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She Sends Kisses	By : Prophecy Category: -Buffy the Vampire Slayer > FemmeSlash - Female/Female > Buffy/Faith Views: 3032 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy and I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Part Eleven: Shoulda Coulda Woulda

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Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend,

Somewhere along in the bitterness.

And would I have stayed up with you all night,

Had I known how to save a life.

- The Fray, 'How to Save a Life'

Sometime around sunrise, the sudden silence wakes me, and I blink sleepily in the harsh light. Every inch of my body is sore, and I can feel the dried blood caked on my skin, hardened after so many hours. My eyes adjust pretty quickly and I look next to me. Faith is on her stomach, her head turned slightly towards me. Her mouth is open, and her face is barely recognizable under the layers of blood. Her skin is pale, and her hand next to mine is cool.

Oh god, oh god. I shouldn't have let her sleep. Should have stayed up and prodded her ribs every few minutes, made sure she didn't pass out. Now she's dead, and it's all my fault. I tap her cheek a few times, but she doesn't move, and I feel tears stinging my eyes, but I can't say whether it's guilt or just the stress of the past twelve hours causing them.

"Faith," I hiss, shaking her back roughly. "Don't be dead," I say a little louder, shaking her more.

She still doesn't move, and I freak out. I slap her cheek hard, pushing against her legs roughly with mine and yell, "Faith! Get up!"

And then, and then.. she opens her eyes a little and swats at my hand. "Go 'way," she mumbles, turning her face away from me. I'm so relieved that I burst into tears, pressing my forehead against the dirty floor. She slowly rolls onto her back, letting out a pained grunt, and looks over at me. "Why're you cryin'?"

I just shake my head, my face still buried in the concrete, and sob even harder. Everything hits me then, everything. I think about Katrina, poor Katrina, probably coming to me for help. I think about Dawn, lost and alone at our father's house, a stranger in her own family. My mom, and how hard she struggled every day to make life bearable for everyone around her. Giles, and how he devoted his entire life to me even though he didn't have to and how he wrecked his own life more than once because of it.

You have a father's love for the girl..

I think about my friends, and how much I miss the cinnamon scent of Willow's favorite perfume, and Xander's hands, softer than mine, massaging those awful post-slaying knots out of my shoulders. I think of the all-night research sessions and all of us getting so wound up that we just had to let it out, so we'd turn on the radio and dance right there in the library like maniacs. I think of a gentle moment with Cordelia, showing me how to cover the bruises without caking on the foundation. And Oz, strumming his guitar and singing Beatles songs for us when everything felt like it was sinking.

I cry harder and I think of Jesse and how different our lives would be now if I'd saved him. Ditto Faith, and when she wraps her arm around me comfortingly, I feel another piece of my heart shatter and I shake with the violence of my tears.

Faith eases closer to me and holds me tighter, and I stiffen against her but she holds me tighter anyway, and finally, finally I let her. I let her hold me and I lose it. The tears pool under my face, mixed with blood and sweat and saliva, and I think of every life I didn't save, and every time I all but begged Spike to punish me, and every time I could have told my mother how much I loved her and didn't, and every time I screamed at Dawn and slammed the door in her face, and how badly I treated Riley and Xander and anyone that was willing to love me. I think about what I could have done to make Angel stay.

Faith just holds on tighter and I shift to my side a little, burying my face in her chest and screaming my misery against her skin. Her calloused hands rub my back through my ripped shirt, and we lay for nearly an hour like that, my sobs slowly subsiding to small gasps and an awful case of hiccups.

Finally, exhausted, I slump against her, every ounce of energy drained from my body. Slowly, she loosens her grip and I roll onto my back, stretching and popping my vertebrae, stiff from laying on concrete all night. She stays quiet, but I can feel her eyes on me. It doesn't bother me so much now, and I relax my body, looking at the underside of the mattress through the metal bars supporting it.

Something catches my eye and I reach up towards it and feel Faith tense beside me as I pull a small stack of photos from beneath the mattress.

"What is this?" I whisper, looking through the photos slowly. My sophomore yearbook photo, one taken at the stupid 'welcome back' party my friends threw after the summer I killed Angel and ran away. Me, Willow, and Cordy in the hall at school--and I rememberXander driving us nuts with flashes every few minutes. Giles had gotten him the camera for Christmas, and he never told Giles but it was the first Christmas present he'd ever gotten from someone besides Willow. Willow and Cordelia's faces are scratched out angrily, and the fourth picture is just a closeup, probably snapped at one of our sleepovers with weapons.

My hands shake as I get to the last picture and Faith rolls over, looking away from me, her body stiff as a board. Faith and I in the library during an all-nighter, surrounded by books and half-eaten packages of Poptarts and potato chips and open cans of Pepsi. She's pulling her ski cap down over her face, but her eyes, just barely visible under the edge of the hat, glitter with amusement, and she's laughing. I've got my arms around her, kissing her cheek, our legs stretched out on top of the table, an open book in her lap where you can see she's tucked a comic book between its pages.

The picture's been ripped in half and taped back together. I look over at her back. "Faith?" I whisper. "What are these? Where did they come from?" She mumbles something I can't understand. "I don't speak Mumblese. Why won't you look at me?"

She rolls onto her back slowly, wincing, and looks over at me, but avoids my eyes. "You don't remember?"

I look at the picture of us again, and I do remember. I remember ripping it in half angrily and stuffing it in an envelope with a letter I don't even want to try to remember. Then Angel asked me to visit her, try to make amends, see how much she was changing, and I felt guilty enough to write a letter making a dozen excuses why I couldn't come, and stuck a piece of tape on the backing from one of Dawn's Lisa Frank sticker albums so she could fix the picture if she still even had it. Or at least see that I felt bad about ripping it up, if she didn't.

She's still looking at me. "I remember," I say softly, putting the photos back where I got them from. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have touched them. They're not mine."

She swallows hard. "It's not a big deal."

I turn my head, catching her eyes. "I can't believe you kept those."

She shrugs a little and closes her eyes, signaling that she doesn't want to talk about it anymore, and I decide to let it go.

For now, anyway.
- 10
- 11
- 12
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She Sends Kisses