For personal enjoyment not for profit, if you recognize it, I don't own it, just bending and folding it.
Chapter 11
One of the clients they had cultivated doing yard work and odd jobs were the Peters, the owners of 1630 Revello Dr. when they saw the for sale sign go up at the beginning of November, Faith and Xander stopped by on their way home from practice to ask if there was anything they could do.
"Mr. Peters," Xander said to the man in his seventies. "We haven't been doing yard jobs while we are doing cross country, but if there's anything you need, were' happy to help."
"Thank you Xander, there are some things that our realtor said we need to keep up and offered to hire someone to do, but we know you kids and Mrs. Peters likes your cousin so we'd like it if you could do the work for us."
This added one more thing to the schedule but did mean that Faith met Mrs. Summers when she was there for the property inspection and when the Peters sang her praises hired her and Xander to do some general yard work and help out when they moved in. Which was why on the first Saturday of Christmas break, Xander and Faith were sitting on the front steps of the soon to be Summers abode, with Joyce's realtor and her Son and Nephew, who were both in college, when Joyce Summers pulled up in a U-haul with her Jeep on a dolly trailer behind.
The realtor had brought donuts, coffee, and a house warming gift of a doormat that said "Bless this house and all those who enter."
Xander was caught flat footed when a twelve year old Dawn climbed out of the cab of the truck whining to her mother.
"I can't believe how small this stupid town is. I mean why couldn't I have stayed in LA with my friends, I'm not the one that got kicked out of school." She said stomping towards the house.
Xander and Faith had talked back and forth, unable to agree on whether the monks inserting Dawn into the Summers' family would change the past or if she wouldn't show up until 2000. They hadn't been able to agree on which way it would be.
Xander quickly recovered when confronted with a whining preteen instead of the woman he had known.
"I'm Dawn, who are you two?" she asked imperiously when she came to stop in front of the porch. Xander didn't say anything
"I'm Faith and this is my cousin Xander, your mom hired us to help you guys move in."
"Well you don't look like movers I've seen before," she said with certainty. "You don't look strong enough." She turned to the two older boys, "You two look more like movers."
The Dave's as they had introduced themselves made non-committal noises.
"Oh, we're stronger than we look," Faith said smiling at the child. She set her cup down on the porch rail. But why don't we go find out what your Mom wants us to do first. The two teenagers and the realtor Mrs. Dobson walked down out to the truck where Mrs. Summers was having a quiet but intense conversation with Buffy who looked sulky.
Joyce saw them approaching and said something emphatically to Buffy before turning to them.
"Good morning Joan, Faith," she said and looked at Xander, "you must be Xander, Mrs Peters had good things to say about you." She said extending her hand to Xander who took it. "Dave and Dave, thank you for driving down and helping us load things yesterday."
"This is my oldest Buffy, and you met Dawn."
"Pleasure to meet you and your daughters Ma'am," Xander said.
"If you have your keys Mrs. Summers, Xander and I can get you the car off the trailer," Faith offered. "We've done it before at our uncle's garage."
"Thank you Faith," Joyce said with relief, I had to get one of the people from the rental office to help me with it last night." She handed her keys to Faith who with Xander made quick work of getting the jeep free of the trailer and then unhooking the trailer from the rental truck. While they were unhooking the SUV, Xander, heard Joyce talking to Mrs. Dobson.
"Thank you for helping
After being told which rooms were each of the girls, the kids quickly unloaded the things in the jeep setting boxes and luggage in closets the next few hours would have been much worse if it was if they hadn't had three abnormally strong teenagers and the two college students. Dawn was somewhat helpful but after the first hour, she was just cranky.
Xander was sure the Dave's noticed that Buffy was much stronger than she appeared but they said nothing.
Mrs. Dobson, drove Joyce and Dawn to go pick up lunch getting Dawn out of their hair as they unloaded the last of the furniture. Faith was upstairs talking with Buffy, Xander could hear them moving around and voices but couldn't hear what they were saying over the stereo they had hooked up.
"You guys are pretty good at this," Dave, Joan's nephew, observed. "Aunt Joan pulls us in to do this fairly often in the summer, there are times we could use the extra hand if you and your cousin are interested."
"We're pretty busy in the Summer, but we might be able to help."
"Aunt Joan pays pretty well," Dave said.
Xander dug out a small notebook he carried in his pocket and scribbled his name, pager number, and email address on one of the paper and then ripped it out handing it to Dave.
"Cool, if Aunt Joan asks us to find more people we'll probably call you. The last one of Dave's Frat buddies that showed up to help was hung over as hell and unpleasant."
The conversation would have continued, but the ladies returned with lunch.
Over lunch, Joan was telling Joyce and the girls about the town.
"Solvang has wooden shoes, we have left over customs that are based superstitious."
Faith piped up, "My Latin tutor says it is likely because of the varied groups that settled the area, Native tribes, Spanish, Russian, Welsh, And Scandinavian."
Joyce's eyebrows rose when she mentioned Latin, apparently the sporty young woman wearing a school athletic team t-shirt didn't strike her as a language scholar.
"I hadn't heard that, but it makes sense," Mrs Dobson said. "the main one is you won't see many welcome mats. It's almost a Feng Shui thing, if you unthinkingly invite anyone into your home you are inviting bad luck into your home."
"It's true, when I moved here one of Aunt Jessica's friends looked at me oddly when I invited them in," Faith offered.
One of the Dave's nodded in agreement.
"That's going to take some getting used to," Joyce said.
"It's just one of the quirks of Sunnydale," Joan said patting her hand.
Changing the subject, Joyce asked Faith and Xander, "So what grade are you two in?"
"Sophomores, Mrs. Summers," Xander replied.
"That's great, Buffy, your first day here and you've already met two of your classmates."
"yeah great, Mom," Buffy said unenthusiastically.
As they finished up lunch Joyce looked around. She then turned to the Daves and Faith and Xander, "Thank you four, I'm surprised we got everything off the truck so quickly. Buffy, Dawn, are there any of the heavier pieces that you want help moving before I let these nice people get on about the rest of their day?"
Both of her daughters shook their heads no.
Joyce reached for her purse and handed each of the helpers money. "Well then, again thank you for your hard work this morning. Now it's time for us to do all the little details to make this home livable."
"You're welcome," Faith answered then turned to Buffy. "Since we're going to be in class together, do you want to get together, we can show you around the mall and the other hang outs around town over break?"
"I guess," Buffy said.
"Do you want to get together Monday?"
Before Buffy could answer, her mom interjected, "That would be great Buffy, after a couple of days of unpacking you can use the break."
"How's 10:30 Monday sound, we'll go hit the mall and watch the crazy Christmas shoppers."
"Okay I guess," Buffy said sounding unenthusiastic.
Since they had keys to the watcher's house, Sunday afternoon saw Faith and Xander moving some additional electronics into the house so it would be there when Mr. Giles arrived.
Monday morning, They went by Buffy's house she let them in and excused herself to finish getting ready. The sat at the kitchen counter for a few minutes until Buffy returned.
"Where's your mom and sister?" Faith asked.
"Mom's at the gallery, My Dad picked up Dawn this morning, she's spending most of Christmas break with him," Buffy explained.
"So it's just me and Mom," Buffy said with a sigh. "Sorry if I sounded dramatic on Saturday, Dawn thinks this is all my fault."
"Sorry, Family can be a pain," Faith offered.
"Yeah, that about says it," Buffy said.
They headed out the door.
"Hope you don't mind, Xander's girlfriend and our friend Jesse wanted to join us." Faith said as they climbed into the van.
"Nah, It's cool."
Their first stop was to pick up Willow, who bounced into the van in a pair of tight jeans and tight thermal top, giving Xander a kiss on the cheek before landing in the passenger seat. She turned and held out her hand to Buffy, "Hi, I'm Willow."
"Hi I'm the new girl, Buffy," she said with a small smile.
"Welcome to Sunnydale."
Shortly they were at the mall where they met up with Jesse. When he introduced himself, Buffy did a double take.
"Sorry I thought –"
"Yeah Jesse, not Jessica, that's okay, I can be just one of the girls, talk about make up play dress up at the next slumber party. I'll be on Faith's team during the pillow fight, you can have Willow."
"Not happening," Willow said with a laugh.
The five teens had a fun morning at the mall mostly browsing and chatting. When the three girls made turn into Victoria Secret, the boys said they be across the way at Sam Goody.
After their foray into the land of lace, They met the boys at the record store. Xander watched as Buffy was approached by Harmony, he heard the cheerleader say, "Hi I'm Harmony, you must be new in town."
"I'm Buffy, yeah, we just moved here."
"Well I just wanted to let you know that you look like somebody who is an A-lister and hanging out with Harris and Lehane's pack won't do you a lot of favors socially."
"Pack?" Buffy asked.
"They're always together." Xander thought as opposed to the gaggle of cheerleaders that Harmony wandered around with. He could see Aura and two others over by the listening stations.
"I won't say that they're trouble, but don't get on their bad side and if you don't choose your friends carefully you'll never rise above them." She tossed her hair, "Anyway, I'll see you around."
Faith walked up as Buffy stood there with a perplexed look on her face, "Yeah Harmony has that effect on people."
"I'm not sure, but I think she was trying to tell me hanging with you guys was dangerous or social suicide."
"Well Harmony doesn't like me much and well one of her ex boyfriends – let's not talk about this in the middle of a store. Why don't we grab some lunch, the food court is a zoo, so I was thinking Chinese buffet," Faith said.
"Buffet sounds good."
Once they made their way to the restaurant, they took a table in the corner. Buffy sat on the end.
"You guys seem nice enough," Buffy started, "but Harmony kind of said your get into trouble and well – we moved here because – my mom would freak." Buffy said flustered.
"Hey, we're not some gang or something, Harmony and I had a problem last year." Faith started to explain. "Okay back story, because you'll probably hear this the first week of school. I've told you Xander is my cousin, I live with him and my aunt Jessica. I live with them because my mom is in Prison. Long story short, she had some run ins with the cops. Mostly just public intoxication but her taste in men tended towards the thug so there were a couple of more serious situations. One of her last boyfriends had a buddy that thought I was old enough to mess with. I broke his leg, there was screaming and fighting between Mom's guy and his friend, Mom was either drunk or stoned to the gills, she got into the act. The cops showed up, they were paying attention to the two guys beating on each other and not my mom. Mom took a swing with a lamp, and connected with one of the cops. Now she's serving five to seven in Massachusetts women's center and I'm here living with Aunt Jessica and Xander. This is a small town, it came out last year among other things that I had been the victim in a sexual assault charge. One of the football player's thought that would make me an easy target, I guess he didn't hear about the part where I used an aluminum bat on the guy, and made some comments in the locker room, which may or may not have caused Xander and Jesse to teach him the error or his ways. Dipshit happened to be somebody that Harmony wanted to date. So I'm on her shit list, gotta love that logic."
"So we don't get into trouble, in fact we're all on the honor roll," Willow said. She pointed to Jesse's Letterman jacket. "The four of us are on the cross country team."
"Just small town BS," Jesse said.
"Great, I thought Hemery was bad for gossip. Let me get this out of the way because otherwise it's going to be awkward and I'll either be dancing around things or have to explain when somebody brings it up at school. I had some problems in school last year. There was a big fight at prom that ended up with the gym burning down. I ran off for a couple of days with the guy I was dating. When I god back, the police were trying to pin the whole thing on me and my parents ended up sending me to get counseling." She took a breath, "They didn't catch who did it, but evidence came out showing I wasn't the one that did it and my therapist says I was just acting out from fear. But by that time the problems my Mom and Dad were having had blown up and now they're divorced. Even though I was cleared of charges, the school didn't want to let me back in claiming zero tolerance. So when mom had the opportunity to buy the gallery here we moved."
After lunch, they dropped Jesse off at home, Buffy said she had more unpacking to do and Faith offered to help. Xander and Willow begged off as Willow was headed out of town with her parents that evening.
Back at the Summers' house, the girls were in Buffy's room as Buffy unpacked boxes, Faith helping and admiring Buffy's shoes.
"What size are you?" Buffy asked
"8 most of the time." Faith answered.
"Well, I'll have to peruse your closet then, I might not be against the occasional exchange program."
"Cool."
Faith started unpacking Buffy's hope chest and as she lifted the sweaters out to put in the closet she uncovered a stake and a dagger fell out of one of the folded up sweaters.
Buffy brushed her aside to pick up the weapons, "I'm sorry, props for a Halloween costume. I thought those were in another box."
Faith stood back and crossed her arms, then thought better of it, if Buffy reacted badly she wanted her hands free. "Buffy, I know those aren't props." She paused. "I know you're the slayer."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Buffy said eyes wide, she still had the stake in her hand.
Faith held up her hands, "Buffy could you put the stake down?"
Buffy looked at her, eyes afraid, then looked at the stake in her hand. She set it back in the chest and closed the lid. "Who the fuck are you and what the hell are you talking about?" she demanded.
"Look, I figured Mr. Giles would introduce us once school started, but then Mrs. Dobson called and when your mom said your name I knew it had to be you." She said holding her hands out in front of her in a calming manner. "I'm a potential, the watcher that was stationed here until the beginning of the month told me your name before he left."
"So you're some wannabe, screw that, were you and your friends stalking me, probably thinking you were so cool, knowing my secrets? I even told you some of what happened. Were you sick freaks laughing at me while I told you that? You can keep the whole slayer thing. Tell Giles or whatever his name is that I'm done, you can take over."
"Xander knows about you being the slayer because I told him last night. The others don't, they know I'm a potential and a bit about what's out there, but mostly because I want them to be safe and safe in this town doesn't come easy."
"Wanna be, hell no," Faith said. "Might get hosed by fate and end up being, maybe, I hope to hell not. Buffy, you got the short end of the stick – hell, I think the slayer package should come with an automatic winning lottery number to compensate – but from what I've read, even if you wanted to stop, that's not how it works. One Girl, in the world empowered with mystic mojo and eleven secret herbs and spices, and the fight doesn't end."
"Yeah, I know, the fight doesn't end until it ends me, and then somebody other poor girl, maybe you – at least you seem to know what the hell is going on – maybe some unlucky girl like me who's biggest worry is whether her dad is going to notice the hickey on her neck or if she should sleep with her boyfriend or not, has to pick up the stake and keep fighting. Screw that, I'm done, I'm just going to go to school and graduate. The fight will have to go on without me."
"Problem with that is if I read the journals right, as far as the things in the dark go, you're the fastest gunslinger around and they're going to come after you and on top of that, if you moved here there's a fairly good chance that some nasty is going to show up. Either fate moved you here to counter it, or because you're here it will come after you."
Buffy sat down on the bed and hugged her pillow, "I just thought coming here would be different, I don't want to get in trouble. I mean, when Mrs. Dobson was talking about not inviting people in I almost threw up."
"Unfortunately, yeah vampires are a thing here, people don't talk about it, they talk about animal attacks, and gangs with BBQ forks. People don't want to know," Faith said.
"So what is the story with you?"
"Well like I told you earlier, I moved here to live with my aunt. Then almost a year ago, the school librarian gives me the whole, 'The world is older than we know' speech. I was already taking Hapkido and working out, but I've upped the intensity and started studying Latin and Greek so I know what I'm up against."
"Why do I feel like I was dropped in the deep end?"
"Mr. Post didn't say a lot, but it sounds like you were. He told me that I was found very late for a potential, so if I was found late, being found after you were called happens incredibly rarely." Faith wasn't going to say that from her reading of the journals in the alternate future, there were periods of time that weren't accounted for meaning there had to be slayers that weren't found in the past.
"So you've been doing the classroom work. Let me tell you it sucks being out there."
"Buffy, the last watcher who was here, Mr. Post said that potentials don't go out into the field but really, like I said, I saw my first vampire at the Bronze, the fifteen and up club I told you about. Before coming here, there was an old woman in my apartment building, she was a witch, she told me about the bad stuff out there. There's a magic store here in town that isn't just new age junk. It seemed that Mr. Post would object so Xander and I didn't tell him, we've staked almost two dozen vampires in the last year."
"See, you can do this, you don't need me," Buffy said.
"We've been able to do it, because we take them when they aren't expecting it, when they come to our places, we have a good idea of where there may be more but we aren't strong enough to go after them, only take them out when they come out alone to hunt, or when we can corner them and take them in daylight. We work together, we use weapons, and we catch them off guard. There has only been one of them that matched up to the way the watcher's books describe as master vampires, and I only think that because she had her victim hypnotized. I think we got her because she was focused on her victim. The rest have been strong and fast, but thankfully dumb. I don't see that continuing, if you're here it probably means something bigger is coming." Faith watched Buffy take in what she was saying.
"Okay so why don't we call Mr. Giles and get him to figure out why I'm here."
"Mr. Giles isn't here yet, he doesn't arrive until after Christmas."
"Well then I guess we're in a holding pattern until then."
"Unless you want to start training. I'd like the opportunity to spar with somebody who is stronger and faster than normal that won't actually tear my throat out if they get the upper hand."
"Maybe, look, this is all a bit much to take in, I'll call you in a day or two, after Christmas, to talk," Buffy said getting up.
"Okay, I'll talk to you then," Faith said following her to the front door she left and headed back to the Harris household.
Faith jogged to the Harris household taking a short cut through the Drier's yard rather than going around the long block and hopped the back wall. She saw Xander's van in the drive so she figured he was home from dropping off Willow. She unlocked the back door and went in. She could hear the TV on in the living room and grabbing a glass of water, she walked in to join her cousin. And stopped in the doorway when she saw a topless Willow sitting straddling Xander making out with his hands on her jean clad ass.
"Sorry," She said ducking back into the kitchen.
She heard Willow make a strangled noise and then heard scrabbling for clothing.
"Hi Faith," she heard a few moments later, she walked in to see both Xander and Willow red-faced but sitting clothed on the couch.
"Hey guys, Sorry Willow, I figure Xander would have already dropped you off."
"It's okay, we just weren't expecting you so soon," Willow said with a wave of her hand as she tucked herself under Xander's arm.
"So how was hanging out with Buffy?" Xander asked.
"Fun, girl has a wicked shoe addiction though."
"there are worse things."
"Yeah, like nearly silent cousins who walk in unannounced," Xander griped.
"Hey, not my fault you weren't paying attention, would you prefer it was your mom walking in?"
"Yeah, not really," Xander said as Willow buried her face in his chest.