Title: Her First Mistake

Author: Restive Nature (aka Bavite)

Rating: PG13 for violence and swearing

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters, nor do I own characters or settings from Dark Angel. They belong respectively to Joss Whedon and Cameron/ Eglee.

Timeline: Post series for Buffy and late season 2 for DA, after the episode "The Berrisford Agenda".

Pairing: Faith/ Alec, though not in the way you'd expect.

Summary: The fury of Faith.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the voice startled Faith slightly and her eyes jerked up convulsively to the rearview mirror. The curse she muttered under her breath did not go unnoticed by the Vampire huddling under heavy woolen blankets in the backseat of Faith's beat up old car.

She rolled her eyes and returned her attention to where it belonged. To the long stretch of highway before them. She sighed, forcing herself not to start playing with her hair. She knew that while she couldn't see Angel's reflection in any of the vehicles mirrors, he could certainly see hers. And he already seemed to be worried enough as it was.

He hadn't uttered any protests when she'd hung up the phone hours earlier and informed him that she was heading out again. They'd known each other far too long, fighting the forces of evil in Los Angeles for the majority of that time, to waste time arguing. He'd simply disappeared into his room and returned quickly with his own bag packed.

Faith had protested. But Angel was unrelenting. He had known instantly that the phone call she'd received was not supernatural related. And as he'd promised so many years before, he would be there for her, to help her through whatever trials she had to face. And Angel had the feeling that this was the big one. Reading the sudden lines that appeared on Faith's face, maybe she sensed it too.

Faith realized that Angel would only find a way to follow her to Seattle, so she allowed him to tag along. He'd given her four hours of silence. But now that the sun was drooping below the horizon, the nocturnal dead man was almost free to play the twenty questions he was bursting with.

She took a little time to try and find an answer that would satisfy him and yet, at the same time, give as little information as possible. Her son Simon was just not a topic she could discuss. He was a secret long kept. The only sacrosanct thing in her world. She did realize morosely that all the reasons she had once had for never mentioning him were gone, now that he was dead. Her silence on the matter was no longer required. She sighed again and glanced into the backseat. Angel, as expected was still huddled under the blanket, but his eyes, his dark brown eyes that seemed to see right through her were boring in on her as if magnetically drawn.

"We're going to Seattle," she shrugged, deciding that it was time. She'd never ignored her son's presence to dishonor him or what she'd had at one time with his father. She'd held her tongue on the advice of her Watcher. But she was dead. Jack was dead. And now Simon too.

Angel, to his credit, did not scoff or roll his eyes or do any of the many things that he could have to show his exasperation at being told information he already knew. He simply waited patiently to see if Faith would continue.

"That phone call was from the cops," she continued after a moment. Angel simply watched, noticing that the hands that usually rested casually on the steering wheel were now clenching and unclenching convulsively. The only time he'd ever seen Faith's hands do that, were when she was about to enter a fight that she wasn't one hundred percent sure that she could win. And since Faith was headstrong and believed in the power she wielded, that meant that Angel very rarely saw that side of her.

Faith's eyes glanced up to the rearview mirror again, reflexively. It was hard to break a subconscious habit, even when one knew that there was no reason for it. At least on this occasion. She wondered how Angel would take this. Of course, knowing him as she had come to do in the last fifteen years, she knew he'd be patient, understanding and calm. After all, it had nothing to do with Buffy Summers, a Slayer that had preceded Faith and who was still the love of Angel's soul and being.

"They called to let me know that… that my son is dead," despite her attempt not to, the last words came out as a sob. Faith's lower lip trembled as she quickly wiped the sudden mess of tears from the corners of her eyes. She chanced another glance over her shoulder. As she thought he would, Angel sat impassively, watching her. There was the gleam of sympathy in his eyes and that inquisitive look that was inviting her to tell him the rest of the story.

She turned her eyes back to the road, one hand removing from the steering wheel as she reached down to the console between the seats, searching for the pack of cigarettes she'd stowed there earlier. Once she found them, she shook one loose and brought it to her dry lips. Her hand repeated the motion, this time intent on a lighter. Once found, she lit the cigarette and took a deep drag. She exhaled slowly, feeling the burn of the smoke along her throat and in her mouth. The smoke curled and dashed against the inside of the windshield. And though it momentarily blurred the road for Faith, she felt as if everything had come into sharp focus.

"I was fourteen when I met Jack," she began softly, not bothering to look at Angel again. She knew he'd be all ears. "I believed him when he said he loved me. Maybe he did right then, I don't know." She paused for another draw off the cigarette.

"Every one of you always thought that I'd had a bad rap growin' up," she continued, smiling faintly. She shrugged. "In a way I did. My dad left before I was born. My mom was a drunk." A brief grimace crossed Faith's face. "She beat the crap outta me a few times." The grimace faded as Faith recalled the mental image of the child she'd been. "I knew what my mom was. A whore. A drunk. Good for nothing. I heard it all my life." Her eyes flickered upward, momentarily. "But I was a good kid Angel."

"I'm sure you were," he murmured. Faith shook her head. She could see that he wasn't sure, that he was weighing her words carefully, gauging what he remembered of their first meetings. The hell child that she'd been when she'd fist arrived in Sunnydale, the bitch she'd been in LA and later. Right up to now, with her sarcastic ways and overt sexuality. Yeah she still had that.

"No," she protested softly. "I really was. When I was little I didn't understand. But when the other kids made it clear to me that they considered themselves above me, better than me because of what my mom was, well…"

"You were determined to be better than that?" Angel demanded, understanding dawning. Faith nodded. She took another drag.

"And I was, for a while," she let out a huff of breath and licked her lower lip. She rubbed the thumb of her free hand against her temple. "But it's a lonely life, ya know? No friends. A mother who is constantly shittin' on everything you say or do."

"And that's when Jack came into the picture?"

"Got it in one," Faith chuckled humorlessly. "Don't laugh," she warned and even she didn't know if she was playful or serious. Perhaps a little of both. "But we met at the library." She waited and could feel more than see or hear the chuckle that Angel tried to hide.

"Really?" was his muffled reply. Faith shook her head. Yeah it was kind of funny, thinking of her at a public library. But that was her now. Way back then, it made sense.

"Anyway," she continued, stressing the word to bring Angel out of his laughing jag. "We started going out. I was impressed and flattered. I mean here was a guy that didn't care that my mom was the town carnival, that liked the same stuff I did. When I was with him, people weren't talkin' about me behind my back. They were polite, at least. I'd never had that before."

"Let me guess." Angel interrupted, slightly sarcastic. "You were so impressed that you gave it up to him, only to find out that he never cared all along and was just after you for one thing and after he got it he left. Leaving you alone and pregnant."

"Look at you brainiac," Faith snapped back. The memory of the last time she'd seen Jack was no picnic and it was that pain reaching forward to pierce her heart anew that made her reply harsher than she had meant. But Angel, who knew her well, understood that on some level. He nodded, accepting what she wasn't saying. And Faith relaxed a little. "That was about it."

"And then?" Angel asked, knowing that it wasn't the end yet.

"Simon was born when I was fifteen," Faith continued. But she stopped again as Angel snorted. "What?"

"Sorry," he mumbled. "It's just… I can't really see you naming a kid Simon."

Faith grinned up into the mirror. "Yeah. That wouldn't have been on my top one hundred." She paused a moment, fiddling with the almost burnt out cigarette. She crushed it into the ashtray before replying. "That's what his adoptive parents named him. When I had him, there was a nurse there who called social services for me."

"Did you ask her to?"

Faith shook her head. "I think she saw enough of that shit. Young girls with no money, no where to go. No way of handling a kid."

"Especially when they're just kids themselves."

"Yeah." There was a long pause before Faith continued the thread of her story. "So anyway, a lady from social services came and talked to me about giving the baby up for adoption. It made sense. But I didn't realize until later what I'd done, signing those open adoption papers." Faith shook herself slightly her free hand drifting up to her temple again. "And that's when she found me."

"Your Watcher?" Angel asked, knowing that this was another sensitive subject, though not as much as this one was.

"The day after they met me and then took Simon away, this other lady shows up," Faith mused. "Tellin' me all this crap about monsters and demons and Vampires that walk the night. That I was supposed to be the Slayer that defeated them all."

"Yet you took to it like a duck to water," Angel pointed out.

"Yeah, well I needed something to believe in," Faith growled. There was silence as Angel thought over what he'd just heard, comparing it to what he knew of Faith's past.

"That's why you dropped your last name, wasn't it?" he demanded softly, putting the pieces together.

"What?" Faith demanded, her eyes jumping up again to see the strange sight of a bundle of blankets sitting upright on their own. The sun had set and she hadn't even noticed.

"You said you signed open adoption papers," Angel clarified. "You mean the kind where all of your information is open to the adoptive parents and the kid in case they want to contact you down the road, right?"

"Yeah. Exactly," Faith grimaced.

"So why did you drop your last name?" Angel asked, though he had an inkling why.

"When my Watcher told me about the Slayer heritage, all that crap about bein' alone…" Faith began heavily. But Angel finished for her.

"You wanted to make sure that Simon couldn't be found or in any way associated with you." Faith didn't need to nod her head to confirm his theory. It was right on the money. "You wanted to keep your son safe." Angel's voice was as heavy as Faith's heart. He knew only too well the sacrifice's a parent made for their child.

"But how did you find him again?" Angel asked eventually.

"They found me," Faith replied. "It was after the pulse. I was in Boston again." Angel remembered well the reluctant trip she'd made. She had told him that she needed to deal with a big bad there. He'd had his suspicions at the time that the big bad was more her past demons than any corporeal threat. Now he knew he was right. "My mom died and I went back to take care of her stuff." Perturbed at the thought of the woman that had borne her, Faith convulsively searched out another cigarette.

"While I was goin' through he crap I found these letters," she explained, talking through the cigarette dangling from her lips, unlit. "It was from Si's mom."

"Why did they send them to your mom?" Angel asked, puzzled.

"I put that address down on the adoption sheets," Faith shrugged. "I wasn't entirely ready to have my life be an open book. At the time, I figured I would go back there to recover. My mom may have been a bitch, but I always had a bed to sleep on in that house."

"Funny how life turns out," Angle commented mildly. "So what happened then?"

"I went up to Seattle," Faith murmured. Angel recalled that she'd been gone way longer on that trip than she'd told him she would be. "I just wanted to se him," she explained hastily. "I wasn't gonna interfere. I just wanted to…"

"To make sure he was okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "And he was. He was so… beautiful." She swiveled her head slightly. "It was painful. It… hurt so much to see him so happy and know that I could never put a smile like that on his face."

"But you did," Angel pointed out quickly. "Just think. If you'd kept him with you, the kind of life he would have had. Look at Robin." He tensed a moment. Mentioning Robin Woods, son of long dead Slayer Nikki Woods was another sore point with Faith. Their relationship had lasted longer than most of hers, but it still had ended.

"Yeah," Faith conceded. "I suppose." She paused to consider what she remembered of Robin talking about his early years when his mother had still been alive and the active Slayer. "I don't know if I could have pulled it off like she did," she admitted softly. "Maybe giving Si up was for the best when it came to the Slayin' gig."

Silence fell and it was a long time until conversation arose again. This time of mundane things. Where to stop for gas and food. To drive all night or not. The topic of Faith's son was not broached again until they reached Seattle.