Chapter Text
“Second best.”
Faith stopped, her brain registering panic and horror before she'd even processed the words. That tone of voice. Flat, emotionless, full of guilt and brooding and the weight of the world. Wrong.
She'd only spent a day with Angelus but she recognized him for what he was, theatrical and eager for any opportunity to hurt someone. Most people who met the Mayor, the real Mayor, not that fake sunny persona he showed the public, were silenced by the aura of menace and power that radiated from him. He could be tittering over apple pie or his golf swing, but there was no mistaking that he was always the most powerful one in the room, and provoking him...well, one cautioning frown from him was usually enough to ensure that nobody felt like finding out what happened if he was provoked. She loved that about him. He wasn't afraid of anything. He made her feel like she didn't have to be either. Except, perhaps, of him.
And Angelus had walked right into his private office, told him to call him master, and impaled him with his own letter opener. That took incredible stupidity or monumental balls, but she understood the smarts behind his suicidal actions. Angelus was always acting like the toughest one in the room, because nobody respected you unless they knew you were stronger than them. You had to make sure they knew it, and you had to keep reminding them, over and over and over. That was the only way to know that they weren't going to turn on you. Even when he deferred to the Mayor, he did it with a swagger and a cocky grin.
Which meant that tone of voice was completely wrong on him. It was bland. Angelus was never bland. Angel was bland. Time seemed to slow down as Faith turned to look at him. His face was human, but he wasn't smiling, or taunting her, just starting with brooding intensity. She searched his expression, desperately looking for a sign, any clue that he was toying with her, that this was part of his game. But there was no glee in it, just sadness and disappointment. Wherever Angelus had been a moment ago, there was no trace of him left behind now.
“Graduation Day. You think we missed anything?” From behind her, Buffy spoke directly to Angel.
This wasn't right. This wasn't fair! She had watched the spell happen herself, she had fought with Angelus, kissed him, felt his joy at being in the company of another as powerful as himself. She hadn't ever expected that they'd be able to keep him around; all Angelus would ever truly want was to be the most powerful one in the room, no matter what he had to do to get there, and he'd have no respect for the Mayor's plans. But she had been so looking forward to enjoying his company before she'd have to stake him. Someone who understood her, who respected her strength, who knew what she was and didn't judge her for it. Like the Mayor. Like Buffy had been supposed to be.
“I think we know everything she knows.” Angel finally grinned, and it was wrong, all wrong. He was smug, proud of having been cleverer than her, and yet it still didn't entirely hide the pity in his eyes, like he felt sorry for her for being such an idiot. They had set this up, they had set all of this up, all so Buffy could keep feeding her queen-of-the-world superiority complex. She always had to make herself out as the most powerful one in the room, as if the fact that life had just given her money and a home and a pack of groupies, and a mother and a Watcher who weren't dead, or evil, or both, made her better than Faith, and she wasn't even embarrassed to admit it.
“May I say something? Psyche.” Buffy released her arms from the bindings Angel had pretended to chain shut and waggled her fingers like a playground taunt, contempt evident on her face.
This wasn't fair! For one goddamn minute, she had been supposed to be the power in town that she was meant to be. She had spent all week fantasizing about this moment, she hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since they left City Hall. What she was going to do to her. Buffy, tied in chains, gazing at Faith through those intense green eyes, finally looking at her with something other than contempt or frustration. Buffy, forced to her knees, head bowed, hair plastered to her face with sweat and tears, begging as she said Faith's name. Buffy, shallow cuts across her delicate pale skin, exposed and vulnerable as her outfit pooled in scraps around her feet. Buffy, overwhelmed and gasping, pleading for it to stop, looking up at Faith as she admitted that she'd been wrong, that she'd been terrible to her, that she'd treated her unfairly, that she had never been better than her. Buffy, curled on Angel's bed, naked and shivering and whimpering...
Instead, here she was, Buffy and Angel laughing at her, the rest of the Scoobies about to find out about her betrayal if they hadn't already, and the Mayor...Faith got nervous thinking about it. She hadn't been with the Mayor long, not long enough to have let him down yet, but certainly long enough for him to have made dark threats about what happened to those who did. If she went back to him now, if he found out that she'd told his archenemies everything she knew about his plans for the Ascension...
Faith snapped. Every time she found a new home, Buffy Summers came along and found a way to take it away from her. Gwendoline, Giles, the Scoobies, the Mayor, Angelus, everything she'd ever expressed interest in since she'd arrived in Sunnydale. “You played me. You played me!” she yelled with a roar, crossing the distance between her and Angel before he could react and throwing him across the room.
She barely noticed the far doors slamming open or the assembled group that rushed in brandishing crosses and stakes at him. She was already in motion towards Buffy, throwing punches and kicks with a ferocity the other Slayer wasn't entirely prepared to counter. Buffy blocked the first few strikes aimed at her, then took two solid punches to the face, rolling backwards as they came to bring herself up next to the low table littered with scalpels and knives. She snatched the first weapon her fingers touched and lunged back at Faith, stabbing and slashing as Faith leapt over her attacks and kept coming. The blade in her own hand came down on Buffy's throat as she dropped to one knee, pressing herself against the smaller Slayer with a wild look in her eyes, not entirely sure what to do with her momentum. She had planned to have Buffy at her mercy, but not like this, not quick and fatal and fleeting. She belatedly registered the feeling of cold steel against her own neck, and glanced down to see that Buffy held a knife on her in a mirror of her own posture. Was that why she had hesitated? Had that happened because she had hesitated?
There was a long moment of silence, a mere couple of seconds, but to a Slayer running high on adrenaline it felt like a lifetime. She could see the hesitation in Buffy's eyes, feel the warmth of her breath on her face, hear her heart pounding even over her own. The knife dug gently into the skin of her neck but did not go further. She gave a playful smirk. “What are you going to do, B? Kill me...you become me. You're not ready for that.” She suddenly dipped her free hand into her back pocket, looping the device there around her fingers as she batted Buffy's knife arm away with her own, acting on instinct and not conscious thought. Her hand snaked its way into the the hair behind Buffy's head and she pulled her in close for a kiss, quick and passionate, before she grabbed Buffy's free hand and interlaced their fingers, squeezing tight as the device that was wrapped around her fingers glowed softly. “Yet.”