Back with my second offering of the day–there will be five in total, four of them fics. This is a bit of a darker tale, though I’d like to think it ends on a bright note.
Title: To Bring Her Back
Author: okdeanna
Rating: R, for violence
Word Count: 0840
Beta: dusty273
Written For: seasonal_spuffy Round 11
Theme: Love is a temporary madness
Warnings: violence, torture, dark angst, implied future romance, also there is an appearance of Angel in this fic.
Timeline: Post Chosen, Buffy S7; Post Not Fade Away, Angel S5; Btvs S8 comics (sort of)
Spoilers: Btvs S8 comics, though only in the top surface since as I’ve not actually read them, just heard things here and there. I’ll put my own twist on everything that happens, as I have no actual idea of what is really going on in the comics. I’m just using something I read as a basis for a new Spuffy story. ;-)
Summary: Spike cannot accept the person Buffy has become, but to find the strong woman he knew before, he must dig deep within himself and turn his back on the man, the Sire, who fought beside him these last few months. He will not give up on Buffy without a fight, or the relationship they might find once the spell-enhanced fog clears from her head. Buffy belongs with him; she just doesn’t know it yet.
A/N: dampersnspoons linked to a post by jnb71976 (http://jnb71976.livejournal.com/15763.html) and since I hadn’t read the comics, I was curious to find out what the hoopla over it is. Upon reading it, I grew angry on Angel’s behalf, but then I realized I had an opportunity to use his current craze to fuel a Spuffy fic in which Spike must find away to save Buffy. To Bring Her Back is the result. Hope you like it!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Buffyverse. That gem belongs to Joss Whedon, Fox and others associated with the TV shows, comics and merchandising. I’m just a writer who loves the show and likes to write about its characters.
Complete Ficlet
It’s a spell. It’s not her. Can’t be her.
He did this. He turned her into this empty, unfeeling shell again. Made her forget what was important, what mattered. What was.
But Spike wouldn’t let him get away with it. He’d get her back. Break the spell. Turn her back to who she was again. Didn’t matter how he had to do it. He’d dust himself if it saved her. If it gave her back her focus, her mission.
A fist to his jaw whipped his head to the left. Hot, searing pain exploded behind his cheek and beneath his right eye, blood oozing from the deep, lengthy cut her diamond studded Claddagh ring made into his skin.
His chest burned as she knocked him backward with a high kick, his body twisting in mid-flight.
His head connected with the red cave rock behind him. His vision blurred. His body ached. Yet, he did not go down. He stayed upright and took another hit to the stomach, a second kick to the ribs.
“Buffy…love,” he paused, coughed up some blood, “…s-stop.” Please, before it bloody kills you.
She didn’t stop. Instead, the hits intensified, damaging his kidneys, his ribs, puncturing another lung.
From his right, he could hear Angel laughing, clapping, sodding egging her on. It firmed his resolve, even as her hits weakened his body.
“Isn’t her,” he muttered under his breath, dodging another hit by rolling his shoulders, but pulling up short when the taut chains that held his arms refused to let him block her next few jabs. “Bloody spell. Can’t help it.”
She pulled a stake from her back jeans pocket, slammed it into his left shoulder, hard, just missing his heart.
A loud hiss of pain tore from his throat; her green eyes gleamed with triumph, with pleasure.
Spike closed his eyelids, unable to look at her as she continued to deliver the ordered torture.
“All you have to do is say it,” Angel advised in a deceptive, languid voice. “The pain will all end once you do. She’ll stop.”
Only because I’d be dust!
Spike shook his head, focused on the pain, and used it to keep him awake, to keep him active.
It took all he had to lift his legs and wrap them around her waist, tossing her away from his body long enough to spit out the blood pooling in his mouth. When she came back at him, her bloody stake on the floor, eyes flashing fire and hands balled into fists, he no longer saw the woman he loved. He saw the girl who beat him in an alley and left him for dead. He saw a stranger wearing Buffy’s face, using her body to destroy him.
His demon roared as her ring bit into the flesh at his abdomen, slicing his skin clean open. Angel only laughed, settling further onto the tabletop he rested on, watching with dark, dead eyes.
In his head, he could hear Red’s voice telling him to hold on, that help was on the way. But Spike knew it would be too late. He could see his death in his old friend’s gaze, feel it in the tiny fists that broke his bones and carved into his flesh.
The Scoobies would not make it in time to help him; if he wanted to live, if he wanted to save Buffy, he had to do it on his own. Now. Before she managed to break his sodding back again, or worse, dust him.
As she drew near him, Spike yanked on the chains that held his hands above him, using the blood that poured from his wrists to ease his way out of the cuffs. He howled as pain lanced through his hands and down his arms, but he managed to free himself and block her next spinning-kick with his hands.
He fell to the floor, grappling for the stake she dropped, and reached it just as Angel’s steel-toed boot connected with his injured ribs.
Spike collapsed onto the dirt floor, ripples of agony lancing through his stomach.
Angel kicked him again, hard, but Spike caught his foot the third time, dropping him onto the floor next to him. Without wasting time, Spike lifted the stake in his hand and hurdled it into the center of Angel’s chest, taking the other vampire by surprise.
Behind him, Buffy screamed Angel’s name, then fell silent as he dusted before their eyes.
Spike sank back to the floor. His body taxed. His mind at ease for the first time in weeks.
Buffy was free again. He didn’t have to look at her to know it. He could feel it; the shift of her focus rent the air with the salt of her tears.
He liked that she cried. It meant that she was her again. Buffy. His Buffy.
He smiled and drifted into oblivion without remorse, content in the knowledge that when he woke, they would talk, as they should’ve done when he first arrived three weeks ago.
*FIN*
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/433267.html
