White lights.
That's the most frightening thing. All the white lights.
No place to run, no place to hide. Burning Buffy's retinas even through her closed eyelids.
She tries to move her legs but they're iron-girder heavy. Heavier, since she can lift a girder no problem. She turns her head and it takes a decade, every movement the slowest snail's-pace.
Help.
White lights.
Her tongue is dry. Mouth parched. Thirst burning at the back of her throat.
There's a weightless moment where she thinks she's falling, her hands reaching out to grab onto something but she can only manage a twitch of her fingers, until thump she lands down and is moving again.
A gurney. She's on a gurney.
She tries to move her legs again and manages to almost raise a knee, except leather cuffs are circling her ankles. They band across her forearms too.
Help.
….somebody
Help…
The lights strobe as she passes underneath them. A rush of cold air hits her as she's wheeled into a much larger space and she groans.
"Is she knocked out enough?"
Buffy tries to turn her head to the voice, one she dimly recognizes as Riley's. A flutter of hope batters her heart.
Riley's here. Riley can help, he's the good guys, he's… he's….
"Adding another ten cc's now," another voice says—female and far away and somewhat smug—and something cold floods her arm again. "This one's a fighter, huh?"
Riley makes a sound that's almost a snort but without humor, as if smug-cc-girl made a joke, but he's heard it before.
"You've no idea," he says before velvety unconsciousness drags Buffy further down.
Spike can't help staring at the bandage covering the stitches of Joyce's head warily as she lowers herself into the passenger seat, her knuckles still gripping the handle of the ax ferociously tight.
"You sure I can't talk you out of this?" he asks with excessive caution, aware that one wrong word might have that ax barrelling towards his face.
"That's my daughter," Joyce says as if it were the be-all-and-end-all of the entire conversation, the active volcano of her glower ceasing any further debate on his part as she slams the car door shut.
"Yup, fair enough," he mutters to himself.
He drives, heading out of Sunnydale towards the woods as Joyce sits pensively in silence.
"She was so small when she was a baby," she says after a while.
There's no croak in her throat, no stutter in her voice but her words weigh heavy in the car's cramped interior.
"Yeah?" Spike prompts, if only to dissipate some of the tension, feeling more than a little mindful of how calm her voice is. She's so eerily still in the car seat next to him.
"People think that after you've had a baby it's all… diapers and late-night feeds, and that you're just in this new baby high of happiness, exhaustion, and maternal bliss," Joyce continues dryly. "And it is. Mostly. But you get this tiny little thing that's so helpless and so dependent. You spend every waking moment thinking about all the different ways the world could take her from you." She twists the ax handle in her hand. "And what you would do to the idiot that tried."
He nods because that seems to be the only thing he can do as Joyce continues, angry words needing to be purged from her heart.
"I've seen plenty of monsters since Buffy got called into a war she didn't have any say in." Joyce shifts in her seat to make room for the ax between her legs. "But every single mother on this planet has thought about what it would feel like to sink their teeth into the neck of the person who tried to take their daughter from them."
Spike's gaze flickers briefly to the ax.
"Starting to think I got off lightly," he says, trying to lighten the mood for the both of them. Calm before the storm, battleground humor.
Joyce smiles tightly, amused despite the situation. "I didn't have a good grip. My aim was off."
Streetlights cast strobing flickers of yellow over her face, highlighting the frown lines on her brow. Spike keeps his eyes on the road, not wanting to see the look of panic on her face at the thought of what might be happening to Buffy. It would only be a mirror of his own.
He hears her draw breath in after a while and he prepares himself for another tense volley of conversation.
"You and Buffy…" she says, her voice sounding strained from the stress of emotion, clearly raging war inside her. "You're…?" she leaves the question open. He turns briefly to meet her eyes, to confirm she means what he thinks she means.
He clears his throat. "...Yeah."
Her gaze narrows slightly, lips pursing with unspoken maternal judgment. Not so much at him though, that seems unspoken. "And Riley?"
Maybe not so unspoken.
"Slayer sent him packing," he says, deciding to keep to himself the exact parameters of that final conversation.
Joyce doesn't ask for them.
She's quiet for a few more moments before asking, "Do you think he had something to do with it?"
Spike bites his upper lip in thought as he changes gears, putting the foot down as they speed towards the fringes of the town, contemplating that sinking feeling he'd had in the woods.
That soapy smell lingering amongst the trees… he couldn't pick out personal notes with the copious amount of blood saturating the place, but still…
"Not that I could, but I wouldn't exactly die of shock if it turns out he did."
He doesn't need to turn his head to know she's holding the ax handle even tighter.
He parks the car on a deserted track that bisects the woods from the greener knolls that edge Restfield. He doesn't ask if Joyce is ready. From the iron in her tone earlier she's on a suicide mission and he isn't about to be casualty number one in its wake. Still, though it's prudent to keep close step with her as they start hiking up into the pitch black woods.
Joyce stumbles just once, righting herself even as he jolts out a hand to stop her falling. Though the only light is the moon filtering sporadically through the trees he catches a look that's part-gratitude part-determination.
She starts to lag as the incline steepens, but when Spike slows his gait to keep time with her she purposely pushes herself harder as if his consideration was a reminder that she's slowing them both down.
Spike almost opens his mouth to say something, but a hard look on Joyce's face shuts it tightly.
She's panting by the time they reach the cave, the abyss-like maw of the entrance a yawning mouth devoid of light.
"In there?" Joyce confirms between hard breaths and she swipes a hand across her forehead, catching beads of sweat that are decorating her hairline. Spike nods, noting the pale quality of her skin even in the moonlight.
Buffy is really gonna kill me for bringing her here…
"Yeah," he says, and after a brief look they set forth together, no planning or discussion or hesitation between them.
The cave is even darker than it looked from the outside, the moonlight just a dim gray glow behind them until they round a bend and find themselves in a well of inky blackness. Joyce slows cautiously.
Sensing she's practically blind, Spike lightly grasps her by the wrist to guide her.
Their boots crunching in unison on the pressed gravel echoes from the walls, interspersed by an occasional thunk as Joyce uses the ax like a walking stick.
It's dim at first but after a few more minutes of walking a faint greenish glow lights the cave walls, illuminated by ground-level emergency lights.
"Doing alright?" Spike whispers and Joyce nods, re-hefting the ax as he drops her arm.
"Fine," she whispers back and they keep moving.
They turn a bend in the cave and come up against an elevator door, bizarrely out of place within the ragged rock and causing them to come up sharp.
"Okay… that's new," Spike mumbles, and in the green half-light of the emergency lights he motions for the ax. Joyce hands it to him without a word and he slots the blade of it into the crack between the chrome doors. With a heave, he splits them open.
The doors widen onto a shaft, almost entirely pitch black and seemingly bottomless.
"Oh," Joyce says, with as much apprehension as that syllable can accomplish.
"Ropes might've been the thing," Spike sighs, tapping the flat of the ax against his calf.
"Could we climb down?" she asks, and Spike eyes the cables.
"Maybe… if we can reach," he replies. He could maybe tuck the ax into the back of his jacket, and just hope for all hell's worth a sudden lurch doesn't send it into the base of his neck. "If you hold onto my arm, think you can lean out for cables?" he asks and Joyce bites her lip before resting the ax against the side of the cave.
She takes hold of his forearm, and he clasps hers in a tight grip, steadying himself with his free hand against the doorway before he dips her outward.
Her fingers almost wrap around the cable, managing to grace it just by her fingertips.
"I can reach it if you let go of me a bit," she says, pained from the strain.
Spike swears under his breath.
"If you drop to your death Buffy is never gonna let me hear the end of it," he says. It doesn't get a laugh but he wasn't honestly expecting it to.
They lurch away as the elevator cables suddenly start moving, the roof of the car rising out of the murk below them, and Joyce almost loses her balance as Spike hauls her away from the drop.
"What do we do?" Joyce whispers, panicked.
Spike picks the ax back up and thrusts it at her. She reels away from it.
"Wait, no– I–"
"You brought it!" he hisses as the elevator rises closer. "You're the cavalry, here! I'm violence-handicapped, remember?"
"But I…" Her gaze darts from the ax, to Spike, to the gradually rising elevator. Not much time to decide.
"What do I do?"
He sighs, rolls his eyes, and forces the ax into her hands. "Swing it like a bat for their chin or the back of the head. Should knock 'em out." He adjusts her posture so she's holding it firmly in both hands. "Don't use the sharp bit unless you want a bloodbath," he adds, patting her on the shoulder as if she's a little kid on her first day of school.
Joyce tightens her grip with determination, and they move to the side of the doors, waiting quietly, breaths held.
It seems like it takes an age for the car to come to a complete stop, and as the elevator doors part blinding lights suddenly illuminate the cave.
A soldier steps out, rifle held in an at-ease position and he adjusts it in his arms, moving past Spike and Joyce without looking up as he checks the safety catch.
"Now—" growls Spike but Joyce is already swinging, the flat of the ax crashing down on the soldier's head as he freezes at the sudden voice behind him. The force of it sends him sprawling in an unconscious heap on the floor.
Spike crows proudly. "Atta girl, Joyce!"
Joyce lets out a shivery sigh of tension, re-hoisting the ax.
"That was easy," she breathes out. "I thought he was going to spring back up like you did."
"Yeah, well… I've got a thick skull." Spike shrugs, skirting the fact that it would take more than a tap with an ax to stop a charging vampire.
Joyce glances down at the prostrate figure on the floor. "Is he dead?"
"Nah, just stunned. Poor little lamb'll wake up with a hell of a headache," Spike answers, stopping the closing elevator doors with his boot. "Hold the lift, would you, luv?"
Joyce positions herself in the elevator's doorway, resting the ax against her leg as Spike rolls the soldier over, fishing in his pockets. He pulls out a laminated ID tag, a long silver key on a chain, a penknife—which he slides into his boot—and a pack of gum.
He eyes the army fatigues, and then Joyce, cocking his head to the side as an idea forms.
"How'd you feel about a costume change?"
Joyce blinks. "Oh…" her cheeks flush a pink color. "I—"
"Look, I ain't gonna peak." Spike grunts, interrupting her stumbling embarrassment. "And it would be a lot less bloody noticeable if at least one of us didn't look like they'd just crashed the party uninvited."
"Well, why not you?" Joyce asks as Spike starts unlacing the soldier's boots.
"I'm not the one wearing a denim skirt-floral blouse combo," he says pointedly.
Joyce glances down at her clothes—completely unprepared for whatever situation they're about to find themselves in—and then nods. "Yes, good point."
She wedges the doors open with the ax and toes out of her boots, taking the standard military camouflage trousers Spike finishes pulling off the soldier's legs and pulls them on underneath her skirt before unzipping it and kicking it off into the cave. The camouflage shirt and kevlar vest follow, roomy enough to be worn over her blouse, but she loses her jacket.
The clothes are warm with someone else's body heat and Joyce suppresses a feeling of revulsion as she glances across at the man now dressed only in a white vest, boxers, and socks. She zips her boots up as Spike robs the rifle of its ammunition, vanishing the clip into a pocket, and joins her in the elevator.
The control panel doesn't contain any floor numbers, only a whited-out screen that they both stare at as the doors whisper closed.
Spike retrieves his stolen loot from the depths of his coat; the key, the badge, the gun magazine, and the gum. The badge he waves across the pad in a way he saw one of the Initiative assholes doing as they moved from corridor to corridor during his reluctant sojourn in a big white box. The pad bleeps, flashes a happy blue color, and miraculously the elevator begins moving downward.
Joyce huffs out a nervous breath, taking a moment to close her eyes and lean against the elevator wall.
A slight ache along her forehead signals she's missed a painkiller. It throbs with heat but she ignores it, instead focusing on the anger that is the burning rod in her spine.
Buffy is here, in this bright awful hole.
Her Buffy is here somewhere against her will and some bastards took her. Took her!
Took my girl. My baby.
Her teeth grit as she lets the thought seep into her bloodstream, boiling away her fear as she grounds herself with the weight of the ax.
She'd make them all pay. They'd all pay.
That soldier deserved the sharp edge…
"Gum?"
Her eyes blink open to the gum packet Spike is holding out towards her, already chewing on a piece himself.
She unclenches her jaw.
"What flavor is it?"
"Spearmint," he answers with a shrug.
She takes a strip and unwraps it, tucking the foil wrapper into a pocket as they chew companionably. Waiting in tense silence for the car to reach the bottom.