Sword and Sheath (chapters 5-6)
Title: Sword and Sheath
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Main pairing: Faith/Robin
Rating: R
Summary: Faith and Robin are fighting vampires in Cleveland, but when Robin receives a couple of ancient artifacts, the effects are life-changing... and not just for the two of them.
Chapters 1 and 2 can be found here, chapters 3 and 4 here.
***
Chapter 5
Robin
***
The sun set without Faith coming back, but Robin wasn’t very concerned; he figured she had probably decided to go on patrolling the local cemeteries. It would have been nice if she could have called him, but Faith was Faith, and it was unlikely the idea had even occurred to her. He tried doing a bit of paperwork - being away from the school didn’t mean he could slack off - and when his concentration failed him, he sat down with a mystery novel.
People passed by the door and he listened with half an ear as he tied together the clues concerning the body in Mr. Thipps’ bathtub. It was an intriguing mystery, and the only one by that author he hadn’t read before.
A series of slow, dragging steps were followed by the sound of a key in his door. That *did* make him concerned - more than concerned, downright worried. He put the book down and hurried out into the hallway, just as Faith came through the door. Her face was sickly pale and her hair damp with sweat.
”What happened?” he asked, putting his arm around her shoulders to support her. ”The sword, did it...”
”The sword was great,” she said, slurring slightly. She lifted her right hand, which held a long object wrapped in dark velvet. ”I love the sword. I couldn’t have done it without her.”
”Then what...?” The thought that she might be drunk turned up in his head, but he rejected it. Even if she’d be reckless enough to drink on the job, Faith had a high tolerance for alcohol.
”Little thing called the odds,” she explained to him. ”Can’t always beat them.”
Suddenly cold, he grabbed her around the waist with both hands and started feeling his way around, until he got to the sticky spot on her back, clumsily tied up with the same kind of cloth she’d used for her sword.
”You drove back home with a wound like this?” he asked. ”You need an ambulance!”
”Couldn’t bring the sword,” she mumbled. ”I’m sorry.”
”Sorry!? Faith, you could *die* from this.” He should have been there to help - and then he remembered why he hadn’t been, and realized why she apologized.
Slowly, he started unwrapping her makeshift bandage so he could reach the wound beneath.
”It’s all right,” he told her. ”I’ll help you.”
”You shouldn’t have to...” she started, and he didn’t know if those were tears in her voice or if it was just lack of oxygen.
”Hey,” he said. ”Let me be the good sidekick here.”
”You my Slayerette now?” she asked him, smiling slightly.
”Damned right, I am.”
Compared to the patients at the hospital, treating Faith wasn’t so bad. The wound was serious, and bleeding profusely, but at least it was just one wound and not a whole body full of illness.
”There,” he said when he was definitely done. ”Feeling better?”
”Lots,” she replied, wrapping her arms around his neck. The color was starting to come back in her face already. ”Forget the sidekick gig. You’re my hero.”
She had a wicked smile on her face, but her voice was serious, and when she leaned in to kiss him he could taste salt on her lips.
Her concern excited him, and he returned the kiss with fervour, pinning her against the wall. He was a patient man, and he particularly enjoyed taking his time with Faith, who was still a novice when it came to the more slow-moving aspects of sex. But slow and soft wasn’t the same thing, and they both liked variation. A full scale of crescendos and diminuendoes, he’d told her once, and she gave him that blank look and ”huh” that reminded him that despite everything she’d done, she was just a kid - and a kid who had gone to prison instead of college, no less.
He grabbed her wrists hard and teased her face with light kisses, the shadow of lips touching her skin.
”You wanna do it right here?” she asked him.
”Let’s start ’doing it’ here,” he said, ”and keep ’doing it’ in every...” he followed the inside of her arm with his thumb ”...single...” scratching her with his fingernails ”...room.”
”In front of the freakovamp and everything?”
”You got it,” he said, releasing her and gently nudging her towards the living room door.
She raised an eyebrow. ”Cool.”
***
They had only reached the door to the bedroom when he felt himself soften. He drew back, bewildered. It couldn’t be... not since his teen years... and with *Faith* of all people! But it was.
”What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice husky and breathless.
”Nothing,” he said firmly, returning his attention to her, using hands and mouth to make up for what was failing him.
Faith was no fool, though, and she’d have to be pretty oblivious not to notice what was going down, especially when she arched her hipbone, grinding it against him.
A puzzled frown flew over her face, and she drew back like he had a minute before. ”You...”
”Shh,” he said, and with a wry smile added, ”There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
”But you’re...” Her eyes were widened with disbelief and horror. Hardly the most flattering situation in which he’d ever found himself. ”It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
”*Your* fault?” He wouldn’t have expected Faith to have insecurities about her performance.
As it turned out, that wasn’t what she meant at all. ”You healed me. Every time you do that, you go more... you know... worn.”
It was true, and it frightened him, especially since he couldn’t think of an alternative. Never dressing another wound? That wasn’t a very realistic option, considering their lifestyle. And through the fear, he felt an increasing irritation that this moment should be ruined by actions he couldn’t take back even if he tried.
”I’m not too worn to wear *you* out,” he said, his lips touching her ear.
”What if it doesn’t take a wound? What if just touching...?”
The thought made him freeze for a second, but once his brain had caught up with his fear, he shook his head. ”Touching isn’t enough.”
”How do you know?”
”I know.” He couldn’t describe it to her, how differently his body reacted to her hot, smooth skin from when it was clammy and bleeding. He twirled strands of her hair around his fingers and tugged very slightly. ”Trust me, I know.”
Faith turned her head very slowly in his direction, a thoughtful expression on her face. ”I want ice cream.”
”Now? Instead of sex?”
”Yeah, instead of sex. Idiot. On *you*.”
”Ah.” He kissed her, and then replied, ”I don’t think I have any ice cream.”
She gave a sharp, short laugh. ”I should have known. You heathen!”
”I have maple syrup.”
She thought about that. ”Okay, it’ll have to do. You’re still a heathen, though.”
”Don’t I know it.” He had to smile at her tone - she was still a teenager in some ways. Even so, he found it comforting to be called a heathen; it brought back memories of heated but friendly discussions in Crowley’s kitchen. He had been an obnoxious, know-it-all boy, and Conchita had scoffed at him. *Do you think the good Lord answers to you, Robin Wood?* *I thought he answered to everyone.* *Ha! He’d have his work cut out answering questions from silly little boys!* *Isn’t the Lord supposed to be almighty, Conchita?*
He suddenly found that he missed her, missed having someone around who believed in an almighty Lord who would set everything right. He certainly couldn’t believe it himself.
***
He woke up in the middle of the night feeling like something was squeezing his heart. His initial, fearful thought was ’heart attack,’ and then the rational part of his brain chimed in to tell him that ’anxiety attack’ was a much more likely explanation, though he didn’t know what would cause the anxiety. If he had dreamed something, he no longer remembered it.
He stumbled out of bed, barely able to stand and wondering why it felt like his head was on fire. Touching his scalp, it felt normal against his skin, though he was startled to see how gnarly and thin his hands looked in the moonlight.
The sensation of fire spread, dug in under his skin, aching and itching until it drove him crazy. He clawed at his skin, trying to rid himself of the feeling. Bugs, it had to be bugs, but what kind of bugs and how did you get rid of them? Maybe he could wash them away. He had to get to the bathroom.
His legs were shaking, and he wished desperately for Faith to wake up, but the weight on his chest made him breath in short, painful gasps and he couldn’t find his voice.
Somehow he managed to make his way into the bathroom, where he climbed into the tub without even bothering to take his pajama pants off. Turning the water on, he let it stream down over his head and body, scrubbing and scrubbing until the water running down the drain had a tinge of pink.
It helped, though. The fire faded into an itch. His heart was racing, but at least that meant he could feel its beat.
He sat down in the tub, leaning his back against the wall and taking deep, shaky breaths. Okay. The worst was over. He could simply sit here, enjoy the warm water, and never move another inch in his life. It was just actually getting *up* from the bathtub that was unthinkable.
The next thing he knew, Faith was shaking him and yelling curses at him, some of him he didn’t know the meaning of despite ten years of teaching high school.
”Calm down,” he said. His voice sounded croaky and slurred to his ears, and he was shivering from the still-running water that had ceased to be warm. ”And stop.... ow!... stop banging my head against the tub.”
She let go of him, but kept yelling, her voice so high-pitched it almost cracked. ”I fucking *knew* something was wrong, you motherfucking piece of shit! But you just *had* to keep your head so far up your ass the shit came out through your mouth! ’Oh, never mind me, I get cursed by old Vikings every day!’ And why the hell did you even touch that stupid cunt!”
”The only cunt I’ve been touching is yours,” he said, trying to sit up. ”And I’m not cursed.”
”Oh, right,” she said sarcastically. ”And what the fuck is that?” She pointed towards his face. ”Extreme Makeover: Backwards Edition, designed to make you look a hundred years old?”
The shivers were growing so badly that his teeth were clattering. ”What are you talking about?”
For a moment, Faith only stared at him. Then she hauled him out of the tub and positioned him in the middle of the floor. He swayed, but managed to remain standing without grabbing hold of the basin.
Beyond the basin was the mirror door of the bathroom cabinet, and despite Faith’s words, it took a while before his brain made the necessary connection between the face in it and his own.
”Jesus,” he said, lifting a shaky hand to his face. The touch confirmed what his eyes were telling him - deep, leathery wrinkles that belonged to someone old enough to have seen both world wars. He took his hand down and gave it a good look while he was at it. If it had looked gnarly in moonlight, there was no doubt now to what it was: the hairy, withered hand of an old man. ”It’s sucking the life out of me.”
”Still think you’re not cursed?”
He shook his head slowly. ’Curse’ seemed an adequate word for what had happened to him, but what kind of person cursed someone - a *random* someone - by making him a healer and then waiting to see how the gift saved others and killed himself? It was an absurd idea. Curses were... giving people smallpox or turning them into amphibies. Not this.
”It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
”We’re on a hellmouth,” she said bitterly. ”It doesn’t have to make any sense.”
The room started spinning in front of his eyes, and he grabbed the basin with both hands. ”Faith...”
”I got you,” she said, laying her arm around his back, and he hadn’t heard her voice so soft since the destruction of Sunnydale. She couldn’t have been any more obvious about the fact that she thought he was dying.
Well, she’d been wrong once before.
He leaned into her as she dragged him from the bathroom to the living room couch, where she proceeded to take his clothes off. He marvelled at the strength of a slayer, how her slim little body held more power than his own ever would. Any other day, that would be a challenge for him to match that power, teach her a thing or two. Today, he was both grateful and humiliated to find himself undressed and wrapped in a blanket like a baby.
Ella watched them with interest from her spot by the wall and commented with some glee, ”He looks like death warmed over.”
Having seen himself in the mirror, Robin had to admit that the spiteful statement held more truth than he would have liked. But considering that she was their prisoner, he couldn’t very well blame her for being tactless.
”Shut up or I’ll stake you right now!” Faith hissed, sounding so vicious Robin expected her to whip out a stake on the spot. Instead she sat down by his side on edge of the couch and asked, ”Do you have the number of the archaeologist?”
”Hanlon? Yeah. But I don’t know how much help he’ll be. He’s no expert on magic.” Robin gave a breath of laughter. ”He’s not even much of an archaeologist.”
”I figured,” Faith said.
”You did?”
”Sure. People who’re good at what they do don’t usually steal from their bosses. Don’t shit where you eat and all that.”
”Quite,” he said, closing his eyes.
”I’m gonna call him anyway, see if he know anything. Him and everyone else. Every god-damned slayer, watcher and Scooby in the entire universe, you see if I don’t!”
He smiled. The end of the Council, even though Crowley hadn’t been among the dead, had been a blow to him - an implication that there was no order to the world. He had never *liked* that order much, but it was still good to know that they weren’t completely on their own anymore.
”Not the LAPD, though,” he pleaded.
She sat quiet. So, she had intended to call them. Again. Robin felt a pang of sympathy for the no doubt overworked cops who must consider Faith a first-class stalker by now.
”If any of them are alive...” she started.
”If they are, they clearly don’t want to be found. Please. When this is all over, you can start calling them again. But not right now. I just... I can’t bear to listen.”
She didn’t reply. Maybe it wasn’t fair of him to ask that she’d give up trying. But he really couldn’t bear it if on top of everything else she’d be on the phone verbally abusing some poor Californian police officers because they couldn’t deliver a miracle.
”All right,” she said at long last. ”I won’t. I’ll call everyone else I can think of, though.”
”You’ll get no argument from me,” he said.
***
Faith made her calls all morning, but it was the middle of the afternoon before she got a callback. Robin wouldn’t have expected it to be possible to jump while lying down, but when the signal sounded, he did. As for Faith, she came running in from the kitchen as if a Turok Han was after her, and threw herself on the phone.
When she hung up, she was looking both relieved and rather pensive.
”Not Giles,” Robin guessed. ”Willow?”
”Buffy,” Faith said. ”She’s flying in from Rome.”
That was certainly unexpected. Buffy had never shown an interest in Cleveland - on the contrary, she had made sure to keep an ocean between it and her. ”That’s good, isn’t it?”
”I guess.” Faith shrugged., chewing a little. After a while, she added, ”Don’t get me wrong, it’ll be great having B here, but the thing is... she’s a ’thinking on her feet’ kind of gal. Great for battle, but for something like this...”
”We need a Watcher rather than a Slayer,” Robin filled in. A thought struck him, and he was stunned that it had taken so long. ”Call Crowley.”
At first, Faith’s expression was blank; then he saw recognition dawning in her face. ”Your mom’s...”
”481-516-2342.”
”Huh?”
”That’s his phone number.” Good job, Robin, ranting off numbers like a maniac, without telling her what it was or giving her a chance to write them down or anything.
”Phone number. Right.” She stuck her hand in her jeans pocket, and when she didn’t find her cell phone there, looked around to see where she had left it. ”481...?”
He repeated the phone number to her, a few numbers at a time, and then asked, ”Do you want me to write it down?”
”Nah, it’s okay. Slayer training.”
”Right.” It was funny, in a way; out of Buffy and Faith, Buffy was definitely the one who felt most like a Slayer, all her idiosyncrasies aside, but it was Faith who could do things like these, who had been drilled as a Slayer should. Robin’s distinct impression was that Giles had taken one look at Buffy and then handed over the reins. Which in a way had proven a pretty good idea - Buffy might have made some terrible judgement calls, but as far as he knew, she’d never technically turned evil.
Still, Robin wouldn’t have traded his Slayer girl for the world.
She was looking at him expectantly, and he realized that she had asked him a question.
”Sorry,” he said. ”You were saying?”
”Shouldn’t you make the call? He’s your family.”
”Not sure I can make it into the kitchen.”
”Cell phone,” she pointed out, holding up the item in question.
”Oh.” Since she looked ready to make another concerned comment on his fading health - the girl had no sense of tact - he started speaking to stop her, so fast he stumbled over the words. ”Right. Forgot about that. Hand it over, I’ll call him. It’s been months since I last talked to the old man; I’ve been so busy with the hellmouth and the school.”
When he finished speaking and reached for the phone, Faith had already dialled the number, and her fingers closed around his as he waited for Crowley to pick up.
The voice that met him was cheerful and Spanish, which first offset him and then made him smile. ”Conchita? It’s Robin. How are you?”
”Conchita doesn’t work here anymore,” the voice said. ”I’m Ramona. Do you want her number?”
Didn’t *work* there anymore? His hand started shaking so badly Faith had to take over the phone to stop it from slipping. What was going on with the world? He was losing his youth, maybe even his life, but some things were supposed to be constant, and that Beverly Hills kitchen was one of them.
”No, no that’s okay,” he said. ”I’d like to speak to Bernard Crowley, is he present?”
He half expected her to say that Crowley had died, or joined a monastery, or moved to Peru, but instead she said, ”one moment,” and soon thereafter, he heard Crowley’s voice, which still after all these years held a bit of New York in the vowels: ”Robin?”
”Yeah,” he said, faint with relief. ”Hello, Crowley.”
”It’s good to hear from you, son. Is everything all right?”
”Not really.” How could he tell Crowley what had happened? Should he start from the beginning, with the sword, or jump to the point - and beyond that, how could he bring himself to say the actual words? ”That’s why I’m calling. There seems to be a... well, a curse of some sort. I know that’s not your area of expertise, but with the Watchers decimated, I figured...”
”Well, I’ll help if I can, of course,” Crowley said. ”What do you...”
The rest of the sentence was muffled as Faith snatched the phone away from Robin, clearly dissatisfied with the way he was handling the conversation.
”Faith here,” she said. ”Listen, Robin’s being all Joe Stoic about this, but he’s really sick, and we don’t know what to do about it. So if you could... yeah? Yeah. Okay.” Her tight face softened a little. ”Nice talking to you too.”
She handed the phone back to him without another word, and he took it, bracing himself against the questions he knew would come.
Crowley had slipped into Watcher mode, offering only dry, clinical questions without comfort or pity, and for that, Robin was grateful. Robin recounted the details as close as he could remember them, and when he had told his story in full, there was a pause in the conversation. He didn’t say, ’please come’ or ’I need you. No ’help me.’ Instead, the next words out of his mouth were accusatory: ”Why did you fire Conchita?”
”I didn’t. She retired, last June.” Crowley didn’t say, ’You would have known that if you’d called,’ but Robin heard it never the less.
”Oh.”
”I’ll be on the next plane, and I’ll bring everything I’ve got. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
”You’ll have to make connections in Chicago,” he said. ”Or New York, possibly.”
”Any connection they have,” Crowley promised. The Watcher was all gone from his voice now. ”You hang in there.”
Robin nodded, closing his eyes that were starting to fog. ”I’ll try.”
***
”You’re dying, aren’t you?”
Robin turned his head towards Ella. Her eyes were sparkling, and her mouth curled up into a smile that showed a glimmer of her tiny front teeth.
”So it would seem,” he said, and unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice now that Faith had left the room: ”I take it you approve.”
Her face hardened, making her look like a woman instead of the pouty adolescent she usually did. The change made him wonder how old she really was. Did vampires continue to grow old inside, so that her face no more showed her real age than his did, or was a once-young vampire stuck in a permanent state of immaturity? It wasn’t something he had ever had reason to wonder before.
”You’re murdering me,” she said. ”Am I supposed to mourn you?”
”I am not *murdering* you.” Was she trying to get to him with that self-pitying attitude of hers? If so, it worked. ”I’m willing to bet you’ll live a considerably longer life than I will.”
”A few decades, maybe,” she spat out, as if the mere thought was an insult. ”You humans have no concept of time. Maybe if you die, I’ll go back to what I used to be.”
”Maybe if I die, you never will.”
”Then I’ll at least get the pleasure of knowing you’re rotting in hell.”
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, tired of whiny half-vampires, tired of this frail old body, tired of the whole Hellmouth. Things had been much easier when he had been killing off vampires one by one, his only mission to get to the one who had killed his mother.
Well, he’d found the right one, and look where that had gotten him. He’d failed to get his revenge, the damned vamp had died anyway - possibly twice - and now he was a dying old man of thirty-one.
He should have gotten out of the game while he had the chance. Or at the very least, he should have stuck to the find ’em, fight ’em, stake ’em approach.
”I wish I *was* murdering you,” he muttered.
”Well, go ahead, then!” she jeered. ”Grab a stake and do me in, get me out of this filthy human body!”
He didn’t answer, though in his mind’s eye he pictured himself doing just that.
”Oh, right, I forgot,” she said, in a sweet, false voice. ”You can’t.”
He could bear dying for those people in the hospital, and for Faith. But to die for this monster... God Almighty.
”I could make Faith do it,” he pointed out.
”Make the Slayer fight your battles, how very brave.”
”It’s her job to get rid of creatures like you.”
”No it isn’t.” Ella’s voice had gone quiet, and Robin looked up, finding her eyes downcast. ”There are no creatures like me.”
He thought of Spike, and what people had told him of Angel. It wasn’t the same. They had been full-strength vampires, with the capacity to murder and mutilate any human who came in their way. It was their urge to do so that had been compromised. Ella still had the urge; it was very clear to him that given the chance, she’d drink him dry and half of Cleveland along with him. But she couldn’t.
He wondered if she had a soul now, Was she still a pure monster inside, raging at its impotence, or was she starting to feel the pull of a conscience and keeping up her soulless behaviour out of fear of what she might become?
You’d have to be Buffy to think that made a difference.
”I hate this,” Ella said quietly, resting her chin on her knees. ”I’m cold, and tired, and wet.”
”That’s humanity for... wet?”
”I don’t know what happened.”
Maybe that was true, but at least Robin had a pretty good idea. It seemed Ella had taken yet another step towards actual life, though hardly one she would enjoy.
He propped himself up on his elbow, but quickly realized that even if he managed to stand up, there was no way he could drag Ella into the bathroom without causing her to escape. Even in her weakened state, she was a lot stronger than he was right now.
”Faith!” he called. He could hear her rummaging about in the bedroom but it took a while before she arrived. Had she been listening to the radio again? He had told her she could bring it into the living room, or watch TV if she preferred, but it seemed she didn’t want to disturb him or something.
When she appeared in the doorway, he told her, ”Ella seems to have had a bit of an accident.”
Faith scowled, measuring Ella with her eyes. ”What kind of an accident?”
”The kind that would require you taking her into the bathroom, washing her off, and getting her some new clothes.” Robin made an apologetic grimace and nodded towards the weapons cabinet. ”Keys are in the bottom drawer. Sorry.”
Faith’s corresponding grimace was anything but apologetic. ”Oh, you’ve *got* to be kidding me!” Despite her obvious distaste, she did go to the weapon cabinets and dug out the key. As she unlocked the manacles, she told Ella, ”Piss on me, girl, and I’m gonna cut out your guts with a dull knife, I don’t care what the cops say. Damn it, ain’t there any books on how to housebreak a vampire?”
”I don’t think the problem has even arisen before,” Robin pointed out.
Faith scoffed. Hauling Ella out of the room, she told Robin, ”If you need me...”
”I’ll make sure to let you know *before* I went my pants,” he said wryly.
She watched him as if she wasn’t certain if he was joking or not. He really wished he had been.
***
Chapter 6
Faith
***
By the time the doorbell rang, Faith had eaten a little, rested a little, but mostly had plenty of time to wonder if it would be okay with the new council to send for a junior Slayer or ten to handle some chores around the place. Surely ”bathroom duty” was the kind of thing you could pass over to someone with less work experience?
She was relieved and excited as she went to open the door, even though the best case scenario was some moldy old Watcher. Better than nothing.
She opened it - and stared. The man standing outside was very tall and very thin, with large black-framed glasses, a giant walrus moustache, a long woollen coat, and a fedora. He looked like a flagpole in disguise.
”Hi there. You must be Faith,” he said, and the illusion was broken, because she’d never heard a flagpole speak with a New York accent. ”I’m Crowley.”
”I figured,” she said, taking a step aside to let him by.
He took off the fedora, revealing his thick grey hair. It made him look a little bit more like a person. Weird as he looked, though, he was younger than she had expected. Maybe it was just Robin’s curse that made her perspective off, but she would’ve thought that a guy who’d retired as a Watcher thirty years ago would have to be ancient. This guy didn’t seem to be all that much older than the other Watchers she had known - well, of the old Council, anyway.
”You’re looking thoughtful,” he told her, taking off his coat. Underneath, he had grey pants and a tennis shirt. Old guy clothes, but no tweed.
”How old are you?” she asked straight out.
His eyebrows shot up. ”How very nice to meet you, Faith. Thank you, I had a very good flight. Now, how is Robin?”
”Dying,” she countered, annoyed to be lectured about manners by some geezer who was supposed to be *helpful*.
His face grew serious, and he put his suitcase down on the floor, though he kept a smaller bag. ”Let’s get to it, then.”
She took him into the living room. Robin was sitting up and had that careless expression she remembered from the San Diego hospital last year. The one that made her want to call the nurse.
”Hi, Crowley,” he said, smiling a little. ”Want me to say aah?”
”It’d be a start,” Crowley said, his voice slightly shaky. He took a chair up to the couch and threw a glance at Ella, but made no comment on her. ”Damn it, Robbie, what have you gotten yourself into?”
”Remember how you told me that smoking would make me age prematurely? Well, I stopped smoking, and see where that got me.”
”I also told you to stay away from magic,” Crowley pointed out. He grabbed Robin’s wrist with his fingertips, glancing at his watch to check the pulse. ”You didn’t listen to that, now, did you?”
On occasion, Faith had heard Robin speak on the phone in what she’d named his teacher voice, the one that said he was completely in control of the situation and willing to be patient with some stupidity from the person he was dealing with, but that his patience had limits. She had thought it was just his job that had made him sound like that. Now she knew better.
”It’s not as if I was dabbling in spells,” Robin said. ”It was an old sheath.”
”Ancient artifacts,” Crowley said. ”Even worse.”
He had to be bluffing with that attitude, Faith decided. There was no magic word that would make things better, and he was *not* in control of the situation.
Maybe Robin never had been either. Maybe no one ever did. She used to think that other people didn’t feel that black hole of chaos and confusion, but what if everyone did and they were just better at faking it? She knew Robin had to be keeping up the whole calm as a cucumber routine as a way of coping, that it was all fake, but the question was if it was just right now, or always?
Crowley kept asking Robin questions about the sheath while giving him the full physical. He even took out one of those headphone thingies - a stethoscope - from his bag. Any moment now, he’d start handing out lollipops.
”You’re a *doctor*?” Faith asked. That was a pretty weird job for a Watcher. Dusty old books were more their thing.
”Demon anatomy, once upon a time,” Crowley said, feeling the glands under Robin’s chin. ”Plastic surgery, after that. Now I’m retired.”
Plastic surgery? Definitely not a Watcher area, but it did explain the relative lack of mold. Except she had lived in California long enough to recognize Botox and silicone, and she could see none of it on this guy. Not even the tight skin of a face lift.
”You never told me how old you were,” she said.
”You’re very nosy,” Crowley said and asked Robin as he squeezed his ribcage, ”Does it hurt when I do this? Seventy-two.”
It took a while for Faith to realize that she had gotten her answer, tangled up in the examination. Okay. Seventy-two was old, a good ten years older than she would have guessed from his face, but still meant he’d been one of the less old-and-stuffy Watchers back in his day.
She could sort of see that, traces of a younger man behind the flagpole disguise. Looking at the two of them, she wondered what Nikki Wood had thought of her Watcher, if she’d ever had the urge to jump his bones. If she *had* jumped his bones.
She sternly reminded herself that not everyone was like her, and that two people could have a close relationship without sex being involved. She didn’t think Buffy and Giles has ever been even close to fucking - and if she was wrong, she *really* didn’t want to know about it - but she could totally see him taking in Buffy’s kid out of some sentimental sense of duty. Well, if Buffy had a kid.
”..and in the morning, it had reached this state,” Robin finished his story. ”I can only hope that the curse has finished running its course and that it won’t get any worse than this.”
”Have you seen any other doctors?”
Robin chuckled. ”Not really eager to try and explain this to a doctor.”
”So what have you told your job?”
”That I have the flu.”
”Hmm... Pneumonia.”
”He’s got pneumonia too?” Faith asked, her voice going high-pitched like a little girl’s.
Both Robin and Crowley looked at her like she was completely off her rocker.
”That’s what he’ll tell the school,” Robin explained. ”It’s a little more comme-il-faut than ’curse’.”
He had to know she had no clue what that word meant, but the point got through anyway. Not a bad idea, she had to admit, to get a doctor’s note.
”You keep calling it a curse,” Crowley said. ”I’m not so sure it is.”
Robin held up his hand with the burn marks. ”It’s this hand that does the healing, and it only started after I was burned by the sheath. As evidence goes, I think that’s fairly conclusive.”
”Oh, I’m convinced whatever spell was put on the sheath is responsible for your current predicament,” Crowley said. ”It’s just that ’curse’ implies that it’s intentional and malignant, and we don’t really have sufficient proof for either. All we know is that the sheath turned you into a healer - and that for some inexplicable reason, the side effects have been amplified. It should take twenty or thirty *years* for you to reach the condition you’re in.”
”I’ll remember that for next time,” Robin said wryly.
”This is normal?” Faith asked. ”Over twenty or thirty years?”
Crowley nodded. ”Ever seen a woman after ten childbirths or so?”
She recalled a kid in school - Janet Sullivan, wasn’t it? - who had a whole mess of brothers and sisters. Her mom had been a real ugly old thing. Not that Faith’s had looked much better, passed out drunk on the couch. ”Yeah.”
”Giving life is a taxing business. Do it every day, and you don’t have much of your own left.” Crowley looked at Robin and furrowed his brow. ”But you say that this happened less than a *week* ago.”
Something clicked in Faith’s brain, and she turned towards Ella, giving the vampire girl a long, hard stare. ”Is it her fault?”
Robin and Crowley both looked at Ella too, their faces carrying the same thoughtful expression.
Ella blinked, and then got defensive, crossing her arms as well as she could with the chains. ”What? He messes me up, and suddenly that’s my fault?”
”This is the vampire?” Crowley said, standing up. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and once again dug out the stethoscope from his bag.
”Former vampire,” Robin said.
Ella bared her teeth at the stethoscope. ”Touch me with that and I’ll bite you.”
”Be my guest,” Crowley said. ”I’ve never had the chance to examine the teeth of a defanged vampire before.”
She *did* bite him, too, but it didn’t seem to phase him much. He just pried his fingers out of her jaw, and as far as Faith could tell, bones and skin were still unbroken.
”Hm,” he said, holding Ella’s chains with one hand so she couldn’t scratch at him as he used the stethoscope on her. ”Are you aware that she has a heartbeat?”
”Are you aware that you’re smelly and repulsive?” Ella asked. ”And I do not have a heartbeat!”
”She didn’t before,” Robin said. ”Must have happened after this last time I touched her.”
”I’m glad you’re dying,” Ella told him.
”And the bucket?” Crowley asked.
”Is there for my utter and complete humiliation.”
”If you don’t shut up,” Faith said, still reeling after the comment Ella had made to Robin, ”I’m gonna tape your mouth shut. It’ll be fun to see if you can *starve* to death.”
”The bucket?” Crowley repeated, looking at Faith.
”Like I have any desire to drag her Royal Badness’s ass to the bathroom all the time,” Faith said.
”Interesting.”
Crowley gave Ella a thorough examination just like the one he’d given Robin, only this time he had to keep his skin out of touch for her teeth and nails. Faith idly wondered if vampires could have rabies. She hoped not. They finally had someone around who was willing to help, and it’d be pretty rotten if he died a horrible death because of it.
”It’s really fascinating,” Crowley said, finishing his examination. ”There are still some discrepancies, but she does seem to be mostly human.”
Ella and Faith both scoffed. Robin raised his graying eyebrows and smiled a little. ”Not including such things as human behavior.”
”Behaviour is learned. Bodily functions are not.” Crowley took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. Without them, his eyes looked big and sleepy. ”She’s old, and she has forgotten things. I think you may be right, Faith. Healing a vampire who has been dead for centuries may be enough to expedite the aging process to this degree.”
”Okay,” Faith said, concentrating on the ’right’ part and ignoring ’expedite’. ”So what do we do about it?”
Crowley put his glasses on, sighed deeply, and shrugged. It made him look like one of the vultures in The Jungle Book. Faith half expected his answer to be ’whatcha wanna do?’ but he didn’t say anything at all.
”That’s it!?” Faith couldn’t believe it. ”We’re not gonna do anything?”
”I’m all in favour of doing something,” Crowley replied, sounding very tired. ”I just don’t know what.”
”If I may offer an idea,” Robin said, sitting up, ”I think since this whole problem started with the spell on the sheath, undoing that spell might be a good place to start.”
”Right!” Faith agreed. ”Undo the spell!”
Crowley shook his head, his eyes fixed on Robin. ”You know I can’t do that, Robbie.”
”But I’m willing to bet you know someone who does.” Robin’s eyes were teary and bloodshot, but the gaze in them was firm. ”You brought your little black book, didn’t you?”
”Son, ninety percent of the people in that book are *dead*.”
”The explosion?” Faith guessed.
”No, time,” Crowley said. He looked over at her with a sad smile. ”Though the explosion certainly didn’t help.” He stood up, heading over to the hall. ”All right. I’ll see who I can find.”
He returned with an old-fashioned notebook, its soft covers made of vinyl, and sat down once again on his chair by Robin’s feet.
”I assume you have tried young Rupert Giles?” he asked.
*Young* Rupert Giles, Faith noted. Oh yeah, she was back in Watcher territory all right. ”I tried to call him,” she said. ”I keep getting Andrew.”
”Andrew?”
”Wells.”
”Ah yes.” Crowley turned the pages. ”I have him in here. Well, if you’ve already called him, there’s no reason for me to pester him further. Could he offer any help?”
”Just in the sense of sending over Buffy - we’re expecting her in a day or two.”
”The senior Slayer?” He frowned. ”Does she have knowledge of spells?”
Robin snorted. ”Not really, no.”
”She has knowledge of *slaying*,” Faith said. ”Which will be pretty useful with me and Robin busy with this shit.”
”Robin is, as you put it, ’busy with this shit’,” Crowley said sharply. ”You will be performing your Slayer duties as always.”
What the *fuck*? That was the trouble with Watchers, they started bossing you around if they got the chance. Judging from Robin’s sharp intake of breath, he knew how pissed that would make her. That calmed her down a little - at least she had him on her side.
She wished she could have gutted Crowley, but they needed his help, and besides, Robin would’ve been pissed. Oh, and the whole it being wrong thing.
”Right now,” she said, ”Robin *is* my Slayer duties. And you’re not my Watcher, Grandpa, so how about you stick to what you know and leave me the hell alone?”
”Just - ” Robin interrupted before Crowley had a chance to find an answer ” - stop it. Please. Look those names up. Someone has to be alive.”
Without a word, Crowley started flipping through the pages of the book. From where she was standing, Faith could see that there were a lot of names in there, but still it took a while before he spoke up.
”Tennant,” he said. ”Young Lydia. Afraid of her own shadow, but a clever girl. Still, I have her marked for vampire lore, which this most definitely isn’t.”
”All I want to know,” Faith said, gritting her teeth, ”is if you have anyone in there who is alive and knows how to make a spell.”
”That’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?” Crowley kept turning the pages, and then hesitated for a while before turning them back again. ”Well, I suppose this is no time to be choosy. Wyndam-Pryce. Not a warlock per se, but decent enough - ”
”He died in LA,” Faith said, cutting him short. The old ache of mourning for Angel and the others flared up and made her voice harsh. ”Strike him out.”
”Ah.” Crowley frowned at the notebook. ”Well, I can’t say I’m sorry - not after that business with Nikki.”
”Different Watcher generations, I think,” Robin said, closing his eyes.
Faith had no idea what he was talking about, and Crowley looked confused for a moment too, but then he nodded slowly.
”Oh, right. I remember there being a boy. Don’t think I ever met him as an adult.”
”So this would be his... what, dad?” Faith asked.
”Mm.” Crowley didn’t seem to want to expand on the subject, or call the number.
”He’s one of the people who voted in favour, isn’t he?” Robin asked, his eyes still closed.
”Yes. Still - it’s been more than thirty years.”
”In favour of what?” Faith was trying to follow the discussion, but it was getting pretty damned difficult.
”Abortion,” Robin said.
It didn’t take long for Faith to follow *that* line of thought. Slayage and kids were a pretty fucked up blend. But taking a vote on it? ”Shouldn’t that have been up to your mom?”
”That was the purpose of the vote,” Crowley said. ”A sizable portion of the Council felt that it was a too important decision to hand over to the individual Slayer. From a Watcher’s perspective, I suppose they had a point. But I’m a doctor. I believe in consent.”
She could just see that - a bunch of tweedy Watchers deciding what to do with their Slayer’s little mistake. Sometimes she really hated this gig. Things were different now, though. At least they were supposed to be.
”Call him,” Robin said. ”The worst he can do is say no.”
Crowley hesitated, but then raised his shoulders in a shrug. ”I suppose in this day and age, that’s true. All right, then. May I use your phone?”
Faith nodded towards the sofa table, where the phone was standing between some popcorn and a pile of books. She’d made a lot of use of all three things lately. ”Over there.”
Crowley pulled another black notebook from his bag, along with a pen. He then went to fetch the sword and sheath, and piled it all up by the phone. In order to do so, he had to move aside Faith’s piles, and he scowled in an almost Giles-like way at the heavy history book she’d put face-down. Very carefully, he tore out a page from one of his notebooks and put it as a bookmark in the history book before laying it aside.
He seemed to take forever to dial the phone number, but then, it was overseas and probably had about a gazillion numbers to it. And then they all waited as he sat quietly by the phone.
”Hello, this is Bernard Crowley,” he finally said, and Faith started a little, because she’d stopped expecting it. ”I’m calling to ask if you could help me out with this spell - well, more like curse - that Robin’s been exposed to.”
He started explaining the curse the way Faith had explained it to him, but stopped before he had reached the aging bit. It wasn’t the kind of silence that you had when you were listening to someone else speaking. This was a stone-cold, freezing silence
”If you ever use that word about him again,” he said slowly, ”I’m going to fly all the way over to England and kick your ass, I swear to God.”
This time, the silence *was* of a listening kind, and Crowley didn’t sound quite as pissed when he spoke again: ”I know that. This isn’t about being *right*. This thing is draining his life right out - he could be older than me, the way he looks. A lot of people have died lately.” He paused. ”I know you’ve... had your share of losses. This is one we might be able to prevent. Please, if you can help us, don’t tell me what he should have done, or what I should have done, just say what we should do *now*.”
Faith watched Robin, trying to figure out how he felt about Crowley pretty much pleading for his life on the phone, but his face was still damned hard to read.
Another listening silence, and Crowley’s face softened. ”Thank you,” he said. ”Yeah, we’re pretty certain. Faith, get me the sword.”
Huh. It seemed ’please’ was reserved for the jerk on the phone. Faith got the sword and sheath from the weapon cabinet and put them down on the sofa table, careful to find an empty spot between all the other stuff on there.
”And the translation?”
”In the pile.”
Crowley rummaged about until he found the note, holding the phone squeezed between his ear and his shoulder. ”Yeah. Viking, it seems like. Well, largely that’s due to size combined with weight, as I understand it. And it says ’blessed be the killer of evil.’ Uh, that’s... S-I-G-N-E. Is that so?”
Since most of what Faith could hear was things she already knew, she headed over to Robin and sat down where Crowley had been sitting before. ”You okay?”
”I’m hungry,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised.
”Well, that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
”Please,” he said in disgust, and while his face was as old as ever, his voice sounded very young all of a sudden. ”Don’t say that.”
”Don’t say what?”
”’Good sign.’ It makes this whole place smell of hospital bed.”
She got his point, but as far as she was concerned, the place already smelled of hospital bed. Last time she had felt it this strongly, she had waken up hooked to a bunch of monitors, and it had made her so mad she pummelled a girl on the way out. Sure, part of that had been to get her clothes. But most of it, the fierce, furious inch-of-her-life beating, had been because she was aching to get that smell out of her nose. To replace it with anything, even the smell of blood.
”Will you do me a favor?” he asked.
”Sure, what?”
”I’d like to eat in the kitchen.”
That was a pretty bad idea. She’d had enough trouble helping him to the bathroom, and she suspected that if they got as far as the kitchen, he’d be too tired to eat. On the other hand, it wasn’t like she could blame him. Not much fun having dinner with a bored half-vamp in one corner of the room and Crowley in the other trying to save Robin’s life with the help of a guy who hadn’t wanted him born in the first place.
”Okay,” she said. ”Just don’t poop out on me.”
He smiled. ”Would I do that?”
”You tell me.”
She got up and put her arm around him, helping him stand. It would’ve been easier to just scoop him up and carry him, but there was that pesky little issue of pride. Robin wasn’t the kind of guy who’d freak at any little attack on his dignity, but there was undignified like falling into an open grave during a stakeout and undignified like being carried around your own apartment by the girl who was supposed to be boinking you senseless.
With joined efforts, they hobbled into the kitchen, and Faith took care to make sure he was comfortable when she helped him into a chair.
”No heart attacks?” she asked.
”Not a one,” he replied. That fucker, he looked like shit, but he still had that dignity thing going for him.
”That’s good.” She stood there watching him for a while. For some reason, it seemed like he was waiting for her to do something. ”Oh, dammit! You want me to cook, don’t you?”
”I could try doing it myself, but...”
”Yeah, ’cause we want more *burns* on top of everything else. God, I hate you.”
This was the danger of staying too long in one place. People started expecting things of you. Lousy, boring things, like bathroom duty and cooking. At least Robin was less likely than the vampire to moan and groan because he thought he was above eating regular food.
Oh fuck. She had forgotten Robin’s most annoying quirk: his inability to eat anything a human would like. How the hell did you cook eggplants and quorn and that shit anyway?
”You get cheese sandwiches,” she decided. ”Take it or leave it.”
”I’ll take it,” he said. ”Though if you feel the urge...”
”Not feeling any urge,” she assured him.
”...there are some vegetarian sausages in the fridge.”
She made horking noises. ”If you’re going to go all blasphemous on me, you can starve.”
But she knew she was going to fry those damned sausages. She was turning into such a pushover.
***
Robin had dared her to try one of the sausages, but even with ketchup it tasted just as bland as she had thought it would, and she stuck to sandwiches.
This was all wrong. Normally he’d be the one who made meals - fancy meals with chopped-up ingredients and half a dozen different herbs and spices. Most of the time it’d taste pretty good by the time he was finished. But without the sauce and the spices and the chopped-up stuff, what you had was gruel in sausage form.
”I don’t know how you can eat that shit,” she said.
He didn’t answer, or smile, or do any of the things that could have set her mind at ease. He just watched her, and she was forced to watch him back. Jesus. She didn’t think he could survive healing someone else, but that wasn’t what scared her. Even if he never healed anyone ever again, if he never so much as touched somebody, she didn’t think he could survive. Period.
What was taking Crowley so long? She listened carefully, trying to hear something from the living room. She picked up a few mumbled phrases, impossible to understand, but then even they went quiet. The call was over.
”Will you please just relax and eat?” Robin asked. ”You’re making me nervous.”
”If you’re not nervous already, there’s something wrong with you,” she snapped.
Crowley showed up in the doorway and gave Robin a long, thoughtful look.
”Well?” Faith asked. ”Is he gonna help?”
”He agreed to try,” Crowley said, not taking his eyes off Robin, ”which is quite something considering he’s the kind of man who wouldn’t sneeze without checking proper procedure first. And he did give me the identity of the Slayer. Signe Amundsdottir, late tenth century, Scandinavia somewhere. It seems the runes we believed to be ’blessed’ is actually her name.”
”Signe, the killer of evil,” Robin said slowly, as if trying out the words. ”It makes sense. So, I guess we should start by finding out all we can about her...”
Faith could tell from Crowley’s expression that it wasn’t going to happen, and it only took her a second longer to figure out why. ”The explosion,” she said. ”There’s nowhere to find out anymore.”
Crowley closed his eyes and turned his head slightly away. She didn’t blame him.
”Do you remember anything about her?” Robin asked. His voice sounded thick. ”Did he?”
”I don’t even remember that she *existed*,” Crowley said. ”Apparently, she worked for some chieftain or another, and after he died, she disappeared. Left her home, no one ever found her.”
”Until now,” Faith said. These little bits of information weren’t very helpful, but they made *her* feel a lot better. For the past few days, it was like she’d been having this Slayer girl - Signe - inside her head, and now she’d taken a step forward.”America’s first Slayer. Cool.”
”I very much doubt that,” Robin said. He was clearly struggling to keep his voice even, but he smiled a little. ”Native American Slayers of that time wouldn’t have made the official registry, but they’re pretty much guaranteed to have existed.”
Okay, point, but somehow that didn’t count. She wasn’t sure why. Those ancient Indian Slayers been the lucky ones, without Watchers or rules or any of that shit. Just superpowers and a chance to use them any way they wanted. And maybe that was the reason, right there. If there was no one around to lecture you day and night on what it meant to be a Slayer, would you even really be one? As little as she liked it, that straitjacket of rules and regulations had been part of the package for thousands of years. Enough that even now that everything had changed, there were still Watchers and sacred duties and whatnot designed to keep the Slayers on the straight and narrow.
”I wonder what she was like,” she thought out loud. ”She had to have some balls, crossing an ocean like that.”
”Pretty irresponsible, though,” Robin said. ”She didn’t tell anyone, she just left.”
”Sounds like my kind of girl,” Faith said. Somehow it was good to know that Signe hadn’t been the perfect little Slayer.
”Don’t be too hard on her,” Crowley said. ”It’s more or less what I did, the first couple of months after your mom died. Sometimes you need the time out.”
”You took more responsibility, though,” Robin said.
Crowley smiled. ”I took you.”
Faith was still following the line of thought Crowley had brought out. ”That chieftain... you think that’s why she left? Maybe *he* was our ’ik’ guy. We ought to be able to find him in the history books, yeah?”
Robin shook his head. ”Scandinavia in those times... lots of tiny kingdoms and hardly any information about any of them.”
”Not to mention the number of names that end in ’ik’,” Crowley said.
”Erik,” Faith said. ”Patrik... What else?”
”Ulrik,” Robin suggested.
”Frederik, Hendrik, Alarik...” Crowley continued.
”Okay, okay, I get the picture.” Faith sighed. ”One step forward, two backward, huh?”
”I wouldn’t say that,” Robin said. ”We’re going somewhere on this. Slowly, but I think eventually...”
”Eventually? How much time do you think we have?”
Silence spread across the room, enough that Faith could hear the by now familiar rattle of chains from the living room as Ella changed her position. She saw the shock on Robin’s face, and her anger and frustration disappeared. Instead, she just felt sad.
”I’m sorry,” she said. ”I didn’t mean to...”
Robin clasped her hand in brittle fingers and looked to Crowley. ”How much time *do* we have, Coll?”
Crowley shook his head slightly and stroke his thumb along his moustache. ”Age is a tricky condition to predict. You’ve taken good care of your body, and that helps, even now. Your heart is weak, but I’ve seen people live for years with a weak heart. It also elevates the risk for a stroke somewhat, but your healthy lifestyle remedies that to a point. All I can say is what I’d tell anyone who manages to reach a high age. Take good care of yourself, and...” He grimaced, clearly aware of how inappropriate his next words were. ”Enjoy life.”
***
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Main pairing: Faith/Robin
Rating: R
Summary: Faith and Robin are fighting vampires in Cleveland, but when Robin receives a couple of ancient artifacts, the effects are life-changing... and not just for the two of them.
Chapters 1 and 2 can be found here, chapters 3 and 4 here.
***
Chapter 5
Robin
***
The sun set without Faith coming back, but Robin wasn’t very concerned; he figured she had probably decided to go on patrolling the local cemeteries. It would have been nice if she could have called him, but Faith was Faith, and it was unlikely the idea had even occurred to her. He tried doing a bit of paperwork - being away from the school didn’t mean he could slack off - and when his concentration failed him, he sat down with a mystery novel.
People passed by the door and he listened with half an ear as he tied together the clues concerning the body in Mr. Thipps’ bathtub. It was an intriguing mystery, and the only one by that author he hadn’t read before.
A series of slow, dragging steps were followed by the sound of a key in his door. That *did* make him concerned - more than concerned, downright worried. He put the book down and hurried out into the hallway, just as Faith came through the door. Her face was sickly pale and her hair damp with sweat.
”What happened?” he asked, putting his arm around her shoulders to support her. ”The sword, did it...”
”The sword was great,” she said, slurring slightly. She lifted her right hand, which held a long object wrapped in dark velvet. ”I love the sword. I couldn’t have done it without her.”
”Then what...?” The thought that she might be drunk turned up in his head, but he rejected it. Even if she’d be reckless enough to drink on the job, Faith had a high tolerance for alcohol.
”Little thing called the odds,” she explained to him. ”Can’t always beat them.”
Suddenly cold, he grabbed her around the waist with both hands and started feeling his way around, until he got to the sticky spot on her back, clumsily tied up with the same kind of cloth she’d used for her sword.
”You drove back home with a wound like this?” he asked. ”You need an ambulance!”
”Couldn’t bring the sword,” she mumbled. ”I’m sorry.”
”Sorry!? Faith, you could *die* from this.” He should have been there to help - and then he remembered why he hadn’t been, and realized why she apologized.
Slowly, he started unwrapping her makeshift bandage so he could reach the wound beneath.
”It’s all right,” he told her. ”I’ll help you.”
”You shouldn’t have to...” she started, and he didn’t know if those were tears in her voice or if it was just lack of oxygen.
”Hey,” he said. ”Let me be the good sidekick here.”
”You my Slayerette now?” she asked him, smiling slightly.
”Damned right, I am.”
Compared to the patients at the hospital, treating Faith wasn’t so bad. The wound was serious, and bleeding profusely, but at least it was just one wound and not a whole body full of illness.
”There,” he said when he was definitely done. ”Feeling better?”
”Lots,” she replied, wrapping her arms around his neck. The color was starting to come back in her face already. ”Forget the sidekick gig. You’re my hero.”
She had a wicked smile on her face, but her voice was serious, and when she leaned in to kiss him he could taste salt on her lips.
Her concern excited him, and he returned the kiss with fervour, pinning her against the wall. He was a patient man, and he particularly enjoyed taking his time with Faith, who was still a novice when it came to the more slow-moving aspects of sex. But slow and soft wasn’t the same thing, and they both liked variation. A full scale of crescendos and diminuendoes, he’d told her once, and she gave him that blank look and ”huh” that reminded him that despite everything she’d done, she was just a kid - and a kid who had gone to prison instead of college, no less.
He grabbed her wrists hard and teased her face with light kisses, the shadow of lips touching her skin.
”You wanna do it right here?” she asked him.
”Let’s start ’doing it’ here,” he said, ”and keep ’doing it’ in every...” he followed the inside of her arm with his thumb ”...single...” scratching her with his fingernails ”...room.”
”In front of the freakovamp and everything?”
”You got it,” he said, releasing her and gently nudging her towards the living room door.
She raised an eyebrow. ”Cool.”
***
They had only reached the door to the bedroom when he felt himself soften. He drew back, bewildered. It couldn’t be... not since his teen years... and with *Faith* of all people! But it was.
”What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice husky and breathless.
”Nothing,” he said firmly, returning his attention to her, using hands and mouth to make up for what was failing him.
Faith was no fool, though, and she’d have to be pretty oblivious not to notice what was going down, especially when she arched her hipbone, grinding it against him.
A puzzled frown flew over her face, and she drew back like he had a minute before. ”You...”
”Shh,” he said, and with a wry smile added, ”There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
”But you’re...” Her eyes were widened with disbelief and horror. Hardly the most flattering situation in which he’d ever found himself. ”It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
”*Your* fault?” He wouldn’t have expected Faith to have insecurities about her performance.
As it turned out, that wasn’t what she meant at all. ”You healed me. Every time you do that, you go more... you know... worn.”
It was true, and it frightened him, especially since he couldn’t think of an alternative. Never dressing another wound? That wasn’t a very realistic option, considering their lifestyle. And through the fear, he felt an increasing irritation that this moment should be ruined by actions he couldn’t take back even if he tried.
”I’m not too worn to wear *you* out,” he said, his lips touching her ear.
”What if it doesn’t take a wound? What if just touching...?”
The thought made him freeze for a second, but once his brain had caught up with his fear, he shook his head. ”Touching isn’t enough.”
”How do you know?”
”I know.” He couldn’t describe it to her, how differently his body reacted to her hot, smooth skin from when it was clammy and bleeding. He twirled strands of her hair around his fingers and tugged very slightly. ”Trust me, I know.”
Faith turned her head very slowly in his direction, a thoughtful expression on her face. ”I want ice cream.”
”Now? Instead of sex?”
”Yeah, instead of sex. Idiot. On *you*.”
”Ah.” He kissed her, and then replied, ”I don’t think I have any ice cream.”
She gave a sharp, short laugh. ”I should have known. You heathen!”
”I have maple syrup.”
She thought about that. ”Okay, it’ll have to do. You’re still a heathen, though.”
”Don’t I know it.” He had to smile at her tone - she was still a teenager in some ways. Even so, he found it comforting to be called a heathen; it brought back memories of heated but friendly discussions in Crowley’s kitchen. He had been an obnoxious, know-it-all boy, and Conchita had scoffed at him. *Do you think the good Lord answers to you, Robin Wood?* *I thought he answered to everyone.* *Ha! He’d have his work cut out answering questions from silly little boys!* *Isn’t the Lord supposed to be almighty, Conchita?*
He suddenly found that he missed her, missed having someone around who believed in an almighty Lord who would set everything right. He certainly couldn’t believe it himself.
***
He woke up in the middle of the night feeling like something was squeezing his heart. His initial, fearful thought was ’heart attack,’ and then the rational part of his brain chimed in to tell him that ’anxiety attack’ was a much more likely explanation, though he didn’t know what would cause the anxiety. If he had dreamed something, he no longer remembered it.
He stumbled out of bed, barely able to stand and wondering why it felt like his head was on fire. Touching his scalp, it felt normal against his skin, though he was startled to see how gnarly and thin his hands looked in the moonlight.
The sensation of fire spread, dug in under his skin, aching and itching until it drove him crazy. He clawed at his skin, trying to rid himself of the feeling. Bugs, it had to be bugs, but what kind of bugs and how did you get rid of them? Maybe he could wash them away. He had to get to the bathroom.
His legs were shaking, and he wished desperately for Faith to wake up, but the weight on his chest made him breath in short, painful gasps and he couldn’t find his voice.
Somehow he managed to make his way into the bathroom, where he climbed into the tub without even bothering to take his pajama pants off. Turning the water on, he let it stream down over his head and body, scrubbing and scrubbing until the water running down the drain had a tinge of pink.
It helped, though. The fire faded into an itch. His heart was racing, but at least that meant he could feel its beat.
He sat down in the tub, leaning his back against the wall and taking deep, shaky breaths. Okay. The worst was over. He could simply sit here, enjoy the warm water, and never move another inch in his life. It was just actually getting *up* from the bathtub that was unthinkable.
The next thing he knew, Faith was shaking him and yelling curses at him, some of him he didn’t know the meaning of despite ten years of teaching high school.
”Calm down,” he said. His voice sounded croaky and slurred to his ears, and he was shivering from the still-running water that had ceased to be warm. ”And stop.... ow!... stop banging my head against the tub.”
She let go of him, but kept yelling, her voice so high-pitched it almost cracked. ”I fucking *knew* something was wrong, you motherfucking piece of shit! But you just *had* to keep your head so far up your ass the shit came out through your mouth! ’Oh, never mind me, I get cursed by old Vikings every day!’ And why the hell did you even touch that stupid cunt!”
”The only cunt I’ve been touching is yours,” he said, trying to sit up. ”And I’m not cursed.”
”Oh, right,” she said sarcastically. ”And what the fuck is that?” She pointed towards his face. ”Extreme Makeover: Backwards Edition, designed to make you look a hundred years old?”
The shivers were growing so badly that his teeth were clattering. ”What are you talking about?”
For a moment, Faith only stared at him. Then she hauled him out of the tub and positioned him in the middle of the floor. He swayed, but managed to remain standing without grabbing hold of the basin.
Beyond the basin was the mirror door of the bathroom cabinet, and despite Faith’s words, it took a while before his brain made the necessary connection between the face in it and his own.
”Jesus,” he said, lifting a shaky hand to his face. The touch confirmed what his eyes were telling him - deep, leathery wrinkles that belonged to someone old enough to have seen both world wars. He took his hand down and gave it a good look while he was at it. If it had looked gnarly in moonlight, there was no doubt now to what it was: the hairy, withered hand of an old man. ”It’s sucking the life out of me.”
”Still think you’re not cursed?”
He shook his head slowly. ’Curse’ seemed an adequate word for what had happened to him, but what kind of person cursed someone - a *random* someone - by making him a healer and then waiting to see how the gift saved others and killed himself? It was an absurd idea. Curses were... giving people smallpox or turning them into amphibies. Not this.
”It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
”We’re on a hellmouth,” she said bitterly. ”It doesn’t have to make any sense.”
The room started spinning in front of his eyes, and he grabbed the basin with both hands. ”Faith...”
”I got you,” she said, laying her arm around his back, and he hadn’t heard her voice so soft since the destruction of Sunnydale. She couldn’t have been any more obvious about the fact that she thought he was dying.
Well, she’d been wrong once before.
He leaned into her as she dragged him from the bathroom to the living room couch, where she proceeded to take his clothes off. He marvelled at the strength of a slayer, how her slim little body held more power than his own ever would. Any other day, that would be a challenge for him to match that power, teach her a thing or two. Today, he was both grateful and humiliated to find himself undressed and wrapped in a blanket like a baby.
Ella watched them with interest from her spot by the wall and commented with some glee, ”He looks like death warmed over.”
Having seen himself in the mirror, Robin had to admit that the spiteful statement held more truth than he would have liked. But considering that she was their prisoner, he couldn’t very well blame her for being tactless.
”Shut up or I’ll stake you right now!” Faith hissed, sounding so vicious Robin expected her to whip out a stake on the spot. Instead she sat down by his side on edge of the couch and asked, ”Do you have the number of the archaeologist?”
”Hanlon? Yeah. But I don’t know how much help he’ll be. He’s no expert on magic.” Robin gave a breath of laughter. ”He’s not even much of an archaeologist.”
”I figured,” Faith said.
”You did?”
”Sure. People who’re good at what they do don’t usually steal from their bosses. Don’t shit where you eat and all that.”
”Quite,” he said, closing his eyes.
”I’m gonna call him anyway, see if he know anything. Him and everyone else. Every god-damned slayer, watcher and Scooby in the entire universe, you see if I don’t!”
He smiled. The end of the Council, even though Crowley hadn’t been among the dead, had been a blow to him - an implication that there was no order to the world. He had never *liked* that order much, but it was still good to know that they weren’t completely on their own anymore.
”Not the LAPD, though,” he pleaded.
She sat quiet. So, she had intended to call them. Again. Robin felt a pang of sympathy for the no doubt overworked cops who must consider Faith a first-class stalker by now.
”If any of them are alive...” she started.
”If they are, they clearly don’t want to be found. Please. When this is all over, you can start calling them again. But not right now. I just... I can’t bear to listen.”
She didn’t reply. Maybe it wasn’t fair of him to ask that she’d give up trying. But he really couldn’t bear it if on top of everything else she’d be on the phone verbally abusing some poor Californian police officers because they couldn’t deliver a miracle.
”All right,” she said at long last. ”I won’t. I’ll call everyone else I can think of, though.”
”You’ll get no argument from me,” he said.
***
Faith made her calls all morning, but it was the middle of the afternoon before she got a callback. Robin wouldn’t have expected it to be possible to jump while lying down, but when the signal sounded, he did. As for Faith, she came running in from the kitchen as if a Turok Han was after her, and threw herself on the phone.
When she hung up, she was looking both relieved and rather pensive.
”Not Giles,” Robin guessed. ”Willow?”
”Buffy,” Faith said. ”She’s flying in from Rome.”
That was certainly unexpected. Buffy had never shown an interest in Cleveland - on the contrary, she had made sure to keep an ocean between it and her. ”That’s good, isn’t it?”
”I guess.” Faith shrugged., chewing a little. After a while, she added, ”Don’t get me wrong, it’ll be great having B here, but the thing is... she’s a ’thinking on her feet’ kind of gal. Great for battle, but for something like this...”
”We need a Watcher rather than a Slayer,” Robin filled in. A thought struck him, and he was stunned that it had taken so long. ”Call Crowley.”
At first, Faith’s expression was blank; then he saw recognition dawning in her face. ”Your mom’s...”
”481-516-2342.”
”Huh?”
”That’s his phone number.” Good job, Robin, ranting off numbers like a maniac, without telling her what it was or giving her a chance to write them down or anything.
”Phone number. Right.” She stuck her hand in her jeans pocket, and when she didn’t find her cell phone there, looked around to see where she had left it. ”481...?”
He repeated the phone number to her, a few numbers at a time, and then asked, ”Do you want me to write it down?”
”Nah, it’s okay. Slayer training.”
”Right.” It was funny, in a way; out of Buffy and Faith, Buffy was definitely the one who felt most like a Slayer, all her idiosyncrasies aside, but it was Faith who could do things like these, who had been drilled as a Slayer should. Robin’s distinct impression was that Giles had taken one look at Buffy and then handed over the reins. Which in a way had proven a pretty good idea - Buffy might have made some terrible judgement calls, but as far as he knew, she’d never technically turned evil.
Still, Robin wouldn’t have traded his Slayer girl for the world.
She was looking at him expectantly, and he realized that she had asked him a question.
”Sorry,” he said. ”You were saying?”
”Shouldn’t you make the call? He’s your family.”
”Not sure I can make it into the kitchen.”
”Cell phone,” she pointed out, holding up the item in question.
”Oh.” Since she looked ready to make another concerned comment on his fading health - the girl had no sense of tact - he started speaking to stop her, so fast he stumbled over the words. ”Right. Forgot about that. Hand it over, I’ll call him. It’s been months since I last talked to the old man; I’ve been so busy with the hellmouth and the school.”
When he finished speaking and reached for the phone, Faith had already dialled the number, and her fingers closed around his as he waited for Crowley to pick up.
The voice that met him was cheerful and Spanish, which first offset him and then made him smile. ”Conchita? It’s Robin. How are you?”
”Conchita doesn’t work here anymore,” the voice said. ”I’m Ramona. Do you want her number?”
Didn’t *work* there anymore? His hand started shaking so badly Faith had to take over the phone to stop it from slipping. What was going on with the world? He was losing his youth, maybe even his life, but some things were supposed to be constant, and that Beverly Hills kitchen was one of them.
”No, no that’s okay,” he said. ”I’d like to speak to Bernard Crowley, is he present?”
He half expected her to say that Crowley had died, or joined a monastery, or moved to Peru, but instead she said, ”one moment,” and soon thereafter, he heard Crowley’s voice, which still after all these years held a bit of New York in the vowels: ”Robin?”
”Yeah,” he said, faint with relief. ”Hello, Crowley.”
”It’s good to hear from you, son. Is everything all right?”
”Not really.” How could he tell Crowley what had happened? Should he start from the beginning, with the sword, or jump to the point - and beyond that, how could he bring himself to say the actual words? ”That’s why I’m calling. There seems to be a... well, a curse of some sort. I know that’s not your area of expertise, but with the Watchers decimated, I figured...”
”Well, I’ll help if I can, of course,” Crowley said. ”What do you...”
The rest of the sentence was muffled as Faith snatched the phone away from Robin, clearly dissatisfied with the way he was handling the conversation.
”Faith here,” she said. ”Listen, Robin’s being all Joe Stoic about this, but he’s really sick, and we don’t know what to do about it. So if you could... yeah? Yeah. Okay.” Her tight face softened a little. ”Nice talking to you too.”
She handed the phone back to him without another word, and he took it, bracing himself against the questions he knew would come.
Crowley had slipped into Watcher mode, offering only dry, clinical questions without comfort or pity, and for that, Robin was grateful. Robin recounted the details as close as he could remember them, and when he had told his story in full, there was a pause in the conversation. He didn’t say, ’please come’ or ’I need you. No ’help me.’ Instead, the next words out of his mouth were accusatory: ”Why did you fire Conchita?”
”I didn’t. She retired, last June.” Crowley didn’t say, ’You would have known that if you’d called,’ but Robin heard it never the less.
”Oh.”
”I’ll be on the next plane, and I’ll bring everything I’ve got. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
”You’ll have to make connections in Chicago,” he said. ”Or New York, possibly.”
”Any connection they have,” Crowley promised. The Watcher was all gone from his voice now. ”You hang in there.”
Robin nodded, closing his eyes that were starting to fog. ”I’ll try.”
***
”You’re dying, aren’t you?”
Robin turned his head towards Ella. Her eyes were sparkling, and her mouth curled up into a smile that showed a glimmer of her tiny front teeth.
”So it would seem,” he said, and unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice now that Faith had left the room: ”I take it you approve.”
Her face hardened, making her look like a woman instead of the pouty adolescent she usually did. The change made him wonder how old she really was. Did vampires continue to grow old inside, so that her face no more showed her real age than his did, or was a once-young vampire stuck in a permanent state of immaturity? It wasn’t something he had ever had reason to wonder before.
”You’re murdering me,” she said. ”Am I supposed to mourn you?”
”I am not *murdering* you.” Was she trying to get to him with that self-pitying attitude of hers? If so, it worked. ”I’m willing to bet you’ll live a considerably longer life than I will.”
”A few decades, maybe,” she spat out, as if the mere thought was an insult. ”You humans have no concept of time. Maybe if you die, I’ll go back to what I used to be.”
”Maybe if I die, you never will.”
”Then I’ll at least get the pleasure of knowing you’re rotting in hell.”
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, tired of whiny half-vampires, tired of this frail old body, tired of the whole Hellmouth. Things had been much easier when he had been killing off vampires one by one, his only mission to get to the one who had killed his mother.
Well, he’d found the right one, and look where that had gotten him. He’d failed to get his revenge, the damned vamp had died anyway - possibly twice - and now he was a dying old man of thirty-one.
He should have gotten out of the game while he had the chance. Or at the very least, he should have stuck to the find ’em, fight ’em, stake ’em approach.
”I wish I *was* murdering you,” he muttered.
”Well, go ahead, then!” she jeered. ”Grab a stake and do me in, get me out of this filthy human body!”
He didn’t answer, though in his mind’s eye he pictured himself doing just that.
”Oh, right, I forgot,” she said, in a sweet, false voice. ”You can’t.”
He could bear dying for those people in the hospital, and for Faith. But to die for this monster... God Almighty.
”I could make Faith do it,” he pointed out.
”Make the Slayer fight your battles, how very brave.”
”It’s her job to get rid of creatures like you.”
”No it isn’t.” Ella’s voice had gone quiet, and Robin looked up, finding her eyes downcast. ”There are no creatures like me.”
He thought of Spike, and what people had told him of Angel. It wasn’t the same. They had been full-strength vampires, with the capacity to murder and mutilate any human who came in their way. It was their urge to do so that had been compromised. Ella still had the urge; it was very clear to him that given the chance, she’d drink him dry and half of Cleveland along with him. But she couldn’t.
He wondered if she had a soul now, Was she still a pure monster inside, raging at its impotence, or was she starting to feel the pull of a conscience and keeping up her soulless behaviour out of fear of what she might become?
You’d have to be Buffy to think that made a difference.
”I hate this,” Ella said quietly, resting her chin on her knees. ”I’m cold, and tired, and wet.”
”That’s humanity for... wet?”
”I don’t know what happened.”
Maybe that was true, but at least Robin had a pretty good idea. It seemed Ella had taken yet another step towards actual life, though hardly one she would enjoy.
He propped himself up on his elbow, but quickly realized that even if he managed to stand up, there was no way he could drag Ella into the bathroom without causing her to escape. Even in her weakened state, she was a lot stronger than he was right now.
”Faith!” he called. He could hear her rummaging about in the bedroom but it took a while before she arrived. Had she been listening to the radio again? He had told her she could bring it into the living room, or watch TV if she preferred, but it seemed she didn’t want to disturb him or something.
When she appeared in the doorway, he told her, ”Ella seems to have had a bit of an accident.”
Faith scowled, measuring Ella with her eyes. ”What kind of an accident?”
”The kind that would require you taking her into the bathroom, washing her off, and getting her some new clothes.” Robin made an apologetic grimace and nodded towards the weapons cabinet. ”Keys are in the bottom drawer. Sorry.”
Faith’s corresponding grimace was anything but apologetic. ”Oh, you’ve *got* to be kidding me!” Despite her obvious distaste, she did go to the weapon cabinets and dug out the key. As she unlocked the manacles, she told Ella, ”Piss on me, girl, and I’m gonna cut out your guts with a dull knife, I don’t care what the cops say. Damn it, ain’t there any books on how to housebreak a vampire?”
”I don’t think the problem has even arisen before,” Robin pointed out.
Faith scoffed. Hauling Ella out of the room, she told Robin, ”If you need me...”
”I’ll make sure to let you know *before* I went my pants,” he said wryly.
She watched him as if she wasn’t certain if he was joking or not. He really wished he had been.
***
Chapter 6
Faith
***
By the time the doorbell rang, Faith had eaten a little, rested a little, but mostly had plenty of time to wonder if it would be okay with the new council to send for a junior Slayer or ten to handle some chores around the place. Surely ”bathroom duty” was the kind of thing you could pass over to someone with less work experience?
She was relieved and excited as she went to open the door, even though the best case scenario was some moldy old Watcher. Better than nothing.
She opened it - and stared. The man standing outside was very tall and very thin, with large black-framed glasses, a giant walrus moustache, a long woollen coat, and a fedora. He looked like a flagpole in disguise.
”Hi there. You must be Faith,” he said, and the illusion was broken, because she’d never heard a flagpole speak with a New York accent. ”I’m Crowley.”
”I figured,” she said, taking a step aside to let him by.
He took off the fedora, revealing his thick grey hair. It made him look a little bit more like a person. Weird as he looked, though, he was younger than she had expected. Maybe it was just Robin’s curse that made her perspective off, but she would’ve thought that a guy who’d retired as a Watcher thirty years ago would have to be ancient. This guy didn’t seem to be all that much older than the other Watchers she had known - well, of the old Council, anyway.
”You’re looking thoughtful,” he told her, taking off his coat. Underneath, he had grey pants and a tennis shirt. Old guy clothes, but no tweed.
”How old are you?” she asked straight out.
His eyebrows shot up. ”How very nice to meet you, Faith. Thank you, I had a very good flight. Now, how is Robin?”
”Dying,” she countered, annoyed to be lectured about manners by some geezer who was supposed to be *helpful*.
His face grew serious, and he put his suitcase down on the floor, though he kept a smaller bag. ”Let’s get to it, then.”
She took him into the living room. Robin was sitting up and had that careless expression she remembered from the San Diego hospital last year. The one that made her want to call the nurse.
”Hi, Crowley,” he said, smiling a little. ”Want me to say aah?”
”It’d be a start,” Crowley said, his voice slightly shaky. He took a chair up to the couch and threw a glance at Ella, but made no comment on her. ”Damn it, Robbie, what have you gotten yourself into?”
”Remember how you told me that smoking would make me age prematurely? Well, I stopped smoking, and see where that got me.”
”I also told you to stay away from magic,” Crowley pointed out. He grabbed Robin’s wrist with his fingertips, glancing at his watch to check the pulse. ”You didn’t listen to that, now, did you?”
On occasion, Faith had heard Robin speak on the phone in what she’d named his teacher voice, the one that said he was completely in control of the situation and willing to be patient with some stupidity from the person he was dealing with, but that his patience had limits. She had thought it was just his job that had made him sound like that. Now she knew better.
”It’s not as if I was dabbling in spells,” Robin said. ”It was an old sheath.”
”Ancient artifacts,” Crowley said. ”Even worse.”
He had to be bluffing with that attitude, Faith decided. There was no magic word that would make things better, and he was *not* in control of the situation.
Maybe Robin never had been either. Maybe no one ever did. She used to think that other people didn’t feel that black hole of chaos and confusion, but what if everyone did and they were just better at faking it? She knew Robin had to be keeping up the whole calm as a cucumber routine as a way of coping, that it was all fake, but the question was if it was just right now, or always?
Crowley kept asking Robin questions about the sheath while giving him the full physical. He even took out one of those headphone thingies - a stethoscope - from his bag. Any moment now, he’d start handing out lollipops.
”You’re a *doctor*?” Faith asked. That was a pretty weird job for a Watcher. Dusty old books were more their thing.
”Demon anatomy, once upon a time,” Crowley said, feeling the glands under Robin’s chin. ”Plastic surgery, after that. Now I’m retired.”
Plastic surgery? Definitely not a Watcher area, but it did explain the relative lack of mold. Except she had lived in California long enough to recognize Botox and silicone, and she could see none of it on this guy. Not even the tight skin of a face lift.
”You never told me how old you were,” she said.
”You’re very nosy,” Crowley said and asked Robin as he squeezed his ribcage, ”Does it hurt when I do this? Seventy-two.”
It took a while for Faith to realize that she had gotten her answer, tangled up in the examination. Okay. Seventy-two was old, a good ten years older than she would have guessed from his face, but still meant he’d been one of the less old-and-stuffy Watchers back in his day.
She could sort of see that, traces of a younger man behind the flagpole disguise. Looking at the two of them, she wondered what Nikki Wood had thought of her Watcher, if she’d ever had the urge to jump his bones. If she *had* jumped his bones.
She sternly reminded herself that not everyone was like her, and that two people could have a close relationship without sex being involved. She didn’t think Buffy and Giles has ever been even close to fucking - and if she was wrong, she *really* didn’t want to know about it - but she could totally see him taking in Buffy’s kid out of some sentimental sense of duty. Well, if Buffy had a kid.
”..and in the morning, it had reached this state,” Robin finished his story. ”I can only hope that the curse has finished running its course and that it won’t get any worse than this.”
”Have you seen any other doctors?”
Robin chuckled. ”Not really eager to try and explain this to a doctor.”
”So what have you told your job?”
”That I have the flu.”
”Hmm... Pneumonia.”
”He’s got pneumonia too?” Faith asked, her voice going high-pitched like a little girl’s.
Both Robin and Crowley looked at her like she was completely off her rocker.
”That’s what he’ll tell the school,” Robin explained. ”It’s a little more comme-il-faut than ’curse’.”
He had to know she had no clue what that word meant, but the point got through anyway. Not a bad idea, she had to admit, to get a doctor’s note.
”You keep calling it a curse,” Crowley said. ”I’m not so sure it is.”
Robin held up his hand with the burn marks. ”It’s this hand that does the healing, and it only started after I was burned by the sheath. As evidence goes, I think that’s fairly conclusive.”
”Oh, I’m convinced whatever spell was put on the sheath is responsible for your current predicament,” Crowley said. ”It’s just that ’curse’ implies that it’s intentional and malignant, and we don’t really have sufficient proof for either. All we know is that the sheath turned you into a healer - and that for some inexplicable reason, the side effects have been amplified. It should take twenty or thirty *years* for you to reach the condition you’re in.”
”I’ll remember that for next time,” Robin said wryly.
”This is normal?” Faith asked. ”Over twenty or thirty years?”
Crowley nodded. ”Ever seen a woman after ten childbirths or so?”
She recalled a kid in school - Janet Sullivan, wasn’t it? - who had a whole mess of brothers and sisters. Her mom had been a real ugly old thing. Not that Faith’s had looked much better, passed out drunk on the couch. ”Yeah.”
”Giving life is a taxing business. Do it every day, and you don’t have much of your own left.” Crowley looked at Robin and furrowed his brow. ”But you say that this happened less than a *week* ago.”
Something clicked in Faith’s brain, and she turned towards Ella, giving the vampire girl a long, hard stare. ”Is it her fault?”
Robin and Crowley both looked at Ella too, their faces carrying the same thoughtful expression.
Ella blinked, and then got defensive, crossing her arms as well as she could with the chains. ”What? He messes me up, and suddenly that’s my fault?”
”This is the vampire?” Crowley said, standing up. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and once again dug out the stethoscope from his bag.
”Former vampire,” Robin said.
Ella bared her teeth at the stethoscope. ”Touch me with that and I’ll bite you.”
”Be my guest,” Crowley said. ”I’ve never had the chance to examine the teeth of a defanged vampire before.”
She *did* bite him, too, but it didn’t seem to phase him much. He just pried his fingers out of her jaw, and as far as Faith could tell, bones and skin were still unbroken.
”Hm,” he said, holding Ella’s chains with one hand so she couldn’t scratch at him as he used the stethoscope on her. ”Are you aware that she has a heartbeat?”
”Are you aware that you’re smelly and repulsive?” Ella asked. ”And I do not have a heartbeat!”
”She didn’t before,” Robin said. ”Must have happened after this last time I touched her.”
”I’m glad you’re dying,” Ella told him.
”And the bucket?” Crowley asked.
”Is there for my utter and complete humiliation.”
”If you don’t shut up,” Faith said, still reeling after the comment Ella had made to Robin, ”I’m gonna tape your mouth shut. It’ll be fun to see if you can *starve* to death.”
”The bucket?” Crowley repeated, looking at Faith.
”Like I have any desire to drag her Royal Badness’s ass to the bathroom all the time,” Faith said.
”Interesting.”
Crowley gave Ella a thorough examination just like the one he’d given Robin, only this time he had to keep his skin out of touch for her teeth and nails. Faith idly wondered if vampires could have rabies. She hoped not. They finally had someone around who was willing to help, and it’d be pretty rotten if he died a horrible death because of it.
”It’s really fascinating,” Crowley said, finishing his examination. ”There are still some discrepancies, but she does seem to be mostly human.”
Ella and Faith both scoffed. Robin raised his graying eyebrows and smiled a little. ”Not including such things as human behavior.”
”Behaviour is learned. Bodily functions are not.” Crowley took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. Without them, his eyes looked big and sleepy. ”She’s old, and she has forgotten things. I think you may be right, Faith. Healing a vampire who has been dead for centuries may be enough to expedite the aging process to this degree.”
”Okay,” Faith said, concentrating on the ’right’ part and ignoring ’expedite’. ”So what do we do about it?”
Crowley put his glasses on, sighed deeply, and shrugged. It made him look like one of the vultures in The Jungle Book. Faith half expected his answer to be ’whatcha wanna do?’ but he didn’t say anything at all.
”That’s it!?” Faith couldn’t believe it. ”We’re not gonna do anything?”
”I’m all in favour of doing something,” Crowley replied, sounding very tired. ”I just don’t know what.”
”If I may offer an idea,” Robin said, sitting up, ”I think since this whole problem started with the spell on the sheath, undoing that spell might be a good place to start.”
”Right!” Faith agreed. ”Undo the spell!”
Crowley shook his head, his eyes fixed on Robin. ”You know I can’t do that, Robbie.”
”But I’m willing to bet you know someone who does.” Robin’s eyes were teary and bloodshot, but the gaze in them was firm. ”You brought your little black book, didn’t you?”
”Son, ninety percent of the people in that book are *dead*.”
”The explosion?” Faith guessed.
”No, time,” Crowley said. He looked over at her with a sad smile. ”Though the explosion certainly didn’t help.” He stood up, heading over to the hall. ”All right. I’ll see who I can find.”
He returned with an old-fashioned notebook, its soft covers made of vinyl, and sat down once again on his chair by Robin’s feet.
”I assume you have tried young Rupert Giles?” he asked.
*Young* Rupert Giles, Faith noted. Oh yeah, she was back in Watcher territory all right. ”I tried to call him,” she said. ”I keep getting Andrew.”
”Andrew?”
”Wells.”
”Ah yes.” Crowley turned the pages. ”I have him in here. Well, if you’ve already called him, there’s no reason for me to pester him further. Could he offer any help?”
”Just in the sense of sending over Buffy - we’re expecting her in a day or two.”
”The senior Slayer?” He frowned. ”Does she have knowledge of spells?”
Robin snorted. ”Not really, no.”
”She has knowledge of *slaying*,” Faith said. ”Which will be pretty useful with me and Robin busy with this shit.”
”Robin is, as you put it, ’busy with this shit’,” Crowley said sharply. ”You will be performing your Slayer duties as always.”
What the *fuck*? That was the trouble with Watchers, they started bossing you around if they got the chance. Judging from Robin’s sharp intake of breath, he knew how pissed that would make her. That calmed her down a little - at least she had him on her side.
She wished she could have gutted Crowley, but they needed his help, and besides, Robin would’ve been pissed. Oh, and the whole it being wrong thing.
”Right now,” she said, ”Robin *is* my Slayer duties. And you’re not my Watcher, Grandpa, so how about you stick to what you know and leave me the hell alone?”
”Just - ” Robin interrupted before Crowley had a chance to find an answer ” - stop it. Please. Look those names up. Someone has to be alive.”
Without a word, Crowley started flipping through the pages of the book. From where she was standing, Faith could see that there were a lot of names in there, but still it took a while before he spoke up.
”Tennant,” he said. ”Young Lydia. Afraid of her own shadow, but a clever girl. Still, I have her marked for vampire lore, which this most definitely isn’t.”
”All I want to know,” Faith said, gritting her teeth, ”is if you have anyone in there who is alive and knows how to make a spell.”
”That’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?” Crowley kept turning the pages, and then hesitated for a while before turning them back again. ”Well, I suppose this is no time to be choosy. Wyndam-Pryce. Not a warlock per se, but decent enough - ”
”He died in LA,” Faith said, cutting him short. The old ache of mourning for Angel and the others flared up and made her voice harsh. ”Strike him out.”
”Ah.” Crowley frowned at the notebook. ”Well, I can’t say I’m sorry - not after that business with Nikki.”
”Different Watcher generations, I think,” Robin said, closing his eyes.
Faith had no idea what he was talking about, and Crowley looked confused for a moment too, but then he nodded slowly.
”Oh, right. I remember there being a boy. Don’t think I ever met him as an adult.”
”So this would be his... what, dad?” Faith asked.
”Mm.” Crowley didn’t seem to want to expand on the subject, or call the number.
”He’s one of the people who voted in favour, isn’t he?” Robin asked, his eyes still closed.
”Yes. Still - it’s been more than thirty years.”
”In favour of what?” Faith was trying to follow the discussion, but it was getting pretty damned difficult.
”Abortion,” Robin said.
It didn’t take long for Faith to follow *that* line of thought. Slayage and kids were a pretty fucked up blend. But taking a vote on it? ”Shouldn’t that have been up to your mom?”
”That was the purpose of the vote,” Crowley said. ”A sizable portion of the Council felt that it was a too important decision to hand over to the individual Slayer. From a Watcher’s perspective, I suppose they had a point. But I’m a doctor. I believe in consent.”
She could just see that - a bunch of tweedy Watchers deciding what to do with their Slayer’s little mistake. Sometimes she really hated this gig. Things were different now, though. At least they were supposed to be.
”Call him,” Robin said. ”The worst he can do is say no.”
Crowley hesitated, but then raised his shoulders in a shrug. ”I suppose in this day and age, that’s true. All right, then. May I use your phone?”
Faith nodded towards the sofa table, where the phone was standing between some popcorn and a pile of books. She’d made a lot of use of all three things lately. ”Over there.”
Crowley pulled another black notebook from his bag, along with a pen. He then went to fetch the sword and sheath, and piled it all up by the phone. In order to do so, he had to move aside Faith’s piles, and he scowled in an almost Giles-like way at the heavy history book she’d put face-down. Very carefully, he tore out a page from one of his notebooks and put it as a bookmark in the history book before laying it aside.
He seemed to take forever to dial the phone number, but then, it was overseas and probably had about a gazillion numbers to it. And then they all waited as he sat quietly by the phone.
”Hello, this is Bernard Crowley,” he finally said, and Faith started a little, because she’d stopped expecting it. ”I’m calling to ask if you could help me out with this spell - well, more like curse - that Robin’s been exposed to.”
He started explaining the curse the way Faith had explained it to him, but stopped before he had reached the aging bit. It wasn’t the kind of silence that you had when you were listening to someone else speaking. This was a stone-cold, freezing silence
”If you ever use that word about him again,” he said slowly, ”I’m going to fly all the way over to England and kick your ass, I swear to God.”
This time, the silence *was* of a listening kind, and Crowley didn’t sound quite as pissed when he spoke again: ”I know that. This isn’t about being *right*. This thing is draining his life right out - he could be older than me, the way he looks. A lot of people have died lately.” He paused. ”I know you’ve... had your share of losses. This is one we might be able to prevent. Please, if you can help us, don’t tell me what he should have done, or what I should have done, just say what we should do *now*.”
Faith watched Robin, trying to figure out how he felt about Crowley pretty much pleading for his life on the phone, but his face was still damned hard to read.
Another listening silence, and Crowley’s face softened. ”Thank you,” he said. ”Yeah, we’re pretty certain. Faith, get me the sword.”
Huh. It seemed ’please’ was reserved for the jerk on the phone. Faith got the sword and sheath from the weapon cabinet and put them down on the sofa table, careful to find an empty spot between all the other stuff on there.
”And the translation?”
”In the pile.”
Crowley rummaged about until he found the note, holding the phone squeezed between his ear and his shoulder. ”Yeah. Viking, it seems like. Well, largely that’s due to size combined with weight, as I understand it. And it says ’blessed be the killer of evil.’ Uh, that’s... S-I-G-N-E. Is that so?”
Since most of what Faith could hear was things she already knew, she headed over to Robin and sat down where Crowley had been sitting before. ”You okay?”
”I’m hungry,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised.
”Well, that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
”Please,” he said in disgust, and while his face was as old as ever, his voice sounded very young all of a sudden. ”Don’t say that.”
”Don’t say what?”
”’Good sign.’ It makes this whole place smell of hospital bed.”
She got his point, but as far as she was concerned, the place already smelled of hospital bed. Last time she had felt it this strongly, she had waken up hooked to a bunch of monitors, and it had made her so mad she pummelled a girl on the way out. Sure, part of that had been to get her clothes. But most of it, the fierce, furious inch-of-her-life beating, had been because she was aching to get that smell out of her nose. To replace it with anything, even the smell of blood.
”Will you do me a favor?” he asked.
”Sure, what?”
”I’d like to eat in the kitchen.”
That was a pretty bad idea. She’d had enough trouble helping him to the bathroom, and she suspected that if they got as far as the kitchen, he’d be too tired to eat. On the other hand, it wasn’t like she could blame him. Not much fun having dinner with a bored half-vamp in one corner of the room and Crowley in the other trying to save Robin’s life with the help of a guy who hadn’t wanted him born in the first place.
”Okay,” she said. ”Just don’t poop out on me.”
He smiled. ”Would I do that?”
”You tell me.”
She got up and put her arm around him, helping him stand. It would’ve been easier to just scoop him up and carry him, but there was that pesky little issue of pride. Robin wasn’t the kind of guy who’d freak at any little attack on his dignity, but there was undignified like falling into an open grave during a stakeout and undignified like being carried around your own apartment by the girl who was supposed to be boinking you senseless.
With joined efforts, they hobbled into the kitchen, and Faith took care to make sure he was comfortable when she helped him into a chair.
”No heart attacks?” she asked.
”Not a one,” he replied. That fucker, he looked like shit, but he still had that dignity thing going for him.
”That’s good.” She stood there watching him for a while. For some reason, it seemed like he was waiting for her to do something. ”Oh, dammit! You want me to cook, don’t you?”
”I could try doing it myself, but...”
”Yeah, ’cause we want more *burns* on top of everything else. God, I hate you.”
This was the danger of staying too long in one place. People started expecting things of you. Lousy, boring things, like bathroom duty and cooking. At least Robin was less likely than the vampire to moan and groan because he thought he was above eating regular food.
Oh fuck. She had forgotten Robin’s most annoying quirk: his inability to eat anything a human would like. How the hell did you cook eggplants and quorn and that shit anyway?
”You get cheese sandwiches,” she decided. ”Take it or leave it.”
”I’ll take it,” he said. ”Though if you feel the urge...”
”Not feeling any urge,” she assured him.
”...there are some vegetarian sausages in the fridge.”
She made horking noises. ”If you’re going to go all blasphemous on me, you can starve.”
But she knew she was going to fry those damned sausages. She was turning into such a pushover.
***
Robin had dared her to try one of the sausages, but even with ketchup it tasted just as bland as she had thought it would, and she stuck to sandwiches.
This was all wrong. Normally he’d be the one who made meals - fancy meals with chopped-up ingredients and half a dozen different herbs and spices. Most of the time it’d taste pretty good by the time he was finished. But without the sauce and the spices and the chopped-up stuff, what you had was gruel in sausage form.
”I don’t know how you can eat that shit,” she said.
He didn’t answer, or smile, or do any of the things that could have set her mind at ease. He just watched her, and she was forced to watch him back. Jesus. She didn’t think he could survive healing someone else, but that wasn’t what scared her. Even if he never healed anyone ever again, if he never so much as touched somebody, she didn’t think he could survive. Period.
What was taking Crowley so long? She listened carefully, trying to hear something from the living room. She picked up a few mumbled phrases, impossible to understand, but then even they went quiet. The call was over.
”Will you please just relax and eat?” Robin asked. ”You’re making me nervous.”
”If you’re not nervous already, there’s something wrong with you,” she snapped.
Crowley showed up in the doorway and gave Robin a long, thoughtful look.
”Well?” Faith asked. ”Is he gonna help?”
”He agreed to try,” Crowley said, not taking his eyes off Robin, ”which is quite something considering he’s the kind of man who wouldn’t sneeze without checking proper procedure first. And he did give me the identity of the Slayer. Signe Amundsdottir, late tenth century, Scandinavia somewhere. It seems the runes we believed to be ’blessed’ is actually her name.”
”Signe, the killer of evil,” Robin said slowly, as if trying out the words. ”It makes sense. So, I guess we should start by finding out all we can about her...”
Faith could tell from Crowley’s expression that it wasn’t going to happen, and it only took her a second longer to figure out why. ”The explosion,” she said. ”There’s nowhere to find out anymore.”
Crowley closed his eyes and turned his head slightly away. She didn’t blame him.
”Do you remember anything about her?” Robin asked. His voice sounded thick. ”Did he?”
”I don’t even remember that she *existed*,” Crowley said. ”Apparently, she worked for some chieftain or another, and after he died, she disappeared. Left her home, no one ever found her.”
”Until now,” Faith said. These little bits of information weren’t very helpful, but they made *her* feel a lot better. For the past few days, it was like she’d been having this Slayer girl - Signe - inside her head, and now she’d taken a step forward.”America’s first Slayer. Cool.”
”I very much doubt that,” Robin said. He was clearly struggling to keep his voice even, but he smiled a little. ”Native American Slayers of that time wouldn’t have made the official registry, but they’re pretty much guaranteed to have existed.”
Okay, point, but somehow that didn’t count. She wasn’t sure why. Those ancient Indian Slayers been the lucky ones, without Watchers or rules or any of that shit. Just superpowers and a chance to use them any way they wanted. And maybe that was the reason, right there. If there was no one around to lecture you day and night on what it meant to be a Slayer, would you even really be one? As little as she liked it, that straitjacket of rules and regulations had been part of the package for thousands of years. Enough that even now that everything had changed, there were still Watchers and sacred duties and whatnot designed to keep the Slayers on the straight and narrow.
”I wonder what she was like,” she thought out loud. ”She had to have some balls, crossing an ocean like that.”
”Pretty irresponsible, though,” Robin said. ”She didn’t tell anyone, she just left.”
”Sounds like my kind of girl,” Faith said. Somehow it was good to know that Signe hadn’t been the perfect little Slayer.
”Don’t be too hard on her,” Crowley said. ”It’s more or less what I did, the first couple of months after your mom died. Sometimes you need the time out.”
”You took more responsibility, though,” Robin said.
Crowley smiled. ”I took you.”
Faith was still following the line of thought Crowley had brought out. ”That chieftain... you think that’s why she left? Maybe *he* was our ’ik’ guy. We ought to be able to find him in the history books, yeah?”
Robin shook his head. ”Scandinavia in those times... lots of tiny kingdoms and hardly any information about any of them.”
”Not to mention the number of names that end in ’ik’,” Crowley said.
”Erik,” Faith said. ”Patrik... What else?”
”Ulrik,” Robin suggested.
”Frederik, Hendrik, Alarik...” Crowley continued.
”Okay, okay, I get the picture.” Faith sighed. ”One step forward, two backward, huh?”
”I wouldn’t say that,” Robin said. ”We’re going somewhere on this. Slowly, but I think eventually...”
”Eventually? How much time do you think we have?”
Silence spread across the room, enough that Faith could hear the by now familiar rattle of chains from the living room as Ella changed her position. She saw the shock on Robin’s face, and her anger and frustration disappeared. Instead, she just felt sad.
”I’m sorry,” she said. ”I didn’t mean to...”
Robin clasped her hand in brittle fingers and looked to Crowley. ”How much time *do* we have, Coll?”
Crowley shook his head slightly and stroke his thumb along his moustache. ”Age is a tricky condition to predict. You’ve taken good care of your body, and that helps, even now. Your heart is weak, but I’ve seen people live for years with a weak heart. It also elevates the risk for a stroke somewhat, but your healthy lifestyle remedies that to a point. All I can say is what I’d tell anyone who manages to reach a high age. Take good care of yourself, and...” He grimaced, clearly aware of how inappropriate his next words were. ”Enjoy life.”
***