Faith's P.O.V
So... Willow said not to go and see her. But since when the hell did I ever listen to Willow? Since never the hell, that's when. Which is why I decided to go see her. Kicked Willow's ass right the hell out, showered, and now I'm standing underneath the tree outside of B's window. Which is really a metaphor for sex, probably.
And also, why am I missing a sock, but still have both boots on? It's a mystery, that's for fucking sure. A chilling, mind-boggling, thriller of a mystery. A conundrum.
What the hell is a conundrum?
Is it like a chilling, mind-boggling conundrum of a Willow? Which is kind of like a regular Willow, but nicer and she runs funny. Yeah, that was good. She's a running maniac! Which is kind of like a regular maniac, but she... runs. Although, I guess that regular maniacs can run. They're not fun like running maniacs though.
Running maniacs are a conundrum.
I miss my sock.
I think that I'll start up my own sock-hunting agency, so that other people don't find themselves in the same situation. Just need a cool-sounding name, something like, "Conundrum-Faith's Sock-hunting Agency!" Wicked. Now I need my own crew.
I'll be president and Buffy can be my bitch. Willow and Xander and Cordy can be the special elite, sock-hunting detectives who work for Poptarts. Angel's the pussy janitor. Giles can be the librarian still. Oh, and Oz can just be his werewolf-self. Werewolves have good senses, Oz can smell out the socks... I don't think he'd appreciate that very much, but who cares? He's my bitch. No wait, Buffy's my bitch. Oh well, they can all be my bitches. Fun for everyone.
Except Angel.
One sunny day, he'll accidentally impale himself on the mop handle, while he's busy having sex with it, then no more Mr But-I'm-the-boyfriend-of-the-girl-whose-vocabulary-only-seems-to-consist-of "But-I-have-boyfriend" and-therefore-the-specialest-of-special. He'll be dead and I'll even teach Buffy some new words to say. Something like, "Fuck yeah, Faith. Nobody gets me hot like you do, you sexy beast" etcetera, etcetera.
We'll see who's laughing then, you big dopey mop-fucker.
So I suppose that I should actually climb this tree if I want to see Buffy. I wonder just how pissed she is... Like, "I'd rather be mauled to death by a thousand rabid giraffes in a vat of acid, while making love to ten geese simultaneously, than ever think of you again, so drop dead," pissed, or, "Get the hell out of my house, I never want to see you again," pissed... Because I'm thinking that we can work on that second one.
Grabbing onto the first branch, I haul myself up, placing one leg on either side of it. I wonder if I can see...
"Ooh, I so wouldn't do that if I were you." A voice says from right under me.
"Dawn!" Startled, I jump back down to the ground. 'Cause I'm all innocent like that. "Uh... do what?"
"She told me to tell you that she's not home. Of course, that was assuming you were a normal person and would come to the front door.
I'm a normal person. I'm even the president of my own detective firm now. Angel's not the president. Angel gets to climb up the tree all the damn time and I bet no-one gives him crap for it. And how did Dawn escape my super-special detective powers so easily? But more importantly...
"She's not home?"
I walked all the way here, semi-sockless, and now she's not even home? If she's with Angel re-establishing their fragile, little "relationship" then I will seriously stake his ass.
"No, she is," Dawn says, walking back to the open doorway. "I said that she told me to tell you she wasn't home. Which is why it gives me endless amounts of pleasure to tell you that she's very much at home. Probably up in her room lamenting the hardships of being a teenage vampire slayer." Dawn pauses just long enough to roll her eyes. "She does that a lot."
"It's a conundrum," I agree, following her inside and closing the door behind us.
Dawn gives me a strange look, but then shakes it off, leaning against the side of the couch. "So spill, what'd you do to her this time?"
What did I do? That's a real good question, seeing as how I didn't really do anything and all. I just played the game that she set up. So really... I'm blame-free, and Buffy has some serious mental problems. Maybe even syphilis too.
"Nothing."
"Faith," Dawn says with a small amount of skepticism. "Remember the last time Buffy said that you couldn't come inside the house for, like, a week? I mean, the girl's not all that bright, but she doesn't just get mad for no reason at all."
"Okay, first of all, you're meant to be on my side. Second of all, the time that you're talking about was funny, and definitely doesn't deserve banishment from the house. She wanted to be in that dumpster. Third of all... there is no third of all, but I'm right. Clearly."
"That was pretty neat," Dawn concedes.
"Thank you."
"Yeah, she smelled funky for, like, two whole days. You probably got the better end of the deal, not having to be here and everything." She slides down onto the couch. "So...?"
"So." I shrug.
"Come on, Faith. Your talent for tormenting my sister is unparalleled. It's brilliance incarnate. If there's a story, I need to know. Blackmail purposes... You understand."
"There's no story," I say, and for all my efforts at denial I receive a look in return. "Dawn, seriously, what do you want me to say?"
"Okay, just finish this sentence: Buffy is moping around in her room and yelling way more than usual because..."
She's severely, sexually frustrated is the first thing that comes to mind. Now that I'm inside the house it's obvious she regrets kicking me out this time. Yeah well, there's a whole lot of begging that needs to be done before she worms her way back into my good graces... Do I have graces? Are they good? I guess that I do. And Buffy is going to come crawling back to me and my graces, crying like a little baby and pleading for forgiveness. "Please forgive me, Faith," she will plead. And I will yell, "Never!" While pointing at her with my pointer of doom, which is really just my finger, but I'm a pirate as well, for some reason. "You have crossed me for the last time, Summers. Now prepare to die." And then we both fight to the death and die, also...
No wait, that's not good.
Never mind. The point here, is that, for once, I am the innocent wounded party. A victim of sexy, half-naked women. A wronged victim! Again. I always seem to be the victim, but that's because I'm the perfect target for lust, greed and deception... Is that--? Whatever. She so wants me. It's really kind of cute how desperate she is to maintain this façade of indifference.
"Faith? Sentence?" Dawn asks impatiently.
"Oh, right. What was it again, again?"
"Buffy is super, seriously pissed at you because...?"
"Oh, that. Yeah, I kissed her."
And I'd do it again, too. Except maybe next time I'd dodge her limbs before they have an opportunity to crush. B's really, very violent when you think about it. Way more than me. I mean, I don't beat her up every chance that I get, do I?
Dawn coughs. "You what now?"
I shrug again in response.
I'm thinking that maybe I should have stuck with my 'Shut the hell up, Faith' policy. I always forget that policy just when I need it the most. And now I don't know whether to laugh at how disgusted she looks, or try to explain... Can't really explain because then she'll know just how bad her sister wants me, what with the obvious lust on Buffy's side and everything. "Get out of my house, right now" is totally code for "You are my new God, who I now worship and stuff." Buffy's a tricky person to analyze, she really just needs to say what she thinks. Took me a few hours, but I finally deciphered the meaning.
"Wow. You're really, really sick, Faith, you know that? Sorry." She shakes her head slightly. "I mean, all this time I thought you were just humoring her, but now it turns out that you actually like her. The world makes no sense." Dawn looks at me sadly. "You're dead to me now."
"Sorry to hear that, kid."
"You... and Buffy. You really kissed her? With lips. With your lips, you kissed her?"
"Well, I didn't really kiss her because if I really kissed her, then she would have all 'Ugh, fu-' Never mind. Look, the point is that you, both of you, get all worked up over nothing. 'Oh no, Faith accidentally threw me in the dumpster.' 'Faith made fun of my friends, however will I go on living my life?' 'Oh my God! Faith kissed me that one time for all of one second, I might as well just die right now!' What's with the melodrama? I mean, for real, it's just not right."
"Oh man." Dawn lifts her head up, rubbing at her eyes. "You used to be so cool, too."
"I'm still cool." She gives me another look. "What? I am."
"Actually, no. No, you're not. Minus a gazillion points for nightmare images that will no doubt haunt my every waking hour for the next millennia."
"Oh, we have a point system now, do we? Well, what about the leather. Doesn't that count for anything anymore?"
"A little," she agrees, but soon goes back to looking incredibly disillusioned. "I mean, Jesus, Faith, you're lucky to escape with your life! Don't you know that Buffy has these metal-melting mucus glands under her tongue? They're, like, totally hazardous to your health. Not to mention all that time she spent living in the bus station. Unsanitary."
B didn't really live at the bus station, but Dawn has all these stories that she makes up. Some of them are pretty funny. Like once, she claimed that Buffy came as a free gift with her mom's thigh master. And, another time, that a group of renegade aliens ditched her in a locker at the airport until someone dumped her on their front porch. Dawn's weird. Just like B. That's why I like her, though. And also why I'm not kicking her ass right now, because I am, too, cool, damn it.
Way cooler than Angel.
And I have better hair.
"I suppose that I should go check in on your unsanitary sister, then," I say, looking at the stairs nervously. "Just to make sure that she didn't, you know, really die from complete disgust."
"Oh please." Dawn throws her hand up dismissively. "She's lucky that people even bother to look at her, let alone come crawling back every time she gets angry. What's so special about Buffy, anyway? I mean, she's semi-retarded, for one thing. Plus, there's that weird smell coming from her bedroom. And I think that she might be a communist."
"Hey! Hey, she's the crawler. I'm the crawl-ee. I'm the begged and she's the beggar. See the difference?"
"No. What I do see is that it's almost one o'clock in the morning and here you are, all ready to drop to your knees and ask for forgiveness. What's wrong with this scenario? Well, I will tell you. Everything."
"Aww..." I ruffle her hair slightly. "I know that you really love B. You don't have to pretend on my account."
She shoves my hand away, looking extremely offended. "I'm not pretending, Faith. She really, truly sucks. And now, so do you."
"Fine, be that way." I stand up. "But you know what? One of these days you'll be sucked into some kind of huge mega-vortex and all the people that you claim suck so bad won't be there to save you. No, they'll be off having tea somewhere, thinking, 'Oh, well Dawn said that I suck, so I hope that she has fun living in a vortex for the rest of her life.'" She rolls her eyes at that. "Yeah, that's right. You just think about it."
"Scenario likelihood is slim-to-none. So to that, I say, bite me." She smiles sweetly.
God, I love this kid. Seriously.
Parenting is hard work. But I think I'm doing a decent job. Now I just need to get her to slip "ass-fucker" into a conversation with one of her teachers, and my life will be complete. All of my wisdom will have been passed on to the next generation, and I can retire. She's a good student.
But right now, I should probably do that thing that I came here for. What exactly did I come here for? A beating? An apology? To apologize? One of those, anyway. I figure that it's one of those things that you can't really know what you're going to do until you're staring the person in the face. Like that time when Willow flew a pencil straight into my ass, and then acted all innocent. She was all 'Oh sorry, must have been that other person who can fly pencils around in the air like a moron.' I really thought that I was going to knock her out. But then it was kind of funny, so I laughed instead. That's okay though, I made sure to trip her over the next time she got in my way. But at the time, I laughed, and I didn't think I was going to. So, my point is, maybe Buffy will think that this is kind of funny, too. Or I could always deny that it happened, scream about hallucinations, and then knock her out and tie her up. Lock her in a cave somewhere. Feed her berries... Do unspeakable things to her body, the usual.
I'm half-way up the stairs before I remember something. "Hey, Dawn?"
"Yeah?" She leans forward from her position on the couch so that I can just see her.
"Your mom's not here, right?"
"Why?" She looks at me suspiciously.
"Because I was thinking about telling her what a little punk her daughter is. Why the hell do you think?"
"Gee, I don't know, Faith. So you can make all kinds of weird, disgusting noises with my sister and not get busted?"
I didn't even think about that. Good one. "Just answer the question."
"No," she says shortly, disappearing from view again.
Damn. I lost the respect of a thirteen year old. That takes talent.
Oh well, she'll get over it. It's not like there's anything to get over, anyway, so it'll take even less time.
When I get to Buffy's door, I think about knocking, but then, what if she hears? Which is kind of the point of knocking on someone's door... for them to hear. But what if she hears, opens the door, and slams her fist into my face? Maybe I should have bought some face-protection. And really, it's also kind of late to be just showing up at people's houses all random. She's probably sleeping. What if I wake her up, and again with the fists of rage? Or what if she's already awake, and she makes with the face-slamming, except this time it's worse because she's all fully-conscious.
I should probably just go home. To my home. Where my face is safe from acts of violence. And what would I say? 'Oh, hey Buff. Sorry to wake you, but I really just wanted to say that I kinda like ya. 'Kay, goodnight'? That's stupid. How do I get myself into these crazy conundrums?
Besides, it's not like she doesn't know. I haven't exactly been the super subtle-girl of subtle-town. Might as well start carrying around a sign - Will have sex with Buffy for food. Or something. I'll make it later. Maybe Xander will think it's funny.
Slowly, I push the door open. It's kind of dark in here, but I didn't see the light on from outside either. I guess that she's sleeping.
This is one of those moments that you can't think about too much. 'Cause if you do, you might just run away. Which makes me wonder, is sneaking into someone's room all creepy-stalker better than just waiting like a normal person? It doesn't really seem like the smart thing to do... Maybe that's why I'm doing it, though. 'Cause I'm rebellious like that. Besides, does anything that I ever do make sense?
Buffy's room mocks me. All warm and inviting and full of nice things. It says, Ha! This is everything that you'll never have, sucker. And even through the darkness, I can make out pictures, the clothes that she was wearing earlier today, thrown carelessly over the end of her bed. And then, a little further up, Buffy's sleeping form. All of it, harsh and mocking.
Edging my way in closer, I stop by her bed.
She really is beautiful.
It's so easy to think, "Hell yeah! I'd fuck Buffy up against a wall anytime of the week. Just give me a wall." But that's not really how I'd do it. I don't know how I'd do it. Funny, right? All the time that I spend thinking about what I'd do to her, given half a chance, and I still got nothing. Maybe if I just had a little bit of sex with her while she's sleeping, she wouldn't notice...
Nah, she should probably be awake for that.
Maybe this is some kind of sign, her sleeping. Maybe this doesn't need to happen at all. And maybe we just need some time away from each other. Me, to stop thinking about her every second of the day, and her, to wrap her head around the fact that I never wanted to be friends with her at all. Then we'll be okay again. And I won't need her anymore. And she might even let me back inside the house one day.
I'd leave, leave this town, but I honestly don't think that I can anymore.
I kind of want to touch her, one last time. Brush that strand of hair, that's not even in the way, out of her face. Or just... I don't know. Something.
But I don't.
Instead, I back out of the room slowly, turn, and pause at the doorway.
"Bye Buffy," I mouth quietly, because I can be just as full of drama as any of those Summers girls.
Then I'm walking down the stairs. I can hear Dawn in the kitchen, but I don't really feel like fending her off this time. So I let myself out of the house, and walk back to my room, more depressed than ever. The ability to go from one extreme to the other in seconds is one that takes years to master.
Everything's still the same, nothing's changed. The only thing that I accomplished by going there was... well, nothing, really. Maybe some newfound resolve that will change the next time something happens.
And then I'm at my door, opening it, crawling into bed without getting changed, and falling asleep.
Maybe tomorrow none of this will even matter.
TBC
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