Title: 5 by 5
Author: vegmb
Rating: R
Spoilers/Setting: Post-“Not Fade Away.”
Warnings: Darkfic: violence, torture, character death
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and make no profit from their use. Thanks to my betas: ezagaaikwe and lillianmorgan
Pairings: Wes/Faith
Summary: Wesley teaches Faith the five basic techniques for physical torture

5 by 5

A brunette dressed in black leather pants and a white tank walked alone into the alley. She looked around cautiously, holding a large knife in her right hand and fingering the sharpened wooden stake tucked into her belt with her left.

“I know you’re here.” She paused for a moment waiting and listening. “Come out, come out wherever you are,” she called out tauntingly, her voice echoing off of the surrounding walls and down the alley away from her.

A door in the wall of the warehouse on the left opened and a man stepped out. He was standing in the shadow so she couldn’t make out any details of his face. He was tall and slender and was wearing trousers with a jacket. He seemed familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite place him.

“Hello, Faith.”

She moved toward him, recognition washing over her face. She returned the knife to its sheath in the back of her pants.

“Wes, dude, what are you doing here? You had my slayer sense going all crazy for a minute there.”

She had started walking over to him, but stopped mid-stride.

“Dude, I heard you died in L.A. What’s going on?” The look on her face had changed from joy to hopeful yet cautious.

He looked at her for a moment, and then nodded to someone behind her. She felt a blinding pain as something hard made contact with the back of her head. Then all was dark.

Wesley watched as her body crumpled then fell. He walked over to her and stood looking down at her body on the asphalt.

“We have unfinished business, you and I. But, we’ll have to discuss that later. Let’s see, I believe that will count for blunt, though I may have to do it again so you can be awake to appreciate the full affect. So, that leaves what? Sharp, hot, cold, and loud.” He smiled to himself, “This should be fun, just like old times. Only…not.”

He leaned down and removed her knife and stake. “I think these will do quite nicely for sharp,” he said as he put them into his pocket.

He nodded again to his companion and the limp body of the slayer was lifted and carried away.

* * *

Faith awoke with a killer headache, tied to a chair by a window in a dirty little apartment. It seemed she had been there before, but couldn’t place exactly when. Or maybe it just looked like all the other dirty little apartments she had seen in her life.

“Does this scene seem vaguely familiar?” Wesley’s voice asked from behind her. “Of course,” he drawled out the words, “that was in L.A. and the roles were reversed then.” It was definitely Wesley’s voice, but it was sinister and powerful in a way she had never heard it before.

What had happened to him? The stories she’d heard had said that he was killed in L.A. trying to take out a member of The Brotherhood just before Angel’s final big battle. Angel had barely made it out alive and it had taken him months to recover from his injuries. No one was really sure what had happened to any of the others. Angel had been fairly certain Gunn was dead and thought he had seen Illyria, (whoever that was, Angel wouldn’t say.) carrying Spike off.

But none of that helped her now. Roles were reversed. What was he talking about? Then, with a cold shudder of fear and remorse, she remembered.

“I thought we had moved past that, Wes. Bygones and all.”

Wesley walked around the chair to stand in front of her. He smiled down at her, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We never moved past it; we just set it aside until it could be dealt with properly. And, I believe that time has now come.”

His smile sent a chill down Faith’s spine. She looked up at him, studying his face trying to find the man she had once known. “What’s wrong with you, Wes? What happened to you in L.A.? We all thought you were dead. You’ve got all of my slayer senses going crazy. But you’re not a vamp and I don’t know of another type of demon that used to be human. So what gives?”

He continued to stare down at her with that fake smile and unnerving calm. “Do you think,” his words were slow and lazy as he absently picked up her knife and began to play with it, “that if you’d been a better slayer, then I’d have been a better watcher? That if you hadn’t been so…damaged...”

He sliced through the skin of her upper arm as he said that last word and she let out a soft cry.

“…when I met you, that I would have had a chance. Or, maybe...”

He made a second cut slightly below the first and stopped to watch the blood run down her arm and drip onto the floor before he continued.

“If I had been Buffy’s watcher and Giles had been yours…”

He reached over and dipped his finger into the blood, then placed it in his mouth.

“…that things would have turned out differently?” He tilted his head to the side inquisitively. “Maybe Buffy would be the one sitting here and you’d be off not saving the world because you had retired from your slayer duties?”

He again dipped his finger into her blood, but this time instead of placing his finger in his own mouth, he placed it in hers, sliding it in and out slowly then letting his finger continue down her chin.

“Do you spend hours sitting and thinking about all this and wondering what went wrong?” He paced over to the window while he spoke and stared out at the deserted street below. Then he turned to her and walked back to stand directly in front of her chair.

“Wes. What. The. Hell. Happened. To. You?” Faith forced the words out as she struggled to remain calm, the metallic taste of her blood still on her tongue. She recognized the darkness in him, true darkness that had turned into evil. Darkness that was originally born of despair and hurt and loss but ran deeper and eventually blotted out all trace of light. Darkness beyond even where she had been, but she recognized it.

He laughed then, a deep resounding laugh. “That’s precisely what happened to me. Your hero, Angel, has sent me to Hell and there’s no way out.” He walked around to her other side. “I died while employed by Evil Inc., Lawyers for the Damned, and their contracts extend far beyond death.”

She had been distracted by the thought that he was totally insane and didn’t notice that he still held her knife in his hand. She winced as he trailed the tip of it down the length of her other arm in steady shallow strokes. “Keep the cuts shallow so you maximize the pain and minimize the blood loss so your subject stays conscious longer.” Her own voice echoed in her mind. Why did watchers have to be such good students?

“You really were an excellent teacher,” he said softly, almost reverently as he looked at her. “The 5 basic forms of physical torture, that’s something they didn’t teach at the Watcher’s Academy. If it still existed, I’d send them a letter suggesting they add it to the curriculum.” He chuckled, “I could just see my father’s face when he read that. Or, better yet, perhaps I should send it to Giles. I hear he’s trying to get the whole mess going again.”

He nodded his head as if making a mental note then looked back at her. “Now, where were we? We’ve done blunt and sharp.” as he walked he counted off on his fingers, “So, what would you prefer next: hot, cold or loud?”

Faith stared at him. “You can’t be serious. How long do you think you can hold me here and keep this up? I’m a Slayer.” She took a breath. “You’re dead. A dead watcher.” He merely smiled at her with a look of infinite patience as of someone dealing with a small uncomprehending child.

Her bravado slipped to let a bit of concern show through. “Wes, I know you’re in there somewhere.”

“OK, so I’ll choose for you. What do you say…” He paused as he pulled out a lighter and let the flame dance in front of her face, “…we try hot?” He moved the flame to the tender skin under her arm that he had cut earlier, the blood sizzling as it dripped into the fire.

“Tell me, Faith, is this what you wanted?” He looked her in the eye. “Is this how you like it?”

Faith looked up into his eyes and smiled. “You know, Wes, I didn’t think you had it in you. I thought you were just a little preppy boy who would do anything to live up to Daddy’s expectations. I guess I was wrong. You’ve finally grown up and come into your own. Too bad you had to be an evil dead thing to grow some balls and make something of yourself.”

While she talked, Faith tried to get her left arm free so she could reach the knife where Wesley had left it on the table beside her, but to the ropes were tied too tightly for her to move.

Wesley moved the lighter so that its flame licked fresh skin. He traced the line of her cheek and jaw with his other hand as he spoke softly. “Perhaps so, but just think, I owe it all to you and Angel…and, of course, Illyria. You all taught me about darkness, and loss, and” he paused for a beat, “real power.”

He traced her throat with his thumb bringing it up under her chin and tilting her face up to his. Rotating his hand to rest her chin in his palm, he ran his thumb lightly over her lips while he looked deeply into her eyes before he continued.

“And as appreciative as I am for all that you’ve taught me…” he had moved closer so that his lips nearly brushed hers as he spoke, “..the time has now come to repay you for your lessons.”

Wesley stood up quickly as he closed the lighter with a snap and pressed the hot metal to her lips. She tried to pull her mouth away, but his hand had tightened painfully around her jaw, holding her firmly in place. The delicate skin of her lips literally sizzled against the hot metal. When he finally pulled the lighter away and tossed it back on the table, her blistered flesh pulled off and went with it.

Tears that she could not control had sprung into Faith’s eyes and spilled over to run down her cheeks. Wesley gently wiped them away with the balls of his thumbs as he cradled her face in his hands. “It’s too bad Angel won’t be coming to save you like he did for me all those years ago,” he crooned to her as he looked deeply into her eyes. “But I couldn’t have him disturbing our little reunion.” He stood and walked out of her sight.

Wesley stood behind her and slipped his arms around her holding a dropper of liquid nitrogen where she could see it. He leaned close so he could whisper into her ear. “I thought we should just combine the last two: cold and loud.” His lips touched her ear as he spoke and he breathed in her scent. “I’ll admit I’m a little anxious because I’ve been waiting so long to be here with you like this, but I’m sure I can go all night. Do you think you’re up for that?”

Faith felt a cold so intense it burned running down her chest between her breasts in one, two, three, four lines. Then an incredibly loud, high-pitched, ear piercing noise erupted on all side of her. She screamed as her eardrums burst, but the sound was lost in the noise.

* * *

Giles had received a rather cryptic message saying he could find one of his Slayers in this run-down, dirty apartment building in Unit 4D. Several pairs of eyes followed him from behind locked doors as he made his way up the narrow staircase; the elevator had been broken for some time apparently. He was quite out of breath by the time he reached the unit in question, though his accompaniment of slayers seemed to have had no trouble at all with the climb.

He reached forward to check the door. Finding it unlocked, he pushed it open and walked into the apartment. At first glance, it appeared to be empty. However, when he looked through the doorway into the kitchen, he could see a human hand on the floor.

Giles walked into the kitchen and found Faith, lying in a pool of her own blood, body and face bruised almost beyond recognition. “Bloody Hell,” he muttered. Then he noticed an envelope on her back addressed to him.

Dear Rupert,

I’ve heard that you are attempting to rebuild the Watcher’s Council. Faith and I discussed it and we have a suggestion for a new class that should be added to the curriculum for new Watchers: The 5 Basic Techniques for Physical Torture. She had been so kind as to give me a lesson when she awoke from her coma and came to LA from Sunnydale some years back. Being a good student, I thought it only right to show her how well I had learned my lessons. We agreed that this course could be invaluable to those who come after us, so do take it under advisement.

Sincerely Yours,

Wesley