My Mind's Eye by Lilyme

Rating: R
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series, characters, plots and dialogues belong to Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt and Mutant Enemy ("grrr argh"), The WB and Twentieth Century Fox. "Every time" belongs to Britney. Neither author nor site make any profit of this.
Distribution: The Mystic Muse: http://mysticmuse.net
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Feedback: Yes, please.
Spoilers: BtVS Season 3, 4 and 5, Angel Season 1 and 2.
Author's Notes: Finally, after I had written this thing in German in late November 2007…I have finally translated it into English. I can only say…translating from your mother tongue into another language still sucks…:P Thanks to my great betas – Wil-Lehane – and K.
Pairing: Buffy/Faith

Summary: Take the events from the episode "The replacement", add Riley's comment "But she doesn't love me", use a little bit of fantasy (or the fantasy of a certain character), stir…and see what happens.

She was lying on something. Something warm and soft. A bed. At least, that's what she thought it was. What else would be warm and soft?

It was dark around her, but this didn't bother her much. In any case, she was way too busy letting the other sensations wash over her.

Because she felt how gentle, yet very determined hands glide over her body, exploring it. The hands seemed to know exactly what they were doing, almost as if they had done this many times before already.

"Liking that, B, huh?" she heard a well-known voice whisper and couldn't help but smirk.

"This too?" The voice seemed to come from another corner of the room and she noticed a more timid hand on the calf of her other leg. The voice sounded a little lower and huskier, though it seemed to be the same one that she had heard seconds before.

Buffy smiled and nodded. For now she didn't wonder about the different voices; most likely her brain simply wasn't all there at the moment.

Tender fingers began to tickle the soles of her feet and Buffy squeaked surprised as she tried to get her feet out of the brunette's reach. This one chuckled and held on to her legs, though ending the tickle attack at the same time. Instead her hands glide slowly up Buffy's calves and thighs.

The blonde noticed how the mattress gave in and Faith – apparently – crawled onto the bed just a little more. And indeed – two seconds later, she felt two hands on her stomach, edging dangerously close to her…

But then she frowned. Since when did Faith have three hands? Since two hands were resting on her tummy and another one was still positioned on her calf, this question seemed to be absolutely qualified. Something wasn't right here…

She thought about the statistical (un)likeliness of having one and a half to two exemplars of the type dark-slayer-biased-for-giving-people-nicknames-and-especially-with-the-affinity-to-call-her-'B'. When that didn't really help, she decided to look…or rather touch into it. People don't have hands for no reason, right?

But when she tried to move her arms, to put her plan into action, she noticed that her hands were tied. Literally. Her wrists were tied to the head of the bed; with the help of what she didn't know, but it felt cold, was most likely metal. She decided to check up and wondered at the same time, why her eyes had been closed throughout the entire time. She couldn't remember closing them in the first place; neither could she remember the beginning of this bondage fun.

Very soon she had to realize that she couldn't open her eyes. Well, actually she could open her eyes, but still she wasn't able to see a thing. It was simply dark around her.

Naturally she panicked, thrashed around on the bed and therefore made her bed mate(s) let go of her. An upset moan escaped her lips, when she, despite using all her strength, did not find herself able to wrest herself free from the bed. What had happened to her slayer strength?

"Shhh, B…hey, hey…Buffy!" she heard the higher of the two voices call out and eased up relieved, when seconds later someone took the blindfold off her eyes that had obscured her sight. She couldn't remember Faith putting the blindfold on her in the first place. What the hell was happening here?

This thought repeated itself in her head…over and over again…as she gained certainty that her senses hadn't played tricks on her. There really were two Faiths…but how was this possible?

"Sorry…We thought, you'd like this," the other one agreed in a higher, but equally worried tone.

Buffy wanted to say something to them, but no sound came out of her mouth. And thus she only smiled, a sign that she was okay. Her mind probably had to process first that there were two of them.

Not only concerning the voice(s), the two Faiths weren't really as alike as two peas in a pod…

One Faith nodded relieved. She seemed younger than the other one, but not much – maybe one or two years. However, her getup was probably supposed to make her appear older. She was wearing a tight black wife beater and equally tight leather pants, her eyes wore dark make-up, her lips were dark red. The hair was wavy, with a silky shine.

The face of the presumably older Faith – for Buffy, the lower voice was an indication for the being older – showed a more pensive expression. She was much paler than the other one and didn't wear any make-up. Her hair was a little more wavy, a little strawy, dull. She wore blue cloth slacks, a matching blue jacket and a white shirt. The jacket displayed a patch with the print "43100" on it. Buffy thought to recognize this getup.

"Gotta say," this Faith began her thought, "it's weird seeing you wearing the cuffs for a change." The bitter undertone of her voice didn't match the expression on her face. She hardly seemed to have moved her lips.

Buffy looked up to the head of the bed and took in the handcuffs. It wasn't the colored, plush-y ones that she had almost expected to see there. No, she saw the kind of handcuffs the police usually used.

She moved the cuffs a little, and it sounded like the rattling of metal on prison bars.

The blonde remembered what the one Faith had just said and looked at the wrists of the girl clad in blue cloth. They were swollen, marked with little blue bruises and red scrapes. She noticed how this Faith had followed her look closely and now looked at her fearfully, yet defensively. But before Buffy could say something…

"Don't listen to this comedian," the younger Faith winked at her, with a side-swipe at the older Faith. "She's just not used to this. Usually she gets to wear the handcuffs and we do naughty things to her." This means she had really heard the brunette say this a few moments ago.

"I told you, Faithie, giving is also fun," the younger one started to grin, and the other Faith followed seconds after.

Buffy raised her eyebrows. Usually Faith got to wear the…? Uh, the one Faith got to wear the handcuffs, and she and the other one would…Would Faith really do…stuff…with herself? In the non-masturbating sense? Or was this still masturbating? Didn't matter. But would Faith…you know…? No…

"Today, we'll let B play the filling of the sandwich, okay?" the girl added, and soon this comment was followed by a discussion about, what kind of filling Buffy represented. Salami and cheese? Chicken? Ham? Peanut butter and jelly?

And at some point Buffy started wondering, what she had gotten roped…cuffed into. Somehow it all seemed a little too silly to be true.

When the brunettes had finally agreed on something – apparently honey seemed to come closest to Buffy – the younger Faith asked, "So, shall we continue?" and moved her hand up and down Buffy's side.

Buffy had hardly expected this question anymore. Silly conversations could be fun to witness…but there was actually something the two Faiths were much better at. She nodded vigorously, could hardly wait for the action she hoped would now really begin.

The younger Faith went back to her agenda and assaulted the shirt that still separated her from Buffy's 'goodies'. Why she was still wearing the little obstacle, Buffy wondered – not unreasonably, shouldn't somebody have stripped her of it before they cuffed her? All she could hope for now was that Faith wouldn't rip the thing off her body in her excitement. But for now this one was happy enough with sliding her hands under the shirt to explore the blonde's body this way.

Faith numero two…unexpectedly came closer, lay down next to her, snuggled up to her. Her left hand caressed Buffy's cheek gently, while she simply looked at the blonde.

Meanwhile the other Faith had made some progress, had pulled the shirt up a bit and was now fumbling with the buttons of Buffy's pants. One after the after had to surrender the merciless fingers.

Dammit, why did the face of the other Faith have to wiggle its way into her line of sight right now? Because this one – right now – decided on wanting to kiss her. Buffy gave in; because what else was she supposed to do? Especially since this act wasn't that unpleasant either.

But before it came to the execution of the kiss, Buffy heard a strange humming sound. Faith's face blurred in front of her eyes; suddenly she couldn't feel her…their hands on herself anymore either.

Buffy awoke with a start and groaned disappointedly, when she noticed that all this had been nothing more than a dream. She had just gotten rid of this stupid blindfold, and now this?!

Slowly her eyes adjusted to the new surroundings. Unfamiliar surroundings…? She wondered, since when she had a ceiling fan…and why she was lying on the floor…

She looked around. And suddenly it made sense; she knew where she was. In Anya and Xander's new apartment, in the living room, to be exact.

At least two dozen packing crates stood around the room; some of them weren't unpacked yet. They all had fallen asleep from the exhaustion. They should have known that they wouldn't manage to do all this – the moving – in just one day. Xander's comic book collection alone had needed the attention of at least two people.

Buffy noticed that Riley was snuggled up to her back and was snoring peacefully. That probably explained the soft feeling and the humming sound from her dream. The handcuffs, however…Buffy couldn't find a logical explanation for those; at least, no explanation that was in any way connected to her current resting place.

Through the partly open door she could see into the bedroom and noticed that Xander and Anya were testing out their new bed – in a sleeping way only. Willow and Tara had found their rest on one of the couches, lay with their faces turned towards each other and were slumbering in peaceful harmony.

Buffy smiled and went into the bathroom. She couldn't say why. She didn't have a reason to cool down; the dream had ended way too early for that. Maybe she just needed to sort her thoughts; and that worked best, when she was alone. And even sleeping people could disrupt her thinking.

As she turned on the faucet and splashed some water onto her face, she thought about her dream.

It wasn't like…this had been her first Faith-dream. These dreams had started about a month ago, on the day she had seen the other slayer the last time. Back then, when she had been a witness in the trial, in which Faith's exact sentence had been assessed.

25 to life for voluntary manslaughter; because of smaller offences in her past, mostly petty thievery, the 17 year old had been judged according to adult criminal law.

Faith had accepted the verdict without any visible emotion; she had probably seen it coming. At least now she knew how her life would look like in the coming years. Stability – something her previous life hadn't really held in store for her.

And thus she had the guard lead her back to her cell willingly. On her way out of the courtroom, her and Buffy's look had met, and Faith had nodded with a hesitant smile. What this really meant, Buffy couldn't really say, but this look in her eyes – and especially her look overall had engraved itself into her memory.

Faith in her blue prison gear, wearing handcuffs, not wearing make-up, dull hair. And with this smile on her lips.

But in that moment Buffy had noticed something; and that's why she knew now, why her Faith-dreams were of this nature, and why she wasn't just dreaming about going to the Espresso Pump with her and drink a cup of coffee or simply go patrolling.

Actually she had felt it, since she had first seen the other girl – she had had feelings for her from the beginning, but she had never admitted it to herself. She had dived back into the unpromising non-relationship with Angel and had failed to see that there was someone there, with whom she could have equally dangerous, but possibly less unpromising with.

She had missed it. Or ignored it, because she had been afraid of the possible reactions from her environment? Yeah, maybe that. But could anyone have reacted worse to this revelation than to a relationship to a vampire? Compared to this, two slayers…girls…in love was the most normal thing ever.

And what was the result of her cowardice? All she had now were her dreams. But – seen from a more positive perspective – at least she had those. Almost every night. And she knew what to do with them.

She also knew why she had been witnessed by two of a Faith-y kind in her newest dream. Not that one Faith wasn't enough for her; usually she didn't dreamsee double-y. The racket with the two Xanders last week had been the trigger. As fun as it had been, eventually she had been glad that everything had turned out okay in the end. She didn't feel any need to experience something like this again, especially since this hadn't been the first doppelganger-incident in Scooby-history.

But at least her fantasy had found a good use for this experience and had therefore provided her with two Faiths…one week late(r). And these two really weren't as alike as two peas in a pod; her brain had given her two different images of the brunette, taken from moments Buffy would probably remember for the rest of her life. One from the trial, one from one of her first patrols with the brunette almost two years ago.

Buffy couldn't believe that everything she had experienced with the brunette – the positive things, as well as the negative things – had happened within just two years. To her, it seemed like it had been twenty…but sometimes like it had only been two days; it was confusing.

She dried her face and went back into the living room. Maybe she shouldn't think too much about Faith and her Faith-dreams right now. Especially since there was Riley, who was still sleeping soundly on the living room floor.

She loved Riley in some way, but at some point she would have to admit to herself that he was only a stand-in for a certain someone, who was unattainable for her for whatever reason.

She stopped in front of the couch and looked at Willow and Tara. The lucky ones – they had made it. If she herself hadn't been such a chicken back then, and had told Faith…

Instead she grabbed one of the blankets lying on one of the crates, and pulled the blanket over the sleeping couple.

She took another blanket and briefly thought about lying down to sleep on the other couch. But then she looked down at Riley and reconsidered this. Because she loved him in a way, stand-in or not.

She covered him with the blanket and crawled underneath it herself. And seconds later, she noticed how he edged closer to her again and put his arm around her. She couldn't say what she would do with her stand-in, if she ever got the chance to get together with that certain someone after all.

Buffy watched Willow and Tara for a little while, before she drifted back to sleep.

A little later she found herself – now finally freed from her handcuffs – lying in the strong arms of that certain someone. In the arms of the younger Faith. At least it seemed that way to her; somehow the brunettes looked much more alike now.

The supposedly younger one of the two was spooning her from behind, snuggling with her, was leaning over her slightly to be able to see her face. The older one lay directly in front of her. In kissing-distance.

A blanket around them kept the three of them warm. If this was really necessary, was a question in itself. Because suddenly Buffy was hot enough…which maybe was due to the fact that both of the Faiths were now wearing equally as little as she herself – very very little…nothing at all, as a matter of fact.

Faith's foot…the foot of the Faith behind her moved up and down her calf as the brunette purred, "Hey, cutie, did you fall asleep just now?"

Confronted with that comment, Buffy couldn't help but wonder, how much time with her Dream-Faiths she had missed; and more importantly – what had happened during that time.

"Nah, I think she just passed out for a minute there," the other Faith grinned and let her hand wander over Buffy's arm.

"Well, means that I must have been pretty good," came the reply from behind her.

Buffy grumbled, unheard by the Faiths. She had missed the best part of this…this 'get-together' – again! The human brain could be so unfair.

"You mean, I must have been pretty good!" bitched Faith numero…the one in front of her…and leaned up on her elbow to get a better look at her twin.

This couldn't lead to anything…Before Buffy knew what hit her…or hopefully wouldn't hit her, Faith and Faith were at each other's throats. They literally fought for the upper hand. They wanted to wring the acknowledgement about being the better lover from their respective counterpart. Wring or even choke, if need be…because that is what it looked like just now.

For one thing, because the wrangling was basically happening right on top of her, and she was in danger to fall victim to a slap in the face or two as well, and for another thing, because the fighting brunettes had taken the blanket with them in their zeal, and the cool air was giving her goose bumps.

Even the sight that she was presented with wasn't making up for that…it was not even close to making up for that, because the most important parts of the bodies of the very naked Faiths…were something she could not see. Stupid dreams, the same crap every time. But how should her brain present her with a sight that she herself had never really had a chance to…catch sight of in real life?

At least now she was sure that this had to be a dream – not only because of the two Faith. The real, the only Faith, wouldn't behave this childishly…would she…?

She watched the two of them, still fighting vocally and physically, a little while longer, but then she finally had enough.

"Shut up, you two," she found her voice at last, and noticed at the same time, how weird this one sounded in her dream. Similar to situations, in which you hear your own voice on a tape recording.

The brunettes looked at her with a mixture of surprise, shock and mischief. If they found her voice equally as weird?

Faith and Faith obeyed, and before Buffy knew it, the two girls were back to cuddling her, warming her.

But now Buffy regretted having told them to shut up. Because they were doing that now, and she missed their voice(s). As well as many other things, and this was not only limited to her Dream-Faith(s). She started to miss silly things that she had hardly noticed consciously before. The way Faith pulled her hair out of the collar when putting on a jacket and let it fall down on her shoulders. How she pleasurably pressed her lips together after having put on her favorite lip stick. Or simply the fact that those big, brown eyes sometimes were so dark you had problems telling where the pupil ended and the iris started.

She had never told Faith any of this. Of course not. She hadn't suspected, how much she would miss all this, how much she would miss Faith. Because even the best and most realistic dream could not be a substitute for reality.

But as much as she missed the brunette, as much as she also hoped that the time in prison would do Faith good…as strange as this might sound.

Faith herself would have never admitted it, but everyone who had seen her in the two weeks between her waking up from her coma and her incarceration, had seen how worn out she had really been.

Waking up and realizing that life had went on without you, like you had never even existed in the first place. But also waking up and realizing that someone was still interested in you…but sadly someone from the Watcher's Council. In prison she seemed relatively safe from them.

The thought of why this special operations team hadn't already eliminated Faith while she had still been in her coma entered Buffy's brain, and she regretted it immediately.

After the brunette's coma, Buffy had attempted to talk to her, but this attempt had ended in a disaster. The same is true for the attempt to reason with her one year earlier.

She tried to persuade herself of knowing why Faith had pushed her away after the accident with Finch, and she herself, after initial attempts to still save this situation somehow, hadn't behaved much differently. She tried to justify it with the overpowering force of the situation, with the fact that they didn't know how to handle this situation. To some extent, this was true, of course.

But the real truth looked a little different: in that night, everything had changed. Buffy knew that things between them would never again be how they had been. Whatever had developed between them in the weeks before the accident – even she couldn't deny that they had grown closer, that more or less harmless flirting had taken place – it had become insignificant within just one second. Much to her regret, because Buffy regretted many things that had happened in the last few weeks before her graduation.

There were a lot of things that shouldn't have happened they way they had eventually happened, and Buffy had wished more than one time to be able to turn back time. She could have gone back and could make made a lot of things right again, starting with Faith's accidental of murder of Allan Finch. No, starting with the f*cked-up situation with that fake watcher, Gwendolyn Post…

But she couldn't. Couldn't go back and save Faith. Couldn't go back and tell her of her admittedly confusing feelings for the other slayer…although she knew that the chance to do this had not entirely passed yet.

She knew where Faith was right now, so it should actually be fairly simple to just go there and…

That she daydreamed in her own dream, Buffy only noticed when she heard Faith's smokily-soft voice chuckling, "You little dreamer, you…"

Being brought out of her thoughts, she concentrated on the brunettes. Or the brunette, how Buffy had to realize a little disappointedly.

Faith number two had disappeared; only one, the one Faith was left. The one Faith, whose appearance came closest to what the real Faith actually looked like.

She didn't answer Faith's comment, but spent several minutes with simply gazing at her. Like she should have done earlier.

Faith smiled at her, and the face of the brunette almost seemed like a freeze image – every detail seemed to have been captured minutely and recorded for all eternity.

Buffy reached out and used the fingers of her right hand to trace the outlines of Faith's face. The dark eyebrows, the nose with a faint hint of freckles, the trademark dimples in cheeks and chin. The cleft in her bottom lip.

Eventually her hand came to rest on Faith's left cheek and she felt, how the other girl took hold of it with her own hand, enclosed it and held onto it.

Buffy picked up her thought from before; her chance was not fully wasted yet. She couldn't make the past undone and give Faith back her "normal" life, but she could help Faith to cope with her future, even if she hadn't had the power to change anything about the girl's nearer future.

Unconsciously, her thumb glide over Faith's full lips. When and if she would ever feel them on her own lips…wasn't something she really thought about right now. Right now, going to see Faith at all was most important to her. She should have done this sooner, but until now she hadn't brought up the courage to face the girl again.

She didn't know, how Faith would react to her visiting her, and if the brunette wanted to see her at all.

Her Dream-Faith at least didn't seem to have any objections. She snuggled closer to Buffy and pressed her forehead against the blonde's. Buffy knew that nothing more would happen here now – she knew her dreams well.

She didn't want to force anything either; the dreaming brain was stubborn in this respect anyway. But she decided to enjoy this moment right here as long as possible. She didn't know yet, if she would even tell Faith of her feelings for her; right now, she just wanted to see her again.

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My Mind's Eye

by Lilyme

Copyright © 2008

lil_redsfaith@yahoo.de