Chapter One
Disclaimer: All Buffy™ characters belong to Joss Whedon and his affiliates.
Note: Contains some dialogue from the BtVS ep "Choices".
"...It's way too late. You know, it didn't have to be this way. But you made your choice. I know you had a tough life. I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well, boo hoo! Poor you. You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean, you had friends in your life like Buffy. Now you have no one. You were a Slayer and now you're nothing. You're just a big selfish, worthless waste."
Faith just loomed over the weaker girl and slowly smiled, in a nasty, reptilian way that had very little humor in it.
"Waste, am I?" she said softly, with a vocal tone so ripe with malice that made Willow double-check the sensibility of insulting the Vampire Slayer who wasn't Buffy. "Hmm, perhaps. But I am a waste that can tear you in two with hardly an effort, so maybe, just maybe, you should just keep quiet, instead of playing-out an invitation to the game of plucky prisoner and gruesome Gestapo guard."
Willow's usually pale skin turned almost as red as a tomato – this was something new. "Don't ever speak about what you don't know!" she snarled, as her common sense again got shoved out of the control seat of her brain.
"I don't know? And you do? Oh wait, I forgot – you have read it in those big books of yours, or maybe in that wonderful world of Internet where you can travel the world from the safety of your own home, even as your trunk gathers more junk," Faith continued to smile in that reptilian way, although now there was a glint of teeth behind the lip as well. "But on the other hand, don't you give me any of your lip about your whole racial slash religious identity – not when the last time you and your family has been at a synagogue... when? Back in first grade, when your parents were pursuing some medium-term personal goal and therefore cashed-in on their supposed origins? Well yes, back then you were chock full of national zest or whatever, but shortly afterwards, once the goal was achieved, all of that zest got abandoned just as quickly, and you want to know why? 'Cause you, little Rosenberg, and your parents are hollow!"
"Hollow?" Willow echoed hollowly, fully aware of the vice-like grip on her upper arms that prevented her from moving anywhere – not that she had any place to move: Faith had lifted her up in the air and just held Willow there in her grasp as if Willow was a baby.
"Yup, hollow. Your folks – all of their rather paltry pretensions to the Old Testament roots aside – are just another pair of hollow, fake, psych-crap-analytics, and so are you! Don't you just hear their echoes in that big bowl of baloney that you just tried to shove to me right now? Honestly, Willow, I understand, I really do – hanging around with Buffy gives you a purpose to live, just like that origins thing back in the first grade. But guess what? This isn't your life!"
"Oh? What is my life?" Willow snapped, really wishing that somebody would get in here and shut Faith up.
"Your life? Get to a prestigious school for your kind, get a doctorate in whatever that you're supposed to be good at – or marry a guy with a doctorate, or do both – and enjoy the rest of your life knowing that you're doing the right – for you – thing."
"Yes, that's what you like," Willow sneered, "me being just a scared little girl, afraid of the dark. Well, it won't work! I will be a bad-ass Wicca, and I'll marry Oz, and-"
Faith abruptly released Willow, before grabbing her once again by the shoulders.
"All right, let's talk about something else," the Slayer said faux-cheerfully, still in that soft, dangerous voice. "Let's talk about lycanthropy, then."
Willow frowned. There was something wrong about Faith, about her lips and teeth: the former seemed too dark and leathery even under the heavy dark lipstick, the latter appeared too white and sharp for human teeth. Faith's grip on Willow's shoulders also appeared to be somehow too stiff to be human – but it was still tremendously strong.
"What about lycanthropy?" Willow spoke, trying to ignore her growing sense of alarm.
"Well, Red, it's a magical disease as old as humanity, almost as old as vampirism. It's an old, old magic that allows people to change into animal shapes and pass it on with a bite, altered as a curse," Faith's voice was still soft, but now it had an extra sing-song quality to it, which reminded Willow of Drusilla at the latter's lucid stage, and that was not good.
"Now Oz is your typical werewolf," Faith was continuing, seemingly unaware of Willow's observations, "and so are his relatives, I bet. But back in the past, when Kakistos was still solid, and undead, he brought forth a different kind of lycanthropy – alligator."
"Alligator?" Willow gulped.
"Yes, the American or Mississippi alligator, so long and so big and so on," Faith dismissively waved her hand. "Anyways, I want you to know that Slayers have natural resistance – a partial immunity if you will – to such... sicknesses. But when a Slayer isn't at her best – like, say, when Kakistos removed several of my toes with red-hot pincers – the curse can take root."
Faith blinked, and her eyes blazed with cold yellow light like twin moons with identical black slits in their middles. Patches of black, scaly skin appeared all over her face, and her mouth extended somewhat forwards, forming a muzzle, complete with razor-sharp – but uniformly-shaped teeth.
"The final difference here," Faith continued in a growl that was so unlike her previous soft voice, "is that unlike Oz I am still fully in control of my... problem. And so, it is with clear heart and mind that I do... this."
Faith leaned forwards, her teeth flashing wide and her eyes blazing yellow, and Willow knew that there was no hope left for her.
Outside the Mayor's residence, an almost full moon was rising.
To be continued...