Chapter Six.
As his feet crept their way down the stairs, Xander tried to remind himself that he was no longer afraid. That he had let his remaining eye bear witness to all that she was, and the vision had not induced fear. It had induced pity. The only real fear that existed, being the wonder of what would become of her, what would become of Faith.
When his gaze finally fell upon the reality of her broken body hunched up in the corner of the cage, he wondered it again. He had watched her pummelling the bars they had put there, had listened to the tortured rage that flew unfettered from between her lips, and he didn’t hold out too much of anything that felt like hope. In all honesty, he also wondered a little, that he had even found himself having hope for her. After everything, did she really deserve it?
A question that made his manly sized bulk move easier as he chuckled softly to himself. After everything, after the last four years, did it even matter anymore? Could he really tell himself that his neck still bore the bruises of injuries that she had inflicted upon him? That he was still wounded by the way that she had used him and discarded him?
After the four years that he had endured, all of it felt like nothing. Not so much. Not enough to damn her to eternal hell, that he was sure of.
“Faith, you awake?” His tone was even and measured. Sure and steady. He wasn’t afraid. “I’ve got food.”
Moving ever so slightly forward as he heard something, not sure what, uttered from the form in the corner. “Faith?”
“I said, not hungry.”
A rasp. A sigh. No raising of head, no eyes of defiance shooting up to wound him. It filled him with confidence, an invitation to keep going. To bring the offering of pizza a little closer to the bars. “I got cheese filled crusts, extra toppings. It’s good.” Opening up the lid, letting the aromas of fresh baked food infuse the otherwise stale stench of the basement.
He noted her still non response, the lack of lifting head, and he considered that maybe he should just place the box down by the bars and leave. Saunter back up the stairs to find his place in front of the screen, flick at her image idly whilst she just sat fading into the solid brick of the solid wall behind her.
He wanted to do more though. He wanted to help.
“Come on Faith, you need to eat. You need to get your strength back.”
The hollow laugh that echoed hard against the walls, made him unconsciously curl his toes inside the man sized boots that didn’t shake in fear. Made him cast a quick glance back towards the stairs, towards upstairs, towards the safety of the grainy screen. “Okay. I’m just gonna set this down over here…” his gaze never wavering, never leaving the sombre hunch of her shoulders, “…I’ll be…”
“What year is it?”
Standing in shock that Faith had spoken so clearly to him, not a rasp or a whisper, but definite, determined. Feeling the slight clench of fingers on the pizza box as her head began to raise.
Not scared. Not scared. All grown up. So not scared.
Eyes so dark. The shadows of the basement doing nothing to hide the emptiness, the desolation. The chill that he felt to the bone as he witnessed the barren wastelands that were the windows to her soul. He clenched a little tighter. He had never thought of her as soulless before. Never.
“I asked what year it is, don’t fuck with me Xander.”
He wouldn’t dream of it. “Two thousand and three. May, two thousand and three. It’s been four years.”
The laughter peeling out again. A sound which made him edge a step back, the pizza all but forgotten, even as he held it firm within his grasp.
“It’s true then?”
“Yeah. It’s the truth.”
“Four years?”
To Xander it seemed longer. It seemed like forever since he had last spoken to Faith, seemed like a different lifetime, a different person. He offered a nod to the empty eyes, tried to grab at valid comment, something that seemed worthy of saying. “It’s been a long time.”
And he came up empty. No longer moving backwards, but pinned into place by the intensity that was becoming her stare. His sight line raising, along with her body. Up to standing. Distance becoming less as she travelled the meagre distance across the cell to the bars, stopping, staring, her face impassive as she made her gaze wander down over four years of maturity, four years of growing up. Four years of change that she barely understood.
He didn’t move. Didn’t utter a sound. Hardly found the space to breathe as he felt her eyes all over him. As he saw emptiness replaced with confusion. “Did you become a pirate?”
No cussing, no poison. Just a simple question, a phrase which had Xander’s hand releasing the tension on the pizza box, to fuss self-consciously with the patch that covered his lost eye. Something still so new to him. “The patch. Right.”
“Long John Silver, without the Long Johnson?”
Was that a smirk he saw? Her head tilting to the side, her hands coming to rest loosely against the bars of the cage. He unpinned his feet, remembered that he had an easy smile that liked to sit upon his lips, and he gave her an answer. “I was thinking more like Danger Mouse. We wear the eye patch the same side…”
“The greatest secret agent in the world?”
Definitely a smirk.
“Okay, so I haven’t thought it through yet.” His hand went to the patch again, trying to remember the light tone of voice to help him forget the sorrow of the empty socket that sat useless beneath it. “It’s a new thing. I’m still getting used to it.”
“I like it.”
“You do?”
“Why not? It makes you look, I dunno… mysterious?”
Xander forgot. In that dank and dingy basement, with Faith shut firmly behind the bars of the cage, Xander forgot that she was supposed to be a monster. His shoulders relaxing, his face finding a smile without needing to be reminded.
“Thanks… I guess.”
Something like a return smile was tracing the parched lips of the imprisoned slayer, something which cracked at aching skin, but which felt so good to feel. Unfamiliar, yet so familiar. And she had to stave the madness off, just for a minute more, a moment more? Like her thoughts could concentrate on something other than her own confusion for just a second. “What happened?”
“I got poked in the eye.”
“No shit.”
“Maybe more of a gouge than a poke, I’m trying to stay hazy on the details.”
Hazy on the details.
Details which were hazy?
Faith didn’t have to find a moment to find a sigh, because a sigh found her of its own volition. Fingers ignoring her silent plea for inner peace, to clench tight around the bars, face seeking refuge from desperation, in the twisted mask of a snarl. “At least you’ve got the details… at least you haven’t been dead in a bed for the last four years.”
“Faith…”
“Save it. Just pass me the pizza and leave.” She held her hand out between the bars, waiting as Xander stood immobile before her, her eyes quickly emptying of anything that had made him feel relaxed. “What, you want me to beg for it? That how you get your kicks these days?”
So far from relaxed. His mind trying to stall, stumble and go back over everything that had just happened. Empty eyes, alight eyes, and now evil eyes. A flash of the devil inside, a taunting tone reminding him how quick she could skip from the good to the bad.
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t want to speak to this Faith. The one who made him reconsider his compassioned plea for un-imprisonment. He simply bent down and placed the box on the floor between them, edging it with his toe until it was close enough for her to retrieve. He didn’t even stay to watch her pick it up, he just turned his back and went to leave. Didn’t leave. Not straight away.
“Faith, you don’t have to be bad.” Not looking to see if empty voids or hate filled vengeance greeted his words. Just wanting to offer the chance, a rope of hope to the girl that had told him that she liked his patch, that had made him smile. “There’s plenty of people that are ready for you to be good.”
No words smashing him down. Not anything. Just his footsteps sounding heavy on the stairs, the door closing with a thump behind him. Nothing until he rested his gaze back on the screen, until he witnessed her reaching down and retrieving the pizza, finding a spot to sit and to eat. And then he smiled.
“You, Xander Harris, are so very easy.”
Keeping it in place as he glanced up to Willow, as he swept it round to the smirk of sweet and innocent Dawn Summers. “Hey, she was digging the eye patch!”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure I saw some swooning, did you see swooning, Dawn?”
“Definite swoonage. And primping.”
A smile which stayed in place as he got back to eating his own stuffed crust pizza. It hadn’t gone great, he couldn’t claim to have made any real breakthrough, he had even borne witness to the ferocity of her snarl… but still, there was something. That moment. Just a couple of minutes where it felt more right to wanna swap gator stories, than remember all of the badness that came so soon after.
He hadn’t lied to Faith. There were people that were ready for her to be good. He just had to hope that she was ready, that she could find her way out of the cage of rage that none of them held the keys to.
The air outside of The Hyperion was just as stale and tainted with things that Buffy didn’t want to taste, as the air inside of The Hyperion. She had dragged her shoulders up to perky, had let her fingers tickle with the excited buzz of holding the scythe, yet even a whistled throwback to her brief musical days couldn’t lift a frown that knew no way of turning. Her head was too busy being upside down to worry about her facial muscles.
Sure, she had managed to put on a hearty show for her friends, skip the steps of the hotel with a smile in place; but wasn’t that the point? Life was a show, and she was just playing her part. When Buffy had found the frown and read the sub-text though, then the air had started turning stale with the worry of her wonderings. The same worry of the same wonderings.
Faith. Definitely mostly Faith. And a great big dish of Angel.
Not a side dish, this situation was nothing as tempting as an appetiser, but another full on frontal dish. Two equally exasperating problems to smash and bash against her frazzled frontal lobes.
And could she please just slip back to that time a couple of nights ago, when she was ready to lay down forever and just let everything be. Be done. Be over. Be something other than hers to deal with?
Spike had talked her out of that one. Giles had misdirected the girls. And now here she was, back steering the ship through uncharted waters. Or following the ship through a graveyard, to make sure that no more misdirection was anywhere in sight.
She hadn’t consciously decided to follow the newly formed slayers, kept under the watchful command of Giles, it had just kind of happened. And now, witnessing them as they made easy dust out of anything that came their way, she toyed again with the idea of jumping ship. Altogether. New start. Fresh faces. Places which didn’t bear boulders which lay like stones across her heart. She knew, absolutely, that she could not stand by happy while Angel made his deal with the devil. It choked her somewhere close to her core when she tried to make anything which felt like sense out of it. There was no sense. Angel had told her that she wouldn’t understand, and in this one instance, she still felt able to trust his words a hundred percent.
Maybe the last of the trust. The final slice just waiting to be eaten by all of the unknown.
This afternoon, so soon after the piercing shots of Faith’s hateful words, Angel’s dismissal of her feelings had felt like hitting rock bottom. She had felt anger, total justified anger, but so much more, so much that felt like loss and losing.
Buffy had decided that this was the theme for the week.
She had lost her home. She had lost comrades. She had lost friends. She had lost a former lover who had been her only source of support over the last god knows how long. And now she had lost Angel.
Yep. She was definitely seeing a theme here.
But what about what she hadn‘t lost? What she had found?
The air was tainted with something which tasted so much different than stale, when she isolated her thoughts onto what she had found.
Easing herself up into the boughs of a mournful looking tree, she observed the slayers as they followed Giles away from the cemetery, allowing this moment for her thoughts to stay focused, to not wander off along the tangents of distraction. Giles was leading them home. They were safe. For now she was free. Great. So how about the plan for reaching Faith, breaking free in her mind sometime soon? Cos so far she had nothing. The buzz of the scythe not offering up wisdom of slayers past, just giving her the flowing feeling of slightly juiced.
It was just so…
She dragged a hand along her forehead, across her aching brain, as she tried to work out exactly what it was. In random moments of clarity, she understood precisely how things should go; She would explain to Faith what had happened, how much they had all changed, how much everything had changed. Faith would repent and smile at the beauty of second chances. And they would all live happily ever after in a candyfloss castle with a flowing chocolate moat. That was the random part. The other parts Buffy really wanted to hold truth. For it to be as easy as the way it played out in her head.
Not gonna happen. Never gonna happen.
Those minutes held in easy suspension against the cage, had assured her of that much. Had led her to be here and sat in a tree and trying to seek enlightenment.
If she could just get Faith to listen. To quiet the anger which burnt in her belly for just a moment… then… then what? They could make happy quips about the knife which had ripped harsh through her belly instead?
She stayed motionless in the tree for all of the hours which sped by fruitless in the moonlight. Not mapping circles with her feet, just tracing them out with the musings of her mind. How to reach Faith? She didn’t have a clue. She just knew that through the bars of a cage was never going to work.
Too many guards. Too many defences.
No one was left up, to count down the minutes until the morning, when
Buffy had returned to the hotel. Everything was silent, peaceful, no
one around to ask her what to do about the next new found problem. The
only nod towards life being the lightly snoring Giles, with his head
lying haphazardly in his arms, snoozing in front of the ever present
picture of Faith. Not a moving image; a silent image. More peace.
In that moment, with her mind still swimming through the uncharted waters of the many trials and tribulations of life, Buffy just longed to rediscover the shelter she had often found in a room which held a sleeping Faith. A different room now, a less permanent sleep; but Buffy’s need was still the same. It still ached deeply enough to bring about the deliverance, her limbs moving with stealth as she had found a silent path down the stairs, her eyes moving unhindered to settle upon the non-defensive form of a sleeping Faith.
There were never any guarded walls or defences when Faith was asleep. It was what had drawn her back there time after time; that silent acceptance, that un-arguing understanding.
Faith may not have known it, may never know it, but hers had been the shoulders which had borne the weight of so many of Buffy’s worries over the last four years. Her lifeless hands had held Buffy’s through Angel leaving, through initial worries at Riley, through bigger worries at the Initiative. Her unhearing ears had been the only ears to ever hear the tortured cries that carried Buffy through the months of Dawn, Glory and her Mom. Terrified cries that never saw the light of day outside of a hospital room.
For awhile she had stopped. She hadn’t been there anymore, had been dead, but once she had returned, then she remembered the way to the hospital. Sharing with Faith, the deal with Spike, with someone who wouldn’t judge. The months that had passed with Willow gone from their lives, the loss of Tara, only accentuated and made harder, by the loss of Willow also.
In the last few months it had stopped for real. Too much then, too much to even dream of finding solitude in a room with the fallen slayer. Buffy had been lost under a houseful of potentials, lost amongst the fear of the worst apocalypse they had ever faced, ever. She had forgotten about Faith. All of that time, she had forgotten how to find her, how to seek out the sanctuary of the silent room. She had forgotten it all, until that final moment, the time when she’d considered outside of the school, everything that she was losing. And then she had found Faith again. And now she remembered how much she missed her. How much she missed being able to speak her thoughts unrestrained to the body before her. No defences. No walls.
So easy to take a seat, to slide the scythe into the space in front of her, and blow out a breath that was coated in weary. Sighing out of her costume, yawning away the camouflage that was so necessary to wear every single day of her outside life.
“Hey Faith.” Still feeling a little strange now that she knew she could wake, would wake, making her voice a bare whisper, a bareness of sound. “It’s been a long time. I’m sorry I stopped visiting.”
Her mind filled in the blanks of the reply. It always did. Flowing easy down those chocolate moats, a closeness that she felt should always have been there. “Things were just so crazy, you know? Sunnydale’s now a hole on the horizon, and we’re all stuck here, not knowing which way to go.”
Buffy eased the jacket from her shoulders, rotating her neck, settling in. “Then there’s you.” Maybe not so settled. “I can’t decide if it was good timing, or bad timing… you sure chose your moment to do the waking up thing.”
She felt the ease of animation as she found easy conversation with the still sleeping Faith. Tossing up the random thoughts of random actions, trying to cram the months that she had been absent, into the fleeting moments until people began waking. Skirting through the easy parts, stumbling across the harder parts, everything covered till she got to the now; the pain she was feeling from Angel, the pain that she was feeling from Faith.
So lost in words which captured her heart, which showed the honesty behind her intentions, that she didn’t even begin to notice that the one who had been sleeping on all of the worries of the world, was now waking. Awake. Waking to those same soft tones again, the sound of Buffy, tripping light across her ears;
“…and I don’t even know how he expects me to deal with it! Doesn’t he get that I need him, that I need to know he’s on my side?”
Faith held herself still. Trapped in her cage, calmed by her rage. Breathing deep to keep up the pretence of sleep, silence allowed to flow, just so that she could hear, so that she could make sense out of whispered confessions through the bars of the cage…
Buffy was here? Buffy was daring to open up her heart, when all Faith wanted, was to rip it bleeding, and still beating, from her chest? An eye for an eye. A heart for a heart. Wasn’t that the only truth? All she wanted spoken in this moment of forced closeness.
“I always thought he would be on my side… Buffy and Angel. Not Angel and Evil, me and no one.”
And what the fuck *was* she talking about? Was this meant to be important, was this supposed to mean anything to Faith? Had four years passed and yet the same shit was still spinning round and round in the dumb blonde’s head? Buffy and Angel? Eat shit and die. The same shit; just different century.
It was enough to have her giving up the pretence of a sleep, to twist round on an awakening. Her body feeling invigorated from the food, stronger, less confused. Her lips still dry and lacking the moisture of refreshment. Xander hadn’t brought the yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum - he definitely wasn’t a pirate - he had brought her the food though, and for that she was almost thankful. Almost ready to bump him from the top spots of her revenge list.
“Faith?”
Her name. Those tones. Again.
And again she felt a smile lift her lips. A different kind of smile, one which carried the hallmarks of all that she was, one which showed Buffy that strength was returning. This girl had had her first meal. “Buffy. This is a *nice* surprise.” Her limbs lifting her up to stand, to tower above the tired eyes of the girl below her. “Did four years make you forget that I don’t care a crap about your pining and whining?” Stalking closer to the bars, a nonchalant pose struck with remembered ease. “The Angel *thing* is so past its sell by date. Ever hear of getting over it?”
She knew that she was taunting Buffy, and she knew it all felt so fucking good, so fucking great. Those fleshy targets still struck with ease. Delighting as she saw the flash of pain, as she saw that nothing had really changed. Nothing that really mattered.
“Faith.”
Smirking at Buffy’s inability to find anything else to say. The flow of her chatter silenced by the reality of those same brown eyes penetrating deep inside of her. “It’s pathetic B. I’m the one whose been down for four years, and you’re the one still wallowing in the same old shit?” She witnessed the deflation, the way that Buffy sank further into the floor. “In a way, I guess it’s kinda comforting.”
“Comforting?”
“Sure thing girlfriend. Easy to pick up where I left off, back in the saddle…” Faith drew the power around her like a cloak of steel. Untouchable. Flexing her muscles out as she sought to bring yet more of the bad stuff. “…it’s good to be back B. Let me out of this cage and I’ll show you just how good it feels.”
Faith’s ears had never heard all of Buffy’s silent confessions, she had no idea of the things that Buffy had been through over the last four years, no idea the lengths she had gone to, the depths she had plundered. It made her underestimate someone who wasn’t such an easy target, someone who was flying close to the end of her own tether. To the edges of sanity. Faith’s eyes first wary, and then undeniably excited, as Buffy had found her feet before her. Had pulled herself up and faced her with a height more close to equal, with a face that bore her own remembrances of righteous anger. “I’d like to say, nice to have you back, but I’m not gonna lie to you Faith.” Yet the lie was so easy to speak. “This is the way you want it to be then? A return to arms?”
“Huh?”
“Fighting Faith. You don’t want to hear me out, maybe give peace a chance?”
The unconscious pleading behind the words was easy enough to hear, but Faith still had deaf ears, asleep or not, she refused to hear anything other than what the rage demanded she hear. “I owe you one B, you want me to forget about that?”
Because she would never forget about that. It was just last night, for fuck’s sake! Four years or not, it was just last night! That was what the rage said - screamed out - drowning out the one that hid behind the walls and defences. Drowning both of them in it.
“No, not forget Faith. Forgive.”
“Fuck you.”
Ignoring the curses was hard for Buffy, strengthening her shoulders to take the blows was easy. Ploughing onwards, her mind not deflected from the way that she thought it should be able to go. “So much has changed, so much is different now. You’ve missed so much…”
“Yeah? Whose fault is that?”
“…the things that we did are so long gone Faith. I think, I don’t know…” Buffy drew in a deep, drawn out breath, organising words behind the ever present feel of exhaustion. “…I think maybe I understand better now. I understand *you* better now.”
Those were the words. The ones she had meant to say. She understood her better now. She understood everything now.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” The understanding not seeping through the barrier of bars, only eliciting more rage. More contemptuous words of bitter amazement. “You *understand* me? You lock me in a fucking cage and you think you understand me!?”
Faith couldn’t remember if it was rage or disbelief that had her clinging to those bars oh so tight again, but clinging she was. Straining to break through, to make contact with the mouth that whispered lies into the darkness, which fed the darkness, that made her stomach churn with a bitterness that had only festered and grown with every night she was away. “You haven’t got the first damn clue about me, you never had the first damn fucking clue about anything B!”
Those prissy eyes, that prissy ass, always judging, always making comment on things she had *no* fucking clue about. Here Faith, let me help you, let me wrap you in my pastel coated bullshit and make the demons go away. It never worked. Had never worked. Would never work.
“Faith…”
“And stop with the name already. I know my god damned name!”
This time Buffy had forgotten about breathing in. About breathing full stop. Held rigid again, held in the same place again. No progress, no ability to break through the walls that had sprung up with the same urgency as soon as Faith had awoken. But Faith was wrong.
It was something that deserved more then a deep breath. Buffy *did* understand.
“I remember the dream.” Striking her own blow with measured precision, calling to the one that had happily shared her piece of heaven. Invoking memories of the dream that showed her everything, the dream she had shared with Faith. Watching her flinch, watching her waver.
“Yeah? I remember the nightmare B.” Witnessing the flash that sprang through Faith’s eyes, the moment that hung in silent suspension until she had spoken again. “*Just* the nightmare.”
Was that an easy lie too?
“Just the nightmare?”
Buffy’s words making her feet start a pace inside that cell, arms breaking from the seal of the bars, to stalk warily across her enclosure. “Leave me alone.”
“No Faith, you tell me I don’t understand, maybe I do. Maybe you’re too scared to take a look.” A hitch in step, more hate filled glances. “I remember the bed Faith, I remember the sheets, I remember all of it. I remember the peace…”
“Leave me alone!”
A hitch in voice. No more glances. “I remember the way that everything was okay again. I remember…”
It couldn’t carry on. Faith couldn’t listen, couldn’t see. Would not remember. Would not weaken herself with visions that offered more of the pastel coated bullshit. She thrust herself with all the strength gained from the stuffed crust pizza; straight at the bars… straight at Buffy, words spat out with too much force, too much feeling. “You remember?! Do you remember this B?!” Hands tearing at the top which covered her skin, which covered the scar that sat itching with vengeance beneath cotton. An ugly scar, a scar not eased by the strength of her body, by a healing power that had almost forgotten it existed. “Do you remember doing it B, killing me? Has four years robbed you of your moment of glory?”
“No…”
“Look at it Buffy! *You* did this! All of this, all of it’s because of you, and you want me to forget? To forgive?!”
She watched as Buffy backed away, as those eyes of green got dipped in water, as the colours ran with the redness of exhaustion, with the bloodshot river of tears. Her head shaking as if she could deny the only truth that Faith believed in, the only words that continued to make sense to her across any leap of time. “I owe you one Buffy, and I ain’t ever forgetting that.”
Drawled out. Harped out. The perversity of that special stare fixing tight to her body again, slipping down beneath her skin, caressing her in ways which made her want to run screaming from the room. She didn’t scream though. She wasn’t a screamer. Pulling her shoulders back yet again, grabbing at a reasoned sanity yet again. “That’s up to you Faith. Just know…” Straightening with the feel of power, with real strength. “…this cage is where you’re gonna stay, until you change your tune. I want to forget, I already forgave. Now it’s up to you…”
Waiting. Watching. Faith’s footsteps drawn to a halt, the remaining stale air being sucked from the room, layered instead with darkness. With payback. “Then I guess we’ll resume normal service and see who lands on top.”
Her shirt dragged back down. The scar on her skin re-covered, the scars in her eyes remaining. All sent to hell with the sneer and her smirk.
“If that’s what you want?”
“It’s exactly what I want.”
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