armedagainstlove | (no subject)

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faith,
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He has been drinking for some time.

Apparently, in this city of bright lights, gold coins go a very long way. Athos hadn't travelled very far from the door, sitting himself upon a stool and beginning to make his way through as much wine as he possibly could. Two bottles in, he has made a great friend of the bartender, who does not mind that Athos has little to say to him. There are gold coins for the taking and Athos has no care for money. He has plenty of money. He is a Comte living in a hovel. He has more money than he knows what to do with.

The wine of the future tastes empty, though, as though it lacks in strength. He has been given many odd stares for his weaponry, but Athos will not dismiss them, knowing that he is not so dangerous when he is drunk. After all, he can still shoot from five paces away and if Porthos can shoot a melon off Aramis' head when drunk, then Athos can wear his weapons.

When he looks up, after another glass, he now realizes that he is not alone. "How long have you been here?" Athos asks of the beauty beside him, puzzled and rather worried that he is lapsing time.

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"Hate and love... far as I've gotten? Same coin, just different sides." Faith knows an observation like that doesn't help. "Though-- guess that's just preaching to the choir, huh?"

Hate is something Faith's pretty familiar with. Love, on the other hand? She craves it, and yet she pushes it away. With punches, kicks, and sometimes stabbing.

"For all that I love her, there will never be any forgiveness given," Athos is sure and clear about this. He feels as though he needs to drink more because it is something that is utterly a difficult topic. "She killed my brother and she was a thief and a murderer," he pronounces, as if that will somehow make it any better.

He breathes shakily, unaware of how to make himself steadier. "And yet, I love her still. Do you know how that feels?" It is not a rhetorical question, he truly wants to know if he is not alone.

"Uh." Faith pauses, trying to swim through memories of people she did the hurting to. Often, they were the ones she loved.

"Never been married, but I guess yeah. For a while-- well let's just say I can't blame 'em for backing away quickly." She shrugs. Even though it was a long time ago, Faith probably shares a lot more in common with Athos' wife than Athos himself. Murderer and thief. Include a little torture and straight mayhem, shake and stir. "How can you still love her?"

Cause Faith is pretty sure she's mostly unlovable. And she keeps trying to come to terms with it.

"I ask myself the same question," Athos admits, because he would rather it be easier. If he were to simply stop loving her, stop loving Anne, his life would surely be better. Now that she isn't dead, though, dangerous and out there, he has no idea what to do. "I don't know what she's doing, now. She must have a patron, but I cannot imagine who. She is dangerous, immensely so, and she is alive."

He has been saying that for days and it is still a shock to hear.

Blinking out of his drunken revelry, he stares at his companion as if for the first time. "You have been listening to my troubles far longer than anyone should," he says. "I apologize for my rudeness."

At first, all Faith can do is chuckle, short and surprised. Her hand reaches out to clap him on the shoulder, firm.

"Look around, Athos. This is the alter of dumping your problems on strangers. Besides, yours seem a little harder hitting than what I got these days." Not that Faith wasn't pretty rocked by some of the revelations she's had in the past months. "I mean, your wife turned out to be the worst person ever. Me, I was that person. Now I'm just dealing with all the consequences."

The touch is surprising and unexpected. Athos does not allow many to touch him outside of his own brethren Musketeers and even they give him a wide berth unless he is so drunk that he cannot manage to walk straight. "And how, precisely, do you atone for such sins?" he asks, not quite believing that she can be the same as Anne.

"You can't." Which is the first time she's ever spoken her feelings on the subject out loud.

"I mean, don't get me wrong. You gotta try. But no matter how many people you save, how many apocalypses you avert? Doesn't make up for it, not ever." Faith never liked apologies, never though they were worth anything, and certainly wasn't about to give up hollow ones in exchange for the lives she managed to ruin all by herself. "Atone is just a word people like me use to make themselves feel better. And that's not really the point, is it?"

She shrugs then, because she knows she's the idiot who's going to keep trying anyway.

"I want to atone for killing my wife," Athos says steadily. "Unfortunately, it seems I can only really drown myself in the remorse of it." He's become something of an addict, and he's utterly aware of it, but he cannot stop himself. "And I do not believe that Anne is in the habit of stopping any apocalypse." He makes a face, draining the remainder of his drink. "Perhaps starting them. That would be the sort of chaos she appears to like."

"You didn't really kill her. You just attempted, technically. Not a huge deal if she's such a crap person." Not that Faith wants to brush his guilt under the carpet or anything. She's going to carry her guilt around with her forever. She thinks she can understand, having her own monkey on her back.

"Then again, I've never been married. That part of the deal? You take on her crap?"

He thinks he might kill her again if it comes down to her or him. He thinks he might be the one to pull the trigger rather than give the orders to the hangman and Athos is hardly sure how to feel about that. "I believe part of our vows was until death do us part. Given that she is alive, I do think I owe her some of my suffering. And perhaps I bear her sins, as well. Never get married," he instructs.

She laughs, a loud and sharp noise that seems to practically fight its way out of her throat. Faith stands and opens her arms, to give Athos the ease of taking a real look at her.

Faith stands somehow more male than her form should allow. She takes up space in the opposite way she's supposed to, with legs splayed apart shoulder-width and ready to take any hit that might come her way. Her red low-cut tank top shows off the dangerous parts of her: muscled arms, plenty of cleavage, and a curved torso down to thick legs wrapped in torn denim. For all intents and purposes she is what the kids these days might call trailer trash, from the top of her unkempt hair to the worn combat boots that cover her feet.

"Do I strike you as the marrying type?" And the culmination of all that armor and facade: her words drip out with sarcasm. Faith Lehane is made for cutting. Not for taking home to dinner with mom, dad, and little brother.

"No," he says, after a long moment's look upon her, though he feels rather shamed to be staring for so long, as though it is not something that is inappropriate for him to do. However, he has known many odd folk to marry and be happy. "However, I am not the marrying type, either. Not anymore," he opines, very clearly. "And I do not believe one can tell as such by looking at me."

After all, with his surroundings and his taste for the drink, perhaps he would seem more the type to marry over others.

"Well there goes my dowry." Faith smirks, enjoying the fuzz in her head that means jokes like that leave her without second thought or over analyzation.

Though on the matter of Athos' marriageability, she's not entirely convinced. Biased, maybe, someone might argue. She'd hung by Angel's side for the past year, sword at the ready for if he ever crossed the line. "I dunno, you seem like a stand up guy. Kind of person that puts the bigger picture over everyone else. I can get behind that."

He does not laugh. Athos has not laughed in five years, but his lips pull somewhat towards his ears, a faint hint of a smile that might have been more pleasing some time ago. "I assure you, I am a drunkard with sins on his conscience and honour at heart only because it is my role," Athos informs her, staring at his steady hands despite all he's drank. "I would like to think the bigger picture is at hand, but I fear I might not see it for the blur of brandy."

"Nuh uh." A protest to pause, so that Faith doesn't spill her drink all over herself trying to both drink and speak at once.

"Are you trying to say you're pretty much a sellsword to the law or something?" Maybe money doesn't figure into it, but as a modern American, Faith interprets role as job and might possibly in this instance not be capable at swimming from the middle of her inebriated thoughts.

"I am rich. I do not need to work to earn my keep," he confesses, which is rather an argument that he does what he does from love of the law, but it is more that it keeps him occupied. "Perhaps I am serving justice after I took my wife's life, or I thought I had, because I am trying to atone."

"Oh. Well, I've learned that guilt is a pretty strong motivator." Her life's motto, if Faith is honest. Still, she learned a little while ago that it's not necessarily a good motivator. Which is why she keeps talking. "But you gotta be careful, don't you? Otherwise you might end up somewhere you don't expect, worse off than when you started. Like, chasing Mohra demons and trying to resurrect the guy you killed."

Yep. The drink sure is settling in, breaking down that filter she usually has pretty firmly in place. "Then you accidentally resurrect him from when he was a horny little 13 year old and things get real messed up."

He is drunk.

He does not think that he is so drunk that he is not comprehending her words. So he believes that she has begun to speak of demons and resurrection and Athos can do nothing but gape. "I have had much to drink," he confesses, "but please forgive me if I do not believe you. I do not think I am hallucinating, but you are making a very strong case for my lack of sanity at the moment."

She cannot be truthful. Such things cannot exist. Can they?

"No, you're plenty sane. It's the world that's crazy. Sometimes I just kinda forget, you know? Who's down with the vampire talk and who's gonna run off in the other direction screaming." Especially when she's this drunk, apparently.

But Faith doesn't seem too bothered by the whole prospect. Considering that vampires and vampire slayers are known and accepted (generally) commodity, it's actually kind of nice having someone point out that it's also completely ridiculous-sounding.

Athos has not laughed in years, but when she says 'vampires', he raises his brow. "You realize that the moment you implicated vampires into this, you owed me an explanation. Sitting here in neon gaudish lights of terror, with a woman of the future, and more drink than I normally know what to do with..."

"Come," Athos coaxes, tugging the bottle. "We should walk and you can tell me about your world."

It's a good idea; Faith could use some air, herself. Her smirk is knowing, but she waits until they are outside and moving along before offering up more information.

"Werewolves, too," she says. This has never been her purview: introducing newbies to the world of the supernatural. For good reason too, since it's only recently she's taken up the mantle of mentor to her fellow and younger vampire slayers. "Not all are bad, though. Which was the craziest part to me, back in the day."

He inhales sharply and nearly accuses her of deliberately trying to set him off balance, given that what she says is so wild and odd that he has a hard time believing it, but he has seen much beyond the pale of what he expects to be true. So why not? Why not werewolves? Why not mad things?

"If I had to cope with such evils, I might drink more, a feat I did not think humanly possible," he jests wryly.

"I keep telling people it's a miracle I'm not an alcoholic." No she doesn't. It's a miracle she's not still a murderer if anything.

But she never had quite that reaction. If she were prone to telling her story it would include how being called as a slayer had been the best thing to ever happen to her. How learning about the things that go bump in the night had been better than what went on in her own household.

"Not gonna lie, though. I like the gig. Always have."

"Even though all the trials and the tribulations, even through the unknown and the demons and monsters," Athos echoes, raising his brows in disbelief. He has been known to fight losing battles in his time, but this seems gargantuan in the size of the continuous task. "Perhaps I ought to be asking whether there is an untold damage you have yet to tell me about. Perhaps in your head?"

"Well, you know I did time. I was kind of dangerous for awhile." And like an alcoholic, it's something she struggles with on a daily basis. It has seeded deeply into her view on the world and of herself. And while she refers to prison humorously as Murder Rehab, she takes the uprooting of those old habits so very seriously.

"Look, it's like this: You give a little girl more power than the biggest dude on the planet, her whole life changes. She comes from a crap home life, and it changes even more. But drawing the short straw on life doesn't really give anyone the excuse to stomp around and use that power to hurt people." So yeah, super damaged. But new sprigs are starting to grow fresh in the places where Faith was carved out.