Author: Lucinda
similar to the series, with chances of violence and moderate sexuality
main characters: Riley, Faith
Faith and Second Chances 13: Ugly Questions
disclaimer: I do not own any characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
distribution: Wic, Paula, Cat - anyone else ask first.
set in season 4, just after the body-switching has been reversed.
Faith tried to convince herself that everything would be alright as she ran on the treadmill. She had this feeling inside that things were about to change, and it made her nervous. Change was rarely that good, in her experience. Maybe it was just some new demon in the area. Maybe it was related to whatever had resulted in Forrest's body being stolen. Maybe it was just the urge to go out and slay something.
She could hear a door close, and the almost decipherable sound of two guys talking. One was Steve, and she thought the second might be Riley. Riley confused her. He was such a nice guy, and she got this weird fuzzy unsettled feeling when they were close. But it was more than wanting to take him to bed and play, there was something else. She wondered if this was what it was like to care about a guy.
"Faith?" Riley pushed the door to the shed open the rest of the way, looking inside.
"Hey there, soldier." She smiled, wondering what had him looking so tense and uneasy.
"Yeah." Riley shuffled inside, not quite looking at her. "I bumped into Buffy today."
"Which explain the unhappy face." Faith muttered, and then looked at his hands, clenched into fists. "Do I want to know what she had to say?"
"She said that you're dangerous. That you've killed people. Not demons, but human beings." He leaned against the wall, looking hurt and confused. "Was she right?"
"I'm a Slayer, of course I'm dangerous." Faith whispered, and tried to gauge his feelings. Something told her that this would not go well. "I told you that I did some bad things, that I made a mistake and things spiraled out of control. I've never tried to convince you that I'm perfect."
"There's a difference between making some mistakes, doing some things you regret and murder!" Riley stared at her, his eyes pleading for an explanation. For something to make things simple again.
"What, you don't think I should try to do better this time around? You don't think I should try to learn from things?" She had the sinking feeling that Riley's almost boy-scout-ish nice guy side was about to cause problems.
"Something you regret should be..." Riley faltered for words, hands waving as he tried to put his feelings into words. "A tattoo, or a miserable ex that you wish you'd never dated, not a trail of dead bodies and broken promises."
"Some regrets are bigger than others." She whispered, knowing that whatever could-be's that had danced between her and Riley were slowly withering. "But I didn't have any promises that I broke here in Sunnydale."
Riley licked his lips, and slowly asked, "What about bodies?"
Faith knew that there was no easy way to explain things. She wasn't even sure if Riley would understand the haze of confusion and guilt that had filled her at first, or the sense of having no other options that had followed. "Riley, I..."
His pager went off, the shrill noise making them both jump.
"Finn." He answered it, his expression making it clear to Faith that he wasn't going to forget this, wasn't going to give up looking for answers.
Closing her eyes, Faith sighed. Was this delay a good thing, allowing her a chance to find better words? Or was it simply prolonging the inevitable?
"One of the teams on patrol has encountered some trouble. Do you think that you can help?" Riley's eyes were shadowed by his doubts and confusion. "Apparently there's a mixed batch of hostiles, some vampires, and some that thy couldn't identify."
Faith tried to suppress her smile. Vampires and demons were simple things, in comparison. "Yeah, I can help with vamps and demons. Assuming you think I can be dependable back up."
"I think you can do that. I have no doubts about your ability to kill vampires and demons." Riley's words left it clear that he did have other doubts. "Grab a few things, and let's go. I don't want to delay too long, they might not have the time to spare."
Faith nodded, grabbing a pair of stakes and a sword. Noting his raised eyebrow, she shrugged. "Some things need dismembered to stop them from attacking and make them die. Besides, it'll work against vamps if I loose both stakes."
"errr... yeah." Riley shook his head and moved towards the door. "We'll take the jeep."
Following him, Faith found herself actually hoping for some enormous impending disaster. If they had to focus on preventing some sort of apocalypse or huge crisis, Riley couldn't demand all the sordid details of her past mistakes, couldn't reject her like everyone else had. She could feel like someone actually still gave a damn for a little while longer.
It was a long, tense twenty minutes as Riley's jeep roared into Sunnydale's old industrial section. She could see several other guys, all in the camouflage uniforms of the Initiative, and they were looking at her funny, as if they had no clue why she would be there.
"Someone tell me what the situation is." Riley demanded, looking at the soldiers. "Where's Daniels?"
"He... He's inside. He said that he'd do a quick recon and report. He radioed that there were at least six vampires, and four other hostiles that he couldn't identify. One was supposed to be about eight feet tall with red scales, and then..." The soldier swallowed before continuing, "He said to call for reinforcements. There was a bit of quiet and then a lot of static."
"Good chance that he's in trouble, or past troubles." Faith murmured, more to herself than to any of the soldiers. The pale faces and tension that she could see was enough to let her know that she wasn't the only one who'd had that unhappy thought.
"I guess we'll go in. Try not to get separated, and be sure to cover each other." Riley spoke, his tone firm, demanding obedience.
An assortment of nods and 'yessir's followed his order, and the soldiers gripped their weapons. One of them pulled something from his shirt, muttering something that must have been a prayer as they turned to face the door. Faith gripped the sword in her right hand and a stake in the left, and prepared to kick some vampire and demon ass. This would be the simple part - kill the monsters, and try not to let anyone else get killed in the process.
Faith almost lost herself in the fighting. Staking vampires, slashing demons... It was easy, wonderful. She'd always loved the rush of a good fight. Then she caught a glimpse of the thing in charge, and felt herself go cold.
It was some sort of patchwork monstrosity. It looked as if someone had taken an assortment of bits and pieces of different demons and put them together like a demented jigsaw puzzle. Bits of him even looked almost human.
"Stop the humans! Prove that you are stronger." The voice was deep, and sounded unexpectedly human.
One of the soldiers stared at the thing, his lips moving, forming a single word, a name. "Jack?"
Faith threw her stake, hoping to distract or kill the vampire that was trying to grab the stunned soldier, resolving later to try to ask him who Jack was, and why he was thinking of him when they were under attack.
During the chaos of the fighting, the patchwork leader escaped. Five demons ended up dead or dying on the floor of the warehouse, and there were heaps and scattering of vampire ashes all over. One of the soldiers found the mangled remains of Daniels. It looked as if he'd been opened up, as if by someone or something curious about how a human's insides worked.
"What was that thing?" Riley asked, his voice betraying a hint of panic.
"I've never seen anything like it." Faith wiped the blade of her sword against one of the demons, hoping to get the worst of the mess away. "It looked like someone wasn't happy with all the regular demons and decided to build their own."
"It looked like Jack." The soldier's voice was louder, almost at normal volume, though he sounded like he was bordering on shock. "Jack's dead, and now there's some sort of thing with part of his face."
Faith's head snapped up, looking at the man. Had he just said... He had. It looked like Riley had heard those words as well. If this thing looked like a dead soldier... What about Forrest? What about any other soldiers of the Initiative who had perished in the line of duty? Would they be resurfacing as patchwork creations? Who in the Initiative would be twisted enough to do that to their own people?
"There's nothing more that we can do here, guys." Riley spoke slowly, as if his mind was too full of horrible speculation. "I think we should all call it a night, some things are just... Someone call in about Daniels, and I think we should all go back to somewhere secure and try to remember how to breathe."
The silence on the way back to jeep had a completely different feel. No longer was Riley's mind in tormented confusion about Faith, but about the thing that they had seen. About the ugly possibilities that it hinted at.
"It would take a medical doctor to put something together like that, wouldn't it?" Riley sounded as if he was thinking out loud, or perhaps hoping that she would find some reason why his horrible suspicions couldn't be true.
"I think so. Either that or one hell of a magician."
"It would also have to be someone... One of ours. Someone in a position to get all the bodies, to take pieces without anyone asking questions." His voice shook.
Faith nodded, trying to resist the urge to point out the obvious - one of the Initiative's scientists had betrayed them. "Someone who either doesn't care if they get found out or someone that really should have used better security."
He glared at her, and then sighed. "Yeah. I just... It's not right. Bad enough that we're fighting things that we don't understand, bad enough that we face the risks of death or injury each time we go out..."
"You feel betrayed, and you don't have words to cover how bad it feels." Faith nodded, knowing what he meant.
"Exactly." Riley reached towards the door of the jeep, keys already in his hand. "WHen I find out who did this to us... They're going to have to court marshal me for what I do to him. Or her."
Somehow, Faith felt worse now that she'd gotten her unspoken wish for something to delay their talk about what she had done.
end F&2nd 13: Ugly Questions.