“Enemies” 2/14

[sroni]

Shit. He was her best friend. How the hell did that happen? She didn’t have best friends. Or at least, she didn’t used to. Then again, her life was such a hellhole before, no freaking wonder she didn’t have them. Who the hell would want to claim the group she used to roll with? Who would want to claim her? The answer to that question was Cyclops. He’d called her his friend before anyone else had, and she’d repaid him by trying to kill him, mocking and pleading for him to see her as she really was, not the persona that she threw up. To see that she needed help, and couldn’t ask for it any other way.

When he hadn’t seen, hadn’t helped, hadn’t cared, she’d given up on ever being one of them, and had gone deeper in her dark spiral of despair. (She’d been reading Shakespeare in prison, just to say she had. It bugged her that people thought she hadn’t finished school because she was dumb and couldn’t hack it. Shit, no. She just didn’t want to go. So she was working her way through Shakespeare to prove she could, and damned if she hadn’t found that she liked the language of it. Scarlet was working on her to do her GED and while the redhead had almost managed to convince her, there was still the matter of her unfinished prison stint. Part of her actually wanted to have the piece of paper, just in case she ever needed a new job. Not likely that would be a need now, but just in case. She’d never planned ahead before. Change, thy name be Faith.)

She’d woken up from her coma and found, once again, no one to help her. No one who cared.

Figured.

Story of her life. Used to be, anyway.

She pulled the body swap stunt, and saw what it was like to have people care about her … except they didn’t care about her at all. They loved their golden girl. B didn’t know how lucky she was to have people who actually cared: to have real friends, a mother who gave a damn, and a boyfriend who loved her and didn’t just want sex. Faith had seen it in Farmboy’s eyes when he thought he was looking at Buffy, talking to Buffy, sleeping with Buffy. No way in hell was he that good of an actor. See, she knew guys. They all thought they were a lot better actors than they really were. Sometimes they really were good. But Farmboy hadn’t been acting.

B had no clue.

It made her want to hit the golden girl sometimes, the way she saw B treat these people who would die for her, no questions asked. But once the initial anger disappeared, she could see that B would do the same for them, and they all knew it.

She had not wanted a friendship with Xander. She had not wanted to explain things that mattered, and have him sweep it under the rug, saying, “It’s all in the past.” No, it wasn’t all in the past. With her, past, present, and future was all a jumbled tangle of thread, and she didn’t know how to get the knots out without cutting it, which wasn’t an option.

But then Harris had to play the hero, and save one of his girls (because if you knew the guy for longer than five minutes and you were female, you became one of his girls and he would protect you until his death), and Caleb decided to use him to demonstrate that no one was safe.

When that happened, she realized that she actually cared about the brave idiot. Like, really cared. She came home from the fight, showered all the blood off, and took advantage of the oppurtunity to cry for the first time in years, and washed all traces of tears away, too, and then rushed to the hospital where she lived for the next two days in a chair before she gave up long enough to drag a cot in there. She had to deal with Kennedy during that time, too.

“I don’t get it, Faith. He doesn’t even like me that much. Why would he risk his life to save me?”

She drew a cigarette out. “Shit, girl, I’m still trying to figure it out. Best I figure is, you’re one of his. And when you become his, he won’t let you get hurt. And Scarlet is his. He would do anything to keep her from crying, so he won’t let you get hurt.”

“Do I need to be worried about him and Willow?”

Faith choked on her cigarette smoke. She almost laughed. IF she had been less worried, she probably would have. “No. They’re like brother/sister. Or maybe sister/sister. That’s all. But have you seen them talk with their eyes? It’s freaky. They can have whole conversations like that.”

When Robin came to visit Harris, he’d talked to her in the hallway afterwards, and called off whatever the hell it was with them, telling her that she obviously cared more about Harris than him. She was tired (and truthfully, didn’t give a steaming pile of dog shit) and didn’t push the issue. Before he left, he gave her a backpack with all her clothes. She’d give him props for that. He coulda just said, “We’re breaking up” and left, but he was nice enough to bring her some clothes to the hospital. She was real appreciative, since she hadn’t changed in four days.

When she went back in the room, Harris had hopped himself up on morphine. (One of the few times; the doctors were constantly trying to convince him to take more, and he kept refusing. Stubborn dumbass.)

And he wouldn’t let her near him until she promised she wouldn’t hurt him.

Shit.

She didn’t make promises, and she sure as hell didn’t make a promise not to hurt someone. It just wasn’t something she did. She knew herself too well to do that. Most of her life, she had walked a very fine line between violence and death. She wasn’t capable of anything else. She didn’t know how to do anything else.

But he was teaching her. And she was letting him.

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