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FIC: The Confessional (parts 10-end)
Title: The Confessional
Length: 12 short(ish to midlength) parts (and a few lines of prologue) in 4 posts.
Rating: R, for language and some images
Warnings: This fic contains reference to slash and some subjects which I guess could be considered controversial.
Pairings: This is not a shippy fic. B/A and A/S are explicitly referenced; many others are hinted at.
Summary: Angel visits Faith in prison. Takes places between AtS S1 & 2.
A/N: Although this fic has a definite time frame, it can't be read as "missing scenes". Among other things, Faith's prison is too far away for Angel to visit this often in one summer. This fic is much more of a "what if", especially towards the end.
Prologue, [1.], [2.], [3.], [4.], [5.], [6.], [7.], [8.], [9.]
10.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
I surprise myself by blurting, “Glad to see you.”
“That’s a first.”
“Yeah, well.” I try to cover it up. “Don’t expect a repeat performance, mack.” I sit back and soften up a bit. “You said I gotta open myself up, and who else am I gonna be open with? Bertha the Butch-Queen?”
Angel looks thoughtful. “I’m not sure if I had had my way you’d be in jail.”
“And you like getting your way, huh?”
“I like getting my way,” he affirms steadily.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“It was your choice.” Angel waves a hand dismissively. “Besides, protecting you from the police all the time . . . more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Yeah.” I want to scowl, but shit, I’m smiling. “Maybe I’ll prove you wrong some day.”
He nods. “Hopefully.”
Now I’m really smiling, and there’s that blasted surge of warmth his approval pushes through me. I only remember feeling this way around someone one other time in my life. “You know what really floated my boat about the mayor?” I say finally.
He stiffens up. Maybe it freaks him, that he can make me feel like the boss did: loved. “What?” he asks warily.
“The milk and cookies. He used to tell me milk was good for my teeth.”
Bit by bit, tight muscles loosen, but his eyes don’t. They’re fixed on me fast, watching me, thinking. At last gravely he observes, “Milk does a body good.”
I laugh. God, I laugh. “Angel, you’re . . . you’re . . . you know what you said about freeing yourself, first?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’m getting there.” I want to talk about movies with him, about the food I like, about the demons he’s fighting. I want to talk about Wesley with him, and Buffy, and . . . my mother? “I mean . . . inch, circumference, world,” I rush on. “I know, I know. But I feel . . . freer.”
He nods like he knows. “That’s the way it feels.”
“The way what feels?”
“When you start to think maybe you have a chance.”
“You think so?” I ask, not quite believing him. “I mean, do you think you have a chance?”
He looks away. At first, I think he’s changing the subject. “I stole a scroll. From Wolfram and Hart. And Wesley translated it. There was a prophecy in it, about a vampire with a soul.”
“Get out. There’s a prophecy about you?”
Angel presses his lips together and shifts in his chair. “It . . . seems that way. There was this word. Sanshu. It means death.”
“Some prophecy.”
“No. It means . . . I can die.” His voice somehow reminds me of how he sounds sometimes when he talks about Buffy. “When I’ve suffered enough, battled enough, won enough . . . I’ll become human.”
I frown. “And then you’ll die.”
“Preferably at an old age. I’ll . . . get gray hair, Faith.”
Still frowning, here. “You sound excited about that.”
“Well, it’s . . . it’s my reward. From the Powers That Be.”
“Gray hair is your reward?”
“Maybe we can’t make up for what we’ve done, but the good we do . . . matters. Makes a difference. And one day it can be over.”
“You’re happy,” I announce wonderingly.
“I feel . . .” He trails off, still looking at that inner light. “Like you said. Free.”
“I’m happy you’re happy.” Now, this is a revelation.
He snaps back down. “Look, I know you don’t—”
“No. I’m serious. I’m happy you’re happy.” Shit, it’s all new to me too, and I’m half afraid I look as much like a boob as he just did—glowing with like a damn Timex Indiglo. But it’s true; my chest is tight again and . . . “I’ve never . . . never felt this way. God, I think it hurts.”
“Faith, you know I—”
Here comes the cautionary tale. “Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. A summer in the joint’s made me a complete lesbo anyway.”
“I was going to tell you that I cared about you.” The earnestness is killing me, and luckily, he smirks. “I think you’re over the wanting to jump my bones stage.”
“Shiddle-cum-shite, no,” I counter. “You do realize I only see one good-looking man a week, right?”
He laughs, and we’re good.
*
I left my mom to her drinks and Kit to his fabuloso uncle. I left them, one, and forgot them. Two.
Kakistos had knocked me out; when I came to, his fangs were already in my Laine’s throat—but that wasn’t what stopped me. It was fear. I’d tried staking him, decapitating him, burning him, playing a mean game of cat and mouse to lure him into sunlight—but it wasn’t dusting him I doubted. It was myself. Fear, doubt, and the thought that maybe that other Slayer out there would be doing this better. Three.
Buffy told me no; she told me to wait; she told me long before it happened that I was too into it. The worst part is I’ll always wonder whether some part of me knew he was a human, and just didn’t care. I’ll always wonder if when my hands pushed in the stake, bringing down death, bathing in blood, whether I wanted this—wanted to have the hands of a murderer and feet that would run from the scene of the crime. Four.
I handed the boss the Books of Ascension, still sticky. There were five of them.
I heard an old pain in Buffy’s voice when she asked, “You actually think I can form a thought right now?” and a part of me seized up with joy and desire. For once, she was jealous of me. Another part of me was worried Angel could smell what happened to me when she walked in and saw us, because the rest of me knows that me driving them apart is an arrogant fantasy, an unattainable wet dream. I dream of me in front of Angel and Buffy behind me, whispering words and guiding me down onto him, and me being a part of that perfect, private happiness. But the truth of it is the three of us could fuck six ways to Sunday and I would never come between them.
Riley. Damn near seven inches, if you want to know. What can I say, he’s got big hands.
I was going to make a cut for every way I wanted Angel to kill me, for every moment I didn’t die and had to hate myself, for every wrong I’d done. Wesley was going to be red, riddled in slashes, repeatedly screaming, and I was still going to be cutting him until his veins ran dry. Eight doesn’t begin to cover it.
Cutting him because I couldn’t exonerate myself—nine years ago, decked out in my floral-print dress and buckle shoes, I thought that was how it went. They told me Christ died to absolve us, and the only way that really works is if we killed him. He was giving us a free ride, I thought. I used to march up to that booth in those buckle shoes and rattle off my misdeeds until my voice got tired. I couldn’t wait to be forgiven so I could sin again.
When I was ten I stopped. I’d finally realized confession was about a remorse I didn’t feel, penance was a prayer in which I could not take pleasure, and forgiveness was a gift, not a given.
Now, going on eleven visits from Angel, everything is different.
11.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How’re you doing?” Angel asks.
“Fine,” I answer. “I’ve been reading.”
“Reading?”
I smirk a little at the surprise in his voice. “Yeah, it’s this new thing I’m learning where you sound out these letters and make words.”
His jaw falls a little. “You didn’t know how to—”
My mouth purses up and I can’t believe how much he makes me want to laugh. “I was kidding.”
“Well,” he says, flustered now, “What’re you reading? I could recommend some good—”
“Cricket In Times Square.”
“I was going to say Victor Hugo, but okay.” I give him my, “We got nothing in common, dickwad” face, and he looks appropriately contrite. “I used to read Cosmopolitan,” he offers, and at my horror looks defensive. “It was . . . homework.”
“Homework,” I repeat dumbly. Hey, still horrified here.
“When a guy like me is dating someone like Buffy, he picks up a little extra reading, alright?”
Okay, now I get it, but you know what? Not helping. Still horrified. “So you read Cosmo,” I repeat. Once again, dumbly.
He nods. “Useful magazine.”
“Ten ways to make a man orgasm?” I say skeptically.
He gives up. “You’re right, it was hopeless. I mean, ten? I can do it in about fifty different ways, and that’s not counting . . .” He trails off and grimaces. “You know, I didn’t really count back then.”
“You could make a lot of money, writing for women’s magazine’s.”
“I could. You know, maybe if—when I get old, I’ll be a writer.”
If—when. Angel, waiting for his orgasmic redemption. “I think you’re wrong,” I say suddenly.
He scowls. “I could do it. I know plenty of stuff about women.”
“Yo, not talking about that.”
“Oh.”
“Know how you told me that you’ve been looking for forgiveness, like, forever?” I lean in, fingers tapping on the table, hand tightening on the phone, and eye him in a way I wish was wise. “I think it’s stupid,” I announce. “What’s the point if you’re never gonna get it?”
Angel looks startled, abruptly a little tired. “It’s not about—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re going to tell me it’s the journey that counts, huh?”
“Well, kind of,” he answers, lips twitching in chagrin.
“I don’t think that’s it.” I spread my hand flat on the table, looking at my five fingers, thinking about the seven sacraments, eighteen years of ignorance, about twenty mysteries of Mary, about one hundred and two years with a soul and one hundred and fifty-two years without one, and about the infinite love of whatever god is out there. “I think you need to forgive yourself.”
He blinks once, very slowly. “What?”
“I think you need to love yourself. Forgive yourself, first, before you expect anyone else to. It’s all very masturbatory.”
He swallows and with a minute, jerky movement, shakes his head. “Do you honestly think you could?”
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I think I could. I always liked me better than you liked you. I call my own name out during sex, you know.” He dips his head, and I see hundreds of years of self-hate. “How long you set to do penance?”
He’s looking at one of his hands; the fingers are moving, thumb and forefinger, a caress over a bead that isn’t there. “Are we . . .”
“What?”
Slowly, lifting liquid eyes to mine, he asks, “Are we in confession?”
“Maybe. How many Hail Marys is it going to take?”
“I’m not . . .” His gaze slides from mine again and he murmurs, “I’m not Catholic any more.”
“It’s the same in every religion. You said so yourself.”
His eyes close swiftly, and for a moment, he could be a statue. Then the lids slowly open, and he says my name.
“What?”
“There was a reason your mother named you that.”
And that’s something I’m not going into with him. “It was on a soap of hers,” I say blankly, hitching a shoulder.
“You have more of it than me.”
“I’m just smarter than you,” I offer guilelessly.
“I didn’t think . . .” He trails off, and begins again. “I hadn’t thought there was anything you could teach me. It’s . . . a leap.”
“Of Faith. Cute.”
Angel nods. “That’s what they call me at the office.” His deadpan is a mask. “So, Cosmo,” he suggests genially. “Think they’d hire me?”
We discuss the finer points of giving men orgasms. I’m pissed he knows so much more about it than me.
*
When Cassie comes at me with a flash of something wicked I pass the basketball behind me, grab it with my other hand, and bring it smack dab into her face. The ball drops through the hoop of her outstretched arms and my slick, sweaty hand is slipping down her elbow to her wrist, squeezing. She drops the blade; I toss it back to my other hand, turn her wrist so the veins’re exposed, and slice.
Sinking into her feels so good my mouth goes dry and I think I’m wet. I grip her head, palming her face, feeling her blood where the ball hit her nose, savoring the sticky thickness and the rush of power. I push her down head first, and I’m on top of her, knife raised, and I’m going to kill her. I see pleasure, pain, the knife the mayor gave me, my reflection—a weapon to be used—Wesley, Buffy, Angel—too many faces—
How can I still want it so much, when I’ve come so far?
I’m shivering for it, thighs are clenching for it, aching for it.
“You can’t do that. It’s wrong!”
I’m not sure whether it’s my voice or Buffy’s. Insane, unsated desire, the thrill and throb of power, the seductive proximity of death—they’ll make you do that. Faith—you can’t do this—Faith—it’s wrong—Faith—
“Faith. You have more of it than me.”
My hand convulses, and I drop the knife. As the C.O.s pull me off of Cassie, whipping out their sticks like dicks, I think: Angel was wrong. As the blows fall on me I don’t revel in them; I don’t think about how I deserve them. I just wait for them to end. After they stop, I’ll wait for the bruises to fade. After I get out of here, I’ll live my life. I’ll fight and I’ll fuck and with luck, I’ll love and I’ll hope and I’ll dream.
Angel, he isn’t the same. He just goes down too far. I’m in jail and I’ve killed people, but he’s been to Hell and kept people alive for things I can’t even imagine. The thing of it is, as far down as he goes, he wants to rise up that much higher. I’m just hoping to walk, to live, to find a place for myself and maybe do my duty. Angel, he wants to save the world.
He’s the one with all the faith, because he still thinks he can.
And you know, I’m not sure which of us is right. What I do know is that I’m happy to know a man like that. I’m happy to know a woman like Buffy. I’m happy there are heroes in the world, even if I’ll never be one of them.
And as the blows continue rain down, I think I at last know what love is like.
12.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How you doing?”
“Pretty good, I guess.” The bruises might be fading, but it’s still a lie. I grimace. “I did sign up for this.”
Angel, hearing the twinge in my voice, lifts a brow. “Regretting the choice?”
I shrug a little, and tell him. “Bad day. One of the girls in the yard tried to build a rep by throwing down with me. She had low self-esteem, and a home-made knife, so . . .”
“Oh.” He knows what this means just as well as I do. My first test, really, and it’s a little different than pipe-dreams about love and forgiveness and Cosmo. “Is she . . . you know—alive?” he asks.
I smile proudly. “She lives to tell the tale. Took the knife away, and I can’t say much for the wrist it came in.”
I expect to hear bull about that, but he only looks relieved. “So you didn’t kill her,” he concludes.
“I really wanted to. Took a big beating from the guards, too.”
“Sorry.”
“Earned worse,” I say, shrugging it off. “Guys like us kind of got it coming.”
He offers his condolences. “I had to sing Barry Manilow.”
Okay, one of the most badass motherfucker (fatherfucker, littlechildrenfucker) mass murders to walk this earth singing the King of Camp? “You’re kidding.”
“In front of people.”
I’m trying not to laugh at him, because I’m guessing this is one of those things he doesn’t plan on telling other people—a confidence, that’s what this is. A confidence about Barry Manilow. “And here I am talking about my petty little problems.”
“Just wanted to give you a little perspective.”
“‘Copacabana’?”
“‘Mandy.’” Should’ve known. If I was sick and twisted I’d come up with a way that song parallels him and Buffy, but the only version of it I could ever stand was Homer’s. “Oh Margie. You came and you found me a turkey . . .” He can see I’m cracking up again and he scowls—amused, sardonic, and a little pained. “I don’t wanna dwell on it,” he says.
I just smirk. “The road to redemption is a rocky path.”
“That it is.”
There’s a heaviness in his voice and my eyes narrow, wondering what happened, why he had to sing of all things, and why the light I’ve been noticing around the eyes ever since he told me about his Sanshu thing seems suddenly faded a little. “You think we might make it?” I ask, narrowing my eyes a little.
“We might,” he says gravely. The answer is different than what I expected. Me and Angel, we’re on different paths. Doesn’t mean we’re not getting to the same place. “Food getting any better?” he asks.
“You know,” I say, smiling a little, “it’s not that different from what I grew up on. It’s a little one note. Eating the same thing every day.”
The side of Angel’s mouth quirks. “I wonder what that’s like.”
“Right,” I say, and laugh.
*
And as we sit here, talking about blood and Barry Manilow, I get this funny feeling. I feel like I could reach right out and touch him. I could touch his hand and feel his skin, and he wouldn’t be warm, but I would. And I could keep touching, touch right on through to the outside, to the world, where there are mothers loving and beating children, kids eating ice cream and shooting their class-mates and watching cartoons, men raping each other and dying for each other. I could go on touching; I could reach right out and touch you.
It’s so funny I laugh. I think he might’ve said something, something about hot dogs, and I might be saying something too, something about what I grew up on: TV dinners on Sundays, skipping school on Mondays, gin and tonic for Mom every other day, cigarettes, peppermint, moldy drywall, mothballs, love neglect squalor. I give him pieces of myself one by one, and they pass through the glass like nothing’s there. I’ve given you pieces of myself, and it’s like nothing’s between us at all.
He listens. That’s the thing about Angel. He’s a dork and he’s a vampire; sometimes he’s an asshole and I didn’t want to give a fuck. I didn’t want to care and I didn’t want to let him in and I didn’t want to love him. But he listens, and it makes me feel like I can touch him. We’re all flawed, but all of us have learned to love, haven’t we, because we listen.
I hated you; I was afraid of you; I didn’t want you here. You’ve seen me; you have the power to judge me, and I don’t like anyone having that kind of power over me. I’ve watched you this whole time, watched you and waited for you to turn away from me. But you haven’t.
I could turn away from you right now. I could move on; I could forget you. I don’t need your judgment; I don’t need your approval; I don’t need you to see me and love me for who I am.
But I’m not going to. I’m going to reach out, and try to touch you.
Take me, and make of me what you will.
*
Disclaimers: Lines from part 12 are stolen from AtS 2.1 "Judgment." I think I got the idea of Faith loving the Red Sox from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dlgood (I think he said it was fanon). The end of this fic closely resembles the end of the novel Jazz, by Toni Morrison. If you have not read Jazz, do. That book teaches better than any other book I've ever read how to love your fellow man.
Length: 12 short(ish to midlength) parts (and a few lines of prologue) in 4 posts.
Rating: R, for language and some images
Warnings: This fic contains reference to slash and some subjects which I guess could be considered controversial.
Pairings: This is not a shippy fic. B/A and A/S are explicitly referenced; many others are hinted at.
Summary: Angel visits Faith in prison. Takes places between AtS S1 & 2.
A/N: Although this fic has a definite time frame, it can't be read as "missing scenes". Among other things, Faith's prison is too far away for Angel to visit this often in one summer. This fic is much more of a "what if", especially towards the end.
Prologue, [1.], [2.], [3.], [4.], [5.], [6.], [7.], [8.], [9.]
10.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
I surprise myself by blurting, “Glad to see you.”
“That’s a first.”
“Yeah, well.” I try to cover it up. “Don’t expect a repeat performance, mack.” I sit back and soften up a bit. “You said I gotta open myself up, and who else am I gonna be open with? Bertha the Butch-Queen?”
Angel looks thoughtful. “I’m not sure if I had had my way you’d be in jail.”
“And you like getting your way, huh?”
“I like getting my way,” he affirms steadily.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“It was your choice.” Angel waves a hand dismissively. “Besides, protecting you from the police all the time . . . more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Yeah.” I want to scowl, but shit, I’m smiling. “Maybe I’ll prove you wrong some day.”
He nods. “Hopefully.”
Now I’m really smiling, and there’s that blasted surge of warmth his approval pushes through me. I only remember feeling this way around someone one other time in my life. “You know what really floated my boat about the mayor?” I say finally.
He stiffens up. Maybe it freaks him, that he can make me feel like the boss did: loved. “What?” he asks warily.
“The milk and cookies. He used to tell me milk was good for my teeth.”
Bit by bit, tight muscles loosen, but his eyes don’t. They’re fixed on me fast, watching me, thinking. At last gravely he observes, “Milk does a body good.”
I laugh. God, I laugh. “Angel, you’re . . . you’re . . . you know what you said about freeing yourself, first?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’m getting there.” I want to talk about movies with him, about the food I like, about the demons he’s fighting. I want to talk about Wesley with him, and Buffy, and . . . my mother? “I mean . . . inch, circumference, world,” I rush on. “I know, I know. But I feel . . . freer.”
He nods like he knows. “That’s the way it feels.”
“The way what feels?”
“When you start to think maybe you have a chance.”
“You think so?” I ask, not quite believing him. “I mean, do you think you have a chance?”
He looks away. At first, I think he’s changing the subject. “I stole a scroll. From Wolfram and Hart. And Wesley translated it. There was a prophecy in it, about a vampire with a soul.”
“Get out. There’s a prophecy about you?”
Angel presses his lips together and shifts in his chair. “It . . . seems that way. There was this word. Sanshu. It means death.”
“Some prophecy.”
“No. It means . . . I can die.” His voice somehow reminds me of how he sounds sometimes when he talks about Buffy. “When I’ve suffered enough, battled enough, won enough . . . I’ll become human.”
I frown. “And then you’ll die.”
“Preferably at an old age. I’ll . . . get gray hair, Faith.”
Still frowning, here. “You sound excited about that.”
“Well, it’s . . . it’s my reward. From the Powers That Be.”
“Gray hair is your reward?”
“Maybe we can’t make up for what we’ve done, but the good we do . . . matters. Makes a difference. And one day it can be over.”
“You’re happy,” I announce wonderingly.
“I feel . . .” He trails off, still looking at that inner light. “Like you said. Free.”
“I’m happy you’re happy.” Now, this is a revelation.
He snaps back down. “Look, I know you don’t—”
“No. I’m serious. I’m happy you’re happy.” Shit, it’s all new to me too, and I’m half afraid I look as much like a boob as he just did—glowing with like a damn Timex Indiglo. But it’s true; my chest is tight again and . . . “I’ve never . . . never felt this way. God, I think it hurts.”
“Faith, you know I—”
Here comes the cautionary tale. “Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. A summer in the joint’s made me a complete lesbo anyway.”
“I was going to tell you that I cared about you.” The earnestness is killing me, and luckily, he smirks. “I think you’re over the wanting to jump my bones stage.”
“Shiddle-cum-shite, no,” I counter. “You do realize I only see one good-looking man a week, right?”
He laughs, and we’re good.
*
I left my mom to her drinks and Kit to his fabuloso uncle. I left them, one, and forgot them. Two.
Kakistos had knocked me out; when I came to, his fangs were already in my Laine’s throat—but that wasn’t what stopped me. It was fear. I’d tried staking him, decapitating him, burning him, playing a mean game of cat and mouse to lure him into sunlight—but it wasn’t dusting him I doubted. It was myself. Fear, doubt, and the thought that maybe that other Slayer out there would be doing this better. Three.
Buffy told me no; she told me to wait; she told me long before it happened that I was too into it. The worst part is I’ll always wonder whether some part of me knew he was a human, and just didn’t care. I’ll always wonder if when my hands pushed in the stake, bringing down death, bathing in blood, whether I wanted this—wanted to have the hands of a murderer and feet that would run from the scene of the crime. Four.
I handed the boss the Books of Ascension, still sticky. There were five of them.
I heard an old pain in Buffy’s voice when she asked, “You actually think I can form a thought right now?” and a part of me seized up with joy and desire. For once, she was jealous of me. Another part of me was worried Angel could smell what happened to me when she walked in and saw us, because the rest of me knows that me driving them apart is an arrogant fantasy, an unattainable wet dream. I dream of me in front of Angel and Buffy behind me, whispering words and guiding me down onto him, and me being a part of that perfect, private happiness. But the truth of it is the three of us could fuck six ways to Sunday and I would never come between them.
Riley. Damn near seven inches, if you want to know. What can I say, he’s got big hands.
I was going to make a cut for every way I wanted Angel to kill me, for every moment I didn’t die and had to hate myself, for every wrong I’d done. Wesley was going to be red, riddled in slashes, repeatedly screaming, and I was still going to be cutting him until his veins ran dry. Eight doesn’t begin to cover it.
Cutting him because I couldn’t exonerate myself—nine years ago, decked out in my floral-print dress and buckle shoes, I thought that was how it went. They told me Christ died to absolve us, and the only way that really works is if we killed him. He was giving us a free ride, I thought. I used to march up to that booth in those buckle shoes and rattle off my misdeeds until my voice got tired. I couldn’t wait to be forgiven so I could sin again.
When I was ten I stopped. I’d finally realized confession was about a remorse I didn’t feel, penance was a prayer in which I could not take pleasure, and forgiveness was a gift, not a given.
Now, going on eleven visits from Angel, everything is different.
11.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How’re you doing?” Angel asks.
“Fine,” I answer. “I’ve been reading.”
“Reading?”
I smirk a little at the surprise in his voice. “Yeah, it’s this new thing I’m learning where you sound out these letters and make words.”
His jaw falls a little. “You didn’t know how to—”
My mouth purses up and I can’t believe how much he makes me want to laugh. “I was kidding.”
“Well,” he says, flustered now, “What’re you reading? I could recommend some good—”
“Cricket In Times Square.”
“I was going to say Victor Hugo, but okay.” I give him my, “We got nothing in common, dickwad” face, and he looks appropriately contrite. “I used to read Cosmopolitan,” he offers, and at my horror looks defensive. “It was . . . homework.”
“Homework,” I repeat dumbly. Hey, still horrified here.
“When a guy like me is dating someone like Buffy, he picks up a little extra reading, alright?”
Okay, now I get it, but you know what? Not helping. Still horrified. “So you read Cosmo,” I repeat. Once again, dumbly.
He nods. “Useful magazine.”
“Ten ways to make a man orgasm?” I say skeptically.
He gives up. “You’re right, it was hopeless. I mean, ten? I can do it in about fifty different ways, and that’s not counting . . .” He trails off and grimaces. “You know, I didn’t really count back then.”
“You could make a lot of money, writing for women’s magazine’s.”
“I could. You know, maybe if—when I get old, I’ll be a writer.”
If—when. Angel, waiting for his orgasmic redemption. “I think you’re wrong,” I say suddenly.
He scowls. “I could do it. I know plenty of stuff about women.”
“Yo, not talking about that.”
“Oh.”
“Know how you told me that you’ve been looking for forgiveness, like, forever?” I lean in, fingers tapping on the table, hand tightening on the phone, and eye him in a way I wish was wise. “I think it’s stupid,” I announce. “What’s the point if you’re never gonna get it?”
Angel looks startled, abruptly a little tired. “It’s not about—”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re going to tell me it’s the journey that counts, huh?”
“Well, kind of,” he answers, lips twitching in chagrin.
“I don’t think that’s it.” I spread my hand flat on the table, looking at my five fingers, thinking about the seven sacraments, eighteen years of ignorance, about twenty mysteries of Mary, about one hundred and two years with a soul and one hundred and fifty-two years without one, and about the infinite love of whatever god is out there. “I think you need to forgive yourself.”
He blinks once, very slowly. “What?”
“I think you need to love yourself. Forgive yourself, first, before you expect anyone else to. It’s all very masturbatory.”
He swallows and with a minute, jerky movement, shakes his head. “Do you honestly think you could?”
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I think I could. I always liked me better than you liked you. I call my own name out during sex, you know.” He dips his head, and I see hundreds of years of self-hate. “How long you set to do penance?”
He’s looking at one of his hands; the fingers are moving, thumb and forefinger, a caress over a bead that isn’t there. “Are we . . .”
“What?”
Slowly, lifting liquid eyes to mine, he asks, “Are we in confession?”
“Maybe. How many Hail Marys is it going to take?”
“I’m not . . .” His gaze slides from mine again and he murmurs, “I’m not Catholic any more.”
“It’s the same in every religion. You said so yourself.”
His eyes close swiftly, and for a moment, he could be a statue. Then the lids slowly open, and he says my name.
“What?”
“There was a reason your mother named you that.”
And that’s something I’m not going into with him. “It was on a soap of hers,” I say blankly, hitching a shoulder.
“You have more of it than me.”
“I’m just smarter than you,” I offer guilelessly.
“I didn’t think . . .” He trails off, and begins again. “I hadn’t thought there was anything you could teach me. It’s . . . a leap.”
“Of Faith. Cute.”
Angel nods. “That’s what they call me at the office.” His deadpan is a mask. “So, Cosmo,” he suggests genially. “Think they’d hire me?”
We discuss the finer points of giving men orgasms. I’m pissed he knows so much more about it than me.
*
When Cassie comes at me with a flash of something wicked I pass the basketball behind me, grab it with my other hand, and bring it smack dab into her face. The ball drops through the hoop of her outstretched arms and my slick, sweaty hand is slipping down her elbow to her wrist, squeezing. She drops the blade; I toss it back to my other hand, turn her wrist so the veins’re exposed, and slice.
Sinking into her feels so good my mouth goes dry and I think I’m wet. I grip her head, palming her face, feeling her blood where the ball hit her nose, savoring the sticky thickness and the rush of power. I push her down head first, and I’m on top of her, knife raised, and I’m going to kill her. I see pleasure, pain, the knife the mayor gave me, my reflection—a weapon to be used—Wesley, Buffy, Angel—too many faces—
How can I still want it so much, when I’ve come so far?
I’m shivering for it, thighs are clenching for it, aching for it.
“You can’t do that. It’s wrong!”
I’m not sure whether it’s my voice or Buffy’s. Insane, unsated desire, the thrill and throb of power, the seductive proximity of death—they’ll make you do that. Faith—you can’t do this—Faith—it’s wrong—Faith—
“Faith. You have more of it than me.”
My hand convulses, and I drop the knife. As the C.O.s pull me off of Cassie, whipping out their sticks like dicks, I think: Angel was wrong. As the blows fall on me I don’t revel in them; I don’t think about how I deserve them. I just wait for them to end. After they stop, I’ll wait for the bruises to fade. After I get out of here, I’ll live my life. I’ll fight and I’ll fuck and with luck, I’ll love and I’ll hope and I’ll dream.
Angel, he isn’t the same. He just goes down too far. I’m in jail and I’ve killed people, but he’s been to Hell and kept people alive for things I can’t even imagine. The thing of it is, as far down as he goes, he wants to rise up that much higher. I’m just hoping to walk, to live, to find a place for myself and maybe do my duty. Angel, he wants to save the world.
He’s the one with all the faith, because he still thinks he can.
And you know, I’m not sure which of us is right. What I do know is that I’m happy to know a man like that. I’m happy to know a woman like Buffy. I’m happy there are heroes in the world, even if I’ll never be one of them.
And as the blows continue rain down, I think I at last know what love is like.
12.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How you doing?”
“Pretty good, I guess.” The bruises might be fading, but it’s still a lie. I grimace. “I did sign up for this.”
Angel, hearing the twinge in my voice, lifts a brow. “Regretting the choice?”
I shrug a little, and tell him. “Bad day. One of the girls in the yard tried to build a rep by throwing down with me. She had low self-esteem, and a home-made knife, so . . .”
“Oh.” He knows what this means just as well as I do. My first test, really, and it’s a little different than pipe-dreams about love and forgiveness and Cosmo. “Is she . . . you know—alive?” he asks.
I smile proudly. “She lives to tell the tale. Took the knife away, and I can’t say much for the wrist it came in.”
I expect to hear bull about that, but he only looks relieved. “So you didn’t kill her,” he concludes.
“I really wanted to. Took a big beating from the guards, too.”
“Sorry.”
“Earned worse,” I say, shrugging it off. “Guys like us kind of got it coming.”
He offers his condolences. “I had to sing Barry Manilow.”
Okay, one of the most badass motherfucker (fatherfucker, littlechildrenfucker) mass murders to walk this earth singing the King of Camp? “You’re kidding.”
“In front of people.”
I’m trying not to laugh at him, because I’m guessing this is one of those things he doesn’t plan on telling other people—a confidence, that’s what this is. A confidence about Barry Manilow. “And here I am talking about my petty little problems.”
“Just wanted to give you a little perspective.”
“‘Copacabana’?”
“‘Mandy.’” Should’ve known. If I was sick and twisted I’d come up with a way that song parallels him and Buffy, but the only version of it I could ever stand was Homer’s. “Oh Margie. You came and you found me a turkey . . .” He can see I’m cracking up again and he scowls—amused, sardonic, and a little pained. “I don’t wanna dwell on it,” he says.
I just smirk. “The road to redemption is a rocky path.”
“That it is.”
There’s a heaviness in his voice and my eyes narrow, wondering what happened, why he had to sing of all things, and why the light I’ve been noticing around the eyes ever since he told me about his Sanshu thing seems suddenly faded a little. “You think we might make it?” I ask, narrowing my eyes a little.
“We might,” he says gravely. The answer is different than what I expected. Me and Angel, we’re on different paths. Doesn’t mean we’re not getting to the same place. “Food getting any better?” he asks.
“You know,” I say, smiling a little, “it’s not that different from what I grew up on. It’s a little one note. Eating the same thing every day.”
The side of Angel’s mouth quirks. “I wonder what that’s like.”
“Right,” I say, and laugh.
*
And as we sit here, talking about blood and Barry Manilow, I get this funny feeling. I feel like I could reach right out and touch him. I could touch his hand and feel his skin, and he wouldn’t be warm, but I would. And I could keep touching, touch right on through to the outside, to the world, where there are mothers loving and beating children, kids eating ice cream and shooting their class-mates and watching cartoons, men raping each other and dying for each other. I could go on touching; I could reach right out and touch you.
It’s so funny I laugh. I think he might’ve said something, something about hot dogs, and I might be saying something too, something about what I grew up on: TV dinners on Sundays, skipping school on Mondays, gin and tonic for Mom every other day, cigarettes, peppermint, moldy drywall, mothballs, love neglect squalor. I give him pieces of myself one by one, and they pass through the glass like nothing’s there. I’ve given you pieces of myself, and it’s like nothing’s between us at all.
He listens. That’s the thing about Angel. He’s a dork and he’s a vampire; sometimes he’s an asshole and I didn’t want to give a fuck. I didn’t want to care and I didn’t want to let him in and I didn’t want to love him. But he listens, and it makes me feel like I can touch him. We’re all flawed, but all of us have learned to love, haven’t we, because we listen.
I hated you; I was afraid of you; I didn’t want you here. You’ve seen me; you have the power to judge me, and I don’t like anyone having that kind of power over me. I’ve watched you this whole time, watched you and waited for you to turn away from me. But you haven’t.
I could turn away from you right now. I could move on; I could forget you. I don’t need your judgment; I don’t need your approval; I don’t need you to see me and love me for who I am.
But I’m not going to. I’m going to reach out, and try to touch you.
Take me, and make of me what you will.
*
Disclaimers: Lines from part 12 are stolen from AtS 2.1 "Judgment." I think I got the idea of Faith loving the Red Sox from
dlgood (I think he said it was fanon). The end of this fic closely resembles the end of the novel Jazz, by Toni Morrison. If you have not read Jazz, do. That book teaches better than any other book I've ever read how to love your fellow man.
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I love your icon.
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A friend of mine made the icon for me literally right after Van Hugh-sing came out. It's one of my funnier icons, I think. ;)