Devil's Truth: Judgment
by MattK
Faith’s eyes fluttered open.

Fuck.

And she’d thought she’d been in pain on the Other Side.

This was bad. Straight-up, fucked-up bad. Only once in her life had she been hurt this bad. Her ribs were smashed where Belial’s lightning had hit her. Not broken, smashed. And if her lung wasn’t ruptured, her name was Chastity. The oozing fourth-degree burn in that spot wasn’t too reassuring, either. Her back and neck hurt something terrible from the impact. No fucking wonder. They’d probably been damn near crushed.

Worst of all, there was no pain in her lower body. There was no*feeling * in her lower body. At all.

*Well. * She thought, with a clinical detachment that surprised herself. *Severed spine. That sucks. Makes gettin’ where I have to be that much harder. *

Slowly, fighting the sudden bloom of pain in her head, Faith opened her eyes. *Why the fuck is everything pink? Oh, hell—probably something ruptured in my eyes, too. *

Still, pink or not, she could see everything quite clearly. The library was a wreck again. Smashed furniture, shredded books, and splintered shelves lay strewn about. The occasional bit of bone or meat from some huge beast whose identity she refused to think about was scattered throughout the wreckage. *Looks like Belial got sick of playing nice. *

That was confirmed an instant later as she raised her head enough—despite her neck’s protests—to see what was happening. *Oh shit this is bad. *

A huge-and-growing, glorious…angel hung over a huge hole in the floor, which, if memory from the battle with the Sisterhood of Jhe served, was right over the damn Hellmouth. God, what must he have been like before he Fell? B, Beefstick, and Angel—*God, he looks so weak! *—were all standing, facing down the True Devil. Inspired, the rest of the Gang was slowly rising to their feet.

And they were all dead. As sure as they were standing there defying Belial of the Beautiful Voice, they were already dead. He knew it. Faith knew it. And she suspected that they knew it, too. He wasn’t the type of foe to be defeated by Slayers, or vampires, or werewolves, or witches. Defeat? Unless a god made a personal appearance, it couldn’t even properly be called a fight. No more than a human swatting flies was a fight.

And he wasn’t going to play the usual round of patty cakes with them, either. No brawling. No weapons. No spells. No, Belial was a wee tad bit more elemental than that. And Faith suspected that the blast that had crushed her was his way of absent-mindedly brushing her away.

But she knew how to beat him. She knew what the price would be. But that didn’t matter. *She * didn’t matter. As long as she got to do something worthwhile with her thusfar shit-worthless life.

*Time to get to it. * She rolled over and started to crawl.

*

Belial hung silently in the air over the Hellmouth, watching the mortals slowly rise to their feet. Oz sheltered Willow under his arm, and she in turn looped an arm around Tara’s waist and pulled her close. Xander and Anya did much the same. Giles hurried to stand at Buffy’s side.

No weapons were raised. There was no battle here. They knew that. Now there was only love and defiance.

“So that is your decision, then?” Belial asked in a soft, rumbling voice.

Buffy looked around, from one face to another. Each, in their turn, nodded the affirmative. Even Anya. Even Spike. The Slayer turned her face back to the raging force of nature before her.

“Yes.”

“Very well then. An angel will sing thee to thy rest.”

Then Belial opened his mouth, and the universe went mad.

*

Outside, the ruins of Sunnydale High blew off its foundations like a house of cards in the teeth of a tornado. In the houses and buildings closest to the school, every light bulb and television set exploded in a shower of glass, and every active appliance burst into flames. The pulse-wave of angelic force raced along circuits, searing linkages, spreading through Sunnydale’s electrical veins like a plague of darkness. Deep, booming thunders sounded beneath the Earth, and the citizens of Sunnydale stumbled through the darkness to stand in their doorways.

Inside, thirteen souls (unlucky thirteen) and one demon writhed in the madness at the doorway between the world and the void beneath reality.

They staggered through a photo-negative world, where green-skinned friends screamed through black teeth. The stars and the gibbous moon were black holes in the blazing white of the night sky.

A white-hot wind seared their flesh to the bone, yet that flesh was still whole when the liquid-nitrogen cold of the hellfire spewing from the foundations licked at them. Live wires lashed in their heads and razors slid along the length of every nerve in their bodies. Acid ran through their veins.

As they could feel the world coming apart beneath them and their bodies coming apart around them, each was in their own private hell.

*

Needles. There were so many needles. Giles’ world was full of needles, stabbing him everywhere, again and again, knitting him apart. Here was each syringe he had used to inject Buffy with the muscle relaxants for her cruciamentum. There was the tattoo needle he had used to damn Randall, Philip, Ethan, himself, and all of their other friends.

Needles. Knitting him to death. And that was all right. That was as it should be. After all, he deserved it.

*

A punch flew in from the darkness and caught Buffy in the stomach.

“I told you I would kill you if you let Willow die.”

Xander.

Another punch. “And now you’ve gotten us all killed.”

Willow.

Then another, and this one crashed into her so hard that it sent her spinning to the ground. “Sorry to go all schoolyard on you, Buff, but you did hit me first.”

Angel.

She didn’t try to fight it. She just curled up into a ball and let it come. After all, she deserved it.

*

“Close your eyes.”

Angel felt the sword go through him again. And his eyes opened again to see Buffy’s face, gleeful instead of stricken this time, receding as he was sucked back into hell.

And he deserved it.

*

Oz was being torn apart by werewolves. Some had Veruca’s face, others had Willow’s.

And he deserved it.

*

Cordelia was being eaten alive by cockroaches. The retribution of every poor high school kid she’d ever picked on, swarming out of the apartment that had been her punishment.

And she deserved it.

*

Faith was torturing Wesley again. The living embodiment of his failure as a Watcher, and she was punishing him for letting her Fall.

And he deserved it.

*

The Initiative was falling again for Riley, and this time he was going to be one of the 40% who had been torn apart by monsters. One of the ones he’d failed, left leaderless because he was too focused on his girlfriend to pull the brakes on the Initiative’s bullet train to Hell until it was too late.

And he deserved it.

*

Tara’s brother was beating her down. But he wasn’t going to stop this time until he was sure she’d never get up again.

And she deserved it.

*

Willow was tied to the stake again, but it was Joyce summers beside her this time.

And they both deserved it.

*

Xander was nine years old again, but it was Buffy delivering the beating this time. And this time, his arm wasn’t the only thing that broke. And she wouldn’t stop until he was shattered.

And he deserved it.

*

Spike was William, the Bloody Awful Poet again, but this time, he was the one being tortured with red-hot railroad spikes.

And he deserved it.

*

Anya was once again the woman she hadn’t been for over a millennium, but this time it was Xander’s hand crashing into her face for daring to question his right to do whatever he damn well pleased. But this time he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to keep beating her, as he had so often threatened to do.

And she deserved it. For taking her holy gift of justice and turning it into the obscene mockery that created a hell-realm to punish a high school boy for kissing his best friend instead of his girlfriend, she deserved it.

*

And through it all, behind it all, above it all there was the sound. The voice. It was the most hideous sound they’d ever seen. The most vile sound they’d ever tasted or smelled. Its feeling on their skin was mucous and battery acid, and its cold sank into their bones. It was the voice of distilled hate and despair and the remnant of broken glory that had once strode Heaven. The sound of stars dying and worlds falling apart and souls fading into nothing. The voice was killing them, but they craved it like poisoned heroin.

*

Faith felt it, too. The invading, violating pain speared into her ass, and erupted like a forest fire in her cunt. A phantom hand slapped her face, and something was forced into her gasping mouth until she gagged.

But she had an advantage. The Other Side had given her this blessing: she knew what was happening. Belial was ripping open their souls, lancing their wounds and letting the infected, stinking pus flow all over them. She was feeling Frank again. The months that had changed her from a child to a woman at the age of eleven.

She realized what was happening, and she knew that she didn’t deserve it. She hadn’t deserved it then, and she didn’t deserve it now.

She ignored the pain and kept crawling. Finally, she reached the lip of the pit. Hooking her fingers around the edge, ignoring the splinters, she pulled herself to the very edge.

There. Twenty feet down. Growing out of the crevasse of the closed Hellmouth. A mound of clear crystals, some as long as a man. Even Faith knew that something like that should have taken thousands of years to grow.

*Gotta love that Hellmouth. *

For a moment, she wondered why she could see clearly, while everyone else was acting like they were in their own little worlds.

*Maybe that’s part’a the deal. The Powers’re saying: This is what you’re getting into. It’s going to hurt like a motherfucker, and that’s the choice you have to make, and you have to choose it freely. *

She paused for a moment, looking down at the crystals, with their razor edges and needle-sharp points.

*All right then. *

The strength of the Slayer surged in her arms and shoulders, and the broken edges of the pit bit into her hands as she pulled herself over the lip and let herself fall.

*

There was an instant of clarity in the maelstrom of pain.

The exact instant that Belial realized what was happening.

The universe fell back into order just in time for the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations to see Faith’s half-limp body tumble into the pit.

*

“No!” Both Buffy and Belial cried at the same time.

Suddenly, Belial cried out in pain and…*cracked * like a frozen glass placed in boiling water. Somehow, though, that didn’t seem very important, and the mortals ignored it as they ran to the edge of the pit. Most of them couldn’t hold back a cry of horror when they arrived.

The crystals of Belial’s bridgestone were as long as spears, and Faith was completely impaled on several of them. No doubt she’d been punctured by several more that hadn’t punched all the way through, and she was sliced by the edges of several more. Two bracketed her head, and both cheekbones had been sliced open.

“Oh, God, Faith…” Who had said that? Did it matter?

Then something worse happened. Faith shifted slightly, and moaned.

She was still alive.

“Faith, don’t move!” Willow shouted as Buffy crouched in preparation to leap into the pit.

“You stupid, whorish little blob of slime!” Belial screamed. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

Forgotten. They’d all forgotten. How could they have forgotten that a fallen angel was hanging overhead?

Because Faith was family. So what if she was their prodigal daughter, the Cain to their collective Abel, she was still family. And she was dying.

“She can’t hear you!” Buffy shouted back. “She’s out of your reach now.”

“Yes, she can!” Belial shrieked wildly. “And no, she’s not!” Then he screamed in pain, and his body cracked again. Those of the Scooby Gang who were still looking at Faith rather than him were able to see the cause: wherever Faith’s blood flowed, the crystals cracked and dissolved.

“Pond scum!” Belial raved. “Walking pond scum, that’s all you are! Bald monkeys wandering around on this little dust speck of a world doing your monkey work! We came first! We were *fire *, not dirt, but He—She—They always loved you best! Where was that infinite forgiveness when He cast us down? Where?” Then he stopped, suddenly lucid. “I’m beaten this time. By microbes. There’s no getting around that, is there? But I think I can make her sacrifice worthless. Oh, yes, I think I can do that. Let’s see how much of the West Coast I can take with me, shall we?” He opened his mouth wide.

Horrified, the Scooby Gang grabbed for whatever weapons came to hand. Something to throw, there had to be something to throw, something to keep him from singing, something to hold him off until—

“He never cast you down, you know.”

All eyes, even Belial’s, turned back to Faith. Her eyes were open, if only barely. Her voice was wet, almost phlegmy. If they didn’t know what fluid was really filling her lungs, they might have thought she merely had a bad cold.

“What do you know about it, parasite?”

“I know what it means to hate so much that you rewrite history,” she answered. “When I first woke up, I had myself convinced that B had been the one picking on me, that they’d driven me out. I was wrong. And so are you.”

“Liar!” Belial shrieked. His face suddenly cracked down the middle, but he ignored it.

“He never stopped talking to you,” Faith continued, ignoring him. “You just stopped listening. If you were to ask it today, He’d forgive you and take you back. He never stopped loving you. All He ever wanted is for you to come home.”

“No,” he said in a hushed whisper. Everyone looked up at him, stunned. Flaming tears ran down his cracked face. “It’s not true. It can’t be true, I remember—“ His blazing, rainbow eyes widened. “I…remember…”

With a gurgling sigh, Faith closed her eyes and went limp.

“Wait!” Belial shouted. “No! Don’t go! I—“

Suddenly, all of the crystals cracked simultaneously, and Belial screamed as a great crack split his torso from shoulder to hip.

“No…”

Faith settled a little further onto the crystals.

Belial and the crystals suddenly exploded into a hail of razored shards. The Slayerettes and Angel Investigations hurled themselves to the ground. Some of the Warriors tried to protect some of their more vulnerable comrades. Angel, big as he was, was only able to cover Oz and Willow. Later, everyone would be quietly surprised that Spike was the one to throw himself atop Tara. Xander shielded Anya, while Giles protected Joyce, but it was Riley who covered Cordelia, while Buffy did her best to curl herself around Wesley’s more vital areas—seeing as how she couldn’t possibly protect all of him.

None of them need have worried. The shards never came near them. They were all swirled up into a whirlwind of glittering razors above the Hellmouth. They hung there for a moment, then flashed away, funneled down into the Hellmouth, revealing…something. Was it Belial’s true form? They would never know. It blazed too brightly for them to look at.

As they shielded their eyes and looked away, there was a heartbreaking wail of beautiful despair. For a brief moment, that despair and loss sank into their bones. Heaven was lost. Again.

Then there was a flash, and the light was gone. It was a night like any other, now, and the only sound was the wind.



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