Faith tilted back her head and drained her shot, feeling the cheap whisky burn down her throat and warm her, then looked back at her drinking companion. He echoed her with the drink but didn't appear to enjoy it as much.
He was twice her age, grizzled, worn, and so very tired. If she lived anywhere near that long would she look like that?
This life exhausted you in more ways than one, and he didn't even have her gifts. He was simply human.
It wasn't a life for humans.
Setting down his glass on the scarred table top in a seedy bar in no-name Tennessee, John ran a hand through his tangled hair and frowned when it trembled. He glanced over at the young woman watching him so cooly and wondered why she was in this life. She could have been a model or a college student or anything.
Instead, he'd found her slitting the belly of the demon he'd chased across two states. Deprived of his kill and obviously not needed, he'd watched her, listened to her, knew this wasn't her first. She was good, really good.
How did someone like her get involved in demon hunting?
"So, demon's all dead. This dive is dull as dishwater. Wanna go some place and make life a little more interesting for an hour or five?"
John didn't respond immediately to Faith's sultry invitation. Women were few and far between as he criss-crossed America, and none were ever more than what she was offering, but she was so young.
Too young.
"I'm not a kid," she added, as if that helped.
"I can tell." He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and pulled a ten dollar bill out of his jeans' pocket, tossing it on the table. "You have a place?"
Faith pulled a Watcher's Council credit card out of her own pocket and smiled. "I can get one."
*****
John was asleep, sprawled on his back, a sheet draped to just above his hips. Faith sat Indian style on the bed next to him, watching him as she drew deeply on a cigarette. There was nothing relaxed about the man, despite his being exhausted enough to sleep. She knew if she simply touched him the gun he'd placed on the night stand would be at her temple or the knife beneath the pillow at her throat.
He was a killer.
Like her.
But he was wearing out, as all humans did.
Faith smiled sadly as her thoughts drifted to Robin--too cold, too hard, getting too old too fast, all the fun wiped out of him by the endless killing. She'd left him months ago, wanting to enjoy what little life she probably had left. She was more than just duty and Robin didn't get it.
She knew John wouldn't get it either.
Of course, most of the Slayers and the Watchers didn't get it either. Only she and to some extent Buffy really understood. Which is probably why they were still alive, though Buffy's retort to that thought was usually along the lines of Faith being too much of a bitch to die.
Which, of course, she was.
Chuckling, Faith twisted her body to stab out the cigarette butt in an ash tray on the other night stand, and her movement brought John awake in an instant.
"Not used to sharing a bed?" she asked casually as she watched the point of the blade hover between her breasts.
"...Sorry," he muttered, lowering the knife and running a hand over his face.
"No worries. I tend to survive getting stabbed, anyway." Reaching out she brushed long fingers over a faded scar across his chest. "You, too, it looks like." His body was well-marked, the most recent a puckered pink hole in his right leg.
It was obvious that sharing thoughts and feelings wasn't something either was comfortable with, but she still needed to ask, "How long you been doing this, John?"
Setting the knife down next to the gun, John pushed himself up to lean back against the padded headboard. "A long time. A lifetime. You?"
"Since I was six."
His face took on a shuttered look. "It's a hard life for kids."
"Yeah." Not wanting to go into the whole Slayer lore thing, she stuck with that.
"You're really good, though. I've never seen anyone move that fast."
Faith grinned at his not-so-subtle probing. "I'm not a demon or part demon."
"Oh, I know that. I don't fuck demons."
"Yeah, the scales and the horns are usually a real turn-off, but there are a couple of vamps I wouldn't mind tumbling."
"You like walking on the wild side, Faith?"
"You know it." Leaning forward she pressed her lips to his in a short, hard kiss. "Ready for another stroll?"
*****
Faith opened her eyes and stumbled, automatically muttering an apology as she bumped into a woman wrapped in a thick robe. The Slayer in her took over on instinct and she began to analyze the scene.
Night. Stars in the sky, moon a crescent. Smoke in the air. Crowd of people in pajamas and casual clothes surrounding her behind a barrier of sawhorses.
A house burning and firemen racing around with hoses trying to put it out.
An ambulance in the middle of the street with paramedics crouched in the back, working on someone impossibly small.
A baby.
Faith moved through the crowd towards the barrier closest to the ambulance, her eyes fixed on that tiny, unmoving form, until it flailed its arms and a weak wail reached her through the extraneous noise. Her attention drifted out of the ambulance to a man standing with his back to her, and a little boy clinging to his side, tiny hands wrapped in the ties of the man's robe. The man's head drooped, his shoulders, previously held so straight and tight, fell, and Faith knew it was relief he felt.
The little boy brushed tears from sooty cheeks and half-turned towards her. She could see he was trying so hard to be brave, but when his eyes went past the man to something laying on the ground, Faith's followed.
A body bag.
Someone hadn't made it out of the fire alive.
Suddenly, Faith knew what this was about, and when the man turned to look at the child, she saw his grief-stricken profile and, although he looked about twenty years younger and his face didn't bear the wear and tear of decades of hunting, she recognized him.
He already had that haunted look she'd seen even when he slept.
This was the beginning for John. Whomever was in the body bag--wife, lover, mother to his children, she assumed--had been killed by a demon. Faith could smell its scent on the air and in the smoke. The fire hadn't been natural.
Nothing about this was natural.
Faith understood revenge, but she also knew his need for it was destroying him. That thought drove her past the barricades towards him, and when he turned a blank look on her, she reached out and touched his arm.
No knife this time.
"Don't do it. It's not worth what you'll lose. Don't chase this thing. Find some place, settle back down, raise your kids in a normal world, and forget what you saw tonight."
John just stared at her, and she wondered if her words were making any impact at all. She could see her hand on his sleeve, and knew she was there, but she couldn't tell if he was listening.
"There are others out there, hunters. Let them find it and kill it, John. It's their duty. Yours is to your kids."
"It killed...her," was his dull reply, his eyes full of grief and yet growing colder every moment. "I have to stop it."
"No, you don't," she stressed, her fingers digging into the terrycloth. "It'll consume your life."
"It already has." He shook her off, turned back to the ambulance to lift his son inside next to the baby.
For a moment Faith thought about trying to stop him, then stepped back and watched him join the children. As the doors shut and the ambulance started down the street, she turned back to the fire and wondered what the point of this had been.
A bit of soot irritated her eye and she blinked rapidly, finally closing both for a moment.
And she was back in the bed, early morning light seeping through the thin curtains. A glance showed her she was alone and his stuff was gone.
Not a surprise.
What the hell was that? She hadn't been asleep. It hadn't been a dream. She'd really been there, in the past. Had John awakened and found her gone? Or had she been in two places at the same time?
Head starting to throb from the weighty implications, Faith groaned and fell back on the pillows. Only then did she notice the note on the pillow next to her. Picking it up, she unfolded it and blinked.
"Thank you for trying, Faith, but we all have our destinies. This one's mine. My only regret is that I brought my sons into it with me, but I couldn't abandon them, and I couldn't let this go. I know you'll understand. I hope some day they will."
End