Retrospect (PG13)
Title Retrospect
Author Brutti ma buoni
Rating PG13 mostly domestic but there are references to (canon) torture
Words 750
Prompt Revealing things under torture/Dying to save a loved one - also Yes or No, really
Setting s5 and post-series
Spike breaks.
It is a quite rational choice. He can feel it coming, the moment when Glory gets past his defences. He tries, of course he does, to shore them up, but she keeps coming, keeps nagging away, like water leaking through a dam when it's found a weak spot.
"Yes or no?"
"No."
But inside, Yes. It's her. The sister. She isn't real. She's a fake, and a construct, and she's not worth a hair on the Slayer's head. Take her. Damn the consequences. No one'll thank me for this. No one expects me to. It's not my fucking destiny to save the innocent. Anything but. Buffy'll get over it. I'll find a spell, undo the monks' magic, make her better. It's not worth sending me to hell before my time. Take the kid.
And then Spike realizes that it isn't inside at all. It's on his lips, his betraying tongue, and Glory looks down at him and smiles. Her evil mouth, red glossed and impervious, broadens and reveals her perfect white-pointed teeth. She's going to devour the world, and it's all Spike's fault.
And he knows that he was wrong. It would have been worth it, dying for this.
He starts to scream.
It's an impossible surprise when his screaming wakes him. But then, it always is.
He's disoriented. He always is. The first time, he was battered beyond belief, alone in the crypt, and it took him a full hour to be certain that it had been a hallucination or a nightmare, and that Glory wasn't gutting the kid somewhere nearby, with the Scoobies standing by in horror and wishing they'd offed Spike anytime these past eighteen months.
Now the disorientation fades faster, usually, on account of the handy company Spike is keeping. There's a small, warm, living hand on his horribly tense arm, and a small, warm, living body plastered against his side, not at all in the manner one would expect had one just destroyed the world by helping a Hell God.
Buffy breathes wetly into his ear, sleepy still. "Glory?"
"Yeah. Sorry, love."
She snuffles a little, reassuringly everyday. "'S okay. Not your fault. Sleep now."
But this time it was a vivid nightmare, a proper recreation of every moment he spent with Glory, and the hallucinations he suffered. Spike's still half there, in the distant past. The helplessness of torture at her hands, the strongest being he's ever been up against. The sound of his skin as it is stripped from his flesh. The internal break, that came just before he fathomed a way out of there, when he knew that if he didn't escape, he would talk. Just now, his body and brain feel just as violated as they did that day.
Buffy isn't quite asleep. Enough that she can gauge his level of lingering distress and wriggle her way on top of his non-violated body, firmly in the now. She wakes herself to the point of being able to open her eyes, blinking like a stunned kitten in the early morning light, right up in his face and unignorable.
"Hey. You didn't do it."
"I know. Wanted to. Would have."
"Didn't." Her mini-burst of energy fades, her eyes close and she drops her cheek onto his chest, relaxing down. He almost misses the next mumble, her mouth somewhere in the vicinity of his left nipple and words probably not meant to be heard. "Was when I knew you were mine."
Mine. A boast he wouldn't deny nowadays; life has proved that plenty. But back then? It's a little uncomfortable to contemplate in retrospect. Spike then would have admitted how much he loved her - obviously he would, hence the embarrassing cock-up with Drusilla and disavowing his past. But the Slayer didn't want him. The idea she had him so marked down, assigned to a drawer marked Property of Buffy Summers…
Well. Pointless to grumble now, decades on. And he hadn't betrayed her, or Dawn, even back then, the most evil true knight ever sworn to the forces of good, on account of being hers… so. Yes.
A little unsettled even so, he takes stock. Nightmare has gone. His body's whole and healthy and under the woman of his dreams and his everyday. And she thinks she owns him, past and present. A part of Spike likes that a whole lot.
Call it two parts, actually. He's getting hard, just at the memory of the words knew you were mine. Feeling that, Buffy smiles against his chest. "Better now?"
"Yeah."
Spike lies still, letting the fleeting arousal fade and Buffy's body warm his cold old bones. He said no. Not so broken after all.
***
Author Brutti ma buoni
Rating PG13 mostly domestic but there are references to (canon) torture
Words 750
Prompt Revealing things under torture/Dying to save a loved one - also Yes or No, really
Setting s5 and post-series
Spike breaks.
It is a quite rational choice. He can feel it coming, the moment when Glory gets past his defences. He tries, of course he does, to shore them up, but she keeps coming, keeps nagging away, like water leaking through a dam when it's found a weak spot.
"Yes or no?"
"No."
But inside, Yes. It's her. The sister. She isn't real. She's a fake, and a construct, and she's not worth a hair on the Slayer's head. Take her. Damn the consequences. No one'll thank me for this. No one expects me to. It's not my fucking destiny to save the innocent. Anything but. Buffy'll get over it. I'll find a spell, undo the monks' magic, make her better. It's not worth sending me to hell before my time. Take the kid.
And then Spike realizes that it isn't inside at all. It's on his lips, his betraying tongue, and Glory looks down at him and smiles. Her evil mouth, red glossed and impervious, broadens and reveals her perfect white-pointed teeth. She's going to devour the world, and it's all Spike's fault.
And he knows that he was wrong. It would have been worth it, dying for this.
He starts to scream.
It's an impossible surprise when his screaming wakes him. But then, it always is.
He's disoriented. He always is. The first time, he was battered beyond belief, alone in the crypt, and it took him a full hour to be certain that it had been a hallucination or a nightmare, and that Glory wasn't gutting the kid somewhere nearby, with the Scoobies standing by in horror and wishing they'd offed Spike anytime these past eighteen months.
Now the disorientation fades faster, usually, on account of the handy company Spike is keeping. There's a small, warm, living hand on his horribly tense arm, and a small, warm, living body plastered against his side, not at all in the manner one would expect had one just destroyed the world by helping a Hell God.
Buffy breathes wetly into his ear, sleepy still. "Glory?"
"Yeah. Sorry, love."
She snuffles a little, reassuringly everyday. "'S okay. Not your fault. Sleep now."
But this time it was a vivid nightmare, a proper recreation of every moment he spent with Glory, and the hallucinations he suffered. Spike's still half there, in the distant past. The helplessness of torture at her hands, the strongest being he's ever been up against. The sound of his skin as it is stripped from his flesh. The internal break, that came just before he fathomed a way out of there, when he knew that if he didn't escape, he would talk. Just now, his body and brain feel just as violated as they did that day.
Buffy isn't quite asleep. Enough that she can gauge his level of lingering distress and wriggle her way on top of his non-violated body, firmly in the now. She wakes herself to the point of being able to open her eyes, blinking like a stunned kitten in the early morning light, right up in his face and unignorable.
"Hey. You didn't do it."
"I know. Wanted to. Would have."
"Didn't." Her mini-burst of energy fades, her eyes close and she drops her cheek onto his chest, relaxing down. He almost misses the next mumble, her mouth somewhere in the vicinity of his left nipple and words probably not meant to be heard. "Was when I knew you were mine."
Mine. A boast he wouldn't deny nowadays; life has proved that plenty. But back then? It's a little uncomfortable to contemplate in retrospect. Spike then would have admitted how much he loved her - obviously he would, hence the embarrassing cock-up with Drusilla and disavowing his past. But the Slayer didn't want him. The idea she had him so marked down, assigned to a drawer marked Property of Buffy Summers…
Well. Pointless to grumble now, decades on. And he hadn't betrayed her, or Dawn, even back then, the most evil true knight ever sworn to the forces of good, on account of being hers… so. Yes.
A little unsettled even so, he takes stock. Nightmare has gone. His body's whole and healthy and under the woman of his dreams and his everyday. And she thinks she owns him, past and present. A part of Spike likes that a whole lot.
Call it two parts, actually. He's getting hard, just at the memory of the words knew you were mine. Feeling that, Buffy smiles against his chest. "Better now?"
"Yeah."
Spike lies still, letting the fleeting arousal fade and Buffy's body warm his cold old bones. He said no. Not so broken after all.
***