Chapter 2
The waitress who, like the establishment she worked in had seen better days, swung by the table at the back of the diner where two young women sat whom she didn’t particularly like the look of. She was doing the rounds with a refill of some extremely bitter tasting coffee. Even if the slightly overweight woman with the fake blonde hair sprouting out at bizarre angles from beneath her waitressing cap didn’t trust them, especially the one in the dark leather and a Marlboro never far from her lips, they were paying customers after all. She could hardly refuse to serve them just because she didn’t like the way they looked.
Seeing the waitress approach Faith eagerly nodded for another cup, choosing to ignore the contempt she could clearly see in the middle aged woman’s grey eyes as she poured. Her need for caffeine overriding any indignation she should feel at the pointed look, because man she’d not had a decent cup of joe for years. Not that what passed as coffee in this crummy diner could exactly be called decent, but anything tasted better than the shit they offered up in prison and the crap Fred brewed at Angel’s. Willow on the other hand, was jonesing more for her frothy milk infused mochas that had less of a kick to them when you swallowed, and swiftly covered her half-empty cup when the waitress tried to pour.
“I’m good, thanks.” Offered the Wicca.
The waitress eyed her suspiciously, she assumed all students lived on coffee and nicotine. Maybe she’d pegged these two girls wrong, her distrust of them growing by the second.
“Come on Red, it’ll put hairs on yer chest.” The brunette smirked at the redhead opposite her, liking it when her eyebrows went frowny. She remembered that from the old Willow, even if everything else about the woman opposite her was unfamiliar.
“No, really, I’m good. And could do without the scary visuals, thanks Faith.” The two looked at each other with mock defiance in their eyes before a smirk broke out on Willow’s face, followed by a short bark of laughter from Faith.
The waitress looked down at the two of them, deciding that they were students all right, high on something other than caffeine most likely. She strolled over to the counter telling the short order chef to keep an eye on those two when she couldn’t, and went back to refilling the cups of overweight truckers who at least appreciated her coffee.
“I think you offended her.” Faith looked back from where she’d been following the waitress’ movements to the woman in front of her. Willow was still smiling but her green eyes had lost the brightness of before. The slayer figured that brief teasing interlude was all there was going to be and sighed heavily.
Damn it I’m no good at this, Faith thought to herself.
They’d stumbled and started a dozen conversations since arriving at the diner, none of them the right one. None of them which would lead the Wicca to explain the sadness in her eyes, or for the slayer to explain the strange nervous feeling she’d been having ever since Willow showed up in LA. Faith suspected the sudden reappearance of a member of the Scooby gang in her life could only spell trouble, especially for her, but getting to a point in the conversation to ask the redhead about that just didn’t seem to be something the dark slayer was capable of.
Faith knew that Willow’s girlfriend had died, and Willow knew Faith had stayed locked up because she wanted to pay for her crimes. And that was as far as either women had managed to get before awkward tension reappeared and their conversations reverted back to the type they had when Willow was still in high school. Non-existent, in other words.
I knew this was a bad idea, the Wicca thought to herself. Watching the brunette take out like her millionth cigarette of the day, lighting it with a dull, battle-scarred Zippo.
“You know, you smoke too much.” Willow played with the sugar bowl as she spoke, a nervous thing she remembered from her childhood dinner table. With parents that believed in only speaking when spoken to.
“Really?” Faith took a deep drag on her Marlboro, her sarcasm unmistakable.
“And it’s really bad for you.”
Faith raised her eyebrows at the Wicca and blew some smoke purposefully in front of her.
“Yeh well, we all gotta die sometime.”
It was a tired old line. The slayer couldn’t believe she’d even uttered it. She watched Willow grimace slightly at the death notion. Painful reminder of the deaths she’d been witness to, thought the slayer. Faith was going to offer some sort of apology or something for her callous words, because hell she wasn’t so unfeeling to not recognise pain when she saw it, but never got the chance.
“Why do you do that?” Willow’s voice was sad again.
“Do what?” And Faith went immediately on the defensive when she heard it.
“Do that tough-guy act all the time. You’re always with the comebacks. And the jokes. And the five-by-fives. ‘We gotta all die sometime huh huh huh’. Pretending you don’t really care about anything.”
“Who said I was pretending?” Faith shot back at the redhead, not liking insightful Willow so much.
“Oh right, Faith. I forgot. You’re mean, you’re a badass. You don’t give a flying fuck about anyone else. That’s why you’ve spent the last 18 months in lock up. Right?”
The Wicca didn’t know where all that had come from. She sat back a little away from the table, not daring to look up at the slayer’s eyes knowing there’d be daggers coming from them. Faith was staring at her all right, but more in surprise than anything else. She couldn’t remember ever hearing the F bomb fall from pale pink lips back in the day. Things really had changed in the intervening years it seemed.
The Wicca had her pegged pretty well, which irked the slayer somewhat, considering the time they’d spent together in LA plus the drive now was probably the most they’d ever spent in each other’s company. Had Faith become so easy to read? She was surprised that Willow said all that to her face and not flinch once when she said it. There was a time when the timid Wicca would jump if Faith even looked at her the wrong way, but now there was an air of defiance coming off of the woman the slayer was intrigued to find out about. Where was the innocent young girl from high school who had never uttered the word fuck, let alone had one?
Clearly not so innocent anymore, thought the slayer.
“Well Jesus Red, don’t feel like you gotta hold anything back.” Faith stubbed her cigarette out, acting more pissed off than she really felt. “Is there anything else you wanna add as you Psych 101 me?”
Willow looked up, determining whether the slayer was pissed at her or just pretending to be. She saw in her eyes that she was just pretending to be. Willow also thought she saw a glimmer in the brown orbs, that was asking her to give the slayer a chance to explain things.
“Yes, actually I do.” The wicca met the slayer’s stare with a determined one of her own, sitting up straight at the table once again, realising she’d never been in danger of incurring the slayer’s wrath after all.
“If you really are still the bitch I knew in high school, why save Angel? Why come back to Sunnydale with me?” Willow paused, then added to soften the harshness a little.
“And if you respond with a smart comeback about missing the Twofer night at The Bronze, I might have to sew your mouth shut.”
The slayer smirked, letting the bitch remark drop at the appearance of spazzy Willow.
“Now who’s with the scary visuals?” She reached in to her pocket for her cigarettes, ignoring the look Willow gave her when she brought one up to her lips and lit it.
“Okay Red, here’s the deal.”
Uh-oh, Willow thought.
“There’s a deal?”
“Ahuh, there’s always a deal to be had Red, and this is going to be ours.” Faith paused, more for dramatic effect than for the coffee she took a sip of. “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”
“Show you my what?” Willow asked, conjuring up all sorts of images she shouldn’t be conjuring right now.
“Chill Red, I’m not suggesting nakedness or anything.”
Despite herself Willow blushed, the visual place her mind went to not as scary as the other visuals caused by Faith in the past. She looked across to see an amused slayer raising her dark eyebrows suggestively, smirking that way of hers again that always wrong footed the redhead.
“Unless you want to get naked.” Faith added, arching her eyebrows in a suggestive manner, her look on the lascivious side of inappropriate.
“I certainly do not.” Willow fidgeted a little in her chair, trying to think of a spell that would make her stop blushing, or stop her imagining her and Faith naked, whichever would work quickest.
“Shucks Red, that hurts.”
The Wicca gave Faith an exasperated look, and the slayer knew it was time to stop playing so many games.
“Okay okay. Enough with the frowny face already.” Faith continued. “All I meant was, you’re curious about what changed me and I’m curious to know how you went from being a geeky computer spaz in high school…”
“Hey!” Willow interrupted.
“Let me finish,” Faith responded. “Like I was saying, I want to know how you go from high school spaz to wicked witch of the west coast.”
Faith stared back at Willow when she was confronted with one of those stern, shocked looks she’d seen on the redhead’s face a lot in the past.
“Hey, I heard a rumour at Angel’s.” Faith offered as explanation, shrugging her shoulders a little as if to say, no big deal.
“Oh,” was all Willow could think of to say.
Reading more from the expression in the brown eyes before her than Willow’s sudden silence, Faith started to realise she’d hit on something big.
“So, not so much rumour as fact. Gotta say Red, didn’t see that coming.” Faith took the time to stub her cigarette out, eyeing the redhead carefully, as if she was really seeing her for the first time.
“I’m impressed,” she continued.
Willow scowled at her, forcing herself to calm her breathing down a notch. Faith was just being Faith after all.
“So what happened?” Faith settled back in her seat, finishing off the last dregs of cold coffee.
“I killed a guy.”