She doesn't expect to survive the battle with the First. If someone asked her, she'd tell them it was just statistical facts-- she'd lived way too long already, Buffy had died twice after five years of being a Slayer and Faith, not once-- but of course, she'd be lying. She's had a death wish since long before she was called, since she was eleven years old, when 'uncle' Billy stumbled drunk into her room and destroyed any lingering childhood innocence she may have had left over, any hope that there were good people out there and maybe, just maybe, she'd find them somewhere. He destroyed that, along with her sheets and her brand new pink panties, the kind with a bow in the middle. After that night, she never wore pink again.

And Faith starts to think Spike is right, about all Slayers having a death wish, something he'd told her (and she knows he'd told Buffy) in the few nights before he sacrificed himself to save the world. That Slayers willingly risk their lives every night for what they believe is their battle, but it's really someone else's. After all, a Slayer is human. Let some do-gooder demon fight the forces of darkness; leave the barely pubescent teenaged girls out of it.

But she knows better. Somehow, being a Slayer actually saved her life, because if she hadn't been called she'd have ended up dead in a ditch with a needle poking out of her arm or her throat cut by a john that ended up a little more psychotic than he initially pretended to be. Just like she did, when she first came to Sunnydale.

Faith left that behind after she went to prison, though-- well, the psychosis (mostly), turning tricks and shooting up parts, though the latter sounds like a particularly good idea at the moment, and the former she's only partially hanging onto in case she needs it. Maybe she'll sneak out later, when Buffy and Angel and everyone are either asleep or distracted, and score a dimebag so she can see what it's like to feel things again, to have that fuzzy numbness that isn't quite numb, that digs things in a little deeper, that makes her love and hurt a little harder. That makes her actually enjoy getting fucked, hard, by a stranger in the back of his car or in another seedy motel, his greedy hands all over her and inside her and screaming for harder, faster, deeper, rather than the flavorless dissociative pleasure it normally is. But hey, pleasure is pleasure. She'll get it where she can.

But her death wish is still willing and able, though a few weeks ago she'd lied about it to Angelus, with a shotgun in her face and a track mark on her arm (see? Couldn't wait to fall back to old habits). Because though it was her first real experience with that fucker, she knew enough of him to not let him know any more juicy details of her life than he already did. Angelus told her truths that had stung, mostly because it was Angel's mouth and Angel's voice saying the words. He had been the only light in her world, well, besides a certain blonde Slayer, but she'd spent so long trying to convince herself Buffy was the bad guy that sometimes there's a part of her that still believes it, though she knows it's pure bullshit. Faith was always the monster. Ever since she got called and started taking instead of being taken from, started victimizing instead of being the victim, it was always herself that she was truly afraid of.

What brought her over the edge, well. Not even Faith herself is able to make complete sense of it. Yeah, a lot of it was Buffy. Buffy, the goddamn angel-slayer-sent-from-heaven (then brought back, then ripped out again), the girl everyone loved (including Faith, unsurprisingly) and the Slayer-- the girl-- Faith would never be. It didn't matter how hard she tried, how many bad guys she killed, how many apocalypses averted and innocents saved, next to Buffy she'd always be trashy, slutty little Faith, groomed by her own goddamn mother to be a whore and then kicked out of the house at 14 when Faith turned out to be a better hooker than she was. Faith couldn't help it that she was young, lithe and hot, not to mention really good with her hands and her mouth and her tongue. But even that isn't true, is it? She can barely look in the mirror when she's applying her makeup (her mask, her armor), hasn't been able to meet her own eyes since that night in the alleyway in Sunnydale, when her sleeve was stained red and her stake was dripping blood and she desperately tried to tell B, "I didn't know, I didn't know." She tells everyone she knows she's hot, and it's true, but only because everyone tells her as such. High-dollar-hooker-pretty on the outside, convicted-killer-destroyer-of-lives ugly on the inside.

She'd loved Buffy. She knows that now. Still does, even though the other Slayer is more of an insufferable, stuck-up bitch than ever. But Faith knows she isn't, not really, but she tries to pretend she is when she feels the need to blame someone, anyone else, for her tumbling in with a man that wanted to destroy the world. She'd loved him, too, misplaced as it was. But she took what she could get, because even though, back then, she was deep in denial about who she was... Even then she knew she was a hard being to love. That was the first thing her mother ever taught her. The First was right.

“No one will ever love you.”

Her feelings for B were not the reason she went to the dark side, or at least they weren’t the only reasons. There's a lot of reasons. But she tries to blame all of it on her feelings for Buffy-- to forget the others, because she knows if she lets herself remember the others, she'll probably go back there, to its cold and sweet caress, to the open yaw of the deep, dark void that terrifies most people, but of course, for Faith, it is comforting. Because of course it is, it comforts her the way a dark, dirty motel does, the way drug dealers and predators and criminals comfort her, the way those things remind her of home, though the very concept of home seems foreign and out of reach.

She's not thinking about these things right now; not all of them, anyway. Right now, she's disassembling a box fan she found in the basement of the Hyperion that she wants to have in her room, to drown out at least a little of the noise, to cut through the silence and leave her a little less alone with her thoughts, but the fucking thing keeps rattling around when she turns it on, so she figures it could use a quick wipe-down. She can't get the last screw out of place, and ends up cracking the frame easily in her strong grip, and swears at the piece of shit.

"Talking to inanimate objects, Faith? Guess that’s not so bad, unless it starts talking back."

Her voice startles the girl sitting on the floor, cracked frame dropped as she shoots up to a standing position, the screwdriver now nearly crushed between her fingers, but ready to use. It stays next to her side, thankfully, instead of raising it toward the interruption. Usually she's able to sense Buffy, but she'd been so wrapped up in thoughts and annoyance at the box fan that she didn't notice the blonde's presence. Her eyes are feral and unfocused as she looks at the intruder, the grip on the screwdriver lessening only slightly.

Buffy bristles at the other Slayer's reaction, taking a small step back. "Sorry," she says, her hands up, palms open unthreateningly. "Are you okay?" She asks hesitantly.

“Five by five, blondie,” Faith replies, still not meeting the other girl’s gaze. Buffy watches her eye the bathroom door-- the only other escape besides the one she's standing in. Instead, still gripping the screwdriver, Faith just bends down and cracks the frame off the small screw that wouldn't budge, and begins wiping down the fan blades. A few seconds go by, and Faith can feel Buffy's eyes on her for those agonizing moments. She's about to jump back to her feet, go on the defense, throw out a verbal attack until the older girl either hits her or leaves. That is, after all, Faith's forte-- fight, fuck, or run, and since she and B never got the chance to try out that second option, to Faith’s extreme disappointment, fighting is easier between them, and running isn’t Faith’s favorite option, especially with the chance to rile up her counterpart. But right before Faith's about to snip off some comment, finally, the smaller girl disappears from the doorway.

Faith drops the screwdriver and leans bonelessly back against the dresser behind her. She wants to go after her. She wants to pull her back and apologize for everything she did to her four years ago and wants to tell her I did it because I loved you and I couldn’t handle it. But she doesn’t.

When a tear drips over her cheek, fat and hot and regretful, she angrily scuffs it away with her sleeve and picks the screwdriver back up.

-----

She knows she could probably ask Giles or Angel or someone if she can get some money for clothes, but she's never been good for asking for things, or, more on the nose, she's never been good at admitting she needs anything. It seems everyone else has grabbed a few outfits and such to wear since their belongings were swallowed up in the Sunnydale sinkhole, but Faith never had much in the first place, so when they all decide to go on a night out she borrows a few different pieces of clothing from some of the girls (Slayers, now, they're Slayers, like you are, but better because they're not whores, they're not dirty and tainted and cruel and vicious and worthless and nothing). She steals the black, knee-high boots with the eight or so buckles on each, pulls them over the stockings that peek out and end just a few inches over the knee, black and white striped and matching her tight zip-up tank vest and sinfully short black skirt. She ruffles her hair in the mirror (still not meeting her own gaze), applies a generous amount of black eye shadow and leaves her lips pale. She has to pull in customers, after all.

She scores some Orpheus from a vamp outside the bar while everyone else is occupied, and shoots it up with the hypodermic needle she'd swiped from the Hyperion's medical supplies in a stall of the crowded bathroom. Fuck. She wouldn’t admit it but that was a damn good high. She wasn’t crazy about the whole mind-trip with Angel last time, but she figures she’ll stay in her own head this time, and with the orphy, it’s a lot nicer of a place to be than it is normally.

When she gets back, she's pleasantly fucked up, and she finally gets to forget how much she hates herself, and she dances with the Scoobies and the newbie Slayers and even Buffy, who seems to be looking at her oddly but who knows, she could just be making sure Faith isn't planning to get stabby anytime soon.

She skirts away from the others finally, and goes hunting. She finds the perfect trick, pretty damn fast too-- the guy must be a foot and a half taller than her, skin dark as coal and hands that engulf hers completely. He's perfect because he'll have some decent strength, for a human, and what's a little pain with her pleasure? She needs it. So Faith takes him by his huge hand, darts a quick look around to make sure none of her friends (that's a joke, right?) are looking, and skips out into the abandoned back alley with him.

Time to get back to basics.

-----

She wants to die. She wants to, because the alternative scares her, but the nothingness of death terrifies her even more.

The alleyway is dirty and lit by a lone, flickering light bulb about twenty feet down, but Faith pays no attention to it as she whispers her wants to no-name in the dark space. He shoves her hard, face first against the dirty brick wall, and she wants to cry and scream and beat him bloody, but instead she moans, sticks her ass out and grinds into his growing erection.

"You wanna fuck me?" She says, voice dripping with seduction, hands searching behind her 'til she's got his dick in her hand, still hidden by his jeans. "You wanna hurt me, baby?"

The guy doesn't speak, only groaning in response and his huge hand curls in her hair, tugging her head back roughly to get his mouth on her exposed neck. Faith unzips his jeans and pulls his cock free. Her fingers tremble only slightly, and he doesn't notice.

"Fuck, I knew you'd have a big dick, baby," she breathes. His other hand comes up to engulf her throat-- and it does, his fingers so long that they nearly touch when wrapped over her neck-- and he yanks her back by her hair, hard, with his other hand. She seethes.

"You want it hard, do ya, slut?" He says, and squeezes her throat.

Faith moans desperately, "yeah," and she can feel the walls of her pussy slickening, throbbing at the promise. There's panic and the familiar burn of fury in her, even with the heady feeling of the orphy in her blood, but she shuts down the rage and the hate and the despair and focuses on the hand on her throat and the flood between her legs.

She yanks her own underwear down and he thrusts so hard into her she nearly screams. He's big enough to not be able to bottom out as he shoves himself into her, but that doesn't stop him from trying, and it hurts, it fucking hurts, and Faith cries out with each rough stroke but she eagerly pushes back into him for more.

"Fuck yeah," she keens, and there are tears in her eyes and a knot in her throat underneath his hand, but her cunt is pulsating and her clit is aching and his hand tightens slightly, but she throws her own up against it and cries, "tighter. Hurt me. Tell me I'm a filthy fucking slut."

And he does, he insults her and brutalizes her and squeezes her throat so hard she nearly blacks out. She's either about to come like a fucking rocket, or unsheathe the switchblade from her boot and shove it through the guy's hand, but before she decides, a familiar sensation trembles through her, like the warm cloud of steam after turning on a hot shower. Without her Slayer hearing, she wouldn't have heard the gasp from the intruder. Suddenly she's coming, she's coming harder than she ever thought possible, a gravelly howl escaping from her enclosed throat, her body shuddering violently against the large body behind her.

Faith wonders how she was able to sense her this time, what with being high as a kite and getting thoroughly fucked in a dingy bar alley. She parts with the john, pulling up her panties and ignoring the hot trickle of cum dripping into the fabric. She flirts, kissing him and giving him her best, sexy smile and wink, and thanks him after he hands her the bills and walks away.

She takes a moment to adjust herself, smoothing down her skirt and pushing up her breasts, and while she's still turned away, she throws over her shoulder, "like what you see, B?"

When there's no response, Faith turns to face the other girl against her better judgment. The look on Buffy's face makes her cold with rage. Yeah, look at me, B. Once a whore, always a whore. She smirks as Buffy's eyes trail over the blooming marks on her throat.

"Let me know next time, and I'll let you join in," Faith's voice is hoarse, and the thumping of her heavy boots as she turns away once more echo down the alley long after she's left.

-----

Angel knocks on her door the next day. It's one o'clock in the afternoon, and Faith doesn't particularly feel like leaving her room, or talking to anyone today. She's shot up another dose or two of orphy so she's not sure the others wouldn't notice, and she doesn't particularly want to have that argument. Still, she invites him in, sitting in the open window with a cigarette between her lips.

She watches him open the door, enter, and close it again, coming to sit faced toward her at the edge of the bed a few feet away. They sit like that for a moment, Angel resting his hands on his knees tensely and Faith taking sporadic hits off her cigarette, dipping her head forward to blow it out the window and turns back to stare at him. She won't break first, so she waits.

After a couple of minutes, Angel finally speaks. What he says isn't entirely unexpected, but it still angers her.

"You know you can talk to me if you need to, right?"

"Sure, big guy. Lemme pencil you for maybe a four or five o'clock? Unless you have more important things to do," she snips. She hates herself for a lot of things, and this is one of them. Why can't she ever let anyone in? Why does she have to be such a goddamn bitch all the time?

But she can't stop herself from saying these things, and Angel knows it. He doesn't give her what she wants, any kind of persuasion to talk about her feelings or pushing against the vitriol she's just spit at him. Instead, he stands and walks to her.

When he gets close, she shudders and looks out the window, unable to meet his eyes. His hand comes up to her shoulder, a thumb brushing her hair away from her cheek.

"I'm here, Faith," he says. "I'll always be here for you."

Against her better instincts, she can't stop herself from leaning into his fingers, his touch laced with warmth though his heart doesn't beat and his fingers are icy cold. And she can't stop the tears that gather in her eyes when he squeezes her shoulder again and steps out of her room, shutting the door quietly.

She sits curled up on the windowsill for the next hour with her knees tucked against her chest, crying as softly as she can in a household full of people with super hearing. When the tears dry, somehow she feels emptier than she did before.

-----

She spends the next day in and out of the hotel, in and out of demon bars, a needle in and out of her arm. She stumbles home just before the sun rises, and tries to tiptoe inside, wary of the good two dozen people in the building with superhearing. But she’s a little too high and the floor is a little too colorful for her liking and is she walking on rainbows? What kind of crazy shit-- and she doesn’t notice the small handful of people watching her from the top of the stairs (pretty sure at least Angel and B are included) and she wants to get out of there, because now they know and how can they not, now they know she’s weak and she’s nothing and she’s, god, she’s really, really fucking high, and suddenly Faith passes out on the wavy rainbow floor.

There are voices when she comes to. She can’t make them out very well, but she thinks she hears maybe Giles or Wes, maybe both, and definitely hears Angel. They’re talking about her, and it makes Faith want to get up and sucker-punch all of them, tell them to fuck off and go away, but her tongue feels thick in her mouth and her limbs are heavy and god it’s so fucking bright and she closes her eyes.

For a short time, she doesn’t sleep. She pretends to but she tries to listen to the conversation happening, though it makes her fucking sick to hear them talk about her while she’s in the damn room.

“… seemed like she was doing better…”

“… she won’t accept our help…”

“… might not be anything we can do to…”

Faith listens, but the words don’t go together in her head. All she knows is they’re talking about her and she tries to speak, to tell them to fuck off, but all that comes out is a pathetic fucking whimper, and she snaps her mouth and eyes shut.

Suddenly, it’s quiet in the room again. Faith startles a bit when she feels a cool, damp cloth being dabbed lightly across her face.

She knows it’s B, and even through all the bad, horrible shit they did to each other, Faith’s muscles relax and her skin tingles at the touch.

“I wish you didn’t do this to yourself,”  Buffy says quietly. Faith isn’t sure whether she knows she’s awake. If she’s really talking to her, or if she’s more talking to herself. She opens her eyes anyway, and the look on Buffy’s face makes her want to hurt something. All she manages to do is cause Buffy pain.

She wants to reply. “It’s all I know how to do,” she’d say. “It’s the only thing that gets me through the day.” But she doesn’t say these things. Even if she could unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, even if she could get rid of the knot in her throat threatening to choke her, she can’t say them.

So she closes her eyes again. Before she passes out, she feels Buffy’s lips, feather-soft, between her eyes.

-----

Later that night, after she’s slept the day away in an opiate-induced haze (the rest of it is gone, she finds, and wants to rip apart the person who flushed it, but she doesn’t call anyone out like she wants to—maybe she has grown) she slips downstairs to grab some food and nearly trips over a body in the lounge. She had been walking in a daze, not entirely aware of her surroundings, but now as she looks down she sees the floor covered in blankets. The Scoobies are cuddled up in a heap together, a large screen TV rolled into the center of the room, snacks and drinks scattered around the nest.

"Hey, Faith, come join us!" Xander yells from his place on the floor, next to Dawn and Willow and Kennedy. "We're watching movies and getting drunk, the more the merrier!"

Faith jolts slightly at the offer, her nerves firing. She wants to come at the invitation with her usual, unnecessary viciousness, but she finds she can't come up with a clever enough reply.

Before she can mutter "no thanks", against her initial impulse to attack, Buffy brushes by her, causing Faith to startle at her entrance, as well as the blonde's hand that trails soft over her arm.

"Stay," Buffy says, her eyes soft in the dim light of the TV, fingers lacing into Faith's. Faith allows herself to be pulled gently to the ground, because Buffy is looking at her like that, and she's touching her like this, and she sits next to Buffy in defiance of her twitching muscles, screaming at her to run, get up and run, rip your hand from the girl you're secretly in love with and never look back.

She shares a bag of chips and a bowl of popcorn and a couple of beers with the others. Faith can't pay much attention to the movie, her mind still racing and panic still crackling under her skin, even in the comfort and warmth under the blankets and the closeness of her body to the other Slayer's. But she does her best to ignore the prickles of "you don't belong here, you're nothing, they're good and you're so far below them it's not even funny". Buffy doesn't let go of her hand, but doesn't she know? Faith is filthy and disgusting and a murderer, why is she touching her, why is she acting like Faith didn't hurt her, like she didn't watch the other girl let herself get brutalized last night, why...? But though Faith's thoughts are anything but quiet, she manages to fall asleep halfway through the movie with her forehead brushing Buffy's shoulder.

She wakes a few hours later to find herself curled tightly in Buffy's slumbering embrace. Her eyes dart around and see the others have fallen asleep, too, and she can smell the night outside, immediately sensing the sunrise a few hours off. She has to get out of here. Edging out from Buffy's arms and away from the warmth she desperately wants to cling to, she heads back to her room to change, but with her heart pounding and blood racing, she might as well be running. She sneaks out her hotel room window, slinking down the pipes on the side of the building, and as soon as her feet hit the ground, she does start running.

-----

The Scoobs have had a few gatherings talking about future plans, since technically they're nothing but disaster refugees and Faith thinks Angel would probably like to have his hotel back eventually. Faith makes sure to be absent during these particular get-togethers, not all that interested in being told she should probably go back to prison, or at the very least being asked what she's planning to do and not having a clue to the answer. She ends up finding out second handedly that they plan on heading out to Cleveland and setting up some kind of training camp for the newbie Slayers. Faith isn't sure how to feel about it, though if she was being honest with herself (and she's trying to, lately, to a certain degree) she's hurt that nobody has invited her yet, even if she knows it's probably far out of the realm of possibility. Nobody wants a murdering whore around, not when they're trying to set a good example for the Next Generation.

That night, she meets up with Buffy, who is, along with Angel and Gunn, taking the newly awakened Slayers in groups through graveyard after graveyard for in-field training. When she arrives, she tries to ignore the look Buffy gives her, accusing but somehow warm in the wake of Faith's slip-out from the previous night. Both of them stay in the background for the most part, though while Buffy stands calmly next to her, Faith paces back and forth like a caged animal ready to pounce, muscles ache to hit, stake, kill as she watches the others take down a few vampires.

Faith nearly jumps a foot in the air when Buffy speaks: "I missed you this morning."

Why's she so goddamn jumpy lately?

The words aren't accusing, or disappointed-- in fact they isn't much of anything at all, other than a simple declaration. Faith isn't sure what to make of them, but they still make her cheeks burn in shame, and she can't understand why. She doesn't respond, mostly because she doesn't know how to.

As they're walking home, the group is attacked by a gang of demons down by a pair of abandoned train tracks, a street or two off from the Hyperion. They aren't outnumbered, but it's still a pretty grisly fight, enough that both Buffy and Faith need to jump in because the other girls may be Slayers now too, but they're not trained as well, they don't have the experience, and they seem to be on the losing side by the time the two veterans throw themselves into the mix.

Faith feels the exhilaration of the fight right off the bat, and she's wild with it, sending kicks and punches nearly haphazardly at the attacking demons. It's a rough but quick fight, and Faith has the last one in her grasp, knife in her fist, and plunges it into the demon's heart.

Blood flashes before her eyes. Pain. Destruction. She doesn't stop after the first stab of her blade, and though the demon is long dead, she doesn't stop long enough to notice. Have to kill it, have to hurt it, have to make it all stop. Killkillkillkill....

"Faith!"

She whirls from the dead demon, knife flashing out behind her, ready to make another kill shot, ready to hurt and kill and destroy... And freezes just inches from Buffy's face.

She drops the knife and runs.

-----

Faith doesn't return until the hotel is quiet, until she's drank herself stupid and spent hours out fucking and fighting and distracting from the absolute disgust she feels with herself. It's nothing new, but it's still a bitter taste in her mouth she'd rather replace with some decent vodka, a stranger's mouth and a few dozen cigarettes.

She doesn't have the energy to make it to her own bathroom, so she goes to the public one on the first floor, but not before stopping by the weapons cabinet for the sharpest blade she can find. She collapses next to the shower and, hands shaking and vision blurred, pulls up her sleeves and presses the metal into her skin.

Relief trickles through her with each pass of the blade, warm and wet and sticky like the blood that drips scarlet onto the bright white floor. Faith watches, numbly, as her fingers bring the knife over her arm, the wounds violent and ragged across her pale skin; each one a reprieve, or a confession, or a punishment, she can't decide on just one, she just slices open her skin until her rage and despair and guilt and hurt seem to quiet themselves, just a little.

By the time she peels herself off the floor, the blood and tears have dried on her skin. She rinses it off, staring blankly at the angry marks that litter over her arm, and is both thankful and annoyed that the wounds will be gone in two days' time, as if they had never been there at all. She rubs the wounds harshly, letting them open again, wishing they'd scar so she could see them every day, make her outside look a little bit more like her inside. Ugly.

Faith is, once again, too engrossed in watching the blood slip down the drain to notice someone step in from behind her. But as she turns off the drain and grabs the bandage she intends to wrap around the wounds, she catches sight of the blonde hair in the mirror.

"Christ, B," Faith's voice falters, but is once again full of fake self-assuredness when she turns around, "you seem to enjoy being my shadow a lot lately, huh?"

Faith temporarily forgets what she's doing, even with the stinging in her arm, but is soon brought back to herself when she sees Buffy's eyes trail down her wrist and widen. Faith's own gaze hardens and she turns her back on the other girl once more, hiding the burn of shame in her face along with the cuts on her arm.

She busies herself by wrapping up her forearm quickly, and tries not to think about the things she wants to say, instead of the things that actually come out of her mouth.

"What do you want, B? You wanna babysit? Make sure I'm not about to slit anyone's throat in their sleep?"

Please fucking help me.

Buffy doesn't speak until Faith's finished wrapping her arm and cleaning her blood from various spots in the bathroom.

"How long have you loved me?"

The question makes Faith violently turn back to face her, her eyes frantically searching for accusation, or disgust, or vitriol in the blonde's expression. She finds none, but her gaze doesn't leave Buffy's for a long moment, dark eyes flashing fearfully in the bright light of the bathroom. She calculates her odds of being able to get past the elder Slayer, run until she’s far enough to not have to answer that fucking question.

The fear seems to dissipate just as quickly as it came. Finally, defeated, Faith turns back to the mirror once again.

Buffy begins to step away, resigning herself to the lack of response, when Faith whispers-- so quiet, her Slayer hearing barely picks it up-- "always."

When she turns back to Faith, the brunette is still facing away from her, but staring at her from the reflection in the mirror. The look on her face is something Buffy has seen before, but it's never struck her as raw and broken as it does now—Faith’s always been great at hiding things, but now she doesn’t much care. She knows her deepest secret now, the one Faith swore she’d never admit to anyone, much less B herself. Faith's gaze doesn't break through the reflection, though it looks like she's about to.

"Always," she repeats, and then turns to Buffy and brushes quietly past her and out of the bathroom.

-----

There's a part of her that wants to go back to prison. Yeah, it was lonely, and the boredom and total lack of privacy sucked, not to mention she would hate having to give up actual food again. But Faith found a passing kind of peace in the stability, a peace that she'd never known before, even if it wasn't quite the kind of peace that she wanted. Because the nightmares were still there, along with all sorts of other symptoms the court-mandated therapist told her were textbook PTSD.

She longs for those days now, days where nothing was expected of her, where she knew her place. Now, she's just another girl again. Nothing special about her anymore, now that she was just another Slayer in a large army.

Faith stalks silently over the roof of a building a few blocks from the hotel. If she happens to decide to take another dive, she realizes she doesn't want any of the Scoobies to find her. They've probably got enough of finding bodies in their line of work, and even if she believes they wouldn't bat an eye at her death, she doesn't want to be the cause of any nightmares any more than she already is.

There's a bottle of half-drained whiskey on the ground next to her, and she's shaky on her feet as she trails along the edge of the building, laughing every time her toes accidentally slip over the side. Even if it causes her heart to jump from her chest.

She pauses for a few minutes, crouching over the edge and letting her legs dangle over the lip. She reaches back for her whiskey and lights a cigarette, ignoring the shaking of her hands and the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

What kind of Slayer is she, anyway? Slayers don’t kill people. She’s scared that she’s going to some kind of hell dimension, scared that she’ll be tortured for eternity even though she deserves it. She’s scared and she’ll never admit it. Not to B, not to Angel, not to anyone. Hardly to herself.

She’s scared, but she wants to die. It would be so easy. Just lean over the edge, let go of the pain and the hate and the terror and horror she feels when she looks in the mirror at herself and the gut-wrenching loneliness and jealousy when she sees B and the others together and she’s tired. She’s tired of the pain and the loathing of herself and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever feel like she truly belongs anywhere. So she’ll sit alone for a while, drain her bottle of whiskey, maybe go back out and score some orphy again or turn a trick or two, or maybe duck over the edge of the building and let her skull crack open or trudge back to the Hyperion to pass out fully clothed. She wants to let the whiskey decide, but as she picks it up again, her skin starts to prickle.

Her eyes close.