For notes, warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1

Chapter 14: Just Your Average (Dysfunctional) Family

I am fairly certain that this was not part of my original job description. As far as I recall nowhere in my training did they mention that my duty while patrolling would someday include quizzing not one but two slayers for upcoming tests. One of them is getting ready for her SAT, the other is trying to catch up in English Literature. I guess it could have been worse... I could have been quizzing Faith on biology. Anyway, right now I am trying to get Buffy to understand just how serious her SAT is in terms of her future... and I can hardly keep myself from smiling at the thought that she's made it this far. I still remember her knocking me out to go face the Master --knowing that she would die-- as well as her reaction to career week last year, when she didn't even think she'd have a future. Back then she still believed herself to be the slayer.

Of course, getting Buffy to focus on her studies is not exactly easy. I tune out her babbling about joining a tribe where rites of passage include piercings while shaking my head in disbelief and before I know it I see Buffy coming my way at full speed and telling me to roll. I obey instinctively and she stakes a vampire using her pencil... a fact that she tries to turn into an excuse to get out of her study session. I hand her a new pencil and she glares at me, much to Faith's amusement.

The truth is that I enjoy this time with them when we are on patrol, when it's just the three of us. We don't have to hide as we do in the library where Snyder is a constant threat hanging over our heads, the Scoobies are not around --a fact that greatly reduces the stress on Buffy, even though things are slowly getting better with them-- and Joyce is not here to hover protectively over 'her girls'. Funny how quickly she has grown to worry almost as much about Faith as she does about Buffy. Whether I want to acknowledge it or not the fact is that patrolling is as close as I can get to the traditional interaction between a watcher and his slayer and I like it... it's just that damn plural that keeps throwing me off.

The thing is that lately I've found myself doubling as a tutor, seeing how both of them have had some trouble readjusting to school --which I guess is only natural. Luckily Buffy is almost back to her old self --and I know I can trust her under normal circumstances-- but with her SAT just a few days away I figured she could use the extra help. I know she's not serious when she claims to choose her answers based on frequency --and I know B was indeed the correct answer to the question I just posed her, even though she's trying to be flippant-- but I can't risk her blowing her SAT in an attempt to keep up her dumb-blonde facade. She is smart but she craves some sense of normalcy in her life and I do realize that --as is unfortunately the case with too many girls around here-- ever since she was born she has been relentlessly bombarded by a media that has taught her that dumb is 'cool' and only 'nerds' care about their studies.

Faith, on the other hand, is a different matter altogether. The girl hadn't set foot in a classroom in over two years so she is a bit rusty but the situation is nowhere near as bad as I had feared. She is still trying to catch up in some areas with her classmates, obviously, and she does get frustrated at times but she is determined to do this. My only problem with her determination is that I'm not sure how much of it is based on a desire to do well in school and how much of it is fear based. I know she's smart --she had to be to survive-- and I know she was a good student before she ran away but I suspect part of it may also be related to the fact that she still feels unsure as to her place in our lives.

Sure, Faith still enjoys teasing me as much as she can but I can tell that her banter is just a facade, one that doesn't quite match her actions. I think that deep down at times she is still trying to make herself invisible, she's still afraid of becoming a 'nuisance'... and she's still reluctant to tell us what she wants. I think I can understand her better since I came back from Boston and that has definitely helped matters, though neither she nor Buffy are aware of my little trip.

Of course we've also had more than our share of awkward moments these past few days, though oddly enough the strangest one probably came when neither Faith nor Buffy were around. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time but I failed to consider how the whole thing would play out. After I came back from Boston I knew the situation we were facing was far more complicated than what we were equipped to deal with so I talked Joyce into going with me to meet with a family therapist, seeing how neither Faith nor Buffy were particularly keen on the idea of seeing a counselor themselves. I had hoped that such a specialist could at least advise us on how to handle the situation, which were the common errors we should try to avoid or the obstacles we were likely to encounter, but things quickly spun out of control. The truth is that it was not a particularly successful session... or maybe the problem was that it was a little too successful for comfort.

From the moment we walked in the door we encountered some rather predictable obstacles when it came to explaining our current situation. We were there in an attempt to learn what we could do in order to help Buffy and Faith cope with everything they'd been through but there was too much we just couldn't mention --not without being committed ourselves-- so we had to simplify our story. We explained how Buffy had run away after a misunderstanding with the law, what she went through in LA and how, when she finally came home a few weeks ago, she did so with Faith in tow. It wasn't exactly the truth but we felt it was the closest to it we could get away with as long as we were limited to what the average person would deem to be a 'believable' explanation. After that the real problems began.

The most relevant one came about when we tried to explain the relationship between Joyce and myself. The poor doctor had a hard time trying to come to terms with the fact that we weren't married, we had never been married, we had never even dated and yet we were there together in her office looking into what we could do to help our girls... and that was the most shocking part of the whole experience for me. She made me realize that they are in fact our girls. I've known that I love Buffy as if she were my own for a really long time and I also knew that Faith was quickly growing on me, but even though I knew Joyce and I had made a commitment to work together to help them I had never really considered what my position in my slayers' lives meant in terms of my relationship with Joyce.

To say that having a total stranger casually mention the fact that we are co-parenting the girls was shocking would be an understatement but the thing is that now --after a couple of days-- both Joyce and I have finally stopped fighting it and accepted that description as a fact. Nature abhors a vacuum so --even if no one ever did anything specific to trigger such a situation-- somehow I've found myself fulfilling the role of Buffy's missing father without me being even aware of it... and now that situation has been extended to include Faith as well. As I said, I have no problem accepting that I love my slayers as if they were my own daughters, that was never the issue, the issue was that even though Joyce and I have been working in tandem for a while we had never quite taken the step to describe the relationship between the two of us as co-parenting. I guess we just hadn't thought of what my relationship with my slayers meant in terms of our own relationship, if that makes any sense.

In the end I think it all boils down to the fact that even though we are far from being a traditional family, like it or not we are a family.

It's strange how I find that to be a more daunting responsibility than I could ever have imagined. I was trained to turn a little girl into a warrior --to send her to her death without giving it a second thought-- and that woman's words changed that in an instant... she made me see myself in a different light. I haven't been what the Council expects of a watcher in a very long time --I've known that for a while now-- but that doesn't change the fact that by having abandoned my original mission somewhere along the way I've unwittingly placed both Faith and Buffy in more danger than they can even imagine. They may not know it but my actions have placed them in harm's way and now it's up to me to find a way to keep them safe because I'm not willing to lose either one of them. That is one task in which I can't afford to fail.

-o-

Author's note: I know I'm skipping two episodes here, I did warn you that this was going to be an AU. "Beauty and the Beasts" is being overlooked because its main purpose plot-wise is to reveal Angel's return to Buffy, however seeing how Angel is not coming back it just made no sense... you can consider it replaced by Giles's trip to Boston. "Homecoming" just doesn't work because it is too heavily based on the dynamics between the Scoobies which are completely different here... that brings us straight to "Band Candy", which probably takes place a little earlier in this universe than in canon.