Buffy No More: The Illusion

Part 4

Consider this: You spend your whole life doing the human thing, the normal thing. You get married to some clown who promises to love you, you get a sorta decent job, you move into a house in the suburbs, you don't have kids, and you spend the rest of your days trying to hold onto what you think is happiness. Then one day, or night rather, something comes from left field and hits you like a semi. Someone brings to the table that you're not as real as you thought you were, they call you a placeholder for someone else, and that you were only meant to be temporary. All these years you wanted to end your life or you didn't see the importance in it and suddenly you have a desperate desire to survive because someone threatened to take it away. I mean, what is that? I spent most of my time going on and on about how everything sucked; I should have found it a relief to know that being accused of murder, bullying, and other crap weren't important because I was less than a vapor in the wind. But this little revelation showed me that no matter how content I was with wasting this brief existence there had to be a part of me that wanted it to amount to some significance. If Angel and Spike were to kill me when they did there would be nothing left of me on this Earth, and that thought had proven scarier than death itself.

By the pacing and constant murmuring of Cordelia, I could tell she felt the same way. "What about Xander Faith? Do you think the little Indian kid got him to? Or Dawn's mother's weird British husband? Did they kill him?" She gasped. "Oh God what would Liam say? No, no, no, no, Liam's dead! Oh God Liam's Dead!" She broke down and began to cry in the abandoned house we were hiding in. Her weeping understandable but extremely agitating.

I was posted at the window with an old kitchen knife in my hand waiting for vampires to devour us or even worse, waiting for the real Faith to take back her body. I was tired, but I failed to recognize it, I was over analyzing every little thing, constantly adjusting my sight, afraid that if I blinked too much my reality would disappear. But mostly, I thought about what this other Faith might be like. What was she doing in that alley when she killed that man? What is a vampire? Are they exactly what they are in the movies? What is a slayer? Did the other Faith get paid for being a slayer? Did she just go around hunting vampires? What were her hopes and dreams and how did life steal them away? Who is Buffy to her and why did Buffy's disappointed eyes scare her? What is it about the blonde beauty queen that made her so fearful? It occurred to me in that moment that I would never know the real Faith, which sadden me, because she was probably the only one who actually understood.

In the background, Cordelia continued to wail as if she was at Liam's funeral. "I never got to tell him that I was sorry."

"Sweety!" I interrupted her. "You have gotta get it together." I went over to console her. "This is difficult for me too, but the truth is if we crumble then we'll be next. It hurts just thinking about the fact that I lost William just because I left the house for like an hour. And Dawn... she was really growing on me... even when I didn't want her to." I was dazed for second thinking about Dawn. I wondered if I wasn't such a selfish prick would our predicament be different. Dawn was trying to warn me long before, but because I was such an awful person she was at this time, probably, being stabbed and reborn. A sudden knock came from the door. The owner of the house was dead so I was certain it wasn't a visitor.

"Faith who is that?" Cordelia stuttered, her hand clenched on to my arm.

My grip tightened on that old rusted knife. The person uttered an intimidated, "Hello, is anyone there?" Just by the voice I could tell it wasn't a local, it was a man with a british accent which sounded much like Dawn's in-laws. Then he introduced himself, "It's Wesley Wyndam-Pryce."

Cordelia let out a deep sigh. "It's ok Faith I know him." She got up from her crouched position and headed for the door.

"Cordelia we don't know that," I exclaimed panickly. "STOP!"