Title: Eleven Letters

Author: Kaylee's Teddy

Rating: PG-13 for angst, some vague f/f pairing and allusions to sexual violence

Summery: Faith writes to Buffy from Jail.

Disclaimer: I do not own Faith or anything else BTVS related. Joss said let there be scripts and they were good, they were very, very, good.

I wrote you a letter tonight. Or tried. Tried to write the kind of letters that people send when their hearts are beating this fast and they can't picture they're lives ever being the same again. It didn't work. I wrote out I love you and forever and always, felt how hollow they rang in my chest. Shredded the paper into tiny pieces, let them scatter across the floor in fluttering piles.

I wrote you a letter tonight. I listed every sin, the ones you knew and the ones you didn't. Every quickie in a dark alley, every stranger who's hands I let wander. Hundreds of boys, a handful of girls...couldn't find a way to say how sorry I was. I listed every violent act, every kid I tripped, every guy I roughed up, every mark I ever put into another human being, lethal or otherwise. I begged for forgiveness, let that letter join the first, love, sex and violence all strewn across the floor. Tried to convince myself I could tell the difference.

I wrote you a letter tonight. I wrote down everything I could remember. Answers to the questions you knew better then to ask. My mother's name. The street we lived on. The night my father didn't come home. The first time I tucked her in. The smell of the gin bottle that I took from her hand. The name of the first of her loser boyfriends, the one who used to crawl in with me after she'd passed out. The things he made me do. How old I was that first time. Everything. Let the letter hit the floor in mismatched chunks, crumpled and broken.

I wrote you a letter tonight. Just your name scrawled over and over till there wasn't anymore blank spaces. I clutched it tightly in my fist as I smacked it, again and again, against the cold dead walls.

I wrote you a letter tonight. Wrote it out against my skin as I called for you, conjured you, made you live and move behind my flickering eyelids. Wrote out promises against my body. Wrote them out so that we'd both remember. Discovered, too late, that there would never be a way to make them come true.

There's only one letter that matters tonight. The one I didn't write. The one that Angel sent. The one that starts Dear Faith. Buffy is dead.