“You get the Watcher. You get the mom. You get the little Scooby gang. What do I get?”
Everything that meant anything, everyone that cared about anyone… all for Buffy. Like she was the snow on a mountain or something. Beautiful and pure, didn’t have to work to get so high. Didn’t have to think about everything she covered, everybody who suffered through the winters and storms in her wake.
Faith had watched Buffy tread on her friends, use men, kill without a second thought and the world forgave her. Heck, they lined up to take their turn telling the mighty Buffy Summers how freaking sorry they were that their bad old heads scratched the bottom of her feet. She could do no wrong and everybody ended up paying for her bad choices. Forgiveness, compassion, understanding… these were things Buffy was owed without owing them in return.
----------------- Buffy was right there for the whole thing. Faith had played it over in her mind a thousand times. They were fighting… Buffy was throwing her vampires. Throw – stake… throw – stake… Why was Faith to blame for that? She’d heard about Ted, heard about the little Justice League buckling down immediately to try and figure out how killing Joyce’s boyfriend wasn’t Buffy’s fault. Where were they when she needed them?
No, Faith… that’s not how it went down. Can’t let that in. No matter how it looked Faith had learned to pull back from the black and white and not let the aching feeling that she was the negative to Buffy’s photo cloud her judgment. She couldn’t think that way, wouldn’t let herself fall back into the mindset of a victim.
They had a job to do, and nobody got anything done living in a grief-soaked fantasy. The harsh realities were that whatever Buffy had done that mirrored Faith, the reason that exceptions were made for her sister Slayer was because she deserved them. She earned them by being a selfless friend, through bravery and kindness. Faith wasn’t stupid. She knew herself well enough to know the real reason things ended so badly for her.
"Ever occur to you, Faith, that the reason we forgot you is because we wanted to?"
Something had to give, and that something was Faith. The world doesn’t care, and it won’t stop for you just because you didn’t get all the hugs you wanted back when you could stand to be touched. This stuff kicked you in the ass but you keep walking, keep climbing. Keep your head down and stop whining.
Only so many times you can trample a blade of grass before it stops springing back up, right? But it was always there… right under the surface. Like that slime from Ghostbusters… You know, down there running through the cities veins. Poisoning them from the inside. Making them angry, scared…
--------- Only nobody was coming to save the day. Not for her. So Faith had to be her own way, back to square one. She was on her side and that had to be enough.
