@feybled {Buffy}
“Faith… Buffy’s dead.”
Angel never lied to her. It was as much an update on the world as a warning from the vampire. Faith was the only Slayer now, behind bars for the greater good, or something like that. But what was truly good if Buffy, the brightest defender against the darkness, was six feet under somewhere sharing the cold, dark earth with the very creatures she sought to slay?
“Thank you for letting me know… And, Angel? I’m sorry.”
-
There was a fight in the prison yard that next morning. Someone said something, and the volatile girl might’ve hauled off and broke some noses. Or Faith threw the punches first, then came the swears and curses. She wasn’t sure at this point, and it didn’t matter. The bleeding girls went to the infirmary, and the Slayer went to solitary. It was better there, alone.
Except, for as disconnected from her Slayer side as she’d been in prison, there was something in her gut, like truly deep down in her muscle fibers, that told Faith she really was alone this time. The Chosen-by-Default One. As Buffy went, so did the ties that bound the two.
Was this what Buffy had felt all this time? The weight of it?
-
Almost five months went by, and most days Faith didn’t feel that guilty about being behind bars, leaving Sunnydale without a Slayer. If they wanted her, they knew where she was. Hadn’t changed. Angel didn’t visit as much, which was just as well. But then came the news report about the Southern California town that went up in flames practically overnight. Attributed to gang wars, but she knew better.
“Turn that crap off,” said Yolanda, another inmate who had yet to be on the receiving end of the Slayer’s fist (but there was still time). “Jeopardy’s on.”
But Faith stayed glued to the news. The unmistakable chaos of the Hellmouth on television heightened her senses, and duty tugged at her innards like she was tied to ropes that were tied to horses running helter-skelter. God, is this what responsibility felt like? Culpability? That was, in a way, her fault.
But what was one more on a long list of faults? The road to redemption was rocky, and it sure as hell wasn’t straight. It was time for a little detour. She’d find the path again eventually.
Faith broke out the next morning. No looking back.
-
She had no delusions of a welcome wagon meeting her at the infamous Sunnydale city limits. Besides, one of the things she’d learned in group therapy had been that doing good wasn’t supposed to be a big ‘hey, look at me!’ thing anyways. Accepting responsibility was quiet, and it was action-oriented. Took her a while to understood what that meant, until Buffy…
Well, when Faith last left the town, she’d burned about every bridge around. So maybe it was best if the Scoobies didn’t know she was here. One call to the police and it was all over for Faith- no chance at parole, not after this stunt, and she didn’t expect anyone to give her a chance to explain herself. She was the Slayer- one and only- but a wanted felon. And no friend of Sunnydale, but she wasn’t here for them. She was here for the Hellmouth, and for every Slayer who did the good work before her. Shit. She couldn’t have figured this out sooner? Like, before people had to die?
It felt like getting back on an old bike, remembering the balance and the way things moved. Faith didn’t really have any gear with her, but thankfully it wasn’t too hard to find scrap wood around, especially after things had been destroyed. Cars were still ashy from the flames, and Sunnydale looked like a hollow shell of its former self. Ripe for demons and vampires to come out and play. And though the cemeteries of the city were familiar to her still, she was overcome with a sense of dread, stepping back over the earth, knowing that here…somewhere… Buffy was underfoot.
Slow breathing. Counting to ten. She’d learned these things in prison too, Faith had never been good at soothing herself- medicating, numbing, distracting were more her style. But the dirt was tangy and sour, and the air was thick with mist that clung to the graveyards and clawed at her lungs. It was cold in her soul, as the Slayer kept her ear trained for the telltale signal that undead vermin were worming their way to the surface. It was subtle, but she’d learned it well over the years.
She hadn’t staked anything since… well, it had been a while. Maybe Faith wasn’t cut out to be the Slayer anymore, and the line needed to move on. But she shook the thought from her head- that was too easy, to imagine herself dying and being spared the difficulty of what was going to come next. Her sense of nausea, the strange discomfort she felt at being back in Sunnydale only deepened when, as she walked through the foliage under the cover of darkness, she spied a stone set apart from anything else. Like it was private, something she wasn’t meant to see. And she knew exactly what it was.
“Shit.”
