Chapter One

The first time I saw him, I was on my way to Sunnydale.

It seems so long ago now, the Faith I was then. I poured myself into leather and wicked attitude, thinking that could cover up the terror like makeup did bruises on my face as a kid. Five by five, that’s all I let them see, just Faith getting the job done, dealing and moving on.

But there I was, running through St. Louis, running like the hounds of hell were on my heels. I didn’t let it show of course, not me, not the tough girl from Boston. But my watcher was dead and I was desperately trying to keep up with a pounding heart too fried on adrenaline, convinced my head was the next to roll.

I’d hopped off the freight train, starved, and I wandered around the city. Didn’t take much food to keep me alive, I’d discovered, but I was still restless for the hunt. I hadn’t been a real slayer long, just enough to know the exhilaration in a cloud of dust, the low down tickle of a bruised cheek and busted rib. So I walked, slower than running, but still fucking flight. I was the slayer, I wasn’t supposed to run. I was supposed to kick the bad guy’s ass.

Four hours, that’s all I had until the train rolled out and kept going, and I ran into the other coast, or the other slayer, whichever came first. I wasn’t sure if Kakistos could swim, but damned if I wasn’t going to find out.

So what’d I do during those few hours to kill? I went down to the riverfront. Mostly abandoned warehouses, but it felt different from the rest of the city. Alive somehow, even with no one around. It made my skin hum the way vampires did, but not. I knew they weren’t really there, no matter what my frizzled arm hairs told me. But I walked anyway, itching for a vamp to show up to give him a good staking, wishing the phantoms I could feel were real.

I rounded a corner when I saw him: a blondish man, only a little taller than I was, brandishing the biggest gun I’d ever seen. I mean, talk about overcompensation issues. I almost stopped then and slipped back into the shadows, but he hadn’t seen me. I shifted to see what he was pointing at, but there was nothing there.

He pulled the trigger, cold eyes utterly emotionless, and I jumped about ten feet in the air. Vampires? No problem. Creepy demony things? Not really. But guns? Those made me want to hide under the bed like I did as a little girl, when one of mom’s men came around, drunk or stoned, wanting nothing more than a quick fight and even quicker screw. I didn’t want either, so I made myself small and hid under the bed. Mashing my hands over my ears, I could still see breaking furniture from beneath the ragged sheets, and feel the springs on the bed above me bounce.

I’d gotten away from that these last few months, just for a little while. I loved my watcher for giving me a new life, something to do besides fend off mom’s boyfriends and watch my neighbors getting capped for selling bad shit. I loved her for giving me a few months when I was the center of someone’s universe. But it didn’t matter. She still left, just like the rest of them. And this time it was my fault.

The man stuffed his gun in a shoulder holster and crouched. As he neared the sticky, hot pavement, something else came into view. Something large and furry and very dead. I gasped, but I didn’t want him to see me. Not really. He was as tough as I wanted to be, tough as I said I was. I melted back into the shadows but he didn’t notice; it was as if I wasn’t there.

Really not there, as in not his world. He was talking to someone over the corpse, which melted into bloody human right before my eyes, and nodded. I’d seen some freaky shit since being activated, but this was really out there.

I stepped into the streetlight, and still he ignored me. The shivers on my skin ramped up so much I flashed back to the time I got creative and tried to cut the electrical cord from the lamp to make it too dark so the man of the day would go away. He didn’t; I got second degree burns on my fingers and a whap upside the head from my mom for messing up a trick. It was that kind of tingle when I stepped closer.

But still nothing. One hand outstretched, I crept forward until inches separated us. He was average at first glance, but when I got right up close…When I got close it was as if I was seeing Death. The death I tossed out day after day was here, and he was human. I couldn’t resist; I just had to touch. Just a bit more and--

My hand went right through him. He shuddered, twisting around to see what ruffled the hairs on the back of his neck, and I yanked my hand back. It was the first emotion I had seen on his face, an almost apprehension, a feeling of ‘off’, of ‘not right’, of ‘not mine’. He turned back to the corpse on the ground and slowly began to fade. I reached forward again, but the electricity was gone. He evaporated into the hot shimmer on the street.

I still stood there staring, waiting for him to come back, to tell me how he did it. How he kept it all inside, how he turned it off, how he could keep running and not let it all in. My hands were trembling, and I clutched the strap of my pack hard. All I could do was bolt down the street, sprinting away from the sudden feeling of loss.

I made the train out of the station, snuggling down between two containers I hoped were tied down tight. No point getting this far to be squashed like some bug. The countryside sped by, turning to liquid dark flowing thick. I closed my eyes and concentrated on that face, the face of Death, the face I wanted to become. If I could just to do that, to cut it all out, maybe I could make it, maybe I could be safe.

I remember that ride through the night, when I was afraid that would be the last time I would see him. Now I know it would have been better if it had been. Maybe I wouldn’t be where I am now. I had no idea it was only the beginning of our relationship. I should have known all men were just in it for the chase. Why would he be any different? But it was just as much my fault. It always is in the end: want, take, have, screw yourself over. The story of my existence.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The next time I saw him was less than a week later. Los Angeles was smoldering under a blanket of smog as I walked through the streets by the bus station. The next ride to good old Sunny-D didn’t leave for four hours, so I had some time to kill. Restless and wound up, I walked.

This was the great L.A. - land of impossible dreams, of starlets and back lots, of earthquakes and heartbreaks. Truth be told, I wasn’t all that impressed. Fake breasts and fake tans weren’t high on my list of sights to see, and while everyone seemed so conscious of how they looked, I could tell just how scared they all were. I could even smell it on the air, sour under all that sun tan lotion.

Except they weren’t scared of being gutted. Maybe they were scared of falling down, of not getting that next promotion, of not making the audition - hell, even of getting a wrinkle to mar that perfect skin. I wondered if they even knew it. If they knew the race they ran was winding down day by day, and in the end they’d lose, just like the demons I fought nightly. They always lose, and someday I would to - but not today.

I was headed for a new start, the fabled Sunnydale, the land of the golden Slayer, the one my watcher had been so enamored of even then. She’d say, “Faith, you’re not alone. There’s another, and she’s been magnificent. Oldest slayer in years…”

Of course, it wasn’t all that impressive, since I knew I wouldn’t be here unless she’d kicked the bucket at least once, but my watcher didn’t want to hear that. The chosen two just didn’t have the same ring as the chosen one. Comparisons started as soon as I began training. And when I actually met Buffy, I thought I could compete and come out on top. After all, I was Faith the Vampire Slayer. And all you need is a little Faith.

But I didn’t know anything about that then. I was still full of hopes and dreams of not being dead in the near future, and I relished the feel of sunshine on my skin as I walked farther and farther away from my ticket to the next place to hang my stake. The air was stiff and dirty, but I didn’t care. This was California. This was Los Angeles. This was my new start.

I walked down by some clothing and fashion warehouses, looking in the plate glass windows, wondering what it would be like to have a normal life. A boring nine to fiver with screaming kids, a nagging husband who wouldn’t take out the garbage, a never-ending mortgage. And for a second, I wished it could be me.

The shadows and reflections of other people flowed by in the glass, rippled and distorted from the actual shapes, and for a second, I wondered which was real — if the wavy reflections were the real people, the way they were inside. Would mine be as twisted as my mother’s had been? What about demons? I knew vampires cast no reflection, but what about other demons…what would they show?

Pretty deep thoughts for a tough girl like me, right? Well, maybe, but just 'cause I’d rather fuck you or kill you than talk to you these days don't mean that’s all there is or ever was. Not that they looked deeper. To Giles, I was another burden. To Willow, I was a threat. To Xander - well, first I was a piece of tail and later something to save. To Angel, a kindred soul turned into an after school special. To Joyce, another daughter, but she didn’t even know the one she had. To Dick, someone to care for, to indulge, to give the choicest kills. To Buffy? Well, isn’t that the question. To Buffy, I was the dark half, the person she saw in the mirror and pretended didn’t exist, the twisted part inside that relished the kill more and more. Course, it’s all fucking irrelevant now.

The colors of the shadows bled together in one continuous rainbow stream, and I had to smile. What if California really was the end of the rainbow, the promised land? Would I find my own pot of gold? Screw that, but try telling me then.

Suddenly, the air felt charged, felt alive. I stopped, staring at the store front window. Out of the passing crowd behind me, I could see a sleek blond head weaving between the pedestrians. I knew who it was immediately, but when I turned my head over my shoulder, he vanished, as if he wasn’t part of my crowd, but one of his own. Fascinated, I looked back to look at the window, trying to catch a glimpse of his face again.

I know it sounds silly, but I wanted to see if he was really as strong as I remembered. And if he was, maybe I could borrow some of that strength — if I could find a way to ask. Maybe it could keep me alive. How funny and true that turned out to be. Irony’s a bitch.

But back to him. He was there, in the reflection, walking casually. He was…stalking something, much as I had always done, but I couldn’t see what.

Suddenly, a flicker of silver in his hand, and the man in the lavender suit in front of him staggered. He kept walking, nonchalant, and cruised around the corner. I raced after him, still staring at the store fronts. As long as I kept my eyes on the glass, I could see him a few feet in front. Finally he stopped and lazily opened a newspaper, leaning against the same store front that I did.

I faced him, the back of his head in the reflection and sighed. Death tilted his chin so his face was highlighted in profile. He was so still, so controlled, not even a fleck of emotion on his face. I schooled my face to be just as blank as his, but couldn’t hold it. Some of my more charming Boston arrogance slipped through, twisting my lips up into a smirk.

What would my watcher say if she could see me now — making faces into a donut shop, seeing hallucinations, and chasing ghosts around corners. But she couldn’t see me, and if she could have — well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have been headed to Sunnydale any time soon.

Very slowly, as if he were afraid of startling something, he straightened and looked into the shop. Crystal blue eyes searched the distance for a moment before snapping into focus—looking directly into mine.

For an instant, I thought I saw something in his eyes besides drowning cold emptiness. A spark of interest, a bit of flame. I knew he could see me and I wondered what he saw. Did he see the real me or some twisted reflection? We held each other’s gaze until someone brushed against my back. I turned to tell them off, but when I looked back he was gone, melted into the early evening heat as if he never existed. I even wondered then whether he was real or imaginary, but now? Now I know.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I never did see him in Sunnydale, not really. Seeing is different from remembering, or whatever the hell happened when I dreamed. Sometimes I thought I caught glimpses of him out of the corner of my eye, but I never felt that ozone tingle on my skin.

He’d come to me sometimes at night, dancing dreams of death and destruction. I’d watch in awe and not a little bit of lust, fingers curling on my thighs. He was so…efficient in his task, so fucking efficient, that I’d wake up out of breath and wicked turned on.

The dreamscapes were always strange places. Mostly he would kill something, but there were occasional glimpses of something more to his life, a shadow of finding the fun that seemed so wrong for those dead eyes. I was always on the outside, never wrassling it out with whatever he was killing. There was no sense of connection like the afternoon in Los Angeles. He was carrying out his life, and I was merely a spectator.

I wasn’t used to being the spectator. I was the slayer, the chick that went out there and hacked and slashed and killed the bad demons dead. It was my thing, my only thing, the bit that separated me from everyone else. Until her.

I mean, I knew she was existed, the perfect golden slayer, but it wasn’t the same thing seeing her with her pack of groupies. And they wondered why I was never around. I was suffocating, drowning in imperfections pointed out in regular rotation. Not bright enough, not fast enough, not ‘trainable’ enough, not freaking blonde enough. It made me itchy and jumpy.

Of course, the FUBAR mess with Gwendolyn Post didn’t help. If I can’t trust the people I’m supposed to trust, who can I? I could trust myself. I could trust the demons to do what demons always did. And I could trust Death. Night after night, I could trust him to sweep into my dreams with wicked firepower or stealthy executions and show me how it should be done.

I don’t think anyone ever saw me checking out Giles’ books. Watcher books had lots of information but nothing to explain why Death popped up, either inside or outside my head, or why he was a blond guy carrying a flamethrower. After all, why would I look? I don’t even think Willow believed I could read. Oh, I was smart enough for the slaying, but I know how they looked at me — Willow, Giles and that pansy-assed Wesley. God he was pathetic. Smooth move Ex-lax, trying to kidnap me to England. Oh that so helped.

Of course, that pushed me to meet Dick, and he was a wonder. He let me see things, see how the world outside of the Scoobies worked. Hey, if I was going to spend my nights killing things, why shouldn’t I get paid? After all, there’s nothing quite like your own pad, even if I had to put up with milk and miniature golf.

Poor Dick, I wonder what ever happened to him. He was an evil bastard, but he was my evil bastard, someone who really cared. He used to send me to errands, but never made me feel worthless. He sent me to Santa Barbara once, right up the coast, to pick up a statue.

That was the last time I saw Death in my world. I have no fucking clue what that statue ever did, but the cave where it was buried had a low smooth pool of water off to one side, glimmering in the torch light. I chucked a pebble or two in while I waited for Rosco and Eddie to kill the Manacula demon.

It was nothing at first, but then I could feel it. That electrical storm tingle I thought I’d forgotten.

I sent the boys on ahead, waiting, watching, and there he was. He shimmered up from the water surface, slim and lethal, holding a pelt of some sort in his left hand. He smiled, an empty vicious smile and flipped open his cell phone, frowning at the lack of reception.

I moved forward, shivering with excitement as he stepped from the pool onto hard rock. He didn’t disappear, but he didn’t seem to see me. I stood directly in his way, and when he passed through me, my world froze.

We both felt it then, stepping back to get a better look. His eyes met mine, a flicker of surprise and he raised his hand, fingers just brushing the line of my cheek.

He raised an eyebrow and said one word. “Interesting.”

I smiled slowly, lips curled up baring teeth. “Very.”

His touch was like magic, not the cheesy stuff on TV or that half-assed Wicca crap Willow did. No, this was wild and painful and made my nipples hard. He tilted his head to one side, pale eyes not so lifeless, more intent, as if they were working on a puzzle. He moved his fingers down my throat, until he traced my collarbone.

I took a shallow breath, closing my eyes briefly.

“This lean tigress burning bright, comes to me at end of night. What secrets I find here, touch my finger to her death day by day.”

I snapped my eyes open, starting at him intently. He didn’t seem to be laughing at all, more puzzled, and I moved my lips as if to speak. He shook his head, frowning, and turned his head over his shoulder to as if to say something.

And like that he was gone. I could hear Eddie outside complaining about the lack of night left. Things to do, people to kill, so I left. I let myself into Dick’s library later, but there were no more helpful books there either. I wasn’t that into book learning anyway.

Guess I should have paid more attention to those stupid little meetings. Not that they talked to me, or noticed I was there unless they needed something killed, but if they’d just told me what went on then maybe this whole situation could have been avoided.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The night when I finally lost was way too soon, gutted with my own knife even. Gotta give that girl points for creativity as I can’t say I saw it coming, not really. I was living life entirely large, handling myself just fine. I’d almost convinced myself that Buffy would never reach the twisted shadow in the mirror, could never become enough like her dark twin to do the deed.

Never pays to underestimate blond cheerleaders.

So there I fell to the back of the garbage truck, my life leaking out into the piles of trash. It was surprisingly painless, the slow slipping away into nothingness.

I almost let myself go, gave it all up, that fight, but then I remembered him. He’d given me the strength to play my supposed friends, to get myself ahead in the game, and he couldn’t let me go now. And so I slipped into the black, holding that one last vision to me tightly.

Somehow I knew I was gone, not dead, but gone. I wandered through a fever dream of Buffy in her room, making that stupid bed, saying whatever it was the Powers forced me to say to betray the man who treated me like family, and I screamed inside my own head. But the vision me didn’t hear, just going through the motions of whatever crap came next like some puppet.

And I knew, somehow I knew, I’d given Buffy the information she needed to win. In that moment, I became fury itself. I raged in my blank prison, sick to death that I’d let him down. That he’d let me down. He’d promised to keep me safe, to build me my own little world to rule in. But now I was here and he was never going to make it all right again. Ever.

Buffy’s bedroom faded, leaving me alone with my memories pulling at one or another like loose threads on a blanket. In the beginning they were tender, half forgotten scenes with my first watcher, some with Dick, even a few with Joyce before that fell apart. Dick giving me that dress to wear, so silly and utterly not me, but just because he cared. Joyce offering me more tater tots. Simple things.

Next came the darkness of battle, the fighting and sweating and drive that came with being a slayer. I shoved that beam through Kakistos over and over. I killed vampires by the score. When I was fighting the whole world went away, I always won, and they always lost. I fought the legions beat every last one.

But that wasn’t the end. I felt of betrayal and grief when my supposed friends turned their backs, the world of pain when they just gave up. Furious, I pushed further and further until I came up with him—the simple beauty of each kill. Something to hold onto. Something to believe in. Something I wanted to be.

In some of the memories there was a woman, shadowy and indistinct, watching like I did. Curious, I wove my way through the images, chasing her trail. Eventually, she stopped and turned, watching the blond man shove a shiv between the ribs of an innocent looking woman.

She cocked her head, tapping her finger on her lip. She spoke softly, almost to herself. “Well done, I can see why you like his technique. So very…thorough.”

I felt as if I should know her, or at least why she was there in my prison of flesh. Seemed a bit rude to just go barging around in someone else’s psyche; none of my other memories talked to me. That didn’t seem to concern her all that much as she looked around with a small smile on her face. I think I just stared at her.

“Seems like you’ve got quite the pattern going on here, what with your mother, Angel, your watchers—all of them, I might add—and now poor Mayor Wilkins. He just left you all alone didn’t he? How horrid…” She trailed off watching me closely.

I nodded slowly.

“Don’t you wish you could do something about it? Make it better somehow?”

This made me almost remember something I’d overheard Willow say about wishing and other bad things, but it didn’t really seem to matter then. I laughed, low, throaty, as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

“Wish? Hell, lady, I wish for lots of things. Not like any are going to happen.”

She arched a perfect brown brow, curly hair bouncing over her shoulder. “You know so much then, what’s possible and what’s not?”

I sighed, rubbing the spot on my stomach where I knew Buffy had cut my real body. “Anything’s possible.”

She grinned. “Of course. That’s the idea. So…if you could…what would you wish?”

I thought hard then about what I wanted more than anything else in the world, some way to take away the hurt, guilt, betrayal. And then it came to me, the answer.

I gestured to my Death as he shot something off in the distance, his face completely blank, empty. “I wish I was like him, exactly like him.”

She breathed deeply, her face shifting into veins and twisted skin. “Done.”

I remembered then what I had overheard the Scoobies talking about as I crouched high above them in the stacks—wishing could change the world. But hell, I didn’t care. Anywhere I ended up had to be better than where I was then, suspended in that world of painful past.

Guess I should have been more specific, but who ever said I had a plan?

Suddenly, I was there, watching him as he walked through an empty field. The grasses were scrubby, the sand dusty and dry, and I could feel the echo of grit caught in my throat. There were mountains in the distance, sharp and snow topped. He moved carefully, searching the horizon for something. He paused, tense, and turned to face me. Eyebrows raised, he took a step forward and stopped.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” he said, voice low and smooth.

“I’ve never been here before,” I answered, just as calmly.

That was before the panic set in, before I understood exactly what I’d done. I had so many days after that to figure it all out, to learn what I’d become.

A shade, a phantom.

Nothing but a wisp of breeze unless I was near him. I no more existed in his realm of existence than he had in mine, but unlike him, this was all that remained. My body was still broken and dull; I had nothing else.

If I were near enough, I was almost real. I could touch him, fuck him, feel his prey, still hand out death night by night with slayer grace. He craved that part of me, the pain and violence, the efficient destruction. I craved it because it was all I had left.

But only near him. If I tried to wander away, I got jacked. I was nothing and worst of all, he was the only one to see me. Others passed right by me, through me. I was truly nothing but death’s bitch. But wasn’t this what I wished for? To be like him, a deadly shade that no one could see but me? That demon lady honored my words to the letter.

So I’m stuck here for who knows how long. Just me and my Death, my Edward.

~Fin~

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