a broken heart
Buffy's body writhed in pain. Spasms wracked her body, starting at her abdomen and traveling up to her heart, which felt like it was breaking and twisting inside out, pushing against her skin. What's happening to me...? Her lungs screamed at her to breath, but her gasping wasn't letting any air into her body, and it was as if her blood had turned to acid in her veins. She felt herself screaming, and she felt hot, stinging tears soaking her face.
There was someone standing over her, shaking her, screaming something. She couldn't hear them over her own pained screams, splitting her own eardrums with the sound. The shadow was gone as she felt her throat dry out from screaming, from lack of air. Her ears kept ringing, and her heart kept twisting inside her chest, as if would burst - she only barley felt someone trying to pin her arms down to the bed, and she didn't notice at all as the person was throw across the room. Her strained arms and ankles were being gripped by several someone's now, all of them blurry figures above her fluttering eyelids, red seeping into the corners. Her attackers heaved her up off of wherever she it was she was on, she felt her throat close up again, a lump of fear build in the pit of her stomach. She struggled against them; kicking as well as she could get her limbs to move.
Her ankles were released, and suddenly she was falling… the back of her head smacked something sharp, and her spine twisted out of shape as it hit the floor. She felt like she'd swallowed a razor blade.
Something was coming towards her face. She opened her rasping mouth, but no sound came out – so instead, she caught their hand between her teeth, crushing the bone with all her strength. Wrong thing to do. As the person ripped there hand away, blood filled her mouth, but she couldn't spit it out… she couldn't… was it vampire blood? She coughed and sputtered, ripping at her neck. She had to get it out. Someone was trying to pull her arms away, trying to make her swallow it. She continued to rip at it, as she was lifted up and smashed down on something else. More hands, here , there, holding her down, tearing away her hands and pinning them to her sides. She was caught.
*
Angel banged on the glass doors with all his might, rattling them but not breaking through. Two hundred and forty odd years of killing things and he could not break though glass hospitals to help her.
She was tied down to the hospital bed, and was still convulsing desperately, as if there was something beneath the bed tearing at her back, which arched as high in the air as her restraints would allow her. Her pale neck had been shredded to ribbons, and he could make out perfectly that they had managed to chop off all her fingernails, and had missed in places, so the tips of her fingers were coated with dried blood. She was screaming. Some of them low and throaty, as the wound in her throat was damaging her voice, but many of them screeching like a dying crow. Several restraints lied broken on the bed, while thick, industrial straps held down her elbows and ankles, all of the others snapped. Not even a Slayer should have been able to break through those straps, but she did. She was tied down like an animal, the most piecing look of terror in her eyes. It killed him to see her like this.
Various Slayerette's stood around her, Willow sitting in a chair, head cradled in her hands, Oz comforting Willow, Xander looking angry, Giles leaning against the far wall from him staring into nothingness blankly. Buffy's mother, Joyce, kept trying to quiet her daughter and put a damp rag over her reddened forehead, which was thrown off immediately. Cordelia was sitting next to Giles on the floor looking scared, holding her knees to herself and rocking. Angel pounded on the door again, demanding they let him in and help her, but it was as if no one could hear him.
A doctor in an open lab coat walked in one of the other doors to the room, holding a chart and a book. "We can't figure out what's wrong with her," Angel heard him say clearly. "It's like her insides are – twisting. Turning in on themselves." the tall, balding doctor looked at her sorrowfully. "If she doesn't stop, her heart is going to burst."
Joyce suddenly burst into tears. "I just heard her scream, and I came into her room… and she was like this. I-I-I called the ambulance as soon as I could…"
"It's all right, Mrs. Summers," the doctor said gravely. "We are doing everything we can, but… we don't know what happened, or how to help her."
"LET ME IN!" Angel screamed, jamming his fist into the glass, which held strong. "I can help her!" I know I can! If I could just get to her… His pleas went unnoticed by the room.
Joyce collapsed into the chair next to Willow's, who didn't look up.
The doctor neared Buffy and tried to push her sweat-drenched hair out of her face. She lashed out at him, stopped only by the leather restraint around her elbow. "She's very strong," the doctor commented. "She broke ever bone in the hand of one of the paramedics and threw another on into the wall." He glanced at the torn restraints.
"She's always been very strong," Giles muttered, taking off his glasses and wiping tears from his eyes.
Angel kicked at the door again, and then tore at the latch desperately. Still, it didn't budge. Exasperated, he slapped his palms into the wired glass. "Buffy…."
"She has… a slight concussion, from smashing her head on the desk," the doctor went on. "Her internal organs are twisting around, and it looks…" he paused, as if what he was about to say was too odd to be believed. "It's looks like all her bone's are breaking and then mending themselves back again. We can't get any brain activity from her on the scanners, although there must be some to attack someone as they approached." He flipped a page of his book. "None of this is regular for a seizure, or anything else we can think of. There's insanity, but that wouldn't account for her body… doing whatever it's doing." He scratched his forehead awkwardly, and though no one appeared to be listening but Oz, Joyce and Cordelia, who were all hanging on every word. "Then there's her neck... we think maybe she couldn't breath, and she was trying to open her lungs again. With all her wounds together…" Joyce burst into new tears, and Willow choked back hers even before the doctor said it. "…she's going to die. And I don't know why."
"I do," Xander muttered, but it seemed no one could hear him but Angel.
Suddenly Willow burst from her seat, rushing to her best friends side. "Buffy! Come back! You can't die!" she shook her. Buffy lunged at her, breaking one of her straps and managed to grab a piece of the redhead's hair in her fist. Nurses rushed into the room almost immediately, one pulling Buffy's free arm away, taking the bloody clump of Willow's hair with it, and tried to force it down to the bed. Another grabbed her head roughly and tried to strap it down, as Willow screamed and grabbed her bleeding head.
"Get her restrained!" the doctor was yelling, as Buffy's friends and family took a step away from the bed, all of them now as scared and terrified as Cordelia. All except Xander, who hadn't moved from his position since he'd arrived several hours ago.
"OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!!" Angel screamed, pushing against the flimsy-looking glass door with all his weight. "I can help her!!!"
Suddenly, Xander turned around, a look of irritation crossing his features. He unfolded his arm's from across his chest and stormed to the door, throwing it open with ease, until he was standing right in front of the vampire. "Don't you think you've helped enough?!" the boy was completely enraged. "What right do you think you have coming back here?"
Angel was equally furious. "What do you mean, 'helped her enough'?!"
Xander glared at him, rage in his eyes. "You did this to her! You made her this way. It's your. Fucking. Fault. This is worse then if you had just snapped her fucking neck like you did Miss. Calwnders!"
"How did I do this to her? And why wouldn't you let me in?" Angel demanded. "Why ignore me?"
"They weren't ignoring you, dead beat," Xander spat. "They can't see you. They don't see you for who you really are! But I do. I could see right through you. What, was I supposed to let you in and let you finish the fucking job?"
"What the hell do you mean? What's your twisted explanation on how I did this, Harris?" Angel sneered angrily. "Enlighten me."
Xander rolled his eyes, reminding him of Cordelia. "Think about it, asshole. You broke her heart and drove nuts." he sneered, his contemned laced with victory, and even a bit of glee at Angel's pain. "It's worse then what you did to your precious Drusilla, Angelus. Worse then what you did to the last Slayer you seduced with all your 'charms'." The word 'charms' was said with sarcasm and disgust. "And this time you had your soul." He began to pace around the vampire.
"How could you know that?" Angel said, his anger beginning to be replaced with unease.
Xander ignored the question. "Your not even a person. You're a thing. An 'it'. Not even the shadow of a man."
"And I suppose you are?" Angel shot, but Xander didn't seem to hear him.
The high school boy looked up at him. His eye's looked unearthly. "You don't deserve your fucking soul," he rasped. His fist shot out at Angel, his fingers pushing through his leather duster, his shirt is skin, his dead heart… Angel screamed, and fell to his knees. He felt Xander's fingers close over something he had never even felt was there before, and felt Xander yank it out roughly – a feeling vaguely familiar to something he had felt before, only this time much more physical.
Xander held it out before him briefly – a glowing yellow orb, glowing like a will-the-wisp in the dim hospital hallway. It began to glow more brightly, pulsing as Xander tightened his fingers around it, until it seemed to crack, and was gone. All too soon – Angel felt the most horrible pain he had ever felt, wondering if he could compete with his dear loves pain now. It was the feeling of every single part of your body dieing at the same time.
"And you don't deserve her, either," Xander sighed, and Angel's body went limp, sprawled dead across the floor.
Inside the hospital room, Buffy's thrashing body collapsed, and the heart monitors line went flat forever.