Title: A Car Ride to Sunnydale 

Author: Sweetness

Rating: PG-13 

Pairing: Willow & Faith (friendship)

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Joss Whedon and Co.

Distribution: Anyone who has permission for one of my fics has permission for the rest, just let me know that you’re taking it, my site (http://fanfiction.angel-buffy.com), otherwise ask.

Notes: Set just after ATS’s season four “Orpheus” and right before Buffy Season Seven “Dirty Girls.”

A sequel of sorts to “The Lonely Vigil,” Faith and Willow are returning to Sunnydale.

Feedback: Yes please :)



The two were silent as Willow drove them from L.A. to Sunnydale, partly because they were both terrified of what they were going to be facing. But mainly both were thinking about the last time that Faith had been in Sunnydale, when she had woken up from her coma. Faith wasn’t happy about her actions during that time, she had invaded Buffy’s body and done a lot of mean and hurtful things to Buffy and her friends. As far as Faith was concerned the only good to have come out of the whole experience was that she had felt what it was like to use her abilities for good, and was that she had realized how much self-hate she had for herself. It still hadn’t prevented her from agreeing to help Wolfram and Hart to take down Angel but perhaps it was the only she could have gotten close enough to Angel in the first place. She owed everything to the ensouled vampire, and she had expected to die helping to defeat Angelus so that Willow could restore Angel’s soul. She was grateful that she had lived, Lorne, the friendly demon who had watched over, had read her fate when she sang for him, and he told her that once she helped Buffy in this battle that the Powers That Be would consider her redeemed. It didn’t mean she could go off and start being evil again, or not continue to do good works; it just meant that she could help people for the sake of helping them. She wouldn’t have to worry about some karmic sword over her head. When he had told her all of this she didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was doing it for herself, not to make some higher forces happy, she wanted to make it so she could look at herself in the mirror and still not hate herself at times. At the same time, Willow was trying to figure out a way to tell the rogue Slayer that no matter what happened in Sunnydale, she was willing to give her a second chance. Willow had recently experienced the seduction of evil and how it was easier to give in to evil than to fight for good. She didn’t want the Slayer to feel that she was going into a den on enemies. But at the same time Willow didn’t know how to tell her this. She didn’t want to say that she had been given a second chance therefore everyone deserved it. Because that really wasn’t the case, Willow had forgiven Angel after he returned to Hell, and when Buffy had come home furious that Angel was helping Faith, Willow had figured that if Angel thought she deserved a chance, then she did. Faith also didn’t know how to start a conversation with someone she had threatened to kill. It’s not as if she could tell Willow that she was sorry, even if Angel had told her that was the best thing to do. It was just she didn’t want to tell the redhead that she had been going to kill her as a way to get back at Buffy. Finally Faith broke the silence, with the only question she could think of.

“So, Red, are you still seeing that little blonde?” Faith asked, figuring asking Willow about a relationship would be the best way to get the other girl to talk. 

“Little blonde, do you mean Oz?” Willow asked a bit confused. 

“Nah, the chick.”

“The chick? Oh, you mean Tara.” Willow as she finally figured out who Faith was talking about.

“Yeah I met her, when I was in B’s body.” Faith said as she looked out the window, remembering how cruel she had been for the other girl. 

“I had forgotten that.” Willow smiled as she remembered the first year she had dated Tara. 
”I take it things didn’t work out.” Faith said as she continued to look at the window. 

“No, they did.” Willow said sadly.

“I am sorry, I am just no good at this girlie-bonding crap.” Faith said.

“No, please don’t feel that way. There’s no way you could have known what had happened. I am pretty sure Cordy or Angel don’t visit you in prison to tell you all the gossip in Sunnydale.” 
”Nah, Cordy never evens visits, and Angel just gives me advice on how to find redemption and the stuff.” 
”Sounds like our Angel.” Willow said with a smile.

“What do you mean?” Faith asked looking at Willow’s profile as she drove. 

“Well I had the pleasure of hearing some of Angel’s advice and Giles’s advice about redemption and that sort of stuff.”
”You, Red, heard Angel’s advice about redemption? What was he practicing on you so he could tell me it?” Faith asked with shock in her voice. 

“No.” 
”Come on, Red, you can’t say something like that and leave it hanging.”
”I guess not. Do you mind if I pull over.” 
”Sure.” 

Faith and Willow were silent as Willow found a place to pull over safely. It only took Willow a couple of minutes to do so. She turned off the car, and then placed her hands on the steering wheel, gripping it as if it was a life support for her, and she had a far off look in her eyes. Faith was worried, Willow looked as if she was hanging by a thread. And if anyone had asked her, she would never have guessed that out of all of Buffy’s friends in Sunnydale that Willow would become evil. Faith figured it had to be something minor and the redhead was beating her self up over nothing. 

“Last summer, Xander and Buffy were in the backyard, and I was upstairs with Tara. We had just made up again; I had made some mistakes and had become addicted to magick. And Tara had broken up with me, but she had taken me back when she found out that I was really trying to beat it.” 
”You became addicted to magick, I didn’t know that was possible.” 

“Trust me it is, and I would rather have become addicted to drugs, it was that horrible. It was as if something was alive in me and it’s not as if there’s a program for witches that are addicted to magick. It all started because I started developing this need for magick the year you came to Sunnydale. I needed to be needed, and that need soon became a reliance on magick.”
”Why did you need to be needed, Red? You had B and Xander, and Oz, all of them in fact, you were what held them all together.” 
”I didn’t know that then, and by the time I did, it was too late.” 

“What do you mean it was too late?” Faith was almost afraid to ask.

“I found out after I had become addicted and after I had tried to destroy the world.”
”Red, there’s no way you would destroy the world.” Faith couldn’t believe what Willow was telling her, here was the most caring person out of Buffy’s group telling her she had tried to end the world.

“After we had made up, we had gotten dressed and were going to tell everyone the good news, but before we had a chance, she was shot by a stray bullet.” Willow started to cry.

“Come here, Willow.” Faith said as she pulled the fragile woman into her arms. “I didn’t know they had drive by shootings in Sunnydale.” 
”They don’t.” Willow said without any emotion as she cried in Faith’s arms.

“Then what happened?” 

“We were living in Buffy’s house, and someone decided he had to get revenge for her preventing him from fulfilling his childish dreams of controlling the world.”
”What a loser.” 
”Perhaps, but he shot her and as he was running he fired off another round and instead of hitting Buffy it hit Tara. Her last words to me were about how there was blood on my shirt.”
”Aw shit, Willow, that’s bad. What did you do?” 
”When I was refused the power to resurrect her, I went to the Magic Box and drained all the magick from the powerful books Giles kept there. Then I went on a rampage. I chased Warren down and killed him in cold blood, I also killed another man just to get the magick power he had.” 
”Willow, you were in pain.” Faith said as she stroked Willow’s back. 

“I can still smell his burnt flesh.” 
”It will most likely stay with you for the rest of your life, I can still hear my victims plead for their lives.” 
”When Giles came to town, I drained him of the magick he had gotten from a coven in England. I had thought it was for him to fight me. It allowed me to feel all the pain in the world and I then tried to destroy the world.” 
”What stopped you?” 
”Xander.” 
”How?” 

“He told me he loved me no matter who or what I was.” 
”At least you had him. I had no one, Red, no one to tell me that they loved me. If someone had told me that, maybe I wouldn’t have helped the Mayor. But I needed to be loved and he was treating me like his beloved daughter, and it helped to ease the pain and disgust I felt when I did what I did.” 
”I am sorry, if I had known.” 
”S’ok, no one did, I wasn’t about to broadcast it to the world that I was jealous of B for having everyone loving her.”
”Still, if we had known.”
”What would you have done? Do you think I would have believed you?” Faith asked. 

“Probably not. How do you do it, every day I wake up in pain, the magick is still there, and it would be so easy to give in and use it.” 
”Angel once told me that it’s easier to give in and die or become evil again, than it is to live in this world and try to make a difference no matter how bad it is.” 
”Sounds like what Giles and him both told me.” 
”It is, every day gets a bit easier, and you can look at yourself in the mirror and not be mad that you actually enjoyed something for a few minutes.” 

“Does it?” 
”Yeah but most of the time, it’s still there, never forgotten. Imagine how Angel feels.” 
”Yeah, it’s gotta be harder on him.” Willow said as she pulled herself back up right and wiped her hand on her face to remove the tears.
”I am sorry for making you cry.”
”Nah, I needed it, thanks Faith.” 
”Never thought someone would say thanks to me for making them cry.” Faith gave her a lopsided smile.
”Yah, but it makes things easier for me to know that if you can do it so can I. Angel is a champion, he has to. I am just research girl.” 
”Nah, you’re more than that, much more.”
”Think so?”
”Yeah, why do you think Angelus, and even me, wanted to kill you to get back at B? You are the thing that holds them together.”
”I guess I don’t feel like it a lot of times.” 
”I am glad that B forgave you cuz she doesn’t seem like the forgiving type most of the time.”
”Well she almost didn’t, I think Giles, Xander and Dawn forced her to accept it.” 
”And how is B’s little sister?” 
”Not so little anymore.” 

“I am actually surprised that Buffy forgave Xander when he left his fiancée at the alter.”
”Xander jilted a woman and Buffy forgave him?” 
”Yeah, Anya wasn’t too happy about all of it. She became a vengeance demon again and tried to get women to wish pain on Xander so she could hurt him. She’s no longer a demon, she was human for too long.” 

The two fell into an easy conversation about things that had happened in Sunnydale in the last few years. Willow told Faith about Tara, and about Kennedy. She also told her stuff that she had never told Buffy about her recent stay in England. Faith told Willow about the loneliness of prison life. And about the battle between her and Angelus when the two had been unconscious, and how even then Angel was still fighting for her to save herself. During the remainder of the drive, the two came to the realization that they were more similar than they were different, and that they both had gone evil for similar reasons. They formed an easy friendship that would most likely last if they were able to survive the upcoming battle. Willow informed her of the First, and Faith told her that she would be on the watch for it. And in each other, they both found someone who could help them on the really bad days when the guilt and the pain over their actions tried to make them give up. 



** END **