Fic: Disassociative (1/2)
title: Disassociative (1/2)
author: Tesla
genre: Post "Not Fade Away"
pairing: Faith/Angel friendship
a/n: Icon by _tayler
I can tell you what they say in space
That our earth is too grey
But when the spirit is so digital
The body acts this way
That world was killing me
That world was killing me
Disassociative ----Marilyn Manson
Funny that the two men who loved me the best, in the purest way, were both demons. I'm not talking about the Watchers and the Watcher-lite, no. I can't say that Giles loved me or that Wes and I had the purity going on. Lot of other stuff went down in LA, but Wes and I were the ones trying to save Angel from the grip of Angelus, and it was generally kind of rushed.
But he's dead, Wes is. So is Cordelia. She never forgave me for clipping her, though. Wes did, eventually, and I did a lot worse things to him. I left scars on Wes, and I'm not talking metaphors. He was pretty familiar with the heart of darkness by the time he came to me, when I was in prison. I wish I'd known what they were doing in Los Angeles, because I would have come sooner and helped. I owed Angel, owed him something that I couldn't explain to B. or the others. Sometime after we went to Cleveland, I got a parole, somehow, from the State of California. It was one of the first things the big guy did when he got hold of Wolfram & Hart.
The lawyers I knew, back in the day, the ones that hired me to kill Angel, they were all dead, too. Too bad. I liked that Lindsey. Sexy.
Spike got out, again, of course. No surprise, man's like a cat. Nine lives and always landing on his feet. One of our Slayers found him under a collapsed brick wall, alive. He got the redemption, because Angel signed it away so he could take down the Senior Partners. So, of course, Spike got B., too.
I can't say that I cared one way or the other. Human Spike is a hell of a lot better than the shitheads that B. was kicking with. I'm not talking about demon, here, just personality. I guess she wanted lightness instead of all of the heavy shit, after years of the Good Fight. Probably would have been a good time for that Riley to be around. He wasn't bad in bed, just not very, I don't know, imaginative. I don't care about that bullshit Robin was always giving me, I know what I'm doing. He was just using psychology on me.
So when Spike said he didn't actually see Angel get dusted, I don't know, something happened to me. I decided I had to go find him.
"Find what? Dust?" B. said, long distance from Rome. She called at one her time, seven in the morning mine, and she always sounded sleepy. Too much Italian food for lunch.
"Don't think he's dusted," I said. Wasn't about to tell her about my dreams. "I wasn't asking you for permission. I'm goin'."
That got me a hang-up. B.'d never really gotten over me having Angelus' bite scar on my neck, let alone all the other shit from my first go-round in good old Sunny D.
All I had to go on was a dream. I can't even call it a Slayer's Dream. But the good thing about being the Senior Slayer in the entire continent, I can generally do what the hell I want about the Mission. And I happened to feel that I had to find the guy who gave me back my mission, gave me back me, even though it hurt him pretty bad at the time. And me getting out and throwing down with the Beast and with Angelus didn't even begin to pay him back. I figured, I owed him, and all the people that didn't get killed because I was there, owed him, and all the little Slayers I was training, owed him. Owed Angel, the original and now the only vampire with a soul.
Besides, I'd been inside his head. I knew a lot of his secrets. I thought I could know where he'd hide, where he'd rest up. And if what Spike told me, he'd be feeling bad because all of his people were dead: Fred, Wesley, Gunn, Cordelia. He could be with that retired God-King, and he---she---had probably been Angel's best shot.
So here I was, in LA, with a backpack with freeze-dried plasma and a Council credit card, and I was taking a cab to the Hyperion. No one had bothered to look for Angel, so why wouldn't he be found? Why would Spike tell the truth? He was human, now, too. Just a regular guy with a British accent.
Never been real thrilled with regular people.
So, not too hard to break into the old hotel. I'd cased it, once before, and then been there for a little while, before Willow and I skated on down to Sunnydale and the big blow. Spent more time in Angelus' head, though.
Spent some time in Angel's head, only he was letting me. When he visited me, in prison, he talked to me about his personal shit. That he was scared that something would make him turn bad; that his crew made fun of his paranoia and his smothering behavior, but they blamed him if he wasn't there. Stuff like that. Because I had the same thing. I could have broken out, easy. I could have killed any other bitch who gave me a problem. He could kill anyone, take what he wanted, really. He could have stayed in Sunnydale. Or he could have just let himself go and lived under the radar.
Neither one of us could do that. Hell, talk about being the real Destiny's Child---you can't avoid it. I was a Slayer and he was a Champion and we weren't supposed to spend our time kick-boxing and watching television.
I worked my way around the place, through all the wings, just for shits and giggles. I didn't really think he'd be there, waiting to be found. But, if he ever came back, he'd smell me there. Slayer-smell's pretty strong to a vampire.
He wasn't going to be in his old suite, or in one of the dusty old bedrooms, or even in the rooms full of broken furniture and stacks of old mattresses. I really did know where he'd go. He'd be in the sewers, somewhere, eating rats. Punishing himself for failing. I just kind of wanted to put off the search.
I didn't really think it would be too hard. The Slayer, the one who found Spike, was rescuing a human being. She wasn't looking to save any vampires, or blue-faced gods.
So I went to the basement, and pried up the trapdoor.
The kinky thing about sewer systems, is that they're so perfect for demonic activity. It makes you wonder about who the hell is on the water boards. I mean, come off it. Ventilation, lights, catwalks. If you didn't mind the rats and the smell, the temperature was usually constant. That's why some clans of demons had condos down there, actually.
Demons tend to stay away from Slayers. Some of the girls are kinda over-enthusiastic, y'know? Kill first and apologize later. I didn't expect to find any trouble, and I didn't.
I walked a route from the Hyperion to downtown, wondering.
In my dreams, Angel was walking with me through a night landscape, just like I had taken Orpheus, again. I kept hearing that Marilyn Manson song, "Disassociative". That's how it started. I just knew, that if I went down to the places where the demons hide, I recognize the place in my dreams.
I knew I'd recognize where he slept.
That's what some of the prison shrinks thought I had goin' on. Why else would a girl knife two guys in Sunnydale, and then kill a guy in Los Angeles, and then confess? But see, the Mayor had taken care of the two guys in Sunnydale, just in case I woke up. He'd destroyed all the evidence, I guess as a back-up plan in case I didn't make the body-switch with B.
So I know about real disassociative disorder, when you're in someone else's body, in someone else's life. I know all about it. I always figured, being a Slayer meant that you had a kind of a demon in you, too. I didn't get to go to school like B. and Willow and people. But I know what parole officers and social workers had said about me over the years; that I was disassociative due to my growin' up with the old lady in Boston.
The real thing was seeing my first Watcher killed. It was like, I found an adult to trust, who knew the answers, and then---I still don't like thinking about it. I think that's what I was doing to Wesley, that time---and I don't like thinking about that, either.
I used to talk about that stuff to Angel, though. He'd done things a lot worse than I ever did. He understood me. And I think I trusted him, because he wasn't going to be killed; he wasn't going to leave me or betray me.
The nervous systems down, the nervous systems down
I don't know why I connect Angel to the Mayor, but it's true; the Honorable was like a Daddy to me. No nasty motel room for the Mayor's Slayer, but the dee-luxe apartment. Oh, yeah, evil demon, killed people. But the weird thing was, he was sincere with all that drinking milk and early bedtime stuff, and he really loved me.
I think Angel felt guilty, too, about the time we knocked boots when he was pretending to have lost his soul. It was damn good sex, but Angel always had to get the maximum guilt out of his enjoyment. Buffy probably gave him shit and then he told me he felt bad for using me.
"De nada, dude," I told him, staring through the Plexiglas and thinkin' some warm thoughts, vistors' room be damned. "Best wrestlin' I ever had."
So maybe that was my secret. I compared everyone to him, because, damn he was a good lay, and he was my only vampire, too.
"Right now, I just want you to wriggle."
Damn, Deadboy, where would you be hidin'?
author: Tesla
genre: Post "Not Fade Away"
pairing: Faith/Angel friendship
a/n: Icon by _tayler
I can tell you what they say in space
That our earth is too grey
But when the spirit is so digital
The body acts this way
That world was killing me
That world was killing me
Disassociative ----Marilyn Manson
Funny that the two men who loved me the best, in the purest way, were both demons. I'm not talking about the Watchers and the Watcher-lite, no. I can't say that Giles loved me or that Wes and I had the purity going on. Lot of other stuff went down in LA, but Wes and I were the ones trying to save Angel from the grip of Angelus, and it was generally kind of rushed.
But he's dead, Wes is. So is Cordelia. She never forgave me for clipping her, though. Wes did, eventually, and I did a lot worse things to him. I left scars on Wes, and I'm not talking metaphors. He was pretty familiar with the heart of darkness by the time he came to me, when I was in prison. I wish I'd known what they were doing in Los Angeles, because I would have come sooner and helped. I owed Angel, owed him something that I couldn't explain to B. or the others. Sometime after we went to Cleveland, I got a parole, somehow, from the State of California. It was one of the first things the big guy did when he got hold of Wolfram & Hart.
The lawyers I knew, back in the day, the ones that hired me to kill Angel, they were all dead, too. Too bad. I liked that Lindsey. Sexy.
Spike got out, again, of course. No surprise, man's like a cat. Nine lives and always landing on his feet. One of our Slayers found him under a collapsed brick wall, alive. He got the redemption, because Angel signed it away so he could take down the Senior Partners. So, of course, Spike got B., too.
I can't say that I cared one way or the other. Human Spike is a hell of a lot better than the shitheads that B. was kicking with. I'm not talking about demon, here, just personality. I guess she wanted lightness instead of all of the heavy shit, after years of the Good Fight. Probably would have been a good time for that Riley to be around. He wasn't bad in bed, just not very, I don't know, imaginative. I don't care about that bullshit Robin was always giving me, I know what I'm doing. He was just using psychology on me.
So when Spike said he didn't actually see Angel get dusted, I don't know, something happened to me. I decided I had to go find him.
"Find what? Dust?" B. said, long distance from Rome. She called at one her time, seven in the morning mine, and she always sounded sleepy. Too much Italian food for lunch.
"Don't think he's dusted," I said. Wasn't about to tell her about my dreams. "I wasn't asking you for permission. I'm goin'."
That got me a hang-up. B.'d never really gotten over me having Angelus' bite scar on my neck, let alone all the other shit from my first go-round in good old Sunny D.
All I had to go on was a dream. I can't even call it a Slayer's Dream. But the good thing about being the Senior Slayer in the entire continent, I can generally do what the hell I want about the Mission. And I happened to feel that I had to find the guy who gave me back my mission, gave me back me, even though it hurt him pretty bad at the time. And me getting out and throwing down with the Beast and with Angelus didn't even begin to pay him back. I figured, I owed him, and all the people that didn't get killed because I was there, owed him, and all the little Slayers I was training, owed him. Owed Angel, the original and now the only vampire with a soul.
Besides, I'd been inside his head. I knew a lot of his secrets. I thought I could know where he'd hide, where he'd rest up. And if what Spike told me, he'd be feeling bad because all of his people were dead: Fred, Wesley, Gunn, Cordelia. He could be with that retired God-King, and he---she---had probably been Angel's best shot.
So here I was, in LA, with a backpack with freeze-dried plasma and a Council credit card, and I was taking a cab to the Hyperion. No one had bothered to look for Angel, so why wouldn't he be found? Why would Spike tell the truth? He was human, now, too. Just a regular guy with a British accent.
Never been real thrilled with regular people.
So, not too hard to break into the old hotel. I'd cased it, once before, and then been there for a little while, before Willow and I skated on down to Sunnydale and the big blow. Spent more time in Angelus' head, though.
Spent some time in Angel's head, only he was letting me. When he visited me, in prison, he talked to me about his personal shit. That he was scared that something would make him turn bad; that his crew made fun of his paranoia and his smothering behavior, but they blamed him if he wasn't there. Stuff like that. Because I had the same thing. I could have broken out, easy. I could have killed any other bitch who gave me a problem. He could kill anyone, take what he wanted, really. He could have stayed in Sunnydale. Or he could have just let himself go and lived under the radar.
Neither one of us could do that. Hell, talk about being the real Destiny's Child---you can't avoid it. I was a Slayer and he was a Champion and we weren't supposed to spend our time kick-boxing and watching television.
I worked my way around the place, through all the wings, just for shits and giggles. I didn't really think he'd be there, waiting to be found. But, if he ever came back, he'd smell me there. Slayer-smell's pretty strong to a vampire.
He wasn't going to be in his old suite, or in one of the dusty old bedrooms, or even in the rooms full of broken furniture and stacks of old mattresses. I really did know where he'd go. He'd be in the sewers, somewhere, eating rats. Punishing himself for failing. I just kind of wanted to put off the search.
I didn't really think it would be too hard. The Slayer, the one who found Spike, was rescuing a human being. She wasn't looking to save any vampires, or blue-faced gods.
So I went to the basement, and pried up the trapdoor.
The kinky thing about sewer systems, is that they're so perfect for demonic activity. It makes you wonder about who the hell is on the water boards. I mean, come off it. Ventilation, lights, catwalks. If you didn't mind the rats and the smell, the temperature was usually constant. That's why some clans of demons had condos down there, actually.
Demons tend to stay away from Slayers. Some of the girls are kinda over-enthusiastic, y'know? Kill first and apologize later. I didn't expect to find any trouble, and I didn't.
I walked a route from the Hyperion to downtown, wondering.
In my dreams, Angel was walking with me through a night landscape, just like I had taken Orpheus, again. I kept hearing that Marilyn Manson song, "Disassociative". That's how it started. I just knew, that if I went down to the places where the demons hide, I recognize the place in my dreams.
I knew I'd recognize where he slept.
That's what some of the prison shrinks thought I had goin' on. Why else would a girl knife two guys in Sunnydale, and then kill a guy in Los Angeles, and then confess? But see, the Mayor had taken care of the two guys in Sunnydale, just in case I woke up. He'd destroyed all the evidence, I guess as a back-up plan in case I didn't make the body-switch with B.
So I know about real disassociative disorder, when you're in someone else's body, in someone else's life. I know all about it. I always figured, being a Slayer meant that you had a kind of a demon in you, too. I didn't get to go to school like B. and Willow and people. But I know what parole officers and social workers had said about me over the years; that I was disassociative due to my growin' up with the old lady in Boston.
The real thing was seeing my first Watcher killed. It was like, I found an adult to trust, who knew the answers, and then---I still don't like thinking about it. I think that's what I was doing to Wesley, that time---and I don't like thinking about that, either.
I used to talk about that stuff to Angel, though. He'd done things a lot worse than I ever did. He understood me. And I think I trusted him, because he wasn't going to be killed; he wasn't going to leave me or betray me.
The nervous systems down, the nervous systems down
I don't know why I connect Angel to the Mayor, but it's true; the Honorable was like a Daddy to me. No nasty motel room for the Mayor's Slayer, but the dee-luxe apartment. Oh, yeah, evil demon, killed people. But the weird thing was, he was sincere with all that drinking milk and early bedtime stuff, and he really loved me.
I think Angel felt guilty, too, about the time we knocked boots when he was pretending to have lost his soul. It was damn good sex, but Angel always had to get the maximum guilt out of his enjoyment. Buffy probably gave him shit and then he told me he felt bad for using me.
"De nada, dude," I told him, staring through the Plexiglas and thinkin' some warm thoughts, vistors' room be damned. "Best wrestlin' I ever had."
So maybe that was my secret. I compared everyone to him, because, damn he was a good lay, and he was my only vampire, too.
"Right now, I just want you to wriggle."
Damn, Deadboy, where would you be hidin'?