Title: Absence(2/?)
Author: Lore and Mally
Summary: Buffy is pulled into a dark hellish world
Disclaimer: Don't own, please don't sue

Buffy felt sore as she woke up on the floor ... again. Still this was a different kind of sore, not a bit like the soreness she usually had after a night with Spike. More painful, more strained. She couldn't feel him lying next to her either and there was nothing covering her.

It was cold as well.

Footsteps clamored over the dark stone floor, was it Spike?
She tried to get up, only to feel the pull of something around her neck. If only her mind would clear up. She could hear it, a cold muffled rush of scattering feet. Her neck hurt as she moved; her skin scratched at whatever was holding her neck. She reached out to it and could feel the harsh leather cut into her flesh. There was something sharp, steel that cut into her neck each time she moved an inch too fast.

Something touched her foot, Buffy pulled it in and looked up at Tara. The young Wiccan was mopping the floor with a dry and dirty rag. She didn't seem to notice that she only wiped the dirt around and around. She didn't even seem to notice Buffy sitting there. Or anything else for that matter.

Her hair was filthy and knotted and her eyes stood empty, completely so.

Buffy tried to reach out to her, but felt the chains pulling her back.

"Tara?"

No this couldn't be, but it was. The eerie silence as Tara moved around the room, the sound of her footsteps slumping as she made her way.

Buffy tried to pull her chain out. It struggled, but she had to get free, she just had to. This couldn't be real...

Finally the thing shot out, making her fall because of the force she'd put in it. She scrambled up; why was the world still turning. No reasons, no big fight, just the need to get away.

All those times she'd told Spike to leave, all those times she'd told him that she didn't need his help. And the one time she actually did, he wasn't here. Where ever here might be.

The door was only a few steps away, yet it seemed to take her an eternity to get there.

It was then that she made her second mistake of the day. She hesitated. Only for one second, but still she'd hesitated. And as she had, it was over.

Willow.

A chained wolflike creature followed her, bound by a leash, trembling for the dark vampire that was it's master. The creature jumped at her and in that one second Buffy could see its eyes. It's human eyes impinged with pain.

Oz.

At that moment Buffy was completely pinned to the floor, that's when she heard the clapping. Turning her eyes upward to the door she saw, no it couldn't be.

Angel.

Angelus smiled sardonically, "Well my love, trying to leave so soon? Before you and I had time to get to know each other again."

Buffy almost stopped breathing. A vehement no kept rambling through her brain, over and over and over again.

It had been bad enough when Angel had been playing Angelus for Faiths benefit, but this...

Even though it had been years since ... Even...

God no.

She wanted to say something witty, something smart. Something, anything to show she didn't fear him...

Nothing came her to mind.

Well Buff cat got your tongue? You should use it before I rip it out and give it to Oz to play with. Angel's laugh sounded harsh and bitter."

Buffy just acted instinctively. Kicking Oz away, she felt a short pang of guilt at hurting him. But there was no further thought, just action as she got up, ready to attack; the manacles around her hands, the chain around her neck, dangling down.

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you slayer? I'm going to show you how I tortured Giles first hand and "fuck" you until your nose bleeds, until you beg me to kill you and then I'm going to turn you, so I can always have you by my side.
I'm going to fuck you like I did your mummy and by the time I'm finished you'll be begging me for a stake, which you'll never get."

Buffy's mouth fell open in shock, then a berserker anger overtook her. A hatred and rage darker than anything she'd ever faced.

She jumped on Angel, kicking him down. Then...

She stared at her hand, at the heart crumbling to dust that she'd just torn right out of Angels chest.

Was that her who'd pushed her fist into him, was that ...

And as she heard Willow screaming, she could feel her mouth still standing open, entered by bits of Angel dust.

And then the world fell apart.

She glimpsed at the darkness and blinked.

Lights flared around her and she found herself in a plain looking room

A white room. An empty white room that seemed to have no end. Just whiteness.

There was nothing... anything it seemed for miles around her ... nothing but light.

A blinding light which she couldn't get away from, no matter how far she ran.

She finally stopped, just standing there in the middle, half, quarter .... of nowhere.

"Someone, anyone!"

But no one seemed to be listening

Images appeared around her, faster and faster. Some clear in front of her, others vague and miles away. Dark hellish pictures of an eternity in pain. An eternity of suffering.

Her friends, her loved ones, no one seemed immune.

One instant of Angel losing his soul, the next of Willow killed and turned.

Acathla, her mother tortured and raped in front of Giles.

And in the end when it all finally slowed down, a young black-haired girl stood alone on a tower.

Dawn, yet not Dawn.

Cut and bleeding... the blood opening a gate between dimensions. And hope in her eyes as a lone woman came to her rescue from the dark of the abyss.

And even as that hope flared up it was cut to bits with the slash of a knife through the child's neck.

Instant death.

And Buffy crumbled under Faiths pain, under her sister Slayers broken heart as she was forced to sacrifice her only link to life, her only hope for salvation... all to save a world that was doomed anyway.

Buffy looked away, away from the falling figure, away from the images, away from hell until she was crumbled down on the ground.

"Have you seen?"

Buffy cried, her body trembling with every sob.

"Have you seen?"

"Why did ... Who the hell are you?"

She crawled up, facing whomever had taken her here.

"We are."

"Are what? A small Texan behind the Wizard of Oz? Show yourself damn it."

There was a moment of silence, then.

"We are."

Buffy couldn't take it, not like this, not now.

"Yeah well, you can just 'be' somewhere else. Same with the 'were' and the 'to be'. What the hell was that?"

"The world as the vampire Angelus made it."

But yet, ... Angel would never do that. Angelus might though. Angel without a soul ...

"Demon soul, human soul, not much of a difference. Just two sides of the same coin Warrior."

Buffy just snorted at that. She knew what she knew, she'd seen the difference. Hadn't she?"

"We thought Angelus was the prophesized dark warrior-savior. That his role in the world would determine the final balance in the battle between good and evil.

"Your point being?"

She'd heard this tune before.

"We made a mistake."

To be continued