Chapter Text
Faith
Dawn wasn't satisfied with the story about her and Tommy sneaking into the venue for a band back in Boston, she gauged (correctly) that if Faith had done something like that, she had done worse, the eyes both judging her and admiring her twisting inside of her like tongs.
Dawn wants a story? I'll give her one.
It wasn't a fun story, it wasn't one that would impress anyone, it was a story where there were no winners. Faith was about 15, just a little older than Dawn, and had heard some fighting in the men's locker room. She was looking for some asshole who owed her money, or something—she couldn't fucking remember, so she went in.
Tommy was painting the room red, bleeding out of his mouth and nose, squealing like a stuck pig with every hit to the gut. The noises were too wet, too weak to be called screams anymore. Football team, by the looks of it, sure felt like it by the way the big one stopped her dead in her tracks.
Faith tried to get them to stop, talked her shit, the works. She got a fist in the gut for her efforts, and then it all went black.
"Is that it?" Dawn asked,
"That I can remember," Faith said, honestly.
"So what's the part you aren't telling me?" Fucking Summers. The Slayer rolled her jaw, lips twitching in a smoke thirsty grimace. Her eyes looked at the flowering wallpaper for a moment. The birds chirped like so many hospital machines outside, the trees silently swayed like armies of faceless nurses.
"I won. Blacked out, I really don't remember anything after the gut punch, like I said. One of my fingers was broken bad enough to show some bone, but Tommy told me later it wasn't them who did that to me."
Dawn blinked, brow taking shapes, accomodating the words. There was still that ignorant glimmer like Faith was cool or something.
Burb barbies are all the same, drool over the grime that they don't have to live in. I'm sure it looks real cool from a 20 mile distance, sweetheart, I'm sure it's a real fuckin' movie.
That was what made her look away, that admiring, that fawning over what she'd done. What she was. It tasted like metal in her mouth. Her face twisted for a moment so short that she passed it off with a sniffle.
"Anyways, the cocksuckers were in the hospital for a few days, listening to their own breathing, if they were awake at all. One of them was in a coma. Brain damage, I think."
You don't think, Lehane, the best you can do is act, and you did plenty of that. You don't even know if that asshole ever woke up, you hope he doesn't because you're scared of the life he'd wake up to.
"O-oh. And the others?"
"Few broken bones, some concussions, plenty of broken teeth. They had to pry one guy's tooth out of my forehead when I was under."
Christ, Faith, you're a fucking mess. This is why you don't tell stories.
"Did it scar?"
"Huh? Dawn, you're fucked in the head, sh- I mean, uh. Twisted. You're twisted."
"Show me," she said, crossing her arms with a smile that told Faith all the ways she could ruin her already precarious reputation if she didn't cough up the deets.
"Yeah, yeah. Fuck," she raised her hair and showed a small white bump on her forehead, glinting in the evening light. The guy was taller than her, she thinks he was the one who punched her in the gut. Tommy didn't talk about it, really, so she had to piece it together herself: he punched her in the gut and then she blacked out, launched her forehead into his teeth, broke a lot of it, then kicked him back and used the equal and opposite force (thanks Ms. Tupps) to knock over one of the douchebags behind her.
From there, it was anyone's guess.
She let the hair flow back down over it.
"Wicked!" she said that way Valley Girls did, where they used laughs like diacritics, "so like, why were they beating up Tommy? Did he owe them money? Did he have drugs or something? Did he.. you know, do one of their girlfriends?"
"He was a faggot," Faith said, looking bored by the information. Like it was nothing at all, because it wasn't. When she'd gotten the ass reaming by the principal afterwards, he'd told her as much, that people like him would always get picked on. That people like Faith would always find fights. She tried to deny it, but the longer she lived, the more she found the fights, the more she saw faggots like Tommy get bled out in the streets, the more she knew it to be true.
"W-what? What did you just call him?" Dawn looked… genuinely disgusted. Spare me the suburban sanctimony. You're the one who asked, brat.
"Fag. Took it up th— he liked boys, y'know? C'mon, we're in California, you're telling me you haven't seen em' around? If you can see their belly button, they're a fa-"
"Don't say that word."
"Why? Just a word."
"It's not…" Dawn looked to be struggling to piece together exactly how to address this development, like the blood and the bones were fine, but a little bit of bigotry was where she drew the line on her sadistic glorification,
"it's not nice. You shouldn't talk about people like that, there's nothing wrong with them."
Faith rolled her eyes, feeling tired of the conversation, but she was locked in now.
"Sure, whatever, but where I'm from, you keep that shit under wraps or you'll get Tommy'd. He mighta been a fag, but he was my fag, y'know? I just… I looked out for him and he looked out for me, a fag and a fuck-up, the Gruesome Twosome."
Dawn couldn't help but ring a laugh out, even while she looked at Faith like she grew a second head, how's that for a gruesome twosome? Faith laughed too.
"Okay, but seriously, stop calling him that."
"Jesus Christ, alright, you win. What are we calling him?"
"A friend?"
"Not anymore, but sure. A friend."
She told Dawn more about him. About the way she thought she had a crush on him when she first met him because of his long hair, his green eyes, his angel face and the red on his cheeks, and then he turned out to be gay which took him firmly out of her dating pool and straight onto her shit list. Unfortunately, he single handedly made up about 30% of her skunk-weed sales.
They loved each other, they'd steal each other's makeup, steal each other's perfume, and if they couldn't get around to having something stolen, they'd gift it to the other. And then he'd left. Once he saw her spit poison and leak smoke all over the lockerroom. Everyone left, in the end.
"So, in the lockerroom, was that the first time you used your Slayer powers? Or like, did you already know and were just waiting for the right time to use it?"
"Hm? O-oh, yeah, those. I got those 2 years later."
Boston-made monster, baby, metal under my skin and smoke on my breath. Fuck you. Go Celtics.
It should have disgusted Dawn, Faith's natural violence, it would have been comforting to Faith. She missed Buffy's green eyes, the way they'd pin her to the moment like a butterfly to a page. They'd judge her right, they'd make it all okay. They'd kill her.
But this? This was fucked in the head. Dawn looked more excited by that than anything.
"Ohmygod, you took on three guys without the powers? That's insane!"
Faith just popped her eyebrows like she was trying to see the appeal of it all.
Is he still listening to the ICU machines chirp every morning? Does he dream of birds with mechanical tweets? Does he see the red of this sunset on the back of his eyelids? Coma'd him good, didn't I? Just like I coma'd Mr. Maclay. I deserve one more coma from B, just to make it even.
"So, how did you meet Charlie?"
There was a silence and a disorientation, like Faith had stood up too quickly and felt all the blood in her body rush out of her head at once. She shook her head.
"I'm not gonna talk about Charlie, matter of fact, we're not gonna talk about Charlie at all. We're gonna keep him out of it." Dawn looked at her, worried, and Faith hated that look, so she threw her a bone.
"Want to hear about hotwiring cars?"
Buffy
She couldn't control everything, she thought, but didn't really believe it. Why couldn't she? She just needed to do more. To be wider. To be stronger. Her hands had to stretch out across the world, eclipse the world with her protection. The road was long, the road was hard, but she'd reach down and rip it out of the ground and make it a sword, if she had to.
Faith was out of control, needed an attitude adjustment or something. Buffy stormed up the stairs, bringing the energy damnit, she'd stewed on it all day. All the things she did, all the things she said, everything to reduce her control and make her life that much harder. It had to stop.
Someone from Faith's past had just shown up, shot Tara's dad in the stomach, and the Boston Bozo was acting like nothing happened at all. Her heels loudly pounded the wooden floor.
Good, she needs to know I'm coming.
Her hand went to the doorhandle for a second, but then paused. There were two voices inside that somehow hadn't noticed her arrival. The voices were muffled, but she could make out the low conversation if she put her ear to the door. It's my room, I can listen in all I want. It's not weird.
"Wait wait wait, so you used to steal cars? How?"
"Civics, Accords, Camrys, that kind of thing. They're all pretty easy to steal. Early 90's was the best, but you can get a late 90's one up and running with some elbow grease. Haven't tried the 2000's stuff, been a while since I've had to boost one."
"Okay, that's the how, cool! But… why? It's not like you could sell them."
Great! My sister is having her criminal awakening the moment I'm gone. They grow up so fast. Buffy crossed her arms like a parent who was going to ground you for the unforeseeable future.
"Depends. Had some guys pay me to steal their cars and rough it up on the highway, then ditch it. Insurance fraud, y'know? Most of the time though, I'd just take the car to one of Charlie's buddies who owned a body shop and they'd strip it for parts."
"Cool!"
Okay, this is going to stop riiiight about now.
She opened the door, the first thing she noticed was the smell of a cigarette in the room, great, she's smoking in here, too? What's next, is she going to reveal she hasn't been potty trained?
Green eyes stared at the crumpled cigarette in the trash with a force just short of causing the bin to explode into sparks. Her spotlight stare turned to Faith, shaking her head and scowling for just a split second, more like a tightening of the eyes. A taste of what was to come.
"Dawn," she said, "come with me. I need to talk to you."
"But me and Fa-"
"Now."
Dawn grumbled something nasty under her breath that Buffy pretended not to hear while her older sister closed the door behind her. Buffy decided to let the silence percolate for a second.
She turned and walked down the stairs to the Kitchen, knowing that Dawn would follow, hearing another muttered nasty on the way there. When they reached it she took out the stuff for a sandwich, the kind that Faith always made, with the extra stuff she would never explain.
"So, explain to me, slowly, what do you think you're doing?" Buffy asked,
"Getting grilled, mostly," she said, even popping her lip like Faith, the sight of it made Buffy's nostrils flare.
"Grilled? It sounded more like your brain was being fried than anything. You don't talk to her, okay? Why doesn't that register with you? Faith. Plus Words. Equals bad!"
"Cause it was Faith! You talk to her all the time."
"Hanging out with Faith is not cool, Dawn. OK? It is dangerous… and icky."
Dawn scoffed, rolling her eyes and looking away.
"Well, you don't think Faith's icky."
The Slayer turned to get back to work on the sandwich, getting more frustrated by the second. The ingredients seemed to be playing hide and seek, and she was losing.
"Yeah, well, think again, sister."
A moment passed. The ingredient she was looking for was right there. Her hand was paused in mid air as something clicked in her mind. Buffy closed the cabinet without getting the ingredient, and turned around to face Dawn.
"What does that mean?"
"What do you think it means, Buffy?"
"I asked first."
"And I got the last word, so you have to go first,"
"ROCK" said Dawn
"SCISSORS" said Buffy at exactly the same moment.
"I hate you," the more "mature" one of the two said.
"Didn't ask, don't care. Now go on, fess up, what do you think it means, Buffy? Why don't you think you find Faith icky, huh?"
She's the devil. A monster. Maybe Glory is just trying to save us all. Maybe Giles has a tome on her somewhere, 'THE DAWN OF THE APOCALYPSE'. I can see it, clear as day. Medieval scrawlings of her eating villages, or something.
"Guhhhm, well, I do, so jot that down. I just think you're being weird."
"Liarliarpantsonfire", Dawn accused. It's like that, then. Okay.
"no,they'renot,they'requiteadmired!"
"yournosegrowslonger,kindalikesnyder"Damnit!
Buffy just couldn't win, today, by the looks of it. Her cheeks were reddening, her habitually crossed arms turning into something more like a self-hug against the piercing winds of Dawn's interrogation. She found her words. Barely.
"Okay, okay! I think she's… okay."
"To look at, right?" Dawn snorted.
"I watch her back. And only her back."
"Lower back, maybe."
"Upper!" Buffy squeaked, her face redder than the abandoned tomato slice on her sandwich. "Upper back!"
"Quit lying, sis. Admit it, I know you two were making out in the training room, I have ears y'know. They were all muttering about it, and you had that lipstick on your neck—"
"I-I was defending myself, she bit me!"
"Oh, I'm sure." A lecherous, bloody little smile, popped up eyebrows like she had allllll the cards.
"Dawn! She… she is a killer," Buffy hissed, glancing at the stairs, tapping her senses against the slayer connection to get a rough estimate of the other woman's location. Still in her room, good. "I can't have a crush on someone who hurts, who steals, someone who ruins everything she touches."
The Monster pursed her lips, unimpressed.
"Which one of us are you trying to convince? Think again, sister, because you don't look too ruined to me, and with the way she looks at you, I think she'd agree."
We can start with exorcism spells, go down the list. maybe some restraints. Not a vampire, but holy water could help narrow it down to other supernatural creatures. Maybe she's like, a tulpa…. is that a thing? I can go to Giles after this.
"Well, I can't speak for Faith, but Buffy is straight." Buffy nodded, made a little hum, crossed her arms. That was fact. Probably in the Bible somewhere. She took a drink of the orange juice, letting the glass circle be a big ol' period at the end of her sentence.
"Buff, I've seen cursive straighter than you."
Buffy coughed up the OJ she was sipping. If any got on Dawn, she didn't show it. Just a little carnivorous smile.
"Besides," her little sister continued, seemingly not content with shredding Buffy, apparently she wanted to atomize her, "you dated a vampire."
"He was different! He had… inhibitions. He was good. Good inhibitions that stopped him from stealing cars. I think. Do you think he ever stole cars?" The blonde could only look to her sister for guidance.
"And Faith's got you. You're plenty of inhibition. Anyways, I have to bounce, promised I'd watch Tremors with Janet. You keep trying to…" she motioned at the sandwich, "put all this together. Ciao!"
Like a tornado, Dawn left a sacred, ruined silence in her wake.