A/N I noticed as I went to post this that it has been over FOUR MONTHS since I updated this fic. I feel horrible about that, I really do. Just know that I have not abandoned the fic. I've been working on a film that has kept me very busy as of late. If you want to know more about it, check out www.theevilwithin.com. I also seem to have had my muse busy working on that film, and have had a hard time coaxing it to write some Wes/Faith. But, after typing in this chapter, I have a feeling that my muse might be coming back. Hope someone is still reading this.

The Story Revealed

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The tension was palpable. Faith could feel it in the air, taste it on her tongue.

She felt like time had slowed down, or maybe even stopped completely.

She held her breath, waiting for the words that would come. Words said in a raspy voice, a voice abused by the recent attack on its owner. A voice full of the emotion that was sure to be there, if the look on her watcher's face told her anything.

And it did. She could read on his face things she would have had to be told to know of in other people. She could read in his eyes the turmoil that he felt in his head, in his heart. Why could she do that? Was it another watcher/slayer connection that she hadn't been good enough to make before now? Could Buffy read Giles like this?

The thought was nothing more than fleeting. There were more pressing matters on Faith's mind.

Such as how to get that look out of Wesley's eyes, the one that told her that he was terrified of what would happen in the next few minutes. Of how his words would affect her. They showed how he thought that she would leave. She wondered what it was he had done that he thought was so terrible.

But it really didn't matter. Nothing he could say would drive her away. After all of the things that she had done, a lot of them to him, and he hadn't turned his back on her.

He had been there. Lately, in the past year, he had been there more than Angel had.

She would do no less for him. He was her watcher. She could do no less. The only thing that she was unsure of was how to let him know that.

She had told him in words, but that didn't seem enough somehow. He had told her he believed her, but in his eyes, she could still see the fear.

The fear that after he told her his story, she would leave. That she would be just like the others, and he would, once again, be left alone.

She reached out, squeezed his hand, and spoke again the words he needed to hear.

"I'm not leaving, watcher man, no matter what you say. So just say it. You'll feel better." She squeezed his hands again, forcing him to look in her eyes. And, she hoped, see the truth in them, as she could see with him.

He relaxed a fraction as he stared into her eyes, and something in them gave him the courage to speak.

"Well, it all started with a prophecy . . . "

'Doesn't it always?' Faith thought to herself. But she did not speak, not wanting to stop him after he started.

"It was only later that I found out that the prophecy was false."

*          *          *          *          *

It was hours later as Faith paced the length of the living room, lit only from the light filtering in through the window.

She glanced at her watcher, wondering if she should put him in his bed.

But she decided against it. It would be somewhat of a blow to his masculinity, she thought, to find he had been put to bed like a child. Especially by a woman, even if that woman was the slayer.

Well, a slayer, anyways. The Slayer was Buffy. Always was, always would be. Hell, blondie couldn't even stay dead.

But Faith was a slayer, and, more importantly, she was his slayer. Wesley's slayer.

She looked at her watcher where he was asleep, sitting up. He had fallen into a fitful sleep when she had left the room to get him some water. It sat, untouched, on the table beside him.

He would need it when he woke up.

Once he finally started talking Faith had been surprised by how much he had had to say.

She had wondered at the change in her watcher, from the man she had once tortured into the man that he had become. But so much had happened.

In no longer surprised her, the drastic change in him. The events that he had lived through since she had last been free had been a lifetime's worth.

Several lifetimes, in fact.

He had been blown up, shot, had his throat slit. Lost his friends, his family, by doing the things that he thought were right. Their absence created a hole in his life. It was something that was still raw. She had seen that when Gunn was here.

It pained him more that the wound in his throat, the loss of them.

She had thought that they would get past it, one day. After all, if Angel had forgiven her . . .But then Wesley had told her about the hospital. About Angel's words, assuring the watcher that he was in his right mind, before he had covered Wesley's face with a pillow.

He had spoken of Fred's harsh, and heartbreaking, Faith knew, words to him. About never coming back.

And it made her even angrier that Gunn had dared to come here for help.

But Wesley had helped. Because that's who he was. Not because it was Fred, but because someone, it didn't matter who, was in trouble.

No matter what other damage they had done to Wesley by turning their backs on him, Angel's groupies hadn't stolen that goodness. The essence of Wesley. He would never let someone die if he could prevent it.

It's why he had done the things that he had done in the first place.

She couldn't believe they had turned on him, not listening to his side before they shut him out completely.

The dark slayer paced the apartment like a caged animal. Thinking about the things he had told her just made her angrier and angrier.

She glanced at Wesley again, seeing that he was still asleep. She didn't want to leave him, didn't want him to wake up, find her gone, and think that she, too, had turned her back on him.

But the anger in her was building. And she couldn't ignore it anymore. If she didn't do something with it soon, she would climb the walls.

Or hurt the people who had hurt Wesley.

She had to go out on patrol, or she would go crazy.

She covered him with a blanket, slipped a pillow beneath his head, where it had fallen now to the arm of the couch. She swung his still shod feet around, placing them on the couch in an attempt to make him more comfortable.

She grabbed her weapons, threw on her jacket, and quietly left the apartment. But not before leaving a hastily scrawled note about performing her destined duty by his water where he would find it.

She had a deep seated need to kill something. To alleviate the frustration she had with the dramatic turn that her watcher's life had taken.