Disclaimer: Joss Whedon created Angel, Faith, and the Hyperion. Glenn Eichler created Daria and Amy. I created everyone else, plus the plot.
X X X X X
Daria's second day wasn't quite a duplicate of her first.
Fortunately, no one picked up that once again she was in charge of her body, rather than Faith. A reputation as a bad-ass had its advantages.
Hmmm. An intellectual bad-ass. Usually, they were played by Patrick Swayze. Or directed by Quentin Tarantino. In any event, in the movies at least, they were always men. So she would be unexpected.
She could kind of enjoy that. Daria had never minded not living up to expectations, except her own.
By those standards, of course, her life since April 10, 1997, had been something less than a stellar success. Of course, a four-year detour while someone else used her body was a pretty good excuse, but still, those were four years that she would not only never get back, but that she would have to live down for the rest of her life.
No, she didn't blame Faith. Assigning blame to her was unfair, and wrong. Faith was as much a victim as she'd been.
The only person to blame was Willard Ray Harbaugh. And he was already on death row. Kind of hard to add to that sentence. Unless one was God. And Daria wasn't that much of a megalomaniac.
"Faith was as much a victim as she'd been." But she was Faith. Even with everything Daria had learned she still instinctively thought of them as different people, when the truth, as it usually was, was far more complicated.
Thousands of years ago Aristotle wrote about the "law of contradiction." Simply stated, this was the premise that an item could not both be and not be something essential. Color was not essential; an item could be both brown and not-brown. But it could not be both can and not-can, both human and not-human.
Daria realized she was an exception. She was both Daria and not-Daria, Faith and not-Faith.
Even if Faith completely disappeared, leaving no traces behind other than a changed body image, super-strength, and a talent for combat, Daria would always be Faith and not-Faith.
An intellectual badass, a superhumanly strong freak, and a walking violation of the fundamental rules of logic. Let's see, how many other laws of nature could she break today?
She considered trying to fly -- "Let us see, when he leaves the room, whether he does so by the door or the window --" but figured that probably wouldn't be one of the ones she got to violate.
Anyway, this was Sunday. There were no classes taught on Sunday, so it was a day off from her job. When the guards came by to ask her whether she was going to the prison chapel this morning, she realized she had no clue what Faith's religious beliefs were. A belief in the supernatural did not automatically mean a belief in one be-all and end-all supreme being.
Certainly, Daria had never believed in a God, no matter that the Barksdales had been Southern Baptist and the Morgendorffers Jewish. Their hippie days had shaken both Helen and Jake free of their need to show their religious devotion by going to a house of worship every weekend, so Daria had never developed the habit of going to church.
She guessed they wouldn't have asked if Faith didn't show up at least some days. Since Daria didn't feel like faking a display of piety, she declined. The guards said, "Thought this was one of your on weeks, Lehane." So Faith went every other week.
Daria tapped one of the two books Faith had out for study. One was a history textbook; the other was a GED study guide. "Gotta crack the books," she said. "Those GED questions ain't gonna answer themselves." She felt uncomfortable dumbing down her speech like that, but that was the way Faith spoke. So, when in prison, do as the prisoners do.
One of the guards nodded. The other one said, "I don't see why you're bothering, Lehane. Ain't like it's gonna be any use to you."
Daria bristled at that, but restrained herself. "I'll get out eventually," she said. "When I do, it'd be nice to have something besides 'killer' on my résumé."
"You'll be at least 30 by then with nothing but a high school education and no job experience," the man said. "What're you going to do?"
"I guess I could always do what you did and become a prison guard," Daria said. No, it wasn't a smart thing to say, but he was giving her a hard time for no discernible reason.
The man said angrily, "Watch it --", which was spoiled by the sound of the other guard laughing.
"Let it go, Joe," the older man said. "You walked right into that one." He nodded to Faith. "Next week, Lehane. And we prefer 'correctional officer.'"
"I'll keep that in mind." They walked away. Daria spent an hour or so reading through the GED book. She did parts of one of the practice tests in her head and, checking the answers as she went along, didn't miss a single one.
She could have taken the GED
She knew most of history except for the recent parts, and really wasn't that interested in learning how the Republicans had played kick-the-President for the last three years of Clinton's term, or who was at war with who. Besides, the history textbook was probably from 1985. Her last year at Highland, the world history book had stopped somewhere around the Vietnam War, and the science book had said, "Someday, man may get to the moon."
Nope; date of publication 1999. "So this is where all the modern textbooks are going," Daria muttered. "Figures. Educate the prisoners and treat the students like criminals." Not that she had any objection to educating prisoners; it was the latter half of the equation that bothered her.
After lunch, she got some free time in the main yard. Most of the other inmates gave her a wide berth, which suited her fine. She moved over to an unoccupied corner and began practicing the fighting moves she'd been doing in the dream. No matter that that particular dreamtime seemed to operate by the rules of real life, she still wasn't entirely confident.
So. Muscle memory. She made sure no one else was close -- so the guards wouldn't think she was trying to start a fight.
She threw a punch.
It was a bit awkward. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried again.
Much better.
Punch. Kick. Punch. Guard. Dodge. Turn. Parry. Spin. Thrust. Unlike Daffy Duck, she did not wind up with her bill bent backwards.
Kick. Punch. Jump.
She looked down and was amazed at how far she'd jumped into the air. She probably could have dunked a basketball, had she any interest at all in sports.
After about twenty minutes, during which she didn't stop once, she'd satisfied herself that this was something else Faith was telling the truth about. The physical activity -- which, apart from walking, Daria was unaccustomed to -- came nowhere even close to tiring her out. She'd barely broken a sweat.
She looked around. People all around the yard, including some of the guards, were watching. Some of them were trying to be unobtrusive about it, but most were simply staring. Most with awe and shock, a few with fear, and a couple with, apparently, lust.
Daria flushed, and it wasn't from the strain of the workout. She guessed Faith didn't do this in public very often, if at all. She hoped she hadn't just blown her cover.
So how would Faith have handled this?
Faith was an odd combination of gregarious and solitary. In prison she seemed to have gravitated more towards the 'solitary' part of her personality, but under the circumstances Daria very much doubted she would have given everyone the finger and walked off.
So Daria treated it as though she were on stage. Check that. Daria didn't go on stage except at gunpoint. She treated it as though Faith were on stage.
She grinned and bowed three times -- once to the left, once to the middle, and once to the right -- and said, loudly, in the best imitation of Faith's tone she could muster, "Next show, I start chargin'."
Then she walked away.
X X X X X
Angel wasn't sure he liked Amy Barksdale's last line. The woman had seemed nice enough -- and she'd looked enough like Faith to be her mother, even if she carried herself differently.
"Do what she had to to recover Daria?"
But Daria had already been recovered. The prison psychiatrist had brought her out again.
He was worried that what Ms. Barksdale had meant by recovering Daria was getting rid of Faith.
And that was something Angel hadn't signed on and wanted no part of.
He realized he hadn't been invited to the meeting with the District Attorney, but figured he had as much right to be there as anyone. Someone needed to look out for Faith's interests in all of this. Maggie Silber would do that, to an extent, but she was looking out for the whole person -- the Daria/Faith combination. It's possible that she could be convinced that it was in that whole person's best interest that the Faith half of her personality disappear.
If you were meeting with a DA, you met at the DA's office. Angel didn't exactly have a map of the sewer system, but he was familiar enough with it that he could get to there from here without risking an untimely death by having to step out into the sunlight. Most public buildings had some form of sewer access -- including the LA County Jail, but jails tended to understandably be a bit wary of strange people wandering around the corridors. The few times he'd visited Faith, it had always been a miserably overcast day with no chance of sun -- and Wesley or Cordelia had waited in the car with an umbrella, just to be on the safe side.
Anyway. There was no time to dawdle. He hadn't heard Mrs. Silber mention a time for the meeting, but he had to assume it was as soon as she and Amy Barksdale could get over there. That meant he had to hurry.
Fortunately, this was LA. Even early on Sunday afternoon, the traffic was miserable. Still, he had several miles to travel underground, and while Angel was in great shape, even for a vampire, he'd still have to run the whole way.
So he figured he'd best get started
He grabbed a stake and a knife -- in case he ran across any other day-wandering vampires -- descended to the Hyperion basement, dropped into the sewers, and took off.
X X X X X
Lynette Vaughn didn't know how she'd been convinced to stay for the meeting with Amy Barksdale and Maggie Silber; she supposed it was because she figured someone needed to be there to speak up on behalf of Faith Lehane, and she doubted anyone else would do it. Bonnie had gone home to be with her family, Amy Barksdale had pretty much told Faith to her face that she never wanted to see her again, ADA Fisk was gung-ho about the idea, and Mrs. Silber was an unknown quantity.
Since the major topic at hand was a bit of a bone of contention, they stayed away from it while waiting for Ms, Barksdale and Mrs. Silber to arrive. The ADA did hand her the Willard Jay Harbaugh file she'd gotten from Texas, and a quick run-through confirmed everything Daria had told her under hypnosis.
Harbaugh had killed ten people and had come within inches, figuratively speaking, of getting an insanity verdict -- in Texas. When they'd polled the jurors after the initial trial, what had convinced them of his sanity, and thus his guilt, had been one thing: his surprise at being accused of kidnapping Daria Morgendorffer.
Otherwise, they each ate a bagel -- Bonnie had left them each one, before taking the rest home -- and talked about trivial things.
About an hour later, ADA Fisk got a call from the security guard that Maggie Silber and Amy Barksdale had arrived. "Send them up, Cal," she said.
Within a couple of minutes they were all sitting in the conference room. "Coffee?" ADA Fisk asked after Mrs. Silber introduced Amy Barksdale to the DA.
"No thanks," they both said.
"Okay. Yesterday, Mrs. Silber, Dr. Vaughn told you that she'd come to a breakthrough with regards to what caused Ms. Morgendorffer's split personality. She told you then she had to tell me what it was first. After hearing it, I've come to a conclusion as to what the DA's office believes the ideal disposition would be of this case."
"Good," Ms. Barksdale said. "As long as that 'ideal disposition' doesn't involve my niece and a deep, dark hole, that is."
"Only half of her," Lynette muttered, but no one heard her.
ADA Fisk said, "Of course not. I've been giving this some thought and I really do believe this would be the best solution for everyone involved." Except for Faith, of course. But who cared about her? "Lynette? If you would?"
Lynette didn't mind giving the report again. "Oddly, it was Faith who gave me the idea," she said. ADA Fisk frowned a bit at this. "She suggested that perhaps hypnotizing Daria was the way to find out what had happened on April 10, 1997. Daria was resistant at first--"
"Oh good," a man's voice came from the door. "I haven't missed anything."
Lynette and ADA Fisk looked towards the doorway and saw a good-looking brown-haired guy, maybe in his late 20's. How'd he get in the building?
The ADA rose out of her seat, saying, "Who are you and how did you get in here?"
"It's okay," Mrs. Silber said. "This is Angel. He's the one paying my legal fees."
"I figure that entitles me to sit in on this," Angel said, sitting down. "I just want to make sure someone's speaking on Faith's behalf."
Lynette had gotten the answer to her question.