Faith stretched out her shoulder as she walked, trying to work out the knot that had formed there sometime during the night. Construction three times a week, slaying every evening, and she gets a muscle cramp from sleeping wrong.
She looked over at Dawn as the sole-remaining Summers' girl sniffed a bit, then sighed. She and Giles were taking dear Dawnie over to Xander and Anya's before patrolling. They advertised it as a movie night, but considering Dawn hadn't been home alone at night simply by default since she'd gotten back, Faith had no doubt that the illusion was gone. She found the whole thing ridiculous. Dawn was eighteen. For all intent's and purposes, she could go wherever the hell she pleased, and rightfully so. However, everyone else acted as if they had something to prove by protecting her from every little thing around her. She had been gone so long, its almost as if they hadn't noticed that she'd grown up.
The trip to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harris was continuing to remain both uneventful and completely silent. Faith could tell that Dawn was no longer amused. Sunnydale was starting to get to her, and it had only been a week. It got to everyone, though. It got to Faith every day, and every night. She wanted a life, she wanted sex, god did she want sex, and she wanted it all away from here.
Over the last three and a half years, she'd gained a brand new respect for her predocessor. Buffy had lived like this for five years, the better part of what should have been her golden age, and then she died. The same path Faith now followed, not entirely of her own will. On the other hand, Buffy had a semblance of a life, and she wasn't burdened with a Watcher who, after losing his first slayer, was making every pointless attempt to both protect the one he had, and never care for her.
Faith looked down at her feet. Sometimes it kind of killed. She didn't know why she cared, it had never meant anything to her before, but now... now it had a little pull. The truth was that Giles protected her because somewhere in his subconscious he saw her as his second chance. He trained her not to die, and he trained himself not to care if she did. She couldn't blame him sometimes - every woman that he'd ever cared about had died, every single one - but when he looked at her like she wasn't worth investing in because she'd be the next one to go to the block, she blamed him for a lot more. She didn't have anyone here, no company besides the vampires and the occasional one-night stand, a beer after work with Xander which even she thought was a little strange.
"Alright, we'll let you off here," Faith said, standing on the curb outside Xander and Anya's apartment building, pre-empting what she estimated as Giles' plan to take her to the door.
Giles made no move to protest, and Dawn said nothing as she headed up into the building.
Slayer and Watcher remained silent as they made their way to the graveyard. Faith prefered not talking to him anyway. Back in the good old days - well, back when the high school was still intact, and most of the gang was still alive (and although she, herself, might not have been too good, she still considered them the good old days) - she remembered Giles as being more outgoing, definitly not as British, even funny. Its not like she was lost on the why of it, but Giles' reversion was still a point of contention in her head.
She wondered sometimes why he'd come back here at all. The council could've sent someone else, there were plenty of people who wanted his job, and unlike herself, he wasn't stuck with his profession. He didn't have to come to a place that reminds him of everything he'd lost over the years. Maybe he could have been happy. She new he wasn't now.
"Hi," Oz said, coming up from the side of the two without a noise but somehow managing not to startle. It was somewhere towards the middle of the third graveyard they'd come to, one near the hills toward the outside of the town. They stood there for a few stagnate seconds before Oz continued, "Patrolling?"
"Yah." Faith replied.
"I'm going into the hills, trying to pick up a sent," he added.
"Good idea," Faith said. Giles nodded. They went quiet again. "We should pick up the pace. You know, patrolling."
"Right." Oz replied. They all stood there for a beat, as if they didn't particularly know with that second of time, like the conversation hadn't ended and the rest of life couldn't begin - like they were in limbo. Then they parted.
Much like many a situation, place, or person these days, no one new how to respond to Oz. He'd shown up after everything went to hell three and a half years ago, stayed long enough to help a little, then left in a search no one really understood. They'd lost her, and everyone else seemed to accept it quite quickly, almost as an offshoot of losing Buffy. However, Oz, even now, after all this time, really believed he could find Willow. And that once he found her, that he could save her. It was that conviction, the determination he maintained, that made him so difficult to relate to.
The truth was, though, as much as she thought he was wrong, if Faith had any way to do it, she'd change everything in a second. Even if it meant that she'd still be in jail, even if it meant that there would be all kinds of new evil. She'd never been selfless, but they'd built there own hell, and she would do anything to break it down. It wasn't evil that made them less than human now, it was themselves.
- - -
Spike grunted as he tossed a few stray papers across his crypt. Letters to Buffy, crappy poetry about Buffy, phone number of the butcher's shop, drawings of Buffy, doodles she'd made in notebooks that he'd stolen, pieces of her clothing. Jesus Christ, he'd been so bloody pathetic. He picked up a nearby cardboard box and started to pile the clippings and such into it to be stored somewhere. He was so bloody pathetic.
He'd found an old bottle of scotch near his bed. It had been sealed properly, it had been sitting there for three and a half years, and it tasted like gasoline of some kind. He was lucky he was already dead, considering. There was only a shot or two left now, and he was making a mess.
He'd kissed her once, he remembered. He kissed her a few times, and although he didn't recall to perfectly at that moment, he was pretty sure he'd copped a feel. Another spell. Damn the redhead, it had been another bloody spell. He didn't blame Willow for everything. He didn't blame her for much, actually, but she did have a tendency to fuck with people without seeing any consequences. Granted, he was similarly affected, but he'd always seen the adverse effects, often aiming for them. She tried to change people in order to help them in the beginning, then it was to help her, and she couldn't see anything esle. They were all paying for that in one way or another.
He wondered sometimes if that was where it began, his 'obsession,' as some called it. With a spell, with that spell even. He hated her, he'd always hated her, and then all of the sudden he was attracted to blondes. It had been brunettes, always brunettes - Drusilla, Cecily, deep brown - blondes reminded him of his mother. They reminded him of the sun, he hadn't seen that in ages. Blondes had been Angel's dig, and he'd never particularly liked any comparison between himself and his grand-sire. So why the hell would he want to bang the old bastard's former flame? Sure as hell wasn't revenge, though it would have been a nice perk, now that he thought about it. He'd attempted to romance her, he'd attempted to take her on a date, he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him for her on more than one occasion, and not in a get-in-your-pants kind of way. He had a big jonze for the bird, he even liked her mother, nice lady, real upper.
Beneath her. He was beneath her, she'd told him. She'd fulfilled her deathwish, and she was right, it wasn't him. He didn't kill her. But he didn't save her either. Not then, not when it mattered. When he had the chance, he'd fallen five stories flat onto his face, and she'd jumped. He'd failed that night in the one thing that she'd ever trusted him with. So now he did it every night. He went through it every night. He was smarter, faster, and every night he fixed in his dreams what he couldn't in reality. All he could do for her now was make good on the deal they'd made, even if it was a little late.
His brain hurt. It felt as though he was falling in and out of unconsciousness every few seconds. He was still standing, but his head was getting heavier. He couldn't trace where this particular line of though had began, he couldn't attribute the geometrical definition of a line to it at all, seemed more loopish, and oval of some kind.
Stumbling out of his crypt, he broke the bottle that had been in his hand on the door, spraying the remains of the liquid onto his face and coat. It felt warm and stung in the corner of his left eye. A few shards of glass cut his hand, some caught him in his cheek as he tossed the rest of the bottle at the door. He shook his hand of and kept walking, his balance off and his feet not falling straight in front of him.
Pathetic.
- - -
"You know, you don't have to come on patrols with me," Faith said, breaking the silence. Giles didn't do it all the time, but he'd made a habit of going more often than she'd like, even more so over the last few weeks.
"With it being quiet lately, I believe this is an excellent training opportunity," Giles responded levelly.
"We train a lot, enough even," Faith countered, "I don't need a baby-sitter. For that matter, niether does Dawn, what the hell is up with you guys? She's a big girl now, so am I."
"Dawn is not the issue, the Hellmouth is dangerous, and she doesn't have any advantage against the evils you and I face every day. As far as you are concerned, you are never too old to train. If you become lax, you become vunerable."
"Giles, no one here has an advantage against the evils we face, not you, not even me, but we make it. Keeping tabs on her isn't going to do anything. She's going to go out, she's going to get hurt, she may even get dead, but its her decision to do any of those things now." She was yelling now.
"Somehow I think this conversation isn't about Dawn," Giles said, his face displaying a stern expression.
"Not all of it." Faith started walking ahead.
"Look, Buffy, you can't -" Giles walked after her.
Faith turned to look at him, "Get over it, Giles," she tooke a breath, speaking through her teeth, "I'm not Buff-" she looked in front of her, "-y." She held out the last sound as she look at the mess of dirt before her. What had been a grave was now a mass of soot piled messily on either side of a coffin-sized hole, at the head of which sat the broken headstone that had once read 'Buffy Summers.'
- - -
It didn't look human. Shrivelled, crumbling, bones showing through the scraps of skin left on its face. It was just a shell, Willow reminded herself, easily fixed. She could make it breath again, she could fix its face, she could cover it with brand new skin - that wouldn't require anymore from her than the energy to open her eyes. But she didn't want the shell. It was a nice covering for what was truly of value to her. And that was more difficult to come by.
She had moved way beyond words. No more incantations, no more herbs, oils, or candles. This was a matter of where to look, where to pull from, how to pick a lock or two. There were ancient barriers between her and what she wanted, those and the massive energy required of her to pass them would be the only obstacles in her path.
One touch now, she had it all in place, so just one touch. She hesitated, looking over the corpse before her, wondering if maybe Buffy was still in there after all this time, if the soul Willow was pulling out of oblivion might be of no matter; if the concept of such a thing even existed.
She put her hand on Buffy's head. She felt nothing, which she thought was strange. Her body just seemed to drain, and Buffy's corpse disappeared. It wasn't long after that that she noticed she was laying down, that she couldn't feel anything - mystical and physical alike. Then everything went black.
- - -
The former construction site hadn't been touched in a decade. City funding was lost shortly after building had begun, and the site was left to rot in the bad side of town. No one cared to buy it, the property wasn't worth the money to develop, so it remained quiet. There were concrete blocks strewn about, bricks, tools, steel support bars, and dust to accompany them.
Atop the rubble, however, sat a poorly constructed tower, threatening to fall to the floor at the sound of a pin dropping. It stood about five stories high, off center at each one, and had a platform at the top level which extended several yards in front of it. At the edge of the narrow platform, were two thin poles which stood about three feet high, sporting a strip of tattered rope each. The tower was the only thing on the site with a story, save for maybe the girl who had appeared below it, laying on a bed of bricks.
She opened her eyes.
She looked over at Dawn as the sole-remaining Summers' girl sniffed a bit, then sighed. She and Giles were taking dear Dawnie over to Xander and Anya's before patrolling. They advertised it as a movie night, but considering Dawn hadn't been home alone at night simply by default since she'd gotten back, Faith had no doubt that the illusion was gone. She found the whole thing ridiculous. Dawn was eighteen. For all intent's and purposes, she could go wherever the hell she pleased, and rightfully so. However, everyone else acted as if they had something to prove by protecting her from every little thing around her. She had been gone so long, its almost as if they hadn't noticed that she'd grown up.
The trip to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harris was continuing to remain both uneventful and completely silent. Faith could tell that Dawn was no longer amused. Sunnydale was starting to get to her, and it had only been a week. It got to everyone, though. It got to Faith every day, and every night. She wanted a life, she wanted sex, god did she want sex, and she wanted it all away from here.
Over the last three and a half years, she'd gained a brand new respect for her predocessor. Buffy had lived like this for five years, the better part of what should have been her golden age, and then she died. The same path Faith now followed, not entirely of her own will. On the other hand, Buffy had a semblance of a life, and she wasn't burdened with a Watcher who, after losing his first slayer, was making every pointless attempt to both protect the one he had, and never care for her.
Faith looked down at her feet. Sometimes it kind of killed. She didn't know why she cared, it had never meant anything to her before, but now... now it had a little pull. The truth was that Giles protected her because somewhere in his subconscious he saw her as his second chance. He trained her not to die, and he trained himself not to care if she did. She couldn't blame him sometimes - every woman that he'd ever cared about had died, every single one - but when he looked at her like she wasn't worth investing in because she'd be the next one to go to the block, she blamed him for a lot more. She didn't have anyone here, no company besides the vampires and the occasional one-night stand, a beer after work with Xander which even she thought was a little strange.
"Alright, we'll let you off here," Faith said, standing on the curb outside Xander and Anya's apartment building, pre-empting what she estimated as Giles' plan to take her to the door.
Giles made no move to protest, and Dawn said nothing as she headed up into the building.
Slayer and Watcher remained silent as they made their way to the graveyard. Faith prefered not talking to him anyway. Back in the good old days - well, back when the high school was still intact, and most of the gang was still alive (and although she, herself, might not have been too good, she still considered them the good old days) - she remembered Giles as being more outgoing, definitly not as British, even funny. Its not like she was lost on the why of it, but Giles' reversion was still a point of contention in her head.
She wondered sometimes why he'd come back here at all. The council could've sent someone else, there were plenty of people who wanted his job, and unlike herself, he wasn't stuck with his profession. He didn't have to come to a place that reminds him of everything he'd lost over the years. Maybe he could have been happy. She new he wasn't now.
"Hi," Oz said, coming up from the side of the two without a noise but somehow managing not to startle. It was somewhere towards the middle of the third graveyard they'd come to, one near the hills toward the outside of the town. They stood there for a few stagnate seconds before Oz continued, "Patrolling?"
"Yah." Faith replied.
"I'm going into the hills, trying to pick up a sent," he added.
"Good idea," Faith said. Giles nodded. They went quiet again. "We should pick up the pace. You know, patrolling."
"Right." Oz replied. They all stood there for a beat, as if they didn't particularly know with that second of time, like the conversation hadn't ended and the rest of life couldn't begin - like they were in limbo. Then they parted.
Much like many a situation, place, or person these days, no one new how to respond to Oz. He'd shown up after everything went to hell three and a half years ago, stayed long enough to help a little, then left in a search no one really understood. They'd lost her, and everyone else seemed to accept it quite quickly, almost as an offshoot of losing Buffy. However, Oz, even now, after all this time, really believed he could find Willow. And that once he found her, that he could save her. It was that conviction, the determination he maintained, that made him so difficult to relate to.
The truth was, though, as much as she thought he was wrong, if Faith had any way to do it, she'd change everything in a second. Even if it meant that she'd still be in jail, even if it meant that there would be all kinds of new evil. She'd never been selfless, but they'd built there own hell, and she would do anything to break it down. It wasn't evil that made them less than human now, it was themselves.
- - -
Spike grunted as he tossed a few stray papers across his crypt. Letters to Buffy, crappy poetry about Buffy, phone number of the butcher's shop, drawings of Buffy, doodles she'd made in notebooks that he'd stolen, pieces of her clothing. Jesus Christ, he'd been so bloody pathetic. He picked up a nearby cardboard box and started to pile the clippings and such into it to be stored somewhere. He was so bloody pathetic.
He'd found an old bottle of scotch near his bed. It had been sealed properly, it had been sitting there for three and a half years, and it tasted like gasoline of some kind. He was lucky he was already dead, considering. There was only a shot or two left now, and he was making a mess.
He'd kissed her once, he remembered. He kissed her a few times, and although he didn't recall to perfectly at that moment, he was pretty sure he'd copped a feel. Another spell. Damn the redhead, it had been another bloody spell. He didn't blame Willow for everything. He didn't blame her for much, actually, but she did have a tendency to fuck with people without seeing any consequences. Granted, he was similarly affected, but he'd always seen the adverse effects, often aiming for them. She tried to change people in order to help them in the beginning, then it was to help her, and she couldn't see anything esle. They were all paying for that in one way or another.
He wondered sometimes if that was where it began, his 'obsession,' as some called it. With a spell, with that spell even. He hated her, he'd always hated her, and then all of the sudden he was attracted to blondes. It had been brunettes, always brunettes - Drusilla, Cecily, deep brown - blondes reminded him of his mother. They reminded him of the sun, he hadn't seen that in ages. Blondes had been Angel's dig, and he'd never particularly liked any comparison between himself and his grand-sire. So why the hell would he want to bang the old bastard's former flame? Sure as hell wasn't revenge, though it would have been a nice perk, now that he thought about it. He'd attempted to romance her, he'd attempted to take her on a date, he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him for her on more than one occasion, and not in a get-in-your-pants kind of way. He had a big jonze for the bird, he even liked her mother, nice lady, real upper.
Beneath her. He was beneath her, she'd told him. She'd fulfilled her deathwish, and she was right, it wasn't him. He didn't kill her. But he didn't save her either. Not then, not when it mattered. When he had the chance, he'd fallen five stories flat onto his face, and she'd jumped. He'd failed that night in the one thing that she'd ever trusted him with. So now he did it every night. He went through it every night. He was smarter, faster, and every night he fixed in his dreams what he couldn't in reality. All he could do for her now was make good on the deal they'd made, even if it was a little late.
His brain hurt. It felt as though he was falling in and out of unconsciousness every few seconds. He was still standing, but his head was getting heavier. He couldn't trace where this particular line of though had began, he couldn't attribute the geometrical definition of a line to it at all, seemed more loopish, and oval of some kind.
Stumbling out of his crypt, he broke the bottle that had been in his hand on the door, spraying the remains of the liquid onto his face and coat. It felt warm and stung in the corner of his left eye. A few shards of glass cut his hand, some caught him in his cheek as he tossed the rest of the bottle at the door. He shook his hand of and kept walking, his balance off and his feet not falling straight in front of him.
Pathetic.
- - -
"You know, you don't have to come on patrols with me," Faith said, breaking the silence. Giles didn't do it all the time, but he'd made a habit of going more often than she'd like, even more so over the last few weeks.
"With it being quiet lately, I believe this is an excellent training opportunity," Giles responded levelly.
"We train a lot, enough even," Faith countered, "I don't need a baby-sitter. For that matter, niether does Dawn, what the hell is up with you guys? She's a big girl now, so am I."
"Dawn is not the issue, the Hellmouth is dangerous, and she doesn't have any advantage against the evils you and I face every day. As far as you are concerned, you are never too old to train. If you become lax, you become vunerable."
"Giles, no one here has an advantage against the evils we face, not you, not even me, but we make it. Keeping tabs on her isn't going to do anything. She's going to go out, she's going to get hurt, she may even get dead, but its her decision to do any of those things now." She was yelling now.
"Somehow I think this conversation isn't about Dawn," Giles said, his face displaying a stern expression.
"Not all of it." Faith started walking ahead.
"Look, Buffy, you can't -" Giles walked after her.
Faith turned to look at him, "Get over it, Giles," she tooke a breath, speaking through her teeth, "I'm not Buff-" she looked in front of her, "-y." She held out the last sound as she look at the mess of dirt before her. What had been a grave was now a mass of soot piled messily on either side of a coffin-sized hole, at the head of which sat the broken headstone that had once read 'Buffy Summers.'
- - -
It didn't look human. Shrivelled, crumbling, bones showing through the scraps of skin left on its face. It was just a shell, Willow reminded herself, easily fixed. She could make it breath again, she could fix its face, she could cover it with brand new skin - that wouldn't require anymore from her than the energy to open her eyes. But she didn't want the shell. It was a nice covering for what was truly of value to her. And that was more difficult to come by.
She had moved way beyond words. No more incantations, no more herbs, oils, or candles. This was a matter of where to look, where to pull from, how to pick a lock or two. There were ancient barriers between her and what she wanted, those and the massive energy required of her to pass them would be the only obstacles in her path.
One touch now, she had it all in place, so just one touch. She hesitated, looking over the corpse before her, wondering if maybe Buffy was still in there after all this time, if the soul Willow was pulling out of oblivion might be of no matter; if the concept of such a thing even existed.
She put her hand on Buffy's head. She felt nothing, which she thought was strange. Her body just seemed to drain, and Buffy's corpse disappeared. It wasn't long after that that she noticed she was laying down, that she couldn't feel anything - mystical and physical alike. Then everything went black.
- - -
The former construction site hadn't been touched in a decade. City funding was lost shortly after building had begun, and the site was left to rot in the bad side of town. No one cared to buy it, the property wasn't worth the money to develop, so it remained quiet. There were concrete blocks strewn about, bricks, tools, steel support bars, and dust to accompany them.
Atop the rubble, however, sat a poorly constructed tower, threatening to fall to the floor at the sound of a pin dropping. It stood about five stories high, off center at each one, and had a platform at the top level which extended several yards in front of it. At the edge of the narrow platform, were two thin poles which stood about three feet high, sporting a strip of tattered rope each. The tower was the only thing on the site with a story, save for maybe the girl who had appeared below it, laying on a bed of bricks.
She opened her eyes.