Title: Beginning/Ending

Fandom: The Secret Circle (TV-verse)

Characters: Faye Chamberlain (with mentions of other canon characters)

Pairings: implied Faye/Jake, Melissa/Nick, Diana/Adam

Rating: FR13

Disclaimer: The Secret Circle belongs to LJ Smith, the CW and company.

Prompts: Written for smallfandomfest for the prompt of Faye and every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Notes: Set pre-season one.

Summary: Faye breaks up with Jake, yet again.

Word Count: 1114

It's over. Again.

When she tells Melissa, her closest friend laughs at her. It isn't a mean spirited laugh but still Melissa has laughed at her. And what makes things worse is that she can hear Nick's voice in the background. Faye wants to throw her phone at the wall, her heartbreak is a source of amusement for Nick and Melissa. She almost asks if Jake is there. Melissa sounds calmer less amused when she says that it doesn't matter how many times Jake and Faye break up because they are just going to get back together.

Impulsive. Reckless. Selfish.

Those are their mutual faults and according to Nick, who's joined the conversation unasked and unwanted, they're what binds them together. He counsels her to give it time, to give Jake time. He tells her that in a matter of days, things will be fixed and back to normal. Until the next time remains unspoken between the three of them. Faye mumbles a quiet goodbye and drops her phone on the bed. Everyone takes it for granted that the six of them are paired off - Adam and Diana, Nick and Melissa and her and Jake. As if they had to be paired off with one another to have a proper circle.

Not that the six of them had bound their circle even if there was six of them and it only made sense to do so. Something had always felt wrong for Faye, as if something was just slightly off even if they were all paired off and mated like they were about to march off into Noah's arc at some point. It was always Faye who would balk at the idea of binding their circle whenever someone would bring it up at the abandoned house as the next logical step for their circle.

Faye with her unquenchable thirst for power was always the one holding the others back from binding their circle. Even if the circle would make her more powerful, something was missing. Something that she couldn't identify. What hurt was how the others perceived her reluctance.

Melissa assumed that it was because of her constant fights with Jake. Melissa would try to argue that once everyone was properly bound within the confines of their circle, then things between them would calm down. Adam argued that it was pure and simple greed that held her back - a bound circle would grant them each more power but less freedom. Diana cited immaturity. Faye wanted the circle bound on her own terms according to Diana, of course Saint Diana never said this to Faye's face. Diana always couched her words in positive terms and phrases but it all boiled down to the same thing. Nick didn't seem to care one way or another; as far as he was concerned, they'd bind the circle when they did. And Jake - Faye knew that he felt like she did. It was never quite the right moment to do so, something always fell short, something within their group was broken.

The truth was that a bound circle with the six of them would be horrible. It'd be a prison and Faye would wind up just like her mother. Except there'd be Jake. And a multitude of break ups followed by round after round of making up with the dull veneer of respectability. Power would be hers but it would be muted and tarnished. She'd push out a kid or two to continue her family line and be immersed within the same stable relationships with the same people. None of them would grow because they would all have rigid roles. Diana would remain the saint and Faye would be the greedy one.

She gets up from her bed, feeling restless and dangerous, and moves to her vanity. Her fingertips trail against the bottles of perfume and the oddments as she gazes in the mirror. Right now, she should be primping and preening vowing to start anew, to find someone that can make her forget all about Jake Armstrong for good. Isn't that how it always begins between the two of them? She goes out of her way to make him jealous but acting like she's over him and he gets all hot-headed with the though that she can move on when she really hasn't.

Faye looks at her reflection in the mirror. She's seventeen and she already feels old, jaded and tired. It's unfair. Tomorrow or the day after or maybe the next, someone will bring up how much easier things would be if their circle was bound. And eventually she'll agree to it, she'll be worn down by argument after argument. Maybe not tomorrow or the week after next but eventually she'll agree and Jake will fall in line. No doubt that when she does capitulate, she'll ask for something to tilt the scales in her favour and it'll be nothing more than a pyrrhic victory. She'll give up her freedom for something trivial and nothing will ever feel right again.

She doesn't really make a conscious decision so much as she reacts to the idea of her being stuck in Chance Harbor.

Impulsively. Rashly. Selfishly.

She packs up a few clothes, some make up and her Book of Shadows. She puts them in a leather bag that Jake had bought her last Christmas. She takes a wad of cash that she'd hidden away in her underwear drawer and slips it into her purse. For good measure, she packs up a few more things in another bag and then she leaves the suffocating confines of her bedroom.

Faye dumps her bags on the back seat of her car as she takes one last look at the house that she grew up in. The house that her mother and her grandmother grew up in as well. Instead of being comforting, it makes her move faster and clumsier and she slides into the driver's seat of her. Upstairs on her bed, her phone chimes with a new text message from Diana. A message that is predictable and trite - every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. If Faye wasn't already racing away from her stifling life in Chance Harbor, she would have texted Diana back and asked her if that was her quote for the senior yearbook.

The second that she speeds past the sign welcoming visitors to Chance Harbor, Faye feels a sense of lightness. As she drives by a car with an out of state licence plate, Faye smiles. Let whoever is driving that car take her place, take up her old life because she's never ever coming back. She won't be imprisoned.

((END))

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