It's been three weeks since Sunnydale collapsed. The gang decided, since everyone was healed and things were becoming routine at the Hyperion, that we should celebrate. So we did. First time I'd drank since I got to prison.

I was having a great time at first. And then Dawn decided to turn on a song that hit far too close to home, and I hastily retreated to my room.

I was not aware that Buffy was following me until I saw her at the door that I'd left open and was sitting on my bed, elbows on my knees and head in my hands, crying. I straightened up but didn't look at her.

"Just go, Buffy," my voice broke, barely audible.

But she walked into my room and shut the door. She sat next to me on my bed, brushing the hair from my face and wiping away my tears.

"What's wrong, Faith?" She asked softly.

"I don't think you want to know, B."

She put her hand on my cheek. "I do. Tell me."

I hesitated for a long moment. But when I started, I didn't stop. And the tears kept flowing.

"I never knew a true childhood. Until the age of eight, I- though too young to do anything- prayed to whatever God was out there to give me the strength to protect my mother from my father."

Shaking my head, I looked up at the ceiling and sniffled. "There are no words to make anyone understand the things he did to her. I remember holes in the walls everywhere- holes that my mother, trying to show me that she was okay, would happily cover with pictures I drew- holes from my father punching the walls, slamming my mother's head through them.

He would threaten to kill her so often that my mother had to hide all of the knives. She also hid flyswatters- he would heat up the metal wires of them and burn her with them- and swept the floors with a broom and no handle because he would break them over her. And she would hide the dog leashes; anything that could, and had, been used as a weapon against her. When my father went to prison, she had four teeth left."

"Oh, Faith.." Buffy whispered quietly. I cried more. "Go on, baby. It's okay. Talk to me, please."

Sighing and clearing my throat, I continued. "They had been together, my mom enduring this abuse almost the entire time, for over ten years. One day, he beat her unconscious and left. I kept shaking her, trying to wake her. I quickly realized this wasn't a good sign, and I was thankfully at least old enough to call the police. My father was arrested and after a long court trial, put in prison for ten years.

But it didn't end there. The sad, pathetic tale of my fucked up life." I sighed. "What I will still never understand fully, to this day, is why my mother took it out on me. She yelled at me, saying she loved him. Less than a week or so after my father was sentenced, she began to drink. A lot. Just months later, I found her smoking and inhaling and injecting all sorts of things.

Another thing I will never understand is why she started the abuse on me. It only got physical when she was out of drugs; which was maybe a few times a month because she started dating drug dealers. No; mainly, it was verbal. Emotional.

She'd call me every name in the book. I was nine years old, and she would call me a slut.

I lived like this until I was thirteen. Six days before my birthday, her new boyfriend and her were drunk and my mom had passed out. Not surprisingly, the bastard raped me- for hours."

I sobbed more. Buffy put her hands on my thighs and looked up at me. "You don't have to tell me any more if you can't, Fai. It's alright."

I shook my head. "No... it's time I got this out. No one knows about any of this; not even Angel. He knows some, but..." I sighed. "I need to do this, I think."

Buffy caressed my cheek again. "Go ahead, baby."

"The fucker left me broken, bruised, crying and wishing I would die. That night, I slit my wrists. My mother had sobered up and found me in the bathroom and, for some reason, decided she didn't want me to die and called 911.

Two weeks of living in a long-term mental hospital, I was deemed stable enough to go home. I know now that I should have told the people at the hospital about my mother's abuse, but I was too scared.

First day I was home and the abuse started again. When I told my mother that her skeevy boyfriend raped me, she called me a lying whore.

That night, I laid in bed, contemplating suicide again. But what if I failed once more? The hospital was better than being here, but I didn't want to go through that. So I made up my mind and, having saved money from stealing some here and there over the past eight months, I ran away and never looked back.

For a few months, I stayed in a motel. The motel manager never looked twice at how young I was. But my money faded, and I couldn't get a job because of my age.

I ended up living on the streets. Two weeks into it, and I was approached by a Latino man who asked me if I ever thought of being an 'escort'. He lied, saying it was just to take men out on 'dates'. Soon enough, though, I realized the meaning of an escort. But I didn't quit.

And then, shortly after, I became addicted to heroin. One other reason to keep selling my body; so I could afford my fix.

None of the johns questioned my age. None of them looked twice at the scars on my upper thighs, either. I lived as a prostitute and a drug addict for three years."

Buffy tilted my head up so that she could look at me. "You... you cut?"

I nodded.

"Then I met Diana. Who I thought was batshit at first. But I was interested enough to read into the fictional world of vampires, demons and Slayers.

One night, I was snatched from the street and into a van. I still don't know who the man was, as he had his face hidden, but he still haunts me. For about four months, he kept me chained to a basement, torturing me in every way imaginable as I already dealt with drug withdrawal. I lost my ability to have children because of him." I sobbed into my hands again.

Buffy pulled me off the bed and into her lap. "Oh, Faith, I'm so sorry. God.. I'm sorry..."

I cried into her shoulder for a few minutes and regained my composure, pulling back from her.

"He had been brutally raping me with one of those big police flashlights. I was bleeding everywhere, and pain ripped through me like fire. I struggled uselessly against the chains, crying, when suddenly every cell in my body became alive and the chains broke under my newfound strength- when I became a Slayer. The man stopped and tried to restrain me, but I yanked the flashlight from his hand and bashed him over the head with it. I covered myself with a sheet, and limped out of the basement, walking until I was stopped by a couple who called 911.

The day after I was admitted, Diana found me, crying when she saw me. She apologized profusely, and I shook my head and gave her a small smile."

"I told her, "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have realized the strength that came over me last night."

I had become a Slayer.

Just one month training with Diana, and she was murdered by Kakistos in front of me. I ran, and ended up in Sunnydale. You pretty much know the rest."

I don't know how, but I ended up telling her everything. Including the part where I was in love with her. But I didn't look at her or change the tone of my voice- pretending as if it was just another fact- and continued on with spilling my secrets to her.

We were both quiet for a long time as I was still crying silently. Then, she lifted me back up onto the bed and lifted my shirt to reveal the- literally- hundreds of self-inflicted wounds on my stomach.

She looked at them for a long time, tracing them with her fingers softly. Then she stopped on one. Yeah, that scar.

Pulling her hand away, she looked up at me, brushing the tears away from my face. And she kissed me.