All Life Is Meetings, And Partings, And Reunions

I'm probably going to refer back to this post. I think that scene, and the one I want to discuss today, from Angel & Faith #25, make nice bookends for the Faith and Giles interactions. I've included to two relevant pages. Yes, the photos are a little blurry. Sorry. You can click on them to make them larger, though.

We start with Faith walking away from Angel and towards Giles (he was resurrected as a 12-year old, if you were out of the loop). Faith has just affirmed to Angel that she's still his friend, but she needs to get away for awhile, figure out who she is on her own. Working with Angel cost her everything of the life she'd managed to build around herself, with the younger Slayers and whatnot. That's pretty important by itself, since Faith has often seemed to be stuck with the castoffs other people didn't want, or if she starts to gather friends, she's accused of stealing them, as Buffy frequently (sometimes validly) accused her. Nadira and the other girls were hers, but getting wrapped up in Angel's quest to undo his screw-ups cost her them.

Anyway, Faith is resigning herself to working for Kennedy and going forward alone, but here's Giles - waiting for her, asking if he can accompany her in panel 2. Isaacs makes it clear Faith is both surprised, and touched. The smile, the hand over the heart gesture, this wasn't something Faith was expecting, but she's glad to hear it. Also, the shift in viewer perspective emphasizes how close they are at this point. Faith has definitely narrowed the distance between them from panel 1 to panel 2. One might even suspect the possibility of a hug. But panel 3 brings us Giles alone, as he lays out his current difficulties adjusting. By panel 4, as Giles admits to his need to find a new path, we can see Faith still looks relaxed. Her stance is easy, leaning slightly forward, there's what I'd describe as a curious look on her face, like she wants to see where Giles is going with this. But the perspective has shifted to a bird's eye view, which is more impersonal, making us less a part of the conversation, and more the audience in the balcony. It increases our distance from them, reducing the intimacy, and I think it makes the distance between the two characters appear greater as well, without either having to move.

And then in panel 5, Giles comes right out and says it: He wants to go back to Buffy, and we get a close-up on Faith's reaction. It's hurt, maybe angry, mostly resigned. This isn't really new for Faith. One of the other recurring themes of her life has been to be compared to Buffy, and be found wanting. Never as good, never as welcome, never anyone's first choice. It's what helped the Mayor sink his hooks into her, that he made her feel second to no one. It's part of why she's so ride or die for Angel, not just because he stuck up for her, but he did it against Buffy. Look back at the page in the older post. Where Faith comments she hasn't heard from Giles in a while, and he tries to apologize, she states it outright: 'You can skip the friendly uncle routine. I ain't your beloved Buffy.'

But a lot had changed since then. She and Giles had worked together for months, independently of Buffy. Even so, at the end of the previous season, there was a sequence where Giles rushes up to her, and Faith begins to assure him she's fine. But Giles is there to retrieve the scythe, because Buffy needs it. So he runs off to get killed, and leaves Faith with a bunch of burning Slayer corpses. But now she'd helped him return from the dead. Not as either of them would have liked, but still, it has to count for something. And still he wants to go back to Buffy.

Incidentally, I've been trying for some time to figure out the panels where the background is just one color, with no details. The best explanation I've managed is that it's designed to focus the reader's attention on one specific thing, typically a character's reaction. In this case, Faith's. Why wouldn't you? Her face is the only thing in the panel, so it gives the reader a chance to look it over a bit, let it sink in.

The second page starts with us back in the balcony. I think we're in essentially the same spot, but they've moved beneath us. Faith has backed up to the foot of Nadira's bed, and Giles is advancing, a bit of entreaty in his posture. I'd like to think he recognizes his mistake and is trying to mend the damage, but mostly he's offering more justifications for why he should get what he wants. A true adolescent. I wonder if the perspective, which lets us survey the whole scene, is meant to make us impartial? Giles does have a good point about being in an unusual circumstance and needing some help. That's about as impartial as I can be, I'm in the tank for Faith, if you hadn't guessed. Note the placement of Nadira and Angel in the upper right corner. Faith had been walking away from them originally, towards a future, possibly a very different one. But confronted with Giles using her as a way to hitch a quick, discreet flight to the States, she's backing up, falling back into her past. Heck, you even have a Slayer in a coma with a well-meaning (but seriously messed up) father figure next to her. Angel isn't anywhere near as close to Nadira as the Mayor was to Faith, but in each in his own way contributed to the girls' self-destructive paths that put them in those beds.

From there, we get another close-up of Faith in panel 2. The color choice is curious. Yellow seems like too cheery a color for a response whose word balloon could have those little icicles hanging off it. The angle is different from panel 5 on the previous page. We seem to have shifted into Giles' position, so that we're looking up at Faith. I think it's to set up panel 3, as she walks out past him, the old Faith armor firmly in place, trying her best to appear as if nothing's bothering her. Of course, Giles has spent enough time around her to know better, and his posture makes it look as though he wants to follow. Or at least raise an arm to call after her. But he doesn't. Maybe he knows better at this point.

What it boils down to is, Faith stopped retreating into her past and went forward, on towards that future she was headed to before this whole conversation. She goes right past Giles and out of the tent, leaving him with Angel and Nadira. All important parts of her past now, but not her future.

You can chart a difference in Faith in how she reacted in the older scene and this one. In the older one, she brought up that Giles hadn't been in touch, as a way of pointing out the distance between them. But when he tries to address it, she throws Buffy up as a wall, and tries to brush him off. Now, when Giles makes the initial point that she has people who care about her, Faith accepts it easily. There's no defensiveness to it, until she gets her hopes about Giles, only to have the dashed against the rocks of Buffy Summers' continued existence. She's progressed, but she still has trouble with getting too hopeful, and the letdown that comes with it.. However, whereas in the older scene she turned away from Giles, looking backwards to keep people at a distance, now she's moving forward, and if other people don't accompany her, so be it.