Work Text:
“Can I take my break?” Faith asks. “There’s no one here. I need a smoke.”
Nikki nods to the counter. “Take another look, sunshine.”
“What?” Faith says dumbly, looking up from the cigarette box she’d pulled from her pocket.
Nikki’s right. There’s a girl standing by the register, looking just as shocked to find herself here as Faith is to see her. She’s wearing a long white dress. Water drips from hair and fingertips, amassing into a puddle on the floor.
She glows.
“I’ll never get used to this,” Faith says—an aside to Nikki—before turning to the girl. “Let me guess. You just died.”
“Uh,” the girl says. “Where am I?”
“Heaven,” Faith says. “Hell?” She shrugs. “You want a coffee? Apparently Hell serves crap-uccinos.”
“The Master—”
“Yeah. There’s no master here. Just Nikki.”
“Who?”
“Look, d’you want a drink or not?”
The girl stares at her for a moment longer, but her eyes eventually drift over to the menu board above Faith’s head. “Um. Hot chocolate?”
She looks back at Faith. Faith looks back at her. This continues for a few seconds longer than comfortable.
“Well, puddle along!” Faith says finally, breaking eye contact. “Are you gonna sit down or what?”
“Oh—um,” the girl says, fingering the pockets of her dark jacket. “I didn’t bring my wallet with me.”
“It’s on the house,” Nikki says, stepping up behind Faith. “Everything is, here. Faith, you’re a shit-awful hostess.” She smiles warmly at the girl. “I’m Nikki.”
“Buffy,” the girl says automatically.
“It’s good to meet you, Buffy. This is Faith. She’s new here, too.”
“Why am I… here?” the girl says, careful, considering each word. “In a…” She frowns. “Coffee shop?”
Nikki shrugs. “No one really knows how it works. I mean, it’s been widely written about, but it’s all just theory. Some say that we appear to someone who will be able to guide us.”
“Oh.”
“Hey,” Faith says. “D’you mind, Boss? We’re supposed to make B a drink, not chit-chat all day.”
“No,” Nikki says. “You’re supposed to make Buffy a drink.”
“This must be Hell,” Faith mutters, turning away to grab the jar of hot chocolate mix. “Hey, B,” she calls back. “You want whip with this?”
No answer.
She turns around, still holding the jar. Buffy is gone.
“Uh,” Faith says. “Where’d Blondie go?”
Nikki looks up from the register—which is largely decorative, as far has Faith has been able to tell.
“Oh.”
“What?” Faith asks.
Nikki frowns. “I’ve heard of this happening, but I’ve never seen it myself.”
“What?” Faith asks again, more demanding this time. “What happened to her?”
“Nothing,” Nikki says. “She woke up.”
“What do you mean, ‘she woke up’?”
Nikki turns to Faith and pulls the hot chocolate mix from her hands, moving to set it back on the counter. “You might at well take your break now.”
“I don’t want to,” Faith says. “Tell me what happened to that girl.”
“She woke up,” Nikki says again. “Faith—she went back to life.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Nikki says, raising her eyebrows. “How would I know? Why do you even care? I thought everyone here was—how did you put it?—‘wicked boring’.”
Faith scowls. She doesn’t know why she cares. Maybe it’s just that Buffy had been one of the first people she’d met here that seemed about her age. She’d never liked most people, having learned first-hand that ‘most people’ are shallow and cruel, but she can’t shake Buffy’s wide, green-eyed gaze and dripping hair from her mind.
Faith had never been the religious type, but she’d thought that Buffy had looked like a bona fide angel.
“You can check the Repository,” Nikki suggests. “Maybe she left something there.”
“What—that old warehouse at the end of the road?”
“You’ve never been in?”
“Uh—no,” Faith says, as if the answer is obvious. “Why would I? What is it?”
“It’s a shop,” Nikki says. “Of sorts. I found my coat there. Of course, it was mine before, but I found it again.”
“You’re talkin’ crazy, Boss.”
“Yeah. Hang on, I’ll take you on a tour,” Nikki says, ducking into the back room to grab her aforementioned duster and throwing it over her shoulders.
“You allowed to leave this place?” Faith asks, mildly curious. She’d never seen Nikki outside of the coffee shop.
“Sure. I just like it here.”
Nikki heads to the door and flips the sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. “You coming?”
Faith hadn’t been very far from the coffee shop either. The world here is, well. Fucking weird, for lack of a better word. A little eerie. Definitely creepy, and Faith isn’t creeped out very easily. When she’d arrived here, she’d materialized into a small one-bedroom apartment. After the initial shock, she’d wandered downstairs and found herself in Nikki’s shop. Nothing much had changed since then.
Outside, everything is dark and foggy. Buildings only come into view when you get nearer to them. By the time they reach the warehouse, the lights from the coffee shop aren't visible at all. Faith won’t admit it, but that’s the reason she hadn’t ever ventured further: she’s afraid of getting lost.
The street itself is mostly residential: small detached homes, each one looking as if it had been designed by a different architect. Senseless, but for their orderly placement.
“They say that the Repository is in the middle of this realm,” Nikki says conversationally. She makes her voice sound casual, but Faith can see the discomfort in her face as well. “It’s pretty neat.”
The warehouse looks pretty bleak from the outside: grey and impassive, like the rest of the landscape. There are streetlights here, but they do shit all to light up the road—not that there are cars here, anyway. As far as Faith knows, everyone gets around on foot. She hasn’t even seen a bicycle.
Nikki shoves open one of the double doors and holds it, letting warm orange light cascade across the front walk.
“I got it, Boss,” Faith says, and then—“Whoa.”
It’s bigger in here than it had seemed outside. Although—perhaps it was just as big. Now that Faith thinks about it, she can’t recall seeing the back of the place from the outside, either: it had just faded away into the fog.
It’s endless.
“I’ve been here a few times,” Nikki says. “You can’t search by name, but you can search by deathday.”
Faith barely hears her: she’s too busy staring in amazement.
The Repository is set up like a bookstore. No—a department store. No—it’s not quite like any place Faith has ever been.
The ceiling is about three stories up, with spindly staircases leading to upper floors. At Faith and Nikki’s level, there are rows and rows of shelves with every thinkable object: books and clothes and jewelry and trinkets. Up high, the lights are large and round and bright, their glow a warm yellow-orange.
Faith feels safe. She also feels as if she could easily get lost in here. The two feelings conflict, somehow.
“What is this place?” she asks finally.
“The Repository,” Nikki says again. “When a person dies, any sentimental objects they have on them end up here. As far as I know, Repository objects are the only things in this realm that have any real value. As for the way it works—it’s a little like a library. You can check out objects for indefinite periods of time.”
“Why doesn’t everyone just come here and get what’s theirs? How come there's so much stuff here?”
“Some people do,” Nikki says, but she looks away as she says it. There’s something darker here. Faith thinks about asking, but she shrugs instead.
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything Buffy might have left.”
Nikki wanders off to a little kiosk, Faith trailing behind her, thinking.
She’s in an endless warehouse surrounded by once-sentimental things that had been abandoned by their now-dead owners.
“You okay?” Nikki asks.
“Peachy.”
“June 2, 1997. There’ve been several new things today. Any look like your girl’s?”
She’s not my girl, Faith thinks, not even bothering to say it out loud as she shoves Nikki aside with her hip to look at the screen.
A few rings—clunky, old, and definitely belonging to senior citizens. Notebooks—but if Buffy hadn’t been carrying her wallet in her pocket, she definitely didn’t have a book on her.
“This,” Faith says certainly, landing on a silver cross pendant. “Definitely B.”
“Crosses,” Nikki says, reading the screen from over Faith’s shoulder. “Aisle 234G.”
“Why are we doing this?” Faith asks, as Nikki claps her arm around her shoulders and steers her in the right direction.
“She’ll be back someday,” Nikki says, as aisle 234G materializes in front of them as if by the power of will. “Don’t you want to keep her stuff safe for her?”
“Are you keeping someone’s stuff safe?” Faith asks curiously.
“No,” Nikki says, a little shortly. “I don’t have a someone.” She halts suddenly. “Crosses.”
“Whoa.”
Faith can’t help it: her mouth drops in awe. There are thousands of them, hanging from hooks by little tags like screwdrivers at a Home Depot. “How the fuck am I supposed to find B’s thing here?”
“They’re sorted by type,” Nikki says, already halfway down the aisle. “The necklaces are over here. What did it look like, again? Kind of big? Silver, right?”
“Yeah. It was—are those prices?” Faith asks, picking up a random necklace. The pendant is smaller than Buffy’s, and a little rusted. There’s a number printed next to a little barcode: 12061652.
Nikki is on her tiptoes looking at the pendants hanging in the highest row. “They’re deathdays. It goes month - day - year. We’re looking for 06 - 02 - 1997.”
1652.
“There’s some real old shit here.”
“Check out the section for sabre tooth tiger teeth and then tell me you’ve seen some real old shit,” Nikki says. “Hey!” She snatches something shiny and silver from the top row and tosses it at Faith. “Catch!”
Faith catches.
“B’s necklace,” she says, turning it over in her hands. She frowns at the little tag. “Why doesn’t she get to keep it? Why is it… here?”
“Dunno,” Nikki says, brushing an invisible speck of dust from her leather duster. “That’s just the way it goes.”
“What if she comes looking for it?” Faith asks.
“She won’t.”
“How do you—?”
“She won’t,” Nikki says again. “Either you take it, or it’ll sit here for eternity. This type of pendant isn’t exactly a hot commodity here.”
Faith slips the necklace over her head. It’s cold against her chest, which surprises her.
“She died in water,” Nikki says.
“What?”
“That’s why it’s cold.”
Faith thinks about Buffy lying face-first in a lake somewhere. Someone rolling her over, pushing life back into her lungs.
“I hope she never comes back here,” Faith says suddenly, emphatically. “She deserves more than this.”
“No one lives forever, Faith.”
No, Faith thinks, fingers tightening around the silver cross. But Buffy should.
—
Every day is pretty much the same for Faith. She works in the coffee shop. She retreats to her one-bedroom to watch re-runs on TV. She returns to the coffee shop. Sometimes she wanders into the street for a smoke—the stuff can’t kill you if you’re already dead, which is one of the few perks of being here—but never far, and never for long.
She wears the pendant every day, but it never warms.
—
A woman recognizes it, eventually. She’s in her thirties, maybe. Pretty. Dark hair, cropped to her shoulders.
“Hey,” she says, smiling at Faith like she’s not surprised to find herself here, in the fucking Afterlife Café, ordering a coffee—no cream, no sugar. “I knew someone with that necklace.”
“Yeah?” Faith says casually. “She’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”
The woman smiles, accepting her coffee from Faith and moving to sit down at a booth. “You remind me of her a little.”
Faith looks at Nikki. “I need a break.”
“Fine,” Nikki says, “but don’t—”
Faith flings herself into the booth across from the dark-haired woman.
“—harass the customers,” she finishes with a sigh. “Whatever.”
“What do you mean?” Faith asks, leaning across the table. “I’m nothing like B. She’s…” A fucking angel, Faith wants to say, and I’m just dead. “A goddamn brat,” she says instead.
“Hmm,” the woman says, taking a sip from her drink. “She never mentions any of her old friends. Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”
“No,” Faith says, crossing her arms.
“Her name is Faith,” Nikki says, leaning her elbows on the counter. “And I’m Nikki.”
“Jenny,” the woman says, tapping herself on the chest with a finger. “Is this your place, Nikki?”
“Yeah. Don’t get too much traffic, so it’s just me ‘n’ Faith here. That is, when Faith feels like being helpful.”
“I’m helpful as fuck!”
“Helpful as shit, more like,” Nikki says, and turns away to clear out the dishwasher.
Jenny smiles, amused. She has the kind of smile that lights up her eyes, which, Faith notices, are the gentle-and-approachable type.
“How’d you know B?” Faith asks, dropping some pretenses.
“I was her teacher.”
Faith nods. “How’s, uh. How’s she doin’? She’s not… coming back here anytime soon, is she?”
Jenny’s face clouds over. “Rupert.”
“Is that who killed you?”
“No.”
Normally Faith wouldn’t hesitate about pressing for personal details, but something about Jenny’s expression tells her to leave it be.
“I haven’t, uh. Seen B in a while,” Faith says.
“She’s okay,” Jenny says, but she seems distracted now. “How well did you know her?”
“Just a little.”
Jenny sips her coffee, tight-lipped, as she stares out the window into the fog.
“Lookin’ for someone?”
Faith intends it as a joke, but it falls incredibly flat.
“Where do people usually show up?” Jenny asks. “I need—I need to make sure Rupert doesn’t come here.”
“That’s kind of outta your control.” Faith frowns. “Do you, uh. Wanna talk about it?”
Unexpectedly, Jenny laughs.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen anyone look more uncomfortable to be offering an ear,” Jenny says. She shrugs. “You say you knew Buffy? Her lover killed me.”
Her lover, Faith thinks.
“And Rupert is—?”
“My fiancé.”
“Let me guess. He’s gonna go after Buffy’s guy and get himself killed in the process.”
“Angel isn’t himself at the moment,” Jenny murmurs, shaking her head. “It’s all my fault.”
“Angel, huh? That’s a sissy name for a dude.”
“I have a picture,” Jenny says, “somewhere. From Buffy’s seventeenth birthday.” She tries her pockets. She has a wallet, but it’s empty when she turns it out.
“There’s no money here,” Faith says, “and sentimental objects go to the Repository.”
She expects Jenny to be as thunderstruck as she herself had been, but something seems to click instead.
“You met Buffy when she died.”
“How did you—?”
“She mentioned seeing a girl, when she came back. It was you—wasn’t it?”
Faith shrugs.
“This Repository,” Jenny says. “Where do I find it?”
“I’ll come with you,” Faith offers. “I can show you the way there.”
But Jenny shakes her head. “I’ll come back,” she promises. “The picture is for you.”
—
It’s the next day when Jenny returns to the coffee shop. Or at least, Faith thinks so. The passage of time is weird here, what with the whole lack-of-sunlight-plus-endless-fog thing. She looks tired, the way someone might look when they haven’t slept for days, although sleep isn’t needed in this realm.
Maybe it’s different in the Repository, Faith wonders. Maybe it’s another realm altogether.
The though fucks with her head, and she doesn’t consider it any longer.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks. “Other than the picture?”
Jenny smiles, tired, but with some degree of contentment. “I gave Rupert a necklace. Rose quartz. He had it in his pocket last night. If he’d died—it would have turned up there.”
“Let me guess,” Faith says. “No rose quartz necklace.”
“Oh, there were hundreds,” Jenny says, smiling as she removes a photograph from her pocket. “But not mine. You know what that means, right?”
Faith has no damn idea.
“Buffy saved him,” Jenny says, and hands the picture over.
—
Faith pins the picture up over her bed. It’s a group shot—Jenny had sat down with her and written all the names on the back of the image with a pencil. There’s Jenny, of course, and Rupert, and Willow, and Xander, and Cordelia, and Oz, and, last but not least, Buffy and Angel.
“There will be a version of him here, somewhere,” Jenny had told her.
“I don’t get it.”
“Angel is a vampire,” Jenny had explained. “When he died, a demon took over his body. He’s still walking and talking, and he has all of the original Angel’s memories, but he’s here, too.”
Faith thinks about that a lot. She wants to find him, sometimes, even though the Angel here had never known Buffy, or killed Jenny.
She stares at the tiny image of Buffy in the middle of the photo, wrapped in her enormous boyfriend’s arms, and Faith wants to hurt him. Wants to be him, and—where the fuck did that thought come from?
She tries to push it away, but the image of Buffy standing, drenched, in her white dress by the counter of the coffee shop still haunts her.
She’d never seen anyone so beautiful before.
—
Jenny is a regular by the time Nikki hires another girl.
Or maybe hire isn’t the right word. Neither of them work for money, and neither had submitted any kind of resume. They’d just popped into Nikki’s life and found a home here.
Kendra appears in the room across the hall from Faith, above the coffee shop. As far as Faith had been able to tell, no one had lived there for a while. It kind of creeped her out before, truthfully—it always seemed like the fog lived on the other side of the door and would spill out into the hall if she were to open it.
After Kendra steps out, the whole creepy mystique disappears. They hang out in each other’s rooms sometimes, when they’re not in the coffee shop. Kendra fixates on the old re-runs like she’d never seen them the first twenty times—although, Faith supposes, maybe she hasn’t.
They talk about Buffy a little. Kendra had known her, and Jenny, too. It’s reassuring, hearing about Buffy’s successes in the real world.
Faith would die a thousand times to make sure Buffy never sets foot in this place again.
—
Neither Jenny nor Kendra can figure out why they’ve been drawn to this place, although both theorize it has something to do with a ‘Hellmouth’, or maybe with the proximity of the Repository. Faith thinks that’s bullshit. According to Nikki, every place is near the Repository, and she’s never seen anything resembling ‘the mouth of Hell’.
—
“There’s been someone out there,” Jenny says one day, sipping her black coffee across from Faith and Kendra. “In the fog.”
Kendra nods. “I have seen him too. Why doesn’t he come in?”
“Hey—shove your ass over,” Nikki says to Jenny, sitting down next to her with a smile when Jenny wiggles over to window. She fixes Faith with a look, then—intense and meaningful. “He’s not allowed in.”
“Why not?”
“Not my rules,” Nikki says. She takes a sip of Jenny’s coffee. “Mm.”
“Should I go talk to him?” Jenny asks. “Maybe bring him a drink?”
“No.”
“Nikki, are you—”
“I’m fine,” Nikki says, but her smile is false. It doesn’t suit her. She’s too genuine a person to pull off such a blatant lie. “Just—not you, Jen. Faith—you can take his order if you want to play Good Samaritan to Shadow Man.”
Faith feels a little antsy about the idea, but she’s not about the tell Nikki that.
“Why me?” she asks instead. “What’s this gotta do with Jenny?”
“Nothing,” Nikki says.
“I can come with you?” Kendra offers. “I am curious about this shadowy figure. And,” she grins, “I am a Slayer.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Faith mutters. “It’s Slayers all around.” She stands up, throwing her hands in the air. “Fine!” she says. “But if he kills me deader, it’s Nikki’s fault.”
“You don’t have to go,” Nikki says stiffly, but Faith’s already out the door, Kendra on her heels.
—
“I think he arrived at about the same time as me,” Kendra tells Faith, as they venture into the street. “Can you imagine living out here?”
Faith can’t imagine it at all.
—
The man is sitting in the park, hunched over at one end of the seesaw. His back is to them. He’s wearing a long, dark coat over his broad shoulders, and his dark hair sticks up as if he’d styled it that morning.
He looks sickeningly familiar to Faith.
“Angel?” she says.
Angel turns around.
“Have we met?” he asks.
For a brief moment, Faith wants to punch him in his face. Really wants to lay it on him, wants to beat him to the ground, wants to—
The deep sadness in his eyes hits Faith in the gut before she can lay a finger on him.
“Where’s Buffy?” she asks, as soon as she can speak.
“She’s fine,” Angel says. “She’s—she’s alive.”
“And you?”
“Dead. Again.” He laughs hollowly. “It’s what I deserve.”
“You tried to hurt her.”
“Yes.”
“You deserve worse.”
“She killed me, ironically,” Angel says. “Is that what I deserve?”
—
Faith takes a break almost every day to visit Angel in the park. He never ventures very far. Usually he’s shoved his massive self onto one of the grownup swings. Sometimes Faith sneaks up on him and gives him a kick in the ass, sending him flying upward with a yelp.
“I know why you’re here,” he says after a week or so.
“To study my enemy,” Faith tells him, trying to sum up the vitriol she’d felt when she’d first seen his picture. “Like a tiger at a zoo.”
“You love her,” he says.
“I don’t know her.”
Angel shrugs. “You loved her when you met her. She has that effect on people. You look at her… and you see her soul. She is all that’s brave, and kind, and good.”
“Fucking poetry,” Faith says.
She understands every word he’s saying.
—
Angel gets more and more incoherent every time she visits him after that. She tries to convince him to move in from the fog, but he won’t budge.
“I’m not allowed,” he says. “I’m not allowed. I’m not allowed.”
He seems as afraid of the light as she is of the darkness.
—
When, one day, she finds that he’s disappeared, Faith knows that he’s gone back to her.
Buffy.
Two lovers, reunited.
Faith wishes desperately to be alive again.
—
Three years pass after that before Faith’s world is flipped on its head. Three years watching re-runs with Kendra and making coffee for Jenny and bugging the shit out of Nikki at the coffee shop.
“I have never had friends before,” Kendra says once, smiling at her over the counter. “Other than Buffy. It is a nice feeling.”
Faith had never had friends when she was alive, and she’s pretty sure that Nikki the Slayer hadn’t either. Maybe that was why they’d been thrown together into some semblance of a family.
Faith stares up at the ceiling of her little room. She loves it, although she doesn’t spend much time here. The walls are painted yellow, and the comforter on her twin bed is the same kind of red plaid a lumberjack might wear. Most of all, it’s quiet. Her room at her mother’s house had never felt so comfortable.
“Faith?” Buffy says from the floor, and Faith topples off the bed in her haste to look at her. “You hit me in the face!”
“B, what are you doing here?!”
“Dying, obviously,” Buffy says, rolling over to grin at Faith, lying on the floor next to her.
“No!”
“What?”
“You!” Faith says, aware that her voice is too loud. “You weren’t supposed to come back here!”
Buffy’s face falls. “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” she says, frowning.
“Did you—B, did you—?”
Did you die to see me again?
Faith can’t ask it out loud; it’s too absurd. Just because she’d die for this girl doesn’t mean that the feeling is mutual.
After all, she’d never had anything to live for.
“Did I what?” Buffy asks. “God, I hope Dawn is okay.”
“Who?”
“I died so that she wouldn’t have to,” Buffy continues. “My sister. Hey,” she adds, fixing an interested stare on Faith’s chest. “My necklace!”
“Oh, yeah,” Faith says, her cheeks reddening as she scrambles to take it off. “Just keepin’ it warm for you.”
She doesn’t mention that it’s still cold from the first time Buffy had died.
Buffy shakes her head, smiling. “You keep it,” she says. “It looks better on you.”
Faith sits back up on the bed as she tugs the necklace over her head again, taking in the sight of Buffy in her bedroom as she does. She’s perfectly dry this time, Faith notes with a wry smile. And she’s wearing a white sweater.
Faith wants to take it off.
“Hey,” Buffy says. “Are you okay?”
“Huh?” Faith says.
“You got a weird look in your eye.”
“Yeah?” Faith asks. “What kind of a look?”
Buffy grins. “Like you wish I’d take this top off.”
“Do you have a mind-reading thing?” Faith asks. “’Cause if so—”
“Nah,” Buffy says. “You’re just being obvious. F.”
“You just died,” Faith says, not trying to be blunt, but not wanting to beat around the bush, either. “How are you so fucking calm? Last time you looked like you were ready to bolt.”
“’Cause I knew I’d find you here, silly,” Buffy says. She leans her chest against the side of her bed and walks her fingers up Faith’s thigh. “I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“Yeah?” Faith says. She swallows as Buffy’s fingers climb higher.
“Ooh!” Buffy says suddenly, spotting Faith’s moon lamp. “Let’s use this instead.”
“Instead? For what?” Faith asks, watching Buffy’s ass as she crosses the bedroom to switch the lamp on.
“For fucking,” Buffy says, and the main light goes out. In the yellow light of the Faith’s plastic moon, Buffy looks like a star—probably the only one in this realm.
“You want to fuck me, B?” Faith asks, grinning. “That’s what you dream about?”
Buffy grins back, sidling down next to Faith on the bed. “Mm,” she says. “Not quite.”
“No?”
“Nope. I dream that you fuck me.”
“Oh.” Fuck, Faith thinks.
If she could dream, she’d have the same one.
“This is really what you want?” Faith asks, already pulling off her tank top.
“I need to forget the trauma of my death,” Buffy says, not sounding very traumatized at all.
Faith shrugs and runs her fingers up Buffy’s sides, pushing her ugly sweater up over her head.
Ask questions later.
—
“I never wanted you to come back,” Faith says, kissing Buffy at the crook of her neck. “You deserve better than this.”
“Better than what? Heaven?”
“If this is Heaven, then I’m Angelina Jolie,” Faith says.
“You could be,” Buffy says, grinning. “You both have nice lips.”
“You haven’t seen hers up close, though,” Faith says, moving to kiss Buffy properly. Then pulls away, quick—“You haven’t, have you?”
“God, if only,” Buffy says, and laughs.
“We should go down, soon,” Faith says. “The others will be wondering where I am.”
“The others?” Buffy asks.
Faith realizes suddenly that Buffy doesn’t know her friends had come here. She doesn’t know about Jenny and Kendra. She doesn’t know that Angel had spent time here, and that his doppelganger still lives in this realm.
She doesn’t want to share this girl with anyone else.
“Let’s go to the Repository,” Faith says, grabbing her shirt and pulling it on over her head. “A field trip. It’s wicked, you’ll see.”
“The who-what?” Buffy asks. She’s still lying next to Faith without a stitch on, and as much as Faith doesn’t want to see her wearing that sweater again, she doesn’t want Kendra bursting in on this scene either.
“It’s a big warehouse full of stuff,” Faith says.
Buffy looks unimpressed.
“It’s where I got your necklace,” Faith continues.
“I didn’t drop it?”
“Nah.” Faith parrots out the words she’d heard Nikki tell dozens of customers. “When a person dies, any sentimental objects they have on them end up in the Repository. There’s all sorts of stuff there.”
“Ooh,” Buffy says. “Jewelry?”
“Lots of.”
Buffy sits up and looks around Faith’s little bedroom. “Where did my bra go?”
“Floor,” Faith says, retrieving it with a grin. “Though I gotta say, B—you look better without.”
Buffy throws the bra at her face.
—
They take the back way out to avoid the others, although Buffy doesn’t know this. Faith can’t fathom seeing their smug faces right now.
She can already hear Kendra’s voice in her head: I knew you were in love with her.
Buffy frowns as soon as they step outside. “It’s horrible out here,” she says.
“It’s not that bad once you get used to it,” Faith lies. “Anyway, we’re not going very far.”
“Okay,” Buffy agrees. But she takes Faith’s hand.
—
The Repository is the same as it always is. Buffy is just as awed by it as Faith had been the first time, and it’s fun showing her around the place. By now, Faith had found some of the oldest and weirdest objects, from the tiger teeth Nikki had mentioned to an entire row of twin nipple piercings.
“I can’t believe how many women died in their wedding dresses,” Buffy says. “Can we try them on?”
“Sure,” Faith says.
They find a camera and take pictures together, laughing the whole time, until an attendant comes along and warns them not to make a mess.
“Sure, whatever,” Faith says, but Buffy can’t peel her eyes away from the woman.
“Mom?”
But she’d already disappeared. The people that lived here always did.
“Faith,” Buffy says urgently. “We have to find her.”
Faith doesn’t know what to say. By now, she’s heard all sorts of rumours about this place. ‘You shouldn’t stay here too long, or you’ll go mad.’ ‘The attendants only appear when needed.’ ‘If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you should stop looking before you find something else.’
All she can think to do is knock things over and hope that someone shows up to give them a stern warning, but she doesn’t want to mess with this place.
Sometimes, Faith thinks it’s alive.
“There’s nothing you can do, B,” she lies, tugging Buffy away from the clothing aisles. “She’s a part of the Repository now.”
“No,” Buffy says, shaking her head. She looks to be on the verge of tears. “I was supposed to see her again.”
“You did,” Faith says, clasping Buffy’s upper arms in her hands. “You just did.”
“I mean for real, Faith! Talk to her! See if she—oh my God. What if she doesn’t know?”
“She knows,” Faith says, although she hasn’t got a clue what Buffy’s talking about. “She knows, B.”
As Buffy sobs into Faith’s shoulder, Faith wishes they’d never come here.
—
“Look who’s here!” Faith announces, as if she isn’t celebrating the death of the most wonderful girl to walk the Earth.
“Buffy?” Kendra says. “Oh my God.”
She rushes forward and wraps Buffy in her arms.
In her embrace, Buffy grins. “I thought you didn’t do hugs?”
Kendra pulls back, embarrassed. “It seems you are an exception.”
“Ms. Calendar,” Buffy says, waving at her old teacher. “Faith mentioned I might find you here. Giles still misses you.”
“And you?” Jenny asks.
Buffy shrugs. “I forgave you a long time ago.” She smiles. “Hug?”
Jenny accepts, returning Buffy’s hug warmly.
“And you’re Nikki,” Buffy says, over Jenny’s shoulder. “I’ve learned a little about you.”
“From the Watcher’s Diaries?” Nikki asks, leaning against the counter the way she always does when the conversation interests her.
“From your killer,” Buffy says, as she pulls away from Jenny.
“Ah.”
Nikki never talks about him.
“Drink?” she says. “It’s on the house.”
—
Faith and Buffy retreat to Faith’s room after coffee with the gang. The moon light is still on, casting a gentle yellow glow over the already-yellow walls.
“Can we just… stay here?” Buffy asks, flopping onto Faith’s bed. “Forever.”
Faith wouldn’t mind that, but she doesn’t think that Buffy really means it.
“Sure, B,” she says carefully, sitting down next to her.
“Why are you doing that?” Buffy asks.
“Doing what?”
“Treating me like I’m made of glass. You can’t hurt me, Faith. I’m already dead.”
Just ‘cause you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t hurt, Faith thinks. She touches Buffy’s cross pendant, still cold against her chest. Just ‘cause you’re dead doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you.
She moves her hand to Buffy’s face, marvelling at the fact that she can feel her skin—soft, glowing orange in the lamplight. She’s real here, dead or not.
“God, you’re beautiful, B,” Faith says, basking in the glow of Buffy’s returning smile.
“You’re not bad either.”
“That’s all I am?” Faith says. “’Not bad’?”
Buffy grins. “You gonna show me what you are?”
“Fucking fantastic,” Faith says, pushing Buffy down on the bed.
She talks big, but she’s never had a complainer on this front before.
—
Sleep isn’t necessary here, but Faith and Buffy fall asleep together.
When Faith wakes up, Buffy is gone.
—
“She went to the Repository,” Nikki tells Faith, after she makes her way morosely downstairs. “Something about trying to find her mom?”
“Shit,” Faith says, inwardly cursing herself again for the jolt of happiness she feels at the realization that Buffy is still here. “Boss, how do I stop her?”
“I doubt you can,” Nikki says. “Unless you know something that's more important to her.”
Me, Faith thinks wildly. I gotta be.
But she isn’t, and she knows it.
—
“B, you can’t stay here,” Faith says, coming to a stop in front of her.
Buffy’s sitting in the same place they'd spotted her mom yesterday: the wedding gown aisle. Dozens and dozens of white gowns glitter behind her.
“Why not, Faith?”
Faith’s hands ball into frustrated fists. She doesn’t know. She’s just absolutely certain that you shouldn’t.
“You can’t feel it?” she asks finally. “It’s off in here, B. Like… someplace else. Another realm. People move on from here.”
Buffy stands up. “All the more reason to find my mom.”
“You don’t get it!” Faith says. “If you leave this place the wrong way, you can never come back. You’ll never see your friends again. You’ll never see your sister when she gets here.”
This catches Buffy’s attention.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Dawn isn’t going to follow you into the dark like a fucking Death Cab for Cutie song! And even if she does, she’ll never find you!”
“What have you heard about the next realm?” Buffy asks.
“It’s the void,” Faith says. Her voice shakes a little. “Please, B. You can spend forever here, but you’ll only get lost. Come back with me.”
“That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?” Buffy hisses. “To keep me to yourself. Just because you never had a family doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have one.”
Faith stares.
“Fine. You wanna stay here? Get fucked, B.”
—
Leaving Buffy feels wrong as soon as she’s back in the street, but she can’t bring herself to beg any longer. If Buffy won’t listen to reason, there’s nothing Faith can do, save drag her ass out of there by force.
She doesn’t think Buffy would react very well to that.
—
There’s a soft knock on Faith’s door after a while, and she opens it, expecting Kendra.
“B?”
“You were right.”
“I know,” Faith says, stepping aside so that Buffy can come into the room. “But, uh. What about?”
“I can’t stay in that place.” Buffy shivers. “It gives me the wig.”
She sits down on Faith’s bed, and Faith wraps an arm around her shoulders.
“I just wanted to see my mom again. You know, I wanted to get to be a kid for once.”
“I get it,” Faith says. “And you know who else gets it? Nikki and Kendra.”
Buffy nods. “God, I almost lost them for real.” She sighs. “I’m sorry I said—um. That you don’t have a family. You do. I’ve seen it.”
“Nikki says there are different types of family,” Faith says. “There’s the one you’re born into. And there’s the one you choose.”
“And then there’s this one,” Buffy says. “A little of both. Wouldn’t you say?”
Faith’s never felt so understood before.
—
A hundred and forty-eight days later, Buffy disappears again.
—
“Did she go back to the Repository?” Faith asks Nikki, wringing her hands wildly. “She said that she wouldn’t go back without me.”
“I don’t know,” Nikki says, frowning. “I haven’t seen her since you two came down for coffee."
“We fell asleep,” Faith says, frantic. “Why’d I fall asleep?”
Nikki shakes her head. “Faith—don’t go looking for her. She’ll be back.”
“Yeah,” Faith says.
—
She goes out the back door when no one’s looking.
Nikki is laughing at a story Jenny’s telling them about Rupert, and Kendra is behind the counter, cleaning mugs, and Buffy?
Buffy is nowhere in this realm.
In the street, on her way to the warehouse, Faith’s cross falls to the ground.