Flinch - Part 2

She arrived to find them still standing there. Immovable, it seemed, they stood as a group of statues around the congealed stain on the floor. Xander held his shoulders up tightly, as if he were afraid of letting them fall, his whole stance tight and tense. In complete contrast, Willow looked boneless, her shoulders slumping downwards and her face lacking life. Oz stood back, somewhat removed from the group, he was still, a little too still, as if he were trying to hold back a wave of something he didn’t want to bring forth, his nostrils twitched and he turned his head to the side as if to avoid a bad smell. Giles, she noticed, seemed to lack any characteristic at all, almost as if he wanted to cease existing, no movement, no expression, except a vague trembling in his right hand that hung by his side.

Faith wondered if anyone had stood and mourned for her.

"Mission accomplished. The Mayor’s history."

One step in front of the other and she found herself standing next to Giles, who had barely looked up at her words, she lifted his hand and placed the stone in it. He let his limbs be molded, like a mannequin in a store window. He felt the movement, but it took several seconds for it and the words to sink in. Looking down at the strange, foreign object in his hand, he sighed and blinked slowly.

"This is he? You bound him in this?"

Faith nodded.

"Caught his soul just as it was leaving the invulnerable human and before it became the very hard to kill demon. Read of the spell in the Books of Ascension."

She spoke quietly, without expression, knowing that he wasn’t really listening, that now that one danger had passed there was a greater one to face. Now that he was out of the running, the Mayor barely rated a mention. It was time to find Buffy and kick the hell out of Angel.

"How did… how did Joyce take it?" Out of all of them, Faith had missed Joyce the most, in the deepest, darkest hours of her depression she had longed for the earthy, maternal Joyce who had been more of a mother than her own had ever been.

"I tried to contact her, but Buffy sent her out of town." Giles placed the stone in his front pocket. "I left several messages on her machine to contact me as soon as she gets in."

* * * *

Joyce couldn’t stay away, she knew she’d promised Buffy, but some things overrode promises. In a world where most parents are scared for their children’s safety because of what other people may do to them or what they might do to themselves, Joyce feared for Buffy because of apocalyptic demons and supernatural forces drawn to the Hellmouth. Certainly that warranted a little extra parental worry and breaking of a few promises.

As far as she could tell, Buffy was not home. A small spark of worry shot up her spine. The graduation had fallen prey to some strange and mysterious attacks, that was the official news report she’d heard over the car radio, but she knew that, in a way, that was good news. Somehow, Buffy had averted the main problem. So why wasn’t she home?

The answering machine blinked, blissfully unaware of the messages it harbored. Joyce pressed the button and walked into the other room to unpack, her ears tuned to the tinny voices that began to speak.

"Joyce, Mariana here. I know you said you were taking the next few days off, but that Grecian piece just arrived and it’s to die for! I thought maybe you might want to take a look before Justin takes it hostage. Anyway, have a good rest."

She smiled to herself at the happy sound of her work colleague. They’d been waiting for three months for that piece to arrive, and yes, she should take a good look at it before Justin got his hands on it and it was lost to the world forever behind a wall of glass.

"Joyce? Uh… this is Rupert. Rupert Giles, I need to talk to you. Please call me."

Joyce dropped her bag and rushed to the phone, the message clicked over before she could get there. She stared at the machine as if she could change what she’d just heard. Nothing in the sound of his voice had made her at all comfortable.

"Joyce," The next message began. "This is Rupert again. Please, I need to speak with you. As soon as you get this message, call me."

She reached out to terminate the messages, to dial the number she knew by heart but had rarely called. That’s when another voice made her turn around.

"I really wouldn’t do that, if I was you, Joyce."

"Angel! Thank god. What’s happened? Is Buffy okay?"

He stepped forward and grinned at her. It was not a nice grin. She furrowed her eyebrows with confusion, before her face became blank with sickening cognition. Her stomach clenched with panic and she felt her chest tighten painfully.

"No, not Angel."

"Top marks, Joyce, really."

Angel clapped slowly and purposefully, his voice slightly amused. He had to give her credit for not over reacting, so many people did nowadays. She barely had time to open her mouth, let alone scream, before he lunged at her.

* * * *

Buffy was stronger this time, when she woke up, she could feel it. She knew where she was, she knew how she got there and she knew that she had to get out of there. Her arms were screaming at her from being held in one position too long. There was a stickiness that itched on her thighs and she realized, when a rank, tangy scent invaded her nostrils, that she’d soiled herself. Buffy wanted to sink into the darkness and disappear.

Her legs, she knew, weren’t bound and she was able to shift them back and forth. She fought back the urge to scream, the black ooze that threatened to bubble up in her throat. There was no chance that Angel would have left her here alone, so somewhere close by had to be look outs, and Buffy knew there was no way she could fight them the way she was. Stronger than last time, she was still weak and nowhere near fighting capacity.

Stay calm, she told herself, think clearly and don’t forget to breathe. Shifting her weight on the bed, she managed to swivel her body so that she could look at her wrists. Her hands were swollen and puffy, the skin looked bloated and too pink. She could no longer feel them.

Her left arm protested at the change in posture and her muscles stiffened into agonizingly hard rocks. Buffy stifled the scream by biting into the mattress, clenching so hard that her jaw began to ache and she saw spots behind her eyes.

The handcuffs were standard issue women’s cuffs, too small to slip out of without doing herself major damage. The bed head was made of metal, thick metal. Buffy fought harder to quell the rising flood of panic. There was only one set of cuffs, holding both her hands, looped around only one pole. She could get out of this if she didn’t lose her head.

Rolling back into her former position, on her back, Buffy raised her legs and hooked her feet underneath the uppermost horizontal bar. She breathed deeply twice before pushing as hard as she could. Her cheeks grew hot and she tried not to cry with frustration. The bed head creaked a little and she had to let her legs fall back to the bed.

Panting deep and hard, fighting back the tears, she cursed herself. Again, she hooked her feet under the bar and pressed up, using every ounce of strength she could muster, praying to any higher power that would listen.

"Rise you fucker. Give me that."

It rose a quarter of an inch, she had to steel herself from letting go with relief. It gave her enough energy to push harder, to try harder than she had ever tried in her life. With excruciating slowness, the bar began to rise again, just as she thought she could take it no more, just when she thought her muscles could not possibly stand another second, there was a gap and she slid the chain of the cuffs through it.

White hot pins and needles zinged up and down her arms as she bought them down in front of her. She tried to shake them off, but the extra movement made her feel faint with nausea at the pain. Buffy stumbled from the bed and stood shakily to the side, staring dumbly at the room around her.

When her eyes came to rest on the door, her thoughts were returned to her and she rushed towards it, nearly falling to her knees with the sudden jolt to her weak balance. She hesitated before turning the handle. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Angel wouldn’t leave her with an escape so handy, would he? There had to be a trap, and if she could barely stand, how would she fight?

There was, ultimately, no choice to be made and she opened the door. It took her several seconds to properly register what she saw there. She barely felt herself sink to her knees. Her mouth opened in a wide ‘oh’ of disbelief and her voice was cracked and almost inaudible.

"No."

An amused laugh reached her ears and her eyes didn’t even flicker.

"No. No. No. No. No."

Joyce was propped up on the other side of the doorway, like some perverted puppet. Her head dangled at an obscene angle, though her face looked forward. Her mouth hung open, slightly, a trail of blood running down her chin the only indication of the missing tongue. Her eyes were no longer eyes, but empty, hollow sockets with little colored nerves glistening from within the bloody tangle. Single slivers of red ran down from the corner of each eye, like little tears of blood.

"I must say, Buff, your Mom put up a good fight."

Angel pushed the body aside as he swept into the room, Joyce thudded across and back, jiggling as if held by string. A gruesome marionette, she swiveled so that her back was now facing into the room. Angel sighed as he looked down at Buffy.

"What’s up? You look a little down." He brightened. "You need to cheer up."

He brought his hands in front of himself, from their place behind his back, and pointed his fingers level to Buffy’s eyes. They looked strange. He wiggled them like puppets. Buffy felt the bile push its way up her throat, burning paths in its wake. She turned aside and began heaving, though nothing came up.

Angel chuckled.

"Oh come on. It took a lot of skill to pop these babies out. The least you could do is appreciate them!"

He shrugged as the sound of her heaving was replaced by the sound of her pained sobs. Prying Joyce’s eyeballs off the end of his fingers, he tossed them aside and smiled at the wet thwack they made when they hit the wall.

"Guess not." Suddenly he reached down and twisted his hand into her hair, pulling her up sharply so that she stood on her toes before him. "I don’t like it when my pets run from me. You’d do well to remember that."

Buffy gasped for breath, she had to fight the sobs to let the oxygen in. It stung the insides of her lungs and made her choke. She tried not to meet his eyes, tried not to look at him, but he twisted her hair painfully and she could look nowhere else. He scrunched up his nose.

"God, you really stink." Dropping her back onto the bed, he looked down at her with a sneer. "That’s one aspect of human life I’ll never miss."

He paused for dramatic effect, making sure that she was listening, he really wanted her to hear these next words and understand their meaning. She was glaring at him, a pure hatred shining in her eyes, it gave him a new vigor.

"I bet you won’t miss it either, not even after an eternity."

He closed the door behind him when he left, listening to her screams and curses as he walked away, lighting a cigarette and feeling the elusive heat at the end of his fingertips. That was one aspect of human life he truly did miss, the ever present heat. You didn’t notice it until it was gone.

* * * *

"I’m not sure I understand." Giles unlocked his door.

"I told you, Buffy asked me to help. She made me see the light."

He gave Faith a tired, weary look before opening the door and letting them all in. He knew he wasn’t concentrating, knew that his mind was as far away from the current topic of conversation as it was physically able to get, and even so, he felt that her words wouldn’t have meaning even if he had concentrated.

"You… you saw her after you woke up? How…?"

"No. While I was still in a coma. Are you listening at all?"

He looked with desperation at Willow, but she too gave off a distracted, confused air. Neither Xander, nor Oz were any help. Giles was forced to decipher her code alone. He sighed, closing the door after them and took off his glasses.

"Faith, please, I’m in no mood to play word games. Tell me what happened."

"She came to me in a dream."

"Oh." He let out a breath and turned to the living room, he’d been so hopeful.

"Hey! I’m not talking dream, dream. Okay people? I’m talking Slayer prophecy, connection, freaky power dreams. God! Just because I’m not Buffy, doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t!"

"Give us a break, Faith," Xander jumped in, his voice cracked a little. "We’re taking a lot on… well… we’re taking a lot on faith… here… Faith. What I’m saying is…"

"Yeah, I get it." She tried to hide the hurt look in her eyes. "I was evil, I get that. And I made some bad choices," She looked squarely at Willow, who hung back and had yet to say a word to her. "and I’m really sorry for every one of them. Really I am."

For a moment the two girls stared at each other. Willow stood with her arms hugging her torso tightly. Her best friend was in mortal danger and the woman who had kidnapped, tried to kill her, not to mention the incident with Xander was standing there trying to make amends. Her eyes tried to stay emotionless, tried to keep a sense of impartiality, but the hostility and resentment bubbled through like the rising of lava.

"Let’s just find Buffy."

"Hear, hear."

Giles and Xander agreed at once, aware of the tension and eager to get back to the matter at hand. Oz stood behind Willow and let his hands rest on her shoulders, offering his support. Faith held her glance for a second longer before breaking away first, unable to meet the accusations.

"I’m sorry." The words were whispered to the floor, unheeded.

"Can you tell me anything important about this… uh … this dream?"

"Well, she told me I had to fight them, then she…" Faith hunched her shoulders close, the next part wouldn’t be easy. "… she turned."

"What, away?" Xander looked at her with alarm. "Please tell me you mean she turned away. ‘Cause I don’t like the other possible meaning here."

"No Xander. I mean she turned into a vamp, then she turned back and started to fade."

"Fade?" Giles looked at her with a terror so deep it sent chills down her spine. Faith nodded slowly.

"Giles, she’s alive, but if we don’t find her soon, I think Angel will turn her."

"I… I…" He let his glasses droop. "I have to call Joyce."

Everyone else stared at her in shock. Several moments later Giles returned and motioned them all out of the house.

"Something’s wrong. The phone rang out, there was no answer."

"So Mrs. Summers hasn’t returned, why the panic?" Xander stumbled as his foot caught in the door step.

"No Xander. You don’t understand. The telephone rang out. The answering machine didn’t answer it. There’s no reason for that to happen unless…"

"Someone turned it off." Willow finished for him, her eyes wide with fright.

* * * *

The door opened again and she felt, rather than saw, Angel enter the room. Buffy had stopped crying, the tears dried and caked in salty trails down her cheeks, her very eyes ached with the strain. Her stomach clenched and unclenched repeatedly in spasms of unbearable agony.

Lying there, her naked belly pressed into the material, her whole form trying to push so hard into the bed that it would break open and swallow her. Anything, any damned thing, other than what was really happening. She was alone, for the first time in her entire life, Buffy felt really alone. She had no one now, and all she wanted was to feel another person’s breath as they comforted her. She wanted her mother.

She could feel her limbs tremble and she didn’t care. Her head lay on the mattress, where he had tossed her, she could smell the stench of her own urine and she didn’t care. The wound on her neck had scabbed over and the slightest movement made the crusty wound crack open again and she didn’t care.

Angel came to stand over her and she didn’t care.

The mattress sunk with his weight as he sat down on the edge of it. Her breathing slowed from its erratic gusts of broken, painful gasps into a quieter, more even rhythm. She didn’t even realize what she was doing until her eyes searched out his form.

As his hand came to rest on the back of her shoulders, she made the slightest movement to get away from him, but his hand pressed harder, making itself known. Making itself felt. His fingers sought out the sensitive lines of her shoulder blade and stroked them. To her shame, Buffy felt a growing warmth under his touch.

"You can stop crying now."

His voice no longer held the amused cruelty that flayed the skin off her bones. It was the gentle, soft voice of her lover, the tone that had soothed her so often in the past. His touch was not the hard, forceful touch of the animal that had been in the room with her before, but the firm, knowing touch of someone intimate with her body.

"Look at you, you’re shivering."

It was so easy to fall back into old habits. So easy to pretend that nothing bad had happened, that she was in the company of Angel, the man who loved her. When he brought his hands underneath her arms and pulled her to him, she gave no resistance and let her head be nestled into his chest. Familiar territory. His hand stroked the back of her head.

"Shh. You understand, don’t you? It had to be done. There was no other way. You made me do it."

Buffy shook her head against his chest. He paused, his hands stopping the comfort they’d been giving. She told herself that she was imagining it, that her sick mind was trying to make her worse, but his left hand was closing tightly around her chin, and his right hand held the back of her head so hard that the spots threatened to return.

"You understand, don’t you?"

In the moment it took her to answer, his grip became almost unendurable, but he relaxed as soon as she nodded ever so slightly. Again, the stroking and comforting returned. She was no longer alone, there was someone there to comfort her.

The blow came out of nowhere and Buffy felt the right side of her face explode. The force threw her across the bed and away from him, when she turned to face him he was standing and looking at her, his vamp face at full mast and a grin spread across his features.

"You’re a stupid bitch, you know that? And filthy too. Take the sheets off the bed."

She stared up at him, her hand covering her cheek, the skin underneath already hot from the blood that rushed there. It felt as if a balloon was being blown up just underneath the surface. Buffy couldn’t formulate a thought, let alone words.

"I. Said. Now!"

His voice rose to a scream and she felt her arms jerked roughly as she tried to bring her hands to her ears. They were still handcuffed. Suddenly, as if someone had quietly explained it to her, she realized what he wanted her to do. There was no good reason to fight him now, so she scurried to the end of the bed and began to tug at the sheets.

Angel stood and watched her as she did what he had ordered. Then he made her stand in the corner where he’d placed a bucket of cold water and a cloth. At his insistence, she bathed herself and then shook out the new sheets he’d left there.

"Act like an animal, Buffy, and that’s how you’ll be treated."

It amused him to watch her battle with herself as she did these things. Breaking her would be one of his finest accomplishments. He especially enjoyed explaining to her why the bed had plastic protection underneath, that it was easier to clean off the blood, that the stench of stale, rotting blood in a mattress was one the foulest things to endure. He liked the way she cringed when he described the acts that brought about the blood in spectacular detail.

She even gave a delicious little whimper when he unlocked the cuffs and returned her back to the bed head and she didn’t fight. Not an ounce of resistance, just resignation, it sent a sliver of dissatisfaction into him suddenly. He hoped that she wouldn’t give up too easily. He had hoped for a good fight, for an interesting run before he brought her over.

Bringing his face close to hers so that he could feel the trembling of her bottom lip on his own, he sneered. Her eyes grew wide and the icicles of fear within them made him buzz.

"You know, Buff, I can’t help but think you’re gonna try and run again." She shook her head, violently, but he ignored her. "We can’t have that. You need something to convince you to stay."

He reached behind him, swinging his hand back at her with a speed she could barely follow and suddenly the sharpest, hottest pain she had ever known ripped into her left arm, just above the wrist. He had thrust a blade clean through her forearm, she’d felt every layer of skin and muscle tear, felt the metal scrape against the bone and press through the other side.

A warm gush of blood oozed down her arm, pooled in the hollow of her arm pit and began to trickle down the side of her breast. He leaned down and licked it off, lapping at it like a puppy. Buffy screamed in pain, this only seemed to make him more eager and he began to suck at the flesh as well, letting his fangs scratch the surface of her skin.

The handle of the blade quivered as it hung, suspended in the air as it protruded from her arm. She tried not to move it, but it was almost impossible not to struggle out of his grasp.

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