Author's Note: Now we examine the dream Faith and Daria had before Dr. Vaughn showed up at the end of part 8.
Disclaimer: 'tain't mine. Except for the original characters and the plot.
X X X X X
Earlier, in their dream: The first thing they did was, Faith caught Daria up on their new lawyer. "I didn't want to make any final commitments till I could hash it out with you," she said.
"I appreciate that," Daria said. "And as far as I'm concerned she can represent us." After a minute or so, when Faith didn't answer, Daria went on, "Faith. I realize you want to make up for your crimes. But I didn't commit these crimes. And I have nothing to make up for. We need to find some sort of compromise that lets you work on your redemption while still not punishing me."
Faith said, "Yeah, I get that. That's something else we need to talk about. But not right now, okay?"
"Given our location, we have nothing but time," Daria said.
"You mean the dream or the jail?"
Daria shrugged. "It fits both."
Faith then said, "Look, I know this might be uncomfortable, but – have you had enough time to deal with what happened to our family?" Instinctually, Faith still didn't think of Jake, Helen and Quinn as "her family." But they were. And she figured if she talked about them like they were, maybe it'd help her think about them that way, too.
"Of course not. Dr. Vaughn gave me five minutes alone to cry. I've barely been able to accept it, let alone deal with it." A beat, then "Never mind dealing with it in a quote-unquote healthy manner. Of course, that was never my strength anyway."
"Do you need the time?"
"I've cried as much as I'm going to at the moment. Everything else is going to have to happen internally – and I don't have a whole hell of a lot of time to do that." Then, looking around the apartment, she asked, "Why do we always end up here?"
"Remember when I told you I'd worked for the Mayor of Sunnydale?" Faith asked. Daria nodded. "Well, before that I was stayin' in this shithole motel 'cause it's all I could afford. Mayor got me these swanky digs. Some reason, whenever I have an important dream, I go here."
"You've had important dreams before?" Daria wasn't even sure she understood the concept. What could an important dream be? One that foretold the future – but that was the realm of pure fantasy.
Faith tried to figure out how to explain it without getting into the fact that she was a vampire Slayer.
Then she gave up. Daria was going to have to know about this someday. "Daria," she said a bit tentatively. "I got something to tell you that I ain't sure you're gonna like."
"I already know you're a robber, thug, and murderer," Daria said, trying to say the words neutrally. "I already know you bring new meanings to the word 'promiscuous." Daria had thought she'd been beyond stunned when Faith had described her crimes. ("And I ain't told you about nearly all of them," she'd said. "I've been a bad person.") When Faith had described her sexual proclivities, she'd reached a whole new level of astonishment. Daria had never been anti-sex, but she'd always felt that sex was the kind of thing you only did with someone with whom you were truly intimate. And seeing that she'd never met anyone who she'd want to let in, it was never something she'd really thought about.
Finding out that Faith not only didn't remember how many men she'd had sex with, but that she didn't even remember the first time she'd had it, was amazing – and showed her how different the two of them really were. She was almost hoping they didn't integrate their personalities, because she had no idea how she would handle directly knowing about all of these things.
"I don't think this is worse," Faith said, knowing Daria was doing her damnedest not to sound judgmental. Girl was failing miserably, but Faith gave her credit for trying. "This is just different. And it sounds insane."
"Ah. As opposed to all the sanity that surrounds us now."
"No. I mean seriously whacked. But it's the truth, I swear." She took a deep breath and said, "You know what vampires are?"
"Bloodsucking fiends who feed on human misery," Daria said. "No, wait. That's politicians."
Faith chuckled and said, "They're real."
"So Election Day isn't just another excuse for a day off from school?"
"I meant vampires," Faith said.
"I know." Faith had been right about one thing; this definitely sounded insane.
"Just listen," Faith said. "Any questions, hold 'em till I'm done." Daria definitely didn't seem like she believed Faith, but she wasn't telling Faith to knock off the crazy talk, either.
"Time for another epic miniseries?" Daria asked. She figured she might as well let Faith tell her story. It wasn't like she had anything else to do.
"Just fillin' in the gaps in the first one," Faith said. "Boy, Giles and Wes would laugh if they could see me now. Me, givin' the story of vampires on Earth." On the other hand, maybe they'd be happy she'd picked up so much along the way. "First thing you need to know is what vampires are," Faith began.
Dreamtime was, in a sense, timeless. Faith had no idea how long she talked, only that it was for quite a while. She explained what Watchers were, what Slayers were, what vampires were – she touched on the other magical creatures along the way, but the vamps were the most important.
She also went over her "life story" again, this time explaining that her 'temporary guardian had been her Watcher – this brought out Daria's one interruption, when she said, "Told you temporary didn't start with a W—" that Kakistos had been a vamp and not a gang leader, and so on.
This also let her get into how badly she'd screwed B and her friends – and why she'd been so convinced she was evil when she tried to get Angel to kill her.
When Faith was done, Daria looked at her in bewilderment. "Are you sure you're not delusional?"
"Do I sound delusional?"
"No. Sane people talk about vampires and demons all the time as though they were real." The thing was, though, Faith wasn't showing any of the signs of that level of insanity. Daria knew damn well that people could seem perfectly normal and be otherwise, but this? She'd heard of people creating castles in the air; if this was all in Faith's head, she hadn't just stopped at creating castles, she'd created an entire damn kingdom.
And if it was in Faith's head, it was in her head.
"I'm guessing," Daria went on, "That you've never mentioned any of this to Dr. Vaughn."
"I ain't in the mental ward, Daria," Faith said. "I may be headin' there soon, but I ain't there yet."
"Good point. Faith, look, it's not that I don't believe you –"
"'course it is," Faith said. "I wouldn't've believed it either. Hell, even after I'd killed my first vamp I didn't completely believe it. But it's the truth. I got mental problems – I had 'em even before I found that that I was rentin' space in your body without an option to buy – but bein' delusional ain't one of 'em."
Daria asked, "Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?" Daria was doing her best to go my the presumption that Faith was not, in fact, stupid. Faith said she hadn't. "Occam's razor says that the simplest explanation that fits all the available evidence is the most likely one to be true. Robert Heinlein put it another way: "Hear hoofbeats, expect horses, not zebras. And right now I'm hearing a rodeo."
Faith got the gist. "So you're saying it's more likely I'm out of my skull than it is that vampires exist."
"Hey. It's my skull too." After a second, "But yes."
"Are you at least willing to let me try and prove it to you otherwise?"
"Sure," Daria said. "But I don't see how. Unless Dr. Vaughn's a demon of some kind."
"She isn't," Faith said. "A couple of the girls in here are part demon but it ain't their demon half that put 'em in here." Along the way, Faith had pointed out that not all demons were inherently evil. A lot of 'em, sure. But they weren't like vampires where there was exactly one you could trust.
"Then and now are the only times I get out," Daria said. "I feel like someone's elderly relative who only gets wheeled out for special occasions, and when they're over, gets shut back in the attic." After a second, "And it's not like now really counts anyway. This is the dreamworld. You could probably show me aliens." After a second, "Are there aliens?"
"None I've seen so far," Faith said. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if some demon or two hadn't decided to run that as a scam to suck in the flyin' saucer freaks." Faith got Daria's point, though. It'd be hard to prove to Daria that vampires existed if all she ever got to see was the inside of a prison meeting room. "I dunno how I'm going prove otherwise to you, though. The demons in here're scared to death of me 'cause they think I'm here to kill 'em. Maybe I could get Angel to come and visit."
Faith had explained to Daria who Angel was. "Unless you can get them to let me out for more than an hour every two days, that's going to be impossible."
"Or unless we figure out how to switch back and forth between you and me," Faith said. "But that might mean you'd have to handle prison."
"You've already said everyone around here is afraid of you anyway," Daria said. "All I need to do is gaze at them menacingly." She smiled faintly. "Assuming your 'rep' is all it's cracked up to be, that is."
"Trust me on that. Even the girls who're out to prove something don't mess with me. I've been in two fights since I got here. First time was some girl heard how tough I was and wanted to prove she could take down the 'new meat.' Second time was four, five of the women who ran with the same crowd as the first one and wanted to make sure I knew my place. Once I took care of them – out in the yard, by the way, still took the guards five minutes to get there – no one's messed with me since. And I don't mess with any of them, either – I kinda keep to myself. I work out, and I study, and I work, and that's it."
"What kind of work do they have you doing?"
"Teacher's aide." Daria gave Faith an odd look and Faith said, "Yeah, I know. Like getting Gary Coleman an NBA gig. But they need someone to make their photocopies and take away the pencils once classes are over." Faith assumed that Daria didn't need to have that explained to her.
Daria said, "I think I can handle that. Except the working out part." Daria had always hated gym class. She walked almost everywhere she could back in Highland, which is how she kept to a healthy weight, but beyond that, the idea of voluntarily exercising wasn't one she found particularly appealing.
Faith had an idea. "No," she said. "You gotta work out, Daria. Remember I said vampire slayers are stronger than everyone else? If you get the chance, go over and pick up some of those weights. The kind you'd never think you could."
"I may not be an expert at weightlifting but I know if you do it wrong you can hurt yourself. And despite my generally depressed nature, I am not in fact a fan of pain. At least, not my own."
Faith smirked at Daria's last comment. "Just pick up a few dumbbells, then. They got some pretty heavy ones out there." She did a couple of phantom one-arm dumbbell moves to make sure Daria got the moves.
"I will," Daria said. "Of course, that assumes we're ever able to let me assume control over my own body. Any ideas?"
Grinning, Faith said, "I got one."
And she reached forward and pinched Daria.
And Daria woke up.
X X X X X
Daria got through Faith's day without anyone being able to tell the difference. A couple of people gave her odd looks, but she mostly kept quiet.
She didn't exactly get any "alone time" as it was usually described, but the teacher's aide position was mostly mindless busywork, so she had plenty of time to think about her parents and her sister, and how they'd died – and how she hadn't been there.
She believed these feelings were sometimes referred to as "Survivor's Guilt." Understanding what it was called didn't make it any easier to get through.
When she got to the exercise area of the yard after lunch, Daria wandered over to the weight area. A guard supervised to make sure no one decided that the dumbbells would make good weapons. They were the only free weights around. Everything else looked like exercise equipment from ten – no, fourteen, by this point – years ago.
The dumbbells looked heavier than they were – or maybe that was superhuman strength.
Dammit, there was only going to be one way to know for sure. She put down the dumbbells and lay down on an open exercise machine. She set the weight at 150 pounds – which was the most she'd ever picked up.
She lifted it like it wasn't there. Whoa.
A couple of more repetitions and she set the machine at 300 pounds.
She felt a slight resistance – but only slight.
She went back and set it at maximum – 500 pounds.
Still easy. She felt like she could have lifted a whole lot more. Actually, she felt as though she could have picked up the entire machine.
When she got up – after doing enough lifts to make it look like she was really working out – one of the guards said, "No wonder no one messes with you, Lehane."
Daria simply raised an eyebrow as she walked away. She was barely sweating.
Okay, the superhuman strength was true . . . what about the vampires?
She was still thinking about this when it came time for her appointment with Dr. Vaughn.
As soon as the psychiatrist entered the room, Daria decided to stop pretending to be Faith.
"So how have things been going?" she asked Daria.
"I assume you've heard about the lawyer who came here yesterday?"
The doctor wasn't really paying attention yet. "Yes. Have you decided what you're going to do about it?" she said as she sat down.
"I'm taking her up on her offer," Daria said in her normal tone of voice. "She's going to talk with ADA Fisk and we're going to see where it goes from there."
Now Dr. Vaughn realized that something odd had happened. "Is everything alright, Faith?"
Daria decided to let the woman off the hook. "You're not talking to Faith."