Set in Season 7. AU from Season 4 onwards.

What if Faith never woke up?

You took such a long time. An endlessly aching span of days, weeks, months, years. Such a long time to die.

You lay there, cold and still and pale.

I avoided you, for weeks. We all did. Thought we could throw ourselves into college and forget you. But you were always on my mind.

And now that song won't get out of my head, and its making me laugh, and then the guilt comes pouring back because you're lying here because of me and all I can do is smile at a song running through my mind.

Giles thinks of you. I've seen his car parked outside the hospital, at times when I'm meant to be at school. I wonder what he says to you. I wonder if you hear him.

So much has happened since you...left. there was this robot thing, and a spell that combined me and Giles and Willow and Xander, and made bullets into doves...and there was Riley. Oh, and Parker.

There was Glory, and the end of the world, and I died. And you just slept through it all.

And now they tell me your brain function gets weaker by the day, that they've had to keep you in an oxygen mask for the past two days while they seek permission to put you on a respirator.

I always figured you'd wake up. Slayer healing and all that. But apparently you hit your head when you fell, and they didn't manage to stop the truck driver until you had just about bled out.

But please, wake up.

Please Faith. I thought I hated you. Then I felt guilty. Then I just missed you.

Now I need you.

I came back wrong. I'm...Spike and I are...I can't even say it out loud to you, and you're half a step away from being brain dead.

You died when everyone fled Sunnydale. You'd been in a coma for four years.

I'll never know if it was just a coincidence, or if they unhooked you as they left. I'm sorry I wasn't there to stop them. I'm sorry I didn't stop you from stabbing Finch. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me. I'm sorry I was just a kid.

So many of the girls have died. Potentials, like we were. Cannon fodder. I just feel like things should be different. I can't be what they need. I can't regale them with stories of my best fights, I can't boost their spirits bragging about my conquests, in bed and out.

You're pale. The machines don't beep. No electricity. I'm sitting in the dark watching your last breaths. Giles stands in the doorway behind but I'm almost afraid to meet his eyes. You breath out, and there is silence. We both wait for you to inhale again.

We hear nothing but our own breathing. Yours is gone.

I'm sorry.