Understanding Faith
by Nicole Clevenger (c)August 2003
Notes: Written for the Multifandom1000 challenge at LiveJournal.
***
He used to think that he understood, that he knew who she was. A spoiled child. A wayward and dangerous brat, refusing to play by the rules simply because she could. A shirker of destiny and responsibility, a bad egg determined to act out rather than fulfill her role. A girl who thought she knew all the answers, who thought that the world owed her everything just because she had the power to take it all.
He used to think he understood, but now he sees how wrong he was.
Because he's tasted the darkness in himself now. He's learned what it means to be alone. Time and experience have taught Wesley that desperation can make a person do many things, things that most people would cringe from in the glaring light of day. Taught him that sometimes there is no right way. Sometimes the world is going to crumble around you no matter how hard you fight it, and the only thing you can do is try to fall in a way that'll enable you to get back up again when all the debris has settled.
He's learned that to do this - to be able to fall without breaking bones - is to pad yourself until you are virtually cocooned. Layer upon layer, each one separating you just that much more from the world outside your self-containment. Lie upon lie, told to yourself in the aloneness of night, until you eventually believe that you're better off in exile. Wall behind wall, until you finally stop looking for a window to the outside.
He sees now that her posturing struggles and defiant acts were her attempts at padding. That - however unconscious the action - she was trying to protect herself against the fall that she saw to be inevitable. Forcing isolation before it was forced upon her, she struck out with fists and feet and words until she had cut herself off from all of them. And then, when things began to snowball, she had no choice but to follow the only light that she could see.
With no windows, the dim trickle coming in through the cracks was a narrow path indeed.
He understands, now, what it feels like to squint into the darkness and stumble along after an illusive illumination trail. One foot in front of the other on the shifting path of What Must Be Done, and if you stop to consider you just might lose the way. The only hope is to keep going forward, to not look back into the shadows. And maybe, if you're lucky, the drop at the end won't be too far to fall.
He wonders if it would've made any kind of difference to any of them had he understood Faith better, back then.
end.
