2: What’s Your Childhood Trauma?
The plane landed on time—for once—and Faith disembarked at Los Angeles International with very little hassle. The man operating the baggage claim gave her a withering look when she hefted her bag up onto her shoulder with one arm and Faith gave him a charming wink so his composure faltered and he looked away. She loved getting a reaction out of people. They never saw her coming and most of them didn’t have experience enough in the personal arena to know what to do when they were approached by someone whose entire demeanor screamed sex, power, and heat. Her ability to turn heads in a room made inconspicuously getting away from someplace a chore sometimes, but for the most part, Faith was happy with how she came off to people.
She walked out of the buzzing front entrance towards the street. Not bothering to hail a cab yet, Faith pulled her cell phone out of her belt and flipped it open, hitting a number on speed dial and waiting as it rang on the other line. The British voice that picked up wasn’t exactly whom she had hoped would answer, but he would have to do.
“Hiya, Wes. I just landed…so what’s the skinny on this Dana chick?”
Around thirty minutes later, Faith was racing through festering back alleys so far removed from downtown Los Angeles that it almost felt like a different world. She’d taken a cab to the last known location Wes had for the girl. It turned out to be an all stops minimart with bulletproof glass surrounding the cashier counter and a very dead security guard spread out in the middle of one of the aisles fenced off by yellow police tape. From there, Faith had managed to track the girl to what looked to be a derelict factory building and slowed in her search. Halfway in her leap over the chain link fence surrounding the place, the little hairs on the back of Faith’s neck rose and adrenaline began pumping through her body like ice. Her limbs and muscles woke up, the slayer in her alert and pacing back and forth inside of her, agitated at the prospect of prey nearby.
Always one to follow her instincts, Faith ran up to the building, taking note of one broken window on the ground floor. It was the only one without bars, the reason becoming clear as she noticed the remains of the iron fortifications scattered on the pavement, bent and broken.
“Good to know she’s keeping in shape”, Faith quipped to herself, as she climbed through the open space and disappeared into the darkness below.
She rolled to her feet on the concrete floor as the predator crouched inside her. Something was nearby. Not on this floor, but close enough to be dangerous. Unlike Buffy, Faith had always felt at home with the wildness inside of her. The slayer part of her, the demon that propelled her, seemed to mesh seamlessly with her human side. When Faith was younger, she hadn’t cared to be able to tell the difference between the two. Her humanity had felt like a weakness to her, seemed to be holding back the animal in her that wanted to fight and kill and fuck all at once all day and all night without a care as to what happened to anyone else. But in prison, Faith had finally taken time to learn the difference. The predator inside was a crucial part of what she was, but it wasn’t who she was and it wasn’t where her true strength lay. It was her humanity that made her strong—her ability to decide to protect others who couldn’t protect themselves.
Still after so many years, every time the slayer inside reared its ugly head—Faith felt the temptation to give in and let it rule her as the familiar power coursed through every fiber of her being. To just stop caring about everyone and what they thought and what they deserved and what was fair would be too easy though. Because she understood what it meant to lose control, Faith could usually talk the rogues she hunted down out of their destructive ways. But this Dana girl wasn’t like any rogue she’d gone after before. They hadn’t even met face to face yet and already Faith could feel the difference. Most rogues were like she had been—wild, untamed, uncaring, unfeeling, but Dana wasn’t wild so much as feral.
The trauma dealt to her as a child must have been so great that it completely stamped out her human will and personality and when the slayer took over that was all the girl had left to protect herself alongside a range of painful memories. If Faith had been less experienced, she might’ve mistaken Dana for an otherworldly demon or a Were just by the pure animalism radiating off of the girl in aggressive waves. However, Faith could feel that she was human if only just so and that knowledge alone was enough for her to take a deep steadying breath and try to calm the predator within her enough to move ahead.
Faith took a few steps into another hall and stopped, taking note of her surroundings. Satisfied that she would be able to recognize the corridor and get back to it even in the dimness of the building, she quietly set her bag down beside the wall, retrieving a tight utility vest sheathing around fifteen or so small leaf shaped throwing knives from the naked eye and a Bowie knife that she quickly stuffed into one boot before rising and moving forward again. The air in the place smelled stale and dusty and dank. Faith didn’t know how many floors the building had, but she figured that Dana was on the one below her. Just something about how the tingles up and down her spine centered closer to the ground than the ceiling spoke volumes. All she had to do was find her way down into the basement.
Finally, she passed a doorway with the door hanging off of the hinges that seemed to be spewing cold air from somewhere. When Faith descended onto the first step she knew she was going the right direction because her instincts went haywire. The sensations were a jumbled mess of feelings and emotions that writhed uncomfortably in her stomach like worms. Fear of the unknown jostled with the thrill of the hunt. Regret and guilt at what she knew she might have to do conflicted with pride in her tracking abilities and the anticipation of a good fight. On the edge of everything, she felt Dana. The slayer inside of Faith recognized another one of its own kind and curiosity warred with animosity in her gut. The aggression coming off of the girl somewhere below her was nearly overwhelming and Faith knew that Dana knew she was there, waiting her out and perhaps even also wanting to meet this familiar stranger with whom she shared so much in common.
A dim light radiated from somewhere at the base of the steps, letting Faith know for sure that the basement at least was inhabited. She knelt onto the second step and waited there for a few moments. Part of her was curious to know how strong the slayer in Dana really was. I mean, if it was basically all Faith could feel, she was pretty sure that Dana’s predator was floating very close to the surface, but she still felt the need to know. So Faith waited, wanting to see if this new baby slayer had patience enough to wait her out or if she would take the bait and attack uphill—putting Dana herself at a disadvantage. But the savageness inside of this girl wasn’t blind, it was clever and it knew what was going on.
So much for the element of surprise, Faith thought.
Grimacing, she pulled a knife free from her vest and slowly crept down the remaining stairs. The single light in the room grew brighter as the swinging light bulb at the back of the room on a chain merged into Faith’s line of sight. Dana wasn’t immediately visible from the stairs, but she wasn’t hiding either. The girl she’d been hunting stood close to the farthest wall, diagonal to the stairway. Faith hadn’t been expecting to find much when they met, but what she saw unleashed the ice in her veins. Dana was average sized for a fifteen year old, skin and bone, olive complected, with dark hair and an anesthetized gaze. Her clothes were ill fitting and covered in dirt and blood, some of it her own from an angry gash on one cheek, but the rest of it had been finger painted on her face and shirt like a preschooler’s drawings.
Faith could feel a myriad of sensations bleeding out into the air from Dana to her. Her cinnamon eyes connected with Dana’s almost black ones and Faith could suddenly feel each emotion running through the other girl as if they were her own. The full range of feelings were there, just out of balance: anger topped the scales along with a dark euphoria that Faith guessed was the slayer inside of Dana relishing in the blood and violence she caused. Fear wasn’t there at all and simultaneously there was something else missing in the girl’s bleak eyes. Something vital to redemption and salvation: human compassion. Though Faith couldn’t see it, she wasn’t entirely ready to believe that the ability to care was something Dana was incapable of, just not something she had a lot of practice at? Damn, this was all kinds of messed up.
Dana stared at her opponent intensely—sizing her up—as if she wanted to devour her and destroy her at the same time.
“I am strong, not weak anymore,” Dana said, beginning to circle Faith slowly, her movements mirroring the elder slayer. “And you are strong too. Strong like me.”
“Yes, strong like you.” Faith regarded the baby slayer quietly, moving so that they were facing one another at all times. “Look, I’m here to help you. I was sent to help you so you can learn how to live with the powers you were given. So you can live a better life than this—”
Faith’s speech was interrupted as Dana shrank instantly back towards the wall, shaking and yelling wildly in another language. As the tirade boiled down, she looked at Faith with a burning stare that seemed to penetrate through all of her defenses. Finally, the baby slayer spoke, channeling a hatred Faith had hoped was long dead.
“I gave you every chance!” Dana’s hollow voice shouted, louder and lighter than it should have been. “I tried so hard to help you and you spat on me. My life was just something for you to play with. Angel, Riley, anything that you could take from me you took. I’ve lost battles before but nobody else has ever made me a victim.”
B? Faith stopped cold, her eyes wide, her mouth open just enough in surprise to maybe catch a mosquito if there were any around. What had Dana just said? It couldn’t be. Those had been Buffy’s words, said on Angel’s rooftop years and years ago. How did this girl know them? She’d assumed Angel hadn’t met her or he would have taken Dana in himself, so what the fuck was going on here? Was she psychic? Could she read minds?
Faith mirrored the alert, but comfortable posture of the other girl now silently staring her down, watching her more cautiously now than ever. She knew she should say something. Maybe even attack. Anything was better than waiting for the next step or for this psycho kid to shank her with one of her own knives, but prison had taught Faith patience and she had taught herself that there were things more important in this world than appeasing her own anger. The predator inside of Faith was pissed because it recognized what Dana was doing—that through some weird psychic link—she was using Faith’s most painful memories so she could toy with the older slayer like she was a ragdoll and relishing in every minute of it. But Faith didn’t take the bait. She couldn’t afford to lose it. Not today.
“You tried to gut me, Bondie,” Dana spouted again, her eyes never leaving Faith’s.
“That was a long time ago,” Faith responded, recognizing her own words. “I’m a different person now and so is Buffy. You can be too. Strong, not weak, like me.”
Faith took a tentative step forward and Dana took another back along the wall in response.
“I can help you, if you let me.” Faith tried again, calmly taking another step, almost within striking distance now.
“…No such animal, no such animal,” Dana growled over and over as her body tensed up at Faith’s closeness. “No escaping…head and heart, stab the heart and cut off the head. Only way to be sure…”
Dana moved farther away, a vulnerable look taking over her features as the savageness melted away and all she appeared to be was an overgrown little girl, regarding Faith strangely with a mix of sadness and—finally—fear.
What the hell?? Faith wondered.
The change in Dana was so quick and so complete that Faith thought that she might be seeing things. Maybe her not wanting to harm this girl was making her see Dana as harmless so she couldn’t harm her or some other strange mind shit. Whether or not Dana’s new demeanor was genuine, Faith knew two things. First, she couldn’t kill Dana this way, not even if she had wanted to and, second, she was definitely looking at this kid’s human side now. The slayer—the predator that had been protecting Dana from the horror of her nightmares—had retreated temporarily for some reason. Maybe it was tired of being on the surface all of the time. Maybe it recognized Faith as kindred and therefore not much of a threat at the moment. Whatever the reason, Faith knew that this docile Dana wouldn’t be sticking around long and she had to take advantage of this opportunity while it lasted before the crazy bitch came back and made everything harder.
“Dana,” Faith called softly, evenly. “I’m Faith and I’m a slayer like you. I’m here to help. I can get you some better fitting clothes, maybe a hot meal, and a place to sleep. All you gotta do is listen to what I have to say. Can you do that for me, Dana?”
“…You had it coming…” Dana murmured, looking down at the cement floor pitifully. “I remember what you did to me, Faith. The broken glass, the shallow cuts so I would remain conscious. You haven’t changed, you can’t. You’re sick! A rabid dog!”
Suddenly, Dana lunged forward, grabbing Faith by the shoulders and throwing her into a stack of nearby packing crates. The older slayer fell through the dusty wood like a knife through butter. Faith had expected Dana to be strong like all slayers were, but most baby slayers couldn’t throw her across a room and not be out of breath at the effort. She wasn’t even sure Buffy was capable of that one and yet this girl had thrown her like a shovelful of snow.
Faith flipped off from her back into a crouch and stood. Dana was smiling at her now, the careless, mirthless, hateful smile of the returning predator gearing for a fight. A fight for dominance. A fight for survival. A fight to the death.
“No wonder you died…” Dana quoted in a scarily out of place Jamaican accent Faith didn’t recognize. “I could wipe the floor with you right now.”
Dana lunged for Faith again, but this time Faith was ready. She ducked and caught the advancing girl with her shoulder beneath her ribcage. Then Faith took advantage of Dana’s sudden loss of balance and wrapped her arms around her legs, using the other girl’s momentum and weight to drop her to the floor. The baby slayer obviously didn’t see that move coming because she yelped in pain, but quickly recovered, rolling a couple of feet away from Faith and copying what Faith had done before by flipping from her back to her feet as if she’d done it a hundred times.
“Not bad,” Faith said, “but it’s going to take a lot more to take me down if that’s what you’re aiming for. I could save you a lot of trouble, kid, if you’d just listen to me. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
Dana raced forward again and swung at Faith, the first blow being blocked expertly by Faith’s forearm, but the second one got lucky and landed on Faith’s temple. Shit! She hits like, B, Faith grimaced, whirling around to block another attack and delivering a rough kick to Dana’s unguarded abdomen. Faith hadn’t held anything back and a vicious blow like that should’ve brought the baby slayer to her knees, but Dana didn’t so much as grunt. Instead, Dana straightened up and delivered a round house kick to Faith’s neck. Faith caught her opponent’s leg and twisted her torso, slamming her elbow squarely into Dana’s jaw.
That got the Dana’s attention.
She spit blood out of the side of her mouth and let out a loud primal scream, throwing herself at Faith again and again. Faith had to say it for this kid, not only was she strong, but she could definitely take a beating. Every blow Faith dealt, Dana absorbed and dealt back twofold. It wasn’t like fighting another baby slayer—they were usually clumsy and overconfident and it wasn’t like fighting someone as graceful and by-the-book as Buffy, but a whole other animal entirely. Dana’s slayer rode too close to the surface for her to fight in any sort of civilized, orderly manner. Every punch or kick she threw was thrown from gut instinct. There was no trained thought, just the will to live and kill. Luckily for Faith, it seemed like Dana hadn’t ever fought anyone like her before because she was tiring quickly. Her attacks were becoming more frequent, but more sloppy and easier to dodge.
Finally, Dana backed up, gasping for breath and tried to flip over Faith to get to the stairs, but Faith jumped up and caught her in a headlock in midair. They landed on the concrete floor in a tangled heap of struggling limbs. Dana seemed to be losing steam and it appeared that Faith might actually be able to get to her—if only because she was too exhausted to do anything other than listen—but just when Faith thought she was done, Dana grasped a broken piece of wood from one of the crates and slammed it desperately into the back of Faith’s skull. The older slayer’s grip immediately loosened around her neck as Dana pushed her back onto the floor—hard. She had half expected Dana to run once she was free, but the girl just stood above her going in and out of focus as Faith’s vision faded to black.