Fanfiction: One More Sad Song
The rest of the night passed slowly by without much incident. Buffy and Angel had neglected to patrol at all; Faith and Spike had gone their separate ways with a promise to meet again the following morning. With two Slayers and two of the most dangerous vampires ever created going about freely through Sunnydale, regular vamp activity had all but stopped. Unbeknownst to most, however, Mayor Wilkins was exercising his authority by dampening down anything out of the ordinary, keeping most supernatural activity off people’s minds and especially off the front pages of the newspapers, which were fond of creating seemingly ludicrous stories to explain odd occurrences.
Back at the motel in Sunnydale’s less-than-reputable area, Faith pushed open the unlocked door to her room and walked inside. No one had broken in; there was simply no point to locking something when it contained nothing valuable. Flicking on the light switch that controlled the room’s sickly yellow lights, she took of her boots and tossed them haphazardly into a corner. The small clock near her bed was slowly flashing “3:02” in somber blue electric light. Not noticing—yet somehow always noticing—the disrepair of the place she now called home, Faith went and sat at the corner of her bed, content to sit and think for a while.
This new turn of events with Spike was slightly confusing to her. Everything she had ever been taught told her that befriending a vampire was wrong. She could never understand how Buffy could hook up with Angel, even if he did have a soul. And now here she was, associating with one of the most infamously dangerous and violent vamps of all time. It obviously wasn’t right, but she was beginning to care less and less about the always-thin line between right and wrong. Such arbitrary concepts bothered her; “good” couldn’t possibly exist without an “evil” to counteract it, so who could say which one was ultimately “right”? The whole situation just seemed a bit too structured and filled with rules for her taste. Life itself was never so easily definable; she had fallen in and out of grace for years, striving for perfection in her childhood, finding herself alone and abandoned in her early teens, and now she was rebelling against structure, on the run from no one but herself with only the haunting visions of her past to keep her company.
But now there was Spike. Someone who appeared to understand and relate to her struggles, even if he wasn’t technically alive and not exactly a typical companion for a Slayer. But then again, neither was Angel. Faith didn’t know what plans Spike had for Buffy and her boyfriend, but it was probably going to be violent. Unconsciously frowning at the thought, she walked into the tiny bathroom and began to get ready for bed. It wasn’t as if Faith had a problem with violence, or that she was unaccustomed to it; the problem was that she was too good at it. Sometimes in a fight, she could be at peace, but that peace came at the price of completely loosing control and going beyond what a Slayer like Buffy was capable of. Because unlike Buffy, Faith liked killing vamps and demons. It gave a purpose to her life; it kept her on track and focused. As she splashed near-freezing water on her face, she realized that she didn’t want Buffy or Angel dead. Not yet. She only wanted them to feel pain for neglecting her and for falling into that typical “pretend friend” niche that Faith despised.
But Spike would probably want them dead.
If it came to that, she would have a choice to make, but for now, it was comforting to simply have a side to fight on.
Faith stared at her reflection for a few seconds, not able to decide whether she liked what she saw, and then she flicked off the bathroom light, refusing to give herself anymore negative things to ponder.
She had enough already.
Going over to the bed once more, she undressed and threw her clothes in the general vicinity of her boots. Slipping on some tattered sweatpants and a t-shirt, the things she wore to bed when no one else was around, she turned off the main light without even thinking about it, plunging the room into darkness. The sounds of the street outside filtered in mutedly, as if they all existed in some kind of clear, concise world that Faith was not privy to.
Thankful that her day was finally over, Faith crawled under the covers and surrendered her busy thoughts to a troubled sleep.
Some miles away in the remnants of Sunnydale’s industrial sector, the rusted door to the largest factory creaked slowly open, the hinges crying out their protest. Spike stood in the doorframe, unafraid of the dark interior. No creature it hid would be able to best him in a fight, and so that left no room for fear, but he still couldn’t bring himself to walk down the stairs that he had descended countless times before. Because although he feared no creature, living or dead, there were uncontrollable memories lying dormant somewhere down in the blackness, memories that would haunt him if awoken. Gathering his courage, preparing himself for the inevitable flood of recollections that was his horrid right, he tossed his still-lit cigarette down into the darkness, creating a tiny beacon of orange light that had trouble staving off the shadows threatening to consume it.
Not that he needed light to see, necessarily; his vampiric eyes could see well enough in an almost total absence of illumination, but the cigarette’s slowly smoldering life was something of a comfort. He began to descend the stairs, listening to the echoes that his footsteps were throwing against the desolate walls of the factory. Reaching the bottom, he left the cigarette where it was and wandered over to the far corner of the room, searching for a few tiny objects, remembrances of a happier time when things actually made sense. He found them on a low table, seated neatly side by side as if ready for a macabre tea party.
Druscilla’s dolls.
Ironically smiling at their cruel fate, some were wearing small blindfolds, and some had had their eyes ripped straight from their plastic heads. Spike picked one up and examined it in the gloom, turning it over in his hands again and again until he couldn’t stand it any longer and put it back in its place. Dru had always had a fascination with dolls, and they only served to remind Spike of the fact that he was now utterly alone, without the one person who had accompanied him nearly everywhere for over a hundred years. More than alone, he felt lost, as if he had no sense of direction, no motivation to do anything besides take out his revenge on the one person most responsible for his pain.
Angel.
For a while, things in Sunnydale hadn’t been so awful. Sure, Buffy and her little Scooby gang had managed to thwart Spike’s plans again and again, but he had been with Dru, causing chaos and mayhem. He laughed a bit as he realized that the old saying was true: he had never really known how good things were until they were gone, snatched from him by the damn vampire with a soul.
Although Angel’s soul had never really been the problem. Things had gone from bad to worse as soon as he had lost the soul. Spike could just imagine the arrogance that almost literally radiated from Angel when he’d finally been set free. He had just barged into the factory, immediately bringing to the surface Spike’s old hatred for his grand-sire. As he began to win Dru’s favor through useless baubles and meaningless talk, Spike knew that their trio was beginning to implode, but he had been helpless to stop it. Confined to a wheelchair after nearly being burnt alive, he had no choice but to sit and watch as Angel systematically destroyed everything that Spike had worked so long and hard to build: his relationship with Druscilla, his plans for Buffy…his entire world had been torn apart.
Now, nearly a full year later, Spike sank to his knees on the factory floor, reaching up to grab as many dolls as he could, crushing their fragile bodies with his strength, throwing them against the wall, ripping their limbs apart, cursing Angel and his god damned Slayer.
They would pay for this, pay for ruining his life and his love. Death was too good for Angel, but it would have to suffice, and Buffy would be next in line. With Faith’s help, Spike knew that he could win. Slayer and vampire united against Slayer and vampire. Two pairs, both trained to kill, set loose on each other?
It would be a bloodbath.
As the cigarette quietly died, its insignificant light fading out of existence, Spike curled up on the floor and tried to fall asleep. Tomorrow would be a big day…