A.N. : Been gone for a little while, now I am back :) This takes place in issue 40 of Buffy season 8, a very little bit of Spuffy, but mostly Fangel (friendship only) Just in case you haven't read the comics, tread lightly...here there be spoilers! Told from Faiths' POV. Also I can't seem to keep up with the comics...I think Angel is human, maybe he isn't but for the sake of this story he is. Also also...did getting rid of the seed get rid of vampires? Cause Spike is still there. So yeah I don't think it did. Just sayin. Thanks!
Spoilers* Angel got possessed and killed Giles, Faith is the only one who doesn't hate him or want him dead. Also Giles left everything to Faith (house, money, etc) so...that's it. I miss Giles already :(
Disclaimer: I don't own it
Figures. She finally gets a hunky chunk of man in her bed and he's comatose. As in blankly staring into nothing, completely still except for a stutter of breath every once in awhile-comatose. She has no idea why she decided to take this on. She has never been much of a caretaker...always too busy tearing things apart to worry about putting them back together again. But she owes him...and everyone else wants to demolish him, so she guesses she will play nursemaid for awhile. After Buffy leaves for the night, she runs warm water into a bowl and sit on a chair by the edge of the bed. Blood is still splattered across his face, a clear sign of his guilt. Her hands dip a washcloth into the bowl, wiping away the red chaos from his face. It is all she can manage for that night.
She shakes her head when she wakes up, haunted by Giles, haunted by his murderer. Feelings of longing and regret and sorrow choke her throat. She doesn't have it in her to fall apart, so she doesn't. She busies herself with chores, cleaning up the kitchen, making breakfast, taking a shower. She can't allow herself time to grieve. B will be by later and she is the one who is allowed to grieve, to cry for the ruin she has caused. Her hands ball into fist and red rage flashes in her mind. 'B got Giles killed.' the thought is there before she can stop it and soon Faith is punching the cabinet, wood splintering on the floor. "Dammit." she grumbles and begins to clean it up.
He isn't moving. Not even a little bit. His eyes are dead. His face frozen in an expression way past horror and disbelief. She lays her hand on his chest to make sure he is still alive. It takes an agonizingly long moment before she feels the faint flutter of his tortured heart. She can't tell if she is pissed off or relieved. Fucking emotions...all over the goddamn place. She has never seen him look so dead...even when he technically was.
Spike can't stay away. She is never sure if it is because of him or B, but once every couple of days he will show up at her window and ask how things are. He never asks about Angel by name, but when he asks how things are his eyes will momentary drift to the open door and the zombie within. He worries, even as he hates, he worries. The mixture confounds her. Sure she would love to beat him to hamburger meat just a little, but she wants more than anything to save him. To give him hope. She mostly just wishes he would move... even if it was to destroy something, she would give anything to see a sign of life from him.
The fourth night she hears muffled sounds, cries that sound like a wounded animal filtering under the door where he sits. She creaks the door open slowly, shocked when she can see he has moved to curl up in the fetal position. Almost as if his body is trying to cave in on itself. "Angel?" she speaks into the darkness, nothing but silence answers her back. She remembers the despair she felt in that alley, so long ago, encompass by hands that were the kindest she had ever known. The truest. He flinches when her palm cups his shoulder, sobs halting momentarily. "It's going to be okay." she says, and hopes that it rings true, because really, she has no clue if anything will ever be okay again. His hand grips hers, tightly, painfully, nails marking crescents into her skin. She doesn't move...she will be his anchor in his wave of grief. Because that is what he needs, someone to ride the storm out with him. She doesn't know when she starts to cry with him, remembering Giles and all he had meant to her in the end. She can't quite recall joining him on the bed, both hands fitted into his, foreheads barely touching as they both fell into oblivion. But when she wakes the first thing she sees is a crinkled forehead and eyes moving furiously underneath eyelids. She knows then that even in sleep he is punishing himself. Never able to find peace. It makes her want to cry all over again.
"Rough night?" Buffy asks besides her. "You could say that." her voice is rougher than usual, horse from the out pour misery shared between two tattered souls. It's all Buffy says, not able to ask how he is, if everything is okay, because the answer to those questions always come back to herself and she is not willing to face them yet. Spike is there again, looking every bit a lovesick puppy as she meets him at the window. He implores her to invite him in again, she doesn't, just joins him on the veranda as she always does. She watches them, secretly jealous of the comfortableness of their bodies. As if their bodies were compelled to come together, as if they were one heart, split into two different bodies. His hand is brushing away a tear, moving to tuck back an unruly piece of hair from her face. He says something, something moronic she guesses and Buffy face crinkles up and she laughs. He chuckles slightly, happy to have pleased his reason for existence. She closes the distance as she leans on his chest. Spike looks embarrassed and ecstatic all at the same time. Any minute now Buffy will make him leave, say something so she can shut back down. She is so busy convincing herself that she doesn't deserve any happiness that she doesn't even realize she is making that decision for Spike too. She may have been the one out of the two of them to go to college, but Faith is pretty sure B doesn't know anything. Not the important things anyway.
She can't sleep. Her mind is too busy rehashing last night. Wondering why after what they had shared he had not said a word to her, or moved at all. She had to check to make sure he was still breathing. She wished she had been the one to take the scythe to Buffy. Then Giles would have lived and she could be at peace. Who would miss her when she was gone? Surely not enough people to count on both hands. Everyone she knew was devastated by Giles death. She would just be gone...no longer a burden to anyone or anything. She hates thoughts like these, old thoughts that a bitter girl would constantly think so many years ago. She gets up from bed, and crosses to his bedroom. Not a single noises rises from the room as she enters. She can see his outline curled onto his side. She lays with her back to him, waiting for something...what she cannot say. He says nothing, doesn't move. Her eyes close. "Faith?" his voice is a whisper of regret. "Yeah. I'm here." his reply is a deep sigh, dragged out from somewhere within his gut. "Know what you mean." They both sleep.
It's been a week and a half and she has finally gotten more than five words out of him. Plus he is eating, or rather she is force feeding him, but she can't distinguish the two. His nights meld with her nights to become their nights. She sits with him in silence, and when he speaks she offers no reply. He is a strange man and she wishes more than anything she could fix him.
Two weeks and he eats. Actually asks for food and then wolves it down like a starving man. At two weeks he moves around, actually leaves the god awful room and walks the flat. He begins to listen to music, he makes clipped comments, he opens a window and breathes in air. At two weeks he is breathing, showing signs of life for the first time, in what it feels like to her, forever. She smirks as she hears him mumbling to himself one day. At two weeks, she begins to have hope that maybe...just maybe, he will survive this. That they both will.
At three weeks she comes home from store and finds him smashed on the floor. There are liquor bottles littered by his feet and shards of glass shining like diamonds surrounding him.
"What the fuck happened?" His reply is a short, crazed laugh. "Me." he states, talking another long swig from the scotch bottle. "I gathered that. What did you do?" He laughs again and she detests it. That laugh makes her feel as if all they had gained, all that had been recovered is lost again. "I saw a rose." he replies, as if that should make any sense at all. She stares at him as if he is crazy. "A rose. You know with thorns and petals?" He is angry, she doesn't know why. "Do you know what I did to him?" he bellows, hurt ripping the words from his throat. "What horrible, depraved, sadistic things I did to him?" She doesn't understand. He continues. "I ripped out the mans heart! Took the thing he loved the most and perverted it...thought it was amusing. Set it up like a game. And then...I killed him." His hands are shaking, hers are too. "I took his neck into my hands and snap! Just like her." "Stop it." she mutters. His body begins to shake too. "I fucking killed him. And it was easy." "Stop it." she says firmly. "And part of me...god help me...part of me liked it." "STOP IT!" she screams now, picking up the closest glass and shattering it against the wall. "Shut the fuck up before you give me a reason to end you." "Do it." he says calmly. "Just end me already would you." She shakes her head very slowly. "No." "Dammit Faith, take me out. It'd be easy for you. I killed Giles, I killed so many, just do it." it's a dare...she knows it. "You want to be out of the world so fucking badly," she pauses, tosses him a knife. "Do it yourself." disgust is painted on her face as she leaves.
When she comes back(after more vampires than she could count got the pointy end of a stick jabbed into them) everything is cleaned up. The knife is on the counter, the room is void of the earlier turmoil. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees him lying on the couch, idly flipping through the channels. She doesn't have it in her to comfort him tonight so she goes to bed. The things he said, the violence she really wanted to inflict on him. Tomorrow maybe...maybe tomorrow she can put him back on the path towards redemption.
It takes weeks, maybe months before he is back to functioning normally. Or as normal as Angel ever got anyway. She can see a spark of life back in his eyes and she swears to god, he actually smiled the other day. Not that you can ever tell with him. He makes idle chit chat now, he cooks, and occasionally says something that doesn't sound scripted. And one day when she has come back from a particularly bad night of something or another beating the shit out of her, he is waiting up...with a first aid kit. Afterward he tells her something she didn't expect to hear. He tells her "thank you"...softly like a caress. She tells him "now they are even". He tells hers "I'm so sorry." and she tells him "I know". He says "he wants to change things, make things better, help people again". She smiles at him, moving to take the gauze as she replies "Now you're talking."
A.w.: Sorry if Angel is OOC...he's all fucked up, so I thought it fit. This was a bit different than what I usually write. Let me know if you like it :D Thanks!