Prague
Faith felt it happen. Even across the distance, over land and sea and country, she felt it. Buffy's light, blazing in a speck of incandescent glory, reaching unimaginable heights, then extinguishing. Just like that. The demon in front staggered backwards from a vicious uppercut, before collapsing, throat shredded.
Faith crouched, staring at her blackened and bloodied hands, numb.
She's gone. She actually went and fucking did it. The numbness crept in, weighing down, pressing on her heart. She slumped against the dusted wall of a house, shielding her eyes from the sun. Was Buffy really gone? Impossible. They couldn't die here, not in this world that wasn't theirs. But what else explained this sensation, this severing of their Connection?
What else explained this hollowness inside?
This was the state Angel found her in. He approached her with wary concern, still anxious about the corruption on her skin. Even although she had regained control of her own body, and proven to Angel she was Faith in mind – the others approached in wary caution. She couldn't blame them. She looked like a demon, moved like one.
"Faith?" Angel's voice cut through the emptiness. Faith knew she couldn't afford to lose it, not now. It was hard enough maintaining control like this, keeping all systems oiled and in order - but she wanted to act. React. Scream. Beat her fists against the earth. Find something to take it out on and let it escape until there was nothing left to feel.
Anything, really, other than this.
"What's wrong?" Angel came a little closer.
Faith gnawed the inside of her cheek until it bled. "S'nothing. Just dizzy. Okay now." She swallowed up the pain, which pumped through her body like poison, set her face tight.
What else could she do? They needed her. If she fell apart on them, in the very moment their lives depended on her, what kind of person would she be? What kind of Slayer would she be?
Her nails gouged the dust beneath, before she got up. She patted her jeans, tried to focus.
Angel rested a hand on her shoulder, meeting her eyes with a serious look. "Tell me you can do this. Because once they finish their mojo, there's gonna be a lot of disgruntled monsters heading our way."
"You know I can."
Angel nodded, the doubt fading. He caught something of her sadness, but not the reason. He squeezed her shoulder. "I know."
Faith smiled at Angel in an attempt to reassure him, but the smile didn't extend past her lips. She didn't understand why she felt like this. Buffy never was exactly a friend. But then again, neither was Faith.
Maybe she reacted this way because they managed to reconcile. At least a little. Maybe because she hoped they could be friends. Sister Slayers. People sharing the same hellish burden together, the weight of the world in their veins, who understood each other on a fundamental level.
And then what?
Gritting her teeth, Faith followed Angel. He kept glancing at her, sometimes in concern – occasionally some expression she couldn't identify.
"Not gonna hulk out. Quit the staring." Faith eyeballed him, daring him to keep flinging looks her way.
"Uh huh." They clambered up a wall ladder to a roof top, beginning the hopping journey above the demon infested streets once more. Near their destination of the Lyceum, where the pit lay exposed underneath the marble floors, Angel delivered another unreadable expression. Finally, he said:
"Faith. I'm worried you won't make it out of Vllk's trap. It snares demons. And you ..." He gestured at her to emphasise his meaning. "Pretty demon-y right now."
Faith examined her exposed, corrupted skin, and the black blotches on her hands like liver spots, strangely detached from her emotions. The demon coursed inside, every inch a part of her. It gave her everything she needed for the upcoming task, but no foreseeable get-out-of-jail card. No way to separate the power from herself.
Magic had a way of fucking things up – why should it be any different this time? "Price I gotta pay, right?"
Angel's face froze in heavy sadness as he turned away. He slid down an awning, landing somewhere out of sight from her current vantage point.
Faith wanted to shout after him something. Anything. But the prevailing thought that absorbed her consciousness right now was that if she died – would everything finally be over? Did she even want to die? She always thought her instinct to live dominated everything else. And yet she always put herself in situations that stated otherwise. People called her crazy, dangerous. In prison they feared her, even although she went out of her way to avoid conflict. Occasionally, the kingpins wanted to prove their status by getting her alone, sneaking in a shiv to a fight – but she always disarmed them, always found a way to dissolve the tension without harmful violence. She had the strength to do more. However, behind bars, it was no longer her right to abuse it.
She'd hurt enough people, already. She feared what lurked inside – the part of herself which took pleasure in pain and cruelty.
Do I want to die?
Cowardice, her mind whispered – or was it the Inner Slayer? She hadn't heard its voice since returning from limbo, or wherever she came from.
She stared at the precipice, where Angel waited for her below, on a brown-tiled, slanting roof, juxtaposed to the white awning. Below this, in the eastern side alley, was the entrance to the Lyceum. Plaguewalkers mooched through the streets, plazas, main traffic routes. Faith spied a minotaur with distinctive antlers crowning its head.
They're sensitive to magic, Vllk had said to her. So we'll cast something useless but strong to attract them all here. To the Pit. Then that's where you come in. He had looked at her, through those chipped, half-moon glasses, one yellowed canine displaying like some grizzled old wolf's. Are you ready for this?
I am, she thought. I fucking well am.
Buffy had done her part. Dead or not, Faith needed to believe. This was the job they were made for. This was the reason why they walked another dimension in black skins, different powers. Now Faith needed to fix her end of things, her corner of the world.
Finding an inner calm, Faith dropped down, scooting towards the alleyway, Angel hard on her heels. Her pounding footsteps in the dust alerted everything within fifty yards, and they went streaming for her. Finding the Lyceum entrance, both Slayer and vampire pushed through, heading across the ancient passageway, the curving steps with their strange statues, all the way to the main library, noise echoing in the confined spaces.
If Buffy was dead, then Faith would continue the legacy.
That was her duty.