Two long hours had passed since Spike had felt the beginnings of the heat from the radiator behind him. By this point, the pain had been unbearable for about an hour and a half. He writhed uselessly against the chains that held him, in a fever of agony, unable to put even the slightest distance between himself and the source of his torment. His arms were stretched taut against the hot metal surface, and by now even the chains themselves had grown excruciatingly hot from their contact with the radiator.

For about twenty minutes, the thin black t-shirt he wore had provided a little protection for his shoulders. But the heat had very quickly penetrated the thin shield to sear the flesh of his shoulders and upper back.

At first he had tried to keep his mouth shut, not make a sound to indicate his pain, lest Warren should come upstairs and hear or see the proof of his weakness. But by now, he was beyond pride. All that existed was the pain, and it was impossible to hold back the cries of absolute agony that rose to his lips. By now, all he could do was lie there in suffering, wishing for death.

Except that since the heat was not from a direct flame, there was no chance that he would actually catch fire and burn to death. There was no escape. He simply had to lie there, helpless in his suffering, until Warren decided he’d had enough.

Through his haze of pain, he was not even aware that Warren had entered the room, until the boy spoke, so close to him that he jumped, startled.

“You know, all this racket is getting annoying,” Warren snapped, his voice cold and angry, and absolutely merciless. “Shut up.”

Spike wasn’t really trying to ignore him; the pain was simply too intense for him to even register the words.

Warren drew nearer to him, grabbing a handful of his hair and yanking him closer to him to snarl in his face, “Unless you want me to just gag you and go to bed and leave you here all night, you’re gonna shut up and listen to me!”

The threat was a very powerful one to Spike, who had suffered two hours of this torment already and could not imagine it lasting the rest of the night. He struggled desperately to choke back his pitiful cries of pain, shuddering and gasping needlessly for breath.

“Now,” Warren went on with a slow, satisfied nod and smile. “Are you ready to behave?”

Despising his own weakness, but just desperate to do whatever it took to make the pain stop, Spike nodded quickly, the moment that Warren released his grip on his hair to allow it.

Warren did not speak, simply kept looking at him and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

*What?* he wondered, desperately trying to think through the pain. *What does he want me to…oh! Right.* “Yes,” he whispered in a trembling voice.

Warren smiled. “Good,” he said in a soft, almost gentle voice. “And I think you owe me an apology, Spike. For the way you talked to me. Don’t you?”

Desperate, Spike nodded. “Y-yes!” he gasped. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, please!”

Warren’s smile widened, and he continued in that same chillingly soft voice, leaning in close to be sure that the pain did not prevent Spike’s hearing him. “Now I’m going to take these chains off. You’re pathetically weak and don’t stand a chance against me. You know that. You try anything…and I’ll chain you right back to the radiator…and next time I probably won’t remember to check on you for a couple days. Got it?”

Spike nodded, fighting back a bitter laugh that would surely have been seen as disrespect. What did the boy expect him to try? He couldn’t move his legs without excruciating agony; his arms were nothing but a mass of third degree burns by now. In this state, he couldn’t have attempted something if he’d wanted to. Well, ok, he did want to. Badly. He wanted to rip Warren’s intestines out and force feed them to him. But it simply was not an option at the moment.

Warren overlooked his lack of a verbal response this time, and the next thing he knew, he felt the release of the tension that had strained his arms for a week and a half, as the chain locked around the radiator was unlocked and fell to the floor. He weakly struggled to pull his arms and shoulders up away from the radiator, but was too weak to even rise.

Warren sneered as he said with mock-concern, “Let me help you with that, Buddy.” And he grabbed him around the back of the neck and yanked him up to a sitting position, then flipped him quickly over onto his stomach.

The fiery agony that tore through his body at the movement, as his seared flesh was torn away from the hot metal, and his battered legs were shifted without warning and then slammed against the floor beneath him, was more than his severely shocked system could take at the moment. He lost consciousness then, collapsing to the floor where Warren dropped him.

He didn’t know how long he had been asleep, when he finally awoke. The morning sun’s rays were filtering through the drawn curtains at the window, so he realized he had slept all night. He was lying on his stomach on the floor of the bedroom. He struggled for a moment to rise, realized that it would be an impossibility on his ravaged arms, so he laid back down and tried to remember what had happened after Warren had taken the chains off.

He was chained again, he noticed, but the chains on his wrists were thankfully cool, and he was not chained to the radiator, but to the leg of the bedframe. He weakly tested the strength of the piece of furniture against his own – and found himself pitifully lacking. At his full strength, it would have been nothing to overturn the bed and free himself. As it was, the bed didn’t budge.

But on the up side – if there was one in a situation this awful – he had a bit more freedom of movement in this position. His wrists were shackled together, but in front of him, not behind his back, and he had enough slack to rise to a sitting position beside the bed – if he could find the strength.

He took a deep breath, amazed that he felt any sense of relief in this situation – and then his thoughts were cut off by the scent that assailed his senses. Blood! He looked wildly around him, forcing himself through the pain to rise on his bandaged elbows. There it was – a bag of blood like the one Warren had brought before, right beside him, just slightly under the bed.

The pain didn’t matter anymore; all that mattered was getting to the one thing that could help to stop it. He struggled to sit up, biting back a scream that would have brought Warren up the stairs to snatch away this small blessing. He took the bag in his trembling hands, sniffing at it cautiously. The memory of the drugged blood in the Initiative came to him.

How would Robot-Boy have managed to drug this bag of hospital blood, he thought. He’s just a kid, doesn’t have that kind of access…but then, Warren had shown a sobering amount of resourcefulness and proven himself capable of things that Spike would not have thought possible over the course of the past couple of weeks.

But the blood smelled all right, and he was really too starved by this point to care. He tore the corner of the bag off with his teeth and guzzled the contents down in seconds. Really, the small amount of blood did little to soothe the ache of hunger that had been his companion for so long now. But it was a relief just to get something inside him, after nearly two weeks of starvation.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs sent an increasingly familiar fear through him. Somewhere about an hour into the torture of the evening before, he had ceased to think of Warren as an annoying little boy. Suddenly feeling a sense of panic, though he knew that Warren must have left the blood there for him, he felt the strong impulse to hide the empty bag, as if he had done something wrong in drinking it. But he didn’t. He just sat there, waiting and watching the door.

Warren smiled when he saw him. “Oh, good. You’re up.” He glanced at the bag on the floor, taking in Spike’s wide-eyed, trapped expression. “I see you found your breakfast,” he commented mildly, sitting down on the floor cross-legged facing Spike.

Spike didn’t say a word, just kept staring at him, but he did relax a little.

Warren laughed. “Still a little shook up from last night, huh?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “Well I guess you should be. Kind of a wake up call, wasn’t it? Well, now at least you know. I mean business, Spike. Messing with me, making me mad – not your smartest options.”

Warren went on for a few minutes more, the basic gist of his little speech being his incredible power and wisdom, and Spike’s relative weakness and stupidity. *Bugger all if the wanker doesn’t love the sound of his own voice,* Spike thought resentfully. His pride screamed to be released on the inside, but it was much easier today to hold it back, to just keep his bloody mouth shut and appear to be listening.

As Warren stood up, he said, “So. As long as you follow my rules, don’t do anything to piss me off…you’ll keep getting the blood. So you should start getting stronger. You’ll be able to walk again soon.” There was an optimistic note in his voice. “I think we’re gonna get along a little better now. Don’t you?”

Spike swallowed hard, nearly choking on his own pride. “Yes,” he whispered grudgingly, but his eyes flashed defiance at his captor.

Warren’s eyes narrowed slightly, obviously not happy with what he saw, and Spike felt his stomach do a little flip of fear. But Warren didn’t say anything else, didn’t do anything. He simply walked away, leaving Spike with thoughts of his own pathetic fear and weakness, despising himself for giving in even in the slightest to the sadistic little creep.

For the first time since his capture, the thought of escape did not enter his mind.


As Xander sat on the couch, Buffy’s head resting comfortably on his shoulder, his arm around her, his heart felt so full he thought it might burst. After his recent self-imposed loneliness, it would have felt good to share this closeness with anyone. But this was *Buffy* -- the object of his adoration, openly or in secret, for six years now.

Even while he had been with Anya, he knew there was a small part of his heart – okay, maybe not so small – that still belonged to Buffy and always would, whether she wanted to claim it or not. It had been his uncomfortable suspicion that, despite his love for Anya, if Buffy had suddenly decided she wanted him, he would have run to her in a second. And this suspicion, he now admitted to himself, was what had started him down the road of fear and uncertainty that had led to his leaving Anya at the altar.

For years he had dreamed of the possibility that Buffy might someday want him. Now, when she raised her head to smile up at him, he almost thought he was in heaven. Almost. If he had been in heaven, he would not see the haunted, hurting look that was still in her eyes.

“What is it, Buffy?” he asked her gently, holding her gaze.

She laid her head back down on his shoulder, mostly as an excuse to break eye contact, he suspected. She was silent for so long that he thought she didn’t intend to answer, until she finally spoke.

“It was my fault, you know.” Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact, but still held such raw hurt that Xander almost flinched.

“Buffy – every girl thinks that when something like this happens. That’s the way abusers work, Buffy. They make their victims feel like it’s all they’re fault, they’re worthless, just fit to be used, so that then they don’t complain or seek out help – so they can control them. And the victim just kind of accepts it, thinks it’s her who’s got the problem, it’s her fault. But it’s not, Buffy. No one deserves to be hurt like that.”

He realized as he finished speaking that Buffy had gone completely still against him. He felt her body tense up, and heard her gasp back a little sob. When he gently pulled away, holding her by the shoulders to look her in the eyes with concern, he saw a wide-eyed, stricken expression on her face.

“Oh, God, Xander,” she whispered. “Oh my God.”

“What, Buffy? What is it?” he asked, a little frightened. Instead of relieving her sense of guilt, judging by the expression on her face, his words had somehow increased it.

She just shook her head, refusing to answer, and then pulled away from his arms. “I’m tired, Xand. I’m gonna go home I think.”

“Buffy…wait….”

“No, I’m okay,” she insisted, forcing a smile. “Really. I’ve just gotta go.”

“Buffy,” he said urgently, catching her arm. She turned to face him, a patient look on her face. “You can’t keep putting this much guilt on yourself, blaming yourself because he hurt you. You keep doing that to yourself, and eventually…something’s gotta give.”

To his dismay, her eyes widened, and she looked even more upset. “Xander…I’m okay, really. I’ll see you later…okay?” she whispered, her eyes pleading.

“Okay,” he replied in defeat, and she left quickly, leaving him to wonder if his friend was ever really going to be okay again.