DISCLAIMER: Joss owns everyone; I own no one.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry it's been a bit since the last update.  I'm back at school now, and time is a bit scarce.  Anyway, this chapter is the car trip to Sunnydale, and then some quality Sunnydale moments, with plenty of Buffy, Giles, and Spike, as well as the rest of the gang.  I have the next several chapters mapped out in my mind, some fluffy, some angsty.  I'd write more tonight, but I stayed up until six thirty in the morning last night, and I have a couple other fics I need to update.  For now, enjoy the short chapter, and let me know what you think, please! 

THROWBACK: Chapter Eight

            "Are we there yet?" the female voice asked.

            Wesley sighed.  They'd been over this.  "Cordelia, for the last time, we're still twenty miles away from Sunnydale," Wes gritted out between his teeth.  Traveling with the pretty seer was one thing, but traveling with Cordelia and two four year old tornados intent on destroying anything and everything in their path was something completely different.

            "I don't think we're there yet," Liam told Cordy helpfully from the back seat, unbuckling his seat belt and crouching on the seat like he was getting ready to pounce on something.

            "Seat belt, Liam," Wes said from the driver's seat.  He was getting to a point where he could almost anticipate what the children were going to do next. 

            Liam ignored him.  "Are there wenches in Sunnydale?" he asked suddenly, genuinely curious.

            "Liam!" Wes scolded, no real bite in his voice as he tried not to smile at the little boy's cheerful question.  He had to remind himself that Liam was from a different world, a different time.

            Cordelia looked at Wes.  "Wench," she said slowly.  "I'm guessing that's the nineteenth century Irish version of a skankcapades veteran?"

            "Skankcapades," Liam echoed cheerfully.  "What's a skank?"

            "A slut," Faith said matter of factly.

            "Faith," Cordy said in warning, turning to give the girl a look.  Faith was looking out the window, a frown settling over her face for a moment.

            "The world is full of sluts," Faith said.  "I'm a slut."  She paused a moment, and her voice changed.  The child was clearly imitating someone.  "Dirty little slut," she muttered, looking out the window.

            Cordy met Wesley's eyes, horrified.  The more time she spent with the child, the more Cordelia's heart ached for the little girl, and the harder it was to think harshly of Faith the woman.  Cordelia had been ignored as a child, pampered from a safe distance, but nothing like what Faith had been through.  What kind of monster told a four year old child that she was a slut?

            "Never be clean," Faith murmured, her voice hard around the edges.  "Dirty little slut."

            I guess we all have our scars, Cordelia thought, her stomach lurching at some of her own memories.  She shook her head and looked out the window.  Faith had too many scars, physical and otherwise.

            "Let's sing," Cordy suggested, trying to keep herself from getting too reflective.  Wes groaned, and she shot him an evil grin.  Singing would keep the kiddos entertained, and it would annoy Wes, both of which were high on Cordy's list of car trip priorities. 

            "Seat belt, Liam," Wes barked out, putting a little mean in his voice.

"I know a song," Liam said quickly, speaking in a very loud voice and liking the way it sounded in Wesley's small car. 

            Faith looked at him sideways.  "You're bluffing," she said, turning a little smile on him.  "You don't know any songs."

            "Do so," Liam said.

            "Do not," Faith countered smoothly.

            "Seat belt," Wes said.  He was getting a headache.

            "DO SO!" Liam yelled.  Faith grinned at him, and he smiled back at her.  There was little the two of them loved to do more than bicker with each other, especially because they knew it gave the adults a headache.

            "Prove it," Faith challenged Liam, letting the ghosts of her past slip out of her mind.

            Liam looked around, his eyes darting back and forth.  At the moment, he couldn't remember a single song.  Too full of little boy bravado to admit that Faith was right, he puffed out his chest and made up a song of his own.

            "Ohhhhhhhhhhh," he sang, rapidly trying to think of words to sing.  "Wench, wench, wench, wench."  Cordelia snorted with laughter, and encouraged, Liam started hamming it up.  "This is the wench song," he sang in his little boy voice.  "Wench, wench, wench.  It's a song about wenches.  And sheep."  Liam continued making up lyrics.

            "Sheep?" Wesley asked, forgetting all about Liam's seat belt for a moment.

            "That's not a real song," Faith said, crossing her arms over her chest.  Her Liam was such a funny boy.

            "This is so a real sooooooong," Liam sang.  "About wenches and sheep.  Sheep with glaives."  He took a deep breath and then boomed out the end of his song in a half yell, half singing voice.  "Sheep with glaives… and WENCHES!"

            From the front seat, Cordelia clapped.  "It beats Barry Manilow," she said.

            Wesley couldn't argue with that.  Braking as he approached a stop light, Wes turned around, grabbed Liam's shoulder, and in one smooth move, fixed it so the little boy was sitting on his bottom in the seat.

            "Seat belt," Wes said, his voice low and full of warning and his face very close to Liam's.

            Wide eyed, Liam buckled his seat belt, and when Wes turned around, he began another verse of the Wench/Sheep With Glaives song.

            They were only seventeen miles from Sunnydale.  With any luck, they'd be there within half an hour. 

            Wes grinned as he imagined Buffy's reaction, and more importantly, Giles' reaction to their small charges.

            Wes had come to a sort of truce with the terrible twosome.  Somehow, he imagined that the Scoobies wouldn't have quite so easy a time with it.  Little Faith and Liam were more than a handful.

            "Sheep with glaives," Cordelia sang along with Liam, grinning at Wes as the British man flinched.

            Just twenty-eight more minutes, Wes told himself.  He passed a car and began speeding slightly.  The time for slow driving had passed, and Wes was ready for this trip to be over.  Nothing was going to slow him down.    

"I have to go to the bathroom," Faith said in a tiny voice from the back seat.

"Why didn't you go at the restaurant?" Wes asked, stepping a little on the accelerator.

"What's it to you?" Faith asked, squirming in her seat a little.  "I have to go now."

Wes sped up a little more, and with a sigh, he took the first exit he saw.

The sound of sirens made Wes want to impale himself with some incredibly dull object.

Groaning, he pulled over to the side of the road.

"Wes," Faith said.  "I have to go."

The officer approached the car.  "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" he asked.

Wes bit his tongue to keep a sharp retort from spilling out of his mouth.

"Faith has to go to the bathroom," Liam announced candidly, taking a quick break from his singing.

Faith squirmed as the officer looked at her.  She wasn't going to have an accident.  She was a big girl, and only babies had accidents.  Dirty girls had accidents.

Look what you did, you dirty little slut.  You worthless piece of shit.

Faith squirmed, trying to push the voice out of her memory.  She wished that Liam would start singing again.  When Liam was singing about wenches and sheep, sometimes the memories left Faith alone.

The officer gave Wes a sympathetic look.  "I'll let you go this time," he said, "but only because your little girl looks like a sweetheart."

"I know eight ways to kill someone with my bare hands," Faith said brightly, but as soon as the man's words really registered, she couldn't speak again.  The policeman had thought she was Wesley's little girl. 

The officer was silent for a moment and then spoke again.

"She looks like her mother," the officer said, nodding his head toward Cordelia. 

Faith stared at him, forgetting all about just how badly she had to go to the bathroom.  He thought she was Cordelia's daughter.  Faith waited for Wes and Cordy to tell him the truth, that she was nobody, just some kid they were taking care of who had to go to the bathroom.

Wes smiled at the police officer.  He looked at Cordelia and then at Faith.  They both had dark hair, and with the posh little outfit Cordy had dressed Faith in, the two did look as if they could be related.  "I suppose she does," he said softly.

Faith looked at him, surprised.  When they drove off, she finally spoke.  "Am I really your little girl?" she asked tentatively, her little face fierce with a look of trying not to care.

Wes pulled into a gas station parking lot.  "Yes," he said finally.  "You are."

"Yours too?" Faith asked Cordelia.

Cordelia didn't think for a moment on Faith the woman.  The need in Faith the child's eyes was so clear.  "Yup," she replied.  "Me too, Faith."

"Me too," Liam said.  "Faith is my girl too, even if I don't like girls because I can't kick them even if they are ugly."

  As she ran to the bathroom, her dark pig tails flying behind her, Faith couldn't help but smile, because for the first time in her life, she was somebody's girl.

Cordelia followed the little girl into the bathroom, surprised at how natural this all felt so soon. 

From in one of the stalls, she heard a tiny voice singing softly.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh… wench, wench, wench…."

TBC… Next chapter, I promise, centers on the Scoobies meeting the little ones, and we'll stay in Sunnydale for quite some time, with Buffy being stuck with babysitting duty, and with everyone realizing that Wes and Cordy are starting to change.

Sorry for the disturbing stuff in Faith's past.  I know it might bother some of you to read it, but I'm trying to include plenty of fluff too, and I wanted to shed some light on what makes adult Faith the way she was in early Buffy seasons.

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