Higher

by Kat

Rating: NC17
Distribution: You want it? Have it!
Credits: Rebecca, who is not becca, or bex, or becky or anything else that I want to call her. But REBECCA, is a true goddess of the beta read and I owe it all to her. ? Sean who is as tough as I deserve when I get too flowery for my own good. Angela, for her insight. And Jen for being an absolute doll and pointing me in all the right directions.
Date started: 21st August 2000 - Finished: 5th February 2001
Feedback: Flames, constructive crits and in depth analysis are all accepted. If you liked it -- do tell. If you hate it, I'd be interested in why. Remember, I don't bruise easy.
Author's Notes: Another day, another style. Thanks to Sean for the idea. Oh, 'nother note: English gals use English spellings.
Summary: A first time. A normal love story?

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This is only the start of the story.

"How high you wanna go, B?"

Dusk is drawing in.

"Higher." She laughs.

This is Sunnydale. A new town, built mostly when the sunshine state was coming alive, when Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth played at the local movie-theatre, when girls wore full skirts and high school jock's drove red convertibles. If this was a normal town, it would hang in the shadow of those days. But this isn't a normal town.

There's a dark woman, with eyes as dark as the hills, pushing a blonde on a swing, a rusty red one that seems oddly out of place in the 'niceties' of the communal park.

The blonde, she laughs, feeling freer than she has in a long time; pointing her toes and reaching for the sky.

'Higher?' the dark woman asks, wrapping her words around a piece of gum. Her name is Faith. It says so on the charm bracelet she was given by her mother at some amusement park on the coast. She's always thought the name ironic; because she thought ironic meant something 'funny' that she didn't understand.

The blonde woman says Faith's name in this oddly frank way, like in its literal context and meaning, without the faint smirk that curled the lips of others. Buffy is the blonde's name, and Faith knows she'd like to touch those clouds she swings towards. Both are trapped, both are free -- and neither knows how the game will be played.

Buffy is pushed higher, and she laughs again.

Faith likes the sound, the feel she gets on the back of her neck, the drawing night air that's cold against her body, the way it's quiet.

In a way, this is every other town. Every other love story.

'Why did you come with me?' Faith asks, pushing her higher.

Buffy smiles. 'I don't know. But blowing off seventh and eight felt like a good idea at the time...'

It's not what Faith wanted to hear. But Faith knows if she was asked, if the question was voiced, if someone said 'what did you want to hear instead?' she'd have no answer. Still, like some petulant child, her arms drop and she walks from the swing.

She doesn't know whether Buffy will chase her.

'Wait, Faith...Faith!'

But something had whispered in her ear, like a tip-off or a single's bar seduction, that Buffy would follow. Something.

Buffy jumps from the swing and lands evenly. She's smiling still, liking the smell of the air. She remembers bunking out of her chemistry test. She remembers liking it. With a wry grin, she remembers once, long ago, feeling vaguely sane - but remembers it like a condition, a what-was-it, a "phase" she's now all but grown out of.

She sets out fast after her companion, jumping fallen trees and park- benches like they were 'territory', because, well, they were territory. Buffy isn't like every other girl, Buffy isn't ordinary, Buffy doesn't live in a normal town.

Faith isn't ordinary either.

Both like the chase, the madness of success with the night drawing in. Faith hears Buffy and stops, turning to face her.

'Faith.'

'Buffy.'

'What did I say?'

Faith had been at some old ranch house on the interstate before all of this. She had offered a hick farmer, with the smokes in his back pocket, three days work for three days board. On the first night he had come to her room, touched her, made her feel so dirty she took three baths and rubbed herself raw. On the second night he had come to her again. She hadn't resisted this time, just laid there, inert, so still he'd think she'd died, or something -- figuring it was easier that way. On the third night he had arrived at her door and she'd punched him, broke three ribs and punctured a lung, scarred his face with her stick-on nails. From the floor he had rasped at her, "What did I say?"

Faith is not a normal girl.

"Why did you come with me? The chem test -- geez, B, why the fuck did you come?"

Buffy doesn't know. There are a lot of things Buffy doesn't know -- most of the time she hates that. This isn't most of the time.

"Why did you come get me?" Buffy throws back.

"I talked to this woman once, answered every question with another. Seemed to think it made her sound smart too. Y'know, forget her name..." Faith grins. It would be poor form, on Buffy's part, to call such a complicated smile 'feral', but if wolves had brains and painted nails Buffy thinks they'd smile like Faith.

Buffy doesn't force a smile in return, like she would with Xander or Willow. Instead, she just blinks and stares at the mud-stains on the shoes she polished that morning. She realises she likes that she can't see her reflection in them anymore. She doesn't say anything.

Faith's brown eyes, that have seen far too much of nothing, fix on Buffy's hands, loose by her sides. "We're friends, right?" she says, weakly.

"Friends. Yeah, friends." Buffy looks up and shrugs, there is little more to say.

A snapshot in time and Buffy remembers the day she first saw Faith -- remembers the loose slacks at the girl's hips, the smell of nicotene and sex on her fingertips, the trace of chips and blowjobs on her lips. Slowly the filter changes and she sees Faith saving her life, frames clicking along as though they were the whirring images of some 16mil camera, and she were eating popcorn with her mom. Silly that way, almost inconsequential, as Faith picks up her bleeding form and runs, and Joyce turns to Buffy and says, "Such a nice girl" through mouthfuls of corn.

Faith sighs and turns. She remembers telling Billy King that she was in love with him. Remembers telling him to take her away from here, remembers telling him that she couldn't live at home anymore. Billy had kissed her eyelids, kissed her lips and then slipped her from her panties and told her he loved her too. He'd been lying, they all had.

Buffy had been in love before, maybe, perhaps.

Nights draws closer still. Normal town? Normal love story?

"Someone told me once - in one of those stupid lit classes - that you love people who understand you. You think that's true?"

Buffy doesn't know why the words - stupid, 12th grade non-facts - slipped from her lips.

Faith spins. Carefully, like some kind of broken jigsaw, she's remembering everything about Buffy; her eyes, the way she speaks - quietly praying - the way that non religious people do pray and say they don't - that she doesn't lose her head over this one. Because Faith knows there would be nothing more funny, or funnier as she corrects herself, than Faith saying she loved Buffy.

Faith remembers Jake in the ninth grade. She remembers kicking his ass for pushing Sarah Louise to the floor. She remembers him spitting at her, cursing her name -- 'Nobody ever wanted you Faith, not even your junkie mommy and your long-gone Daddy. Nobody wants Faith! No one!'

'You like school?'

Buffy smiles, shakes her head, and lets her eyes meet Faith's. It's funny the way that after everything has been said, there's so little left to say. Or maybe not so funny, just right in a way, sort of destined.

Dusk turns to night. Buffy stands firm, watches the dark eyes flicker as they find her own, feels a smile turn her lips. 'School says good stuff. Words. Books. Giles.'

Buffy remembers the way it was when they found the nest -- she remembers what it's like now, acknowledges this strange rush of immediacy that accompanies Faith. There's no time for waiting, no time for admiring -- like you would 'pretty things' and china dolls - all the time she has with Faith is like the cigarettes the girl chain smokes; quickfire, potent.

Faith's eyes soften. With the nightfall she feels the history fade away.

Just another love story. Just another day.

"Yeah." Pause, a slight turn away. "I suppose I should..."

Buffy doesn't move. "Come home?"

Buffy remembers seeing looks in Faith's eyes and wanting to capture them, kiss them better, drive them away. She remembers reading the pamphlet in school entitled 'Homosexuality: Normality.' She remembers love, she remembers adoration and infatuation -- but those seem like distant words, now, words used without her knowing what they really meant.

Normal love story.

'Yeah, I'll come 'home',' Faith says nonchalantly, running her hands beneath the waistband of her 501s, the same pair she stole from some laundromat in Nevada. She steps forward then and picks up one of Buffy's hands - kinda dainty, she notices, despite the small splinters and cuts -- and looks at it a moment. "I like your hand," she says.

"I like yours," Buffy says, smirking. "My, what handcream do you..."

The word would have been "use". But Faith's too busy kissing Buffy, and Buffy's too busy kissing Faith for it to come out and waste the night air. Doesn't matter, the line was lame anyway.

There's no one home. Buffy's mother is probably out, at the gallery, at a friend's, doing some shopping. The clock blinks seven PM.

Buffy's room is quiet but the window is open and the air dances with the curtain, making it billow and dip in some silent performance.

The sullen quiet is disturbed a little when the door opens slowly and Faith steps in. "You sure are neat," she says immediately, to fill the cool air, in a bid to make it breathable for Buffy who's panting - or something - behind her.

"Yeah," Buffy returns, following her in. "Sure am."

Faith falls to sit on the neatly-made bed. 'Not a thing out of place,' she notes, blandly, her eyes on the small animals scattered across Buffy's eiderdown.

Buffy moves to the window, pulls it shut, casts a fleeting glance over the yard below. "Not a thing," she replies automatically.

With the same silent steps they use to hunt, and kill, Faith is up and her hands are on Buffy's hips. Playing with the material of Buffy's halter in an instant, lifting it, and stroking the skin beneath it. Buffy gasps - which makes her feel like some stupid kid at some X-rated candy store - and feels Faith's lips at her throat, the soft press of lipstick against her skin, the scent of Faith's perfume. She didn't even think Faith wore perfume.

"Is it going to rain?" Faith whispers.

"Maybe," Buffy replies. She's liking the fact that the people pulling into their driveways, complete with their pinstripe and their briefcases, just have to look up, angle their head just a little, to see them. See that 'odd' Buffy Summers making out with some 'ladyfriend.' She can imagine the evening barbeques where the news would be spread, pre-cursored by the universal 'I shouldn't really be telling you this, but...'. Can imagine them putting all her late night activities and numerous ass-savings down to her newfound and so-called 'orientation'.

Faith's concentrating, kissing, playing and moving her tongue along the lean muscle and bone of Buffy's neck. Her hands moves around Buffy, under the shirt to trace often broken ribs like some anatomical dot to dot, one by one, mapping her carefully. Buffy pushes back into Faith. 'Harder' she wants to say although she knows it'll sound stupid. Faith's hands touch her skin again; there's a familiarity in them.

Maybe it's comfort. Buffy wonders if Faith touches her like she touches herself.

Buffy would often sit at this very window and wonder what a girl did when she'd lost the love of her life at seventeen. Wonder if they went on to write agony aunt columns, live in LA and witter over their eight or nine cats, concerning themselves with the grocery lists of others. Now she stands at this window and knows he was the love of her life, and that she lost him at seventeen.

She's eighteen.

Buffy doesn't think that one through, finds she enjoys the silence that the non-thinking brings and watches the scene beneath her, Sunnydale in the unforgiving night. And the next moment, she wonders -- simply -- if it will rain.

There is a security in the way that Faith is touching her, running her hands up and over the skin, pressing her palms and fingers to Buffy and placing her rouged lips to sun-bronzed skin.

Buffy leans back into her, her body moving now, counter-point to the feel of Faith, the smell of her, the sensations that touch her, pulsing through the once cold skin.

'You sure?' are Faith's words.

'Slow,' Buffy murmurs, 'I want this to be slow.'

It is slow. With the night streaming in through the window and the darkness around them, she moves from Faith and turns. Carefully, she lifts her tee from her body and reveals a white bra; a lace cupped one she remembers buying in Santa Monica. "I don't..." she begins.

'I know,' is the answer that comes from somewhere.

Quickly, Faith moves to her, puts her hands on Buffy's shoulders and then slides them down her arms, capturing the hands and intertwining their fingers.

Buffy's smile is sweet, kind of candy coated in a way. Faith offers her a lop-sided smile in return. "Real slow," she breathes. "Real slow."

Faith kisses Buffy again, remembering in a way that has almost become ritual, and fucking annoying, her past sexual encounters with each kiss. She remembers losing her virginity in a pick-up truck, remembers the whore house where she killed vamps in Kentucky -- remembers images of a time before innocence, before sparkling beauty in blue eyes that have never been closed.

This is how it should be.

Faith moves Buffy backwards, leans her against a white wall. Kisses are leisurely, slow, a dangerous mix of passion and resignation, a dark smudge of crimson to Buffy's pastel pink.

Buffy moves her hands to Faith's hair, feels the strands between her fingers, feels the touch of feminine beauty against her own skin, smells beauty products that are unfamiliar, almost recoils at the stink of smoke. Faith, so close like this, is almost unnervingly real.

This is real life, normal life, normal love, normal worship. Ironically, this is alive. And maybe, after so long, she doesn't feel so empty anymore. This breathes.

She pushes Faith back towards the bed and is thanked by a light in Faith's eyes, an acceptance, a text-book hunger. Faith drops to sit, pats the bed beside her like she would signal a spare seat in class - this, Buffy reminds herself, if Faith were to go to school. Buffy grins and moves fowards, presses her lips onto Faith's, feeling their strange smoothness, and Faith lies back, lets the patchwork quilt trappings of Buffy's perfect life envelop her. She could be safe here. Funny.

Faith reaches her hands around Buffy and pulls at her bra, undoing the catch and letting it fall from her sun-kissed skin. Buffy moves a moment to stand up and then takes her bra away completely, even drops it into the laundry basket in the corner of the room. Pert breasts with pink nipples are revealed, expected, yet prettier in a picture postcard way than Faith expected. Who would have thought Buffy had such nice tits, she almost thinks, before the thought dies naturally. Faith leans closer, wonders if she should touch them...

'Let me undress you,' Buffy says, still looking pink, white and black alone in the half-light.

'I...'

Buffy places a finger on Faith's lips and then kisses her cheek. She moves to Faith's worn leather jacket and slips her from it, pulling one arm and then the other from her and dropping the coat to the floor. She likes the jacket, which reminds her of James Dean and the danger and excitement and smooth exterior that was Faith, her Faith, exactly. The tee pulls tightly over Faith's bust, nipples showing through the material that displays pop art and empty, meaningless slogan.

Buffy smiles and kisses Faith again, pushing her hands to her hips and loving the feel of her in the near-darkness. Buffy's travelling fingers make their way to the hem of her tee and slowly, surely, Buffy pulls it higher, revealing the pale skin, and then the start of breasts, and then hard nipples, before the dips and intricate lines of Faith's neck, finely boned - all exquisitely beautiful and made wonderful by their familiarity to Buffy's eyes.

Buffy reaches a hand out, slow, unsteady, to Faith's breast and caresses the nipple, plays with it under her thumb and then captures Faith's mouth again, kisses her hard with her thumb continuing to play and push. Faith feels herself sink backwards and Buffy moves to lie above her, pressing her hard nipples to Faith's, kissing her.

The symmetry is unnerving but hot, in that way that dirty magazines, and books, and late-night tv often misused the term.

Buffy rolls from Faith and onto her side. She licks a finger - a middle one with rings from a market stall - pushing it into her mouth and bringing it out, slowly. Coolly, she trails the finger down Faith's breast bone, between her breasts, and then to her stomach, touching lightly around her navel until she finds Faith's jeans, those very same 501s from Nevada. Slowly, because that was their watchword, she undoes the buttons one by one. Faith, her eyes gleaming in the gloom, wriggles from the pants and then pushes them away from the bed and onto the floor.

Somewhere, thunder rumbles.

'You've done this before?' Buffy asks, trying to sound cool.

'Yes.' Faith responds, sitting up and touching Buffy's breasts, running her hands over the warm nipples, as though she were amazed by them.

'How was it - was she - did she?'

'Shh,' Faith soothes, running her hands over Buffy's breasts and pinching lightly and then pressing her lips to them, swirling her tongue.

Buffy knows, then, that Faith has not done this before.

Buffy arches her head back and looks for the sky again, the clouds she so wants to reach, the rain she wants to be above. She can't find them. The sensations start -- the familiar dig of fear in her stomach.

'Did you love her?'

Buffy meant to say 'me' but her mind caught up with her mouth, and stopped the words from coming out. If anything, she tells herself, this is a one night stand. She likes the imagery, the stand, the hold against the normalities of their real world.

Their eyes meet and the cold air begins to test Buffy's wet nipples, making them harder.

"I wouldn't ever say," Faith says slowly, shaking her head. "Never."

Buffy's impressed. Faith reads the double-talk better than anyone ever has, but then, she remembers, Faith was the walking almanac on double talk, her own denial induced dialect of pidgeon-english.

Faith pushes Buffy back and she lands on her pillows, her back arching up into Faith, wanting her. Faith's hands are on her, over her, unbuttoning her trousers and pulling them down, kissing her stomach, kissing her navel as she moves her lips to just above Buffy's white panties, licking a small line that turns cold in the air.

Buffy shivers, smiles, runs her hands through Faith's dark curls, loves the warmth that's settling over her. Faith plays with the elastic of Buffy's panties, teasing it down and then letting it flick back up, running her hands to Buffy's hips to move the garment lower, revealing part of Buffy's skin, the innocent tan-line and looking up to meet Buffy's equally innocent grin.

Faith knows, at this moment, there are three hundred things she could say to stop this, to hurt Buffy the way that maybe that innocent grin needs to be hurt. Buffy should hurt more, she knows.

Faith kisses the tanline skin again, throwing the thoughts away like trash, the paper kind that she never recycles. She pulls the edge of the panty lower from Bufy's hip, lets it fall slowly and kisses her again. Faith grabs Buffy's hips and holds her tight.

Buffy's hands find her own breasts, and she touches them, feels the cold air around her and the electricity between them, the sensation of Faith's breath on her skin, the warmth -- so different, so alive, so scared and lonely and suddenly together.

Suddenly together.

Faith prints her ruby kisses onto Buffy, the tops of her thighs and the silken skin there as she pushes the panties lower, lower still -- revealing dark pubic hair and folds of hot red skin -- a smile takes Faith again as she sees Buffy's sweat gleam in the shadowed light from the window.

'Real slow,' she whispers, shifting herself down and then pressing a finger to Buffy, hearing the gasp and then pressing her mouth, her lips, her tongue to the wetness forming between her friend's - what? - legs.

She was hesitant, back then, in the park, hesitant that maybe she shouldn't, that maybe every friendship turns to love and that love turns to hate. Hesitant because they never want to stay after they have her, never even want to leave a note, never want to kiss her goodbye. And when they do sleep after, and share a cigarette, the brightness of the morning makes everything - anything - unbearable.

She doesn't care and swirls her tongue again, liking the taste of Buffy against her teeth.

Buffy is gone. She can't think, can barely breathe but recognise the sight of this, the feel of this, the taste of this. And the words are all wrong, electricity with heat, sensation with softness. Maybe, as she runs her hands back over her breasts, there are no words.

Yes, there are no words.

Faith presses her warm tongue to Buffy's labia and Buffy feels her skin crawl, come alive, dance over her stomach and shoot energy, light, the feeling around them out of her fingertips and into the stark night.

Even as she stumbles for the words - they're wrong - like the poetry of someone new, is never as "right" as the poetry of the old.

Faith's smile is different, part of it would tell a passer-by of the innocent beneath the snarl, the lonely girl beneath the red lips. But no mere passers-by are allowed this smile, this sacred and holy smile that the girl with the charm-bracelet and the black leather jacket keeps for her friend, her Buffy. Her Buffy. The words aren't as odd to Faith as she expected. She likes that.

Faith's never been this hot before, this totally lost in herself, her partner, when going down on someone else -- it's a strange sensation, made stranger by the base way Faith explains it to herself -- but she reaches a hand down, makes room in her panties and gives herself a rub, once, twice and then hears Buffy's moan and slips her fingers between her own wetness and almost succumbs to the sensation.

Buffy moans again and then sighs, feels something welling inside her that's slower than before -- she touches her breasts again, and thinks about Faith, the beautiful Faith -- the beautiful girl beneath her -- sucking her, licking her, taking her places she's quite sure she never thought she could be.

She begins to buck as Faith's touches slow, fall -- she can feel Faith's breath between her, on the soft down of pubic hair and her swelled labia, clitoris -- all aching, maybe begging for that touch, that sweet acid touch that Faith applies only to move away.

She rolls onto her side and sees Faith has lost herself, taken by the feel of her hand running down between her legs and into her wet panties. Buffy smiles and lifts herself, moves over to Faith and then presses her own hands over Faith's, slides them down like the two halves of the same whole that they believe they are, and meets Faith's fingers.

Faith doesn't jump -- there's no surprise between them, only expectation, familiarity, something that, had they been older, they would have thought was love.

Buffy takes over and circles her fingers, feels the wetness of Faith between them and likes it, lies on her side -- on the bed cover of so many innocent child fantasies of castles and white knights -- and slips Faith from her panties and then lies her cheek against Faith's stomach, brushing it like she would against a fine material, a silk.

Faith, arms above her head caught in her long black hair, is enjoying this. She sees the cut of Buffy lying exquisite, naked, glowing in the dim light, beside her, Buffy's tail at Faith's top. She reached out and her fingers fall down the easy curve of Buffy's thighs. Slowly, Buffy opens her legs, ready. Faith pushes a finger between the gorged folds of Buffy's sex, quick, as thought Buffy may change her mind and then slowly, preparing her for the intimacy of the act, Faith pushes a finger all the way in and Buffy arches and moans and Faith feels it, feels the sensation pushing back at her from Buffy's mouth breathing hot on her stomach.

There has never been a sweetness like this -- never a control so measured and so explored. Faith pushes her fingers in and moves them around -- and she feels, totally justifiably, like she and Buffy are the only people on the planet who feel this way, who touch and give and love like the sun won't rise for them tomorrow.

Buffy pushes her head to Faith again and there's more of an urgency now, a yearning -- Faith lifts a leg and hooks it around Buffy -- giving herself in a way she never thought she would, had never been asked to before -- displaying secrets and hidden parts as slowly, slowly Buffy makes love to her. And this, for the dark child that was Faith, was the part she couldn't comprehend.

Faith wasn't an ordinary girl. No one loved Faith. People only fucked Faith -- Buffy, innocent and blue eyed Buffy made love to Faith.

Faith had thought only old aged couples in retirement homes, with their cathitas and their prozac, were the people who made love. Made love because they were too damn old to fuck. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe.

Buffy licks and purrs and doesn't feel like herself. There's a swelling in her blood and she feels some kind of slow passion burning faster -- Faith's fingers are in her, pushing, probing...

She doesn't recognise it at first, the shaking, the heat, the waves of energy crashing through her -- the orgasm is sweet, long, carefully played out and experienced -- like, almost, it was always meant to be this way.

Maybe. Possibly. She doesn't know.

Faith sees Buffy's eyes flicker shut, the shudder of her body and almost feels herself lose the small grasp of control that she's exerting, holding onto...

Buffy's rolled away from her caress and Faith is lying on her back, lost, eyes shut.

Faith's skin burns at her, begging her to complete what was started and she reaches a finger down and plucks an image from her memory, any image, so that she can push herself to the edge. Lying on her back, the now hot air around her, she picks Buffy. Buffy on a swing ages old that's peeling red paint in the middle of a park, and she's laughing, and Faith's making her laugh. She likes how the image is normal, loving, sweet -- and then her orgasm overtakes her and she lets go.

In the middle of Sunnydale, a suburban town in southern California, there are two girls lying sated on a bed.

Buffy dreams of Faith, and Faith dreams of Buffy.

Outside, it doesn't rain.

By eight forty they have woken and dressed.

Faith stands in front of the mirror -- inspecting herself, checking the fit of the clothes against her skin. She's taking Buffy out, going to show the world who she belongs to.

Buffy is beautiful, alive and sparkling before her.

'You look great,' Buffy says, redundantly as she catches Faith's eye. It seems almost funny, like they were at some eighth grade slumber party and would at any moment start playing truth or dare.

'Not looking so bad yourself,' Faith returns coolly.

Buffy giggles, which isn't so abhorent on her as it is on everyone else. In fact, it's almost cute. "So good in fact I could..."

Faith kisses Buffy softly, and then presses her hand to Buffy's head and brings her into the kiss, presses her chest to Buffy and feels the surrender beneath her, feels her tongue against Buffy's teeth, just enjoys the sensation of being together, of being claimed in the twilight.

Of finally having someone to call her own.

They are going to dance -- and the world, the universe, is going to see who Buffy belongs to.

Faith stares at the man and then at Buffy.

He's bleeding, slow, trickles of blood are drawing out onto his shirt. He's dying. Of course he's dying, she tells herself, of course he is.

Buffy's bent over the body and Faith can barely stand to look at her - - there is something righteous in her eyes, something pitying, something full of distrust and near hate.

Buffy can't see Faith, can't see the person she knew -- all she can make out are the frail lines of that face, a foreign face.

She doesn't know Faith.

Faith feels nothing, stores her emotions cleanly away like she has done every other time this has happened. The man lying against the dumpster is dying, nearly dead and the look in Buffy's eyes says 'I trusted you.'

Past tense. Past tense. Past tense.

The man's eyes close -- he dies, at Faith's hand.

And Faith knows, standing in the darkness, that she's finally lost. This is the end. No one can save the dark child.

Faith doesn't care.

Years later, Faith remembers the swing and Buffy Summers and smiles.

It was never a normal love story.