Happy Birthday to geyer!!!

[talesofspike]

Happy Birthday to geyer! May you have the best of days. The ending's about as happy as I thought I could realistically get away with. Hope it does the job.


Note: This is my way of saying thanks to my beta t_geyer on the occasion of her birthday for her unending patience, perseverance and support. This fic was kindly beta-ed by Josephine Martin with Slaymesoftly stepping in to correct any unwitting Briticisms.
Chapter 4

This was one scene that all three 'travellers' were familiar with, though as Wes remembered it, Angel wasn't due to arrive just yet. There were brightly coloured abstract paintings on the walls, most of which were rough brick, one being bare but most of the others painted in pale colours. Only the partitions that had obviously been added to divide up the open plan space had the smooth finish of plasterboard. The apartment had the look of a place that belonged to a guy who wanted to impress, as if the owner had paid a designer to come in and pick the decor and the wall lights for the converted warehouse and then obsessively kept the place exactly as the professional had left it... until a squatter had moved in and messed it all up. Not actively, no wholesale destruction, yet, but at the same time they hadn't bothered to clean up because they weren't going to be there long enough to care.

Angelus grinned at the scene before him. Victim and torturer, Wesley tied up and gagged, his face reddened and puffy, small cuts and abrasions on his cheeks from where the slayer had pummelled him. Bloody stains marked the front of the watcher's shirt, one beginning at the tear by his right shoulder, two more from tears over his pectoral muscles. Shallow cuts, painful but not deep enough to allow the blood loss to make him pass out.

"She really did a number on you didn't she, Wesley?" the soulless vampire crooned. "Guess with you, it's all about the pain. Maybe if Angel had tried something a bit more inventive in that hospital room..."

"It would have made no difference at all," Wes responded coolly. "In case you hadn't worked it out, we've been moving forward in time within each person's memories."

Angelus slowly raised an eyebrow as he processed the words the watcher said, one side of his mouth lifting upward into a smile as he fixed his attention on Present Day Faith. "So that would make this your pity party..."

Past Faith sat on the windowsill, the sash window raised high enough for her to rest her back against the side of the frame and look down into the alley below. She looked tired, not in a way that a good night's sleep would help, but tired in her very soul. It showed in the shadows under her eyes that not even her heavy make-up could hide, in the pallor caused by eight months in a hospital basement and in the weight she'd lost on her intravenous diet. Most of all, it showed in her eyes. She stared at the blood on sliver of glass in her hand, turning it this way and that, before she let it fall to the ground over twenty feet below. She gave a deep sigh and turned away from the window.

It felt strange to Wesley to see this scene over without fear and pain to cloud his senses. When events had originally unfolded he had read it so differently. She hadn't kept the window wide as she cut into his body so that the chill evening air would bring him additional discomfort. She hadn't let the glass fall and smash in the alley to destroy evidence. She had been laying a trail. Perhaps she had even seen Angel at the far end of the alley before she dropped it. The regretful sigh hadn't been an attempt at sarcasm. It had been real. She had believed that death was on its way and she was getting ready to welcome it. It was the indifferent attitude that had been feigned. Everything that followed from here was an exquisitely timed charade.

Wesley found himself moving closer to his Faith, wanting to make her understand that despite his bitter words not so very long ago in regard to this very scene, he didn't hold a grudge.

His movement seemed to attract the slayer's attention. "Wes?" She sounded, hesitant and alone. "I-."

Wes gave his own sigh and stepped in before the slayer could continue. "Is this one of my memories?"

Faith tilted her head on one side for a second and then gave a gentle shake of her head.

"Then that would suggest that I'm rather more over the experience than you are... So unless your rehabilitation includes some sort of twelve-step program that requires you to apologise to everyone you've ever wronged, I suggest you let it drop."

"Isn't this just sweet?" Angelus drawled. "Too bad the whole Marley's ghost deal means the sympathy fuck's out of the question."

Wes resisted the urge to tell the vampire to shut up and settled for glaring in his direction.

Past Faith got up and slowly walked toward Battered Wesley, rubbing her hands together to get rid of the numbness. "That's refreshing," the vision remarked. "But I'm feeling a little cold." She gave a couple of almost gentle slaps to Past Wes's cheek as she passed him by on her way to the open-plan kitchen area. "What do you say we warm the place up?"

"I'm sorry," Present Day Faith whispered, as her counterpart picked up a safety lighter.

Back in the day, Wes had thought that Faith was adding emotional torture to her repertoire that had so far included blunt, sharp and cold, that she had wanted to taunt him by making him feel responsible. Now he saw her words for what they were, a stalling tactic.

"Did you ever wonder if things would have been different... if we'd never met?" she asked, though the watcher in the chair was gagged and unable to answer. "What if you'd had Buffy... and Giles would have been my Watcher? You think you'd still be here right now? Or would Giles be sitting in that chair...? Or is it just like fate? You know, there is no choice. You were gonna be here no matter what..." She picked up an aerosol, holding it in one hand and the lighter in the other. "You think about that stuff...? Fate... and destiny?"

She strolled back over, stopping a few feet short of where Wesley was tied up. "I don't." As if to punctuate her words she pressed down on the top of the aerosol and moved the lighter flame into the into the resulting spray, producing a mini-flamethrower effect that missed Past Wes's face by less that a foot. "Not that any of this is your own fault."

Another gout of flame went past the side of his counterpart's head, but, this time around, Wes realised that Faith had known that Angel was on his way, that the fire and apparent threat of permanent disfigurement were meant purely to provoke the vampire into action.

"Since this may be... the last chance we'll have to unload on each other, I feel that it is kind of my duty to tell you that if you'd been a better Watcher, I might have been a more positive role model," Past Faith informed him before loosing another cone of fire. "Face it, Wesley, you really were a jerk.  Always walking around as if you had some great big stake rammed up your... English Channel." Frowning, she took the gag out of his mouth. "I think I want to hear you scream."

Just in case Angel had been in any doubt about which was the right apartment, she gave him the opportunity to cry out for help.

"You never will," Past Wes told her and it was true. The pain that she had inflicted upon him had changed him irreversibly, though not in any physical sense. He realised now that that had been the real reason she had stuck to bruises and shallow cuts. Painful as they had been at the time, and he'd been pissing blood for over a week, within a month there had been little to show other than a faint scar on his right shoulder. However, he had been tested and he had been surprised to find that the experience was not as traumatic as he had feared it would be. In Sunnydale he had spilled his guts at the mere mention of torture. In this room he had learned the truth of the adage that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

"Admit it, Wesley," Past Faith prompted. "Didn't you always kind of have the hots for me?" She produced one last jet of flame before the door went flying off its hinges and Angel strolled into the room. "About time, Soulboy. Ready to play now?"

"I'm ready," Angel replied.

"You just had to interfere before she got to the good stuff, didn't you?" Angelus bitched at his former self. "You couldn't let the girl have a little more fun."

Wes drew his eyes away from the tableau of the past to realise that his Faith was still watching him and, belatedly, he realised that he had made no response to her apology, too caught up in his own thoughts.

"I forgive you," he told her. "As you said, if I'd been a better watcher..."

"And like I said, if you'd been a better watcher, they wouldn't have sent you in the first place."

Wes didn't get a chance to frame a reply. As soon as he began to open his mouth she stopped him.

"Don't argue. I've had years of sitting in an eight by ten room with nothing better to do than think. I made my own mistakes. Can't blame them on other people. Past is past and we're neither of us who we used to be. Last couple of days you've done a pretty good job keeping up."

"Yeah," interjected Angelus, rolling his eyes. "A pretty good job of making you both dead. Won't that look good on his résumé?"

The scene played out until the bitter end. Past Faith got her fight. They smashed nearly everything that was breakable in the apartment before they took a swan dive through the windows down to the alley below, but despite all her careful planning she didn't manage to goad Angel into killing her. Her punches and kicks got weaker and weaker and by the time Past Wes had freed himself, grabbed a weapon and followed them out to the alley, with their present day selves following after, Angel held the sobbing girl in his arms as she begged him to kill her.

"How does it feel, Wesley?" the vampire demanded. "Angel might not have had the guts to end her pain, but you've done it." He grinned at both of them. "Or maybe you just figured that a piece of shit like her didn't matter if there was even a hope of getting your precious Angel back... even though Angel doesn't want you around."

"The world's a better place with Angel in it. Even if I'm not a part of the team any more, it doesn't make it any less true."

"Deal with it, Big Guy!" Faith added. "Soon as the ride's over, he's back at the wheel."

"Not if I have anything to do with it," Angelus snarled.

The alley began to spin, the motion familiar to them now, and when it stopped again they were in the basement of The Hyperion, empty except for some packing cases, Angelus's vacant cell, a plastic-wrapped corpse, Wes and an axe.

"You know, if he was wearing a jacket, I wouldn't be able to tell you apart," Faith remarked to Wes.

Angelus gave a chuckle. "Subtle clue: the one that comes with the basement is the one who chopped up his girlfriend's body, knocked out all her teeth, burned her fingerprints off with acid and put the pieces in dumpsters all over the city in nice tidy Hefty bags. He comes with a free axe accessory."

"Well, we could hardly call a funeral parlour and ask them to pick her up," Wes snapped back, but not before Faith's look of horror made him wince. "Not when we had to behead her in case you had tried to sire her."

"Puh-lease," the vamp drawled. "Even I have my standards. Who would want to spend eternity with a lawyer?"

Axe Wes slowly pushed himself to his feet and folded back the plastic from Lilah's head and shoulders. With his free hand he gently brushed away the hair from her face. The corpse's eyes fluttered open and she smiled at him.

"Freaky!" Faith commented.

"Schizo," Angelus replied. "Vampires and Bruce Willis films aside, when you see dead people moving around it normally means there's a screw loose."

"Why so glum?" the body asked. "It is kind of what you wanted, isn't it? I mean, deep down. Me out of the picture. Utterly… finally… you can't get more utter than this. It makes your life simpler, doesn't it? Cleaner?"

"Yep," Angelus added. "Definitely Looney tunes."

Axe Wes's words were lost under those of his days-older self. "It's called grief and it can manifest itself in any number of ways. Faith-." He stopped short of pointing out that Faith's hopelessness and suicidal despair in the vision they had just left had probably had more to do with the mayor's death than the criminal charges she had faced.

Lilah sat up and shrugged the plastic down to her waist. "Come on, what are you worried about, Wesley?" she asked. "You hated yourself for being with me. Or maybe, you just hated yourself for loving being with me. Hey, semantics. In any case, we both knew sooner or later it would come to a messy end... for one of us, anyway."

Angelus watched as a look passed between his two companions, a look that ended with the slayer's eyes more shuttered and guarded than they had been since the beginning of their trip. It was a look that said, maybe I was beginning to trust you, but I was wrong. He gave a satisfied smile. Even if they were both going to end up dead it wouldn't do to have them go out with the hearts and flowers routine.

Lilah got up from her makeshift bier and walked around behind Axe Wes, almost whispering in his ear from beyond his line of sight. "So ease up on that furrowed brow. You're free now, no longer encumbered with the secret shame of our relationship."

"It wasn't a relationship," Axe Wes answered.

"There's a signed dollar bill in your wallet I think proves different," Lilah got in before Angelus had his say.

"You screw her for the better part of a year but it isn't a relationship?" he asked. "So, what? You've been working as a gigolo? A very cheap gigolo..."

Wes ignored him, turning instead to Faith. "It was complicated... We needed each other. We used each other. We were just too tired to be alone... but I didn't belong on her side and she couldn't come to mine."

"You knew how I felt," the corpse insisted.

"You don't feel," Axe Wes replied with only the vaguest semblance of equanimity.

"The only true thing I ever-."

Axe Wes turned his back on the woman. "You didn't love me!" he yelled back, frustration bringing him close to tears, and when he looked down, Lilah's body was back on the table, blue-tinged and still.

"You couldn't," he concluded with a world of regret, sinking back down onto the crate where he'd been sitting when they arrived.

Lilah stepped out of the shadows again, not in the drab beige top she had died in, but in one of the tailored suits that was more her normal fare and her hair was a riot of waves. "We'll never know now, will we?" she said taking a seat on the far side of the bier. "I know what it is. The reason you're having such a hard time with this. Why you're taking so long to… you know." She ran a manicured finger over her throat. "The awful truth: you couldn't save me... and this is the exclamation point."

"I saved you from the Beast…" Axe Wes protested, "for all the good it did..."

"Wesley, you know that's not what I'm talking about. You couldn't save me… from me."

"Ever the gallant failure, huh, Wes?" Angelus asked. "Not good enough for Daddy, not good enough for Faith, here, not good enough for Fred. Hell, not even good enough for his saintly Angel-ness."

"Good enough to trap you here while they put your soul back," Wes reminded him. "And, right now, that's all that counts."

"...There was always a small part of you that thought you could pull me back from the brink of my evil, evil ways," Lilah said with a self-mocking smile. "Help me find redemption."

"Redemption..." Axe Wes repeated as if in a daze.

"Angel's influence, I suppose," answered Lilah. "The whole 'not giving up on someone no matter how far he or she has fallen'. Oh, well. Too late for me."

"Well, unless you steal his kid," Angelus pointed out. "It won't even matter if you die trying to save him. It turns his stomach just to look at you."

Axe Wes got back up and moved to stand at the corpse's shoulder.

"So let's just get it over with," Lilah continued. "That body's not going to dismember itself, you know."

Wes raised his axe. "I'm sorry, Lilah..."

"Oh, Wes, we don't have that word in our vocabulary. Not people like you and-."

The axe fell, severing Lilah's head, and in that instant, in the room where Lorne watched over her and Wes, Faith's body snapped into an upright position.

There was no warning. The transition was sudden and disorienting. Faith found herself sitting on the ground in an alley, debris all around her, and a few feet away in the middle of the garbage, Wes's body lay motionless.

"Looks like the watcher's out of the game. It's just you and me now..."

Faith looked around but Angelus was nowhere to be seen.

"It’ll all be worth it. Is that what you try and tell yourself, Faithie?"

Faith got to her feet, looking around warily, but refusing to move more than a couple of feet from the watcher's form. She twisted, trying to pinpoint where Angelus's voice was coming from.

"Is that the nasty little lie that kept those thighs nice and warm in your prison bunk?" the vampire asked from his hiding place.

Faith snorted under her breath, prowling around Wes's body, hoping for a telltale movement to give away the vampire's position. "You kiss your momma with that mouth?"

"No, but I ate her with it."

Suddenly, she had a fix and he was behind her. She spun on her heel and jumped over Wes, so that she was between him and Angelus.

The vampire lay flat on his back. He rose to his feet like the second hand of a clock sweeping round from nine to twelve, an image from hundreds of cheesy old vampire films, and fixed the slayer with a coldly appraising look. "And now for a poem: Faith goes gently into that good night. You’re fading fast, baby. I can feel it."

Faith shrugged. "All the same, I hear this holler in the distance…" She tilted her head to once side, listening to the mystical whisper in the background that just might be... Willow. "...Tells me you’re about to get what’s coming to you."

"Or not," Angelus smirked. "I’ve got friends in high places."

A sudden clatter of garbage cans had both of them spinning around. A rat scampered into the middle of the alley, its former hiding place exposed and Angel, gaunt and filthy, dove upon it. That, however, wasn't all that Faith noticed. Wes's arms had been at his side before. Now, his left hand was in a pocket of his suede jacket.

Angelus was too focused on his counterpart to notice. "Him not being one of them."

Angel stood up with the squirming rat clenched tightly in his hands and bit into it, draining the squealing creature dry.

"Ugh…" Faith grimaced and gave a shiver of disgust. "When is this?"

"When isn’t it?" the soulless vampire demanded. "Twenty years after that stupid doughnut shop and his fingers never smelled of anything but rat! 'I’m so sorry. I give up. I’m gonna live in a sewer.'"

Faith gave a shrug. "He’s paying for what he did..." She could understand that. She would still have been in prison, doing her own penance, if Angelus hadn't gotten loose. As soon as she had a good enough reason to leave, it had taken her less than a minute.

"He’s hiding from what he is..." Angelus spat out, "which may be a big Psych 101 revelation for you, cupcake, but I already know this crap so why do I have to go through it again?"

"Maybe," answered Angel, "because it’s not about you… jackass."

Angelus turned around and stared at Angel, stunned, until slowly realisation began to dawn.

Faith treated the sewer-dwelling vamp to a welcoming smile. "Angel, it’s good to see you." She nodded at his overgrown matted coiffure. "Hate the hair."

For just a second, Vagrant Angel took his attention away from Angelus. "Faith, why are you still here?"

"Just waiting to see this pervert get stuffed back into the deep crazy ground he came from," she suggested. "Maybe keep an eye on watcher boy's back till it's done."

"And then what?" Vagrant Angel asked. "After that, what happens?"

Before she saw the blow coming, Angelus's boot connected with enough force to send Faith literally flying into the red brick wall, her spine slamming against the surface so that she dropped to the ground like a rag doll.

"Probably something like that," Angelus replied. "I had a feeling the rules had changed."

Angel walked over to Angelus, looking his alter ego in the eye and doing his best to stare him down. "She’s not who you’re after..." he reminded his other half.

"No kidding, Rat-boy. The slayer will just be gravy once I finish you off. I’ve been waiting a long time for this." Angelus lashed out against the other vampire, but he had no moves that his souled self didn't know or couldn't predict.

It was too much effort for Faith to open her eyes, but that was okay, Angel was here and she'd done what she came for. She struggled for each breath and she knew it wouldn't be long now.

"Faith, wake up!" Angel shouted during a brief respite from the evenly pitched battle. "Are you listening?"

'Damn him for not letting this be over,' she thought, forcing her head up a few inches and making herself focus on him. "Angel, I’m dying..."

"Yeah, it’s a lot easier than redemption, huh?" Angel goaded.

"Always so concerned with the human condition..." Angelus bitched, but Angel's distraction was the tie-breaker he needed. Grabbing his opponent by the coat he threw him down the alley. Moving over to Faith, he pulled his foot back and kicked her head as if it were a football and he was going for the extra point.

In the hotel room where Lorne cradled the slayer as she moaned and thrashed, a bloody gash appeared on her cheek.

"It’s no big mystery," Angelus continued as he stood over his souled counterpart. "They suffer, they die. That’s what they’re there for."

Angel launched himself into a body tackle, aiming his shoulder straight at the other vampire's gut as he rose from the ground, and this time it was Angelus who was thrown across the alley and into the wall. "I’m not perfect, Faith," he argued, while Angelus got back to his feet. "Even with a soul I’ve done things I’ve wished a thousand times I could take back."

"Yeah, like those Manilow concerts, you son of a bitch!" contributed Angelus, punctuating his complaint with a huge punch to Angel's gut.

Angel reeled into an array of metal trash cans and tumbled with them to the ground.

Still weak, and not sure enough of his strength to try to rise, Wes used the sound as cover, letting the used clip fall from his pistol and sliding the spare which he kept in his jacket pocket into place.

Angelus kicked at Angel where he fell, but Angel was more concerned with Faith than the fight.

"Faith!" he yelled. "Wake up!"

Her eyes slowly opened as if that one action was sapping the last of her life force. "We rolled the bones. You for us."

Shot after shot after shot rang out in the alley, every one finding its mark in Angelus's back.

The vampire swayed on his feet for a second and then dropped to his knees.

"Not this time," Wes answered, letting the empty gun fall to the tarmac, and using the wall to lever himself upright and support him as he made his way to the fallen slayer. "I'm not going to let you down again."

Angel looked at Angelus, kneeling on the ground in front of him, still swaying slightly, and then he caught him under the jaw with an uppercut that sent him sprawling to the ground.

Wes made his way to Faith and crouched beside her, pulling her to him. Her mouth seemed to go slack, her eyes beginning to close. "Don't you damn well quit on me," Wes shouted despite her closeness.

"I did… my time."

Angel came to hunker by the slayer's other side. "Our time is never up, Faith," he told her. "We pay for everything."

"You're not helping," Wes spat out. "Faith!" he took hold of her chin and turned her head so that she was forced to look at him rather than the vampire. "Life is about more than atonement or duty. It's about hope. You've had the crap end of the stick all your life but, if you give in, then you're never going to know anything else. Trust me."

"Don't deserve..."

Wes scooped the slayer into his arms and began to walk toward the mouth of the alley, occasionally scraping his arm against the wall as he ricocheted off it. "You have a little girl. Don't you want to know that she's okay?" he asked harshly. "That nothing's happened to her? We can trace her. We can make sure she's happy and loved. It's all very comforting, thinking you can look down on her from heaven, but what if she needs you here? Don't you want to be around for her to find if she comes looking for you when she's older?"

"Wes!" Angel called out, turning to throw one last right hook at Angelus, who was still struggling to get back up despite his wounds, before he made to follow the watcher.

"Better off without me," Faith whispered as they somehow emerged from the alley and into the gardens at the back of the Hyperion.

"I've got her," the watcher insisted, not bothering to turn back to look at the two vampires, unsure if the alley would even be there if he did. "You deal with Angelus." He focused his attention on the woman he carried. "Better off thinking that you never loved her?" he asked, staggering up the steps to the door and shouldering his way through. "Better off believing she was just an inconvenience you wanted rid of? Or that you hated her the way you hated her father? That the only reason you didn't have her aborted was because it was too late by the time you got found out?"

"No! I loved her." Faith protested.

The watcher smiled. "I know," he whispered back as her body began to fade away to nothing in his arms. It was time he woke up, too.

The vampire remained unconscious on the floor of the cell while his son leaned over him. "Wes," he whispered.

"You already killed him," Connor replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "Him and Faith... and now I need to kill you before you hurt anyone else." He lifted the left hand that his father had once been so proud of, a stake poised for the killing blow. His arm made it half-way before Faith grabbed it.

"Break me off a switch, son..." she said, yanking him to his feet and throwing him into the bars at the other side of the cell. "There’s about to be a whuppin'."

Connor lashed out, striking her in the face, but the blow wasn't enough to faze a slayer. She punched him back rather harder and then, grabbing the back of his T-shirt in one hand and a handful of pants in the other, she threw him out of the cell, and followed him, slamming the door shut behind her.

Fred came running into the basement, stopping at the top of the stairs in amazement at the sight of the girl they had written off as dead taking the fight to Junior and making him wish he'd never heard of a slayer.

Lorne followed more slowly. Wes was mostly moving on his own two feet, but he wasn't steady enough that the Pylean was about to take his arm away from around the man's waist any time soon. "Happy now?" he asked the watcher. "She’s alive. You're nearly alive. It’s a miracle!"

Faith picked Connor up and hurled him across the basement as if he weighed no more than a couple of pounds.

The boy staggered to his feet and went straight into another attack, but this time a spinning kick sent him slamming back against the steel bars of the cell.

His father's arm reached through the bars and wrapped around his neck, pinning him in place. "Connor, it's over." He tried to soothe the teen. "It’s me. Really."

Connor slumped back against the cage. Angel or Angelus, it didn't matter, because he didn't have the will to fight both the vampire and the slayer.

Faith packed the last of her things as Wes looked on, the silence between them stretching out. She zipped up the backpack Wes had bought for her on her escape from prison, along with the few changes of clothes that were in it and what she stood up in. She looked up and her eyes met his across the width of the bed. "What you said..." she began.

"I meant it," Wes replied. "I don't plan to let you down again."

Faith gave an awkward shrug. "I kinda need to go to Sunnydale."

"So we do it after," Wes assured her.

Faith looked around the room as if to indicate it, the hotel and Los Angeles in general. "And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime... Sunnydale's not exactly friendly territory for you, and I'm not really doing anything here. I was wondering if maybe you could use someone to watch your back..." Wes asked. "...if you think I can keep up?"

A hint of a smile crossed the slayer's face. "I'm a slayer. No one can keep up... but someone who's willing to take a forty foot swan dive out of a window with me comes pretty close." Her expression grew serious for a moment and she looked him straight in the eye. "You can't ever say anything. None of them can ever know. I won't have them pitying me."

"As if I'd risk you repeating any of my secrets..." Wes replied with a soft sad smile.

Faith nodded and, with a last scan around the room, picked up her bag. "I'll tell Willow that we'll pack your stuff and then make our own way there. Coming?"

Angel leaned on the courtyard's interior wall, breathing in the scent of jasmine and looking up at the night sky, but he turned when the door opened and Faith stepped out.

"Hey," she greeted the vampire, coming to lean beside him.

"How are you feeling?" Angel asked.

"Like I did mushrooms and got eaten by a bear," the slayer answered with a grin.

"That about sums it up, but at least you missed out on being shot in the back a dozen times."

"Yep."

"And now you’re going to Sunnydale," Angel stated.

"Me and Wes both," Faith answered, knowing when she caught the momentary coldness in Angel's eye that she was doing the right thing taking him with her. They all had things to atone for and if Angel wouldn't let him earn his forgiveness here, then she knew enough about how it felt to let him try to make it right with her. "I think I prefer the bear but the way Willow talks it up, that’s where I’m needed."

"We never stop fighting."

Faith smiled. "Probably not," she agreed, "But that doesn't mean that I'm not hoping for a vacation one of these days... a real one next time, with margaritas and beaches and a room with a view."

"Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you…" Angel apologised, "our little brain-tour notwithstanding."

Faith shrugged it off. "Another time."

"I have a lot to thank you for..." Angel began but the slayer cut him off.

"Well, that vice is plenty versa. Don’t even start. It’s only gonna lead to hugging and…"

Angel even cracked a smile. "No, we can’t have that."

Faith was surprised to find herself laughing. "No."

They turned and walked back into the hotel together.

Wesley was waiting there with Gunn, who was standing over Connor, glaring at him.

"All right," the teen protested. "I get it. I messed up."

Faith landed a playful punch on his shoulder. "Hey, cheer up, punk. That just makes you one of us." She turned to Gunn and slapped his hand in a high five.

"You headed out?" he asked.

"Yeah, no tears, big guy."

"Nah, I’m good," Gunn replied. "I just wish I could’ve seen you kicking the crap out of junior here."

The memory brought back another smile. "It was pretty funny."

She took her pack from Wesley and then grabbed hold of his sleeve so he had to follow her back to where Angel was waiting.

The watcher gave a simple nod. "Angel."

Faith grinned and nodded at the vampire. "See? Brits know how to say goodbye." She leaned in toward Wesley and announced in a stage whisper, "Angel, here, wanted to hug."

"No, I didn’t," said the vamp.

"You're going, too?" Gunn asked and Wes gave a shrug and then nodded. Gunn seemed to hesitate for a moment and then asked in spite of himself. "Don't you want to say goodbye to Fred?"

Wes shook his head. "I already did that once this evening." The strange thing was that he meant it. There was nothing left that he wanted to say to the Texan. It wasn't that the slayer had convinced him about Fred manipulating all the men around her. Fred's refusal to speak to him had lasted only until she had wanted someone dead and that made him think Faith was probably right, but that wasn't why. It was that he realised if there had ever been a time for their relationship, then it had been before he took Connor, before they had driven him out, before he had looked into the abyss. Romantic daydreams were all very well, but he didn't want to be anyone's hero any more. There was something dark and slightly twisted inside him now and he didn't care to pretend otherwise. It would take someone who made no pretence when it came to their own darkness to understand that.

Willow emerged from the office with Fred and, in the flurry of activity that ensued, Wesley slipped out to his car unnoticed. A minute or two later, barely long enough to start up the engine and find a CD, Faith yanked open the passenger door and threw herself into the seat.

"Wagons ho!" she commanded.

Disclaimer - All writing is on a non-profit basis, purely for entertainment purposes. Use of any non-original material within any stories in no way implies ownership, be it from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series or any other film, television, musical or other source.