IV.

The next few days passed quickly. Faith had come home, sullen and uncharacteristically quiet. She'd spent some time working with Mayor Mitchell's people setting up a security team, but had not really talked to him much. She hadn't had much to say to Robin either.

Faith watched Wood's chest rise slowly as he slept, and then closed her eyes and listened hard to the soft release of breath. Every time he finished one breath, there would be the slightest pause before the next breath came. She thought about the wounds he'd received in the battle against the army of the First, back in Sunnydale. She'd expected him to die.

His breathing, so outwardly peaceful, beat painfully beside her night after night. She did not have to raise the sheet from his body to see the scars. She felt them in her fingertips, she felt them under her lips, she even felt their warm corrugation against her belly as he lay with her, she felt all of this in memory. When he fought too hard or trained too long, even after all this time, his wounds would weep blood, the drops falling like tears.

She turned over, away from him. It was hard to admit, but he was making her pensive. Her strengths were her body, her instincts, her gifts. She made Buffy Summers look like the thoughtful one, which hadn't used to bother her, before Robin Wood. He made her reflective. He gave, better than he got, in so many ways.

The first time, after Sunnydale, she had meant to prove to him that he was no more than any another man. He had been rocked and rolled, been wrung out like a cloth, and afterwards, looking at her, he had laughed. "Mad skills, dear girl. Mad skills." His voice was full of warmth and humor, and it had cut her that he was so at peace with his world, and his place in it, and hers.

She'd looked at him as a challenge, a contest, and she hated to lose. It wasn't till he was bleeding out again in an ambulance that she thought about what she was doing to him.

She had respected him, and his capacity to accept everything she was, while still demanding more, drove her to be better than she'd been. Her abilities, his discipline, they'd seemed a perfect match.

Once she had Robin back on his feet, she had married him, and seen him happy. They had each been a challenge and a comfort to each other. She had been happy. It had been good. Now she knew she had another trial coming, another test, to prove if she was worthy.

She listened to his body, fighting to stay another day in the world. He was a better man than she deserved, and she wondered how she'd be punished for letting him love her.

V.

The weekend came, and Faith convinced Wood they needed some time together. He readily agreed. He'd seen too little of her since their fight about the contract for Mayor Mitchell. When she'd suggested they call Xander and Dawn, he'd recalled their conversation about Dawn being buried in her books. It had sounded like a great idea to him.

Xander, when Wood had called him, was equally excited. Dawn was settling him rapidly into domesticity, against which he rebelled by becoming the undisputed master of the charcoal grill every weekend. Xander did some nice vegetarian options in deference to Robin. The two couples had not seen much of each other since they had returned to California from Chicago, and even that trip they rarely talked about. It was technically a violation of Faith's parole for her to have left the state.

Faith smiled as they pulled into the driveway of the little house in Lago Vista. She could smell charcoal, and something with peppers, even from the driveway. It was pretty festive, and Faith had always loved a party.

Dawn was waiting for them in the doorway, looking both unchanged, and somehow older than when she and Xander had started living together. Whatever Xander was doing for her, or to her, it agreed with her. Little sister was glowing like a firefly and tried her best to crush the slayer with her welcoming hug.

They chatted, and drank iced tea and talked about the house and how tough it was getting everything really clean after a move. Faith had no idea what it was like to move. She'd never really moved before in her life, just fled one place to get to another. Still, Dawn's house seemed supernaturally clean and homey to Faith, and Dawn obviously wanted Faith's approval. So, Faith went from room to room with Dawn, reassuring her that the carpets were the right color, the furniture was the right style, and the library had the right mystical texts and charms.

Dinner was relaxed, under the grape arbor in the back yard, whose vines were starting to climb the wooden trellis. She found herself actually enjoying the younger woman's quiet enthusiasm for domestic life, the white picket fence in the suburbs and tomatoes in the garden and all the rest. It was almost like a normal life.

She looked up at one point as Dawn went to get her another vodka and coke, and realized that her husband and Xander were again conversing quietly over by the grill. They'd done that a lot this evening.

"Hey, old man," she called to Wood. "What are you two up to? Thick as thieves, man, thick as thieves. I swear, you better not be talking about me!"

"No, no, just talking over some old times, Faith, no biggie." Xander was a little too glib, though with him it was still sometimes hard to tell. He never could lie to her, though. He looked guilty.

"Okay. Well, you guys better not be comparing notes, lover boy, you'll make Dawnie jealous!" As she said it, she realized it was the wrong thing.

Suddenly she was back in grade school in Boston, asking her dad what mom had said to get that shiner. She was in confession, telling her priest that he'd had more altar boys than she had, so he could kiss her ass. She was telling Buffy they could dump the body in the river and no one would ever know. It was all the wrong things she'd said, and she saw the look between the two men.

It had never come up, she realized. Robin knew she'd been with men, a lot of men, before he knew her- some of them good, some evil, all meaningless. She'd never mentioned Xander. The poor boy had cared for her. She'd used him, hard and cruel, because it had suited her. She'd hardly thought about it since. It was a different time.

There was a crash, and she looked to see Dawn, looking at an empty glass lying on a tray, as the drink spilled out over her hands onto the ground.

"Hey. Dawn. I thought you knew. It was a long time ago."

Dawn continued to stare at the vodka and coke dripping at her feet. "I need to clean up. Excuse me." She turned to go.

"Dawn!" Xander called, moving towards her, "Honey? It's not… Dawn!" He followed her, and Faith heard their voices, the one hurt, the other trying to explain, as they moved into the house. She stood, and saw that Robin was there, holding his hand out to her.

"We should go. You and I need to talk." He waited for her, hand out. She shrugged past him and around the house, got into the car and stared out the window.

VI.

A few minutes later, Robin slid behind the wheel, and started the car.

"I told them we're sorry. I told them to call us, and thanked them for their hospitality," Wood said through his anger and his surprise. He began to drive them back to Anaheim.

"I think she'll be okay," he said. "That's not how she should have found out."

"Sorry, chief, I just say the wrong thing some times."

"It's not how I should have found out either. You hurt him."

"You'll deal. You know you can't resist me. Besides, it was a long time ago. I'm sure he's fine." She reached out to put a hand on his thigh as he drove.

"You think I care about what you did with some boy, five years before we met? Is that it? I don't mean you hurt him then, I mean you hurt him now. By hurting Dawn, in their home, when they thought you were their friend." He took her hand and put it back on her own lap. "Don't play me girl. Not ever, and most of all not now."

She looked out the window into the dusk and watched the highway lights come on as they traveled home. Without turning to him, she asked, "So what did you say to him, anyway?"

She wondered how long it would take everyone to forget her latest mistake. It seemed like a pattern to Faith: everyone welcomes her. She screws up. Most of them forgive her, some don't. This cycle repeats, tighter and tighter. Someday the last person would be gone and she'd wonder who to ask forgiveness from then.

"I'll tell you what I'd asked him, Faith. I asked him to tell me everything he knew about Mayor Richard Wilkins. It took a while."

Oh. That. She should have known Robin would never let it lie, would never leave it and let it scab over. He wanted to pick at it and poke at it, keep the wound fresh. He was tough that way.

"He was my boss. He was evil. Big Bad, pitch-black type evil. But he was also powerful, and charming, and he cared about me. So he made me his bodyguard, and his assassin." Her voice was calm, and soft, and she never stopped looking out the window. The words flowed out of her, over her, away.

"He got me to kill for him, and lie, and spy, and hurt for him. Damn near die for him. And I did it- I did it all. The state shrinks said I did it because I lacked a nurturing environment and a strong male role model. The priest said I was tempted by corruption and evil because I lacked, heh heh, faith."

She sighed. "Then Buffy Summers put a knife in my gut and twisted it, so she could feed my blood to Angel, her vampire champion. Another slayer decided I was worth less to the world than a mass-murdering vampire, because he had a soul, and as far as anyone knew, I didn't. It took a long time, but after I recovered, I realized that there was something Buffy had I never would, she had family."

"She had friends, and people who would fight for her, and even fight against her when they thought she'd made mistakes. Eventually, they brought me back to Sunnydale, to fight the First. I tried to fit in, but it was tough. You remember what it was like. No matter how good I am, or how tough, or how right, she's always going to be the Chosen One, and I'm just another girl who could be a slayer."

"That's not true, Faith. You know why I put you on Mayor Mitchell? Because you've seen real evil. Our students have seen danger, and we've shown them strength, and speed, and tried to teach them discipline. But sometimes in this world, you have to see evil, and know it, and beat it. I'm betting you can do that."

"You really love me, don't you?" She was looking at him, her dark eyes burning in the dusk, her dark hair framing the round face with the little pointed chin, so beautiful and so fey.

"Of course I do. I wouldn't have married you just for the sex, you know." He tried to put a little lightness into the line. "I mean, look at me, girl. Sex is everywhere, a man be this fine."

She grinned, and reached over to rub the skin of his scalp. She loved it when he was shaved smooth, like he was carved from some precious wood. Robin Wood. She chuckled, almost giggled, a most unusual sound.

"Take me home," she ordered him grandly. "Make love to me, and then hold me close till morning. After that I need you to cover first shift guarding the mayor for me. He's at the North Haverbrook transit center, some ceremony for the monorail extension."

"Why, where are you going to be?" He cocked an eyebrow at her as he drove.

"Begging for forgiveness from Xander and Dawn, of course."

"Okay." He nodded thoughtfully. "It's a good thing I love you, Lucy."

"Oh, Ricky," she sighed, and closed her eyes anticipating the arrival home.