Author: Lilith (aka neversaynever)
Email: fairiesbite@yahoo.com
Character/Pairing: Buffy-centric, with reference to Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Riley, Buffy/Spike, and of course Buffy/Faith
Summary: My thoughts on all of Buffy's cannonical romantic/sexual relationships (and why I think they were all doomed to failure--and I'm not talking because of broken curses), but mostly on her relationship with Faith.
Rating: PG-13 (for fairly vague masturbation)
Disclaimer: All characters and original plot/settings belong to Joss and Mutant Enemy.  I wish they were mine--they're very tasty--but unfortunately they're not.  Mine, that is.
Distribution:  My site.  Want, ask, take, have.
*****

She Alone

The first time it had happened, one night when she was undressing, it was perfectly innocent. An accident. Her own fingers brushing against her nipple felt so strange, alien. Her stomach twisted in a funny way, and she tried it again, more deliberately. The strangeness spread, she felt possessed by it a little. It frightened her. She thought she didn't like the feeling at first, but after awhile, she craved it.

Faith was like that.

It was years later and she was no longer the naive child who didn't understand her own body. Her body had become her fortress, and she felt comfortable in it, comfortably deadly within the muscle and sinew that destiny had provided, and equally so with the softer, hidden places that biology had granted her sex. She no longer started at her own touch, but rather arched up into it, making pleased sounds softly, so that her mother wouldn't hear.

She didn't usually fantasize. She'd tried a few times, picturing Angel's hand instead of her own, but in the end she found it was better if the one with her was only herself. She loved Angel, but he had never quite elicited the same response.

Then she met Faith, and the strangeness came rising up within her again. She couldn't figure out why. Five seconds around the other slayer--this outsider who had suddenly appeared to claim half of everything Buffy owned, as though they were married or something (though Faith was far too wild to work comfortably in that metaphor)--and Buffy felt possessed again, as though some funny sort of lightness, of urgency, was taking over her body. She couldn't shake it. It made her angry at first. She tried to ignore it.
 

Isn't it funny how slaying always makes you hungry and horny?

Faith could read her so well. That stung a little, for the girl who very nearly took pride in being secretly misunderstood. Nobody had ever really been in a position to have real insight into Buffy before. And though maybe she was willing to catch a post-slayage snack with her (friend? partner?), she never in a million years would have admitted what she always did later, alone in her bed. And she certainly wouldn't have admitted that the urge had doubled since the other slayer had arrived. Maybe she didn't even notice that herself. At first.

When they went out patrolling together, they talked about men. Buffy spoke of Angel in that dreamy yet half-wry way that she and Willow used, but somehow it felt empty when she used it to talk to Faith. For Faith, men were nothing, used and cast aside again. Buffy wasn't a man, and sometimes when Faith was going on one of her little tirades against the other half of the species, Buffy thought she caught the other slayer giving her a strange look with her hooded eyes (always on guard, even in the recklessness of her actions). The strangeness would spike up a little, and Buffy would have to concentrate on acting normally.

Men were nothing, but it wasn't as though Faith lacked the capacity to be serious. She just wasn't serious about men. They were a quick fix, something to get her off in the waiting period before . . . something serious. Buffy couldn't quite allow herself to fully articulate the thought. She danced around it, mothlike, continuously during their patrols. In her bed at night. She thought she didn't like the feeling, at first. But after awhile, she craved it.

Strangely addicting, that damaged girl. She made Buffy do odd things, feel odd things. It was easy to feel vindictive, to turn everything into rage, to blame everything on her when things finally fell apart between them. Some part of Buffy felt as though the explosion could have been of a different kind, but she was too busy trying to hate and not ready to think about it anyway.

Thinking about it, letting the strangeness continue, that was too hard, especially with Faith going crazier, pain and anger and something that she claimed was part of their common nature taking her over and turning her rotten. So much easier to just damage her still further, to open the other girl's wounds wide and expose them to the air. She was desperate to save Angel, desperate to stop Faith, desperate to get her feet back onto firm ground.

This, too, was years ago. She dreams about it sometimes, the knife, the blood. Faith's blood on her fingertips, warm and red, offensive and audacious as the girl it came from. It's not exactly a nightmare.

When Faith had come back, she hadn't allowed herself to feel anything but the anger. Even in the girl's body, her single-minded focus on ending the situation and finding a way to destroy Faith's presence in her life kept her in control, kept her feet on the familiar ground of fighting evil. Black and white.

Still, the rage ebbed surprisingly fast, and without making a conscious decision to do so, she almost admitted to herself that enmity wasn't really what it had been about.

Angel left, which in the end worked out, because true love at age eighteen wasn't exactly all it had cracked up to be. She no longer believed in forever, not after all that had happened. It hurt, but in the end . . . it faded. Many things did. So she moved on.

Riley was the pony she'd always wanted, just like every other little girl, before she knew that she wasn't exactly the archetype. She'd ridden him until she realized that she was treating him the way Faith would, using him but not really reaching inside. She wasn't being satisfied anyway. Then she'd let him go, poor lost pony. She wasn't up to a mercy killing. When had she started thinking that way? Dark cynicism, creeping in around the edges. Faith in her thoughts again, too. Comparing herself to the other slayer? (Who had slept with Riley, too. In Buffy's body. Sharing again . . . Buffy stopped thinking about it.)

Spike was a little better and a little worse. He wasn't quite as empty to her as Riley had been. She was only using him, too, but there was something else there. Some faint shadow of meaning revolving around the sneer, the attitude, the hidden pain . . . the very slight hint of truth to his claim that he understood her. He fit her better, but in the end it wasn't enough. She cast him aside too, her interest spent, and then turned to disgust when he could not accept her decision . . . when he tried to change the rules.

He loved her. That made him difficult, because it demanded something of her, and she couldn't understand how he could ask. She couldn't conceive of reciprocation. Soulled, she let him hang around, because he was the closest thing to what she vaguely knew she wanted (another? a partner? the slayer is alone . . . ) But, she wouldn't let him too near.

When she touched herself at night, she cried out softly, more affected than she'd ever been in any of their arms. Buffy did fantasize now, about mirror images, her own inverse. The yang to her yin . . . or was it yin to her yang?  Black and white.

She kept the image carefully faceless; she was learning to see shades of grey.

She knew now why Faith went through her boys so fast, why they couldn't hold her interest. Boys weren't the slayer. In the end, that was all there was to it.

Buffy had never understood herself as well as Faith had. She was almost ready to admit to that.