Faith's Sunset
by Taz
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters and I will put them back, exactly where I found them, when I've finished playing with them. Promise. Oh, and I'm poor, so don't sue me - blood from a stone and all that. Thank you.
Timeline: Post S7.
Author's Note: Be warned, dear readers; this short story came from a very dark place and there are no happy endings.
POV: Faith.
How do I tell her that I've had enough?
How do I tell her - her - that I want to die? That when the sun goes down, I want to go with it.
How do I tell her?
When I fall to pieces, she holds me, rocking me gently and trying to lend me some of her strength. And when I look up, into those sea-green eyes and see the pools of water hidden there, I know she deserves more than this. She deserves more than this empty shell of the woman she once knew. The woman she fought with. Hated. Loved. The woman who always, despite all the shit, loved her back.
It's taken us a long time to get to this place. We spent years trying to despise each other, but in the end…. in the end we finally gave in. We finally realised that we were two halves of the same fucked-up coin and we never looked back. We thought we had it made. I thought we'd have our happy ever after. Yeah, really - roses 'round the door, white picket fence, Norah Jones singing softly in the background…
But then it all went to shit. The way it was supposed to. See, the way I figure it, there's no way the powers that be could let someone like me be happy. Not for long. Not after everything I did. I mean, where's the retribution in that?
The thing I don't get though, the one thing I just can't fit my head around…. Why did they have to bring her down with me? I mean, if I deserve the fiery furnace, she's gotta deserve the angels and floaty clouds. Not this - this life ain't for her… it can't turn out so messed up for someone who's done so much good. It's all wrong…
After her mom died, I figured things couldn't get much worse. Then we had the whole hellmouth cracking open episode, and I figured the same. Then Giles got sick… The big 'C'. Gotta hand it to 'em… never saw that one coming.
We had him at home for as long as we could, but in the end, we weren't enough for him. After a grand total of eleven months, G-man finally made his final journey. We were all with him in the hospital - Red and Ken had flown in from England, and me, B, Dawnie and Xander all sat by his bedside and waited. And waited. And waited. Man! It seemed to take forever. You know when you see those films where it focuses on a clock and the hands go backwards? Yeah? Well, it was like that. Giles finally died at 3.13am, October 26. I had no idea I was capable of crying so much; I cried like a goddamn baby. We all did - even Xander
It wasn't until after the funeral that we found out about his medical insurance. Or lack of it. Turns out all the records were held by the Council. Red pulled every string she could over in England, but when Sunnydale fell into the earth, every record of Rupert Giles went with it. And then, just when we were all trying to grieve, we found ourselves in debt. Right up to our eyeballs and then some. B was listed as next of kin, so, naturally, the medical bills landed at her feet. Tens of thousands of dollars.
Red managed to persuade her Council colleagues to at least cover some of the bill - they coughed up to the tune of 4k, but that still left us with thousands to find. And that was before we found out about Giles' credit cards. How in the hell he ran up bills totalling $70,000 dollars, I'll never know. B reckons he paid off everything her mom owed on the house - she found documents when she was clearing his apartment. 'Course, the house went the way of everything else in SunnyD, and the insurers refused to give us a single cent… something about an 'act of God' clause in the small print.
So, there we were, me and B, trying to scrape together every last dime and shield Dawnie from all the crap as much as we could. Xander emptied his life savings pot, which accounted for $23,817. We ended up spreading that about as much as we could between the different creditors, but it still didn't really touch the sides. Red and Ken took out a loan secured on Ken's martial arts studio and managed to pull together another $30k. Me and B? We had nothing to sell, aside from my Harley, which made pocket money in comparison. We were renting the house, just as G-man had been renting his apartment. Nothing to sell.
We tried telling all the credit card people that Giles had left no estate, that we had nothing, but they just got all heavy-handed and threatened us. So, that's when I got a couple of jobs. Not much - just pulling shifts on the doors of one the city's favourite girl bars and giving a few self-defence classes in the school hall of an afternoon. B? She made sure she was there to see Dawnie off to college every morning, then changed into her Wallmart uniform and headed off to her seat behind the checkout.
I can't say it wasn't hard. It was like we suddenly had to stop dealing with all the feelings about Giles and focus all our energy on fighting creditors as best we could, all the time making sure we had enough rent every month to keep the house. Giles always told us the Council was taking care of it for us… turns out that was another one of his regular credit card payments. Dawn? She was falling behind in her college work and falling to pieces when she got home. B had to pick up most of the pieces there, 'cause I was workin' the doors most evenings. 'Cept Sundays. That was my day of rest - real biblical.
So, anyway, we're just about dealing with all that crap when the next barrel-load of shit hits us. I got ill.
It started off really weird. Like I got pins and needles in my hands and feet. But I tried all the tricks - ice water, hot water, stamping my feet on the floor, getting B to massage them. Nothing worked. Then I started to lose feeling, first one leg, then the other, and it worked its way up my body 'til I couldn't even feel myself pee any more. After I've been like this for about a week, I give into B's constant whining and go to see the doc. His initial verdict? A bulging disc in my back. So, I get some x-rays, but they come back clear. After a few months, the pins and needles are still coming and going and I get referred to a specialist. Mr Specialist orders an MRI, so I have to lie real still in this big ol' tube. Damn, the thing's noisy! At least they gave me headphones though - Greenday were a great distraction from the claustrophobia.
Anyway, a week or so later, Specialist called me back. B came with me. Said he had bad news. Something about some fuck-up on my sheaths? I dunno, something like that anyway. Long and short of it? Multiple-fucking-sclerosis! You heard anything so fucking dumb before in your life? A slayer with MS? Payback's a bitch.
B kept telling me not to worry. They can't tell how it'll progress until it does progress anyway, so B kept on reminding me that I might just get a bit of pins and needles every so often. I'd smile and agree, tell her I was one of the lucky ones. Thing was though, I'd been reading up - seems one of the ways they treat the condition is by slowing down the immune system. See, with MS, it's basically the body attacking itself. So, if you got no immune system, the symptoms sometimes stop getting worse. But I'm a slayer, remember? Immune system to beat the ass off Superman. Nothing's gonna hold back that baby. I figure this means the MS'll grab me by the throat and squeeze tightly. There's no way I'm escaping this one - no way. Way I figure it, I'll be in a chair in a matter of months.
Anyway, my symptoms keep coming until I have to stop the self-defence classes, and the boss at the club tells me she can't employ a bouncer with no feeling in their hands. Way she saw it, if things got a little rough I wouldn't be able to tell my own strength, so I could hurt someone real bad, and that'd leave her with a massive problem. So, that was it - income gone.
B was real good about it - on the outside, at least. I heard her crying when she thought I was sleeping. Every night, she'd sneak out of our bed, creep down to the kitchen and just sob. Can't say I was any better - see, with no work to occupy my mind, there was plenty to time to think. And, with me being at home in the daytime, it was me answering the calls from all the banks we owed money to. So, all that repressed Giles grief is creeping out, I'm trying to handle all the threats from financial fat-cats and hide it from B, I'm trying to deal with Dawn falling to pieces when she gets home every day and I'm trying to hide the fact that the symptoms are getting worse. Hell, I've even told B I'm drinking in the daytime… she went crazy at me, but I figure if she thinks I'm drunk, she won't think it's the MS making me fall over or pull myself along by the edge of the kitchen counter.
And that, I guess, brings us right up to now. I can't carry on like this. B had to actually carry me up the stairs one night last week. She was so angry when she saw the state I was in. Dawn was staying at some friend's house for the night, and I was in on my own. I fell on my ass in the downstairs washroom, and I didn't have the strength to get back up, which meant I didn't get to swill my mouth with Jack before B got home, which meant the 'I'm drunk' ruse was up. When she got home, I was just crying, stuck between the door and the john - I could only be thankful that I'd already taken a pee by the time my legs gave way.
B telephoned the doctor the next day and got everything explained to her in glorious technicolour detail. He told her I'd refused to get either a frame or a chair when he'd first suggested it, three months ago. The look on her face was some place between shock and dismay. That alone was enough to make me crumble.
And what did B do? She held me while my body racked with sobs, she listened to me rambling about not being able to take any more crap and she swallowed her own tears to give me some strength.
It's been like that ever since. B's rearranged her shifts so there's always her or Dawn in the house with me, and she insisted on the chair. As far as chairs go, it's okay. Blue frame. Black wheels. But it's still a chair. I'm still a fucking slayer in a chair. And I'm no good - not to B, not to Dawn, not to anyone. Sooner or later, there'll be more hospitals and more bills, and I ain't got insurance.
I'm telling you, I got nothing left to give. It's like I've taken on board so much shit that there's no room for any more. Imagine a bottle; a big, empty bottle. All the time it's empty, or half full, there's always room for more - but when it's full, when the liquid's spilling over the top, there's just no room for anything else. You can spill a bit out and make room for more, but sooner or later, it's just full. Plain and simple. And that's a bit like me - there's so much crap inside, so much guilt and grief and pain, I just ran out of room. I guess that's what the tears are for - emptying a little bit from the top of the bottle to make room for the next wave - but I'm even running out of tears now, which means I can't empty my bottle. There's no space left. And if there's no room for me to take anything else on board, I'm no use to anyone. I can't slay, I can't work, I can't even make love to the one woman who gave me her heart any more, and if I can't even listen and give her and Dawn support, I'm useless. I'm no good to them, and by hanging around I'll just create them more problems.
But that's where I get stuck. 'Cause I don't know how to explain that to her. I don't know how to tell her that no matter how much I love her - and I do, more than anything - it's not enough. Nothing's enough to keep turning the pages. The book needs to close. … and when the sun goes down, I will go with it.