Prologue for "St. Valentine"
Time-line: Immediately after "Dead Things"
Disclaimer: Don't own any of the characters/settings, and stuff, represented in the following story, but it isn't illegal to dream is it? (Very likely it is *frown*)
Rating: R for violence, language, sexual content, and bloody poofy vampires with souls...
In response to Nos' challenge on Carnal Sins message boards, Buffy and the gang have to face an old friend, but there is more then meets the eye in this 'lil shindig.
-----------
Darkness, only broken by a pale dispassionate light, filled the cavernous room. All around were the sounds of machines, metallic whurs and scratches blended together, forming a sort of soothing white noise. This was his home, though, not really. His home was above, not in this dank and shut off place, but strangely, he found this place more relaxing. In front of him, the glow of artificial light flooded his vision. One never really got used to that glow, you just adjusted until you could stand it for longer periods of time. He was accustomed to it by now though, and welcomed it, as much as he welcomed the dank smell or the musty feel. This was his home.
With a sigh, Warren forced his thoughts back to the work before him: numbers filed in neat rows and columns. It all looked fine, and probably was. He was the best at this sort of thing after all, but he wanted to make sure. This was dangerous ground they were stepping on. He and the other two had done some pretty risky things before, but this was different, more personal than the rest. Suddenly, his face split into a grin. He loved the danger more than anything else. The intrigue and subtle maneuverings that he could achieve astounded even his ego. And with the other two, he really could be running Sunnydale by now, easily.
Images replaced the numbers in his vision, a blonde gril, skinny and not as tall as some others. Buffy Summers, the Slayer, or whatever you wanted to call her, was who stopped him from running this place. Despite all their efforts, they couldn't even shake her.
He was sure she would figure out who killed Katrina, if she ever heard the dead girl's name.
He could see it now: in a righteous stroke of martyrdom, she should have gone to the police and tell them everything, confessing to them her dirty sin and feel peace in the fact that she was still in the right, that even as a murderer, she could still grasp on to that tiny holy principal.
Bull shit.
By now she knew the name of the girl, and who had killed her. If she didn't already know that the trio had killed her, (that's right, they all killed her, not just himself!), then she would within a day or so, and that gave him precious little time.
Flashing another self-satisfied grin, he stood and sauntered into the main room, pushing away the thick dark curtain that held back most of the light. The others sat in front of their computers, no doubt looking at porn, or some other dubious activity. No time for their foibles, he had to be the first to strike.
"Listen up, girls!" he called out from the doorway, still grinning. "I've got a plan..."
He watched the two jump as if they had been pinched, and turned to face him. Jonathan, the short gnomic person, frowned incredulously at Warren.
"Just as long as it doesn't involved murder, Warren."
Andrew flinched as Jonathan spoke of the killing. They were both soft-hearted fools, thought Warren.
"We aren't going to kill anyone for you, we came to that decision while you were... away." he hesitated at the last.
They all knew who was in charge, and it definitely wasn't either of these two.
"That's right," Andrew spoke up from his chair, then immediately tried to sink back into it, obviously regretting he had spoken. "We aren't killers, just super-villains." he finished meekly.
They disgusted Warren to no end, but he needed them. Let them quiver and cower at the thought of a dead body, he wouldn't.
"When did this become a democracy, kids?"
It was never a democracy: he led, they followed.
"You'll do what I need you to do, or we'll all go down with the ship."
Andrew looked as if that scenario wasn't all bad.
Moving from the doorway, Warren pulled a small remote control from his pocket and held it out to the other two.
"We got her this time boys, and we won't even have to lift a finger."
-----------
Buffy continued to stare at her reflection. Blonde hair hanging just above her shoulders framed a red face. Red because she had just sobbingly confessed her...
What was the thing between her and Spike?
Certainly not a relationship -- !
Tara oddly seemed to understand, but maybe she was just trying to make her feel better. Buffy didn't want to feel better, she was wrong, what she did was wrong...
So why did she do it?
With a shuddering sigh, she buried her face in the washcloth again.
"Buffy...?" called a voice from behind the closed bathroom door.
Dawn.
How would Dawn look at her when she found out?
"Are... Are you okay?" she asked, hesitantly pushing the door open a bit.
Buffy loved her sister dearly, she might understand if she knew... but buffy would never tell her.
"I'm okay, Dawn. What are you doing up this late?"
The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them. Her sister didn't like being reminded that she was still a kid. But that's what she was, no matter how she felt about it. More then one time Dawn had gotten her and the Scoobies into considerable trouble.
Indignantly, Dawn stormed in, fixing Buffy with a furious glare.
"It's not that late, Buffy! Anyway, I've still got some homework to do." she said, trying to sound as casual as possible, but she failed horribly.
Her glare was still fixed on Buffy, though a little worry tinted the edges of her anger now.
With a grimace, Buffy saw that her face was still puffed and red.
"What happened?" she asked, her glare melting away to be replaced with concern. "You've been crying!"
Her accusation came with a squeak.
"Dawn, go to bed! You've got school tomorrow and it is late."
Standing, she threw the cloth into the sink and pushed past her sister.
Tara had tried to convince her to go check on Spike, see if he was okay. He had to be okay, he'd taken worse punishment from Glory and was just fine. A chill ran down her spine. He had just lain there, taking what she was pounding him with. Smiling affectionately, even!
"Don't wait up for me this time, Dawn. You need sleep!"
It seemed she couldn't keep herself away from the vampire. God he had to be okay!
Ignoring Dawn's protests, she rushed downstairs. She grabbed her coat and hurriedly slipped it on. She was shaking. Tara was right about one thing, she couldn't convince herself that she didn't love him.
Why did she let herself act like this? She had beaten the shit out of him on countless occasions, why was she so concerned now? No more questions... it had happened. Focusing her Slayer energies, she calmly opened the door. He would be at the cemetery.
------------
Why did he let himself react like this? Pacing a hole through the floor, hands shaking as if he hadn't had a smoke in weeks.
Bloody Slayer, his bloody Slayer.
Light flashed as he lit his cigarette. He shoved between his swollen lips and pulled -- smoke out of it. In his mind, idle fantasies were playing. Buffy came and cleaned his wounds, telling him how much she loved him, how she was so sorry.
Not bloodly likely.
If she was even still awake, she would be more concerned with absolving her own sin than his.
He flicked the finished smoke to the ground and snubbed it under-foot.
Bloody Slayer.
Suddenly, he became aware of said Slayer standing outside the entrance of his crypt. Forcing himself to stop shaking and pacing, he casually walked to the door, awaiting the knock. He waited -- for what seemed like an eternity, then he heard a quiet knock. He opened the door and stepped back. She had been crying.
"'lo luv..." he mumbled, giving his best smile despite the swollen state of his face.
She looked as if she would hug him any moment, but instead, she pushed past him, into the main room, hands on hips, lips pursed in a considering gaze.
"Whut brings you 'round these parts?"
He was surrounded by cigarette butts. He had one eye swollen shut, and various cuts and scrapes dotting his face.
Buffy took a deep breath: he knew a woman was about to lecture him when she had that expression on her face. But nothing came out of her open mouth, and her eyes misted
"I told Tara..." she finally managed to get out.
Tears rolling down her face, she told him everything Tara had said about -- her. She didn't come back wrong, she was fine, and the feelings she had were normal, even expected. She sounded disappointed when she said nothing was wrong with her.
Disappointed!
Her hips swayed slightly as she walked toward him, a hand reaching up, brushing his face.
"God, I'm so sorry..."she said quietly, as if she didn't want him to hear. "I've been going about this the wrong way..."
She almost looked as if she were debating with herself.
Going about this the wrong way? Obviously Tara's influence.
"Let... Let me clean you up..."
He stood, gaping.
--------------------
He recalled the previous night, all his idle dreams coming true… well, his decidedly less sexual dreams. She didn't stay after she had cleaned him up, just mumbled something about having to get back before sunrise and flitted away, as if she didn't have a care in the world. He would have to talk to her about these mood swings of hers, he thought she had gotten over the skulking about being brought back.
Now he waited, expecting her to return with a vengeance, making up for her lack of defenses the night before. But she didn't. Night felt, and he was still sitting, fidgeting in his crypt like a caged rat.
He wasn't going to be Buffy bloody Summers' lapdog! With a grunt of determination, he stood and left his crypt. Time for a bit of fun. Besides, he hadn't killed himself a demon in days… but strangely, that didn't seem to matter that much anymore...
No! He was letting himself be distracted. There had to be some kind of apocalypse going on, somewhere. So that's how he found himself sitting at Willy's bar, drowning in drink and bored to tears.
Shouldn't be here, demons usually didn't like him hanging around this place, but apparently they understood his mood and left him alone. Hell, he had gone soft, he just had to admit it himself. A slimey sort of demon sat beside him, sucking on a bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Does it look like I've gone soft to you, mate?" he asked the thing, without turning to it.
"Spike, you kill your own kind -- and you hardly come to poker night anymore, you're soft as a human babe." -- spoke the demon in a gruff voice, one un-used to human dialect.
"Listen, mate! I'm still big an' bad as ever. Watch your tongue!" -- slurred Spike --. Maybe it was time for him to go.
Drinking always led to something terrible, usually.
Stumbling to his feet, he made his way out of the bar on shaky legs. He had to find a bit of fun before he ripped his hair out. What kind of trouble had been walking the streets of Sunnydale these days?
Nothing. Just your run of the mill vampires and demons. Well, if you wanted to count that troupe of nerds as a big bad…
A plan popped into his head: that trio had been bothering Buffy lately, what with there little experiments and the such. He would take care of that problem, somehow. The chip made it extremely hard to stop them from bending him over their knee and spanking him if they bloody well pleased, but determination and a considerably non-sober attitude won out over reason, and he decided to search them out.
Where to go though? They scurried out of their hole sometime back and could be anywhere.
This was hopeless, less then hopeless. If they were even in the city, it would take months to find them, and they would probably just move off again.
With all the sensible reasoning running through his head, it was a wonder that he found himself in front of an old, burned out shelter, looking at a door.
What had brought him here?
Gut feeling, most likely, and Spike liked following his gut.
He kicked the door down violently, splinters flying in every direction as the rotted, twisted wood broke with hardly a touch, and he was sent tumbling to the ground. His head spun, and he pushed himself up. The entire place was dark, and dust lay an inch thick on everything in sight.
'Oh, swell gut feeling Spike!' he thought to himself.
As he turned to go, something caught his eye: the glint of newly restored hinges across the room. Why would this abandoned place need new hinges? Well, a vampire nest was as good a reason as any and he walked through the dust and mildew toward the door. Suspicions paid off, and he smiled in triumph as the spanking new door came into view.
Very suddenly, his danger sense triggered something in his mind, and he turned around just in time to see Warren. Thoughts raced through his head: he could rush past the scrawny boy, with little to no hurt done to himself. Opening his mouth, his words were cut off by sudden jolts of electricity, leaping from pore to pore, racking his entire body with pain and eventually, numbness.
He fought, sending wild kicks and punches, trying to see through the haze. A blow connected, luckily, and Warren was thrown back a full ten feet before colliding with the opposite wall. Unluckily, pain exploded in his head, and with the shock, he slowly began to lose consciousness. Darkness closed in, and his last thoughts were that the door he had smashed into bits was back, fully intact, and the dust looked as if he had never come through.
Time-line: Immediately after "Dead Things"
Disclaimer: Don't own any of the characters/settings, and stuff, represented in the following story, but it isn't illegal to dream is it? (Very likely it is *frown*)
Rating: R for violence, language, sexual content, and bloody poofy vampires with souls...
In response to Nos' challenge on Carnal Sins message boards, Buffy and the gang have to face an old friend, but there is more then meets the eye in this 'lil shindig.
-----------
Darkness, only broken by a pale dispassionate light, filled the cavernous room. All around were the sounds of machines, metallic whurs and scratches blended together, forming a sort of soothing white noise. This was his home, though, not really. His home was above, not in this dank and shut off place, but strangely, he found this place more relaxing. In front of him, the glow of artificial light flooded his vision. One never really got used to that glow, you just adjusted until you could stand it for longer periods of time. He was accustomed to it by now though, and welcomed it, as much as he welcomed the dank smell or the musty feel. This was his home.
With a sigh, Warren forced his thoughts back to the work before him: numbers filed in neat rows and columns. It all looked fine, and probably was. He was the best at this sort of thing after all, but he wanted to make sure. This was dangerous ground they were stepping on. He and the other two had done some pretty risky things before, but this was different, more personal than the rest. Suddenly, his face split into a grin. He loved the danger more than anything else. The intrigue and subtle maneuverings that he could achieve astounded even his ego. And with the other two, he really could be running Sunnydale by now, easily.
Images replaced the numbers in his vision, a blonde gril, skinny and not as tall as some others. Buffy Summers, the Slayer, or whatever you wanted to call her, was who stopped him from running this place. Despite all their efforts, they couldn't even shake her.
He was sure she would figure out who killed Katrina, if she ever heard the dead girl's name.
He could see it now: in a righteous stroke of martyrdom, she should have gone to the police and tell them everything, confessing to them her dirty sin and feel peace in the fact that she was still in the right, that even as a murderer, she could still grasp on to that tiny holy principal.
Bull shit.
By now she knew the name of the girl, and who had killed her. If she didn't already know that the trio had killed her, (that's right, they all killed her, not just himself!), then she would within a day or so, and that gave him precious little time.
Flashing another self-satisfied grin, he stood and sauntered into the main room, pushing away the thick dark curtain that held back most of the light. The others sat in front of their computers, no doubt looking at porn, or some other dubious activity. No time for their foibles, he had to be the first to strike.
"Listen up, girls!" he called out from the doorway, still grinning. "I've got a plan..."
He watched the two jump as if they had been pinched, and turned to face him. Jonathan, the short gnomic person, frowned incredulously at Warren.
"Just as long as it doesn't involved murder, Warren."
Andrew flinched as Jonathan spoke of the killing. They were both soft-hearted fools, thought Warren.
"We aren't going to kill anyone for you, we came to that decision while you were... away." he hesitated at the last.
They all knew who was in charge, and it definitely wasn't either of these two.
"That's right," Andrew spoke up from his chair, then immediately tried to sink back into it, obviously regretting he had spoken. "We aren't killers, just super-villains." he finished meekly.
They disgusted Warren to no end, but he needed them. Let them quiver and cower at the thought of a dead body, he wouldn't.
"When did this become a democracy, kids?"
It was never a democracy: he led, they followed.
"You'll do what I need you to do, or we'll all go down with the ship."
Andrew looked as if that scenario wasn't all bad.
Moving from the doorway, Warren pulled a small remote control from his pocket and held it out to the other two.
"We got her this time boys, and we won't even have to lift a finger."
-----------
Buffy continued to stare at her reflection. Blonde hair hanging just above her shoulders framed a red face. Red because she had just sobbingly confessed her...
What was the thing between her and Spike?
Certainly not a relationship -- !
Tara oddly seemed to understand, but maybe she was just trying to make her feel better. Buffy didn't want to feel better, she was wrong, what she did was wrong...
So why did she do it?
With a shuddering sigh, she buried her face in the washcloth again.
"Buffy...?" called a voice from behind the closed bathroom door.
Dawn.
How would Dawn look at her when she found out?
"Are... Are you okay?" she asked, hesitantly pushing the door open a bit.
Buffy loved her sister dearly, she might understand if she knew... but buffy would never tell her.
"I'm okay, Dawn. What are you doing up this late?"
The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them. Her sister didn't like being reminded that she was still a kid. But that's what she was, no matter how she felt about it. More then one time Dawn had gotten her and the Scoobies into considerable trouble.
Indignantly, Dawn stormed in, fixing Buffy with a furious glare.
"It's not that late, Buffy! Anyway, I've still got some homework to do." she said, trying to sound as casual as possible, but she failed horribly.
Her glare was still fixed on Buffy, though a little worry tinted the edges of her anger now.
With a grimace, Buffy saw that her face was still puffed and red.
"What happened?" she asked, her glare melting away to be replaced with concern. "You've been crying!"
Her accusation came with a squeak.
"Dawn, go to bed! You've got school tomorrow and it is late."
Standing, she threw the cloth into the sink and pushed past her sister.
Tara had tried to convince her to go check on Spike, see if he was okay. He had to be okay, he'd taken worse punishment from Glory and was just fine. A chill ran down her spine. He had just lain there, taking what she was pounding him with. Smiling affectionately, even!
"Don't wait up for me this time, Dawn. You need sleep!"
It seemed she couldn't keep herself away from the vampire. God he had to be okay!
Ignoring Dawn's protests, she rushed downstairs. She grabbed her coat and hurriedly slipped it on. She was shaking. Tara was right about one thing, she couldn't convince herself that she didn't love him.
Why did she let herself act like this? She had beaten the shit out of him on countless occasions, why was she so concerned now? No more questions... it had happened. Focusing her Slayer energies, she calmly opened the door. He would be at the cemetery.
------------
Why did he let himself react like this? Pacing a hole through the floor, hands shaking as if he hadn't had a smoke in weeks.
Bloody Slayer, his bloody Slayer.
Light flashed as he lit his cigarette. He shoved between his swollen lips and pulled -- smoke out of it. In his mind, idle fantasies were playing. Buffy came and cleaned his wounds, telling him how much she loved him, how she was so sorry.
Not bloodly likely.
If she was even still awake, she would be more concerned with absolving her own sin than his.
He flicked the finished smoke to the ground and snubbed it under-foot.
Bloody Slayer.
Suddenly, he became aware of said Slayer standing outside the entrance of his crypt. Forcing himself to stop shaking and pacing, he casually walked to the door, awaiting the knock. He waited -- for what seemed like an eternity, then he heard a quiet knock. He opened the door and stepped back. She had been crying.
"'lo luv..." he mumbled, giving his best smile despite the swollen state of his face.
She looked as if she would hug him any moment, but instead, she pushed past him, into the main room, hands on hips, lips pursed in a considering gaze.
"Whut brings you 'round these parts?"
He was surrounded by cigarette butts. He had one eye swollen shut, and various cuts and scrapes dotting his face.
Buffy took a deep breath: he knew a woman was about to lecture him when she had that expression on her face. But nothing came out of her open mouth, and her eyes misted
"I told Tara..." she finally managed to get out.
Tears rolling down her face, she told him everything Tara had said about -- her. She didn't come back wrong, she was fine, and the feelings she had were normal, even expected. She sounded disappointed when she said nothing was wrong with her.
Disappointed!
Her hips swayed slightly as she walked toward him, a hand reaching up, brushing his face.
"God, I'm so sorry..."she said quietly, as if she didn't want him to hear. "I've been going about this the wrong way..."
She almost looked as if she were debating with herself.
Going about this the wrong way? Obviously Tara's influence.
"Let... Let me clean you up..."
He stood, gaping.
--------------------
He recalled the previous night, all his idle dreams coming true… well, his decidedly less sexual dreams. She didn't stay after she had cleaned him up, just mumbled something about having to get back before sunrise and flitted away, as if she didn't have a care in the world. He would have to talk to her about these mood swings of hers, he thought she had gotten over the skulking about being brought back.
Now he waited, expecting her to return with a vengeance, making up for her lack of defenses the night before. But she didn't. Night felt, and he was still sitting, fidgeting in his crypt like a caged rat.
He wasn't going to be Buffy bloody Summers' lapdog! With a grunt of determination, he stood and left his crypt. Time for a bit of fun. Besides, he hadn't killed himself a demon in days… but strangely, that didn't seem to matter that much anymore...
No! He was letting himself be distracted. There had to be some kind of apocalypse going on, somewhere. So that's how he found himself sitting at Willy's bar, drowning in drink and bored to tears.
Shouldn't be here, demons usually didn't like him hanging around this place, but apparently they understood his mood and left him alone. Hell, he had gone soft, he just had to admit it himself. A slimey sort of demon sat beside him, sucking on a bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Does it look like I've gone soft to you, mate?" he asked the thing, without turning to it.
"Spike, you kill your own kind -- and you hardly come to poker night anymore, you're soft as a human babe." -- spoke the demon in a gruff voice, one un-used to human dialect.
"Listen, mate! I'm still big an' bad as ever. Watch your tongue!" -- slurred Spike --. Maybe it was time for him to go.
Drinking always led to something terrible, usually.
Stumbling to his feet, he made his way out of the bar on shaky legs. He had to find a bit of fun before he ripped his hair out. What kind of trouble had been walking the streets of Sunnydale these days?
Nothing. Just your run of the mill vampires and demons. Well, if you wanted to count that troupe of nerds as a big bad…
A plan popped into his head: that trio had been bothering Buffy lately, what with there little experiments and the such. He would take care of that problem, somehow. The chip made it extremely hard to stop them from bending him over their knee and spanking him if they bloody well pleased, but determination and a considerably non-sober attitude won out over reason, and he decided to search them out.
Where to go though? They scurried out of their hole sometime back and could be anywhere.
This was hopeless, less then hopeless. If they were even in the city, it would take months to find them, and they would probably just move off again.
With all the sensible reasoning running through his head, it was a wonder that he found himself in front of an old, burned out shelter, looking at a door.
What had brought him here?
Gut feeling, most likely, and Spike liked following his gut.
He kicked the door down violently, splinters flying in every direction as the rotted, twisted wood broke with hardly a touch, and he was sent tumbling to the ground. His head spun, and he pushed himself up. The entire place was dark, and dust lay an inch thick on everything in sight.
'Oh, swell gut feeling Spike!' he thought to himself.
As he turned to go, something caught his eye: the glint of newly restored hinges across the room. Why would this abandoned place need new hinges? Well, a vampire nest was as good a reason as any and he walked through the dust and mildew toward the door. Suspicions paid off, and he smiled in triumph as the spanking new door came into view.
Very suddenly, his danger sense triggered something in his mind, and he turned around just in time to see Warren. Thoughts raced through his head: he could rush past the scrawny boy, with little to no hurt done to himself. Opening his mouth, his words were cut off by sudden jolts of electricity, leaping from pore to pore, racking his entire body with pain and eventually, numbness.
He fought, sending wild kicks and punches, trying to see through the haze. A blow connected, luckily, and Warren was thrown back a full ten feet before colliding with the opposite wall. Unluckily, pain exploded in his head, and with the shock, he slowly began to lose consciousness. Darkness closed in, and his last thoughts were that the door he had smashed into bits was back, fully intact, and the dust looked as if he had never come through.
