Night Falls

Notes: Thanks for the reviews. Keep them coming.

Previously:

"Rest?" Faith asked.

"Yeah," Wesley replied.

"I don't actually think I'm going to complain," Faith said, leaning back against the headboards and closing her eyes. "I'm kinda tired."

"Would you like me to get Buffy for you?" Wes asked, rising to his feet.

"Yeah," Faith said, smiling slightly. "Thanks."

Chapter Thirty:

Faith leaned back against the headboard of the bed and counted the booming clicks of the second hand as it revolved around the clock on the wall. She watched as the light shining in through the half curtained window danced in patterns on the bed sheets. Everything seemed surreal and she was completely alone. She could hear the girls training out in the yard. She could hear the anxiety underlining Hailey's voice as she tried to lead them. But why was Hailey leading them? She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips against her temples, rubbing away the pain that dulled her thoughts and crashed like waves through her head.

There had been an explosion. Some girls had died. She remembered diving on top of Willow. Willow was still alive. She wondered how they had escaped from the blazing inferno that the school had become after the bomb exploded. She opened her eyes again, her vision blurring before it cleared. The light from the sun reflected off of a mirror sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Faith reached over and picked it up, turning it around to look at her face. She smiled crookedly. "I don't look so bad," Faith commented as she surveyed her face in the mirror. She had some bruises and scrapes. A bandage was slapped on the side of her forehead. But the visible wounds were already starting to heal.

"You know I don't mean to," a woman said. Faith peeked around the mirror to see a woman standing at the foot of her bed smoking a cigarette. "You just get me so angry some times."

"I get you angry?" Faith questioned.

"You just don't listen!" The woman exploded. "If you would just stay out of the way. But no, you always have to be underfoot."

"I was a little kid!" Faith exploded back. "Of course I was always underfoot."

"I should have just gotten rid of you when I had the chance," the woman muttered disgustedly.

"Yeah, you should have," Faith spat angrily. "Then I wouldn't have had to go through all of this shit."

"You think you've had it rough, kiddo?" The woman asked incredulously. "Think about me for a second. I squirted you out when I was fifteen years old. That fucks a kid up, you know? Having all of that responsibility and shit. I had to drop out of school. I had to take some shit job in a diner to make rent because my parents threw me out on my ass."

"I wonder why," Faith smirked.

"Shut your mouth," the woman growled. "Or I'll shut it for you." Even though Faith knew that the woman was either a hallucination brought on by her head trauma, or the First Evil messing with her mind again, she still shut her mouth out of fear of her mother's wrath. She had been beaten enough to know when to stop pushing the limits. "That's a good girl," her mother sneered. "So where's your bitch, anyway?"

"Who?" Faith asked in confusion.

"That blonde girl you're sleeping with nowadays," her mother answered, glancing around the room. "I don't see her anywhere. Thought she loved you and all. I guess not."

"She's coming," Faith replied weakly.

"Right," her mother said snidely. "I'm sure she is. After she's done fucking that blonde, Billy Idol wannabe in the basement, right?"

"They're not together anymore," Faith ground out through her teeth.

"Is that what she told you? Faithy," her mother said, moving closer with a sympathetic smile on her face, "haven't you learned that you can't trust anyone? Everyone stabs you in the back, remember? Or maybe it's the stomach these days."

"Get out," Faith replied moodily.

"I can see you're not in the mood to talk," her mother said complacently, backing into the shadows. "I'll just come back when you're ready to listen."

The woman disappeared and Faith slumped against the headboard, exhausted, frustrated, and angry. "Fuck!" She yelled, slamming her fist down on the bed beside her. She heard footsteps tentatively moving up the stairs and down the hallway. They stopped in front of her door. The door slowly opened and Buffy peeked her head inside with a worried look on her face.

"Who were you talking to?" The blonde Slayer inquired as she moved into the room and closed the door behind her.

"No one," Faith said, still seething from her supposed encounter with the First.

"Are you okay? You seem kinda angry," Buffy noted as she sat on the side of the bed.

"Sorry for having feelings," Faith shot back. "I forgot that I'm supposed to be a nice, little, reformed, and castrated bunny."

"Don't tell Anya that," Buffy said half seriously. "She'll never look at you again."

"What?" Faith asked angrily.

"She's terrified of bunnies," Buffy said, watching as Faith's eyes shifted from an incensed glare to an amused twinkle.

Faith smiled a little and nodded. "I'll have to remember that."

"So how are you feeling?" Buffy asked, swinging her legs onto the bed so that she was lying next to Faith.

"You want a smart ass answer to that question?" Faith retorted playfully.

Buffy smiled. "How about a real one?"

"Okay," Faith said, nodding. "Not so great."

"Your head hurt?" Buffy asked, reaching over and running her fingertips down the side of Faith's face.

"Not so much anymore, actually," Faith responded, unconsciously leaning into her girlfriend's touch.

"No one ever told me you were such a romantic," Buffy kidded.

"Oh, there's lots about me you haven't discovered yet," Faith said.

"I know," Buffy said seriously. "But I want to."

"Not all of it's pretty," Faith replied.

"I don't care," Buffy said. "I want to be with you. Really be with you. All the way."

"All the way?" Faith asked jokingly, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Okay, you know what I meant," she said, but sobered. "And yeah, all the way like that too. Not now obviously, as you're injured."

"I think I'd be okay," Faith argued.

"Wesley said rest," Buffy noted.

"Wesley's an idiot," Faith countered.

"I'm going to tell him you said that," Buffy warned.

"And I'm going to tell him you tried to get me to have sex with you even though he specifically told you I needed to rest," Faith shot back.

"Ha!" Buffy exclaimed. "So you do need to rest then. You admitted it."

"Damn," Faith muttered. "You're a tricky one."

Buffy smiled softly and rolled over to face Faith, nestling her head in the crook of the other girl's shoulder. "I'm almost ready. I promise."

"It's okay, B," Faith replied. "I don't want to rush you."

"You haven't," Buffy acknowledged.

"So why is Hailey leading the girls?" Faith asked, her attention diverted to the sound of someone cursing loudly wafting in through the window.

"Oh…that," Buffy said, sitting back up again. "We need to talk."

"Okay," Faith said nervously. "About what?"

"When the bomb went off, you kinda stopped breathing for a little while," Buffy explained. "Will did CPR on you and everything and you're fine…but technically, you died."

"I died?" Faith exclaimed, bolting up in the bed, only to slump back over grimacing as pain shot through her head.

"Yeah," Buffy replied, taking Faith's hand in her own. "But you're okay."

"I missed my own death," Faith murmured, shaking her head. "That sucks."

"Anyway," Buffy continued, "Hailey was called."

"No way," Faith said, her face brightening with a smile. "The sheriff got called, huh?"

"Yeah," Buffy said. "I haven't had a chance to really talk with her. I've been up here with you most of the time. I don't know how she's dealing with everything."

"Not too well by the sounds of it," Faith said, listening through the window as Hailey yelled.

…………………………………

"Stop!" Hailey yelled, moving to intervene in a fight that had broken loose between Kennedy and Colleen. They were supposed to be sparring, not street fighting. Grabbing Colleen, Hailey picked her up and deposited her several feet away. She turned back to Kennedy, ready to calm the other girl, only to receive a hard right hook to the nose. "Damn," Hailey murmured, stumbling backwards as blood began to drip from her nose. "You punched me in the nose?" She demanded, looking up at Kennedy.

"It was an accident?" Kennedy offered weakly.

"Oh, right. You just meant to hit Colleen, not me," Hailey muttered angrily.

"She was taunting me," Kennedy argued back.

"You were sparring. You're supposed to taunt each other. It's all a part of the game," Hailey replied.

"You okay?" Willow asked, moving over.

"I'm fine," Hailey grumbled. "It's stopped."

"Slayer healing," Colleen noted.

"Not like you should have it anyway," Kennedy mumbled under her breath. Hailey would not have heard it if not for her new, heightened senses.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" She asked casually. Kennedy smiled politely, though her smile was entirely faked, and shook her head. "I guess it was just the wind."

"Must have been," Kennedy replied.

"Do you want me to get Buffy?" Willow whispered, commanding her girlfriend's attention once more.

"No, it's cool," Hailey replied. "I have to figure this out. They have to respect me on their own or they never will." Willow smiled, though she would have preferred allowing Buffy to talk, or kick, some sense into Kennedy.

"What now, boss?" Kennedy asked rather sarcastically.

"Take a breather," Hailey instructed. "The next two girls can go. But let's keep things friendly this time, okay?"

The girls nodded and formed a circle once more, the two Potentials scheduled to spar stepping into the middle of it. Hailey watched as the girls threw punches and kicks at each other, making sure not to actually hit each other, while practicing their defensive moves as well. "What do you think?" Willow asked.

"They're good," Hailey replied. "There's just one problem."

"What?"

"They're not Slayers," Hailey said, heaving a sigh. "They can fight well enough, but I'm not so sure they have the strength."

"There's nothing that we can really do about that," Willow replied.

"Maybe," Hailey answered, but already she was thinking. The top ranking members of the Coven knew many things about the world of magic that even a powerful witch like Willow would not know. Shrugging away her thoughts, she focused on the two girls in front of her.

…………………………………

Andrew sighed as a popped open a can of soda as someone called for dinner. He was sitting in front of the laptop at the dining room table, trying desperately to ignore the flow of chitchat that ran from one room to the next in the Summers' house – now that a horde of teenage girls lived there. He lived with a perpetual headache. At the same time, however, he knew that he would not have wanted to be anywhere else. He was working at his redemption and a little aggravation every now and again was nothing. Pulling up one of the camera feeds, he scooped out the warehouse district.

The others had all but abandoned the cameras since the explosion and Caleb's surprise attack. The plan to abduct a Bringer had also fallen by the wayside. Taking a sip from his drink, he watched as a vampire moved into view. He was obviously stalking someone, but did not notice that someone was also stalking him. Andrew nearly spit out his soda when he saw a Bringer grab the vampire from behind and shove a cloth into his face. The vampire slumped over and the Bringer dragged him off out of view.

Andrew ran a hand through his hair and muttered, "What the hell was that?"