Point of No Return

Title: Point of No Return

Part Title: Descent

Rating: T – Just some talk and very little action. But be warned, it is quite dark… I just love tortured Faith.

Genre: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Batman Begins crossover.

Summary: Bruce tells Faith about the night her father died… and then some.

Spoilers: Anything through Angel Season 4 is fair game with minor spoilers. There are Batman Begins spoilers, as well as a few minor "Batman" spoilers. That makes no sense, I know. You'll just have to read it to get it. There is some conversation used from Angel Season 4 episode "Salvage".

Timeline: Faith is in prison, so anytime after Buffy Season 4/Angel Season 1. This is obviously following the first part, so after dear Mr. Ducard dies.

Dedication: By rather overwhelming odds, this is to you all who requested it be continued including the person it was originally written for. Consider this the sequel to "Point of No Return". It will likely not be continued as I have more than enough on my plate as it is. Written for Jess and for the nice people who reviewed this in the first place. And I will respond to reviewers who are nice enough to log in. I'll bake Christmas cookies for the rest of you… it's one of my hidden talents.

x-o-x

Part II

Descent

"430019 coming out!"

There was a loud beep and the door clicked. The matron pushed it open and the door swung to admit the matron, a large woman named Betty and her charge, prisoner 430019. Though her dark hair was down and her eyes were cold, beneath her demeanor was a sense of dread. When Betty had come to Faith asking her to come to the waiting area to speak with her visitor, she just assumed it was Angel. Tall, dark, handsome… all of those adjectives seemed to fit him well. But he usually showed up when the apocalypse was waiting around the corner.

But the person behind the Plexiglas wasn't Angel. In fact, it was someone she never thought she'd see again. When she had sent her father away from her cell all those months ago, she had neglected to tell him of her conversation with Bruce Wayne. And yet speak of the devil. He actually had the nerve to smile at her. Smile, as though telling her that he wasn't dangerous. Smile, as though telling her that he was alive and her father, though she despised him, was dead.

She sat down, her eyes hardening. She hoped she looked intimidating. It was hard to look intimidating while wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with 'Northern California Women's Facility' stamped in large black block letters across her chest. His smile faded at her hostile look. Well, she thought huffily as they stared at one another, he deserved it. He shouldn't have come back here. No, she had told him in no unspecific terms to screw himself if he ever thought she'd be sympathetic to his idea of "justice".

Before she could even begin to fix her glare in what she hoped was a cold mask, Betty knocked on the window and held up a hand. "Five minutes," she barked. Nodding to Faith, she turned on her heel and stalked back to the door. With a small sigh, Faith turned around, resigned to her fate. Bruce nodded towards the telephone and she picked up the receiver hesitantly before slipping it to her ear.

"Long time, no see," she said, holding all warmth from her voice. It was a voice she had used a lot lately.

"I wish I was here under better circumstances, but—"

"If you're here to tell me that you killed my father, I'll congratulate you," she replied coldly, cutting him off, "but if you're here to give me some bold life lesson that I could be doing so much better, well… I'll stick with my last words. Get the hell out, and don't look back."

"Faith…"

"I mean it." She had to mean it. No more second thoughts about being imprisoned. No more second thought about being stuck in this cell while her father was out pursuing his justice and likely flying off to his death because of a giant bat. There had to be more to the end of the story. There had to be. "How?"

She wanted to know why her father died. Feeling his esteem dropping slightly, Bruce met her eyes and recoiled slightly at how chilled they were. "What do you want to know?"

"Fill in the blanks."

He had never heard her voice sound so dead… so cold… her father had taunted him about his daughter. He had spoken of her so proudly, and yet both men had seen the exact same thing – a defeated woman trapped in the hell of her own mind. "There was a train. He didn't get off. It fell off the tracks."

She cocked her head, her eyes narrowing. "Something that you likely did, right? What'd you do… blow the brakes, take out the tracks? Seems like your line of work."

He tried to cut off the sigh that was struggling through his body. "He could have saved himself."

"But he didn't," she replied. Her voice was far colder than anything he had heard before. He had likely seen near-corpses talk in a less icy tone. But the true gift was her eyes. They were frigid, true. But there was something in there that he didn't like. They reminded her of Henri's eyes. So cold… so emotionless… so… feral. "And you didn't bother to help or you wouldn't be here."

"I'm sorry."

She placed her hand on the receiver as though she longed to slam it up on him, but she slowly moved her hand away. He watched the way her hand clenched into a fist… and then unclenched. "Don't say that," she replied at last. "You're not sorry. You killed a bad guy. It's what you do."

"I'm not here to placate you, Faith."

"No, you're really not."

He had to say something fast before their last three minutes were wasted on meaningless conversation and his chance to save her was gone forever. "You can change things, Faith."

She looked up at him. If it was possible, she looked even more hostile. Even Betty, who looked as though she could take on the wrestling circuit in her lonesome, took a few steps back. Bruce inwardly winced as he faced her. It was just like facing his inner demons, but they belonged to a woman. "Come back in a few decades when my parole comes around. Then we'll talk."

"By then, you'll be ready to kill me," he replied. "That's not an option, Faith."

"Hmm. Guess you're smarter than the tabloids say."

So, she had read them. She thought of him as an arrogant playboy. She obviously knew he emulated a bat because he had told her the last time. "There's another choice, Faith."

"Like the choice you gave my father?" Her tone was hard now. He could hear her through the Plexiglas. "Just because you think you can go around and kill people doesn't mean you're above the law, Bruce. You may be able to buy the law from your billions, but some of us don't have that luxury."

"And some of us don't face the demons we do, Faith," he hissed into the line – he was beginning to attract the attention of the rest of the people around him. Two guards at the door swung their bats menacingly.

"Oh, right," she snapped. "Your demons must be so huge… all this talk of buying out subsidiaries and creating mergers must be so trying on your time." Her eyes glittered strangely. "Diving off of buildings, getting the girl… must be so hard for you."

"Okay, so maybe you don't know about what it takes to be what we are. That's why we take the path to figure it out. The descent to it is what makes it worth it."

One eyebrow arched finely as she stared at him. "Maybe you learned more from him than you thought."

He paused for a moment. "You are not your father."

"But I am his daughter," she replied, before smiling. On her face, the grin would have signaled warmth. But it didn't reach her eyes. It wasn't even close. "Gas to the flame, Bruce. Gas to the flame."

"You're different from him." You have to be, he added silently.

She closed her eyes, the grin sliding from her face. For a moment, a shadow passed over it. He shuddered at the amount of power he felt from the other side of the glass. It was raw and undeterred. To control it could be her greatest triumph. To give into that power and to rot for the rest of her life in this cold hell was not the path that she had to take. There was more for her. She deserved more.

"You're not."

Bruce looked up at these words. Her hand moved forward to touch the glass. "I so wished you were someone else, Bruce. I wished you were the person who never gave up on me. That person is the only person I can count on. He saved me."

"He locked you in here."

"It wasn't about locking me away," she replied passionately, "it was about saving my soul. Maybe you forgot about that while you're diving off of buildings. What was it you said… it isn't what you are underneath but what you do that defines you?"

"It is something like that," he replied quietly.

"The thing is," she replied, shaking her head slightly, "you haven't given me the slightest thing for me to even want to take your side. How can you ask me to join you? You're me… you're a killer. You've got blood on your hands. I don't care whose it is. You can buy off whoever you want, but you'll never buy me. If you knew Henri at all, then you'll know I'm not falling for an idiot's words. I had enough of that back in Sunnydale."

He had to give it to her… she was tough. Perhaps she was too tough.

"You're better than that," Bruce tried evenly. "You deserve better than that."

"Not when I'm in here twenty five to life and you're out there playing giant wannabe-hero," she deadpanned. "That's not fair."

"But it is life," he added. Knowing by Betty's rather impatient look that they had less than a minute left, he switched to a different tactic. "He talked about you before he died."

"Did he tell you how much I didn't care?"

"No, but he said that you were the only thing in his life worth salvaging."

A hard look came across her face again. "You can't salvage what's already beyond repair, Wayne. Even you're not that stupid."

"But I have to try. I owe him one."

"Oh, so this is about owing him now, is that it?" Her hostile look was back.

"Look, Faith, I'm not pretending to be a hero here. I'm just trying to be myself." Betty was looking at Bruce now as though she wanted him to disappear. Faith was getting agitated. That usually meant a stun gun, a tazer blast and about a half-dozen guards to take the convicted murderer down. She looked like she was ready to hang up the phone. But it was time to play his last card. "Faith…"

She looked up at him, startled. She hadn't expected him to say anything else. Their five minutes were up. "What?"

"Why do we fall?"

"Huh?"

"Why do we fall?" Bruce was smiling now.

"So we can kill demons and spend the rest of our lives in solitary?"

This was too abrupt a switch in her humor, even for her.

"So we can learn to pick ourselves back up." She was reaching for the receiver again. "Faith, don't make the same mistakes your father did. There's a chance for you here. There's a chance for you in Gotham."

"You don't need me." Her voice was strangely muffled now.

"No," Bruce replied. "But one man put me in charge of the one thing that was most precious to him."

"He… he told you that?" Her voice had softened. Though Betty was now standing directly behind her, one hand plastered to her sidearm, Faith had calmed almost completely down now.

"Those were his last words."

She swallowed hard and looked away. "I hated him."

"I know."

"I don't like you much either."

"That much I gathered."

"Why do you even care about what happens to me? You can take care of me here… just leave me be. In twenty five years, I'll be ready to do whatever."

"Because by then you'll only be a shadow of what you are. The descent to hell is what this place will bring. You deserve better. You've earned better."

She actually smiled at him now. There was a different light shining in her eyes… something that may have resembled tears had she not been the self-proclaimed cold-hearted bitch she thought she was.

"Gotham isn't beyond saving. You're no different. I have attorneys and judges who are ready to swear that a move to Gotham City is in your best interest. Just say the word and it'll be done."

"No one has that kind of power. Not even for one convicted for murder two."

"I have that power, Faith. So do you, but you don't know it yet." Now that he had calmed her down, it was best to keep talking. "They told me there was nothing out there, nothing to fear. But the night my parents were murdered I caught a glimpse of something. I've looked for it ever since. There is something out there in the darkness, something terrifying, something that will not stop until it finds justice... me. Didn't you tell me last time that the only thing you could count on was you? How can you do that when you're strapped to that corner cell?"

"Because I deserve to pay for what I've done," she said quietly.

"You can't pay forever. Not when there's a world that needs you."

"Gotham has you," Faith countered. "What the hell can it do with me?"

"Everything," Bruce replied fervently, reaching for the receiver between his chin and ear. "It can go everywhere from here, Faith. Just say the word."

Betty had tapped Faith twice on the shoulder before lifting her watch and tapping it with a pudgy finger.

"I'll think about it," Faith said, looking Bruce in the eye.

"Justice is more than revenge Faith. Think about that when you plot my assassination."

"I had ten ways to do it without the world finding out," Faith replied. "I must be losing my touch."

He gave her a small smile as he hung up the phone.

He watched as she stood and left, the matron Betty calling out for the high-security prisoner to pass through the wards.

There was no real need for goodbyes.

She would come around.

He had given her a lot to think about.

Her father was dead. But that didn't mean his spirit would die. He may have been good at one point, but his semi-psychotic daughter would prove to be the best thing that happened to either one of them. Henri deserved a daughter like Faith. It really was a pity that he was dead and couldn't see the day when his daughter could breathe free air again. All he had to do was negotiate with Rachel for a prisoner exchange. Gordon could pull some strings in the precinct, perhaps get her a new trial… she could be fighting crime within a year. With her skills as she had so colorfully told him ("could hand you your ass before you even realized it was gone"), she could do great things.

She would be useful. She had a great understanding of the underworld Carmine Falcone had once ruled with his iron fist. She understood thieves as she had survived as one. She understood murder because she had spilled blood. She had great potential.

He smiled a bit as he walked out of the state penitentiary. The guards weren't looking too happy. They lifted their bats menacingly as he walked past them. He smiled at them. They didn't smile back.

They apparently liked to beat on the girl a lot. It was a pity that she had stopped beating people up. That would have been worth watching.

x-o-x

The End. Again.

As always, feedback is most welcome. Comments, critiques, spasms… I would be most appreciative.