A/N: Keep the love coming people. I post much more frequently with reader feedback. HungryLucy, it's not out of the question but it is a little early. She is still fourteen. Ultrawoman, thanks for the review, I'll keep it up, yeah? Berserker Nightwitch and Rebel Goddess, that interaction is coming. William / Spike / Summers women is coming... And no-one fear about me getting Glory happy, I don't see much point to changing the show's course too dramatically at this point.
Disclaimer: To quote another author, nothing was harmed in the making of this fic except my innocence.

Last time, on Crushed: Dawn asked William if he loved Buffy. William reminisced about Cecily. Poor, poor William. Xander showed up and he laughed when he found out William the Bloody did not come from gruesome crimes but William's Bloody Awful Poetry. Joyce came home and was surprised by a William sized thing in her lounge room. Spike showed up at the Summers household bumping into William before he was taken by Glory's minions. Poor, poor Spike. What happens next?

Injuries all around

William woke groggily. He moved to turn over in his sleep as he always did only to be halted by a searing pain flashing white hot through his chest. Gasping in deeply, he was struck with another wave of white hot pain. He started to pant shallowly, his body attempting to get more air than he could take in ordinary breaths.

He cracked his eyes open. The first thing he saw happened to be Dawn Summers staring at his face intently from six inches away. letting out a small squeek he attempted to shift away from the fourteen year old girl before gasping as another flash of the most intense pain he had ever felt blasted in his chest.

"He's awake!" the young girl yelled at the top of her voice, with no regard forWilliam or his inability to move. William tried to relax his chest and remember how he got injured as he saw several people, Buffy, Joyce and Xander, come into the room.

It was at this point William realised he was not in the lounge room like he'd originally thought. He was in a room he hadn't seen before. A decidedly feminine room. Even though William had only seen the inside of his mother's room, there was just something feminine about the room that informed one it belonged to a young lady. William flushed. This was, sadly, the only time he had been in a young lady's room.

"You're awake. That's good, William. That is good, right Buffy?" Joyce Summers asked her eldest daughter. William liked Joyce. She was a wonderful woman, who reminded William of his own mother. The parallel was a pleasant one. Very few things seemed to remind William of home these days.

"Yeah, that's good mom." Buffy replied, exasperated. It was clear, even to William, that while Joyce meant well, she was out of her depth in this situation. "What happened to you?"

"I was outside and I ran into... Spike I think. He looked a bit like me, but he'd done something horrific to his hair and he seemed to be drunk."

"That sounds like Spike, all right." Buffy muttered under her breath.

"Then there were these... men, in brown robes. They attacked us. I- I'm afraid I don't remember much after that." William smiled apologetically, his breath still shallow.

"Spike had you attacked? I knew he was only biding his time!" Xander exclaimed, loudly. The three women looked at the young man like he had said something very stupid.

"Uh, Xander?" Dawn began in a calm, clear tone. "You do realise we found one of the demons dead of a snapped neck out there, don't you? I mean, I don't think Will here could actually snap a neck like that. No offense. They took Spike and left William." Dawn spoke as though to an idiot. William looked at Xander in sympathy. He knew that look well from his own time.

"Oh... right. They were probably just after Spike then..." Xander trailed off uncomfortably, finally coming to the same conclusion as the others. He looked at the disgusted expression on Dawn's face and the sympathetic expressions on Joyce and William's faces. Buffy had turned to look at William's bruised chest and side.

William looked at what Buffy had done and nearly had a fit upon seeing he was not wearing a shirt. His frantic movements to escape Buffy's gaze earned him another deep pain from his wounds, expressed with a groan.

"I think you've got a few cracked ribs and some bad bruising. You should heal up okay." the Slayer stated with a critical eye. "You should probably not move too much, it might make it worse." William nodded faintly when a thought occured to Joyce.

"William, what were you doing out the front of the house at that hour?" William looked embarassed.

"Well, I was going back to Rupert's-"

"We've told you it's not safe to head back to Mr. Giles' at night on your own." Joyce told him in a disapproving, motherly tone. "You could have waited for Buffy to come home. It was quite a shock for her to find you lying unconscious at the front door."

"I didn't want to put anyone out of their way. I am perfectly sure that I could have managed the trip without too much difficulty. Indeed, given a little time to gather my rescources, I won't impose upon your hospitality any further-"

"Nonsense!" Joyce declared. "You'll stay right here until you're well again, and you'll stop trying to do more than you have to!" Buffy and Dawn, the younger Summers in particular, seemed happy to have him in the house.

"Yeah, you can have my room here. Just give me Mr Gordo and I can bunk with Dawn." Buffy stated cheerfully. Dawn looked at her in disgust.

"You're not sleeping on the bed"

Spike struggled against his captors as they hauled him before Glory. He was frustrated. Not only had he allowed them to take him but now he couldn't even escape two of them. The little sods were stronger than they looked.

"What the hell is that, and why is it's hair that colour?" Glory asked, her voice awfully petulant for a god. One of the minions took half a step forward, without releasing Spike's arm, and grinned, a disturbing image from the scabby demons.

"Stunning one, we believe he is... the Key!"

"Really? That's fantabulous!" Glory said, beaming. She stepped closer and run her fingers across Spike's chest lightly before a small frown crossed her features. "And impossible! He can't be the Key. 'Cause, you see, the Key has to be pure. This is a vampire. Lesson Number One: Vampire equals Impure." She turned away in disgust, and Spike tried to play on the opening.

"Damn right I'm impure! I'm as impure as the driven yellow snow. Let me go!" he half yelled, pulling his arms and the demons holding them.

"You can't even brain-suck a vampire. He's completely useless" the goddess whined before sitting down on the sofa.

"So, I'm just gonna let myself out..." Spike murmured, attempting to turn on his heel before the demons at either arm reasserted themselves, holding him in place.

"But your Unholiness, we observed the Slayer. She protected this one above all others. She treated him as precious." the speaking minion stated in a hesitantly confused voice. Glory looked at Spike with a malevolent grin before getting off the sofa.

"Really? Precious? Let's take a peak at you Precious." She stated, stepping up to Spikes body to look at him really closely. Spike looked down his nose at her.

"Sod off" he snarled before an offhand blow to his mouth sent him across the room.

"He doesn't look very fancy to me!" she mock complained, nearly skipping to where he had fallen.

"Hey, easy with the lip!"

"But if the Slayer protects him, maybe appearances are deceiving. Maybe there's something on the inside? What do you know Precious? What can I dig out of you?" the blonde ex-god asked sweetly before driving her index finger deep into the peroxide blond vampire's chest.

Spike screamed.

Buffy wandered through Restfield Cemetary, stake in hand. She was worried about William. He had taken a pretty hard blow in the ribs and it had only been made worse by slamming into the house wall. Buffy or even Spike would have shrugged off an injury like that, but it was really obvious that William had never been seriously wounded in any way shape or form in his life before.

Her peaceful little stroll was broken when a newly risen vamp ran at her, game face out, grave dirt still falling from his clothes. She neatly sidestepped his clumsy rush, only to pirrouette on one heel to see him trip over and turn to dust as he impaled himself on a tree branch.

Buffy stood staring incredulously at the place where tha vampire managed to kill himself. She had never seen that before. It was absolutely freaky. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, defeats unspeakable horrors nightly with a handy quip for every slay, is shocked into silence by a vampire. Granted, the vampire had to be the only one who had killed himself on a tree branch that had fallen free in a cemetary but still.

Shaking her head, Buffy continued her patrol. Walking further through the cemetary, Buffy heard a noise from one of the open crypts. Shaking her head at the stupidity of the so-called creatures of the night, she stepped into the crypt.

"You know, you'd think that you evil villians would get a new plan. I mean, the whole crypt thing is getting kinda old." Buffy was shocked to see, not a vampire, but one of Glory's scabby minions. The rat-like creature looked arouns nervously, obviously panicked at being caught in an enclosed crypt with the Slayer.

"You'll never find the vampire, Slayer! Glorificus shall extract the identity of the Key from the vampire and there is nothing you can do to stop her! She is the most beautiful, leth-" Buffy ended the demons litany with a stake to the chest and an eyeroll. She was more worried about Glory having Spike. Spike knew the Key was Dawn.

Time blurred for Buffy as she sprinted to Giles' house. Her thoughts were chasing themselves around. Glory has Spike. Spike knows Dawn is the Key. Glory wants the Key. Spike is a vampire. Vampires are evil. Glory has Spike.

The terrifying chain of thought was put in hiatus as she arrived at Giles' house. Bursting in the door, she yelled at the top of her voice.

"GILES!" Buffy paced frantically as she waited for her ex-Watcher to come out. She was not waiting long, as he soon entered with a worried expression, his tiredness evident in both his eyes and his attire. As he shrugged his robe on, Buffy answered the question he was obviously going to ask. "Glory has Spike." The Watcher's eyes widened.

"Oh dear Lord!" Buffy nodded grimly.

"Get some weapons. We're going to kill him before he can talk, or we'll kill him because he talked. Spike just ran out of chances," the Slayer said monotonously. Giles nodded in agreement before passing the crossbow to his slayer.

Spike panted in unneeded air. He was manacled to the roof of the building and he was covered in injuries. The hole in his chest from Glory's finger and sealed somewhat in the hours he had been here, but his face was badly swollen from repeated superhuman blows. His ribs were all broken or fractured, his pale torso coloured purple and yellow from the bruising he had suffered.

He drank as Glory, his tormentor, gave him a glass of water, gently rubbing his damaged body.

"Is that better? Do you think you can try to talk now?" the ex-god asked in false sympathy. "Good. 'Cause I'm tired of these games!" she screeched, slamming the glass into the vampires head, cutting his eyebrow. "I need time, I need a drink. You're a very needy little blood-sucker and it's not very attractive! So start talking."

"Yeah, okay." the vampire wheezed. Glory brightened at his capitulation. "The Key. Here's the thing. It's that guy, on tv. What's his name?"

"On the telivision?" she asked in skepticism.

"On that show? The price show? Where they guess what stuff costs?" Spike asked with a light wheeze in his voice.

"The Price is Right?" one of the minions asked, his scabby face creased in confusion.

"Bob Barker?" another asked excitedly, pleased to be healping his Glorificus.

"We will bring you the limp and beaten body of Bob Barker!" the first minion declared, ecstatic beyond belief that he could so serve his goddess.

"It is not Bob barker, you scabby morons!" Glory snarled in frustration. "The Key is new to this world and Bob Barker is as old as grit. The vampire is lying to me." Spike wheezed out a hoarse laugh.

"Yeah." he acknowledged pleasantly, his face twisted into a gruesome parody of a smile. "But it was fun. And guess what, bitch? I'm not telling you jack. You're never gonna get your sodding Key. 'Cause you might be strong, but in our world, you're an idiot." the blond vampire delivered precisely.

"I'm a god." Glorificus declared haughtily.

"The god of what, bad home perms?" Spike asked derisively. A horrified hand went straight to he mess of blonde curls.

"Shut up! I command you shut up!"

"Yeah, okay, sorry but I just had no idea that gods were such prancing lightweights." the shackled vampire sneered. "Mark my words, the Slayer is going to kick your skanky... lopsided ass back to whatever place would take a cheap. Whorish. Fashion victim ex-god like. You." the vampire finished slowly. Glory's eyes narrowed and she delivered a roundhouse kick that burst Spike free of the chains around his arms and sent him through the front door, which splintered under the impact.

"Good plan, Spike!" he muttered to himself scornfully.

"Bring him back!" the ex-god ordered her minions. She walked into the bedroom to wait for her minions to bring the vampire back before she felt the falling sensation she felt everytime the body she shared with Ben went to his control.

A/N: Aren't I just evil leaving it like that? Of course I am. But, as promised, the next chapter shall have actual Spike/William/Dawn/Buffy interaction. Various combinations at various points, but it might be a long one to make up the conversations I want to fit in before I continue the actual story based elements. But review if you want to see more. Without reviews my muse gets ignored. I mean, why should I listen to that little pyromaniac elf if his ideas don't even get appreciated?