Devil's Truth: Another Rude Awakening
by MattK
Willow was the last to wake up. That was only natural. She was, after all, a tiny person. Of their whole extended family, only Buffy was smaller, and Willow lacked Buffy’s constitution. Everyone else chained to the walls in the bleak dungeon that had once been the basement of Sunnydale High had spent a fair amount of time contemplating just how tiny and delicate she looked, and how helpless they were to even check her condition.
After an eternity half an hour longer than it took for the next to last person to wake up, she finally stirred and moaned.
Where was she? What was she sleeping on? It was cold, and wet, and every time she tried to move, her head and stomach both rebelled. She groaned again as she tried to move limbs that were far too heavy. What was wrong with her?
“She’s waking up!”
“Thank Isis!”
Chains rattle on one side of her. “Are you okay, baby?”
“Oz?”
On the other side. “How do you feel?”
“Tara? I-I’m okay...” She opened her eyes and tried to sit up. The room spun and she nearly threw up. She flopped back to the floor. “Just not in the sense of wanting move, and only in an extremely vomity way.”
“It’ll be okay, baby,” The quiet male voice on her other side comforted. “You were tranquilized.”
“We all were.”
“Giles?” Willow struggled into a sitting position. She wavered and nearly fell again, but she fought the dizziness down. There was a clanking of chains to her left. She blearily turned her head, to see Tara, chained to the wall beside her, reaching out as far as she could, making comforting cooing sounds. If she could, Willow knew that Tara would be holding her up and stroking her. Willow tried to reach out to her, to take her hand, but her own chains—*So that’s why my limbs were so heavy*—stopped her. They were so close, so very close, but their fingertips couldn’t quite reach.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Cordelia. “Sadistic bastards make sure none of us can touch each other.”
“Of course not,” Wesley, with an unprecedented tone of bitterness. “That might offer us some comfort.”
“Where are we?” Willow asked, lowering her arm in frustration.
“Don’t know,” Xander said. “Somewhere straight out of Better Homes and Dungeons.”
Willow scanned the room. It was dim, but not dark, and her chains allowed her enough movement to see everything. The door was to her left. Tara and Oz were chained on either side of her, with Riley chained in the corner and—to her surprise—Joyce between him and Tara. Xander, Anya, Cordelia, Giles, and Wesley were chained on the opposite wall.
She gasped when she saw the wall opposite the door: Angel, Spike, and Faith were...stapled was the only word her clouded mind could manage...to the wall. A metal band at each wrist and ankle, across the waist and chest, held them tightly in place. Angel and Spike also had a band across their throats. Angel’s clothing hung in tatters from his body, and half-healed wounds showed through the holes.
“Angel? What happened to him?”
“He got machine-gunned,” Cordelia answered sharply. “As you can imagine, he’s not feeling his best right now.”
“Turn off the bitch, Cordy,” Xander snapped. “You don’t need it.”
“Don’t talk to me about bitchy, Xander. You watch your best friend get shot down, then talk to me about bitchy. I bet you wish you’d been there to watch.”
“As a matter of fact—“
“Enough,” Giles snapped. “We have to—“
“Hey, wait a minute,” Willow interrupted. “What’s Psycho Girl doing here? Isn’t she supposed to be in prison?”
“Sure am, Red.” Faith answered. “Wish I was there, actually. It’s more comfortable than this.”
“Well, then, I like you just where you are.” Willow said. “You don’t deserve comfortable. You deserve to live in a tiny, tiny room, and sleep on rocks every night.” Willow braced herself for Faith’s venomous comeback, or snarled threat. She was surprised when all she got was a sigh.
“I’m not arguing with you on that one, Red. I know you won’t believe me if I say sorry, and you probably wouldn’t accept it even if you did. But I am. I wanna make up for what I can, and take what I’ve got coming for what I can’t. That’s all I can do. It’s up to you whether that’s enough.”
Willow settled back into place, stunned.
Faith turned her head toward Tara and smiled. “Hey, blondie. What’s your name again?”
“T-Tara.”
“Yeah. I’m real sorry I picked on you.”
“It’s alright.”
“No, it’s not,” Faith and Willow said simultaneously.
Tara shook her head and smiled softly. “I’ve dealt with much worse.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have added to the pile, then.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Willow snapped.
“Willow, it’s okay. Faith, I said it’s alright, and I meant it. I forgive you. Take me off your pile of guilt. I can tell it’s already crushing you.”
Everyone who knew Tara stared. It was perhaps the most she’d ever said at one time.
Faith smiled gratefully. “Thanks, kid. Oh, by the way—“
“Yes?”
Faith grinned mischievously. “Nice rack.”
Tara blushed, but smiled shyly.
“Isn’t this cute,” Spike piped up. “Isn’t this just bloody lovely? Hate to interrupt your love-fest, kiddies, but can I remind you that we’re in the dungeon of a soddin’ True Devil?!”
“Quite right,” Giles agreed. “We must set aside our...” he looked around at the group. “...many, many differences and formulate a plan.”
“One question,” Riley spoke up from his corner. He’d been sitting up against the wall, his knees drawn up, resting his head on them. Now, he looked up. “Why are we here? Why are we still alive? Are we hostages? Sacrificial victims?”
“That’s right,” Xander nodded. “That’s right. We should try to think like our opponent.”
“You can’t possibly think like a True Devil,” Anya said, subdued. “We’re going to die horribly. Just accept it.”
“What do we know?” Riley asked. “He wants to corrupt Buffy. But what does that mean, specifically?”
“Specifically, it means turning Buffy into his own personal assassin. That’s what it bloody means.” Wesley supplied. “Which leaves the world without a protector: one Slayer in prison and the other working for the darkness.”
“Can he really do that?” Joyce asked. “I mean, she’d never—“
“ ‘Course she would, if the sitch was right.” Faith said. “Ted was an accident, and he turned out to be a robot, but that was luck. And she set out to do it with me. It gets easier every time.”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” Willow said acidly.
“Yes,” Faith answered simply.
“Well, I believe in Buffy,” Willow said stubbornly. “She’s not you. She’s—“
“Putty in his hands,” Anya said glumly. “This is Belial we’re talking about, here. No one resists him without help from the Powers. If she has any weaknesses at all, she’s his.”
They all looked back and forth at each other, aghast.
“We have to save her!” Joyce cried.
“Which means, of course, that we must escape,” Giles said. Spike rolled his eyes. “For which we need a plan. Now, what resources do we have?”
“Well, we have three superpeople who are all strapped to the wall,” Xander volunteered. “One of them shot full of holes. We’re all chained to the wall—“
“But not gagged.” Oz said, looking at Willow.
“That’s right!” Willow agreed eagerly. “You’re such a genius!” She said to Oz, who beamed. Then she turned to Tara. “I know we can’t touch or do gestures or light candles or mix components or anything, but we can still talk. There must be something we can do.”
“Funny that a True Devil would make a mistake that stupid,” Xander mused. Then he turned to Anya, grinning smugly. “Maybe he’s not so tough after all.”
“Actually,” a calm voice came from the doorway. “It wasn’t really a mistake.”
Every head snapped toward the door. It had opened amazingly silently while they had been distracted by their discussion, and a silver-haired man in a navy suit stood there. Spike, Anya, Cordelia, and Wesley flattened against the wall.
“It’s just that there’s nothing you can do here. We’re on the Hellmouth, so I can extend more of my power into this realm.” He walked over to Willow and Tara, and crouched in front of them, so that he could look them in the eye. “And even a fraction of my power is mightier than that of your little gods. So feel free to try anything you like. It won’t work.”
He stood, turned, and slowly strode the length of the room, surveying them each in turn. Each of them backed against the wall as he passed, except for Riley, who did his best to stand defiant. Belial merely smiled indulgently at him, patted his shoulder, and moved on.
Finally, Belial arrived in front of Angel. He gently reached forward and shook the unconscious vampire, who moaned. “Liam,” The True Devil whispered. “Liam, wake up.”
“Huh...huh?” Angel blinked and shook his head as he raised it to look at his captor. Even Xander had to wince when he saw where bullets had passed clean through Angel’s neck in some places. “B...Buh...” It seemed that the vampire had to struggle for the strength—or the breath—to speak.
“Y-yeh-yes?” Belial smirked.
“Buffy,” Angel finished emphatically. “Wh-where i-is she?”
“Sleeping,” Belial answered shortly. “I had to add some...exotic ingredients to her dose. Enough tranquilizer to keep her asleep long enough to prepare all of you for your roles would endanger her life. The side-effects those extras have—suggestibility, relaxed will, a tendency to chatter on about whatever I steer the conversation toward—those are just bonuses.”
“She’s stronger than you think,” Riley said boldly. “Stronger than you.”
“That’s true,” Belial agreed amiably, turning to the young man. “But it’s you, not me, who will turn her toward the darkness.”
“Never,” Joyce declared. “You can do what you want to me, but—“
“Oh, stop being so melodramatic and relax,” Belial scoffed. “You’ve already done your part. You just have to tell her about it.”
“B-Belial.”
“Yes?” He cheerfully turned back to Angel. “What is it, Liam?”
“F-f-Faith.”
“What about her?”
“Sh-she’s c-cruh-crucified. If you le-leave her ha-hanging there l-like that, she’ll die.” Angel was rapidly regaining his strength.
Belial looked at Angel thoughtfully for a moment, then turned that look on Faith. “That’s true, isn’t it? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Silly me. I keep forgetting how fragile you silly little dirt-crawlers are.”
He stepped over in front of the dark-haired Slayer and pondered her for a moment before speaking. “How does this sound, Faith? I’ll make a deal with you. If you come work for me, you’ll have anything and everything you’ve ever wanted. Money and all the material things that come with it, of course. But so much more: you will finally have the respect and recognition you deserve. *You’ll* be the Chosen One, not the second string. You wanted Sunnydale to be your town? You’ll have the whole *world* recognizing you as their protector, and loving you for it. I can even give you Richard Wilkins back. The father of your heart. And all you have to do is what you like. What you were always meant to do anyway: fight.” He paused and studied her expression for a moment. “If you don’t come work for me,” He continued, the personable smile not fading from his face. “I leave you here to suffocate when your abdominal cavity fills up with you body’s own fluids. Your choice, of course. I won’t force you.”
A solid ball of dread and anger filled Willow’s stomach. *She’s gonna do it. Of course she will. She’s evil, and—*
“No,” Faith answered, barely above a whisper.
“I really do suggest you give it more thought. You’re not going to get a better offer. After all,” The True Devil grinned maliciously. “There’s only two things you do well, Faith. Fighting is one. Neither of them gets you very far in the world.”
Faith looked down, as if lost in thought. Everyone in the room held their breath. Her previous refusal had been so weak, and Belial already had one Slayer.
Faith’s head suddenly jerked up and she spit in Belial’s face.
Belial didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed. The saliva evaporated from his face with a hiss. “A spitter, Faith? I’m surprised. I would have thought you were a swallower.” He shook his head in mock regret. “It seems Frank was right. You really *are* nothing but a stupid, worthless, slut. But then, that must run in the family. Oh, that’s right. You probably don’t know.”
Faith’s fists were clenched, and she trembled in fury, humiliation, and remembered agony. But she shut her mouth tight, determined not to ask him what she didn’t know. She also struggled, with less success, to hide the tears standing in her eyes.
After a moment, Belial frowned and continued. “I imagine that your mother told you that your father was a worthless bastard who abandoned her when she was pregnant for you. Yes?”
Faith just looked away from him.
“Well, that’s only partly true. The man your mother was living with at the time *was* a worthless bastard who *did* abandon her when she was pregnant. But there’s a secret even she doesn’t know: that man was not your father. Do you want to know the real secret?” He leaned in close to her ear, and stage-whispered so that everyone in the room could hear. “She caught you like syphilis at a bachelor-party gang bang that she whored herself out to so she could buy more heroin.”
“That’s enough!”
Belial’s head snapped up and toward Angel. His eyes narrowed. For the first time, he showed something other than cheerful superiority and equanimity. “Did you say something to me, Liam?” he asked, his voice dreadfully quiet and cold.
“Stop calling me Liam,” Angel said, half genuinely annoyed and half trying to distract him from Faith. “I gave up all right to that name when—“
“Silence!” Belial bellowed, suddenly furious. The roared word echoed and re-echoed, seeming to grow in power rather than diminish, until the walls of the prison shook. As the word overlapped itself until it became a meaningless cacophony, the earthly beings reeled, their senses assaulted and disrupted. Then it was all cut off, as if with a guillotine blade, when Belial barked “Enough!”
There was a moment of deadly silence as the devil glared at the demon before him. Then he grabbed Angel’s chin and forced it up so the vampire had no choice but to look into his eyes. “No more. You are not Angelus. You never were. Just because you share a body, and remember what he did with it, doesn’t give you the right to take credit for his great deeds.”
Angel didn’t dare to speak, but others couldn’t contain their amazement.
“Take credit?”
“Great deeds?”
Belial’s grip tightened. “Angelus was the greatest vampire who ever existed. From the very night he rose, his every moment was a masterwork of pain. No vampire ever caused so much death and suffering in so short a time--stupid, instinctive animals that they are. Certainly not his worthless, hedonistic sire. In the end, he didn’t care what happened to him, as long as he was the one to murder the world and watch it burn down. He had a vision, and a passion for destruction almost worthy of a True Devil. And you—you dare to blame yourself for his glory? Enough. No more.” He stepped back from Angel and clenched the hand that he had been using to grip Angel’s face, then raised it in a summoning gesture, and he spoke two simple words: “Come out.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, just as they began to believe that the True Devil had been bluffing, or that whatever he had attempted had failed, something hit Angel. Hard.
His eyes bulged in his sockets, and his teeth clenched. His hands crabbed themselves into claws, and he began to shake violently. The cords stood out in his neck and the rusty sound of a half-blocked scream forced its way out of his throat.
His shaking grew more violent, then he started flinging and forcing himself against his bonds. If he’d been free, he would have curled into a ball, but he was bound too tightly.
Then, for a single, eternal instant he was frozen in place, his every muscle pulled as tight as a guitar string, ready to snap.
Then he threw his head back and screamed.
Everyone in that room had witnessed things that would have broken a weak soul. All of them were well acquainted with pain—injuries they had suffered in their war against the darkness, and the violence they had been forced to deal out to others. All of them lived with the nightmares. Few of them liked Angel. Some hated him. But none had ever imagined anything as horrible as the scream that erupted from his throat at that moment. It was the sound of a strong soul being ripped to the bone, driven beyond all defenses to the point where the whole universe was nothing but pain, and all it could do was scream. The sound of agony so terrible that the first second of it would have stopped any of their mortal hearts.
Then his lungs were empty of air, and his screams were silent. But he kept screaming. And that was even worse.
Suddenly, he gagged, choked—and something that looked like black smoke started to billow from his mouth. It gathered into a roiling cloud above his head, and began to collect and expand.
That was when they heard the buzzing. It wasn’t loud. It was more of a whining hum, really, and it grew as the cloud grew. That was when, one after another, all of them realized that the cloud wasn’t smoke. It wasn’t even a cloud. Not really.
It was a swarm.
A swarm of thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes.
Then the swarm started to stream from other openings—his nose, his ears, even his wounds.
By now, the rest of the prisoners were nearly mad. Joyce Summers, unprepared for the sudden immersion in her daughter’s life that she had so hoped for, was curled into a catatonic ball. Some fought against their chains and wept and yelled stop it, stop it, for god’s sake leave him alone. Leave him alone, you bastard. Others screamed and wept and tried to hide their eyes and cover their ears at the same time, and begged for someone to make it stop, make it stop, please, someone make it stop. Yet others could only stand and stare in horror, at what they had been so certain they had wanted, what they’d wished for so hard, and now they wanted so much to take it back, this wasn’t what they’d wanted at all, oh, god if they’d only known.
Then it was over. Angel sagged in his bonds. The swarm hung in the air for a moment, then settled to the ground. As it did so, the whining hum of the mosquitoes grew louder as they flew in tighter and tighter circles. Slowly, like a polaroid developing or a statue emerging from a block of marble, the cloud coalesced into a humanoid figure, a writhing, man-shaped mass of bugs. Then the mosquitoes began to connect and flow together like tiny drops of oil until finally all were one. Then, like a special effect in a movie, the humanoid blob of oil morphed into a naked man, exactly identical to Angel, with his demonic face in place.
Angelus.
Unmindful of his nakedness, Angelus stared at his hands in wonder. “Free...I’m free...a body of my own...” He began running his hands over his broad face, assuring himself that both the hands and the face were real. “And pure...I’m pure...no weak humanity holding me down...” He slowly raised his head to Belial, then dropped to one knee, and bowed it again. “How can I possibly repay you...master?”
Belial patted his shoulder as he walked past on his way to Angel. “Just by doing what you like best.”
He stopped in front of Angel, grinning with triumphant malice. “I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’ve done you a favor, Liam. You’re not human. You’re still just a demon with a soul. A freak in both worlds. Cope with the fact that you’ll be there to see the stars burn out, when everyone you care about is dust. Cope with the fact that, even though you can’t lose your soul anymore, you’re still an addict. And the blood of the woman you love is the fix you need.” He smiled benevolently and patted Angel on the cheek, then turned to go. “Buffy will wake up, soon. All of you be ready to play your parts. Come, Angelus.”
“Aw, can’t I torture just one of them?” Angelus asked as they exited.
“Not yet. I need them unmarked. Later, if there are any left.”
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