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When Mrs. Post (that sounded like a real stuffy way to address her. Maybe she should just start calling her The Post instead) suggested that Faith do some training, she’d been expecting her to tell her to just go at it by herself. But instead she slipped off her cardigan and left it neatly folded on one of the few empty spaces on her dresser. And then she took a few steps back, primly rolled up her sleeves, and spread her arms as she met Faith’s gaze.
“Well, come on, then,” she announced.
Faith, still sitting on her bed, raised an eyebrow at her. She took her time looking her up and down, waiting for her to waver. She didn’t. “You’re gonna fight me in a pencil skirt?”
“I fail to see what the issue is,” she replied, her hands dropping to her sides. “If you’re afraid that it’ll put me at a disadvantage, don’t be. Just give it your all. And do try to be precise with your attacks this time. None of the flailing about you were doing with… Buffy earlier.”
She said Buffy’s name like a swear, and even though they weren’t even super close friends, she found that it annoyed her.
“I don’t flail,” she snapped, dragging herself upright. “If you don’t know how fights actually work because you’ve never been in one yourself, you can just say that.”
She didn’t rise to the bait. She didn’t even look right at her. Just pointedly fiddled with her shirt cuff, making adjustments that she really didn’t need to be making. God, this woman pissed her off. Just because Faith had a fighting style that wasn’t ‘stab the vamp one time with a stake and walk away’, didn’t mean she was doing anything wrong. As far as she was concerned, her still being alive was a pretty good indication that she was doing something right.
“Sometimes, Faith…” she began again, after a bit. “It takes an outsider’s perspective to help us recognize our own areas of improvement. That is what I am attempting to do with you today.”
Faith groaned, popped her left wrist with a crack, and punched her in the face.
She tried to punch her, anyway. Instead of breaking her jaw or her nose or whatever, what happened was that she hit her arm, which had raised immediately to shield her face. She shot Faith an irritating, thin-lipped smile as if to say ‘see? I told you so’ and reached over to grab hold of her extended arm. And then she twisted it, spinning her around so that she now had her back turned as pain radiated from her shoulder. On instinct, Faith folded her free arm and rammed her elbow into what she assumed were her ribs. She felt it connect, satisfyingly, and the iron grip on her arm loosened. Before she could actually think strategy (which she didn’t usually do, but at first she had thought she might as well try to give The Post what she wanted) something urged her to plant her feet, grab onto her, and slam her face-up onto the carpet.
When she straightened, she found Mrs. Post’s eyes wide open, blinking at her in obvious shock.
Yeah. Damn straight. That’s what a real fight’s like, part of her said.
Oh fuck, another part said, something uncomfortably close to fear flooding her system.
“How’s that for preciseness?!” She sneered. She heard a slight waver in her voice but chalked it up to being just a little out of breath and not because seeing her new watcher lying on the ground like that was reminding her of what had happened to her last one. She was over that. Buffy had helped her deal with it, and she was moving on. She had moved on. She didn’t even have nightmares about it anymore. …Not in the past week, anyway.
Mrs. Post sat up, smoothing down her hair with both hands. “Precision,” she breathed. “And not quite. Being fast is not an excuse to pay less attention to the little things. Aggressive fighters win bar brawls. Clean, efficient fighters—now those are the ones that can truly lay claim to the title of ‘slayer’.”
Faith crossed her arms, wondering how she could make her feel like she was being talked down to when she was literally sitting on the floor in front of her. “Gee, thanks for the tip. I’d actually consider listening to it if you could hold your own against me for—for more than half a minute! That was pathetic! How far do you think that’s going get you when you get attacked by some—“
She shut herself up before she could make herself look any stupider. Instead, she just stood there, pretending to suddenly be super interested in something at the bottom of her dresser.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Mrs. Post get up. She wasn’t going to look directly at her, because from the way the room had gone quiet, she had a good feeling she’d find pity in her expression. And that was either going to piss her off even worse or make her tear up, and both of those options were equally bad.
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she said, her voice now a little quieter from the usual ‘you’d better listen to me because I’m so much smarter than you could ever hope of being’ thing it had going on.
She exhaled, folding her arms a little tighter. “Why’re you acting like you don’t know? Doesn’t the Council keep some fancy file on my past that you’ve read?”
Mrs. Post stepped a little closer and Faith resisted the urge to back away, closer to her bed. She wasn’t scared of her. She could deal with this. “I do think it would be better to hear it from you. …Besides, the Council and all its red tape aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be.”
Surprised at the sourness in her tone, she finally glanced over at her. Thankfully, she didn’t look like she was pitying her or anything. Yet. “Thought someone like you would be a real council ass kisser.”
Humorlessly, she smiled slightly. “Another hallmark of a good slayer is due respect for one’s watcher.”
Well. Now she kind of didn’t have a choice but to think about it again. Even though she didn’t like to. That wasn’t the kind of person she was, anyway—the kind that got stuck in the past and couldn’t move on from it because of how upset they were all the time. Instead, she just kind of took on things as they happened. Sometimes she didn’t even like thinking about tomorrow (especially when she was doing stuff she knew she’d regret in the morning, even if it felt like a great time at that point).
So normally she just tried to pretend the whole deal with Kakistos and her last watcher hadn’t happened. Not entirely, because that felt… disrespectful to her memory, but as much as she possibly could. But there wasn’t really any getting out of this.
She settled back onto her bed, clasping her hands together. “My last watcher was killed. …Not nicely, either. I was there, so I—y’know.”
Mrs. Post said nothing, as if sensing she still had stuff to say.
“She died even though she knew so much about vampires and whatever other weird shit we were fighting, and she wasn’t like—frail, either. She could throw a pretty good punch when she needed to. So for a while I guess I kind of assumed nothing would happen to her. That she was safe.” She grimaced, embarrassed at the memory. “Really stupid of me. And… and honestly, you’re really annoying, and I don’t like you, but if you’re going to be my watcher then I just—“
She swallowed before finishing, quietly, “I just don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”
Faith felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up, startled. “Don’t fucking touch me—“
Whatever else she’d been meaning to say died in her throat after she saw the expression of dead seriousness she was looking at her with.
“Listen, Faith. I won’t be treating you like a child. I cannot promise you that I won’t be dying while I am your watcher. That is something entirely within the realm of possibility. But what I can promise you is that I will not be careless and needlessly put myself in harm’s way.” Her eyes crinkled suddenly, with a little half-smile. “Besides. Even if I can’t quite measure up to you yet, I am always in pursuit of ways to make myself stronger. Consider it a… life’s goal of mine. So I won’t be sitting on my hands, waiting to see what comes my way, if that is something you are concerned about.”
Faith frowned, breaking eye contact. That really shouldn’t be as reassuring as it was. She’d been expecting her to spout some bullshit about needing to focus on herself first before she started worrying about other things, but she’d actually been honest with her. It made her start to think that maybe, if all this worked out, she could actually count on her when it mattered.
“Yeah,” she muttered, shoulders slumping. “I hear you. Maybe I’ll also get to teach you a thing or two at some point.”
“That remains to be seen,” she said, because of course that was what she was going to say.
Immediately, she shot back, “If you’re so damn confident, let’s go for another round.”
Was she imagining things, or did she actually grimace at that for a second? Hah. So she’d really done a number on her after all. She guessed that was fine, though. They’d only started working together like, a day or two ago. It wasn't ideal or anything, but there was still time to work stuff like this out.
“Yes, let's. But this time I want you to—”
“Follow your damn advice. I get it,” she huffed, getting to her feet again. “I'll try. That good enough for you?”
“It's all I can ask for,” she replied with a small smile that reminded Faith, even if it was just for a second, of the way her last watcher had looked at her when she'd done something to be proud of. And with that, they went back to sparring.