A/N: This is my first BtVS story, and it's been lurking on my computer for a while. Set somewhere in Season 3, slightly AU, I guess. WARNING: This is slash, as in two girls, as in Buffy and Faith in a romantic relationship. You have been warned.
Buffy's always thought that gray was a strange color. She never saw the point of it, that weird mixture of black and white. It wasn't stark and powerful like white, or depressing and expressive like black. It was just something in between. Weird. Out of place.
And when she met her brunette counterpart, the first thing she thought of was gray. Because even though Faith riled her friends with wild stories and enthralling tales, those tales really weren't stark and powerful. They were too over the top. Those tales weren't really depressing or expressive, because they had no emotion behind them. They just were. Full of the mindless action that populated comic books.
And when she brought her to her house for dinner, Buffy's mother loved Faith, too. But Buffy still saw her as a gray area. Something about her never fully seemed right, like she was only half a person. She was an enigma, something neither here nor there. Caught in limbo.
Buffy trains with her. She grows closer to her every day. But Faith is so guarded, like a castle with walls and guards and cannons and crossbows protecting her heart. Buffy longs more than anything to know what's inside her head.
Because Buffy's always associated white with good and black with evil. But Faith is gray again. Looking at her, Buffy would expect her to be evil and working for the bad guys. But here she is, every day, showing up to train and exchange playful banter. She fights on the good side, but she acts like she's on the bad side.
The more time that Buffy spends with Faith, the more she realizes that there are shades of gray. Gray is not a definite color, like white or black. It's an in-between, and most in-betweens don't have a definition. They change. That's why they're in between: they're constantly changing, shifting, never staying in one spot. That's why, Buffy thinks, that gray can never be white or black. Since it moves so much, shifts all the time. Because there are some days when Faith just becomes an angel in disguise, and others where Buffy's afraid that she'll lose her to the dark side, but most days she's perfectly in between, straddling the line equally on both sides.
Buffy likes to think that she's white. The color white. She likes to see herself as a defender of good, using all the right and ethical methods to get there. Well, there is all the killing that she has to do, but Buffy thinks of herself as all the more good for doing that. If she wasn't strong enough and good enough to take a life herself, then no one would, and the world would descend into chaos. She'd never accept that she's anything but white, since white is the color of good.
Buffy's feelings towards Faith have always been white. She's always seen the good in the gray person that is Faith. Always seen the white, only the white. And maybe that's why she can tolerate Faith; she doesn't feel like she wants to hang herself, like most of her friends do. Buffy tries to make them see the white, she really does, but she just can't seem to make them do it.
And as Buffy thinks on the matter, she realizes that she doesn't really know Faith. By filtering out the black, Buffy only knows half of Faith. Maybe she only wants to know half. Because if she ever saw the black part, she might run away screaming in the other direction. She wonders why she knows that Faith is a gray person, but she only thinks of her as white.
Everything about Faith is gray, and it's possibly her gray sexuality that intrigues Buffy the most. If someone asked her why that was, Buffy would splutter and not be able to come up with a coherent answer or any sort of answer. But that's what fascinates Buffy about Faith.
Faith will go looking for guys to go to bed with, but there are times that Buffy thinks she sees her flirting with girls. Buffy thinks she's even seen Faith leave with a girl once, but when Buffy went over early the next morning, she walked in on Faith in an empty bed, even though she usually walks in on Faith and her one-night stand.
Buffy's finding Faith turn grayer and grayer in her eyes. She finds it hard to believe that someone can be completely gray, when most people's morals are so clean cut and clear. But then again, Faith isn't most people. She's her own person, and maybe that's what the grays are. The independent ones who don't take crap from anyone. At all. Ever.
And maybe, Buffy muses, that the grays are everybody. Just maybe, the world isn't the black and white place she thought it was. Maybe everybody has a little bit of gray in them. Look at Willow and Xander. She thought that they were all white, and then they're kissing behind Oz and Cordelia's backs. So maybe, she thinks, that gray is everywhere. She's just never seen it before.
As she lets herself look at the gray, she starts to see it everywhere. She sees it in everyone and everything. And when Buffy looks at herself in the mirror, she sees it. She sees the gray in herself. She sees where she's flawed, and where she's gray. She sees all the bad decisions and insecurities and strange feelings she has. She sees those awful thoughts and the frightening desires. For the first time, Buffy fully sees herself.
This new gray world scares her. Makes her want to hide under a table and run, more so than any vampire ever did. She doesn't understand why, but her gray thoughts cause her to trip and tumble. She can't seem to fight it, but she can't seem to live with it. So for the moment, she'll just ignore it.
It becomes harder and harder to ignore it as it weaves itself into her dreams, her memories, even her school classes while she day dreams. Buffy can't exactly pick up on what it is that bothers her about being gray. She focuses her energy on that instead of what it means to be gray. She thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks...
And then she understands. Being gray means being undefined, somewhere no one understands. But no one understands her, anyway. No one can even begin to know what it's like to know that you're the only one, the last line of defense to stand between the world and total destruction. She's already alienated enough from the world; why would she want to alienate herself more?
Because though it's entirely plausible that everyone is gray, everyone's a different shade of gray. No one can really understand each other, because no one is the exact same shade of gray. There are some people who are close, but no two exactly alike. Gray is funny like that. It lumps everyone under a huge broad category, but it's so varied inside that category that it's almost like everything in it should have its own separate subcategory. And maybe, Buffy muses, they do.
And as she muses, she becomes to understand that she's not one of those grays who has their own subcategory. She's the only one in the world, save for one other person, who has a partner. Someone with her shade of gray. She has another Slayer. Another someone who knows exactly what she's going through. Someone who's felt the weight of the world on her shoulders and known that she can't crumble. Someone who knows how to feel alone, and how sometimes, it's the best way to be.
In the next few weeks, Buffy decides that the best way to fully get it, to complete her journey into the gray world of life, is to talk to her counterpart, the one who introduced her to the color. One-on-one.
And so they go. On night, while patrolling. They get to talking. They get to talking about loneliness. They get to talking about life. They get to talking about love. And when Faith tells Buffy that she'll never fall in love, Buffy's new mind can't accept it.
Just a naive few months ago, Buffy would have accepted this answer. It was black and white; clear cut with no room for discussion. But now that she's gray, she doesn't get it; doesn't compute. Buffy finds it hard to understand how someone as gray as Faith could have a view so obvious and blatant as this.
And when she asks, Faith simply laughs and tells her that guys are so much better for lovin' and leavin' than just plain old loving.
"Well what about a girl? Ever thought about that?"
The words are out of Buffy's mouth before she can stop them, like a waterfall that refuses to stop. She goes to looking at the ground, her eyes suddenly tired and her feet suddenly dragging. Why did she go and say that? Faith won't mind her saying that; she'll probably just laugh it off. Buffy, though, minds. The idea that a thought like that could cross her mind so strongly that she'd have to voice it scares her.
But what scares her more is when she doesn't hear Faith laughing.
And very quietly, like a timid mouse in the face of towering man, Buffy lifts her head to meet Faith's. Faith isn't laughing. She isn't smiling. For the first time, Buffy has seen Faith speechless. And she was even the one to render her so.
And very quietly, like a little child about to tell Mommy that she broke the vase in the hallway, Faith lowers her lips to meet Buffy's. Buffy isn't resisting. She isn't pulling away. For the first time, Faith has seen Buffy in the most innocent of moments, of kisses. And she was even the one to bring it about.
As Buffy's initial shock wears off, she smiles and leans in a little more. She is now perfectly aware that this kiss is gray, somewhere in the world between right and wrong, somewhere in the world between welcome and feared. She is now perfectly aware that she is gray, somewhere in the world between good and evil, somewhere in the world between fantasy and reality.
And if this is gray, Buff thinks while sinking into Faith's chest after the kiss, well, then maybe she's lucky to be gray.
Because clearly gray is where all the good stuff happens.