BtVS Fic: "Awake" (Faith) PG, 1/1
Title: "Awake"
Author: bradcpu
Rating: PG. Typical violence, angst, hinted slash, darkness, and depravity. Nothing that couldn't air.
Summary: A missing segment from the season 4 finale, "Restless."
Disclaimer: It all belongs to other people, and they do it better. Just Jossing here.
Notes: Here's my interpretation of how Faith's dream from "Restless" might have played out. I wrote it as Buffy season 5 was airing, but never archived it anywhere.
Brown eyes shot open as a reflex, senses on edge. Poe once called sleep "little slices of death," and so it was for Faith. A long time ago she had learned to fight and claw her way out of it, grasping at consciousness and pulling her way to the surface. Back to something she could fight.
But there was a warmth here now. Sunlight fell in long streaks over the crisp white bed sheets, across the familiar room. Buffy's room.
The dark-haired girl realized she was no longer wrapped in those sheets, but standing near the bedroom door looking at them. Her senses lit up again. Someone was next to her.
"I know you," said the blonde girl to her left.
Faith examined the face, and recognition came, as it so often did, with a twinge of guilt. "Yeah, I know you, too. You're Willow's... friend."
"We're no one's friend," she said, fixing Faith with a long, emotionless stare. "I know you."
A distant scream came from behind the dark Slayer, and she turned to look. Suddenly the world was plunged into blackness. Cold air blasted past her ears. She seemed to be flying forward, but the only sense of direction came from the screams that pierced the darkness. Those, too, seemed to be whooshing past. Then a rhythmic strobe flash began, and she saw the source of the screams. Faces - wide-eyed and twisted in agony, some streaked with blood - blinked in and out in the flashing light, flying toward her in bursts. Some were friends, all were familiar; and all of them pleaded with her for mercy. There was none.
A throbbing sound began to grow beneath the screams until it became a thundering heartbeat. It gradually melded into the shrieks and was joined by the sculpted synth of club music. The sound raced through Faith's blood, pounding away the confusion and fear. The faces were gone now. Only the darkness and the music remained, shot with flashes of light. With closed eyes, almost involuntarily, her body began to move to the beat. Her hands went into her hair as her head fell back, and she opened her eyes.
The club was teeming with life, moving in unison around her. She could feel the bass thumping from the floor through the soles of her boots, feel it tingling her fingers as she raised her hands over her head. In front of her, Buffy swung her head from side to side, golden locks flying with abandon. It was pure. Primal. Faith smiled.
Buffy smiled back and screamed over the music. No sound emerged.
"I can't hear you!" Faith screamed, still smiling.
"I know! Isn't it great?" came the distant sound of Buffy's voice. But her lips said something else.
At a nearby table, Cordelia stared in disbelief. "I think they've just slain common sense. Will she ever wake up?"
"Things are changing," Angel said. "Buffy needs this right now. Maybe everyone does."
"No, I didn't mean her," Cordelia said, looking at the dancing Slayers again.
With a start, Faith realized that Buffy had disappeared into the writhing mass of bodies. The dark Slayer danced through the crowd. Lights swirled over the faces in a spectrum of bliss, so different from the stark white visages of pain. A low whisper came from somewhere in the crowd; a presence that didn't belong. Faith danced on.
There was the metal clank of a heavy door swinging shut, and the music that had filled her senses abruptly fell to a dull, indistinct bass. Jarred from her rapture, she whirled to the source of the sound. She was in her old motel room.
A voice came from within the moonlit room. "Looking for salvation?"
As the dark Slayer's eyes adjusted to the light, she saw Xander's profile outlined within the silouhette on her bed. Yet he looked different somehow. She was here looking for something. "If that's what you want to call it," Faith said.
"Wrong room. You're looking for 730." Xander leaned on one arm and faced her, the sheet falling down his bare chest and settling casually on his hip. There was something odd on top of his head. "I didn't figure you for a salvation girl. What faith are you, anyway?"
"Never gave it much thought." She watched as the figure rose from the bed and moved toward her. She could see now that he was wearing only boxers and an ice cream salesman hat.
"I see why." He paused, measuring her with a gleam in his eye. "I'm thinking raspberry revenge. Or maybe black cherry swirl."
"Way off," said the dark-haired girl. What was she here looking for? "I'll tell you what, you keep the ice cream and the hat. I'll take door number two."
"That's not the way," Xander said.
As Faith opened the motel door, Xander's last words fell gently into her mind: "There's something out there." Beyond the door was a flood of white light that washed away everything. As her vision cleared, she heard the voice of Buffy's Watcher.
"...and the power, and the Glory, forever."
She was standing in a familiar church sanctuary, looking down the aisle toward Giles, who seemed to be finishing a sermon. Only a handful of heads dotted the rows in front of him.
"Ah, sister Faith. We had nearly given up. It looks as though attendance is down," Giles said with concern. "Would you care to lead us in the next verse?"
"Lying git," came a voice from her left. She looked down to see a frustrated Spike shifting in his seat and pulling at his necktie. The blond vampire leaned toward her. "He said he was gonna let me lead the next one."
"Shh!" Anya turned from the row ahead. "This is supposed to be important." She gave Faith an apologetic look. "Some people can be so rude."
"No?" said Giles, still looking at Faith. "Well, then, who would like to present the announcements?"
Spike's hand shot into the air.
"Willow, if you would..." Giles said, looking at the front row. The redhead stood and walked to the pulpit, smiling broadly, as Spike muttered "Teacher's pet."
Willow cleared her throat and read from a sheet of paper. "It says here that apples won't actually keep the doctor away. Now, I find that very hard to believe. But it has gotten Xander, Giles, and I. Now Buffy's in danger. Oh, and I'm happy to report that our bake sale raised $25. So yay us." With a beaming grin, she returned to her seat to an impressed murmur from the small crowd.
"Very nice, Willow," Giles said as he took the pulpit again. "Just remember, it's important that we find Buffy before it's too late. But I think we have time for some confessions. Who's first?"
Faith caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye - a figure, slumped and powerful - disappearing into a confession booth on one side of the sanctuary. She pulled the stake from the back of her pants and followed.
As she approached the booth, her heart began to pound heavily in her ears, and Anya's voice sounded distant behind her. "My name is Anya, and I was a demon." Muted applause rang out as Faith reached for the curtain and pulled it aside. She couldn't see the back wall. "Now, instead of killing people, I have sex with Xander." A chorus of "aww" nearly hid a pleading "I used to kill people too," then all sound died away and Faith found herself in silent darkness once again.
Her wide eyes found no hint of shape or form as she cautiously groped for the wall she knew must be there. Somewhere. She felt her arms flailing blindly in front of her, invisible. Then a hand grabbed one of those arms.
Faith whirled with the stake held high behind her head and faced Buffy. There was a dimly lit alley behind the blonde Slayer.
"Whoa! Easy there, killer."
"I-I'm sorry," Faith began.
Buffy looked back over her shoulder. "No time for that now. There's this thing-"
"Oh, hey, they're all looking for you back there."
"I know. It's looking for us both. We have to go." The dark-haired girl hesitated, confused. "Now, Faith!"
Buffy broke into a run down the narrow alley, pulling Faith's arm behind her. Their footsteps rang against the concrete, echoing back from ahead and behind. Sounds doubled and tripled, creating shadows of themselves, all muddled beneath the Slayers' heavy breaths. Was something following them?
From nowhere, there was a circle of vampires surrounding them. Buffy stopped and struck a fighting stance, pressing her back against Faith. "Ready for some action?"
"I thought you'd never ask." The vamps began to close in. Behind a vamp's shoulder, she got a brief glimpse of a bald man in a suit dangling something yellow and square over his head like a prize. Then the figure was gone and there was only an empty alley. The dark-haired girl smiled like a predator over a pinned prey.
Faith sprang forward, catching the vamp directly in front of her in mid-step with front kick and then lashed out with a violent right hook, dropping a second vamp. Another grabbed her arm. Big mistake. She gripped his wrist in both hands and pulled, flipping him onto his back, then staked him before he could react.
Something was whispering through the alley, the figure she had seen before. It was here.
Two more vamps fell on her. An elbow sent one away while a backfist put a stake through the other one's heart. The first staggered forward again only to meet a knee to the stomach and a stake to the back. "How are ya over there, B?"
No answer. Instead another bloodsucker appeared over her. In a near frenzy now, she slammed a fist into its gut with a grunt and uncoiled into an uppercut. The thing was on its back now.
There was a voice calling her name. Louder and louder.
She raised the stake and brought it crashing down into the thing's feminine chest. Buffy's chest. The blonde Slayer looked up at Faith, her face frozen in shock, and back down at the stake buried between her ribs. "Faith... what have you done?"
Faith blinked and looked around the alley. Bodies littered the street: Xander wide-eyed and on his back; Willow twisted like a broken doll; and Wesley face down with a wound between his shoulder blades, his eyes turned toward her. Each was crumpled in the spot where she had dropped a vamp. There were no demons here, no vampires - only innocent blood. Everywhere. Beneath her, Buffy gave a last exhale.
"That's my girl," said a voice in her ear. "That's my Slayer."
"Faith?"
The dark Slayer opened her eyes to Riley, who was leaning over her in bed, his hand across her body, gently rubbing her arm. She looked up at him, confused.
"Faith, it's almost Dawn," he said, gazing earnestly into her eyes. "You have to wake up."
"What? It's-"
"Do I have to spell it out for you?" He sighed and nodded toward the door. The whispers were coming from the other side. "It's time to go."
"Right," said Faith dully to herself. She slid out of the warm bed and stepped through the door into a tiny room. She was afraid of what waited beyond, but she was tired - so tired that it didn't matter to her whether she lived or died.
Three more steps and she collapsed, sliding down into a corner.
This was her safe place. Nothing could get her here. The child's room beyond this closet door was another world. The carpet of broken bottles, used syringes, and filth stopped at its edge. The pain stopped, too.
But now something shook that fragile barrier with a rattle. Another rattle, and a cracking sound. The whispers became a scream - Faith's scream. The closet door was flung wide, and a man pounced on her. Her eyes followed the stake as he raised it behind his head. Alan Finch smiled, swung the stake down, and slammed it into Faith's chest.
Her screams were choked off as she tasted her own blood. Her eyes closed and opened again, and the figure over her was different. Primal. A painted face.
Faith's eyes shot open again, and she leaned forward and spat out the gurgling blood, feeling her cracked ribs tremble. Then she remembered. She was in solitary confinement, and the pain in her chest was very real. It was the reason why she was here.
For a long time, she hadn't been able to feel that pain. For a long time, she hadn't felt anything. But now she was awake and there was no safe place anymore.
And no one was coming to explain, or to console, or to help. Her soft, wet, blood-soaked sobs continued through the night; alone, unheard, on her hands and knees in solitary.
And no one would ever know.
++++++++++
END
Author: bradcpu
Rating: PG. Typical violence, angst, hinted slash, darkness, and depravity. Nothing that couldn't air.
Summary: A missing segment from the season 4 finale, "Restless."
Disclaimer: It all belongs to other people, and they do it better. Just Jossing here.
Notes: Here's my interpretation of how Faith's dream from "Restless" might have played out. I wrote it as Buffy season 5 was airing, but never archived it anywhere.
Brown eyes shot open as a reflex, senses on edge. Poe once called sleep "little slices of death," and so it was for Faith. A long time ago she had learned to fight and claw her way out of it, grasping at consciousness and pulling her way to the surface. Back to something she could fight.
But there was a warmth here now. Sunlight fell in long streaks over the crisp white bed sheets, across the familiar room. Buffy's room.
The dark-haired girl realized she was no longer wrapped in those sheets, but standing near the bedroom door looking at them. Her senses lit up again. Someone was next to her.
"I know you," said the blonde girl to her left.
Faith examined the face, and recognition came, as it so often did, with a twinge of guilt. "Yeah, I know you, too. You're Willow's... friend."
"We're no one's friend," she said, fixing Faith with a long, emotionless stare. "I know you."
A distant scream came from behind the dark Slayer, and she turned to look. Suddenly the world was plunged into blackness. Cold air blasted past her ears. She seemed to be flying forward, but the only sense of direction came from the screams that pierced the darkness. Those, too, seemed to be whooshing past. Then a rhythmic strobe flash began, and she saw the source of the screams. Faces - wide-eyed and twisted in agony, some streaked with blood - blinked in and out in the flashing light, flying toward her in bursts. Some were friends, all were familiar; and all of them pleaded with her for mercy. There was none.
A throbbing sound began to grow beneath the screams until it became a thundering heartbeat. It gradually melded into the shrieks and was joined by the sculpted synth of club music. The sound raced through Faith's blood, pounding away the confusion and fear. The faces were gone now. Only the darkness and the music remained, shot with flashes of light. With closed eyes, almost involuntarily, her body began to move to the beat. Her hands went into her hair as her head fell back, and she opened her eyes.
The club was teeming with life, moving in unison around her. She could feel the bass thumping from the floor through the soles of her boots, feel it tingling her fingers as she raised her hands over her head. In front of her, Buffy swung her head from side to side, golden locks flying with abandon. It was pure. Primal. Faith smiled.
Buffy smiled back and screamed over the music. No sound emerged.
"I can't hear you!" Faith screamed, still smiling.
"I know! Isn't it great?" came the distant sound of Buffy's voice. But her lips said something else.
At a nearby table, Cordelia stared in disbelief. "I think they've just slain common sense. Will she ever wake up?"
"Things are changing," Angel said. "Buffy needs this right now. Maybe everyone does."
"No, I didn't mean her," Cordelia said, looking at the dancing Slayers again.
With a start, Faith realized that Buffy had disappeared into the writhing mass of bodies. The dark Slayer danced through the crowd. Lights swirled over the faces in a spectrum of bliss, so different from the stark white visages of pain. A low whisper came from somewhere in the crowd; a presence that didn't belong. Faith danced on.
There was the metal clank of a heavy door swinging shut, and the music that had filled her senses abruptly fell to a dull, indistinct bass. Jarred from her rapture, she whirled to the source of the sound. She was in her old motel room.
A voice came from within the moonlit room. "Looking for salvation?"
As the dark Slayer's eyes adjusted to the light, she saw Xander's profile outlined within the silouhette on her bed. Yet he looked different somehow. She was here looking for something. "If that's what you want to call it," Faith said.
"Wrong room. You're looking for 730." Xander leaned on one arm and faced her, the sheet falling down his bare chest and settling casually on his hip. There was something odd on top of his head. "I didn't figure you for a salvation girl. What faith are you, anyway?"
"Never gave it much thought." She watched as the figure rose from the bed and moved toward her. She could see now that he was wearing only boxers and an ice cream salesman hat.
"I see why." He paused, measuring her with a gleam in his eye. "I'm thinking raspberry revenge. Or maybe black cherry swirl."
"Way off," said the dark-haired girl. What was she here looking for? "I'll tell you what, you keep the ice cream and the hat. I'll take door number two."
"That's not the way," Xander said.
As Faith opened the motel door, Xander's last words fell gently into her mind: "There's something out there." Beyond the door was a flood of white light that washed away everything. As her vision cleared, she heard the voice of Buffy's Watcher.
"...and the power, and the Glory, forever."
She was standing in a familiar church sanctuary, looking down the aisle toward Giles, who seemed to be finishing a sermon. Only a handful of heads dotted the rows in front of him.
"Ah, sister Faith. We had nearly given up. It looks as though attendance is down," Giles said with concern. "Would you care to lead us in the next verse?"
"Lying git," came a voice from her left. She looked down to see a frustrated Spike shifting in his seat and pulling at his necktie. The blond vampire leaned toward her. "He said he was gonna let me lead the next one."
"Shh!" Anya turned from the row ahead. "This is supposed to be important." She gave Faith an apologetic look. "Some people can be so rude."
"No?" said Giles, still looking at Faith. "Well, then, who would like to present the announcements?"
Spike's hand shot into the air.
"Willow, if you would..." Giles said, looking at the front row. The redhead stood and walked to the pulpit, smiling broadly, as Spike muttered "Teacher's pet."
Willow cleared her throat and read from a sheet of paper. "It says here that apples won't actually keep the doctor away. Now, I find that very hard to believe. But it has gotten Xander, Giles, and I. Now Buffy's in danger. Oh, and I'm happy to report that our bake sale raised $25. So yay us." With a beaming grin, she returned to her seat to an impressed murmur from the small crowd.
"Very nice, Willow," Giles said as he took the pulpit again. "Just remember, it's important that we find Buffy before it's too late. But I think we have time for some confessions. Who's first?"
Faith caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye - a figure, slumped and powerful - disappearing into a confession booth on one side of the sanctuary. She pulled the stake from the back of her pants and followed.
As she approached the booth, her heart began to pound heavily in her ears, and Anya's voice sounded distant behind her. "My name is Anya, and I was a demon." Muted applause rang out as Faith reached for the curtain and pulled it aside. She couldn't see the back wall. "Now, instead of killing people, I have sex with Xander." A chorus of "aww" nearly hid a pleading "I used to kill people too," then all sound died away and Faith found herself in silent darkness once again.
Her wide eyes found no hint of shape or form as she cautiously groped for the wall she knew must be there. Somewhere. She felt her arms flailing blindly in front of her, invisible. Then a hand grabbed one of those arms.
Faith whirled with the stake held high behind her head and faced Buffy. There was a dimly lit alley behind the blonde Slayer.
"Whoa! Easy there, killer."
"I-I'm sorry," Faith began.
Buffy looked back over her shoulder. "No time for that now. There's this thing-"
"Oh, hey, they're all looking for you back there."
"I know. It's looking for us both. We have to go." The dark-haired girl hesitated, confused. "Now, Faith!"
Buffy broke into a run down the narrow alley, pulling Faith's arm behind her. Their footsteps rang against the concrete, echoing back from ahead and behind. Sounds doubled and tripled, creating shadows of themselves, all muddled beneath the Slayers' heavy breaths. Was something following them?
From nowhere, there was a circle of vampires surrounding them. Buffy stopped and struck a fighting stance, pressing her back against Faith. "Ready for some action?"
"I thought you'd never ask." The vamps began to close in. Behind a vamp's shoulder, she got a brief glimpse of a bald man in a suit dangling something yellow and square over his head like a prize. Then the figure was gone and there was only an empty alley. The dark-haired girl smiled like a predator over a pinned prey.
Faith sprang forward, catching the vamp directly in front of her in mid-step with front kick and then lashed out with a violent right hook, dropping a second vamp. Another grabbed her arm. Big mistake. She gripped his wrist in both hands and pulled, flipping him onto his back, then staked him before he could react.
Something was whispering through the alley, the figure she had seen before. It was here.
Two more vamps fell on her. An elbow sent one away while a backfist put a stake through the other one's heart. The first staggered forward again only to meet a knee to the stomach and a stake to the back. "How are ya over there, B?"
No answer. Instead another bloodsucker appeared over her. In a near frenzy now, she slammed a fist into its gut with a grunt and uncoiled into an uppercut. The thing was on its back now.
There was a voice calling her name. Louder and louder.
She raised the stake and brought it crashing down into the thing's feminine chest. Buffy's chest. The blonde Slayer looked up at Faith, her face frozen in shock, and back down at the stake buried between her ribs. "Faith... what have you done?"
Faith blinked and looked around the alley. Bodies littered the street: Xander wide-eyed and on his back; Willow twisted like a broken doll; and Wesley face down with a wound between his shoulder blades, his eyes turned toward her. Each was crumpled in the spot where she had dropped a vamp. There were no demons here, no vampires - only innocent blood. Everywhere. Beneath her, Buffy gave a last exhale.
"That's my girl," said a voice in her ear. "That's my Slayer."
"Faith?"
The dark Slayer opened her eyes to Riley, who was leaning over her in bed, his hand across her body, gently rubbing her arm. She looked up at him, confused.
"Faith, it's almost Dawn," he said, gazing earnestly into her eyes. "You have to wake up."
"What? It's-"
"Do I have to spell it out for you?" He sighed and nodded toward the door. The whispers were coming from the other side. "It's time to go."
"Right," said Faith dully to herself. She slid out of the warm bed and stepped through the door into a tiny room. She was afraid of what waited beyond, but she was tired - so tired that it didn't matter to her whether she lived or died.
Three more steps and she collapsed, sliding down into a corner.
This was her safe place. Nothing could get her here. The child's room beyond this closet door was another world. The carpet of broken bottles, used syringes, and filth stopped at its edge. The pain stopped, too.
But now something shook that fragile barrier with a rattle. Another rattle, and a cracking sound. The whispers became a scream - Faith's scream. The closet door was flung wide, and a man pounced on her. Her eyes followed the stake as he raised it behind his head. Alan Finch smiled, swung the stake down, and slammed it into Faith's chest.
Her screams were choked off as she tasted her own blood. Her eyes closed and opened again, and the figure over her was different. Primal. A painted face.
Faith's eyes shot open again, and she leaned forward and spat out the gurgling blood, feeling her cracked ribs tremble. Then she remembered. She was in solitary confinement, and the pain in her chest was very real. It was the reason why she was here.
For a long time, she hadn't been able to feel that pain. For a long time, she hadn't felt anything. But now she was awake and there was no safe place anymore.
And no one was coming to explain, or to console, or to help. Her soft, wet, blood-soaked sobs continued through the night; alone, unheard, on her hands and knees in solitary.
And no one would ever know.
++++++++++
END