( )scription

Did anyone out there in LJ land happen to tape Tru Calling last night? More so, would you be willing to send me a copy?

We got slammed with a blizzard last night, but didn't let that change our plans to go out to eat, as it's the one evening in the months of Jan or Feb that DH and I get to spend together (don't anyone ever try to convince me that a teacher's day ends at 3 pm). So, while we're driving around rural roads looking for someplace open, my hastily set VCR is taping a blank screen .. because I forgot to shut off the Satellite dish! GAH.

I don't even like the show that much, but it messes up my archiving to not have the episode on tape.

***

Finally getting the TPFICT archives updated. That's been too long in the coming. For some reason, I decided that it was easiest to update by deleting all the files on Xmission and reuploading. This was one of those times I was not functioning at my brightest. It's taking forever.

***

Apparently it's WIP Amnesty Day? Never heard of it, and can only guess at what it really is. I think I'll take advantage of it.

Started this one in November '99, about the same time as GL. It's my first, and probably only, attempt at a Buffy fic. I don't know when it got abandoned. It got briefly revived in January '01, about the same time as GL, then abandoned again. I think it's safe to say that it's dead.

It was spawned from an idle comment someone made on the Buffy discussion list about the possibility of Oz poisoning himself from a poor earring choice. Then it started to morph into a Faith origin story. Then it died.


Silver

Chapter 1

Faith danced with her eyes shut, alone with the music. The club was crowded this night; bodies competing for space on the dance floor. Humid air cloaked them, cloaked her. It would have been hard to breathe had she not forgotten about breathing, locked up in the beat.

This was how it should be, she thought. Surrounded on all sides by people and not one of them expected anything of her. Not one of them realized she was anything other than she appeared to be. Odds were, not one of them ever paid that girl in the leather pants and the black tank top a single bit of notice. She simply wasn't worth noticing.

And there wasn't a single one of them that she cared to notice. If there were any vampires here, she didn't feel them. She didn't need to think about ghosts or zombies or saving the world. She didn't need to think. It was her eighteenth birthday and she was the only one who knew it.

She had wanted to celebrate with all the people who helped her this far. She'd heard good things about Club Phoenix, so here she was, throwing a party of one, held on the two feet of floor space she had claimed.

There was one allowance. The tunes were courtesy of the Dingoes. Back in Sunnydale, she'd fought side by side with the guitarist, Oz. It wasn't entirely a coincidence she and they were at the same club on the same night. Not entirely.

A missed chord caught her attention and she spared a glance towards the stage. Oz had been missing a lot of chords tonight, enough that Faith found herself waiting for the next error. Where the red head usually played with his eyes on the crowd, tonight his attention was focussed completely on his guitar. Focussed so completely, Faith wondered if he even knew he was playing before a live audience.

Devon knew. She saw the lead singer lean towards Oz and mouth something, probably threatening, at him. He looked angry, one fist clenched around the microphone, the other clenched at his side. Oz just shrugged and kept playing.

Something about the way he was standing prompted Faith to push closer to the stage. She felt her instincts go on red alert. Someone jabbed an elbow into her side. She shoved back and vaguely heard the people around her murmuring their displeasure. The club wasn't very large, but the crowd seemed determined to prevent Faith from reaching her goal.

As she drew closer, she saw that Oz's face had taken on a pallor way beyond his usual fair complexion. He missed another note, then stopped playing altogether. He was starring at his guitar as if he'd never seen the instrument before.

The audience went quiet first, then Devon and the drummer stopped as they realized something was truly wrong.

Oz stood on the stage swaying in the new silence, then slipped to the floor.

Faith took advantage of the collective shock to push past the remaining people and jump onto the stage. Without a word, she grabbed Oz's arms and started pulling him off-stage. The drummer leaped up to help.

Devon started to follow, then turned back to the microphone. "Thank you," he announced with a slight bow, as if the whole thing was part of the Dingo's act. "We'll be back after a short break."

****

"What the hell happened?" Devon demanded as he rounded the corner into the small storage room that served as the club's Green room.

Oz was slumped on the couch, his head propped in his hands. He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head, and groaned. The groan shifted into something closer to a growl, an animal expression that spoke clearly of his pain.

Devon took an instinctive half-step back at the growl, then straightened up when he realized the source was his normally unassuming friend. "You can't do this to me," he protested, returning to his primary concern. "Come on."

"Do something useful, hot-shot," Faith said, striding through the door that led from the club proper, a glass in her hand. She knelt by Oz and held the glass under his face until he took it from her. "Drummer-boy is getting some blankets from the van. Think you could do something besides stand there?"

Devon started to shrug, then dropped his hands and said, "I've seen you around, right? At Sunnydale? You're one of Buffy's friends."

"Sometimes," Faith responded. She turned her attention back to Oz. He was starring at the glass with the same attention previously given to his guitar. "Drink it," she told him, "It won't kill you." She stood up, brushed the dust off her leather-clad knees and looked around for the first time.

The room's sole furnishings were a battered couch and an even more battered coffee table, probably salvaged from someone's basement, with a handful of folding chairs scattered around. The club was still new and Faith conceded that it was possible that the owners just hadn't gotten around to fixing up this room yet. Their monetary attention had clearly been focussed on the parts of the building the public would see. Then again, she decided, the person in charge of doing this room has probably hit the Salvation Army, and pocketed the rest of the cash.

The return of the drummer interrupted her observations. He had a green wool army blanket slung over his arm. "It's all I could find," he said apologetically. "There was so much stuff . . ." His words trailed off when Faith grabbed the blanket from him and tucked it around Oz. "Do you know he keeps chains in his van?" He whispered to Devon. "Thick ones with --"

"Man, you okay?" Devon asked, a note of concern in his voice. "We have to go back on."

Several seconds passed while Oz contemplated the water glass, apparently ignorant of the others in the room. Devon was just opening his mouth to pose the question again when Oz said, "Sure. No problem." He rose to his feet, the blanket slipping from his shoulders. He took two assured steps towards the stage, then slowly crumpled back into a sitting position on the floor. "Or not," he added.

"Show's over, boys," Faith said. "The only place he's going is some place to sleep it off."

"Sleep it . . . ?" Devon looked at Oz, then at Faith, disbelief evident on his face. "He doesn't use."

"He barely even drinks," the drummer added.

"Yeah? Then he got sick real fast. He looked fine when you first came on."

"He doesn't use," Devon said again, more forcefully.

"Then you want to tell me why your guitarist is sitting on my floor, and my packed club isn't getting the live music they paid for?" asked a new voice. It came from a dark-skinned man standing in the main doorway. He looked to be in his early thirties, and completely lacked hair on any part of his body that Faith could see. "Who are you?" he continued, looking at Faith. "I'm not paying you."

"A groupie," she responded with a smirk, "and you couldn't afford me."

The man sniffed and turned back to Devon, clearly dismissing the girl.

"Ummm . . . he got sick," Devon said. "Something he ate." Under his breath, he added an "I hope" before plastering a sincere expression on his face.

The man looked down at Oz, all but passed out on the floor. "Make sure he's better by Friday. You mess that up, I don't want to see any of your faces again." He glared at both of the standing Dingoes in turn until they nodded dumbly back.

****

Sometime in the night, Oz woke up with a thick, persistent pressure behind his eyes. It couldn't quite be called a headache, but there was no ignoring it. He tried to rub his face and realized that he wasn't entirely sure where his hands were. His limbs, his face, his whole body felt on the verge of going numb.

Were it two days later in the month, Oz would have thought the change was upon him. Although the change, especially the first couple of times, hurt. Right now there was only the numbness that seemed more like a warning of impending pain rather than a signal of its absence.

As he lay there trying to puzzle out what was happening and whether or not he should be worried about it, he fell into a fitful unconsciousness.

****

"Hey, get up."

Faith kicked at the base of the bed where Oz was asleep. He didn't respond. She could see the slow rise and fall of his chest, so there was no questioning whether he lived. But the sheets were twisted around his body, and hanging off the edge, and his body was contorted into a position that couldn't be comfortable. He was going to hurt when he woke up.

"Is he normally like this in the morning?" she asked, directing the question to Devon.

The older boy had just stepped out of the shower when Faith arrived. His brown hair was still slicked back, and he was clad only in a pair of jeans, earning an appreciative glance from the Slayer.

"Uh-uh," Devon replied. "Usually you just have to say his name and he wakes up. He barely even needs an alarm clock."

She leaned over until her lips almost touched Oz's ear. "Feeling a bit HUNGOVER?"

The question didn't even earn her a protest.

"I told you, he doesn't use," Devon said, beginning to sound a little annoyed.

"That's what they always say," Faith said, straightening up. "I think our boy needs a shower." If immersing him in cold water is what it took to wake him up, then that is what she would do. She slipped one arm under Oz's knees and another under his arms and lifted. Her Slayer strength made the action effortless.

As she turned towards Devon and the bathroom, Oz's head flopped back, pulling his t-shirt up and revealing his stomach. At the same time, both the singer and the Slayer saw the long wound that ran the width of Oz's belly. It didn't look too deep to Faith's trained eyes, but it was an angry red, the skin surrounding it swollen. Red streaks extended from the wound almost an inch in every direction.

"What the hell?" Faith deposited Oz onto Devon's bed.

"It looks like he lost a fight," Devon supplied, "to a sharp knife."

Or a vampire, demon, or some other nightmare creature, Faith amended to herself. "Maybe he was trying to off himself," she threw out, just to test the option. She didn't believe it, and the look on Devon's face made it clear that he didn't believe it either. "Was he in a fight recently?" she asked.

"Not that I know of." Devon looked again at the wound. "We should take him to the hospital."

"You've got extra cash on you?" she countered. Money was hardly the top of her concerns, though. While the assorted Slayerettes did end up in the hospital on a fairly regular basis, they had all learned that it was the place to go only when there were no other options, or no chance at surviving any other options. Only the Sunnydale police's persistent denial made it possible for them to have the hospital records they did without drawing unwanted attention. To try the same stunt with the Los Angeles hospitals and police departments would be an exercise in stupidity.

Also, there was too strong a chance that with a wound like this, coupled with Oz's unconsciousness, the hospital would want to keep him in for observation. Which would be fine until the full moon rose in two days. Faith didn't take risks she didn't have an even chance of winning.

"We have to do something!" Devon protested.

"First we wake him up," Faith said. "Then we find out how he got slashed." Then I go find whatever did this to him, and kill it, she thought.

****
end Chapter 1