Chapter IV

Let's go to LA

"Boy I'm sure glad we asked Giles how to defeat the biker demons", Xander said the next day. "Yep, who would've known they were allergic to bees?" Willow added. "Well at least we did not have to conjure up bunnies", Anya chimed in. "I'm just glad Dawn is okay", Sarah said thoughtfully. "Well you are very much welcome, Buffy. I defended her with my life, is all, but don't even mention it" Spike said. Sarah had decided to keep Spike in the dark as to her real identity and everybody else decided to play along. The peroxide blond vampire had given them all an earful about the consequences of magic and how wrong it had been to mess with forces beyond their control, but as Sarah had already given that speech to Willow, everyone just kinda reacted in a "You're right, but we're sure as hell not agreeing with you" way. Sarah was glad they'd survived her first day in Sunnydale, but now she knew that she had to do more important stuff than hang around with the Scoobies if she wanted to stay alive long enough to find the way back to the real world.

Sarah knew where she needed to go, first of all to talk to Angel, the love of Buffy's life, and second to see if she could find Freddie, the love of Sarah Michelle Gellar's life. But unfortunately, Buffy was pretty broke. Turns out Willow and her better half had been living rent-free as house guests on a very generous grant of the Buffy Anne Summers foundation for the last couple of weeks. She'd already asked them to chip in with rents and utilities and they would have to cancel the cable contract – well there was pretty much only shit on, anyways in those pre-Netflix days – but when Sarah saw the look in Dawn's eyes at even the suggestion that Tara and Willow might be moving out, Sarah knew that she could not threaten them with that to get them to pay their share. Thankfully Giles had – after some prodding – agreed to "transfer some funds onto Buffy's account for the immediate necessities", turns out there was a "retirement bonus" the Council paid to Watchers who got their Slayer killed. Man, those dudes were creepy in the way they treated the Slayers. So Sarah had the money for a round trip ticket to Los Angeles and thus would be headed to Sunnydale station in a few hours for the one daily train from Sunnydale to Los Angeles Union Station. She sure as hell would not ride a bus from Sunnydale bus station, favorite arrival point of creepy Inca Mummy Girls with a thang for innocent Xanders. Thankfully the train would be pulling into Union Station just a bit ahead of sundown, so Sarah was relatively confident she would not end up as lunchables for the next Vamp down in SoCal.

Sarah got a cab down to the Hyperion and walked through the door when she heard a voice that sounded a lot like David Boreanaz but wasn't quite the same "Cordy, we've got a new customer, can you… Buffy? I though you were..." Sarah gave him a smile. The way he looked at her made it quite obvious that Angel still had a crush on her. She would not tell him that Buffy was gone and dead. She did not want to break his heart like that. "Angel, we have a problem. Willow performed a spell to bring me back from the dead, and here I am, but… My Slayer Powers are gone. And what did a bunch of surprisingly non-bee-venom-resistant biker demons do, the second they found out the Hellmouth was slayerless? They attacked. We need help. And I can't believe I'm even saying that, but you said Faith was not yet lost and could be redeemed and maybe you are right. If there is redemption for Faith, she can go to Sunnydale and get all redempt-y." Sarah said, trying her best to affect some Buffy-speak.

"Buffy, I am so glad that you are alive. And I would come to help you in Sunnydale in a heartbeat, but I think you are right. I belong here in Los Angeles. Being near you would be too much temptation for me in the long run. But you do know that as part of her redemption Faith turned herself into prison, right? Do you really think we should stage a jailbreak as the first act in getting her onto the side of good again? Kinda goes against the whole 'not evil' thing, doesn't it?" "Well, Angel, let me at least talk to her. See what she's like after a year in prison. See whether she is even willing to help fight evil and all that. I know my friends are not really on board with getting her back, but who else is going to fight the monsters, Spike?" "Pff, Spike", Angel said dismissively, "That bleached blond Brit doesn't even have a soul. He could turn evil every second. In fact, I think he still is. Remind me, why you haven't staked him already? We should really not rely on a brain chipped vampire as the champion of all that's good in this world" "So, will you help me visit Faith in prison then?" Sarah asked "I guess I could", Angel responded "There are visitor hours in the morning tomorrow, which obviously I cannot attend, but I think we can get you booked for then. It's not like anybody except me ever bothers to visit Faith."

Faith's PoV

Life in prison was excruciatingly boring, but for the most part it was survivable. It was supposed to be a punishment, so boring was actually kind of okay. Faith had been given sessions with a shrink due to her having let slip her earlier suicidal tendencies and while she could not exactly tell him about having been in the employ of a snake demon or only killing Alan Finch due to mistaking him for a vampire, she could get some clarity on why exactly relationships with Buffy and her friends had gone to hell in the blink of an eye. She even got some insight into her life in Boston and while it still hurt to think of her messed up childhood, she was at least able to talk about it a bit more by now. She would never not think of her mother as a horrible woman who was to blame for a lot of her issues, but she could learn to grow into something more than the abuse survivor. And in a sense she was that: a survivor. She had survived Buffy putting a knife into her stomach. She had survived a coma when the doctors had given up on her and basically dumped her in a broom closet. She had survived Boston and with a bit of luck she might even survive her own self-destructive tendencies.

Faith did not exactly wish to make friends in prison, even though there were a few inmates who really did not deserve to be there – three strikes laws and all – and some who were actually decent people once one got to know them. There had been a few "tough girls" who wanted to start a fight with her, but after she punched one of them back with even half her Slayer-strength once they did not dare touch her. In fact, Faith even managed to break up some fights between other inmates simply by happening by and saying stuff like "So, what are you trying to do here, exactly". The wardens did not exactly like her, but appreciated that she was "easy to handle" except for some nightmares she got, but then again, that as well was depressingly common in a prison in the "Land of the Free". Faith was quite surprised when she heard – in broad daylight – that she had a visitor and should get ready to meet them in fifteen minutes. Angel was the only one who ever visited her and then only sporadically. Had he finally gotten rid of his daylight allergy? Well good for him, he seriously needed a tan…

Sarah's PoV

Sarah was a bit nervous. Cordelia had driven her to the prison and been surprisingly mature and chatty for what she remembered of the former High School alpha bitch. Apparently people could indeed change and high school was not exactly a place conducive to producing well adjusted human beings who treat others nicely. She was glad the change of scenery helped Cordelia be a more well-rounded human being and she was surprised to actually enjoy her company. If Cordelia was to be believed, even Wesley Windham Price, the caricature of a stuffy but incompetent British watcher had grown as a person. Well good for them. Sarah did not quite understand the whole "Pile-eeh-ah" thing and why they got home with a girl called Fred, but it actually gave her some hope that dimensions could be crossed in order for her to go home to Freddie and her two beautiful children. Oh, speaking of which, she still hadn't gotten around to searching for Freddie. Back in the days of Buffy season six getting filmed Sarah and Freddie had lived in Los Angeles and she even knew the address from back in the day, but she was almost certain she would not find him there, after all, in this world Sarah Michelle Gellar almost certainly did not exist and most likely was not dating Freddie Prince junior. At any rate, right now the most important thing was getting a certain brunette to embrace her destiny of saving the world so that she, Sarah Michelle Gellar, would not have to do it. She was a bit nervous about what to say, after all, the last time Faith and Buffy had met, they had not exactly parted on the most amicable of terms. She would just have to go in there and see how it went. After going through a metal detector and a manual screening and a few other bits of security theater, Sarah finally sat in the visitor room in front of a window waiting for Faith to arrive. As she finally got there, Sarah had to calm herself down again, before greeting her "Hello Faith..." - "You're not Buffy", Faith answered.

Author's note: So I got a bit of writing in on my day off work. I may at some point write a chapter about how they defeated the biker demons, but I think it is not all that important. I guess you'll be more interested in what on earth Faith's last sentence is about...