Title - Faith's Death

Rating - PG13 for now...if it changes i'll let you know

Pairing - Buffy/Faith

Setting - Right after Buffy's death, between seasons 5 and 6

Disclaimer - These character do not belong to me, I am not that clever. All characters belong

to Joss and the really big companies who financed him.

Chapter 2- I'm going back to L.A.

In the moment she'd barely thought about it, just flung herself through the glass barrier.

Three seconds to wonder if this was the same way that Buffy had flung herself off of that

tower, like it was right, like it mattered, like it was everything she had left.

The meeting with Angel was short, perfunctory, a few more details then Wesley had

provided, an awkward hello to Cordelia, Angel staring out with this blank hollow expression

that Faith prayed she wasn't making herself. Faith could feel herself tense, go numb and she

felt torn between taking care of Angel and avoiding him at all costs. She was fine, she could

stay fine, as long as she didn't think to hard, as long as she could maintain the illusion that she

could function, she'd be alright. But Angel was the one who could see through all that, who

could see past her tough girl facade and feel the pain she was carefully clamping down on.

Because he was the only one who could share it, the only one who could see it and Faith

couldn't bare that. She needn't have worried, Angel barely spoke to her, or even looked at her

and after all...what was there to say? Buffy was dead ...and neither of them had been there.

It wasn't until she was in the car, driving down the highway, that she began to panic. She

hadn't been alone, truly alone, in over a year and she found the prospect of hours by herself

disquieting.

"It'll be fine" She thought to herself.

"Just take some getting used to."

She took several deep breaths tried to make her hands unclench. She wondered if this

was how Buffy felt, being the one, the only one. She wondered if Buffy had felt this

desperate, felt how deep the burden was that she had undertaken. She liked to think that she

had, that in the first days of her calling Buffy had wanted to push it all away, that she'd felt this

same gnawing loneliness, the same sense of panic. One girl in all the world...but somehow

she doubted it. Because for Buffy being the only one would have been normal. Buffy had

always been alone. Not like Faith, for Faith being called as the slayer meant being paired,

meant being with Buffy. But there was no Buffy anymore.