After their dinner, Dawn announced that she would retire to her room – to which Connor immediately responded by quickly claiming the living room couch. Faith had carried their dishes to the kitchen, so she wasn't there to witness the interaction, but Tara immediately noticed that both of the younger teens sounded somewhat flustered. She chuckled briefly to herself. This might be an interesting scenario to witness.

Both Dawn and Connor were "special", the former as a mystical Key and the other as a child of two vampires. Neither was "human" as the traditional classification went. She was in no position to object, even if she wanted – which she did not. If they wanted to explore the possibilities of a tentative relationship, so be it. In the meanwhile, she had her own attraction to handle.

Dawn was the first to take the stairs to the second floor with the other two women following her. They stopped briefly in front of the door to Buffy's room, where Faith made the brief motion to grab the handle before she balled her hand into a fist and let it drop, followed by a drooping of her shoulders and head.

"Faith...," Tara started quietly.

"No," Faith answered with a shake of her lowered head. "I'll just... I'll go and sleep in the car."

"Don't be ridiculous, Faith," Tara huffed. "My room, Joyce's old room, has plenty of space for the both of us. There's a spare mattress, too."

"I..."

"Get your ass in here, Slayer," Tara practically growled and opened the door to her room. Further along the corridor, she could see Dawn smile briefly before the younger girl vanished inside her own room.

"Wow, you really got a butch side in you, Blondie," Faith grinned, her brief mental stop momentarily over. She had been totally unprepared for the feelings that particular door invoked in her – both good and bad. It would take a long time before she could even think of entering the room behind it. Of course, Joyce's old room held its own ghosts for her, but she could immediately see through the partly open door that it had been completely redone since the "hostage" episode over two years ago.

Still, it was with leaden feet that she followed Tara inside the place of one of her crimes.


Tara was lying in the large, king-size bed trying to concentrate on her book, but her attention was constantly shifted to the silent, dark figure sitting in an armchair next to the window. The usual night-time noises – blaring of car and bus horns, occasional screams, explosions, and so on – had started an hour ago while she was in the bathroom doing her nightly ablutions.

She had returned to her room to find Faith sitting in the armchair she had dragged in front of the window, staying totally still. During the past hour, the Slayer not moved a muscle.

"Every night like this?"

The sudden question shook Tara back into the here and now, and she lowered the book onto her lap.

"More or less," she sighed. "It's like an amusement park for them. You... you get used to it after a while."

"That's fucked up," Faith frowned. "Wouldn't know, though. Never been in one," she continued more quietly.

"What?" Tara gasped. "Surely..."

"Hey, newsflash, Blondie," Faith interrupted her. "In case you didn't get the memo from B, my mom was never in a state to take me amusement-parking."

"No, she never...,"

"It's getting quite late," Faith interrupted her harshly. "You said something about a spare mattress..."


Twenty minutes later Faith was lying on a mattress at the foot of Tara's bed, and the atmosphere in the dark room could have been cut with a knife. Both girls had bidden each other good night after Faith returned from the bathroom, but it was obvious to both that the other was very much still awake.

To Faith this was her first night in freedom in two-and-a-quarter years, and the mattress was much more comfortable than the prison ones, so she should be able to just count her blessings and snuff out. Yet, she felt nowhere near close to sleeping. She thought she should say something, but absolutely nothing came to mind. 'Say something!' she shouted inside her head, not knowing that Tara was doing very much the same – so the silence went on.

So, it became a contest of will-power... which Faith eventually lost.

"Blondie..."

"Get up here, Faith," came the quiet response.

"What?" she asked totally mystified.

"Haul your ass up here," Tara prompted more seriously. "You don't want to sleep alone on the floor, and I think this whole setup is ridiculous anyway. We're both reasonable adults, so it should have been a no-brainer from the start."

Faith battled briefly with her sub-conscious but then, like on autopilot, got to her feet and silently slipped under the covers of the large bed Tara was already occupying.

"See, much comfier," Tara told her quietly in the darkness.

There was a respectable, at least a foot-wide area of empty bed separating them.

"Yeah...," Faith muttered. Despite the distance between them, it was – at least mentally – much warmer and cosier than on the floor. "Thanks, Blondie."

"Think nothing of it," Tara replied. "Maybe now I can get some sleep."

With that she rolled over to her side, facing away from Faith, and gradually relaxed so her breathing became deeper as sleep took over her.

Faith, on the other hand, lay awake eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. The sweet scent of Tara's night cream and the obviously relaxed girl next to her felt like a lucid dream already. In prison the noises and smells of the night were a total opposite to what she was experiencing now. One part of her mind – and it was a major one – was constantly worrying that she might wake up at any time and find herself still in her own cell, lying on her hard, thin mattress.

"Hey, what's with the Riverdance, Flatley?" came a sleepy question from beside her. Without even realising it, Faith had started to nervously shuffle and kick her feet around under the covers. A nervous habit.

"Sorry," Faith muttered apologetically, sorry for having wakened up the other girl. "Something I picked up while I was in the solitary."

"I see," Tara replied. "Now, I'm going to do something here, because I know we both definitely need the sleep. It doesn't have to signify anything more. Ok?"

"Umm... yeah, I guess," Faith said uncertainly.

"Alright then," Tara responded.

Faith felt a whole-body shudder as Tara slowly scooted close to her, draped an arm over her mid-section, and pulled themselves close to each other for a full-body contact.

"Sleep, Slayer," Tara murmured in her ear. "Nothing bad will happen to you while I'm watching over you."

"Blondie...," Faith whispered thickly as the other girl's warm body pressed against her.

"You're too precious for words, Faith," Tara murmured back, already more than half-asleep again.