Chapter Text
“You think it's gonna rain?” It sounded absurd the moment Faith said it. Sometimes she’d ask stupid questions because she liked to hear the answer from his mouth. He always sounded so certain, in his own way.
“Nonsense. It’s a beautiful day.” Faith closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the birds and the bugs. Felt the sun on her skin, felt the way her heart slowed down and the blood beat in her ears as the Mayor dispelled any doubt she might have had. Or tried to, at least.
“Now eat your sandwich.”
The feeling on her stomach, where the tissue was shiny and raw for a reason she couldn’t remember, didn’t fade. A light buzzing. It would do that when it was about to rain.
“I don’t know, it’s just… it always seems like it starts raining right about now.” It felt stupid before the sentence was even finished.
“You’re too young and too pretty of a girl to start wearing worry lines on your face.” Her smile was soft, like the blanket underneath her, like the voice she let lull her. The buzzing felt worse.
“Oh! Now hey, hey, heyyy-” Richard reached over and picked up a small snake that had been making its way across the picnic blanket like it was really rather embarrassed to be intruding, but the Mayor wasn’t having any of that.
He could make anyone feel welcome, anything.
“Hey there, little fella.” He laughed softly, brow furrowing just a few degrees. “I don’t know where you belong, but it’s not here with us.” Even when he said that, it wasn’t because he wanted it gone. It’s because he wanted it to get wherever it was going safely. Faith wasn’t looking at the snake, just him. When he chuckled, her face couldn’t help but reciprocate a smile.
“There you go.” He let it go and leaned back on the blanket. “You see, there’s nothing gonna spoil our time together. Now, who wants cheesecake? He laughed, but the buzzing stopped Faith from doing so too.
He leaned up and away, reaching into the basket.
“NO!”
She came like she always did, knife in hand, each steady step covering a room’s distance. The white and blue picnic blanket spattered with red. The birds stopped chirping, the bugs stopped buzzing.
It was gonna rain. White turned to gray and blue to black when the rain came and washed the warmth away.
Faith ran, like she always did around this time. She never escaped her. It always ended the same way. Buffy took a step on the damp grass and it sounded just like the concrete of the roof of-
She fell, hands scrabbling for purchase.
Clack. Clack.
Faith’s shirt was wet, brown streaks that looked red in the weird light of the morning going backwards. Night was coming like always. Buffy shone brightest then.
Stumbling to her feet, she ran through the treeline.
Clack. Clack. God, she was getting closer. Why couldn’t she just catch up and end it already?
The buzzing got stronger in the scar, and Faith’s legs turned to jelly. It felt like a whisper in her ear, a promise, a lock that was aching for the key Buffy had in her hand. The same key that killed Mayor Wilkins and ruined his picnic blanket.
It was totally dark now, and the trees turned shorter and grayer with each step until each one was a headstone. She saw her name on the one in front of her and fell in.
Her back hit a soft cushion with white sheets that were dry no matter how much rain fell on them. It was so warm, so soft. Her killer stood at the edge of the grave and looked down, calculating and cold. When she fell on top of Faith, she fell into her arms and embraced. The rain grew distant, sunlight glowing on them without a source.
She felt the jagged key slot into place just underneath her left rib and she sighed, nestling into Buffy’s arms. The chill of the rain, of the dark, of the running felt so distant now. She was completed. It always ended like this. Sometimes after running, sometimes after a fuck, sometimes after a “Hey, how do ya do!”
The key twisted and she screamed, she was undone.
She opened her eyes and looked at where the hurt was, but it wasn’t her stomach that was bleeding. Buffy’s stomach had the metal knife jaggedly sticking out of it.
“F-fuck, B, no no no-”
The blonde looked up at her with that confused pout Faith hated to love. Tears welled up in Faith’s eyes, or was that rain? At some point the white curtains had been replaced with muddy walls, soft sheets with a hard casket.
“It was supposed to be me- I didn’t mean… please, no-”
It was always her. Always her who bled, who fell, then Buffy would twist the key, wind her up like a doll, and the dream would restart. This was new. This was all wrong. She held Buffy close, wanting nothing more than to swap places, but her warmth was washed away with rain that tasted like steel in Faith’s mouth.
A while later, two hands gripped the edge of the grave.
—----
Cold. The first thing that Faith felt was the cold. The second was the feeling of a dry throat, then cracked lips that split uncomfortably as she ripped a gasp from the sterile air around her. Her eyes scrolled to the left, towards the infernal beeping machine. Her hand felt fuzzy, like it belonged to someone else, smaller than it should have been. She didn’t want to look at it for long, and didn't like how it was lagging slightly behind the motions she gave it. An image came to mind of a shitty dubbed kung-fu movie she used to watch on repeat, the way the lips never matched the words. She sent a smile to her mouth, but the mouth itself couldn’t seem to be bothered to carry it out.
The blanket smothered her, damp with sweat, too thin to warm her. If anything, it acted more like a thin liquid barrier sapping what little warmth she had left. With a small whine, she sent the impulse to fling it off of her to her hand. After some consideration, the hand obeyed. The blanket didn’t go as far as it should have, wrapping around her ankle like a desperate, wet grip from a rainy grave.
Sitting up wasn’t as easy as it should have been; it hurt, the IV and needles inside of her pulling uncomfortably. So fucking cold. It was an instinctive motion to rip them out, frigid and clinical steel sliding out of her.
Her eyes widened, tracking a bead of blood gathering on her arm like they were eager to follow it out, her breath slowing down and her blood roaring through her ears.
“Get your shit together, Lehane.” Her voice cracked somewhere near the end of ‘together’, but she sure as shit wasn’t going to acknowledge it.
Swinging her legs over the bed, Faith tried to stand up. It didn’t pan out. Slayer strength be damned, her legs seemed to be questioning the wisdom of leaving the bed at all. Goosebumps tracked up and down her skin.
When she put her weight on her legs on the second try, they didn’t collapse back into a sitting position again, more like a swaying transitional stance one takes before falling on their ass. Her hand gripped the corner of the doorway after a few steps before she could fall. Each breath hurt, but that was the last thing on her mind.
Her steps grew a little steadier, but not the way they should have been. A part of her she had no interest in acknowledging wondered idly if Buffy had taken more than the knife out of her when she ripped it out, if she’d taken the part of Faith that had made her special with her like it was hers now. God, the sound.
Yeah, she could stroll down memory lane another time. She rounded a corner, wondering how it could be so dark in a place with so many lights. Her arms crossed around herself. She couldn’t seem to warm up, even though it wasn’t all that chilly in the room. No, the cold was in her, she knew it. Part of her ached for someone to rip it out. What kind of sound would it make?
Faith saw a flash of color as the double door in front of her squeaked open, a woman wearing a cardigan that made her headache develop a secondary, smaller headache on top of it. It was the same color as the bead on her arm the needle had left when she’d ripped it out. She blinked away the memory and padded towards the woman.
“Excuse me.” Her voice is worse than the door, Faith thought, “You know how to get to 3rd Floor West from here?”
The expression on Faith’s face didn’t promise a future of fruitful dialogue between the two parties. “Uh… what?”
Faith’s eyes darted up to the woman’s seemingly armored bob cut, then back into her eyes as she awaited an answer.
“I see. Um, you need some help or something?”
“Graduation.” It came out desperate, like the word was in rather a hurry to get out of her mouth.
“What?”
“Graduation. I gotta get to Sunnydale High School Graduation now.” Have to be there for the boss, have to help him, have to get warm, have to warn him she’s coming. He can make it all make sense.
“Well you can’t! I mean, Sunnydale High School isn’t even there anymore.” She nervously laughed in a way that made Faith want to take her stupid fucking Teddy bear and force feed-
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know who the hell Faith was. Sometimes Faith didn’t even know that. “What day is it?” Faith couldn’t stop the blinks that reflexively followed the tremble in her voice.
“Friday” Faith’s eyes darted down to the stuffed bear in her arm before returning to its owner.
“What date is it? The date.”
“February 25th.” The woman sounded less with each word she spoke, and more scared with each one that Faith replied with.
“What year?”
“Maybe I should get you a nurse?”
“What happened to the school?” Please don’t let her have won, please don’t let her be okay, please don’t have hurt her, please please please
“Don’t you just want to-”
“Just… Tell me.”
Faith didn’t let go of the breath she was holding until the woman stopped speaking.
—-------------
Her new fuck-you-red cardigan was hardly solid, but the Teddy Bear was. Faith hugged it to her chest, half hidden underneath the fabric of the thing. She didn’t know why she took it, it was probably meant for some kid who was gonna croak in a month.
Probably gonna outlast me.
When Bob-Cut told her about the Principle’s death, it was like something cracked. Like the needles multiplied in her comatose body, metal worms eating her up from the inside. She could feel them in her heart. The awful, stabbing certainty that Bob Cut gave her. It was over. The fucked up experiment that was Faith Lehane had ended before it really began. Self pity like heartburn flooded through her, her grip on the teddy bear tightening to an almost hydraulic level.
It’s not over yet, Lehane. Can be, though. We can make it Five by Five, baby, a nice even sum. Just gotta zero out.
She shivered, and the night-wind cut through the cardigan with so many slashes. As the cold terror gave way to numb, self assured action, she felt it. The warmth that faintly buzzed in the roof of her mouth and spread through the back of her neck and up to her temples, like manicured nails idly playing with your hair and all the tingles that came with it.
Just gotta get warm, Lehane.
Her feet took her towards it, like a moth through a cold and wide night towards a distant light to die in. She wondered if moths were fully satisfied when their wings turned to ash, their blood to hissing smoke, the fire taking away any part of them that could be cold ever again.
She liked to think they were.