Never take an amulet from a demon in a boxcar.
Well, the demon had said "Learn your best lessons there." That was obviously one of them. Faith supposed that there had been others, but mostly there had just been a shiny shiny portal and then some walking through a forest. And him. Not forgetting. She supposed he had been meant to be a lesson as well. Or maybe just the half time entertainment.
Maybe she had been a lesson to him as well, you never know.
It was so easy to slip back into bad habits, she thought, as she grabbed the guy's wallet and jacket and walked away. Too easy. What would they think if they could see her now? No more best Buffy - behaviour for me.
What would he think?
He'd understand. For all of his irritating babble about honor and duty and the warrior's code, he would understand. There was a darkness in him that connected them and made them understand each other. Oh, he would never knock a guy down and steal his wallet. He was too good for that.
No doubt about it, he was a good person. For an old guy.
"There's darkness in you, bud," she'd said to him. He had begun to protest, but he had seen it was useless, he had seen into her and recognized himself. It had shocked him. She'd understood. He'd been grateful for that understanding. Way grateful she recalled, with a tiny visceral tingle. He was a demon in the sack. Or, well, the bushes, to be exact.
Not that she had minded at the time. He was good at a lot of things.
He had a power in him though, that she had not found in her self. That had scared her at first. He was so strong, so capable of inflicting hurt on just about anything, then getting up and doing it again. They were similar. He said so. She saw it. He even had his own version of Buffy to rub the wrong way, his own example of shiny perfection like a splinter under the skin. He was angry, like her, and stubborn, like her. But he was good. He'd never been bad. "Like you also", he had said, before she left. She had shaken her head, perhaps sadly, and said nothing.
A good person wouldn't do all the things she had done, and was even now planning to do.
She had carried her wariness with her when she went, grabbing at the amulet dangled in front of her like some fat kid grabbing at a candy bar. The demon who did the dangling had a smile like a fish hook, and she had taken the bait, the hook, the line, everything. "Have fun kiddo," it had said, "and take some happy snaps before you come back." Except that she had no intention of coming back. Not ever.
She knew she couldn't hide forever. Maybe just for a while?
But now she was here, not there, and all the faith that Boromir had said he had in her goodness was nothing more than coma hangover. For a moment she wished she was back there, had never decided to come back. She didn't know why she had, really. She admitted to herself for a moment that she missed him and hoped he would be okay. But nothing ever lasts.
Then she walked into the, hard LA night, bad to the core.