There's a nest of Te'Appa demons three nights later, bringing the Slayer and her Scoobies out in force. Spike brings Tyr, promising a fun fight even as his eyes promise the more wickedly fun things that'll follow. It's as fun as he'd promised, a vicious fight that has her laughing as she stabs one demon through it's beady little eye with one hand and pulling a charm from her hair with the other. She's gotten separated from the main group at this point, but she's close enough to hear them. A demon charges her, slow and lumbering like all boar-like Te'Appas, and she cracks the charm on the boney protrusions over the demon's spine. It manages to backhand her into a nearby gravestone with enough force to crack the marble before the charm activates. A swirling vortex of slime and ectoplasm surrounds the demon that howls in confusion. The vortex gets smaller and smaller, slowly crushing the demon in its center until both the vortex and demon disappear. By the time the battle is almost at an end, Tyr is battered and bloody and wants nothing more than to shower and sleep for a year. Another demon charges at her, knocking her to the ground as it tries to gore her. Her scalp stings when she yanks a bone charm out of her hair, forcing it into the demon's drooling maw. The salamander vertebrae of the charm ignites and within seconds the demon has burned to ash, coating her in it. She hears Spike shout and a demon's death-roar and runs toward the sound.
Tyr is in time to see Buffy wrap herself around Spike, in time to see him wrap his arms around the Slayer, and he finally manages to do what centuries of servitude to demons and humans alike could not. He breaks her. She stands there watching for a long time as her heart shatters in her chest, nails biting into her palms hard enough to make them bleed, teeth tearing into her lower lip so she won't let loose the scream that will tell the world that she's dying inside. She turns and runs, not seeing Spike shove Buffy away from him with a scowl. Not seeing Spike scent her in the air.
Not seeing whatever hits her hard enough that she knows no more until she wakes naked in a cold, dark room, ropes holding her spread eagle of what feels like a rough wooden table.
Candles flare to life, illuminating the familiar stranger who had pressed that glittery shot into her hand, the one that had almost killed her. In his hands are chains and shackles made of metal that glints dully in the flickering light, and they scare her more than anything she's ever faced in her long life. The iron shackles burn when the man clamps them over her wrists and ankles, securing them out of her limited view. A scream tears her throat when he brushes a chain over her prone form, skin hissing and burning where the links touch her. He drapes chain after chain across her naked form, each link making her scream again and again.
A wish hits her after he's laid the second chain across her, her body going insubstantial for one painless second before snapping back. The pressure of the ungranted wish makes her bones groan until it vanishes, the Wisher letting the wish go unfulfilled. She assumes that Spike had tried to wish her to his side, but the iron holds her and makes it impossible to do anything except choke on her own screams and sobs.
Tyr has never been in this much pain, so much pain that she screams and screams and every fucking breath in she takes exits on another until the cave around her fills with them. Unforgiving iron burns into her skin, from the heavy manacles clamped tight over her wrists, ankles, and neck, and the thick chains crisscrossed over her naked body. Her skin smokes under the metal, bubbling and raw each place it comes in contact with it. She can see the iron-sickness starting, black veins running up her arms, and she wonders if this is how Nemain had spent her last days before letting final death take her.
"Hello whore."
That voice, teasing and light. She knows that voice. Where has she heard it before?
"It took a long time, but I found your weakness, just like I told you I would. I went back to show you, and imagine my disappointment when you weren't where I left you."
A pale, round, moon of a face leans over her, eyes like warm chocolate leering down at her as the man smiles. Her blood runs cold when she sees that smile.
"Alchemist's son."
"My father never spoke my name around you, did he? Weak, pitiful old man. You remember the fun we had playing in the mess he left behind?"
Her reply is a snarl that is cut off when he presses a sliver of cold iron against her cheek and she screams, screams louder as it traces a bloody path down her neck and into the valley between her breasts, before the man takes it off of her.
"Have you had fun whoring yourself to that vampire and his friends? I can see him all over you, fingerprints burned into your skin. Disgusting."
"Like…"The word catches in her throat, making her cough before she can rasp out the rest, "Like it's any better than what you did. Cut me open so you could jack yourself off while you were inside me."
"Mmmm, yes. I remember that now. You were so…responsive. How many times did I kill you that night before I shoved you into that wall?" He sounds like an unsure lover asking was it good for you too?
A wish hits her again, geis clamping down on her throat.
"Your lover is trying to wish you back to his side, but he can't have you. You're back where you belong and you're not leaving."
Tyr's mouth works, trying to draw air past the collar as her back arches in a grim parody of orgasm, pressing her naked body hard against the chains. Death, when it finally comes, is a blessing for the short time it lasts.
When she revives, he's brought a chair next to the table so he can watch; head propped on one hand while the other hand holds that hateful bit of iron. A boney forefinger taps the sliver and, as she watches, the metal shimmers and turns back and forth from gold to iron with each tap.
"Do you like my new trick? I learned how to do it a few years ago. It's pretty easy when it comes down to it. I can even do it after the gold has been ingested."
His smile makes her sick, or maybe that's just the iron poisoning, but that explains the shot glass full of alcohol and gold flakes that had turned to iron and almost killed her. Would have killed her if Spike hadn't found her. At the thought of Spike, pain that has nothing to do with the current torture cuts into her heart.
Tyr's existence becomes nothing but pain. She can't remember a time when she didn't hurt, when her wrists and ankles weren't blacked with iron-sickness, black veins of poison creeping up her legs and down her arms like deadly vines. She doesn't know how long she's been here, it feels like an eternity, but she knows that she's never getting out. There's no one coming to rescue her.
/`/`/`/`
The alchemist's son has come and gone so many times she's lost count, but he delights in telling her how long she's been here. Almost a week he tells her, five and a half days. Her eyes have swollen shut at some point, her body too damaged to heal anything but a killing wound. She can hear someone shuffling nearby, a low snarl and a cracking sound, and she lets out a broken little cry when her ears try to twitch to catch more of the sound. He'd nailed them to the table she's chained to at some point. The fact that the nails aren't iron is a pathetically small blessing because she doubts that even iron could make it hurt more.
Tyr can smell the bitter, sickly smell she has come to associate with the alchemist's son, the smell oddly soaked in blood, and knows he's coming back to hurt her again. No one is coming to save her from the hurt and even if they did, she has nothing to go back to. Hopelessness rises in her chest and Tyr releases her final breath and lets go.
/`/`/`/`/``/`/`/`
She's floating in a sea of darkness, warm and painless against her skin. Each breath she takes is free, scented with rain and blood. Tyr sighs, limbs loose in the dark water that supports her. Her hands are like pale spiders in the water, rings shining like stars. The sky above her reflects the memories of each ring, the little Sidhe that had crafted them for her and her sisters. She watches the memories as they shift away from her rings to her sisters. She watches herself dance with them, feet stained red by battlefield soil, head thrown back as they laugh and touch men with the chaos of combat. Badb looks down at her, reaches down and pulls her into the sky.
It's the first time in centuries that her skin fits right, that there's no geis mark wrapped around her throat like a choking hand. She laughs simply because she cannot contain all the joy bubbling through her, and her sisters join her. A man screams as he dies and she pulls his soul from the corpse of his body, freeing it and tossing it skyward so it can find it's way home. Her steps falter in their dance as eyes as blue as that sky flash through her mind.
Spike's eyes watching her as he lies beside her, his graceful fingers tracing their way over her face, her lips, the soft fur of her ears, before his lips follow their path.
She shakes off the memory of impossible blue eyes and white-blonde hair. He has his Slayer now. He doesn't need her, if he ever had. Nemain grabs her hand, laughing as she pulls Tyr-Amara- forward in their dance.
Come back Tyr, come back to me.
The voice, Spike's voice, hits her like a hammer blow to the head and she stumbles. Badb soars above them, shifted to the crow body that neither Nemain nor herself has ever been able to maintain. Nemain brushes her fingers across a dying man's cheek, and he groans in pleasure as his soul leaves the torment. A hand wraps around her ankle and she falls beside the dying warrior who had grabbed her. His intestines spill around him and he stares at her, pleading for her touch. She grants him peace. This is where she belongs.
Tyr!
She's dead. She shouldn't have to put up with his voice tearing at her heart. Nemain is frowning at her, Badb landing and shifting to ask why they're pausing.
Tyr! Come on you stupid slag, come back to me.
Agony rips through her chest as Tyr and Amara war in her mind, tears flowing unchecked down her face even as she calls Spike all manner of unpleasant names in her head. Kind Nemain kneels beside her, brushing cold tears off Amara's face, smiling like she understands.
Love you, please don't leave me.
"You were the last to join us little sister, slow to claw free of the bracken that birthed us, and we loved you no less for that."
Stern Badb kneels at her other side, lacing her fingers through Amara's- through Tyr's.
"Our time has come and gone, little sister, yours has not."
Together, her sisters lift her to her feet.
God, please no. Don't leave me!
"Time to choose. Are you ready sister?"
Amara struggles against them.
"No! Please don't send me away!" She's crying in earnest now, sobs wracking her frame as she remembers the last few days of her life. "I've missed you both so much, please don't send me back to all that pain. Please."
"It was not all pain though, was it?" Nemain's black eyes blink, turning blue before shifting back.
"You always were too fond of the mortals, Amara. It's only fitting to give your heart to one." Badb says, as blunt as ever.
"We'll never be far sister, but it's time for you to go now."
Her sisters take her hands and Amara looks at them, committing their beloved faces to memory before she grips their rough, tattooed hands in hers.
I love you, Tyr. Come back to me.
"I'll see you both again, at the end of my road."
Her sisters smile and nod before throwing her skyward.
/`/`/`/`/`/`/`
It's the pain that welcomes her back, but it's fleeting. Someone has torn the chains off her, wrenched the manacles away, while she danced across the ghosts of battlefields. She chokes on the air she gasps down. Breathing hurts. She looks down at herself and sees her skin crawling back over her ribcage. The shackles and chains are gone, the black tendrils of iron-poisoned veins have already begun to recede. There are chain-shaped burns wrapping around most of the skin she can see, most still weeping blood and pus, a few already beginning the slow process of healing the damage the alchemist's son had dealt her.
"Tyr?"
Those impossibly blue eyes looking down at her, cool arms wrapped around her, and she thinks that maybe the pain was worth it just so she could have this at the end. Lifting her hand feels like she's trying to lift the earth with it, but she manages somehow. Her fingers leave bloody streaks across Spike's cheek. He's a bit singed, like he'd gone out in the middle of the day, and there's a gash bisecting his chest, but she's never seen anything so beautiful in her life.
"Can't…kill me," she says, her voice weak. Her lips are spit and bruised, but she still manages to make them twitch in a smile that exhausts her. "Halfwit."
She wants to ask how he found her, wants to ask how long she's been here, how long she'd tasted true death, but he's crying and smiling and leaning down to kiss her and when he finally does, his smile tastes like life, tastes like hope, tastes like blood and nicotine and something that is uniquely Spike; and in that moment nothing else matters as her heart frantically tries to beat it's way out of her chest and into his hands where it belongs.
END
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