Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or anything relating to it, they are the property of Joss Whedon and ME.
This is in answer to a challenge at the Chocolate Covered Strawberry Archive, written by gidgetgirl, so I don't own that, either.
A/N: I said I gave up fanfic. I have, really, I just- got stuck on original. And fanfic is much easier to write. So this got born. If you like it, please review it, and I might continue.
*
'Tainted', whispered the darkness around her. She curled closer into a ball, her shoulders shuddering with it. They spoke to her, and bit, and crawled, sneaking nearer. She didn't want them, but they chased her.
The room around her glowed faintly, light flaring from half a dozen crystals dotted about it. The child's back arched, and then the pursuers were forgotten as she hunched up in the bed, her fists balled, fast asleep.
The chanting fell to silence, as the women watched over the girl.
"She's asleep," whispered a motherly looking woman, her hair greying around her temples and a rather faded woollen cardigan with half the buttons done up wrong. "Poor lamb. Needs it."
"Yes," agreed the other, as different from the other as it was possible to be. The barely-out-of-her-teens woman gazed over the bed with a look of sympathy on her face, a look that seemed oddly out of place with her shock of pink hair, and piercings. "Her mum's gone, you know, Maud. Didn't stay." She glanced at the older woman for a reaction. Maud's lips tightened silently, but she nodded.
"I didn't expect she would stay. Not really the type. Had no idea what as happening. Best place for the child, anyway, without an pig-ignorant woman poking in."
A ripple of laughter burst from the younger woman that she hastily checked. They both glanced at the bed, but the girl didn't stir. Dark hair fanned out across the pillow, her face turned to the opposite wall.
"We are here to help everyone," she said, in a tone coloured with humour. "You advocate that, Maud."
"I know, Hannah, I know," Maud said crossly. "We took in that American, didn't we? Open to everyone who needs help. What gets me is that she could see something was wrong and didn't even help her child until now." She turned to leave the room, followed obediently by the pink-haired Hannah. Maud paused at the door, glancing back at the bed.
"She'll sleep through the night now, poor dear," she said finally, closing the door behind them.
*
"Tainted," they whispered, but more faintly. She could hear them, they would wait, but they couldn't fight, and steal her tonight. She drifted further into dreamless sleep, one arm hanging down from the bed, a cruel black mark that was part of her flesh. Menacing, it stood out against the pale skin that glimmered in the comforting light of the crystals.
The same mark flared into hot pain on his arm as Ethan Rayne sat up in bed, sweat pouring from his temples, his face creased with fear, the last images dancing through his head, laughing mockingly. They had not forgotten him.
The same group of people, screaming, laughing, dancing, singing, talking flashed into Rupert Giles's mind as he lay in bed, the light still on, and a book sprawled across his chest, his glasses half off his nose. He was remembered.
"Oh dear," Giles said grimly, tossing back the covers purposefully.
*
A/N: Who is she, how did she come to pass, and what the hell does Ethan or Giles have to do with it all?
Review please!