Title: Ladyfingers
Author: Scynneh
E-mail: scynneh@yahoo.com 
Disclaimer: Faith isn't a good girl; just misunderstood, or is that a bad girl who just needs a friend? I dunno, but Joss disagrees with me.
Improv 12: flame, boot, ache, tendere
Synopsis: This is a blurb on what’s been happening with Faith while Angelus rearranges the city. I *like* Faith, she has lots of potential to be worked out, and I feel that Joss has not allowed her to reach the heights that she- stopping myself in the workup of a rant- ‘scuse me.
Dedication: Ducks, who writes fluff and then stuff like BHB that makes me tumble over and say ‘oh...lords’, in amazement, then I have to toddle off to try and reciprocate. Here y’are dearie. And to Maayan, who has sat through my babble about the evils of certain programs. Right? *g*
Distribution: I am very pliable when asked. Try it.
Spoilers:  That DDM…..(Damned Darla Mess). Again, I have an AU of my own, where Angelus has been freed, and the forces of good are taking an extended holiday- that’s the way we like it right? Evil Baby running amok. Anyway, here Faith has heard little snippets of the events transpiring outside of prison, and she is about to get a taste of things dark and delicious. Maybe..?
Author’s Notes: The title is from a song by Luscious Jackson by the same name. And Joss may very well have some interesting things planned for Faith in the near future, but I, as a critical viewer have become rather jaded with the concept of him doing anything that will eventually work out for the greater good. This took off on a rainy afternoon when I was staring at my computer, and the rest flew along. It went off in a totally different direction than I expected, but hey, what the Hell, I just write this stuff down. Who *knows* where it comes from?
March 2001

*
Sometimes I think that my love of death is all that ties me to life..  The one thing that stays my hand when I roll out of my bunk at night and crouch beside my mattress, a knife positioned over one wrist, the blade winking obscenely at me.  An normal person might not understand my choice of weapon unless they were familiar with how I have been rolled by the world. 

I got a sore lot in life, in addition to being the offspring of a woman who considered the deepest philosopher to be the bottom of her beer bottle, I found out that I had a Calling.  Yup, and it came with capital letters and danger.  Beautiful women, skimpy outfits and questionable intimacies, God, I sound like an advertisement for a James Bond movie. 

Granted, Mr. Bond was on the side of the better power; I’ve been having some difficulty following that wavering line, and these days it seems that while most things are rather easy to follow, good and evil have eternal leases on being vague-until one reaches the extremes, that it.  Which, some would hurry to point out, I most assuredly have.

Not that it hasn’t had its moments, I’ve managed to turn traitor to the organization responsible for my training, kill a human, and ruin several relationships while taking a break. 

Propane on a rag that was torn and crimson-spotted before anything knew of what heat and fire meant. They became my fuel, then it all ran out; flicker, twist and whirling flame that was asphyxiated by this uncobbled path that I have tripped on.

Oh, did I mention my little stint behind bars?  Right, that mistake with an employee of a demonic mayor earned me several years in the Pen, and a closer look at how bad things could get if I didn’t turn over a tree full of leaves in a hurry.  But, I’ve strayed from the point, I was supposed to get matters straightened out and return to a life of ‘saving the world’.  What a load of laughs that was, as if I had any intention of letting the men who came into my admittedly shitty corner of the world, and blew everything to pieces take my choices away again.  It was what the majority of people expected, that was a given.  Maybe a couple individuals understand what I did, though.

Like Angel, for instance, the word around the dirtier bars has been that his Sire and loopy Childe returned and ripped the velvet carpet beyond repair.  Rumors still persist that the good ol’ do-gooder has gone the way of the mammoth, and that L.A. will soon be snapping under the yoke of a crueler hand than the Warrior ever was. 

He would understand why I couldn’t let myself be chained by anything or anyone.  I knew that in prison, and the thought of when I would be able to do things the way I felt they should be- and damn the consequences, was all that kept me from committing justifiable homicide more than once.  And when the prissy representative from the Council showed up one afternoon to inform me in a very disdainful tone, that the decision had been made to ‘allow me readmission to the arms of your Calling,’ I nearly busted the plexi-glass partition between us and had my way with his trachea.  

Restraint was a test in willpower, and I was able to smile pleasantly and even nod with ‘pained understanding’ when he listed my numerous transgressions against society.  The bastard even went so far as to mention my behavior in high school as ‘a turning point to a life of wrongdoing.’  That comment was worth a good half hour of honest- to-God laughter, and I had to bite my lip to keep it under control.

The doctors even toned down the medications meant to 'give clarity to a wandering mind,' and I was glad for that, those pills were just what a girl needed if she wanted to spend hours examining the cracks in her psyche, and I had too much of that with the shrinks trying to 'understand me.'  Hours watching water seep through poorly sealed plaster, drowsy observations on the split in the heel of a beloved boot, furthering that wound into the leather, then nothing again.

            I convinced just about every person that came to visit me of my desire to become a better person, all except for Angel.  Right before the ‘Darla incident’, he came to see me, and as soon as he picked up the phone on his side of the booth, I knew that the jig was up.  His eyes were sadder than usual, and as he spoke, I had the feeling that this was going to be a horrible conversation; all of my disguises splattered on the walls behind me like the meat from an overripe plum left out in the orchard, neglected, languishing for a hot mouth, fingers to cradle its aching center and shuttle it away from purposeless desolation.

"Why don’t you care anymore, Faith?” he asked, with his typical bluntness.  Gotta love a man that goes for the jugular, must have something to do with his beverage of choice.  Please, consider me cracked I know I sure do.  Like the victims of Marie's Nutcracker, shards curving underfoot.

    Anyway, Angel was giving me his patented  ‘there’s something wrong with you at the very core of your being, and I’m the only one around who’s been in that place, talk to me’ face, and I was hedging, twirling a strand of hair violently around my index finger, and doing my best to ignore the expression he was sporting.  Eventually, I had to give in to the Broodmaster, after all, he grasped what I was going through as no one else possibly could.

            “I’m just sick of pretending to be a ‘good Slayer’,” I told him, proving that I too could strike the major blood sources with a single sentence.  “It’s boring, and I’m doing a crappy job.  It’s not my thing to enjoy doing the kind of stuff B does, y’know, college and the corn-fed boyfriend.  I need something to kick and punch, and here I can’t do any of the above.  To be honest, it’s driving me nuts, and I don’t know how much longer I can take this without striking out on my own.”  I let him see some of the frustration in my eyes, and from the way he winced, there was no doubt that he got the real meaning of my last few words.

    Angel dispensed with the expected speech about 'holding onto a belief', but we both could tell that it was as half-hearted as my earnest expression.  Directly preceding his departure, Angel laid a palm on the glass that was between us and said with all the fierceness one would if giving ultimatums about the Apocalypse:

    "I may not be able to help you Faith, but there is someone out there who can.  Trust me on this."  Cold fingers on my brow, imagination did nothing to lessen the feeling of being taken care of, and he was gone.

    I have always liked him; the crush at first, wanting what I couldn't ever have in any decent world, but then, I've never been in such a dimension, so I figure that there's a chance yet, for whatever Angel wants to be, and however I turn out.  

    My head is slowly settling, and the warring factions of my degenerated soul have come to some kind of impasse, all in accord that I am not what Fate wanted, better to leave me on the roadside, inured to hurts, the possibilities secured behind a web of blunders that cosset me, immortal tenderness of the lost, who no longer need to be found.

Fin