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Mostly for app purposes - this is a basic review of Faith's life, starting with the events of Go Ask Malice, and continuing through her time in Buffy and Angel (though not through the comics.)
Trigger warnings for rape and abuse.
Faith’s world is much like our own; set in the late 90s, and the early 2000s, it is in fact meant to mimic our world almost exactly – with one major difference. The Buffyverse is a world of magic. It is inhabited by witches, ghosts, and perhaps most importantly demons, the most prolific of which seem to be vampires, former humans who - upon death - lost their soul and were possessed by bestial demons. Their need to feed on others, and their ability to "turn" those still human, made sure there was a steady supply. While their ability to pass for human - and their retention of human traits and memories, allowed them to hunt within the human populace in a way most demons could not.
The counter to this is the slayer – a girl born to every generation, empowered by the heart and soul of a demon, so that she can fight them on their own terms. Guided by the watcher’s council, they keep the unsuspecting human world safe from the monsters that would plague it – and although they can’t be everywhere at once, they are nevertheless a rather powerful figure in the supernatural war.
They were generally guided - and taught - by "Watchers," from the Council - scholars, often gifted in either magic or combat; they trained those with with the potential to become slayers, where they found them, and directed those slayers to where they could do the most good. From simply hunting at a particular grave site, to actually stopping an apocolypse, it was the job of a slayer's watcher to make sure they got where they needed to be.
That said, however, each slayer would inevitably fall; they died in the line of duty as a matter of course, leaving their watchers to grieve for them. When this happens, a new one is awoken – one of many potentials, all female. For millennia, this meant only one girl would be the slayer at a time, one girl would fight the darkness. At the start of the series, this was Buffy Summers - a former cheerleader who had recently moved to Sunnydale, and discovered it was a hellmouth, a gateway to hellish dimensions with a tendency to draw in the supernatural.
For a while, Buffy, along with her friends (Willow and Xander), her watcher (Giles), and her occasional beau (Angel), worked to keep the town and the world at large safe from harm. They fought back against the vampires and other demons in the town, and kept the hellmouth from being opened. An anomaly developed, however, when Buffy was killed - or more specifically, when Buffy was resuscitated from her death. Because she had died, a new slayer was automatically called; yet when she was returned to life, she retained all her powers. Thus, there were two slayers.
This second slayer was not Faith, who would come into the story later. Faith at this point was still living at home, with an alcoholic mother, no father, and public school teachers who refused to believe she did her work even when she did.
Her story starts on her sixteenth birthday, sneaking into a concert with her best – gay – friend, Tommy. It was the Freak Wharf’s drummer, Kenny/Killian, who accidentally set Faith’s it into motion.
Gifted with the ability to create tulpas – mental projections of powerful memories - Kenny accidentally helped bring Faith’s childhood imaginary friend to life; an imaginary friend that turned out to be a long dead demon – the daughter of an ancient slayer, who had turned to evil for vengeance, she became what was known as a vengeance demon, a nearly immortal creature who could grant any wish for revenge she heard, generally in the most twisted of ways. All the while she remained in the guise of a six year old girl.
One wish, which she had never been able to grant in life, was to give her mother Artemia revenge upon the one who had killed them both. None of this was known to Faith at the time. But it was nevertheless to have a great impact upon her – because in order to grant that wish, “Alex” had chosen to bring back her mother in Faith’s body.
It began with blackouts, when angry, in which Artemia would emerge – brutally beating the boys who had teased Tommy; hospitalizing them. It cost Faith friendship with Tommy, who fled, and got her reprimanded at the school. Faith, like the rest, honestly believed it was her doing the deeds. She did little to fight the accusations, simply pretending that she didn’t care.
Unfortunately, things only got worse; starting with her mother’s arrest for drug possession, and Faith being sent to the foster system, where she was placed with several other kids in what appeared to be an ultra-religious household. Ironically, however, it was they who provided her with her first true introduction to the supernatural, when she discovered the family’s secret. Their son, supposedly dead, was in fact a vampire – a little boy they kept locked in the attic; using the naughtier children as blood sources.
It was faith’s first kill, although she wasn’t a slayer as of yet. She accidentally knocked a curtain down, lighting up the room and turning it to dust, and leaving its mother and father to grieve.
Faith, meanwhile, fled – along with one of the older foster children, who claimed they could stay at her boyfriend’s place. Faith crashed on the couch for the duration, and it was actually one of the more pleasant experiences in Faith’s life. She’d had no more black outs since the fight at school, and only had to deal with the odd dreams – memories, it would turn out, of Artemia’s final days.
Unfortunately, this peace in Faith’s life was only temporary; during her time at the house, she had begun to date the roommate of their host; a boy who had seemed sweet, and had given her a multitude of gifts – all of which turned out to be stolen. When she confronted him about his kleptomaniac ways, the relationship fell apart, and she quickly realized she was no longer welcome. She packed up and left – in time to find out her mother had been released from the halfway house; yet instead of looking for Faith, had apparently taken up prostitution.
Faith lost control. She blacked out again, viciously beating the man who had been attempting to pick up her mother - and was sent to a mental institution, where she spent several days possessed, before coming out of it. Sadly, she categorized this particular experience as one of the best in her life – the food was good, the rooms were comfy; the entire thing was fancy, having been paid for by Diana Dormer, her future watcher. She even met Kenny in that hospital, there to get help for his problem with creating visions – and the two began to know each other as people.
When she deemed stable, she was released into the woman’s care; and it was revealed to her that she was a potential slayer – not a nobody, but one of the special girls spread throughout the world, who could one day be called to protect the world. She found stability there – throwing herself into training to become a slayer; reading the books, quizzing herself steadily, and preparing for the day she might be called. She even started a steady relationship with Kenny, who revealed that his own girlfriend had been killed by a vampire.
Like all things in Faith’s life, it ended in disaster. She discovered her mother was dead – not at Faith’s hand; she discovered her father was in prison for murder, not dead, and began to remember his abuse of her as a Toddler. Worse, Alex was coming more and more out of her head into real life – making physical appearances where Faith could see her. When Faith was named the slayer, she struck, with the blackouts suddenly becoming much more frequent. No longer depending on anger, she would often shift completely to Artemia without even noticing it; even getting a tattoo – the one on her shoulder to be precise; a tribal mark.
Simultaneously her dreams became more potent, forcing Faith to relive more and more of Artemia’s final days. The first human Artemia accidentally killed; getting dragged forward before Kakistos, an ancient vampire – her daughter being torn from her grasp.
Artemia – and Faith through her – was raped by the vampire; her body broken and left to starve to death, fading away until she finally cried out for vengeance via the demon – her own daughter, killed at the vampire’s hand.
Faith would have been lost at this point, if not for the help of her watcher, and Kenny. The two of them applied a strain of sorts, to allow Faith to confront her and remove the presence from her mind. Sadly, it wasn’t quite soon enough – although they removed Artemia, she had left Faith a parting gift, in the form of her tribal tattoo. It was in fact the mark of Kakistos, and allowed the vampire to chase down Faith anywhere she went.
Because of this, he was able to find her – to know who she was. But instead of going after her directly, he first captured Diana as bait, to bring her into his layer. There, he brutally ripped the watcher in half before Faith’s eyes, before trying to claim her as his own – but Faith beat him off, collapsing the tunnel and escaping with her life, although not robbing her of his.
After that, Faith fled. She felt that the cops would blame her for the murder; she couldn’t remain. Kenny wasn’t even incentive – some of the tulpas he created were of his ex-girlfriend, and he had a rather bad tendency to have sex with them, she’d discovered.
Before she hopped aboard the bus, however, she made one stop – she beat the drug dealer and pimp who had put her mother in such dire straights, and attempted to save a young girl he was terrorizing. But it was Faith she looked like at terror, after she had knocked the man’s teeth loose – not him.
That was when Faith first started wondering if she wasn’t a monster; before ever coming to Sunnydale.
What happened after that is unknown; other than that Kakistos continued to follow her, all the way to Sunnydale. There, Buffy – her fellow slayer – forced her to confront the vampire, taking it down once and for all with a wooden pillar straight to the heart. Free at last it was, as always, too little too late.
Unfortunately, no one in Sunnydale really checked up on Faith’s past, beyond finding out her watcher was dead. Nobody seemed to have any idea the extent of what she had been through – or at least no one did anything about it. Faith was left to her own devices, in a six dollar motel, and it wasn’t long before she started to feel neglected. The dark path she had begun to follow before arriving carried her forward further, and she became more and more reckless in her fights trying to forget what she had been through.
Perhaps predictably, it all came crashing down around her. Like her predecessor before her, Faith accidentally killed a human being while hunting vampires with Buffy. Unlike Artemia before her, Faith refused to claim guilt for what she had done, protesting that it didn’t bother her. Powerful and lonely, this was just the final thing to convince her she was nothing more than a monster; and monsters were above it all. When Buffy tried to make her deal with what had been done, she tried instead to pin the murder on Buffy – but her bad lying simply brought attention to the truth.
Angel, a vampire with a soul and Buffy’s occasional beau - almost reached her after that; he chained her up and confronted her with what had she had done, to force her to deal with it. Unfortunately Wesley, another watcher sent by the council, interfered. He tried to arrest Faith instead, destroying whatever trust she had left and still failing to stop Faith’s escape.
Faith chose not to run, though, in the end – even saving Buffy’s life, and earning at least some trust back from the slayer and her friends. But her loyalty was no longer to the gang. Instead, she turned to the Mayor of Sunnydale, a man who had traded his soul long ago in order to keep from aging - and who had in fact founded the town on a hellmouth as a place for demons to feed. She promised to help him ascend and become a powerful demon himself, betraying Buffy and the gang ostensibly in return for him giving her a place to live, and a place by his side. In truth, he had become the closest thing she had to a father figure; this despite his occasional habit of threatening her life. On his orders, she killed an innocent man, tried to steal Angel’s soul, and later poisoned the vampire in order to distract Buffy.
The only cure was the blood of a slayer; and in trying to get that blood, Buffy tried to kill Faith. But Faith chose to jump off a building rather than save Buffy’s boy, or help the blonde slayer with the use of her lifes blood. She fell onto a truck, dropped into a coma, and was taken away. Although Buffy did manage to save him, it was only by giving a good portion of her own blood to him.
When she awoke, it was to discover the mayor defeated – in part through advice Faith gave to Buffy in a dream, although the brunette slayer seemed to have forgotten this. Despite the mayor’s sociopathic nature, he was one of the only parental figures Faith had ever had, and it had been one of the few times Faith truly felt loved. So finding him dead had enraged her - all the more when she discovered that Buffy wasn’t even dating Angel anymore, after putting Faith into a coma to save him.
Rather than attempt to reconcile as Buffy hoped, she attacked; kidnapping the other slayer's mother, and ranting about how Buffy had abandoned them – before using a gift given to her by the mayor to swap bodies with Buffy. Unfortunately for her, she became attached too Buffy’s life. Too having friends who cared about her, and people who saw her as a hero. She even tried to save a church full of people – until Buffy interrupted her, in Faith’s body own body.
Although Buffy set things right, it wasn’t before Faith let something slip – as she beat her own body senseless, she screamed that “Faith” was a monster; a murderer; worthless. It was the first time she actually expressed how she saw herself in the show – and after being put back in her own body, she fled.
Again, at this point, she disappeared from the shows; later to appear in Angel, a spin-off of the series – where she took a contract to kill the title character. But her plan in truth was the reverse in the end – getting Angel to kill her. Now truly having slid off the deep end, Faith tortured Wesley, shot at Angel, and yet ended up crying in the rain, and begging him to just end her as the monster she saw herself as.
He didn't. Instead, he convinced her that it wasn't too late for redemption – protected her from the police, Buffy, and the watcher’s council all; and in the end, she voluntarily turned herself into the police, to try and make up for what she had done.
Much like with the hospital before it, the jail cells served as a stabilizing place. Food daily, and a place to sleep – with only the occasional idiotic inmate trying to kill her. Although the experience ended like all the rest, it arguably did so on a better note. Faith wasn't released, but rather broke out when she discovered Angel needed her help – he had lost her soul, and if she couldn't capture Angelus, his soulless alter ego, there would be no bringing her vampiric sponsor back.
The ease with which Faith broke free proved that she could have escaped at any time; she had kept herself in check, and had the power to do so. More importantly, her talk with Angel at the end of this arc convinced her that redemption meant you had to keep fighting; she couldn't just choose to lay down and let it be over. It was never over.
After the battle ended, though, it all fell apart. Buffy, in a desperate gambit, had convinced Willow to cast a spell - awakening potential slayers across the world, making them all into slayers who could help their fight. Faith, too much of a general to join Buffy's army once the major threat was gone, moved to Cleveland – like Sunnydale, the location of a hellmouth where dangerous supernatural creatures tended to gather. There, she did the dirty jobs no one else would. Such as killing children who had been turned into vampires. Although she seemed to hate herself for it, the fact remained that someone had to do it – and as the rogue slayer, people trusted her ability to do what no one else would.
This is the point she is being apped from.
Trigger warnings for rape and abuse.
Faith’s world is much like our own; set in the late 90s, and the early 2000s, it is in fact meant to mimic our world almost exactly – with one major difference. The Buffyverse is a world of magic. It is inhabited by witches, ghosts, and perhaps most importantly demons, the most prolific of which seem to be vampires, former humans who - upon death - lost their soul and were possessed by bestial demons. Their need to feed on others, and their ability to "turn" those still human, made sure there was a steady supply. While their ability to pass for human - and their retention of human traits and memories, allowed them to hunt within the human populace in a way most demons could not.
The counter to this is the slayer – a girl born to every generation, empowered by the heart and soul of a demon, so that she can fight them on their own terms. Guided by the watcher’s council, they keep the unsuspecting human world safe from the monsters that would plague it – and although they can’t be everywhere at once, they are nevertheless a rather powerful figure in the supernatural war.
They were generally guided - and taught - by "Watchers," from the Council - scholars, often gifted in either magic or combat; they trained those with with the potential to become slayers, where they found them, and directed those slayers to where they could do the most good. From simply hunting at a particular grave site, to actually stopping an apocolypse, it was the job of a slayer's watcher to make sure they got where they needed to be.
That said, however, each slayer would inevitably fall; they died in the line of duty as a matter of course, leaving their watchers to grieve for them. When this happens, a new one is awoken – one of many potentials, all female. For millennia, this meant only one girl would be the slayer at a time, one girl would fight the darkness. At the start of the series, this was Buffy Summers - a former cheerleader who had recently moved to Sunnydale, and discovered it was a hellmouth, a gateway to hellish dimensions with a tendency to draw in the supernatural.
For a while, Buffy, along with her friends (Willow and Xander), her watcher (Giles), and her occasional beau (Angel), worked to keep the town and the world at large safe from harm. They fought back against the vampires and other demons in the town, and kept the hellmouth from being opened. An anomaly developed, however, when Buffy was killed - or more specifically, when Buffy was resuscitated from her death. Because she had died, a new slayer was automatically called; yet when she was returned to life, she retained all her powers. Thus, there were two slayers.
This second slayer was not Faith, who would come into the story later. Faith at this point was still living at home, with an alcoholic mother, no father, and public school teachers who refused to believe she did her work even when she did.
Her story starts on her sixteenth birthday, sneaking into a concert with her best – gay – friend, Tommy. It was the Freak Wharf’s drummer, Kenny/Killian, who accidentally set Faith’s it into motion.
Gifted with the ability to create tulpas – mental projections of powerful memories - Kenny accidentally helped bring Faith’s childhood imaginary friend to life; an imaginary friend that turned out to be a long dead demon – the daughter of an ancient slayer, who had turned to evil for vengeance, she became what was known as a vengeance demon, a nearly immortal creature who could grant any wish for revenge she heard, generally in the most twisted of ways. All the while she remained in the guise of a six year old girl.
One wish, which she had never been able to grant in life, was to give her mother Artemia revenge upon the one who had killed them both. None of this was known to Faith at the time. But it was nevertheless to have a great impact upon her – because in order to grant that wish, “Alex” had chosen to bring back her mother in Faith’s body.
It began with blackouts, when angry, in which Artemia would emerge – brutally beating the boys who had teased Tommy; hospitalizing them. It cost Faith friendship with Tommy, who fled, and got her reprimanded at the school. Faith, like the rest, honestly believed it was her doing the deeds. She did little to fight the accusations, simply pretending that she didn’t care.
Unfortunately, things only got worse; starting with her mother’s arrest for drug possession, and Faith being sent to the foster system, where she was placed with several other kids in what appeared to be an ultra-religious household. Ironically, however, it was they who provided her with her first true introduction to the supernatural, when she discovered the family’s secret. Their son, supposedly dead, was in fact a vampire – a little boy they kept locked in the attic; using the naughtier children as blood sources.
It was faith’s first kill, although she wasn’t a slayer as of yet. She accidentally knocked a curtain down, lighting up the room and turning it to dust, and leaving its mother and father to grieve.
Faith, meanwhile, fled – along with one of the older foster children, who claimed they could stay at her boyfriend’s place. Faith crashed on the couch for the duration, and it was actually one of the more pleasant experiences in Faith’s life. She’d had no more black outs since the fight at school, and only had to deal with the odd dreams – memories, it would turn out, of Artemia’s final days.
Unfortunately, this peace in Faith’s life was only temporary; during her time at the house, she had begun to date the roommate of their host; a boy who had seemed sweet, and had given her a multitude of gifts – all of which turned out to be stolen. When she confronted him about his kleptomaniac ways, the relationship fell apart, and she quickly realized she was no longer welcome. She packed up and left – in time to find out her mother had been released from the halfway house; yet instead of looking for Faith, had apparently taken up prostitution.
Faith lost control. She blacked out again, viciously beating the man who had been attempting to pick up her mother - and was sent to a mental institution, where she spent several days possessed, before coming out of it. Sadly, she categorized this particular experience as one of the best in her life – the food was good, the rooms were comfy; the entire thing was fancy, having been paid for by Diana Dormer, her future watcher. She even met Kenny in that hospital, there to get help for his problem with creating visions – and the two began to know each other as people.
When she deemed stable, she was released into the woman’s care; and it was revealed to her that she was a potential slayer – not a nobody, but one of the special girls spread throughout the world, who could one day be called to protect the world. She found stability there – throwing herself into training to become a slayer; reading the books, quizzing herself steadily, and preparing for the day she might be called. She even started a steady relationship with Kenny, who revealed that his own girlfriend had been killed by a vampire.
Like all things in Faith’s life, it ended in disaster. She discovered her mother was dead – not at Faith’s hand; she discovered her father was in prison for murder, not dead, and began to remember his abuse of her as a Toddler. Worse, Alex was coming more and more out of her head into real life – making physical appearances where Faith could see her. When Faith was named the slayer, she struck, with the blackouts suddenly becoming much more frequent. No longer depending on anger, she would often shift completely to Artemia without even noticing it; even getting a tattoo – the one on her shoulder to be precise; a tribal mark.
Simultaneously her dreams became more potent, forcing Faith to relive more and more of Artemia’s final days. The first human Artemia accidentally killed; getting dragged forward before Kakistos, an ancient vampire – her daughter being torn from her grasp.
Artemia – and Faith through her – was raped by the vampire; her body broken and left to starve to death, fading away until she finally cried out for vengeance via the demon – her own daughter, killed at the vampire’s hand.
Faith would have been lost at this point, if not for the help of her watcher, and Kenny. The two of them applied a strain of sorts, to allow Faith to confront her and remove the presence from her mind. Sadly, it wasn’t quite soon enough – although they removed Artemia, she had left Faith a parting gift, in the form of her tribal tattoo. It was in fact the mark of Kakistos, and allowed the vampire to chase down Faith anywhere she went.
Because of this, he was able to find her – to know who she was. But instead of going after her directly, he first captured Diana as bait, to bring her into his layer. There, he brutally ripped the watcher in half before Faith’s eyes, before trying to claim her as his own – but Faith beat him off, collapsing the tunnel and escaping with her life, although not robbing her of his.
After that, Faith fled. She felt that the cops would blame her for the murder; she couldn’t remain. Kenny wasn’t even incentive – some of the tulpas he created were of his ex-girlfriend, and he had a rather bad tendency to have sex with them, she’d discovered.
Before she hopped aboard the bus, however, she made one stop – she beat the drug dealer and pimp who had put her mother in such dire straights, and attempted to save a young girl he was terrorizing. But it was Faith she looked like at terror, after she had knocked the man’s teeth loose – not him.
That was when Faith first started wondering if she wasn’t a monster; before ever coming to Sunnydale.
What happened after that is unknown; other than that Kakistos continued to follow her, all the way to Sunnydale. There, Buffy – her fellow slayer – forced her to confront the vampire, taking it down once and for all with a wooden pillar straight to the heart. Free at last it was, as always, too little too late.
Unfortunately, no one in Sunnydale really checked up on Faith’s past, beyond finding out her watcher was dead. Nobody seemed to have any idea the extent of what she had been through – or at least no one did anything about it. Faith was left to her own devices, in a six dollar motel, and it wasn’t long before she started to feel neglected. The dark path she had begun to follow before arriving carried her forward further, and she became more and more reckless in her fights trying to forget what she had been through.
Perhaps predictably, it all came crashing down around her. Like her predecessor before her, Faith accidentally killed a human being while hunting vampires with Buffy. Unlike Artemia before her, Faith refused to claim guilt for what she had done, protesting that it didn’t bother her. Powerful and lonely, this was just the final thing to convince her she was nothing more than a monster; and monsters were above it all. When Buffy tried to make her deal with what had been done, she tried instead to pin the murder on Buffy – but her bad lying simply brought attention to the truth.
Angel, a vampire with a soul and Buffy’s occasional beau - almost reached her after that; he chained her up and confronted her with what had she had done, to force her to deal with it. Unfortunately Wesley, another watcher sent by the council, interfered. He tried to arrest Faith instead, destroying whatever trust she had left and still failing to stop Faith’s escape.
Faith chose not to run, though, in the end – even saving Buffy’s life, and earning at least some trust back from the slayer and her friends. But her loyalty was no longer to the gang. Instead, she turned to the Mayor of Sunnydale, a man who had traded his soul long ago in order to keep from aging - and who had in fact founded the town on a hellmouth as a place for demons to feed. She promised to help him ascend and become a powerful demon himself, betraying Buffy and the gang ostensibly in return for him giving her a place to live, and a place by his side. In truth, he had become the closest thing she had to a father figure; this despite his occasional habit of threatening her life. On his orders, she killed an innocent man, tried to steal Angel’s soul, and later poisoned the vampire in order to distract Buffy.
The only cure was the blood of a slayer; and in trying to get that blood, Buffy tried to kill Faith. But Faith chose to jump off a building rather than save Buffy’s boy, or help the blonde slayer with the use of her lifes blood. She fell onto a truck, dropped into a coma, and was taken away. Although Buffy did manage to save him, it was only by giving a good portion of her own blood to him.
When she awoke, it was to discover the mayor defeated – in part through advice Faith gave to Buffy in a dream, although the brunette slayer seemed to have forgotten this. Despite the mayor’s sociopathic nature, he was one of the only parental figures Faith had ever had, and it had been one of the few times Faith truly felt loved. So finding him dead had enraged her - all the more when she discovered that Buffy wasn’t even dating Angel anymore, after putting Faith into a coma to save him.
Rather than attempt to reconcile as Buffy hoped, she attacked; kidnapping the other slayer's mother, and ranting about how Buffy had abandoned them – before using a gift given to her by the mayor to swap bodies with Buffy. Unfortunately for her, she became attached too Buffy’s life. Too having friends who cared about her, and people who saw her as a hero. She even tried to save a church full of people – until Buffy interrupted her, in Faith’s body own body.
Although Buffy set things right, it wasn’t before Faith let something slip – as she beat her own body senseless, she screamed that “Faith” was a monster; a murderer; worthless. It was the first time she actually expressed how she saw herself in the show – and after being put back in her own body, she fled.
Again, at this point, she disappeared from the shows; later to appear in Angel, a spin-off of the series – where she took a contract to kill the title character. But her plan in truth was the reverse in the end – getting Angel to kill her. Now truly having slid off the deep end, Faith tortured Wesley, shot at Angel, and yet ended up crying in the rain, and begging him to just end her as the monster she saw herself as.
He didn't. Instead, he convinced her that it wasn't too late for redemption – protected her from the police, Buffy, and the watcher’s council all; and in the end, she voluntarily turned herself into the police, to try and make up for what she had done.
Much like with the hospital before it, the jail cells served as a stabilizing place. Food daily, and a place to sleep – with only the occasional idiotic inmate trying to kill her. Although the experience ended like all the rest, it arguably did so on a better note. Faith wasn't released, but rather broke out when she discovered Angel needed her help – he had lost her soul, and if she couldn't capture Angelus, his soulless alter ego, there would be no bringing her vampiric sponsor back.
The ease with which Faith broke free proved that she could have escaped at any time; she had kept herself in check, and had the power to do so. More importantly, her talk with Angel at the end of this arc convinced her that redemption meant you had to keep fighting; she couldn't just choose to lay down and let it be over. It was never over.
So rather than go back to prison, Faith took a more active role – she rejoined Buffy and her friends in fighting against a new force, the "first" evil, and helped to stop an apocalypse. For this, she joined Buffy and her gang, now complete with an ex-vengeance demon, a little sister, a dorky demon-summoner, and a slew of potential slayers who had yet to be called - but no Angel.
Her role in it was relatively minor – she took charge of the gang for a short while when the turned against Buffy, and unfortunately led them into a trap; but her presence, the presence of another slayer in their battles, was nevertheless a large help to them in their eventual victories, and cemented to Faith that she could do good.
After the battle ended, though, it all fell apart. Buffy, in a desperate gambit, had convinced Willow to cast a spell - awakening potential slayers across the world, making them all into slayers who could help their fight. Faith, too much of a general to join Buffy's army once the major threat was gone, moved to Cleveland – like Sunnydale, the location of a hellmouth where dangerous supernatural creatures tended to gather. There, she did the dirty jobs no one else would. Such as killing children who had been turned into vampires. Although she seemed to hate herself for it, the fact remained that someone had to do it – and as the rogue slayer, people trusted her ability to do what no one else would.
This is the point she is being apped from.
