Chapter 15: "Dancing in the Dark"
And it spit her back out onto the edges of the Pit.
Hell was coming to New Jersey, and a bunch of supernatural assholes had decided that she had all the right stuff to pull a Chuck Yeager and fly it back the fuck where it came from.
Lucky her.
...
The Dream was always the same. She stood there on that blasted plain and saw the high walls and those massive Gates, and knew that shortly they would crack open onto the field of the Plains of Jars, the Halls of Minos, and the massive Damned city of Dis beyond. And the hordes of Hell would pour out, Power would pour through...
And Hell would come to New Jersey. And then to the World.
There were some that would joke that Jersey was already Hell, but not Faith, never again... for she was looking at the Real Thing right now in living Technicolor in all of its damnable glory.
Everyone she'd ever known was here, everyone she'd ever touched for good and for ill, and who'd ever touched her back. Almost everyone...
There was Angel, broadsword over shoulder, looking about with a frown of annoyed recognition. She suddenly remembered that he'd been here before, for a hundred years, or some place Damned close to it. Gunn, wearing a half smirk, and cocking an eyebrow at her. Wesley, armed to the teeth. Giles, tweedy... crossbow over his shoulder, a short sword at one side, and looking about and cleaning his glasses for dear life. Not-Buffy looked around, a ghost-scythe in her hand, popping bubblegum. Her echo's mom, Joyce, hefted a skillet next to her, looking at ghost B with puzzlement. Some kid, no, teenager, sandy hair and unrecognized, leaned on a sword just behind Angel. A cocky smirk on his face she wanted to slap off.
QueenC, frowning with a cute pair of horns over her face, designer jeans and boots with a pair of small axes in her hands. No metal yardstick this time: teacher-C was evidently out for the duration.
Abby, Blade, and King were arrayed around beside her: Abby with that UV-arc and pistol and her bow; King strapped with firearms and various other things; Blade with that sword rolling his shoulders and looking big, mean, and reassuringly solid. And she wished she hadn't had to drag them to this place with her. She always was hard on her friends...
She looked over and saw Xander, Rona and Vi at his sides along with a half a dozen girls Faith couldn't recognize. Slayers all, though. He gave her a lopsided grin, hefted his axe, and shook his head looking around with a 'What the hell did I get dragged into now?' expression. There was a long-arm over his shoulder, the real African rifle: a .375 H&H that looked worn and well used, and well maintained. "You sure know how to show a boy a good time, girl," he said, smiling.
"Finest kind, Xan - finest kind," she shot back and they both laughed, the killer in her to that hyena laugh in his and she knew then, suddenly, that something was healed between them... and maybe there was a chance some day that she could set things right. If they lived long enough.
Richard Wilkins gazed at them from the side, smiling at the exchange. "I'm proud of you, firecracker. Almost worth not making it to see you grow into yourself." She gaped at him, stunned almost beyond comprehension that he'd be here, on this side of the Gates, still looking at her with exasperated fondness. He laughed, "I didn't take you in just because you were a tool, firecracker. You were special." Her first watcher nodded agreement, blood about her.
Spike, long coat billowing, walking along with that cocky expression she'd always hated/loved making quips to the blue/brown woman - BEING - that stalked beside him with reptilian, birdlike grace. They paused in front of her and Spike nodded and quirked his mouth and said, "Bloody Hell, Slayer."
"Bloody Hell, indeed." She grinned and then bowed slightly from the neck at the blue being, received a birdlike cock of the head in return. "Old One." Faith nodded to her. "I'm honored that you would grace us with your Power."
The woman-thing looked about. "This shell confines. I am dreaming this." She made a casual gesture. "It amuses: I shall allow it to continue."
Faith shook her head slightly, bemused. And where the hell did that come from? wow. There was another woman behind Angel, off to the side, wearing a mid-length white jacket and street clothes, slayer feel to her, and Faith's eyes widened in shock but she didn't have time - couldn't make time - there were things she had to attend to and damn it all, anyway.
ALL of them were here, an unending line of them, covered in wounds and bearing weapons of every imaginable description, led by a young black woman walking beside another. All the Slayers, going back to pre-history, an unbroken chain that Faith felt terminate in her, for now. She nodded at the lead woman. "Slayer." And received back an equal nod and greeting.
"Nikki Wood. Your son is a putz, you know that?" She grinned.
"Did the best I could. But I wasn't given much time," she glared at Spike, malevolently. "This is done, I'm going to have my coat back, I think."
The other black girl looked at her, looked around. "I Chose you, I tink?" At Faith's nod she said, "Is bad here, no? What is it you need from us?"
"Kendra." Faith nodded. She turned and pointed behind them, towards the multitude of sleeping, dreaming non-combatants that would all-to-soon be trying to make their way away from The Blasted Plains and the hordes of spawnlings that would soon pour through, ravaging once those Hellish Gates cracked open.
"Lead them out, cover their backs. Make sure they live. Hold those windlasses, don't let the hellspawn to them. You'll have help in that... Lend your strength to the doors... make it hard for them." She ticked off items on one hand, pointed where and where. Tossed her head in annoyance at the clamor of voices objecting that they should be in the lines, instead.
"No, dammit. You had your shot," she responded, looking at the array of mortal wounds on the past Slayers. "Holding the line's a job for the Living, not the Dead. Our job, our time, our present."
"Need you guys to make sure they get out, get clear, get safe. Guard their backs. While we hold this line and the gap." Kendra and Nikki frowned, looking at the Gates as though they wanted to argue about who should hold, who should guard. "No. It's what we do. We stand between them and the Monsters. Protect them." She shrugged. "We fail, and you'll have all the Slaying you could ever want, guaranteed."
They nodded. Kendra smiled, the gap across her throat lending an eerie echo to the expression. "I and I chose well, I tink, mon," the Jamaican girl said.
The eldritch bar groaned and cracked, seals shattering...
And the Gates of Hell cracked open and the Armies of Hell began to pour through, and they moved in a too thin line to meet them.
She was a blur of motion, sword and knife in her hands, killing Hellspawn as she moved. Death was her Gift, and she gave it away to all she met, and all those that she'd touched fought and bled beside her.
She felt Them coming then, the Others, called by whatever to this place by time and blood and aching need, connected through gossamer ties of torn mind and imagination, as strong as cable. The giant and the dwarf moved to one of the windlasses, others moving with them, and the Albino cleared them a path with that hellish ebon blade that reaped more than bone and flesh as it bit. A blazing elf moved beside him, bow swiveling almost with intelligence of its own, skewering demons as they moved. Larger than mortal strength in all too mortal frames groaned and cracked and the massive handle began to budge.
Hellspawnlings shrieked and gibbered and foamed at the sound, rushing forth in renewed frenzy.
To the other windlass, convict and ambling beach bum moved side by side with the ancient gunfighter, a massive wall of strength and iron will. Warrior crest rippling, woman with sword that bent like a wave slew whatever came near, moving at one side, and a tall, tall man in chaps leveled an ancient sharps and fired, loaded-fired again, smashing spawnlings out of the way. They reached and grasped the winch, taking hold. A huge biker looking type, wild red beard, angel colors, and faded blue eyes, wide as he was tall, moved and lent massive strength to theirs. She thought she could see a broken "E L" on the knuckles of one hand...
At their backs, a big man in black with a huge silver pistol stalked next to a large, beat upon looking fellow who smoked hellings with an ancient .45, fedora falling to blood soaked ground. And a small wraith of a girl with long black hair and luminous silver eyes prowled the edges of the fight with long claws and a bone pale knife, popping up here and there where ever something threatened one of the gate people and what she touched with that blade gasped and died.
Crowding the gates there was a screaming wave of hellspawn. Some of them cute little Disney devils, some of them straight out of the minds of Bosch and Geiger. The others were slowly, groaningly pushing closed the gates, against massive resistance too great for mortal strength to overcome. If only she and those like her could hold the line, keep the gibbering hordes from slashing them down as they shoved and groaned and died with the strain. The blades in her hands moved like extensions of her soul, and blood was deep around her. Blade and Whistler and King helping to close the line, Hannibal screaming a non-stop litany of "Fuck fuck fuck fuck ME! Game fucking Over!"
In a break in the fight, destruction swirling about her, she saw her again, working to staunch a hole in a bleeding Wesley, white coat soaked through with blood and demon guts. The sandy haired kid warded them, sword raised. Faith's eyes met hers and nodded, brown eye to brown. "You a doctor?"
"Something like," the other nodded, frowning as she tried to tighten a dressing. Kakhistos rushed them, snarling, and Faith cut him in half without a pause, and damned near without a glance.
"Can you help with the wounded?" Faith got back a 'what do you think I'm working on?' look and nodded, whirling back to the dance of death. Could hear C's voice in her mind from the other night's dreams, as clear as bells, even though she could see her over over there, going under to a wave of goblins, far fewer after than before they took her. "Not anyone's 'backup Slayer', Faith. You're The Slayer now, have been since Kendra died. Many are Called; You were Chosen. Death is your Gift." Then nothing but arms and swords and claws, rising and falling, gore spraying out and up. Faith screamed in rage and loss, trying to claw her way to that place.
She broke a wave of hell-lings, and had no time to rest: Being all in black, crimson and green came out before her, cloaked, masked, and wrapped about in spiking chains. No spawnling this: a full blown Hell Spawn, a General of Hell, twin curving blades in his hands. She knew from the sudden feral rush within that This was what the Essence in her was meant to hunt, and she gave herself over to it with a scream. He met her rush with a feral howl of his own, twin blades whirling, chains striking, all the strengths of Hell behind him. Threw her back, and the hordelings behind him rushed into the precious ground lost. She rolled to her feet and came again, meeting eldritch blades with sword and axe, strength to strength, speed with ferocity. He was strong, faster than her, and his wounds closed with lambent fires while hers bled and tore. Strong... stronger than her? Not fucking hardly. He threw her back a dozen yards, bleeding from a score of wounds and she landed crouched with a grunt. Her eyes narrowed, measuring...
She feinted, leapt, struck all in one smooth motion and came to a rest beyond as he slid apart one half from the other in a blaze of green fire, blades falling to the ichor-drenched ground. Spawnlings boiled around and she whirled in a blur, clearing a gap about herself, and those that lived shrieked and gave berth. She sheathed her sword and picked up his blades, and felt them sing as they snugged into her hands, as if made for her. A word came into her mind then, "Valdris", and she nodded and accepted it. She moved on then, killing as she went, and her friends killed beside her. Giles pushed his glasses back up on his nose, hair wild. Then went back to beating demonlings to death with the stump of a shattered crossbow. Not Giles. Ripper. Having wayyy too much damned fun for any librarian.
And then a huge heard, no - three - canine and scaled, came thrusting up through the gap in the Gate, clawed feet splattering hellings and defenders alike, forcing it wider. She leaped into the gap, not sure what the fuck to do about it, but game-all for trying. Vi threw herself in beside her, Scythe or ghost of the damned thing a crimson blur. Wished she'd never, ever had that Steinman thing come to her on the scaffold, for it beat in her ears and the back of her mind like an ear worm from Hell. She danced lethally amid the carnage to the inner rhythms.
Xander fell in at her side firing upward til rifle emptied, then moving on sheer will with axes. She sent him a fey feral grin, blinding, and sang as the killing dance took her. "You know that we're damned if we never get out, and maybe we're damned if we do. BUT with every beat I've got locked in my heart - you know I'd rather be damned with you!"
He laughed, eye patch flashing as his head tossed back. "You're fucking nuts, kiddo." Snickered. "But if we gotta be damned, you know I wanna be damned - dancing through the Dark with you, too."
Abby pushed in beside her, that damned UV-Arc slicing through a tree trunk leg and drawing a hell shattering howl from the thing. Looking a little white around the edges: hell on wheels for vamps, but this whole demons and 'Stopping-the End-of-All' thing had her a bit wigged. She scraped up reassurance she didn't feel and shoved it into a blazing grin and said, "Welcome to your first Apocalypse, kiddo. Don't die: I hear it absolutely ruins your fucking day."
"Are they always like this?" She gasped out, slicing the forked tongue out of a snapping head, ducking teeth.
Faith narrowed her eyes, buried a blade haft deep in the brain of a head that dipped too low as she leapt over it. It shrieked like a dying locomotive and the lights went out in the eyes. "Naw. Apoco-scale of one to ten, this one's about... a 12.5." She ducked, flashed a smirk at the girl. "But I hear they get worse the longer you last"
She laughed, spattered with blood and ichor. They'd lost sight of Blade and King, long ago. Knew they still lived, from the slayer feel. "You are fucking Insane!"
"Funny. All my friends keep telling me that," She jerked her head towards the fleeing non-combatants. "Goes with the Calling. We fight and die, so they can live." She leapt and slashed again, slicing a long gash across a massive throat, dropping another massive head onto the ground. Blocking just a bit more of the gap: buying that much more bloody space that someone else didn't have to die holding. "It's not just a Job, it's no pay and all the demons you can kill. Double your misery back if you're not satisfied."
She stepped back, absently decapitated a spawnling that tried to scramble over a head and past. Nodded decisively. "But it's damned fucking satisfying."
Blade made his re-entry then, burying sword with a full body-strength strike into a remaining head and dropping it into the gap. Ripping it free and standing, rolling his shoulders with a growl. She glanced over. "Glad you could join us."
"Been busy." He gave one of those barely present smiles. "Nice party. Guests are getting a bit rude."
The massive thing with three heads, scaled and hairy, thrashed spasming on ichor soaked ground before them and she leapt to a head, and thence to a high mound of massive humped shoulder and looked out upon the smoldering Pits. Looked out over the terraced depths of The Pit and the roiling waves of hellspawn still coming.
The Thing the Darkness Fears. Slayer. She suddenly knew that it wasn't just words, wasn't just an ego-driven boast, wasn't just something the Powers dumped on you until you bent broke shattered from the weight of it. That there was Reason for it, reason that transcended the pain and the shattered lives and the long endless chain of broken girls torn by the need of it. She knew: because Here, Now, she stood before the reason of it and saw into the depths of the thing that they stood in the path of. That which was behind the things ever waiting to be unleashed upon those the ones she and those like her guarded, guarded even from themselves. And knew as well that there was reason why it was essential to hold onto the humanity and not shatter, and not Become that thing that snarled and sung within. She embraced both, the essence and the broken humanness inside, and sang back to it, with a score of wounds bleeding and covered in ichor.
Out there, beyond the range of Slayer sight and slayer sense, she saw with more than sight the massive spire and the swirling energy growing at its tip. Realized that there was where she needed to be...
She saw Him again, then: laughing eyes crinkling as he sweated, bled and pulled, torn hands dragging one of the spiking chains hacked from the Hell General's corpse towards a windlass that desperately needed it for leverage. Saw, and knew and named him in her mind. After all, he was the one who taught her that it's not just the people in your lives that matter, that you'd best be careful what you touch, what you use, what you make, because you leave a bit of yourself in everything you touch. Everything that touches you back.
And gave her the clues to figure out the inverse: that it's not the Things, it's the people you touch and who touch you back that can save you.
She didn't need the answer, but she jumped down stalking over to him and asked him anyway: "So, who the fuck are you, anyway?"
"Part of all that I've met; I've become a fucking Name," he grinned and pulled, 'All's well in a world with me in it' smirk broadening. "And why the fuck are you wasting time with silly shit when we both have work to fucking do, eh?"
"Ha!" She threw her head back and laughed. "Of noble note, yeah - just need to find someone else and then let's fucking be about it."
"You eat with that mouth, kid?" She snorted and watched about as she spun, carved and slew, slicing a path for him and that chain. Finally spotted:
He wore black and gray and a pair of too-intelligent lizard things sat on his shoulders. He fought with a darkling blade that she hadn't noticed before, and it screamed in her mind with hunger and love as it bit into demon flesh and bone. Leather pants and halter, a dark haired woman fought beside him with pistol and sword and magics, arguing with him about something...
She fought her way to them and threw over her shoulder as she carved a spawnling from their backs: "I'm here, and I need to be there, dammit."
The woman did something, spoke Words that could never be remembered, only heard and reached inside of her and drew from her mind the place she'd glimpsed with more-than-sight, passed it to the gray man. "Have no idea how to get there from here."
He nodded, suddenly looking ineffably weary.. and said, "I've done it before, in a place something like this. It's going to bite, though." He looked at her, saying, "You're going to need to clear us a space, and keep it so." A tall mercenary woman, long chestnut hair, and a small dark woman fell in at her back and nodded. "As long as she doesn't try to talk them to death," the tall one jerked her chin at the smaller one, "We'll help hold it clear."
While they did that thing, he knelt down and began drawing swirling patterns and symbols in the ichor stained ground with an athame. She handed him the figurine and he nodded. The woman lent him power and she felt it flow through the lizard things as they grasped the strands of Power and channeled them. Time passed, and she struck and killed and bled as they worked.
...
And Done. He channeled the final bit of Power, capital-"P", that the dark-haired woman fed to him, and fed it into the Spell, letting it build and hang there, waiting. She could feel from where she was the exhaustion that bit deep into his bones, threatening to overwhelm him. And if it did, all of this was for naught and the Whole. Damn. World. was going to end. She felt him swallow it down with an act of sheer Will, and it held there.
Black-and-gray was sitting cross-legged in a patch of bloody of open dirt, winged lizards staring intently at nothing beyond him. The dark-haired woman was kneeling across from him, and between them was an elaborate swirling circular design drawn with ichor on the ground. A knife stood quivering in one part of the design, and Power crackled between them. Dark-hair met his eyes with concern as he said, "All right, every thing's done. All that's left is gathering and holding the power."
"Can you keep it under control long enough?" she asked.
"No," He said, matter of factly. She blanched. "I thought I'd let it build until it implodes through both of us. Always wanted to see how that felt."
Smart ass. Evidently, the woman thought so too, judging from the glare she sent him. Could swear she saw one of the lizards sniggering. "Did it once before," he said. "We'll see."
"It's now or never," the woman said, shooting the man another glare, and Faith nodded and slashed one last time and jumped, over the lines of the Circle, landing in the center of it. Extremely careful to not break any lines.
She nodded, meeting his eyes. The heads of the two lizard-things wove together in some unfathomable rhythm and she suddenly realized they were holding the lines of control to the Power, channeling it, so it wouldn't burn out the man and woman's minds.
"Do it," she said.
He drew the hand holding the athame between the tiny figurine and the embedded dagger with one single smooth motion, a line through the bloody dirt connecting the two and completing the design. And the Power broke through them all in a wave and a rush, broke through her, dissolving her within it...
...
The Universe turned inside out and imploded, twisted, and then expanded again, depositing her Elsewhere.
"Whoa! What a rush!" Like the biggest damn' roller coaster she'd ever been on, complete to the clench of nausea in her gut. She grinned, looking around her.
Top o' the Spire, Ma! She recognized it, deep in her heart, soul, and in the places of her mind where the hidden things were kept. Named it, to herself. Looked different from what she'd expected, what she'd seen described. Knew even as she thought that... that it looked different to everyone, different form, shape... different things. This place was hers, and she Knew that too, down in her bones and blood.
She glanced around, past the tiny alcoves along the walls that were filled with images rather than items, with rare exceptions, because Things had never been all that important to her. Came to rest on the Presence near the Center, and she ambled up to him like a lazy, indolent cat. The Big Bad.
Thought quirked in her mind even as she thought that: "No". That's too easy, that was always B's stichk. Bad/Good, Evil/Good, Soul/Not-Soul. 'Like it's always that simple', she remembered telling someone, somewhere.
So... not 'Big Bad', maybe. Not 'Big Good', either. Just a man, bookish looking, spectacles and thinning hair and scraggly goatee and skinny arms. Just a Man, connected to another man, another image of the same thing, with echoes of what would be a fuck of a lot of Power in another place and time, but was only reflections of power here. But the Reflections were damned near enough...
She stopped a short distance away from where he was holding that eldritch, runed sword upright, pommel to the ground and pouring Reflections of Power into it that caused that flickering, lambent, swirling vortex to form around its point. "Are you absolutely sure you wanna do that?" she asked.
He jerked his head up towards her in surprise, narrowing his eyes at her. "Oh yes, definitely," he stated. Then he gave her an honestly curious look. "Why ever wouldn't I?"
She inclined her hear to the Pit, beyond the lip of the small plateau. "Because of that. And what it'll do."
He shrugged as if it was no consequence, an 'oh, that' movement. And maybe it wasn't, to him. After all... this was the man who once helped to create a blasted waste the size of North America via his part in a wizards battle that leveled and raised mountains, once. In another place. But it mattered to her, and she had a job to do, and that was stopping him from doing it here. Lucky her. Oh joy.
"Can't let you," she said.
He snorted at that. "You have no earthly idea who you're talking to, young lady."
"Why yes. I. Do." She replied. And didn't that just get his attention?
He Looked at her, really looked, this time, as she continued. Saw the Power that lived and danced within her, everything she was, everything she held. And everything she was, was laughing at him, and he didn't like that at all.
"I know exactly Who you are. And What. I can even name it: a dozen names. And yes, I know, 'that's what I'm called but it is not and never shall be my True Name' yata yata yata." She grinned. "And it doesn't matter, because this is my Place, my World, my Mind, and I Name you here: here in the Place Where Only That Which You Have Loved Can Save You. And Knowing you, and Naming you, here, I have power."
"My Place, not yours, and you've brought in another thing that doesn't Belong, doesn't, can't exist here, and if you continue with that, our whole fucking Universe ends." She nodded at the blade and the growing vortex, continued. "I even understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and I sympathize, but you can't - not here. You're using a thing that isn't, and drawing on shades of power you don't have here, and if you do, it'll rip open ALL the barriers not just between your world and where you want to go, but between mine and all this. And that Pit will swallow the world."
She felt them as she spoke, all of them, real and not-real, awakening inside of her. All of those that she'd touched, and been touched by, never knowing it. Lending their power and joys and dreams and loves and lives to hers. For just one shining moment, she was a focus, more than herself - a part of everyone she'd ever known and touched, and who'd ever known her for good or for ill. She wrapped that feeling about her like a cloak, drew on it, and it warmed her to the core: 'Oh. So that's what love feels like. I never knew...'
She shook her head. "S'not gonna happen. Not on my watch."
He blinked at her, dismissed her words away with a blink, and she knew then that she wasn't going to be able to talk him down from this. Saddened her a bit, because she knew what it was like to want to go home... to want to even have a home to go to.
"Doesn't matter, and you'll never reach me to stop me," he stated, turning back to the sword. And spoke liquid sounding Words that couldn't be remembered, only heard, and a barrier of light and energy sprang up between them.
The Slayer inside of her thrummed and sang, and she stepped through it like it wasn't there, insubstantial as mist. He whipped his head around again and gaped.
"You can't possibly... " he started, and she gave him a smile as rapt and sensual as a lovers. Her arm moved once, with the strength of all of those that sang inside of her moving through her, and her blade whisked across in an arc that separated head from body before he had a chance to finish telling her just what she 'couldn't possibly'.
"Of course I can," she stated. "Death is my Gift." The Power dispersed like fog, and the vortex winked out, and the runed sword fell glittering to the ground by his corpse.
And his body faded and vanished and the Gates of Hell...
Slammed shut.
...
She came back to herself on the Blasted Plain, looking up once again at those massive Gates. And everyone she'd ever known was around her once more... everyone she'd ever touched or who'd ever touched her.
The Ancient Slayers were the first to go from there... fading with a final salute of weapon or upraised fist. "Rest you gentle, sleep you sound," she said, softly.
She looked out over her friends, met eyes more than somewhat shell shocked at what they'd seen and felt. Counted heads.
All of them seemed to have made it. Barely maybe, in some cases. Thank the gods, dismal pricks that what passes for a 'god' in this sorry ass existence were. She knew in her blood and bone that it was possible to have died in this place, and for the living, you never come back from that one. She saw Cordy at the back, and smiled.
"Dancing in the Dark," Xander threw her a mock-salute and a lopsided grin.
"And we didn't even get Damned for it, huh?" she threw back, grinning herself.
They began to fade out then, and she raised her twin blades over her head in a crossed sword salute. Saw her, again in that moment, all too familiar eyes meeting her own with confusion and shock. No time to ask, never time, dammit. Have to figure it out later.
Last to go were last to come... standing in a sprawled crowd with bemused expressions looking about. Gunfighter, sharpshooter, swordswoman, barbarian and mage; Damned Albino, Giant and Dwarf and glowing elf; convict, Shanir, and biker; beach bum and private-eye; executioner, Sorceress and Killer. Heroes all, and Champions. And all-too-mortal bone and sinew for all of that. Because that's the thing that Heros are made of...
"One equal temper of heroic hearts," she whispered, knew they heard it.
He was standing there, a bit to one side. 'Knew any world that I'm in is gonna be all right' smirk intact. She wandered over, nodded to him. "So, who the fuck are you, anyway," she asked. No heat behind it, because she didn't need the answer.
"Soul that has toiled and wrought and thought with thee," he grinned. "Not bad, kiddo. Not too fucking unbecoming men that strove with Gods, eh?"
She laughed. "And women. No, not bad at all," grinning back at him. "Thanks."
"Any time," he snickered. "Looks like thanks to you, I am become a fucking Name. I'll get you for that," he winked.
She laughed again as he faded, and the Blasted Plains dissolved about her taking her with.
She groaned and sat up, stars above her the first things her eyes met. Not dead, but damned sure feeling like it might be a fucking improvement.
"She's back," she heard Blade say to someone else. He put hand under her arm as she faltered standing, helped her out of the circle until she could stand on her own. He nodded, "Got a bit worried."
"Had voices in my head to talk to," she smiled, remembering. Hannibal, Abby, and Wes were gazing about with expressions stuck somewhere between shell shocked and bemused. "Looks like we lived."
"Little worse for wear, maybe." She looked at the cuts and wounds covering all of them, at her own. No wonder she'd felt like shit, standing. Not as bad as they'd looked in the dreamways, thank the dismal gods for that, but there. She saw Wes holding his side, and her eyes clouded.
There was a body over there a ways, sprawled in the actual nexus, with its head lying somewhat distant from it. She shook her head. "Rest you gentle, sleep you sound." Faith went over slowly, looking at it. She bent and picked up something long and gleaming from the ground beside the corpse, shook her head and came back holding a long, slender, elegant looking sword.
"Best not leave this lying around," she remarked. "Its owner may come looking for it, one day."
Wes looked over at it, a bemused expression on his face. "All this, from that," he said.
Faith nodded, "Man, most mortal. Used by something that just wanted to go home... "
"Do you think the other one died as well?" he gave her an unfathomable look.
"No idea, Wes." She shook her head. "No idea."
Faith looked around. No Pit. They'd made it. Piles of ash and dust, mixed in with more'n a few demon parts littered the area beyond the circle. She saw Kronenen with his men, errr... things standing in a small clump off to one side, talking amongst themselves. There were fewer than they'd started out with, and she winced at that internally. She wandered over, hands in pockets. "Yo. See you held."
Vince looked up, grinned. "Slayer."
She nodded back, "Thug," and grinned back at him.
"Man oh man oh man!" He stared at her. "What a fucking ride!"
"Finest kind, killer," snicker She nodded. "Sorry about your men."
"Happens." He shrugged. "Least they went with a bang." He met her eyes, "Don't sweat it, Slayer. They knew what they were going into. And no one expects to get out alive from here."
She nodded, thoughtfully. "What now?"
He looked around. "Lots to think about." He looked her over, met her eyes and shot her an absolutely blazing grin, eyes glowing. "So this is what it feels like to walk on the side of the Angels, huh?"
"Naw. Usually feels like shit, and the pay scale sucks," she answered. "But every once in awhile..."
"Heh." He still had that idiotic grin, waayyy too many teeth there. "'Once in awhile' might just be enough. Occurs that my end of town could stand some cleaning up... " He paused, looked out into the night. "Never really thought about it that way, before. Yer a bad influence." He turned to his button-things.
"C'mon boys. Lets go break things and kill some shit." He turned towards the line of cars. "Gots a few 'rivals' that could stand some shaking up. Later, Slayer." he threw back over his shoulder at her.
She stared at his receding back, shook her head, looked up at Blade. "Huh. Keep an eye on that boy. Make sure nuthin' happens to him, hey?" Smiling, "He's got the makings of a gen-u-ine Champion. Kinda like to see him live long enough."
"Heh."
She looked at the scorched in Circle, narrowed her eyes. Walked over to one of the demon corpses nearby and put one foot on it, throwing back her head and letting out a Weissmuller yell that shook startled bats into new patterns in the sky and an owl out of a nearby tree, and then threw Wesley a grin. "Now, Party much, eh? Shall we?"
The long drive back was quiet, each lost in their own thoughts...