Chapter Text
A week after Buffy said she was going to die, Faith broke out of prison.
Really, the only reason it took her that long was because she kept trying to talk herself out of it, to do what Buffy wanted her to do, to keep playing the atonement game the way she’d promised she would. She wasn’t supposed to go running after Buffy. She was supposed to stay put, do her time, be penitent and quiet and not do anything rash. Only if something happened to Buffy was Faith supposed to change course. The problem, though, was that Buffy had said she was going to die and, well, that wasn’t something Faith was built to just sit around and wait for.
The deal was this: Buffy would start sending postcards, one a week, to make sure Faith still knew she was alive. If they stopped, that was supposed to be the signal for Faith to act. And, well, seven days had come and seven days had gone and no postcard had arrived. Not, of course, that Buffy had said how soon she’d start sending them, but Faith hadn’t really wanted to just sit around to wait to find out Buffy was dead anyway.
So when a sixth mail call (no mail on Sundays, obviously) passed without any shouts of “Lehane,” Faith waited until they were being taken out to the yard, then she broke her chains and her cuffs and went over the wall. It wasn’t quite as easy as that, of course - Slayer strength was enough to get her free from her restraints but it took several seconds, seconds she only had after she had knocked the two nearest guards unconscious, plus one of the guard towers had gotten lucky and put a rather large hole in her shoulder - but in the end, what mattered was that she made it to the parking lot, hotwired one of the cars there, and got the hell out.
The Northern California Women’s Correctional Facility was only about a six hour drive from Sunnydale but, what with all the dodging cops and changing cars and trying not to bleed out and other such thrilling activities, it was close to midnight when Faith finally rolled past the “Welcome to Sunnydale” sign. Her shoulder had stopped bleeding, at least, but she was tired and hungry and really, really wanted to get out of her clothes. The plain blue prison jumpsuit wasn’t really her color even at the best of times and this particular jumpsuit was covered in dirt, grime, and far too many of Faith’s own bodily fluids.
She ditched her current car (her fourth of the day) in Miller’s Woods and jogged into town proper. This late, even Sunnydale’s inexplicably survival-instinct-impaired populace was mostly off the streets, leaving only a few late-roaming cabs taking the drunks home from the bar and desperately underpaid pizza delivery drivers hitting the last of the house parties.
And the vampires, of course.
She found her first one in Restfield, just climbing out of his grave as she trotted up. He was almost exactly the same height she was, with death-pale skin and faded brown eyes, but the thing that caught her attention the most was what he’d been buried in: a complete LA Dodgers uniform, from the cap to the cleats and everything in between. For a moment, she could only stare.
“What?” he demanded, looking put out, despite his bumpy, ugly, vamp face. “You got a problem?”
“The Dodgers?” she shook her head. “You just really like it when your team loses to the Giants?”
“LA is my team!” the vamp snarled. “You don’t turn your back on your hometown!”
“Nah, you’re right,” Faith sighed. “I’m a Red Sox girl, so who am I to throw shade?”
The vamp hissed. “Hypocrite! I’m going to enjoy eating you!”
“Oh, right,” Faith snapped her fingers. “About that.”
They traded a few punches back and forth; the rifle round in her shoulder was still giving her a little trouble, but the day Faith Lehane couldn’t take a lone, newly-risen vamp with one hand tied behind her back was the day she’d be rolled off in her wheelchair to the Old Slayers Rest Home. Eventually she had him grabbed with her good arm by the scruff of his neck and was slamming him, face first, into a nearby gravestone. After the third hit he slumped, unconscious, and she dropped him. Now all she needed was a stake. Thinking for a second, she turned and headed over to the spot where he first climbed up out of his grave. She had to climb most of the way back down to find what she was looking for, but after a few moments, she triumphantly reemerged from the earth with a polished length of Louisville maple. She swung it once, just to enjoy the feel, before sighing and breaking the bat over her knee.
She nudged the vamp over with her foot so he was facing upright. His face didn’t look too great, even for a vamp. To her surprise, though, his crisp baseball uniform only had a little dirt on it. His ball cap was on the ground a few yards away, but otherwise…
Fuck. He really was almost exactly her size.
“This has to be about the most humiliatin’ way I can think of to get into the pants of a Dodgers fan,” she grumbled before starting to tug off his cleats.
The only upside was, if anybody saw her before she could get off the streets, they’d probably be a vampire so she could stake them too.
Oh-dark-thirty wasn’t the best time to show up on Buffy’s doorstep, Faith knew that, but the whole point of this was to make sure Buffy was still alive, so Revello Drive was where she headed after finishing the quick sweep of the cemeteries she’d started with Restfield. That had partly been to make sure she didn’t see any fresh graves marked Buffy Anne Summers and partly because she thought staking a few undead would help clear her head. Both had been at least partially successful. Now, though, as she slowly crept up the sidewalk to Buffy’s house, Dodgers hat pulled down low over her face, all of her anxieties and misapprehensions started roaring back. Buffy was going to be furious with her. Buffy was going to turn her in. Buffy was going to try to kill her. This whole thing had been stupid and pointless and was going to accomplish nothing but earn her a lifetime in solitary at some maximum security hellhole, or maybe an Army black site run by those commando guys Buffy’s farm boy had been a part of. She should go. She should just turn and run and never look back. Sorry, B, sorry, Angel, I tried, I screwed it up like I always do, redemption was never gonna work, I fucking blew it, you shoulda known better.
She made herself keep going.
The Summers house was dark and silent. Faith studied the exterior for a few moments, then jumped up and began to climb the tree next to the house. From there it was an easy hop over to the porch roof and the window of Buffy’s room that overlooked it. She’d seen Buffy use this route to get in and out of her house without waking Joyce up a few times. Now, though, as Faith peered through the glass, she could see no one. Buffy’s bedroom was as dark and empty as the rest of the house.
Faith eased up the sash and slipped in. As her vision finished adjusting, something that always happened swiftly thanks to her Slayer gifts, she saw that not only was Buffy not here, but it looked like she’d left with some purpose. The closet was open and several outfits looked to be missing. Buffy’s weapons trunk was gone too. A quick check of the dresser drawers revealed more of the same: signs of packing. Of departure meant for the long term.
Quickly, Faith poked through the rest of the house and found the same. Dawn’s bedroom was packed up as well. Joyce’s… well, Joyce’s bedroom still had all her clothes and things, but Faith couldn’t exactly be surprised by that. No reason for her to pack anymore, and Buffy hadn’t really seemed super ready to let her mom go. Faith couldn’t really say she knew what that was like, but… it was more like she wished she knew. For Joyce, she could almost get it.
Jealousy had been such a huge part of Faith since the moment she’d arrived in Sunnydale, and in few ways more than Buffy’s relationship with Joyce Summers. Faith’s memories of her own mother were hardly distant, but they weren’t especially pleasant and she’d frankly spent a lot of time trying to push them further away. The drinking, the casual violence, the seemingly-endless parade of guys… The prison shrink had said that a lot of Faith’s issues came from the lack of a supportive parental figure in her life, that she had craved approval and affection from the adults around her and blamed herself for not getting it. That last part Faith wasn’t entirely sure about - she had plenty of things to blame herself for, sure, but she didn’t know if that was one of them - but the craving bit? Well, the dude had her fucking number there for certain.
That was what had led her to Wilkins, after all. Why she’d stayed with him almost up to the end.
But first, there had been Joyce Summers. Well, no, first had been Diana, and then Gwendolyn Post, but Faith was kinda 0 for 2 on Watchers-as-maternal-figures at this point. She’d kinda… mostly… gotten over Diana’s death by now, even if she still had the occasional nightmare about her and what Kakistos had done to her. It was the thing Buffy had said on one of their very first nights together: Faith had followed the first rule of slaying. She’d stayed alive. Even if she should have saved Diana somehow, even if that failure would haunt her for the rest of her life, she still knew that survival was what mattered. It’s what Diana would have wanted. She’d literally told Faith to run, so Faith knew that it was what she’d wanted. It just… it still fucking hurt, that’s all.
But then Joyce… from the very first moment Faith showed up in town, Joyce had been nothing but kind, friendly, and supportive. Yeah, she’d known Joyce wanted her to take over Sunnyslaying duties so B could go off to Chicago or Paris or the moon or whatever for college, but it wasn’t like Faith would have argued much. She was a Slayer as much as Buffy, she could handle the Hellmouth just fine. Unlike Buffy, who seemed like half the time she was fighting against herself and her calling as much as against the demons and undead, Faith liked slaying. It was the first real thing she’d ever been good at. She’d had a purpose. She’d been chosen, and to a girl from Southie who’d never been chosen by anyone or anything her entire life, it felt good. So why couldn’t she take over for B? And in the meantime, Joyce had made her dinner, had invited her over for Christmas, and had just generally been…
…well, the kind of mom Faith had always wished her real mom was. Faith had even kinda gotten the impression that, after B left, Faith might still be welcome for the occasional plate of fish sticks or movie night with Dawnie.
Even when things had gone completely sideways and Faith had literally kidnapped her to use as bait for Buffy so Faith could use her Mayor-given bodyswap thingamajig, Joyce had seemed as worried about Faith as she had about herself. Eventually, of course, Faith had pushed her to the point where she’d gotten mad, but seriously, Faith could probably make the Pope wanna take a swing. She knew how to push buttons. That Joyce had given in eventually wasn’t really on her. That was Faith’s fault too.
(The stab of guilt she felt over that felt surprisingly familiar. Familiar, and old. Like she’d been feeling it a long time. She hated me because of what I did. Fuck, that snot-nosed prison shrink probably was right. God dammit.)
So yeah, there was a real part of Faith that had kind of wanted Joyce as her mom. Stupid thing to want, really, but no use lying about it anymore, at least not to herself. It wouldn’t change anything regardless. Not now. Joyce wasn’t anybody’s mom these days.
The first aid kit Faith remembered being kept in the bathroom was gone but Joyce’s liquor cabinet remained intact and at least partially stocked. Mostly fancy wines, but there was a wicked high-proof brandy in there too. After stripping off her jersey, Faith popped the brandy, took a long swig, then dumped a generous splash on her bullet wound. She had to dig around a little with her fingers to pull the slug out, undoing every bit of work that her Slayer healing had accomplished, but she really didn’t want to leave the damn thing in there. Then she took the cleanest piece she could find of her prison uniform, ripped a few strips off it, and did her best to make a proper bandage. It hurt like hell again, but it would probably heal by morning now.
Then she crawled onto the couch and passed right the fuck out.
The morning sun woke her, streaming through the plate windows at the front of the house. Still nobody home, Faith realized, sitting up. She probably needed to move on too, see if she could find someone who did know what was happening. She took a shower, put her Dodgers junk back on, and ate a bowl of cereal she found in the cupboard. Then she washed the bowl and spoon because… well, because she felt like it, that’s why. Once they were on the drying rack, Faith left the house the same way she’d come in.
Her next stop was Giles’s place, but it was as much a bust as Buffy’s had been. Same emptiness, same signs of packing up and leaving. It was, unfortunately, also the only other place Faith really knew where to find Buffy or her friends. She’d never bothered to learn where Xander lived, Red was somewhere on the UC-Sunnydale campus but she had no idea where, and of course all of that could have changed in the last year and a half anyway.
Well, so be it then. Time to visit an old friend.
Willy’s bar looked a little different than the last time Faith had seen it, in the aftermath of the fight against the Sisterhood of Jhe. He’d done some remodeling, even changed the name from “Willy’s Bar” to “Willy’s Place.” Maybe he thought it sounded more homey, who knew. When she pushed the door open and stepped in, the man himself was standing behind the bar, drying some glasses. Pale, skinny, with thin hair beginning to recede from his perpetually-surprised face, Faith thought she saw some signs of the time that had passed while she was inside. A few more lines, a few more gray hairs mixed into the black. Strange thing, being in prison. Everything stays the same, except for all the things that change.
“Hey, Willy,” she said, smiling. He jumped.
“Slayer!” he said, more loudly than he needed to. Several dimly-lit shapes toward the back of the bar moved toward an exit. Faith ignored them. “I… I hadn't heard that you were out! Basket of chicken fingers on the house to celebrate your return to free air?”
She chuckled. “Not just yet,” she said. “Listen, all I need to know is where to find Blondie and her little gang of friends. I know they’re not home, so just tell me where else to look, okay? And then I’m gone. No hard feelings.”
“Oh, I- I don’t do that sort of thing no more,” Willy insisted. “I am strictly the owner of a legitimate establishment serving legal beverages and high-quality meals to paying customers. That’s it.”
She studied him. “Nice disclaimer,” she said, “but you’re clearly not thinking this through here. You know I got history with B. You really think any of your patrons are gonna complain if you point me her direction? Hell, you might just be man of the hour. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Willy opened his mouth, then stopped, considering. Faith had obviously been right; he’d been stonewalling on instinct rather than thinking about the situation, and to most outsiders, her still wanting to kill Buffy made the most sense. She waited while he processed. “I… suppose there’s no harm in reuniting old… co-workers,” he said after a moment. “Whatever happens after that is not my concern, yeah?”
“Not in the slightest,” she agreed.
“The old guy, the Brit - he owns a magic shop these days, a couple blocks over, on Maple Court. Called the Magic Box. Word is, the Slayer - I, I mean, the other Slayer, of course, if you want to find her or her witch friend, you can sometimes find them there.”
“Thanks, Willy!” said Faith, slapping him on the shoulder. He grunted and tried to rub it surreptitiously. “Now, how about those chicken fingers?”
“...Comin’ right up.”
They actually weren’t bad, and Faith would have happily left him a tip if she’d had any money whatsoever. Instead, as she was getting up to leave, she said, “Hey, Willy?”
“Yeah?” he asked, collecting her basket.
“You know anything about somebody called ‘Glory?’”
Willy’s face froze. His entire body, in fact. His knuckles on the chicken basket had gone white. “...Never heard the name,” he grated out. Faith’s jaw tightened.
“Good to know. Guess I won’t be back later to ask anything else, then.” Willy swallowed but didn’t change his expression otherwise at all. Faith gave him a nod and walked out, feeling all the way to the door like someone was lining up a shot on her back.
Well. That was definitely interesting. And worrying. Also definitely worrying.
She found the Magic Box easily enough. Despite the sun shining down from almost directly overhead and the hours posted on the front glass saying 10 AM - 9 PM Monday-Thursday, 10 AM - 2 PM Friday-Saturday, Closed Sundays, the shop’s Closed sign was still firmly in place. (Sunday was four days ago, Faith knew, but purely because of the lack of a mail call that day.) Probably another bust, Faith decided, but Willy had said Buffy and Red came here a lot. If they were using this as their replacement for the now-blown-sky-high school library, doing their research and shit here, maybe there’d be some kind of clue inside.
The front door was simple glass and would absolutely not have kept Faith out on its own, but there was always the possibility of magic and, besides, she doubted she’d make a lot of friends here by breaking into their clubhouse so obviously. Poking around a little, she found an alleyway door in the back and, after testing the lock a couple of times, gave an extremely sharp tug on the metal handle. There was a slight crunching sound, making Faith wince, but then she was able to gently ease the door open and slip inside.
It was a stockroom, apparently. Mostly mundane stuff: trash can liners, register tape, pencils, pads of notepaper, stickers and a pricing gun, janitorial gear. A few things looked a little more “mystical,” like the rows of little crystal bottles, the jars of various bug bits, and a few boxes of tiny semi-precious stones like what you can find in any cheap zoo or natural history museum gift shop, but Faith ignored it all, heading out the opposite door, through a little beaded curtain, and into the shop itself.
The shop interior was quiet and dark, like everywhere else she’d looked so far, and she definitely did not turn the lights on. Last thing she needed was some irate customer banging on the door, demanding ingredients for a frog transformation potion or whatever. Besides, Slayers didn’t really have to worry about visibility as long as there was at least some light to see by, however dim.
Unlike the other places she searched, though, she found some actual fucking information here. A legal pad, sitting on a table in the middle of the sales floor (and Faith was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to put a table and set of chairs right in front of the cash register if you wanted people to actually buy things from you), with page after page covered in tiny, precise handwriting that could not have screamed “Willow Rosenberg” louder if it had possessed an actual voice. Faith dropped into the chair in front of it and began flipping through.
The first part looked like something she might have seen in her prison shrink’s notes: several sets of “cognitive and behavioral function tests,” none of which looked to be doing too hot for whoever the subject was. Hell, Faith thought she might have had some better scores while she was still in her coma. The next section - lengthy, and color-coded with highlighters in a system that Faith couldn’t sort out - was mostly incomprehensible, but she saw words like “invocation” and “rite” and “communion” and “summoning” that made her think it must be some kind of spell or magic ritual list. The fact that all of them were crossed out, the latter ones several times, the final two with so much pressure behind the pen that it ripped the paper… well. That probably wasn’t a good sign.
Past those pages were some more freehand notes that Faith could actually make sense of. “Glory” stood out prominently. Unfortunately, the words “exiled hell-god” right beneath the name seemed like pretty bad news. There were references to something called the Order of Dagon and the Orb of Dagon - both of which were words that Faith thought were supposed to have Rs in them, except it was Willow and she would never have made that mistake twice - and also, weirdly, Dawn. The specifics weren’t clear, but “being of interdimensional energies” sounded like something out of Star Trek but was instead connected to something called “the Key.” (Capital letter. Always important.) And the Key was, or used to be or maybe was going to become, Dawn.
And that’s what Glory wanted. The Key.
“So Glory needs Dawn so she can turn her into this Key thing and… something something something, end of the world,” Faith summarized to herself. “And Buffy thinks Glory’s going to kill her.”
Well. This all sounded like a fucking party. Clearly she picked the right week to break out of jail.