InsaneJournal

WHO: Pike and Faith.
WHAT: Faith doesn’t want to sleep. Pike dozes off for a second after staying up with her. Things go wrong.
WHERE: Their motel room.
WHEN: January 1st, somewhere after 1am.
STATUS: Incomplete
Ratings: PG-13, possibly R for language in the narration.

Pike hadn’t had a New Years he could remember since ’92, and every year since then had been spent mostly in beds and bathrooms. The years since he was eleven spent drunk that night and hungover the following day were bad. In some cases, especially in the years since ’96, they were really bad. Waking up in New Mexico when you’d been at a party in Texas the previous night type of bad. Then there was the thing in Vegas where he could no longer come within one hundred feet of Siegfried, Roy, or their show. Then there was the one after breaking up with the gypsy, and boy were THOSE boils unpleasant.

This one was still worse.

Faith was in a bad way. That was to be expected, but it didn’t make it hurt less to see her like this. He was doing the best he could to help her, but it wasn’t easy. She wouldn’t eat unless he made her, and even then she’d only eat a little. She didn’t want to sleep, and he could only try to coax her so much without pushing too hard. So far, he’d had no success getting her to sleep, and so he hadn’t slept either. The only time he’d tried to touch her, just to let her know he was there, she’d flinched. He’d just smiled and told her he understood, and that he’d be there when she was ready. It was the truth, but it left him with little more to do for help than sit with her, most of the time.

Sitting with her left him a lot of time to his thoughts, and this was not a pleasant thing. Guilt and rage warred for control of his mind, represented by two different images, two fresh bad memories to add to his collection. The first was Buffy, hanging by those chains, torn up and barely conscious. He’d been glad, at the time, that he’d already had his mind and emotions on a tight leash, because if he hadn’t he’d have thrown up all over that warehouse floor. It wasn’t the blood or even the mess itself that got him. He’d seen worse messes from the victims of hungry werewolves or various demons. No, it was the fact that the only reason she was up there like that was because he’d stubbornly refused to even take a few harmless precautions that got him. Two people he cared about were being forced to pay for his idiocy.

He was going to hate himself for this one for the rest of his natural life, if not longer.

Then there was the anger. That one was represented by a much different image: Sam, using some fucked up mojo on Faith, her face contorted in pain. At the time, Pike had been struck dumb. Sam was supposed to be a friend, and he was torturing her? Pike could not remember a time when he’d felt more betrayed and furious than he had at that exact moment. He had very nearly leapt on Sam, but had instead taken firm hold of himself and simply spewed out the exorcism, cutting off Sam’s supernatural Guantanamo Bay routine. Sam had been pissed, but Pike had not, and still did not, give one flying fuck. Sam had crossed a line. At this point, it wouldn’t even matter to Pike if he apologized. Pike could accept an apology, but he would never forgive, and there was no chance of him ever trusting Sam again. If Faith eventually did, then Pike could be civil to him, but that would be the limit of his interaction with Sam. He was also worried about how his friendship with Ruby would be affected by this. He didn’t have many friends, and if his difficulties with Sam’s behavior spilled over into his friendship with Ruby, it would leave him feeling very close to alone. Andrea was a great friend, but Pike didn’t want to make her his sole confidante and venting outlet. The worst part of this whole thing, the part that hurt almost as much as the actual act, was that up until that night Pike had looked at Sam as the only one who could really understand his thing with Faith, given Sam’s own situation with Ruby. He could talk to other people about it, true, but they would never really get it like Sam would. That was gone now, and it sucked, but what was done was done and it hadn’t been Pike’s actions that caused it.

None of this was showing on his face, or in his behavior. It would have made him feel better, maybe a lot better, to vent, but this wasn’t about him. This was about Faith, and making sure she got better. He had to be strong for her, be a rock for her to grab onto, even if it meant shoving all his crap down into a deep hole inside and trying to forget it. In his mind, that was just what you did when you were responsible for and cared for someone: You put your own crap aside for their good. It was what neither of his parents had ever done for him. In fact, his father had taken great pleasure in taking out every little frustration on him, and it was why he was so quick to sacrifice for others. Including, in this case, sleep, which Pike wasn’t planning on getting until Faith did.

She’d gone into the bathroom a second ago, and for just a moment Pike let that mask he’d been wearing slip. He was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, and when he heard the bathroom door click closed he sighed and let his head loll back onto the bed. He took a few deep, almost desperate breaths to try and calm the storm of thought and emotion raging in his mind. For just a moment his eyes fluttered closed and, without even realizing it, he drifted off into a light doze.