June 2000

Best way to ignore this pounding in my heart, so I figured in my infinite wisdom the other day, was just to carry on as normal right? No need for a big change, no need to let the old Faith back in as that clearly hasn’t worked in getting my mind off the path marked Buffy Summers. No need for me to get all wiggy when she is near, cos well I have slayer strength, so somewhere inside me there must be slayer control too. And that means I can handle the dark, tepid nights when we’re just the two of us hanging in the cemetery, waiting for some vamps to dust, just like a couple of regular gals out on a regular kinda...I wanna say date, but I’m supposed to be with the not wigging over B here, and regular gals don’t have dates, and if they do I can’t imagine that Red took T-T-Tara to Sunnydale’s answer to Tales from the Crypt the first time she slipped her the tongue....though I wonder where that little moment of relationship history did take place? And why should I care? Jeez Faith, focus much????

So I’m carrying on as normal. I’m turning up for practice, not exactly on time and dressed appropriately but hey, I’m there and when I’m there I’m good little boxing slayer, or flying kick slayer, or the slayer that comes with her own handy Byzantine axe. I particularly liked the slayer that got to hit farmboy to the mat with a back kick cos he just "accidentally" got in my way.....hey, I never saw him Giles, he can be pretty stealthy you know, Initiative training and all that.

Accept I had heard him, of course I had. Slayer ears remember? All the better to hear you with, asshole!!!

B and me were training together, but not, you know, training together, as ever since that day B hit me, both of us have been a bit cautious with the trading blows for old times sake routine. So B is over by the punch bag, Giles holding on to it and looking like he wishes he wasn’t. Blondie is sure pummelling that bag pretty hard I remember thinking to myself, but let it slide, cos that wouldn’t be carrying on as normal, right? And just to prove to myself I am calm in her presence, that I haven’t noticed the sheen of sweat building up over her shoulder blades, glinting in the light from the window, reminding me of how long its been since I saw a chick’s blades glimmer with sweat, and not only how long but where I’d been positioned at the time of that particular memory. Yeah just to prove I am SO dealing with the me and B thing, I’m practising the ti-chi stuff Giles thinks is really cool. He probably likes it so much cos its nice and slow and he can do it in his tweeds, but for once I really let myself get into it. Cos its right what the old dali master of the magic shop says, you do get into the zone whilst your breathing and stretching like that, and when you are in the zone, nothing else matters. Translation being, I’ve found a B free place to go to, even when she is in the same room as me and I can smell her perfume. But when I zoned out in the training room, moving one arm around in an arc, a quickened version of the same move would have resembled a really solid elbow punch to some un-lucky vamp, I forgot all about that perfume, and the tight grey top she had on dampened in all the right places with her sweat. I was just out there man, pretty freaky stuff when you stop and think about it.

Or so I thought until I heard footsteps behind me, off to the right. Distinctive, big footfalls that I’d heard before. And I realised I wasn’t totally zoned out after all, cos not only could I place exactly where those footsteps were, I knew who they belonged to and what that cardboard cut-out of a soldier had said in the magic shop the other day. Thinking of that made me think of B again, and all that hard concentrating with the whole breathe out-out-out-in shit Giles had taught me went to waste, as my zone was completely gate-crashed by the one person that I was trying not to think about. So when Army Boy moved closer, I’m guessing he was just gonna ignore me completely and go straight for the top-shelf over there by the punch bag, I just kinda lashed out. Wasn’t thinking of much when I did it. Maybe it crossed my mind as my leg connected with his midsection and he bent double, that it was payback for the other day. Maybe I even thought as I delivered a two handed blow to his back sprawling him to the floor, that it was because he had come in, breaking my concentration, making me think of B. But when I looked up from his sorry lame ass on the mat, to the surprise on B’s face I realised why I’d done it. And I sure as shit was hoping that it wasn’t written all over my face as she came over to the both of us.

I was visited by the little green demon, commonly known in human circles as jealousy.

He gets to have B and I don’t, so I did what any gal in my situation would do, I decked him.

That’s carrying on as normal wouldn’t ya say?

Five by five