Not what they see
TITLE: Not What They See
AUTHOR: Fyre
EMAIL: Fyredansa@hotmail.com
SUMMARY: Faith contemplates
FEEDBACK: Tell me what ya think...please?
DISTRIBUTION: "AngelBuffyImprov" and anywhere else - just ask.
SPOILERS: Season 4-Buffy/Season 1-Angel
COUPLE: None
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of this is mine. I just play with it.
CLASSIFICATION: I have my solo moments
NOTES: Yet another improv - this time : hollow-wander-silver-fitting. Also, my first Faith POV.
DEDICATED: To Eliza - for blessing us with such a fantabulously mysterious character.
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Watching the houses flit passed through the dark curtains of my hair, the moon gleaming like a silver quarter in the deep night sky outside, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't managed to escape.
Jail, probably.
No.
Definitely. There's no probably about it.
But I did. I escaped and, right now, I'm on my way to the deepest darkest place I could go to, the only place I know that has people who are as bad as me.
Dark is good sometimes.
It's a place that I've grown more and more familiar with, it's my sanctuary, my shelter, the only place where I actually don't have to be in fear of B's shadow crowding me.
Anyone's shadow. It's so dark, that even the smallest shadow can't be seen. So I can't be seen. That's what I want.
Just to disappear into nothingness.
But the darkness won't let me. It's my master now. I can't escape from it, no matter how I fight, no matter how I reach for the light, the darkness tightens its hold on me, pulls me back, deeper and harder.
They don't get it, but that's because they're all safe and warm and happy in the light.
The darkness means nothing to you, unless you touch it, carelessly wander into it without looking – the moment you’ve touched it, no matter how careful you think you are, it you and you can never escape.
I thought I could handle it. It’s like a drug. You swear you’ll never be the one to get hooked, but you do. It’s always the same. At first, I was so sure of myself, so confident, I went to the person I knew I shouldn't. Another person who had the confidence to be in the darkness like me.
He knew what it was like to be dark, but he knew how to hold the mask that said he was in the light. I did at first, but the more I think about it, it seems like he was the darkness. The thing that still holds me. The thing I can't escape.
At first, he was someone for me to turn to. B had G-Man and Wes, but neither of them wanted anything to do with me. I was...an unpredictable character. She had two Watchers. I had nothing.
No matter how I reached to them, they only saw her, in all her sunny and wonderful glory. They didn't see me, I was just a dark, unseen spot obscured by her shadow, easy to ignore and forget about, not worth their efforts.
So, I embraced the only thing that would comfort me, fighting for him, doing what he wanted, letting myself be taken over by everything that dear old B would never even look at.
Seeing her and her close circle of friends only made me depend on him more. I had no one else to turn to, but she had everyone, so close and tight.
It made me resent her.
Never hated her. I couldn't. She was another like me, only the goody-goody version and she had tried, made a real attempt to be a friend.
But darkness and light don't mix.
So, I resented her. I wanted what she had. A semi-normal life, friends, trust, appreciation of any kind. Something. Anything.
Happiness was too much to ask for, though.
Never had it, never will.
It's a reality I've started to face and now, after what I did to them, all of them, I know that there's no way in hell that I'll ever be forgiven by any of them, especially B.
It should satisfy me, knowing I've damaged her life, made her feel a little pain, but it doesn't.
It hurts.
I try not to believe I still care for her. For all her crew, but I do. For a little while, they made me feel like I belonged, that I was one of 'them'.
They killed the one person who had helped me, so I desperately wanted to hurt them for that. To me, when I started out, it seemed fitting that I was avenging my lost father, the man who had cared for me.
Not now, though.
Seeing her hurt, the betrayal, I just wished I could be struck down, destroyed, killed. I feel hollow, empty, completely and utterly lost.
I had betrayed her before, but even after that, she had forgiven me, told me I could change, be saved.
Not this time.
Not for the first time in my life, I saw hatred.
I had lost one of the people who could have been my salvation from the darkness. She had cut the rope that held me up, letting me fall deeper, leaving me at the mercy of my guilt and despair.
They don't understand why I did what I did, even though I told B once, how jealous I was, how I was always being compared to her, always coming second best, expected to be like her.
That's why I wasn't. That's why I pulled this mask over myself. I knew I was worth something, that I was special, that I could be good for something, but never as long as she was around, being the great Goddess of B-dom.
I didn't seem to care, I said I didn’t care, but the problem really is that I cared too much. I cared about being hurt and lonely, so I became the bitch of all bitches to keep people at a distance, so no one could get close, like my first Watcher.
The first person I had ever been close to, after being pulled away from my family, and she got killed, all because of the damn sacred duty thing.
But, my plan backfired. They weren't meant to start hating me, I didn't want that much, didn't want to be rejected by the Watchers as a liability. In the end, I became a Judas to the group, selling my soul to someone who I thought cared – my thirty pieces of silver, a Playstation and nice apartment.
Another reason for me to turn to the Mayor. He gave affection and everything I wanted – seemingly unconditionally – and insisted he would always be there to take care of me, even after the Ascension.
Dead.
The Ascension went as planned, until B and co. decided to fight back and blow the school up. Never thought the girl would have the imagination to do it. Gotta give her credit.
And Angel survived.
The way I got it figured, he drank from her. She had a scar on her neck I hadn't seen until I was in her body. And it could only be a bite, a hard one.
He was no average guy.
I wanted him, there's no doubt of that.
But I was nothing more than another Slayer. Even if I wasn't the goody-goody he had as a squeeze.
And I tried to destroy him time and time again, even after he tried to pull me back out of the darkness.
He knows the darkness too. He's touched it, he's been deeper in there than I ever have, he knows the pain that can come with it.
Maybe that's why I want to find him. I don't know. I still want to get out of this, before it kills me, sucks the life out of me.
He was my second lifeline, after B but who can say if he will still want to help me? After everything I did before the summer, almost destroying him - he might just walk away.
Half of me wants to kill him, because he's handled the darkness. He can live with it, every single day. He faces it and has an unlife to deal with.
The other half wants me to make him kill me. He knows the darkness, so he knows what its like, why I want away, why I would be better off dead and buried.
The others didn't see that in him. The darkness was nothing to them, just like my 'issues' were nothing. It wasn't how they saw me. I was just a 'problem child'.
Which is why, after attacking my friends and their families, ruining their relationships, almost being the aid in bringing in apocalypse, being in a coma and too much other painful stuff to go into, I'm sitting in a dark bus, heading towards L.A.
Going to a city of shadows, to find the one escapee of the darkness who may be able to help me into the light and let me prove to myself - and to them - that I'm not what they see.
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