Faith was not especially proud of her life thus far. And it took a lot of self-control to keep going after… after. When her name was called as having a visitor, in daylight, she assumed it was either the Watchers or Wolfram and Hart here to kill her. And when she saw the dark haired man sitting behind the screen waiting for her it didn't change her prognosis much.
"Hello Faith."
"Boytoy." She responded, noting the lack of hate, hope or much of any emotion much in him. Her assumption he was here to gloat or insult her or something. Instead here was the joker of the Scooby Gang looking like, well, like… "Buffy's dead, isn't she?"
"Yes indeedy, the buffster won the world height record for high diving without a pool." Then he looked into her eyes. "Of course, you can only do that once."
The dark slayer didn't need to think to realise why Angel wasn't here to tell her. The broody one was probably sitting in a dark room somewhere working on his guilt and deep thoughts.
"How's everyone taking it?"
"Buff's in heaven, I talked Willow into doing a spell to check first when she wanted to bring her back." He looked at the roof for a second, took a deep breath, and continued. "Giles is doing the British Stiff Upper Lip thing, Willow spends a lot of time crying, Tara comforts her, Anya decided to move to New Orleans and become a brothel madam and Dawn spends all her time with Spike."
There was a moment's silence before speaking continued.
"And they assigned you the job of offing me so a new slayer could be called?" Her tone made it clear she was totally serious.
"No, they were going to pay some inmates to do that, it's not anywhere near as suspicious."
The hollow feeling and pain in his soul prevented the construction worker from being creative and funny. Or for that matter from doing anything much. Walking, talking, eating, all required planning and discipline or he didn't. Getting out of bed in the morning required a real effort of will.
"Ok, yeah, that would work." God only knows enough people left here feet first.
"I called Reilly, he called some other people, and your 'undercover assignment' is over, Agent Bailey." Noticing where Xander's eyes were going she turned to see a guard approach her without the usual suspicious hostility and heard the Sunnydale resident's words. "Congratulations, your 'new assignment' is waiting."
The car driving back to the 'dale an hour later.
The windows were wound down all the way so she could feel the air blasting her in the face. Fresh air howled around like a wind tunnel, her face was stuck out the window with her mouth open like a big dog. When she spoke it was extra loud to allow for the wind roar.
"So they just had my whole criminal record declared an elaborate forgery of some super secret spy agency and the warden BELIEVED them?" Which was the story apparently. All of it, including the underage prostitution, suspicion of drug dealing and petty theft, destruction of public property etc from Boston. "Sounds like bullshit to me Bwana!"
"Believe it, and check the envelope in the glove box." There was I.D. from the FBI – standard cover for CIA agents working in the States, which is illegal – a Washington DC drivers license, passport with entry and exit stamps from places she had never heard of let alone visited, birth certificate, Psychology degree, bank account details and a bunch of other stuff.
"Convincing forgeries Xman, but it doesn't answer my question." Holding the paperwork down out of the airstream she looked again at the Birth Certificate of Jennifer Bailey, born November 2nd, 1976. And as for the degree, well, her GED had been earned in jail.
"The warden practically kissed my feet for taking you off his hands. Do you have ANY IDEA how shit scared the guards were that they'd be on the shift that had to try to stop you the day you decided to leave?" There was a smile on his face for the first time. "And most of that isn't forged, once they had a fake identity worked out the appropriate agencies were just told to include all that stuff in their standard document creation systems. And a lot cheaper than keeping you in prison, by the way."
Putting all the paperwork back in the manila envelope she returned it to its place and went back to enjoying the feel of free air blowing over her face. And trying to work out her feeling about Faith Towers and her whole life now officially being no more than a Federal Bureaucrat's lie. She couldn't get over how much she desperately wished that were so.
The place had been fixed up pretty well, and the newly minted Ms Bailey was checking out the bedrooms, of which there was several. That was when she noticed the master bedroom. It had a king sized four poster with canopy, mirrors on the walls and ceiling, silk ropes pre-tied to the posts on the corner of the bed, and was done out in red and black, with lots of satin.
"Druscilla decorated." Came a voice from behind her.
"What?" Faith screamed at the familiar voice coming unexpected from just behind her.
"Druscilla decorated, and she really did seem to see things in them." Angel said in a somewhat puzzled way. "Of course she was nuts."
The slayer hugged the souled vampire for all it was worth.
"YOU HAD HER TURNED LOOSE!! HOW COULD YOU XANDER?" Willow was not really shouting, she was bellowing and using her magic to amplify her voice. "You never even asked us."
"No, I didn't ask you." The words were agreeable if the tone most definitely was not. "I didn't ask the Watchers Council either, I just showed Riley's superiors how they tried to have her, a United States citizen, kidnapped and removed from this country for a show trial and execution. Twice." And the investigation into previous slayer Crucimentum rituals was apparently proving interesting. As was the debate about which degree of murder it amounted to.
"Oh Xander you didn't?" Giles asked. He may have left the organization and have reservations about some of its members but old loyalties die hard.
"Expect to be asked to testify everyone." And not just in the US. The UK government was less than thrilled by the whole thing. They would have to make an example of the Watchers Council to make up for the diplomatic damage done, too much rested on having a 'clean cut good guy' image. The trial would not be secret to the people who mattered for that purpose, as it would be to everyone else.
"Also I have no intention of apologising for freeing Faith, it was that or kill her and we can always do that here if we have to."
"Kill her here if we have to." Giles repeated slowly and distinctly. "You'll have Reilly kill her if she doesn't work out. That's what your saying."
"Xander how could you ask anyone to do a thing like that!" Willow asked, staring at the carefully neutral expression on her oldest friends face. "I mean I hate her with a passion that is hard to describe without resort to demonic languages but you make it sound like getting rid of an old car."
"I'm not planning on asking anyone to do it." His favourite author, Robert Heinlein had said it best in one of his later books. 'Some day you may have to shoot your own dog.' And the advice was NEVER to farm it out to anyone else.
"So, Xman, exactly who am I an agent for?" Faith, or Agent Jennifer Bailey asked as they sat in the library of the Crawford Street Mansion where the dark slayer now lived. She was trying to put in practice an idea her prison shrink had been big on. "I need to know who this upright citizen is if I'm going to live her life."
Normally if someone had said that Xander would have tried to convince her that she didn't have to try to be someone else, she should just be herself. Given who she was, what she had done, and the changes in his own life over the last year he didn't.
"Well officially you're a FBI agent who was assigned an undercover mission right out of the academy because you look younger than you are. You were under when you went to Boston, and are now on indefinite leave after losing track of where the cover story ends and the real you begins. It's what all but a small inner circle at the Bureau believes, for that matter."
"So they know I'm Faith?" She ignored the implications that she was officially a little nuts, because aIt was true, and bIt was, according to the lowlifes she grew up with, a routine problem with UC cops.
"No, they think you're a CIA agent, other facts the same, and their doing all this to be owed a favour by the people at Langley in the future."
"So the CIA think I'm an agent of theirs?"
"No, they think you're a freelancer they used to avoid the law against them working in this country, same story as the Bureau otherwise."
"So which of them do I work for?"
"Neither." Was the construction workers response
"Did I lose some IQ points in prison, 'cause I gotta tell ya boytoy that's the kinda explanation that isn't, ya know?" That she had fallen back on her Faith speech patterns was a mark of how stressed she was. There was a pause while the Zeppo thought.
"Ok, look. Reilly and co can't claim you because they don't officially exist." There was another pause. "In practical terms they set this up and have coughed up the money."
"So I, Jennifer Bailey, am basically a female version of Captain Cardboard?"
"Look at the bright side, it beats being the next Alley McBeal."
A quiet spot in one of Sunnydale's parks, that afternoon
"As you meditate let your senses expand, let the magic of the everyday world flow gently over you and into your mind." Tara spoke gently to her girlfriend and student, Willow Rosenburg. Ever since doing the soul location spell the red head had a fear of her magic ability. 'Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely' had stopped being an old quote, jumped up and hit her in the head with a 15 pound hammer. Hence these lessons in the spiritual/self control side. "Just accept it without trying to interpret, just let it gently flow."
During meditation the red head always noticed a much greater awareness of the world around her anyway, as the mental noise stopped blocking it out. The point of this exercise was to help ground the individual and establish more of a connection with the Earth. The blonde Wicca's mother had been a committed believer in teaching control as more important than raw power, and ethics as the fundamental basis of self-control. And now she was teaching the woman she loved, and who was so fearful after nearly tearing her friend away from her heavenly reward.
Twenty minutes later session ended as the teacher kissed her student gently on the lips and whispered for her to come back. This was the outdoor part of the program, and the one her mother had actively taught her. Twice daily meditation to gain oneness with Gaia. Next came the part that she had been assured was crucial to reinforcing oneness with the goddess and the positive powers of the universe. But which for obvious reasons had remained a theoretical subject until recently.
"Next we will perform a privacy spell to avoid interruptions." Miss MacLay said serenely.
"Then the Tantric Sex?" Willow asked coyly
"Then the Tantric Sex."
Rupert Giles was cautiously optimistic that things were improving for his group. Xander was slowly recovering from the pit of despair that losing Buffy had caused. Being proven right about not bringing the slayer back, then getting Faith out of prison, together with another promotion at work were building his confidence as they distracted him from his woes.
Willow had been so determined to do the resurrection spell, so absolutely certain of herself, that when the possible consequences were demonstrated the bottom had nearly fallen out of her world. But she had Ms Maclay to help, and was visibly better. A shift in emphasis back to her science studies was also noticeable; all to the good as far as her future career possibilities went. The couple were also drawing closer as they took over some of the mothering role of Dawn.
The Watchers Council were mostly on bail, although 'tragically' Quentin Travers had simply refused to go quietly. The funeral had been small, apparently, and closed casket since the remains had had to be loaded into the body bag with a shovel. Testimony was apparently going to be taken by satellite hook-up, so there was no need to leave the hellmouth unattended.
Sipping his tea he thought of Faith, or rather Jennifer, as she insisted on being called. Currently working the cash register, she was proving a capable sales assistant and a competent bookkeeper. Not in Anya's class as a businesswoman, but good enough to keep things working smoothly. Her propensity for violence against humans was still evident in the way she had hammered Warren Mears into the ground when he and his pathetic friends had become bothersome, but still, they had a potential for real trouble.
Yes, all was, if not right with the world, not as bad.