Chapter 3:

Cigars, Cigarettes, Razors!

by Quwinntessa Starber

<Another night.> Willow thought as she lit the many candles that had become her only source of light. Shortly after Spike left, Willow had fallen into a deep dream filled sleep. When she’d awoken, the sun had been high in the sky. Because of the position of the window she realized she had a million-dollar view; one that faced out over the great expanse of the ocean. Which ocean, she wasn’t quite sure, she didn’t know what time of day it had been either. Spike had said that she’d been out for four days. That was plenty of time for a vampire with his resources to get one girl to the other side of the country—or even beyond. His remark about them being somewhere the Slayer couldn’t find them, made the possibilities of their location innumerable. She tried not to think about it.

Moving from the last candle she crossed the large room and sat down on the floor before the fire. Pressing her back to the front of the chair so that her head tipped back to the cushion of the sitting portion, Willow examined the ceiling for a few moments, watching the light from the fire and the fifty or so candles play across the texture revealing hidden pictures.

Reaching up her hand to the dark marble table beside her, Willow brought the loaf of bread down to her level and tore off a hunk and stuck it into her mouth.

When she’d awoken for the first time during the day, she’d found a tray of food sitting on the black table; a loaf of French bead, a small hunk of cheese, and a bottle of water. The food had sickened her at first, but she’d been thankful for the water.

After getting up this second time, she’d found a small door she’d taken at first to be a closet, was really the door to a private wash room. She’d taken a few of the candles into the room and had a long warm bath to try to clear her head. When she’d finished, she dressed in her old clothes and lit the rest of the candles.

Now as she sat in front of the blazing fire all she could do was wait for her host to return to her. Normally—if she were in her right mind—Willow would have been terrified at being trapped in a room with Spike, the Master of Sunnydale, and the one vampire who had kidnapped her and promised her death. But she wasn’t in her right mind. All she could see was Oz and…it didn’t matter. Death was a welcomed friend now, and Spike was the death man’s chaffer.

She felt rather than heard his approach to her cell. The feeling of a dog who’s master has beaten him one to many times and now sits and waits for the next blow without emotion, came immediately to her mind; she ignored it. Willow sat where she was, head tipped back chewing quietly on a bite of bread and cheese, as the door opened and closed again.

Spike for his part was trying to look past the obviousness of her prone position. Head thrown back bearing her neck to the waiting vampire, the girl looked like a child sacrifice to a great dragon in this room lit only by firelight. He knew what she was trying to do, offer herself quietly, letting him know that she wasn’t going to put up a struggle. But for all that he understood what she was doing, her head thrown back like this, neck bared, firelight reflecting off her long red hair, it was one of the most erotic pictures he had ever been witness too. In that moment she was a thousand times more beautiful than Drusilla had ever been. And that one revelation was what was causing him to stay were he was, by the closed door, watching this red haired temptress with no desire to live, throw herself to the waiting jaws of the dragon.

He was trapped and he knew it. So like any great vampire, he played it off. "I didn’t think you’d still be tired, Red. Want some more time to sleep?" His smile was forced; he could feel the strain pull his muscles tight as he waited for her answer.

Willow turned her head, exposing the left side of her neck to Spikes hungry eyes. He couldn’t help it, he licked his lips. Smiling a knowing smile, Willow looked enticingly at her keeper. "Only if it’s the permanent kind. Think you could help me?"

<Damn it, she’s doing it again! What the hell is wrong with her?> "Damn it Red, what in the hell’s wrong with you?! You’re the only person I know who actually wants to die!"

For a fraction of a second, Willow’s eyes grew wide with fear. Then like a cloud over the moon, she was indifferent again. Spike couldn’t take it anymore. He was angry at himself for even caring what the little chit was feeling. <It’s not as if I’m souled or something equally as vampire stupefying. Her defiance is just grating the hell out of me!>

After he’d left her room the night before, he’d gone to the kitchen to bring her up something to eat. He wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing. To keep himself sane, he just chalked it up to all those years of taking care of Dru. But for some unknown reason, he knew that wasn’t the real reason. He tried not to think about it.

Once he’d gotten back up to the room with the food, he’d found that she’d fallen asleep. After laying the food on the table, Spike had walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed and watched the fallen red head sleep. In sleep, she looked almost happy, innocent like she didn’t when she was awake and her eyes haunted with a strange stillness.

That day he’d dreamed of her eyes haunting him from one corner of the house to the other, calling out to him to save her. He wasn’t sure why, but even in his dreams, he’d followed the sound of her voice as it permeated the seaside mansion, trying to find this lost child. For that is what he saw now as he looked at her prone form, just as he’d seen it in his dreams, a child. A child so utterly lost that it caused a two-hundred-year-old killer to feel compassion towards her.

In the end, he hadn’t found her, instead his dream self had taken him to the small door that let into her private bathroom, before it had stopped and he’d awoken to gasping breaths.

After the dream, sleep seemed pointless and he’d gone to check on her. He’d heard her moving around her bedroom, but a cold chill had passed over him as he’d heard her turn the water on for a bath. Thinking back to his dream, Spike had remained in the hallway outside her bedroom door, until he’d heard her again moving around her room after her bath. Only then, when he’d known that the bathroom door was shut tight, did he return to his quarters—just down the hall—and awaited the night.

Now as he stood in the doorway to her elegant room, he couldn’t help but glance away from the prone body of his suicidal captive to the flush wood door that moved into the adjoining washroom. Again the chill passed over him.

Willow’s eyes tracked the sudden movement of Spike as he rushed upon the bathroom door and went inside. Getting up from her position by the fire, Willow moved to follow the vampire into the room. Chilled from the loss of the fire’s heat, she shivered as she came into contact with the tiled floor.

The room was pitch black, the only light coming through the doorway she was herself currently blocking with her body; so she didn’t see Spike withdraw from the room. The contact was light, just the material of his Poet shirt brushing against her unclothed arm, but it was enough. A small shriek escaped her lips as she backed way from the vampire she could not see. Stumbling over the edge of the carpeting that harold the main room, Willow braced herself for the fall she was in no capacity to prevent.

Suddenly, strong cool arms wrapped themselves around her waist and shoulders, catching her in mid-decent. In the blink of an eye, Willow found herself flush against the hard body of her savior.

The next thing that happened startled both her and Spike, but as he shifted his hold on her just slightly, Willow released the tension in her muscles and leaned into him.

He could feel the muscles shift under his hands and as the tension eased from her body he took more of her weight onto himself and cradled her in the protection of his arms. Using his heightened sense of smell he took in the delicate scent of her hair—the smell of a flower he couldn’t place wafted back at him and he basked in the sense of warmth that was this fragile girl. Bringing his hand up from her shoulder, he began to lightly pet her hair and whisper soothingly to her that he was sorry for scaring her.

For her part, Willow was in a place she thought was out of limits for her. Here in this monster’s arms, she’d found something she so desperately needed but could not name. At his soft words and light hands, she found herself snuggling into him and reveling in the solid expanse of his chest.

For a minute she forgot, as his hands worked wonders on her senses, that she was a prisoner. She forgot what she was trying to hide in the bathroom. But as she felt his hand about her waist tighten, felt the sharp edge of metal against her skin, she tensed immediately and look up into his face.

Spike wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he knew the feeling he and Willow were creating was one that he could never remember feeling with is cold dark goddess. She was like warm inviting sand, she molded into the impressions his muscles created and filled him with a heat he thought he’d forgotten to time and the nights his demon lived in. But now she tensed and suddenly realizing that he now knew what had been in the washroom; and it was time he confronted her. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.

Pulling away from her slightly, but still keeping his arms about her, he looked into her eyes and saw the question there.

"You know exactly what I found, don’t you, Willow?"

She couldn’t remember him ever using her real name, so she was startled into answering his question. "Yes."

Nodding his head, Spike moved the hand he had about her waist up into view of both of them. Shifting his other arm from around her shoulders to around her waist he kept her in his tight embrace where though she was still tensed, she had not made to move away.

In the light of the candles, the gleam of fire off metal caused the tiny razor blade to sparkle. Spike held it between two fingers now and due to his vampire enhanced senses, he could not only see, but also smell the blood on the razor.

While in the blackened bathroom, Spike had instantly known why he’d been drawn to the room. The smell of innocent blood permeated the walls around him, threatening to overwhelm him. He’d caught the glint of the razor blade just before Willow had walked into the room. It was the scent that rolled off of her that caused him to step back and nearly collide into her. In the moments after catching her, he’d been distracted by…her. Too distracted to notice the smell of blood. Just a little, the type of blood letting that accompanies testing a knife for sharpness against a thumb.

Now as Spike took a full step away from her, he could smell her essence more fully and it threatened again to overwhelm him. Kneeling down before her, like a man to pray before a goddess, he slipped his hands under the bottom of her long T-shirt and meant to pull it up a little before her hands flew to his and stopped the progress of both the T-shirt and his hands.

Willow knew it was over, but she didn’t want him to see the evidence that would incriminate her. Her eyes met his in a silent plea to stop, but a slight shake of Spike’s head ‘No’ caused her to drop her hands and wait for what was about to come.

The minute her hands left his, Spike stood and in a move he would later wonder about, lifted her into his arms and carried the unstrugling girl to the bed and laid her out on her back. With her arms slightly away from her body, he looked into her face and asked. "How bad is it, Luv?"

She couldn’t look at him. Turning her head to the side, she stared into the fire as Spike’s adept fingers lifted her shirt and exposed the flesh of her toned stomach. She heard him draw in a quick breath and wondered for a split second that she had made him draw oxygen. Then at the sound of her name on his lips, she turned her attention back to him.

She didn’t understand the look on his face. He was a killer after all, but just then the look on his face said otherwise. The look read across the spectrum. There was anger, pity, and for just a second a look of real worry. It was the worry that caught her attention and she suddenly felt a need to reassure him. "It’s not that bad really, I’m ok, it doesn’t hurt."

"Doesn’t hurt! You carved yourself up like a Jack-o-Lantern from hell! Don’t tell me this doesn’t hurt!" He punctuated his remark by poking a finger at one of the diagonal lines that ran across her stomach in a criss-cross pattern that created diamonds all over her stomach. His finger touched the skin that curled under itself and away from the cut. At the contact, Willow flinched but didn’t cry out. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut tight and waited for the waves of pain to cease washing over her stomach.

Spike saw her expression and pulled his hand back. Looking over her entire frame he noticed the cuts seemed without pattern and were semi deep in some places, light welts in others. It looked to him like the type of cuts he’d inflicted on hundreds of his victims over the years; cuts designed not to kill, but to cause vast amounts of pain.

"Why?" He didn’t know what else to say to her.

She was quiet for a moment, while she let the question wash over her like the pain. Then opening her eyes she looked at him and gave a half hearted grin. "I guess," the grin faded away. "It didn’t hurt when I did it."

"You were in the bathtub at the time." It wasn’t a question, but Willow nodded her confirmation anyway. Again the same question. "Why?"

She shrugged her shoulders, which caused the skin of her stomach to stretch and she grimaced slightly. "It made me feel better, I guess."

So simple really, the truth, where so many other lies could have been uttered, she’d spoken the absolute and total truth. He watched her face as the obvious pain from her torn skin showed on it like a book; but along with the pain he saw a determination, one that spoke volumes to a vampire as old and accomplished in the ways of torture as he was. Done. It was the look of a person who had finally conceded to death and was only waiting for the final blow. And it was then that Spike realized he couldn’t bear to see that look on this little girl’s face. For he’d decided just that, she was nothing but a little, lost girl, and she’d found a spot in his heart he’d thought long dead. Maybe it was because she seemed so much like his insane goddess, but he reasoned it was something completely different, something he couldn’t figure out right now because he had other things that had to be done first.

Rising from the bed, Spike went to the bathroom. Returning a few moments later he carried a towel and a basin filled with luke warm water. Placing the basin on the nightstand he proceeded to clean the wounds as delicately as possible. At her grimacing face, he began to speak to her in a low tone that seemed to draw Willow out of the pain that threatened to encompass her.

With determination, she listened to what he said and found a strange sense of comfort from the words he spoke. "The cuts should heal, but some of the deeper ones, may scare, I’m not quite sure at this point. Don’t worry about it though, Ducks, you’ll be fine. I’m not going to let anything hurt you again…shhhh, shhhh, I know, I know…I’m almost done pet. You don’t have to do this ever again. I know it hurts now, Luv, but I promise I’ll make it better…I’ll make it all better. Shhh…almost done. Do you like blackberries? How about raspberries? There’s a path along the shore that has a few bushes, I’m not sure which kind of berry grows on it, but as soon as you’re up to it we’ll go take a look, sound good? I’m sorry, Willow, this one’s deep, it’ll be over in just a sec Luv, promise…there, better? The berries should be ripe now, at least I’m pretty sure they will be, it’s been a while since I’ve eaten any, but you can tell me if they are or not later. How’s that sound?"

Lifting her hand from her side, Willow touched his wrist, causing Spike to stop and stare at first their joined hands and then her face. A roguish smile stole over his handsome face. "Don’t tell me, you hate berries, right?"

A shy smile stole over her face then. "No I like berries, it’s just I won’t be able to have any."

"Why’s that, Luv?"

"Because the first chance I have, I’m going to try to finish this." She moved her hand across her torso indicating the open cuts. Spike knew she didn’t mean finish the messy pattern, but the wish she had to kiss death goodnight.

Smiling down at her, the emotion touched his eyes, and caused them to crinkle. "We’ll pick those berries, Willow. And once you’ve tasted them, you can tell me if they’re ripe or not." Pausing he examine her face and saw the hint of her recognition of his power over her. Moving his hand to her face he caressed it for a moment before he caught her eyes again. "I’m not going to let you go, Red. I think it’s safe to say you’ve bewitched me; and while I don’t quite know what I’m doing right now, I’ll figure it out in time. Until then, you just worry about not moving too much until these wounds heal. I think when it doesn’t hurt you to stand anymore I’ll show you the rest of your home. It doesn’t seem right to keep you locked-up here in this room all day, now does it?"

He saw the desperation flash into her eyes and his heart lurched at it. "Please Spike, I just want to go, ok? Please understand, I just want this to be over with. Please…please."

Placing a cool finger over her lips, he hushed her and gave her a quick smile. "I don’t know what hurt you, Red, but eventually, when you’re ready, you’ll tell me. Until then, just know that nothing is going to hurt you ever again."

"Spike I don’t want this, I just want to-"

"Shhhh, Luv, get some rest."

With that, he rose from the bed and took the basin tinged pink into the washroom. When he came out he gave her another smile and moved towards the door.

"I’m not really sure about this thing I feel for you, Pet, but I’m not ready to ignore it yet. It seems ri…I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out. I knew a girl once, when I was still alive, who’s father used to beat her something awful. She used to take her father’s razor to the bruises he’d made and carve smiley faces into her body. She once told me that it made her feel better knowing she was the one causing the pain and not her father. That and I saw an info-mercial on it once. Whoever hurt you, will pay, I promise you that. Until then, you don’t have to worry about causing yourself anymore pain to cover up the old ones," another soft smile. "No more pain to for you my Red Queen, I won’t stand for it."

With that he left the room. As the lock sounded in the door, Willow looked to the ceiling and pondered over his words. When she fell asleep hours later, she still didn’t understand any more than the fact that Spike wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t know if that thought made her want to laugh or cry.

chapter 2

chapter 4

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