Chapter 5
“Ow!” Buffy yelped and his eyelids slid open, still hazy with sleep as though his body had reacted defensively before his brain could catch up.
His brows creased in confusion and now his grip was really starting to hurt, so she slapped his arm.
“Let me go!”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, slightly loosening his grasp, but obviously not in any rush to release her.
“None of your business.” Buffy lifted her chin and finally managed to shake off his hand.
“Is voyeurism a hobby of yours?” The bleached menace sat up.
“What?”
“You know, playing peeping Tom, lurking about, spying on strangers,” he said in a voice still gritty with sleep as he rose from the bed. And for God’s sake, couldn’t he at least cover his chest? Even if he had a neat tattoo over his heart that she really shouldn’t be staring at.
“I wasn’t lurking.” She somewhat ungracefully clambered to her feet and pointed at her bag. “Maybe I should be the one doing the accusing. You stole my bag.”
He scratched the sharp edge of his cheekbone and glanced at her without a smidgeon of guilt or apology. “Nice drawings.”
Buffy’s jaw dropped open, her chest feeling too tight as the anger stretched its wings wide. “That’s private! You can’t just go around sticking your nose in other people’s belongings!”
She was sure blotches of red sprung up on her cheeks like they did every time she let her temper get the best of her.
The bastard just shrugged. “Then don’t leave it lying around for anyone to find.”
She was too angry to address his reply with anything approaching wit, so she just blurted out, “Are you even going to brush it off?”
His eyebrows drew together. “Huh?”
How very eloquent.
She pointed towards the specks of dirt on the bed linen.
“What, you got OCD on top of that bitch syndrome?”
“Wow, your mother must be so proud of your manners,” she said, not very willing to admit him calling her a bitch had stung a little. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been called worse. Not like she cared what he thought of her.
His eyes darkened, lips pressed in a tight line as he snatched up a black T-shirt and pulled it over his head with jerky movements. “Not like I can ask her,” he said coldly. “She’s dead.”
Well, that kind of took the wind from her indignant sails. She flailed around for something to say but ‘sorry’ felt somehow inappropriate. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t motherless herself, so she knew how empty those words would sound. People had told her often enough.
“Oh,” she finally said.
Well, there she went with the lack of wit again.
He scoffed, avoiding her gaze and looking for all the world like someone who had just let a secret spill against their better judgment. Let a stranger in on something way too close to his heart.
Unsure and uncomfortable with the sudden tension, Buffy picked at the strap on her bag. “I should go.”
“Nobody’s stopping you,” he muttered
She made her way towards the door and was just stepping over the threshold when he said, “Aren’t you gonna check? Your bag I mean. I might have taken something.”
“Have you?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “What would you do to me if I said yes?”
Rolling her eyes, she replied, “It’s not like there’s anything of value in it. But if you did take something, I know where to find you. And I’ll kick your ass.”
He chuckled and hooked his thumbs in the front belt loops of his jeans in a way that had to be designed to draw attention to his crotch. It sure was kind of bulge-y…
“My eyes are up here, pet.”
Damn. Caught.
Her eyes snapped to his face, cheeks growing hot.
“Are you sure you don’t want to spank my ass instead?” he asked curiously, reveling in her embarrassment.
“Pig,” she mumbled and rushed out of his room with his provocative glance flashing though her mind.
*******
As soon as she fell asleep that night, she was him again, whoever he was. It was like a movie put on pause waiting for her to return so she could follow the plot without missing a beat. Except it was all fragmented, scattered puzzle pieces she was only aware of when her subconscious steered the progress of her thoughts.
“Choose,” the monster said, his fingers bruising the delicate throats of two women. The younger seemingly a less frail portrait of the other. A mother and a daughter. For the helpless devastation reflected onto her from the boy, Buffy knew they were his family.
“No!” He clutched at the tear in his neck, getting dizzier as blood trickled down to soak the collar of his school uniform. Crimson blossomed on the white of his shirt, staining his chest. Somewhere in the distance, a clock ticked, the boy’s dread mounting with each second.
“If you don’t, I’m going to have to kill them both. Is that what you want?” The monster tightened his grip. Unperturbed. Almost gleeful. “What’s it going to be, kid? Both or just one?”
The boy opened his mouth, a raspy sound whispering past his chapped lips. “W-who are you? Why are you doing this?”
“Name’s Angelus. And why?” He let out a dark, chilling laugh, shoulders shaking from the mirth. “Because it’s fun. And don’t think you’re going to sidetrack me with questions. So… who’s going to bite it?”
Buffy could feel how hard the boy was shaking, how his spine stiffened as he dredged up every ounce of determination to say, “K-kill… me instead.”
Angelus’ eyes narrowed right before he tittered in amusement, a madman relishing a private joke. “Do you know what happens to martyrs?” He dragged his tongue up the column of the younger girl’s neck and cheek, moaning at the taste of her tears. The scene sent the boy’s heart galloping in vicious anger, his knuckles popping as he clenched his free hand into a fist, the nails cutting into his palm. “They die horribly and… painfully. And I don’t remember offering option C.”
In the next five seconds, hundreds of different ways to kill this man roared through the boy’s mind. Yet he couldn’t do anything but sit there on the floor, wishing for this to be just a nightmare.
“What are you? Ten? Eleven?” Angelus asked as though they were having a polite conversation. As though the boy whose mind Buffy shared wasn’t on the cusp of losing everything.
“T-thirteen,” he stammered through the clenched jaw. Buffy really hated this feeling of déjà vu, the way she stumbled into someone else’s recurring nightmare.
“You’re scrawny for a thirteen-year-old,” Angelus mocked, “Okay, martyr, either you choose in the next five seconds or mummy dearest and sis here are going to kick it both. It’s your choice. And if you move a muscle, I’ll just break their necks where I stand and you’ll know it’s your fault.
“One.”
His breath hitched in his throat and he pleaded and begged the monster in front of him not to do this, but Angelus only laughed.
“Two.”
He frantically looked around, his palms sweating, scream building at the back of his throat.
“Three.”
No, no, no, no… Don’t do this, take me instead!
“Four.”
His eyes locked with theirs, tears blurring his vision. How could he choose between his mother and twin sister? How could he save one only to damn the other? How could he live with himself if he let this happen?
He leapt to his feet just as Angelus said “Five,” only to be kicked backwards so hard it knocked the breath out of his lungs. Even though it wasn’t Buffy’s body, she was forced to gasp for breath as well.
That sound. That horrible snap of bone and cartilage, the thud of a body colliding with the floor, the scream ripping from his throat. Nothing could ever make Buffy forget it.
His mother lay there, her eyes empty and cold. Accusing. Why couldn’t you save me?
“I’m feeling charitable. See? Your sis is alive. So pretty, isn’t she?” Angelus pinched her cheek and grinned at the fallen boy but he could hardly see anything through the haze smothering him. The weight of what happened hadn’t fully registered yet. He could hardly move at all.
Angelus’ lips moved, his voice a slowed down caricature as the world shattered. The sound of it was so loud it drowned out everything else.
His sister fell and knocked her head on the table when Angelus pushed her down.
Buffy could tell that the boy imagined standing up and rushing him, ripping Angelus’ head off with his own hands though he was less than half of the other man’s weight.
His legs shook so hard he couldn’t even kneel.
Angelus approached him then, leisurely, calmly, like a lion stalking its fallen prey, already knowing he’d won.
When Angelus’ hand closed around his upper arm, the rage ignited and flared. The boy screamed. He struggled. The pain from hitting Angelus’ brick wall of a body didn’t even register. Angelus just swatted his hands aside like he was shooing away a mosquito on a hot summer night. Before Buffy knew what happened, Angelus had tied a cord around the boy’s wrists, dragging him behind like an animal carcass then tethered his hands to the radiator pipes.
Angelus’ cool breath prickled his cheek as he whispered, “If there is one thing I love more than torturing martyrs, it’s showing virgins a good time. You think we could kill two birds with one stone?”
The boy’s gaze flew to his sister who was half-unconscious from the head wound. The bile rose at the back of Buffy’s throat as cold sweat broke out on his skin.
Angelus rose fluidly to his feet and stepped over to the girl. With a few quick yanks, he ripped off her clothes and tossed her right next to the boy’s feet. Horrified, he pulled at the cord, silent tears pouring from his eyes.
“Eline,” he said. “Run. You have t—”
“Now, now, lad, that wouldn’t be very wise of her.” Angelus coiled her hair around his hand and pulled her head up. “Unless she wants to see me rip your twiggy legs off and beat you to death with them.”
Her dazed blue eyes met his, mirroring his agony and helplessness. “William…”
Such a gentle name, Buffy thought. If she could, she’d close her eyes to spare both herself and him the sight of what she knew was about to happen.
“Now you,” Angelus shifted his attention to William, “are going to watch. If you look away for as much as a second, she’s dead.”
She screamed as he violated her, gut wrenching sobs that made Buffy sick to her stomach but she couldn’t look away. With each second, she felt a piece of William die.
*******
White.
Everything around him was so blindingly white it filtered through his tightly shut eyelids, the sharpness of it sending pinpricks of pain through Buffy’s aching brain. There were voices, morning light illuminating the dust motes fluttering in the air.
William swallowed the metallic tang of his own blood, his sore stomach heaving again at the smell of his own urine. The reason his bladder had betrayed him came back to Buffy in painful Technicolour.
As though waiting for him to regain full consciousness, the agony lanced through him as he leaned against the radiator, staring blankly at a paramedic cutting him free. His head was spinning. He clutched the woman’s sleeve to steady himself and tried to comprehend what she was asking him. For a moment William wondered if the Earth truly was just a plank sailing across the never ending ocean and he was the only person who noticed it heave on the waves.
“What’s your name?”
His name? Had he ever had one? He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to be alive.
“Coward,” he mumbled, repeating the word over and over, testing the new identity in a few breathless exhales.
He’d failed to save them. The idea resonated through his skull with the insistence of an alarm clock when you still wish for five more minutes to sleep.
“There’s a body,” someone said, and for a moment William frowned. There wasn’t any body, he wanted to say. Just him and Mum.
Paramedic poked and prodded at him, shining a sharp light into his eyes after she tended to the tear on his neck. The blood had coagulated hours ago. How long had he been sitting here? It could have been centuries.
“I’m going to disinfect the wounds on your wrists now, okay? It will smart a little,” she informed him in a professional yet compassionate voice. Like he was a frightened bird who’d take flight as soon as she spoke too loud.
His wrists? He glanced down and saw the skin chafed almost to the bone. Must have done it himself, trying to loosen the cord.
She dabbed them with antiseptic but he didn’t flinch.
He couldn’t even feel it.
And he wanted it to hurt. He deserved every ounce of pain that was coming to him. He had been too weak, too slow, too stupid to save the only family he had left. The two people in his pathetic life who had loved him his entire life. And now they were gone.
The monster had taken his sister. Slipped into his true guise and sank his teeth into her delicate throat, gorging himself on her life. She couldn’t even scream anymore, too far gone to react. Not after… not after he’d…
The last thing William had seen before being knocked out was Angelus hauling Eline over his shoulder and into the light outside. Shouldn’t a monster like him be banished to the darkness?
William didn’t get to say he was sorry. He didn’t get to say goodbye. And now he never would.
He couldn’t even bury her.
With his chest constricting, he curled his arms around his legs and hid his face in his knees.
******
Buffy woke up with a start, her throat sore from the crying she must have done while sleeping. Sure enough, when she swept trembling palms over her face, her cheeks were stained with tears. It was still dark outside but she felt too unsettled to sleep. Cool air brushed her feverish skin when she slipped out of the sweat soaked sheets and wandered over to the window, opening it to let in crisp fresh air.
For some reason, she could taste blood on her tongue.
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Again, I have to warn you about the upcoming graphic violence in this chapter. It's kind of crucial to the character development though.
Previously (just to jog your memory): Spike caught Buffy in his bedroom where she found her missing bag. ;)
Awesome beta: All4Spike
Previously (just to jog your memory): Spike caught Buffy in his bedroom where she found her missing bag. ;)
Awesome beta: All4Spike
Chapter End Notes:
If there were any doubts about the identity of the man whose memories Buffy dreams, I'm sure it's all cleared up now. So, what do you think? :)