She was chained to the earth.

They were unbreakable, holding her bound to the whims of it as it slashed and clawed its way through her. Binding her to the ground, to the land and the sky, and everything in between as inexorably as they did to the rock wall behind her. And still, it continued to claw within her, tearing and remaking, breaking apart everything that made her. Molding her into something…else.

(I don’t want to be this.)(It doesn’t matter, you already are.)(No, I’m not, I’m me, I’m just me.)(Wrong. You’re so much more. And now, now that hell walks the Earth, now that Acathla has awaken after centuries of forced slumber, you’re more than even that.)

It was that something else that scared her, but she couldn’t break out of the (dream/vision/memory), and that frightened her more than anything. And still, the pain continued, organs that felt as if they were removed and put back in, skin that stretched and stretched, and was so very thin she knew it was going to split and everything was going to come pouring out, and oh, God, please let it end!

But it didn’t, and her cries went unheard as the black entity continued to invade her body, to shape and reshape, and fight something deep, deep within her, until there was no hope for it, and she knew she was going to die; it was really only a matter of time, and then, at least, this agony would end. Oh, please let the agony end.

She’d do anything for it to end, anything, but please, MAKE IT STOP!

No one listened. They heard her, but they did not care. They did not listen to her pleas for release, her cries of pain, her begging. They watched with impassive eyes as it devoured, and she thought she heard a laugh coming from them but wasn’t sure. She couldn’t hear anything over her own pounding heartbeat, the blood pumping through her, the cries echoing in her head, and the dark blackness consuming her.

And then it stopped.

Just like that. It ended and there was nothing left. No, there was more. Slowly raising her head, eyes black with knowledge, and pure white with power, she raised her head and looked at the three men standing before her. Her mind screamed at her – what had they done? What evil had they released to consume her so? What did they do to her?

(‘What did you do to me,’ she demanded, but they did not answer. No, they looked at her with impassive eyes, old and hard, and they said nothing. Then, as if something commanded them to do just that, one said, ‘We made you.’)

She asked none of those questions, for she already had the answers. No, the one burning question she had was why. Why had they done this? Why had they let loose such a creature on one of their own? Why had they forced this rape upon her?

Breaking free from the chains that held her to the land, she threw them at the trio, catching them unawares. Instead of knocking them backwards, of wounding them, of hurting them as they had her, the chains wrapped around them, tying them to the Earth as they had so brutally done to her.

“You will never own me,” she told them in a language long dead, the guttural sounds hissing over the short distance between them.

“We already do,” they said, speaking together.

“You are wrong, and We will show you.”

Turning from the three High Priests, she left the cave, entering the bright sunlight. It burned. Searing through her as if she were the evil to be burnt away with cleansing fire. Roaring in pain, the Thing within her cowered in terror, too, and it was then that they bonded.

The Priests had done this to Them, had cursed the two of Them to this, to a lifetime (several lifetimes, a thousand thousand lifetimes) of this pain. Of hiding in the day, of hunting in the night, of tracking that which They feared and that which They were.

It broke something, deep within the land, something primal and vicious, and yet it balanced it at the same time, and the land sighed in relief. This was it then, this was the defining moment when evil was countered by good, and the demons that so brazenly walked the earth now hid in the shadows, hiding from one of their own. Cowering in terror.

The Human and the Demon were now irrevocably joined into something more, something neither knew, and yet something which they both (knew, craved, needed, hated, hunted, hid).

The First Slayer walked into the sunlight, letting it burn away the demon within…no, not burn. Letting it seep into her so that they were one. And that night, still chained to the land in ways she did not know, would never know, She hunted. Released Her need to fight, to dominate, to obliterate, and the demon roared. Predator/Prey. Hunter/Hunted. Slayer/Vampire.

She could feel them, feel them scattered across Her land, Her world, and so She set out to destroy them…and to free the land from their taint.
~~~~~~~~~~
Faith woke with a start, heart pounding at the (dream/memory/vision) she’d just experienced.

What was that? What the fuck was that? Was that one of those prophesy dreams Julie always told her about? Or was it something else? Something…far, far more ancient. She looked at her wrists, expecting to see the manacles that held that first slayer to the world, that chained her to the earth, that tied her to the world she was meant to protect. There was nothing there.

No chains, no restraints, nothing but her own pale skin, smooth and unbruised.

“Faith?” Doyle asked, “You alright, lass?”

She jerked again at the voice, forgetting for a moment what the sound was, what the words meant, what language was. It took her another moment to nod her head, to answer in the language that Doyle spoke in, and not the long forgotten guttural tongue that First Slayer had used.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, her throat on fire from screams not her own, her insides felt like they were pounded by a very large hammer. What the fuck was all that about?

“Bad dream?” he resettled himself next to her. They were in Maine now, having traveled across the US, and were now looking for a way to cross the Atlantic. London beckoned, that and the Watcher’s Council with their resources, texts, supplies, and weapons. He still thought that was a bad idea, but Julie had more sway over the slayer than he.

“Yeah,” Faith mumbled again, but didn’t go into details. She wasn’t sure what to say, or really how to say it. The dream, while making complete sense to her, jumbled when she thought of how to put it into words, how to tell the half-demon beside her just what the hell happened in her sleep.

“This place,” Doyle said with a sigh, when it was clear she wasn’t going to tell him anything about her dream. “It breeds nightmares. Everything here is a walking terror, after you for some reason or other – wanting to eat you, drink you, play with your eyeballs. It’s no wonder they seep into your sleep.”

It wasn’t that, but she didn’t tell him so (couldn’t, didn’t want to, wasn’t sure how to). Instead, she rolled over, tugging the thin pillow into a more comfortable position, and said, “Whatever it is, I’m alone. In the end, I’m always alone.”

Doyle wanted to question her on that, wanted to know what she meant by those words. What did she dream of that had her speaking in tongues, and begging to be let free from the earth?
~~~~~~~~~~
Buffy jerked awake, trembling and disoriented.

Angelus’ hands held her steady against him, his arm tight about her middle, his face a mask of concern as he said something to her. Frantic, she shook her head, unable to understand what he asked, and looked to her wrists. Nothing. There was nothing there. No chains, no bonds forcing her to the ground, as she was raped, defiled, and remade.

Tears tracked down her face, but still she couldn’t say what was wrong with her. Vaguely, she felt Angelus wrap her in his arms, lifting her up and holding her close as she shook her head, mumbling that she didn’t want this, that she wasn’t a thing to force to their will. She was, and they had sullied that, making Her Them, and they never realized what they had unleashed upon the world.

Buffy didn't realize that her words weren’t in English.

“Shh, baby,” he cooed to her, rocking her lightly in their bed. He combed the hair away from her face, and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. She still cried, babbling that she didn’t want it, that this wasn’t right. They’d done this to her, they’d forced this on her.

Angelus wasn’t sure what language she spoke, the words in their harsh tongue foreign to him even as he understood them, but didn’t care. She was terrified, rubbing her wrists as if expecting to see something there, holding her, tying her, binding her.

(No one can touch you, lover; no one has the right to hold you, to speak to you, to tie you to them…but me.)

What had she dreamed that terrified her so? The events of the last weeks had served only to force her to grow, to become the woman she was always meant to be. Not to break her, not to reduce her to tears, not to terrify her so.

“Buffy?” he asked, pulling her away from him to look at her face. She’d calmed slightly, her tears had stopped, but she still held onto him as if by letting go, she’d become lost in the current.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

“They had me,” she said after a moment, forcing her muddled mind to remember English, remember the only language she’d ever known, and yet when Angelus spoke to her, she couldn’t understand him.

“God, they had me, I was chained, they wouldn’t let me go, and there was crying.” She didn’t know where the crying came from, but it was loud and echoing, and it haunted her. “Screaming and pain. I couldn’t break free, the chains had me, tied me to the earth. Bound me to it, and I couldn’t break away.”

“Who did?” This time his words were a demand, but his touch was still exquisitely tender.

Turning her face to his palm, Buffy breathed deeply and tried to calm herself. His embrace was comforting. Safe. It made her heart slow, and her fear ease. Shifting further into his arms, wrapping them around her and resting her head against his bare chest, she breathed deeply of his scent. Powerful Angelus, his own unique scent and the scent of her, of their recently spent passion, and something else, something…earthy.

“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. (Earth, we are bound to the Earth. We are one, and We are balance.)

His arms tightened even further. “What did you dream of?”

“Chains, a cave,” she closed her eyes, partly to remember the dream scenes, partly to block them out. “They bound me…her…to the cave wall and forced me…raped me.”

She shivered, her breath hitched again. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

“Shh,” he repeated, rocking her. “Nothing happened, I’ve got you, love, and I’m never letting you go.”

What scared her so much? What had her seeking solace in his arms? Oh, he didn’t mind, not at all, but he didn’t like her so frightened over something she couldn’t even remember.

“Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Hank looked out his cell, unbelievably bored.

This wasn’t what prison was supposed to be like, was it? The boredom, the absolute nothing to do, the pain in his ass dungeon mates. He was a prisoner in his daughter’s lover’s dungeons, and he had nothing to do. Nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to paint! He couldn’t even draw a stick figure, but if he had to, he could paint a mural right now.

“Bloody hell,” Spike mumbled, pacing the small confines of his own cell. “At least give me a bloody TV!”

There was no answer, but none of them were surprised. Willow had read through the books Buffy brought – yesterday? Last week? A month ago? – who could tell in here. Time meant nothing; it crawled by in boring minutes, with no one talking, no one willing to ease the tedium for everyone else.

Oh, Buffy came to visit, seemingly every day though it was hard to tell. But with the hostility that emanated from the cells, why would she want to return? Joyce was hardly the supportive mother, despite a very real try to be so…afterwards.

“Honey, I’m sorry for what I said,” Joyce told her daughter during one visit, Hank sitting next to her. Privacy wasn’t to be had in their new home. “I didn’t mean it – that you couldn’t return. I-I was just in shock. Well, okay, angry, too. It’s a lot to take in, and I’m afraid what with the police there, accusing you of all those things, it…”

“It’s okay, mom,” Buffy smiled, and Hank was reminded what a beautiful daughter he had. Alive and vibrant, full of live and love…and forgiveness. She was full of forgiveness and light, and he had to wonder just where she came from with two selfish parents such as he and Joyce.

The apology, while heartfelt, hadn’t helped the situation, however. Oh, Buffy now talked to her mother, and Joyce was no longer glaring at her only child, but that didn’t stop the discomfort. It was heavy in the air, weighing everything with the new roles everyone played.

Or it could have been the thick Hell air. Hank wasn’t sure.

The door opened and their food entered, the burly guard assigned to the task glaring at the humans in the cages as if they’d actually try something. What, Hank wondered. What could they try? What could they do that would do them any good?

Nothing. Not a damn thing. They were trapped here, and the sooner, he realized, they all accepted that, the better.

And therein lay the crux of the problem. They hadn’t accepted their new lot in life. It was sad, beyond inhumane, but they were prisoners now. Kept in cages with a strictly regimented life, allowed none of the creature comforts they were used to, none of the freedoms.

The guard left, after delivering their trays of carefully balanced lunch – dinner? No, lunch; they’d had breakfast already, fresh fruits and some kind of dairy that tasted mostly like milk. He returned with an ornately decorated goblet of what had to be blood for Spike, and left again.

As Hank ate his salad and meat – he didn’t want to think what kind it was, better not to ask – the guard returned. With a television set for Spike. Cheered, the vampire rubbed his hands together in glee and flicked it on.

Static filled the air.

“Bloody hell,” he groaned, flopping back on his cot and narrowly missing banging his head on the bars. “Fuck me, isn’t this typical.”

“There are no TV stations left?” This was from Xander, who no doubt also wanted the diversion. “The inhumanity of it all!”

“Of course not,” Giles said, though it wasn’t with the lecture tone Hank now recognized. It was with the resigned tone of a man who just now realized something more about their situation. “Why would there be? The world isn’t ours any longer. It’s Angelus’. And I doubt very much he has need of television.”

“The least he could have done,” Spike grumbled, “Is leave the pay-per-view channels alone.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Buffy looked exhausted. She wasn’t sleeping well at all, haunted by the images from the dream she’d had of the First Slayer. The Slayer who began this all, the one who was forced into this servitude…

(We will not serve, We will lead. We Will hunt. We will be.)

Not servitude. It was something both more and less than that.

She was indentured to the priests who’d forced this on her, but she was master of the land and all her inhabitants. She was dominate there.

Buffy stretched, working the kinks out of her shoulders. It’d been a while since she worked out like this. It hadn’t seemed that long, but then her sense of time was all askew, so it didn’t count.

She’d all but begged Angelus to give her a room where she could do this, where she could pound on something without his interference, without him glowering at her that she was in danger. Ha, what did he know? She wasn’t in danger, not in this place – except from maybe over-fawning…could you actually die of that? It took away something from her hunt when the vampires were weak, confined to a small space, and usually taken care of by Angelus before she got a good workout.

“Feeling better, lover?” The smooth voice of Angelus broke through her post-pounding high, and Buffy whirled to face him.

“Yes,” she smiled, feeling loose and strong once more.

“Good,” he nodded, moving forward with the grace of the predator he was. “Then it’s time for your next lesson.”

Buffy quirked an eyebrow, her blood already quickening. Lust pooled low in her belly at the thought of what Angelus meant to teach her now, even as she tensed. She was weak, and knew it. Weak with lust for her demon lover, weak with need for him and all he now was to her. She didn’t understand it all, but hadn’t the courage yet to ask.

There were a lot of things she wanted to ask him.

The laughter was low and sensual, gliding over her skin like a caress. “Hmm, yes, lover, that kind of lesson, too. But no, this is something different.”

“Different? I don’t understand.” She was standing before him now, part of her ready to jump him and take what she knew he could give her. Part of her wanted to stay as she was, the victim…

Not the victim. She wasn’t a victim; no, she was here freely. She was here because he’d taken her family hostage to ensure her being here, true; but she could have said no. It would have killed everyone below, but she could have said no. And then she wouldn’t have this burden, she wouldn’t have this…this crisis of conscience.

She wasn’t going to be the victim. No, not any more. She was going to be proactive about this.

Yes, Buffy realized as she looked at Angelus, watching him as he watched her in the silence of the room he’d given her. Yes, she was going to stop being the coward, hiding behind her friends and family. Hiding behind whatever Angelus threw at her, demanding of her, forcing from her.

She was the Slayer. She was descended from a girl who hadn’t a choice and took that helplessness thrust upon her and made it hers. The First Slayer didn’t let them control her, didn’t let them use her for their own ends. Oh, eventually the Priests that evolved into the Watcher’s Council had exerted enough influence or intimidation to have control over their slayers, but not the first ones.

Not the First.

Buffy wasn’t going to be one of them…like Kendra. Kendra was a mindless drone, and while her death weighed heavily on Buffy’s shoulders, there was nothing she could have done to help her. Kendra wasn’t going to listen to something not told to her by the Council. And now, Kendra was dead.

Something changed in her eyes, and Angelus wondered what it was. Wondered what she thought that had the light he’d longed to see there permanently. Longed to see that light – passion and life – not just when she was mindless in passion. Not just when she was eager to see her friends below. But all the time.

“Angelus,” she murmured, resting her hands on his arms.

The insight she’d just had scared her. She knew, deep within her, that she’d have to embrace this sooner or later, but this…not this. This was different. This was scary, and it was staring her in the face, waiting to devour her if she did something wrong.

Then again, the epiphany from a moment ago came from the First Slayer, a girl who was dead millennia ago.

Leaning into him, she pressed her lips to his, softly, gently, hinting at promise. Buffy didn’t say anything else, couldn’t. Wasn’t sure what to say, but then maybe now wasn’t the time for words.

His arms went around her, possessively, and he deepened the kiss. He still didn’t know what caused the change in her – the mental connection that occasionally flared between them wasn’t working today – but he also didn’t care. This was the change he’d been waiting for.

Oh, he still planned on everything he’d already set into motion – he wasn’t letting those in the dungeon free, he wasn’t letting Buffy out of his sight any more than he already did, and he certainly wasn’t letting the world free from his grasp – but this…this was a step.

Laying her on the floor, he purposely gentled his touch. This was Buffy’s first step towards accepting him fully – as her god, as her equal, as her mate.
~~~~~~~~~~
Later, when she could remember how to breathe, when her heart wasn’t pounding and her blood wasn’t racing, Buffy rolled on her side.

She was still naked, lying on the workout mate in her personal room, utterly sated from Angelus, and, surprisingly enough, Buffy wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t afraid of her passions, of what she felt in Angelus’ arms, nor was she afraid to show him. Not any longer.

Well, maybe. Just a little. Okay, maybe a lot. She just wasn’t going to let that stop her.

“Was that the next lesson?” Buffy smiled, running a hand over his cool chest, fascinated by the differences between them.

“No,” Angelus laughed, capturing her hand and bringing it to his lips. His other snaked around her lush body, bringing her closer to him, and Buffy settled more comfortably against him, tangling her legs with his.

“That was…something else.” Promise, it was a promise; passion, it was never-ending; love. And that was the heart of it all.

“No, my love, your next lesson is more scholarly in nature.” He sent her a wicked smirk when she frowned in confusion. “It’s time you learned about your new god and Acathla’s world.”

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