Author's Note: Heading down the home stretch. The end is near.
Disclaimer: Buffy characters belong to Joss Whedon; Daria characters belong to Glenn Eichler; all other characters and the plot belong to me.
X X X X X
In the early morning of April 11, Bonita Juarez arrived at her prison (and yes, she thought of it as hers) to find everything, at least on the surface, under control. John, the head of the night shift guards, met her at the prison entrance. "What's going on?" she asked.
"We found Lehane and the other woman in the kitchen. They'd been in a fight. Lehane won. The LAPD is doing their business here, for the moment, but they still can't tell who either of our guests are."
"Have you figured out how they got inside?"
"No," John said. At least he wasn't trying to make excuses. So far, everything we've seen points to this being some kind of hit in Lehane, by the redheaded woman, anyway. The Korean woman ain't talking about whatever part she played; in fact, she ain't talking at all. But Perez and Jackson -- you know, the two women across from Lehane -- say it was pretty fucking obvious Lehane wasn't interested in going anywhere."
"Yeah, but they also say they saw a leopard -- and that the redheaded woman just grabbed Lehane and disappeared."
If they're on anything, Warden, you couldn't prove it by any of us. The cops got a blood sample from each of them just in case, but they ain't acting like they're all strung out."
"What's Lehane saying?"
"So far, that she suddenly woke up and found the two women in her cell, that the Korean fought the redhead and the redhead fought both of them, and that she ain't got no idea how she ended up in the kitchens. Then the redhead tried to kill her -- the woman's got this freaky-ass metal hand, you can still see the bruises on Lehane's neck -- but that she managed to fight her off. We took them both to the hospital -- the redhead was out cold when we got there, and we wanted to have someone check out Lehane's neck."
"So what you're saying is . . ." Bonita prompted.
"I realize I ain't an investigator, Warden, but sounds an awful like to me like Lehane's telling the truth."
Bonita knew that Faith Lehane had made some enemies in her day; she hadn't thought any of them wanted to have a hit put on her that desperately that they'd have someone invade a prison to do it, but obviously she'd pissed off someone along the way. And she was pretty sure that Lehane hadn't been trying to escape. For that matter, she was equally sure about the Daria part of her personality; Dr. Vaughn had never said anything about any hints of that, and the psychiatrist was usually pretty sharp about things like that. Still, the investigation needed to be thorough. "Where are they?"
"The redheaded woman's still in the hospital area, 'cause she's still out. The Korean's in the visitor's area being grilled by two cops, and Lehane's chatting with two others in, um, your office." John flinched, expecting Bonita to be angry.
Under normal circumstances, she probably would have been. She hated it when people thought they could just walk into her office, much less take it is over as though they had the right to do so. But these circumstances weren't even close to normal. Keeping the three women that far apart had been an excellent idea.
"I'm going to go sit in on the discussion with Lehane," she said. "Go check to see if they've learned anything about our other two uninvited guests, and, most importantly for us, how the hell they got in here."
"Right," John said, and walked away.
There was a uniformed officer standing outside of Bonita's office. He moved to stop her, but she said, "That's my office and this is my prison. I think I have the right to go inside."
The officer hesitated for a second, then stepped aside and waved her in.
Now, let's see if she could figure out what the hell was going on around here, since no one else seemed to have a fucking clue.
X X X X X
In the early morning of April 11, despite the fact that she was being interrogated by two of LA's finest, Daria Morgendorffer was in a good mood. She'd finally proven to herself that she could handle these new worlds she'd ended up in.
Yes, worlds.
One was the world of the supernatural -- the vampires, the demons, the werewolves. Even if she'd never be Faith or Buffy, she could handle herself.
The other was the world of the future. True, 1997 to 2001 might not exactly be "Daria Morgendorffer in the 24th Century," but it was four years. As the saying went, it was four years of her life she would never get back.
"And you still say you don't remember how you got into the kitchen?" the balding man -- a Detective Hunter -- said.
Daria repressed her natural urge towards sarcasm. Yes, it was stupid, annoying, and counterproductive to have to answer the same question for the fifth time, but smarting off to police officers when they had you in custody somehow seemed like a peculiarly stupid idea. So instead of saying what she wanted to say -- "Why, yes, actually. She ran at me, tackled me, and walked me through a wall," which would have had the additional virtue of being the literal truth -- she said, "No. I remember being in the cell, and I remember being in the kitchen. I can't explain how the woman got me there."
"And you've never seen this woman before?" Hunter's partner, a Detective McCall, said.
This question Daria could answer honestly. "No."
The woman continued, "Back to the incident in your cell. So what do you think of the two inmates who say they saw you and the attacker disappear?"
"I think you'd better search their cell to see what they've been smoking," was Daria's answer. "Aren't these the people who also claim they saw the leopard?"
"Are you saying you didn't?"
Detectives," Daria said, "It is just barely within the realm of possibility that two people managed to break into a prison, even one as well-run as this one is. But a leopard? That just doesn't make sense."
Right then the door opened. "Who are you?" Detective Hunter asked irritably.
"The prison warden," came the voice of Warden Juarez. "Since you're using my office, I thought I'd see what I could do to help. Any progress?"
"She keeps telling us the same story," Detective McCall said.
Because you wouldn't believe the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, Daria thought. You wouldn't believe that a woman can transform herself into a snake and leopard, or one who could phase out of existence and back in again with only the slightest sound to betray her return. And if you did believe them, you couldn't handle them.
But she could. And she knew that. Now.
"Maybe it's the truth," the warden said. The detectives clearly weren't even willing to concede the "maybe." Detective McCall turned her head, and Detective Hunter simply grunted. "Mind if I talk to her?"
The detectives looked at each other until Hunter finally shrugged and said, "What the hell. Maybe you'll have more luck than we have."
Then, without another word, they left the room.
The warden moved from behind Daria to in front of her, sitting down at her desk. After the two detectives had shit the door, her mood changed from cool to annoyed, though she didn't seem to be personally annoyed at Daria. "How the hell do I make this go away?"
"You're asking the convicted felon?" Daria asked in disbelief.
"No, I'm asking Daria Morgendorffer," Warden Juarez said.
This brought Daria up short. "You know --"
"I know enough," she said. "I know Dr. Vaughn brought you back out and somehow got rid of Faith. I know you're not happy that Faith isn't around any more. I know that you're not even pretending to be her any more -- you haven't been using her accent or her vocabulary. And I know that there's something going on out there that I don't understand. You may be able to bluff the guards, Dr. Vaughn, and even the LAPD. Don't ever try to bluff me. Here's the important thing, though. I don't care about the stuff I don't understand, except so far as it affects my ability to run this prison. I can't have people breaking in here trying to kill you. Or, for that matter, save you. Or because they've heard we have a nice gift shop."
"You have --
"We don't have a gift shop," the warden said tightly. "So. Tell me. How do I make this go away?"
Daria said, "I don't know how you're going to explain it. I do know this much: Any explanation is going to involve making the two inmates who say they saw a leopard and two vanishing people look like they're either lying or delusional. It's also going to have to involve a coherent explanation of how the redheaded woman and I got from my cell to the kitchen, and I'm being honest when I say that I can't give you that information. The truth is this: I woke up to a woman with a metal hand trying to choke me. I managed to fight her off, and the other woman came in to try and rescue me. We fought for maybe a minute. Then comes the whole "how-did-they-get-to-the-kitchen" portion of the discussion. Then we fought and I won. What you're going to do with that, I don't know. I do know I did nothing wrong here, though."
"You left your cell," Warden Juarez said.
"Involuntarily."
"I've only got your word for that."
Daria resisted the temptation to roll her eyes, and said, "If you truly believed I had tried to escape, the second I'd gotten out of the prison hospital you'd have had me thrown in solitary. Not sitting comfortably in your office."
The warden said, "You're right. I don't. But it might be the easiest thing way for me to make this go away."
"Except," Daria said calmly, because it really didn't sound like the other woman wanted to handle things that way, "That ship sailed so long ago that it's reached the other port and the crew are all off the boat looking for hookers. At the moment, you can't hide me and hope I go away, because the news story's too big."
"I know," she said. "And it would be wrong, too." Daria hadn't wanted to try the moral argument, not knowing where the warden stood on that. "I wish I didn't know that, but I do." The phone rang right then; the warden spoke in monosyllables and hung up the phone irritably. "If you're interested, we've figured out something about one of your visitors."
"I am," Daria said. It was obvious why the warden wasn't especially happy. "One" implied "Not the other one."
"The woman who tried to attack you was carrying a couple of documents that referred to her as 'Mrs. Krueger.' I've never heard of her, but the police are acting like they just caught Osama bin Laden. Apparently she's a high-level hit woman, and she doesn't come cheap. Who the hell did you piss off?" She'd have to remember that name.
"Me? No one. Faith, now -- you'd have to talk to her. Oops," Daria said acidly. "You can't." Just because Daria was feeling better about herself didn't Faith's situation still didn't rankle her. Yes, she'd changed her mind about what to do about her situation. She wasn't going to be uncooperative with the psychiatrists at all; she was going to feed them every answer they wanted to hear so she could get out of here as fast as she could.
"Watch it. I had nothing to do with that." Which was true. She'd gotten the short end of the stick in this as well. Not as short as Daria or Faith, but short enough.
"You're right. I'm sorry. I'm angry about this, but not at you."
"Apology accepted," Warden Juarez said, sighing. "Now I still need to figure out what I'm going to do."
"You're not going to be able to keep the invasion quiet," Daria said. "Too many people know about it now. The leopard and the disappearing act should be easier. Anything you can come up with that doesn't seem likely to get me an extra 5-10, I'll back up."
The warden frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown, not an angry one. "I'll hold you to that," she snapped. "Now. We'll tell the good detectives that you must have blacked out, and that Mrs. Krueger dragged you to the kitchen to finish you off while locking the Korean woman is as she left."
"Why didn't she kill me there?" Not a bad start, though.
"Witnesses."
"Makes sense. Now. Where are you going to put me for the rest of the night? My cell's still a crime scene."
That question, the warden couldn't answer right away."
X X X X X
In the early morning of April 11, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce stood guard in the Hyperion. It annoyed him slightly to have had to refrain of joining a battle, but the reasoning was sound. Angel and Gunn were better fighters, they needed Cordelia to tell them where the demons from her vision were, and someone needed to watch over Dr. Vaughn.
So he had to do it.
So be it. He still might believe Angel high-handed in the way he'd handled the situation, but he couldn't fault his motives or his desire to protect the psychiatrist.
Eventually he'd worm the truth out of the vampire. He was certain of it.
Until then, he was content with his book.
X X X X X
In the early morning of April 11, Amy Barksdale was still wide awake, wondering what she could have done differently to make the situation not turn out like it had.
The answer always came back the same: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Dammit.
She turned over and lay on her stomach, closed her eyes, and hoped for sleep to finally come.
X X X X X
In the early morning of April 11, Lynette Vaughn thought about vampires, thought about Faith, thought about Daria, and thought about herself, and what she was going to do.
Eventually, she'd doze off. She hoped.
X X X X X
In the early morning of April 11, Carla Fisk slept.