We end up in this dive bar in some basement off a narrow alley, not far from the cemetery. There's no sign, no light at the entrance. How do people even know it's there? The concrete floor is sticky and I see a glints of glass as the disco ball twirls on a string. A jukebox is wheezing out some honky-tonk tune for the single couple on the dance floor, who seem oblivious as they grind completely out of time with the music. Faith gives the bartender a nod by lifting her chin, the up-nod, and it suddenly dawns on me that that is how guys nod, not girls. What floors me is that I realize Faith's always done that nod, and that I just noticed.
The bartender puts two drafts and some amber liquid on ice on the counter as Faith slides a ten across the counter. She collects all the glasses and heads to a booth as far away from the jukebox as possible. I follow, trying to figure out how she ordered without saying anything. She slides into the booth as I sit across from her. She puts her boots up on my bench and slouches in her seat, taking a sip of the amber liquid.
"Nice... ambience." I quip.
She looks around the room with a fond smile, surprising me by agreeing with a 'yeah.'
"You come here often?"
"Sometimes." She gives me that tough look, daring me to judge her, but I don't rise to the bait. Judging Faith is a one-way ticket to attitude, with a sucky in-flight movie to boot. "It's a way to be around people without actually being around people, I guess. Quiet. And it reminds me of places I knew growing up."
I look questioning at that, but she doesn't answer my look. Just takes another sip of the amber liquid. "So what are you drinking?" I ask.
Her eyes are amused over the top of her highball. "Scotch." Her mouth quirks into a smile. "You want me to get you one?"
"No. I'll stick with my beer," I say, taking a tiny sip.
She launches into the story, no transition, no introduction. "The first few months were the worst. New girl, everyone wanted a piece of me. Other cons, guards, everyone. First week, I lost my temper. She started it but I finished it." Her voice is quiet, like she's talking to herself. She's staring at the glass she has in her hand as she rotates it a quarter turn, then again, over and over. "I almost killed her. And spent a week in solitary. After the guards got through beating me." Another quarter turn. I watch the glass as well, her thumbs moving rhythmically.
"I guess I reached a decision, somewhere along the line. I wasn't going to be someone's punching bag, but..." Her shrug is eloquent with what she isn't saying. "So I started to react to attacks by defending myself, ending it quickly by incapacitating the attacker and then stepping off. And I made sure it was obvious who started it. So I got a rep that I could fuck you up, but wouldn't unless you tried something. People stopped trying and the guards stayed off my case."
"First few months, I spent hours, every day, training. They had a heavy bag in the gym and I put in sometimes 8 hours a day on it, if they let me. When they didn't, I rolled up my mattress and worked on that. That helped my rep as well. People saw me wailing on that heavy bag for hours and hours, well..." Another shrug. "I would pace half the night until I collapsed. I didn't have a cellmate. None of them wanted to be locked in a room with me, I guess, and the guards were worried about what would happen if I snapped, I think. Can't blame them there." Her closes her eyes, briefly, shutting away some pain, and then shakes her head and sits up a little.
"Angel... heard. He came on infrequent visits, but he kept tabs on me, maybe through that detective friend of his. So he sent me a book." She laughs a little, at that. "Me, a book. On eastern philosophy, you know, Buddhism and stuff? I thought he was crazy. But one night, I was pacing and the light from the hallway kinda hit it, there on the desk where I had left it. So I picked it up and just started reading on some random page. Made no sense. But I kept reading anyway. All night, squinting, trying to make out the words in that piss-poor light. That morning, I watched a sunrise through the bars, like I had never seen one before in my life."
She suddenly seems to remember that she's talking out loud, because she laughs, embarrassed, and takes a sip of her drink. "Fucking corny, huh?" I shake my head. She takes another drink and lets out an audible breath. "Anyway, I used one of my phone calls, which I never did, and called Angel about three weeks later. I had finished the book AND read everything on the subject in the prison library, like all of three books. Asked him to send me more stuff and a notebook. He did. And kept sending me stuff. Eventually Cor started to too. And Wesley. I nearly tortured the guy to death and he sends me this beautiful, leather-bound copy of Shakespeare's tragedies." The look on her face is thoughtful in quiet awe, which is the look I imagine I have on my face as well. "So I eased off on the heavy bag, went down to about four hours a day, and started reading. And writing, filling up all these notebooks. And letters to Angel, off-the-wall shit, I'm sure."
"The things you do when you have time and nowhere to run to. I didn't understand much of what I was reading, but I'd send questions to Angel and he'd try to answer them. Then, I swear he somehow got this class offered at the prison, Tai Chi, as part of the anger management counseling I was required to do. I never thought to ask him," And she smiles to herself at this, "but in my head, he somehow did it just for me. Tai Chi combined the physical stuff with the reading, in a way, like a moving mediation." She glances up at me as she says this, gauging my reaction to all this, and I keep my expression neutral—I know she thinks this is corny, and I don't want her to think I do. "I kept up with it after the instructor left and Cor sent me tapes. I even started showing some of the other cons in the prison yard."
I suppress a surge of jealousy as she describes her relationship with Angel. She picks up the glass and drains it, setting it down with a thud to break the mood. "I guess that's it. Nothing more to tell."
I reach across the table and catch her hand. She looks down at it like she's deciding whether or not to pull away. She doesn't, but meets my eyes instead. "Thanks," I say simply. I'm not sure if praise would seem condescending. "That's... you're" I pause, trying to think of a good word that doesn't sound too weird, but I can't come up with anything but, "amazing." Those expressive eyebrows shift down, like she doesn't quite believe me, but she lets it stand. She nonchalantly pulls her hand away and picks up her beer, taking a sip, staring off in the middle distance somewhere over my shoulder, her thoughts far away.
"Wait... what was bothering you earlier?"
She shakes her head and I know the answer before she says it, so I cut her off with a head shake of my own. "And don't tell me nothing."
Her sideways look and throaty chuckle is her way of letting me know I caught her. "Three years," she says instead.
"Three years?"
"Since I arrived in Sunnydale." She looks around the bar, obviously thinking of all the places she could be right now. "I swore I was never coming back the last time I left. And yet... here I am." Faith throws her head back, flipping her hair out of her eyes. "This place just keeps pulling me back. Earlier, I was thinking about that. About how much pain and misery might have been averted if I had never showed up here."
"No regrets."
"B?"
"My new motto. No regrets." I gesture around the room, thinking about how Sunnydale seems to pull me back too. "I'm back too, you know, and I've been running to my grave ever since I left it." She really did have me pegged, earlier today. I shake my head, a flat negative. "No more." Her eyebrow quirks up in surprise.
"I just figured out, there's nowhere else I'd rather be right now." She glances around the room in obvious disbelief and looks back at me. I give her a silly grin and pick up my beer, extending the glass to her. She raises her glass, clicking it against my glass with a crisp 'tink' before draining it. I follow suit and lower my glass to see her shaking her head and laughing. Mentally, I add, 'and no one I'd rather be with."