Service Unit

Chapter Thirty One – Remembering

Dawn leaned back and scrutinized Buffy's face. "You did this? I thought you'd outgrown your 'beat Spike to a pulp' phase."

"I have, Dawnie! I didn't do this…" Buffy looked down at her knees. "… not physically, anyway, but it's my fault it happened. It's my fault he's hurt. He was trying to protect me from Angelus and…"

Dawn squeezed once then let go. "And you'll fill me in later. Right now I need you to focus. Let's just get Spike fixed up, okay?"

Buffy nodded and started picking the little tufts of gauze out of the holes in Spike, trying not to let her gaze wander to his penis. She failed. She looked up at Dawn. "It's broken?"

Dawn nodded then shrugged. "Well, not technically. There's no actual bone in there, just these tubes that fill with blood when he gets hard. One of those is ruptured and the blood is leaking out into the tissues. If he was human, he'd probably need surgery to fix it and it might not work right after, but since he isn't... He'll heal, Buffy, we just have to keep him fed and he'll heal. That's what vampires do."

"How do you know so much about it?"

"What? Vampires or penises? If it's penises, I looked them up. I research stuff, Buffy, that's what I do. If it's vampires, well… I need to talk to you about that, but not right now. Let's work on Spike first."

XXXX

There had only been two small shards of wood inside Spike and Dawn had carefully removed them with a pair of forceps, using the ultrasound to guide her. The wood had pretty much shredded his intestines, though, tearing gaping holes in the delicate tissues, and his bladder had been skewered by the largest piece. It had been driven nearly all the way through him, only being stopped from poking out the back because it had hit his tailbone. It had taken both of them to remove it, with Dawn holding Spike's hips firmly against the pad and Buffy standing over him, pulling with a steady upward motion.

The ultrasound also revealed something else inside him. Several something elses, in fact, but neither one knew what they were until Buffy wiped the blood off and examined them. They were about half the size of a regular toothpick and had barbed tips that were leaking some kind of clear fluid. A drop of the fluid dripped onto Spike's thigh and his skin started to smoke. Buffy quickly washed it off – leaving a nickel-sized burn mark – then clapped a hand over her mouth and bolted from the room. Dawn listened to her retch into the toilet for several minutes before she reappeared, pale and shaking. "What are they, Buffy?"

Buffy sank to her knees next to Spike and reached for his hand. "I'm not sure, because the picture was kind of small, but they look like the barbs on the penises of his last renters. They must have gotten knocked loose while they were… or maybe they're supposed to fall off when they… come… or something. That must be why he was still in pain. Those things were floating around inside him, poking him and leaking that holy water type stuff, pretty much eating him up from the inside." Buffy looked up at Dawn. "You're sure you got them all, right?"

Dawn swallowed hard and nodded, her face a slightly greenish shade. "Yeah. I did two sweeps and didn't find any more, but I'll check again if you want."

Buffy bit her lip and looked down at Spike then back up at Dawn. "Would you? Please? Just to make sure."

Dawn nodded again and picked up the transducer. She adjusted a few dials on the machine then got to work. She sat back fifteen minutes later and turned the machine off. "Didn't see anything. He's clear." She started digging in the duffel bag. "And now I think it's time for the 'filling Dawn in' part of the day. You told me Spike had been captured and his demon was missing and it was Angel's fault, but you never said anything about pictures, penis barbs, or renters, so you seriously need to explain that. Like right now. Okay?"

Buffy got up and fetched the small trash can from beside the bed then set it down next to Dawn. "Okay, but you'll probably need this."

They set about stitching him up. Dawn showed Buffy how to use a suture needle and they started carefully closing the holes, talking as they did. Buffy told Dawn everything that had happened since Spike had been delivered to her – including a brief description of Spike's time as a slave – and Dawn used the small trash can three times.

"And that brings us to right now." Buffy tied off the suture thread and clipped it with the small scissors. She looked over Spike's belly and noticed that Dawn's suture needle was lying unused, attached to the thread that was partly closing the largest hole. Buffy looked up at her sister. "Why'd you stop?"

Dawn was sitting back on her feet with her hands clenched into fists as she tried to get her anger under control. "Angelus is so dead. And if that little trainer asshole wasn't already dead, I'd kill him myself. And I'd make it hurt."

Buffy looked down at the last puncture wound on her side of Spike's stomach and poked the needle into his skin. "You and me both, but you'll have to take a number for Angelus. Spike has first dibs, and then me."

"What are you going to do with him until Spike's better?"

Buffy shrugged. "Leave him exactly where he is. We don't need him for the ritual anymore since Spike's demon is back, and my blood will heal Spike and make him strong again, so basically, Angelus is just a prisoner on death row waiting for the executioner to come off sick leave."

Dawn nodded and picked up her needle then started back to work. "Okay. Um… about your blood. How much have you given Spike so far?"

Buffy paused her suturing for a few seconds as she thought about it. "He's had five full mugs of blood, but I mixed the first few, so…" She calculated how much of her blood she'd given to Spike. "Uh… three and a half mugs of me. Why?"

"Well, that's part of what I need to talk to you about. You've called me twice since Spike got here and both times triggered something. Memories. Stuff the monks planted, I guess, because they technically never happened. I wasn't even here yet."

"What things?"

"The first call brought up memories of when Spike was working with Adam. He gave those encrypted disks to Willow, remember?"

"Yeah."

"Well, after your phone call, I was heading out to get the stuff you wanted and all of a sudden I remembered sneaking onto Willow's laptop to look at the files while you guys were storming the Initiative. There was a lot of stuff about the experiments they did on vampires." Buffy's hands froze and she looked up at Spike's face. Dawn hurried to continue, "Not Spike. At least I don't think so. Hostile 17 wasn't listed as one of the test subjects in the files I looked at."

Buffy resumed suturing then tied off the thread, clipped it, and sat up. "What kind of experiments did they do?"

"Mostly to see how much damage a vampire could heal from. They found out that a vampire could have about forty percent of his body mass removed and it would eventually grow back. No matter what parts were removed… even the brain. More than forty percent was too much and the vampire would dust. They also tested what kinds of damage they could heal. Gunshot wounds, acid, holy water, stakes, metal bars, fire, breaking every bone in their body, being crushed, being boiled, being frozen… you name it, they did it."

Buffy shuddered. "God, I'm glad we shut that place down. Killing vampires is one thing, but that? That's just wrong." She shuddered again then took a deep breath. "So what did the sick bastards find out?"

"The parts that are still there will heal. The parts that are missing will grow back as long as they're under the forty percent threshold. They concluded that whatever force animates a vampire works to restore their body to the condition it was in at the time they were turned. Like a reset button. The more damage there is, the longer it takes to reset, but eventually it will happen."

Buffy dropped her suture needle into the trash can then started picking up the bits of thread and gauze that were scattered around. "Okay. That's interesting information and everything, but Spike wasn't hurt that bad when I called you the first time, so I'm not sure what it has to do with anything or why the monks would have you remember it now."

Dawn shrugged as she tied off the suture thread and clipped it. "I don't know, either. All I can think of is that they knew something like this would happen, or maybe the Powers had a hand in it." She motioned to the neat sutures sprinkled across Spike's abdomen. "If I hadn't remembered the stuff in the Initiative files, I would have seen all that damage inside him and called someone to come repair it."

"Which he doesn't need because he'll just… reset. We only needed to close the holes so when we get blood into him it doesn't leak back out."

"Right. So maybe we're on some kind of timetable that we don't know about yet, and taking the time to find someone willing to come over here to open him up and fix everything would have messed that timetable up."

Buffy sighed. "Great. If the Powers are behind this, then why can't they just send a note or something? 'To Whom it May Concern, the next apocalypse is happening nowish and here's what you need to do,' but no, they just keep with the cryptic and leave us to figure out what the hell's going on."

Dawn gazed sadly at Spike's face as she said quietly, "Or maybe they made me remember because they thought Spike had suffered enough."

Buffy's eyes blazed. "Then why didn't they do something when he was in that other dimension? Everything he went through over there while he was fully conscious isn't as bad as someone doing surgery on him when he's knocked out? How does that even make sense?" Buffy snorted. "The Powers care sooo much about what happens to Spike that they just left him there. Fucking assholes."

"They probably don't have any say in what happens in other dimensions."

Buffy shrugged. "Maybe they don't, but they could've stopped him from being sent there in the first place. He's a Champion, dammit! And when Angelus showed up here? If they don't want Spike to suffer, then why didn't they smack me or something when I decided to let him loose? Why'd they let him lie to me and why'd they let me believe him?"

Dawn sighed. "It could have nothing to do with the Powers, Buffy; I was just throwing out ideas. Maybe the monks just locked those memories and I had to hear the right words in the right order to unlock them. Like a password. And they wouldn't unlock until I needed them for something."

Buffy reached up and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, wincing a little at the pressure on her left one. "God… we could sit here trying to figure this out all night and it would get us nowhere. If it's the monks, fine. If it's the Powers, fine. Whatever. It's done. If I'm supposed to stop another apocalypse then something will happen to tell me that, so let's just forget the why you're remembering stuff and get to the what you're remembering." She lowered her hands and took a deep, calming breath then dipped a clean washcloth into the washtub and started dabbing at Spike's stomach, cleaning the blood and ultrasound gel off his skin. "What did my second call trigger or unlock or whatever? More Initiative crap?"

Dawn scooted back and leaned against the bed. "No. That one was me looking through Giles' Watcher diary after Angel nearly drained you."

Buffy stopped sponging off Spike's belly and looked over at Dawn with wide eyes. "You've read it? He let you?"

Dawn chuckled. "Let might be too strong a word. More like 'didn't know then and doesn't know now,' and if you tell him, I'll kick you."

Buffy laughed quietly. "Don't worry, I won't subject you to the lecture and the stern, disappointed looks. And anyway, it didn't really happen. It's not like you read it after you got here." Dawn shifted guiltily and Buffy gasped. "You have?"

Dawn shrugged. "Maybe." Buffy quirked an eyebrow and Dawn smirked. "Okay. Yes. I've read the whole thing… well, up until the Sunnydale crater entry. I haven't read past that because now it's in England and I'm not."

Buffy laughed quietly again. "You'll have to tell me about it some time. What did the part say that my phone call unlocked?"

"Giles was worried because you'd willingly given your blood to Angel, and since you loved him, if you kept giving it to him, it would bind you together. Forever. Or at least until the Council killed you or dusted Angel."

Buffy's eyes widened and she looked down at Spike. "That's what he was trying to tell me."

"Spike knows?"

Buffy shrugged. "I think so. He wanted to tell me about blood bonds, but his throat was too sore for him to talk that much, so I told him to wait." She looked over at Dawn. "You tell me about it."

"I only know what Giles wrote down, and I've pretty much already told you. If a Slayer freely gives her blood to a vampire she loves, they're bound together forever."

"How much blood? Did he say?"

"The Council doesn't know for sure, but Giles guessed it would be about how much the Slayer's body holds, and a body your size would be roughly six pints."

"How much is that in American?"

Dawn rolled her eyes and said drily, "That is American and it's about three quarts."

Buffy ignored the tone of her sister's voice. "Okay. So how does a vampire bond to a dead Slayer? If he takes all her blood…"

"It can't be taken all at once, well… for that reason. She'd be dead. It has to be freely given several times and once they hit the right amount, they're bound. How big are the mugs you used?"

Buffy stood up. "Hang on and I'll tell you."

Dawn nodded and started digging in the duffel bag while Buffy was gone. When she stepped back into the bedroom, Spike had three ice packs wrapped in hand towels placed strategically around his genitals and Dawn was sponging the rest of the blood and gel off his stomach.

"They each hold two cups, so he's had seven cups of Buffy."

Dawn dropped the soiled washcloth into the tub and dried her hands. "So it'll only take about five more cups to bind you two, if Giles was right." Dawn watched as Buffy knelt next to Spike and took his hand in hers. "Do you want that, Buffy?"

Buffy looked up at Dawn and nodded forcefully. "Yes."

"Does Spike?"

Buffy looked back down at the unconscious vampire and whispered, "I don't know."

Dawn turned to the duffel bag. "Then maybe we should wait on giving him your blood until the demon lets Spike come back so you guys can talk. He'll heal okay on regular human; it'll just take a little longer." Dawn pulled out an IV kit and nodded toward the blood bags. "Find some way to hang one of those. I didn't bring a stand."

XXXX

Spike cowered in the dark, his arms wrapped around his head. Something tapped hard on the largest bruise on his naked back and he jumped, turning and twisting as he tried to locate it. A vicious cackle sounded from somewhere off to his right and he scuttled away from it until he hit a wall. He pressed himself into the rough stone surface, once again covering his head.

The cackling came nearer and changed to an evil whisper, "She doesn't want you anymore. She hates you now for what you did."

Spike shook his head and murmured, "No."

The voice hissed, "Yessss."

Spike turned away, pressing his other side to the wall as he clapped his hands over his ears. "No. She got free. She used it to get free and she got him, she did. She saved me. I remember her saving me."

"She saved herself. She hates you. She's going to kill you. And you deserve it. I hope she makes it hurt before you die. For a long time."

Spike started shaking his head so fiercely that it bounced off the wall. "No, she wouldn't. She's not like that."

"Yes, she is. And her sister will help. She's here. She came to help kill you because of what you did to her. They both hate you now." A feather light touch brushed down Spike's back and he pulled away, but he couldn't avoid the solid kick that hit him square between the shoulder blades an instant later. It sent him flying and he landed hard then curled into a ball as he tried to protect himself from more kicks. He also covered his ears, but he couldn't block out the voice. It continued in that low whisper, telling him how worthless he was, that he deserved pain, that everyone he loved hated him and that they were going to take pleasure in killing him.

Uposs stood over the battered form at his feet then launched another kick at his head before he squatted down. "It shouldn't be long now until they kill you. I'll keep you here with me and have some fun until then, but don't worry, I'll send you back in time to feel everything they do to you. Everything."