It was her daddy who’d taught her to shoot. She remembered the way he’d crouch behind her with his arms around her, holding her small hands under his on the grip of the pistol. She’d been so small, one of those towheaded little girls with perpetually pink cheeks that people on the streets couldn’t help but smile at. Her father’s arms around her, the feel of the pearl handled grip under her palms, it felt like safety and power. Both of those were ripped away from her when he died. She supposed she’d been looking for that feeling ever since.
She was eight when he died, a car accident and her white blond hair had already darkened to a rich chestnut. The driver of a BMW had run a red light and smashed into the driver’s side of his pickup. She hadn’t been with him at the time and she remembered everyone telling her how lucky she was, that if she’d been in that truck she’d have died too. She remembered thinking they were wrong. She wasn’t the lucky one. She was the one who’d been left behind.
Her mother’s drinking got worse after that. She couldn’t handle the pressures of raising her daughter or keeping a roof over their heads. Almost daily, she cursed Faith’s father for dying and leaving her in this position and it was Faith that paid the price. The last beating was the worst. She was thirteen and her mother had lost her job. She’d called in sick one too many times, staying home to nurse a hangover. Her boss had finally had enough. Of course it was Faith’s fault, for needing so much, for existing.
Her mother passed out sometime after midnight and, broken and bleeding, Faith shoved some clothes into her backpack, stole twenty dollars from her mother’s purse and ran away from home. She fell in with a pack of street kids and learned to survive. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t glamorous and she did things that made her sick, but she stayed alive and no one beat on her anymore.
She was sixteen when she found that feeling again. Safety, power. A Slayer, newly called. Strength flowed through her, gave her confidence, a new purpose. She was going to save the world from the vampires.
~*~
Things didn’t go according to plan, but that wasn’t new, was it? When had her life ever stayed on track? No, Faith was destined to always jump the tracks, make her own path and usually the hardest one.
She’d put it past her though. Managed to help save the world, in the end. A clean slate, a new start, she’d hit the road. She traveled, hitchhiking, hunting, slaying and she had a good time doing it.
She met him in a bar, in a backwater little town in Missouri. Bored out of her mind, she was slamming back shots while the bartender stared at her cleavage. It didn’t bother her. A lot of men looked at her. She figured she should give them something to look at. Tight leather pants, black halter-top, baring the smooth line of her back, dipping low in the front.
Someone was standing behind her, she could smell the beer on him and see the cigarette smoke he was exhaling. He was close enough that she could feel his body heat and she slammed her empty shot glass down on the bar.
“You can look, but do it from a distance, buddy,” she said, signaling to the bartender for another shot.
She felt a hand slide over her ass, squeezing and she started to turn, ready to break someone’s nose, when the hand was jerked away and she heard a man’s voice.
“Now that’s no way to treat a lady.”
Faith turned on her stool to see a man in a brown leather jacket holding the wrist of a cowboy. He was twisting the arm, his grip firm and the cowboy was trying to get loose. Faith tilted her head to the side.
“Keep that up and it’ll break,” she said. Leather jacket guy glanced at her, eyebrow raised, then released the man’s wrist. The cowboy rose to his feet and quickly walked away, glancing back to see if he was being followed. Her rescuer stepped up and leaned against the bar beside her.
“You okay?”
He really was too cute for his own good and by the way he was looking at her, he knew it, too.
“Five by five,” she said. “Had it covered, by the way, but thanks.”
He smirked and she couldn’t help but smile. Yeah, this one was trouble. Problem was, Faith sort of had a thing for trouble. She couldn’t stay away from it.
“So, what are you doing here, alone?” he asked and she laughed.
“Right now? Waiting for you to get past the knight in shining armor act and make a move already.”
~*~
His guns were on the bedside table. She reached out, ran her fingers over the cool metal. Slayers didn’t use guns much, but hunters did. She had one in her bag. A girl couldn’t be too careful.
Dean was asleep, his arm over his head, the glow of the streetlight outside the motel window casting shadows over the planes of his face, his chest. God, he was pretty. That body, hard, lean muscle, his hands, strong, callused. The line of his jaw and that mouth, it was made to keep a girl awake at night. His eyes, so clear, so deep she thought she might fall into them and never find her way back out. Scary thought. Still, it had been three months since that night in the bar. When the morning had come she hadn’t slipped out the way she usually did. She hadn’t expected it when Dean asked her to stay with them, him and his brother. His explanation of what they did, saving people, hunting things, had shocked the hell out of her. Explaining what a Slayer was, then proving it, had been entertaining. So she’d climbed into that big, black, sexy car with the Winchester brothers. Town after town, one motel room after another and every night, she told herself that when dawn came, she’d go, that there was nothing holding her there, not really. And every morning, when dawn came, she was still there.
Faith stroked one finger down the pearl grip of the pistol, then sighed and slid back into bed, curling against Dean’s body. He sighed in his sleep, turning, wrapping his arms around her and she knew why she stayed.
Safety. Power. Her daddy would have liked Dean.
I was up late, made a random manip using the pictures that were currently on my desktop for whatever reason and voila! a ficlet, with illustration!
