While You Were Sleeping
by Kelly Smith
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I still haven't taken personal delivery of the slayers, so I'm guessing I still don't own them. Or anything surrounding them. That pleasure still belongs to Joss. He's one darn lucky fella.
Author's Notes: Remember season four, when everyone's favourite slice of dark slayer pie woke up from that pesky little coma..? Okay. Now unremember it. It never happened. No one woke up, no bodies were switched, no Riley was jiggied with, no nothing. Nada. This fic starts on the day of Chosen with all of that in mind. Everything else has remained the same, just without the Faith bits. Them bits I get to play with, manipulate, and make my own. Cool huh?
Dedicated: To Sarah Shahi's ass. It makes me believe in heaven.
The beeping of the machines had long since ceased in the dark and desolate room of the rogue and comatose slayer. The electricity had been cut off days ago. No one left to maintain a power supply, no one left who would care if she lived or if she died. No nurses remaining to monitor her condition, no doctors to sign off on charts which had always remained the same. No change. No difference. Four forgotten years of the same beeping monotony.
The shallow repetitiveness of barely their breaths was the only sound which broke the eerie emptiness of silence, the soft fluttering of eyelashes against a pale, sunken cheek the only other outward sign that she still existed. Until then. Until now. Until the monotony changed.
A broken body forced to feel again.
If the machine by her bedside was still able to chart her progress, it would have malfunctioned almost instantaneously. The sharp ragged lines of her heartbeat creating graphs more complex than any seismic activity, the surge of power infusing her system making her back arch high from the bed. Lank and dirty hair hanging limp around a face that was a contorted mask of hurt and pain.
It was fast and it was furious and it was real. Sensations slamming into her body as everything around her fought to find focus. Shards of sunlight forcing their way through the blinds to stab pain into her eyes, her ears tormented by a return to consciousness, by thoughts which had lain dormant all of the years that she hadn't had to think them. Back now. Here now. A twisting in her gut, a thorn in her side.
Her hands moved almost unbidden to find the evidence of her memories. The cold feel of serrated steel forcing panic back into breaths, her skin becoming clammy as she fought to push back the blankets and the sheet which covered her body. They felt like they were holding her down, holding her prone. Her mind screaming at her feet that they knew how to work, how to fight, how to scramble until she was free. Unobstructed. Able to flex. Her eyes travelling slowly down across the gown which covered her modesty, her skin prickling as her hands connected with the naked flesh underneath. Looking for the gash, the rip, the tear. The confirmation of the violence which tripped quick through her mind.
It was raw and it was the truth. Almost slamming her back down into the bed, the sick sensation of falling, icy green eyes charting her progress as she fell. All of her final minutes forcing themselves into this minute. Too much to hear, too much to see. Unable to stem the torturous tide of the memories;
`That's mine.'
`You're about to get it back.'
Fear. Her feet feeling foreign as her body began to demand that she take flight from this place. A hospital. Knowing that much, yet not knowing where the nurses were, where the doctors were.
Her hands reached out to steady herself as she shakily put weight upon her legs, hissing as every muscle in her body coerced her into sitting back down. Deep breaths.
"Come on Faith."
Shit. Her voice. Was that HER fucking voice..?
Barely a whisper cracking out from parched lips. Her tongue moving in a pointless gesture of trying to bring moisture. She desperately needed to hear the reassuring sound of a rasp she could remember, urging softer tones to scrape free from the back of her throat;
"Come on."
Softer. Weaker. Was she weak now?
No. Never weak.
She closed her eyes as a wave of dizziness made her instantly reconsider that statement; definitely weak. It felt more truthful when she regarded it that way. Maybe always weak.
Her fingers flitting again to pull at the gown, her eyes which had quickly accustomed to the gloom of the room taking in the scar which ridged uneven across her abdomen, a slash of pink against flesh which hovered near deathly white.
"Fuck."
A rasp she remembered. A line she knew well. A smile which sought to twist her face into a snarl, lips licking not for moisture now, but to sweeten the taste of the revenge which sat bitter in her stomach. Deep down and festering beneath the disfigurement that *she* had put there.
`You did it. You killed me.'
Only she hadn't, had she?
A chuckle wanted to accompany her meandering thoughts, but the steady flow of resentment was keeping her humour firmly in check. It was forcing her shaking limbs to try standing again, satisfied when she didn't sink back down, when the pins and needles which buzzed along her limbs was the only pain that she could feel.
Her walk was even and steady as she made her way to the cupboard which ran along the back of the room. A simple sticker stating; Patient's Belongings.
Belongings.
Somewhere she belonged..? Somewhere she should be..?
Her aching eyes wanting to fall downwards as her gaze rested upon the clothes that she had shed, just what..? Yesterday? Upon the blood that had spilled so easily over her clothes… only…
"What the fuck..?"
A voice more hers as she reached to touch clothes she had never seen. Never worn. No torn reminder of the gash that sat beneath the gown. No red stained patterns telling the tale of how her life had trickled away. To here. To this.
The Mayor..?
Her legs threatened to fail again as his face swam into the space behind her eyelids, as his smile reached out to urge her into being strong. More words. Sounds which scratched her inner ear as if they were being spoken aloud instead of in memory; no matter that they were soft words, caring words, her body still buckled slightly at the recollection of his image, at the reminder of the plan.
It made perfect sense to her that he would bring her fresh clothes, that he would provide for her. He had always wanted her to be her best, to look her best; and now, lifting the scratchy feel of fresh denim from the cupboard, she wasn't disappointed. If this was what he wanted her to wear to face the fight, then she would be more than happy to oblige.
The fight. The plan.
Her hands slid across the jagged edge of her scar again as she lifted the gown from her body, her forehead furrowing in a deep frown as she felt the way her ribs protruded sharply from underneath her skin. It wasn't right. Her brow managing to dip even further as she tried to trace curves which should have been second nature to her, fingers instead faltering on hip bones which screamed of malnourishment, the air rushing fast from between her lips as she looked down at her thighs which had always been so supple; so firm.
Weak now.
The words goaded her again from somewhere deep within her muddled subconscious, and they were words which sought to rekindle her hostility. A pin point of light within the confusion that forced her to seek clarity, her teeth gritting as she shook her head in a feeble attempt at clearing the fog.
"Think, damn it, think!"
Strength was still evident in the tone of her voice, and she used that strength to pull the new jeans over her feet, up over her legs. The muscles in her arms aching as she struggled to put on the t- shirt. A smirk settling at last on her lips as she saw something she recognised, something that felt right. Thankful that her jacket and her boots weren't lost in the fight; at least she still had something left of her armour.
She urged herself into thinking more as she finished the slow painful act of dressing, her whole body screaming that it wasn't yet ready to march into battle, but her feet already moving her in slow testing steps towards the door. There was a plan; she knew that much. And she also knew that she was to be at the mayor's side when the plan was put into action. Her hand trembling just once in the moment before she turned the handle on the door, the final second when she knew that this was it; fight or flight.
But she wanted to fight. Right..? She had kept herself going these last few months, just knowing that she would eventually get to wipe those self righteous and pathetic smiles from the faces of the self righteous and pathetic. She wasn't about to give that up now, just because *she* had tried to turn her into a shish-slayer-kebab for her undead boy-toy. Just because maybe, just maybe, if she saw her again, it would only end the same way.
Because she would let it end the same way? Because she *wanted* it to end the same way?
It was a fog that she didn't want cleared. Questions that she didn't want answers to. So instead she allowed the festering darkness to come back and claim her fully. Her hand steadying with new found strength as she pulled the door harshly towards her, her eyes not needing to dart around and check for people that weren't there; she would remove anything or anyone that stood in her way.
She had places to go. She had people to kill.
Her very first graduation.
Beneath the newly primed floors of the brand spanking new high school, there was a battle already being fought. A fight not waiting for an errant and forgotten slayer to make an appearance, when already the spell had been done to awaken a whole army of light and bright slayers. Ready to fight. Ready to die. Each one of them spurned on by the fresh feeling of newly discovered power, fizzing fast through their veins, pumping destiny into their blood.
The spell that the witch had performed had bound the slayer line together like nothing before, shattering the rules of unnatural selection, to forever break the hold of long forgotten men over the world's forgotten warriors. A moment of divinity reaching out to touch each of them, providing them with access to the power that had long since been denied.
Even the slayer who had held the front line felt the release of the energy as it had crackled in the air all around them; her body tensing, feeling a surge of pure slayer deep down inside, as what was hers, suddenly became theirs.
A renewed strength. A rebirth.
Her senses awakening in that moment as if they had never been awoken before; her arms flexing with renewed precision. The unrestrained force in her body just aching to be released upon the howling army of the undead. The soon to be army of newly re-deaded undead.
She wasn't sure of the grammar; an ironic thought when she considered her current position in the high school, but she was more than sure of the finality of the thought. The scythe thrusting fast through the air to reach her grasp only confirming it for her. Dust spreading to coat the already oppressive air as more and more Turok- Han journeyed foolishly within her reach. She was unstoppable, she was invincible.
She was on her knees as the sword ripped ragged holes through her shirt to pierce at the skin of her back; still going. The pain made bearable, even as she had been run through, by the steady mantra which refused to be silenced.
'No.'
Just no. Over and over. A rejection of failure. A belief in the basics. Good over evil. More than that; a belief in herself. As her face had dropped close to the ground, as her own stolen voice had summoned her back from flirtations with death, she had absolutely embraced that belief in herself. She had earned that belief, and nothing or no one could ever seek to douse the flames of her spirit.
Nor the flames of a past lover, as his soul had burnt a victory laden path through the swathe of ever rising evil. His sacrifice bringing the turn in the tide; allowing his girl to retreat with the knowledge that they had won. That her belief in HIM had given him the strength he had needed to die the death of a champion.
Rocks falling. Time racing. A plea for her to leave. Her legs finally beginning to feel the burn of exhaustion as she had pulled herself up the steps that marked the entrance to the world above. Still running though, beating out a rhythm of survival as she had dodged the falling debris to reach the bright light of the sunshine outside.
And then she had frozen.
Not through the surrender to fatigue, but due to the sudden realisation of what was occurring; what was about to be lost. The rumbles underneath her were assuring her that the Hellmouth was still hungry in its failure, and she realised, beyond doubt, that Sunnydale was about to be swallowed.
A small price to pay..?
Her hand reaching to smother the wound on her abdomen, the same time that her mind was seeking to smother the memory of other gashes in other shirts. Of blades which sliced through skin as easy as a knife through melting butter. Of what was really about to be lost.
"BUFFY!"
Dawn's cry sounded loudest from the bus, a sister demanding that her family stay in tact, that Buffy stop whatever was causing her to stand in the way of a super sized earthquake and get her ass on the bus. Now!
And so she had run again. Her heart pumping to dispel the tingles that previous thoughts had resurfaced. She had lost far too much to take the time to count individuals now. To even consider the possibility of trying to take detours past hospitals which had long since closed for business.
Just run. Just escape. Just get the hell out of dodge.
They had been her thoughts, her new fangled mantra to carry her legs the last distance to the bus.
She had known that something was wrong the whole time that she had been making her way to here. Sunnydale High. Except where were all the students..? Where the fuck was anybody?! Not one single person had passed her on her journey, not one police patrol car to slide away from, not one Scooby sized snack to maim a chunk from.
It had made her grow steadily more uneasy. Her shallow frame trying to regenerate strength all the while that her mind was trying to put into order anything that it was seeing. Certain landmarks that had changed within just a few hours, and even, maybe, the way that her hair was seeming to hang a few inches lower.
Which meant..?
She had not a fucking clue. It was making her antsy as hell though, creeping up on a spot to stake out the party. Bemused eyes fixing on the changed façade of the school, muddled brain adding it to the growing list of inconsistencies which had increasingly become her thoughts.
Where was everyone?
Praying for stealth, she had edged as close as her survival instincts would allow. Finally able to bear witness to humanity. A humanity which only offered more inconsistency.
Them. The gang. But not. But different.
Her head grabbing at dizzy as the world had spun around her. All of her re-awoken senses screaming that the sniff of a battle was hanging heavy in the air, that she pull back her arm and run screaming into the fight; Only now she didn't know the fight.
She watched silent in her confusion as they had loaded themselves up onto the bus, the ones she remembered - albeit differently - waiting to make sure ones she didn't recognise had managed to take seats. Their eyes always glancing back towards the school, whispered words unheard as their heads had leaned in to converse a course of action. Finally deciding. Their trudging feet lifting them wearily up and onto the bus as if they were leaving someone behind. As if they had lost.
She crept closer. She knew who was missing.
Not even feeling as the ground had started to shake beneath her feet, just waiting. Eyes fixed and unmoving as they had sought out the one who could placate her desire to exact revenge. Forgetting the mayor. Forgetting graduation. Just focusing upon the slice of a knife, the feel of warm blood, her own blood, moist and sticky as it had leaked her life steadily between her fingertips.
'You did it. You killed me.'
Was it wonder or gratitude she heard in the memory of her voice speaking the words? Didn't know. Didn't care. Only knew that the twisting in her gut was getting more savage with every step she took towards the school, towards the bus. Faltering at the sight of her, but not stopping. Never stopping. Even as Buffy had frozen in her backwards glance towards the school, the forgotten one did not stop in her steady pursuit of her.
"BUFFY!"
The sudden scream brought a pause where Faith didn't want one. A voice breaking from the bus to pull the golden haired, The Chosen 'One', from whatever thought had been holding her back. Legs starting to move again, moving away.
And so this was it. Her body feeling as if it had crumbled beneath her, her legs protesting that she still sought to stand, and this was the moment that she would force the fighting to commence. Maybe stupid. Probably. She didn't care. She only cared to soothe the bitterness that ate at her soul, that sat ragged across the pallid skin of her abdomen in the shape of a Buffy sent caress.
"B."
So hollow. So empty. So nowhere near loud enough.
The roaring of a falling building drowning out anything that she could of hoped to produce. Yet still; Buffy was stopping again. A sudden stoppage, feet planting firm as she had whirled to face the distant sound that had rung out a call of remembrance loud within her ears.
"Faith."
Not spat from between lips as the girl in question had stepped closer to her frozen state, but whispered in disbelief as eyes had spread wide. As glances had been cast upwards, towards something of a higher power.
"B." Spat with absolute venom. "I owe you something."
Her rasping words faltering as she had glanced down at the stain which was still spreading out across the front of Buffy's top. Warm blood. Her blood?
More confusion, more dizziness. The anger sliding from her tone as she spoke words which were shrouded in nonsense. In everything that occupied her broken mind. "I… I killed *you*?" Her fingers shifting up from limp, to trace a pattern across cotton where she knew her own wound lie. Yet… "I killed you."
Not a question now, but like an admittance. A belief. The fog coming back, reaching around her to drag whatever had been keeping her going, standing on her feet, slowly but surely out of her body. Disorientation messing images of the here and the now with the then and the when..?
Her fist curling against her abdomen, her breaths seeking to leave her body in an ever faster rush. So close to crashing. To falling.
"Faith..?"
An urgent plea?
Buffy's eyes had been drawn from the shell of a girl in front of her, by more of the Dawn screaming behind her. Focusing the warrior, the survivor. Feeling the tense as Faith, maybe not so broken, had refocused in front of her. Balling fists again, shaky legs setting back into the posture of a fight.
"You ready for payback B?"
And what *was* this?!
Buffy had often nightmare sequenced the payback, when she had been foolish enough to believe that Faith would awake after three… no, four years in a coma; but now?
"Not now."
She spoke the words cautiously as she edged her way back towards the bus. Her glance flying behind to witness the wide eyes peering from the revving vehicle as her friends finally caught up on the sitch unfolding before them. As they probably cursed the timing just as much as Buffy. But then, just a moment ago, Buffy herself had been cursing that this moment would be lost to her forever.
A cosmic joke? A final fling with fate to truly test her will of preservation?
The fist that flew without warning at Buffy carried nothing but bare naked rage. It carried no real power. The other's limbs still weak, everything still weak. A mind dazed. Every thought fragmented by the confusion which was seeping itself further and further into her being.
And Buffy deflected it with barely an exhausted breath. Her mind fighting its own daze to gain back focus. "I said not now! Will you *ever* listen to me?!"
She expected she could answer that one without Faith's input. Still; it had brought brown eyes back to hers, had brought with them a lost look, a scared look.
"B?"
No venom. No spitting of names now that everything was fading to black. And maybe she was wrong. Maybe Faith would listen.
"We have to…"
But no. Faith wouldn't listen. She was too busy falling, her mind closing down at the same time her body gave up this torture that felt nothing but self enforced. Her body collapsing limp and light into Buffy's waiting arms.
A slight smile daring to cross Buffy's lips as she considered that she had caught her this time. No more falling on her watch. No way, mister. Only… wasn't it too late for this? Hadn't she already watched her fall way beyond anyone's reach?
"Buffy… NOW!"
A united scream as the ground had shook with more fury than at any previous moment. The building finally succumbing to dust, the pavement around Buffy beginning to crumble as she clung unwaveringly to the form of the fallen slayer.
A last effort. Not just her own preservation, but the girl she was hoisting above the tired joints of her shoulders. A hiss escaping drying lips as the effort caused the gaping wound which marred her stomach, to grow ever bolder in its presence.
She spoke curse words, she spoke possibly some Latin curse words, and they all paved the way for her feet to walk ever further forward toward salvation. Gratitude obvious in her eyes as Xander had reached down from the bus to unburden her from her load. His gaze teetering somewhere closer to 'what the hell?', even though he knew that she wouldn't have answers.
She had nothing. Her final task of leadership accomplished for the day, as she had sunk slowly and heavily down into the sticky leather seats of the bus. Exhausted. Wounded somewhere close to the realm of mortally. Absolutely spent.
She heard Giles' voice ask a frantic 'where to?' as the bus started to motor with welcome speed, but it was all she could do to lift her finger in a vague direction of away from behind them. It would do. Accepting hugs from friends and sisters the further away that they got from the pit which was increasingly evolving in the background. Chasing them away. As if they needed urging.
Finally stopping. Coming to a halt. The bus caked firmly in a dust that carried all of the memories they would ever be able to salvage from the town named Sunnydale.
Buffy wouldn't rise to take in the view; Buffy couldn't rise, she didn't think, if the lives of everyone here depended upon it. But then, hadn't she already done that once today? Rising from the ashes, snatching victory from defeat?
No. She wouldn't clamber down the stairs to gaze over everything she had just taken pleasure in destroying. It would hurt far too much to admit to herself all that she was leaving behind. Better instead that she lay here and focus on trying not to bleed to death, wishing beyond anything else that she could allow her eyes to drop and close on all that surrounded her. Not that she was inviting death; preservation was paramount, but rather sleep. It annoyed her that she wouldn't allow herself to rest; her body demanded it, her slayer healing demanded it, yet she wouldn't. She couldn't.
She had nothing left. Her eyes fighting the fuzzy blur of unfocused to ignore the inner rambling of her mind. She had nothing left..?
Then why would her eyes not close upon Faith?
Author's Notes: It occurred to me earlier, that I have no mention of Robin anywhere in this story. Having considered the best way to go, it is my deep regret to announce that he died in the battle. Robin Wood, son of a slayer, had no surprises to deliver to keep him fighting the good fight. His death was fast, yet really painful, and he died without anyone ever knowing whether his skills were mad or lacking. I'm sure his mother would be proud.
Author's Notes 2: You feedbackers are all truly fantastic. Thank you.
Dedicated: For now I shall stick with the ass. I'm very loyal to the ass.
The bus rumbled on along the road without any thought of particular direction, its only purpose still remaining, to get everyone the hell away from the hell that had opened out in a ragged abyss behind them. Giles didn't think it mattered too much beyond that right now. If he could just get them far away enough to call safe, if he could just remember which way was the best way to reach a nearest hospital, then maybe where they were would perhaps start to matter. All that truly mattered to him was the sight that made his eyes wince every time he cast them up to catch glances in the mirror above his head.
Buffy. Looking every bit as small as her frame insisted she surely was. No rod of steel holding her shoulders ever straight, no air of invincibility to stop the pain from lacing out across her lips. A firm line. A tight line.
Always the one holding the line.
Without a doubt, he was worried about her. Not having had the time to check her wound, he still knew the severity that caused the blood to stain such deep red across her top. Not a scratch, something to be sighed at and then tended. It was deeper than that, it was the reason he berated himself into trying to remember the geography of this god forsaken country; where they were, where they were going, and where the blasted hell he would find a bloody hospital!
The slam of his hands against the steering wheel caused more than a few curious gazes to be pointed his way. The new slayers that weren't busy bleeding onto the leather of the chairs, the battle weary Scooby gang who would never get used to an outburst of emotion as un-British as hands slamming against anything; they all looked. Eyes finding the energy to seek him out, a faint murmur wondering what the drama was now. Yet she, his slayer, she still wouldn't find the change in direction needed to soothe his worry, still wouldn`t meet his eyes. They were stuck fast.
Not away from behind them, like she had insisted they drive, but stuck firmly behind them. Gaze drawn like the poised string of a waiting crossbow to the slayer, the other slayer, one of many slayers, unconsciously resting on the seat that sat at the back of the bus.
Giles couldn't even begin to fathom what Faith's sudden reappearance meant in the grand old scheme of things; whether it was a case of good, whether it was a case of bad. Maybe there were prophesies, a codex that spoke of comas and rebirth…
Being the man that he was, he knew full well that none of those things would have any baring on what would occur in the future. He understood more than most why Buffy's eyes were so adamant in their perusal of the fallen one. His shoulders often the ones there to bear the weight of her guilt over everything that had ever happened in the history of The Chosen Two. Not that he would ever allow her to apportion blame. His glasses always rubbed with renewed efficiency when she had wanted to offer words to him about the loss of her humanity, the things that set her apart; four years a long time to wonder if you've killed someone, if you have snubbed out life. If you're as dark, deep down, as the thing you had tried to eradicate. Gazing at her now with a pride that was so much more than the pride of a watcher, he could see only light. But then, his gaze wasn't being met. He knew. Her gaze, and the things that she saw, they would be the only things that had any baring whatsoever on what would occur.
So lost was Giles in his thoughts, in the straight road which opened up before him, that he didn't even notice the one which crept closer to wonder at his own state. Shocked by the crack of hands against steering wheel, concerned at the loss of control in one who always exerted control.
"Giles, you okay?"
Willow's voice was hopeful, looking for that port in a storm that always made sense. Knowing that sense was definitely gonna be needed in the aftermath of all of the nonsense.
They had destroyed Sunnydale. Wiped it from the map. Gone. Just like that. A crater to scar the map like infected teenage acne that had been scratched one too many times. It certainly felt like nonsense when she thought about it that way.
"Willow? I'm fine… is everyone else…"
"Fine? As in feeling dandy and fine, or fine, as in, stiff upper lips, please ignore the way my hands are digging deep into the steering wheel, fine?"
She had to point that out. His knuckles *were* straining white from the effort of clutching.
"I'm fine Willow."
And it was hard to argue with a tone that steady. But then, she hadn't become a kick-ass uber witch by hanging onto meek, and mindful. "Okay, I see we're gonna be going with the stiff upper lip version - which is great, I respect the Britishness - but truthfully Giles? I think you should let Kennedy drive for a while. Take some down time."
Kennedy had already asked. Already offered. Kennedy had to do something or else she was going to explode from sitting doing nothing except listening to the sound of new power roaring fast through her body.
Willow sensed the feeling in her girlfriend, it was hard not to. The keening intensity in her eyes, the ragged breathing harsh from a fight; Kennedy was openly embracing everything that being a slayer meant. All of it.
"Kennedy wishes to drive?"
"Uh-huh. She's got a whole tank full of energy, ready to roll…" Her back straightening as she felt again the force of that keening intensity slipping and sliding across the curves of her back. Making all those tingles from the earlier magic evaporate to be replaced by bigger tingles. Different tingles. The kind of tingles that needed to be kept firmly in check on the bus marked crowded. "…she *needs* something to do Giles. Let her drive?"
He had no reason to refuse. "Very well. Perhaps she'll be able to make sense of where we are, where we're going."
His lips restrained from humming the opening bars to 'Road to Nowhere', as he steered the bus over to the side and relieved himself from driving duty. He *was* British, that was true, but even his finely tuned sense of dry British humour couldn't force the amusement out past dust coated lips.
At least he had direction now. His aged shoulders finding that steel rod to force straightness as he turned to face his slayer. To do as he always did. Tending her wounds, tending her spirit. Bringing her gently back to that place where he knew her humanity would always shine bright.
His slayer also wasn't concerning herself with the direction that the bus was taking. What did it matter when all of her thoughts were sequestered so firmly behind her? Looking back. Her ears assaulted by the solemn tone of a storytelling Andrew, whispering tales all tall into the ears of the regrouping potentials.
She immediately scratched that thought. Not potentials - not anymore - these girls had realised their potential. Buffy herself had made sure of that. And now she wished she could make sure of the fact that none of them got to hear this drawn out tale of darkness and deceit. This one sided story that always ended in the worst possible way. A story she hated hearing, a story she hated anyone hearing.
"…Faith. Her name alone invokes awe… a set of principles or beliefs on which you are willing to devote your life…" Andrew basked in the attention being given his way. A welcome distraction from the hell they were driving away from. His tone catching grave to mirror the sight of the fallen warrior laying inanimate, and barely breathing, on the seat behind them. Casting his arm out to bring grandeur to each of his statements; "…the dark slayer. A lethal combination of beauty, power and death."
Could Buffy choke on words which weren't hers? And while she was at it, could she please, maybe, just for one moment, manage to tear her eyes away from the one who it was that supposedly invoked such awe. Wicked awesome.
Five by five.
Sound bites ripping chunks from her ass whilst memories crept on up to take a taste too.
"But like so many tragic heroes, Faith was seduced by the lure of the dark side… she wrapped evil around her like a large, evil, Mexican serape."
Was there truth in any of that..? As Buffy lost herself in the memory of pain tainted eyes, and words of betrayal, she found herself questioning again, like so many empty nights of unanswered questions; was it really the lure that seduced the tragic hero..?
Or had the seduction existed only in the touches they ripped from each other, in words always baiting to take a step further. Really, was a lure still considered a lure when it felt like a push?
"…she became a cold blooded killer…"
Didn't we all?
The crack of hands meeting steering wheel broke her thoughts for just a second. The second when she would have sunk deeper to consider the parity of their actions. When the four year merry-go- round of thoughts would have gathered her up and settled her back in for the same familiar ride. There *was* a crack though, and again her eyes dumped the fuzzy, to focus on what lay broken before her.
Not so five by five anymore. Not so anything.
She let the silence of that thought soothe her aching head while Andrew regrouped his words after the welcome interruption. Maybe he would forget the story. Maybe he'd find something else to focus on other than the mysterious form of the mysterious rogue slayer, suddenly lain before them like a gift from the gods. Yeah. She had real high hopes of that happening. Even Dawn had crept closer to him to relive the days when their biggest foe had been one of her firmest friends.
It didn't take him long to regain his stride. He was, after all, a storyteller. "Faith has a history not to be taken lightly. She's a killer. Never forget that…" Buffy's chest tightened as the words sunk down low, as Andrew's eyes drew grave again to the subject of his story time tale; "…you must stay on guard around Faith at all times. Your very lives may depend upon it."
"Oh for goodness sake Andrew! Stop with the melodrama. Go and help Kennedy navigate, go on! Shoo!"
She couldn't even raise a smile at the unexpected words of her watcher. Breaking the silence, not dampening the violence that was twisting tight through her soul. Just looking at her… just seeing her… just…
"Hey Buffster, you're looking a little worse for wear there."
Just letting the words of other friends, not just her watcher now, bring her slowly round to face the front of the bus. Not wanting to, but maybe *needing* to, something to break the cycle of feelings and thoughts which were dragging her down. Hadn't she just been all superhero gal again? Shouldn't she be able to find a smile?
"Sorry, Xander?" she asked. Cos hearing words was one thing, making sense of them was something else.
"You, looking worse for wear."
Her eyes dropped to the shirt which was showing stains of heavy bleeding, could only imagine what the rest of her even began to look like. But then…
Her eyes twisted unwittingly back to their former resting place. Seeing the damage. "All the cool slayers are wearing it. It's a look."
Xander ignored her direction of glances - he wasn't ready to revisit that place yet himself - and instead cast his eyes to Willow. A little concern showing, a little bewilderment obvious in his one good eye as he held onto his concern for Buffy. "Can you do anything to patch her up?"
"No can do buddy. I'm all out of magic. The mojo has left the building."
"Giles..?"
"Xander, I'm sure that Buffy will be fine. As soon as we reach some sign of civilisation, we'll check into a hospital…"
"Wait!" Buffy fought through the flecks of white lighting that flashed pain behind her eyes, to pull herself up further to sitting. "Who said anything about hospital? Maybe some of the girls need attention, but I'm definitely on the good side of okay."
"Buff, if I had a flashlight I could shine it right through you. That's a hard injury to dismiss."
She knew that Xander meant well, but he wasn't making her feel well. She knew that she wasn't dying, at least not today, and all that his concern was doing, was distracting her mind from the places it wished to return to. Her body tensing of its own will as Giles had reached out a tender hand, had placed it upon her shoulder in a sign of caring affection.
"Buffy, I know that this is tough, but we really need to make a plan. Do you have any clue where you wish to head to?"
Could she point a vague finger again?
"Can't you steer the ship?"
"Unfortunately I have no idea where we are. Though…" Giles allowed his own gaze to follow the track of Buffy's. Seeing for himself the evidence of a girl, he had never really thought to see again. Buffy may have long wished for her return to consciousness, but it wasn't a wish he was particularly fond of. "…maybe with our new set of circumstances, it would be prudent to seek Angel's help?"
He noticed the way that her eyes widened to his words, slowly closing as she silently weighed up the forming thoughts of a plan.
"Angel..? Do you think… I don't know?"
"He helped to deal with Faith before. I think it bears consideration."
Deal with Faith? They didn't even know what the deal *was* with Faith. Buffy had no rebuttal though. Could see in her friend's eyes that they thought it was the right way to go. And so she nodded. Barely perceptible, her gaze already leaving them again to keep up her vigil, looking for answers to questions she hadn't yet asked.
What was Faith's deal? Why was she here? Why now?
All held prisoner by her tongue as she instead agreed to the course of direction. Not even bothering to call on the strength needed to argue against a hospital.
"That's settled then. We shall drop the wounded off and then I will seek to make contact with Angel."
Giles new plans giving him something to do. Urging Xander to help him relay the news to the others, discussing with Kennedy the fastest route into LA. The directions they would need to find the Hyperion. It was a relief. The time he had just spent in Buffy's company had not offered the reassurance he had hoped he would find. Rather the opposite. He did not know the exact thoughts that she was torturing herself with, but he knew without doubt that the pain behind his slayer's eyes was nothing to do with the wound that sat untended beneath her shirt. It was everything to do with what she was forcing her eyes to see.
Willow had done the rounds with Xander, checking on the girls again, letting them know that an end to the journey was nearly in sight. Hospital for those that needed it, a hotel and shower for those that could stand. It wasn't the victory party that the saving of the world deserved, and she really *did* want to make a big deal for the newly created slayers, but it was for now, the best that they could do. Plus; with Faith. Willow was glad they were heading towards Angel.
A gladness she tried to subdue as she retook her place next to her battle weary best friend. Sighing at the tiredness that sat so plainly on her face, at the glassy faraway look that still focused on the occupied seat at the back of the bus.
"Hey." She spoke softly, mindful not to make her jump, not to make her crash. "Just between us girls, how are you really holding up?"
"By a thread. You?"
"It's strange… Sunnydale, just gone like that. Anya…"
"Spike."
"Everyone Buffy. It's just so surreal. Do you think we're all trapped in some kind of dream state, we'll wake up in the morning and this will just be the freaky side effect of another freaky spell?"
Did Buffy think that? "No. It's real. It's all gone."
Making Willow fall silent, making her consider every memory left behind, every whisper of old caresses that still blew on the breeze, every landmark that reminded her of who she was. Who she had been.
"And here comes the homesick."
Venturing words not making Buffy turn. But then Willow was getting used to that, still talking even though Buffy's focus was so obviously elsewhere. It led to talk of Faith. It seemed the only relevant subject.
"I think maybe it was me that woke her up Buffy. Just so you know, in case this all goes bad. It was probably my fault."
There. She admitted it.
"Huh?" And look. That turned them eyes for a moment, brought them back round to front. "Did I miss something?"
"No, no missing. Just, the spell. You know, releasing all that power, awakening slayers everywhere…"
"What does Giles say?"
"I haven't, to Giles, yet. I thought, with the way… you seem mighty uh… interested in Faith."
Oh Goddess. That *really* brought the eyes back around quick.
"It's not interest Wills, it's… concern. I wouldn't be a good slayer if I saved the world, and then Faith woke up and massacred you all on this bus, would I?"
"No?"
"No. Not of the good. I'm just being concerned. I'm watching her."
And if this was watching, Willow wanted a new definition for obsessive staring, cos that was what she had been seeing. "You want me to help *watch* for awhile?"
"So you don't think it means anything?"
Willow caught the curveball, tossed it up in the air and threw it right back. "Do you want it to?"
"Maybe. I thought I had given up on it. Then, when I realised, when the town went tumbling down…" she looked at Faith again. Right before her. Not buried. Not lost. "…she was everything I was thinking about having to lose."
"And then she was there. Wow. I guess, if I was you, maybe I'd be all looking for the meaning. I'm not you though Buffy, and I'm telling you, the spell; it's all to blame."
Or to thank? Buffy wasn't quite sure on that one just yet. She thought she was sure, she thought she felt gratitude growing beneath the scars of the battle, but she was wholly too tired to tell. Faith's hollow cheeks, the faint, but steady, rise and fall of her chest, just the fact that she was here. That was all Buffy was really sure of.
"I was wondering if it wasn't a second chance. I lose everything, but I get back Faith. You sure it's just a spell thing?"
"Mostly, yeah." Willow watched as Buffy deflated a little more into her chair. Leaning her head back, rotating her shoulders. "But it could mean a second chance too! I mean, if she doesn't wanna do the massacre thing."
"That's just it though Will. I *know* she's gonna wanna do the massacre thing. She's still Faith. And she's still there." Buffy's hand raised now in nothing like vague, gesturing towards Faith, imploring Willow to see, to understand. "I did that to her. That's all that she knows."
And whoa, that was just a little bit scary for Willow's liking. She had long, long ago forgotten the feel of cold steel against her neck, the feel of fear that Faith could generate with one penetrative glance, one growled out word of a threat. She had forgotten, she had forgiven. So easy to take the moral high ground and forgive the shell of a body that lie surrounded by machines. No growls and looks, just beeps and nothing.
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here - a limb I would really like to keep attached to my body - and maybe suggest the introduction of restraints. Just… just in case?"
Faith didn't look like she was waking anytime this century, but Willow was already realising that some of her memories would be following her from Sunnydale. And not just the happy ones.
"No Wills. No restraints."
"But Buffy…"
"But no. She's weak. And I don't mean, me weak; lost a little blood and my outfits heading to Goodwill, weak. I mean properly weak."
"And slayer healing, have you forgotten about that?"
"Not a chance." Buffy's fingers motioned to her wound again, her insides already straining to start the healing process, her body screaming out for rest so as it could start to do its job. "But we're talking four years Will. Just… just look at her."
Buffy implored again, and so Willow turned to see. Witnessing nothing but the faint outline of the girl they used to know. Used to fear. "I see Buffy, I do. But if she wakes up and tries to kill me, I am not playing nice."
"I understand that. Funnily enough..? Don't think killing *you* is gonna be top of her agenda."
"That makes me feel better."
"Yeah. Fuzzy feelings are the best."
They shared a slight smile. The kind of smile that says, how the heck did we get to crisis time again already? But then, crisis did seem to have a nasty habit of following them around.
When Kennedy called out that they were about to hit the city, Willow pulled herself up and around, ready to go join her girlfriend, ready to put plans into action. She just hoped, really hoped, that crisis wouldn't follow them into LA. Maybe Buffy was wrong, maybe Faith would wake up all full of repentance and good intentions. Something she would believe only when her memory faded, the one where she saw Faith, just a few hours ago, swinging a rage filled punch at her friend.
It made her sigh and turn again, made her offer some final words to Buffy's unhearing ears.
"If she kills you, then I'm not playing nice either!"
Resolute popping up, only to be softened by a Willow smile. Surprised that Buffy had heard her words, surprised that she found a reply.
"She won't kill me. She'll try, but she won't."
"How do you know?"
But Buffy had no reply to that one. Just a shrug of shoulders that held no enlightenment. Her thoughts were becoming so confused, twisting up inside her head, mixing with hope, with fear, every memory laid out broken before her, and her unable to look away.
*She* did that. Had done that.
And, as always, the thought made her feel like the monster she had tried to slay. Was it the spell that awoke her? Was it really a second chance, an opportunity to redo the past?
Or was it simply evil's way of issuing payback. Not a gift from above, but a gift from below.
She stared. She watched. She waited. Accepting that she wouldn't know anything, she wouldn't have the first damn clue, until Faith woke up. Again.
Author's Notes: I promise I'm gonna wake Faith up, and keep her awake, real soon.
Author's Notes 2: I liked this. Now I don't know. Not an interesting note at all, but it sure bugs the shit outta me. Is good to share that kinda stuff.
Dedication: To ALL DJ's with hot asses ;o)
Checking into the hospital had been an easy exercise and passed without incident. None of the wounded particularly wanted to be there, so gloomy faces met Giles' instructions, but not one of them could argue that they didn't *need* to be there. They were all new to this, they didn't realise the extent of the power they had so recently inherited, so they didn't know that the wounds which for now looked deep and morbid, were really not much more than scratches when inflicted upon a slayer. Buffy knew, of course, but in her mind, if she had to be there, then they definitely had to be there; and Giles was more than insistent that she be there.
In the end it had been an argument he didn't need to make. Buffy had not spent the last few hours guarding Faith with everything she had left, to then let her pass from her gaze without needing to follow. Not a chance. So she had offered the tightly clipped smile, allowed herself to be herded like cattle through the sliding doors of LA County Hospital, and then she had taken charge of making sure that her gaze remained unobstructed.
Quite a mean feat when faced with doctors wishing to know what the heck had happened; was there an accident, should the police be called, had they been attacked..? Her head nodding vague, shaking vaguer. It led to outlandish stories of camping trips, bear attacks, car accidents, anything and everything which could help to explain the strange array of wounds which sat upon each of the injured girls. Luckily, and also kinda crazily, the stories were readily accepted; this was LA, most stories were accepted here. What wasn't expected was the commotion Buffy caused when she tried to explain Faith;
"She was in a coma, then she wasn't… and now…"
"Excuse me, she was in a coma?"
"Right, four years worth of coma. She woke up this morning, and then she collapsed…"
"She collapsed? She was… walking? After a four year coma?"
Buffy had assumed that the truth was the best way to go with Faith. She didn't have a clue, not even the start of clues, as to what kind of attention the girl needed, and she was not ready to take chances. Unfortunately, even in LA, this truth was being questioned.
"Uh… sure. She's real strong, ya know, couldn't wait to be up on her feet again."
"And she was on this camping trip, with the rest of you?"
Okay. A little harder to explain. "Sure! You know what they say, gotta keep the sleeping mind stimulated! We thought it might help to wake her up, I guess we thought right."
"Right."
The doctor was beyond bemused. He often got to see the weird and wonderful while working at this hospital, but he couldn't recall a day when he'd had so many strange cases to deal with all at once. This latest one; this really sealed the deal. A coma patient who got up and walked after four years of sleeping. No way. Didn't happen.
It was those kind of thoughts which had him recommend a private room for the dark haired girl, somewhere that they could observe exactly what was going on with her, away from the general population of the rest of the hospital. Buffy would never allow that.
She *hadn't* allowed that. The tone of her quiet, yet intensely hard voice, making the doctor absolutely sure that she would be sharing the same room. There was no telling what would happen if Faith awoke again to find herself alone. Lost. Buffy would stay with her, she would watch over her, and when the time came and Faith awoke, she would be waiting there to greet her.
Buffy understood what it was like to be shoved back into a world that you didn't understand, all alone and afraid. And regardless of anything, of everything, she would do what she could to prevent Faith from experiencing that torment again.
Willow had watched the fraught exchange between doctor and patient, they all had, yet not one of them had found a place where they had felt comfortable to intervene. She had wanted to, just maybe, drag Buffy aside and explain to her that Faith was not her albatross, she didn't have to hang her quite so heavily from around her neck. But there would have been no point; not only would an ancient mariner's rime, be lost on Buffy, but also, Willow had seen the steel. Slayer steel. Slayer power. Slayer, slayer, slayer. Forgetting savage wounds that ripped through her body, just remembering the creep she could send down necks, as eyes that determined stared out her demands. Oh - Willow had felt sorry for the doctor then, had almost wanted to gently pat him on the arm afterwards and assure him that he hadn't just been crushed by the will of a slight and wounded girl, he had, in fact, been crushed by a slayer.
Yeah. She figured out real quick that that little speech wouldn't help any, so she had kept it to herself, offered different words to different others instead. Little pep talks for all of the patients, promises that they only had to stay one night, that tomorrow they would be right as rain, ready to rumble, ready to resume the rest of their lives.
And then she had reached the room where two slayers lie in private seclusion. Not sure if she had to knock, not sure what she thought she was invading. It *did* feel like invasion though, like she was interrupting something she didn't understand. Something she had never wanted to understand.
A sigh chasing away them kind of memories, as her hand did indeed lift to ask entry, her little tap immediately answered by Buffy's little voice. Tired again now that she had won another battle, that she had assured her eyes that they still had a job to do, they weren't being rested yet.
"Nice digs Buffy, who did ya have to threaten to get this place?"
"Funny. I didn't threaten him, I asked, real nice, I even smiled… did you see the smile?"
"Yeah, very… friendly." Willow walked her way inside the room, taking in the simplicity, noting Faith over by the window, Buffy taking the spot nearest the door. "So, what did they say?"
Blank looks. Yet Willow was sure she had seen the doctors visit already, had waited and watched outside for the doctors to leave again. "The doctors Buff, what did they say?"
"Oh, of course. I got stitches, matching, back and front. You wanna see?"
Buffy lifted her top gingerly to show Willow a scar which would last maybe a few days. Her body was strong, her body was powerful, there would be no scars leaving staining marks across her abdomen. For now though, it was a scar that made Willow gasp a little, step forwards to admire the matching sides and matching stitches. "What about… inside, is it, did they..?"
"No. I already glued myself back together in there, I guess. Just these, some in my shoulder. No big."
Right. No big. "And…" Her eyes taking in the other no big. "…what did they say about coma girl?"
"Faith."
"Yeah. Faith."
The wary inflection that wrapped itself around the girl's name, did not go unmissed by Buffy. She expected it of course, half of her believed that she also should be feeling more fear at the reappearance of Faith, but she didn't, and so it made it hard to assuage the fears of others. How could any of them fear Faith when she was just so obviously broken?
"They don't know anything Wills, they don't believe she was in a coma, they don't believe she woke up from a coma… I think they want to treat her for dehydration, maybe malnourishment… ask Giles. He was in here."
"So they think she's gonna be better?"
"Like I said; ask Giles. I don't think they know anything until she wakes up."
Willow had figured as much, none of them really knowing anything until Faith woke up. She waited now, as Buffy offered that little shrug, as she pulled herself up on her bed and made to settle down with eyes still watching, and she thought again of the albatross. The signs of guilt, of penance, that were wrapping the weight of the world around her friend's shoulders yet again. It hurt.
"Buffy?" she spoke as she approached the bed, smiling softly as room was made for her to sit. "You don't have to do this to yourself, you don't… it isn't like you owe her anything." She kept her eyes on Buffy, not looking at Faith, easier to speak about her, when she didn't remind herself that she was right there in the room. Not six feet away. Not six feet under. "You know if she'd had the chance, she would've done the same to you. Worse to you."
"Would she?"
Okay. This was crazy. Willow could understand - she *knew* - Buffy felt bad about stabbing Faith. Yadda-yadda-yadda. But this, whatever it was, like some kind of crazy denial of what Faith was, who she had been; it wasn't good. It was the opposite of good. It was bad.
"You *know* she would have! What about Xander, huh? What about me..?"
"You're both still here though, Wills."
"Yes! But no thanks to Faith. She was a killer Buffy, she was bad. You know that, I know you know that."
The memories which frazzled across the tired mind of Buffy, were assuring her that she knew that Willow knew that she knew that… okay, so she wasn't sure of what she was knowing, but the memories sure felt like pain. Faith's desire to hurt her, only matched by one other desire, and that desire was nothing but fuel to the first. And all of it spelt pain.
A pain which reverberated and tore rips through her conscience, which forced her eyes to see the mess that she had made, all laid out in front of her. Willow chose not to look. Buffy had no choice. "Maybe it's different now."
"And maybe it's not. You said yourself Buffy, she's still there, she's gonna still want her pound of flesh."
Could she cut through the un-pleasantries and just offer up the appropriate pound, Buffy wondered. Would that appease Faith's plaintive plea for payback? Would that level out the scales of justice to even?
If someone had offered her the tools, she maybe would have done it right then. Not eager to dice and slice, especially not her own flesh, but something so very far past eager to have answers. Something to stop her mind from whirling, from trying to figure out what the hell was happening, and more importantly, what the hell was going to happen.
"We just… look, can't we at least wait till she wakes up, to get in line and condemn her? I know there's gonna be issues, but let me at least fool myself for five minutes that this might possibly just work out."
Buffy's eyes didn't flash steel at Willow, she didn't try and strong arm her into accepting her will, she just showed her tiredness, her confusion, a sad smile which spoke of how much she wanted to believe that it could all work out okay.
"I'm just scared Buffy. You can't blame me for being scared."
"You're a big bad Wicca, and you're scared of that?" Her arm raised towards Faith, towards the machine monitoring her heart which beeped out that same monotonous tune of existence. "You faced The First evil, and now you're scared of Faith?"
"No. Not quite. It's more like, scared, for you. I know how she gets under your skin Buffy, I remember how she got under your skin, and I prefer you all, ya know, own skin under. And with you being all…"
"Being all what?"
Uh? Willow wanted to say, interested in Faith, again, but that didn't cover it, didn't say what she really wanted to say. Their former home may have thrived upon ignorance and denial, but deep down, Willow had read the signs. Not liked the directions, but she *had* read the signs.
"Affected..?" Did that sound right? "Yeah. Affected by Faith… I just worry you're gonna get caught out. Your guard isn't up."
"Maybe I'm sick of guards right now. Can't I just be guard free gal for a bit?" It sounded so much easier. Buffy didn't think she had the strength for guards right now. The day had been like a never ending endurance test, and she was sure her endurance was soon to be found wanting. Also… "And I'm not affected by Faith, I'm affected by the things we did to each other, the things that she made me do…"
"And the difference is?"
"There's a difference."
A thin line. A fine line. Not letting herself read between the lines.
"Sure. A real big difference."
Willow let it go. There wasn't anything to gain from this conversation now, there was nothing that she could do to release Buffy from her burden. Maybe it would change when Faith woke up, when she showed her true colours, good or bad. Until then this was a pointless exercise, just seeking to exhaust her friend more, rather than making her see sense.
She decided to do the only thing that did make sense. Finally assuring her own exhausted mind that rest was soon to be forthcoming. She needed to rest. She needed to replenish her own waning power. Because as sure as she wasn't about all that was yet to pass, she was more than sure that she would be needing her power.
"I'm gonna head on out with the others, go find Angel, give him the good news. Shower, change, rest. Will you be okay till I get back?"
"Huh?" Already gone. Already back inside the gaze that never wavered. "Yeah. Go. I'll be fine."
Barely looking up to find a wave as Willow had left the room. Every moment pausing, wondering, waiting… would this be the moment when she woke up?
Against the odds, she had fought the need for sleep for the longest time. Her eyes red and pained with the effort of staying wrenched open, her whole body cramping with the demand to seek rest. It was inevitable that she would fall. A blink, which turned into a moment of peace, which turned into the setting for a dreamscape. Asleep. At last.
Her breathing much deeper than the girl beside her, inherent steadiness, inherent strength. But the eyes which sought to rest behind her eyelids, they were becoming just as unsettled. Little flickers at first, the tell tale sign that dream sleep is approaching, that the real world is slowly fading.
For Buffy it faded first, her mind not swirling in the same abyss as Faith's, able to pick a point, a place that offered her the peace she needed after enduring all that had been tormenting her. Not sure if she had summoned Faith there, knowing that she wouldn't know how to, if she was asked to, yet also knowing her thoughts had been trapped only in Faith; the same thoughts which had led her to here.
The white light not harsh and harmful, not making her shield her eyes in pain, but soft light, warm light, infusing her soul, offering her refuge and sanctuary. Buffy knew where she had brought them to; this was heaven. Her heaven.
The bed which had held her rest all those months, still waiting, her place still assured, and she headed that way now, unable not to reach out and touch. Smiling at the fresh sheets her mind had produced, sat off to the side, waiting to be laid upon the bed.
"Damn. I know we're in *your* head this time."
The first words Buffy had heard, the first time those tones had tickled her senses in years. Sure, there had been the timid taunts outside of the crumbling school, but none of those words held Faith. They were too broken. No, this was Faith. Buffy's eyes raising from the bed to take a look at the one who had been occupying her mind.
"You're fixed." The words streaming as if on playback. No thought to say them, just the compelling need to release the sound.
"Yeah. I'm a tough cookie."
Buffy smiled at that. A look of pure pleasure. Her hands reaching out to pick up the sheets, beginning the task of making her bed. Paving the way towards rest. "Help me?"
"I never did know how." Yet Faith was already moving. Her own head not finding the confusion of the dream, just accepting the space, the room, something comforting in her soul. Her hands moving as if making the bed with Buffy was the most natural thing in the world, timeless, smoothing over sheets, a careful placing of pillows. "Sure is a big bed for a solitary hero."
"One girl in all the world. One girl all alone."
"That's what they say."
Their eyes meeting then, across the bed. Not scared, not fearful, no harrowing look of yesteryears resentful envy, no boasting to the other of the pain they could inflict. They met in peace. The patience taken to truly understand. To see past the spills of old wrongdoings, to settle in a look of truth which eased out across the dreamscape.
Buffy felt it to her core. She felt the hope and the belief, and she felt a spirit able to endure anything. It compelled more of her words. More of the kind she didn't think to say, that were just said.
"That's only because they don't know about the comics by the bedside."
Faith's smile raising as much as hers. "We done here?"
"Just pass my comforter?" The last thing to make it right. Her hand reaching out to take the offering from Faith, no idea how it got here or why, just waiting for delivery. Ignoring that feeling that was creeping slow up her spine… a crawling…
"You not grown out of this yet?"
Expecting to look down and see Mr Gordo. Not the thing that was sitting cold and vengeful in Faith's hand. Shining in the light that was fading fast from comfort, that was chasing her already, even though she remained standing still.
"Faith..?"
Her voice breaking now, eyes drawn to the bed as it grew mind numbingly cold, as the sheets lay in tatters, as everything was broken again.
"It's okay." And Faith. Not knowing. Not knowing how this world was twisting already to bring all of her demons crashing back round to face her. Foolish of Buffy to think she could ensconce them safe in heaven when so much of Faith resided in hell.
Her eyes were still smiling as they looked toward Buffy, almost done now. Not knowing why the other's green eyes seemed to be growing darker with each breath of time, still advancing towards her, determined to give her the comfort she requested. Finally, almost begrudgingly, looking down, looking to see exactly what it was that she was offering;
"Even I know that's a fucked up metaphor for comfort, B."
And with those words, the world came crashing down. Her distaste at seeing the knife, only matched by her fear at feeling it, her wound festering and reopening, blood spilling down upon the pureness of the white sheets to open up a pit to hell. Swallowing her instantly, slipping and sliding down the sides, her hands clawing to find purchase, to drag herself back up.
A hand. A grasp. Clutching, grabbing…
Words again.
"I won't let you fall… I'm pulling you up…"
Buffy's voice finding desperate, trapped, not understanding what went wrong, how they got here. Why they left there. She knew it had changed though, she knew that they were in Faith's head now, she knew that this much pain could never be all hers. She pulled harder, could feel herself slipping, realising that Faith was struggling against her, not with her.
"Don't sugar coat the truth B, you know I'm pulling you down."
Faith didn't know where the venom had come from, but now that it was back she held it close to her heart, feeding the memories, understanding the pain. Her hand a vice around Buffy's as she invited her down to hell.
Her breaths fought to stay in her body the harder that she ran, legs pumping, heart racing. She could feel the hunter behind her, closing in on her. Payback. Revenge. Buffy. The mirrored reflection of every bad act, the total opposite of all she ever was. Chasing her down, murder in mind.
It made Faith push harder, ducking between gravestones which had always felt like home, trying to outrun the past, the truth which pursued her like ghosts in the night.
It was different here, it wasn't about making peace; it was about the hurt and the pain. The other side to the coin. Nothing mattering except the life which had always been hers.
"You think you can escape what you've done?"
Fuck. Her voice. Echoing out all around her. Not Buffy soft, but slayer hard. Determined. Making Faith's eyes dart in every direction, wanting to plead with anyone for an escape, a way out of this, this endless cycle of agony.
"The blood keeps on flowing Faith…"
Her hands covered, dripping crimson, her clothes covered, the gash across her top opening with every encumbered step.
"…The pain keeps on growing Faith."
God. Singsonging it down into her soul. Her knees weak, breaking beneath her, delivering her body to the earth. Laying prone and unprotected as Buffy moved closer to her side, as she lifted up her hand in a final pause.
"What, ya don't wanna play with the big pretty knife?"
"Please…"
Every bad feeling crawling over her, crawling inside of her. Itching. Making her skin burn with the need to rip it free, to uncover herself, to destroy herself… "Please?"
"I thought you liked playing with knives, F?"
Trying to inch back as the slayer leant over her, the tip of the knife dragging pretty patterns slow across her skin, making tingles of fear slide free with the blood. All of it caressing her, heaven sent, hell sent, Buffy sent. Remembered caresses, forgotten ones…
The final one.
"Welcome back Faith."
Plunging deep. Killing her.
The machine by Faith's bed was beeping in frantic urgency, hitting every high note, calling forth help. Designed for this purpose, to signal emergencies, to scream loud when a patients heart sailed off through the roof. Screaming now. No monotony. Until there was silence.
Flatline. Finished.
The wires ripped from Faith's body as she had ripped herself from sleep. Her whole body was on fire with the memory of the dream, a shared dream? She remembered Buffy there, she remembered the look in her eyes… not the bed, god, the bed was so far from the fear which encased each of her limbs. Eyes darting, eyes fixing, eyes finding their pain.
"Buffy."
Knowing if she could just, if that voice, if she could just end it now…
Her gaze flitting round not for hope of escape, but to find a weapon, anything, immediately drawn to the chair by Buffy's bedside. Knowing how much damage she could inflict before the other girl awoke… if she could just…
Her legs flirting with falling, but holding her firm, not encased in a gown this time, but still wrapped in the denim. She felt stronger. She felt…
A sigh from the sleeping caused her to stop. A sound. She couldn't stop. She had to stop *this*! The fear, all of it, the confusion, no fucking clue anymore as to which god damn way was up, what was down, who the fucking hell she even was anymore.
She lifted the chair high above her head, not thinking, not even trying to enact payback, or revenge. She couldn't think of that now… she just had to stop the fear, the agony of this endless pursuit through hell…
A door crashing back, a witch with wide eyes.
"I knew it!"
The alarms that Faith's heart machine had set off at the nurses station had alerted a newly returned Willow to the idea of danger; and she had known, just known that crisis had found them again. Running down the hall to Buffy's room, the door sent crashing open, and Faith. Stood, same snarl, same twisted sneer residing on her face.
She didn't even get the chance to say 'Red', to annoy Willow with an over friendly, sadistically sarcastic, greeting. Because Red had already taken her down. The mojo returned, the words whispered, and Faith, trapped yet again in a sleep that was neither natural, nor peaceful.
Dedicated: To the Wind Beneath My Wings. Mwa ha ha ha ha.
The four Scoobies had stood in silence while contemplating the small screen which showed them Faith. A grainy picture, a TV show, nothing which felt quite real. No sound to be heard, because she was making no sound. No movement to be seen, because she remained completely still. How they had left her.
Xander had been the one to switch on the monitoring equipment. His curiosity leading him to press the button, breaking through the discussion of the hospital escape, through Giles' quiet rebuke at Willow's easy use of magic.
"It was just a little mind bending Giles! No worse than in Sunnydale, no different than pretending to be agents for Interpol!"
"That's beside the point. You mustn't get used to relying on magic again, you know how…"
"Buffy, tell him!"
Oh yes. Xander had removed his gaze from the unwelcome confrontation in front of him, to look for welcome distractions behind him. Drawn to the small TV, fingers moving idly to see what was on.
"Uh… guys?"
Not sure at first. His mind not quite believing that not only did Angel have a cage in his basement, he also had that cage wired up to CCTV. It fed him images disturbing… thoughts he wasn't comfortable thinking. "Seriously, guys, what's this?"
Invoking the silence as they had turned to see. As they had witnessed. Here she was. There she was. Welcome Faith.
"Oh. They still have the cameras!"
"You knew about the cameras! Why are there cameras?!"
Xander's voice was unwittingly pleading. His new thoughts much less comfortable than even his previous thoughts. He didn't want Willow playing Mistress of the Dungeon with Angel. He refused to believe it. "Will..?"
Imploring that she put him out of his misery.
"They had cameras to watch Angelus. From before. I forgot all about them, I guess they might come in handy now though."
Willow *had* forgotten about them. Her recent visit to re-ensoul Angel had been so fleeting, due to commitments in Sunnydale, that paying great attention to the details surrounding her, hadn't been paramount. She remembered now though. Looking at the fallen form of the fallen slayer on that same grainy screen. Maybe wishing that it would be as easy to tame all the darkness on show this time around.
"Any idea when she'll be joining us Wills?" Xander leant closer to the screen, flicking at the image of Faith, absently wondering if it would wake her. "Did you set a specific time?"
"I'm not an alarm clock."
"Even still, I'm assuming you set some kind of parameter on the spell that you used?"
The displeasure was evident in Giles' tone, in the stern gaze that met Willow's resolute one. He didn't mean to seem so reproachful, he knew that she was doing what had to be done to ensure they had managed to leave the hospital unchallenged, but he couldn't suffocate the worry that encased him whenever he thought of Willow with such power. He had worked so hard with her to learn the balance, he had great faith and trust in her, yet still he worried like an over protective father whenever she touched that source. He couldn't help himself.
"What spell was it?" He could soften the tone though. He could swap reproachful for concern. Letting his eyes wrinkle with a smile so that she knew he was just being him.
She wouldn't have it any other way. "An old Druid incantation, I found it in one of your books! I've been waiting forever to try that one out…"
Buffy stayed staring at the screen in front of them, the only member of the gang not to be caring about which spell it was that Willow had used. There was a sleep spell, she knew that much, she had even stood by Willow's side as she had *explained* to the nurses that she was Faith's doctor, that she had to move her to a more private facility. What did it matter the origin of the power..? Especially when Buffy was still caught up in the shock of coming round from *that* dream and learning what she had missed.
Faith woke up. And she hadn't greeted her.
Just one more thing to add to the list of things that she had always meant to do in regards to Faith. One more thing to fall by the wayside. There were so many of these things that she couldn't even think to name them all. She knew where to begin; she knew better about friendship now, she knew better about how to offer that friendship. She knew better about responsibility. Not just responsibility for actions, but responsibility for feelings. For forcing action.
"How long..?" Deciding she was better off not knowing too much more. Better off focusing on the now. How she felt now.
"It's not specific, but it's not very strong either."
So how was she feeling now?
"Is she… can she dream?"
Willow rested her eyes on a friend that did not look rested. Her curiosity obvious in the tone of her voice, gently questioning. "Dreams? Why the interest?"
Silence. More staring.
"Buffy?"
But she couldn't help it. She couldn't stop those dreams from invading her system. The first so peace packed with heaven sent perfection, the second so torturously terrifying as to assure her that hell truly existed, and with demons so much more fierce than even the First Evil could ever hope to produce.
Existing in that hell, existing in the body that had so joyously pursued Faith; it horrified her. Feeling the pain, all of that fear, remembering the way that she had played with that. And she knew. She realised. She was Faith's demon.
She felt sick. She felt guilt.
The hand to the arm shocked her back to face front, refocusing a gaze onto Xander's one good eye, finding her voice for all of them. "There was a dream… in the hospital. We shared a dream."
"Hey, you never said!"
"Sorry Will, slipped my mind." Yep. Slipped her mind to drip down into her soul. So much more damage it could do there.
"Was this a slayer dream Buffy, do you remember details?"
Details? Everyone of them.
"Vague. Hell's fire. Eternal torment. Nothing specific."
She hoped that had covered it, until Giles countered her vague. "Still, it throws up certain pertinent questions. This could be Faith's way of trying to re-establish a connection…"
"And I thought the chair was her way of trying to re-establish a connection. My bad."
"Will…"
"No Buffy. I told you, if she tries the funny, I don't play nice."
Giles wanted to reduce the slump that still sat so obvious in the un- straight shoulders of his slayer. Derailing the move to an argument over Faith. Bringing it back to the details, the safe bits. "Did it feel like you were summoned there, was it similar to before…"
"I… she…" Buffy not wanting to give details. Unwilling to share the start of the dreamscape, to talk about smoothing pillows and meeting gazes, about comics by the bedside. "…we were just there."
"And it was… unpleasant in its nature?"
The feeling still ripping a void through her core, emptying out the good stuff to settle on the bad. Fists that clenched to hold tight to a knife, hands that thrust in unwelcome reminder of taking life. Human life. Faith's life.
It was too much. "It was unpleasant. Can we move on now?"
Slayer steel. Slayer power. No one willing to disagree.
"When's Angel gonna be here." A pause. Buffy's eyes relaxing to settle on Giles, to reach a safe subject. "Where *is* Angel."
Not having a clue.
"Right." Her watcher the man with the uneasy answers. "It seems there's been a certain change in Angel's circumstances since we spoke to him last."
"I spoke to him in a time frame of hours ago, how much can have changed?"
For now she smiled a little.
"I… it seems that perhaps he didn't offer you all of the information when he visited. I assume he didn't give you the origin of the amulet?"
The smile dampening of its own will. A shake of the head.
"I'm not sure of the details completely, I assume that Angel will wish to fill you in on…"
"Giles, can we please cut the crap?"
Again Xander was wanting to pull his gaze away from the unwelcome confrontation. From the tension flowing so fast between slayer and watcher. There was no chance though. He had heard the tale from Angel's mouth, had sat back stunned on his haunches as Giles had conversed in short depth about all that had occurred. He blurted it out without thought to soften the blow. "Angel's gone all Senator Palpatine."
"He's having palpitations?"
Rendering Buffy too confused to wonder if that was even possible.
"More like, the bringer of order and justice, turned head of an evil empire. Star Wars 101... Tell me you understand?"
"Giles?" She watched him and waited. Not smiling through the glasses routine, nothing familiar easing the fear of the unfamiliar that arose with Xander's words. "Translate?"
"It's, well, it pains me to say it Buffy, but it's remarkably like Xander just stated. For some reason, Angel Investigations is moving to Wolfram and Hart…"
"Is this a joke?"
"No, unfortunately there appears to be little reason for cheer. You really need to speak to Angel."
"Yeah. You're right. I do." One more thing. Join the list. Take a number. Roll up. Show starts. And the ride just never stops. "I'll be with Faith."
She didn't care for the looks, or the glances, or the Willow words which called her softly back. What was the point in making no sense upstairs, when she could make so much less sense down below?
Faith wouldn't wake alone again. Faith wouldn't attack her again.
Faith was behind bars.
It was cold down here in the basement, with nothing but the memories to keep her company. No other's shoulders to lean her weight upon, because no one else could even begin to understand what it was that she was going through. Heck, Buffy herself barely had a clue what she was going through. Why she was feeling like this.
She could not deny to herself that she had often thought of Faith over the last four years; a different Faith, the kind of Faith that might have existed if things had been different. But even so, she still knew that this level of, what… interest? Concern? Affectedness..?
Was affectedness a word? Was it the right word? Affection..?
Affect. She *knew* that this affect was all wrong.
This absolute determined need to watch over the sleeping Faith, this unquenchable thirst to have all of her words flowing fast down a path that sounded like defence.
Buffy was not stupid. Even with one thousand, four hundred and fifty nine days to smother her righteousness with a deep sense of guilt, she still understood that not everything was defendable. Not everything that Faith had done could be boiled down and softened by cause and effect. Something's just were.
And sometimes she still thought of the Faith that had become. Her memory twisting in the same way that Faith's sneer had twisted so tight on her face, burning with contempt, every angle covered by the reminder of the pain. Oh yes. Because nothing had cut deeper than that first sight of betrayal, the first time Faith had spat in the face of every single one of the principles that Buffy held dear. Good over evil. Such a hard line to tow?
All of those days, all of those nights, and Buffy still couldn't find a defence for that one. Couldn't excuse the inexcusable. No matter the condemnation she had welcomed into her heart for the outcome, her spirit refused outright to accept that lures or pushes, any motivation, could deserve action as hurtful and soul destroying as betrayal.
They were the Chosen Two. And that was the kind of partnership that was made not to be broken.
That Faith *had* broken. Right..?
A wry smile settled on her lips as she pulled herself up from the stairs. She had argued this around in her head so many times, that she was sure the devil's advocate had set up shop there. One minute she could put everything down to the lure, the next she could put everything down to the push… and right now she just wanted to put everything down.
For a moment then, as Faith's hollow breath's echoed all around her, she had convinced herself that the righteous side was winning the argument; it often did. Only then her eyes had settled again on a broken form and her own breathing had become hollow, the wry smile had settled. No side was winning the argument, except for the side which felt so god damn affected.
And was that every side?
And could she please stop thinking and concentrate! Not caring that concentrating often led to thinking, just caring that she wanted to have something to say when Faith awoke. Something non-threatening, yet something which said so much more than Hello. Welcome back. Oh, and by the way..? You were gone for four years.
It drove the smile down in favour of a frown, because she knew better that there was no easy way of phrasing that little piece of information. It sounded pretty whack to her own ears, and she had been here for the whole of the four years. Not counting when she wasn't here. And that was even more whack. God. If her head span much quicker she could call herself a whack job. A whacko. Wanting not much more than to whack her head hard against the nearest surface of resistance.
She focused her eyes and realised that that would be the bars of the cage, the bars she had seemingly, without thought, wrapped her hands hard around. Testing the strength. Wondering if Willow's extra bonds of magic would keep the might of a pissed slayer firmly locked inside. They felt strong enough to her hands, but then, she wasn't pissed. She was just a whack job.
A thought which kept the circles mapped out as her feet paced the claustrophobic space of the basement. Gaze flicking furtively up to the camera, before falling once more upon the still form of Faith. Each step wondering if the bars were strong enough to keep out a slayer who was spiralling close to madness.
She hated patience. She hated this waiting. She wanted actions, reactions, cause and effect. She wanted answers.
She wanted Faith to defend the indefensible. To take the betrayal and make it hurt less, to assure that it was never her heart that had turned so traitorous, that it had never run that deep. A mistake. A hiccup. Something like regret.
It felt different this time. She wasn't being pursued from sleep with rips to her skin and words coated in revenge, she was being lifted slowly… like floating. An effervescent feeling which bubbled along her limbs in a kind of psychedelic bout of pins and needles. If she knew her mind she'd consider it kinda trippy; even in her non knowing state of mind, she felt something like a smile lift the corners of her mouth. It felt good. It felt odd.
Her tongue tracing the lifting lips and thinking of strawberries. Wondering absently if the cat had got the cream.
"Faith..?"
A whisper settling in her ears to provide a soundtrack to an awakening. Her awakening. Letting the fizz tickle her arms and legs into stretching, letting her body succumb to the need to move. To exist.
"Faith..?" Lips lifting further, arms wanting to reach out and find the comfort in that voice. "Are you awake..?"
Maybe offer comfort to the hesitancy in the tone.
Comfort?
And her eyes slammed open on the memory.
'Even I know that's a fucked up metaphor for comfort, B.'
The same words sent to send the world crashing down.
She remembered the violence as her body twisted to find the right way up, not caring if muscles still screamed out resistance, just needing the protection of the right direction, needing to face her. To find her. Defend and attack.
"Faith, wait, it's okay… I'm not gonna… it isn't…" Eyes finding sight through the obstruction of bars, little strips which tore at the image of Buffy, words which tore at something even more sacred, which ripped right through to her core. "…just relax. Just… deep breaths."
Damn fucking right deep breaths! The deepest. Whole lungfuls which fed the hate she kept close, inflating her heart with all she remembered, all she'd forgot.
"You."
Stated with venom. With lips that had settled into something so much scarier than a smile, a leering perversity which crawled across Buffy's skin in ways which even the meanest of vamps could never hope to reproduce. It erased all thoughts, all un-stated arguments which cited defence. It left only feelings.
Buffy's feet pinned now as she withered under the penetrating force of Faith's wicked glare. So much hate. Leading her to wonder if a gaze that sharp could rip holes through her skin.
Andrew watched the screen with barely contained excitement, his mind already writing the script, creating a turn of phrase;
Two warriors, one arena. Iron bars the only thing separating the power wielded for both the dark and the light…
He leant closer to hear the words, his shoulders hunching, a frown appearing as he heard only silence. His fingers moving to find sound, to offer a voice to the fantasies which slid through his mind.
"Whatcha doing Andrew..?"
Willow's lilting tones making him jump fast from his seat, making him look guiltily towards the door to the office which housed Mr Giles and the vampire. "I was just watching. Mr Giles told me to watch." He tried to return the easy smile that the witch was offering him, tried to act surprised as he noticed a frown creasing her features as she looked towards the screen. "Oh! Wow… looks like she woke up. Mr Giles..?!"
His whining voice letting Willow know that this wasn't such a sudden event.
"How long?"
"She… uh…" Andrew looked pleadingly towards the office again. "Mr Giles..?!"
"Andrew, don't make me threaten you with amphibian features. How long has she been awake?"
The face of the irritated watcher broke through any threat, the door opening to see what the distraction was. What was so pressing to break through his deep discussion with Angel; He wanted to speak to Buffy, Giles did not think that now was the right time. The discussion had been very deep.
"What is it Andrew?"
"Faith just woke up and Willow's threatening to turn me into a toad again!"
He looked almost pityingly at the boy. Turning his eyes slowly to face the screen, easing back to Willow. "Perhaps you could put us all out of our misery and carry out the threat?"
Patting Andrew out of his way, settling closer to look at the show before him. "How long has she been awake?"
"She just woke up! This minute…"
"Right. What happened?"
The two slayers still stood trapped in a wordless exchange through the bars of a cage. Everything spoken, that needed to be said, in the looks which could never be held back by anything as meaningless as bars. Buffy wanted to speak, wanted to make something meaningful out of every thought which had plagued the minutes since Faith's return, yet her thoughts had been replaced by feelings, and her feelings dictated that she stay still. That she make no move. Her mouth simply venturing on the same word again.
"Faith?"
The word that invoked awe. Trying to invoke some kind of response in the one that wore the word. Uttering silence again as she watched her make her move. So stilted; as if checking that her legs worked before she moved them, her face losing the snarl for just a second as she winced out something that looked like pain.
Fingers wrapping tight around the cage as Faith reached her target, as she got as close to her prey as this place would allow.
"Where the fuck am I?"
Knuckles straining as much as her voice. Bars which wouldn't move for Buffy, having no chance of shifting under the force of the four year forgotten slayer.
"Fai…"
"I know my fucking name, now where the hell am I?!"
Nothing forgiving in her glance. Nothing welcoming. Nothing at all except for the same rage and the same hate. Four years forgotten, maybe, yet everything remembered now. Still so fresh, as fresh as if just yesterday she had faced Buffy on the roof, as fresh as if her hand was still pushing her own knife back through her skin. Gutting her. Killing her…
"Where am I!?" So much ferociousness ripping harsh from her throat.
She could feel the walls of the cell closing in on her, the bars hard in her hand letting her know she was imprisoned. Cornered. Captured. Knowing nothing else except Buffy. That she was the one responsible. For this. For the hole which still ripped raw through flesh and tendons, which still taunted her with the feeling of weak.
"We need to talk."
The air around her body cooling as the clamminess of sweat tickled a path down her neck. So tense. So tight.
"Faith…" Something stirring. Every single time those lips whispered her name. Lies, deceit, death. "…you need to listen to me."
Not listening. Not moving. The tension in her body coiling tighter around each of her limbs, waste filled muscles screaming from the stabbing pain of being held so rigid. So hard.
Unbreakable. She wouldn't break.
"I'm not going to hurt you…"
Gut churning.
"…this isn't about hurting you."
Buffy dared herself to take a step forward. Faith wasn't moving, wasn't speaking. Her eyes lost to Buffy, a void which showed nothing except the reflection of her cage. All imprisoned. All held back.
Her feet moving in wary steps to bring herself closer, not thinking of what things to say, what words to make it better, just wanting to fill that void. To take some of the torment away, to destroy some of Faith's demons. "Things have changed Faith, everything has changed."
No response. "You…" God. She what? "…that night."
*That* night.
"After you fell, there was… they… you were in the hospital Faith."
Was that too matter of fact?
Not that it mattered, because still the view remained the same. Except closer. Buffy not realising that wary steps had become steps all bold. Never meaning to deliver herself into space this near, yet her body taking actions that her mind would never dare to think through. To give sane thought to. Wanting so badly to touch. Maybe a reaffirmation that the presence was real. That before her again stood Faith. Same girl. Same woman. Same air of tattered indifference lending a detachment to her pose. An emptiness in her eyes.
It made Buffy push on. "They didn't know if you would wake up. They said that you never would… that it was fruitless to want it." Yet she had wanted it so badly. So many different reasons to want so badly. "Four years Faith. It's been four years…"
The damp walls of the basement would have coated her sobs if she could let them break free. If she could finally pour tears over all of the bloody wounds of the past. They were not her wounds to wear though, and she would never rub salt into the injuries that she had inflicted. Holding her breath instead.
No quirky smile to soften the moment, no perky words to reduce anything to mean something less. It had been four years. It was a touch she was aching for.
Her eyes frozen as Faith's gaze slid across the bars of imprisonment to reach her face. Feeling a silent tear dare to break ranks when she realised that fingers were following eyes. That Faith's hand was crossing the bridge between them to make contact, to reignite that feeling. A gasp.
Was that her gasp? Eyelids closing to push the silent tear free, to stand unmoving, yet not unmoved, as fingertips touched a cheek which had waited so many months to feel again. So many years.
"B?"
A whisper, an invitation. Feeling the shake in the hand as it caressed slowly across her skin, across her jaw line, mapping any change. Across a neck which bore the scar hidden beneath skin, to the clothes which sat battle weary, years of fighting kept encased beneath cotton.
The large side, the righteous side, the side which Willow had urged to take caution; that side was screaming at Buffy. Downright, red alert, sound the freaking beepers, screaming. Step back. Guard up. Retreat, retreat!!
The side which sat frozen though, the small side, that was the side dictating the pace to her. To stand and to feel. To offer up without resistance, to make no threat.
The side which felt the smash the hardest as Faith had slammed her forward into bars, against her prison, fingers wrapping tight in a fist around her clothes, breath snarling out words which made up for the strength that was missing from her grasp.
It still hurt.
The roughness of metal grazing across the smoothness of her cheek. Yet she didn't step back. Didn't pull away.
"You think you can fucking fool me again?! You think I *need* to listen to a fucking word you have to say?! You gutted me Blondie, you fucking gutted me…"
"Willow, no! I don't think your intervention is the type needed here. I will…"
"No Giles." Angel spoke up from his place watching the screen, his eyes and ears both perked to catch every word, every insinuation, every deep down cry from Faith's broken soul. "You're not strong enough to deal with this. With Faith. I'll go."
There was no argument as he left them, because too much focus was directed still at the show unfolding before their eyes. At Buffy held with ease against the cage, at Faith's face contorting with such twisted anger as she screamed words into her ears.
"Why isn't the Buffster moving?"
Xander wondered it aloud. Everybody heard. Nobody had an answer.
Faith's throat was raw from the effort of so many words, so much volume, her hands tired from clenching, her legs aching from standing. It was just… again… so much of the same. So much confusion, so much not knowing, so much being a pawn in the fucked up game of life.
So tired of it all.
"Let me out of this fucking cage."
Not much strength left to shout. Not much will left. Four years? Four fucking years? Was that…
No.
Bullshit. She tried to clench harder to squeeze the source, wishing her hands had a grip around that neck so fucking slender, around skin so fucking smooth.
The feeling that caressed her own skin at that moment was a different kind of awakening, a different memory of senses. Fizzing. Buzzing. Trickling through each of her limbs, calling forth a never forgotten power. Her power. Slayer power. Her head drawn away from Buffy, her eyes flying to catch sight of a vampire.
No.
"Faith, let go of her."
His steady slow steps down the stairs making her spring back away from the bars. Away from Buffy. The walls not far enough away from the monster that strode into the room. Pushing back.
"Buffy, are you okay?"
Faith's hands were sliding to her stomach as if she could claw away her wound, make herself strong again. Fear returning, panic insisting that her breaths catch tight in her throat, yet still fall fast from her lips.
"I'm… fine. It's okay. I'm okay."
Buffy spoke with the choke that sat in her own throat. Her own confusion blanketing the situation in a surreal bubble that threatened to burst with her at the centre. She could see the fear in Faith, could see that desperate need which just a minute ago was vowing to reap revenge with death, now straining with futility to sink into the walls. And words.
"You are not feeding me to him." Spoken like a plea.
Four years gone, but not understanding.
She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to do it. Buffy did know though, that this was not the way. She could feel the anger, the fear, the desperation which flowed so fast from the now cowering Faith. And god, could she blame her?
They had locked her in a cage, faced her with the person who did this to her, and now the vampire who was gonna drain her blood dry had just walked into the room.
Welcome back Faith.
Buffy stepped slowly away from the bars, slowly away from Faith. Her eyes switching to catch Angel, to motion with her head that they needed to back off. To retreat. Watching as he left, counting the steps until he had reached the top.
It was the hardest thing in the world to turn away. To show her back. But she knew that it was the only way. That what she was doing was nothing more than terrifying Faith. She had shared the dream, she had seen the scenes, had held the knife which done the damage.
Where the words came from she didn't know. Why she said them she would always know, maybe one day realise; They were the whispers from her heart.
"I'm sorry Faith."
So sorry. For then? For now?
For everything.
Dedicated: To all of the list mums that give me a place to peddle my madness :) Wouldn't you just know that the weekend when I was out of action, all of those lovely beauties would be about creating the action. And not just the usual scrumptious suspects either. I swear I even spotted a glimpse of Oral down at my favourite 'graveyard'. SUPERB! There was Val covered in pork grease (?) Dylan championing freedoms of speech and mutual respect giving. Electra waving her jolly hockey stick in the most unmenacing fashion. G spot myths and miracles... the weekend had it all. It made my return to my mailbox so much more fun! Cheers ladies.
Dedicated no.2: To Poet's weird boobies of course!
The taste of sorry still sat sluggish in Buffy's mouth as she carried herself wearily up the steps from the basement. The words had crept out unknowingly. Whispers which had ached to have the space to be spoken so many times in the last four years. Not that she hadn't ever given them voice before - there had been times. Private times. Times when she had sought solitude away from the world in the void that was always welcoming in Faith's hospital room. But she had never thought that she would have opportunity to say them to an awake Faith. That she would want to say them to such a hateful Faith.
Such a hateful face.
She had felt paralysed when Faith had first taken her into her grasp, the shock of the slam making her eyes squint in pain, the metal bars caressing skin that had just moments before felt the gentleness of a different caress. It was the words that had frozen her though, not the action. Such bitterness, such anger, so many things that no other person had ever had the power to touch her with. Faith had always touched her. Always known where her secret buttons were located, always known how to push to provoke a reaction.
Sorry.
Buffy could bet that wasn't the expected reaction. She was still clinging tight to the defence of whack-job, it could be used to explain so much. Perhaps the way she had let Faith's ineffectual strength hold her such an inanimate prisoner… as if the weakness was begging Buffy to stay still. Maybe the way she had kept quiet instead of shouting Faith down with words of her own, so many accusations to be levelled, so much of her own pain that could be turned, sharpened and directed at Faith. Yet she had stayed still, barely daring to breathe in case she missed a moment of it, her ears open and hearing, giving path to each one of Faith's hate filled words.
It made a change from her own words of condemnation. Almost refreshing to be hearing it from the source, instead of imagining the way that it would go. At least she knew now the way that it would be… no easy forgiveness to wipe away a situation that had, even at best, never been easy. Even when it *was* easy, it had never been easy.
Too many guards. Too many defences.
"Buffy, are you okay?"
Fresh guards in place as she looked up into the concerned eyes of her watcher. "Peachy. You?"
She tried to shrug him off as his hands reached her face, as they caressed along that cheek, the one that had bore the touch of Faith, of metal. "This doesn't look too bad."
"I said it's fine." He sighed as she pushed him away, yet she didn't even hear him, couldn't be worried about soothing concerns which meant nothing to her. She had a whole big list full of more pressing concerns. "Angel?"
Passing her glance quickly across her friends, to settle on… well, wasn't that another little mind boggler? The day before yesterday and she was planning a cookie baking session with this guy, and now her mind was already beginning to question his friendship?
Angel caught her glance. He knew her well enough to know that she was about to start asking for answers. Answers he couldn't give in truth, that he would have to hope he could make believable enough to be good enough. His head motioning towards the office, waiting for her to walk before he followed close behind.
"So you wanna tell me what the hell is going on?"
Buffy barely waited for the door to close to launch an all out attack. No time to prepare a method, just knowing that everything about this felt wrong. She knew about Wolfram and Hart, had heard from Angel himself what they stood for, the kind of things that they represented. Evil. And she couldn't believe it.
Couldn't believe that he was staring at her without words, that he wasn't already trying to defend what was going on. "Nothing?! You haven't got anything to say?!"
She watched him cloak himself in that air of aloofness that had always managed to irritate her, the way he was able to pull back, to remain detached.
"Buffy, this has got nothing to do with anything that's going on. I don't have to explain…"
"Yes you do! You can't… god, you can't do this and expect me to just stand back and say nothing. Wolfram and Hart, Angel… what about the things you told me…"
"I know what I told you, I know what they are. All of us do, and all of us have made this decision. Together." He took a step closer to her, making his way into space where he had always been welcomed, not able to hide the slighted look as she shoved him violently away. "Bu…"
"No! When were you gonna tell me Angel? Did it slip your mind before, didn't it rate as important?"
"It isn't your business. I only came to bring the amulet."
Buffy wanted so much to accept the words which came in the voice that had always held reason, but she couldn't, she couldn't find reasoning for this. For any of it. "My business isn't evil law firms, so I guess you have a point." She clipped her tones, offered him some ice to douse any of the fire that had remained constant over the years. Baking season was over. Cookies were not on the menu. "I can't support you in this. As long as you know that you're doing this without my support."
And he stepped further back. Maybe accepting what she was saying, knowing that he couldn't offer stories of forgotten sons to make it all make sense. "I don't remember asking for your support."
So off the cuff. So little weight attached to the final nail in the coffin.
"You bastard."
Taking Buffy's blow without a retort. He had nothing he could say.
It made the office tense with silence for what felt like an age, Buffy's eyes refusing to meet his, to bring herself to even look at him. She knew so well that good and evil existed in a place that mixed intrinsically with grey, but to her there was no grey here, just huge flashing neon signs, illuminating red for danger. Evil all of the way.
Angel watched her, studied her for reaction as she dug her hands into the chair behind the desk. Watching the straining of knuckles, realising just how close she was to breaking. "Do you want to talk about Faith?" Knuckles straining harder. His voice finding the weariness of two hundred plus years as he looked to find any words which could build something of a bridge. "You won't ever understand what's going on here Buffy, and I'll never be able to give you the answers that you need; but don't cut me out of this. You brought Faith here for a reason, let me help. You know that I'm qualified."
Incredulous. Those were the eyes that finally rose to greet him. Incredulous with a side of heart breaking. "You're qualified for what exactly?" Still so far from understanding. "You're head of an evil empire Angel, you think that Faith needs that, you really think that *that* is gonna be any good to her?"
"I wasn't talking about that."
"Well I was! I am!" She broke her spot by the chair to find footfalls on the floor. More spirals around the track, more pointless steps which didn't take her any closer to anything. "I thought you were the beacon. You were the shining light, my goodness, god… how wrong did I turn out to be?"
"I'm still…"
"No. No you're not. If you do this Angel, if you work with them, then that's it for us. Forever. Do you understand that?"
Angel had known that this reaction was always going to be on the cards when Buffy heard about Wolfram and Hart. He had hoped that he would have time to do good, before she found out the bad. Now that she knew, all he could do was give her space, hope that down the line she would find the acceptance to bring him back into her heart. Until then, he still had to force the important issue. The issue that resided in his basement.
"And Faith?"
"That's it?"
He shrugged. It was hard to keep aloof as you lost your girl. Hard to make words.
"This is all so screwed up. We shouldn't have come here…"
"No. You did the right thing. We have the room here for the slayers, for everyone. We can take care of Faith here."
He kept it measured, he kept business tones for a situation that teetered on a knife edge of tension. He could see the hardness enveloping her eyes, could smell the power as it tainted the air around her skin. He knew not to provoke that emotion.
"I don't want to be here."
"Do you have anywhere else to be?"
Buffy felt the tears so close again. Her mind not able to keep count anymore of what was lost, what was found. She felt like she was losing her sanity, she knew that if she couldn't just close her eyes and crash sometime soon, somewhere peaceful, then her sanity would remain only a fond memory in the distance. She pulled it back. She fought for a rod of steel for her shoulders that Giles would be proud of. So used to laying her feelings aside, to take care of business. It was almost a comfort, the familiarity of the action.
"You're right. We don't have anywhere else to go. We'll stay here, at least until we can sort something out."
"And Faith?"
She wanted to scoff. It was supposed to be her that was locked in the obsessive throes of affected and interested concern. She swallowed the Valley-gal reply of Obsessive, much? And instead remembered the rod and the steel. "Faith isn't your responsibility. You don't need to worry about her."
"I can help her."
"You think I trust you?"
"This isn't about you, Buffy. This is my city, and why you are in it we play by my rules. Faith is my guest now, and I'll do all that I can to help her get past the darkness. I don't need your permission, and you've already made it clear that I don't have your support."
He left it open. He baited her to deny it, to find a place where they could be a team again. She found only anger. Quiet seething anger.
How could two days have changed everything so much?
She remembered his last smile, the one before he had walked with a skip in his step from the cemeteries of Sunnydale. And now that, like everything else, was buried in rubble. Nothing but dust.
"Just stay out of my way."
They were the only words that Buffy could seek to find. A warning. A threat. A barely concealed statement of detest. Her body tensing more with each step from the room, culminating in a slam that shook the door on its hinges. A warning to each of her friends to let her pass without comment.
Xander sat in idleness, his finger finding the flick again as he observed Faith on the grainy screen in front of him. He'd offered up his services as lookout, almost drawn to watch the slayer unravelling, as if it was some second rate, yet absolutely addictive, reality TV show. It just shocked him how different she looked now, made him sigh a sound of wonder as he considered how much fear she had provoked in them in the past.
He was a man now, and his man sized boots were not shaking in fear. His head was merely shaking in regret.
"Hey, any change?"
He smiled a look up as Willow and Kennedy came into view. Their hands wrapped in happy togetherness, their eyes finding smiles that reached out for everyone.
"No such luck Wills. She still seems intent to break through the bars. You think she would've figured it out by now."
"Yeah. She never was that bright."
"Sure, but compared to you, we're all morons."
Willow shrugged her shoulder as she let go of her girlfriend's hand to take a step closer. Witnessing for herself the way that Faith was trying to tear ineffectual strips from the bars of her cage. "Is that all she's been doing?"
"Oh no, she did this big session of kicks as well. She rested. For like five seconds." It was his turn to shrug his shoulders now. "I guess she's getting some stamina back."
"She doesn't look all that special. You guys sure she was a big bad?" Kennedy had already taken the time to study the screen which showed them Faith. Trying to reconcile the image with the words that Andrew had spoken, with the tales that Willow had told her to bring her up to speed. "She looks kinda…" mimicking the Xander flicks to the screen, poking at the view. "…pathetic. Pretty weak."
"Right. Don't let her hear you saying that kinda thing. She doesn't like insults, does she Will?"
"Nope. Though Kennedy is right. It is hard to remember what she was, when she's looking like she is. I should do a glamour thing, return her to her snarly days."
"Or we could just keep putting Buffy down there, and let her find her own way back."
Xander's easy words had returned the room to silence. The two old friends worrying silently about Buffy, about how this was going to affect Buffy, about how it was going to affect all of them. And Kennedy, silent only because she was still studying Faith, still watching that unabated anger slammed repeatedly against the bars of the cage.
"Have you thought that maybe letting her out, might calm her down a little?"
"Huh?"
"Well, from a slayer point of view, if anyone locked me in a cage, I'd be pissed as hell. From a person point of view, gotta think the reaction's the same."
"We can't let her out."
"Why not?"
Xander stepped up, patting Willow affectionately on the arm as he passed her by. "Okay, I can see that your sweetie pie here must have missed out some of the relevant details concerning our little psycho slayer. She's dangerous. She kills people. She enjoys it. Therefore, cage."
"How do you know she still kills people, I thought you said it had been four years?"
"Four nice, non-psycho years Ken. I'm not desperate to return to that, and I doubt that Willow is either." He looked for her nod of agreement, smiling when it came. "Anyway, you little newbies shouldn't be worrying about this. This is an old problem, us Scoobs will take care of it, you don't need to worry."
Xander tried to offer the smile to Kennedy as well, trying to bring his best friend's new girlfriend, into the fold. The smile wasn't returned.
"But she's a slayer. She's one of us. Not a Scooby."
"Kennedy, I told you before, you shouldn't get involved."
"Why? Because Buffy thinks so? Because you say so?" The slayer puffed out her chest, breathed in her power. "I think keeping slayers in cages is bullshit. There's enough of us here to keep a firm grip on her…" Finger pointing steadily to the screen, to Faith. "…that's just messed up. Sorry Willow, but that's my take on it."
She didn't wait for her girlfriend's reply, she didn't need to. Kennedy had heard the tales, had seen the proof of a girl gone rogue, and she wasn't so impressed, wasn't so terrified by what she saw. Her back was turned then, her feet finding a path to the garden, going to train with Giles. With the other slayers. All slayers together.
Willow had stayed staring at the screen long after Kennedy had left, relieving Xander from his duty, forcing herself to bear witness to all of the rage and pain kept caged up beneath them. She couldn't agree with the opinion of her girlfriend, there was no way that Faith could be set free in the state that she was in. No way. Even looking at her now, all hunched up in the corner, head depressed down between her legs, Willow could still sense the danger in her pose. Could still remember the destruction that had always paved the way for Faith.
"What are you thinking, huh?"
Words never meant to be heard, just voicing her wonder. Fingers not flicking the screen, but tracing those hunched up shoulders, jumping in her seat as Xander's voice broke through her deep concentration.
"Caressing the prisoner, is that like a butch fantasy thing?"
Her fingers flying, as if scorched, from the screen. "Xander! I thought you were resting. What time is it?"
"Dinner time. The sun's gone down, the slayers have flown the coop, and I've got a big ol' hankering for pizza. Care to join me?"
"The slayers have gone?"
"Giles took them out to get their bearings. Didn't Kennedy tell you?"
She didn't need to answer, she just shook her head. No. Kennedy hadn't told her anything, not since she had shared her opinion on how they were handling Faith.
"Oh. I guess they left pretty quick."
"Don't worry Xander, I know that she's pissed at me." Willow offered him a small smile, a tired smile, patted the space next to her on the desk. "She just doesn't understand. She wasn't there."
"Right."
Xander took the proffered seat, allowing his glance to slowly flick the way of Faith. A gentle sigh easing him to sitting as he realised she wasn't fighting anymore, she wasn't screaming, she wasn't trying to rip herself free from the cage. "She been like that long?"
"A while. Probably storing up energy for the second round."
"Yeah." His words coming stilted from his lips. "Do you think that Kennedy had a point?"
The silence that grabbed hold of Willow's throat spoke a world of no. Her head shaking, her eyes spread open in obvious disbelief.
"Just hear me out Wills, think about it for a minute…"
"No! No thinking. You've seen her Xander, you know what she tried at the hospital. If we don't keep her locked up, then she's gonna go rage crazy on Buffy. I won't allow that."
"I think the Buffster can handle her."
Thoughts like these had been plaguing the soft hearted man all evening. Putting aside the fears of yesteryears, to try and view things from a different angle. From Faith's angle. Letting each of her words echo in his ears, watching as every fist she smashed against the bars made her cry out in pain.
And he finally understood Buffy's words about monsters.
He never had before, had always been the first to trumpet out nonsense when Buffy had questioned what had happened with Faith. It wasn't the same. Faith was a killer. Buffy was just neutralising a threat. He had never had to drive a knife into Faith's gut, had never had to have his palms coated in the reality of her blood.
This time though, this time he had helped to carry her lifeless form in from the car, had smiled a satisfied smile when the doors to the cage had clunked firmly closed. Yep. They had put the monster in her cage. So why did it all feel so wrong?
"I don't believe this… you really think we should let her out? Give her free rein to act on all of her pretty little revenge fantasies?"
"I didn't say that. I just think that this might not be the best way to bring her back to the fold."
"She doesn't want back to the fold! She was never *in* the fold!"
Willow had risen from her seat in defiance of Xander's words. It wasn't that she hadn't taken her own view from Faith's side of the fence, she just thought they were being far too quick to dismiss the things that Faith was capable of doing. "This is crazy… she's dangerous Xander, dangerous."
He backed down, stepped away from the confrontation. His hands offered up in gentle supplication. "Hey, ease off the gas there girly. I'm not making an argument, just stating a case. There must be better options, better ways of handling this."
He appealed to soft Willow, kindergarten Willow, all the compassion that he could muster slipped inside his gentle gaze. He wasn't saying that they should set her free to rape and pillage, he was just suggesting that there were maybe other ways to handle this, without acting like the monster that they all feared.
He didn't even know if she was a monster anymore. He just knew that they had locked her in a cage.
"Okay." Willow could never deny much of anything to Xander Harris when he beseeched her with that puppy dog look. All cute and kindness, the things she had always loved. "Tomorrow we'll have a meeting and discuss the best thing to do. The best way to go. Maybe Angel has some ideas… maybe…"
"Maybe Buff won't want Angel being a part of it."
"Won't want Angel being a part of what?" Timing perfect. Buffy's eyes narrowing on the guilty looks of her two flustered friends. "Guys?"
"We were just saying Buff, maybe the cage isn't the best way to go… if we want Faith, if we want her to, I don't know… get better?" Xander offered a nervous glance Willow's way, carrying on when she gave him a slight nod of the head. "Maybe locking her down there is gonna make her more…"
"Pissed?" The smile that lit Buffy's face was unexpected, causing confusion in the small circle, a pause offered for her to continue. "Look, I'm not totally dumb, I thought you two had figured that out already?"
The pause extending as neither of them spoke an answer.
"I know that the cage isn't gonna work out, I get that, I got that earlier today. It just seemed like a good idea at the time."
"So what do we do?"
"That's where I dumb down again. I haven't got a clue. I'll try and talk to her again tomorrow, try and get her to listen… until then, I need to go slay."
"You're going slaying? Now?"
"Sure. I've slept, I'm rested, I'm raring to go." She slipped the scythe out from behind her back, the glint in her eye only deepening, the smile on her lips lifting further. "I haven't had nearly enough time to play with this yet. Maybe I'll bump into Angel." Now she had gob smacked her friends. Their heads turning, questioning glances being thrown her way. "Joke?"
"Right. Are you sure you should be going out. You seem a little…"
"I'm fine. Good to go. Believe me Xander, I can't stay here. If I stay here I'm gonna end up down there again, and I need to think first. I need to figure out a way to reach her."
They could accept that. They knew Buffy well enough to know that this was sometimes the way she chose to deal. Rehearsing her lines in front of a vamp, working out her frustrations until nothing remained except dust.
"Will you guys keep an eye on her, make sure she gets food?"
"Sure. We're getting pizza, I'll slide it through the bars."
"Play nice Wills. I'll see you in the morning."
With that she tossed the scythe high in the air and caught it on the turn. Showing them her back, an easy tune whistled from her smiling lips as she quickly left the building.
"Okay. That was way too weird. Why with the happy?"
Willow didn't know. Didn't want to know. Knew all too well. Buffy was always affected one way or another by Faith, she always had been. Years ago, the years in between, and now again. "Her arch nemesis is back in the game, maybe she's just excited."
It sounded viable.
"Does she always whistle her way into battle, did I miss that?"
"Hi ho, hi ho. She's a dedicated slayer."
"I'm telling her you called her a dwarf."
The silliness slipped easily over the lifelong friends. There wasn't ever any situation that they couldn't find a smile for. Even when Xander had talked Willow down from destroying the world, he had done it with a smile. She caught his eye now, flashed him something like devilment. "You do that Xander Harris, and I'll tell her that you moan her name in your sleep!"
"I do not!"
"Uh-huh. Never?" She laughed as he coloured, poking him in the ribs to deepen his agony. "Come on, let's get this pizza ordered. I'll go get Dawn, you slide the slices to Faith."
"Me?! You said you were doing it."
"I lied."
Her chuckle reverberated through reception as she left to hunt out the younger Summers sister. Xander left shaking his head, his gaze unwittingly searching out the screen again.
She still looked like she was resting. Maybe he could slide the slices without even waking her. Cos no matter what his conscience said, no matter what his heart said, he had no idea what he would even begin to say to Faith.
Author's Notes: It occurred to me after writing this chapter that there is no toilet in that cage of rage. No bucket either, as far as I know. So, in case y'all start to wondering how Faith is gonna take a piss if she's locked up forever, well... not sure yet. Just know it will be resolved. Or there'll be puddles. We'll see.
Dedicated: After the last heartfelt, chest warming dedimication of gratitude to mothers of the lists, it seems only right to go back to worshipping the ass of Sarah Shahi. Both beautiful things. Both deserving of worship.
Sarah Shahi's ass... *drooooooooooooool*
As his feet crept their way down the stairs, Xander tried to remind himself that he was no longer afraid. That he had let his remaining eye bear witness to all that she was, and the vision had not induced fear. It had induced pity. The only real fear that existed, being the wonder of what would become of her, what would become of Faith.
When his gaze finally fell upon the reality of her broken body hunched up in the corner of the cage, he wondered it again. He had watched her pummelling the bars they had put there, had listened to the tortured rage that flew unfettered from between her lips, and he didn't hold out too much of anything that felt like hope. In all honesty, he also wondered a little, that he had even found himself having hope for her. After everything, did she really deserve it?
A question that made his manly sized bulk move easier as he chuckled softly to himself. After everything, after the last four years, did it even matter anymore? Could he really tell himself that his neck still bore the bruises of injuries that she had inflicted upon him? That he was still wounded by the way that she had used him and discarded him?
After the four years that he had endured, all of it felt like nothing. Not so much. Not enough to damn her to eternal hell, that he was sure of.
"Faith, you awake?" His tone was even and measured. Sure and steady. He wasn't afraid. "I've got food." Moving ever so slightly forward as he heard something, not sure what, uttered from the form in the corner. "Faith?"
"I said, not hungry."
A rasp. A sigh. No raising of head, no eyes of defiance shooting up to wound him. It filled him with confidence, an invitation to keep going. To bring the offering of pizza a little closer to the bars. "I got cheese filled crusts, extra toppings. It's good." Opening up the lid, letting the aromas of fresh baked food infuse the otherwise stale stench of the basement.
He noted her still non response, the lack of lifting head, and he considered that maybe he should just place the box down by the bars and leave. Saunter back up the stairs to find his place in front of the screen, flick at her image idly whilst she just sat fading into the solid brick of the solid wall behind her.
He wanted to do more though. He wanted to help.
"Come on Faith, you need to eat. You need to get your strength back." The hollow laugh that echoed hard against the walls, made him unconsciously curl his toes inside the man sized boots that didn't shake in fear. Made him cast a quick glance back towards the stairs, towards upstairs, towards the safety of the grainy screen. "Okay. I'm just gonna set this down over here…" his gaze never wavering, never leaving the sombre hunch of her shoulders, "…I'll be…"
"What year is it?"
Standing in shock that Faith had spoken so clearly to him, not a rasp or a whisper, but definite, determined. Feeling the slight clench of fingers on the pizza box as her head began to raise.
Not scared. Not scared. All grown up. So not scared.
Eyes so dark. The shadows of the basement doing nothing to hide the emptiness, the desolation. The chill that he felt to the bone as he witnessed the barren wastelands that were the windows to her soul. He clenched a little tighter. He had never thought of her as soulless before. Never.
"I asked what year it is, don't fuck with me Xander."
He wouldn't dream of it. "Two thousand and three. May, two thousand and three. It's been four years."
The laughter peeling out again. A sound which made him edge a step back, the pizza all but forgotten, even as he held it firm within his grasp.
"It's true then?"
"Yeah. It's the truth."
"Four years?"
To Xander it seemed longer. It seemed like forever since he had last spoken to Faith, seemed like a different lifetime, a different person. He offered a nod to the empty eyes, tried to grab at valid comment, something that seemed worthy of saying. "It's been a long time."
And he came up empty. No longer moving backwards, but pinned into place by the intensity that was becoming her stare. His sight line raising, along with her body. Up to standing. Distance becoming less as she travelled the meagre distance across the cell to the bars, stopping, staring, her face impassive as she made her gaze wander down over four years of maturity, four years of growing up. Four years of change that she barely understood.
He didn't move. Didn't utter a sound. Hardly found the space to breathe as he felt her eyes all over him. As he saw emptiness replaced with confusion. "Did you become a pirate?"
No cussing, no poison. Just a simple question, a phrase which had Xander's hand releasing the tension on the pizza box, to fuss self- consciously with the patch that covered his lost eye. Something still so new to him. "The patch. Right."
"Long John Silver, without the Long Johnson?"
Was that a smirk he saw? Her head tilting to the side, her hands coming to rest loosely against the bars of the cage. He unpinned his feet, remembered that he had an easy smile that liked to sit upon his lips, and he gave her an answer. "I was thinking more like Danger Mouse. We wear the eye patch the same side…"
"The greatest secret agent in the world?"
Definitely a smirk.
"Okay, so I haven't thought it through yet." His hand went to the patch again, trying to remember the light tone of voice to help him forget the sorrow of the empty socket that sat useless beneath it. "It's a new thing. I'm still getting used to it."
"I like it."
"You do?"
"Why not? It makes you look, I dunno… mysterious?"
Xander forgot. In that dank and dingy basement, with Faith shut firmly behind the bars of the cage, Xander forgot that she was supposed to be a monster. His shoulders relaxing, his face finding a smile without needing to be reminded.
"Thanks… I guess."
Something like a return smile was tracing the parched lips of the imprisoned slayer, something which cracked at aching skin, but which felt so good to feel. Unfamiliar, yet so familiar. And she had to stave the madness off, just for a minute more, a moment more? Like her thoughts could concentrate on something other than her own confusion for just a second. "What happened?"
"I got poked in the eye."
"No shit."
"Maybe more of a gouge than a poke, I'm trying to stay hazy on the details."
Hazy on the details.
Details which were hazy?
Faith didn't have to find a moment to find a sigh, because a sigh found her of its own volition. Fingers ignoring her silent plea for inner peace, to clench tight around the bars, face seeking refuge from desperation, in the twisted mask of a snarl. "At least you've got the details… at least you haven't been dead in a bed for the last four years."
"Faith…"
"Save it. Just pass me the pizza and leave." She held her hand out between the bars, waiting as Xander stood immobile before her, her eyes quickly emptying of anything that had made him feel relaxed. "What, you want me to beg for it? That how you get your kicks these days?"
So far from relaxed. His mind trying to stall, stumble and go back over everything that had just happened. Empty eyes, alight eyes, and now evil eyes. A flash of the devil inside, a taunting tone reminding him how quick she could skip from the good to the bad.
He didn't answer her. He didn't want to speak to this Faith. The one who made him reconsider his compassioned plea for un-imprisonment. He simply bent down and placed the box on the floor between them, edging it with his toe until it was close enough for her to retrieve. He didn't even stay to watch her pick it up, he just turned his back and went to leave. Didn't leave. Not straight away.
"Faith, you don't have to be bad." Not looking to see if empty voids or hate filled vengeance greeted his words. Just wanting to offer the chance, a rope of hope to the girl that had told him that she liked his patch, that had made him smile. "There's plenty of people that are ready for you to be good."
No words smashing him down. Not anything. Just his footsteps sounding heavy on the stairs, the door closing with a thump behind him. Nothing until he rested his gaze back on the screen, until he witnessed her reaching down and retrieving the pizza, finding a spot to sit and to eat. And then he smiled.
"You, Xander Harris, are so very easy."
Keeping it in place as he glanced up to Willow, as he swept it round to the smirk of sweet and innocent Dawn Summers. "Hey, she was digging the eye patch!"
"Uh-huh. I'm sure I saw some swooning, did you see swooning, Dawn?"
"Definite swoonage. And primping."
A smile which stayed in place as he got back to eating his own stuffed crust pizza. It hadn't gone great, he couldn't claim to have made any real breakthrough, he had even borne witness to the ferocity of her snarl… but still, there was something. That moment. Just a couple of minutes where it felt more right to wanna swap gator stories, than remember all of the badness that came so soon after.
He hadn't lied to Faith. There were people that were ready for her to be good. He just had to hope that she was ready, that she could find her way out of the cage of rage that none of them held the keys to.
The air outside of The Hyperion was just as stale and tainted with things that Buffy didn't want to taste, as the air inside of The Hyperion. She had dragged her shoulders up to perky, had let her fingers tickle with the excited buzz of holding the scythe, yet even a whistled throwback to her brief musical days couldn't lift a frown that knew no way of turning. Her head was too busy being upside down to worry about her facial muscles.
Sure, she had managed to put on a hearty show for her friends, skip the steps of the hotel with a smile in place; but wasn't that the point? Life was a show, and she was just playing her part. When Buffy had found the frown and read the sub-text though, then the air had started turning stale with the worry of her wonderings. The same worry of the same wonderings.
Faith. Definitely mostly Faith. And a great big dish of Angel.
Not a side dish, this situation was nothing as tempting as an appetiser, but another full on frontal dish. Two equally exasperating problems to smash and bash against her frazzled frontal lobes.
And could she please just slip back to that time a couple of nights ago, when she was ready to lay down forever and just let everything be. Be done. Be over. Be something other than hers to deal with?
Spike had talked her out of that one. Giles had misdirected the girls. And now here she was, back steering the ship through uncharted waters. Or following the ship through a graveyard, to make sure that no more misdirection was anywhere in sight.
She hadn't consciously decided to follow the newly formed slayers, kept under the watchful command of Giles, it had just kind of happened. And now, witnessing them as they made easy dust out of anything that came their way, she toyed again with the idea of jumping ship. Altogether. New start. Fresh faces. Places which didn't bear boulders which lay like stones across her heart. She knew, absolutely, that she could not stand by happy while Angel made his deal with the devil. It choked her somewhere close to her core when she tried to make anything which felt like sense out of it. There was no sense. Angel had told her that she wouldn't understand, and in this one instance, she still felt able to trust his words a hundred percent.
Maybe the last of the trust. The final slice just waiting to be eaten by all of the unknown.
This afternoon, so soon after the piercing shots of Faith's hateful words, Angel's dismissal of her feelings had felt like hitting rock bottom. She had felt anger, total justified anger, but so much more, so much that felt like loss and losing.
Buffy had decided that this was the theme for the week.
She had lost her home. She had lost comrades. She had lost friends. She had lost a former lover who had been her only source of support over the last god knows how long. And now she had lost Angel.
Yep. She was definitely seeing a theme here.
But what about what she hadn`t lost? What she had found?
The air was tainted with something which tasted so much different than stale, when she isolated her thoughts onto what she had found.
Easing herself up into the boughs of a mournful looking tree, she observed the slayers as they followed Giles away from the cemetery, allowing this moment for her thoughts to stay focused, to not wander off along the tangents of distraction. Giles was leading them home. They were safe. For now she was free. Great. So how about the plan for reaching Faith, breaking free in her mind sometime soon? Cos so far she had nothing. The buzz of the scythe not offering up wisdom of slayers past, just giving her the flowing feeling of slightly juiced.
It was just so…
She dragged a hand along her forehead, across her aching brain, as she tried to work out exactly what it was. In random moments of clarity, she understood precisely how things should go; She would explain to Faith what had happened, how much they had all changed, how much everything had changed. Faith would repent and smile at the beauty of second chances. And they would all live happily ever after in a candyfloss castle with a flowing chocolate moat. That was the random part. The other parts Buffy really wanted to hold truth. For it to be as easy as the way it played out in her head.
Not gonna happen. Never gonna happen.
Those minutes held in easy suspension against the cage, had assured her of that much. Had led her to be here and sat in a tree and trying to seek enlightenment.
If she could just get Faith to listen. To quiet the anger which burnt in her belly for just a moment… then… then what? They could make happy quips about the knife which had ripped harsh through her belly instead?
She stayed motionless in the tree for all of the hours which sped by fruitless in the moonlight. Not mapping circles with her feet, just tracing them out with the musings of her mind. How to reach Faith? She didn't have a clue. She just knew that through the bars of a cage was never going to work.
Too many guards. Too many defences.
No one was left up, to count down the minutes until the morning, when Buffy had returned to the hotel. Everything was silent, peaceful, no one around to ask her what to do about the next new found problem. The only nod towards life being the lightly snoring Giles, with his head lying haphazardly in his arms, snoozing in front of the ever present picture of Faith. Not a moving image; a silent image. More peace.
In that moment, with her mind still swimming through the uncharted waters of the many trials and tribulations of life, Buffy just longed to rediscover the shelter she had often found in a room which held a sleeping Faith. A different room now, a less permanent sleep; but Buffy's need was still the same. It still ached deeply enough to bring about the deliverance, her limbs moving with stealth as she had found a silent path down the stairs, her eyes moving unhindered to settle upon the non-defensive form of a sleeping Faith.
There were never any guarded walls or defences when Faith was asleep. It was what had drawn her back there time after time; that silent acceptance, that un-arguing understanding.
Faith may not have known it, may never know it, but hers had been the shoulders which had borne the weight of so many of Buffy's worries over the last four years. Her lifeless hands had held Buffy's through Angel leaving, through initial worries at Riley, through bigger worries at the Initiative. Her unhearing ears had been the only ears to ever hear the tortured cries that carried Buffy through the months of Dawn, Glory and her Mom. Terrified cries that never saw the light of day outside of a hospital room.
For awhile she had stopped. She hadn't been there anymore, had been dead, but once she had returned, then she remembered the way to the hospital. Sharing with Faith, the deal with Spike, with someone who wouldn't judge. The months that had passed with Willow gone from their lives, the loss of Tara, only accentuated and made harder, by the loss of Willow also.
In the last few months it had stopped for real. Too much then, too much to even dream of finding solitude in a room with the fallen slayer. Buffy had been lost under a houseful of potentials, lost amongst the fear of the worst apocalypse they had ever faced, ever. She had forgotten about Faith. All of that time, she had forgotten how to find her, how to seek out the sanctuary of the silent room. She had forgotten it all, until that final moment, the time when she'd considered outside of the school, everything that she was losing. And then she had found Faith again. And now she remembered how much she missed her. How much she missed being able to speak her thoughts unrestrained to the body before her. No defences. No walls.
So easy to take a seat, to slide the scythe into the space in front of her, and blow out a breath that was coated in weary. Sighing out of her costume, yawning away the camouflage that was so necessary to wear every single day of her outside life.
"Hey Faith." Still feeling a little strange now that she knew she could wake, would wake, making her voice a bare whisper, a bareness of sound. "It's been a long time. I'm sorry I stopped visiting." Her mind filled in the blanks of the reply. It always did. Flowing easy down those chocolate moats, a closeness that she felt should always have been there. "Things were just so crazy, you know? Sunnydale's now a hole on the horizon, and we're all stuck here, not knowing which way to go." Buffy eased the jacket from her shoulders, rotating her neck, settling in. "Then there's you." Maybe not so settled. "I can't decide if it was good timing, or bad timing… you sure chose your moment to do the waking up thing."
She felt the ease of animation as she found easy conversation with the still sleeping Faith. Tossing up the random thoughts of random actions, trying to cram the months that she had been absent, into the fleeting moments until people began waking. Skirting through the easy parts, stumbling across the harder parts, everything covered till she got to the now; the pain she was feeling from Angel, the pain that she was feeling from Faith.
So lost in words which captured her heart, which showed the honesty behind her intentions, that she didn't even begin to notice that the one who had been sleeping on all of the worries of the world, was now waking. Awake. Waking to those same soft tones again, the sound of Buffy, tripping light across her ears;
"…and I don't even know how he expects me to deal with it! Doesn't he get that I need him, that I need to know he's on my side?"
Faith held herself still. Trapped in her cage, calmed by her rage. Breathing deep to keep up the pretence of sleep, silence allowed to flow, just so that she could hear, so that she could make sense out of whispered confessions through the bars of the cage…
Buffy was here? Buffy was daring to open up her heart, when all Faith wanted, was to rip it bleeding, and still beating, from her chest? An eye for an eye. A heart for a heart. Wasn't that the only truth? All she wanted spoken in this moment of forced closeness.
"I always thought he would be on my side… Buffy and Angel. Not Angel and Evil, me and no one."
And what the fuck *was* she talking about? Was this meant to be important, was this supposed to mean anything to Faith? Had four years passed and yet the same shit was still spinning round and round in the dumb blonde's head? Buffy and Angel? Eat shit and die. The same shit; just different century.
It was enough to have her giving up the pretence of a sleep, to twist round on an awakening. Her body feeling invigorated from the food, stronger, less confused. Her lips still dry and lacking the moisture of refreshment. Xander hadn't brought the yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum - he definitely wasn't a pirate - he had brought her the food though, and for that she was almost thankful. Almost ready to bump him from the top spots of her revenge list.
"Faith?"
Her name. Those tones. Again.
And again she felt a smile lift her lips. A different kind of smile, one which carried the hallmarks of all that she was, one which showed Buffy that strength was returning. This girl had had her first meal. "Buffy. This is a *nice* surprise." Her limbs lifting her up to stand, to tower above the tired eyes of the girl below her. "Did four years make you forget that I don't care a crap about your pining and whining?" Stalking closer to the bars, a nonchalant pose struck with remembered ease. "The Angel *thing* is so past its sell by date. Ever hear of getting over it?"
She knew that she was taunting Buffy, and she knew it all felt so fucking good, so fucking great. Those fleshy targets still struck with ease. Delighting as she saw the flash of pain, as she saw that nothing had really changed. Nothing that really mattered.
"Faith."
Smirking at Buffy's inability to find anything else to say. The flow of her chatter silenced by the reality of those same brown eyes penetrating deep inside of her. "It's pathetic B. I'm the one whose been down for four years, and you're the one still wallowing in the same old shit?" She witnessed the deflation, the way that Buffy sank further into the floor. "In a way, I guess it's kinda comforting."
"Comforting?"
"Sure thing girlfriend. Easy to pick up where I left off, back in the saddle…" Faith drew the power around her like a cloak of steel. Untouchable. Flexing her muscles out as she sought to bring yet more of the bad stuff. "…it's good to be back B. Let me out of this cage and I'll show you just how good it feels."
Faith's ears had never heard all of Buffy's silent confessions, she had no idea of the things that Buffy had been through over the last four years, no idea the lengths she had gone to, the depths she had plundered. It made her underestimate someone who wasn't such an easy target, someone who was flying close to the end of her own tether. To the edges of sanity. Faith's eyes first wary, and then undeniably excited, as Buffy had found her feet before her. Had pulled herself up and faced her with a height more close to equal, with a face that bore her own remembrances of righteous anger. "I'd like to say, nice to have you back, but I'm not gonna lie to you Faith." Yet the lie was so easy to speak. "This is the way you want it to be then? A return to arms?"
"Huh?"
"Fighting Faith. You don't want to hear me out, maybe give peace a chance?"
The unconscious pleading behind the words was easy enough to hear, but Faith still had deaf ears, asleep or not, she refused to hear anything other than what the rage demanded she hear. "I owe you one B, you want me to forget about that?"
Because she would never forget about that. It was just last night, for fuck's sake! Four years or not, it was just last night! That was what the rage said - screamed out - drowning out the one that hid behind the walls and defences. Drowning both of them in it.
"No, not forget Faith. Forgive."
"Fuck you."
Ignoring the curses was hard for Buffy, strengthening her shoulders to take the blows was easy. Ploughing onwards, her mind not deflected from the way that she thought it should be able to go. "So much has changed, so much is different now. You've missed so much…"
"Yeah? Whose fault is that?"
"…the things that we did are so long gone Faith. I think, I don't know…" Buffy drew in a deep, drawn out breath, organising words behind the ever present feel of exhaustion. "…I think maybe I understand better now. I understand *you* better now."
Those were the words. The ones she had meant to say. She understood her better now. She understood everything now.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" The understanding not seeping through the barrier of bars, only eliciting more rage. More contemptuous words of bitter amazement. "You *understand* me? You lock me in a fucking cage and you think you understand me!?" Faith couldn't remember if it was rage or disbelief that had her clinging to those bars oh so tight again, but clinging she was. Straining to break through, to make contact with the mouth that whispered lies into the darkness, which fed the darkness, that made her stomach churn with a bitterness that had only festered and grown with every night she was away. "You haven't got the first damn clue about me, you never had the first damn fucking clue about anything B!"
Those prissy eyes, that prissy ass, always judging, always making comment on things she had *no* fucking clue about. Here Faith, let me help you, let me wrap you in my pastel coated bullshit and make the demons go away. It never worked. Had never worked. Would never work.
"Faith…"
"And stop with the name already. I know my god damned name!"
This time Buffy had forgotten about breathing in. About breathing full stop. Held rigid again, held in the same place again. No progress, no ability to break through the walls that had sprung up with the same urgency as soon as Faith had awoken. But Faith was wrong.
It was something that deserved more than a deep breath. Buffy *did* understand.
"I remember the dream." Striking her own blow with measured precision, calling to the one that had happily shared her piece of heaven. Invoking memories of the dream that showed her everything, the dream she had shared with Faith. Watching her flinch, watching her waver.
"Yeah? I remember the nightmare B." Witnessing the flash that sprang through Faith's eyes, the moment that hung in silent suspension until she had spoken again. "*Just* the nightmare."
Was that an easy lie too?
"Just the nightmare?"
Buffy's words making her feet start a pace inside that cell, arms breaking from the seal of the bars, to stalk warily across her enclosure. "Leave me alone."
"No Faith, you tell me I don't understand, maybe I do. Maybe you're too scared to take a look." A hitch in step, more hate filled glances. "I remember the bed Faith, I remember the sheets, I remember all of it. I remember the peace…"
"Leave me alone!"
A hitch in voice. No more glances. "I remember the way that everything was okay again. I remember…"
It couldn't carry on. Faith couldn't listen, couldn't see. Would not remember. Would not weaken herself with visions that offered more of the pastel coated bullshit. She thrust herself with all the strength gained from the stuffed crust pizza; straight at the bars… straight at Buffy, words spat out with too much force, too much feeling. "You remember?! Do you remember this B?!" Hands tearing at the top which covered her skin, which covered the scar that sat itching with vengeance beneath cotton. An ugly scar, a scar not eased by the strength of her body, by a healing power that had almost forgotten it existed. "Do you remember doing it B, killing me? Has four years robbed you of your moment of glory?"
"No…"
"Look at it Buffy! *You* did this! All of this, all of it's because of you, and you want me to forget? To forgive?!" She watched as Buffy backed away, as those eyes of green got dipped in water, as the colours ran with the redness of exhaustion, with the bloodshot river of tears. Her head shaking as if she could deny the only truth that Faith believed in, the only words that continued to make sense to her across any leap of time. "I owe you one Buffy, and I ain't ever forgetting that."
Drawled out. Harped out. The perversity of that special stare fixing tight to her body again, slipping down beneath her skin, caressing her in ways which made her want to run screaming from the room. She didn't scream though. She wasn't a screamer. Pulling her shoulders back yet again, grabbing at a reasoned sanity yet again. "That's up to you Faith. Just know…" Straightening with the feel of power, with real strength. "…this cage is where you're gonna stay, until you change your tune. I want to forget, I already forgave. Now it's up to you…"
Waiting. Watching. Faith's footsteps drawn to a halt, the remaining stale air being sucked from the room, layered instead with darkness. With payback. "Then I guess we'll resume normal service and see who lands on top."
Her shirt dragged back down. The scar on her skin re-covered, the scars in her eyes remaining. All sent to hell with the sneer and her smirk.
"If that's what you want?"
"It's exactly what I want."
Dedicated: Just for J, let's keep the focus directed firmly at the Shahi ass. I haven't watched that ep in ages... I could probably use the inspiration. So yes, to Sarah Shahi's ass. My love still burns bright. Obsessively even :)
The sleep that she had managed, after leaving the confines of the basement, did not leave Buffy feeling rested. If anything, she felt more exhausted; as if her mind had stayed focusing on every movement, replaying every phrase that had been thrust roughly between the two slayers. She had tried, no one could say to her that she hadn't tried, but just as she feared it would be, it was going to take a whole lot more than trying, to get a grip on Faith.
On the problem with Faith.
Getting a grip on the problem. Wasn't that what she was supposed to be doing now?
She knew that down below her in reception, the Scooby gang were gathering to offer up ideas on how to handle Faith. How to handle the problem. But she just couldn't pull herself down the stairs yet, couldn't face them with wisdom, when she was lost so much in confusion. Different sides of the same parts all arguing amongst themselves about which way to go. What the hell she was supposed to do?
The slayer residing inside had already fizzed a feeling of excitement through her veins when she thought about the possibility of a throw down. Resuming the old position and seeing who landed on top. Buffy *knew* who would land on top though. The slayer knew who would land on top. She had already beaten Faith, and the absolute truth, was that she never wanted to revisit that place again. Seeing the scar of the past had been enough to remind her how wrong it had felt to ever tarnish Faith's flesh with caresses so brutal. She would happily go to hell herself before she ever indulged in that kind of brutality again. She wanted no part of it. She would not be taunted into it.
Which left, what..? The bars to a cage that provided a barrier as tense and taut as any of Faith's self made defences? Just as hard to cross.
No. Keeping her in the cage was not the right way either. Maybe it was just as brutal as the first option, encasing her within the rage, trapping her beneath the stares of everyone she thought had hated her. Definitely not conducive to making a happy slayer. Not the way to construct a bridge over all of the water that flowed so troubled, definitely not the way to show her that everything had changed.
Somewhere inside, Buffy was longing for the steady guidance of Angel, for the solidarity of Giles, for anyone who could show her the way to steer the boat around all of the obstacles of destruction. Self-destruction. Faith's destruction. No more destruction.
A long time ago, long after the first holding of hand, the first whispers of sorry, Buffy had vowed to herself, that given the chance she would do everything possible to make it different; she would not lose Faith again. And now, so much lost, so much already different, she reiterated the heartfelt vow to herself. Whether they took the easy route or the hard route, she would be there captaining the ship. Buffy would not lose Faith. Not again.
Easy comfort was found in the arms of the sofas in reception. The Scoobies lounging, indulging in the last remnants of breakfast, discussing the frivolous ideas for an easy Saturday afternoon. No apocalypse brewing, no homework to be turned in, no jobs to go to. Willow was voting for a shopping trip, noticing a definite need in everyone to gain fresh clothes - no amount of spin cycles ever enough to wash away the dust and blood of Sunnydale. She would take Dawn and Kennedy, any of the other slayers that dared to take their chances in the shopping malls of LA, and she would buy clothes for everyone. Enough clothes to function. Like, two outfits each?
She wasn't sure of the exact logistics, she just smiled, happy in the knowledge that Giles was treating. That today offered the possibility of something so far away from all of the bad stuff. She was more than ready for the what comes next, already embracing plans of futures with the newness of her girlfriend. Places they could go to, places that she had always wanted to visit.
In her mind, she had already started preparing her conversation with Giles. Getting ready to explain the importance of tracking down all of the benefactors from her nifty little spell. Visions of crossing oceans, Kennedy by her side, uniting all of the girls that had crossed over from potential to slayer.
They were fun thoughts, good thoughts, all thoughts which drew her mind away from the messes of Sunnydale that still needed cleaning. Which drew her eyes away from staying enraptured by the screen, from the return to rage that was still screaming out its rank disdain in the cage down below them. And could she *please* just shut up already?!
Bagels did not blend well with bitterness, and bitterness was all that was being served up from below. Yesterday, watching the screen, watching Xander, Willow had felt that brief glow of hope, that brief fleeting with the feeling that Buffy was right. Things could be made different this time around. But now, hearing the barely veiled threats which echoed up the stairwell..? All that she wanted was the shopping, the new clothes, and the dreams of a future that contained none of the same old madness.
"Morning guys."
She hid the brief flicker of guilt behind a breezy dose of perkiness, as Buffy had made her way into the space amongst them. Reaching down and snagging a pastry, flashing smiles at her sister, at Xander, finally coming to rest on Willow, prompting a reply.
"Morning Buffy." Affixing her own brighter than sunshine smile. "How was the slaying last night?"
"Oh, ya know, dusty." The red head making the space on the sofa for her best friend to sit, fixing her with rapt attention as she awaited more words. "So what's up with Faith this morning?"
Okay. Not the words she wanted. "The obvious?" Eyebrows wiggling to assure of her humour filled intention.
"Has she had any breakfast?"
Was that the obvious? Did Buffy *really* think that Faith was going crazy again because they hadn't brought her bagels?
"Uh… how about, no? She's been acting like that all morning Buffy, even Xander isn't brave enough to bring her food when she's in that state."
"*I* offered to take her food." Dawn smiled across her words. She wasn't scared of Faith, she had never been too terrified of Faith. "Willow said, no."
"Willow was right. I don't want you down there Dawn, okay?"
"Sure. Cos I can fight soldiers of The First, but I'm way too timid to deliver bagels through bars to Faith. That is so stupid, even for you."
"Maybe, but it's still a no." And that was the end of that. "What about one of the slayers, are none of them up yet?"
"Giles is giving them a daylight tour of the cemeteries. They'll be back soon." Willow left it there. She didn't add the words of her girlfriend, the ones that assured that Kennedy would never play the part of jailer to Faith. "Maybe she's not even hungry, she looks too…" Casting her eyes around, catching those nimble limbs as they smashed more pointless blows against the cage. "…busy, to eat. I bet she calms down by lunchtime."
Buffy could bet that she wouldn't. But then Buffy already knew exactly what was up. The rage returning in absolute earnest when she had turned her back on her in the early hours of the morning. As Faith had thrown down the gauntlet, and Buffy had picked up the scythe. Walking away. Not rising to the challenge. She hadn't realised though, that the anger would still be burning so bright in the daylight.
"She has to eat. I'll take her something down."
"You sure that's a such good idea Buff? I don't mind going, I'm a good aim, I could probably toss the bagels right through the bars."
"No Xander, it's okay. I should go." Cos she really should. The captain at the helm. Picking up a couple of the pastries, retrieving another of the coffees as she made to go to the stairs. "Wish me luck?"
She had turned and said it with a smile, tried to keep the smile as she met the unsure glances of her sister and friends. God. It looked like everyone else had already lost the faith.
Neutral was tethered firmly to her face as she made her way down the stairs again. Not reacting to the rises that Faith was throwing at her feet, not even bothering to raise her eyes and meet the gaze. She knew what would be there, she knew how it went, what the hatred looked like.
"I've brought you some breakfast."
Slid in softly between the cursing. Ignoring the ranted reply. Just slipping down to sitting again, making out that sharing breakfast with Faith was the most natural thing in the world. In truth it was the furthest thing from normalcy. Ever. Something that Buffy was relying upon.
Everything had changed. Everything was different.
"There's bagels, or a donut. I was late getting up, so there's no variety. No jelly ones left. It's the curse of sleeping in."
Just a little flick of her eyes, a brief dance upwards, just to place a shape, to witness Faith stood there, barely touching distance away. Arms locked tight, fingers clenching around the bars.
"You do know that they're magic?" Hoping that if Faith knew how futile it was, she would stop with the endless slamming, the endless screaming.
"The bagels or the donut?"
"The bars."
"Figures."
Letting her eyes rest longer this time, observing not hate, but an emptiness, a void that was just as uncomfortable to witness as the hatred had always been. A void that brought silence, no more screaming, no more slamming, no more of anything.
"I meant what I said Faith." Trying to fill the void. "You won't be coming out until you start calming down. I can't risk you going all revenge girl on my friends. They've been through enough…"
"Save it for someone who cares, B."
Only allowing a smile to pass her lips, no retaliating remark, no hurt to serve up with the offer of breakfast. "Sorry, I forgot, you don't care. My bad. You want coffee?"
Watching as that void was chipped away to be replaced by confusion, an unsure step backwards, eyes which flicked to the cup, to her face, eventually down to the floor.
"It's not Starbucks good, but it's better than what they offer up at the hospital. That's something I won't miss; vending machine coffee. Do you think they have to try extra hard to make it that bad?"
Faith's eyebrows knitting, her gaze firing up with little sparks of contempt. "I was in a coma, I wasn't drinking the god damn coffee."
"And is it wrong to say, lucky you? Seriously Faith, if there's anything I'm glad to see the back of, then it's that evil old vending machine."
Buffy settled for straight out staring now. Fixing Faith with her eyes and vowing not to turn away. She didn't have the first idea what she was doing, there was no one there to direct her across the choppy seas, across all of the oceans of hurt… it just, if she could just *act* normal. If she could just show Faith something, other than the thing that she was expecting. It might work? It felt worth the try. Pinning her against the bars now, with nothing but her eyes, it felt like maybe it was working. Like a connection was returning.
Not a void. Not hatred. Just confusion and…
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Ah. Concern?
"Nothing's wrong. I didn't sleep too well, I haven't had a shower yet. Other than that, I'm good. Great. You?"
She took a chance and raised the bagel, crossing the distance which was barely out of reach, to bring it to definitely within reach. Keeping her hand steady, her breathing steadier. The stare still fixed, tracking Faith's eyes as they devoured the food in midair. "Take it."
Willing her to accept.
"I know what you're doing B, and it ain't gonna work."
"What am I doing Faith?"
But there was no quick reply, just something dark creeping in to cast shadows across the already dim room, a chill settling across Buffy's smile as that mouth finally moved on a response. "You're fucking with me. Same as you always fuck with me."
"No, I…"
"Bullshit. You think you can bring me coffee and that'll what, chill me out? Stop me wanting nothing more than to break down this cage and beat you to death?"
Faith wasn't shouting or screaming. Her words were succinct and to the point. Crafted somewhere in amongst four years of twisted nightmares, four years of unheard screams.
And how could Buffy construct a smile for that one? How could she say anything other than the truth? "You really think you could beat me to anything? Look at yourself Faith, you haven't got the strength to beat yourself to death, let alone anyone else."
Her hands lifting up the bagel again, her taunting words trying to push Faith into accepting.
"Fuck you."
That again. She considered for a moment, that getting Xander to toss the bagel through the bars, was not altogether a bad idea. Buffy was semi-toying with tossing it in herself. She'd even consider awarding herself three points if she could lodge it straight in Faith's mouth and stop the flow of the cursing.
"Your choice." Lodging it instead in her own mouth. Reminding herself that this was a relaxing breakfast with an old friend, stopping her teeth from grinding down on the pastry, keeping the smile in place as she chewed on something which felt like sandbags between her teeth. "It's good."
Not an easy lie.
Her fingers wrapping around the coffee cup, blowing away the steam so she could add a little moisture to the dry bagel. Wincing at the bitterness, wishing for sugar. "You sure you don't want any?"
Letting her eyes take the time to reflect on Faith again. Not buckling under the hatred, just trying to dig down below, to see the things that she was sure resided there. Not seeing anything other than eyes which shone back at her with something so undeniably intense, something so undeniably hungry. For bagels? For destruction?
"Do you know how much I hate you?" Still not screaming, just more of that slow steady rage, a sneer which stole away all of her beauty to leave nothing but disgust. "I so fucking hate you."
"No." A sad shake of head. The greatest understanding of all. "You don't."
"Yeah. I do."
It was the moment that ended the easy façade that Buffy had prayed would stay in place. The pretend game where everything was just as it should be, where they traded easy banter skilfully across a peace laden breakfast table. Sighing now instead, dropping the bagel back down to the ground, freeing her mouth to speak more words which she prayed would sound like sense. "I get why you think you hate me Faith, I hate myself too for the things that I did to you… I hate the things that you did to me…"
Pinning with the gaze of green again, Faith having nowhere near the strength to defend herself against Buffy's greatest weapon of all. The truth. No matter that she would deny it, that she would happily die in this moment denying it, the truth was as known to her now as it has always been. The truth that she hid from inside of the darkness…
"…but I don't hate you. You don't hate me. Bad things happened, we handled everything wrong…"
"Shut the fuck up!" A truth that she hid from behind a mouth that could rival even her mother's love for coarseness. "Just shut the fuck up."
"No again. You have to hear this, you have to start hearing this. I know it's hard… believe me Faith, I can't even begin to imagine how screwed up this all is for you…" Her eyes digging deeper, looking, searching, her mouth not sure of the words, not knowing what she should speak, just trusting in the truth. "…and I… I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for everything." And god, she *could* see it, she swore to herself that she could see it. There, beneath that contemptuous mask which twisted and turned the features of Faith's face, she could see the vulnerability, the need to reach out, to find dry land. "I'm sorry Faith."
Calming the waters. Trying to banish the demons.
The demons which refused to be banished.
They were the right words that Buffy had spoken, but so much at the wrong time. Faith too tormented by a present that was wrapped firmly in her past, by truth which felt too much like deception, to ever hold up her head and ask for help. To beg for help. No. The shutters slammed down hard on any fleeting hint of vulnerability, the demons in her soul delighting at the free space they had found behind her eyes, the space to snarl and growl at Buffy. "You think that's what this is? You think that all this is just bad things happening?" She leered across a smile again, tainting the one in front of her with so much more than a truth that could be righted by sorry. A dark desire, something which crawled across her skin and begged to be released; to take, to have, to destroy. "I fucking hate you."
Her sprit buoyed by seeing Buffy drop her eyes, releasing her from the hold which had held her rigid with an intensity that terrified her. Delighting in the damage she could do with just the simple vocalisation of her hatred. Had it always been this easy to hurt her?
"What, you don't like that B? Am I not falling in line and playing the game your way?" She laughed at the pain which flared across the basement, at a hint of tears she couldn't care a fuck for. "You're still the same. You think you can paint everything in pastels and it'll all work out okay. Well life's not like that Buffy. Real life isn't like that."
"Don't tell me about real life."
"Oh shit yeah, cos you've lived it hard, right? You make me fucking die B, you think I don't know what this is?" She paused to give the moment longer to do harm, preparing the way for more of the real truth. Her truth. "You wanna prove how much of a better slayer you are by reforming big bad Faith? Guess what? Not gonna happen." Her smile growing cockier, her words cruising on a roll. "You can keep me in this cage forever and your sorry wouldn't mean shit, *you* don't mean shit. Do you get that? Do you think you can *understand* that one?"
Oh it felt so good to find the saddle. Back on top. Loving the high life. It all felt so fucking good, so damn fucking good, everything she wanted, everything she needed. Slamming at Buffy, attacking Buffy, consuming Buffy. Buffy. Buffy. Buffy.
Her demons howling with laughter as she pulled herself up before her, that perky slant of shoulder disappearing beneath a weight that Faith hoped would drive her down into the ground. No parting shots to hide from, nothing done to return the blows. And it made her say more, made that cockiness think it had won the battle, had belittled Buffy with all the dark and menacing. "Aw, you not gonna share your bagel now, B?"
Her dimples aching with the force of the smile, preparing to strike again as Buffy had turned. Such sad eyes again. Such a hollow voice. "Starve."
And gone.
Buffy had returned to reception to find that all of the extended family was now back in attendance, and not only that, they were all huddled, as much as possible, around the grainy screen and all that it showed them. A nasty little shock, when she realised that she had had witnesses; that what to her seemed such a private struggle, was in fact on full view to the world. It made her fragile spirit grab quick to hostility, a need to vent an anger which she had kept such a firm grip on down below.
"Everyone enjoying the show?" Words which sounded just as bitter as Faith's, turning the heads of her friends, of her watcher. All of the new formed slayers regarding her with something like guilt. "Are we passing round popcorn?"
"Buffy, we…"
"No Wills, I'm not in the mood." She was so far from in the mood. "You all saw what happened, maybe it can prompt an idea or two?"
Silence greeting her. And there was a surprise! Eyes all dipping down to the floor, not wanting to watch anymore now that Buffy was stood before them, now that she could meet their gazes. "Come on guys, you all saw how bad that went, surely someone's got something?" A rasp breaking the harshness of her words, her friends daring to look up again as they noticed the desperation wrapped around all of the pain.
"Buffy..?"
Pain, because no matter how much she told herself that she could keep doing this, the thought of going down into that basement again, and soaking up all of Faith's rage, left her feeling somewhere so close to broken. She couldn't keep doing it.
"It's okay." Dragging at the drapes to cover her own fragilities, worried that she had already shown too much. "So what do we think, from now on all food is of the tossed variety?" Searching hard for the smile, for a return to normalcy.
"I did offer."
"Yeah, I know you did Xander. I'm sorry I passed it up."
The crowding newbies edged away from the gathering as Buffy made her way to take a seat. Perhaps sensing that this wasn't a place they were welcome, that none of them had gained entrance to the sacred circle of Scoobies. Of friends.
"I think it might make sense Buffy, if you kept the visitation to a minimum for now." Making her smile a real smile for the moment. Had he read her mind? "It doesn't seem as though you're making much headway, and I have to worry about the toll that all of this is taking on you…" He gestured towards her stomach, towards her in general. "…need I remind you that you were close to mortally wounded just two days ago. You barely slept last night…"
"I'm fine." Slipping back down to the pretend smile. Not feeling mortally wounded, just mortally weary. Wondering if death from exhaustion was a genuine concern. "I'm gonna go up and take a shower."
"Ooo, are you gonna come shopping with us?"
"Shopping?"
"You remember Buffy; stores, clothes, shoes…"
"No, I need to think this through Wills, I can't just forget that she's down there. I need to…" What? Smash her head continually against a brick wall? "…I need to find a solution. If I could just get her to understand that four years has gone, that none of that matters anymore."
Making Willow sigh. Making her turn her head back towards that screen. Again. Those same hunched shoulders, that same pathetic pose that just made Willow want to shake some…
Except…
"What's she doing?"
Honestly not understanding. Not having a clue that it was even possible, the farthest thing that she would've ever imagined when thinking of Faith. The wonderment of her tone having everyone turning to see. Forgetting about solutions.
"Is she…"
Not having the words to bring the picture to life.
Buffy not needing the words. Not needing to reach forwards and turn the volume higher to witness the sounds that would accompany the shakes. She had been so close to giving up, so close to accepting that casting Faith overboard and away was the only option open to her. That losing Faith was the only option that remained. That hard hollow shell, that ferocious snarl, that sneering leering look which crawled and slithered across her skin. And now this.
She didn't say words, she didn't complete the sentence. She leant across and offered Faith some dignity. Plunging the screen into darkness, offering her heart the hope of light. Of something bright.
Not trusting her voice to speak as she turned from her friends to find the stairs upwards. No. She didn't need to iterate what is was that Faith was doing. Her own eyes were doing the same.
Xander felt the injury to his heart as if he wore the wounds himself. Yesterday he had truly believed that somewhere, in amongst all of this madness, they could offer salvation to Faith. But now… after seeing the way that she still held so much of the bad stuff for Buffy, he just didn't know. He had no way of knowing. He didn't even begin to understand.
He would have to be stupid though to not make the connection, and Xander wasn't stupid. It was there for all to see. The pain that had flickered and died as the screen had been pitched into blackness, was the same pain that sat so naked and raw in Buffy's eyes. Trying to shield it before she had walked away, trying to swallow the tears that Xander had already taken note of.
If there was one thing he wanted more than to offer his help to Faith, then it was to offer his help to Buffy. To take some of her pain away. His mind remembering her words, the things that she had said she wanted.
'…If I could just get her to understand that four years has gone, that none of that matters anymore.'
And how the heck could he do that? How could he make Faith understand the passing of time, the loss of her days?
He hadn't been sat in a tree seeking enlightenment, he hadn't been mapping circles out with his feet whilst his mind span in spirals. He *had* been zapped by an idea though, an idea which made him latch on quick to the shopping trip to the mall. Which made him grab at Andrew and enlist him for what he had called their very secret mission.
Bringing excitement to Andrew's eyes, bringing excitement to Xander's step. He didn't know if it would work, he didn't know if it would prove completely pointless. He did know though, that he was sure as hell gonna have a whole lot of fun doing it.
She didn't know exactly where she went when the lights were turned out, but she knew that it wasn't a happy place. Even when her sanity spared her enough not to make her relive every single sick sadistic minute of her life, she still woke up drenched in a sweat that could never wash away the pain. Could never have her waking up and feeling rebirthed. Reborn. Faith may have taunted Buffy with words of wallowing in the same old shit, but in truth, it was her who was stuck somewhere close to the bottom of the barrel. Desperate to climb out, desperate to give in, desperate to make the whole fucked up lot go away. Disappear. Forever.
It was the hands of darkness clawing at her skin, dragging her always down, that had her shoulders shaking in a basement. Not sorrow. Not guilt. Not some fucked up, misplaced gesture of repentance. Just agony and pain and a desire for an end.
She didn't have the strength to beat herself to death. If she did, she may have used it.
Instead her rage coiled and spread in different directions, towards the pious voice that chased her through graveyards, towards a face that reflected enough of the good stuff to have her choking on the sickness that ached to break free. Shoot the messenger. Destroy the one that called her bad. That made her bad. Her whole fucking existence making her own existence more pointless. Who wanted Faith, when they could have Buffy?
No one. But then, who ever wanted Faith?
The Mayor.
The Mayor had wanted Faith. *His* pious voice tainted with more than enough sadism to attract the masochist in her. His heartwarming smiles just the right temperature of freezing to have her clinging tight for cold comfort. Easier to accept than the other kind. Than *her* kind. So much easier to delight and sneer through the giving of pain, than to sit back and accept her own.
She refused her own. It did not exist. She was not weak.
It was what her smirk said, it was what her snarl screamed. Leather coatings of second skins, offering protection for her own skin. A harlot painted twist that curled and curved upwards, shielding beyond doubt a mouth that cried to turn downwards.
No one ever got to see the truth behind every one of those lies. Even Faith herself refused belief in anything except the lie. She was the lie. It was all that she knew.
Air tainted like poison as it slipped fast through her lips. Promising her life, bringing only more anguish. Shoulders still shaking, everything breaking.
But she would not break.
She may be just as weak as Buffy assured her. She knew herself that she was probably weaker. But she would not break. Faith had inner strength. The strength of a thousand demons.
Tears, for Buffy, were nothing more than a wasted notion. She had no time for tears. A lifetime spent grafting the granite that her shoulders were crafted from; making herself hard, making herself strong. Tears didn't ease the pain, they didn't erase blame, and they sure as hell didn't change the past. Yes. Tears were definitely a wasted notion. Yet Buffy had wasted a thousand tears beneath the steady stream of the shower.
The heat of the water breaking fast across her skin, the chill of her feelings breaking fast from her eyes. Tears. And every single one of them, a gift crafted for Faith.
Another wasted notion?
She didn't think so. She wouldn't allow herself to believe so. When Buffy had dictated to Faith that she starve, she had meant every word. That one word. All of her anger, all of her pain, directed and aimed with a single blow.
Faith wanted to hurt Buffy? Go right ahead. Faith expected Buffy to lay down and play dead? Not a chance in hell. Buffy didn't play dead. Buffy had *been* dead. It wasn't a game, it wasn't about rolling in the dirt and seeing who landed on top; it was an end. A finality. Something that she wasn't ready to accept with Faith. Something that the screen had begged her not to accept in the seconds before the darkness.
Tears were such a wasted notion, and yet her heart had broken in two when she had witnessed tears from Faith. All of that rage, all of that anger… and did people really cry tears of hate?
Buffy remembered crying tears of pain, tears of anguish, of loss and despair. She could not remember ever wasting a drop on hatred.
Another understanding? A Zen moment beneath the steady beating rhythm of the water that was only meant to cleanse her body? To hide her tears?
And which kind of tears were her own?
An answer she knew, an answer that could never be wasted; all of the above and so much more.
So very much more. Buffy couldn't cry her tears in front of Faith anymore, that sanctuary had gone with the awakening she had wished for, but there was some source of comfort in knowing that she shared her tears with Faith still. That below her, somewhere deep down, Faith was crying the same tears. Not a chocolate flowing moat, no candyfloss in sight, but something more, something that she could build a bridge upon.
Hollow shells did not cry. Empty eyes did not shed tears. And no demon ever, had sat shaking in a basement, the product of pain, anguish, loss and despair.
The heat of the shop had been almost unbearable. Not located inside the fancy schmancy mall that the girls were checking out, but placed somewhere down a little side street. A venue out of sight. It wasn't that the shop was peddling filth of the nasty kind, it wasn't that only the bad elements of society liked to hang out there, it was simply the fact that geeks liked to be geeks away from the teasing taunts of the jock strapped mall rats.
It worked for Xander, after all, this was meant to be a very secret mission. Something he had regretted saying as soon as he had said it. The drool pooling on Andrew's lips almost instantly, his gaze torn between naked excitement and outright hero worship.
"This is *so* cool, oh wow, have you seen this one?!"
Xander breaking his gaze from the shop owner to see what was so important now? And look, *another* rare and limited edition, another comic book held beneath plastic to protect the contents from pawing hands.
But Xander didn't want rarities and things coated in plastic. He wanted something that Faith could hold onto, a truth presented to her in words and pictures that he knew she would understand. Four years gone? She had a whole lot of reading to catch up on. And he knew just where to start.
Watching as the cashier was ringing his purchase through the till, he hoped again that this would be worth it. That maybe an act this simple could start to cut a path through the burning rage of Faith. He believed that it could. He had seen her in those moments, the ones which seemed like clarity, and he had not seen a soulless monster. He had seen a girl. A girl that he remembered loved her comics, that could sit for what seemed like hours of a lunchtime library meet, completely engrossed in the actions and adventures of some mythical superhero.
And he had seen the girl whose shoulders shook. Maybe, for him, the real moment of clarity. The moment when foreman Xander took up his place. Not at the helm, not like Buffy; he would never want to be the one who stood in her shoes, no matter how fashionable or highly affordable those shoes may be. But the guy, who even with only one eye, saw things. Looked over things. Seeing, understanding. And wanting to help.
Buffy had eaten breakfast, had taken a shower, had wasted a thousand notions; and now she was left feeling refreshed. Rejuvenated. Ready again to face a problem that wasn't going away. That she didn't want to go away. She may have still felt the stiffness of shoulder that told tales of her deep down exhaustion, but her shoulders no longer felt as if they might be close to breaking. Buffy had found her strength in the tears that had washed away with the shower, and now she planned to utilise that strength. To think with a clear head, and to plan accordingly.
Obviously, Faith was weak.
Buffy knew this as much as she knew her own strength. Sure, she had gathered comfort in the knowledge of sharing her tears still, but the tears she had witnessed were not the same as the tears she had wept. The ones she had witnessed had not washed away any pain, had not given purpose to thoughts and feelings all confused; no. The ones she had witnessed had only further charted a demise that had begun four and a half years earlier. That downward spiral, that loss of Faith.
Buffy remembered so well Faith's crazed look. The one which seemed to have been perfected over years of practice, not brought to the fore so effortlessly in a dingy and dank smelling motel room.
'I don't care.'
And Buffy had believed every word. Felt every word as it sank through the laden down layers of her own confused mind. So scared. So shocked at Faith. And welcome to the downward spiral. Every detachment seeming greater in the weeks that had followed. Every look screaming psychotic, every word backing up the sentiment.
It had made it so easy to dismiss the terrified. To ignore the silent screamings that tore from Faith's gaze in moments of enforced exposure: Psych Faith! Did ya like that Faith?
Only Buffy had seen that she hadn't. Beneath the hate, the absolute unabated revulsion, Buffy had recognised the slice of betrayal. The hurt and the pain. Heck, she had relished in it… delighted at it. She had celebrated it with a knife to the gut. And the first of her wasted notions. The changing of her emotions.
It was hard to hate someone who lay broken before you. It was even harder to hate the one that you broke.
Faith was weak. Buffy was sure of that.
It was the kind of thought that allowed her mind to reclaim and repackage the softly, softly approach. The one where she allowed her musings to trip light down the path to forgiveness. Recovery. A place which remembered every look which came before the crazed. Looks which were crazed in such a different way. Just as fear inducing, just as confusing. Way more intense. A look she would waste a thousand notions upon, if she ever got the chance to see it again.
So… softly, softly? How did you go softly with someone that hadn't had four years to gain a greater insight, to gain maturity and learn the labels for feelings that had felt so volatile and destructive at the time?
Not a clue. Not a one. All that Buffy *was* sure of, was the strength she had found under a steady stream of hot water and in the shedding of clothes that bore two days of misery. The feeling of refreshed and rejuvenated that still encased her ever weary limbs.
And that was a clue, wasn't it?
A clue she still pondered the sanity of, as she made her way back down the stairs. Still with the feeling of perky, of hope, but overloaded with a distant sense of trepidation. She was glad that the others were still all out on the shopping trip, because there was no way that they would okay this one without a stern session of therapy first. It was official. Buffy was mad.
But, and to her it was a big but, she felt mad with a sense of purpose. She had thought it through until it made sense. Until it made the only sense. Washing away the misery had done her a world of good; so how good would it feel to wash away four years of misery?
And it wasn't like she was *completely* mad. She was armed. Her grip holding comfortable around the handle to the crossbow, her finger nowhere near the trigger, but her reflexes so much quicker than Faith's. Buffy felt secure in her trepidation. She hoped that it showed.
"Faith?"
That's it. Tone steady. Non-committal. "Are you awake?"
"Did you bring back the bagel?"
And smiling in spite of herself. "No. I can get you something to eat though, if you're hungry?"
She steadied the misgivings that the situation forced her to feel and instead crept closer to the cage. Arm slightly raised, not taking aim, just showing her strength.
"My last meal?"
"Nothing like that. This is just protection. A warning." She shrugged her shoulders dismissively in Faith's direction. "I'm hoping I don't need it."
"I'm locked in a cage. Unless you're planning target practice, I don't see you needing it."
Buffy's eyes stayed soft as Faith pulled herself up before her, nothing menacing, not yet, just walking closer to the bars. Maybe a sitting target.
"No to target practice, my aim doesn't need improving…" Eyes dipping from soft, to unsure. "…I'm letting you out."
"What?"
"I'm gonna let you out."
"Have you totally lost it?"
Possibly. Probably. She tried to gather her tone back towards steady and sure. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to open up a cage on someone that had vocalised wanting to beat her to death. "No, this is a sane thought. I have the crossbow…"
"Why?"
"The crossbow?"
Because she thought she had made that quite clear. Raising it in Faith's direction again, just to reiterate.
"No. Why are you letting me out?"
Not so easy to explain. Not so easy to talk about washing away misery, about Zen moments attained beneath the repetitive beating of the cleansing water. She went with less deep. Not so meaningful. "A shower."
Met by silence.
"No change of clothes yet, Wills is out buying outfits, but you can shower…"
"Red's buying outfits?"
It was a horror that had crossed Buffy's mind too. "Yeah. I told her nothing too…"
And she was going to use humour. Buffy was good with humour. Faith not so much. She was much better with the bitter.
"Fuck it B, just get me a jumpsuit. If we're gonna play prison, I may as well get in costume."
Instead she had to fight to cling tight to the softness in her eyes. Just allowing the slightest glint to shine through her gaze, that small reminder that none of this was a game. "Don't make me turn around and walk away again Faith. I know you're angry, I know you're hell-bent on revenge, but let's make this easy, okay?" She counted through a slow ten as her eyes locked tight to Faith. Not flinching from the intensity, not rolling over in the face of all of that contempt. Standing steady and sure. "I let you out, you stay calm. We go upstairs, you take a shower, you come back in here, and then I'll fix you lunch. Do you think you can manage that?"
Double the ten count.
"Well?"
"Fine. Whatever. Just get me the fuck out of this cage."
And that was progress; seeing the hate beat back by resignation. It was also comforting as she dipped her fingers into her pocket to produce the keys. She *really* didn't wanna have to use the crossbow. That would not be progress. Resignation should be easier to control.
The steady stream of beating water was not so comforting for Buffy this time around. Now it was much more distracting, much more intense in its ability to provide Zen moments of enlightenment. Not quite as intense as the moment that Faith had shed her resignation though; that had been way more intense, had spawned way more of the understanding.
In her mind she had already told herself that caresses intent with brutality had no place touching Faith's skin. As Faith had shed her dungeon rank clothes - stood before her with that same familiar edge of defiance, that same familiar smirk of something unnamed - Buffy had felt the urge to touch with the absolute brutality of desire. A sudden feeling, a remembered fear, a choke which had sprung from the back of her throat as Faith had posed naked before her.
A choke which had been the only word spoken, as she had turned and climbed into the shower. And now, just sitting, listening to the monotonous, trying to disembark from the new train of thought, the new rush to find a wreck. Because this could only ever end in a train wreck…
Affectedness. Affect. Affection.
None of her labels of maturity covered the one word that she herself had spent more than four years forgetting. Desire. Not for words of friendship, for hands held in understanding. But for the Want. The Take. And the Have. For skin that burned with heat, for hands that dipped her flesh in fire. For Faith.
And welcome to the start of the real spiral downwards.
She had choked on her feelings back then. Just like now. Had played the game without reading the rules. Hadn't understood what she had been stoking with all of those coy smiles of flirtation, what she had been provoking with all those dances of intimacy at the Bronze. She had thought she could touch the fire and not get burnt. She had learnt the hard way.
"Can you pass me a towel?"
The voice that broke through the distraction of her thoughts, through the now silent shower, was enough to have Buffy raising the crossbow high again. An act of protection.
"What?"
"A towel. I asked for a towel." A towel would definitely be good. "And stop pointing that damn thing at me! I get it, you're armed and dangerous. I'm terrified. Now the towel?"
Buffy's arm offered the towel without her eyes ever moving. Fixed so tight to Faith's gaze, not daring to waver, not daring to wander. "Do you feel better?"
"Five by five, B." Not sure who was the prisoner as she held the eyes that were glinting back at her. Eyes that seemed so much more assured without the protection of second skins. "Nothing like a quick shower to cure four years worth of deep sleep. I'm almost ready to roll."
So very much more assured.
"Which is my cue to say, back to the cage!" Trying to sound just as assured, just as unshakeable. "Come on, you keep this easy and I'll make you that something to eat."
"I'm nothing but easy." Faith's gaze also not dropping as she returned her worn clothes to her body. Fixing on Buffy. Fixating on Buffy. So many different thoughts rewiring her thinking, her ideas on payback. On revenge.
And this could work.
"This doesn't change anything Buffy, but I appreciate it all the same."
Just a little offering. A little space to place a smile.
"Huh?"
"I appreciate the shower, letting me use the john. I thought I was gonna explode down there…" But not too much. Not blowing it. "…I promise I'll go easy when it's time to take payback."
"Wow. You're so thoughtful."
She was now.
She *had* been resigned. Resigned to being Buffy's bitch, to doing as the armed slayer dictated, to being as inconsequential as she had always found herself being. Then she remembered. She remembered the rules to the game that they were playing. Not the one on the roof, the one that had ended in the mother of all knock outs, but the one that had inspired the ferocity of all the later play. Green eyes which dipped soft beneath lashes, cheeks tainted by something much warmer than the California sunshine.
Faith had shed the safety of her costume and she had seen. And she had remembered. Before the time had come to taunt her demons with cries of unwanted affection, of wasted desires, she remembered that look. The sound of the chokes as Buffy had first realised the taste of the seduction that Faith was wrapping so tight around her. The blush that had provoked her to always push it further. To want more.
Want, take, have. Destroy.
"Yeah, I'm real thoughtful. This doesn't change anything though. I'm still getting my payback."
"Lunch first?"
"Whatever you say, girlfriend."
Topped with a wink. A return to the huskiness she had memories of mustering just for Buffy. Lunch first. And then payback. Her demons were in agreement; it was a damn fine plan.
A plan that she nurtured as easily as she nurtured the silence. Let Buffy sit in front of her and wonder at what was going on. It levelled the playing field a little… made Faith's ongoing confusion seem not such a problem. Faith wanted to do this right. Wanted to extract as much second hand pain as was humanly possible. Quite a big ask, but she more than felt up to the task. It's what her smirk said. What her secret smile screamed.
It all came down to payback.
Buffy may have comatosed her own feelings of desire, but four years of actual coma had done nothing to dampen the memory for Faith. The time when want, take and have, had meant nothing like destruction, had just meant the simplicity of the action. Before Buffy had torn herself from Faith to throw herself at Angel, before she had ever stared her down with a look so high and mighty and proclaimed her as bad. Called her a killer.
She hated that pious voice with such passion.
'You *killed* a man.'
No shit.
That had changed the name of the game for Faith; from desire to destruction. But if those green eyes still dipped beneath lashes for her, if those cheeks still blushed pink for her, then it was going to make the destruction so much more sweeter, so much more desirable. A part of her had felt like dying with every single step that Buffy had taken away from her. Now she felt alive again. Back in the saddle. Ready to play.
"So B..?" Taking notice of every look, every breath, every rise and fall of her chest. "You ever gonna tell me where we are?"
"A basement."
"Don't fuck with me."
"Sorry Faith, I forgot about the lack of humour. I hoped the shower might have refreshed you."
Definitely refreshed.
"I'm locked back in this cage - how refreshed did ya think I'd be feeling?" Keep the eyes tight. Do not drop the stare. "So where are we?"
"LA - Angel's place if you want specifics. After Sunnydale went boom, we didn't know where else…"
"Angel's place?"
"Right… Angel left Sunnydale. I forgot you didn't know."
"He left?" For a moment Faith forgot everything. A moment when you have to step back and beg confirmation for something you never expected. No plan, nor appetite for destruction, just disbelief. "Angel *left* you?"
"Sure. Four years ago. Right after graduation."
And this silence she didn't offer as part of a plan. Just taking the time to fit new fragments into an ever expanding picture of the time she had missed. Memories mixing with new truth. Questions to be asked.
"How did he… with the poison…"
"I cured him."
More questions. "You?" More disbelief. "But, how?"
Her eyebrows dipping as she forgot to take bites from her lunch, as her mouth hung open in obvious speechlessness. Words eventually coming with the hint of a sneer, with something she wasn't trying to shape and mould to fit her growing disguise. "The dead fucker drank from you?!"
"It wasn't…"
"You *let* him drink from you?!"
"What else was I supposed to do?"
And Faith had no answer. No anger at Buffy's action as she fought to rein in the feeling. A deep breath. Composure. "You could have thought of that first, ya know, before you stabbed me and let me jump off the roof."
"I've said sorry."
"And I've told you it don't mean shit. Means even less now I know this." And it did. "I thought you gutted me for a reason - a fucked up reason, sure - but still a reason. What was I B, a going away gift?"
"It wasn't like that. I didn't know…"
"Save it."
Because she wouldn't get into this now. The time when she stood before Buffy and demanded answers, she wanted no barriers, no bars, nothing to stop Buffy from feeling the pain of her blows. Now she just wanted the time to slice through the fresh layer of confusion, more facts to be focused on, more nonsense to make sense from.
So, Buffy had stabbed her. Had wanted to feed her to Angel. Angel had left Buffy. Sunnydale had gone boom. And now they were in LA.
It wasn't much for four years gone. She couldn't even guess at how much more there was to add to the ever growing list of things she didn't know she didn't know. Or something.
It was so much easier to focus on the plan. On the first and most important of all the facts. The thing that she did know she knew for sure;
Buffy had stabbed her.
And it all came down to payback.
Author's Notes: Yay. The comical chapter. Or comicy. I knew nothing about comics when I decided to use them as the basis for Xander's great idea - now I know a little - but it's still really not a lot. I couldn't have ever written this without the help of Tan, Cece and Mint. They were my geek brigade ;) My cape clad heroes. They gave me perfect ideas and perfect inspiration for how to fit stuff together. They rock.
Dedicated: To the above Trio of Terrificness. Much love X
And... *sigh*... The Hulk would NEVER beat Superman's ass!
Nor Sarah Shahi's ;)
Xander had hung back from all of the excited girlyness, when the happy shoppers had finally made their way back to the hotel. He wasn't one for talk of high fashion, he didn't care so much which pants Willow had bought him, whether his new shirts matched his new socks or not. What he did care about though, what he absolutely cared about, was the package he held now, safe and secure beneath his arm.
The 'very secret mission' to the comic store had been a welcome success, everything that he had wanted they had in stock, and now he felt ready to face Faith with something meaningful. Something to distract the mind that he had witnessed as it had broken beneath them.
He didn't have excuses for all of the things that Faith had done before, for any of the acts that they had all been so happy to label as psychotic, he didn't know her reasons - he didn't know much of anything when it came to her lures and her pushes - but he did know about second chances. About forgiveness. About remembering the person who had existed before the darkness had reached out to claim them.
With Willow he had connected through memories of breaking that pesky little yellow crayon back in kindergarten, with Faith he was hoping a connection resided somewhere in the pages of Contagion and Cataclysm. He hoped that he could rescue her spirit with the added enticement of No Man's Land. Yeah. Xander Harris was putting all of his faith in the Caped Crusader.
A thought which made him shake his head still with a little breath of bemusement; he had always been a Marvel man, a firm subscriber to the philosophy that The Hulk could kick Superman's skinny ass any day of the week. That the X-Men far outweighed any of the offerings from the DC side of the tracks… but then he remembered those meetings which were ignored in the library. How he had smoozied over to Faith one afternoon, all full of boyish charm, all full of glazed eyes and happiness hormones, asking what it was that she was reading;
'Whatcha reading Faith?' Putting himself into her space, encroaching his ass on the desk where she rested her boots. Upping the volume as her attention never waned from the comic she was engrossed in. 'Anyone in there?'
Starting to tap the back of the magazine until she ceased her reading, those dark brown eyes flirting with dangerous as she had finally let her gaze come to rest on him. 'Do you have a reason for bugging me? Shouldn't you be off somewhere, learning something?'
Her hands flitting as if at a fly, trying to ease him away. But then, Xander was controlled by the hormones, he hadn't heard a word. His hand reaching out again to touch the comic, turning it round to look, to see, to spark a debate that had raged right up until the time when she had defected and left them.
'Batman!' His voice high pitched in its disbelief. 'You're tainting Giles' library with the evil DC?! Do you know how wrong this is?'
'Don't diss the DC, dude, you gotta have respect for Batman, the guy's a legend…'
'The guy has a utility belt! What kind of superhero has nothing but a utility belt?'
'Add in the bitchin' hi-tech underground lair, top of the range surveillance equipment, crazy assed car… I dunno Xander, a damn good one?'
'Madness!' He remembered covering his ears in mock shock, the way her eyes had lit up as she launched into the spiel on what was happening in the city named Gotham. All the bad crap, the background to Contagion, how it led into Cataclysm. Showing him the issue she was reading then, getting him hooked with the way she wrapped her lips so sensuously around the story. The dark bits seeming real, the bad bits coming to life. 'Okay… so Batman has potential. I can admit that the story *might* sound exciting…'
'No way man, it's totally wicked. Kicks serious ass.'
'Yeah, whatever. Everyone knows that X-men kicks ass, anything else is just trying for second rate…'
The light in her eyes growing, the smile on her face widening. 'Ya know… for a nerd you don't know shit. Next you'll be going down The Hulk versus Superman route…'
'Whoa! Okay, you can stop right there Faith. I can cope with the disturbing love for Batman, he's all dark and broody, and I know how that *always* gets the girls. But no way, I'm not taking the Hulk slurs. He'd serve up Superman's ass on a platter any day of the week, any comic fan with any sense knows that.'
'Anyone with any sense would know that Hulk is nothing more than a moron with muscles. You're deluded. It's bad. I kind of liked you too… shame it had to end this way.'
And he had stayed, and they had bantered. He had flirted, she had gifted him with the odd flash of her eyes, the odd teeth gripping her lip, sending her gaze sliding slowly down over his form. Yeah. He definitely remembered those kind of days. He hoped for something similar now. Not the flirting - he was not looking to revisit that slice of past with Faith - but the easiness, the banter. Reminding her of the fun that could be had when she was good. Before she was bad.
The basement sat coated in the same gloom, the same dank and dirty aroma that had caked every single minute since Faith had been stuck down there. Imprisoned down there. It was a feeling that was eating away at her insides, giving that hatred some more points to add to her bulletin board, more fuel to the fire of payback, more and more retribution to be gainfully harvested.
At least knowing now that she was in LA, offered some level of comfort. It was a city, it was a great big fuck off city; the kind of place she could lose herself, the kind of place she could find escape. Yet the bars were made with magic, and the door wasn't opened unless a crossbow was pointing up into her face. It was bullshit. And it more than fuelled the rage that set out the plan. More than fuelled her hunger for the game.
She was going to play Buffy, and she was going to beat Buffy. It was the only thing that she demanded of herself now. The thing that held her tongue in place as she ached to scream out her imprisoned frustration, the thing that kept her arms by her sides all the time that she wanted to pound out a rhythm against the bars that would not break. Control. It was about control. Who had it. Who used it.
Buffy thought that she was in control, that a piece of wood pointing up in Faith's face was enough to tame the hatred that ran in rivers through her veins. Not a chance. Faith was in control. Quiet, calm and measured control. She remembered the dipping green, she remembered the tinted pinks.
She refused to remember a time when those colours were her favourite colours though. When Sunnydale was a Sunny slice of heaven, instead of a shafted slice of hell. No. She focused only on the things that were important, the things that had become important with the passing of days, with the widening of the abyss that had ripped open so destructively between the two slayers. Buffy just so damn good, and Faith, just so damn bad. And she could do that, she could be bad. She *was* bad. She remembered.
Bad. Wicked. Evil. The smirk grabbing her lips as she thought through all of the bad, wicked and evil things she wanted to do to Buffy. Her eyes dipping dark as she contemplated Buffy wanting her to do those things. What the flush asked for, what the pinks hinted at.
She may be behind bars, they may have caged the beast; but none of them had come close to taming her demons. All they had done was to feed them. Offer them the sanctuary to recover, the room to grow. To multiply. To take back control.
He waited until after dinner to search out the steps to the basement again. Xander hadn't discussed his idea with anyone except for Andrew, and he wanted it to stay that way. Knowing that once everyone was fed, they would be drifting off and out - seeking something energetic to do - made him feel secure in his planning of stealth. His only obstacle had been Buffy… sat in front of the screen again, staring at the screen again, yet the screen was still bathed in blackness.
"Hey Buff, you know it's not switched on, right?" Wondering if one rolling eye was as good as two as she turned to face him, as he sought to tease her tentative smile higher. "It's that button there; I think it's called 'on', works for 'off' as well."
"Do you have one?"
"You wanna turn me on?"
"Definitely no. I was thinking more the turning off… and that doesn't work so well either, does it?"
And the smile was fixed in place. Her shoulders relaxing as she span in her chair to face him properly, her feet raising to prop up on the desk. "I can't decide if we should turn it back on or not. I want to know what she's doing… but then that seems all kinds of stalkery. What do you think?"
He think? He thought that she should take her mind away from the idea of Faith for more than five minutes, maybe take some interest in the world that she had saved yet again just the day before yesterday. "Why don't you take a break? I know the girls are all getting set to go out somewhere, why don't you go with them?"
"They're going out?"
"Yep. Willow said something about expanding the fun, keeping the bonding going." Her green eyes all aglow with the chatter of shopping, of the normal days fun that they had all managed to enjoy. "You could go bonding."
"Yeah. I'm not really in the bonding mood." Buffy's green eyes nothing like aglow. Just kind of tired, her shoulders still sinking down; not in relaxation, but close to a slump. "If they're all going out, I guess that leaves me to go slay."
"More slaying?"
"Uh-huh. You wanna come?"
Xander weighed up the idea of slaying against the idea of comics and lengthy philosophical debates on all things green and hulk like. It was an easy answer. "I'd love to - but, with the patch, the lacking of night vision…" He shrugged, smiled. "…you mind if I sit this one out?"
"No, go for it. I'm probably not the best company anyway." And Xander would have to have no eyes to miss the sigh that slipped from her lips, the way her gaze cast back towards the screen. Again. "I bet Faith would come slaying." The air of petulance that wrapped around her mouth in a pout. It passed quick, barely there, but he was watching.
"Sure she would Buff, but I doubt it'd be the demons she'd be looking to go four years of frenzy on."
"Yeah. That's a definite negative."
Her lips curving back up into a smile. Her eyes just a little bit aglow. They were things which made him ponder, made him ask the question which came to him as obvious. "Would you though Buff? I mean, slay with Faith again. Would you want to?"
Her eyebrows dipping before him, her gaze seeming to deepen with an unknown edge of intensity. There was a curious quality to the tone of her voice when she spoke, as if she wondered at what it was that prompted the question, whether he had been privy to all of her secret and silent thoughts. "Why you asking?"
"Curiosity?"
Making her shoulders shrug a little, her gaze staying steady. "Obvious answer - no way. She's dangerous, unpredictable, unrestrained. She has *no* attention span when it comes to what's going on around her…" Slipping to monotonic as the list carried on. It dampened the glint in her eye, eased off on the intensity. Right up until she got to the truth. That point where Xander felt as if he had been measured up, and accepted. Like she trusted him enough to tell him. "…but the honest answer - the one that stays strictly between me and you?"
He nodded his offering of privacy.
"Yeah. I'd love to. It'd be a blast… all of that old fire, all of that excitement. I swear Xander, she makes me forget who I am when we're slaying. When we were in the thick of it, I don't know… it was like nothing else existed…"
"And that's good?"
Eyes wide, pupils dilated. "It didn't suck. It's…"
Not knowing the names for every feeling that flitted across her face as she thought through her words, but he sure as heck knew some of them. He recognised the flush of exhilaration, the fidgeting fingers of anticipation.
"…it's like freedom. Like flying."
Treating him in that moment to a full on Buffy Summers special, the kind of smile that you carried in your memory forever, that you treasured. Something that was incredibly intense.
"Wow!" Filling him with a little of the buzz, his own blood racing. "*I* wanna be a slayer. You think, with the scythe… Wills could…"
"No."
"I could be the one eyed slayer! I'd be a legend, I'd be…"
"No!"
He laughed. She laughed. She sighed. He stopped. No exhilaration, no anticipation; just yearning. He didn't know whether for times gone by, for times wished for, but he did know that it was yearning. He remembered the Buffy and Faith show, of course he did, he'd get off on it for days afterwards, every single time that he'd gotten to see it. The way they trained together, the way they slayed together. He didn't wanna go to that place where he thought about them dancing together. Nope. Four years hadn't done anything to dull *that* slice of still ripe memory. He remembered the show though, and he could understand the yearning. All of the Scoobs were Buffy's friends, all of them had been closer to her than Faith had ever managed… yet none of them ever came close to the bond that had existed between the slayers in those final weeks before madness.
Willow had been obsessed by it, giving him looks every time Faith had appeared to drag Buffy so easily away from them, every time that Buffy had knowingly blown them off to go do *slayer* stuff with Faith. He had just enjoyed the show. Complimenting them when he got the chance to wander in on an impromptu training session, standing back in open adoration when they went slay crazy on an unfortunate band of undead.
"You really miss her, don't you?"
Another question asked as obvious.
"Hey, what's with you and all the questions? You're funny guy; not serious guy. You're not allowed to change!"
"I'm still funny guy! It's just these new pants - Willow bought them way too tight… they're stifling me." It was the truth. She *had* bought him a size lower than he had worn for the last year or two. Maybe three.
"I'm not helping to take them off."
"You might have to. It's gonna need slayer strength."
"Then ask another slayer."
He contemplated which one he might like to ask. Xander had envisioned a couple of those moments too. Pillow fights and girl on girl action. Girl on girl on him action. There was lots of action. "You think I should ask two? As back up."
Making Buffy laugh again, making her eyes glow again. No chance of directing her back towards his question though. And it was a good thing that he already knew the answer. He didn't need to press her, to pin her down and force admissions from her throat. He had looked, and he had seen the truth.
Yeah, Buffy missed Faith. And he realised then, he accepted then, that he kind of missed Faith too.
The only problem with sitting back, retreating, and letting your demons take back control, was that sometimes the cracks still shone through. In moments when you felt most guarded, when you were sure that nothing could ever happen to shake your steadying foundations, something like a Cataclysm came along and rocked the fuck out of your world. At least that's how it seemed to Faith. She had been so set on her snarl, so lost in the delusions of fantasies she wanted to incorporate into her revenge, that her eyes had barely raised when Xander had first walked slowly down those stairs. She hadn't been expecting Xander, was only prepared to take on Buffy, and it had allowed the light to switch back on. The growl silenced by surprise.
"Xander, what's up?" Forgetting for that moment that a cage still surrounded her; just smiling again at the funny little patch, responding to the ease that shone through his gaze.
"Hey Faith, I come bearing treasure."
"Treasure..? You're taking the pirate thing serious now?"
"If the patch fits." To the smile that lifted his lips as he stepped his way closer. It made Faith step closer too, edginess slipping away as she sank her arms to rest against the bars. To listen to his words. "You're looking better today."
And finding her own smile. "Yeah, amazing what a shower can do. I feel almost human again."
"A shower? Did I miss something?"
"Hot running water. Lots of soapy suds. Crossbow pointed in my face."
"Buffy let you out for a shower? She was… *with* you, while you took a shower?"
And damn! She would forget her demons forever if real life really was this funny. The bulk of manhood not hiding the boy as Xander flushed red with the imagery. Not even meaning to think it; but really? Buffy had taken Faith for a shower?
He wanted details. Not necessarily the horny kind. Just… Buffy had let Faith out for a shower?
"Sure thing Xander. I needed someone to wash my back…"
Oh god…
"Stop!" Making her rasp out a throaty laugh as his hand sprung up in front of her face. Imploring silence. "Why did Buff let you out for a shower?"
"Ask B." The lack of answer simply fuelling his fantasies. Prompting Faith to ease up on him, to cast her eyes down and look for the treasure. To get back to the fun stuff that kept the screaming fury at bay. Everything opposite of Buffy. "Look, don't sweat it man, she probably thought I was stinking up the place. She was armed, I was terrified the whole time." Waiting till his gaze unglazed and slid back to soft. "So where's the treasure then? Gotta give the girl her booty."
And it had paved the way for the easiness to continue. Him teasing her for what seemed like an eternity with an unmarked carrier bag, a different kind of rage, the one which screamed impatience, finally having him offering up something which meant close to everything to her. The real her. Nothing able to hide the excitement that had exploded in her eyes as they fell on the book in his hands. A reflection of the comics she had once owned herself…
"Holy Fuck… is that, oh my god…" Her words jumbled and lacking the hardness which often tainted even the softest of her sentences. "You got me Cataclysm!"
Wanting to break through the bars for a different reason, every ounce of her aching to grab Xander and wrap him in an embrace like salvation. To get to that book, to remember everything that wasn't about being bad, that was all about being good.
"I thought you might remember it."
"Remember it?! Dude, I read those comics a thousand times. This is so fucking awesome. Pass it here."
Faith outstretched her hand, passing through the barrier of the bars, touching freedom. Almost touching. Xander whipping the book away at the last minute, something like his own evilness tinting the glint that shone through his eye. "Wait, you have to do something first."
"You what?"
"Quid pro quo. You give, you get."
"You want *my* booty first?" And where the hell did that come from? Was he an evil pirate, all about plundering and pillaging the goodies…
"No! I *so* didn't mean that."
"Then what do you want?"
Her confusion genuine, no clues gained as the smile stretched his face, as that glint continued to grow. So curious as his hand dipped inside of the bag again, pulling something else out, so sure of himself, so full of the glee.
"What I want Faith, is you to finally admit the truth."
"The truth?"
"Yep." His hands turning to show her the cover of the next book. The title which glared bright from the artwork on the front. The Incredible Hulk vs. Superman. He knew she hadn't ever owned this graphic novel, he remembered it coming out after she was gone. He remembered that slight wish for her to be around at the time, to argue the points with. "Hulk could so beat Superman's ass."
He held it just at arms length, just out of reaching distance. His smirk growing as she eyed him with that same old disdain, her smile growing to encompass the whole of the basement. "Not ever gonna happen."
"No give, no get."
His grin staying resolute, his arm not giving an inch. Watching as her own resolve crumbled, as her eyes flicked faster and faster to the comic in his hands.
"Okay… sure, fine, whatever. The big bad Hulk could beat Superman's ass…" Her grin triumphant as he gave the book over, her mouth knowing it was time to trumpet victory. "…on the day that hell freezes over. Green dude's a chump, bet this book proves it."
Laughing nothing but the sound of pleasure as he started arguing his four years worth of points that she had missed, as he tried to fill in every blank that had been lost to the girl in a hospital bed. Not coming close to winning, her stubbornness not at all affected by what he said happened in the book. It was something he had anticipated, something he had prepared for. The enticement of No Man's Land.
This was his coup de grace. The thing that he was sure would have her like putty in his hands. Breaking through any hint of remaining snarl to return to the time before the badness. To hopefully stay there. His hand lifting out the first of the five novels in the series, ignoring all of her Hulk slurs to lose himself in the real treasure. The only booty that he knew she would desire.
"What's that?"
Enjoying his ignorance, just flitting that eye occasionally up to study her face. Wanting to laugh as the expression only darkened, that familiar badass that was nothing about death and destruction, just part of the package of Faith.
"Don't fucking ignore me Xander, what have you got?!"
"Say it and mean it, Faith."
"Screw you." Her fingers tightening on the bars, her eyes deepening as they fixed on nothing but him. "What is it?"
And he couldn't keep in his own excitement. Forget who was better between Hulk and Superman, this was about making Faith feel better, about giving her back her own superhero. His voice full of importance as he finally gave into her demands.
"No Man's Land."
Not getting it. Her eyes looking unimpressed, her tone about to hit cursory again. It made him show his hand, slide out the ace in the pack; "Batman, Faith. I've brought you the all *new* tall, dark and broody. The stuff you missed. The rest of the story."
There were no screams of girly excitement, nothing that he would have found upstairs with new clothes and matching pants; but there was something which went so very much deeper. Which touched his heart. The way that her shoulders slumped, the way that her eyes widened, the way that they shone.
"You brought me Batman?"
A plea for her hero?
Xander wished that he had the bright lights signal to really call him forth, to have him swoop in and save the damsel in distress, to wipe away all of the darkness that lingered in Faith's eyes. He stepped the last distance forward and placed it gently in her grasp, his voice taking the monotone to slide her up to date;
"This is what came after Cataclysm. There's five of them, I got them all. They're really good, you're gonna like them."
"I already love them." Her eyes drinking up the image on the front, her hero standing tall and proud. A light in the dark. Ready for action. "This is so fucking cool."
And it was. Even better than the feeling she had found in the shower.
The world that existed between the pages of the book, was not about taking pain and making pain. Her pain didn't exist there, none of this existed there. No coma, no four years of frustration that she had woken up to embrace so harshly. No death, no hate, no rage and despair. This was a world for superheroes. The kind of world she longed for. Yearned for. Faith may not have known it, would not have accepted it, but beneath those demons, beneath the shell that had been her own lifetime crafting of granite, there was still a superhero aching to break free.
Trapped in a prison stronger than any kryptonite, trapped in a city which offered more destruction than any mythical Gotham. But still there. Still inside. Still her. Fighting battles she didn't even know existed, buried so deep in the trash and the filth, the death and the darkness that had always been her life. Muted by demon screams, by the unhinged howls which pled for revenge.
Faith forgot those thoughts when her mind found sanctuary in the make believe world of the superheroes. Moments of victory when real demons didn't exist, where everything was quiet, except for the truth;
Good over evil. The superhero always won.
It didn't matter how much trash and filth existed on the way, how much darkness reached out to touch even the most super of heroes in moments of weakness - they still always came out on top. Bad guys didn't win.
There was always someone there to slay the demons.
Her shoulders found more of the weary as she finally dragged herself back through the doors to The Hyperion. Another duty performed, another night spent battling the forces of evil. And she had battled hard tonight. Slaying what had felt like a thousand demons, a whole gang banging group of something she couldn't pronounce, stepping up to ease her tension. She would never remember their names even if she could get her mouth to pronounce. They didn't need names. They were demons, she slayed them. It's what she did.
Buffy's moves were effortless as she vaulted herself across the counter to land in the chair in front of the screen. A decision made as she had made mince meat - or gloopey mess - out of the unpronounceable demons; to placate the need that her eyes had, to take a look at Faith. An unguarded look. A look which would contemplate everything that had fought to rush fast through her body upstairs in the bathroom.
Desire.
That was what she was calling it. Unwelcome desire? Definitely. Unexpected desire? Not entirely.
She remembered the feeling. She was feeling the feeling. And she knew full well that the feeling had no place being felt in the present situation. Faith had the mind of a seventeen year old psychotic. And that should have been enough to dampen everything that felt like desire.
Words she said to herself as her finger reached out to touch the button, to flick the switch. Bringing to life everything she had been thinking upon, every untarnished memory she had been focusing upon. Buffy wanted to isolate the feeling, to allow it, and then to get a grip on it. Place it back in a prison just as bound and unbreakable as the prison that housed Faith.
She hadn't known about the coup de grace though, about Xander's own acts of bonding brought about by untarnished memories. It meant the releasing of different feelings, something which still begged to remain unnamed, that she still didn't feel mature enough to deal with. Her heart beating fast as her eyes had focused on what was on show;
Faith. Not hunched and sat bewildered in a corner. Not raging fists against the bars that kept her confined. No. Instead she was slouched comfortably on her side, head propped up on an elbow, her eyes intense as they flicked over what was in front of her.
A comic. One in front, and a pile by the bedside.
Buffy's hand shook with the unknown as she traced out the image that shone before her, as her mind carried her thoughts to all those places called Heaven. Remembering only that feeling, only the peace and tranquillity, the sense of everything being okay. She wanted to rise and take the stairs, she wanted to see with her own eyes, to engage this Faith who looked like the one she often imagined.
She wouldn't rise though. She couldn't rise. She refused to. She had not even come close to getting a grip on that thing called desire, and now, unknowingly thanks to a man named Xander, she had so much else to get a grip upon.
Author's Notes: I have a laptop, yet am insisting on sitting hunched, bent over the poota, on the front room floor. It makes the back ache bad. Like a forewarning for the crankiness in this chapter. My back aches; the chapter aches.
Dedicated: The Gators of course !!!!!!!!!!!!
The hour had easily crept round to mid-morning again, by the time Buffy finally made her way down the stairs the next day. Another sleep in. Another sleep in that was nothing to do with actual sleeping, and everything to do with resolving long resided issues. The ceiling mapped and charted by her eyes all of the hours that she had lain lost in the thoughts which plagued her just as easily as any nightmare sent demon would have sought to plague her.
And her desire had felt quite demonic when she'd considered it in those terms. Practically a nightmare even with her eyes wide open. This concern, this word which began with the prefix of affect, wanted no part of the desire that had ridden up in Buffy when Faith had stood so naked before her. She didn't want that memory of feeling, she didn't want to go to the place that her memories had taken her to. It had just been so much easier when Faith was sleeping.
No fire. No spark. None of that thing that had raised her hackles in a thousand different ways. No barriers. No defences. No mixed signals.
Buffy had held Faith's hand and called it friendship. She had spoken private truths to her and called it comfort. She had never once, not in all of those years, looked at Faith's broken shell and called it desire. Something she could ignore when there was no-one left to call her on it, something she had been able to deny even as her maturity had taught her all of the words for all of her wants.
It was something that had her mind feeling edgy as she took the stairs down to the lobby. Determined not to even glance the way of the screen, determined to seclude herself in the easy emotions of genuine friendship. "Morning guys!"
Like fresh air itself as she skipped a little jaunt to join them at the sofas. Willow, Giles and Dawn. Just what the doctor ordered. If the doctor was all about ordering silence and awkward glances and sentiment that wasn't returned with the gusto of a great new day. Dawn was the only one to look up and meet her eyes with a welcome forthcoming, not seeming bothered by any of the tension that was seeping out around her.
"Okay Dawn, what's up with those two? Did you poison the pastries?"
Buffy's voice looking to spread the cheer, still seeking some of that medicine for her undercurrent of edginess. And she hoped that she had found it in the moment that Dawn had smiled, had rolled her eyes. Guessing that she hadn't as they had dropped straight back down again.
"Nothing that easy. You`re about to get interventioned."
"I what?"
"Dawn! We never said that…"
Not even really paying attention to Willow. Fixing on her younger sister still; The way she had taken to biting her lip between her teeth, fussing at her fingernails. And Buffy could guess at how this one was gonna go. Giles would fuss and be overly protective, would argue she was not looking after herself properly. And Wills would back him up. Always the worrier… always concerned…
"Buffy?"
"I'm here." Still smiling. A little confused - it wasn't like she had been totally neglecting herself. Amused as well though. Willow's resolve face causing her smile to rise ever higher.
"You have to understand, we're just concerned about you…"
"Hey! I'm fine - look, all healed…" Turning on her spot, lifting her top to flash the slight scar that was fading with every hour, that was barely a reminder that another apocalypse had been thwarted quite so recently. "…with the new clothes as well, I'm feeling pretty much…"
"We're concerned about Faith."
Giles voice breaking through to resonate with the ominous, not allowing the illusion of everything being great to persevere. Breaking through the perky prose, bringing more of the confusion back to Buffy's eyes.
"Faith?" Losing all of her longed for amusement. "What's wrong with Faith?" Because she hadn't heard any more of the crazed rage filled screaming. Wasn't aware that more problems had arisen since she had observed her so happy last night.
"No, not Faith. You."
"I think I need coffee."
She joined that thought with a need for possible illustrations. Diagrams which would divert her thought path to fly along the same lines as Willow.
"What Willow is trying to say, is that we're concerned by the way you have chosen to focus all of your attention onto Faith. Now I understand Buffy, but…"
Buffy held up her hand. She doubted more than anything that he truly understood, but this to her was not even about that. Too soon since the last questioning of her focus, too soon since the last time she had stood solitary before them.
"Where's Xander?" Her voice like ice as it froze the air around them. "Shouldn't he be here for this? Interventions are never complete without everyone attacking at the same time…"
"We're not attacking, this isn't an attack." Willow spread her hands expressively, compassionately. Beseeching Buffy to see the concern behind their statements. "Xander's down below with Andrew, they wanted to take Faith's breakfast…"
"Andrew? See, we are punishing her!"
"What's wrong with you?"
"What's *wrong* with me?"
And there was no seeing concern behind statements, just reacting to the words which were chosen. All of this felt like an attack, and she didn't even know why she was being attacked. Yes, she was focusing a lot of her time and thoughts into Faith - but what the hell else was she supposed to do? Leave her to rot? Turn her over to the appropriate authorities?
"Buffy, we're just concerned that your view on dealing with Faith, may not be rooted very firmly in the facts. No matter what you want to believe…"
"I don't *want* to believe anything…"
"Yes you do!" Buffy's head snapped round as the volume raised from Willow. Surprise at the vitriolic voice shouting out so many old hurts before her. "It's like you've forgotten everything that she did to us. Faith killed a man, killed *two* men. She shot an arrow full of poison through the chest of your boyfriend, she held a knife to *my* throat, wrapped her hands around Xander's…"
All those memories brought to the fore. The edginess that was running rings around her false feel of perky, slowly lifting. Not turning as the door had opened in front, not caring that the happy band of sorority slayers were back from whatever morning jaunt Giles had sent them on. Just soaking up the attack. All of the wounds from the past.
"…she was with the Mayor, Buffy. She would've happily killed all of us." Stood still and unflinching. Waiting for the rest that she knew was definitely coming. "And the best part, the part you seem to have tuned out on the most..? She *enjoyed* it. Faith's crazy, and the sooner you get your head around that, the better for all of us."
"What about better for Faith?"
"See!?"
They were stood squaring off. Never a thought of the physical, but so much wanting to unleash verbally. It flowed between them like waves of tension, reaching out, unfolding, tightening around everyone who bore witness, like a noose around their necks.
"What's going on?"
"Kennedy, this doesn't concern you or the girls. I suggest you go…"
"No. If Buffy is gonna be tearing strips off my girlfriend, I wanna know why." Her shoulders firm. Her stance unwavering. "Not moving till I do."
"Me? You think this is me tearing strips?"
"Willow?"
Kennedy watched and waited as her feistier than she had realised girlfriend, blew out the rage that had seemed to so easily reach out and encompass her. Sad sighing at Buffy, a shake of the head which only looked patronising. "Buffy - in her infinite compassion for psychopaths - decided to let Faith out of the cage yesterday. And not only out, hey Buff? More like a little buddy bonding upstairs in the shower..?"
Such sarcasm, such insinuation. So easy to remember past jealousies, times gone by when every minute that Buffy spent with Faith, was another minute not spent with her. Forget old faithful. Just focus on Faith.
"Huh? You let her out for a shower?"
Kennedy not privy to old jealousies, to dynamics which would have only confused if she had been there and seen it all. She had disbelief at the shower for different reasons.
"Yes Kennedy, and ya know what? You have a problem with that…"
"Yo, hold up, there's no problem here. I'm just surprised - I had you pegged as unfeeling, this is refreshing."
"Oh, right. Thanks?"
"Kennedy..?"
"Sorry Willow, but I've told you how I feel about this." Her tone wasn't combative, it wasn't looking to fuel the fight; Kennedy was simply stating the truth as she felt it. "You're not going to solve anything by keeping her locked up. You'd be better off letting her out and dealing with the consequences. You know that we can take her, *we* know that we can take her…" Late night patrol littered with varying ideas on Faith. The slayer that had shared her power so unknowingly. "…if you give her a chance, I don't know, maybe she'll surprise you?"
"With a knife to the neck? A stab to the back? I'm not so keen on those surprises."
"Willow…"
"No Giles! You agreed with me! Buffy shouldn't have let Faith out without all of us knowing, being prepared." Willow felt her shoulders slump as the fight went out of her. Realising that this battle was already feeling like lost. A last ditch effort. A last turn to her girlfriend to seek an ally. "Why are you being like this?"
"Like this? *You* made me like this, you made me like her. This is Faith's power that you shared amongst us all… slayer power. I can't just damn her Willow, I don't even know her."
"Yeah? Lucky you."
"Right, well, I don't see how any of this covers yesterday's little excursion. I may not be as vehement in my approach Buffy, but you have to accept that letting Faith out, without any form of back up in case…"
"No Giles. I'm not doing this. You wanna relieve me of the leadership badge again..? Go right ahead. If you come up with a better idea on how to help her, I'll be up in my room. If things blow up in your face again…"
"That's hardly fair Buffy."
"This is hardly fair! You all scurry off and leave me to deal, and then you don't like the way I'm dealing?"
Breathe deep. Re-craft the granite.
"I'm doing my best Giles. If that's not good enough - my bad. At least I'm trying. At least I've made the effort to visit, at least I'm giving her the chance."
Project the compassion.
"I don't really see that my visiting would make a difference."
"So you don't even try? You were her watcher! She was your slayer! Come on Giles, what would the council do? Where's all that wealth of experience now that we need it? You said there were ways to rehabilitate…" Make him see how little he had done to help. Cooing about her injuries, offering soft eyes when everything she was going through was just so hard. "…help me Giles, tell me what I should do?"
Rendering him silent. Yes, there were ways, council ways. Ways which had blown up along with the rest of the legacy. He had offered little, because he was not sure what to offer. Had known how little good he had done before.
"I'm sorry Buffy, but I don't know."
Just as she had expected.
She cast her eyes across the group that were now gathered in varying degrees of shock around her. The new slayers with grudging respect; their stone cold leader now humanised before them, surviving a run through with a sword, but wavering in the face of human emotion. It comforted them. Relieved that they would not be turning to the stone they had thought she was cast from. Dawn; eyes downcast. Wishing she was well away from the epicentre of the mini Buffy earthquake. Giles; forlorn in his failure. And Willow;
Buffy could not see the answers expressed on her face, in the deep green of her eyes. She could see the taint of tears though, the sparkle that heightened the sadness at the turn of events. The beginning of a train wreck. The onset of tears.
Tears to Buffy were a wasted notion. A thought she sighed on as she turned to go up the stairs. Something she would not cry on as she returned her focus to Faith.
The almost silent tap that sounded against her door, allowed her to guess exactly who was standing there awaiting entry. Seven years of friendship good enough to give her sixth sensing abilities, knowing that Willow would come to seek safe ground. To direct them back to a place where brief blow ups would never really matter.
"Come in."
Her voice already softening as she silently practiced her own sound of sorry.
"Hey Buffy. I bring ice cream." A smile alighting as the tub was indeed produced before her eyes. "You wanna share?"
"Yeah."
Finding firm footing already. Relaxing as space had been made on the bed, as Willow had gathered her skirt around her and found a place to sit. "I'm sorry about downstairs Buff, I never meant for it to go quite as…"
Holding up a hand, holding back apologies. "It's forgotten already. We're all a little battle weary still, minds are frayed, tempers are frayier."
"Definite agreement. Especially the frayier bit."
Just taking a spoon and delivering a spoonful. Gasping at the cold, delighting at the taste. Wishing it really was this easy to placate a battling of Wills. "Apart from the shouty bit, I meant what I said downstairs; I'm dealing with Faith my way, the only way I know how. She screws up and I'm gonna ride her ass, until then it's all about second chances."
And the ice cream wasn't the only source of cold in the room. Willow's hand freezing in mid air, not delivering anything, just sat silently awaiting more words she knew she would wish to refute.
"Don't you ever wonder what might have happened if she had woken up sooner. If the coma hadn't lasted so damn long..? Faith hasn't had the time to grow up, to mature, to stand back and take stock… don't we owe her a shot at that?"
"We don't owe her anything. *You* don't owe her anything."
"Doesn't she *deserve* the chance?"
"Why? Because she's a slayer? Because you all share some mystical bond that none of us normal folk will ever get the flush of feeling?" Willow couldn't stop the sarcastic slant again. Her ears bombarded by her girlfriend's sharing of the bond, her tether close to snapping as she was edged outside the caring sharing circle once again. "That doesn't cut it with me Buff, I'm not sharing the bonding. Faith is still Faith, and she's still a cold blooded killer."
"What type are you Wills?"
Everything freezing.
"No way… that's nothing like this! Don't even bring that into it."
"Why not? You skipped sides just as quick as Faith did, had a bloodlust just as thirsty as hers was."
Tears still wasted. A notion lost beneath words.
"We forgive you because you're Willow, and we condemn her because she's Faith. Is that what you're saying?"
"No!" And Willow didn't have a broomstick, or a pointy hat and cat, but she still held her own power. Something which brimmed and boiled in her veins when attacked, that pushed her mind to touch places she would never normally embrace. "*I* had reasons Buffy, do you remember them? Do you remember what he did to Tara?!"
The feeling thrusting at her senses; the sight, the sounds, the smell, the taste. The weight that had died in her arms. Tears never enough to capture the pain that wouldn't fade away, would never disappear behind the illusion of days and months and just over a year.
"God Buffy, he ripped my heart from my body, he took away the love of my life… I know how wrong I was, I know I'll never be free of that… but at least I had reasons."
Lures and pushes.
Reasons.
Stories which started with hearts ripped from bodies, and the loss of love. Which ended with the loss of life.
The similarity hung before them without either finding a voice. Both holding such power, yet neither brave enough to take a step over that final barrier. Connecting the dots to see the full picture. Understanding all that needed to be understood. Speaking the reasons. Making it real.
They stood in silence.
"I'm not saying that Faith doesn't deserve a second chance, I'm asking why you have to serve it up to her on a silver platter Buffy. Why you're letting her play the helpless victim, while we all get to play the monsters. I never hurt Faith, I never held a knife to her neck. Why am I the bad one?"
And seven years of friendship had taught Buffy when tears were the kind not to be ignored. Laying down her own rhyme and reasoning, to hold tight to a woman she had witnessed losing everything. She wouldn't hold that pain against her, she had never been able to.
"I'm sorry Wills, I shouldn't have brought that up. You're right, this is nothing like that…"
"I would never have done what I did if Tara… if he hadn't…"
"Shhh. I know." Her arms finding a hug, releasing a feeling. "I'm sorry."
Shushing the words that had been ready to burst forth. Hard words. Unflinching words. Dismissing excuses, no matter how heartfelt, to focus on the facts. The slayer could still remember the dark eyes of Willow, the strength that had ridiculed her own in the magic shop; the threat to her family, the threat to her friends, the threat to the world.
The friend allowed the quiet to offer forgiveness.
But no similarities?
Even Buffy wasn't that blonde.
It had shocked her when the next knock had come at her door. Not expecting Giles to have finished cleaning his glasses yet, not expecting that he would come to offer apology. But then Buffy did not know his own depth of feeling for her, how much he had been hurting over the downslide in their relationship. Questioning her authority, not once, but twice over the last couple of weeks. Sending her off to find comfort from a dead man, when he should have been the one holding her up and making her strong.
He still felt the urge to take her by the hand. To protect her from everything that he knew would hurt her. He had tried to harden himself, harden her in the face of a battle he was terrified they would lose. Terrified that he would lose her. Giles wanted to shake himself by his good old English britches when he counted all the different ways he had pushed her away.
"Buffy, may I come in?"
"Are you still intervening?"
"No," His tone conciliatory as he entered her room. "I realise how that must have felt to you, but I assure you I have nothing but confidence in your ability to eventually reach Faith."
"Eventually? It's not much of a confidence vote is it?"
Buffy raised herself up from the bed to stand before him, ready for more battle, ready to stand down if it looked like she had pushed too far. She had already picked out stories of death to regale Giles' ears with, tales of the Ripper, memories of Ben. She had already prepared herself to meet another brick wall. Another derailment.
More excuses for why murder wasn't murder when it wasn't Faith doing the murdering.
"On the contrary, it's a rather large vote. I want to help you Buffy, I want to help Faith. If there's a way that you think I might be of use…"
"You mean it?"
"Absolutely. As a watcher, I take it as my duty to offer what ever assistance you need."
And he could hide behind his council walls, and officious tone, but there were another seven years that had been well spent by Buffy. Learning to love the man in front of her for the care and affection which often clouded his view. That caused his glasses to smear. She may not have still needed him to lead her, to teach her; but she still needed his love more than anything. His guidance readily accepted when it wasn't meant as instruction.
"Thank you." Her hand reaching out to be dwarfed in his, so grateful inside that he had chosen to stand beside her. "I don't know what good it'll do, but maybe you can connect with the slayer side of things… get her mind back on the duty, on what our calling stands for…"
"Do you really think that it will make a difference?"
"No, not yet."
"Then why?"
Not sure if she could explain it. The idea that grew and shaped with every minute spent thinking over the time lost, over the time she had had to mature and to grow. "I know she won't listen now, I know what she wants now… but things change Giles. Maybe one day it *will* make a difference."
"Then it's certainly worth making the effort."
Giles smiled and steadied his gaze, swallowed down any mention of approaching Faith himself. Alone. He had agreed with Willow earlier, he did believe that Buffy had been irresponsible in her releasing of Faith without back up; but he did not believe as much in a lack of second chances. He would much rather meet Faith without the igniting fuel of Buffy, but this was not the time to be making suggestions. This was the time to be standing at Buffy's side.
Down below, in the depths of the building, the one who had caused all of the turmoil had no clue that turmoil even existed. In her world it didn't. A world where two geeks had brought her breakfast and an endless supply of nerd filled topics to keep her mind amused. Not caring a fuck when she had alerted herself to Buffy's steady approach, to the sound of her footsteps, the small tinkle of laughter that had breezed in right before the girl herself. She forgot about demons when she thought about superheroes.
As for the one who had rode the storm of the turmoil, she had also lost herself in the sudden thought of superheroes. Seeing again the comics strewn across the floor, the easy pose struck by Faith. The fun filled faces that glanced up to greet her.
"Ah, Buffster! Do I sense another member for LA's newest and most exclusive comic club?"
And glancing right by them. She wanted this moment, had denied herself this moment. Engaging the Faith that she so often imagined.
"You're in a comic club?"
Her eyebrows arching up high on her head, amusement coating the smile which trickled across her lips.
"You know what prison's like B, ya think you're safe as a kitten, then you fall in with a bad crowd. I tried to resist, really I did."
"Yeah? What happened?"
Batman flying through the air to land in her grasp. Tossed through the bars. Caught with ease. "Xander tempted me with the hard stuff."
It turned Buffy's eyebrows the way of another long held friendship. Sliding into a flash of a frown, just for a second, just as she had placed the pieces together until they all fit. "You brought the comics?"
"Yep! Nothing like good old Marvel goodness to perk up the pri…" He went to say prisoner. Changed at the last. "…prisms… uh, prisms of power."
Earning him looks. Four of them. Buffy's voice the one to do the asking. "Prisms of power?"
"Right. That's how I see you slayers; all tall and powerful and prismy, very much like prisms."
"I think you mean prismatic, that would be the correct…"
"Actually Giles, I think he meant prisoner." Faith let her smile curve round her lips, let the sanctuary of superheroes fly off into the night as she rose to greet the watcher. The one who had overlooked her downfall. Made it so much easier for her to flounder so pointlessly beneath Buffy. "Long time no see."
Though it still felt like days.
She had caught up on more of the missing while hanging so innocently with her new best buddies. The geek brigade coming to her rescue, and providing her with answers. Andrew was especially good for running his mouth off, his tongue tripping across words that Xander had kept seeking to censor. She had caught the basics though. Learnt more than enough for one day. Was content to play the happy hostage and show the signs of steady reform.
No one had ever slain Faith's demons. She didn't believe in superheroes in this world.
A mantra that made her dimples etch out easiness as she stepped a pace closer to the bars. Show them what they need to see. Silently prepare the rest.
"Yes Faith. I'm sorry I haven't been down to see you before now, things are still hectic…"
"Yeah, I caught that. Team Andrew filled me in on the spell to go slay crazy. Seems like I owe Red a thank you. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her."
And her silence had no understanding yet for the awkwardness that filled that moment in front of her. The quick glance between the watcher and his *real* slayer. That number one golden girl. Just itching to find a fall.
She still stored it away though. Built new memories to refer back to in the darkness of the night time. Something to chase away the blood, sweat and tears that she didn't care to think about.
Just practising relaxed as Giles had suggested to the comedy duo that they go and fetch something to eat, that lunch had long passed and Faith was no doubt hungry. Practising the deep breaths as he had turned to face her again.
And all of those years had passed and he still hadn't learnt to hide the look? The disappointment that sat obvious whenever both slayers were in the same room, and his gaze was forced to rest on the darker of the two. Thrift shop silver when compared to the pure carat gold of Buffy. Truly relaxing as she made herself recognise more of the same old shit.
The comics were left on the floor. Her demons were back in the drivers seat.
...continued in chapter 11...