Faith, "Scar" (song by Missy Higgins)
Faith could read her body like a road map, each of its permanent markings landmarks to specific moments of her life- moments that if she had her way, she would much rather kick out of her memory, for the most part. Then again, if she got rid of every sucky memory of everything she'd ever gone through, she'd end up with a Swiss cheese brain or something- huge holes where all the shitty stuff had been. Probably way more holes than cheese.
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger…is that why she's a Slayer? Did someone up there not screw up after all?
Faith has stood naked in the fluorescent light of the motel bathrooms once or twice, looking at herself in the mirror and letting her eyes drift over each scar visible to her on her body, remembering, letting herself drift into sober mindset even as her fingers traced hesitantly over he slightly rough marks.
There's the typical ones, of course, the ones ever kid has- two chicken pox scars on her face, because of course Faith never was one to have enough self control not to scratch an itch, even today. Maybe especially today. There was the faint line on her ankle from practically slicing an artery open trying to shave for the first time when she was eleven, the small white line on her chin from falling off the jungle gym at school, and a few on her feet from wicked blisters (leather boots without socks were a no-go, she'd learned) and on her knees from being a tomboy and splitting her kneecaps open tackling people so much. Nothing out of ordinary about any of that- no one but her probably even noticed those kinds of scars.
But the others, those were the ones that Faith usually attempted to ignore, the ones she generally avoided touching, and shoved away the hands of any guy in bed with her who had the way wrong idea that it was okay for him to touch them. These were the scars Faith hadn't inflicted on herself… the ones that weren't an accident.
The cigarette burns on the back of her neck… the reason that for as long as she could remember, Faith had been too uneasy to wear her hair up for more than two or three times a year, in case someone noticed. The mark at her shoulder, where the bone had penetrated through skin- the reason, she suspected, that even as a Slayer, that arm seemed to be a weak spot, dislocating more easily than the other. The scar at her throat from Angelus's fangs… and the reminder still stretched across her stomach of the stabbing she had received from her own knife, courtesy of Buffy's hand.
All of these could be covered, and Faith did, wanting neither to draw notice to them nor to notice them herself. They were a part of her now, a part of her body, her person, even if she had welcomed none of them or the experiences that brought them about. She may not have asked for them, but they were hers.
She had wondered sometimes when she unthinkingly rubbed the back of her neck, or brushed a hand across her stomach, touched a finger to her shoulder, if anyone had scars that no one could see inside. Their brains, their hearts…their souls, if they were physical things too. Could that actually happen…and if it could, how the hell must hers look by now?