Cracking Foundations
Set during Angel Episode "Release" and "Orpheus"
Haven't written in a while but saw the prompt and went for it. Here we go!....
UPDATE: Just went back and edited this a little bit as it was kinda a hot mess. It is rated G I guess, nothing too bad in here.
The needle plunges into skin that hasn't seen much sunlight lately. Her body feels mangled, the way her insides have felt for God knows how long. Since she started being the bad guy, since she started to feel regret. Faith can only remember three regrets in her short roller coaster of life. I guess what they say is true. Things are slowing down now, whether its the drugs or the adrenaline Faith doesn't know. Maybe it's because she knows the end is coming and the score's going to be written in ink. Bad guys on the ground. Good guys walk away. Thing is, even she knows she shouldn't be walking away.
Walking away was for good guys. Walking away was for Buffy and Giles and Wes. There are two of em. The three she mentioned earlier.
She hits Angelus in the face again and again as he's sitting. The punches are getting weaker. She's got to step back. Give him a chance to bite her or the shot was a waste. Stay in your upright seats passengers, we made a short turnaround but we're back on course and everything is five by five.
"You're wrong. I'm not like you." Faith spits. Being like him, being soulless, it means no regrets.
Regret number one. The man in the alleyway. The beginning of the end for the good inside of myself. If only she hadn't reacted, hadn't killed a civilian. A hit, a squish and it all turned around. The mayor wouldn't have been able clutch at her and her insecurities the way he did if it hadn't gone down. She wouldn't have spent way too long in the hospital with a hole in her gut and a claw in her brain scratching away until little was recognizable when she woke up.
Yes it was childish
"You will be." he says. But she knows he's wrong. He'll be out of commission and she'll be in a dreamless sleep for a long time if there's any God. Just a few more seconds now, she can feel her arm being grabbed, she can feel her body being pulled closer to him. That's it, fangs are in. We are go.
Regret number two, anything and everything she did to Buffy Summers. She looks back at the things that seemed like retribution that she did to Buffy and she knows now that they were all batshit crazy but it's hard when you're spiraling. You just keep spinning until you fall or bump into something a lot harder that stops you. Buffy was the hard thing in her life, funny that she was a girl. When she was at her craziest and bounced around UC Sunnydale doing everything in Buffy's her own skin she realized that being in her body didn't made her the hard one. It made her weaker, so she fought some more since ruining Buffy's life from the inside wasn't her thing. Knock down drag outs were always just a little more Faith's style than the mind games.
and you got aggressive
More blood clamors out of her. His bite weakens, he sits back. "What did you do?"
Regret number three, the things she did to Wes. Perfect little British dork that's been turned into a junkie stabbing emotionally mauled piece of work. He was a perfect little English cottage cut open and set on fire. His foundations are cracked. She sees the coldness in his eyes, the clenching in his hand that's near constant. There are two kinds of torture, the coldness of a strangers metal instruments that's impersonal and surgical and then the kind she did to Wes. The skin on skin on knife closeness of a personal one. It's evil and sex and pain all in one fucked up little memory unforgettable to anyone who's ever experienced it. It the way a lover tortures another and it's so sickening now how much she enjoyed it at the time. That's how he can be so cruel in alleyways to poor young girls, he's seen the lust in cruelty and can't quite turn away from it like a good little boy. Since they're little session she bets he's liked to get and give the pain way too much these days. She knows it's not just her that's the cause of his attitude change, she knows the way this demon-fighting life is. No one keeps doing it long and those that do are different, worse. It wears on you. The good and the evil, the blood and the fear. It eats at you, just a few small nibbles with every vampire and demon and god damn apocalypses. This is just another. Next year there will be one more and that's the scariest thing. You can't do this forever and keep on skating by.
And I must admit that I was a bit scared
Wes pops up next to here. There he is, ex-Watcher extraordinare that she can't etch-a-sketch to the good kid he used to be. "Are you alright?"
She wants to say no, say she's sorry, say something more profound and touching and deep and all that sappy crap Buffy's good at. But she's not Buffy and she'll never know how to say she's sorry and it's too late now anyway. She can hear the sandman's quiet step approaching. The sleep is coming. There's no time to say sorry. Might as well go out with a cool line.
"Kicked his ass." and then it's all black. For a while anyway.
But it gives me thrills to wind you up