Who: Faith Lehane and a few friends What: Reflecting on the past and looking to the future When: Today Where: The Prison Warnings: No
Faith is a loner. It's in her design. Even when she was a little girl, she never had many friends. Her only friend as she shuffled from relative to relative was an imaginary one named Alex who later turned out to be a vengeance demon born in Ancient Greece. After that there was high school, and her friend Tommy who had been bullied constantly for being gay. One day Faith snapped and broke a bully's arm. Tommy wasn't grateful for the violence but afraid of it, and had fled the next day, leaving only a note for his best friend in the dust. After that, there was Buffy, and after that Faith just gave up. Prison isn't the kind of place you want to make friends anyway.
She is surprised to see Serena and Alec. Serena her usual ball of frantic energy, all smiles and sunshine until she leaves and Faith realizes what she's done. Alec is standing there awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck, his barcode.
"Guess you just needed to be asked by a perky blonde, huh?" Faith asks.
The corner of her mouth turns up into a smirk. She realizes then that doesn't really care that Serena is the one to convince him to come back. She is just glad to have him back. With so many soldiers down, she needs all the help that she can get. This prison is almost as much his as it is hers. She is the one who killed all the zombies inside, and so it is more hers. The zombies are no longer inside the building, the threats are coming from outside, and this is more Alec's area of expertise anyway. The losses are all felt tremendously, but the gains are good, very good. She finally has all the super soldiers in the city living in the prison and the Salvatores are back. She finally has Alec back.
"Pick out a cell. I'll get you set up with Kono on sentry. She's in charge."
"Yeah, we'll see about that," he retorts.
"Alec!"
She is shouting at his back but he is already gone. Kono may kill her for this, she thinks. Alec is undeniably a pain in the ass but one that they probably need with such a gaping hole in security and raiding. She thinks she will talk to Max about taking over the raiding schedule. She thinks Max will be every bit as good as Derek was at leading the raiders, and maybe even being a friend.
Derek’s fist was in her face and the collision nearly took her off her feet. She stayed standing, just barely but her vision swam a little bit.
“You’re off your game today, Slayer,” Derek taunted her.
“Just letting you get a few hits in so you don’t feel bad about yourself, Wolf Boy.”
“So this is all for my self-esteem? I didn't know you cared so much, Faith.”
“I’m a giver.” She grabbed him and jerked him towards her to headbutt him but, he side stepped her and the momentum landed her on the floor again. She groaned and rolled over before getting back up.
“Come on. You’re not even going to tell me?”
“Fine.” She punched him in the face this time. “Stefan’s been hooking up with Faye.”
They circled one another.
“Faye? You mean the psycho witch who teamed up with Dick Roman.”
“One and the same.” Faith punched him again, this time even harder.
“You want to talk about it?”
Stefan’s betrayal stung deeply. He had promised Faith so much and like most of the men in her life, had come up exceedingly short. She knew his humanity was off and that was complicated, but on no planet could she accept him hooking up with Dick Roman’s Girl Friday. Dick had tried to take everything from Faith, including her mind, and her boyfriend was fucking the enemy behind her back. It was somehow worse than Buffy and Alec’s repeated attempts to murder her.
Faith punched Derek and knocked him to the floor. She jumped on top of him and hit him again.
Faith does this twice every day. She walks through the prison and around it doing a perimeter sweep to ensure security. She doesn't always catch everything. The prison is a big place, but she does her best. The process takes several hours, longer if she slows to a more leisurely pace. She stalls in the rec room for a minute and sits on the couch. She lights a cigarette and exhales, watching the little grey rings of smoke. Most people don't like that she smokes indoors, so she normally tries to keep it confined to her office. The rec room is strangely empty, and she misses the sounds of Scott and Stiles playing video games. She checks her phone, it is only quarter past six. She knows in a little while the singers would be here in playing karaoke on the Wii. This isn't such a terrible place, she thinks. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse, they had fucking karaoke. Faith isn't a total failure. The prison still works. This is the reason that Faith is willing to sacrifice everything for it. This is the reason nobody will ever have her full attention, her entire heart. Her heart belongs to this place.
“I get you, Faith. I really, really get you.” Dean was half smiling to himself, and Faith didn’t appreciate the secrecy. She wanted in on the joke, or she assumed she was the butt of it.
“What are you talking about?”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh it’s just usually I’m that guy.”
“What guy?”
“The guy who has to tell everyone that they can’t or that they should or shouldn't. Never on this big of a scale or anything, but I've been that guy. That guy that’s trying to protect everyone,” Dean clarified.
“Yeah, well I’m not a guy.”
He grinned again. “I've noticed.” The smile faded. “That guy isn't afraid to sacrifice himself. When you go after Glory, are you even coming back?”
Faith just shrugged. “It’s like I've got nine lives or something. Trust me, you’re not getting rid of me that easily, Winchester.”
"Alec's back on the schedule," Faith says as she approaches Kono. "Starting tomorrow. We'll let him move in today."
"Alec's back?"
"Yeah."
Kono wasn't at the prison when Alec was originally kicked out but his reputation precedes him.
"We're giving him a second chance. We need him. Sorry in advance though cause he's kind of a pain in the ass. Don't let him boss you around. Just stand up to him, and he'll quit being a dick. He has skills and training that we need."
Kono nods and goes back to her post. Faith sighs as she watches her go. Of all the old Council members, Kono is the one she knows the least, and she realizes this is something she will have to change. Faith is always part of the boys club, but sometimes girls have to stick together too.
“So I finished putting up the magical barriers around the prison to keep her out. And while I was at it, to kind of practice a little, I might have put a protection spell on your motorcycle,” Willow said as she walked into Faith’s office.
“Hey, cool.” Faith grinned and Willow smiled back.
For some reason Faith pinpointed this moment as when they stopped being frenemies and started being friends.
Faith strays along the back fence, walking in a jagged criss cross as she tries to name off all the supernatural creatures in the prison. Vampires, werewolves, sirens, super soldiers, mutants, aliens, witches. It once bothered her, that itching scratching feeling of being surrounded by the monsters she was intended to slay. Faith once took her job so seriously that she couldn't understand why Buffy would ever sleep with a vampire. The thought of it had once sickened Faith but now didn't bother her in the least. Vampires were part of the newly established pecking order where everyone has to work together to survive. Without humans there are no vampires and without vampires... well, Faith doesn't exactly subscribe to the belief that they are essential to survival but they are convenient. It's difficult to tell when a vampire is going to snap but it's difficult to tell when a slayer is going to snap. They were all just walking around, such fragile things.
The wind whipped through Faith’s hair as she cracked the window in Stiles’s Jeep so she could smoke a cigarette. She knew she’d catch hell for smoking in here later, but now wasn’t later and Faith wasn’t much for following rules. She figured she was already going to have to answer for the bulletholes in his Jeep, so what was a little cigarette smoke?
Stefan was driving and she studied his outline for a long minute, wondering what would have happened if the vampire and his goons hadn’t interrupted the two of them. Stefan and Faith had gotten incredibly close on this trip, but she knew it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to Emily. She wasn’t even sure she was being fair to her own damn self.
“Bet this is the last time you follow me anywhere,” she finally said, breaking the silence.
He gave her a bemused smile. “Why’s that?”
“Uh. We almost both died back there.”
“Well,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time for me. I’m already dead technically.”
“You’re not dead, dead. You’re not staked dead.”
“No. But I can handle a little trouble.” He grinned cheekily.
She smiled at the double meaning there. “You do like to live dangerously.”
“There’s nothing more dangerous than hooking up with a vampire slayer when you’re a vampire.”
“It’s a good thing for your health and safety that won’t be happening again,” she retorted.
She returns to the roof. It's the one place where she can get a bit of quiet away from the chaos of the prison. There are many people who come up to the roof to smoke, make out, or do other things away from the prison's prying eyes, but the roof is large and Faith favors one section of it. It is the spot where Nate's pot garden still continues to grow. Faith is not very good at taking care of the plants, and so Shelley is extremely helpful when it comes to seeing them grow. She knows that the plants are to be used for medicine for the infirmary. That is their intended purpose. But Faith also knows that her old friend Nate used to enjoy smoking the stuff from time to time. Faith never uses drugs, not anymore. After being poisoned by Orpheus twice she won't even take an Aspirin for a headache. But she tends these weeds for her fallen friend.
Faith looked up from her desk, startled. She knew that Nate was a vampire now but this was the first time she had seen him since he had changed. She was told he was having a little bit of a hard time.
“You think I go around staking my friends?” She stood up from her desk and walked around in front of it.
“I think you go around staking vampires.”
“There’s like, a dozen vampires living in the prison,” she pointed out. If she was running around staking vampires at random, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “And I don’t care what you are. I’m just glad to see your face again.”
And in one of the rarest moments of Faith Lehane’s life she grabbed Nate roughly by his shoulder and jerked him towards her. She slapped her other arm around him and hugged him. She didn’t have to worry about breaking him so she hugged him tightly.
“Don’t scare me like that again,” she said quietly in his ear.
The winter is slowly ebbing away and the snow has melted into small pockets that dot the edges of the lawn. Snow has turned to a muddy slush that will soon warm into earth again. The winters are long and harsh in Everett, but Faith does not mind. She may have been serving time in the Southern California penitentiary, but she had grown up in Boston, and New England winters could be just as cruel. A bit of snow clings to the headstones sitting under the tree that has somehow become the spot where the graveyard went.
They're lucky, some distant voice says. Maybe they are lucky, Faith thinks. So many corpses between here and the east coast, and most will never get a headstone with their name carved on it. They will only get the mindless wandering of a zombie lifestyle. The endless consumption, the craving for flesh. They may be dead but at least they're not relegated to that.
Faith was twelve years old the last time she prayed. Back then, it had been in a Catholic church in South Boston. This time she was sitting at her desk in her office. The smell of cigarettes and cheap whiskey hung in the air as Faith closed her eyes and prayed to Castiel. In a dramatic flurry of her papers being blown all around, Castiel appeared.
“Are you alright?” he asked. Faith had never called for him this way. Usually she just used the network.
“Yeah, I’m still breathing. Vera on the other hand was just eaten in front of the entire prison!”
Castiel looked somber. “I know. I am sorry for your loss.”
“Apologies won’t bring her back. Where’s God? Where is God now? Why didn’t He protect her?”
In a similarly dramatic fashion, Faith ripped the curtains from her window. They had a good view of the yard just beyond the fence where several walkers were piled up trying to break it down. Sentry would eventually take care of them but right now everyone in the prison was in a state of shock.
“Where is He, Castiel? Does He just not give a shit about anyone? He’s just done with us?”
“You are not forsaken, Faith. You must be strong. He has not forgotten about you or the people of Everett.”
Faith rolls over onto her back, not caring about the cold pressed against the thin material of her jacket. Her eyes blink lazily a few times because the sun is bright despite the cold. The gold reminds her of Buffy's hair, and the sky reminds her of Spike. She sometimes thinks her life can't get any stranger until one of her friends gets on a spaceship and flies off to another planet. She wonders if Spike has already reached Antar. She wonders what Antar is like. She wonders how nice it could be to start over fresh in a place where people don't know you. Would everything be so different that it would be disorienting? Would it just be better? To start fresh, to start in a place without zombies? She wonders what Spike is going through and thinks he might be the bravest person on the planet. Or at least, he used to be.
“Give me some of that.” She reached out and snaked the bottle of moonshine Spike had been drinking, and took a long swing. Maybe the swig was too long, because instead of fighting for his bottle back, Spike just raised his brow at her.
“Tough day at the office, love?”
“Every day is a tough day at the office,” Faith said when she finally came up for air.
“Might want to find a new job then.” Spike took his bottle back and poured a glass for Faith.
“Who else would take this one?”
“Nobody in their right mind.”
Faith smirked and clinked her glass against his bottle. “Cheers to being driven crazy by Buffy.”
Unlike Spike, Faith can't outrun her past. There is no spaceship waiting for her. There is no second life. She is stuck with this one, and she's not so sure that she minds. Even in the depths of her deepest despair, those nights spent tossing and turning and listening to the conflicting voices in her head. Do this, do that, turn around, and get someone killed. And that is your fault, Faith. Your fault. The voices could drive her crazy if she really let them on a cold, lonely night. So many choices to make, life or death choices that normally could have fallen on Buffy's shoulders. Faith never knew what it was like to be the one until she was the one. Some choices were merely impossible gambles.
Faith could run but she couldn’t hide. Not from Wesley. Their connection as slayer and watcher was somehow enabling him to follow her wherever she went, and he could just pop into her head whenever he damn well felt like it.
“It’s the end of the world. I can take on the big bad beast and lose everything, or I can play nice and lose half. I’ve never been a gambler. What about you?” Faith asked. Wesley darts at the dartboard in a pub that looked a little too posh to be something Faith dreamed up.
“Either way you’ll still have me, Faith.”
“We’ll be the last two standing in Everett at this rate.”
“To answer your question, no. I am not much of a gambler, but life is a gamble. I took a gamble when I went to you for help with Angelus and it paid off. I took a gamble going to work for Wolfram and Hart and….”
Suddenly blood appeared on the front of Wesley’s shirt. Faith’s dark eyes focused on it before she looked up at his face again.
“You give really sucky advice, you know that?”
“Do you really want me to tell you what to do?”
Faith pouted. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.” Wes returned to his darts.
Buffy is leaving. This is no shock to Faith's system, this is how life is. Buffy leaves, and that is that. Faith thinks she will come back, that she will always come back. But it's not just Faith that Buffy has left behind this time. It's Willow and Angel too. It's the other slayers that she took responsibility for when she made the decision to turn them all into slayers. Faith now carries this burden but she does not resent Buffy for it. It feels natural to her, she gravitates towards the other slayers. She understands them in a way that nobody else ever will. While some have moved on, others still stay on and Faith feels responsible for them. She will not fail Kennedy, Dianne and Molly. She will definitely not fail the little slayer that looks so much like C. She won't fail them like she failed the others. This is a silent promise she makes to herself, to become their big sister, to protect them from everything. Faith always says that she has no family, but she has four brand new little sisters that she will do anything for. She will die for them without a thought, but mostly she will teach them how to be strong.
“People say I look like her. Does it bug you?” Aria was prying. She had a nasty habit of doing that, but she continued at her own expense. Faith easily knocked her to the floor and stood over the miniature slayer.
“Her, who?” she asked. Faith knew perfectly well who Aria was talking about.
“Colleen.”
Faith said nothing for about thirty seconds, and reached to give Aria a hand up from the mat on the prison gym floor.
“Yeah, I guess you look like her.” She was downplaying the similarities in looks between Aria and Colleen. When she had first found out that Aria was a slayer, C was the first person she thought about. In the last few weeks she had spent more time getting to know Aria as they trained and she wasn’t a thing like C. “But you’re not like her. You’re braver and stronger.”
“So then why don’t you like me?” Aria asked after a beat.
“I don’t like anybody. The only thing I want is to keep you alive. We don’t need to be girlfriends and talk about our feelings. Go wash up, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Faith watched with some regret as Aria’s back retreated through the doorway.
Max sits beside Faith on the edge of the roof. She looks so natural perched there, like the deadly predator cat she was meant to be. Faith hadn't even heard her approach, she simply opens her eyes and sees Max there like she is a part of the roof, like she has always been there.
"I saw Alec's back," Max says.
"Yeah."
Faith sits up and mirrors Max's posture, one leg draped over the edge of the roof and the other curled up, knee nearly touching her chin.
"You cool with that?"
"I asked him to come back," Faith admits. "I don't know what happened to him, but he seems different. I'm ready to give him a second chance. I feel better knowing you and Steve are here to help keep him in line, though. Gotta admit."
Max smirks. "It takes a village to raise an idiot."
Faith laughs. It's funny because Alec isn't stupid at all.
Alec was shirtless and stretched out on the bunk across from her, looking every bit the lazy and dangerous predator that he was. She was enjoying the view quite a bit. It was the way they operated. Feeling more than a little satisfied, she stretched like a cat on the other bunk without a stitch of clothing on.
“You know this isn’t the end,” Alec finally said breaking the dreamy silence between them.
“Hmm?”
“More people will come here. You cleared out a high security prison facility. This place was crawling with zombies. Other people will want what you have. And you can either give it to them, or let them take it away from you.”
Faith rolled over onto her side and gave him a confused look. “What are you talking about? I’ll just kick their asses and throw them out.”
“Like you did to me?” He smirked mischievously.
“Just like that.”
“Joke about it if you want, but I’m not the first one that’s going to show up here looking for a piece of the protection this place has. It’s a messy world out there right now, and you don’t want to be caught out in it.”
“So you’re saying what? I should just let people come in here and live with us?” Faith asked.
“More will come. It’s just a matter of time. So get ready.”
Max leaves Faith alone with the darkness of her own thoughts as company. She smokes a cigarette and occasionally pulls a flask out of her pocket. The whiskey warms her blood in the end of March chill. Spring is coming according to the Almanac that someone brought back on a raiding trip. Spring is coming, slowly but surely.
"Hooker, what's it gonna take for you to eat something?" Lafayette's voice is a welcome distraction, and Faith turns to look at him.
"I eat plenty and you know it." She doesn't even complain about the food. It's not that different from what she grew up eating. "You're here for the weed. You don't need to front."
Lafayette shrugs. "It's here, sugar. How you gonna expect me to not smoke it?"
"I don't," Faith says.
"Well, good. Cause Lala needs to relax him some before I go back into that motherfuckin' kitchen!" He sits down beside Faith and lights the joint. Ever the gentleman he holds it out to her first. She shakes her head. "More for me," he says before taking a puff.
A long silence passes between the two of them.
"What do you think about me?" Faith asks him suddenly. "I mean, do you think I'm a good person?"
Lafayette gives her an incredulous look. "Sister, I am the wrong brother to be asking that question, okay? I begged one of the baddest bitches in Louisiana to turn my cousin into a vampire knowing full well that my cousin? She hates vamps and she's probably gonna hate my ass for a long motherfucking time."
"I guess everybody makes mistakes."
He shakes his head. "Not a mistake. I wouldn't take it back for anything. I'd rather her hate me forever than be dead. I'm selfish like that."
“Stop giving Dr. Yang such a hard time.” Emily towered over Faith’s hospital bed in the infirmary.
Faith scowled. She didn’t want to stay in this bed for one second longer and it wasn’t just because she hated hospitals, or because she felt she ought to be out there doing something instead of being laid up. She didn’t want to stay in this bed because it wasn’t that far from Connor’s. And looking at Connor’s face reminded her of what they had just been through.
“It’s not my fault that she has no bedside manner.”
Emily rolled her eyes, but still laid down next to Faith. The Slayer relaxed a little with her girlfriend laying next to her. Faith smiled. “Much better.”
“How are you doing?” Emily asked. “I mean, really.”
Faith could bullshit Emily, but she knew that she would just see right through her like she usually did. “I think I just took away the one thing Buffy had left.”
“Screw Buffy. She just tried to kill you.”
Faith shook her head. “I know. But I know what it’s like to be her right now. I know what it’s like to have nothing and be desperate and on your own. I used to want her to feel how I felt, but now it just seems cruel. I took him away from her, but I didn’t save her.”
“You are doing everything you can to keep this place safe. Stop blaming yourself for everything. I hate when you talk about yourself like you’re a bad person.”
“I’m not a good person,” Faith said.
“I think you’re the best person.” Emily leaned in and kissed Faith then, and she felt a warm flutter inside of her. Nobody had ever made Faith feel so good about herself, and it was likely nobody ever would again. Emily was far too good for Faith, and Faith knew it.
Time passes. Faith watches the sunset. She sits perched on the edge of the roof like a gargoyle, the prison's literal guardian. Lafayette is long gone, and Faith rests her chin on her knee as she watches the skyline fade from pinks and purples to a dark ashen grey. She thinks she can almost see her reflection in those dark lines.
"Thinking about running away?" Stefan asks.
Faith stands up. It seems like the thing to do. She hasn't seen Stefan in so long, but he looks exactly the same to her, and her heart beat speeds up for half a second. He will always look the same, she reminds herself. He is a vampire. They won't ever age. Stefan will forever look seventeen while the rest of them age and decay and fade. It sounds bad when she thinks about it that way, and wonders if somehow Selene's mind is stuck there.
She smiled at him. A real genuine kind of smile.
"No. I think I've done all the running I'm going to do in this lifetime."
“You should be more careful with your nightly prowls. Everyone knows you sneak out of here on your own all the time,” Sam said. He was lecturing her and she rolled her eyes so hard they almost got stuck in the back of her head. She and Sam did not ordinarily get along but he had a way of butting into her life. It probably didn’t help that she kept coming back to climb him like a jungle gym.
She pulled her tshirt back on. “I’m not afraid of any of them. I’m not afraid of anything.”
Sam laughed. He looked like he regretted it a second later but he laughed anyway. “Faith, you’re afraid of everything about yourself.”
“Am not.” She scowled.
Sam gave her a pointed look. “I’ve never seen anyone try to run from who they are like you do.”
Faith tossed his jeans at him and left. She was there for the hot rebound sex, not for analysis.
And it is good, it surprises Faith even. She has hated Stefan and she has loved Stefan probably more vehemently than any other relationship she's ever had. Hell, she and Alec, and she and Buffy have actively tried to kill one another and their relationships still aren't as volatile as the one she had once shared with Stefan. Stefan and Faith are not meant to be, they are too different. While once those differences united them, they now divide them. She finds that now she no longer hates Stefan, she's rooting for him in a different kind of way. She wants him to find the redemption that saved her. She wants him to have even that small peace of mind in that chaotic churning of his darkened soul. She will help him, if he lets her. But she will never make the mistake of loving him again.
"Thanks. It's good to be back." He smiles. Faith can't tell if he's faking it or not. It doesn't really matter. "We haven't really talked for awhile. How are your uh... how are your powers coming along?"
Faith smiles again. "You really have been gone for awhile. Turns out Dad was a dick, but he left me a few presents." She shrugs like it's no big deal.
“Allison’s lucky. I wish you were my dad,” Faith said. Chris had just shown her how to put together an Anzio 20mm Sniper Cannon.
“What was your father like?” he asked as he carefully packed the weapon away.
“Dunno. Evil? Nasty. I didn’t really know him that well, or at all.” Faith shrugged like she didn’t care, even though she cared a lot. Chris watched her carefully.
“Sometimes a person isn’t worth knowing.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
He picked up the case and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder as he walked over to her. “You’re a leader, and you’re a hunter. You would have done the Argent name proud.”
"You alright?" Stefan asks. He's aware that even though Faith is there she's not really there. Her mind wanders so easily these days. The older she gets, the more area there is to wander on the inside. Sometimes it makes her sick looking into those dark corners of her mind but if she doesn't see past the darkness, she'll never see the best of herself beyond those shaky walls.
She nods. "Fine." Always fine, forever fine. Just like Alec is always alright.
"Okay. I just wanted to say hi. My brother's getting settled in so... I wanted to warn you."
Faith smirks. Oh God. Alec and Damon in one place at one time sounds like trouble waiting to happen. She already has visions of her and Stefan breaking up fights dancing in her head.
"Thanks for the warning. Let me know if you guys need anything. I'm going to put Max in charge of raiding so she'll get in touch with you about where and when you're going."
Stefan nods and disappears. Damon is another pain in the ass without a doubt, but also another strong player in town, and the prison can use as many of those as they can get.
“I heard some of the kids here are planning a formal,” Jack said as he wandered around Faith’s office. He had a habit of doing this sometimes. He would wander around and talk to himself while Faith nodded every once in awhile, chain smoking cigarettes and catching up on the schedules and paperwork.
“I look pretty good in a tux,” he said.
“Mmhmm.”
“You’re not even listening to me.”
“You’re right. I’m not,” Faith said as she picked her head up and gave him a smirk. It was a hint for him to leave her alone so she could get some work done. Jack wasn’t fond of taking hints. Usually she found his tenacity charming, but right now she just gave him a pointed look.
“You could be slow dancing with me in the near future.”
Faith snorted. “I’m not going to a stupid prom. I didn’t go in high school, and I’m not going now. I’ve never slow danced before and I’m not starting now.”
“Wait. What? You’ve never slow danced before.”
“No. Not really.” Faith’s eyes were back on her paperwork.
Jack’s expression was completely lost on Faith because she wasn’t watching him. She was doing work, and the next thing she knew, there was music flooding into her office from Jack’s tablet. It was some old love song, one of the ones her mother used to play when she was a kid.
“No!” she protested before Jack could take her hand and tug her to her feet. “I’m not doing this.”
She could be stubborn. So could Jack.
“Fine. If I do this will you leave me alone?”
“I promise.” Jack nodded.
Faith rolled her eyes but put her hand in his and her other hand on his shoulder as he rocked them gently back and forth.
“See? It’s not so bad.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Oh, come on. You get to be pressed up against me. Don’t act like it’s such a chore.”
“Jack, if I was gonna be pressed up against you for fun, it wouldn’t be for any slow dancing.” She gave him a pointed look.
“I guess I can live with that.”
“So can I be excused? I’ve participated in this life altering event and it was everything I ever dreamed of. I got shit to do.”
He smiled at her then and squeezed her hand. He raised his hand and spun her around before dipping her dramatically.
“I suppose you can be excused now.”
She rolled her eyes, but smirked as he straightened up and released her. “Just remember all work and no play makes Faith a dull girl.”
Faith is alone again. She drenches her soul in whiskey and dries it with cigarette smoke. She's stuck in one of those in between moods where she can't tell if she wants to laugh or cry or maybe do both at the same time. She stares out into the dark streets of Everett and thinks about the future. She thinks about the houses and businesses out there, and she thinks about the zombies that will need to be killed. She thinks about the enormous job that lies ahead of them all. She thinks about life outside of this prison and what the future of Everett holds.
She never asked for this job, this job of helping the human race survive. Now that she has it, she refuses to let it go. She told Buffy that Everett was Faith's last stand, and it is. She will die in this city. As Sunnydale had once been Buffy's territory, Everett was Faith's. This is her city, and she wants to see it thrive. She is not content with simple survival. She wants more than that.
“Sure, it’s possible but it would take some time.”
“Time for what?”
Tony Stark considered Faith’s question. “We would literally need to go house to house and shut off the power. People probably died with their lights and televisions on. That’s all wasted power. If we do get it turned on we’ll need to conserve it.”
Going house to house meant zombies. It meant killing zombies.
“I wiped out the whole prison full of zombies myself. I think we can handle a grid somewhere. But you’re right. It will take time.” Time they didn’t have at the moment but they would have it and the minute they did, Faith would seize the opportunity.
Faith pulls Krissy's bracelet out of her pocket and rubs her fingers over the carefully woven fabric. She scans the note again quickly with her eyes. I think you'll have better luck with this than I will. Thanks for everything, Faith.
Faith had thought that Krissy would die after she was attacked by a demon in the forest. She even called off her Connor hunt for a little bit to go back to the prison and check on Krissy. By then she had already changed. How odd, Faith had thought. She can't think of anything worse than becoming a monster. Connor and she had made a vow that if either of them became vampires they would stake each other. What about werewolves? They had never made any kind of deal about that. The world is never black and white, but gray. The bite of a monster is a miracle to a wounded sixteen year old girl.
“That’s fine? It looks like an oozing wound.” Adrian followed Faith, his long legs coming in handy because The Slayer was striding quickly. “I can fix it in just a minute.”
“I don’t need it. Save it for somebody else.”
“You’re really worried about it, aren’t you? Afraid I’m going to go insane.”
Faith gave him a confused look. “That’s what happens, right? You go crazy because you use the spirit too much. You know I may not slay you guys, but I do try and pay attention when people talk about you.”
“I’m not as fragile as you think I am. I can handle that. Can’t have our fearless leader walking around like this.”
“I heal fast.”
“I heal faster.”
“Fine. But none of that aura reading shit.” Faith held up a finger and Adrian raised his hands up in mock surrender, feigning innocence. She pulled the sleeve of her tshirt down over her shoulder so the wound was fully visible. She had gotten into a nasty scrape with one of Glory’s demons on her hunt for Dawn. Some of them had claws, as it turned out.
“There. All better, and I’m sorry to report I’m not crazy just yet.”
It was all better. Faith looked at her shoulder and only saw smooth pale flawless skin where there had been rips and tears and blood. She was completely healed. Adrian could do a lot. It was no wonder Faith believed he could help Buffy. He was proof that miracles were still possible, even in this world of chaos and decay.
When Alec walks out onto the roof, the sun is beginning to rise again and so is Faith. In fact, she's floating approximately five inches from the ground. Her arms are folded and she looks so peaceful floating there. He can hear her smile from there, and knows his location has been given away.
"I learned a few things while you were away," she says.
"I can see that."
Alec walks towards Faith and finally stands beside her. He looks over at her but keeps his face expressionless. She is still staring out into the horizon. Soft golden light is beginning to edge just over the shadows of the treetops. Dawn's first early rays are beginning to warm Everett, and it is beautiful.
"I think the world is getting bigger, Alec. Like the way it used to be."
She is back on the ground again, walking towards the edge of the roof. His heart hammers with the sudden brief worry that she may just walk right off the ledge. He wonders when he started caring again, and decides this is Rebekah's fault, or maybe Faith's, or maybe secretly his. He'll never admit that.
She turns back and smirks at him instead. "Ellis and Zoey are having a baby."
"Good for them." Alec folds his arms over his chest, pretending to not care.
"Come on, Alec. People are having babies. We're going to have kids to protect. It's not over yet."
The minute she heard him yelling her name, she took the nearest exit down a long corridor. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Ellis. She thought he was great. He was just a touch too energetic for her comfort level, and he was ten times more amped up than usual.
“Faith, Faith! Wait up, girl. Hey, Faith!”
Finally, Faith rolled her eyes and turned around only to see Ellis standing right in front of her. How had he moved so fast? She looked down at what he had in his hands, and her eyes widened as he opened the box of cigars.
“I’m having a baby!” he exclaimed.
“I heard. Congrats.” She picked out a cigar and studied it. She smoked cigarettes plenty, but she didn’t think she had ever smoked a cigar before. Ellis lit the cigar for her and she inhaled deeply. It was different than a cigarette but she liked the sweet pungent odor of the smoke.
“I hope it’s a girl and that she’s just like Zoey. Oh man, oh man. Zoey’s just about near perfect, don’t you think? I knew I was gonna marry her the minute I saw her.”
Faith smiled a little bit. Listening to Ellis talk about Zoey and the baby stirred something inside of her. Love was never like this for Faith. Love was full of pain, and betrayal ,and heartache. It wasn’t brilliant and sweet. It wasn’t excited and hopeful. Not for her, and this renewed her passion for keeping the people inside the prison safe. It wasn’t just the people anymore, it was this tiny person that was coming out of Zoey in nine months. This tiny person had just gained a protector, whether he or she liked it or not.
Faith was a loner. This is not in her design anymore. She has so much help. She has actual friends and a family. She has all the things she always complained about never getting before. Buffy has left her legacy behind, and Faith is determined to not let her down. But it's not really about Buffy. It's not about Faith, or Alec or any of them. It's about the world and the future, and the ties that bind them all together. It doesn't matter if someone is a human, or a vampire, or a slayer, or a transgenic, or a fucking werebutterfly. They are bonded by their will to survive.
The first ray of sunlight stretches out, yawning over Faith and Alec standing at the edge of the roof. His voice is soft in her ear as he stands behind her, ever solid, his arms wrapping around her.
"You should sleep, Faith."
"I'm not tired."
She can dream with her eyes open. She doesn't need to sleep. She can see Allison and Stiles emerging from the brush, dirty and road worn. She can see the others as they walk their weary selves out of the forest, she can see them driving their trucks and motorcycles down the long road to the prison. She can see a whole new generation of survivors. She can see city lights in the sky again, just beyond her reach. She's so close and patience is a virtue she hasn't yet earned. Her tenacity will push them all, and the fire that burns inside of her will never be extinguished.
"More will come," Alec says quietly.
Faith smiles and it touches her eyes as she focuses on the horizon. "Let them come."