A/N See, when I get a groove on, I can update fast! Feed the author beast and give me feedback!
Gambles and Needs
****************
Lindsey hung up the phone and allowed himself a small smile. His instincts had been right about Faith. Granted, his instincts usually weren't very far off, but Faith had been a big gamble. He could usually read people pretty well, but not Faith. Faith was a hard one, in more ways than one.
Lilah, on the other hand, Lilah was extremely easy to read. Even from miles away, only half watched, in order to protect himself from the consequences of his desertment of Wolfram and Hart, he could tell what she was planning. What she was plotting.
He knew what Lilah was thinking in regards to the ex-watcher. Or was that watcher, now that Faith seemed to have run back to settle firmly under his wing?
It wasn't like Lindsey had been reborn, had decided to become one of the good guys, the syrupy sweet righteous type, like those that worked for Angel. As a matter of fact, he still hated Angel with a passion.
The highway patrolmen had not been amused.
And hating Angel usually meant hating the lot of them.
So why did it matter to Lindsey what happened to one Wesley Wyndham-Pryce?
It didn't really.
But if Wolfram and Hart were working as hard as Lilah seemed to be to recruit the former leader of Angel Investigations, it must mean that the man was fairly significant to the big fight.
And as much as Lindsey hated Angel, he didn't want Wolfram and Hart to win this fight. The thought terrified him.
If they were to gain rule of LA, or anything else, he shuddered to think what would happen. It was bad enough that they had the power that they did have.
So Lindsey went ahead and assembled the case as his former law firm had been prepared to do if Faith had followed their plan, had done what they wanted.
Because Lindsey had been keeping tabs on Faith too. And she had received numerous visits from one Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.
So Lindsey took a gamble and got her released, banking on her running to her watcher.
And she had done just that.
Now Lindsey hoped he was right about the rest. That Faith would stick around and that she would manage to keep Lilah's claws out of Wyndham-Pryce.
* * * * *
Wesley woke to the sounds of domesticity in the kitchen.
He almost didn't recognize the sounds, it had been so long since he'd heard them.
He thought back to his first morning with Angel Investigations. Before Gunn. Before Darla. Before Pylea, and Fred, Buffy's death and resurrection, before Connor. Before the events that had shattered his reality, and had fragmented his family.
It had been simple back then. Just Angel, Cordelia, and himself. They fought evil. They had eggs.
Was that what he was smelling right now? Or was it just that vivid a memory?
He sniffed at the air again, and again heard the noise that had woken him.
Clattering in the kitchen.
He rubbed his hands across his face, trying to rub the remnants of a long night spent in his chair away.
His skin dragged on the stubble covering his chin. He needed a shave, and as his hands passed over his eyes, he thought about his glasses. When was the last time that he had worn them? He didn't know. But as his stomach rumbled, the smells penetrating his senses, his glasses were forgotten. He got up and approached the kitchen.
He knew Faith was there. After all, that's why he had slept in the chair. And she had made him tea the night before. In that very kitchen, without disastrous results.
But it was still jarring enough to see her in the kitchen, looking very much like the old Faith in her black clothes and tousled hair. Yet there was something different about her, humming softly and stirring something that was cooking on the stove. She just seemed different. He hoped that she'd stick around long enough for him to find out why.
* * * * *
After being strapped to a chair by the girl that had made breakfast and now sat across from him, Wesley thought that he would never again be surprised by her.
He was wrong. She had cooked. For him. Well, for both of them. But still, she had thought to include him. Nothing could have surprised him more.
It seemed that he was always wrong when it came to Faith, no matter what he thought.
Could he do this? Could he be her watcher if he couldn't predict her? And who could he ask? Not the council, for certain? And not Giles, who had ceased to be a watcher himself. Giles had gone back to England, believing Buffy needed to start standing on her own.
Kind of ironic that it was at the same time that Faith realized that she no longer could.
Faith had always been the more independent of the two slayers. So different from Buffy, right from the first. No family, no friends, no watcher. No desire for a new one, especially a stuffy Brit in suits and glasses.
He ran a hand through his scruffy hair, thinking how they had both changed so much.
People were not solitary animals, not even the slayer, no matter how much the Council wanted them to be. Buffy had more than proven that.
The Council of Watchers insisted that the slayer always cut herself off from the world. From her friends. From her parents.
Like Kendra.
But Buffy had refused. And she had proven just how wrong the Council was. It was her connections that kept her alive. Her friends.
And when she died, it was her friends that brought her back.
First Xander, the night that the Master had been set free.
Then Willow, and the irrefutable proof that the slayer needed people of strength around her.
Because without them, Buffy Anne Summers would still be six feet under.
Everyone needed people around them. Even slayers.
And Faith has finally let herself need someone.
But the watcher wasn't sure who needed who more.
He needed someone. In an unbearable way that screamed in his heart and ripped at his skin. And he needed to be needed.
The thing that he had done had taken away that which was most vital to him. His family. The family that he had sought and craved his entire life. And he had thrown it all away, on a false prophecy. He had shattered his life on the assumption that he would be saving the person who had managed to get into his heart. The brother that his soul had cried out for, and that his life's path had led him to.
He remembered the shattering of spirit, the knife sharp shards cutting at his soul at the words. Words delivered in the coldest fashion possible. The back of the women that had captured his heart turned towards him as she spoke the words that sealed his coffin shut.
The prophecy was a fake, a ruse, a plot, a ploy. A trap. Meant to lead him on the path to his greatest destruction, as the thing that had forged it had known it would.
And there, in that room, Fred had ended his life. She had told him to never come back, and he knew then that he would never have the chance to speak his side. That is wouldn't matter if he did. That the letter that he had written with tears in his heart and sobs in his throat would never be read.
He could never fix that which he had broken. But he would try. He would find Connor.
The words that Fred had spoken had ended his life in a way that Justine's knife could never have done. Even if she had sliced that one inch over that the doctors had told him he had been lucky with.
That would have been quick and relatively painless.
But Fred's words had started the slow process of killing his soul. They had stolen his hope.
And he was convinced that he would slowly whither away. That he would die of a broken heart and a shattered spirit of his own doing.
And then he had found Faith, who had come to him with hope and trepidation in her eyes. Would her presence and her need for his guidance be enough to pull him back, to keep him alive, to keep him sane?
It was then that he discovered he needed her far more than she would ever need him.
But could he accept that? Could he need someone who had tried to kill him, someone who had marked him with battle scars?
He would have to. He would have to take that gamble. He felt that he couldn't survive if he didn't.
"Wes! Hey, earth to British Guy!"
When Wes felt his mind snap back to his body, Faith was standing halfway out of her chair, her hand waving in front of his face in a frenzied fashion. As if nothing mattered more that her attempt to snap him back to reality.
With a blink and a shudder, he pulled himself out of the well of deep thought that he had been lost in.
"I know my cooking is a bit of a stunner, but does it really require that depth of thought?" She laughed, a rough sound in her throat, as if it had been a very long time since she had made that sound. "I may not be a bad cook, but even the best omelettes taste like shit cold. Eat it!"
He went to say something, to wonder aloud what to do next, thinking that they would have to flounder through this slayer/watcher thing together, but she held up that forceful hand, put up that palm, that palm that he had quickly learned meant 'don't even think about it, buster', in his face, and shook her head.
"No talking, watcher man. At least not today." She shoved a forkful of eggs into her mouth, chewing rapidly and swallowing swiftly, as if prison had taught her that savoring food was something that she was no longer allowed the luxury of. "God knows that I have a million and two questions that I am going to demand you answer, not the least of which are how you got that nice new scar and how in the fuck Angel had a kid. Nearly passed out when the geek and the thug told me that."
She averted her eyes at the harsh look from him, misinterpreting his surprise at her mention of them as disdain for the monikers she had given them.
"I mean Fred and Charles. Keeping the shock off of my face was a chore, let me tell you. 'Course, they didn't tell me what Angel was. And after all, couldn't let on that I knew their boss was a vamp. I mean, that's probably not something that a proper watcher would tell his cousin, huh? After all, I probably wouldn't even know you had been a watcher."
The next look Faith managed to interpret correctly.
"I know! I wouldn't buy it either. But they did. Good thing that the cheerleader wasn't around." He winced a little at the mention of Cordelia. She saw, and moved on quickly. "Like I said, I expect a full disclosure. But I think I can manage to wait another day or two."
Faith got up and started removing the dishes off of the table. Wesley was surprised to see that he had managed to eat his omlette while she spoke.
"Today I think that we need to find some training space." She looked around his apartment. "Not that your place lacks charm. But I just don't think the size is going to work for the workouts that I have in mind."
Wesley nearly dropped his tea in his lap at the statement. And he wondered why there was a sudden lick of fire in his gut.
It really had been a long time if could take an innocent statement in such a way.
He sighed heavily and got up to help with the dishes.