Faith walked down the empty street alone and cold. Sunnydale wasn't cold. Ever. Not even now. It wasn't the weather that made her cold. It was the emptiness. The emptiness in her heart that gave her a chill. The fear in her soul that caused her to wrap her light jacket around her even tighter. It had nothing to do with the weather. It never did. Even on the hottest days she was still cold and alone. Dead inside. That was until a certian blonde entered her life. The one with so much warmth in her heart that it kept her alive for a short while. She was born again in this light, the light she prayed would never end but inevitably did. She had a habit of doing that. Pushing away and fighting, lashing out when somebody tried to be there for her. Then again, before Buffy nobody had ever really been there for her. Maybe that was why she couldn't deal, why she had reacted in the stupidest way imaginable. Why she had shut down and given up. Taken the easy way out. The only way out. Again and again, no matter how many times she rehearsed it, when things finally came down to it, she couldn't. She just couldn't. She couldn't tell Buffy how she really felt, she couldn't talk to her, fall into her arms and cry. She couldn't do anything to make her wrongs right. All she could do was compound the hurt and make it worse. Not only for Buffy, but for herself. The look in Buffy's eye when she exchanged barbs with her, the pain on her face in combat. Not that she would hold back. Quite the opposite. The firey blonde would fight back harder, and get more and more intense with each blow. Maybe that was one of the things that attracted her so much. Then again, there was so many things it was impossible to choose just one, or to even isolate it enough to name it. Faith thought back to the time when things hadn't been so rocky. So flammable. Maybe things were better then, or maybe they weren't. Maybe it was easier to tell herself that they were, and deny the truth. The truth that hurt so much. To pretend that neutral was better than acidic was a lie. Bigger than just smoothing out the cracks in her memories, it was erasing the entire thing and throwing it away. She couldn't forget, it was to sell herself short. **"Show me how you do that trick The one that makes me scream" she said "The one that makes me laugh" she said And threw her arms around my neck "Show me how you do it And I promise you I promise that I'll run away with you I'll run away with you"** Tricks, games, played many times over with Buffy and then repeated in her mind even more. If only that promise had been real, if only it had been stronger. It wasn't. Words tossed like leaves in the wind, floating aimlessly, with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. No destination and no starting point, flowing continuously never ending. She couldn't take that. Couldn't live like that, couldn't be the puppet any longer. Her childhood had been enough to last a lifetime. More than just one life time in fact. She had enough manipulation in her, both used for her and against her, to last several life times. That was maybe something to her advantage, then again, more often than not, it had caused her great pain. She couldn't just play the game, she couldn't show Buffy how she did the tricks that made her smile, and Buffy would never run away with her. The closeness and the distance, all rolled into one. The empty words and lost promises. All of these things combined had sent her spinning off out of control. If she couldn't have what she so wanted and needed in the arms of the one she loved, she'd get there another way. Know thine enemy, keep them closer than friends. That was how this was going to work, there was no other choice. **Spinning on that dizzy edge I kissed her face and kissed her head And dreamed of all the different ways I had To make her glow "Why are you so far away?" she said "Why won't you ever know that I'm in love with you That I'm in love with you" ** After that things were changed forever. Buffy's dynamic with Angel was skewed, and Faith was forever thrown into demonic obscurity, not really fitting in with the bad guys or the good. Not really demonic, not really evil, fully hurting and fully human. What had that done to "them" if she dared even call it that. Had it brought them closer? Torn them apart? Ruined their lives forever? Impossible. If there was one thing she knew for sure, it was that without Buffy there was no life. She'd rather die than go on knowing what she'd lost and what she needed but could never have. **You Soft and only You Lost and lonely You ** All she could think about, all she was. What was Buffy then? Was the slayer the same without her other half? Her own personal demon? Was she really just as lost without Faith as Faith was without her? Could this be? Or was it, like most things, wishful thinking. Thoughts that she so wanted to be realities she did everything in her power to make them so. Her weakness. Her weakness that she mistook for power. Though she wasn't sure, she could have sworn that as the knife plunged into her gut a flicker of something closely resembling pain flashed in Buffy's eyes. Was it pain for Angel? Pain for herself? Or, could it have been pain for Faith? Was it an unasked question? Was it the final WHY? Why did things have to be this way? Why weren't the different? Why were the fighting against each other and not side-by-side? WHY? **Strange as angels Dancing in the deepest oceans Twisting in the water You're just like a dream** That was why. There was no Buffy, she was merely a spectre. A reflection that Faith created. What she could have been, what she should have been, what she wanted to be. What she wanted to have. Everything that was missing from her life, all in one package. That couldn't be it. Not exactly. She didn't want herself. She had never loved or even respected herself. That she had been taught at a young age. She wanted Buffy. She didn't want to be her. Buffy was her dream. Perfection, too good for her, so above her. Something Faith could never have, something she never deserved and never would deserve. Thoughts and feelings of inadeqacy plagued her. Eight monthes of silent reflection in the scariest place of all. Her mind. Her naked unbriddled mind. Like she was being punished. The bad child sent to her room to think about what she had done. The ultimate punishment. Eight monthes of Faith. Of herself, seeing who she was for what she was worth. The truth. No lies, makeup, seduction, no false exteriors here. Go to your room. Think about what you've done. Then with a magnificent flash it was over. The dreams stopped, the pain dulled. **Daylight licked me into shape I must have been asleep for days And moving lips to breathe her name I opened up my eyes And found myself alone alone.** Awake and alone. Cold and scared. Back into reality. Her name no longer a mere breath away...her face a few steps further. Alone. So close and yet so far. No matter where she was it didn't matter. She had been saying the name over and over again, until daylight licked her into shape. Now nothing mattered. The loneliness was too much to bear. Buffy wasn't even Buffy anymore. The first sight, the interaction, the jabs. Empty, and alone. Like two shells, life sized marionettes. Controlled by an unforgiving master, the fates casting the die of destiny and not caring where it landed. Carelessly moving game pieces on a board, throwing some aside and breaking others. Sunnydale wasn't Sunnydale without it's slayer, and she was gone. Buffy wasn't there anymore, she had died with the school. As Faith had gone with the mayor, Buffy had gone as well. Both dead, no longer masters of either domain. Both alone, both cold and both scared. **Alone above a raging sea That stole the only girl I loved And drowned her deep inside of me** They had killed each other. Isolation the drug of one and assimilation the other. Faith really was alone in the world, the raging sea. The world that had cruelly stolen her Buffy and made the one-time warrior one of them. Drowned in the unforgiving sea of faceless existence. If one could even call it that. **You Soft and only You Lost and lonely You Just like heaven** She had died and come back, but she had been to heaven once in her existence and that was more than anybody could ever ask for.