Fanfiction: Sunnydale Calling
Back in the truck Xander gave her the long version, mapped out everything they knew and didn’t know about The First, what they’d tried and the kernels of plans they hadn’t fully worked out. Faith could see his gift for strategy and analysis, forged in whatever fires he’d been plunged into these last years. She felt his unspoken acknowledgment of the changes in her, too. Each of her questions earned Faith a deeper level of information, as if Xander were a general conferring field promotions as the bodies piled up around them.
“What are our chances?”
“Not looking good. We’ve had a victory, but we have no real way of knowing how big this war is. And I’ve never seen Buffy so shit-scared. She’s taken heart from closing this seal thing, and she’s covering like mad, but I can feel it in her. There’s only been one other time I’ve heard Buffy say she couldn’t beat something the hellmouth threw at her. She did it then, but it killed her.” He gave her a sidelong glance, searching for some expected reaction. “You don’t know.”
Faith gave a quick shake of her head.
“I’m not painting word pictures here. Buffy died. Couple of years ago, now.”
She felt her face go slack. No questions would form in her head — even words were beyond her.
Xander told her the rest of it: Buffy’s sacrifice, Willow’s plan and how they kept the patrols going until Will had everything ready. How, believing they were doing the opposite, they had wrenched Buffy out of heaven. “We thought we were doing the right thing, you know?” He stared through the windshield as if the sea of automobiles required constant monitoring. “It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done to someone I love.”
One of? Faith studied him, but Xander had thrown up a wall, muttering a sudden curse about the driver ahead, swerving sharply into the next lane. She rubbed the shoulder that his sudden maneuver had slammed against the window, but said nothing.
“That whole saga reminds me,” Xander said. “Another big change since you saw her last. Buff has a younger sister now. Dawn.”
“What are you talking about? I saw Dawn dozens of times. I’m the one who caught all kinds of hell for teaching her to shoplift.”
“You —” Xander gave her a sharp glance, then his frown cleared. “That’s right, you did. I remember. Goddamn, those monks were thorough.”
“Make a little less sense, will you, Harris. How did monks get into any of this?”
“It’s not going to make much sense. Dawn didn’t exist until about three years ago — no, that’s not exactly right. She’s existed for all time, but as pure energy. As the key that this hellgod I was talking about, Glory, needed to open the gate between dimensions. The usual apocalyptic hoodoo bullshit. These monks shaped the key into Dawn and sent her to Buffy, knowing she’d protect Dawn with her life. They planted false memories in Buffy, her mom — anyone who knew Buffy. Apparently you too, even though you were out of the picture by then. They’re great memories, totally unshakable, even once you know the truth. Even in Dawn. You ask her about that day you went shoplifting, and she’ll probably remember what you both were wearing, what she took, and how long she was grounded for.”
He caught her up on the rest of it, too, everything that had happened since she’d last seen Buffy and the Scooby gang. Everything personal, however, was carefully excised, apart from pieces of information that were crucial to understanding what followed. Tara’s death, for one, and Willow’s rampage and near-ending of the world.
“How’d B. take that? Willow was her — I used to be jealous of how tight they were.”
“Will’s back with us. You’ll see her when we get back. So, you know, things were bad and then they got better. At least with this shit coming down, we have that.”
“No, I mean — well, how? How did B. fight her? They were there on this bluff together, with this whatever, this hell-temple rising out of the ground?”
“No — no, not exactly. Willow kept her out of the action with some kind of spell. Giles and this coven in England, they had a lot to do with it.”
“So it was Rupert who faced her down.” Faith was getting interested in just how squirmy Xander had become. There was some history there that he refused to tell, and she couldn’t figure why.
“No. Well, yeah, but not exactly like you’re thinking.” He pointed ahead and to the right. “Hey, gas is twelve cents cheaper here than Sunnydale.”
A wisp of remorse curled through her at causing Xander’s obvious distress, but it had come down to one piece of truth that she needed to know. Faith went for deliberately obtuse. “So Rupert’s up there on this bluff with Willow, with this fucking huge black marble temple thing rumbling up out of the earth —”
“Actually it was sort of sandstone-y — hang on.” He bullied the truck through two lanes of traffic to reach the offramp. “Might as well gas this puppy up.”
As the tank filled, Xander tackled the bug-spattered windows with singleminded attention, avoiding her gaze.
Faith suppressed a smile. Deep dark secret he’d rather die than reveal: Xander Harris had saved the fucking world.
That diversionary tactic had worked pretty well, Xander thought. Faith had dropped the subject — as they drew closer to Sunnydale, she dropped all subjects. Fidgeted with her purse, chewed at her bottom lip, which had begun to look a little raw.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll be all right. You won’t be the only one there with some serious history with Buffy. This is bigger than that; we’ve had to come together in spite of it all. There’s too much at stake.” He hoped it was true, hoped they would hold together. And speaking of stakes, he hadn’t yet mentioned everything that had gone on with Spike, between him and Buffy, both before and after the soul. He was too uneasy with it himself.
Despite that, something had shifted within Xander during that long drive from the prison. He felt less scared than he had been for the past month. Laying the whole thing out for her, responding to the intelligence in her questions, he was relieved to feel he was talking to an equal — at least till the ass-kicking began. Though the Army Guy part of him understood Buffy’s switch to drill instructor, the friend part bristled. Willow’s attention was taken up with research — or with Kennedy. Otherwise he was den mother to a pack of fifteen-year-olds or babysitter to Andrew. He’d needed to sort everything out logically, unedited, without worrying how his misgivings would affect his listener. The last place he’d expected to find that was in Faith.
“Not much farther to go,” he told her. “Is there anything you need first?”
“My clothes. Everything’s supposed to be in my apartment just the way I left it. There might be some weapons there too that might be useful.”
“Apartment?” All Xander remembered was a sleazy motel room, and if she’d left anything there, it had long ago been claimed as swag.
“Wilkins gave it to me. He’d made some kind of arrangements before the Ascension; I got a letter from some lawyers not long after I went to prison. They said it’d be ready for me anytime I needed it.”
“Wilkins,” Xander repeated. “I don’t know that I like the sound of this.”
“He’s long gone.” Faith looked away from him, to streets that surely must have looked familiar to her by now. She returned her gaze to him. “I’m not exactly cool with it either. I’d like it if you’d come with.”
Faith’s key still worked, and she swung the door open to a blast of stale air. A huge window at the far end of the room showed Xander the lights of the city just beginning to wink on in the dusk. She flicked on the loft’s track lighting.
“Wow,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, so low he could barely hear it. Faith’s arms were hugged around her body as if she were cold. She stood in the center of the room, staring into the middle distance, not even aware of Xander. He looked around the place.
The mayor apparently hadn’t done things halfway. This had to be one of the more pricey pieces of real estate in town. Expensive materials, first-class craftsmanship, not a single corner cut. Even the small kitchen was fully equipped. “I don’t get it,” Xander said. “You and Mayor Wilkins.”
Faith turned to face him, eyes glittering in the shadows cast by the overhead lights. “I don’t get it either.” Her boots beat a sharp tattoo on the hardwood floor as she crossed to the closet. She pulled down a duffel bag and started stuffing clothes into it without even removing the hangers. Halfway through she turned and fixed Xander with a fierce look. “I don’t care what you get or don’t get. Except this: don’t ever think it was about sex. Believe me, if there’s one thing besides vampires I can scent from a mile away, it’s the sex vibe. He never wanted anything from me that way.”
She turned away to clear the rack of clothing, and then fished out a plastic shopping bag she began piling with shoes. “In my whole life, there’s been two people who told me I was worth something just the way I was.” Faith glanced at Xander long enough to thrust the bag of shoes at him. “And one of those was Mr. Rogers.”
Kneeling by the duffel, she punched its contents down, her hair curtaining her face from Xander’s gaze. She stopped suddenly, then peeled back several layers of clothing. From where he stood, Xander could only see a twist of pink fabric, sprinkled with tiny red flowers. Faith smoothed her hand over it, traced one of the blooms with a finger. One ragged sob burst from her, but she quickly capped that well. Her hard-assed control over her own emotions got to him almost as much as Willow’s unrestrained grief. He abandoned the bag and took a couple of steps toward her, but Faith rose to her feet, yanking the pink cloth from the tangle in the duffel. A dress — he saw that now. Simple and sweet — he couldn’t, to tell the truth, even see vintage Willow in that dress, much less Faith. She turned and hung it back on the bar in the empty closet. When she faced him again, her expression was unreadable. “We need to get out of this place.”
Everything Xander knew about women’s prisons — until his wiggins revelation earlier today — he had learned from (oooh, mama!) B-movies. So he hadn’t really thought about how Faith’s entry into the chaos of their slayer refugee camp would feel to her. It hadn’t occurred to him either that she’d be an object of fascination to the potentials, who’d told and retold her history with sweeping comic-book strokes. They gathered in the living room, staring at her with huge eyes, whispering to each other behind their hands. Faith’s presence, which had always seemed to him to take up all available space, grew compact around her.
He dropped the bag of weapons they’d brought from her place. The muffled clank/thunk of metal encased in leather brought them to silence. “Girls,” he said brightly. “This is Faith. Make her welcome. She’s here to train, to fight, whatever else is needed. Buffy here?”
Amanda piped up. “She’s in the kitchen.”
Xander took Faith’s bags from her and dumped them with the other, then gestured her through the dining room entrance. As the whispers rose up behind them he turned and thrust his index finger toward them, leveling a stern look. The girls clammed up again and a few started upstairs. He caught up to Faith, who’d hesitated just outside the kitchen door. “There’s a homeless guy smoking out in your yard.”
Xander glanced where she pointed out the picture window. Spike, well wrapped in a brown blanket, stood in the shade of a tree, feeding his nicotine habit. Now was not the time to bring up that whole subject. “We know that one. Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”
He reached over her shoulder, pushed the swinging door open. Buffy, Dawn and Willow looked up from chopping vegetables, their conversation halting midsentence. “Hey, everybody,” Xander said. “We’re here.”
Xander could see Faith shoulder back into her persona, as if shrugging on a leather jacket. “B.,” she said quietly. “Willow —”
A knife clattered on the countertop as Dawn hurled herself at Faith. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” She yanked her into a bonecrushing hug. “Faith! You’re here! Ohmygod!”
Faith recovered enough to return the embrace, lifting Dawn off her feet.
“Dawn,” Buffy said. “Let her have some air.”
They parted and Faith stepped back, trying to rein in her reaction. “Look at you. God, you’re growing up so fast.”
Dawn vibrated with joy. “It’s so great to see you.”
Buffy put her hands on Dawn’s shoulders. “It is,” she said. “We’re glad you’re here.”
“I’m just happy to help,” Faith said. “However.”
Xander felt it all piling up, the things that needed to be said — that might never be said.
So, it seemed, did Dawn. “You could help with dinner. Willow, hand me another knife.”
“She’s had a long day, Dawnie,” Willow said.
“No, I’m good. I’d like that.” Faith stepped to the kitchen sink to wash her hands, but whirled and grabbed the knife as a streak of brown shot by the window and then crashed through the back door. Buffy caught her wrist and extracted the knife as the blanket dropped to the floor and Spike slapped at the smoldering skin on the back of one hand.
“Bloody filthy habit. Kill me yet.” He looked up and saw Faith. “Oh. Hullo.”
Buffy released her arm and Faith slowly let it drop to her side, keeping her gaze leveled at Spike.
“You must be Faith,” he said. “Yeouch, this burns.” He crossed in front of her to snatch a stick of butter from the counter. She stared at him intently as he passed. Spike peeled the wrapper back, rubbed the butter on his singed hand, frowning at her scrutiny. He shot Xander a what’s the deal? look, and Xander shrugged.
“This is Spike,” Buffy said. “He lives here.”
“I know who he is. William th— He what?”
“On their side now. Much like you.” He set the stick of butter back on the counter.
“Spike — ew,” Dawn scolded.
“Let me know when patrol’s on.” He disappeared through the basement door and they heard his boots thundering down the wooden stairs.
Faith had gone to bed early, Buffy and Spike were out patrolling, and Willow was bathed in the blue glow of the computer screen. Xander was sorority house mother again tonight. After all the giggles and fights over bathroom time had settled down, he’d gone out to the street to sit in his truck for a while. He switched on the stereo, not as loud as he’d have liked, and kept watch on the house, nursing a beer.
He was putting away a lot less of that now that he’d gotten things clear with Anya. Despite Faith’s reaction to seeing him after three years, a good part of the misery-weight he’d put on had melted away. He allowed himself a decent Mexican beer every couple of days, this one from his Christmas stash of Noche Buena. Usually Xander drank it alone, out here in the truck cab, listening to The Clash.
Willow was loving the Norah these days, but for Xander’s money, the only fitting soundtrack to the life he was leading was The Clash. Nothing else conveyed the urgency that was with him every waking moment. London is drowning and I, I live by the river… Fuckin’ A right. Sunnydale was as close to the river as you could come — only it was like that river in Cleveland back in the sixties, the one so full of toxic crap that it caught fire and burned for days.
The song ended and he thumbed the << button to play it again, and again, until he lost count of the replays. A tap at the passenger window startled him and he snapped the stereo off, pissed at himself. Not even a decent night watchman. Xander hit the window switch and the smoked glass slid down. Only a shadow hovering by the door frame. He lifted the sawed-off that rested by his leg. “Step out where I can see you.”
A movement, and he tensed. Then: Faith, in an oversized tee shirt. “Mind if I join you?”
He lowered the shotgun and shifted to make room. “Climb on in.”
She scrambled up into the front seat and slammed the door, glided the window back up. Xander noted with disappointment that she wore leggings beneath the big tee. “You post a guard out here every night?”
“Nah. I just do this when I’m restless, or need to get out of the dorm. Trouble sleeping?”
Faith nodded. “All those nighttime sounds. Girls having bad dreams. The homesick ones crying. Brings back all the others. The crazy ones laughing. Women fucking. Others being fucked by a couple of the guards. Make it short and sweet — just call it suffering.”
“You ever learn to sleep with all that going on?”
“You have to sleep or go crazy or die. But you learn to wake up fast.”
“Shit.”
“I got what I deserved. And maybe what I needed.”
Xander could think of nothing to say to that, so they sat in silence.
It was Faith who spoke first. “So what the fuck is Spike doing living here? And couldn’t you have warned me?”
“Ah, I’m sorry, Faith. I don’t quite feel right with it myself, so I didn’t know how to get into it. It’s complicated. Spike’s fought on our side for years. For his own warped reasons, but he’s still saved the collective Scooby ass a time or two.” He shrugged. “And now he’s got his soul.”
“What, Buffy’s decided to collect ‘em all?”
Xander couldn’t repress a laugh, though it made him feel vaguely disloyal. “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“What’s your story, then?”
“Story? How do you mean?”
“You’ve gone out of your way to be kind. I’m sure you could’ve begged off making the trip down to get me.”
“Everyone’s got their hands full here. I had the time.”
“Do you know that your voice does this thing when you lie? I probably noticed it because we’re in the dark and that’s all I have to go by —”
Xander raked the fingers of both hands through his hair. “It’s just — ” (It’s just that I want to be Willow’s Xander.) “Every one of us in this house, excepting the fifteen-year-olds, has needed some heavy-duty forgiveness. We haven’t deserved it, I don’t think, any one of us. But we’ve needed it and longed for it. What religious types would call grace, I guess.”
Faith’s voice rose up then, sweet and strong and clear: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me…”
It stopped his heart and pierced him through. When he could form a sentence, he said, “I didn’t know you could sing.”
“I didn’t either, till I went to the joint. Joined the gospel choir. Looks good on your record, y’know?” Her voice was casual, but he sensed the lie in that just as she’d nailed his.
“You sound phenomenal.”
“You think?”
He felt he could see her soul shimmering around her, faintly glowing as Angel’s had, captured in the gypsy glass. Xander lifted a hand to push back her hair, and as his fingers brushed her cheek, she turned her face toward him and then they were kissing. Softly at first, and then with more hunger. Her hands moved over his chest, tracing the musculature carved out by his work. She brought one hand to his neck, her thumb caressing, seeking out the flutter of his pulse.
Without intention, with no thought at all, Xander thrust himself away from her, back against the driver side door. “Whoa,” he panted. “Wait. Time out.”
“What’s going on?” Her voice had lost the soft warmth it had begun to acquire.
He worked to even out his breath. “Something I should tell you, I guess. I have a thing.”
“I do remember that much.”
“Ha. Yeah. Well, I don’t know what you’d call it, so … it’s a thing. I can’t — I can’t stand anyone touching my neck. When, uh — during — I don’t know why, it’s just always been that way. It’s, um, it’s a deal-breaker. Physically. If you see —”
“I get it. Sorry.”
“No, hell, how could you know? I’m sorry. I really, ah fuck, I really liked kissing you. Maybe it’s just a good idea to go slow anyway. God, could this feel any more junior high?”
Faith’s hand bumped into his arm, then traveled down to find his hand. She closed hers around it. “No. It feels good. Slow gets you there too. You just enjoy it more. That sounds like one of those sappy gift books with one sentence per page.”
“Buff and Spike will be getting back soon. Maybe we should head on inside.”
Faith sat on the edge of the bathtub, her gaze fixed on her bare feet on the dingy floor mat. Too many sets of feet. The whole house seemed overtaxed somehow — the tub and sinks were grimy, bedrooms held the smell of too many bodies. She’d escaped here to think, but still felt their presence.
She’d locked herself in here to think about Xander. Faith knew what you’d call it, Xander’s “thing.” According to the prison social worker, it was muscle memory, some trauma stored deep in the flesh when the conscious mind had shoved it aside, considered it “dealt with.” There was a lot of it going around in the joint. Faith didn’t know whether to believe his assertion that he didn’t know why a touch on his neck freaked him out, but she’d bet money — the whole two-hundred-and-change the state had staked her to — that she knew.
Faith saw herself in that shitty motel room four years ago, straddling Xander on the spongy mattress, her hands locked around his neck, determined to choke the life out of him. She’d nearly succeeded — would have, if Angel hadn’t burst into the room, clocked her with a baseball bat. If Xander had “always been that way,” it was Faith who’d laid that scar on him, because she knew she’d been his first. This was something she could never take back, make right.
“No wonder you’re so gloomy.” Her heart hammered at the unexpected sound of another voice — Wilkins’s voice. “Just look at the haze of filth on everything. I hope you’re taking your vitamins, because this place is a germ incubator.” His gleaming shoes were planted in a safe spot out of accidental touching range of any of the fixtures, the towels, hamper or mat. “You’ve done well, Faith. Inserted yourself right in the heart of the enemy camp. If under the most appalling conditions.”
This wasn’t Richard Wilkins, she told herself. This was an entity who used his form and even his personality traits to manipulate her. I know who you are, and you won’t use me, you fucker. She wanted to say this. But if she did, the one person (or whatever he’d been) who’d loved her, the one she had never hurt, would be lost to her forever. She’d take this fake, this Disney animatronic version from the Hall of Evil Mayors, use him, at least until she felt a little stronger.
“I’m afraid you’ll be stuck here a while longer until the plan’s ready to implement.”
“I’ll be here,” she said.
“You’ve always done me proud,” he told her. “Cheer up. Soon everything will change and I’ll be walking this earth again. Or slithering.” Again he burst into his cornball laugh. “You can be at my side, the way we planned.”
Her eyes filled. “I’d like that.” The words came out in barely a whisper.
The Wilkins-thing leaned over her. It didn’t have his scent, the lime/spice dimestore aftershave he’d favored. “Faith, Faith. No tears. I promise this will all be over soon.”
Then it was gone, and Faith ground at the tears with the heels of her hands, then rose to brave the dormitory sounds of the sleeping potentials.