DISCLAIMER: Joss owns them all.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is wrapping quickly to a close. There's this chapter and one more, and that's it. There may one day be a sequel, which I have vaguely planned out, but I'm still iffy on it.
In the meantime, I was looking at a Willow-centric throwback in which both Willow and Vamp Willow are turned into small children. Anyone interested in reading it?
THROWBACK: Chapter Nineteen
Giles walked into his apartment and took one look at the children, who were sprawled on the floor doing something that could only be described as unbelievable.
Giles took his glasses off, and a small, British sound escaped his throat. "What are they doing?" he asked, arching one eyebrow.
Cordelia looked up from the magazine she was currently flipping through, glanced over at the children, and shrugged. "Painting each other's nails," she replied.
Liam held his messily painted right hand up proudly. "Look!" he ordered Giles. "It's blue."
Xander barely constrained his glee. "And sparkly," he added. "If this isn't a Kodak moment, I don't know what is." The idea of Angel covered in Barbie band-aids, joyfully painting his nails a bright, sparkly blue appealed to Xander on so many levels. Oh, the potential for mocking!
Anya leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Xander got a goofy look on his face, his eyes going wide and a half smile settling over his lips. Anya's idea of a Kodak moment got him… thinking.
Giles cleared his throat and busied himself with desperately trying not to conceptualize whatever it was Anya had said.
"It involves honey," Anya told him. "And quarters."
"What would you do with honey and quarters?" Faith asked curiously. The little girl's forehead wrinkled in concentration as she added some finishing touches to one of her fingers.
Xander gently clapped his hand over Anya's mouth as she turned to respond.
"I bet it has something to do with an orgasm," Liam said innocently. Xander's hand still on her face, Anya nodded vigorously.
Desperate for a subject change, Giles knelt down to talk to Faith. "Your nails are very pretty as well, Faith," he said in a tone that had Faith wrinkling her nose. He didn't talk to her like she was a real person, just because she was little. Or maybe just because she was Faith.
Maybe she wasn't a real person.
"Faith, what do you say?" Cordy prompted upon hearing Giles complimenting Faith's nails.
"I was taught by the best?" Faith suggested, shooting a grin at Cordy.
Cordy shrugged. She'd been shooting for 'thank you,' but she couldn't argue with the plain, hard truth.
"Why is one of your nails pink when the rest are blue?" Giles asked Faith curiously, patting her on the head while he did so.
Faith shot him a wicked glint and delicately lifted up her middle finger, clasping the other fingers in a fist. "This finger?" she asked innocently.
Giles looked at her. Was the child flipping him off? It was hard to tell. At that exact moment, he stopped patting her head.
"Faith!" Cordy said.
Faith turned to Cordy, her lone, pink finger still raised in an indelicate position. "Yes?" the child said, the very picture of innocence.
"Put that finger down," Cordy said.
"Can't," Faith replied. "It's drying."
Cordy opened her mouth and then closed it again. That was the kind of logic that she just couldn't argue with.
A room away, Buffy sat, holding a mug in her hands and watching the marshmallows swirl gently in the hot chocolate.
She hadn't managed a coherent sentence since she'd sat down at the table with their two visitors from L.A. A lawyer and a cop? The cop she could understand. They were, after all, talking about Faith.
Faith? Her dark hair flying as the woman whaled away at a vampire, beating him senseless before staking him.
Faith? The child fiercely and rhythmically punching a vampire, grunting out the echoes of her past as she did. Little slut. Bad. Bad. BAD.
Faith? The rogue slayer fighting with Buffy on the roof tops.
Faith? The child with her arms thrown up to ward off oncoming phantom blows.
Faith? The child frozen to the ground, caught up in memories she couldn't understand and a past she couldn't escape.
Buffy swallowed hard and looked up at the man sitting across from her at the table. "I get the cop thing," she said, glancing over at Kate. "But what's with you, lawyer type guy? Are you Faith's lawyer?"
"Not strictly speaking," Lindsey replied.
Are you a good man?
Faith's words echoed in his mind. Lindsey heard the children laughing in the other room, and he sensed himself coming to a crossroads. The laughter took him back, into his own past, into the person he had once been.
The little girl laughed gleefully as her brother tossed her up into the air. Other children clung to each of his feet, and he could hear the baby coughing in the other room.
"Lindsey, Lindsey!" the little girl in his arms yelled gleefully. He was her favorite person in the world. The only person in her world.
"Yeah, Menley?" he said, fixing the child on his hip even as he thought about the medicine he'd never be able to afford for the baby.
His four year old sister touched one slobber-covered hand gently to the side of his cheek. "You're my brother," she pronounced, as if that was news to him. "I don't even care if you're a boy," she promised him. Menley was currently on an anti-male kick. "You're a good boy," Menley clarified, distinguishing him from her other brothers, all closer to her age.
Lindsey, age thirteen, blushed.
If he was so good, why was the baby coughing? Why was Menley still wearing that scrap of a summer dress when it was starting to get cold? Why did he wish to God that Momma would wake up out of her work-induced exhaustion and make everything okay?
"Throw me again, Lindsey," Menley ordered, and Lindsey did as she asked.
The child's peals of laughter from the memory echoed in Lindsey's head, and he made a decision in that moment.
"I would like to represent Faith when and if she returns to her former state," Lindsey said. "I'm currently in between law firms, but I could provide counsel nonetheless."
Kate stared at him. A Wolfram and Hart employee walking away? It was almost unheard of.
"Is Faith returning to her former state?" Kate asked, pushing down everything inside of her that was shouting that the current situation was nothing more than some trick of mirrors and smoke, that the criminal in her mind was still out there somewhere, an unforgivable, inhuman monster.
Faith? The little girl with the haunted eyes and the tortured past?
"Should Faith return to her former state?" Kate rephrased her question, surprising herself.
"I don't know," Buffy said. She opened her mouth to say more, but a yell from the other room distracted her.
"NOT-A-PUSSY! YOU'RE HOME!"
Kate and Lindsey looked at each other and then shot questioning and sardonic looks at Buffy.
"Wesley's back," Buffy said, biting down a grin. Not-a-Pussy Wyndam-Pryce. It had quite a ring to it.
Silently, Buffy, Kate and Lindsey walked into the other room to the sounds of Liam informing Wes in one fantastically long run on sentence of everything that he had missed out on while he was gone.
"And then we sang about sheep, and Anya taught us the Kama Sutra, and we played the sheep game, and Riley was a wanker, and so we…" Liam trailed off guiltily. "Uhhhhh…we did not staple him to a wall," the little boy amended his story as he talked. Wes might not like what they'd done to Riley. "And then Cordy had a vision, and Buffy fought vampires, and Giles was British, and Mr. Spike got his sodding blood, and we sang the Wanker Ass Bint's Orgasm song all the way home." Liam paused, so excited and cheerful that no one in the room could reconcile the image of the little, bouncing, band-aid covered, nail-polished four year old in front of them with Angel, the master of the brood.
"Not-a-Pussy," Liam continued, "you missed out on an awful lot."
Wes gave the child a stern look. "Language." Liam looked at Wes thoughtfully. He had forgotten how much Wesley wasn't a person to be pushed. He'd forgotten how much fun it was to push Wesley.
"Well, it's not like you are a pussy," Liam started to say. Wes tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at the child. Liam shut his mouth and scuffed his foot into the ground.
A single band-aid dropped off his elbow, and Liam bent down, picked it up, and resolutely tried to stick it to the middle of his forehead.
Wes turned his attention to Faith. "And what about you?" he asked the child, aching to hug her, to hold her, to love away the pain that he was only just now beginning to understand. "Did you have a good time while I was gone?"
Faith looked at Wes, her little lips set in a firm line and her eyes stormy. Without a word, she punched him in the stomach.
It knocked the breath out of him.
"Faith!" Everyone in the room said at once, horrified, except for Lindsey, who bit back a grin.
Wes said nothing. He merely straightened up and looked at Faith, refusing to back away from her.
"You left," Faith said flatly, by way of explanation.
"Yes, I did," Wes admitted in the same voice.
"You left me," Faith said, her bottom lip quivering. She took her arm back to punch him again, but he took her little fist firmly into his own.
Little Faith of the burnt feet and blood red past.
"I came back," Wesley said simply, his voice low and steady. He looked down at the child's clenched fist. "And this isn't the way to solve anything, little luv. We don't solve problems with fists."
Unless they were vampire problems, Wes added silently, but that would come with time.
When he called her little luv, Faith wavered. Was that the same thing as love? Did her Wesley love her? Really love her? Like the way Liam maybe-loved her? Like the way that people maybe didn't hate her quite so much anymore? Like maybe she wasn't quite so bad that people had to leave and never come back?
"Maybe I should kick you instead," Faith said, her sullen voice cracking to let in just a hint of a wicked smile.
Wes gave her a look, and without another word, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight. After a moment, Faith hugged back, fiercely. He picked her up, and Faith snuggled as close to him as she could get.
"If you ever leave me again, I'll kick your ass."
Faith's statement hung in the air.
"If I leave," Wes told her quietly, privately. "I'll always come back to you, Faith." His voice caught in his throat. "You're my girl. My little girl."
He knew that those were the words she needed to here.
"And I love you." His final statement fell on Faith's ears like a clap of thunder. She looked at him, bewildered, terrified, and painfully hopeful.
"You do?" she asked quietly.
"Yes," Wes replied steadily.
Faith tried not to look like she cared all together too much, but for the first time, in a long time, she felt safe.
"Would you like to hear the Wanker Ass Bint's Orgasm Song, Not-a-Pussy?" Liam asked finally, breaking the silence.
Wes opened his mouth to reprimand the child for his language, but then said nothing. The contents of his pocket, everything needed for the reversal spell, made Wes look at the little boy in a new way.
Before she began singing along with Liam, Faith whispered one more thing into Wesley's ear. "Don't believe anything Cordy tells you," Faith said solemnly. "I was awful good while you were gone."
As the word good crossed her lips, for the first time, Faith didn't feel like it was a complete lie. Maybe, some day, she really would be good. Maybe she wasn't going to be a Bad Girl, and Ugly Girl, a Little Slut forever.
Maybe, instead, she'd be Wesley's girl. And Cordy's girl. And Liam's girl.
Just maybe.
TBC… one more chapter. Wes performs the spell to turn the children back, Faith's painted middle finger makes a return, and Xander takes a full role of pictures for Angel's benefit.
PLEASE REVIEW!
