Fanfiction: Faithless

PROLOGUE: FURY

"Please. You don't have to do this. It doesn't have to be this way!" he was pleading. "You're right," she said. "It doesn't have to be this way. But this is how I want it to be, and if you don't like that, well too fucking bad."

Silent resignation on his part. He had stopped struggling against the cords that bound him to the uncomfortable wooden chair, in what could only be described as a dungeon, but was more or less just a basement. How long he'd been sitting tied up was unknown to him; he'd become conscious in this state, bloodied and bruised at the hands of this maniac. The room was small, and very dark, the only illumination being the moonlight trying to peek its way through the small, rectangular slits high up on the walls. Probably ventilation shafts not meant to let any real light through.

"Don't try to sweet-talk your way out of this," Faith said from across the room, where she was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, one leg crooked over the other. Shrouded in darkness, he could only just make out her dark auburn hair, slightly disheveled, that framed her beautiful face, with its wide hazel eyes and full, red lips. Beautiful to be sure, but she kept to the shadows, preferring to be seen only partially or not at all. "You can't escape justice, no matter how hard you try."

He snorted his disapproval of this statement. "Oh, and you must be Justice Incarnate, right?" But as soon as it had left his lips, he regretted ever saying it. He watched as Faith's confident demeanor slowly turned into one of smoldering rage. She was almost trembling in her effort to control herself, but finally after a few long, long moments, she regained her composure and simply smiled.

"Yes," was all she had to offer in reply.

"And you've passed your judgment on me already, haven't you? You don't even care about what I have to say, what I have to tell you." He really didn't have anything useful to tell her, but it was worth a shot anyhow.

"I'll be honest with you for a minute here, and don't take this the wrong way, but I couldn't give a shit about you, your past, your little lies, or your worthless existence." Faith paused for a moment to consider what she had said, and then continued, but in one of the highly sarcastic tones that she was so good at. "No, I take that back. I do care about your past. It might lead to me to others like you who need to be disposed of. Still care to share?"

"Fuck you," he said, knowing he couldn't win against her, consumed as she was with her lust for violence and revenge.

"That's wishful thinking on your part. I don't fuck vampires. So keep it in your pants," she teased, moving away from the wall and coming to crouch on the floor only a few feet from where he was tied up. From inside her dusty, black jacket she withdrew a serrated knife with a seven-inch blade. It caught even the feeble, gray light pouring in through the shutters up above, and it showed him a quick glimpse of the chair, where his reflection should have been, before Faith moved it back into her jacket. "Or it might get misplaced."

"Look, you don't understand. What you're trying to do to my kind is genocide! That can't be justified," he implored through gritted teeth.

"No," Faith retorted, "it's you who doesn't understand. Because I don't care. Call it genocide if you want, or call it murder. It's all the same to me. The very existence of vampires is ridiculous: you take life in order to keep living. And you're asking me to justify my intentions?" She laughed, standing up to her full height and dusting herself off.

"We didn't ask for this kind of life. We had no choice either way."

"And neither do I. I didn't ask to become a Slayer, I didn't ask to be the one that has to defend humanity from you, and I sure as hell didn't ask for all the blood that's on my hands."

"Then stop. You don't have to be a Slayer forever. Unlike us, you do have a choice, Faith." This was a big gamble on his part. If this argument couldn't get through to her, nothing could. His life was on the line. But perhaps if he could stall her for a few more minutes, his friends, other creatures of the night, might have time to locate him and come to his aid. They would definitely be looking for him after what had happened at the club. He remembered trying to fight Faith off as she burst through the entrance and attacked him, but apparently he'd been unsuccessful. Quite unsuccessful. Surely his friends had heard the news and would be on their way.

"Maybe you're right." Faith turned away from him, sorting through her feelings. This was a good sign! But as soon as he'd had this thought, she turned back around, all signs of indecision gone from her face, replaced by the most menacing smile he'd ever seen. Definitely not good. "But I have something to tell you, and you're probably not going to like it," she said softly, as she came and sat down on his legs, straddling him, playfully running her fingers through his hair. For just a moment he saw an amused, little-girl grin, but it was gone so fast he couldn't even be sure that he had really seen it. "Are you ready?"

He nodded, quite prepared for more verbal taunts. But what he wasn't prepared for was the knife flashing silently in the twilight and plunging straight into his left thigh. He was so shocked that for a moment, nothing even registered; not Faith staring unflinchingly into his eyes, not the room and its murky bleakness, not the blood spurting from the wound, nothing. And then there was pain, pain like he'd never felt before. It consumed his very being, flowing along every nerve straight to his mind. He could feel that his muscles had been ripped in half by the blade that was still embedded in his thigh. His veins, torn and shredded?

Blinded by this feeling, eyes shut, grimacing, he tried to rein in the pain so that he could vanquish it. Slowly, slowly, it ebbed and was nearly gone, when Faith snapped out of her reverie and whispered close to his ear, her breath hot on his skin, "Oops, looks like I forgot something."

Not comprehending this somewhat cryptic statement, he could only watch helplessly, arms bound to the chair, as Faith took her right hand and waved it in front of his face, getting his full attention. Then she trailed her fingernails down the side of his face, caressing his chest, finally coming to rest inches from the hilt of the knife. His eyes widened suddenly, realizing what she intended to do.

"You know, serrated edges are so very amusing," Faith was telling him, as her hand circled the knife again and again. There was blood everywhere, all over her clothes and skin, but she didn't seem to notice. In fact, she seemed to be immersing herself in it. This was beyond belief. "It's rather like a double-edged sword, don't you think? Cuts one way, and then cuts the other way, too?"

"Why can't you just kill me?" he asked, his body preparing itself for the pain surely to arrive any second.

"Aw, poor baby! Want your mommy?" And with that, she twisted the knife, doing irreparable damage to his leg, before savagely ripping it free. And this time he screamed. He screamed until he thought his throat would bleed. The wound had been extended by the twisting action, and there was now a gaping hole where part of his leg had once been. It was weeping red like a waterfall all over Faith's already bloodstained hand as she grinned and laughed a little to herself, watching the dark crimson liquid jet from his thigh.

"I'll never get tired of that color," she cooed, admiring the terrible spectacle that she'd created. He started to shudder and then began to cry. The pain was just too great, and this torture was killing his spirit, a spirit he had once thought to be unconquerable. Faith ignored him, and got up from her straddling position to gaze upon her work from a higher viewpoint. She tossed the knife aside, its purpose fulfilled.

"You'll pay for this, you bitch!" he suddenly cried, in between the tears and blood. Where were his friends, damn it? Suddenly he felt a terrible blow to his jaw as Faith punched him with all of her power. His head snapped to the side, recoiling from the tremendous force. He could feel fragments of his teeth awash in a sea of blood within his mouth. Coughing, he spit it out all over the floor.

Having no more willpower left, reduced to a bloody, beaten animal, the vampire closed his eyes and waited for the killing strike, the wooden stake to be driven straight into his motionless heart. But it never came. He opened one eye, cautiously, lest Faith decide to pummel him once more, but he spied her on the other side of the room, back against the wall, that same, confident smirk back on her face, arms crossed, one leg crooked across the other. Except her hands were no longer those of an angel, no longer white and innocent. Now they were the hands of something malicious and evil. The hands of a devil.

The two just stared at each other for a few silent minutes, Slayer and Vampire, beater and beaten. The night was quiet outside of the room, no sound but the whisper of the wind, and no smell but the moist, humid odor of an impending storm. How far away was it? The vampire couldn't tell. Faith's rock-steady gaze was unsettling, and the vampire could feel himself growing weak from the loss of blood that he'd sustained. He was leaning forward limply against his bonds. Seeing this sad state of affairs, Faith reacquired her knife and, with a glint of red, moonlit steel, cut him free. He fell in a heap, sprawled out facedown on the stone floor, blood still pumping from his leg and trickling from his mouth.

His whole world was red: red from the pain and red from the blood, a red haze of inescapable death. Faith knelt down by his limp form and flipped him onto his back so that he was staring at the black ceiling. And sure enough, there was Death looking right back at him, smug in its certainty that out of all the creatures on the planet, he was going to be next to die. Straddling his chest this time, Faith reached one of her blood-soaked hands into the darkness, groped around for a bit, smiled when she came in contact with what she was searching for, and then suddenly there was a sharpened, wooden stake in her possession.

Again taking on a soothing, pleasant voice, if such a thing were possible, she began to speak as she admired her weapon. "I bet you're wondering where your friends are. Aren't you?"

The vampire's eyes widened. His pale countenance, twisted with surprise and horrid understanding, was almost fading into translucence now.

"You didn't think I was just sitting idly by while you were unconscious, did you? I took the small liberty of depositing you here, doubling back to catch your friends in pursuit, and killing each and every one of them. And not quickly, either. You think what I've done to you tonight is bad? You don't know the meaning of pain if you think this is unbearable. How do you think it would feel to have your knees and elbows shattered so that you couldn't walk or crawl? How would it be to be able to feel your crushed bones within your skin? Can you imagine?"

She laughed a little to herself. "No, of course you can't. No one can. Not unless it's happened to you. So you better thank God, Satan, Yahweh, Buddha, whatever trite little deity you pray to, that that's not what I'm going to do to you. But you know what? Right now, there is no God in Heaven. Because right now, at this moment, I am God."

Lightning flashed through the shutters up above, blinding him and illuminating Faith's eyes for one terrifying instant. Thunder followed a few seconds later, rumbling through the sky as if heralding the arrival of the apocalypse. He could hear the rain begin to fall outside, the steady, staccato drumbeat rhythm that it made against the damp earth unmistakable. He mustered his energy together for just one last sentence, one thing that he had to ask before Faith destroyed him.

Through the pain, blood, and tears, he managed to say, very quietly, "Don't you feel any guilt?" His mouth could barely pronounce the syllables correctly around the broken teeth and blood. His sharp, vampire teeth were now little more than jagged stumps.

"You're asking if I feel any connection to those I kill?" she asked, raising her voice just a bit to be heard over the rain. He nodded, convinced that her calm demeanor was simply a charade for some inescapable feeling of inner torment due to her violent lifestyle. Outside, the moon had been covered by the black, raging clouds, and the room had been plunged into almost total darkness. The vampire could just barely make out Faith's silhouette, stake in her right hand. "You want a connection? It's just skin. I see, I want, I take, I forget. I could do anything to you right now, and not feel anything. I can make you scream. I can make you die." He saw lightning again, instant brightness, a glimpse of the stake slowly, ever so slowly, being lowered to his chest, until the point was resting right above his heart.

"You see, I can't let myself feel anything, or I couldn't do what I do," she said, her voice taking on a melancholy tone. She sounded tired of being a Slayer. Maybe all she'd ever wanted was a normal life. "Believe me, I think about just ending everything all the time. I think it might be nicer to be surrounded by oblivion and nothingness than all the shit that comes with being alive." Her voice began to quaver. "And I've had to deal with more shit that most people; being entrusted to protect humanity and being forced into the role of a killer isn't all fun and games, and sometimes I wish it would just disappear."

Faith sighed. The stake began to exert a greater pressure on the vampire's chest. He could feel it begin to puncture his skin, and a thin stream of blood began to crawl out of his heart, absorbed by the weapon that would end his life in mere moments.

"'The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep,'" she was whispering. The stake entered his chest. He closed his eyes. "'And miles to go before I sleep...'" The rain's intensity increased, and then with one, sudden downward movement, Faith drove the stake right through the vampire's heart. She began to cry. "'And miles to go before I sleep.'" The vampire died and was gone forever; the only sign that he'd ever been there was some dust collecting in Faith's spilt tears. Thunder crashed, drowning out the sounds of her sobbing, and then it was gone, leaving her curled up on the floor, alone in the darkness with her tortured soul.

Lightning came once more. The rain continued to fall. The vampire was forgotten as if he had never lived. And Faith was gone.

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