Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long for this chapter, but I've been busy with real life a lot, both at work and socially. A lot's been happening, leaving me with little time for writing. But this week should be a bit calmer and I hope to get a chapter or two done. I'm off on leave in a week, maybe heading to Spain for some sunshine and ocean water.

Just to mention it: It's already over 30 degrees Celsius here in the office by now (9 am) and only going to get worse. So if this chapter might seem a bit strange to you it's because my brain is starting to overheat.

And now, on with the show!

#

Chapter 8: Bonding

#

Max had found a stone bench in the garden behind the Hyperion hotel and was busy trying to get her thoughts under control. She had expected this to be a weird visit. Meeting the mother she never even knew she had? Yes, that was bound to be a strange experience. But this strange? Completely off-the-charts strange? No, she hadn't quite expected that.

Her inner soldier was giving her a lengthy scolding right now, most of it centering on her outburst of about five minutes ago. Coming back from the cemetery where she had just seen a creature right out of a fairy tale book exploding into dust ... it had wound her up pretty tight. And then seeing everyone around her acting so ... normal. They acted like people just coming home from the office, not warriors who had just slain a demon. This wasn't right. It just didn't fit into her world.

A soldier who doesn't adapt to her surroundings dies, her inner soldier said. So the enemy has taken you by surprise. Deal with it! Move on!

"Easy for you to say," she mumbled under her breath. "I bet Lydecker never expected us kids to fight against vampires."

She shouldn't have gone off like that. It wasn't Faith's fault that her world was such a strange place. From what little she'd been told Slayers didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Someone chose them and sent them off to war against these things. It sounded somewhat familiar to her. Maybe her mother and she had something in common after all. They had both been meant to fight in a war and no one had asked them whether or not they wanted to fight. The only difference was the face of the enemy.

Zack had warned her more than once about her recklessness, about her tendency to follow her heart more than her mind. The logical thing would have been to get out of Seattle the moment Lydecker knew she was there, but she had stayed because of her friends and Logan. The logical thing would have been to kill Lydecker when she had the chance, but other things had taken precedence in her heart and he still lived to hunt her down. The logical thing would have been not to blow up in Faith's face ten minutes ago, but she had done it anyway.

Logic apparently wasn't her strong suit.

"Those look like pretty heavy thoughts," a voice said, causing Max to look up. Faith was approaching her. How had she gotten this close without Max noticing her? Had she been too distracted or did Faith simply move that stealthily? Probably both.

"I'm sorry for blowing up in there," Max said, not meeting her mother's eyes. Apologizing never came easy to her. "It was just ... I guess it was all a little too much."

Faith chuckled and sat down beside her.

"I met my first vampire when I didn't yet know a thing about being the Slayer. I was crashing in a motel, there was this bus of church people the vamps were looking to turn into snacks, and suddenly I had this buzzing in my head. Like an air-raid siren, an alarm calling the soldiers to war. I didn't even have time to think before I threw myself into battle. I killed the vamps, saved the church people, and got arrested by the police."

"Arrested?" Max raised an eyebrow.

"Indecent exposure. I didn't have time to put on clothes before the Slayer siren sent me whirling into action. My first Watcher paid bail for me and went on to explain the whole thing. Didn't believe a word at first, but after everything I had already seen ..."

Max shook her head, trying to suppress a smile.

"How do you deal with it?" she finally asked. "How do you deal with something like this?"

"How do you deal with being on the run from the government?"

"That's different."

"Of course it is. It's different because you've been doing it for ten years while the vampire thing is brand-new to you. Me, I've had over twenty years to get used to it. Now and then I still see things that surprise the hell out of me, too, but most of it's gotten to be pretty routine. Strange thing about people, we can get used to pretty much anything."

Max tried to wrap her mind around that. Faith did have a point. Most people would be pretty shocked to learn that transgenic supersoldiers on the run from the government existed, not to mention worked at a bike messenger service in Seattle and did the occasional job for a save-the-world guy. Was meeting a vampire-slaying woman with superpowers really that much stranger?

Well, considering that said woman was also her mother, yeah! A hell of a lot stranger!

"I don't really know what I expected coming here," Max said after some silence. "I learn that I have a mother somewhere, a real mother, not just a test tube. I wanted to meet this person. I told myself that it was only to get more information about Manticore. Maybe I'd find something that'd help me take them down. Stop them from hunting us. I didn't expect ..."

She looked up, meeting Faith's eyes.

"I didn't expect to meet someone like you."

Now it was Faith's turn to raise an eyebrow. The gesture was eerily identical to Max', though neither of the two women noticed.

"Was that an insult or a compliment?"

"I'm not really sure yet. This is all still too weird for me."

"Welcome to the club," Faith said, looking down at the floor. "I never expected to have kids. Robin and I talked about it a couple of times, but ... at first we figured it was too dangerous. Our line of work, the many enemies we made, it would have been madness to bring a child into this, so we decided to wait.

"About a year or so prior to the Pulse things had finally calmed down a bit. There were Slayers everywhere; the demon population was under control. So we tried. It didn't work, though. And we learned it never would."

Max gave her a questioning look.

"It's the Slayer thing," Faith said with a sad look on her face. "Seems like our super-healing powers are designed to keep us in fighting shape no matter what. A pregnant Slayer can't fight. So our immune system ... I miscarried twice. Never got past the third month. Some of the other Slayers tried, too. Same result."

"I'm sorry," Max mumbled, not really certain how to deal with something like this. Emotional scenes weren't her forte.

"When you first came here, claiming to be my daughter ... I was so pissed. It was like ... like someone was making fun of me. Hey, you super-Slayer, you! Can slay demons, but can't have a kid. Let's rub it in her face a bit, shall we?"

Max said nothing. What was there to say?

Faith gave her a slight smile. "I can see it, you know? A little bit here, a little bit there. Or maybe I'm just imagining it."

"What?"

"The resemblance. It's there. Or maybe not. I'm not really sure."

Max again said nothing. If she was honest with herself then yes, there were some points of resemblance between Faith and her, but she doubted they meant anything. She had about a hundred siblings (that she knew of. God alone knew how many more Manticore had created since she had fled from there) and most of them looked nothing alike.

Faith's hand came to rest on her shoulder. Max almost squirmed away, but squashed that impulse at the last moment. Was it weird being touched this way with Faith being who she was? Certainly. But also, in a way she wouldn't even pretend to understand, it was comforting.

"I want to get these bastards," Faith said, almost growling. "The ones who did this to me, to you. I want to get them and make them pay." A feral smile appeared on her face. "That okay with you, kid?"

Max smiled back at her.

"It's what I wanted to do for the last ten years."

"Good. Now, I realize that it won't be easy. Soldiers, guns, a hundred more like you, but I've got the big brains in there working on it already. We'll find a way. I promise you that. We'll get your siblings out of there and shut this Frankenstein lab down for good."

Max nodded, though the joy she felt upon hearing her mother utter these words was somewhat dampened by the knowledge of how hard it would be to accomplish, if it was possible at all. Then something else occurred to her.

"I should probably find some way to contact the others."

"Others?"

"I was one of twelve who escaped ten years ago. Eleven of us are still free. I've only been in loose contact with some of the others this last year."

Faith looked thoughtful. "Ten more like you? Out in the world and pissed at Manticore? I think we could do something with that." Max didn't miss the slightly worried look in her eyes, though. The thought of meeting ten more kids that she had never known about had to be weird.

"I don't really know how to get in touch with them, but I have a friend who might think of some trick or other. He's quite handy that way."

"A friend?" Faith asked with a raised eyebrow. "Or something more than a friend?"

"Me and Logan aren't like that," Max said automatically, though she was anything but certain when it came to anything regarding herself and Logan. She knew she had some feelings for him, but it was strange and frightening. Something she had never been made for. So usually she did her best to ignore it.

"Logan, eh?" Faith smirked at her. "I've got to meet that boy. Check out whether or not he's good enough for my little girl."

Max gave her a look of mock disgust.

"I've only known you for a few hours. You don't get a say in who I might date or not."

"Oh, so it's dating now? I knew there was more to this Logan fellow."

"We are not ..."

"Ever hear the one about the lady protesting too much?"

From the balcony above Robin watched as his wife and her newfound daughter bantered with each other and couldn't help a smile. No one knew better than him how deeply it had hurt Faith to lose her unborn children, how devastated she had been upon learning that she could never have kids. She might have fooled some of the others with her usual carefree attitude and snappy comebacks, but he had been able to see past her façade almost from the day he first met her.

Maybe things were finally looking up a bit. Maybe life had just handed Faith a break for the first time in twenty years.

One could only hope.

TO BE CONTINUED