Fanfiction: Chained Freedom
Faith watched in complete horror.
She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. She cursed herself for not making a break for it when she had had a chance. Her window of opportunity was gradually disappearing as the seconds ticked away. If she didn’t make her move soon, she would pay the price.
"Faith, where are you going?" Wesley asked as he watched the woman slide off the couch.
"We need more snacks," she declared without hesitation.
Wesley glanced at the bowl of popcorn and bag of chips on the table. "We do, huh?" he smirked.
Faith sighed and stood. "Wes, I can’t take it anymore. When we agreed that you could pick the movie this week, I didn’t think you’d pick this. I expected cars to blow up, people to be shot, maybe even some laughs and some hot sex. Not this."
"And what exactly is wrong with Old Yeller?"
Faith could only look at him. When she finally found her voice, she asked, "Did you seriously just ask me that question? I mean, did those words actually leave your mouth?"
"It’s a classic," Wesley countered with a smile.
"And to think I’m having sex with you," Faith scoffed, running a hand through her hair. "Why?! Why am I having sex with you?!"
Wesley couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped his lips as he paused the film. "You just have to give it a chance. I mean, they shoot the dog later on. There’s some violence for you."
Faith’s expression fell slightly. "They shoot the dog?!"
Wesley looked from Faith to the television screen, a bewildered expression on his face. He looked back at Faith, stunned. "You didn’t know that? I thought everybody knew that."
"Like I would sit through this crap on my own free will," Faith sighed. "Excuse me, but I have to go out and kill something now."
"Faith, it’s not that bad," Wesley smiled as he got to his feet.
"It’s not that bad? Wes, they shoot the dog!"
"Yes, but? But it doesn’t kill him, alright? It just kind of grazes him?."
"Liar," she smirked. "Wes, babe, seriously, I have to go kill something before I go insane. I love you and all, but I am not sitting through this crap any longer."
"What?" Wesley asked as Faith’s words finally resonated in him.
Faith opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out. She cleared her throat and tried again, "I’m gone patrolling."
She quickly leaned over and kissed him before walking towards the apartment door. "I’ll see ya in a little while," she called over her shoulder as she grabbed her jacket off the coat-stand by the door.
"But Faith?." Wesley started.
"I’ll be home before you know it," she said as she turned to him. She waved goodbye and pulled the door shut, leaving Wesley alone with his shock.
"Idiot!" Faith hissed, the soles of her boots scraping across the sidewalk..
She hadn’t meant to say it. It had almost been like an out-of-body experience. She had heard the words come out, and it had sounded a lot like her, but she could have sworn that she hadn’t said it.
I love you.
The only other person Faith had ever said those words to had been her mother, and the woman had been on her deathbed at the time.
But now she has said it to Wesley?.
"Damn subconscious," Faith grumbled.
Faith stopped for a moment, her mind trailing to her task at hand. She searched the pockets of her jacket to make sure her stake was with her. Satisfied when her fingers slid across the smooth wood, her mind returned to Wesley and their relationship.
A relationship. That’s what they had, right? Sometimes she didn’t know. It wasn’t like she had other relationships to draw a comparison from. All her previous relationships had been about nothing but a quick fuck— no entanglements. Sometimes, no names. Definitely no emotions. But now it was different.
Her life finally had some order. She had found a home, a dysfunctional extended family in Angel and the others, and she had Wesley. She finally had someone who truly loved every part of her personality, her being. Someone who didn’t just love her for the wild, passionate sex. Someone who actually gave a damn about what happened to her.
And she had screwed their relationship all to hell with three simple words.
Things were going to be different now, and she wasn’t so sure it would be a change for the good.
A quiet jingle from over her shoulder snapped Faith from her thoughts. She turned quickly, stake drawn.
A cat skittered across the sidewalk and into the darkness of a connecting alleyway.
Faith waited a moment before dropping her arm slightly. She watched the cat disappear and sighed.
"Focus, Faith," she whispered to herself. She placed her stake back in her jacket pocket and continued down the sidewalk.
She wondered if Wesley would be asleep by the time she returned home.
- Give or take, anyway.
Wesley laid in bed, his left arm under his head and his right resting across his chest. He had been laying that way for a while, long enough to estimate how many tiles were on his ceiling. Between tile-counting, he had thought about her, about what she had said. About his complete non-reaction to her words.
He had been shocked to say the least. One moment, they were debating the crappiness of a Disney movie about a dog with rabies and the next, she was making a nonchalant declaration of love. Shocked. He had seen it in her face too. She had even alarmed herself.
He never got a chance to react before she ran away like he was a carrier of the plague. He could only hope that she hadn’t taken his lack of coherent speech as a denial on his part because it hadn’t been.
Wesley turned his eyes to the bedroom door as the hinges squeaked slowly. He glanced at the alarm clock, noting the time, before closing his eyes and feigning sleep.
Three whole hours, he thought.
She hadn’t patrolled like that in weeks.
The hinges finally ceased their drawn out squeak, and he heard the sound of the door closing again. He listened to her soft footfalls on the carpet, and opened his eyes slightly as he heard the dresser drawer open.
Faith slowly removed her clothes, trying not to make noise as she tossed them to the floor. She quickly removed her bra and panties and grabbed a T-shirt from the drawer she had opened. Once the shirt was over her head, she removed her hair from underneath the collar and tugged the shirt back down. She slowly pushed the drawer shut, and Wesley instantly closed his eyes again as she turned towards the bed.
After a moment, the covers shifted slightly, and he felt the cool breeze against the right side of his body. Faith inhaled deeply as the mattress shifted under her weight.
As Wesley listened to her, he wondered what she had done the entire time. Had she been thinking like he had? About what she had said, about the significance of it? Had she been thinking that she should have never said it, that he didn’t feel the same about her? Did she wish she could take it all back, even as he wished that she wouldn’t?
The bed shifted again, and he listened to her groan as she tried to get settled down. After a moment, her arm draped over his waist as he felt her warm body press against his. Her head rested on his chest, her breath warm against his cool skin.
He smiled as he felt her inhale again.
"And when is it supposed to be here again?"
"Two weeks," Cordelia replied.
Wesley continued to study the pencil sketch of the demon she had envisioned the previous night. It didn’t resemble any demon he had seen before, which meant he and the others had a lot of research ahead of them before its arrival.
"You’re getting better at this sketching stuff," Wesley smiled as he slid the picture back over the hotel counter to her.
"Yeah," Cordelia smiled. "What can I say? I’m a natural."
"Angel helped her," Fred admitted as she passed the two, her nose in a book on physics and time relations.
Wesley smiled as Cordelia rolled her eyes.
"Thank you, Fred," Cordelia called to the girl as Fred made her way to the settee.
"You’re welcome!" Fred called back.
"Speaking of Angel, where is he? And Gunn and Connor for that matter?" Wesley replied, looking from Fred to Cordelia.
"Angel’s taking Faith’s late day as a chance to train Connor. Gunn’s helping out."
Wesley nodded as Cordelia looked down at her drawing. He watched her for a moment as she grabbed a nearby pencil and began to erase and resketch the demon’s scaly arms.
He and Cordy had always had a bond. Back in Sunnydale, it had been a failed attempt at romance that had brought them together. Here in LA, it had been survival that had kept them together, that had strengthened their friendship. Surviving the demons, surviving Angel’s dark period, and now surviving Wesley’s own lapse into the darkness.
Nothing tests friendship like life in LA.
And he had learned one important thing about their friendship over the years. If there was anyone he could trust to give him a truthful answer to any question he had, it was Cordelia.
"Cordy, can I ask you something personal?" he finally asked quietly.
Cordelia looked up at him, curious. "Depends. How personal are we talking?"
"Just rhetorical personal."
"Okay, shoot."
"If you happened to say I love you to someone, and they didn’t automatically say it back, what would you think?"
Cordelia tapped her pencil upon the hotel counter. "Well, after the complete and utter mortification, followed by wondering why the world just doesn’t open up and swallow you whole when you need it to, I’d probably think that I just made the most horrible mistake of my life." She paused, raising an eyebrow. "Why?"
"No reason," Wesley replied with a slight shrug.
"You’re lying," Cordelia replied, leaning forward on the counter. "What’s going on, Wesley?"
As Wesley searched his mind for a legitimate excuse, he heard Fred from over his shoulder as she greeted a visitor.
"Hi, welcome to Angel Investigations. How can we help you?" she asked eagerly.
The man, dressed professionally in a navy suit and matching tie, smiled politely at Fred. "I’m looking for Mr. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce."
Wesley turned instantly. That voice. He knew that voice, that accent.
"What do you want?" he managed to say as he turned to the man.
The man’s smile turned to a sneer as he stepped further into the lobby, Fred moving back to allow him in.
"Now is that any way to greet an old chum?" the man asked.
"That’s an odd choice of words, Phillip." Wesley frowned as he took an aggressive step towards the man.
Phillip Emerson. He knew he had known that voice. Back when he had been vying for the position of the new Watcher in Sunnydale, Phillip had been the only other contender for the job. After a week of debates among the leaders of the Council, they had finally decided that Wesley was more qualified for the position. From that moment on, the men had hated each other. Phillip because he had felt shunted by the decision; Wesley simply because he knew Phillip was nothing but a self-absorbed prick who hadn’t deserved the job in the first place. And, later, it had been Phillip who had had the great pleasure of delivering Wesley the news of his termination, a snide smile on his face the entire time.
"I hope you still don’t hate me because of some little assignment that happened years ago," Phillip smiled.
Wesley crossed his arms over his chest. "I need a reason to hate you now?"
Phillip simply chuckled and casually slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks.
"What the hell do you want?" he asked again.
"Obviously, someone has misplaced their sense of patience since they were ousted from the Council." He paused before continuing, "I’m here to relay a message to Faith."
"What kind of message?"
"I just need you to inform her that the Council has a proposition for her if she’d like to take it."
"You want her back," Wesley realized.
"On official Slayer terms, yes."
"Well, Phillip, I’m sorry you wasted so much time traveling from the pits of hell, but Faith doesn’t need the Council."
Phillip laughed bitterly. "Wesley, have you forgotten that you’re not her Watcher anymore? In fact, you’re no one’s Watcher."
"Funny how that doesn’t really bother me coming from a man who didn’t have what it took to be a Watcher in the first place."
Phillip shrugged, his smile never faltering. "Maybe not, but the Elite Team has better benefits."
Wesley tensed at those words. The Elite Team. The team that he, Angel, and Faith had eluded the last time they had come for Faith, for her blood.
Thank God she slept in this morning, Wesley thought.
"Tell Faith we’ll be in touch," Phillip said as he turned towards the door. He made his way to the door and pushed it open slightly before turning back and shooting Wesley another winning smile. "It was splendid to see you again, Wesley." With that, he disappeared into the late afternoon sun.
"I’m gonna take a wild guess and say he’s not a client," Fred frowned as she glanced at Wesley.
"Wes, what the hell was that all about?" Cordelia asked from over his shoulder.
"I need to call Faith," he said as he quickly made his way towards the office phone on the counter.
As he dialed, Cordelia asked, "Wes, who was that guy?"
"A former colleague," he mumbled as he listened to the extension ring in his ear.
"What’s an Elite Team?" Fred asked as she stepped up beside him.
Wesley couldn’t suppress the growl as his own voice on the answering machine played back at him. "Dammit," he spat as he slammed down the receiver.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
Cordelia reached over the counter and gently touched his hand as she repeated Fred’s question. "Wes, what’s an Elite Team?"
"You were gone the last time the Elite Team were here, Cordy."
"I take it they’re not the good guys of the Council," she frowned.
"The Elite Team is what we consider the muscle renegade portion of the Council. They believe full-heartedly in the Council’s stance that an inactive Slayer is a dead Slayer."
"But Faith’s not inactive," Fred chimed in. "She still goes out and kills vampires."
"But not under the Council’s terms," he sighed. "In their eyes, she’s still a rogue. She doesn’t answer to them. She doesn’t abide by their rules."
"But isn’t that what the other Slayer is for?" Fred asked, confused. "Buffy?"
"She doesn’t count," Cordelia concluded, looking from Fred to Wesley. "Faith’s the true Slayer. So if Buffy was to bite the big one again?."
"The Council would technically be Slayerless," Wesley finished.
"So why not just hire her back? Isn’t that what he said?" Fred continued. "That they had a proposition for her?"
"After what they did to her, I doubt Faith would go back," Cordelia frowned.
"Exactly," Wesley agreed. "And they wouldn’t send an Elite member if they were positive she would take the job back."
Cordelia sighed before replying, "Okay, Wes, let’s just calm down and think rationally. I mean, would the Council really murder a girl just to get a new Slayer?"
"Cordelia, the Council has committed greater atrocities for what they believed to be the common good. Killing off a Slayer is nothing. They’ve done it before, and they’d do it again." Wesley reached for the phone again, dialing Faith’s cell.
A sense of relief washed over him as he heard the extension pick up. "Faith here."
He had never been so happy to hear her voice.
"Faith, where are you?"
"I’m?" There was a pause as Wesley heard a door open. "Right behind you," she finished.
Wesley turned and hung up the phone. Faith smiled at him from the doorway, a box of doughnuts in her arms. She hung up her phone as he approached her.
"What’s up, babe?"
"You’re okay?" he asked, reaching up and touching her face.
She gave him a bewildered look. "Five by five, babe. Why? Am I not supposed to be?"
Wesley sighed, a frown forming on his lips. "Faith, I believe we may have a situation on our hands."
Faith’s slight smile faded as she looked into his eyes, the urgency clear in his deep blues. "Wes, what’s going on?" she asked.