beer_good_foamy | Fic: The Colours Of My Life

Current Music: Black Sabbath - Killing Yourself To Live

Entry tags:

faith,
willow

Fic: The Colours Of My Life

OK, one of the fics I needed to get done. This is written for

tiny_white_hats's 10th anniversary comment ficathon, and

daria234's prompt:

Willow/Faith or Willow&Faith, post-series they work together well, but she doesn't know what she would do if the other woman went dark

Title: The Colours Of My Life
Author: Beer Good (

beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy, post-series
Rating: PG13
Word count: ~900
Characters/Pairing: Willow and Faith gen (allusions to Willow/Kennedy)

The Colours Of My Life

This nest was a factory of some sort, the kind they used to have in all big American cities before they all closed down and started falling apart, but in the high-contrast light of the illumination spell she'd cast a few hours earlier it looked much older. Big complex, big brick buildings, big courtyard like the old castles in Europe, except with logos painted on the walls instead of heraldic animals, and vampires instead of Japanese tourists, at least until they all got slain an hour ago. (The vampires, not the tourists.) Twelve Slayers against 20-odd vamps. It had been a pretty unfair fight, really, Willow thought as she walked over the battlesite towards the one Slayer still here, who seemed to be searching for something in the shadows.

"Find anything interesting?"

If Willow had been afraid she'd spook Faith by sneaking up on her like that, no such bad luck. The Slayer just kept poking through the debris and dust left by the battle. "Nah. Just making sure, is all."

"No bodies?"

"No bodies."

"Vamps traditionally just leave dust, you know."

"Vamps do, yeah."

"Aaaand all Slayers are accounted for, and either unwinding with age-appropriate drinks or with band-aids. But then you know that, being the first on scene and all."

"Yeah," Faith said and crouched down to examine a blood stain. "Guess you wouldn't have seen from back there. Bunch of them weren't in vampface. Just looked like regular guys. They're learning."

Willow winced and understood why some of the Slayers had looked a little extra shaken. "Oh. How did they handle ...?"

"Whaddyathink? They're good kids, but any normal person would think twice about killing someone face to face. 'S OK. I just had to do a little more work than I'd expected."

"Well, all's well that ends well, right?" Willow tried for an encouraging smile, thinking back to what the battle had sounded like. In here, shut in between the red brick walls and the darkness outside, every little noise echoing, no easy way out... "They trusted you to have their back, Faith. Heck, they followed you into battle."

Faith shot her a flat grin, twirling her knife in an obvious way. "Right. Like they'd want me behind them."

"Faith, those girls think you're - "

"Save the speech, OK? I know, they think I'm cool, and not as stuck-up as B, and they can't wait for me to teach them how to sweep a leg, and if I said 'boo' they'd all need new My Little Pony panties. They're almost as scared of me as they are of you, sitting behind the lines trying to come up with a reason to not just blow up every vampire in the world with your mind." She pulled a hand through her hair and exhaled. "Sorry," she mumbled as Willow sat down beside her. "That was out of line. You light 'em up, we put 'em out, that's the deal."

They didn't say anything for a while.

"Redemption, huh?" Willow finally said.

"Sucks, don't it?"

"Yup."

Faith chewed over what she said next for a while before saying it, keeping her voice down. "I just keep waiting for it to get easier, you know? And then I'm out there and everything's just a blur and it's... What would you do if I kill some bystander again? Or one of the girls does on my watch? If the next head I chop off just happens to sit on top of a Slayer who hasn't learned to stay out of my way? What happens the day I tell you and Buffy to shove your tactics up your collective ass and start doing my own thing? I'm not... I was never..." She paused. "I just mean, I'm supposed to teach them something, there's gotta be more to it than just 'be sorry you fucked up and don't do it again'."

Willow nodded slowly, peering up at the crumbling brick walls all around them. "Well, look on the bright side, there could be less."

"Less?"

"Sure." Willow's voice was strangely even. "Like, you could feel sorry for what you've done but never really... um... feeling sorry for what was done, because you can't make yourself think the done-tos didn't have it coming. A-and never being sure you wouldn't do the exact same thing again in the same situation. Because really, no matter how much you try to change, you can't tell yourself that the person who did that was someone completely different."

Faith gave her a long look. "That's the bright side, huh?"

"Well, y'know, hypothetically."

"Right."

"Or, um, look at it this way." Willow put on a wry smile. "At least evil me is colour-coded for easy ID. You're in those leather pants even when you're good, how the heck are we supposed to tell the difference?"

"True." Faith nodded. "Of course, evil you could dye her hair red so we wouldn't spot her."

"Darn. That'd be just like her. She is an evil genius, you know."

"I don't know, Kennedy tells me she goes down pretty easy," Faith said as she got to her feet. "And since evil geniuses don't blush like that, I think we're done for the night. Age-appropriate drinks, huh?"

"Th-that sounds about right." Willow quickly stumbled to her feet. "Let me just turn out the lights first." She snapped her fingers and darkness fell over the empty factory. Funnily enough, it felt like being home again.

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AWESOME.

I love it. Never thought of putting these two together, but it works so WELL.

Thank you!

Willow and Faith go really well together, I think. I didn't use to think so, but once you see it it's hard to unsee...

Ooh, excellent! I love the two of them working together -- and reflecting together -- like this.

I love Willow "not feeling sorry for what was done". Not only do *I* (and most of fandom, I suspect?) feel the same way, I totally think she does too. It's interesting to see her reflections on that.

Lovely. And the last sentence is perfect.

(Also, how do I have no Faith icons? How is this my most serious Willow icon? Shame on me.)

Thank you!

I always thought that would be a dilemma for Willow: Feeling truly sorry for what she's done, while still thinking that some of it was completely justified. What's that quote in s7 - "I killed him for a reason!"

And since evil geniuses don't blush like that, I think we're done for the night.

Could be an illusion spell, of course... ;-)

Oh, absolutely. Then again, good or evil, Willow is a pretty lousy liar. :)

Eeesh, vamps learning? That is not good.

Great gen relationshipping here - they aren't quite friends, but they work together and know each other well, and know how to ease away some of the worst of it without sugar-coating.

Thanks!

Faith and Willow's issues are similar enough for them to have common ground, yet there are also some really big differences - most of all that Faith has the luxury (for certain values of "luxury") of telling herself that what she did was unequivocally bad. Allan Finch and Lester The Volcanologist emphatically did not have it coming, and she did it to help advance some pretty evil schemes. Willow, on the other hand, I don't see ever accepting that the world would have been a better place with Warren still in it...

Very nice. I can see Willow and Faith having this conversation. Good job. (cookies later?)

Thank you!

Terrific and very in character for these two. A conversation I could actually hear happening.

Gabrielle

Thanks a lot!

Yay, yay and yay. I never get tired of this pairing, and you always deliver in spades.

Speaking of Black Sabbath, is the new album any good? I hear "Age Of Reason" kills.

Thank you! (And I'm sorry about not commenting on your summary posts, I've been in a real fic reading slump lately... will get back to you.)

13 isn't a great Sabbath album, at least not after just one listen, and obviously it's way too long, but it's far better than it has any right to be. Tony riffs, Geezer's rhyming dictionary feels dirty and used, and Ozzy actually sounds good. "God Is Dead", "Age of Reason", "Live Forever", "End of the Beginning", "Dear Father", "Methademic"... There's some really good songs here, even if you'll feel like you've already heard them before. Also, it's fun to realise that things have come so full circle that Tony Iommi is now stealing riffs from the White Stripes, but at least they're good riffs.

OK, I will comment now! I really like this -- especially the contrast between what is...for lack of a better word, "wrong" with these two, or at least the nature of their temptations. Faith to reject community and go off on her own and then just getting sick of how people do things; Willow to define the wrong threshold of power to cross and lose track of what limits she has to have. Both about control. I also love the comparison between Warren (and possibly Rack) and Faith's kills. I do think Willow knows that it was wrong and regrets doing it, but...well, yeah. Ideally, Willow should wish that Warren weren't dead, but she can't will herself into feeling bad that he's out of the world. Which I think given the Willow/Warren parallels (which she is probably aware of subconsciously if nothing else -- I mean, not "there are parallels!" but that the two have a few things in common) is always going to be a bit of a roadblock to her forgiving herself. But then, she also has it easy in a way Faith doesn't, because Willow never killed someone who is as innocent as Lester.

The colour-coding discussion at the end, along with "evil geniuses don't blush like that", made me think: would Dark Willow blush black instead of red?

Thanks!

But then, she also has it easy in a way Faith doesn't, because Willow never killed someone who is as innocent as Lester.

Which, on the other hand, is easier for Faith in another way - it's something that's easy to feel bad about, it's far more black and white than Willow. Faith can unequivocally feel bad for what she did; Willow can't.

There's definitely parallels... or rather, overtones of parallels between Willow and Warren. It's interesting that in true "Strike me down with all your hatred" fashion, Willow goes truly dark and tries to end the world and kill her friends after she kills Warren. "You kill me, you become me", as Faith would have it.

would Dark Willow blush black instead of red?

Well, since we know she can print text on her skin (as in the transformation sequence), I think she'd take a page from Eskimo!Willow's book ("maybe you should just say 'shrug'") and just have her cheeks say "blush." :)

Which, on the other hand, is easier for Faith in another way - it's something that's easy to feel bad about, it's far more black and white than Willow. Faith can unequivocally feel bad for what she did; Willow can't.

Definitely. It's ironic that Willow colour-codes herself whereas Faith...doesn't, because the Willow's actions are ultimately more...complicated than Faith's bad actions within s3 are (though the reasons are very complicated both times) -- the Mayor's plan was pretty straight-up evil, and Faith pretty willing to support that because she didn't see any other options. Willow was -- well, like Faith, pretty willing to be evil because she didn't see a lot of options left, but there was a real sense that the world would be better off without Warren & Rack (& the others in the Trio), and a twisted kind of belief that everyone would be happier if Dawn were re-Keyed including Dawn herself, and that her friends were kind of getting in her way, and finally that the world needed to end.... The only things she really accomplished were killing Warren and Rack, but even the goals have a hint of righteousness, instead of falling in with an unapologetically evil father figure who treated her well. (Well, I guess, Rack is the closest thing to the Mayor in the s3/s6 parallels, and Willow killed him, so....)

And I do think the shift is a lot about s3 vs. s6, and the absence of authority figures for good or for ill (no Mayors left).

Well, since we know she can print text on her skin (as in the transformation sequence), I think she'd take a page from Eskimo!Willow's book ("maybe you should just say 'shrug'") and just have her cheeks say "blush." :)

Well, didn't the text show up only because she sucked it from the books? Perhaps if she carried around a book with "blush" printed on it -- maybe some of her old fanfic. :)

You are my favorite Willow/Faith OR Willow, Faith writer, no lie. Its interesting to see Faith dealing with the burden of responsibility now - different than the one Buffy's had in degree but not kind. Prison was in a sense another "luxury" that Faith had, not unlike someone who is depressed or suicidal checking themselves into a psyche ward to take a "time out", to lift some day to day burdens in order to be able to focus on the key internal problem. (I know it's weird to talk of prison as a luxury but hey, three squares a day, every day, workout room, no job to go to, no bills. Just sayin'.)

Of course it's a bit different in Faith's case than most people who are incarcerated - she chose to go to prison, rather than ordered to by the court system - but the metaphor still holds. In a bizarre way she got to be the little kid, taken care of, while Buffy tried to be an adult with little support system, now the tables are turned.

"Like, you could feel sorry for what you've done but never really... um... feeling sorry for what was done, because you can't make yourself think the done-tos didn't have it coming. A-and never being sure you wouldn't do the exact same thing again in the same situation. Because really, no matter how much you try to change, you can't tell yourself that the person who did that was someone completely different."

I had to read through that twice to really absorb it and then when I did - oh SHIT. Yeah. I've always felt that this very point calls into question my own complicity in the matter as a viewer. Was I shocked? Hell yes. Did I cheer just a little? Not out loud but, I didn't exactly feel sorry for him. the only difference is that I've not had the opportunity to act on it.Or rather the opportunities did that I didn't take, to be honest. (re: my Ted meta.) what if I had? I suspect I understand Willow's position a lot more than I want to admit to generally.

Thank you!

And yeah, I pretty much agree re: Faith's reasons for going to jail and her reasons for leaving. Her epiphany isn't that she must be punished, but that she has no control over herself and can't trust herself ("I got dangerous for a while"). She goes to jail partly because she feels she deserves it, but also to "reboot" as it were - break a habit. (She even refers to it as "murder rehab" later on.)

Was I shocked? Hell yes. Did I cheer just a little? Not out loud but, I didn't exactly feel sorry for him.

Yeah. It's a pretty tricky issue to justify morally, especially since I'm very much anti-death penalty IRL, but on the other hand... Once he's dead, what's the moral argument for feeling sorry about it? In my headcanon, Willow would feel sorry for having killed Warren, but not for him being dead (again, season 7: "I killed him for a reason!") Which again raises the question if we have morals to feel sorry for others, or for ourselves... How do you feel truly guilty about something when you can't help but think the outcome was, if not good, then at least an improvement? Especially when it's an action that's more or less forced upon you, as it is in a lot of cases ranging from domestic abuse to political oppression... Like i said above, Faith, at least, has the "luxury" of knowing that what she did was undeniably wrong, while Willow feels guilty for not feeling guilty enough. I can't really blame her.

it was Buffy's arguement that faith need to go to prison, wasn't it? on AtS (I thought they overdid the "angry bitchy buffy" characterization, when it was Riley throwing stones at the end of WAY, not Buffy; I thought the point was that Buffy like Faith "walked a mile in someone else's shoes" and really got to see how it felt to be Faith, to be treated like worthless garbage; little did I know it was the start of "damn the characterization just get them onto the other show!"

Probably PT, but

blackfrancine wrote a comment a couple of years ago that she thought both Faith and Buffy expressed and understood love through service, and that it might be something common to all Slayers. I think she meant the Mayor and Faith, but I also see that in Buffy and Faith S7 esp the end of EP. It's easy to hate on that episode but Buffy's handoff of leadership and Faith's acceptance of it is an amazing moment. Faith is going to keep her promise to Buffy; it's an act of love whether it's stated explicitly or not; just as Buffy keeping her promise to Joyce re: Dawn and protecting the world is an act of love, etc. Faith's is smaller and therefore easier to overlook, IMO, but for her it's a big deal.

It's a pretty tricky issue to justify morally, especially since I'm very much anti-death penalty IRL, but on the other hand... Once he's dead, what's the moral argument for feeling sorry about it? In my headcanon, Willow would feel sorry for having killed Warren, but not for him being dead (again, season 7: "I killed him for a reason!") Which again raises the question if we have morals to feel sorry for others, or for ourselves...

Yes I'm anti-death penalty too, and I have a certain moral view of myself, so when I am vicariously horrified and thrilled by Warren's death? I feel like I have to look myself in the mirror. Have you seen Lars von Trier's Dogville? It's really rather brilliant in that it's about a group of townspeople who essentially take their anger and frustrations out on one woman who is a willing martyr (because she feels ashamed of who she is and guilty about her past, an attempt to atone), and these "good people" all indulge in horrible acts, but don't see themselves as horrible. What I found interesting is how ANGRY viewers and critics got at the film, at von Trier, etc etc (hell, I got pissed at the voice-over narration) and in a lesser way acted like the townspeople in giving vent to their anger.

Why is it that Willow's murder of Rack is forgotten in S7 btw? "She killed a man" - is that meant generically? I assume it means, literally, one man. Again, he's kind of pond scum in the social scheme of SD, so it's easy to not care, but that opens up a whole can of worms. I think somewhere in the Bible Jesus says that even sinners forgive - ie value - the people they love. It's when we fail to see the value of human beings we don't love, when we label them as I just labeled Rack (pond scum) to dismiss them that we have a problem.

I really do like TKIM for the way that Willow is able to provide a conduit, so to speak, for Warren to express anguish, despair and regret. The way he (Adam Busch) cries "I'm sorry I'm sorry come back!" guts me EVERY SINGLE TIME. Redemption isn't possible; sometimes perhaps remorse is the closest we can come, but it doesn't erase or undo anything. ("Can't say I'm sorry." - BY) I think that points out the flaw in redemption arcs even as the season pumps redemption arcs for Spike, Faith and Andrew for all they're worth.

while Willow feels guilty for not feeling guilty enough.

Good point. I notice that a lot of fandom wants her to feel more guilty, to explicitly express remorse for what she did to Tara - to beg forgiveness when Tara herself never demanded it (onscreen). Tara wanted her to not do it again. I think the same is true in fandom with Buffy and Spike - a lot of people feel that Buffy didn't apologize enough, that it didn't count in AYW, they want the character on her knees and that isn't the character and that's not what Spike wanted from her, ever.

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Fic: The Colours Of My Life

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