TITLE: "Normal again" (2/?)

AUTHOR: Richard Bachman

EMAIL: bachman_rchard@hotmail.com

SITE: nope

FEEDBACK: Give it to me luv, you know you want more of this!

DISTRIBUTION: Do whatever you like poodle. As long as Richard is mentioned I'm fine.

RATING: NC-17 Humor/angst

PAIRING: B/S

SUMMARY: Got this wonderful idea after watching normal again. Instead of Buffy, Spike gets a dose of demonic goodness inserted into his system. As his consciousness is transported to an AU where he finds Sunnydale is no longer the good old Sunnyhell he despises and knows so well, things are getting a bit surreal for the poor bleached wonder.

WARNING: Dark and ansty fic, but I suppose that we kinda got used to it after watching whole bleedin S6.

THANKS: To anyone for reading my senseless dribble.

CHARACTERS: Spike and Buffy, separated by dimensions.





ACT 2: White is NOT my favourite colour.



SCENE 1

Flashes of bright white danced in front of my eyes.

Strange sounds invading the silence; hectic voices, and there was some bleedin wanker screaming like a girl.

More white as I opened my eyes. White walls, white ceiling, white floor.

Bloody hell, what his this place?

"OK now friend! Cool down! You're gonna hurt yourself!"

"Mike! It's no good, he's gonna break the needle."

I gasped as I felt a sharp stinging sensation receding out of my left arm. For some reason, the nancy who had been yelling murder shut up immediately.

"Get him over to the bed and strap him down."

"No! No! Get off me you bleedin gits! Sod off! I don't want to be stabbed with that! It's bad! It's poison! Get away from me!!"

The nancy was back again, yelling, struggling and panting.

~ Bloody hell, was that me screaming all this shit? ~

I looked at myself, horrified. Somehow, my duster, black shirt and jeans have been nicked and were exchanged for a plain minging grey shirt and baggy trousers in the same peachy colour. Two beefy guys were holding me by my arms and dragged me to an uncomfy looking bed in the middle of the white overkill. Struggling like a professional nutcase, I snapped my head around and spat at one of them. The guy pulled a disgusted face and tossed me on the mattress, pinning down both my hands with my arms stretched above my head.

"Mike, secure his wrists! Secure them now!"

I whimpered and begged them to let me go. Tears stinging my eyes. Panic searing through my throat. Something was horribly wrong here. Something was absolutely as wrong as eating kittens in front of little Nibblet's eyes for breakfast.

~ What was wrong with me? Why was I so freakin scared and begging like a bloody poof? ~

They ignored me of course, and strapped my wrists with a set of leather restrains to the steel cased bed. When they tried to do the same to my ankles, I kicked like a pissed off mule, but one of the Florence Nightingales grabbed them after being hit in the chest twice and pinned them down by leaning his whole bleedin weight on them. I wager the bugger was finally getting enough of my inventive ways to piss them off. My mad ramblings were soon replaced by mad screaming when the sharp pain of bones threatening to snap clawed up my legs. Once again they ignored me and even jerked on the leather straps to make sure they were extra secured. I struggled against my restrains, still whimpering like a bloody poof, then finally gave up and let them tie me up. Two heavy leather belts were secured around waist and with that done, I was as only able to wriggle a bit and move my head. Deadly humiliated and agonizingly frustrated, I watched how the two tossers reach for that bleedin needle again.

"Now hold still, this is for your own good. "

No! I yelled. Don't do this to me! But the sharp stinging sensation was back again as the needle penetrated the skin. Akwardly, It didn't hurt as much as I dreaded, and soon a dull blanket of numbness replaced the unpleasant feeling.

~ Oh god, this was exactly like the time when Dru and I went to Woodstock and fed too much on the happy locals. Only far less amusing this time. ~

Feeling the wetness of tears that had stained my cheeks unnoticed and swallowing hard, I listened to the soft voices droning around me, trying to calm me down and put me at ease. Then they were gone and I was left alone to stare at the bleedin white ceiling while I was tripping on whatever they had injected into me.

It could have been good though, this total numbness and fogginess that cluttered everything. I was too paralysed to feel any pain, and it was impossible to hold on to even one single coherent thought, not even one about the Slayer. For the first time since I had that Bloody-awful Buffy-is- shagging-me nightmare my mind was cleared. The hurting was gone, leaving me in an almost serine state of just being, just existing, very much like I used to before everything went to hell because of her. I could stay here, lying in this sterile room, tied up like a bleedin dog and keeping myself busy for the next 100 odd years with looking for shapes of horsies and puppies in the ceiling creaks. Receiving a nice dose of peace of mind every 24 hours a day.

I could let time slip by unnoticed if it wasn't for that bloody awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me that time, wasn't exactly something that I had plenty of.



SCENE 2

The slayer knew that the demon was already beaten. It would take no more but a couple of simple jolts to make whatever was left of it to stagger from its feet and hit the ground. But the Slayer was taken by rage. She felt more hatred towards the heinous creature swaying in front of her then towards any other demon she had ever encountered. Well, maybe except for Glory, or Adam. Or Spike that time he kidnapped Angel and tried to bleed him dry to cure his insane girlfriend. The thought of the blond vampire reminded her how the demon had tossed him aside like ragged doll after piercing him with his gruesome poky things, which by the way, were now harmless since she had broken both its arms and snapped the offensive protuberances off the paralysed limbs. The deadly wounded demon howled, sounding more in pain than in mad murderous anger. But Buffy was beyond sympathy. With one fluid movement, she picked up the lid of a garbage can, spun around and slashed the demon's head clean off its shoulders. Still wearing the rather surprised look on its ruined face, it hit the ground with a dull thump and rolled towards the unconscious body of the fallen vampire, halting in front of his black Docs.

Buffy, panting of exhaustion, moved over to Spike warily, her face wearing a serious frown.

"Spike?"

She crouched beside him, turning his body around. She had hoped to meet his fiery piercing eyes, but they were closed. The gaping wound in his abdomen covered his shirt in blood, but it was barely visible within the black of the fabric. Only when she placed her hands on him and shook him carefully, did she notice how much he had bled. Her white hands tainted deep red.

"Oh my God. Spike! Please! Wake up!"

Shaking him more ferociously now without gaining any sign of life out of him, she swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.

Flashes of memories, her mother lying on her back on the sofa, her face as pale as his and eyes staring at the ceiling, looking at nothing in particular.

He couldn't be.dead?

~Of course he's dead. He's the living undead, remember? Vampires won't die like mom did. She was human. He is not. As long as he doesn't turn to dust in my hands, he's still here. Don't start panicking now and play the stupid bint here. ~

She flinched mentally, hearing her inner voice of reason adapting the vampire's offensive tune. Slowly, she got up and collected herself. She must get Spike away from this place and fast. Dead demons attracted others of its kind, who mainly regarded their dead comrades as yummy treats. Buffy knew so because Giles had told her after she had asked him what the hell happened to all the dead demon corpses that they left behind after slaying, since they didn't go POOF! like the vampires. She had been totally freaked out after the watcher told her, she didn't want to use the dismembered demon bits scattered around here as a bait to test out that textbook knowledge.

Carefully, she picked up the wounded vampire, swaying his arm over her shoulders and steadying his unconscious form with her free hand. His head hung heavy over his chest while his feet dragged over the ground, as she carried him out of the alley.

Pushing back her anxiety into the tiny dark corner in the back of her mind like she had done so many times before in her happy Slayer life, she whispered softly some reassuring words to the blond vampire. Just in case he could still hear her.

"Don't worry Spike. I will get Willow to take a look at you. I will make sure that you'll be all right. Just.just don't turn to dust on me, OK?"



SCENE 3

~ Bloody hell, I'm dust this time. ~

I was struggling feverishly against my restrains. It didn't help much since I couldn't manage to even rip the thin leather bands strapped around my wrist to pieces, let alone the thick belt around my waist. Oh this was rich! Not only was I in some kind of madhouse, being treated like one of the loons who belonged here with all my unexpected an unwanted whining an whimpering, I lost all of my vampire strengths too. Gritting my teeth, I let out a ragged roar, frustrated with my incapability to free myself from my would-be execution place.

Outside my private nutcase's quarters, it was a beautiful sunny day with a heaven blue sky.

I could tell it was b'cause I could see it through the bleedin window.

I woke up this morning, not with the sun on my face but I bloody well could. The wankers of last night had shifted me to another room while I was catatonic or the other room had shifted to me or whatever. Wouldn't surprise me since this was such a fucked up place anyway. The point was that the room I currently was in had a window.

A very big window.

And some sadistic clown had parted the lovely white curtains.

I swallowed as I lifted my head for the one hundred and forty fourth time this morning, anxiously watching the broad band of sunlight traveling over the dirty checker floor, coming toward me ever closer. Soon it would start to crawl up the bed. I had figured out with my sick sense of curiosity that it would probably start with the toes of my left foot, slowly heating it up till it became so hot that it combusted and burst into flames. Then it would leave a burning trail of destruction all over my legs. Those bleedin trousers I was wearing were so thin that they were almost translucent and wouldn't be enough to protect me. By the time it reached my face, the deadly sun must had already burnt half of my organs to ashes, so I would probably don't have to worry anymore about my brains getting fried or my eyeballs getting boiled. There had to be a limit to the damage an immortal body like mine can receive before it gave up and dispatched itself in the draft.

My god, please let there be a limit.

When the beam threatened to start its incinerating ways on my foot, I finally opened my mouth and burst into some mad screaming while banging my head against the steel headboard. It helped, and someone came rushing in, throwing the door shut behind.

"William, please stop this. Stop it! You're hurting yourself!"

A female voice. Probably a nurse. She sounded sincere and reasonable enough, but I was in blind panic.

"Can't! Window! Sunlight! I don't want to burn. Put a bloody stake trough my heart if you like but not this. Not this!!"

Hands pushed me back against the headboard, forcing me to stop my banging. But I didn't bloody want to, the banging was all that kept me a bit sane here, at least I got some of the nervousness distracted from my immobilized body which was itching to jump out of bed and crawl away in a dark corner.

"Don't do this you bloody bint! Don't you see what's going to happen? Sunlight there. Vampire here. We don't bloody mix very well!!"

"William! Calm down. There is no need to."

"There is bloody well need to bang my head on the bloody bed b'cause I'm gonna be burned alive within a couple of seconds!!

"No! Listen to me William, listen to me! You're delusional! Sunlight won't hurt you! You're not a vampire! Calm down!"

"Get me the hell out of here!!!!"

She pulled her hands off me. A small and slim human figure dressed in a white dress and shirt. She walked over to the window and grab hold of one of the curtains.

~Oh thank God, she finally figured it out through her thick skull. ~

"William, I want you to look at me. Look at me or I will not close these curtains for you."

I blinked my eyes. As long as she had been in the room, I hadn't glanced at her once, being too occupied by my own dreads of death. Call me mister Selfish. I didn't even have a freakin idea how she looked like. Now that the bint was standing directly in the threatening sunlight, it was even harder to convince myself to raise my chin and take a good gaze at her.

"William? Are you listening?"

"yeah. I'm listening. Sounds fair enough. I look at you and you make the sun go away. Deal."

"Now then."

Reluctantly, and with eyes watering of staring directly into the blazing sunlight framing the girl, I gazed up slowly.

There, standing in front of the freaking window, dressed like a nurse and wearing a deadly concerned look on her face, stood the Slayer.

My mouth dropped open.

"B-Buffy?"

Fast as lightening, she pulled the curtains completely open, flooding the room with a sea of bright sunlight.



TBC.