Fanfiction: Sunnydale Calling
As if that hadn’t been enough awkwardness for one day, Anya stopped by sometime in the afternoon.
Faith had lost track of the time by then: it spun out slowly between Xander’s awakenings, raced by when he was alert enough to talk. She’d stolen a few cat naps on the room’s unoccupied bed, further distorting her sense of time. The nurses and orderlies tending to Xander looked after her as well, bringing her tea and danish from the break room, coaxing her to eat, suggesting she take just an hour or two to go home for some real sleep. Her refusal to leave his side, though it defied their advice, made her a kind of mascot to them. The strong young wife, so they thought, ferocious in her love as a mama bear. Their attentiveness made her intensely uncomfortable, but she endured it for Xander’s sake, grateful they were lavishing such care on him.
Anya was already at Xander’s bedside when Faith snapped awake. Clutching the bedrail with one hand, the other wistfully fingering the button Faith had transferred to his hospital gown: Be Nice to Me — I Gave Blood. Such naked sadness played across her face that Faith knew immediately Xander still slept. It felt wrong to lie there silently and watch, yet she was reluctant to announce her presence and shatter the moment. Faith tried to picture the two of them in a life together, but she had noticed Anya so little during the past week at Buffy’s house. The vision of Xander-and-Anya would not hold together in her imagination. She gave Anya another moment to herself and then shifted on the bed, drawing in her breath and sighing it out in the rustling sounds of a waking sleeper. When she opened her eyes again, Anya had taken a step back from the bed, rearranged her expression.
“Oh. Faith.”
“Anya. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”
She glanced at the IV pole and assorted lines running to and from his bed. “Lot of tubes and stuff. How is he?”
“Still fighting the shock to his system, they said. Fading in and out most of the day, but less restless than he was last night.”
Anya held her in her sharp gaze. “You’ve been here a week, and now you’re Mrs. Xander Harris.” Her voice was all false lightness, and Faith knew she was meant to read both levels. “Neat trick.”
She shrugged. “Told a few lies and signed a few papers. He didn’t have time for them to dick around searching for a next-of-kin.”
The corner of Anya’s mouth twitched upward. “I wish I’d known it was that easy.”
Faith considered giving her the same speech she’d misdirected at Willow, telling Anya that Xander had, as his life was beginning to slip away, spoken of her. But the brittleness of her posture and speech told Faith this news would not be welcomed, but would be a knife-cut as deep as Xander’s.
Faith knew what it was when pride was all that you had.
Anya raised the offering she’d brought, thrusting the handful of yellow tulips across Xander’s bed toward Faith. “Give him these when he wakes up, would you?” She took a step toward the door. “Put some pennies in the water, if you have any. They’ll last longer.”
And then she was gone.
Willow returned in the early evening. She tried to convince Faith to go to Revello and catch a few hours of sleep while she kept watch, but Faith refused. When Xander woke, she would be there. If the First sent more freaks in robes, she’d be there for them, too. Willow managed to persuade her to sit still while she kneaded the muscles in Faith’s shoulders and neck. It went against her every instinct to relax into Willow’s attentions, but she found it easier to talk when they weren’t face to face. “How’s B.?”
“What happened this morning really hurt. She’s acting like it didn’t, but …. Has Xander said anything?”
“No. Like I said, he’s been awake a few times, but not that kind of awake. Buffy didn’t have any clue?”
“Well, yeah, kind of. They had a fight two days ago. It sounded bad.”
That hung in the silence between them for a moment. “It was about me, wasn’t it?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“He wouldn’t. You know that.”
Faith had become attuned to the small noises that signalled Xander’s emergence from his deep sleeps. Hearing them now, she shook off Willow’s hands and went to his bedside, Willow trailing behind.
“We’ve gotta stop meeting this way,” he said to Faith. His eyes looked clearer than they had since the attack.
“I’ll work on that. Look who’s here.”
“Hey. Willow.” Xander reached a hand toward her, and Faith stepped back to let them have a moment.
Willow sniffled, then groped for a tissue. “Dammit, I wasn’t going to do this.”
“Your turn was long overdue. This time I get to be the pale, wan young thing in the hospital bed.”
“You’re looking better, though” Faith said. “How do you feel?”
“Slightly less like crap. Itching to get this goddamn blade out of my leg. I wish you had just let me yank it out.”
Faith exchanged a look with Willow. “They took it out, Xander. When they went in for the bleeding.”
“It’s still jammed in there. I feel can it.”
“Well, you’ve got tissue damage,” Willow pointed out. “And it’s been stitched up, inside and out. Plus the swelling — sure, with all that going on, it’s gonna feel weird.”
Clearly irritated, he looked away from them. At last he registered the tulips on the bedside table. “Nice flowers. Will, did you bring those?”
“Anya,” Faith said. “She was here two or three hours ago.”
“Oh. Guess I was out training for the Olympic sleep-team trials.”
“You’re looking world-class,” she said. “Except the Russian judge screwed you on points.”
“Goes without saying,” Willow said.
Though it was a small exchange, to Faith it felt like an enormous shift had occurred. Just minor league Scooby banter, really, but seamless, as if she’d always been part of that. She laid a hand on his chest, drawing in a deep breath, trying to rein in her emotion.
Xander covered her hand with his. “Faith. Hey — what?”
“Nothin’. Five by five.”
“What happened to your voice? You didn’t get hurt in all that —”
“Laryngitis, that’s all. You don’t remember me screaming at you to ‘live, goddammit’?”
“Not so much with the remembering. After the other night, anyway.”
Willow picked up on the current between them. “O-kay. Blushing now. So did I tell you Giles called in from Bombay? He sends his best, said he’d call you in a couple of days when you’re stronger.”
“Tracking another stray potential?” Faith asked.
“Yeah. And Dawn and Buffy send their love.” Willow said it in a rush, as if she hoped to breeze it past Xander.
His expression closed down. “Yeah? I’m still feeling the love from my last conversation with Buffy.”
“Xander, I wish — ” Willow’s misery was written across her face. “She’s sorry, I know she is.”
“Will, people aren’t sorry for saying the kind of things she said to me. You plant bombs that carefully, when they go off there’s no ‘sorry’ in it.” Faith could see the exhaustion he’d been fighting overtake him. “Give my love to Dawn.”
“Xander —”
“Thanks for coming, Willow.” There was no mistaking his dismissal, or that it was directed solely at her. He held fast to Faith’s hand as Willow turned and fled.
Haggard as he was, he did not descend into sleep for a long while. Faith stood at his side, stroking his hair, until he finally slipped under.
When the First made its next move, it was not the Bringers who came.
The first voice to pull her from her restless sleep was one she hadn’t heard since she was a child. The words it whispered close to her ear were burned in her memory, the same as every other time. “Quiet, Faith. You wouldn’t want to wake anyone.” Funny how that’s all it took for hot shame (muscle memory) to rush into every fiber of her waking body, paralyzing her just as it had back then.
She wasn’t seven now, wasn’t helpless. “Get away from me, you fuck.” She forced herself to move, sat straight up in the bedside chair where she’d sprawled as she’d fallen asleep.
Dev grinned, flashing that gold tooth he was so fucking proud of. “Good to see you again, Faithie. You grew up real nice. Fine pair of tits you have now.”
Faith lashed out with a kick, her boot connecting with nothing. The First. She knew that, she knew that. Dev had died sometime after he’d dumped her mother, OD’ed in some pisshole, bought himself a hot shot. Even then, she’d wished she’d been the one to serve it up to him.
She glanced back at the bed. It had taken him a while to get there, but Xander was deep under. “I know what you are,” she said to Dev. “You can’t touch us, not without your bitch-ass helpers. And I killed the last sorry motherfuckers you sent.”
Dev’s features melted, and then Richard Wilkins stood before her. “Faith, the things prison has done to you. To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought you could become coarser, but I see I was wrong.”
“Seen that one before,” she said. “Y’know, I thought lame impression comics went out of style years ago. But as long as there’s no two-drink minimum, show me what else you got. You take requests?”
“I think I’ll stay with this one for a while,” the Wilkins-thing said. “It worked well for me before.”
“Bullshit. I knew even then.”
It smiled then, colder than any Wilkins himself had ever favored her with. “Doesn’t make it any less effective. I thought we could spend some real time together, Faith. Quality time, I’m sure Mayor Wilkins would have called it.”
“A waste, is what I’m calling it.”
“I know it’s not considered polite to remark on a woman’s appearance this way, but you’re looking like a wreck, Faith. When was the last real sleep you’ve had?”
“Stop using my name. You sound like a fucking salesman. ‘The most beautiful sound to a person’s ear is his own name.’ I read some of those ‘How to Succeed’ books in the prison library. They’re a laugh, because anyone who’s been in the joint is no longer a mark for that kind of smarmy bullshit. Unless they’re a desperately sad case who never learns.”
Not-Wilkins spread its hands. “I couldn’t have put it better myself, Faith. Here you are with the same outmatched collection of do-gooders you started out with.”
“So okay. Salesmen are in the First brotherhood. No real surprise there. And I guess it’s not exactly a coincidence that half the banks and churches in the country are named after you, too. Politicians — well, I knew that before I even met the Mayor.”
After a few more exchanges, she stopped fencing with the First. It kept up a running monologue, though, even after she picked up a couple of the magazines one of the nurses brought to her in the afternoon. “Don’t mind me,” she said as she opened a year-old People. “I just get a little bored.”
The First stayed with Wilkins’s form, using the smooth politician’s rhetoric, playing the connection she’d shared with him, laying on with evangelical fervor promises of the devastation it planned to unleash. She made no response at all, but after an hour or two exhaustion rolled through her until she wanted to weep. Screw it — there was nothing it could do to her physically — or to Xander, which concerned her more. She tossed the last magazine onto the floor at Wilkins’s polished shoes and slouched in the chair to catch a few minutes of sleep.
The Mayor’s voice carried her, soft and hypnotically seductive. No words bled through to her consciousness, just silky, sibilant (How’s that snake thing working out for you?) murmurings. Eventually something pulled her out of her doze, a coldness in the pit of her stomach, and gradually words formed once more from the liquid sounds she’d been swimming in.
Suggestions. Things she could do to Xander’s IV lines. Or else something as simple as a pillow pressed over his face. Or as satisfying as that old classic, her hands wrapped around his throat, flesh to flesh. Finish what she’d started, all those years ago.
Faith shot to her feet, heart pounding. “Fuck you! Go back to hell.”
She plunged a hand into the ice bucket, half melted since its last refilling, and shoved a fistful of ice chips into her bra. Willow had brought her some things in a Manhattan Portage satchel. Faith reached inside for the Red Bulls and downed two in quick succession. Whatever it took, she would not sleep and she would not leave Xander’s side.
She stood holding the railing, longing to touch him and steady herself, but not wanting to awaken him. The First had shut up, and Faith looked on Xander’s face, pain lines smoothed away for now.
“I always knew you’d find yourself a good man.” Marquita. Impossible. But here she was, standing where Wilkins had been. “He’s good, but he’s wrong for you. So much pain you’ll cause for each other, sugar. Look at him here — it’s already started. Why don’t you end it for him?”
“No. You can’t wear Marquita. Only dead people. Xander told me that.”
Marquita smiled her slow smile. “You know how dangerous a prison kitchen is. I let myself get caught alone — stupid. And you weren’t there to watch my back.”
“Oh God oh God,” Faith whispered. Marquita’s God had let her die. She raised her chin. “That’s the way you want me to think, isn’t it? I’m giving you nothing you want, punk.” She was weaving on her feet, but she turned it into a sway as she lifted up her cracked voice in Marquita’s favorite song — one Xander had liked hearing Faith sing in Buffy’s kitchen.
I don’t feel noways tired I’ve come too far from where I started from Nobody told me the road would be easy I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me.
The First abandoned Marquita’s form then, adopting a series of others (the deputy mayor, her first Watcher, Kenny — her mother’s nicest boyfriend who gave her sips of beer when she was four) to maintain the verbal onslaught. Faith emptied Willow’s bag of energy bars and caffeine drinks, but morning still found her sitting on the floor by Xander’s bed, knees pulled tight against her chest. It was blessedly silent, and Faith slept.
What woke her was Buffy screaming her name. Faith’s head snapped up and banged into the temperature control unit. Her cheeks were slicked with tears. She looked wildly around, found Buffy at Xander’s IV pole. Buffy whirled to face her. “My God, Faith. What have you done?”
She scrambled to her feet and ran for the hallway. Two of her favorites were staffing the nurse’s station: one on the phone, the other chatting with the chaplain.
“Please. It’s Xander. Now.”
Light. Intense, like looking into the sun. He tried turning away. Someone held his head, pulled back his eyelids.
“Pupils reactive.”
Sounds his brain refused to process. The light disappeared, but its afterburn blinded.
“Pulse is—”
Fingers pressed into his neck. Xander wrenched himself out of his drugged sleep, lashed out blindly. Arm strapped down on something, still he swung it—
Fuck! Bright pain flared in his arm, a moment later swallowed whole in the nuclear flash that rolled over him. So overwhelming that it took time to locate its source: the leg.
He made a sound that was not exactly screaming. When he got it stopped, he could hear Faith making a sound that was not exactly crying.
When his vision cleared, a doctor rose into view, his stethoscope and glasses knocked cockeyed. Xander remembered him from earlier: he had studly news anchor hair that he needed to get over. “Jesus,” he said, brushing off his white coat.
“Oh no,” he panted. “That’s my ‘Jesus,’ pal.” He sucked in a breath and waited out another wave of pain. “Asleep here. Pretty much minding my own—” Yet another wave (tubular) and he gave up the effort.
It took a while to sort everything out — the IV lines and other tubes he’d torn halfway out of his body; the fact that he was (or had been) relatively okay, just asleep, when the commandos of pain had crashed into his room; that Faith’s wiggins had launched this whole cluster-fuck.
“Faith” and “wiggins” were two words that didn’t really fit together, but he was too fogged by another hit of pain medication to try and sort that out too. She’d agreed to go back to Camp Scooby for some sleep, but while she waited for Willow to arrive she held his hand as he drifted.
He thought of something he wanted to say to her, sort of urgent in a brain-damaged but mellow kind of way. But when he opened his eyes and wet his lips to speak, he saw that someone else was in the room, talking to Faith. She had her head bowed, focusing on her fingers twined with Xander’s, as the man addressed her.
“You’ve played your part brilliantly, Faith. It’s all coming together now.”
The drugs pulled at him and he wanted to go, but he just — It was an itch he couldn’t scratch, he could almost recognize —
Yeah, yeah. He had it now. The Mayor.
Now he could sleep.
Faith curled under the covers in the sunlit bedroom, thoughts racing. The sleeping pill the doctor had given her hadn’t done anything, just given the caffeine in her system an ass to kick. Her mind picked at the same thoughts over and over again, until she wished she could claw her way out of her own brain. Playing on the main track, of course, was the epic screw-up of this morning. Buffy had disappeared by the time Faith and the doctors and nurses had run back into the room; Faith had even checked the bathroom. Which made no sense, if Buffy was Buffy. Maybe she’d been a dream, born of the sleeplessness and terror the First had pounded into her. Or a hallucination — this thought scared Faith in a way few things could. Although voices and visions hadn’t been part of her last slide into madness, she had to remember always that there was this fault line in her mind, and be alert for warnings of disaster. She would die before she broke again; she had promised herself that.
She couldn’t chalk it up to premonition — Xander, it turned out, had been all right, at least until the doctor had scared the shit out of him by grabbing his neck. The physical damage from his waking panic had been limited; the worst of his pain was from jostling his wounded leg, but he’d been lucky there, the repairs all held. And why — this was the question she kept turning over — why was her intuition not just that something was wrong, but that Faith herself had hurt him?
When her yammering mind grew tired of questions she couldn’t answer, it seized upon the one thing she knew and chewed on that for a while. Willow was right; she loved Xander. She tried to count the number of times she’d said please the last couple of days, every one for Xander’s sake. It was a word that had rarely passed her lips before now. Want. Take. Have. — her watchwords had been replaced. Please. Help him. Please. Let me go to him. Please. Don’t let him die. She would not beg for her own sake. Only love could make her ask, plead, crawl if she had to.
Faith had never called it that, but she’d loved Marquita. She had planned, when things were settled with the First, to visit her in prison — and she’d known when she promised that it wasn’t the empty talk you always heard when someone got out. Marquita had been a mother to Faith; the only one she’d had. Here in the empty bedroom she let her grief rage.
When it passed, her head pounded and she felt hollowed out, but even in her exhaustion, Faith couldn’t sleep. After a while she went downstairs to make tea, and found the white bread that someone kept insisting on buying. Spread a couple slices with butter, sprinkled cinnamon and sugar over them and stuck them under the broiler. She’d learned this from Marquita, who’d told her it was one of her favorite comfort foods when she was a child. Comfort food wasn’t a concept Faith’s mother had had much to do with, except tossing her the occasional package of rubbery Sno-Balls from the Hostess Thrift Store.
She stood by the stove with a potholder in hand, waiting for the the perfect moment of caramelized crunch, which came seconds before the tarry roof shingle stage. Spike’s entrance into the kitchen was announced by his tread on the stairs, so she wasn’t startled when he burst in and greeted her. She bent to retrieve her toast plate.
“You’re a right ray of sunshine,” Spike said to her back, after waiting for the acknowledgment that didn’t come. “It’s a wonder I don’t burst into flames.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
She turned to carry the plate to the place she’d set for herself at the counter. As she stepped around him, his smirk melted into a mixture of apology and pity, which made her lift a hand to her own face. The storm of her grief had not quite ended, merely subsided to a slow drizzle of unnoticed tears. Faith snatched a paper napkin from its holder and scoured her cheeks. This, she realized, was exactly what bothered her about Spike’s new face, so soft compared to the old. All his feelings paraded across it, bareass naked. No way to go around in the world, not if you wanted to survive.
He said nothing, just went to the fridge and poured himself a mug of something, stuck it in the microwave. It took a moment for the smell of hot blood to cut through the cinnamon scent.
“Jesus Christ!” For a second she was slammed back in Xander’s truck. Bright arterial blood dripping from the seat, the dashboard, coating her skin. She let the toast drop from her hand. “Have some fucking courtesy!”
“Sorry.” A second later he figured it out. Again, that awful naked emotion in his eyes until Faith looked away. “Ah, Christ,” he said. “Sorry. How’s he doing?”
“Better than they thought he’d be, I think.” She tried to sip her tea, but the blood smell was still too strong. “A little bit of a setback this morning, but he’s past it. Look, go ahead and drink; I can already smell it, so there’s no point letting it get cold.” Spike needed something to do, she thought, other than — “The fuck you lookin’ at?”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me. Why’d you give me the eye that way when you first came here? Felt like we’d seen each other before.”
“We had. You just didn’t know you were seeing me.” Her mouth quirked up at his confusion. “I hijacked Buffy’s body a few years ago, you didn’t know that? You and I had quite a conversation at the Bronze.” That would give him something to chew over. Which was fine, she’d decided she didn’t want to know why—
“Haunted, aren’t you?” Spike asked. “That’s why I was staring. Can’t say I’ve seen that look on my own face; haven’t seen a reflection in a bloody long time. But I know what it feels like from the inside.”
Her guard went up. “‘Fraid you’ve lost me, Spike.”
“You’ve gone fifteen rounds with the First, haven’t you? Last night? Just now?” Compassion bled through his voice, made his words even harder to take. “Even if I couldn’t see it in your face, I can smell it all over you. Fear. Despair.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Bein’ strong isn’t going to help you. The First will use that against you and break you. Bring it out of you, the part that’s weak and afraid. If you try to hide it, stand alone, you’re buggered.”
She couldn’t look up at him, but she thought of Marquita. I let myself get caught alone — stupid. It had been the First using her form, but it was something she would have said — she’d ripped Faith a time or two for close calls when her attention lapsed.
“It’s come and scared the bejeezus out of everyone in this house at least once,” Spike went on, “but some of us it likes to camp out and play with. Can’t say I wasn’t already half crazy when the First got me, but it sent me right ‘round the bend. Made me do things.”
Faith looked up at him now. “It did?”
Spike rinsed out his mug and put it in the dishwasher. “Yeah, some killing. I’d thought I was through with that.” He rearranged a couple of glasses in the top rack before he turned back to her with still too much showing on his face. “I think you need to know that.”
Faith closed her eyes. How close had she come? She’d been lucky, the way she’d been lucky those times in the kitchen when she’d dropped her guard. But she needed someone watching her back. So this was her choice right now, a vampire about as mentally stable as she was, more crippled by what he’d gained than what he’d lost.
Fuck it. If she’d learned one thing in prison, it was that you took what you could get.
“Yeah, okay,” she said, and began to tell him about last night.
No drifting this time, no haze. Just one second: asleep. Next second: not asleep. The same way Faith had snapped to, the morning they’d awakened in her bed. That seemed like years ago now, too long since he’d watched her sleep, even longer since he’d felt the electricity of her skin against his. Their hands touching — nice, but not enough. Welcome back, horny thoughts. This had to be a good sign. He turned his head toward the bedside chair, but instead of Faith’s dark hair, he saw a spill of bright red curtaining most of a fat textbook. Right, Willow had come to give her a few hours’ rest. Xander started to speak, but at last his brain processed the final image he’d had of Faith before he’d slipped under. Faith and the Mayor. He felt like burying that again beneath a few more hours of sleep, but he knew that was a forlorn hope.
Willow raised her head to work the kinks from her neck and suddenly realized he was awake. “Xander. Hey.”
“Willow.”
She rose and laced her fingers through his. “You look so much better today.” Tears shimmered in her eyes.
“Hey, none of that,” he said.
“Do you feel better?”
“Yeah, I do.” He had, anyway. He told himself to suck it up, be the Xander Willow loved. “I’m glad you came back. I know I was a hardass yesterday, and it’s not even you —”
“It’s okay. I’m glad to do it. For Faith, too. She looked so tired this morning.”
“You two are finally speaking now, huh?” Funny. Faith was charming skeptics left and right.
She nodded. “I feel like I understand her better.”
So did he. Xander tried to stay engaged in the conversation, but felt himself slipping into depression. Buffy had spat on seven years of friendship, and everything between him and Faith was a lie. He’d never felt this isolated; it was even worse than the days he’d holed up alone after abandoning Anya. His best friend was at his side, and all he could wish was that she would go away so he could think about how alone he was. It felt even lonelier to have her there, forcing him to wish she’d leave. Xander would be the first to admit this was insane troll logic, but knowing the way he felt was stupid didn’t make him feel it any less.
There was no sucky situation that couldn’t get worse — Xander had known this even before he’d met Buffy and become acquainted with the Hellmouth. So in retrospect, it was not much of a surprise when a woman from the social services department of the hospital stopped in and asked if she could speak to him alone.
Willow seized her hand and pumped it like a used car salesman. “Hi. Willow Rosenberg. I want you people to know the hospital’s been doing a phenomenal job. You bet I’ll be voting the next time the bond issue comes up.” She released her hand then. “I’ll be in the cafeteria, Xander.”
The social worker smiled warmly. “She’s very sweet. Is that your wife?”
“No, I —”
She was riffling some pages in a folder. “Oh wait, no, that would be Faith. The whole staff seems very taken with your wife, Mr. Harris.”
He didn’t have much time to take that in before the interview turned to his injury and hey, his chemical dependency problem. Life with Faith was getting richer every goddamn minute. He tried denying her version of the stabbing (self-inflicted, particularly loving that) as the social worker took copious amounts of notes. So great, they’d be coming to embroider a big red D on his hospital gown shortly after she left. This was a fucking brilliant briar patch Faith had tossed him into — the harder he protested, the more screwed up he looked. He finally fell silent as the social worker discussed treatment options, sinking deeper and deeper into the blackness. At long last she left, after saying she’d come back to discuss it another day with both him and his wife.
A few minutes later Willow came back. He tried to hold it together long enough to send her out again.
“So what was that about?”
“Standard insurance bullshit. If I take a mortgage out on my spleen, though, I can probably pay it off by time I’m fifty. Will, I hate to ask you, but I’m hungry, and I’ve got this craving.”
“Oh, that’s good! Wanting solid food, always a good sign. What can I get for you?”
“I was just lying here thinking about Pocky.”
“You’ve gotta see someone about that Pocky problem, mister. I’m telling you as a friend.”
Ha, yeah. Old joke, suddenly no longer funny. “You remember the drill, don’t you? Not the regular strawberry—”
She rolled her eyes. “Lord no, never regular strawberry. The Tsubu-Tsubu Strawberry with the little bits. And also the Men’s Pocky, not just plain chocolate. Xander, the only place that has that is clear across town —”
“I know, Will, but—”
“I promised Faith I wouldn’t leave you. She’s really worried about what the First will do next. She made me promise I wouldn’t even let in anyone I didn’t know, unless I touched them.” Willow broke into a smile. “Did you like how I did that? Smooth, wasn’t I?”
“You were brilliant.” He couldn’t believe how much effort it took, trying to seem semi-normal.
“How about I get you something from the machines downstairs. Then when Faith comes back, I’ll make the Pocky run.”
“I guess,” he said slowly. “Nah, forget it. There’s nothing else I really have a taste for.”
Willow heaved a worried sigh and he knew he’d won. After being her friend for almost twenty years, it was almost too easy to play her. Another thing he could feel rotten about, if she would just hurry up and leave him to it.
Time alone to contemplate the shit parade that was his life turned out to be less satisfying than Xander had expected. Which, really, was just what he should have expected. About the only bright spot (besides the imminent appearance of Pocky) was how much better he felt physically. It was almost too much: he felt too jittery to be bedfast. He pulled back the covers to inventory the various tubes and attachments and carefully rid himself of the catheter. Within fifteen minutes he was testing his legs on a walk to the bathroom (so all right, the catheter had served a purpose), using the IV pole as a wheeled walking staff. It hurt some, but considerably less than he’d anticipated.
On his second exit from the bathroom (catheter concept becoming clearer all the time), he opened the door to find Spike gaping in confusion at his empty bed. Spike’s startled gah! followed Xander’s by only half a second. Spike gestured at the twist of sheets. “Not exactly what I expected,” he said defensively.
“Believe me, if I’d been expecting you, I wouldn’t be walking around my room with my ass hanging out.”
“Are you supposed to be—?”
“Fuck no. Do you care?” He swung his legs back onto the bed and pulled up the sheet.
“Fuck no.”
At least one small corner of Xander’s universe could still be depended on.
“So what are you doing here?” He glanced at the windows, blinds still down as Faith insisted, with bright sunlight bleeding around the edges. “Seeing how it’s still flambé o’clock.”
Spike tossed a flat brown paper bag onto the bed. “Andrew sent you these.”
Xander recognized its size and shape immediately. Comic books. He let it lie there, for once not the slightest bit interested in what might be inside. “I can see how the Judge Dredd vs. Aliens #1 could be worth the risk of self-immolation. Especially since we’re talking your self.”
“Right, well.” Spike dropped into the chair, instantly sliding into a sprawl. “I came, actually, to talk about Buffy.”
“Christ,” he said wearily. “Who hasn’t come to talk about Buffy?”
“Maybe we would stop if you would bleedin’ listen.” Spike closed his eyes a moment, clearly summoning patience. “Look, this thing between you, it’s got her really upset.”
“That takes a big fucking nerve, Spike.”
“She’d try to make it right if you’d give her a chance. And you’ve been just as harsh about her lovers. I should know.”
Xander shook his head. “She thinks this is about Faith? Look, I thought Buffy and I would be fighting about our crappy taste in lovers clear into our eighties. I counted on it. This —” He had planned never to tell anyone what she’d said, but fury overrode conscious thought. “This is about coming and looking me in the eye as I’m dying and telling me that I’m shit. Call me petty, but that’s a deal-breaker.”
Spike looked away. Xander watched a muscle ticcing in his jaw. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “You poor stupid sod.”
Okay, that was one Xander didn’t have a comeback for.
“Can’t you see it? That wasn’t Buffy, it was the First.”
“Nice try, Spike. But the First can only appear as someone who’s dead—”
Spike interrupted. “Someone who died.”
“Right, whatever. And Buf—fy… oh.” He fell back against his pillows and tried to catch his breath.
“God, the First must love being Buffy. So much firepower for so little effort. A few words from her can create a world of devastation. It’s true for all three of us sorry gits — me, you, Faith.”
“Faith? What about her?” “First paid her a visit too, all in its Buffy-drag. This morning, just before the big panic that mobilized half the hospital.”
He had wondered what could possibly wig Faith out to that degree.
“Not that she’s that easy to panic,” Spike went on. “But the First had been at her all night, wearing her down. Right here, the whole time. She’s a warrior, that girl.”
“Faith told you this story?”
“‘Story?’ That’s a funny way of putting it.”
Xander waited out his silent scrutiny.
“I pulled the details out of her, yeah,” Spike said. “But I knew the story before she said a word. She looked shell-shocked this morning. Think about that, Harris. I’m not bein’ all poetic here. I saw those poor buggers who fought in the trenches, ghostin’ around London in the years after. God knows I fed off more than a few. And the air in here? It’s thick with the smell of fear, and it’s got her flavor.”
Xander looked around the room. How could it seem so unremarkable, if what Spike said was true? There were no signs of a struggle of any kind — even the bed she’d napped on the previous day had been tucked and tidied up, leaving no trace of her at all.
“Doesn’t look it,” Spike said, “but this room was a battleground last night.”
He turned his gaze back on Spike. “Is she all right?”
“Will be. She was finally dropping off when I left. You’ve no idea how tough she is.”
He still couldn’t get past it, the lies she’d told the ER staff, the feeling of her hand laced with his as the First lavished praise on her. “That’s just the beginning of what I don’t know about Faith.”
“Then bloody ask her!” Spike leapt to his feet, feeling for his pack of cigarettes. “Christ, you piss me off. I mean it, all of you. You brood and piss and moan, but do you talk to each other? The First is playing every one of you, and you give it exactly what it wants. The pathetic thing is, I did the same thing to you lot a few years ago, and you’ve learned sweet fuck-all.” He jammed a cigarette between his lips. “I’m off; I need a smoke.”
As he turned for the door it flew open and Willow bustled in. “Spike, hey.”
“That’s right, I said pathetic!” Then he was off, pulling up his coat to shield him for the dash to his car.
Willow blinked, startled, then shook it off. “Not even asking. Hey, you’re sitting up.” She held up the plastic store bag and crossed to the bed. “So get this, I walk in and Mrs. Park greets me like a long-lost relative, and she asks me, ‘Where’s your friend? The handsome boy who says such funny things?’ And I’m all, well, life-eating job, mugging, stabbing, hospital, but I tell her the first thing you asked for was Pocky. And then she throws in another half dozen boxes and a big bag of those cinnamon bears. I mean, who knew the Parks even noticed us apart from all the other kids who blew in and out of there.”
“You’re kidding me.” He hadn’t been in that store for at least a year, yet they remembered him, had noticed his absence. They had a connection, built over hundreds of boxes of Pocky and two-minute conversations. Xander had never even been aware of it, but now he saw it. Slender as it was, this bond felt precious somehow, an unexpected gift — yet he’d been willing to trash what he had with Buffy and with Faith. He looked into the bag to avoid Willow’s gaze. “She thinks I’m handsome, huh?” He rubbed the heel of his hand at a tickle under his eye and it came away damp. Jesus, he was becoming a sap.
Willow caught his hand in hers and smoothed her palm over the tear, rubbing it into her skin and his. “It got to me, too,” she said. She closed her other hand around his hospital I.D. bracelet.
It all got to him then. His unbelievable luck in having such friends. His monumental stupidity. Sheer gratitude for being alive. Worry for the psychological battering Faith had endured. The fevered exhaustion of the last couple of days. A dozen other jumbled feelings. Had he mentioned his great fucking stupidity? Another tear threatened to slip free, and Xander knew there were plenty more backed up behind it. He ducked his head away from Willow. “Will, go home.”
One hand held tight to his; her other touched his face. “Don’t be silly. This is home.” She drew him into her arms and whispered into his hair, “Let go, let it go, it’s okay.”
So he did. This one time he kept from crawling into a cave with his pain, and let Willow be Steadfast Man.
And yeah, from the other end, steadfastness looked very much like a super power.
On Dr. HairGod’s next rounds, Xander was given to understand that the ideal of active involvement in his own wellness (to swipe a phrase from the social worker) did not extend to ripping out his catheter and rambling around his room. He’d known they wouldn’t be happy, but he hadn’t thought a doctor would actually yell at a patient fairly fresh from ICU. Xander found it surprisingly entertaining, but then, he’d been pretty desperate for amusement. Willow had stayed with him through the day. They’d talked a lot, tried to watch some television, and after Willow’s run to the gift shop, played every card game they could think of. Ultimately it became clear that he was well enough to be bored out of his skull and nothing was going to hold his attention as long as he was trapped in this room.
On second thought…. The door whispered open and Faith slipped into the room. No one noticed but Xander; the gaggle of interns accompanying Dr. HairGod — Michaels was his actual name — were still enthralled by his tirade, which had begun to wind down. Xander did enough noticing for all of them. Faith wore her black leather jacket and tight jeans, and suddenly he could think of a number of things he could do in this room that would keep him happily occupied. Though he had been trying throughout to look suitably chastised, he now couldn’t suppress a grin, which earned him another loud burst of alpha-male posturing from Dr. Michaels.
Faith spoke up. “If this is the line for ass-chewings, I guess I’m next.”
He watched the doctor’s face as she moved to the bed. Oh yeah. Definitely a charter member of the Faith fan club. She leaned in for a kiss and a quick finger-comb of Xander’s hair.
“Well, you can’t be here every minute of the day, Mrs. Harris. Ultimately it’s your husband who’s responsible—”
“Not about that,” Faith said. “I need to set something straight. About the stabbing. If the three of us could have a few minutes privately.”
Xander had to love how the interns filed out of the room without waiting for the attending’s orders or permission, and how Dr. Michaels was too smitten with her to be aware of it.
“So I’ll get to the point,” she said. “I lied.” She reached for Xander’s hand, laced her fingers through his. “Pretty much the whole story was bullshit. Stupid thing to do, but I freaked out. And I was protecting my brother.” This was interesting. “He’s the druggie in the family, and he’s the one who stabbed Xander. I was afraid to get the police involved, because he’s crazy and it would get ugly. So I made up a story that would give him time to run.”
“Do you know where he is?” Michaels asked.
“Nobody knows, and nobody wants to know. And I still will not speak to the police.”
“By law, I should—”
“I won’t give him up. I’m not all ‘He ain’t heavy, Father, he’s my brother’ about him. He weighs a fuckin’ ton. But he’s still my brother.”
“Mr. Harris?”
“I’m behind her one hundred percent.”
Michaels considered for a moment. “I understand. I’ll have a talk with your case worker, then. I’m glad you got here in time, Mrs. Harris. I’ve got good news.” He addressed Xander. “We’re all amazed at your progress. If nothing unforeseen happens, we’re discharging you tomorrow.” He stayed to give some instructions and answer Xander’s questions. “Is there anything else you need to know?”
“Just one more thing,” Faith said. She favored Xander with a sly smile. “Newlyweds and all. How soon can we … get back to normal?”
“As long as you’re reasonably careful, you can resume relations whenever Mr. Harris feels ready.”
Xander said, “Could you close the door on your way out?”
He was beginning to lose hope, but Michaels eventually did tire of the sound of his own voice, and left them. Faith kicked the door closed after him — he had, of course, chuckled at Xander’s “good line.”
“Did you know half the hospital staff’s in love with you?”
“Bullshit.” Faith put some fresh ice in his water glass, poured in some juice and handed it to him. “They like me because every time they suggested I go home and get some rest, I told them to go piss up a rope. I guess they like fierce.”
“Fierce saved my life.”
She dismissed that with a grunt, picking up the bag Spike had brought. “What’s this?”
“Andrew sent them. I haven’t even looked.”
She pulled out the first one in its protective sleeve. “What’s with the plastic slipcovers?”
“It’s a geek thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Hm. Rawhide Kid. I’d say definite overtones there.” She flashed him the front cover, so close to him that Xander could hear the soft creak of the leather jacket as she moved. “What else? Wonder Woman — holy shit, they’ve got her looking hot. Think I should get my hair cut like that?”
“Faith, if you got any hotter, there would be actual flames shooting out of this bed.”
“That might be cool.” She lifted the sheet, inspected him. “So what’s the story — they’ve got you disconnected from all the tubes and wires?” Before he could even answer, she was under the sheet with him and the hospital gown was somehow gone. Just his bare skin in contact with her leather and denim.
“Oh God,” he said. “Please don’t break me.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. Merest flash of teeth against his nipple, and he sucked in his breath. “I’m gonna fix you up better than new.”
Faith wasn’t much for hanging onto moments, but she felt right now that she could stay like this forever. Her head against his chest, listening to his heart, slowing now. She stroked the skin at the small of his back — her favorite part of his body, at least in the non-inherently-erotic category. He sleepily played with her hair.
“You seriously think half the people in this place are in love with me?”
“I think half the people in this bed are seriously in love with you.”
“Xander—” Her voice cut out on her again. Shit. She really wanted to say it. She’d come to it too late, like learning French once you were past the age when your tongue could wrap itself around certain sounds. In the joint she’d marveled at the way little endearments tumbled from Marquita’s lips: honey, sugar. Faith had tried these out this afternoon as she stood beneath the shower spray, practiced saying I love you. It would never come naturally. She’d sounded like she was coughing up a hairball.
Xander touched her face, whispered, “You don’t have to.”
“Fuck that. I want to.”
“Then that’s enough. Look, it’s the apocalypse. We just take things one day at a time, till we run out of days. That’s the way the Scooby gang’s always done it. Hey, wait a minute. This is your first apocalpyse, isn’t it? Technically, anyway. You were in a coma for the whole snake transformation thing, and in prison for the others.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” And how do you act? You rage, she guessed, against the end of things, especially when it looms over the beginnings of something as sweet as this, lying here in the darkening room with Xander feathering his fingertips across her lips. You fight, and you kick its ass if you can.
“Apocalypse is just like New Year’s Eve,” Xander said. “It’s bound to suck, but it’s more fun if you’re with someone you love.”
Faith threw her leg over his right, careful not to bump the injured one. The first kiss she gave him was soft and sweet. “Happy New Year, baby,” she whispered.
End