Chapter Two – Buried Alive
Faith lay in the bed, shaking like a leaf. Damn slayer dreams, she thought. Why do I have to get them? Can't Buffy bear the brunt of that curse? The sun started to peek through the curtains of her shabby room. There had been only one motel in the town that she could afford. Her money was running out and fast. If Wesley didn't take her in, train her, she would be on her way to somewhere else. Having a bit of cash would help. Finding a job would be a nightmare, especially since she skipped the whole parole officer thing.
Slowly, she got up from the lumpy bed and made her way to the shower. The water was only lukewarm, but it washed away the grime from the dream, or she should say nightmare. Dying in a dream wasn't her version of a dream. Now she knew why her senses had been on alert for months. Maybe she'd finally see some action.
But first things first. She had to convince the asshole that she was a good bet. He hated her, that she knew for sure. Playing the woe is me card might work, or it might get her killed by that nice gun he carried around. Her next step would be to talk to him on neutral territory. So she'd scope out where he worked, where he shopped, wear him down until he relented. She could see the small flicker of sympathy when she had apologized. That fifty times a day just might make him believe her. Dressing in her best clothes, which consisted of her least rattiest jeans and last clean t-shirt, she shrugged her jacket on and went to find breakfast. They had to have a cheap diner in town somewhere.
Wesley wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, trying to warm them from the chill that had come upon him since last night. The hot coffee helped somewhat, but he knew until he sat down and analyzed what the dream meant, it would haunt him. Hence the cold feeling in his extremities. The waitress brought him his breakfast, which consisted of one hard-boiled egg and an English muffin. Shopping was on the list to accomplish that evening after his shift at the library. He didn't have to stock much in his pantry, but if the weather changed, he could possibly be snowed in for a longer duration than his food supply would last.
As he ate, he went through in his mind what sources of materials he had in his small library, plus what he could get his hands on easily. It didn't amount to very much. Most of his collection had been in the Hyperion. And he couldn't very well have gone back for any of those volumes when he left Los Angeles. The warning had been very clear. Stick around and he would end up dead. He had taken Angel's threat seriously.
While he mentally made a list of the sources he would go through that night, whom should he spot coming in the door but Faith. One who didn't give in to threats. He thought that his display of anger would have convinced her that he was entirely serious. Looking his way, her eyebrow arched, but otherwise she didn't acknowledge him. She sat at the counter and ordered her breakfast, never looking back over her shoulder to where he sat in the booth.
With haste, he gulped down the rest of his meal and left the amount on the table, leaving as quietly as he could. He didn't count on her raising her mug in mock salute to him as he strode out the door. Getting to work early wouldn't be a bother. Faith was the only thing that bothered him right at the moment.
The library in which he worked was small and not very well stocked. The town didn't have the revenue to build a new facility, so they limped along the best they could. When applying for the job, he thought that they would want someone with a real library science degree. That did not matter, apparently. His degree in linguistics qualified him to work at the reference desk. It paid him enough to live without much extra. He had yet to dig into his savings and that's the way he wanted to keep it. That money was only for emergencies. Living quite frugally the past couple of years made it even easier to live in this town without money.
"Hello, Mr. Pryce," the head librarian, Julie Patten said to him as he came in the back door.
"Good morning, Mrs. Patten."
"You're early," she said, although with no surprise in her voice.
"Yes, my timing seems to be off today. No matter. I need to do some research of my own. Tidy up a bit from yesterday."
Even though she was married with several children, she still batted her eyes at him when he spoke to her directly. The smile that always seemed to break out on her face started to form. He swore sometimes the only reason he was hired was for her to listen to his voice every day.
"If I had more employees like you, I'd be in librarian heaven."
And you would never get any work done, now would you. But he had no time to think about middle-aged horny librarians. He had but one problem to tackle that day – figure out what to do with Faith, since it seemed that she was still around town. The dream must mean something, must be foretelling some kind of battle that might come to pass.
After he booted up his computer, he went to work checking out old sources, but nothing seemed to pop out at him. Most of the information on the Internet wasn't helpful usually. So he tried a few chat rooms, looking for any information that might lead him to the robed intruders. Nothing. He found absolutely nothing. His next step would be to contact the Watchers' Council. No doubt, they would want to know that Faith had been released from custody. Ringing a former fellow colleague up, he heard a disconnect message and no forwarding number. The whole hour of research that he allotted was over. And he found nothing.
So he decided to earn his keep. The library was open for business now. Since it was the morning, all he had to deal with were several elderly patrons and a few weary mothers with toddlers. It became somewhat busier in the afternoon, after the school let out for the day, but for the most part, it was a cushy job. There was no slaying demons, no potentially getting injured, no doing the job without a paycheck. The excitement of his life came when someone needed to learn how to use the Internet for the first time. Otherwise, dullness perpetuated his existence. Which was exactly what he had been looking for.
Reshelving several of the reference materials that a patron had used, Wesley worked his way to the back to check out whether there were loose books that needed to find a home. When he came back around to the front after his rounds, he found Faith, feet propped up on a table, reading a magazine. She only nodded as he passed by.
"Feet off the table," he admonished her in a whisper.
She complied immediately. That shocked him. Faith never complied that quickly. Wonders never ceased to amaze him.
Faith sat in her chair until lunch, then returned an hour later, book in hand. She occasionally looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but otherwise there was no other contact. He certainly did not want to lose his job over her. Around closing time, he watched as she got up from her table, pushed the chair in and gave him a little wave goodbye. It had put him on edge the whole day.
Slowly putting his coat on to leave, he was stopped by Mrs. Patten before he could exit the building.
"Would you like to join us for dinner this evening?" she asked as he gathered his briefcase to leave.
She had asked him several times to join her family, but he always declined. Tonight would be no different.
"Thank you so much for the invitation, but I have to decline."
"Oh. Well, maybe another time," she said, a little hurt in her voice.
Nine months of loneliness. Maybe this was his penance for all the mistakes that he made. He would be lonely for the rest of his life. Not that he would even pretend that it would make up for the heartache he had caused. He hadn't trusted his friends with what he had found. Now he was paying the price, a small price in his mind.
Nodding her way, he quickly rushed from the building before he changed his mind and accepted her invitation.
"So, that's where you work?" Faith said from the shadows.
"I thought that you had gone." He had hoped that she had left. Stubborn twit.
"Can't. I wish that I could. I just can't. I need you."
Wesley whirled around, slamming his briefcase onto the wall beside her head, startling her. Since it was already turning dark from the incoming clouds, she didn't see it flying towards her head. Lucky for her he meant to miss.
"Stay away from me. You don't need me. Remember? You never needed anyone."
"You learn a lot in prison. The one thing that I learned was you can't shut yourself down. Totally what I did. When I came to you in LA, I wanted someone to kill me. Whether it was you or Angel, didn't care very much. You were right about me bein' a piece of shit. My counselor said . . . ,"
"Nice confession, Faith. It doesn't change the fact of what you did to me. It never will."
Faith wouldn't look him in the eyes. "I didn't ask you to ever forget. Not that I can either. I fucked up wicked bad."
"Why are you stalking me? Come to take another pound of flesh?"
Faith's intake of breath said it all to him. That was not why she was here. She backed against the wall, trying to hold in the tears that he could see shining in her eyes.
"I would never hurt you, ever again. Please believe me. It's just, something's up. I need your help."
"You're past helping," Wesley responded to her plea with disdain.
"God, you're just this freakin' crazy son of a bitch now. You don't care."
Wesley picked up his briefcase, done listening to her opinion of him. He couldn't take her assessment of him any longer.
"You're just gonna let them kill me, aren't you?" Faith said as he started to walk away.
That statement stopped him in his tracks. "What are you talking about?"
"Dreams. Those damn slayer dreams. They hurt. Buffy figured out how to defeat them, but I'm not strong enough."
Now he was intrigued. Slayer dreams always meant something. Maybe not what everyone thought they meant, but they always had some meaning. Turning slowly, he watched as she slid to the ground, putting her head in her hands.
"Slayer dreams?"
"Yeah, these guys in robes. No eyes. I couldn't stop them. There were too many of them."
Wesley's briefcase landed on the ground with a thump. His breathing increased as he went over the scenarios in his head. Could she have possibly had the same dream he had? It was impossible. He had never experienced anything like that in Sunnydale. Of course, he wasn't her watcher for very long.
"The robes were red. Eyes looked like they were sewn over with an x."
"Oh, fuck. I'm gonna die. I knew it."
Fatalist. Figures, he thought. Her interpretation of the dream was for it to come true. Slayer dreams didn't always have to come true. They could be just a warning. So why did he share it with her?
"Not necessarily. They don't always come true," he said to reassure her.
"Just my luck. I'm not here to harsh on your mellow, or get on your ass or anything like that. I really don't even want to be here. I just wanna square things with you is all. If I'm gonna die, I need to set things straight."
"We should talk about this somewhere else."
He had noticed as Faith tried to apologize for the millionth time that she was shivering. Her jacket wasn't sufficient for the weather that they were experiencing.
"Yeah, wouldn't want one of your friends to hear about this shit," she joked.
"I have no friends. Makes it easier," he quipped back to her.
Helping her off the ground, he took her hand in his. And he thought that he was cold. Her hands were like ice blocks. This was not what he wanted to do. He wanted to be left alone in his solitude. Faith showing up changed that. He could feel his blood pumping a little more, his brain working for the first time since he translated that damn false prophecy.
"I'm sorry."
"The no friends is entirely not your fault. I need to go to the market. I haven't a thing in the house to eat. I will help you on one condition, Faith."
The look of hope on her face was unmistakable. No one had ever looked at him that way. Even when he researched, finding solutions to matters no one else would have figured out, his friends never looked like that. Like he held their very lives in the palm of his hand.
"That once we solve this, you'll leave and never come back."
Faith nodded in agreement. At least that was a start.
Not that she wanted to agree to his condition. She didn't exactly want to leave once they figured out her freaky dream. But he at least wanted to help her. How weird was it that he knew what was in her dream though? There must be more to this than she even knew.
But as his blue eyes bore into her when he asked her to never come back, that she would do for him if he wanted. Just to show him that she listened to him, even if it was to never darken his doorstep again.
She sat in his car while he grabbed some grub from the store. He was offering her food too, which was good on the old wallet. She just hoped that he could actually cook.
His touch when he helped her up off the ground warmed her up a little. She'd been cold all day, even to the point where she tried warming up her hands in the sink of the bathroom at the library. It was a no go. Now she was warming up a little. No one had touched her in so long. In that simple, brief touch, she had noticed how callused his hand was, how strong the hand could be, how long his fingers were. Shit, slayers were supposed to be observant. But this was a little excessive.
He returned a few moments later, loaded down with food. The breeze blew through the car when he opened the door to put the bags in the back. Should have dressed for winter, she thought. Didn't have the clothes though. Shivering a little, she pulled up her legs to try and keep warm until he slammed the door. He quickly got in and started the car, turning up the heat full blast.
"You obviously don't have a proper winter coat, I see."
She almost shot a venomous reply back, but the shivers stopped her short. If she wanted his help, then she'd have to play by his rules. Even if those rules sucked big time.
"Not thinkin' that I'd find you out in the middle of fucking nowhere."
"Not exactly where I thought that I would end up myself. I like the solitude."
She'd had enough of solitude in prison. That could possibly be why being alone with him weirded her out a little. She craved being in a crowd, dancing, drinking, losing herself in the mindless wave of people. Here she could lose herself too. Just would be a lot more depressing.
The first fat snowflakes fell around the car as they drove to Wesley's cabin. Reminded her too much of growing up in Boston. Often on the streets with only the clothes on her back, she was now grateful that he was going to feed her. It really sucked when she was roaming the streets with no one to rely on.
"Thank you for uh, you know, doing this."
There. She said it. Saying thank you to him. Her practicing had only consisted of telling him she was sorry.
"I assure you, Faith, that my motivations aren't exactly philanthropic. I also have a stake in the outcome of this."
He wasn't the one dying in the dream. It was her blood that was spilled. Not his. So she wondered what he saw. As Faith went through the dream in her head, over and over again, what she did, what she saw, it finally hit her. What she had been doing right before the guys with no eyes arrived to make her life a living hell.
The heat blowing in her face made her gag. She couldn't breathe, couldn't swallow, couldn't focus. The meaning of the dream came back to her full force.
"Faith, what's wrong?"
She couldn't get any air into her lungs. It was like she was drowning without any water to speak of.
"Faith, you need to breathe," she heard Wesley saying off in the distance.
She felt the car come to a halt, the pressure of the seatbelt across her chest making it all that much more difficult for her to breathe. Wesley reached over and took her shoulders in his hands. Shaking her, she looked into his eyes, trying to say what she had seen. It was like someone had stuffed dirt all the way down her lungs. Like she had been buried alive.
A hard slap came next, but it still didn't help her breathe. Her vision started to darken around the corners. She could still feel Wesley's hands on her, trying to shake her out of whatever episode she was having.
"Faith, I order you this very moment to come out of whatever is happening to you."
As she faded to black, she thought she felt her seat being reclined and Wesley moving over to her. The words I'm sorry tried to come out, I'll do better, You can't die, I won't let it happen, all wanting to surface from her brain. Only nothing did.
Just what he needed, Wesley concluded as he felt for a pulse. Faith having some kind of episode. He knew she was as healthy as a horse before her coma. Maybe there was a condition that had come about since then. Her pulse was faint and she wasn't breathing. There was only one thing he could do.
Pushing her seat back abruptly, he started to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive her.
"Come on, Faith. Come on. Fight this."
He wouldn't have her die like this. There was something that they needed to fight. And he would need all the help he could get, even if it did come from Faith.
He checked to see if his efforts were reaching her lungs and it was. So nothing blocked her airway. A couple more breaths and she surged forward, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Don't bury me. I'm alive. No, no," she shouted.
Pinning her arms to her sides so she wouldn't hit him in her fit, he held onto her tight until her breathing slowed down somewhat. Loosening his hold, he rocked her back and forth slightly, murmuring to her that it was alright. He didn't know what else to do to calm her.
"Oh, geez. Oh, man. What was that? I couldn't breathe. What was that?" she muttered to him, voice hoarse from the shouting.
"Shh," he told her as he felt her finally relax into his hold.
"Oh, God. I didn't hurt you, did I?"
"No, no. I'm fine."
She was worried about him? When did this change happen? She was never worried about anyone but herself. He never entered into the equation back in Sunnydale.
"I couldn't breathe."
She gripped his jacket tightly, literally curling into his chest. She lay against him for a while, gathering strength, until she sat up to look at him.
"We should, um, we need to, damn. Just drive."
Faith without words. Whatever had put her over the edge, it had also taken her ability to think straight. But Wesley did as she asked.
TBC
Author notes: DarkWes is back. Not so dark that he'd let Faith die on him. Didn't know how many people would like some angsty Wes. He's so much fun to write like this.
Answers to questions:
psychotic chaos-yeah, broody guy; I've never watched Tru Calling; him, slip, no way; I bet Faith's have a hard time hearing the next morning.
I.B. Slackin'-I'm slow is all. You should do an LJ. It's so much fun. And you can do most of it for free.
trecia-Thanks for reading. On the other fic, I just wrote more. You must have been reading my mind. I'll post more in a couple of days. I hated to leave that one undone.
Imzadi-for now, only the two. I'm worn out from writing a million characters.
Thanks to all who reviewed: psychotic chaos, SPIKEANDKELSIE, I.B. Slackin', tp96, Fionabeam, trecia, Tariq, Imzadi and everyone else reading!