My Enemy, My Ally, is probably the best Kirk-era Star Trek novel ever written. If you have any interest in Star Trek novels, and you ever see a copy of this one, snap it up. You won't be disappointed.

Disclaimer: Joss owns Faith; Glenn owns Daria, Rita, and Amy; I own Lynette, Bonita, and Carla.

X X X X X

Daria spent the next couple of hours in the library. Around 12:50 a guard had come in, looked around, asked the librarian if there were any radios or TVs around -- the man clearly did not understand the concept of 'library' -- and had walked out.

There were three other inmates using the library; they were all at individual desks. There was room for a couple of dozen more. The bookshelves lined the wall; rather clever, Daria thought, as this gave the inmates nowhere to hide, nowhere to meet in secret. You had to have permission to get up, and you had to say where you were going, and within two minutes you had to be back at your seat. This didn't allow a lot of time for browsing.

For the first half an hour or so Daria had buried herself in another practice test for the GED. Once again it was confirmed to her that she didn't need to do any studying. After getting permission, she returned the GED study book to the librarian and said she was going to go pick up something from the fiction section. After a minute or so the best thing she'd found was a twenty-year old Star Trek novel by Diane Duane, My Enemy, My Ally.

There were worse things she could be reading, she supposed as she walked back to her seat.

Half-paying attention to the book -- which was actually pretty good, about Kirk having to ally himself with a Romulan with whom he had only one very important thing in common-- her thoughts kept drifting back to her situation.

She'd dropped off her copy of April 10, 1997 as soon as she'd walked into the library. Ann Rule's book on Harbaugh's crimes had also been there, she remembered -- but even though she felt she could read Ann Rule's book, given what happened when she'd read her aunt's she didn't think it was an especially good idea for her to do so.

The problem was, while Dr. Vaughn had blocked out everything she'd read, she hadn't blocked out Daria's newly recovered memories of April 10, 1997. So she still remembered a man's voice saying, in a thick Boston accent, "rock beats scissors," and her mother's voice saying, "It's okay, sweetie," immediately afterwards.

And always, always always always, there were those damned words on the wall: "HAVE FAITH." Intellectually, she supposed that that was where Faith had gotten her name from.

And intellectually was where she needed to keep any self-analysis. She knew damn well she couldn't handle Faith's emotions. She was frankly amazed that Faith had been able to handle them and come out even at the level of sanity she had. Faith may have been a promiscuous multiple murderer, she may have tried to kill herself, but somehow, she'd managed to come through all of it with a certain level of sanity intact. That said a lot about her ability to handle herself.

And a lot about Daria's own inability to do the same thing. The events of this morning, and of April 10, 1997, had made that crystal clear. Daria had never had any illusions of her own indestructibility; that didn't mean she wanted counterexamples shoved in her face.

In many ways, she mused as she turned the page, she and Faith would be better off if they could find a way to integrate. But in this, at least, she had to agree with Dr. Vaughn: Their personalities were too disparate. Daria could never imagine herself as free-wheeling as Faith was; never as sexually active, never as social, never as anti-intellectual. And Faith probably had similar reservations.

Then why was she so pissed off that Faith wasn't around any more? After all, this way, likely within a month or so, she'd be free, walking the streets, and -- while the criminal record would still follow her -- still able to do most of the things she wanted to in life, with the addition of a little bit of superhuman strength.

She wasn't lying to Buffy; she couldn't turn her back on anyone in genuine trouble. But she clearly wasn't quite cut out to be a vampire Slayer.

Which was one of the reasons she was ticked off that Faith wasn't around any more, amazingly enough, but not the most important one. (It might be important to the people Faith couldn't save, or the creatures who didn't die when they should have, but still, to Daria, while she accepted the existence of vampires and the Slayer in the abstract -- William of Ockham had helped a lot with that one -- she wouldn't accept their existence as concrete until she actually saw them, or possibly killed them.)

Buffy seemed to think she could do that. Faith had seemed to think she could actually be a Slayer, still. Daria was convinced otherwise.

Anyway. Another important reason was a simple one. Daria had made a promise, and it was one she'd meant to keep. Whether Faith was a separate individual or not -- it made an interesting question, once she'd have loved to ponder in the abstract at some point -- Daria thought of her as such.

An individual who hadn't been under a death sentence. Who had had people who cared about her -- not many, admittedly, but as Daria pointed out, that still left Faith with more friends than Daria had ever had.

Daria didn't feel the pain of not having had friends, really, because she'd never met anyone worthy of being her friend. And she realized that sounded elitist. So be it. Daria was an elitist. She made no bones about it.

She still had hopes of finding someone like that, some day. Someone besides, well . . .

Faith.

Daria, of course, had long since realized that she and Faith as separate individuals wouldn't have been friends. Daria probably would have respected Faith's intelligence and, if forced to, her right hook, but that's about it.

Circumstances had dictated otherwise. She and Faith had been closer than friends, closer than relatives, closer than lovers.

And "from Daria's mind Faith hath been untimely ripp'd." She'd lost a part of who she was. And that was the final reason. For good or ill, for nearly four years Daria Morgendorffer had been Faith Lehane. And that was four years of her life she would now never get back.

That she wouldn't forgive Dr. Vaughn was a given. The question was whether she'd forgive Aunt Amy and Carla Fisk. After all, they were going to do it, even if they'd never gotten the chance. Dr. Vaughn was a murderer. Aunt Amy and Carla Fisk were merely guilty of conspiracy.

She realized by this point that she'd long ago lost track of the book. She looked down and saw Kirk and the Romulan commander coming to a wary kind of understanding of each other -- that they might never be friends, but the respect they had for each other and the circumstances they were in had dictated that they at least be allies.

Seemed interesting enough, and exceptionally well-written for a Star Trek novel. She kept reading.

X X X X X

As they'd left the press conference, the ADA had told Amy, "I understand why you went off on Kendrick Talbot."

"Fox News," Amy had muttered. "We Distort, You Decide."

Ms. Fisk had laughed. "I don't agree with that, but Talbot himself is a grade-a jackass." she said. "The thing is, sarcasm doesn't often translate well to small print."

"I know. But I couldn't let what he said pass. And anyway, most people are going to see it on TV or hear it on the radio."

"A lot are," Ms. Fisk said. "But enough are going to see it in print that it could cause problems."

"And," Amy'd been forced to admit. "There are people stupid enough not to be able to detect sarcasm, even when it's as obvious as that. 'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.' Still, you know why I had to respond."

"I do. But I wish we'd been able to come up with some other way of doing it. This could backfire."

"I'm not sure how," Amy had said. "It's all been handled at this point, right?"

"Right," Ms. Fisk said. "We agreed to a deal, signed legal court documents, and everything. When any hearing about Daria's competence to be released into the general public --"

"Oh, please, Ms. Fisk," Rita had said. "Released into the general public. You make her sound like a wounded dog someone's been nursing back to health."

"I'm afraid there may be some members of the general public who may indeed see her as a dog of sorts, Ms. Barksdale," Ms. Fisk had said. "One who's too dangerous to ever be let loose. We know better, and fortunately Judge Knott isn't one to pay attention to public opinion, but that doesn't mean that public opinion might not have an effect on her life once she gets out. Or our lives while we wait."

"At the moment," Amy'd said, "All we're doing is waiting. I certainly believe in planning for the worst-case scenario but right now I'm not going to panic about it until I see some evidence that it's coming true."

"A good plan," Rita had said. "Ms. Fisk, how soon can we get in to see Daria?"

"As soon as you want," the ADA had said.

They waited an hour or so for the crowds to die down, in the meantime listening to a borrowed radio, while ADA Fisk went back to her office and resumed her phone interviews. She was going to be appearing on Larry King Live that night -- evening, actually, since that show was geared for an east coast audience. No doubt immediately afterwards she'd have herself treated for laryngitis. Even for someone used to doing a lot of talking like a courtroom attorney, she'd been running her voice ragged.

The talk shows they heard seemed, at the moment, to find it more an interesting story than an indictment of the legal system. Some of the callers seemed to think it was a scam; more of them didn't. Of course, this was Los Angeles, where people tended to be liberal. How it was playing out around the country, she had no idea. She doubted Fox News would be sympathetic, but there were two things playing in their favor on the "this is all a liberal conspiracy" front. One was Dr. Vaughn's record of exposing fake insanity pleas; the other was ADA Fisk herself, who happened to be a fairly conservative Republican. (They'd had about ten minutes for relaxing small talk during their conference; and it spoke to their situation that a frank and open discussion of political issues turned out to be a relaxing conversation.)

Now she and Rita were waiting in the visitors' area of the LA County Jail for a guard to track Daria down and talk to her. It was time to tell her what had happened -- and what was going to happen.

The door opened, and a guard escorted her in. Rita gasped. "What have they done to her?"

"She looks okay to me," Amy said.

"But I mean, that outfit --"

Amy couldn't help herself; she laughed. "Rita, I doubt fashionability was one of the things they were going for when they designed the things."

"But Amy, really, didn't you know that people who think they look good feel better about themselves?"

Daria sat down. "I'm not entirely sure where this conversation started," she said with a faint grin, "But somehow it feels disturbingly familiar."

"I was complaining about your outfit," Rita said.

"Well, my Christian Dior is on loan to Winona Ryder," Daria said. "Hello, Aunt Rita. Glad you could make it."

"Sweetie, you're family," she said. "I was just so happy when I found out you were alive -- and then to find out you were here --"

"How do you think I felt?" Daria said. "I mean, at least you lived through the last four years. For me, the time between April 9, 1997 and March 29, 2001 is a complete blank."

Rita's face got uncommonly serious. "It was no time at all for you, Daria. For us it was four of the longest years of our lives."

Shaking her head, Daria said, "I'm not trying to make this into a competition. Really. Let's just say it was lousy for all of us in different ways and move on."

"We had a press conference today," Amy said.

"It was about you," Rita said.

"I actually had that figured out," Daria said. "Unless one of you somehow came up with a cure for cancer in the last two days."

"Sorry," Amy said, "I had to put that research on hold while I came here. I'm sure their chemotherapy will hold them over until I get back."

"And what did you say in the press conference?" Daria asked.

"Pretty much everything about the situation except Dr. Vaughn's removal of Faith," Amy said. "We -- the ADA, Rita and me -- covered pretty much everything from Willard Harbaugh to the present day. We may or may not have gotten to what our grandfather did for a living, but apart from that --"

"I'm surprised you haven't heard about it," Rita said, frowning slightly. "It was all over the TV and radio."

Daria seemed to be on the verge of making another smartass remark, stopped, and said, "Hmm. That explains why the guards were running around the prison turning the radios off. Warden Juarez must have been trying to protect me." She smiled faintly. "Damn decent of her, under the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"Never mind," Daria said firmly. Now, I'm sure you didn't come here just to update me on your daily activities."

"No," Amy said. "We came to tell you what we have planned for your recovery."

A cold look settled over Daria's features. "Dictate away, mein commandant."

X X X X X

". . . no, they didn't so much as hint at the vampire issue," the man said over the phone. "Apparently the training held well enough that she didn't talk about it."

"More likely she felt that it would only cement the case for her insanity, and no doubt 'Daria Morgendorffer' wants to get out of prison as soon as possible."

"You want us to do a smash and grab when they're transferring her from the prison to hospital?" the man asked.

"No. There has been far too much publicity over the case. The last thing we need is a manhunt. And if what you report about Ms. Barksdale's intentions is accurate -- that she intends to have the Faith persona erased -- then Faith has completely ceased to be useful to us. Send in the specialist. We'll rescue her later, if need be, after she completes the task and kills Ms. Morgendorffer. With any luck, the next Slayer will be far more tractable."

"Certainly, Mr. Travers. Right away."