Oliver Pike (notafishie) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2010-02-16 18:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | pike |
Who: Pike (narrative)
Where: The pizza shop, and an alley near it.
What: A trip down memory lane goes bad. (Fleshing out the Detroit stuff mentioned elsewhere.)
When: Around 7pm.
Ratings: R to be on the safe side.
Status: Complete
Staring at pizza wasn’t as entertaining as eating it.
Pike was sitting in their booth in their pizza place. In front of him was a large pizza, what he was coming to think of as the “meat emporium”. It was steaming and smelled fantastic, but right now the smell of food just turned his stomach. He hadn’t even really been sure why he’d been compelled to come in and order something. On some level, a logic level that Pike did not often visit, he knew he had to eat, and no, vending machine snacks didn’t count. It was the same level that made him recall that knife wounds required the occasional change of dressing, which he’d utterly forgotten about once Faith disappeared. This also served the purpose of checking to make sure he hadn’t sprung a leak or damaged himself further in the bar fight – or club fight, he supposed – the day before. Even then it was a rote action, not something he dedicated any real time or effort to. His mind was elsewhere, lingering on dark eyes and a dazzling smile that he was scared he would never get to see again.
He supposed that was why he was here. This was their place. Maybe she would stop in for food. Probably not, but right now Pike felt an awful lot like a man drowning at sea, clinging to a single piece of driftwood in a hurricane. He didn’t plan on giving up, but that didn’t mean this was easy. He was only human, after all, and more emotional than most, even if he did hide it. His age had brought with it a certain degree of wisdom, but it hadn’t come without a cost.
The cost.
He winced. The pizza just became about a million times less appealing, and given that he had been staring at it sort of like it was an alien a few minutes earlier, that was saying something. The cost of wisdom. What was it that one nuclear guy said? Pike thought back, hoping it had been one of those days he was awake for a history class. I have become death, destroyer of worlds. Back then, Pike had always brushed it off with some hilarious Galactus-themed jokes. Now he knew better.
Now he understood.
Detroit, 2002.
Motor City. Fuck yes. This was the first personal vacation Pike had taken in a long time. He was in town for a car show. He’d gotten in the night before, and forewent picking up one of the “booth babes” that sometimes decorated the place in favor of some food, a bed, and a movie on HBO. It was kind of sad that these days, this sort of thing was the highlight of his life, but he was very good at burying any loneliness he may have been feeling so deep that it would have taken an archaeologist and one of those jumbo oil drills to find it.
He’d picked up a morning paper on the way in, and while he waited for the typical preamble of beginning credits to pass by, he glanced through it. Sports, human interest, entertainment, wild dog attacks, a factory closing down in-
His brow furrowed. “Wild dog attacks?” He leafed back a few pages until he found the article. Yeah, that’s what it said, wild dog attacks. Fatal wild dog attacks. Every single one, in fact. The paper was reporting it in that distressing-but-blasé way that signaled a reoccurring crisis that people were beginning to adopt as fairly normal. Apparently, the attacks started several months ago, and only occurred during three nights of each month. According to the article, they had started again the day before. On a hunch, he pulled out his phone and checked its calendar. “Lunar cycle matches,” he sighed, running one hand through his hair. “No rest for the wicked, I guess.”
It was time to do some research.
Back in the present, Pike’s eyes had glazed over. The cooling pizza was forgotten for now, while the owners tittered worriedly about their “favorite health inspector”. Unnoticed by anyone else, he’d jammed his hands under the table.
He didn’t want anyone to see them shaking.
Detroit, 2002.
Kids.
Pike was shaking with barely contained rage. When he’d first realized there was a werewolf in Detroit, he’d felt a conflicting mix of emotions. Irritation at his vacation being interrupted, although he supposed he should’ve expected no less. It had been a long time since his life hadn’t involved weirdness on some level. That wasn’t what had confused him. It had been the strange mix of relief and hope. Since parting from Buffy in Vegas, Pike’s life had revolved around blood and death. Sure, he was killing the bad guys, but some days it just got kind of…exhausting. Some days you wanted to do something that didn’t involve chopping something’s head off with a big axe, or lighting it on fire with a homemade flamethrower. Pike didn’t want normal, he’d made that decision the week after leaving Buffy, but occasionally something a little less heavy would’ve been nice.
So when he’d found out about the werewolf, he had kind of been hoping that this would be something different. That he wouldn’t have to kill anything. That he could just teach this person how to build a cage, educate them on when to use it and what tranqs to take in order to take the edge off the wolf. He’d been hoping that he would be able to give this person the tools necessary to have a normal life for once.
And then he’d found out this thing was solely eating kids.
None of the victims had survived. The eldest, about a month ago, was twelve. The latest had been an eight year old girl. That meant one thing and one thing only. This wasn’t some poor sap who didn’t know what was happening. Prey was often pretty random, in those cases. The prey pattern here showed an amount of exclusivity that made it pretty clear that this wolf was deliberately choosing who and what to eat. This was no victim.
This was a monster, Pike thought as he loaded six silver bullets into his revolver. This was a monster, and he was going to kill it.
A lump had formed in his throat. He was biting his lip, and under the teeth blood was starting to well up. The beginnings of tears were prickling at his eyes, but he blinked them away. He wanted to push the pizza away as he was sure it was the smell that was making him nauseous. That had to be it. Of course.
He didn’t really believe it, either.
Detroit, 2002.
For a guy like Pike, nights in Detroit were like nights in a lot of other places. Full of dangers no one would ever acknowledge. Full of purpose. Full of fear, he wasn’t too proud to admit. Tonight, though? Tonight was a night of rage and promise. Tonight was the night he was going to put some silver into a monster that was preying on kids, and he was not too goodie-goodie to admit to himself that he would enjoy it.
He had a lead, too. Some kind of hubbub near the children’s hospital, which made sense in a way that made him sick to his stomach. According to his research earlier that day, all of the kids were either sick or being treated for mental issues. That meant the wolf was either a doctor or a nurse at the hospital, someone who would have been connected to all those kids. Someone that was supposed to take care of them. It made Pike absolutely sick to know this, and filled him with a rage and disgust that he couldn’t quite rein in. He was going to kill this sick bastard with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.
He’d been tracking it since the hospital. Luckily, a werewolf wasn’t exactly hard to track in an urban environment. Sure, there were probably some people that thought it was a furry on parade or something, but most people tended to react when they saw something like this.
Pike was no Predator, but this thing was being pretty careless. He’d been able to get ahead of the thing by taking a shortcut, and now he was perched in a fire escape, some raw meat thrown in a nearby dumpster to attract the monster. Pike’s plan was to wait for it to go to the dumpster to check out the meat, and then he’d blow it away. It would be far enough in that he’d be able to get up the fire escape before someone got to it. It was a good, clean kill.
That was the plan, anyway.
The pizza was abandoned as Pike bolted up from the booth and tore out of the pizza place at a dead sprint. What had started as a little light reminiscence had become a full-on flashback, and he had to get out of there before it hit the worst part. He tried to outrun the memory, but could only get as far as a nearby alley that he practically flung himself into, panting and sweating heavily.
Detroit, 2002.
It was like a train wreck in slow motion. Three shots barked out of Pike’s heavy revolver. All three hit their mark, tearing right through the heart of the beast as it turned to run. Pike stood, one hand on the ladder leading up, but hesitated. He wanted to see this sick bastard die. He wanted to watch as-
His look of triumph quickly turned to a look of abject horror as the wolf fell, slowly transforming back into its human form. Almost immediately, his mind began picking out details that didn’t fit. That cheekbone was too soft, that musculature too juvenile. Gripped with a sick horror, Pike stood morbidly transfixed as he watched the body hit the ground.
It was the body of a thirteen year old boy.
Pike hugged himself tightly, as if fighting off some intense chill that no one else could feel. His legs grew weak and he had to thump heavily against the alley wall for support. The tears he’d blinked back earlier were falling freely now. The leather of his jacket creaked as his fingers dug in painfully.
Almost done now. Just a little more waking nightmare.
Detroit, 2002.
The rest of the night was a blur. Climbing down a rusted fire escape on the other side of the building, a few feet from where he’d just murdered a little boy. His motel room door as he went crashing through it. The crappy tile of the room’s bathroom, covered in breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A bloody washcloth tearing at the now-raw skin of his shooting hand. Dry heaves that felt like they were going to kill him, and the dark certainty that it was no less than what he deserved.
And then, finally, the black void of a dreamless, emotionally exhausted sleep.
Pike sucked in a sharp breath, coming back to himself. He immediately began swiping the tears from his face and picked himself up off the ground. The minute he was up, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes, lit one up, and took a long pull on the cigarette. This was pretty much the reason he kept cigarettes on him, for when the memory of Detroit became a little too persistent and he didn’t have any booze to numb the nerves afterward. He stood there in the alley for a moment, puffing on the death-on-a-stick and staring at nothing, trying and mostly failing to regain his composure.
He’d stayed in Detroit for two days trying to figure out what happened. It was on the second day that the morning paper printed the kid’s obit, and mentioned in that obit was the fact that the kid had been the only surviving victim of the most recent batch of wild dog attacks. He’d been attacked about an hour before the eight year old. According to his parents, the child had hidden in a dumpster and buried himself in trash. Local zoologists believed that it had saved the child’s life, as the reeking garbage most likely made his scent much harder to track. Pike knew they were right.
He’d left Detroit that morning. Just hopped on his bike, tore out of the city, and never once looked back. So began a three month stretch of his life that he barely remembered, thanks to all the benders he’d been on to try and purge all memory of Motor City from his mind. He wasn’t completely off the grid. He could remember a job here and there. But the periods between them were mostly a haze of alcohol, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. Maybe that was part of why he was so steadfastly standing by Faith. Because he knew what she was going through, at least a little and he hadn’t been lucky enough to have anyone to help him come back from that. He didn’t wish that fate on anyone.
Maybe that was also why he’d attached himself to her so quickly. He’d never told anyone about Detroit. Not that there were many people he could have told. He’d considered calling Doyle once, but the thought of that look in Doyle’s eyes stopped that thought dead. That look that said, ‘oh my god, you’re a childkiller’. Back then, he’d seen it enough in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror. He didn’t need to see it in one of the only people he could’ve called a friend.
He’d pulled himself out of that muck and mostly moved on. He would never forget it, but it no longer occupied a huge portion of his conscious thought. But since finding out about Faith, it had been slowly creeping back into his thoughts. He had a feeling that if he wanted to help her, he’d have to talk about it, as hard as that would be considering how many layers of distance he’d built up between the incident and himself. But he’d said it the other night.
He’d risk anything for her.