Disclaimer:BtVs is owned by Joss, ME, and probably a whole couple of other people who are, well, not me.
Moments
He hurts.
And that's all. He just hurts. He hurts everywhere. His skin feels burned. Actually, it feels more
like she pulled it off, slowly, deliberately savouring every moment, every scream, every whimper.
Maybe that's what she did. His very bones do burn like fire.
But he won't cry. No matter how much she hurts him. That's what she wants, he thinks. She wants him to
break.
He knows what it's like. He knows what it's like to take so much joy in pain, knows this moment of
brilliant joy when your victim breaks. Just like that.
So he lies - he can't even sit, it hurts so much, so very much - in the corner, his own blood sticking
to his skin. It's all he can smell.
He thinks it's only fair. Somewhere, in some hidden corner of his brain, he thinks that this is hell.
Or maybe hell is worse.
He keeps the thought far away, though. He doesn't want to turn insane. Although, maybe, he already is.
The girl, with that purring voice, that crazy voice, she seems oddly familiar at times.
Sometimes, he sees Dru when he looks at her. He called her that name once, and she laughed, and cut a
bit of the skin and flesh on his arm away, quoting something by… Shakespeare? He can't remember. It
didn't make much sense.
He can't remember lots of things, and sometimes it frightens him.
The girl doesn't call him by his name, and it's just as well.
The one time Dru was here - or was she? - she explained. Whispered to him as if she was telling him a
great and wonderful secret. Told him he didn't get to have a name. He had been bad. That was his
punishment.
Maybe she was right.
He hates it. Hates being here. He should never have come to this town. He would never have come here,
if it hadn't been for that damn demon.
He hoped for the Slayer. But she never came.
And he's alone now.
He doesn't know why he didn't run when they caught him. Maybe he had given up already, inside.
After they brought him down here, he saw Darla, once. He knows it was her. The redhead didn't exist
then, and everything was much clearer in his head.
She had changed. Her hair had gone shorter, the smiles she gave him, had become more cynical.
She had smelled of sex, anger, and oddly enough, fear.
He had asked her what she was afraid of. After all, he was the one who was chained to the wall.
She had claimed she wasn't afraid. They both knew it was a lie.
But Angel, too tired, and too… he doesn't know. But he hadn't asked again.
She had just been staring at him, her eyes burning themselves into his soul. Was a good thing he had
gotten one, wasn't it?
When she had left, he had somehow known that this was goodbye.
He's lying at the floor of his cell - cage - in his own blood. Every single bone, every muscle, every
nerve hurts.
He wonders if Dru would like seeing him like this. He doesn't know. There was a time he would have.
But his judgement is bad, these days.
He hears her steps even before he can smell her. They are sharp and precise. He bets she was one of
those timid little girls in life, one of those who never dared to do anything. One of those who always
follow the rules. They are the worst.
When she reaches the door of the cage, he does his best to ignore her.
Instead, he whispers to himself - in his mind - the words of a prayer he can still remember after all
those years. The one he has learned long ago as a little boy.
He wonders that if she keeps doing these unspeakable things to him, will he turn insane like Drusilla?
Will he escape into his own mind?
He doesn't know.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in - and then she steps in, and
asks in that terrible sweet voice, "Does Puppy want to play?"
And all he can do is scream inside that that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
