Title: Dancing with Herself
Author: Sarmi
Category: Post-BTVS Finale
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Faith doesn't belong to me. And I'm kinda okay with that since she scares me.
Summary: Faith realizes that her darkness is nothing compared to Buffy's.
Authors note: This one of a series of POV ficlets about how how Buffy deals with Spike's death. They can be read in any order and are leading up to my fic titled Crazy Faith.
I always knew B had a dark side. You can't be what we are and not have one. I think what surprised me the most is how she doesn't even try to hide it anymore.
Sure, in the daylight she is still little miss sunshine and daisies, but once the stars come out so do her demons, just not the one she's looking for.
She once told me that being a slayer didn't make us killers. Yeah right. She didn't fool me then and now she isn't even bothering to fool herself.
Last night, in some old Roman cemetery with statues of weeping Mary's and fruity angels, I saw her. The real her, the Buffy I knew was always there carefully tucked away behind the good girl façade. I always thought we were the chosen two. But I was wrong, next to her I might as well be Suzy fucking Sunshine.
She never really scared me until last night. And she didn't just scare me, she terrified me. Because under different circumstances I could have been her. Hell at one time I wanted to be her and was.
She was a blur of carnage and beauty. She fought like she was looking for something, some illusive answer, some lost feeling. And when there was nothing left but dust on the ground she turned to me and all I could see was sadness and frustration rolling off her. Some itch she just couldn't scratch.
So I picked a fight, it was the least that I owed her.
No matter how hard she looked though, she was not going to find him here, and she knew it. She knew he was not some place that she could go to, but the fight let her get close to what she once felt when he was fighting beside her and against her. She wasn't supposed to love the thing we were built to destroy, at least not a second time. She should not have had to sacrifice the man she loved again to save a world that cared nothing for the pain it cost her. She may have had everything I ever wanted but she had also had it all stripped away from her as well.
And as we walked back to her apartment, both bloody and bruised (I wasn't about to let her win, I don't owe her that much) all she said to me was "thanks for the dance." I think I'll sit the next one out.
