White Magic

"You little liar...I ought to kill you right now...but I won't." There was mingled pleasure and menace in her soft voice. "You're too much fun."

Hard, hot hands held Spike's wrists pinned over his head, as the Slayer shifted her body in closer to his, her firm, muscular thigh sliding between his legs to press threateningly against his bare, vulnerable member. He was naked, of course, his body slightly slumped against the cold stone wall of his crypt...and he was being punished.

"Please," Spike whispered, as one of her hands left his wrists to trail possessively down his side. "Please don't..."

The soft hand on his hip became a hard fist that crashed down across his mouth, knocking his head into the wall behind him, before snatching a fistful of his hair and jerking his head back again.

"‘Please don't'," she cruelly mimicked his words, releasing his wrists to seize his throat, her thumb digging painfully into the hollow of it as she shifted in closer, whispering in his ear, "I think you'd better keep your mouth shut."

His throat was dry with terror, a convulsive swallow painfully restricted by her hand against his neck. Keeping carefully still as Buffy reveled in her power over him, he kept his hands where she had placed them, above his head, not daring to resist as she used her hand at his throat to push him onto his bruised, aching knees.

"Buffy...love, wait..." he rasped out as she released him and stood up straight. "I wasn't trying to..."

Her boot impacted brutally with his stomach, silencing his attempt at reasoning with her as she crossed the room to the bed and picked up Spike's discarded belt. She turned to face him again, as he gasped and choked for breath, struggling to recover from the blow; and the casually suggestive way she played the leather through her fingers sent a shudder of dread down his spine.

She crouched in front of him, running the belt idly down the side of his face, smiling when he flinched, closing his eyes and turning his head away.

"Did you think they'd believe you, anyway?" she asked in a soft, intimate voice that made him feel terribly exposed and vulnerable. "Do you think they'd ever believe *anything* that contradicts with what *I* tell them?"

Unsure whether or not he was supposed to respond, Spike shook his head slightly. "Please, Buffy," he whispered. "I wasn't going to say anything...I didn't..."

The belt flew, coming down hard across his groin, and Spike bit back an anguished scream, his hands fisting against the wall as he struggled not to move, not to react defensively and trigger an even more violent reaction from his tormentor. Buffy grabbed his hair again and yanked his head back, her voice deceptively patient and gentle as she continued as if he hadn't spoken.

"You think they'd *ever* take your side over mine, Spike? You think there's anything I can do to you that I won't get away with?"

Feeling trapped and terrified, desperate to appease her, Spike shook his head, blinking back tears of pain and humiliation. "No," he whispered. "No, Buffy..."

"You could tell them everything," the Slayer continued in that same quiet, intimate voice that was so confusing and frightening. "You could take pictures." She paused, raising one hand to turn his face back toward her, waiting until he obediently met her gaze to go on. She was smiling as she declared softly, "You could have rock solid evidence to prove it...and I would still walk out of it with them believing that it was somehow all *your fault*. You know that, don't you, Baby?"

Spike's heart sank...because he really did.

He nodded, lowering his gaze, as the tears he had been struggling to hold back fell to dampen his bruised face.

"You open your mouth against me, Spike," Buffy continued, a note of steel cloaked behind whisper soft affection, "and before I'm finished they'll be lining up...to stake *you*. Don't worry, though. I won't let them." There was cruel amusement in her voice as she explained, "I'll wanna punish you myself. Do you understand?"

Spike nodded, swallowing back a sob, his eyes downcast and glistening with tears.

Buffy stood up straight, the leather belt doubled and hanging from her hand. "Look at me, Baby," she commanded softly.

The vampire raised wide, fearful eyes to hers...just as the leather belt flew to strike him across the face.

*********************************

"I'm...not sure when it started, exactly...the...beatings. The...a-abuse..." The word fell from the vampire's lips with difficulty, his eyes downcast and focused on his hand, trembling and wrapped around Tara's in her lap. "I guess it...was gradual. Didn't happen all at once, so I...didn't rightly notice when, yeah? I mean...Buffy used to hit me before. Ever since the chip, so...so when we started...sleepin' together, and she didn't stop...guess I didn't think much of it...at first..."

He stopped for a moment, swallowing hard, struggling for control, and Tara gently squeezed his hand.

"It's okay," she murmured. "Take your time; nobody's in a hurry."

Spike did not raise his eyes as he drew in a deep, shaky breath, nodding as he readied himself to continue, then bit his lip and hesitated again. A frustrated frown creased his brow as Tara raised a hand to his cheek, her fingers effectively shielding his gaze, and creating a wall of privacy so that the vampire's focus was drawn solely to her own eyes.

"You're okay," Tara whispered. "You can do this. I'm right here."

Not a moment of the brief, tender exchange was lost on the Watcher sitting across from them. He averted his eyes, feeling like an intruder in the intimacy of the scene. Giles was anxious about Buffy, and impatient to hear what Spike had to say, but he simply waited until silence until the vampire appeared ready to go on.

"She...used to like to...tie me up," Spike finally continued, though his voice was low and trembling slightly. "I...didn't mind at first, but...but after a while...it was all she wanted to do..."

Giles grimaced, shaking his head as he interrupted, "I really don't need to hear about how you involved my Slayer in your sick little games, Spike..."

"He's talking." Tara's unusually sharp tone took Giles off guard, and his eyes widened at the stony expression of warning on her face. "Are you gonna listen, or are you gonna leave?"

"I...want to listen, Tara, but I don't see how..."

"This is hard enough on him already," Tara insisted, her eyes blazing with protective fury. "I'm not gonna have you making it harder. This is intensely personal, and frankly none of your business; Spike's showing a lot of courage to even talk to you about it...so why don't *you* show a little respect?"

The idea of showing respect to Spike was admittedly rather foreign to Giles' mind, but he *did* respect Tara, and regretted upsetting the kind, mild-mannered girl. In addition, she was clearly very protective of the defenseless vampire, and he was well aware that if he angered her by making Spike feel threatened, he would lose his chance of hearing this first hand account of the recent changes in his Slayer.

"I'm...sorry, Spike," the Watcher replied cautiously, his eyes never leaving Tara's. "Please do go on. I'll...stay quiet until you have finished."

"Thank you."

The sheer simplicity of the vampire's response caught Giles off guard, and he raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had expected at the very least a sarcastic response, some little jab to gloat at his minor victory...not quiet, polite gratitude. In the years he had known him, Spike had been neither quiet nor polite.

The vampire's story unfolded in halting, hushed bits and pieces, and Giles found it both horrifying, and next to impossible to believe...if not for the haunted look of fear and desperation in Spike's wide blue eyes, which never quite met the Watcher's throughout his speech.

Mental and physical abuse of the worst kinds had escalated into sexual abuse, and eventually outright rape and torture, all crimes that Giles might have thought Spike capable of committing...but not Buffy. Never Buffy. Spike's soft, shameful words painted a violent and vivid picture, but he found it hard to reconcile the images he created with what he remembered of the girl he had trained and mentored for so many years.

"I was...in that basement for...for two weeks." Spike was whispering by the time he finished the story, his voice trembling, and he appeared to be fighting tears. "It...seemed longer. If T-tara and...and Dawn...hadn't found me...I...she'd have killed me. I know it. Or...or I'd still be there."

Giles looked up at Tara sharply in surprise, wondering just how much the girl had seen, even as his heart sank at the stricken look in her tearful eyes as she stared past him, clearly seeing in her mind a very different time and place.

"I saw it, Giles," she inserted quietly, raising her eyes to meet his. "I saw what she...what she did to him. He's telling the truth. Dawn...she saw it, too. She saw Buffy installing the padlock on the basement door to keep him there. I saw her threatening and hurting him weeks before that. It's absolutely confirmed that Buffy did this."

"I...I don't understand," Giles admitted, removing his glasses and wiping them nervously with his handkerchief. "This is very difficult to believe, I'm sure you'll understand. It doesn't sound like Buffy..."

"She's not the same, since she...came back," Spike reminded him, still not looking at him. "Something happened to her...part of the spell, p'rhaps, the one that brought her back. Or...or after, maybe...I don't know. But...but she's not herself. She's not the girl I...I fell in love with."

Giles could not help the contemptuous glare those words earned, his lips parted automatically to discount the vampire's long held claim of love for Buffy, but Tara's challenging stare intercepted any comment he might have made. Still, Spike caught the brief interplay, and a tight, humorless smile rose to his lips.

"Don't worry, Watcher," he remarked softly. "I'm bloody well over her by now." He glanced up at Tara beside him, his smile softening and becoming almost shy as he added, "I've moved on."

"I just don't understand this, Spike." Giles shook his head, deliberately ignoring the comment, though it *did* give him some cause for relief. "You told me that following Buffy's return, you discovered that your chip no longer worked on her, yes? Is that correct?"

Spike winced, anticipating the question he was leading up to, and nodded silently, his head lowered. "Yeah."

"Then why would you allow things to go as far as you claim they did with Buffy? You could defend yourself against her. Why didn't you?"

Spike opened his mouth as if to respond, his gaze lowered once more to his and Tara's joined hands, but then he closed his mouth again, shaking his head, at a loss. Tara straightened, leaning in closer to Spike in a subtlely protective gesture, her eyes narrowed as she turned toward the Watcher.

"That's not a fair question, Mr. Giles," she declared in an accusing tone of voice. "You have no idea of the kind of mind games Buffy's been playing with him...with everyone. This is *not* Spike's fault, no matter how badly you might want to make it be!"

Giles frowned, uncomfortable with the accusation, despite the fact that he was still quite skeptical about Spike's story. "I'm in no way attempting to..."

"Spike's told you his story," Tara cut him off firmly. "He shouldn't have to explain himself to you. He's the *victim* here. So unless you have any more questions about the actual *facts*..."

"All right, all right," Giles tried to soothe her, raising one hand in front of him in a gesture of backing off. "Tara, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to cause either of you any further upset. I'm just...trying to understand."

"Don't bother, love," Spike murmured, lowering his head against Tara's shoulder for a moment in weary resignation, raising it again to meet her eyes as she turned toward him in concern. "It's too much for him to believe, especially from me. We should have known he wouldn't help, not if it means admitting there's something seriously wrong with his golden girl..."

"Now wait just a minute!" Giles objected, indignant. "I haven't said I don't believe you, only that it's...*difficult*! Surely you can understand that. You're talking about the girl who's been like a daughter to me for the past six years! And excuse me for saying so, Spike, but your word has been known to be less than reputable in the past..."

"What about mine?" Tara demanded. "You don't believe me, either?"

Giles shook his head, unable to argue her point. "I just...I need to see her. To talk to her. Perhaps it would help me to understand what's happening if I could simply talk with Buffy and get her perspective on..."

"All you're going to get from her right now is lies," Tara objected, shaking her head in frustration. "Have you not heard *anything* we've been saying?"

"No, wait, love," Spike objected, frowning thoughtfully, and Tara turned her attention toward him again, a questioning expression on her face. "Maybe...maybe it's the only way he's gonna get this." When Tara still looked a little confused, he clarified softly, "If he hears it from her."