Disclaimer: Since my name is not Joss Whedon, 'Buffy: The Vampire Slayer', 'Angel' and the characters associated with the show belong to someone who in't me. I also do not own the storyline, that is taken from gidgetgirl's 'The Lost Child Challenge' (details below) posted at the Chocolate Covered Strawberries Archive.

The Lost Child Challenge

When Faith was fourteen, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. After that, she left home on her own, pregnant with the rapist's child. When she was found by the Council, her first Watcher took the baby, assuring Faith that it would be taken care of... the Watcher then was killed by Kakistos before she could give Faith more information. Now, years later, the child has come back into Faith's life.

Requirements:

Faith dealing with mixed feelings about the child: a mother's love and the memory of the rape.
The child having a Faith-esque attitude problem
The council having had some hand in the child's conception
The child having an amazing destiny
Faith wanting to save her daughter from her own mistakes

Chapter 4

Kent, England.

"How did it go?" Seeing the somber expression on Faith's face, Xander posed the question tentatively.

She shrugged wryly. "Not well."

"I suppose it might have been worse." Giles suggested, doing his best to sound cheerful and failing miserably.

"Yeah – if she'd shot me or something. She probably felt like it. I could see it in her face – she hates me."

Buffy's heart ached with sympathy for her one time foe. "I'm sure she doesn't . . ."

"She does." Faith sighed. "And I can't say that I blame her. I should have insisted on seeing her, no matter what Constance said. If I had . . ."

"It wouldn't have made the slightest difference." Giles cut her off firmly. "Do any of you have any idea of the extent of the Council's influence? They have a network of bribed officials at every level of bureaucracy, fingers in hundreds of pies, thousands of strings that they can pull – if you had tried to stop them taking Eleanor, it would have been a fairly simple matter for them to arrange to have you declared an unfit mother, or even to falsify the results of a blood test to prove that you weren't related to her." He almost added that she could have found herself arrested on a trumped up charge and spending the rest of her life rotting in a jail but decided that it would not have been the most tactful of comment's, given the dark-haired Slayer's history.

"But why?" None of them had an answer to Faith's question. "What do they want with my daughter?"

London.

The archives of the Inner Sanctum of the Watcher's Council concerned matters deemed to be too important, or too dangerous to be stored in the main record section, those for which secrecy was deemed vital.

Only a handful of people had had access to these files and documents, and more than half of that group had been killed.

A combination of arguing on Buffy's part, threats of Faith's and magick on Willow's had 'persuaded' the Council's Senior Custodian of Records, the Honourable Emerence Marsh-Hadley, that Giles should be admitted to that privileged circle.

"Perhaps I'll get a raise." Giles commented dryly, ignoring the protests of the Honourable Miss Marsh-Hadley and ushering them into the library.

It was a huge room, perhaps twice as large as the gym at Sunnydale High was, paneled in dark wood with the walls on three sides of it lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves laden with leather bound volumes, including the Watcher's Diaries of the past several millennia and files, thicker by far than those they had read earlier, on Slayers, Potentials and Watchers throughout the ages. The fourth wall was covered with tapestries and portraits that glared down at the group that had intruded upon this sacred space.

"These all have 'S' and 'H' on them too." Kennedy grumbled. "Anyone have any idea what they stand for?"

A collective shrug was the only response she received.

"Check this out." Willow's tone was awed as she gestured towards a large tapestry that seemed to be the centerpiece for the fourth wall, covered in a sprawling web of names carefully stitched in fine gold thread. "And I thought the family tree in Faith's file was impressive!"

She craned her neck, squinting as she tried to make out the name at the top of the tapestry, the ancestor of this many millennia old family.

She was considering a spell to help her make it out when, as if the tapestry had read her mind, the name increased in size, illuminated in a faint glow.

"Cool trick." Willow furrowed her brow in confusion. What she had thought was a name was not written in any language or script she recognized. "What is that?"

"The first Slayer." Buffy responded automatically, her voice soft as she approached, tracing a name with her finger and watching as a network of names sprang from her touch, weaving their way through the deep crimson cloth, so dark that it was almost black, of the tapestry. "And this is her family."

"As fascinating as this is," Giles cut in, indicating the massive room and its contents with a wave of his hand. "We have a great deal of material to get through and, while we don't have a deadline, we ought not waste time."

"Can't the one eyed man be excused from research?" Xander asked hopefully, assuming his most pathetic facial expression as he gestured towards his eye patch.

"No."

"Eleanor's a little doll!" Willow murmured fondly as she leafed through the photographs in the folder documenting the little girl's development over the five years of her life. "She's so adorable."

"She looks just like you, Faith." Kennedy said, looking at the photograph over her girlfriend's shoulder.

"Except with blue eyes and a better grooming regimen, Buffy added playfully, receiving a light punch in the arm for her pains.

Fortunately Giles was so deeply immersed in a detailed account of the career of Rachel Knight that he failed to notice that all five of them had abandoned their own tasks in favour of examining Eleanor's file.

"Looks like she takes after her mother in more than just her looks." Xander chuckled good-naturedly. "There doesn't seem to have been a single member of her staff that's lasted more than six months – not even the gardeners or the maids. Looks like someone's a trouble maker."

"Let me see that." Willow extended a hand for the records, her frown growing progressively deeper as she studied them. "How many babies do you know who can go through four nannies by their first birthday?"

"Besides Cordelia?" Xander quipped half-heartedly.

"At intervals of exactly three months?" The red-haired witch raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Nobody on this list quit, they were all transferred to other posts."

"Why?" Faith was bewildered by this information.

"I don't know." Willow sighed. "I'm sorry, Faith, I can't tell."

"Faith?" Buffy looked across the table at the other girl, a copy of the birth certificate of Eleanor Constance Knight in one hand. "Do you know what time Eleanor was born?"

"Constance told me she was born around eleven o'clock at night." Faith responded, then her expression darkened. "But then again, she told me a lot of things."

Chewing her lower lip thoughtfully, Buffy did some quick calculating. "That's about the same time that Kendra died, and when Kendra died . . ."

"I was called." Faith finished for her. "Is that why they wanted her?" Even though she knew perfectly well that none of them would be able to answer her, she had to pose the question aloud. "Because she was born while I was called?"

"Maybe it gave her some kind of power." Buffy suggested. "I doubt there was a precedent. I don't know of any other Slayers with kids – except Nikki Wood, of course." She added as an after thought.

"She we ask Giles?" Kennedy queried, glancing across at the gentleman in question, who was happily engrossed in his reading.

"Nah, we'll ask him later." A ghost of a smile graced Faith's face. "At least somebody here's enjoying himself."

"The Council must have known in advance when Kendra was going to die – and when you were going to have your baby." Willow mused aloud. "They would have had to have somebody at the hospital to take Eleanor before you knew. . ." She trailed off.

"Before I knew that the only person I thought I could trust had lied to me and that my daughter was alive?" Faith scowled darkly. "Damnit!" She struck the first section of the file with an open hand, sending a shower of papers flying.

Crouching down to help her rescue the fallen documents, Xander offered her a slight smile. "At least we can be grateful for one thing – British organization. They're all numbered. Faith?" his smile disappeared and his expression became one of concern. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

The dark-haired Slayer was silent, not answering, not even seeming to hear the questions. Her brown eyes, wide with horror and anger, were fixed on a piece of paper.

In her hand she held a copy of a check for fifty thousand dollars, dated the 7th of September, made out to Bryan McDermott and signed Quentin R. Travers.

TBC.

Author's Note: That's all for now. Please review.

Author's Note II: For those of you who have forgotten the Prologue, Bryan McDermott was Eleanor's biological father.