Who Is She?

by Slayer Tash

We haven't seen Faith in months. She had been working with Giles since we all went to different parts of the globe but then she just fell off the face of the earth. I don't know how true that is considering I am looking at her right now. It doesn't exactly look like her but the tingles I am getting up and down my spine confirm it for me.

She is dressed in a yellow sundress and a blue cardigan...her hair is pulled up on one side and she looks upset, like on the verge of tears upset.

I decide to risk it and make my way towards her "Are you okay?"

She looks at me, her eyes filled with tears "I-I'm not sure."

"You look shaken up."

"I am...I'm looking for my sister...I had her traced to that...that warehouse over there" She points to a dilapidated looking place "And while I was in there this cop showed up...saying he had pictures of me and that I was the one that went missing. I tried to tell him it was my sister but then we just got ambushed by all these people. He helped me get out but I haven't seen him come out yet"

"Your sister?"

She nods.

"Who are you?"

"I am" She stops talking and it looks like she is thinking "I am...I don't know"

I have never in my life been inclined to believe Faith but something tells me that she isn't playing with me this time around.

"You don't know?"

She shakes her head, the tears that had kinda vanished while she was explaining seems to be back.

"Do you know who I am?"

Another shake of the head.

"How long have you been looking for your sister?"

"I don't know!" She starts crying.

I put my arm around her in some attempt at giving her comfort. It was already hard enough cause it is Faith we are talking about here but we are on a deserted street in the shitty part of LA .

I let her cry for a bit before attempting to find out something...anything.

"I don't suppose you know where you are staying, or if you live here in LA."

"Nope"

"Is there anything in your purse?"

She looks down at it, surprised she was holding it. She opens it has a look inside then drops it. Seriously I need to find out what her drama is.

I bend down and pick up her bag. I see why she dropped it there is a .38 Magnum in it and nothing else.

"What are you playing at Faith?" I say to her.

"Who's Faith?" She frowns.

"You are and you know it. Now tell me what the hell are you playing at?"

"I am looking for my sister!"

"How can you know that you are looking for your sister but not know your own name?"

"I don't know."

"What is the last thing you remember?"

"Walking in to the warehouse to find my sister."

"You don't know how you got there?"

"I don't."

"You don't know your name?"

‘No" She sighs "Look I know this sounds crazy but I have no idea why I am here."

"Or in those clothes?"

She looks down at what she is wearing "What is wrong with my clothes?"

"Well it is something I would wear and that would have to be the most least thing we have in common."

"We have things in common?"

"Yeah...look of what you said about the warehouse is true I don't think we should be hanging out in the open like this...I have somewhere safe I can take you"

"Uh...."

"You can trust me."

"I can?"

"Yes"

"Okay"

Now I know this isn't Faith playing a game, Faith not playing a game wouldn't go anywhere with me and Faith trying to fuck with me wouldn't go anywhere with me.

"I have a car just around the corner" I tell her and head that way.

She falls in to step beside me "I know why I am in the crappy part of LA at 3pm on a Saturday but why are you?"

I am here because Angel sent me to try and locate a nest of Inchlet Demons that had been messing with some thing of his that he got courtesy of Wolfram and Hart and he gets kinda snippy about his things. I just don't think it is something I can explain to her.

"I was running an errand for a friend when I saw you all in trouble. I stopped to see if I can help"

"Thank you" She says

We reach the car that is on loan from Angel and I unlock it. She gets in the passenger side and me obviously the drivers side. I start up the car and prepare for what is going to be the strangest car trip I think I have ever had.

Angel is pacing in front of me. Giles is pacing behind me. Willow is sitting on Angel's chair tapping away on her laptop and Xander is sitting on the couch with ‘Faith'.

"Why is everyone freaking out?" She asks.

"If you are who we think you are and if the people who tool you are the people I think they are then the freaking out is warranted" Angel explains to her.

"People took me?"

"4 months ago you fell off the face of the earth. You were meant to be coming back from a mission Giles sent you on. You never came back. Not until just now."

"Mission?"

"You worked with us" I tell her "We did missions. We are based all over the world."

"Again I say mission?"

"I think we should verify who she is before we divulge that information" Giles whispers to me so only I can hear.

"How do you plan to do that?" She says from her spot on the couch.

"Well if she heard that I think that is all the verification we need," I say as she gets up off the couch, "We think you are a slayer, a slayer named Faith Lehane. You have been a slayer for the last 10 years. You came from Boston to Sunnydale, you stayed in Sunnydale helping me...helping us fight vampires and demons you did that for some time before heading up to LA. You spent a few years here before you went back to Sunnydale to help us stop the world from ending...any of this sounding familiar?"

"Nope but I think you are crazier than what I am."

"It is the truth. We have photos of you....we have your things, Giles has your things."

"If all this is true do you know what happened to me?"

"Yes" Angel states speaking up "An organization called the ‘Dollhouse' they operate here in LA. They take in volunteers who will work for them for an undisclosed amount of time and at the end of it get paid out a huge lump sum of money in exchange for their silence."

"So what was I volunteering for?"

"There isn't much information on them. They pay a lot of money to protect themselves. I do know that the have what they call actives and they are programmed to do jobs, once the task is completed they go back to I guess the headquarters where their memory is wiped and they wait until they are needed for the next job"

"How do I know that this isn't a job right now?"

"Why would we tell you this?" Xander says.

"Well if my memory can be wiped I guess it doesn't matter what I am told cause I will conveniently forget it when these fuckers decide to play god with my life."

"Everyone that works for them are volunteers. When they sign on with the Dollhouse they basically give them control of their lives for whatever time period they have signed on for."

"Would that be something the version of me you all know would do?"

I try to stop the snort that comes out.

"What does the snort mean?"

"Faith running off and leaving a mess behind her...no that isn't something the version of you we know would do" I answer her sarcastically.

"That is hardly fair, Buffy" Giles says jumping to her defense. Something he did a lot before she vanished. "When she left...it wasn't just her fault and you know that."

"I do know that, I also know she took off and left me alone to deal with things"

"Were you and her screwing...the other me?"

I shoot her a look and she puts her hands up in the air.

"Relax it was just a question. I may not know a god damned thing about anything before earlier today but I pick up this vibe around you. I can't explain, I don't understand it but we are connected somehow."

"I am a slayer too. We are both slayers, the first two to be in existence together when normally there is only one."

"Uh Kendra" Xander says.

"Right...but Kendra and I were nothing like Faith and I. Faith and I were different"

"Cause you were screwing?"

"What is it with the screwing?" I ask her.

She shrugs her shoulders, "This Faith girl gets under your skin....you cant say her name without your left eye twitching."

Xander lets out a laugh.

"What?" I ask him.

"Remember when I had the twitch?"

"That some kinda disease?" Faith says with a grin on her face and I notice Giles, Angel and Willow each hide a laugh.

"Yeah she is Faith" Xander confirms what I have been feeling since the second I saw her running out of that warehouse.

The meeting kinda wraps up after that. It is just me, Angel and Faith left in his office.

"Do we have some kind of plan?" Faith asks "I am sure these guys won't just let an active...that's what I am right?"

We nod.

"Well I am sure these guys won't just let one go missing...they ay eve have tracers planted on me somewhere"

"We have scramblers in place."

"What does that mean?"

"It is a security measure in case anyone tries to tag one of the slayers to get to us from the inside. It is a machine that scrambles any type of tracking or tracing device."

"Are you guys going to do tests on me?" She looks scared.

"No."

"What do you want to do?" I ask her.

"Uh I wouldn't mind getting a shower maybe some fresh clothes some that aren't so Buffy like" She flashes a grin at me.

"I was gong to ask if Laura Ashley threw up on you" Angel says.

"Who's Laura Ashley?" She says with a cute frown on her face.

"Never mind. Feel free to use my place for whatever you need. I will get some clothes that are more you sent up right away"

"Your place? Did you and I screw?"

"No...you haven't screwed anyone in this office"

Wrong! I think in my head.

"Buffy could you take Faith....can I call you that?"

She shrugs "I have no idea on what you are supposed to call me so go for it."

"Buffy?"

"Yep. I am on it. Maybe I will just take Faith to my room. Might be easier for her to shower with girly products available."

"Good idea" He says.

Faith follows me out of the office and we make our way to the elevators that will take us to an area Angel has had made into bedrooms for people to stay in. Normally when I come back to LA I just stay in a hotel but since Faith disappeared security was stepped up and we weren't to stay anywhere without the kind of security Angel had set up.

We get in and I select the floor we need.

"So we screwed, huh?"

"Yeah then you vanished."

"Was it that bad?"

"I think confusing may have been the word when it comes to us and the screwing. Our interaction with each other has always been...."

"Wiggy?" She offers.

"Yeah wicked wiggy...we have some kind of history let me tell you, not all of it as good as the screwing...can I please stop calling it screwing?"

"Sure."

"I don't know what word will describe what we shared, it wasn't making love and it wasn't just sex either."

"I think I understand what you mean. We have a wiggy history and the being intimate came out of the blue"
"Yeah, the time we were together before that we tried to kill each other"

"So was most of our time leaning towards the killing or the groiny action?"

"More the killing side of things...although you loved discussing groiny action with me...groiny action with other people"

"I was a shit head?"

"At times yeah but so was I"

"I think we would be wicked hot together"

"Trust me we were" I say as the elevator dings announcing we had reached our floor.

The doors open and she steps out "Well here is hoping I can get my memory back...something tells me it will be worth it just for our little experience" She flashes the trademark Faith grin and I forget to breathe.

Faith is back...I think.

She is wandering around the apartment I have been using for the last few weeks. Angel is organizing to have some of her clothes sent up as soon as possible and as soon as they arrive she said she was going to jump in the shower. I have offered her drinks both soft and alcoholic and also food but she says she doesn't feel like either.

There has been little glimpses that make me wonder if this is in fact Faith. Like the not wanting a drink or food. I don't think there was ever a time that food or drink I have offered her has not been taken up. Also she took off her little jackety shrug thing and her tattoo...so not there but the little sub conscious scratching thing she always seemed to do with it while she was thinking is still there.

I still get the tingles. The tingles I have gotten since the night we met, the tingles that go off the Richter scale whenever we are near each other.

"This is us yeah?" Her raspy voice breaks me out of my thoughts.

I look over and she is holding a photo of her and I. "Yeah, that was taken about 3 days before you vanished"

"We look pretty cozy" She says as she puts it back down.

"We kinda were" I make my way over and look at it myself. She was sitting on my lap and I had my arms wrapped around her we were both looking at the camera with big grins on our faces. We had put my digital camera on the timer setting to pose for it.

"So how long were we going out?"

"It was never official really. We have always had a shaky relationship and one night we just ended up together after I had said that every time I saw you I had an urge that was either fight or...or...fuck but fight always seemed to win out and I always wanted the other F part to win out. You grabbed me, you kissed me and we gave in to the other F part for about 6 weeks. One night there was a huge battle and we got separated. I was pretty beat up...Angel found me...brought me back to his apartment and was cleaning me up...you walked in...you started yelling about how could I and how could he and then took off...next time I saw you was earlier today"

"I went off because he was cleaning you up?"

I nodded "Angel and I used to date...when I first moved to Sunnydale he was my first love and I guess when you saw him kneeling in front of me and holding my hand you just...I guess you thought..."

"You were bumping uglies?"

"For lack of a better word, yes. I had a cut on my hand than he was cleaning out and I didn't even get a chance to explain it to you"

"So I was a hot head?"

I smile "At times yeah. I don't blame you for jumping to conclusions though. If I had walked in and seen you like that with an ex then I would have gotten my noise out of joint too...especially after the kinda fight we all faced that night"

"And Angel said before that I hadn't screwed anyone in the office before...he doesn't know about us?"

"He does but nobody else does. The night you went off he kinda guessed it and I told him about us. The others don't know and Angel isn't one to interfere in your business so that is why he didn't mention it?"

"Why don't they know?"

"We wanted to keep it to ourselves...we didn't want to define what we had and we didn't want them asking us to define what we had every 2 minutes"

"So what is the deal with the slayer bit of us?" She says changing the subject abruptly.

I explain to her about being called and the definition of slayer and the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of us now. Just as it comes to a close her clothes arrive and she jumps in to the shower.

Having her so close to me and not being able to talk to her or touch her or just be with her like we used to is painful. We may have only been a cohesive us for 6 weeks but it was the best 6 weeks of my life. The last 8 years with her were washed away in one night. You would think that sleeping together would make it even more awkward but it didn't. It just made all the pieces fall together.

Flashback

I am lying in her arms and it feels right. I feel safe, I feel warm, I feel happy, I feel content, I feel wanted, I feel amazingly sated and I feel loved I don't know how to explain the last one but I do. I feel it. I feel all those things and it is such a relief to finally be allowed to feel them. I have denied this for so long and to not have to deny it feels...pretty much like the euphoric feeling I got as I came a few minutes ago.

"You should be sleeping after a ride like that yo" Rumbles from below me.

I look up at her reluctantly moving my head from her chest "Are you tired?"

"A little yeah" She yawns for emphasis.

"You can sleep if you like, I would prefer to bask if that is okay"

"Of course it is, knock me a little kiss first though"

I deliberately and purposefully drag my body up hers for our lips to meet. It is sweet and soft and much to my dismay short. She pulls back with a small smile and then closes her eyes. I rest myself back on her chest and my breathing soon falls in to time with hers as I join her in the land of nod.

"Uh Buffy do you mind if I take you up on that offer to eat?" Pulls me from the day dream.

"Huh?" I say.

"Eat...I'd like to eat."

"Sure" I say kinda squeaky and I clear my throat "What would you like?"

"Whatever you've got" She says without a hint of Faith about it.

Man I miss the innuendo. I get up of the couch and head into the kitchen. I scrounge around in the cupboards and all I can find is microwave popcorn. I pull out the box and hold it out for her to see.

"Excellent" She grins and takes it from me and goes about putting it in the microwave.

"So you remember your love of microwave popcorn and how to use said microwave but nothing else?"

"It's strange" She says facing me "The things I remember are fucking crazy...well not remember as much as just do them or know them without a second thought."

"Like what?"

"Well I know I trust you. I don't even have to question it even now in my not knowing who I am phase I know that you are safe. I know that you know me better than anyone else...probably even better than me at times...I know that right now I couldn't give two fucks about the popcorn...alls I wanna do is throw you up against the counter and have my way with you."

I smile...I even consider letting her do just that but I know I can't. Not like this, not when it isn't really her.

"I know right now that you are thinking you can't do that, that you feel like you are taking advantage of me."

"I would be."

"Even if I want it?" She raises he eyebrow in such a Faith like way.

"Yes" I say with a sigh and walk out of the kitchen before I let myself do something completely stupid.

"Buffy" She calls out after me.

I ignore her and make my way to my bedroom.

"Buffy!" She is right behind me.

"Don't Faith, just don't."

Her hands are on my hips "Tell me why not."

"Faith" I breathe.

He lips are on my neck "Tell me why not" She whispers in my ear.

"You aren't her....you aren't my Faith" I say and she lets go of me and I walk the rest of the way in to my room closing the door behind me.

I lay on my bed and cry...and cry...and cry...for the first time since she left. It took her coming back for me to realize what I had lost.

Next