A/N Again, thanks so much for all the feedback. The more I get, the more I write. Think of it like a bribe.
Coming Home
************
Faith sat on the floor of Wesley's apartment, soaking up the quiet darkness that surrounded her. She has changed out of the suit she had been wearing, shoving the costume in her backpack. She had debated throwing it out, but it had come in handy once. Maybe she'd need it again someday. Who could predict those things?
Unfortunately, the only thing that the slayer had had to change into was the outfit that she had been wearing the night that she had confessed. Faith wished that she had had something else. Would the clothes remind him too much of the things that she had done? She hoped not. She really wanted a fresh start. A clean slate. She really wished that Lindsey had thought to bring her clothes other than the suit for court.
It's not that Lindsey hadn't given her useful things. He had.
He had gotten her the name of the hotel that housed the new offices of Angel Investigations, the address of the apartment where she currently sat. He had even given her a little bit of cash. Out of his own pocket.
But he hadn't thought of a change of clothes.
Oh well. Faith couldn't fault him for it. There wasn't much you could do. Men just didn't think of things like that, for the most part. Women's clothes weren't a priority. Not women putting them on, anyway.
Faith was sitting cross-legged on the floor beneath a window, one of Wesley's journals open on her lap. She was trying to read by the light that filtered in from the street. She hadn't wanted to turn a lamp on, and alert the neighbours to her presence. They might know that Wesley was in the hospital, and call the police, knowing the place should have been empty. Faith didn't want to deal with the police again. Ever. If she could avoid the law for the rest of her life, then that would be fine with her.
She wasn't positive any of his neighbours would know the difference. Wesley seemed to be too involved with Angel Investigations and the people there to be making friends with his neighbours. But Faith didn't want to take the chance. So the lights stayed off.
When she had first come in to Wes's apartment, she noticed the state of the place. She supposed that she had been too preoccupied to notice when she had encountered Fred and Gunn. But then again, she hadn't been the only one thrown by the meeting. If they hadn't been, then Fred would have remembered to lock the deadbolt on the door on the way out that morning. But she hadn't, thankfully. It had made it that much easier to get into the watcher's place. All Faith had had to do was twist the doorknob hard enough to break the feeble lock. And it still gave all the outward appearances of a working door. The knob simply no longer had a functioning locking mechanism. So Faith remembered to throw the latch on the deadbolt as she closed the door, making sure no one without keys could come in.
It was after she had done that that she looked around the apartment. Even in the half dark she could see the scattered journals, the knowledge on paper which had exploded about the room.
She really was surprised that she hadn't seen it before. With notebooks spread open and writing upon any scrap that was suitable for holding ink, Wes's place resembled the library of Sunnydale High during a Scooby Gang research party.
Faith wondered what it was that Wesley had been researching. It had to have been something big for him to have left his journals out like that. Wes had always struck Faith as being organized. Well, maybe not so much organized, as anal. The one other uptight people would have laughed at.
That's how he had struck her that first day. Anal British Prig. As if it were his name tag.
But not anymore. He blew that image out of the water when he endured her torture and refused to scream. But she tried not to think about that. No matter how admirable and stoic he had been. She had been proud of him. But remembering her pride in him for his actions meant that she had to remember her part in it. And that was something that she was deeply ashamed of. She shook her head. Not the time to think of that now.
She had also thought that all of that book stuff was nerdy. But she knew better now. She understood more. The knowledge contained in those books could be used as a very powerful weapon. At times it was only that knowledge that allowed a slayer to conquer the things that needed defeating.
Slayer strength was essential at times. But on other occasions, that strength was only useful if you had knowledge of your opponent's weakness.
Yes. A thing or two that Wesley had taught her while she had been in prison had managed to sink in. It was the because of the fact that they had that she knew Wesley's opinion on the matter. It was that knowledge that allowed Faith to realize that there was something drastic going on. If there hadn't been, he would have never left his books that way.
So she had picked one of them up off of the pile, and had taken a seat where some of the light from outside could find its way to the words on the page. And she started to sift through all of that knowledge, looking for an explanation.
It was there that she was still sitting, one of the many books on her lap, when Wesley arrived home from the hospital.
* * * * *
He usually had no one to come home to. As Wesley walked down the hallway towards his apartment, he wondered why it felt so different. It's not like he had ever had that, aside from the all too short time with Virginia. But that wasn't what was bothering the watcher, the lack of a girlfriend. He tried to figure out what it was that was making his heart constrict as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. When his hand touched the extra set, he knew why today was different. He fished the spare set out and looked at them. Remembered how they had been left unceremoniously in his hospital room with all of the other things removed from Angel Investigations so that they could deny his existence.
That was the difference. Before, if Wesley had needed someone to come home to, someone would have been there.
Not now.
He had never had to return from the hospital by himself before. It was a pain that wrenched his gut, closed his throat.
When the restriction in his throat made it hard for him to breathe, he remembered that pillow. And the fact that they hadn't let him explain. And according to Fred's warning, he would never get the chance. Losing that chance made him angry. In his head, he understood their anger. That was why he fought to explain, to at least give them the why, even if they couldn't understand his reasons. But his heart hurt that he had not been given the chance.
Wesley had even written a letter to explain. But it wasn't to justify himself. He knew that there would never be any justification. Because of what he had done, Connor was gone. Not dead, Wesley refused to believe that. But gone. Wes wouldn't give up until he found a way to bring Connor back. But he could explain why he had done what he had done, maybe make some minute sense of his actions to the others.
He had still wanted to explain, to have them know why, to have them know his side, even after he had seen Angel.
He had understood Angel's rage. Wesley had taken the only son that the vampire would ever have. And lost that son to Angel's enemy. Wes could see why Angel was angry enough to act the way he had. After all, it had been the very day that Connor had been taken.
So Wes had written the letter, hoping to send it. And that Angel would have become calm enough to let one of the others read it. That maybe Angel would want to know why.
Then Fred had visited. And Wesley had learned that time had done nothing. Then she had dropped the bombshell about the prophecy. After that, it no longer seemed to matter. Fred had made it really clear what they thought, made it really clear that they didn't want to know his side. They had already made up their minds.
So he had put the letter in the box with the other remnants of his life at AI. He didn't know why he hadn't just thrown it out. Maybe he would. And everything else. Maybe he'd start over. All of these thoughts made it a little easier to put the key in the lock. The hurt he had felt had begun to turn to bitterness as he had lain in that hospital for hours, for days, alone.
When Wes turned the key for the lock in the doorknob, he found that the lock had finally let go. It had been weak to begin with, and he had known it would be just a matter of time until it gave way. At least the deadbolt still held.
The door swung inwards into the very dark apartment. The light from the hallway only penetrates as far as the couch, but it was enough to reveal all of the papers strewn about.
That explained how they knew what he had done. Wes couldn't believe it. They would have had to have gone through, like they would have done with a suspect. That's what he now was to them, a suspect.
Wesley leaned against the wall, the remnants of his life on a box in his arms. It was only as his foot pushed the door closed that he wondered that if Gunn and Fred had found these journals, had they found the others? The ones about Faith?
The thought jarred him the same instant that the door slammed closed. And it was in that instant that the silent emptiness of his apartment, his world, shattered.
* * * * *
Faith had been looking for clues, for anything to help her decipher the fragments of conversation she had heard between Fred and Gunn. "Angel", "forgive", "hundred years". She was looking for notes about what she, as a slayer, had always been taught was impossible. How a vampire had had a child. She had briefly wondered if it had been Buffy's.
There was just so much information to sift through, mostly things about a prophecy. And Faith had had a long day, between court, and the hospital. Her slayer stamina had only held out for so long, and she had fallen asleep. Knees pulled in, her head lolling forward to rest across the journal that lay atop her knees.
But those long nights at the prison had taught her to be aware of her surroundings, even in sleep. The door opening had been done with a quiet reverence, and had only stirred her into awareness. It was the slam of it closing that snapped her to full attention. It pulled on her, not unlike the strings on a puppet, and before her heart had beat a second time, the slayer was on her feet.
The swift movement of a figure on the other side of the room caused Wesley to drop his box to the floor with a loud crash.
Had one of the people who had tried to kill him come back to finish the job?
The dark shape stood up with silent grace and fluid motion, landing on its feet in one motion, the motion of a natural predator.
Its dark hair floated down towards its waist in a cascade of raven curls. And there was something intuitively familiar about it. The figure filled him with both trepidation and warmth. With contradictory fear and pride.
Fear, because some of the scars hid body bore, he had received from her.
Pride, because that natural predator was his to teach. His to mold, and to transform.
She was his slayer.
"Hey Wes."
It seemed he had someone to come home to, after all.