Warnings: This fic will contain: Violence, torture, strong language, blood play and strong sexual themes.

A/N: Title comes from a song of the same name by The Unquiet Void, written by Jason Wallach and published by TUQV. As always, I own nothing. I have nothing. Just call me a turnip. A very heartfelt thank you to Nia for the quick beta for this and for her support and encouragement to get this tale out there. THANK YOU, SWEETIE!


Prologue:

The Slayer stepped off the last stair and onto the basement floor, warm soapy water sloshing up the sides of the bowl she carried. Despite the very dim light from the lamp near the utility sink, her eyes adjusted easily to her surroundings. Heart heavy and mind filled with confusion, she kneeled beside the still form of her -no, not mine anymore. I threw him away like he didn’t matter. Now something’s happened to him, made him kill humans against his will. It’s up to you, Slayer. All up to you to find whatever dark place he’s gone to and bring him back. Bring him home.

Hard as it was, Buffy managed to push back the maelstrom of thoughts and emotions and begin the task of cleaning up the dried blood from the prone vampire’s mouth and chin. A task that would have gone much smoother had the object of her thoughts not opened soulful blue eyes to warily peer up at her. Guilt and self-loathing reflected back at her from deep, expressive eyes and she quickly broke the gaze before he could see her own tormented emotions.

Chapped lips parted, his cool pink tongue darting out to moisten them before he began to speak. Oh, Gods, that voice.

“Did I hurt anybody?”

“Andrew,” she sighed wearily.

“Who?”

The question would have been funny a year ago when no one could remember the third member of the Slayer’s self-proclaimed arch nemeseses, comprised of three cyber nerds determined to ruin her life and take over Sunnydale in their mission to rule the hellmouth.

“Oh,” was all Spike said in response.

“He’ll be okay,” she assured him in a tired voice as she finished cleaning him up.

“I don’t remember.”

“It’s okay.”

“Buffy, I don’t know why-”

Before he could finish the sentence, Buffy pushed to her feet and went to the sink to empty her bowl of soiled water and to wring the excess water from the washcloth she’d used. She was stalling, she knew; nowhere near ready to have this conversation. Still, she braced her hands against the sink and bowed her head. “We think we do.”

The clank of the chains binding the vampire to the brick wall behind her clued the Slayer to the fact that he had sat up. She knew without a doubt he was staring at her back, could almost feel his intense gaze boring in to her.

It seemed odd, suddenly. The Vampire and the Slayer, two predatory night creatures by their very natures, knew each other so well. Yet, William and Buffy stood so completely clueless of one another when it came to the part where human hearts were involved.

It had been so much easier when all they'd wanted to do was kill each other. Death and violence and primal, animalistic mating were something they both easily understood; his demon, her Slayer, both hedonistic regardless of what form the pleasure took. However, throw in a whole bunch of actual human emotion and they were both screwed in the so not fun way.

Which had just led her thoughts back around to the now souled-up version of her dark warrior; the demon she'd so willingly given her body to in so many ways and on so many levels and now was forced to keep chained like an animal who could turn on its mistress at anytime.

Heaving a dejected sigh, Buffy opened her eyes to stare once more into the scratched and stained basin of the utility sink. "Something's playing you. Some ghost or demon has figured a way to control you. I've got the gang researching it now."

Good. Talk business. Leave your whirling, swirling emotions for another time when the weight of the world isn't trying to bury you.

Buffy did her best to focus on the subject at hand, grateful that her back was to Spike so that he could not see the lingering fear in her eyes. Fear that she was losing him one piece at a time to whatever this thing was that was playing with what she considered hers. However logically or illogically that possessive thought, this vampire was hers. Hers to love or hers to kill, but still hers as much as she was his.

"Xander has a theory that you're being triggered."

"Kill me."

Two simple words. Just two single syllable words put together and spoken into the brief silence following her speech. In a flash, Buffy spun round on her heels to face the vampire that had hated and loved her in equal measure over the course of several years. "What?"

The demand came out several octaves higher than she liked and Buffy winced at the sound. The look on Spike's face was more intent, more serious than she had ever witnessed and it broke her heart just a little. But the vampire was not done by a long shot. Hands curled around the iron chains manacled to his wrists, he continued, "Buffy, you have to kill me."

"You don't understand," she told him as she stepped closer. "When I left the room, earlier, I heard you talking to someone."

Spike was having none of it, however, and spoke over her denials. "Do you have any idea what I'm capable of?"

Though he hated the words that spilled from his lips; hated the truth in them and the disgust which would fill the eyes of his love once she heard them, he forced them out of his mouth. She flinched slightly and her eyes flicked away for the briefest second before resolutely meeting his once more.

"I was in the cellar with you," she reminded him softly. "I saw what you did."

He snorted,"'M not talking 'bout the people in the cellar. The people in the cellar got off easy."

Here it comes, Spike thought miserably as he looked into the face of the only woman he would ever love with every last cell and fibre of his being. This was the moment she would learn the truth about him and all the dirty little things he'd done over the last century and some change. When she finally understood, she'd dust him right and proper. After all his filthy deeds, he deserved no less. The fact that it'd save his Slayer and the Bit was merely a bonus.

That in mind, he continued in a stronger tone, renewed determination to save the ones he loved driving him onward. One way or another, this ended tonight. "Buffy, you've never met the real me."

Buffy folded her arms across her chest, closing herself off to the heartfelt pleas coming from the powerful creature at her feet. "Believe me. I'm fully aware of what you're capable."

"No," he assured her. "You got off easy, too."

True to vampiric fashion, Spike shot to his feet and began pacing like the caged animal he was in this moment. His eyes met hers with purpose. "Do you know how much blood you can drink from a girl before she'll die?" His voice was icily calm, considering the raging emotions of his newly regained soul. "I do. You see, the trick is to drink just enough...to know how to damage them just enough...So that they'll still cry when you-" his voice trailed off to leave the meaning hanging on the air between them.

Rape.

Images from just a few months ago rose like bile in his throat and he doggedly forced them back. Instead, he ploughed ahead with renewed determination in hopes that he could push her to do what needed doing and sod all else. This was likely his best shot at protecting the humans whom he had come to think of as his family from the monster that he was. "Because 's not worth it if you don't make 'em cry."

"It's not your fault," Buffy told him in a soft, compassionate tone despite the ache in her chest. For a moment, she wondered if they were both completely silent, would they hear the sounds of each other's heart breaking?

Spike scoffed at her resolution.

"You're not the one doing this."

He snorted. "I already did it. It's already done." There was still an ace up his sleeve regardless of his own disgust at the thought of using it. With a ruthless smirk, he puffed out his chest. "You, uh, wanna know what I've done to girls Dawn's age?"

if that don’t get me a redwood to the chest...

He knew he had finally struck a nerve when her beautiful lips twisted into a grimace of disgust and she looked away. "This is me, Buffy. You've got to kill me before I get out."

"We can keep you here, keep you locked up until we-"

"Have you ever asked yourself why you can't do it?" Spike bellowed. "Why you can't off me after everything I've done? To you, to the people around you? It's not love," he continued in a softer voice and looked away out of fear of seeing the truth reflected in the startling green of her eyes. "We both know it."

"You've fought by my side," she replied just as quietly as she stepped a bit closer. "You've saved lives. You've helped-"

"Don't do that!" Spike bellowed as he furiously paced away from her. "Don't try to rationalize this into some sort of noble act!" He came to a stop several paces away from her, determined to shield the pain in his heart and the expectation of her imminent rejection by looking at the floor. His voice, when he spoke his next words, was whisper soft. "We both know the truth of it."

It was killing him to say these words, tearing his heart out to finally put voice to the long-suppressed truth. Buffy didn't love him. She never had. She never would. She was a true spirit. A goddess. A fierce warrior and protector, and he was beneath her.

"You like men who hurt you," he said at last, still refusing to look at her.

"No."

"You need the pain that we cause you," Spike told her carefully as their eyes met once more. "You need the hate to do your job, to be the Slayer."

"No," Buffy said again, this time stronger than before. Her voice shook slightly from the force of her denial and, to his surprise, she stepped closer to him. "I don't hate like that. Not you...or myself. Not anymore." Tears clogged her throat and she forced them back, swallowed against the lump of emotion, so many emotions; forced herself onward in what she had desperately been hoping to avoid. "You think you have insight because your soul is drenched in blood?" It was a rhetorical question and he remained silent as her voice took on a ranting tone. "You don't know me!" Sudden realization struck her, then, a harsh bark of laughter filling the dark, dank room around them. "You don't even know you."

She was right and she knew it. For all his Big Bad persona, Spike had admitted to her years ago the type of man he had been before Drusilla had found him. Wasn't that how she'd found him? Sobbing his broken heart out in an alley? William, the human had been a soft-hearted human in love with the toast of London's society blue bloods. William the man had been a poet and a romantic who took care of his ailing mother. By his own words, William the man had been a snivelling ponce before he'd been killed and turned into a soulless, murdering monster.

"Getting killed made me feel alive for the first time in my life."

Spike, the Slayer of Slayers, had the heart of a romantic who loved with everything he was and gave those he loved everything he had. When he loved, he held nothing back.

Suddenly, it was as if she were seeing Spike for the very first time. Knowledge she'd gained of him in the five long years she had known him clicked together to create the puzzle that was William the Bloody. Drusilla had never loved him. Yet, he stayed with her, killed for her, cared for her in her madness, gave her everything of himself, for more than a century.

Buffy, herself, had been worse than Drusilla at her most insane. She had done things to Spike that the insane vampiress had never done. Yes, Dru was the demon that had broken Spike's heart countless times over the decades. But, in less than three years, Buffy had become the monster that broke Spike's seemingly indomitable spirit.

And what had Spike done in response? He had scoured the planet; went to the very ends of the underworld to seek out a way to have his soul restored to him. For her. For her love and forgiveness.

"And she will look on him with forgiveness. And everyone will forgive....and he will be loved..."

That's what it all came down to. The one fact that lay at the centre of everything William had done as a human and everything Spike had done as a vampire. It was all he wanted. His heart's one desire. To be loved.

Buffy blinked away the threatening sting of tears, shoving them aside and going with anger at the once proud vampire. A lifetime had passed in seconds and a new determination to save him, even if it was from himself, gave her the strength she needed.

"Was that you who killed all those people in the cellar? Was that you who waited for all those girls?"

"There's no one else."

"That's not true!" Buffy snapped. To take the harsh sting from her words, she immediately softened her tone. "Listen to me. You're not alive because of hate or pain. You're alive because I saw you change. Because I saw your penance."

"Window dressing!" Spike hissed as he lunged at her in a last ditch effort to sway her determination. To his utter shock, the stupid bint didn't even flinch. The chit actually scoffed at him and gave him a smirk which he knew to be a damn fine imitation his own.

"Be easier, wouldn't it? If this were all an act? But it's not." One last step and they were practically nose to nose in the semi-darkness of the basement. "You faced the monster inside, and you fought back. You risked everything to be a better man."

"Buffy," he whimpered softly at the warm look of understanding and compassion he saw reflected in the green gaze peering back at him.

"And you can be," she continued as though he hadn't spoken. "You are. Maybe you don't see it, but I do. I do.." Her lips trembled slightly and her eyes misted at her admission. "I believe in you, Spike."

Spike's haunted blue eyes filled with something she hadn't seen in a very long time. Hope. For a moment, she found herself drowning in that look. For a moment, there existed the very real possibility that she could lose herself in him like she had once upon a time.

Before she could analyze her raw emotions or what they might mean for her and the vampire just inches from her, the light snapped out. A sudden explosion showered the floor in thousands of tiny glass shards and she ducked slightly as an intruder burst into the room. The sound of splintering wood announced the arrival of a second intruder as something heavy was bashed against the side of her head and Buffy's world abruptly turned black.

The First has Spike. The Potentials have arrived. Buffy has already had her second run-in with the uber vamp.

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