Sum: Faith has another showdown with Spike about the demon prophecy that
she knows will put her through hell. She shares more about her past the
piece of Slayer power she kept away from the power stripping spell.
Author Notes: Thanks for all the great feedback guys! Get Ready For Big Things! (Oh, great now I have to live up to that.) Thanks to Jill and Dutch!
"Me and all the kids from the neighborhood--
we'd play out in the street all summer long.
Rule was we had to go home at night,
when the street lights came on.
We were oblivious to the rest of the world.
And we'd hold up the cars in the street.
Yeah, we'd always play boys against girls,
and both sides would cheat.
....
And I'd say
'Here we go again! Yeah, ok this time you win.'
and I would feel dirty, I'd feel ashamed,
but I wouldn't let it stop my game.
We would play hide and go seek.
Territory would be the whole block.
Sometimes the older boys when they'd find you,
they wouldn't want to tag you, they'd just want to talk."~ Ani Difranco
Forget Me Not - Chapter 14- "Hide and Seek"
"Hey, I don't want to freak you out or anything, but there's a guy following you," this chick in a green hooded-sweat shirt with a limp brown bob said to Faith. She reminded Faith of Red in her mousier days.
Robin had left Faith's place hours ago, left for good, with some bullshit mention of talking to her when she "got back" from Angel's protection. Faith was too tired to do for sleeping so she decided to take a walk around Sunny D. She was half hoping to run into Robin, and that he would have something more to say, but she knew she wouldn't. He wasn't one to hang around town.
"Lemme guess he's not black, bald and fine, is he?" Faith asked Mouse-girl.
"Um, no he's white. He has a black coat. He's not bald—"
"He's got the peroxide hair, and he isn't fine...he's nasty, like a nasty sex- on-a-stick boy that you would wanna screw, even though you know he has no job and probably gets thrown in jail a lot," Faith said as she felt her eyes narrow.
She looked around, but didn't see him.
"Um—I--- yeah," Mouse-girl stammered as Faith looked for Spike.
"Don't worry he has to stay at least ten feet away from me, and he's harmless. He's not following me for the reasons you think. If you wanted to take him home he wouldn't bite you," Faith assured her.
"He has to stay ten feet away? Isn't a restraining order ninety feet?" The girl's eyes seemed to widen with excitement more than concern.
She was probably glad that Spike was not with Faith. Mouse-girl was probably following Spike, too shy to talk to him and noticed that he was following Faith, and thought she had to do her moral duty and tell Faith about it.
"It's not a restraining order. It's a mystical barrier, that if he tries to cross will throw him back. He doesn't want my ass. He just wants to put me through hell. He thinks it's for my own good. You should just go hit on him. It's not hell he'd want to put you through," Faith told her.
"You don't have to be obnoxious. I was just trying to help you," Mouse girl snapped.
Right. The Muggles weren't down with mystical barriers. How could people live in Sunny D, a former crater and now re-opened Hellmouth and be so clueless, Faith would never know. If it wasn't for Connor and Kennedy wanting to be Mad Warriors of the Mission, Faith would have been so out of here with Robin. Didn't he know that?
"She's too bloody stubborn for help," Spike walked out of blackness with the black coat and all. He would have looked like a bad-ass vamp if he wasn't pouting.
"Want to see just how stubborn she is?" Spike asked the girl as he rolled his eyes, "Faith, get away from the girl. She's not human."
"Just get out of my face." Faith grumbled, "I want to be alone."
"See." Faith heard him say to the girl as she turned away, "Thick as pea soup. Didn't even hear me. Run away. That girl isn't human."
"You're not human?" Faith turned back to the girl in curiosity, "Hey, are you one of those Demons where I can wish something on an ex? I wouldn't want to wish anything harsh. What if he forgot all of his SAT words for one day, or he was forced to watch Pax TV all day? Actually, that is kind of harsh."
Faith bit her lip. Was she going to turn into a psycho bitch again just because Robin dumped her? Granted, it was screwed up for Robin to promise something and not deliver, but he had his own shit to deal with, and dealing with Faith's shit too was just too much.
"What if I just wished he could let go off his past?" Faith asked Mouse Girl who didn't look so mousy now with her little grin, "But you demons, you can be real bitches. I wish something like that and then you make him get amnesia or something, right? Just forget it. Why don't you just get out of here with..."
Faith looked at Mouse girl's face again and saw her eyes glowed green. Mouse girl ran at her and the hood of her sweatshirt came down. She had horns, and not cute little nubs like Lorne's. They were short enough to fit under a hood but they were deadly with points.
"Spike!" Faith yelped.
Then she was more embarrassed than afraid. Was this how it was going to be now? She was going to be a little helpless lamb calling out to vampires that she had to stay away from? The thought of this pissed her off so much that she pushed horned mouse-girl away.
"I told you!" Spike said as he seemed to be standing on his toes at the edge of the mystical barrier.
"Ex?" he asked as Faith ran far enough away that Spike was able to grab mouse-girl.
"You can't mean Wood?" Spike asked Faith as he twisted the demon's neck around and she fell to the ground.
"Yes, he finally wised up," Faith grumbled as she stepped as close to Spike as the spell would allow with the dead mouse-girl demon between them. Great this was all she needed to make her day a complete suck-a-thon, gloating from her ex's mother's killer about their break up.
"Just keep you're fucking mouth—"Faith began before she felt herself fall to the ground.
"The derivation is over. The joining must be stopped," Mouse-girl demon was standing over Faith, looking very lively for a dead demon. "You will not bring forth our end, Slayer!"
Faith backed up from the demon, crawling away on her ass pathetically as she looked up at it.
"Bloody hell!" she heard Spike yell as he tried to get through the barrier and got thrown back.
"I'm sorry, love. It's a Rhoshobi. They keep so much to themselves, no one knows how to kill one," Spike called to her.
"So you're the dudes that wanted to kill me?" Faith couldn't help but smile.
This mouse-girl wanted her dead because she thought Faith still was somebody- a Slayer. Not because she looked like some sad girl alone in the street.
"We don't want to, but we have to. You will bare hell on earth. One who cannot be controlled. The end of our order. The beginning of a new age, the end of our own," the demon said in a droning voice, like she was reading from her school book as she seemed to let Faith get up.
"And it just goes on from there with all the doomsday stuff. So, say good night, Gracie," the demon said cheerfully like any average mousy girl as she rapped her hand around Faith's throat.
"Wait. I did the spell. I'm not the Slayer anymore. The prophecy can't happen. Maybe y'all can stop being so mad cryptic and help me out," Faith tried to say evenly.
She was going to get strangled to death, and Spike was going to be made to watch. If you weren't sure how to kill a demon it was best to go for the eyes, and whatever else made it different. All that made this chick different was the horns. Faith couldn't believe it when she poked the demon in the eyes as well as if she was any other girl in a cat fight. It wasn't that impressive. She didn't rip the bitch's eyes out or anything. The demon yelped and covered her eyes, but then threw Faith down on the concrete again.
"You've stopped nothing!" the demon roared as she advanced toward Faith clumsily, with her eyes still covered.
"This vampire that follows you still burns for you. You taking out your inner Slayer has not quieted his fire at all....You still have some of it in you. You couldn't bear to give it up, so this nasty boy still has a little flame. If we let him touch you the world will burn."
"You don't understand. I kept that bit of Slayer power so he couldn't touch me, so I could make him stop. He won't burn into me. He won't make me a murderer again, I swear," Faith pleaded now and was sickened by the sound of her own voice.
She thought she should just let it get her, but Spike was there yelling at her to get up and run, telling her if she could just get far enough away from the demon he would kill it. Faith couldn't give up in front of him.
"It's because of the bit of dying demon power that he still burns for you. You had to be true to your demon self and keep it! You'll kill us all," the demon yelled angrily as she chased Faith.
"But if I didn't keep it, I never would have had a way to stop him from burning into me," Faith demanded and ran from it.
___________________________________________________________________________
"I don't think she wants to talk out the paradox, love. Duck!" Spike warned.
The Rhoshobi bitch with the horns was running after Faith and Spike was running after them. He could feel when he was getting too close, and if he violated that warning, that little tug on his insides, he would be thrown back on his arse. This was ten times worse than that sodding chip ever was. But unlike when he had the chip people listened to him. Faith ducked. She slid under the Rhoshobi bitch's horns quite gracefully. Spike swallowed in relief. But how long was Faith going to be able to stay alive without Spike to help?
Then Spike smiled. The bitch had gotten her horns stuck in the dumpster where she had been trying to impale Faith. She was pushing against the dumpster, cursing with her small girlish voice as she tried to get lose. It would have been funny if it had been any other time.
"Right," Spike sighed, "Now go your ten meters away, so I can..." Before Spike could finish he heard the Firecracker's familiar angry grunt. She had taken out her knife and cut the demon's neck lose from her body.
"Well, that works too," Spike stated, then smiled.
"I killed it. I killed it," Faith turned to him and beamed, and then she quickly frowned. She looked down at the demon body, and stopped frowning when it turned into a milky brown substance and then vanished.
"I'm not surprised. I am surprised about Wood though.. How could he leave now of all times? I thought he was smarter than that," Spike scoffed as he lit a cigarette, and tossed her the lighter.
"He is smart. Smart enough to finally realize I am no good for him. I make everyone crazy," she said and lit her own cigarette.
"He is crazy. I never thought he'd release his hold on you," Spike said.
"His hold? How can you say he had a hold on me? He couldn't even keep up with me to hold me, I was too busy running from him," she laughed bitterly and rolled her eyes.
"Don't blame yourself. Well, maybe you could stop being drawn to dominant men like that, who only want to keep hold of you, but still he—"
"What the fuck are you talking about? Robin is a total kitten. All he wanted to do was prove to me that a man could be nice, and I sucked the nice right out of him. If anyone was whipped it was him," she said.
"The woman in the school girl outfit holding the whip is still being made to be the school girl. The Headmaster is still the Headmaster," Spike informed her.
"I'll fucking show you who the Headmaster is, you little shit!" Her eyes narrowed in anger and darted around like seeking missiles.
"I don't think that will work out. Even if this bugger of a spell was gone, my soul seems to catch my body on fire whenever we touch. Lovely offer though," Spike smirked.
"You'll never get to touch me. You got that!" she roared, pointing her cigarette at him. "Aren't you listening to them? The Rhoshobi. If it went down the way you wanted and we touched, I'll unleash hell on Earth."
"Since when do you listen to demons that want to off you?" Spike felt his brow wrinkle up in frustration. "They're wrong. You have to know they're wrong. We're running out if time. I bloody know you know as well as I do what will happen if you don't let me touch you."
"You don't know what's gonna happen," she insisted a bit more softly, "Lots of things could happen. I'm getting out of here. Going where you can't find me, with someone has more power than you ever will. Maybe they'll make things right. What ever is right, that's what's gonna happen."
"Is that what you're hoping for?" He laughed at her false naiveté. "You're gonna run and hide with Angel, and hope Daddy Warbucks will kiss it better somehow? You kept that demon piece to fight me off, but it just draws me closer. You're stuck in a paradox. If you're looking for a miracle, I'm all you've got, pet."
"Damn, leave it to you to come up with the worst Daddy/Angel metaphor of the night...What's a paradox?" she asked as she rubbed her forehead in weary frustration.
"A bugger of a situation that can't be solved because of itself," his voice swung up as he exhaled smoke, "Rhoshobi girl said you shouldn't a' kept the bit a' demon, because that's what makes me all hot for you, but you said if you gave it up to Allie and that spell you never would've been able to fight my fire off. It's what you do to stop a thing from happening, and it would have made it stop happening if it didn't also make it happen at the same time. In other words, it's a total fucking rub. Damned if you do, damned if you don't."
"I should have just given it all up to Al in that spell, the slayer demon," she said looking through him with wide dark eyes.
"Then you'd be dead. You must have known that," Spike said as he tried to find her gaze.
"Then this whole you burning and making me evil again thing wouldn't be happening," she found his eyes.
"I'm not—"he began.
"It's not a paradox, then. Not really, I wouldn't be damned if I had gave it all to Al and died. It would have stopped it," she said and her mouth hung open in horror.
"Don't be a bloody idiot!" he snapped.
"I'm wrong. Then I don't get it. Can you explain it again, a paradox? Maybe it will explode my little pea brain and then everything will be over," she looked down and shook her head.
"If only I could touch you. I'd slap you silly," he had to smile, "You get the bloody paradox just fine. Not only do you get what it is. You get what it's not. It's something most gits couldn't really get after thousands of dollars and years of schooling, and you got it in thirty seconds. What you don't seem to get, is that you are a brilliant chosen girl who deserves to make it to at least thirty-five, so you can do more good in the sodding world."
"You don't know shit about what I deserve!" she screamed and then continued quietly, "Why should I make it to thirty-five when I made sure other people didn't?"
"Buffy is not dead. She's in that sodding human Angel dimension and you—"
"Not everything is about B, English," she said
"That bloke you killed had to be older than thirty-five. He was a vulcanologist, right? Don't you need a million years of school for something like that? And if he was such an innocent what was he doing hanging out with demons that were attacking Slayers?"
"I'm sure you wouldn't be saying that if someone stabbed me or Dawn. I could have stabbed Dawn back then. But I wasn't even talking about that dude," Faith said softly as she slid down and against the dumpster and sat.
"Oh, here we go again. You gonna run the gamut again? How you tried to kill Buffy and the lot of them? I tried to kill them all far more often than you've been knocked out. Well, not Joyce or Dawn. Joyce gave me hot chocolate, and it seemed rude to try to kill her little niblet daughter after she was so hospitable. Well, Dawn wasn't really around then. All those memories of her peaking at me from the stairs and asking if I was 'that rebel yell guy' are fake. What a—"
"Joyce invited me over for Christmas, and I tied her to a chair and told her I was going to kill her and I had a fucking soul when I did that, Spike," she spat and pounded against the dumpster.
"Where was Dawn?"
"I gave her money to go to the movies. I told her I needed to talk to her Mom alone," she said shakily.
"See, that was nice," Spike said, as he crouched down right up against his ten meter warning.
"Yeah, nice," she laughed and cried, "when she came home to a slashed up Mom."
"Were you really going to slash Joyce?" Spike asked plainly.
"I thought about it," she said and then her voice shook again, "but she just seemed so—so Mom."
"I know what you mean. Look, don't you think that if you really wanted to kill any of them you would have? Except for Buffy, they were all weak as kittens, and she wasn't there to defend them plenty of times. Always prancing about with Angel in those days, I imagine. You psyched yourself up that you were all big and bad, but if you really had been there would have been at least one dead Scooby."
Spike threw Faith his coat. He didn't know why. He supposed he wanted to be able to throw something over the mystical barrier and he had already given his lighter to her. She was wearing only a tank top, but he hadn't realized that until right after he threw the duster.
"Speak for yourself," she grumbled as she caught the duster, "What the hell is this for?"
"Trust me I'm not speaking for myself. I wanted Red so bad I could taste it, and Buffy, don't even get me started. I wanted that girl under my power, twisting, screaming, begging..." Spike shook those thoughts off as he felt his eyes wanting to roll back in his head, "Harris I didn't think about one way or another, until I got to know him then he was on the top of my killing list...So, you see just because I accepted Joyce's cocoa---"
He stopped when he heard her crying. It was a soft shaking sound with no voice in it. He wouldn't have heard from where he had to stand if he hadn't been a vampire. This barrier was torture. Bring the bloody chip back. He didn't give a toss what he could or couldn't do to others, but not being able to do anything for her, with her, to her...Now this was a poetic way to torture him.
"You're really broken up about this Joyce thing," he sighed painfully now, "Look, when she first met me I was trying to kill Buffy and she hit me with an Ax. After that came the cocoa. She wasn't really one to hold a grudge, love."
"You know how Al took the demon out?" she asked suddenly looking straight at him.
"By violating your mind. I've seen him—"
"Do you know how though? He takes secrets...All the darkest things that you have in you that you don't want people to know. Do you want to know the one thing I kept back so I'd have a piece of the mother fucking demon to fight your ass off?" she demanded and didn't wait for him to answer,
"It had nothing to do with anything you know. You have no idea how deep the evil in me is. No one does. I killed my mother at twelve. She never got to be thirty-five, so I'll be damned if I do as a person who just keeps killing. See, I'm not the other B-licious girl, the one that she would have been if she fell on hard times. I'm just no good. So, don't be comin' around and makin' it worse."
"What happened? Was she beating you? Telling you that you were evil? Because that—"he began.
"My Mom wasn't like that. She only hit me when she was drunk and she never left any bruises. She may have said some mean things to me, but she said just as many nice ones. I just got really pissed off at her one night. She had said we were going to McDonald's. She had even said maybe we could get a dog. She always said she would try to be home more, but I knew she never would. She had too many other people—too many friends. I wasn't good at making friends with other chicks like she was. So, I knew if I did get the dog, I wouldn't have to be alone at night anymore... So, dinner time comes and goes, and she doesn't show for McDonald's. I was pissed, but I thought it maybe good. She would feel guilty and I'd finally get the dog. So, she comes home tanked off her ass. I reminded her that she stood me up. I tell her she has to get the dog to make it up to me. She says no. 'We need a dog like a hole in the head,'" she was looking past him again.
"What kind of dog did you want?" he asked. He could see her with one of those big skinny gray ones. People were always afraid of them because of their size, but they were really very kind. They would only hurt, or kill, if someone trained them for it.
"Any kind. Anything just a dog, a puppy," she said she was looking past not only him but everything—the world. He really wished she had reminded him that was a stupid question given the context of the story. Still, he couldn't picture her with a little dog, like the one that got swallowed up in that worm hole. Poor thing.
"But Mom said no dog again, after saying yes, again," Faith told him, "So, I told her she was a lying bitch and she never cared about me, she always betrayed me. She hit me a couple times, and I went to my room. My room was actually a closet, but it had a skylight. I never had a room with a skylight again. It was cool. I guess you wouldn't be able to have one, but you could see the stars out of them, that is the best part anyway. She comes into my room. She says 'I'm sorry. You know you're a good kid.' I prove her wrong. I don't forgive her, I pretend to sleep."
All right. Spike swallowed. He had seen many things done and had done many things to little girls, but a mother hitting one for anything short of touching the stove top or running out into a busy street baffled him. He had never been hit by his mother, The school masters did all the hitting, and he was told never to hit his sister. She was a little girl.
"Hours go by, and I know. I know I have to get up, get up and do my job," Faith told him.
"What job is that, love?" he asked.
He asked quickly. He was afraid if he didn't she would have just stopped talking and froze there, but still relived this in her mind. Like someone who had been reading out loud to themselves and then decided to go about it all silent.
He was waiting for the shoe to drop. What horrible thing was Faith made to do that made her have to kill the woman that bore her?
"My job. I have to check and see if she is okay. Sometimes she passes out in the middle of the floor, and I can't let her stay there or else when she wakes up she's wicked depressed. If I get her to the couch at least she doesn't get depressed. Sometimes she leaves the door unlocked, the lights on. That's no good. We live in Roxbury. It's not safe. So, I go to do my job and..."
She was frozen again.
Spike noticed she made the switch. The switch of taking the past to the present with her words. Drusilla did it all the time when she was remembering something that wasn't quite dead. Spike knew reminding Faith that she no longer lived in West Roxbury and she was safe, was useless. She wasn't really safe.
"Anything she did to hurt herself was not your fault," Spike said.
It sounded like Faith's Mum made her death wish come true, leaving Faith to feel like she granted it.
"You think Mickey would off herself? She's not a loser, not like me," Faith laughed at him.
"Mickey?" Spike asked. It was good to ask the easy questions to get the hard stories out.
"Mirika. Mirika Demiers. It's Albanian. She kinda wanted to wash the olive off, so she changed it to Mickey Winters. So, I go to do my job and I see...I see. She made it to bed. But she has a cigarette. It's in her hand and it's burning away. I sit there. I sit there and watch it burn down down to nothing. Ashes on the bed. I see her hand light up with the sheet. Really slow... a little fire. Like a lighter. It burned for a second until she woke up. Do you know what a woman being burned sounds like? Do you know what a burnt up hand smells like?"
"Yes," he answered unflinchingly.
So, the Firecracker was Albanian. He should have known, like he knew she was never a real killer and only fancied herself as one.
"It's wicked nasty," she stated.
"Look, plenty of people freeze up in situations. You should be happy you got out alive with a place burning down," he said.
"Place burning...?" she wrinkled her brow in confusion. "Oh, no she woke up. She screamed and woke up we put the fire out. We go to my bed because she seems scared of her bed. She keeps saying it's five by five, but I know it's not. She holds me with that burnt up hand and she doesn't let go. It smells awful, and I want to pull away. She gets very sad after that. I go to school and I come home and I find her in her bed, but she hasn't changed the sheets. 'I could have killed you,' she keeps saying."
Faith rises and he does too. She starts to circle the dumpster. He follows her at the distance he's forced to. Spike has never hated anyone more than Alistair Crowley. Him and his bloody spells; he's worse than anything the Marquis de Sade ever thought up. Spike wished he had the time to make Alistair dead- dead in a way where he couldn't rise up again.
"I don't tell that it was my fault. I go to school again, and I come home and it's the same thing again. The hand has stopped smelling but the fingers look really bad. I tell her I learned what to do with broken fingers in school, and maybe that will help make it better. It doesn't it makes it worse. Whenever I touch her she screams like she's being burnt again. I'm burning her again. Five days. Five days I've stayed home from school. She talks to me like nothing is wrong, but I know something is. Her hand looks worse. It starts to smell again. This time different. She talks to me about stupid things, like how I need new shoes. Whenever I say something about her hand she says: 'I could have killed you. I should send you away.' So, I stopped talking about it."
Faith took out his lighter and began doing a few Zippo tricks. He hadn't taught her any of them. In fact, she had taught him a few.
"Then Mary comes in. She wants to know why Mickey hasn't been at work. Mickey may like to party, but work is a party so she never misses. Mary calls an ambulance and the men come and take her. She doesn't want to go. She hates hospitals because the only time people we know go they never seem to leave. Mary says this is stupid thinking. It's a burned up hand. No one dies of that. But, she's wrong. What does she know? She's just a dumb stripper. See, if no one tells, if no one tells about the burnt up hand it gets worse and worse, and then it gets infected and then the secret you didn't tell gets into the blood stream and you kill your mother."
Faith was holding her hand over the lighter and she began to lower her hand down. Spike wondered what had stopped her from doing this before. Today he would be the thing that would stop her from burning.
"Faith!" he yelled, and he went to grab her hand and the lighter.
He thought maybe he'd take away any other lighters she probably had. He'd have to watch her until this passed, like he used to for Dru. He never found it a difficult task, but it did take a lot of focus. Sometimes he would just make love to Dru for a good while, and after she was better. But he couldn't even begin to handle the Firecracker. For one thing when he tried to go towards her he was thrown back some meters, his ass scraping over the concrete.
"What the hell are you doing? You're not too smart either sometimes, Mr. Paradox. I suppose we have a lot in common," Faith laughed now as she walked up as close to Spike as she could.
"Not as much as you think. I'm the one that killed my Mum, really," he grumbled from the ground.
"You said you never hurt your family when you were a vampire, or was that just another lie?"
"Wrong," he told her as he got up, "I said I loved them through being a vampire, and it didn't do them a lot of good."
"You always hurt the ones you love," she smirked sadly, "You and I—two peas in a pod."
"I am not going to hurt you. You know it and I know it," he insisted.
"So, I guess there's no love 'cause I'm not gonna hurt you," she said defiantly.
"Faith, I---"Spike began.
"I'll hurt him," a smooth smug voice said and Spike felt like he had his legs swept out from under him by a tree trunk. "Get the hell away from her, Spike. Funny, how I've had to say that to you just as much as when you were evil."
Spike looked up at his sire with rage. He was actually speechless at the hypocritical bollocks that was coming out of Angel's mouth. Just because he had managed to get the jump on Spike this once didn't mean he was the never faltering hero.
"Angel, don't bother. He can't get with in ten feet of me with the spell," Faith laughed.
She slowly walked up to Spike and he went flying back.
"Look,"Faith said proudly, "still kickin' ass."
"That is cool," Angel agreed as he stood next to Faith and looked down at Spike.
"Why can't you just keep walking towards him and throwing him like that? It's like a walking show. We could get popcorn," Angel suggested.
"Because shows and magic don't last," Faith answered. "Soon it'll wear off and he'll want to get his hands on me, and it will unleash all hell. Sounds like some dates I've had."
"Me too," Angel actually smiled. Faith brought out the liveliness in the most dead. "So, you were saying something about a vacation? Not that I don't love the idea. But one thing I've learned is that vacations don't solve problems."
"You think that's what she wants to do? Solve this? She just—"Spike began as he rose.
"In all my years with Spike this is usually what solves the problem," Angel said as he hit Spike to the ground again. Bugger.
"It won't now. We just need to run out the clock," Faith informed Angel after she quickly recovered from a frown.
"Run out the clock!" Spike roared.
"Is there an echo?" Faith rolled her eyes and flashed her battle smile. "Yeah, I just have to stay away from him until his little soul light doesn't burn for me anymore, and then it'll be over,"
"You got that right! She needs me Angel," Spike demanded as he jumped up and glared at his sire.
Angel rolled his eyes and hit him again. Spike grunted in frustration and hit his sire who stumbled a bit. Spike's eyes widened in surprise, and he grinned. He hadn't really thought he hit the old poof that hard. Training everyday with Faith hadn't only helped her. Spike also realized he had to work on his blocking as Angel hit him again.
"He really believes what he's saying is true, Angel." Faith interjected, "So go easy on the beating. It'll all work out. Maybe that girl Fred of yours will find a way to make me a Slayer again, and I'll beat his ass myself for being stupid."
"Go easy on the beating? He's the one with the split lip, pet" Spike snapped, "As if he could beat me. I'll beat him if he doesn't listen to reason. Angel, I need to heal her or---"
Angel hit him again, this time it was that hard nose crushing hit.
"Let me guess if you can't touch her the world is gonna end? Did you ever think since Faith, a demon clan, and every prophecy on the subject says that doing this burning into Faith is evil that maybe it's, I don't know, evil," Angel scoffed.
"Like reasoning with a post," Spike answered as he hit Angel.
"My thoughts exactly."
Angel stated blocking Spike's second hit, and hit him.
Faith rolled her eyes. "Can we just ramble, Angel? We don't have time for this."
"You wanna play hide an' seek with me?" Spike demanded.
He looked only at Faith. She licked her lips to keep her smirk on, ""Fine, love. You won't win."
"Come and find me," she dared and hit her chest with both hands and then held her arms out in a V. Oh, if this bloody spell was gone she would get it.
"You'll never get through Angel," she leaned her elbow up on the ape-man's shoulder.
"I kinda hope he tries," Angel said.
Spike laughed now.
"How many times has he been so hell-bent on getting a girl that had nothing but power around her that he'd destroy himself to get her?" Spike demanded.
"Oh, once or twice" Angel answered with his false casual sigh.
"Bollocks!" Spike pointed at him, "Ask your Daddy how many Slayers he's killed? How many seas did he cross when he heard where the next one was? How many to the death battles did he have a go at just for her life? Buffy only got in his way of owning the world, with me it was always all about the Slayer—all about her life. You call to me."
"Faith, you are sure about the whole Spike not turning evi—"Angel began.
"He's-he's still good," her eyes darted around as she frowned, "Let's go."
She turned quickly and started stomping away. Spike could smell her fear.
"You're dancing with the master. So, guess I'm it, then," Spike yelled after them
"One...two...three..." he counted yelling after her. He noticed his voice sounded much more bitter and raspy from when he used to actually play hide and seek. It really hadn't been that long ago when he played it in the killing fields with victims that had no chance of winning.
"You sure you don't want me to kill him? Break his legs, maybe?" Spike heard Angel ask Faith.
"So, do you own any places in the Cayman Islands?" she asked Angel.
"I don't know. Probably. That's kind of—sunny—though," Spike heard Angel say.
"It doesn't matter where you take her, Angel. In the end she'll realize she's meant to come to me!"
Spike yelled at the retreating backs.
End
Author Notes: Thanks for all the great feedback guys! Get Ready For Big Things! (Oh, great now I have to live up to that.) Thanks to Jill and Dutch!
"Me and all the kids from the neighborhood--
we'd play out in the street all summer long.
Rule was we had to go home at night,
when the street lights came on.
We were oblivious to the rest of the world.
And we'd hold up the cars in the street.
Yeah, we'd always play boys against girls,
and both sides would cheat.
....
And I'd say
'Here we go again! Yeah, ok this time you win.'
and I would feel dirty, I'd feel ashamed,
but I wouldn't let it stop my game.
We would play hide and go seek.
Territory would be the whole block.
Sometimes the older boys when they'd find you,
they wouldn't want to tag you, they'd just want to talk."~ Ani Difranco
Forget Me Not - Chapter 14- "Hide and Seek"
"Hey, I don't want to freak you out or anything, but there's a guy following you," this chick in a green hooded-sweat shirt with a limp brown bob said to Faith. She reminded Faith of Red in her mousier days.
Robin had left Faith's place hours ago, left for good, with some bullshit mention of talking to her when she "got back" from Angel's protection. Faith was too tired to do for sleeping so she decided to take a walk around Sunny D. She was half hoping to run into Robin, and that he would have something more to say, but she knew she wouldn't. He wasn't one to hang around town.
"Lemme guess he's not black, bald and fine, is he?" Faith asked Mouse-girl.
"Um, no he's white. He has a black coat. He's not bald—"
"He's got the peroxide hair, and he isn't fine...he's nasty, like a nasty sex- on-a-stick boy that you would wanna screw, even though you know he has no job and probably gets thrown in jail a lot," Faith said as she felt her eyes narrow.
She looked around, but didn't see him.
"Um—I--- yeah," Mouse-girl stammered as Faith looked for Spike.
"Don't worry he has to stay at least ten feet away from me, and he's harmless. He's not following me for the reasons you think. If you wanted to take him home he wouldn't bite you," Faith assured her.
"He has to stay ten feet away? Isn't a restraining order ninety feet?" The girl's eyes seemed to widen with excitement more than concern.
She was probably glad that Spike was not with Faith. Mouse-girl was probably following Spike, too shy to talk to him and noticed that he was following Faith, and thought she had to do her moral duty and tell Faith about it.
"It's not a restraining order. It's a mystical barrier, that if he tries to cross will throw him back. He doesn't want my ass. He just wants to put me through hell. He thinks it's for my own good. You should just go hit on him. It's not hell he'd want to put you through," Faith told her.
"You don't have to be obnoxious. I was just trying to help you," Mouse girl snapped.
Right. The Muggles weren't down with mystical barriers. How could people live in Sunny D, a former crater and now re-opened Hellmouth and be so clueless, Faith would never know. If it wasn't for Connor and Kennedy wanting to be Mad Warriors of the Mission, Faith would have been so out of here with Robin. Didn't he know that?
"She's too bloody stubborn for help," Spike walked out of blackness with the black coat and all. He would have looked like a bad-ass vamp if he wasn't pouting.
"Want to see just how stubborn she is?" Spike asked the girl as he rolled his eyes, "Faith, get away from the girl. She's not human."
"Just get out of my face." Faith grumbled, "I want to be alone."
"See." Faith heard him say to the girl as she turned away, "Thick as pea soup. Didn't even hear me. Run away. That girl isn't human."
"You're not human?" Faith turned back to the girl in curiosity, "Hey, are you one of those Demons where I can wish something on an ex? I wouldn't want to wish anything harsh. What if he forgot all of his SAT words for one day, or he was forced to watch Pax TV all day? Actually, that is kind of harsh."
Faith bit her lip. Was she going to turn into a psycho bitch again just because Robin dumped her? Granted, it was screwed up for Robin to promise something and not deliver, but he had his own shit to deal with, and dealing with Faith's shit too was just too much.
"What if I just wished he could let go off his past?" Faith asked Mouse Girl who didn't look so mousy now with her little grin, "But you demons, you can be real bitches. I wish something like that and then you make him get amnesia or something, right? Just forget it. Why don't you just get out of here with..."
Faith looked at Mouse girl's face again and saw her eyes glowed green. Mouse girl ran at her and the hood of her sweatshirt came down. She had horns, and not cute little nubs like Lorne's. They were short enough to fit under a hood but they were deadly with points.
"Spike!" Faith yelped.
Then she was more embarrassed than afraid. Was this how it was going to be now? She was going to be a little helpless lamb calling out to vampires that she had to stay away from? The thought of this pissed her off so much that she pushed horned mouse-girl away.
"I told you!" Spike said as he seemed to be standing on his toes at the edge of the mystical barrier.
"Ex?" he asked as Faith ran far enough away that Spike was able to grab mouse-girl.
"You can't mean Wood?" Spike asked Faith as he twisted the demon's neck around and she fell to the ground.
"Yes, he finally wised up," Faith grumbled as she stepped as close to Spike as the spell would allow with the dead mouse-girl demon between them. Great this was all she needed to make her day a complete suck-a-thon, gloating from her ex's mother's killer about their break up.
"Just keep you're fucking mouth—"Faith began before she felt herself fall to the ground.
"The derivation is over. The joining must be stopped," Mouse-girl demon was standing over Faith, looking very lively for a dead demon. "You will not bring forth our end, Slayer!"
Faith backed up from the demon, crawling away on her ass pathetically as she looked up at it.
"Bloody hell!" she heard Spike yell as he tried to get through the barrier and got thrown back.
"I'm sorry, love. It's a Rhoshobi. They keep so much to themselves, no one knows how to kill one," Spike called to her.
"So you're the dudes that wanted to kill me?" Faith couldn't help but smile.
This mouse-girl wanted her dead because she thought Faith still was somebody- a Slayer. Not because she looked like some sad girl alone in the street.
"We don't want to, but we have to. You will bare hell on earth. One who cannot be controlled. The end of our order. The beginning of a new age, the end of our own," the demon said in a droning voice, like she was reading from her school book as she seemed to let Faith get up.
"And it just goes on from there with all the doomsday stuff. So, say good night, Gracie," the demon said cheerfully like any average mousy girl as she rapped her hand around Faith's throat.
"Wait. I did the spell. I'm not the Slayer anymore. The prophecy can't happen. Maybe y'all can stop being so mad cryptic and help me out," Faith tried to say evenly.
She was going to get strangled to death, and Spike was going to be made to watch. If you weren't sure how to kill a demon it was best to go for the eyes, and whatever else made it different. All that made this chick different was the horns. Faith couldn't believe it when she poked the demon in the eyes as well as if she was any other girl in a cat fight. It wasn't that impressive. She didn't rip the bitch's eyes out or anything. The demon yelped and covered her eyes, but then threw Faith down on the concrete again.
"You've stopped nothing!" the demon roared as she advanced toward Faith clumsily, with her eyes still covered.
"This vampire that follows you still burns for you. You taking out your inner Slayer has not quieted his fire at all....You still have some of it in you. You couldn't bear to give it up, so this nasty boy still has a little flame. If we let him touch you the world will burn."
"You don't understand. I kept that bit of Slayer power so he couldn't touch me, so I could make him stop. He won't burn into me. He won't make me a murderer again, I swear," Faith pleaded now and was sickened by the sound of her own voice.
She thought she should just let it get her, but Spike was there yelling at her to get up and run, telling her if she could just get far enough away from the demon he would kill it. Faith couldn't give up in front of him.
"It's because of the bit of dying demon power that he still burns for you. You had to be true to your demon self and keep it! You'll kill us all," the demon yelled angrily as she chased Faith.
"But if I didn't keep it, I never would have had a way to stop him from burning into me," Faith demanded and ran from it.
___________________________________________________________________________
"I don't think she wants to talk out the paradox, love. Duck!" Spike warned.
The Rhoshobi bitch with the horns was running after Faith and Spike was running after them. He could feel when he was getting too close, and if he violated that warning, that little tug on his insides, he would be thrown back on his arse. This was ten times worse than that sodding chip ever was. But unlike when he had the chip people listened to him. Faith ducked. She slid under the Rhoshobi bitch's horns quite gracefully. Spike swallowed in relief. But how long was Faith going to be able to stay alive without Spike to help?
Then Spike smiled. The bitch had gotten her horns stuck in the dumpster where she had been trying to impale Faith. She was pushing against the dumpster, cursing with her small girlish voice as she tried to get lose. It would have been funny if it had been any other time.
"Right," Spike sighed, "Now go your ten meters away, so I can..." Before Spike could finish he heard the Firecracker's familiar angry grunt. She had taken out her knife and cut the demon's neck lose from her body.
"Well, that works too," Spike stated, then smiled.
"I killed it. I killed it," Faith turned to him and beamed, and then she quickly frowned. She looked down at the demon body, and stopped frowning when it turned into a milky brown substance and then vanished.
"I'm not surprised. I am surprised about Wood though.. How could he leave now of all times? I thought he was smarter than that," Spike scoffed as he lit a cigarette, and tossed her the lighter.
"He is smart. Smart enough to finally realize I am no good for him. I make everyone crazy," she said and lit her own cigarette.
"He is crazy. I never thought he'd release his hold on you," Spike said.
"His hold? How can you say he had a hold on me? He couldn't even keep up with me to hold me, I was too busy running from him," she laughed bitterly and rolled her eyes.
"Don't blame yourself. Well, maybe you could stop being drawn to dominant men like that, who only want to keep hold of you, but still he—"
"What the fuck are you talking about? Robin is a total kitten. All he wanted to do was prove to me that a man could be nice, and I sucked the nice right out of him. If anyone was whipped it was him," she said.
"The woman in the school girl outfit holding the whip is still being made to be the school girl. The Headmaster is still the Headmaster," Spike informed her.
"I'll fucking show you who the Headmaster is, you little shit!" Her eyes narrowed in anger and darted around like seeking missiles.
"I don't think that will work out. Even if this bugger of a spell was gone, my soul seems to catch my body on fire whenever we touch. Lovely offer though," Spike smirked.
"You'll never get to touch me. You got that!" she roared, pointing her cigarette at him. "Aren't you listening to them? The Rhoshobi. If it went down the way you wanted and we touched, I'll unleash hell on Earth."
"Since when do you listen to demons that want to off you?" Spike felt his brow wrinkle up in frustration. "They're wrong. You have to know they're wrong. We're running out if time. I bloody know you know as well as I do what will happen if you don't let me touch you."
"You don't know what's gonna happen," she insisted a bit more softly, "Lots of things could happen. I'm getting out of here. Going where you can't find me, with someone has more power than you ever will. Maybe they'll make things right. What ever is right, that's what's gonna happen."
"Is that what you're hoping for?" He laughed at her false naiveté. "You're gonna run and hide with Angel, and hope Daddy Warbucks will kiss it better somehow? You kept that demon piece to fight me off, but it just draws me closer. You're stuck in a paradox. If you're looking for a miracle, I'm all you've got, pet."
"Damn, leave it to you to come up with the worst Daddy/Angel metaphor of the night...What's a paradox?" she asked as she rubbed her forehead in weary frustration.
"A bugger of a situation that can't be solved because of itself," his voice swung up as he exhaled smoke, "Rhoshobi girl said you shouldn't a' kept the bit a' demon, because that's what makes me all hot for you, but you said if you gave it up to Allie and that spell you never would've been able to fight my fire off. It's what you do to stop a thing from happening, and it would have made it stop happening if it didn't also make it happen at the same time. In other words, it's a total fucking rub. Damned if you do, damned if you don't."
"I should have just given it all up to Al in that spell, the slayer demon," she said looking through him with wide dark eyes.
"Then you'd be dead. You must have known that," Spike said as he tried to find her gaze.
"Then this whole you burning and making me evil again thing wouldn't be happening," she found his eyes.
"I'm not—"he began.
"It's not a paradox, then. Not really, I wouldn't be damned if I had gave it all to Al and died. It would have stopped it," she said and her mouth hung open in horror.
"Don't be a bloody idiot!" he snapped.
"I'm wrong. Then I don't get it. Can you explain it again, a paradox? Maybe it will explode my little pea brain and then everything will be over," she looked down and shook her head.
"If only I could touch you. I'd slap you silly," he had to smile, "You get the bloody paradox just fine. Not only do you get what it is. You get what it's not. It's something most gits couldn't really get after thousands of dollars and years of schooling, and you got it in thirty seconds. What you don't seem to get, is that you are a brilliant chosen girl who deserves to make it to at least thirty-five, so you can do more good in the sodding world."
"You don't know shit about what I deserve!" she screamed and then continued quietly, "Why should I make it to thirty-five when I made sure other people didn't?"
"Buffy is not dead. She's in that sodding human Angel dimension and you—"
"Not everything is about B, English," she said
"That bloke you killed had to be older than thirty-five. He was a vulcanologist, right? Don't you need a million years of school for something like that? And if he was such an innocent what was he doing hanging out with demons that were attacking Slayers?"
"I'm sure you wouldn't be saying that if someone stabbed me or Dawn. I could have stabbed Dawn back then. But I wasn't even talking about that dude," Faith said softly as she slid down and against the dumpster and sat.
"Oh, here we go again. You gonna run the gamut again? How you tried to kill Buffy and the lot of them? I tried to kill them all far more often than you've been knocked out. Well, not Joyce or Dawn. Joyce gave me hot chocolate, and it seemed rude to try to kill her little niblet daughter after she was so hospitable. Well, Dawn wasn't really around then. All those memories of her peaking at me from the stairs and asking if I was 'that rebel yell guy' are fake. What a—"
"Joyce invited me over for Christmas, and I tied her to a chair and told her I was going to kill her and I had a fucking soul when I did that, Spike," she spat and pounded against the dumpster.
"Where was Dawn?"
"I gave her money to go to the movies. I told her I needed to talk to her Mom alone," she said shakily.
"See, that was nice," Spike said, as he crouched down right up against his ten meter warning.
"Yeah, nice," she laughed and cried, "when she came home to a slashed up Mom."
"Were you really going to slash Joyce?" Spike asked plainly.
"I thought about it," she said and then her voice shook again, "but she just seemed so—so Mom."
"I know what you mean. Look, don't you think that if you really wanted to kill any of them you would have? Except for Buffy, they were all weak as kittens, and she wasn't there to defend them plenty of times. Always prancing about with Angel in those days, I imagine. You psyched yourself up that you were all big and bad, but if you really had been there would have been at least one dead Scooby."
Spike threw Faith his coat. He didn't know why. He supposed he wanted to be able to throw something over the mystical barrier and he had already given his lighter to her. She was wearing only a tank top, but he hadn't realized that until right after he threw the duster.
"Speak for yourself," she grumbled as she caught the duster, "What the hell is this for?"
"Trust me I'm not speaking for myself. I wanted Red so bad I could taste it, and Buffy, don't even get me started. I wanted that girl under my power, twisting, screaming, begging..." Spike shook those thoughts off as he felt his eyes wanting to roll back in his head, "Harris I didn't think about one way or another, until I got to know him then he was on the top of my killing list...So, you see just because I accepted Joyce's cocoa---"
He stopped when he heard her crying. It was a soft shaking sound with no voice in it. He wouldn't have heard from where he had to stand if he hadn't been a vampire. This barrier was torture. Bring the bloody chip back. He didn't give a toss what he could or couldn't do to others, but not being able to do anything for her, with her, to her...Now this was a poetic way to torture him.
"You're really broken up about this Joyce thing," he sighed painfully now, "Look, when she first met me I was trying to kill Buffy and she hit me with an Ax. After that came the cocoa. She wasn't really one to hold a grudge, love."
"You know how Al took the demon out?" she asked suddenly looking straight at him.
"By violating your mind. I've seen him—"
"Do you know how though? He takes secrets...All the darkest things that you have in you that you don't want people to know. Do you want to know the one thing I kept back so I'd have a piece of the mother fucking demon to fight your ass off?" she demanded and didn't wait for him to answer,
"It had nothing to do with anything you know. You have no idea how deep the evil in me is. No one does. I killed my mother at twelve. She never got to be thirty-five, so I'll be damned if I do as a person who just keeps killing. See, I'm not the other B-licious girl, the one that she would have been if she fell on hard times. I'm just no good. So, don't be comin' around and makin' it worse."
"What happened? Was she beating you? Telling you that you were evil? Because that—"he began.
"My Mom wasn't like that. She only hit me when she was drunk and she never left any bruises. She may have said some mean things to me, but she said just as many nice ones. I just got really pissed off at her one night. She had said we were going to McDonald's. She had even said maybe we could get a dog. She always said she would try to be home more, but I knew she never would. She had too many other people—too many friends. I wasn't good at making friends with other chicks like she was. So, I knew if I did get the dog, I wouldn't have to be alone at night anymore... So, dinner time comes and goes, and she doesn't show for McDonald's. I was pissed, but I thought it maybe good. She would feel guilty and I'd finally get the dog. So, she comes home tanked off her ass. I reminded her that she stood me up. I tell her she has to get the dog to make it up to me. She says no. 'We need a dog like a hole in the head,'" she was looking past him again.
"What kind of dog did you want?" he asked. He could see her with one of those big skinny gray ones. People were always afraid of them because of their size, but they were really very kind. They would only hurt, or kill, if someone trained them for it.
"Any kind. Anything just a dog, a puppy," she said she was looking past not only him but everything—the world. He really wished she had reminded him that was a stupid question given the context of the story. Still, he couldn't picture her with a little dog, like the one that got swallowed up in that worm hole. Poor thing.
"But Mom said no dog again, after saying yes, again," Faith told him, "So, I told her she was a lying bitch and she never cared about me, she always betrayed me. She hit me a couple times, and I went to my room. My room was actually a closet, but it had a skylight. I never had a room with a skylight again. It was cool. I guess you wouldn't be able to have one, but you could see the stars out of them, that is the best part anyway. She comes into my room. She says 'I'm sorry. You know you're a good kid.' I prove her wrong. I don't forgive her, I pretend to sleep."
All right. Spike swallowed. He had seen many things done and had done many things to little girls, but a mother hitting one for anything short of touching the stove top or running out into a busy street baffled him. He had never been hit by his mother, The school masters did all the hitting, and he was told never to hit his sister. She was a little girl.
"Hours go by, and I know. I know I have to get up, get up and do my job," Faith told him.
"What job is that, love?" he asked.
He asked quickly. He was afraid if he didn't she would have just stopped talking and froze there, but still relived this in her mind. Like someone who had been reading out loud to themselves and then decided to go about it all silent.
He was waiting for the shoe to drop. What horrible thing was Faith made to do that made her have to kill the woman that bore her?
"My job. I have to check and see if she is okay. Sometimes she passes out in the middle of the floor, and I can't let her stay there or else when she wakes up she's wicked depressed. If I get her to the couch at least she doesn't get depressed. Sometimes she leaves the door unlocked, the lights on. That's no good. We live in Roxbury. It's not safe. So, I go to do my job and..."
She was frozen again.
Spike noticed she made the switch. The switch of taking the past to the present with her words. Drusilla did it all the time when she was remembering something that wasn't quite dead. Spike knew reminding Faith that she no longer lived in West Roxbury and she was safe, was useless. She wasn't really safe.
"Anything she did to hurt herself was not your fault," Spike said.
It sounded like Faith's Mum made her death wish come true, leaving Faith to feel like she granted it.
"You think Mickey would off herself? She's not a loser, not like me," Faith laughed at him.
"Mickey?" Spike asked. It was good to ask the easy questions to get the hard stories out.
"Mirika. Mirika Demiers. It's Albanian. She kinda wanted to wash the olive off, so she changed it to Mickey Winters. So, I go to do my job and I see...I see. She made it to bed. But she has a cigarette. It's in her hand and it's burning away. I sit there. I sit there and watch it burn down down to nothing. Ashes on the bed. I see her hand light up with the sheet. Really slow... a little fire. Like a lighter. It burned for a second until she woke up. Do you know what a woman being burned sounds like? Do you know what a burnt up hand smells like?"
"Yes," he answered unflinchingly.
So, the Firecracker was Albanian. He should have known, like he knew she was never a real killer and only fancied herself as one.
"It's wicked nasty," she stated.
"Look, plenty of people freeze up in situations. You should be happy you got out alive with a place burning down," he said.
"Place burning...?" she wrinkled her brow in confusion. "Oh, no she woke up. She screamed and woke up we put the fire out. We go to my bed because she seems scared of her bed. She keeps saying it's five by five, but I know it's not. She holds me with that burnt up hand and she doesn't let go. It smells awful, and I want to pull away. She gets very sad after that. I go to school and I come home and I find her in her bed, but she hasn't changed the sheets. 'I could have killed you,' she keeps saying."
Faith rises and he does too. She starts to circle the dumpster. He follows her at the distance he's forced to. Spike has never hated anyone more than Alistair Crowley. Him and his bloody spells; he's worse than anything the Marquis de Sade ever thought up. Spike wished he had the time to make Alistair dead- dead in a way where he couldn't rise up again.
"I don't tell that it was my fault. I go to school again, and I come home and it's the same thing again. The hand has stopped smelling but the fingers look really bad. I tell her I learned what to do with broken fingers in school, and maybe that will help make it better. It doesn't it makes it worse. Whenever I touch her she screams like she's being burnt again. I'm burning her again. Five days. Five days I've stayed home from school. She talks to me like nothing is wrong, but I know something is. Her hand looks worse. It starts to smell again. This time different. She talks to me about stupid things, like how I need new shoes. Whenever I say something about her hand she says: 'I could have killed you. I should send you away.' So, I stopped talking about it."
Faith took out his lighter and began doing a few Zippo tricks. He hadn't taught her any of them. In fact, she had taught him a few.
"Then Mary comes in. She wants to know why Mickey hasn't been at work. Mickey may like to party, but work is a party so she never misses. Mary calls an ambulance and the men come and take her. She doesn't want to go. She hates hospitals because the only time people we know go they never seem to leave. Mary says this is stupid thinking. It's a burned up hand. No one dies of that. But, she's wrong. What does she know? She's just a dumb stripper. See, if no one tells, if no one tells about the burnt up hand it gets worse and worse, and then it gets infected and then the secret you didn't tell gets into the blood stream and you kill your mother."
Faith was holding her hand over the lighter and she began to lower her hand down. Spike wondered what had stopped her from doing this before. Today he would be the thing that would stop her from burning.
"Faith!" he yelled, and he went to grab her hand and the lighter.
He thought maybe he'd take away any other lighters she probably had. He'd have to watch her until this passed, like he used to for Dru. He never found it a difficult task, but it did take a lot of focus. Sometimes he would just make love to Dru for a good while, and after she was better. But he couldn't even begin to handle the Firecracker. For one thing when he tried to go towards her he was thrown back some meters, his ass scraping over the concrete.
"What the hell are you doing? You're not too smart either sometimes, Mr. Paradox. I suppose we have a lot in common," Faith laughed now as she walked up as close to Spike as she could.
"Not as much as you think. I'm the one that killed my Mum, really," he grumbled from the ground.
"You said you never hurt your family when you were a vampire, or was that just another lie?"
"Wrong," he told her as he got up, "I said I loved them through being a vampire, and it didn't do them a lot of good."
"You always hurt the ones you love," she smirked sadly, "You and I—two peas in a pod."
"I am not going to hurt you. You know it and I know it," he insisted.
"So, I guess there's no love 'cause I'm not gonna hurt you," she said defiantly.
"Faith, I---"Spike began.
"I'll hurt him," a smooth smug voice said and Spike felt like he had his legs swept out from under him by a tree trunk. "Get the hell away from her, Spike. Funny, how I've had to say that to you just as much as when you were evil."
Spike looked up at his sire with rage. He was actually speechless at the hypocritical bollocks that was coming out of Angel's mouth. Just because he had managed to get the jump on Spike this once didn't mean he was the never faltering hero.
"Angel, don't bother. He can't get with in ten feet of me with the spell," Faith laughed.
She slowly walked up to Spike and he went flying back.
"Look,"Faith said proudly, "still kickin' ass."
"That is cool," Angel agreed as he stood next to Faith and looked down at Spike.
"Why can't you just keep walking towards him and throwing him like that? It's like a walking show. We could get popcorn," Angel suggested.
"Because shows and magic don't last," Faith answered. "Soon it'll wear off and he'll want to get his hands on me, and it will unleash all hell. Sounds like some dates I've had."
"Me too," Angel actually smiled. Faith brought out the liveliness in the most dead. "So, you were saying something about a vacation? Not that I don't love the idea. But one thing I've learned is that vacations don't solve problems."
"You think that's what she wants to do? Solve this? She just—"Spike began as he rose.
"In all my years with Spike this is usually what solves the problem," Angel said as he hit Spike to the ground again. Bugger.
"It won't now. We just need to run out the clock," Faith informed Angel after she quickly recovered from a frown.
"Run out the clock!" Spike roared.
"Is there an echo?" Faith rolled her eyes and flashed her battle smile. "Yeah, I just have to stay away from him until his little soul light doesn't burn for me anymore, and then it'll be over,"
"You got that right! She needs me Angel," Spike demanded as he jumped up and glared at his sire.
Angel rolled his eyes and hit him again. Spike grunted in frustration and hit his sire who stumbled a bit. Spike's eyes widened in surprise, and he grinned. He hadn't really thought he hit the old poof that hard. Training everyday with Faith hadn't only helped her. Spike also realized he had to work on his blocking as Angel hit him again.
"He really believes what he's saying is true, Angel." Faith interjected, "So go easy on the beating. It'll all work out. Maybe that girl Fred of yours will find a way to make me a Slayer again, and I'll beat his ass myself for being stupid."
"Go easy on the beating? He's the one with the split lip, pet" Spike snapped, "As if he could beat me. I'll beat him if he doesn't listen to reason. Angel, I need to heal her or---"
Angel hit him again, this time it was that hard nose crushing hit.
"Let me guess if you can't touch her the world is gonna end? Did you ever think since Faith, a demon clan, and every prophecy on the subject says that doing this burning into Faith is evil that maybe it's, I don't know, evil," Angel scoffed.
"Like reasoning with a post," Spike answered as he hit Angel.
"My thoughts exactly."
Angel stated blocking Spike's second hit, and hit him.
Faith rolled her eyes. "Can we just ramble, Angel? We don't have time for this."
"You wanna play hide an' seek with me?" Spike demanded.
He looked only at Faith. She licked her lips to keep her smirk on, ""Fine, love. You won't win."
"Come and find me," she dared and hit her chest with both hands and then held her arms out in a V. Oh, if this bloody spell was gone she would get it.
"You'll never get through Angel," she leaned her elbow up on the ape-man's shoulder.
"I kinda hope he tries," Angel said.
Spike laughed now.
"How many times has he been so hell-bent on getting a girl that had nothing but power around her that he'd destroy himself to get her?" Spike demanded.
"Oh, once or twice" Angel answered with his false casual sigh.
"Bollocks!" Spike pointed at him, "Ask your Daddy how many Slayers he's killed? How many seas did he cross when he heard where the next one was? How many to the death battles did he have a go at just for her life? Buffy only got in his way of owning the world, with me it was always all about the Slayer—all about her life. You call to me."
"Faith, you are sure about the whole Spike not turning evi—"Angel began.
"He's-he's still good," her eyes darted around as she frowned, "Let's go."
She turned quickly and started stomping away. Spike could smell her fear.
"You're dancing with the master. So, guess I'm it, then," Spike yelled after them
"One...two...three..." he counted yelling after her. He noticed his voice sounded much more bitter and raspy from when he used to actually play hide and seek. It really hadn't been that long ago when he played it in the killing fields with victims that had no chance of winning.
"You sure you don't want me to kill him? Break his legs, maybe?" Spike heard Angel ask Faith.
"So, do you own any places in the Cayman Islands?" she asked Angel.
"I don't know. Probably. That's kind of—sunny—though," Spike heard Angel say.
"It doesn't matter where you take her, Angel. In the end she'll realize she's meant to come to me!"
Spike yelled at the retreating backs.
End