Faith awakened slowly, gradually becoming aware of her surroundings. She felt calm, relaxed, safe, safer than she'd ever felt.

She was acutely aware of the warm body weighing down her right arm. Taking a deep sigh she curled her arm closer, pulling the still sleeping blonde even closer into her arms. She smiled.

How could she deserve this? After all she'd done, how could she ever have something so perfect? Someone, so perfect...

But of course Buffy wasn't perfect, Faith was well aware of that, but in comparison to Faith she might as well be. B...Her B. Someone so seemingly unattainable that, despite being madly in love, Faith had rather gone insane than admit she was a teenage girl with a heart that could be broken.

But that was a long time ago. So much has happened since the events in Sunnydale during Buffy's senior year. She was so young then, they both were. And yet, Faith had never really ever felt like a kid, ever since she could remember she was having to survive on her own: whether that was hiding in the closet from the latest abusive drunk her mother had brought home, lifting some guy's wallet to buy some food since her mother was never sober enough to cook let alone shop for groceries, or slaying vampires and fighting (or in one case joining) the forces of evil.

So it seemed that for the majority of her life, her existence had been about survival. She would survive, enjoy what she could, and move on so no one could hurt her. At times she felt invincible, that is until she arrived in Sunnydale.

Seeing Buffy, her life, her loving mom, her dopey friends...At first it made Faith angry. She was jealous. Jealous of so many things. Why had Buffy gotten that life when she hadn't? Was she really as worthless as her mother had told her so many times? Well, she had thought so back then.

She was jealous of what Buffy had. But that wasn't all, she was jealous of her friends, jealous that they were an important part of Buffy's life. She felt like just an accessory, someone who could just make the job easier when it came to slaying. That's all she had thought she was to Buffy, the other slayer. The backup. The one that shouldn't exist. The mistake.

She had had an obsession with Buffy. She wanted her, and she wanted to be her. But then, Faith found that spending time with Buffy, even if it was only for slaying, was the thing she would look forward to. She felt drawn to Buffy. Not just sexually, that she already was sure of. This was something more. When she would see Buffy get injured, even just a little during a fight she would later have the urge to hold her, protect her, support her.

She'd never really liked people. She just found them to be boring, or jerks, or just trying to get something. Seemed like trusting people was just asking to get hurt. But then, Buffy had been different. Sure, most of the time Faith felt unimportant, but there were those rare glimpses, those smiles, those little silly conversations, that made Faith wonder if maybe Buffy did enjoy spending time with her at least a little.

In that short time she had spent in Sunnydale, she had slowly and deeply fallen for Buffy. But she'd never loved another human being like this in her life. It had scared her, but also excited her. Those few days leading up to the Allen Finch disaster had been the best days of her life up until that point. Never had she felt so connected to another person. She remembers the thrill of dancing with Buffy at the bronze, of slaying together, of growing closer and closer.

But then, of course like all things in her life, things went to hell. She was scared, scared of what to do. She knew the scoobies would throw her under the bus, she couldn't expect them to understand, and she couldn't expect Buffy to either.

Originally when she'd blamed it on Buffy, it had been with the hope that Giles would have a stern talk with Buffy and then things would move on like always and Faith then could skip town unnoticed once everything died down. She'd been stupid, she knew that. Blaming Buffy was the first in a long line of actions she knew left wounds that she doubted would ever truly heal between them. She'd hurt them. All of them. The scoobies, Giles, Mrs. Summers, Angel, but Buffy most of all. And the worst part of it all was that she had wanted to.

She had gone to the mayor because it was safe, she knew he wanted her to help him, she wanted the Allen Finch stuff to go away, so this was a relationship she was familiar with, one based off of two people using the other for what they needed or wanted. The thing is, she'd never expected to like the mayor. For a big bag he really wasn't that bad a guy.

She'd never had a father, and never really had any sort of decent parent at all, so when the mayor treated her so well, well, it made her even angrier at Buffy. Why did she have to choose the bad guys in order to feel like someone appreciated her? She didn't want to work for the mayor, but she had told herself at the time that it had been Buffy who brought her to it.

She had blamed Buffy. For everything. For her joining the mayor, for the scoobies hating her, for the council's distrust, for the crappy motel she'd lived in, for her joining the mayor, for her crappy life, and most of all for her broken heart.

As the blonde resting beside her stirred, she realized one very important thing: it had been fear that had allowed her love to become hate, and now she was no longer afraid.