This Is How It Goes

Buffy swallowed. "How, uh, how are you?" she asked softly.

"Five by five," Faith responded. Buffy raised an eyebrow at the complete lack of help in that statement, frowning. Faith inhaled, turned her head. "Been better."

"How did you know we were here?" Buffy asked, searching for topics.

"Didn't," Faith answered shortly. "I was out walking and felt vamps."

"Oh," Buffy said in a quiet voice. They stood there in an awkward, painfully tense silence, until Buffy took the metaphorical plunge.

"Faith, I want you to know that I ... I'm not going to push, okay?" she said softly, placatingly, and very slowly took a step forward. "I just need you to know that I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. I — I'll give you whatever time you need."

Faith closed her eyes. "Yeah ... okay," she said hoarsely. She exhaled shakily and opened her eyes again, meeting Buffy's for a split second before turning around and walking away.

"I love you," Buffy called out faintly. Faith stopped, her back still facing Buffy. "I won't stop. Not ever."

There was a moment of silence as Faith stayed frozen. Buffy wished she could see her face. After a couple of seconds, Faith started moving again. Buffy could see, even through the distance, the tension in her shoulders. She watched her round the corner of the street and sighed as she disappeared. This was what she had to do. Wait. Be mature. Give Faith the time she needed. She wanted to run after her, wrap her arms around her, and tell her everything was going to be okay. But they both knew it wasn't. Not now.

Buffy walked slowly back into the shop, a heavy, sinking feeling in her stomach. She vaguely acknowledged the cuts on her arms had stopped dripping. She walked into the store, glass and various destroyed furniture crunching under her feet, and immediately saw Spike on the floor. He was sitting up on one elbow, wiping blood from his lip with the other hand and sneering. Angel was standing over him, shoulders moving with unnecessary breath, looking at him with naked fury in his eyes. Buffy froze uncertainly.

"Um," Buffy said.

Angel snapped his head up to look at her. Buffy glanced at Spike briefly. "Do I want to know?" she asked.

"Nothin' to worry about, love," Spike said, standing up and keeping his contemptuous, angry gaze on the other vampire. "Just having a little manly heart-to-heart."

"Shut up," Angel snarled. He looked livid.

"Interesting suggestion, but ... no," Spike said, accompanied by a smirk and small tilt of his head. He slid his eyes to Buffy. "So, tell me, pet. How's this love triangle working out for you?"

Buffy looked at Angel before she could help herself. He had twisted his head around, looking at the ground. She didn't answer, her stomach curling unpleasantly.

Spike chuckled darkly. "Oh, this is rich. One mentally unstable, supernatural honey wasn't enough for you, huh, Slayer? Had to string a couple of them along?" He brought his fingers to his lip, wiping away the blood and examining it before shooting Buffy a twisted grin. "Prancin' through your sexual experiment without a care in the bloody world, while the Shagless Wonder over here," he waved a hand at Angel, "follows you around like some dog begging for table scraps. It'd be funny if it wasn't so pitiful." Spike cocked his head, looking thoughtful. "On second thought, scratch that. It's hilarious."

"That's not what this is," Buffy said tightly. She flicked her eyes to Angel again, almost scared to see his expression. He was still looking away from her, his face drawn and stiff, jaw muscles working. "He's here to help. As a friend."

Spike laughed shortly and mirthlessly. "That the pretty lie you tell yourself?" he asked sardonically, and then sneered. "Angel's not your friend, sweetcheeks. He never will be." He pointed at the other vampire, smile gone, his eyes bright and sharp. "He'll be in love with you 'till he's a couple of specks in a dustpan. You think he can shut that off for the sake of kittens and rainbows? You think his moronic, useless sense of nobility even comes close to that? What you're doing here," he gestured around him emphatically, his voice breaking, "is ripping him open, pulling out his guts and shoving them in his face. You may have moved on to the next trollop, but everything in him is stuck here with you. I hate that bastard more than I will ever hate anyone in my entire unlife and I'm not even enjoying this as much as I should be."

Buffy was staring at him helplessly through his speech, feeling something thick rise up in her throat.

"You know what?" Spike continued, expression scrunched up like he was thinking hard. "Seeing how he's let himself go, it's put things in perspective for me. Dru wants me like I was — not like some pitiful, sobbing eunuch. If I want her back, I'll have to do it myself. I'll find her, torture her, and make her love me again." He smiled happily.

Buffy swallowed. "My friends?" she asked weakly.

"Oh, right." Spike frowned, brow furrowing in confusion. "Where did I stash them again?" he muttered.

"You lost Xander and Willow?" Buffy snapped.

"Misplaced. Temporarily." Spike said, waving a hand distractedly. "I was completely hammered, Slayer. Things get a little fuzzy." He brightened suddenly. "Right. They're at the factory. Or they're not." Buffy growled at him menacingly. "Factory," he said again, nodding. "90 percent sure they're at the factory."

Buffy glowered at him. Spike tipped his head to her sardonically, nodded at Angel, and strode out the door. He stopped in the entrance, turning to look at them.

"Hope you two crazy lovebirds make it work," he said cheerfully, pointing at them. "And, hey, if things get too complicated, you could always try a threesome." And he was gone.

Buffy stood there, feeling the tension in the room billow around them like heat. She couldn't look at Angel.

"I ... I'm, uh, gonna call Oz and Cordy. Get them to drive over to the factory," she said finally, shakily.

"Yeah," Angel said quietly. His voice was carefully even. "Good idea."

Buffy walked towards the entrance, trying to avoid the larger pieces of glass. She turned back to look at Angel when she reached the doorframe, and saw him looking at her intently, his eyes hooded and shadowed. She felt an overwhelming urge to touch him, to tell him she still loved him and always would, but knew that wouldn't accomplish or change anything. She walked out to the phone booth across the street.

Chapter 30: Entropy

Author's Notes: Once again, thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback and encouragement. We're actually in the last six chapters of this story, so we're nearing the end. Hope you all enjoy the ride.

All systems tend towards entropy. Buffy thought she had read that once. Or maybe it was in one of Giles' pedantic lectures that he dished out on a regular basis. The point being: things fall apart. And, in her case, things fell apart at exactly the same time. Angel, Faith, the Mayor, even the relationships between her friends were dissolving into unpleasant chaos. Reliable, solid points of her existence were drifting away, disintegrating into uncertainty.

There were times where Buffy felt like she was floundering helplessly, not sure where she was going or how she was getting there. At least with the situation with the Mayor, she knew where she stood. They were drawing towards an inexorable fight, towards a corporeal foe that she could throw satisfyingly solid punches at. Even if she lost against him, she knew who she was fighting and what she was fighting for. Things like that didn't exist with Faith and Angel. She didn't have a battle plan, didn't have any precedents or directions or things to hit. Instead, she had guilt, shame, and a pervasive sense of disorientation. She wanted to go comfort Faith, she wanted to go comfort Angel, she wanted a world where they could all live happily ever after in some glorious, semi-platonic triumvirate.

Instead, she went on with her life. She went to school, researched an apparently un-researchable topic, and tried not to think of Faith and Angel's faces full of crippling sadness. And she talked to her friends.

"So, no chance of passing it off as some ill-timed awkward positioning?" Buffy asked.

"Well, that's an interesting possibility. Let me think about ... no. Absolutely not," Xander responded.

"I think our expressions of crushing guilt pretty much sealed the deal," Willow contributed, looking at her hands sadly.

They were at the library. A couple of days had passed since the Spike debacle. Angel and Faith had been conspicuously absent, and Buffy hadn't sought them out. At least there was plenty of sordid school drama to distract her from the gaping holes in her chest. Buffy, Xander, and Willow sat around the table, ancient books, pamphlets, and journals spread in front of them. At the moment, they were ignoring the research materials, discussing the illicit romantic activity that had transpired between Willow and Xander while they were being held hostage.

"How long have you guys been ... positioning?" Buffy asked hesitantly.

"What? No! There were no positions!" Xander said frantically, and then put his hands out and tried to gesture calmly. "We're just two friends who occasionally engaged in some less than monogamous behavior. Without any positions. Of any kind."

Willow glared at him exasperatedly and then turned to Buffy. "It's not like we were having this massive affair. It was just a — a series of mini-flukes."

Xander nodded vigorously. "Flukes. Yes." He glanced at the clock on the library wall and sighed. "Do you think Mr. Huston would take the excuse that I couldn't study because I was busy leaving mass quantities of messages on Cordy's phone?"

"Is the class called 'Methodology of Not Being A Sucky Boyfriend'?" Buffy asked.

"Chemistry."

"Then no."

Xander groaned. He shot one last, desperate glance at Buffy, grabbed his bag and walked out of the library. As the doors swung shut, Buffy looked at Willow sympathetically, brow furrowed.

"How are you doing?" Buffy asked.

Willow sighed, shaking her head. "I — I don't know, Buffy. I didn't know I was capable of feeling this much awfulness." She leaned forward, cupping her face with her hands. "I didn't know how fast things could just ... collapse."

Buffy leaned over and put her hand on Willow's back, rubbing gently. "I know. Trust me, I know. But, it doesn't mean they can't be built back up. It just takes time."

"How — how can I ever make things right with Oz again?" Willow asked anxiously. "When I think about how I hurt him ... it's like there's this huge, sucking black hole in the middle of my chest," she said vehemently, motioning emphatically at her own torso. "And — and I feel like there's this clock ticking away all of the moments that I could be talking to him and stop him from hurting."

Buffy shook her head and saw Faith's jagged face behind her eyes. "It's out of your hands now, Wil," she said softly. "You just have to — to understand that he needs time for himself. He has to figure out what's going on, and how he feels about you and how this affects your relationship, and what being taken over by evil incarnate means for his self-identity, and ..." she stopped, realizing the path her sentence had invariably taken.

"I have this sneaking suspicion that you're talking about someone else," Willow said, smiling gently.

Buffy sighed, grinning sheepishly. "What can I say? I like a little less 'sub' in my sub-text."

"Buffy," Willow started to say, and then stopped, looking as if she was searching for words. "Maybe ... maybe Faith needs you to let her go," she said tentatively, watching Buffy's face for a reaction. "What — what if she can't come back from this?"

Buffy swallowed. "Maybe she can't," she answered quietly. "But I'm not giving up that quickly." She met Willow's sad gaze. "Could you walk away from Oz that easily?"

Willow shook her head. "No," she said softly. "I couldn't."

The two girls sat in a thick, contemplative silence for several minutes. Buffy was staring at the wooden table like it would miraculously produce a solution for her problems.

"I know it feels hopeless now," Buffy said slowly. "For both of us. But it won't forever. Things will get better." She paused. "And then they'll suck again."

Willow smiled unconvincingly. "Such is the beautiful cycle of life."

There was another moment of dejected silence before Buffy leaned forward, her face brightening. "You know what we need?" she asked, suddenly sounding more energetic.

"Prozac?"

"Shopping," Buffy said resolutely. "We need bags and bags of pointless clothing."

Willow straightened up. "And mochas?" she asked hopefully.

Buffy nodded firmly. "Definitely mochas."

~ — ~ — ~

Three hours later the two girls were walking downtown, sipping happily from their mint-chocolate, sugar-saturated beverages, plastic cups in one hand and an ever-growing stash of shopping bags in the other. The sun had just set, the sky glowing with the soft light under the horizon. Streaks of gold and russet orange played across the clouds. Buffy felt this strange prickling sensation in her chest and realized it was mild happiness. Being with Willow made it easier to submerge all of her emotional baggage under clothing concerns and inane conversation. It felt good to be just a girl, shopping with her best friend.

"I'm serious, Wil," Buffy said earnestly. "Every girl needs a skirt that allows for maximum kickage while also saying, 'I'm classy but not pretentious.'"

"Right. Because every girl has found herself in a situation where being able to kick someone in the face trumps fashion," Willow said sarcastically, grinning.

Buffy gave her a look. "And by 'every girl,' I of course mean 'me.' Haven't you learned not to take my generalizations seriously?"

"If I haven't by now, I should probably be questioning my intelligence," Willow said cheerfully.

"And I'm not even gonna touch dresses and acrobatic jumping. Speaking of," Buffy said, her smiling growing wider, "there's this new dress store on Hibiscus. We so need to check it out."

Willow finished her mocha with a satisfied slurp and motioned with difficulty, movement restricted due to the 13 packages in her arms. "You go ahead. I wanted to stop by the bookstore."

"You sure?" Buffy asked, frowning.

"Yeah, totally. Nora Roberts waits for no woman." Buffy's eyebrows shot up in concern. Willow held her hands up, backtracking. "Joke. Bad, not funny joke." She started walking away, turning to face Buffy. "I'll meet you at the dress store in a few."

"Kay," Buffy said. She started walking towards Hibiscus Street, belatedly realizing that the conquests from her shopping expeditions were slipping out of her hand. One of her bags fell on the ground, spilling its contents of jeans and bracelets.