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tamingthemuseTitle: Piecing Her Back
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters/Pairing: Spike/Buffy, Ensemble Cameos
Rating: Soft R/M
Challenge/Prompt: #406: Diaglyph
Word Count: 1,423
Warnings: Angsty
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters belong to their rightful owners, not the author.
The world is dark. There is no laughter or light left in her life. Demons scurry this way and that. She can not see them for the sun went down to rest permanently long ago, but she hears and feels them. She hears their claws scurrying on the ground and feels the evil radiating from them. The hairs on her thin arms stand on end. Her hands ball into fists, but she has no weapon. With no weapon, how is she to slay?
She hears a voice droning on and on. She follows it and finally sees a light piercing the darkness. The voice is familiar, but it isn't until she's come abreast with the light that she places it. Her science teacher is droning on in one of his lectures, but she lost him two years ago to a Vampire attack she wasn't in time to stop. He turns and looks at her, chalk in hand. "You weren't in time."
He turns back away to the board, and she watches, with shame building, as he scrawls her name there and then "Slayer" underneath. Beneath that comes "Protector" and then "Failed". Her shame is there for every one to see, and now it isn't just his voice she hears.
Her mother cries. "You failed us, Buffy. You failed me. What kind of daughter are you if you can save the world but not risk your neck for your own mother?" Her sister yells her name. Her friends are there, too: Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia, and even Kendra, all chanting the same, "Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure!"
A figure steps from the shadows. Her trembling lips pull upward into a smile. "Angel." He's here. She'll be safe now. These nightmares will stop. He'll help her save the world.
But there's something different in the way he advances on her. She backs up, the wooden cross around her neck tapping lightly against the flesh covering her breastbone. This isn't her Angel, not her Angel at all, she knows before he ever opens his mouth to reveal, in a wide grin, glistening fangs tipped with blood from where he's just eaten.
Something drops behind him. Her green eyes dart to the body of Jenny Calendar and then back again to Angel. "Don't you hear them, love?" he asks, smiling. "They're singing your song. They're right, you know. You were too late, but then you always are."
For a moment, she can not move any muscle save her eyes, but her eyes do run. They run from his cruel laughter and smirking smile to the classroom where her Science teacher still drones on about how much of a failure she is. Her friends have stopped chanting, but they're all looking at her through deadened eyes. Their mouths open as one, each mouth of her friend and family -- even her dad's there now -- twist open to reveal snarling fangs much like Angel's.
"You let us become this," Joyce tells her. "What kind of daughter are you?"
"What kind of sister?"
"What kind of friend?"
She finds her voice at last. Her own scream echoes through the night as she turns and runs. She runs until she can run no longer and drops with the intention to roll back on her feet as she can feel a great weight starting to wash over her. She can not get back up, however, and stays there on the ground as torches flare to life. She's run into a stony wall.
She looks up at it, idly wondering how it came to be here and why she didn't feel, see, or sense it in some other way before she hit it. Colors spill onto the gray. They run like blood but form diaglyphs into the stony exterior. She's seen these drawings before. She hears chanting again, the same voices as before, her friends and family condemning her for allowing them to be condemned. Her bottom lip trembles.
More torches flare. The first Slayer, a girl even darker and wilder than Faith, slowly approaches her, her long arms slinging from side to side like the cavewoman she is. She grins down at Buffy, and she, too, begins the chant, "Failure. Failure. Failure."
Buffy tries to move. She tries to get up. She tries to find yet more fight left within her, but she can't rise. It's as though she's glued to the ground for no matter how hard she tries to struggle, she can not even lift a finger. But her mouth opens again. It still works, and she screams, screams for all the lives she's lost, screams for all the harm that's happened to those she loves, screams for all the failures she has allowed to happen, screams for help she knows will not come.
Something grabs her arms. She can not see it even as it shakes her, but now, another voice is adding into the mix. "Buffy. Buffy. Buffy, pet, come on, snap out of it!" A new force touches her lips, but this force isn't strong or demanding at all. It starts lightly but won't break as she whimpers.
It's firm yet gentle, powerful yet undemanding, unmoving yet giving. Her world spins. Light breaks through the darkness, and she sees him finally. He's kneeling right beside her, holding her tightly against him as she shakes, and kissing her as though his kiss can save her.
Slowly, her insides start to quiver for another reason other than fear. Slowly, she realizes that he's pulled her out of another nightmare, and they're laying in a broken and abandoned building. The significance of the structure is not lost on her as it reminds her of her own life, so broken, once abandoned, so ugly and the verge of being destroyed once and for all, needing a loving hand yet having none for it deserves none.
But she does have a loving hand. Two of them, in fact. They're cupping her face and stroking her flesh and hair. They're holding her firmly in place as their owner continues to kiss her like there's no tomorrow. Perhaps there won't be. Perhaps there never was, and perhaps, that is for the best.
When he sees her eyes wild and open, he finally slows the kiss, stopping it as gently as he first began it. The head of a Vampire leans against hers, but the eyes that look into hers are full of adoration. "It's okay, pet. You're here. I'm here. Whatever you were dreaming of is gone, and they'll have to go through me to get to you." He smiles; something unknots deep within her gut.
He strokes her blonde hair again, his touch so soft and gentle that she instinctively leans into it, wanting more of that gentility and the love she can feel glowing inside of it, wanting more of him and what he's silently offering to give her, wanting to feel once again the way only he makes her feel. She can tell he wants to say more, something beyond what he actually does say, "You're safe now, and you're not a failure, Buffy. You've saved more lives than you've ever lost. You've saved more lives than any other Slayer before you, pet."
She trembles. She wants to curl up and wrap him all around her, use him to hide herself from the world, but such isn't quite possible. "Sp-Spike?" She hates the way her voice trembles as she says his name.
But he just smiles, sweet and understanding, not condemning in the least, and she knows he wants to give her everything he has and everything she needs. She's not at all sure the two can be the same, but she's eager for his loving, for his protection, for his gentle care. She ignores the tears that have flooded into her eyes as she whispers, her voice still trembling, "Kiss me again."
He does again and again. He strokes her until her body burns. He kisses her until her mind has gone senseless and she no longer remembers her dreams and fears. He makes love to her in this broken down house, gentle until her actions tell him she demands him to be rough, and then he obliges her in that, too, all the time loving her, all the time trying to piece her back together, all the time giving her all he has so that she might again find the courage to live once more, all the time loving her and asking nothing in return but the love she can not yet give.
The End
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters/Pairing: Spike/Buffy, Ensemble Cameos
Rating: Soft R/M
Challenge/Prompt: #406: Diaglyph
Word Count: 1,423
Warnings: Angsty
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters belong to their rightful owners, not the author.
The world is dark. There is no laughter or light left in her life. Demons scurry this way and that. She can not see them for the sun went down to rest permanently long ago, but she hears and feels them. She hears their claws scurrying on the ground and feels the evil radiating from them. The hairs on her thin arms stand on end. Her hands ball into fists, but she has no weapon. With no weapon, how is she to slay?
She hears a voice droning on and on. She follows it and finally sees a light piercing the darkness. The voice is familiar, but it isn't until she's come abreast with the light that she places it. Her science teacher is droning on in one of his lectures, but she lost him two years ago to a Vampire attack she wasn't in time to stop. He turns and looks at her, chalk in hand. "You weren't in time."
He turns back away to the board, and she watches, with shame building, as he scrawls her name there and then "Slayer" underneath. Beneath that comes "Protector" and then "Failed". Her shame is there for every one to see, and now it isn't just his voice she hears.
Her mother cries. "You failed us, Buffy. You failed me. What kind of daughter are you if you can save the world but not risk your neck for your own mother?" Her sister yells her name. Her friends are there, too: Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia, and even Kendra, all chanting the same, "Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure!"
A figure steps from the shadows. Her trembling lips pull upward into a smile. "Angel." He's here. She'll be safe now. These nightmares will stop. He'll help her save the world.
But there's something different in the way he advances on her. She backs up, the wooden cross around her neck tapping lightly against the flesh covering her breastbone. This isn't her Angel, not her Angel at all, she knows before he ever opens his mouth to reveal, in a wide grin, glistening fangs tipped with blood from where he's just eaten.
Something drops behind him. Her green eyes dart to the body of Jenny Calendar and then back again to Angel. "Don't you hear them, love?" he asks, smiling. "They're singing your song. They're right, you know. You were too late, but then you always are."
For a moment, she can not move any muscle save her eyes, but her eyes do run. They run from his cruel laughter and smirking smile to the classroom where her Science teacher still drones on about how much of a failure she is. Her friends have stopped chanting, but they're all looking at her through deadened eyes. Their mouths open as one, each mouth of her friend and family -- even her dad's there now -- twist open to reveal snarling fangs much like Angel's.
"You let us become this," Joyce tells her. "What kind of daughter are you?"
"What kind of sister?"
"What kind of friend?"
She finds her voice at last. Her own scream echoes through the night as she turns and runs. She runs until she can run no longer and drops with the intention to roll back on her feet as she can feel a great weight starting to wash over her. She can not get back up, however, and stays there on the ground as torches flare to life. She's run into a stony wall.
She looks up at it, idly wondering how it came to be here and why she didn't feel, see, or sense it in some other way before she hit it. Colors spill onto the gray. They run like blood but form diaglyphs into the stony exterior. She's seen these drawings before. She hears chanting again, the same voices as before, her friends and family condemning her for allowing them to be condemned. Her bottom lip trembles.
More torches flare. The first Slayer, a girl even darker and wilder than Faith, slowly approaches her, her long arms slinging from side to side like the cavewoman she is. She grins down at Buffy, and she, too, begins the chant, "Failure. Failure. Failure."
Buffy tries to move. She tries to get up. She tries to find yet more fight left within her, but she can't rise. It's as though she's glued to the ground for no matter how hard she tries to struggle, she can not even lift a finger. But her mouth opens again. It still works, and she screams, screams for all the lives she's lost, screams for all the harm that's happened to those she loves, screams for all the failures she has allowed to happen, screams for help she knows will not come.
Something grabs her arms. She can not see it even as it shakes her, but now, another voice is adding into the mix. "Buffy. Buffy. Buffy, pet, come on, snap out of it!" A new force touches her lips, but this force isn't strong or demanding at all. It starts lightly but won't break as she whimpers.
It's firm yet gentle, powerful yet undemanding, unmoving yet giving. Her world spins. Light breaks through the darkness, and she sees him finally. He's kneeling right beside her, holding her tightly against him as she shakes, and kissing her as though his kiss can save her.
Slowly, her insides start to quiver for another reason other than fear. Slowly, she realizes that he's pulled her out of another nightmare, and they're laying in a broken and abandoned building. The significance of the structure is not lost on her as it reminds her of her own life, so broken, once abandoned, so ugly and the verge of being destroyed once and for all, needing a loving hand yet having none for it deserves none.
But she does have a loving hand. Two of them, in fact. They're cupping her face and stroking her flesh and hair. They're holding her firmly in place as their owner continues to kiss her like there's no tomorrow. Perhaps there won't be. Perhaps there never was, and perhaps, that is for the best.
When he sees her eyes wild and open, he finally slows the kiss, stopping it as gently as he first began it. The head of a Vampire leans against hers, but the eyes that look into hers are full of adoration. "It's okay, pet. You're here. I'm here. Whatever you were dreaming of is gone, and they'll have to go through me to get to you." He smiles; something unknots deep within her gut.
He strokes her blonde hair again, his touch so soft and gentle that she instinctively leans into it, wanting more of that gentility and the love she can feel glowing inside of it, wanting more of him and what he's silently offering to give her, wanting to feel once again the way only he makes her feel. She can tell he wants to say more, something beyond what he actually does say, "You're safe now, and you're not a failure, Buffy. You've saved more lives than you've ever lost. You've saved more lives than any other Slayer before you, pet."
She trembles. She wants to curl up and wrap him all around her, use him to hide herself from the world, but such isn't quite possible. "Sp-Spike?" She hates the way her voice trembles as she says his name.
But he just smiles, sweet and understanding, not condemning in the least, and she knows he wants to give her everything he has and everything she needs. She's not at all sure the two can be the same, but she's eager for his loving, for his protection, for his gentle care. She ignores the tears that have flooded into her eyes as she whispers, her voice still trembling, "Kiss me again."
He does again and again. He strokes her until her body burns. He kisses her until her mind has gone senseless and she no longer remembers her dreams and fears. He makes love to her in this broken down house, gentle until her actions tell him she demands him to be rough, and then he obliges her in that, too, all the time loving her, all the time trying to piece her back together, all the time giving her all he has so that she might again find the courage to live once more, all the time loving her and asking nothing in return but the love she can not yet give.
The End
