Sugar and Spice Part 3 Chapter 5, an angel fanfic

Disclaimer: Please see Part 1, Chapter 1…

Sugar & Spice

Part 3

Chapter 5

"Thanks, Wes'." Angel took the file off Wesley and laid it on his desk. "What's that one?" he indicated the sheet of paper in Wesley's hand, his keen nostrils picking up a blood-scent.

"A letter from some clients."

"Who?" Angel asked.

"Fell Brethren," Wesley responded in that absolutely neutral yet prissy English tone that indicated disapproval.

"Look, Wes'," Angel said earnestly, "I know you're uncomfortable with my decision, and there are things I can't go into right now. But please, have…Faith."

"I do –"

"Good job Robin's not here to hear that."

Wesley turned around, seeing the woman that Angel had seen and addressed, "Faith!"

"Wesley." She grinned at them.

Straightening up, Wesley walked up to her and gently clasped her upper arms with his hands. It was not yet readily apparent that she was pregnant – just a slightly convex curve to the abdomen - and she looked just like she always had: exotic cobalt blue eye-shadow, bright red lips, tousled brunette hair, dressed in a revealing mixture of leather and denim that she mockingly referred to as 'Urban Slut chic'. Nevertheless there was a peace in her black velvet eyes and a rosy glow to her cheeks that bespoke positive things.

"You're the visitor Buffy was going to send?" Wesley enquired.

"Nah, I just drove a million miles to get here through the LA rush hour on the off-chance you'd be free for lunch." Faith quipped with elephantine sarcasm. "Yes. I volunteered; things are a little tense at the moment back at the homestead."

"Tense?" Angel demanded, worried.

"Not in an apocalyptic end-of-the-world kind of way, more in a sort of good way." Faith tried to explain. "School's due to start next month so most of the grown-ups are already in harness doing the pre-semester admin…bureaucracy does rule the world…and getting used to holding down a day-job alongside the Slayerdom gig. Robin's so cute when he's in principal mode…"

Shaking her head as if to clear it as she accepted a hug from Angel as well as Wesley, she told them, "Sorry; anyway at least the stench of the Double Meat Palace is forever cleansed from our home – and despite the size of the Ennis House it somehow cost into every corner. It's a million jobs at once for everyone going on and Xander's not here to do his Slayer juggling thing for the next month…no super-powers my ass, he's got to have something for the way he always seems to be able to be attentive to every new Slayer that turns up – all ten million billion of them."

"What's up with Xander then?" a new voice enquired.

Faith turned as Spike entered the room with his customary swagger. "He's gone with Oz and Grey Miller down to Riley Finn in South America for a few weeks."

"And you took the opportunity to escape the asylum," Angel said.

"In a heartbeat; there's only so much supposed 'sisterhood' I can stomach," the Dark Slayer complained, "so I told Buffy I'd come down and check on anything you'd managed to pull up on Hewitt the possible Harbinger. Can I help it if traffic forces me to make my trip a longer than planned vacation?"

"Vampire Slayer," Illyria was standing in the doorway, her empty blue eyes staring at Faith.

"Yes, Faith." Wesley gave Faith an apologetic look. "Angel, could you help Faith…?"

"No problem." Angel responded; the last thing they needed was Illyria and Faith getting into it. He waited until Wesley left with Illyria, then advised, "Sorry about that, Illyria's been around more often than not these days, superseding Fred. We can't seem to establish what's got it so agitated. It might be an idea to avoid the Blue Meanie as far as possible."

"No problemo," Faith assured the two vampires.

"This attack on Dawn," Spike wanted to get down to brass tacks. "It could be a Harbinger for real? How high on the scale of Big Badness?"

Faith shrugged, "That's why I'm here. The answers we came up with to those two questions are respectively, 'more probably than not' and 'nearer ten than one,' which are worryingly vague considering how motivated we were to find answers."

Neither vampire needed to respond to that statement; they could imagine Buffy's reaction to the most recent attempt on her baby sister's life – no thread of investigation existed that the Slayer wouldn't have had yanked and twisted to find out what was going on.

"Giles and Willow figured you guys might have access to some of the more obscure texts," Faith expounded. "So here I am."

"Tell us what happened," instructed Angel. "We might be able to get a handle on things."

Faith moved to sit on the couch, crossing her feet at the ankles while Spike perched on the arm and Angel remaining standing (probably to himself plenty of pacing room, she thought with faint amusement). "Hewitt showed up in New Sunnydale while we were all down here dealing with the Oligarchs. Someone directed him to Dawn's boyfriend, Connor Riley."

"The blond kid," mused Spike. "I've met 'im. He was giving off the mystical like a gas leak."

"Yeah, Willow said the same thing," Faith agreed. "She ran a check on him – criminal, mystical; the works. On the surface it was all American Pie. Laurence Connor Riley, college math professor and Colleen Niamh Riley née O'Donnell, private Middle School deputy headmistress – spelled N-i-a-m-h in the proper Irish way, not the lazy English N-e-v-e like the actress Ms Campbell by the way. The pair of them are salt-of-the-earth, a completely ordinary Irish-American couple, hard working, decent, upright and good."

"'Nauseatin'ly wholesome' in other words?"

"Oh yeah," Faith rolled her eyes – she wasn't that reconstructed. "They had one daughter, Lauren, the original redhead with wild bouncing curls no less – I've seen the photos. She's now doing – wait for it - an FBI-sponsored fast-track post-grad internship in forensic pathology with the Jeffersonian Institute, some genius professor Brandon or Brennan or something, the top body-botherer in the country. When Red was ten they adopted baby Connor when it looked like their attempts to have more kids was going to stay all hat and no cattle."

"Looked?" Spike, as ever picked up on the word.

Faith shrugged. "When Connor was six, Colleen's stomach flu turned out to be an ebony-haired bundle o' joy – Niamh Riley, currently thirteen going on thirty and like her big bro' and sis' acing and excelling in an all-around all-American wholesome Pilgrim Fathers work ethic kinda way. Unfortunately no matter what she tried, Willow couldn't crack Connor's adoption records – there are all sorts of mystical wards and locks – heavy duty mojo. But what she has been able to establish is that Connor is definitely like us, but he's also definitely like us." Her hand wave indicated the general 'good and heroic' group.

"Helps little old ladies across the street I bet," Spike commented with a hint of acid.

"Jealous are we?" Faith teased.

"I know the Niblet," Spike growled, "too nice for her own good. I swear, if she ends up pregnant instead of going to college –"

"Buffy will kill him long before you get chance too." Faith cut him off. "Relax. They're thinking with what's between their ears…as well as what's between their legs."

"Can we get back to Hewitt?" snapped Angel, his stomach twisting over this discussion of his son…and Buffy's sister.

"Sorry, anyway, Hewitt gave this spiel about being some sort of school counsellor which Connor saw through like glass. He and your buddy Clem –"

"Clem's still in Sunnydale? Good on him." Spike said in surprise.

"Yeah," Faith judged Angel's expression and decided to skip explaining that when it came to training new, confused – and often very cocky – Slayers a bit too pleased with their new 'invincibility', funny-ha-ha looking Clem with his horrific face-splitting trick was instantly and viscerally a much more effective lesson than any amount of lectures and warnings by experienced Slayers never to judge by outward appearance.

So she went on, "Connor and Clem saw Hewitt doing a recon of the Summers' des res., and Clem recognised him as the old hitter for hire. When we got back to Sunnyd., they filled us in and we managed to put into place a translocation spell. We knew Hewitt would probably wait until Dawn was alone and when he cornered her she just used the charm to translocate them both to the mansion where we were waiting with baseball bats and bad attitudes."

"Was Dawn…?"

"She was fine, Spike. It was her idea." Faith commented. "Anyway that was where it all went pear-shaped. We never got chance to do the interrogation that we planned because as soon as it became obvious that Hewitt was trapped - literally and metaphysically - he killed himself with a mystical suicide hex."

"Not willingly though." Angel put in.

"That's right – even as he was uttering the spell he had this look of…stunned rage…on his face and you could see him fighting desperately against uttering each syllable, but he was as unprepared as we were so he didn't have time to resist." Faith recounted the event. "Someone was determined – and desperate – for us not to find out who Hewitt's paymaster was. Willow said that to lay a suicide enchantment on somebody as overwhelmingly self-centred and egotistical as Hewitt and without him knowing about it required extremely powerful whammy – and lots of dead presidents."

"Could be some minions of the First," mused Spike, "still pissed off at what Buffy did to the original Big Bad?"

"We thought of that, but you'd be the logical first target for the whole 'annihilating the Turok-Han and closing the Hellmouth' deal." Faith pointed out.

"They might be too afraid to go against Spike directly," Angel pointed out. "A vampire's three great terrors are fire, sunlight and the Slayer – in that order. If you were the crawling flunky of a demolished Big Bad, would you go up face-to-face against someone who had the balls to just stand there and let his ultimate nightmare slow-roast him alive to save the world?"

"Aw, shucks, I'll be blushing next." Spike drawled, but then scowled at his grandsire. "Unless…you're trying to say this is my fault?"

"It usually is," retorted Angel and then suggested to Faith, "Or it needn't be Spike at all. Could be the –" he jerked his head up at the ceiling to indicate the Senior Partners but didn't Name Them, "-are playing a long game."

"We thought about what's left of the original Watchers' Council," admitted Faith, "which led us to thinking about those so-called Ninja Cyborg things; Giles pointed out that Robot Roger's little bit of Masterpiece theatre showed they weren't on our side of 'good', and neither us or you have managed to figure out who's funding the production line."

They exchanged grim glances; the cyborgs had been good enough to fool vampires and Wolfram & Hart's mystical alarms up close and personal repeatedly for several days, which bespoke a puppet-master able to access extraordinary craftsmanship, talented sorcery and extreme wealth. That was why on the QT Angel had reached out to Virginia Bryce – immensely wealthy sorceress – and David Nabbitt – stupendously immensely wealthy techno-geek – who were making very careful, very discreet enquiries.

"Since the cyborgs were supposed to deliver me as a helpless slave controlled by the Staff of Deva-Sin to a master who wasn't Wolfram & Hart, or The Powers That Be, or, apparently the Watchers' Council, it means there's a new and potent player in the game who could royally screw everything up." Angel brooded.

"I can see why you need to narrow the suspects down," Spike said.

"Pretty much. Giles' theory was that whoever or whatever Mr X is he's laying low whilst everyone from the PTBs, Wolfram & Hart and my grandaunt Alice are homed in on trying to track down the Evil Robot Us's and their Generalissimo, but that's not going to keep the heat of us forever."

"Yeah, we've got figure on seeing the sequel sometime soon, especially as he, she, they or it didn't get what it wanted." Angel agreed.

"Well, the über-brains dived into the books and that's where it started to get funky," Faith explained. "We found a few really obscure passages; bunch of stuff about a stunted sapling, Children of Light and 'the Key' - Dawn, natch. Stuff about how twisted branch or stunted tree wanted to destroy the Key before it could unlock the secret of the code –"

"And those attempts to destroy – kill – Dawn are a Harbinger?" Angel clarified.

"So a few of the texts claim, but not all of them. Those that did said that the attack on the Key was a prelude to another Big Bad – not connected to the Big Bad as an event but involving some of the same people," Faith recounted carefully, trying to be accurate and then hesitated in the manner that told the two vampires she really didn't want to say something.

"What?" Angel prompted.

"We were going dizzy with the whole Harbinger/Not deal, but what makes us so sure that the Harbinger thing is so strong a possibility…" Faith trailed off and sighed. "We were sat there trying to make sense of the whole tree, Key and secret code passage when…Dana walks in with this bowl, plonks it on the table next to Willow, and tells her it's the secret code."

"What was in the bowl?" Angel asked with a sinking feeling.

"Fresh human blood…her own." Faith gave a sad sigh again, "She'd cut her arm. Put a good pint in too. Course, when we'd done freaking out we tried to talk to her but…she'd gone again."

"Any chance that she…" Spike asked quietly.

Faith gave him an uncomfortable glance, knowing only too well how the deranged Slayer had tortured and mutilated him when her addled mind confused him with the man who had murdered her family and kidnapped her years before. "No, especially now that Fallon Mady…She's not in any distress. She has the suite next to Buffy's at the Ennis House; Xander soundproofed it so she isn't bothered by noise unless she wants to play music or something herself. She takes her medication and as long as she's got lots of paper and drawing pens she's reasonably happy."

"But she'll never be functional." Spike said softly, standing up and gazing out of the window.

"No. Like someone once said, she's too far gone to save." Faith saw Spike flinch at the recitation of his own words to Angel. "It's not your fault. It's not ours either. The body's still functioning, but Dana Parvati was murdered with her family years before you or we got anywhere near her. All we can do now is to ensure she lives her life in comfort instead of locked in a loony bin being used as a lab rat by some psychobabbler angling for fame and fortune on the talk-show circuit."

Continued in Part 4.

Note: TARDIS – Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. Space-faring vehicle possessed by the Time Lord known as 'the Doctor'. Most famous for a) looking like a 1960s-era blue police box from Britain and b) being infinitely larger inside than it is outside.