The girl is good, but Faith is no girl. She's better; she's God's perfect killing machine, with decades of practice behind her. There's never been a Slayer like her before, and she doesn't really know if there will ever be one again.

In short, she kicks Max's ass. As it should be.

Faith steps over her casually while she's still flat on her back, breath knocked out of her. One boot to one side of the girl, the other to the other, and Faith adjusts her khakis and casually sinks down into a crouch, resting her elbows on her knees, lacing her fingers together, balanced up on her toes. One of her Slayers used to call it her Prophecy move, because of the movie where Christopher Walken played an angel.

Angels again. Angels fucking *everywhere.*

"Now, just relax," she orders in her Watcher voice, catching Max by the wrist when her arm starts to move again. "Relax. I'm here to help you." She pulls out a wooden stake, and lays it in the girl's hand. Instinctively, her fist closes around it, and she frowns in confusion.

"What's�"

"It's what you use to kill vampires."

"*Vampires?* Lady, what the fuck are you, *crazy*?"

She's been here before; she's very sure of herself. "No. I'm a Vampire Slayer, just like you are. How old are you, seventeen? I was fifteen when it happened to me, and I had no idea what the hell was going on." *I didn't know for years,* she thinks, but she keeps that to herself.

"Okay. I'm going to spell this out for you before you get the fuck off of me. Nothing *happened* to me. Got that? Nothing *happened* to me, and nothing is *going on,* so if you want to go again, let's go, and if not, why don't you fuck on off?"

Faith snorts. "Uh-huh. Listen, Max, do you think any *human* could fight me off like that? You may think I'm crazy, but then what does that make you?"

She's a pretty girl, exotic looking, but very childlike, except in the eyes. "Whatever happened to you when you were a kid, lady, that's not my problem. I know what I am."

"Yeah? So hit me. What are you?"

"I'm a weapon, engineered by the United States military, built from the ground up and raised in a training compound. I'm a fucking a-bomb, all right? What are you, the humanity police?" She stops abruptly, and her eyes betray surprise; she doesn't know why she admitted that, except that her internal balance is completely thrown off by the introduction of a wild card like Faith into her life.

Faith knows exactly how she feels.

There's a little part of her head that's trying to answer questions. Military � engineered � they built some kind of Slayer? The Initiative � what could Riley tell � *fuck,* still missing a goddamn *Slayer*....

But mostly, inside, she's screaming like Seattle, rage and fear splitting her open from the inside. Because she *tries,* she really does try, she studies what they send her to study, she knows how to network and run background checks and do the legwork, she's even fucking patient about it. She asks questions, looks before she leaps, stays on the move but doesn't run off. She even fucking *prays,* but it doesn't help. There's still more things in heaven and earth than she can fathom, still a whole world out there that she doesn't understand, and how the hell is she supposed to do her job like this? Blindfolded, fucking ignorant. The oldest Slayer, big sister, the one who is supposed to help guide the others, and she just doesn't know anything, have any answers, even know what is possible.

She keeps trying, but she doesn't feel like she's getting any wiser. She still doesn't have that perfect center, that knowledge that she's doing the right thing and that it's all falling into place around her. She pretty much just feels like she's chasing her own tail.

Leveled by this in a way that no fight could ever bring her down, Faith stumbles backward, almost crab-walking back away from this girl, this whole new deal. "I'm sorry," she mumbles. "You're not who I was looking for. I have to � find �"

Have to find a *clue.* Have to start all over at square one.

Have to face the fact that she was losing another one, that there was a Slayer out there fighting blindfolded, a Slayer who would probably die because Faith couldn't get to her in time. Because her witness-watcher-sister-savior didn't know what the fuck she was *doing.*

She tries to get up, but the weakness has spread out from her imperfect center, infecting her whole body, and she just can't. She stays down on the alley ground, curling her knees up against her body, hiding her face, wanting to kill and wanting to vanish.

Slayers were chosen in order to fight and die. Maybe she should just have *done* that, just Slayed and Slayed until she died like the rest of them, instead of shifting gears, going into self-preservation mode in order to pass on whatever ragged shreds of knowledge she could claim to have. Slayers were *not* meant to be Watchers. They were not meant to be thirty-nine years old.

Christ, what if she *couldn't* die? What if a Slayer could be *killed,* but couldn't just age and die?

What if she had to make the choice herself, how long to hang here freelancing, when to bow out and let another Slayer come along � another Slayer who wouldn't know half what she did, wouldn't know where to go or what to do, or even that there was another one out there like her? How the *fuck* could she make a decision like that without screwing it up? And screwing up a decision like that � well, hell, it could destroy the world, couldn't it?

Great, just great. Humanity's future hanging by a thread, and who was holding the scissors?

*Me.*

*Me.*

*Help me....*

But there was no one to ask for help. No Watchers, no angels, no second Slayer that Faith could see. She was alone, brutally alone, and all the people who had once been her friends were either rotting in the ground (those of them who'd left much in the way of *bodies* behind) or long past their own last curtain call. Retired, their wars over at last, while Faith just kept going, because she didn't know what else to do. Because of things that drove her � things like wanting to make a dead girl and an aging detective fucking *proud* of her.

She can hear Max getting up, and the creak of leather as she swings her leg over the motorcycle. In the strained, post-leather pause, Faith looks up, to see that the girl is still holding the stake, staring at it carefully. She meets Faith's eyes.

"Vampires, huh?"

Faintly, Faith tries to smile, and she mimes a stabbing motion. The thirty-second Slayer training course. Diplomas by mail. "Through the heart. Fire and decapitation work too."

"Crosses?" She nods up vaguely in the direction of the cross Faith has hung.

"Wouldn't count on �em. Might buy you a little time."

Max puts the stake inside her leather jacket. "Thanks for the tip."

She doesn't say it totally sincerely; there's something cocky about this kid, like she can't really imagine anyone can teach her anything about fighting, but whatever. Briefly, Faith thinks about following up � maybe hanging for a while. Because Slayer or not, this girl is the goods, Faith can tell. She can do the job, if she has to. If she has Faith to show her how.

The candles she's lit are still burning. And there's still a girl out there, a girl who was human just a few months ago, and she's not going to live if Faith doesn't get up off her ass in this alley and go find her.

A girl who is what she is because Buffy Summers died.

Just like Faith.

And Max may be a killer, she may be the goods, but she's not a part of that, and so Faith lets her ride off. Because she's not looking for another Faith, for another dark-eyed, cocky, indestructible hellion with a strange designer drug running through her veins, part paranoia, part bloodlust, part hope.

She's looking for something else entirely, something she catches a glimpse of in each new Slayer, but only a glimpse. She's living forever, following each link in the long chain of lives, looking for the right altar to lay down her greatest sacrifice to the past.

*I always, always loved you,* she's gonna say when she gets there.

And the new girl is gonna look up at her with wide, brimming eyes, and say, *I'm glad.*

Curtain. Cut. Wrap. Goodnight.

"Silence"
Delerium, *Poem*

Give me release Witness me
I am outside
Give me peace
Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe that I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

Passion chokes the flower
Until she cries no more
Possessing all the beauty
Hungry still for more
Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe that I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

In this white wave I am sinking
In this silence
In this white wave
In this silence
I believe

I believe I can't help this longing
Comfort me
I can't hold it all in
If you won't let me
Heaven holds a sense of wonder
And I wanted to believe that I'd get caught up
When the rage in me subsides

I have seen you
In this white wave
You are silent
You are breathing
In this white wave
I am free

*****
fin