Faith’s yacht moved between endless planes of darkness; the sea below and the sky above, and only the splash of the waves and the low rumble of the engine had any voice in that place between places.

Buffy sat alone, her back to the mast, looking out past the boat’s bow, towards the still-distant lights of Sunnydale. There were miles and miles to go before they reached the harbor, and she was chilled to the bone, her blanket lying a few feet away on the open deck. She could get it, of course; it would only take a moment to fetch it and wrap it around her… but she wouldn’t. The spot where she sat was the only place where Faith, sitting back there behind the ship’s wheel and staring forward to guide them back home, couldn’t see her. If Buffy moved, even a foot to either side, then the other girl would have no choice but to see her, judge her… and Buffy had already judged herself. Most harshly.

I failed. ‘Failed’, with a capital ‘F’. I’m supposed to be pretty bright; Faith’s the one who isn’t up for anything more complicated than fighting and making out with bikers. So how come I couldn’t manage one little thing, fool her for even an hour, and derail this apocalypse that bearing down on us?

She didn’t know, and sitting there and beating herself over the head with it wasn’t getting her any closer to an answer. What she did know was that Faith had turned out to be surprisingly perceptive; Buffy had been so sure that this time she had the girl fooled. Heck; there’d been a few moments there when she’d almost fooled herself into believing that she was seriously interested in Faith, and willing to overlook anything the renegade Slayer did so long as they could be together.

Buffy sighed, keeping it soft so that the other girl’s enhanced hearing wouldn’t pick it out of the ambient sounds of the boat and the ocean.

I feel… weird. Sure, there’s the blame I’m heaping on myself for messing up, here, but how come I’ve got this big ol’ hollow feeling in my stomach, too? Her usual remedy for a feeling like that, for nearly any oddness of the emotional persuasion, actually, was to spend a few hours wrapped in Angel’s arms. Even though they could never again have a true, complete physical relationship, the absolute love she felt for him was wonderfully comforting….

Strange; the hollow place in her middle had just grown larger, and colder.

Because it’s not absolute love anymore, is it? Something’s up with him, something he’s not sharing with me. When we lay in his bed together now, not all of him is with me, he’s pulling away even when he’s right there. And then there’s what he did with Faith; having sex with her to convince her that he’d really lost his soul. I hate that, I would have hated it even if he’d told me about it… but he didn’t. I had to find out from Faith.

Faith; poor, deluded, dangerous Faith, caught between her murderous urges and her desperate need to be loved. She should have killed Buffy earlier, broken the Slayer’s neck when she had the chance. Because sure as the sun would rise in a few hours, at some point in the near future, Buffy would be forced to fight, and probably kill the girl.

I don’t want to fight her, or kill her, and she doesn’t want to hurt me, either… and it’ll still happen, because of tonight. Because I wasn’t smart enough. Then there’s me and Angel… that’s in trouble too, and it might be my fault the same as the rest of it.

I should have known, what he had to do… to trick her. It’s good that he did it, it helped us, gave us some clues about what Wilkins and Faith are up to, is it his fault that I’m having trouble forgiving him?

No, that wasn’t what the problem was, and she knew it.

The fact that he did it, that he had sex with her… that hurts me, it hurts us. Him lying about it, lying to my face about it, saying that he didn’t… that hurts more.

Sometimes people; human beings and vampires alike, could be so blind. Angel, centuries-old creature that he was, couldn’t see that treating her like a child who couldn’t make her own choices, that taking the choice away from her like that, was infinitely more damaging to their relationship than simply admitting what had happened. As for Buffy herself, for the life of her she couldn’t understand the mindset behind what Angel was doing; why he was growing more distant, why he couldn’t trust her to decide for herself what course her life should take.

And it’s not like I can just ask him, either. If I ask him point-blank why he can love me as a woman and still treat me like a child, it’ll just turn into a huge argument that’ll make things even worse. God! I wish I could just get in his face and demand that he be honest with me! If I could only….

She couldn’t, though; of course she couldn’t, the risk of destroying what they still had was too great.

Which of course brought her around full circle, to Faith. Thanks to everything Buffy had done, or had failed to do, things between the two Slayers had imploded… utterly. The two of them cold have been friends, if it had gone differently. Buffy could easily believe that, even if she still couldn’t imagine herself as part of the girl-on-girl love affair that the younger Slayer wanted.

Buffy shifted her body slightly, trying to find a more comfortable way to prop herself against the mast… and failing.

No matter what she thinks, I did like her at first, after the initial shock wore off. She’s funny, in a raunchy, utterly different way from Xander, or Willow, or anybody else I’ve ever known. She’s fierce, and wild, and more than a little crazy… and I liked her. She frowned to herself, even as her nearly-dried hair was blown across her face by an errant sea-breeze. I still like her, in an odd sort of way, despite everything she’s done; that’s why it’s bothering me so much that I couldn’t get us off of this track that’ll end up with one of us either badly hurt, or severely dead. And what bothers me even more is that… well, it’s like the thing with Angel. I can’t see what it is I’m doing wrong; whatever I could have done to make it all turn out okay is probably right there in front of me, but I’m too close to it, it’s a blind spot, and I can’t….

Buffy sat there, perfectly still, for the space of a long breath. Then she stood up.

Faith must not have been expecting to see her again until they reached shore; when she saw the blonde Slayer walking back along the deck towards her she gave Buffy a wide-eyed stare before catching herself and looking away. The ignorage continued even as the older girl climbed down into the stern well and took a seat across from where she sat at the wheel.

“Faith,” she began, as calmly and reasonably as she could manage, given the situation. “I know you’re upset with me, and I know things between us aren’t… good.” That was understating things a bit, sure…. “I still want to talk to you. I want to explain something, if you’ll let me.” The lights of the town twinkled in the distance, the water gurgled as it slipped along the hull; nothing else answered her. “No matter how upset you are right now, I’ll bet you get a big laugh out of this later, when you think back on it. You always thought I was Miss high-and-mighty Slayer, getting all the glory while you got ignored, and here I am, falling flat on my face with you right here to see it. Congratulations, you win, you saw right through me, and I’m going home with nothing.”

The girl didn’t move her head, didn’t look away from the horizon ahead. She did speak, though.

Briefly.

“Fuck off.”

Buffy paused, slightly taken aback yet not quite willing to give up.

“Listen, I….” She considered what she wanted to say, what she needed to say, then started again. “I know I messed this up, all of this. I tried to… I mean I did, lie, to you--” Swallowing didn’t do much to lessen the dryness in her throat, she discovered. “What I did, everything tonight; I had to do it, you must be able to see that. I’m fighting to save everyone I know, I’m trying to keep everyone I care about in the world from being killed by you and your….” The girl had twitched, slightly, in the middle of that, and Buffy belatedly realized that even that statement had stung Faith, since it failed to include her as someone that the Slayer counted among her friends and loved ones. “I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t easy for me, that I didn’t lie just to be lying, if that’s what you think. I do see you as a person, with feelings, and I wish I hadn’t had to hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt.” There was no change; Faith was still resolutely staring straight ahead, with no expression at all. That didn’t leave much to be said, except for the obvious.

“I’m sorry, Faith. I really am.”

She waited a few moments, to see if there would be a response to that. There was.

“Go and fuck yourself, B.”

The Slayer bristled.

Nice vocabulary you’ve got there; how about using one of the other twenty words you know--

“At least I’m trying!” she snapped, glaring at the girl’s impassive profile. “It’s not like I got us here all by myself you know!” She shot to her feet, ignoring the way the boat’s movements forced her to brace against the wood rail enclosing the sunken pilot area. “Okay, sure, how about I say what you want to hear?” She leaned forward, speaking loud and clear, almost into the girl’s face. “I ignored you, Faith. I left you alone too much, I didn’t hold you hand every time you were depressed, and damn me, I didn’t shove all my friends to one side to make room for poor little you.” Faith stared straight ahead, pretending not to hear even though Buffy was so close that her breath stirred the girl’s hair. The Slayer eased up on the volume a little, though the bitterness and sarcasm just felt too good for her to bother with restraint at this point. “And too bad about that epic romance you thought we should have; somehow I must have been too busy doing my job, and babysitting a super powered basket case, to catch the signals you were throwing my way about this huge crush you had on me.” Buffy was more than half-expecting a punch or kick that would send her flying off the boat. When it didn’t come she was almost disappointed. Straightening back up, looking down at the girl sitting there like a moonlit statue, she shook her head. “So there you go; I did all that, I admit it. And we still never would have gotten here—“ She stamped her foot, hard, to indicate their current impasse, good versus evil, as well as the actual physical location of boat, ocean, and nighttime. “—If you weren’t so twisted, and bloodthirsty, and hell-bent on screwing me instead of being even the half-assed, second-rate Slayer you were capable of—“

Faith came to her feet in a rush, and Buffy’s fists came up reflexively, ready to smash the girl back if she lunged. It didn’t happen, though. The younger Slayer stood there, radiating tension like a spring coiled to its breaking point, her dark eyes glittering like the distant lights of the town.

“All right, you blonde midget bitch, now it’s my turn to say what you wanna hear; ready?” Buffy felt her eyes grow wide, and her temper flare even hotter.

“Midget--?!”

The younger girl overrode her.

“I’m scared, all the time; there, that make you happy?” Buffy swallowed the rest of her outraged retort, and Faith kept going. “I’m not scared of dying, much; Kakistos sort of got me past that. What scares me shitless is thinking that somebody might take me alive. I’ll fight anybody, but what if you or the Watchers were to ambush me, tranq me somehow, either with that rifle, or maybe with something you get into my food?” She took a step back, and folded her arms tight against her stomach. “You think they’ll settle for putting me in a nice prison somewhere? A big, roomy cell with clean floors, and a bed, and trips to the exercise yard every day?” Her full lips thinned as she considered it. “Even that much would be bad, I’d go crazy in a hurry, but at least I’d have some company.” The ocean breeze pulled a tangle of still-damp hair across her eyes, and she tossed her head to get it out of her way. “You all know what I’d do if I broke out, and I could break out of prison, easy… so you’d never put me there in the first place. No, I’ll bet there’s a pit somewhere in England, down in some Watcher’s basement. Dug deep into solid rock and with a five-ton slab of concrete ready to drop on top to seal me inside. One little hole in that, big enough for some air, maybe a bucket with some food and water dropped in every couple of days, and their problem’s solved for good.” Her face was drawn, haunted-looking, as she considered her likely fate. “I’ve tried to think of a good way to kill myself if that happens… haven’t come up with anything I like, yet.”

The intensity with which Faith had begun her rant had sort of run down to nothing by the end, and now she was staring sightlessly off into the night. Buffy shivered, wondering what kind of suicide methods the girl might be contemplating. The whole notion of the pit and slab sounded horrible… and all too logical. No doors to kick down, no bars to bend, no walls to leap… just stone and concrete, too strong and thick for even a Slayer to damage with her bare hands, too much weight for even a Slayer to shift. Trapped, in the dark, with barely enough room to move, and barely enough air to breathe. She opened her mouth, to make some sort of empty noise of reassurance, or maybe a dry joke about villainy being the pits… no, that wasn’t funny.

At all.

She was saved from having to say something by Faith coming to herself once more.

“I like to fight, too; not going to argue on that one. And fucking is a lot more fun than sitting in some library and reading.” She reached up and thumped the side of her head lightly with the heel of her hand. “Think I don’t hear you when you make fun of me? When you make your little jokes about how I can barely read the TV guide, much less the dusty old demon books? Or how I say ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ so much ‘cause I can’t handle words with more than one syllable?” Buffy felt a few inches smaller, remembering those comments. The other girl sighed. “Okay, so you’re right; I’m stupid. I’ll own up to it.” She turned half-away from the Slayer, reaching out to put her hand on the wheel and adjusting for the way the boat’s course had drifted slightly while she was talking. “You and Angel fooled me good; couldn’t have done that unless I was at least a little deficient, huh? Giles, too; I totally thought he’d bought what I said about you staking that Finch guy.” She looked up at the moon, briefly, then glanced over to where Buffy still stood. “I’m even stupid enough to keep talking like this, to keep telling you the truth about what I think and what I feel, when all you can do is lie.”

Buffy’s own rage had cooled, too, during the course of Faith’s speech. Which was not to say that its embers didn’t flare a bit at that little comment.

“I don’t just lie!”

“Sure you do, you do it all the time, to people you don’t think matter. How many years did you lie to your mom, about the Slayer thing? How many times did you lie to me, about Angel being dead and gone, when you were hidin’ him in that mansion?” There was real hurt showing on the girl’s face when she mentioned that one, and Buffy remembered how the revelation of his return had changed things between the two Slayers. That was obviously still a sore point for the younger girl, but she chose not to dwell on it just then. “The thing is, you can lie to me; it’s okay, I’m used to it, and I can live with it.” Faith’s fingers were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles whitened from the strength of her grip, and Buffy wondered if it was about to be torn loose from its mounting. “The problem, though, the real problem, is when you lie to yourself, and don’t even see it. That’s what got us here, Buffy. You’re pissed about the two of us not being able to get past this place where we’re at? Well, you don’t have to look at me for somebody to blame. It’s all right there.” She jabbed a finger at where the blonde stood, which caused Buffy to blink in genuine confusion.

“What?”

“When you tell yourself that I’m crazy for being in love with you. Or that I’m deluded, defective, de-rational, whatever.” The younger Slayer stood there, her pale skin glowing with reflected moonlight, and she spoke with absolute conviction. “You’re lying when you tell yourself that you could never love me back, because I’m evil, or ‘cause I’m a girl.”

Buffy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How this, this… maniac could think she knew what was going on in someone else’s head, when her own was so tangled that she couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together….

“I’m not gay, Faith! I’m just not!” God, she thought to herself. If only I was, it sure would have saved me some trouble last year, with Angelus. “I’m straight, all the way, so no matter how much I, uh, like you, the two of us could never have—“

“Bullshit, B. You’re better than that and you know it.” Faith had relaxed now; she stood at her ease as she spoke, still with that same unnerving certainty. “Whatever else is wrong with you, that’s one thing nobody can argue about: You love who you love and to hell with anything that gets in the way. Angel proved that.” Though her lips twisted with distaste, she didn’t let it color what she was saying. “You decided he was the one, your soulmate or whatever, the walking, talking corpse. If you can have sex with that, and never even blink, then you’re not going to let a little thing like these,” she trailed her fingers across her breasts, still snugly contained in the dark bikini top. “--Or this,” she gestured to the place between her legs, the tight denim cutoffs leaving no room for doubt about what wasn’t there. “--Tell you what you can’t do.”

She wanted to argue it, wanted to tell Faith that she was out of her mind. It was hard, though, trying to come up with a way to prove that she was homophobic… especially when there was no denying the fact that the kissing, earlier, had been kind of nice. Nice in a totally strange way, sure, but still….

“None of that even matters, Faith.” Better not to argue the iffy stuff, and just concentrate on the easy things. Like… “You said it; it’s because you’re evil. The things you’ve done, the way you treat people who can’t stand up to—“

The girl didn’t even wait for her to finish.

“That’s just more bullshit, Buffy. Listen, if you didn’t want me, I wouldn’t go all stalker on you. I’m not Angelus. I wouldn’t start hanging around outside your bedroom window, or leaving you notes and sketches, or killing little Willow’s fish. If you really, truly didn’t feel anything for me, I’d leave you the fuck alone.” She took a deep breath, and went on in a softer voice. “Earlier, when you were holding my hand, and touching my leg, and….” She had to stop for a moment and clear her throat. “And when you were… kissing me; you can’t tell me that was just an act. Can you?” Buffy didn’t answer. She couldn’t, not when it would have meant admitting that a surprisingly large part of the act hadn’t been an act at all. Faith nodded. “Didn’t think so. There was something in your way though, something that made you sick, made you back off, right when you realized what you were doing, right?” She cocked her head a bit, watching Buffy carefully. “Wanna know what that was?”

The older Slayer was getting tired of this girl treating her like she was the slow one.

“It was me remembering that it was you, with the evil, like I said. And that you’re a girl; I told you, I like boys.”

Faith shrugged, dismissing the point.

“So what? I like boys too, sometimes. No, this is where you’re lying to yourself, where you’re shoveling the BS so hard and fast that even you can’t see the truth.”

Obviously this conversation wasn’t going to end without Faith presenting her cosmic and profound insights into Buffy’s psyche, so the blonde sighed and gave her the invitation she was waiting for.

“All right, Faith; what truth? What’s the really-real reason why I can’t admit my true feelings for you?”

The girl crossed her arms again, and chewed her lip for a moment before she finally answered.

“Because you think I’m weak.”

It was literally several seconds before Buffy could fully digest that statement. Standing there, staring at Faith and trying to get her head around it wasn’t easy, and the steady throbbing of the boat’s engine was an unwelcome distraction she didn’t really need. Reaching out, she fumbled with the little control panel she’d seen the other girl use earlier, and eventually she found the right switch. The diesel faded into silence, and the boat coasted forward through the gentle ocean swell.

“Care to explain that?” she asked the younger Slayer. “I give you a whole list of perfectly reasonable, non-crazy reasons why the two of us don’t get along,” --and why we can’t do the… other things—“And you veto all that with ‘I think you’re—“

“Weak, yeah.” Faith let go of the wheel; the sailboat had lost all of it’s forward motion now, and was just drifting. “You could forgive the ‘evil’ thing; you did it with Angel. And if it was just me being a girl, you could get past it too.” She shrugged, and gave the blonde a level stare. “You’re prejudiced, B; you can’t stand people who are weak.”

That got a brief, harsh laugh out of Buffy.

“If you were weak then I wouldn’t be having a nervous breakdown trying to figure out how to beat you and your boss! The whole problem is that the two of you have too much mojo on your side, and all I’ve got is me, one cursed vampire, and a bunch of plain old human beings who would make a better comedy team than a—a combat squad!”

Faith shook her head in irritation.

“You know that’s not the kind of weak I mean.” She leaned back, against the rail, and looked down at the waves lapping against the side of the boat. “The first time you saw me, I was running from a monster; Kakistos. I needed you to help me face him, and even if I was the one who ended up killing him, after that you always saw me as somebody who wasn’t in your league.” Buffy wanted to deny that, only the words she wanted would not come. “When Ms. Post showed up, it only got worse. Yeah, she fooled all of us, but it was me that she sent against Angel; I was the one so stupid that I did her dirty work… or almost, anyway.” Killing Angel, was what she meant. It was true, too; Buffy had never quite forgiven her for coming so close to dusting him, that night. Not that she herself had been any closer to realizing what Gwendolyn Post was after, until it was almost too late.

“That’s all history, Faith,” she said, taking advantage of a brief pause. “Even if I was mad at you for something, that doesn’t mean that here and now I’m holding it against you. Or that it’s the reason why we can’t….”

Now it was Faith who spoke into the silence.

“Really? How about me and the Mayor? Is that ‘now’ enough for you to blame me for?” She looked up, and Buffy’s face must have given something away, even in the dimness, because Faith nodded slowly. “Thought so. Me going over to his side really convinced you that I was a worthless piece of shit, didn’t it? It proved once and for all that I was spineless, and gutless, and that I deserved everything I got from you guys.” Buffy didn’t say anything; there was nothing she could say to that. The younger girl looked away again, down at the twin rings that shone silver on her hand. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong about everything.”

As much as she didn’t want to add to Faith’s already massive load of emotional baggage, there was no way Buffy could just let that pass.

“Wrong? What, you think joining up with the bad guy is something a strong person does?”

Infuriatingly, Faith just nodded.

“Yeah, for me it was. Want me to run it down for you?” She sat down there, against the side railing, with her feet tucked under her. “When I left, when I first went to see the Mayor, it wasn’t me giving up on being a good guy… it was me deciding not to beat my head against a wall anymore. I went to find something for myself, instead of spending the rest of my life sitting in that motel, begging for some of what you had, and wouldn’t give me.”

Buffy growled at the familiar complaint.

“I wasn’t trying to shut you out. I did care about you, we all did. We would have helped you, if you’d just given us some time!”

The girl gave her a sideways look, and her mouth twisted sourly.

“I believed you the first four or five times you said that, B, and then half a year went by and there I was, still waiting. Sooner or later I had to stop hoping you’d find time to help me, and go find a way to help myself. Was that me being weak?”

The blonde Slayer gave her a glare.

“Well, yeah, when you go to the monster you’re supposed to be fighting, and make nice with him, it kind of is, Faith!”

“I don’t think so. How about right after that, when I was still on the inside with you and the lame-patrol; I could have killed ‘em anytime I wanted, just waited until you were off somewhere and then walked through them with a knife, or a sword, or plain ol’ hands and feet. I could have made it look like the Mayor did it, too, and you wouldn’t have figured it out until it was way too late.” She put her hands on her knees and cocked her head, looking up at Buffy standing there. “I could have killed them last week; I could go kill them right now, or anytime I want. The Mayor could kill even you, if I kept you off him for the ten seconds or so it would take for him to chant up the right spell. Wouldn’t it be easier, to just do it? To stop worrying about you, and what you’ll do if you stop him, and catch me, and just blow you all away?” The older Slayer stared at the girl, unable to even put a label on her emotions just then. Faith sighed. “Doesn’t sound like I’m doing the easy thing, does it? What the weak person would do?”

Buffy didn’t feel like standing up any more. She sank down on the cushioned bench beside the wheel.

“Just because I don’t understand you, or why you’re doing whatever you’re doing, that doesn’t mean you’re noble.”

Faith shook her head, and reached down beside her to trail her hand in the sea.

“Never said I was noble, I just said I wasn’t weak.” She gazed across the water, at the lights of Sunnydale a few miles distant. “Do you think leaving that nice, safe, shitty place you’d made for me was the easy thing? To jump the fence and join up with the black hats?” She withdrew her hand from the water, and clenched it into a fist. “Well, it wasn’t. Even with things like they were, staying would have been the easy way. Being the number two Slayer, the good little bad-girl that nobody liked and everybody laughed at.” She went silent for a moment, contemplating that. “Leaving was hard, going against you, and them, and what you all expected me to do… that was hard. And it was scary as hell. I jumped off a fucking cliff, daring to go to him. Think that’s what a coward does?” She exhaled, suddenly looking very tired. “He gave me a chance, too. More than any of you ever did. Now there’s this, with you begging and pleading with me to turn on him, and come back, and have everything forgiven… you don’t think I want to do that? To take another chance and hope that it would be enough to make you love me for real?” Her fist slammed down on the deck, and the –boom- that resulted probably scared whales as far away as San Francisco bay. “It’s not easy; you’re not making it easy, but I’m not going to betray him. Not even for you. I’m stronger than that, B, no matter what you think of me.”

She was trying to find a way to make all of this just more Faith crazy-talk, to turn it back around on the girl and show her just how insane it all was. So far, though, Buffy wasn’t having much luck.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, eventually. “The reason the Mayor isn’t doing all kinds of doom and destruction spells on us, or sending demon-ninja assassination squads, or having you just wade in with guns blazing—“

“Is because I talked him out of it,” Faith answered. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Buffy scrubbed both hands through her hair; no worries about messing up her ‘do, the swim earlier had taken care of that.

“And the reason you’re doing all of that is…?”

Faith just stared at her with those fathomless eyes.

“You know why,” she said, softly.

That hurt. It physically hurt, way down in Buffy’s stomach.

“Leave!” she shouted, as loudly as she could, hoping that the sheer weight of sound might break through to the younger girl. “Get the hell out of town, and let me and him fight it out!”

“No.” Faith pounded the deck with her fist again, lightly this time, once, twice…. “No. If I do, then one of you will die; maybe even both of you.”

Buffy couldn’t believe what she was hearing, or what she was feeling, when she considered where that would lead.

“If you stay, then it’s going to be you getting killed, especially if you get between us.” All she got back was a shrug, and a turn of the head that put Faith’s gaze back on the distant town’s lights.

There’s no way, no way she’s right about any of this. She’s trying to confuse me, twist what she’s done all inside out so that it seems like something different than it really is.

Could it really be as simple as Faith was making it out to be, she wondered? Was Buffy’s fundamental issue with the other Slayer something as irrational as disgust over her weakness? Disdain over her failure to live up to Buffy’s own standards? Okay, fair enough, except for the way she’s trying to say it’s not her being weak at all, just different. Not the choices I would have made, no, not what a ‘good’ person would have done. Only… she’s not claiming to be good, all she’s saying is that she got tired of being my doormat, and finally did something about it. Not to show me up, or punish me for how I treated her; if she’d wanted to do that then she would have killed the people I loved. She didn’t. All she did was find a place where she mattered, and someone who treated her with some respect. Like we should have been doing, at least a little.

All of that, whether it was true or not, would have been enough to keep a team of therapists busy shrinking Buffy’s head for a year or three, and it wasn’t even the most immediate issue here. Right now, tonight, this minute, there was the whole thing about—

Faith. Is she right about that? Do I really feel something for her like she does for me, and I’m hiding my head in the sand because I don’t think she’s good enough for me? There was, undeniably, a kind of opposites-attracting thing there, and there had been from the first night they’d met. Also, the oh-so-clever seduction thing she’d tried on the girl earlier, with the hand-holding and the leg-touching and the… the lip-smooching….

“No.” Faith’s head came around at that one word, and Buffy lifted her chin and tried her best ‘unwavering determination’ look. “I can’t be… attracted to you.” So much for unwavering; she fell back to just plain old determined. “You’re crazy, and evil, and in no way, shape or form my type. Even if you’ve got some kind of, I don’t know, honor or something, that doesn’t mean I like you.”

The younger girl looked maddeningly self-assured.

“You like me. You even want to jump me, when you’re not too busy freaking out about it.”

That was pushing things too far.

“I do not!” Buffy responded hotly, and Faith half-raised a hand to ward off her glare.

“Okay, maybe not yet. You could get there real easy, though, if you cut me half the slack you gave your pet vamp.”

Again, that wasn’t necessarily true, and yet…. And yet Buffy couldn’t say for sure that it was wrong, either. One thing was certain.

“Faith…. You scare me. You can seem so ordinary, sometimes, so young, even. And then you show me what’s underneath, and I wonder if it’s even the same person.”

Fingers coming through the damp tangles of her hair, the other girl took her time before she answered.

“I don’t know everything, B; you’ve never let me come as close as I wanted. What I think…. I think you’re the kind of person who can only love somebody who does scare you, a little. Somebody who challenges you.” She used one hand to gesture at Sunnydale, glittering there on the dark shore. “Everybody else you know is so in awe of you, so in love with Perfect Buffy, they would kiss your feet while you were kicking them in the face.” She studied the older Slayer’s face, teeth gnawing at her lower lip while she found the words. “You need somebody who loves you, and who’s still strong enough to tell you ‘no’, once in a while.” Faith unfolded her legs, and waved both hands up and down over her form like a game-show model presenting a prize. “That’s me, B. It’ll always be me, and it’ll only ever be me.”

The casual arrogance would have been annoying, or maybe even amusing, if it hadn’t been buried in the midst of everything else Buffy was feeling just then.

No. Or am I just saying ‘no’ because that’s what I’m supposed to say? She’s not… that’s not how I… there are real, logical, completely reasonable reasons why everything she said is not true.

There are.

(Do I really want to jump her?)

That was not what she needed to be focusing on, just then. Not that there was anything else she could center her whirling thoughts upon, as an alternative. She was too honest to just dismiss what had been said, for the sole reason that it had been Faith saying it. Even so, there was too much to digest; best if she fell back to the old reliable response.

“You’re wrong.” There, that felt pretty natural.

“About what?” was Faith’s inevitable reply.

“Everything.”

The girl studied her, her lips pursed, and shrugged.

“Okay, I’m wrong.”

Time passed, with the water gurgling alongside the boat, and the two of them sitting across from each other, staring.

“You are so wrong,” Buffy said, daring her to reopen the argument.

Faith just lay there, back propped against the rail and looking totally at ease.

“Got it; way wrong.”

Buffy frowned. Somehow she’d been expecting more.

“You’re just going to agree with me?” she demanded, half-angry and not even sure why. “You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong? About you being… wrong?”

Faith blinked, and tilted her head to the side, and blinked again, as if uncertain of what she was seeing.

“Why, you thinking you need me to?” she asked, softly. “You want me to be the one to tell you ‘no’?” Buffy felt the blood drain out of her face even as Faith’s mouth twitched into a tiny smile. “’Cause I can be that person for you, no problem, so long as you ask nice.”

Oh god; maybe she’s not wrong.

She ran through it all again, in her head, trying to find a safe path through the tangle of arguments. When she got to the end, she was even less sure of herself than she had been a minute before. What Faith said made the strangest kind of sense… which was enough to send her halfway into a state of shock. What was worse, the girl’s take on things felt right, and that was infinitely worse, because ultimately, this was all about feelings.

Buffy wasn’t in love with Faith; she just wasn’t.

Only… she no longer saw a reason why she couldn’t be, no longer felt an aversion to exploring the possibility of such a thing coming to pass.

“Faith?” She wasn’t sure the other girl had heard her; Buffy had barely heard herself. A moment later, though—

“Yeah?”

“I—“ Buffy swallowed, and tried to get her rapid breathing and whirling head under control. It had been a really rough night, and it wasn’t over yet. “I, um…. I think I’m going to throw up.” That prompted a short, stunned silence. When Faith recovered, though, her voice was wry.

“Well, so long as you lean over the side first, be my guest.”

Faith looked down at the top of Kira’s head. The little girl’s eyes were closed, and for a moment the former Slayer wondered if she’d managed to put the child to sleep with StoryFaith and StoryBuffy’s long-winded arguments, counterarguments and soul-searching.

Damn if I didn’t come close to putting myself to sleep with all of that, she thought ruefully. Couldn’t help it, though. It’s so fucking improbable that the two of us—I mean, the two of them—would ever get together, it took me most of an hour just to work it around to where it almost sounds like it could happen. Or at least, be able to happen, now. She stared up at the ceiling, and reflected that any psychiatrist-type eavesdropping on this little tale she was spinning would no doubt be making all kinds of notes on his clipboard, and nodding sagely at the profound significance of every word and action she was describing the story Slayers making.

Screw that; the kid wanted a story, I’m telling her a story. There’s nothing more to it than that.

Yeah, right. And she’d had that whole long riff on how it was StoryBuffy who was so good at lying to herself.

“Faith?”

She gave a little start; Kira was definitely still awake.

“What is it, sweet girl?”

Kira fidgeted just a little, before settling back down against her arm.

“Buffy gets it now, right? She’s okay with falling in love with Faith?”

The young woman squinted down, but she was still just seeing the top of Kira’s head.

“Yeah, she gets it now. Do you? I know that was long, but do you see what was going on there, with Faith doing what she did, working for the Mayor?”

The girl thought it over for a while, looking down at her bare feet and wiggling her toes as she considered.

“I think so,” she said, eventually. “It’s like what I did, when I left the hospital and ran away with you. They wanted me to be a good girl, but what they thought was ‘good’ would have been me laying there in my bed ‘till I died from the AIDS. That would have been the easy thing; staying there like they all wanted, an’ it would have killed me.” She twisted her head, and looked up at Faith with wide, guileless eyes. “I’m glad I went with you instead, an’ not just ‘cause I got better and lived.”

Faith looked at her, surprised despite herself, and smiled.

“I’m glad you did, too, kiddo.” She bent over far enough to kiss Kira on the forehead. “I am, too.”

Crap, here I am about to cry; what kind of tough chick example am I setting, here?

She cleared her throat, and looked at the far wall, to try and get her mind back on track.

“Okay, so Buffy’s finally got past what was tripping her up without her even knowing it. That still doesn’t mean she’s head-over-heals in ‘Luv’, though; just that she’s not looking to freak out and run away whenever the subject comes up.”

“So now they can hurry and get to where it’s happy?” Kira asked, hopefully.

Faith shrugged as best she could, what with a little girl on one shoulder, and a freshly-stitched gunshot wound in the other.

“Well… now they can start on it, yeah. Just remember, these two have had a lot of sh… of stuff go down, and it still won’t be easy. Especially with—“ She sighed, and settled her head back against the headboard to get comfortable. “How about I just tell you, huh?”