Take her please.

Added another chapter. This will probably be the only one today - due to the Turkey day tomorrow. Please, please, please tell me what you think. I realize that is begging, but I so don't care.


Chapter 6

Buffy's POV

Fuck a goddamn duck! Giles.

"Umm… I can explain," I stammered.

He just looked at me. Oh, okay. I guess I was supposed to explain then.

"Umm, see Faith, she's…well she's here."

He looked over to her. "Well yes Buffy. We have now established that you can state the obvious." He turned to Faith, "Now to the not so obvious. Exactly why are you here, Faith?"

Faith just stared at him. I could see something rising inside of her. She shook it off though, "I left you the letter. I know you got it."

"Of course I did."

She frowned, "so why did you not do what I asked?"

"Because what you wanted was not best," he stated.

"Who says?"

He cleared his throat, "I said. I was not going to give her to a family that didn't know about her. That was asking too much. She needed to be kept close. What if she exhibited certain symptoms – slayer symptoms? Plus, she was exactly what we needed. And I don't regret my decision for a moment." He looked to me and smiled, “None of us do.”

Faith didn't say anything at first. I wasn’t sure if she was controlling her anger or just masking it. "It wasn't what I wanted."

What? "Who cares what you wanted?" I said.

She has got to be kidding me. What she wanted? Count to ten Buffy. Okay, that didn’t work.

Faith started to speak. I suppose Giles got that I was about to explode, because he intervened, shutting Faith up.

“Faith, I know you didn’t want this. But you asked a lot of me. I had no idea what I was going to confront when I got to Boston, but it certainly was not Elizabeth. I am not trying to be harsh, but you made a decision. And basically that decision was to make no decision at all. You put your problem, as it were, squarely into my lap. I, therefore, was left with a choice that was not pleasant. Though the ends certainly justified the means.”

“You could have told me,” she said.

“Believe me Faith, I tried.” What? He did?

“How?” We both asked.

“I looked everywhere for you. I had the coven track you. You disappeared. And you did it deliberately. I knew that you were making a horrible mistake, Faith. But you did not want to be found. After a while, I stopped looking.” He took off his glasses. Jesus that was annoying. “And well, I think everyone was better off in the long run. Elizabeth is loved. In fact, she is one of the most well adjusted children I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. She brought us closer together. She healed a lot of pain, with just her presence. Your stupidity, if I may be so blunt, was our saving grace.”

“You have no idea what I was going through,” she spat.

He shook his head, “No, you are wrong. I have plenty of ideas. You were scared. It is completely understandable, and yet highly unjustifiable. You had faced bigger demons than this. No, I suspect things got too tough. You exemplified classic Faith behavior – you ran.”

She huffed for a second, but didn’t answer him. She was pissed. Probably because he was right.

And I could not believe that I was just kissing her. What the hell was wrong with me? Two minutes and I’m like ‘sure Faith, stick your tongue down my throat. Issues? What issues?’ I was a moron.

Giles sighed, “I suppose my only mistake was not heeding the inevitable – that you would eventually reappear. That is my fault. The question remains though – what are you going to do now?”

I turned towards her, “Yeah. What are your plans? Or is all of this too much?”

I could see that she was angry. Hell, I could feel it. But I didn’t care. She had no right to come into my life, our life, and blow it apart. But then… I didn’t want her to go either. And I couldn’t decide if that was for entirely selfish reasons or not.

Faith turned her back to us, “This is too much,” she whispered.

Jesus! “Well then run Faith. Do what you do best. But understand one thing. If you leave – do not come back. I do not want to deal with you again. It may be easy to explain to her now,” I was crying. Shit Buffy, get it together, “I won’t have her feel…unloved.”

I sat down on the sofa. Why was I crying? This fucking hurt. She couldn’t do this to me, to us, again. I wiped my eyes, and put my head in my hands. This was one of those times where I wished everything would just go away.

“Mommy! What’s wrong?” Well fuck me.

I looked at Willow.

“We left in such a hurry, we forgot the beach stuff,” she smiled weakly.

“I’m okay, sweetie,” I choked out.

She put her arms around me, trying to pull me into a hug. “It’s okay Mommy, it’s not that bad.”

That made it worse. I couldn’t stop crying. This was ridiculous. Pull it together Buffy.

I felt someone else sit down beside me. Faith. I could always feel her. I didn’t look up but rather felt her put her hand on my knee.

“It’s okay, B. Really. It’s okay. I won’t go anywhere,” she whispered in my ear. “Not if you don’t want me to?”

I nodded, not looking up. I wanted to bury my face in her shoulder. I wanted to feel her arms around me.

Liza walked over to the couch and took my hand. She crawled in between the two of us. “It’s okay Mommy. I know who she is.”

Okay, didn’t expect that one at all. We both pulled away from each other and looked at her. “I am not a baby. I know that I had a different Mommy before. And her name was Faith. I do ‘member stuff.”

She patted Faith’s hand, “You can stay with us. It would make my Mommy stop crying.”

Why did little kids have a way of putting things into perspective without ever saying anything? I can’t believe that I thought… well I don’t know what I was thinking. But I had no idea that she would know who Faith was. Did I mention I was a moron?

I watched the emotions play across Faith’s face. Stay or Go. Flight or Fight. Why was every little decision so damn difficult for her? Why was she always so afraid?

She looked at Liza and me briefly, before looking down at her hands, “Okay.”

I heard her, but did I believe her? A part of me wanted to scream thank you. Because I knew that just like with Liza, Faith would fill an emptiness I had inside of me. The one I didn’t know I even had. But there was another part of me – a part that was afraid. I had spent five years with Liza. I had fed her, bathed her, clothed her, and loved her. I felt like her mother. And she felt like mine. And yet I never was completely confident that someday, someone was going to make all of that disappear. That Faith was going to make it disappear. That she was going to take it all away.

It was too much to think about. There was always something about Faith. Something that I wanted to, no scratch that – something that I needed to possess. Was that love? I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had been in love with someone. I mean, there were others, don’t get me wrong. I had not been celibate over the last few years. (Jesus, I wasn’t a nun.) And I’d come to accept the fact that I was playing on Willow’s team a long time ago. The thing was, I never got to play with Faith. And so did I want her to stay because… well, you know, or was I afraid that if she didn’t stay she would take my world with her when she left?


TBC