Fic: Waking Up
Title: Waking Up
Creator: drizzlydaze
Rating: PG
Setting: Wishverse AU
Word count: 981
Prompt: Prompt tag. Sequel to Lovers’ Meeting/Journey’s End by brutti_ma_buoni
A/N: Vamp!Wishverse!Buffy. And guess who’s her sire? Turned out… oddly cheery. Far too light-hearted, grumblegrumble. I suspect the full ramifications of turning a Slayer are yet to be felt.
When she wakes, she scrambles for air. Breathe in, breathe out. Neck snapped, windpipe crushed-no, not anymore. That memory is false. She’s not dead. She can’t be. She’s not dead.
“Where… Who…” Broken questions tumble from her lips into the emptiness-but not silence, no, she can hear soft bed beneath her and her ragged breaths and a million other things-because she cannot remember anything beyond that suffocating desperation. “Someone…”
Something hits the wall of the rooms, which makes Buffy jerk into a sitting position. A door, she realizes, and its edges are clear and defined and distinct even in this impenetrable darkness. And someone is coming from that door, with a white face and whiter hair.
“Spike…” she says, but she does not know why, so she shakes her head aggravatingly. “What’s happening? Where am I? …Who am I? I…”
The figure darts forward as she starts to hyperventilate. Her throat is burning and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know anything. And something more potent starts choking her, a thick delicious smell clogging the room.
“Here,” the person-a man-urges in a deep voice, and presses his wrist against her mouth. It’s only now that she realizes how elongated her teeth are, how they cut against her bottom lip, how…
The blood is sweet and nourishing, wonderful in its richness. Her confusion and doubts are swept away by the flood, and she feels powerful. She’s a hundred feet tall and strong and fast, and she tugs harder on the man’s wrist, and moans. She hears a returning whimper as the man makes a weak attempt at pulling away, but she only bites harder. How easy it is to stop his struggling.
“Buffy,” the man says as he sinks onto the bed with her from his standing position. “Buffy, stop.”
Something in his voice makes her stop, makes her pull away. And look at him. The blood seems to stimulate something within her, a stirring. And she asks, “Who are you?”
The man is leaning heavily against her at this point. “You don’t remember. Give it a mo’.” She waits, then moves to his wrist again. “No,” he rebukes sharply. “Bit low on blood myself, luv.”
“I don’t remember. I still don’t re-” She feels the blood again, surging through her system, fixing her where she was wrong and now she’s right and she remembers. A long chain of memories reassert themselves into her system. “Spike.” And this time she knows what it means. It means him. Not a man, not the man-a vampire and her sire.
“Slayer,” he responds.
It’s the oddest thing. Before her death, she’d been trapped. Weighed down and choking on life and death, duty-bound and cold. She’s dead now, but she doesn’t feel like an empty sack for a demon. She doesn’t feel like a body. She feels vibrant and boundless. Slayer plus vampire strength. And she smiles, a dangerous and deadly smile. A vampiric smile. “I’m a vampire. I’m a vampire.” She laughs. “You know what? You just turned a Slayer, Spike. And I’m strong. Not just vamp strong. Not just Slayer strong. I’m stronger than you. I’m stronger than a Slayer. Wonder why vamps don’t do that more often. Seems like a big plus on the evil side.”
“Apart from being unable to resist sucking the Slayer dry…” he drawls. “Something breaks. Extinguishes. They bloody suck the world dry.” He tilts his head.
Her eyes wander back down to his wrist, now healed. “I’m hungry.”
“You aren’t feedin’ from me again. Told you, I’m low on blood.”
“Why?”
“Had to stay here while you were dead. Dru’s not exactly dancing for joy. And if I hung around her, she’d thrall me to get to you.”
“Let’s kill her,” Buffy suggests. Drusilla’s her grandsire, she realizes. Ugh. “Then I can get her blood and-”
She’s pinned against the bedpost by a fast strong hand and narrowed blue eyes. “Suggest killin’ Dru again and you’ll be dust by my hand.”
She’s stronger than him, and they both know it. Not to mention he’s already been weakened when she took his blood. But she doesn’t move anyway, and maybe it’s because he’s using some kind of weird sire thing, or it’s just the sick-not betrayed, not at all. He’s the enemy, always has been. Only he’s not anymore. He’s her sire and he made her right and-feeling she gets that incapacitates her. “Didn’t think you two were together anymore, from the looks she gave the Master.”
The grip tightens. “I’m… Master now. Lord of Sunnydale and the Aurelius line.”
Buffy smirks. “Cheesy.”
Slowly, he eases up on her, finally letting her go. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Cheesy. But true. Dru’s not interested in that post-”
“-Because she’s a loon-”
“-and I’m the next in line.”
“What did you do when you first… rose?” Buffy quickly asks, just in case he decides to call her out of the Drusilla-is-crazy jibe.
He’s silent for a long moment. “Stabbed some people with railroad spikes.”
“Oh yeah. Maybe I should do something like that. Stake them?”
“Sounds like you have someone in mind, pet.”
“Y’know, Watchers’ Council. Poetic justice and all.”
“Generally the standard procedure for fledglings. Get your kicks in with vengeance,” he says, sounding a little bored.
“And after that,” she promises. “After that, there’s more fun to be had. I’ve heard all the stories, you know. There’s torture-”
“-Slow-”
“-and mayhem-”
“-sounds like fun-”
“-destroying the world-”
“-what for?-”
“-slaughtering, killing, massacres-”
“Mmmmm,” he purrs. “Thrilling.”
They’d moved closer in their banter without realizing it, twin smirks of anticipation spread across their pale faces. Then quick as lightning, Spike jumps up and yanks Buffy along with him. “Let’s get started then, luv.”
Prompted On The Beach by shapinglight and Slayers' Blood by quinara.