TITLE: Return
AUTHOR: Roseveare, t.l.green@talk21.com
RATING: R, for language mostly
SUMMARY: 'She can't believe they're the last ones left.' Faith and 
Wesley, ten years on.
SPOILERS: AU post-season 3.
NOTES 1: "What is it like down there, Charides?" "Very dark." "And 
what of return?" "All lies." - from Callimachus, on Hades.
NOTES 2: This went through about four different titles before 
settling to this one; the draft was posted to the workshop list and 
to beta as 'Resurrection' and variations thereof. Also, for the 
record, this story contains just about everything I've always thought 
I'd never do; non-linearity, short point of view intercuts, present 
tense...
THANKS: to Ellen Ross and Katta for beta, the folks on the angelfic 
discussion list, and to Viola for helping me find a title.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, just borrowing, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda. 


------




Return




I.


She can't believe they're the last ones left.

It's some kind of irony, after all this time. Her and him, he and 
she, Faith and Wesley sitting in a tree. It's a bad fucking joke. 
Twelve years in prison for murder and by the time she came out 
everyone else was goddamned *dead*; people who might've understood; 
people it would've been reasonable to go to pleading sanctuary. 
People she hadn't had stripped to the bone, at her mercy, under her 
thumb and her fist for five hours on an evening twelve years gone 
that'd kept her company all the cold lonely nights inside.




She's an obligation he wishes he could refuse.

Closed up like a fist, her eyes grim when she looks at him, too much 
of his own failure behind them. He could cope better if he didn't 
feel like every moment of his mere presence was exacerbating in her a 
guilt almost beyond endurance. Her self-condemnation only reminds 
him. A lot of people have left scars on him. She's still the only one 
who made a game of it. 

She tortured him. For hours. She enjoyed it. It isn't something he 
can forget, but he isn't going to fail her this time.




Far from the man she remembers, he seems to have developed an 
aversion to suits that's almost funny. He wears leather these days, 
protective armour, a tougher darker second-skin the knives and claws 
and the whole rest of the world too find just a little harder to 
penetrate. She remembers how that feels. It looks good on him, even 
though his figure's gone gaunt as hell with age and his hair's 
started to grey - his face developed a toughness that compensates at 
some point in the years she missed.

She doesn't wear leather. She doesn't wear fucking blue, either, not 
after over a decade of blue. Stupid colour, stupid uniform, stupid 
institution, and she misses it. Somewhere in those twelve years it 
got to be, if not home, a place she felt she belonged. 

Institutionalised. Yeah, she read that. Done a lot of reading, in all 
that time. Has certificates to prove it. Yay her.

She feels agoraphobic, outside. All the world opened up around her, 
and she can't breathe. She guesses she'll have to learn to live with 
that, unless she feels like killing someone else to get thrown back 
in the pen.

Jeeze, Wes, man. Joke.




He's wondered about her new tendency to dress in neutrals - white, 
beige, cream, grey, green, not much enamoured any more of bright 
colours or dark. Although the paler shades and lighter fabrics show 
off the muscle tone underneath to greater effect than tight black and 
leather did. 

He finds it almost amusing, that they swapped over. And of course, it 
goes deeper than fashion, deeper than skin. If they could talk to 
each other, maybe they could strike a balance. 

If they could talk. Beyond monosyllables, beyond lectures, beyond 
factual monotones; the polite veneer his parents drummed into him 
versus what passes for her courtesy. But. 

It's been only a month. Give it time.

He was starting to feel very weary of the world. If nothing else, her 
reappearance in his life has knocked him out of his reverie. He's 
grateful to be given a feeling of purpose again. At least sometimes 
he is, when he sits and thinks hard about it, because that's when he 
isn't walking round with his nerves strung tight almost to snapping, 
remembering she's had him helpless in a way nobody else ever has, 
remembering there's a piece of him she'll always own.

He tells her it doesn't matter any more. He tells himself he forgives 
her. He pretends it's true.




His company is based in one of the big collection of upmarket 
converted office suites that used to be Angel's big old hotel. He 
told her, a couple of weeks in, that the suite came up for lease two 
years ago and he bagged it then. So there's still a PI agency in the 
Hyperion, six years down the line from when Angel Investigations gave 
its last gasp. 

He calls his business the Wyndham-Pryce agency, and for some reason 
is self-conscious as hell about the name.

When she first arrived, she was self-conscious as hell, too. Shit, it 
wasn't like she would've gone to *him* if there'd been anyone else 
she could take her questions to. 

Looking for names she recognised, she'd tracked down Xander, still in 
Sunnydale (and, damn, were there a lot of Harris's in the phone 
directory). Un-thrilled to hear from his psycho-killer-ex-lay, un-
thrilled that his prissy bitch of a wife had answered the phone to 
his psycho-killer-ex-lay, and probably still un-thrilled about the 
whole strangulation-sex thing too, he angrily told her that Wesley 
Whingeham-stick-up-his-ass-Pryce still had some kind of business in 
LA but so far as he knew, everyone else was dead or in England. For, 
like, years now.

Remembering the closeness of their friendship, she couldn't bring 
herself to ask him what happened to Buffy in 2006. Steeled herself to 
go see Wesley, who the answer was less likely to cause pain.

Xander would've been amazed by her sensitivity, if he hadn't slammed 
the phone down even as her resolve crystallized.

The Wyndham-Pryce agency was in the phone book. The address surprised 
her. She got a taxi to the door of the Hyperion, a place she'd seen 
only in Angel's enthusiastic descriptions when he was new-established 
there and much with the DIY back in her early days in prison.

She stood outside the door, looking up, wondering what it must've 
been like here in a second-hand storybook past where this sprawling 
building was the nerve centre of Angel's operation; Angel's family.




The first time he met her again he'd taken her for a client, inviting 
her up through the speaker system in reception. At his desk with his 
head half-buried in paperwork and his concentration somewhere in the 
twelfth century, he didn't register her furtive presence in the room 
for at least a minute before he looked up to find her standing there 
and with customary grace fell out his chair in shock.

She leaned over, helped him up, dusted him down, pinched his 
backside, and told him she liked the new look.

Some things never changed.

Other things did. Like the way in which, after that, she grew sombre 
and awkward. She was out of place, disconnected, lost. Twelve years 
in prison, and she'd been a minor when her first accidental crime 
sent her down that road. She'd never really lived in the world. 

If he were to divide them up in proportion to blame, how many of 
those years were down to him? 

He figures he has a claim to at least four. 

She didn't come to him to be taken in, but he could do no less.




In twelve years...

The world changed. Country boundaries vanished and shifted. New 
regimes came to power and old ones fell. Some of the new ones fell, 
too. She watched it pass by. Events that couldn't touch her where she 
was.

People died. She doesn't give a fuck about what happened to Madonna 
or George Bush; it's the deaths she only heard about afterwards that 
hurt. The ones that should've rocked her world but didn't because she 
never knew. She's been wondering what dead people have been doing 
with their lives now for the past two, seven, eight years.

Computers, cars and cellphones got smaller and sleeker, then got 
larger again. A bunch of drugs got legalised. Protests about global 
warming turned into mass riots at the end of the decade. The United 
States of America went to war twice while she remained a 
dispassionate observer.

Wesley Wyndham-Pryce's hair went grey and he grew old before his time.

Odd to think that she never wondered, in prison, about what he was 
doing now. He's been twelve years frozen in her mind as a broken doll 
tied to a chair with her marks all over him.

You'd think that in twelve years she could've found the fucking 
humanity to loose the ropes, clean him up, let him out.




He's spent much of the last month teaching her to fight again.

She's still strong, and you wouldn't think instincts like that could 
dry up in prison, but it's as though she lost the spark. She used to 
be proud she was built to fight. Now she stares down grimly at her 
victims, as though contemplating those other old corpses less 
deserving, and obviously *he* can't get her to talk out her problems.

He finds himself furious when she scores a slash on his thigh in a 
training session and freaks out so much that, although he's the only 
one close to being a match for even an apathetic Slayer, he has to 
find her a new sparring partner in Gregory, the second newest member 
of his staff.

It's after that incident he finds her sitting, rocking, staring at 
his blood on the sword in her hands. He turns his back and stalks off 
without a word.

Beginning to doubt he has anything to offer her after all. If Angel 
had survived... maybe even Buffy... if Giles hadn't done what he 
did... if Angel hadn't...

There's nobody left; he can only fail or succeed on his own.

For twelve years he's ignored her existence, forgotten about her like 
everyone else and he never realised, never thought, never knew that 
she was alone.

He thinks - if he'd found it in him to visit the prison, to start the 
reconciliation all that time ago, maybe they wouldn't be so lost as 
they are now. Maybe things could have been different.

Maybe a lot of things could have been different.




He dreams...

//the tip of the glass sliding over the skin of his chest and oh God 
she presses down that little bit harder, the blood welling up around 
the shard. her eyes flicker between the glass/his face/the glass/his 
face and the glass meanders in a lazy journey from sternum to 
shoulder. there are techniques for dealing with torture and as a 
Watcher of course he knows these but he can't seem to disconnect. his 
eyes blankly stare at her as she pulls back the glass and ditches it 
into the breast pocket of his torn and stained shirt. then she's 
curled up in his lap again, her weight on the cuts and bruises she 
already inflicted, and one arm creeps over his shoulder for balance 
as she places her hand palm-down over the oozing cut and rubs and 
squeezes. he gasps and the gag chokes him.//

She wakes up screaming.


-----




II.


She remembers the first time she was told what it meant to be the 
Slayer. One girl in all the world (in the actually-not-really sense 
since Buffy fucked that one up and now she supposes so does she). 
Strong. Special. They didn't list 'doomed to die young' but she sorta 
figured that one out for herself. She thinks looking back that that's 
where a lot of the rage came from. She finally learned she was 
special at seventeen, that her shit-lousy life had been leading to 
something, and Something was death.

She's not dead. She's not young.




He has survived. Torture. Gunshot. A multitude of stab wounds. 
Demons. Slayers. Vampires. Lawyers. And no small amount of humans in 
there, too. 

Fourteen years since the Council first sent him out. A plethora of 
potential deaths, from Sunnydale to the agency, from the first time 
Angel tried to kill him (softly, with a pillow; a soft death, for all 
that rage) to the last where he all but succeeded (metallic slice, 
hot gush, burning pain), through the long years beyond.

He should not be alive today. With the catalogue of failures at his 
back there is no way on Earth he should be the one left standing. But 
he is.




That first unsettling reunion in his office he made her tea and they 
talked stilted talk for about three hours, until they'd covered just 
about every angle of the last twelve years her brain could process. 
It wasn't everything - there is always more, and even now she keeps 
thinking of things and people and *wondering*. Half the time he 
doesn't know or remember any more than she does, so she ends up 
phoning around everywhere and trying to coax information from the 
scary sprawl the internet's become.

Angel stopped visiting around the fifth year. It'd been patchy at 
times before that, and it tapered off towards the end. From every 
other week to every other month, until she could no longer be sure if 
he stopped coming because he couldn't or because he simply forgot.

Either way she forgave it. She was ready for it. Had never expected 
constancy, not after her crimes, and had always known Angel did 
dangerous work that could end with him dusted any day. Nobody else 
ever came. 

At least, not in visiting hours.

But she didn't need Angel or anyone else to walk the path she'd 
chosen. The awareness of him was enough. Him and the others from the 
stories he told her. Doyle. Darla. Lindsey. Connor. If they could 
follow the road, so could she.

She could make the journey alone. It was only when she reached the 
end of the tunnel that she realised the journey had been the point, 
the light at the end no more than illusion, and where did that leave 
her if not fucked?

Free after twelve years' penance, and no life left to lead.




He sends staff out on missions and she clutters up the office. Falls 
asleep across the row of low, padded client chairs, reads books 
(apparently she learned to enjoy this in prison: he is, frankly, 
amazed) more often than she watches video discs on the office 
computers. 

She is just there. He supposes something dangerous could come up, it 
doesn't often in daylight but it has on occasion, so he leaves her 
be. So far as he is aware, she has nowhere else *to* be; vestigial 
Slayer, ex-con, child of an abusive broken family even he shudders to 
contemplate. Every friend she didn't drive away lost to death, all 
those apologies and goodbyes unsaid. He knows something about that 
himself. The ghosts don't drag her under. 

The current Slayer is called Sondra and living in Italy. The third 
since Buffy died and Faith... well. The others didn't last a year, 
sacrifices to the cause. From them, at least, the cause took only 
Life.

She is his penance, sullen slump of challenge and dark eyes whose 
gaze pins him to a past he'd rather avoid, the crack of a dirty joke 
that falls raw on the air even if he's heard it before.

Nights, she patrols. At times he accompanies her, but is content to 
trust her alone. Trust. Yes, he knows she's changed; yes, he trusts 
her - at least, intellectually. He still needs to get the message 
across to his body, those occasions she brushes past him and he 
instinctively goes cold and starts remembering the feel of ropes and 
helplessness.




She wonders how the hell the asshole she remembers from Sunnydale 
turned into this gaunt warrior with all his battle scars. She 
remembers the derision from Buffy's Bold Band of Merry Men, thinks on 
the reality that he outlasted any of them.

Remembers they didn't like her too much either and, watching him on 
the phone to a client, all stern-faced and tough-voiced, she takes 
odd comfort in that.

For the first time it occurs to her that Wesley, back then, was also 
young. A body full of starch and a head drummed full of regulations 
and expectations, armour against the world finding out he didn't have 
a fucking clue what he was doing. So along comes Faith to screw up 
his life, and a year later torture him for it.

Her mind blanks on her. Thought shuts down and all she sees is grey. 
An indeterminable time later she clicks back to reality staring at 
the dusky green walls of his office.




He'd never have imagined she would change so much. Faith, in watered-
down shades. He wonders where all the energy and rage have gone; 
suspects they have merely gone inside, inverted rather than 
eradicated; ponders what would happen if she ever let them out and 
checks again with the prison psychiatrists who insist she's sane.

She is by all accounts the very definition of rehabilitated. The 
psychiatrists are positive.

They're not too sure about him.

Neither are the co-workers whose odd sideways stares inform him 
they're still curious to know why he's sheltering the woman who 
tortured him a dozen years ago. Even Kate, who knows more about his 
history than any of them, is convinced he must be harbouring some 
masochistic tendencies, to invite her into his home as well as his 
workplace. But his own paranoid jumpiness and cursed bloody nerves 
are a minor issue when weighed against the fact she must not be left 
alone, and nobody else he trusts is about to co-habit with a 
supernaturally-strong murderer (reformed).

He shares living space with his torturer, and makes an effort not to 
lock his room at night.




One thing about this new set-up he's got going, she supposes nothing 
says better that people can change. He's got some guy who used to 
work for the evil law firm, an ex-con, and a bitch of a blonde ex-cop 
who doesn't seem to have a civil word for anyone. And she thinks 
Gregory might be a demon. She needs to quiz Wes on that one at some 
point.

The lady cop is the one who took her confession, and she's not sure 
how she feels about that, remembering how she was all out to stuff 
Angel in a sunny cell. 

Despite the fact the agency must bring in some money for Wes to have 
four other members of staff on the payroll, his apartment is still a 
shithole. A different shithole to the one she remembers checking out 
before moving on to Queen C's place (deciding he'd probably avoid 
coming home to it whenever possible), but a shithole still. Books 
stacked to the ceiling mark about the only thing there that doesn't 
surprise her. She finds herself tidying his rooms for him and it 
freaks her out.

But certainly neither of them have a problem with living in the bad 
part of town. Hell, he looks scary, these days (twelve years ago 
she'd have been rolling on the floor at *that* concept), and maybe 
she doesn't, but that's an illusion. She is scary. She can't change 
that. Twelve years inside can't change that. She still has the 
strength to break him in half without breaking a sweat. Those twelve 
years on his side can't change that either. He's still human. 

She sleeps on the couch. He hasn't so far shown enough inane chivalry 
to offer her the bed. Probably only because he knows she'd laugh him 
outta there.

She has no damn idea why he chooses to tolerate her presence 24/7 
when she can't touch him without him flinching. The man has issues a 
mile wide. 

Well, snap.

Someday she'll get the whole story out of him as to what the fuck 
happened while she was gone.




Faith is the oldest Slayer on record, or rather off-the-record, 
courtesy of an incident soon after Buffy had gone when, suffering 
from a severe case of Screwed, the Council broke into the prison, 
tied her down, stopped her heart and restarted it, then took 
themselves and their toys away for good.

He can't believe she doesn't hate them for it, but she claims 
it's 'five by five'. They needed someone to fight the good fight. She 
couldn't do it from a cell. 

She's grateful they chose to re-start her heart, he's amazed they 
did. It must be Giles' influence. In fact, the incident 
had 'Ripper's' signature all over it. While Wesley admits the logic 
of it to be sound, he doesn't know if he could have ordered the 
actions carried out himself.

She's thirty-two. They killed her and freed her and cut her loose. 
But she still has the strength, the skills, the mission. Another 
anachronism, abandoned by the Council. Another reason why *he's* not 
going to abandon her, even if her presence does wake him some nights 
in a cold sweat. 




Buffy's dead. She knew that back when they killed her, not that they 
gave her much chance to ask questions.

She remembers the feel of the gag in her mouth and her hands and feet 
tied down; the spark and *thud* as they pressed something to her 
chest that popped the world like a bubble. When she woke up she had 
three broken ribs and a man's taste on her lips for the first time in 
years and her brain processed things funny for about a week before 
settling again to something approaching normal.

The Slayer dreams she'd been having stopped. No use in prison. 
Someone else got tagged. Council bastards.

Why didn't they kill her *dead*?

She isn't sure whether she feels more satisfied to have her answer or 
betrayed by Wesley's explanation. Sure, she hasn't done Giles too 
many favours. But there had been a while. A while back at the 
beginning. When they didn't get on so bad. He was her Watcher longer 
than Wesley was. 

Wesley who betrayed the Council for her.




She still gives him nightmares. He's experienced worse, done worse, 
since she tried her hand at carving her pain out of his flesh, has no 
place withholding forgiveness. He's read the books, of course. Knows 
how torture changes a person. She shattered something in him. An 
innocence, a vital piece of his worldview. 

That piece of him that is hers, carried with her these twelve years, 
he wonders how often she takes it out and fondles the memory of his 
pain, of the sounds he made trying not to scream. He doesn't believe 
she's changed so much so fundamentally that she doesn't still get off 
on pain, at least until her new conscience prickles her and she 
starts to obsess on her guilt all over again.

If she could only meet his eyes.

If she could meet his eyes and look at him square, talk to him 
normally, he could tell himself it didn't happen and there's nothing 
between them now but an odd alliance of old enemies much changed by 
time. 

As long as she won't look at him it will always be there; her guilt 
keeping him a victim.




The flinch is starting to really. fuck. her. off. She never expected 
forgiveness, but in the weeks she's been with him she's seen him face 
demons and vampires, lawyers and angry clients, and it's almost an 
abomination, the way Mr. flat-voiced, stony-eyed and bad-tempered is 
wiped away in a flinch by her touch. She figures landing her fist in 
his face would only exacerbate the issue, but still. She'd kinda like 
to do that, when she walks in on him getting shaved in the bathroom 
and he almost cuts his own goddamn throat.

Speaking of which. *Still* hasn't got the story behind that scar. 
Doubts somehow that it was from a shaving accident.

She asks if she could work days and pull a paycheck like everyone 
else 

(if she asks him for money he flinches handing it to her as her palm 
brushes his, touching the soft pale flesh of a scar from when 
something with claws took a slice out of his hand and wrist, and she 
wonders how far it extends up his arm. she didn't put that one there 
and she thinks it looks pretty cool, like there's nothing better to 
say badass-demon-hunter-I-mean-business than this ugly brand. it's a 
message clear as writing. 'I survived,' it says, 'I survived 
something with claws this big, you think you could?'

and she had big claws too and maybe she's getting a little obsessive 
over the scars),

tells him she wanted the paycheck so she could get her own place and 
get out from under his feet all the time. He seems reluctant. He 
gives her the paycheck.




Memory slaps her with a chaos of vision...

//standing with a makeshift flamethrower in her hands she rages on 
his culpability and prepares to inflict damage no healing or long-
sleeved-shirts in LA summer will ever cover. if you'd been a better 
Watcher, she says and the kick is that it's true, he brought himself 
to this place a mannequin strung to a chair at her mercy, so she 
smiles as she lifts the inferno to his face because even he can't 
tell himself he doesn't deserve this and she knows the truth comes 
closer to breaking him than anything else she's done.//

He recoils from the history in her eyes.


------




III.


He's afraid he's failing her all over again. He tried to give her a 
home; she wants to leave it. And he's afraid - if she's not ready, 
then loneliness could turn her back to the dark. But maybe it's his 
own fears he's projecting. He signed away his soul in blood, once, 
and no amount of helping the helpless in Los Angeles, 2012, can 
reverse that.

If he can save her, at least that piece of him Faith owns will be 
safe when he's taken to Hell.

He wishes he'd killed Lilah the first time she let him close enough 
to wrap his hands around her perfect throat. 

She has her desk in the underworld now, and he heard the farewell 
present she sent the vampire, that exploded in Connor's face instead, 
was what finally put the seal on Angel's fate, but he doesn't know 
for sure. He never talked to any of the people who would've known, 
and now there's nobody left to talk to except Giles in England (and 
he supposes the Watchers Council *could* have been keeping tabs on 
Angel back then, but on the other hand, does he really want to know 
half a dozen years on? besides, if Giles knows about Angel he knows 
about him, too, and probably wouldn't talk to him anyway) and Faith, 
whose tenure in jail ensures that she knows less than he does.

The two people in his life he loved most for longest both turned 
their backs on him. He carries debts of guilt he'll never repay. All 
that's left is her; his very first failure, dragged out from 
suspended animation; a second chance.




So Giles is in England, alive and still active if not on the front 
lines anymore, and apparently the only other anyone can say for sure 
is.

Angel is dust. Not the time he stopped visiting, enough after to be 
something of a painful jab to her heart, but not long enough to say 
he'd forgotten entirely. If he'd lived, he might've come back 
eventually.

Buffy wasn't long after Angel. Completely unrelated, though. The 
soulmates stuff must've just been a thing for souled vamps instead.

Queen C vanished back in 2002, never heard from again. Willow went to 
live out at some retreat and ended up drowning herself a couple of 
years later. And Xander got married and went on to live the most mind-
bogglingly normal life a guy who used to list vampire-hunting as his 
favoured extracurricular activity could wish for.

Some folks she could remember Angel telling her about, Gunn or 
something, some chick with a man's name, had taken off together. 
Nobody knew for sure where they'd gone but there've been conflicting 
reports of a couple who matched their description fighting vampires 
in Texas. The newest are from four years ago, no sign since. It's no 
skin off her nose, she only knew them vicariously, but from his 
emphasis she figures they mattered to Wes.

And Wes- 

She'd been stunned when he told her he hadn't worked with Angel 
since '02. Angel never told her that in his visits. She couldn't 
remember if he'd lied to her at all. She'd tended to avoid asking 
about Wesley. Probably he hadn't even had to lie.

Far as she could figure it, they'd had some fight. Wes knocked about 
by himself for a bit, fell in with a bad crowd, fell out again, 
formed his own agency after Angel's collapsed. 

Some kind of guilt thing. She got that.




He wants her to keep believing it all ended the way it was supposed 
to. That they reached the last pages of the story and the heroes died 
heroically, fighting the fight. That it didn't fall apart like it 
did. He doesn't want her to know that he's already damned. He wants 
to keep hope alive; to keep her believing in him. He is after all, 
most bittersweet of ironies, all she has.

Over a month, and he hasn't told her, not properly. 

Her lips press to a thin line and her eyes glitter. She slams a stake 
into a vampire, backhands another across the basement of the 
warehouse to slam into the wall, and he contemplates the unchecked 
force of her aimed at him. Fists and glass and fire and all the 
things she could do if she found out the truth behind the fairytale. 

The vampire he's fighting almost takes his head off with a right hook 
in his distraction.




She likes to watch him fight. His movements economical, brutal. He 
takes damage but doesn't let it stop him. Another vamp bites the 
dust. He doesn't pause before moving on to face the next. He's thin 
enough that it looks like his arm will break from the force of the 
punch he throws. It doesn't.

And this is Wesley. It's *Wesley*. Forty-whateverthefuck years old 
and he's lived through at least a decade of this (with maybe a 
respite in the middle for whatever he did in that 3-4 year slump) and 
still fighting. Everyone else is dead and he's still fighting.

Wussley. Captain Couragous. Wimpy Wes. 

It should be her finishing off these last vampires because, well, 
Slayer. But she holds back to watch him. She holds no doubt he'll 
win. 

She has a feeling itching at the back of her mind, though, times like 
this, and it's nothing good. The feeling that this change had already 
begun back when she had him tied to that chair. That the guy she cut, 
bound, bruised and would've burned wasn't anyway anymore the Watcher 
who screwed her over.

The exhilaration of the fight is still thumping through her veins. 
Its lust has lessened with age, but not so much. Not for the first 
time, she wants to kiss and make up. Wants to find out what his skin 
actually looks like under that long-sleeved crap he wears even on the 
warmest of days. Is burning with the want.

He'd puke if she touched him.




He dusts the last vampire and hears her sardonic round of applause. 

Scowls. Bites down on his irritation at the grin on her face, the 
very odd look in her eyes he can't quite define. He asks her what the 
hell she was doing and is utterly taken aback to have her come back 
at him that she likes to see him fight.

He tells her, with heavy annoyance, that he's not 'tight' (a moment 
of dislocation, hearing Gunn's remembered vocabulary from Faith's 
mouth) and he's not graceful nor any other of the adjectives she 
pulls out (is she on drugs?) but an aging demon hunter who'd very 
much like to keep aging, thankyouverymuch.

She smirks. She can do so. She has more years left than he does, and 
doesn't know what's waiting for him on the other side.




She sent a letter to Giles. It wasn't easy to write. What do you say 
to the guy who ordered you killed?

Actually, she said thank you. Wesley would choke and spit his tea 
across the room in disbelief. Maybe she'll tell him after all, 
just 'cause she digs the reaction.

Giles gave her her life. If it had been anybody else in charge when 
they found themselves without a Slayer, she'd be dead, minimum 
effort, no question. The special ops team and their guns, not a 
medical team to do what was necessary and then try so hard to pick up 
the pieces afterwards that they broke her ribs in the process.

The letter she receives back from him makes her cry. Fuck, man. 
Sounds like Giles has been tearing himself up over this the last six 
years. She wants to go visit him, talk to him in person, tell him how 
sorry she is that things went so badly back in Sunnydale, how sorry 
she is she never made up with Buffy. 

She can't even pick up the phone.

Wesley remains unimpressed. He's more pissed about what the Council 
did to her than she is. The realisation twists something inside her 
chest.




Faith is more substantial than she used to be, more flesh on her 
bones. Though certainly not overweight, God forbid he ever thought 
that, she might instinctively know and punch him through the nearest 
wall (Slayer strength or no, Cordelia would have done so in the 
circumstance had she lived long enough for her figure to start 
develop padding). But she isn't a waif any more, with that pale-
skinned dark-eyed look that seemed like she might melt away. A woman, 
not a girl.

No Slayer has ever grown old. Not that thirty-two is old, except for 
a Slayer. So far, she seems to be aging normally. 

There are twelve years between them, the same number of years she 
spent in the prison. He doesn't know why the comparison amuses him.

She's lovely, in adulthood. Those dark eyes, the dusky voice, the 
untameable hair. She moves like an athlete even without quite the 
body to match, Slayer suppleness still holding strong.

Kate follows his gaze as she bandages the cut on his arm that he got 
because Faith likes to watch him fight. To Faith, over by the water 
filter, sharpening stakes with a knife and talking to Gregory. The 
arrogant sexuality of her posture hasn't changed much. Nor her 
habits. He knows full well she's jumped the bones of every man in the 
office but himself. 

Of course. She'd have to touch him to do that.

Kate grimaces, and looks down. Their fling was a couple of years ago 
now and she's been seven months married to, of all things, a 
policeman. Which narrows the options on precisely what it is she's 
grimacing about.




She picked up the phone and dialled the number spur-of the-moment 
before sanity came flooding back in and she blankly regarded the 
angular black receiver held away from her ear in a hand that shook.

When the tinny voice came on the line, it was to tell her he wasn't 
there. It's a week before the next moment of madness ambushes her and 
she dials again.

She doesn't know what she expected. Giles is businesslike, soft-
voiced, subdued, interspersed with moments of emotion and regret. He 
sounds old and strained. He asks where she is now and what she's 
doing. She tells him and he goes all quiet and English and huffy.

She tells him. Whatever problems he might've had with Wesley in the 
past, they do good work here now. She tells him. They have both 
changed, so has he (you had me killed, you fuck). She tells him. 
About herself, Wes and Gregory going up against that massive Van 
Damme demon the previous week. He chuckles and corrects her 

(I believe it's Vanadan, Faith)

before having the grace to sound impressed.




The cut on his arm itches, bothering him. He picks at the edge of the 
bandage to scratch the swollen flesh underneath. The injury bisects 
another scar, much older, one of hers he thinks. 

To tell the truth, it's been so long he's no longer sure.

And he's been thinking. Thinking about time. Thinking about how much 
they've both changed. Thinking the past isn't a country either of 
them should be living in anymore, considering their collective crimes.

Faith's still looking for her own place, in more ways than one. He 
knows she's dragging her heels, or she'd be gone by now. She has the 
money.

He needs to talk to her. Soon. Open his mouth, let the words out. 
From over a decade away, Cordelia's voice in his head taunts him for 
his babbling, his lecturing, his musty books. Words were always 
supposed to be what he was best at, though they proved themselves 
unfaithful to him more than once.




He starts at her touch...

//she straddles him, rocks back and forth on his lap, legs gripping 
with the force of Slayer strength. laughs at his body's response and 
lowers her face to his to deliver a parody of a kiss, her teeth 
closing on and tugging briefly at the balled knot of the gag that 
prevents him closing his mouth and resisting the forced intimacy. her 
tongue laps over his split and swelling lip and when he tries to pull 
away she sinks her teeth down so hard they almost meet through his 
flesh and she suckles there, mingling her saliva with his blood.//

She flinches back.


-----




IV.


She finally figures it out. Call her dumb, but she gets there in the 
end. Helps when the ex-Wolfram and Hart guy opens his mouth and 
squarely inserts both feet.

She stares at him blankly a few seconds as things click. The world 
does a twirl, shakes her balance all to hell, readjusts, stills again 
in a shiny new alignment.

And *that's* the steel she sees now in his eyes, the darkness 
underlying his voice, the fixed purpose that moves his limbs when he 
fights, the grim efficiency with which he kills. And suddenly a whole 
lot of things make a whole lot more sense.

What doesn't make sense is *why the fuck* he seems to think he 
couldn't tell her.




He learned all too well to be wary of her anger. Clearly his decision 
to shield her from the truth is another example of his oft-
demonstrated tendency towards not thinking things through before 
making his judgement calls.

He certainly did not expect to find himself faced with her here in 
his home, with her eyes angry and betrayed and her fists clenched at 
her sides, looking frighteningly like her old self and not the pale 
ghost of a woman he's come to know in her stead. His apartment hasn't 
been a haven since she got there. Abruptly it feels like another 
torture chamber and he's cursing himself for his well-stocked kitchen.

When she lunges through the door and snatches for his collar, small 
fingers twining through the fabric, and slams him back against the 
nearest wall, pinning him there while she shouts in his face, 
something snaps within him. His fist lashes out. She reels away. An 
instant later she's airborne, her foot arching towards his face. He 
blocks, grabs, twists and throws. His back responds with a protest 
that he's getting too old for that move, but right now he's not about 
to care because

(I'm not your victim any more)

she's spun around in the air, her feet dance off the wall, and she's 
hurtling back at him. Her head and shoulder hit him in the gut and he 
folds.

And, damn it, he's fought more demons than she has; he taught her a 
good proportion of the moves she uses against him; strength isn't the 
only factor that determines a fight and he isn't going to lie down 
and be her punchbag twice in a lifetime.

It ends with him pressed to the floor, her weight grinding him down, 
her hips riding his. Her hands desperately striving to free the two-
handed white-knuckled hold he maintains on her throat as though his 
life depends on it, his muscles shivering with the strain. 

The fight drains out of him despite himself as she asks, voice 
choked, if he's ready to stop playing now and give her some straight 
fucking answers already.




His mouth's a grim line, his breath in gasps, and her voice is flat 
and cold and comes from a part of her that hasn't stirred in a long 
time as she asks him. What the hell did he do? She asks him, what's 
so terrible that he had to hide it from her (did you lie to me, you 
bastard)? She asks him, how'd they really die, huh? how'd they really 
die back when he was *working for the fucking enemy*?

The skin and the leather under her hands don't feel all that 
different except the skin is more scarred and pitted and the leather

(I didn't kill him, Faith)

doesn't break and start to leak under the force of her grip and Oh 
God the familiarity is sickening and the rush that bubbles up through 
her brain drowns her ears with noise from within so that she can 
barely hear the words tripping over each other in a deluge from his 
mouth.

And Wesley didn't kill him, not with his own hand, though that 
doesn't mean much when the guilt behind his eyes says he had a hell 
of a lot to do with the process that led to it, that made sure by the 
end killing him was the best thing anyone could have done. Wesley 
doesn't even know who did it because he was in the ICU with his life 
hanging by a thread and apparently his heart stopped too, more than 
once- 

Her hands have loosed their hold on his arms. His blood is under her 
nails again. Her body retreats from the feel of his underneath. The 
last thing she expects is for the hands around her throat to tighten 
and pull her back, lowering their grip to rest over her collarbones.

"Faith."




If he closes his eyes he can still see her against the lids, outlined 
in a haze he can't decide is the red of fire or the red of blood. A 
girl who doesn't exist any more, who ceased to be within minutes of 
doing what she did to him.

Time scars you and moves on, he thinks. You make choices and the 
world rolls on, he thinks. What you were is left behind. Only so much 
scar tissue. She chose. He chose.

It goes beyond all reason and logic that he not forgive her. She's 
not the only one here who's played death incarnate to unfortunate 
souls, who's left images of old phantom selves branded in the minds 
of victims. But reason and logic don't get to vote in matters such as 
these.

His heart-

The loosening starts inside his chest, the painful tightness that's 
been wearing so heavily on him these past weeks dissipates, and he 
blinks to find himself sitting, legs awkwardly splayed under the 
weight of a smaller body he barely recognises anymore, staring up at 
an attractive dark woman who looks more than a little confused. 




She feels her anger crumble; can't sustain it, when she watches as 
the flinch leaves his face and somehow she knows it's gone for good. 
It'd make her the world's biggest hypocrite. Even if he did take 
Angel from her.

And oh, God, she can barely take that in, what he told her. Her mind 
flinches from the memory of his words. He wasn't Angelus at the end, 
Wesley is sure of that. Certain that on the other side there was no 
excuse, no redeeming, for those last days. And she can see it in her 
head, clear as daylight, and later she'll cry herself hoarse in his 
memory. Angel gave so much of his redemption away that in the end he 
had none left for himself.

And Wesley- 

With a soul in his heart, he signed his life away to evil. With a 
soul torn, tattered and bruised, he paid his own penance. Six years 
fighting. How many more?

She had never expected forgiveness. 

They're all dead and he's still fighting.

So is she.




"Faith."

He's suddenly terribly aware of her hands, how they're small and warm 
and tacky with sweat, and he always knew they'd send shudders through 
him where they landed. When her mouth closes on his he tastes the 
blood from her lip, split somewhere in the struggle.

His own hands' foray is halted, encountering the flare across her 
stomach where Buffy thrust in the knife that even Slayer healing 
never did obliterate. He wonderingly smoothes over it fingers 
calloused and rough from years of fighting, draws back embarrassed 
that he did. She makes an irritated noise and, gripping his wrist, 
replaces his hand over the scar with a strength he can't resist.

He finds himself terribly annoyed with Buffy, for all that she's six 
years buried - again - and Faith was, at the time, evil. An awkward 
moment ends as she makes a crack about how anyone would think he'd 
never done this before, and he twists his mouth in determination to 
wipe the smirk off her face, or at least replace the sentiment behind 
it.

In their previous lives, this would be wrong in so many ways he'd 
shudder to imagine. But they're years beyond the bounds of Watcher 
and Slayer now, and he suddenly feels grateful beyond measure to that 
bastard Rupert Giles and the Council of Watchers, who killed her six 
years ago so she could be with him now.




She pops the buttons on his shirt and yanks the collar down his back, 
leaving him to shrug his arms from the constricting sleeves with 
faint disapproval

The claw scar on his hand extends up wrist and arm, overcutting a set 
of straight, thin lines that look like someone hit the dark magic 
blood rites hard back in his evil phase. Beyond that, shoulders, 
back, chest - irregular marks etched over most any body part you care 
to name.

Fuck. Talk about an explosion in a scar factory, Wes.

She loves the way he can inject so much biting sarcasm into the words 
thankyouFaith. Takes down a mental note to insult him more often.

All this time she was aching to see the indelible proof of her guilt, 
her breath tight and her chest constricting at the thought of what 
she'd find. Now she finally gets her view she finds that other marks, 
new and old, obscure her early daubs. Too much time has passed, too 
much history she didn't share has written over what she did back 
then. The sight of him unclothed doesn't strike her down with guilt. 
She thought she remembered every detail of what she did to him, from 
the replay each night over twelve years, but now she has exhibit A in 
front of her she can't find the evidence.

She runs the tip of her tongue down the pale river above his left 
nipple that looks like it might've been drawn with a jagged shard of 
glass. Traps him with her thighs and pulls him close.

*Come on, Wes.*

I think wanna hear you scream.




By rights he should not be alive today. He should have died when 
Angel and Lilah walked away in opposite directions and left him for 
dead. He thinks it was Gunn and Fred who extended his life, calling 
for the ambulance in spite of all he'd done. That was when they left; 
either too shaken by the horrors they'd seen Angel commit in the name 
of the mission or too afraid he'd find out they called emergency 
services on the adversary Angel wanted dead. 

He imagines them, sometimes, setting out in Gunn's battered old truck 
across the country to Texas, Gunn and Gunn's girl, never to be heard 
of again except in rumours.

By the time he was in any state to do anything, Lilah had descended, 
Connor was dead, Angel was dust. Wolfram and Hart fucked him over 
just like every other employer he'd ever had. 

Angel - the old Angel - might've called it an epiphany of sorts. When 
he got his act together, he tracked down Kate Lockley, still hunting 
vampires by night in the meaner parts of the city, and they formed 
the Wyndham-Pryce agency from the ashes with wages accumulated in 
three years as a minion of hell.

Faith should not be alive today, either. Both of them are reanimated 
from the dead. Walking corpses, trailing death behind them and 
carrying it within them. Somehow, they both still have a heartbeat. 

He rests his head against Faith's chest and listens to hers.




His body is a storybook.

She traces marks down the side of his right calf, little regular 
teardrop-shaped indentations, and prods him in query. He stretches 
his neck, contorting to see what she wants to know.

Sannoth demon, apparently. '08. They have quills.

On his stomach, a circular mark, hard, ridged, old, crossed over by a 
hundred smaller and more linear ones. She prods. He rests his chin on 
his chest to look and smiles a little sadly.

Zombie cop, '01. Bullet wound. She remembers hearing about that one.

At the back of his left knee, a long, broad, deep scar that could and 
maybe should have crippled. He's been lucky as hell with this one. It 
stretches up to his buttock. She prods. He can't contort to see it. 
He doesn't need to.

Angel. '05. Sword duel. Fuck, she needs to get that story. But not 
now, while his voice, even relating so little information, is dead 
and hollow.

A thin line over his spine, unremarkable. She prods. He laughs, 
briefly. His explanation is quiet and simple.

Faith. '00.

She remembers taunting him, sliding the shard of glass over his back, 
asking him how he felt about paraplegia. The way he shivered and 
stiffened, as she broke the flesh but didn't cut further than the 
bone.



END