Buffy stalked furiously toward the cemetery at a quick, determined pace, her eyes flashing with slowly building rage. She could scarcely believe that it was true – the monster who had brutally devastated the man she loved was bound and at her mercy in the old crypt. Finally, she was going to be able to make him pay for what he had done – and make sure once and for all that he could never, ever do it again.

As she walked, Warren’s many offenses played themselves over and over in her mind. She thought of the scars Spike still bore, might always bear, on his back and arms from the cruel burning from the radiator; thought of the beatings Spike had received at Warren’s hands, without mercy, day after day, and for the slightest offenses.

She remembered Spike telling her in a hesitant voice, haunted and aching with hurt and fear even after all this time, of the brutal torture sessions in Warren’s basement, the pleasure Warren had taken in inflicting horrific agony on him, masking his own cruelty by calling it “research”.

She still held in her memory the vivid image of the battered, emaciated body of her lover, the day she had found him and brought him home, so ravaged by forced starvation that he barely had the strength to stand, so broken by abuse that he hardly even dared to accept the nourishment she had offered him.

She could feel her fury building up inside her, growing stronger, boiling up within her until she could barely manage to restrain it, as she thought back on Spike’s halting, shame-filled admission of the degradation and violation of the sexual abuse Warren had unleashed upon him with sadistic pleasure. He had had no intention of Spike’s ever leaving his house, and had therefore seen no reason to curb his basest desires, seeking out ever worsening ways to humiliate and abase his victim in his quest to satisfy his penchant for absolute power and domination.

Just the thought of the heartless little pervert’s using the man she loved so viciously and remorselessly set a murderous fire of rage smoldering in her chest.

But worst of all, worse even than that, was the damage that had yet to heal -- the emotional wounds resulting from the cruel words that had accompanied all the other abuses, telling him over and over with both words and actions that he was worthless, pathetic, deserving of the pain and humiliation he had suffered, a sub-human slave fit only to be used for the pleasure of his human master.

Driven home repeatedly with disturbing, almost textbook-accurate brainwashing and psychological breaking techniques which Warren had obviously put a lot of thought and planning into, those unhealthy ideas were still a daily battle for Spike. The thought patterns that told him that he could never expect any better than that life of misery, that he deserved nothing more and would eventually be cast down again, still echoed in his mind.

She knew it was true, though he tried his best not to worry her, to hide it and make her think everything was all right. He *was* getting better, regaining his confidence and self-esteem, she knew; but there was still a deep insecurity that he wrestled with on a daily basis, as she had seen just tonight. She had clearly seen the fear in his eyes, that his small offense of going along with Dawn’s lie might somehow have forfeited her love for him.

There was still an incredible amount of healing needed before he would regain his old confidence and assurance. One month of love, tenderness, and affirmation was not enough to undo five months of shattering abuse and degradation.

No. She had to admit, she realized, angry tears streaming from her eyes, Spike was struggling to recover from much more than the events of the past five months. Warren may have been the one to victimize Spike…but she had prepared him to be a victim.

For nearly a year before the incident in her bathroom had driven Spike to his terrible fate, she had repeatedly trained him to believe the words that Warren would later say to him. She had called him worthless, disgusting, evil and soulless, making it clear to him at every opportunity that she saw him as less than her, unworthy and incapable of ever making anything better of himself.

She had taught him to accept the physical abuse as his due. Often, whenever she felt irritated with him or frustrated or had simply had a bad day, she had taken it out on him, striking out with her fists as well as her words, and showing no remorse or concern for him afterwards, even when she had beaten him nearly to unconsciousness. After all…he wasn’t human. He was just a vampire…a thing…did what she did to him really matter all that much?

Hadn’t she punched Warren out the day she had rescued Spike for saying very much the same thing?

*God, what a hypocrite I am!* she thought with bitter self-disgust, her tears running down her face as she continued blindly, by memory, to make her way to Spike’s crypt.

She knew in some part of her that all of the anger she felt was not directed at Warren; there was a great deal of it that was focused on herself. But as she reached the door to the crypt and stormed inside, she thought again of the brutality he had poured out on Spike, and determined that he would not get away with it…as she had.

She reached the sarcophagus and slung its cover away into the wall, where it cracked into a hundred pieces and fell to the floor, not even strained in the slightest by the effort; then she completely bypassed the ladder and leapt to the basement floor, landing cat-like on her feet, facing her sister’s captive.

Dawn had left the torch lit, and it was still burning brightly so that she could clearly see her surroundings. The furniture that Spike had brought to this room had long since been stolen in his lengthy absence. All that remained in this room was what Dawn had wished into existence.

Buffy’s eyes widened, horrified in spite of herself by the bloodlust that had apparently overtaken her sister’s imagination. Though according to her story, Dawn had not been able to bring herself to hurt Warren nearly as much as she had originally intended to, she had obviously had much more in mind when she had made her plans.

A surgical table much like the one Spike had described to her from Warren’s basement was placed off to the side, and near it was a table bearing various implements of torture. Buffy shuddered at the sight of them; *she* didn’t even know what some of them were for. How could Dawn have possibly known?

She found herself wondering just how much input Anya had had into the situation.

She averted her attention from the equipment and turned it on Warren, who was hanging chained to the wall, his eyes wide in surprise and fear as he stared at her. He was dirty and unkempt from days without washing, and his face was pale and shadowed, but he appeared otherwise unharmed – just exhausted and scared.

Buffy’s eyes narrowed in fury as she realized that the now-helpless young man probably knew the uses for all of the dreadful weapons on the table near her. He had probably used most of them on Spike, judging by the dreadful tale he had told her. This boy appeared helpless at the moment, but she was not deceived. He was actually very dangerous, thriving on the pain and terror of others.

Buffy’s lips tightened into a grim smile. She didn’t need the weapons her little sister had filled the room with.

She was the Slayer; she *was* a weapon.

“B-buffy!” Warren’s voice was a thin, shaky rasp as he watched her apprehensively. “Y-you have to let me out of here! Your sister…she…she’s crazy, Buffy! She’s totally out of her mind! She needs help!”

Buffy smiled ironically at the unbelievable gall of the boy, the insane notion he had that she would even consider helping him, after everything that had happened. “I think you’re right,” she said softly. “I think she does need some help.”

Failing to see her true meaning, Warren let out a weary sigh of relief, as Buffy took the key from the pocket of her jeans and approached him slowly, evenly.

Unlike her little sister, she had a tremendous physical advantage over Warren, and preferred not to beat up on a prisoner, chained and helpless. She wanted him to have the opportunity to fight her if he wanted to, although she knew that he wouldn’t, and that it would be useless to him if he did.

Every motion fluid, even, she turned the key in the lock, loosing his wrists from the chains that bound him.

Immediately, without another word to her, he reached down to snatch up the half-empty water bottle Dawn had left near him on her last visit…a cruel little touch to remind him of the torture of deprivation he had inflicted on Spike, left just out of his reach but within his sight.

He rapidly guzzled the remainder of the water in the bottle before discarding it to the floor and looking back up at Buffy, gasping out, “Thanks…”

The word was barely out of his mouth before she struck him across the face, hard, knocking him backward onto the floor.

He looked up at the furious Slayer standing over him, murder in her eyes, and his eyes widened in fearful realization, as he scrambled backward away from her. “Buffy! Buffy, wait, don’t!” he gasped. “You don’t wanna do this!”

“Oh, no, Warren, I think you’re wrong. I really, *really* wanna do this. I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time,” she contradicted him with a smile on her face, advancing on him slowly, in no hurry. Her smile disappeared as she added, “Nobody messes with my man.”

“Buffy, I’m sorry!” he pleaded, still backing away. “Please, I’ll never come near you guys again, I swear!”

“You’re *sorry*?” she spat out the words at him, her anger rising again at the useless apology, so insincere and *so* too little too late. “ ‘Sorry’ doesn’t do Spike a bit of good, does it, Warren, even if you meant it! Even if you regretted it with everything in you – which I’m pretty sure you don’t…” she snarled. “…it wouldn’t fix anything! The damage is done, Warren, and someone’s gotta pay the price!”

She followed up her angry words with a hard kick to the boy’s stomach, sending him crashing into the opposite wall about ten feet away. He hit the wall with a sickening sound of cracking ribs, sliding a little ways down to the floor with a moan of pain.

“You broke him,” she whispered, advancing again, her tears of mingled anger and guilt sliding down her face again. “You hurt him, and you talked him down, and you – you *used* him for your own pleasure – until that was all he thought he was. Just somebody’s toy, to be used and abused…”

“I’m sorry,” Warren repeated uselessly, cringing back against the wall as she reached him again. “I – I didn’t think it mattered…he’s just a vampire!”

“No…he’s not human, so who cares what you do to him, right?” she shot back in a tearful, bitterly sarcastic voice, trembling with rage and disgust. “He’s the monster…and whatever you want to do to him is just okay, because he’s not human? Is that what you think?” She had reached the boy by now, and backhanded him hard, knocking his head back against the wall again, so that he saw stars before his eyes and nearly lost consciousness.

“He’s shown more humanity over the past few years than you *ever* have. God, you were so blind,” she whispered, her eyes wide with painful realization.

Warren couldn’t hear her through the roaring in his ears. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t only speaking to him anymore.

“You sick little pervert,” she went on accusingly. “You got off on the power you got out of it…on being able to control someone else. Whatever you wanted, you could just make happen, so you took advantage of that. You took advantage of *him*, when he was at his most vulnerable.” Anger at the thought of what Spike had gone through, and not only at Warren’s hands, coursed through her afresh and she leveled a hard kick at his head.

“You think he deserved it because he’s a vampire? You’re a killer, Warren,” she went on, hot tears streaking her face, her voice losing some of its fire, but none of its emotion. She was aware that he was unconscious, slumped against the wall, but kept speaking anyway, her voice a haunted whisper. “You can’t possibly think you’re any better than he is.”

She stood there for a moment, fighting back the desperate sobs that rose up inside her, wiping harshly at the tears that stained her face.

She was in no way the victim in this scenario. Quite the opposite, she thought with a self-directed sneer of disgust.

Warren was still, not moving, and for a moment she wasn’t sure if he was alive or not. As she regained control of her emotions, she crouched down and felt the boy’s throat for a pulse. It was shallow, but steady. She had not done any fatal damage yet.

And suddenly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She knew that he deserved it…but she also knew that he was not the only one whose hands were stained with Spike’s blood. She didn’t know what they would do to take care of the problem created by Dawn’s wish, the problem slumped unconscious against the wall. She didn’t even know anymore what she *wanted* to do about it.

All she knew was that she was no one to judge anyone…even Warren.

Listlessly, feeling drained and desolate, she dragged his limp form back over to where Dawn had chained him. He was obviously in no condition to stand at this point. Fortunately, there was a second set of chains attached to the wall at a lower point; apparently Dawn had intended to bring Warren to his knees.

She dropped the collapsed form on the floor by the chains and locked them around the boy’s wrists; the chains were not long enough to allow him to stand, but were long enough to give him some limited freedom of movement…not that she expected him to be moving any time soon.

As Buffy released her hold on him, allowing Warren’s unconscious body to drop to the floor and turning to go, she was once again lost in the torrent of emotions that swept over her, bringing fresh tears to her eyes again.

She climbed the ladder to the upper level blindly through the haze of tears that blurred her vision, and made her way stumbling toward the door. She stopped a few feet from it, an image springing to mind unbidden, of herself, slamming that door open and intruding without hesitation on the privacy, the rights of the man that she loved.

She wondered painfully if he had ever feared her sudden, violent approach as he had once feared the helpless young man in the basement. The thought sent her to her knees, her arms hugging herself as she gave way to the painful sobs that shook her body. Now, left with no convenient outlet for her anger, she was forced to look inward at last…to recognize the truth that her subconscious already had, and had shouted out during her accusing rant at Warren.

Every word she had spoken to him was equally true of herself. For a long time, she knelt there on the floor, sobbing out her anguish of guilt.

It hit her with a breathtaking force, the truth of the matter. Warren was the one who had hurt Spike badly, devastated him and broken him without mercy.

But she had made him believe that he deserved it.