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1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
Buffy pictures life as it used to be: dinner table with mother and sister. (She doesn’t bother to include her father in this idyllic daydream today.) Her mother is the guest of honour, clad in white. Glowing, like an angel.
“I miss you,” Buffy tells her.
“I’m right here, honey,” Joyce says. “I’ve always been right here.”
Faith watches this from the side, an unusual wallflower. Unseen, like a ghost.
“Where’s Faith?” Joyce asks. “Weren’t you going to invite her over?”
I’m right here, Faith thinks desperately. I’ve always been right here.
“Oh,” Buffy says. “She didn’t want to come.”
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
“Come on, B,” Faith says, whipping around to face her, manic grin illuminated by Sunnydale streetlights. “Don’t tell me you don’t love this. Isn’t this what a little-miss-girl-next-door is supposed to dream about? Bein’ a star?”
“How is this stardom? It’s not like anyone knows who we are.”
“They know,” Faith says, indicating the shadowy figures lurking just out of the streetlight’s reach.
One, two, three dozen vampires step into sight, surrounding them.
A crowd?
“Our audience.”
Buffy and Faith move to stand back-to-back, on their toes, stakes raised, heartbeats elevated—anticipating the thrill of it.
“Welcome to the show.”
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
“So—do I get my one phone call?” Faith asks the security guard, long after Buffy and Angel have left.
“Who you gonna call?” The guy chuckles to himself like he thinks he’s hilarious. “I think you missed your chance, lady.”
“What? I don’t have rights?”
“You gave those up when you walked in here.”
Faith slumps against the wall and thinks about what she’d say to Buffy, if she could even get through to her.
Sorry I tried to kill your boyfriend? Sorry I fucked the other one? I love you?
Yeah, right. Fuck that.
She doesn’t call anyone.
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
Buffy talks about spa days and perfect hair. The company of Dawn and Willow. Coming home to a massage from a significant other.
Faith watches as B’s eyes close briefly in contentment, willing herself to make a sarcastic comment but unable to form a coherent thought.
Buffy opens her eyes again, and Faith finally looks away.
“Does that night end with a—?” Faith makes a suggestive grunting sound.
Ignoring this, Buffy asks: “What about you? What’s your perfect day?”
This. Right now. This is pretty good. You. Me. Some vamps to kill.
“There’s no such thing as perfect, B.”
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
(Buffy) So one by one, they turn from me
I guess my friends can’t face the cold
Why I froze, not one among them knows
And never can be told
(Faith) She came from the grave much graver,
If I could, then I would save her,
Everything is turning out so dark
(Buffy) Going through the motions
(Faith) I’ve been through this once before now
Wish I could help her with this, but how
(Sweet) It’s what they have inside
(Buffy) These endless days are finally ending in a blaze
(Buffy & Faith) And we are caught in the fire
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
“What will happen if we manage to be old? Living in the old Slayers’ home. I mean… what would we do then? What could we do?”
“We’d still have kickass powers,” Faith says, lounging next to Buffy on the couch. “I don’t think those go away with age.”
“No, but—other things do. Muscles and… and spryness. Flexibility.”
“Are you saying you’d wanna be young forever? I dunno, B.” Faith smirks. “What about that with-age-comes-wisdom shit?”
“I’m a Slayer. I’ve never needed to be Knowledge Girl to do my job.”
“Now you’re talkin’ my language.”
Let’s be young forever together.
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
“We probably won’t, though,” Buffy continues.
“Won’t what?”
“Live to be old. Have you ever heard of an old Slayer?”
“We’ll probably kick the bucket before we’re thirty,” Faith agrees. The thought sobers her a little. “Well, this is cheery.”
“Sorry,” Buffy says. “It’s just… I have this philosophy. To live every day like it might be my last. Only—when I came up with it, I was in high school, and the biggest danger to my life was one or two incompetent vampires. I guess it’s just been getting too real lately, y’know. Apocalypses. Friends turning evil.”
“I know.”
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
Buffy listens as Faith tells tall tales of rassling alligators, surrounding by her friends, looking on with rapt attention.
It’s not like Buffy can’t do that. They simply don’t have alligators in Sunnydale.
Oh my God, Buffy thinks. I’m not jealous of her.
Not jealous of her outfit: dark top and leather pants and damn she’s hot.
Not jealous of her passion: fighting for the thrill of it, her face gleeful as she describes taking down a demon twice her size.
Not jealous of her skill, power, ingenuity.
(Faith looks at Buffy and she’s not-jealous of the very same things.)
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
Faith hasn’t relied on anyone in a very long time: she knows first-hand that people have a tendency to let you down.
Buffy—her of the entourage of supportive friends—had declined a joint patrol tonight because she’d made plans to study with Willow and then look after her kid sister.
So, tonight, Faith’s got no one but herself. Again.
What the fuck is gratitude, anyway? Weeping thanks at the feet of those who’ll lift you out of the quicksand one day and then dump you back in it the next?
Faith’s just glad she’s a hot chick with superpowers.
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
Buffy has a father, and he takes her to see the ice show for her birthday—every single year, without fail. He doesn’t miss a moment. He is so proud of her.
Faith has a dog, and she names him after some musician in one of the shitty bands she listens to because her father hates them. She takes him for long walks, stopping at the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She smokes them in the park, her pup joyously chasing squirrels around benches and old oak trees. She never wants to go home.
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
Girl’s father abandons her; maybe it’s for the better. Girl’s mother dies.
People keep dying around her. People that she cares about.
(This is probably because she has the strength and skill needed to fight the vampires, the demons, and the forces of evil. Creatures of the night hate her.)
She dies for several months, and the world feels like Hell when she returns. Is there anybody on her side? She feels so disconnected. Broken. She makes things worse before they get better: hits rock bottom before she climbs up again, stronger than she was before.
(Girl feels alone, always.)
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
How do you explain to someone that you don’t know how to love them?
The ability to love is supposed to be universal. Natural. Right this minute, people all over the world are getting married, making promises of incomprehensible things like “honesty” and “patience,” “forgiveness” and “forever.” Hand-holding, love-making, child-bearing.
Fucking terrifying.
Faith spins on her toes as she delivers a flying kick to the underside of some vamp’s chin. Beside her, Buffy wrestles with another. Faith watches her struggle for a minute, golden hair in the dirt, before intervening with a sarcastic quip.
Their love is risk-taking, bone-breaking, heart-shattering.
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
Faith can barely recall what it feels like, being loved. Her parents might have loved her, because of the whole deal in which parents are obligated to love their offspring. And yet, neither her mother nor her father had paid much attention to parental obligations.
Faith knows what it feels like to love, though. Knows how it ignites the blood that runs through her veins. Knows how it sends sparks down her fingertips when they collide with Buffy’s skin. Knows how it makes her face monopolize her dreams.
What if she loves me, too?
And then: Don’t be a moron.
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
Timing is one of the uncertainties. Whether or not Buffy loves Faith, she does a poor job of concealing that she wants her. It’s her eyes, her mouth. Faith can tell. And hey—that’s better than nothin’. But when to act?
Truth is, there’ve been loads of opportunities. That time Faith had landed flat on top of her in the cemetery, for starters. That time in the library—alone, alone, with no one but the books as witness.
Why hasn’t she done it? Why hasn’t she kissed her?
The fear of rejection is enough to make a coward of her.
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
Forget apocalypses—the greatest battle had been her own upward climb out of that godforsaken hole she’d landed in.
Wanting to die: a surprising wish for someone with so much life in her. The spring drains from her step as she approaches the edge of the precipice.
Voices call to her: You’re not alone.
But she’s always been alone.
Hasn’t she?
It’s difficult, turning back. Taking a helping hand; allowing it to lead her away from the edge.
It’s a long time before she’s far enough away to feel it again—the heart in her, pounding like a kickdrum.
Alive.
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
Neither Buffy nor Faith is particularly adept at communicating feelings with words. Buffy stumbles as she tries to get them out. Faith covers, inventing reasons to leave and avoid conversations altogether. Both of them lie.
Touch doesn’t lie. Not with them.
When you’re angry and you can’t tell her, “I’ve got your back,” what do you say?
Say nothing.
A tap on the back. A touch of the hand. An arm around her shoulders, tugging her with you: “I’ve got you, you’re safe with me.” None of that stuttering about “not that you need protecting.”
They’re both fluent in this.
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
That B agrees to come along is halfway surprising: Faith has already gathered she’s not Sunnydale High’s most diligent student, but she’s not Faith, either.
Hearts on windowpanes, legs over windowsills, and then they’re together, and they’re fighting, and they’re dancing, and they’re fighting, and oh God.
Oh, God.
She didn’t mean to.
That godforsaken night was the best of nights and the worst of nights.
(Hearts on windowpanes.)
Stakes in hearts and bloodstains on shirts.
(Legs over windowsills.)
Sirens in the streets.
(Hearts on windowpanes.)
Standing at the mirror.
(Legs over windowsills.)
Forgetting, forgetting, forgetting, forgotten.
(Hearts on windowpanes.)
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
They both live like they might die any day, but it’s different for Faith: she has less to live for. Buffy has the Scoobies and her kid sister. Faith has…
Her?
No.
Buffy’s never been anyone’s. Not really. And she’s certainly never been Faith’s.
A year is a long time, Faith thinks.
A long time to avoid the tension that’s existed between them since they first met. A long time to avoid pushing B against the wall and kissing her mouth, her neck instead of her goddamn forehead.
(If she knew she was going to die tomorrow, she’d do it.)
20. What does friendship mean to you?
(Lies.)
All the high school girls had turned on her because she’d slept with someone’s boyfriend. Mitch? Michael? Max? Hell if Faith can remember. It wasn’t her fault the dude was so weak, but no one cared. The words bounced off her skin, tough as diamond since she’d turned sixteen. Bitch. Slut. Whore. She didn’t need their fake asses to like her. She did what she wanted. She did who she wanted.
“You wanna hang out on Saturday?” Buffy asks. “I want everyone to be there for my birthday thing. Dinner. Whatever.”
“Everyone?”
“All my friends.”
Friends, Faith thinks.
(Truth?)
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
Absence. A desperate desire for closeness, born from a gaping hole in her heart: an unseemly mark left by a family that had never really loved her.
Little girl stepping on broken bottles with little toes while the little girls from her school played hopscotch in safe streets.
Careless teenager stepping on boys’ hearts with stolen shoes while her careful classmates studied mathematics with their mothers’ help.
Weary woman stealing glances at Buffy Summers from a hospital bed.
“You shouldn’t be so reckless,” Buffy says, and touches Faith’s cheek tenderly; brushes her hair aside.
Faith isn’t used to the caring.
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
“I dare you to say five nice things about me,” Buffy says, after two drinks.
“Okay,” Faith shrugs. “Easy. You’re hot.”
“That was the easiest one?”
“Be hotter if you…” Faith pulls her top down a little, and winks as Buffy rolls her eyes. “Two: you’re strong as hell. Three: you’re as stubborn as me. I mean—not always good thing, but hey. Four: you’ve got that good-girl thing workin’ for you. Five: you, uh. Care about people. Or whatever.” Faith meets Buffy’s eyes again. “Now do me.”
Swap ‘good girl’ for ‘bad girl’, and Buffy’d say the same things.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
Faith would kill to have had Buffy’s childhood instead of her own. A mother, a father, a brat kid sister. Sure, havin’ a little sis meant havin’ a boatload of responsibility, but it’d have been worth it for the company.
Closeness? The proximity of her mother’s drunken breath as she screams, too close to her face.
Warmth? Summers spent hiding under the neighbours’ porches with stray cats and stolen comic books, avoiding her father’s rage.
Happiness? Putting hundreds of miles between her future and her fucked-up childhood. Happiness is squashing it down inside her and hoping it’ll never surface again.
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
“Why are we still talking about this?” Faith says, finally snapping. “I had a shitty childhood. Has it sunk in, yet? Do you understand? I don’t have a relationship with my mother!”
“Sorry,” Buffy says, frowning. “It-it’s on the paper.”
“Why don’t you talk about your storybook childhood some more?”
“It wasn’t,” Buffy says coldly. “You think my life is perfect?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Faith says. “Your dad left. I got it.”
Not it. There were fights with her mother. Wrong words on both sides. Harsh, and cold, and disappointed.
Buffy thinks about this, and she doesn’t say anything at all.
25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling..."
“We’re both here,” Buffy says, reaching past Faith to give a vamp a good kick in the face. “We’re both Slayers. We’re both talented in the… in the fighting department.”
“We’re both here,” Faith agrees, dancing around Buffy to knock another vamp’s feet out from under him. He falls on his face, and Faith stabs him in the back. “We’re both Slayers. We’re both above this.”
“I thought you wanted an audience.”
“Not at Sunnyhell High’s talent show,” Faith says, standing up and dusting herself off.
“Faith. Please. I can’t do it alone,” Buffy pleads.
“Dammit, B.”
It means ‘yes.’
26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share..."
Anything.
A fucking can of Pringles.
She’s been alone her whole damn life. Sharing? Not with her parents. Not with her peers. What do you get the girl who has nothing?
“You’re quiet today,” Buffy comments.
“Thinkin’.”
“About what?”
“It’s my birthday tomorrow.” Faith doesn’t know why she says it. She wishes she could take it back as soon as the words are out of her mouth.
But Buffy doesn’t fuss. “You want anything?” she asks.
Just this, Faith thinks.
“Nah.” She shrugs. “I’m fine just… goin’ out. Dancing or whatever.”
“Can I come?” Buffy asks.
“Yeah. That’d be cool.”
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
“Want one?” Faith asks, holding out her pack of cigarettes to Buffy, who wrinkles her nose.
“Why do you like those? They’re gross. They smell bad. And they make your lungs and your teeth turn funny colours. It’s not sexy. It’s gross.”
“Didn’t know that healthy lungs were sexy.”
“They are!” Buffy says, nodding. “Very sexy.”
“You really believe that, B?” Faith asks.
“Yeah-huh.”
Faith puts the cigarette out with the toe of her boot.
“Did you just do that for me?” Buffy asks, frowning.
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
Faith shrinks inward, taken aback; disguises it as a shrug.
“No big.”
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
Buffy’s hair shines like the goddamn sun, and her face lit by early morning light is like nothing Faith has ever seen. If she’d known words like luminescent, she might’ve been thinking them.
Buffy lifts her head groggily from the book she’d fallen asleep on.
“What?” she asks, when she notices Faith watching her. “It’s my hair, isn’t it? It got weird overnight?”
Faith smirks. “Hair’s good as gold, B. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re just saying that,” Buffy says, patting her head to suss out the damage.
“If you looked like hell, I’d tell you.”
Buffy hesitates. “I know.”
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
“—and so, if I hadn’t said anything, he wouldn’t have known I’d written about him at all!” Buffy concludes, dismayed.
“That’s it? You wrote about your guy in your diary, and he finds out? Not exactly dire, B.”
“He wasn’t my ‘guy’ yet,” Buffy says, defending her story. “And… let’s see you top it.”
“Can’t,” Faith says breezily.
“There you go!”
Faith rolls her eyes. “It’s not ‘cause your story’s a winner, B. It’s ‘cause I don’t feel it.”
“Everyone gets embarrassed!” Buffy says. “Although,” she adds, “I guess I don’t, y’know… Rassle alligators in the nude.”
Faith winks.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
Begging.
Sobbing.
Two things Faith never does. Let alone at the same time. Let alone in front of another person.
I’m bad. I’m evil. I’m bad. Just do it. Angel, just do it. Just kill me.
Apologies cut short. Swallowed down. God, she wishes Buffy had let her say the words.
Could she have said them?
I’m sorry. I am. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Buffy, forgive me.
She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to say them.
It’s too late, now. It’s been years, and the words still eat at her from the inside, acid rain falling upwards.
Begging for an end.
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
“Didn’t we do this one already?” Faith asks, leaning over Buffy’s shoulder to peer at the question sheet.
“Hey,” Buffy says, snatching it away. “No reading ahead.”
“Please. Like you haven’t,” Faith scoffs.
“I haven’t!”
“Sure.”
“Come on, then,” Faith says, nudging Buffy with her shoulder. “Tell me what you like about me.”
Buffy rolls her eyes. “You are such a pain.”
“I try,” Faith says graciously.
“I know you do.”
“So—come on! Spill! I told you that I liked your hair.”
“Which I already knew. And I told you that I like your honesty.”
“Only for you, babe.”
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
Faith’s whole fucking life has been a joke. One, long, rambling story, and where the hell is the punch line? It’s more than twenty damn years overdue.
“Nothing,” she says, not wanting to elaborate.
Unfortunate.
“Why not?” Buffy asks.
Cause you have to, don’t you? You have to laugh about it. If you don’t, it’ll only drag you under.
‘Course, it’ll drag you under all the same. Some things are inevitable.
“Life’s a joke, B,” Faith says. “Might as well have a laugh while you’re here.”
“I didn’t know you felt like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it’s not worth living.”
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
“Not what I meant,” Faith says. “Think of it this way, B: you’re here, then you’re gone. Why waste your time bein’ all sad about it?”
Buffy frowns. “Right. Like you don’t get sad, or feel guilty, or regretful, or whatever.”
“There is something I regret not doing,” Faith admits, shrugging.
“What is it?”
Faith leans in closer til Buffy can feel her hair tickle her face.
“This,” she says, and kisses her, more softly than she’d imagined she would.
Buffy grins breathlessly when Faith pulls away again. “Pretty sure the question said you can’t communicate with anyone.”
“Who’s communicating?”
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
Faith had lost interest in the questionnaire before they’d even started, and now that the prospect of kissing Buffy is very much a reality, she’s having trouble focusing.
“You were saying?” she says, kissing Buffy’s hair, and then her neck, outlining the shape of her with her lips like she’d wanted to do since they first met.
“Uh. Things,” Buffy says, closing her eyes. “Save one.”
“Hmm. Your diary,” Faith suggests against her skin.
“Why?”
“Wanna read what you wrote about Angel.”
“Are you sure you don’t just want to see what I wrote about you?”
Faith is diary material?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
Buffy.
Buffy, Buffy, Buffy.
Now that she has her, Faith can’t bear to lose her.
She’d broken down in prison when she’d heard the news. Angel had told her. Buffy had already been dead for at least a month—it had taken that long for anyone to bother letting her know.
She remembers punching the walls til her knuckles bled, staining the concrete.
But now she’s here—here, in Faith’s arms.
“I’m family?” Buffy asks.
The only one Faith’s ever had.
“Right,” she says, remembering Faith’s dead mother and deadbeat father. She snuggles into Faith’s side. “You’re my family, too.”
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
“I’m havin’ this problem,” Faith says, when they finally hit the bed. “I kinda dig this girl.”
Faith looks over at Buffy—her hair fanned out across the pillow like sunrays, her green eyes sparking with curiosity and something else Faith can’t identify—and feels as if truer words have never been spoken. She loves this girl, even if she can’t say it aloud yet. She can show her. She will, if Buffy will let her.
Maybe she can’t apologize for the past—but maybe she doesn’t need to.
“I can help you with that,” Buffy says.
And she does.