Chapter Two

Faith knew where Angel lived. He’d sent her a few letters in a fancy girly handwriting, and she’d memorized the return address. Angel Investigations, in the Hyperion Hotel.

Of course, he hadn’t sent a letter in a while. Kind of a long time, actually. And he hadn’t visited her in a year or two, either. She’d started to wonder if something bad happened to him—if he’d finally taken on something he couldn’t beat—but when they were keeping her at Wolfram & Hart she’d heard that woman say that Angel wouldn’t stand a chance against Faith once they were finished with her. So he was still around, at least.

Buffy! Yeah, that was it. She’d gotten to him—made him stay away from Faith. Maybe they’d found a way around the soul deal, and she was with him right now, in the hotel.

Faith bit back a groan. Looked like she’d find out.

~*~*~*~

Wes stirred in his sleep. Something was poking him in the side. The couch really wasn’t the best place to sleep, but his sleep hadn’t been good lately anyway. He dropped off like a stone, fought through nightmares, then awoke in the morning with no sense of having rested. It was as if he’d merely closed his eyes, and waited out the night.

Wes pressed his eyelids together, trying to hold onto sleep. It was unsatisfying and often disturbing, but it was still preferable to being awake, when his mind ricocheted ceaselessly from translating the text to taking the baby, from feeling Justine’s blade slice into his throat to Angel’s hands squeeze around his neck, and finally to Fred telling him the prophecy was fake. He’d thought about it so often the sequence was burned into his mind, a permanent imprint on his brainwaves.

Finally Wesley gave up. The attempts were useless. Sleep was gone for the night.

He opened his eyes, and there was Faith, sprawled out in the chair opposite, watching him.

For some reason he was unsurprised.

“Did you talk to Angel? Find out the whole ugly story?” Faith nodded, and Wesley pulled himself upright. “Come to finish me off? I haven’t got a gun now, so feel free.”

Faith stared at him. “Why’d you do it, Wes?”

Wes’s mouth twisted. “Didn’t they tell you? I was in league with Angel’s archenemy. I gave him Angel’s son. Then I slit my own throat, apparently, or something like that—I’m not sure how they worked out the particulars.”

Faith scowled. “That’s what the stick said. Her and the big dude. Angel just spaced out and shrugged. He didn’t even ask how I got out of Stockton.”

“They have other things on their minds,” Wes said after a moment.

Yeah, she could see that. But she wasn’t welcome at the hotel—that was plain. Story of her life. Cordelia acted like she had her old prom queen crown up her ass, and the rest of them had looked at her like she was bad news.

And Buffy wasn’t even around to tell them what to think. Angel had forgotten about Faith all by himself.

Faith hated herself for feeling hurt. She was used to it by now, wasn’t she? It wasn’t like Angel owed her anything.

Still made her feel like crap.He opHe

“You’re a smug little tightass, but giving the baby to that guy didn’t make sense. I mean, it’s just stupid. How would that help the baby? Besides, if you’re so evil, why would you get me out of Wolfram & Hart?”

Wesley didn’t answer. The thought that someone thought better of him than his friends—the people he’d done everything for—the woman he loved—the thought that Faith trusted him more—god, that was rich. Any more and he’d vomit.

“So why did you?” prodded Faith.

No one had asked him that. Not once. Not once. “I thought the prophecy was real.”

“I mean, why’d you get me out of Wolfram & Hart?”

Wes was silent for a moment. “I was your Watcher, Faith,” he said finally. “I failed you.”

He was apologizing? To her? God, she had to be dreaming. Maybe she was back a coma. “I wasn’t Buffy,” she mumbled.

“No, you were Faith. Buffy had a Watcher, even if the council didn’t recognize him. You were my charge.”

“You’ve been feeling bad about that all this time, Wes? Even after I….”

Wes closed his eyes. “I wanted to have one less thing to feel guilty about.”

Faith didn’t respond. He had to know how she felt—she’d turned herself in, right? She wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t wanted to fix things.

Wes didn’t seem inclined to say anything else. Fine with her. “Mind if I crash here tonight?” she asked, stretching her arms out to indicate her tiredness.

Wes was surprised. He would have thought she wanted to go drinking, or dancing, or find a likely-looking specimen and go home with him. “Oh … of course,” he agreed lamely.

“Great,” she said casually, as if it weren’t a big deal. As if she had somewhere else to go. “Being poked and prodded in a lab can take it out of you.”

“Yes, I rather imagine so,” said Wesley awkwardly. A few weeks before, the thought of welcoming Faith into his home would have astonished him.

Now she was the closest thing he had to a friend.

~*~*~*~

Faith slept on the couch.

Although Wes knew it would have been courteous to offer her the bed, it would have felt inappropriate, somehow. Intimate. As if he expected something in exchange for allowing her to stay there.

She stayed the next day, and the next, and the one after that. He didn’t ask her when she intended to leave, and she didn’t mention it, and finally he realized that she wasn’t really planning to leave.

She’s a lone wolf, too, he thought. The overly dramatic description gave him pause for a moment. It wasn’t really possible for there to be two lone wolves together, was it?

For that matter, he didn’t think either of them were loners. They’d both done things wrong, terribly wrong, and they’d both been hurt, and they were both alone, but it wasn’t by choice. They were exiles.

He found himself surprisingly at ease in Faith’s company, but Faith had been wrong. He had indeed been affected back in Sunnydale when she’d taunted him with something that she’d never let him have, no matter how suggestively she writhed on his lap. He’d been a miserable prig, but even then he’d known that she was merely mocking him, exercising her magnificent animal sexuality. If he’d tried to touch him she’d have slapped him down and laughed in his face.

But he hadn’t wanted to push her away at all. He’d had to fight against the impulse to close his hands around her hips and grind his arousal against her. He’d shoved her off his lap hastily so she couldn’t tell just how affected he was. And now, although she was quite circumspect—at least, as circumspect as he expected Faith could ever be—he was reacting in much the same way.

They seldom left the apartment during the day. Wesley was somewhat concerned about Wolfram & Hart locating Faith, but Faith wasn’t worried; they were on her radar now. She could take care of them.

But she seemed content with their nocturnal routine. She was a creature of the night. It suited her.

At night they did what both knew best and hunted demons. Usually. Sometimes they just stayed home He didn’t attempt to direct her in her slaying, and she didn’t taunt him. It was a peaceful partnership.

Sometimes they sparred, and she was surprised by how different he was from the stiff, nagging tightass he’d been in Sunnydale who thought he knew so much more than anyone else.

They lived in a dream state. Once she asked him about Buffy, and he told Faith she had died the previous spring, but had been resurrected. Faith was silent the rest of the afternoon, but came to him later, forehead creased, and asked him if she was still the Slayer.

“What? Why wouldn’t you be?” he asked in surprise.

“When Buffy died the first time, Kendra was called. Then when Kendra died I was called. Has someone else been called now? Are there three of us?”

Wesley was ashamed to realize he didn’t know the answer. “If there is, Faith, it doesn’t affect you,” he told her. “It has nothing to do with who you are or what you do.”

She didn’t protest, but her face still looked troubled.

She’d been there less than two weeks when their comfortable little relationship began to change.

A sharp, entitled rap on Wesley’s door surprised Faith so much at first she didn’t realize what the sound was. The whole time she’d been there nobody had been by, not even a Mormon or whoever the hell it was who went door to door.

But when she looked over at Wes, he didn’t look so surprised.

“I think it would be best if you got out of sight,” he murmured.

Faith narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth to protest, but he held a finger to his lips and nodded towards the door. With a scowl she slunk into the same closet he’d chained her in not long before. Home away from home, she thought bitterly.

Wes opened the door without bothering to ask who it was. He didn’t have to. There was only one person who came to see him these days. “Hello, Lilah.”