...And Live Forever by Barnabas

Rating: R
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, blah-blah-blah. Nobody's making any money off this story (though if someone wants to send me a million dollars, I won't turn it down).
Distribution: The Mystic Muse: http://mysticmuse.net
Author's Site: http://www.geocities.com/barnabas930
Feedback: Please feed the animals – send me feedback!
Spoilers: Post-Chosen.
Author's Note: This is a sequel to my story Racing the Past. If you haven't read "Racing," please do so before starting this one, or it'll make much less with the sense
Pairing: Buffy/Faith

Summary: A California life alone is just too hard to build.

In a fifth-floor room of one of the city's most upscale hotels, a broken, shattered, naked girl pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her legs, and cried.

She cried as children all over the city woke up and ran excitedly to their living rooms to see what Santa had brought them.

She didn't notice as the scotch tape holding up one of the cardboard reindeer, put up two weeks earlier by a woman now on a bus halfway across Nebraska, came unstuck and the smiling cartoon creature thunked to the floor.

Eventually, she ran out of tears. She wanted to keep crying, but it seemed like her tear ducts must've dried up or something.

Re-emerging several minutes later, she hastily pulled on underwear, jeans, a sweatshirt, and her jacket. The rest of her clothes, with one exception, were shoved into her backpack. The exception was a certain black dress, which she balled up and threw into the wastebasket. She walked over to the bed, picked up and crumpled the hateful piece of paper, and sent it to the same fate that she'd dispatched the dress to.

She put her hand on the room's doorknob... hesitated... turned around. Going back to the bed, she picked up the small silver frame and smashed it against the corner of the nightstand. Carefully, she pulled the slivers of glass away, reached in, and withdrew the picture, which she folded in half and stuck in one of the inside pockets of her jacket.

As she turned to leave, she spotted the two hardcover books. After another slight hesitation, she grabbed them up and jammed them into her pack.

She slung the backpack over one shoulder and strode through the door without another backward glance.

Faith obliged and began rocking her hips forward even more rapidly. Why not? This wasn't doing anything for her – not that she'd expected it to – so why not at least let him get something out of it?

"Oh yeah, that's good," he panted. He reached up and pawed at her breasts, as clumsily this time as the first dozen attempts. She knew her tits were pretty fuckin' spectacular, but come on. Seriously, dude, either do it right or stop showing what an amateur you are.

Faith said nothing. Didn't even open her eyes. She knew he was becoming unnerved with her silence – not a word, a whimper, or a moan since they'd started – and was just trying to get some sound out of her. She could've told him he was wasting his time, but that would've meant speaking to him, which was sorta the whole point, right?

He'd complained a little when Faith hadn't let him be on top; the guys usually did. The women were generally more understanding, though they could be pissy about it sometimes, too. Well, tough shit; Faith was always on top, and that's just the way it was. If they didn't like it, they were free to go. None of them did, of course.

She felt his climax approaching and began moving even faster, her hips practically a blur.

"Holy shit," he whispered as he saw and felt this, a phenomenon only slayer-speed was capable of producing, then let loose a long groan, his body going completely stiff, then bucking slightly beneath her.

Faith got up, pulling his raincoat-covered organ out of herself, and lay down beside him, still silent, barely breathing hard.

Why did they care? He had, after all, so why should he care if she had, too? But still, so many of them asked...

Probably because it was obvious even to morons like this guy that she hadn't. They knew it, but still wanted her to lie to them, to help prop up their sad, self-inflated images of themselves as King Shit, the biggest, baddest fucker for miles around.

It had been ages since Faith had had a decent orgasm. Mostly it was either just ripples on the pond, or nothing altogether. She'd never had this much trouble finding someone who could successfully get her off. Damn, this was turning into a serious drought. What the hell was with these people, anyway?

Usually, she could tell just from the first glimpse whether the person was going to be able to do it for her or not, and in the case of this idiot, she had been right. Why did she bother then, if she knew it was going to be a wasted effort right from the start? Hey, even in the best of times finding ones who could take her that final mile wasn't as easy as you'd think. There were lots of nights when she was just shit outta luck, and it was either settle or go home alone. And Faith hated going home alone. An hour killed with some stranger was an hour she didn't have to spend by herself.

For the first time, a new possibility occurred to her: what if it wasn't them? What if the reason no one could draw more than a climactic little shudder out of her was because there was something wrong with her?

"Well?" he asked again. Again, she ignored him, and he apparently decided it wasn't worth asking a third time.

After another few minutes had passed, she got up and headed for the shower. On the way, she scooped his pants up off the floor and tossed them to him. "Get out," she said simply.

He made no move to put the pants on, instead dropping them onto the spot on the bed Faith had just vacated. "You can't do that," he accused, as if he were the first guy in the world this had ever happened to.

"Sure I can." She stood in front of the bathroom door, crossed her arms under her breasts, and waited patiently for him to get moving. "Get out, or I throw you out. Your choice."

"Shit," he mumbled, finally standing up and looking for his missing boxers. He found them after a moment and began pulling them on, followed by the pants. "Who the hell do you think you are? Fuck you, you damn bitch!" He snatched his shirt up off a nearby chair.

"Yeah, you just did. Weren't you paying attention? But now the fun's over, so you're gonna leave. Bye." Faith continued to stand there, arms crossed, her posture making it clear that she wasn't going to budge until he was out the door.

"Think you're hot shit, don'tcha?" he fumed, taking a step toward her. "Think you can just get a free fuck outta me and then toss me out the door like – "

Whatever he'd been about to say would forever remain a mystery. At the words 'door like – ,' his hand had come up to slap Faith across the face. Faster than his eyes were even capable of registering, he found that arm pinned behind his back, and his face mashed up against the motel room door.

"Okay, that's about enough," she told him, her voice icy-calm. She grabbed him by the hair, jerked him backward, swung the door open, and propelled him through it. He turned around just in time to get hit in the chest and stomach with his own shoes, which she threw out after him.

Now that the trash had been taken out, Faith locked the door and made her way to the shower.

She re-appeared after a time, and began pulling clean clothes out of the drawer. She decided she'd be picking up and moving to a new town today. She didn't have to – she wasn't wanted by the authorities any longer – but she still moved around often. Partly out of habit, partly because she had nothing in her life anchoring her to any particular city or town, and partly because she hated feeling tied down.

Faith zipped up the old pair of jeans she'd just put on, fastened the top button, and picked it up. Probably her asshole boss wondering where the hell she was. Well, might as well give him her two-week notice, seeing as how she was leaving today and all.

"Yeah, Darren, I know I'm late," she began as soon as she'd answered. It had to be him, after all, since no one else had this number. She never stopped to consider that it was still the middle of the night, and she wouldn't be late for another six hours.

"Faith?" a familiar female voice asked. Familiar, yet Faith couldn't quite place it. But definitely not Darren.

"Willow. It's me, Willow. Faith, where are you? A 206 area-code... Isn't that Washington state? Good, then that means you're not far away – " There was no mistaking the emotion in her voice – she sounded nervous and upset. The rawness in it also seemed to indicate she'd been crying.

"Yeah, that's right; I'm just outside Seattle," Faith confirmed, cutting the witch off mid-babble so she could find out what the problem was that was so obviously the source of this phone call. "What is it, Willow? What's wrong?"

Faith stood outside the funeral home, getting more soaked by the second and trying to figure out just why she'd come.

Sure, she'd loved D once upon a time; thought she had, at any rate. But she'd gotten over her a long time ago – if there was anything Faith had experience with, it was people letting her down.

Good question. She didn't owe it to any of these people to make an appearance. Why go in and subject herself to more pain? Why go in and face those old faces and tough questions?

Her mind made up, Faith turned to leave, and collided with someone coming up behind her. "Sorry," she muttered, not looking at him or her, and tried to move past.

Faith's gaze, which had been focused on the sidewalk, began moving up. Boots, black jeans, black t-shirt with an open button-down shirt of deep maroon over it, long black leather duster, the hair... Wait a minute.

"Huh? Oh, right," Spike chuckled, his hand coming up to his now wavy-brown locks. "Long story. Involves a girl. Two or three, actually. Including, I believe, the very one you're here for. You're not actually leaving, are you?" he asked again. "I mean, awful long way to come just to stop at the front door and turn around, isn't it? Plus, having you there will make me not look so bad for not wearin' a bloody suit n' tie," he smirked, and gestured to her clothes. With the exception of not having a button-down shirt of her own, the only difference in their outfits was the length of Spike's coat.

"What makes you think I haven't already been in? Maybe I just spent two hours in there," she challenged.

"Simple, luv." He reached out and gently grasped a few strands of her drenched hair. "Calling hours just started twenty minutes ago, and as wet as you are, I'd say you've been outside for at least that long."

"Hey, you two," a new voice said, and they both looked to see the green-skinned demon walking towards them. Lorne, right? Faith thought that was his name, but wasn't completely sure; she'd only met him once. "You going in, or are you just going to stand around out here and see if you'll melt?"

Faith sighed; she knew she'd have to go in now, now that she'd been spotted. She didn't look forward to seeing everyone again, but one thing she absolutely hated was the thought of these two going in and blabbing about how Faith had run away because she was too chicken to come inside and face them all.

"I know, tough question, right? You just go right ahead and think it over, then; I'm heading in," Lorne told them. "Here, lambchop, I think you need this more than I do." He handed Faith his umbrella and made a quick dash for the door.

"Hey, by the way, what the hell are you doing outside in the middle of the afternoon?" she asked him as they started up the walk. "And weren't you supposed to be a ghost or something? You don't feel all that ghosty to me." She reached out and poked his arm experimentally. Yep, definitely solid.

"Oh yeah, the ghost thing. Yeah, that lasted all of about two months," he explained. "And as for what I'm doing out here, I figured I'd be fine walking from the car to the front door, what with the weather and all." He indicated the cloudy sky, which contained not a hint of sunlight. "But if we stand out here much longer, it'll clear up and you'll be continuing this conversation with the handsomest pile of dust to ever dirty a sidewalk."

"Wouldn't want that," she agreed, getting a flicker of enjoyment out of the look her sarcastic tone generated. He pulled open the front door and motioned for her to go inside.

"Hello, Faith," another well-known voice greeted as she waited for Spike to hang up his coat – she'd decided to keep her own on, just in case she needed to make a quick getaway. She closed Lorne's umbrella, hung it on a hook, and looked up at the newcomer.

He looked older. His hair was completely gray now, and he'd put on a few pounds around the middle. And were his glasses thicker, or was that just her imagination?

"I'm glad you could make it," he told her, and she found that she actually believed he meant it. He seemed about to try to hug her, apparently re-considered, and offered his hand, instead. She shook it.

"Well, I had to come, I guess," she said, hoping Spike wouldn't rat her out for her near-flight.

"Everyone will be pleased to see you, I'm sure – in fact, I know for certain that Willow is looking for you. I think everyone's here now."

Faith had a moment of panic as a new thought struck her, something she hadn't considered before. "Giles, Robin isn't here, is he?"

"Who?" Giles asked, looking puzzled. "Oh, Principal Wood. No, I don't believe I've seen him. As far as I know, no one attempted to track him down. Why?"

Giles regarded her curiously for a few seconds longer, then turned to the vampire. "Spike, could I speak with you for a moment?"

Spike looked at him warily, apparently still not completely trusting the man who'd once plotted with that very same Robin Wood to have him killed, but ultimately gave in. "Yeah, fine, Rupes. Catch up with you later, pet," he told Faith, and the two moved off.

"What, can you imagine what the nibblet would've said if she'd caught me in an outfit like that?" Spike retorted, obviously referring to Giles' expensive Saville Row suit.

Faith glanced down at her own jeans and black t-shirt, and suddenly felt very self-conscious. But she didn't own any dresses or fancy shit, so what was she supposed to do? And it was too late to leave now; she'd have to stick around for at least a few minutes, anyway. Dammit.

The funeral home was bigger than it looked on the outside. A long hallway stretched out in front of her; to her right was the empty room Giles and Spike had just disappeared into, and through the doorway just in front of her on the left came the sound of several people talking quietly. Faith took a deep breath and stepped through.

She was instantly hit with the sensation that anyone who's ever been to a high school or college reunion is well-acquainted with. She looked around at the handful of recognizable faces, the same but now completely different, and felt like she'd turned her back for just a second, and while her attention was momentarily diverted, the world had been fast-forwarded ten years. When did they get so old?

"Faith," a large, bearded man in a dark suit said, stepping forward. Only the patch over his left eye gave his identity away. "I didn't expect you to show."

"Xander?!" She couldn't get over the change in him. Not just the beard – the size! He looked as big as a grizzly bear. Was it possible he'd actually gotten six inches taller, or was that just a trick of the light? "Um, wow," she commented, looking him up and down.

"Yeah, I've been getting that a lot today," he told her through a tight-lipped, humorless smile. "It's good that you came – Willow's been looking for you."

"Why?" This wasn't good – people were actually looking for her? Christ, she just wanted to get in, pay her respects, and get the hell out of here!

"I don't know, but she seemed pretty anxious about it, so don't leave without talking to her. Good to see you again." He nodded to her and walked off, and almost immediately the next old face came up.

"Hey. Look, I was meaning to call you two years ago," she told him before he could even get a word out. "Really. You know, to say thanks and everything."

"It's okay," Gunn told her with an easygoing smile. He looked very comfortable in that suit, which surprised her – she would've thought he'd be as out of place in a setting like this as she was. But then she remembered what she was thanking him for ('Short version is, he's the best lawyer we've got') and realized that he must do the nattily-attired thing on a regular basis now. Angel still had yet to explain that one to her – along with what they were all doing working at that freakshow in the first place.

"No, it's not. You did us these two huge favors, and I should've called you right away. But then other stuff happened, and I just – "

"Faith. It's okay," he repeated, and reached out and gently touched her arm. "It really was no trouble, believe me, and I was happy to do it for you." He looked over her shoulder, apparently saw someone he recognized, then glanced back at her. "Look, I'm sorry to be abrupt, but there's someone I need to talk to. It was good to see you again, and make sure you don't leave before you talk to Willow." And then he was gone.

And just to make her that much more uncomfortable, more people came toward her. It was like they were waiting in line or something. Had she been turned into the fucking First Lady while she wasn't paying attention?

This time it was a man and a woman, both about her own age, or maybe a little younger. He was large and blocky-looking (the terms 'hick' and 'hayseed' came to mind), and seemed very out-of-place in his suit and tie. She was much smaller, with short auburn-ish hair and green eyes of a shade that had all kinds of past associations for Faith – wonderful, terrible, and everything else in between. The slayer tried to place these two, but felt certain she'd never seen either one before in her life.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but that man called you Faith, didn't he?" Whoa, what was with the accent? But even though the face was new, when she replayed the question again in her head Faith thought the voice might be one she'd heard before. Where?

"Oh, we've never met!" the woman told her. "But we talked once before, and I recognize you from the picture." She extended her hand. "I'm Becky. Becky Wilkerson."

It still took Faith a couple of seconds to get the name, but once she did, everything clicked into place. "Oh! Yeah, the slayer from kangaroo country, right?" She shook the offered hand, then the guy's. Becky introduced him as her husband Mark.

The Aussie shook her head. "No, Angel did. He still had the number from when you called for it a couple of years ago. He thought I'd want to know. I did." Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. "I'm still barely believing it about Kait, and now Dawn, too? How could that happen? They were both such good fighters – even Dawn, though she didn't have the powers that we do. But I never once saw her make a wrong move or get herself into a situation that she couldn't handle." Mark put an arm around her and gave her a supporting hug.

"Yeah, you're right," Faith mumbled. "She was great." For some reason, she felt the sudden and powerful urge to get away from this woman, before this conversation went any further.

"So then what happened?" the other slayer asked – almost demanded. "You were with her, right? How could this have happened?"

Her eyes were locked on her own boots as she answered, "I don't know. I wasn't there. Sorry." Gunn's exit then popped into her mind, and she saw her escape route. She didn't know if he'd been being honest or if he'd just been blowing her off, but it would work either way. She raised her eyes, picked out a figure across the room, and tried to paste an expression on her face that she hoped looked something close to Gosh, look who it is! "Hey, um, look, there's someone over there I gotta go talk to. Nice meeting you."

She pushed past them and nearly ran for the nearest doorway, but didn't get away quick enough to miss Becky's final words: "Oh, hey, Willow's looking for you, by the way!"

Heads turned to watch her rapid flight across the room. As more people spotted her and realized who she was, a couple of them attempted to stop her and chat. One of these was a handsome blonde man in a very expensive suit. He was now the liaison between the Watchers Council and Wolfram & Hart, but before that he'd run with Dawn and a young slayer named Kait for a time. Faith never even gave him a look, but probably wouldn't have recognized him, anyway; he'd come a long way since the time she'd stolen his last Hot Pocket. "Hey, Faith – " he greeted, only to have her sweep right by him and into the other room. "Ooo-kay, be that way, then," he muttered, and turned to resume his conversation with the woman beside him.

The first thing she saw was the casket. It was against the far wall, surrounded by a small jungle of flowers. The lid was closed, and a framed picture of D sat on top. Between her and it, probably two dozen people filled the large area, wearing dark suits and dresses, talking in hushed tones.

As she scanned this crowd, her eyes fell almost instantly on the one person who looked exactly as she remembered. He looked up, spotted her, and made his way over. "You made it," he said by way of greeting.

Like Willow, Angel had been looking for her and hoping she'd decide to come, but he still didn't have the faintest idea what he wanted to say. He only knew that he was worried about her.

Two years ago, she and Dawn had been traveling together – and he had a pretty good idea that it had been more than just that – and he'd heard from both of them pretty regularly for over a month. Then, nothing. It was like they'd dropped off the face of the earth. He'd been able to confirm, through the resources of Wolfram & Hart, that they were both still alive and in no serious danger, and decided not to pry any deeper than that. It was their business, and they were entitled to their privacy. Still, he worried.

Then last week Dawn turns up dead in Tennessee, and Faith is nowhere to be found. Not, at least, until Willow calls him three days later and informs him she tracked the slayer down somewhere just outside of Seattle. So what had happened? What had happened between the two of them to separate them by such a distance?

"Umm..." he began, searching for the right words. "So... how have you been?" he finally asked, almost wincing at how lame that sounded.

"Five by five," she answered, and didn't notice the way his jaw tightened at this answer. She suddenly looked to him more like the old Faith, the Faith who'd tried to kill both him and Buffy, than he'd seen in years. He could tell just from her posture, her movements, and her quick and glib way of speaking that she was more emotionally closed off than he could ever remember seeing her. What had caused this? He didn't know for certain, but thought it probably had an awful lot to do with the dead woman on the other side of the room.

"So what happened, anyway?" she asked, and inclined her head to indicate she meant Dawn.

"We don't really know for sure," he admitted. "They found her body a couple of weeks ago, but it took the local coroner a few days to identify it. It had..." He hesitated, not sure if he should tell her this part, but continued anyway. "It had washed up on a riverbank just outside Knoxville. When it was sent back to us here in LA, my science team did their own..." (He stopped himself just in time from saying 'autopsy'), "...examination... and found traces of Merndafin in the bloodstream."

"Merndafin. It's a rare combination of enzymes, usually found in the secretions on the claws of Lemshak demons. She had two deep puncture wounds in her chest, so we think she was fighting a Lemshak, and it... it just beat her," he finished quietly. "I'm sorry, Faith," he added.

"Yeah. Me too," she mumbled. "Uh, look, Angel, I've never been to one of these things before. What are we supposed to do?" she whispered.

He smiled kindly, stepped closer, and lowered his voice even further. "Just go see her for a minute or two. Say a prayer if you'd like, or talk to her, or just think about her. Whatever you're comfortable with."

"Can we get together and talk before you leave town? Just the two of us?" he asked.

She turned her head and looked at him, really seeing him for the first time since the conversation had begun, seeing the concern in his eyes. The worry.

Well, who the hell had asked him to be concerned? Why the fuck should he care? Or for that matter, why should she care that he cared? She hadn't come for a trip down memory lane, or for a friggin' encounter session; she'd come because she felt like she owed something to D. In spite of what the other woman had done to her at the end, Faith felt like she was at least obligated to do this. But that was it! She was going to go stand by that damn coffin for two minutes – exactly two minutes – and then get the hell out of here, and hopefully never see any of these people again.

Rather than answer Angel, she turned and strode across the room. People saw her coming, saw the look in her eyes, and got out of her way.

She stopped beside the casket, folded her hands in front of herself, and stared at the framed picture. It showed the Dawn that Faith remembered from years ago, the brat from Sunnydale. She didn't ask it for explanations; she'd tried that enough two years ago to learn that photos don't talk back. Photos have no answers to offer.

Instead, she took a moment to mourn everything that had been lost: D's normal life, thanks to having a slayer for a sister and a group of friends who spent most of their free time saving the world; the life D and Kait might've had together if the other slayer hadn't been killed years ago; the happiness D and Faith had had and what they might've made together, if only their collective screwed-up pasts hadn't gotten in the way...

When she eventually turned away, not realizing that almost ten minutes had gone by, nearly everyone in the room was stealing cautious glances at her. She turned to leave and discovered a certain redheaded witch standing in her way.

"I've been looking for you," Willow told her with a small smile. She didn't look that different. A little older, a little more mature, and a little more beautiful, but still the same old Red.

But instead of talking, Willow just turned her eyes back to the coffin, as if still unable to believe that the young girl she'd known and loved like a sister of her own was now lying inside.

"Oh. Uh..." Willow hesitated briefly, then decided Faith deserved the truth. "She was... pretty badly burned," she explained. "We think it came from the energy of the Key being released after she died."

"Yeah, I know." Sadness, regret, and embarrassment. "It's her school portrait from the tenth grade. But it's the most recent one we had of her – at least, that wasn't showing her, y'know, like spitting off the Eiffel Tower or something goofy like that."

Faith looked at it once again, then slowly reached into the inside pocket of her jacket. She didn't want to give this up, but she also wanted people to know what this woman had really looked like. Yeah, they'd known Dawn, but none of them had ever met D. And since it was D, not Dawn, inside that box, they shouldn't leave here thinking she was still that whiny little fifteen-year-old from back in the day.

She unfolded the small five-by-seven photo, leaned forward, and tucked it into the larger frame on the casket. There, that was better.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." Willow snapped herself back to the here and now. "Well, um, see, none of us saw Dawn over the last six years. I talked to her on the phone a couple of times, but that was it. I guess I was hoping you could tell us about her, what you know about what happened in that time." Willow thought that sounded kinda lame (and it wasn't even entirely true), but it was the best excuse she'd been able to come up with, and she could hardly tell Faith the real reason she'd been so anxious for her to show up, could she? That would spoil everything.

"I don't know, Willow." Faith shuffled nervously from foot to foot. "I don't really know that much, and it's not really my place to go giving away her secrets, anyway. Plus, I wasn't planning on stayin' long; I've got someplace I kinda need to be." Yeah, like anywhere that isn't here.

"Faith, please – don't leave yet!" Willow pleaded. "You're at least coming to the services tomorrow, right?"

"Uh, I don't know. Maybe." Faith felt a sudden need to get away from the woman before she could talk her into making any definite promises. "Catch up with you later, okay?" she said in a quick, mumbled brush-off, and began heading for the exit, praying she could get there before anyone else stopped her for another of these excruciating little chats.

Alas, it was not to be. Before she'd taken more than five steps, a door off to her right opened, and the room instantly fell silent. Faith looked over and saw a small brunette coming directly towards her, and wondered what this was all about. It was only after giving her a closer look that she realized the woman was Buffy.

It wasn't just the hair – which was now dark-brown and much shorter than Faith ever remembered seeing it – that was different. Her face was drawn, the skin sallow and pulled tightly over the cheekbones, eyes slightly sunken. B had never had carried much extra weight around to begin with; now she looked like a supermodel who'd gone overboard on the Weightwatchers.

Faith knew B should be twenty-nine now, but she looked ten years older than that.

Buffy walked right up to her, said "I need to speak with you" in a glacial tone, turned, and walked back in the direction she'd come from, not even bothering to check to see if Faith was following her or not.

With an entire room full of people watching, Faith knew she could hardly avoid this. Reluctantly, she fell into step behind the other slayer.

Faith closed the door after her, and they found themselves alone in what looked like a large office.

Buffy turned and faced her. "So. How have you been, Faith?" The anger behind this question made it obvious she really couldn't give two shits about the answer.

"Hey, you know me, B," she replied, unconsciously slipping back into the persona of the Faith she'd been eleven years ago. "I get by."

"Yes, I do know you," Buffy agreed. The glittering, fake smile on her face was close to being a snarl. "Very well, in fact. But now I'm thinking I'm not exactly the only member of my family who does. Or should I say, did."

As if by magic, an all-too-familiar piece of jewelry was suddenly dangling from her fingers on a fine silver chain. When it twirled slightly, Faith could see that the back of it had been blackened, and it looked like it might've melted just a little, as well. She remembered Willow saying D had been badly burned.

"They found Dawn wearing this. And I find that very interesting, because inside – " She pried the locket's cover open, " – is a picture of you. A picture that looks very recent. And also – " She held it up and displayed the inscription on the inside, " – what seem to be your and her initials. So, care to explain, Faith?" Her tone was almost ridiculously light and cheerful, but Faith could hear the faint traces of hysteria lying just underneath.

"No, B, I don't care to. That's none of your damn business." She turned to leave.

"Oh, no you don't!" Buffy exclaimed, and grabbed Faith's upper arm, spinning her back around toward her. "You're not leaving until you tell me just what the hell this is all about!" She shook the locket accusingly in the younger slayer's face.

"Or what? You gonna kick my ass right here?" Neither realized – or cared – that their voices were gradually growing louder. "Besides, sounds to me like you've already got it all figured out. If you didn't, you wouldn't be freaking out like this." She turned to leave again, and again Buffy grabbed her and spun her around.

"Of course I figured it out! You think I'm stupid? I know she had a crush on you way back when. So you tracked her down and took advantage of that, didn't you? 'Can't have Buffy, so I'll settle for the next-best thing,' right?"

"Answer me! Admit it, damn you! Go ahead: tell me you were fucking my sister!" she shouted. All pretense at small-talk had vanished in the other room; the two dozen people were now standing utterly silent, listening to this exchange between the two women with morbid fascination.

"Yeah, B, I was. So what?" Faith's own anger was rising now. "Like I said, that's none of your goddamn business. She was a grownup, and it was her choice. You know, maybe if you hadn't spent all those years being such a bitch to her, she wouldn't have walked out on you." She was almost shouting herself now, and took a step forward, forcing Buffy to fall back a pace.

"You never believed in her, B. Never. You were always trying to protect her, 'cause you didn't think she could take care of herself. You made, what, one half-assed attempt at training her? And how long did that last? Until the potentials started showing up and you decided they were a better use for your time than your plain old ordinary sister, right?"

The anger in Buffy's eyes was being replaced by another emotion, but Faith didn't care enough to try to figure out just what it was.

"Well, guess what, professor? One of your students trained her instead, and did ten-times a better job of it than you did with any of those girls back in Sunnydale. I've never seen anyone without any kind of powers who could fight better than she could, guys included.

"In fact," she added, making an exaggerated show of looking Buffy up and down, "with the way you're looking now, she probably could've taken you, too. So if you wanna blame me, and think it's all my fault that you treated her like shit and drove her away, go ahead. Whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep at night. But don't expect me to stand here and listen to you while you keep shoveling your same old holier-than-thou bullshit. I had more than my fill of that act eleven years ago." And with that, Faith turned and stormed from the office, slamming the door behind her.

Buffy stood there for a few seconds, staring at the door, mouth hanging slightly open.

How stupid was she? She'd dreamed for years of getting this chance – to see Faith again, talk to her, patch things up and tell her certain things. She'd finally gotten that chance, and what had she done with it? Yelled at her and driven her away. Again.

"Oh my God," she repeated, and sank to the floor, tears falling from her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

When Faith exited the office, no one even tried to pretend they hadn't been listening in. She stood glaring back at them for a pair of seconds, then began marching forward once more. People in her way hastily cleared a path for her; the look in her eyes let them all know that she was not someone they wanted to be in the way of right then.

She began walking faster and faster, and by the time she'd reached the front door, she was practically running. When she reached the sidewalk outside, she actually was running.

She'd sprinted over four blocks already when she heard the voice behind her. "Faith, wait! Faith!"

With a sigh and a groan, she slowed to a stop. "Angel, what the hell do you think you're doing? These clouds clear up, you're air pollution."

"Make what quick?" She glanced nervously up at the sky; the rain had stopped, but the sun was still hidden behind the overcast.

"This conversation. I need you to promise you won't leave town until you and I get a chance to talk." Almost against her will, Faith found that his calm, concerned, friendly manner was draining her anger away.

"Tell you what: when I get wherever I'm going, I'll give you a call and we can have the longest conversation in recorded history, assuming it's on your dime," she offered with a smirk.

"No, that's not good enough." Angel still wasn't sure this idea of Willow's was all that great, or that it made a ton of sense – or any at all, really – but for some crazy reason he'd agreed to it, and now he needed to see it through. "We need to get together, sit down, and have a good, long talk."

"About a lot of things," he told her, trying to keep his answer as vague as possible. "So how about it? Are you going to agree, or do we stand out here arguing about it until the sun comes back out and I go up in flames? Although, I think these people would actually love that," he decided, looking around. "Probably think it was performance art or something. You know LA."

He asked for her number, and wrote it down on a slip of paper. "I'll call tonight and we'll settle on a time," he promised.

"Hey, Angel," Faith said, picking up the phone after the second ring. She reached one hand over to the remote next to her and flicked the TV off.

Faith sat up in surprise. "Willow? How the hell did you get this number? Or for that matter, how'd you get my number in Seattle?"

"What? Oh, I-I know this spell. It lets me find the current phone number of anyone I want – assuming they have one. I tried it on Dawnie a few times over the years, but it didn't work very often. I guess there must've been a lot of times when she didn't have a phone."

"Yeah," Faith murmured, picturing D and Kait living in some old abandoned building, as she knew they'd done on many occasions. "So, what's up?" The details of Willow's magick stuff held no interest for her.

"I just wanted to apologize for this afternoon," the witch said. "I never expected Buffy to blow up like that. She's been upset, obviously, but I thought she'd actually be glad to see you; that's one of the reasons I hoped you'd come."

Faith barked a short, bitter laugh. "Yeah, well, apparently not. What the hell happened to her, Willow?" She didn't really want to get into a long conversation right then, but she had been wondering about this all day. "She looked like death-warmed-over or something."

"I know," Willow agreed sadly. "It's been... The last few months have been hard on her," she admitted. "She had kind of a serious problem with one of her old students, she just had a long-term relationship end – " Faith felt her stomach tighten in sudden, involuntary jealousy at this, " – and she had been getting more and more worried about Dawn.

"She's had personal problems, she's working too hard, and she's stressing about things she can't control," she summarized. "It was bad before, but then add this new thing to it, and it's just too much. She blamed herself for Dawnie walking out, and now she blames herself for her death, too."

"Funny, 'cause I kinda got the impression she blamed me for that," Faith observed with biting sarcasm.

"She doesn't!" Willow exclaimed quickly. Maybe too quickly. Way to go, Rosenberg! she berated herself at the other end of the line. That's really playing it cool. "You were just... just the most convenient target," she explained. "She's spent the last few days beating herself up; she just needed someone else to yell at for a change, I think."

"If you say so," Faith responded skeptically. "Hey, Willow? You remember a couple of years ago I had Angel track you guys down and get your address and phone number? Did D ever get in touch with you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she did. But I don't know what she said. Buffy got a letter from her a few weeks after Christmas, but she never let me see it."

"Oh. Um, look, I'm waiting for a call from Angel, then I've got some other things to do tonight, so..."

"No, you won't. I'll be there, but you won't see me, so please don't go looking. It was good to talk to you again, Willow. Take care of yourself." She hung up the phone before the Wicca could get another word in. Have a nice life.

About ten minutes later Angel called, and she agreed to meet him the following night. She gave him the address where she was staying, and he promised to have a car pick her up. "You don't need to do that, Angel; I can get there on my own," she told him, but he insisted. After a couple more minutes of small-talk, they said goodbye and hung up.

Faith stood and walked over to the dresser. In the top drawer was a small supply of makeup. She applied it in the once-famous Faith style (heavy and dark), changed out of her loose jeans and into tight leathers, collected her black leather jacket, and went looking for the nearest club.

After a few drinks and a lot of dancing, she found a petite little green-eyed blonde girl, brought her back to her place, fucked her hard, fast, and rough, and then threw her crying ass out into the night.

The next morning she found a spot a couple of blocks from the church where she could stand without being observed. Soon after, people began showing up, dressed again in dark suits and dresses, somber looks on their faces. The hearse arrived, and Faith spotted Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles getting out of the limousine just behind it.

After everyone had moved inside, Faith waited an extra five minutes, sighed, and made her way to the church's entrance.

She took a seat in the last pew, and was relieved to see that no one seemed to notice her. When she sensed the mass was drawing to a close, she got up quietly and made a quick exit.

The graveside service was going on just over a hundred feet away. From her spot concealed in the shade of a grouping of large trees, Faith watched it all. Her gaze was repeatedly drawn away from the casket and toward the gathering of people.

Buffy sat stoically in the front row, sunglasses covering her eyes. Beside her, Willow occasionally cried, and Giles, sitting on the witch's other side, comforted her, either patting her leg or allowing her to lay her head on his shoulder for brief moments.

Nearly everyone Faith had seen yesterday was there, with the exception of the two vampires, Angel and Spike, who were of course unable to attend the late-morning service in the sunny Los Angeles cemetery.

She listened intently and was able to pick up the priest's words, going on about 'beloved sister' this and 'dear friend' that, and she thought again what a crock of shit it all was. These people were burying a girl who hadn't existed for years, instead of the amazing woman that she had actually been. Not a single one of those people had known the D that Faith had.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket for the photo, suddenly needing another look at it, and realized with mounting horror and self-disgust that she didn't have it anymore; she'd left it at the funeral home yesterday. "Shit," she muttered.

Things seemed to be breaking up down there; people were shuffling around and getting out of their seats. Like a puff of smoke, Faith faded back and out of sight before anyone could spot her, and headed for her motel room. She still had quite a few hours to kill before the car picked her up for her get-together with Angel that night.

"I'm just still not so sure this is such a great idea," Angel said for probably the tenth time in the last four days. "I've known her for a lot of years now, Willow, and no offense, but are you sure you're not letting your own view of... life... affect your judgment at all?"

"You've known her for years, Angel, and I know you love her, but honestly, which one of us knows her better now? Which one of us has spent nearly every day of the last thirteen years with her? This is fine. Trust me, I know what I'm doing," she told him, trying to inject more confidence into her voice than she actually felt. Okay, so it was a strong hunch, but all the same, it was still a hunch.

They continued their phone conversation for another few minutes, moving on to talk about other things, before Willow had to excuse herself and clear out for the evening. She wanted more than anything to stay and make sure things went well, but she knew she couldn't. If this was ever going to work, it would have to happen on its own. All she could do was give a gentle push to get things going in the right direction, then stand back and hope it all worked out.

The 'car' that picked Faith up turned out to be a top-of-the-line stretch limo, and she was able to spend the ride over to Angel's place eating canned nuts watching Looney Tunes on its large TV. She hated that stupid, smug roadrunner, and wished they'd let the damn coyote catch him one of these days.

The driver dropped her off in front of a large, modern-looking high-rise apartment building. The doorman had apparently been told to expect her; he buzzed the door and let her right in, without asking who she was or who she was there to see. She took the elevator up to one of the very top floors, found the correct door, and thumbed the buzzer. One of the penthouses; 'bout where you'd expect the guy in charge of Wolfram & Hart to be living.

"Uh, I live here," Buffy said with a puzzled expression. "What do you mean, 'you're here to see Angel?'"

"That son of a bitch!" Faith whispered, it instantly dawning on her what all this had been about. "He set me up. Bastard!" She spun and stalked toward the elevator.

"Faith, wait. Please!" Buffy dashed after her, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her around. When she realized that this was exactly what she'd done during their fight yesterday, she jerked her hand away like she'd touched something hot. Faith turned back toward the elevator, pushed the 'Down' button, and waited for it to arrive.

"Faith, please!" Buffy pleaded again. "I'm so sorry about what I said yesterday; I can't even tell you. I didn't mean any of it, I swear!"

"Yeah, you did, B. But that's fine. Maybe you were even right about some of it." Faith remained facing the closed elevator doors, her back to Buffy, not looking at her as she spoke.

"No, I wasn't. I acted like the world's biggest bitch. You wouldn't have come if you didn't care about Dawn."

There was a 'ding' announcing the elevator's arrival, and the doors slid open. Faith stepped inside.

"Faith, please don't go!" Buffy begged, tears beginning to pour down her cheeks. She reached out and put her hand over one of the doors, preventing it from closing. "There are some things I need to tell you, and if you leave now, I'm never going to see you again!"

Faith's hard exterior softened just a bit, and she said gently, "C'mon, B, just let me leave." She reached out and took Buffy's hand, attempting to move it and let the doors slide shut.

Instead, Buffy grabbed it fiercely and pulled her forward, at the same time sinking to her knees, wrapping her arms tightly around Faith's waist, and sobbing openly. "Don't go, Faith, please don't leave me! I just lost Dawnie, and I can't lose you, too!"

What the hell? Faith wondered. This couldn't be the same woman who'd been screaming at her yesterday afternoon, practically accusing her of using her sister like a ten-dollar ho. "Uh, okay, B, I won't leave. Promise." She hesitantly patted Buffy's shoulder. "Now please, stand up?" she asked.

Shakily, Buffy got to her feet, furiously trying to wipe her tears away. "I'm sorry," she said, embarrassed. "Can we go inside and talk for a little while?" she asked the younger slayer when she'd finally gotten herself back under some kind of control.

Buffy smiled weakly and, still sniffling slightly, led Faith through the front door of the apartment.

The place was huge. Beyond the small foyer they were currently standing in was a living room that looked bigger than B's whole house back in Sunnydale. A flight of stairs ran up the far wall to the second floor. Off to their left, Faith could see what appeared to be the dining room through an open door, and there were a couple of closed doors off to their right that led who-knew-where.

"Well, sort of," Buffy explained, walking past her and into the living room. "It belongs to Angel's firm; he's just letting us use it while we're in town." She sat down on the large leather sofa and motioned for Faith to join her.

"We're not sure. Another month or two, maybe?" She reached over and picked something up off the end-table next to the couch. "Willow tells me this belongs to you." She held up the picture of Dawn that Faith had left the previous afternoon.

Faith nodded, not trusting herself to speak. God, she wanted that picture back! How stupid had she been to have left it?

"She was really beautiful, wasn't she?" Buffy murmured, examining it for the five-hundredth time in the last two days.

"I want you to have this back," Buffy told her, looking up. "But I'd like to borrow it for just one more day, so I can have a copy made, if that's alright?"

"Just go ahead and keep it," Faith replied indifferently, waving it off. "No big deal."

Buffy had always had trouble reading Faith, figuring out what she was thinking. That had led to a lot of the problems between the two of them over the years; maybe they could've avoided a lot of those difficulties if Faith had been a little more open with her emotions, and if Buffy had done a better job at realizing just what the other slayer was actually thinking.

This wasn't the case now, however; Buffy saw right through Faith's facade. She'd spent the last day-and-a-half figuring out that Dawn really had meant a great deal to the younger slayer, more than she could've believed possible. She was filled with a fresh burst of shame over her words of yesterday.

Dawn had obviously been very important to Faith, and this picture was obviously very important to her, as well. Despite the way she'd tried to blow it off and pretend it didn't matter, Buffy didn't miss the quick, desperate looks Faith kept sneaking toward it; she wanted it back, and Buffy was going to make sure she got it.

"No, Faith. This is yours," she repeated, quietly but firmly. "I'd like to have a copy, too, but I'm not taking this one away from you." She held it out.

"Fine," Faith sighed, taking it. "Geez, if you're going to be a pain in the ass about it," she grumbled, but Buffy didn't miss the relieved look that flashed across her features. "Get your copy made, and then give it back to me." She offered it back to Buffy, who accepted it with a smile and a nod.

Buffy took a deep breath. Okay, here goes nothing. "I wanted to tell you some things about Sunnydale... Eleven years ago... You and me."

"Hey, ancient history. Don't worry about it." Again that casual front, which Buffy was now having a little better luck seeing through.

"No, I do worry about it. There are some things you need to know about what happened back then, and you are not leaving until you hear them." Faith's eyes opened a little wider, and a small half-smile formed on her lips at Buffy's strong words and implied threat.

"I think you thought that what you and I had back then didn't mean anything to me. That for me it was just, I don't know, empty sex or something. A convenience. Right?" Faith looked away, and Buffy knew that that was exactly the case.

"But see, that's not true!" she exclaimed, and scooted closer along the couch. She reached out and picked up the other woman's hand. "It meant... God, at times it felt like you were the only good, true thing I had in my life." Her eyes had begun to slowly leak again.

"Then why – " Faith began before she could stop herself, then fell silent, looking away, cheeks flushing.

"Why did I treat you the way I did? Believe me, I've spent ten-plus years trying to figure that out. I guess... I guess what I've come up with is that it was a combination of fear and guilt. I was afraid that if I let people know how I felt about you, and the relationship we had, that they'd... I don't know, hate me, or laugh at me, or something? 'Hey, did you hear that that weird Summers chick is a big lesbo, too?'" The tears were falling faster now.

"We didn't have a 'relationship,' B. We had sex. It was great – you were great – but let's not turn it into more than it was, alright?"

"Please, just let me get this all out first," Buffy requested, and held a hand up between them to stop any more of the other slayer's words. "So I was all paranoid and neurotic about my image – high school, you know? Image was everything, and mine wasn't in the greatest shape by that point, anyway; it wasn't in any kind of condition for a fresh new beating." She shrugged and gave an abashed little smile. "But not long after that Willow started seeing Tara and everyone was great about it, and I felt so stupid for thinking people – especially my friends – wouldn't be able to deal. They loved me – they love me – and they would've handled it fine.

"And then there was the guilt. I still loved Angel, even though I knew we couldn't be together anymore. I felt guilty about moving on to someone new, and a big part of me felt like I should do whatever it took to be with him, and wait for him as long as I had to, even if that was the rest of my life. And I was worried about how badly I'd hurt him if I not only started up with someone else, but then he finds out that the someone else is a girl." Buffy choked out a brief, bitter laugh. "Would he think it was his fault, that he'd gayed me up or something?"

Faith wasn't looking at Buffy; her gaze was fixed firmly on the coffeetable in front of them. A part of her was listening to Buffy's words and jumping up and down, happier than she'd been in two years – it had really mattered to B, after all! But another part of her was refusing to believe any of this, thinking Buffy was making it all up, either to make herself feel better, or make Faith feel better – maybe both. A third part of her was believing but not caring. So what if Buffy had cared about her? Didn't mean she did now. And even if she still did, so what? Faith had gone down this road before, and all it had ever done was hurt her. Believing in people only made it hurt that much more when they ripped your guts out later on.

Together, those two negative portions of her brain combined to stamp down the small voice that was begging her to lean over, throw her arms around Buffy, and try to pick up where she and D had left off two years before.

"And really, I'm not being fair to my friends, because I don't think it was them I was most worried about." Buffy was growing more and more nervous about Faith's reaction – or lack thereof – but she had to get the rest of this out. "I was seventeen, and still kinda... I don't know. Immature? Shallow? Something like that. I didn't want to admit to myself that I could feel that way about another girl; remember, those were still the days before it had become all cool and trendy. I was fine with us screwing each other's brains out practically every night, but it was like, as long as no one else knew about it then it didn't necessarily say anything about me. I wanted to think that what we had didn't mean anything. But now I know that it did; it meant everything.

"I wanted to tell you all this so many times over the years, Faith," she gushed. "But the only times I saw you after that, the timing was just so far from being right, and I know it would've only made things even worse." She squeezed the other's hand tighter. "The timing probably isn't right now, either, but I know that if I don't do it now, I'll never see you again. And I want to, Faith! I want to see you again and again and again!"

"I get it, B," Faith said, standing up. And she did. B wanted another quick bounce. No problem – she could take care of that. She'd been doing it for perfect strangers often enough over the years; she could certainly help B out. She dropped her jacket onto the sofa and pulled her shirt over her head; she wasn't wearing a bra tonight.

Buffy never stopped to worry about Faith's obvious lack of enthusiasm, that she looked about as excited as someone heading to the dentist. Her eyes became huge and glassy as she saw the younger woman's breasts again after all these years, just as magnificently perfect as she remembered them. After one brief moment of total stunned paralysis, she darted forward and caught them in her hands, trailing kisses up from just above the top of Faith's jeans, over her navel, up her chest, to her neck, and finally capturing her lips in a fiery meeting of tongues. She had to get up as she kissed higher, and now found herself standing in front of Faith, who went to work undoing the buttons on Buffy's blouse.

They stumbled and fumbled their way toward and up the stairs, shedding one article of clothing after another along the way. By the time they collapsed on Buffy's gigantic bed, they'd run out of things to take off.

They lay there, side-by-side, eyes and hands roaming over each other. When Buffy tried to climb above Faith, the other slayer gently but firmly prevented her. Buffy frowned for a moment, then forgot about it as her mouth and fingers began to explore familiar-yet-long-forgotten territory.

As she began to move downward, Faith stopped her. "No, B. Let me," she whispered, and slithered down to a spot between Buffy's legs that had once been her most favorite place in the whole entire world.

Faith was as good as Buffy remembered. Honestly, she'd never had anyone better. Not Angel, not Parker, Riley, Spike, or any of the guys in the years since she'd left Sunnydale. None of them had ever brought her to the places that Faith had.

She worked her up slowly, then brought her back down equally as slowly. When she'd finally finished over an hour later, Buffy was a shuddering, quivering, sweat-covered, boneless, and incredibly-satisfied heap of a slayer.

"God, Faith, you're amazing," she told her when she managed to find her voice again. She reached her hand down, took Faith's, and pulled her up to lie next to her. She smiled and stroked the other slayer's cheek, moving on to her jaw, then tracing the shape of her lips.

Faith accepted this compliment with no reaction whatsoever. Yes, she was amazing. She knew that. This was one of the few things she'd ever been good at, and she'd had plenty of practice over the last fifteen years or so. So she'd gotten B off; big fuckin' accomplishment. Just one more on a very long list.

Buffy started to slide down Faith's body again, and this time Faith didn't stop her. B probably felt like she owed her something in return, so she'd oblige and let her feel like they were equal or square or whatever.

Faith, never one for romantic or flowery prose, thought to herself, 'B's goin' down on me,' like she had every time before. But while this thought had always brought a thrill of pride, belonging, and incredible anticipation eleven years ago, now it just made her feel tired and old.

As Faith felt Buffy go to work, she started making the appropriate noises and movements; if she was going to let B do this, might as well let her think she'd gotten the job done, as well.

For someone with very little experience with other women – none, in fact, other than her time with Faith – Buffy was very good. Their first couple of times together, she had been high on enthusiasm and low on skill, but with a little guidance from Faith, who'd done more of this by the time she arrived in Sunnydale at sixteen than her new sexual partner would ever have believed, she improved rapidly. By the time Faith betrayed them and went to work for the Mayor, Buffy was frying her wires on an almost-nightly basis, taking her to heights she'd never reached before or since – other than a brief period two years ago. Part of that came from the depths of her feelings toward the older girl, but most of it was purely Buffy's talent; whether Faith had loved her or hated her, Buffy was still going to have her screaming deliriously by the end of the night.

Now, eleven years later, Buffy hadn't lost even a single jot of that remarkable ability. If she was rusty after such a long layoff since their last night together, it didn't show. The effort she was giving Faith was as good as what she'd managed on her absolute best night in Sunnydale, and even beyond. Back then it had been strictly a physical exercise for her, and she'd always tried to wall her confusing emotions off and not let herself linger on them – she might've learned something about herself that she hadn't been ready for. But on this night, she threw her emotions fully into what she was doing, like gasoline on a fire, hoping that they'd combine with the words she'd already spoken to let the other slayer know how much she truly cared about her, and how sorry she was for all the lost years in between.

So why wasn't Faith building up to a nuclear bomb-like explosion? If B was as good as ever – and she was; better, even – how come Faith wasn't gasping like a landed fish, grunting like a pro tennis player, and writhing like a snake on a hot plate? Okay, so in fact she was, but none of it was real; she was just doing it to avoid hurting B's feelings. She'd been through so much already in the last few days – why let her think she was doing a shitty job at this, too? Faith did feel a climax approaching, but it was a weak one, and still very far-off. This was exactly what she had been dealing with for two years now, but that had been with strangers; she'd expected it to be different with B. Better. More like the old days.

They went on like that for another half-hour, easy, with Buffy coaxing every last trick out of herself that she knew, and Faith faking it like crazy and hoping her terrible acting would go unnoticed, with B's mind concentrating so hard on other things. At last, she was able to grab hold of that elusive release and let go with it, and try her best to make it sound twenty-times more powerful than the pathetic little thing that it actually was.

"Fuckin' unbelievable, B," she muttered, in the best approximation of a breathless voice that she could manage.

Buffy crawled her way back up, dragging her tongue along Faith's body as she went, ultimately ending up at her lips once again. After a long, long kiss and some mutual final groping, Buffy laid down next to Faith, draped an arm across the other slayer's chest, and quickly fell into one of the most contented sleeps she'd had for as long as she could remember.

She woke up some time later to find herself alone in bed. Frowning, she sat up and heard someone moving around downstairs. She ran out into the upstairs hallway, which overlooked the living room, and saw Faith.

She had collected her socks, panties, jeans, and boots from the stairs and the floor of Buffy's bedroom, and put on everything but the boots. As Buffy watched, she searched around, found her shirt, and pulled it over her head.

Faith looked up at her, surprised. The startled look vanished in an instant, replaced by that same casual indifference. "What's it look like? Gettin' outta your way. Last thing you need is me around here screwin' things up for you. But tonight was fun; thanks." She sat down to lace up her boots.

"You're leaving? You're leaving after... after all that? After everything I just told you?" Buffy felt her voice starting to hitch already, and a fresh batch of tears coming on. No, this couldn't be happening. After finally getting the chance to pour her heart out after all these years, after what they had just shared in her bed, Faith was going to walk out on her? Buffy headed for the stairs.

"What did you tell me, B? That way back when you used to have the warm fuzzies for me? Great. But that was then, and we can't ever go back to being those two kids that we were." She finished her left boot and started on the right. She tightened the laces as fast as she could; she needed to get out of here, and fast.

Once upon a time, she'd had these stupid, retarded fantasies about what it might be like to really be with Buffy, to be, like... girlfriends, or something. What would it have been like to do corny things with her, like go to the prom and dance all night with her, even the slow dances? Or shopping (and hanging out) at the mall? Or to some stupid high school football game on a Friday night? Or on a picnic together? Or just walk around in public holding hands?

Well, none of that was going to happen. Stupid lovesick crap for fourteen-year-olds, anyway. B could give her all the fancy made-up explanations she wanted; it was still perfectly obvious how she saw Faith: just a particularly-effective human vibrator. 'Oh Faith, fuck me 'til my eyes cross and I can't even remember my own name, then get the hell out of here.' Yeah, same old B. So, the hell with her.

"Faith, please," Buffy whispered, stepping in front of her. She was still nude, and the silent tears were running in a steady stream down her cheeks, off her jaw, landing on her bare chest, and running down her breasts. Faith observed again how visible B's ribs were, and how painfully skinny she looked.

"C'mon, B, don't make this harder." She stepped around her and headed for the door.

That stopped her. Faith stood frozen in her tracks, unmoving. After maybe half-a-minute, Buffy could tell that she was mumbling something. As she stepped closer, she could make it out; it was "No" over and over again.

"Yes, Faith," she whispered, reaching out to gently touch her arm. When she felt the contact, Faith jerked like she'd been electrocuted, and whirled around to face Buffy.

"No!" she yelled. "No, you don't! That's bullshit!" Her own eyes looked suspiciously wet.

"No, it's not. I've loved you since the first moment I saw you, fighting that vampire outside the Bronze. At first I thought it was just a slayer thing, some weird mystical connection that I couldn't really define, and it took me way too long to realize the truth, but now I finally do." Buffy continued to speak softly and calmly, not wanting to spook the other woman, wanting to make sure she understood what Buffy was saying and that she meant it.

"There's no such thing as love," Faith told her. "It's all a bunch of shit. Something someone made it up to guilt-trip people into doing what they wanted. But that's all it is, is shit; it's not r-real!" She stumbled over the last word, and now the sobs started in earnest.

"Stop saying that, you bitch!" Faith screamed, and punched Buffy in the mouth, dropping her to her knees. "Stop lying to me and trying to trick me into caring about you! You don't care about me! Nobody cares about me! They just make you think they do, and then leave you on... leave you on Christmas morning!" She sank to her own knees, hands covering her face.

"How do you leave someone on Christmas morning, B? How could she? How could she?" Faith was unable to say any more. She fell over onto her side, hands still hiding her face, and cried. Huge, shuddering sobs filled with more pain than Buffy thought she had ever heard.

She shook off the effects of the punch, crawled over, and pulled Faith's head into her lap. She just held her for what seemed like forever, stroking her hair, letting her get it all out.

Eventually, Faith ran out of tears. She didn't resist as Buffy unlaced her boots, took off her jacket and jeans, and carried her back upstairs to bed. They laid down, and Buffy wrapped her tightly in her arms, whispering over and over to her that she loved her, until they both fell into an exhausted sleep.

Willow came in early the next morning, opening the door as quietly as she could. When she saw the clothes strewn all over the place, including ones she knew Buffy would never be caught dead in, she grinned wider than she ever had in her life, and made a quick exit.

It worked! she chanted over and over in her head. It worked! I was right! It worked! Yes!

She fished through her purse, looking for her phone; the first order of business was to call Angel and gloat.

When Buffy woke up, it was morning, and Faith was still there. The other woman had already woken up, and now lay there, staring intently at her.

"Yes," Buffy answered, not having to ask what she was referring to. "With all my heart."

Faith rolled over on her back and looked up at the ceiling. "Mmm," she said, with neither belief nor skepticism.

Buffy leaned over, pushed up the sleeve of Faith's shirt, which Buffy hadn't bothered to take off of her after bringing her back to bed, and planted a light kiss on her shoulder.

"No! I can't remember the last time I treated someone that badly, and you deserve to know why." Buffy sighed and tried to put her thoughts into words.

"The last time I saw Dawn was six years ago, in Australia. It's awful to admit now, but for the longest time after she left, I was glad she was gone. I was so mad at her. Willow told me a few times that she was going to try to call her, and asked me to talk to her, but I wouldn't. I thought, 'She ran out on me; why should I beg her to come back?' I worried about her some, even though I knew she was with Kait and Becky and as long as they stayed together they'd be fine. But what if they didn't? What if they split up and all went their separate ways? But even that wasn't enough to get me to talk to her. 'If she gets in real trouble, she'll come back on her own,' I figured.

"But just in the last few weeks, I started having these feelings like I really needed to see her again. I'd wake up in the mornings and think maybe I'd had dreams about her in the night, nightmares of awful things happening to her, but I never remembered much about them when I woke up. I tried to get Willow to find her for me, but she said she already had, and that somehow locator spells didn't work on her for some reason. By the end, all I wanted was to be able to apologize to her, and kiss her and hug her and tell her how much I loved her, you know?" Buffy asked, her voice starting to catch.

"And it would've been bad enough if it was just her that I was missing, but it wasn't. I missed you, Faith."

Faith gave a brief start, and she looked over at Buffy out of the corner of one eye.

"I missed you, and that just added on to all that pain of missing Dawn, and made it like ten-times worse than if it had only been one of you. I wanted to see you again, and tell you everything I told you last night, and see if we could somehow make it work better than the first time around. I'd finally been able to acknowledge to myself that I loved you, and always had, and admit that there was nothing wrong with that."

Faith rolled back onto her side, facing Buffy. Her eyes were filling up with some emotion, and the older slayer realized after a moment that it was wonder.

"So when we found out last week that Dawnie was dead, and we got her personal things back and I found that locket, I figured out pretty easily that you two had been...

"God, I was so jealous!" she exclaimed softly, but took hold of Faith's hands at the same time to try to let her know that she wasn't mad – at least, not anymore. "You were the two people in the world I most wanted to be with, and it turned out you were with each other. I was jealous of her for being with you, and jealous of you for having her in your life.

"Every day that's gone b-by," she continued, beginning to cry again, "it's sunk in more and more: Dawnie's dead."

Inside Faith's head, that small, innocent voice was getting bigger and tougher, making more and more headway in removing the foot that the hardened, bitter part of her was using to ruthlessly stomp it down. It still had a long way to go, but it had made enough progress to let her bring one hand up and attempt to wipe the tears away from B's cheeks.

"She's dead, and y-y-you got to see her and be w-with her, and know h-her, like I never did. I wanted to see who she grew up to be, Faith." She turned her green, tear-filled eyes to Faith's brown, equally pain-filled ones. "You got to see her and who she'd become, and I never did. I love you, Faith, but I hated you for that! And I hated her – for leaving, and for getting herself killed before we could make things right again.

"She's dead, Faith. She's dead, so I'm not supposed to hate her, am I? Doesn't that mean I'm a terrible person? Why didn't she ever come looking for me? Did she hate me, too? Did she hate me that much?"

Buffy couldn't say any more. She covered her face, drew her knees up to her chest, and cried, finally letting out everything she'd been holding onto for the last week.

This time it was Faith's turn to provide the comfort, and that increasingly-louder voice in her head temporarily grabbed the reins of her body and pulled B into her arms, holding her until she'd gotten it all out.

They eventually got up, showered and performed their other morning grooming rituals, and headed downstairs, where Buffy made breakfast.

When Faith saw the meager portion Buffy had fixed for herself, she said simply, "No way, B," and left for the kitchen. She returned moments later with two bowls of cereal and a carton of milk, which she set down before Buffy. "Eat," she commanded, then disappeared into the kitchen again. She came back after a few minutes carrying a tray, on which she'd piled a large helping of toast, pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs. And a large glass of orange juice, just for good measure.

She took her own seat once again, started eating her own food (which had by now gotten cold), and stared pointedly at B, making it obvious she was prepared to sit there and wait for her to finish every last bit of that food, even if it took her all friggin' day.

"Fine," Buffy said irritably to Faith's unspoken challenge. She'd already finished both bowls of cereal, and now grabbed a knife and fork and started on the pancakes.

While they ate, they talked, and began comparing notes on just what had happened to bring them together last night. It was obvious Angel had had a lot to do with it, but they quickly realized that Willow seemed to have been involved, as well. "I'm going to kill her," Buffy growled, but not without amusement.

They didn't talk much about the past. Buffy desperately wanted to know what had happened between Faith and Dawn, but sensed that the other slayer wasn't ready to talk about it yet. When she was, she would, and Buffy would just have to leave her alone about it until then.

About the only thing along those lines that did come up was brought up by a question from Faith to Buffy.

"B, can I ask you something?" She reached for the milk and poured herself another glass as she watched Buffy shovel scrambled eggs into her mouth.

"Willow told me that... well, that you got a letter from D a couple of years ago. I was just wonderin' if you'd mind telling me what she said." Faith blushed and looked away. "But if you don't want to, that's cool; it's probably private anyway," she added hurriedly.

Buffy put her utensil down and look at the younger woman, realizing again just how much her sister must have meant to her. The anger and jealousy she'd felt for the past week was now replaced by happiness; they'd seemingly had their problems, but they'd obviously made each other very happy, as well, and Buffy was thrilled for both of them that they'd had that time together, however it had ended.

"The envelope I got from her had the picture in it that she'd taken," Buffy told her. "That was it. No letter, no note, no return address. Just that picture."

"Oh." That was disappointing. She had really been hoping D had been able to tell Buffy many of the things she'd told Faith, about how sorry she was and how much she wished it had never happened. "So you don't – "

At that moment the door to the kitchen swung open and Willow walked in. "Faith! Wow! Gosh, um, what are you doing here?" she asked. The surprised look she tried to put on fooled no one.

"Actually, that's an interesting story, Will," Buffy smirked, laying her fork down. "It seems Faith showed up here thinking this was Angel's place."

"Oh! Really? Gee, that's strange! Uh, how come?" she blurted, darting her eyes all around the room, looking everywhere but at the other two women.

"That's a very good question," Buffy agreed. "And we've put our heads together, and we think you might have had just a little something to do with that."

"Willow," Buffy growled, and pointed to an empty chair between her and Faith. Willow sat down with a gulp, stealing cautious glances at the two slayers. "Well?" Buffy prodded.

"What?!" The stunned look on Buffy's face was incredibly amusing to both of the other women, though they covered it well.

Buffy opened and closed her mouth several times, but no sound came out. Finally, she managed, "I don't believe that."

"I do, B," Faith chimed in. "Even your sister knew, and she was, what, like twelve?" She grinned and dropped her fellow slayer a wink.

Even through her shock and outrage – not directed toward Faith or Willow, but toward herself for not being more discreet – Buffy was happy; this was the first time she'd seen Faith smile since she'd been back.

"Things have been so rough lately, Buffy," Willow continued. "First that problem with Lisa, then you breaking up with Jake, now Dawnie... I was worried about you. So when I knew Faith would be coming back for... Well, I just hoped maybe you might, you know, be able to make things a little better for each other. In fact, I kinda thought Faith might be the only one who could help you."

Willow didn't add one crucial little detail, for the simple reason that she didn't remember it. Over the last few weeks, she'd been having dreams about these two, and in these dreams, someone she knew – someone she loved more strongly than even a blood relative – came to her and showed her what these two could be together. She never remembered who this mysterious person was, or much else about the dreams, but their residual effect had been to produce a stronger and stronger feeling within her that she had to get these two back together. And with the tragic news about Dawn, she'd at last had the chance to do it. As she watched them sitting there with one another, it just seemed so right to her that she never even thought to question where this strange compulsion had come from. And by the end of the week, she would have completely forgotten about ever having it.

Buffy sat in silence for a minute, absorbing this. She was mad at Willow for interfering, but she had to admit it had been a good idea – and a very insightful one. Just seeing Faith again, and getting to spend last night with her, was the best thing that had happened to her in the longest time. And now the gratitude and excitement flooding through her at maybe having a second chance with the other slayer was almost enough to offset the pain of losing Dawn. Not quite, but close.

"And so you got Angel to help you," she prompted after she'd processed everything.

"Yes, but he didn't want to!" Willow assured the slayers quickly. "I really had to talk him into it. But finally I convinced him that I was trying to help both of you, and that I thought it would work.

"Actually, I think I kinda freaked him out," the Wicca told Buffy apologetically. "I think he'd sorta guessed about Faith and Dawnie, but he didn't know about you two."

"Oh." Buffy blushed and looked down at her food. "No wonder he was acting so wiggy around me. I just thought it was because of Dawn and everything. Oh," she repeated.

"Well, normally I'd tell you to mind your own damn business," Buffy said, standing up. "But in this case, thank you." She walked behind Willow, the greatest friend anyone could ever hope to have, leaned over, hugged her, and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. "You're the greatest, Will."

As they stood by the sink loading the dirty dishes into the machine, Buffy turned to Faith and asked, "Faith, will you stay here? With me?"

No! her brain shouted at her. You can't stay here! Are you a fucking moron? She'll only hurt you and leave you, just like her bitch of a sister! Run! Run out that door and never look back!

"Faith?" Buffy inquired, growing worried about the scared look clouding the other slayer's face.

Oh, just shut the fuck up! she told the voice, and that small, hopeful part of her got up off the mat and belted it right in the nose, knocking it on its ass. It wasn't gone for good, but it was down and out for the time being, at least. And don't even think about calling D a bitch again.

Buffy went back to Faith's place with her and helped her pack up her stuff, and she moved in with her and Willow that very afternoon. They went out on a patrol together that night, the first time they'd worked together in seven years, and even though they only ran across a couple of pushover vamps, both thought it felt wonderful... and comfortable... and right.

Faith quickly made it her highest-priority mission to help Buffy put back her missing weight. As it turned out, she was a very good cook, something Buffy and Willow never would've guessed at, and she made breakfast and dinner for the three of them every day. They'd usually go to a restaurant for lunch, as well as the occasional dinner.

Within two weeks, thanks to Faith's great cooking and her enormous helpings, Buffy's ribs were nowhere to be seen. Her face filled out, and her eyes no longer had that sunken look. She was looking more like a woman in her mid-to-late-twenties now, as opposed to one tottering on the edge of forty. Afternoons spent outdoors in the LA sun, doing various things with Faith – and sometimes Willow, too – helped take that pale, sallow hue from her skin and put her back on a path to being that perfectly-tanned California blonde that Faith had first met.

Speaking of which, before long Buffy had re-colored her hair. Though Faith hadn't said anything, Buffy could tell she missed the old blonde-haired B. In truth, Buffy had missed it, as well. She preferred herself blonde, just in general, but she really preferred it when she saw herself with Faith. The contrast between the two of them, light on dark, was just something she found incredibly sexy.

Buffy took Faith's picture of Dawn to a photo place and had two eight-by-ten copies made of it – they were even able to digitally edit out the crease in the center where Faith had folded it, producing a perfect image. The first copy was for herself; the second was framed and presented to Faith as a two-week anniversary gift.

For the most part, things were going very well between them. There had only been a couple of problems so far.

The first came about a week after they'd gotten back together. Buffy woke up in the middle of the night to find Faith packing her things. They'd had a near-repeat of that first night's argument – Faith telling Buffy she'd be better off without her, Buffy telling Faith she loved her and needed her, Faith yelling at Buffy that love was just a load of bullshit, just a meaningless word that only got in the way. Buffy ended up having to practically tackle Faith to keep her from leaving, carried her struggling form back to bed, and made love to her until the sun came up. After that, Buffy became a light sleeper, always on the lookout for a possible attempted-bolt by Faith.

The second problem was an ongoing one, and it was one only Faith knew about. Simply put, she was finding it more and more difficult to fake it without Buffy knowing. She hadn't been able to coax much more than a major shiver out of herself, no matter what kinds of wild, incredible things B did to her, and she repeatedly found herself trying to turn molehills into mountains, as it were. She knew that her acting sucked, but she'd never concerned herself with sparing other people's feelings before – if they got her off, great; if not, the hell with them and their precious egos. But she cared about what B thought – both about Faith, and about herself – and Faith badly wanted to return to those teeth-shaking skeleton-liquefiers from the old days. Not because they felt so immensely majestic – which they did – but to avoid B figuring it out on her own, and the hurt feelings that would surely follow.

She was going to have to do something about this soon. She could keep hoping things would magically fix themselves, but how likely was that? It had been almost a month now, with no change. No, she was going to have to tell B the truth. Better to hear it that way than to realize it on her own one of these nights.

The curtains were open and late-morning sunlight streamed through the large windows and onto the bed, where the two slayers were lounging. They'd gotten into the habit of sleeping late, and most mornings didn't get up until after ten (which meant that Willow, who always woke up bright and early, no longer had breakfast with them).

Buffy lay with her head on Faith's chest, her still short but now blonde hair fanned out across the other slayer's skin. One hand was under Faith, wrapped around her back, while the other traced lazy patterns on the brunette's stomach.

"You remember the first night we were... together?" Buffy asked, breaking the silence that had stretched out since they'd said good morning, ages ago.

Buffy grinned. Her face was turned away from Faith, but the younger slayer could feel the muscles in B's cheek, resting against her stomach, pull up, and knew what the expression on her face was. "Remember, you were so anxious that you ripped my shirt and bra practically to shreds, and I had to wear some of your clothes home?"

"Yeah, but you looked damn hot in 'em," she pointed out, and began twirling a lock of Buffy's hair around her finger. "And I didn't rip yours to shreds. In half, maybe, but not to shreds."

"I got home, and then couldn't sleep all night. All I could think about was you. I just wanted to run back to your room and do all of it all over again." Buffy thought for a minute, then laughed softly, with a touch of embarrassment. "I never told you this, but I slept with your shirt on my pillow that night so I could lean over and smell you whenever I wanted. When I saw you again the next night in the Bronze, I felt like I could barely keep myself from tearing your clothes off, every stitch, right there in front of everyone."

Faith smirked. Buffy couldn't see it, but she could hear it in the other slayer's voice. "You didn't make it much longer than that. I came over to your table and picked you up for a patrol, and we got as far as the alley out back before you just had to stop to eat me out right there."

Buffy wasn't put off by the less-than-poetic phrasing. That was just Faith; rough around the edges. Actually, that was one of the many things Buffy loved about her, that she was so different from Buffy herself. It seemed they fit together so well, the differences in the other filling up those missing areas in each one of them. The yin-yang symbol almost seemed to have been invented with Buffy and Faith in mind.

Faith remembered what had happened on that patrol, after they'd finally managed to pull their pants back up and their shirts back down and catch up with Giles. "That was the night Gwendolyn Post showed up," she said softly. "That was where things started going wrong, wasn't it? It happened that early."

"The things she said about you, trying to... I don't know, turn me against you or somethin'. And then when I found out Angel was back... I guess saying I was wicked jealous would be the understatement of the friggin' decade. Jealous and threatened. I'd just got you, and then here comes the love of your life to take you back again."

"I'm sorry," Buffy told her, and placed a tender kiss on the soft skin of Faith's stomach. She played through those events again, seeing them now from Faith's point of view, and couldn't believe she hadn't realized how hurt the girl must've been over the Angel revelations. God, was she thick-headed or what! "I wish we could just go back and do it all over again, and get it all right this time. I can't believe all the time we've lost."

"It's okay," Faith reassured her. "We're here now, right? 'Sides, it hasn't all been bad over the last few years. There were some highlights." She regretted this almost as soon as the words had left her mouth. Nice going, moron – remind her that you were screwing her dead sister.

Buffy didn't respond to this. She turned her head back the other way, toward Faith's feet, and resumed using her finger to draw random shapes around her bellybutton. As the silence stretched out, Faith grew more and more angry with herself. You fucking idiot! she silently raged – if she could've given her own brain a good hard slap across the occipital, she would've done so in a second.

Faith was silent so long that Buffy had begun to believe she wasn't going to answer. She was about to say something else, change the subject, when Faith replied, "Yeah, B. Yeah, I did. I loved her." Buffy sat up and looked at her, and saw the wetness forming in the corners of Faith's eyes.

"Good," Buffy said decisively, and crawled up and kissed a very stunned-looking brunette slayer on the lips. When she pulled away, the look hadn't changed, so Buffy explained. "You think I should be wigged because you and she were... well, you know." She blushed. "Well, yeah, I am, kinda. But even though you haven't told me any of it, I have an idea that the last few years haven't been easy for you, and weren't for her, either. Whatever happened between you, I'm glad you had each other, even if it was just for a little while."

Buffy interrupted her with a finger to her lips, something D had also been fond of doing. "It's okay, Faith. When you're ready." She leaned down again and kissed the younger slayer on the forehead so softly that if Faith's eyes had been closed, she might've believed it had just been her imagination.

"So, whaddaya think?" she asked, sitting back on her heels. "Should we get up, or stay in bed 'til noon?"

"Mmm, that's a tempting plan, but that would get you out of having to eat breakfast, which ain't gonna happen," Faith told her sternly. "You're eating breakfast and lunch, and that's final."

"Fine... Mom," Buffy grumbled. Faith shoved her playfully, and B flopped over onto her back, making them both laugh out loud.

After over a month away from it, it was time for Buffy to get back to training her current group of slayers. To help take some of the burden off of her after Dawn's death, Angel, Spike, Andrew, and Emily, Buffy's most advanced student, had taken over the lessons. Also helping out were an older, very quiet and reserved slayer named Megan, and her odd-but-incredibly-sweet boyfriend. Buffy had explained that though these last two weren't on the full-time W&H payroll, they lived in LA and helped Angel out often.

All six fill-in teachers worked with them on combat skills, both hand-to-hand and weapons-training, and Angel, Spike, and Andrew also imparted as much of their extensive knowledge of vamps, demons, magick, and all other things mystical as they could.

But the girls were Buffy's responsibility, and she knew she'd have to get back to them at some point.

It wasn't just the lingering grief over Dawn, or wanting to spend time with her old-now-new-again lover that was seriously eating into Buffy's eagerness to get back to her students. She was still upset over what had happened a few months ago, and nervous that it could happen again.

One of her former trainees, Lisa, had returned for vengeance over what she felt had been a betrayal by the older slayer years before. At the time, Buffy had been as patient with her as she could be and put up with her as long as possible, but she had finally become such a disruptive influence that Buffy had been forced to send her home. Apparently she had never gotten over this, and had shown up one night looking for payback. Buffy, her then-boyfriend Jake, Willow, and the other young slayers had done everything possible to take her alive, but she'd seemed determined to go down fighting, and so she had.

Buffy naturally hadn't told Faith about any of this – it was too eerily similar to what had happened to the other slayer back in Sunnydale eleven years ago, and Buffy didn't want to bring those memories up if she didn't have to.

She was worried about herself, and her ability to still be a good teacher. What if another one of her students turned to the darkness? Andrew would no doubt have a Darth Vader/Obi-Wan reference for the situation, which was only one of the reasons she hadn't mentioned it to him.

"This is Emily," Buffy continued the introductions, pointing to each girl in turn, "Monique, Selina, Darby, and Rachel. Girls, this is Faith." All five appeared to be between sixteen and eighteen years old; the effect of Willow's spell seven years ago had been to not only activate every potential slayer of the appropriate age back then, but to cause every future potential to be called when they reached the age of fifteen or sixteen.

"You mean you've never heard of me?" Faith asked incredulously. She glanced over at Buffy. "I'm not even sure whether I should be relieved or offended."

"Well, you and I aren't as unique as we used to be," Buffy replied with just a hint of a smirk. "Not as much reason to tell all the old Faith stories now."

The building they were in was Wolfram & Hart's training center, where all the firm's teams of field operatives honed their skills. One room of the giant structure had a sparring area set up, complete with mats and pads and other necessities. Another chamber was devoted to working with weapons, and included an entire wall lined with seemingly every type of sword, axe, knife, and bow ever invented, along with many other types of miscellaneous implements designed for maiming and killing; a 'firing range' adjoined this room, to work on throwing and shooting the weapons. Taking up the rest of the space in this end of the building were offices, conference rooms, and mens' and womens' locker rooms.

The majority of the structure, however, had been turned into a nearly-perfect replica of a three-block cross section of Los Angeles city streets and buildings – the bad part of town, of course, since that's where the vamps tended to hang out. This part of the building had been sealed up tight, with no possible way in or out other than the main door the operatives (and in this case, slayers) and their instructors used. At various concealed locations in this training ground were trapdoors where captured vampires and demons could be released into what had long ago been dubbed 'the maze.'

Buffy and Faith were seeing it for the first time, and were blown away. It made for the perfect controlled training environment; Buffy couldn't have asked for anything better. They'd only been planning on staying in LA for a month or two after the funeral, and that time was almost up. At that moment, she decided she'd need to talk to Willow and Faith about the possibility of extending their stay for awhile. This place was too good to give up that quickly.

"Okay, everyone ready?" Emily asked the others. Nods and murmurs of assent. "Alright, then let's show these two what we've got!" she encouraged. Faith was immediately glad she wasn't one of this girl's students; that perky enthusiasm probably would've driven her completely bugshit within two days.

Emily opened the large, heavy steel door that was embedded in the thick concrete wall that sealed off 'the maze,' and motioned for the other four student slayers to enter. When all five of them were through, she slammed the door closed behind her, leaving the two older slayers standing outside. Buffy hit the button that engaged the high-tech locking system.

"Come on," Angel said, stepping out from where he'd been lurking in the background. "I'll show you to the control room."

He led them to an alcove at the far end of the long concrete wall. A set of steep, narrow stairs led upward, and they began to climb, ending up in a booth thirty feet above ground level. It was made of concrete, as well, and had a large, thick plexiglass window that looked out over the re-created LA street scene below them. A console below this window was filled with a bank of monitors, which were hooked up to hidden cameras scattered all throughout the area, showing locations that weren't visible from where they stood.

They watched the five slayers below them slowly fan out, heading off in different directions, down different streets and alleys. They were alert, looking around in every direction, stakes held firmly in hand.

"Alright, here we go," Angel said, and reached toward a row of ten red buttons. He pushed four of them at random, and then explained that each button opened a trapdoor down there and released a captive vampire. They had underground access to each of these doors, and his staff could hustle a new vamp into each holding cage while the exercise was going on, theoretically extending things indefinitely, unleashing vampire after vampire after vampire.

They looked down through the window and saw Darby, still in sight, preparing to take on the vamp that was now rushing toward her. On the monitors, Emily, Monique, and Rachel were also under attack.

Each slayer made quick work of her opponent, and just like that it was on to round two. Angel pushed seven buttons this time, and within moments all five slayers were engaged, including Selina and Emily, who were fighting two at once. Again they handled things with no problems.

"Yeah," Buffy agreed quietly, not wanting to admit to the other woman that these five – maybe with the exception of Emily – owed their skill more to Angel, Spike, and Andrew than they did to her.

Angel had to wait a few moments for more vampires to be loaded into the holding cages, but when they were all full once again, a series of lights went on to signal this, and he pushed all ten buttons, letting out the maximum number of opponents.

Monique found herself under attack by two, and dusted both quickly. Selina and Darby only faced one each, and both had an easy time of it. Emily and Rachel each got three.

Emily – who Faith had to admit was pretty damn good, even if she probably was intensely annoying to be around – polished off hers easily. Rachel was having a little harder time of it.

She dusted the first one quickly enough, but the remaining two had boxed her into a corner, and were smart enough to keep a distance between them, making it impossible for her to engage one without turning her back on the other.

"Yeah, she is," Angel agreed, equally concerned. Buffy continued to watch in silence.

Rachel was growing more and more upset and nervous as the seconds passed. Apparently deciding she wanted to get herself out of this position as quickly as possible, she broke and ran at one of the vamps. An exchange of blows followed, and an instant later she had him pinned to the ground. She raised her stake, then plunged it into his heart. He disintegrated.

While she'd been busy with her opponent, however, the other vampire – a female – had gotten behind her. Almost before the dust from the first vamp had settled, she had her arms around Rachel's chest, pulling her up and dragging her backwards. She grinned, bared her fangs, and buried them deep in the slayer's neck.

"Dammit!" Angel yelled, and dashed for the stairs. Faith and Buffy were right behind. They would never make it in time. Not even close.

Luckily for the young slayer, Emily had finished with hers, and gotten to the scene just as the vamp bit down into Rachel. She grabbed the creature and pulled it away; Rachel reached a hand up to her bloody neck, seemingly in a daze, and sank to the ground.

Emily blocked a punch, ducked a jumping spin-kick, and got her stake past the vamp's guard, causing her to poof.

"What the hell was that, Rach?" she screamed, hauling the younger girl to her feet. "You just came within about ten seconds of being cold meat on a slab! What were you thinking? You never – never – " Emily shook the wounded slayer for added emphasis, " – turn your back on an opponent like that! Understand?"

Angel, Buffy, and Faith arrived in time to hear the end of this chewing-out. Now that Emily had had her say, they all looked to Buffy, waiting for her to tear into the girl, as she'd done to so many others over the years. Every slayer who'd ever trained with her had come to dread the 'Wrath of Buffy' that always resulted from stupid or careless mistakes.

"Rachel, just... don't let it happen again," she said, so softly that Darby, who was standing the farthest away from her, couldn't even make out what she had said. Buffy turned and walked toward the exit, not looking back.

They were all surprised, even Angel and Faith, who had the least experience with Buffy, the Drill Instructor From Hell. Emily, who had the most such experience, stood there with her mouth literally hanging open. What the hell had just happened?

Buffy and Faith were crossing the empty parking lot outside the complex after yet another training session. This was the fifth straight night since Buffy – with Faith assisting – had gone back to work, and things were going downhill fast.

Yes, Rachel had made a mistake on that first night and nearly gotten herself killed, but generally speaking the girls had been an impressive group. Well-trained, well-motivated, confident and capable.

Within just five days, however, that well-drilled group of slayers had degenerated into a collection of girls that at times looked like they barely knew which end of a stake was the dangerous one. Selina was now sporting a broken arm, Darby had nearly been bitten a couple of nights ago, and even Emily looked less confident and effective.

They hadn't said anything, even to each other, but both Angel and Faith knew what the problem was: Buffy. Whereas before the girls had been taking their cue from Angel and Spike, adopting their positive take-no-shit-and-kick-some-ass attitudes, now that Buffy was back they'd started to take after her, and she was setting a less-than-great example. She seemed distracted, disinterested, and nervous.

They were about halfway from the building to the car when Faith stopped and turned to the older slayer. "What the hell are you doing here, B?"

"Here; this," Faith explained, gesturing back toward the training center. "Why are you still doing this shit? Training them?"

"Because they need me," Buffy replied, with a mix of confusion and 'shouldn't that be obvious?'

"Yeah. Right." Faith looked away and laughed without a trace of humor. "Yeah, you're doing a bang-up job in there."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Buffy asked, stepping toward Faith with her anger appearing instantly, as though an interior switch had been flicked.

"It means that you couldn't give a single, solitary shit about this crap. Anyone can see it. You'd rather be just about anywhere else, doing just about anything else, than training these girls. And since you apparently haven't noticed yet, they're picking up on that. You keep this up, I guarantee you you're going to get one of them killed within a week."

"How dare you?" Buffy challenged, stepping even closer. "You don't know a thing about how I handle my business. I've trained dozens of slayers over the last seven years, and I haven't had one die yet because of something I've done during training, okay?" But then she remembered Lisa, and supposed that that wasn't completely true. Her cheeks flushed and she suddenly couldn't meet Faith's eyes.

"Oh, really?" the other slayer mocked, sounding uncomfortably similar to the Faith who'd once worked for Mayor Wilkins. "You don't look too sure about that, B."

"Fuck you – F!" Buffy spat, and turned and marched off toward the car. She got in, slammed the door, and drove away, leaving Faith standing there alone in the now-deserted lot.

She'd spent the last two nights staying in Angel's guestroom. He'd been concerned when she had shown up on his doorstep, but hadn't asked questions, which she appreciated; she wasn't in the mood for explanations.

But she'd known she would have to go back eventually, so here she was. She was willing to apologize and try to put it all behind them, but she had no idea what B would be thinking. Would she feel the same way, or would she just throw Faith out on her ass and tell her to stay the hell away from her?

As Faith opened the front door of the apartment, she had her answer: six suitcases sat in a row at the spot where the foyer became the living room.

Ha! Look at that, you stupid bitch! the small, cynical voice in her head shouted triumphantly. She's tossing you out! Just another round of 'Thanks for the fucking, Faith, now get the hell out.' You still love her, don't you? You stupid, trusting loser. Haven't you figured out yet what happens when you start to count on people? They hurt you, then laugh at you behind your back. You thought maybe you were actually going to have that fairytale ending with B that you always wanted? What a joke! What makes you think you deserve something like that? What makes you think you deserve anything good, ever?

Faith started toward the luggage, wanting nothing more than to get her stuff and get out of here as fast as possible. She felt tears approaching, and wanted to be as far away from this place as she could get before they started falling.

No! she told it. I'm not going to cry. Not here, anyway. So just shut up! And, surprisingly enough, it did.

At least B had put all her stuff in these suitcases. She could've just dumped it all in a huge pile in the middle of the floor. Or out in front of the apartment door, for that matter.

Faith was a little surprised to see that there were six suitcases; she hadn't thought she'd acquired anywhere near that much stuff in the last few weeks.

"Faith." Buffy's voice, coming from behind her. Faith turned around and saw her stepping out of the downstairs bathroom. She was wearing a simple sky-blue summer dress and a sexy, knowing smile. Faith was instantly confused.

"Don't worry, B; I'll be outta here in two seconds," she told her, picking up three of the bags.

"Well, I hope so," B purred, walking toward her seductively. "Our flight boards in an hour."

"Mmm-hmm," B confirmed, stepping close to her, wrapping her arms around the taller slayer and burying her face in the right side of Faith's neck. "Glad you made it in time. I just called Angel to tell him to send you over here, but he said you were already on your way."

"I don't get it. You're not throwing me out?" Faith cautiously set the bags back down.

"What do you think?" Buffy asked, moving over to nuzzle the other side of Faith's neck.

"Mostly, I'm thinking I missed something important here, 'cause this is making, like, zero sense." Without even realizing she was doing it, Faith's hands came up and gently clasped Buffy's back, pulling her further forward, bringing their bodies more tightly together.

"You were right. What you said the other night? You were right about it," Buffy admitted quietly. "And you know what I finally realized? I don't have to do it anymore. When I started, there was just me, so who else was going to? But now... Giles is the head of the new Watchers Council, and they have hundreds of watchers all around the world working with new slayers. And there's all the ones I've trained over the years, and some of them are teaching now, too, traveling around just like I've been doing and collecting a half-dozen at a time. The job is in good hands.

"So guess what?" she asked perkily, pulling back to look Faith in the eye. "You're looking at a retired slayer – well, retired from teaching, anyway," she amended. "I've found exactly what I want to spend all my time on, instead." She leaned up and kissed Faith on the lips. "Can you guess what that is?"

"Are you sure? I don't want you giving all that up just for me. I'm not worth it."

"Yes, you are, Faith," Buffy told her firmly. "But that's not the whole reason, or even most of the reason. I'm just tired of it," she sighed, leaning her head against Faith's chest; Faith brought her chin down and rested it against the top of B's head. "I've been doing this almost non-stop for over seven years now, and I'm tired of it. I've lost my sister, I lost the woman I love and nearly didn't get her back again, I've nearly driven Willow away two or three times...

"I don't know if I'll never go back to it, because I did enjoy it at times. But I need a break from it. A long break. So does Willow; she deserves one. She and I have been fighting evil together for over thirteen years, and we both could use some serious time away from it. She deserves the chance to have a normal life – for awhile, at least. She should have the chance to find a woman as wonderful as the one I've got." She hugged Faith tighter.

Ha-HA! Kiss my ass, you little bitch-punk! she screamed, and took her foot off that annoying voice in her head long enough to kick it in the teeth, then went right back to stomping on it. Let's see you laugh at me now!

Faith counted backward in her head. "Our seven-week-and-... three-day anniversary? Since when do they celebrate that?"

"No, Faith." She kissed the spot on Faith's chest just below the hollow at the base of her neck, then leaned up again and kissed her on the lips once more. "Our twelve-year anniversary. November sixteenth, 1998 – the night we first slept together."

"I don't remember a whole lotta sleepin' that night, B," Faith teased reflexively, but she realized Buffy was right. Wow, twelve years. Didn't seem that long. But at the same time, it seemed even longer; it was a lifetime ago. Several, in fact.

"Well, maybe not. But whatever you want to call it, that's one of the things we're celebrating with this trip. Speaking of: we'd better get going." She pulled out of Faith's grasp. "We'll miss our plane. Don't worry; I already packed everything you'll need."

"You'll see," Buffy replied mischievously, picking up the other three, and on the subject of their destination, she would say no more.

They walked across the immense lobby and up to the main desk, looking around and gawking at their amazing surroundings the whole way. The architecture was all early-Spanish influence, with windows looking out onto the Pacific Ocean and a small waterfall against one wall that gave into a little brook cutting across the entire room. It bestowed a relaxed, leisurely atmosphere upon the place that even the many tourists hurrying to and fro couldn't spoil. As Buffy checked them in, Faith turned around and noticed once again the band playing in the lobby's center. They'd spotted them on the way in, and she thought they added nicely to the ambience of the scene.

They were in the middle of a soft, pretty instrumental with a vaguely Latin flavor to it. As she listened closer, Faith realized it was an acoustic variation of 'Hotel California.'

"'You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave,'" she muttered. "Story of my life."

"We're all set." Buffy held up the room keycard. A bellhop stood nearby, ready to take their bags up.

One of the many perks for having a good friend who just happened to run a massive law firm was that they were always able to go top-shelf in whatever it was they did. In this case, their connections had earned them the most luxurious suite in the entire hotel. It wasn't quite as big as the penthouse Buffy, Faith, and Willow shared back in LA, but it was huge nonetheless. Skylights graced nearly every room, including an enormous one in the bedroom, positioned directly over the equally-enormous bed.

Buffy immediately tried to pull Faith onto it, tugging at the other woman's top, but Faith demurred. She still needed to have that talk with B about her small 'problem,' and she wasn't going to start the trip with it. She wanted to get out and enjoy this a little first.

"C'mon, B, we've got all the time in the world for that. But we just got here, and it's already after one; let's get to the beach before the sun goes down."

Buffy frowned, a little confused. Was Faith still mad at her? It hadn't seemed like it, but now she wasn't sure. Why wouldn't she want to make love?

"Okay," Buffy replied in a slightly-puzzled tone. They began digging through their bags, looking for the things they'd need for an afternoon at the beach.

They held hands as they walked down toward the water, conscious of the stares they were getting. Faith had experienced this before, with D, but for Buffy it was something new altogether. But instead of being embarrassed about it, or self-conscious, she felt a surge of pride – this was her woman, and she wanted everyone to know it! She tightened her grip on Faith's hand and allowed her smile to grow as wide as it wanted.

It wasn't just the fact that they were two women holding hands that was the source of all the stares, because this wasn't a completely uncommon sight on Playa del Amor; it was the fact that they were the two most stunning women on the entire beach – and there was some steep competition for that honor – and they were holding hands. Every guy – and some of the girls – they passed found their heads filled with visions of these two naked, sweaty, and doing very naughty things with one another.

An added source of all the stares might've been the bikinis they had on, which were more wishful thinking than actual clothing. Even with the towels they had wrapped around their waists, they were quite the picture.

They found a not-too-crowded spot, laid out their towels, sat down, unpacked their stuff, and stretched out to enjoy the sun and watch the waves. When they took turns slowly rubbing suntan lotion on each other's backs, there wasn't a guy within a hundred yards who wasn't watching with rapt attention.

After a couple of hours had passed, they went down and did a little swimming, then came back and stretched out once again, letting the sun dry them. Buffy had forgotten all about her concerns that Faith might still be mad at her.

Eventually the sun was falling into the horizon, and it was time to go. They packed up, re-tied the towels around their waists, clasped hands, and headed back toward the hotel. Along the way they got more stares, as well as quite a few smiles and nods. They smiled back, slightly embarrassed at all the attention, and pulled each other closer – they wanted to make sure everyone knew that they were together (there were some thick-headed morons out there, after all), and each of them wanted to let all the others know to stay the hell away from her woman!

They went back up to their suite, showered and changed, then came down for an exquisite dinner in the hotel's five-star restaurant. Once they'd finished dessert, they asked around about the best nearby club, and were directed to what they were promised was the best one in Cabo.

Faith was having fun, but at the same time she was reminded uncomfortably of that night in Boston. She wasn't worried that she and B were going to end the night on the run from the authorities, but she found herself missing D more than she had in a long, long time. She remembered the stir the two of them had caused that night, particularly among the male patrons, and smiled, a little sadly. D had been so full of life that night – how could she be dead?

She and B hadn't caused quite that kind of scene here, but they'd certainly attracted quite an audience. Couples danced nearby, and the women were throwing angry looks at their male partners, who were much more intent on watching the two slayers than paying attention to who they were dancing with.

Faith was naturally put in mind of the only other time she and B had gone out dancing, that night in the Bronze just before she'd mistakenly killed Allan Finch. That had been hot, but this was so far beyond it that mere words couldn't truly do justice to the spectacle. The two of them pressed up against one another, backed away, pressed together again, backed away. Hands roamed everywhere: lips, cheeks, necks, shoulders, breasts, sides, backs, stomachs, asses, hips. Every few minutes they'd duck their heads forward and meet in an almost-savage kiss, and all other action on the dance floor would come to a virtual stop until they'd pulled apart again.

There wasn't a person in the place, even the jealous women, who didn't admit to themselves that these two were an amazing, beautiful sight together. Most everyone sensed – some consciously, most unconsciously – that these two were just meant to be together, now and always.

It had passed one in the morning before Buffy finally managed to drag Faith out of there and back to the hotel.

They were in the midst of an incredibly-passionate kiss in the elevator when the doors slid open and an elderly couple stepped inside. The slayers blushed until they turned purple, mumbled apologies, and waited until the pair had exited a couple of floors higher up. The doors had barely closed behind them before the kiss resumed.

Buffy practically knocked their door down as the two of them stumbled through it; she was topless even before it had entirely closed behind them. Faith grabbed her around the waist, picked her up and carried her toward the bedroom; Buffy squealed in delight and brought her legs up, wrapping them around the other slayer's ass. Faith's mouth attacked Buffy's breasts as she carried her along, then continued the assault after dropping her on the bed.

They somehow got the rest of their clothes off, though neither could've said exactly who was responsible for taking off what.

Through the fog of lust that had settled over her mind, fuzzing out a lot of her higher brain functions, Faith began to remember that there was something she had been meaning to do. What was it? It had seemed important, hadn't it?

"Umm... B? I don't... There's something – " she mumbled around Buffy's thumb, which was currently lodged in Faith's mouth. B pulled it out after a second, replacing it with her index and middle fingers.

"It's okay, Faith," Buffy replied as she nipped at one of Faith's earlobes, not thinking all that clearly herself right then, not really registering that the other woman was trying to tell her something.

Oh, the hell with it, Faith decided. I can take care of her, at least, then we can talk.

Again Faith went slowly, bringing her up gradually, stretching it out as long as she could, then bringing her back to earth like the world's slowest, greatest, sexiest parachute.

"Mmm," Buffy agreed. "So do I. And I guess that makes it my turn, huh?" She rolled onto her side and grinned at Faith, one hand coming up to softly knead one of the brunette's breasts, occasionally flicking the hardened nipple and generating a shudder each time.

"Uh, B...?" Faith started, then stopped herself. Something, some voice inside her, was telling her not to have this conversation now. That she should wait just a little longer. Faith didn't know why, but she decided she trusted this voice and this advice.

"Yes, Faith?" Buffy bent forward and kissed the skin of the younger slayer's side, several inches below her armpit.

Buffy looked at her quizzically for a few seconds, but then this look rapidly changed to one of raw hunger and desire. She sat up and moved to position herself above Faith, forgetting momentarily that the other slayer never let her do this. Buffy had never asked why; it was just something Faith had had a thing about since they'd gotten back together.

But as she crawled into this position now, Faith didn't stop her. She nearly did, but then that voice in her head told her again to let it go, let B do this. Again, she trusted this voice, even though she wasn't quite sure why.

B slowly put her index and middle fingers in the other slayer's mouth once again, swirled them around, then trailed them downwards. Faith gasped/moaned when B's moist digits reached their destination, and B whimpered when she heard this, leaning down to capture Faith's mouth once more.

As B started up a rhythm, Faith felt her arousal growing, and with it, her own sense of amazement. B had just begun, and already Faith was feeling hotter than she'd been in... two years.

She looked up at B's face slowly rocking mere inches above her own. Her blonde hair hung around her face in a sweaty-but-incredibly-sexy curtain, the moonlight pouring through the skylight turning it into a silver-gold that Faith thought was the most beautiful color she'd ever seen.

B's emerald eyes bored into her chocolate ones, and for that one magical, perfect moment in time Faith was able to look deeper into B's soul than she had ever believed possible; she suddenly understood B like never before. She saw all her hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares. She saw her pride in her successes and her guilt over her failures – both in her slayer career and in her regular, everyday life. She saw the love she had for her friends, for her mother and her sister, and the incredible love she had for her fellow slayer and lover.

As the speed of Buffy's ministrations increased to an almost frantic pace, Faith felt something begin in the pit of her stomach, a sensation that was at once totally familiar but completely foreign. She'd had it before, too many times to count, but nothing this powerful. This was going to be even bigger than what B had produced back in the olden days; she just knew it. In the four seconds she had left before it hit, she did the only thing she could thing of: grabbed fistfuls of bedsheet in both hands and held on for dear life.

"Oh! Oh, holy shit, B, I'm... I'm..." Whatever she had been about to say was lost in the moan/scream that followed. It went on and on, containing all her love for B, and pouring out everything that had built up over the last two years. When she finally fell back on the bed, feeling like a horde of stampeding angels had just torn through her body, she didn't think she had ever been that totally and completely spent in her whole fucking life.

Buffy just stared at her in shock. Was that me? I did that? Wow. I mean, she's been intense before, but... wow. "Faith, that was..." She trailed off, unable to think of an adjective that could possibly capture what she had just seen and felt from her lover. She laid down next to her, put her hand on her stomach, and rested her head against Faith's oh-so-soft breast.

A few minutes passed, and the younger slayer slowly began to get strength and feeling back into her limbs. Suddenly, her eyes snapped wide open, and she jumped out of bed, pulling away from Buffy like she had some sort of horrible infectious disease. She stumbled and crawled into the corner, pulled her knees up to her chin, and buried her face in them, not looking at the woman who now sat on the bed watching her, totally dumfounded.

"Faith?" Buffy asked softly, cautiously. "Faith, what is it? What's wrong? Wasn't that... I mean, it seemed like it was... Did I do s-something?" Her voice started to crack, and silent tears formed at the corners of her eyes. She got up and slowly made her way over to the frightened-looking woman huddled in the corner. "Faith? What happened?" She gently touched the brunette's knee; Faith jerked away from the contact.

"I... I..." She wasn't crying, but she looked incredibly upset, almost panic-stricken.

"Faith?" Buffy wasn't sobbing, either, but tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"I came, B!" she exclaimed, peering up at Buffy with a haunted, scared look in her eyes. "I fucking came! I mean, I really did!" She buried her face in her knees again.

"But I haven't," Faith mumbled from behind her closed legs. "Not really; not anymore. Not like that. Not since... not since..."

"Since Dawn," Buffy finished in a whisper. She'd been crouching in front of Faith; now, her legs gave out on her and she sat down heavily on the floor.

"So that means, all those times... all those times with me... you weren't... you didn't...?" Buffy's hands came up to her face, and now the sobs did begin.

They sat that way for a time, Faith huddled in a silent lump, Buffy crying as she realized that she'd been disappointing her lover all this time.

They might've continued to sit that way until the sun came up. If they had, they likely never would've been able to put things back together again. They each would've silently packed their things, maybe mumbled an embarrassed goodbye or apology, gone off their separate ways, and been unhappy for the rest of their lives.

That didn't happen. Fortunately – for both of them – Buffy took a few seconds to think things over, and had what could only be described as an epiphany.

"Faith!" she cried, her sobs tapering off. She started wiping her tears away with both hands, gave up, and used them to clasp Faith's hands, instead. Faith jerked again and tried to pull away, but Buffy held her tight. "Faith, look at me!"

At first the other slayer refused, looking everywhere in the room but, then eventually gave in and locked gazes with her.

Faith shook her head. "Not really," she sniffled. "Just pathetic little waves that would barely rock a rowboat. But nothing really... y'know... good. Nothing like that."

"Faith, don't you realize what this means? It means that whatever sort of... of mental block or whatever... that you had, you just got past it. I got you past it," she almost whispered, marveling at this.

"No, B, that's not what it means," Faith corrected. Her own cheeks were wet now, as well. "It means I'm over her. It means... It means I'm... I'm forgetting h-h-her!" She had thought she'd wanted nothing more than to get over this problem; now that she had, it hit her that this meant getting over D, as well. She hadn't even made the connection between the two things until just then.

"No chance!" Buffy told her forcefully. "You'll never forget her! Ever! And I don't want to take her place. But what it does mean is that you can remember what you had with her, but also move on and build something new... You know, with me, maybe."

Faith stared at her with such hope in her eyes, such mute need, such an obvious wanting to believe, that it broke Buffy's heart. She grabbed the brunette and pulled her into a hug so tight that it might've broken a couple of ribs on a normal human. "I love you, Faith," she told her over and over again.

Faith sat in stunned disbelief that she'd actually said this. And when she realized that B wasn't getting up, wasn't running to pack her stuff, wasn't rushing off to leave her – that she actually hugged Faith even tighter – she began to cry again, this time in relief. "I love you, B," she repeated.

They sat there, rocking and crying and hugging and telling each other they loved one another until the sun came up.

The two of them went back to bed, and Buffy proved – repeatedly – that Faith really had gotten over her mental block, and the floodgates truly had been thrown wide open... so to speak. At long last they took a break around noon, and ordered breakfast-slash-lunch.

As they ate, Faith discovered the courage she needed to tell B about the past. First her own, from Boston to Sunnydale and then back again, then D's, from Australia to Boston. It was only when she started telling the story of the two of them, beginning in Boston and ending just over three months later in Denver, that her voice began to crack.

She gave B the message Dawn had asked her to deliver, her apology for what had happened between the two sisters six years ago. She'd promised D once upon a time in a Houston motel room that she'd find Buffy and tell her this if anything ever happened to her. Faith apologized for not being able to deliver it sooner, but she just hadn't been able to find the words to talk about any of it until now. Buffy refused to accept the apology, saying she understood completely and that Faith had nothing to be sorry for.

When Faith had finished telling of that awful Christmas morning, she cried again, and B cried with her. "I'm so sorry, Faith. I'm so sorry," B repeated over and over.

By the time they'd finished telling their stories – Buffy shared many of her own from the recent past – the sun had gone down, and the two women lay back on the bed and made love until it rose once again the next morning.

They slept in all day long that next afternoon. It was the best, most peaceful sleep either could ever remember getting.

In the afternoons they went to the beach for swimming and sunbathing; they also went scuba-diving, para-sailing, windsurfing, and whale-watching; they spent a hilarious afternoon trying to play golf, and decided that the miniature variety was much more their speed. Faith even talked Buffy into going skydiving, something she'd always, always wanted to try. At night, they became an incredibly-popular fixture at the local clubs; in the two weeks they never once had to pay for a drink themselves. And somehow, in the middle of all that, they squeezed in nearly as much private time with one another as most honeymooners.

They stood at the front desk; Buffy was checking them out and taking care of their bill, which would be sent to Wolfram & Hart. Faith looked toward the center of the lobby and saw the hotel band was once more set up on their little dais. Just like on the day the slayers had first arrived, they were in the middle of that soft instrumental version of 'Hotel California,' played with a vaguely Mexican air to it.

Her whole life, Faith had been defined by the people who'd hurt her growing up. Her junkie mother, who'd seemed to barely notice Faith existed most of the time. Her father, who liked to get drunk and beat her, until he disappeared shortly after her ninth birthday. The string of men Faith's mother brought home, who she'd offer her daughter to in return for some smack as soon as she'd realized how beautiful Faith was becoming, and that she now had the perfect way to score a fix whenever she needed without having to spend a dime.

Then she'd become the Slayer – well, a slayer, as it turned out – and she had thought that she could finally put all that behind her. She wasn't just mommy's little whore any longer; she was someone now, someone important. She was one of the good guys! She had left Boston, and hoped she'd left all those horrible memories there, as well.

But as it turned out, outrunning your past wasn't that simple; just because you said it was all behind you didn't make it so. Like the song said, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

After a long stretch of rough times, however, she had begun to think she might be able to do just that. She'd found a greater happiness with D than she'd ever had in her life, and thought she had been very close to finally being rid of those old demons once and for all. She knew by then that the memories would always be there, but maybe she could find a way to break that hold they'd always had on her, always weighing her down, causing her to believe people existed solely to cause her pain.

Instead, the exact opposite had happened. D had left, and Faith became one-hundred percent certain that she could never trust anyone ever again. The entire human race was just six billion assholes who spent all day every day walking around and thinking up new ways to hurt her. 'Excuse me, ma'am, I'd like a room, please. For how long? Permanently. This chick's checkin' into this here Hotel of Pain and Distrust, and she's planning on staying.'

Buffy finished taking care of everything at the desk, thanked the clerk, and turned around. She took Faith's hand and they walked toward the exit.

Faith turned to look into B's smiling face, filled with such love, and realized something – she had her own epiphany, you might say. She suddenly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'd left all those old memories, weighted down with their sets of heavy chains, upstairs in their room. They weren't going to drag her down again, not for the rest of her life. She could accept them, and make her peace with them, and move past them once and for all. She squeezed B's hand and smiled back at her.

When Faith had first come back to LA nine weeks ago, the hard, bitter, cynical voice in her head had been the dominant part of her personality. She had a hopeful, innocent, trusting voice – the one that had come to the forefront during her time with D – but it was weak and small and being ruthlessly suppressed.

Her time with B had changed that. That first night, when B had told her she loved her, had gone a long way toward turning the tables. The trusting voice became bigger and tougher, and slowly it began to shove the cynical voice toward the background. It got even bigger, and now it was the one doing the stomping. The weak, cynical voice whined that she was being foolish, that B was just going to hurt her like everyone else did, but it sounded more pitiful and hollow with each passing day.

As they walked past the band, Faith stopped and told them, "You're wrong, you know. You can leave – if you've got someone this amazing to help you break out." She kissed B on the cheek and resumed walking toward the front door, enjoying the confused looks on the faces of the band, and B herself.

They stepped through the front doors and out into the warm Mexican sunshine. As far as B knew, they were just leaving the luxury resort here in Cabo San Lucas.

But Faith knew better. She knew that she had just left her own personal Motel Hell behind, as well, and it was hereby closed for business, for now and forever.

"Oh my God," Buffy breathed as soon as they opened the door of their LA apartment.

Willow had left a couple of days before to visit Giles in England; she'd be gone until after New Year's. But before she'd left, she – with help from Lorne, Andrew, and a reluctant Spike – had decorated the entire place, floor to ceiling. It was almost impossible to find a square-inch that didn't have some type of Christmas decoration: lights, garlands, fake snow, four-foot plastic snowmen... There was a tree over in the far corner that had to be at least twelve-feet tall, with several presents already under it. And someone had even managed to hang a large plastic Santa, sleigh, and nine reindeer – including Rudolph – from the living room's ceiling, two stories up.

"How did they...?" Buffy started, dropping the luggage in her hands and slowly walking deeper into the apartment. Realizing Faith wasn't beside her, she turned and saw the look of fear on the other woman's face. Thank God for the talk they'd had two weeks earlier; Buffy understood perfectly what was wrong.

"Faith!" She dashed back to the door and took her brunette slayer's hands in her own. "I know what you're thinking. But it's not going to happen again. I promise. You hear me?" She captured Faith's eyes with her own. "I promise! Do you believe me?"

The fear slowly faded from Faith's face, replaced with love for her blonde slayer. "Yeah, B, I believe you. I trust you."

Buffy beamed, and placed a kiss on the tip of Faith's nose. She pulled her inside, closed the door, and kissed her again, this time on the lips. Their mouths opened almost immediately, and the kiss progressed from tender and sweet to heated and passionate.

"How long's it been?" Buffy asked, already panting softly. Her hands came up to cup Faith's breasts.

"I don't know," Faith replied, gasping a little herself. "Eight hours, maybe?" Her hands dipped down to B's ass, grabbing it and pulling B's pelvis tighter against her own, and she started to grind slowly up and down against her.

The bedroom was just way too far away, and besides, the hardwood floor of the foyer wasn't that hard...

They had over three weeks until Christmas, and they spent most of that time shopping. Unlike two years ago with D, there was no three-gift-limit this year. They were running out of room for all of them under the tree – and this was a big tree.

Buffy was still shocked by what her sister had done to Faith, and was extra-determined to make sure that this Christmas went perfectly. She knew she'd gone a little crazy on the presents, but hey, Faith deserved this.

Finally, it was Christmas Eve. Buffy had been tempted to take them out for an elegant night on the town – an expensive dinner, followed by an evening of dancing. She'd wanted to exorcise those bad memories and replace them with good ones when morning came and Faith saw she was still there, that she wasn't going to leave. But Buffy wasn't sure whether this would work like she planned or backfire horribly, and decided it wasn't worth the risk. Instead they stayed in and ate a casual Christmas Eve dinner cooked by Faith, the master chef.

"You think Santa will bring me any presents tonight?" She grinned to show she was kidding... mostly.

"I don't know. Have you been a good girl this year?" Buffy inquired with a teasing smile.

"I don't know; you tell me." Her fingers started toying with one of B's nipples, which grew hard almost instantly.

"Yeah, pretty good, I think," Buffy managed in a slightly-breathless voice. "Faith?"

"I know." She looked at the clock on the nightstand; 12:12 am. "By the way, Merry Christmas."

"Hmm?" Faith murmured, rolling onto her stomach and trying to ignore the finger softly poking her in the ribs. "G'w'ay," she mumbled into the pillow.

"Christmas?!" Faith was instantly awake, sitting up and looking at B with a huge – and slightly goofy – grin on her face.

"I think I heard Santa a couple of hours ago. Wanna go see if he brought us anything?"

"Let's go, B," Faith agreed, holding out her hand. Buffy took it, and they ran for the stairs and the living room, stopping only long enough to grab camisoles and sweatpants, which they'd put on when they got down there.

Santa really had come; the pile of presents was even bigger than when they'd gone to sleep. Of course, both women knew that in this case Santa wore all-black, used hair-gel, and had fangs, but it was the thought that counted, right?

Buffy had had the idea a couple of weeks ago to set aside a few of the presents she bought Faith, address them as 'From Santa,' and give them to Angel. On Christmas Eve, he'd sneak in during the night and drop them off. Buffy had asked Angel to go to Faith and propose she do this, also, and pretend it was his idea. Faith had loved it, and had eagerly gone along. As a result, each slayer now had nearly ten new presents from 'Santa Claus.'

Torn wrapping paper, bows and ribbons, and opened boxes were everywhere. A small mountain of clothes, jewelry, weapons – they were slayers, after all – and other assorted items had gradually grown up beside the tree over the course of the morning, and Buffy and Faith were currently in the middle of a traditional Christmas breakfast of cookie dough, milk, and chocolate bars. Only a single present remained unopened, for Faith from Buffy, who had insisted she save it for last. Faith sensed how nervous and excited the other was about it, and she was dying to find out what was inside.

"Okay, last one," Buffy said when they'd finished off the last of the food. She pointed to the small box on the table in front of Faith, then held her breath and waited.

Faith disposed of the last of the paper, opened the small cardboard box, and took out a dark-purple jewelry box. Buffy held her breath.

When Faith hesitated and looked up at her with an unreadable expression in her eyes, Buffy felt like her heart was literally in her throat. She was more nervous than she'd ever been in her life – by far.

Buffy had spent the last two weeks trying to think of what she wanted to say at this moment, but couldn't come up with anything great. She'd finally given up on working anything out ahead of time, and just decided to say whatever came to her at the time. But now the time was here, and she was drawing a complete and utter blank! Feeling like the world's most foolish idiot – foolish mute idiot – Buffy took the ring from its holder and slipped it onto the fourth finger of Faith's left hand, then simply looked up at her hopefully and smiled.

"It's... It's..." She drew a blank on describing it, and instead turned her eyes from it to the woman in front of her and asked, "What's it for? I mean, what does it mean?"

Now something came to Buffy; a couple of things, in fact. The first was that Faith's response seemed eerily familiar, like this was the beginning of a scene that had already been played out somewhere once before. The second was what her answer was supposed to be.

"You know what it means," Buffy told her. She raised the hand to her lips and gently kissed the back of it.

"But... But I don't have one for you," Faith said in a suddenly-horrified voice. "You need one, too, so I'm gonna have to – "

"Faith!" Buffy took the slayer's right hand, as well, and held them both as she stared directly into her eyes. "You don't have to give me anything. Just wear that, and be mine, and let it tell the whole world that you're mine, and that'll be enough. That'll be more than enough." She didn't know where the words had come from, but they felt right. They felt like Summers words, somehow. And when they talked about it later on, she would learn that Faith had had the same feeling, as if she had been speaking words that weren't originally her own.

The dark-haired slayer felt herself standing on the edge of an emotional precipice, with B on the other side and a ten-thousand-foot drop separating them. She'd come so far out from under the awful shadows of her past, but this was the final hurdle, that last big leap necessary to become the truly strong woman – inside and out – that she'd always been capable of becoming. But it was a hell of a big leap. What if she took it, and then things didn't work out between them? That could happen; she knew she could be a total bitch sometimes, and –

"Faith?" Buffy asked, beginning to look worried. "Is it... too much? Do you..." She swallowed hard, and extra moisture started to build in her eyes, "...not... want to?"

It'll never last! a tiny voice promised from deep inside her. You'll never make her happy!

Oh, just shut the fuck up, Faith shot back at it. It did, and she never heard from it again.

Inside her head, the Faith standing on the cliff's edge looked across at B, took a deep breath, and jumped.

Anxiety turned to relief on Buffy's face, and relief quickly gave way to happiness. "Really?"

Buffy's smile got big enough to split her face clean in two, and when it ran out of room to expand, erupted in a joyous laugh. She pulled Faith down on top of her and kissed her, rejoicing in the knowledge that there would now be an infinite number of kisses to follow it. They were going to spend the rest of their lives together.

They sat on the couch a long time later, holding hands and staring deeply into each other's eyes. They hadn't spoken since Faith's acceptance.

"Definitely. I tell ya, I imagined my life turning out a lot of ways, but I never saw myself sitting on this couch here with you, wearing something like this." She looked down at her left hand for the four-zillionth time that afternoon.

Faith cocked one eyebrow and gave Buffy a 'Don't-even-give-me-that-shit' look. "Any that didn't have me in jail or dead by now, those were the good ones. But this?" She looked down at her ring again; four-zillion-and-one. "This is like... so too good to be true. I keep waiting for the guards to come by and wake me up, 'cause this is all just some delusion I'm having after being cracked on the skull too hard and thrown in solitary for the weekend."

"You mean, the beautiful, sexy, strong, brave, caring, thoughtful, and all-around adorable kind of people? Maybe not. But I wouldn't know, because you're the only person I've ever known like that."

Faith blushed and smiled shyly. After looking away toward one of the windows for a moment, she returned her eyes to her lover's face. "That's not totally true. You're all of those things, too."

"Umm, I guess Angel or Willow? You have the number in England where Red's staying, don't you?"

"Uh-huh," Buffy confirmed. "Okay, let's start there. Oh, and make sure we remember to wish her Happy belated-Chanukah."

They called Willow (and Giles), then Angel, then Xander, then everyone else they could think of. They laughed, and cried, and basked in the love of their extended family. Now, after all these years of standing on the outside and looking in, Faith was finally part of that family, as well.

After they'd run out of people to tell, Buffy grabbed her slayer and dragged her back upstairs. They made love until neither one could move any longer, then fell into a thoroughly-exhausted and blissful sleep, and didn't wake up again for over eighteen hours.

If the first day of January was a time to look forward to the future, then the last day of December was a time to say goodbye to the past. And on the final day of this both awful and wonderful year, two women walked hand-in-hand through the grounds of a Los Angeles cemetery, prepared to do just that.

They'd been here before – more than once – but something was different about it this time. And it was more than just the new grave marker; there was an odd feeling in the air, which both felt but neither could name.

It was the first time they'd visited since the old stone had been replaced. The original had read: DAWN ELISABETH SUMMERS, 1986-2010. Beloved of BUFFY, JOYCE, KAIT, WILLOW, XANDER, TARA, SPIKE, and RUPERT. All of which was fine, except for one thing; there had been something about her that Buffy and Willow had had no way of knowing when they ordered it, something that had happened after she left them in Australia, years ago. Dawn had told Faith about it one night, and when Faith passed it on to Buffy, the elder sister had teared up with pride and happiness, and wasted no time in having a replacement made.

DAWN COVINGTON SUMMERS, 1986-2010. And there was one more change that came as a total surprise to the younger slayer. Beloved of KAIT, BUFFY, JOYCE, WILLOW, XANDER, TARA, SPIKE, RUPERT, and FAITH.

"True. But if I was going for total accuracy, then yeah, I did. It looks better like that, anyway. Like it's finished, I think. Like maybe now she's finally at peace."

They stood in silence for a little while, gazing down at the small plot and thinking about past mistakes, lost opportunities, and second chances. Eventually Faith withdrew her left hand from her pocket and held her ring up for display.

"Check it, D: I think I really got my happy ending, after all," she said to the name chiseled on the stone. Buffy looked up and smiled at her. "Amazing, huh?"

After a few more minutes spent in quiet reflection, they turned to leave. As they walked back toward the car, Faith had a question.

"I do." Her left hand still held Faith's right, and she brought it to her mouth and kissed the back of it. "Absolutely."

At almost the same moment, both women were at last able to identify that odd feeling that they had been experiencing since they arrived: hope. No – it was more than that; it was hope... and optimism. The reason they hadn't known what they were at first was because these were feelings that neither had ever had before. But now they had both, thanks to their trust in a brighter future together.

Just over a hundred feet from the gravesite, deeper in towards the center of the cemetery, a small hill rose, topped by a little stand of trees. On a day over three months before, an angry, hurting, and emotionally brittle woman had stood there, watching the service below and feeling like the outsider that she still was and assumed always would be.

Now, as the two slayers walked hand-in-hand toward the burial ground's wrought-iron gates, another dark-haired young woman stood in this spot. She appeared ten years younger than the slayer who'd hidden here on that September morning, with long, straight hair of dark chestnut and piercing blue eyes, in contrast to the slayer's brown ones. And there was one other thing about this girl:

She was translucent, shimmering faintly each time the gentle LA breeze blew by. Whether the slayers would have seen her had they turned and looked, I know not. But they never did.

"I'm so happy for you, Faith," she whispered toward their dwindling forms. "For both of you. This is the way it was supposed to be, I think."

A new figure stepped out of the trees. Unlike the girl, he was solid flesh-and-bone, and very much corporeal. His skin was the color of mahogany, and his collection of dreadlocks flowed down over his shoulders and onto the back of his long black leather coat, which had clearly seen a lot of hard living over the years. "They got one thing right, those two: things do happen for a reason."

"Yeah?" she asked, a little dreamily, then the words sunk in a little, and a thought struck her. "Wait – is that what this was all about?" She wanted to turn and glare incredulously at him, but was unwilling to take her eyes off the two slayers until they were gone from sight. They had been two of the most important people in her life, and she wasn't willing to give up even a nanosecond of this opportunity to see them one last time. "Everything that happened in the last few years – was all of it designed just to get the two of them together again?"

"Why? I mean, I'm so far from complaining about it that I'm in another hemisphere, but why would they go to so much trouble just for two humans? Two out of six billion?"

"Because they're not just any two ordinary humans, and you know it – maybe better than anyone else. They're special. Important," he told her. "We've reached the latter days. Evil times are on the wind, blowing nigher every day. There's gonna be fire, and bloodshed, and screaming, and death. That can't be prevented, but those two have the ability to end it before too much is lost, before it's too late for this sorry world. But not alone. Only with the strength they provide one another will they have enough to overcome. And now, I think they will."

A second young woman, also translucent, appeared behind the first, and slid her arms around her mate's stomach. She was tall, pretty in a plain-faced way, with long, straight, dark-blonde hair tied back in a loose ponytail.

"Kay? They'll make it, right?" the brunette asked, as if she trusted her answer more than his.

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by Barnabas

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