Author: Kay Tee maybeshedoes@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.oocities.org/maybeshedoes//front.html
Distribution: Take it, but tell me where so I can visit.
Rated: R, for pain, violence; the usual.
Category: Series
Feedback: Please please please
Original Character Warning
Spoilers: Tons for 'Passion,' in fact, you want to watch that before you read this. Minor spoilers for 'Somnambulist,' 'The Prodigal,' 'Angel,' and BBB.
Disclaimer: In my dreams I'm Joss, but during the day I have to face the cold hard truth-- I'm a hack who steals characters. But I'm not giving them back! Or I am, just don't sue me, all I have are speeding tickets and student loans.
Summary: Spike can't take care of Druscilla all by himself, so he gets himself a slave to help. Spike makes a decision. Angelus doesn't make a decision. Eve gets hurt.
Author's notes: Okay, it's been forever since I put out a chapter of Eve, but I've been in this... slashy place. For a while. I kept having to smack myself down when my fingers or libido or dirty dirty mind or whatever tried to slash this fic. So, I'm sorry that this has been so long in coming. I suck. I know.
Other notes: I haven't made any attempts in these chapters to take similar tones to the episodes they correspond to. I'm not here either. In other words, there was no way I was going to be able to write a brilliant episode like 'Passion.' The tragedy of that ep happened near the end, and most of my story here occurs before Jenny Calender's unhappiness. Don't get all upset at me. Or do. I've never been flamed before, and like Faith, I'm all about new experiences.
One last thing: I'm assuming that the very first scene of 'Passion' happened on a Monday night. I don't think the show ever told us exactly what day it was, but if I'm wrong, let me know so I can fix it.
==Monday Night==
Angelus lurked in the shadows of Eve's doorway, watching her as she sat in the windowsill, smoking.
He'd never known what to think of her, even when he had his soul, and he was still at a loss when it came to his newest possession. He had thought he'd broken the slave, but now... she seemed wholly recovered from his treatment.
And Angelus didn't know if this made him happy or angry or... proud.
He had big plans for his unlife, the first of which involved him getting the hell out of the states and back to Europe. But there was some unfinished business left for him in Sunnydale:
Buffy, always at the front of his mind. He had to destroy her, pick her apart and leave her alone; alive, but broken. She had loved him, made him believe that he could really be a man, and that was unforgivable. Buffy's torture had to be the worst and last the longest, but that restricted what he could do to the others.
Willow, the sweet little girl with complete trust in him. She had accepted him, been kind to him, even though she was clearly a little afraid of him. He wanted to tear her up, rip her open with his teeth, split and exposed. Because just like the large poster in her room proclaimed: she would always be beautiful on the inside.
Then Giles. The man was a *watcher* for chrissakes, and closer to Buffy than her real father. By all rights, he should have hated Angel. But no, they had been regular companions, drinking tea and brandy and discussing literature like the couple of cultured old gentlemen they were. Angelus wanted to get a taste of Giles-- knew about his past, wild and dangerous, and wanted to see that. Wanted to bring out the fierce warrior Giles could be, and wanted to obliterate him.
And Xander. Angel had been so *envious* of Xander-- not just because he was Buffy's friend and confidant, but because he was everything Angel had wanted to be. Alive and young and brave and naïve. New to the world, and not yet jaded. Really, Angelus was more disgusted with himself than Xander. He had wanted to be at the beginning of life, wanted to be brave, hell, had thought of Xander whenever he needed to gather his courage to go into battle. He had always remembered the way Xander had dragged him out to the Master's lair to rescue Buffy, and had a XanderVoice in his head to push him into doing the things he'd been afraid to do since being cursed... But Angelus hated the effect the boy had had on his life. He wanted to turn Xander. The boy was so loyal, he would make a beautiful minion. Yes, debased at Angelus's feet, that was where *that* boy belonged.
Of course, he'd realized after the first full night he'd spent soulless that he couldn't kill everyone he wanted to kill, because they were Buffy's friends, and hurting her was most important. He could not make a move against any of them that wasn't calculated to somehow hurt Buffy. And he just wasn't sure what plan to go with.
Honestly, he was starting to get just a little bit frustrated with all the not killing, and Spike's incessant nagging wasn't helping either.
So he was standing in Eve's doorway, watching her. She had been his friend too, treating him not like a man, but a vampire who had a soul. It had been... comfortable. He had *liked* her, just enjoyed her company. And yes, he was also attracted to her; she had a delicate beauty reminiscent of his sire...
But he didn't want to think about Darla. The memory of killing her to save that sniveling little brat of a slayer sent him spiraling into a rage so dark he thought he might lose his perfect grasp of his control.
He turned his mind back to his slave.
The thing was, he didn't really know how to hurt Eve. She was even more in control of her feelings than he was of his. She had revealed nothing particularly useful to him during their brief friendship-- he could always kill her family, but they were too damn far away, and he just couldn't be bothered; she wasn't vain, seemed totally ambivalent to the growing number of scars on her body; she had nothing in the world the Angelus could take away from her-- except Spike.
But there had to be more. There had to be something to the girl that Angelus just wasn't seeing. Sometimes he was tempted to turn her just so he could see who she *really* was. But he had done that to Penn, with disappointing results. The man had turned out to be a puritan through and through, though that was twisted a bit by Penn's demon, his nature would always be one of routine and contemplation and spartan living. *Christ*, Angelus had been so bored by Penn, ditching him even before the curse.
Now, Eve was complicated, a challenge maybe. But she had turned in on herself after Angelus had branded her, and he had been so disappointed. Harris's spell had clearly woken Eve up, but it had also hurt her deeply. And that was the most frustrating thing in Angelus's life to date: Xander Harris had managed to hurt Eve worse than Angelus had ever been able to.
The vampire had visited Buffy earlier that evening, leaving her a pretty present on her pillow. He was feeling malevolent, but calm. Tonight he was going to hurt Eve, one way or another. Make her forget the lingering pain from her false feelings of love, make her remember who she should be crying over when she wept into her pillow.
***
Eve sat in the window of her attic room, her bare feet (Dru had once again found and destroyed her shoes) swinging in the gentle breeze... okay, so it wasn't a breeze so much as the stale warehouse district air being funneled between alleyways. But it was nice enough.
She puffed away on one of the strange Mexican cigarettes that Spike had procured for her, feeling relatively relaxed after the Valentine's excitement from earlier that week, and everything in her life was pretty much as good as it could get at the moment.
So naturally that was when Angelus popped into the window with her. He let his legs stay in the bedroom so he could face his slave.
"Evie," he started happily, "how are you doing?"
Eve just blinked at her master for a moment.
"That wasn't a rhetorical question," he added.
"Um, I'm fine..." Eve frowned, sure that any response she gave would be punished.
But Angelus just shrugged nonchalantly. "That's nice. I know I've neglected you lately..." He stroked the back of his hand down Eve's scarred cheek in a mockery of affection. "I couldn't help but noticing these pretty little bruises on your neck..." He tilted Eve's head back to examine said neck, but the bruises Spike had given her were almost totally faded. Angelus shrugged, "Now, I know *I* didn't give them to you..."
Eve was beginning to get an idea of where her master was going with this, and was already wincing internally.
"So, if *I* didn't give them to you, where did they come from?" Angelus was grinning, but it was not a nice grin.
"I fell in the shower," Eve immediately replied.
Before the last word was even all the way out of her mouth, Angelus had a handful of her hair and had already pulled her close to him. His lips brushed her ear as he said softly, "I *hope* you wouldn't lie to me, Evie." When the girl remained silent, Angelus continued, "No one harms what's mine but *me*. I'm just trying to protect you. Now, either I punish whoever hurt you, or I punish you for lying to me about it. What's it gonna be? Hmm?"
When Eve opened her mouth to reply, Angelus warned, "One chance. One word."
The whole situation was really ridiculous. Eve knew that Angelus knew who was responsible for her bruises, but she couldn't just give Spike up...
At the slave's hesitancy, Angelus's painful grip tightened until Eve whispered the only thing she could say: "Spike."
***
Angelus fidgeted with the switchblade as he slowly circled Spike's body. The blond vampire was suspended in mid-air in the main room of the warehouse. He was spitting and frothing and generally making the noises of someone being tortured with their own weapon.
The older vampire used the knife to carefully slice another chunk of Spike's arm off. Sucking on the juicy flesh thoughtfully, Angelus turned to his audience-- the minions, Druscilla, Eve.
"Don't cut him down," the dark-haired vampire commanded, motioning to Eve and Adelle, his favorite new childe, to follow him into the bedroom he had taken for himself. Druscilla pouted and at the last moment he motioned for her to follow as well.
***
Spike eventually managed to get himself down, hauling his tired body back to his wheelchair-- crawling though he could walk a little now, not wanting Angelus to know how strong he was getting.
Spike made his way to Eve's room, and found her much as Angelus had found her earlier that night: sitting in her window with her back to the door.
The wheelchair bumped noisily as it rolled over uneven floorboards, and Eve turned to greet her former master, smiling weakly at him.
And Spike knew she was showing him her mouth because it was partly his fault and she wanted him to feel guilty. But he didn't, dammit, wouldn't feel bad for her. He'd been *tortured* for hours; she'd just lost a few teeth...
"Something to eat?" He suggested brusquely, and Eve rose, going to her mini-fridge and getting out a few packets of blood.
She didn't bother heating them up, just tossing them into Spike's lap in an expression of her remaining displeasure.
"S'a bit much, innit?" Spike said conversationally as he gestured to his own wounds, then Eve's face.
She sort of half smirked, half grimaced, and knelt to untie Spike's boots.
He drank while she tested his reflexes-- everything was in working order, in a few more weeks he'd be back at full strength and then... then Angelus would still be stronger than him, still have a hold over Dru, and still be a pain in the ass. Besides which, the slayer, who had done this to Spike in the first place, was bound to start sniffing after Angelus to stake him, and Spike just knew he was gonna get caught in the crossfire when that all started up.
But Spike was starting to form a plan. "Pet, you allowed out tomorrow?"
Eve stood and took the empty bags from Spike, throwing them away. He could tell that talking hurt as she grimaced when she answered warily, "What do you want me to do?"
"Want you to have a talk with the slayer's gang," Spike explained. "Tell them you want to help them bring down Angelus."
Eve's face was open in her pure shock. "Spike, you want me to ally myself with... and they're gonna want to kill you too. And Dru..."
The vampire interrupted, "Well you're gonna manage it so only one dies, aren't you. You tell me when the attack is planned, and I'll make sure Dru and me are safe. Deal?"
Eve realized that if this worked, Spike's life would be in her hands. There would be nothing stopping her from turning him in to the slayer too. But she would never do anything to get him killed-- he had taken the place of 'vamp friend' vacated by Angel, though he wasn't as kind as the souled vampire had been.
Apparently, Spike knew that he could trust her, and it made Eve nervous to be so exposed to this man-- creature-- who had beaten her, threatened her with death, and just generally abused her so much in the past.
But Eve nodded anyway. "I'll do it... if you're sure?"
Spike grimaced, looking down at himself, realizing that he was in no shape to practice walking today. "You think I want to stay and take more a what Angelus is dishing out? Not my thing, pet," Spike eyed the slave carefully after uttering those last words, wondering if she would understand what he was asking.
The implication was pretty explicit, at least to Eve, who could read Spike pretty well by this point. He wanted to know, and she needed to tell him: "I wanna leave too."
So she would stay with Spike and Druscilla even after Angelus died. That was fine. What was she gonna do with freedom anyway?
==Tuesday Morning==
It was always a little exciting walking into that library; Eve never knew what to expect. This morning she found Xander and Cordelia sitting at the main tables, talking to Giles about some school thing.
They all looked up as she walked in, and Eve had to take a deep breath.
One thing she'd forcibly not let herself think about was Xander. Spike, Dru, Angelus-- they'd all tried to get inside her to hurt her where it really counted. And though she cared about them all in ways she'd rather not, they hadn't been able to get her. Hadn't touched her heart.
But Xander had. His spell had ripped her open, and now she was vulnerable. Now she was hurting.
Part of her just wanted to dive across the room and hit the boy, leave scars on the outside of him that he had left on the inside of her. But Eve just shook those feelings off, chalking up her need for violence to too much time spent with vampires.
"Uh, Eve, how may we, uh," Giles stuttered, glancing behind the slave as if he expected her to be followed by a band of vampires though the sun was shining merrily just outside.
"Help me," Eve finished, her words a bit slurred because her mouth still ached.
"Help you what?" Cordelia interrupted. "Find out everything about us Angel doesn't already know so he can kill us all while we sleep?" The cheerleader glanced sharply at her boyfriend, noting that Xander's ears were beet-red. She glared harder at Eve, still not really trusting any of the local females to keep their hands off Xander even though his spell was over.
"Help me take Angelus out," Eve explained.
Giles took off his glasses, polishing them as he said, "I was under the impression that you were, er, rather inclined to aid your vampire masters, rather than betray them."
"Spike and Dru, yeah," Eve grimaced as she sat on the table, "but Angelus? He's killing me."
Her last words were spoken with such sincerity and pain that Giles had to take a little pity on her. "You are injured?" He asked.
"Always," Eve responded sullenly. She shrugged off her rising bad mood and said lightly, "Apparently teaching me obedience is like pulling teeth. *Just* like pulling teeth." She absently tongued the bloody pits where two of her back molars had been, watching Giles realize and absorb her meaning.
"Oh, er, well, that is..." Giles stammered helplessly.
Cordelia sighed loudly, standing up. "Here, I have Aleve, good for every kind of pain," she said, pulling a pill bottle out of her back pack and handing Eve two blue tablets.
Eve took the pills gratefully while Xander and Giles stared at Cordelia incredulously. "What?" She exclaimed. "I can't be gracious?"
"Yes. Quite." Giles studied Eve for a moment before asking tentatively, "So, you have a plan to, uh, 'take Angelus out'?"
"Uhm, no, not so much," Eve admitted. "I just wanna help."
Cordelia shrugged, "I can see that," she said, looking pointedly at the freshly opened bite on Eve's neck.
"But, uh," Xander couldn't quite meet Eve's eyes as he spoke up for the first time, "what can you really do?"
Eve turned uncertainly to Giles, who said hopefully, "You could give us information. Do you know what Angelus plans for Buffy?"
"Naw, sorry, I mostly just hear the 'hate, kill, torture' stuff when he talks about her. He won't even tell Spike his plan," Eve sighed.
"Can you at least tell us where they're staying?" Xander asked. "We're kinda in the dark here."
"Oh, yeah," Eve answered, trying not to flinch at the sound of the boy's voice. "We're 4417 West Packing Street."
"The same place Buffy found Spike when he raised the Judge?" Giles asked, surprised.
"Yup. Don't know why they haven't moved," Eve shrugged, a little sheepish that they already had the only information she could offer.
"Well, like, when does Angel sleep? And when does he go out to eat and stuff like that. If we knew that, we could just, like, shoot him with a crossbow and spare Buffy the damage," Cordelia suggested.
Giles blinked rapidly at the cheerleader for a few seconds before agreeing, "Yes, we need to know everything about the general comings and goings of Angel, how many vampires he has amassed, anything that would be useful if we hope to form a reasonable plan."
Eve looked at the ceiling, counting silently. "Besides Angelus, Spike, and Dru, there are seven minions left. But three of them are Angelus's, and they're wicked strong already. I'm not really sure about the other stuff, but I can find out for you."
Giles smiled, a little relieved. This wasn't really good news yet, but he thought that Eve could be trusted, and having an insider in Angelus's home could only be a good thing. "Well, excellent. You will return tomorrow and tell us what you can?"
"Of course," Eve answered.
"We'll see you then," Giles replied.
Eve nodded curtly to the librarian and Cordelia, ignoring Xander completely as she turned to leave.
Seconds after the outside door to the library closed, Buffy stormed in the other entrance, wielding Angelus's gift from the night before.
***
Eve walked into the warehouse, her arms full of fresh food.
One of Angelus's minions, Adam, stood up from where he had been lounging, walking over to Eve and sneering as he thumped her arms, almost making her drop her bounty.
Before he could make some snide remark, Angelus's voice boomed from the shadows, "Considering last night's demonstration, do you really want to do that?"
Adam turned in surprise, both at his sire's presence and at the warning, "But that was just Spike-"
Angelus was on the fledgling in a split second, holding the struggling vampire in the air by his neck as he hissed, "Yes, and Spike was once one of my favored; older than your *grandparents*, so you'd do well not to underestimate him."
Adam gasped desperately, not yet accustomed to not needing to breathe. Angelus narrowed his eyes at the fledge before casually tossing him aside and turning to Eve.
"Put your things away," he instructed, "Druscilla wants you."
Eve nodded, remembering to say, "Yes, Master," at the last moment.
***
Druscilla smiled mysteriously at Eve as the slave tidied up her mistress's manicure.
"Tick tock, tick tock," the vampiress's musical voice rang through the room. She ran her free hand over Eve's neck, causing the slave to shiver involuntarily. "Lovely skin-- soft and wet and very very sweet," Druscilla pouted a little, "but Daddy doesn't want to share."
Eve ignored these ramblings as always, having the additional discomfort of the dog Druscilla had brought home with her the night before rummaging around under the table. Eve was allergic-- her eyes tearing up and her feet *itching* where the nasty thing kept rubbing up against her.
The slave worried-- this calm time with Druscilla was always nice, but now she was afraid the psychic vampires would 'see' Eve's betrayal of Angelus, and then...
"Tick tock," Druscilla sing-songed loudly, getting Eve's attention. "Running out of time, Sweet," she murmured delicately.
Sometimes the soft of Druscilla's voice, the round of her eyes, the fragile of her hands-- they made Eve see the gentle young woman Dru must have been. Eve had to wonder about that: Was she kind? Was she happy? Was she as lovely as the vampiress she had become?
Dru always seemed to know when Eve was imagining her mistress as a human, and the vampiress did not approve. As Eve released Druscilla's hands, the task completed, Dru raised one fist and brought it down sharply on Eve's arm where it lay on the table.
The blow shattered Eve's watch, and startled her enough that she exclaimed, "OW!" Though she wasn't really hurt.
And suddenly, Angelus was right there, leaning in the doorway with a nasty smirk on his face. Eve knew that smirk; she had to consciously keep her own lip from curling at the unpleasant implications of *that* look.
But the vampire accosted Druscilla instead of the slave. "Dru," he tisked, "Evie's mine now. You know you're not allowed to hurt her without me."
Druscilla grinned wickedly. "Are you going to punish me?" She asked eagerly.
"Yeah, baby," Angelus strode into the room, all confidence and power, his hands idly unfastening his belt. "Why don't you take the afternoon off," he said to Eve, though his eyes never left Druscilla.