Happy Endings
Fandom: Buffy
Pairing: Faith/Robin
Rating: PG
Word Count: 590
Spoilers: Up to
Notes: For Azar’s last line drabble challenge.
When she first came to Sunnydale, she was
jealous of Buffy. After all, who wouldn’t be? With those
And what did she have?
A mother who never loved her. A father she’d never met. A Watcher who wound up dead (and if she ever forgot that it was her fault, that she hadn’t been strong enough, smart enough, to defeat Kakistos, then the dreams were always there to remind her.)
Small wonder, she thinks sometimes, that she became The Bad Slayer, The Bad Girl. After all, she was always going to come up lacking, and if you’re going to go for something, you might as well go for broke, right?
Other times, she knows that’s a load of crap, that there was no excuse for the things she did.
That knowledge, and with it her need to atone for what she’d done, brought her to a Los Angeles police station, what kept her in jail when she could have broken out at any time without breaking a fingernail.
Her need to atone is the reason that she broke out, so that she could help Angel, the one person who’s never let her down. It’s also the reason she went back to the place of her worst defeat, to be the good girl, to help save the world.
She found out, though, that it wasn’t always that simple. That some people weren’t ready for her to have changed, that Buffy would always look at her with a bit of distrust, even if it lessens with the passing of time. Dawn’s never entirely trusted her, even now, and sometimes when Xander looks at her, she knows he thinks of their one-night-stand, weighs her against his other exes (in particular the Blessed Cordelia and the Exalted Anya) and finds her wanting. And the Potentials-who-are-now-Slayers, well, they like her, think she’s cool, but she’s well aware that they know all about her, that they still see her as The Bad Girl.
Strangely enough, she’s ok with that.
Because no matter what people see her as, she knows that she’s changed, knows that her life has meaning, that even if these people have spells of not entirely trusting her, they fight on her side and they would die with her if needs be. They’re the family, however dysfunctional, that she never had, and she would die for them.
She would die for them, but there’s one among them that she’d much rather live for.
That’s the reason that she’s smiling when she wakes up in the morning, luxuriating in the feel of Robin’s arms around her, his skin pressed close against hers. It’s why she’s glad of the effect slaying has on her, because when she’s hungry, he’s the one who’ll sit up eating take-out at all hours of the morning, and when she’s horny, well…
When she arrived in Sunnydale, she used to be jealous of Buffy, but she’s not anymore. Because while Buffy is off in Europe, looking for herself or something like that, Faith, for the first time in her life, knows who she is and what she’s meant to be doing, and she doesn’t want to go anywhere, do anything else, be anyone else, because she’s got everything she’s ever wanted.
This time, the bad girl got the happy
ending, and she's not giving it back.