The Fire in Her Eyes by Imrryr
Act 1 – Chapter 2
...
"Ignoscito sæpe alter, nunquam tibi."
"Forgive others often, yourself never."
- Publilius Syrus
...
Faith Lehane
The Southern California Institution for Women. May 2, 2000.
...
Faith stood alone on the edge of a high cliff, a gentle breeze blowing through her hair as she looked out over a dark, forested valley and the wide river meandering slowly through it. The sun was setting and dark clouds filled the sky, but there was no sign of rain.
She knew from long experience that this was only a dream, but she took the time to enjoy it nonetheless. So many of her dreams were unpleasant these days. It was a pleasure just to be free and escape that feeling of being hemmed in from all sides, even if was only for a little while.
And she had to admire just how real it all felt; from the cool air brushing against her skin, to the fresh smells of the trees and grasses, to the myriad sounds of birds, crickets, and even wolves. It all made her slayer dreams feel like passing shadows in comparison. Hell, sometimes she wondered if even Sunnydale had ever felt this real. Of course, she'd never bothered to really pay attention to that sort of thing when she'd had the chance. Funny how being locked in a cage twenty-four seven taught you to appreciate stuff like that.
Faith couldn't help but keep scanning the horizon though. For slayers, even the simplest dream could be loaded with subtle yet important meaning. Or at least that's what her dead watcher used to say. A dream might be a prophetic warning about an upcoming apocalypse, or it could be those unsettling sorts of experiences where Faith inhabited the body of a slayer long dead, facing off against vampires and demons and other things she would need a Giles-sized vocabulary to describe.
In Boston, she certainly had plenty of both, but for some reason after Faith had come to Sunnydale her dreams changed. Sure, there were still frequent glimpses of the lives of past slayers, or of her own childhood, or of Buffy stabbing the mayor as Faith picnicked on the grass with him, but there were also these new dreams where she was just... there... someplace she could swear she'd never been before, beholding a world that was alien yet still somehow familiar.
It was all just a little bit weird, but hey, at least no one was trying to kill her.
These days, she couldn't really ask for more than that.
Now sitting on the cold granite outcrop, she glanced to her right and sure enough Buffy was there too, perched not that far away, hands behind her back, feet dangling over the edge, admiring the view.
In these quiet, pleasant dreams, B was always there. It was the weirdest thing.
Of course, it wasn't actually Buffy, they weren't sharing some kind of profound slayer dream or something – that had only ever happened once – and as far as Faith knew, B was busy living it up as a college student at that very moment, attending parties, screwing the BF, and generally doing her utmost to forget that her sister-slayer had ever existed.
Last year, after another one of those unusual dreams - one that involved a city of stone columns and red tiled roofs, an erupting volcano, and a demon of pure flame – Faith had even asked Buffy about it, but no, B been pretty insistent that Faith seldom featured in her dreams, and when she was there, well, the setting was always Sunnydale and they were usually just slaying vamps or something.
It figured. Vampire ex-boyfriend and mystical sacred calling aside, Buffy had a tendency to be annoyingly conventional.
Either that or she was lying.
Faith sniffed the air again. Burning wood. There was always fire in these dreams, and in the distance she could now see smoke billowing up from the trees. Sometimes there were torches, other times entire cities were aflame, but always there was fire. She had no idea why.
Still, the forest remained. It seemed ancient, as old and eternal as the mountain she sat on, yet an inescapable sense of loss fell over her. 'Soon this place will be gone,' she thought. Somehow, she knew it was true.
Buffy still hadn't met her gaze, but she was smiling and kicking her legs as she stared out at the wilderness beyond. "I think I'll like it here."
"I'm glad," Faith mumbled. Another thing that proved this wasn't a typical slayer dream: it actually felt like she had some control over the words that came out of her mouth. None of that 'Little Miss Muffet' crap. It had been almost a year since that shared dream with Buffy, and the words she'd spoken then still made zero sense to her. When the fuck did she ever speak in nursery rhymes?
Unfortunately, Buffy's responses were another matter entirely. Her lips quirked into a faint smile, "It won't be the same, but that's okay. Everything here changes. Everything except us, it seems."
Faith frowned. "I don't get what you mean, B."
It was the first time the woman actually looked at her and her green eyes seemed to mirror the forest below. "You will, soon."
Faith found that oddly reassuring, until she realized that behind Buffy was an advancing wall of flame being carried along by a stiffening breeze. Trees caught fire, crackling like they were kindling and thick black smoke burned Faith's throat. She coughed and began to panic. This was way too real, even for one of her crazy-ass dreams. As she jumped to her feet, Buffy only looked casually over her shoulder. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," she said. "You can't stop it anyway."
In just a few seconds, they were surrounded by fire on every side except for the cliff face itself. Down below, it seemed like the entirety of the ancient forest was ablaze.
"The wind is blowing," B said happily, stretching her legs again. "It feels nice."
Trapped between the inferno and a sheer drop, Faith watched in disbelief as Buffy just sat there without a care in the world as the flames licked her hair until all she could see was fire.
...
Faith awoke to find herself lying on her cot in a cold sweat, her single bed sheet dumped on the concrete floor. It was dark. She groaned. 'Fucking dreams.'
Her head hit the pillow and she sighed. There weren't any clocks in her cell, but it must've only been an hour or so after lights out, not the least because she could still pick up hushed conversations from the rest of the cellblock with her enhanced hearing. Normally, she wouldn't dream of falling asleep at 7pm like some kind of old lady, but her sleeping schedule was all out of whack these days.
That was the slayer's doing. It wanted out. It wanted to hunt, and as a result Faith's nights tended to be lonely, restless affairs.
During the day she had been catching what little sleep she could, and it helped that she'd already developed a reputation of sorts, mostly at the expense of one chick who wouldn't take a goddamn hint and keep her hands to herself.
Not that Faith was worried about becoming someone's bitch per se - like that would ever happen - she just didn't like clingy chicks, especially since the ones here only wanted something from you. Granted, the nicer ones mostly just wanted companionship, someone to talk to, someone to care for who would actually care about them in return, but even that sort of thing was beyond Faith's limited capabilities. She didn't do relationships.
It also hadn't escaped her notice that many of the girls in relationships here were getting used and had no idea it was happening. Some were used for sex, some for access to shit from outside, others to hurt ex-girlfriends either emotionally or physically. Faith could recognize the latter easiest of all. The mayor had used her to murder people, and to hurt Buffy, all in exchange for power and money and what seemed at the time like love.
Faith had enough of being used; it was why she was in this shithole in the first place... well, part of the reason anyway. It wasn't like she'd been completely unaware of what joining up with the mayor would entail. Her conscience had bugged her constantly then and throughout all the months she'd served the guy. She had just chosen to ignore it.
And really though, punching Deb in the face and being generally unapproachable aside, she was mostly just known as the quiet one. Funny thing that; she had never been particularly quiet when she'd been free.
So, throughout the night and most of the day it was just her and her annoying thoughts. Prison life gave you far too much time to think and reflect, and adapting to that was proving harder than she ever imagined. Normally, when her thoughts turned dark Faith would just go out, preferably to a club, but often to a cemetery where she put everything out of her mind and burnt off all that excess energy she always seemed to have by making a dent in the local demon population.
That's what was so cool about becoming a slayer; she had a reason to be out at night, a purpose of sorts, something beyond a simple desire to quiet her nagging thoughts over whatever her current shitty situation was, or even worse, those memories of growing up that were best left forgotten.
Her first watcher had talked about that a lot; having a purpose.
Faith hadn't really paid attention to her lectures at the time. She was fifteen, and just glad to have a regular meal and a roof over her head during those few hours when she'd actually turn up at her watcher's doorstep, but she never stopped going out and partying, nor did she stop going home with random people.
It was impossible to avoid her watcher's judging eye when she stumbled through the door at ten o'clock in the morning, but though Faith had never said so, it was nice that there was someone out there who seemed to give a shit.
Naturally, it all had to end.
She had to rely on herself. It was the one lesson she'd learned growing up in Boston, and her watcher's death only reinforced it.
However, what she had found in Sunnydale had really thrown her for a loop. There she met Buffy and her rather odd collection of friends. Slayers weren't supposed to have a posse and it was hard to know what to make of Willow, and Xander and the rest of them. They were all right, at first, but also kind of, well, nerdy. One moment she wanted to get closer to them, to be accepted, and the next she wanted nothing to do with them.
With one exception, though; she always wanted to be around Buffy. It was clear from the beginning that there was something special about her. Buffy drew people in without even realizing she was doing it. Giles, Willow, Oz, Xander, even Cordelia, they all loved her in their own way, and it wasn't long before Faith discovered that she loved her too. In retrospect, sitting here in a cell with plenty of time to dwell on it, the attraction had been there from the start, but then Faith had never been particularly perceptive. At the time she had just thought Buffy was a total fox.
A completely and utterly straight fox, but hey, there was always hope. There were more than a few girls in Sunnydale who turned out to be not so straight after Faith was finished with them.
So, yeah, in Sunnydale she was protecting people, fighting the good fight and all that. Life was good - well, kind of good - and she was starting to get Buffy to let loose a little. At the end there were even nights where it seemed like Buffy might not have been quite as straight as she let on.
Then, of course, Faith had fucked it all up.
Not the killing of Finch - that had been an accident - but the way she had handled it, going immediately into self-protection mode and damn the consequences. Well, that had quickly turned into a nightmare.
The mayor had offered her a way out of it all. He cared about what happened to her, like really cared. Not that sort of caring that Giles and Buffy seemed to offer - the kind that involved lots of secrets and only ringing you up when they needed you for something. No, the mayor was different... or so she had thought.
In the end - big surprise - he was using her too. Wilkens needed someone to do his dirty work, and Faith did it all with a willingness that disgusted her now. However, even after Buffy had stabbed her in the gut to save her boyfriend, when the time finally came to choose between helping the mayor realize his life-long ambition or helping Buffy destroy him, she had chosen Buffy. She couldn't help it. In their shared dream, she told Buffy of the mayor's weakness and B duly went out and killed him at the moment of his ascension.
The mayor had his weakness, Faith had hers.
He was dead now, without ever knowing that Faith had betrayed him. It still hurt a little. Thankfully, her dreams were the only place where she could see the betrayal on her surrogate father's face.
The next time she saw him was on eight months later on a videotape.
'Go out with a bang,' he had said.
She looked up at the drab off-white ceiling that showed more concrete than paint. Some bang.
Even if she hadn't turned herself in and had instead run across the country while in possession of Buffy's body; what kind of life was that? Maybe the mayor had loved her as a daughter... but it was a twisted sort of love if that was the inheritance he left for her.
Faith blinked. Most every night was like this; a trip though her less pleasant memories, constantly reminding herself of every single thing she had done wrong in her short life, all combined with an inexorable feeling of restlessness and a desire to run away and never look back.
Deep inside, the slayer yearned for freedom. It wanted to hunt, to do what it was born to do, but now it was trapped in what was essentially a cage of Faith's making.
Sometimes she wished she could've somehow given the slayer free reign from the start; fighting vampires and demons on her own until she grew so tired she could think to do nothing more than limp into bed in the morning, only to start all over again the next night. She yearned to be out in the open. No walls, no friends, no attachments, no thoughts; just her and a stake, saving the world.
Getting involved with others only ever seemed to end in disaster for all concerned.
After nineteen years, Faith figured she would've learned the lesson that everyone was out to use you.
She sighed. Well, everyone except for Angel, it seemed.
Now sitting up in her cot, Faith shook her head and grumbled to herself as her bare feet slid across the cold floor.
Angel had visited her just the other day, and already she was falling back on old ways of thinking.
...
"It just... sucks. You know?" she was saying into the phone. "Everyone's out there, moving on with their lives, and it doesn't matter what I do in here. It won't change what they think of me. I'll always be the girl that fucked up. The psycho who killed some people and wound up in prison."
From the other side of the glass, Angel was staring back at her, doing a far better job of looking like he gave a shit than the prison shrink ever did, "What they think about you isn't what's important, Faith."
She huffed. Of course it was important.
Faith regretted a lot of things - what she did to Angel, and Wesley, and Xander, and several dozen other people besides - but every time she thought about Buffy it left her with this horrible ache in the pit of her stomach, like she had destroyed something incredibly precious and important but couldn't quite put a name on what it was.
"Obsessing over your mistakes, that's no way to go through life. Take it from me."
She smiled. "Yeah, but you're not technically alive."
Angel rolled his eyes, "You'd be surprised how often people remind me of that."
The silence that followed didn't last very long. Angel was seldom deterred whenever Faith tried to change the subject. "You can't let Buffy's opinion of you determine how you feel about yourself."
God. How the fuck did he learn to read her so well? If only she could get out of here and do something; something to show B that she had changed. Maybe then she could look at herself in the mirror and not feel completely disgusted.
Then Faith was reminded of that one time she'd actually convinced her mom to go through rehab. They were both so proud when she finally got out. She was like a new woman; a real mother. Life was great - for a few weeks anyway. That was when Faith found the not-so-well hidden liquor bottles in the kitchen. After the shouting match that followed, her mom fell into another one of her bouts of depression, and before long she had lost the only real job she'd held in five years and they were right back to square one. Except soon things got even worse…
Would that be Faith's destiny too? Would she walk out of this place only to pick up right where she left off? Would she let the world swallow her up again?
"Faith?"
She looked back up at him. "Hmm?"
"Where were you just now?"
She sighed, "No place good."
"Faith."
"I don't wanna talk about it."
There must've been something in her tone, because Angel actually did let it drop that time.
Still, he stayed there, silently, as the minutes ticked by. "You should consider talking about it, whatever it is you're keeping inside." At Faith's dubious expression he added, "You don't have to talk to me, but you should trying talking to someone. It might help."
She shook her head. "No one gives a shit. Not even the shrink they make us talk to every week."
Angel stared at her in silence, almost pouting until Faith finally gave in, "Fine, fine. Almost no one gives a shit. Happy?"
The corner of his lip inched up. "Have you given any thought to what we talked about before?"
"The letters? Ugh, no thanks." Three weeks ago, Angel had suggested Faith try writing a letter to someone back in Sunnydale. He had meant either Joyce or Giles, but the only person she could think of actually writing to would be Buffy herself. And what the fuck could she possibly even say? 'Dear Buffy, Hey, what's up? Look, I'm really sorry about the whole body-swap thing, and sleeping with your boyfriend, and almost killing your previous boyfriend, and-'
"Faith."
"Sorry."
"I didn't mean you should actually send them, you know? Just get your feelings out."
Or how about, 'Hey B, remember how I staked that guy and you tried to help me but I figured it'd be easier if I just blamed it all on you? Wasn't that a riot?'
"You're thinking about Buffy again, aren't you?"
Faith ran a hand through her hair. "How is it you always seem to know what's going on in my head?"
"I've been around for two-hundred years. Had a lot of practice when it comes to reading body language, and Buffy has a way of getting to people, as I was reminded last night."
"You went to see her?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Yeah. It didn't go so well. Apparently, she has a new boyfriend."
"Oh, right," Faith muttered, feigning a degree of ignorance. She hadn't told Angel about everything she'd done in Buffy's body, or in this case, everyone. "Captain Beefstick."
Angel chuckled. "The name suits him."
Faith laughed too. "So, what? You get into a fight with him or something?" Her smiled dropped when Angel only chuckled nervously in response. "You didn't?"
"Yep. Not exactly my finest hour. Buffy had to separate us."
She shook her head. Exactly how many centuries needed to pass before men grew out of the 'fighting the ex's boyfriend' stage? "So what? You trying to rekindle the old romance?"
Angel's eyes widened a fraction. "No. No. I came to the conclusion long ago that it wouldn't work between us. It's why I left Sunnydale in the first place."
Faith wasn't exactly sure why Angel was confiding in her. Maybe he was in as much need of a shoulder to lean on as she was. "So, why'd you go see her?"
"To apologize, and offer my help against the Initiative."
"The Initiative?" The name sounded vaguely familiar...
"Yeah, I've run into them before." Angel was looking over Faith's shoulder at the clock on the wall behind her. "But never mind that. The important thing was she forgave me, Faith, for what I said in L.A. She forgave me for sticking up for you. She forgave me for everything."
Then the phone went dead. Time was up.
...
That was the lesson the big guy had been struggling to teach her for months now. People weren't all the same; they could change, they could surprise you, and not just in the negative way Faith was used to. And eventually, who knows, they might even forgive you.
She put her head in her hands. This sucked. Having no freedom to get away from her thoughts sucked. Knowing that Buffy hated her guts, and that it would be at least twenty-five years before Faith could even begin to make it right... that really sucked.
Faith let out another deep breath. Here she was, wasting what everyone said would be the best years of her life in prison.
Every day for Buffy was another day fighting the good fight, making a difference, and being surrounded by loved ones. Every day for Faith was another day to be forgotten, another reminder that she'd fucked it all up, a day that passed without anyone outside these walls giving a shit whether she lived or died.
Okay, anyone except for Angel.
Fuck, she could use a smoke. Sometimes she just wanted to tear her hair out. This place was driving her mad.
But on the other hand, the prospect of actually going back out there, back to the real world, was beginning to frighten her. With the benefit of hindsight and months of self reflection, Faith could see just what she had become in the weeks and months after Finch's death. She didn't like that person. She didn't ever want to go down that road again.
But could she trust herself not to? In the end, was she really any different from the girl who had tried her hardest to ruin Buffy's life?
No, she wasn't.
She stared at her hands. In the end, she would always be Faith. No amount of penance could change who she was.
This was where she truly belonged; safely locked up. If nothing she did could ever make it up to Buffy - the real Buffy, not the one in her head - then the least she could do was suffer for what she had done. After all, that's what prison was for, right?
She glanced at the tiny hand-mirror lying propped up on her small plastic table then immediately slapped it down. Hair in disarray, skin losing its color, muscles turning soft from little use. Even in the dark, she looked like shit.
Faith fell back onto the bed. It was going to be another one of those nights. Gradually, the whispers of her fellow inmates died down completely until the only thing she could hear was the beating of her own heart. Strangely, it was actually dark in her cell now, like really dark, not nightlight dark. Perhaps the lights in the cellblock were out?
Hmm. Maybe she'd actually be able to get a decent night's sleep for a change.
She steadied her breathing and did her best to clear her mind. Before long, her eyes drifted shut only to shoot open again. A light was shining from the center of her cell, just hovering in midair like some kind of weird magical floating orb thing.
"The fuck is -"
For a few moments, Faith just laid there, mesmerized by the light as it remained fixed in front of her, shining like a star; a star that was growing inexorably larger and brighter. Finally, her instincts kicked in and she rolled off the cot and onto the floor. Scrambling under the thing, she dove for the door on the far side of the cell, determined to pull the whole thing off its hinges if need be. That was probably a bit much to ask in her current state, but in the end it didn't matter because there was no door to be found. She spun on her heels. Despite all the light, the concrete walls of her cell were now nothing more than an inky black void that she couldn't so much as punch a fist through.
She knew that because it was the next thing she tried.
"Son of a -," Faith shook her stinging hand as she backed up against the black, solid wall where the door used to be.
Not only was the light shining brighter than a hundred watt bulb, it was still expanding, pulsating in size and brightness, her cot and tiny desk lost behind it. The ionized air began to swirl around her until it felt like she was trapped inside a miniature tornado, scattering what little she owned all over the cell. Then something grew from the very center of - of whatever the hell this thing was. She blinked. Deep inside the orb, she saw the interior of another room, one complete with a table and sofa, only upside down and dimly lit.
As it grew, it began to look more and more like the kind of setup a stuffy old British dude might have; fancy carpet, heavy oak furniture, wall to wall bookshelves. Squinting from the brightness, Faith could just make out the silhouettes of people gathered round, as if waiting for something... or someone. Had the council caught up to her? Had they finally come to the conclusion that a state prison wouldn't contain Faith should she decide to go rogue again?
"Sons of bitches," she muttered. The last thing she wanted was to be in the 'care' of a bunch of strangers who looked on her as little more than a weapon, and a defective one at that. What would they do with her? Experiment on her? Erase her memory? Kill her? Fuck. Angel wasn't going to come to the rescue this time.
Her body flush against the wall, the small notebook she kept hit her in the face before rejoining the swirling mass of paper, clothing, and bits of trash. Now the glowing ball of light took up practically the entire room. She could feel the thing pulling her in, and her hands felt instinctively for something, anything, to hold on to.
There was nothing.
The next thing she knew there was a crack like thunder and she was falling into oblivion.