Author's Notes: First things first, I've been toying with the idea of doing a season six rewrite since I started writing Fuffy. Twice I've been told not to do it since it's already been done, but since when do I ever listen to anyone? I'll be updating every Sunday evening from here on out. I would love to know what you all think of the first chapter :)

Chapter One

"Prisoner 430019, you got a visitor!" The guard shouts into my cell, banging his baton on the bars as he tries to get my attention. "Hey, did you hear me?"

"I heard you," I mutter under my breath and jump off the top bunk.

I stand with my hands behind my back as the guard opens the cell door. I don't say a word and look down at the ground in front of me as I follow him through the cell block, ignoring the cat calls and threats coming from every cell that I pass by. It's Wednesday and it's early, far earlier than any visitors I've gotten in the year that I've been locked up. And I'm exhausted, having been kept awake by nightmares all night long, nightmares of the past and nightmares only my fucked up subconscious can come up with.

The visitor's area is empty and the guard points to the cubicle down at the very end. I nod and walk down there, surprised to see Angel on the other side of the glass. I raise an eyebrow as I take a seat and pick up the phone.

"Hey, Angel. Kind of early for you to be here, isn't it?"

"I have some news."

"Good news?" I ask and he shakes his head no. "Figured as much. What's going on? New Big Bad or something? Need me to bust outta here and fight the good fight with your crew in LA?"

"Buffy's dead."

I feel the colour drain from my face even though I had that sinking gut feeling since last night that something had happened to her. Blame the nightmares and the shared slayer dreams we've randomly had since I'd been Called. Last night, the nightmares had felt far too real and the first one I woke up from, it felt like someone had ripped a part of my soul out of me. That first one was the worst too and that was the one that I saw Buffy dead on the ground the split second before I woke up.

Angel looks like he's been through hell and back. I notice it now. I've never seen him look so rough before, so…lost. I know what Buffy meant to him, she was his world even if he couldn't have her. There'd been a few visits where I had to listen to Angel talk about Buffy, sometimes he did it without realizing it and always apologized for bringing her up the way he did. I never cared though. I know how much he loves her and it shows whenever he says her name. I can't even imagine what he's thinking or how he's feeling right now.

"I-I don't know what to say," I whisper into the phone.

"Sunnydale needs you now," he says as he stares through the glass right at me. "Sunnydale needs a strong slayer and you're the only one left, Faith."

"In case you've forgotten, I'm stuck in here for twenty-five to life and there's fuck all I can do about that."

"I'm working on it," Angel says softly and I raise an eyebrow at that. "I've got you a good lawyer, Faith. He'll get you a fair trial and make the Judge realize there just wasn't enough evidence to charge you with both of those murders."

"But I confessed," I hiss into the phone and I lean back in the plastic orange chair to make sure none of the guards are eavesdropping. "Was all they needed to lock me up and throw away the key."

"Faith, you can't save the world locked up in prison and Sunnydale needs a slayer now more than ever. Once word gets out that Buffy is gone-"

"This lawyer," I cut him off and he sighs heavily into the phone. "Where'd you find him?"

"Wolfram and Hart."

I laugh hard. This is priceless. The evil law firm that's out to kill Angel is gonna help him get me outta prison? Now that's a laugh riot.

"There is another option," Angel says and I stop laughing and stare at him. "It's not an easy one, but it doesn't involve waiting for the case to move through the system and get to court."

"I'm all ears, big guy."

Angel very quietly explains the other option of getting me out of jail, sooner rather than later. He wants me to break outta here and before I do, he's going to get that same lawyer he got for me to hack into the prison records and clear my file, essentially wiping my slate clean. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, not so sure if that's something I'm willing to risk. I'm trying to do good, find my path on the road to redemption. Can't help but feel that breaking outta prison is the complete opposite of what I should be doing. It's wrong and I can see Angel knows it too, but there's a sense of desperation in him that I can't ignore.

I don't have much time left with him and I can already hear the guard making his way down to the cubicle to tell me that time is up. I don't want to have to make a decision now and I tell him I'll let him know what I've decided by the end of the week. I hang up the phone before the guard reaches the cubicle and I motion to Angel that I'll give him a call when I make my decision.

"Back to your cell," the guard grunts and I place my hands behind my back.

My mind is full of thoughts of what choice to make the whole walk back to my cell. I don't even hear the cat calls and the threats that are being yelled out at me as I walk past this time. The guard slams my cell door shut behind me as soon as I step inside.

Brenda, one of the older women that is serving three life sentences is in my cell waiting for me. I look back at the guard and he's sneering at me as he casually walks away. I turn to look Brenda in the eyes and she's stark-raving mad like the lunatic she is. I know what she's doing in here. She's trying to prove herself after our little scuffle out in the yard the other day. I took her down without even breaking a sweat when she charged at me and she probably thinks that now she has me trapped she'll get the upper hand.

"Bitch, you got any last words?"

"How about a couple first words?" I snap at her as I clench my fists at my side. "Go fuck yourself."

"You're dead, Lehane."

I see the shank in her hand, barely concealed under the sleeve of her blue shirt. I can feel my heart racing at the anticipation of the fight, just like it used to whenever I came across a vamp or a demon and knew I'd be the only one walking away in the end. I duck as she lunges forward and I sweep my leg around, forcing her to fall to the hard, cement floor. I move quickly to grab her left wrist and pull the shank out of her hand and toss it out of the cell.

"Ever hear of fighting fair, Butch?" I ask her and I see her breathing red when I call her the nickname some of the others have given to her behind her back.

"Life ain't fair," she chuckles as she pulls her hand free from my grasp and throws a hard punch to the side of my head.

She tries to punch me again, but I see it coming and duck out of the way. There's no way in hell I'm letting this crazy lunatic try beat my ass in my cell while the guard stands a few feet away just out of sight. Then again, I know if I fight back, I'll be in solitary for weeks and the chance of me getting out of here will be harder than ever. I give a little tap to the cheek just to egg her on and she's practically breathing fire as she charges at me again.

I close my eyes as she takes me down, pushing my face into the cold, hard floor. I hear the other guards' voices as they scramble to open the cell door and get Brenda off my back. She raining hard punches to the back of my head and I feel the edges of darkness pulling at me, drawing me in until everything fades away.

The steady beep of the heart machine is what I wake up to. I open my eyes and the lights in the room are so bright I feel blinded at first. I take in a few deep breaths and let my eyes adjust. I'm in the hospital infirmary and the beds next to me are empty. My left wrist is cuffed to the bed and I groan softly as I reach up to touch the bump on the back of my head with my free hand.

"Welcome back, Faith," Eddie, the only guard in this place who seems to give a shit about me, says with a smile as he approaches my bed. "How you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a truck named Butch," I chuckle softly. "How long have I been out for the count?"

"A day," he replies and he pulls up a chair and sits next to me. "I just started my shift when I saw what was going down. How come you never fight back?"

"Just don't," I shrug and I try to sit up, wincing as the room starts to spin. "Not worth it."

Eddie just nods and smiles sadly. He knows what it's like in here. He sees it day in and day out and can't do a damn thing to stop most of what goes on between the inmates. If it wasn't for Eddie, I probably wouldn't have been put in a cell by myself just to keep the other crazies off my back while I sleep at night.

"Brenda is being transferred to another block," he says to me and he reaches for the styrofoam cup of water that's next to the bed and hands it to me. "You won't need to worry about her anymore. And Declan, the guard that let it all go down, he's been let go."

"Wicked."

"I gotta go, my shift is about to start," Eddie says as he gets up from the chair and pushes it back against the wall. "Doc says you'll be out by tonight if you're feeling up to it."

"Hey, one upside of being in here is the beds are comfortable and it's quiet," I chuckle and he gives me a little wink before he heads for the main door. "Hey, Eddie?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for giving a shit," I say and he smiles at me before he walks out of the infirmary.

I sigh as I stretch out on the bed, every bone in my body cracking as I do. I try to get some more sleep, feeling the lingering effects of whatever pain medication the doctors in here were allowed to give me. I drift in and out of sleep for a couple of hours before one of the doctors comes to check on me. After a quick assessment, she tells me I'm fine enough to go back to my cell and tells me to make arrangements for a follow up in a couple of days. I have to wait for a guard to come down to the infirmary to escort me back to my cell and I wait in one of the chairs by the door, handcuffed to the railing on the wall.

I kept hoping that maybe it'd be Eddie who would come to get me to take me back to my cell, but instead it was a guard I'd never seen before. He knelt on the ground next to me and un-cuffed me from the railing. Something felt a little off about this guy, but I tried to shrug it off as I stood up from the chair slowly and cautiously. He doesn't say a word to me as he leads the way out of the infirmary and down one of the many maze-like corridors through the prison. He makes a left when I know we should've been going straight and he leads me right into a storage closet.

"What the hell is going on?" I ask angrily as he checks the corridor both ways before he shuts the door.

"Name's Gunn," he says quickly and he grabs a plastic bag off the floor and hands it to me. "Hurry up and change."

"What?"

"Angel sent me for you, Faith. The lawyer he got that promised to help out bailed on us. I'll explain everything as soon as we're outta here. Now hurry up and change. We don't have much time."

I open the plastic bag and inside is a standard issue prison guard uniform and a wig. I laugh and give him a look like he's crazy if he thinks this'll work. He taps the watch on his wrist and I sigh heavily, deciding to go out on a limb and trust this guy. I strip out of my clothes and change into the guard's uniform. The wig is blonde and definitely not my style, but I put it on and tuck my hair under it the best I can. Gunn hands me a swipe card that all the guards have to get through each of the gates that cut off the prison from each ward and the outside world. I clip it to the belt and put my hands on my hips.

"What's the game plan here, Gunn?"

"Just getting through this place without being detected. Come on, I know the shortest route outta here. I got a car waiting outside."

I take a few deep breaths and follow him out of the storage closet. I keep my head low when we pass by a few guards, but they're too busy talking to one another they hardly even notice us as we walk past. My heart is racing so god damn fast it feels like it's about to leap out of my chest. I try to stay calm and try not to freak out and bail.

I know that it'll take us a good ten minutes to make it through the maze of corridors to the door that will lead us outside and to freedom. I grab on to Gunn's arm when he makes a turn and heads for the stairwell. He tells me to trust him and I shrug, deciding I have nothing left to lose at this point. He leads the way down the stairs quickly, down to the basement. It's cold, damp and eerily quiet aside from the few pipes that have water slowly dripping from them. Gunn pulls out a flashlight from his pocket and flips it on when we reach hole dug into the ground.

"You're joking," I laugh as I look down the hole and from the stench coming up from it, I can tell that it leads right into the sewers.

"Come on," Gunn urges and he slips down the hole and shines the light up at me. "We gotta move, Faith!"

I pull off the wig and drop it to the ground. I jump down the hole and land on the ground below a little harder than I expected to. Gunn is already making his way through the dark tunnel and I jog to catch up with him. The stench is overwhelming, but it kind of reminds me of the days I spent in Sunnydale going through the sewers during the day looking for nests. Gunn keeps up the pace and stops when we reach a fork in the tunnel.

"Here," he says as he grabs a bag stashed up in the pipes overhead. "Brought you a change of clothes for when we get outta here."

I sling the bag over my shoulder and follow him down the left tunnel. I don't know how long we walked for, but it felt like forever. The only sounds were the echoes our footsteps made in the thankfully dry as a bone sewer. The further away we get from the prison, the less my heart races wildly out of control. I start to calm down, but I know we're not out of the woods yet. Still got a long way to go before I'm essentially free of the place I should've spent the rest of my natural life in. A small voice inside my head keeps urging me to go back, telling me I'm making one of the biggest mistakes of my life breaking out of prison like this. It's a voice I've always ignored my whole life and I figured what's once more.

I want to kick Angel's ass for getting this guy Gunn to break me out of prison before I even made my choice. Guess I don't have a choice anymore now that the lawyer Angel had found bailed on us. Still, not gonna stop me from kicking Angel's ass a little bit for springing this on me without some kind of warning first that it'd be going down like this. In my head, the fantasy of breaking out of prison was much more elaborate and exciting, complete with dodging bullets and a wild car chase.

Can't say in the year I've been locked up that I didn't have those little fantasies of breaking out. Doing time and sitting in a cell for twenty-three hours a day gives you nothing but time alone with your thoughts. A pretty dangerous thing if you're someone like me. Gotta thank Angel though for all the times he's come to visit and talked to me about learning how to deal with my emotions. I don't know where I'd be without him now. He's a better shrink than the one the prison issued me. At least Angel listened to me; the prison shrink was just doing his job and didn't give a shit about what I was really feeling or thinking.

After what seems like forever, Gunn stops and grabs another bag out of the pipes overhead. He pulls out two bottles of water and hands me one, which I barely thank him for before I chug it down as if I'd been walking in a desert for days and was completely dying of thirst. I lean against the sewer wall and close my eyes, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in the back of my head now that the painkillers have completely worn off.

"You don't talk much, do you?" I ask him.

"Just focused on doing what Angel asked me to do and that's getting you outta here in one piece."

"I'm a slayer. I can handle myself."

"Yeah, so I've heard."

Gunn flashes me a smile and starts walking again. I sigh and push off the wall and follow him, shifting the bag from one shoulder to the other. It isn't much longer until I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My heart starts to race again since I know being out in the open is gonna expose us and be easier for the law to track me down and haul my ass back to prison where I belong.

We both change into street clothes and I'm a bit surprised that these are my old clothes. They're a little snug, but I put them on anyway. Being in prison with three solid meals a day has put on a bit of extra pounds on my body, which I'm not about to complain about since my whole life I never had three solid meals in one day even if the quality of the prison food was a little shifty. I keep the guard's boots on since there was no change of shoes in the bag for me. I don't mind though, they feel comfortable despite being almost a size too big for me.

Gunn grabs the prison uniforms and we make our way out of the sewer. There's a bit of a chill in the air, but the air is fresh and a huge relief from the stench inside the sewer. I light up a cigarette and toss the lighter to Gunn and he sets the prison uniforms on fire. We both watch as they burn, black smoke curling up into the sky.

"Nasty habit, you know," Gunn says as he watches me smoke my cigarette. "Something you pick up on the inside?"

"Passes the time."

"It'll kill you."

"Betcha something else will before the big C does," I reply dryly and Gunn laughs. This guy isn't too bad, just don't get why he's hanging around Angel and the LA crew. I know he's a part of the crew in LA, I heard Angel mention him a couple of times. "Where's this car that's supposed to be waiting for us?"

"Parked it a few miles that way," he replies as he points to where the sun is just starting to set beyond the trees. "Gotta get a move on if you expect me to find it in the dark."

"And after we find the car? Where we headed, LA?"

"Nah, there's this safe house outside the city. Angel hooked you up. Said to keep you there 'til he figures out how to clear your name so you aren't a wanted fugitive."

"And how you feel running with a wanted fugitive, Gunn?"

"When it's one as gorgeous as you, I'm pretty sure I can handle whatever comes my way," Gunn says with a smile that lights up in his eyes.

I roll my eyes and I knew I should've seen it the minute we started talking once we reached the end of the tunnel. It's not that I'm not interested in the guy; he's cute in a desperate sort of way. But I promised myself about a month after I was put in prison that when I got out, I wasn't gonna be the same old Faith. I punch him in the arm and flick my cigarette into the ashes on the ground. We take turns stomping on the embers that are left from the prison guard clothes, making sure it's out before we leave.

I let Gunn lead the way through the woods as the sky grows dark. I keep looking back, expecting maybe twenty or thirty prison guards behind us chasing us down every time I hear a twig snap in the distance. But there are never any guards behind us every time I look and yet it doesn't make me breathe any easier. It's nearly pitch black by the time Gunn finds the car. He has it hidden under branches and he tosses the flashlight to me while he works on getting it uncovered.

Once we're in the car, getting it to start becomes another matter. I just light another cigarette and wait as he revs the engine, hitting the steering wheel every time it roars to life and sputters and dies a second later.

"Great get-away car, Gunn. Remind me next time I break outta prison to find someone with a better car than this piece of shit"

"Shh," he hisses and he strokes the dashboard. "She didn't mean it," he says to the car. "Come on, baby, start."

I roll my eyes and lean back in the front seat, propping my feet up on the dashboard and flick the ash out the crack in the window. After a few more tries, the engine roars to life. Gunn lets out a whooping laugh as he backs up and turns the car around. We're not exactly on a road, a trail maybe and the ride is far from smooth. Gunn cranks the radio though as soon as we're on the open road and I roll down the window, flick my cigarette out and watch the embers explode in the mirror as it hits the road behind us.

Wherever we're headed, I know it's gonna be a long drive. My stomach growls loudly, reminding me that I haven't eaten since yesterday. Gunn reaches blindly into the back seat and pulls out a bag of Doritos. I give him a look but take the offering, savouring each bite since eating nothing but prison food for a year really fucked with my taste buds. I need some real food and soon and I'm pretty sure Gunn is thinking the same thing since I hear his stomach growl even over the music. We're on the road for an hour before he pulls up next to a gate, overgrown with weeds and vines.

"Where are we?" I ask him as we both get out of the car. "This the safe house?"

"Should be, yeah. Just gotta get past this gate," he replies and he tries to open the gate, the metal creaking but not budging an inch.

I sigh and I push him aside and pull at the gate, feeling the metal creak and groan until it gives way and opens. I grin at him in a smart assed way and he just runs back to the car and hops in. I hope into the passenger side and crank up the music as he pulls in the private driveway. About five minutes off the road I spot a small cabin nestled in between a row of trees. It's not big, barely bigger than a shack, but it still looks better than my prison cell. All I gotta hope for is hot running water and I'll be happy.

"Angel said to sit tight. He'll be around later tonight," Gunn says as he stops the car just a few feet in front of the cabin. "You feeling all right, Faith?"

"Tense," I reply with a shrug and open the car door. "You staying or you going?"

"I gotta get back to LA."

"Thanks for what you did today," I say to him with a smile and he shrugs it off as if it's nothing.

"The least I can do to keep the Hellmouth in Sunnydale safe," he replies and smiles at me as I get out of the car. He pops the trunk and leans out the window. "Got you a few supplies in the back to tie you over 'til Angel gets here later."

I walk around to the back and pull out the cardboard box sitting in the trunk. Inside is a few cans of soup, a few cans of beer, matches, and a half dozen bottles of water. He tosses me a key for the padlock on the door and says his goodbyes before he backs up and heads down the driveway, leaving me alone in the darkness.

There isn't much to the place and it's not long before I find there's no electricity, no running water and the only source of heat seems to be the wood stove. It really could be worse. Like still stuck in prison worse with Butch's buddies trying to kill me.

I'm feeling on edge and keep expecting the cops to come crashing through the door at any second. I got a feeling that's not gonna go away, not even if Angel somehow magically managed to make my record disappear. I get the wood stove burning with the small stash of dry firewood I find out at the side of the cabin. I no longer feel as hungry as I was in the car and I lie on the cot and place my hands behind my head and try to relax. I watch the shadows from the burning wood flicker across the ceiling and for the first time I feel the tears in my eyes start to fall.

These are the tears that wanted to fall when Angel told me Buffy is gone. These are the tears that have been waiting for what feels like an eternity to fall.

Angel told me once to never let the past define who you are, but to let it be a part of who you will become. Who I'll become from this day forward, I have no idea, and I'm scared as hell to find out just what the future holds for me.

Especially now that the world only has one Slayer. Me.