Chapter 16: "For I am a part of all that I have met"

"Yay team! Do we rock, or what?" Faith laughed, then made a toasting motion with her beer bottle to Abby. "Congratulations, kid. You survived your first Apocalypse. And you obeyed Rule #1 even: Don't die." She grinned, and Abby grinned back.

"Of course. I'm told it absolutely ruins your day."

"Damn straight. And coming back from it's no picnic either, I'm told." Faith cocked her head at Wesley. "Y'know? We really should have figured it out a bit earlier. Vision-Cordy was right: had everything I needed. You should have caught on. And me."

Wesley gave her a quizzical look.

"'Looks like you found us some work of noble note, damned straight.'" she quoted. Wesley still looked blank. She shook her head. "Try it without Walter's warped sense of humour addition, or my weird slay-dream interpretation. Ditto for the later quote. Add in the library."

Blade caught it, suddenly. She grinned at him. Not often she was ahead of Wes.

"Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note may yet be done," he quoted. She nodded.

Wesley's eyes flashed suddenly with comprehension. "Tho' much is taken, much abides, and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth..."

She nodded. "That which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in Will." She closed her eyes as the last line came to her, "To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and not to Yield."

Hannibal looked puzzled. She winked at him, "Ulysses. Lord Tennyson. It was the Key."

"Naw. I was puzzling at you knowing it." He stuck his tongue out at her. "I don't quite get how it was the key though?"

She shrugged. "It was a literary reference And the books. And all of the 'You knows' and 'You have all what you needs'. All of the people closing the gates were fictional characters: ones I knew. Books, movies... If Wes had caught the quote and emphasized it - and he should have had to have memorized it with his background - I probably would have put it together with the character and clicked it. Those were some of my favorite books."

Wesley shook his head. "Didn't occur to me to mention. I wasn't sure the poem would mean anything to you."

She frowned, "Hey - "

King cut in: "We know: You read a book, once. Honest." She threw her bottle cap at him. "ow!"

"Lots of them, actually. LOTS of fiction... fantasy, sci-fi, action, mysteries... not much horror." She grinned. "Nothing to do in prison except assassinate the clock. I read a LOT there, maybe for the first time. It kept me half-way sane. Ran across that poem, and the last of it... resonated with me. It said something about what I was trying to do... 'Hunting Redemption'." She glanced sideways at Blade and he returned one of those ghost smiles. "I hung on to it a lot, whenever I started to forget why I was there, and what I wanted out of it. 'Tho much is taken, much abides'. Took me a bit to figure it out... " She grimaced. "Wasn't easy. Half the words Tennyson used, I couldn't figure out what the fuck they meant - didn't have the context. Had to puzzle it out. But it gave me something to do... something to hang onto, against that killing blackness that's all prison leaves you."

She closed her eyes again, remembering, "everything was taken... but something was left. 'Some work of noble note' maybe, when I'd paid for the past. So I wasn't what I should have been, but that which I was, I fucking was... made weak by self-hate and years of abuse, yata yata."

Her voice was soft as she opened her eyes again. "NOT to yield." She nodded, "That character'd quoted it all through that book. It stuck. If it'd clicked, I'd have figured out who he was, and then the rest. And recognized that sword... "

Wesley frowned, "I'm not quite certain though how that would have brought the rest together. How that did bring the rest together, when it did click."

"Because you don't have the referents, maybe? The idea of fictional things being able to cross in and affect Reality would be foreign to your Watcher's mind. NOT to a Slayer though... especially one who'd spent almost two years reading fiction and living in it." She grinned. "After some of the stuff I'd seen? Not too out there, dude."

"'The Place Where Only That Which You've Loved Can Save You', Wes. And that which you've loved is always people. Real... fictional characters if they touched you deep enough. Put it all together: ALL of the people in those were people that'd touched me - Cordy, you, Xan, Vi, Angel.. Wilkins... even B and the gang. And the fictional ones I hung onto to keep from drowning. Sword of Morgaine... " She paused, glancing at where the gate sword lay gleaming on one of the weapon counters. Safe enough, now. Anything that wanted to walk in here to take it was damned well welcome to try... and it'd better be pretty damned dangerous to try it and live. Not gonna happen.

"Elementary, Watcher." She swigged from her bottle.

Wesley was looking at her very oddly, "Yes, quite. If you say so." He nodded. "I certainly won't underestimate your rather... unique.. perceptions again."

Hannibal snickered. "Sure you will." Wes glared at him, then laughed.

"Still, pretty smart to put it all together just from that," Wesley raised his bottle in a toasting motion.

"Naw. You're the smart one. I'm just clever, and had info you didn't," she shook her head. She never saw the look Wesley gave her, or the exchange of frustrated glances between him and King. Wouldn't have understood if she had. "Thug, not brain."

"Learned that from Walter too: you have to know your limits," she paused, "before you can exceed them. Being human's a lot more than it looks. That's why they always underestimate us. Rare exceptions, demons and gods can't be more than they are, can't 'exceed their grasp'. It's not in them."

"'Walter?" King inquired

"Walter Slovotsky," She nodded. "Sleeping Dragon series by Rosenberg. Road to Evenor, Road Home, specifically." She drained her beer. "He was the one that had the Ulysses poem and the dreams my slayer dreams were patterned on, running in his head all through those two books. That the poem came from. He's where I drew the "Place Where Only That Which You've Loved Can Save You from... and the meanings: 'that it's not just the people in your lives that matter, that you'd best be careful what you touch, what you use, what you make, because you leave a bit of yourself in everything you touch'. That when you come to that place, you'd best have gone out, lived deeply, touched a fucking LOT - because in the end it's the only thing you have. And it comes back to you... "

She gazed out into the distance... "Spike was wrong. It's not always about the Blood. It's about the People. It's about the Dreams. That's what makes humans the deadliest and most effective predators in the universe, makes humans 'magic' - the stuff up here. Makes a demon infested vampire go out on his own and find himself a soul, without needing a gypsy curse to force him." She tapped her temple. "We dream shit up, and we make it happen. Rockets, guns, special ammo," she nodded at King, "radio, spells... when we hit something that challenges us, we figure out a way over, under, or through it. We dream up a way and we build the fucker... "

"Like that wizard was building a way to get back to where he wanted to go," Wesley mused. "Dreams." He looked away.

"Dreams," she nodded. "And only Dreams could stop him." She paused, struggling for the words to fit what she was seeing, feeling... "That Which You've Loved comes back to you. That which you've touched, touches you. That which you dream can turn on you. It always did on me." She winced. "Bastards. That's why 'They' dumped this one on me: I'm fucking used to my dreams turning and biting me, what I touch turning on me."

"Yanno?" She turned her head and glared at Wes. "I'm getting real fucking tired of those goddam Powers fucking with people's hearts to do their fucking work for them." She stood. "Hell with it. I'm going to crash. Laterz."

She fled and left them sitting, staring after her.

It took a long time for sleep to claim her. She tossed and turned, muttered her way into exhaustion. Finally, darkness had mercy and swept her into its cool embrace.

She wasn't surprised to find herself elsewhere...

Figured that if Hell was the Pit, antechamber to the Powers would be Wally World. Least it wasn't S-Mart. She followed the sound of voices and noise until she found herself in electronics...

Harmony bounced up from where she'd been watching a bank of big screen TVs with a squeal, "Faith!"

"Yah." She regarded the blonde former cheerleader-socialite, "Harm. THX. Ears. Hey?"

Harmony laughed, bubbling. "Sorry." She looked over the Dark Slayer with something like concern in her eyes. Harmony? Concern? Faith wondered for her sanity, not for the first time. "You made it. Cool."

"Bats out of hell always come home to roost, Harm," Faith gestured at the various television sets, puzzling at the images. She frowned when she noticed that all of them featured her. "Whatcha got here?"

"Lives, silly. All of them yours." The blonde vampire settled herself back into her recliner, handed Faith a bag of microwave popcorn. She gestured at the main bank in front, "Those are all the lives you could have had if you'd made different choices after you hit Sunnyhell. If the rest of us had made different ones, taken different actions." Faith studied the flickering scenes until Harmony motioned to the sets on the left. "Those are all the lives if you'd never come there. If you'd picked a different path after your Watcher died." She grinned and turned her chair to the right, "And these are the ones you never had, never could have. Lives you dreamed about. That one's my favorite:"

Faith looked. It was her, damned straight: wearing far too much dark makeup and eyeliner and wearing bloused pants and shirt, a kerchief binding her hair back. She pointed a flintlock pistol at an incredulous and shocked Will Turner who was holding a sword and objecting, "You cheated!"

"Yo. Pirate?" Faith laughed. Yeah, that'd always been a favorite of hers, too. She noticed that all of them were like that, westerns, space scenes, fantasy... she shook her head. All the idle places she'd put herself in her mind as a kid to escape from the hell that was her real life; to will away the bars in prison; or killing time in lonely motel rooms. She shook her head. Too weird.

"o-kayyy." She looked at Harmony. "Slayer Dream. Powers. Aren't you supposed to be dead to be a Messenger?"

Harmony laughed. "Well, duh! Vampire?"

"Ah. Right." Faith snickered. Figures. "So, not that this ain't fun and all, but where's Cordy? Was kind of expecting her."

Harmony rolled her eyes. "Like she'd ever be caught dead in Wal-Mart? Silly." She waved aimlessly. "Take yourself there. It's easy."

"Huh? How?" Even as she said it, Faith felt a pull in herself and found herself suddenly elsewhere.

White, all around. White floors, white tiles, white metal, white carpeting, white furniture, white ceiling, white white white. Pleah. If this is heaven, she decided she was never going to die.

"Not Heaven, exactly. Just an office," the voice startled her. Room'd been empty when she got here.

"So, pick the decor yourself, huh?" She turned to see dream-Cordelia, not in white thank gods, but tastefully and expensively dressed in a medley of darks and colors.

"Oh please. Like I'm this boring? Not." Cordelia came forward to take Faith by the shoulders. "You done good. Figured it out. Didn't die. Took you long enough." She grinned.

"Yah." Faith glared at her. "And the traditional reward for a Job Well Done is another fucking Job, right?"

"Yeah," Cordelia cocked her head, regarding her. "But not right away, probably. This is more of a chance to sort things out in your head... a bit of a breather." She paused, "And a chance for me to say 'thanks'."

"For what? 'Saving the World'? Comes with the package." Faith snorted. "Life sucks, but like, what's the alternative?"

"How about 'for not letting Angel and Wes down'? Proving Angel was right about you and I was wrong? Not letting Wesley die?" She gave Faith a serious look. "Giving me a second chance for screwing up? I'm only here because evidently, you felt I was someone who'd touched you. Otherwise... someone else'd be here and we wouldn't have had a chance for me to let you know how much I appreciated what you did, earlier."

Faith cocked her head. "An' touch is what it's all about, huh? What matters. Making an impact."

"Yes. In more ways than one." Cordelia touched the cheek Faith'd once left bruised and almost broken with an elbow, when she'd been in psycho-slayer mode after fleeing that church in Sunnydale. "Ow. You always did that thing, one way or another."

"Sorry." Faith's eyes darkened. "I never got a chance to say that, before."

"No worries." Cordelia grinned. "Not the first time I've been decked by a slayer."

"And you were wrong, before, back there," she continued, softly. "That's not the only reason They 'dumped this on you'."

"Oh? Why then?" Faith glared. "Not that I mind, kinda: not like I want the Pits to open up on earth. But it fucking hurts, dammit."

"I know." She looked at her with compassion. "But it's what made you the one for this, your 'special power' if you want to look at it that way. You reach people. You touch deeply, grab hold of life and everything in it. You touch people whether they want to be or not, make them react to you. Touch them to the soul, even when it hurts. Run like hell before they can touch you back. Like you, hate you, no one's ever been indifferent to you. No one's ever been unaffected by you." She smiled.

"'You'd best be careful what you touch, what you use, what you make, because you leave a bit of yourself in everything you touch'," Faith quoted back.

"'that it's not the Things, it's the people you touch and who touch you back that can save you'," Cordy nodded, "And that which you've loved and touched is always the people. Don't lose that. It's Important. It's the difference when every thing's going to Hell and the things aren't enough to hang onto. Took me one hell of a long time to figure out what you seem to have known all along." She met Faith's eyes levelly, "No one else had all the bits and pieces to do this except you. Had the knowledge, and that connection to people and dreams."

"Never had 'things'. 'Things' didn't matter. Never really had 'people' either, but at least I could try," Faith shrugged.

"And we fucked up pretty badly, didn't we? Put the final cap on everything when you came to us in Sunnydale, pretty much drove you to the mayor and over the edge. All of us." Cordelia's eyes were dark.

"Hell, Cordy," Faith stared at her, incredulous. "You were fucking teenagers, for chrissake. We were. Ever see a kid that could see past their own asshole?" She snickered, a horrid sound that threatened to turn into a sob. "I never did. You guys were wrapped up in your own concerns.. Hell, you had to be. You were trying to survive everything the fucking Hellmouth could throw at you. It'd have been fucking amazing if you'd been able to see past that and past all the shit I was dumping on top of you too. Would have taken Saints, not a bunch of scared, fucked-up kids." She paused, thoughtful, "Giles, maybe. Always been hard to forgive him for not. Fucking grownups." She frowned. "Not. Your. Fault. I was already fucked up beyond salvage way before then. Just took me awhile to see that."

"Not beyond salvage," Cordelia shook her head.

"So, am I fucking quenched yet?" She grinned suddenly, tired of the blame and tired of playing that game-not-a-game.

"Ha. Getting there. Still being forged, I'm afraid." She grinned back at Faith, "But you've got a better chance now. You're starting to learn how to touch back without hurting."

"Gee. Can't wait. Getting used to the hammer." She rolled her eyes.

"Yeah." Cordelia sobered, met Faith's eyes. "I'm glad you didn't die. Gives us a chance."

"Dying's a Bad Thing. Ruins your day. 'Sides - you told me I wasn't allowed."

"Damn straight." She winked. "Til next time?"

"So... this a regular gig for you now?" She regarded the other woman.

"If you want. They were going to give you to someone else, but you Called me." Cordelia laughed. "Definitely proved interesting."

Faith cocked her head, regarded her back seriously. "I think I could deal with that. If we gotta be damned and all, you know?"

"Dancing in the dark, Faith. And bumping into things and hanging on to others when it hurts." Cordelia smiled. "Later."

Sleep swallowed her back up and took its time before spitting her out again...

...

'dancing in the dark with you', Faith rolled over, stretched, and yawned, suddenly grinning. 'Could prove interesting, C.'

She got up, suddenly curious to see what the day and coffee would bring.