Author's Note: This is earlier for Bonita Juarez than the scenes we've seen already.
Disclaimer: Buffy's Joss'; Daria's Glenn's; Remainder's Mediancat's.
X X X X X
People kept coming up to Daria and asking her what had happened last night; not just inmates, but guards. She probably talked to more people that afternoon than she'd talked to combined in the entire rest of the time she'd been the personality controlling her body.
She told them all the same thing: She'd been asleep when "Mrs. Krueger" -- apparently her real name was still a mystery to the police -- had someone broken into her cell. They'd scuffled briefly; the assassin had knocked her out and dragged her to the kitchen so she could kill Daria out of the presence of witnesses. Then she had turned the tables and had managed to knock her attacker unconscious, right before the guards showed up. What this talk was about a Korean woman, or a leopard, Daria had no clue.
Apparently this Mrs. Krueger had quite a reputation; according the guards and inmates, she was thought to have killed 40-50 people over her career. Daria wouldn't have known her from Eve, but then Daria tended not to hang out on online contract killer bulletin boards. That Daria had even survived was seen as a major accomplishment (and this was even given Faith's reputation as being a "chick you wouldn't want to mess with").
That Daria had beaten her, and gotten her captured, had propelled her reputation from "tough chick" to "Wonder Woman." Not that Daria would take advantage of it, directly at any rate, but she got the impression that anything she wanted, from contraband through any woman in the prison, was hers for the asking. She decided she'd just settle for them leaving her alone, though it wasn't as though she'd had to fight people off on a daily basis.
The balance of the afternoon not spent rehashing the events of last night with all and sundry or talking to the world's most boring psychiatrist was spent, once again, in the library. She found a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy on the shelves, and started to read that.
Not that she was in love with Dante's philosophy, but she did admire his inventiveness.
She also liked the role Virgil played. All alone in a strange wood, descending into hell, and Dante got a guide who knew exactly where he was going and when to call for help when necessary.
The world, of course, wasn't like that.
X X X X X
Lynette Vaughn woke from what had been one of the worst nights of sleep of her life, stretched, and looked around the room.
She checked her watch -- it was still before 7 AM. Still, there was no way she was going to get back to sleep. Her dreams, when they'd come, had been full of movie monsters, from Dracula to Freddy Krueger, all bearing down on a terrified and helpless Daria. When Lynette tried to protect her, she had no luck; all they could do was run.
She knew that dreams didn't predict the future, and that the dream symbolism so beloved by Freud was equal parts fact and fiction. Still, it wasn't hard to figure out what this one stood for. Lynette was worried that, even with her help, Daria/Faith wouldn't be able to handle her responsibility.
Her rational mind knew that, on some level at least, this was absurd -- faith, after all, had been handling it for a couple of years, and even though her emotional state had been nowhere near stable, it was Lynette's considered opinion that the time Faith had spent killing supernatural creatures had only been marginally responsible for her having had the breakdown she'd had.
They hadn't helped, of course; but due to the circumstances of Faith's creation, she would have had some kind of mental meltdown whether she'd been a vampire slayer or joined a convent.
But her rational mind knew that her concern for Daria's life was in no way misplaced, seeing what Lynette has been told the average lifespan of a vampire slayer tended to be. Buffy -- the other slayer she'd been told about in passing -- had been doing it for over four years now, was 20 years old right now, had been doing it for over four years, and at that was one of the longest-lived ones in history.
Obviously there was little, if anything, Lynette could directly do protect her. And yet, she still wanted to. She didn't bother analyzing why, because the why didn't matter.
So she would try.
After she cleaned up and went to the bathroom, she took her cell phone off its charger and called her husband.
"Hi, sweetie," he said.
"Hi yourself."
"I heard about everything that happened after the LA Times published that article -- how did you get away from that?"
"By hiding out somewhere no one would think to look," Lynette said.
"Challenger Deep?" When his joke was met with silence, he added, "Well, no one would think to look there . . ."
"So it's a good place for me to put your body."
"One of the best."
She chuckled to herself and said, "Did the media frenzy get to you any?"
"No. There are some benefits to being trapped out in the middle of fuck-all nowhere. This shoot's as far out in the woods as we can get. If any reporter actually went through the hassle of making it out here, I think I'd almost feel obligated to answer their questions. But all I got was a dozen or so phone calls -- and that's why God invented assistants."
"I'm glad you weren't bothered," she said.
He said, "After hearing about what happened, so am I -- for you, I mean. So, are you going to try to get out today or are you going to stay in hiding?"
"I thought I'd poke my head out and see if I saw my shadow -- or shadows, as the case may be," Lynette said. "If it's not too bad, I might try to go home. If it is, I'll just stay here for a while longer."
"Okay. Keep me up to speed. I love you."
"Love you too," she said, and they hung up.
When she dressed and got downstairs to the lobby of the hotel, the only one there was Angel. There was coffee and donuts on what used to be the check-in desk. "Good morning, Doctor. I didn't know what you might like to eat for breakfast," he said. "But I figured it's hard to go wrong with coffee and donuts."
"You'd be in trouble if I were a diabetic Mormon," Lynette said, but went over and poured herself a cup of coffee and took a chocolate glazed. "Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome."
"So, you're the only one here?"
"I'm the only one who lives here full-time. Everyone else is free to crash here if they need or want to, but that's usually only before, after, or during emergencies."
"Speaking of which," she said. "How did things go last night?"
Angel frowned slightly. "Are you sure you want to know?"
"Ideally? No. But lacking any convenient anvils to fall on my head and give me amnesia, that's not one of my options any more. Tell me."
So Angel told her what they'd been doing last night. Two Burchells' demons -- Angel described as being, essentially, humanoid zebras --- had been running a meat shop where all the meat came from freshly killed human beings. It was disgusting, but Lynette had been well prepared to hear something like that.
"And you killed the demons and shut the place down?"
"Yes, we did. We got lucky -- caught them on a day they were brining in new supplies, so there wasn't a mob of angry customers to deal with."
"Hmmm."
"Hmmm? I thought we did a good job."
A bit startled, Lynette said, "No. No. Absolutely, you did a good job if they were doing what you were saying. It's just that -- well -- maybe if you'd kept the store open, you could have gone back there tonight and gotten some of their customers too."
Angel grinned. "That's a hell of an idea, Doctor. And you know what? We can do it tonight. We didn't have any witnesses and a place like that isn't going to be open during the day. Provided Cordelia doesn't have any visions, that's exactly what we'll do." Cordelia had explained her visions to Lynette yesterday.
"How do you do this every night?" Lynette asked.
Angel said, "Because someone has to. And on balance, I'd say we've done good work, over all."
"I didn't ask why," Lynette said. "I asked how. Don't you get tired? Mentally tired, I mean, of doing the same thing, putting your life in danger, day after day, with so much at stake?"
"Of course we do," Angel said. "But it's not like we get no downtime at all. Everyone here has things they do for fun. But when it's important, we come back here. And I really can't give you a better answer than 'someone has to' for both how and why we do it."
"It's just amazing to me, that's all," she said. "That you and Faith and everyone can do all of this -- and that Daria might have to as well --" she didn't want to think about that. Faith was ready for it. Daria, despite beating the hell out of her cell wall, wasn't.
"I know. I do it every day and I'm still amazed. Honestly, Doctor, you amaze me a bit."
"How?"
"Because you aren't pretending that I just have a severely deformed face, you're not pretending that Daria's not what she is, and you're not running for the hills."
"Not like that would do me much good. The trolls would probably get me."
Angel grinned. "No. They were all killed off years ago."
"Oh. Good."
"Anyway, you're not doing any of that."
Lynette shrugged. "I'm not built that way."
"And neither are we."
Thinking a bit about what Angel had said, Lynette realized she'd gotten the best answer she was going to get.
And, for the moment, it was enough.
Angel asked, "So, what are your plans for the day, Doctor? You're free to stay here as long as you have to."
"I appreciate that, and I may take you up on it," Lynette said. "But I thought I'd take a look outside to see how things are going."
"It's still a big story," Angel said, handing her a copy of the morning's LA Times. Kal Endicott had another front-page story, following up and discussing what had happened yesterday.
"Did you read it?" she asked.
"Yes, just to see if the wind had changed. It hasn't, really. There's a significant minority of people who still think this is some scam Daria's running -- but it is a minority."
"Good," Lynette said, and quickly skimmed the story herself. Angel had been right.
Before she flipped to page A7 to see the continuation, she noticed a story about a break-in at the LA County Women's Prison -- yes, a break-in. The details weren't clear, "but it definitely had something to do with yesterday's public revelations about the true identity of Faith Lehane," according to a police spokesperson.
"Excuse me," she said to Angel, and quickly dialed Bonnie Juarez' work phone number.
"Hello?" the voice said exasperatedly.
"Bonnie," Lynette said. "What happened?"
"We're still trying to figure that out. But she's okay."
"She is?" Lynette said, relief evident in her voice.
"Yes," Bonnie confirmed. "She was attacked, but she fought off the woman who attacked her. Look, Lynette, I don't have a lot of time to chat at the moment --"
"I completely understand. Give me a call once all the heat's died down."
"I will," Bonnie promised. "Talk to you later." On Bonnie's subsequent goodbye, both women hung up and Lynette pondered what to do next.
Her neighbor was usually up by now, so she called her. It turned out that some reporters had apparently hung around outside her Palladium Lane house for most of the day -- at least, her neighbor confirmed, some of the ones who were there when she left in the morning had still been there when she got home in the late afternoon.
None seemed to be there yet this morning, and her neighbor had successfully ignored the few who'd tried to talk to her. Lynette thanked her and said goodbye.
"Everything okay?" Angel asked.
"Everything seems to be. Apparently Daria fought off an attacker last night -- and not another prisoner, either. Someone actually broke into the prison.
"What?" Angel said, practically erupting from his seat.
"You only read the one story?" Lynette asked.
"That's one more than I usually read," Angel said, taking the paper from Lynette's unresisting hands. He skimmed it and said, tightly, "Damn."
Lynette said nothing to that; there was nothing she could say. "Someone attacked her. In prison. Someone broke in to attack her there. And while I know Faith made herself some enemies along the way, there are only two I can imagine with both the money and the guts to actually send someone to attack her in jail. Those would be the Watcher's Council and Wolfram & Hart. And I'm going to find out which one it was, and who specifically gave the order."
"And?"
"And I'm going to kill them."
Lynette shook her head. "No, you're not."
"I'm not."
"No." After a second, she added, "We're going to kill him."