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She'd never know why she asked. If any part of her thought about it, she'd have expected Buffy to knock her to the floor as she still occasionally did, whenever Faith caught her on a bad day, violence these days being something of a calming ritual for them.
But Buffy had simply stared at her instead. A long stare, something Faith couldn't read, that could have been disbelief. And then she'd picked up her cell phone and dialed, that odd look still holding Faith's gaze.
"I need two plane tickets to LA, and I need them today."
"So I guess that's a yes then?" said Faith as Buffy hung up the phone.
The blonde Slayer was already on her feet. "Shouldn't you be packing?"
Faith shrugged and rolled off the couch. "Why not?" she asked of the empty room. "I was getting tired of exotic Spain."
-)(-
And so they found themselves, twenty-six hours later, stumbling wearily out of LAX into smoggy grey twilight. Buffy suggested immediate coffee, and Faith didn't argue. Buffy paid for the taxi with the Council credit card. Faith paid for the croissants with cash. They spent less than ten minutes in the booth before Buffy declared that she had to walk.
Buffy was prone to strange moods these days, so that in itself was no shock. But this mood was stranger than most. They rode bus after bus and walked long blocks under neon orange light, Buffy pointing out the darkened windows of old haunts and the bright parking lots of favorite stores. Early morning found them stopped outside a low-rent and insignificant-looking restaurant. Having some familiarity with bad neighborhoods, Faith thought about reminding Buffy that even as two of the three most dangerous women in the world, they were still rather vulnerable to bullets, but something in Buffy's posture convinced her not to press the point.
Buffy broke the silence suddenly. "Did you know I ran away once?"
"Sure, after the thing with Angel, right?" This was a dangerous topic for them, but nothing Faith seemed to be on Buffy's mind tonight.
"I never told them, but I fought demons here. Some kind of gross Freddy Krueger freaks with a despair fetish. They kidnapped the kids around here... drop-outs and orphans. People no one would ever miss."
The glassy reflections of their eyes met on the restaurant windowpane, and Faith looked away.
"I had a destiny that found me, no matter where I went. And I had a mom, who missed me. So eventually, I went home."
Faith waited for the rest, but Buffy was done. Not even glancing at Faith, she turned away from the restaurant and headed down the sidewalk.
-)(-
They climbed over, under, and around the sunken remnants of Sunnydale for easily an hour before they finally agreed that this was the cemetery in question. The rubble here was easier to cross, less slippery and wider spread, and Buffy eventually settled on an upturned headstone, flat and clean where it stuck out of the dirt.
"Here. She was pretty close to here, I think."
Faith wasn't sure why she'd brought flowers, except that Buffy hadn't seemed mad when she bought them. Now, faced with a rough expanse of broken earth, they felt rather trivial. There was no marker here to put them on, and if it was still in one piece, the body could be a mile off.
She laid them on the ground anyway, awkwardly, beneath a rise of dirt. For a moment, she forgot Buffy's gaze, forgot the grotesque crater around them. All she saw was Christmas cookies shaped like trees, and a game of Monopoly hopelessly lost, and a warm smile - a fleeting blessing but never forgotten.
When she looked up, Buffy was crying silently, that grave and empty weeping that lies past pain and somewhere beneath loss.
-)(-
Buffy didn't want to go back to Spain, and Faith didn't want to leave Buffy, so they found themselves on a train to New York.
"I felt it. When you died, you know."
Buffy, elbow deep in Goblet of Fire, took a moment to look up, blinking confusedly.
"I mean, just so you know. Even without the destiny thing. That there are people who would miss you."
The shyest hint of a smile snuck across Buffy's face as she went back to her book. She didn't turn a single page until Vermont.