Broken
by Lucie
Rating: PG

Disclaimer: All belongs to Joss Whedon etc etc.
Author's Notes: A little longer this time. Second to last of this particular series (I think..:)). Hope you like it, and would love some feedback.

There’s nothing there. There never was. Curiosity was rampant inside me, and only because I felt I had experienced the complete mardi gras of emotions with Angel. It was an empty encounter. It was only an encounter.

Subdued by too much thought, Buffy The Vampire Slayer was lying on her bed. A small paper cut on her thumb was all she had to show for the amount of reading she had done today. And reading what? Trashy ‘drug-store’ novels. Love lifts us up where we belong and all that jazz. Boy meets girl. Incredible though it may seem, Buffy still found a tear rolling down her face when Chad came back from his expedition in South America to prove his love for Trudy.

Maybe I’ll start being an optimist. Can you just do that? Just decide to become an optimist? It’s just a state of mind. Negativity gives you nothing but a headache and a general air of cynicism that repels all but the infatuated. Faith was negative. So was I ever infatuated with her?

She turned over to her side, picking up the smooth piece of wood that was her trademark from her bedside table. She always loved it how she could do that, play so flippantly with the tool that caused the undead’s undead hearts to beat again. At a whim, she threw it up and it cut the air, whistling back down into her open palm.

Slap.

We could have been a fucking Chad and Trudy, Faith. A little unconventional maybe, but a tear jerking couple nonetheless.

Slowly turning the stake over in her hands, Buffy shut her eyes. Letting slow breathing take over any sense of alertness. She wanted to dream. Music formed in her mind and she mentally swayed to the sound.

Don’t think. Just breathe.

Breathe.

A sharp rap on the door sent a rip through Buffy’s Bahama state.

‘Buffy?’

Strained, Buffy’s feet touched the floor and her hands felt for the doorknob.

‘Willow. Hey.’

Safe, secure, platonic Willow.

The redhead was standing in the doorway, a bunch of cheap-looking daisies dressed in crepe wallpaper clasped in her hand. Did she know? Were those sympathy flowers?

‘Hey, Buff. Tough night, huh?’

Buffy paused as this slowly made its way past the thickness in her brain. She reached up and snapped the light on, filling the room with a much-too-harsh reality.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, just the hair and all that. Mind if I come in?’

Throwing a glance towards the clothes horse that was her bedroom mirror, Buffy was greeted with the sight of what could only be described as a slightly blonder Reagan from the Exorcist.

‘Jesus, I look like shit.’

Willow turned and shrugged her shoulders indifferently, placing the daisies on Buffy’s desk, heads resting against the shaft of the stake.

‘Don’t worry about it, Buff. It’s your birthday. You’re allowed to look like shit.’

A shade of excitement, an emotion left on autopilot from a childhood long forgotten, shot through Buffy’s heart. That’s right. My birthday.

‘Happy birthday!’

Willow grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into an uncomfortable elbowy embrace.

‘Oof…thanks, Wills. I actually forgot.’

Willow stepped back, still holding onto Buffy’s shoulders.

‘What? You forgot? Your own birthday?’

Willow applied two sharp raps to Buffy’s head.

‘Are you going senile?’

Buffy smiled. Willow was so real, somehow. Maybe it was because she was just so goddamn normal.

‘No, not senile. Psychotic maybe.’

A grin appeared on Willow’s face.

‘Well, you’ve got no time to be going all Spike on me, birthday girl. We gotta get you out of this dark 70’s throwback room and into the world of cake and candles.’

Buffy groaned inwardly. Her sense of excitement had gone as quickly as it had arrived, and now she was in no mood to be playing Miss Pass The Parcel. Perhaps it was to her advantage that she looked worse than the Elephant Man on a bad hair day.

‘Willow, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I need time to…’ She sorted through the cliched excuses filed away in her brain. ‘Wash my hair?’

Willow rolled her eyes. ‘Nice try, Buff. Let’s go.’

Buffy just had time to grab her hairbrush before Willow had her out the door by the wrist.

*****

Being with her friends always made Buffy feel grounded. She thought after her brief encounter with Faith she might have changed around them, or felt awkward or inadequate. But she hadn’t changed, had she? Maybe that was something she needed to acknowledge.

Anya patted her on the back.

‘Happy birthday. I was going to make you a cake but Jerry Springer was on TV. I like that show. Stupid people make me laugh.’

Buffy smiled. They were sitting at a small table in the Expresso Pump, all six of them, Willow, Tara, Xander, Anya, Buffy and Giles. The loyal crowd. Buffy felt herself relaxing in the presence of such easy company.

‘Gee, thanks, Anya. You shouldn’t have.’

Anya nodded her head, pleased with her small step in understanding humans and their clumsy celebrations.

Giles cleared his throat abruptly.

‘I don’t want to overshadow Anya, but I ah, I brought you a real present, Buffy. I think you’ll like it.’

Cheeks reddening, Giles slid a small wrapped box across the table, and Buffy stopped its garish pink and orange flight with a finger.

Xander wiggled his eyebrows. ‘I wrapped it, Buff.’

‘That explains the paper, then,’ Willow said, grimacing.

Buffy slid her finger under the tape and with a single, satisfying motion ripped the paper open.

‘God… Giles. Thanks.’

The stake was only about 2 centimetres longer than her present one, but it had been polished with loving hands, and as it lay there in its bed of gaudiness it appeared almost beautiful. As beautiful as a weapon of mass destruction could be, anyway.

Giles leaned across the table and picked it up.

‘It’s made from some sort of special wood. I don’t know much about it but it’s good quality…smooth, easy to fashion. We modelled it almost to your old one, but the extra length was purely for your convenience. It should….’ Giles looked embarrassed, trying to think of a compliment. ‘It should be good for you, Buffy.’

Buffy, pathetically, she thought - was almost crying at the sight of Giles’ open and honest face. She felt a sense of relief as she looked at the stake clasped in his fist. For now, this was where she belonged. With her friends. She pushed back her chair and strode over to her watcher, bumping the side of the table with her hip in her haste. Pulling him into a hug, she whispered a thank you.

*****

Willow smiled, and Buffy smiled back. They were strolling down the road towards Buffy’s apartment. As they walked, Buffy saw a young man with short black hair and laughing blue eyes approach them, probably on his way to some romantic and exciting destination.

Willow swung an arm around Buffy’s shoulders. ‘Did you have a nice day?’

‘The best.’

‘I knew you would, Buff. Nobody should ever be alone for their birthday, y’know that?’

Buffy smiled again, and as the young man walked past, she brushed a stray strand of hair into place, as if it mattered once more.

*****

I missed you. Where were you? I waited.

Faith kissed the picture in the frame, leaving no mark. She had no disguises on tonight.

I remember how I used to remember you. I had a certain way.

Faith slid her ringed hand across her exposed stomach, across her exposed scar.

Whenever I looked at you, and felt the connection, I would remember the knife in my gut. The betrayal. And I would hate you. God, I would hate you, because I loved you.

Faith paused, lifting her hand away from the scar and placing it on Buffy’s glassy cheek.

The hate is gone.

Instead of climbing out of Buffy’s window, now smashed to a million pieces on the floor, Faith lay down on the slayer’s bed and kicked her shoes off.

She supposed that this time, she could wait a little longer.

*****

Willow said goodnight to the slayer, and grinned in her flitty way. She had known something was wrong from the moment she stepped into Buffy’s room that morning. The girl had sadness in her eyes, as if she had received a sudden and unexpectedly rotten telephone call the night before. Willow suspected Faith. Buffy’s uncomfortable attitude towards the dark-haired slayer was something Willow had never been able to figure out, and besides, Buffy hadn’t mentioned her all day.

As she turned and walked down the steps, Willow thought of Tara, and her mood simply lightened.

*****

Buffy kept the light off, in no mood to let reality seep into her uplifted state of mind. Knowing her patterned post–slaying ritual of turning on her stereo, getting into whatever she happened to be wearing that night and crashing into sleep, she had no need to use her eyes. As Jeff Buckley flooded into the apartment, she walked into her bedroom, and sat down on the edge of her bed. Pulling out the new stake from her belt, she examined its fine shape with her fingers.

‘Beautiful,’ she whispered.

And it was. Tossing it up in the air, it flew back down.

Into another’s hand.

‘B.’

Buffy jumped as the syllable grated the air.

‘Jesus…Faith…is that you?’

Buffy peered towards the voice, her eyes now cutting through the darkness. She could make out the smooth shape of Faith’s body, stretched out like a cat across her bed. Despite her hammering heart, the body still made her gasp, and she was ashamed.

‘It’s me, B.’

Buffy’s tongue darted over her drying lips. ‘What are you doing here.’

‘That sounded more like a statement than a question.’

‘Well maybe it was.’ Buffy felt she couldn’t do this. She felt as if she was being forced to prematurely pick up the fragments of a broken dream.

‘B, I’m not here to bullshit. I only swung by to tell you something.’

Just squeeze your eyes shut. ‘I don’t wanna hear it, Faith. I’m tired.’

Faith swung herself round so she was sitting, staring at the girl beside her. Buffy moved away, intentionally leaving a breadth of air between their bodies.

‘I’m gonna say it anyway. I don’t care if I’m speaking to a fucking corpse, I’m gonna say it anyway.’

Wearily, Buffy opened her eyes and let them drift towards the ceiling. Jeff Buckley continued his soul singing into the blackness.

‘So say it.’

Faith swallowed, her throat ticking softly. She was pissed off at herself for not being more mentally prepared for this; she had been too busy planning an impressive entrance.

‘B, I…I’ve been meaning to say this, for a wicked-long time now. But I haven’t been thinking the right way, so I didn’t really know how to….’

To Faith, her teenage-angst stuttering sounded pathetic. Suddenly, all she could think of was the cigarette she had to have after this, when all this was done.

‘Fuck it. I love you.’

For a moment, time settled for Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Her fragments of dream returned to a sudden whole, as if the small oak clock on her mantle-piece was ticking backwards.

...continued in The Chase...