Bad influence

Chapter One: Being Carried

Summary: Someone from the past of Faith comes back with news less then pleasant in certain points. Buffy finds herself finding out more then she knew about her sister slayer and the new slayer(etts) find that no matter how good you are, old friends of the Slayers always get the best rooms. Even if they were evil before "they got a soul".

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senior

"Admit it B, I whooped your ass."

"Hey, I'm sick, I think I get an excuse for being beaten." Faith laughed loudly at Buffy as they walked into the kitchen. Of course it wasn't the only kitchen in the Slayer house (Castle, whatever you want to call it) being as large as it was, picking up new slayers. Or slayeretts as Xander called them, saying that they need to be able to fight off an apocalypse (or two) with a few years of experience. Wouldn't hurt if they had a near death experience to toughen them up either.

"You call a cold-" Faith began before she stopped as she saw a young girl, no older then sixteen standing in the kitchen, her eyes directed to Buffy.

"Umm… Buffy, Willow said to tell you there's someone in the boundaries." Said one of the new (about a month in the castle) slayeretts. She was twisting her strawberry blonde hair around her finger nervously as she continued with what Willow had told her. "She's seems to be a low level threat, but she's carrying something and its cloaked with something magical, we don't know what it is."

"I'll check her out." Buffy said, all humour from the conversation with Faith before, lost. As she entered the foyer she pulled a sword out of what was an umbrella but now held axes and swords in case of emergencies. "Barbara, get the arches into position, if she attacks me, shoot." Barbara nodded and ran up a spiral staircase to get to the top floor to tell the slayeretts up there to obtain positions.

Buffy saw her in the distance of two hundred metres or so forward. 'How had she got so close without us detecting her?' Buffy wondered as she swung the sword in her hand to get a better grip before she walked to the woman. From what she could as she walked was that the woman was cradling something her arms, with one hand over it as if it were a weapon she needed to pull out at any moment.

Buffy couldn't see the girl's face, because of the hood that hid it in the shadows, but she knew from how the woman was walking that she wasn't hurt, at least not fatally. It was a stupid thing for the woman- if she wanted to attack- to keep her eyes on the weapon and not on what was ahead of her. Buffy could easily kill her if she found her a threat, and the arches could easily shoot from where they were.

Something wasn't right.

Buffy was only fifty paces away and the woman still hadn't looked up. So she spoke, "Excuse me?" The woman quickly faced her as if she hadn't even notices someone was there, and maybe she hadn't. Buffy still wondered what was in her arms and why it was cloaked with magic so strong that even Willow couldn't break through it… easily.

"Who…who are you?" The woman hadn't come for her; either that or she was playing dumb and stupid.

"I'm Buffy Summers." If she wanted to strike, now was her moment, but instead she relaxed from her tense stance. She smiled softly and murmured a pray to her goddess. Before she met eye contact with Buffy. Buffy could see that she had green eyes that held pain and torment, there was also a fading bruising around her neck that looked like something or someone had strangled her.

"Is she here?" She paused before realising that Buffy probably had no idea who she was talking about, "Faith?" Buffy stopped, if she was a demon how to kill her, why was she asking for Faith? In her most humble opinion, more demons tried to kill her then Faith. Maybe the tides had turned or maybe the girl was trying to get her trust.

"Why-" but before the blonde slayer could even finish her question a cry came out, a baby's cry.

"Shh… come on sweetie, I know you're hungry." Her voice cracked as she said this, and Buffy could see that the girl herself- who was about her own age maybe a few years younger- was pale and quite gaunt. Her slayer senses weren't tingling, in fact, all her morals pointed to at least allowing this girl descent food, water, a bath and a sleep. She could even hear her mother's voice telling her that's she'll make some warm cocoa.

"Why do you want to talk to Faith?"

"I'll wait outside if you don't believe that I'm trustworthy, just-just tell her Aurora is here, she'll know who I am… I hope she will, I hope I'm not that easy to forget." Buffy could see she was trying not to break down in front of her.

"Faith?"

"What's up B? Was the woman evil?" Faith asked grinning, until the next words that poured out of Buffy's mouth made her stop laughing.

"You tell me." Faith frowned and her eyes narrowed just soft enough to tell Buffy that she was confused at the statement, "I-I don't think she is, she's in the foyer, she asked for you." Curiosity bet over slayer instincts to shout about irresponsibility in letting a "could-be" demon/evil person…thingy in the house.

As she walked out of the kitchen into the foyer, the first thing she heard was a lullaby. A Lullaby she hadn't heard for a very, very long time. "Hush, now, my little one.

Please don't you cry, lay your head down on my shoulder and sigh. Sun's gone away, and Mama will pray. Silence will keep all while you sleep."

"Aurora?" She asked softly, she already knew the answer though; she would recognize that voice anywhere. Aurora gasped and turned around swiftly and then faith saw it, the mark on her neck, the one that were like purple handprints. Then she saw the baby.

Aurora, still holding her child, cast an arm around Faith's neck, brought herself closer to Faith. Faith could feel her trembling and she knew that Aurora was crying. Faith was never one much for comforting, she had no idea what to do in a situation, but when the baby started to cry and Aurora was crying, she knew she had to do something.

"Hey, come on, we'll go to my room and you can talk to me." Through the sniffles of Aurora as she rocked her baby, the dark slayer could tell that she also was hungry, As a result of this, she brought Aurora and the baby into the kitchen and grabbed some chips, bread, milk, water, basically anything she could carry before she went to her room, which was on the third floor, between the second which was filled will long-term slayeretts (those who had been training and past certain levels of experience for about a year) and the third, short-term. The ones that were between the two levels were on the higher floor. But the long term (and scoobies) each had a time shift in which they were to patrol the boundaries to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary even with Willow's magic.

"So you got knocked up, forced into marriage, beat, cheated on and basically had a shit life?"

"Then he joined the cult, the demon cult, at first I thought it was- well- the sort of play-around ones, you know dungeons and dragons, then one day I left him with her, my baby, and- and I forgot to get the shopping list, so I came back and he had a knife over her. I screamed and he said he needed her blood, that he- we would have everything and we could have another child then.

"I fought him with everything I had, every ounce of strength, and… and when he was knocked out I grabbed her and went to a family friend, she was in a strong covern, so powerful, they gave me the blanket because they said he might try looking for her over me so I needed to hide and- and I've been running, looking for you. I went to Sunnydale and it was just a hole and I was so scared, so-" Her voice broke off and she was crying again.

Faith's frown had deepened, but she held Aurora in a hug, as she sobbed into her shoulder. She didn't know any comfort words like Aurora always had, almost always had. Then she remembered something, something Aurora once said to her.

"When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't do that-"

"You get someone to carry you." Aurora finished for her with a bittersweet smile, "I know I've asked you to carry me before, and I know that I owe you so much, but…" She didn't know what to say, she was so lost and so alone in the world that she had lost herself in misery.

"Don't worry, I'll carry you, but you better make me some of those cookies, I've been craving them for a long time." She joked, and it got out a smile from Aurora, a small smile, but a smile that held no bitterness, just memories.

"Hey, who's the new girl?" Dawn asked while Buffy was using a punching bag, her expression softened when she saw her younger sibling who was- at this moment- not looking as young as she remembered her looking. 'You take your eyes off your kid sister for five minutes and she looks like she's twenty-five' Buffy thought with a smile.

"Did they spread like wildfire that quickly?"

"Buff, they started spreading as soon as Willow sent Annie up to tell you someone entered the boundaries." Buffy laughed, yeah, girls gossiped, and since they were slayers, they gossiped even more. "So, who is she?"

"An old friend of Faith's." Dawn's eye's lit up quite suddenly in excitement of new gossip to tell the girls.

"And the cloak?"

"Look, how about we let her settle in, and then she can tell you, if she wants to tell you." Buffy said with a piercing glare meaning 'don't push her, she's been through enough'. Dawn rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, cocked one hip to the side and pouted. Before she muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "yes mum." Buffy watched carefully as Dawn exited the room before Xander entered.

"I heard something about a new girl, slayer?"

"Not that I know of, I think she's just a friend of Faith's who's been through something big." Buffy shook her head and relaxed her muscles before she walked towards Xander who locked the door behind him, knowing that this was 'big scoobie talk moment'. "She'd been strangled, and she had a baby." Xander muttered a few curse words; "I don't know if it's anything supernatural and I'm not a hundred percent sure she knows about the entire 'magical' world like we do." Buffy sighed and blew at a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes.

"Well what can we do?" It was a rhetorical question, and he was right. What could they do? Nothing except make the best of it and hope that the world won't end tomorrow, or that she's really a clone… or a robot.

"I just… she was ­strangled, those bruises… and she had a baby…" Buffy looked up at Xander. "She looked so helpless Xander, light she had been kicked so many times she had almost given up hope that it would stop."

"We can help her, you know that, and Faith is who she was after, though I don't know why her and not you."

"Because she wanted to talk to someone she knew, who she saw as family, if you were in trouble and Faith had been a slayer before me, who would you run to?"

"You but I don't see-"

"Because you trust me, you know that I would help you." Xander went silent as he looked at Buffy. "I'm going to check on her, make sure she's alright, find her a place to sleep, and see if there's anything else I can do."

"I don't mean to sound rude Buffy, but why would you offer all that to her?"

"When Faith saw her, she- she looked like how I would if I saw mum, disbelief but hope. I think they were as close as sisters, and then the thing with Faith's slayer happened and she was scared-"

"That still doesn't tell me why you're being so ultra nice, I have nothing against it but it seems a little out of character…"

"She looked like how I felt when I dug out of the grave, scared, lost and alone, not really sure what was going on around my surroundings." Xander went quiet and for a second he remembered how she looked when they found her, as if she didn't know any of them, as if she wasn't quite sure where she was, who she was. He understood, and he took Buffy's word for it that she was safe.

Xander watched as she left the training room, Dawn had been at the door trying to listen, but he doubted she caught much of what they said, let alone something interesting. Especially by the way that she seemed surprised when the door opened. He had help re-build the castle, along with Willow's magic and a few [magical] construction workers. He knew how thick the castles walls and the doors were. Even slayer or vampire hearing wouldn't be able to hear properly from the next room over.

Buffy knocked lightly on Faith's door, just enough that if they weren't too busy they would hear. Besides she really didn't want to disturb the baby. When she heard Faith's voce say "Come in." She opened the door to see that Aurora was holding the baby as she slept.

"Don't worry B. The babe's a heavy sleeper." The three of them laughed softly as Buffy closed the door behind her and sat on the end of the bed.

"What's her name?"

"Hope." Faith looked shocked and then a small smile crossed her face, as she looked at Aurora who was humming the lullaby softly under her breath. She had such a gentle voice that seemed to carry her nature, Buffy couldn't understand what would hurt her like that, it had to be human, a vampire would have just snapped her neck.

"Why would you name her a name like that?" Faith asked, only to have a smile from Aurora as a reply, "Come on, that's not fair."

"You did it to me all the time when we were young, and I named her Hope because when I found out I was pregnant, I had hope, that and because I know you would kill me if I named her Faith."

"Damn right, no kid deserves all the 'You gotta have Faith' puns people keep cracking." With that comment, Faith cut a look at Buffy in a mock-glare. Yeah, the entire scoobies liked to crack 'Faith' jokes when she was around, and Buffy would stake her life that guys had used pick up lines with 'Faith' in it when they knew her name.

"She'll get all the Hope puns, but she's my Hope, Hope that the world will get better." Faith breathed out a sigh; she was still at a loss to do. Maybe B had an idea, she looked at B, who was to busy watching the baby to catch her eye contact. 'Damn' Faith thought, 'what the hell am I supposed to do? Do I talk to her? Does she even WANT to talk to me?' It was moments like this where she wished there was a battle she needed to get to.