Thanks to my new betas Erin and Rachel! *hugs*
Title taken from my new method of naming fics, picking a Duran Duran song title. (yes, lame, I know)
Summary: During an alternate season 2, Buffy is on the run to avoid recapture by the military group that had kidnapped and experimented on her. When she finds herself pregnant through artificial means, her desperation to stay one step ahead of them escalates. Yes, this is a vampire/slayer fic, and of COURSE it's spuffy.
This chapter deals with non-con experimentation and procedures.
Chapter 1
As Buffy locked the flimsy door of the motel behind her, she realized it brought her no measure of relief. A lock meant nothing; it was something she engaged merely out of habit. She had forgotten what it felt like to be unafraid. To not have that edge of panic and paranoia curling around the edges of her senses at all times; her eyes systematically surveying her surroundings for any hint of the enemy.
For the ones who did this to her.
Bastards.
All was quiet for now, and she allowed herself to relax a fraction, her hands unconsciously going to caress the growing bulge of her abdomen.
She had been running for so long, it took her a moment to remember where she was. Not that it really mattered. Buffy never stayed long enough in one place to gain an impression, either of the favorable or negative.
It had only been seven months, yet seemed a lifetime. Thoughts of her previous life tried welling up to flood her consciousness and Buffy battered them back frantically.
She didn't want to remember that time. It made her nostalgic, made her long for home, and that made her weak.
But she had been happy.
With a frustrated growl, Buffy kicked over the chair that had dared to block her way in the run down hotel room she had taken for the night. She'd be gone tomorrow.
Always running.
A hint of tears tried to blur her vision and Buffy swiped them away angrily. Turning to the bed, she grabbed the tattered wallet that lay upon the faded blanket and checked the status of her funds, finding it lower than she liked.
Well, that was something easily taken care of.
Grabbing a stake, Buffy threw open the door to her room and slipped out, always on the lookout. One thing she had quickly come to realize was that it didn't matter what town, what state, even what country she was in, there were always vampires to be found.
And they always seemed to have money.
Every sense heightened for both demonic and human signatures, Buffy slipped through a pair of rusty gates where she knew she would find something waiting for her. If nothing else, this experience had taught her how damn predictable vampires were. She had thought it was just Sunnydale vamps who haunted cemeteries, but she was so very mistaken.
Ten minutes later, Buffy let herself back into her room, her funds now well and truly replenished. It had never crossed her mind to rob the vamps she had staked in Sunnydale. But then again, her very survival had never depended on her cash flow either. Still, she was without guilt. She needed the money and by whatever mystical force that made vamps go poof, anything in their possession also poofed.
And that was a waste.
The thing in her belly was kicking, but she ignored it as she got herself ready for bed. Her steadfast refusal to think of it as a baby, as a part of her, was getting harder and harder as it grew larger and more active inside her. But she couldn't allow herself that luxury.
Because she had no idea what had been put inside her.
When she finally fell asleep that night, her living nightmare bled into her dreams, a habitual mental drain. Buffy had grown used to it, trapped in the hell her mind had recreated, blindly clawing to get out. It never failed. Total exhaustion was of the familiar for her these days. She had come to thrive on it.
It didn't mean it got any easier.
Heart pounding, body glistening with sweat, Buffy attempted the deep breathing exercises that had been taught to her in her other life.
When she had been happy.
It was seven months since her life had been taken away from her. Seven months since she had been abducted by an unknown enemy on a routine patrol in Sunnydale. She had been sixteen years old and had grown up in the span of an evening.
To this day, Buffy still didn't have a clear identity of who, exactly, had abducted her. Her first impression upon waking from whatever they had tranquilized her with was of a white so blinding it hurt her eyes. Everything was white. Even the bastards who claimed to be there to help her had been clothed head to toe in white industrial suits, masks covering their faces from her view; steadfastly refusing to answer even the simplest of her questions. Male, female, she had no idea.
Bastards.
The Council had been her initial thought; her last meeting with them not having ended on the best of terms, but it didn't take long for her to question that assumption. She didn't know why she began to think differently, she just did. From their whispered mutterings, she realized that they were fully aware that she was the Slayer.
Then came the violation.
Drugged so her slayer strength was a moot point, Buffy lost track of how many times her wrists were shackled to a gurney, her heels placed in stirrups while the people in white knelt between her parted legs. Pleas of enlightenment went unanswered and resulted in being drugged with something that made her mind fuzzy, Buffy soon learned to keep her mouth shut. Her mind was the only thing she had left and Buffy refused to give it up to them.
But then came the degradation as gynecological speculums were unceremoniously shoved into her vagina and Buffy soon realized she wasn't a person to them. She was an experiment. That first time, there had been murmurs of surprise at finding an intact hymen, yet that gave them little pause.
And then the pain followed.
Blinding, cramping pain that didn't end until the speculum had been removed and they were finished with whatever torture they were doing to her. Her palms were indented with half moon crescents from her fingernails digging into them as she lay there shackled to the table.
Having her mind altered should have made it easier for Buffy, but she wanted clarity. The drug that stole her strength was released into the air of her barren, white cell at regular intervals through a vent in the ceiling, and thus, completely unavoidable.
It was a non-ending, living hell.
She had no idea how long she had been there when she awoke to the sound of running feet and a blaring alarm. Shouts and screams could be heard over the loud noise and it was only then that Buffy noticed something.
The electronic door that kept her a prisoner had slid open.
What she found outside that cell was pure chaos, but while her slayer strength may have been absent, her mind was all there. And her mind was pure Slayer.
Without daring to question why her door had been opened or what was happening around her, Buffy ran. She met no resistance to her flight, and once outside, she discovered she had been imprisoned in a hidden military base.
Finding the fence surrounding the base with the power shut off, Buffy quickly scaled it, calling on every reserve of strength she possessed.
And then she was free.
Her first instinct had been to return home, an acute need to return to the safety and familiarity of her mother and watcher nearly overwhelming her. To be held in her mother's arms again, only then could she even begin to put this nightmare behind her.
Except it wasn't safe, and Buffy knew it. Since the compound had not been destroyed, Buffy had to assume they still wanted her.
Or at least wanted what they had put inside of her.
She didn't need a test to tell her that she was pregnant, Buffy knew it as sure as her Slayer did.
She just didn't know with what.
Days turned into weeks; weeks into months and her body grew bigger. Buffy didn't fool herself to think that they had put a human baby inside of her. Her slayer side told her that it wasn't so, reacting to whatever supernatural origins her baby possessed.
No longer was she an innocent in any way, except one. Not that anybody would believe the truth of an immaculate conception.
****
Knowing that attempting to sleep again was futile, Buffy swung her bare legs out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Her appearance, something she used to take great pride in, refused to register anymore, and she ignored her wan appearance in the mirror. She'd changed her look so many times she had almost forgotten what she truly looked like.
Before they took her life and stuck her with another.
The thing kicked her again, and her hand went to the swell of her abdomen, rubbing small circles almost tenderly before Buffy jerked her hand away realizing what she had done.
Firming up her resolve, Buffy went to the chipped desk and sat down in the chair, refusing to allow any maternal thoughts to penetrate. This thing inside her made her a target, it took away her life. She could never even entertain the notion of returning home until it was no longer a part of her.
Beyond that, she refused to dwell.
Feeling the familiar rage of helplessness and the never-ending fear well up inside of her, Buffy looked at the bedside clock. Five AM.
Time to get moving.
a/n Oh don't worry, I actually have more written. Just let me know if you want it :P