Entranceway Application

[want_take_have]

Name: Kyra
DW username: kyronae
E-Mail: kyronaed@gmail.com
IM: goldeneyes1
Plurk: kyronae

Other Characters: N/A

Character Name: Faith Lehane
Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel
Timeline: After AtS 2x1 (“Judgment”)
Canon Resource Link: Faith Wiki
Character History: When Faith first arrives in Sunnydale, she seems confident, fun, and full of a couldn’t-care-less attitude. It’s a mask she wears well, but can’t maintain. As she settles into life on the Hellmouth, the cracks in her careful facade quickly become clear.

Above all else, Faith is desperate to be wanted and accepted. Growing up, she never really had that from her own family. Her father was abusive and later imprisoned for murder, while her mother was an alcoholic. Faith quickly learned how to pretend like she didn’t care about her home life, but her lingering bitterness comes to the surface while talking to Buffy in Enemies, saying, “"When I was a kid, I used to beg my mom for a dog. Didn't matter what kind, I just wanted, you know, something to love. A dog's all I wanted. Well, that and toys. But Mom was so busy, you know, enjoying the drinking and passing out parts of life, that I never really got what I wanted."

When she comes to Sunnydale, she seems to settle in so well that Buffy is apprehensive at first. Faith gets along with her friends, with her mother, and with the boy she was potentially interested in, too. But even though Faith is charismatic enough to be liked for her own traits, she has no real confidence in her place there. That self doubt causes her to worry when Giles, Buffy, and Buffy’s friends hold a meeting without inviting her. It makes her brush off Buffy’s invitation to Christmas dinner, worried that she’s only doing it because her mom told her to, before loneliness drives her to joining them anyway. And it makes Faith compare herself to Buffy constantly.

The first real seeds of doubt are planted when Gwendolyn Post arrives, claiming to be Faith’s new watcher. Faith is slow to trust, and worried about becoming attached to another guardian (her last having been brutally murdered by a vampire), but Gwendolyn offers her two things... seeming confidence in her ability, and a kind of camaraderie as a fellow outsider. It is Gwendolyn that plants the idea that Giles and Buffy are purposefully excluding her and Faith from their meetings, adding to Faith’s already significant insecurity. When it turns out that Gwendolyn was actually dismissed from the Watcher’s council and had been using them all, especially Faith, the sense of betrayal hits hard. Rather than removing the worry that Gwendolyn had planted, Faith’s confidence in her ability to judge people is shattered even further.

In the end, the persistent feeling that she’ll never live up to Buffy makes her stop trying. During one of their patrols, she accidentally kills a man...and panics. She’s so terrified of getting in trouble that she tries to blame Buffy and, when it doesn’t work, turns traitor and offers herself as an ally to the Mayor.

Faith never really wanted to be “bad.” She thrives off of being physical and violent, and her trust issues and history of emotional and physical abuse (at the hands of both enemies and people she should have been able to trust), means that she’s likely to act first and think later. What really drove her towards being evil was the fact that, in the Mayor, she found everything she’d been wanting.

However evil the Mayor was, his feelings for Faith were genuine. Working for him, Faith felt loved, useful, and wanted. She didn’t have to doubt that the Mayor was comparing her to Buffy or using her, except as the employee she’d offered to be. In fact, he even protects her from some of the harder jobs, at first, allowing others to go after her former friends instead of trying to shatter all her ties at once. He truly tried to protect her, and Faith loved him back (though she might never have admitted as much), as the father she’d never had.

Later, when she tries to reform her life, the only person left who will give her a chance is Angel. Unlike any of the others in her life, he knows what it’s like to try to rewrite his life, moving from monster to protector. Faith is fragile, still, and her hold on the “right” path is tenuous, but the deciding factor in her reversal isn’t all that different from her relationship with the Mayor. The Mayor’s approval and acceptance had her working for the bad guys. Angel’s approval and acceptance of her allows her to believe she can turn back around.

Her relationship with her mentors is definitely a balance between love and hate. Faith’s natural distrust and her sense of isolation makes it very difficult for her to give control over to anyone else. She resists Gwendolyn Post’s appointment, completely ignores Wesley, and later develops a hatred for the Watcher’s Council that rival’s Buffy’s own dislike. Faith doesn’t like being told what to do, and she’s willful enough to make that very, very clear. This is only made worse by how many of her mentors have actually failed her or betrayed her. Gwendolyn, Wesley, and the Watcher’s council all betray her at various points, writing her off as foolish, stupid, or unsavable. To make matters even more complicated, the only two mentors she truly felt safe with were brutally murdered - her first watcher by Kakistos, and the Mayor by Buffy.

Whichever side she’s on, one thing doesn’t change: Faith truly doesn’t like herself. When Willow tells her that she’s screwed up everything and doesn’t deserve forgiveness, Faith can’t just shrug it off. She attacks Willow, saying “You hurt me, I hurt you. I’m just more efficient.” Later, when she receives a post-mortem gift from the Mayor, she has the opportunity to escape her life entirely. She steals Buffy’s body, leaving Buffy to take the other slayer’s penalty, while Faith makes plans to run.

While she’s still in Buffy’s body, she decides to take advantage of Buffy’s boyfriend, Riley. The results are disastrous. Riley sleeps with her, not realizing that someone else is in his girlfriend’s body, but the genuine care and affection Riley has for Buffy is too much for Faith to handle. She nearly breaks down, pulling away from him and very nearly fleeing in panic. And when she finally faces off with Buffy again, she violently attacks her former body. She takes out her dislike of herself, shouting at her old body as she does, calling herself “disgusting,” “nothing,” and a “murderous bitch.”

Faith’s low self-esteem makes relationships...complicated. She’s well aware that she’s attractive and, more often than not, she uses that to her advantage. She dresses in tight, form-fitting clothes, she flirts shamelessly, and she’s incredibly casual with sex. She writes men off as useless (except for one thing), calling them all dogs. But Faith’s sexuality isn’t as casual as it appears. Linked in with betrayal she’s suffered from other sources, she doesn’t expect that men really could want anything else from her. Rather than looking for more and getting burned, she shortens what she sees as an inevitable process, using men and then ignoring them once she’s done with them. When someone does try to get close, as with Riley or (later) Robin, the intimacy panics her.

Whether Faith is good or evil, there’s no question that she’s not exactly the most stable Slayer ever. The circumstances she grew up with never really prepared her with coping skills for difficult situations, and the added pressure of super strength and an unavoidable destiny was enough to make her crack. Faith has a bit of a victim mentality...which has dangerous repercussions now that she’s strong enough to dominate most people around her. It allowed her to justify a lot of the horrible things she did, blaming it on people using her or not living up to the people they should have been. When Xander tries to come and talk sense into her, she very nearly kills him before Angel stops her. And, in season one of AtS, she tortures Wes mercilessly while waiting for Angel to find her, hoping that showing how evil she is will get Angel to put her out of her misery. While doing so, she lays the blame at Wesley’s feet, wondering out loud if this would still be happening if he’d been a better Watcher.

Angel’s refusal to kill her and his insistence that she could be a better person allows her to try to start over, but it’s a struggle. She still deals with insecurity and violent impulses, but she really doesn’t want to let him down. She eventually turns herself in, handing herself over to the police to keep Angel from getting into trouble, and she stays in prison, even though she’s more than capable of breaking out.

Abilities/Special Powers: Slayer Strength (canon is variable on just how strong that is, but it seems to range from about 2 or 3 times the strength of an average man, to up around 10 times. 

Slayer Healing. Minor cuts and bruises heal within a day. Larger injuries may take half or a quarter of the time it would for a normal person to heal. She can survive some injuries that would be fatal for a normal person (but not all)

Visions. These are not as common or as clear as the kinds of visions that Cordelia has. Slayers have dreams that can show them bits of the past, connect with other current slayers (such as Buffy and Faith sharing dreams), or give small hints about the future. They usually only occur before something catastrophic (either world-wide, or personally, such as Buffy getting the visions right before Angel was poisoned by Faith), and would not occur here unless there was another Slayer to share dreams with or else mod permission before a large event.

Third-Person Sample: Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

The blunted sounds of contact were soothing, fitting perfectly with the familiar jolt through her arm as her fist connected with the punching bag. She didn’t bother with gloves. The skin of her knuckles had turned red, the first signs of scrapes appearing, but she didn’t stop. The pain was soothing. It helped ground her.

You don’t know what evil is.

Thud.

Thud.

The bag swung crazily from the impact of her blows, the chain protesting the movement.

This place wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t LA. Hell, it wasn’t even Sunnydale, as far as city life went. And maybe it was just another prison, but she could wear what she wanted and the food actually had flavor most of the time (if she didn’t make it for herself), so really, she couldn’t complain. Except it wasn't supposed to go like this. Early release, good behavior or not, had never been part of the plan. And as wonderful as it was to see Angel...to be around the one person who believed in her...she wasn't sure how much was faith (ha) and how much came from the weird, time-line craziness that had him remembering things she hadn't even done yet. Maybe it should have been a relief, but every time someone reassured her about all the ways she would prove herself, she resented it a little bit more. Because those actions weren't hers. Not yet, anyway. Not really.

That Faith...that future Faith...was...

Something else entirely.

I’m evil! I’m bad! I’m evil! Do you hear me? I’m bad! Angel, I’m bad!

Maybe it was denial or low-self-esteem or how delinquents came out of self-fulfilling prophecies... or some other line of bull shit that they fed to you during group sessions about gaining a more "positive" outlook. So maybe it was just part of the process and maybe future-her wouldn't have been any more convinced even after living through the redemptive crap.

Didn’t mean she had to like it.

Thud.

Thud.

Crash

One particularly fierce punch, and the protesting chain gave way. The bag wobbled in mid air, almost like it was surprised to suddenly be freed from its support, before crashing to the ground. Bits of ceiling and drywall dust sprinkled down, making Faith grimace as she stepped back, holding her bruised hand. She considered the damage, face impassive, and then... “Damn.”

She left the bag where it had fallen, letting her bedroom door slam behind her as she stepped out into the hall. She needed a drink.

First-Person Sample: [it's a mark of her agitation that, when the camera turns on, it captures Faith just as she flicks her lighter. Even knowing that the camera is on, she ignores it as she sucks on the filter until the tip of her cigarette glows red. The smoke curling into her lungs isn't anywhere near as soothing as she'd like it to be, but it must help a little because her tone is fairly even when she does speak, if rather dry]

Right. So this is fun. Who's a girl got to hit to show her appreciation? [because, however much wanted out of prison, early release wasn't exactly the point.

She takes time for another slow drag before she continues, not particularly pleased to be asking (she'd hoped she'd be out of here by now), but she's slowly being forced to admit that it won't be that easy]

Speaking of...guess I'm offering services if someone's willing to pay for a bit of muscle, because I could really use something to pummel and something to eat.

[a beat]

And, just a PSA for the first person to suggest paying for a different kind of service...you I'll pummel for free.