Disclaimer: Btvs is absolutely not mine-believe me if I was that good at writing …well I'm not so it's not mine!
Consequences-Faith POV and a different ending.
'"I didn't, I didn't know. I didn't know." Ok so I was babbling, I knew it but I didn't give,
who would with the body of the man you just murdered right in front of you. B was all
practical 'Call 911, stop the blood, hold still' hell it was too late for that, even I knew all we
could do was run. Now don't call me chicken, I know it's not the first time I've run away
but this...it wasn't just running…it was survival. "Can't save the world behind bars" I'd
told B and yeah I guess that was somewhere in my mind but first instinct, I didn't want to
rot in the slammer, more than that, I didn't want the needle. So, I took my own advice and
got us the hell out of there although there was something that wanted to pull me back. I lost B pretty quickly, wandered round in circles for a bit but that feeling inside me wouldn't go away,
the one that wanted to go back and look at what happened. I did after a while. I looked at
the body, at the red stain on the man's shirt, right over the heart. It was the first time I cursed
my aim, a stake to the heart-great for dusting vamps, kills humans too though. I hadn't
planned on finding that out. The blood had stopped flowing, of course it had, he was dead.
It was still wet though and, damn, so intriguing, so I touched it. That shook me, more I think
than watching him die. The red on my fingers, the blood on my hands, it was powerful. I'm powerful too, powerful enough to take the future that blood spoke of, to end it. Shit I needed
to hurl, that power was too much even for me, part of me anyway. One half of me-the Faith
half-revelled in it, the feeling of control, being above everything humans could dream up really stoked me. The other half of me, maybe more than half- the part of me that was a bit more like Buffy, or wanted to be- was freaking, couldn't deal. So that's how I was, now you know, or
maybe you'd guessed. I'm not a shrink, I don't know what you might have got from how I
acted, I know why I acted like that though.
I went home, well 'home' feeling worse than I'd ever done in my life and I'd felt pretty
bad. The blood on my hands was brown and crispy. It felt like a fungus, a parasite creeping
over me. Strange B later said it was something that crept inside you, nah over me. That's
why I was scrubbing so hard, it was only a covering. Like make-up-enough washing and it'll
come off right? So B tried telling me all this shit and yeah some of it was probably true but
when she told me flat out,
"you don't get it. You killed a man." That was it, I didn't need to hear anymore. So I
told it to her straight.
"No. You don't get it. I don't care" and I didn't. Well the Faith part of me didn't,
the other part of me was pretty much still freaking, mixed in with writhing and squirming in my stomach, maybe that's why I needed to barf. So what came out of that mixture was a
defensive mechanism I guess. You don't last long in this world if you don't build one and
mine's been reinforced many a time.
So I had a lot more shit to face, turns out the guy was deputy mayor of all things so Wes sent us to check it out, kind of ironic really. Buffy was hung up on that, she was finding it tough but I was keeping her in it, there was no way out for either of us now it was neither or both. She still wanted to rat though, I could see it in her but hell it was ok for her, she wouldn't even get accessory to murder. Not fair really, it could have been her, so easy, it was all so quick, he came out of nowhere, anyway whatever, it happened, shit does. Thing is though, I gotta stay. The world need's a slayer whose soul's in it. I've seen B and yeah she digs it but she needs a prompt and the world wont always give it her. The world needs, well it needs me out there, and I gotta keep me locked up. They need to lock up the murderer, it's the other bit of me I need to shut away. I was doing pretty well at it too, the guy's office, only one slip. Two if you count the picture but she didn't know about that, she didn't know about the nights either though, about the dream of drowning. I'd get to the air and there I was, pushing myself down again. Well it's not too hard to figure that one out is it? Buffy did surprise me though, that thing about being the real face, she was right y'know. That act wasn't me but it was part of me, the part that couldn't afford to care, couldn't let it sink in, couldn't admit-not to the rest of me, not to anyone else-what had happened. "I missed the mark" that was as close as I could get. "I'm sorry" well it's just words isn't it. Doesn't mean anything, it's
only what you actually do that counts and I told her. I told her about the lives we'd saved and she
wouldn't have it, that part of me, the one that wants to be like her, it wouldn't have it either. Bullshit it was screaming at me and when Buffy said it, when she said she'd cry over the bystander caught in the crossfire that little voice inside me was there saying "Me too" the whole way.
I had to shut it up 'cos y'know what there were the cops. First bit of sound detective
work I see them do and they're trying to arrest the world's best. They think they're on top of things
when they can't even comprehend what I see. So I lied of course and Buffy did too. She wasn't
ready to split yet but if she did it'd be to Giles. So I went to him after the cop left. I wasn't about
to take any chances was I? He believed me, I'm pretty sure but he has a lot of faith in Buffy. Not
that there's much of me in her, I dragged what little there was out of her and killed it by doing so.
No I knew I'd have to work to make him believe me, he didn't let on if he did but hey it was
perfectly viable, we were both down that alley. I told the truth. Just one tiny detail altered. Just
one name, that's all. And I did it just in time, for me I guess 'cos Buffy came to see Giles just when
I finished, and y'know what she was gonna split so I told her what I'd done and the look on her
face… nah it should have been funny but it wasn't. I couldn't look at it properly, shifty eyes, I had
'em. Something about it, it was like looking into a mirror only I knew no one would see my
emotions on my face like that. "Sorry" I said to Giles. Sorry. How lame is that and yet I was, I
truly was but it's only words isn't it. Words don't matter, nor does the method, not really. It's the
consequences that matter. A man is dead, it doesn't matter who killed him. It shouldn't, that's
what the Faith half of me was thinking but I knew, inside-not in the Buffy half or the Faith half but
somewhere in my gut-that it did matter and the murderer had to be punished.
So I hung around, listened in on their convo., that's always me isn't
it. Not quite in there, just separated by something. After all that though, after
having the bottle to rat B out, the only person in this whole friggin world I even
came close to trusting, he was just playing me. He knew all along and couldn't
even tell me. He told Buffy though, they had a nice long chat about it. "She's
unstable, Buffy. I mean, she's utterly unable to accept responsibility" that's what
he said and I guess he was right. "She's in denial. There is no help for her until
she admits what happened." Admit what happened, I had. I told him the truth,
just with one name changed. He supplied the true name.
"Giles, I didn't do this. I swear. Look, I know that I messed up badly,
but the murder, i-it... it was..."
"Faith. I know."
I know too. I always knew, in that bit inside me, the one not either Buffy nor Faith,
well they knew too, they just tried to deal with it. And couldn't.
So that's where I am now. I know what I did and like I said it's the
consequences that matter. I've got the knife here, shoulda used a stake really but I've
always had a thing about knives, so shiny and entrancing. I'm procrastinating, trying
to put it off, saying good bye. Maybe I'm not gonna. You know what I will.
Good bye. Hope this explains it, maybe someday someone will explain to me, why.
Why it was me, why on earth I was the slayer. I turned killer, it's a line you can't cross,
believe me I know. So Good bye and good luck, show this to the new slayer, teach her,
teach her not to turn out like me.'
Xander looked up from the piece of tear stained paper, his were there, and Faith's.
On looking up though things got worse. There she was, her dark hair matted with blood
that flowed from the slash on her neck. Xander walked towards her body and touched
the blood. He looked at the red on his fingers, the blood on his hands and wept for the
slayer who might have been, the slayer for whom the consequences were simply too great.
So whaddaya think? Should I do a second part? It'd be an overlap of another perspective of
some of the events of Bad girls and consequences plus a continuation of this version. Please tell me
and also whether you think I did justice to Faith 'cos she's such a cool character and I wanted to
make it clear that she is so totally good underneath.
