XI. A Sword Through Me
Willow sat in a chair just to the side of the one buffy was currently occupying, a frown creasing her face and a look of worry in her eyes. Although, she was here purely by her own choice, buffy hadn’t made her come, simply told her where she was going.
“I still think you’re insane buffy.” The red heads eyes flickered over to a nearby metal tray, where various pieces of equipment lay uniformed and waiting. Four bell-bar pieces of jewelry, four big, nasty looking needles, three pots of ink, and what looked like a sort of gun from the future. each one of them designing for a specific purpose, and each one of them basically, being inserted into the slayers body.
“We all set?” a tall man, with bleached white hair and baggy jeans came over to her, pulling up a stool and snapping a pair of latex gloves over his hands. Without a word, buffy nodded, a small knot of tension wrapping itself within her stomach, a burst of adrenalin fusing her veins quickly. Pain. This outing was all about pain.
Without a word, she stuck out her tongue as instructed and closed her eyes. Felt him marking her tongue with a pen, before clamping it tightly. Fr a moment, her world focused down into one, single sensation: the point of the needle as it lightly brushed over the top surface of her tongue. And then it descended. She felt it piercing the first, tough layer of muscular skin, before slicing its way easily through the roped flesh beneath, to pop its way out of the lower surface of her tongue. The pain was slight, and certainly not enough. If she wasn’t concentrating on it so intently, she doubted she would have felt it at all.
A few moments later and she opened her eyes, taking the hand mirror the guy offered her and sticking out her tongue. A small silver ball now adorned the center of her tongue, glinting off the lights in the room. She could feel herself smile softly, before handing back the mirror and adjusting her self in the seat. As the guy got the next needle ready, her eyes flickered over to willow, who’s own eyes were almost comical, they were opened so wide. Her hands were covering her mouth and she looked both shocked and in awe at the same time.
Without any words, she turned her head to the right, giving the guy a perfect way through towards the tragas in her left ear. Once again she closed her eyes, almost ignoring the feeling of the marker and the clamp, feeling another burst of adrenalin as the needle hovered over her flesh for a second. And then her world erupted into a brilliant array of colors and stars, a sharp, stabbing pain erupting from her ear to reach to the tips of her very toes. Pain signals screaming through out her body, throbbing in time with her racing pulse. She moaned in pain, screwing her eyes tightly shut as the jewelary was fixed into place.
Ignoring the mirror that was once again held out to her, she leant forward in her chair, dropping her elbows to her knees and cradling her face in her hands, concentrating on the pain that was coming out of the left side of her head, and also trying to ignore it all at the same time. She’d never felt pain like this in her entire life.
Is this what faith felt? As she hung in the eye of that storm?
She quickly brushed off the thought, sitting back up and wiping her eyes, capturing the tears that had formed with her thoughts, before they ever had a chance to drop.
She lifted up her top this time, revealing her stomach to the piercing guy, but this time, not closing her eyes. For someone who was supposed to be humanity’s only chance against the darkness, she was such a fucking coward in the face of the pain she was receiving from the ear piercing.
She watched in rapt fascination as the curved needled dug upwards through the bottom of her bellybutton, could actually make out the gray of the needle underneath her skin, and almost jumped as the sharp point popped out of the skin just above her navel. The pain wasn’t as bad as the ear piercing, nor as painful as her tongue. It was just the right amount of pain for her to feel comfortable with, enough for her to take her mind away from the images in her head, and the agony within her chest.
“You ok?” she nodded to the guy, before lowering her top and letting out a huge, heaving sigh.
“I don’t want the lip piercing now.”
“Yu sure?” she nodded to him, before slowly standing up and moving to the other side of the instrument tray, removing her tops and stripping to her bra, before she laid face down on what looked like a massage table. She could still feel willow’s presence sitting just a little way from her, could actually feel her friends body tremors across the air waves, and wondered idly if the red head was going to pass out.
The buzz of the tattoo gun filled the room, and buffy closed her eyes again, relaxing down into the comfortable padding of the massage bed, and awaited to sting of pain to greet the center of her back.
XII. We Build Our own Cages
“you… are insane.” Buffy looked over at willow again, as she sat on the edge of the massage table. The guy, who’s name she’d forgotten already, was currently rubbing some cream into the wound, before placing a gauze pad over it.
“you keep saying that.” When the guy came around the front of the table and removed his gloves, buffy pulled her tops back on, mindful of the now extremely tender area of her lower back.
“and I mean it every single time. I mean, god buffy, what’s with all this? You never liked tattoo’s and piercing before.” The blonde shrugged, pulling out her wallet and handing over the appropriate amount of money before walking out of the door, the Wicca trailing behind her.
She was still talking, but buffy wasn’t listening. She was slowly, methodically, focusing her attention on each of her new pain areas. First the tongue, then the ear, her belly button and finally, the most painful of all: the tattoo. She’d spent hours every single day, drawing ideas for it in her note books, ignoring whoever was talking to her and instead, concentrating on her pen. Watching as it crossed over the paper, scratching into it and leaving behind a trail of ink.
Over the last few weeks, the design had been formed. Black and gray, softness, and yet when looking at the entire picture, hard at the same time. Just like faith. She hadn’t even realized what she was drawing, until she’d finished, but when she had, she knew it was the perfect way to remember the one person who gave everything for her.
Reasonably, she knew that faith gave her life for everyone, but at the same time, it was almost as if she was just doing it for her. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, or the way she smiled that last, painful smile at her. Maybe she was just imagining it and it hadn’t happened at all.
The design was a pair of raven’s wings. Large feathers fluttering out over the wings and the word raven, in a delicate script, underneath. And also, the one thing of faith that she will never forget. Even if she forgot her own name.
“it’s just so fucking *hard* faith!” she was sat on faith’s dorm room bed, cross legged and face streaked with tears. The room was hot, and moist. Heavy with the humidity of the early spring heat wave.
Her statement had been a general one, nothing singular or specific, just that everything in her life was getting so damn hard. Her mother’s death, looking after dawn, dealing with her friends, dealing with Giles, loving faith and never having the guts to own up to it. terrified of what she might say, terrified of what might come of them.
And the underworld. It never stopped. Every week it was something else, some new demon, a gang of vampires, evil experiments got seriously wrong. She never got just five minutes. Five minutes to just lay, be still and quiet, to breathe. Have no worries. No little sister yelling at her to do something, no friends rushing in to tell her the world was going to end again. Just peace.
Was that too much to ask? Was that too hard to find?
She couldn’t remember the last time she had five minutes to herself, because her life was relentless, never giving just an inch for some breathing room. And she wanted it all to end. Wanted to be a normal, every day college kid. Living off of her parents, going to classes, and having the most worrying thing in her life be whether or not she was going to get an assignment in on time.
“Hey hey now. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I know. Maybe we can find you some space huh?” she looked up through her tears at her best friend, and not for the first time, wondered what she’d done to deserve her. “I dunno. me and xand can do the patrolling one night and red and t-bear can look after dawn. You could maybe hang out here or something.”
The brunette shrugged, trying hard to think about what her best friend was asking for, and not really having a clue how to give her anything really. Buffy was so hard to deal with sometimes. She just needed to blow off some steam.
“it just feels like I’m trapped faith.”
“B, listen to me. Just remember: we build our own cages. And if we build ‘em, then we can knock ‘em down too.”
We build our own cages.
and we do. Everything we do in our lives, leads us to the point we’re at right now. We make our own choices, and sometimes they’re the good ones, and sometimes they’re the bad ones. But it’s really all our own doing. We just don’t know which of our choices is gonna be a good one, or a bad one.
So with the wings the animal that in her mind, would always represent faith to her, she’d also had those words inscribed into her skin.
In the perfect memorial to her beautiful raven haired friend.
XIII. Trespass
“How you doing kiddo?”
“Jesus fucking *christ* skip!” faith was currently crouched down against a crumbling wall, assessing the damage that had just been caused to her jacket. That mother fucker of a demon just ripped claw marks all down the left sleeve. “you scared the shit outta me. What the fuck are you doing here?”
she quickly pulled out her knife and cut off both arms, knowing she was loosing a hell of a lot of protection from the leather, but also knowing it’d bug all the holy hell out of her.
“Just come to check how you’re doing.”
“you know, for a big mother fucker, you’d think you’d know how to fight..”
“I’m shocked you’d think that!” he held his hand over where a human heart would be and gave her a wounded look. Which she replied to with a raised eyebrow and a sardonic smirk. “ok, so I can’t fight. How you doing?”
“Well, that demon with the ball sac on his chin won’t be getting up for a while. I think I just lodged them in the back of his skull.” The big demon grimaced at her and took a peak over the waist high wall, only to be shot with an arrow in one of his horns. “If you’d asked, I would have told you that that, my friend, is a bad idea. You got any clue how much farther I gotta go yet?”
“Well that hurt. And you’d come about four kilos. Another 20 and your home free. If you survive that long.”
“gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. Am I even out of the city yet?”
“not yet. And when you do get out of it, you’ll know.”
“how’s that?”
“well you get into the suburbs then. You know, where all the demons and their families live?” faith sighed heavily as she pulled her jacket back on. So far she’d taken out more demons than she could count, and over that wall were about ten of the worker demons with lots of arrows and sharp pointy things.
“no way around it?” he shook his head, watching as she pulled out a couple of arrows and stuck them into the dirt, turning herself around to face the wall and settle on one knee. “this, is gonna be so fun.” She lay one of her arrows across the bow, pulling back the wire as far as it would go, and took a huge lungful of air, before she popped her head above the wall.
“jesus faith!” she released the wire, the arrow making a sort of whooshing sound, as it cut through the air, before it thunked into something hard. That’s when the screaming started. She ducked back below the wall and knocked up another arrow, before repeating the process.
Each time she came back below the wall, another pain filled cry would split the night.
“Do you ever miss?” she grinned at him as she prepared one more arrow across her bow, and jumped above the wall again, to fire it over. No one screamed this time. “I guess you do.”
She grinned at him, holding up her finger and counted down to four under her breath. That’s when a gurgling sound filled the air. Obviously someone trying to cry out, and being unable to. Skip popped his head above the wall and looked down the slight incline to the damage his slayer had just performed.
“Fuck faith, you shot one of them in the balls.”
“I know. He said when they’d gotten me, he was gonna have him some fun.”
“well he can’t any more.” The dark girl grinned at him before standing up and jumping over the wall, leaving her demon guide and friend behind.
“Hey dumbass!” her voice called him from over the wall. “you coming or not?” he grinned before he stood up and followed her.
XIV. Blood Debt
The memories of my time in hell slowly faded into a canvas of smudges across my mind, blurring with the reality of consciousness and bringing me back to my bedroom, buried underneath my sheets.
The day outside my window was almost black with rain. Tiny droplets of water tapping gently against the glass and slowly trickling downwards before falling to the ground below. But I didn’t mind. I always used to hate the rain, it kept you from doing much outside, and I was always an outside kind of girl. But ever since my trip down into hell, I love it. Go out walking in it and just enjoying one of the things everybody takes for granted.
Because in hell, there is no rain, no snow, no relief at all from the burning, blistering heat that’s generated without the aid of the sun. where the rocks are scorching to touch and if you’re not careful, and rest against them for too long, you’ll be scarred for life.
I shake my head slightly, clearing it of those dark thoughts as I turn my attention to the person next to me. I’m flat out on my back, my left arm stretching out and underneath her head, and she lays with her back to me. It’s obvious that for most of the night I was spooned up against her, sharing warmth with her.
She shifts in her sleep, turning over and draping her arm over my chest, nuzzling her cheek into my shoulder as she stills and drops into a deep sleep again. I take the chance to study her, all the minute details that make up her beautiful face, somewhere in the back of my head I haven’t dealt with the fact that she’s actually right here next to me, her bare flesh pressed up against mine.
It’s while I’m looking at her that I hear a soft whooshing sound, one that I grew used to listening out for in hell, because by knowing that sound, the big guy never managed to sneak up on me again.
“What’re you doing here skip?” I whispered, gently pulling my arm from underneath buffy’s head and sitting up against the head board.
“How do you do that?” he blinked at me and I just shrugged, throwing him my patented smirk as I watched him. “It’s Alacos.”
“What about him?”
“You owe him Faith.”
“I realize this. But if he’s expecting me to give him blood, he’s got another thing coming.”
“No, he needs something else.” This conversation was making me incredibly uncomfortable, the way it was going making me slightly nervous and bringing out the slight twitch in the side of my left thigh. Of course, whenever I thought about alacos, that twitch appeared.
“What?”
“A slayer.”
2002
huddled in a small cave wasn’t exactly my most favorite place in hell, but then, it’s better than what most of the people and demons here get. What was making me more uncomfortable was the guy crouching down against the wall opposite from me. He looked normal enough, except the blood red color of his eyes.
My slayer sense was slapping me hard upside my head, because something just wasn’t altogether human about this guy, even without his eyes. The way he was built, the way he moved. Like a hunter, a predator. Is that why I was feeling so much like the prey?
Except.. he helped me. There was no way I was going to beat down all five of those demons, who were guarding the gates to the suburbs. It seems that the worker demons down here were a lot smarter; they attacked all at once instead of one or two at a time.
Just my luck.
But this guy had come out of no where, bounding over the wall with practiced ease and cleanly kicking the head off of one of the demons, flashing me a cheeky grin before jumping into the fray and giving me a hand. When the fight was over, we’d ran full tilt, and ducked into this darkened cave, which you wouldn’t even know was there for the shadows.
“Alacos.” He shot a grin at me, telling me without words that he’d caught me studying him. I didn’t flinch or look away though, but my frown deepened slightly. “I have a problem with you being here. You don’t belong, despite what those fucking morons think.”
“so you’re gonna help me, right?” I shot him a doubtful look and he chuckled at me, shaking his head and looking out of the opening to our hiding place.
“I can see things. The future, the past. It doesn’t happen when I want it to mind, but I’ve seen what’d happen if you stayed here. And let’s just say that I have no interest in bowing down to a slayer.” I raised my eyebrow at him. “Trust me, it’s not a future either of us want. You wanna get out of here, I want you out of here. Let’s just leave it at that. On one condition.”
“Should have fucking known.”
“I help you, and when the time comes, you help me.”
“with what?”
“I dunno. But I know I’ll need some extra strength. And you have that. What’d you say?”
“You’re a demon. I don’t trust you as far as xander could throw you.” He chuckled again, and I could tell that that superior laugh was going to make me want to rip his head off of his neck. But really, what choice did I have? Skip had to go do some all important thing for the powers that fuck you over, so I’d lost my guide for this warren of caves and streets, buildings and demon homes. If I go it alone through here, I’ll probably die trying to reach the exit, if I go it with him, I could either be led to a dinner party, where I’m the main meal, or he’d actually help me out.
I had more options with him than I did on my own.
“Alright red-eye. I’m Faith. I’ll be the person who’s gonna kill you if you fuck me over.”
“Sounds fair.”
“Glad we understand each other.”
2005
“Now? he needs my help now?” I gave skip a look that would have frozen anyone in place if he weren’t a demon. And used to it already. I flickered my eyes down to the blonde beside me and then back to him, shooting him a look that pretty much told him that Alacos couldn’t have worse timing.
“I doubt he planned it this way. But that’s the way it is; he needs you, you promised to come.”
“I can’t go without telling b.”
“What you gonna tell her anyway? I made a deal with the devil for my freedom and I’m just gonna go back to hell so I can give him a hand, I’ll be back before lunch?” I grinned at him and shook my head.
“I told her that there was a price for my freedom, and that someday I’d have to go back and pay off my debt. She’s not happy about it, but there’s nothing either of us can do about it now.”
He shrugged at me, taking a look around my room and smiling slightly. “You changed the color.”
“I was getting bored of the red. Reminded me too much of hell.” We grinned at each other for a few moments, both remembering many of the comments I made when I was downstairs, about how someone should redecorate; red was such a cliché.
“I’ll be back for you tonight.”
“What time?” before I’d even finished speaking, he’d disappeared. I sighed deeply and leaned my head back against the wall. “I hate when he does that.”
