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[[pan down, a dark alley, a full moon rising ominously between two buildings crumbling with decay. it is our world, it is ancient. you recognize the glass and chrome and metal, but there are chunks missing like something took a bite out of a structure you feel in your bones is too large for any mouth. there is a fog dancing on the street, it almost feels like a noir film from your childhood. maybe a voice over will tell you about the mystery they solved and the woman they kissed. that would be alright. that would feel normal.]]
Heels clack on the asphalt, a slight squelching sound rises in the distance, a bit like something huge munching on something just as large.
"Connor, please shut the hell up," the woman's voice is laced with humor and something akin to maternal, if such a thing in this place was still possible.
"Pan up," another woman quips under her breath, her entrance into the dark alley noticeably unmarked in contrast to her companions with their heels and their humor, "two dead monsters... wait." She stops everyone with a hand, reaching out near her hip as though her group is close enough to touch.
They are not.
Gwen is clacking along ahead of them, shoulders straight, electricity buzzing about her fingers. Connor is leaping between windows above them, like a disturbing version of a radioactive spider. Illyria lurks further behind, silent, head cocked with curiosity, silent less out of fear and more out of boredom, with a bluish sort of tint to her hair and skin and eyes.
A radio crackles on the leader's hip, "HEY FEARLESS LEADER. ARE YOU PICKING UP TACOS ON THE WAY HOME?"
"Anne, I told you not to fuck around with this thing while I'm on patrol," that maternal edge is there again, faint and charming in a brittle, sharp kind of way. Like how a shark must care about its young.
"Faith," the bluish woman bounds closer to her and cranes her head forward. "There is something dead nearby, and also..."
"Yeah yeah yeah," the boy leans down to tug on Faith's hair, "the god wants tacos."
"One of Jhiera's girls has a place not far from here, they have pretty good tacos," Gwen throws over her shoulder. "Though it's pretty obvious they've never had a decent taco in their lives."
"Demons," Connor shrugs before hoisting himself up into one of the many fire escapes still dangling by a thread above their heads, "they never really understand human food."
Illyria moves away to examine a particularly disgusting pile of goo near a hole in a nearby wall, shrinking down on her heels and putting her face really, really close. Faith watches in awe for a moment and then wrinkles her nose and moves forward.
Things in LA were starting to find a bit of an equilibrium these days. The larger demon gangs were being beaten back by either Faith's rag-tag team, Gunn's vampires, or Jheira's girls and for the most part life was life. A post-apocalyptic, there's no good tacos kind of life, but life.
Especially now that most of the dragons were gone.
There was still one on the outskirts past Gunn's territory, but since he seemed to have it under control, Faith didn't mind much.
Most of the weaker, more human-esque demons had moved as close to Anne as they could get in the early days, before Faith found her and they joined forces. (Faith knows better than anyone that Anne allowing her and Illyria to take up residence with her was a shot in the dark and they could have very well been on their own, but the thought of all those helpless baby Slayers changed her mind. As long as Faith followed the rules. Which she did... mostly.)
That was the thing about the New Los Angeles - it was less of a city now than a collection of territories and funny thing about that was... Faith wasn't in charge of any of them.
Yeah, she had an army of sorts - Slayers that were called and then stuck in LA after the Fall. Most of them (that survived) fell into line once they found out she was here. But she was a Slayer first, a General.
Anne was the Mayor.
Anne was the one that negotiated with Jheira and Gunn, set up territory boundaries, decided on laws and rules. She was creating a whole society and Faith was just along for the ride.
(And also commanded an army, but like... what is an army in peacetime other than just a bunch of really bored teenage girls?)
Faith followed after Gwen, listening idly to Connor buzz about tacos and demons and the various different stands he had tried that had popped up. Even after nearly ten years, Illyria preferred tacos and pancakes to most other foods. Which meant that Faith mostly ate pancakes and tacos.
(Okay, maybe she was a leader. But who was going to want this army?)
Gwen buzzed ahead of her and Faith ran on silent feet to catch up. There were things she was learning to rely on in this world, with this team - the way Connor could be three people at once, Illyria's unspoken devotion to the idea that none of them were allowed to die, Anne's ability to make anyone smile no matter how shitty things were, and the static electricity that gathered around Gwen just before and just after blood was spilled.
"What is it?" Faith whispered, just as Gwen pulled her around a corner by the elbow. A small shock ran up Faith's arm, just enough to remind her how dangerous Gwen was, but not enough to leave a lasting impression.
At the end of the block, a large pulsating and slightly oozing-looking furry demon about the size of a small elephant lay wrapped around an old street light. Crouched on it's back, looking slightly disheveled and pulling a longsword out of the demon's neck, was a petite blonde woman. She waved down at them and grinned.
"A little late to the party, don't you think?" she called to them as the creature beneath her feet gave one last shuddering breath.
Gwen's hair rose slightly, "For fuck's sake, Ash. You couldn't have fucking waited?"
"Nah," Nina twirled herself into a slight flip as she jumped to the ground, strolling up to them with a smirk on her face that told them she was showing off and enjoying it. "You slow me down, Raiden."
Faith shook her head, "And me?" She pulled Nina towards her, running light fingers over the other woman's skin, looking for bruises and wounds and pretending for everyone's sake that she just couldn't keep her hands off of her.
Nina planted a kiss on Faith's neck sloppily, wetly, ridiculously, giggling when Gwen rolled her eyes at the display, "You're just too damn sexy, it's distracting."
Despite the bravado, Nina was trembling from exhaustion and there was a slight hitch in her breath, presumably from the bruise on her right rib cage. She shouldn't have been able to take this thing out on her own, that's why Faith had gathered up the troops. Anymore, most things left behind that were this big were harmless, or traveled in packs on the outskirts and left the city alone. This one - a young male - had been thrown out of his herd for being too violent, from the reports Connor had provided earlier this week. It was young, foolish, and had been raging too close to the inner pockets of the city for about a week.
"I thought you were still with the wolves," Faith said quietly to Nina, rubbing her hand along the small of her back.
Two weeks of negotiations between Faith, Gunn, and the werewolves that were starting to collect together into a ramshackle pack just on the border of Gunn's territory had ended so badly, Faith had washed her hands of the whole goddamn business. There were plenty of other places in the city that were still inhabitable, and there were two, stronger, packs nearer to the ocean that weren't so young and temperamental that Faith was sure would eventually subsume the new one. Nina had stayed behind for another few days - she always had a bit of a soft spot for the underdog, no pun intended.
"I've been tracking this thing for about two... maybe three days?" Nina sighed. "It picked off one of the pups and nearly started a war."
"Three days?" Connor whistled. "Fuck me."
"Yeah, how come that wasn't part of your debriefing this morning?" Gwen shoved him with one finger and he made a show of flailing back, grinning.
"Anne gave me old intel, I guess," Connor shrugged. "I was with his herd when he was born, but she was getting word from the village on the Hill. I would have done the same thing but Faith wanted the whole gang."
Nina leaned against Faith's side, "Nothing like a family roadtrip, huh?"
Illyria came in to view, her hands full of goo, "I wish to study this in the Shell's Lab."
The first thing she'd done in the hesitant peace after the Fall was restore Fred's old lab at the Hyperion to something resembling functionality. Her research was rarely shared and always a bit more mysterious than Faith thought maybe it ought to have been, but for the time being it wasn't hurting anyone, so she mostly ignored it. The Hyperion was the single building still standing in a ten-block wasteland, now mostly full of wild, tangling plants Illyria and Spike cultivated and some of the more docile, but not entirely domesticated, herd animals. It was a bit of an oasis in the midst of the frantic restlessness of Anne's small city-state or any of the small demon villages.
Connor called it their vacation home, and he wasn't entirely wrong.
Faith felt it was a bit more like the hotel from The Shining, isolated and decrepit as it was, with Spike as it's only permanent resident.
"Hmm..." Nina nodded at Illyria, "We'll go with you."
"Like hell ya'll are planning a party without me," Gwen clapped her hand on Illyria's back. "Let's go see what little Spike is up to."
Illyria's eyes flickered and she plopped the handful of goo into Connor's hands. "Bring more," she demanded, before turning around and striding back to where she had collected it.
Faith looked up at the dead demon, "Should we....?"
"Nah," Connor interrupted. "There's some roamers near by, they'll skin it, clean it, and trade all of the working parts. Probably turn the meat into tacos."
Nina sucked in a breath, "Tacos!"
Faith glanced at her and smiled, "Glad you're not dead."
Nina shook her head, "Love you too, weirdo."
Nina'd been gone, gone for days for days and it was war - everything was war. War and death and dust and fucking demons everywhere. How do you cope, she asked Anne. You survive another day, she'd shrugged back and then continued sewing up a wound that would fester and never fully heal but how do you tell a twelve year old child that the world wants his arm and it would take it no matter what she did. How do you tell a child that the world wants to eat you up, gobble you into pieces? There's something in Anne's eyes that tells her that she's always known this - the way they've both always known this. But She. She didn't know. She woke up in the morning and smiled and winked and said, I'm too pretty for the world to eat. Which doesn't sound too different from what Faith always said, but there was. Faith woke up and said, You'll choke on me and I'll crawl back up your throat and you can chew me up every day but I'll still be here for you to try again tomorrow. Because she knew the world - she knew the world's hunger and the hunger of her life vs the hunger of a fucking apocalypse was the same. Anne and Faith (and Buffy, too - if she thought about it), they laughed because the world had chewed them up so many times, ground their bones into dust until there was nothing left at all, but they kept going. Nina? Nina laughed and said, neener neener neener, you can't catch me and it was terrifying and it was intoxicating and it was a whole different kind of strength that Faith needed like water and oxygen. And Nina'd been gone, gone for days and the whole world was war. And Anne smiled at her over the broken body of a child that would never, ever be whole again (but under Anne's firm and capable hands could be more and Faith didn't have a religion or a god or faith exactly, but she believed in Anne and right now, that was all any of them could really expect) and said, you love her and Faith shook her head. Because love - l o v e - was fragile and changeable and delicate and there was nothing of that in her when she looked into Nina's eyes so she'd whispered, I need her and Anne had kissed her softly (because kissing between reflections is like kissing the mirror, here is me and here is you and our lips match maybe but they mean nothing) because it was the saddest thing she'd ever heard and they were watching a child die between them. And Nina'd been gone, gone for days for days and it was war - everything was death all around them, they were in hell and if it killed them, they were going to scratch out a little piece of heaven. And any time you said goodbye could be the last time you ever said anything at all. Wasn't that a kick in the ass? And Nina'd been gone, gone, gone for days....
Hey, Nina always smiled at Faith like the whole world could break into a thousand pieces and it wouldn't matter because in one single moment in the history of the universe, Faith had existed. There was blood on her cheek and a burn on her left arm, but she was there there, there.
Faith grabbed her and kissed her long and hard on the mouth and Nina's lips smiled against hers and her tongue reached out to run along Faith's lower lip and Faith didn't have a religion or god or faith exactly, but she was pretty sure Nina's lips and tongue against hers was as close as this asshole was ever going to get to heaven and that was just fine with her and when she pulled away she said, Glad you're not dead. And maybe that would be enough.
((Gwen was right, the tacos weren't the best, but Spike greeted them with some homemade cheese and a couple of bottles of scrounged up wine he'd bought on the black market or found during a foraging run and Illyria kept Connor and Spike busy in her lab with the goo - sending them out for smelly, mysterious supplies - and Gwen kept a stash of old novels in her room and growled at anyone who came wandering into her hallway and Anne didn't send word about a disaster for a solid three days which may have been a record and Slayer University could run without her for a few days and Nina had found some old bath salts in an abandoned house in the Wasteland while hunting so they made good use of them and it almost felt normal.
To be fair, Faith never thought her life could be this normal and if it wasn't for the warmth of Nina's limbs pressed against hers at night, she may have all thought it was a dream.))
[[pan in, the sun is coming through a half-shut window and birds are chirping outside, you can see the dust swirling in the air where the light hits, before the camera stops on a tangled up pile of white sheets, four bare feet sticking out of from underneath. it feels like a home, like a fairy tale. it's not. it's your life. and any minute now you'll wake up and remember that even after an apocalypse, you can find perfection.]]