Title: Undercurrents (4/?) Author: Sean Gaffney Rating: R Pairing: B/F, eventually. Distribution: Any Faith or Buffy/Faith sites that archive this sort of thing... Spoilers: Even though this takes place after Graduation Day and Season Three, it will contain spoilers up to and including Restless and Season Four. Futuristic orbs and weird dream sequences are your friends... Summary: After the events of Graduation 2, Buffy and a reawakened Faith are forced to deal with old wounds as they undertake a quest for some mysterious benefactors... Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and company own Buffy, Faith, and everyone Else. That makes this fic possible. By using them, I'm being vaguely illegal. So I shall say now that they aren't mine, nor will they ever be. Author's Notes: See Part 1 Undercurrents By Sean Gaffney Part Four The two slayers walked along the dull grey featureless landscape, their goal slowly getting closer and closer. Very slowly. Despite Buffy's offer to talk, there had been an uneasy silence between the two of them. Neither one wanted to start opening up all the old wounds. Hell, they weren't even old. Buffy had to keep reminding herself that Faith had tried to kill her less than three weeks ago... at least by her own personal calendar, which was the only one that mattered when you were in the future. She peered over at Faith. This was their dreams, so there weren't any signs of the injuries Faith had received. Mental or physical. Not only was Faith looking tanned, rested, and ready, but she wasn't acting doped up around Buffy anymore. Now that Faith had told her, she cursed herself for not noticing it before. It seemed so obvious. She was definitely going to kick Percy's butt when they woke up, whether he was responsible for it or not. She should have known better than to trust Watchers, in any incarnation. Well, except for Giles, but he didn't count. "Something fascinating you, B?" Buffy shook herself, and realized she'd been staring at Faith for a while. She blushed and tried to cover it up with a grin. "Just still getting used to having you back, really. That's all." Faith smiled. "Me too." The smile then vanished. "I don't wanna do this." Buffy stared. "What, you mean this spell thing?" "No, I mean talking. I don't want to go over everything again. I like this, B. If I work at it, I can even pretend that nothing ever happened, that we're still the Chosen Two, off on another quest to rid the world of serious badness." She shuddered. "Dammit, I loved that. It made me feel..." Buffy had stopped walking. "Happy?" she guessed. Faith looked up. "Like I was actually worth something. Like I was making a difference." "You did," Buffy said, then winced as she realized how that sounded. "Yeah, I sure did, didn't I?" Faith said bitterly. "I was a big help. If it hadn't been for me, lots of people would still be alive." Buffy started to protest, but stopped herself. Why bother? Faith was right. With her help, the Mayor nearly came close to destroying them all. Who knows what would have happened if she hadn't gone to him. If she hadn't been driven to him. That was why she was bothering. She still felt guilty. And that's why she felt the same as Faith. She really didn't want to deal with this either. In case it turned out that the only reasons she was doing this was to assuage her own conscience. She wanted to do something to help Faith, for once. "But I guess we gotta, huh?" Buffy blinked, and turned to Faith. "Gotta what?" Faith kept moving, her eyes still staring at their goal, but her face turned a little more stoic. "We gotta talk about things. Cause I don't want it to fester. That's what happened last time. I didn't talk about how I felt. And I ruined it. I pushed you away. I don't want that to happen again, B, I really don't." Buffy considered this. Faith was right. No more avoiding. They'd air it all out. And if that meant a fight, fine. And if it meant they had to stop being friends... well, she hoped it wouldn't. Cause she could see the relationship knitting back together. Even now, slow as it was. They were coming closer again. And if she did this right, it might be the final way of repairing the damage they both did. She exhaled. "Where do we start?" Faith looked at her. "Allan Finch, I guess. Before that... things weren't rosy, but they were good. They were even getting great. Then I fucked up and it all went to hell." Buffy shrugged. "I was terrified. I mean, we were getting close, you were right. I was doing a lot of stuff I'd never tried before, letting loose. I was starting to feel what you do when I slayed, feeling the racing in my pulse. And then here was you, killing someone." "*You* were terrified? I was fucking out of my wits! It's not as if I'd been killing people before! He was just surprising me, and I was already nervy, and I didn't think... and then all of a sudden you just started freaking on me, telling me I killed him. Like I didn't know." "I wasn't even talking to you, really. It was just pure denial." "We were both kids." Buffy shrugged. "Yeah. I thought I'd grown up a lot. Took this last year to show me how wrong I was." "I needed you to support me. I didn't really care if we told the police or not, I just needed it to be us. I wanted us to still be us. But it wasn't, it was me. You were right back in your Scooby life, and I was on the outside with a corpse." "I was bad at that stuff. I was trying to reach out, and I kept running into this wall of denial. And so after a while I started to believe it." "I know that." "Yeah, well I'd kinda figured out your end too," Buffy said. "So why are we bothering to go over this? If we had to do it again, we'd do it different. You'd help me deal a little more, I wouldn't go all ice bitch on you. Yay. Do we feel better about ourselves now that we know this?" Buffy thought about this. "Yeah," she finally said. "I do. Do you?" Faith gave her a sort of half-smile. "Yeah, I guess. I dunno, I was kinda expecting something more earth-shattering." Buffy took a deep breath. "Wanna talk about the Mayor?" Faith tensed, then stopped dead, looking ahead of her. "When'd that get there?"