TITLE : Inner Walls
AUTHOR : Elegy
FEEDBACK : elegy1@voila.fr
RATING : NC-17 for some scenes of verbal and physical violence and some sexual scenes.
SPOILERS : This story takes place after "Sanctuary" (season 1 of Angel and season 4 of BTVS).
DISCLAIMER : Faith, Buffy and all other characters belong to Joss Whedon, Warner, UPN, etc.
NOTE: Faith's thoughts in italics.
This fic is dedicated to the great French team (you know who you are) and particularly to Broody, my twin sister-in-arm I love so much. And big big thanks to Miss Kitty, my patient beta-reader and sworn enemy of "which", to whom I'll be always grateful.
SUMMARY : Faith goes to jail after her confession.

ACT I   ACT II   ACT III   ACT IV   ACT V

ACT I : Darkness

"I'd like to make a confession."

The knell had tolled. Faith could not draw back any longer. In Inspector Lockley's eyes she seemed to have detected slight disappointment. In Buffy's, satisfaction.

Look at me, B, look at me. I did it for you...

Or had she finally denounced herself to protect herself from what she was able to do? She had lost control, completely, entirely, desperately. And the most difficult thing to bear was that she had felt a huge and terrifying pleasure to let herself go, to cross the barriers of her conscience again, to plunge into the darkness of her tortured mind.

The events had succeeded one another very quickly. First the long and laborious interrogation to try to justify rationally a fatal mistake in an irrational context. The inspector had not seemed astonished though. But how could a jury adhere to her version? How could they accept that she had killed Allan Finch because she had thought he was a vampire?

Why didn't you hold me back?

She would be sentenced to a very long penalty, maybe to death. It did not really matter now.

I'm already dead.

After the legal hours of police custody, she had been transferred to the prison of Los Angeles in an uncomfortable police van. She had not seen neither Angel nor Buffy again.

While the policemen made her get out of the van, she contemplated the huge dark walls that were waiting for her with indifference. She looked at the multiple barred windows, the high walls with barbed wire, grey and dirty.

When Faith, firmly escorted by the policemen, finally passed through the heavy doors of the prison, a feeling of panic seized her. While the two men were forcing her to move forward, she turned her head to the other side, behind her, to what she left, as if she wanted to keep the image of freedom, as if she hoped to see someone, someone who would have cared for her.

B...

But there was no one. Nothing but the void. And the night.

Faith walked through passages and gates that were carefully closed behind her. She had to undress and take on shapeless clothes bearing the prison name and a number. Her number. The last symbolic stage of her downfall, of the loss of her personality. She no longer had a name, she was nothing more than a handful of meaningless digits.

Then she was led to her cell. She walked through new passages, new gates under the heavy gazes of the other prisoners delighting in her arrival as the unique distraction in a world where only the mechanical routine allowed you not to think too much. She endured some obscene remarks, ignoring the threats and the invitations, her blank look fixed on the end of the large passage up to her cell.

"Hey Jessy, got ya some company!" said the guard mockingly while opening the cell gate.

"Fuck, no!" exclaimed the woman slumped on the bed.

Faith noted behind her the noise of the keys that were locking the gate, shutting her irremediably and making her suddenly become aware of reality. Panic overwhelmed her again, churning up her insides. She tried to focus her attention on another thing. She looked at her cell mate. Probably Hispanic, she was quite pretty with dark short hair and wore impressing tribal tattoos.

"What are you looking at?" she spat, her eyes full of animosity.

I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...

"Nothing.", Faith answered averting her gaze.

She concentrated on the examination of the cell. Tiny, austere, dirty, the walls covered with graffiti, oozing humidity, the bunk beds, the small washbasin next to the toilets, one shelf, one window, bars... The void...

"Hey! I'm talking to you bitch! You don't have to look at me like that!"

Jessy had risen and was advancing threateningly on Faith, still immobile in the middle of the cell, staring into space.

I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...

The vision of Jessy's bloody face flashed through Faith's mind. She saw herself holding her by her hair and crushing her face against the wall, several times, without a word, with only this murderous madness in the eyes, this madness that pursued her, and the void...

I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...

Jessy was standing in front of Faith. At the moment when she rose her fist to hit the Slayer, the latter looked at her, finally, and her fist stopped, mid movement. Jessy had never seen such an expression before. An icy shudder ran down her spine. She saw madness, hatred, in the dark eyes that seemed lost and harmless previously. An immeasurable violence emanated from this silent woman who had come and disturbed her daily routine. Suddenly she did not feel like pursuing her gesture, she felt that she would regret it.

Faith had not blinked. Her eyes had harpooned the other woman's, defying her, dominating her, but her mind was elsewhere. It had gone through this face - I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall... - and had been fixed far away... in the void...

Jessy stepped back and faced the insane look in the new comer's eyes trying not to show the confusion she felt. They remained silent for a moment sizing each other up.

"What's your name?" finally asked Jessy, breaking the silence which had become heavy.

"Faith."

"I'm Jessy. Well, you take the upper bed. And welcome to hell."

Faith had not slept all night. She had turned over the same thoughts, seen the same face, the hatred then the satisfaction that had shown through those green eyes that haunted her.

Faith did not really realize that she was in jail until the night anxieties of the other prisoners resounded in the long and empty passages. There were continually noises, half-stiffled tears, cries, insults, which came and broke her reflections and brought her back to her despair.

In the morning a guard came and opened the gate while taking a malicious pleasure to run her nightstick down the bars in order to wake up the few prisoners who could have been asleep.

Jessy rose, grumbling.

"Move your ass, it's breakfast, 'better not be the last ones."

Faith climbed down her bed and followed Jessy in the passage. She saw hundreds of clones, of women like her, dressed in orange jail suits, wearing their numbers, going out of their cells and treading heavily to the refectory. She saw tens of aligned cells on several stories like an immense and labyrinthe-like anthill.

"I warn you, you look after yourself, Faith. I won't be your protector."

They arrived in the refectory where long tables were set out. Many prisoners were already settled and Faith felt the looks they were sending her. Her Slayer's keen senses allowed her to hear the questions and the lewd remarks which burst out from every table. Prefering to ignore them so as not to give way to blind anger, she took her tray and began to sit next to Jessy.

"What are you doing exactly?"

I'm sticking this knife in your belly...

"I'm sitting down."

The other women around the table were watching them attentively, a smile on their lips.

"No, but you're dreaming, pretty girl, you beat it, it's not your table and I didn't invite you.", said Jessy very loud in order that everyone could witness to the unalterability of her status of gang leader.

Faith looked at her silently, her tray in her hands. The women roared with laughter mocking at this so fragile newcomer who would soon be devoured by the merciless pack ruling the underworld of the prison.

I'm sticking this knife in your belly...

Faith cast a quick glance around and spotted an isolated table where only two women were eating. She headed towards it slowly, focusing on each of her steps, letting flow back the muffled anger which was growing, an anger to which it was so tempting to give way again so as to drown in its nothingness and not to have to think anymore.

I'm sticking this knife in your belly...
I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...

She sat down at a distance from the two other women and began to eat the foul gruel that the prison staff deigned to serve them.

The prisoner sat on her left was staring at her with an outraged look. She stretched out her arm to Faith's tray and snatched her plate.

"I'm sure you don't want it anymore. Give it to me."

Faith turned to the woman and with a quick gesture she got her plate back. The laughter of contentment choked with surprise. Then the woman, named Trisha, rose revealing her imposing and muscular body. She slowly approached Faith then leaned slightly over her in such a way that she could talk in her ear, her two gnarled hands resting on the table on each side of the dark Slayer. Faith could feel the heavy body behind her and the warm breath near her face.

"Listen, you little cunt. I think that you don't really get how it works here...", whispered Trisha. "Here the newcomers obey our rules, and if I want you to give me your plate, you'll give it to me wisely, like everything that could interest me by the way..."

...I'm sticking this knife in your belly...

"...You're mine since you've chosen to sit at my table and you have to follow the rules or else we will break you, we will destroy you until you come back crawling and crying to beg us to allow you to lick our boots..."

...I'm looking at your pretty mug that I'm gonna explode against the wall...

"...You're nothing here, nothing but what we decide you to be..."

...sticking this knife...

"...You're no longer Sunnydale's stuck-up girl, you're only a piece of shit..."

...sticking this knife...

"...that we'll crush willy-nilly untiiiiiiiiillllllllllaaaaaahahhhhhhhh!!!!!!"

Trisha's sentence turned into a long and painful cry while her right hand had just been pierced by a fork in such a quick movement that nobody would have been able to say that Faith was the author of it if she had not kept her hand on the handle. She remained impassive, studying the blood trickling slowly from the wound, her gaze blank. A silence had followed in the refectory, and only the cries of Trisha, who was clinging on Faith's hand and was trying vainly to make her let go of the fork, could be heard. It was as if the time was suspended, no one moved anymore, the guards seemed to have disappeared.

I'm gonna tear your tongue out in order that you stop crying...

While rising abruptly, Faith at once pulled the fork out and threw her head back violently breaking Trisha's nose who collapsed on the floor.

Three guards appeared suddenly and seized Faith who did not resist and let them bring her in an isolation cell. She was thrown in it with no care.

And then came the pain. Nightstick blows fell without a break for five long minutes during which Faith's mind had regained consciousness at last. She did not try to defend or to protect herself, the pain brought her back to reality, allowed her to focus on another thing than her despair.

The guards left her, at last, in the darkness and the solitude of this tiny and stiffling room with no window that was used to punish the recalcitrant prisoners. Faith still felt the warmth of the blows on her bruised body, a warmth almost comforting, almost familiar, like after a difficult fight against a vampire.

I'm gonna stick this stake in you and you'll disappear into dust...

Lying in the cell's cold floor, she brought her knees to her and curled up. Then she lost consciousness and there was nothing but the void.

Faith stayed three days in isolation. She woke up during the night of the first day, her body painful, her face swollen. But she knew that her Slayer's condition would allow her to recover quickly. A doctor had visited her several times and made her swallow some pills. She felt that her mind was hazy, her thoughts more and more confused.

Fucking pills...

But her desire for violence had decreased and she felt calmer. It may have been also due to the obscurity into which she was plunged or to the total lack of noise, of these anguish cries echoing from cell to cell.

Maybe that I'm dead... Maybe that Buffy stuck this knife - my knife - in my belly and that I'm still in a coma... Maybe that she succeeded, that she pushed me from the roof when the helicopter came...

She saw again the vision of Buffy and her on the roof when they had fled the Council's men.

I'd believed that you would forgive me... I'd believed that you would understand... That you would give me a second chance...

The hatred in her gaze, the determination, the resentment.

The satisfaction...

She regretted the blindness of the other Slayer, who had never really listened to what Faith had desesperately tried to make her understand in their moments of complicity, during their common patrols or in the Bronze. They had been very close though, almost in symbiosis in the fights, in dance... Faith had felt that Buffy had not been indifferent, she always felt the effect she produced on others... Lust... She saw it in those eyes she loved so much, in those eyes which refused to face her own gaze, fraught with night and ambiguous promises, fraught with questioning. Those eyes which had turned away from her gaze, being finally too much fraught with consequences. But Faith had almost resolved to content herself with the blonde Slayer's friendship, a friendship which was really offered to her for the first time... Until a fool came and threw himself on her stake at the corner of a street.

Why didn't you hold me back?

Until Faith killed Allan Finch and that Buffy betrayed her.

The image of the stake stuck into the assistant's heart appeared then in her mind, the human blood running down her hand, the gaze full of incomprehension of the man who had wanted to warn them, the panic in Buffy's. The haze in her head. The flight. The denial.

You let me down... You've never supported me... You accused me... You've never wanted to believe that it could have happened to you... You've always believed to be so strong... You, the Chosen one, invincible Buffy, irreproachable and always honest... You used Finch to justify yourself, to go away from me, so as not to face what you felt for me... It was so easier...

Panic and despair had made her lose her head. Driven to the wall, Faith had attacked to defend herself, forestalling Buffy and accusing her of the murder.

I didn't mean it... But you betrayed me... Let me down... It could have happened to you and this is why you panicked... We could have gotten over it together... We could... You've never admitted it was an accident... You had to wash your hands, your guilt, your responsibility. Fortunately the rogue Slayer, the substitute was here to carry the can... It was so easy for you... And everybody would believe you... Nobody has ever believed in me... Not even you... Not even me...

What followed was only an uninterrupted stream of mistakes, a path of self-destruction pursued by "the rogue Slayer", "the psycho" as her former "friends" liked to call her. The darkest part of herself had taken possession of her mind and she had no longer managed to make emerge the part that Buffy had known and liked before the murder. The part that had loved the blonde Slayer. The part that had made her laugh or simply smile. The part that had liked life and its pleasures.

But you betrayed me... And you killed me on that fucking roof for nothing, for...

The cell door opened, interrupting her thoughts. The light was too harsh for Faith's eyes, closed up for three days in the obscurity. She averted her eyes feeling dizzy. She realized that she was unable to know when she had been really conscious, if she had dreamt her thoughts, or if she had slept for three days stunned by the pills. She had almost forgotten where she was, lost in the void of the darkness of this silent cell.

Light... Coma... I'm awake...

"Come on, move, get out of here!"

The shadow in the doorway evoked her nothing.

These Council's assholes have locked me up...

Her eyes becoming accustomed at last to the light, she recognized the uniform, then one of the guards who had beaten her.

Jail...

She rose with difficulty, her body numb, and followed the man in the passage. Then Jessy's words came to her mind.

Welcome to hell.

To be continued in ACT II