***an important conversation between Dawn and Faith…***
CHAPTER 13
Dawn had never felt pain this deep before. Not when her mother had died nor when she came across the limp body of her older sister strewn over the rubble last spring. In both cases, it was as if she had been too preoccupied to grieve properly. The tears that had fallen when Buffy had come to her school that day had been her hardest cry. Denial had set in quickly followed by determination to raise Joyce Summers from her wooden prison. And when the plan had fallen through, Buffy was there to share in her grief.
It was the same when Buffy had died. She had always felt guilty that she didn't grieve enough but the whole Glory ordeal not to mention her mother dying only a few months earlier had drained the teenager in every possible way. And then there was Spike. His presence lightened the burden from her shoulders. Though all the Scoobies had been gravely wounded by Buffy's death, none seemed to have taken it harder than he had. No matter what she, Willow or Tara said to him, he had the notion that it was his fault engraved into his stubborn skull.
Despite her pain, Dawn almost laughed at his refusal to see the truth of the matter. He had done all he could and that was all Buffy had asked him. It was never good enough for him. Just like their explanations at why she was not to blame for her mother's death.
At the thought of her mother, Dawn buried her tear-streaked face further into her pillow. Her face was molded into its center and a primordial scream of pain and frustration poured into the cotton fabric from her aching throat.
"Dawn," a newly familiar voice said from behind her. She cut her scream though the tears continued to fall.
"Dawn," Faith's voice said again, closer. Dawn could feel the young woman's weighted gaze on her.
"Go away," she managed through muffled cries. But Faith stood her ground. She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, giving the emotional teen room to breathe. Speaking of which…
"You know, if you keep your face stuffed in the pillow like that, it's gonna end up sticking to your face." A tentative smile broke out on the woman's face when Dawn sullenly turned her head to the side.
"Well, maybe if I died, you all wouldn't have to worry about me anymore," the total disregard for self caught Faith off guard. She quickly recovered and maneuvered into a position that gave her face to face contact with her future aunt. Dawn moved to turn away but Faith captured the girl's moistened face in her small hands.
"Look at me, Dawn," she demanded. The forcefulness of the tiny woman's voice sent chills through Dawn and she stiffened. Her wide eyes captured any residual tears. They managed to fall through when she was forced to blink. The way Faith looked at her, with that grim determination and love reminded her that this woman was indeed a Summers.
"Listen to me carefully." Faith's dropped her hands but assisted Dawn in sitting up. Dawn pulled her knees to her chin, arms wrapped tightly around them. Faith sat in front of her, one leg folded underneath her while the other dangled off the side of the bed. She smiled tiredly at Dawn.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat things for you, or treat you like a kid," Dawn almost smiled at that. "In the future…things aren't too good. Who am I kidding? They suck, big time." Dawn smirked at Faith's candor. If she was one thing, it was brutally honest. Just like someone's favorite vampire…
"What happened to Spike?" Dawn whispered. At the thought of Faith's similarities to the vampire and from what she had told them earlier, the teen had cast her angst aside for the moment.
This time, it was Faith's turn to look down. Her shoulders visibly slumped and she exhaled raggedly. The bed vibrated lightly as her unrestricted leg tapped rhythmically against the side of the mattress. She remained that way for several minutes before finally looking up at Dawn with blurry eyes.
"He…died," she choked out. The words were no less painful now than they ever were. She had always heard that pain was something you learned to deal with. Even the jagged wound left by the death of a loved one was supposed to close over time. Bullshit! She cursed inwardly. The pain never goes away.
"What happened?" Dawn asked, raising her head a little. "And why were you so against Buffy earlier? I mean if she's your mom…"
"She doesn't deserve to be called my mom," Faith said without conviction. After what Buffy had done to Spike, Faith deemed herself alone in the world. She knew her mother had been captured that same day but she didn't care. Part of her reveled in the fact that her mother was in the hands of Gabriel. But that revelry soon transformed and dragged her into an abyss of guilt and shame.
"You are not my mother," Faith said softly though the venom she spat with each word echoed into Buffy's ears. In one sweeping motion she had killed him. Her friend. Her lover. Her everything. The grief she felt was beyond comprehension. It was an emptiness that had threatened to consume her all those years ago, after being ripped from her eternal paradise. But somehow, this seemed worse. Maybe it was because she had found the proverbial heaven on earth with her family. Even though the last five years had been rough, they had always been there for one another. The three musketeers.
Tears enveloped her vision as she stared longingly at what remained of her Spike. Her William. He had given her the most impossible of gifts and her thanks had been to erase all traces of him from the earth with a simple piece of wood. She reached a trembling hand down; her fingers begrudgingly wrapped around the smooth surface of the oak sliver and lifted it from its copulation with the ashes. It would all be over soon enough.
Buffy raised the stake into both hands and presented it to the wrathful figure in front of her.
"Take it," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. She knew Faith would be left alone in this cold, dark world, but she would be fine. And it wasn't as if there was a choice in the matter.
She ventured a look into the greenish-blue orbs of her only child and gasped at the sneer of revulsion that took in her broken form.
"You want me to what? Kill you?" Faith snorted her derision. She finally rose from her knees and stalked off.
"Faith," Buffy said in desperation."Take it. You know what has to be done."
Faith whirled around with inhuman speed and ripped the wooden death from her mother's grip. She cocked her arm to strike. Buffy closed her eyes, puffing her chest out to greet the blow she hoped would reunite her with her now dead lover. She felt Faith's arm surge forward. Death was only half a heart beat away…
Wave after wave of guilt washed over Faith from the memory. She had been so close to ending it, knowing she had to do it. Not to relieve her mother's pain, but for the world.
Buffy felt the biting sting of wood as its tip pricked her flesh. But there was no more. She opened her eyes as the wood crackled loudly against the paved road.
"What are you doing?" she asked Faith. The girl's shoulder length locks hid her from Buffy's prying eyes. Buffy. Or bitch. It didn't matter what she called her as long as it was never mother again.
"What are you doing?" Buffy demanded frantically, her hands gripping Faith's slumped shoulders. "You have to do this Faith. You know it. It's the only way." Faith refused to meet her mother's gaze because she knew Buffy's eyes held the truth. The truth that the young girl could not deal with. She couldn't be alone. As long as Buffy was alive, Faith would never be alone. The thinking was convoluted, she knew, but denial was a powerful hallucinogen.
"I can't," Faith said weakly. "I won't!" She yelled, slapping Buffy's arms away. Her anger and hate had returned and she peered unflinchingly into the slayer's green embers.
Buffy wilted at the sight but didn't back down. "You know what the books said. We told you. You just don't want to hear it. This is the only way to defeat him, Faith. We didn't…we don't have any other choice."
Faith didn't even feel her arm raise or remember her fist connect with Buffy's face, knocking the slayer to the ground. She looked up at her daughter with pleading eyes, staving off the call of unconsciousness as long as she could. As she heard her daughter's last words before succumbing to the darkness, she couldn't help but wish it had pulled her under sooner.
"We always have a choice," the figure said, walking away. "And right now I choose to forget you. Forget my mother. As of right now, you're nothing to me…"
The bitter sting of those words made Faith's stomach lurch. How could she have been so cruel? So unforgiving? This had been the woman that had given her everything and yet she had walked away from her helpless form, never looking back, even as Gabriel's demons had shackled Buffy and taken her away. Faith wanted to wallow in her own heartache, to feel that familiar pang of loss as sure as a stake through the heart of a vampire. But she couldn't now. She had come up here for a reason.
"He died. Your sister killed him." She saw Dawn's gasp of disbelief but continued. "She thought she was doing the right thing. It was, after all, mentioned in the prophecy."
"What?" Dawn asked through the haze of newly formed tears. Buffy killing Spike? Never. Even when they had been mortal enemies, she had never done it. And now that they were together…she would just stake him just because a prophecy said so? "Why? Why was it so important to stake him?"
Faith laughed humorlessly. "That's what I didn't understand. Well, actually, I had only found out what they had meant when I saw my…when I saw Spike turn to dust. They had been telling me for several days that something was going to happen and they might leave and never come back. Even though I was nineteen, they still shielded me from the reality of what it all meant." Dawn heard the resentment in her tone and could not help but to understand. Buffy was like that with her now, trying to protect her from all the baddies when in reality it only hurt her in the end.
"They told me something was going to happen. That Buffy had to do something and they made me promise that no matter what it was, I would follow through and return the 'favor'," the last word dribbled out in contempt. "Some favor. 'Hey kid. Why don't you watch your mom kill your father, then turn around, and do the same to her? It'll be a blast. A great family bonding exercise'." She waved her hand in disgust.
"But couldn't they have…I mean, there had to have been another way," Dawn said with pleading eyes. Faith smiled warmly. Maybe there's still hope for you, Dawnie.
"That's what I said." The warmth disappeared from her eyes and was replaced by a grim determination. "There is always a choice, Dawn." The teen picked up the hint right away.
"But…if it's in something's nature to be one way, then does it really have a choice? I mean, if something is naturally evil, then can it ever be good?"
Faith smiled but it didn't reach her eyes. It was a condescending smile, as if she knew something that Dawn didn't. It didn't take long for Dawn to feel the anger bubbling within her.
"What?" she spat out, full teenage sullenness in effect. Faith cocked her head to the side, taking in this beautiful young girl in front of her. Her lip poked out, pouting, and Faith's smile was now genuine. If it was one thing Summers' women did well, it was pout. Of course that went hand in hand with their innate stubbornness, but that was beside the point.
"Do you think Spike is evil?" She asked Dawn, her tone neutral. The teen looked at her thoughtfully before bursting into a cacophony of giggles.
"Spike? Evil?" She asked incredulously, then rolled her eyes. "Spike and evil go together like me being a normal fifteen year old teen and not an ancient green gob of cosmic energy. So, no, I don't think Spike is evil."
"Has he ever told you about the things he has done?"
"Yeah…I mean…." And Dawn remembered….
"And the lady invited you in?"
"Well, I had hubby by the throat, didn't I? Promised her he'd live if she did the invite."
"And did you…let him live?" She was getting nervous.
Spike looked at her hard and Dawn's heart skipped a beat. "What do you think?" he asked her menacingly.
Faith couldn't help but laugh at the girl's shocked face. She was obviously recalling one of Spike's vampiric tales. Dawn glared at laughing figure.
"What's so funny?" Dawn asked, crossing her arms across her chest. That only made the petite woman laugh harder, until she held her sides in and massaged her cramping muscles.
"Sorry," she said, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Dawn rolled her eyes. "It's just that…that face you just made."
"What about it?"
"That's the same face I made when he used to tell me his stories." She regarded Dawn momentarily. "That's what you were thinking of, wasn't it?" The teen dropped her eyes to the bed, her finger twirling in her dark hair. Faith viewed this girl. This little girl that lost her mother, was on the run from a hell-god and then lost her sister in a matter of months. The grief must have been overbearing. And now she admitted that she still blamed herself for what had happened. It reminded her so much of Spike. Even four decades after the events of Buffy's tragic dive off the tower, he still would not totally forgive himself. Faith saw it whenever Buffy joked about dying. He would flinch and that pain of loss, of failure, would creep across his pale features. Afterwards, he usually meandered off by himself, and Faith had, on occasion, saw him crying silently. She had never told Buffy nor confronted him. She just knew. And that was when it hit her. What happened to him was not so much Buffy's fault as it was a necessity's. Spike would have never left her, never left them, if it wasn't the only way. At least at the time. Faith looked up at Dawn, remembering why she had followed her up here.
"Dawn," she said, the seriousness in her voice palpable. It was also coated with compassion. "I'm know you are not a kid, and I'm not going to treat you like one. I'm not going to say we live in a rosy future full of kittens and lazy Sundays spent lounging around the house as a family." It had been like that for a few years, Faith remembered, but ended all too quickly. She saw the lengths Buffy had gone to give her a halfway normal existence, under the circumstances of having two witches and an ancient key as an aunt and a vampire and vampire slayer as parents, that was. She touched her hand to Dawn's warm cheeks and sighed. How much had these women, these Summers women been through? When would it end? She doubted it ever would.
"Things happened, with you, that changed you in a way no one had realized. I don't know what it was and I don't know when. All I know is that it's soon." She saw the fear in Dawn's eyes and it wrenched her insides not to be able to take it away. But she had to continue.
"And when that happens, you probably won't even feel it. But this thing, whatever it is, will gestate and fester within you for years until it turns you into something…someone that's a far cry from what you are now. The things you will do…" she broke eye contact. The hurt and pain she was causing this young girl was pulling Faith under a tide of heartache. But she had a purpose.
"Dawn," she said, looking up with a renewed determination, "I just want you to know this. That through it all, you do come through in the end."
"Great. So how many people die before I finally get the guts to face whatever this is?" The hurt teen asked sarcastically.
"It doesn't matter now. Because we are going to change that."
"How? Are you going to stop this thing when it comes for me?"
"No. For some reason, at least I think, that part is an important part to the restoration of this world. I know with me being here, things have already changed. But despite that, the major events will not be hindered by my actions."
"Then why are you telling me this?" the teen asked, confused.
"Did anyone ever tell you how impatient you can be? Anyway, just because I can't change things doesn't mean you can't."
"I don't understand."
"Yes you do, Dawn. Like I said, what happens to you cannot be changed, but what you do after that can be. Remember what I said earlier, downstairs, about choice? I meant it. No matter how hopeless a situation seems to be, no matter your resignation that it's over, you always have a choice. Remember that. Understand that." Again silence fell between the two before Faith continued.
"I know you don't like to think of him this way, but before he fell in love with your sister, Spike was evil. Just because he never tried to harm you or your mother back then didn't change that. But over time, his love for her, for you, and even the Scoobies, changed him fundamentally. He did what no other vampire had done. Without the benefit of a soul, Spike found his moral compass. He found his redemption in the love of you and Buffy. He defeated the demon within for you girls. And surprisingly enough, the demon acquiesced to William the man's domination. Dawn, the hardest thing for people to do is change who it is in their nature to become. But he did." Faith studied her hands and sighed.
"When the time comes Dawn, years from now, remember; no matter how great the pull of this thing within you, you will always be a good and loving person. Don't let it change you. You are responsible for your actions, not anyone else. And no matter how hard, how hopeless you feel, you always have a choice." She tapped Dawn on the knee and moved to get up.
"Where are you going?" she asked. Faith swirled around, jubilantly. She had finally said it, and she truly believed her words would make a difference. That's all she had wanted to do, make that difference.
"Oh, I don't know. Go outside, stretch my muscles, get some fresh air, kick a little demon ass. And not in that order," she smiled and almost skipped out the room.
Dawn stared at where her future niece had been and shook her head. She had a choice in things. She could change the way things ended up for her. Dawn felt good about that. And though Faith had not implicitly referred to it, some of the guilt Dawn felt for what happened to others trying to protect her had dissipated. They held no blame to her, they only did what came naturally and that was to protect someone they loved. Dawn leaned back against her pillow, and looked up at her star-covered ceiling. The choices people made were so often based on their desire to love or be loved. Dawn couldn't fault herself for the Scoobies, Spike or Buffy for putting themselves in harm's way to keep her safe. How could she, when she'd do the same thing? So the world had turned into a rotten hellhole, no big. For an instant she understood, truly. If her choices were correct maybe - just maybe - she could make the world a better place.
***I hope I was able to give you a little more insight into Faith's character. Tell me what you think of her.
***And for those eager for the next chapter titled Stakes and Stones
His jaundice eyes smiled at the blond vampire before he reared back and sent the stake into Spike's chest.
"Buffy!" he screamed before darkness claimed him and he knew no more.
So, tell me how bad you wanna know what happens next….Review please. Haha.