lucetilogs | I can cut you into pieces

I can cut you into pieces

Who:

slaying
What: The inevitable confrontation after the week's events
When: Back-dated to Sunday morning, after the alternate universe event ends
Where: The tunnels, at first
Summary: Post-experiment, Buffy is a moth to the flame when it comes to hurt and McCoy just has avoidance issues. Clearly they need to talk about what happened.
Rating: PG+?

McCoy was not entirely sure what happened at first. Lately, it seemed like this was becoming a regular occurrence for him, waking up sore and not recognizing his surroundings. He could blame the company he often kept these days, he supposed. Or maybe he was just growing too accustomed to waking up each morning to the same ceiling and that particular thought unnerved him slightly. Oh, how he was growing tired of it, he lamented silently to himself as he rubbed at his face tiredly. Then the memories of the past week came back to him in a nauseating rush.

Oh, hell.

An appropriate sentiment, as that is what it felt like as the memories of what he had done – no, it wasn't him... was it? – became less hazy and more distinctive as he woke up properly. Terran Empire? Chess pieces, confrontations... Summers. Experiment sprung to his mind almost instantly, eclipsing the nagging feeling he had and something Spock would most likely enjoy picking apart, but something he vehemently refused to even consider. It didn't seem like there was an excuse as he swallowed dryly as he leant back heavily against the wall.

"Damn it..."

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The tunnels. That was where they held criminals. Bad guys. But Buffy knew that McCoy wasn't one of those. Right? She rubbed her sternum. It hadn't been him. People had told her that during the week and she had told herself after. But...she couldn't help but feel the disgust in the pit of her stomach. The things that voice had said. The things that man had done. It left her confused.

She had been waiting for him to wake up. She heard Bones' curse. "Sorry about the decor. We didn't have anything in a sorry you went evil and hurt everyone. Nothing vacant, at least."

Her arms were crossed and she avoided eye contact. But at least she was here.

McCoy had not realized that she was there with him until she piped up. He should have expected her to be there really and made a non-committal noise in his throat in response; clearly the evil comment seemed fair to him.

It was almost disconcerting as he attempted to separate the aspects of a peace-keeping armada from an empire that had been around for centuries. His expression was unreadable as he watched her, noticing how she avoided any eye contact with him and rubbed her... agnoizer.

He cursed quietly to himself. Who the hell had invented that piece of crap? This is was why he was suspicious of technology.

Buffy tugged at the lock, jangling a key and sliding the door open. "Well, silence isn't a crime. You're totally free to go."

She kicked the cell open and leaned back against the bars. She still couldn't smile. Couldn't shrug this one off. She kept remembering the feeling of approaching the Doctor in the bar, filled with hope and love and only getting brutality in return.

She sighed.

McCoy made no attempt to move and remained obstinately on the floor with his back to the wall and brought up one leg, wrapping his arms around it as he continued to watch her.

The door swinging open and the offer of freedom did little to console him. This wasn't like being questioned by the authorities at the Ole' Miss or dealing with what Jim did during their bar crawling days at the Academy. It was different now, being on the other side of these bars, and having her as opponent before they dragged his sorry ass down here.

"... Where is it?"

Buffy pressed the pads of her fingers against the space between her eyebrows. "Where's what?"

She hated doing this. Playing jailer to people she didn't want to jail. So she rattled the bars and shoved the door further open. Out, the gesture said. Get out and stop being her prisoner. She doesn't want to feel like one.

Her other fingers drummed against her hip. Impatience. Worry. Concern. Self-conciousness.

McCoy did not pay attention to that gesture. He frowned slightly to himself... was this how she felt when he nailed her windows shut? No, that little act seemed so trivial in comparison to this scenario and he licked his dry lips. A trace of nicotine remained and he blanched.

"That damn thing, that's what." His words lacked his usual bite, tone tremulous as he recalled the device that had managed to affect her so profoundly. It seemed important that he find out where it was so he could properly destroy it.

Recognition charged across her face--along with a very strange, very alien look of fear. Buffy rarely did look afraid in front of McCoy. She didn't want to start, now.

"It's at home. Weapon's chest. Figured it was a safe enough spot for it until..." She trailed off. Until what? Until she found the time to break it apart? Throw it in the river? Why had she even kept it as long as this.

She took one step into the cell but couldn't bring herself to hold her hand out. Not yet.

McCoy finally averted his gaze and stared at the wall to his side. He felt shameful, guilty, disgusted with himself at how he was responsible for that look to flicker across her face as he brought up the subject of that Goddamn thing. Some damn gentleman he had acted as his demeanour became tauter.

"Should have just destroyed it."

"Believe me, I'd pencilled that in for soon. After I--y'know--rebuild the burning shambles of a life I have left here."

He averted his gaze and she averted hers and it was all one big aversion party. "Look, it was an experiment. Not really you. Blah blah blah and other things like that." Shrugging. She should have brought something, perhaps. Food. She suspected he was hungry.

True to form, McCoy just wanted a glass of romulan ale. One shot glass would happily blitz away everything that happened. Whether or not they had replicated the bottle he kept stashed behind Lungworm's fish tank was questionable, since he honestly couldn't recall seeing the goldfish on his sporadic returns to the house.

It was probably dead then. Figures. He felt a flare of anger as she dismissed the week as just another one of their experiments, but buried it somewhat inexpertly beneath his default scowl that carried into his voice.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, you know. Peachy with a heaping side of keen."

She sounded anything but alright. "Because regressing back to a few months after clawing out of my coffin is totally the best experience ever." Buffy sounded whiney. She sounded self-obsessed. But she was also making the problem conspicuously not about McCoy and the change he had experienced. That had been a badness beyond words and beyond snarky complaints. And she did not trust herself to bring it up.

"Come on. Let's get you home."

That struck a chord with him and his expression became darker. McCoy was aware how sensitive that subject was for her and being regressed back to it? It was not making him any more chipper than he was already.

"Damn it." He favoured the weak profanity as he tried to stand up. And while McCoy was being stubborn at first by not leaving the cell when she gestured for him to get out, he found getting to his feet this time was a difficult experience with his limbs being thoroughly uncooperative.

He thought back... who had he fought with exactly? Sparrow, some other pointy-eared bastard, Buffy... hell, no wonder his limbs were protesting.

She reached out. She would help him up now that she saw he was having such trouble with it.

There had been other issues besides the regression, of course. The major freakout about why suddenly she was treating Spike like Angel and remembering Angel as Spike. She wasn't sure how much Bones could remember and she would play it as cooly as possible before spilling her guts out to him.

McCoy saw that movement from the Slayer out of the corner of his eye and snubbed her offer of help directly.

"Don't," he waved her off brusquely with one hand as he kept the other on the cool wall of the cell, "I'm not an invalid. Just cramped, that's all." An unlikely declaration, since he remembered pacing the cell like a caged animal. Had he thrown insults at his jailers from behind the bars too? Most likely.

"Home, then." The doctor stated awkwardly as he looked at the open door. He wanted to ask more about what happened to her, but it felt wrong to just fall into old patterns with her after the incident with the agonizer. For something that was not supposed to exist, it filled him with such dread that it made him pale. He did not know whether he was experiencing echoes or if it was just a figment of his overactive imagination.

Oh God, please be the latter.

"Home. She repeated, with emphasis. Buffy backed out of the cell; clearly, being here was making her anxious. No one liked seeing their friends--no, their family--behind bars. It went against all of her natural instincts. The opposite of what she was supposed to be doing for McCoy. And yet, then again, there was a twinge of concern for when the Doctor would step over that threshhold into freedom. What if this was a trick? What if he never really returned back to normal at all?

Buffy's brows contracted. Both of them must have realized what was going through her head. This was, by no means, the first time that someone trusted--someone loved (albeit for different reasons)--had changed violently upon her. Encountering the darker side of McCoy smacked of the morning she had met Angelus as he masqueraded as Angel. The horrible things that had been said. The way it felt like some vital organ had been torn out.

And the moment Angel had come back to her, she had ran him through with a sword. Could she have done the same, now? Responding to her own thoughts, Buffy shook her head.

"It's really me, Summers." He offered to her in silence that reigned between them and inwardly admonished himself for how awkward that surname sounded coming from his lips now. It might not have been enough to crush the tension – the unspoken uncertainly –completely, but he damn well tried to at least alleviate it before he walked through that door.

"If it wasn't, I probably would have skipped out of here already." He added as a bitter after-thought. As it stood, he remained at the door and looked up at the entry of the cell. It was only one step between him and perdition now. His face was a mask of remorse, but an apology had failed to expertly materialize as of yet. How could it one come so easily and mean everything? He had used violence against her with damn intent because his views had been cruelly inverted for giggles.

"I think it's still in here. Hell, I hope it is."

"I know it's you."

She wanted to think that she could tell. That there was an air of difference around this man and the one from last week. A difference that she hadn't been able to spot because of the haze and confusion surrounding her own...problems.

"Just 'cause I magically thought Spike was Angel last week, doesn't mean I'm still suffering from the same delusions about other people's identities."

"So you're not..." McCoy trailed off, but it was obvious what his thought process was rotating around at the moment. His shoulders seem to sag with relief.

"Thank God for that."

"No, I am. I mean--we are. Just not li--" Crap. That was more of an admission that she was comfortable with. But it had to happen, didn't it? Eventually? Given enough time and space the truth was bound to slip out. Buffy simply hadn't wanted it to come out at such an inopportune moment.

Her cheeks flared up, red. Not shame or embarrassment, but emotion. Confusion. How could she even explain to McCoy about these feelings that felt like they were invading her?

"Spike and me...it's been--since the draft."

McCoy allowed that to sink in and watched as she blushed. Her and Spike... since the draft, huh? It made a lot of sense, actually. Even before the earthquake, he had watched leave to go out on patrol in the evening and then hear her sneak back early in the morning. Emony must have told him to drop it, but there was concern that only a plus year of captivity could do to a man buried there as to where she was staying. Especially when Derek let Emony, Spock and him stay in their residence.

Hell, patrol could mean a lot of things when it concerned Buffy Summers; sparring with other fighters, brawling with pirates, attending her shift at Good Spirits or God knows what else she got up to when she left the house.

"... What the hell." Disapproval, confusion, shock and maybe a pinch of anger was all rolled into one cantankerous gripe.

"There. That face, right there? That's exactly why I didn't tell you sooner." She jabbed a finger in his direction. Righteousness, one of her favouritest defense mechanisms. She turned away and tried to hide from the look of mixed-bag emotions on his face. It sliced her and hurt her in ways she had not anticipated. Going into the relationship with Spike, she knew that she would disappoint Bones. Back then, she had shrugged and gone with her gut instead. Now, she felt the chilling grip of some unnamed responsibility. Why should she care?

But she cared so much. Enough to keep it from him, at least.

Buffy might have cared enough to keep this from him, but McCoy was having trouble keeping up with her list of romantic pursuits. He rubbed his brow in the faint hope that it would disperse the twisting expressions in revelation of this and entice the Slayer to actually look at him instead of turning away like she often did. What a familiar situation this one was.

McCoy had laughed back then when she commented how different he was, but there was no way he could laugh now... and just why the hell was it affecting him so much? He remembered when he had made something of the truce with the bloodsucking bastard, back when she was still powerless.

Maybe it was the wall of silence. Neither of them could win.

Still turned away, she began to speak. "I just--Bones? I want to do right by him. Finally. And I feel I'm capable of that, right now."

These were important distinctions. Buffy wasn't sure about whether she actually loved Spike. He was in her heart--that much she had already admitted to Angel, years ago. She felt something warm and genuine towards him, but was that enough? Could she shape it into love just by the sheer force of her will?

"You can do what you want." He finally landed on that listless reply. He wondered, was this just indignation over how she was transferring those affections she had for Jim over to Spike? The doctor remembered how his abrupt departure from this world had affected her; she had never admitted to loving him, after all.

"You're old enough to--" make your own mistakes? "—-take care of yourself."

... And why the hell should he care any of this.

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I can cut you into pieces

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