A/N: More Faith because she is perfect, in that broken kind of way.
Joss's world, I just live in it. Without profit.
Faith has never slept well. She was born into the Slayer Line, after all—nightmares don't knock softly. She dreams of death, of killing and of dying, because that's all there is in this life. When she was little she dreamed of killing her mother, but that's something she never discloses. When the vampires came, Faith was bitten and bled dry—she also cut their throats until she saw dust and plugged their hearts with wood.
Sometimes she dreams in sepia, the soft tonal worlds of ages past. But the violence always remains the same, the bloodletting and bathing in dust and bleached bones. When she dreams of the girls who die she wakes screaming.
Xander makes a comment one day, about bags under the eyes. Faith doesn't take Xander seriously and knows he speaks with a joke on his tongue, but she feels in that moment like knocking him out cold.
She's the outsider, they all know this. She's the different one, the one who isn't blonde, but sometimes she dreams and she's inside Buffy's skin.
The Master bled Buffy once, tasted the copper like it was ambrosia and sucked in the glorious life that was hers. Faith feels his fangs like pinpricks on her neck and it doesn't hurt when he's inside because it's beautiful, a sweet release from this world of violence. She falls into the water and her lungs fill up, sixteen years flashing forward like a light in a dark tunnel.
Faith wakes slowly, smiling not screaming.
She fills her days with killing and sex, only to fall into uneasy sleep at the end of them and dream the same.
Angel is the thing she doesn't understand, because he should be dead—really, truly dead. Faith thinks she'd prefer Angelus to this sad lump, at least with Angelus she'd have some fun before staking him dry. Angel broods and mopes and laments his doomed love with Buffy, and rejects Faith's open invitation with a pretence of chivalry. It makes Faith sick to think Buffy loves this sap—aren't they vampire slayers, after all?
It's a week before Graduation Day and Faith beats in the rubber skin of her punching bag with much affection. The Mayor told her to exercise and drink a glass of warm milk before going to bed, see if that helped her find sleep easier. She leaves out the milk part.
Her knuckles are raw—red with open scabs, wounds that won't heal because she doesn't let them.
She tumbles into bed, Egyptian cotton that smells of money wraps around her and keeps her warm. Faith waits for the girl in her dreams to come.
This night the dream is different—she doesn't feel threatened, or violent…she feels safe.
A fire roars in the hearth, red velvet carpet catching the light of the golden flames. She lies down, naked, the feel of the carpet soft on her back and the heat from the fire ignites her skin and she warms. What is this?
Angel is there, his body golden in the heat, scars like ripples branded over his skin. A warrior, claiming his princess in his castle.
Faith could never be a princess, it doesn't work that way. This is Buffy's dream she's dreaming, Faith an unwelcomed trespasser in this land of love.
But it feels right when Angel moves his hand down her leg, when his touch lights a match and she catches fire.
But it's not real and can never be real, not for Faith, not for the girl doomed to walk in the darkness. Love is a lie told to children, and making it is an illusion.
She brings herself out, wakes to the smell of money, the sheets clean. She sweats out the memory and purges the yearning she has to return to the dream. She would rather suffer cruel nightmares, of torturing undead things and having the life strangled out of her, than to dream of being loved.
