They thought that they were experts--they weren't. No, he had lived for a hundred years honing and refining his torturing technique, and he knew that the demon dimension he spent three centuries in wasn't perfect. But spend three centuries being tortured and even the biggest amatur can reduce you to an animal when you believe that you're nothing more than one.
When you believe you're less than.
But here was something more painful than anything those wanna-be demons could ever inflict. Because there is so much more to pain than forgetting who you are. No. Pain is when you know you should know who you are and you can't. You can't do anything.
When the only dream you allowed yourself to have in your entire, long, existence was stripped from you, stripped from you by no one but yourself, then you've felt pain. When the only person to console you was then ripped away a few, harsh days later, not even giving you time to grieve?
That was pain.
It redefined the word and gave it entirely new meaning. It was the moment that would stay with you, and fifty years later, or hell, a hundred, the memory will be enough to leave a scar.
All he could feel was turmoil, he was swimming in guilt, knowing that it was HE that wasn't strong enough to save them. The two most important people in his life. Gone. Because of his weakness.
Doyle.
Another flare of hurt ripped through his body, crippling his mind. He had died because of him. Doyle was always strong enough, he knew it, hell, even Cordelia did, but Doyle never believed. He died fighting the good fight, probably how he should have gone, how he wanted to go.
But there was the underlying bitterness, the nightmares that plagued his sleep. Those last few moments where he looked up to see the hero, risking his life in a blur of green and blue to recklessly save everyone else. God how he missed him.
And Her.
His Buffy.
No matter how many he times he tried to kid himself, now he knew that this was killing her too. That this was just as painful for her as it was for him, even more so because her friends never really approved of him. And the idea that she was hurt just as bad, and all because of him...because he wasn't strong enough to fight the demon, that he wasn't strong enough to keep her alive as a human...that she couldn't remember the absolute bliss that was The Day...
That was torture.
The remains of his faithful punching bag was strewn across the floor and his throbbing knuckles was the legacy it left behind. The torn skin and bruised bones look nothing like he felt, no, because to be torn apart he had to be whole in the first place. And that wasn't true. It hadn't been true except for that one night...and The Day. When he had as few people in his life as he did, the ones that left were everything.
There was this void...this hole. For all the years he had read and re-read poetry, the eloquent and immortal words he had stored in his memory banks failed him. Suddenly his life was startlingly incomplete.
Incomplete.
Some how the term fit perfectly. And it was because his best friend was gone. Because Buffy was gone.
He mourned the loss of Doyle, his only real friend was gone, and he could never get him back. Suddenly, his gloom seemed to--not clear, not even thin, but became more transparent. Doyle would never come back, no, he was gone...but what was stopping Buffy from being here?
And it was so simple.
He was dying without her. And she was dying without him.
Simple.
All those little complications in between would sort themselves out in time or after a good hard fight. The best fight there could be. And for the first time in a very long time, the beginnings of a smile lighted on the corner of his mouth.
Doyle would approve.