Author's note: I know these chapters a little shorter than I want. This is the way it's all coming out of my head though. Bear with me. I know I owe comments to some people. Please comment if you have a question. I really am going to end this fic really soon, but there will be a sequel since I'll have lots of questions unanswered. Thanks for reading. Enjoy!

Chapter Twelve—Live and Let Live

Six Months Later

Fred arranged and rearranged her desk, hoping that if she did this enough, then her anxiety would disappear. Floating around the ether had been easier in a way. She couldn't really contemplate actually getting out of that mess, while being here sometimes just made her so mad. Poor Lindsey was usually the recipient of those tirades.

Since Cordelia had taken to being alone these days, she had Lindsey to keep her company. They never did get around to assigning him someone. That must have slipped Cordy's mind too. Doyle tried to pick up the slack, but he wasn't exactly Mr. Organization around the house. Fred tried as hard as she could, but there was just too much to do and not enough time to do it. Spike really did keep one busy.

Spike. She did have to admit that his heart was on the mend. He did seem to be happy now, where even six months ago, he thought that all was lost. Oh, six months. Fred certainly didn't want to be reminded of that time.

She had never heard Cordy scream so loud in her life. Watching it all through Angel's eyes, everyone found out that they were definitely getting another helper. Life wasn't fair. Ending up where they did really wasn't fair either. They were all neither here nor there. Heaven, hell. What did it all mean?

No harps, no fire pit of doom. Just endless work, a few hours of enjoyment, then back to the grind. At least when one was alive, you could run away from it all occasionally. Here, you couldn't, unless you were Cordelia Chase.

Fred sighed again, bringing her down mood to the attention of Lindsey. He frowned right back at her, probably catching her surliness. That was not her intention.

"This sucks," she announced as she got up from her desk.

"You can say that again," Lindsey replied as he started to join her.

"We need to do something. This just isn't right. Six months. Time to kick some butt."

Lindsey stuck up his hands in defeat. Would he join her in her little intervention? Or would he wuss out and let her deal with it herself? Maybe she'd employ another tacit. Otherwise, things would go on as they had. She'd sweet-talked, she'd played the nursemaid, she'd listened, she'd cried alongside, she'd done everything in her power to fix it all, or at least make it a little better. Now was the time for drastic measures.

"Drastic measures?" Lindsey inquired as he followed her out the door.

"Darn tootin' drastic measures. I'm tired of this shit."

Lindsey raised his eyebrows at her swearing. She only swore when there was no other choice. It looked like there was no other choice.

Slamming doors and trampling on flowers, Fred made her way to the cottage where all this had started what seemed like so long ago.

"Cordelia Chase, you get your behind down here right this instant."

Fred waited for her response but it never came.

"Darn tootin' I mean business."

Willow always thought she meant business, but sometimes her tirades just fell flat. Everyone stared at her, like she'd snap her fingers and all would be known to them.

"I don't get it."

They never did. None of the potentials, or baby slayers or whatever they were being called now ever got it, at least the first time. They didn't understand the history, nor did they want to until a light bulb went off in their heads. Or someone whomped them upside the head. It was usually the latter.

"If you don't want to do the work, read the material, then why are you here?"

Megan, the eager-beaver-wants-to-please slayer, raised her hand high. Willow hated calling on her. No one else volunteered though. Even though she saw a lot in Megan that was so much like her at sixteen, it didn't mean that she liked it one bit. Being reminded of one's youth didn't make it any easier to deal with at the moment.

"We're here to learn the history of slayers and why they were called. If we don't know the history, then we just might repeat mistakes that were made in the past."

Yeah, lots and lots of mistakes made. Buffy wasn't in the room, so she could take a little liberty with that. Faith might laugh, or pound her into the ground.

"And so the mistake that was made…" Willow trailed off when she saw a familiar person peek through the glass in the window of the door. He's always interrupting.

"Go on, Megan. What was the mistake in this instance?"

Spike entered with a flourish, black coat sweeping around him, making a few of the baby slayers sigh. THAT was the mistake. Slayers and vampires DO NOT mix.

"I'll tell you what the mistake was. Trusting a vampire? Not a great idea."

Willow snorted when she heard that comment come from Spike. Buffy had been lucky that time, trusting Spike. Didn't mean that he still wasn't the bad guy at that point. Chip kept him in line.

"Is it true though that if you had not been altered, you would have never joined forces with the slayer?"

Oh boy, now Ms. Know-It-All had to go and ask that question. Laurel thought that she knew it all, but Willow knew she knew how to ask the right questions. She thought.

Spike leaned onto Willow's desk, crossed his arms just so, and turned his head, probably just to show his best profile to the students.

"That about sums it up. Class dismissed."

Wait, what? What did Spike think he was doing? She wasn't done. They had at least thirty minutes left in their session. Then she was going to meet the "new" girl in Accounting for lunch. Bastard hijacked her class, again. Spike just loved to do that.

"I wasn't done," Willow stated as the baby slayers got up from their seats to leave.

A few lingered, just to make sure it was OK, but for the most part, they all headed out to their next class, Combat. Spike's class. Jerk.

When the last girl was out of earshot, Willow turned to Spike and pointed her finger in his direction. She made angry face, but Spike just waited until her temper cooled. It didn't take long.

"Ok, now, as I was saying before," Spike started as Willow slammed her books down on her desk. Well, maybe the anger had disappeared, maybe not. "I don't think that the Calculator Lady is good enough for you."

He was scaring another one away. Willow wished he would just stay out of her life. He had managed to scare away at least three people, when all they wanted to do was be friends. Why was he being a jerk?

"Spike, go away."

"It's just, I don't see the connection. And also, she was flirting with the new Watcher, Charlie, Chuck, whatever his name is."

This is what he would do, she thought. Every single time, he'd sabotage even the first date. Not this time.

"Cameron. And no, she was not flirting. How could you know?"

"Supernatural hearing. And the fact that I just saw the two of them leave the building hand and hand."

Dammit. It happened again. Unlucky in love. Spike was a curse. Willow was hungry for lunch, didn't have a date and was damn tired of being told by a vampire that she couldn't date anyone. Willow guessed that her lunch date was off.

"Wanna go out for a bite?" Spike asked as he headed to the exit of the room.

"One, you have class, remember? Two, you come in here to tell me that my date just cancelled lunch. Three, you weren't very nice doing it. Four," Willow kept going.

"Oh four. Giles wants to meet with us, for lunch. Can you make sure he closes the blinds in his office? Nearly fried me the last time we had lunch with him."

Willow didn't need Giles telling her what to do either. Sometimes she just wished she would tell them all to go jump in a lake, Giles especially. Maybe she'd just go out and have lunch by herself.

"Mandatory," Spike told her as he opened the door.

Willow couldn't throw the tome she had in her hands at Spike, it was too heavy. So she winged it at his head with magic. He moved too fast, ducking out the door as she watched the book slam into the glass, breaking it.

"You broke it."

"Sorry. I just, it's hard to pull back."

"You must learn control."

Wesley sighed again. He was beyond frustrated. Faith wasn't concentrating on anything lately except for slaying. She had left water on to boil and almost burned the kitchen down. She threw another slayer through a window, causing the girl to go to the infirmary for three days with cuts and bruises. Now she broke a priceless object that he had been studying that could possibly help them in their most recent quest for answers.

He hadn't meant to shout at her, but as he watched her withdraw, he knew that it was more than just his anger that made her antsy. Slayer lore was always a subject Wesley thought was sometimes off the mark. Slayers couldn't predict the future; they didn't know when evil was mounting an offensive. Or could they? Buffy had easily predicted the rise of the First. Faith knew that he had died and that something evil was responsible. If there was a way to tap into that energy, he'd love to be able to study it. First things, first. They had a job to do.

In addition to all the changes in their lives in the past few months, their relationship was rocky at best, volatile at its worst. He knew that caring about her wouldn't be easy. Wesley just didn't realize how difficult it could be.

"I need to punch something. This is just so frustrating. We need to fix this," Faith growled.

Instead of listening to Wesley to calm down, Faith turned around to the nearest wall and put a hole through it. All that time that they had spent training, all the time they had spent working as a team was falling apart oh so quickly. Faith's cheek twitched just a little as she pulled her hand back through. It was covered in blood.

"Oh dear," Wesley exclaimed as he looked at all the blood.

Instead of grunting in pain, showing him that she knew something was wrong, she just smiled.

"No biggie," she proclaimed as she strolled out of the room. Wesley watched as Faith held her hand down, a trail of blood following in her wake.

Who had taken his slayer, his Faith and replaced her with this, whatever she was? She was acting way too much like the old Faith, the one that turned evil, joined the Mayor and tried to kill Buffy. He wanted his Faith back and would fight to get her back there.

First things, first, yet again. A sample of her blood might give him some insight.

I hope you enjoyed another chapter. This is taking me away from another story I'm writing, but the words are flowing. I need to get back to the other one shortly. Hope to finish this soon. Thanks!