I so know what he's up to. He thinks if I can look her in the face, everything's going to be fine. We'll all be one happy family. Well, I'm sorry Angel, but it doesn't work that way. I can be as forgiving as the next person... just not to her. She hasn't done a damn thing to earn it.

Oh boy. She looks ... tired. Cordelia stopped just inside the door. Faith looked up at her from behind the glass, on the other side of the cubicle the guard had indicated to the visitor. How does she manage to look good even in those drab clothes? Life is so unfair...

Cordelia mentally slapped herself. Try to be a little less shallow, Chase. The chair was grubby, but she sat down anyway, and picked up the phone.

"Hi."

Faith just sat there, hand on the receiver, staring at her. Cordelia fought the urge to bolt from the room. "So... I suppose asking how you've been would be pretty pointless, huh?"

That got almost a smile out of the other woman. "Nah. Polite chit-chat can get you through a lot. I've been pretty good, all things considered. I started working in the garden here, did Angel tell you?"

"He doesn't tell me anything about you." Brutal honesty, that's what I'm good at. But when she watched Faith's face change, just a little bit, Cordelia was startled to realize she felt... guilty.

"Then why are you here?" That was the old Faith back: tough, arrogant. Balls of durasteel. The old Cordelia would have brushed her off as a waste of potential, street trash.

The new Cordelia couldn't escape that easily. Not when every echo of every voice was a call for help. When the shadows under a person's eyes begged her for a solution. When every nightmare she had was multiplied in someone else's sleep.

Angel and Wes didn't know she was here. Oh, Angel had suggested it, but this was her own decision. Her own choice. Her own day, not his usual after-dark outing. Time to face the shadows, and see if one of the voices she heard in the night was Faith's.

"Why are you here, Cordelia? I'm sure you have better things to do than waste time in here with me."

"Actually, yeah, I do. I could be doing a lot of things, all of them more fun than this." Anything would be more fun than this. Come on, Faith, let me know what I need to know, then I can get out of here and not have to look at you and remember that sneer on your face...

Faith chewed on the inside of her lower lip for a long, silent moment. Then -- "I - I'm sorry."

That had not been what Cordelia expected to hear. Not what she wanted to hear. But Faith kept talking anyway, like it was all going to come out or she was going to implode with it. "I screwed up. Not the stuff that happened later... that was a different kind of screw-up. I mean, when I first came to town. It was like... all I'd heard about was B. The Slayer, the one who'd died and come back - the one who could kick ass like nobody before her. I figured, she's gonna understand, right? She's my soul-sister. So nothing else mattered but playing to her, impressing her enough that she'd like me."

"She did," Cordelia said. "Okay, not as much as Xander did, but..."

Faith shook her head. "But it was stupid. 'Cause, the thing I've figured out is, B doesn't understand. We're both called, yeah, sure. But that's all. There wasn't this great connection.... There wasn't anything other than us trying to way too hard. And, 'cause of that, I lost what I could've had."

"Oh yeah? And what was that? A life outside a jail cell?"

Faith didn't even flinch. "Maybe. Maybe a Watcher, one I didn't have to share. And maybe... a friend. Someone not tied to me 'cause of prophesy or Fate or anything. Just... getting along." Her gaze fell. "I think we could have been, y'know, friends. If I hadn't been so blind."

Cordelia snorted. "And if you hadn't slept with my ex."

"Yeah. I'm sorry about that, too. The old want-take-have me."

"Yeah well, looks like everyone's had Xander, by now. Except Buffy." Cordelia meant that to be catty, but it came out more wryly amused than anything. "And maybe Giles. Okay, that was...actually not as ugly a thought as it should have been." Faith looked up at that, and the look on her face - half mortified, half hysterical, set Cordelia off into giggles. Faith snorted, then started to laugh as well. More than one person in the gray, dingy room looked over at them curiously, until they got themselves back under control.

I wouldn't have shared that thought with anyone else. Maybe Doyle. Maybe. Not anyone else. But ... okay, I'm in no way friends with her. And I haven't forgiven her for anything. Not yet. But...

Cordelia looked up again to see Faith looking at her. There were shadows under her eyes. And the echo of need in her voice. But maybe this is where I need to be, what I need to be doing, too. I wonder if they'd let me bring her some makeup? Good stuff, not that trash she wore before...

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