Title: Life Behind a Shadow
Rating: NC-17
Author: majistrix
Summary: Dean or Buffy? Faith will have to decide.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.
Spoilers: Just assume everything for both BTVS and Supernatural Season 1.
Author's Notes: This is my first fic so be gentle. I'm also taking liberties with the time lines of both shows to make things line up. The story starts after "Not Fade Away" and assumes that John Winchester was already dead at that time.
Chapter 1
Dean raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow as he climbed over the blackened wreck of what used to be somebody's car. The entire parking garage smelled like sulfur. The interior with its canines of jagged slabs of concrete and the charred remains of automobiles, surfaces still dripping with blood and jutting out ready to tear flesh, looked like the maw of some giant monster. The dark horrible path that he and his brother tread, which only days before had been the ramp to level A5, now lead straight to the monster's gullet and had been vomiting a steady stream of demons at them for a half hour.
There had been no need to sew together a lead from overlooked news reports or for hitting up Sam's LexisNexis account to bring them here, the reports of apocalyptic levels of destruction in LA streamed world-wide.
They took off from Omaha when the first "obviously overwhelmed and exhausted" witness described seeing what looked like horned demons. Sam floored the Impala's accelerator when the radio reported another poor deluded soul who said they saw a dragon. They made the trip in a day. The mass of traffic inching out of the city on the other side of the freeway and a quick lie at a checkpoint to a baby-faced National Guard MP about being undercover federal investigators got them into the heart of LA just like that.
They followed a trail of bodies, or what was left of them, to the parking garage. Sam was reminded of pictures of an obliterated Nagasaki when he saw what was left of the structure and wouldn't have gone in if it weren't for the stench of sulfur that hung around the place like humid air.
Whatever was in the garage immediately reacted to their presence. They fought their way up three levels of broken stairways with a more and more spirits and demons thrown at them as they went like it was some sort of video game.
Dean would have preferred that this was a game because he and Sam, running out of ammo and energy needed to press pause. This standard hunting trip had turned into something more dangerous and Dean wasn't sure they were going to make it.
Bitter at the idea that he was probably going to die in some godforsaken parking garage before he got to celebrate a good day's hunting by hitting some big city bars-even if Sam was cock-blocking him part of the time-a tired Dean smashed the closest demon in the throat with butt of his shotgun while out of the corner of his eye he saw a sluggish Sam almost get eviscerated.
They braced for another wave when the parade of evil suddenly stopped. The men shared a perplexed look and then stumbled forward over more debris until they reached a clear area protected by a semi-circle of smoked out cars.
Sam swept the flashlight over the skeletons of metal and revealed what he thought might be Celtic runes spray-painted on the sides of the cars.
"Hey. Do you recognize this?" Sam asked Dean pointing the light over something that looked like a cross smooshed together with a smiley face.
"Jesus rocks LOL?" Dean answered with a shrug as he walked past Sam and entered the circle of cars.
"Whatever they are they're probably the only thing stopping the flood of demons from attacking us." Sam said as he shone the light ahead of him. Sam continued forward trying to decipher the runes but was interrupted when he heard Dean scream.
Sam raised his gun and sprinted over to where Dean was and found Dean inching his way backward determined to get as far from whatever thing he was staring down at.
"What? What is it?" Sam yelled excited.
Dean wide eyed and shaken pointed frantically at the floor beneath him, "Look!"
Sam shone the flashlight at the ground at Dean's feet. A trail of bloated rotting rats with their throats ripped out leading from where Dean was standing down to where the level's elevators once were.
Sam's face creased in disgust but relaxed as he rolled his eyes seeing that Dean was still squirming.
"Screw you. Don't look at me like that!" Dean said doing an okay job of hiding the fact that he was freaked out.
Sam shook his head moving to Dean's hiding spot, "Dude, you look at stuff that's worse than this every day. Stop being a wuss."
Sam walked over and grabbed Dean by the arm and yanked him forward. Shoving the flashlight in Dean's hand he pushed Dean forward until Dean picked up his pace as he gingerly stepped through minefield of rotting rats.
They followed the trail to a crumpled car. The flashlight caught something hiding behind it, which cast a vaguely human shaped shadow onto the wall behind the vehicle. Between the destruction and the attacks from the demons, they had not encountered any other people in the garage. This thing had to be another demon.
Sharing a nod of agreement, about the situation, Dean and Sam split up to surround the hiding demon.
The vampire clearly hadn't had a descent meal in a while. His was emaciated and even in the low light it was easy to see that his grayish skin was sunken in around the eyes. His eyes struggled to fix on the muzzle of the gun Dean trained on him. He didn't even have the energy to flinch at the sound of Sam removing his machete from its hilt.
"Pathetic looking thing isn't it?" Dean taunted, his blood still rushing from being so close to dying and more than happy to find something to take his frustrations out on even if it was something that looked like someone's neglected dog.
Sam warily moved closer to the thing. Weakened or not, vampires were still faster and stronger than any human could hope to be and his nightmares retained the visions of too many victims of vampire attacks, ripped apart and unrecognizable, to take this thing lightly. Sam examined the area around the vampire and spotted more of the runes spray painted around where he was laying.
"He's probably the one who put the protection up around this place." Sam declared.
"Which means he's probably the one lobbing all those fucking demons at us." Dean replied sneering. Dean surveyed the feeble mass at his feet. Unsure if the weakness the vampire displayed was some sort of ruse-they'd seen it before-Dean took out his holy water and sprayed a little of it on the vampire in hopes of pissing it off enough for it to act.
He didn't move. Instead the vampire continued to lie there helpless. He moaned a little and writhed as the liquid burned him, the vampire's leather coat moving aside to reveal an infected wound in its side.
"Damn, that's gotta hurt. No wonder he hasn't tried to rip your head off yet." Dean teased even though the pestilent wound made his already unsettled stomach roll a little more.
"What?" Sam asked.
"You know. Animals always hunt the slower and weaker ones first." Dean said, moving over to Sam's side. Dean, mischievous, smirked and elbowed his brother, just in case the insult didn't hit its mark.
"Dude, for the last time, there was ice on the sidewalk. That's why I slipped. I didn't need a save from you anyway." Sam insisted, wincing at the "aggrieved little brother" squeak in his voice.
Dean ignored him. He tossed Sam the flashlight and replaced the rock salt in his shotgun with 12 gauge shells.
"Don't take it personally Sammy." Dean chuckled lining up the sight of the gun for the shot that would best take off Angel's head. "We do the same thing if we have the chance."
Dean pulled the trigger.
When Sam tells the story, he insists that there was no noise, which Dean always says was impossible considering all the crap strewn across the floor and that Sam should have known somebody was coming.
When Dean tells the story, he makes sure to show whoever is in the room the winding scar around his trigger finger, which was broken and damn near torn off from the force of something yanking him and the sawed off upward as he fired. After that Sam usually calls Dean a whiner and makes jokes about Dean hurting his jerking off hand.
When Faith tells it, she simply says that she kicked both their asses like bitches they are and downs the rest of her beer. Neither of the men argues with that.
Faith hit Dean so hard that Dean and his shotgun were thrown twenty feet before smashing into a concrete pillar knocking him out.
Sam, surprised, was slow to fire a shot at the woman. Dropping the flashlight he fired at Faith who was a just a dark fleeting blur in Sam's sight. Moving Slayer quick, she easily dodged the blast, her momentum carrying her to a safe position behind one of the cars.
Faith waited until she heard Sam reloading before popping out from her hiding place. Sam fired over and over again, as Faith outran the barrage of bullets from Sam's gun. This time though she ran to where Dean's gun had dropped. Not even flinching as Sam's bullets flew at her; she snatched the shotgun off the ground and continued her sprint to another hiding place.
It got quiet as the echo of gunfire finally ended. Sam's adrenaline flared, accelerated by his weariness and worry for Dean. The hammering of his heartbeat drowned out the silence. Sam kept the gun trained on where Faith was hiding as he crept over to his fallen brother.
"I don't want to hurt you," Faith called out. "Put the gun down."
"Screw you. You're going to die vampire." Sam yelled.
Sam's irritation reached new heights as he heard smoky laughter burst out from the woman.
"You need to put it down." Faith ordered. "Can you even see me?" Faith asked smirking as she slowly rose up from where she was hiding.
"Don't need to." Sam answered hoping that she was stupid enough to keep talking to make up for what he couldn't see.
Faith smiled understanding what Sam was implying. Keeping her mouth shut she silently moved behind him. When she was close enough she grabbed Sam from behind, immobilizing the arm with the gun and pushing the muzzle of Dean's shotgun into the Sam's back.
Sam grimaced as Faith twisted his wrist.
"Easy. Don't get excited." Faith said in as soothing a tone as a person could have while pointing a loaded gun at someone. "Just let me have it."
"Okay." Sam said as he relaxed his body and feigned surrender. Not as quick as a slayer but pretty damn good, Sam maintained his grip on the gun and twisted his body away from the woman.
He didn't need to see her now. She was less than two feet from him and he had been in enough fights in close conditions to know exactly how to position him to get off a good shot. The only confirmation he needed was the sound of the gun and at this angle he might not get a kill shot but no vampire was going
to be walking around with a hole in their chest.
At the end of his spin Sam raised the gun and fired a shot.
Only there was no reassuring gun blast because the gun didn't go off, he'd run out of bullets shooting at her before. Desperate he tried using his powers to hurl a chunk of debris at her but once again his powers deserted him.
In a second, Sam's heart went from the anxious beat of fearing for his and his brother's life to the steady leaden beat of the condemned as he and Faith both stood surprised at the outcome and both looking at the gun that was still in Faith's hand.
Faith quickly shifted from shock to an irritated anger as much at herself as at him in letting him get the jump on her. She stalked forward tossing the gun and grabbed the man immobilizing him.
Sam was so scared couldn't look at the woman. He knew this was the end and though he'd seen enough spirits and tortured souls to have no illusions about what might await him he still silently wished that he would end up somewhere better than this. His mother, Jess, Dad and maybe even Dean were already gone, would it be too much to ask after all the pain of losing them that he could be with one of them in the end?
Faith freed one of his arms and delicately gripping his wrist she drew a hand close to her. "You a hunter?" she asked him.
The show of gentleness coupled with the fact that she was crushing his ribs overwhelmed his fear clouded mind. He could only manage a feeble almost nod as an answer.
Faith gave him a skeptical smirk, "Don't look like it." She titled her head and caught a glimpse of Angel's prone form behind them. Her smirk was swiftly replaced with a scowl, "Handy with that gun though." Faith squeezed Sam harder, making him gasp.
The last thing Sam saw before Faith viciously head-butted him into unconsciousness was the growing pool of blood under Dean's head.
The first thing Sam saw, when he woke up, was a flashing neon sign saying "Joe's Cabana" complete with a flashing neon girl lifting up her top over and over again. This definitely wasn't heaven.
And it wasn't hell either because he and a very much alive Dean were on the sidewalk in front of Joe's Cabana, Sam laid out and struggling to sit up in defiance of an aching side and head, while Dean was sitting on the curb, head and hand bandaged and looking surprisingly well despite the weird stare he had going on.
Sam won his struggle with verticality and called out to Dean. "Hey. You alright?" Sam asked, his voice raspy from the previous throat crushing, waving his fingers in front of Dean.
But Dean continued to stare ahead ignoring his brother. Sam grimaced as he sat up a little more to see what was enthralling Dean.
Straight ahead of them the lights from the club bounced off of a collection of destroyed buildings, debris, military trucks and ambulances. There was the familiar milling around of paramedics and other emergency responders, but oddly not a cop in sight.
What was much odder was the fact that the wounded people being patched up seemed like they had gotten lost on their way to a birthday party at the local Chucky Cheese. That is if the local Chucky Cheese stayed open until 3am in bad part of town and served pizza with steroids as topping option. Okay, that was a bad analogy, but that was the only way Sam's already confused mind could reconcile the sight of a girl who could not have been any older than 15 holding up a fallen girder so that an EMT could attend to a person who had been trapped underneath.
There were many more kids around all helping to move debris that was much bigger and heavier than they were.
Sam's jaw hit the asphalt and he wondered if the blow to the head had broken something because this was bizarre.
"Dean, are you seeing this?" Sam asked turning to his brother again.
Dean, no longer catatonic, gave a nod and a smirk as he tried to straighten his rumpled blood stained clothing with his unhurt hand.
"It's cool man. Anyway, Faith kind of apologized for us getting jacked up. ", Dean explained.
"Who?" Sam asked.
"The brunette.", Dean said, wiggling his eyebrows in the direction the two women standing almost toe to toe arguing next to one of the ambulances that was off to the side.
The one woman Sam recognized as the woman who he fought in the parking garage. In the last of the day's light he could see that she wasn't pale enough to be a vampire. Judging from her leather pants and tight top she wore he would have thought her to be the wayward little sister-or possibly barely legal girlfriend- of one of the bikers he and Dean sometimes ended up drinking with after a hunt. She was the kind of girl who looked like she could put up a fight, and probably would, if you crossed her. But even with that kind of spunk she shouldn't have been able to clean their clocks as easily as she did.
As for the other woman, well, if the difference between Faith's looks and her abilities was merely puzzling for Sam, the same comparison made about the other girl should have made him so confused his head would explode.
The blonde looked like one of the typical Southern California girls he went to school with. Pretty, pasteled and privileged. Certainly not stupid-we are talking about Stanford after all-but not outwardly fierce. And certainly not as openly aggressive in the way that the other woman was now taking Faith on, standing on tip-toe even just so she could get in Faith's face.
The school girl was making the biker chick back up and the two of them looked like they were a second away from beating the hell out of each other.
"Dude, I'm almost glad I got knocked out." Sam could hear the lechery in Dean's voice. "Come on. Get up. Let's go over there."
Sam tore away from the fighting to find Dean grinning with a leering smile and now standing next to him, which unfortunately put his head level with Dean's crotch where he could see the real reason his brother was so chipper. Sam groaned and shook his head, amazed that even when only a few hours removed from possibly dying Dean still managed to be completely filthy.
"That's sick. She almost freaking killed you." Sam pointed out which Dean answered with a shrug. "Besides", Sam said pointing to the arguing women, "she looks kind of busy at the moment."
"Sam get your mind out of the gutter. I'm just talking about business." Dean replied. "These women are uh…colleagues, yeah colleagues, and we have a responsibility to work with them. "
Dean looked down at his little brother, unaware of how much his smirk just did not match his bruised and bandaged face. "And if Faith decides she wants to make up for giving me a lickin' by giving me a lickin' who am I to stop her?"
"You are unbelievable." Sam countered, wondering if the reason why Dean was doing so well despite the blow to his head was because the blood in his body permanently circulated near Dean's crotch not his brain.
"You fucking bitch!"
"I hate you!"
Dean and Sam both turned in the direction of the yelling to see that the cat fight had now turned into a melee with both Faith and Buffy trading blows.
Out of instinct the men tried to rush over to stop the fight but their injuries reduced their running to a quick hobble. A group of other girls however were able to get to the two women and restrain them.
"What the hell is it now?" another girl asked as she stalked over towards the chaos. She was like Buffy and Faith a little older than the other girls who were there and clearly in charge.
"Willow stabilized him and he's on his way to the coven to get fixed up." Kennedy said clearly exasperated by the feuding women. Turning to Buffy she continued, "It's ugly but it's the best thing for him right now."
Faith nodded at this while Buffy shrugging off the Slayers holding her turned her death glare towards Kennedy for siding with Faith.
"They're evil!" Buffy said her patience completely gone now that she saw that she was double-teamed, "An evil coven. What part of evil don't you understand?"
Kennedy sighed and closed her eyes, using an anger management technique Willow had taught her, as she struggled to keep her cool. The Slayers had been running non-stop since Willow got some feeling of, what Andrew called "a disturbance of the force". The "disturbance" was actually the Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart descending onto the streets of Los Angeles to exact revenge on Angel and his crew for averting their apocalypse.
The sudden and intense fluctuation in dimensional space had reached Willow over a thousand miles away in Cleveland causing Willow to cry out, her body going completely rigid as the connections between Willow and the healing forces of the earth were instantly pushed to nearly a breaking point to balance the presence of the new evil. At the time Kennedy thought the cause was a quick flick and swirl from the new tongue barbell she'd just gotten the other day.
Boy was she wrong.
From the initial annoyance at being interrupted to the hours of having to listen to Buffy order everyone around and Buffy and Faith fighting she was close to losing it.
So it didn't help that when she did finish her breathing technique the first thing she saw were Sam and Dean, both looking confused, intrigued and more than a little scared by the cat fight. That was it!
"Who the hell are you?" Kennedy growled at the two men, the angry sound of her voice caused everyone else in the fracas to focus on the newcomers.
Dean still in happy horny mode grinned despite the hostility in the woman's voice. "You just got us out of there." Dean said his good hand pointing in the general direction of the collapsed parking garage.
"And?"
"Uh…yeah well…" Dean struggled to find a response. The drugs that the medics had given him were kicking in. That and the fact that he was close enough to Faith to see the fighting and the hot night had made her sweaty and she wasn't wearing a bra.
"We're hunters." Sam said finishing for his brother. Sam turned asked Faith, "What was that in there?"
"Something you don't want to mess with." Faith stated looking at the ring of bruises around Sam's throat. "Sorry about the beat down but you were going to kill my boy."
Sam was confused for a second trying to think of who she could have meant but then remembered the sick vampire he and Dean had come across.
"The vampire?" Sam said incredulously.
Suddenly Sam felt vulnerable again. Sam had had little time to assess his and Dean's situation in the few minutes since he'd regained consciousness. The only facts he had to work with were that he and Dean we in fact alive, the girl he thought was a vampire wasn't and not only that but she and the other folks that were with her seemed more interested in helping the injured. Yeah there was a lot of weird stuff going on too but in the hunting business if you wanted to survive you had to learn weird wasn't always bad and to appreciate good the few times it actually bothered to show up.
Standing next to his injured but patched up brother seemed like something good until Faith said that the dull throb around his neck was for trying to kill something that deserved killing.
If she was choosing vampires over humans what did that make her?
More importantly, how exactly did she and these other girls see Dean and him?
Faith could sense Sam's discomfort. "Look you can think what you want. Don't care. Don't have the time." Faith motioned at a girl standing on the outside of their little circle of conversation to step forward.
The girl came up to Sam and handed him the gear he and his brother had taken into the parking garage.
"There's your stuff." Faith stated, "I don't know how you got in here but this ain't for amateurs. If I were you I'd go home. The soldier boys will take you out of here if you need it."
Faith then turned and looked at Buffy, "Angel's waiting. You comin' B?"
The blonde was still giving the other woman the stink eye but she nodded reluctantly.
Faith and Buffy walked away taking Kennedy and the other girls with them.
Sam stood silent, more confused than ever, standing in the middle of the battered street rifle in hand as he and Dean were alone again.
Dean broke the silence slurring, "Jesus, she's got a great ass man."
Sam could only shake his aching head at that. Grasping his brother's uninjured arm he pulled Dean along, shuffling in the direction of where they left the Impala.