{btvs} mirror's true reflection
Title: Mirror’s True Reflection
Author: aaronlisa
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Characters: Faith Lehane
Rating: FR13
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and company.
Prompts: Written for 2x5obsessions for the prompt of “the dark things you fear.” Also written for day three at mini_nanowrimo where I signed up to write 250 words a day in November.
Notes: Very minor spoilers for the Season Eight comics, specifically the Faith arc in the “No Future for You” storyline.
Summary: Faith knows that there are far worse things to fear than vampires.
Word Count: 503
There are dark things that Faith fears, things that are far worse than any vampire that she’s ever encountered, including the Turok-Han. The knowledge that there are worse predators that haunt the night is what keeps her awake at night, impatient for the sun to rise.
Cleveland is a lonely place for her. Robin has embraced his role as a Watcher of the new Slayers, Faith’s left out in the cold. By her own choice this time, still she’s on the outside looking in, a familiar place for her. What makes the pain of their break up hurt even more is the fact that when she pulled away, Robin didn’t fight to keep her. His whole life was wrapped up in protecting the baby Slayers that Buffy had sent to them in Cleveland. Faith has become the go-to person when there are things that the Council can’t handle or take care of their own.
She has a shitty apartment that she goes to at the end of every night. It’s one step up from the slums that her mother had called home back in Boston just before the end, just before Diana Dormer came and lifted her out of the mud where Faith belonged. It’s not home to Faith and it’ll never be. It’s a place where she sleeps, keeps her meager possessions and where she stays when there’s nothing to slay. She does the dirty work for the Council, for Robin, and for the others, because Faith knows just how dirty her hands are with work that she’s done before. Work that she had done in the name of love. Now she does because she doesn’t dare say no to Buffy. Even if the command never comes from Buffy’s lips.
Robin had remarked the last time he had been to her apartment on the lack of mirrors, Faith had simply shrugged it off, ordered him to tell her the real reason why he was there and then she had kicked him out. Later on, she had told herself that it was better this way. Better that she was on her own and that he was taking care of the baby Slayers. Yet deep down inside, Faith was pleading for him to call her on the lies that fell from her lips. He didn’t and instead he took everything she said at face value before he left.
Faith never does tell anyone why there’s a lack of mirrors in her apartment, not even Giles when he comes back into her life with a sincere way of getting out of the self-subjected squalor. Yet she thinks that perhaps he knows the reason why. She thinks that Giles sees a lot more than he ever lets on to seeing. And that perhaps Giles understand that there are far worse things to fear than the vampires that Slayers hunt; that the monster that they should all truly fear isn’t the vampire or the demon but man. Faith recognizes the monster whenever she looks in the mirror.
((END))
Author: aaronlisa
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Characters: Faith Lehane
Rating: FR13
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon and company.
Prompts: Written for 2x5obsessions for the prompt of “the dark things you fear.” Also written for day three at mini_nanowrimo where I signed up to write 250 words a day in November.
Notes: Very minor spoilers for the Season Eight comics, specifically the Faith arc in the “No Future for You” storyline.
Summary: Faith knows that there are far worse things to fear than vampires.
Word Count: 503
There are dark things that Faith fears, things that are far worse than any vampire that she’s ever encountered, including the Turok-Han. The knowledge that there are worse predators that haunt the night is what keeps her awake at night, impatient for the sun to rise.
Cleveland is a lonely place for her. Robin has embraced his role as a Watcher of the new Slayers, Faith’s left out in the cold. By her own choice this time, still she’s on the outside looking in, a familiar place for her. What makes the pain of their break up hurt even more is the fact that when she pulled away, Robin didn’t fight to keep her. His whole life was wrapped up in protecting the baby Slayers that Buffy had sent to them in Cleveland. Faith has become the go-to person when there are things that the Council can’t handle or take care of their own.
She has a shitty apartment that she goes to at the end of every night. It’s one step up from the slums that her mother had called home back in Boston just before the end, just before Diana Dormer came and lifted her out of the mud where Faith belonged. It’s not home to Faith and it’ll never be. It’s a place where she sleeps, keeps her meager possessions and where she stays when there’s nothing to slay. She does the dirty work for the Council, for Robin, and for the others, because Faith knows just how dirty her hands are with work that she’s done before. Work that she had done in the name of love. Now she does because she doesn’t dare say no to Buffy. Even if the command never comes from Buffy’s lips.
Robin had remarked the last time he had been to her apartment on the lack of mirrors, Faith had simply shrugged it off, ordered him to tell her the real reason why he was there and then she had kicked him out. Later on, she had told herself that it was better this way. Better that she was on her own and that he was taking care of the baby Slayers. Yet deep down inside, Faith was pleading for him to call her on the lies that fell from her lips. He didn’t and instead he took everything she said at face value before he left.
Faith never does tell anyone why there’s a lack of mirrors in her apartment, not even Giles when he comes back into her life with a sincere way of getting out of the self-subjected squalor. Yet she thinks that perhaps he knows the reason why. She thinks that Giles sees a lot more than he ever lets on to seeing. And that perhaps Giles understand that there are far worse things to fear than the vampires that Slayers hunt; that the monster that they should all truly fear isn’t the vampire or the demon but man. Faith recognizes the monster whenever she looks in the mirror.
((END))