Disclaimer: I didn't invent any of the characters depicted in this story, or the general situation in which the story takes place. I am not making any money with this.
Comment: This is basically an alternate version of season four, centered on a new relationship between Spike and Willow. Things with the Initiative are slightly different, too, meaning that they are really bad guys in this one. Adam has already been eliminated, and Spike didn't betray the gang to him. Tara is not a part of this story.
It would be best (and really appreciated by me, too :)) if you read the first part of this story, The Gift, which deals with the first stages of Spike and Willow's friendship, how it came about, and how things between the Scoobies are changing as a result. But time is precious, and that's why I'm offering you a short summary of The Gift here.
"The Gift", summary: Spike has been captured again by the Initiative and is beeing subjected to food deprivation and isolation. Willow has to rescue him on her own (since he might provide valious information and is considered less dangerous by the Slayer the closer she can control him), while Buffy and the gang deal with a major demon-concentration. Willow finds Spike in a cell, in a pitiful condition, too weak to move, so she feeds him on her own blood until he is able to follow her out of the Initiative's facilities.
In spite of his condition, the gang still finds it hard to believe that the Initiative is the heartless, monstrous institution that Spike reports it to be. All except for Willow, who confronts her friends and then joins Spike, dissuading him of his original plan to just blow up all of Sunnydales underground. Instead, they infiltrate the Initiative again and find thousands of pictures of unspeakably tortured creatures as proof for the ruthless and cruel "investigations" of the institution. These pictures they bring back to Buffy and the soobies to convince they were right in considering the Initiative their worst enemy.
Meanwhile, Spike has told Willow that, as a consequence of feeding him her blood of her own free will, she is now marked. She and Spike are "bonded": he will feel it if Willow has strong emotional reactions of fear, anger, or any other kind. Likewise, he will be instinctively drawn to her whenever HE gets very emotional about something. They get a pretty scary example of how this bond works, when Spike collapses on the floor in convulsions as a consequence of Willow's reaction of extreme anger when she sees a picture of Spike being tortured.
I hope that didn't bore you too much. Maybe it even made you want to read the original after all...:) Anyway, on with the fun.
Oh, one last thing: please, please REVIEW, otherwise this story will dry and whither away; in return, I promise to update regularly. I am greatful for suggestions, and please don't hesitate to correct spelling, grammar and such - englich is not my native language.
The Bond
by
Miranda
Chapter 1
There it was again. And this time, there was no mistaking it: it was the girl. He knew it with a certainty that had mothing to do with actual knowledge. No one had told him, he hadn't seen anything - it was the bond speaking to him. The girl was with someone, and she was very excited. If she was not having sex already, it would happen very soon.
On the previous night, and the night before that, Spike had been able to dismiss these sensations as products of his own fantasy. He was getting too little sleep these days, and a diet consisting of the blood of cows and pigs mixed with oatmeal could get at anyone's constitution.
And then there was the uncertainty of their position against the Initiative, and the frustrating calm with which Buffy and her stupid gang were dealing with the situation - true, Willow's plan to implant a virus into their main system had been at least partly successful, their operations seemed to have stopped. But they WOULD regroup and reorganize, and they would do so with a vengeance. And all the while, Buffy and her pet-Scoobies were sitting in Giles' living-room, having long, maddening chats about contacting the proper authorities (WHAT proper authorities? It was "the proper authorities" who were sponsoring the Initiatives' activities, any blind child could see that) or taking trips to bloody Roswell.
So yes, this uneasiness, this tugging that came from inside and led him in a direction he didn't want to acknowledge, this sudden tingling in his blood - all those things he hed felt on the two previous nights could very well be nothing but fabrications of his own overstressed mind and body. Waking-time remnants of the nightmares that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes to sleep. Residues of the white light and the constant hum that still wouldn't leave his mind...
But tonight, there was no way of denying it anymore: his mind, his blood, every nerve in his body was talking to him about the girl. On the nights before, her feelings had been subdued, unprecise and rapidly supressed; but tonight she was giving in to them, she was letting it happen. Spike could feel her mounting excitement coursing strongly through his own veins. Oh, Willow...
Finally, he couldn't take it any longer. He would go crazy if he just kept on sitting in his crypt, waiting for her to finish her encounter with whoever the bloody bastard was that had gotten lucky that night. Spike's first impulse was to let his instincts and the bond lead him to where she was, rip the aforementioned bastard to pieces and take over where he had left off. But the chip in his brain would of course prevent him of giving the guy as much as a friendly knock over the head, and anyway, he didn't want to hurt or scare Willow. He wasn't that far gone. After all, she was his Bonded One, and he owed her. He owed her in ways he wasn't prepared to fully accept yet.
On second thought, maybe he could just go out there and get himself ANY girl - pick her up at a club, or even off the street - he wouldn't even have to use violence, he could be perfectly charming and adorable if he put his mind to it. At least he could turn all this inconvenience into an agreeable night, after all. Of course, it would have been much better still if he could have sucked whatever girl he chose dry after shagging her, but these days, the all too common shagging-and-dumping act would have to do. Maybe he should go look for friend Xander's girl, what was her name, Anna? Anja? Angela? She sure liked sex and made no secret of it either, and she had even shown a certain inclination for him on occasion...
But he had not even reached the door when he stopped in his tracks. None of the images of gorgeous, exhuberant, enticing and sexually depraved women that he was running through his mind stirred lust or arousal. On the contrary, he was felt sickened at the mere thought. What he was feeling was not him - it was all Willow, HER arousal, HER lust and pleasure, this was her moment, and Spike realised that there was nothing for him to do but sit through it, wait 'til it was over... and wish her a good time.
He leaned against the stone wall of his crypt and lit a cigarette. It was going to be a long night.
-----------------
The day was overcast and uncommonly humid. Downright sticky. Mosquitoes were buzzing low, and an eerie slience lay over Sunnydale in the early afternoon hours. Buffy and Riley had promised to pick her up, but that would be later, once they had spent the day's heat on each other, and slept off the exhaustion, and were ready to dance themselves into heat again at the Bronze. Willow smiled to herself. Those two were acting as if this were a once-in-a-millenium chance to get sex for free.
Then her smile faded. She was happy for her friend, but she feared she was too lost in her blissful cloud to pay enough attention to the problems at hand. Now the Initiative knew someone was moving against them, and it wouldn't take them long to find out who. And then what? Buffy seemed confident enough, she kept saying they would take this one step at a time. Having no strategy was the best way to surprise them, she said, who could outplan the gang if the gang didn't even have a plan?
But Willow could not forget the look in Buffy's eyes when she had confronted the gang about the Initiative's methods and motives. That look had said "I like my life just the way it is, and if I have to fight to make it stay this way, I will. I will fight you if I have to, Willow. And I will win." And then there had been that distant expression on Buffy's face when Willow had told them about her and Spike's incursion into the Initiative's facilities. Those pictures still haunted Willow's dreams, but when Buffy put them down, her expression never changed. She just said: "I'll have to talk to Riley", and since then she had adopted this placid attidude.
But Willow didn't feel placid at all. Willow was actually getting a severe case of the creeps. And then there was this other thing, this... this yearning inside her. She had never felt this way, it was as if someone had taken away a part from her she never even knew was there. It was a kind of hollow emptiness, Willow could feel it growing inside her, and it scared her more than any demon, more than the Initiative, more than her own powers.
She shook her head and sat up on her bed. She had to get out of this room or soon she would be talking to the walls. A mental list of her options for the afternoon didn't offer very encouraging results: the movies? She wasn't in the mood to watch Mel Gibson save the world again. Giles'? Another study session with the musty old books and she would definitely develop an allergy against demons and yellowing pages. Besides, Giles was giving her the oddest looks these last days, almost as if he was suspicious of her. The library? She had no papers due, and was too distracted to do any serious research. Spike? He would be asleep and annoyed with her for disturbing him. It was too hot for a walk, but she decided she needed to get out and stretch her legs anyway.
The cemetery was deserted. Willow found herself wandering around between the grey tombs before she could decide consciously where she wanted to go. There was a deep shadow beneath the trees, and it was very quiet. Not even a single cricket. All the birds were asleep, and the blades of grass were hushed.
And there was the crypt. She had been so distracted with her thoughts that she had just let her legs take her where they wanted. Or had this been in her mind before she even left her room? The air was thick and heavy, it wrapped itself around her thoughts like a wet cloth, inside her usually focused mind everything seemed to be a blur, and inside her heart too. Unvoluntarily, Willow had to think of yesterday night, and a hot wave of shame and guilt washed over her, like the sudden memory of an unfulfilled promise.
Inside it would be cool....
Suddenly, Willow wished for nothing more than to lay her cheek against the cold stone. Spike would never know she was there, she would just slip beside him on the slate where he lay... Whithout hesitation she took the key from its hiding place and opened the door.
"Spike?", she whispered, noticing that her voice was hoarse. Then she stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind her.
Comment: This is basically an alternate version of season four, centered on a new relationship between Spike and Willow. Things with the Initiative are slightly different, too, meaning that they are really bad guys in this one. Adam has already been eliminated, and Spike didn't betray the gang to him. Tara is not a part of this story.
It would be best (and really appreciated by me, too :)) if you read the first part of this story, The Gift, which deals with the first stages of Spike and Willow's friendship, how it came about, and how things between the Scoobies are changing as a result. But time is precious, and that's why I'm offering you a short summary of The Gift here.
"The Gift", summary: Spike has been captured again by the Initiative and is beeing subjected to food deprivation and isolation. Willow has to rescue him on her own (since he might provide valious information and is considered less dangerous by the Slayer the closer she can control him), while Buffy and the gang deal with a major demon-concentration. Willow finds Spike in a cell, in a pitiful condition, too weak to move, so she feeds him on her own blood until he is able to follow her out of the Initiative's facilities.
In spite of his condition, the gang still finds it hard to believe that the Initiative is the heartless, monstrous institution that Spike reports it to be. All except for Willow, who confronts her friends and then joins Spike, dissuading him of his original plan to just blow up all of Sunnydales underground. Instead, they infiltrate the Initiative again and find thousands of pictures of unspeakably tortured creatures as proof for the ruthless and cruel "investigations" of the institution. These pictures they bring back to Buffy and the soobies to convince they were right in considering the Initiative their worst enemy.
Meanwhile, Spike has told Willow that, as a consequence of feeding him her blood of her own free will, she is now marked. She and Spike are "bonded": he will feel it if Willow has strong emotional reactions of fear, anger, or any other kind. Likewise, he will be instinctively drawn to her whenever HE gets very emotional about something. They get a pretty scary example of how this bond works, when Spike collapses on the floor in convulsions as a consequence of Willow's reaction of extreme anger when she sees a picture of Spike being tortured.
I hope that didn't bore you too much. Maybe it even made you want to read the original after all...:) Anyway, on with the fun.
Oh, one last thing: please, please REVIEW, otherwise this story will dry and whither away; in return, I promise to update regularly. I am greatful for suggestions, and please don't hesitate to correct spelling, grammar and such - englich is not my native language.
The Bond
by
Miranda
Chapter 1
There it was again. And this time, there was no mistaking it: it was the girl. He knew it with a certainty that had mothing to do with actual knowledge. No one had told him, he hadn't seen anything - it was the bond speaking to him. The girl was with someone, and she was very excited. If she was not having sex already, it would happen very soon.
On the previous night, and the night before that, Spike had been able to dismiss these sensations as products of his own fantasy. He was getting too little sleep these days, and a diet consisting of the blood of cows and pigs mixed with oatmeal could get at anyone's constitution.
And then there was the uncertainty of their position against the Initiative, and the frustrating calm with which Buffy and her stupid gang were dealing with the situation - true, Willow's plan to implant a virus into their main system had been at least partly successful, their operations seemed to have stopped. But they WOULD regroup and reorganize, and they would do so with a vengeance. And all the while, Buffy and her pet-Scoobies were sitting in Giles' living-room, having long, maddening chats about contacting the proper authorities (WHAT proper authorities? It was "the proper authorities" who were sponsoring the Initiatives' activities, any blind child could see that) or taking trips to bloody Roswell.
So yes, this uneasiness, this tugging that came from inside and led him in a direction he didn't want to acknowledge, this sudden tingling in his blood - all those things he hed felt on the two previous nights could very well be nothing but fabrications of his own overstressed mind and body. Waking-time remnants of the nightmares that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes to sleep. Residues of the white light and the constant hum that still wouldn't leave his mind...
But tonight, there was no way of denying it anymore: his mind, his blood, every nerve in his body was talking to him about the girl. On the nights before, her feelings had been subdued, unprecise and rapidly supressed; but tonight she was giving in to them, she was letting it happen. Spike could feel her mounting excitement coursing strongly through his own veins. Oh, Willow...
Finally, he couldn't take it any longer. He would go crazy if he just kept on sitting in his crypt, waiting for her to finish her encounter with whoever the bloody bastard was that had gotten lucky that night. Spike's first impulse was to let his instincts and the bond lead him to where she was, rip the aforementioned bastard to pieces and take over where he had left off. But the chip in his brain would of course prevent him of giving the guy as much as a friendly knock over the head, and anyway, he didn't want to hurt or scare Willow. He wasn't that far gone. After all, she was his Bonded One, and he owed her. He owed her in ways he wasn't prepared to fully accept yet.
On second thought, maybe he could just go out there and get himself ANY girl - pick her up at a club, or even off the street - he wouldn't even have to use violence, he could be perfectly charming and adorable if he put his mind to it. At least he could turn all this inconvenience into an agreeable night, after all. Of course, it would have been much better still if he could have sucked whatever girl he chose dry after shagging her, but these days, the all too common shagging-and-dumping act would have to do. Maybe he should go look for friend Xander's girl, what was her name, Anna? Anja? Angela? She sure liked sex and made no secret of it either, and she had even shown a certain inclination for him on occasion...
But he had not even reached the door when he stopped in his tracks. None of the images of gorgeous, exhuberant, enticing and sexually depraved women that he was running through his mind stirred lust or arousal. On the contrary, he was felt sickened at the mere thought. What he was feeling was not him - it was all Willow, HER arousal, HER lust and pleasure, this was her moment, and Spike realised that there was nothing for him to do but sit through it, wait 'til it was over... and wish her a good time.
He leaned against the stone wall of his crypt and lit a cigarette. It was going to be a long night.
-----------------
The day was overcast and uncommonly humid. Downright sticky. Mosquitoes were buzzing low, and an eerie slience lay over Sunnydale in the early afternoon hours. Buffy and Riley had promised to pick her up, but that would be later, once they had spent the day's heat on each other, and slept off the exhaustion, and were ready to dance themselves into heat again at the Bronze. Willow smiled to herself. Those two were acting as if this were a once-in-a-millenium chance to get sex for free.
Then her smile faded. She was happy for her friend, but she feared she was too lost in her blissful cloud to pay enough attention to the problems at hand. Now the Initiative knew someone was moving against them, and it wouldn't take them long to find out who. And then what? Buffy seemed confident enough, she kept saying they would take this one step at a time. Having no strategy was the best way to surprise them, she said, who could outplan the gang if the gang didn't even have a plan?
But Willow could not forget the look in Buffy's eyes when she had confronted the gang about the Initiative's methods and motives. That look had said "I like my life just the way it is, and if I have to fight to make it stay this way, I will. I will fight you if I have to, Willow. And I will win." And then there had been that distant expression on Buffy's face when Willow had told them about her and Spike's incursion into the Initiative's facilities. Those pictures still haunted Willow's dreams, but when Buffy put them down, her expression never changed. She just said: "I'll have to talk to Riley", and since then she had adopted this placid attidude.
But Willow didn't feel placid at all. Willow was actually getting a severe case of the creeps. And then there was this other thing, this... this yearning inside her. She had never felt this way, it was as if someone had taken away a part from her she never even knew was there. It was a kind of hollow emptiness, Willow could feel it growing inside her, and it scared her more than any demon, more than the Initiative, more than her own powers.
She shook her head and sat up on her bed. She had to get out of this room or soon she would be talking to the walls. A mental list of her options for the afternoon didn't offer very encouraging results: the movies? She wasn't in the mood to watch Mel Gibson save the world again. Giles'? Another study session with the musty old books and she would definitely develop an allergy against demons and yellowing pages. Besides, Giles was giving her the oddest looks these last days, almost as if he was suspicious of her. The library? She had no papers due, and was too distracted to do any serious research. Spike? He would be asleep and annoyed with her for disturbing him. It was too hot for a walk, but she decided she needed to get out and stretch her legs anyway.
The cemetery was deserted. Willow found herself wandering around between the grey tombs before she could decide consciously where she wanted to go. There was a deep shadow beneath the trees, and it was very quiet. Not even a single cricket. All the birds were asleep, and the blades of grass were hushed.
And there was the crypt. She had been so distracted with her thoughts that she had just let her legs take her where they wanted. Or had this been in her mind before she even left her room? The air was thick and heavy, it wrapped itself around her thoughts like a wet cloth, inside her usually focused mind everything seemed to be a blur, and inside her heart too. Unvoluntarily, Willow had to think of yesterday night, and a hot wave of shame and guilt washed over her, like the sudden memory of an unfulfilled promise.
Inside it would be cool....
Suddenly, Willow wished for nothing more than to lay her cheek against the cold stone. Spike would never know she was there, she would just slip beside him on the slate where he lay... Whithout hesitation she took the key from its hiding place and opened the door.
"Spike?", she whispered, noticing that her voice was hoarse. Then she stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind her.