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crossing_lostrp2006-04-15 02:07 pm
fikgirl.livejournal.com) wrote in crossing_lostrp2006-04-15 02:07 pm
Entry tags:
[Faith] Skipped Time (Day 8), On the TARDIS (open tag to TARDIS folk)
[OOC: This takes place later that night, after everyone has gone to sleep. Faith started coming so clearly that I had to get it out and posted.]
Meditation had not worked. Tai Chi had not worked. And there wasn't anything to read. Her copy of A Wrinkle in Time, battered and dog-eared, but given and not taken from a fellow inmate was back at her and Mara's makeshift camp, so Faith could not even turn to that as a distraction from the press of insomnia.
The insomnia wasn't anything new to Faith. She couldn't just curl up in bed and go to sleep on a good day; on a bad one, like this one where she was stranded on a desert island, sleep was even more difficult to find without some way of burning off steam first. In prison, there'd been time for exercise before lights out. Sometimes, that hadn't been enough but there were things that could be done in the privacy of her bunk that took off that Slayer edge, that driving pressing need to hunt and run and just move without boundaries and with freedom.
Truth is, she'd gotten used to the lack of freedom in lockup. Her body adapted and so did her mind; that's what she'd come to believe. Before crashing here, when she was handing a plastic bag containing her belongings and dressed in a dress that looked more like a funeral gown than anything anyone in their right mind would wear, the Slayer beast surged forth, instinctively smelling that elusive freedom. Faith, and her two Watchers, Ms. Blake and Mr. Verlin had spent the first three nights in a posh hotel – Closet Gay Guy, as Faith had dubbed Verlin had his own room of course. The second night, Faith left the hotel to roam the streets, looking for a fight. Finding one hadn't taken long, and when the vampire was dust under her heels, Faith breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, (I'm still me. I’m still a Slayer.)
Blake and Verlin had been less than happy with her nocturnal run. She wondered many times over the course of the next few weeks how it was that they could be Watchers when they clearly didn't even understand what a Slayer was. Only the threat hanging over Angel made her stay with them and do her best to abide by their rules. She pretended it was prison again; it helped.
Seven days ago, the Slayer had finally been set free. Free to roam, free to jump, free to hunt, free to be. Even limiting her roaming to daylight hours after the first close encounter with the Creepy Stalkers because she didn't dare leave Mara unprotected at night, hadn't completely calmed the need and the itch to hunt. The Slayer was a nocturnal creature because her prey moved at night.
Now the awareness of night pressed in on her, a heavy weight pressing upon her chest and her mind. The Slayer felt it and crawled around inside of her skin, clawing and itching to get out, to touch the night and become one with it. (To hunt.) On every level, from the conscious to the subconscious, Faith's being knew that it was night and knew that it was the first night she could completely be the Slayer with no holds barred and still, there was no freedom. Willingly, eagerly, she'd come to this ship and it had been a good thing – she learned who these people were and that they were just as stranded as she was – but she should never have agreed to stay when they bedded down for the night.
Faith was trapped inside this spaceship and as fascinating and cool as it was, it didn't lessen the feeling of entrapment.
The room she'd chosen to sleep in was all leather and suede, hard and polished, yet still felt feminine and had that air of woman to it, and right now it only intensified the itch.
Giving up on capturing illusive sleep, Faith swung her feet to the floor and stalked across the room. The corridor outside was deserted, because no normal person would be awake this time of night, and Faith hovered between relief and disappointment. Someone to actually talk to might be a pleasant distraction.
(Shoulda dragged Ash into the shower with me,) Faith thought, then shelved it. Not now, not yet, she wasn't going that road again, wasn't going back to the time in her life when everything had been divided into the fight-it-or-fuck-it/slay-it-or-lay it category; even her relationship with B had those undercurrents of charged sexual energy and frustration to it. Faith could admit it, wouldn't deny that soft womanly curves every now and again did the job just as well as a man; fortunately, B had never picked up on it so it was one less thing for The Slayer – the first one and foremost – to not hate her for.
She stopped and drew back her hand when she realized that her feet had carried her right to the room that Ash occupied. Unthinkingly, she had approached his room, knowing that a way to cure the itch was right there – and her heart pounded, blood roaring in her ears, her hand trembling as she stared down to where it hovered just over the door. Faith cursed herself, jerked her hand back and back pedaled as quickly as she could. Flirting was safe, playful teasing was all good, but crossing that line – going back to the dirty bump and grind with not a care for anyone's feelings or needs – wasn't. It was a part of her that she'd left behind, a part of her that she'd hated, but had cultivated out of "self-protection" according to her shrink.
It was an instinct that still reared its head when she wasn't careful, something to fall back on that was easy, that didn't require thought or control or attachment.
"It's harder on the outside."
(Yeah, yeah, Angel, I know. I get that. Would be easier if I could talk to you.) Faith gave a soft, rough laugh. (How many fucking slayers need a vampire as their grounding base?)
She found the kitchen and began mechanically going through cupboards. (Fridge is off limits.) Faith found coffee, she found mugs and she found an old Mr. Coffee which actually made her giggle. (Time traveling alien still uses the old reliable.)
Coffee brewing, she sank into a chair and watched it drip down. (Worse thing for insomnia, but it's not like I'm gonna sleep anyway.)
The dripping coffee entranced her. So much so that she was on her feet, back tensed and dropped into a defensive crouch, every predatory instinct in her body on alert when a voice asked from the doorway, "You can't sleep either?"
Meditation had not worked. Tai Chi had not worked. And there wasn't anything to read. Her copy of A Wrinkle in Time, battered and dog-eared, but given and not taken from a fellow inmate was back at her and Mara's makeshift camp, so Faith could not even turn to that as a distraction from the press of insomnia.
The insomnia wasn't anything new to Faith. She couldn't just curl up in bed and go to sleep on a good day; on a bad one, like this one where she was stranded on a desert island, sleep was even more difficult to find without some way of burning off steam first. In prison, there'd been time for exercise before lights out. Sometimes, that hadn't been enough but there were things that could be done in the privacy of her bunk that took off that Slayer edge, that driving pressing need to hunt and run and just move without boundaries and with freedom.
Truth is, she'd gotten used to the lack of freedom in lockup. Her body adapted and so did her mind; that's what she'd come to believe. Before crashing here, when she was handing a plastic bag containing her belongings and dressed in a dress that looked more like a funeral gown than anything anyone in their right mind would wear, the Slayer beast surged forth, instinctively smelling that elusive freedom. Faith, and her two Watchers, Ms. Blake and Mr. Verlin had spent the first three nights in a posh hotel – Closet Gay Guy, as Faith had dubbed Verlin had his own room of course. The second night, Faith left the hotel to roam the streets, looking for a fight. Finding one hadn't taken long, and when the vampire was dust under her heels, Faith breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, (I'm still me. I’m still a Slayer.)
Blake and Verlin had been less than happy with her nocturnal run. She wondered many times over the course of the next few weeks how it was that they could be Watchers when they clearly didn't even understand what a Slayer was. Only the threat hanging over Angel made her stay with them and do her best to abide by their rules. She pretended it was prison again; it helped.
Seven days ago, the Slayer had finally been set free. Free to roam, free to jump, free to hunt, free to be. Even limiting her roaming to daylight hours after the first close encounter with the Creepy Stalkers because she didn't dare leave Mara unprotected at night, hadn't completely calmed the need and the itch to hunt. The Slayer was a nocturnal creature because her prey moved at night.
Now the awareness of night pressed in on her, a heavy weight pressing upon her chest and her mind. The Slayer felt it and crawled around inside of her skin, clawing and itching to get out, to touch the night and become one with it. (To hunt.) On every level, from the conscious to the subconscious, Faith's being knew that it was night and knew that it was the first night she could completely be the Slayer with no holds barred and still, there was no freedom. Willingly, eagerly, she'd come to this ship and it had been a good thing – she learned who these people were and that they were just as stranded as she was – but she should never have agreed to stay when they bedded down for the night.
Faith was trapped inside this spaceship and as fascinating and cool as it was, it didn't lessen the feeling of entrapment.
The room she'd chosen to sleep in was all leather and suede, hard and polished, yet still felt feminine and had that air of woman to it, and right now it only intensified the itch.
Giving up on capturing illusive sleep, Faith swung her feet to the floor and stalked across the room. The corridor outside was deserted, because no normal person would be awake this time of night, and Faith hovered between relief and disappointment. Someone to actually talk to might be a pleasant distraction.
(Shoulda dragged Ash into the shower with me,) Faith thought, then shelved it. Not now, not yet, she wasn't going that road again, wasn't going back to the time in her life when everything had been divided into the fight-it-or-fuck-it/slay-it-or-lay it category; even her relationship with B had those undercurrents of charged sexual energy and frustration to it. Faith could admit it, wouldn't deny that soft womanly curves every now and again did the job just as well as a man; fortunately, B had never picked up on it so it was one less thing for The Slayer – the first one and foremost – to not hate her for.
She stopped and drew back her hand when she realized that her feet had carried her right to the room that Ash occupied. Unthinkingly, she had approached his room, knowing that a way to cure the itch was right there – and her heart pounded, blood roaring in her ears, her hand trembling as she stared down to where it hovered just over the door. Faith cursed herself, jerked her hand back and back pedaled as quickly as she could. Flirting was safe, playful teasing was all good, but crossing that line – going back to the dirty bump and grind with not a care for anyone's feelings or needs – wasn't. It was a part of her that she'd left behind, a part of her that she'd hated, but had cultivated out of "self-protection" according to her shrink.
It was an instinct that still reared its head when she wasn't careful, something to fall back on that was easy, that didn't require thought or control or attachment.
"It's harder on the outside."
(Yeah, yeah, Angel, I know. I get that. Would be easier if I could talk to you.) Faith gave a soft, rough laugh. (How many fucking slayers need a vampire as their grounding base?)
She found the kitchen and began mechanically going through cupboards. (Fridge is off limits.) Faith found coffee, she found mugs and she found an old Mr. Coffee which actually made her giggle. (Time traveling alien still uses the old reliable.)
Coffee brewing, she sank into a chair and watched it drip down. (Worse thing for insomnia, but it's not like I'm gonna sleep anyway.)
The dripping coffee entranced her. So much so that she was on her feet, back tensed and dropped into a defensive crouch, every predatory instinct in her body on alert when a voice asked from the doorway, "You can't sleep either?"
{Doctor] Nightcrawlers (tag Faith, open)
He gestured to the door, the bedrooms beyond. "She traveled with me for a few years. And she was a warrior. As her appriciation of weapons shows. Just be careful of the thorns in the second drawer of her dresser. Look like small raptor claws. Their very poisonous at the tip. The weapons are trophys or gifts, and that rat tail... you can imagine the size of the rat. When she left, she only took her favorite knife and one of those Janus thorns. She left to settle down and marry, have a child." The sadness was back, and the pain overcame the joy of her memory.
She had married a Gallifreyan, Andred, and bore the first naturally concieved child on his homeworld in... almost 900 years. They had sent young Tiala to Leela's homeworld when the war started. To be raised by the Sevateem, her tribe. A primative life was better than none at all. But he didn't know if the girl still lived. After all, her father had been wiped from history. Leela and Andred had burned with his homeworld.
"She enjoyed a good fight, much as I tried to show her diplomacy was often better. I think she would have liked you."
He stared into his barely touched coffee.
[Faith] Nightcrawlers (tag Doctor, open)
(Shit. Congratu-fucking-lations, Lehane. You stepped right in it again.)
"Yeah, well, thanks for the warning 'bout the thorns," Faith said. "Haven't tried testing Slayer healing against poison and don't want to start just yet.
"Um, I'll do right about the weapons," Faith promised. "I can tell that they're real prizes and she took good care of 'em." She glanced at the door, hoping that someone else had gone all nocturnal or insominiac to rescue her from the completely uncomfortable feeling that had now settled around her. When no such rescuer appeared, she shifted gears, hoping to change the subject, "So, I guess you travel all over all the time, huh? Seen dinosaurs and shit? Probably even seen the end of the world? Not apocalypse or Armageddon, 'cause yeah, if you seen that I really don't want to know 'bout it, but I bet you seen a lot of major stuff, huh?"
[Doctor] Nightcrawlers (tag Faith, open)
He shook his head with a kind of amused ruefulness. "Course all sorts of things went wrong on the viewing platform. Just made it mor interesting. Took her home and went for chips after. Let her decide if she really wanted this kind of life."
"If it's any consolation, by the time Earth dies, from the sun expanding, the people have all left. Spread all over the universe. Your kind are just beginning to explore.
"As for dinosaurs... not really much to see. No people, smells like lizard, and rather large chance of being eaten or stepped on."
[Faith] Nightcrawlers (tag Doctor, open)
She picked up her cup, realized it was empty and her eyebrows lifted. "Wow, this must be good coffee." Faith briefly considered another cup full and then changed her mind. She could manage to keep going with little or no sleep, but she only wanted to pull a stunt like that when it's only her ass she's watching. There was a whole group of people here, and she wouldn't put them all at risk.
"So, whatd'you think the reception at your camp will be if me and M head there alone?" Faith asked. "I mean, I'm good either way. I could keep on with you guys, see this radio tower thingie, or head to safety in even greater numbers. It's all up to M."
Faith tapped her nails on the tabletop. "It might just be better for me to take her to the camp proper, though, huh? A lot safer than the jungle, and if those Others attack, then there'd be one more fighter in the camp."
(One more fighter just itching for a good fight.)
Re: [Faith] Nightcrawlers (tag Doctor, open)
The Doctor considered. “There’s a woman there, Ripley. I think you’ll either really like each other or want to kill one another. She’s a hunter type. She also stalks the forest at night, loves runnin free in the woods. She’s smart, strong and fast. Likes a spot of violence now and then.”
[Faith] Nightcrawlers (tag Doctor, open)
"Don't worry, Doc, your secret's safe with me," Faith told him. "If there's anything I do well, other than fighting and - er, fighting," Faith paused surprised by the sudden upsurgence of embarrassment and a desire to not let her usual commentary regarding sex spill out, "It's keeping secrets.
"I was told that we don't tell anyone about slaying and vamps and demons. Not like anyone would believe you anyway if you up and start talking 'bout that kinda stuff. I guess that's why I was sorta surprised that Tara had told y'all all about vamps and slayers. It's good though. It meant that I didn't come in here with everyone flying blind. Even if Jon and Rodney don't really believe it."
Faith rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck. "Ripley, huh? Sounds cool. We'll probably understand each other. Or, yeah, you're right, wanna kill each other."
"I'm gonna take a walk 'round, if that's ok?" Faith asked, "I still need to wind down a bit. And uh, not that I mean to take advantage of your hospitality and all that, especially after you know, you offered me the weapons, but you wouldn't happen to have any changes of clothes 'round here? Or is that more of something I should ask Rose in the morning?"
[Doctor] Nightcrawlers (tag Faith, open)
The Doctor stood himself. He might not sleep, but he could find some rest in his own room. At least lose himself in a book.