DISCLAIMER: Joss owns, not me.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm knee deep in papers and recovering from what the doctors thought was mono but wasn't, so I'm sorry the wait was so long and could potentially be another couple of weeks before the next one.
To those of you wanting to see Liam's angst… there will be bits of it, as he remembers some of his Angelus-y moments. Why not more human Liam angst? Because of the principles of memory I'm operating off of for this fic… little Liam's memories are much more distant than Faith's… the closest ones to him are first and foremost those four year old Liam would actually have, and secondly, things that happened more recently in terms of years… so it's easier for Faith to remember, because she's eighteen years in the future… Liam is more than two hundred… so no Liam family angst. He doesn't remember his family other than the memories the four year old boy has, and even those are fuzzy and vague, and becoming fuzzier and more vague with every day that passes. Sorry, but that's the way I see this fic, and it doesn't want to be written any other way.
I put pictures of Liam and little Faith (along with the rest of my kiddos) up at my website… you can find the url at the top of my profile.
If you like throwback fics, check out LITTLE MISS PRISS in my profile, a throwback of Cordy in the episode BAD GIRLS in Buffy season three… Wes and Faith babysitting a four year old Cordelia… fun, no?
THE BAD GIRL, a vignette in little Faith's POV, is now up.
And since some of you seem to just now be discovering the Hopie Chronicles, I thought I'd point you in that direction… it starts with ONLY HOPE my first serious fic, and my first kidfic…
Anyway, this is a shortish chapter… Imzadi, Kate and Lindsey will be back next chapter, I promise.
THROWBACK: CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," Willow sang, a little off key.
Liam and Faith stared at her, their expressions completely blank.
"Okay," she said, "so not so much so with the hand clapping. I can deal with that." She looked at Xander out of the side of her eye. "Tough audience," she said.
Faith and Liam turned their attention to Xander, expectantly.
"Booger," Xander said.
The kids looked at each other for a moment, and then started cracking up.
Xander turned his head toward Willow. "It's a gift," he said, bowing slightly.
"Ani," Faith said quietly, looking up at Anya and pronouncing her name in a distinctly childlike way, "you do something now."
"Well, tiny human," Anya said brightly, her eyes wide, "would you like to see a trick Ani can do?" The children nodded. Anya turned to Xander, concentration settling over her face. "I'm going to need a box of tacks, a Frisbee, two pounds of green jello, a bottle of Flintstone vitamins, and an inflatable sheep."
Xander pretended to think about it for about half a second. "A world of no," he told her, but as he saw her smiling at him, he detoured from The Sarcastic Island to Happy Xander Land, and his expression softened as he wondered what exactly she had planned for that Frisbee.
Willow looked up at the ceiling, trying not to go to Happy Willow Land.
"If you're happy and you know it, wench your wench…" Liam sang.
Faith poked Liam in the side. "Sodding blood?" she asked him in a whisper.
He nodded, and the two of them slipped out of the living room and into the kitchen, leaving Xander and Anya staring at each other, and Willow staring at the ceiling.
From across the room, Riley raised one eyebrow, as Buffy continued to play the damage control game.
"You can't take what Angel does seriously," she said. "He's just a little boy now."
"Liam," Riley said, no humor in his voice, even as his lips turned up in a slight smirk.
Buffy nodded. "Right," she said, forcing herself to remember that the child's name was Liam. "And little boys, they bite people, and call people pussies, and try to staple people's pant legs to the wall all the time." Riley stared at her. "Not buying it?" she asked him.
Riley shook his head. "No," he said plainly.
"He's just a little protective of me," Buffy said. "When you think about it, it's kind of cute, in a little kid way."
"Is playing with knives in Giles' kitchen cute in a little kid kind of way?" Riley asked.
Buffy's eyes flew open, and she turned around to see Xander and Anya staring at each other, deeply involved in some kind of incomprehensible conversation about the many uses of Flintstone vitamins, and Willow, her eyes fixed on a point in the ceiling, trying to look inconspicuous and failing miserably.
"You might want to consider investing in friends a little less distracted by sparkly things," Riley told her, following her into the kitchen.
"Sparkly things?" Buffy asked, temporarily distracted. Then she shook her head. "All right. Knife. Kitchen. Kids. Watch me focus." Riley bit back a smile, as Buffy took charge.
"Freeze," Buffy said, her voice loud. In the living room, Willow, Xander, and Anya froze and looked at each other guiltily.
"Pseudo-Faith? Angel-like child?" Anya called, looking around. "Where did they go?"
The documentation started roughly around Faith's second birthday. Occasional hospital visits. A broken arm from falling out of her crib. A severe burn on the bottom of her right foot from playing with the stove.
"How exactly does a three year old child burn the bottom of her foot on a stove?" Wesley asked, anger seething through his voice.
That was the sole documentation he had of Faith's early childhood. Two visits to the local minor emergency room. Aside from the hospital records he'd managed to dig up, he had no other paper work on the slayer until just before her fifth birthday, when she'd been taken into the hospital upon the death of her mother.
Why is Mommy asleep in the bathtub?
Faith's voice echoed in his ears.
Why is it all red?
Wesley felt his eyes burn with unshed tears at the tarnished innocence he could hear in her voice in his memory.
He muttered an expletive. She'd discovered her mother, wrists slit, dead in a bathtub overflowing with blood-tinted water.
He could see the scene vividly before his eyes. The little girl: dark hair, with dark circles under her eyes and bruises on her scrawny arms, tentatively shaking her mother's arms. The bathtub, off white porcelain, the water still running.
He had no idea where the image came from, but he knew it was true. His girl.
Ignoring his tearing eyes and the mounting fury inside of his chest, he turned the page.
"Well, Faith girl," he said softly, picturing her four year old self in his mind. "Let's see where life's roads took you next."
"Hey Liam, catch!" Faith yelled happily. Liam turned, and Faith tossed him a knife, nice and easy. She had to play easy with her Liam. She was stronger than he was, but that was okay, because the Mommy was much stronger than she was – always stronger -, and he kept her away at night, with his singing.
The Mommy hated singing.
Buffy saw the knife flying toward Liam's head, and she moved as quickly as she could, bolting in front of him to catch it. She turned to glare at Faith.
"You do not throw knives," she said, her voice horrible and low.
I don't care, Faith told herself right away. She can yell and she can hit, and I don't care.
"But Buffy, we throw knives all the time," Liam said. "Sometimes we catch them…"
Buffy knelt down to Faith's level. "You don't touch knives," she said, softening her voice at the forced carelessness in the child's eyes. She reached out a hand to touch Faith's shoulder, and Faith flinched visibly.
"…and sometimes, we throw them out windows…" Liam continued on, babbling.
Riley brought his hand to his temple. He was getting a headache.
"You could get hurt," Buffy said, gentling her voice as much as she could. She could feel Faith trying not to tremble under her finger tips, a sullen look settling over the little girl's mouth. "We don't want you to get hurt."
"… and sometimes, the poodle next door doesn't like that very much…" Liam babbled on.
Buffy shot a glance at Riley. "Is he still talking about knives?" she asked him. Riley nodded.
"Yup," he replied.
"Do you understand, Faith?" Buffy asked her. "You don't throw knives at people."
"Not even if they're gonna catch them?" Faith asked, the words catching in her throat a little, her back stinging something awful with the memories of the knife cut that was really her falling down the stairs because she was damn clumsy.
So damn clumsy.
"… and sometimes, we stab things with them. Stab-stab-stab…"
"No stab," Buffy said firmly, turning to look at Liam, pulling Faith closer to her in a casual hug.
"Stab," Liam said, wrinkling his brow a little.
"No stab," Buffy said.
Faith met Liam's eyes. "Stab," they both chorused at once.
"No…" Buffy cut herself off. This was ridiculous. How was it that she, her boyfriend, and three of her friends were completely incapable of watching two not-quite-ordinary four year olds?
Faith saw the moment of weakness, and, snuggling up to Buffy, she went for it. "Can we bring Spike his sodding blood?" she asked. "Please?"
"We'll be really good," Liam promised. "No stabbing."
Buffy sighed. What was the worst thing that could happen?
TBC… next chapter, Spike and the kiddos, with a special glimpse of Spike in parenty mode, Cordy getting her manicure, Kate and Lindsey stop over in a café on the way to Sunnydale, and a rousing version of "If you're happy and you know it, slay a vamp"...
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