Little Miss Muffet
She dreams of spiders. Hundreds of them, crawling across her skin and she can't move. She opens her mouth to scream but they surge inside it before she can make a sound, choking her. She feels their blackness inside her, as her body disintegrates around them --
Awake. Faith gulps for air in the darkness and presses the palm of her hand to the cold cement wall beside her to remind herself what's real.
This is what her world has been reduced to. Dreams of spiders or cats and hazy, dawn conversations she can't remember when she wakes up crying. The prison routine of her days is so bland and identical she pays little attention to her waking life anymore. The dreamworld is a thousand times more vivid and it consumes her with a sense of urgency she thinks ought to mean something, but she can't figure out what.
Spiders. Or -- not. One. A spider, singular, twice as big as she is, lurching at her, but it doesn't touch her. Sits beside her instead and she can feel waves of malevolency coming off it, tangible, enough to make her stomach knot with dread. Not malevolency, maybe. Possession. Desire.
She would like to call Buffy. It's the first thing that comes to mind when she wakes in the mornings, but she jerks that thought back every time she has it. Stupid. Stupid, stupid and shameful and what would she say? "Hey, B, I've been having bad dreams, will you hold my hand?" Tries not to think about words like portent or prophecy. Always hated the idea of foretold evil. If it is something to be concerned about, Buffy's probably getting her own messages to deal with. Never needed her anyway.
There is a beast. Something old and evil and coming. She has no picture for it, no words, just a sense of being pinned, wriggling, like a bug while something comes for her, searches for her, will find her. Hears its name echoing in her skull, as if spoken by a thousand voices. The beast.
She thinks maybe she wouldn't be having the dreams if only she could get outside of here. If she didn't feel so confined, utterly trapped by metal and stone and her own clumsy attempts at penance. Wants to run, but tells herself no, no, no, no. Stay. She's going to do what's right, for once, if it's the last thing she does. Feels a chill as she thinks those words.
A hand over her mouth. Awake? Or ... no, asleep, but dreaming with a lucidity she associates with unreal conversations with Buffy. Hand on her mouth, firm as steel, and this is it, hits her suddenly, and she strains to see it in the darkness.
Blonde hair. Ringlets and perfectly plucked eyebrows and an expression that's absolutely eating her alive. A flash and the idea becomes literal. A tongue presses up inside her, with no pretense of tenderness or pleasure-giving. Devouring, instead. Wanting and taking. A mouth hot against her, sucking and pulling. Teeth scraping across her folds. Fingers inside her, splitting her open, and she is bleeding out her life in a flood of clear fluids, unable to stop this. Arches upward and feels her entire being dissolve in a rush of energy and light --
She wakes sweat-covered, shaking. Her thighs are sticky, the sheet beneath her soaked with her own juices. She knows now, whatever happens will be soon.
A cat. A cat on a bed. It blinks slowly at her. I know this, she says to it. It looks at the knife in her hand (in her gut) where it lies suddenly heavily (slides into her, ripping her apart). The blood on the blade is (dried and black) green, bright green, and (she stumbles to the edge of the balcony and) it shimmers, and coalesces and
falls.
She is hearing voices when she's awake. Whispering at the edge of her thoughts, in a language she can't understand. Something like Russian, maybe. She wishes she had a Watcher now to tell her what it is. What's happening to her.
Lips close around her clit. A hand pushes into her. She can feel hot salt on her cheeks. Is transfixed by a smiling face above her, glittering with menace. Mine the lips say, the red, red lips and move to bite her, to tear her open. No! she says, but the world (she) vanishes in a flash of green light.
When she wakes this time, she can understand the voices. She lies perfectly still with her eyes closed, and they are no less foreign, but now they make sense.
"It has failed," one is saying. "The Slayer cannot protect it. She is too far away." Faith wants to whimper, say that she'll do anything, just wants a second chance, but there are more voices now.
"We must begin again."
"A situation less volatile."
A girl, wavering in front of her for an instant, young, with long brown hair, then gone.
"Faith," says a voice, closer than the others, and gentler. Says it like a statement and a carress and something abstract.
A room and a mirror. She turns around to face it and sees herself, dark hair and eyes and the scar on her bare stomach.
"Not enough," it says, sounding almost amused.
Creeping, grabbing fingers on her breasts, in her mouth, her cunt, the world breaking.
"Something more dear."
A mirror. She turns, and tries to gasp but can't. Sees nothing but light, green and brilliant.
"Buffy," she whispers, and she truly can't move now. She hears chanting, a spell (sister, it whispers), can feel the magic building.
"Yes," says the near voice. "To Buffy."
Frantic shouting and a sense of urgency.
"An unmaking," it says. "A fresh beginning."
Mirror. Turning. Long, light hair, and a startled, wide-eyed face.
The world goes white and new.