Sleeping With Ghosts
by Jade
Rating: R

Author's Notes: This may or may not be a prequel to my next story, frankly, I have no fucking idea. I know, I know, Queen of Cups isn't finished, but I needed a break people, what can I say? I promise to get back to it soon! The story is from Willow's POV, because she was my original favorite character, until Faith came along. This originally was started as a Willow/Faith thing, but the Buffy/Faith section of my brain screamed at me and beat me with a stick. ;D Willow's thoughts in this story suggest a sexual encounter between them, which I may or may not expound upon at a later time. I don't do much work with Baddy Red, but she has a lot of depth, and I want to explore that. Or something less profound.....the title is from Something Corporate's 'The Astronaut' off of their Leaving Through The Window album, which is a fucking fantastic CD! If you don't have it, buy it! A lot of the songs make me think of B and Faith....*sniffles*
By the by, in my world Tara never died. In my world, she's happily engaging in lesbian love at this very moment. There's also unicorns, Kurt Cobain and a naked, very willing Eliza Dushku chained to a four-poster bed. Wanna come to my world? Yeah. Me too.

	...i've been sleeping with ghosts
	i've been watching the stars crawl out of the sky
	i've been hoping i'm close
	to the spaceman movies i call my life
	and i've been climbing latters through time
	i've got tunnel vision but i'm doing fine
	and i've been watching stars coming off of the wall
	and maybe if i'm lucky i could catch them before you fall...

So here I am in a place they call New Orleans, a place where darkness grimes around the edges of everything, staining this city like old silver. I don't know what the other patrons of this hole-in-the-wall bar are doing here, but I know what I'm doing. I'm looking for the girl.

Girls, actually. One sweet, stammering blonde, and one dark-haired, dark-hearted brunette. Breakers of hearts, slayers of their demons, and queens of their respective parts of my heart. One was my lover, the other my mortal enemy, one tried to save me, the other held a blade to my neck, but I love them. In different ways, I love them both equally. Faith, she was my obsession, the object of my lust and my hate. She was my teacher in the harshness of being. I wanted her, but she was always Buffy's, and only Buffy's. Tara, she was my one, she was mine. I know that now. What I don't know is how to convince her of that.

I fucked up. Royally. I let my dark side come out to play, just like a certain brunette beauty. I want nothing more than to say it's chained up now, that I won't hurt her again, but I know I will. The darkness is always there, whether you accept it or not; you can't escape it, because it's a part of you, essential, irreplacable. Hulking, lurking just behind the dark part of your eyes, sneering at you like a high-school Prom queen. Faith taught me that, without so many words. She never was one for talk. So now, all I can do is chase after Tara, tripping from town to town just to catch glimpses of her hair and slips of her scent. Pathetic, but it's my life now.

I stare deeper into my drink (vodka on the rocks) and think about how perfect it would be to see Faith now, to see her through my new hardened eyes, to see if she was still beautiful to me. I think she still would be, sad as that is. She always had that something about her, that erotic, semi-sweet, dangerous and wounded, sad aura. Black and blue, the colors of a fresh bruise on innocent skin. Impossible to forget. I wonder if Buffy still dreams of her. I think she does.

The gang split up after Buffy declared she wanted to be alone for a while. It had been eight years since Faith's imprisonment. We were a liability to her and to ourselves, she needed some space to herself for a while. The while turned into two years, and if I'm lucky, once in a while Xander and Anya will send me a christmas card from Santa Barbara, signed by their dog and their son, Alex. Disgustingly cute family. Giles passed on almost a year ago today. The doctor said he'd been sick for years, letting the cancer eat his lungs away. I cried myself to sleep for six months. Giles was the best of us, I think sometimes.

God knows where Spike is. He and Dawnie went to England for their honeymoon and he left her after a week. Bastard. Commitment-phobe my ass, all he ever wanted was Buffy, Dawn was just a subsitute. Once he got her in bed, he'd leave her. I could've told her that he'd do that, but she took it hard, not surprisingly. What was surprising was when she shot herself five years ago last December. Guess she really loved the bleach-blonde asshole. Poor, sweet, little Dawnie. Buffy never recovered. None of us did.

This girl walks in, interrupting me from continuing on that vein of thought. Good, because it's not a happy one. It bleeds pain like a new wound.

She leans over the bar, dressed in tight black leather pants and a black scoop neck tee. Cover it all with an opaque leather jacket, and presto, you've got a biker chick. She doesn't look like she's spoiling for a fight though, quite the contrary. After she orders her drink, she sits down, awkwardly perching herself on the barstool, her long legs dangling like lillies. Her dark curls obscure her face, but I get a flash of familiarity with her. She's beautiful, just my type, dark, strong, tight, curved in all the right places, with hard girl-muscles bunched under the soft skin. I am considering taking her to bed with me tonight, in my lonely little hotel room, when she takes off the jacket, acknowledging the bartender as he passes her her drink; a hard gin, straight up. A smooth white arm, riddled in scars, reaches for the glass, and I see it. A tattoo, like a demonic symbol or barbed wire, slashing across her arm. I speak up.

"Hey, Faith."

She doesn't look up, just takes a sip from her drink, very ladylike. I can tell she'd like to chug it though, feel that sweet burning forgetfullness numb all her pain away.

"Been a while, Red."

"Only ten years. I never forget a tattoo."

She laughs, low and husky, the sound like bourbon hitting the ice, a sweet wasteland.

"And I never forget a witch. How ya been?"

I take a pull from my own drink, watching her as she pours more alchohol down that lovely pale throat. "I've been alright. And you? You still five by five?"

I'm teasing her, suddenly desperate to hear that laugh again, needing to be close to my old life, to something happy, trite as it may sound. She turns to look at me, her sorrow-blackened eyes finally reaching mine. There is a scar in the shape of a teardrop under her right eye, red and glaringly obvious.

"Not anymore, Red."

Without even thinking, I touch her arm. She doesn't flinch like I expected, she just looks at my fingers, lying there on her skin, and lets a half smile quirk her face. I look up at her through my hair, hoping she can somehow sense what I feel.

"None of us are, Faith. We never were."

"B was."

"Yeah, well. Buffy was never the same to us anymore. Not since Dawn."

Faith nods her head, her eyes distant, caged seas of brown and black. She knew about Dawn, I assume Angel told her. She was in prison when it happened, but she still found out. The shot heard 'round the world. We all loved little D, but Faith, Faith loved anything connected to Buffy, Dawn especially. She seems to shake herself from something like sleep, and turns back to her drink, effectively dislodging my hand. "So, you still chasing your girl?"

I nod, knowing she'll sense it. "You too, I bet."

Her hands clench at the glass convulsively. "B was never my girl, Red."

"Cut the bullshit, Faith." She looks up, startled at my language. Yeah, how you like Good Girl Red now, Faithy? "We all knew you were in love with her."

A sigh escapes her, and I can smell her breath, tainted with the gin, but still retaining that cinnamon I remember from a drunken truth-or-dare kind of kiss, one night at the Bronze after Homecoming. She tasted like blackberries, dark chocolate and cinnamon. I wonder if she remembers that, or what I tasted like. Her voice shocks me, and I wake up with a start.

"Yeah, well...I guess I was. I still am. God, how fucked up is that?" She turns to give me a bleary-eyed grin. "She stabs me in the fucking gut, she calls me worthless and beats the living shit outta me. And what do I do? I love her like her curses were kisses." Her hands are shaking as they bring the glass up to her mouth again, to drain the last bit of gin. For the first time, I notice how finely-shaped her fingers and hands are. Piano-player's hands. Not killer's hands.

"I went to prison for her." She continues, a quiver in her voice. "Fuck Angel, fuck salvation. I did it for her. And when I get out, I can't even work up the nerve to see her, after her sister died and all." She looks up at me. "I want to vomit blood every time somebody says her name, to hit myself hard in the stomach, to cut my own heart out. If that ain't love....If this ain't love, then, then, fuck, I dunno what is."

We sit in silence for a time, each reflecting. She orders another drink, downs it, and stares at the empty glass like it holds her future. I want to ask her so many things, like how did she come to New Orleans, and where's she been all these years, when we needed her most. But what's done is done, and I know bringing up the past will only fuck things up. So, without pausing to think, to analyze, to be logical, like I have so many times in my thirty years, I reach out and touch her shoulder.

She jumps a little, and her eyes fly to mine. There are tears hovering in the murky brown of her irises, but I know she won't let them fall. She's too stubborn for that, too old. She must be twenty-eight now, two years younger than me and Buffy, not a fucked-up selfish kid anymore. She knows what she wants now, she's just afraid she doesn't deserve it. The words bubble out of my throat before I can stop them, making the air around us quiver in strange, exclusive silence.

"Why don't we stop sleeping with ghosts, Faith? I'm tired of chasing aimlessly, how 'bout you?" Her eyes widen slightly, and she nods, a smile playing tag with her full, perfect mouth.

"Whaddya suggest, R-Willow? That we let them do the chasing? Not gonna happen."

I grin back at her. "No. I'm saying we go look for them. Really look, not just follow them around like little puppy dogs. I don't like being a puppy, do you?"

"My tail ain't waggin', Wil."

I hold my keys up, jangling them a little for emphasis. "Black 1956 Jag Roadster. You feel like a road trip, Faith?"

She looks at me, looks at the keys. I see her hands begin to shake, and for a moment I think she's going to refuse, she's going to stay the sad martyr forever, dying for her sins. But then she smiles, lighting up her whole face, making me think I'm seeing her for the first time. "You drivin'?"

I nod. Her smile gets bigger. "In that case...Hey Bartender! Get me a bourbon on the rocks and a water for my...friend here!" She waggles her brows at me.

I laugh, just a little, hardly more than a snicker. But it's the first time I've laughed in over a year, and it feels damn good. I'm looking forward to the day ahead, and the monstrous hangover Faith is sure to have. Damn good.

...continued in Impulses Of The Uncommon Girl...