Echoes

AUTHOR: Kita (Donna M.)

EMAIL: Kita0610@aol.com

RATING: R

INFO: Takes place immediately after "The Gift" & "There's No Place Like Pltz Grb". // indicate dialogue and/or flashbacks to scenes from multiple eps. POV alternates between Faith and Angel. Yes, this is pretty much hetfic. It's not, however, 'shippery.

GRATITUDE: Criss, 'cause she's a spectacularly bossy beta. Jess, 'cause she'll always be my favorite. Couldn't have done it without either of them. Little shout out to Lar fic in here, 'cause she rocks Faith. See if you can find it. Paisean made me a gif to go with this story. Click HERE to see it.

DISCLAIMERS: I don't own Faith, Angel or any of these characters. But I would take 'em if I could, and only share with Joss if he promised to be nicer to them.

FEEDBACK: Gratefully accepted at the above address.

Echoes

~~~"You did it, B. You killed me."

Uprush of air after a fall, sickening thwack of skull. And the blood. Years later, and still the blood.

But she isn't falling backward this time, instead she has twisted in the air like a scared little kitten, and the ground rushes toward her face and that's - wrong.

Blood from her ears, small trickles of red life. Hope running out, hope /dying/. Blood tears, and her nose is...licks her lips, tastes the salt.

Hears the crying around her, but can't pry open her eyes to see who it is.

That's wrong too. No one ever cries for her.

--

"Aren't you ever going to take this thing out?"

Sunshine pouring through lace curtains catches the gleam of the blade buried to the hilt in her belly. She leans over pristine white sheets, and grabs Buffy by the back of the head. The blond Slayer goes limp in her arms, unresisting in the mockery of an embrace. Whisper in Faith's dreammind: Buffy could choose to fight this, she could choose a different way out. But she doesn't. Even as Faith's fangs descend, even as she stabs at Buffy's neck without art or mercy, even as she tears out half of her throat and lets the exposed artery shower them both and the pale yellow wallpaper in red, red blood.

Bends her head again and the blood rushes toward her to fill the void left by teeth and time. The sweet sound of suckling and slowing heartbeat is so loud inside her skull, it takes a moment for Faith to realize that she is not the only one moaning with the pleasure of this kill.

--

"You can't kill me, B. You kill me, you become me."

Leans in to drop a kiss on the damp forehead. Holds her close, just a little too close, scent of rage and rain and self.

Feels the knife slide in again, sees the shocked look on Buffy's small face. Gasps in pain and, this time, tastes her own blood in her throat. Edge of the roof, and falling....

Even in sleep, she grabs for the wound in her stomach, the one which has never really healed //aren't you ever gonna take this thing out// and pulls her hands away sticky and warm.

"You did it. You killed me."~~~

She wakes from the dream with a small shout and the echo of pain in her side. Curls into fetal position on the thin mattress, feeling every poke and splinter of the metal frame beneath. Reaches to wipe the sweat off her brow, and smells it.

Blood.

Frantically lifts her shirt, checks the bloodless scar on her stomach and then swears under her breath. " Idiot."

She is reaching under her bunk for the box of tampons when she sees the door. Or the space where the door should be. But isn't. She leans forward and squints her eyes, certain that this is just a trick of the light, or one more fucked-up dream...But her side aches enough to tell her that she is awake, and the blood is seeping from between her legs, staining the hideous orange jumper she wears even to sleep. And the cell door is still open.

On her feet in less than a breath, and at the opening in less than two. Dark, too dark, and much, much too quiet. She fights the urge to pinch herself again, and snaps at the faded pale green rubber band around her wrist instead. Tiny shock of pain along bruised blue flesh. She swallows, looks around.

Her clothes are laid out neatly by her open cell door. A manilla envelope containing all her personal belongings sits atop her black t-shirt and faded denims. Inside her scuffed Doc Martins, a crisp one hundred dollar bill.

She turns her back to the door and vomits into the steel sink.

**

She is dressed and at the front gate just as the sun peeks over the mountains which she could never quite see from inside her cell. She'd passed each interior door and the guards had simply buzzed her through, without once meeting her gaze. At the third door she stopped demanding answers from them.

Moot point. She already knew.

She'd had her regular period two weeks ago.

She walks to the small convenience store at the edge of the compound, uses the restroom, and digs some change out of her jeans.

All she has is his cell phone number, she can't remember the number to his hotel, and he's probably not there anyway. The last note she got from him said simply "24-35-46". It wasn't even signed, but she knew who it was from. What it meant. The combination to his safe's lock, because he may not ever get back from whereeverthehell he went off to this time to be able to open it. But this is *Angel*, and if ...if what she has deduced is truth, then he would be around. No matter where he'd been, he'd have found a way back by now. Surely she isn't the first to have been../told/.

Unless that was what her dream had been about, unless they're *both*--

"Yea?" Deep voice, rough and torn around the edges. Wet.

Voices in the background. Wesley.

Willow.

Crying.

She breathes. "A-Angel..?" And can think of nothing else to say. Her fingers are slippery on the ancient pay phone.

"I'll be there," he says.

The line goes dead in her hands.

**

The drive from LA to the high desert is four hours at best. Take into account the fact that Angel wouldn't want to hit the endless expanse of white sandy nothingness when the sun is mid-sky, and she figures she's got at least a seven hour wait.

The pimply faced kid behind the cash register at the 7-11 wouldn't break her hundred, but after watching her pace in the heat for over two hours, she guesses he felt sorry for her. He brought her out a few bottled waters and a candy bar, along with his teen aged version of a flirtatious smile. Tried to make with the chit chat too, but something about the way she was holding herself must have put him off. Maybe it was the fact that she was snapping the band inside her wrist hard enough to draw blood. Now he just sneaks a few peeks at her from behind his car magazine; he hasn't left his post in over an hour.

The oppressive heat and lack of sleep are making her tired, but when she closes her eyes all she sees are puddles of blood and cool white metal. The sunshine makes them both look beautiful. She snaps her rubber band and stays awake.

By the time noon rolls around, it is so hot that everything has a bluish cast, a watery mirage of steam rising off anything that attracts the sun. She dumps one of the bottles of water over her head, and kicks her Docs off. Within five minutes the concrete is too hot on her soles, and she ends up putting the shoes back on. She ties the long black laces carefully, pulling each one to get the length just right, undoing them and tying them again when they are still too loose. When she's done with that, she toys with the rubber band some more.

Idle hands.

Waiting for anything has always made her palms itch, even before she was Called. But she doesn't think about the irony of a Slayer being picked up from her stint in prison by a vampire. 'Cause then she'd have to think about the fact that she's *The* Slayer. And then she'd have to think about how that happened. And until Angel shows, she sure as hell isn't going to think about that.

Or about why she is still bleeding.

Or why she feels so. godamn. strong.

By two o' clock she can't feel her wrist anymore.

***

Miles of nothing but sweating asphalt and deadly sun. The road is black and silver and gray and there is nothing to see.

Someone like him should be able to see death coming, he thinks. But all he can ever see is the aftermath. Graveyards and tears. Random visions of grief and memory.

((Buffy's mother had died, and he was in his car.

Desperately trying to think of the right thing to say when he saw her. Because the clearest memory he has of his own mother is killing her.

A three hour drive to think about that. To recall small hands and angry words. To cover the ancient and forever wound with something silver and shining. Corn silk hair and firsts and only's. To breathe in and out, and try not to rage against the draw, the knowledge that the cemeteries of Sunnydale still lived inside of them both.

He let the top down when the last purple rays flew the sky, and convinced himself that his presence would be comfort enough.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner." Because supplications always spill so easily from his lips in the face of Redemption. Harder to stumble if he is already on his knees.

Her fingers interlocked with his, a basic, guiless gesture of trust. Laid him bare.

He sat with her in the dirt. Cloying scent of too many flowers covered the more familiar notes of freshly turned grave soil. Hours there. Beneath the dead tree which had long ago seen them grasping and suckling at one another, with a passion and affection he would never find again, wasn't often certain he believed in anymore.

Until she kissed him, with that living mouth and tongue tasting like grief and mashed potatoes. Comfort food. Godamn violins in the background he swears; but he kept up the Gentleman Vamp, he did. Pulled back, apologized again, and held her chastely 'til sunrise.

All the while seeing himself tearing into her, spilling open and breaking, railing into her softness and sacred heat. Blamed the demon for the image, lit like fireflies around her. Her face in simple ecstasy. Fucking her on her mother's grave.

Two years, and nothing had really changed.

And, he had to go.))

Road bleeds into sky.

Willow, standing in his hotel. She didn't belong there, not when he was just getting it all back together, not when he had just made it right with them all. Not ever. She is not of this place, and he was never really of theirs. Still she stood, dressed in tear stained clothing and Buffy's jacket. Echoes of the past that hunt him down no matter what skin he finds himself in. Princesses with visions, prissy Englishmen playing at warrior, and tiny blond lovers carrying the scent of Earth and woman. The voices that call him back. The dead that never stay buried.

She didn't have to say anything, of course.

He just knew.

One fragile glassbubble moment when Cordelia gasped and Wesley stepped two feet closer to him, and Willow blinked huge dewy eyes and looked away... He thought maybe if he didn't move, or blink, if he could remember that he didn't *have* to breathe...that time would stop. After all, it had stopped for him (them) once before.

It cannot be mere arrogance, this belief that his grief is surely the end of the world, because the end of the world really does hinge on his destiny.

And somehow his destiny had always been tied up in Hers. The equivalent of centuries worth of agony could not turn Beloved into enemy; the passage of mere months or miles would never turn her into simply friend. Nothing had changed.

(And he had just kissed her...)

Two years spent carefully creating this space where his redemption was about humanity, his own sins, and divine forgiveness. Then there was Willow with those eyes of pity and scent of Home, and suddenly he was staring down locked windows, once more lurking in the shadows of lives he could never touch. Once more remembering days that never were and nights that never should have been.

Voices around him but he said nothing. Because if he stays silent time will stop and silence is easy and the rest will not be and

it was all a lie.

The threats of the Demons, the promises of the Powers, shanshus and epiphanies and everything that he has built. A creation made of soap bubbles and mortality and things which do not last.

He did not come to LA to save his fucked up soul, he came to save his sanity. He is weak and he is selfish, and he could not spend one more day in a town covered in her and not be able have her. He did not struggle for redemption to find favor with the gods, he struggled to be deserving of *her* favor. It has always been so, no matter what he says, or who he surrounds himself with, or how many others tell him that they love him.

There was only one girl who who ever called him worthy, even when he was not. One girl who looked at him and saw a man not a monster -even when he was one. He sent her away and she grew to be a woman, she forgot chocolate and sunshine but she remembered him leaving without saying good-bye, and so she loved another man. But to him she will always be seventeen. Will always be standing in his doorway swearing to him that she is his. He will always remember hesitant hands and pink blush and his name scribbled on school folders.

He stood in his lobby and he waited for the pain, he is still waiting for the pain. There should be pain. But instead there was /is/

Nothing.

Hands reached for him, hands /touching/ him but, Nothing.

He bit through the inside of his cheek and he could not taste the blood. He fancied for another moment that he'd lost his soul. Because he hadn't felt so gloriously hollow since he was Angelus, so wiped clean since he returned from Hell a mindless animal. He looked around at the humans gathered within arms reach and waited for their blood to sing to him. Waited for the clarity of a baser purpose. Waited for the punch line.

Nothing.

Then Willow was leaving, something about making funeral arrangements and would they all be there. He wanted to say something, then. Wanted to say "No, no I won't be there, I have this new life now, you know, and I can't go dropping everything every time someone in Sunnydale dies." But of course, he didn't. He didn't say anything at all. Not that he isn't a consummate liar, you see.

//I want my life to be with you

I don't//

//You're all fired//

//It's all right, I can handle it. Let me worry about the neediness//

It's just that he has no more voice for pretend.

His cell phone rang just as he walked Willow out to her car, just as she reached up to... hug him. So grateful for that distraction, for the excuse to pull back from her without having to say in the Other voice don't. you. fucking. touch. me. Invasive and presumptuous with their stares and their human hands, and Angelus swimming so close to the surface that their collective fearsorrowfear was little more than a godamn aphrodisiac...

His little reminder that the lie he lives goes much deeper.

And... he has to go.

Bite and avoid his truest skills, runaway and silence. Nothing has changed.

He climbed into his convertible and was 200 miles up Rt. 1 before he even realized that he hadn't told them where he was off to. (That was part of the new game now, wasn't it? The rules say that a good vampire always tells his keepers where he is going and when he will be back.)

He notices the phone on the seat next to him is ringing again, that in fact it has not yet stopped. He has no idea what he would say if he answered it. So he turns it off.

And yes, he knows they love him. He knows they worry. He knows they are the only family he has, will ever have. But what could he possibly say?

Avoid is easier. Than insanity. Than falling apart again.

Breaking down and salting the earth with human-like tears won't bring her back. And if he can't have that, then there is only asphalt and sun and silence.

***

It is 4:00 when the black car with heavily tinted windows pulls into the lot. Squeal of tires on gravel and a spray of gray dust. Faith blinks sunburned lids and grabs her backpack, hefting it over one shoulder.

She moves to stand but the ground shifts beneath her feet, and then she is falling

//-falling- //

No. She grabs for the door handle. Breathes in a lungful of smoke and gasoline.

Maybe she got it all wrong. Maybe she got let out for a different reason. Maybe it was Lindsey, maybe it was Wolfram and Hart. Maybe it was the godamn tooth fairy. Anything is possible, right?

Caressing the pieces of false hope like shards of glass in bloodied fingers, gently, gently. He pushes open the heavy passenger door from the inside and leans away from the sunlight. The last of illusions shatter in her fist. She knows that face: shuttered and dark, empty empty eyes, (and god, is that what I used to look like?) She can hear the last bit of glass tinkling as it hits the ground

//covered in Wesley's blood falling two stories I'm bad Angel Kill me I'm bad//

and this is

//wrong//

She shouldn't be here, she is not ready yet, this is wrong, it's-

"It's Buffy."

It's not a question, and he doesn't answer her.

In fact, he says nothing at all as they pull out of the lot and toward the highway. Nothing as they turn onto the entrance ramp, and nothing as the car idles in the evening's rush hour traffic. She taps her leg against the dash, toys with her rubber band, and stares at his profile. He doesn't move except to drive. She is halfway to flipping on the radio when she realizes there isn't one. Car horns, and sirens in the distance. Her stomach rumbles.

"I'm hungry," she says. Angel just nods.

Thirty minutes later they pull into a diner beneath a neon sign that says " ocs". Whatever. It has to beat the hell out of prison food. And if Angel is going to do tall-dark-and-silent-guy, then he can at least buy her a decent meal. She jumps out of the passenger door before the car is even parked, stuffs two tampons into her pocket and heads inside.

When she gets back from the bathroom, he has his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, and there is a chocolate shake on her place mat. He doesn't look up when she climbs into the torn vinyl seat across from him.

"So are you going to tell me what happened, or are we gonna play twenty questions with it?"

Angel takes a sip of black coffee. "I'll tell you what Willow told me."

His voice isn't wet anymore. It's empty, dark, and she can hear the echoes inside. Like the week she spent in solitary confinement for breaking another prisoner's arm. Concrete and naked rage. He doesn't tell her much she hadn't already guessed at from the dreams, and when he is finished, he sits back once more in his silence.

Watching her eat three hamburgers and two orders of fries. Watching her jiggle her leg in time to non-existent music. Watching her scratch at the raw skin of her palms, and the bruised skin of her wrist. He says nothing.

She has spent the last year without real company, and sometimes her own thoughts are so loud, she would swear they are being broadcast for everyone to hear. She knows that's crazy, and guesses that means then that she's not. Crazy people don't *know* they're crazy. When Faith was really crazy, she felt completely sane. It was everyone else who was fucked up. Sitting in this diner without bars between herself and a grieving vampire makes her wonder. Maybe she is still crazy. Maybe he is. Hardly surprising either way.

She knows he is... aware of her. Her agitation, her insatiable hunger, her blood. Catches his nostrils flaring just once, when she shifts in her seat and swallows down her second slice of apple pie. She excuses herself to use the rest room, strangely grateful to find that the bleeding has finally stopped.

When she gets back to the table, Angel is in his coat, standing, and there is a pile of bills under the water glass.

"Ready?" he asks. But he is already halfway to the door.

***

Angel sucks in a breath of stale night air, and pulls the car door open. So grateful to get away from the glare of fluorescent lights, and the grating thumpthump of humanity. Too many others fluttering around him when it's wrong that anyone else still exists at all. This strange grief has narrowed his world down to two. One is gone-dead-gone, and the other stares at him now over the hood of his car, wearing the skins and the muscles and the presence of all those who came before her. All those who have already died to serve the Council's twisted creed of "one per generation". How far back, how deep does it go, he wonders? How much would he have to tear away in order to get to the part inside of her that is now Buffy?

//Slayer's blood, it's the only cure//

He wonders if she even knows what it all means. She's never been the Only one. He can't stand to look at her, but he can't bear to stop.

//I tried, but she got away...//

She's not bleeding anymore. The last time she left the table she came back smelling like old blood and cheap soap.

//Then it's over//

He slams his door shut and looks at her. "Do you need anything else?"

"Yea, I really need to get cleaned up."

Angel almost laughs out loud at the tired metaphor. He thinks of taking her back to the Hyperion for a shower and night's sleep. But even if she would agree to go, he has no patience for the emotional repercussions that would be sure to follow. ((Cordelia's first real black eye and the the numbness which has never faded from Wesley's right hand.)) He hasn't the strength to unearth yet more carelessly buried anger. And he's not sure he wants her there, anyway. Yet one more living lesson that the past is never over, and he is never clean.

So he drives south toward the shore. Faith can wash her sins in the ocean, he will watch from dry land. Angel has never believed in baptism. She falls asleep on the way, her head resting on the glass, her right hand still twitching in her lap. He watches the road, follows the pattern of asphalt and white, and lets the silence take him down.

**

Half an hour to the beach, the sky is black and blue. She strips to the waist and he turns around 'til he hears the splash. Fishes in his trunk for something dry while she swims.

He wordlessly hands her a large cotton shirt when she climbs out of the surf. She towels dry with it, then slides it on over her bra and panties. He stares.

"Can't stand the prison smell on my other clothes," she explains. Plops down smoothly onto the sand and finger combs her wet hair. Something graceful about her now, something centered. Prison did not give her that gift.

Her voice, scratching along the surface of his silence again. "When are you going back to Sunnydale?"

Angel shrugs, his hands still and bloodless at his sides. Sunnydale means Buffy's funeral. It means putting her into the ground, and she will not claw her way out in frozen, white skin. She will rot. Fifty years from now, no one will tend to her grave. He's seen enough graves in two hundred and fifty years to know. Eventually, they all fall to dust.

She stares up at him. "*Are* you going back?"

Another shrug. He wants to go home. Right now, however, he cannot remember exactly what that word means, only that it used to mean Buffy.

"Hey...Angel..are you..are you all right?" Stupid question, and he knows she knows that. Understands that its rhetorical, that it's what people say to one another. What friends say. But he isn't a person, has never felt so far from personhood as he does right now, and he has proven time and time again that he has no idea how to navigate friendships with any sort of success. Love, compassion, connection, these are all worldly things. He doesn't much *like* the world, certainly doesn't trust it, and really never has. Once again he's back to bite or avoid, and the biting got his ass kicked in recent past, so he's chosen avoid this time around. It's simple process of elimination to him.

But Faith does not understand avoid. Faith needs the world for answers. For someone to blame, someone to hit, something to kill. It is her nature, and he can smell her annoyance rising at his reluctance to engage. It smells mildly like like almonds and whiskey. Makes his gums itch.

"Godamn it, Angel aren't you going to say *anything?*"

"I told you what happened. That's all I know. What else could I possibly say that would make any difference?" He is working harder at calm now. Steady voice and steeled control to keep the quiet wrapped round him with the dark. Noise and light, both too painful to contemplate. Frightening. Like falling from a high place and shattering....

"What has that got to do with anything? Making a difference? You been standing around like some stupid statue all day and you expect no one to notice?" She rises to face him, so he turns away.

"No one ever noticed before."

"Oh right, that's it. Feel sorry for yourself. *That's* sure to make a difference. Why won't you talk to me for godsake?"

Small rumble in his throat, but not... his. "Faith - don't push this. Not now."

"Why? What are you afraid of?" Her voice is higher, louder. Curious that no matter the way Slayers shout, they never seem to sound afraid. Never sound like Cordy, or even Wesley. Never sound hysterical. "You scared of me? Of getting angry?"

"*Getting* angry? I'm already angry. I'm - leave it alone." ((Please leave it alone.))

"You are? Wow. Coulda fooled me. Cause from where I'm standing it mostly looks like tough guy vampire fest."

"You don't have any idea what you're talking about. You don't know how I feel. You don't even know *me.* Go tell it to your shrink and leave me alone." His fingers twisting now, stuffed inside his pockets, fondling tiny pieces of lint, and crumpled silk.

She snorts. "Oh see, that's where you're wrong baby. I know you real well. I know you inside. Better than anyone. Better than B ever did." Two steps in now, and much too close.

"Don't you dare, Faith." His own voice half an octave lower. He has to say her name, has to keep reminding himself that she is a person, someone he knows, has cared for, has wanted to keep safe. This is important. Because she doesn't understand avoid and his gums itch and she is much. too. close.

His anger has never failed to push anyone away. In the most secret places inside, he counts on their fear to give him his boundary, his border. It has always worked ((I love you now leave me alone)) but it is not working now. Not here. Not with her.

Faith.

Faith. Repeats the name.

//Faith wins again//

He watches as her legs part in loose fighting stance. Wonders idly if she's even aware. "Why? Whatcha gonna do, hit me? Why the hell won't you just break down and admit you're pissed? The world won't end if you get pissed off, Angel. Come on. You're mad. I can see it all over you. I can smell it for godssake. You're mad and -"

He pulls back before that small, powerful hand can find his shoulder. Opens his mouth to tell her once more just to leave it, to beg her if that is what's necessary, because the sea breeze is carrying the scent of fightorflight and he is in no mood for the latter, just apathetic enough for the former. He can come up with a fistful of righteous excuses to hurt this girl and 'mad' is too simple, too human, too many miles from the mark.

"No, I'm not mad, Faith. I'm fucking furious. With Giles for letting her do this, with Willow and Xander for not saving her. I'm furious because Spike..*Spike* was there when she died and I wasn't. I'm furious at her stupid little sister for being some kind of godamn key. For the way they're all gonna look at me when I go to her funeral. All of them, I could kill every single fucking one of them, Faith. Every last one, and it would feel good, and it still wouldn't bring her back, so what is the fucking point of all this?"

Angel does not bother to state the obvious. Furious at Faith for still being here when Buffy is not. Furious at himself for so many things he would not know where to start with the telling. It bleeds from him, and speaking it would be superfluous.

"Point is you're not the world's best actor anymore. Mainly, you're just full of shit."

He turns to look at her face, finally. "Fuck you."

"No. Fuck you, Angel. Fuck you. You're a godamn coward. You can't even speak it. Can't even admit that the one you're really mad at is her."

"What? That's insane." ((Leave it alone. Leave it alone. Leave me alone.))

"Is it? She fucking bailed, baby. She bailed on you, and me, and the whole sorry godforsaken world. She chose to take a swan dive off a tower for some kid that we both know don't even *exist* 'cause she got what? Tired? Well *fuck* her. Fuck her, Angel, and her sorry ass tired. *I'm* tired every stinking motherfucking day and I get up and do it. She was nothing but a godamn coward, and whatever it is she didn't wanna deal with- me, you, farmboy, her mommy dying, well, swell, now she doesn't have to 'cause she's fucking *dead*."

"Stop it!" Grabs her by the shoulders, half fangs and half tears, hot breath on his face. Thinks of Drusilla pressing both hands to her ears and humming to deafen the shouts when Angelus came to blows with Darla, or Spike. Has the insane urge to do the same right now, lest he break open. Held together only by spit and string, and the warm, safe silence she is shattering with her voice and her truth and her bearing.

"No, I'm not gonna stop it! Someone has to say it! Precious little blond SuperSlayer was really a stupid, selfish, bi-"

His palm connects with her cheek the instant his snarl bares jagged canines and too many teeth. Gold eyes never could abide his own tears. So he swallows down the sorrow in favor of the satisfying *thwap* of outstretched fingers on soft breaking skin, and the tiny echo of her brain bouncing inside of her skull. This clarity of purpose so much more comforting than silence. And falling not so terrifying after all.

Her fist flies between his eyes in retaliation before he is able to raise both of his own in self defense. The bones rearranging behind elastic flesh to suit the demon save him from the full on pain of a shattered nose. He still stumbles backward from the sheer force of her blow. She is stronger now as well. He should have remembered that.

Shakes his head a bit until the buzzing in his ears slows, sees the mark of his ring clearly imprinted on her face.

//You hit me//

Righteous excuses. She is Predator and Familiar and he cannot stop, does not want to stop. Lunges forward one more time, but she is faster now too, and her booted foot catches him in the center of his chest. He sprawls with an undignified "ooof" and a series of dull thuds as ass, back and finally skull connect with well packed sand.

She lands atop him on a shout, and he is scarcely able to fend off the rain of manic punches and kicks. Bruises on his face and chest, and small cuts on her skin where he haphazardly catches her with nails and teeth. She is bleeding. Hot, sticky wet coating his fingertips and fingernails. He stares at his hands.

//Then it's over//

What else does Faith's flesh carry now that she is Alone? If he sucked his hands clean, who would he taste? (Cemetery dirt and chocolate cake, death and the visceral knowledge of home.)

//It's not over, it's never over//

Licks his fingers, one after the other, searching for her there.

//Strands of wet blond hair in his mouth as he suckled at her neck until her heart slowed, near to dying and still, still moaning his name.//

He hears it now from far away, buried beneath the sound of wasps and thunder. His name. His arms are pinned to his sides.

"Angel I'm sorry, I'm sorry Angel, I'm so sorry."

//Angel I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Oh god, Angel I'm so sorry//

Hot tears falling on the ridges of his face, and they cannot abide such emotion either. Shift and flash until human eyes look up from wet lashes as Faith melts against his chest, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.."

//Everyone is so sorry//

Burrowed into him like a small and fragile thing when she certainly is not, looking up at him with a warmth and innocence she does not possess. But he will believe it. Believe in the illusion of it, the *nostalgia* of it, because that's the only thing left to him finally. It has all fallen to ash and bone, and there is nothing left but this. Echo.

It's almost real. Warm and lush and beating. Hands on his face and lips on his chin drifting upward, waiting for him to pull away.

He doesn't.

Because there are no violins in this kiss, but there is a painful familiarity. There's the sense of the world sliding under his feet, the stark understanding that this is stupid, and wrong. Like the alleyway in Galway, like the back room of the Bronze, like every other time someone has touched him in tenderness when every muscle in his body screamed at him to look beneath.

Fangs and poison tipped arrows and the love of women he adored as well as he could. All the things that touch his cold, cold skin but never stay inside. But Faith will swear no allegiance. She will not look at him with anything resembling sweetness or promise. He can rest safe here, in the knowledge that she will not speak vows

//I'll never forget I'll never forget

You'll never be alone//

then go and do something as fundamentally stupid as dying, and leaving him with this.

And he feels guilty for being angry at Buffy for dying, feels guilty for responding to Faith's kiss now that Buffy is dead, so he keeps on doing both. Because guilt is so easy. Penance, like the rush of demonrage, is his nature. Whereas, Angel realizes, he doesn't know the first thing about grief. So skilled at mourning the loss of his humanity, so adept at bleeding for the wounds of the whole frigging world, and yet he has no idea how to cope with something so..personal. It is so much easier to cry for sins committed in another skin, so much simpler to feel sorry for someone else's pain.

His own pain is foreign, and silent. Faith tastes like salt.

***

His mouth is soft and firm under hers, his teeth slippery and smooth. He tastes of nothing. Cool and empty. Ice. The grave. He didn't used to taste that way, she remembers that much. Remembers when he tasted like ...Buffy. Sugary and melted sweet, stolen flavors lingering on his tongue long after he'd kissed her. The flavor familiar and coveted, because Faith had tasted it too. Once, before he returned from Hell. Before it all fell down. Before the line between having her and *being* her became indistinct.

There's nothing left to take of Buffy anymore. No cotton candy taste to lick off his palate, no blond hairs on his shirt, no secret, careful smile on his pale lips. Buffy isn't here anymore....

And of course that's the only reason Angel has his lips on hers, the only reason why his tongue is plundering her mouth with rough familiarity. Sliding in and out like sex, wet and hard and demanding. Secrets and answers to things hidden but never buried.

She waits for him to stop, to pull away, to bow his head and blink up at her from beneath those lashes and say, "Sorry." That's always been the appeal, hasn't it? The demon in little boy skin. But he doesn't stop, doesn't move away, just keeps on- fucking her mouth with a sort of simple brutality.

And that's not really the way it was supposed to be.

None of this is. It's

//Wrong//

all wrong.

She was supposed to serve her time and make things Right. Take her punishment, go to group, work her steps, make amends. Write letters her shrink would approve of. Get to her state of grace, claw her way to redemption, godamnit. ((Dear Buffy, I'm sorry for fucking your boyfriends, and stealing your body, and trying to kill everyone you loved. Dear Buffy, I'm sorry I wasn't more like you. Dear Buffy, I'm sorry I can't forgive you for not forgiving me.))

(Now there's no one to forgive her, and nothing to keep her animal inside because the cage is gone and this stupid rubber band on her wrist is not going to be enough, damnit, it's not anywhere near enough if Buffy won't read her letters then she can never get right with her so Faith can never get forgiven, never get saved, because...)

Buffy. isn't. here.

But Faith still is.

And Angel's kiss is nothing but anger and ashes.

She reaches down to where her hips have aligned with Angel's. They fit. She remembers that too, they fit so well. //Let me guess you summoned back the true Angelus because you need a new boy toy// Tugs his zipper down, reaches inside and pulls his cock free from the confines of his jeans.

He just moans against her mouth as his flesh grows in her hand, and she doesn't know why he is doing this, doesn't have the first idea why he isn't pulling away, isn't saying //I'm with Buffy//

but he isn't, and Buffy is dead and Faith is not.

There are no more kisses then. Only his body under hers in the dirty sand. Her legs straddling his hips and her hands tearing at his clothes. Batting his hands away from hers finally; if this is his pathetic attempt at rebuttal, it is much too little and years too late.

//Come on, fight me vampire, come on

I'm not gonna make this that easy for you, Faith//

God, but it is now. Easy. Easy to strip him of clothing and pretense and humanity. Hovering so close she can feel his demon rumble in the base of her skull, in the small hairs rising on her arms, in the prickle between her thighs. Where the hunger lives.

There are so many ways to make war. To shed blood. To claw herself out of that stinking grave.

Kneels, naked and wet between his knees, and turns around. Sits up straight, hands crossed in her lap. Offers her back. She is face down in the sand before she can breathe, rough grain scraping her nipples and belly as he tugs her closer to him. Almost screams as he tears into her, but she doesn't. Arches to meet him instead, and stares at the water. The tide is coming in,

stealing the shore.

She lifts her hips further, and tilts her neck to the side in blatant offering. Thinks of him drinking pigs blood and cows blood. The sour unfulfilling taste of cold, dead things. Thinks of biting her own tongue when she wants to bite someone else, ripping out her own hair when she wants to rip out a throat (and hear the *scream* just before cold, dead eyes stare back at her). Thinks about two hesitant girl fingers slipping inside her aching warmth when what she really wants is this. This. Hardness. Unbending muscles around her thighs, bluntsharphard nudging her womb, the solid presence of a cold, dead thing.

Realizes she has never thought of Angel that way before. Sure, Vampire, Undead. But- *Dead*. Kissing the dead. Fucking the dead. No wonder Buffy could never let go. No wonder pretty midwestern boys with earnest hands and sincere smiles could never hope to compete. It was just pigs blood by comparison.

And she knows he won't bite her now any more than he could hit her again earlier. He's the fucking king of fucking martyrs, and maybe his rubber band is in his head, but it's still all the same. He still wants to. Wants to. Because he hurts, and she hurts, and this hurts, so it must be right. The frustration pouring forth from him with his sweat, small pools of water and fucked up morality. Falling from his forehead and shoulders like rain, the droplets gathering in the hollow of her back.

She keeps on baring her neck, keeps on tempting the fates and the angels, keeps on looking over her shoulder at him. Watching for golden eyes and ivory fangs and things that she does not fear. Faith has never been bitten. But she's seen...and pain shouldn't look so attractive. But it does. It looks like pleasure and it looks like death and it looks like Angel. Just eyes and teeth and growls in the darkness.

(Just the knowing.) It should have been her. Two years ago on a roof, two days ago on a platform.

//You know you won't take me alive

Not gonna be a problem//

It should have been her.

No kisses. No caresses. No redemption, no resurrection. Just cruel fingers on her hipbones, tight fists in her hair, salt and sand on her back and belly and the cold, aching pounding between her legs that is much too much and not nearly enough. She meets his every thrust until he is gasping and she is bruised, scrambling for purchase on the damp ground.

Tosses back her head finally, and lets him grab her scalp with both hands, arches up, and up, with the furious rhythm that lifts her off the sand. Hears Angel grunting and feels his false breath on her neck. Tilts her head one more time. Listens to murmurs against her sunburned skin and whispers that sound like so many curses in her ear.

She puts her own hands on her belly, just above the dark nest of down and she can almost feel him there, through the thin flesh and beating pulse. There. Center. Source. Where the blood flows.

Damn her heroics and damn her dying, bless her martyrdom and bless her death - because it was the only way, wasn't it? The only way Faith could ever have a part of her. This part. Any part. This.

And when he opens his mouth in a breathless shout, when his body shakes and the muscles stand corded on his shoulders and neck, when his head falls back and his eyes fall shut...if when he comes he is seeing blue eyes and blond waves instead of brown eyes and dark curls...hell, she can not fault him.

So is she.

**

After, sweaty and tangled, her sole heartbeat loud to her own ears. Blanketed around her, his fingers resting on her shoulder and belly create only the illusion of warmth. Faith doesn't harbor one damned illusion.

It does not matter if she memorizes every part of him. If she brings him off a thousand times and paints the look on his face after each one. If she counts the light freckling patches of skin across his shoulders, and commits to heart the soft places beneath his arms, under his belly, and behind his ears. If one day in the distant future when she is older and he is not, he manages to smile at her with something akin to tenderness and greater than friendship.

She will still never hold that place in his heart. She will still never hold his soul in her hands.

He will still be Buffy's vampire.

That is fine. She doesn't need his heart and god knows she doesn't want his soul, just some simple honesty. He doesn't have to look at her with love, just so long as he doesn't look at her with regret. He is laying curled around her, smelling of her sex, and she can feel his discomfort. His struggle to try and change things, to make them somehow *right*, and that is just fucking stupid. Things aren't right, things aren't going to be right anytime soon, things likely won't ever be right again. And that's fine too, because Faith never really expected much more out of life. But damnit, he is not going to treat her like something that *happened* to him.

She deserves more than that, because she has paid and paid and she is still not done paying. Because she suffers like he does. Because she loves him. She is not in love with Angel, but she loves him. He gave her another chance, and another, and another. And maybe it makes him an idiot, but he still treats her as worthy of those chances. He is so damned hard to love, and completely impossible not to, and that has always been her own foolish weakness when it comes to members of the opposite sex.

She loves him because he has been nestled inside of her; he surely isn't the first, and god knows he won't be the last, but he was there nonetheless, and she has loved them all. Xander with his stutter and quiet moans, Riley with his big hands and sincere kisses, the boy she gave her virginity to when she was fourteen, pressed up against a chain link fence so hard she wore the mark of the steel on her bottom for days after. All the other nameless, faceless ones, the ones who touched her in that not-so-secret place, the ones who barely fit in her hands, the ones who wore small gold crucifixes which danced along her eyelids when they lay on top of her in the night.

She loved them all. And she loves Angel. Because good girls always love the men they take into their beds. And more than anything, Faith just wants to be good.

But she will not suffer awkward embraces and meaningless words in wet sand, will not let him chalk this up to another one of his karmic mistakes. She will not be another instrument of his self-pity and loathing, just one more Act of Contrition in the dark.

He doesn't need to catch his breath, and she is strong, stronger than she has ever been. She stirs in his arms and licks in one long swipe up his belly to his chest, bites down hard on his neck. Waits for the grunt and the stirring against her thighs.

Sinks down on the length of him with one small moan, and rocks.

He grits his teeth around a smile the way men do, the way two hundred year old vampires do, when they fuck. She makes him writhe underneath her weight and her warmth, makes him chew his bottom lip, makes him pant and moan and buck.

Because Faith might not be good, godamnit, not yet. But she sure as hell knows what she is good at.

This time, when he comes, he is looking right at her.

**

The third time he slips inside of her she is so wet he can barely feel her muscles clench around him, just a whisper of pressure and ache. A reminder. An echo.

((of rain and clear eyes, graveyards and sailing ships, of broken doors and broken promises, and things given only to be taken away))

She licks her lips and her eyes drift shut again, sweat and sand and starlight in her black hair. All night, he realizes with a small start. They could do this all night. He could fuck her until the next new millennium and nothing would happen. Nothing. No backward moving clocks and no sucking vortexes and no fate of the whole frigging universe resting solely on the choices they make in their bed.

The sky won't break. The world won't end.

Just nothing.

And how fucking sick is he that he wishes it were different? That he would give up anything....

He wants to make this all about vampires and slayers, wants to bury the part of himself that is cold inside the part of her that is warm. Wants to sheath what is hard and eternal inside that which is soft, and wet and ever changing. It's fucking-as-metaphor for his bite, just tearing into flesh that opens so easily, he can almost believe it was created for his plunder and pleasure alone. He doesn't want this to be about humanity and what has been irretrievably lost.

Certainly doesn't want this to be about recapturing something that was never really his to begin with. Doesn't want to think about regrets, or revenge or reprisals.

Those foolish, mortal things that haunt him as surely as blond hair and small, silver crucifixes, //howdoesforeversoundtoyou//, and the vision of a tiny, powerful body, broken and bloodied at the foot of a five story tower, now tattooed to the backs of his eyelids.

He just wants to forget. And he is so good at mixing up the forgetting with the wanting, so skilled at losing himself inside of someone else.

His demon had wanted a rut, wanted the sound of blood and bone and the scrape of flesh and sand, but the man wanted only simple comfort from this ache, and he knows it is merely luck that he found both in the same act. He doesn't buy into Fate anymore, and he sure as hell knows that this is. Wrong.

Knows it when she wraps her legs around his waist and draws him closer, makes him quiver and bite his tongue to hold on, when she caresses the nape of his neck, and plays with the damp curls above his shoulders. He has no right to be intimate with this one, to draw pleasure from pain, to twist roles and history. It is wrong to leave the unspoken..unspoken.

And god, it's so fucking wrong when she finally looks up at him, and he sees way more than he has a right to, way more than he should, in those dark, unshuttered eyes.

It's the wrong time, the wrong beach, and it's the wrong...girl.

But he is a man, and he wants comfort, and cold comfort is better than none at all. And there is no greater relief than being forgiven, no greater solace than being- loved, so he shuts his eyes against it, but he cannot erase the face.

Trusting and open and pale and -

He is sorry. He is so sorry, he will ever be sorry. Because it is wrong. Because there are three of them here on this sand, and one of them is being punished, he is sure of that. He just isn't sure of who. And he can't quite bring himself to care.

Her eyes open as he moves away, crawls down the length of her and inhales.

He hears the whimper of protest as he slips away, but then he is between her knees, greedy hands pushing aside soft, wet flesh, prickly stubble of chin and cheek on her legs. She is bleeding again, not much, but she's bleeding...enough. Enough to bring his fangs down, enough to taste the faintest coppery residue on the tender parts inside her knees and thighs. Enough to swirl the taste around on his tongue when he finds the center of her, enough to dig his claws into lush hipbones, and bite back the instinctive growl.

Enough that no living, breathing man would likely do this. But he has not lived or drawn breath in two hundred and fifty years; now she is dead, and he doesn't give a good godamn if he ever does so again. And the sight of her, open to him on the sand.. the blood drying between her parted legs even as he kisses and suckles the crimson smears staining pale, secret skin.

She moans softly and thrashes a bit as his tongue circles sweet, pink flesh. He breathes. The scent of life and Beginnings that will Never be, and the taste of poison sweat and Slayer.

The attraction that has been the undoing of more than half the clan of Aurelius. This insane lust, this stupid, masochistic need to get close to the hunters of their kind, despite knowing that it can only end in madness for any of them. Spike kills Slayers, Angel fucks them, but it all ends the same. And *still* their blood calls. Demon to demonkiller. Fellow murderers, artisans of Death. These tiny women with the only hearts' rhythm that does not speed up in fear when he bends close to their necks. These powerful creatures with vital, living bodies pumping full of the only blood that is somehow mystically tied to his own. The only worthy adversaries, only worthy lovers. The only surrender that really matters.

Who else could it be, but Her?

And god yes, he knows that this is not his Slayer beneath him. Knows that this girl will never deliver him into the arms of perfect happiness, or even perfect despair, because all moments of perfection have come and gone for him. But the blood is of the same source, it is old, and it is sacred, and it tastes of home. He drinks.

She calls his name, finally. For a moment, it breaks the silence.

***

He drives her to the bus station just before sunrise. Mr. Chivalry, she thinks, declining his offer of a ride any farther than that. She wants to get where she is going by herself this time, with no one pulling her strings. Wants to make some choices that are good and clean.

It's all she has left, finally. She doesn't have any happy memories of B, like Angel does, to hold on to. And the only thing of Angel's she ever really touched was his grief.

But she is The Slayer. And that, so long as she lives, can never be undone.

She rests her head against the bus window and watches him climb back into his car. He waits until the sign on the front of the bus lights up.

Sunnydale.

Then he drives away.

-Finis

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