Thought I'd try and lengthen this after all. Gonna be a multi-chapter kind of deal (I'm kinda feeling the Faith/Dean thing at the moment). I'm making no promises over update frequency though.

CHAPTER TWO

Faith had tried to fit in. She'd tried to be the good girl, the team player. She'd even tried to do the monogamy thing with Wood. But no matter what she did, even after Sunnydale was nothing but a ditch, even after she'd helped the Scoobies gather and train the new Slayers in Cleveland, Faith knew that they didn't trust her. So Faith did one of the things that she did best.

She left.

She had been pretty good at being a team player, and done a decent impression of a good girl, but as each of the new Slayers was told about her past, she could see the changes in their eyes. She knew they all wondered why Buffy and Giles let her stay with them. They thought she was a risk, a liability. She was dangerous.

She couldn't ever try to deny that last one.

Which was why she knew it was better for her to leave. They needed stability in their new, little Slayer Academy, and they couldn't have that while she was still there.

So Faith headed out, onto the road. Giles and Willow called sometimes to check in, or to guide her toward the spooky happenings that they picked up on. Faith wasn't sure if Buffy even knew that they called her. Or that she owned a cell phone for that matter.

Faith was surprised to learn that she didn't really mind. She was good at taking care of herself. She was good at being alone. She had plenty of practice after all. So she left them, caught the first bus at the depot, and landed in Columbus. She dusted a couple of vamps, but stayed less than a week. She wanted out of Ohio, they had enough Slayers to take care of things.

She bounced from small town to small town, skeezy motel to skeezier motel, before deciding to stick to the bigger cities. You could scratch more itches in a city, and one of the things she'd learned in LA with Angel, was that there was always plenty of action in a metropolis for someone with her select skill set.

She was right.