Title: Breaking Free
Author: Jas/CrazyTaraWitch
Rating: PG for now
Disclaimer: I'm a student; needless to say, I own nothing.
Setting: End of Season 3, just after the mayor was destroyed and Angel left.
The first thing she felt was soft, smooth skin on her forehead. No, not skin--lips. Soft, feminine lips. *I must be dreaming*, Faith thought as she struggled to open her eyes. *This has to be a dream. Who would be kissing me gently?
Passionate kisses from a horny loser, sure; but a gentle, loving kiss that felt like a carress? Never. Never once in my life has there been someone that cared enough about me. Isn't that why I'm so screwed up?* She thought as she slowly forced herself to open her eyes and accept her loveless reality--but no. Someone was there...someone Faith had never thought she'd see again without a threat on her lips and a knife in her hand.
"Buffy..." she managed to murmur quietly, fearful that the slightest sound would cause her to disappear, proving that she'd never been more than a wishful hope; or worse, that the opposite would happen: that Buffy, perfectly real Buffy, would turn around, and Faith would once again be forced to deal with the hate, or perhaps even worse, the hurt, in those beautiful eyes.
At this thought, Faith couldn't help but feel sickened by herself. Where had that strong girl that didn't give a shit about anything or anyone gone to? Yet as the blonde standing in the doorway of-- a hospital room?--began slowly to turn around, Faith couldn't help but realize that that person, that young woman who had always been five by five no matter how shitty everyone around her was, was gone for good. This girl--this *woman*--standing before her, so completely different from herself and yet so exactly the same, had pried open the heart that had been cold and locked shut since the first time daddy hit her in a drunken rage; since the first time her teachers told her she would never amount to anything; since the first time her mother had abandoned her, only to come back and do it all over again; since the first time her brother and his friends had locked her in a closet and done things to her that she'd sworn she'd never tell a living soul; since the first time she had felt the blood pumping excitedly through her veins as she stabbed at a vampires heart, and felt the thrill and the joy of watching the undead minion burst into dust and disappear-- ever since she'd first learned to love the kill.
Now things were different. For months Faith had been trying to act like her same-old bad-ass self, so no one would know how much she had really changed. And it seemed to have worked. Buffy, Giles, even little Willow, all seemed convinced. The only problem was, Faith knew. She knew how different she was. And in the instant just before Buffy's eyes met hers, she knew how much her life would depend on the next words out of the other woman's mouth.
"Run."
"Buffy?"
"Run, Faith. Just run." Buffy commanded, tears in her eyes.
As Faith still looked at her questioningly, Buffy decided to pull out the big guns--the one thing she knew she could say to make Faith leave. Lacing her voice with venom she didn't feel, she said simply, even as she turned to walk out the door, "That's what you're good at."
Faith remembered now what had happened. Why she was in the hospital. Why Buffy had told her to run.
She also knew that she wouldn't run. *Couldn't* run.
She would go to the cops, turn herself in. She'd be sent to jail and would probably never see the light of day--much less Buffy-- ever again.
Akyrie
