I remember when I was a little girl, I would beg my parents for a little sister. Someone to play with, to magic marker the walls with, to whisper with when mommy and daddy were fast asleep and we were the only ones up. I remember closing my eyes every Christmas and thinking what it would be like to open my presents with my little sister, giggling over every parcel and ribbon, envious of what each got but in the end willing to share.

That’s how I always imagined sisterhood to be. Something beautiful, where you could always find acceptance. After learning about my... destiny, I was actually thankful my parents said no. What if my sister was disgusted with what I became? Someone who killed those who were already dead, who was the "one girl in all the world with the strength and the skill to hunt vampires." I disgusted myself, and I honestly felt as if I were some freak of nature. Buffy Summers, the girl who inherited supernatural powers overnight. And I remember thinking ‘What would my sister say?’

And then I died.

After my sort-of death, Kendra came. She wasn’t really like my sister. We had a bond, sure, like I suspect other Slayers would have had if there were more than one. Kendra died so suddenly, but she was more of a friend than a sister. There was no real kinship that lay between us, and for one, brief, selfish moment I was glad because then I wouldn’t have to deal with the loss of a friend, of a... sister?

When I returned, I didn’t expect another Slayer. But Faith came anyway, her brash, rough and tough attitude getting us both into trouble. She was always a little tipsy, always walked on the edge and sometimes even fell over. But I looked out for her, and she looked out for me. True, I was jealous at first. I mean, here was a girl that was everything I wasn’t: gutsy, bold, wild - everything I pictured for a Slayer to be. She was out on her own, independent girl. She didn’t need a backup group of friends to cheer her on, she did her own cheering.

She had a lot of things to deal with, and so did I. I like to think that we helped each other out, that I was able to show her she could be independent and in turn she showed me I could open up. We shared in-jokes, slaying, hell at one time we even shared friends. Just like I always imagined sisterhood to be.

I’m not really sure when Faith decided she was out of the loop. Maybe it was when she killed the Mayor’s assistant, maybe even before. Some days she’d be right beside me, cracking jokes or flirting with guys shamelessly. Or sometimes, she’d be gone for days, only to return good as new. I never wanted to think what she was doing those days. She knew exactly how to manipulate me. She knew every dirty secret I had, and probably even some I had hidden away even from myself. She brought out the part in me I didn’t even know existed - the rash, brash, and wild Slayer she was.

It didn’t suck.

I remember thinking ‘Great, this is it. I’ve got the little sister I’ve always wanted, and she’s just like me. We’re the Chosen Two, freaks of nature by law, but we’re Slayers. We’ve got each other.’ It was a high, and for the first time I felt good about my Slaying. I was saving lives, doing what I was built to do.

I was finally living my life through Faith’s eyes.

I know the exact moment I realized that with the good, comes the bad. She was out of control, I was out of control. We both were. It wasn’t Faith’s fault, she didn’t know. I had years of training behind me, she had what, months? Slayer reflexes or not, she wouldn’t have been able to catch herself until it was too late. If I were holding the stake, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop myself either.

Right?

I’m just making up excuses for her. I always wanted to believe that she was a good person, despite what she let others see. I never gave up because I always believed there was nothing to give up on. She was there, she was a person, she was my Sister in Arms. And God help me if I were gonna give up.

I scrubbed my hands raw that night and I still could see his blood. Every time I looked down at the drain, I knew that it wasn’t enough, that I had to keep on washing. I felt dirty, horrible. But… I wasn’t the one who killed him.

That thought didn’t make it easier to sleep at night. The only thing I could see were his eyes, wide, anticipating death. It was like he knew his final card was up and had so many things unfulfilled. He was like me, the night the Master rose.

When I visited Faith the next day, I was planning on how to comfort her. It was her stake that pierced his heart - a human heart - and no matter what she said or what she did in the end it would always be her. But she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t scrubbing her hands until they bled, or asking herself how she could have done that. She never displayed guilt, and that was what scared me. She finally knew her power, and decided exactly what to do with it.

She didn’t care anymore. Faith didn’t care whose lives she ruined as long as it wasn’t hers.

The next few months were a blur. So much went on, but still, in the back of my mind, I expected Faith to come and admit to me what she truly felt and cry it out. And I would hold her, and rock her, and wait until she fell asleep like the way I always pictured it to be with my sister. But the part of me that wasn’t naïve admitted that Faith was a big girl, who made her own choices. Unfortunately, her choices weren’t always tipped towards the scale of good.

I’m not sure if I hated Faith, but I knew the moment she tried to take Angel away from me that she was gone. Little sis was all grown up and stalking the streets at night looking for innocents, not the undead like she was supposed to.

I don’t know if it was for vengeance, or if it was because I wasn’t ready to let Angel go, or both, but I needed Faith’s blood. My knife slid into her... and it was so easy. One minute, she was there, and the next... I didn’t understand, though, what kind of euphoria that held for her. How could someone gain pleasure in taking another person’s life? It was just... wrong.

And it was then that I realized little sis wasn’t all she was cracked upto be. When Faith jumped from the roof of her apartment, I suddenly realized what happened. In a moment of clarity, I realized that I had just possibly killed the only sister I’ve ever had. Then suddenly, the Slayer part of me took over, and I let it. Faith’s a big girl, she knew what she was doing when she got involved with the Mayor. Let it go. So I did. I pushed it back so far that not even my emotions could reach it. To the darkest, deepest recesses of my being where I’ve hid away every failure I’ve ever had in order to be a better Slayer.Slayer’s can’t cry. So Faith’s in there, along with Miss Calendar, and Giles’s torture. Along with Angel’s broken curse, Willow’s goldfish, Mom’s kidnapping. With every failure I’ve ever had, Faith’s is now a part of them. I went to Angel that night and forced him to drink. I didn’t care that he was leaving. This was my chance, my moment of redemption. The world needed him more than they ever needed me. Who am I? I’m weak. My emotions run me. I’ve been living lucky far too many years. It’s like that old cliché, ‘My luck’s finally run out.’ This was it, and I’ll be damned if the only thing that could save him wasn’t something I wasn’t willing to give up.

I’m not entirely too sure how long I was out. Hours, at the most. Balancing on the brink of death isn’t the same as dying. There is no darkness that surrounds you, nothing numbing you from your pain. It’s just... flashes of white. Like you’re ready to come back. It gives this false sense of security, that you know you’re going to pull through, but no one really does. All they do is either balance or fall... and one way or the other, they don’t go back to the way thingswere. One of those flashes of white was a message. Maybe it was because we’re Slayers and we just know, or because we were both trying to make up for our failures. Maybe it was something else, I don’t really know. I can’t remember everything that she said to me that day. I remember riddles. And ‘a higher power guiding us’. It was like a dream, where, if you’re lucky, you can get out with little patches of memory before it all completely fades. But this wasn’t a dream. I know, because she said it, said the thing I’ve been afraid of since becoming a Slayer because it’s the simple truth.

Human weakness. Never goes away.

Not even when you’re invincible, or if you’re a Slayer, a vampire or a cursed demon. It’ll always be there, your weaknesses, because it’s a part of you.I once told Kendra that emotions are a major asset. They fuel your fight; when you have a reason for doing something, it’s so much better. There’s a... zing to your punch, an extra motivation. But never once did I tell her that feeling too much can get you killed. Finally breaking through the Slayer she was brought up to be I found a little girl who never really was. She would train with her Watcher and sleep with her stake instead of playing in the park or sleeping with her stuffed animals. But she was a Slayer, that’s what she did best. And the day I finally got through her she died.

Sometimes when I close my eyes at night the deep, dark part of me emerges and I can see them. I see Miss Calendar’s eyes, begging for the forgiveness I should have given. I see Giles’ broken face, enduring torture to do the duty I should have been there to perform. I saw Willow and Xander, their faces after losing Jesse. They all hurt the same, there is no winner for Who Buffy Betrayed Most. But at times the only things I see are Kendra and Faith. Both dead because of my mistakes. It was a six degrees. If I hadn’t slept with Angel, he wouldn’t have lost his soul. If he wouldn’t have lost his soul, Miss Calendar would have never died trying to find his cure, and Giles wouldn’t have been tormented with his dead love. If Angel hadn’t lost his soul, Angelus wouldn’t have tried to summon Acathla and Kendra wouldn’t have had to come back to Sunnydale to give me the sword. If Kendra hadn’t come back to Sunnydale, she never would have fallen to Drusilla. If Kendra hadn’t died, Faith wouldn’t have come, the Mayor’s Ascension would have been easily and earlier diverted, and no one would have had to die.

If I had been a better Slayer - a better person - none of that would have happened.

But when I wake up again, I push them all back. I’ve tried to redeem for my failures as much as Angel does. For every life I save, I say a little prayer honouring that life to them. Giles would never let me live with my guilt, he would tell me there was nothing I could do. No one will say it was my fault, even Cordelia. Sometimes Xander says it, but I know he doesn’t think it’s true. None of them will admit that I walk on the edge as well, and none of them will admit that sometimes even I fall over, because when it comes down to it I’m all they’ve got. Buffy Summers, the Chosen.We wouldn’t be alive without her.

So I did what I had to do. I got up again, like I always do. But one of these days, I won’t get up. One of these days, I’ll be the one lying prone unable to move, teetering on the brink, and one of these days I’m gonna fall.

I saw it in the Mayor after his metamorphosis. When he saw the knife, I knew I had him. And I ran.

Through the hallways, and over the woods, to grandmother’s house I go. Or something like that. I crashed through the window to meet Giles and we blew the library up. Ascension done, dealt with. No more crazy demon-Mayors trying to kill us. We were out of the woods. But there was someone who wasn’t.

Faith.

A few days after the Ascension, I visited her. She was struggling on life support, but she wasn’t going to give up. The Mayor wouldn’t allow a DNR. He loved her like a daughter. Like his daughter.

Her bruises are healing now, at the rate only Slayers could. We asked the hospital, and they said there’s a wealthy benefactor who’s paying for Faith’s treatments. We didn’t need to ask, we already knew. His weakness was Faith because he loved her.

I look at her now and realize for the first time that she might actually die. It was different from before, because I thought I had killed her. Now, she’s on the same brink I was on, that I’ve been on so many times. And the only thing I can pray for is that she manages to balance herself before it’s too late.

The Watcher’s Council tried to kill her. Several times, in fact. We had to set up guards near the entrance to make sure that they wouldn’t try to kill Faith again. She’s a murderer, not fit to be a Slayer. If they think she’s a murderer, imagine that they think of themselves. Centuries - no, millenias - of deaths, of them choosing one girl and making her "special" enough to fight vampires. They claim it’s for the common good, they say it’s for humanity. Save the fact that this one girl in all the world never wanted her destiny, save the fact that they took the choice away from her and gave it to themselves. Save the fact that they were the hunted and the hunter, and that eventually, whether she knew it or not, she would fail. Save their families, their friends, their loved ones losing another joy in their life.Screw the Council. I stroke her hair gently. Someone comes in every day to wash it, to make sure she’s presentable. Because comatose or not, if the Mayor had lived through the Ascension, if he had managed to re-transform himself back to the human, he wouldn’t have stood for Faith being dirty. He wanted her clean, healthy. I guess somehow he knew that one day Faith’s destiny would catch up with her, and she’d die.

I’m not sure what kind of music she likes. Last I checked, it was the loud, rocker type. Stuff you could mosh to. They let me play her music once in a while, usually it’s something quiet, but I try to bring in something fast. To some extent, music reminds me of Faith. The way she describes Slaying was almost lyrical. She loved it.

I stay in her room a little while longer. I like to keep her company, tell her about my day or about the latest baddie I’ve Slayed. There’s not much left in Sunnydale, they’re scattered now ever since the Ascension. The townspeople are coping with what we told them - freak gas leak and the combination of a really big snake igniting some sort of involuntary spark caused the school to explode. Snyder was killed from the venom, and the guys that attacked us were hitmen sent to kill the Mayor. Oh, and did we mention that the snake got the Mayor too? It’s a really hazy explanation, but they’re willing to believe it. They’re afraid of ending up in the psycho ward of Sunnydale General, because if you scream loud enough about the dark they’ll silence you. That’s what this town’s like, what it’s about. It’s built on denial and the fervent want of believing everything’s gonna be okay. It doesn’t matter anyway. Our alibi’s tight, now that Sunnydale Grads of ’99 know the deal. And they’re too scared to tell. The only thing they cling onto is the thought of someone fighting for them, which is what we do. What I do, now that I’m alone.

I lean over and kiss her on the forehead. She’s still paralytic, and the doctors don’t know when she’ll wake up. They say that if she does... there’s no real chance that she’ll come back the same. Like I’ve always said, you either balance or fall, and one way or the other you can’t go back to the way things were.

Not the first time in my life I’m glad my parents said no. Here she is, my little sis in arms, lying prone on the bed unable to move, speak, or even breathe on her own. Just a broken shell of what once was. It doesn’t make my failures any less tangible, doesn’t make the fact that I did this to her any less horrible, but I go out there and Slay baddies for Faith. She would have loved it.

What would my sister say? Well, she can’t really say much. But I like to think that she’d understand. Fallen Warriors don’t get any tributes. No one likes to believe that people that great can just... die. Faded pictures - in our minds, or in print - are our only memorials, a memento mori to other warriors, no matter how fierce. Human weakness is always there.

I like to think little sis would be proud. It doesn’t really matter to her right now - this dimension, I mean - but sometimes I like to think that she’s smiling - even better, laughing - while I tell her about the latest demon I’ve battled. And sometimes I think I can see the tiniest smile on her lips while I tell a story.

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