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Everything is Joss's and Mutant Enemy's.
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"I'm a junky, baby." Dawn said, laughing through her tears. "I'm a junky like Major Tom."
/I learned my lessons young
I'll turn myself around/
Spike knelt before her and made her look up at him. Her eyes were unfocused and he blanched. He knew this all too well. "Oh, Dawn," he said, pulling a thumb across her lower lip, where tears had gathered. "You're worth so much bloody more than this."
/I've got a guardian angel tattooed on my shoulder
He's been watching over me/
"We're away from Sunnydale, but you still can't stop playing fantasy games. No one is worth more than this, Spike." Dawn dabbed a finger in her blood and rubbed it across his bottom lip, a sick mimic of his innocent actions. Her smile disappeared, and her voice was mocking. "We kill or get killed, we get high or we suffer without a vice. We kill ourselves little bit by little bit each day before someone does it for us. It's the way it is."
He was deeply shaken by this. There was far too much truth in her convoluted words.
"You're right," he said.
"It's just routine: ink, cocaine, blood and tears."
/I've been a bad, bad girl/
-Chapter 5-
Silence filled the clearing. No birds were chirping, and no wind was rustling the leaves of nearby trees. The only sign of life was the vibrant scarlet of Dawn's bleeding wrist.
Dawn got up shakily, her eyes now darting across the landscape ahead of her. Without a word, she walked past Spike and back through the barn door. Spike followed her wordlessly as she slid down the interior barn wall. She was holding herself as if she were expecting a blow to the ribs, but she couldn't keep the self-satisfied smile from her face. Her little speech outside had somehow strengthened her will to self destruct. She was right, and he had admitted it.
For the first time since her encounter with Spike two nights prior, she admitted to herself that she saw no hope in her future. She had told herself along with Spike that she was optimistic about starting her life over. He didn't realize that the only thing she wanted to start over was where she called home. She hadn't even realized this until now. As much as Dawn felt abandonded and discarded by Spike, she was using him. He was just yet another way out, an escape, much like her drugs. She had absolutely no intention of quitting drugs and her reckless lifestyle. It was all that was keeping her alive these days.
Dawn fidgetted where she sat. Her body was convulsing from a combination of cocaine and the rush of having her blood spilling in riverlet patterns down her arm. She raised her hand and caught a drop of blood that had been traveling towards her elbow. Spike moved silently next to her, taking her arm gently in his freezing cold hands. He looked at her, expecting to see her flinch at the sudden coldness, but she just stared at his movements, glassy eyed and determined. Spike reached over next to him, retrieving Dawn's already bloody bandages from her bag. He set out to wrap her wrist, but stopped as she spoke.
"Where is your demon, Spike?" She said, low and deep in her throat. "What?" He asked, pulling away a little warily. Dawn smiled sadly, still staring blankly at his cold hands. When she didn't respond, he asked her again. "What? My demon?" "Your demon, Spike." She said, confidantly. Her eyes finally traveled up his torso to look boldly in his crystal eyes. He shifted away slightly. He had never seen this look in Dawn's eyes. He couldn't quite place it, but he knew that it made him feel very uncomfortable. Where her eyes were once glassy and blank, they were now intense and set upon his own. There was a richness there that had never been there before, a depth in her expression that shook him to the core. Her bottom lip hung slightly open, one corner peaked in a sadistic smile. A woman's smile.
He stared, waiting anxiously for her to continue.
"Don't pretend that you haven't noticed my increased heart rate, the way the coke is making the blood pump-" She scooted closer to him, "-in my temple, in my neck-" she titled her head to one side, letting her hair fall away to reveal her slender neck, "-and through my veins." He glanced down quickly at her bleeding arm, and then back to Dawn's face.
"I do not like where this is going." Spike stated clearly, although yellow flickered in his eyes for a moment before being replaced again by blue. He hoped she hadn't seen, but her woman's smile had turned into a sneer.
"There it is." She whispered proudly. "Your demon." He glared at her hard, refusing to respond. Instead, he went back about wrapping her wrist in the bandages. "You're bloody cracked out," he muttered, "don't even talk to me until you can act like an adult, Dawn. You are still a child." He put extra emphasis on the word 'child', taking special care to overpronounce the consanents. He was aware that she would not take kindly to this statement, but simply wanted to distract her from the path she was heading down.
To his dismay, her eyes rolled back in her head as she laughed. It was a strained laugh, desperate and sad. "But Spike, I am not a child. I am sixteen, puberty has run it's course. The stares that adult men-" She put the same emphasis on the word 'adult' as Spike had put on 'child,' "convey anything but an innocent admiration for my childish youth. You don't think I feel the blood pounding through their veins? It's enough to get the blood pounding in mine." She made a sideways glance at the newly bandaged wrist that was still in his hands. "And here I am, ripped open and bleeding, and I know you can smell my blood doing just that, pounding, pulsing..."
His eyes flashed yellow again, but the gold lingered a breath longer than before. Spike felt the two sides of him engage in a battle within himself. He loved her, he couldn't let her seduce him into treating her otherwise. She was his golden girl, still a child despite her curves. A child, but God, the way her lips were moving...
"I don't know who you think you are playing here, Nibblet." He said, gripping her injured hand tightly in his own. She gasped in pain and surprise, but quickly regained her composure. "Don't pretend like it doesn't excite you, Spike. I've heard your stories. You used to tell them to me when I was a little girl, remember? I know about your past. You call me a child, and yet I have to ask you, just how many young girls have you tasted?" She cocked her head to the side once more, re-exposing her neck. "Tasted, in more ways than one? Doesn't it get you off that I am so desperate for death? I can feel the monster inside of you struggling to not cut the last thread I am hanging on by. I can sense you fighting the urge to take whatever is left of my innosence. To taste it on your tongue, to have it pool down the back of your throat. To feel this euphoric sensation that I am feeling, and more."
Spike felt as though his heart had dropped somewhere around his stomach region, then had shot back up to conveniently take up residence in his throat. She called this bubbling thing inside of him a monster, but he couldn't help but wonder who exactly the moster was. He barely recognized this girl, and yet with every word she let slip past her lips, he found himself becoming increasingly unsettled. Unsettled in very bad ways. The desire she brought forth in him terrified him and aroused him. His past was knocking at his door in the shape of a beautiful young girl who had no idea and every idea of what she was asking for.
His eyes shifted to gold, and this time, they did not shift back.