SB Fag Ends

1. The Last Beat of My Heart
2. Premature Burial
3. You're Lost Little Girl
4. Nicotine Stain
5. Into The Light

( Songs Under the Cut )

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Prompt: Afterlife in the Fast Lane



Wallpaper: 1680x1050 only (at the moment anyway)

Title: Trading Faces
Author: Bogwitch
Word Count: 996
Rating: PG
Spoilers: BtVS Season 5, AU past-Crush
Summary: They’ve shared something; and it was good.
Authors Note: For the prompt: Trading Faces.

This is a HEAVILY pruned version, I recommend reading the full version here

( Trading Faces )

To kick things off, lets start with a picture:



What on earth could be happening here?

War raged; Spike’s head a battlefield for a conflict drawn out between another’s desire and his own will.

A voice, a terrible, brittle voice, spoke on a cracked, dry tongue inside his mind. It suppressed his thoughts with vile words, filling his head with whispers and poisonous lies. It sought to take over everything he was, to take control and drive his consciousness out of his own head until he was its servant. He was being consumed from within by force he could not touch, nor pummel.

He fought this voice with all he had; a tug of war where he refused to surrender, and yet he could not fight the pull that moved his feet forward towards Mortifex’s nightmare tower. Leaving Buffy and his cosy crypt behind as only a distant memory he could not quite grasp, he found himself within the ragged throng. Strangely conscious, yet still compelled, he found he was not like the rest of these dead things. They had surrendered utterly or were merely the empty shells left behind by their departed souls; they did not struggle, were not tormented by some internal voice. They knew of but one thing, and they were walking towards him with one purpose: to become his forever.

And so, they crossed the streets of the frightened town, filing past places familiar and dear, then over the scrubby desert of the outskirts, where the earth now sunk into noxious, fetid marsh. Before them then, the great tower of Mortifex rose up like some lofty giant, piecing the sky with castellated black teeth that bit into the dark shifting clouds.

This was not a place that Spike wanted to be. He summoned up his last effort and hummed to cling to some filament thread of what he knew and tune out that domineering voice, even though this time, he really didn’t want to sedated. In yielding response, the voice reluctantly retreated, if just a little, and Spike could resist as the horde surged forward through his enemy’s ebony gate.

Soon he was alone. He could hear Mortifex’s cursing him, in his head, from somewhere high above; yet the more the necromancer ranted and spat his rage, the more he lost his grip.

Spike was free, but only just and for who knew how long.

And they came to Mortifex’s dread gate; the walking and the stumbling dead, an army of the damned; to gather there, swarming, amassing, at the base of his tower of hatred. Eager to follow their master’s command, they sought their entrance, yet were denied. The mindless ones, those that had long known the embrace of the earth, moaned and stunk, clawing at the edifice that was closed to them with fingers no more than bones, whilst the whirling winds of ashes wound themselves around the great fortress and coalesced into new looming turrets, brutal and twisted.

Mortifex watched from the battlements, the sky breaking at his back. The dead were many, more than he had ever summoned in all his extended life, and he was pleased; the town could not resist and would fall to him. Sunnydale would be his to seize and make its inhabitants into his wretched slaves. His time had come.

Again, he raised his yew staff and this time he drew down the lightning from the ether. The energy hissed and sparked angrily as it caved to his will, swelling his power once more. He brought the staff down once, twice, a third time and issued his orders.

With a grinding screech, Mortifex’s gate opened to those he had brought to him, the portcullis drawn up high into the black scrolling mist to accept his army within. They shuffled forward, regiment after regiment of this undead infantry, into the great citadel of Mortifex and were swallowed up, each and every one, until none remained without.

Except a vampire alone, small and insignificant standing proudly at the base of the curtain wall, his coat flapping like crow wings in the cruel wind; one alone that was not completely under Mortifex’s control.

One he had not yet conquered.

Darkness blanketed Sunnydale in its embrace and refused to let go.

Those that lived shut their doors and locked them tight, once more hiding from the terrors outside. This was a night for staying indoors, staying in bed and ignoring the scents of earth, ashes and decay that tainted the cool night air with their stink; death odours, lingering and cloying, unforgettable, reminders that Mortifex had stolen their loved ones from their eternal rest.

Only one dared to walk the streets of the stricken town; a warrior that had lived and died and had lived again. One that had heard Mortifex’s call but was not compelled to answer.

The Slayer.

Buffy knew the night, but not this one. The sun in shadow at the dawn, dark lingered and did not depart. The sky, cloudless and clear, held no starlight and the moon chose not to rise. The dead were gone. Her work was done. But the Slayer knew the streets were yet not safe for those she protected. She set forth to that dark fortress. Someone had claimed dominion over all those she fought to keep in the ground.

Mortifex.

Maker of the dead.

Raiser of phallic black towers.

Stealer of boyfriends, lovers, nope something else less… couplely…

Stealer of Spike.

This Mortifex was going to pay for coming to Buffy’s town.

But first, she needed some help.

The crypt’s sepulchral silence stretched far beyond what was an acceptable amount of time for a reply. The walls flickered softly with fuzzy light from the TV. Columbo was explaining the convoluted, meticulous solution to yet another perplexing case with the sound on mute. None of the Scoobies were interrupting the fun and frolics by knocking insistently at the door.

So far so good.

Yet Spike wasn’t even trying to snake his hand inside her underwear anymore and his mouth had stopped uttering the obscenities that he considered pillow talk into the soft skin of her collarbone. Spike on silent? Something had to be deeply wrong with that picture, she thought.

Beneath where she sat curled into his lap, he wasn’t moving. His eyes, glassy and wide, stared into nothing and his fingers were paused as they gripped the top button of her jeans, still poised to pop it open to reach all the treats she offered inside.

“Spike?” she poked his fine, sculpted chest. “Spike? Anyone home in there?”

No reply came from Buffy’s undead lover. He remained as if dead again; motionless, struck dumb. He barely blinked as she waved her hand frantically in front of his face. “Come on, this isn’t funny.”

Then she heard it again; a call, a pull, a summons; a whisper in her head: Dead things, come to me. Come to Mortifex, your master. Serve me. Do my bidding. Come to me.

“Huh?” she thought aloud. “Mortifex? Such a dorky name.”

As she spoke the unfamiliar word Spike moved once more, crumpling his worried brow. “I think… I think I’ll just…”

“Spike?” she tried again.

But her pleas fell on ears that could no longer hear her. The vampire lifted her as he rose and stood, placing her gently back onto her feet as if he somehow still cared, but he was lost to her. Lost in thrall.

“Hey, half naked Buffy here!” She grabbed up her discarded blouse and covered herself, suddenly modest and vulnerable. ”Come back!”

But Spike walked out of the door without a glance back to the girl he loved, ignoring her as she called to him, disregarding the annoyance and the worry and the confusion in her voice; a slayer’s wrath and the fear of a girl betrayed.

Raised from the dead by their new master, the dead rose together.

An army of the unliving, they shuffled, limped and shambled down Main Street towards Mortifex’s solemn tower, a perverted cortege of corpses; some embalmed and still fresh, others, older, all but loosely articulated bones, rotted and decayed. Behind them, incorporeal and insubstantial, their ghostly spectres followed, chained to the mortal plane but bound to no flesh; lost detached souls that could not pass over, trailing their former bodies without hope of solace or rest.

Everything dead in the town rose again as if to meet Judgement, crawling out of the earth, pushing through six feet of coffin and grave dirt to answer their summons. Sunnydale’s seven municipal cemeteries emptied; hasty graves, dug to cover brutal crimes, became holes in the ground; urns of cremated ashes toppled from shelves and mantelpieces and blew away on unearthly breezes; the resident vampire populace left the demon bars and joined the silent procession, compelled. Even the pet cemetery gave up the bones of the town’s pampered pooches and cosseted cats.

And in one lonely crypt, two more that had seen beyond the veil heard Mortifex’s claim on their flesh and they parted from the coil of their amorous embrace.

“Spike,” Buffy pushed away from her lover. “Spike? Did you hear that?”

And so at Mortifex’s will, his eldritch tower manifested; a tall, dismal pinnacle of polished black marble capped with bone; death triumphant. Slowly, unfathomably, its sheer walls formed like great cliffs, rising up from nothing in a swirling cloud of dark, smothering smoke; anything living that breathed that bitter, acrid fume choked on its vile essence. This was a place were the living perished and the dead lived on, a place of empty graves and subservience; death’s dead realm.

As it rose, the tower shook the earth and drew in the night, devouring the moon and the stars until the darkness closed in around it, daring the sun to shine upon its pointed battlements. Its dreary presence sent out a sickness, poisoning the tinder dry Californian desert around its base until the ground sunk into dank, putrid marshes of disease. Night here was everlasting and life was brief. The sun found other places to bathe in its golden light.

Mortifex stood at the peak of his fortress and cackled; lightning splitting the sky as he raised his twisted yew staff above his head. He thought of one name and bent all of his considerable will on it, calling its owner to him.

SPIKE.