Faith - Acceptable Losses

[iluvroadrunner6]

Fandom: Buffyverse/Supernatural
Title: Acceptable Losses
Author: iluvroadrunner6
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Faith Lehane, Sam and Dean Winchester, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
24hour_themes Prompt: 3:00 ~ Determination, especially in matters that seem to hold you back.
tamingthemuse Prompt: Percieve
Content Warning: Spoilers through 510: Abandon All Hope.
Summary: There were some losses that Faith didn’t consider acceptable.
Author’s Note: Faith’s POV through “Medias in Res.” Thanks to lollobrigida for helping me fine-tune my Faith voice.
Disclaimer: I do not own. They all belong to Joss and Kripke. I’m just borrowing and will put everything back where I found it.



Faith tended to work solo for a reason.

Mostly, it was because she liked to call the shots. Six years down the line from the Great Slayer Explosion of 2004 and she got used to being looked at as some kind of point of authority. It had its pros and its cons—she loved it because it meant that she was the one in charge and running the play, but at the same time, people were placing their trust in her to get them out to the other side, and that part tended to go not so well for her. She didn’t think things through enough, and that always seemed to get people killed. It was one thing when she only had to worry about herself—she knew what damage she could take and what she couldn’t and more importantly, whether or not that mattered. The girls, she wasn’t sure on all the specifics, and she didn’t have the focus for it. It was probably why she bailed on the castle when she did. She was better off on her own, and Giles had no problem with feeding her tips on hot spots to check out. That, basically, is how she wound up on Bobby Singer’s front porch.

That hadn’t gone incredibly well.

If she had known they’d just come from a giant show down with the source of all evil, where things had gone to shit and they lost some people, she might have been a little more sympathetic. Maybe not much, but a little. But she didn’t so instead she just wound up with a case of foot-in-mouth disease and making things worse, but she had a job to do. Giles wanted her to watch Michael’s vessel’s ass, so that’s what she would do.

In fact, considering they both had asses worth watching, she'd do just that—Goddamn.

Anyway.

She was surprised Giles hadn’t given her the all-clear to axe this Sam guy, being the guy that’s supposed to house the big man downstairs and all. She didn’t like having to kill people, but fate of the world, blah blah blah, she had figured that was what the assignment would boil down to eventually. Especially considering he was the one that let him out in the first place. But that wasn’t her orders. So far, Giles wanted her to hold back, see what they could find out, and Faith would do as she was told. There were certain points of authority that she was willing to cede to. Giles was one of them.

Faith’s initial lack of tact was made up for when they saw how she could kick ass. The Winchester boys could appreciate the added muscle, even if they still didn’t like her that much, so they didn’t mind if she tagged along to the next great showdown. In this case, Giles had leaked to her that one of his coven connections had been feeling some major black magic spikes in the greater LA area, so they were heading down to check it out.

She knew from experience that black magic during an Apocalypse was never a good thing, but she was a bit hesitant to head into Los Angeles. She hadn’t been there since the Angelus situation, but from what she heard about what had happened when the gang tried to overthrow Wolfram and Hart, she couldn’t bring herself to head in there and help out. By the time she’d gotten word, almost all the people she'd known were dead. And Faith, as per usual, couldn’t deal. She’d now lost one of the few people who trusted her enough to take a chance on her, and while yeah, she wanted to do some violence, she’d be doing it to some other demons somewhere else.

As they arrived at the warehouse that seemed to be Ground Zero for all the creepy happenings, Sam went to lay the salt lines to trap the demons in—intell had confirmed that they were the only ones that powerful—while Dean went to the weapons locker in the trunk and moved to toss Faith a shotgun.

“Here.”

She caught it, but quickly tossed it back. “Don’t think so. Slayers and guns don’t mix.”

Dean stared at her blankly, almost as though she’d just said something completely stupid. “You hunt demons, but you don’t use guns.”

“I’ve got better assets,” she replied, scanning the available weapon, before grabbing one of the knives. It was a nasty looking thing with some kind of etching on the blade. “Nice piece.”

“Know how to use that or do Slayers not do knives either?”

Faith raised an eyebrow, before turning to face him with a feral grin and running the edge of the blade just over his shoulder. “Oh, you only wish I’d show you what I can do with a knife.” They both stared at each other for a moment, before Sam cleared his throat next to them, and Faith dropped the look and went back to business. “Special magic knife or plain old boring knife?”

“Magic,” Sam nodded. “Get a kill shot it’ll kill a demon. This breed anyway. It doesn’t work on the higher level ones, but these demons all seem pretty basic, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Wicked,” she said, testing the weight in her hand. “Let’s go crash the party.”

That would be the moment where everything went sideways.

In the beginning it was easy. The demons were demons, and with a little slash and stab and they weren’t demons anymore, they were dead bodies. The boys were blowing them back with rock salt, and she knew that Dean had some kind of special demon killing gun in his back pocket, but Faith was just plowing through them like it was nothing. They were a means to an end, and it was the better that they knew the demons were dead, in her opinion, rather than having them jumping to another piece of meat or getting out and still doing what they needed to do. They’d mourn the lives later, when the world didn’t end.

It wasn’t until they found their way to a small back room that seemed to be the epicenter of the problem that she froze. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. She stared into the face in front of her as though she had seen a ghost—which really, was what was happening—and it took her a minute to actually speak.

“Wes?”

The face, so familiar, froze for a moment, before a sickening smile crossed his face, and his eyes went black. “Not at the moment, love. Try again later.”

Faith couldn’t move at first, and then it was all rage and determination. She knew all about acceptable losses, but there were some people that just weren’t part of the equation. There were people she wouldn’t kill for the greater good, not when there were other ways, and this person was one of them. Even if he should be dead. Even if she didn’t know how he was back. That was all something she could deal with later. For right now, she just wanted to get that demonic piece of shit out of her friend.

When Dean and Sam arrived in the room, Faith had the demon pinned to the ground through sheer force of will, the blade of the knife pressed against the jugular. “Faith, what’re you—?” Sam began as the two brothers looked at her, confused.

“A demon that’s possessed someone—you know how to get them out of people?”

“An exorcism, but—”

“Do it!”

“Faith, wait a second—”

“The demons are after something. I don’t know what, but it’s on those scrolls, and last I checked, none of us were all that heavy into ancient languages. He is. Never mind the fact that whatever the demon knows, he knows.”

“They won’t do it, sweetie,” the demon taunted under her. “They’re not ahead in this quarter in the game, and they’re taking whatever wins they can get.” Faith responded to that by digging her knee a little harder into his back, forcing him to give a groan of pain that she’d have to apologize to Wes for later. She also felt the demon trying to telekinetically toss her, but every time he tried she just dug the blade of his knife into his throat a little harder. If she was going, he was going with her. She gave him a glare, before directing her attention back to the Winchesters.

“Can you do it or not?”

“Even if we do, there’s no guarantee he’ll get out of it alive,” Sam said softly. “You may not save him at all.”

“Don’t care,” Faith said softly. “I’d rather see him dead than possessed, but I’d really rather see him not dead at all so I at least have to try. Are you going to help me, or not?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other again, before Sam started to chant softly. The demon started to writhe in pain, so much to the point that Faith had to loosen her grip on the knife just to avoid nicking Wesley with the knife and having him bleed out on accident.

“Doesn’t matter what you do to me,” the demon muttered. “You’re all going to burn anyway.” And with that, he rocketed out of his body with a scream, and Wesley collapsed back into Faith, who pushed him into a sitting position as she tried to check his pulse and other vitals.

“Wes?” she said, hand on his face, and his eyes rolled up to focus on her for a moment, before he passed out completely. “He’s alive, but he needs a doctor.”

“I’ll get the car,” Dean said Faith started to pull the limp body to his feet and with Sam’s help started to walk him towards the door.

***

It was nearly three AM by the time they got any information from the doctor in the emergency room. A high fever, some internal bleeding, and they were admitting him, but otherwise he should be okay. Faith had lied, told her that he was her brother and lied about the circumstances as well, but she couldn’t just walk into an ER and declare that her recently back-from-the-dead friend had been possessed by a demon and now needed to be nursed back to health. So half-assed story it was.

After talking to the doctor, she made her way back into the waiting room, catching Dean and Sam’s eye before nodding towards the door. She needed a smoke in a bad way, and somewhere where they could talk freely, so she led them to the far end of the sidewalk as she lit up, before turning around to face him again.

“Did you get the scrolls?”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “They’re back in the Impala. Is he gonna be okay?”

“According to the doctors he should be fine,” she said as she took a drag. “I set up some charms and stuff around the doors and windows of his room before I left, so he should be safe for now, but I’m gonna stick around and make sure nothing nasty shows up to do him some damage.”

“Good,” Dean nodded, crossing his arms in front of his chest as both brothers looked at her expectantly. She watched them back, before tilting her head to the side.

“What? I got something on my face?”

“You gonna give us some actual answers?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow. “Look, we’ve taken a lot of this on face value, but I think we’ve earned a little bit of honesty here.”

“I agree,” Sam replied. “Who is he, Faith?” His expectant face was a little bit softer—a bit of puppy dog mixed with a ‘please, you can tell me’ expression that probably made all the girls fawn—but it still made Faith uncomfortable as hell. She didn’t owe them anything. She was supposed to be the one protecting them, after all, but apparently she wasn’t going to be able to finish her cigarette in peace if she didn’t.

“He's a friend,” she said simply, as though that was all there was to it.

“A friend who happens to have been possessed by a demon dealing with scrolls in an ancient language that I don't even recognize?”

“He used to be part of the Watcher’s Council.” She wasn’t going to bring up Wolfram and Hart. Not relevant. “So he tends to know about that kind of stuff.”

“Your Watcher? Thought you told Bobby your Watcher was dead.”

“I did. And she is. He’s not my Watcher, he’s just a friend.”

“Then how come you looked like you’d seen a ghost?”

Her eyes met Sam’s on that, then she looked away again, not really sure how to respond to that. “Wasn’t expecting to see him mixed up in all this, that’s all.” And that was the truth. She glanced between the two of them, trying to figure out what their next move was going to be. She knew that there was a risk that Wesley wasn’t completely Wesley. That came with the gig. And if he was beyond fixing, she would do what she had to do. But until then, she wasn’t going to give up on him. She just had to get Sam and Dean off her case. “Look, it’s late. If you don’t mind, I’d just like to finish my smoke and go back inside to wait for him to wake up.”

Both of the brothers looked at each other again—that silent communication that was a real pain in the ass—before turning back to her again. “What about us? You want us to just hang out here until your friend wakes up?”

Faith shook her head, before pulling a folded piece of paper out of her pocket. “Go to this address. I know it looks abandoned, but trust me—a friend of mine lives there. I called him when I knew we were rolling into town, so he’s expecting us. Say you’re the people who were coming in with Faith and give him that if he asks you why I’m not with you. He’ll set you up, and I’ll give you a call when Wes wakes up and we have a better idea of what’s going on.”

Dean nodded, before taking the paper from her and sticking it in his pocket. “It’s nearly three AM. Think he’ll still be up?”

“Let’s just say he’s a night guy.” She flicked what was left of the cigarette down to the sidewalk and ground it over with her boot probably a little more force than was necessary. “Anything else?”

“Just give us a call if something changes,” Sam nodded, as both the brothers made their way out to the car. She waited until the Impala was pulling out of the hospital parking lot before she took a deep breath and making her way back towards the hospital.

“When this is over, Wes? We’re so even.”