my teeth will only cut your lips, my dear | open-log

[slayerskiss]

Who: Faith Lehane & You!
What: Faith has mommy issues, turns into a succubus, gets a bit violent and then also hungry and horny.
When: May!
Where: Around!

Content Warnings: Grief, references to death of a family member, childhood neglect and abuse, alcoholism, hypersexuality, possible nsfw, monsterfucking, pseudo cannibalism.



I. MAMA, WE ALL GO TO HELL.
(May 8th.)

[It's mother's day, three o'clock in the morning, and Faith is at the cemetary. Which really just goes to show the miserable bitterness that wells up inside her every single time this day comes around. It's been... two years now. No, three. This bitterness doesn't stop welling up in her chest.

Her presence in the cemetary is likely only noticed due to the fact that she put a bullet through the head of an undead spectre that crawled its way out from the guard. It was a magic bullet. Works like a charm. There's a satisfied hum coming from her. If anyone else is here, she tries not to notice. She walks her way to the furthest corner of the graveyard and clears a spot in the dirt. She reaches into her coat and pulls out a bottle of vodka, shakes it up a bit and drops it in the clearing.]

Nightwalker said it'd help to pretend I was talking to you. For some reason. So I gave you your favourite to represent you. You're welcome. Not sure they even have booze in hell. You must be hating it.

You remember when I was eight? That was a year after you came and picked me up from your asshole relatives. This time, that year, it was mother's day. Your first and my first, and I guess I was excited 'cuz I'd never had a mom before, and I kept telling Alex, or Malice, whatever you wanna call her now. I kept telling her you were coming back for me, and I guess I stopped believing it was true until you actually did.

The day comes, and the night before you binge drank and got super wasted and got in a fight with our "roommate" at the time, who left the next morning never to be seen again. So you're hungover, miserable, ashamed, and really not feelin' it, right? But I wanna take you to ice cream, 'cuz I'd saved up enough money for it from stealing shit from the other kids at school. I only had like five bucks, but I figured that'd be enough for the both of us. Not like grandma ever took me.

You're hungover, and hating it, and hating that I'm making you do this, and hating me for bothering you when you really just wanna lay in a corner and die. But at that point, you still pretended. So I asked you how yours was, that you had to pay for because it turned out five bucks was only enough for mine. [She pauses, glancing upwards.] No, that's right. I paid for yours, you got one scoop, you paid for mine, I got three. God.

Anyway. I ask you how it is. And you smile. And you tell me it's lovely. And you thank me, and tell me you love me. [Her voice falters here and something bubbles up in her eyes and she realizes she's crying, just a little. Well, maybe more than a little.] So when I try to remember all the good moments we had, before you... before you fucking died. Why is it that it's just that that I remember? That one bitter memory where I don't even know if you were lying.

Did you even tell me you loved me? Or did I just imagine that like I imagined having a friend? [Faith wipes her eyes, smudging her makeup a bit. She lets out a sigh, shuddering. It's cold.] Anyway. That was my eulogy for the funeral you never had, mom.

Enjoy the vodka, mom. [She stands up, rolling the bottle over with her foot for a bit, before stomping it and shattering the glass into the dirt, leaving the ground wet with running liquid.] You always loved it more than you loved me.

That didn't help at all.[And with that, she turns away from the makeshift grave and walks away, staring at the ground. If anyone was listening, she'll glare briefly but do nothing else herself, not unless prompted.]

II. SHE WILL ALWAYS BE A BROKEN GIRL.
(May 10th.)

[Come the morning and Faith is... changed. She only notices when getting out from her sleeping position, which is less a bed (too comfortable) and more well, the couch. She gets up and almost immediately, her wings start getting caught on the cushions.

She finds a mirror, and comes face to face with the sight of what she's become. A succubus, with hair that's even longer and thinner, sharp teeth like a thousand knives in her maw, a forked tongue that extends frankly a bit uncomfortably long, and a long tail that coils up to her chin, moving like another arm.

And wings. Leathery bat wings. There's a lot of ways she can react to this. And she definitely does a lot of freaking out in the privacy of her own house, but by the time it's her favoured time of day, aka night, she tends to be less ashamed.

She can be spotted flying across Trench, and might drop on a rooftop near you and grin down at you. She is, notably, still not wearing much in the way of clothes. You try finding something that fits three new limbs. And there's an aura around her that attracts the attention of people around her, whether that's just because she's hot remains to be seen, but regardless she's hard to miss.

Or, later at night she'll be seen around the clubs, dancing and partying and flirting with just about anyone. At this stage, the demonic appearance is... lessened. Her face could pass for human, if it weren't for the horns. She wants to be wanted, to be craved. She's addicted to the sensation. She doesn't cover the monster, not much, just... well. She might as well be pretty.

Or alternatively, she might be at Sapphora. A bit more thoughtful, her tail flickers nervously as she stares at the staircase leading to the higher floors, sipping at her drink with a nervous chatter to her teeth. This physical form is still... confusing. She's not sure where exactly she got a glass of darkblood, but she's not exactly complaining. It's... delicious. Is this what it was like for all the vampires she killed? She feels bolder, stronger.

But still too weak to go upstairs and acknowledge the elephant in the room.]

III. TONGUES & TEETH
(May 15th.)

[She's back to normal for now, and one night she goes on a trip into the Trenchwood. She's itching, all over her body, it's like a siren call to anger, to violence, to the hunt. She disappears off the path at some point, but you might hear the faint cackle of her laughter.

If someone were to go and investigate, they'd find her standing over a beast. An ugly thing with long limbs and milky white skin and needle-like fingers, human looking, with a pinched up wrinkled face, all growls and hisses and whines. It still begs. It still pleads. Or maybe that's just what she's looking for.

There's a person in there, or there was once, and Faith is a Slayer. There's people in vampires, people who could be saved, people who were victims once. Faith is a Slayer. She's not a healer.

She's born for the kill. So she settles for grabbing the beast by the throat and hauling it up to her level, and she tosses her axe aside. There's something wild and feral in her tonight, and she just won't stop fucking itching. Maybe she just needs her fix.

That's what the rational part of her brain is telling her as her teeth sharpen into fangs and she drinks her fill from the beast's neck. She doesn't know that she's been spotted.]

IV. DAY TO DAY
(May. Wildcard option.)

[For the rest of the month, Faith does her job. She tends to patrol, even when the beasts are weaker. And she can be spotted in the middle of the night, with a crossbow in hand walking down the street or through the graveyard or through the woods or even on the beach. Sometimes she takes a minute to throw rocks and skid them along the surface of the water.

Sometimes she'll stop in bars and sit in a booth on her own, order something and enjoy whatever entertainments on. She's not as aggressively extraverted as she might be when she's partying, but if anyone wants to talk to her, they're free to.

And maybe once or twice, she'll engage in an underground fight, bet gems on it, and beat the living shit out of her opponent. Whether you come to her impressed at her ability, mildly outraged she didn't hold back a little, or even to offer a round in the ring, she'll be around.]

Comments

[slayerskiss]

She opens her mouth to reveal a grin of fangs, razor sharp and feral. "Oh yeah? You mean John? You think I don't know? He's a monster too, isn't he? Him, and Ozpin, and Willow, probably you too... Maybe I should just..."

She laughs, it sounds manic and uncontrolled, like she's completely off her leash. "Maybe I should just kill you all! Then I wouldn't be stuck on the outside looking in all the time in a fucking shitty motel!" (She may be confused) "It's my sacred duty to put a knife in all your fucking skulls." Then, her eyes shoot directly toward where Augustine was whispering.

And then she jumps to reach him, clawed hand outstretched. If she focused her senses, she could get an accurate location. But she's not exactly focused, so she'll do the next best thing.

(Now might be a good time to bust out some of that necromancy...)

[butnotyet]

Shit.

Lucky he kept moving; lucky his blood makes his reaction time even faster than he has, as yet, even begun to understand —

And it's still something of a close call.

If this were Mercymorn she was facing down, it would almost inevitably have been the kidneys that Joy would have targeted — wherever they might have migrated to; she would have found them, easily enough, because they were her favorite means of turning off anyone God would have complained about her killing —

Augustine is a spirit generalist, not an anatomist. He's not anything close to as combat-focused as the Second House, in his specialties — but he hasn't been on the front lines of a five-thousand-plus-year-old war the whole damnable time and not learned a few good tricks for shutting down an opponent fast.

The soul longs for the body; the body longs for the soul — and fucking John fucking Gaius, going around acting like his name is every bit as much of a divine and forgotten secret here as in the Nine Houses, is not the only one capable of yanking someone's soul (most of the way) out of their body without a bloody word of warning.

He isn't putting her soul anywhere else — not jamming it into the River to get an extra battery charge, since it isn't like he needs it and also isn't like the River is where it should be, here in Trench; not breaking off pieces to stash in other bodies, like he remembers doing (like he's never done) in Nephele-that-Wasn't, to make the dead rise again — no, it's a lot more like what John did to him when he first arrived on the Farthest Shores and God didn't feel like indulging his tentacle kink when they could continue a religious debate instead.

Calling it painful is both an understatement and misses the point; a body without a soul is just a corpse, after all. The shock of becoming 95% corpse for about five seconds, and then being snapped back to life, is also the sort of psychosomatic shock that tends to result in self-protective unconsciousness.

Something of a problem for someone springing at high velocity (and low accuracy) into a bunch of tree branches, yes, but all things considered, Augustine's only going so far as to make sure she doesn't end up with any permanent injuries to skull or spine.

"Any time now, John," he mutters, finally drawing his rapier. Just in case.

But:

Nope.

No John — unsurprising, it isn't like Alfred's even had long enough to get his attention, necessarily, much less explain what the hell is going on, or where; the girl-turned-monster, or whatever is going on with her, does indeed seem to be out as cold as he could like. Good. Well. Probably he can actually sheathe his rapier again after all, then; he does, too cautious about the claws and fangs and rotten-flower scent of that vile blood on her neck to feel foolish about it.

He turns his attention to the Beast that had had her attention, and — it's still dressed in a scrap of tunic, only moderately bloodstained, and some of that blood even seems to be human, to his senses. Easy enough for him to dissolve it into its constituent atoms, accelerating entropy in every Beasthood-infected cell, until there's nothing but powdered ash (and if this still adds to the blood pollution endemic around all of Trench, well, he can't tell, and wonders if maybe it doesn't, if nothing liquid spills into the earth) and dust and a scrap of, well, less-stained tunic.

Given that he promptly wraps it around her neck and head and arms, the better to contain her if necessary and keep any of her Vileblood from damaging his clothing — or him — well, the fact it's only less stained and not unstained might be incredibly gross, if she does wake up while still swaddled in it.

Then again, given the rest of the hog-tying and hoisting-over-his-shoulder to haul her back to God, maybe waking up in someone else's nasty shirt is the least of her concerns.

«What? Oh! There you are, just ahead — we're almost to you,» Alfred tells him, somewhere between fretful and relieved (and maybe a little bit horrified that he wasn't there, to protect Augustine, when she sprang at him).

[necrolord]

It's another minute before they're reached by the sound of God tramping gracelessly through the woods, and then there he is, with Alfred coiled round his shoulders like a strange and fancy scarf. He's been carrying on conversation in a murmur, and his brow creases in open worry when he sees... whatever this is.

Faith doesn't look great, and Augustine looks— well, it's definitely an outfit.

"You're fighting crime in this?" says God, halfway between incredulous and appreciative, looking the owl mask up and down and then up again. And then, a bit more to the point: "What happened?"

[butnotyet]

«I miss having hands,» Alfred announces morosely, and insubstantiates, such that God walks straight out of his embrace within His next two steps — then swims through the air on a parallel course, a bit faster, to catch up to Augustine and peer at his burden. No hands, no legs — and yet, somehow, he still gives the impression that he's got his tail tucked between them anyway; a neat trick, for a creature that appears to be made entirely of tail (plus a head).

"What the devil did you say to him that made him think I was doing that?" Augustine demands of Alfred, acerbically, and gets... nothing, or maybe a shrug, which is going to look a lot like nothing when played on a creature with no shoulders, either.

He lowers his burden to the ground, careful to keep her biometrics at baseline, careful not to jostle or injure her, careful about that vileblood — and pulls the beast's tunic away from her head, showing God her face.

Showing John her face, come to think of that.

"Second young lady I've seen since getting back here who used your name like a weapon meant to wound me," Gus remarks, oh-so-idly.

«At least the other one was funny about it.»

Augustine provides a succinct rundown of the interaction — kill, snacc, convo, threats, attack, defense, cleanup, transport — and shakes his head. "Have to say, this is a far cry from her behavior, at least so far as I've seen, when she's been in the house."

Unspoken question: Well, John, what are you going to do with her now?

[necrolord]

He crouches on his haunches to have a look at her, brow crinkled in open concern. God chews his lip. He can see what's going on here, the thrum of activity under the skin. Had half-hoped Vilebloods would be immune. Useful information, to find that they aren't, but not great news for Faith.

Your name like a weapon, says Augustine, and God goes still. For another long moment he looks at the girl, not his Saint, but the searching attention has vanished from his face and gone inward. When he does look up at Augustine, it's with some cool edge behind his dark eyes. (It is the look of God filing away a problem to be dealt with later.)

"That's interesting," he says, levelly. "Didn't think she knew it."

He doesn't ask about the other; he just rises back to standing. "She'll get better. Let's bring her back, give her the couch in the study. I can take it from there."

[butnotyet]

God's First Saint looks at God, just as levelly as God speaks, and does not, as yet, make any move to re-cover her face, her fangs, her injuries; he does not offer any information about Anna, or the frankly fascinating conversation they'd had, fueled by ramen, or the memory of it.

"I'm not one of the children," he points out, after just long enough for the pause to be obvious. "Are you planning to give me the grown-up version of what you're barely talking about, here, or are you planning to carry her back there alone?"

(All that, after God had said let's bring her back — suggesting that Augustine, or maybe Alfred, will of course want to help.)

[necrolord]

There are two things he's barely talking about, here. One of them is parenting. That's the thornier issue than the bone-deep magic parasites, so they'll focus on the latter.

"It's bees," says God.

He enjoys the silence after this pronouncement, because it is, objectively, pretty funny. In its wake, he clasps his hands together like an alright, let's head out.

"Leave her face uncovered. I'll carry her." Until his noodle-armed efforts get too pathetic and Augustine is honor-bound or exasperated enough to step in. There are a hundred ways to do this, when you can walk bodies alongside you or spawn skin hammocks or all the other things he'd be a little embarrassed to pull. Most would be a hell of a violation. He likes Faith, for all that he doesn't know what she's been hearing; it seems kindest to scoop her up like the child she is. "I can give you the rundown on the way."

[butnotyet]

The paralytic force of God's pronouncement not only prevents Augustine from covering Faith's face again; it also requires him to run a bit to catch up, once God has nearly left the clearing.

"Bees," Augustine repeats, incredulously disbelieving. Of all the things to claim as the cause —

«Should I go ahead to the house and start the coffee, then? We probably have plastic cups, too...»

"I will stab you —"

«Just so long as it's with a spoon —»

Alfred vanishes, before Augustine can attempt to make good on his threat, and does not reappear elsewhere in the vicinity, this time.

When God's attempt to keep things fully manual reaches the point of terminally-pathetic, Augustine does consent to carrying her feet — after wrapping them in that tunic; he has no particular interest in being covered in bees himself, after all, nor in determining whether or not direct pressure on her skin will cause anything to erupt from it. And otherwise, well, he's had a lot of practice in listening to Teacher's explanations, and this is just another opportunity for more of the same.

(When they do, in fact, finally make it back to the house, there's an incredibly smug snake in the kitchen, next to a coffee tray that does, indeed, have a number of plastic cups on it, full of hot, strong coffee — spoons already tucked in each one. Did he get help? If so, he's not saying.)

cw: bugs under the skin talk

[necrolord]

He talks on the way, as though this is all a whimsical little local quirk. Parasitic blood bees, under the skin; yes, really; they make a hive of the bones and seem to feed on Blood Pollution, which is genuinely fascinating and the subject of much current study. By him and the few other researchers not too unsettled by parasitic blood bees.

God does not mention that he had a nasty case of blood bees, when they first came on. In those first furious days of May. Could've ended badly, if he hadn't found a way to evict them from the raw bone and chitin of his warped body; if he hadn't needed them gone to skin himself over looking human again. No one knows, and no one will know, and if he ever meets the wacky werewolf patron they will have words.

"It's a hell of a procedure," he says, sympathetically, when they lay her down bleeding onto the familiar study couch. "Can't be fun to have me picking bugs out of somebody's marrow. Maybe best you keep her tied up for this bit."

cw: bee discussion and descriptive queasiness

[butnotyet]

There are reasons that Augustine has said virtually nothing, throughout the lecture; for one thing, the vast majority of the information is completely new to him, still, despite having been working his way through Teacher's notebooks; for another, at this point in his long, long life, anything related to Hymenoptera is just.

No.

(Not helping: the way he had had to fight the damn things himself, just before his death, when trying to figure out what the hell was going on with Joy's disappearance.)

Augustine doesn't know why he had had trouble finding Teacher, to ask him why there'd been a yellow blanket left on his bed on the first day of the fifth month of the year; why he hadn't really had much luck tracking him down anywhere, in fact, for several days. The timing isn't getting any traction to speak of — and his month has, overall, been both longer than expected and busy, with Nephele-that-Wasn't and turning invisible and, and, everything else —

What he does know is that Teacher is talking about how utterly fascinating all of this parasitic-blood-bee thing is in just slightly too much detail for it to seem, well, innocuous; he's definitely had some sort of experience with it. And then that next-to-last sentence —

There's a moment, after Teacher finishes talking, that Augustine fails to react outwardly at all; it's the moment in which he is putting several puzzle pieces together, and finding that they all fit, even if he doesn't know what picture he's supposed to be assembling, as yet.

Too much knowledge of what's going on, and the process of getting rid of them, and then — Can't be fun to have me picking bugs out of someone's marrow, he says, as if he's never gotten feedback.

The sheer horror of the prospect of having any part of one's body start to resemble that of a Herald — only the combination of an iron will and Lyctoral bodily autonomy-and-control keeps Augustine's bile from rising. He still has to swallow, twice, before he can answer:

"Can't say I was planning to untie anyone still sprouting claws like that."

(It even almost sounds as lighthearted and cheerful as his norm.)

[slayerskiss]

Faith's eyes shoot open at around this part, her mind growing less and less hazy. But nothing, NOTHING can undercut the sheer panic anger. The fear, pain and distinct sensation of a horrible violation, of her entire soul being ripped from her body, of feeling the stark relief of her limbs going slack and the agony blanketing all the thoughts and doubts in her head, and having it forced back onto her.

Is this what Angel felt?

She's confused. The Doctor's here, or The Emperor, or God, or John's here and through her bleary eyes, she looks at him and she can almost see The Mayor, his eyes kind and as he went along with his malice, as he turned her rotten.

She writhes, attempting to tear her bonds with her arms, her teeth, anything. She feels panic creeping down her throat no matter how much she doesn't want to believe she's scared of this, of him.

She remembers being strapped to a hospital bed, waking up to a world that moved on without her, as they clambered to pump her full of enough drugs to keep her docile. She remembers watching Wesley's men stun Angel, dragging her off to deport her and reprogram her till she's a good little slayer like Buffy.

She doesn't even realize she's growling out her words. "Kill you - I'll KILL you all!"

And when she glances at the other one, at this stranger with her life in his hand, she almost feels like she can see it from another point of view. She wonders if this is what Xander felt, when she was squeezing his throat shut and sneering down at his attempts at kindness. She wonders if this is what Willow felt, when she backed her against a wall and caressed her face with the blade of her knife. She wonders if this is what Wesley felt, when Faith was cutting scars into his body and laughing at him, mocking him.

She wonders if she deserves whatever it is that's going to happen to her. (The idea that they're going to try to help her is fucking laughable.)

cw: another bees mention

[necrolord]

Augustine looks at him too long. Augustine fumbles the delivery, falters like John has said something properly horrifying and not just "her flesh has been honeycombed by evil bees," which— fine, yeah. It's not an ideal situation. Still.

It's practically a relief, when Faith breaks the tension by coming up rabid and swinging.

"Hey, easy," soothes God, as he flicks his fingers for Augustine to back off and give her space. She'll make a mess of the couch, but that's fine; he'll sort it out later. "We've got to stop meeting like this."

She hadn't been half this bad, that day on the beach. But she hadn't had bees in her bones, which could make anyone a little extra testy.

"I thought we agreed monsters weren't on the menu."

[slayerskiss]

She lets out a feral growl, snarling with deformed sharp teeth. She glares up at him with all of the spirit and defiance of a rabid animal chained to the wall against it's will. She writhes and pulls like she can break free and claw at his throat.

Like she has a chance. The Slayer has always been a tool to be used. It's easy for her to forget that just because she's allowed her leash to be held by others that that control will be ripped away the second - the second that she's too dangerous to contain.

And then she goes limp, for just a moment, and instead of a gasp or a growl, instead of anything else, it's laughter that comes out of her scarred throat.

"Maybe..." She grins up at him, vicious. "Maybe I lied, John. Maybe I... I'm not the world's best actor, but second place isn't bad." It's an in-joke. An in-joke with herself. But her stare is pointed and paranoid, like he's out to get her, like he's always been out to get her.

They're all out to get her. The Mayor was right, there's nobody else she can trust. She should have died with him.

"Let go. Just let me go. I'm not going back, I'm not," She's quickly running out of breath and energy, which is impressive considering what a Slayer's supposed to be. She's barely anything resembling coherent at the moment. There's even tears welling up in her eyes.

And yet, as she speaks, there's something off. Like you could reach out and see something. A memory. It's hard to pin down how it's happening, but her mind races with a fixation on all the horrible things she's done, on the man before her and the man he reminds her of.

Apparently she had an apple before this?

And yet in her current state she seems entirely unaware.

[necrolord]

There she goes calling him John like an accusation, like she can make it a weapon. It's not like he needs to ask where she learned it. And it's not currently the point.

"You're not going anywhere but here," he tells her. "Let's get you bug-free and then we'll talk."

God does not need touch, to work his magic. He could work shut the honeycombing of her bones with a moment and a thought— and maybe a little effort, to unpick what the Pthumerians have done to her. It's not quite his sort of magic, and it takes a bit to get the translations right. But he knows this cure. He's done this one before.

He doesn't need touch to make it take. But it helps, and it's good for consistency, good for his image, good for the way he means to soothe her. So he reaches out to catch her by one pale shoulder, gently, and he smooths a hand up to her wounded throat.

The vision hits before he knows what's happening.