Chain

By Irfikos

Part IV: Blood, Love and Rhetoric

4.2: Choices

Notes: This section coincides with the episode, "Villains."


All ugly thoughts are gone
I’m sure we’ll all be friends
I’ll try to break your back
You’ll try to make amends

Curse softly to me baby
and smother me with your love
Temptation comes not from hell
but from above…

– My Curse
Afghan Whigs, 1993

---

He’s at work when he gets the call. Dawn. Crying. Hysterical. Something about Buffy. About Tara. About Willow. Something not good.

“Hey – Dawnster – slow down, there. Slow down. Take a breath or something…”

He can see the foreman scowling at him out of the corner of his eye. Talking on his cell phone at work again. Another emergency. Gonna hafta take off early. Again. Sometimes it sucks to be a superhero’s sidekick.

But this isn’t just another apocalypse. He can hear it in Dawn’s voice. This is bad. This is something way bad. She eventually remembers to breathe. And then she talks some more and he can’t possibly be hearing it right.

Buffy missing. Tara… Tara dead. Dead? Oh god… And Willow – Willow, what?

He’s running as she talks. He forgets to ask if he can go. He runs to the truck. He forgets his keys and has to run back to grab them from his lunchbox. He ignores the guys gawping at him like he’s some kind of crazy person. He runs back to the truck. Starts it. Slams it into gear and is gone. One sidekick, coming up.

He remembers both the phone in his hand and his capacity for speech at roughly the same time.

“…be right there Dawnie. Sit tight. On my way. It’s gonna be okay – okay?”

He hopes he didn’t just lie to her

---

She looks up as Willow steps through the door. It’s even worse than she’d thought. With Willow in such close proximity the grief and fury she’s emanating is enough to make Anya dizzy. The light fixtures explode one-by-one as the young witch passes by them. Anya knows enough to bite back the reminder of just how much these sorts of things cost. Nobody understands the expenses involved in running a small retail business. And it’s become blatantly obvious that none of her friends care about that sort of thing. Not with all their, “Oh, the world is about to end. Let’s all go to the Magic Box so that the forces of darkness will have a place to find us,” or their, “Uh oh, demons are attacking us! Lets just smash their heads into the expensive glass display case and get their goo all over the merchandise.”

But now terrible things are happening. She’d felt it hours ago. Had sat up in bed, sweating and alarmed. It had gone away, just like that. She’d thought that maybe it had simply been a nightmare. But then a few minutes ago, as she had been on the telephone with the glass people regarding their shoddy workmanship on the repairs to the display case, it had hit her hard enough that she had doubled over, dropping the phone. A cry for vengeance so deep and so dark, she had known immediately who it was from. Just as she knew that it was not for her to answer. So she waited, here, behind her counter. She had known that Willow would come.

“Willow,” she feels compelled to try, if anything to reduce the amount of property damage taking place. But yeah, mostly because she’s scared out of her wits and doesn’t know what else she can do to stop this.

Willow rudely ignores her, instead sweeping her eyes around the shop. Searching. “Where do you keep the black arts books?”

Anya tries again. “Something terrible has happened, I know. But you don't have to do –”

“I need power,” the witch cuts her off, zeroing in on the upstairs shelves.

Anya does what she can. She’ll keep trying to reason with her but she knows. She knows what’s going to come next. She takes a deep breath and tries not to be so terribly afraid.

---

Spike returns and hands Warren the stun gun before scurrying back to his spot across the room. He backs against the wall and slouches there with his arms behind him, watching. Blood is still streaming down his face, covering his mouth, dripping from his chin. He’s not even trying to stop it anymore. He looks terrified. Not particularly reassuring. Warren steps closer, blocking her view of Spike. The strap on her right wrist is a lot looser now. She just needs a little more –

Warren holds up the stun gun, about to thrust it at her. "Well think agai –"

He freezes in mid-jab, eyes wide. He makes a kind of gurgling noise and drops the stun gun. He flails weakly at his neck – there's something sticking from it. Buffy furrows her brow, confused. Warren drops to the floor to reveal Spike standing behind him holding some kind of – oh! Tranquilizer gun! He cocks his head, looking down apprehensively at the unconscious Warren Mears, then looks at the gun in his hand. He tosses it away as if it were going to bite him. He glances at Buffy and then comes over to her, dutifully removing the straps.

She sits up and wipes at the blood on her face. He looks away from her, down at Warren. She crosses her arms in front of herself, shivering. She can't think of anything appropriate to say. She looks down at Warren as well. She blurts the first thing that comes to mind.

"My shirt."

Spike looks up at her. He doesn't seem to understand. He looks lost. She nods down at her shirt wrapped around Warren's hand.

"That… was my shirt." Lame. That was the lamest thing she could have said just now.

Spike furrows his brow at her. Then recognition seems to dawn and he moves quickly, unbuttoning his own shirt and handing it to her. Oh… it does not smell good, but she takes it gratefully. Puts it on. It’s stiff with dried blood and dirt. Damp with fresh blood.

"Thank you."

He doesn't seem to hear her. He drops to one knee beside Warren and feels for a pulse, pulling the dart out as he does so. Buffy looks around, spying the rest of her clothes in a pile by the door. She jumps off the table and hurries over to them. When she's dressed again she approaches Spike cautiously, pausing to pull off a chunk of scorched wood from a nearby pallet. She stands behind him, holding her makeshift stake. He is still kneeling over Warren with his back to her. Now she knows what “skin and bones” really looks like. She grimaces and makes a mental note to eat an entire pizza when this is over. She easily finds the spot where the stake should go. A quick upthrust from just below the sharp plane of shoulder blade, between the sixth and seventh rungs of the ladder of ribs. All it would take. She can count the ribs, trace the backbone, down to the hollow of midsection, the jutting of hipbones above black jeans with a belt that has been knotted to keep them from slipping from his attenuated body.

Came back wrong.

He doesn't look up at her.

"Is he gonna be… um… okay?" She watches Spike, completely baffled.

"Think so," Spike mutters. "Darts were loaded for you though. He's… he’s just a human."

Buffy flinches slightly at the implication of his words. Spike reaches for Warren's wrist, pulls it up to study his watch. And so the weirdness continues.

"Got an appointment somewhere, Spike? Planning to get in a little light mugging before bedtime? Maybe something to top off all the kidnapping and murder?"

He looks up at her as if she's the crazy one. "What?"

He’s not taking any of the bait she’s setting out. "Never mind. You… uh… wanna fill me in on just what the hell’s going on here?"

He way-too-carefully places the limp arm back down and settles back to sit beside the sleeping geek. "Not really. …You should go."

"Need some alone time with your little nerd buddy?" She arches an eyebrow.

Spike snorts but doesn't say anything.

"Tell me anyway Spike," she says in her best exasperated, I'm-about-to-kick-your-ass tone.

He sighs but cooperates without a fight. It doesn’t seem right without the customary roughing up. She doesn’t know how to react to this new Spike. His compliance is really disturbing. "Was gonna make you his… uh… slave. Control you, y’know?"

"His what? How?"

"Mind control. Of sorts.” He stops and blinks slowly, as if it’s an effort for him to focus his thoughts into speech. “Gonna… put a chip in your head. Have himself a pet Slayer. Take over the world. That sort of thing."

Spike is fixated on the shallow rise and fall of Warren's chest. She can tell that he's listening to the guy's heartbeat. Sensing for anything that would indicate that something is wrong.

"A chip in my head?"

Spike nods. "Yeah."

"A chip… like yours?"

Spike doesn't answer.

Whoah. She leans against the table, staring at him.

"That's where you’ve been? All this time? That's what happened?"

He's not going to answer.

“He’s controlling you, then. The stuff you’ve been doing – killing – he’s been making you do it?”

Spike shakes his head. “Can’t make me do anything. My decision. I have free will, you know.”

Buffy stares at him, perplexed.

“It was your decision to attack Anya? To help him kidnap me? You’re… not being forced somehow?”

He turns his head away so that she can’t see his face.

“Not… forced,” he whispers. “Made my choice. Could have refused, couldn’t I?”

“Okay, you’re not making any sense, Spike.”

He turns back to continue his vigil over Warren. He keeps his head tilted enough that it’s difficult to see his face, but she recognizes the all-too-familiar look of someone who is trying not to show weakness. Too late for that. The blood continues to flow – drip, drip. Spike seems dazed, watching the droplets form into a spreading pattern on Warren’s shirt. He doesn’t seem too concerned about the not making sense.

She looks down at the unconscious figure before them.

"Okay, that's it." She stands up. Reaching down, she grabs Spike by the arm. "C'mon. Let's get the hell out of here. Figure this whole thing out."

He wrenches away from her before she can pull him up. "No!"

"What are you talking about? We've got to get you out of here."

"Can't. Have to be here when he wakes up."

"Or what?"

He finally looks up at her when he answers, his voice full of misery. "Don't – don’t know… something… it'll be…"

He shakes his head again. Like there’s a swarm of bees or something flying around his head, distracting him.

Buffy takes a breath, remembering the sight of Spike curled up on the floor of the Magic Box. She squats down beside him and looks again at Warren, her expression grim. "And if he doesn't wake up?"

Spike looks down again. He actually shudders. "It'll be worse."

Sighing, she stands up again and begins pacing. Okay. Situation here. What would Giles do? What should the Slayer do? Help the vampire? That’s not the right answer, is it? And… had she just suggested killing Warren? What the hell is wrong with her? She can’t kill a human, even if he did –

She wraps her arms around herself again.

Even if she were to – hypothetically – try to kill Warren, she gets the feeling that Spike might be compelled to try to stop her. Although they both know he’d fail.

“Okay,” she announces. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Um… we keep loser-boy here unconscious as long as we can, until we can find out a way to keep him from hurting you. If he’s figured out a way to control you through your chip, then maybe Willow could –”

She’s interrupted by a brittle laugh from Spike. “Don’t think Will’s gonna want to help me, luv.”

Buffy sucks in a breath. Tara. God. Another flash of Spike hovering over Tara, bringing a blood-drenched hand to his mouth. She grips the stake tighter and pushes the memory aside. No. She has to focus. She can’t – can’t let that…

She shakes her head. “No. If – if we explain to Willow… she – she’s good with the techie stuff and she… We just need to explain to her. It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of it. I’ll fix this.”

Another vague, infuriating little smile passes across his lips. “Get out of here Buffy. You’re free now, right? Stake me if you want. I don’t care. Just… get away from me. I don’t want your help.”

“Well, Spike… sometimes you don’t have a choice.” Buffy holds out her hand. “Come on.”

“Always a choice,” he mutters. He doesn’t seem to be talking to her. He’s still just watching the blood drip down. “Got to do the smart thing.”

“Spike…”

Wincing, he presses the palm of his hand against his head and looks sideways at her, noticing her outstretched hand for the first time. “No-brainer,” he mutters.

There’s a knot of something building in the pit of her stomach. She thinks it might be horror. Or rage. Something unproductive, that’s for sure. She tries again, more forcefully. “Spike, this is ridiculous. We have to get you out of here. Just… come on. Get up.”

His eyes dart with confusion from her to Warren and back to the hand she holds out to him. He glares at it suspiciously. She sees his gaze drift to her other hand. The one holding the stake. He licks his lips. She moves it behind her back, out of sight. Then, reconsidering, she brings it back out and holds it up for him to see before tossing it across the room. She holds up her empty hands to let him know he can trust her.

He frowns. “That was stupid.” He almost sounds like himself for a moment.

“I trust you,” she lies.

Haunted eyes peer into her own. The whites of his eyes have gone almost completely red. It makes the blue of his irises seem pale; washed out by comparison. Solarized. His face is tight. Pinched into a pained expression she had become all too familiar with during her mom’s illness. He appraises her.

“No you don’t.” He states it as a fact, neither hurt nor surprised by the knowledge.

“I… I don’t want to hurt you.” She realizes as she says it that she really doesn’t.

He runs his fingers over his mouth and looks down at them, in dazed fascination. They’ve come away covered in blood.

He sniffs. “Can’t do it myself you know… chip.”

She repeats herself, reinforcing the truth of it to the both of them. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He nods, taking that in. Still not looking at her. He licks blood from his fingers thoughtfully. He’s not going to come with her. Not without a fight. She could probably knock him out… with the tranq gun or otherwise. But she can work a whole lot faster without dragging around the unconscious undead. Best not to disturb him any more than he already is.

“Listen… he should be out for awhile, right?” She indicates Warren with the toe of her shoe, pulling back quickly as Spike snaps instantly to attention, tracking the progress of her foot as it moves toward the prone figure. Looks like Warren trained him well. She swallows back that feeling in the pit of her stomach. If that feeling makes it to the surface, very bad things will happen to Warren. She can’t let that happen.

Once satisfied that she’s not making any more threatening gestures toward his charge, Spike replies, “Yeah, think so.”

“Good. Okay. You go ahead and stay here with him. I’m going to find Willow. Don’t worry. We’ll fix this.”

“Yeah. Willow’ll fix it,” he agrees. She hesitates a moment, eyeing him before turning to the door. She really doesn’t like the way he says it.

 

 

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