The Violence of Existing
Chapter 4
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When Slayer padded out of the bathroom wrapped in a white
towel, he was gone. Wesley never stayed,
hadn’t spent the night once since he had tracked her down a year earlier.
~~~~~~1 year
earlier~~~~~
She had been sitting in a dark corner of one of her regular
after-slayage goth clubs, doing a line of coke and trying to lose herself in
the pounding music when he had slipped into the booth beside her.
“I’m so glad you’re hanging up your stalker hat.
that I didn’t see you,” she said.
Then she had looked at him, up close, for the first time in
over 3 years. What she saw surprised
her. This man was not the prissy,
ineffectual Watcher who had tried to make her toe the Council’s line.
this scene, with his all black clothing, his tousled hair, and his three day
growth. She raised her eyebrows in
appreciation and nodded toward the line that was still on the table.
“Want?” she offered.
“No thank you. I seem
to recall a time in the not overly distant past when you weren’t so eager to
have your body polluted with chemicals, but I suppose death might change
things,” he’d answered. His voice was
deceptively smooth and calm, and she had made an internal note to be ready for
whatever had made him finally approach her.
She had laughed, and it sounded more than ttlettle
hollow. “Don’t worry Wes, I haven’t been
promoted to head crack-whore yet.”
He had been skeptical at first, but soon he found out that
even though she drank and did the occasional line, she never lost control.
drunk. It was almost as though she
weren’t capable of excess anymore.
“So are you going to clue me in on why you’ve been following
me around, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?
can get up and walk right on out” she had said.
Her voice was chipper and sweat, belying the words that she spoke.
If he thinks I’m going
to see . . . well, I won’t. I can’t.
It was his turn to bark out a bitter laugh.
another day—perhaps I’ll share it when you tell me how a dead slayer is
walking, talking, and breathing,” he had replied.
Slayer waited for him to continue, staring at him mutely
with something close to disinterest in her eyes.
“You killed a . . . friend . . . of mine.
core. Ring any bells?”
The haunted look that briefly flashed through her eyes was
all the answer he needed.
“I had no idea it was you, Buffy. . .” he started to
continue, before her sharp retort interrupted him.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice low and laced with
warning of imminent danger to his person.
He gave her a quizzical look.
If you don’t wish to be called by your name, what do you prefer?”
“Slayer.”
He stared at her for several long moments.
first I didn’t realize it was you. The
night you killed Lilah, I saw you leave her building on my way up.
never presumed that it could be you, as I knew you were dead of course.
off for a moment. When it resumed, it
was silky smooth and threatening in its calm, cool delivery.
her own blood, I began . . . interviewing . . . my sources.
to find.”
“Silly Wes. You never
would have found me if I didn’t want
to be found,” she drawled, tilting her head flirtatiously to one side and
giving him a seductive half-smile. Only
her eyes betrayed the hard calculating look of a warrior engaged in
battle.
His eyes had roamed appraisingly over her body in response,
had darkened with a hint of lust as he lingered on the swell of her breasts
over the black bustier, had raked slowly down to the exposed flesh of her
stomach before briefly settling on the firm thighs that were encain rin red
leather. When he raised his eyes to meet
hers again, she was still smiling at him.
This was not the girl he had known in Sunnydale.
her head, her long mane of dirty-blonde hair falling in sexy, tousled layers
onto her shoulders and back, the tips in front just brushing the luminescent swell
of her breasts.
“So, Wes, what is it that you want?” she questioned.
It was then that he had moved towards her, his eyes burning
into hers, and she had been only slightly surprised to feel the cool feel of
the tip of a blade pressed firmly against the skin of her abdomen.
“What I want is
the answer to a single question. Precisely
when did you begin murdering humans?” he had bitten out, the hand holding the
knife steady, his face a hard inscrutable mask.
Slayer had reacted to the threat by running to meet it.
that the point of the knife punctured the skin of her belly, pressed forward
until she could feel the blood welling up around the blade and run in a trickle
down her skin. Her expression never
changed—there was no acknowledgement of the imminent threat, or the pain.
just inside her and her lips were mere inches from his.
“Your fuck buddy was my first,” she purred.
before he had the chance to plunge the knife he was brandishing into the depths
of her gut, she had one strong hand wrapped around his scarred throat, applying
unrelenting pressure. The slight relaxation
of his hand on the knife told her that he knew she could crush his windpipe in
an instant. They had stayed that way,
frozen in an impasse, for several long moments.
It was Slayer who finally broke the silence.
“I’m thinking that maybe the question you should have asked
is why.” She had dropped her voice in a
faux whisper. “Technically I’m not
allowed to tell you, but I’ve never really cared too much about technicalities.
motto.”
He had given her a calculating look before pulling back the
blade. She had dropped her hand from his
neck and they sat back in the boothardearded and distrustful.
him about her assignment to eliminate a female lawyer who had made a deal to
open a dimensional portal for a demon warlord.
Lilah’s file had been thick, but the last deal was the one that signed
her death warr
greed, and her willingness to do anything that might give her more
power—including damning their world to a long, drawn-out war with highly
trained demons intent upon conquering this dimension—had all combined to make
her Slayer’s first, and thus far, only human target.
had fulfilled her assignment. She didn’t
tell him how she had bent over and thrown up as soon as she had reached the
relative safety of the alley where she had left her car parked.
Wes had listened quietly, occasionally breaking in to ask a
question, but mostly just trying to digest the information.
guys but he hadn’t ever fully considered the extent of her personal
culpability. Still, her death had
affected him. His anger at Slayer had
dissipated as she talked, but his grief over Lilah did not.
night, both still alive, neither feeling the need to eliminate the other any
longer.
The next night Wesley wordlessly joined her on patrol.
talk. Slayer told him about her
banishment from Heaven. He had shared
his own fall from grace with her in cold, detached tones.
away. For a moment, before she regained
control of herself, she was certain her own eyes must have betrayed her own
surprising surge of emotion at hearing that Angel had had a son with
Darla. Slayer felt as though she had
been sucker punched in the gut at the news, and it had taken her a moment to
push it back. She struggled to regain
her usual sense of emotional neutrality, and when it hadn’t come right away,
she’d settled on turning the anguish into anger.
betrayal of Angel. He had responded with
his own healthy dose of anger at her over killing Lilah.
physical assault, and then they had been naked and writhing together on the
floor amid the ruins of broken pottery that hadn’t weathered the fight.
In the end, Wes refused to continue calling her Slayer.
his history with the Watcher’s Council and he couldn’t remind himself of their
personal history every time he had to call out her name.
called Buffy, she pick a different human name.
She had simply glared and refused.
It had been two weeks into their renewed acquaintance when he had
overheard her part of an assignment call from Harris, his eyes lighting up with
sardonic amusement when she had begrudgingly given her code name for
verification. When she hung up the
phone, he had spoken.
“Artemis, Greek Goddess of the Hunt,” he had murmured,
thoughtfully. “Quite appropriate.
her Roman goddess counterpart.” When she
gave him a warning glare, he had simply smiled.
After several days of his persistence, she reluctantly gave in.
So now he called out “Diana” when he came inside her, and
she called out nothing.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care for him—she did.
each other. They felt connected—the
outcasts, the unwanted, and the broken. <
st
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> They did not feel love.
although neither had ever taken another lover.
No, she said nothing because the one time she had moaned out
a name during sex with Wesley it hadn’t been his and neither of them had wanted
to be reminded of the one whose name it was.
He, because of his betrayal of the one whose name was spoken.
Slayer.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Slayer pulled herself from her thoughts and finished drying
off her body. Throwing on a pair of yoga
pants and a tank, she looked longi at at her big comfy bed with its fluffy
white down comforter and soothingly cool cotton sheets, before turning toward
the padded bench that sat in front of one floor to ceiling window.
unobstructed view of the city skyline.
Sometimes, when she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she sat there
for hours and stared out at the city that had taken in her and made her one of
its own after Heaven had dumped her back to earth.
Tonight was going to be one of those nights.
on them as she stared out into the night sky.
Lights pretty.
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