Chapter 25: Cutting Edge Negotiation

[madimpossibledreamer]

do not eat old blue cheese
really
the food poisoning is not worth it
(I did get to make a barrow brie joke [see lotro] but that wasn't worth it either. my stomach's still slightly off today)

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Bleach (I Hope Tomorrow's a Better Day)
Chapter Summary: Spike gets an offer he can't refuse.
Word Count: 855
Rating: Teen
Warnings: It’s Spike, so.  racial slurs.  Also hikari’s offer is kinda dubcon.

          “I was wondering when you’d join us.  It’s been centuries since I’ve used this technique, after all.”  A female voice, polite and Japanese, but gloating all the same.
          Spike sits up, slightly surprised he can do so, and cautiously opens his eyes.  “You hide it well, but you’re a romantic.  Quite impressive, for something that lacks a soul.”  They’re in a garden, one of those gardens sappy, pathetic poet William had found so impressive in their youth.  Words float skyward from the plants, written with a ridiculous calligraphy hand.  Oddly, it’s not a perfect English garden, as it’s a little overgrown.
          She stands there, just about what he’d expected.  A posh Japanese woman in a fancy kimono.  She appears impassive, but he can sense her power.  She’s hardly as harmless as she appears.
          The whispering catches his attention and he turns to see—there’s Xander, muttering to himself, chained.
          “What did you do, you bloody bint?”  He can actually move freely to his surprise, and he does, charging her with a snarl, putting on his Game Face.  Only to charge through her.  Like she’s a ghost.  But he can feel her, the taint of the cursed blade, move, and he turns to see her, her physical form in hand, held to Xander’s throat.  That certainly isn’t mere illusion, unless that’s not the whelp’s soul at all, since a few drops of blood fall from where the tip nicked the skin.  It’s not the same sword, either, visually, with the same glossy obsidian appearance but serrated, now, an opal in the guard suffusing the entire weapon with an ever-changing glow.  It still feels like the same sword, though, but stronger, like its true power has been unleashed.  “It’d be a shame to kill him now, but I will, if it becomes necessary.”
          He curses her under his breath, but she still appears unmoved.  Of course she would.  She’s got the upper hand.  “Where are we?”  Grudgingly polite; maybe that’ll get him somewhere.
          “Don’t you recognize yourself?”  She gestures, and a ray of sunlight focuses on one of the hedges until it starts to burn, and that—that hurts.  He’s gotten a limb caught in sunlight before, and it’s the same fire threatening to burn away everything he is, erase his very existence.  He drops to his knees, voice hoarse with the scream, and with a gesture the flames disappear, leaving behind blackened shrubbery.  “Have I demonstrated your inferiority to a sufficient degree?”
          “You’re his sword, ain’t you?”  Because she’s got the upper hand, sure—for now. 
          She finally smiles.  It’s beautiful, sure, but there’s something so cold and alien about it he has to suppress a shudder.  “You’ve overplayed your hand a little, parasite.  You care what happens to one poor, insignificant human.”
          Of course, this is just a confirmation that he’s lost his mind.  Least it wasn’t the Slayer; he’d never live that one down, but a droopy human wasn’t much of an improvement.  Even if this is just some illusion-related metaphor, he has little doubt that the spirit could kill the boy, if she hadn’t already.
          “You’re one to talk about feeding on others,” he shoots back, and to his surprise there’s just the slightest twitch of an expression.  Like she’s amused.  Encouraged, he continues.  Maybe he can get something out of her after all.  “We really should’ve listened to Glinda, eh?”
          “What, that pathetic child?” she scoffs.  “She knows what she feels, but has no faith.”  It’s an incredibly unkind assessment, and he’d be tempted to fight her just from that, but…no, he can’t forget the situation.  She’s still got a hostage.
          “You’re not keeping me alive to gloat, given you’ve yet to impress me with your master plan.  So what, then?”  Everything he has is screaming for him to release the boy, but he knows what will happen if he tries, and that’s even if he manages to succeed.  It took a few attempts for her to even deem him worthy of answering.  A challenge to her power like that?  She’d be as petty as Angelus.
          “If I killed you here, someone would notice, eventually.  Yet you are close enough to the child that you could be of use.  Cooperate, and I may reward you—that chip you loathe so much can be gone.  You may have the boy’s body, distract him from his own suspicions.”  The casual way she offers those prizes suggests she finds them trivial—but she also doesn’t know their true value.  Not to him.
          “And if I don’t play along?”  He suspects to hear the overly cliché threat against the boy.
          “You believe you have a choice.  You’ll learn.”  She pats him on the shoulder.  “I look forward to utterly breaking you.”
          The world fades again, slow now.
          When he comes back, Xander’s looking at him with a friendly look on his face that Spike’s dreamt of.  It feels more unreal than the garden, especially with the whispers that just won’t stop.  “C’mon, Spike, I’m not just going to leave our pet vampire out here, even if your brain has gotten stuck rebooting.”
          Well.  He’s not bored.