TITLE: Dust under the carpet
AUTHOR: Mexx
DISCLAIMER: Not mine… you know the drill.
RATING: PG-13.
SUMMARY: Faith considers what she is to the people in her life.
FEEDBACK: Don’t make me beg. Seeing me beg isn’t pretty. But feedback would be nice.

I’ve been told I have a habit bring out people’s worst qualities, dig up the parts of themselves that they try to keep hidden. I bring out the parts of peoples selves that they try to sweep under the rug.

For Giles, it means bringing out Ripper, that darker, evil side of him. For Xander it was the hunger, for sex and for violence, that’s what he wanted off me and I gave it to him. For Willow I brought out the bitch that had been hiding behind knee high socks and cute bags. I brought out the demon in Angel, not literally – strictly no screwing for him, but around me he lets the demon a little closer to the surface, senses honed for when I’m going to betray him.

The part that I bring out of Buffy, well, I bring her out, her true self. She isn’t some snivelling blonde high school senior who kills demons because she has to. She wants to kill the demons, she wants the blood and the violence and the death and me.

She wants me because I can give her all that she wants.

I bring out the darker true side of Buffy Summers that she tries to keep hidden and she can let me draw it out of her because she knows she and I are the same. She knows I don’t judge her, but revel in the carnage that we can make together.

She lets me draw out her dark side because she wants to be like me, she wants the freedom and the fun and the death and the dust. And she doesn’t even know it.

She doesn’t know that she craves the release my presence bring to her mediocre life full of mediocre people.

They know it though; Giles, Willow, Xander, Angel. They all know that with each demon we slay together, each kill we make side by side, she gets a little bit closer to me and a little bit closer to her darkness.

They try so hard to keep her away from me, drive a wedge between us and bring her towards the light that makes her true self cower in the shadows.

They try to push me away, discard me, brush me away like dust under the carpet, dirt hidden by a pretty rug, a killer hidden by a pretty face.

-- finis