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Faith wakes up on the floor in a white cell scrubbed clean of any personality next to a severely malnourished vampire. She sits up, looking around the blank, empty room tiled with large white squares, and her gaze moves to the glass doors that keep them locked in. She finds rows and rows of cells filled with all kinds of demons outside, all of them alone. Why’s she the only one who gets a roommate? Just her luck.
“So,” the vampire says, looking up at her. “You gonna kill me?” He cocks his head as she stares at him, confused, and he gestures to a stake lying next to her. So that’s why she’s here: some kind of weird test of whether or not she’ll do her job.
She picks up the stake, looking from the weapon to the vampire before setting it back down. “Nah,” she says, stretching out her legs with a concerning pop from her knee. “What’s the fun in that?” She looks him up and down, and something about him seems incredibly familiar. Bleached hair, leather coat, black nail polish… “You’re Spike,” she concludes, and he snorts.
“Slayer been talking about me?”
Faith shrugs. “Mostly about how she kicked your ass.” She sighs, picking up the stake again to keep her hands busy. “I heard about that Gem of Amara bullshit. Wish I’d been there; would’ve liked to see that.” She smirks at him, and he ducks his head with an eye roll.
“Story’s embellished if it’s coming from Summers,” he says defensively, and Faith’s smirk grows wider. “I’m guessing you’re Faith, then.”
“One and only,” she says, standing up and stretching her arms over her head. She has a raging headache, and she doesn’t even want to know what those army assholes did to her when she was asleep. She stares down the hallway, moving closer to the glass. “What d’you know about this place?”
“Don’t get too close to the glass,” he says, and Faith backs away. “Unless you want to get shocked.” Faith turns around, finding an untouched packet of blood along with a tray of what looks like public school lunch mush. “And the food’s drugged, so I wouldn’t go for that. From what Mr. Lab Rat over there says,” Spike gestures at the wall behind him, “we’re here so they can experiment on us. So you’re in for a treat.”
Faith sighs, sitting down again, and Spike eyes her curiously. “Thought the Slayers would’ve been behind this.”
Faith scoffs. “We don’t kidnap demons and play Operation with them. We slay vampires. That’s our job.” She watches him coolly. “I’m glad you think so highly of us.”
“You’re the bloody Slayers, and I’m supposed to think highly of you?” Spike snorts. “Not bloody likely.”
“You worked with Buffy, though, didn’t you?”
Spike looks away, exhaling in irritation. “That’s different.”
“But she didn’t stab you in the back.” Spike rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t respond, so Faith takes that as a cue to continue. “We wouldn’t do something like this.” Faith sighs, standing up again so she can pace. “Anyway, we gotta get out of here.”
“Apparently, they take us after we eat the food,” Spike says. “I say we pretend to eat, let them drag us out, and then attack.”
Faith looks him over. “Can you even stand up?”
Spike rolls his eyes, glaring at her. “Hilarious.”
“No, I was being serious,” she says, but she moves on. “Anyway, we could also-”
Faith’s cut off by a series of crashes, and a man in a white lab coat goes flying past their cell. Spike stands up in alarm, craning his neck to see around the glass wall separating them from the hallway. There are a couple more crashes and scientists thrown around before Buffy walks up to the cell, dragging a scientist by the collar of his coat behind her. She’s bleeding from a gash in her forehead and she has a slight limp, and worse than that, she looks like she’s alone.
What the fuck is Faith supposed to do with her dumbass heroic girlfriend?
“-wait for backup,” Faith finishes as Buffy fishes a badge out of the whimpering scientist’s pocket. She opens the cell, dropping the man and throwing her arms around Faith.
“I leave you alone for five minutes and you get yourself kidnapped,” Buffy murmurs.
“You idiot, you shouldn’t have come,” Faith says, squeezing her tighter. “What if you got captured too?”
“I don’t care,” Buffy says, kissing Faith. “No one messes with my girlfriend.” Faith grins. “God, you scared me,” Buffy whispers as she pulls away. “Don’t do that again, okay? I don’t know what I’d do if…” She trails off, so Faith kisses her again.
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” she says, tucking a strand of Buffy’s hair behind her ear.
Spike clears his throat from behind them. “This is heartwarming and all that shit, but I’d recommend going somewhere, actually. Ideally before the bloody army starts shooting at us.”
Buffy glares at Spike, but Faith turns her head to see at least twenty commando guys rushing down the hallway. “He has a point, B,” she says, slipping her hand into Buffy’s “We should go.”
Buffy lets Faith pull her along, but she glares at Spike one more time for good measure, muttering, “We’re helping him now. Of course we are.”
Faith laughs, and the three of them take off through the hallways. The rest of the cells unlock behind them, swarming the commandos with demons as Buffy yells something about Willow hacking into the control server. And through it all, she doesn’t let go of Buffy’s hand.