Oh, man, erika, do I love the way she treats the inside of his head.

I have a Faith fic percolating. It's being really insistent. And I really, really, really do not have time to give in to ficcing right now.

That's how it is, I think, with people who've known each other close to forever, like they have.(In cumulative years, maybe nsm, but they've spent a fair amount of time shut up in a small squad...and he likes to tease her and symbolically pull her pigtails. And there is next to no privacy in that environment.) And I think Munchkin's not all that acquainted with the unexpressed thought. Read about them in books, but...

OK. This is the beginning of the Faith piece that's been wanting out. I'll be doing this one in stages, because damn it, no spare time at all right now.

The Long Road

Highway, a deep river of darkness punctuated and limned by pale yellow dots. There were stars overhead, uncluttered by city light. In this moonless night, they seemed close enough to pick up and scatter as confetti.

It had been a long time since she'd come this way.

• * *

Faith drove well. It was a skill she'd picked up early, knowing how to handle any vehicle anyone could produce. The acceleration of awareness, a gift of the Slayer birthright, helped too.

She'd picked this truck up somewhere just outside Tulsa. It was pushing thirty years old, but something about it just spoke to her: a big heavy longframe Toyota Land Cruiser, the kind where dropping it into low-four meant getting out and doing it by hand. The paint, an ironic British racing green, was faded to nearly pastel. It weighed three tons and ate gas at a horrific rate. She didn't give a damn; the Council had given her plenty of money for this trip. And it was tacitly understood that what she chose to spend it on was entirely up to her.

Faith drove south, casually, not so casually. Her nervous system was talking to her, a soft insidious background whisper that was threatening to become a chatter. It had been awhile since she'd been out alone like this, alone and not running from anyone. Two years ago, she couldn't have gone near California, but times had changed; Willow had hacked the records, made a few big changes to the fingerprint file, and Faith was unidentifiable as a wanted felon. She was free. She was also edgy. The highways had grown progressively thinner of passenger cars since they'd whupped the First Evil. But this was spooky - here on Interstate Five, the main artery into Los Angeles, she hadn't seen a single vehicle that wasn't a semi or an eighteen-wheeler. Nothing left out here but commercial vehicles. Where the fuck was everybody, anyway?

The night was silent, nothing but the steady turnover of the Cruiser's big engine. It was getting on her nerves, that silence. She turned the radio on, twisting through stations on the dial, getting random bits of noise and speech: come back to Jesus Ooooh baby I love your way Texaco on I5 just north of the first Bakersfield exit full service come back to Jesus somebody bring me some water ooooh baby baby....

She finally settled on a station out of some small town in the Valley. The dj had put on Warren Zevon, an album side; probably gone to take a leak and smoke a joint, Faith thought, but she listened to "Werewolves of London" and grinned to herself, sparing a passing thought for Oz, wherever he was now...

Singing along in a jangly offkey contralto to "Excitable Boy", she almost missed the hitcher on the side of the highway. About a hundred yards beyond him, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw him staring after her.

"Huh." There was something compelling about his stance, the way he watched her tailights trying to disappear. She stopped the cruiser, backing it up to where he waited.

• * *

Shit.

A question, a really dumb one, in fact.

Is Sunnydale north or south of Los Angeles? I can't remember...

I'm pretty sure it's north.

Hil, thanks. That means I get to rethink a few things in the story; I think I'll put Faith taking highway 5 to hang out in LA to nerve herself up to cut up 101 north to Sunnydale, because there's no place I can think of between LA and Sacramento off interstate 5 for Sunnydale to be. It would have to be off the coast side, Santa Barbara up to San Luis Obispo.

Huh.

I remember reading something that used the geographical clues we've had in various episodes and figured out that Sunnydale would probably be somewhere near Santa Barbara.

It looks like it ought to be there, nestled up near the coastal ranges. I wonder if Willow would ever sneak up to Malibu with some of her buddies, and magically egg Mel Gibson's house...?

edit: and it's very fresh in my mind, because we drove home from LA two days ago using that exact route. Nice had a business meeting in Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara.

Hee hee...I can see that. Cool start, Deb.

Thanks. It just occurred to me, when this damned thing started burrowing its way toward daylight, that I wanted to do a post-Chosen that incorporated the POV of some of the men out there - suddenly confronted with a reality in which there are thousands, maybe millions, of girls with supernatural strength, and most of them without a clue as to what it is, or how to handle it, or why it's there.

Also, I wanted to give Faith a shot at adulthood in her own right, away from the others, without any help but what she can find in herself.