April 2006
You’re tired. Partly from being put in charge of a major organization and partly from having to follow Dawn’s every move so you can restrain her from jumping on anyone who answers in the negative to ‘have you ever met my sister?’ Surely shrinking her back down should have shrunk her sex drive?
“God, That class was so dull I had to fake a slayer dream just to get out of it!”
Sprawled out on the floor of your office, carpeted by end-of-term reports, Dawn frowns, “I thought you taught it?”
“Yeah, so?”
You throw yourself down into the big, plush leather chair all section heads are provided. This might have started as a temporary position but you’ll be damned if you fly all the way to Scotland and not have perks.
“No one’s doing any work- it’s the last day of term! We should be watching movies and playing Hangman.” You always suck at that game though, too worried about keeping the little man alive to think clearly.
She rolls her eyes, “That’s regular school. You’re teaching the art of stabbing, not Maths!”
Why is she so English suddenly? You have a sneaking suspicion there’s a secret boyfriend involved as all her new English words are either school or sex related- except for ‘chav’ but you really have no idea what that one’s about.
“You know, you could help me with these rather than just counting down the seconds until Faith arrives.”
So not counting the seconds!
The clock ticks and you jump.
One second closer.
“Oh shut up, you’re still grounded for letting your love life spill over onto company time so don’t start lecturing me about mine.”
Occasionally you wonder if making Dawn your little sister was the Monk’s idea of a big cosmic joke- not only does her new love of heels mean she towers over you even more than she naturally does, but she’s perfected the art of the ‘Mom-Glare’. “Buffy, there are many lectures I could give you about your love life- being in a hurry to end it is not one of them.” She licks her lips and gags, “I am however running out of spit. So please, do me a favour and lick a few envelopes.”
“I have a baby who dribbles everywhere, can’t you just use that?”
The look you receive is withering, “Why does pushing something out of your vagina make women so open to discussing disgusting things?”
“That’s not disgusting! Try cleaning poop off the walls!” Incidentally, are British people just really lazy? They shorten poop to ‘poo’- like one letter is going to make a difference.
“You scare me. And you’re still looking at that damn clock!”
It ticks. Again. “She said she’d be here at five. That’s very, very soon.”
Dawn groans, “She might have said five but we both know that means quarter past. If you want to spend the extra fifteen minutes worrying about it then be my guest, but please, lick some bloody envelopes while you’re at it!”
“She said five, Dawn, and she’ll be here- I told her it was important.”
“Did you bring food to entice her, ‘cause you know that otherwise she’s not going to-?” You point to the stash in front of you on the desk. “Sushi?” Dawn snorts, “Dramatic irony much?”
As a nickname it’s actually quite insulting. You should probably get Faith to stop using it. But you sort of love her clever quirks. “I’m not leaving her for Satsu, I’m leaving her for… living with Satsu. Who is my friend. And an entirely different thing.”
“Watch me not believe you.” Dawn spits again, dry and onto your beautiful carpet.
“Can you please stop doing that?!”
“Does Faith even eat sushi?” She continues, totally disregarding you.
You squish down the brown paper bag to show the bucket of fried chicken behind it. “I know how to take care of my woman.”
Uncomfortable Pause.
“Ignore that.”
She’s not your woman. Not anymore. Not in this mood.
Faith does not sulk, you sulk. Faith falls into a deep pit of depression- which wouldn’t be so goddamn awful if she wasn’t quite so pro-active about it. Faith tends to drag herself out of the pit by lashing out at the thing she thinks made her depressed in the first place.
Which is why you want her out of the house.
Not that you’re even going to question how she’s the one with Post Natal Depression when she didn’t even do the hard bit.
Oh God, if only it were PND. How simple that would make everything…
It took a month after the birth for her to fall into this depression and now four months later she’s barely managing to keep a lid on it, only by completely separating herself into ‘Slayer’ and ‘Faith’ has she managed to hold off others knowing. In the school she’s the big bad slayer, the teacher all the girls fear yet… are in awe of. As soon as she’s home, as soon as that door closes, she’s violent and miserable and so… so different you can’t tell if this is an up or a down or just an ‘other’- something new you’ve never dealt with before.
You freaked out- properly freaked- when Rose missed her ‘eye contact’ milestone. You were sure she was irreparably damaged from the time Faith had punched your stomach. You can forgive her anything but that, anything. Even if she wasn’t in the best state of mind.
Rose caught up pretty quickly to the other children but that fear is still there- the part of you that screams every time Faith reaches for your child.
“She’s here.”
“What?”
Dawn is crouched against the door, strangely staring through the keyhole out of the room rather than into it. “Faith. She’s out there, talking to Leah, who… looks either like she’s flirting or very, very nervous.”
“Nervous. Faith scares her.” Your own palms prickle, even when you rub them against your jeans.
It’s 5.10 and she’s late.
One look at her face makes you giggle, “What happened to you?”
“There are a lot of tiny, pissed off, powerful girls stuck in detention and this is really not my day!” Faith snaps, holding her rapidly blackening eye.
Dawn chuckles and skirts round her to run off and drink a lot of water. Possibly with boys. Many, many boys.
“She’ll be ok, B. Brat knows what she’s doing.”
There’s something so perverse about the way their relationship goes up when yours’ goes down. “That’s what I’m worried about- she’s got a bloodhound’s nose for men!” There really aren’t that many males in the castle so Dawn has progressed to the townspeople. Not that she understands a word they say, but apparently that’s not really important. “I’m sorry about your eye.”
She shrugs, deflating once the door fully closes. “S’ok.”
“I got you some food, I know you skipped lunch for that meeting-”
“It’s fine. I don’t want anything.” Her eyes avoid yours, staring instead at the sea of paper separating you.
A weight pushes on your chest, forcing you back into the chair, fidgeting with the desire to just go to her. “You have to eat some time Faith.”
You don’t expect her to agree and she doesn’t. Instead she fixes her back to the door and studiously ignores everything.
“Do you know why I wanted to talk to you?” Not even that attempt to grab her attention works. You cough uncomfortably. “I need to talk to you about… things at home.”
She doesn’t look at you or even make any sign that she’s heard you. This is ‘normal’; her lack of attention- she doesn’t care to eat, wash or pay attention to her daughter. What hurts most is when you see her in the corridors, laughing with the younger slayers; paying them the attention she denies the two of you. Though even then, you can see in her eyes, how she’s not really there, not really enjoying it.
God, you can’t remember the last time you saw her enjoy herself. You remember her smiles that first month, how Rose was her world. It’s hard to believe but sometimes, it feels like she knows, as if she’s aware, somewhere buried deep down in there… and it breaks your heart.
She’s fighting to come back to you.
But neither of you can beat down that wall. You have a life, a daughter, and a job that you have to get back to. She can’t be the centre of your world, not anymore. You can’t dedicate the time to pull her back from this one.
She was once the secret you loved to keep, but now everyone knows and it’s so much harder.
“We both know that it’s not- you’re not…” The urge to make this easy, to say you don’t think she’s a good mother, is almost too hard to crush down. But you don’t want to lie to her. She deserves better than that.
You like to pretend that everything is black and white when really inside you’re a sludge of colours and textures, some vibrant and some dull grey. Faith likes to pretend she sees in colour, gives everyone a chance, and treats them all equally, when really she’s split down the middle.
Faith is either exceptionally good at something or truly awful, there’s never any middle ground with her- not even when it comes to her feelings. The problem is that she assumes everyone feels this way so merely brushing her off because you’re busy is a sign of aggression. She’ll love you forever if you show her the smallest bit of affection.
“B…?” It’s so hard for her to even force out one letter that you want to cry even more. Yet you don’t. You stay stuck to the chair and try to hold perfectly still, hoping in some kind of vague wish that she’ll see your calm and draw from it.
“You helped me so much at the start Fay, when I had no clue what to do. I don’t think I could have done it without you.”
She smirks bitterly and slides down to the floor, “But?”
For weeks she’d been near-scarily effective, fleeing in terror from becoming her own mother. “But it’s not like that anymore.”
A lump in your throat stops you from going further. Suddenly this just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do any more. She is the better parent and even if she was crap, even if she worked all day and preferred to spend holidays with her secretary than her family you shouldn’t take her away! You know how much that hurts! How being abandoned feels. He didn’t even come to your fucking funeral! “Buffy?”
Of all the moments to be emotionally damaged… “Faith…?”
But the worst your father could have been charged with had he stayed would be emotional neglect. Faith is violent. She punched your unborn child! And yes, ok, she didn’t know there was a child in there but she didn’t know who you were either! It’s so hard, so goddamned hard, to not bring that up every time you visit the Baby Doctor- every time he does that awful little ‘hmm’ noise that means something is not quite right.
“I have to say some things and I need you to listen, ok? I need you to not talk or get angry, just until I’m finished. Please?”
She nods.
“I love you.” Finally her eyes meet yours and you can see the surprise in them. “I’m never happier than when I’m with you. Every time we’re apart I get the feeling there’s a black hole in my chest, this huge, overwhelming loneliness. And then you come back and I’m whole. But… it’s not working any more- you’re here and I’m still empty. You can’t give me what I need right now and I have to learn to be complete by myself, because… because it’s unhealthy to need you this much.”
Faith frowns, “I need you too.”
Exactly. “And I can’t be what you need. I have Rose- she has to come first.”
“You don’t want me anymore?” She sees what Spike never did- that look you’d saved for him, the one that said ‘I love you and I need you but I’ll never be yours’. Except she should be seeing the one that says ‘I wish I didn’t love you and I wish I didn’t need you but I will always be yours’.
“I love you but I can’t look after you.”
The unthinkable happens. A tear runs down her face. She hates to cry- says it makes her feel weak. You’ve felt her tears in the night, under cover of darkness but to see them in the warm orange glow of the office lights… It hurts, almost as bad seeing your baby hooked up to machines, on Christmas day. The two of you had watched through the thick plastic of the incubator and you’d sobbed, crying harder than you’d ever cried in your life before. She held you steady, your rock.
It stays there, the tear, clinging to her cheek. “I’m sorry, F.”
“I ruined another family, haven’t it?”
You don’t know much about Faith’s family, not really. She must have, of course, at some point, had living biological relatives. There’s been the vaguest of mentions of siblings- young or old you don’t know but at least one was a boy. She has a battered Red Sox cap with an illegible name scrawled across the label and a string of cheap plastic beads in a box under her bed.
Her mother killed herself when Faith was a young teenager- Willow found that one out through a full night of research- but there’s only a mention of an abandoned baby in the same building a few nights later to go along with your theories.
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I told her to give up! I… I told her that she should just stop fighting if it was that hard- she listened. Only time. Ever.”
“You were a kid!” Unpleasant tingles run along your spine. It’s obvious Faith doesn’t want anyone near her- she’s crunched into a little ball, her arms wrapped around her knees. “She abused you horribly- I think it’s ok to feel a little angry!”
Faith fidgets unbearably slowly. “Why? She just told the truth.”
“You’re not worthless.”
“You obviously think so.”
There’s really nothing that can be said to that. Too many nights of dark secrets whispered in dark places to let you believe there’s anything you can say to change her mind.
“I’ll try harder, I promise.”
Only then does it hit you that she still thinks you’re just telling her off.
She doesn’t know this is goodbye.
“Faith…” you sigh, “Please… I’ve had to let go of so much for you, and I wish you’d understand. I wish I knew the way it would all turn out and if it will all be worth it.”
“That an actual dilemma or jus’ a really fucked up way of saying ‘get out’?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m not saying ‘get out of my life’. I’m not saying I want to get rid of you forever- you’re a part of my life. Our lives. I’m sure Willow would be lost without that unattractive rash she gets on the side of her neck when you’re mentioned. Without it she’d just have the acid tummy.”
Faith rolls her eyes at your joke of an attempt at humour. “Whatever, B.”
The way she sneers your nickname makes you stomach curdle. It’s been so often used in anger, more times used in love, that you’re not sure what it’s supposed to be any more. It used to be just her thing but now everyone does it- subconsciously when they’re calling for you or Faith’s just been in the room or sniggered by deviant young slayers.
The worst are the new girls, the ones Faith saves. They stare at you with their big, trusting eyes and breath it out with awe.
You hate it.
Because it hurts you, to hear them call you ‘B’ with such reverence. It hurts that she instils in them her love. And yet when you look at them all you see are soldiers and their stupid team spirit that you just don’t feel.
You hate them a little bit for that too.
Just like you hate her.
God… it’s true. You do hate her. But not for the obvious reasons; not because she’s scatterbrained or loud or reckless or even because she won’t give up those stupid cigarettes. You hate her because of what she has done to your future.
The two of you are tied, forever, irreparably because there is a tiny life made of you. Rosy will always be your first child and she will always be part Faith. You gave up the perfect husband and the genius children for her and… and it hurts your soul to think it but… for Rosy too.
Rosy doesn’t have ‘good genes’. She’s never going to be suddenly brilliant at music or top of the class or even blonde. She’ll be petulant and stubborn and occasionally cruel. Or else stupid and useless and so incredibly dense you’ll want to smack her.
Oh sure, maybe she’ll get the good bits of both of you but this is your life and the universe hates you.
Above all, you hate her for making you love her, for being your one true love, your ‘soul mate’- if you believed in such a thing anymore. If the world was kind she would be a top business man in something like the media industry, who didn’t need to work that hard to make tonnes of money and instead could just spend his days doting on you and his daughter. He wouldn’t mind that you were a slayer, he’d be happy to have found a powerful woman, believe in equality above all else and… and he’d still let Faith stay. He’d let her have a room. He wouldn’t feel jealous watching the two of you together.
You’re so broken you can’t even imagine a parallel universe without her in.
She pervades your every waking thought, permeates every pore in your body.
“You can’t-” She takes a breath and tries again but stops and starts, repeating ‘you cant, you can’t, you can’t’ over and over again until she runs out of air. “You can’t do this.”
“I hate-” You frown. You’d been meaning to say ‘have’ but instead it came out ‘hate’. How Freudian. “I have to do this.”
“Why?” She stands up and comes ever closer, growling with a frown.
“What?”
“If it ain’t my fault then why are ya doin’ this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?!”
Your mind stops short, so incredibly caught up in the complete stupidity of that statement, “You violated me! In- in every stinking way possible! And I put up with it because… because… because I love you.”
You’re so used to not mentioning ‘it’, this thing; the third member of your non-marriage. Even in your head you only refer to it as ‘her ups and downs’. The truth is so hard to speak, even just to yourself.
It’s a disease.
And right now it holds her tighter than you do.
“I’m used to your general insanity, your ups and downs and that crazy thing you…” Air catches in your throat, “Look, I just- I want Rose to have a normal life. Her mothers are slayers, she’s probably going to grow up with weird powers and be a freak-”
“She’s not a freak! She’s our daughter!”
“-To the other kids. What happened to letting me talk?”
Faith storms closer, trampling across the slayer-reports on the floor, not even noticing Dawn’s good work being ruined. “TALK?! YOU WANT TO TALK?!”
You hear the squeals of fright from the other side of the door as her voice booms.
Through her eyes you can see the thing stoking the fire. IT. And you’re scared, fucking, Goddamn, unashamedly scared because it hates you and she does too. When it wraps her hands around your neck and slams you to the wall it doesn’t look out of her eyes to see the woman she loves, the mother of her child. It sees the enemy.
You’ve been here enough times before to know that nothing you say will stop it. The only thing keeping your windpipe from being crushed at this exact moment is Faith’s tenuous grip on reality.
And a baby’s bones are so much more breakable than yours.
“Fay?” You wheeze, “Please. Don’t.”
She doesn’t reply. It doesn’t let her.
“Buffy? Faith!” Leah and Dawn stand at the door, staring in abject terror at your darkening face and feeble gasps.
“Hit her!” Dawn pleads, turning to the frozen slayer next to her.
“I can’t! They’re stronger than we are!” Leah replies, then noticing the stapler she grabbed in her well trained haste, makes forward to beat the danger back.
“Faith…” You plead weakly, “She’s going to hit you.”
It takes all your energy to speak but it doesn’t register in her eyes, just as your fingernails biting into her flesh makes to difference.
“Please, move…”
She doesn’t. When the blow comes your vision has slowed down enough that you can watch in slow motion as the skin on her temple tears and her head instantly spins.
Dawn is there to catch you as you fall but you fight against her, desperate to get back to Faith. “Leah! Stop!”
She doesn’t. Instead she just kicks harder at Faith’s crouched form. A hand shoots out to snag the redhead’s leg and pulls her down hard enough for the smack of head against desk to resound around the room.
You pretend that was what you were warning her against.
“Leah!” Dawn hesitates, desperate to go to her friend but not stupid enough to continue forward if Faith still wants to fight.
“Take her to the nurse.” Faith half-growls, half-groans.
Guilt tastes like bitter shards when you swallow it down.
All that’s left is silence and lost blood.
The fried chicken has gone cold by the time you finally get around to eating, spread out on the floor with paper as your picnic rug. You remember the last picnic, in Paris, and your heart aches. Faith shares your sushi and pronounces all the names on the label right the first time.
“This one’s nice.” She makes small talk and tries to ignore the angry witch, listening in through the door to ‘facilitate’ this meeting.
“It’s tuna.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Me neither.”
“Ok.”
Faith sighs and shuffles slightly, wincing as her sore head moves on the pillow of your lap. “It hurts.”
“I’ll get you some painkiller later.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, Fay… Sometimes you’ve just got to hold you hands up and say ‘I’m sorry, I admit it, I tried but I just couldn’t do it’.”
“But I can. I can do it.” She protests quietly, her voice still low in the hope of evading being overheard.
You sigh, and frown and try to think of another way to put this but in the end you’re just left with ‘no’. “No, you can’t- Faith can. Faith; my sort-of-wife Faith can and you’re not her anymore. You punched a fucking hole in the wall because Rose wouldn’t stop crying!”
The cut on her head reopens as she spins around to sit up. “She was doing it on purpose!” The utter ridiculousness of that statement throws you for a moment. But then her eyes say that she really does mean it. She really does blame Rosy.
“She’s a baby!” Your hand throbs with the desire to defend your daughter, “I don’t care if you hate me, at this point I really, really don’t but you will not take your aggression out on her and you will not blame her for your sickness, because it’s yours! It’s your fault!”
‘Fault’.
Again.
That wasn’t meant to come out.
There isn’t really such a thing as ‘fault’- you try to tell yourself that it’s not her fault- that she doesn’t want to be like this, she just is. Yet it can’t be her honour you’re so desperate to protect, it has to be Rose and- and it’s silly and nonsensical really because how well exactly did you defend Faith’s honour to start with? It’s still so easy to play the blame game, to jump to the wrong conclusions. You try so hard to not do it but you’re just as bad as your friends- it’s all Faith’s fault. All the time.
“I can’t help it,” She whispers, “Some times it feels like there’s this dark cloud that-”
“Stop making excuses!” Though she isn’t, “I’m not saying you can’t see her, I’m not saying that you don’t love her, I… I want you to go back, to London. Sassy said we could come live with her, in the castle, while we’re-”
She snorts, “Satsu. Should have known.”
“Faith…” You growl in warning, “Don’t go there. She’s a friend. A better one than you.”
And such a sweet girl… You pulled her away from Japan (where she practically begged to be stationed), ran around Europe with her then gave up on the idea of being with her and decided instead to send her back to Scotland while you played house in London. Now, five months later, she runs the place and calls at least twice a week to check you’re ok, make sure you don’t need a place to stay.
“She’s great with kids and it’s just until we get back on our feet, I just need to sort out my head and then we’ll move back to London and see you but- we just both need to be ok for that to happen.”
‘Just’ is a ridiculous word. Trying so hard to make it seem like the huge, important, scary thing you’re talking about isn’t actually huge, important and scary.
“Besides, while we’re gone, I have a couple of missions I need you to go on. Now the pay isn’t great but I’m hoping the travelling will make up for-”
Her face lights up the way it used to. “Ya givin’ me money? Actual money and… stuff?”
“Yes Faith, it’s called a job.” And an excuse to get her away from Rose for a while.
“I never had a job that paid actual money before…” She steals the sushi off your plate and hums happily.
“What did they pay you in?”
“I don’t really think you want the answer to that question B”
Mini-golf and white powder. “Mm. Look, I… I want you to take this break but you have to… you have to take care of yourself, because I’m not going to be there to do it for you.” She flushes as you run your hands over her face, pulling her to you until she has no choice but to look. “I need you to take care of my Faith. As corny as that sounds.”
“M’tired.”
“I know baby, I know.” You smooth back her hair, mindful of the blood, and try not to cry as she slips away again. Her skin is against yours but her mind nowhere near. “And when you’re tired you don’t have the energy to fight it.”
She’s so visibly desperate to be away from this room you almost start to feel sorry for her. “I’m gonna ruin this, aren’t I?”
“No! You’ll be brilliant!” The girls already love her, “It’ll be like old times! Only… with less of the stabbing. On both our parts.” When that doesn’t even so much as raise a smirk you know she’s gone too far back behind that glass wall. And this time there’s not even a crackly phone-line to help you pull her out.
Willow knocks after a moment of silence. “Faith? We need to take you to have that head wound looked at.”
She blinks in surprise, as if noticing it for the first time.
“Faith?”
“Comin’.” You help Willow pull her to her feet.
Nothing can stop your heart scrunching into a messy ball as she bats away your attention. But you made this choice, you decided on awkward nods, ‘goodbye’s that say ‘goodbye’ rather than ‘I’ll see you at home’. This is the way it has to be. For everyone’s sake.
Yet there’s still something, something that makes her turn at the door, other people’s hands wrapped around her arms, and look back into your office. Disregarding the expensive wood panelling, the old desk and the crack in the wall shaped like you. She smiles, ever so faintly, at the messy papers and half-eaten sushi (the ones you tried and didn’t like), seeing something so ‘you’ in the room.
Something worth fighting for.
“Lehane.”
“What?” You frown at her from across the room, sheltered once more by your desk.
“My surname. Thought it might be important now ya my boss.” You give an audible gulp. “I wanna help the girls. And then get mine back.”
