BTW, speaking of la fic, I'm about a quarter of the way through my "Faith on the road, post-Chosen, AU" piece, The Long Road. feedback's a good thing, and I want to get back to it this weekend, now that the book edits are taken care of.

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 long-frame 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 fullblown 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 rear view 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.

• * *

(more)

He was a big man, with one of those faces, the kind where gauging his age was as impossible as it would be for a nun. He had deep laughlines, but no other wrinkles, yet his hair was white, and so were his eyebrows. He looked like a boxer gone to seed, soft in the middle, with hands that would make fists like ham hocks.

"Thanks for stopping." He climbed into the passenger seat beside her. "Nothing but commercials out there."

"No problem." She turned the volume down slightly, not really minding. "Tenderness on the Block" wasn't one of her picks anyway. "Where you headed?"

"South." The answer, flip on the surface, seemed oddly flat. "Just south. You?"

"South, for a few days. Into LA. Then back on up north, but not this road." She heard her own voice smooth out. A few days in LA. She wondered what she'd find there. Angel, still helping the helpless? Wes, the forbidden fruit she knew better than to try for? Cordelia was gone; so was Fred. Gunn had done something bad, really bad, old school-Faith bad; she didn't know what, but the word was, he'd left Angel in disgrace. The Council had been alive with whispers. Something about a deal with the devil...

"You got anything to eat?"

His voice, still flat and uninflected, jerked her attention back to him. "Bag of tortilla chips. It's in back. Hang on, I'll pull over."

"No, don't worry, I can reach it."

He twisted around in his seat, his upper body partially obscuring his left hand. His voice was casual, too casual, and her reflexes caught and locked. She jerked the truck to one side, cutting hard and sharp behind a semi with Oregon plates, spinning the Cruiser safely off the road onto the shoulder. She accomplished all this with one hand; the other was clamped around his wrist, pinning his hand - invisible in the depths of her bag - hard in place.

He screamed, a short breathless squeal.

"I was giving you a ride south, dude." Her mouth was a cold thin line. "Shitty way to say thanks, isn't it? Trying to liberate my wallet?"

"You're one of them." Lit by the incandescent flashes of passing halogen headlights, his features were mobile stone. His voice was thin with pain; her pressure on his wrist was unrelenting. Ahead of them, towering darkness, rose the Tehachapi mountains, and the road called the Grapevine. "One of the Girls. Shit, I should have known, I should have -"

"I'm not one of the Girls." Oh, man. Everywhere she went, everywhere. Why was everyone so fucking scared of the new Slayers? "I'm more than that."

He understood what she meant before she realised she said it. "You're one the Two. Oh, God. Please," he whispered. "Please don't kill me."

"Stop talking like that. What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm not going to kill you. Of course I'm not. I don't kill human beings, even shitheads who try to rob me."

A memory, the one that wouldn't ever allow itself to erase, caught her throat and choked her off: the Mayor's aide, froth and blood bubbling at his lips, his eyes on her, beseeching, don't let this be true, no, make this not be real, with Faith's stake in his heart. She remembered the look of horror, a kind of strained compassion, on B's face. She remember, too, her own words: I don't care. A lie, of course. She cared. The caring had ripped her in half.

Her hand tightened unconciously on the hitcher's wrist. His whistling intake of breath brought her back. She ought to boot his ass out, she thought, put him right back out there, let him rot waiting for a ride. But if he got one, and he robbed the driver, it would be her fault, and the legend would grow, the Two, golden Buffy, pitch-dark Faith, Snow White and Rose Red…

"Goddamnit." She released his wrist, and swung the Cruiser back onto Interstate 5. "I'll take you into LA. But you try stealing something, and I might forget you're human. Clear?"

He nodded. Faith set the Cruiser up the long road to Los Angeles, where memories waited.

• * *

(more)

It wasn't until she'd parked the Cruiser in a public lot on Figueroa that she wondered how the hell she was going to get into Wolfram and Hart.

She’d booted the hitcher the minute they’d hit city streets, sending him on his way with the bag of tortilla chips clutched hard in one meaty paw, and a cold glare guaranteed to make sure he didn’t argue with her. The last thing she needed was anyone knowing where she was headed. The glare probably hadn’t been needed; he’d hit the pavement hurrying. Whatever legends were building around the Two, he wasn’t inclined to hang around and ask questions.

She walked up to the corporate monument to Mammon that was Wolfram and Hart’s Los Angeles headquarters, and stared up at it. Way too late in the day to just walk in the front door, she thought, and anyway, could a slayer even do that, stroll up to the reception desk of Fiends of Hell, Incorporated, without triggering fifty kinds of alarm bells? Giles had said the place was rumoured to be laced with mystical wards, or some bullshit.

Frustrated, she jammed her hands into her jacket pockets, and touched the cellphone the Council had insisted she take. Prepaid, programmed with a variety of one-touch numbers; she hadn’t even looked to see what numbers were there. She’d actually forgotten she had the thing - she hadn’t wanted to bring it, and hadn’t once used it, or even thought about it, since she headed back west.

She stepped up under the nearest streetlight, and turned the phone on. Randomly, she punched the display button and brought up a list of names: Giles. B. Xander. CoW2 – that must be the London one. Angel. Angel? What the fuck?

She highlighted his name and, without hesitation, hit the call button. He answered on the second ring.

“Giles?”

For a moment, disoriented, Faith said nothing. Then it occurred to her, the phone must be registered to Giles; it was his name that was probably blinking on Angels no doubt ultrasophisticated caller ID. She found her voice.

“Not Giles, yo.” Something moved in the shadows behind her. “Angel, hang on a second, OK? There’s something – no, it’s gone. Hi. Anyway. It’s Faith.”

“Faith!” His voice was sharp, edgy. It reminded her that things had been pretty dark in the southland recently. Shit had not merely been hitting the fan, it had been circulating through the air conditioning system and landing on everyone, like detritus from a twister. “What’s wrong? Is everyone OK?”

“Yeah, we’re all fine. Five by five.” She wondered if she ought to mention Buffy, and decided against it. He could bring up the subject himself, if he wanted to. “I’m in LA, right downstairs at Wolfram and Hart. Passing through. I figured to be here for a few days. Can you give me a place to crash? If not, it’s cool, I have plenty of money. But I wanted to see you – I wanted to see everyone who’s left.”

“Give me three minutes.” He still sounded terse, but then, he always had, and probably always will. “I’ll come down and get you. My suite’s right here, in the penthouse.”

• * *

She sat on an antique settee that had probably come from a chateau in Europe somewhere, looking around a room that seemed to have about as much in common with Angel as she had with Britney Spears.

“What?”

The word jerked her attention back in his direction. He sounded strange, almost impatient.

“Sorry.” She moved her head, taking in the room, letting him see her do it. “Just trying to wrap my brain around this. Doesn’t much look like you, you know?” She was silent a moment, and then gave an interior shrug. Might as well ask. “Was it worth it? Wolfram and Hart, I mean?”

“I know what you mean. Short form answer? Don’t know yet.” He was prowling the room, but without focus or enthusiasm. She thought she’d never seen so much energy and so much exhaustion in the same package. “Considering all the shit that’s gone down in the past year, I’m inclined to think, no. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if all of it – Jasmine, saving my son, Cordy, everything – wasn’t just a big snare set by the Senior Partners, to get us in here.”

Son? She blinked at him, wondering what he was talking about, but he kept talking, sweeping over her unspoken words.

“Get us in here. Control me. Separate us – it’s a great tactic, a classic, you know? Divide and conquor. Yoko factoring.” He smiled, dark and bitter. “If that’s what it came down to, then they won and I lost. Gunn – weak. Can you imagine that? So weak he let them take Fred, empty her out, scour her soul into nothing, so that he could keep being what he thought he was.”

“I knew about Fred.” She was aware of a twinge of something she couldn’t define, pity maybe, or her own sense of personal loss. Fred had helped her. The girl had been right, and real, and sharp as a razor. Hot, too. “Sucks. I’m sorry.”

He talked on, letting it out, and she suddenly understood that he needed to do this, just spit out the stuff he couldn’t talk about with those who were left.

“Wes stabbed him. Did you hear about that, back at the High and Mighty Council of Watchers of the Slayer of the Vampyres?” His words and inflection, a perfect twisting of Andrew, were chilling, completely without humour. “Put a knife in Gunn’s belly. He lived, but we booted him out. No idea where he went. Cordy never woke up from her coma. Gunn, Fred, Cordy. Wes has gone dark, really dark. I can’t –“

He broke off suddenly, as if aware that he’d been talking, wondering what in hell he’d said, remembering that in a very real sense, she represented a potential enemy. She uncoiled herself from the settee.

“It’s okay, Angel. I’d heard there was some bad juju falling down here, but not the details. And you can talk to me, or not – whatever you want. Just want you to know, I’m not here on behalf of anybody. This trip is personal for me. I’m not reporting back to any of those fuckwads at the Council. And to be fair? No one asked me to.”

He smiled at her, a small grin, but

That's cause I'm good. Luck has nothing to do with it.(/Howard) You know, that's the first time I ever heard a TV woman say that? And I'm thirty. And a beneficiary of the biggest feminist revolution in the fucking world.(/Kay likes her own goddamn carrots, damn it) Sorry...that still feels huge. But I'm boring. ETA:I had no idea you could give such good Faith, internet spouse.

(rest)

She sat on an antique settee that had probably come from a chateau in Europe somewhere, looking around a room that seemed to have about as much in common with Angel as she had with Britney Spears.

“What?”

The word jerked her attention back in his direction. He sounded strange, almost impatient.

“Sorry.” She moved her head, taking in the room, letting him see her do it. “Just trying to wrap my brain around this. Doesn’t much look like you, you know?” She was silent a moment, and then gave an interior shrug. Might as well ask. “Was it worth it? Wolfram and Hart, I mean?”

“I know what you mean. Short form answer? Don’t know yet.” He was prowling the room, but without focus or enthusiasm. She thought she’d never seen so much energy and so much exhaustion in the same package. “Considering all the shit that’s gone down in the past year, I’m inclined to think, no. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if all of it – Jasmine, saving my son, Cordy, everything – wasn’t just a big snare set by the Senior Partners, to get us in here.”

Son? She blinked at him, wondering what he was talking about, but he kept talking, sweeping over her unspoken words.

“Get us in here. Control me. Separate us – it’s a great tactic, a classic, you know? Divide and conquor. Yoko factoring.” He smiled, dark and bitter. “If that’s what it came down to, then they won and I lost. Gunn – weak. Can you imagine that? So weak he let them take Fred, empty her out, scour her soul into nothing, so that he could keep being what he thought he was.”

“I knew about Fred.” She was aware of a twinge of something she couldn’t define, pity maybe, or her own sense of personal loss. Fred had helped her. The girl had been right, and real, and sharp as a razor. Hot, too. “Sucks. I’m sorry.”

He talked on, letting it out, and she suddenly understood that he needed to do this, just spit out the stuff he couldn’t talk about with those who were left.

“Wes stabbed him. Did you hear about that, back at the High and Mighty Council of Watchers of the Slayer of the Vampyres?” His words and inflection, a perfect twisting of Andrew, were chilling, completely without humour. “Put a knife in Gunn’s belly. He lived, but we booted him out. No idea where he went. Cordy never woke up from her coma. Gunn, Fred, Cordy. Wes has gone dark, really dark. I can’t –“

He broke off suddenly, as if aware that he’d been talking, wondering what in hell he’d said, remembering that in a very real sense, she represented a potential enemy. She uncoiled herself from the settee.

“It’s okay, Angel. I’d heard there was some bad juju falling down here, but not the details. And you can talk to me, or not – whatever you want. Just want you to know, I’m not here on behalf of anybody. This trip is personal for me. I’m not reporting back to any of those fuckwads at the Council. And to be fair? No one asked me to.”

He smiled at her, a small grin, but genuine. “Nice to know they aren’t stupid enough to ask.”

“I’d gut them, wouldn’t I? After all, I’m the Dark Twin.”

The words were out before she could stop them. His reaction, the shift of the fine planes of his face, told her he knew.

Shit.

“OK.” She blew her breath out. “Down here too, huh? B and me, yang and yin, The Two?”

“Well – yes.” He held a hand out and patted her shoulder. His touch was light, unintrusive. Angel knew about boundaries. “We get everything at Evil and Company, but not all the details. I’ve been hearing stories about the Slayerettes – we had a run-in ourselves, a really sad case, she cut Spike’s hands off. Apparently, a lot of people out there are genuinely afraid of the girls and the power they have.” Two pairs of dark eyes locked and held. His voice was even. “And I gather, not without reason. I’m a little curious about you and Buffy, though. You two seem to have become celebrities, since Sunnydale blew out.”

“Celebrities?” She began to laugh, sour, on the wrong edge of hysteria. “Honey, it’s a fucking cult, or something. I don’t know why it started, or how, or when. One day we’re in the bus, some kind of Jack Kerouac Magic Bus deal, me and B and Giles and Xander, plus Robin Wood – Principal McHottie, used to run Sunnydale High, mother was a Slayer Spike offed back when CBGB’s was happening – plus a few girls, the surviving Potentials. Willow, too, and her little chewtoy, girl named Kennedy. We’re on the bus, heading for Cleveland.”

“Cleveland? Why in hell?”

She smiled, suddenly tired. It occurred to her that she’d driven about six hundred miles that day; body and mind were both aching. “Hell is why. Cleveland’s got a hellmouth. So we check into a motor lodge near Bakersfield, heading east, and the news about Sunnydale’s all over the television. And next day, the guy behind the desk looks at me, looks at B, and begins stammering. Are we going to kill him? Please don’t kill him, even though we’re the Two, he knows we can kill him.”

Angel was staring at her. She nodded.

“Not shitting you, yo. It was, like, I don’t know – we go to bed and wake up, and sometime between moonlight and morning, we’re cult objects and killers. They wouldn’t take our money. They couldn’t get our asses out fast enough.” She yawned cavernously. “It got stronger every day. We’d stop in a town, check for potentials, take them with. Within a day or two, a few would disappear, and so would a whole lot of people. I don’t know what’s happening, or why. But there are fewer people out there than there were a week ago. Trust me on this one. Maybe you didn’t notice – up here in this big glass tower, and anyway, you don’t get out during the day and you’ve had other stuff to deal with. But outside LA? The herd’s being culled, Angel. We don’t know any more than that.”

(all I have so far. Feedback? would be a good thing to have.)

I wish the H:LOTS fandom was more active so I'd have one place to write my Howard-worshipping essay. But I did get a chance to tell ML(viva internet, huh?) Sorry, couldn't resist. Worst Warning I ever read On A Homicide List: These characters wouldn't act like this. I'm making them for plot reasons.
Babe, what's wrong with that sentence?

Wow, deb, that's really good (as if you didn't know. =).

Characterization is excellent, that couldn't be anybody but Faith. I also really like where the story is going, I think. How soon after Chosen is this supposed to be, though? I don't really get a good timeline feeling from it. I assume it's at least a year later, possibly later than that, but then you get phrases like "there are fewer people out there than there were a week ago," that makes the extended trip to Cleveland (which I assumed was right after Chosen) seem very recent.

I'm not much of a critic/editor, so that's all I've really got for you. But I'm looking forward to more.

About four months after Chosen, I'd say.

Be good to get back to it. Be warned - there's a bit of slash coming up soon, to be written next, in fact. The story's actually a prezzie for Roz Kaveney, so the slash aspect, well, yes.

Consider me warned. I can read slash, I just don't bother when fic is nothing but sex. This one, clearly, isn't.

"Sex is never gratuitous," That said, my fics are usually longer on politics than The Sex. But I seem to have a thing for semi-public places.