A/N: Shout-outs to jkwhedon1919, sonya vasquez, triciagold28, Sage of Wind Dragons, jkmp28, slytherinxbadxgirl, The-Knight2000, belladamon29, and Souffle Girl in a Blue Box! One chapter left to go. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.
"Yawning again?"
Faith opened her eyes to the glare of a South Dakota summer sun and the warm metal of a half-rusted truck bed against her back. She glanced to her right, to the familiar face of a much-younger Dean Winchester than the one she had just said goodbye to, the corners of his mouth quirked upwards in amusement.
"Yeah," croaked the Slayer finally, placing the sunlight, the scrapyard, and her particular pair of boots. This was the Singer Salvage Yard, the morning after Dean had picked her up from the airport in Omaha, after Castiel had dragged him up and out of Hell.
"What, Bobby's floor not comfortable enough for you?" he teased.
"My bed in London is better," Faith groused. She had said this – or something much like this, on that long-ago summer day.
"Probably. I told you we could turf Sam onto the floor," Dean reminded her.
The woman scoffed, "Yeah, like that was ever actually going to happen."
"Huh. Well, if you're in that much need of shut-eye, why don't you grab fifty winks, then? We don't need to be anywhere for a minute. Bobby'll holler if he finds anything in those books." Not bothering to ask for permission, the hunter tugged the strap of Faith's gray tank top back over her shoulder and pulled her closer, until she was halfway lying in his lap.
Faith permitted the indignity, the same way she had eight years previously. She squirmed onto her side, her cheek resting against the worn cotton of his thin t-shirt. Closing her eyes tightly, the woman imagined that she could hear his heartbeat, soft and regular and reassuring. At length, she said, "This is dumb, but I'm a little worried that if I fall asleep, you'll go away again."
His tone was understanding without being patronizing. "Faith – "
Memory prompted her response, carrying with it a little extra hysteria. "I didn't want you to die, Dean."
The hunter's hand was warm and callused on the bare skin of her arm. "Vampires." It was a request to focus, his voice light, joking. "Which one'd win in a fight? Your kind or mine?"
"Dumb question. Obviously, mine," Faith answered automatically.
"Not in the sunlight," he pointed out.
Trust him to get pedantic about stupid details. The Slayer slammed her knee into the side of his leg in retaliation. "You didn't mention sunlight."
He chuckled, a low rumble in his throat. "You gotta use your imagination."
Half-irritated, half-still concerned, the Slayer started, "Dean – "
Cutting her off before she could go any further, he put a single index finger against her lips. "I'm here, okay?" Dean said easily, as if they were discussing what caliber of silver bullets worked best for putting down werewolves. "I'm here, you're here, we're both here. So talk to me about vampires."
Faith slept in the sunlight, in the hollow happiness of her memories, with the familiar mumble of shop talk dulling the wild flailing of her mind. It was only a dream, and the Slayer knew that, but it has been so long since she had dreamt of anything good. For now and for as long as she could, Faith would take whatever good dreams came her way.
She spent an entire year dreaming in sunshine. The bed of the pick-up truck wasn't the most comfortable place, and so sometimes she slept on the grass, and sometimes she slept in the cab, and sometimes she used Dean as a glorified body pillow. The hunter of her memories didn't seem to notice the uncharacteristic behavior. He spoke as if on autopilot about monsters and his strange encounter with the entity called Castiel, the one that proclaimed to be a servant of the Lord.
Faith absorbed every word, just as she soaked in the heat emanating from the August sun overhead. Dean's voice was the soundtrack that filled her dreams, that coaxed away her exhaustion and chased away her regrets. On that day, they had been young. They had been alive. They had been happy.
And so, for a while, the Slayer slumbered.
Eventually however, sleep and South Dakota grew boring. Then it was that Faith remembered the hunter's words – to find the Axis Mundi, she needed to follow the road. That was easy enough on its own. When she was ready, the Slayer bailed out of the old pickup truck. She retraced Dean's winding path through the junked-out wrecks of old cars until she came to Bobby Singer's weathered home and the front porch, where her leather jacket was draped over the porch railing. Faith gathered up the jacket into her arms, tucking it over her bent forearm. She had no idea where this road might lead, and something heavier than a tank top might indeed come in handy.
Squaring her jaw, the Slayer strode across the gravel, past Dean's gleaming Impala and Bobby's far more dusty Chevelle, under the arching iron of the front gate with its sign for the salvage yard, and out onto the pothole-marked blacktop. She made it about ten feet along the old country road when the bright afternoon light instantly dimmed to the deep darkness of night, the moon and stars obscured by clouds overhead, and the unforgiving concrete beneath her feet was replaced by the slightly soggy feeling of grass and earth after a rain.
Faith looked to her left and to her right. A cemetery. Figured. The Slayer shrugged her jacket onto her shoulders and began exploring. She wandered through the cemetery, her fingers trailing over the moss-strewn tops of headstones, following the sounds of voices. She came to a stop when she caught a glimpse of the voice's owner: Dean Winchester. Again.
This time, the hunter was sprawled out across the grass not far from a freshly dug grave, carrying on a one-sided argument that Faith knew instinctively she was meant to be answering. She watched him briefly, then turned on her heel and struck out for the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery.
This was not the Axis Mundi – not yet. And there had to be more to her afterlife than one other person. She didn't – she wasn't ready or willing to consider what that might mean. Faith was her own person. She had always been her own person. The thought of her un-life being defined by someone else was incredibly unpalatable.
She scaled the cemetery fence and dropped down easily onto the pavement beyond. Faith checked to make sure that the memory of Dean Winchester was not following her, and then she struck out across the asphalt leading away from the cemetery.
As she rounded the curve of the road, she found herself transported indoors, to a cluttered, shabby apartment that she had nearly forgotten. Faith was sitting on a threadbare couch with broken springs, the same couch that she had lived on for a handful of months when she was sixteen.
Standing in front of her, with a bouquet of flowers in his hands, was a scruffy blond teenager. He was grinning at her, his smile gaping wide and dopey, as he announced, "And that's not all, babe. We're going to dinner tonight. You, me – actual reservations and everything. It'll be a real Valentine's."
Oh, God. Steve. Faith had thought she had put her kleptomaniac boyfriend behind her. He had been a bright spot in another one of the many not-so-great stretches between getting kicked out of home by her mother's new boyfriend and when she finally landed herself in the penitentiary a few years later.
Sure, this had all come crumbling down to rubble not too long after this night, but before she knew about all the stealing, before she learned that she should never have trusted him, she had been happy – ecstatically happy. The one and only time that a guy had ever brought her flowers.
The Slayer looked up at Steve, at his expectant face. When she was sixteen, she had babbled with excitement and thrown herself at him, pulling him into a make-out session that had nearly made them miss their reservations. But that had been then.
Now, although she could still feel the pressure of the memory, urging her to leap to her feet, to be as wildly and freely thrilled as only a teenager could be, she forced herself to step backwards. The road. She had to find the road. Had to find the way out.
Faith pushed past Steve, who continued to be oblivious to her changed demeanor, pushing open closet doors and tossing the dilapidated apartment that she had shared with him and two other runaways. There had to be a road somewhere. Where could it be? Finally, a half-torn circular for an oil change place on the pockmarked kitchen table caught her eye. Faith raced to the circular, picking it up and staring at it. Now what? On impulse, she tipped her head forwards, leaning until her nose booped the edge of the cardboard.
Then she was spinning in circles, rather like the times that Castiel had used his teleporting mumbo jumbo on her, until her feet struck solid linoleum and she opened her eyes.
Suddenly sick to her stomach, Faith recognized this place, recognized the peeling wallpaper, the scratched up furniture, the smell of burning spaghetti sauce on the stove, the old FM radio blaring Sinatra. The Slayer's legs carried her into the kitchen. There was her mother, ruining dinner and singing happily along to "You Make Me Feel So Young." She turned around and beamed at the sight of her daughter.
"Hey, little firecracker! How was your nap?"
Faith glanced down, to the rabbit footie pajamas that she was wearing, and wanted to cry. But she couldn't cry. Not now. The Slayer gritted her teeth, closing her eyes as her mother dropped a rubber spatula, dripping with spaghetti sauce, back onto the stove top and rushed across the room to embrace Faith.
It took every ounce of Faith's not-inconsiderable will-power to hold still while her mom's too-thin arms wrapped around her tightly, until she could barely breathe. The woman carried on as if Faith had spoken, seeming not to hear her silence – the same way that Dean and Steve had been. Heaven, Faith was quickly realizing, was one weirdly wacked-up place.
"I burned the first batch, but you don't mind a little texture on your pasta, do you, sweetheart?"
Despite herself, Faith shook her head.
As soon as her mother released her, the Slayer was tearing back into the living room. There had been a road map, she remembered vaguely. One of those carpet maps of a small town. A hand-me-down from her cousin. Faith tore into the toy closet, pulling out a couple of scalped Barbie dolls, until she found the carpet. Dragging it out into the middle of the grim living room, she jumped straight down onto it with both feet.
She was back inside the whirlwind, nausea pounding at her temples, for another long moment, and then she hit the ground. The odor of burned spaghetti was replaced with something equally familiar but far less dangerous: beer, fried food, human bodies. Faith pushed herself up off the sticky barroom floor and looked directly into the barrel of a shotgun.
A young man, maybe mid-twenties, with an unabashed mullet was staring down the stock of his rifle at her. "Who are you?" demanded mullet-man.
In one swift movement, Faith knocked the barrel of the shotgun to the side with her left hand while she yanked the stake from her belt with her right – she had spotted it in the cemetery memory and had instantly tucked it into her waistband. A girl never knew when she was going to need to stab someone with something sharp and pointy.
Once the rifle was no longer pointing her in the face, the Slayer tugged it out of the man's hands and threw it halfway across the room. "Better question is, who're you, Billy Ray?" Narrowing her eyes in concentration, Faith began thinking aloud. "Bar, mullet – you happen to go by the name of Ash, by any chance?"
The man's hostility and suspicion did not diminish in the slightest. "Yes," he said stiffly, eyeing the shotgun. He dared not begin side-stepping towards it yet, however. "How do you know that? Are you an angel?" he demanded hotly.
For the first time since waking up in Bobby Singer's junkyard, Faith laughed. "Definitely not," she assured him. She slipped the stake back into her belt and extended her hand in his direction. "I'm a Vampire Slayer. Name's Faith. Dean Winchester sent me."
"Huh." Still suspicious, the mullet man reached out and shook her hand once. His grip was rough and a little clammy. "He need something?"
"Nah." The Slayer gnawed on her lip, having a momentary loss of confidence. "I mean, probably. Ain't Winchesters always needing something? But no, I'm not really here for him. I'm here 'cuz I died. And he told me this was a good place, when the quiet got boring."
"We have a few people who come in here from time to time," admitted Ash. "Those who find the Axis Mundi." Still wary, he retreated behind the bar. Faith did not stop him. The man reached into one of the refrigerated drawers beneath the bar and retrieved two PBRs. "You thirsty?" he offered, sliding one of the longnecks across the counter to her.
Recognizing the gesture for the peace offering that it was, Faith said, "Sure," and hopped up onto a barstool. She popped the cap on her beer bottle and took a long, cool drink. After the absolute bizarreness of seeing first Steve and then her dead mother, she needed something to take the edge off her nerves. When she set the bottle back onto the counter, Ash was regarding her thoughtfully.
"So," he said, taking a pull from his own beer, "why don't you tell me your story?"
"My story?" Faith squirmed on her bar stool. "Kind of a long one."
Ash shrugged. "Go ahead. We got all the time we need – literally. It's called eternity for a reason, you know."
The Slayer grimaced. "Yeah. That's what I was afraid of."
June 3rd, 2017, London, England, 9:47 p.m.
She could say exactly where she was in the moment that it happened. The Burkle was halfway through an intense debate over the demarcation between science and magic when the world changed. A door that had been closed since almost the beginning reopened, and that which had been lost from the universe returned to it.
Suddenly, the air danced with danger. Suddenly, everything mattered. Perhaps the Burkle, too, felt the change, for her mouth went dry and she lost her train of thought. The half-second of distraction was all that Illyria needed to surge forward and seize control, unseating the mortal woman in the space of a single blink.
Illyria finished her debate with – what was his name again? Oh, yes. Andrew – and then she left Winifred's London laboratory for the flat near Piccadilly Circus. It would not do to spark suspicion. Not yet.
Smirking to herself as she descended into a crowded rush hour subway station, the Old One wondered if she ought to perhaps send Sam and Dean Winchester a fruit basket. The air was singing, for Amara had returned. Illyria recalled how the older hunter had seemed touched by Her when she last saw him. Somehow, someway, this had grubby Winchester fingerprints all over it.
Screw the fruit basket – she would send them a full case of whiskey. That ought to make Winchester the elder happy. But not, thought Illyria with indecent glee, quite as happy as me.
"What is this place?"
The two angels stood at the far end of a blank hallway, its perfectly rectangular, perfectly white walls threatening in their silent emptiness. Or perhaps Alirael only felt that way because she had spent the last three centuries toiling in the records department, and anything that wasn't a cramped room filled with floor-to-ceiling shelving and a good few thousand folios felt alien to her. She scrunched her toes inside her sensible yet stylish black pumps and looked up into the severe features of her new boss, Kushriel, who kept discipline amongst the non-angelic residents of Heaven.
Kushriel nodded to the single white door situated halfway along the hallway. "We call it solitary confinement."
"I didn't realize we had a solitary," mumbled Alirael, feeling embarrassed. She had tried to do her research on this reassignment, but it had felt mostly pointless. Ever since the Metatron debacles – plural intended – the higher-ups had clamped down on all the clerks and the recorders. Now they had mandatory "outside" rotations to different sectors of Heaven, in theory to prevent the more literary angels from following the Heavenly Scribe's example.
"We hadn't," said the older angel, and some of her brash demeanor smoothed out. "Not for millennia."
"What changed?"
The corners of Kushriel's mouth twitched into an amused smile. "We got ourselves a regular escape artist. Caught this one leaving her assigned Heaven fifteen times in two earth months."
"Where was she headed?" the recorder wondered.
Kushriel shrugged. "Unclear. Word has it that she made it all the way from the L's to the W's."
Eyebrows raised, Alirael concluded, "So you think she's entering other human's afterlives?"
"We weren't sure. Not at the time. So we let it pass, until . . ."
"Until what?"
The supervising angel's smile widened. "Until she was found in the secure facility breaking concrete off the walls and throwing it at the prisoner. I was half-tempted to give her an upgrade for that. But it sets a bad precedent, so we did this instead."
There had been only one entity in Heaven referred to as 'the prisoner.' "At Metatron? But he escaped a while ago."
"Six months, to be exact. She's been in here for seven."
"Who is she?"
"A Vampire Slayer."
Alirael cocked her head to one side and redistributed her weight between her two sensible heels. "A Slayer?" She pushed her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose. Angels were created with perfect eyesight, but millennia of contributing to the Book of Life had left her more than a little myopic. "That seems unusual. I recently finished copying over the Slayer chronicles. There's never been an incident of Slayer rebellion in Heaven. Why, they're usually so grateful to not be the Slayer anymore that they never make a peep."
"Be that as it may," said the supervisor, "this one's an absolute disaster. Those hunters must've rubbed off on her."
The recorder frowned. This did not jive with her reading. "Hunters tend to be almost as well behaved as a Slayer," she pointed out.
Kushriel gave her a surprised look. "Not this set. You really don't know who you will be guarding, do you?"
"No, I'm beginning to think that I don't."
"You'll be monitoring Faith Lehane. The so-called 'Rogue' or 'Dark' Slayer." The angel's tone turned dismissive. "The one who is only up here because she slept with Dean Winchester."
Alirael gulped. She vaguely knew about half the names on the current Slayer roster, but if the number one, don't-you-dare-forget-it name for any contemporary scholar of Slayers was Buffy Summers, the number two name was Faith Lehane. And the Winchesters were infamous.
"Really, Alirael, you hadn't known that she was here?" asked her new boss in surprise.
"I thought that was only a rumor. Lehane always seemed a little too - "
"Wicked?" supplied Kushriel.
"Colorful for Heaven," finished the recorder
"Maybe," her supervisor allowed. "Anyway, she's here now, and we can't kick her out."
"Why not?"
Rolling her eyes, the other angel admitted, "Hannah made a covenant with Castiel."
"A covenant?!" gasped Alirael. "Why would she do that?"
"She is enamored of Castiel, who is enamored of the Winchesters, to the point of betraying his brothers and sisters."
"And the Winchesters - "
"They are enamored of the Slayer. Or at least Dean Winchester is. Which brings us to the other reason we tolerate her presence. It was documented by Zachariah that Dean Winchester has two great weaknesses, although I suspect that number has since grown to three. Can you guess what they are?"
The first answer was easy. "Obviously, one is his brother the abomination."
"Correct. Zachariah believed the other was Faith Lehane."
"So she is a -"
"I believe the human term is bargaining chip," the supervisor smiled nastily. Her expression becoming more severe, she said, "I trust you know to keep all of this to yourself?"
"Of course," promised Alirael.
"Very well. Then, if you have no more questions, I think it is time for you to meet your new charge."
Slightly nervous, the records angel nodded. Kushriel snapped her long, thin fingers, and the single alabaster door swung wide open. Alirael stepped forward, her heels clicking along the marble floor beneath her feet, and then she walked through the door into a decrepit human apartment that carried the odors of unwashed bodies, bad cooking, and old alcohol – this must be one of the Slayer's favorite memories.
How strange, thought Alirael, tracing her way through the memory. An unnaturally cheerful woman in her early thirties was stirring a pot of something burning on the stove top, singing along to a human radio.
"I've got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow," trilled the woman loudly. She stuck her head into the cluttered living room. "Come on, firecracker! Sing with your mommy."
Huddled in the far corner of the dimly lit living room, her knees drawn up to her chin, wearing the largest pair of ragged bunny footed pajamas that Alirael had ever imagined possible, was a frazzled woman with deadened dark brown eyes.
"Leave me alone," she mumbled in response to what must have been her mother's call. "Leave me alone."
Alirael chose that moment to make presence known. "Faith Lehane," she began in a very business-like tone. It was not a question.
Lehane looked up from her knees and frowned. "Who're you?" she growled.
"I am Alirael, the new – "
The Slayer cut her off sharply. "My new warden, is that it? G-d, why can't a girl ever catch a break. Go to Heaven, it will be good," she dropped her voice half an octave lower, mimicking someone. "Swear to God, if I ever get my hands on him, I'm gonna wring his frigging neck."
"Whose?" prompted Alirael, curious in spite of herself.
"Uh uh." Faith shook her head. "Like I'm gonna tell you that? You'll probably find another way to use my memories against me."
The angel frowned. "You do not consider this to be a happy memory?"
The Slayer narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You frakking kidding me, Wings? Sure, this was a good memory when it happened, but I was four then. Four!" she repeated with derision. "I didn't know anything. Didn't know that Mom was drunk, didn't know how everything was gonna play out - I'm thirty-five, you know. Or something around there. Do you age when you're a ghost? Can you look that up for me? Anyway, thirty-five or thirty-six, don't much matter. This sure as hell ain't one of my favorite memories anymore – 'specially not after you winged douchebags've made me relive it a gazillion times."
Having been given little training prior to her reassignment, Alirael was unprepared for this. She had not had to deal with actual human emotion in well – ever. She attempted to defuse the situation by trying one of the techniques she had read about. "You sound angry."
"I am angry, dammit. I – " Lehane caught her breath, recovered her composure, and went on. "Here's the deal, Al - Can I call you Al? Good," she said, not waiting for an answer. "My momma, sure, she said she loved me. But she never could give up the booze - or the men. And later on, she could never give up the crack. Hell, the only thing she could ever give up was me."
"That is – "
"No," snarled the woman. "Can it, feather duster. You – you don't get to have an opinion, Al. Not on my pathetic childhood or my pathetic mom. Just . . . change the channel or get your ass out of here. 'Cause this?" she gestured dismissively to the shabby room around her. "This I don't have to share with nobody."
"I . . I will have to ask . . . I am not authorized to . . ." Alirael fidgeted uncomfortably with the pen in her hands.
"Faith! Come sing!"
Against her will, the Slayer was pulled to her feet by the invisible force of the memory. She took furious, hesitating steps towards the kitchen.
"Get me out," she repeated to Alirael, the words somewhere in the strange land between a command and a request. "Please."
September 29th, 2017, Savannah, Georgia, 11:25 a.m.
She had searched endlessly, researching through miles and miles of internet headlines in the guise of Winifred Burkle, investigating anything and everything she could uncover in an attempt to locate the entity that she had once served with such deep, wholehearted loyalty. In the end, after two months of internet searches and three weeks of torturing demons and angels alike, Illyria found the information that she needed.
And now, as she approached the tall woman in the deep-necked sleeveless dress standing in the front pew of an old Lutheran church in Savannah, Georgia, the Old One did not even need to ask her name. She bent at the entrance to the pew, but instead of genuflecting to the statue of Christ at the far end of the nave, she bowed to Amara. "My liege."
The woman turned slowly. She blinked at the kneeling god king, and then recognition set in. Amara raised the Old One from her knees. "Illyria."
"You look well," commented Illyria, inwardly burning with curiosity. There was so much that she needed to know, so much that she needed to ask. What had happened in all those millennia of silence? For the moment, however, she forced herself to be content with pleasantries.
Amara smiled, as if she sensed the impatience of her one-time courtier. "I have been growing," she said wryly. After a moment's hesitation, she continued, "Where is my brother? I have sought him in so many places, in so many of his houses of worship, but he is nowhere to be found. Where is he?"
"I do not know," admitted the Old One. "No one has seen or heard from him in centuries - at least that is what Michael and Lucifer told me."
"Archangels." Amara spat the word in derision. "What were you doing with them?"
Shrugging aimlessly, Illyria explained, "They wanted to destroy the world - I humored their attempts to court me to their sides."
"You have always been clever."
"You taught me well."
"But you have had to learn much alone," said Amara, and she frowned. "I . . . a demon called Crowley attempted to teach me about this world. It had an odd slant to it, his teaching."
Illyria said nothing. The only demons she was on a first-name basis with tended to be dead within an average of ten minutes after she learned their names. She knew of Crowley, just as she did all the major players, but she had yet to meet him.
Continuing, the sister of God went on, "I have missed much, since my brother cast me out. Can I . . . can I trust you as I once did?" The question itself was light, but her tone grew darker with the follow-up, "Or do you serve one of my brother's spawn now?"
Illyria's eyes flashed an electric, lightning blue. "I serve no one, my liege." Her words were a hair shy or a snarl. "No one but you."
The Darkness stared deep into the Old One's gaze for a long, infinite moment, then she relaxed and sat in the wooden pew. "Good." She nodded for the Old One to join her. "So tell me, old friend, what has become of the world while I have been away? Has anything other than destruction occurred?"
Sinking down onto the uncomfortable bench, Illyria paused and frowned thoughtfully. "Well," she said at length, "there are these things called milkshakes."
"Faith Lehane broke out of solitary."
Alirael glanced up from her latest ream of paperwork on new arrivals (last names La to Li) to meet Kushriel's furious glare.
"What?" stammered the angel. "That's impossible."
"Apparently not. She somehow acquired a pen – an angel's pen – and she used it to find the locked door to the Axis Mundi and pick the lock. She is loose again."
Rising from her chair, Alirael wondered, "How are we going to find her?"
"We shall track her down without your help." Kushriel stared disapprovingly down her nose at the records angel. "You were tasked with watching her. This will go on your service record. And the Gardener has been told about this."
"Joshua?" gabbled the younger angel, shocked. She had known the Slayer was important, but to bother Joshua with this! No wonder Kushriel looked so peeved.
"Fool," snapped her supervisor. "Do not say his name. Now, pack up your things and go back to the clerks. You will be filing forms until the next apocalypse arrives."
"But - "
"Out."
Reluctantly, Alirael gathered her papers together and began the long, mortifying trek out of the new arrivals department towards the Book of Life sector. She walked slowly, dragging each foot in front of the next. This was not her fault, she attempted to reason with herself. She had merely done her job and checked in on the Slayer once every two human weeks. And now her one chance for advancement, her one chance for something other than endless reading and writing about the exploits of short-lived humans was over.
By the time she arrived at her previous office, the angel was in such a foul mood that she did not notice the door was standing ajar. In fact, she did not realize that anything was wrong until she went to sit in her chair and found a familiar insolent figure already seated there.
"Hey," said Faith casually, kicking her heavy Doc Marten boots up onto the desk, scattering some of Alirael's meticulously organized papers.
"What?" gasped the angel. "How – how are you here?"
The Slayer shrugged. "I'm sneaky, and I run fast."
"You've ruined me," Alirael mourned. "I hope that gives you some satisfaction."
"Not really. Look, Al, I didn't pull a runner to tank your reputation, okay?" the woman told her earnestly. "I did it because if I had to spend another minute with the memory of my deadbeat mother, I was going to claw my own eyes out. But I think . . . I think I might have a way to make it up to you – a way where we both come out on top."
She could not believe this was actually happening. "You're insane. And get your feet off of my files. They're important."
"Maybe I am crazy," admitted the Slayer, but she brought her boots down from the desk in a sign of good faith. "But why don't you just hear me out? It won't hurt anyone, and If you do, I might even come quietly."
"And if I don't?" the angel scoffed.
"Then . . . ." Rising to her feet, Faith cleared her throat. She shook her arm, and an angel blade dropped down the sleeve of her leather jacket into her hand. "You'd be amazed at what people just leave lying around up here," she mused conversationally, twirling the sword so that the edge glimmered in the light. "I don't want to hurt anyone, Al, but see, I really, really don't like solitary."
"What do you want?" asked Alirael, taking a quick step backwards. No Slayer had ever slain an angel, but Lehane was a close ally of the Winchesters – and they had killed Zachariah.
"I think we could help each other. Do you really want to keep working the same dead-end job for the rest of eternity? Stay in this cozy little fire trap of an office?"
"I – "
Faith dropped the attitude and went for pleading, "Help me out, here. I'm not asking for much, just for some way to not get stuck in solitary anymore. Like, ever."
The angel laughed. "Don't you realize that as soon as they find you, you will be returning to solitary confinement? You'll be lucky to leave it in a century."
"Nah." The Slayer shook her head. "I ain't going back. I told you, Al. Eyes clawed out. Not exactly a pretty look on me. Or anyone, for that matter. Look, if you help me not go back there, I'll be a model prisoner. Your reputation will skyrocket."
"Heaven is not a prison."
"Ain't it? You shoulda tried that line before they shoved me back into my horrible childhood. Anyway, if you don't help me, I'll make your time as my babysitter nothing but miserable. You won't have five minutes' peace until they send you back to whatever little cubicle you worked at three promotions before this one."
Alirael looked from the unsubtle threat of the angel blade to the equally unsubtle desperation in the Slayer's eyes. If she did not acquiesce the crazy woman's request, she felt that further demotion might be the least of her worries. "Do you offer all your guards this deal?" she asked while she debated her options.
"No," said Faith. "I could lie and say there's something special about you, Al, or that I like your face, but the truth is that I'm done trying to play by the rules."
The angel raised an eyebrow. Somehow, she fancied that the Slayer had never truly tried to play by the rules. "Why now?"
"Geez," Faith exhaled. "Angels. I swear – explaining things to you lot is so ridiculously hard. You just don't get it. That people need things like personal space and toilets and breathing the air outside. I don't think one of you understands the meaning of the word 'trapped.' Except maybe Michael, but that's cause he's stuck in the Cage. Have none of you ever tried to break him out?"
She waited for a beat of silence, then continued, "Whatever. Listen, Al, I'm not asking for much. I just want you to look the other way. Don't sound the alarms when I sneak out now and then. And in return, I promise I'll be the best-behaved dead person this place has ever seen."
The angel could see no alternative that did not result with her getting disemboweled by the deranged Slayer. "If you take advantage and make me regret this . . . "
"Never," promised the Slayer fervently. "Let's shake on it."
"Very well, then."
Faith's hand, callused and firm and likely very, very, deadly, closed over the angel's and squeezed. Alirael stared into the woman's intense brown gaze and wondered what in Heaven she had just gotten herself into.
November 17th, 2017, Seattle, Washington, 3:30 p.m.
He was lost. He had tried to kill the Darkness, and his angel blade had shattered into a thousand glittering fragments. She was going to swallow his soul. Dean knew that, just as he knew that his favorite song was a toss-up between Travelin' Riverside Blues, and that – that other one. The hunter closed his eyes. If this was how everything ended, he'd rather see the backs of his eyelids than Amara's face, somehow still smiling.
Dean had prepared himself for the end, and so he was completely caught aback when instead of ripping his soul from his body, Amara kissed him. His surprise quickly faded to be replaced by confusion and more than a little fear. What was she doing?
The hunter struggled with himself. He needed to step away, needed to pull back, but something about Amara drew him in – and it wasn't just the way that she kissed, although she was plenty good at that, too, come to think of it.
Finally, a cool female voice said, "Well. That – oh, what is the mortal phrase? Ah, yes – that escalated quickly."
He knew that voice. Dean sprung away from Amara as if burned. He whirled to stare at the newcomer, a rail-thin brunette with cobalt hair, lips, and eyes. "Fred?" No, no that wasn't Fred. That was the – "Bluebird. What are you doing here?"
"Bluebird?" echoed Amara, glancing from the hunter to the Bluebird and back again.
Illyria frowned, unamused. "It . . . is a nickname," she explained. "Spike, the vampire half-breed I mentioned earlier, gave it to me."
"What interesting company you have been keeping. Bluebird - I can see where he found the idea. Not very original, is it?"
"Vampires rarely tend towards the original," commented the Old One dryly.
Dean watched the two of them in horror. "What are you doing here, Illyria?" he repeated, finally remembering her proper name. He came to a quick conclusion. "You're going to help her destroy everything, aren't you?"
"Not everything. Not you, Dean," Amara assured him. "Never you. You freed me." Her expression grew more serious, almost petulant. "I do have one question that I need you to answer, however."
"What?" asked Dean nervously.
"Who was that woman?"
"Who?"
Amara frowned. "The woman who was in your mind just now – the one you thought of when we kissed."
Why could they never, ever stay out of his head? Angels, demons, God's freaking sister – why were they all so interested in what went on inside his brain? "What do you mean?" said Dean in a play for time.
"Who is she?" Amara took a step forward towards him, the movement silently menacing. "This woman you often think of – I have seen her before."
"She's dead," answered Dean shortly.
Unimpressed by this answer, Illyria interjected, "Then tell our lady who she was – or shall I do it for you, Winchester?"
The hunter turned on her. "Are you screwing around in my head, too?" he demanded.
"What nonsense," snorted Illyria. "I have far more entertaining things to do. Besides, you mortals are always so dreadfully predictable. I have no need to see inside your head to know who you might be fixated upon."
"I do not like to wait, Dean." Amara drew his attention back to herself. "Who was this woman, and why do you think of her when you kiss me?"
Dean swallowed, propelled to honesty by the power of the Darkness and the fear of what might happen if he continued to dodge the question. "She was – her name was Faith. You –" he swallowed again, "you remind me of her."
Displeased, Amara pressed, "Why? How can I remind you of a human?"
He could not lie to her, not when she was staring at him with the full power of her gaze. "You're a little like her – beautiful, dangerous, free . . . " More than a little unstable, he added to himself.
"I have not always been free." But Amara did not deny that she had always been dangerous.
"Neither was she. But damn, she tried."
"Hmm." The Darkness mulled over this for a moment before wondering, "What happened to her?"
Illyria stayed silent. This was the Winchester's question to answer.
"Bad luck. Me." A shadow of something much like shame passed over the hunter's face, and he looked down at his boots. "Kinda the same thing, really," he said in a small voice.
"She must have been quite the mortal for you to compare her to me."
Dean shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know how you'd judge things like that. She was just Faith."
Amara reached out across the space between them to place her flat palm on the man's chest. "You carry much grief, Dean," she observed. "Wouldn't you like me to relieve you of that?"
"Everyone's got their crap to carry," countered the man, uncomfortable with where this discussion seemed to be taking them.
"Would you have her back, if you could?" wondered Amara.
He did his best to set her straight. "Doesn't work that way. We tried it once – disaster is putting it lightly. No, Faith deserves to be where she is, up in Heaven. She deserves to be happy."
"And you, Dean Winchester?" the Darkness inquired archly. "What do you deserve?"
Illyria looked up from examining her nails to watch the hunter with her intense blue gaze..
"Well," gulped Dean, "I don't know about deserving. But for what it's worth, I'd like to live."
Faith was watching reruns of peak mid-90s television on Steve's crappy TV set, ignoring the horny teenager as he kept trying to make out with her, when Castiel appeared in front of the screen, blocking her view.
The angel smiled in an uncharacteristically friendly way. "Hiya, hot stuff," he greeted her, for once sounding as if he hadn't just swallowed a bucketful of gravel. "You might want to work on your alarm system."
Springing to her feet, the Slayer scrambled over the back of the couch, putting the furniture in between whoever the heck was currently wearing Castiel's face and herself. "Not Castiel," she said aloud, more for his benefit than hers. "Who are you?" She squinted, thinking fast. What could possess another angel's vessel? Crowley might, but he would never refer to her as 'hot stuff.' Faith threw out the idea of her worst case scenario. "Are you Lucifer?"
"Right in one, girlie." Lucifer winked, and the sight of Cass winking was enough to make the Slayer wince. "Out of curiosity, how'd you guess?"
"Castiel knows better than to try and flirt with me. Seriously, is there no such thing as privacy around here?"
"Not for me," grinned the Devil. "I'm the new God – of Heaven and Hell and everything in between."
Seeing Castiel with so much facial animation was discombobulating. Faith struggled to remember where she had left the oil change coupon that was her ticket out of this memory into a new one. "Okay . . . so why are you here?" she asked in an effort to keep him talking.
"I wanted to see what Dean Winchester's whore looked like – your reputation precedes you." Lucifer cocked his head to the left and considered her. "You know, I always thought you'd be one of the girls who came over to my side. And after that shindig with Kakistos? Both Azazel and Alistair swore we had you in the bag."
It might be true, but it was equally likely to be nonsense, and Faith had no desire to humor him. After all, dudes that went by "The Father of Lies" were notoriously untrustworthy. "So why are you wearing Cass? Why are you really here?"
"Like I said," shrugged the Devil. "I was curious."
"Right," said Faith skeptically. At last, she caught a glimpse of the advert on Steve's table at the far end of the couch and began edging toward it. "Well, now I hope your curiosity is satisfied."
"You should be dead," Lucifer said lightly, as if commenting on the weather.
That made no sense. The Slayer side-stepped closer to the end table. "I am dead."
"You should have been dead far sooner."
"Right," repeated Faith. Her hand closed on the advert, and she pressed it to her nose. Faith was spinning through the Axis, leaving Lucifer behind. As soon as her feet landed on gravel, the Slayer was off and running again, racing from memory to memory until she finally hit the Roadhouse.
Ash and Pamela looked up as she tumbled onto the splintery wooden planking of the bar, and staggered to her feet, swearing a blue streak.
"What's wrong?" asked Ash, his usual casual attitude replaced by concern.
"Bar the doors," gasped Faith. "Lock it down. The Devil's running Heaven."
"What?" yelled Pamela at the same time that Ash demanded, "Are you sure?"
The Slayer caught her breath. "Yes, I'm sure. He just stopped by my place for a little chat," she finished with a touch of hysteria.
"He what?"
"Not good." Ash made the understatement of the year.
Faith snorted. "Just . . . just lock it down."
The man picked his laptop off of the bar counter and began typing away furiously. "On it. We're going to need eyes on Middle-earth, to find out how this happened."
"Enough of the Hobbit references, dude. But, yeah. We're fighting blind. We need intel."
Pamela suggested, "As much as I hate the idea, we could contact Castie-"
"No, Pam," the Slayer cut her off. "Castiel is out of this one. Lucifer's wearing him."
"Sh-t," breathed the dead psychic.
Faith let out a strangled laugh. Sh-t really did about cover it.
May 15th, 2018, Louisville, Kentucky, 1:12 p.m.
Staring up at the two deities, hardly believing his luck that he was still standing in one piece, Dean Winchester cleared his throat. Before they disarmed the soul bomb that Rowena had placed inside of his chest, he needed to make a request. "Chuck, I mean God. There's one thing."
"Ahh," said Chuck discerningly. "Faith? You want me to bring her back to life."
"No," he answered thickly. The word stuck like tar in his throat, but he had to force it out. "What's dead should stay dead. I want you to – what I'm asking is – I mean that – Castiel said that his friends had a place for her in Heaven, but I – I'm not sure. Could you make sure she's okay up there?"
Chuck frowned as though confused. "Are you sure that is all that you want?"
The hunter swallowed. This was incredibly difficult, one of the most difficult decisions that he had ever have to make, but he had already come to his answer. "I'm sure."
When Chuck and Amara merely regarded him with skepticism, he added, "Don't get me wrong. I wish like hell that she was still around. But like I said, what's dead should stay dead. She an' me, we've both learned that the hard way."
"I will grant your request." began Chuck slowly. "For what it's worth, I always was rather pleased that you two found each other."
God raised his hand, and a stream of blue and white light shot from Dean's chest.
As the agony of carrying thousands of souls inside him gradually faded, the hunter's eyes flicked back to Amara. She was watching him in curiosity, her head tilted to the side. The Darkness reached for her brother's hand, and she spoke, "Thank you, Dean. For giving me that which I have most desired. I will return your kindness."
What the hell did that mean? the man wondered as the two deities merged into two pillars – one of fire, one of smoke – that writhed and twisted around each other until finally disappearing into the sky.
Faith was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Bobby's ancient Chevelle, fiddling with a fiendish-looking contraption made of broken windshield wipers in her lap. Ash had mentioned something about switching their regular poker game to Dungeons and Dragons, and Faith was trying to get this homemade hand-crossbow working in time to threaten his manhood if he tried to trade her face-cards for a D20. She was deeply engrossed in teasing the spring mechanism, so much so that when someone spoke, the Slayer jumped and nearly fell off of the car.
"Hello, Faith."
Dropping the windshield wiper crossbow, Faith slid over the car roof and into the front seat, where she had left her angel blade. She didn't travel anywhere without it, not after that Lucifer incident a while back. The blasted Son of the Morning had cleared out of Heaven – if Alirael's rumor mill was to be believed – but Faith was taking zero chances.
She glared at the two intruders – a short, scruffy man and a statuesque brunette – and demanded, "Who are you? Angels come to gawk at the sad little Slayer? If so, get lost. I don't work with angels, and I don't talk to demons. So frak off."
"Do they really recognize you so little, these creations of yours?" The strange woman asked the man with an odd tilt of her head, seeming inordinately amused.
Faith followed this exchange, her eyes tracking from one figure to the next. "Who are you?" she repeated.
"A friend asked me to check in on you," said the man.
"That's nice. Now tell me who the Hell you are," snarled Faith, and the clear blue sky overhead rumbled with thunder.
"I like her," murmured the woman conspiratorially. She advanced forward. "I am Amara. And this is my brother – apparently he has chosen to go by Chuck."
Faith stared at them in confusion, and then her slow brain put two and two together. Amara. Amara. Amara – "Wait – he – you – I – and then – hold that – you!"
She whirled on the male figure, debated taking a step in his direction, and then settled for just glaring and twitching with anger. "You sick, twisted sonnuvabitch," she swore, censoring herself before she told the Creator of the Universe to go and do something anatomically impossible. "You wrote about them! They were dying and bleeding and praying for you to come and get off your ass and help, and you just wrote about them!"
Hands clenched into fists, Faith turned to the woman. "So. You're this amorphous Darkness that everyone's been so panicked about, huh?'
"Yes," grinned Amara, still amused. She nodded towards her brother. "Please don't stop. It's so refreshing to see someone else yelling at him."
"O-kay." The Slayer looked back to Chuck – God? – whoever he was. None of her anger had abated, but her self-control was reasserting itself. "Why are you here?"
Chuck cleared his throat. "Dean asked me to look in on you."
"Is he – " Faith gritted her teeth. "Is he okay?"
"He appears to be well," shrugged Amara. "As far as appearances go. He is alive, if that was your question."
Well, that was absolutely not comforting in the slightest. "Chuck?"
""Dean and Sam are alive and well."
"And Lucifer?" The Slayer's fingers clenched tighter around the hilt of the angel blade.
Once again, Amara answered for her brother. "I banished him."
Faith glanced back to the Darkness. "Where to?"
"I . . . I do not know."
"Well, that's not going to cause people trouble anytime soon," grumbled the woman sarcastically.
"Er, right," said Chuck.
Useless. The Big Man Upstairs, the God of Heaven and Earth, and he was . . . completely and utterly useless. If Faith had believed in divine intervention, she might have felt a little despairing. As it was, she just rolled her eyes. "If there isn't anything else, I've got a vampire to Slay. Same damn vampire every night," she complained, "but I've almost got the round-off back handspring double backflip stake into the heart combo down cold. Maybe this time I'll do it with my eyes shut."
With that parting shot, the Slayer turned on her heel and walked away, down the gravel driveway that would lead her to the road and the cemetery beyond that. As she rounded the corner, a low female chuckle drifted along to her ears on the afternoon breeze.
"I like her," said Amara for the second time. "Are you sure we can't – ?"
"I made a promise," countered Chuck regretfully.
Faith shivered as the air around her blurred into darkness. What was that? she wondered, scaling the cemetery fence with an urge to get the seven feet of sharp, tall iron between her and the two gods – should they choose to follow. Faith had no idea, but she had an uncomfortable feeling that whatever it was God and his dysfunctional sister were discussing, it was not good.
June 7th, 2018, Lebanon, Kansas, 6:42 p.m.
"Who is this?"
"Huh?"
His mother was slowly making her way through the small stack of dog-eared photos that had so far managed to survive Sam and Dean. She had pulled a particular picture out of the pile and was frowning at it.
Sam glanced down at the image in her hands – and instantly winced. Trust his mother to track that down. At the time that the photo was taken – to be more accurate, at the time that Lily had snapped the picture on her expensive phone like an overly smug ninja and then sent it to Dean the next year inside a card bearing the legend "I know where you sleep" as a combination birthday present and blackmail – the blackmail photo had been taken on their monster-hunting trip to the wilds of Wisconsin, when Sam had been soul-free.
The photo itself wasn't anything special, just his brother and Faith sleeping in the same bed. They weren't cuddling or spooning; they weren't even touching. But Sam always felt uncomfortable looking at that picture, as if he was intruding on a moment that was never meant for him. He felt even more awkward now, knowing that there was no way on earth his repressed, private older brother would have intentionally left that particular picture in the stack for Mary to review.
"Hello?" echoed his mother. "Who's the woman here?"
"That's, uh, I think that's Dean's," said Sam, lightyears away from being a smooth operator, making an unsuccessful grab for the photo in question.
Mary easily dodged his outstretched hands. "Sam," she said, injecting the word with just a touch of impatience. "Who is she?"
Drat. He could not see a single way out of this. The hunter cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. "That's Faith."
"And who is she? This photo doesn't look very old, but your brother didn't mention her."
Sam exhaled. "No, he wouldn't." Toeing the fine line between answering his mother's curiosity and protecting Dean's privacy, he said, "Faith was a Vampire Slayer – one of the better ones. She died a few years back. Dean doesn't talk about it."
"Oh." Mary stared more intently at the photo. "Were they . . . were they close?"
"Yeah." He gently tugged the picture out of her grip and tucked it away into the back of the pile. "You could say that." Sam held out his hands and helped his mother up to her feet. "Come on – I think dinner's almost ready."
"You don't want me to ask him about her, do you?" guessed Mary shrewdly.
The hunter hesitated, torn between the truth and something that would be easier to hear. Finally, he said, "You can ask all you want, Mom; he just won't answer."
"I told you not to bet so high against Pamela, Wes," Faith slid into a wooden chair across the table from her former Watcher and handed him a condensation-laden glass of the closest thing to a dark ale that the Roadhouse carried. "She cheats."
"She's blind!" said Wesley, as if ableism explained why he had not listened to her. He took a slow sip from the ale.
"And a seer," the Slayer added helpfully.
Wesley sprayed his drink across the table. "Oh, of all the . . . Hence the gales of laughter from the audience when I accused you of peeking," he complained.
Grinning, Faith wiped droplets of ale off of her face with the sleeve of her black jacket. "Yep, pretty much. Oh, and I was, you know."
"What?"
"Peeking."
"You rotten girl," grumbled Wesley, and he sought comfort in what remained of his glass.
"Not that much younger than you, Wes," she reminded him.
There was an awkward pause.
"No," Wesley Wyndham-Pryce said finally, "no, I suppose you're not."
Another awkward silence ensued, and then he gamely continued, "Thank you, by the way."
"For the drink? No need. I owed you for last time, anyway."
"No, not for that," the Englishman corrected her. "For bringing me into this little cabal of yours. It is – almost – rather touching."
Shifting in her chair uncomfortably, Faith summoned her courage. "Hey, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about, Wes."
He raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Sunnydale and LA and what I did to you, and – "
"Stop, Faith. That was the past. And I have finally learned that we must let the past rest." Wesley smiled crookedly. "Or else we never will. I propose a toast."
The Slayer leaned back from the table, surprised. "Really?"
"Yes, really." Wesley raised his glass. "To new beginnings."
"I like that." Faith lifted her own beer bottle. "To new beginnings."