A/N: Shout-outs to Sweetie420, Sage of wind Dragons, Madre, sonyavasquez, MewLover9000, bbofsd01, and addie9ring. And a big thanks to all of you who have read this far. Again, the road's going to be a little dark for the next three or four chapters. Supernatural episodes mentioned are Red Sky at Morning and Fresh Blood. Onwards!
November 16th, 2007 Burlington, Vermont, 8:00 p.m.
The motel room door closed behind his younger brother, and Dean exhaled a quiet sigh of relief. Not that he didn't appreciate Sam or anything, but he was starting to get a little irritated with all the twenty-four-seven concern. And this week had been even more claustrophobic than usual, investigating a poltergeist at the University of Vermont. Ever since the showdown with Gordon, it had been all feelings, all 'you gotta open up,' all the time. If Dean didn't get a little breathing space asap, he was going to start hitting things.
Sam must have picked up on that, because when they got back to the motel that afternoon, he said there was a movie in town he'd been wanting to see – some indie flick about a mental patient. Did Dean want to go see it with him? Or would he mind too much if Sam took the Impala and went to see it by himself?
Nope, Dean didn't mind at all if Sam took the car. To the contrary – it was the best idea that he had heard all month. The clouded-over sky threatened snow, and he didn't much fancy getting caught in a blizzard on the way back from some ridiculous arthouse film. His entire body ached from getting hurled against a row of cafeteria tables by the poltergeist. Besides, there was no need for him to watch a movie about a psycho. Not when his whole life felt like a never-ending trip down the rabbit hole into permanent crazy town.
He found a brochure by the TV and ordered a pizza - triple meat, double cheese, deep-dish crust - the greasiest thing on the menu. While waiting for it to arrive, Dean flicked through the twenty-something channels on cable. He ran through them about three times, somehow managing to catch all of the infomercials and weather news reports. Nothing seemed interesting. The place didn't have Magic Fingers, and he wasn't really in the mood for pay-per-view.
With Sam out of the room, he had thought that the walls would stop closing in quite so much. If there were half the people in the space, it ought to have felt twice as large. But physics didn't seem to be working for him, and Dean's claustrophobia was just as looming, just as present. The hunter grimaced in frustration and dropped the remote to the carpeted floor. Tonight really just wasn't his night.
Sprawling out on the bed, he tossed his cell phone from hand to hand. Dean stared up at the popcorn-textured ceiling and tried to remember the time difference between Vermont and London. What was it – six hours? Seven? He always had trouble, mostly because he was never in the same time zone that he had been in last time. Finally, he came to the conclusion that it was five hours. So, one a.m. One a.m. wasn't too late.
Before he could second-guess himself, he was scrolling through his contacts and hitting 'call.'
Faith picked up on the third ring, a twangy guitar and a man's voice in the background. "Hi, sexy," she said breathlessly, sounding incredibly buzzed. "What brings you to my part of town?"
"You sound like you're having a good time."
She giggled uncharacteristically. Voice muffled, she replied to someone on her end, "Oh, it's just my brother-in-law. My sister's going into labor. I'll be right back."
The noise of the guitar faded into the background as a door open and closed. It was replaced by the sounds of vehicular traffic, horns and sirens. When Faith next spoke, her tone had completely sobered up. "Hey. Sorry about that. There's this metal band . . . Dragonforce . . . Dumb name, but they're pretty good, actually. I've been, uh, hanging out with the bass guitarist."
"So you're smoking pot and I've got a uterus?" he asked teasingly. Try as he might, Dean couldn't help but envy her freedom. Too bad you couldn't get pot delivered.
"I needed an excuse to step out for a minute."
"That the best you could come up with?"
The Slayer chuckled. "Not so good at the whole making stuff up thing right now, I guess."
"Last dance with Mary Jane?"
"Mary Jane, Tila Tequila . . . been a whole lotta dancing tonight. You?"
"Exorcised a poltergeist, ordered something drowning in grease to make the bruises go away."
"You have a monopoly on getting thrown down stairs or something?"
"Or something. It was half a cafeteria this time."
"Eugh. That sucks. What's Sam up to? Other than seducing grandmas, I mean."
Dean laughed. He'd forgotten that he'd told her about Sam's septuagenarian admirer. They hadn't talked in a while, not since she'd found out that she was the main recipient of Giles' will and gotten insanely busy with figuring out how finances worked. When had he told her? It wasn't the sort of thing that he'd usually take the time to text, and he'd kind of gotten preoccupied with being pissed off at Bela.
The pieces slowly clicked into place. Right. Sam had sent her a picture of the tuxedo, setting off the next round of Winchester Prank War, and he'd retaliated by giving Faith a detailed account of Sam getting felt up by old women. It had been deeply, deeply satisfactory.
"He's indulging his geeky side – catching some nerd flick or something. How's Angel?"
"Monosyllabic."
"That bad, huh?"
He could hear the discomfort in her voice. Whatever was going on with Fang boy, Faith was not happy about it.
"Angel reads a lot," she said grudgingly. "He sits in Giles' study and pours over every diary G-man ever wrote, every chronicle he collected or annotated. Not sure why he's doing it, not sure that it matters much. I've been meaning to have a talk with him about getting out of the apartment. It's unhealthy. And it creeps me the hell out," she added under her breath.
And there it was, the thing that she'd been running from. Funny, how that worked out. One or the other of them always seemed to be running from something.
"I've got an idea," she went on, suddenly more cheerful. Maybe it was the marijuana talking. "When I get back tonight – tomorrow – whatever, I'm gonna lay down the law. If he wants to mooch in my house, reading my books, drinking my blood –"
Dean started violently. "What?"
"Pig's blood that I buy at the butcher's . . . yeah, I could have said that better. Sorry, Dean. You still breathing?"
The hunter subsided back onto his lumpy mattress. "Barely."
"It's all weird – it's my stuff, but it isn't my stuff. It's my money, but it isn't my money. It's all still Giles's, always will be. But if Angel's gonna campaign for moping champion of the year, he can put that research to good use – he can find a way to break your deal."
He had hoped that they wouldn't get here, to the thing that he was running from. It was part of why he hadn't called her as much lately. The timer was halfway out, and Dean was slowly starting to accept the inevitable. Hell, he'd even let Sam muck about under the hood of his baby. But he wasn't willing to stop pretending completely. Not with her. Not yet.
"I should go," he said as the room pressed in on him again. It was like he was stuck in that trash compactor on the Death Star, and he couldn't find any piece of steel long enough or thick enough to wedge the walls apart. "The delivery guy just knocked," he lied.
Some of Faith's ebullient cheer subsided. "I'll call you tomorrow."
"Yeah."
"I will."
"I know. Enjoy the rest of your night."
"Yeah. You, too."
December 14th, 2007 London, England, United Kingdom 11:45 p.m.
She hadn't planned on celebrating her twenty-seventh birthday. Faith wanted to ignore the whole thing, just let it pass. Sure, yeah, she was another year older. And, as Angel so helpfully reminded her over midnight crêpes the night before, not one in five Slayers lived this long. But it didn't really mean anything. Not to her.
Couldn't convince the rest of them of that. Becka and Lily had saved up from their summer jobs and were flying in to celebrate tomorrow. She'd have to figure out how to get to Heathrow and back to the apartment without taking the wrong subway line and almost getting lost. Again. Andrew had called from Rome that morning to belt some sappy song at her in bad Italian. Faith didn't speak Italian, but she was pretty sure that his pronunciation was a hair south of abysmal. Dean emailed her a photo of him and Sam at Biggerson's, both of them with giant pieces of cake, and the caption, "Told lies. Got cake. Worth it. Happy Birthday."
Now, despite her wishes, Faith couldn't forget that it was her birthday. She couldn't forget that she was twenty-seven. And so when Angel slipped out around ten to go patrolling, she fell into a brown study, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Giles' living room, doing the kind of hard thinking that she generally avoided at all costs.
The Slayer couldn't help but overanalyze all of her life decisions up to this point, including breaking it off with the guitar player the week before. He was hot, and the sex was great, but he had started talking about commitment and trying to take her out to a nice restaurant for dinner. That had been the end of things. Faith had zero interest in commitment or boyfriends or romance. There were more important things going on.
Perhaps, had Faith realized in some distant corner of her mind that this was a quarter-life crisis, she would have been a little more careful, a little less reckless. But after nearly two hours of brooding, it all became too much. Something had to give, something had to change, and the Slayer was a hundred and ten percent fed up with research and patrolling and fighting two-bit vampire henchmen. She needed to act.
She cleared Giles' study, pushing the desk all the way up against the bookshelves and rolling up the heavy rug to reveal the polished wooden floor beneath. Three months of living in this apartment, and Faith knew where everything was, could find books and magical ingredients in the dark. Only feeling slightly guilty, she flipped through Basic Demonology for Initiates. It was her first time at this, and she was going to need some pictures.
Rummaging through the desk, she found what she needed: candles, chalk, incense, matches, and an obsidian bowl. Apparently, Giles' old demon-summoning habits had died hard. Faith drew a large chalk circle on the wood floor and then enclosed it in a single triangle, drawing a peculiar symbol in each of the three corners. The Slayer frowned as she drew, peering closely at the images in the text. She hoped they were right. If not, this was going to end badly.
Finished drawing, she placed the bowl in the center of the circle and filled it partway with incense. She positioned one candle at the tip of each triangle corner and then lit them. Fully prepared, the Slayer pressed on before she lost her nerve.
"Ad construgendum, ad ligandum eos, pariter et solvendum. Et ad, congregantum eos, coram me. Olvikan," she added for good measure, and dropped a lit match into the bowl of incense.
It went up in a great gust of fire, reaching almost to the peaked ceiling. When the flames died down, she gazed across the smoke at her new guest.
"Hi, there, little firecracker," beamed the thing that had been Richard Wilkins I, II, III, and, at the very end, a demon. Also, the first reliable guy that she had ever known. He was much as she remembered, thick brown hair combed back in bald defiance of his receding hair line, tie knotted exactly in the midline, his green eyes wide and smiling. It was him, not the First, not some whacked-out coma nightmare, and it made something deep inside her ache.
"First time summoning a demon? Knew you'd be just as good at this as you are at everything else. Have to admit, I was kinda surprised when I felt your call. Did you find that little prize I left for you? I thought it might be right up your alley, give you a nice chance to go out with a bang! Always likes a show, that was my Faith."
His sheer excitement petered off slightly at her continued silence, but then the Mayor bounced back, optimistic as ever. "And wow, just look at you! I always know you'd grow up so beautiful. Kind of young lady any father figure would be proud of. I'm thrilled to see you – just abso-stinking-lutely thrilled, but you've got me on tenterhooks with curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat, they say. Speaking of cats . . . cat got your tongue?"
Now that he was here, the words seem to fall out of the back of Faith's brain. She wasn't sure what to say or where to start or why in Hell she had ever thought this was a good idea.
"Hi," she said at last, once she had her metaphorical feet under her. "I . . . I did use the katra."
"Didn't it work?" he asked, mildly taken aback.
"Yeah, it worked . . . until Buffy got the chance to switch us back . . . and then . . . a whole lotta sh-t happened."
The Mayer raised one eyebrow forbiddingly. "Now, now, Faith, there's no call to be using language like that. Even when you're severely disappointed." His voice softened. "What happened?"
Faith shrugged, incredibly uncomfortable. This was worse than introspection. She held up her hands in gesture of helplessness. For some reason, she was now fighting the urge to cry. It was just . . . she had forgotten how he used to look at her, how nobody had ever really looked at her with that much concern. Nobody really did now, either. Sometimes Dean, when he was in the middle of a panic, but not often, and never this much. His eyes didn't melt the way the Mayor's did. And never anybody else.
"Jail?" Her voice cracked on the last consonant. "Jail and another apocalypse and redemption and . . . it's been a long nine years," she concluded, angry at the moisture in her eyes.
"You go back to being friends with Glinda?"
"Yeah . . . I . . . it's complicated. Killing people . . . I didn't like how I felt." He wouldn't understand. Chances were, more demon than human, the Mayor couldn't actually understand. This was the best explanation she could come up with.
"So why now, Faith? I'm not saying that I'm unhappy to see you. Quite the contrary. You're the most interesting thing that's happened all year. And even if you decided to be that dreary Watcher's Council's poster Slayer, you'd still be my girl, and I'll always be proud of you. But why now? I may be old, but I wasn't born yesterday, you know." He waggled a finger at her. "What do you need from me?"
"I need some information."
"Anything you want, kiddo. If I know it, you can know it, too."
"How . . ." The Slayer hesitated and then took the last jump. "How can I break a crossroads deal?"
Richard Wilkins' face clouded over. "Don't tell me you got so desperate that you made some backroom bargain with those lowlife traveling salesmen, Faith. I won't believe it. You know you've always got better options than that."
"It's – it's not me. It's for a friend. I need to find a way to break his deal. If I don't, he's gonna die."
The Mayor leaned forward across the flames, studying her eyes carefully. Less jovial, he said in a serious voice, "It's a complicated thing to do, crossing a crossroads demon, what with their mangy little whippersnappers always sniffing you out. Only the demon in possession of the contract can amend or rescind it, which means you've got to track them down. And sometimes they sell their contracts, handing them over to their bosses or someone even higher up. I think you'd better start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know about this contract, starting with the person who made it."
Giving up on a losing battle, Faith blinked and allowed the tears to flow. Of all the people to cry in front of, Richard Wilkins was probably the safest. "It's a long story."
"I've got all the time in the world."
"The guy who made the deal . . . His name is Dean."
Faith talked. It felt like they sat there for hours, while she explained about the Winchesters and the terminal bad luck that ran through their family. Of course, the Mayor was not content just hearing about the person she was trying to help. He wanted to know about her – anything and everything that had happened in the past eight-plus years. And for the life of her, the Slayer could not think of one good reason why she shouldn't tell him.
It wasn't as though she had any secrets that people could use against her. Everyone who was anyone on the monster grapevine already knew the story of the Dark Slayer – it had spread like wildfire during her incarceration. Demons loved it when a Slayer was on the ropes, and they had eaten up the tale of girl gone bad gone to prison. People knew her past, if they knew anything about Slayers. Not a thing Faith could do to get her anonymity back now.
The only potentially dangerous secret she had was Dean, and he was the reason she'd done this summoning, anyway. So she explained everything to Richard Wilkins the whatever he was, as they both sat on the bare floor of Giles' study.
At the end, when she had finally exhausted her narrative, she looked up from the still-glowing embers in the obsidian bowl and met the too-understanding eyes of a demon. She hated this, how he could understand her better than people who had known her for so much longer. Guess motivation really did count when it came to relationships.
The Mayor shifted position, stretching his hands out in front of him. "Well, you've gotten yourself involved in quite the to-do here. Not to mention, quite worked up," he commented, withdrawing a pristine white handkerchief from his breast pocket and lobbing it over the fire to her.
Surprised, she caught the hankie on autopilot. "What - do I look like a raccoon or something?"
"You might want to blow your nose," said Richard Wilkins kindly.
Faith blew her nose while the demon continued to stretch.
"Goodness, I'm getting a little old to sit criss cross applesauce. Mind your manners, young lady," he added at Faith's poorly-hidden eye-roll. "If I'm not too old to say 'criss cross applesauce,' then neither are you."
"Sorry…"
She was, as always, instantly forgiven. He grinned at her, the disrespect apparently already forgotten. The ease with which he forgave hurt a little, too, making her stomach cringe.
"Question is, where do you want to go from here? You've decided that you want to save this boy, and, Faith, I gotta say, I hope he's worth it. Not even that Angel you used to be so fond of was good enough for my little girl."
"Angel's a man-bitch," Faith said flatly. Six months in, and she was still kinda pissed at him. It was a low level of pissed-off-ness, but it had phenomenal staying power. Even the crêpes he'd made for her as a post-Slaying happy birthday treat last night hadn't gotten him much closer to her good books.
It was a mark of how much the Mayor detested Angel that he didn't reprove her language. Instead, the demon simply smiled.
"Plus, I'm not . . . I'm not in love with this guy." For some reason, it was critical to her that the Mayor got this. Although she could not have explained why, she needed him to understand her. "He's just a friend."
"Friends is a good place to start."
Faith didn't quite get it, how he switched roles from evil boss to surrogate father to gossiping great-aunt at less than the drop of a hat. "Love, romance, the whole nine yards - not really my thing. You know that."
"Just you wait until you meet the right boy – or girl. I hear that's very accepted these days."
"Can we focus, please?"
"All right, all right, I know romance isn't cool with the kids anymore, and it's all about sex, sex, sex, but –"
"Focus, boss." The title slipped out.
Richard Wilkins' smile grew even brighter, if such a thing were possible. "I missed you. No one in Hell's quite like you. They're all angry and bitter and full of boring remorse. They aren't bright like you. My little firecracker."
She shook her head. Couldn't listen, couldn't internalize whatever it was he was saying. "Look. How do I save Dean?"
"It's as easy as pie – and just as complicated. You ever try to make a double crust, apple pie by hand? Lattice-topped and everything? It can be devilishly tricky. And speaking of tricky, I'll ask around, see if I can find out who's holding the contract. We get that, you find a ritual to summon that particular demon, and you can try to bargain with that demon to save your little friend. If they're willing to bargain."
Faith's stomach plummeted. "And if they're not?"
"Then I'm sorry, jitterbug, but there's nothing else you can do. Until . . ."
"Until?"
"Until he gets down here. Then we may be able to work a little magic."
The Slayer nodded, filing all of this away. She'd have to come back later, go back over this conversation, see if there was anything she missed. Before she let him go, though, she did have one final question. "Thanks. Can . . . can I ask you something?"
"Fire away."
"Why are you willing to help me? You . . . didn't ask me for anything, didn't ask me to make a deal. What's your angle here, boss? What's in this for you?"
"Oh, Faith." He sounded truly upset. "You wound me to the heart. Which is saying something, because technically I don't have one anymore. Isn't an old demon allowed to be sentimental? I like to think that you'll always be my little girl – even if you choose to ally yourself with riffraff like that Watcher's Council. And I'm always going to be looking out for you, whatever way I can."
She wasn't sure how much of this she believed, but Angel would be back soon, and she needed to clean up all evidence of occult activity. After a brief exchange of goodbyes, she released the Mayor back to his Hell dimension – he'd never clarified which one he was in, exactly, - and cleaned the study.
As she wiped down the floorboards, Faith reflected that the Mayor had never actually promised that they would succeed. Another double-edged sword, just like everything else in her life. Still, even if it didn't pan out, she had done something tonight. And that was a good first step.
A/N: We're almost at 200,000 words! Who'd have ever thought Synch would get this far? (I definitely did not.) And nearly at 200 reviews! In celebration, the 200th reviewer will get to nominate a monster or two for Faith and Dean to fight.
TTFN,
AiH
