Fic: The Colours Of My Life

[beer_good_foamy]

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.

Comments

[deird1]

AWESOME.

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

[frayadjacent]

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.)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

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

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

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

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.

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

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

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

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


Gabrielle

[frogfarm]

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.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

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?

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

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.