Btvs fic: Whatever's Left to Hunt, She'll Find
Title: Whatever's Left to Hunt, She'll Find
Author: Carla
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Joss Whedon.
Written for: soda_and_capes for the 2008 apocalyptothon
Prompt: Post-apocalyptic Faith, Angel, and Buffy would be amazing, especially if it were gen.
Rating: 13+
Setting: AU after early season four
Summary: It’s the end of the world, a werewolf hunts her, and Faith feels fine.
There’s a werewolf hunting her.
Before, Faith might have been pissed. She certainly would have turned the tables on it, tracked it down, kicked its furry ass. After - the end of the world - she sits herself on a roof and waits. It will come or it won’t.
If nothing else, she’s glad she isn’t the only living creature left.
~~*
It comes for her slow. She’s surprised it has survived so long if this is how it hunts, meandering across the city - down alleys, through parks, she can hear its howl coming ever closer, but not nearly fast enough.
Her adrenaline kicks in and she’s almost forgotten how it feels, that rush in her chest, that burn in her belly. There’s nothing to fight anymore, except the werewolf making its way to her.
The plague hit first, and the humans went fast. The food chain was shattered; the vampires which didn’t starve died in the fires that came after. She still doesn’t know what started the flames. Maybe vampires themselves, tired of not having any food, tired of being picked off one at a time.
They made for a distraction, but it was too easy, when they hadn’t eaten in days, weeks, when they were so blood-sick they couldn’t focus long enough to swing at her. Maybe it wasn’t the starvation and the fire, maybe the plague mutated, twisted until it could devour them too.
She was the only one left, she thought, her Slayer blood and Slayer healing keeping her safe.
She doesn’t know when Buffy fell, but she wasn’t sure why she thought she should. They are bound by magic and sisterhood, but that doesn’t mean they are tied together. That doesn’t mean one should matter to the other.
There is only supposed to be one. She wonders, now that she has time enough to think, now that she has so much time she can’t help but think, if they didn’t bring about the apocalypse, if having two instead of one is what upset the balance.
There is nothing for her to hit, nothing to distract her.
She does not like having those thoughts.
Finally it arrives beneath her building. It doesn’t attack, it doesn’t howl to bring her down. It simply sits, half in the sun and half in the shadow, its tongue lolled out. Its fur is gray and matted, and it isn’t very large.
It must be small as a human. She can’t tell if it is a girl or a boy.
Does it matter? She doesn’t think so, but maybe, in this after world, it does.
There’s a shimmer, a shift, a whimper she can just catch riding up to her on the wind and then, crouched on the broken concrete, is a man.
He looks up, and it takes her a second to place him.
Oz.
~~*
“Didn’t expect to see you,” she says.
He twists his head and cracks his neck. He’s completely comfortable naked, even crouched on a dirty sidewalk, weeds crushed under his feet. When he stands, he doesn’t cover himself. She likes that confidence.
“Is that why you’re on the roof?”
She hops down, lands easy. “Roof, ground, whatever. Gotta make my own fun.”
He nods. “Been looking for you.”
That earns him a cocked eyebrow and her arms crossed over her chest. “It can’t be that hard to find the only living thing in the city.”
“That’s a big assumption.”
“I’ve been all over, wolf boy. I know what’s going on here.”
He makes a noncommittal sound. The silence that falls between them is uncomfortable, not because she worries she’s said something to shut him up, but because she’s finally heard another voice and immediately misses it when it stops.
Faith kicks a big chunk of concrete into the cracked street. Her boots are scuffed and the soles worn. She’ll have to salvage a new pair soon.
“You’re not gonna hump my leg are you?”
His smile is small and slow, but she hasn’t seen a human face in so long, and no human expressions. She doesn’t even look in still waters or unbroken windows, because she can’t take it, seeing her reflection and nothing else.
“Probably not,” he says.
“Probably not?”
“Well, it has been a long time.”
She snorts a laugh at that, because it damn well has, and really looks at him. He’s compact and heavily scarred. Maybe that’s from being a werewolf, but probably the end of the world hasn’t been good to him.
“Why’re you looking for me?”
“Looking for survivors first,” he said, “then word got out someone was still hunting vamps. Who else would do that?”
“Who else but a Slayer at the end of the world?”
“Who else but you, still fighting when you don’t have to.”
She’s not sure how she feels about that.
“What else am I gonna do?”
Oz gives a little half shrug, just one shoulder up and down. “Survival’s not enough, you have to go hunt dying monsters?”
“I’m the Slayer.” She leaves the rest unsaid - it’s what I do, and even, I’m making up for things. Paying penance still, because the world ended and the prisons fell before I was through.
He stares at her for a minute, and she can almost feel him weighing her words, her actions, her very self. It’s not something she enjoys, being judged, but Oz is so matter of fact she isn’t sure what to say about it.
Finally he nods, more to himself than her. “There’s something you need to see.”
She could ask what it is, but odds are it’ll be more exciting to take a look at it for herself.
“Lead on, Lassie.”
He makes a chuffing noise, but he’s also shifting back into a wolf, and she can’t tell if he’s laughing at her or if it’s just a part of the process, a sound forced by the transition. He takes off running almost before he’s fully changed, and for all it took him so long to catch her, she has to dig in and really push herself when he’s running full out.
She’s stronger than ever, and it feels fucking fantastic to show it off now that she’s no longer alone.
~~*
Buffy’s alive.
Buffy goddamn Summers is alive.
Faith isn’t the Slayer anymore, she’s a Slayer again, one of the two, and it feels like the end of the world all over again. She’s not the only one, and maybe she is wasting her time hunting monsters while all around her they die on their own, because surely she would have run into Buffy before if she was out slaying too.
There’s a tiny little refugee camp, and Buffy’s at the center of it. Mostly it’s made up of girls, early teens or younger. There are no parents, there are few boys, just these girls, living together in rundown buildings, an old town, and Buffy who looks to be everywhere at once while Faith watches.
“I didn’t know,” Faith says. Oz is crouched next to her, his bare leg close enough to her arm she can feel the heat radiating off him.
“Me neither. Not until I ran into one of their patrols. I thought the world was dead.”
He puts it into words for her, and she finds herself suddenly, inexplicably grateful.
“So Buffy still has her friends.” The words taste bitter, dirty penny on her tongue. She thinks this is jealousy, or maybe she’s mad - furious - because here’s Buffy, alive, and she never came looking for Faith. It’s ridiculous, but it’s how she feels.
“Not exactly.” He stands. “Come on.”
He starts down the hill before she can tell him to fuck off, the last thing she wants is to spend the end of the world with Buffy, not when she’s so unwanted no one came to see if she was still alive.
She didn’t exactly go look for her either.
Faith sighs and follows him to the camp.
“Oz, hey!” The girls greet him, and he nods to them, but doesn’t say much. For the most part, they don’t seem fazed by the fact he’s naked; she catches a couple casting quick glances his way, and then giggling together. They're young, she thinks, and when they turn to look at her, their eyes go wide. Recognition? No way.
Buffy comes out of one of the buildings as they approach. Her hair is cut short, and it’s dirty. Her clothes have been mended many times, the stitches neat.
“Faith.” Her voice is flat.
“B.” There’s only the slightest hint of mocking in her tone. She can’t help it.
“You found her.” Buffy looks at Oz. “You were right. I’m impressed.”
He gives that little half shrug again.
“Did you tell her what’s going on?”
“No. Thought you should do that.”
He ducks into a different building, leaving them standing together, alone.
“Well,” Buffy says, and runs her hands through her hair. She grips the back of her neck when she’s done. “You thirsty?”
“Could use a drink.”
“Come on then.” She leads Faith around to the largest building. There are big containers of water, some sort of filtration system leading outside, and though it’s room temperature, it tastes clean. It’s nice, fresh water she doesn’t have to boil.
“So - what’s going on?” Faith asks when it looks like Buffy isn’t going to say anymore.
“I’ve been looking for survivors.” She stops herself, and scratches her neck. “Well, I have been now. In the beginning, they started finding me first.”
“The girls?”
“Yeah. They’re - well, some of them call themselves Potentials, said their Watchers used that phrase, and the others picked it up. They were girls who would maybe become Slayers one day, after I died.” She presses her lips together. “After you died.”
“And they knew about it?”
“Yeah. We’re pretty rare, not knowing what we were. Usually the Council found them and made sure they were trained. We should have - whatever. It doesn’t matter now. I think that’s why they survived, because they were different like us.”
Faith thinks about that. She’d assumed it was her Slayer healing which kept her alive, so it makes sense they survived too. Special runs in their veins.
“Anyway, one of them came to find me, and then a couple more, and since then we’ve been searching them out. There are a few other survivors, too.”
“Like Oz. Special blood.”
Buffy chews on her knuckle. “Yeah.”
“What are you gonna do with them all?”
She shrugs. “I haven’t though much past finding food, staying alive. Oz has plans, maybe. He usually does. He thinks there’s more of us overseas, and wants to figure out a way to get there. He wants to rebuild the world, I think.”
“What do you want?”
Buffy shrugs again. “I don’t know. I’m so tired.”
Faith knows that feeling well.
“Come on, I’ll show you around.”
~~*
The tour lasts until sundown, and they join the others for dinner. The other girls watch them without saying anything; Buffy inspires something like awe in them, she can tell. The food is plain, mostly veggies and meat, but Faith doesn’t really care anymore as long as it gives her energy.
She and Buffy eat in silence. The others talk amongst themselves, their voices high and giddy. It reminds Faith of being back in school, and the reasons she left. It’s like there isn’t an apocalypse going on, like none of them could die tomorrow.
Then again, they are baby Slayers. Maybe that’s how they survive.
Oz joins them after awhile, and he’s followed shortly by Angel.
Faith stops eating mid-bite and stares at him. She figured he was dead, like so many others she’s known, like so many vampires she’s killed. But there he is, standing at the head of the table, looking at her.
She hates him a little in that second. Buffy didn’t look for her, and she gets that, she does, they have so much between them, too much maybe, though it looks like they’re going to try to put it all aside now.
But Angel was supposed to be her friend. Her hero.
More than anything, she wants to get up and hit him, smack him, throw him around some.
“Faith,” he says, and, as always, there are whole worlds of things he doesn’t say. She gives him a nod, he sits down, and things are, not okay exactly, but it is what it is. There’s no point in fighting over what should or should not have been done.
Buffy’s purposefully not watching them, and things are quiet until Oz speaks.
“We’re headed east,” he says. “Will you come with us?”
She thinks about hunting on her own, and how there are fewer things out every night, and she’s gone many days without seeing anything at all. Buffy’s watching her, and Angel too, and she thinks maybe she could do the team thing now. She’s changed, and probably they have too.
The whole world has changed. She thought there was nothing left, just hunting and slaying until she finally died.
If there’s something more, does she even want it?
Faith finishes her dinner, drinks the water, and nods. Yeah, she wants it, something to do, a goal, a plan. Yeah, she wants it, this place to belong.
“You training the girls to hunt?” she asks.
“Some,” Buffy says. “I take a team out each night, but we’ve pretty much cleaned up this area.”
“You’ll have to go pretty far to find anything. I’ve been here a little while.”
She made a noncommittal noise. “Well, we’ll have to put training on hold until we hit the road then. You can show us your tricks later. If you want.”
“Sure,” Faith says, easy, and that’s that. She’s found her place.
End
Author: Carla
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Joss Whedon.
Written for: soda_and_capes for the 2008 apocalyptothon
Prompt: Post-apocalyptic Faith, Angel, and Buffy would be amazing, especially if it were gen.
Rating: 13+
Setting: AU after early season four
Summary: It’s the end of the world, a werewolf hunts her, and Faith feels fine.
There’s a werewolf hunting her.
Before, Faith might have been pissed. She certainly would have turned the tables on it, tracked it down, kicked its furry ass. After - the end of the world - she sits herself on a roof and waits. It will come or it won’t.
If nothing else, she’s glad she isn’t the only living creature left.
~~*
It comes for her slow. She’s surprised it has survived so long if this is how it hunts, meandering across the city - down alleys, through parks, she can hear its howl coming ever closer, but not nearly fast enough.
Her adrenaline kicks in and she’s almost forgotten how it feels, that rush in her chest, that burn in her belly. There’s nothing to fight anymore, except the werewolf making its way to her.
The plague hit first, and the humans went fast. The food chain was shattered; the vampires which didn’t starve died in the fires that came after. She still doesn’t know what started the flames. Maybe vampires themselves, tired of not having any food, tired of being picked off one at a time.
They made for a distraction, but it was too easy, when they hadn’t eaten in days, weeks, when they were so blood-sick they couldn’t focus long enough to swing at her. Maybe it wasn’t the starvation and the fire, maybe the plague mutated, twisted until it could devour them too.
She was the only one left, she thought, her Slayer blood and Slayer healing keeping her safe.
She doesn’t know when Buffy fell, but she wasn’t sure why she thought she should. They are bound by magic and sisterhood, but that doesn’t mean they are tied together. That doesn’t mean one should matter to the other.
There is only supposed to be one. She wonders, now that she has time enough to think, now that she has so much time she can’t help but think, if they didn’t bring about the apocalypse, if having two instead of one is what upset the balance.
There is nothing for her to hit, nothing to distract her.
She does not like having those thoughts.
Finally it arrives beneath her building. It doesn’t attack, it doesn’t howl to bring her down. It simply sits, half in the sun and half in the shadow, its tongue lolled out. Its fur is gray and matted, and it isn’t very large.
It must be small as a human. She can’t tell if it is a girl or a boy.
Does it matter? She doesn’t think so, but maybe, in this after world, it does.
There’s a shimmer, a shift, a whimper she can just catch riding up to her on the wind and then, crouched on the broken concrete, is a man.
He looks up, and it takes her a second to place him.
Oz.
~~*
“Didn’t expect to see you,” she says.
He twists his head and cracks his neck. He’s completely comfortable naked, even crouched on a dirty sidewalk, weeds crushed under his feet. When he stands, he doesn’t cover himself. She likes that confidence.
“Is that why you’re on the roof?”
She hops down, lands easy. “Roof, ground, whatever. Gotta make my own fun.”
He nods. “Been looking for you.”
That earns him a cocked eyebrow and her arms crossed over her chest. “It can’t be that hard to find the only living thing in the city.”
“That’s a big assumption.”
“I’ve been all over, wolf boy. I know what’s going on here.”
He makes a noncommittal sound. The silence that falls between them is uncomfortable, not because she worries she’s said something to shut him up, but because she’s finally heard another voice and immediately misses it when it stops.
Faith kicks a big chunk of concrete into the cracked street. Her boots are scuffed and the soles worn. She’ll have to salvage a new pair soon.
“You’re not gonna hump my leg are you?”
His smile is small and slow, but she hasn’t seen a human face in so long, and no human expressions. She doesn’t even look in still waters or unbroken windows, because she can’t take it, seeing her reflection and nothing else.
“Probably not,” he says.
“Probably not?”
“Well, it has been a long time.”
She snorts a laugh at that, because it damn well has, and really looks at him. He’s compact and heavily scarred. Maybe that’s from being a werewolf, but probably the end of the world hasn’t been good to him.
“Why’re you looking for me?”
“Looking for survivors first,” he said, “then word got out someone was still hunting vamps. Who else would do that?”
“Who else but a Slayer at the end of the world?”
“Who else but you, still fighting when you don’t have to.”
She’s not sure how she feels about that.
“What else am I gonna do?”
Oz gives a little half shrug, just one shoulder up and down. “Survival’s not enough, you have to go hunt dying monsters?”
“I’m the Slayer.” She leaves the rest unsaid - it’s what I do, and even, I’m making up for things. Paying penance still, because the world ended and the prisons fell before I was through.
He stares at her for a minute, and she can almost feel him weighing her words, her actions, her very self. It’s not something she enjoys, being judged, but Oz is so matter of fact she isn’t sure what to say about it.
Finally he nods, more to himself than her. “There’s something you need to see.”
She could ask what it is, but odds are it’ll be more exciting to take a look at it for herself.
“Lead on, Lassie.”
He makes a chuffing noise, but he’s also shifting back into a wolf, and she can’t tell if he’s laughing at her or if it’s just a part of the process, a sound forced by the transition. He takes off running almost before he’s fully changed, and for all it took him so long to catch her, she has to dig in and really push herself when he’s running full out.
She’s stronger than ever, and it feels fucking fantastic to show it off now that she’s no longer alone.
~~*
Buffy’s alive.
Buffy goddamn Summers is alive.
Faith isn’t the Slayer anymore, she’s a Slayer again, one of the two, and it feels like the end of the world all over again. She’s not the only one, and maybe she is wasting her time hunting monsters while all around her they die on their own, because surely she would have run into Buffy before if she was out slaying too.
There’s a tiny little refugee camp, and Buffy’s at the center of it. Mostly it’s made up of girls, early teens or younger. There are no parents, there are few boys, just these girls, living together in rundown buildings, an old town, and Buffy who looks to be everywhere at once while Faith watches.
“I didn’t know,” Faith says. Oz is crouched next to her, his bare leg close enough to her arm she can feel the heat radiating off him.
“Me neither. Not until I ran into one of their patrols. I thought the world was dead.”
He puts it into words for her, and she finds herself suddenly, inexplicably grateful.
“So Buffy still has her friends.” The words taste bitter, dirty penny on her tongue. She thinks this is jealousy, or maybe she’s mad - furious - because here’s Buffy, alive, and she never came looking for Faith. It’s ridiculous, but it’s how she feels.
“Not exactly.” He stands. “Come on.”
He starts down the hill before she can tell him to fuck off, the last thing she wants is to spend the end of the world with Buffy, not when she’s so unwanted no one came to see if she was still alive.
She didn’t exactly go look for her either.
Faith sighs and follows him to the camp.
“Oz, hey!” The girls greet him, and he nods to them, but doesn’t say much. For the most part, they don’t seem fazed by the fact he’s naked; she catches a couple casting quick glances his way, and then giggling together. They're young, she thinks, and when they turn to look at her, their eyes go wide. Recognition? No way.
Buffy comes out of one of the buildings as they approach. Her hair is cut short, and it’s dirty. Her clothes have been mended many times, the stitches neat.
“Faith.” Her voice is flat.
“B.” There’s only the slightest hint of mocking in her tone. She can’t help it.
“You found her.” Buffy looks at Oz. “You were right. I’m impressed.”
He gives that little half shrug again.
“Did you tell her what’s going on?”
“No. Thought you should do that.”
He ducks into a different building, leaving them standing together, alone.
“Well,” Buffy says, and runs her hands through her hair. She grips the back of her neck when she’s done. “You thirsty?”
“Could use a drink.”
“Come on then.” She leads Faith around to the largest building. There are big containers of water, some sort of filtration system leading outside, and though it’s room temperature, it tastes clean. It’s nice, fresh water she doesn’t have to boil.
“So - what’s going on?” Faith asks when it looks like Buffy isn’t going to say anymore.
“I’ve been looking for survivors.” She stops herself, and scratches her neck. “Well, I have been now. In the beginning, they started finding me first.”
“The girls?”
“Yeah. They’re - well, some of them call themselves Potentials, said their Watchers used that phrase, and the others picked it up. They were girls who would maybe become Slayers one day, after I died.” She presses her lips together. “After you died.”
“And they knew about it?”
“Yeah. We’re pretty rare, not knowing what we were. Usually the Council found them and made sure they were trained. We should have - whatever. It doesn’t matter now. I think that’s why they survived, because they were different like us.”
Faith thinks about that. She’d assumed it was her Slayer healing which kept her alive, so it makes sense they survived too. Special runs in their veins.
“Anyway, one of them came to find me, and then a couple more, and since then we’ve been searching them out. There are a few other survivors, too.”
“Like Oz. Special blood.”
Buffy chews on her knuckle. “Yeah.”
“What are you gonna do with them all?”
She shrugs. “I haven’t though much past finding food, staying alive. Oz has plans, maybe. He usually does. He thinks there’s more of us overseas, and wants to figure out a way to get there. He wants to rebuild the world, I think.”
“What do you want?”
Buffy shrugs again. “I don’t know. I’m so tired.”
Faith knows that feeling well.
“Come on, I’ll show you around.”
~~*
The tour lasts until sundown, and they join the others for dinner. The other girls watch them without saying anything; Buffy inspires something like awe in them, she can tell. The food is plain, mostly veggies and meat, but Faith doesn’t really care anymore as long as it gives her energy.
She and Buffy eat in silence. The others talk amongst themselves, their voices high and giddy. It reminds Faith of being back in school, and the reasons she left. It’s like there isn’t an apocalypse going on, like none of them could die tomorrow.
Then again, they are baby Slayers. Maybe that’s how they survive.
Oz joins them after awhile, and he’s followed shortly by Angel.
Faith stops eating mid-bite and stares at him. She figured he was dead, like so many others she’s known, like so many vampires she’s killed. But there he is, standing at the head of the table, looking at her.
She hates him a little in that second. Buffy didn’t look for her, and she gets that, she does, they have so much between them, too much maybe, though it looks like they’re going to try to put it all aside now.
But Angel was supposed to be her friend. Her hero.
More than anything, she wants to get up and hit him, smack him, throw him around some.
“Faith,” he says, and, as always, there are whole worlds of things he doesn’t say. She gives him a nod, he sits down, and things are, not okay exactly, but it is what it is. There’s no point in fighting over what should or should not have been done.
Buffy’s purposefully not watching them, and things are quiet until Oz speaks.
“We’re headed east,” he says. “Will you come with us?”
She thinks about hunting on her own, and how there are fewer things out every night, and she’s gone many days without seeing anything at all. Buffy’s watching her, and Angel too, and she thinks maybe she could do the team thing now. She’s changed, and probably they have too.
The whole world has changed. She thought there was nothing left, just hunting and slaying until she finally died.
If there’s something more, does she even want it?
Faith finishes her dinner, drinks the water, and nods. Yeah, she wants it, something to do, a goal, a plan. Yeah, she wants it, this place to belong.
“You training the girls to hunt?” she asks.
“Some,” Buffy says. “I take a team out each night, but we’ve pretty much cleaned up this area.”
“You’ll have to go pretty far to find anything. I’ve been here a little while.”
She made a noncommittal noise. “Well, we’ll have to put training on hold until we hit the road then. You can show us your tricks later. If you want.”
“Sure,” Faith says, easy, and that’s that. She’s found her place.
End