Unforgiveable
Title: Unforgivable
Author: Juniper
Email: juniper1@chickmail.com
Summary: Faith deals with Buffy's death as she wakes up in the hospital. Quasi-sequel to 'Which I Did'.
Rating: I'll say PG-13 for language, I guess.
Disclaimer: I may call her my Faith, but she does not belong to me. Neither do any of the other characters I mention. They belong to Joss, and whoever else is lucky enough to have a legitimate claim.
Feedback: Yes, please? If you do, you can ask me to write anything and I will. I'm probably getting myself into trouble, but...I need inspiration, anyway.
Spoilers: Anything season 3 is fair game, including Grad 2. This takes place around October of season 4, but has no basis in show reality.
Notes: #2 in my Faithseries. Oh, and Te, I hope you like this, too.
*****
I gotta admit, it's all such a huge waste.
Look at that, me admitting something. Me, admitting I screwed up.
Girl, my mama once told me (drunk as usual; that's the only time I got advice from her), girl, you gotta watch your back. Don't let anyone stab you in it.
Yes, mama, I'll watch my back. No, mama, I won't let anyone stab me in it. Mama, I don't know if I let you down or not. I never wanted to let you down, but I always did. She stabbed me in my belly. My belly that could have done what you did, given life to a confused little girl who doesn't know how to give all she has to give. Mama, she stabbed me in my belly and I laughed and I fell. Mama, you called me your angel (sometimes) and then I fell. So many times. From heaven to earth and all the way to hell.
Mama, I can't find her here.
It's just the voices here, and they tell me she's gone. They whisper that she's gone, taunting and tormenting me over and over. She's gone gone gone gone gone gone. Dead in a right proper Slayer way. They don't have to tell me but they do. They don't have to, because I saw.
Funny all the new ground me and B tread together. Never two Slayers, not like us. We knew each other, we lived in the other's life and breathed the other's breath. No brushing in and out like Kendra. We were closer than anyone realized, even us. No Council could predict this, this connection that goes beyond psychic. She stabbed me in my belly and I fell, and all the hate oozed away. I could see into her head, from the moment I hit the truck bed, and I was never alone. I loved her for so many things, but I honest-to-God loved her for that, for never leaving me here alone.
She left me. I tried to scream it into her head, begged her not to go, begged her to turn back. Stubborn to the fucking end, that girl. I should have known. Plucky enough to stab me in my belly, plucky enough to walk into her death. Too bad that psychic hearing only seems to work one way. I hear her, she don't hear me.
(I love her, she don't love me.)
No one can hear me. I babble, I sing, I shriek my pleasures and pains, my triumphs and losses, and nobody hears. They don't hear me now. All the stethoscopes and gauges and monitors, and they can't hear the loudest signal I'm putting off. They can't hear me crying.
Living in her head all these months, I started to forget. The blood, the pain, the betrayal - my betrayal. Of her. I failed her, made her kill me. I wish I could have known earlier, what would happen when I found myself in this predicament. In this hospital bed.
But like I said, they never had two Slayers working together. How could they know what would happen when they killed (loved) each other? When one killed (loved) the other? When one hit this point of having nothing to do but think and think and wonder if part of her soul attached itself to the hand holding that knife (my heart)?
I only wonder because I started seeing. Even before that dream, that crazed dream with the cat and the boxes and stuff I can't even remember (it all gets so hazy when a day is a week is a month) I saw everything she did. I felt Angel's teeth like they were in my neck, I watched the Boss change and realized in horror all I'd done to help him. I saw myself racing through the halls and reaching Giles' side and I saw the fuse and I saw the explosion. I saw the redness in her head and I felt the tears when she watched him walk away into the glare of mist and flashing lights.
I felt her heart speed up when our eyes read the prophecy together. And when it happened, I tasted the fear and the doctors raced with the crash cart when I jerked. I felt the life flowing from her body and I saw Xander with his shiny wet face. I screamed and I died like I didn't die from the knife; I felt her die and I whispered I love you into her head and then she was gone, and I was alone.
I forgot what it's like to have this blankness in my head, this space where I can't seem to figure out how to decorate. Emotions here, memories there, add a little knowledge there. Neurons fire and you've got yourself a Faith.
But Faith ain't Faith anymore, not without her.
All my life I lived with that emptiness, knowing something was missing and not quite knowing what it was. Then I was Called in place of Kendra and I found her and I knew what that little piece was, what fit into the hole. Someone to understand. I knew she was supposed to be there but I didn't know how to make her fit. Like the very last piece of the puzzle that you keep turning and turning and it still won't go, and you get so tired by the last turn that you just want to give up, tear it all up after all that work and lay it all to waste. Most people have the patience to get to that last turn, but I guess I didn't. I laid it all to waste just when she was about to fall into my life in just the right way. Just when we were about to be everything I could possibly want. Just when I started to think we could both understand.
Just when I thought I might be able to say I'm sorry.
Wait. This is new. Where'd the blackness go? There's this big white canvas in front of me and it takes me a second to do the reality check and realize it's a ceiling. You don't have ceilings in your head, that's one thing I've learned. Just a big vast endless space that manages to trap you without having borders. You can't get out, even when you get into somebody else's head. You have to be there, too, with the loneliness and the emptiness and the way the craziest songs you've ever heard in your life come back up, of all things, to play over and over again all out of tune and warbled.
Like when my mama used to play her old records, the ones that daddy left. I always loved when she would put on Edith Piaf, and the pretty voice would fill the air with French. I didn't understand the words (never been much of one for languages - school, either, for that matter) but I would stretch out on my back on the old carpet in my little room in Boston, and I would look up at the ceiling - a lot browner and dingier than this one - and that's when I got to be an artist. I got to paint all sorts of stuff, and I painted myself in Paris with someone who would love me like mama loved me. Someone who would give me the advice and wisdom she would.
Guess I knew even then that I couldn't make it on my own. Not in the morality department, anyway. Gotta have a guiding hand...given my life, it seems fitting that I forced my only guiding hand to guide a knife into my belly. I can laugh about that, now. I can laugh about pretty much anything now that I realize that I see the ceiling because my eyes are open.
Pretty much anything.
I can't seem to laugh about her being gone. 'Cause even though I would have killed her, would have broken her into pieces, I never wanted her dead. Survival instinct, you know? That and the fact that I was pretty fucked in the head. Someone should do some study on whether comas can help get rid of psychotic behavior. I feel strangely unfucked now. Except for wanting to die when I think about getting out of here and picking up the pieces, living without her to help me. I couldn't pick them up when she wanted to help; how can I now that she's gone?
I cough softly and gaze around. This is not good. I *hate* needles. And my body...I haven't felt this weak since long before I was Called. Not since the guy in the street grabbed me and I wound up in the hosp - No. No, I will not think about that. I'll think about how this means I'll be getting out of here and start training and maybe even make up for a tiny fraction of everything I did. Just a tiny fraction, because the bigger fraction is solely comprised of her, and I can't possibly make up for not being there for her.
'Cause you see, once you've gone so far that they're not around to be able to forgive you, you've most likely done something that can't be forgiven. Mama couldn't forgive me, either.
I make a decision right there and then. Or here and now - my sense of time and place and everything relevant to reality is just all fucked. But my decision is this - no more being weak. No more self-pity and self-indulgence and self-absorption. It's not just me, I gotta see that. I do see that. Or I did, but I was wrong then, too, 'cause then I was thinking it was just her and me. And now she's gone, but it's still not just me. I'm alone; it's just me in that sense, but it's not. It's Willow and Xander and Giles and Angel and Cordelia and everyone I hurt.
It's the new Slayer, Buffy's...the only word to use is replacement, and it seems so cold, so dismissive. Whatever she is, it's her. I have to help her, keep her from fucking up like I did. Nothing like the voice of experience to cure what ails you, mama used to say.
First things first. I'm alone, in this small room, and I most definitely do *not* want to be alone. And there are things, things I have to do. I lift my arm and barely manage to grasp the button to call a nurse before my body remembers that it has no strength. It isn't a nurse that comes; it's a doctor and rather quickly, too. He stops in the doorway (and damned if he isn't attractive) and simply stares for a moment, shocked. I don't really care - I sort of gathered from all my time in B's head that I was not one of those let's-wait-and-pray-for-the-best case scenarios. I was more a roll-her-once-a-day-to-prevent-bedsores-as-long-as-the-insurance-doesn't-run-out type. How the hell was this being paid for, anyway?
So the doctor is there and he slowly comes in. I wonder how much he knows about me. Can't be much...who was there to bother to tell him? "Faith?" he queries softly.
"That's me." Wow, talk about dry mouth. "Water?"
"Of course." He ducks into the bathroom (why is there a bathroom in a room occupied for a coma patient?) and returns with a glass of water. Not as cold as I like it, but hey, no biggie. It helps the rasp in my throat, at least. "Faith, you're a patient at -"
"Sunnydale Transitional Hospital, I know," I cut in. "Head trauma, coma, it's been five months, it's probably late October, yeah yeah yeah. Look, doc, let's cut to the chase. I need to use a phone."
He looks startled. "Faith, I'm afraid there are other matters more pertinent right now than -"
"No, there aren't. I know I'm acting strange, and I know you're surprised to see me awake, but I really do need to make a call before anything happens. Please? Just hold the receiver to my ear and dial the number?"
Shaking his head in amazement, he lifts the phone from it's cradle and dials the number I tell him. The ringing seems to go on forever, and finally the tired, weary voice mutters, "Yes?"
"Giles." God, I never thought I'd be glad to hear that stuffy, British voice. "Giles." It's all I can say.
"Who is this?" he demands suspiciously.
"It's...Faith. Don't hang up! Please...Buffy, she won't turn. Don't worry about that."
I hear a clunk. He must have dropped the phone. "Wh-what?" he finally stammers. "Is this a joke?"
"No joke," I whisper. "Giles, I just woke up a few minutes ago. I need you to come see me. Something strange has happened. Can you come? Will you?"
I can practically hear his reluctance, his concern, his distrust, dripping from his breath as he hesitates. "I can't move, Giles. I can't even hold the phone I'm so weak. Please."
"I'll be there soon." And the phone goes dead.
I look up at the doctor. "I'll have a visitor soon. Let me see him for awhile and I'll cooperate with whatever after that."
He's scribbling in a chart as fast as his hand can move. I suspect I'm turning into a paper for some journal, but whatever. I just have to see Giles, I have to make sure they don't try to lock me up again. He tried to help me last time; why couldn't I see it? Too busy fucking up to pay attention to my own personal savior.
I gotta admit something else. I don't get it. I don't get the decisions that the powers-that-be make sometimes. I mean, get this. They look out for humanity enough to Call a few who maybe, hopefully, can help, and apparently they get involved on an individual basis sometimes. So what I don't get is why they took her and not me. I keep getting these second chances even though I keep screwing up, like they really think one of these times I'm gonna get it right. But how can all the chances be worth all the things I've done to screw it up? And then they take her, the one who always seemed to have it together. The girl had it pegged; she didn't need to be looked after so much. And they took her.
I try to think of what Giles would say if I told him that. Something about it being B's choice - does he know yet that she knew? - and the way we have free will. They didn't take her, it was just circumstance, yadda yadda yadda. But free will only goes so far in a world where prophecies come true. Someone somewhere set something in motion so that someone else, somewhere else, could write the prophecy so that she could walk into her death in Sunnydale.
I think it goes more to the fact that she was who she was, and she did what she did, and I have a hell of a lot more to learn. No need to let me off the hook of all these sins I have to atone for.
It isn't long. He walks into the room alone, and I realize just how much it hurt to lose her. She wasn't just his Slayer; she wasn't just a pupil to teach in the art of demon demise. She was his friend, and she was the only child he had ever had. It hits me suddenly that she probably had a lot of people crying at her funeral, and she was the only one who might have cried at mine.
He stares at me now, a little shocked, a little worried, a little neutral. "Faith."
"Hey, G." I try a wan smile and fail even at that. Why am I so fucking scared that his face will close down in condemnation?
"Ah...how long have you been awake?"
"Like I said, a few minutes before I called you. Giles...has she been buried?"
I saw the comprehensive confusion creep across his face. "I - Yes, she has. This morning. Faith, how do you know -"
"I told you, something strange has happened. Ever - ever since she stabbed me, I've been in her head. Like this connection...I know everything that's happened since then, everything she knew." I want to just demand to know everything I need to know, but I need to be soft. Docile. Non-psychotic. "How's Xander?"
"Not well. Hospitalized, traumatized. He's catatonic. Faith -"
"Do you know what happened? How she...died?"
"Actually, no." He's grasped this fast. "Do you?"
"You want revenge, go after Drusilla. Better yet, wait til I'm out of here and I'll do it...That is, if you don't send me away to be locked up. I understand if you do, but I want to tell you...I want to make it up to you. All of you. I want...I want to be the Slayer again. To be on the right side."
He stares at me, his expression indecipherable (where the hell did I learn that word?). "Faith, I cannot stay now. I'll have to come back -"
"Wait. She won't vamp out. She didn't feed. You'll watch anyway, tonight, but she won't, I promise. I was there. And...you should know that it wasn't your fault. She wouldn't have let you be there, because...G, she knew she was going die that night. There's a prophecy you calculated for next year, but the date was off. She was reading ahead and realized the mistake...she made the choice to go. I think she - she knew it was time."
I don't think I've ever seen this man cry. But there it is, a tear slipping down his left cheek. It looks sort of lonely and I wonder if one will join it from the other eye. "I will come back later, Faith...Buffy told us how you helped stop the Mayor's ascension...her dream...we'll talk later, all right?"
Does that mean he believes me? That he'll give me a chance? I don't want to dare to hope but I do, and my heart lifts up on itself and I want to sing. Something happy, like 'I'm So Pretty.' Something perfect. Maybe shit can be okay.
But there it is at the same time. The boss. The sting knowing he's dead. The relief that he failed but the wrench of losing the only father-figure I ever had. Well, the guy in the street made me call him daddy, but the boss never held a knife to my throat. Never put me in the hosp -
No. Not there. Here, with Giles. But he's backing out the door and I'm alone again, and the voices are starting up the chant again. She's gone, Faithy dear, gone gone gone. A little puppy (undead demon) ate your puzzle piece and you'll never be whole again. She's gone. They hate you. Kill yourself, Faithy dear. You're fucked in the head.
God, how I want to listen. All I can think of is that I wish I had been at the funeral and I wish I could be at the grave right now and oh not again not that night don't live that night again that's when it all started. I close my eyes and I can feel her lips on me and the most obvious thing occurs to me for the first time, that maybe she had such an easy time stabbing me not because of Angel but because of me, because she put the ball in my court and I never gave it back.