This is most definitely a 'do not eat while reading' chapter, so leave those Thanksgiving leftovers chillin' in the fridge. One of my betas (the lovely Passion4Spike) asked for a scene showing what happened to Spike to make him break. I wrote one and then she beefed it up quite a bit, so a hearty thanks to her for the extra added angst and gore. (See… my muse isn't the only one who likes torturing our poor, wee Spikey.)
It's highly descriptive and extremely graphic… so be warned.
Service Unit
Chapter Seventeen – Details
The little alarm clock on the bedside table beeped and Buffy blindly flailed her arm out until she'd located the button that would turn it off. She laid there, blinking in the dim light from the lamp as she brought her alarm clock hand back to where it had been resting on Spike's fuzzy head. She'd been dreaming about a fully healed Spike, snarking and bantering with her as he'd punched and kicked and whirled around some shapeless demon. His fangy smile had been radiant; his joy in the fight shining clearly in his amber eyes as he'd roared a battle cry and launched himself into the air.
She tightened her hold on the vampire lying on her chest and had to choke back a sob at the thought that a fighting Spike might be something she saw only in her dreams from now on. She stroked his soft hair for a few minutes then carefully slid out from underneath him and stood up next to the bed. He looked a little uncomfortable with his face smooshed into the mattress, so she walked around to his side of the bed and maneuvered him into a more comfortable looking position then tugged the covers up to his shoulders. She felt something crusty on the sheet and turned the covers back just a little to look at it. Was that dried semen? She leaned down and sniffed. Yeah, she knew that scent.
She stood up and looked at Spike's slack face then back down at the sheet before smiling slightly. Spike had apparently had a wet dream when he'd fallen asleep sitting up last night, so there was the proof that Slayer blood was an aphrodisiac for vampires. Nice to know that it's affecting him, at least a little. So get ready, Spike, I'm gonna stuff you so full of Slayer blood that it'll run out your ears. We're gonna wake up your demon, dammit. She stripped the comforter and sheet off the bed, piling the comforter on the floor and tossing the dirty sheet into the hamper. She stepped into the closet and fetched a clean top sheet then quickly remade the bed around the still sleeping vampire.
She leaned down and kissed his cheek then stood up and stared down at him for a few minutes. Wonder who he was dreaming about? She smiled widely and headed for the bathroom. You know what? It doesn't even matter. At least he had a good dream instead of a nightmare, probably for the first time in two decades.
She took a quick shower and pulled on her hanging-out-at-home sweats then pulled her hair back into a loose pony tail. She stopped by her guest bedroom and rapped twice on the door before pushing it open. The trainer was sitting on the edge of the bed and he looked up at her. She nodded back over her shoulder. "I'm going to make breakfast. Do you need to eat? What do you eat?"
"Your dimension does not contain the sustenance I require, madam, but I fed well before I left mine and will not need to feed again for some time."
"Okay, then stay in here until I come get you. And be quiet. I don't want Spike to even know you're here if I can help it."
"As you wish, madam."
Buffy shut the door then stepped back down the hallway and poked her head into her room. Spike was still sleeping and hadn't moved at all that she could tell, so hopefully he hadn't heard the trainer speaking. She nodded. Good.
XX
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XX
Eating breakfast had been a bad idea. A very bad idea. Buffy pulled the trash can closer to the couch and leaned over it, dry heaving for what had to be the twenty-fifth time since she'd decided to read Spike's binder.
She pushed the can back and sat up, dragging the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her face. She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes, breathing slowly until her stomach had stopped pitching and rolling like the deck of a ship caught in a hurricane, then she took a deep, steadying breath and looked down at the open binder lying next to her on the cushion.
The trainer definitely had a raging case of OCD because the details he'd recorded were astounding in their detailness. She could understand how the trainer's notes on each training session and punishment were so exacting because he'd been the one who'd done all those things to Spike, but the rental contract reports floored her. It was like the trainer had been there, watching absolutely everything and writing it all down. He'd even described the expressions on Spike's face when he hadn't been wearing the hood. And there were pictures. Lots of pictures. And nearly every single one of them showed Spike in some kind of agony.
She'd made it through the notes on Spike's training in a little over two hours… and eight or nine 'discussions' with the trash can. His first punishment, six days after he'd arrived in the slave dimension, had been the ticket her bacon, eggs, toast, and orange juice had needed to get on the express train headed back up her esophagus. She'd never seen a human body that damaged. He'd barely even been recognizable as human at all, looking like a half squashed bug with his main joints all bending the wrong way and several 'new' joints added to places that weren't supposed to bend. And then they'd left him like that, letting him heal almost all the way before using the straightening and righting of his limbs as another punishment when he'd continued to refuse to follow their commands.
All the astounding details painted horrible, regurgitation inducing tableaus in her mind, as if the scenes were playing out in her living room. She could hear Spike screaming in pain and cursing in rage, she could hear the wet snapping sound of breaking bones and Spike's shrieks of agony, she could smell the blood, and she could practically taste the stench of burning flesh. Any kind of cooked meat would definitely be off her menu for quite a while… probably the rest of her life. Even the thought of it made her want to lunge for the garbage can again.
The whole thing tore at her heart, and she'd had to stop reading more than once, not only to puke her guts out, but because she simply couldn't see through her tears. Each time she stopped made it that much harder to go back, but she pressed on, swallowing down her heartache, rage, and disgust until it felt like she had an acid factory lodged in her midsection. She had to get through this, though, she had to know – something in here could hold the key to helping him now – and because he'd been strong enough to live it, then she could damn well be strong enough to read about it.
Now, eight long hours after she'd retrieved the binder from her junk cupboard, she'd just started reading about the last renter in the long, long, long list of demons that Spike had serviced. Every single one of them had had only one goal, it seemed: to cause Spike as much pain as they possibly could. Some had done that by beating him with their bare… well… hands wasn't really the right word… so, their bare… whatevers. Basically they'd hung him up and used him as a punching bag. Others had beat him using sticks, clubs, or other similar implements, and one renter had used what looked like a fish. It had short, stiff spines all over it like a porcupine, but it was shaped like a fish, and he'd spent an inordinate amount of time slamming it into Spike's balls and then jerking the spines free when they'd become imbedded in his flesh.
Buffy had found herself cringing time and time again, until her muscles were cramped with pain. Each subsequent entry seemed worse than the one before. As she'd read, she'd kept praying that it would be the last one, that the next page would be blank, but her prayers had fallen on deaf ears for eight long, torturous hours. Buffy was no lily-white virgin or naïve school-girl; she knew what kinds of things demons were capable of. Her research on Angelus, Spike, and Drusilla had quite effectively knocked the bloom off that rose at the tender age of seventeen, but the level of depravity reaching out from the pages of the binder was beyond anything she could've previously imagined. And now it was permanently tattooed on her brain and embedded in her heart like broken shards of glass, cutting her with every breath.
Although beating Spike into hamburger had been a favorite pastime of some of his renters, most of them had raped him, repeatedly and in the most brutal and repugnant ways possible. Even the females he'd serviced had raped him, which Buffy thought was monumentally stupid because Spike was a fantastic lover and would've rocked their worlds if they'd just let him do his thing. Only one of the females had allowed him to get any pleasure out of the act; the rest had just gotten him hard then had kept him that way with a ring or the plug – or both – using him for days or weeks at a time without allowing him any kind of release.
Whoever had taken the pictures – the trainer, she assumed – seemed to be obsessed with showing Spike's ravaged, swollen penis. At least one of the females had been obviously incompatible with Spike's anatomy. There was a series of pictures that showed a leopard-skinned demon with feline features and a fire-engine-red mane of flowing tresses riding Spike like a runaway horse. The expression on her face was unmistakable: rapture. The expression on Spike's face was equally unmistakable: utter anguish. His body was taut on the floor beneath her, his back bowed, every tendon and muscle as tight as piano wire as he pulled against his restraints, and his mouth was open in a silent scream. A photo of the aftermath had made Buffy heave into the garbage can again. Spike's penis looked like it had been through a meat-grinder; his tender flesh torn and shredded. If Buffy hadn't known what it was, she wouldn't have known what it was, and he'd lost so much blood that he'd gone soft, even with the ring.
The leopard-demon had complained that Spike was 'too fragile' when his trainer had shown up to collect him and she'd demanded a refund, even though she'd ridden him practically non-stop for the entirety of her two-day rental. The notes revealed that even though the renter had climaxed thirty-two times, Spike had still been punished because she'd claimed to be unsatisfied with his performance, and his already mutilated penis had been soaked in holy water for hours, leaving it looking like something that had been left on the grill too long: blackened and charred … unrecognizable as human.
But as depraved as the females had been, the males had managed to outdistance them almost exponentially. Most had raped Spike with whatever passed for their penis, and only a very few had an appendage that Buffy could look at and say, 'Yep, that's a penis.' The rest… not so much. There had been tentacle-like things, scale covered things, things that had sharp barbs or other protrusions, and things that defied any kind of description, but they'd all had at least one thing in common – they'd all been brutally forced into Spike.
And when they hadn't been forcing some part of their body into Spike's body, they'd used toys. Most had used the toys the trainer had displayed to her, but a few of Spike's earliest renters had gotten creative, using whatever was handy. One renter, who apparently didn't have any external sexual organs, had spent three days sodomizing Spike with a broken tree branch, shuddering in obvious pleasure every time Spike had tried to scream from the pain.
The trainer had taken great pleasure, it seemed, in counting the number of times the renter had demanded that Spike scream as he shoved the thick, splintered wood deep into Spike's body, utterly destroying every organ south of his lungs. 'The unit's inability to verbally articulate its agony is both a stimulant and frustration for this renter. This appears to allow the renter to sustain his pleasure much longer than with previous units that were capable of expressing their discomfort. I suggest we demand a higher price for this unit in the future for this added benefit. I have never witnessed this renter sustain his pleasure for more than half an hour on previous occasions, while with this unit he is approaching four hours of continuous orgasmic enjoyment.' The trainer had also noted that if the branch had been angled slightly differently and had been forced a mere four inches further in, it would have pierced Spike's heart, dusting him. 'I would also suggest that we provide all future renters with a wide variety of toys that are not made of wood, at no extra cost, of course, or we run the risk of losing a highly profitable unit.'
Buffy swallowed back more bile and shivered, suddenly cold as she remembered reading about the day they'd taken Spike's voice. He'd held up under brutal conditions for a year and a half, fighting every step of the way, but that was the day he'd finally broken. He'd already had his hearing and ability to scent taken from him a few weeks earlier, but, in true Spike fashion, he'd kept resisting all the trainer's efforts to force him to follow commands. The trainer had continued to tap him with that stick and Spike had continued to sneer and curse and spew insult after insult as he'd blatantly refused to move into the proper position. One of the trainer's assistants or the trainer himself had then forced Spike into position, making him hold it for several minutes to several hours before he'd been punished for not following the order.
The punishments had varied; sometimes they'd been only a simple blow from a fist or the command stick, sometimes he'd been punished by being sprayed with holy water or having crosses pressed to his skin, and sometimes he'd been hung from a chain in the middle of the training room to be beaten or flogged. But the punishment that had been used the most had involved Spike being strapped and manacled to a table that looked disturbingly like the one in the exam room of Buffy's gynecologist before being gang raped over several hours by an average of ten demons. There had never been less than five and one time – after Spike had managed a kick that had hit his trainer in a delicate part of his anatomy – there had been twenty-four demons, and that part of the punishment had lasted nearly four days.
On the day in question, Spike had already been punished by being whipped, having one cross shoved up his ass and another strapped to his penis for two hours, and being gang raped, anally and orally, by nine demons. But he'd still fought, refusing to move into the display position when ordered to. He'd snarled at, sneered at, cursed at, spit on, and called his trainer pretty much every dirty name ever invented, a few of which Buffy was pretty sure he'd just made up. The trainer had given the order again, and of course Spike had refused, throwing a two-finger salute even though his hands had been restrained behind him at the time. The trainer had struck him across the cheek with the command stick and Spike had let his demon out, snapping his fangs at his trainer and threatening to rip his throat out the next time he touched Spike with that stick.
The trainer had ordered that Spike be strapped to the 'rape table' then had tipped his head back over the edge and secured it in place so that Spike's throat was bared. Spike had continued to snap his shortened fangs at the trainer and an assistant as they'd come close, each holding a pair of wicked looking pliers (a picture of the pliers was stapled to the page). They'd been fast, clamping the pliers down onto Spike's fangs even as he'd tried to shake off the demon. Then they'd twisted and Spike had howled in agony, his body arched off the table, struggling against his restraints as his fangs were violently ripped out. He'd choked on the blood pouring from the empty sockets, splattering it all over his face, neck, and chest. He'd then spit a mouthful of it at his trainer, hitting him in three of his eyes before loosing a series of curse words that would have made the most foul-mouthed person on Earth blush like a virgin. Yes, the trainer had noted down each and every one, and Buffy had to give Spike props for his inventiveness. Some of them weren't even in English. She recognized a few different demon languages in the mix along with French, Italian, German, and what she thought might be Portuguese.
The trainer had then called to what Buffy had dubbed the 'rape squad,' and six large, ugly demons had trooped into the room and had lined up according to penis size – extremely large to grotesquely large – between Spike's legs. Spike had screamed. A lot. He'd started screaming when the first demon had thrust into him, ripping his anus and sphincter, and stretching his colon to cyclopean proportions, the thrusting member making Spike's abdomen look like there was something alive inside him that was struggling to break out. The trainer had noted that Spike's screams were continuous, broken only by his need to draw in more air to scream with.
The fourth demon had slammed its mammoth cock deep into Spike's torn, bleeding, ravaged hole, stretching him and ripping him even further than the previous three demons had already managed. Each thrust of the demon's hips had driven a shriek of anguish from Spike's throat as it had plunged its penis deeper and deeper into Spike's body. The trainer had noted that Spike's shriek had turned to a decidedly shrill howl when the demon had snarled out his release and emptied its acidic semen deep into Spike's destroyed bowels, burning him from the inside out … literally branding Spike with its spunk. The fourth demon had jerked its hips into Spike a few more times for good measure before pulling out and smacking his semi-hard, acid-covered cock against Spike's balls and penis, laughing gleefully before making room for the next in line.
Spike's howl had morphed into strangled, ear-piercing screeches as his balls sizzled and his tender flesh burned and blackened. The fifth demon had stepped up between Spike's legs, wrapped what passed for his hand around Spike's blistered cock, and squeezed hard, making Spike's whole body tense up. Spunk had squirted out of Spike's hole, leaving his devastated channel smoldering and bubbling with acid burns. The demon had laughed appreciatively as Spike's screeches had faltered, then began again in earnest. Still squeezing Spike's cock hard, keeping the vampire's body taut and his hole as tight as it could be, the demon had lined his steely, elephantine cock up with Spike's ass, waiting to time its plunge into him with the moment that Spike was at the zenith of pain and his channel was as tight as it could get.
Without warning, just as the fifth demon had roared and impaled Spike's tightened channel with its massive appendage, the trainer had slashed his claws across Spike's throat. The trainer had noted down how far the blood had spurted and how Spike's screams – that had increased in volume as the fifth demon violently raped him, never releasing Spike's cock from his crushing grip – had been cut off sharply when the trainer had installed the stone in Spike's larynx. The trainer had then gone on to describe the look of complete hatred on Spike's face when the fifth demon finally moved away and the final demon in the lineup – one with a cock at least twice as big around as the demonstration dildo (yes, there was a picture) – had slammed into him.
Spike had tried to scream at the agony of being torn nearly in two, but he couldn't. His look of hatred had intensified as he'd kept trying to scream and howl in pain as the sixth demon violently pistoned its hips, ramming its rock-hard appendage up Spike's ass like a jackhammer, ripping the vampire apart. Spike's expression had melted into one of despair and he'd stopped trying to scream exactly seventeen minutes later (as noted by the trainer). The demon had finished raping Spike twenty-three minutes after that, and by then, Spike had been sobbing and continuously mouthing a litany that the trainer was OCD enough to write down: "Please help me, Buffy, please. My demon's deserted me and I can't do this on my own. Please come for me. I can't stay strong without it. Please, Buffy, please come."
The trainer had left Spike strapped to the table overnight, blood and demonic semen dripping from his destroyed hole, his cock and balls blistered and blackened. The wound on his neck had gaped and dripped blood as he'd continued to sob for hours, his litany of mouthed words gradually shortening to only two words, "Buffy, please," and even that had stopped eventually. When he'd been released in the morning, he'd dropped immediately into the display position when ordered to, even though he hadn't been fed and could barely move because of all the unhealed damage from the day before. The trainer had noted that his pelvis had been broken in eight places and both hips had been dislocated from his legs being stretched open wide enough to accommodate the massive bulk of the demons that had assisted in the punishment.
The rest of the training notes had gone fairly quickly after that. They'd had to let him heal for nearly two weeks before his training could continue, but Spike's will to fight had been shattered like a piece of bone china dropped off a skyscraper. His whole reason for being had been taken from him. Everything that was 'Spike' was simply gone, destroyed… obliterated… and Service Unit 238 had been placed into the active rental queue about two months later.
Buffy closed her eyes against the tears that threatened again, but it was futile to try to stop them. They spilled from behind her lids, hot and salty, staining her cheeks with utter despair. Her stomach heaved and roiled, but she didn't even move for the garbage can – there wasn't anything left inside her to come up. In fact, it felt like there was nothing left inside her at all. Her heart, her very soul, seemed to have taken refuge somewhere else… far away from the pictures now playing over and over in her mind. Spike, the strongest demon… no, the strongest man she'd ever known had been destroyed. Utterly destroyed. It wasn't his physical strength that had been taken from him, but something so much more valuable: his spirit. She'd never known Spike to give up. EVER. In fact, that was one of the first things they'd learned about Spike from his grandsire: 'Once he starts something, he doesn't stop until everything in his path is dead.'
Spike had been captured and chipped, and, after a few weeks of moping, he'd adapted and then he'd taken on a Hell God, surviving her torture with his spirit intact. He'd gone through the Demon Trials to gain his soul, and yeah, he'd been a little crazy for a while after that, but he'd adapted once more, coming out of it with his spirit stronger than ever. Then he'd burned closing the Hellmouth, but even dying and coming back hadn't dulled his spirit if Andrew's report on his activities in LA was anything to go by. He'd been the same old Spike, snarking and fighting his way through his unlife, but the little yellow demon in her guest room had managed to break that spirit, leaving nothing but an empty Spike-shaped shell behind. He'd taken everything from Spike. Everything.
Buffy's chin quivered and her heart pounded painfully in her chest as she opened her eyes, wiping them with her sleeve. She took several deep breaths, trying to re-focus her mind and finish this. She had to finish… she had to know everything. She picked up the binder and laid it across her lap, gritting her teeth in determination as she started to read.
A short time later, Buffy closed the binder and shoved it away from her, her vision again blurred with tears. She'd carry the images of Spike's torture and abuse in her head for the rest of her life, and they'd undoubtedly cause more than a few nightmares, but out of the two of them, she'd gotten off easy. She'd only read about it. Spike had lived it… and survived it. Now she just needed to get his heart back… his spirit. She knew his body would heal, but what about the rest? Would he ever be able to function on his own again? Would he ever be able to do even the simplest of tasks without being told to? Would she ever hear his voice again? Would he ever call her 'pet' or 'luv'? Would he ever call Dawn 'Niblet'? Would she ever see anything but fear in his beautiful blue eyes? Would he ever love her again?
"God, Spike…" she moaned to herself, clamping her eyes shut against the pain as a dagger stabbed her heart and twisted violently. "Please… please, Spike. Please come back to me. I love you… God, I love you so much. Please… love me."
Buffy didn't know how long she'd simply cried, curled up on the couch and wallowing in pity, both for herself and Spike. It was at once too long and not nearly long enough. Finally, though, she pulled herself together, prodding the Slayer side of herself to get back on the clock, and began to try to sort through everything from a more detached perspective. At least she'd learned a few things. Some things she added to the top of the pile of disturbing that was rivaling Mount Everest in height – like how Spike had come by those punctures on the backs of his knees and the damage to his penis, and what, exactly, that 'specialized sustaining fluid' had been formulated to do to him – but a lot of the things she'd learned explained why he was acting the way he was. For example, the whole forehead to her shoe thing after the shower. He'd been trying to thank her, to show his gratitude, and she'd completely misunderstood the gesture.
She'd also learned all about those stones that the trainer had removed from Spike. Especially how to install them. She'd have to get that little silver stick from the trainer so she could make Angel deaf. That way she could talk about her plans and Angelus – who she was fairly certain was at the controls – wouldn't be able to eavesdrop and formulate ways to thwart those plans. And that, coupled with the large ball gag, would piss him off because he wouldn't be able to engage in his favorite pastime… fucking with people's minds. Yeah, she could just install the silencing stone, but having to wear a glittery pink ball gag would be so much more humiliating, and Buffy thought it was way past time for Angelus to experience some of what Spike had gone through.
She also needed to get the black rock from the trainer because she was definitely going to use it on Angel. It would make things so much easier to be able to knock him out without having to club him in the head, although, depending on her mood at the time, she might just club him anyway. And she wouldn't have to wait for him to wake up when she did; she could just use that black rock to wake him up… and then maybe she'd club him again. Wake him up, club him, wake him up… It would be like a slow-motion game of Whac-a-Mole. That brought a slight smile to her face.
Reading the binder had been one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but in a way it was also one of the best. She now knew everything that Spike had endured and his current condition was a testament to just how stubborn, strong, and resilient he was. He should have been either a gibbering lunatic or completely catatonic – an emotionless automaton – after going through the things he had, but even though his spirit had been broken, he was still mostly sane, still functioning on a basic level, and still able to adapt to new circumstances, albeit with fear and trepidation. He could come back from this, she knew it. It would take time and there would for sure be enough tears from both of them to float a battleship, but she'd help him fix his spirit even if they had to put it back together with duct tape. Spike would prevail. His spirit would heal.
She glanced at the clock on the wall above her phone table. It was time to feed her beautifully stubborn vampire. She stood slowly from the couch and picked up the binder with one hand and the trash can with the other then headed for the kitchen. She set the trash can on the floor and considered the binder for a moment, wondering if she should just toss it now that she'd read it. She shook her head and stuffed it back into the cupboard. Whether or not to get rid of the record of his torture and abuse was a decision for Spike to make. It might even be helpful. Once he was ready, they could take it somewhere and burn it, signifying the end of that part of his life.