She walked the night-time streets, the steam rising from her breath trailing away like dragons smoke. Her heels made a sharp, delicious clicking on the pavement as she weaved in and out of the crowd. Tourists mostly, rich old Europeans and Japanese with their clicking cameras, pastel sweaters and badges. People who looked out at the world either with jaded contempt or irritating wonder.

The young were there too, the prematurely cynical with their hollow eyes and glossy hair. These turned to look at her sometimes as she walked down the Champs Elysees. Ah, the romance of that enchanted circle around gay Paree. In the warm glow of the orange spotlights on smooth white plaster, marble and gilded statuettes, not many noticed that the trees were bare of leaves, reaching beseeching skeleton arms to the sky.

She walked on, the long coat swirling around her ankles. The cold did not touch her, but it was different. Different yet so much the same. And as always the loneliness you could feel only in the midst of a crowd was making her remember. All those years ago when things might have been different.

**Nothing that you say will release you,
Nothing that you pray would forgive you.
Nothings what your words mean to me.**

He'd begged and pleaded with her in the end. Cried a fearsome mixture of tears and blood all over himself. She would always remember that moment, crystallised in her memory. The smell and sounds of it, the sharp tang of blood and fear in the air mixed with the acidic stench from the voided contents of his bladder.

Her first kill. The one that no one knew about. And his words had meant nothing to her then, not weighed in the scales against what he had done to them.

Father. Daddy. Papa. All the words which should have evoked fondness and a feeling of safety he had tarnished for her forever. Husband, honey, darling. Words her mother had choked and died on.

She hadn't been able to understand it then. Couldn't understand why her father hated her so much. What could she have done in her six short years of life that made him hate her so? Faith knew he hated her, and that he hated her mother because of her. He'd drink, come home drunk, start slapping her mother around. She would always hide in the same place, no matter that he would find her in the end and drag her out from under the bed and lay into her with his belt, his fist, whatever came within reach.

It was as if she expected it to happen, like a pattern that must be followed.

Small places were safe places. Like lying under that bed in the dust-balls, squeezing her eyes shut tight as she curled into a ball. Knowing that once the door opened and light flooded the room that it would be the time to scream.

**Something that you did will destroy me
Something that you said will stay with me
Long after you're dead and gone.**

She remembered the altar candles and the smell of the flowers. The sound of her Spanish mother rocking on her heels reading her rosary beads. "Quiet, Faith. You have to pray, pray to The Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ and God. They will protect you, keep you from harm. Pray to the Infanta, pray..."

Now I lay me down to sleep. And the plaster idols smiled at her with blank, empty smiles. They smiled the night that her father dragged her mother in there by the hair and beat her so badly he broke her jaw. The candles burned fragrant wax in front of the cross where Jesus suffered for all humanity.

Who knows how long it would have gone on, but a little after her sixth birthday it happened. He crossed a line she had drawn in the sand of her mind.

Sweet little Faith and her pretty, pretty mother. How lucky they were, so people said, to live in a big house on that nice street. Lucky, lucky Constanza to have such a handsome husband, all blond and laughing with a steady job. Lucky, lucky Constanza and Faith, picking up the pieces of shattered crockery the next day, Constanza telling her daughter, "Mummy walked into a door, alright, sweetheart? All that happened was Mummy was careless."

She would always remember that night. He had not been yelling, he had not beaten her mother. In fact, he was sweet, loving, as if it was a good dream that had somehow come true. He had leaned over her bed and she had smelt the fumes of whisky on his breath as he stroked her hair back from her forehead, looking down at her as she cowered under the quilt.

"You're such a pretty little girl, Faith. Look at you, such fine skin, such big eyes. You look just like your mother....and your uncle Bryan. Remember Uncle Bryan? Yes, Daddy's little brother, the one with the dark hair and eyes just like you."

Funny that the thing she remembered most clearly about that night was how the bed had sunk under his weight as if a giant had stomped on one end. That and his voice telling her to be a good girl and be quiet, be nice to him or he would go and twist mummy's neck like a chicken.

**If flesh could crawl
My skin would fall
From off my bones
And run away from here.**

He wouldn't even let her scream. It hurt so much, like she was being torn apart and he wouldn't let her scream. Whore, little whore just like your tramp of a mother, whoring herself to my own brother. You'll never be good for anything, you'll just be a whore and a cheating lying bitch like your mother, spreading your legs for every man you see on the street.

And she had prayed to God. Prayed to the triptych and the plaster idols to come and save her. To send the stern golden Angel Gabriel with his flaming sword to come and save her from the Demon. Nothing happened.

**As far from God
As heaven is wide
As far from God
As angels can fly.**

And two nights later she heard them in the bedroom as always. Angry shouts, the sound of fist on flesh, her mother wailing. And she had just gotten up and gone further down the hall to his study. The gun was in the drawer where she had always known it was. Funny why she had never thought to use it before. It was heavy in her hand and it's weight felt good.

BLAM! So easy, and blood flying everywhere. Of course even both her little girl's hands couldn't hold it steady and the recoil nearly threw her off her feet, but at such close range. She missed a few times and it gave him time to crawl, to plead, and she learned then that the weak became victims and suffered while the strong enjoyed the ambrosia of power.

Blood everywhere. The stains wouldn't come out of the carpet no matter how many times her mother scrubbed that frantic night as she sat on the bed, calmer than she had ever been while her frenzied mother pulled the gun out of her hands and put her own larger prints on it. Throwing clothes in a bag and taking her out of the house. Getting into a car. "Now we must be very quiet, Faith darling. So lie down and go to sleep in the back, OK sweetheart? We're going on a trip."

She didn't care. They were leaving the Place of Horror behind.

**If holy is as holy does
This house will burn straight down to Hell
Take its conscience with it
As it falls.**

Those months on the run were the happiest of her young life. No money. All those nights they slept in the car. Her mother working at those diners. Always moving, always afraid the police on their tail would finally catch up to them. But the world was suddenly beautiful.

Of course, the police did catch up with them, in Los Angeles. They had taken her mother, but she had run. She had run and run and run. Sleeping in alleys and rummaging in dumpsters. Wild-eyed and feral child among the thousands of other wild-eyed and feral children lost in the alleys of the city.

That was how the men had found her, the men all in black suits with the clean hands and the British accents. She had been with a pack of children then, lobbing bricks at the windows of a church. Trying to let all her anger and rage out, to spite a God that turned away when the cries of His children were at their most pitiful. She spat on the steps, fought and bit when the clerics caught her. Screamed as if she was on fire when they pulled her into the House of God where the men were waiting.

"Yes, she is one." They had taken her with smooth cool hands, smelling of soap, expensive cologne and fine wool. Gentle, soft-spoken men of books who had taken care of her and told her wondrous stories of her new calling, how she was supposed to fight evil in the world and become a saviour when her time came. When she was called. How she was a champion of Good. They had taken her to a small town called Sunnydale and left her in the hands of the woman who was to be her Watcher, her companion in this epic battle which she was destined to fight. And for a while, Life had seemed beautiful. She wasn't bad, she had proof she wasn't bad.

They had forgotten just one little detail. Or maybe they had never known it from the start.

What it was like to kill, what it was like to have to risk your life night after night, knowing that you would die in a few years and no one would mourn your passing. She wasn't even given the honour of being the sole Slayer, no, hers was a fluke calling. The first Slayer was still alive. The first Slayer, Buffy Summers, who was first in everything with her perfect life, her perfect living mother, her perfect little circle of friends and her perfect way of doing things. Little Miss Perfect who was so good inside that she had actually tried to love Faith.

We who are Sisters in the Battle.

Buffy who saved Giles time and time again, and Faith who failed her first Watcher. Buffy who was loved beyond reason, and Faith who only knew boys who wanted her body and who knew she would give it to them. Whore. Little whore. Just like her mother.

No one came to her window at night to whisper his love. No one who would lay down his life for her.

The Mayor had offered her what she craved. He was her Father, with him she was first and never second place. And with him she was bad, so very very bad, and there was nothing wrong with it.

It was pulling in her veins, the need. She felt hollow inside and she quickened her pace. Just a young woman walking quickly and swiftly like a knife through the crowd.

"You can change, Faith, but you have to make the choice. It will be hard, and it will hurt, but you have to do it. No one else can."

She had, hadn't she? She had gone through Hell and come out the other side again. Living for so many years in the sterile environment of the prisons, knowing that the one good thing was that this stay was prolonging her over-lived Slayer lifespan, and that when she came out she could make a fresh start again. He would help her. Her Angel Gabriel who had come not golden but dark and of the night.

She had gone back to him to slowly pick up the pieces of her life, to learn that hating oneself was not the natural way to live. To learn that even those who walk on the dark side of the line can sometimes cross over, like him.

Fought together, lived together, cried together and laughed together. And she thought she had finally found her place, her family, with him and Cordelia and Wesley's forgiveness. Thought that the drought had ended and happiness was hers at last, sweet as the moonlight falling on his shadowed face as they sat on the rooftop ledge, high above the City of Angels.

Then it had happened. It was just a matter of averages when you came right down to it. Taking risks every night of her life; one day she would inevitably fall. Fall she had. Doctors had given up hope, and she had lain on the hospital bed watching him with his head down on the sheets beside her, his hand clenched tight around hers. And she had asked him the Question.

She would never forget the look of horror on his face, how he had backed away from her overturning the chair in the process. No, he couldn't. Did she know what she was asking? He couldn't give her Eternal Life at the price of her soul.

But she loved him, couldn't he see?

He couldn't. In his heart he would forever love her, The Golden One. Buffy, her fairer half. He would hold his love for her until the day the prophecies came true and he could be human again.

She lived. Her spirit could never back down from a challenge, from its rage. And against all expectations she had lived, but she would never go back to him. Never. He had cut so deep he had stopped the heart.

**Nothing said could change the fact
My trust was blind
You broke the pact
If God's my witness, God must be blind.**

She had gone back to Sunnydale to face the demons that haunted her.

**If flesh could crawl
My skin would fall
From off my bones
And run away from here.**

And there she had met him. The Fates must be laughing as they played Snap with Other-Halves. Him, moonlight and viciousness, frenetic energy and a stranger to morality. The one on the other end of the balance scales from Angel, just as she was the counterweight to Buffy.

They had made a pact. Chip out of his head, and he would help her Slay Angel and put her demons to rest forever.

**As far from God
As heaven is wide
As far from God
As Angels can fly.**

To obey just wouldn't have been his style. Instead, he drained her the moment he woke from the operation. Then, he gave her the Gift of Eternal Life. And in the nights that followed, the gift of his black heart on a silver platter, the gift that his Sire had not been able to give her.

Of course, the Slayer had to kill them now. And what a fight it had been. Like fighting with herself in a mirror. Could she kill Herself, everything that was good in her, everything that Buffy symbolised? No.

And neither could Buffy deny her darker side.

"Go, Faith. Get out of here. Never come back."

She had walked far enough now, and her steps slowed on the bridge as the hunger built in her, wanting blood. Yet she waited.

The crowd was thin here. People broken off from their groups, a few hawkers. Lovers leaning over the bridge, walking arm in arm with each other to stave off the cold. She was cold, but the cold came from deep inside and was stronger than the winter's blast.

The people swirled, like snowflakes in a little dome shaken by a giant hand. And he was there.

How many years since she had last seen him? He hadn't changed at all; still tall, still dark-haired and dark-eyed, still handsome enough in his long black coat to make the women around him pause and look. The Demon with the Face of an Angel.

"Faith." Just one word when he could have said so many. He had been following them since he had heard, she knew. Drawn to what he had unconsciously wanted yet not been brave enough to pay for.

She smiled with a soft red mouth in a pretty pale face.

**Take it back I dare you take it back
No you can't? You should have thought of that
What's inside a man
That goes so wrong**

And saw the longing in his eyes. The loneliness of ages. And she felt triumph then, and she felt power. Just as she had felt power holding the gun, listening to the man who was not her father blubbering and crying, wet with his own tears and piss and blood. The image shocked her back into the present, standing on a bridge as a chill breeze blew.

"Faith?" She heard them come up behind her and felt her steely heart melt a little more. It wasn't right, she had waited this long and paid so much for her revenge. Shouldn't it have tasted sweet?

**Choke on guilt that's far too good for you
Say one word I'll laugh and bury you
And leave you in the place
Where you left me.**

"Cor, love ! You've lead us a merry dance. But not so bleedin' merry for the poofter, is it?" Her ice and moonlight love slid an arm around her waist, grinning into the darkness at the Angel forlorn standing lost. And another arm slid around her, twining with Spike's, as Buffy came up on her other side, her teeth still stained from the blood of a kill.

She saw Angel's stricken face. He was offering them his heart on a plate, a sacrifice. Asking for them to take him with them, asking for an end to the lonesomeness.

**If flesh could crawl
MY skin would fall
From off my bones
And run away from here

As far from God
As heaven is wide
As far from God
As Angels can fly.**

"Will you do it?" Buffy asked her. Her golden half now preserved in ice forever. Sisters in Battle still fighting for the Good, even though they killed the sick and dying like Angels of Death. "Will you leave him just standing there?"

Would she? A kaleidoscope whirl with pictures of her life. The little whore who had become something more. Fighting for the God who would not listen against the Black Tide that was coming. A warrior for the Good. And things had come a full circle. The Sire who was not her Sire asking for forgiveness across a windy bridge.

The gun was heavy in her hand. So heavy her fingers opened and she watched it fall into the water, never to be seen again. And then she felt so light, light enough to float away into the sky, free at last of the chains that had bound her down.

She opened her arms.

**I wish I could fly
As Angels can fly
I wish, I wish.**

And he was with them, she felt the cold of his tears on her cheek, tears of relief as they wound their arms around him in welcome. The Prodigal Son returns. The Sire of them All.

Spike's laughter sharp in the night. "Never thought I'd bleedin say this, but its good to have you with us, you soddin' prick."

And the night was theirs, completely.