The Big Payback

Chapter 3 - Spike and Dru Are Taken

Part 1

Spike had been a prisoner of the Watchers' Council for months. He remembered well the day that he was captured; it was not long after the day that he found Drusilla, his mate, with a chaos demon. When he protested, she turned on him. Never before had he been on this end of Drusilla's wrath; he did not think she was capable of speaking to him or treating him the way she did – and all for a chaos demon, one of the most repulsive creatures he had ever seen. She had thrown him out of their lair and told him to never come back, to "go back to that mean old slayer that you are so fond of".

He had left then and wandered aimlessly around town for days going from one bar to another until some guy struck up a conversation with him and, after several drinks, they started reminiscing about lost loves. The guy was human and didn't seem to realize that Spike wasn't; it didn't matter to Spike, especially since the guy was paying for the drinks.

What Spike didn't notice was that he was the one doing most of the drinking and that one time when he turned his head to talk to someone on the other side of him, his drinking partner slipped something into his drink. All Spike knew was that when he woke up, he was bound and gagged on the floor in the back of a van that was moving at a high rate of speed and his drinking partner had a tranquilizer gun aimed at him. All of his efforts to free himself proved fruitless and he ended up a prisoner of the Watchers' Council.

When he arrived at Council headquarters in London he was dragged down what seemed like a long hallway to a hidden elevator and eventually dumped onto the floor of the cell that he currently occupied. There were other prisoners in the cells, vampires and demons of all sorts that showed evidence of all kinds of torture. The place looked like a madman's playroom.

In the time that he had been imprisoned he had witnessed torture that would have made Angelus proud. He had been questioned, drugged, beaten and starved. When he was fed, it was on something so foul that he had emptied his stomach the first few times until he was eventually able to tolerate the vile liquid that they called blood.

The questions generally centered around his relationship with the slayer and her relationship with Angelus. Apparently the watchers made no distinction between the souled and the unsouled versions of his grandsire. After they felt they had gotten all of the information that he knew about Buffy, they decided upon the ultimate punishment for him. They restored his soul. They did not get the results they expected.

Part 2

Spike had been captured and imprisoned about three weeks before they brought Dru in. Judging by what one of the guards had said, he could only guess that somehow she found out that he had been captured and was being held by the Watchers' Council and when she tried to rescue him, she herself was taken. This meant that regardless of what she had said to him about siding with the slayer against her and Angelus, she still cared for him; she was still his dark princess.

Now she sat whimpering in the corner of her small cell, completely ignoring everyone and everything. She ate when she was feed and that's it. Her jailers got no other response from her.

At this point Spike didn't know how much more punishment he and Dru could take, especially Dru. He remembered the way she looked when they first brought her into the cells. He didn't know how long she had been held before they brought her in and literally threw her into the cell two rows down from where he was being held. What was formerly her dress was in tatters and caked with dried blood, apparently from lashes with a whip, and her already thin frame was little more than skin and bones. Her beautiful dark hair had been chopped off unevenly and it too was matted with dried blood. It was obvious that she had been beaten and that she was being starved. If he could have gotten his hands on the animals that brought her in, he would have used every torture trick he'd learned from Angelus, and then some, to make sure that they paid, and paid dearly, for what they had done to his mate.

After about three weeks Drusilla had retreated to within her own mind and she no longer responded to the frequent beatings that Travers and his cohorts administered. Quentin Travers, head of the Watchers' Council, was a miserable excuse for a human being. At first Spike had watched as one after another they committed all sorts of outrageous detestable acts on Drusilla, but when Travers entered the prison where the two of them were being held, it was a whole new ball game. He could no longer watch, but he couldn't help from hearing and imagining what was happening while Travers was urged on by the fools who accompanied him.

Once she became unresponsive, just as they had done to him, those bastards returned her soul and still they punished her. Wasn't she tormented enough by the memories of past deeds, brutal, horrible deeds, committed by her own hands? Did they have to continue their attacks on her? Spike was afraid she would lose her mind completely this time.

Quite the opposite happened. Drusilla seemed to gain a clarity that Spike had never seen in her. She was still unresponsive to the torture, but when they were alone, Drusilla spoke with reasonableness and clearness of mind. With the return of her soul, Drusilla also regained her sanity. She retreated to a corner of her cell and whimpered like a wounded animal. He imagined this was the impact of the demon showing her all the evil deeds that it had committed and convincing her that she had committed the acts herself.

All of the other prisoners had been killed off in one way or another and he and Drusilla were the only ones left. When they took the last body away, Quentin Travers turned to him with an insane gleam in his eyes and said, "Don't worry vampire, company is coming."

Spike was not like Angel and Drusilla. Once his soul was returned, no amount of physical or mental torture would convince him that he, William Pendleton, had committed acts of torture and murder. They could starve him to death and they could torture him as much as they liked, but they would never break his mind. Seeing the creature before him that was now Drusilla, he was more determined than ever to survive and he resolved that going forward his sole mission in his unlife would forever be revenge.