June 29th, 2016, Cleveland, Ohio, 7:45 p.m.
Lily dropped her phone onto the glossy wood of the kitchen table and sighed. She stared at the frozen TV, where the paused screen showed Faith and Dean charging past the crumpled desk sergeant. A coal-black semi automatic was clutched tightly in the demon's hands, and the unmistakable gleam of a silver angel blade dangled loosely from the crook of Faith's elbow. At this distance, the expressions on their faces were blurred, but Lily fancied that she could fill in the blanks. Faith would be affecting a grim sort of triumph, and as for Dean, he was probably just plain amused.
Sipping from the coffee mug in front of her, the blonde turned to her best friend, who was still watching the television. "Well?"
"We're not actually going to call Buffy, are we?" Becka looked more than halfway sick to her stomach.
"What else can we do, Beck? You saw the tapes." She took another sip of coffee.
"Yeah, but do the tapes really mean what we think they mean?" asked the brunette. It wasn't clear if she was seeing actual flaws in the police report's logic or if she was just floundering about for an alternate explanation. "No one died. Faith and Dean might not be as, you know, evil as everyone's been saying."
Lily raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. In their dynamic duo, someone had to take the pessimistic view of things. Pessimism was not a look that either Slayer wore well, and so they tended to take turns. Now, with Becka refusing to accept the clear implications of the situations, it fell to Lily to express the downer viewpoint. "The Mark of Cain is not some butterfly temporary tattoo that you get out of a quarter dispenser at the grocery store," she reminded her fellow Slayer. "And whatever Sam did to bring Faith back - "
"If he really brought her back right," said Becka darkly, flipping into pessimism. Rising from the kitchen table, she yanked the kettle off of the stove and began refilling it at the sink. This situation called for more tea.
"Exactly."
"So that's it, then?" Metal clanged on metal as the engineer slammed the kettle back onto the front burner with enough force to set Lily's teeth on edge. "We find Faith and Dean and put them down? What if he's holding her against her will?" The anger leeched out of her voice to be replaced by concern. "What if he hurts her?"
"You actually think he'll hurt her?" wondered Lily. She had been trying desperately to avoid that particular train of thought.
The brunette pursed her lips. "Before the Mark, never. Now? I have no idea. Who knows how much of Dean Winchester is still rattling around inside there anyway?"
"We could apply the same question to Faith," the blonde pointed out.
"Yeah." Becka sighed. "We gonna go in and liberate her?"
"In theory." Lily was losing some of her steam. "I mean, yes. If she wants or needs liberating."
Raising her eyebrows, the other Slayer said, "If? You realize that when we call Buffy, she's going to want to ride to the rescue? Whether or not Faith needs or wants rescuing? At the very least, she won't rest until we bring her in."
"True."
"We're not putting Buffy above Faith," stated Becka flatly.
"Of course not. If Buffy wants her in, but Faith wants out – " The blonde frowned in thought.
"Then we help her stay out?"
"Yeah. I think that's what we're going to have to do."
"Great." Lifting the kettle from the stove, Becka poured herself a large cupful of steaming water and added a peppermint teabag. She stirred the water and the tea solemnly. "When did Slaying get so complicated?"
"It's been complicated from the beginning," said Lily in commiseration. "I just don't think we realized it."
They sat at the kitchen table in a moment of silent camaraderie, and then together they dialed ten familiar digits into Lily's cell phone. If there were a library dedicated solely to the recording and transcription of awkward phone calls, this would have been the primary exhibit. Buffy spluttered at first, but then her demeanor changed, and she took in the news with almost terrifying calm. By the time she hung up the call five minutes later, both of the younger Slayers were feeling even more on edge than they had been previously.
"So," said Becka at length, rising a second time from her chair and stretching her arms up toward the ceiling, "that could have gone worse."
"Maybe." Lily eyed her dark mobile phone and exhaled heavily. "You realize this means that we need to hit the road ASAP, right?"
"Yeah. I'll give work a call, tell them my grandma's sick and that I need to take that week of PTO I've been saving. And then I should probably let James know that I'll be out of town for a few days."
"G-d," mumbled the blonde. "I hope this only takes a week We're going to have a devil of a time tracking them."
"Mmm," Becka agreed. "Too bad we can't call in that vampire friend of Dean's. What was his name again?"
Lily supplied the name. "Benny. He's dead, remember?"
"I remember. He's dead, and Bobby Singer is dead, and Sam might as well be dead, what with how stupid he's acting."
"I thought he had more sense," muttered Lily into her coffee mug.
"Really, Lil?" the engineer snorted. "Winchesters don't have the sense God gave a goose, not when it comes to each other. I still . . . I can't believe he brought Faith back and didn't tell us."
"I can't believe he was fool enough to think he could just geas her into being his hench-person. Slayers don't Igor for anybody – and Sam sure as shooting ain't no Dr. Frankenstein."
"It's Fraahnkensteen," Becka corrected automatically. "Yeah, that was more than a little dumb. You know we may need to bring the cavalry in if we can't find Faith in time?"
Lily winced and got up from her chair. Cavalry, Faith, and the new and improved Dean Winchester would not be a good combination. "I know. So let's get moving. I can be packed and in the car in ten. You?"
Pushing her chair into the table, the engineer followed her best friend upstairs. "About that. We driving or flying?"
"Driving," answered the blonde over her shoulder. "New Jersey?"
"They'll be long gone by the time we make it there."
"Probably. But at least we'll be able to review the CCTV and talk to the police who arrested Faith firsthand."
Becka froze at the top of the second floor landing. "Huh. You know what was funny?"
Frowning, Lily turned around to look at her. "What, Beck?"
"No casualties at that police station. A hell of a lot of broken bones and concussions and superficial cuts, but not one casualty. I wonder if that means something."
"I dunno. Other than that Dean could've killed them and he chose not to."
"Not a very comforting thought, is it?" The brunette shuddered.
Lily shook her head. No, it was not a very comforting thought at all.
June 30th, 2016, London, England, 2:30 a.m.
The sun had long since set in London Town, but Spike had yet to go out. Angel was off on some scouting mission with Fred, which meant that for once Spike could enjoy the peace and quiet and smoke in the flat. As long as he sat by the open window and ran the central air later, no one would be the wiser. He was debating about whether or not to turn on the telly when his phone rang.
To his surprise, it was none other than the Slayer head honcho herself. Curious, the vampire raised his mobile to his ear and said, "Hello, luv."
"Spike." Buffy's tone was curt. Whatever this was, it was most obviously a business call.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I've got a job for you. And Angel."
A job for both of them? How unusual. Buffy tended to keep her former lovers as far apart as she could. Her discomfort at their sharing a flat in central London amused him to no end. "I'm all ears," said Spike, his interest growing by the minute.
"Faith's gone rogue."
The vampire took another drag from his cigarette, half-convinced that his ears were playing tricks on his mind. "Faith . . . Faith . . . You wouldn't happen to mean our dearly departed Faith?" he said at last.
"Yes," replied Buffy. The word sounded as though it pained her. "Turns out she isn't as dead as she used to be. And now she's palling around with a Knight of Hell – we need damage control," the Slayer concluded in desperation.
"An' you want me an' Peaches to control her?" Spike coughed on smoke. No one could control Faith. It had been one of the many things about her that had driven the blonde Slayer crazy, back in the day, as well as one of the many things that the he had admired.
"Yes," said Buffy fiercely but then she back-tracked. "No. I don't know. I need you to find her. Figure out what's going on. If she's actually a threat or if she's in over her head. Either way, we can't let her keep being play-pals with the King of Hell and his newest knight."
Spike scratched the outer shell of his ear and leaned back in his comfortable armchair. "Just out of curiosity, who might that knight be?" He was ninety percent sure that he already knew, but it never hurt to confirm.
Buffy mumbled a string of words that blurred into one another.
"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Who did you say?"
"Dean Winchester."
"Ahh," hummed the vampire wisely. His suspicion had been correct. "Never fear, I'll track down Captain Forehead. We'll handle it."
"Good. And Spike?"
He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the adjacent coffee table. "Yes?"
"You should hurry," Buffy urged him. "I think those protégées of Faith's are going to try and mediate something with her."
"Doesn't sound like a horrible idea." Becka and Lily had always had good heads on their shoulders. Even better, unlike Buffy and Faith themselves, the two Slayers of the younger generation were remarkably not prone to overreacting.
"It isn't safe. They'll get themselves hurt." The fear in the woman's voice was palpable.
Instinctively, he attempted to comfort her. "Buff. This is Faith we're talking about. She won't hurt Lily or Becka. She treated them like family."
"Yeah, well there used to be a time when she never would have hurt me, either," muttered Buffy. "And we all saw how that turned out."
"I thought that was water under the bridge?"
"Just because Faith reformed before her death doesn't mean that she doesn't have the same . . . capacity for violence that she had as a teenager," the Slayer insisted. "If she's allying with demons . . . Do you see why I'm concerned?"
"I hear you," the vampire soothed. "Don't worry, B. Me and Angel will find our resurrected friend. We'll get this taken care of in no time."
"I hope so," said Buffy fervently, and she hung up.
Spike stared at the phone in his hand and reached for the flask at his hip. Right. He'd get right onto the calling Peaches bit. He just needed a drink or two to fortify himself against spending the foreseeable future in close quarters with his grandsire first.
July 5th, 2016, Aurora, Colorado, 9:30 a.m.
They had one week. One glorious week before things turned sour. They hit almost everywhere on Faith's national park bucket list – Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Tetons, Vegas, whorehouses in the rural outreaches of Nevada, the California coast. Nothing on her mind, nothing to worry her or occupy her time except for greasy food, booze, sex, and the occasional fight outside a demon bar. As long as she kept her back turned to security cameras, she was golden. Faith's only frustration was that wherever Abaddon's hangers-on were coming from, she could not get a handle on it for the life of her. They were like worms, crawling out of the woodwork one minute, and burrowing deep into the muddy earth the next.
On this particular morning, she woke in a hotel room somewhere just outside of Denver. The pillow beneath her head rose and fell rhythmically, and the Slayer rolled over to stare along the length of a black t-shirt to Dean Winchester's scruffy chin and too-long hair. She was tempted to reach up and run her fingers through the fuzzy mop, but thought better of it when the demon's black eyes flickered open. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and blinked down at her.
"Morning. Did we . . .?" his voice trailed off suggestively.
"No." The Slayer ended that train of thought before the demon could get carried away. "You were too drunk."
"Ah." Dean laid back down and dragged an actual pillow over his face. "Where's Crowley?"
"He stepped out." Faith tapped the demon's ribs until he moved the pillow and glared at her.
"What?"
"You got a plan?" she asked casually, as if the answer didn't matter.
He squinted against the pain of his hangover. "Plan for what?"
"Your divorce with Crowley."
"Oh." Relaxing, Dean closed his eyes again. "Nope."
"Just gonna wait and see what he does?"
"Yep."
Faith gnawed on her bottom lip. "That's a sucky plan," she pointed out.
"Which is why it's a good thing that I have you, then, isn't it?"
"I hate you," grumbled the woman, but she didn't put much effort into it.
"No, you don't," he contradicted her. "Anyway, it'll be fine, Faith."
"And how do you know that?"
Dean moved his callused hand down from the pillow to rest on her forehead. "Because," he said, roughly giving her hair an odd combination between a stroke and a pat, "it's not just me that's got you. You've got me."
"Are you petting me?" The Slayer's tone jerked up half an octave, and she batted his hand away.
"I'm hungover. I'm doing whatever it takes to get you to shut up."
"Winchester - "
Dean turned onto his side, dislodging Faith from her comfortable position half-slumped across his stomach. "Sleep now, talk later."
"Listen - "
"Shh." The demon reached down, wrapped an arm underneath her armpits, and dragged the Slayer up along the mattress until she was even with him on the bed. He nuzzled the tip of his nose against the nape of her neck and then exhaled. "You know what I don't get?" he thought aloud in hazy hangover-induced honesty.
Leaning her head back against his shoulder, the Slayer retorted, "Why you say you want to nap but won't stop talking?"
"No." He looped his arm over her side again, pulling her tighter into his body. "Why I didn't make you stay before – before the Mark."
"I don't belong to you," she snapped, but she made no move to extricate herself.
"No, you don't," Dean agreed. "But you'd've stayed if I'd asked."
"Maybe," Faith admitted. Something sharp pricked at the backs of her eyes as she fought away the thought of what used to be and what might have been. "I guess now we'll never know."
July 5th, 2016, Denver, Colorado, 8:55 p.m.
The conversation set the course for a day that went from bad to worse. Despite her best efforts, a large order of onion rings, and three beers, Faith could not pull herself out of the doldrums. With each passing moment of every passing day, she was coming to realize that resurrection had not solved anything. There were only three times when she felt alive: tracking a demon, banging a stranger, downing a shot. But even then it wasn't real. It was a mere stop gap that lasted for five minutes. Five, ten, fifteen, thirty – and then she was empty again.
When night came, she sat sullenly next to Crowley at a bar and didn't say a word as Dean monopolized the karaoke microphone, massacring his way through increasingly drunk versions of Meatloaf's greatest hits. Once he finally relinquished the stage to a quartet of bright-eyed coeds and staggered his way across the crowded space towards them, Faith signaled to the bartender for another whiskey. She tossed it back before Dean could reach them.
The demons exchanged an eyebrow-raised look over her head. They had never seen the Slayer approach intoxication this early in the evening before – especially not when there was a nest of vampires less than two blocks away that needed to be cleared out by midnight.
Crowley covered the rim of her glass with his hand. "Going a bit hard, don't you think?"
Faith pushed him away and gestured to the bartender again.
"Hey." Dean grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the counter. "Aren't you going to compliment me on my song?"
The Slayer spun on her heel and glared up at him. "You know," she began in a sweet voice that set Crowley's danger warnings buzzing, "that whole time you were up there, molesting the microphone and mangling the classics, I kept thinking: I loved him once."
Releasing her as if her touch burned him, Dean recoiled backwards. "You loved me?"
His shock gave Faith the leeway she needed to reach over, grab Crowley's umbrella-laden pink drink, and down it in one swallow. "No, you idiot." She slammed the glass back on the counter. "I loved the frakking microphone stand. Yes, you." Faith glanced at the King of Hell. "Dunno why you're so set on making him your new consort, Crowls. He's dumber than a box of rocks, this one." She jerked her thumb towards Dean.
"Crowls?" echoed Crowley in stunned shock. He dug a thick finger into his left ear and twisted it around. That couldn't be right. He must have misheard.
Overcoming his surprise, Dean moved back into the Slayer's personal space. His palms grazed her waist. "For what it's worth," he said in a silky voice, "I used to love loving you, too – if you know what I mean."
Faith's glare only intensified. "You need better pick up lines, Fabio. Or I need more alcohol." She extended her empty glass towards the bartender before either of the demons could stop her. "A lot more alcohol."
Crowley and Dean exchanged another look, and the King of Hell inclined his head towards the Slayer. This one's on you, the gesture said.
"Slayer," started Dean.
Faith interrupted him. "Go knock boots with that waitress." She pointed indiscreetly to a blonde with wavy hair who was taking a tray of drinks and wings to the table closest to the karaoke stage. "She's been eyeing you up all night."
The demon laughed. "After you just said you loved me? Only a heartless sonnuvabitch could do that."
"Used to," Faith reminded him sourly. "Past tense. Very, very past tense. And in case you hadn't checked the mirror lately, you are a heartless sonnuvabitch."
"And you're dead," Dean countered, although it was a weak comeback. "That why you're so . . . emotional . . . today?" he prompted with sudden insight.
Faith shook her head, furious. "I came back wrong," she murmured as the bartender poured her a bourbon. "And I'm just starting to realize it."
In one of his rare moments of pity, Dean shifted his weight until he was leaning solidly against her. "Everyone comes back wrong," he said, the words drifting to her ears along a puff of beer-flavored breath. "Doesn't make you special."
The Slayer looked away and stared into the amber depths of her drink. She was not interested in pity. "I finally get it," she mumbled after a long moment. "That weird saying on that HBO show you liked. 'What's dead can never die.' Of course they can't. Because even if you bring them back, they aren't alive again. Not enough to count, anyway."
"Faith." He gripped her chin and turned her towards him and away from the bourbon. "You getting suicidal on me, zombie girl?" he asked, lowering his voice. 'Cause you know, sweetheart, if you want to die that badly, I can do it myself. No need to outsource the wet-work."
"No." The woman grit her teeth. "I'm just not sure this is working for me."
"So why not get lost? You can always leave."
Faith took a hasty gulp of her drink. A few droplets slid down her chin as she said, borderline hysterical, "You mean I can try. You or Crowley, someone's gonna drag me back in, and I don't frakking care anymore, Dean. I don't frakking care if you live or if you die."
"Except that you do," he corrected her. He took the bourbon from her and finished it in one go.
"Except that I do," she admitted with a frustrated toss of her hair. "Because it's the one g-ddamned thing the Veil left of me. It's funny – I think I used to love you, once upon a time. Now I don't even like you."
"Mmm." Dean nodded at the bartender for a refill.
"Anyway, it doesn't matter," continued Faith furiously. "None of it matters anymore." Her mouth twisted in disgust. "So I'm gonna sweat my brains out on that dance floor and go home with a stranger." She turned to leave the bar but found Dean blocking her way. "Christo," she hissed at him venomously.
Flinching, the demon took a step back. "Careful," he taunted. "Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't get the clap."
"Wait too long, and your little blonde'll wander off with someone else," she shot back. "Now get out of my way."
He pressed the keys to the Chevy into her hand as she pushed past him, another unexpected gesture of pity. "Here. Go clear up that vamp nest, then take a few days and straighten yourself out. You're no use to me like this."
Faith screamed internally. She had frakking had it with being 'of use' to people. If that was all her life was . . . if that was all that was left . . . she had more than half a mind to take those keys and take that car and drive it straight off a cliff. Only then she would be stuck back in the Veil, unable to move forward or backwards, trapped.
She slammed her shoulder into his. "Damn you, Dean Winchester." Faith bit her lip to force back the moisture burning in the backs of her eyes. "God. Damn. You."
He ignored her outburst. "We're headed to Santa Fe next. Meet us there when you finish."
"I ain't coming back." The Slayer walked away.
His quiet laugh floated to her as she stormed across the dance floor, galling in its condescension. "Sure you ain't, darlin'."
June 7th, 2016, Salt Lake City, Utah, 10:27 p.m.
"What can I get you, honey?" the overweight, middle-aged bartender asked her with a friendly smile.
Normally, Faith would have taken out the woman's eye for that, but tonight she just let it pass. "Whiskey. Strongest and cheapest you got."
Something in her tone must have tipped the old lady off, for she pressed, "You okay, hon?"
"Not really." The Slayer forced a grin, but all she felt was sick. "Existential crisis. Kinda just wanna get drunk, maybe find somebody to take my mind off things." Alone in this bar, with no one who knew her name or her face or even a page of the pathetic tragedy that was her god-forsaken life, honesty came easily.
"I get off at eleven," interjected the other, younger, male bartender from across the bar.
Accepting her whiskey from the too-friendly woman, Faith looked him up and down. Tall, dark blonde, clear grey eyes – she guessed he would come in at a solid 8.5. Eleven was still three hours out from now. That gave her plenty of time to find a demon bar, pick a fight, win that fight, and tidy up in some women's restroom. She grinned and ran her thumb across the side of her whiskey glass, already damp with condensation. "Eleven, huh? We'll see if I'm around."
June 8th, 2016, Tempe, Arizona, 2:43 a.m.
When the nightly call came in, Crowley was grateful that his errant demonic charge was far across the room, serenading the other bar-goers to a truly unfortunate version of Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy." He asked his informant, "Where is she now?"
"Salt Lake City," came the quick response.
He had to hand it to Phillips. The man – demon – was always the consummate professional when it came to jobs such as this one. "What is she doing?"
"She just gutted a vamp she found trying to chow down on a homeless person."
"You mean staked," Crowley corrected with a twinge of irritation. "She staked a vampire."
Phillips stuck to his guns. "No, boss," he insisted. "Gutted. She sliced him to ribbons, and then she staked him."
A little more brutal than the King of Hell would have expected, but not entirely out of line with Wolfram and Hart's original psych profile from their first contact with the Slayer. "Fascinating. What would be your assessment?"
"She's devolving, my lord. Falling apart. The further away from Winchester she gets, the worse her control becomes."
Still keeping one eye pinned on Dean at the microphone, Crowley ran a thumb across his bottom lip in thought. "How did she act? After, I mean."
His informant cleared his throat. "She told the homeless man to run, and then she sat there in that alleyway for a good half-hour, staring at nothing."
"And then?" the King of Hell prompted.
For the first time, distaste entered Phillips' voice. "She pretended to be a hooker and beat the sh-t out of the john who tried to pick her up," he explained. "After that, she went back to the first bar she started out in and found some guy to do her in an alleyway on his smoke break."
"Just think, the Slayer has only been gone for two days," mused Crowley.
"Yes, my lord."
"And the Slayers? How goes their search?"
"They've got multiple groups, sir. The closest to her location are the vampires Angelus and William the Bloody."
He could have predicted that. Angelus and Spike had experience, experience which most of the motley vigilante crew who called themselves Slayers lacked. Of course Buffy Summers would be sending in her hounds to bring her lost sister to bay. Not that it would do them any good in the end. The King said, "Very well, Phillips. Stay close on her heels, but don't let her see you."
"Of course not, my lord," Phillips assured him. "I change meatsuits twice a day."
"Good. Keep me apprised of her next moves?"
"Yes, my lord."
Click.
Returning his phone to its place inside his suit jacket pocket, Crowley took a long, slow sip from his gin and tonic. His three-week experiment with the Slayer was quickly running its course. He suspected there were only five days left, at best. He hoped she would accelerate her fall to rock bottom and return to Santa Fe before her remaining days elapsed. She would have to, if the King wanted a chance at postponing her expiration date.
The demon wrinkled his nose and finished his gin. Another case of Sam Winchester's sh-tty shellwork striking yet again. He turned in his chair to watch Dean murdering yet another karaoke classic. Well, at least someone was having fun.
July 8th, 2016, El Reno, Nevada, 7:19 p.m.
She had been sitting at the diner booth for less than ten minutes when the vampire walked in. She sensed him from the moment the door opened, swiveling on her blue vinyl seat to take in the familiar black duster, peroxide blond hair, and pointed chin. Faith growled as he dropped onto the bench seat across from her. "How did you find me?"
"How do you think?"
"I don't know, Spike." She ripped the paper top off of her straw wrapper and let it fall to the cracked formica table top. "That's why I asked."
"See," said the blond conversationally, "the funny thing is, there's been at least a dozen Slayers scouring this country for you, following a trail of vampire and demonic deaths from New Jersey to Wyoming to California and back to Denver – rumor has it that twenty vampires disappeared overnight there a couple of nights ago – you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
"Nope. Doesn't ring any bells." Faith shoved an onion ring smeared with ketchup into her mouth.
"Uh huh." He did not believe her, and thy both knew it. "Be that as it might, the most clever brains of the Slayer Organization have been combing every inch of the West looking for you and your, uh, boyfriend."
"Not my boyfriend," said the Slayer automatically.
Spike knew better than to pursue a dead-end argument. "Right. Well, none of 'em has had the slightest shadow of luck. And then suddenly this afternoon you check your email address from a very public Internet café, and now, well, here we are. If I didn't know better, I would say that you wanted me to find you."
In lieu of replying, Faith ate another two onion rings and took a swing from her beer bottle. "Where's Angel?"
"'Scuse me?" The vampire feigned shock.
"You really think I'd log-in to an email account and not take as much advantage of the chance for cross-surveillance as I could? Come on, Spike. You know me better than that. No one's changed the admin passwords to the list-serve since I died," she told him with the air of one being unnecessarily helpful. "You might want to have somebody look into that."
"So you read all our correspondence." He really did not want to think about what that might mean. The email and forum threads had become very heated in the last ten days, since her return from the grave had become common Slayer knowledge.
Faith shrugged. "Basically. Might've done one or two other things while I was there."
"Viruses?"
"No." The Slayer shook her head. "Why would I frak up Slayer operations? That's not what I want at all."
"What do you want?" asked Spike curiously. It was becoming more and more clear that this was a set-up. But he didn't mind. The supposedly evil undead Slayer seemed more tired than anything to him, and she was attacking her burger and onion rings with the fervor of the almost-starving. He wondered when she had last eaten.
"Another beer would be nice," answered the woman. She set her empty bottle back on the table and picked up her cheeseburger. "But you didn't answer my question. Where's Angel?"
"I sent him on a wild goose chase," the vampire admitted after a beat of silence. "He isn't quite in a diplomatic frame of mind where you're concerned. Buffy's filled his head with all her fears, and you know that doesn't tend to be the part of his body he thinks with."
"Not where B's concerned, anyway." Faith's eyes narrowed. "What makes you different?"
"The thing is, me, I like broken things."
The brunette chewed thoughtfully on her cheeseburger but did not bother to deny the statement. It was true enough.
"So." Spike filched an onion ring and bit into it. The crispy fried breading crunched between his teeth. "Why did you want to meet?"
"I figured someone would come after that IP address, but I wasn't sure who. I had no idea that it would be you." She wiped a glob of mustard out of the corner of her mouth with a napkin. "Guess that's why we're having this conversation all nice and civilized in here instead of over a fistfight in the back parking lot."
"And here I thought it was your stomach growling that dictated the setting of our discussion."
She lifted her shoulders in a gesture of sheer unconcern. "Could be." The woman held out her hand. "You got a smoke?"
"You can't light up inside restaurants anymore," Spike reminded her. "But after, sure."
"Great." The Slayer reached back down for her cheeseburger. "So, you gonna buy me that beer or not?"
"Why are we here, Faith?" It was time for her to stop dodging the question.
Glancing off to the side, she admitted, "I needed to know. What the story is, how close you all are, if there's any way to buy you lot off."
Spike frowned. "No one really knows the story. Other than Sam Winchester bringing you back to chase down his brother, who made a deal with Cain and is now some immortal brand-bearing Knight of Hell, and said Knight of Hell busting you out of police custody in New Jersey a week and a half ago."
"Ha." Faith laughed dryly. "That's pretty much it."
"Where is your flannel aficionado, by the way?" the vampire asked in a too-innocent voice. "Unusual for you two not to be attached at the hip, isn't it?"
"No idea where he is," said the Slayer curtly. "We split in Denver."
"That explains the twenty vamps dead in one night," Spike muttered under his breath.
Faith pretended not to have heard him. "How many people does Buffy have out looking for me?"
"Almost all of them. Your girls are the closest."
"Dammit." The Slayer pursed her lips. "I don't want them to find me."
"You want anyone to find you?"
Reluctantly, the woman admitted to herself that he had a point. "No, not particularly. But I especially don't want them to find me, not when Dean's around."
"You two planning on meeting back up?"
His subtle fishing for information was not lost on Faith. She chuckled at him and polished off the final bite of her cheeseburger. "I don't know," she said honestly. "I was pretty pissed three days ago. Now, though, I'm not sure."
Spike waited patiently for her to continue, and sure enough, the Slayer took the bait.
"I guess," mused the woman slowly, "I guess I thought that I would feel more free away from him and Crowley."
The vampire raised his scarred eyebrow. "Crowley's part of this, too?" Buffy had suggested as much, but it meant more to have Faith confirm it.
"How do you think I was clearing out so many nests and covens so fast? He's got good information."
"Of course he does; he's the King of Hell."
"Not the first demon I've worked with," Faith grumbled to her dinner plate.
"Certainly not the most interesting." Spike leaned in closer to her. "Tell me more about your breakup with Winchester."
The Slayer shrugged a second time. "Not much to tell. I felt claustrophobic. I thought I'd feel better on my own."
"And do you?" he wondered.
"No. I don't feel much of anything, really." Faith reached for the last onion ring.
"Buffy felt like that. When she first came back. Have you thought about talking to her?" Even as he asked the question, the vampire knew it was a mistake.
Faith snorted. "I'd rather die," she said shortly.
Spike did not doubt for a moment that she meant it.
"Well." She rose from the booth. "Thanks for the dinner, Spike. Give Angel a kiss for me. Tell him I'm happier this way."
"You're not happy."
"No," the Slayer admitted. "No, I'm not. But, you know, I never was very happy when I was alive the first time, either."
"They would take you back – Buffy, Lil, Beck, Angel – they'd all welcome you back in an instant." It was a last ditch attempt to change her mind.
"Thanks for the offer, but I'm tired of chains."
He was not going to let her get away with that one. "And that's why you're throwing your lot in with that black-eyed wonder of yours? You trying to tell me he just lets you be and do whatever you want, no questions asked?"
"I don't know," said the Slayer truthfully. "I don't know where I'm going or if I'm staying. I just know that I can't go back."
And without waiting for the check or the promised cigarettes, she walked out of the diner and disappeared into the Arizona night.
Spike gave the Slayer a good thirty minutes' head start before he phoned in the reinforcements. "Easy, girls," he quieted their uproar of questions and concern. "I found her."
"And?" demanded both Becka and Lily in unison.
The vampire shook his head. They were too much alike, too reliant on each other. Always had been, ever since Faith had taken them under her wing. "And she doesn't want to be found."
"Is she evil?" Becka breathed.
"Is she okay?" Lily asked at the same moment.
"She's . . . five by five. But I don't think it's going to be enough."
"Oh." The disappointment in Becka's tone was clear. "You think Buffy's still full-speed ahead, then?"
He had yet to call the head Slayer, but Spike already knew what her answer would be. "Yeah."
"Dang it," said Becka. "It won't be good if we corner her."
"Or him. He's probably worse."
The brunette laughed. "He's always worse. Definitely not the most well-adjusted crayon in the box."
"Faith moved past her crazy," concluded Lily sagely. "Dean always buried his."
As amusing as their double act usually was, Spike had neither the time nor the patience for it tonight. "Well, I don't think either of them is much into burying the crazy now," he cut the girls off. "They're both rolling in it."
"Like dogs in rotten fish guts?" proposed the blonde Slayer.
"Lily!" gasped Becka with more amusement than horror.
"I have a literary frame of mind, okay?" Lily defended herself.
Spike snorted. 'Literary' wasn't quite the word for it. "You have a dockside frame of mind."
"Maybe that, too," the woman capitulated.
In an attempt to bring the conversation back to the realms of the productive, Becka said, "So . . . so who's gonna get close to Buffy?"
"I'll do it," Spike answered firmly. "She trusts me."
"You mean she likes to bang you from time to time," muttered the engineer quietly.
Not quietly enough, for Lily burst into a peal of laughter. "See, I'm not the only one with a dockside frame of mind."
Despite of the urgency of the moment, the vampire found himself smiling. "And you two used to be so innocent. What happened to you?"
"Faith," said Becka.
"And Dean," added Lily.
"They happened to us."
June 11th, 2012, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1:39 a.m.
She gently eased her way out from behind the wheel of the Chevy, her jeans liberally streaked with slime demon offal and effluvia, leaving splotches of dried muck on the upholstery behind her. The night had started out simply enough, with a beer and a game of pool, but it had ended, the way so many evenings often did, with a desperate scuffle in a dark side street. And somehow, somewhere in the middle of the scuffle, she had decided to drive to Santa Fe.
Finding her former posse's hotel was not difficult. Faith simply checked the first motel under the 'A's in the yellow pages, and then the second name under the 'B's. She hit pay-dirt with the third name under 'C,' played the 'I'm looking for my brother' card with the bleary-eyed clerk at the front desk, and jimmied the door open with a couple of bobby pins. Stepping inside, she found the place deserted except for the snoring, sprawled form of Dean Winchester draped across one of the beds. He opened one eye when she walked in, muttered her name, and then instantly passed out again.
Faith rinsed off the slime demon gunk under the hot spray of the shower as quickly as she could and changed into clean clothes. Her head was throbbing, and she could feel exhaustion deep in her bones, but she was also filled with a murky sort of satisfaction from her entanglement with the slime demon. As it turned out, the Mark of Cain was not the only thing that required blood to keep it lying dormant.
When she returned to the bedroom, the demon had his meaty fists spread out all over the pillows, and Faith did not feel like a two a.m. wrestling match. Sure, she could take the other queen bed, but that meant she would end up kipping with Crowley, whenever the King of Hell chose to come in. Instead, she lay down on top of the covers beside Dean, resting her head on the demon's flattened stomach. The Slayer curled into a ball along the curve of his body, the warmth of his skin like a furnace against her back and under her cheek.
Dean muttered in his sleep, a nonsensical string of sounds that could not be arranged into words, but he did not stir except to move instinctively closer to her, until no space remained between his legs and her back.
The woman exhaled, a slow, silent release of fatigue, tension, and resignation. For better or worse, she was choosing a side. And yet . . . . The monster inside her was quiet. The demon beside her was quiet. Everything was quiet.
Finally, Faith could sleep.
June 11th, 2016, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 8:41 a.m.
When morning came, Faith found herself alone in the bed. Across the room, the demon was watching her from the lone creaking wooden chair, his eyes an innocent green for once. "Welcome back," he said lightly, as if she had just stepped out for a milk run.
"Yep," was the terse response. Faith wondered briefly what time it was. She was still so tired.
"Thanks for cleaning out the car, by the way. It was starting to smell like Crowley's dirty laundry."
She could barely remember that, her frenzied removal of all the fast food wrappers and scrubbing down every inch of the Impala's interior until it practically sparkled. That must have been yesterday morning, back when she had had some actual energy. "You're welcome," she finally said, wondering why he didn't mention the bits of slime demon blood that she felt sure had been coating the steering wheel.
"I got you coffee." He nodded towards the McDonalds cup perched on the nightstand.
Faith raised her eyebrows. "That was nice of you."
"Nice had nothing to do with it. There's something that only you can do for me."
Ahh. This was much more like it. "What do you need me to do?" asked Faith without hesitation. She reached for her coffee and took a single, scalding sip. Black with one sugar and one cream. Damn him, but he knew what she liked.
"I got a call last night from some redneck kid who's holding Sam hostage. Not sure how he got Crowley's number, but he probably nicked it out of Sam's phone. Anyway, he's promising to kill my darling little brother if I don't show up and take his place."
She struggled to make sense of all of this. "And you want me to go to the rescue?"
"Nah." Dean tossed her a paper bag. Its insignia matched that of her coffee. "Have a McMuffin. I told him that I didn't care what he did with my sonnuvabitch brother. If he kills Sam, I'll find him one day and pay him back for it – slowly, over days. But if Sam's not competent enough to outwit one single nutcase, he's kinda got torture and death coming to him, don't you think?"
"Mmph," said Faith noncommittally through a mouthful of egg and sausage.
"Thing is, it got me thinking, and it's time to take you up on your plan."
"My what?" The Slayer almost choked on her breakfast. She had had a plan? That was news to her. "Excuse me?"
"Your plan. You had your three days to freak out and now it's time to pull it together. Yeah, whatever, so someone made you come back, and you're tired and pissed and beginning to realize that not everything behind those pretty brown eyes is quite the way you left it. It's time to man up, Faith. You didn't like my divorce strategy last week, so I wanna hear yours."
"You didn't have a divorce strategy last week," she snapped petulantly.
Dean said nothing, merely continued to watch her, his green eyes cold chips of ice in an impassive face.
"This alliance thing that we've got going on," Faith began carefully, "it ain't gonna last."
"I know."
"And it's not just your brother and some redneck kid on our heels," the Slayer continued. "I ran into Spike, while I was out."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I thought about leaving him unconscious in a Lutheran church at sunrise," she admitted. It had been a tempting thought, but in the end, it would have taken too much time and effort, unless he provoked her to it.
"Did you?"
"No. He didn't chase me."
"Pity." Dean's mouth twisted into a garish grin. "He'd make one hell of a bonfire."
Faith shook off the mental image that particular sentence created. "That's not the point. The Slayers have made tracking you and me down kind of priority numero uno. And they're not afraid to use dirty tactics to get information. They aren't gonna leave us alone, Dean. You know that as well as I do."
"Why didn't you go back to them, then? If escape is futile." His unrelenting gaze was boring into her brown eyes. Faith refused to flinch.
"Because I want to live on my own damn terms for once. And honestly, I don't care if you tag along or if you don't. But I am finished being your sidekick."
"You've got big plans," surmised the demon.
"You could say that. What's dead can never die, Dean," she reminded him. "You can't die, and I can't exactly go anywhere, either. Heaven's closed. Hell's not my preferred retirement home. So we –"
"We?"
"A temporary we," the Slayer amended. "We might as well just – "
"Take over the world?" suggested Dean sarcastically.
"No." Faith would not be needled. Not when she was finally feeling a sense of clarity again. "Metatron. I'm going to kill Metatron."
Dean leaned forward in his chair, curious. This was bold and ambitious. To be completely truthful, it was far more ambitious than he had been expecting. "You want to break into Heaven and murder the head angel? Why?"
Faith smiled the bitter smile of those with nothing to lose. "Why not?" she posed the rhetorical question. "Besides, it's his fault I'm even here."
"So I should send him a fruit basket?" the demon teased.
"As long as you put a stick of dynamite in that fruit basket, I don't see why not." After wadding up the empty McDonalds bag, the woman chucked it towards the trash can beside the door.
"Mmm." Dean mulled the proposition over in his head. "He is obnoxious."
"Mmhmm." She did not press. It was always best to let the demon come to his own conclusions.
"And he did kill me," he said thoughtfully.
Standing from her chair, Faith moved across the faded motel carpet. "Mmhmm."
"Okay," the demon made his decision. "I'm in. You got any ideas on how you're going to execute this little plan of yours? I mean, do you even know where the stairway to Heaven's located?"
The Slayer paused in the doorway to the bathroom. Even super hot undead Vampire Slayers needed to brush their teeth from time to time. "That depends."
"On?"
"What's your ethical stance on angel torture?"
"That's my girl." Dean's sh-t-eating grin widened. "Keep talking."
