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The Silken Cage: Journey	By : margotlefaye Category: -Buffy the Vampire Slayer > Het - Male/Female > Angel(us)/Buffy > Angel(us)/Buffy Views: 21206 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 6
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel or any of the characters therefrom. No profit is being made from this work of fanfic, which is intended as commentary on the original, not as a derivative work. No infringement intended.

Chapter List
- 1-The Silken Cage: Journey
- 2-Part 2
- 3-Part 3
- 4-Part 4
- 5-Part 5
- 6-Part 6
- 7-Part 7
- 8-Part 8
- 9-Part 9
- 10-Part 10
- 11-Part 11
- 12-Part 12
- 13-Part 13
- 14-Part 14
- 15-Part 15a
- 16-Part 15b
- 17-Part 16
- 18-Part 17
- 19-Part 18
- 20-Part 19
- 21-Part 20
- 22-Part 21
- 23-Part 22a
- 24-Part 22b
- 25-Part 23
- 2
- 3
- 4
A.N. At the time this was written, it was a lot more common for the identification of human remains to rely on dental records than on the relatively new and expensive DNA testing.

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Buffy lay unmoving, staring up at the ceiling of the cabin, letting her body recover from the latest battle. The ceiling had no answers for her. She heard Angelus moving about the cabin and turned her head to watch him. As she did so, she took stock of her surroundings.

They were fairly nondescript. Overhead lights provided illumination. Heavy curtains covered two small portholes. From the diffuse light that leaked around the edges, she guessed that the cargo the ship carried would block most sunlight from reaching the cabin. Ripping the curtains down at high noon, an idea she had idly considered, would do nothing more to her captor than seriously piss him off. There weren't too many other things around that could readily be turned into weapons, either. The bed they shared was narrow, bolted to the floor. Not exactly a bunk, but not much of an improvement over one. There was a battered desk, a small table, two wooden chairs, that might be useful if she could break them apart. However, they were pretty solid, and wouldn't be easy for even a Slayer to smash. Several cartons --heavy cardboard, and utterly useless for her purposes-- were stacked neatly at one end of the cabin and lashed down. Clearly, the freighter they were on was one of the smaller ones, responsive to the pitch and roll of the sea. Most of the cabin's sparse furnishings were fixed in place. Nothing she could easily pick up and throw, or use to bash him over the head. She would just have to bide her time, hoping something more usable would come within her grasp. Perhaps when he fed her again. One oddity was secured near the cartons. It was a small refrigerator --almost a large box-- and looked brand new. Angelus knelt before it now, extracting something.

Blood, she realized. He was taking out a plastic packet of dark red liquid and tearing a small hole in the end. As she watched he stood, lifting the packet to his mouth. Tilting his head back, he drank it down in a few voracious gulps. She watched the muscles in his throat move as he swallowed. How, she wondered, could anything so wholly evil be so purely beautiful?

He turned to her, licking the blood from his lips. It was a gesture at once brutal and sensuous, and it elicited an unwilling response from her recently sated flesh. She tried to ignore the feelings.

"You've been planning this for a while," she observed, sitting up. She smoothed her disheveled skirt and slip back over her lower torso and around her knees as best she could with the silk scarves restricting her movements.

"It doesn't take much planning, Buff. Just the right connections." He tossed the empty packet into a waste can bracketed to the wall, then walked toward her.

"Even the blood? Didn't think you cared for packaged food." Warily, she watched him as he came closer. He moved with the feline grace of one of the great jungle predators, as if he were still stalking her, despite the fact that she was well and truly caught.

"I don't," he admitted, reaching the bed and sitting down beside her. He hauled her onto his lap once more. She didn't bother to struggle. "But feeding off the hired help isn't wise unless you want to do their work yourself. I can't live off your blood alone, tempting as the thought might be." He punctuated the words with a kiss to the wounds he had left before. She closed her eyes, shivering, dreading that he might drink her, dreading her own response if he did. "It'll be a week before we make the first port, and two weeks more before we get where we're going."

"Three weeks?" she said thoughtfully. "Japan?" He looked down at her, one brow arched in amusement.

"That's my girl," he said mockingly. "Quick on her feet. Yeah, Buff. Japan. Where none of you little friends would ever dream of looking for you. Not that they dream you're alive." He nuzzled her neck again.

"Only vampires leave dust," she said trying to stop her trembling. "They know you're back. And we made a rather large mess at my mother's house." Where Riley was probably still lying, where he would lie until her mother returned to find him dead and Buffy vanished. Oh, Mom, Riley…I'm so sorry! She forced her self to speak casually. "When they don't find my body--"

"Oh, they'll find a body," Angelus assured her. "Not yours, of course. But a few days in the water will make the little blonde I dressed in your clothes a sure bet for being identified as you. Once my minions phone the tip in to the police, next week."

Nausea swamped her. "You killed someone who looked like me so that you could use her body to fool my friends?" she asked, trying to pull away from him. Angelus laughed, tightening his grip, keeping her close. He hadn't done what she feared, actually. Just made use of a convenient corpse. Between the ordinary criminal population and the vampires inhabiting Sunnydale, finding a body that could substitute for Buffy's had been fairly easy. Finding one that had her flawless dental record had been a bit more difficult, though his eager minions had managed that, too. But relieving her mind wasn't on his agenda.

"I learned the hard way not to underestimate you or your little playmates," he taunted her instead. "Your success in sending me to Hell made me realize I'd used the wrong weapons against you. What shattered Dru only made you stronger. And your friends have the annoying habit of pulling you out of the tight spots, to pay you back for all the times you save their sorry asses. So, I needed to make sure they aren't in the picture this time. Even if they somehow figure out that I pulled a switch, they won't have a clue to go on. I didn't take ship from Sunnydale or even LA. We left from 'Frisco. Not even my minions knew that."

She licked dry lips. "How?" she whispered.

"Tinted windows. Gotta love modern technology. Makes daytime traveling a hell of a lot easier. I left before dawn, put you in the back seat…and when I thought you might wake up, I just pulled over, had a quick bite, sent you back to dreamland."

His expression was smug. He had planned carefully, she realized. But had he been careful enough? Willow's computers weren't troubled by geographical boundaries. If she searched for passenger information on all commercial transportation leaving Sunnydale and didn't come up with leads on Buffy and her captor, it would only take the push of a button for her to widen her search. And there would be a clue in the passenger manifest…if this were a ship that was licensed to carry passengers. From the look of their cabin Buffy doubted it. That meant there would be no records, no trail, nothing for Willow or any of the others to hold on to, nothing to give them hope. A week until they made their first port, he had said. A week before she could try to escape, try to get home, try to kill him…

She shivered anew. She didn't know if she could kill him. She hated him, as passionately as she had ever loved Angel. He had murdered Riley and some unknown girl not to feed, but just so he could capture her. She loathed and despised Angelus…

…almost as much as she craved his touch, craved his weight crushing her down, his hands caressing her, craved the feel of his body possessing hers and his fangs in her flesh, draining her, bringing her unbearable ecstasy. He wasn't Angel…but he was all of Angel she had left. "You'll fight, and you'll shag and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver…" How had Spike known?

It didn't matter. Not what Spike said, not what Angelus did to her. Nothing mattered, except surviving the coming week until she could take her chances in whatever port they were headed for.

"One thing I don't get," she told him now. "Why?"

"Don't be stupid," he growled, "You know why." He pushed her off his lap, and strode over to the packed cartons. Buffy rearranged herself at the top of the bed. With her bound hands, she plumped up the rather flat pillows to the best of her ability and settled against them. Somehow her question had angered him. Why? Perhaps because the answer assumed a weakness he was loathe to admit…a weakness for her? The fact that she was still alive argued in favor of that idea. Could she turn that to her advantage? As her mind worried the problem, she watched him rummage through the cartons. She was surprised by the items he pulled out and tossed carelessly onto the desk. She recognized some of them. Books. Angel's books. Poetry. Art. Philosophy. Classic works of literature not only in English, but in the original French or Greek or Latin, even Spanish and Portuguese. Angelus had not struck her as the bookish sort. Why bother bringing these along?

He finished going through the carton, and frowned down at the things on the desk. He hesitated a moment, then selected one. He brought it back to Buffy.

"Freighters don't have social directors," he said, tossing the book down by Buffy. "No shuffle board, no orchestras, no ballroom dancing, no TV or VCR. We have to make our own entertainment. And, my love, while you are very entertaining, you don't have the stamina to keep me occupied 24-7."

"Like I would," she said heatedly.

"Like you could stop yourself," he countered. Then he smiled slowly, in a way that chilled her. "Would you like me to prove that to you? Because, I do need my diversions."

Buffy's eyes narrowed. "Well," she said sweetly, "we could always do the other things we're good at. Like, oh, fighting? Why don't you untie me so I can kick your ass?" He laughed appreciatively, amused by her refusal to be cowed by him. Her spirit was delightful. Her continued resistance made her ultimate yielding so much sweeter for him.

"Oh, yeah, babe," he taunted now. "Like you did last night."

Her eyes fell. Awkwardly, she reached for the book.

"I can't hold a book like this," she pointed out, frustrated.

"You don't have to, my love," he said rejoining her on the bed. The endearment was, as ever, a mockery, a reminder of how deeply Angel had loved her, and how deeply Angelus despised her. He went on in the same disparaging tone. "Kids like you, Buff, are used to passive entertainment. Turn on the tube, pop in a tape or a game cartridge, load a CD. You think of reading books as a solo activity, unless it's a bedtime story."

"You want to read me a bedtime story?" she said sarcastically, turning his weapon of mockery back on him. He settled beside her on the bed, but made no move to touch her this time. Still, they were separated by only a few inches, and she was utterly aware of him. He smiled at her, amused by her discomfiture at his nearness.

"Something like, babe, something like," he said agreeably. "See, a hundred years ago, that's what people did. They would gather in a room, usually near the warmth of a fire. And while they knitted stockings or darned socks or smoked pipes, someone would read a chapter from a book, a letter from a friend, a verse from the Bible. It might be the latest part of a work by Dickens, being serialized in the paper. Or a poem. Or the report of our gallant boys in blue or gray from the front. But people read together. Like you and I will do."

"Well, this is creepy," she said caustically. "You going all Giles on me. Since when did you become a literary critic?"

"All my life, Buff. Men of my station…did you think I was a laborer? A peasant? How the hell did you think I got to meet the noblewomen I detested? In life, I had rank and privilege. Modest, perhaps, by some standards. But enough so that I had the benefits of a classical education. And enough so that I really couldn't stand the vapid little idiots who had only been taught watercolors, passable French and the intricacies of a quadrille. One of the reasons you aren't dead, my love, is that you have a rather fine mind."

"If you mean, I've been able to think my way out of worse situations than the one you have me in now, I'd have to agree. I'd also have to warn you. I'm going to do it again." She expected her words to anger him, but he laughed instead.

"It might almost be amusing to see you try," he said with a nasty chuckle. Then his tone grew more serious, menacing. "But I have a couple hundred years on you, sweetness. I think I can manage to stay one step ahead." She glared at him. He smirked in response. "The books are to further your education. Since you won't be going to college, and I want your mind to stay sharp."

"Gee. How enlightened of you." She refused to be intimidated.

"Self-interest, babe. You'll need all the skills I can give you…" he dropped the amused mockery with which he had been regarding her. His smile faded, his eyes narrowed, he looked almost enraged. "…when you become my consort," he finished brutally.

Everything in Buffy went cold at his words. Living women did not become the consorts of dominant male vampires. Their mistresses, on occasion. Their toys and pets all too often. But consorts…those were equals, females who shared power with the dominant male. Co-leaders of nests, rather as Dru had been to Spike. In other words, vampires.

"You're going…to turn me?" she couldn't keep the tremor out of her voice. Her deepest fear, from the moment she had learned she was the Chosen One, had always been that there might come a time when not only would she fall to a vampire, but she would be turned instead of killed cleanly. Being bitten by the Master had heightened that fear…which had been horribly intensified when Angel had lost his soul last year. Waking up alive and his prisoner had been reassuring in one way: she thought that particular danger past. Because if he wanted to kill her or turn her, he had had the opportunity. Now, it seemed that whatever reprieve she had was temporary. Did she even have the week it would take them to get to their first port, or would she arrive there not as a protector of innocents, but as their deadly predator?

Buffy's eyes were huge, her breathing rapid, her skin flushed. She was trying to hide her reactions, as she always did, but Angelus wasn't fooled. Her obvious terror restored his good humor.

"There was never any doubt about my turning you, Buff," he said almost casually, knowing how close she was to full-blown panic. "That's always been the game plan."

"No," she denied. "You want me dead, not turned. You tried to kill me…last year."

"Never," he said firmly. "Not once." She licked her dry lips again, still fighting for control, trying not to give way to terror. He decided to spell things out more clearly. "What, the time in the graveyard, when you had the flu? Or maybe you mean when those damned ghosts hauled me off to your school and you said I couldn't just make you go away."

"Actually, I was thinking of the time you tried to drive a sword through me just before you were going to drag the world into Hell," she said bitterly.

"You really do have a lot to learn about men, don't you, kid?" he laughed. "When you were ill…of course I'd have drained you…and turned you, if your annoying friends hadn't gotten in the way. I'd never seen you sick, never feverish and weak like that. There you were barely able to stand on your own two feet, and you were still trying to protect your friends, facing off against me like a fierce, spitting kitten against a lion. You looked so…delectably vulnerable. I just got carried away, decided to dump my long-term plans and vamp you then and there. Never thought your friends would have the balls to stop me. Then, at school, when the ghost made you say I couldn't make you go away…well, that was a challenge, and I can never resist one of those. So I was going to prove you wrong…by getting your soul the hell out of there, and making you a demon. And what a demon you would make." She had drawn away from him, shrinking to the edge of the bed.

"Never," she said forcefully, but he heard the quaver in her voice. "I will never make any kind of demon at all." He laughed. Oh, he knew Buffy would never willingly join him, but he could tell she was beginning to doubt her ability to stop him from turning her. Her fear was an almost palpable thing. This was delicious. He savored her terror for a moment, before he resumed speaking, giving her more things to fear.

"Won't you, my love? You should know better. You should know me better. Do you think I went to all this trouble for a piece of ass?" he demanded. She flinched at his deliberate crudity. "I can get that anywhere, anytime. But turning a Slayer…it's never been done, you know." Her eyes flashed to his and he saw the surprise his words caused her. He smiled, anticipating how his explanation would ratchet up her terror. "Others have bragged about how they were gonna do that. But that intoxicating blood…it's a trap, Buff. You start drinking it, and you don't want to stop, you think that you can't stop, that drinking it is the only thing in the world. The next thing you know, you've taken it all, and you can't force your own blood down the girl's throat because she's already dead and gone."

"Spoken from experience?" she asked bitterly. He recognized another knife he could twist in her, and was quick to take advantage.

"How could you doubt it?" he agreed. "Oh, yeah. Angel wasn't gonna tell you about that, now was he? But I took out three slayers. Never boasted about how I was gonna turn them, though. Never particularly wanted to turn them, anyway. But you…I had a lot of time to think, when I was trapped in Hell with Angel," his voice assumed a menacing quality as he let a little of his rage show, remembering past wrongs. "It should have been my triumph and you stole it from me. The demons tormenting your boyfriend should have been bowing down before me, the demon who restored the world to them. So, while I was enduring the pain he suffered, I had time to contemplate what I would do to you if I ever got the chance." As he spoke, he reached out, and caressed her arm delicately. The lover-like attention, so at odds with his hate-filled voice, chilled her to the bone. She tried to pull further away, out of his reach. He growled and wrenched her back. "Well, this is my chance," he continued. "And I owe it all to you. See, when I was plotting my revenge from Hell, I worried about how that tasty blood of yours might tempt me to finish you off too quickly, because it was a safe bet that you were gonna be a whole lot sweeter than any other Slayer I'd eaten. Then, you came along and forced soul-boy to drink damn near everything you had. So, I knew then. I knew how delicious you were, how good it would feel to drink you down…but because I had already nearly drunk my fill of you, I knew I would be prepared, that I could control it. And now…your mine to feast on for as long as I want." He laughed, his contemplation of the future having restored his good humor. "By the time I turn you, I won't even have to think twice about staying in control." She was shaking now, her lovely green eyes filling with tears. He had really gotten to her. He was utterly pleased with himself and couldn't resist continuing to torment her.

"Oh, yeah. You are going to make an incredible demon, something the world has never seen. The power and knowledge of the Chosen One corrupted by a demon's touch. All that battle skill you've been honing, used not to protect but to destroy." In truth, his plans for her were even more subtle, more evil, though they would ensure that she was his to torment for eternity. But those plans were perhaps too subtle for her to appreciate fully. Better to taunt her with an evil she could comprehend. "Can't you see it, Buff? Can't you imagine what you'll be like when I bring you into the night?"

She could, of course. All too easily. She could imagine herself stalking humans the way she now hunted vampires. She knew the contempt vampires felt for the humans they fed upon, and could imagine the lengths she would go to if she ever shared that contempt. So lost was she in that dread, dark vision, that it took her a moment to realize that Angelus was speaking again.

"Now, the thing when we were fighting before Acathla…when I had the sword. Well, I was pissed. I might have driven the sword through you. Of course, I'd have been pissed at myself afterward…because I really was looking forward to having you to torture for a few millennia in Hell before I turned you. When you first came after me with that sword, I didn't plan to kill you. I just figured stabbing you a few dozen times might make you easier to handle."

Buffy was almost cowering at the edge of the bed. She hadn't believed him at first, thinking that he was either lying to himself, or just trying to frighten her. But what he said was plausible. She had always believed that he intended to just kill her, eventually. He had tortured and changed Dru…but Dru hadn't loved him first. Buffy would never have dreamed he'd want her around to remind him of the time he had spent as Angel. Yet…it made an ugly kind of sense. And that, of course, meant that the danger she was in was far greater than she had at first believed: not a danger to her life alone, but to her very soul.

Angelus watched her expressive face, watched the fear growing. He knew what she was thinking; in her current weakened state, with her hands bound, if he chose to turn her she wouldn't have a hope of stopping him. He let her terror mount for a few delicious moments, before he gave her a bit of relief.

"Oh, I'm not gonna turn you right now. I'd have done it already. Except when I…lost my patience… I never wanted to rush things with you." The hand stoking her arm moved upward, gently caressing the planes of her face. It was the touch, not of a lover considering his mistress, but of a connoisseur evaluating a prized piece of art. The passion she roused in Angelus was the passion of possession and mastery, never of love. "You're young and beautiful, but you have no idea how much more beautiful you are going to be in a few years, when you…ripen. But I can see it. I've seen how women age, and I know what you will look like given a few more years. I don't want to miss that." His hand slid from her face into her hair, pulling her toward him. His eyes bored into hers. Normally dark brown, they looked almost black now. "This is for the long haul, babe. Eternity. You are going to spend thousands of years at my side, " he said coldly. "Do you think I'd want to share my unlife, my power, with some brainless bimbette?" He pulled her into a kiss.

It wasn't an erotic kiss, not a kiss of flesh hunger. They had sated those needs. It was meant, she was sure, to reinforce his mastery over her. As if she needed another lesson in that. Still she yielded to the kiss. His words about taking his time and letting her age had soothed her immediate fears, even as they opened up another vista that appalled her: living as his prisoner for a decade, and then being turned. She couldn’t imagine a more horrific fate. But if she wanted to avoid that fate, she had to live long enough to turn the tables on him. And that meant she had no choice but to embrace what he offered…for now.
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The Silken Cage: Journey