Hemery High
Okay, this was the freakiest day EVER. First off, gym class, which always sucks, but today they were starting an archery unit outside, so she’d figured, at least I won’t sweat and have to actually shower in the girls’ locker room like I was in some prison movie, and then have to redo my hair completely and be late for World History again. But then when Coach Olsen handed her the bow and the arrows she felt this weird hum in her bones, and her ears were full of a big crashy wave noise so she couldn’t even hear him, probably he was going on and on about how to put the arrows on the bow but she did it just perfectly anyway. And somewhere in her head she could hear another girl’s voice saying, “nocking, it’s called nocking,” and when she raised the bow everything felt right and perfect, and she put all three in the bullseye whoosh whoosh whoosh. And she had this ridiculous feeling that if he’d just give her some more arrows she could totally do that Kevin Costner thing, split one right down the middle, and then she realized that she had grabbed Coach Olsen by his nasty double-polyester shirt and was yelling, “Give me more arrows!” in his face, and she looked down and his feet were dangling off the ground.
Then Shaundra and Trisha looked at her like she was a grade-a number-one freakazoid, and she tried to explain that it was just one of those one-in-a-million things, it probably happens all the time.
But she felt weird and shaky the whole rest of the day, and then after school that creepy-ass homeless-looking guy had to pick her to come up to and start talking about VAMPIRES. Which, no. He stopped with the vampire thing after she yelled loud enough to get campus security over and then he was all, “just speaking with the young lady, um, proselytizing for my church,” which she guessed was the Church of Wrinkled Smelly Tweed, who wears tweed in L.A.? But when they were hauling him off he looked at her and put his hands up to his mouth and made fangs, which looked like the Monty Python guys talking about that killer rabbit and would have been pretty funny, actually, if she wasn’t so weirded out already.
So it was no wonder that she couldn’t go straight home after school, that she had to hit the mall with Shaundra and Trisha for a little retail therapy and to make sure they weren’t still looking at her funny. And then she got them to drop her off a couple of blocks from home so she’d have time to think up an excuse, and she’s pretty much decided she’s gonna say it was a study date she forgot to mention, because with her current grades her dad isn’t gonna object to that.
She creeps around the side of the house and into the back yard—-she’ll stuff her shopping bags into her old playhouse and bring them in later, when the coast is clear. And it’s getting pretty dark back there, shit, she didn’t realize it was that late, and she’s hoping she can manage to recite a few random facts about the Renaissance to convince Dad when something grabs her from behind, she starts to scream but there’s a hand on her mouth and then there are teeth in her neck, Jesus, teeth?!? Her playhouse spins around her and she tries to kick whoever’s doing this, tries to swing blindly backward but her legs and arms are going cold and heavy and numb, things are getting way dark and the last thing she thinks is this isn’t fair, this can’t be right, I haven’t even got my license yet.
Bed
It doesn’t happen when he comes. The moment of perfect happiness is a few minutes later: she’s drifted off to sleep, head on his chest. He looks down at her; her hair is incredibly messy, her nose is smushed oddly against his chest, and the mighty Slayer is in such a blissful trusting doze that she’s drooling a little puddle on one of his nipples. He thinks he might possibly die of love. But something else happens, instead.
See, what Buffy and her friends don’t know is that Angelus never left. He’s always there, muttering away in the back of Angel’s brain. Lungs liver lights...luscious! he says, whenever they meet someone new. Buffy has such beautiful skin, he says, every day, every hour. Wouldn’t it look lovely on the wall? And the past few minutes he’s been a little louder than usual, but that always happens when there’s the scent of blood in the air. (Angel eased in so slowly, so carefully, a tiny bit further each time; his hands in her hair, his eyes locked on hers, asking "Is this okay? Is this still okay?" with each little push, even though his thighs were trembling with wanting to go in hard and fast and now. And finally she got impatient, rolled her eyes, grabbed his hips and pulled up, and there was a give and her mouth went round for a second. That gorgeous iron scent rolled through the air, he could taste it on the back of his tongue and Angelus said way to go buddy, how about a few quarts more? But Angel kissed her face, whispered in her ear that it wouldn’t hurt long, rocked so, so gently until she was ready to speed up.)
And now that smell still hangs in the air, but he’s looking at her lying there so trusting, so utterly undefended, and for a second dares to picture the same scene a few years from now, a decade from now, thirty years, Buffy with gray hair and crows’ feet passed out happily on his chest.
That’s when it happens. There’s a rushing wind inside his head, a blur of lights; he feels like he’s standing on a subway platform, he’s stepped over the safety line, he’s not minding the gap; the train blows by an inch from his elbow, spins him around in its backwash and Angelus is grinning at him from every window in every car, everything whirls and changes and oh fuck, oh Jesus, no…
He uses the last of himself to run, bolt from the bed and from Buffy, stagger out to the street. But when he hits the sidewalk he’s gone.
Angelus comes out angry and hungry and confused—-it’s been so fucking long since he’s been in charge, so many decades of watching that whiny hopeless bastard squander all his power, brood and stew and woe is me. So it takes a minute for his head to clear, and he grabs the first thing that’s offered, doesn’t matter that she smells like cheap foundation and unfiltered Camels, he takes a good long drink. It’s not much of a vintage: SoCal Streetwalker, indeterminate age. But it’s enough to wake him up all the way, to let him focus on what he really wants. And what he really wants is back upstairs.
He takes the stairs two at a time, blood on his breath and a song in his heart. Leaps gleefully onto the mattress, and she bounces and startles awake; her hand flinches out toward the nightstand in her stake reflex, but then she relaxes, grins up at him and says, “You doofus, what are you doing?”
“This,” he says, so happily, he’s never ever been so happy; he sinks his fangs in hard and fast, pins her with his weight; she screams in his ear and thrashes and wiggles under him. And that’s very nice. But somewhere in his head, Angel rages and weeps; and that’s the best part of all.
Cheap Motel
She knew it was the same dream again as soon as it started, and she tried to break out of it, to get up from the park bench and run before Giles got to her. But she sat, just like she wanted to be there, and he kept walking across the grass. The deelybopper things on his stupid sombrero were bouncing with each step, and before she could stop herself she looked at his chest and yeah, there it was, a silver letter opener bobbing along with the beat too. Blood clumping and clotting on his shirt and bounce bounce bounce.
He reached her, took her chin in his hand and tilted it up till she had to look at him, and all she could see in his face was disappointment. She closed her eyes and waited for it, and he said, “You’re not nearly as bright as I thought you were going to be.”
***
It’s been a week now, a week since she sunk that blade into a huge bony demon chest, into the thing that had probably killed Giles, and as she plunged it into a space between ribs that seemed like a good bet for a heart, she had a tiny shred of hope that maybe they’d find him alive somewhere, and a big grief she hadn’t had time to feel yet, but mostly anger and triumph: mess with me, will you, mess with my Watcher, you bastard, you’re dead.
And then—strange gristly noises and shifting under her, and the massive chest she’d been perched on was suddenly human-sized and her kneecaps hit the floor, and Giles looked up at her.
He was disappointed. And then he was dead.
She sat on his chest, frozen. Riley was saying something but it was far away. She looked up at Ethan, and she waited for him to smile, to gloat, to laugh a supervillain laugh so she could kill him. But he just looked—-stunned. Maybe she even saw the beginnings of disbelief, of horror that his stupid stunt actually worked.
She killed him anyway.
She kept trying to talk herself into feeling bad about that. She reran all the things she said to Faith, after Faith murdered somebody. Not above the law, can’t just do anything we want, blah blah blah--it all made sense and it made no difference. She’d be glad she’d killed Ethan, if she could feel anything at all.
Riley tried to help, tried to get her to talk, “If not to me, to somebody.”
“You got specialists in this sort of thing?” she said.
“Actually, yeah, we kind of do,” he said.
“You guys have specialists in everything,” she said, and he stopped trying to get her to talk. Because after—-afterwards, the Initiative post-wetwork specialists showed up. They doused the cheap motel room with chemicals and scrubbed it down, and in ten minutes they had it cleaner than it had probably ever been since 1974. And through the fog of numbness she sat in, the thought penetrated that they were really, really efficient, that they must have done this kind of thing before. A lot. She looked at Riley, and he looked away, and…she didn’t want to talk to him because she didn’t trust him anymore.
Everybody else tried. Lots of not-your-fault speeches, lots of did-the-best-you-could. They all echoed around her, distorted, like she was at the other end of a huge empty room.
They tried to get her to eat. They tried to get her to sleep. Every time she slept she dreamed.
***
It was the same dream again, park bench, sombrero, letter opener wagging like it’s conducting a song, a song of disappointment in a stupid girl. She woke up in the same sweat, knowing this was all that would ever be, once-friends talking at her from too far away to hear, Giles walking up to her every night.
She staggered out on patrol, underfed, underslept, because what else was there for her to do? And in the fourth cemetery she hit, a minutes-old-fledgling, still dirt behind his ears, had the luckiest night of his life.
In Faith
Okay, you’d think it would be hard to get used to being a little shorter, or that her stride‘s off or her hands the wrong size or some shit like that. But all that weirdness seems to settle down pretty quickly. Like when you put on jeans right out of the dryer and they decide to fit after a couple of minutes, you know?
No, all the body stuff is working (except Faith can’t get used to looking in the mirror and seeing a flatter butt. If she keeps this body she’s definitely got to do some squats.)
What’s freaking her out, though, is the smell. Her own smell is just gone, and she has to keep stopping herself from whipping around because she thinks Buffy is right behind her. And it’s not the expensive perfume or the bath bubbles or shampoo or anything, it’s just…Buffy. Weird.
She knows she ought to lay low, just hole up somewhere until she can catch her flight out. The fewer people she sees, the fewer chances they have to see through her Miss Priss impression, right? But…part of it is she keeps thinking about the Mayor, how he was thinking about her to the very last, looking out for her, wanting to help her, and wouldn’t he want her to use this chance, to stick it to the Scoobies somehow? Make them feel stupid after the truth comes out, when they know they had her right there and couldn’t tell that she wasn’t their precious Buffy? And part of it…well, okay, part of it’s just that it’s fun. Fun to mess around with B’s friends’ heads, fun to take this body drinking and dancing. It’s not like B was doing all she could with it, right? Hell, she probably never even reallllly enjoyed that bubble bath.
So, once she shakes free of Joyce she chats up the Scoobies. And man it would be nice to let Willow in on the secret, wouldn’t it? Let her know with a knifeblade and a smile. But that would blow her cover, so she just imagines it, enjoys the little show in her head and thinks, maybe later, bitch.
And then there’s Spike. Oh hell yes. She thinks for a minute about actually doing it. If Buffy ever gets this body back, let her deal with cleaning up after that. But it’s more fun—-and more in character, right?—to do the cocktease of the century. Shit, he can hardly stand upright when she’s leaving. Perfect.
And then Willow reminds her of the boyfriend. Which is just crazy. Because if anybody’s gonna catch her, it’s him, right? Because he’s gotta be the one who knows B the best. But Faith starts thinking, what if he knows her the best but it turns out he likes me better? What if B gets back (and she’s gotta stop thinking that, she’s won, B isn’t getting this body again.) But...what if she gets back, and every time she and the Marine are screwing, he’s looking at her like, “What’s with all the vanilla? What happened to the freak you were, that one time?”
So she goes for it. Frames herself in Riley’s door, gives him that look that always works. Gives him a good view of her ass when she crawls up on the bed. And then the moron doesn’t want to play. But she’s gotta admit, the way he gets all intense when he says he’s not playing is...pretty hot. So she thinks, okay, we’ll start out vanilla and work our way down, and by midnight he’ll be knocking on his frat brothers’ doors and asking to borrow handcuffs and blindfolds. No problem.
Except it’s weird, fucking him. Part of it is she keeps smelling Buffy and panicking for a second, because B being right behind her now would be not good. But part of it is—-Riley’s a really big guy, right? Not just hung, but big all over. And it’s like a leftover from before she was a slayer that Faith never really quite relaxes with someone so much bigger than her. Because, back before the mojo hit her at sixteen, they would have been a lot stronger than her, too. And you just never knew what a guy that big was gonna do. They could hurt you without even knowing. Or sometimes they did know, and they liked it.
Anyway. Whatever. Even now when she could kick the crap out of them, she’s always a little...cautious, with the big guys. But Riley’s being so—-slow, and doing this weird nuzzly neck thing that sorta tickles but sorta feels really good, and he’s got her whole skull cupped in one hand which could be scary but he’s digging his fingers into her scalp mmmmm nice, and he keeps lifting his head up and looking in her eyes and giving her this big stupid grin. And she can’t help it, she just relaxes all the way, it feels like her spine uncurls and she’s maybe giving him a big stupid grin back.
Which is when he says “I love you.” And for just a second she thinks, wow . Before she remembers: not me.
She bolts out of bed and stands there jabbering. She’s not even sure what she’s saying, but somewhere in there Riley wraps a blanket around her all careful and she can smell them on it, sweat and come and Riley and Buffy not me not me not me.
She runs out of the room, clutching the blanket around her, past staring frat boys in the lobby, out into the dark.
She’s not sure how long she runs, she doesn’t know where she’s going. Her credit cards are in her clothes back in Riley’s room, she can’t go back there, she can’t catch a plane, she can’t stay in this body, she can’t do anything except run.
When the sun comes up she’s in a clearing. Her hair’s full of leaves; she’s lost the blanket to a thorn bush somewhere, she’s bleeding from scratches all over and her bare feet ache. She sits on the ground and she’s just…blank.
She can’t even bring herself to be surprised when something walks into the clearing to join her, part man but part not, metal bits shining in the sunrise.
“Slayer,” he says. And she just sits, just waits to see what he’s gonna do. He’s a big guy.
***
The council wetwork operatives have gotten seriously fucking tired of listening to the rogue Slayer kicking on the walls of the truck, and they’re glad when the word finally comes back that the border’s too hot, they can just finish her off here.
But the gun’s not even fully loaded when the kicking stops. They all look at each other, waiting for her to start begging again, screaming that stupid shit about her mother and body switches, but there’s a moment of silence and then just one little rattly noise.
They go peer in the back window of the truck, and at first they think she’s faking it but they poke her with a pole and get no reaction. Finally they go in, guns at the ready; and the Slayer’s lying on the floor in the middle of the truck, not a damn thing near her, bruises circling her snapped neck.
GraveYard
When he dreams about her they’re making love.
When it really happens they’re fucking.
In the wreckage, choking with the dust; up against the Doublemeat, her smell drowned out by the blaring grease; on his cold floor, knowing he’s bruising her bones into the marble with every thrust but she won’t let him slow down. Never anyplace soft, kind on the skin; never any place she might relax for more than that one shuddering second, that one moment when she really looks at him, a look that’s flat and even and unreadable, but at least not hate.
This time it’s a graveyard, her legs clamped around his waist a little too hard but he likes it. Likes everything she does, likes everything she is except miserable. Can’t fix that, can’t talk her out of it or joke her out of it or even fight her out of it. Keeps trying to fuck her out of it. And maybe it’ll work, maybe that hatefree second will get longer and longer and turn into something more. Some kind of spark.
He’s pressing her up against one of the tombs, some Irish name from the early part of the century, and, trying to hold himself back from coming, makes himself wonder if it’s some distant cousin of Angel’s. That’s funny and hurts, and he laughs angry in her ear and runs his teeth down her neck—his real teeth, he always vamps out somewhere in the middle of this, can’t keep the pretty mask up with her around him, he can’t think buried in all the slick and warm. His teeth scrape Angel’s mark and he shudders, anger and lust and envy for both of them, he swears he can taste his sire in her sweat on that scar, and she says, “Go ahead.”
“What?” he whispers. He’s surprised he can still talk, it feels like whatever keeps him going, whatever he has left instead of breath and blood has all moved to his cock; it’s all inside her, she’s got everything and he’s just mindless motion.
“Go ahead,” she says, rolls her head so the tendons in her neck move under his mouth, god, salt and hot, blood thrumming under the skin. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it does, it does matter, letting him do that? His head clears a little, he looks her in the eye. And there’s something there, some little flash of hope, of—-affection? Something. That isn’t flat and dead and duty.
“Tell me when to--” he says. “Make me stop.” She nods, and leans forward, and kisses him. A soft kiss, a kind kiss, fitting her lips gently around his jagged teeth, and he gasps and jerks away and he doesn’t know why. And then he can’t stand it anymore and just slams his face into her neck, right on the old mark, tasting it and erasing it and making it his, driving his teeth in as hard as he can, licking and sucking and pulling. And he told her once that the only thing better than tasting a slayer was fucking one. But both at the same time, oh god, it’s just, everything he feels in his mouth goes straight to his cock and comes back doubled, pleasure crackling up his spine so hard it hurts, he knows his thrusts have gone wild and ragged and he can’t stop, his ears are ringing with screams, screams from every girl he ever killed and every time he drove Dru over the edge and maybe even from Buffy, and god he can’t stop, pushing with his hips and pulling with his tongue, and then he’s coming, groaning into her neck, whipping his head side to side and smearing her face with blood.
When he can think again they’ve fallen together, landed somehow in a heap next to the tomb, an acrid smell from the dry leaves smashed under them. He keeps his face buried in her sticky neck for a moment, wanting to look, to see if she still has that new expression, but he’s afraid to, afraid she’s got the usual one, the look that says “I hate myself, where are my underpants?”
He doesn’t raise his head until he’s steeled himself for that look. But he’s not ready for the one he sees, for her head slack to the side and eyes glassy and oh fuck oh Jesus, he reaches for a pulse and there’s so much blood everywhere, he didn’t know, there’s no heartbeat quiver in her neck and no breath, he was sure he could hear her all through that, panting and moaning and screaming, when did she stop, she couldn’t have stopped, did she tell him to stop?
He pulls out of her, (still so warm, can’t be dead, this is some kind of mistake) fumbles his pants up and buttoned because he can’t be on top of her with his dick hanging out if she—but she isn’t, it’s some sort of horrible joke, and he shakes her and slaps her and finally kicks her, and when he feels a rib break and she doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t move except to loll sideways from the impact, then he knows.
He leans over a tombstone and throws up most of her.
Then he slashes his wrist with his teeth, kneels over her and has actually drizzled a drop or two in her mouth before he can stop himself, before he jerks to his feet no no no and runs, bolts to the other side of the graveyard and wraps his arms around a tree, bangs his head into the rough bark over and over, counting. Like he was a boy playing hide-and-seek, one sugarplum fairy two sugarplum fairies, but he counts for minutes and minutes, digging his nails into the bark and not going back to her, not, waiting out the window of time when he could bring her back all the way wrong and she could hate him forever and fuck him forever but it’d be cold.
He goes back when it’s safe, when she’s really dead. Again. Sits by her, holds her chill hand and tries to think, tries to work out what happened; he doesn’t know why it matters but it does. And he can’t figure it out, can’t decide if the look she gave him, the kiss she gave him was really his, and this was an accident, just when--or if the look and the kiss were because of what she’d decided to do, what she’d decided to use him for.
And he can’t decide which would be worse.
Finally he gives up. Pulls her slack body up into his lap and holds her for a while, for the longest while he ever has, works out what to do. Stretches her out on her back and curls her fist around one of her stakes, lies on top of her, taking in what’s left of her scent that’s not blocked by blood and dead leaves. Waits for the sun, so when her friends find her she’ll have a weapon in her hand and dust all over her. So when they remember her they’ll remember she died fighting. Not that she maybe wanted to die. Not that she maybe wanted him.
The End
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