EXTRA WARNING: Contains extreme pain and angst and reference to very
very violent death.

TITLE: Guardian Angel - Chapter 9
AUTHOR: Lysia
EMAIL: lysias_fanfic@yahoo.co.uk
RATING: 18/NC-17 depending where you live.
WARNING: NASTY/ANGST FIC! Contains torture, prostitution, rape,
slavery and very very hurt Spike. Bless!
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine. Characters are property of Joss Whedon.
SPOILERS: Starts off in B:TVS S4 'Pangs' and A:TS S1 'I Will Remember
You', skips through to 'Primeval' on much the same lines, then goes
off on a huge tangent into the murky realms of AU. (see chronolgy)
ARCHIVING: http://www.the-crypt.net under 'Lysia'. If anyone else
wants it just ask.
PAIRING: Spike/Angel plus some extra minor pairings.
NOTES: Answer to April Challenge and plot bunny on 'Our Armageddon':
http://www.shibbybitch.net/ourarmageddon/plotbunnies.html "Angel
stayed human in I Will Remember You, but he and Buffy doesn't work
out somehow, and he flees the country with Wesley in tow. In the
meantime, Spike escapes The Initiative, and leaves Sunnydale,
embarrassed by his disability to kill and maim. The two meets up in
some strange country... From there on... *shrug* - ???"

CHRONOLOGY

NOVEMBER 1999 – Angel becomes human through the regenerative blood of
a demon. Buffy and Angel resume their romance. Spike is chipped.
MAY 2000 – The Initiative is destroyed. Buffy moves to LA with Angel.
Spike disappears.
2004 PRESENT DAY – Buffy leaves Angel, Angel moves to Europe.

CHAPTER 9

AMSTERDAM – 2004, PRESENT DAY

By the time Spike awoke the next time, he felt much more rested. The
pain was gone and when he opened his eyes they were working this
time. He found himself staring at a yellowed ceiling. A pink floral
lampshade surrounded the bulb that hung from it. The light was off,
but the room was lit well enough by the peachy glow that made its way
through the large curtains drawn across the window. It was daylight
outside.

He sat up slightly as he attempted to figure out where he was. The
bedroom was clearly some kind of rented accommodation. This was the
bland dιcor of a flat tailored to meet the taste of everybody, and
yet failed to meet the taste of anybody at all. It was all whites and
beiges and a few soft pastel pinks, yellows and peaches. A very old
dusty television stood on a large doily on top of the chest of draws
opposite the bed, and the big mirror on the dressing table was
surrounded only by a hairbrush and a tub of gel. This was clearly not
a girl's bedroom.

Spike turned over, and the bed creaked loudly as he did so, probably
alerting anyone in the apartment to the fact that he was awake. He
tried desperately to remember the events that had led to him being
here, but couldn't. He discovered that he was still naked, but
covered with a thin duvet and old embroidered bedspread. The thought
occurred to him that perhaps he'd been let out to a client for use in
the comfort of his own home. It wouldn't be the first time, but
something told him that this was not the case. Nobody paid that sort
of money to let a vampire whore sleep the night away in their bed.
Besides, he got a very odd feeling about this place. Despite being
strange, it somehow made him feel... safe. He couldn't quite place his
finger on why though.

His gaze fell upon the bedside table, which was covered in books,
which immediately brought his memories flooding back. The titles on
the little leather-bound volumes told him as much as a detailed essay
could. Some were poetry, some were art, some were history. All were
poncy academic stuff. Every item gave away the identity of its owner
so easily. Except for the 'Guide to Amsterdam Massage Parlours'. That
one threw him completely.

The figure appearing in the doorway did not surprise him in the least
though. He didn't even bother to look up to guess who was standing
there watching him.

"Hello Angel," Spike announced, managing a knowing half smile as
Angel approached him.

Angel sat on the end of the bed, perched awkwardly, as if his
presence would upset Spike. "How are you feeling?" he asked, his
voice quiet to so as not to aggravate Spike's headache.

The vampire sat up properly, resting his elbows on his bent knees and
looked at Angel, curious as to why his human Sire had taken it upon
himself to rescue his unwanted Childe. A million questions were
flooding his mind and he didn't know how to ask a single one of them
without appearing ungrateful. This was like some sort of bizarre
dream. Angel had saved him. Angel who had made it very clear that he
did not want to see or hear from his Childe ever again. Angel hated
him, and yet here he was asking about his welfare.

"Better," Spike replied. "Head's stopped hurting, cuts have healed.
I'm a healthy little vampire." He laughed and grinned.

Angel didn't respond to his smile. He simply looked at him in concern
and pity, before asking quietly, "And your teeth?"

Spike froze, the fake smile fading. His gaze drifted to the curtains
and he stared into the middle-distance. He hadn't wanted to think
about that. He knew the taste of blood in his mouth was too fresh to
be from his earlier feed. His gums were bleeding, and they hurt like
hell.

"Painful," Spike admitted. He swallowed, and the taste of his own
blood filled his mouth again.

Angel reached a hand out to Spike's face.

"Hey, sod off!" Spike snapped, batting the hand away and shifting to
the top end of the bed, as far away as he could get.

"Spike, I need to examine your teeth," Angel explained, his concern
for Spike made more than clear by his tone of voice.

"Not bloody likely."

"Just look at yourself," Angel appealed to him urgently. "Look at the
blood."

Spike pressed a hand to his lips and found his fingers coated with
blood. His mouth was full of it. He stared back at Angel, determined
that he wasn't going to cry in front of his Sire.

"It's not healing," Angel pointed out, his voice soft but firm. "If
anything it's getting worse. I need to look at your teeth and find
out why."

Spike continued to stare at him for a while. Then he closed his eyes
and nodded. Angel stood up and moved closer while Spike leaned
against the headboard and tilted his head back. The vampire was
tense, almost trembling, as Angel gently pushed his upper lip back
and examined the bleeding gums beneath. He located the line in the
flesh above Spike's human teeth where his fangs were designed to drop
down. Blood was trickling from the crease of tissue at an alarming
rate. The skin was red and inflamed and there appeared to be an
unusual lump of bone beneath the surface.

"Drop your fangs," Angel murmured, placing a hand on Spike's shoulder.

Spike twisted his head away and covered his mouth with his hand.

"No," he mumbled, looking resolutely in the opposite direction.

Angel observed Spike's reaction with curiosity.  He had to admit to
being incredibly concerned for Spike's psychological wellbeing. Loss
of a vampire's fangs could be a traumatic experience. Aside from the
difficulty it could cause in hunting and feeding, the mental effects
were similar to those suffered by a human who had lost a limb.

"Why not?" Angel asked him. "Because you're scared of the pain or
because you're ashamed?"

Spike froze and Angel felt a cold chill.

Silence followed, until eventually Spike replied. "A bit of both, to
be honest, mate."

Moved by Spike's unexpected openness, Angel sat down beside his
Childe. He had a horrible feeling that fragments of tooth would have
to be removed from Spike's gums – not a pleasant process for the
vampire.

"Come on Spike," he continued, as gently as he could in such a
situation. "You're only going to hurt yourself more if you leave the
wound like that."

Spike sighed, defeated, but admitting the hopelessness of the
situation. He sat back, screwed his eyes shut, and screamed in agony
as he forced the shattered remains of his fangs down through his
gums. Angel only noticed that the vampire had taken hold of his hand
when it started to ache from the pressure of Spike's squeezing.
Fortunately, Spike had let go – probably out of embarrassment –
before his chip was set off.

Angel immediately returned to his task. Spike's fangs had pushed yet
more blood down and the crimson fluid was now dripping onto his
chest. Angel quickly laid a napkin under the vampire's chin to catch
the blood. Spike was shivering now, and when Angel caught sight of
the shards of bone that had once been his fangs, he understood why.

His canines had been ripped out, leaving two neat holes where they
had once been. The four incisors appeared to have been clipped,
taking the points off. Or at least that's what it looked like someone
had tried to do. The only one to have survived the process was the
second incisor on the left. The front left seemed to have split and
fallen out, leaving a very jagged wound where it had torn at the
skin. The front right now only had half of it remaining; a tiny shard
of tooth in a bleeding and raw wound. The right second incisor had
also split in the clipping process, but was still embedded in the gum.

Angel swallowed and turned away. Spike must have seen the look on his
face, as when Angel looked back the vampire was staring at him in
dread and anticipation.

"So tell me honestly, doc," Spike muttered, blood tricking down his
chin. "How bad is it?"

Angel stared down at his hands. He almost couldn't bear to tell Spike
this.

"They pulled two and left the other four in, clipped though."

Spike eyed him with confusion. "That's good, right?"

"Not entirely," Angel replied. "Three of the four haven't survived
the clipping process. One looks like it broke and fell out, another
seems to be missing one shard, and the last is cracked. All the
broken ones need to be removed or you won't heal."

Spike sat there in absolute silence, until eventually bursting into
hysterical laughter.

"So you're telling me," he spluttered, "that I'm gonna have one fang
left!? Just one! Out of six!"

Angel observed Spike's behaviour with a sympathy he had never thought
he could feel for a soulless creature. He knew that, logically and
morally speaking, Spike deserved everything he got and more, but
there was still some deep primitive part of him that was just
screaming, 'I'm going to kill the bastard who did this to my boy!' It
was an alarming reaction, but somehow comforting at the same time. It
was nice to feel worried about someone else.

"I think we should get you to a dentist," Angel explained to Spike in
a voice that showed his distress. "There's got to be a demon doctor
around here who can help. We just have to..."

"There's no time for that!" Spike wailed, holding his head in his
hands.

"What do you mean by..."

"You'll have to do it," Spike informed him, looking up to Angel with
blood-shot eyes.

Angel's jaw dropped. Spike expected him to pull his teeth
out? "Spike, it would be safer to track down a professional," he
insisted. "I don't know if I can do this right and I don't understand
why..."

"I'll explain later," Spike groaned, returning to his curled up
position. "Just get it over with."

Angel went cold, shuddering at the horrific prospect, but Spike was
adamant that there was no alternative.

And so he found himself sorting through his few possessions for a
small toolkit that contained a pair of pliers suitable for extracting
vampire teeth. It was like a dream. He couldn't believe he was
actually considering doing this. Spike had made his wishes clear, and
Angel felt as though he was simply going through the motions to keep
him happy. He wasn't going to go through with this. He couldn't...

It wasn't until he was standing over Spike with a pair of pliers in
his hand that he realised the reality of the situation. His head was
spinning as he watched Spike tilt his head back and brace himself for
the pain.

"Take the last whole one too," Spike told him mournfully. "One fang
ain't gonna be much use for anything. I'd rather lose 'em all and
look a bit less weird than have one tooth."

Angel nodded, and Spike closed his eyes and opened his mouth. Taking
a deep breath, Angel clamped the pliers down onto the broken shard of
tooth, and pulled.

Spike yelped but didn't try to move away. The shard came out with
little force. Next came the two split fragments of the right rear
incisor. These were a little trickier to extract as they seemed more
firmly embedded, but Spike still didn't flinch too much. Finally,
Angel gripped the remaining whole tooth in the pliers. He felt Spike
inhale sharply.

Then, with as much force as he could muster, Angel tugged at the
tooth.

Spike screamed, and he clenched his fists and bucked away from the
pliers.

It took three pulls to get the tooth out. By the time it was over
Spike had tears of agony escaping from his eyes and Angel was shaking
with the stress of having to put the vampire through such pain.

As soon as the ordeal was over, Spike curled up again, pressing the
napkin to his blood-covered lips with a trembling hand. Angel quickly
wrapped the teeth in a tissue and dropped them into the waste-paper
basket, then went to leave Spike alone, thinking that he would not
want to be seen in such a state.

"You don't have to go away, you know," Spike called to him in a
faltering, somewhat rasping voice.

Angel turned back and sat back down on the end of the bed, slightly
closer to Spike this time, watching as Spike lay there and dabbed at
his bleeding mouth. Already the blood flow had stopped now there were
no sharp edges of teeth slicing the insides of his gums.

"I thought you might want to be left alone to recover," Angel
explained, hoping that he didn't offend Spike in his assumptions.

Spike looked up and began to neatly fold the bloodied napkin with
meticulous care. He didn't know what it was, but some kind of
pleasant warm familiar feeling was surfacing. He certainly hadn't
forgiven his Sire for the last 120 years of neglect and betrayal, but
his hatred had waned considerably. Perhaps it was gratitude for the
rescue, or maybe he was so scarred by the last four years that he
wanted someone to care for him regardless of who it was. Either way,
at that moment, for some reason he wanted nothing more than to have
Angel stay with him and talk to him and make everything better again.

"I've spent the last four years on my own, mate," he replied flatly,
but with little aggression. "It's actually nice to have someone here
to... I don't know... hold my hand, so to speak."

A small smile crossed Angel's face. "Actually, Spike, you did hold my
hand."

The vampire also smiled slightly, as much as he could manage with the
pain he was in. "Yeah, and if you mention that to anyone I'll kill
you – and this time you'll stay dead."

Both men managed a small chuckle at each others' comments. It was as
though a century of hatred had just been undone. Suddenly, they were
friends, joking about the past. It was... nice.

"So," Angel continued. "You've got me here, holding your hand –
figuratively speaking. Now are you going to tell me why we couldn't
get a dentist to do that whole... tooth-pulling thing?" He cringed at
the memory.

Spike's face fell and he stared miserably at the duvet. "Yeah," he
muttered, fingering at a loose thread on the embroidered pattern on
the cover. "I won't be here by tomorrow. I'll be back in that place
and you'll be on your merry way, and there'll be no time for dentists
or demon doctors or even a trip to the chemists for a packet of
aspirin."

Angel stared at his Childe in disbelief. "Spike, you can't think for
a minute that I'll let them take you back there," he insisted,
suddenly uneasy.

"They won't have to," Spike explained, the lump in his throat making
his speech sound very rough. "The chip acts as a tracker. They made
the modification when they got me here. They know exactly where I am,
and I'll bet my miserable soulless unlife that as soon as the sun
sets you'll get a phone call demanding that you bring back
their 'property'."

Angel froze. Suddenly he remembered Spike's reluctance to leave the
brothel when he rescued him. He had been in such a hurry to escape
that he hadn't listened. "And what happens if I don't?" he asked,
dreading the answer.

The vampire sighed and stared up at the ceiling, as if praying for
some kind of divine intervention to aid the situation. "Then they'll
activate the chip by remote control until I either stake myself to
stop the pain or my brain gets so damaged I go into a coma."

A painful silence descended. Spike stared at the fading light through
the curtains. Angel stood up, glancing around the room in a state of
shock and desperation. If only he had listened to what Spike had been
trying to tell him. He could have found an alternative plan. If only...

Angel looked at the tiny figure lying in his bed. Spike looked like
an injured child. He was so small and frail he looked as though he
would break if anything else happened to him, and now he was going to
have to go back to the hands of his abusers, or else die.

"Is that what they did to make you pass out when we escaped?" Angel
asked.

Spike nodded but didn't look up. "That was a short sharp blast to
knock me out. They probably thought you couldn't be bothered to haul
an unconscious body home. I guess they thought you were trying to
capture yourself a private vampire slave and wouldn't care enough
about me to make that much of an effort. Could just as easily find a
different vamp who wasn't a dead weight."

Disappointed and frustrated, Angel sat back down next to Spike's
knees and tried to think through the situation. "Can you be sure they
didn't just tell you this to frighten you?" he asked, a hint of
desperation to his voice.

"Tell me?" Spike spluttered, staring at Angel. "I've fucking seen
it!" He took a faltering breath, then dropped his gaze and began to
twist the napkin in his hands. "First vamp who tried to escape got
knocked out same way I did. They brought him back and decided
to 'make an example out of him'. They chained him up and stuck the
rest of us into the cell next to him. Then they cranked the chip up
and let it do its thing." Spike sniffed and swallowed awkwardly,
feeling sick just thinking about it. "It took him eight hours to die,
and all the while he was screaming at us – at anyone – to stake him
and get it over with. By the end of it there was blood pouring from
his nose, his ears, his mouth, and even his eye sockets. His hair and
scalp were burned to a crisp by the shocks from the chip. The smell
of burning flesh... bloody hell Angel, it was unbearable. Why do you
think there's no other security in the place other than the guards
and the alarm? They don't need to keep us there by force. We're all
too bloody terrified of the consequences to try and escape. Not
after..." He fell silent and dropped his head into his hands, biting on
his lip.

Angel could barely speak. He had always known that some people had
some really unpleasant ways of dealing with vampires, but this was
beyond barbaric. Killing a demon who was a threat to human lives was
one thing, but torturing and enslaving one that had been made
harmless was simply unnecessary and cruel.

Spike threw the napkin across the room. "That's not gonna happen to
me – I'd sooner have you stake me than let me go through that," he
spat, staring at his feet.

"With any luck it won't come to that," Angel mused, already pacing
the room, attempting to formulate another plan to save Spike from his
fate. "There has to be another way to get you out. I'm not going to
let you go back to that place, Spike."

The vampire looked up, a small melancholy smile of gratitude on his
face. Angel was helping him. His Sire was actually helping him! It
was a shame it was a nigh on impossible task. "Well I appreciate the
thought, but you're gonna have your work cut out."

"I don't care," Angel replied firmly, folding his arms across his
chest. "Whatever it takes, I am not going to give up until you're
free. Properly and officially free."

Spike's smile widened, and his gaze dropped to the duvet. He wanted
to say 'thank you' but the words wouldn't come out. Luckily, Angel
had managed to read his mind.

"You're welcome."

TBC...