Okay this is the new, and hopfully better, version of Little Princess, let me know if you like it.

The Little Princess

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess, she had long, silky brown hair and eyes the colour of chocolate. By far the prettiest in all the land, but no one ever saw her because she was locked up in a high tower by her evil step-father. She was never allowed out, and the only company she had was her kind hearted step-sister, who was sent by her captor to look after the princess. Her sister was the only person who ever showed any kindness to her, and she promised the princess that one day, a handsome prince would come and rescue her, taking her away from the evil stepfather, to a faraway place where they would live happily together for ever...

Faith stood outside the hospital room door. She had waited until Willow had left before she went to see him, but now that she was there, she was starting to freak out a little. Through the little glass window, she could see him lying there. He looked broken. And a little drugged up. She knew that he probably wouldn't be up to talking, but the least she could do is sit with him for a while. So, she slowly, and quietly, opened the door and went to sit by his bed.

She had thought that he was asleep when she reached out for his had, and so she jumped a little when she felt him squeeze hers.

"I thought you were asleep." She whispered, smiling sheepishly at the way she had startled.

"Nah. Nurses keep coming in and poking me with needles and stuff." he said.

"Oh, sorry I should go and let you rest. Sorry." She stammered as she began to get up, only to find that Xander still had hold of her hand.

"No, stay. I think that we need to talk. About a lot."

"Yeah. That's why I came. Figured it would be the only chance we'll have, since B's is loco right now. But, tell we if you want me to go, you need to rest." He nodded in agreement, and after a brief pause, she softly asked, "How are you, really?"

He couldn't respond at first, didn't know how to, truthfully. It wasn't like with Willow, he didn't need to put on a brave face to protect her. He could be honest. All those letters that they wrote to each other while Faith was in prison, they were always honest in them.

"Honestly, I feel like shit." He laughed bitterly. "I guess at least I can wear the eye patch I had when I dressed p as a pirate for Halloween again, though."

Faith turned her head away from him, in an effort to hide her tears from him, the tears that she was crying for him. Hell, she didn't even want to admit it to herself. She couldn't figure it out, why she even was crying, they hadn't spoken to each other in person, since she stole Buffy's body, and there were defiantly still feelings of animosity and distrust between them, despite their correspondence by mail, and the revelations of those letters. And still she cried for him, for what he had lost, for not being able to save him, and most of all for ever hurting him in the first place. She didn't look back at him until she felt him squeeze her hand again.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he said softly, "I didn't mean to make you cry."

"One eye and you still see everything, huh?"

"I guess Caleb was right then?" he said dismally.

"How do you mean?" she asked frowning.

"Right before he did it, he called me 'the one who sees'" he explained. She frowned as thought, realising something that she should have known long ago.

"Yeah, he was right. It's everyone else who's been blind. All these years you've been here, you've noticed things that no one else even saw. You help because you can see what needs to be done. You saw that I needed help. If I had seen that myself, things would be so different now. People say that you're lucky to have survived all you have, but luck had nothing to do with it, did it? You're still alive, because you know how to stay alive. You'd be a great slayer, you know. And I'm sorry I never saw any of that sooner."

"Or maybe I just know when to run," he joked, Faith knew that he was doing what he always did, making a joke out of it, because everyone had always made him feel like nothing. "So, how about we talk about Lexie, while we still have the chance?"

"That's why I'm here." She reminded him, suddenly more afraid and nervous than she had ever been. This was, after all, possibly the most significant conversation she would ever have.

Two years ago, Xander got a letter from Faith. His first instinct was to bin it, but, thankfully, he decided to read it. And then he decided to read it again, just to take it all in. just to make sure he had read it right in the first place. After everything Faith had done to him, all she had put him through, and just when his life was starting to work out, she drops a bomb on it all. She just told him that he may be the father of her child.

That moment, two years ago, he had felt numb, then angry, then confused, and a hundred other feelings, most of which he didn't even know existed. And Faith was responsible for them all.

The second time he read the letter, or maybe the third, he got the facts straight in his head. She found out she was pregnant about a week after she tried to bring Angelus back. She said she had never been so terrified, so she denied it to herself for as long as she could, carrying on as normal. Wilkins never knew. When she had finally come round to the idea, she had called her step-sister, Ellie, who was a book editor, living in Boston. Ellie had tried her best to get Faith to go back to Boston, but she was afraid to, because of every thing that happened to her there. See, Ellie's father, after marrying Faith's mother, had packed the eldest of the two, Ellie off to boarding school, and spent the next five years abusing Faith in every way imaginably, and some ways that no one should be able to imagine. She hadn't told Xander this for him to pity her; she just wanted him to understand.

Anyway, it was Ellie who had saved her, after finding out just what kind of a man her father really was, she had made sure that he was locked up for a very long time, and since she had graduated and was legally an adult, she had adopted Faith and taken her away from her drunken mother. But it was only a year before Faith was called and her Watcher died, scared and broken she had come to Sunnydale.

After confessing everything to her sister, but refusing to go to her, she simply continued with the Mayor's plans, ignoring her condition. She spent most of her pregnancy comatose. The baby, a girl, was delivered by c-section on the 25th of October, 1999. And as Ellie was Faith's next of kin, she was automatically given custody. Ellie had tried to have Faith transferred to a Boston hospital, but she was under police custody, even though the doctors held little hope of a recovery.

There was a catch though. Xander wasn't the only guy that Faith had had sex with during her stay in Sunnydale, and he was not the only possible father. And the reason the two of them needed to talk.

"I called my sister from Angel's; let her know she might not hear from me for a while. Gave her the skinny about what's happening here. I used to call them once a week in prison, but I only got fifteen minuets at a time, it was so good just to talk to her and Lexie without a guard breathing down my neck." All of a sudden Faith couldn't talk any more. Whenever she thought of her daughter, it always made happy and sad at the same time, but it was just too much for her this time. Once again, Xander squeezed her hand and it gave her the strength to compose herself. "She told me that she wants a puppy for her birthday this year."

The way Faith smiled when she talked about Lexie, her whole face lit up with pride and the unconditional love that only a mother can have for hr child. Xander thought that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"Yeah? What kind of puppy?" he asked softly, just to keep that smile on her face. Faith looked at him. He wasn't like the men she had grown up around, the ones that taught her not to trust , that she could only ever rely on herself, because men only want to hurt you. He was a good person, one of the best. It had taken her too long to realise that.

"I don't think it matters to her, just so long as it's hers." There was a moments silence between them before they moved on to the more serious side of the conversation.

"Look, Xander, nothing's changed since I last wrote to you, I don't know it you're her father, but I wanna know for sure. After this whole thing with the First is over we can do a paternity test. I mean, if that's what you want?"

"Yeah, I need to know." She didn't even hide the sigh of relief that came from knowing he felt the same way.

"Good." She said. "There's something else I wanted to tell you as well."

"Okay," this didn't sound like good news he thought.

"When you wrote back to me, you asked me who named her Alexandra, and I never answered. At the time I didn't want to get your hopes up, of you know, freak you out or anything, but the truth is, when I first called Ellie and told her, she asked who the father was. I told her that I wasn't sure, but then I told her all about you. She said that you sounded like a good person, and she couldn't understand why I treated you so bad. Her saying that, it got me thinking about things, why I'd acted the way I did, pushed you away. The next day I called her again, I told her that I hoped it was you, because if my baby was anything like you, then it would be okay, because of who you are. When I woke up, I knew where she was from reading my hospital file, and when I had turned myself in I called Ellie and she told me everything, she named her Alexandra because I had told her I wanted my baby to be like you. I told her she made the right decision. "

She finished explaining, unchecked tears running down her cheeks, and he didn't know what to say, that she had thought that much of him, it was incredible, sure, she' still gone a little crazy and tried to kill him and his friends, but he knew that things were never that cut and dry. Faith had been broken long before she had ever made it to Sunnydale, they were at fault for never seeing that she needed help.

"Thank you." He said, the only thing he could think of. She smiled in acceptance, before asking him

"Does anyone else know? I mean it's okay if you told the others, there your friends-"

"No one knows. It was none of their business." She nodded and he knew that their talking was over now until the first was history. She got up from the chair next to his bed and went to the door, turning before she left the room.

"I still want it to be you." She said.

"So do I." And the she was gone.

TBC

I'll try and get second chapter up within the next fortnight.