closed ♔ fallen saints and fallen stars

[behindcloseddoors]

 ♬ keep on wanting - the fray

WHO || Myri & Spike [closed]
WHAT || Myri share her discovery with Spike
WHERE || London, England
WHEN || mid-april, after dis
HOW || Actionspam

[Myri asks Spike to come with her, and they check out a car, which she lets him drive, directing him to take them towards London. As they ride, she studies him in the darkness, before finally saying:]   I... meant to ask as well, how you were feeling. I heard people talking about what happened.

 

Comments

[witchwoman]

[Myri stays quiet and keeps her head down. She's not going to be able to outrun the guards or climb any fences. She's only ever been good at staying out of sight.]

[bigbad]

[Well, Spike will just have to carry her.

He'll figure out getting to the roof when he can. For now... he lets himself be dragged. Not that he's got anything resembling a choice.]

[behindcloseddoors]

[ They're led down to cells, and Spike would get his first glimpse at the other 'residents' here. He'd hear more than he sees: moans and crying and manic babbling in all kinds of languages. Shadow creatures of all types languish in cells, beaten, bloody, pale, skinny, or just twitching as the result of who knows what kind of horrible treatment.

They're separated here, taken away from each other - Myri back to her cell, Spike to his own. It's actually days before they see each other again. Dimitris has plenty of individual torments lined up for both of them. He still seeks to study Myri's empathic ability, and he has a particular interest in testing the limits of Spike's chip. Which... is going progressively more haywire by the day. Sometimes he'll be in pain for hours at a time, a mind-frying experience that leaves him forgetting what it felt like not to be.

Rarely, he'll bring one of them to observe the other being 'studied', as if as a reminder, which he's only happy to spell out: try anything, and the other suffers.

Time ceases to mean anything to either of them. Days, weeks, months? Who can say how long they've been here now, but one thing seems clear: there's no wait out. ]

[witchwoman]

[The moment they separate her from Spike, it's like the last of her strength is drained from her. In the time thereafter, Myri stops trying to keep track of the hours, doesn't bother trying to remember how many days it's been. The pain is unbearable. They learn just what hurts the most, how to make her body and soul both scream with need to heal. It's the prolonged exposure that does the worst. She fights against it with strength her body doesn't truly have, throws herself against whatever restraints they put her in. She wants to help these people, these poor prisoners that are being hurt because of her.

None of it compares to when they bring her in to see Spike. He's not living, can't be healed, so her powers don't call to him as they do to other creatures. The pain here has nothing to do with an empathic gift and everything to do with her heart breaking that she's somehow played a part in this, that it was a doppleganger wearing her skin that trapped him here. She cries until her body isn't sure how to do that anymore, leaving her quiet on the floor of her cell for any amount of time that they'll leave her there. She imagines she will die here, and that maybe if does, somehow they'll let Spike go, then. Above everything else, one thought remains.

It's hopeless.]

[bigbad]

[The nice thing about the pain slowly melting his brain: it makes Dimitris' tests less torturous. After all, Spike's head is tormenting him just fine all on its own. Everything else he bears... not stoically, he screams too much for that... but he bears it. He doesn't stop swearing and insulting his tormenters when the pain stops long enough for him to get his tongue back, and he doesn't stop waiting to hear the sounds of punching and Buffy's snappy one-liners from the inevitable rescue.

It's taking a bloody long time, but it has to happen someday.

The only torture he can't handle is when they show him Myri. If anything could break him, it's that. Seeing her in pain, not being able to help her...

He thinks he might understand her gift a little better. If it's half as bad as this feels, he's never letting anyone get hurt near Myri again.]