Title: Breaking a Slayer 21-24

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Spoilers/Ships: This is AU. Buffy/Spike/Angel.

Distribution: Sure, just let me know.

Feedback: Is always nice. DarkRhiannon@aol.com

Rating: NC-17.

Giles had truly believed that patrolling with Buffy would reestablish the rapport that they had previously shared. They had, after all, spent countless nights out under the stars waiting for this or that vampire or demon to arise and bedevil Sunnydale. Surely this could be no different.

But it was.

Buffy was radically different in every aspect, Giles realized. It wasn’t just her social persona that had been damaged to the point of destruction. The Slayer aspect was just as altered. Buffy no longer quipped or slurped on soft drinks while waiting for fledglings to arise. She crouched in inscrutable silence, unwilling to speak, or even acknowledge her Watcher.

Instead, the Slayer waited in the dark, barely breathing, senses obviously extended as far as they could go. Giles hesitated to disrupt such focus, especially when it was precisely what he had been pushing her toward for so many years. To have it now, exactly as he had demanded, yet find it wanting seemed unfair to his Slayer and unreasonable of him. So he held his tongue, more upset with every passing minute at the changes that had occurred while he was gone.

Buffy had shifted into the Now the moment they left the apartment that night. She couldn't begin to explain how it felt, hadn't articulated it even to herself. To her vampire lovers, it was routine, a shift that they themselves made when hunting prey, thus they didn't question it in her. But Buffy sensed that Giles had seen the difference and was made uneasy by it.

Where before, she'd been a girl hunting vampires, occasionally harnessing her powers, but most of the time retaining her own individuality and personality, now she was Other. She was more, and yet less. She existed in the moment, dwelling in her senses. She was alive to every vagrant breeze that wafted through the cemetery. Aware of each footstep, each twig, each blade of grass over which she stepped. She was the Slayer, a consummate predator and an inhuman one. She had finally allowed that persona to encompass her own. Instead of harnessing the power, she *became* the power.

Giles was visibly uneasy with her, attempting to force her to converse when all she wanted to do was stalk. Track the prey, annihilate it, move on. The destructive urge overwhelmed her, controlling every instinct and stealing her volition until all that remained was Slayer. She glanced up at him ferally and he flinched back from that implacable gaze.

*

Angel drove through the welcoming dark, his mind focused on the twists and turns of the road, deliberately blanking out all thought. His concern for his mate and childe could only be a weakness. He must focus on the here and now. He'd promised Will a doctor, so a doctor he would have. The surgeon waited for them, room prepped and blood waiting for the aftermath. Angel would arrive on schedule and Will would go under the knife. After that, well, Angel wouldn't think about that. Because, if he did, he might turn the car around and drive his childe back to Sunnydale, against his own word and damn the consequences.

Angel knew that refusing his childe would only delay the inevitable. Even if he did, Spike could always find another doctor and coerce her into performing the operation. It was easy enough to do. But Angel was terrified of modern medicine. He'd never needed it, but had watched Buffy and her friends undergo treatment for various and sundry maladies. He'd come away with a greater distrust of the modern miracles of medicine, not less.

Somewhere deep within, he remained a child of the eighteenth century. Doctors were not to be trusted. Most were drunks, dirty and unskilled. Surgery was a last resort and killed more than it helped. Women were better off with midwives; and men…men should just grit their teeth and bear the pain. Everything in his being resisted taking his childe to such a deadly place.

Giles was exhausted. He and Buffy had stalked every cemetery within walking distance, then driven to those too far for him to reach. In response to his interrogation, he learned that Buffy usually ran there, a fact that surprised him not at all, looking at her lean, practically emaciated body. He knew that Angel had been feeding her this past month or more, but he'd not made a dent in the damage the Slayer had inflicted upon herself. Yes, she seemed this side of cadaverous, but she'd always had generous breasts, he thought, with a blush.

Buffy seemed immune to his gaze, fully focused on her prey and unconcerned with things of less import. Giles admired that focus, at the same time he was inwardly frightened by it.

A fledgling exploded from a nearby grave and Buffy whirled to face it. In seconds, it was gone, dust on the wind, and Buffy was sheathing her stake in her back pocket, unconcerned.

*When had she become so deadly?* Giles wondered. *Was this truly a recent development, or had he just become so blind, so out of touch with her that he failed to recognized the growing power of the Slayer? Certainly, it had been quite a while since he patrolled with her. But still,* he chastised himself, *I'm her Watcher, official or not! I should have seen what was happening, should have known the extent to which she was subsuming her very identity to that of the Slayer.*

It all came down to Angel, Giles realized. Whatever his purity of motive, the fact remained that by abandoning her, Angel had left Buffy to survive on her own. That she took strength from the Slayer within was hardly surprising. Especially considering what she must have perceived as his own abandonment of her, followed by that of her friends. Added to her mother's death, it was a potent mix indeed, more than enough to convince a teenaged girl that she couldn't face it on her own.

*What other chance did she have, Ripper,* he asked himself, *than to deny her feelings and allow the Slayer full reign.* It was the only way for her to survive at all. And now…now she was trapped in her pain. Too damaged to exist on her own, unwilling to rely on others, she dwelled in the Now, forsaking thought or emotion, simply reacting to threat and waiting for the next crisis.

Giles was even unsurprised that she had found relief in the embrace of not one, but two vampires. They, like her, were creatures of the night. They were predators like her. They were creatures of flesh and passion…like her. Small wonder, then, that they allowed her to express whatever feelings she allowed herself. Small wonder that she gained comfort from their bodies, however ephemeral that comfort might be. It was all she had left.

The destructive urge overwhelmed her, controlling every instinct and stealing her volition until all that remained was Slayer. She glanced up at him and he flinched back from that fell gaze.

*

Spike gazed into Angel's deep brown eyes at the first, excruciating cut into his skull. His sire gripped his hand, clutching it almost painfully hard. William welcomed the pain. He was trying, with every ounce of his being, not to cry out or admit weakness before his sire. Angelus had punished such weakness almost to the point of true death, and William had learned, early and painfully, not to give voice to his agony. But this, this was more than he'd ever thought to bear. The pain seared through his head in blinding hot waves, consuming his thoughts and wrenching at his very being.

Angel was in torment watching his boy in agony. God knows, he'd inflicted suffering on Will before; Angelus had positively reveled in the pain he could impart to his childer. But this, this was different. The surgeon was precise and unemotional, slicing away flesh and using a bone saw to cut away the very bone of Will's head. Angel shuddered in reaction, trying not to show his nausea to his childe. If Spike could take the pain, surely Angel could deal with the sight. Right?

But it was awful, watching his favored childe suffer like this at another's hands. This kind of pain had never interested Angelus…it was too deep and distracting. Maiming his childe was never his intention, for he was a lover of beauty above all things. Both Angel and Angelus yearned to possess that beauty, but not destroy it. It was in the holding of power that he gained his most heady triumph, not in destruction, though that, too, held its own pleasure.

Spike was conscious. Barely. He held to volition with tooth and nail, fighting to retain his mind through every cut, every slice that the surgeon bestowed. He began talking to his sire, unconcerned about the topic, but needing to hear the sound of his own voice…to prove, somehow…that he was still a thinking, if unbreathing, being, one who was in control of his own unlife.

"So, Peaches, how'd you meet up with this bugger?" he asked.

"He had a problem with an associate who was able to disembody himself. It wasn't pretty, but eventually we caught all of him…." Angel knew what Spike was attempting and commended his childe on his bravery. Spike was many things, some of them quite despicable, but he was never a coward.

"So, Childe, what's the first thing you want to do once this is over?" he caught himself asking, then winced, knowing what the probably answer would be.

As always, Will surprised him. "Wanna go back to Sunnyhell and bang the Slayer," he said with a grin. "No holds barred, scream or make me scream shagging. That's the ticket," he looked up at his sire, expecting a slap, or at the very least a growl. Instead, he got an interested look.

"Mmmm, sounds like fun. As long as I'm there, too," Angel rumbled, suddenly consumed with thoughts of his mate.

Spike was surprised, but even more surprised when the surgeon ripped something out of his head with an audible sucking noise. "That's it," the surgeon exclaimed, dropping the chip into a waiting metal dish.

"You got it all?" Angel asked, concern overtaking him for his childe, who had blanched past white into translucent at the movement.

<"Yes, it's all there. The rest of the synaptic connections should heal in days, hours even if you get him some fresh blood. Vampiric nervous systems heal amazingly fast," the surgeon noted, placing some bone glue on the chip he'd carved from Spike's skull before carefully fitting it back into place.

Angel watched in nauseated horror as the surgeon folded the flap of Will's scalp back over the chip he'd carved out earlier and began taking tiny sutures in the flesh. Spike wasn't moaning, so Angel knew it didn't hurt that much, but his old-fashioned soul was deeply disturbed by the entire procedure. It just wasn't right, damnit! Doctors shouldn't be allowed to cut open people…or vampires…and use them for experiments. But that was precisely what had happened to his childe.

Spike groaned and his long eyelashes fluttered. Angel was transfixed, watching in concern as the dark blue eyes of his childe closed.

"God, what's wrong? Spike? SPIKE? Answer me!" He cried, as the surgeon looked up in alarm. Angel was unable to waken his childe and was desperately afraid that he would never see that insolent gaze again.

Buffy and Giles entered the mansion in the daylight. She knew that it was unfair of her to bring him here, where Angelus had tortured him, but there was no place they could spar at his apartment, and she no longer had a back yard or anything even remotely close to it.

They slid the furniture in the great room to the walls and stood, facing each other in the silence. Giles had chosen swords for the day, unaware that Buffy had bad memories of her own concerning swords and Angel in this house. They sparred, slowly at first to relax their muscles, then faster.

Buffy was surprised at the agility and speed with which Giles responded to her thrusts. Clearly he hadn't been sitting around eating biscuits and drinking tea the entire time he'd been on the Watchers' retreat. He was good. Better than when he'd left.

He smiled slightly at her…a tiny, somewhat condescending Giles smile, which meant a bare tilt of those oh-so-British lips. No one who didn't know his every expression would even recognize it as a smile, but it galvanized Buffy into action. *How dare he smile at me like I'm some child? Some little girl?* she thought, picking up the pace and darting at him harder. *Pompous old…watcher dude…geeze, Buffy, you're pretty weak on the insult thing…it's been a while.*

She realized, thinking, that it had been months since she'd quipped at all, even in her own head. *Hmm, that's weird,* she thought. *Didn't even think about it before now.* A lot of things were different, and she'd avoided considering any of them with her usual stubborn denial. Shrugging off her atypical introspection, she moved forward in a sudden blaze of motion, whirling under Giles' guard and knocking the sword from his hands with one twist, then holding hers to his neck, gauging to a hair's breadth the safe distance.

Giles froze, looking into the face of a killer. *That's what she is, old man, no matter how you dress it up with Chosen One and Slayer. She's a killer. A necessary one, certainly, but a predator, to be sure.* He'd never thought of Buffy in quite those terms before and wondered if this was how the vampires felt right before she killed them. She looked as if she could do him this very instant and then go upstairs for a nap.

"Um, er, ah, very good, Buffy. Well done, indeed. Though I think we can lower the sword now, yes? Ah, very good. Well, I think that's enough training for today. I'd like to sit and talk with you a bit. What do you say we return to my apartment, freshen up and discuss the Hellmouth. I've been gone for two months and I hope you've been keeping track of the various phenomena that have occurred during that time. I will, of course, need to enter them into my journals."

Buffy nodded, wordlessly, picking up the swords and wrapping them carefully before following him out of the mansion.

*

Spike wasn't waking up. Spike *wasn't* waking up! Angel was pacing nervously back and forth by the operating table as the doctor examined his childe. "I can't tell what's going on, I'm sorry," he said and Angel snarled at him viciously, pacing closer until he was right in the man's face.

"What do you mean, you can't tell? Why not? Use one of those damned machines. That one over there, the one that goes 'ping.' Do something, anything," he growled, shifting to game face in his fear and worry.

"You don't understand, Angel. The machines only work on a live patient. To all intents and purposes, vampires are dead. You don't register on my machines as alive at all. I can't listen for breathing or a heartbeat. And even your brainwaves function on a completely different level. It's as if you're not animated by life at all, as if something else is what allows you life…unlife…whatever you want to call it."

"The demon." Angel said.

"What?" the doctor asked, still looking into Spike's unresponsive eyes with a light.

"The demon animates us, takes our bodies after our souls leave. We're dead until we rise. Spike can't be dead, not true death…he would turn to dust. So the demon must still be in there, somewhere." Angel stalked to the table and gazed at Spike. He stroked the hair back from that handsome chiseled face. He was so beautiful, so young-looking. As if he were asleep and just waiting for the right moment to awaken. Angel leaned over and kissed his childe gently on the lips. Had Spike awoken at that moment, he would have been shocked to his core at the love on his sire's usually inscrutable face.

Angel slid his hands under Spike's body and lifted him easily against his chest. "Thank you for everything, doctor." He said, walking out and leaving the man to turn off the machines and lights behind him. Angel placed Spike gently into the back seat of his convertible and covered him tenderly with a blanket. His childe might as well have been dead for all the response Angel got.

Angel climbed into the front seat and began the slow drive back to Sunnydale. He had no idea how he could break this to Buffy. She relied on him and Spike to a degree that Angel knew was dangerous. He was about to see what would happen when one of her supports was ripped from under her.
 

Buffy was bored. Bored, bored, bored. It was a familiar feeling, but one that she'd been free of these past several months. *Maybe it's good to be bored,* she thought idly as Giles rambled on about the significance of the M'fashnick demons she had bested a few weeks ago. *At least it means that I feel…normal again.* Normal. As if. She hadn't been normal since she was fifteen. Still returning to normal, for her, was of the good, right?

Enough was enough, though. It was getting dark and she was itching for a good slay. "Giles, I'm gonna go out and case Sunnyrest for new graves while it's still light, K?" she said, jumping to her feet and grabbing a couple of stakes.

"Hmm?" he said, not looking up from the cross-referencing he was doing on his notes regarding the Hellmouth. "Oh, yes, Buffy, you do that. Be cautious, please."

"Will do. See you later."

*

Angel carried Spike into the mansion in the evening dark. His childe had not moved during the entire car ride. Angel had spoken to him, long rambling recollections of hunts they'd taken, places they'd been, anything and everything he could think of to stir his childe to consciousness. Nothing provoked a reaction.

After settling Spike into his bed, Angel paced downstairs quickly and got blood from the refrigerator. He heated it and brought it upstairs to the bedroom. Cradling Spike in his arms, Angel poured a small amount of the blood into his mouth. Spike didn't swallow. Angel put the mug down and closed Spike's mouth, massaging his throat muscles until the liquid was gone. Then he started again, pouring a bit more in, and doing the same thing. He managed to get the entire mug of blood into his childe in the next hour, but it failed to provoke the desired response. Angel lapped the spilled blood from around Spike's mouth, cleaning him off before pressing gentle kisses against those perfect lips. Still no response. Angel hung his head, cupping his face in his hands and cried.

*

The hunt was slow and deadly. Buffy had found the new grave just before sunset, but couldn't reach the fledgling because its master appeared. He was dressed in dreadful eighties attire, complete with puffy hair and she was prompted to actually taunt him, something she hadn't done in months.

"Dude, what century do you think we're in, anyway? The Loverboy look went out two decades ago! And loose the plastic pants!" She danced forward, stake in hand, but he ran and she had to decide which vamp to go after. The fledge would be an easy kill, but she could probably return and get it later. Better to off the master before he made any more. She took off after him and followed, gaining ground with every leap over the gravestones in her path.

Buffy finally cornered him and plunged the stake home, but upon her return to the grave, she saw that she'd missed the fledge…it had already risen. She tried to track it, but it wasn’t clear which way it had gone. She skulked around the cemetery in ever widening circles, searching for some sign of its passing.

Without warning, she was thrown to the ground. Buffy rolled, leaping to her feet and faced her snarling opponent. *Damn!* The fledge was huge. He had to be six and a half feet tall. He was bigger and much, much wider than Angel. She craned her neck, gazing up at him and wondered how the hell Mr. Eighties had managed to even turn this thing. He lumbered forward at her and she darted back, determined to use her agility against him. She moved forward, bracing herself carefully before trying a spin kick on him. He didn't even move, just looked at her.

*I knew I should have brought the crossbow,* she thought to herself, circling quickly to get behind the huge vamp. She darted in and rammed the stake into his back, but he was so big, it didn't penetrate all the way to the heart. Buffy backed up and did a front kick, driving the stake deeper into the tough muscle and bone of the thing's huge ribcage. It took two more kicks before the vamp finally disintegrated into dust. Buffy sighed in relief and decided to head for home.

She'd been walking on autopilot for a while when she looked up and realized she was at the mansion. Instinct called this home, whether her two vampires were there or not. She'd just go in and curl up for a bit, then she'd go back to Giles's. Entering the mansion, Buffy felt the presence of vampires and raced upstairs to the bedrooms. She darted from room to room until she came to Spike's bedroom. There, on the bed was Spike. He looked…dead. Or asleep, which in vamps passed for dead anyway. Angel crouched next to him on the bed, sobbing.

"Angel, what's wrong? What happened? Is he…ok?" Buffy rushed to the bed and climbed on, turning Spike's unresponsive face towards her and studying it.

"Gods, Beloved, he won't wake. I'm afraid that the surgery hurt him too severely. He was fine until right after the chip came out. He's been like this ever since." Angel's voice was broken and rough from the crying, and tears covered his handsome face.

"Damn. Did you try blood?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah, he couldn't drink it, but I worked it down his throat."

"What about your blood? You're his sire, maybe he needs you to, well, resire him or something?" Buffy speculated.

"Good thought, Buffy. Can you hold him up a bit?" Angel slid around to Spike's left side, helping Buffy to move behind him and hold his wiry body in her arms. Angel shifted to game face and ripped open his wrist, holding it to Spike's unmoving mouth. The blood dripped in and Angel rubbed his throat again to get it down. He continued until he began to feel dizzy from the blood loss, then pulled his wrist away and licked it closed.

Buffy watched, hoping for a sign that Spike knew what was going on and might awaken. Nothing. She racked her brain for some other way to cure the vampire, and thought of one. She was pretty sure it wouldn't please Angel, but it was the only way to revive Spike that she could think of.

"Angel, bite me," she said.

"What?"

"Bite me, then hold his mouth to my neck. Slayer blood cures anything, right?

"No. I won't let you do that."

"What, you did it…it didn't work, now it's my turn."

"Buffy, what if he wakes up and he's out of control, like a minion? What if he's unable to push the demon back. What if he's evil without the chip and just wants to hurt you? It's too risky, Beloved."

"It's my risk to take. He saved me, Angel. I would be dead by now if he hadn't called you and helped you take care of me. I won't let him die. Do it!"

Angel growled in frustration, concern for his mate warring with desperate anxiety for his childe. Finally he gave in and pulled Buffy to him over Spike's body. He bit deeply into her neck, sucking with powerful muscles at the blood for a moment before pushing her abruptly away. *God, she tastes like heaven!. That blood, so pure, so powerful.* It was damned difficult to let her go.

Buffy leaned over Spike and bent her neck, angling it so that the wound pressed against Spike's lips. Blood welled up and drained into Spike's mouth, where Angel massaged it down his childe's throat. At first, nothing seemed to be happening. But suddenly, Spike's game face surfaced and he clamped powerful arms around the Slayer, holding her tightly to him and sucking at her neck with painful intensity.

Buffy moaned in pain as Spike drank her, unwilling to hurt him, she began to loose consciousness from the drain. Angel tried to separate them, but Spike's hold was too strong. "Spike! Childe! Stop. I command you. Don't kill her!" he ordered, pulling and tugging at the two of them in a vain attempt to separate them. Angel could see Buffy passing out and heard Spike snarling animalistically as he fed. *God, what have I done?* he asked himself.