DISCLAIMER: Joss. 20th Century Fox, and the Gilbreths own the canon and the concept respectively. I only own Condom Man and Orgasm Girl. Great possessions, eh?
AUTHOR'S NOTE: You guys were so wonderful about reviewing the last chapter that I was absolutely inspired to update quickly. And yes, I know Buffy is being mean, but read on… As for future fics, right now I'm looking at a fic from Tara's perspective, just because she's so quiet that I think there's a lot of stuff to be explored there, with Anya/Andrew ficlets and a Project X mini-series starring Xander and Lindsey, with Xander as the narrator. And yes, in future stories I'll try to accommodate all of your requests for characters: Doyle (either as a teenager or a little boy with a crush on Cordy), Katy (for you, Imzadi), Oz, and more.
CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN: Chapter Eleven
I followed Buffy out to the car without saying a word. I kept my face blank. I wasn't about to let her know that the fact that she automatically blamed me hurt so bad that I wanted to chuck cinder blocks at something (or someone). One thing was for sure: I wasn't going to cry. No matter what. Bite Me Giles was one tough cookie.
I was five by five. She could blame me all she wanted to, and I still wouldn't give a care, five by five.
"What in the world is wrong with you?" Buffy hissed, the second we were out of the ear reach of the rest of the crowd. "I walk in there, and that poor girl is absolutely covered in food, Faith Giles, and that's…" she trailed off, and I rolled my eyes. What was she, lecture girl?
"Did it ever occur to you, B," I asked, leaning lazily against the car, "that you're not Mom?"
Her hands flew to her hips. "Mom's under a lot of pressure right now with the gallery opening," Buffy said, "and she doesn't need to have to be dealing with you and your little mess."
If you asked me, Darla was the one who was a little mess. Literally.
A slight smile crept onto my face. Giles kids totally put the venge in revenge.
"Faith Giles, this isn't funny. Now, we can stand here for as long as you want, but you're not going anywhere until you tell me what happened in there and why you did what you did to Parker and why it is that, out of everyone in this family, you have to make trouble."
I took her words like a punch in the stomach, even though I made sure that my facial expression didn't change. She made it sound like I wasn't even a part of the family, like I was destroying it or something. Didn't she understand that the family, Anya, Andrew, Dawnie, Lindsey, all of them…they were my life. Sometimes, I thought that if I hadn't have them, there wouldn't have been anything to fight for at all, and here she was telling me that I was the odd one out.
"I make trouble," I told her, looking her straight in the eye and pushing down the tears that I could feel wanting to come, "because I can." We'd see how she liked that as an answer. I hoped she'd hate it, and she didn't disappoint.
"But that's just it," Buffy said, "you can't, Faith. Not anymore. You're a smart girl, and you're strong and athletic and people follow you, and you have a responsibility to use your gifts wisely. You can't just go on making with the pudding throwing every time someone says something you don't like."
"You really don't get it, do you?" I asked. I couldn't help myself.
"Don't get what?" Buffy asked. She lowered her voice, and I could tell just by looking at her that she thought she was trying to understand me, but she wasn't really. She didn't want to understand me, because all she really wanted was for me to be like her, and that had nothing to do with understanding. "I get that something's going on with you, Faith. I do, really, but I can't help you with it if you don't tell me what it is, and the way you've been going, it's not acceptable."
Like she even knew what acceptable was.
I turned to walk away from her, and she reached out to grab my arm. "No you don't," she said. "We're staying right here until you talk to me, Faith Giles. You're not just running away from this."
So all of a sudden, I was the one who ran away from things? I wasn't the one who had moved out, right when Mom and Dad had decided to uproot us all. I wasn't the one Wills needed to talk to when someone made fun of her plaid jumper or the one that Andrew needed to answer his million and one useless questions or even the one that Xander tried all of his jokes out on. She was the oldest, and no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much and how hard I loved them, they missed her, and it hurt so much that I couldn't fill the gap.
I couldn't be Buffy.
I jerked my arm out of her grasp and bolted across the street. She didn't understand. No matter what I did, I wasn't Buffy, and we needed her, and the harder I tried to make things better for the rest of them, the more everything fell apart, because I just wasn't good enough. Hadn't I always been the bad child? The troublemaker? Wasn't I the one who got in fistfights and came up with all of the evil plans?
I ran, blindly, away from her.
"Faith!" I heard her scream the moment before I saw the car, barreling towards me. As I turned to look at it, I realized that there was nothing I could do. It was speeding, and I was in its way, and for the life of me, I couldn't move a muscle. The car swerved and screeching filled the air as the driver slammed on his brakes.
I stood there, like a deer in the headlights, and as the car just barely missed me, all I could think about was what my tombstone would look like.
Here Lies Bite Me Giles
She Was in Trouble
A Lot
The next second, it was over, and the owner of the car was yelling. Buffy caught up to me, and she pulled me quickly off of the road.
"Are you okay?" she asked, searching my body for phantom bruises. The car hadn't even hit me. What did she expect, air bruises?
I looked away.
"You could have been… it….car…woosh…" Buffy started rambling incoherently. I glanced up at her and noticed that her face had gone a pale white. Her hands were shaking and her eyes were glassy with what might have been unshed tears.
Tears? For me?
I didn't like seeing her like that. Annoying or not, unfair or not, Buffy was a Giles, even if she hated me, and if there was one thing I couldn't stand, it was to see someone I loved hurting. Even Buffy.
"Listen, B," I said softly, "I'm okay."
She stared at me, not understanding for a minute.
"Really, I swear, Buffy, I'm…" I never got to finish telling her I was fine, because in the next instant, chaos exploded all around me as my brothers and sisters poured out of Pepe's, where they'd all seen my close encounter of the car wrecky kind.
"What in the bloody hell was that?" Spike's voice broke through the yells of my siblings. I turned to look at him, and he glared down at me. I matched him, look for look, but I shivered on the inside. I'd never seen anyone look so angry my entire life.
"I'm fine," I told Spike, keeping my voice calm.
"Only because you're a lucky little chit," Spike boomed. "Darting out in front of on-bloody-coming traffic…"
He trailed off, and I stared up at him, wide eyed.
"If you ever do anything like that again, Bit, I swear I'll thrash you within a sodding inch of your life," he said lowly.
I didn't believe him, but I wasn't about to tell him that. He was angry at me, really angry. I couldn't get the image of the tombstone out of my mind, and here Spike was yelling at me. The worst thing was, I knew that for once in my life, I actually deserved it.
"Don't you talk to my sister that way," Buffy said, some of the color coming back into her cheeks.
My mouth dropped open. She was actually standing up for me? Was this the same Buffy who'd more or less accused me of being the bad seed? The same Buffy who didn't have time to do anything but yell at me?
Spike snorted. "So now you don't like the way I'm talking to your sister?" he asked. "What about the way you've been talking to her the whole sodding day? Do you even hear yourself, Big Sis? Bit can't do anything without you jumping down her throat like she's Freddy Bloody Krueger."
Buffy put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Spike.
This was getting interesting, even if my favorite soccer coach ever was furious at me for almost getting myself killed. I'd be lucky if I wasn't running extra laps for the next three weeks.
"That is not true," Buffy said. "I don't yell at her all the time."
"Objection, your honor." Lindsey spoke up. The rest of my siblings, who'd rushed out along with Spike when the car had slammed on its brakes, looked over at him, silent. Buffy turned towards him. "You've been badgering the witness," Lindsey said, his voice low and serious. "You've been badgering my sister." He met my eyes when he said sister, and I knew that it meant something to him, that I meant something to him.
Buffy took in a deep breath. "I have n-"
"Veraciously," Willow piped up, nodding solemnly.
"I gotta four oh niner that, Buffster," Xander said, still speaking in code. "You do kinda yell at her a lot."
How had I ever doubted, even for a minute, that they were behind me? They loved me, maybe even as much as I loved them.
"Faith?" Buffy asked, her voice hesitant, like she expected me to deny what everyone else was saying.
I wanted to say how true it was, and how unfair she'd been, and how I didn't understand why I always had to be the bad one, but instead, I just muttered under my breath. "I don't give a care."
That was a lie. I did care. A lot.
"You're always yelling at her, Buffy," Dawnie whined, dragging Buffy's name out longer than I had thought was humanly possible. "Even when it's not her fault."
"Oh…oh…oh….yes…" Anya agreed, sounding strangely like someone in one of those shampoo commercials where they were having an 'organic' experience. "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Anya continued, her pigtails bouncing. "You do pick on Faith, and it makes me sexually repressed."
Spike snorted. "Don't think that's a problem," he said under his breath with a grin, chuckling.
"She means sad," Andrew clarified. "For Anya, sexually repressed means sad." He put his little hands on his hips and thrust out his chest in a superman pose and he continued speaking. "Faith is our Ejaculation Protector, and the Condom Avenger and Orgasm Girl don't like it when people hurt her feelings."
I scuffed my foot into the ground. "She didn't hurt my feelings," I muttered, refusing to meet Buffy's eyes.
"Yes," a little voice spoke up, calm and certain. "She did." Everyone stared at Tara. "Faith talks to us, and she listens, even when I don't talk. She makes the kids at school be nice to me. She…she…she…" Tara stuttered a little, aware of the many eyes on her. She wasn't used to talking so much around people. "She's our sister, and she's good."
I smiled. Like I said before, Tara didn't talk much, but when she did speak, it really meant something.
"Faith, I…I never meant to…" Buffy trailed off.
"I hope the pizza eats you!" Dru broke in passionately. "Poor, poor princess all alone and scared and tough and strong, and the Pretty Lady just doesn't see. I hope the pizza chomp chomp chomps you down like silver scissors!"
I was pretty sure that that was the first time in my life that someone had called me a princess and the first time that someone had wished a giant pizza would eat Buffy. Such was Dru.
Silently, Tara walked up and weaved her hand through mine. One by one, they came to stand beside me: Xander and Lindsey, Dawnie and Dru, Tara, Willow, Anya, and Andrew. After a moment, Wes came to stand beside them, straightening his glasses and clearing his throat. He'd been surprisingly quiet during the whole ordeal, but even serious Wesley was there for me.
They were on my side. They were all on my side.
The adults and older kids looked on, and all I could think about was the fact that I wasn't alone, and that, for once, I didn't have to be the strong one. Tara squeezed my hand. The rest of them could be strong for me.
"Faith," Buffy said.
I fought against the tears and lost. "It doesn't matter," I muttered.
"Yes, it does," she said, "and this time, you and I need to talk for real."
"For real," Anya piped up. "No faking it," she said. "Faking orgasms takes the fun right out of them."
Andrew regarded me solemnly. "May the force be with you," he said, handing me a condom. "I got it out of Riley's wallet. His supply has not yet been depleted, perhaps because of an evil impotent shield of doom." Andrew supplied his own echo. "DOOM DOOM DOOM."
"Impotent?" Riley squeaked, and I remembered that Sam was there, too. I pushed back a grin, even as the tears slipped slowly down my face. I wasn't even sure why I was crying. I thought about my tombstone again, only this time, I saw a different message.
Faith Giles
She loved us
And we loved her.
Andrew sniffled and wiped his nose on his shirt, muttering something about Riley needing to seek out the Elixer of Power and Potency hidden deep within the Viagara Forest.
I loved that kid.
They'd stood up for me, even Spike who still looked mad enough to spit nails about the car incident. They'd all stood up for me, and now, the only thing left for me to do was talk to Buffy.
TBC… Sweet Buffy/Faith bonding time, as each figures out what the other has been going through and they discover that they're more alike than either of them had thought.
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