Summary: This is a sequel to my story A Creature I Don't Know which can be found here: s/8467907/1/A-Creature-I-Dont-Know
A/N: I strongly recommend a good understanding of season 5 to follow this: Shadow especially for this update.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, UPN and WB Television Networks own the television shows, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". Dark Horse and IDW own the Comics. No copyright infringement is intended, no money is being earned by myself. The title of each chapter, and the story as a whole, come from K's Choice songs/Album titles. (Given that I had soundtrack for the first I thought I should have one for the second).
Thank you all for your kind words and support for my last story. I hope you enjoy my continuation of it. I would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts. Many thanks.
5. The Ballad of Lea & Paul
Dawn had been asking questions. They were incessant, they were inconsequential, they were being asked purely to fill the air. Faith had managed to answer them all though; a CAT scan was apparently a Computed Axial Tomography. It was being used to take 3D pictures of her mother's brain. It was even able to do it layer by layer. It was incredible really.
While Faith's answers managed to placate Dawn, they did nothing to make Buffy feel any better. If it was any other time, if it was anybody else's mother, Buffy would have been impressed at the knowledge that her girlfriend had buried within her. Proud that she was applying herself. However, it was her mom that was being taken apart layer by layer. It was her mom they were searching deep within to find out what was going wrong.
The nothing was definitely something and the something had the doctors running scared.
After what felt like hours she left them to each other, she kissed each of them on the cheek before heading off in search of answers. Buffy returned to the pair wishing she hadn't left them. Ignorance is bliss. She looked around the waiting room. This wasn't the place. She pulled up her sister by the hand and walked her to the canteen. Her girlfriend duly followed.
A shadow. An operation. All routine. It would all be fine. Nothing to worry about.
She told the pair of them to return to school but both shook their heads and Faith took her hand. She would wait. Last years SAT scores were pretty damn respectable. With a good set of finals, she'd be swinging. Dawn stubbornly insisted that if Faith got to miss school, so did she. So they returned to the waiting room. They returned to waiting.
Dawn was asleep by the time the doctor re-emerged. Buffy rose and Faith duly followed. Their hands entwined as they prepared for the news. He asked her to sit. She'd been sitting for hours, she didn't need to sit, she just needed to know.
Brain tumour.
He said a lot more than that, but she wasn't able to recall any of the details. He asked her questions. About her mother's cell phone, about the house, about their medical insurance.
His lips were moving, she didn't know what he was saying. He could have been telling her that there was a cure. He could have been reciting the lyrics to the Hokey Pokey. All she knew was that her mother had a brain tumour.
An intern came and rescued her from Dr Isaacs. She recognised him, she almost remembered his name. Dan? Sam? Ben? She just knew that he'd managed to get the doctor to go away. That, and her mother had a brain tumour.
She turned round to Faith,asked her to wake up Dawn and walk her to school for her. She had to do something, there must be a spell. Something. Anything. She knew Faith hated magic, that she didn't trust it but Faith's opinion was meaningless right now; all that mattered was that her mother had a brain tumour.
Faith realised that they must look pretty bizarre to passers by. Herself still in her school uniform, a young teenager sat besides them, both of them with melting ice creams as they watched the carousel turn round and round.
Buffy had told her not to tell Dawn anything. If the girl asked, she was to tell her that they were still waiting. She'd been meant to walk her to school, but Faith didn't want to return to the classroom, she knew that Dawn would want to go even less.
Dawn had been talking to her for a while but she hadn't been paying attention. The ice cream dripped slowly onto her hand. Had the weather been warmer she might have attracted wasps. If it had been any other day she might have cared.
"I understand you know." Dawn said after a while. Faith simply frowned at the young girl besides her. "About you and Buffy, I mean."
"Understand?"
"Yeah. Her and Angel had this fairy tale love for each other…" had Dawn noticed the ice cream cone crushed in Faith's palm she might have stopped. But she didn't. "…they would fight, she would cry. He went evil, tried to kill us all. He got cured and they loved again and she cried again."
Faith dumped her ice cream in the trash can besides her and wiped the worse onto the wood of the bench, the rest onto her tights.
"With you and her it's the same."
"I'm nothing like Angel, Sunny D."
Dawn simply shrugged and they fell back into silence. Watching as the horses were forced to continuously dance in front of them.
"Is Mom going to die?"
"My mom died. She was a loser - weak. Your mom's a fighter. She's not going to die."
"Promise?"
"Would I lie to you?"
Faith returned Dawn to the Magic Box and found everyone staring at Buffy. She figured they'd been told about Joyce. She hoped nothing would be said to Dawn. She shouldn't find have to find out, not like this. Not knowing that everyone else had already been told. She approached the table, Dawn in her shadow. Buffy spotted her, grabbed her by her bicep and pulled her into a corner.
"Giles screwed up." She told Faith quietly.
"Sure picked a hell of a day to do it."
"We need to go find Gorgon of the Jungle."
"Can I be dressed in something a little less Catholic?" Faith motioned up and down her school uniform.
"No, I think the innocent Eve look will be perfect for our serpent."
Buffy filled Faith in everything she'd missed, explained about Giles serving the demon woman everything she needed to create a monster. Faith merely shrugged. Buffy was amazed that she seemed unfazed that they were going hunting for a woman with an obscene amount of strength who's plan was to raise a giant cobra. Faith simply made a joke about spiders. She hated spiders.
Buffy sent her into Sunnydale Zoo's Reptile House first. The plan was simple. Faith was to walk in, speak loudly about researching snakes for a school project and disrupt the chanting and the ritual. Buffy would enter when things got hairy. The woman couldn't possibly take on two slayers.
"Excuse me!" Faith interrupted a woman that fitted Buffy's description. "I'm looking for the cobra but its not in its house, and the glass is all smashed. Has someone told the keeper?"
"What?" The woman frowned back at her.
"Well, if there's a cobra on the lose-"
"Oh its not on the lose!" The woman suddenly broke into a wide smile. "He's in there, I'm going to make that worm a star!" She pointed to the urn on the floor and Faith's attention was suddenly brought to a robed man – she assumed it was a male – in the corner. "Now, if you don't mind," she back handed Faith across the fake cave, "we were chanting! Well, chant then, minion!"
Faith rose slowly and rubbed the back of her head. She took a moment to reassess the situation and went to punch the woman.
"That should have killed you." The woman frowned at her, grabbing Faith's fist within her own. "Why aren't you dead?"
"I don't get why you dye your hair that colour but I guess we're both left with unanswered questions." Faith said with a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders before hitting her with her left hand trying to free her right.
"Hey! My. Hair. Looks. Great." Each word was punctuated with a punch.
"You're fiesty." Faith smiled ducking the last attack. "I seem to be attracted to that in women, especially when they hit me." She nodded kicking her legs out from under her. "I guess it all stems from the odd relationship I had with my mother."
"You," she held pinned Faith up against the wall, "should be quiet. And you…" she trailed off when she found her robed creature was being held in a headlock by Buffy, "should be chanting..."
"You just can't get the minions any more, can you?" Buffy said innocently. "Wanna trade?"
"Sure." The woman nodded, taking Faith firmly by her neck and lifting her above her head. "This one's not giving me anything I can work with." She sighed throwing her across the room and clattering into Buffy.
Faith landed heavily and Buffy waited for Faith to rise again but she didn't move from where she'd fallen. She looked up at the woman. "What kind of demon-bitch are you?"
"Please, call me Glory." She smiled back at her before tossing her against the cave wall with the same ease in which she'd thrown Faith. She lifted her sycophant up and dusted him off. "How hard is it to keep chanting?" she asked him as she stood him back on his feet.
Buffy could only watch as Glory came towards her, lifted her once more, threw her into one of the terrariums and finished the ritual. As the snake rose she and Faith were forgotten to her. They weren't her concern – she had what she wanted. They'd barely managed to stand in her way, they could never have stopped her.
She fell out of the container and crawled towards Faith. She scooped up the battered and bruised body of her girlfriend and carried her to safety.
She called into the Magic Box from the hospital. She'd left Faith to the ER nurses. They were worried for her but assured her that she would be okay. But then the doctors had said the same about her mother.
She walked between hospital wings, checking on the progress of her mother and her girlfriend. Giles was looking after Dawn, they still didn't know what the snake was for. Supposedly, no news was good news.
When Faith woke up she asked if they'd won. She joked about feeling like Xander as her left hand went to her bandaged head. Her right wrist was strapped up, she wriggled her fingers, it wasn't broken and her head felt fine.
The hospital had wanted to keep her. They were worried about a girl being carried into the hospital looking as though she'd been hit by a truck. They'd gone over her medical records, found her in care and with a history of serious injuries.
She was 18 though, she discharged herself and thanked them for their concern. She would not be kept any longer.
She and Buffy walked slowly back to the Magic Box. Mrs Summer's was awake, Faith had removed all her bandages while she'd waited outside the room while she and Buffy had spoken with the doctors. It wasn't good. It was a brain tumour it was never going to be good. She squeezed Buffy's hand and apologised for not stopping the demon woman. Glory. Her name was Glory.
They walked into the shop hand in hand, their arrival, sounded by the bell above the door, was greeted by Dawn running across and wrapping her arms tightly around Buffy.
"Is she awake yet?"
"Yeah, she's waiting for us."
"Can we take her home now?"
"Give her a while," Faith filled Buffy's pregnant pause, "she's still a little groggy."
"Any monster reptile sightings?" Buffy looked up to the others watching them.
"None." Giles shook his head.
"Tara and I did a mini-patrol earlier," Willow offered, "but the big snakie was nowhere in-" She was shocked into silence by the serpent breaking through the shop window.
The creature knocked Faith and then Buffy across the room in its bid to get further into the shop. It looked around for just a moment before it spotted what it came for.
Dawn was terrified, shaking as she stood in the middle of the shop. Instinctively she screamed. But the snake came no closer to her. It looked her up and down before spinning round and slithering away. As suddenly as it had come, it was gone.
"Why was the big snake afraid of Dawn?" Willow asked.
"It knows." Buffy said to Giles. She turned to speak to Faith but she'd already leapt through the broken window and headed after the monster.
Faith ran as fast as she could. After months of inactivity her legs carried her faster than she could ever have imagined. It was as if her legs had simply been waiting for the right time to come back into their own.
Giles and Buffy pulled up in his car besides her, she jumped into the back seat and they continued in their pursuit of the demon. It wasn't until the creature slithered into one of Sunnydale's grander public parks did the girls abandon the man and his car.
As if in sync the girls wordlessly flanked the beast. It was Buffy who leapt onto the creatures back. Faith ran along side the girl and the snake as it continued on its path. She spotted a chain, with a sign dangling limply from its links, suspended between two poles. Without breaking stride she pulled the metal from its holders and threw it up to Buffy.
Faith could only watch as the monster reared up, squealing as it tried to buck Buffy from it's back. She hung on and pulled the chain tighter and tighter against its throat. Its squeals were reduced to croaks as it found it could no longer draw breath. It slunk to the ground as it lost consciousness.
Buffy hit the ground hard as the creature suddenly rose, like Lazarus, from the dead. By the time she'd rolled to a stand, Faith had tackled the monster. Faith hit and hit the creature, tearing its face apart. It was beyond dead by the time Buffy pulled her from it. She had to physically restrain the girl to stop her from returning to the snake.
Giles was waiting for them on the road. The engine was still running. Buffy took the back seat, insisting that Faith take the front. No one said anything about the blood covering Faith's hands and uniform.
Faith was taken home to bed, she needed to recover, she needed to be strong. One of them needed to be strong. Buffy returned to the hospital with Dawn. It was time to talk about their mother.
One of them needed to be strong.
Thank you, Circus