Who: Faith and Alec What: Alec gives Faith the news of Connor's death When: Tonight Where: The cabin they've been staying in Warnings: None
Whatever drugs Connor had used on Faith had been highly potent. The Slayer didn’t wake up. She slept on the couch where Alec had brought her for a day and a half before Alec got fed up and dragged her into the bathroom. He turned the shower on and shoved her underneath the water fully clothed. The freezing cold water was a startling alarm and Faith’s eyes instantly opened and she gasped for air as if she had been drowning the whole time she was out. Alec had to get in the shower too just to steady her and she stood trembling against him for a few minutes as the water woke her up.
They stayed that way until Faith’s lips turned blue and then Alec carefully dried her off and went digging around in closets until he found some clothes for her. They were men’s clothing so they were practically hanging off of her but she found an oversized tshirt that she could wear around the cabin. She was used to the cold as her mother was forever forgetting to pay the heating bill back in Boston. She spent many a cold winter huddled on the couch with a blanket and this wasn’t much different.
Alec didn’t say much, which was a pleasant change of pace considering he was usually all too eager to point out Faith’s failings. He could have easily blamed Connor on her but he didn’t say a word. She didn’t bring anything up either considering Alec was the reason that Faith was still alive. Instead she just let him take care of her. He wasn’t like some of her other past relationships. Alec didn’t expect a lot of words, he was just there, hovering around as Faith swam in and out of consciousness for a few days.
Six days had passed since Connor had drugged her and the drugs were out of her system by then, they had been for two days. She was procrastinating simply because she hated going back to the prison with bad news after being gone for so long. She wasn’t eager to resume her hunt of Connor either. So instead she was half laying on the couch, reading an old magazine about dogs when Alec came in.
“Hey,” Faith said as he settled at the end of the couch. “What’s that look for? What’s wrong?” She knew Rebekah hadn’t done anything to him since she took off with Neal and Shannon. She wondered if that was why Alec looked that way. Did he miss her? Faith didn’t dare ask. Her mind wandered to other possible threats in town but Alec didn’t usually care too much about those. She knew something had happened though. Something big.
Alec hadn’t left much. He mainly stayed in the cabin while she slept off her drugs but after a while he nipped that. And now she was up, but she never left. He never asked her to leave though, so that might have been it. He wasn’t really thinking about it. They went about their days not really saying too much. Sure, he was glad she was alright. He guessed. Seeing her like that was amusing to him at first because it was Faith and she deserved worse sometimes. There were just times he couldn’t stand her. And it was easy to blame her for everything that went wrong in his life, but there was a time that he had to own it. Fuck you, Steve. He could hear Steve’s disapproving voice in his head telling him to fix it, get over it and move on or something equally patriotic and maybe it was time to just get over it.
He wasn’t a talker, but the question that was on the tip of his tongue for a few days was Are you okay?. A question that was really easy to ask, but for Alec it was like another confirmation that he gave a shit. He guessed saving her from Connor was a way, but there was a difference in not wanting her to die so he could kill her himself and then caring. A huge difference. And the first was still pending. It would always be pending with her.
But, he realized a lot. Especially when he was holding onto her in that shower a few days ago, bringing her out of her own drug induced coma. He remembered her eyes staring up at him, dark and a little lost. Maybe a little surprised. They had barely made eye contact, but when they did, Alec knew for certain that whatever was with them wasn’t over and maybe Rebekah had it right all along, which pissed him the hell off. He didn’t say anything about it because it didn’t matter. He was sure she’d be gone once she got warm and figured out what was going on. But she stayed. And he never told her to leave.
So she was still there.
The fire was running low so he he gathered some wood to bring inside. Faith was on the couch reading a magazine while he got the fire situation situated. While he was outside there was a message and he barely glanced at it. Just a look and he knew what he needed to know. He wondered if Faith saw it, but by the way she was acting, she didn’t. Her phone must have been in the other room. She was avoiding a lot lately. Not that he pointed it out to her.
The flames came to life again and he stood back before sitting down at the end of the couch. She shifted and he looked down at his hands, not really sure how to tell her, or if he even wanted to. Did he want to be the one? Fuck no, but it wasn’t like she was going anywhere or checking her phone … and finding out by her phone was shitty, even Alec knew that.
“Connor’s gone.” He said, not breaking her in gently or whatever shit that people do. He was gone. Dead. Not coming back. Her best friend, right? Her brother. Whatever he was to her, they were close and glanced over at her. “Staked.” It was finally over. Whatever havoc he was wreaking in Everett? It was done and finished and he couldn’t tell what Faith was feeling. It seemed to be a mixture of relief and anger. Sorrow and guilt. It was fucked up that it came to that, that someone like Connor even was turned, but it happened. And now he was gone. And his friends and family were left behind to pick up whatever pieces he guessed. He remembered when he lost Rebekah to a spell and then cement, how empty he felt. Maybe it wasn’t the same, but that was the only way he knew how to relate and even then, he said nothing. Taking his eyes from her, he stared ahead at the flames as they rose freely.
Connor’s gone.
Staked.
Faith was quiet for a long moment, the subtle hypnosis of the flames in the fireplace drifting her mind out to far off places that even Alec couldn’t touch. Places where she and Connor had beaten the daylight out of one another and then sat down and had a drink and talked about the shit sandwich that was usually their lives. They had both gone through hell as kids. Connor’s hell was a bit more literal but Faith’s upbringing was it’s own kind of hell. They talked about who they were and what that meant because nothing like them had ever existed before. Connor was The Destroyer but was that who he really was? Faith was The Wolf but was that who she really was? Neither of them really knew. They just kept doing what they were best at. Fighting and with fighting came dying.
She reflected quietly on her own last conversation with Connor. The real Connor, not that roid raged out asshole who had strung her up in the place where Buffy and Angelus had tortured them nearly to death for poetry. The real Connor had been sitting vigilantly in the control room, watching the cameras for any threats. The real Connor had yawned before saying goodnight to Faith who was on her way to turn in for the night. That was it. It was so simple. Their last words to each other.
Night.
See you tomorrow.
But Faith wouldn’t see him tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that. He had gone off to help some people who needed it and Faith had gone about her usual daily chores. She hadn’t even gone looking for him all day. Why look for someone who take care of themselves the way that he could? He would show up eventually, before the night was over. He would show up possibly with a god damn buddy even. But he never showed up. That psychotic bitch Drusilla turned him into a monster.
Connor had been dead for awhile. He really had been. The demon that killed him had hung them all over a barrel for weeks. She hated that was how he would be remembered. Connor the town terrorist, holding everyone in Everett hostage when she remembered the way he looked at her the first time he saw her and found out what she could do. She remembered the boy who punched like a semi truck and loved her despite all of her many varied flaws.
Connor had been dead for awhile and this, this moment had been coming for a long time. She felt a wetness in her eyes. It wasn’t completely unlike Faith to cry but she tended to do it in private. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had cried. Who had died last? Dawn? She hadn’t shed a tear for Dawn, assuming Buffy was doing all the crying for her. Faith didn’t cry for Giles or Peter or Elle and she wouldn’t cry for Neal and Shannon. Shit. She hadn’t even cried for C.
She put her hands to her face and felt her entire body wrack with a sob that managed to choke it’s way out of her throat. She hunched over, so that her head was in her hands as she felt that salty wet floodgate open. It didn’t matter to her that Alec was watching. There was only so much a person, even a person like Faith, could take before they broke.
Alec let that little bit of information digest and it was quiet for a long while. The only sound that really heard was the wind and the crackle of the flames. She knew it was coming. Hell, even he did. They both knew that Connor was going to last long around Everett the way he was. It was just a matter of when it happened. Alec didn't have all the details, but he knew enough and he wouldn't lie to Faith about this. Not about Connor. Even if Alec couldn't stand the guy.
Connor had arrived long after Alec was kicked out left and he slid into a role that was Alec's so fucking easily. But that was how it was sometimes he guess. Didn't mean that Alec had to like it. Or him. It wasn't enough of a dislike though for Alec to wish this on him.
Staring ahead, Alec watched the flames dance and the moment Faith shifted, Alec froze. And when the tears fell and she started crying for her friend, he closed his eyes and bowed his own head. He didn't know what to say, he never knew what to say so the easiest thing was to say nothing. But the seconds moved onto moments and moments moved onto minutes and after a while, he frowned and looked at her. He'd never seen her this way before and he was actually a little surprised she was doing it in front of him.
But right now wasn't the time to point it out, or to play his games. This was different. Her dark hair hung over her face and hesitantly he reached out, touching her shoulder. She flinched, but he kept it there. Her body was wracked with sobs and he moved closer, turning toward her this time and his hand that was on her shoulder was now reaching for her own hand so he could hold onto it. It wasn't much. It wasn't anything, but that was all he knew how to do right now and that was even if she let him.
She wondered who had finally done the deed. Was it Dimitri? It didn’t have to be him but she knew that he was on the hunt for him. It could have been anyone though really. All it would take was one lucky shot. One person strong enough or maybe even not that strong if they were in the exact right place at the exact right time. That person had every advantage and it only took a second to stake a vampire. Just one careless slip and it could all be over, even for someone as powerful as Connor. He would only have a moment to register who his killer was before he would dissipate into ash. That would be all that there was left to bury. No body or anything, just what housekeeping could fit in a dustpan. She supposed she would find out all the details when she finally went home to the prison she had been neglecting.
Right now she was too busy reacting and she couldn’t just swallow her feelings no matter how hard she tried to stuff them back in there. Because she shouldn’t have been breaking down like this in front of Alec of all people. She wasn’t alone. She had friends now, it was a thing. She had people she could count on for the first time ever and she was crying in front of Alec.
His hand on her shoulder startled her for a second but then she relaxed into it. If he was going to kill her he could just fucking kill her. But if he was going to kill her why had he saved her? If he was going to kill her he could have done it sometime in the last five days. She knew that he had every intention of killing her the day he stole her gun and shot himself like an idiot. The intention was there that day but now his hands were soft and yielding, comforting rather than threatening. They might have had the most fucked up relationship on the planet but wasn’t it just perfect? They were two damaged little fuckers. And she was the girl who was sleeping with the man she once nearly tortured to death.
Her relationships were mostly damaged, torn and destroyed beyond repair. That was why Connor had been so important to her. Boyfriends and girlfriends would come and go but her brothers would always be closer to her heart because they were constant. They had been constant. Right. Because he was dead.
Her fingers closed around his hand in hers and she pulled him towards her, her small frame encompassed by his arm. She could hear his heartbeating as she cried. And when she finally finally ran out of tears, he let her rage against him, banging her fists against his chest and cursing God and everyone she had ever met. Angry fat tears rolled down her cheeks as she yelled obscenities. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
Alec remained quiet and dutiful as he sat there, holding onto her. She was curled against his side for so long until a wave of emotions hit her and she was pounding his chest. He took it, he let her get it out. It wasn't the time, but after this? He was probably certain it would never be the time again. With each pound of her fist, he felt how much she gave a shit about him. About Connor. And then the next wave hit her and Alec suddenly found himself pushed away as she screamed and yelled and he didn't watch her. He stared ahead while she got it out but then it just stopped. Her yells and pleads and the why's and she sat there, her body still rolling with her grief that he was sure she hadn't even seen last of yet and it was his turn to pull her toward him.
His hand ran over her face as he wiped her tears and he barely made eye contact as he pushed her tangled hair from her face. He felt her nails pressing into his skin, either to hold on or to keep herself from tipping over again, but he didn't care. She'd done worse to him. He let her go and moved to get up, there was something in the kitchen that he had kept from her because she was drugged, but now seemed as perfect time as any. Alcohol did nothing to him, he drank it at the bar because that's what was required but he didn't have to waste it here. It was hers. But she reached for his arm as he stood and he looked back, sliding his hand down her own arm and holding her hand so he could pull her up with him.
He grabbed the whiskey and handed it off to her. He wasn't sure if that would help, but shit, sad people tended to drink, so he guessed it was all in the right place. He stood next to her in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter, his arms crossed and watching her.
"Do you gotta head back?" He asked after a while of them just standing there. He wasn't sure if there was a disappointment in his voice that she had to go back or not, but he questioned it in his own mind. His gaze faltered on her until he looked ahead and sighed. He wasn't sure if Rebekah was right entirely. Because he loved Rebekah. He still did. But it was so easy for her to just bounce and leave him behind and if he ever saw her ... what would he do? She was an original and he doubted she'd ever have the luxury of being buried twice. He banked on never seeing her again and maybe that was for the best. But, she was wrong. But in a lot of ways she was right. He might have loved Rebekah, but he never stopped loving Faith. He never realized he could love two people at once, but he did and finally, his eyes were on Faith again.
"I can take you back if that's what you need to do." He shrugged. "Or you can stay."
He knew what she liked, that was for sure. She opened the bottle of booze and took a long swig. It tasted a little weird and for one paranoid moment she wondered if Alec was trying to poison her. Then she realized she just hadn’t had a drink in a few days and her body was reacting to the sudden substance back in her life. Good old alcohol. It was always there for her when she needed it. She didn’t bother pouring a glass and just drank straight from the bottle. She reached for her crumpled pack of smokes and pulled one free before lighting it.
“I have to go back,” she said in an especially raspy voice after a long minute. “Just not yet, okay?” She looked up at him then, forcing him to make eye contact with her. She didn’t want to go back just yet. She didn’t want anyone to see her this raw. She thought it had been bad after Colleen died, after Buffy died, after Vera died, after Nate died. It hadn’t been this bad. Somehow she almost felt that she was grieving everyone at the same time. Connor was just the little push she needed over the precipice.
“I don’t want them to see me….” She dropped her eyes. “Like this.” So maybe it was the reason she had stuck around here. Alec was safe in that he was distant from her life at this point. Impulsive forest sex notwithstanding, the two of them tended to avoid each other because it always ended in conflict. Except for now. Not this time. Something seemed different this time. She was getting a glimpse of another side of Alec. Ironically, probably one that Rebekah had brought out in him with her brash mood swings. Of course she didn't want them to see her like this. She was the leader right? The one that held it all together and who really called the shots. That's why it was so easy to blame her. Because she did call the shots. Every fucked up thing the prison did was because of her. Whatever stupid plan they had, or rash decisions, it all went back to the girl that was standing beside him, smoking and drinking and grieving and telling him that she couldn't go back because they couldn't see her vulnerable. He got it. And he wasn't going to question it. Mainly because he kind of didn't want her to go.
How did it get to that?
Even with her being in her own little coma for the last few days, he could look at her and feel that anger. He could easily blame her for every shitty thing that happened to him since being in Everett. It was her decision to kick him out. It was her decision to take advantage of Rebekah. It was her decision to allow him to use her gun. Just petty fucking shit. Shit that he'd remember. Or that he did. Because he looked at her now and didn't feel that anger. He had to let it go sometime right? And it wasn't like she was looking at him like she wanted to kill him. Or hit him. Or tell him what a jerk he was. He actually didn't know what to expect from her either. Not like this.
But he didn't want her to go. Not yet. So he just nodded. "Okay." He sighed, looking ahead as his hand reached out, slipping under her thick hair and touching the back of her neck. His fingers massaged the nape of her neck and he looked at her. "Want me to stop?"
She shook her head. He used to do this back when they lived in the prison together and shared that first cell. Faith was the only one who never had a roommate. That was because she never wanted to replace the original one. Alec had shared that cell with her and nobody did after he left. After she kicked him out. Sometimes she couldn’t even remember how it all went down. How Alec went from the guy she trusted most to the one she didn’t trust at all. He had just been so cold after he killed that girl. Was it an accident? She would never really know. The sad part was that she understood him but she had to do what was good for everyone. She was the leader. It was easy to blame her because she made the hard decisions. The kind of decisions that most people didn’t want to make.
She wasn’t much of a leader right now, having been on the hunt for Connor for weeks now. She had made him a promise though and that promise had meant more than her life. It had meant more than that prison. In the end she had failed at keeping her promise but she wouldn’t have given up. She would have gone out there again if somebody hadn’t beaten her to the punch. Maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she would have stayed here and buried herself in Alec. Maybe she would have converted him to her cause. The two of them versus Connor stacked the odds pretty heavily against him. Maybe a lot of things, it was done. She just needed to get her shit together so she could go back home.
“You could come back with me,” she said seriously. She didn’t know if he would actually take her seriously. She didn’t really want to talk to him about what happened with Rebekah. She didn’t want to rehash the past. “Steve and Max and Jondy are all moving in. You’d be with your family.” And if anyone could keep Alec in line it was Steve Rogers. She could see how they were related.
She put the cigarette out in the sink and took another swig from the bottle of whiskey. There were no more tears, no more anger. She felt completely and totally drained, exhausted and sad. Alec had taken care of her and she was ready to give him a second chance. She had given other people second chances and it paid off. She herself had been given a second chance once and she didn’t waste it.
If he would have opened his mouth right then and there it would have been a no. the moment she asked though, he was just a little surprised by it all and he didn't say anything. But, the truth was? There was no way in hell he could go back. At least that's what he thought. There was a lot of shit he had one, or been a part of. He turned his back on the prison, his prison. Sure, Faith ran it. It was her building, her people, but his plans were the backbone of that place. What she fell back. Or did. A lot had changed in the last year and shit wasn't the same anymore, but there was a lot that happened there was that clearly recognized by him. Because he made it happen.
"Steve let me know what was going on." He wasn't happy about it then either, but Steve was a good guy. He kept Alec in line and let him know when he fucked up - which was often. Alec had a strange sense to obey him and actually give a shit what he said. Steve's opinion of him mattered that much that really, Alec couldn't remember anyone else filling that role for him that Alec actually respected.
After that though, Alec hadn't talked to him. Or to Jondy, or to Max. Mainly because of the shit he was doing with and he didn't want to talk about it. Ever. It was just one of those things that was going to get buried and no one would know the truth except for him and the blond vampire that was already gone from Everett.
"Nah, I'm gonna stay out here." He said after a few minutes of thinking about it. There was a lot of shit that he put the prison through, that he put this girl through, but he doubted the prison would be as forgiving as Faith usually was. His hand moved from her neck and down her back until his palm rested on the counter behind her and he looked at her.
"At least for now."
She nodded. “Yeah, I get it.” She finally picked her head up and looked at him again. She took another drink and paused. She let go of the breath that she was holding and looked past him out the window to the zombie that was milling around in the backyard. Not that it mattered. Those things didn’t stand a chance against the two of them if it came near and they were safe inside of the house.
“I’m gonna go lay down.” She handed him back the bottle of whiskey. She would have gone to one of the bedrooms but it was actually warmer on the sofa in front of the fire place. That was where she preferred to sleep. Alec always kept the fire going and it was warm in the living room area.
Her socks slid across the hardwood floor as she made her way back into the living room. She had to go back to the prison soon. She just needed to sleep this off. She needed to be a stone wall again when she went back in there. She couldn’t bend or break. They couldn’t see her like that. Not for the first time in her life, Faith felt responsible.
She curled up on the couch and Alec went outside to deal with the zombie. When he came back in she was half asleep but she managed to sit up enough to make room for him on the sofa too.
Alec dealt with the zombie pretty quickly but he stayed outside for a few minutes, just thinking about what the fuck was actually going on. Was this actually happening? Did life seem to come to a complete circle or was this just some fluke? He wasn't sure and it wasn't the forest that had all the answers or the deader than dead zombie that was a few yards away. He hated that. But instead of taking care of the zombie completely by getting it away from the cabin, he just walked back in.
He saw her laying on the couch and he flipped off the light, then grabbed a blanket from the chair. She sat up and looked at him. His response was him just tilting his head and laying the blanket over her small body on the sofa. He easily got his boots off and sat next to her before she laid her head down in his lap, her eyes still hypnotized by the fire in front of them. His arm went out to the side and he looked at her before he brought it in and held onto her.
She looked so small, laying there, so vulnerable and usually Alec wouldn’t mind her like this, but this was different and nothing like he remembered. It was shockingly new, this feeling. He brushed some hair from her face and trailed his finger down her cheek as her eyes closed and wondered what the hell he was really doing. But the truth was, this was a long time coming, he just didn’t realize it.
He moved down slightly, shifting her as he went, which to that, he offered her a small smile but he laid back against the couch as he held onto her and shut his eyes. No longer questioning it, or thinking about it, he just went with it as she was too and for the first time in a few weeks he thought maybe this was the start of something better for the both of them.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, some things were best born from tragedy and darkness.