And she fucking nails him.

The dense metal fist slams into the guy, knocking him off his feet, even as the rifle goes off. Vi feels her stomach lurch sickeningly into her chest, but she hears the shattering of glass that tells her the shot went wide.

Caitlyn’s been futilely grappling with some juiced up shimmer freak in the courtyard, unaware of the threat from above, but the gunshot distracts them both. Vi watches as both of them hesitate, Caitlyn glancing up, piercing blue eye analyzing the scene in a moment; flicking from the broken window, to the terrace where the gunman Vi had hit is still flattened, to Vi’s stricken face on the opposite ledge.

“Cait!” Vi screams, warning her, because the hulking goon looming over her has recovered himself, is charging again, trying to close the distance between them, trying to break Vi’s life into shards with his big ugly hands and Vi is too useless, too far away, to do anything but scream.

And then Caitlyn is pivoting on her heel, using the momentum to launch herself backwards, lining up a shot while the shimmer freak runs her down, barreling straight into the path of the bullet she sinks between his eyes. The crack of the rifle, even from this far away, rattles in Vi’s chest. She watches with horror as the freak keeps coming, even with half of his skull a pulpy spray steaming on the pavement behind him. But he only makes it two steps, three, four before he collapses forward, slumping into a twisted heap at Caitlyn’s feet.

Those were the last two. Vi’s on the move even before the body’s done twitching, vaulting over the ledge she’d been stuck on, leaping and scrambling up the side of the terrace where the gunman had been, needing to make sure he was really out of the fight. One glance at the dent in his skull, his unnaturally splayed legs, the smear of gore on her battered gauntlet is all Vi needs to confirm that he’s not going to be a threat to anyone ever again. She doesn’t even pause to retrieve her weapon, just turns, plants her heel on the edge of the balcony and springboards off of it, landing in a rolling crouch that sends a dull shock of pain across her shoulders, through her ribs. She’s pretty sure she cracked one, earlier in the initial ambush, or else bruised it pretty bad. She knows she’ll feel it later, but for now, the adrenaline pumping through her body is doing its job, keeping her alive, keeping her going, getting her to Caitlyn.

“Cait!” Vi calls again, closing the distance between them in great, desperate bounds. “Cait!”

“Vi,” Caitlyn’s voice is a ragged wheeze. Up close, Vi can see the livid red finger marks across her beautiful throat and she thinks if Caitlyn hadn’t already blown the brains out of the back of that animal’s skull, she would have liked to do it herself. “Vi,” Caitlyn’s voice, a little stronger now, brings her back to herself, “are you hurt?”

Here she is, windpipe bruised to shit, knuckles scraped and bleeding, a trickle of blood running down her cheek from a cut at her hairline, eye blinking furiously at the stinging sweat dripping down into it from her exertion, and all of Caitlyn’s considerable focus is singularly locked on Vi, her gaze flicking over Vi’s face, down her body, searching for wounds, for problems she can solve.

Vi lets her remaining gauntlet drop to the ground with a metallic clank, right hand sweaty and aching from the tight grip she’d had her fists clenched into. She crosses the last distance between them, sees Caitlyn’s eye flashes wide in surprise for a moment before Vi takes Caitlyn’s face in between her hands and pulls her down for a kiss.

Caitlyn’s mouth tastes like blood. She parts her lips for Vi easily, pliantly, not resisting even a little when Vi surges up and uses her grip on Caitlyn’s face to tip her head, flicking her tongue out, gliding over Caitlyn’s teeth — all there, none missing. No trips to the emergency dentist after this, at least. The blood seems to be coming from the inside of Caitlyn’s cheek, cut on her own teeth when she’d taken a blow to the face, or bitten when she’d been choked or—or something. It’s minor. Vi lets herself relax, parting their lips just enough to draw in a sip of breath, to swallow briefly — saliva, hers and Caitlyn’s. Blood — Caitlyn’s.

The second kiss is slower, less desperate. Vi doesn’t register that she’s melted forward into Caitlyn until she suddenly realizes she’s got both feet planted flat on the ground again, that Caitlyn’s arms are wound around her, one splayed between her shoulderblades pressing them tighter together, the other snared in the sweaty hair at the back of Vi’s head, holding just tight enough to sting a little. Her own arms have become encircled around Caitlyn’s neck, locking her in place.

The power has shifted, too — less Caitlyn reassuring her, indulging her by placidly yielding to Vi’s anxious, demanding attention more of the intoxicating push-and-pull that’s always throbbed at the core of this thing between them. Caitlyn hums into the kiss just softly, she licks her own blood from the roof of Vi’s mouth, she nips at Vi’s lips, and she does it all so slowly, so methodically, so deliberately Vi thinks she might sink to the floor if Caitlyn wasn’t holding her so tightly upright.

Vi kisses her and kisses her, slanting their mouths together, rolling her body into Caitlyn’s, keening low in her own throat as she feels Caitlyn’s chest heave, sucking the breath out of Caitlyn’s mouth and down her own throat. Vi digs her blunt nails into the skin at the back of Caitlyn’s neck, scrapes hard enough to feel her breath hitch, to make Caitlyn gasp into the kiss and she thinks she’s alive, oh thank fuck, she’s alive, she’s alive.

Finally, lungs aching, lips swollen, Vi drags her mouth away from Caitlyn’s, burying her face in the side of her tender, bruised neck instead. She feels Caitlyn pant into her hair for a moment, before a shower of quick, hungry kisses falls across the side of her head, then her face. “You’re not hurt,” Caitlyn says again, less a question now than when she’d first uttered the words. “You’re okay.”

Still, Vi nods against her, knowing without having to be told that Caitlyn needs to hear her say it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Me too,” Caitlyn offers, a little dumbly, a little unnecessarily and Vi can’t help the sputter of laughter it elicits in her — knowing her piltie had stayed sharp going who knows how many rounds with a bulked out shimmer-boosted maniac trying to cave her skull in and kept her head through all of it, but had let herself get kissed stupid by Vi in two minutes flat. “What?” she rasps, probably about as dignified as one can sound half breathless and with a slightly crushed windpipe — which is to say, not very, but Vi loves her for trying.

Vi just shakes her head, tilting her face to press a tender, gentle kiss to Caitlyn’s bruised throat, wondering if she can feel Vi’s smile there against her skin. “Don’t worry about it.”

“‘Don’t worry about it’ means you’re taking the piss,” Caitlyn grumbles good-naturedly. “You know, I— wait.”

“What is it?” Vi asks, moving to step back, stopped by Caitlyn’s hand pressed into the small of her back, holding her close.

Despite this, Caitlyn leans back a little to catch Vi’s gaze. “What happened to your other gauntlet?”

“Oh, that,” Vi says, grinning. “It’s, uh, up there.”

Caitlyn’s gaze drags from Vi’s right gauntlet a few feet behind them, to the raised terrace Vi gestures at. She raises one eyebrow, exasperation and fondness clinging to her voice as she asks, “And how exactly did that happen?”

“Crazy story, actually,” Vi says, because really, it is. Now that it’s all over, she still can’t believe she’d made that shot. She shifts in place, wrapping an arm around Caitlyn’s waist — it’s instant, the way Caitlyn’s arm drapes over her shoulders in response, shifting her weight to lean into Vi. “Let’s go get ‘em back and I’ll tell you all about the effortlessly cool way I saved your life on the way back to the station, Cupcake.”

“”Effortlessly cool?’” Caitlyn quotes dubiously, pausing to stow her rifle behind her back. 

“Yeah,” Vi nods, hip-checking her lightly. “You know how I am in a crisis.”

Caitlyn laughs so hard it makes her gag, sagging into Vi’s shoulder and sputtering out a few weak coughs. She rubs her throat gingerly and says, “Ah, don’t make me do that. My throat is killing me.”

“Serves you right,” Vi mutters, grinning when Caitlyn’s hand sneaks out to pinch her side in retort. They’ve made it to the first gauntlet. Vi leans down to slip her hand into it, powering it on. “Right.” They keep walking, Caitlyn shortening her stride to match Vi. “So, there you were: totally and completely helpless—”

“I think I’d argue with ‘totally’. And ‘completely.’”

“You’d argue with a brick wall. And, anyway, who’s telling this story, me or you?”

“Right. Of course. Go on.”

“Thank you. So, like I said, you were basically a sitting duck…”

It’s a long walk back to Topside and before she knows it, Vi’s whole body feels like one big bruise.

For a second he looks pissed the fuck off. That pure, red-hot anger Faith’s always been so good at calling up out of people. She thrills at it, grins at him, feels a stream of  blood and drool dribble down her chin, watches as disgust tints his features before he gets control of himself. The look on his face goes back to bored, disappointed, but she knows it’s a mask now. Knows she really got to him.

“Young lady, you could save us both a lot of time if you stopped fighting me and just accepted what you got coming to you. What you earned, to be frank,” Caleb says, drawing closer.

A stab of anger, sharp and bitter, rushes through Faith’s chest. Stop fighting, just take it. Yeah, she’s heard that before. A lot of the garbage Caleb’s been spewing is intimately fucking familiar to her. Maybe a few years ago talk like that could’ve worked, could’ve psyched her out. But not now. Not with so much on the line.

Faith backs up carefully, timing her movements to his, keeping distance between them. She goes about it subtle, leading him away from where Buffy is still a crumpled heap in the corner of the yard. 

Caleb’s strong, sure. But Faith just survived The Beast. She survived Angelus. Before that she survived her mother, survived her mother’s boyfriends, survived Kakistos and a swan dive off an apartment complex, a stint in prison. She survived herself.

She’ll live through Caleb. All she’s got to do is kill him. Or, if she can’t swing that, drive him off. Buy some time for Buffy to recover, for her little Scooby Gang to show up, or that jumped up Billy Idol-with-fangs wannabe boyfriend of hers. 

“You’re gonna have to work harder than that, Cletus,” Faith fires back, reaching up to check her nose. It hurts, but doesn’t feel out of place so she presses down against one nostril and exhales hard, forcing a jet of blood and mucus out of the other. The pain of it sends a blurry wave of tears to her eyes, but she knows how cool it looks - how it makes her seem like an animal. Something feral. She smiles at Caleb’s fresh expression of disgust and doubles down. “Listen here, I’ll be honest. You’re a priest right?”

“—I consider myself more of a—”

“Yeah, whatever. Confession is part of the gig across the board. I think,” Faith is pretty sure this isn’t actually true, but she also doesn’t care. It’s that look of aggrieved annoyance that flits across his face that she’s looking for. “Look, man, I’ve had a rough couple weeks is all, y’know? Just got out the slammer - big adjustment. Had to go toe-to-toe with my best friend and got the shit kicked out of me. Not a walk in the park! Now I’m back here and it’s the apocalypse and if that wasn’t bad enough I’ve got to listen to you jawin’ on about sins and purification and oh my god, your women-problems. Listen pal, if you can’t get a date, don’t make that about the impurity of women. It ain’t that philosophical. The place to start there is a good long talk with your barber and a stick of 24-hour deodorant. But that ain’t my problem. Frankly, Rev, what I need is a win. And I think you’re gonna give it to me.”

“I think what you need to is to shut your shameless, filthy Jezebel mouth,” Caleb is quivering with rage. He’s fast, but she’s got him off balance so each clumsy lunge he makes towards her is telegraphed enough for her to slip out of the way each time. “You spawn of Lilith, you creature of temptation and filth. I will reach down into you and pull out your dirty, lustful, whoring tongue out of your mouth by the root, so help me—”

“Brother, you don’t know how many men have said this to me, but you’ll notice my dirty, lustful whoring tongue is still here,” Faith punctuates this by waggling it at him.

He roars and lunges again and he’s so focused on her, on getting to her that he totally misses Buffy coming up on him from the back until the nasty, rusted length of rebar she’s got with her is already all the way through his shoulder. He falls to the ground, screaming, clawing at the wound, cursing a blue streak.

Faith hardly has a chance to enjoy it before Buffy’s rushing past him, grabbing Faith by the arm, dragging her forward away from him.

“That true?” Buffy pants, limping along besides Faith. She still hasn’t let go of Faith’s arm, her skin warm and soft in the dark.

“What?”

“Get called a spawn of Lilith a lot? People threatening to pull your tongue out?” Buffy asks.

“Oh, well, maybe not the exact phrasing,” Faith admits. Christ, her ribs ache. It’s a bit of a strain to take enough of a breath to speak, but she’s not about to let that stop her from mouthing off. “But, y’know, the sentiment.”

Buffy hums, bumping against Faith with her shoulder. “I can buy that, actually.”