Title: Airport Coffee Shop
Rating: PG-13
Author: Bastard Snow

Disclaimer: Don't own any of it

Summary: The Scoobies have a late-night lay-over in Chicago, and meet a face that's a little too familiar.

A/N: This is what happens when fanfic authors talk. No good can come of it.

Feedback: Yes, Please!

Lawrence Mathers was annoyed. Two of the people he'd brought in were entirely innocent, he was sure of that. The witnesses he'd interviewed said that the man, Jim, had just tried to help his wife, Michelle, when she was accosted by the others.

Michelle and Jim had no idea what was going on, and Jim actually looked like he wanted to call his dad. He was all set to release them, as soon as their bags had been searched.

The others, however, were a completely different story. Far from being scared and worried, qualities common in most people who were brought in for questioning, these four – Willow, Alexander, Faith and Buffy of all names – were joking around like it was no big deal, shooting the breeze and basically being mean to him.

This was not how Lawrence liked to run his interrogations. He was also angry at one of his deputies, who had missed a cell phone when they were being frisked. They found a damn cross the size of Texas, but missed the cell phone. Typical.

The detainees had kept the phone long enough to make a call, and Lawrence had every confidence that within a few minutes, he'd be hearing from a lawyer.

However, Lawrence still had them for the moment, and he planned to make good use of it.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Lawrence looked over at Erik, the promising young man who had called in the disturbance.

"What is it?"

"Um… I've just searched their bags. You might want to come take a look at this."

"Erik, we're not gonna get them on possession of marijuana. I'm not that desperate for a conviction."

"There's no drugs, sir," Erik said. "But… well, I think you should see for yourself."

Lawrence ambled over to the open bags and looked in the one belonging to Buffy Summers first.

"What the hell is that stuff?"

Erik picked up one of the wooden things. "It looks like a stake, sir. Like, for a tent?"

"Well, that's not –"

"Only, there's blood on it."

That got Lawrence's attention. "Blood?"

"Well… something like that. It's red, anyway. And this bag," Erik moved to the one belonging to Willow Rosenberg. It was filled with little bags of dust and dried vegetables and… animal parts? "Well, I don't know what all this stuff is, but there's gotta be some kind of contraband in there."

Erik moved to the next bag. "This belongs to Faith Lehane. It's got a couple of stakes as well – no blood, this time – and a big knife."

"A knife?" Lawrence asked. People weren't supposed to have knives. He wasn't specifically aware of any regulations that said you couldn't have wooden tent stakes, but knives, he knew, were a big no-no.

"Yes, sir. A jewel encrusted dagger, sir. It's actually a very nice weapon."

"What about Harris' bag?"

"Nothing, sir. Well, nothing illegal. Some prescription eye-drops, a notebook full of weird drawings. A stuffed bunny."

Lawrence cocked an eyebrow, and Erik just shrugged. "I don't make this stuff up, sir."

"We released the Levensteins yet?"

"Just about to, sir. Their bags are clean."

"Don't," Lawrence said. "This stuff here… we have to make sure they're not connected in any way. Just in case."

"Yes, sir," replied Erik. "What do you think this is?"

Lawrence picked up the dagger and flipped it around in his palm.

"Son, I got no idea."

----------

"I don't get it," Jim whispered. He and Michelle were huddled in one corner of the airport's holding room, talking quietly with each other and observing Michelle's assailants.

When they had first been thrown in the cell, those four had been nervous and twitchy, watching him and Michelle out of the corners of their eyes. Well, the guy hadn't, but he was… scarier, anyway.

But then, about ten minutes later, the one who looked just like Michelle – whose name was apparently Willow – had done some weird stuff with her hands, and spoken something that sounded like Latin. They had spoken quietly for a few seconds after that, and then relaxed completely.

It was really odd.

"What don'tcha get?" Michelle asked. She was being normal for him, he knew, because he was really kind of freaked out.

"Them," he said. "And how… you and her can look so much alike. Don't you think that's odd?"

Michelle shrugged. "They say everybody has a twin. Hey, maybe some time, you can put on an eye patch and I can dress like her and we can pretend we're crazy airport attacking people, only with more sex, and less craziness. Or, different craziness, anyway."

Jim laughed and put his arm around his wife and held her close. "Do you have any idea how amazing you are?"

Michelle shrugged. "It's a living."

Jim kissed the top of her head. "I wonder what they're talking about."

"Crazy things, probably. Crazy, airport attacking things."

"Yeah," Jim said. "You're probably right."

----------

"That's really fuckin' weird," Faith said.

Xander nodded. "It is. Will, she looks just like you. Just like the vampire you did."

"Only, less with the bondage gear," added Buffy.

Willow nodded. "She's like me, only straight."

"And like Anya, the way she talks about sex," said Buffy. "You should hear some of the things she's whispering in his ear."

Faith nodded. "I feel kinda dirty."

They all looked at her.

"What?" she said, defensively. "I can feel dirty."

Buffy looked down at her chest and squeezed her breasts together. "Would that really even work?"

Willow looked confused for a moment, then her eyes lit up in understanding. "Oh. Oh!" She squeezed her own breasts together. "Huh. I dunno."

Xander looked at Faith, who was also squeezing her breasts together. And then he caught on.

"Yes," he said, without thinking. "It does." Willow and Buffy looked up at him with horror in their eyes, blushing simultaneously. Faith just grinned at their embarrassment. Xander decided the best course of action was to move the conversation along.

"So… a straight Willow that talks like Anya," Xander mused. "If she had Dawn's ass, she'd be the perfect woman."

"Xander!" Buffy screeched.

"Oh, yeah," Willow nodded, imagining the picture in her head.

Buffy gaped at her best friend. "You traitor."

Willow smiled meekly. "Sorry."

Xander looked from Willow's chest to Buffy's chest, to Faith's chest.

"And switch those, too," he said, pointing between Willow's and Faith's breasts.

"Hey!" Willow and Faith smacked Xander on the arm.

Faith grabbed her breasts forcefully. "You want these girls, you're gonna have to come get 'em. They're stayin' where they are."

Xander waggled his eyebrows, and stuck his tongue out. "Watch yourself I don't take you up on that."

"You couldn't handle this."

"I've learned a lot in the last few years. I can handle quite a bit."

"Hey! Can we have a little less hormonal over drive? Jeez!" Buffy sighed. She glanced at Willow's body. "What part of me would the perfect girl have?"

"Legs," Willow and Xander said, simultaneously. Buffy looked at them.

Xander coughed. "We uh… might have discussed this at some point."

"You guys are all perverts," Buffy muttered. "Really, my legs? I always thought they were kinda stubby."

Xander shook his head. "Good legs."

Buffy grinned, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

Willow frowned. "How come he gets all the fun?"

----------

"Jesus, what is he, like, Stifler?" Jim asked. "How does one guy get that lucky?"

"I bet they don't do what I do," Michelle sing-songed, teasingly.

Jim looked at his wife and grinned.

"Hey," called the big one. "Where are you guys from, anyway?"

"Excuse me?" Jim said. "I'm sorry, are you talking to us? Because I thought you were maybe interested in assaulting my wife."

The man coughed into his hand and had the decency to look ashamed. "Yeah. Uh. Sorry about that. It was all a big mistake, kind of thing."

"Oh, did you hear that honey? It was all a big mistake, so let's just forgive them for attacking you and tell them where we live."

"Jim," Michelle cautioned.

Jim stood up. "No, you know what? I've been taking crap from guys like you for my entire life. Well you know what? Here, today, right now, I'm done with it, okay?"

The people sitting across from him sat there for a moment in stunned silence.

"Wow," said eye-patch guy. He turned to the blonde. "Have I become Dracula?"

"No. And you're not Larry, either."

"If anyone here is Larry, it's Willow," the man replied.

"Hey!" protested the redhead – Willow. "I may be gay, but I'm not piggish, or… or a brute!"

"Well, neither was he, once he came out," eye-patch replied.

Willow frowned. "Well, I wasn't before I came out, either."

Big guy rolled his eye. "Will, you didn't know before you came out."

"Did so!"

"Yeah, okay, for like a month. That counts."

The redhead glared at him.

Jim turned to Michelle. "Does any of this make sense to you?"

Michelle shook her head.

"Listen," one-eye said, standing up. "I'm Xander, and these are my friends Buffy, Willow and Faith. And we really do apologize for the mix-up back there. Completely our fault. We've just had… issues with randomly appearing twins."

Willow smiled. "Yeah, either they're robots, evil, or various aspects of ourselves, either one of which would kill the whole if killed itself."

Jim blinked. "What?"

Xander shook his head. "Nothing. Listen, we're gonna get out of here pretty soon. If you guys don't mind, we'd like to do you a favor and get you out of here, too."

"'Get out of here'?" Jim asked. "What, are you guys going to escape? No thanks, we'll just wait."

Buffy laughed. "Nothing so sinister. Just say we've got some… friends."

The others laughed at her little joke, but Michelle and Jim were still lost. They pretty much stayed that way for the next few minutes, until the chief of security showed up looking very unhappy.

"What can we do for you, officer?" Buffy asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and looking at the guard with big blue innocent eyes.

"Don't try your little tricks on me, girly," the man said. "I been around too long for that. Now. You, with the eye patch."

"Moi?" Xander asked, holding his left hand delicately to his chest.

"Yeah. You're coming with me."

Xander shrugged. "Okay. I should warn you, though; I've been told I have a sarcastic and occasionally grating nature. You might not like me very much. Also, I don't know what you think you'll get out of me."

"Oh, I've got some interesting questions, and interesting ways of getting answers."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees as Xander grinned. It was not a nice grin. Jim glanced around at the girls sitting around Xander. They were all glaring at the officer, their eyes little more than beads. Jim was suddenly happy to be on this side of the bars.

He slid back a little, pressing against Michelle.

"Sweetie, I love you, but now really isn't the time," she whispered.

The officer slowly swung the door open. Xander stood and walked haughtily out of the cell.

"Hey," Faith called.

"Yeah?" Xander asked, pausing.

She grinned at him. "Leave some for us."

Jim had no idea what that meant.

----------

"Ladies, ladies, ladies. What have you gotten yourselves into this time?"

All five occupants of the O'Hare International Airport holding cell looked up at the voice. Two of them recognized its owner.

"Graham!" called Willow and Buffy, smiling.

"Hello. Riley and Sam send their regards. The ol' gimp is caught up in California at the moment. Something about his cousin, I'm not really sure what."

"Everything okay?" Buffy asked.

"Far as I know."

"How'd you get back here without the guards?" Willow asked.

Graham shrugged. "There was nobody up there, so I thought I'd come see. So what'd you do this time?"

"Hey!" protested Willow. "Why do you automatically assume we did something?"

"Um. Cuz you're in jail? Hey, why does that girl look – was there another Toth?"

"Riley told you about that?" Willow asked.

Graham shrugged. "There was some mention of separate rooms and experiments, but I told him he was just being weird."

"Well, we're not clones, or robots, or evil vampires from another dimension, or anything like that," Willow assured him. "It's just one of those messed up things that never happen to anybody unless you're us."

Faith coughed.

"Oh, right," said Buffy. "This is Faith. And those two are Jim and Michelle. So, you wanna bust us out of here, or what?"

"Got nothin' better to do," Graham said with a shrug. He pulled a key from his pocket and opened the cell door. "I was in Gary visiting my sister. I think I pissed her off."

"How'd you do that?" Faith asked, as she stood and stretched her arms above her head. Graham took a long and obvious look at her physique. He looked at Willow and Buffy. Willow shook her head.

"Damn. Anyway, I was pretty much threatening all the guys who were hitting on her. Got tiring after a while, for both of us."

"Why?" Willow asked. "Is she hot?"

"Willow!"

"What?" asked the witch. "It's a legitimate question. I'm on the market."

"Yeah, but he said she was getting hit on by guys, not girls," Faith pointed out. "Maybe li'l sis don't swing that way."

"This is really very disturbing. Can we just get you out of here and leave?"

Buffy nodded. "Sure. They're with us, too, okay?"

"Yeah. Where's Harris?"

"Xander's in interrogation," Willow told Graham.

"Yeah? Can't be much fun for the fed. I'll go see what I can do about gettin' you guys outta here."

Graham pulled out his cell phone and dialed. "Hey," he said once the other party had picked up. "It's me. Send it."

Graham winked at Faith. "Back in a few."

----------

As he stood on the far side of the two-way mirror, Lawrence Mathers simply could not understand. The records he'd been able to access on this kid – police, social services, a few other public databases – didn't even begin to hint at the level of headache the young man with the eye-patch was giving him. There was simply nothing to account for it.

Mathers hadn't been surprised to find the kid had an FBI file. He'd lost his eye somehow, and he'd jumped quickly to violence earlier. That indicated gang involvement, and though the FBI hadn't been particularly adept and shutting gangs down, they had, at least, been able to learn a lot about them. This young man was no exception.

This Harris kid had history of 'incidents' as long as his arm, but nothing that ever stuck. He'd been in the hospital a bunch of times, had barely graduated high school, and gone on to what was, in all honesty, a fairly meteoric rise at a construction company in his hometown of Sunnydale – a job he had lost when the town imploded.

However, the FBI file indicated that despite some suspicious activities, Alexander LaVelle Harris was nothing more than an average American who'd had more than his fair share of bad luck over the years.

A file like that prepared Mathers for someone who was paranoid. Thought the world was out to get him. Thought that police were scum, and always trying to pin something on someone, and didn't really care whether they were right, so long as they met their quota.

A file like that prepared Mathers for somebody who was stoic in the interrogation room, giving up as little as possible on the general principle of "Screw you if you can't figure it out yourself."

A file like that did not prepare Mathers for a young man who sat in his chair and made jokes about being arrested. A young man who found the term 'blood-sucking lawyers' to be the height of wit. A young man who was, in fact, so relaxed that he had asked a deputy for a Twinkie to go with his coffee. Who smiled, and was polite, and said a lot of words without actually telling them anything.

Mathers was at a loss, and was taking a five minute break from the interrogation – if it could really be called that – to get his bearings. Somebody knocked on the observation room door.

"Come in," Mathers said, gruffly.

The door opened and his deputy, Erik, stuck his head in.

"Um, sir? There's a gentleman out here asking about the folks we've got in lock up."

"Lawyer?" Mathers asked.

"Um. No sir. He looks military."

Mathers's eyebrows creased, but he followed Erik back out to the front where a young blonde man was standing.

"Marshall Mathers?" the young man asked, holding his hand out.

"I am," Mathers replied, shaking the young man's hand. "And you are?"

"Graham Miller."

"Well, Mr. Miller, what can I do for you tonight?"

"Actually, I'm hoping you could release my friends, as well as the two people you've got locked up with them."

"Are you, now?"

"That's right."

"And what reason would I have for doing something like that?"

The fax machine behind the desk rang once, connected, and started printing something out.

Graham formed his fingers into a gun and 'fired' at the fax machine. "That's your reason right there."

Erik grabbed the fax from the machine and handed it to Mathers, who read it silently.

From the Office of the Governor of the State of Illinois. Current detainees Harris, Alexander LaVelle; Lehane, Faith; Rosenberg, Willow; and Summers, Buffy Anne, are hereby remanded to the custody of Graham Miller, an agent of the United States of America. Any additional detainees requested by Mr. Miller shall also be remanded to his custody immediately, and without question.

It was signed by the governor. And the signature didn't look like a stamp.

"Well, Mr. Miller, it appears the governor is on your side."

"Yeah, looks that way," Graham said.

"Unfortunately for you and your friends, I'm a federal Air Marshall, and not subject to the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois."

"Yeah, well, that's actually not true," said Graham. "Congress passed and the president signed a law putting all Air Marshall's under the guidance of the appropriate agencies of the states in which they are based. The only ones who are strictly under federal regulation are those who actually get on the planes and fly around."

"I've not been made aware of that."

"I'm not really surprised. The wheels in DC turn slowly." The fax machine rang again, and Graham smiled. "Anyway, I thought you might say something like that."

Erik produced the second fax. It was from the Department of Justice. Mathers grabbed the fax. It was much shorter.

Compliance with all state communication re: Summers, Buffy, et al is hereby ordered.

It was signed by the Attorney General. That signature didn't look like a stamp, either.

Mathers looked up at the young man before him. "ID," he growled.

The kid handed over two forms, a driver's license and military ID. His smug smile showed that he knew he'd won out.

"Don't take it too hard." Miller accepted his IDs back from Mathers. "Most of 'em won't be like this. You just got unlucky and tagged a few people with connections to the top."

Mathers looked up at him. "How far up?"

Miller shrugged. "How many people can wake the attorney general at this time of night, get him to hand-write a short note and have it faxed to O'Hare Airport?"

Mathers could really only think of one person.

----------

End Chapter 2