Fanfiction: Sunnydale Calling

* * *

Xander had been in some creepy-ass places, no question. But this one — he took his sweat-slicked palms from the steering wheel, resisted wiping them on his suit pants only by a huge effort of will. This one pretty much rocketed to the top of the Fear Factor wiggins parade. Nothing supernatural here at all, that was the strange thing. From what he could see from the street, just a high stone wall stretching a couple of city blocks. Coils of razor wire curling along its top like Christmas ribbon. A pair of turrets commanding a view of the yard within and a fair amount of surrounding acreage. Gray, all of it. Not a whiff of witchery, a hint of hoodoo.

That, Xander decided, is what made it so terrible.

It was purely in the architecture, designed to suck the soul right out of you, break your spirit. Didn’t matter that this was the Ladies Auxiliary; it had every bit of the Big House vibe. He wondered what it would be like to pass through those gates, knowing for the next year, five years, ten — maybe the rest of your life — this is where you’d live. He couldn’t imagine it.

He couldn’t stop trying to.

For the first time, Xander found himself thinking of Faith entering this place three years ago. That tough persona of hers clutched so tightly around her that it vibrated — he’d seen that up close; he knew. How long had it taken to shatter in this pit?

He hadn’t let himself think about her, not in the sense of putting himself inside her skin, since —

— since the night she’d almost raped him, killed him —

— since she’d allied herself with the mayor. Even though Xander had volunteered for this particular mission, it had been less about bringing her back into the fold than proving something to himself. Less about doing the right thing, and all about seeing if he could do the right thing. He wasn’t sure if the distinction made any sense; it didn’t have to. No one else had even thought about his history with Faith when he made the offer — things were so fucking dire that, well, that he was using words like dire. If Buffy could consider moving past her history with Faith, his own was not even a blip on the radar. Before he went into the women’s prison, though, he wanted to make it clear in his own mind. He was here to spring Faith for the fight against The First, but he’d also come to find out — not if Faith had changed, but Xander himself, for good or bad. To see if Willow had been right about him.

When he thought about his life — and he’d been doing way too much of that lately — he realized that since kindergarten he’d been all about trying to be who Willow thought he was. Not Anya, sad to say, or even Buffy. And whenever he’d lost sight of that, he’d lost himself, too. Coming here today was, in a way, all about living up to Willow’s ideal Xander.

* * *

It was the talk they’d had the day he took Willow to Tara’s grave. In a weird way it had been one of the best days of his life. To have Willow back again, have her really be Willow instead of this strange witchy being who’d spoken of herself in the third person as if she were a bug or something — there was joy in this, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. Though he’d have gladly taken every bit of her pain on himself, the things she’d lost and the things she’d done, if it would take her back to how things were before all the black-eyed weird shit. Since he couldn’t, he was left with the knowledge that he’d take Heartbroken Willow over The Thing That Was Not Willow — whatever that said about him, and he was not sure. He’d had a lot of time to obsess about it, while he waited for her on a bench by the water, harassed by aggressive panhandling geese.

She came back from the grave with red-rimmed eyes, but carrying with her a deepened sense of calm. She sat by his side and laced her fingers between his and they sat this way for a long time. Willow moved their hands onto her lap, where she stroked his work-scarred skin with her free hand. “I know — I know it’s hard for you sometimes,” she began. “It must seem like everyone has some kind of super strength or power but you, and —”

“Don’t,” he said gently. “It’s all kinds of okay.”

She covered his hand in both hers and squeezed. “Shhhhh. This is my big speech, and you know how I get.” She drew in a breath and pushed it out again; what he called the Willow Reset Button. “I know there are times you feel left out.”

“The Zeppo,” he murmured.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Sorry, go on.”

“But you do have a superpower, Xander. It’s just one that everybody discounts, but they’re wrong, it’s just as important as Buffy’s or mine or anyone’s. You’re like … well, Steadfast Man.” An explosive hiss of breath escaped him, and Willow jerked at his hand. “Don’t laugh, dammit! Yeah, it’s a dorky old-fashioned word anymore, because nobody is.”

“Will, I wasn’t laughing at you—” It wasn’t really a laugh, either. Derision, more like.

“I know who you were laughing at, mister. You listen to me. You took your dorky old-fashioned superpower and you saved the world.” She shifted so that she was kneeling on the bench; she put a hand to his jaw and made him look at her. “You saved me.”

“Will—” His throat closed and nothing more would come.

“You loved me and you wouldn’t stop loving me.” Her chin started to tremble as a small hiccup burst from deep in her chest, and Xander felt an answering ache in his own breast. “I hurt you and you loved me and I kept hurting you, and you— you—”

If she lost it, so would he. He put his fingertips over her lips and said, “Shhh. It was nothing. Kind of— kind of a Captain Kirk thing, ya know?” He slashed with his hand across the front of his shirt. “Sexy as all hell. All the girls—”

The sound of her keening stopped him short, cutting him deeper than her magics had on that day. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t ever tell you, but oh God—” She wound her small hands into his shirt as Xander pulled her closer, and she descended into fevered, incoherent sobs.

His own tears slid into her hair as he murmured reassurance. “I know, baby, you told me, it’s all right, it’s all right, I’m here, I’m unhurt, Willow Willow don’t cry…”

* * *

Steadfast Man. You couldn’t get more Classic Willow than that: equal parts generosity and self-effacement, assuming that he would do for just anybody what he’d done for her. As much as he wanted to believe in her version of him, Xander knew what he was. Yeah, he’d gone to Faith all those years ago with the same offer, ready to stand by her through whatever trouble she’d made for herself. She’d dealt out the hurt too, as ready to kill him as Will had been. But Faith had sliced him open in ways Willow never could. He’d let hate well up in the wounds she’d made and in the end he couldn’t wait to see her taken down. That was Willow’s Mr. Unconditional Love.

Six buzzsaw chords ripped through the truck cab and Xander had to laugh. The infamous witchy cd player strikes again, with the perfect song for the perfect moment: “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” He’d just come to the Clash — turned, you might say, by Spike the night Joe Strummer died. Spike boosted some cds and retreated to the basement to crank them — and get royally shitfaced. Xander had kept him company for both.

— If I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double — You nailed it, pal. That’s life with the Scooby gang.

Xander cut the engine and was enveloped in sudden silence. Get it done. He sucked in a little Joe Strummer attitude, like a quick drag on a cigarette, and stepped out of the truck. Walked toward that prison gate like he was making a beer run to the 7-Eleven.

* * *

Faith waited. That was part of being on the bottom of the food chain in here, that your time was worth nothing. Each day it was hurry up and wait. Strangely, this was the one time she didn’t mind. There was still so much to sort out.

She didn’t know who had pulled the strings — hell, in her case it had to be steel cables — to get her out. Clearly someone powerful. It wasn’t because of the great job she did in the prison kitchen or the literacy work she’d taken up with girls even worse off than her. The Watchers’ Council was the obvious guess, but some weird shit seemed to be going on with the Council. Faith was totally out of the loop — Buffy and her friends hadn’t made even the first move toward her, and Angel — he was a little like those anti-abortion preachers. There are so many babies to save that there just isn’t time to follow up on the ones who’ve made it past fetushood. (Faith should know; her mother used to enjoy telling her that Faith herself was a rescuee.) Angel, well, he was on to the next lost soul. So she was in radio silence here on the dark side of the moon, but still she knew something big had happened with those British prigs. She couldn’t say what gave her that feeling, but it was bone-deep.

A deep desire to fidget washed over her. Faith was better at stillness these days, but sometimes the old antsiness surged high. She let her eyes close. Breathing in, I calm my body…

“Just look at my Faith.”

Her eyes flew open, the breath left her lungs in a rush. “Fuck me dead —”

Richard Wilkins gave her a reproving look. “Language….” His pseudo-scowl melted into a grin, transforming his homely face. She’d missed that indulgent smile and his eyes that had always been a mirror for her, showing Faith someone lovable. Tears welled in them now, as he told her, “The last time I saw you, they said you wouldn’t live through the night. And just look at you.”

“They told me you were —”

“Dead? Darn tootin’ I was. Am. But you know what they say — you can’t keep an evil man down.” Wilkins exploded in his goofball laugh, awakening in Faith the awareness of just how much she’d missed that, too. Just as suddenly, he sobered. “Gosh. My little Faith. You haven’t been drinking your milk, have you? You’re like a broomstick. I would have come to you sooner, but it’s taken this long to build enough power to appear like this. We don’t have much time, so I’ll make it fast. You’re still my right arm, Faith, and I’m going to be needing you soon. Stay strong for me. Promise me?”

“I — How —” Faith still sat in her chair, but she felt like some part of her was floating away, distant and tiny as a lost balloon. She thought she’d sorted out these feelings, made her choices about how her life would be from now on. All that had gone slippery in her grasp now, and all she wanted to do was say yes, I promise. She managed to evade. “I can’t take this in.”

“You need time. I owe you at least that much, after you came so close to —” He clapped his hands together. “Enough gloomy talk. We’re both here now, that’s what’s important. You take some time. I’ll gather my strength, and I’ll be back.” Wilkins’s form seemed to shimmer for a moment, then sharpened again. “Faith, I am so proud of you.”

Just like that, he winked out.

“Wait, aren’t you the one—”

who was getting me out of here?

Faith sank back in her chair, panting now. Jesus. Whatnowwhatnowwhatnow? All the time she’d spent in counseling in this place, coming to terms with who she’d been and what she’d done. The most shattering part had been facing the fact that the only person in her life who’d ever loved her, been proud of her, looked at her with that light in his eyes (And tears! She’d seen them just now!) had been evil. Some of the girls in group had tried to make her feel dirty about it. A man his age, come on — surely she was repressing some memory — She’d done her share of suffering over that paradox. She hadn’t resolved it, but she’d made it something she could live with. It didn’t mean she was evil or worthless. One a’ those things, her cellmate Jinx had said, shrugging. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Bad people’s feelings aren’t any less real, and sometimes there’s good in ‘em. Now, though, it was all too close to see clearly.

The door swung open, and Faith hesitated, then stood. The warden smiled. “I’m sorry for the delay.” Behind her, a glimpse of broad shoulders, dark hair, dark suit before the door closed again. “I’m sure that didn’t calm your nerves. Everything’s in order, though.” The warden invited her to sit back down, compose herself a little, while she gave Faith a pep talk about how far she had come. “I know freedom seems a bit overwhelming right now. But Faith, you’ve shown how strong and capable you are. I’m convinced you’re going to be one of our greatest success stories.”

Faith blinked, stammered something, and finally the warden rose to usher her out, into the custody of whoever waited out there. As she stepped into the outer office, the man in the suit turned from the window to face her. She squinted into the light until recognition finally sank in.

Holy fuck. The second last person she ever expected to see today. Xander Harris.

* * *

He let her take it in at her own pace, saying very little. She’d braced herself for an onslaught of chatter during what would be a long drive, but Xander surprised her. When she’d known him before, even his silences seemed jittery, filled with his desperation to come up with something to say, something to do. Xander too had learned something about stillness these last four years. Faith stared out over the six-lane cluster-fuck that was L.A. freeway traffic, and used all this luxurious contemplation time to roll two things over and over in her head. The buzzclickrollslam of the last gates she’d passed through as she left the prison. Sounded just the same as the first time they shut her inside, but the way it reverberated in her chest and her head made a world of difference. As counterpoint, a piece of the song that had come slam-dancing out of the stereo when Xander started up the truck.

Exactly who’m I s’posed to be? Don’t know which clothes even fit me…

He’d snapped off the stereo, but the lines echoed in her head. They’d nailed that — literally, figuratively. Faith left prison in the same outfit she’d worn walking in. Despite Jinx’s best efforts with a needle, it hung on her. So did her old toughness. It came out reflexively about half the time she spoke, but it sounded off somehow. Silence seemed a better fit.

After a long while, Xander spoke. “How’re you doing? Hungry?”

“I’m still good. Maybe in an hour.”

“So — the next off-ramp.” He pointed at the Shell sign that loomed high over the next exit, shimmering like a mirage through the heat and exhaust of half a mile of slow-moving cars. “I’d better start merging.”

Faith laughed. “It is — Jesus.”

“Hard to take?”

“Beautiful. Weirdly enough.” A sudden impulse buzzed through her, and before it could dissolve, she gave it voice. “Yeah, let’s get off here. What I’d really like to do — could we go to a grocery store?”

Right this minute she wanted to bask in all the wack shit that came along with freedom. Traffic jams, fluorescent lighting, perky, innocuous shopping music, and the sheer too-muchness of shelves and shelves of toilet paper and toothpaste. She longed to be paralyzed by choice, a concept she hadnt snuggled up against in a very long time.

“Let’s do it,” Xander said without hesitation.

She couldn’t even get inside before it hit her. The double glass doors slid apart and Faith stepped through, then through force of habit she stopped to wait for the outer doors to close behind her before the inner ones opened.

Xander, oblivious, walked on. “So what is it you’ve missed most? Ben & Jerry’s?” The glass panels parted for him. “There’s a whole parade of new flavors, we could get ‘em all and make ourselves really sick — Faith?”

She stood rooted where she’d stopped, lost in wonder. The feeling of the day’s heat at her back, meeting the air conditioned chill of inside. Both things at once. People coming in and going out at the same time, uncontrolled . In prison, gates came in sets of twos, and one of any given pair was always locked, like those spaceship airlocks in sci-fi movies. Here, she could go in, or turn around and leave. Whatever she wanted. Someone jostled her from behind and she tensed, battle-ready. A gangly subteen girl flashed braces, apologizing, touching her arm and then continuing on inside. Faith realized she was trembling.

“Faith? Are you okay?”

She roused herself, pulled her armor snug around her. “Five by five.”

They ended up with the Ben & Jerry’s after all, after Xander’s rundown of the merits and drawbacks of various new flavors. A pint of Makin’ Whoopie Pie (you’ve got your chocolate and your marshmallow fluff action, like the S’mores, only with crispy cookie chunks instead of the whole soggy graham cracker thing, and really all you need to know is, graham crackers were originally invented to discourage people from having sex) and one spoon, which they passed hand to hand as they sat on a bench outside the grocery.

“So,” Xander said after a pause, “you look good.”

Faith had never acquired a talent for social lies, but she was adept at spotting them. “You got fat.”

Xander’s twitch of a smile made her regret her mouth. “I got a lot of things.”

There was a whole shitload of history piled into those six colorless words, but Xander wasn’t elaborating, and Faith didn’t know how to draw any of it out of him. She dug the spoon in around a slab of chocolate cookie, grateful for something that required her attention.

“Can I ask you kind of a personal question?” he asked.

Faith pushed the pint back at him. “It’s everything you’ve heard. Hot girl-on-girl action, every night. Did you think about it a lot?”

“Got me through some long nights,” Xander said. Not even a stammer or blush.

She found herself more rattled than him, sorry again that she’d baited him. “Ask.”

“Been seeing any dead people?”

The spoon nearly slipped from her fingers. “Who are you now, Bruce Willis, Child Psychologist?”

“We’ve got a new Big Bad. I guess you’ve figured out that you got sprung early because we need your help. This is the Biggest, Fucking Baddest Big Bad Ever, in fact, it’s the Wellspring of Bad. You might have heard this catchy little slogan: from beneath you it devours? I can see that you have. This thing — The First Evil, it calls itself — is the most serious shit we’ve ever faced, and I don’t see how we’re going to put it down.” He accepted the pint and the spoon and scraped around the sides of the container. “The good news is, I never see how we’ll fight these things, and we always do. Anyway, one of The First’s nifty parlor tricks is taking on the form of a dead person. It will fuck with your head like you cannot believe. We had a run-in with it a few years ago, right about the time you showed up. Angel came close to committing suicide after it got done with him. So I wanted to warn you.” He held out the ice cream, and their hands touched. Faith felt it as a sharp buzz, like touching your tongue to a 9-volt battery. “I saved you the last bite of cookie,” Xander said.

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.

Though she was exempt from regular kitchen duty because she trained the potentials, Faith volunteered most evenings anyway. She liked it, she told Xander, and when he got off the job site early enough, he wandered into the kitchen first to see if she was there, and if she was, he’d help out.

Faith could hack through heads of lettuce and several pounds of carrots and potatoes in no time. “This? This is nothing,” she’d said the first time he marveled at her work. “I’m used to dinner for four thousand.” She’d flourished the knife she held. “Sweet! It’s not chained down.” They all managed to sit down to dinner by seven or seven-thirty now rather than nine or ten. Under her tutelage, Xander was getting pretty handy in the kitchen himself.

He worked at her side because the kitchen was where she sang. She got caught up in the rhythm of her work, and first she’d start humming, then she’d lift her voice and Xander’s breath would catch. It was always a gospel song; she said they were the only songs she knew. Faith told him the kitchen lead she’d worked with, Marquita, had sung them as they moved seamlessly from making one meal into the next. Marquita had been the one who’d brought her into the choir.

The potentials grew a little less eager for KP duty with Faith than they’d first been; he wasn’t sure if it was the flashing blades that made them nervous or the churchy music. Willow, Spike and Anya, he had his theories about. Maybe they thought she was going to start proselytizing at the first conversational lull. Buffy’s hackles rose whenever she got near Faith, singing or not; she kept her distance. She had other things on her mind anyway.

Xander didn’t care. The two of them could do as much work as six potentials, in less time. And there was always an opportunity to slip out onto the back porch for some, well, neckless necking. That was all they’d managed in the week she’d been here. With training, patrols and kitchen duty, her waking hours were full, and there was nowhere on the premises with even a splinter of privacy. He contented himself for now with her voice and their quiet teamwork.

* * *

Xander found Buffy at one of the campus picnic tables, a trayful of dubious cafeteria offerings before her. “I hope you didn’t wait for me to start in on that,” he said. “Really your only chance with the goulash is that first too-hot, tastebud-searing bite.” He set his lunch pail and hardhat down and sat on the bench across from her. “I’m glad you called. This is nice.”

“I’m glad I caught you in time. It’s really been forever since we’ve done this.”

He looked around them at the high schoolers packed along the other tables or spread out on the grass with their brown bags and cafeteria trays. “Yet strangely the same,” Xander said. “The cool kids still won’t sit with us.”

She grinned. “Now more than ever. So whatcha got in the silvery lunchpail?”

He flipped the latches. “The silvery lunchpail is why guys like me get into jobs like mine. It’s all about the silvery lunchpail of goodness. Silvery lunchpail guys do not trade lunches, so get that out of your head right now.”

Xander felt it coming on like a migraine, another of those conversations that spun out endless banter like threads of cotton candy. Jesus, it depressed him. He hated having them with his friends — they were a sign that things had changed, or else that things needed to change but were stuck. Exchanges like this exhausted him, but were in some way easier than moving past them and talking about something real. It seemed lately he had these the most with Buffy.

He unwrapped his sandwich. “Roast beef. On some kind of peasant bread. Faith placed a permanent ban on squishy white bread.”

She took a bite of the goulash, made a face. “You guys seem to be getting pretty tight.”

His first reaction was relief. A split second later, the Captain Kirk in his head ordered shields thrown up at full power. Xander shrugged. “Turns out I like the cooking. There’s kind of a rhythm to it, a flow. Like my work here, when it goes well.”

“You guys seem to be getting pretty tight.”

“Yeah, you said that. Is this one of those counseling techniques? Are we here to talk about some problem I have?”

“Xander —”

“Sorry. Sorry. Defensive. Yeah, I’ve spent some time with her. Mostly just kitchen duty. She’s part of this fight, Buffy. At our request. What are we going to do, lock her in a closet until it’s time to train the girls, or fight, or die? She’s been locked up.”

“For good reason.”

“I’m well aware of that. Look, you’ve got your history with her. I can respect that. She and I have our own history, and that’s all I can take into account when I decide whether or not to move beyond it.”

Buffy shoved her tray aside. “I can’t believe this. Have you forgotten what she did to me? She dug her hooks into everything that was mine. Angel. Riley.” She cast a glance around at the students nearby and lowered her voice. “She took my body. All Faith wants is to take something else that belongs to me, and she doesn’t care what.”

“Buffy? Hello?” Xander snapped his fingers three times in front of her face. “Tell me when the fuck I ever belonged to you. Because what I remember is practically tying myself up with a big red bow and presenting myself to you, and you couldn’t wait to head for the returns desk. Now that Faith might have an interest, I’m your property? Excuse me, but that’s just fucked up.”

“You’re my friend.”

“Am I? Sometimes lately I wonder if you even see me.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve had an apocalypse on my hands.”

Xander closed the lid on the lunchpail, snapped the catches. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been right here in the middle of the fight. Just like all the other apocalypses.” He shoved the waxed paper with his sandwich across the table. “Why don’t you take the rest of this? Like everything else, it’s yours.”

“Goddammit, Xander,” she spat, “don’t you show me up in front of these kids. I’m their counselor.”

“That’s bullshit. You invited me out here to lay this on me, counting on the fact that we were in public. Nice variation on the swanky-restaurant-breakup tactic, except I don’t happen to give a shit what these kids think.” He swung his legs over the picnic bench and stood. “You know, Buff, you’re all about redemption and forgiveness, as long as we’re talking about someone with a set of fangs and a body count in the hundreds. But anyone else can go fuck themselves.”

“You can anyway.”

Xander looked at her and nodded once. He snatched up his hardhat and lunch and stalked off to sling them into his truck. There’s your fucking real conversation, Harris. Though he felt like a juvenile asshole for doing it, he peeled out of the parking lot and rocketed into the street, headed away, anywhere.

* * *

Xander skipped dinner at Camp Scooby, heading to the Bronze to shoot some pool. He left after one game and a beer; the band sucked and the crowd was too young. After burning some time in aimless driving, he found himself again in the truck outside the house on Revello. The soundtrack was different this time — a cd he’d burned of Sonnyboy Williamson II, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells and Little Walter. It was music that went down well with smoldering anger, and even better with each successive belt from the bottle he’d bought on the way home. He watched the upstairs windows darken by ones and twos, later tonight than most, because Xander hadn’t been there to impose order. Well, it was nice to know he served his purpose in the grand scheme of things.

Buffy, Spike and Faith would already be out patrolling. The past week more often than not, they went out together but Faith returned separately from Spike and Buffy. Xander didn’t know whose idea it was to split up, whether Faith was uncomfortable fighting by Spike’s side, or Buffy didn’t want her there. Or, he supposed, Faith could be staying out to let off some steam after a good fight. It had been her way back in wilder times.

He’d thought to wait for Faith’s return, but the Wolf’s lye-soaked growl made Xander too edgy to sit still. —Tell ol’ Automatic Slim, tell ol’ razor-toting Jim — Yeah, yeah, this was dangerous music made by dangerous men, another fitting soundtrack for the Scooby life. —We gonna honky-tonk till midnight, we gonna fuss and fight till daylight— That was it, man, and that was what the problem was here in the last bastion of vampire slaying. They needed to get out there, bring it like Buffy had said they’d do, but here they were, still waiting on the next move from the First. And while they waited, they ripped at each other, while the First popped in periodically with a Corpse-O-Gram to keep them at one another’s throats. Fuck that, fuck waiting around. Xander Harris could pitch a wang dang doodle that equaled anything Howlin’ Wolf could. Instead of sitting around in his truck, he’d go find Faith, finish her patrol with her. He rooted around behind the seats and came up with a stake and a knife — not as much use as a sword, but concealable — and started off in the direction of the cemetery.

It took a while, but he found her in one of the rougher alleys in town, announced by the clatter of garbage cans and produce crates as she fought a pair of biker vamps who would’ve given him pause even without the fangs. On a normal night. Faith kicked one of them across the face, and as he stumbled backwards, Xander caught him by his greasy hair and punched the stake through his heart. The other lunged at Faith, and after a left hook and an elbow to his head, she kicked his feet from under him and dusted him where he sprawled.

Xander looked around them. “All clear.”

She tucked her stake into the waistband of her skirt. “What are you doing here?”

“I haven’t patrolled for a while. Thought I’d look for you.”

Faith nodded.

“How’s it been out here?”

“Not a lot going on,” she said. “And just vamps. I haven’t seen any Bringers.”

He fell in step beside her as she walked out of the alley. “From beneath you it endlessly farts around.”

Faith cast him a bemused glance. “You’re in a mood tonight.”

“I came to a realization, that’s all. Less sitting around and waiting, more going out and making things happen.”

She stopped, grabbing Xander’s arm and jerking him to a halt. “Have you been drinking?”

“What makes you think —”

“I can smell it, for one. What the fuck, Xander? Are you trying to get me killed?”

“What the fuck right back at you. You’re making it sound like I’m drunk and got in your way. I just dusted that vamp. It was a textbook fight.”

“It was. And you felt bulletproof, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” Come to think of it, he still did.

She shoved him back a step. “Goddammit, Xander, that is what’s going to get somebody killed. Me — or you — or somebody else.”

“Kids, kids.” A guy in a suit, definitely slumming in the bars along the strip, peered at them drunkenly. “I don’t know what you’re fighting about, but love is precious. Come on, now, buddy, buy that pretty lady some flowers.”

Hand still splayed against Xander’s chest, Faith turned toward the drunk guy and showed her teeth. “Look, Dr. Phil, why don’t you go wave down a cab while you’ve still got the arms to do it.”

Backing away, Suit Guy put his hands up in the universal hey, I’m harmless. He shot Xander a look of exaggerated sympathy. “You kids have a nice night. Taxi!”

Xander looked back to Faith, starting to grin. “Well, that was —”

She shoved at him again. “I’m not done. Dammit, Xander, I don’t have that many friends. I can’t afford to lose the ones I’ve got.”

They stood toe-to-toe in the wash of red neon, their breathing ragged. Xander felt a buzz of electricity move through him from where her hand pressed against his chest. It looped back into her and in the next breath they were kissing. No tender exploration like the other night, just heat and hunger and hands.

Faith pulled him back into the alley they’d just cleared. Her hands invaded his shirt as he ran his up her short skirt. He made her breath hiss and catch as they fumbled their way toward a padlocked doorway in deeper shadows. There she hitched her skirt up and unzipped his jeans, inviting him to catch the wave that she rode, rising and falling with her rhythms until they both fell back panting against the graffiti’d steel door.

* * *

Xander awoke to the warmth of sunlight on his skin. He inhaled a complex bouquet of stale air mixed with a vague suggestion of eau d’alley and the sharp scent of their mingled sweat. Disoriented, he blinked in the bright light and tried to determine where he was. Faith’s old apartment, in her bed, though he didn’t remember spending that much time there last night. She still slept beside him, her dark hair fanned out across the pillow.

He took an inventory of aches and bruises. The worst was a long floor burn on his forearm, though later it might get some competition from his left knee, which he’d managed to bang on … well, something. Everything else seemed minor, scratches mostly. Last night’s exploits made him think of an expression he’d heard the first time in the boys’ locker room at Sunnydale High. Back when Larry was still in the closet and working the overcompensation angle for all it was worth. A girl’s name would come up and Larry would boom, “Man, I’d like to tear off a piece of that.” Okay, that had freaked his shit right out. Even after he’d lost his virginity, even after exploring all 30 non-vanilla flavors with Anya, he’d never had sex that even remotely fit that description. Until now.

It had been about a 50-50 split as to who’d torn what off of whom, but looking at her now, Xander saw no physical signs of the night before. Eyes closed, face free of makeup, she looked impossibly young. Too pale, that was from her last few years in prison and would take some time. The change that moved him most was the vulnerability in her face. Gone were the furrows between her brows, the set of her mouth that marked her anger at what the world had done to her, her suspicion of what it would try next. Xander could spend at least three days watching her sleep like this.

What he got was another five minutes. There were none of Anya’s slow, catlike stretches as she awakened. Something just kicked her starter and her eyes flew open, wariness flooding back. Xander had a feeling his presence had something to do with that; he wondered if he was the first man who’d ever been allowed to see Faith unguarded and vulnerable, asleep.

“Hey,” he said, touching her arm. “Want me to run down, get a couple espressos?”

“No. Get dressed and get out.” She was halfway across the room by the time she finished speaking, grabbing up their tangled clothes, throwing his across at him. “Now, move!”

They were both only half dressed when the Bringers kicked in the door.

* * *

They swarmed her so fast and purposefully that Faith couldn’t even count them. She dove for the only weapons left in the apartment, her short sword and Xander’s knife, scattered with their clothes. A little too hand-to-hand for her comfort, but she was glad enough to have them. Right before her view was cut off by the convergence of dark robes, she caught a flash that was Xander vaulting the kitchen counter to disappear behind the work station. So much for bulletproof.

The Bringers weren’t carrying the battle staffs Xander had described to her. Just the wicked-looking curved knives. No abductions on the menu today, then. They were here for wet work.

She kicked and slashed with both blades, dodging their feints. Four of them, she thought, but it was hard to be sure. Faith dropped to the floor and slashed at ankles, rolling out of their circle when the wounded Bringer gave way. It was harder for her to maneuver where she rose, but harder too for them to set on her at once.

The first who rushed her she met with a kick that sent him staggering backward into the kitchen work island. Another came at her from the side, and she slashed at him, drove him back. She cast a glance toward the kitchen area, waiting for the first Bringer’s next lunge, but he lay on the hardwood floor, hood yanked back. A long barbecue fork was sunk deep into his spine at the neck. Dead or not, he wouldn’t be getting up.

Faith snatched up a floor lamp, jerking its cord out of the wall, and thrust it at the next Bringer. It made an awkward weapon, too bottom-heavy to be effective, but she swung and jabbed to crowd the priest against the kitchen counter. Xander was ready; he swung a monstrous cast-iron skillet, and the Bringer dropped like a stone. Faith reached for the sword to run him through, but yet another of these assembly-line fuckers blindsided her, and they tumbled to the floor together.

He had his curved blade clutched in one hand, but Faith thrashed until he could not lift his weight from her to bring the weapon up. She writhed, cursed, kneed, spat, gouged, but neither of them could get enough distance to inflict any real damage. When the Bringer rose to his knees, it was because Xander had one arm around his neck, his other hand closing around the wrist of his knife hand. He peeled the priest off her, and Faith scrabbled for her own blade then plunged it into the folds of his robe.

Xander let him loose too soon, and the Bringer’s dead weight landed across her legs. She struggled out from under, turning the body to wrench her sword free. Faith crawled across the blood-slicked floor to take care of the one Xander had belted with the frying pan, and then turned back. Last one.

Xander was still on his knees, panting, reflexes leaden. She screamed his name as the last Bringer lunged. Xander pitched forward, sprawling in the Bringer’s path, bringing him down. Faith used the blade on him, then rifled his robes, coming up with nothing except an ornate sheath, empty. She took that and went on to the next body, stripping it of weapons.

“Get their knives,” she ordered. Faith pulled on her shirt and shoes and ran to what was left of the door, checking both ends of the hallway. “We’re clear, but we’ve got to get out of here.” When she turned back, he hadn’t yet risen. Jesus, the place was bloody, especially where he knelt in the midst of the fallen Bringers. “Damn, Xander. You fought like a motherfucker.” But move, she wanted to scream.

“Bleeding like one, too,” he said. His voice sounded vague, distracted. “Think I’m gonna need some help.”

He cupped his hands together over his left thigh, curling his upper body in toward it. Faith didn’t realize what she was seeing for a precious few seconds. “Jesus, no, Xander! Don’t pull it!” She skidded onto her knees before him, laid her hands on his wrists — so carefully, don’t make things worse — “No no no, Christ, Xander, leave it there —”

Bright blood slicked his hands, sprayed across Faith’s shirt and spattered onto the floor’s tacky surface. He looked up at her, confused, eyes beginning to glaze already. “But … it doesn’t—”

“We have to get to the infirma— the hospital. Now.” She ran for the closet and yanked the pink dress off the hanger. Took it in her fists and tore it straight down the middle. (“Nobody knows what you are. Not even you, Little Miss Seen-It-All.” You had that right, Boss. Who’d have seen this coming?) One half she knotted tight above the knife hilt; the other she tied below.

“Oh, great. Pink?”

“Not for long.” She hauled him upright, yanked the comforter off the bed and bunched it under her other arm as she helped him out of the apartment.

“My shoes —”

“Forget ‘em. We need to go.”

It was an agony waiting for the elevator, wondering if he’d be better off if she made him limp down the stairs. His fingers twitched toward the hilt. “I think I should get this out,” he said.

“No. Listen. You’ll bleed faster. Keep it in, it’ll compress the artery.” The elevator door rattled open.

“Artery?” Xander repeated. “That can’t be good.” He blinked. “Shouldn’t it hurt more?”

“It will.” If you’re lucky, you stupid sonofabitch. “C’mon, focus. We have to get to your truck. Can you reach your keys?”

He tried to slide a hand into his pocket, but his fingers might as well have been inflated rubber gloves. Faith slapped his hand aside and hooked the keys from his pocket. They made it to the street and she fumbled the key into the truck door.

“Lady, you need an ambulance.” Another fucking advice-monger. Sunnydale was crawling with them, worse than vampires.

“I need you the fuck out of my way.” She draped the comforter around Xander’s shoulders and settled him into the passenger seat, careful not to disturb the knife hilt.

“Maybe he’s right,” Xander said as she climbed into the truck cab. “Ambulance might be faster.”

“I guarantee you it’s not,” she said, firing up the engine and pulling into traffic. “Plus one thing: I don’t give a shit if I run anyone down on the way.” She set about proving it, weaving through downtown traffic, across the yellow line and back, whatever it took. “Stay with me, Xander. Talk to me.”

“I just had this goddamn thing detailed,” he said. “Stupid, you know? From beneath you it devours, and I really need to spend two hundred for a sparkling-clean truck?” His words were starting to slur, space out. “This shit’s never coming out.”

“It was looking good, though.” She was desperate to keep him alert, engaged. “A nice ride back from prison. I appreciate that.”

“Oh fuck, the least,” he said. “The jeans are shot, too.” He reached toward the knife again. “This really looks wrong.”

She clamped her hand around his wrist. “Xander. Don’t touch that or you will fucking die. Which way up here? Right or left?” Faith knew exactly where she was going, but she wanted him to fight the darkness she knew was creeping around the edges of his vision.

“Left, right up here. Left right left right,” he chanted in an infantry cadence. “Did you know I was in the army one night? I had a good wife but she left, right! Only I was the one who left. And she wasn’t quite my wife. Would have been.”

“Who, Xander? Stay awake and tell me.”

“Willow, I tried so hard, I really did.”

Faith tightened her fingers around his wrist, dug in her nails. “No last words, goddammit!” She felt something tear in her throat, but pushed her voice out louder. “Do you understand me, Private Harris?”

He was half slumped over his leg, but made an effort to straighten. “Sir, yes sir.”

She saw the portico ahead, the big letters that would light up in neon red at night: EMERGENCY. The truck skidded to a stop at the double doors and she scrambled down to the pavement, screaming for a doctor. A pair of orderlies dashed out of the sliding doors, toward her, taking in her blood-drenched clothes. “In there, in there, inside the fucking truck! Knife wound, his leg, it got the artery.”

One of the orderlies ran for a gurney while the other opened the passenger door. Screw this, there wasn’t time. She shouldered the orderly aside and gathered Xander into her arms.

“Miss, you’re going to hurt yourself and him too —”

Fingers clamped on her shoulder, and Faith twisted back to bite them. “Back off.” She had Xander to the second set of doors when the other orderly met them with the gurney. She laid him on the crisp white sheet, taking up one of his hands — so cold — and running alongside as they wheeled him into an ER cubicle.

“Miss, what’s your relationship to —”

“Wife.” No one was going to hang her up in red tape; she was staying right here.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, take care of him. Please.”

“Can you tell us what happened?”

Jesus. What could she say? Once she was connected to those bodies in her old place, she’d be back in the joint so fast her head would swim. She suddenly realized she was being edged out of the knot of white coats at his gurney. “No. I need to —”

“We have to get him stabilized.” The nurse drew the curtain and panic knifed through Faith.

“No.”

She steered Faith to the cot next to Xander’s cubicle. “We’ll put you right here, and make sure you’re all right, and you can tell us what happened while we’re checking you out.”

Shut up, shut up. Faith couldn’t hear the terse exchanges behind the green curtain, except for isolated commands that meant nothing to her. “What are they doing?”

“Getting him fluids, typing his blood. We can help him better if you tell us what happened.”

God forgive her. “I think he took something. He talked about some guys being after him, but it was some kind of spooky shit, not just guys, but without faces, something like that. Then he cut himself.” Xander, Xander, I’m so sorry. I can’t talk to the police, not and stay with you.

“Do you know what it was he took?”

Faith shook her head.

“Does he use drugs occasionally? Regularly?” Why did everyone talk so loud in the ER?

“No.” Faith’s own voice was in tatters; she could barely speak above a whisper. “Never. He’s a real straight arrow. But he’s been — there were deaths in the family.” God, she hoped she wasn’t making things worse with this horseshit. “Please let me see him.”

They were about to take him up to the OR. Though his clothes had been cut away, the ceremonial knife was still sunk deep in the flesh of his thigh. He was half-conscious, but recognized her. “Not so much with the farting around now, at least,” he murmured as she took his hand. Xander seemed dreamy; they must’ve given him something, despite what she’d said. “We make a pretty good team.”

“Yeah, we do.”

They began wheeling the gurney away, and she kept his hand, walking at his side until they physically stopped her at the double doors of Surgery.

It was painfully bright in the OR, and cold. Sharp smells like death. Green blurs moved in and out of view, spitting words he couldn’t take in. Pain rushed through him, pathways thrown wide open. From a trickle to full-bore firehose. Like nothing he’d ever imagined.

Before he went under (in case he didn’t come through) he wanted to see one human face. It was all hidden here, beneath caps, masks, eye protection. He wanted to look in someone’s eyes.

He saw her then, standing back from the commotion. Blonde hair shining like (clich�, so sue me, I’m dying) a halo. Her eyes met his, held them. “Xander. They’re saying it’s not looking good. I need to tell you, in case —”

They were trying to turn his head, insert a breathing tube, but he fought them, caught her eye again.

“You’ve always been such a huge disappointment to me. But today was a revelation.”

“Xander.” Voices so loud. He flinched. “We need you to cooperate. Just relax for me.”

“Today,” said Buffy, “was really your worst fuck-up of all time.”

Whatever they’d shot him up with took him then. The OR lights dimmed then went dark.

* * *

Somehow Faith carried off the pretense that she was Xander’s wife through the entire admissions process, signing half a ream of papers and sitting through the interview with the clerk. She told everything she knew and made up the rest. If things went well, he could help her sort it out later. If not, well, it mattered as much as a freshly detailed truck in the face of the apocalypse.

Once released, she found a pay phone and called the house, asking for Willow.

She waited for the sound of the phone being passed hand to hand, adrenaline shakes hitting her so hard she thought her legs would go. She sat on the floor, her back against the wall under the bank of phones. “Willow, listen, it’s Faith.” She read the doubtful pause that followed. “I know, my voice is shot to shit, but it’s me. I need you at the hospital. Now. It’s Xander.”

“Oh God. What’s happened?”

“Those eyeless fucks. They attacked us, cut him bad. He’s in surgery right now.”

Faith heard her soft noise of dismay over the line. Yet when Willow found her voice again, it had assumed a strength Faith couldn’t find within herself. “What about you? Are you okay?”

The question — the concern she’d never expected from Willow — closed her throat for a few seconds. “Bruised, is all. I need you to bring some clothes. I’ll have to shitcan these. Grab whatever, just get here soon.”

“Have you called Buffy?”

“No, but she needs to be here, especially if she’s O positive. You call her. Just work it out so I have a few minutes with you. We have to talk. If you don’t find me down on the first floor, try the blood bank. Third floor, I think.”

“There in ten minutes.”

Faith reached up and behind her, fumbling the phone into its cradle. She leaned back against the wall to wait for the shakes to pass. Stared stupidly at the pale skin of her arm against the washed-out pattern on the hospital gown they’d given her to cover her bloody clothes. Faded color marking so much suffering, waves and waves of it. A pair of green-clad legs halted in front of her, and their owner squatted to speak with her. One of the ER guys, carrying a plastic drawstring bag bundled under his arm.

“Mrs. Harris. Why don’t we find you someplace more comfortable? You’ve got someone coming?”

She nodded.

“That’s good. We’ll make sure they know how to find you.” He helped her to her feet and brought her to the surgical waiting room. He got her a hot cup of tea, dumping a fair amount of sugar in it. “You’re still a little in shock; this will help.”

Faith sipped; the syrupy taste disgusted her, but she swallowed some more.

“You did all the right things,” the ER doctor told her. “His chance of making it is all due to you. And there’s a damn good trauma team in the OR with him.”

“Thanks,” she said numbly.

He pushed the plastic bag at her. “You already have his wallet” — true, they’d retrieved it for his insurance card and then turned it over to Faith — “but here’s the rest of his things. The clothes are pretty much destroyed. If you decide to dispose of them here — same goes for your own clothes — make sure you use the biohazard receptacles.”

He droned on a moment or two longer before returning to the ER, but the rest of it was lost on Faith. Bloodless sonofabitch. Dispose. Receptacle. They all had language here to keep the nasty facts of suffering and death at arm’s length. Her clothes and Xander’s, soaked and stiffened with his blood, were nothing but biohazard to them. Something potentially dangerous if they weren’t kept safely segregated from ordinary hospital trash. How could these people help him if they had such little fucking clue who he was, what his blood had bought?

Willow appeared in the waiting room doorway, and Faith rose to her feet, letting the hospital gown fall open.

Willow’s eyes widened. “Holy cats.” She enclosed Faith in her arms, asking again if she was okay. Faith stiffened at first in her embrace, unsure what to do, then she let herself relax into it, draw the strength the Willow offered.

She settled Faith back into her chair, freshened her tea from the pot on the coffee cart. It felt alien to be taken care of, especially by Willow, who’d always felt so threatened by her. Willow sat too, warming her hands on her own cup of tea. “Buffy’ll be here soon. What is it you need to tell me?”

Faith looked down at her cup, the dark amber liquid. “You and Xander. I know you two are really tight.”

“Sure.” Puzzlement still in her voice.

“In the truck. After. He was hazy, everything got kind of tangled. But he talked about you. About, you know, almost marrying. He wanted to tell you.” Fat tears spilled onto Faith’s cheeks, and she scrubbed at them with the back of her hand. “Fuck. He said, ‘Willow, I tried, I really did.’ I thought you should know.” That was all she could get out.

Tears shimmering in her own eyes, Willow touched Faith’s hand then drew hers back. “It’s important to you, doing the right thing.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m glad you told me. But I don’t — I don’t get it. Anya was the one he was supposed to marry. He said it was me?”

“I thought —” Faith shook her head. “He didn’t say. Just that he almost had a wife. I asked who, trying to keep him saying anything, keep him conscious. That’s when he said, ‘Willow, I tried.’ I connected the two. Still. It was important to him. He wanted you to know.”

Willow’s breath hitched, tears making glistening tracks down her cheeks. “I can’t think what he meant. What if I never —” She censored that idea, but it curled into their minds like smoke, hazing over all other thought.

Faith drew herself up a few moments later, determined to bury her fears in some kind of action. “I want to get some slayer blood in him,” she told Willow. “Maybe it’ll — fuck knows what it’ll do. But it can’t hurt.”

Together they went upstairs to the blood bank, were installed in vacant donation chairs where they gaped at the television set, not talking, definitely not watching the dark red ribbon each had pulsing out of her arm. That was how Buffy found them a few minutes later.

“Willow. Mrs. Harris.”

Faith looked around at the technicians. None seemed to have heard. “Keep it down, B. I did whatever it took to get his ass into surgery. Take a peek inside his truck if you think that was a bad idea. Looks like a fucking slaughterhouse floor.”

Her words brought a fresh wave of tears from Willow, but anger rode along with them. “For God’s sake, you two. Don’t fight.”

“Faith, what happened?”

“What’s your blood type?”

“O positive.”

“Grab a chair and open a vein, B., and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

The technicians unhooked Faith and Willow, plying them with cookies and donuts, juice and buttons that read Be Nice to Me — I Gave Blood, then got Buffy set up. Once they all drifted off to return their attention to the soap opera playing on the far television, Faith sat by Buffy’s side, tearing into a packet of Oreos as she described the attack.

“We got all of them,” she finished. “Xander killed one, and the two of us together took care of the other three.”

“This all happened when — last night?”

“No, this morning sometime.”

“Because I’m wondering now where the hell you both were last night.”

Faith felt suddenly exhausted. “What does that matter now?”

“It matters because it’s not The Real World: Sunnydale we’re living here. We’re a camp of defenders. And I know the concept of discipline has never been high on your hit parade, but now it’s going to mean the difference between life and death. Where were you two?”

“My old place, the loft. You’ve been there.” That was the understatement of the decade. She and Buffy had tried to kill one another there; Buffy had nearly succeeded.

“Jesus H. Christ, Faith. You took Xander to your and the mayor’s old love nest?”

Faith shot to her feet. The room tilted and grew dim.

Willow reached out a hand to steady her. “Easy. You’re a quart low.”

Faith waited until Buffy’s face became clear in her vision. “You do not want to say that ever again.”

“If it belonged to Wilkins, it’s as good as the Hellmouth Bed & Breakfast. Were you trying to set Xander up, or are you that stupid?”

Stupid, Faith thought. Stupid, thoughtless, horny beyond clue. The both of them, but the fault was hers.

“Ease up, Buffy,” Willow said. “Can’t you see what’s in front of your face? She’s in love with him.”

The only thing worse to Faith than seeing the shock and surprise in Buffy’s expression was knowing that it was mirrored in her own.

* * *

She stayed at his side all that night because they let her. First she’d locked herself in a restroom for a cat bath and to change into the clothes Willow had brought. Not that Faith gave the slightest shit who saw her in clothes soaked with Xander’s blood (biohazard). Except Xander himself.

He was pretty much still checked out, though. They’d roused him in Recovery long enough to be sure he had come out of the anesthesia, then they hazed him right back up with pain meds and sent him to his room. A few times during the night he’d nearly surfaced, waking her with agitated, unintelligible mutterings, calming again as she took his hand and spoke soothingly. After his third bout with restlessness, she cracked open one of the Red Bulls she’d had Willow bring her, and kept talking.

Faith spoke about her life: the one she’d had early on, before she’d learned she was in the Slayer line. The powerlessness of knowing every day she was at the mercy of adults who did not give a shit, who ruled their lives — and hers — by whim. How all that seemed to change when she became a slayer, the way power seemed to hum and crackle in her body, and how difficult it was to tamp all that down to fit the expectations (whims) of Wesley and Giles or even Buffy. She talked about Angel and how he’d stopped her spiral out of control, and about her last few years in prison.

It was possible to tell him these things because he slept. She would say them again some day when he was conscious, because now she knew she would not be crushed by speaking them.

As light crept in through the cracks in the blinds, she kept on, though her voice was a wreck. “I’ve apologized — or tried to — to just about everyone I hurt. Hell, I even wrote a letter to Dawn, apologizing for teaching her to steal, and apparently that’s something that never even happened. I’ve never said, though, that I was sorry for what I did to you. You offered me something nobody ever had, Xander. I just didn’t know how to accept it or value it.” She stroked her thumb over the back of his hand, and leaned her head against the bed railing. Tears fell, but she was too fatigued to realize it. “You don’t know how many times I took all that back, sitting there in prison. How many times I let you stand by me when I told Giles the truth and none — none of the rest of it ever happened.”

She felt a faint pressure of his fingers around hers; almost too slight to notice. Faith looked up and met his gaze, hazy still, but it was Xander in there.

“Hey,” he said. His voice rasped too — they’d told her he might have some hoarseness from the breathing tube.

Faith picked an ice chip from the bucket the night nurse had kept refreshing, and fed it to him. “Hey yourself. How are you feeling?”

“Packed in cotton. All over, but mostly inside my head. Yay, drugs.”

“Yeah, well, be careful not to say that to anyone but me, Xander.”

“How long they leaving this in?”

“Leaving what?”

“The knife,” he said. “I can tell it’s there.” She could see the tug of the medication pulling at him.

“Xander, it’s out. You’re fine.”

“I feel it.” He let himself drift away from her, not quite asleep yet not really conscious.

Two quick taps sounded at the door, and Buffy pushed it open a few inches. “How’s he doing?”

“He was awake a few moments just now, but I think —”

His fingers tightened around hers. “Tell her no,” he slurred.

“Xander, it’s Buffy. She came yesterday too, while you were still —” Faith could see him fighting the undertow now.

“I don’t want her.” His breath grew ragged. “She said … she’s said enough.” Eyelids fluttered as he struggled to stay conscious. “Get her out.”

Faith smoothed his hair back from his damp forehead. “I’ll take care of it. You sleep.” She crossed to the half-opened door, where Buffy stood, frozen. “B., I’m sorry. He said —”

“I heard him.” Tears swam in her eyes.

“I don’t know what he’s —”

“No,” Buffy said, forcing steel into her tone. “I’m sure you don’t.” She turned on her heel and marched away.

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 flamb� 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

Eliza Dushku - Faith Lehane

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Fanfiction: Sunnydale Calling