Part Ten
Stockton, September 2001
Eddie Rhodes had been in the job long enough to know the rules. Not the regs, the endless stream of minutiae spewed out by the Department to make his job harder; the Rules, the simple, unspoken maxims that told people like him how to keep a lid on things in a place where most of the inmates would happily stick each other for a packet of smokes. There was no rulebook, no official list you could learn from, you either picked them up on the job or you found another job. Somewhere high up on every guard’s list was ‘Never get invested in a convict, because the handful that pay you back won’t make up for the dozens that let you down.’
He knew the rules as well as anyone, but sometimes he just couldn’t follow them. And so, when the phone rang on the fourth day of his month’s duty watching over the Hole and one of his colleagues announced “430019 coming down,” he couldn’t stop himself feeling a pang of sadness.
They hadn’t even bothered to avoid her face when they beat her this time. Her cheek was covered by a livid bruise that could only have come from something like a nightstick. Dried blood stained the front of her shirt; her face had been cleaned up a bit, but traces of blood still clung to her nose and he was amazed that it wasn’t broken. There had to be more bruising hidden under her clothes, but there was no sign of pain in the way she walked. Even with her hands cuffed behind her back and her legs shackled, her movements flowed easily, as though nothing in the world could touch her. Maybe it couldn’t, he thought as he looked into her dark, empty eyes. Maybe there was nothing left to touch.
Prisoner 430019 Lehane, Faith stopped in front of an empty cell while her escort removed the shackles from her legs, then stepped inside for them to close the door and remove the cuffs. She didn’t make a sound throughout the procedure, and once she was locked in she just sat down with her back to the wall, staring into nothing.
Rhodes took one of the guards aside when the others left. “Hey, Grodin, what did she do this time?”
“Threw down with three of Carter’s crew, right in the middle of the damn yard,” Grodin replied. “Sanchez got a busted arm, Regan lost some teeth before we could get in there. The girl’s lost it, man.”
“She hurt any of our people?” Rhodes asked, and when Grodin shook his head he continued, “So how come she got wailed on so bad?”
“’Cause she’s a psycho, Eddie! She’s been going off on people for months, you know it. What the hell were we supposed to do? Hartson’s gone to the Warden, wants to get her tossed in the psych unit.”
“Yeah, like they’ve got a spare bunk over there,” Rhodes muttered in disgust. “You got the paperwork on this?”
“Yeah, it’s here.” Grodin handed him a folder. “Thirty days. All yours, man.”
Faith was aware of them talking about her, but nothing they were saying made any impression on her. The moment the cell door locked behind her, she began pulling back into herself, everything beyond her skin fading away until the only thing that was entirely real to her was the grief.
It was so intense, so bound up with rage and guilt that at first she barely knew what she was feeling, but the truth had been laid bare at last. How could she not have known? There hadn’t been a day that went by when she hadn’t thought about Buffy, and yet somehow she’d deluded herself that she didn’t care. That fiction hadn’t survived her first stint in solitary, the endless hours confined to a tiny cell had left her with no refuge from her thoughts, and one by one the lies she told herself had been peeled away. All those nights when she’d lain awake, she hadn’t been waiting until she was sure there would be no more pain. She couldn’t let herself sleep until she was sure Buffy was safe for one more night. But now there would be no more silent vigils in the darkness, no more waiting. There was only the grief, and even as it dragged her down Faith clutched at it, because it was the only piece of Buffy she had left.
Rhodes leaned back in his chair with a groan, closed his eyes and started to massage his temples. Staring at the cheap computer screens in the prison always gave him a headache, but it was the only way he could review an inmate’s records while he was on duty. Of course, in this case, at least half the headache came from trying to make sense of what he was reading in Lehane’s file.
It wasn’t close to the first time he’d read the file. Rhodes made a point of reading up on every new arrival, and over the years he’d become quite adept at spotting potential problems just from the paperwork. Lehane’s file had struck him as unusual from the start. How did a teenage girl from South Boston end up in a small California town called Sunnydale? The local police had considered her a suspect in a back-street murder – of the town’s deputy mayor, no less – along with a local high school girl who had briefly been the prime suspect in another murder the previous summer. Lehane’s name was mentioned in connection with yet another murder, a geology professor, but before that investigation could even get off the ground she’d turned up in the local hospital, comatose, with a stab wound in her abdomen, and her doctors had told the local PD she wasn’t going to wake up. Both cases went to sleep for eight months, then out of the blue Lehane got out of her hospital bed, beat up a girl who’d got lost in the building, stole her clothes and walked out like she’d just woken from a nap. The next night, she attacked the high school girl, now a college student, at her home and was knocked unconscious. The police arrested her, but she was snatched from a squad car by persons unknown. About a week later she surfaced in Los Angeles, committed a string of assaults and robberies, then for no apparent reason she walked into an LAPD precinct and confessed to both murders, although she refused to say anything about why she’d killed either man. According to the file, there had been enough indications of premeditation in the professor’s killing to make a case for Murder One, but Lehane’s public defender had used the confession to bargain the D.A. down to Murder Two.
The whole story had made Rhodes curious the first time he read it. Why had she confessed? Pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser charge or shorter sentence was one thing, freely walking into a police station and confessing without even seeing a lawyer was something else entirely. Rhodes had seen exactly one case like it, and that time the prisoner had slit her wrists less than a month into her sentence, so he’d kept a special eye on Lehane from the start.
If her file had puzzled him, her behaviour at NCWF was almost baffling. A prisoner as tough as her could have ruled the whole cell block, but she’d kept everyone at arm’s length for months, and when she did start to get involved with the other prisoners it was all done through her cellmate, Marquez.
Rhodes had reviewed the file a couple of times over the winter, trying to find some clue as to why Lehane acted the way she did, but he’d come up blank. Her disciplinary record was good; a rep like hers inevitably attracted occasional challenges, but no-one had ever caught her starting a fight and she’d never raised her hand to a guard, no matter what they did to her. The psychiatrist’s reports were filled with the clichés – anger-management issues, poor impulse control, low self-esteem. The only thing that stood out was her absolute reluctance to talk about what happened in Sunnydale and L.A.
When spring arrived, Rhodes had decided to drop the matter. He still didn’t get her, but she didn’t cause trouble and it seemed as though the other prisoners were becoming reluctant to start anything when she was around, so he concluded it was better to stop looking that gift horse in the mouth and leave well alone.
Then she’d had that visitor, the middle-aged Englishman. No-one knew exactly what he’d said to her, but it had knocked her completely off her feet and she hadn’t been the same since. First she’d beaten Rayna Mitchell so badly that Mitchell had to be transported to Manteca hospital to have her jaw wired back together, and only a couple of days after getting out of the Hole for that attack, she’d sent two more prisoners to the infirmary. That had set the pattern for the summer. Rhodes wasn’t sure what bothered him the most, the sudden bursts of violence or the way Lehane acted once she was back in solitary. Different people dealt with solitary in different ways; some kept as active as they could, others withdrew into themselves, but he’d never seen anyone shut down as much as she did. Rhodes had gone over the file again half a dozen times since it all started, trying to figure it out, but it made even less sense than ever.
It was after eleven when he went down to the Hole to check on the prisoners. The other three were all in their bunks, either asleep or faking it. He wasn’t surprised that Lehane's bunk was empty, though; sometime during her second stint in the Hole she’d taken to sleeping curled up on the concrete floor of her cell, without even pulling the covers down over herself, and after a few days the guards had given up trying to stop her. Some days, she barely even moved from that position, not even to eat. The bunk hadn’t been touched in the week since she arrived for her latest stretch.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t asleep, she was sitting up against the wall, staring into the gloom with that horrible empty look in her eyes. Rhodes stopped outside the cell and watched her for a minute. If she knew he was there, she didn’t give any sign of it.
“What’s got into you, kid?” Rhodes whispered, more to himself than her. “You’ve been in and out of this place for months. You keep this up, someone’s going to kill you, or Hartson’s going to dump you on psych and they’ll keep you so doped up you might as well be dead.”
“Doesn’t matter, Eddie.” The sound of her voice made him jump, they were the first words he’d heard from her all week. She turned her head a little, not quite enough to face him, her eyes glistening in the dirty yellow glow of the night lights. “She’s gone now, none of it matters any more.”
He crouched down in by the cell door. “Who’re you talking about?”
“She kept us all safe, you know? Protected us, but nobody saved her. So now there’s no-one, there’s just me, and I can’t do it, I’ve got to be in here ‘cause I’m one of the bad guys, and I can’t even get out the way and let the next girl have her shot ‘cause I’m too damn scared to finished it.” Tears left shimmering lines on her cheek. “You know why, Eddie? ‘Cause I know where I’m going, and it’s not… she’s not going to be waiting there for me. So she’s up there, and I’m here, and now the whole world’s going to burn.” Her head jerked upward and Rhodes found himself staring into her eyes; the misery and terror he saw chilled him. “You got a family, Eddie? Wife, kids? You look like a wife and kids kind of guy. Tell them… Don’t wait for tomorrow, ‘cause someday soon there won’t be one.”
Her head slumped forward and the movement cascaded down her body until she was lying flat on the concrete. Rhodes tried to keep her talking, but for all the reaction he got, he might as well have been speaking to a corpse.
Tears pooled on the floor beneath her, seeping in between the chill concrete and her skin. Her body shivered, but her mind didn’t even register the cold; speaking to Eddie had felt like her final confession, and now she just wanted everything to end.
Something passed through her, so fast that she almost didn’t notice it, but her eyes opened and her head lifted almost imperceptibly from the floor. It felt like the echo of someone far away crying out in the darkness, a voice she was sure she knew but couldn’t place. Her eyes started to move, searching the gloom for some clue, but there was nothing. Then, without any warning, she bolted upright on the floor, scrabbling backward away from something she couldn’t see or hear until she collided with the bunk.
It felt as though a second heart was pounding in her chest, beating in terrified haste, too fast to count. Then her lungs started to burn, like she’d been running flat out for hours, and her eyes, her eyes, aching as though she’d looked straight into the sun. Her own heart quickened in panic, throbbing in time with the phantom pulse she felt, while pain blossomed in her hands, blows across her knuckles and tiny points along her fingers, like needles stabbing into her skin. Her eyes stared heavenwards, too terrified to believe.
“Buffy?”
Part Eleven
Stockton, October 2001
“You ready?” Eddie Rhodes paused with his hand on the door to the cell block.
I’d better be. Faith closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself. She’d spent so long planning for this moment, considering her options and stripping away everything that wasn’t completely focused on what she was going to do next, but deep down she wondered if maybe that had been too long. Perhaps, now that it came down to it, she’d find she’d over-thought everything.
For the first day or so after the pain returned, thinking at all had been almost beyond her. For a while, she’d been sure that she’d finally lost her mind and everything she was feeling was some kind of hallucination. She’d stayed huddled in the corner of her cell for hours, both afraid that it was true and afraid that it wasn’t. Eventually she’d collapsed from sheer exhaustion, the strain of the previous months breaching the last of her defences, and when she woke, she knew what she had to do.
And then she had to wait. That was the hardest part, not driving herself insane while she served out the remaining three weeks of her confinement. There were times when she almost broke, when she could feel herself about to scream with frustration or beg the guards to help her, but something, a scrap of pride or the fear that they’d think she was crazy and send for a straitjacket, let her keep control, however tenuous. She’d made herself slow down, when her body screamed to be up and moving, and somewhere along the line she’d learned that, in fact, she was the one in control.
Eddie had noticed the change. Maybe some of the other guards, too, but they just seemed to be relieved she wasn’t sleeping on the floor any more. Eddie was different; she knew she’d freaked him with her late-night confession, but in spite of her inability to explain it to him he knew something was different and he seemed to trust it.
She must have done something right, she reflected, or he wouldn’t have come to bring her back to the block.
One last breath, and she nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
Eddie opened the door and escorted her into the block, then walked with her as far as the day room. As he handed her over to the guards on duty he whispered “Good luck.” She didn’t dare reply.
One of the guards opened up the day room door and she stepped across the threshold into her old territory. The place was full, and everyone turned to look at her; she felt like a character in a Western, walking into the saloon while all the locals stared. It took an effort of will not to stop in the doorway.
Keep it together, okay? After a few moments the murmur of conversation started up again, but she could feel eyes on her as she made herself walk calmly between the tables, just like it was any other day. There was hostility in the air, and some apprehension, but not as much as she’d expected. The overall atmosphere was more like anticipation, people wondering what she was going to do next.
A glance at the clock had confirmed what Faith already knew; the commissary had closed for the day. She’d allowed for that in her planning, though, and moved straight on to plan B. She went straight up to her cell. As she’d expected, everything that had been left out in the open had been pilfered in her absence, but luckily no-one had looked hard enough to find her little stash, rolled up in a sock and wedged into one of her bunk springs. It wasn’t much, but it should be enough.
Stuffing the sock’s contents into a pocket, Faith headed back down to the day room. As she walked in, she caught sight of Cat sitting with Michele and a couple of others, but aside from one glance as Faith walked in and the conversations died again, Cat ignored her. Faith’s stride faltered for a moment as she remembered the way Cat had looked at her that day in the yard, before Giles came to see her, but she had something else to do before she could start fixing that.
It took a few moments for her to spot the woman she was looking for, but before long Faith had her; a skinny thirty-something with dirty blonde hair, sitting at a table with a couple of her buddies. They all looked up as Faith approached, trying not to seem apprehensive.
“Hey Sasha”. Faith took a seat across from the blonde. “I’m looking for a phone card, can you hook me up?”
“You want a phone card?” Surprise overtook caution for a second, but Sasha got herself under control again quickly. “I’ve never heard of you trading for cards before.”
“Never wanted to make a call before,” replied Faith. She kept her voice low and calm, trying to sound non-threatening.
It seemed to work; Sasha’s body language relaxed a little. “Okay, let’s talk. What do you got?”
“Couple of packs of smokes, a new lighter, half a book of stamps.”
They haggled for a couple of minutes, then the exchange was done under the table. Five minutes later, Faith was slotting a new card into one of the cell block’s payphones and dialling a number she’d spent a day dredging out of her memory. She tried to stay calm, but by the time she’d finished dialling her hand was shaking so much that she could barely hit the right buttons, and as the phone at the other end of the line began to ring Faith leaned against the wall and made herself take a few slow, deep breaths.
“Hello?”
Faith had spent days thinking about what she was going to say, but as soon as she heard Buffy’s voice her mind blanked.”
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
Faith wracked her brain for something to say, and the best she could come up with was “You’re alive.”
“Who is this?” Buffy’s voice turned hard and suspicious.
“You’re back, B.”
There was a barely-audible gasp at the other end of the line, and then “Faith?”
“How… how did… what happened?”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I…”
The line went dead. Faith listened to the cut-off tone for a few moments, then she hung up and rested her head against the wall, not sure if she was supposed to laugh or cry.
She’s really alive
Smoke coiled upwards to gather among the springs of Cat’s bunk.
How? How the hell can she be back?
Faith took a long drag on her cigarette and held the smoke in her lungs, letting the nicotine seep into her system. Smoking wasn’t having the usual calming effect that evening. All through those weeks in solitary, she’d been so completely fixated on confirming that Buffy had returned that she hadn’t been able to think beyond that point, and now all the other questions were piling in on her.
How do people come back from the dead?
Angel came back from hell, right? Something pulled him out and dropped him back in Sunnydale.
Yeah, but B wasn’t in hell. Who’d want to take her halo away and dump her down here?
The Scoobs? They’d want her back, but raising the dead? Can they even do that? Can’t be easy or everyone’d be doing it. They’d have done it to get Joyce back.
There’s no-one else, though. It’s not the Council, they didn’t even like her. Can’t be Angel or he wouldn’t have gone away like he did. Had to be them. They couldn’t hack it without her, so they brought her back.
The cigarette burned down to the filter. Faith stubbed it out on the floor, and then lay back on her bunk with her hands behind her head. She sounded tired. Maybe she’s not sleeping? It’s got to be rough, waking up down… oh God! Please, tell me they didn’t bury her first. She stared at her hands, remembering the blows she’d felt. She was in a coffin. The stupid bastards brought her back in a coffin.
Footsteps rang on the staircase outside the cell, accompanied by a low murmur of conversation as the other women of the block returned to their cells for the night. Faith took her place on the landing for the final count of the day. Cat stood silently beside her, and for the first time since she got out of solitary – or, if she was honest with herself, for the first time since she first went to solitary – Faith had a good look at her cellmate.
She looked different, and not in a good way. The changes were subtle enough that Faith could only see them up close, but they were there. Cat had lost weight; her cheekbones were more prominent than they had been, her chin more pointed. Her posture was different, too, more slumped around the shoulders. It wasn’t much, but it had Faith worried.
“Cat, can we talk?” she asked as they were locked in for the night. Cat ignored her, so she reached out and put her hand on Cat’s shoulder. “Please.”
Cat shrugged her off. “Go to sleep, Lehane.” She climbed onto her bunk and lay down, facing the wall.
The buzzer went off too early, just like Faith remembered it. One of the few advantages to being in solitary was that no-one really cared if you slept late, but on the cell block you got the buzzer at the same time every morning. If that didn’t wake you, the chorus of groans and curses that echoed from every cell on the landing would.
Faith sat up on the edge of her bunk, rubbing at her eyes. Her side ached from whatever fight Buffy had been in the previous night. Back to that again. Same old, same old. Guess I’ll just have to get used to it again.
She stepped over to the sink and splashed some cold water on her face to clear her head, then turned around to grab her uniform shirt. That was when she noticed that Cat hadn’t woken up. “Hey, come on, chow time.”
She put her hand on Cat’s arm and gave her a shake. Cat’s hand slide over the edge of the bunk and hung there. A syringe dropped from her fingers.
“I need a doctor in here!”
“Where’s the stash, Lehane?”
She’d been sitting in the office, hands cuffed behind her, for maybe half an hour when Hartson walked in. They’d kept her in the cell at first, made her watch while the doctor came, while they confirmed Cat was dead and put her in a body bag. Then two of the guards had brought her down here, getting her out of the way so others could pull the cell apart.
“I just asked you a question!” Hartson backhanded her across the face.
“I-I don’t know.”
“Like hell you don’t.”
“I didn’t even know she was using! I just got out of freaking solitary, Hartson, how am I going to know what she’s doing?”
There was a knock at the door, and a moment later one of the guards who’d been searching the cell came in. She tossed tiny bag of white powder onto the desk. “Found it stuffed inside the bunk frame. Doctor Stephens said she found track marks on Marquez’s thighs, looks like she’s been injecting for a couple of months.”
Two months. She was using last time I saw her, and I didn’t see it.
Hartson looked at the bag with contempt. “Tell the Warden, and keep checking the cell, make sure there’s nothing else in there. You,” she turned back to Faith, “get your clothes off.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a dead convict on my block, Lehane,” Hartson said, taking a pair of latex gloves from a box on the desk, “and I find anything, anything, that connects it to you, I’ll make your life a living hell.”
The memory of Hartson’s fingers inside her made Faith’s skin crawl, but she didn’t give herself time to dwell on it. When they finally let her go it was rec time, and everyone was outside in the sun. Seeing them all out there, carrying on like nothing had happened, was enough to get the old demons whispering in the back of her mind, telling her to make someone else hurt the way she was hurting.
She stopped at the edge of the yard, fists clenched, nails digging into her palms, until she’d got herself under control. Today, she had a job to do, and she wasn’t going to let her old self mess it up.
It wasn’t easy picking out one person in the mass of bodies, but after a minute or two she’d spotted Michele at a table on the other side of the yard, playing cards with two others. Faith made her way over, avoiding a game of basketball that didn’t seem confined to the court. “Hey Michele.”
“What do you want?” Michele asked, her voice rough and angry. The other two women at the table edged away, sensing trouble.
“I want to know who gave Cat the dope. Any ideas?”
“Why the hell do you care?”
“Cat’s dead, Michele! Don’t you want to know whose fault it was?”
“I know whose fault it was, bitch, I’m looking at her!” Michele jumped to her feet, getting right into Faith’s face. Everyone around them stopped dead, waiting for the explosion.
“I didn’t touch her, I swear.”
“You dumbass ho, you don’t get it, do you?” Michele’s voice dropped so no-one else could hear her. “She liked you, gaynip. She liked you, she got worried about you and you told her to go to hell. Well nice job, ‘cause while you was off getting your skank ass tossed in the Hole, that’s right where she went. This one’s on you, ‘Beantown’, this one’s all on you.”
Part Twelve
Stockton, December 2001
“What is this crap?”
“It’s called a salad, Bev.” Faith speared a piece of celery on her fork and wished her new cellmate would shut up for once.
As oblivious as ever, Bev replied, “Couple of mangy lettuce leaves and some celery don’t make a salad. You got to have tomatoes, peppers, salad cream, tuna, mayo, that’s a salad, am I right?”
Like it’s not messed up enough having salad for lunch three days before Christmas, now I’ve got to listen to this… The others at the table made various noises of assent that Bev would no doubt interpret as a ringing endorsement. Faith knew better; they were just agreeing in the hope that she’d stop complaining for a while and let them eat in piece. No-one else at the table seemed to have any interest in starting a conversation, and that suited Faith just fine.
Everyone had been wary of her after she left solitary, but as days turned into weeks and she didn’t attack anyone, things gradually returned to normal, or something close to it. The days when people would only share a cafeteria table with her if there were no other options were over, but she still kept everyone at arm’s length, unwilling to let them get close.
Most of the women on the cell block had treated Cat’s death like it was just another part of being inside. People took drugs, people died, it was sad but it happened. As far as Faith could tell, only Michele knew anything more than that. She hadn’t said a word to Faith since their confrontation in the yard, but Faith could feel the animosity pouring off her any time they were in the same room. She barely noticed it any more. Michele couldn’t make her feel any worse than she already did.
She hadn’t even had a chance to grieve in peace. Only two days after Cat died, Faith returned to the cell after a shift in the laundry and found a new girl there, a parole-violator who stayed a week before she was shipped back down south to finish her sentence. The day after that girl left, up rolled Bev Turner. Bev was just beginning a stretch for attempted murder; the scuttlebutt in the yard was that she’d heard another mom at her kid’s school say the kid was fat, so Bev cracked her skull open with a claw hammer. It wasn’t her first time inside, though, and there were a few inmates at NCWF who already knew her. She had a rep as a loudmouth, but she was tough enough that not many people called her on it.
Unfortunately, she seemed to have decided that hanging out with a girl who’d spent the summer putting gangbangers twice her size in the infirmary was the perfect way t make herself look tougher. Either that, or she really didn’t get how much Faith hated being anywhere near her. Faith reckoned she was stupid enough for either to be true, and the constant complaining about the food, the clothes, the bunks and whatever else happened to occur to Bev was starting to wind her up.
Great, start feeling sorry for yourself, that’ll help. Ignoring whatever it was that Bev was saying at the moment, Faith started looking around the room for something to distract her. Someone had taken a load of paper napkins, cut them into snowflake patterns and hung them all along the edge of the serving counter. It reminded her of the frost patterns she’d see on the windows back in Boston, and she smiled, remembering snowball fights in the street outside her home. It only lasted a moment, but the recollection felt good, a reminder of a time when things were simple and she knew where she belonged.
A murmur of angry voices from the other side of the cafeteria broke her out of her reminiscing. Two rival crews had wound up at adjacent tables, and they’d been trying to stare each other down all through lunch. Now, as a latecomer went to join her gang, words were being thrown, and then someone flung their arm out and flipped the new girl’s meal tray out of her grip. The new girl, a stocky Korean with a rough scar under one ear, jumped on the tray-flipper, a heavily-tattooed blonde, and yanked her out of her seat. The blonde’s buddies leapt to her aid, and in moments all hell had broken loose.
“Nice!” Bev was out of her seat before the first punch was even thrown, shouldering her way through the crowd to get a good vantage point for the fight. Faith just picked up her tray and headed in the opposite direction, stopping by the serving counter along with a handful of others who’d decided they didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire when the guards intervened.
Someone, probably one of the kitchen staff, hit the panic button and the emergency siren started to wail, but the handful of guards in the cafeteria didn’t wait for backup before wading in and trying to put a stop to the fighting. The crowd of onlookers slowed them down as much as possible without actually holding them back, but inside a minute three guards were pulling the two sides apart.
Someone shoved one of the guards, who stumbled, hit his head on a table and went down.
Oh crap.
The guard scrambled clear with blood streaming from his forehead. The others abandoned their efforts to stop the fight and concentrated on getting their colleague out, clearing a path for him with their nightsticks. Someone near the centre of the mob flung a meal tray at them, striking one of the guards in the face, and just like that the whole focus of the violence moved from the two gangs who’d started it all to the retreating guards.
A tray crashed against the wall a couple of feet from Faith’s head, showering her with leftover celery, and she decided it was time to be elsewhere. A few others had the same idea and were heading for the cafeteria door. They got out into the corridor just as a dozen guards came charging toward them. Faith flattened herself against the wall, hands high in the air. The others followed her lead; one wasn’t fast enough and got bundled out of the way. One of the guards who’d been in the cafeteria waved his nightstick at them and yelled something to the reinforcements. Faith couldn’t make out the words over the din, but two guards started herding her little group back to their cells.
“Man, that was awesome!” Even hours after the guards suppressed the brawl – it never escalated far enough to call it a riot – Bev was still excited, pacing the meagre length of the cell while telling and retelling the glorious tale of her part in it all. “Did you see what happened to Hartson? That arm’s not going to be working right for a long time. Should’ve been there, celly, it was so cool.”
“Yeah, wicked cool,” Faith muttered. She was lying on her bunk with a cigarette in her hand, staring up at the top bunk and trying not to remember the noises it made when Cat moved in her sleep. The memory of those discordant creaks seemed almost musical compared to the sound of tortured metal when Bev moved her bulk. “Throwing down with the guards, great idea.”
“Aw come on. Rep like yours, I know you dig it,” Bev said with a vicious grin. The split lip and bruised ribs she’d picked up didn’t seem to bother her in the least; if anything, she looked pleased to have taken a few hits, like it showed how tough she was. “Throwing down’s what it’s all about in here.”
“Great, so you guys have your fun and now the whole block’s on lockdown for Christmas.”
“Oh, big freaking deal, you miss out on your turkeyloaf, who the hell cares? I’m talking about payback, man, scoring some points on the damn hacks!”
“I like the turkeyloaf.”
“God, what is with you-”
“You know what, Bev?” Faith could feel her patience dangling by a thread; she took a drag on her cigarette and held it for a moment. “I think I’m done hearing your voice today.”
“Oh yeah?” Bev’s cheerful belligerence soured in a heartbeat. “So what you going to do about it, huh? I hear a lot of talk about you, but I think you’ve gone soft since your girlfriend baked herself.”
Faith shot off the bunk, and before Bev could move she was pinned against the wall with Faith’s arm across her throat and the glowing tip of a cigarette poised inches from her eye. “Don’t screw with me, Bev. You think you’re tough ‘cause you put some soccer mom in the hospital? I’ve killed people. I’ve fought battles you can’t imagine. Only one person ever took me down, and you are not her. You could never be her.”
Faith stepped back and Bev collapsed in a heap on the floor, clutching at her throat and gasping for breath. She looked up at Faith with eyes filled with fear and hate. Faith just stared back, her eyes empty and cold. “We’re going to set some new ground rules. I don’t care what you do out there,” she jabbed her cigarette toward the cell door, “you can talk trash all you want and throw down any time you got the urge, but in here you’re going to keep your head down and watch your mouth. You do that and we’re going to get along fine. One more thing.” Faith knelt in front of Bev, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I ever hear you talk about Cat like that again, we’re going to finish this conversation, got me?”
The look of fury in Bev’s eyes was answer enough. Faith stood up, sucked the last hit out of her cigarette and flicked the butt into the toilet bowl. As she turned away, she said, “I’m not like everyone else in here, Bev. I’m a monster. You don’t want to make me remember that.”
Part Thirteen
Los Angeles, January 2002
One of the fluorescent light tubes in the ceiling flickered, buzzing like a wasp caught in a jar, and then went out. A moment later there was a ping and the tube lit up, only to begin flickering again in seconds. There was something hypnotic about it, the regularity of it, which was almost soothing. Buffy watched it struggling to stay lit, then turned away and looked around the office. Everything was so quiet; there was hardly a sound except for the light above her. “This is different.”
“It looks bigger without all the cops,” Faith replied as she walked between the rows of desks.
“I guess.” Buffy picked up a nameplate from a nearby desk. “Detective Lockley - wasn’t she the one who-”
“Yeah.” Faith’s head dropped for a moment, and then she straightened up and looked at Buffy with her old grin. “She had a wicked beef with Angel.”
“I remember.” A hint of smile crossed Buffy’s face, and then faded as she returned the nameplate to its place. It occurred to her that she shouldn’t be this at ease with Faith around. “Why are we here?”
Faith shrugged. “Last place we saw each other?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what I meant.”
“I know. How come we’re getting in each other’s heads again?” Faith stopped by the window, across the desk from Buffy, looking out between the slats of the blind. “Maybe ‘cause you need to talk to someone.”
“About what?” Buffy asked nonchalantly.
“About what you’re doing, with whoever you’re doing.”
Buffy felt a moment of shame at the implication, but the mask she showed everyone fell into place in a moment. Sitting on the edge of a desk, trying to look relaxed, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, B, this is me you’re dealing with.” Faith turned and leant on Lockley’s desk. Her hair fell around her face, and she glared out from the shadows like a cop interrogating a suspect. “All those little bumps and bruises? Bites, scratches on your back, the down-low ache? I know what makes a girl hurt like that.”
“I thought you’d be cheering me on. You always said I needed to find the fun.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I talk a lot of crap sometimes.” Lockley’s chair creaked as Faith lowered herself into it. “Never pegged you for a cheater, Buffy.”
“I’m not cheating on anyone.”
“That so?” Faith gave her a sceptical look. “Riley’s not into that stuff. I know, I tried, the guy’s bones are vanilla.”
“I’m not with Riley anymore,” Buffy replied. She should have been angry that Faith could talk about it like it was nothing, angry that she’d even mentioned it at all, but the anger wouldn’t come. She saw a question in Faith’s eyes and mustered enough venom to mutter, “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“So who is it?”
“You think I’m going to talk to you about my personal life?”
“You need help, B.”
“From you?”
“From someone, and I’m the only one here.”
“Are you? Here?”
“You think I’m not real?”
“The real Faith wouldn’t be trying to help me.”
“So I’m not real. Doesn’t make me wrong. Look, I know you’re hurting, but this stuff you’re doing, it’s not you.”
“I’m fine. Better than fine. I’m alive, I’m not stuck in some hell dimension-”
“Don’t.” Faith cut her off hard. She got up from the chair and stepped around the desk, facing Buffy with eyes that shimmered in the light. “I’m not buying it. You can play Angel and the Slayerettes with that ‘back from hell’ story, but not me. I’m the one making payments on a condo by the lake of fire. No way you wind up down there.”
There wasn’t even a hint of doubt if Faith’s voice; Buffy had never heard her sound that certain about anything. All of a sudden, Buffy couldn’t bring stand to look at her, couldn’t face what she saw in Faith’s eyes. “They didn’t know what they were doing, they just…”
“They needed you back, so they told themselves it was the right thing to do. I dig it.” When Buffy looked up again, Faith was still gazing sadly at her. “You’ve got to tell them, Buffy. Let them help.”
“I already told them.” The words carried with them all the hopelessness she felt. “They can’t help me, Faith. God, everything’s so messed up right now, I don’t know how I can fix anything.”
“You’ll figure it out, B, you’ve just got to try.” Faith stepped forward, and Buffy went to meet her. “I need you to be okay.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t start climbing out of this hole so I could pass you coming the other way.” Faith raised her hand and brushed a strand of hair from Buffy’s cheek. “You’re supposed to meet me at the top.”
“Faith, is this… is this real?”
“Happy birthday, B.”
Part Fourteen
Stockton, May 2002
It always took forever to rinse out the shampoo. Faith stepped back under the shower head and pulled long strands of wet hair back from her face. Trickles of tepid water snaked across her skin, carrying away the lather in dribs and drabs.
God, I miss real showers. The bathroom she’d had at the motel in Sunnydale, with its endless supply of hot water, seemed like the most decadent of luxuries when she though back to it. A hot shower had always eased the aches after a fight, and even though she knew that her taking a hot one wouldn’t help with the bruises Buffy had picked up the previous night, she couldn’t help wishing she could test the theory. The hot water in NCWF’s showers barely lasted long enough to fog the mirrors, then they had to make do with water that only the most generous person would describe as warm, and the pressure, never high, only got worse as the weather warmed up.
Not long after she’d arrived, Faith had concluded that the water pressure was a big reason why so many of the inmates opted for shorter hair; the feeble spray from the shower heads made washing long hair a tedious exercise at best. She knew that some people thought she was crazy for letting hers get as long as she had, but she couldn’t bring herself to get it cut. Faith couldn’t say if it was vanity, masochism or simple stubbornness that stopped her, and she didn’t particularly care. The hair was part of who she was, and there were a lot of changes she needed to make that ranked above her appearance.
Out of the corner of her eye, Faith saw one of her blockmates handing off something to another prisoner. She’d seen so many contraband trades in the showers that she barely noticed them anymore; it was too easy to palm something behind the privacy screens, even if the guards were watching like hawks, which they weren’t. That day, all but one of the guards were men, and she’d noticed that most of the male guards overcompensated when they were on shower duty and spent so much time not looking at the naked women that they’d barely notice if a riot broke out, whole those that did look were usually too wrapped up in whatever sweaty fantasy their brains had cooked up to see anything at all. It was the female guards who saw things. Hartson had been notorious for picking up on shower-room trades, and for the way she came down on anyone she caught making them; the news that she’d been put on disability after the ‘Christmas Smackdown’, as it had become known, caused a surge of illicit deals. The only way to stop it would have been to cavity-search every prisoner after every shower, and there would never be enough manpower.
One last turn under the showerhead and Faith decided that her hair was a rinsed as it was going to get. She was reaching for the faded towel hanging on the privacy screen when the pain hit her.
A jackhammer impact flared in her chest. It hurt so much that her first thought was that she was having a heart attack, but the blood pounding through her veins told her she was wrong, that it wasn’t coming from her at all. She tried to be ready for it all the time, and even expected it at night, but she’d never felt pain from Buffy at this time of the morning. The shock of it buckled her legs beneath her and she landed in a heap on the tiles, splashing water and soap suds everywhere. A chorus of jeers and catcalls rang through the shower room, mocking her for her clumsiness, but it was all just background noise. Faith’s hands had jumped to her chest, instinctively protecting the wound she felt, and now she forced them down again, clenching her fists as she tried to control the pain. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt before; it struck like an inhumanly strong fist but pierced deep inside her like a blade. Her vision started to blur, and for a moment it was all she could do not to pass out.
Booted footsteps rang on the tiles as a pair of guards came to investigate the commotion. They probably thought there had been an attack, and when they saw Faith sitting on the floor, uninjured and staring up at them, the woman stopped and stared back in confusion. The man tried to keep his expression neutral but there was a leer in his eyes as he took in the view.
Get up.
Get up.
You’re not hurt, so get on your freaking feet!
“I-I slipped,” she replied to the unasked question as she pulled herself up. Even she could hear the trembling in her voice, and in the depths of her minds she knew the guards would think she was covering for someone who’d hit her, but that wasn’t important. She grabbed her towel and started drying off. The guards took that as a cue and began chivvying the others along.
Her hands kept fumbling as she dressed herself, trying to hurry and fighting against a body that couldn’t handle the contradiction of such pain without injury. The delays felt endless, the pain didn’t ease in the slightest. She could feel it sapping her strength but she was terrified that it would end. That could only mean one thing.
As soon as she was released back into the cell block, Faith rushed up to her cell and grabbed the phone card she’d traded for all those months ago and kept hidden ever since. Clutching it in her hand, she made her way down to the payphones. By the time she arrived she could barely see straight.
The phone seemed to ring forever before the machine picked up, taunting her with the sound of Buffy’s voice before letting her speak. “Buffy! If there’s anyone there, pick up, please. Buffy’s hurt, you’ve got to find her. Can anyone hear me? Damn it!” There was no response from the other end. She hung up and tried to think.
“Okay, okay…” She picked up the handset again and dialled 411.
“Directory assistance, how can I help you?”
“Yeah, I need a number in Sunnydale, California. The name’s Giles, Rupert Giles.”
There was a tapping of keys, and then the operator said. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I have no listing under that name.”
“What? No, that’s wrong; it’s got to be there.”
“I have no listing under that name.”
“Okay, what about Alexander Harris, same town.”
“I have that number, shall I connect you?”
“Yes!”
The call went through to another machine. She called out, hoping he would hear her, but nothing. She hung up, dialled 411 again and asked for the Rosenberg house.
“How are you spelling that name, please?”
“Damn it… R-O-S-E-” The pain in her chest vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. “…no…”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, can you repeat that?”
The handset began to slip from her fingers as she waited for the void to tear open inside her, willing it to finish her this time. It never came, and as the moments passed she realised that the she could still feel the bruises from the night before.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
“…never mind...” Faith hung up the phone and slumped against the wall, sliding down until she hit the floor, her head bowed.
She’s alive.
Part Fifteen
Stockton, June 2002
Buffy caught herself fiddling with her bracelet again and very deliberately put her hands on her knees. She couldn’t have felt more out of place, and the way one of the guards kept looking at her wasn’t helping at all. In a way she couldn’t blame him, she didn’t exactly fit in with the other people in the visiting room. It was full of boyfriends, husbands, parents, children – pretty much everything except twenty-one-year-old women.
What the hell am I doing here? She started a minute examination of her fingernails, just to give herself something to concentrate on apart from how ridiculous she felt sitting there. She’d come all this way and walked into this place, a place where they searched you before they’d let you talk to someone through a sheet of glass, and why? Because of a couple of phone messages and a half-remembered dream she’d convinced herself was nothing more than that.
Every noise from the other side of the glass was muted, but Buffy caught the sound of one of the barred doors opening and looked up in time to see Faith walking into the room. She did a tiny double-take, so small that anyone who didn’t know her wouldn’t even see it, but it made Buffy feel a little better that she wasn’t the only one feeling surprised. Somehow she’d expected Faith to look the same as always, all dark makeup, denim and attitude. The sombre-faced woman in the shapeless blue shirt walking toward her wasn’t what she’d prepared herself for. It wasn’t the Faith who’d betrayed her, the Faith who’d woken up and sought vengeance, or the Faith she’d confronted on Angel’s rooftop. It was someone else, someone she didn’t know how to deal with.
It was someone who sat down opposite her, picked up the phone and waited. Buffy snapped herself out of her daze and did the same. “Hi.”
“B.” If Faith was feeling as uncomfortable as Buffy was, she didn’t show any sign of it. “They said you asked for a visitor’s pass, I thought maybe I was hearing things. What’s the deal?”
“You tried to call me, I got your message. So did Xander. You sounded… I don’t know, worried, I guess.”
“Worried… yeah, you could say that.” There was something in Faith’s eyes that suggested it wasn’t exactly the right word, but Buffy had no idea what that word could be. The idea of Faith, the real Faith, worrying about her was off-putting enough already. “You got hurt.”
“Yeah.” Buffy felt her hand straying toward her chest and put it back down on the desk. “I was shot.”
“Shot? Like, shot, with a gun? You’ve got…” Faith glanced around for a moment and lowered her voice. “You’ve got uglies carrying guns now?”
“It wasn’t an ‘ugly’. It was just a guy, some pathetic little man trying to be a supervillain He couldn’t handle getting beaten by a girl.”
“So he shot you. Son of a bitch.” There was real anger in Faith’s voice, and Buffy could see her having to work to keep it under control. “You got over it kind of quick, even for us.”
“I had some help. Willow, she fixed me up.”
“Neat. I’m glad everyone’s okay.” Faith must have seen something in her face, because her expression changed in a moment. “Everyone’s not okay.”
“He… he killed Tara.”
“Tara…” Faith’s eyes narrowed as she tried to place the name. “Willow’s girl?”
“Yeah. She died in Willow’s arms.”
“Damn.” The anger flared again, burning deep in Faith’s eyes. “Tell me you got the guy, B.”
“He’s…” Buffy swallowed, trying not to remember seeing Warren die. “He’s gone.”
“Gone, you mean…” Faith stared straight at her, her face shocked. “You didn’t…”
Buffy shook her head. “Willow.”
“Oh God.” The dark eyes closed for a moment, and Faith bowed her head. “What happened to her?”
“Giles took her to England. She’s… she’s working through it.”
“Took her to England.” Faith nodded like it was the obvious thing to do, but there was something in her voice that set Buffy’s teeth on edge. “Maybe I should have taken Wes up on the offer.”
The old buried anger surged up Buffy’s throat. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to her. She was caught up in something, something dark and powerful, for months, and then she lost the person she loved. You can’t imagine what she went through.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I’ve got no clue how it feels getting swallowed by the dark.”
“She is nothing like you” Buffy stopped, trying to make herself calm down. “Faith, wait, I’m-”
It was too late; Faith was slamming the doors closed before her eyes. “Why’d you come here, B?”
“I thought you were worried about me.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for the update.”
“Faith…”
“Take care of yourself, B.” Faith hung up the phone and walked away, never looking back.
Buffy felt as though she was about to explode as she made her way back through the security checks. Stupid, stupid stupid… What’s wrong with me? I can’t even be in the same room with her? She was furious with herself for falling back into the old pattern so easily, and what bothered her the most was that she didn’t understand why she was so angry. Faith didn’t have any right to think that way, did she? So why shouldn’t Buffy get angry at her? It all churned through her mind, and she had to fight not to let it show until she got back to the car. She got in behind the wheel and slammed the door shut, then smashed her fist into the dashboard. She’d meant to just vent some of what she was feeling so she could get away, but once she’d opened the door she couldn’t close it again. Her fist pounded the dash over and over until it was covered with a spider’s web of cracks in the plastic, and then she slumped forward over the steering wheel and let herself weep.
Part Sixteen
Stockton, December 2002
Down in the dayroom, someone raised their voice in complaint about something, probably what was on the TV that evening. Faith ignored it, concentrating on her pencil as it traced a long graceful curve across the page. She shifted a little on her bunk, angling her sketch pad toward the light, and examined the line for a moment, deciding whether or not it was right. Satisfied, she started stroking her thumb gently along it, smudging it to soften the outline.
“Still on the art therapy?”
Faith looked up and saw Eddie standing in the cell door. “Yeah, the shrink says it’ll help me externalise my rage or some crap like that.” She wanted to smile at him, but that would have been against the rules of the unspoken agreement they seemed to have come to over the last year. She pretended he was just another hack, he pretended he wasn’t watching out for her. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected he was the one who’d got the shrink to put her on the art program in the first place.
“Hey, I’ve seen it work,” he replied. “You know the light’s better downstairs, right?”
“I know. I just like working in the quiet. Don’t get a whole lot of it round here.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He glanced down at the sketch pad. “Marquez, right?” Faith just nodded, not trusting herself to speak, but he must have seen what she was feeling. “It wasn’t your fault, Lehane. Sometimes people just fall apart in here.”
“Didn’t help much, did I? Wasn’t even here.” She added a touch more shading under Cat’s jaw line. “I don’t know how close it is.”
“I think you got her down,” Eddie assured her. “You’re getting good at this stuff. You mind showing me some more?”
“Go ahead.” Faith pointed him toward the small stack of sketchbooks and loose drawings on her shelf. Then she remembered what was hidden inside. “Wait…”
Too late; he’d already found the little notebook hidden in the pile and was flicking through it. “These are real good. Who is this?”
“Just… someone I knew a long time ago.” She wanted to play it down, but she knew she was wasting her time trying to fool him.
“Must have been more than that, you keep drawing her like this. Is she the one you talked about in solitary? The one who died?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s her. She’s not dead though.” Eddie looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
“So who is she? Girlfriend?”
Faith couldn’t help laughing, even though acknowledging how crazy the idea was hurt her inside. “God, no, she’d have a coronary if anyone thought me and her were getting nasty together. She’s… I don’t know, she’s like the way things could have been, you know? We could have been friends. She wanted to help me, but… I didn’t want help.”
“You ever talk to her?”
“No. We don’t exactly get along these days.”
“Things change.”
“Yeah, and you can’t put them back the way they were.”
“Sometimes you can.” Eddie handed her the notebook and smiled. “I’d better get going.”
“Yeah, we don’t want people thinking you like me, I’ve got a rep to protect,” she grinned back.
After he’d gone, Faith added a few touches to her sketch, but she couldn’t concentrate on it any more. She set it aside and picked up the notebook, turning the pages one by one. A dozen Buffys looked back at her from scenes half-remembered, half-imagined. The night they killed Kakistos. Christmas Eve. The notice board at the college The night they stopped off for pizza during a patrol. As always, she finished with her favourite; the Homecoming dance, Buffy in her ball gown, her face streaked with dirt but still beautiful. A perfect image from the time before everything got complicated.
She was putting the notebook away when something hit her in the back, and she’d reached out to steady herself against the wall before she realised it was Buffy who’d been struck. Fresh pain blossomed in her cheek, and then below her ribs, the hardest blows she could remember feeling for a long time. She thought of the phone card again, a voice inside her screaming that she should make contact, warn them that something was wrong, but she couldn’t. The memory of Buffy’s visit held her back, made her do what she always did. Huddle up on her bunk, grit her teeth and wait for it to end.
Part Seventeen
Sunnydale, April 2003
“Sure, no problem Giles. I’ll let her know. Take care.” Willow hung up the phone with a faint sigh of relief. As much as she knew that Giles could take care of himself, with everything that was going on she felt better for hearing his voice.
The house felt even more claustrophobic than usual. Potentials seemed to be everywhere, squabbling with each other and generally getting in everyone’s way. For a moment, Willow considered going to the basement to see Spike, just to get away from it all, but she had a job to do. A teeny little job, but still a job.
She collared Vi at the bottom of the stairs. “Have you seen Buffy?”
“Uh, yeah, I think she’s out back. She interrupted training and sent us all back inside.”
“Huh.” It sounded odd; Buffy had been pushing them all to train harder for days. “Okay, I’ll go find her and see what’s up.”
Getting through the kitchen was a nightmare - Andrew was trying to keep half a dozen girls away from a batch of muffins that hadn’t cooled yet – but she made it out onto the back porch. The garden looked empty. “Buffy?”
“Over here, Will.” Buffy’s voice sounded strained.
Willow followed it around the corner and found Buffy sitting on the grass in the shadow of a bush, her back up against the wall. Her head was down, her hair hanging loose around her, but Willow knew her too well not to realise that she was in pain. “Buffy? What happened?”
“It’s not me,” Buffy said without looking up.
“Faith, right. You think she got in a fight or something?”
“I don’t think so, Will. I could feel it happening. Whatever did this, I don’t think it was human. Maybe the First sent something after her, I don’t know.”
“How bad?”
“Bad. Maybe ubervamp bad, I don’t know.”
“Well, she’s alive, right? I mean, if she wasn’t alive, you wouldn’t be… yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think so. I’m okay, Will, I just need a minute.” Buffy raised her head and pushed her hair back, wiping her hands across her face as she did so. “You were looking for me?”
“I was? Oh, yeah, right. Giles just called, he said to tell you he should be back tomorrow.”
“Good, that’s good. Thanks, Will.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’ll be fine, honest. I just didn’t want the Potentials to see me like this, they need to… Can you get them together? I want to go through some stuff with them this afternoon.”
“Sure.”
Buffy stayed seated until Willow was out of sight, then she stood up, quietly wiped away the last of the tears she’d been hiding and went back to work.
Part Eighteen
Santa Barbara, May 2003
For a few hours in the afternoon, the last bus out of Sunnydale reduced the emergency department at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital to near-chaos. No sooner had the staff begun to deal with the wounded and pack the critical cases off to surgery than the police arrived, wanting to interview the refugees, and after them came the reporters trying to piece together the story of the abandonment and destruction of an entire town.
The hospital more or less kept the reporters at bay, and Giles did his best to deal with the police, who seemed to buy into his story that they’d taken the school bus when the ground started shaking. In theory, that left Buffy free to watch over their rag-tag army, but as some were taken away for treatment and others went in search of food or a place to rest, she started to lose track of them. All the adrenaline had soaked out of her system about five minutes after they reached the hospital, leaving her with nothing to hold back the fatigue built up over months of violence and fear. To make matters worse, one of the doctors figured out that some of the blood on her clothes was hers and started insisting that she needed to be examined. Buffy tried to say no, but that just earned her a sharp look from her sister and she was too tired to argue. By the time the doctor had looked at her wounds and run a battery of tests, her people were scattered all over the hospital and beyond, and it was a long time before she’d accounted for all of them. All but one.
She ran into Dawn in the lobby of the emergency room. “Hey, have you seen Faith?”
“Last time I saw her she was headed for surgery with Principal Wood, but that was like right after we arrived. Maybe she’s waiting for him?”
“No, I was just up there; they said she came back down here hours ago.” Buffy’s eyes swept the E.R., searching for dark hair or a denim jacket.
“Buffy, you don’t think maybe she took off when she saw the cops?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. Okay, look, you stay here and grab her if you see her, I’ll go check outside.”
In all the upheaval that followed the battle, Buffy had so lost track of time that she when she stepped outside she was surprised to find that it was almost dark. The sun was disappeared below the horizon, staining the western sky red and orange like a pyre marking the death of her home town, and for the first time she truly felt the enormity of what had happened. Her whole life was gone, buried at the bottom of a miles-wide crater in the desert.
No, that wasn’t true, she told herself. The places were gone, but most of the people she cared about were still with her, and that was enough. Assuming she could track down the last of them.
A trail of smoke drifting over the top of a hedge caught her eye as she crossed the parking lot. She found Faith on the other side, sprawled on a bench in the shadow of the hospital. There was a cigarette in her hand; she seemed to have forgotten about it as she sat with her head back, eyes closed, as though she was soaking up the last of the light. She looked relaxed, almost at peace, and for a second Buffy didn’t want to disturb her, but then Faith opened her eyes and glanced her way, and her demeanour changed. She tensed for a moment but then it faded, leaving behind a sense of sadness that made Buffy wish she’d left Faith alone.
“Hey B.”
“Hey.” Buffy walked over to the bench and stood there, arms folded in front of her. “I was wondering where you were.”
Faith’s eyes darkened for a moment; Buffy could almost hear her thinking you thought I took off. “Figured I’d better keep my head down when the cops showed up.”
“Thanks. It could have been…” Buffy fumbled for a word, “complicated.”
“Yeah. They didn’t see Excalibur?”
“We are so not calling it Excalibur. And no, I got the scythe off the bus before they showed up. Will and Kennedy went to get some motel rooms for us, they’re looking after it.”
“You put those two in a motel room and you think they’re on guard duty?”
“Andrew’s with them.”
“Damn, B!” Faith’s eyes lit up with amusement. “That’s wicked harsh. I know you’re not a fan of the brat, but you had to sic that guy on Red?”
“There wasn’t anyone else!” Buffy protested. “Giles was talking to the cops, the doctors wanted to check on Xander’s eye, Vi says she’s not going anywhere until Rona wakes up and most of the girls were hurt one way or another.”
“You could have sent Dawn.”
Buffy found herself staring at her own toes. “I… kind of want to keep her close right now.”
Faith nodded. “Yeah, I get that. Rona’s going to be okay?”
“She’s a Slayer now; she’ll be back on her feet in a couple of days.”
“Cool.” Faith hesitated, then looked up at her and asked “Did you hear anything about Robin?” Buffy looked faintly queasy, and Faith’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“You had sex with my little sister’s high school principle, in my bed. It’s… creepy.”
“I had sex with your boyfriend while I was in your body, B. It’s all relative.”
“I’m not grading on a curve here.” Buffy shook off the image. “The doctors say he’ll be okay, but it’s going to be a while. He got hit pretty hard.”
“He’s not the only one.” Faith glanced at Buffy’s stomach. “You sure you’re okay?”
Buffy’s finger toyed with the hole in her blouse. “It’s nothing.”
“Went right through you, B.”
“I’m okay. The docs had a minor freak-out about it, but nothing major got hit and it’s all closed up, so…” She shrugged.
“What about the rest of you?”
Buffy almost launched into the same ‘Stoical Slayer’ routine she’d been using on everyone else, but for the first time in years she didn’t care if Faith saw how she really was. She sat down on the bench beside Faith, groaning a little as she did. “Honestly? I’m tired, I ache, my home’s gone, my worldly goods consist of a kick-ass scythe and one outfit with the cutest little blood-stained holes, I’ve got a couple of dozen people all looking at me like I’m this great hero and waiting for me to tell them what to do next, and about an hour ago I remembered I left my wallet on the dresser, which means I have no drivers licence, no money, no credit card and no ATM card, so right now the mighty leader can’t even get herself a cup of coffee out of a vending machine.”
Faith listened, thought for a moment, then pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket and offered them to Buffy.
“A world of no,” Buffy said, “but thanks.”
“You sure? There’s only two left, better get in now.”
“I’m good. And I’m sorry about the bitchfest, I ought to be glad I’m even here at all.”
“Nah, you’re good. And I hear bloodstains are going to be big this fall.”
Buffy giggled. “Neat. I always wanted to start a trend.” The moment of levity passed, and she looked over at Faith again. “How about you, are you okay?”
“Five by five. Biggest sore spot I’ve got’s yours – but I guess you know that already.”
“Yeah. You know Will thought there was a chance we’d break the link when she did the spell?”
“I’m just happy we didn’t get all the girls hooked into our thing.”
“Yeah, that would’ve been bad,” Buffy agreed, trying not to picture all of them feeling each other’s wounds. Each other’s deaths.
“How many’d we lose?”
“Spike. Anya. Amanda. Maria. Stacey.”
“What happened to Stacey?”
“Kennedy said she saw her go off the ledge.” Buffy closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m kind of hoping the fall killed her.”
“Yeah,” Faith whispered, knowing it hadn’t. “That makes, what, seventeen new Slayers and us?”
“Plus all the others we never knew about. Will told me she could feel them, all of them, getting their power.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands, all over the world.”
Faith gasped. “How the hell did the teabag patrol miss that many?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were meant to.”
“You’re going to have to get organised, B.”
“Don’t remind me. I try to think about what we’re going to do, and all my brain’s coming up with is ‘I want to go to Disneyland’.” Buffy let her head roll back and looked up at the stars starting to appear in the darkening sky. “You know what? I’m done. I’m off the clock for tonight, all this stuff can just be tomorrow problems.”
“Sounds good to me.” Faith leaned back herself and gazed up into the night. “Still feels weird, looking up and seeing stars. It’s pretty.”
“I know what you mean. I spend so much time outside at night, and I’m looking everywhere except up. Maybe we’ll have more time now.” Buffy let the view sink in for a while, then she turned to look at Faith. She was staring upward as though she wanted to memorise every star in case she never saw them again; seeing that look on her face made Buffy want to comfort her, but she didn’t know how or for what. “You know, we haven’t really had a chance to talk since you got back.”
“Yeah. My fault, I guess. I’m sorry about the way things went down, B. I swear, I never thought it would go that far, I just wanted you to slow down for a bit.”
“No, you guys were right, I was being an idiot. Not about going back to the vineyard, but there’s no way taking the Potentials was a good idea, no with Caleb there. We’d just have been giving him more targets, and we couldn’t kept them all safe and gotten to the scythe.”
“Some things you’ve got to do yourself, right?”
“No. I should have gone in with you. One of us keeps him occupied; the other one grabs the scythe.” Buffy let out a sigh born of shame as much as regret. “I don’t know why I didn’t realise that at the time. If I’d been thinking straight…”
“Hey, I get it now. Everyone’s looking at you to make the call…”
“And if you don’t do something right away, you feel like you’re letting them down.”
Faith stopped looking at the stars and her eyes met Buffy’s. “I always thought you were the lucky one, having all the people around you. I guess sometimes it’s easier being alone.”
“No,” Buffy replied. “No, it’s not.”
They held the gaze for a moment, and then Faith looked away. “Yeah, well, all I know is I never want to be the one giving the orders again.”
“You did okay, I keep telling you.”
“I walked right into a trap, B.”
“And I’ve never done that,” Buffy said. She almost reached out, but held herself back. “Seriously, you kept them all together, that’s a lot.”
“Spike was about ready to kill me.”
“I know.” Buffy ducked her head for a moment, blinking away a tear.
“How do you do it, B?”
“Do what?”
“You take these losers and turn them into heroes.”
“I don’t… what are you talking about?”
“Come on, B. You got William the Bloody getting his soul back and saving the world, and the way I hear it Angel wasn’t exactly the champion type when you guys met up. You made them better.” Faith took a last hit from her cigarette and let the smoke drift out into the night. “Too bad it only works on vamps, huh?”
The way Faith spoke made Buffy look up sharply, but Faith either didn’t notice it or pretended not to. Buffy hesitated, and said, “They loved me. It changes people.”
“Yeah.” Faith ground the cigarette under her heel, looking very carefully down at the ground as she did. “Yeah, I guess. And you loved them.”
Don’t say something you can’t take back. Buffy didn’t know where the thought came from, or which of them it was aimed at. “I don’t think I’m ready to love anyone right now.”
“’Course not, you just lost-”
“I don’t just mean that.” Do not mention the cookie dough metaphor, she’ll never let it go. “I just need to be single for a while, you know?”
“Yeah, sure. You’re going to be busy as hell anyway, lots to do.”
“Lots to do,” agreed Buffy, grateful for the way out. “How about you, any plans?”
Faith shrugged. “It’s not exactly up to me.”
“I’m not going to make you go back to jail, Faith,” Buffy said. She tried to make eye contact, but Faith kept avoiding her. “What do you want to do?”
“Who cares, B?”
A fuse Buffy hadn’t even known was burning ran out. She sprang off the bench, too upset to think before she spoke.” Okay, that’s it, I’m done with all this avoidance mixed-signal crap!”
“You think that’s what I’m-”
“It’s all we ever do. We start talking, then one of us shuts down and I’ve had it! Just be honest with me, Faith. Tell me what you want.”
Faith stared at her in shock, obviously not sure how to respond. Buffy didn’t say anything more, but she wouldn’t look away, and eventually Faith surrendered. She lit another cigarette and took a couple of drags, then said, “You know the worst thing about being in jail, B? Nothing you do matters, you can’t make a difference anywhere. Three years, Buffy, I felt every fight you had, like I was always with you but I couldn’t do a damn thing to help. I hated it, but I thought I had to do my time to make things right. Except my time’s never done, there’s no parole board waiting for me, and it’s not about where I am, it’s about what I’m doing. I’m supposed to be helping people, making the world better, being a Slayer again. And I want to do it, I want to do what’s right, but…”
“But what?”
“But I can’t!” Faith yelled at her. “Don’t you get it? I want to do the right thing, but I can’t, and I hate it!”
“Why can’t you?”
Faith stared at her in disbelief, and then suddenly ground her cigarette out on her own palm. Buffy gasped as the burn flared in her hand. “That’s why!” Faith snapped. “We can’t both be out there, B, I’ll get you killed.”
“We’ll figure something out…”
“I felt you die, Buffy,” Faith whispered. Her head was bowed now; she looked as though her outburst had drained her. “I felt you die, and then there this hole inside. I can’t go through that again, I can’t.”
“Faith, listen to me,” Buffy sat down again beside her. “We’ll figure out how to break the link.”
Faith shook her head. “Forget it, B. Giles already told me he could never find a way. I mean, you died and it’s still there.”
“That was before. Willow’s way more powerful than she was, and we’ve got the scythe now. If it can call every Potential in the world, it can help us with this.”
“And what if it can’t?”
“We’ll work something out,” Buffy insisted. “We’ll do shifts, alternate days or something. Maybe one of us can slay while the other one trains the new girls, I don’t know.”
“What about us, B? You sure you want me around like that?”
“Yes.” Buffy felt the urge to reach out again, and this time she didn’t fight it. Her hand closed over Faith’s; the other girl looked up in surprise, but she didn’t pull away. She looked like she was about to speak, but Buffy stopped her. “Faith, just listen to me, okay? I know we’ve never been friends, but we should have been, and I want us to be. When I was at the vineyard, and I felt you get hurt… I thought you were dying, and I was terrified that I’d never see you again. I know it sounds weird after everything that’s happened, but I’m glad you’re back in my life, and I want you to stick around. I don’t know if we’ll be friends, or co-workers, or… or Option C, whatever that is. I just know I want us to be okay. Do… do you…”
“Yeah.” Faith nodded, and then looked away. “You figured out how to make it work?”
“God, do I have to think of everything?” Buffy protested, but for all the indignation in her voice she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “Do you have any idea the kind of day I’ve had? I got run through with a sword, you know.”
Faith smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I think I saw that. Didn’t look so bad.”
“Oh, you’re so going to regret that.” Buffy punched her on the arm, and then she grew serious again. “Look, we already saved the world today. Can we be a tomorrow problem?”
The End
