Chosen One: A Swiftly Falling Darkness
chapter four: mockery of a saviour
She'd been expecting vampires.
She got demons.
It was the difference between being able to stand back from the door and fire arrows at them, and going against a dozen of them, hand to hand.
They came in, eerily silent. No grunts, screams, taunts, or any of the noises she was used to hearing from her opponents. Just the great, lumbering silence of the reptilian bodies.
And Faith was tired. She'd been tired for a while, fighting every night, sleeping a few hours in the dawn, working all day at the diner. She'd been tired after the battle against Angelus, after the battle against the First, after going to Cleveland and seeing the Hellmouth there.
Her life since being Chosen was a blur of deaths, demon and human. She was tired of death, tired of slaying, tired of having her own little portion of the world on her shoulders, tired of everything that had made her who she was from the moment she'd been Chosen – the moment she'd left childhood behind.
If this was the kind of life her predecessors had lived, no wonder Slayers didn't have a long life expectancy. B had survived eight years of Slayerdom, dying twice in the process.
Now she understood B's frustration.
But B had done her time, fought the good fight, handed the baton over to a bunch of good Slayers, and retired from the fight. Well, retired as much as any Slayer ever did.
As she ducked fluidly under the scaly arm of one of her attackers, Faith grabbed him and used him as a club against three others.
Now, she wished she'd stayed with Robin in New York. Or even brought him along. He'd been great at watching her back.
Now, she wished she'd called him this afternoon as she'd thought of doing when she left work.
Her momentum from the swing carried her hand down to the tazer one had dropped. She picked it up and skipped a demon before jabbing it into the abdomen of the next. As she did, she brought her leg up, kicking another one down.
But for each one she kicked down, there were others.
There were too many of them, coming too swiftly at her.
And she was just one Slayer.
For a moment, she envied Nikki Wood. Unlike any other Slayer, Nikki had left something of herself in the world – a legacy in her son, Robin.
Faith would leave nothing.
In the big city of New York, there'd been plenty of vamps to slay and demons to hunt, Robin's Mom's Watcher was cool, if a little desiccated, and the food was awesome. Robin was great company, if not quite the anchorage Faith found she yearned for. On the whole, Faith had been happy in New York. Sort of.
Then the discontent had slammed into her with the force of the Beast's fist. She didn't belong in New York. She liked the city and the people she met, but she had a hole inside that the food and the slaying didn't quite fill. Even Robin didn't quite fill it.
So Faith told him she was headed to LA for a while, by herself, to go see Angel and the gang.
She'd reached LA, but Angel wasn't there and she couldn't seem to find anyone willing to talk about him on the street. They were all about the big new boss at Wolfram and Hart – a scary bastard that you really didn't want to cross.
The last time Faith crossed Wolfram and Hart, she'd nearly ended up dead.
So she'd stayed and slayed. And slayed. And slayed.
Faith was tired of slaying.
They pinned her arms in a flesh-bruising grip, and sat on her legs so she couldn't kick. They bound her, hand and foot, without a word or a grunt or a clickety-click of some weird demon tongue. They stuffed a gag in her mouth and poked her in the throat in case she tried to scream.
Faith didn't bother. Screaming was only of use when you had someone to hear it, and the Hyperion wasn't exactly Grand Central Station, New York city.
So there was only the sound of her panting and the grunts she made as she picked opportune times to kick free of her captors.
Of course, the opportune times weren't quite opportune enough to get away.
She was trussed up like a turkey for thanksgiving dinner. But even in the midst of their handling, these demons were careful and cautious of her. They treated her as though she was both dangerous and precious; live cargo, not dead meat.
Which was a compliment about her skills as a Slayer; just not the kind of compliment she wanted right now in this way. She'd rather have been undervalued and given the chance to escape.
Dead was easy. Faith had thought about it since she learned from her first Watcher that a Slayer fought the vamps and demons. And fought the vamps and demons. And fought the vamps and demons. Until she died.
A long life was not on the books for any Slayer.
It was definitely not on the books for Faith, not now.
What she was worried about was the bit that came before death. The part that usually hurt.
The shoulder in her belly hurt as one of the creatures slung her over its shoulder like the proverbial sack of potatoes. Faith nearly retched.
Then her vision was reduced down to the inside of a heshen bag and something slammed into her skull, and after that, there was only darkness.
----
They were playing cards when they heard the door from the garage close behind Wesley.
As if on cue, Angel's cellphone buzzed.
Angel clambered to his feet with the swift grace of a predator, and grabbed the phone from off the chair where it sat. He looked oddly casual in the knitted sweater he wore – a long-ago gift from Cordelia to help him 'relax' and never worn. Not until Cordy was no longer there to see him wear it.
It softened his darkness, made him less intimidating.
Fred figured that was why he never wore it to the office.
"Hello...? Oh, hi, Kennedy."
Fred looked at Angel, but he'd turned away to the window to talk. And then Wesley came into the room and her attention was captured by the weariness in him.
He walked like a man who'd seen horrors he only wished to forget, and hardly noticed them as he came in. But when Charles spoke up from his place on the couch, "Wes?" Wesley looked up and his mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile and yet held elements of relief and repulsion.
"Not her."
The tension in the air eased, just a little. It had been there since Wesley had gotten the call from the morgue to go in and identify another Jane Doe. Long dark hair, olive skin, early twenties, tattoo; they'd feared it was Faith, but it wasn't.
It wasn't.
For such small things, Winifred Burkle could be very grateful. Faith meant a lot to Angel and Wesley. And because they cared about what happened to Faith, so did Fred.
"You should have some dinner," she suggested. Wesley often forgot to eat while he was doing his research – like Fred. And the last few days had been very stressful for him and Angel in particular. "Lorne made crabcakes."
"Just a little something I whipped together. They're still in the dish if you want 'em."
"Tasty stuff," Charles added.
Wesley paused, "I might have a little something. Lunch seems like a long time ago now." He moved across the large living room to the kitchen, putting his briefcase on one of the chairs and draping his jacket over it.
Charles exhaled slowly. "That's something at least," he said, keeping his voice low enough so only Lorne and Fred could hear.
Fred stared at her cards, "He's had a lot on his mind."
"And then some," Lorne added as he shuffled his hand. "One less thing off his mind for the moment."
"So, whose turn is it?" Charles asked.
Fred barely noticed his question; she was looking at Lorne, who was looking at Angel. Fred looked at Angel, who was standing completely still, as if he weren't a vampire so much as a statue.
"Thanks Kennedy. Yes, we'll let you know. Thank you."
By now, they were all looking at him, waiting for the axe.
And he turned, a silhouette against the evening sky beyond. "They found a new Slayer. Just called." The words were barely audible.
A new Slayer. Just called. Which meant another Slayer had died, although, in fact, a lot of Slayers had died in the last few days and no new Slayers had been called for them. And Angel had shared the theory that as long as no new Slayers were called then it mean that the one Slayer the gang knew personally was still alive, and that was...
"Faith?" The name was soft, pained. Fred turned to look at Wesley but he wasn't looking at her. Instead, his eyes sought Angel's as Angel looked to him.
"They got in contact with the guy she left with for New York. She was in the city until a couple of weeks ago, then she decided she'd come down to LA and visit us."
"And since then...?"
"He heard from her once a week, got a call when she made it to LA, but he hasn't heard from her since then."
"How long?"
"Nearly a week."
It was as though there was nobody in the room but the two of them, and the girl of whom they spoke.
In a way, there wasn't.
Faith belonged to a time and a history that none of the others in the room shared. If Cordelia had been here, perhaps it would have been different.
Cordelia wasn't here.
Fred didn't dare break the silence. It wasn't hers to end.
Then, Angel moved. Faster than any of them expected, he crossed the room, hand clenched around the cellphone, grabbing for his coat draped over the chair. It trailed behind him, dragging minor turbulence in the wake of his passage. A moment later, they heard his footsteps descending the stairs to his rooms beneath the house.
Wesley laid his plate down on the table and laid his hands either side, staring off into space. Then he picked the plate up in one hand, took his briefcase and coat in the other, and left with a muttered apology. His footsteps were muffled against the carpet as he went up to his rooms on the first floor, but they heard his door close, firmly and finally.
"So, that's it?" Fred heard herself ask, looking from one face to another, seeking answers, seeking certainty. "Faith's just...dead?"
Charles folded his cards together and laid them down on his lap, his movements slow and regretful. "You generally don't get live after you've done dead," he said quietly. "And a new Slayer was called."
"But we don't know..."
"No," Charles said shortly. "We don't. But they think so. And they sure as hell know a shitload more about Slayers than you or I ever forgot." One hand reached down to lightly rub at the bandage covering the gunshot wound he'd received several days ago. Wesley had located a spell to speed the healing process, and it seemed to be working well. Charles should be back on his feet and around the place in a matter of days instead of several weeks. "I guess that's it, then."
"So it would seem," Lorne said quietly. The anagogic demon winced. "They're taking it very hard."
"You think?" Sarcasm was one more weapon Charles used with expert skill. This time, at least, he used it gently. "I sure don't need to be psychic to pick that up. The girl meant a lot to them."
Charles threw down his cards on the coffee table, silently indicating the game was over. He shifted on the lounge again, wincing a little as the movement pulled the tender muscles of his healing leg. Fred kept an eye on him. They weren't dating anymore. That didn't mean she didn't care. "We need to find the fucker who's doing this and put him in his own personal hell."
"Giles and Willow don't have any leads," Fred said. "And they've been doing this for a long time."
"They don't have the resources of Wolfram and Hart at their fingertips," Charles reminded her. "We do."
"For all the good those resources do us," she muttered. The two men looked at her. "Haven't you tried to get any of the other branches to send you something, yet?" She'd tried it several times, mostly test results or specific items that they'd run out of in the LA branch. She hadn't received anything from another Wolfram and Hart branch office to date.
"Not yet."
"Don't bother. They certainly don't." Fred knew she was getting strange looks from the other two. They hadn't expected her to be so indignant about the other branches, and she was feeling a little silly. But she wanted some of those results and she knew the other branches were holding them back.
"Well, even restricted to LA, we've still got more than the Sunnydale gang ever had to work with. And they stopped the end of the world several times over." Charles sounded almost irritatingly sure of himself. Fred had loved that certainty while they were going out. Charles would know what to do. And if Charles didn't, Wesley would.
The certainty was now irking.
The card game was quite evidently over. Even if Angel hadn't left without a further word, nobody remaining was in a mood to play.
And Fred was worried about Wesley.
"Believe me, there's nothing on Earth that will stop those two from going after the culprit," Lorne was saying to Charles. "And I wouldn't like to be him when they catch him." The couch creaked as he leaned back.
"Actually, I'd like to be there when they do." Charles cracked his knuckles, threateningly. For a moment, Fred could see the Charles Gunn she'd met when she first came back from Pylea; the street-wise young man, suspicious and a little wary. He'd lived by his wits and his fists, and done a good job of it. But there'd been so much more to him – as his current involvement in the law firm showed.
Fred packed up the cards, grabbed her jacket from the chair over which she'd draped it, and left them to discussing what would happen to the perpetrator of all these crimes.
If asked, she would have told them she was going upstairs to do some Internet research for one of her projects.
In actual fact, she went to Wesley.
"I'm sorry for interrupting," she began, expecting him to tell her to go away and come back later.
"Not at all," he said with typical Wesley-like courtesy. He opened the door wider, ushering her in. "Come in."
She'd been to Wesley's apartment, back in the days when he still kept it. Although there'd been room at the Hyperion for all of them, both Wesley and Cordelia had kept their apartments. Fred guessed it had something to do with personal space, and holding onto the last shreds of independence from Angel and his work.
The air of Wesley's apartment had been one of abandonment. He stayed there, came back for things, but he didn't live there, and it had showed. Even when Fred had come to see him, looking for support to kill Professor Seidel, the apartment had been messy with the paraphernalia of life, but still not really lived in.
This suite at least felt like it was lived in, even if it was mostly books.
They were stacked up in wall-to-wall bookshelves, which were interspersed with tables on which small artefacts were displayed. The books were probably originally sorted by topic and age, since Wesley was big on organisation. Although, he was also big on research, and research tended to mean organisation went out the window - as Fred well knew from running the R&D department at Wolfram and Hart.
She took a seat in one of the high-backed, old-fashioned lounges, noting the books he had piled up on the low table in the centre of the room. Some were open, showing diagrams and personal notes. Most were closed. Over by the corner lamp, the white rim of a plate gleamed in the light, the uneaten crabcakes strewn across its surface.
"I apologise for leaving so abruptly, earlier," Wesley said as he resumed his seat and closed up the books he'd been reading.
"You needed space," Fred responded.
"Which then makes me ask why you're here." The way he spoke wasn't quite pouncing on her words, but there was a certain...knowingness in his voice that shivered over her body. Soft and throaty, with that crisply precise accent that she'd occasionally imagined making exquisite love to her – even while she was with Charles.
Angelus had been right. Wesley was rugged and handsome, intelligent and well-read. As long as Fred knew him, he'd been that way.
But the darkness was new. Since The Estrangement, and the business with Angel, Justine, the guilt of what he'd done, and the distance that fell between them when she and Charles began to see each other. Fred wasn't even going to start on the topic of Lilah Morgan and the weirdness of Wesley's relationship with the lawyer.
"I just thought..." she began. "I wanted to make sure you were okay. What with the news of Faith, and all." She stared down at her hands in her lap, and realised she was sitting up straight, as prim as a schoolkid in the presence of a teacher.
And, perhaps because he saw her nervousness, he suddenly relaxed, no longer seeming predatory as he leaned back against the chair. "I'm...okay."
"You don't look okay," Fred told him. And he looked like shit. Elegant shit, as Charles would say, but shit nevertheless.
He smiled a little. "It's difficult to think of her dead," he murmured, without elaborating on exactly who. "Whether we were working towards the same goal or not, she always had such an intensity about her." One hand gestured at the table and the open tomes sprawled haphazardly across the fine woodgrain surface. "I was reading my notes about her back from my days as a Watcher." His voice trailed off, and his eyes stared into space, seeing something from that time, remembering something that made the sensitive mouth twist.
"What?"
He looked up. "Old regrets." When she waited for him to continue, he shifted. "I was wondering, if I had been who I am now when I was first called to serve as a Watcher, would Faith still have done what she did."
"You...you felt strongly about her." It was something of a surprise to Fred. After Willow and Faith had left for Sunnydale, he'd spoken of Lilah, but not of Faith.
The dark-fringed eyes looked at her, unhidden by glasses. Without the concealing glass and the wire frames, his gaze was powerful, disconcerting. "I would be lying if I didn't say that Faith is a large part of what I am today. Her influence on my life has brought me to this point, just as my influence on her life in Sunnydale assisted her descent into darkness."
Fred was caught up in his gaze, a little amazed that, even in the midst of his grief, he was thinking philosophically about the dead Slayer. "Did you ever consider...being her Watcher again? When you broke her out of prison, I mean?"
"Of course," he said easily. "Hunting down first the Beast, then Angelus... It was what I'd been trained to do, all my life. Fighting the darkness, with my Slayer taking point while I protected her back..." His demeanour went very still. "Even putting her in danger in order to get the job done." Soft as rustling leaves in the fall, the words whispered through the room, like layers of guilt, mulching down on the ground of his soul. "She deserved better."
"Maybe she had the best." She blushed a little and her heart beat a touch faster as Wesley glanced warmly at her. "Faith was smart," she said in explanation. "Streetwise. I think she knew a good bet when she saw it." It was extrapolation, but wasn't that what physicists did? Suggest a reasonable theory and look for the evidence to back it up? "She was coming back to LA. Maybe she was coming back to see you."
"Or Angel."
"Or maybe both." Fred wasn't deterred. "You don't know what she was thinking. But she was on her way here, and there's only two people in this city I think she really cared about..."
He smiled, a faint, deprecating curve of the lips. "I disagree, but thank you."
Silence fell between them, rolling over them in gently uncomfortable waves. After a moment where Fred searched for something to say, she stood, knowing she looked nervous, but not knowing how not to look nervous. "Anyway, I came to see that you were okay. And now I should probably go up to my rooms and do some work," she said, babbling to fill the quiet. "We've been doing some complex testing on protein strands with the possibility of developing a blood synthetic that would provide the same effect..."
"...on vampires as real blood," Wesley finished for her as he rose from the couch. "I know. I read the reports that come out of the labs."
"You do?" She was genuinely surprised at that.
He smiled, warmly. "Of course."
The silence swept in, filling the gaps in their conversation. Fred flushed and turned to go, and somehow there was a warm hand on her arm.
"I always read what you're working on," he said with poignant simplicity, and the heat rushed to her cheeks. "It's interesting."
"Not everyone thinks so." From this close, she could smell the tang of his scent, sweet and indeliably male.
"I'm not everyone." He was smiling, and again, Fred had the sensation that she didn't really know the man who was restraining her with nothing more than his fingers on her arm.
Fred found Wesley attractive. She always had. He was a gentleman and a good man, and handsome, thoughtful, and clever as well. She'd known he liked her. Even before Angelus made his revelations about Wesley's interest in her, Fred knew. And she'd loved Charles, but Wesley was always there, and compelling in his own intense way...
This close, he was very compelling. Fred could see very clearly the thin rim of pale iris in his eyes, the pupils dilated in the artificial light, the fringe of dark lashes that made his eyes seem somehow bluer. This close, she could feel the heat of him so close to her own cool skin. His breath was warm against her lips as he leaned in to kiss her...
Chords blared, the opening bars of Offenbach's 'Can-Can'. She sprang back, startled by the interruption of her cellphone. Wesley also jerked back, and she hooked a strand of hair over her ear, suddenly self-conscious as she searched out the device buzzing smugly in her jacket pocket.
There weren't too many people who called her at any time, and, at this hour, she could guess who it was.
She was right.
Knox was suitably apologetic about the interruption. "Look, I know you wanted to keep work and home separate and everything, but I was thinking about the arrangement of the protein strings in the compound and how we might be going about this the wrong way... Do you have a few minutes – not more than half an hour – just to go through the findings from the last set of tests...?"
Fred glanced at Wesley, who'd moved away to give her some space for the conversation. The mood was spoiled, and she'd been planning to go through the test plans sometime tonight anyway. And they were so close to making a breakthrough...
...but there was Wesley, watching her with patient eyes.
She paused the call with Knox, "It's just about tomorrow's testing... I was going to do this later, but..." She indicated the phone, helplessly.
He was polite, but she could see the resignation in his eyes as he spoke. "It happens. Go sort out your testing." When she didn't resume the conversation, he jerked his head at the door, smiling a little. "Go." And Fred felt the words he didn't say – the words that warmed her to her toes. I'll still be here when things settle down.
Fred went.
----
They chained her up in a tiny little space and left her there during the day. The thick sandstone shaded from deep grey to pale grey, to gentle hues of pale, grubby gold, to beautiful warm red-and-gold streaked hues from nine until five. Then, as the sun set, the colour leached out of the stones, taking them back to their ugly dull grey.
Then the vampire came.
Faith thought of this one as the leader of the pack, since he was the one who ordered the others around. Snatches of conversation suggested he wasn't the big boss, though. Someone else was the one giving the ultimate orders – and he wanted Faith alive.
That and the fear the vamps had for this 'big boss' behind the scenes were the only two things keeping the vamps from drinking her dry or turning her into one of them.
"Good evening, madam Slayer. Ready for tonight's meal?" His polite words were always tainted with mockery, but Faith didn't respond to it. "No pithy response today? No smart comment?" Lead Vamp seemed disappointed. "Angelus' little blonde thing in Sunnydale is said to be full of witticisms as she slays. Surely you can conjure up even a fraction of the spirit she displays?"
Faith couldn't.
She had little enough strength as it was. Her wrists and ankles were chafed raw from the manacles, and her shoulders ached from keeping her arms up all the time in the cell. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept, and in the thin white singlet and black panties they allowed her, she was always cold.
So she conserved her energy and her anger as Lead Vamp smacked her about a bit before calling in his minions to drag her out into the church proper.
Faith had never liked churches much. Cold, empty places with unsympathetic old men up the front, and a God who didn't seem to care, let alone hear the prayers of the faithful. He'd never answered any of Faith's childhood prayers, and she'd long ago given up on a deity in place of self-reliance.
Angel had been the closest thing to a guardian that Faith had ever had. Pun fully intentional.
And Angel was gone.
It hurt. It hurt about as much as waking up to discover that the world had moved on without her, that Mayor Wilkins was dead, that Buffy was living it up as the Slayer.
At least this time, Faith knew who to lash out at - and it wasn't Buffy.
She'd staked vampires until her arms were sore. She'd fought demons until her body ached. She'd done what a Slayer was supposed to do - and done it without backup, without Slayerettes, without even a prissy Watcher to boss her around.
God, what she wouldn't have given for Wes - even Wes as she'd first met him, all stiff and uptight as he'd been.
Part of her wanted to go back to New York city and Robin. He hadn't been Angel, but he'd been good company.
In came the vampire flunkeys; one, two, three. Faith braced herself against the pain in stiff muscles as they hauled her out like so much cargo. She was dragged up to the front the church hall like a side of beef, arms out towards the high, arched windows; feet chained to the floor. The ropes threaded through her manacles pulled her arms apart, tearing at muscles that hadn't been given a chance to stretch, and she gasped in pain and swayed on her feet.
Only the tension in the ropes kept her upright, and her shoulders screamed in agony as she swung a little too far and couldn't regain her balance.
She was still off-balance when the lead vampire took a good long drink out of her, his claws digging gently into her already-sore shoulders to prevent her from jerking away.
Faith jerked away anyway, ignoring the way his talons left raised welts across her flesh and shredded the material of her singlet top. What little space she had, she used to slip out from under his fangs, denying him the meal. He'd eat soon enough anyway, she was just the appetiser.
He raised animal-yellow eyes to her, "So," he murmured, "There is some spirit in there after all..." He trailed one finger down her temple to her jaw. "You should consider yourself lucky, Slayer."
Lucky for what? Getting to watch you and the rest of your kind feed off me and off them? For being alive?
She'd rather be dead than have to watch this every night.
Beyond the torchlight, figures moved in the shadows, slowly gaining definition. The people were herded through the church doors, like sheep to the proverbial slaughter.
Faith knew what they saw. As they came out of the darkness, their eyes would be drawn towards the light. Her flame-illuminated body, battered and bruised, would be the first thing they saw. Her flame-illuminated body, tied and tired, would be more or less the last thing they saw. Ever.
The vampire leader turned to see where her gaze led, and smiled, his fangs still tinged red with Faith's blood. "Ah," he murmured and stepped away, "Dinner awaits."
Faith knew what came next. She'd seen it last night, and the night before that, and the night before that. The people would be given a good, hard look at her before the vamps fed on them. The vampires liked the taste of fear.
And here she was, the great warrior, the Slayer, tied between two poles, unable to do a single, fucking thing.
The irony wasn't lost on her: she was a Vampire Slayer captured by vamps and unable to help herself, let alone their other victims.
Faith looked the victims-to-be in the eye, trying to remember faces, expressions, people. The dignity of memory was all she could give them, and it wasn't enough. She could feel that.
Her gaze flitted over the victims, and stopped on the familiar features of a tall, lean man. Eyes that she knew were blue in the light shone black in the irregular flare of the torches.
She breathed his name, her mouth shaping the syllables like a prayer or a plea or an abject denial. And all hell broke loose.
----