Hallmark Card For My Assassin
by Witchkittyn
Rating: R
Spoilers: Season 3, Graduation 1 & 2
Summary: The darkest place in Sunnydale is the hospital gift shop.
Dated: 12/18/01
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, ME, WB, UPN, Sanddollar and Kuzui own these characters and treat them a lot more honorably than I do...well, when they were still on the show, anyway.
For the hallowed bard DreamSmith, who wanted more, believe it or not.

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Not again.

It's all he can think as he sits there on the bed, numbly listening to the doctor's deep voice tell him in clinical, emotionless detail what's wrong with her. Another fall from a high building. Just like before. Another severe head blow. Just like before.

He can't help wondering briefly, as he does when things go awry, whether it's her. A calling card... a retribunal from his jealous, unholy ghost. He hasn't believed in God in years, but he's always believed in her. The one deity he has never doubted the existence of.

Nor the wrath of.

Ed is an old acquaintance, the Mayor's long-time personal physician, and a senior resident at the hospital. Ed knows, of course, that his Mercedes is bought and paid for on the blood of innocents, on account of the "special interest" groups in town. Smart fellow, Ed: never asks questions, never goes sticking his nose where he shouldn't. Just patches up the ones that live, dutifully tags the ones that don't. Cog in the machine. But Ed doesn't know about Slayers.

Ed doesn't know Jack Sprat about Slayers. Never regain consciousness, his foot. The Mayor has half a mind to have Faith tear out Ed's tongue when she wakes up.

Ed didn't know quite what question to ask when he handed over the admittance form to sign. "If you don't mind, sir... it's for the records... what relation is she to you?"

Now there, the Mayor thinks, is the sixty four thousand dollar question.

What, indeed. Business associate is hardly an appropriate term at this juncture. Friend? They're a little long past the friendly stage. Lover?

He didn't think he loved her.

He shifts sluggishly on the bed now, turns and forces himself to look on the damage. The hair that had been soft and always somewhat damp, like the rest of her -- always slightly, erotically dewy -- now that hair appears dried and dull, as though she's been plucked from her field and left in the sun to wither. The young, atheletic body; the skin that had been so smooth and clean... like soft pressed linen in his hands...

She looks like bruised fruit. That seems almost uncannily appropriate, a perfect way to describe his young protege. She had been fruit-- forbidden fruit. And bruised long before he got to her.

An apple. Lips red as apples, skin white as milk. Not just any milk either; the sugar-sweetened kind you get at the bottom of an especially pleasurable bowl of Saturday morning cereal. There's much too much sugar in cereal today, makes the kids too rowdy. Fruit slices on Apple Jacks, a shiny knife paring an apple. Carving into her, parting her soft skin, luxuriating in her juice--

He swallows thickly, realizing with some displeasure that his mouth is actually watering.

He shouldn't have to feel guilty. The patriarch of the city, the soon-to-be ruler of the free world hasn't felt guilt, about anything, in well over a century of evil deeds. Now, though, he can't seem to help it. He finds himself imagining that those bruises souring her previously immaculate skin may be a side-effect of his touching her, that he might have somehow inflicted the black scars decorating her face. That he might have killed her the instant he gave in to his unseemly desire to kiss her.

She taught him how to kiss. Her way, at least; he certainly hadn't needed any instruction in the old tried-and-true method. But the kind of near-gymnastic things she wanted done with her tongue, things that initially gave him pause-- because good grief, it was the inside of another person's mouth and that was unhygenic to say the least... she'd been all too eager to show him that. Sitting warm on his lap, her ringed fingers on his face, soft strokes turning to gentle clawing through what was left of his furry red hair as her strong, ferocious mouth had ravaged his. How strange it had been to find himself the student in that instance, and she the teacher.

His gaze drifts to her mouth now. The lips that used to nip him teasingly are swollen, black and split, looking uncomfortably ever more childlike without her usual warpaint. Well she is a child, isn't she, when it all comes down to it? Despite all her street smarts and her filthy mind, she's barely more than a little girl dressed up as a streetwalker. And he had never forgotten that, ever; not even during what they did together all those nights... in the darkness of rented hotel suites and limosine backseats and once, at her behest, even in the back booth of that sordid, clanging nightclub--

...but she had asked. That was the thing. He can't remember initiating their little trysts even once; it was always her ball. And she'd never been little, never been meek, not in the least. He never could have done it if that were the case, if she'd left any room in his consciousness for the abused little girl she looks so very much like now.

She had come to him as a woman, all those nights. White as milk and black as death, exuding danger and dark adult knowledge from her time on the street. A fighter, a killer, his lovely assassin. She'd been so strong, holding him down, her hands full of the vim and vigor that she crushed the life out of her victims with, and she'd been the brief, exquisite death of him many times, many nights.

He reaches out now and takes up one of those deadly hands. Once gleaming with silver rings, capable of dealing torturous pain... or pleasure. Now the only silver is the sharply glinting IV needle, impaling her hand like the spindle that sent Sleeping Beauty into her swoon. Even her nailpolish has been stripped away, her trademark blood-colored varnish that he himself brushed on her playful fingers the morning before. Now those fingers lie still and naked in his own, as small and brittle as a seashell battered by a raging ocean.

Buffy Summers. Seafoam hair and seagreen eyes. He used to battle the sea himself. Used to be the terror of the ocean, but any good seaman knew you never, never underestimated it. You could damn the sea, but it would mercilessly break up your ship and swallow you regardless, and all your curses would accomplish was a faster drowning courtesy of your own open mouth.

Boy, that's not a very comforting analogy.

No, little miss Buffy Summers is not the sea. He'll never dignify that girl with any such grand description as that. She's nothing -- a schoolyard punk; a cheap worthless strumpet, as guilty of defiling Faith as he is. She's the one who's defaced Faith with these bruises, not him.

He's got nothing to feel guilty for. Not a darn thing.

Yet he can't stop looking at her. So unnaturally still, for a young lady who used to move so marvelously in other beds. The spunky girl who used to wolf down chalupas and demand sex in restaurant restrooms and sleep on Star Wars bedsheets. He doesn't even know how he got here, to this place, caring so deeply -- so inappropriately -- for a girl he would have killed with a smile three months ago.

He wants her, even now. Wants to take her out of here, back to his own home, his own bed, and smooth all the purplish black marks from her body, kiss her awake like Snow White. His dark shadow looms over her bed, staining the pink hospital blankets, and he wishes nothing less than to cover her and love her and nurse her back to her former sweet, destructive self.

He thinks... it's probably best if he steps outside for a while.

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As in most hospitals, the gift shop at Sunnydale Memorial is brightly lit and cheerily decorated, with fake palm fronds and reggae muzak playing discreetly in the background. It's meant to be a comforting place; a hopeful oasis in a building full of bleak flourescent light and wall-to-wall suffering. Unlike most gift shops, however, Sunnydale's is extremely lucrative. And it should be, for all the business it does with so many grieving fools and their money. Teddy bears and flowers and little mylar balloons. Modernized offerings on a deliberately vague altar, in hopes of a speedy recovery, a miracle at the last second.

Never in a thousand years would he have guessed that he himself would buy anything here.

Though it's fitting in a way, he thinks to himself as he stops in the doorway, casting his gaze over the toys and flora. The gift shop is like him. All smiles and money, masking the ugly secrets of the grand institution it fronts. Call him evil, but he isn't stupid. He knows irony when he's smacked in the face with it.

He didn't think he loved her. Because you can't, realistically, love the underage employee you've been having an illicit affair with, can you? What kind of anniversary gift do you buy for your teenage dominatrix mistress? Do they even make Hallmark cards for that??

His fingers casually browse over a Muppet mug, a Precious Moments picture frame, recalling her hot breath on his cheek. Her world-weary voice rasping filthy directives into his ear. Her chocolate-colored hair getting in his mouth as he tried to keep up with her frantic kisses, her breasts and arms and back shuffling in his embrace, her sculpted legs hugging him tight as she burst in his lap like ripe fruit.

He fumbles the mug and it bounces on the polished tile, made of plastic.

He shouldn't love her. Not least because he isn't supposed to have any emotions. Yet here he is, mooning in a gift shop, letting the hours slip by, the checkmarks on his mental to-do list going unmarked, as the big moment approaches. It's the day he's been waiting for, for centuries, thought at times it would never get here. Now...

Now he'd give anything for just a few more hours. There's no kill switch for the gears he's set into motion, no halting the metabolic changes he can already feel deep in his gut. That's new, and unpleasant; he's not used to having less than perfect control over every situation he's faced these past hundred years. Yet there's no going back now, precisely when all he wants is just a little more time. He could fix her, with another day or so, knows he could pull her out of her trance with enough time, enough love...

...but then, that's how this whole mess got started, isn't it?

His heart aches. Because-- be honest now-- who couldn't love her? Who could possibly look into those beguiling dark eyes, into that sweet, sad face, and not want to gather her up, brush away her hurts, promise her anything? What red-blooded American male could possibly look at a body like hers and not be... well, moved?

That's no excuse, he scolds himself. He doesn't believe in divine retribution... but he realizes, suddenly, why this whole thing just smacks of a punishment. Had he just been stronger, never given in to those base impulses in the first place... because that's how she'd been hurt, countless times before, throughout her life. Poor little kitten. Not all bruises show themselves on the skin.

If only he had never touched her... everything might be different now.

He picks out a teddy bear -- and then thinks better, his fingers moving past it to a stuffed critter with more meaning, its little paw impaled with a shiny balloon reading Get Well Soon! in neon blue letters. He buys fresh flowers on purpose, firmly believing she will wake long before they wilt and rot on her windowsill.

After all, he won't be in much position to buy replacement flowers after today.

He goes to the checkout, a fool and his money. The clerk is a honey-blonde, full-faced, apple-cheeked all- American beauty, just the kind of cleanfaced youth he hoped to breed here when he built the place. Just the kind of person that the Slayer, Buffy, fancies herself the savior of.

It occurs to him Faith is lying upstairs black and blue for the sake of innocents like this girl standing before him right now.

"Are you going to the graduation ceremony?" he asks out of nowhere, conversationally.

"Oh yeah!" The child nods, her bright blue eyes sparkling. "My cousin's in the band! I got a half-day off just so I could go watch. I leave in about--" she leans, checking the clock over the pewter figurine rack "--half an hour!"

"Well hey, that's great!" He holds out a hand, smiling genially. "I'll be seeing you there, then. I'm the commencement speaker. Richard Wilkins III, mayor of Sunnydale."

"Oh! Well, good luck!" She shakes his hand, polite and sweet as you please. "Well -- I guess it's probably a little ruined for you--" she waves her hand at the flowers and the toy, obviously bought for a sick not-friend not-lover not-sure-what-the-heck-she-is. "--But you try to enjoy the afternoon, sir."

Enjoy it. Oh, yes. He certainly will enjoy it. He has a sudden, pleasing image of blood staining honey blonde hair, of seagreen eyes flashing in abject terror. Of a blonde skull crushing under his hand, bone fragments and brain tissue staining pillows and sheets.

"You," he tells her with a grin, "enjoy every second you have left on this earth, missy." He shakes the girl's hand once, tightly. "You can never tell, can you, which one might be your last?"

The young clerk gazes up at him, her wide eyes a little wider now, her smile a little faded. Maybe she thinks he's referring to his Faith's unforseen accident. Either way he can smell it in the air, feel it crackling in her hand -- the first delicious strains of fear. That's a good girl. Smart girl. Fear me.

With a final squeeze of her hand, which has become limp and tiny in his, he drops it and turns to go with his sack, making a mental note to eat the marching band as soon as he finishes up with the Slayer.

He walks down the polished hallway, past busy nurses and cringing, weeping visitors; his flowers in hand, his bag in tow. He feels absolutely nothing. The sensation is one that he has been away from for a while, and it comes to meet him again like a dog happy to see its master. He had been feeling, for a while there. The brief, bright months he'd spent in her company, colored by neon club lights and loud rock music and shiny clothes....

He'd stolen her spirit. Feeling her had allowed him to feel. No wonder she's almost dead. Old habits die hard.

But wasn't that why he fought to stay alive for so long, made deals with every demon in the book? Because he was addicted to feeling?

Never mind. Now that she's silent, her rowdy spirit muffled and imprisoned in that still reposing shell upstairs... it's almost as though she never was. He can feel that part of himself that existed for those few sunshiny months slipping away, shutting up, just like it did after--

It's a good thing. Like Miss Martha Stewart says. He can feel all his human emotions bleeding away, and that's just what needs doing now. He needs to be cold, unrelenting. Inhuman. Invincible.

He's ready now, he thinks.

Just one more stop, up the elevator, back to that dark, silent room to drop off the gifts, offerings to whatever higher power watches over ailing evil little girls. Flowers, a stuffed red plush kitten. And one solitary, shiny apple.

She's a smart girl. She'll know what it means.

End

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