is that the nutjobs don't know Dawn is the Key. Energy matrix, teenage girl, the two are readily separable and quite hard to believe as a combo.
So they might, just might, get out of here without everyone dying horribly, he thinks. Might be able to run away with the kid, get Buffy a new identity… probably without him, come to think of it, because a vampire would be pretty noticeable. So would a Slayer, so Buffy'll have to be discreet or even retired, and-
It sounds like a fucking awful life, but at least it's a life. He's almost resigned to it, when the voice comes.
"So, a little bird told me they'd changed my Key. It's not a green light any more, right? It's a little girl. A Slayer's sister. It's you."
It's Glory. Of course he knows it even before Buffy's gasp confirms the name. He leaps for the garish blonde stranger, and isn’t remotely surprised when she throws him off and into a wall with enough force to cause structural damage to both him and the building.
If that was Plan E, it sucked.
Fortunately, Buffy has another plan.
She's backed up a little, pulled out her small, efficient knife and is holding it to Dawn's throat. The kid takes a moment to even notice, let alone believe it. Then Spike watches as all the blood drains out of her face, and the relieved childishness slips from her expression.
The kid's been in the Initiative for a couple of days now, and in her head it'll be much longer. She's learnt to shut down in the face of overwhelming shit. Her sister threatening her life seems to fall neatly into that category. She looks like stone.
Buffy's ignoring Dawn. Eyes are all for Glory. "I will kill her. I will kill her and you'll never have your Key."
Bad, bad tactic, thinks Spike, painfully extracting himself from the plasterwork and trying to get into a fighting stance. Glory smiles widely, in a way that means badness. "Not if I kill you first, honeypot."
Well, this'll be fun. A fight to the death with an ally who can break them all, with the certainty of failure written all over Buffy's face. Got to try, obviously. Spike can't simply run away and leave them.
(Well, could…) But he discards the idea speedily. A world in which Glory has some kind of infinite energy looks as unpleasant as a world full of the Initiative. He'll make his stand here, thanks. At least this way he knows who he's fighting for.
It's almost peaceful, that decision. Life after Drusilla hasn't been a bed of bloody roses. Death with Buffy has a ring to it.
But then something goes wrong. To Glory. She pales, twitches, screams and-
Is another person. A perfectly ordinary man in Glory's tarty gear. It doesn't suit him.
Buffy's blinking, Dawn still in her grasp but the knife drooping away from the kid's neck, not important. "Um. Ben? What's going on?"
Who's Ben? Apart from Glory's bodyswap buddy? Why does Buffy know his name? This wasn't in the plans.
Buffy continued to look like a stunned mullet. "I- I forgot you were Glory."
Ben, whoever he is, looks ready to spit. "I am not her. I'm her damn prison."
Spike starts to circle round, oh so slow, on the principle that Ben could turn into Glory at any moment, and give him another amusing chance to be slung heroically into the fixtures. Ben's blurting out some tedious life story, blah blah prison for a hellgod (huh, hellgod. Explains Glory's power), blah blah innocent child not fair, Glory uses the power of the Key to go home, blah blah, accidental universe destruction side-effects. I don't want to hurt anyone. You should get out of here.
"And take the Key, right?" says Buffy, gesturing at Dawn.
"That's the Key?" Ben does a stunned mullet in his turn. Oops. Way to give the game away, Slayer.
"Yes," says Buffy, calmly. "She's the Key." Not that he needs the change of pronoun to confirm it, but Spike notes it all the same. Buffy might still kill the kid, but it’ll hurt her deep into the soul if she has to off her sister. It suggests another tactic Spike might take, better than eating the infant Summers.
Ben's eyes move towards knives, and opportunities. Spike's nowhere near the ideal position for jumping him, if he's Glory-strong, but it's time. Spike has a knife of his own, and it's jammed up into Ben's neck before the lad knows what's going down. He is not Glory-strong. He feels normal, struggling humanly against Spike's vampire strength, his brief contemplation of child-murder no longer animating him.
Spike speaks into Ben's neck. "So you're Glory's prison, hmm? And her life-support, by the sound of it. We kill you, she dies, right? And she can't end the world with the kid here, so-" There's a perfect logic there. Maybe others can use the Key, but they'd have to know about Dawn first. This guy is the only real link to Glory's big plan. And - just ask Gregor - links must be severed.
Ben gets it fast. He whimpers, moving to beg. "I'm just a guy with shitty luck. I'm a doctor, I just wanted to help people. Glory stole my whole life. I'm only twenty-three years old. And she-" with a vicious jerk of his head towards Dawn that precious nearly takes care of the throat-slitting for spike "-she's not even real."
Spike looks to Buffy for permission, which would come, but his hand's already moving the knife into Ben's neck. It's not hard to kill a man with the right weapon in the right place. It's quick, with the arterial blood spraying up and out in a perfect, deadly, irrevocable arc.
Dawn starts to scream, high and horrible. She's been so quiet for the last minutes that Spike almost forgot she existed. Which is ironic. He ducks, almost as an afterthought, and drinks from Ben's neck wound. Dying human blood, but still richer than any chilled stuff he's had lately. It's gorgeous.
Buffy says, "It's okay Dawnie. It has to be this way."
Then she and Spike start to get the fuck out of the ruination of the Initiative, bringing the ruination of the universe with them. The kid doesn't stop crying.
***
Where do they go from here? Choose Your Own Adventure here
Author Brutti ma buoni
Rating R - lots of passing violence, gore, killing of non-Spuffy characters
Words c1200
Setting Alternate season 5, branching off from season 4
A/N Follows Devil's Bargain and the later parts of this AU, most recently The Princess in the Tower
Spike would never claim to be a long-term master strategist, but a poor tactician, he isn't. So his thoughts are working overtime as he considers the situation. Buffy has found her sister within the evil Initiative. Her sister is some kind of massive energy matrix which every demonic and human nutjob this side of the Mississippi seems to be hunting down with evil intent. Or good intent, whatever, it's unnerving stuff. Buffy knows this. Dawn does not. They're hugging. Buffy is - quite clearly - no longer planning to stab Dawn through the heart and save the world from Key energy, whatever the fuck that is.
None of this is a huge surprise. Slayer may be way, way away from her past - may indeed have killed more people than Spike's quite comfortable with, rivalry-wise - but he always thought she'd baulk at the knife-through-her-sister part of the plan. Which is why he was gonna do it for her. Now it's pretty clear Buffy will simply kill him straight afterwards, which would be very self-sacrificing of him if he were a good guy but is a pretty fucking massive disincentive since he isn't.
They are now officially in need of a Plan E.
The thing that Spike's pretty sure of, and on which their lives depend, is that the nutjobs don't know Dawn is the Key. Energy matrix, teenage girl, the two are readily separable and quite hard to believe as a combo.
So they might, just might, get out of here without everyone dying horribly, he thinks. Might be able to run away with the kid, get Buffy a new identity… probably without him, come to think of it, because a vampire would be pretty noticeable. So would a Slayer, so Buffy'll have to be discreet or even retired, and-
It sounds like a fucking awful life, but at least it's a life. He's almost resigned to it, when the voice comes.
"So, a little bird told me they'd changed my Key. It's not a green light any more, right? It's a little girl. A Slayer's sister. It's you."
It's Glory. Of course he knows it even before Buffy's gasp confirms the name. He leaps for the garish blonde stranger, and isn’t remotely surprised when she throws him off and into a wall with enough force to cause structural damage to both him and the building.
If that was Plan E, it sucked.
Fortunately, Buffy has another plan.
She's backed up a little, pulled out her small, efficient knife and is holding it to Dawn's throat. The kid takes a moment to even notice, let alone believe it. Then Spike watches as all the blood drains out of her face, and the relieved childishness slips from her expression.
The kid's been in the Initiative for a couple of days now, and in her head it'll be much longer. She's learnt to shut down in the face of overwhelming shit. Her sister threatening her life seems to fall neatly into that category. She looks like stone.
Buffy's ignoring Dawn. Eyes are all for Glory. "I will kill her. I will kill her and you'll never have your Key."
Bad, bad tactic, thinks Spike, painfully extracting himself from the plasterwork and trying to get into a fighting stance. Glory smiles widely, in a way that means badness. "Not if I kill you first, honeypot."
Well, this'll be fun. A fight to the death with an ally who can break them all, with the certainty of failure written all over Buffy's face. Got to try, obviously. Spike can't simply run away and leave them.
(Well, could…) But he discards the idea speedily. A world in which Glory has some kind of infinite energy looks as unpleasant as a world full of the Initiative. He'll make his stand here, thanks. At least this way he knows who he's fighting for.
It's almost peaceful, that decision. Life after Drusilla hasn't been a bed of bloody roses. Death with Buffy has a ring to it.
But then something goes wrong. To Glory. She pales, twitches, screams and-
Is another person. A perfectly ordinary man in Glory's tarty gear. It doesn't suit him.
Buffy's blinking, Dawn still in her grasp but the knife drooping away from the kid's neck, not important. "Um. Ben? What's going on?"
Who's Ben? Apart from Glory's bodyswap buddy? Why does Buffy know his name? This wasn't in the plans.
Buffy continued to look like a stunned mullet. "I- I forgot you were Glory."
Ben, whoever he is, looks ready to spit. "I am not her. I'm her damn prison."
Spike starts to circle round, oh so slow, on the principle that Ben could turn into Glory at any moment, and give him another amusing chance to be slung heroically into the fixtures. Ben's blurting out some tedious life story, blah blah prison for a hellgod (huh, hellgod. Explains Glory's power), blah blah innocent child not fair, Glory uses the power of the Key to go home, blah blah, accidental universe destruction side-effects. I don't want to hurt anyone. You should get out of here.
"And take the Key, right?" says Buffy, gesturing at Dawn.
"That's the Key?" Ben does a stunned mullet in his turn. Oops. Way to give the game away, Slayer.
"Yes," says Buffy, calmly. "She's the Key." Not that he needs the change of pronoun to confirm it, but Spike notes it all the same. Buffy might still kill the kid, but it’ll hurt her deep into the soul if she has to off her sister. It suggests another tactic Spike might take, better than eating the infant Summers.
Ben's eyes move towards knives, and opportunities. Spike's nowhere near the ideal position for jumping him, if he's Glory-strong, but it's time. Spike has a knife of his own, and it's jammed up into Ben's neck before the lad knows what's going down. He is not Glory-strong. He feels normal, struggling humanly against Spike's vampire strength, his brief contemplation of child-murder no longer animating him.
Spike speaks into Ben's neck. "So you're Glory's prison, hmm? And her life-support, by the sound of it. We kill you, she dies, right? And she can't end the world with the kid here, so-" There's a perfect logic there. Maybe others can use the Key, but they'd have to know about Dawn first. This guy is the only real link to Glory's big plan. And - just ask Gregor - links must be severed.
Ben gets it fast. He whimpers, moving to beg. "I'm just a guy with shitty luck. I'm a doctor, I just wanted to help people. Glory stole my whole life. I'm only twenty-three years old. And she-" with a vicious jerk of his head towards Dawn that precious nearly takes care of the throat-slitting for spike "-she's not even real."
Spike looks to Buffy for permission, which would come, but his hand's already moving the knife into Ben's neck. It's not hard to kill a man with the right weapon in the right place. It's quick, with the arterial blood spraying up and out in a perfect, deadly, irrevocable arc.
Dawn starts to scream, high and horrible. She's been so quiet for the last minutes that Spike almost forgot she existed. Which is ironic. He ducks, almost as an afterthought, and drinks from Ben's neck wound. Dying human blood, but still richer than any chilled stuff he's had lately. It's gorgeous.
Buffy says, "It's okay Dawnie. It has to be this way."
Then she and Spike start to get the fuck out of the ruination of the Initiative, bringing the ruination of the universe with them. The kid doesn't stop crying.
***
Where do they go from here? Choose Your Own Adventure here