JEWEL TONES – ONYX
(Five Faiths That Never Were, Part 5)


When the first sporadic deaths occurred in New York, no one was paying any attention. A localized incident; acidic gas, no problem, the government said. But when more people began to die in smaller towns outside the city, the whole country sat up and took notice. The media blamed the government and the government swore its innocence, and by the time it spread to DC, Atlanta and LA, the entire country was in an uproar—but it was already way too late.

I guess we thought we were going to be safe. After all, we'd lived so long outside the rest of the world, fighting creatures most people didn't even know existed. We hadn't lived in a purely human world for a very long time, and I guess, somehow, we thought we'd be outside its rules. That our little group of Cleveland Hellmouth Slayerettes would live forever.

After all, we'd already lived through so much.

Then the first marks appeared on Xander, and we realized that all the fights, all our love, our friendships and trials, none of it meant anything. All the apocalyptic battles we'd survived, all the good we'd done, all our heroics meant nothing to this silent, uncaring killer. It was coming for us just the same as everyone else. We had the ability to turn back the forces of Hell itself, to conjure and create from nothing, and we were still all going to die.

We were lost.

In the short time the world had left to live, people took to calling it Creeping Death. I don't know why. It's more like a racehorse once it gets hold of you. No one knew where it came from, or why—though considering the symptoms, blaming the government seemed fair—and pretty soon, there wasn't anybody left to ask. It all happened so fast.

We'd barely begun to deal with Xander's illness when it entered the final stages, and by then, Giles and Wood were already sick, too. I have blurred memories of holding Dawn's hand, my fingers curled in her hair, feeling the fever radiate from her in sickening waves. I remember Wood screaming for his mother when the end came, remember Giles laying silent, like a pale tattooed wraith, his bloodshot eyes become flat, empty mirrors. You'd think, with something like that, when the deterioration process is so ugly and slow, that when death finally came it would be a relief. But it never was. Every time one of them died it only got harder to take.

Willow held on the longest. For a while we thought she might actually make it. When she was gone there was only me and Buffy. We cried, and we grieved and we watched pretty much the rest of the world drop like flies around us until we were convinced that our Slayer powers were all that was keeping the disease at bay.

But then, a few weeks after Willow's death, Buffy came up sick. Buffy, my Slayer sister, the one I'd thought would stick around and help me stay sane through all this. She was the hardest. I stayed with her and held her until the end, ashamed that all I felt beyond sadness was the terror that I was going to be next.

For the next couple of weeks I was pretty much catatonic. I lived in this kind of numb state of shock where I woke up every morning and expected to see little black circles of death spotting my skin, like the reaper coming to claim me one painful inch at a time. But every morning, against all odds and common sense, I came up clean. Eventually I figured I must be immune; that lucky one percent of the human population that just also happened to be a Slayer.

By that time there was no one else left alive in Cleveland.

I didn't give a whole lot of thought to where I was going 'til I got to LA and found Angel. His face was drawn, pale, etched with more lines than I could ever remember seeing. He'd never smiled much before, but he smiled less than ever now, and his eyes were haunted with the ghosts of the recently dead. He was ecstatic to see me, but at that point I think he was so lonely he'd have been happy to see a puppy.

The disease doesn't affect vampires, of course. Nothing in them to feed on, or kill, I guess. It also doesn't affect certain types of animals. The human race, though? Damned near history.

Sometimes I think about how pissed Spike would be. All that noble self-sacrifice and then humanity goes and offs itself anyway.

What a fucking joke.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

The breeze from the Pacific Ocean coasts over my skin, salty scent mingling with the stench of ash burning on the beach below. Of course some people survived. Not many, but some. Most of them have come out here to the coast like we have, where the air is fresher, cleaner, far away from the cities choked with the bodies of the dead.

This night marks three months that Angel and I've been here, and I'm still not used to this. I swallow against the lump in my throat and realize that given the situation, I suppose that's just as well.

I squint my eyes into the distance and try to pretend that it's just normal people down there around the bonfires. Young people staying up late to drink and make out and do the drunken shuffle along to the latest Top 40 hit on their little Panasonic radios. Nothing out of the ordinary here at all.

Sometimes, when the scent of burning flesh relents a little, I can almost believe it.

Later, Angel comes up the cliff to join me like he usually does; a pale, handsome vision still clothed in dramatic black. The disease may have killed off a lot of things, but Angel's fashion sense hasn't suffered a bit.

We sit for a while and watch the people below, neither of us really talking to the other. We do this so often now that it's almost like a ritual. And we don't really need to talk, anyway, because there's usually enough comfort for each of us in just knowing that the other is there. That we're not alone. He could go anywhere in the world he wanted, but he came here with me to this alien place that has somehow become humanity's new world order. This place where people burn the bodies of the countless dead night and day in an attempt to begin rebuilding their lives.

After a while, he tilts his head thoughtfully at the beach and speaks.

"You know, when this is done, they're going to need someone to look out for them. Protect them from other things."

I can tell he's trying to make me feel better, trying to look toward the future where we'll have something better to do than sit around and smell burning bodies all night long. Normally I'd find it touching. For such a bad ass he's really a great big sweetie. But tonight it only pisses me off.

"It's going to have to be you," I say, rolling up the sleeve of my shirt and showing him the cluster of black circles gathered by my wrist.

After all, for me, there's not going to be a future.

His face goes taut and he looks away, mouth pressing down into a fine, pale line. "Dammit, Faith." I watch him struggle with his emotions and I try to feel sorry for him, I really do. But I feel too sorry for me to be much good at it.

"You know, I'd say that it's really no big," I laugh bitterly. "Except that it is." I shake my head and stare at the interlocking circles that blur and fade together in the dim firelight from afar. With my eyes full of tears they look like little skulls. "I'm not ready to die." Of course I'm not. Neither was Buffy. Or Giles. Or Willow. Or Xander. Memories of them vomiting and choking, black circles cutting patterns into their skin like barbed wire flare to life in the eye of my mind.

Why now? It isn't fair. It's been months since the Creeping Death hit, and now I get it? Stroke of luck? Twist of fate? Virus mutation? I don't know. All I know for sure is that I'm dying, and I feel tiny, scared and alone.

All these months, watching everyone die, living with the pain and the guilt of survival… I'd really believed that I was going to live. I'd thought I had time.

"I'm tired, Angel. My body hurts, my bones ache, and I've got this fever creeping up the back of my throat like the sun after a night full of drinking tequila. But I don't want to die. I'm not supposed to die."

He puts his arm around me and shelters me from the sea breeze, and we sit like that in silence for a long time. Down below, the surf hits the sand, tides as inexorable and changeless as the disease inside my body that's eating me alive. I sit and stare and lean into Angel, taking what cold comfort I can from him. I think of a little girl in pants two sizes too big for her, remember the sunshine on my face as I swung high on my rickety swing set, trying so hard to touch the sky, trying to fly. I remember, and I mourn for the woman I dreamed of but never became; the woman I might've gotten to be some day, given a chance.

"I'm going to miss you," he says quietly, and his voice trembles.

I press my lips together and fight for control as I look up at him through bitter tears.

"Yeah. Me too."

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Another twenty-four hours have passed, here on the ragged edge of the world. Tonight Angel is gone, and I sit crouched on the sun beaten rocks alone, black circles snaking up my arm like damning tattoo's all the way up to my shoulder joint. There's a burning that rises from my gut all the way to my mouth, and I'm always thirsty now, no matter how much water I drink.

I know Angel would have stayed with me until the end. I wouldn't even have had to ask. But in the end I begged him to leave. If he had stayed I never would have found the strength to do what needs to be done.

I watched Buffy and all the others die slowly, painfully and stark raving mad.

I'm not going out like that.

I cock the gun in my hand and stare at it thoughtfully. The salty taste of Angel's tears still lingers on my lips where he kissed me goodbye, and it's a good taste; an alive taste. The kind you want to carry with you at a moment like this because it reminds you that you were full of life and love and breathed and tasted and laughed somewhere in there between all the pain.

I close my eyes and imagine his face, remembering the way he looked at me in happier times. I remember all of them that way—Buffy smiling, Dawn laughing, Giles cleaning his glasses, Xander fumbling over his words like a big goof, Willow's nervous little smile—and pretty soon I can't tell the salt spray of the ocean from the tears running down my face.

My hand seems to lift the gun of its own accord. From far off, I hear the pounding of the surf, the quiet murmur of voices. Somewhere in the distance, a seagull screams. And you know, I thought I might wait and pull the trigger at dawn and all that poetic, trite shit, but fuck it.

Night was always more my time, anyway.