Inner Walls
by Elegy
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: This story takes place after "Sanctuary" (season 1 of Angel
and season 4 of BTVS).
Note: **...** = Faith's thoughts.
This fic is dedicated to the great French team (you know who you are)
and particularly to Broody, my twin sister-in-arm I love so much. And
big big thanks to Miss Kitty, my patient beta-reader and sworn enemy
of "which", to whom I'll be always grateful.
"I'd like to make a confession."
The knell had tolled. Faith could not draw back any longer. In Inspector Lockley's eyes she seemed to have detected slight disappointment. In Buffy's, satisfaction.
**Look at me, B, look at me. I did it for you...**
Or had she finally denounced herself to protect herself from what she was able to do? She had lost control, completely, entirely, desperately. And the most difficult thing to bear was that she had felt a huge and terrifying pleasure to let herself go, to cross the barriers of her conscience again, to plunge into the darkness of her tortured mind.
The events had succeeded one another very quickly. First the long and laborious interrogation to try to justify rationally a fatal mistake in an irrational context. The inspector had not seemed astonished though. But how could a jury adhere to her version? How could they accept that she had killed Allan Finch because she had thought he was a vampire?
**Why didn't you hold me back?**
She would be sentenced to a very long penalty, maybe to death. It did not really matter now.
**I'm already dead.**
After the legal hours of police custody, she had been transferred to the prison of Los Angeles in an uncomfortable police van. She had not seen neither Angel nor Buffy again.
While the policemen made her get out of the van, she contemplated the huge dark walls that were waiting for her with indifference. She looked at the multiple barred windows, the high walls with barbed wire, grey and dirty.
When Faith, firmly escorted by the policemen, finally passed through the heavy doors of the prison, a feeling of panic seized her. While the two men were forcing her to move forward, she turned her head to the other side, behind her, to what she left, as if she wanted to keep the image of freedom, as if she hoped to see someone, someone who would have cared for her.
**B...**
But there was no one. Nothing but the void. And the night.
Faith walked through passages and gates that were carefully closed behind her. She had to undress and take on shapeless clothes bearing the prison name and a number. Her number. The last symbolic stage of her downfall, of the loss of her personality. She no longer had a name, she was nothing more than a handful of meaningless digits.
Then she was led to her cell. She walked through new passages, new gates under the heavy gazes of the other prisoners delighting in her arrival as the unique distraction in a world where only the mechanical routine allowed you not to think too much. She endured some obscene remarks, ignoring the threats and the invitations, her blank look fixed on the end of the large passage up to her cell.
"Hey Jessy, got ya some company!" said the guard mockingly while opening the cell gate.
"Fuck, no!" exclaimed the woman slumped on the bed.
Faith noted behind her the noise of the keys that were locking the gate, shutting her irremediably and making her suddenly become aware of reality. Panic overwhelmed her again, churning up her insides. She tried to focus her attention on another thing. She looked at her cell mate. Probably Hispanic, she was quite pretty with dark short hair and wore impressing tribal tattoos.
"What are you looking at?" she spat, her eyes full of animosity.
**I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...**
"Nothing," Faith answered averting her gaze.
She concentrated on the examination of the cell. Tiny, austere, dirty, the walls covered with graffiti, oozing humidity, the bunk beds, the small washbasin next to the toilets, one shelf, one window, bars... The void...
"Hey! I'm talking to you bitch! You don't have to look at me like that!"
Jessy had risen and was advancing threateningly on Faith, still immobile in the middle of the cell, staring into space.
**I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...**
The vision of Jessy's bloody face flashed through Faith's mind. She saw herself holding her by her hair and crushing her face against the wall, several times, without a word, with only this murderous madness in the eyes, this madness that pursued her, and the void...
**I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...**
Jessy was standing in front of Faith. At the moment when she rose her fist to hit the Slayer, the latter looked at her, finally, and her fist stopped, mid movement. Jessy had never seen such an expression before. An icy shudder ran down her spine. She saw madness, hatred, in the dark eyes that seemed lost and harmless previously. An immeasurable violence emanated from this silent woman who had come and disturbed her daily routine. Suddenly she did not feel like pursuing her gesture, she felt that she would regret it.
Faith had not blinked. Her eyes had harpooned the other woman's, defying her, dominating her, but her mind was elsewhere. It had gone through this face - **I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...** - and had been fixed far away... in the void...
Jessy stepped back and faced the insane look in the new comer's eyes trying not to show the confusion she felt. They remained silent for a moment sizing each other up.
"What's your name?" finally asked Jessy, breaking the silence which had become heavy.
"Faith."
"I'm Jessy. Well, you take the upper bed. And welcome to hell."
Faith had not slept all night. She had turned over the same thoughts, seen the same face, the hatred then the satisfaction that had shown through those green eyes that haunted her.
Faith did not really realize that she was in jail until the night anxieties of the other prisoners resounded in the long and empty passages. There were continually noises, half-stiffled tears, cries, insults, which came and broke her reflections and brought her back to her despair.
In the morning a guard came and opened the gate while taking a malicious pleasure to run her nightstick down the bars in order to wake up the few prisoners who could have been asleep.
Jessy rose, grumbling.
"Move your ass, it's breakfast, 'better not be the last ones."
Faith climbed down her bed and followed Jessy in the passage. She saw hundreds of clones, of women like her, dressed in orange jail suits, wearing their numbers, going out of their cells and treading heavily to the refectory. She saw tens of aligned cells on several stories like an immense and labyrinthe-like anthill.
"I warn you, you look after yourself, Faith. I won't be your protector."
They arrived in the refectory where long tables were set out. Many prisoners were already settled and Faith felt the looks they were sending her. Her Slayer's keen senses allowed her to hear the questions and the lewd remarks which burst out from every table. Prefering to ignore them so as not to give way to blind anger, she took her tray and began to sit next to Jessy.
"What are you doing exactly?"
**I'm sticking this knife in your belly...**
"I'm sitting down."
The other women around the table were watching them attentively, a smile on their lips.
"No, but you're dreaming, pretty girl, you beat it, it's not your table and I didn't invite you," said Jessy very loud in order that everyone could witness to the unalterability of her status of gang leader.
Faith looked at her silently, her tray in her hands. The women roared with laughter mocking at this so fragile newcomer who would soon be devoured by the merciless pack ruling the underworld of the prison.
**I'm sticking this knife in your belly...**
Faith cast a quick glance around and spotted an isolated table where only two women were eating. She headed towards it slowly, focusing on each of her steps, letting flow back the muffled anger which was growing, an anger to which it was so tempting to give way again so as to drown in its nothingness and not to have to think anymore.
**I'm sticking this knife in your belly...
I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the
wall...**
She sat down at a distance from the two other women and began to eat the foul gruel that the prison staff deigned to serve them.
The prisoner sat on her left was staring at her with an outraged look. She stretched out her arm to Faith's tray and snatched her plate.
"I'm sure you don't want it anymore. Give it to me."
Faith turned to the woman and with a quick gesture she got her plate back. The laughter of contentment choked with surprise. Then the woman, named Trisha, rose revealing her imposing and muscular body. She slowly approached Faith then leaned slightly over her in such a way that she could talk in her ear, her two gnarled hands resting on the table on each side of the dark Slayer. Faith could feel the heavy body behind her and the warm breath near her face.
"Listen, you little cunt. I think that you don't really get how it works here..." whispered Trisha. "Here the newcomers obey our rules, and if I want you to give me your plate, you'll give it to me wisely, like everything that could interest me by the way..."
**...I'm sticking this knife in your belly...**
"...You're mine since you've chosen to sit at my table and you have to follow the rules or else we will break you, we will destroy you until you come back crawling and crying to beg us to allow you to lick our boots..."
**...I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...**
"...You're nothing here, nothing but what we decide you to be..."
**...sticking this knife...**
"...You're no longer Sunnydale's stuck-up girl, you're only a piece of shit..."
**...sticking this knife...**
"...that we'll crush willy-nilly untiiiiiiiiillllllllllaaaaaahahhhhhhhh!!!!!!"
Trisha's sentence turned into a long and painful cry while her right hand had just been pierced by a fork in such a quick movement that nobody would have been able to say that Faith was the author of it if she had not kept her hand on the handle. She remained impassive, studying the blood trickling slowly from the wound, her gaze blank. A silence had followed in the refectory, and only the cries of Jessy, who was clinging on Faith's hand and was trying vainly to make her let go of the fork, could be heard. It was as if the time was suspended, no one moved anymore, the guards seemed to have disappeared.
**I'm gonna tear your tongue out in order that you stop crying...**
While rising abruptly, Faith at once pulled the fork out and threw her head back violently breaking Jessy's nose who collapsed on the floor.
Three guards appeared suddenly and seized Faith who did not resist and let them bring her in an isolation cell. She was thrown in it with no care.
And then came the pain. Nightstick blows fell without a break for five long minutes during which Faith's mind had regained consciousness at last. She did not try to defend or to protect herself, the pain brought her back to reality, allowed her to focus on another thing than her despair.
The guards left her, at last, in the darkness and the solitude of this tiny and stiffling room with no window that was used to punish the recalcitrant prisoners. Faith still felt the warmth of the blows on her bruised body, a warmth almost comforting, almost familiar, like after a difficult fight against a vampire.
**I'm gonna stick this stake in you and you'll disappear into dust...**
Lying in the cell's cold floor, she brought her knees to her and curled up. Then she lost consciousness and there was nothing but the void.
Faith stayed three days in isolation. She woke up during the night of the first day, her body painful, her face swollen. But she knew that her Slayer's condition would allow her to recover quickly. A doctor had visited her several times and made her swallow some pills. She felt that her mind was hazy, her thoughts more and more confused.
**Fucking pills...**
But her desire for violence had decreased and she felt calmer. It may have been also due to the obscurity into which she was plunged or to the total lack of noise, of these anguish cries echoing from cell to cell.
**Maybe that I'm dead... Maybe that Buffy stuck this knife - my knife - in my belly and that I'm still in a coma... Maybe that she succeeded, that she pushed me from the roof when the helicopter came...**
She saw again the vision of Buffy and her on the roof when they had fled the Council's men.
**I'd believed that you would forgive me... I'd believed that you would understand... That you would give me a second chance...**
The hatred in her gaze, the determination, the resentment.
**The satisfaction...**
She regretted the blindness of the other Slayer, who had never really listened to what Faith had desesperately tried to make her understand in their moments of complicity, during their common patrols or in the Bronze. They had been very close though, almost in symbiosis in the fights, in dance... Faith had felt that Buffy had not been indifferent, she always felt the effect she produced on others... Lust... She saw it in those eyes she loved so much, in those eyes which refused to face her own gaze, fraught with night and ambiguous promises, fraught with questioning. Those eyes which had turned away from her gaze, being finally too much fraught with consequences. But Faith had almost resolved to content herself with the blonde Slayer's friendship, a friendship that was really offered to her for the first time... Until a fool came and threw himself on her stake at the corner of a street.
**Why didn't you hold me back?**
Until Faith killed Allan Finch and that Buffy betrayed her.
The image of the stake stuck into the assistant's heart appeared then in her mind, the human blood running down her hand, the gaze full of incomprehension of the man who had wanted to warn them, the panic in Buffy's. The haze in her head. The flight. The denial.
**You let me down... You've never supported me... You accused me... You've never wanted to believe that it could have happened to you... You've always believed to be so strong... You, the Chosen one, invincible Buffy, irreproachable and always honest... You used Finch to justify yourself, to go away from me, so as not to face what you felt for me... It was so easier...**
Panic and despair had made her lose her head. Driven to the wall, Faith had attacked to defend herself, forestalling Buffy and accusing her of the murder.
**I didn't mean it... But you betrayed me... Let me down... It could have happened to you and this is why you panicked... We could have gotten over it together... We could... You've never admitted it was an accident... You had to wash your hands, your guilt, your responsibility. Fortunately the rogue Slayer, the substitute was here to carry the can... It was so easy for you... And everybody would believe you... Nobody has ever believed in me... Not even you... Not even me...**
What followed was only an uninterrupted stream of mistakes, a path of self-destruction pursued by "the rogue Slayer", "the psycho" as her former "friends" liked to call her. The darkest part of herself had taken possession of her mind and she had no longer managed to make emerge the part that Buffy had known and liked before the murder. The part that had loved the blonde Slayer. The part that had made her laugh or simply smile. The part that had liked life and its pleasures.
**But you betrayed me... And you killed me on that fucking roof for nothing, for...**
The cell door opened, interrupting her thoughts. The light was too harsh for Faith's eyes, closed up for three days in the obscurity. She averted her eyes feeling dizzy. She realized that she was unable to know when she had been really conscious, if she had dreamt her thoughts, or if she had slept for three days stunned by the pills. She had almost forgotten where she was, lost in the void of the darkness of this silent cell.
**Light... Coma... I'm awake...**
"Come on, move, get out of here!"
The shadow in the doorway evoked her nothing.
**These Council's assholes have locked me up...**
Her eyes becoming accustomed at last to the light, she recognized the uniform, then one of the guards who had beaten her.
**Jail...**
She rose with difficulty, her body numb, and followed the man in the passage. Then Jessy's words came to her mind.
**Welcome to hell.**
When Jessy saw Faith arriving, accompanied by a guard, she could not repress a thrill of anguish. Since the beginning this sexy brunette had been making her feel uncomfortable and what she had done to Trisha in the refectory only confirmed the idea that she had to beware of her. Faith had still this strange blank look which at the same time puzzled and scared Jessy.
"Hey Faith! Congratulations! You won the award of the most staggering entrance in that fucking prison!"
Faith turned her gaze towards her without reacting. Jessy noted that Faith had been beaten by the guards. Severely.
"They gave you pills, didn't they?" she asked trying not to reveal in her tone her hope of a positive answer.
"Yes..."
"They're gonna calm you... You'll need them here. Nobody can hold on without that crap."
Faith climbed on her bed and lay down. Her head was spinning and the light went on hurting her eyes. Jessy leaned against the wall and studied her silently for one minute.
"Faith?"
"Huh?"
"What did you do to land here?"
The silence fell again in the cell.
**It was an accident... It could have happened to you...**
Jessy did not dare to repeat her question because she feared Faith's unpredictable reactions. She wondered if this woman should not have been locked up in a mental hospital rather than in jail.
"Thefts, assaults, murders."
Faith's voice was neutral. She seemed to enumerate simple facts that did not touch her. This detachment worried Jessy even more, and she did not dare ask for details.
"How long did you get?"
"There hasn't been a trial yet."
Jessy thought over Faith's last words then made up her mind to make an effort.
"Faith... You seriously fucked around the other day... If you're in custody, you'll have to calm down because you risk adding some extra years... And you're up shit's creek with Trisha's gang... Now she wants to bump you off."
Faith made no remark. All this was just so familiar; violence, hatred, revenge. Feelings she knew so well and against which she kept fighting continuously. But against which she often lost.
Jessy was wondering if Faith was listening to her. She continued nonetheless.
"You don't know who you're dealing with. There are two or three girls here with whom you'd better be friends if you don't want to finish with your bashed head in the loo. Trisha is one of them. So am I by the way."
Jessy was pacing up and down the cell, disturbed by the other woman's muteness.
"Actually I don't know why I'm tiring myself out explaining you those things, apparently you don't give a fuck about them... It may be partly 'cause I've always dreamt to blow this cunt's head up and 'cause you've been the one to have dared to do it for years..."
**I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...**
"How long have you been here?"
"Almost eight years..."
"What for?"
"Drug traffic, gangs, all that crap, you know..."
"You killed?"
The question surprised Jessy. Faith had risen and leant against the wall. She looked hard at the young woman.
"Once."
"But it's not the reason why you're here, is it?"
It was not really a question. Jessy lowered her head.
"So how did you do to be among the respected leaders?"
Jessy looked up and showed her fist.
"With that. And by finding allies among the right people at the right time. But Faith, there are things that can't be done. Like humiliating Trisha in front of everyone for example. If she catches you, you'll pray that the guards might be the ones who'll beat you up..."
"I don't care..."
Jessy sighed.
"Listen, you don't understand! Your trial hasn't been held yet, it's your interest to play it safe to get out as fast as possible."
"I don't care. There is nothing waiting for me outside."
**I did it for you B...**
"And no one."
With these words, Faith climbed down her bed and got out of the cell.
Faith had decided to visit the prison. Along the passages, the prisoners she met stepped aside when she went past and talked to one another under their breaths. Did they fear her for what she had done or did they shun her because Faith had become cursed, the first name on top of the hit list of Her Majesty Trisha?
Faith walked out into the yard in which the prisoners played football, did body-building, traded illicit goods or plotted against one another. A few exchanges stopped at Faith's presence then resumed, the gazes never leaving the one who had defied Trisha.
She leaned against a wall and took out her pack of cigarettes, the only thing she could have kept from outside.
**But I still have my scar...**
"You give me one?"
Jessy had finally joined her. She held out the pack to her then lighted a cigarette for herself.
"You're crazy to go out."
Faith could not help smiling bitterly.
**Psycho... Psycho Slayer...**
"I know, I'm a psycho-slayer... I'm used to it," she said smiling at the other woman.
Jessy did not know how she had to interpret this sentence and this smile. Faith's mental state worried her more and more. She seemed to be suicidal, indifferent to everything, resigned, weird.
Faith was studying a small group of women gathered in a corner of the yard.
"That's Trisha's gang?"
Jessy followed Faith's gaze and nodded. She also noted that the women were staring at them too.
"You shouldn't stay with me if it's dangerous," Faith said blowing smoke rings.
Jessy did not answer. She did not take her eyes off the group which was heading towards them. Five women looking determined and little affable stopped before them. Trisha wore a bandage around her hand and a sticking plaster on her nose.
"I like your new look," Faith said.
Jessy could not believe her ears. She had definitely classed Faith among the incurable dangerous maniacs.
"You're dead," Trisha said containing her rage with difficulty.
**I'm already dead...**
Faith smiled and blew the smoke of her cigarette at her face.
"You little bitch!" spat Trisha.
Her gang had to hold her back because the guards were watching them closely. It was not the time and Faith knew it.
"You're dead," Trisha repeated before walking away with her gang.
"You're mad, Faith, completely loony..." Jessy concluded resignedly.
"If you're scared, nobody forces you to stay with me, and, by the way, I thought that you said you wouldn't be my protector, Jess."
"Fuck off!" exclaimed Jessy going away.
Faith stubbed her cigarette out and made up her mind to pursue her tour. She watched the girls who were doing sports. Some were striking a punching bag with boxing gloves. Some were doing weightlifting. Some others were doing push-ups. She approached the punching bag.
"May I?" she asked the two muscular girls who were training.
They looked at her up and down mockingly sizing her up. One of them finally held out the gloves to her.
"No, thanks."
Faith gave a few punches to test the solidity of the bag. It would not resist long to the Slayer's strength. The others kept watching her sniggering.
**Remember B when we trained together... We had to pull punches so as not to tear Giles' nth bag... In the end we had to fight each other to relieve our frustration...**
Then she gave a sidekick with all her might. Just one, which literally unhooked the bag and made it fly seventy feet away. The sniggers ceased at once. All the gazes had turned towards her. In them could be read incredulity but also fear. And a timorous respect.
"Sorry," she apologized to the two boxers who were gaping at her.
She walked away smiling.
She came back to her cell. Jessy was lying on her bed and was smoking.
"There are showers somewhere?"
"Yes. Downstairs."
Faith took one of the towels provided by the prison and was about to leave when Jessy called her back.
"Faith!"
"What?"
"You shouldn't go there..."
"Why? You're afraid that I could get lost?"
"The showers... are used for many things... among others to settle scores... and the screws turned a blind eye..."
"So come with me."
"I can't protect you, Faith... Not against Trisha..."
"I don't need you to protect me, Jess."
**I'm already dead...**
Faith got out of the cell.
The showers were in the basement of the prison. Several rows of aligned individual cubicles devoid of doors for reasons of safety. The room was large and plunged into semi-darkness, which was not reassuring but propitious to intimacy. A guard was standing by the entrance door. She searched Faith to check that she did not have a hidden weapon then held out some soap to her.
Faith headed to the cubicles at the end of the room to avoid finding herself under the guard's eyes. She heard water running somewhere. She disappeared into a cubicle and undressed. She realized how much she missed her leather clothes. She turned the water on and let herself be soothed by the noise and the soft touch of the liquid over her skin. After a moment, she realized she could hear something else behind the noise of the showers.
**Moans...**
She pushed aside a lock of hair stuck on her face and, without turning the water off, headed silently towards the noise. It came from the cubicle at the very end.
Faith leaned in slightly. Two women were making love under the shower, trying to stay as discreet as possible. The blonde woman, who was facing her, had her eyes shut and relaxed under her partner's caresses. Faith watched them mutely, the want suddenly tearing her stomach. She observed their bodies moving slowly, their hands sliding down their skins, the brunette's fingers giving pleasure to the other woman who kept on moaning.
And who was looking at her. She had opened her eyes and was smiling at her.
"What's going on over there?" asked the guard walking heavily towards the cubicles.
Faith smiled at the blonde and came back to her shower as the guard arrived.
"Nothing... Nothing... If I can't have five minutes of intimacy... I didn't know you were eavesdropping. Unless you want to join in, my hand is a bit tired..." said Faith so as to divert the guard's attention and protect the two women.
The guard looked at her with a pout of disgust and went back next to the door, but not before she had called Faith a "Fucking perverse dyke".
Faith smiled and finished her shower trying to ignore her painful desire. At the moment when she surrendered and began caressing herself, the moans stopped in a muffled cry. She withdrew her hand, an intense frustration overwhelming her body, Buffy's image superimposing suddenly with the blonde's.
She heard the water being turned off and saw the two women walking past her a few instants later. The blonde cast an appreciative look at Faith's body and whispered "Thanks" to her, a little smile in the corner of her lips. Faith watched them going away with regret, her desire even stronger and still unfulfilled. She felt exactly like when Buffy touched her inadvertently or in a friendship gesture, like after training when their bodies fought against each other, brushed each other, like when they rolled on the floor, their bodies tangled, like when her fragrance intoxicated her and that she dreamt of plunging into her blonde hair, of breathing her skin, of drowning in her eyes...
**Frustration... I wanted you so much...**
She sighed, clenched her fists tightly and finally hit one of the shower walls leaving a hole into it.
**I wanted you so much...**
She slid slowly onto the floor, her back against the tiled wall. She stared at the blood of her wounded fist disappearing in a whirl down the drain. The pain was more bearable than the desire tormenting her. Her tears running down at last, mingled invisibly with the water streaming down her face.
**I did it for you...
But you, what did you do for me?**
Two weeks went by at the pace of the daily routine in which most of the prisoners took refuge. The routine and the tranquilizers. Faith continued to take them, she felt that they calmed her violent impulses. Above all they prevented her from thinking really, from turning over her tortured thoughts, from suffering. But Buffy's image never left her mind.
**The satisfaction on her face...**
Trisha's gang had become discreet, which boded no good according to Jessy. She thought that Trisha was waiting for her wounds to heal so as to deal with Faith personally.
The other women avoided the Slayer prudently preferring not to be seen in her company but above all bewaring of her reactions and her strength. The episode of the punching bag had spread around the prison. Trisha claimed to everyone that unhooking a bag, though impressing, did not mean that she knew how to fight.
Jessy had softened. Faith understood that she played a role that protected her from the others.
Faith had met her lawyer, appointed by the court. There was no question of a trial before, at best, one year because of judicial slowness. The judiciary was not in all that much in a hurry because Faith had made a confession and that she had acknowledged all the charges. Moreover, he had given her to understand that she should not delude herself about the outcome of the trial. At best she would get between fifteen and twenty-five years, at worst life imprisonment or even death.
**Is this what you're expecting from me, B? You want the law to end what you didn't succeed in finishing with my knife?... In that way your hands will stay clean, your conscience clear, and you'll remain perfect and innocent Buffy. And you'll be satisfied. You already were... The satisfaction in your eyes... This is what hurts me the most... The satisfaction in your eyes I loved so much...**
"Faith?"
**You're gonna pursue me with this satisfied look until the day of the final injection?**
"Faith? Fuck it! Answer me!" Jessy shouted exasperated by Faith's repeated absent-minded moments.
"What?"
"I saw Trisha a few minutes ago."
"And?"
"She had no more bandages."
"I'm happy for her."
"Fuck! Faith, how should I tell you that she's gonna bump you off?!"
**I'm already dead...**
"And so what?"
Jessy despaired of ever understanding this frightening, though so attractive, girl. She scared, disconcerted and exasperated her, but she could not deny that she attracted her irresistibly. She had not made love for a long time. Since her former girlfriend, Pat. The want was always terrible in jail. Almost worse than the drug withdrawal.
"Buffy..."
Jessy did not sleep. She could not stop thinking of Faith's body who was fidgeting in her sleep above her. For five minutes she had been hearing her turning over in her bed and moaning, muttering continuously a single name. Buffy.
She rose and watched her. Faith was sweating and her face was expressing intense distress. Her fists were clenched, her jaws tense and her body trembled now and again.
Jessy resolved to put an end to her nightmare.
"Faith!" she called shaking her arm.
"Buffy..."
"No, it's Jessy, wake up! You're having a nightmare, wake up!"
Faith opened her eyes. She no longer knew where she was and her gaze seemed to be lost, scared. With a hesitant hand, Jessy pushed aside the locks of hair sticking to her face by sweat.
**I'm dead...**
Jessy continued to caress her face trying to soothe this tormented gaze that was fixing her. No, that was passing through her, Jessy corrected herself. A gaze still near madness. A gaze leant over the void. Her hand was getting lost in the long dark curls, slowly, gently. It moved lower, on her arm, hardly touching the skin, then up, brushing the lips with her fingers, drawing forms on this face that began to relax.
Jessy was containing her lust, her desire to accentuate her caresses and this forced smoothness was almost painful. She wanted to touch these breasts under the tank top, this muscular belly, these long legs which had stopped shaking, she wanted to take her into her arms, reassure her, make her forget for a while the pain she felt everywhere inside her.
When Jessy met Faith's look again, she realized it was no longer blank and that she was staring at her intently. She removed her hand at once.
"I'm sorry..."
"Why?"
"I..."
Jessy could not end her sentence. Faith had sat up and had gripped her tee-shirt pulling her to her. She took her by her nape and lifted her literally with her other hand, making her climb on the bed. Jessy did not have the time to be surprised at this incredible strength. Faith had lain down on her back and had dragged her in her movement, kissing her violently and hugging her tightly. Their added desires, their common frustrations met at last in this feverish embrace of their eager bodies.
Jessy rolled off the tank top discovering what she had wanted to touch so much but also revealing a terrible scar on the tanned skin of Faith's belly. She hesitated for an instant then continued to slide down her hands on the breasts, on the scarred belly, then even lower until she finally plunged her face between the long legs which started to tremble again.
Faith threw her head back and closed her eyes.
**Buffy...**
Buffy's image had imposed itself again in her mind but this time it had taken Jessy's place like a fantasy repressed for too long. The frustration had been so strong that Faith felt the pleasure coming too fast, too abruptly, a great wave overwhelming her suddenly, making her arch, and she muffled her cry in the sheets.
**Buffy...**
Jessy went up to her level and kissed her. Faith had kept her eyes shut relishing Buffy's fake image, imagining that the tongue insinuating in her was the other Slayer's, like she had dreamt of it, hoped it so many times, and also like she desperately knew that it was not her, that it could never be her.
She opened her eyes. Jessy was observing her.
**I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...**
The disappointment, the renewed frustration aroused in her a new wave of violent and morbid impulses.
Faith stood up, turned Jessy on her back and hiding her own face in her neck to conceal her change of mood, began to make love to her. But her gestures had become mechanical, cold, impersonal. As Jessy's moans were invading her mind, Faith tried to pull herself together and to persuade herself that she was hearing Buffy's voice, that her hand was touching the blonde Slayer's body, that she was giving pleasure to her. But there was nothing to do. She did not feel the unbearable burn, the fire in her belly and her sex when Buffy touched her, the electric atmosphere, the intense desire enveloping their meetings, the thrill, the embarrassment, the hesitation and the lust when they looked at each other. She felt nothing. Nothing but frustration and disgust. Disgust of herself, of what she was doing, of this vain sexual mechanics that she could no longer be satisfied with.
**I'm gonna tear your throat with my teeth and wallow in your pain...**
The disgust of this delightful violence which could take possession of herself at any time and which she did not succeed in getting rid of.
The disgust of the despicable being she had become in the eyes of the only person she had ever loved, those eyes that had condemned her with
**satisfaction...**
The disgust of this void that overwhelmed her and made her lose consciousness, her eyes wide open onto nothingness.
"Faith..."
The sound of Jessy's voice whispering her name in ecstasy brought her back abruptly to reality, to this sordid reality, to the inevitable outcome of her wasted and pathetic existence, locked up behind the walls of a prison, behind the bars of her sick mind, prisoner of her murderous madness, of her schizophrenia, and forever condemned by a satisfied gaze.
As Jessy let out a last sigh of pleasure, she felt something wet in her neck. Faith was weeping silently, destroyed by this moment of cruel lucidity, devastated by this unbearable sudden awareness, her tears running down freely, slowly, like the ultimate relief of her alienating frustration.
The two women stayed silent, immobile, Jessy holding Faith tight in her arms, waiting for the tears to dry up, not daring to speak, not knowing what to say anyway. Faith remained an enigma for her. She had perceived her absent-mindedness, her gestures without passion, without tenderness, her disinterest. She had felt hurt, humiliated. Then she had understood that Faith would stay elusive, that her mind had been closed again, that it would remain tortured and incomprehensible. She had understood that Faith felt nothing for her, that she was not the object of the brunette's desire, not because of herself but simply because Faith could not feel anything, because she had forbidden herself to feel any other emotions than this inner violence passing through her gaze. Jessy wondered against which somber demon of her past she protected herself, what terrible event she could have lived to retreat into indifference, into the refusal of feelings. What had left such a scar in her skin.
"Who's Buffy?"
Jessy's voice had finally pierced the silence.
**The Chosen one... The one who has been chosen to make me suffer, to make me pay. The one who has proved to the world the rotten slut I am, the one who has saved the world from a psycho Slayer...**
"How did you hear of her?"
**The one who has condemned me...**
"You've been saying her name for several nights..."
**The one who has killed me...**
"She is... someone I've known..."
**The one I've loved...**
"Someone close?"
**The one who has hated me...**
"Less than I wished."
"You loved her?"
**I love her...**
"Yes."
"And what happened? She knew it?"
**You did it B. You killed me...**
"I don't know... Maybe..."
"You've never said it to her?"
**Never had the courage to confront you on that ground, B...**
"No."
Jessy digested Faith's last words letting a heavy silence fall down again for some time. It seemed impossible to convince Faith to open up more. Her answers were laconic, her reticence palpable.
"How did you get this scar?"
**You did it B...**
"A fight... that turned out badly..."
"A knife?"
**My knife...**
"Yes."
"Who did it?"
Faith got free of Jessy's hug and turned her back on her.
"Her," she finally said closing her eyes.
Jessy knew there was no use insisting henceforth. Whatever may have happened between these two women, she would not know more of it. Faith would keep her truth inside her like a much more painful scar than that which marked her belly.
Jessy turned round on the other side and fell asleep.
Faith was awakened by the sound of the gate being opened. The guard cast a glance inside the cell and gave a slight smile when she saw the two women in the same bed.
When she went away, Faith climbed down her bed and took her toilet bag. Silently she headed for the showers.
Several prisoners had come in before her and the water vapor had created an opaque fog in the room. She took her shower making the last traces of last night disappear, the last shreds of guilt she had felt when she had slept with Jessy.
As she was getting dressed, she heard women laughing and speaking loud amid the noise of the showers. She did not take notice of it. When she lowered to get her things out, she suddenly felt herself being flung violently against the wall, then two prisoners she did not recognize seized her arms and immobilized her.
"So you cunt, you don't show off any more, do you?" exclaimed Trisha while kicking her in the face.
Faith had been surprised and had not had the time to free herself. Her nose was bleeding and her lip was cut but it was not the worst. She felt that her jaw was broken and the pain was agonizing.
"I told you we'd get even with you."
Trisha kicked her in the face a second time - Faith heard her bones cracking upon impact - and carried on with a punch in the liver that winded the dark Slayer. She felt she was falling forward but Trisha's colleagues held her back.
"I told you I'd kill you."
Another kick. The blood spurted out on the walls. Faith could not see anymore, she did not feel anything more but pain. It was too late for her to react, she was going to lose consciousness.
"I told you I'd kill you..." repeated Trisha clenching her teeth, her gaze mad with rage.
**I'm already dead... So what?**
Faith heard a click. Blinded by the blood trickling in her eyes, she did not see the flick-knife held by Trisha. But she did feel the cold blade sinking into her, she felt the familiar sensation of such a particular pain, she felt the blade coming out and thrusting again into the precise place of her scar, like a bad imitation, a fake replica of Buffy's gesture.
**What an irony...**
The women released her and she slowly slid onto the floor. While holding her belly, the blood running out between her fingers, Faith could not help smiling. All this was only a grotesque parody. Nothing could ever compare to the pain of being crucified by the one you loved. Nothing could ever match the mix of contradictory feelings in Buffy's gaze when she had stabbed her.
**You did it B. You killed me...
I'm already dead...**
As she had done it before on the roof during this cursed night, Faith looked at her bloody hands then sank into unconsciousness at last.
Faith woke up three days later in the prison infirmary. Jessy, worried about the length of her absence, had finally gone to the showers and had found her lying in her blood, unrecognizable, disfigured. The prison doctors were used to receiving prisoners who had been beaten up, and even sometimes to bring back cadavers, but they would never have thought that Faith could have survived after such a loss of blood. Nevertheless Faith had been lucky: the knife blade had reached no vital organs. The doctors diagnosed multiple fractures of the jaw and the nose, two broken ribs, and had to stitch her two orbital archs. To relieve pain, they had injected her with morphine and she had been delirious since waking. They had to tie her up to the bed because, despite her injuries, she had tried to leave and had opened again the wound of her belly they had just stitched. They did not understand where she could find such a strength.
In the prison, an enquiry had been ordered to find the perpetrators of this murder attempt. Obviously everybody knew them but nobody had seen and heard anything. Even Jessy knew that she had to keep silent. The administration was not fooled either: they knew perfectly how the internal law between prisoners worked and had a precise idea of the murderer's identity. But without a witness they remained powerless.
Trisha showed off in the middle of her court, having reaffirmed strongly her domination over the other prisoners, a domination which no longer admitted any dispute. They feared Faith for her violent unpredictability as much as they respected the logic and predictability of the sheer strength embodied by Trisha. With her they knew the possible limits and consequences. With Faith they could never know and it was much more frightening than to go on being under the yoke of Trisha. Order had been restored and the hierarchy respected.
Faith went back to her cell after one week. The doctors did not understand either how the various fractures could have knitted in so little time. The physiology of this woman was beyond them.
Faith did not speak anymore and her eyes were continuously lost in the void, blank. When she had come back, Jessy had tried to ask her what had happened exactly, how she felt, but Faith had immersed herself in muteness not even casting a glance at her. So Jessy had taken her in her arms and had simply hugged her gently. To her surprise, Faith had not pushed her away, merely grimacing with pain when the embrace woke up her wounded ribs, but still giving the impression of not feeling concerned.
Days went by. Faith no longer got out of her cell except for eating and washing but always escorted by Jessy. She had not uttered a word since her return from the infirmary. She did nothing apart from swallowing her pills and smoking. Jessy had never more dared to touch her.
And then one day, a guard stopped in front of the gate.
"You have a visitor, Faith."
Faith was lying on her bed and was smoking a cigarette. She did not react. The guard was waiting.
"Hey Faith, it's your first visit for three months, you're not interested?"
**The dead have no visits... except for that of the worms...**
"Wilkins, are you coming or am I gonna fetch you?!" the guard shouted, finally losing patience.
**Wilkins... The boss... He's come to see me...**
Without realizing that this assumed name had become hers, Faith rose and followed the guard to the visiting room.
The man sat behind the dividing pane of glass was not Mayor Wilkins.
**He's dead... Buffy killed him...
Angel...**
She sat down in her turn and picked up the phone which was used to talk through the pane.
"Hi," began Angel.
"Hi."
Her voice was toneless, hoarse.
"How are you?"
**You told me: "You'll probably be haunted and maybe for the rest of your life." How right you were Angel...**
"Five by five..."
Angel scrutinized Faith's face and finally saw the marks left by the wounds.
"What happened?"
"A brawl... A girl who didn't like the color of my lipstick..."
**"I told you I'd kill you..."**
"I would have thought that..."
Angel did not end his sentence. He knew that no bars could keep a Slayer against her will, he also believed that Faith constituted more a danger to the other prisoners than the reverse.
"You didn't defend yourself?" he resumed.
**I'm already dead, Angel... Already dead...**
Faith gazed at him without answering, her eyes in the void again. Angel did not like this gaze, it was the look of renunciation, of resignation, of surrender to madness.
"Faith, look at me! You mustn't yield to easiness, to darkness, you must fight!"
**"It's supposed to hurt. All that pain, all that suffering you
caused is coming back on you. Feel it! Deal with it! Then maybe
you've got a shot at being free."
Free... but what for, Angel?**
As other words were coming back to her, she looked at him at last, an immense distress on her face.
"Angel... You told me once that - I didn't have to let the darkness swallow me... that I didn't have to taste evil..."
The vampire nodded silently.
"I tried, Angel... I tried... Pain and remorse, I've felt them... even stronger every day, torturing me every night... All the time - All the time..."
The tears were running down freely on Faith's cheeks.
"There are times... times when I can't bear it all anymore... times when I forget -"
**I'm gonna stick this stake in you and you'll disappear into dust...**
"- times when I'm at a loss... completely... and... and..."
"And when the darkness overwhelms you..." ended Angel.
**And I feel so good... so good... in darkness... that I wish I never got out of here again...**
"It's an endless fight, Faith... You'll never forget... But you must cling to the light, to the right things you did in your life, to what you still can do to make amends... You mustn't let the darkness and violence overpower you, you mustn't forget what you did. You can get through all this, Faith, I know you can make it..."
"But it's so hard... It hurts so much... I can't... I don't know... how..." Faith pleaded in a sob.
**"It's supposed to hurt..."**
"Each time I tried to be good for people, each time I saved a child, a human being, each time I killed another vampire... I said to myself that I was useful to something... and my immortality was easier to bear... Helping the others has given me a valid reason to go on living... You must find this light... The light of your redemption..."
"But what can I do if I'm locked up in jail?"
"What is your greatest wish?"
**Buffy...**
"What is the only thing that really matters to you?"
**I'm sorry...**
Angel saw that his words had struck home even though he was not sure of her answer.
"This is your light, Faith."
**"This is your light, Faith..."**
When her visit time had ended, Faith had come back to her cell repeating herself continuously this sentence, clinging to its resonance.
**"This is your light, Faith..."**
She must not give in, not yet, not before having done what she had to do to be in peace with her conscience.
When Jessy saw her coming in the cell, she was surprised by her expression. It was still haunted by unnamable demons but there was also something new. Determination. Whoever her visitor might have been, this person had succeeded in reviving a feeling inside her.
"Who was your visitor?" asked Jessy curiously.
Faith stared at her for quite a long time then a small smile appeared on her lips.
**"Your light... The light of your redemption..."**
"An angel."
Weeks went by and the determination had not left Faith's gaze. She had ceased to take tranquilizers and had started to practise again under Jessy's suspicious but admiring eyes. She spent hours performing push-ups and sit-ups in her cell then executed a few series of blows. Kicks and punches accomplished with a speed that Jessy had never seen before. Sometimes she went out in the yard to train on the punching bag pulling blows to prevent the bag from unhooking again. The other prisoners watched her technical displays with envy and respect even if they kept in mind that Faith had been helpless in front of Trisha. Then Faith, exhausted, went downstairs to take a shower and came back to her cell.
Trisha and her gang observed and mocked her, delighting in the memory of the thrashing they had given her in the showers. Faith remained impassive focusing on her movements so as not to let her urges for violence overwhelm her again. She concentrated on her might and her precision repeating untiringly the same blows and repeating tiredlessly to herself the same sentence.
**"This is your light, Faith..."**
Nothing else mattered any more.
One day Faith went out in the yard and saw Trisha's gang surround Jessy. As she got nearer her Slayer hearing allowed her to catch words fraught with threats.
"If you go on slipping this crap to me again, you're gonna regret it, Jess!"
"What crap?" asked Faith when she was near them.
All the gazes turned to the intruder that no one had seen coming. Trisha's surprise changed quickly into a vicious smile.
"Look! Here is your silly cunt, Jess... She may end up like Pat if you don't change your dope..."
Faith looked at Jessy in astonishment, suddenly understanding what the matter was. Jessy was terrified and kept her eyes lowered.
"Ah! I understand better why you look like a zombie and have the brain like an oyster..." said Faith out loud with a little smile.
Trisha nearly choked.
"You little whore! You seem to have trouble in understanding, don't you?..."
"No. You don't understand. You don't know who I am."
Trisha roared, soon followed by the others. Jessy was looking at Faith imploring her silently to stop.
"Ah yes? And who are you apart from a pretentious little jerk who's gonna be bumped off... and this time that I won't miss?..."
Faith had kept her mocking smile.
"I'm the Slayer."
Trisha burst out laughing to hide the discomfort aroused by this persistent and provocative smile.
"The slayer?! And what do you slay? Punching bags?"
Faith did not answer. She folded her arms on her chest and continued to look at her, smiling.
"I'm gonna make you eat your fucking smile and your arrogance, you bitch! This time you're dead!" Trisha spat walking away with her gang and running her forefinger under her own throat to illustrate her words.
Faith's grin widened and she raised her middle finger clearly in order that nobody could misunderstand her answer. Then she turned to Jessy.
"What are you playing at, Jess?"
"No, you, what the fuck are you playing at?! It wasn't enough for you to be stabbed once? You really want to die like that?!"
"Twice..."
"What?!"
"I was stabbed twice..."
Jessy, despaired of her behavior, stared at her without understanding.
"Listen, if you want to be suicidal and be killed, it's up to you! But don't involve me in it, I still care about living!"
"So is it like that, that you keep Trisha at a distance? Is it what you call 'finding allies among the right people at the right time'?"
"You have to manage to survive in this fucking prison... And I'm not a saint, Faith, and neither are you, so don't lecture me!"
"You provide her with dope and she makes sure that nobody causes you trouble, don't you?"
"Basically, yes."
"And who's Pat?"
Faith saw Jessy's gaze darkening. She was visibly not the only one to struggle against past demons.
"She was... my girlfriend..."
Jessy's eyes had filled with tears. Faith thought about Trisha's words again, about the threats she had uttered.
"And Trisha killed her."
It was not a question. Jessy nodded. Faith resumed.
"What happened?"
"She didn't want to... sleep... with Trisha... She... didn't want to obey her..."
Jessy furiously wiped away the tears that were running down her cheeks with the back of her hand. Faith put her hand on Jessy's shoulder.
"She didn't want to be her whore... and this bitch... this... cunt beat her to death in the showers... like you... like me..."
Faith took Jessy by her chin and forced her to look at her. She caressed her cheek gently and gave her a slight kiss on the mouth.
"Things are gonna change, Jess. Things are gonna change, I promise you. And I'll avenge us."
Faith knew that she would not have to wait long. The affront had to be washed as fast as possible. It was a question of honor, of this stupid and blind honor which was used as a justification for so many odious crimes.
It happened two days after the altercation in the yard. As Faith made her way to the showers, she could feel tension reigning around her, in the gazes she met, in the eloquent silences. She saw discreet signs exchanged between some prisoners. She knew that she would be followed soon.
She came into one of the showers but did not undress. She turned the water on and slipped into the next shower. She waited, her keen Slayer senses on the alert.
She heard at last laughter, belly laughs, self-assured and domineering, but also laughs of connivance with the guard, tense laughs like before the killing.
Then they came, with their heavy step so recognizable, and stopped a few feet apart from their victim. Faith perceived in the eyes of some of them the astonishment of seeing her waiting for them.
"So Faithy, the slayer of punching bags, are you ready for your thrashing?"
"Tell me Trish, you're so scared of the girls you want to tame that you always need your whole clique?"
"I'm not scared of anyone! I can deal with you personally!"
Trisha rushed at Faith, her knife pointed at her. Faith merely avoided her with a dodge. She found herself between Trisha and her gang.
"Hey Trish, I'm not sure I want, I heard that you were so useless in bed that you had to threaten girls so as they sleep with you!"
Trisha uttered a cry of rage and charged at Faith. With a surprising speed, she dodged, again, blocking then pushing away the arm holding the knife and shot her knee in the stomach of her adversary who doubled up. Waiting for their ringleader to catch her breath, two girls attacked the Slayer so as to try to immobilize her. Faith used the run-up of the first one to take her arms and hurl her against the back wall. The second one tried to punch her on the face. Faith blocked the blow, seized her arm and gave a roundhouse kick in her head. The woman collapsed holding her head.
Trisha had pulled herself together. Taking advantage of the fact that Faith had her back turned, she flung her knife at her.
Faith heard something whistling behind her but understood a little too late what it meant. She had just the time to shift aside then she felt again the sensation of the cold blade sinking into her right side. She turned back slowly letting the pain overwhelm her, reinforce her consciousness of reality, sharpen her impulse of violence. A smile broadened on her face. She pulled the knife out and raised it to her lips. In a sensual and provocative gesture she made her tongue slide down the blade slowly, tasting the flavor of her own blood, never taking her eyes off Trisha's gaze.
"I should have known that you were unable to fight alone and without cheating..."
"You're just a fucking little whore and -"
"No, I am the Slayer. The rogue Slayer, mad and unpredictable, the one who allied herself with absolute evil, the one who likes killing, the one who's gonna kill you, the one who's gonna make you regret to be born."
Faith dropped the knife on the floor and approached slowly. Her concentration was total.
Trisha had risen. She punched Faith who did not flinch then gave a series of quick blows. Faith blocked them all, while stepping back until she found herself driven back against the wall.
"That's all?" she said.
Trisha seized Faith's neck to strangle her. The dark Slayer slid her arms between Trisha's and lifted her elbows abruptly making her release her grip. Faith gave her a blow of her head that cut her orbital arch and made her stumble back.
"But I'm also the other Slayer, the Chosen one, the one who had been chosen to fight against evil. And you are evil."
Faith gave a sidekick which hurled Trisha into a shower. One of her followers chose this moment to attack her from behind. She grabbed Faith by her shoulders and sent her knee in her back. At the same time Faith struck her liver with her elbow and flung her head back breaking the nose and a few teeth in addition. She turned back, gripped the girl by her hair and knocked her out with a punch.
Faith focused her attention on Trisha again.
"You're evil. You've been terrorizing this place for years. Doing what you want all the time. You're evil. I know that. I was bad and I'm still. You've got nothing to teach me, you're only a beginner, you don't know what absolute evil is."
Trisha rose and took the knife. Simultaneously she kicked and pushed her blade forward. Faith parried calmly, pushing away the leg and grasped the wrist holding the knife.
With a wristlock Faith made Trisha drop the knife and she twisted her arm with another armlock, forcing Trisha to kneel so as to avoid it breaking.
"You don't know what absolute evil is."
Faith increased her pressure on the arm causing a stronger and stronger pain in Trisha, who was immobilized on the floor.
"Stop it! Stop it!" shouted Trisha who could no longer take such a suffering.
"I am absolute evil. I am your punishment."
Finally Faith sharply broke Trisha's arm, who howled. She dropped it and walked towards the other women who were watching, petrified by fear and pain, the downfall of their invincible leader. Faith looked at them for a while, almost feeling pity. Then she turned back, abruptly, again facing the other woman who was writhing in pain on the floor.
"I am the Slayer... I track..."
Faith approached Trisha who tried vainly to move back.
"I strike..."
Faith kicked her in the face making the blood spurt on the wall.
"I kill..."
She picked up the knife and, kneeling near Trisha who was moaning, she slid the blade slowly down her cheek tracing a thin bloody line in it. She studied for a while the blood trickling from the wound, savoring this moment of selfish power.
Then Faith stared intensely into the panicked eyes of her victim, a smile appearing on her face.
"Unfortunately... Only the worthy representatives of evil have the honor of fighting the Slayer... and of dying from her hand..."
Faith's smile broadened even more in front of the increasing terror of the other woman.
"Unfortunately, Trish, you don't belong to them... All this was only hot air... Look at yourself... You're just a terrified little girl... terrified by the idea that your whims won't be fulfilled... terrified of no longer being the focus of attention... terrified of having thrown off the mask..."
Faith rose and threw the flick knife away.
"Unfortunately you don't deserve the Slayer's interest... Where is the bad, the terrible, the awesome girl who ruled the prison with a rod of iron? A poor and terrified little girl... who's crying on the floor... 'cause her beautiful toy is broken... Look at yourself... Remember what you told me when I arrived? That I was nothing here? You were wrong, Trish, and even if I know that you understand nothing about what I'm telling you, I'll tell you anyway 'cause you have woken her up, I'm still the Slayer. And you are in the way of my redemption. But you, what have you got left now? Look behind you and ask yourself what you did, what you became."
A suffocating silence suddenly filled the room.
"You're nothing any more."
**Nothing but the void...**
Faith turned away and left the showers.
Six months had gone by since Faith's arrival in prison. Six months she had spent fighting her fears, her anxieties, her remorse, trying to contain her violence and her madness. Six months of solitude, of confrontation with her thoughts, with her tortured mind.
Six months and only one visit. Angel had not come back but his words were still imprinted in Faith, like a hope,
**"This is your light..."**
like a meaning given at last to her life. He had released something inside her and she clung to his words and to the image of a certain blonde Slayer who had condemned her. But this image - her satisfaction - did not make her suffer any longer, she lived it now as a challenge, as the symbol of her redemption.
News of the fight between Faith and Trisha had spread in the prison. A strange calm had reigned since then. Trisha's gang had split. In jail nobody stayed with the losers. But nobody tried to take control either because everybody feared to have to face the anger of the woman now called "The Slayer" by the prisoners. They did not only fear her anger, her reactions disturbed them too. They did not understand that Faith did not replace Trisha in her role of leader, that she did not take advantage of her ascendancy and of her power to control and exploit them. Faith was not interested in all this. She stayed for hours in her cell, smoking and waiting, her gaze turned inside. She waited.
And one day, she was called.
"Faith? Visit!" shouted a guard through the gate.
Faith stubbed out her cigarette with a shaking hand and headed to the visit room. While walking along the passages she wondered if Angel had come back to appraise the import of his previous words, to make sure that she was not dead or that she had killed no-one, to make certain that she had not plunged into darkness again.
But behind the pane, there was no vampire.
**Buffy...**
The petite blonde had her arms folded and was eyeing Faith with a harsh and intransigent look. Faith swallowed, then finally made up her mind to sit down and lift up the phone. She waited until Buffy decided to do the same.
"Buffy..."
**"This is your light, Faith..."**
"I want to make things clear: I've only come because Angel begged me to do it, because he told me that you were sinking... that you were needing us... needing me..."
Buffy paused still fixing Faith with a harsh look then she resumed, in view of her silence.
"I thought that you never needed anyone, Faith... I thought you were so strong that nothing could ever reach you... I thought that you didn't care about anything, about the harm you did to us... to me."
Some words came back in Faith's mind, words that she had said to Buffy on the roof before the Council men sprung up in their helicopter.
**"You have no idea what it's like on the other side! Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense! There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything..."**
"You know it's wrong... You know that I... regret..."
This last word had been extremely difficult to pronounce for Faith. It was like the outcome of a long and painful reflection.
"It's too late, Faith, and it's too easy. I didn't come to hear that."
"So why did you come?" asked Faith who began to tense up.
Buffy studied Faith for a while then a little ironic smile appeared on her lips and she drew her face very close to the pane as if she wanted to confide something to her.
"I came to make sure that you really were in jail among your fellow criminals... I came to make sure that Angel wasn't wrong, I wanted to see what despair and pain looked like on your selfish face... I wanted to be sure that you would know what it is too..."
**"You have no idea what it's like on the other side! Where nothing's in control, nothing makes sense! There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything..."**
Buffy fixed Faith's eyes in which tears began to form. The dark Slayer was clenching the phone with all her strength as if to prevent herself from falling.
**But I've never known anything but that, B, despair and pain...**
"Now I'm sure. So I can leave."
Buffy put down the receiver, took her handbag and began to walk away.
"Buffy!" shouted Faith with a sob.
Buffy turned back and saw the tears which were running down Faith's cheeks. And Faith glimpsed again the terrible vision of satisfaction on the other Slayer's face.
**Is this my light, Angel?**
Then the veil fell down again in Faith's mind. And she plunged again into the void.
One week had passed since Buffy's visit. One week that Jessy had seen Faith come back from the visit room with this blank stare and looking destroyed. One week that she tried to understand what could have happened there. But Faith said nothing. She stayed prostrate on her bed and only got out of it because Jessy dragged her to the refectory or to the showers. One week that Jessy saw the emotion, tears in her lost eyes. And that she did not know how to help her.
Faith unceasingly replayed the movie of the visit in her head. She constantly saw again the anger and the satisfaction in the green eyes of the other Slayer. She could not believe that Buffy could delight at her suffering. She could not believe the hatred emanating from her. It was not like her. It looked more like what she could have felt.
**It's not you, B... Or else...**
An idea had just gone through her despaired mind. She rose abruptly and strode out of the cell.
"Can I use the phones?" Faith asked a guard.
"Yes, of course. The call boxes are up there. You have five minutes," she answered, pointing at a room.
Faith left the guard and slipped into a box. She knew that the lines were tapped but it did not matter. She dialled the number with a feverish hand, one of the rare numbers she knew by heart.
"Angel Investigations, who's speaking?"
Cordelia's voice extracted a smile from Faith. The former cheerleader had always seemed ridiculous to her.
"Hey, Queen C, I'd like to talk to Angel."
"Faith?!"
"No, this is Hilary Clinton."
A silence. Then Faith resumed:
"Please, I don't have much time..."
Another silence. And half-muffled voices. Faith heard Cordelia give the receiver saying "This is the perverted psycho!" a remark that, instead of irritating her, only made Faith's smile broaden.
"Hello, Faith, what's up?"
"Angel... I have to... to talk to Buffy."
"She came last week. What happened? She didn't want to tell me anything."
**"I wanted to see what despair and pain looked like on your selfish face... I wanted to be sure that you would know what it is too.."**
"I couldn't, Angel... I couldn't talk to her... She didn't give me time..."
"What did she say?"
**"It's too late, Faith."**
"She blamed me. She came to see me pay... not to listen to my fucking regrets..."
**You've never listened to me...**
Angel kept silent on the line. Faith insisted:
"You must convince her to come back... a last time... I need... I must -"
"I'm gonna try," Angel cut her off. "I'm gonna try but I can't promise you anything, you know how she can be -"
"Stubborn. Yes, I know. But you're the only one who can make her understand..."
"I'm gonna try."
"Thanks. I have to go now."
"Hey Faith!"
"Yes?"
"You must fight. You know that the path is long, you know it's difficult, but you must fight, you musn't sink again, you mustn't yield to the temptation of evil."
Faith smiled again.
"Tell me, Angel, when you were given back your soul, was it provided with a priest's outfit?"
There was a silence then Angel replied:
"Very funny, Faith. But we're talking about redemption here. And there is no other word embodying better what we're both living. I know what you're living, you must fight, cling to your... to your light."
**"Your light..."
"It's too late, Faith..."**
"This is what I did, Angel. But my light went out."
And she hung up.
Days went by and Faith waited. She waited and clung to the hope of Buffy's visit, to what she considered as her last chance not to fall definitively into the formless jumble of her deranged mind. Not to lose touch completely with the real world. Not to sink into a nothingness of perpetual and vain suffering. She waited, forgetting the life surrounding her, Jessy, the other prisoners, the daily routine, merely hoping that the guard who walked by her cell every day was going to stop for her at last.
And one day she stopped.
**It's your last chance... Don't screw it up...**
When she came into the visit room, Faith felt her heart beating uncontrollably. Buffy had the same position as her previous visit and her gaze was as harsh as before. Faith lifted up the phone with a shaking hand. Buffy imitated her.
"You've got five minutes," Buffy warned with a brusque voice.
"You have to promise me that you'll listen to what I have to say until the end. Afterwards, I won't ask you anything more. You'll be free to leave... and never come back."
"Five minutes."
"Promise me, B."
Buffy sighed and seemed to relax a little.
"OK. Promise."
**"It's too late, Faith..."
No, not yet...**
"You told me the other time that you had come to see despair and pain on my face..."
"Selfish."
"What?"
"I said: 'on your selfish face,'" Buffy corrected dryly.
Faith studied her for a while and resumed:
"Despair and pain, B, are the only things I've ever known in my fucking life. I'm gonna skip the story of my rotten childhood with an alcoholic mother and successive stepfathers who calmed their nerves on me 'cause you're gonna believe that I use it to justify my acts. No, I take the responsibility for the madness of my actions, I acknowledge I was violent and that I liked it, I acknowledge that I killed two men, I acknowledge that I helped a sick man mad with power who wanted to trigger the Apocalypse. I acknowledge that I tried to fuck up your life... But have you ever wondered why I did all this? Do you really believe it was out of selfishness? Out of sheer wickedness? Out of madness? No, B, this is what all of you wanted to believe 'cause it was easier, simpler for you. More reassuring. It was despair and pain which pushed me to do all this, to try to destroy you, to try to destroy myself..."
"You could have talked to me, shared your pain, rather than accuse me of the murder and hurt us. I could have helped you..."
**You've never listened to me, B...**
"You've never taken the time to listen to me... At the moment when I thought I could talk to you, Angel reappeared and... there was no more room for anybody else in your mind..."
Faith paused and added:
"Anyway it wasn't my pain that I wanted to share with you..."
Buffy seemed to be puzzled by these last words.
"So what was it?" she finally asked.
"For the first time in my life, I had the impression I found someone who could understand me... Another Slayer... who could understand the weight of such a calling... what we felt... For the first time in my life, I had the impression I exist and I thought I'd found a friend... We didn't need to talk to know what the other was thinking... feeling... You knew what I felt, B... for you... And you felt it too... I know that..."
"I don't understand what you're talking about, Faith," Buffy said visibly ill at ease.
Faith smiled. She had not been wrong.
"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about, B. And this hatred I saw in your eyes the other time in the visiting room, and all these times after... after Finch... I know it so well... It's not like you... But it betrays you, B... The desire I felt for you, I saw it in you too... And you were unable to face it... It made you too scared. It questioned you too much. There was Angel, the others... You've never been afraid of monsters, you've never been afraid to love a vampire, but you were afraid to love me."
"You're talking crap. There was nothing between us but friendship... and... and... hatred..." stammered Buffy who had lost her confidence.
"Yes, hatred... A hatred caused by the frustration of having been rejected, abandoned, betrayed... Despair and pain again for me... And for you, a convenient justification to run away from your feelings and your desires... A hatred caused by the fear to face them. The harm I did to you allowed you to bury them, to forget them. In front of the others it was easier to acknowledge your hatred for me than your desire... But the less you succeeded in forgetting them, the more your hatred increased... and the more you looked like me."
Buffy had blanched. Her jaw tensed, she clenched the phone so hard that her knuckles were white.
"That's it. I have just only one thing to tell you, B, and afterwards you can leave... I wanted you to know that... that... I'm sorry for all the harm and pain I did to you... and... and that I loved you... and... and that I'm ready to do anything for you to forgive me one day... 'cause... 'cause I still love you, Buffy..."
Faith had tears in her eyes. She was relieved. She had thought that she could never say it, never face Buffy's gaze if it had been filled with hatred as she uttered these words. But there was no longer hatred in the blonde Slayer's eyes. Just amazement and tears.
For Buffy was crying.
She was crying because of all this incomprehension, all this waste, all this suffering. And because of her own cowardice. Because of her cowardice to acknowledge the truth. For the first time she felt guilty. Guilty of having given up Faith after Finch's murder, guilty of not having listened to her when she had needed it, guilty of having used her when they had needed to. Guilty of having tried to kill her. Guilty of having fled the confusion that Faith's mere presence always aroused in her, guilty of not wanting to acknowledge her feelings. She admitted, at last, that she had a great part of responsibility in this huge waste. And that at the very least she owed Faith to take it.
"No... I am sorry, Faith. I was... a coward... I didn't want to understand... I didn't want to acknowledge... I -"
"Visits are over!" announced a voice in the phone.
Buffy seemed to panic. She wiped away the tears that were still running down her cheeks and clung to the gaze of Faith who was rising, hurried by a guard. She saw again the image of her own hand and of the knife stuck into the dark Slayer's belly.
"Forgive me, Faith!"
Faith smiled. The veil of darkness had vanished from her mind.
"I've forgiven you for a long time, Buffy."
"I'll come back next month!"
**"It's too late, Faith."**
"No. It's too late, ain't it B? Our lives had parted for ever. Now that we're in peace with each other, I prefer to keep this image of you. I don't want you to come back."
**There is just pain and hate and nothing you do means anything...**
Faith put down the phone slowly. And before disappearing with the other prisoners, she whispered words that Buffy could read on her lips.
"I love you, B."
Faith spent two years in jail. Her trial was never held, for lack of witnesses and of tangible evidence. She refused all the visits, clinging to the last vision she had kept of Buffy, the vision of a vulnerable Slayer who had forgiven her, the vision of the tears of this strong woman who had acknowledged that she had shared her love. It was enough for Faith. Her mind had woken up. It had emerged from the darkness. Appeased at last.
The day of her release, Faith left her orange suit and took her own clothes on, restoring her lost identity. But she knew that she would never be the same again. She went the opposite way, walked down passages again, meeting envious gazes, passing again through gates definitively locked up behind her. This day, she walked through the heavy entrance door on her own, a door she would have never thought to see again. She looked one last time at the prison walls, searching for the window of her cell where Jessy would pursue her life. When she turned back, at last, to face the outside world, her eyes were full of tears. And this is in that way that she saw her. Leant against a car, her arms folded, with these green eyes which had been her obsession for all these years of imprisonment and solitude.
**Maybe it's not too late finally...**
Then Faith wiped away her tears and headed to the light.