milliways_bar | (no subject)

"I'm Bound," Faith says. "I'll be here for a while." she grins. "I'm so glad I know who he is now. I was...if he'd changed because I didn't get it to him on time..." She sighs. "I'm supposed to protect people, and I've had rather enough of failing at my job, these days."

"Bound, hmmm? Are you dead?"

Tactless. As we know.

"Protect people - are you with security?" Gil had said something about Faith being 'dangerous to know', though?

"I'm not dead, no. Just bound. And yeah, I'm with Security." Faith shrugs. "Didn't mean just that, though. In my world, I'm a Vampire Slayer. Chosen by...somebody or other...to protect the world from vamps and demons and other nasties. Leaves a girl with a sense of responsibility."

"Oh, you are from that" - Supremely silly? No. Infinitely weird? No. - "specialised and interesting version of Earth where teenage girls have to hunt and kill vampires? I must admit I quite like vampires; I know Nick and David and Armand and Lestat and Louis and that snarky old one, what's his name again? I'd rather you didn't slay them, actually."

He then smiles a wry little smile. "Armand is Richard's lover, actually, and he somtimes takes him along, fast asleep, for his shift, so please don't harm him when you bring Richard the antidote. I'm sure he'd rather be turned into a wolf than do without Armand."

If slaying vmapires is something she does by nature, the way Loki does Tricks, not her own choice, really, then she might be dangerous to Armand without meaning to be?

"Oh, I don't Slay here," Faith assures him quickly. "I've got a few friends here who are vampires...I don't know David or Armand...or Lestat, or Louis...but I know Nick very well, I'm...very fond of him. I don't Slay indiscriminately, even my world there's one vampire who's not evil who I'm friends with, and there's demons I don't kill too."

"Oh, good. Nick's a very nice fellow; I haven't met him all that often, but I like him a lot. He's very helpful, sincere and honest, and fun to talk to, unless you happen to touch a point that sets him off," Asar-Suti says. "So, if you're not danger to Armand, I am sure Richard will be extremely happy to see you."

He sips the Red Bull again; the vile sweet taste pervades everything. Perhaps you have to eat sausages and pop-tarts with it to combat that effect?

"Nick was the first person who ever said 'I love you' to me," Faith says quietly. "21 years old, and I'd never heard it until...he's been a good friend. I have managed to make him mad, but that was deliberate and for his own good." She smiles. "Short version, I promise not to try and kill any of the vamps here, unless one tries to kill me first."

"Why would nobody love you for the first 21 years of your life - that is not a good way to grow up," Asar-Suti says, his perkiness instantly replaced with genuine compassion.

He's a pushover for emotional woes, always has been, even when he was evil, which proved his undoing, back at home on his world...

He hopes Connor does say those three words to her occasionally, though.

"I accidentatlly managed to make Nick go all angsty and withdrawn once, upon which two people who hate my guts anyway saw fit to interfere and 'rescue' him from me, which gives me two very good reasons never to want to make Nick mad again - one, more importantly, because I like Nick and was very sorry to have scared him, and then also because if these people catch me 'bothering that same poor man again' - as they must see it - several sorts of unlawful events might follow, as they're quite powerful, but so am I when I have nothing to lose."

"Eh, my mother was...well, she liked the alcohol. And the 'smacking Faith around.'" She shrugs. "I hear it now, from Nick and from Connor, so."

She winces. "Yeah, I've done that too. Recently. It was...uhm. Bad. But he forgave me, and we're good now, thankfully."

"Yes, he forgave me as well. Actually, he started out by apologising for going odd at me. I hope I get on with him from now on; I got on well with him yesterday, in any case."

For the sad childhood, he has a bowed head and downcast eyes that blaze with sympathy. Asar-Suti has been quite eveil at times, but the pointless hurting of innocents has never made sense to him.

Faith nods. "Yeah, he has that habit of feeling guilty about stuff...see, uh, I don't know how much you know about Slayers, but we have Prophetic dreams, and I had one about his past, where I was inside one of his victims. It...freaked me out, and I reacted badly."

"Connor mentioned the dreams, and that they're prophetic - such things happened a lot on the world where I came from, too."

Meaning to say, Asar-Suti has no difficulties to believe that the dreams tell the truth, and that's the end of matters.

"I can guess how that would positively drive poor Nick into paroxysms of guilt, sliding from despondency downwards," he adds, nodding and sighing. Oh those complicated vampires; somehow you love them a lot, though.

"But I've dreamed of him dying, too," Faith says softly. "Staked out for the sun, and me stabbed in the chest and made to watch...I've seen him die, I've seen myself die...I talked to Dream, he said I should ignore the details and focus on the commonalities, but I don't know...I don't know what to do."

"Did you see who did that to you? It might be a warning so you can avoid that fate, something that might happen if certain things come to pass. Is there something of a thread that goes through all your dreams?"

Dreams, prophetic ones. A Cheysuli speciality, not something Ihlini do much at all. Aidan, resident expert on that sort of things from the world Asar-Suti comes from, has not been in evidence at all recently. So the small purple god will have to try and make sense of all this on his own, if he can.

"It's been different people every time." Faith shrugs. "I'm more worried about Nick, really."

"Different people killed you and him every time? Who was it, though? Were they - Slayers?"

Faith shakes her head. "I only saw him die the once, that was...they're not even in the bar, and I think it has to be symbolic. My old Watchers...do you know what Watchers are?"

Asar-Suti shakes his head. "No, I haven't heard of them in connection with your world; David's tradition has those people that call themselves Watchers, from a secret society called the Talamasca, but that's probably different. What are your Watchers?"

"It goes back to the people who created the first Slayer...these guys chained a girl to the earth and tied a demon to her so she could fight the evil. they and their descendants were supposed to be responsible for watching out for the Slayer, protecting her, training her...but somewhere down the line it became more about controlling her." Faith sighs. "Giles and Wesley though, the ones I had, they're all right. They wouldn't...I think they had to be symbolic."

"It does sound like a very evil way of fighting evil," Asar-Suti says, making a face. Not to say a very inane way - but he does not, indeed, say so. "Forcing sombody unwilingly to her destiny, that sort of thing, and controlling her by means of general Watcher-dom."

They sound like cowards that are afraid of fighting their own evil, and send young girls to kill vampires instead.

"So you dreamt your watchers killed Nick and forced you to watch that?"

"And stabbed me in the chest," Faith says, nodding. "Yeah. But then I had another dream where...well, somebody here cut my throat open. And another, totally different somebody staked me, in yet another dream. So I honestly don't know which way I'm going to die. Especially when you add the dream where I was a vampire, much as I hate to think about it...no offesne to the vamps here, but the ones in my world, by and large, aren't so pleasant."

"Apart from the one who is, as you said."

Asar-Suti looks at her, quite serious.

"I may be wrong, I may be too logical, and I certainly utterly lack the empathy that Esk or Aidan have when dealing with such things, but for me, those dreams make sense. They rhyme, gel, and deliver a clear message."

He doesn't go on - he wants her assent before he inflicts his theory on her.

"People keep telling me that I can't save everybody," Faith says thoughtfully. "In the dreams. That's the only real message I'm getting...some outside input would be much appreciated."

"No, take the whole and draw a mental line through it. At home, you're a slayer. In those dreams, you're a vampire, you're staked, you're stabbed, you're killed, your vampire friend is killed, and it's your watchers that are doing it. Sounds rather obvious to me."

Asar-Suti shrugs.

"You said 'control'? You said the first of them made the first of you to fight their evil for them? You're here, Bound, out of their control? They will want you back. They might be working on getting you back. Either the dreams are messages from them, trying to blackmail you back to your 'duty' - not that you can, because, Bound and all that - or the dreams are warnings that they are working on getting here and reclaim you. If not Giles and Wesley, whoever they might be, then other Watchers? The organisation that hands down their tradition? Having a Slayer go AWOL and make friends with vampires must be utter catastrophe to them. They must be after you in some way."

Asar-Suti doesn't like the idea of those Watchers at all, even if Faith says those that she had were all right. Shady figures sending out young girls to kill nice vampires - ugh! A bunch of prejudiced cowards and self-righteous vigilantes, as far as the former Dark God is concerned.

Faith sighs. "That's actually the one thing it can't be," she says, shaking her head. "The Watcher's Council was blown up not long ago. There are very few of them left alive, and none of them are likely to have the power and resources to reach me here."