Part Two

"So, y'know, are you gonna…keep it?" Buffy sat on one side of a rotted picnic table. It was chained to the ground outside what must have been the seediest motel in Frieda. Faith was perched on the tabletop, toes overhanging the bench in front of her. The parking lot to the side was barely lit by a flickering fluorescent streetlight.

Buffy'd tracked Faith down using Giles' suggestion about the credit card records. Convincing Faith to talk with her hadn't been hard. Convincing her to ditch slumsville and come back home wasn't too tough either. It took all of two seconds, though, for Buffy to realize that undoing the damage that had been done between them—and the stone guard Faith had erected as a result—was going to be a job of work.

Faith sucked on the filter of her smoke, deliberately looked everywhere that Buffy wasn't. "It's Robin's kid."

"Oh. Oh, god. Faith, I'm sorry." Buffy felt her belly hollow out. It hadn't even occurred to her. Robin was dead, and it felt like so long ago that he hadn't been. Too long, except not. The month had felt like an eternity, but it was still only a month. And now everything Buffy had said to Faith back at the apartment sounded ten times more heartless as she played it back in her head.

"Done the abortion thing before. Coupla times. Not exactly a party."

"When…?" Buffy thought of Xander, the night the high school had nearly been bombed by zombies and eaten by a many-headed snake-demon simultaneously.

"Before. Before you and I met." She blew a cloud of smoke into the sky. "Before I was called."

"But you were…" Fifteen. Just like Buffy had been.

"Everybody's got a sad story, B. Don't go guidance counselor on me now." She launched herself off the picnic table and scrunched the last of the cigarette under the toe of her motorcycle boot. "I don't know. Gonna think on it, or maybe try not to."

"Yeah. That's…that sounds good." Buffy dusted her ass off once she was upright. "And Faith…"

"Mmm?'

"Whatever you decide, I'm…I'll be there for you."

"Be careful, B." Faith warned dryly. "One of these days you're gonna say that and I'm gonna take it to the bank." Faith plucked another smoke out of the breast pocket of her denim shirt and lit it as she walked away.

Halfway across the parking lot, she turned around. "You coming, or what?" She shouted through the darkness.

When Buffy's sports bra went missing, she found it in a pile of laundry at the end of Faith's bed.

Which was really just a full size mattress on the floor.

Buffy's too. There was a discount mattress store a half-mile away with a buy two deal, so they'd gone together.

Delivery was extra, so they'd carried the mattresses, one at a time, down the residential streets and up into their apartment. This was before they found out about Faith's condition, of course. If they'd known, Buffy wouldn't have let her do all that lifting, and Faith would have gotten all insolent about it, and they'd have argued at high volume out on the sidewalk in front of the store.

Which may have resulted in the discount mattress sales guy offering to waive the delivery fee, especially if Faith had gotten punchy and rude.

Buffy would have to keep that tactic in mind.

"My bra?" Buffy implored, hooking a finger into the strap. Faith was passed out, nursing what could easily be misconstrued as the mother of all hangovers, but was really just killer morning sickness.

"Mmm, hey, B," Faith murmured, gradually shifting her limbs against the knots of blankets gathered around her. "Sorry 'bout that. Tits hurt. Gotta double up."

Buffy rolled her eyes and let the black spandex drop from her finger back into the abyss of dirty clothes. Settling on the edge of the bed, she retrieved one of the ceramic mugs from the pair she'd deposited on an over-turned milk crate when she'd first come in.

Faith half-rolled over, and stretched an arm across her body to get a hand around the second mug. "Did you put the cinnamon in?" She mumbled, wiping at her eyes with the other hand.

"Don't I always put the cinnamon in, Faith?" Buffy sipped at her more traditional sugared-and-creamed coffee. As Faith sat up, propped on pillows that were propped on the bare wall, Buffy stole a glance at her breasts, which really had gotten huge.

"Yeah." Faith exhaled a hint of a laugh. "You got my number, B."

"I want to ask you something." Buffy untied her apron strings and tossed the stained canvass onto the booth bench, and then tucked herself in next to it. She reveled in being off her feet.

"Shoot," Faith said around a bite of pancake and hash brown, both slathered in blueberry syrup.

"I don't want you to get upset, though. We live together, so I think I should know."

Faith waited, eyes locked on Buffy over her heaping plate. The diner buzzed around them.

"Okay," Buffy finally got down to it. "When you're out at night, what are you doing? If you're not trading sex, where does the money come from?"

Faith's mouth puckered up, and her eyes shifted, and Buffy could tell she was trying to decide. How much to tell. How much to trust. Buffy held her coffee mug in both hands and didn't let up on the interrogative stare.

"There's some shit going down, B. Shit you've got no idea about. You want to know, think you're gonna have to come with me."

"When? Tonight?"

"I roll out just before midnight. Be ready." Faith clanked her fork down on her empty plate. "And Buffy? It's gotta be between you and me. If you can't promise me that--"

"I got it. You and me."

From somewhere in the back of the restaurant, a woman yelled for Buffy. She closed her hand around her apron and stood up, wincing at the ache in her lower back and whisking Faith's plate away with her.

Buffy followed Faith through a maze of back alleys, twitching a little. Faith had one up on the golden girl in this case. She knew Buffy'd hardly patrolled since they got to Frieda, and that she wasn't familiar with the behind the scenes action the way Faith was.

"You sure you know where you're going?" Buffy ducked through a patch of bushes curtaining the entrance to a vacant-looking parking lot.

"You don't?" Faith baited.

"Fine. I'm rusty on the stealth and inner compass stuff. You wouldn't survive ten minutes waiting tables."

"I'm sorry, B," Faith served up a playful dose of sarcasm. "Must be hell, all those plates. I'm trembling. Really."

"Hey, I make an honest dollar. What did you do all day?'

"Elbows." She supplied, dragging her palm across her stomach. "And my buck's as honest as yours. Now cool it. We're here."

Faith paused outside a worn steel door. The building around it was brick, cold looking, bars on the windows of all three floors. It looked entirely unlit from the street, but Faith knew there were lights on in there, a few. And black-out shades screwed into the window frames.

"What is this place?" Buffy hissed.

Faith punched a keycode into a dimly glowing box to the left of the door.

"Faith, I don't think--"

The door sounded a dull buzz, and Faith grabbed the handle, opening the steel maw just far enough to slip into pitch-blackness.

"Think you can find your way home, B?" Faith asked over her shoulder. When Buffy didn't answer, Faith clasped her wrist and tugged her inside. "Better stick with me then."

The door banged shut behind them. Faith slung an arm up to search the dark emptiness above her for the chain that would illuminate a bare bulb somewhere overhead. Before she could locate it, though, a strong, dry hand closed around her forearm.

"Faith?" The man asked. "You're late."

The yank-and-release of the chain sounded in the hallway. The tired light spread out, throwing shadows like graffiti up onto the bare, concrete wall.

"Sorry, Greg." Faith gestured back at Buffy, who was standing, arms crossed, against the door. "Had some extra shit to carry."

"You can't bring your girlfriends here, Faith." McGregor admonished, stiffening. "You know better."

"She's a Slayer," Faith explained. "The Slayer, actually. Source of the bloodline."

McGregor's face shifted, traces of interest and awe trickling over his features. It dried up almost immediately, though, and he was back to wary. "A Slayer she may be. But is she one of us?"

Faith turned back, cocked her head and gave Buffy a once-over. "Guess we'll find out."

The three of them—Buffy, Faith and this British guy—walked briskly though badly lit hallways. The hair on Buffy's neck was up on high alert. This was the dictionary definition of creepy, and Buffy mused to herself about whether the fact that Faith was involved in whatever this was made her more or less nervous.

Faith seemed at home. She and the Brit—Greg, had she called him?—were exchanging pleasantries: How was she feeling? Five by Five. Morning sickness still persisting? Comes and goes. Would she like a cup of tea? Naw, she's cool, but thanks for the offer.

Halfway up an enclosed stairwell, Faith asked Greg, "So. How are the girls?"

"Long day," Greg sighed back. "They all are, really. By afternoon I'm counting the minutes, it seems. Until you arrive." Buffy saw their eyes catch, just for a second, and then he was looking down and away, clearing his throat.

And then they were out of the stairwell, up on third. Buffy was immediately assaulted by various pounding noises, and a pair of random, muted screams, and the dense smell of sweat mixed with out-and-out fear.

"Faith." Buffy stopped short, clutched the hem of Faith's jacket. "You said I needed to come here to know what's going on. I'm here. And I'm not going any further until I get some answers.

Faith and Greg exchanged looks.

"Miss…" Greg prompts.

"Buffy. Summers. Vampire Slayer, circa 1997. Don't Miss me. Tell me what the hell kind of operation you're running here."

"Miss Summers. My office is just down this hall. If you'll join Faith and I there, you'll find me quite forthcoming, I assure you."

Buffy outlined the man with her eyes. He wasn't particularly young or old. Thirties maybe, boyish around the mouth. Hair was a nondescript brown, probably longer than was strictly allowed given his age, strands curling around his jaw. His pants were tweedish, but his shirtsleeves were rolled up and the top two buttons of his collar undone.

His faced seemed more creased than wrinkled.

Buffy pressed her lips together. "Fine," she conceded. "Let's go."

Her first reaction, gut reaction, was that the Council would never do such a thing. Not the old Quentin Travers Council, and not the new version she knew—via Giles—was forming in London to take its place.

No way would they hunt down innocent girls.

"Hard to hear, B. I know. But when has the Council had qualms about offing a Slayer they think might turn out to be a liability? I mean, hey." Faith held her arms out, offering herself as evidence.

"It was acceptable practice even when there was only one Slayer. The Council's common wisdom was that it was preferable to chance an undefended period of time—time during which the new Slayer would be called and trained—than to allow a potentially dangerous Slayer to live. Now it's an easier choice than ever. With thousands of Slayers activated worldwide…"

"They don't even have to stress about downtime. They're just pullin' weeds," Faith finished. She was sitting on the edge of the desk, a virtual skyline of paperwork behind her, one boot propped on the arm of Greg's chair.

Greg—McGregor Ward, if you wanted to get formal about it—had gone rogue from the new Council of Watchers a month ago, after they'd contracted a hit on a Slayer. The girl had been incarcerated prior to the mass calling, some kind of juvenile detention place in New Jersey. She made the Council's radar when she escaped by punching a hole in her concrete cell.

"They caught her quickly. Efficiently." Greg swallowed and downcast his eyes.

Faith curled her hand around his shoulder. "Girl was in for car theft."

For a minute, all Buffy could do was let it sink in. Of course it was real. Slayers had always been viewed as instruments rather than people in Council eyes. Controlling the Slayer—her life, her actions—had been their main M.O. from the beginning. The lengths they'd go to if they felt they were losing their hold were boundless.

And now there were hundreds, maybe thousands of Slayers. And the Council was facing one hell of a rebuilding year. All those stuffy Brits were probably quaking. And scared people had a tendency to do stupid, terrible things.

"Why are we here? If the Council's out for the kill, there are girls out there who need protection!" Buffy pushed out of the chair she'd been sitting in and grabbed for the door.

"Buffy." Faith slid down from the desk worked her way in front of the door. "You're right. They are out there. About fifty feet away out there."

"Here? How many?"

"Four, currently. We're working to locate others that may be targeted by the Council." Greg reached behind him and unearthed a small stack of files, which he handed to Faith.

"You want in, we could sure use the extra hands." Faith splayed a hand across her abdomen. "Kid's already slowing me down."

"I want in."

"Good. This is what we got on the girls who're already here. Medical records, case notes, family histories. Whatever we could get."

Buffy reached for the paperwork, but Faith withdrew, tucking them behind her forearm. "You need to know, B. These girls are different. They're not like the batch we trained back in Sunnydale."

"I'm sure I can handle four girls. I was a high school guidance counselor. This can't be that different."

"Suit yourself." Faith handed over the files, hint of a smile on her lips. "Greg and I have to make the rounds. Stay here and study up."

Greg rose from his chair, and Buffy dropped back into hers, already scanning the contents of the first file.

"Lock the door behind us," Faith instructed once Greg was out in the hallway. "And do not leave this office for any reason. You got me?"

"Got you," Buffy murmured absently, pulling the paper clip from a collection of notes.

She recognized the handwriting immediately.

Greg had the hook up on wicked good butterscotch candies. Butterscotch candies being something Faith hadn't given a shit about until she got knocked up. As they made their way to the other end of the hallway, the sucking sounds were the only noise. Faith hoped it meant the girls were beddy bye for the night.

"I have to be honest, Faith. I don't mean to doubt your judgment, but I'm not sure Buffy's right for this operation."

"Why's that, Greg? Because she's a priss?" Faith gave him her best look who's talking size up.

Greg rolled his eyes. "She's not willing to accept her limitations. Buffy's obviously out of her element at this point. Which wouldn't be an issue in and of itself, but she needs to know where her blind spots are."

"Thing about Buffy." Faith adjusted the sugary disc in her mouth. "She's gotta look all big and bad. It's like that thing, method acting? Where the guy in the football movie actually puts him self through spring training or whatever? If she doesn't think she can, she can't. Line of duty survival tactic."

"You seem to be able to admit your weaknesses."

"Well yeah, Greg. I mean, who's gonna buy that I'm perfect?"

Above them, the light bulb flickered and went out. Faith felt Greg's his hand lightly clasp hers, a point of contact in the dark, keeping tabs on what's important when things go a few shades more vulnerable on the quick.

It was funny, Faith thought, how her hand landed just below her belly button, flat as a shield.

It was like trying to read a shredded treasure map, piecing together all the little scraps of information about the occupants of what Faith had referred to during their earlier conversation as the Rouge Slayers Compound. Buffy's head was swimming with it all.

Or maybe just swimming with the fact that suddenly she had no idea who to trust. Because these notes, at least some of them, had been had written by Giles.

Is that what he was doing out there, what he was teaching Dawn? How to track down the bad Slayers so they could be taken care of? He'd put it delicately like that for her, too, give Dawn those somehow gently pensive eyes and explain that Some things just required taking care of.

Or was he telling her anything at all? Did Dawn even know she was out Carmen Sandiago-ing in order to help the council decide who among the new Slayers was fit to live?

These questions tangled with the uneven accounts of the four young women Buffy was trying to steady across her lap. It was a mess of a story, or more accurately, four messes or stories. Yes, each girl had a tidy brown expand-a-file, but the contents were as unseamed as litter. There were napkin notes. Torn photos. Unfinished thoughts. Lists with half the items crossed off, but none of the remainders interrelated in anyway Buffy could come up with.

Some of it was cold and hard, Xeroxes of medical records, for instance, or transcripts of legal conversations. There were memos with a symbol in the upper right-hand corner that Buffy knew to be the Council's mark, though there were no fancy titles or intricate logo incorporating the C.O.W. initials. They were way too fly-by-night for anything that obvious. And COW was a terrible acronym to have to rep anyway.

Occasionally, Buffy heard boots clomping down outside the door. Always just the one set. She couldn't picture that McGregor clomping anywhere. She imagined the two of them, doing something akin to patrolling together, while she was holed up alone, trying to catch the loop.

For a minute she let herself sink into the understanding that Faith had done this. Been the outsider, desperate to be fitted into the fight, buzzing with energy and the need to do right in the face of so damn much wrong.

Difference was, Faith had dragged Buffy through the night and into the deepest, most dangerous secret she had, vouching for her at the door and handing over an all-access pass inside an hour.

Buffy, on the other hand, hand crossed her arms and her heart into the best wall she'd been able to mortar together.

Shuffling the paper around, Buffy wondered: Had this always been the way? Faith saying yes while Buffy said no?

The screams outside the door slashed her thoughts. Files sliding to the floor, Buffy flipped the dead bolt and sped out into the hallway. Time had come, she decided, to get the lay of the fray.

Faith heard Sparks walling out from the shadowed end of the hallway. She mumbled something to Greg about getting a better light fix in this joint before turning on her heel, ready to sing for her supper.

Down at the other end, where the dingy fluorescents still cast a sick green light down from the spackled ceiling, Faith cussed out loud when she saw the door to Greg's office bang open. And yup, instant Buffy. Here she came to save the day. Or royally fuck it up.

Sparks was a transplant from Merry Ole, the first of Greg's saves. She was wailing and screeching, wanting out, alternately swearing her own death if they didn't free her and threatening theirs, her accent a throwback to Spike's. In fact, put Spike in a girly body and give her breath and a beating heart, and you'd pretty much have contestant number one on the isle of misfit chosen freaks.

"Buffy! Fall back!" Faith hollered, hauling ass down the long line of doors. But Buffy'd already kicked the door in, and Faith doubted anything she screamed was gonna match up to the way Sparks was laying it on.

Puffing a little in the doorway, Faith zoomed in on the Slayerific version of Girls Gone Wild. She could imagine exactly how it'd played out in the tiny span of time between Sparks' overture and Faith getting to her orchestra pit seat: Buffy had forced entry and found Little Miss Dynamite shackled and begging for release, which the golden Slayer had been all too anxious to grant. Buffy'd probably been thinking this whole operation was Devil's work at that point, that they were chaining girls to the wall for the hell of it. It's exactly the kind of thing Buffy was so fond of doing. Assuming the absolute worst about Faith.

This time, her grandiose assumptions had gotten her cornered with her arms over her head, Sparks beating on her like nothing. For a minute, Faith just watched, shaking her head and almost, almost grinning. Buffy had a knack for picking the hard way when things needed learning. And here there were once again, Faith blowing kisses from outside the classroom.

Greg came up behind Faith, his face a mess of worry. Before he could even begin to spew the verbal unraveling Faith knew was on the way, she cut him short.

"It's not that she can't win this. Believe me. Buffy's got this nailed. It's that she doesn't know if she's supposed to fight our girl."

"So you're just—"

"Just gonna let her get some hands-on education. It's the kind she likes best, anyway." She let her eyes settle on Greg. "All us Slayer-types do."

"How much…I mean…will she…"

Buffy came up suddenly then, eyes flashing on Faith's silhouette in the doorway. "What am I doing here?" She yelled, blocking a face-blow.

"Get her back down as gentle as you can, B," Faith replied, loud against the scuffle. "And don't take it personal. Our girl Sparks is short a few screws."

Once she had an agenda, Buffy executed it pretty damn nicely, getting one of Sparks' arms behind her back and then dropping her down onto her mattress with a sweep to the back of the knees. Greg stepped around Faith to help with the mechanics of refastening the shackles. Sparks spit a mouthful of blood in his face. Buffy pinned her neck, and eventually they got her back to where she'd been in the first place. Tucked nice and cozy into bed. All the way in.

"You wanna give her something?" Faith asked Greg, who was leading a stunned, mussed-up Buffy by the arm out of Sparks' room.

"Ativan maybe?" Greg's eyes rolled back as he tried to shuffle through his mental list of close-but-no-cigar drugs they'd tried on Sparks. "Let me look at the chart. I forget the side effects of the various Benzodiazepines." As they tooled back into the office, Greg busied himself looking for a specific clipboard on his disaster area of a desk.

"Benzo-what-now? Why is that girl in chains?"

Faith opened a first-aid kit and grabbed an insta-ice, tossing it to Buffy. "The eye," she explained. "Bloomin' already. You're not gonna want to have to explain that one at the diner tomorrow morning."

Buffy cracked the plastic packet and pushed the suddenly cold compress against her cheekbone. "Again I ask: Chains?"

"Told you to sit back and observe your first night in. You never did like taking direction though, huh?" Faith meant it in good fun, and she hoped Buffy's returned scowl had to do with the fact that her ass was freshly kicked. "Chain-girl is one Eugina Victor. Round here we call her Sparks, cuz, well, she's got a tendency to shoot off. She got the dream thing going pretty hardcore right after she got the call. Kinda put her over the edge. She was in a peds pysch ward in London when Greg here snatched her up. Council already had the hit ordered."

"And now, thanks to you two, she's got a bright, shiny future as a chandelier?"

"We're working on getting a good cocktail of medications going for her," Greg explained. "It wouldn't normally be such a challenge, but between the compliance issues and the Slayer metabolic rate…"

"The drugs work differently on us then on normal people. And even when we find something that seems to work out for her, she doesn't want to take it." Faith sat back in the office chair, hands folded over her belly.

"Does she understand that if she escapes, the Council will have her killed?" Buffy tossed the expired ice pack onto an over-flowing trashcan.

"That's the thing." Faith said, locating Greg's missing clipboard on the floor next to her chair and examining it for a second before handing it over. "She wants to die. She was hospitalized in the first place because—when the dreams heated up—she tried to slit her wrists. Her mom found her in the bathroom. All kinds of blood, but--"

"Not a scratch on the girl," Buffy finished.

"Bingo."

Around the apartment, they knocked, listened, opened. It was pretty much standard roommate operating procedure. If you didn't want the other person to come in, you made some qualifying sound.

If you were, say, topless in front of your full-length mirror examining your body's profile, you'd make some qualifying sound.

It was there, enough of a something to stop Buffy for a minute. It wasn't anything you'd suspect, and under clothes Buffy was sure no one would be able to tell the difference. But with just the flesh, already pulling a little to accommodate, Buffy easily outlined the rise below Faith's belly button in the mirror's reflection.

"Um, naked." Faith came out of her trance and crossed an arm over her breasts, busily trolling mounds of crumpled clothing for outfit material.

"I'm sorry." Buffy reached back for the door, her throat suddenly on the dry side. "I knocked, but…I'll just go until you're ready."

"Nothing you ain't got yourself." Faith shrugged and let her breasts go. They were full, like somebody hadn't quite stopped in time after Faith'd said when, and her nipples had a distinct duskiness to them. Faith had always had darker everything, but Buffy knew the rusty brown tint was outside the norm. "Don't bother me if it…Yo. Buffy."

The blush that came across her was dark enough to rival any part of Faith's body. Buffy felt it everywhere, and Faith's knowing smirk amplified it. She'd been caught checking Faith out. Or not…not checking, exactly, because it was really just a kind of fascination with pregnancy boobs, Our-Bodies-Ourselves once-over. Faith was holding her every bit accountable, though, and making no effort to cover up.

"Like 'em?" Faith glanced down. Buffy thought she was going to topple over into dirty laundry hell.

"Still getting used to them myself, but I gotta admit I'll be a little sorry when these bad girls are gone." Faith let it go, let Buffy off the hook, and dug for a bra. Buffy exhaled what she was sure must have been half the damn air in the apartment.

"So, you're…" Buffy exercised her jaw, the burn waving off of her as a chill came in to take its place. "You're not keeping the baby?"

"Nice thought, kinda. Robin's and everything. Like a legacy. But y'know, like you said. Faith patented disaster. And now, with Greg…"

"Yeah. You two seem close."

"We've got this thing going that really means something, y'know?" Faith pulled a black t-shirt—a guys black t-shirt, Buffy didn't fail to notice—over her head.

Buffy squatted down to perch on a milk crate. "I-I get that."

"Well yeah, B. Of course you do. You've always felt it, the Calling. Always known what it was for, what you were supposed to do with it." Faith pulled her mane out of the collar of the t-shirt and combed her fingers through it. "I just knew I rocked at violence."

Buffy felt like her script was short a few crucial pages. "The Calling?"

"This is my time now. These girls, protecting them, fuck, molding them into real Slayers. It's the gig you dream about, feeling like you've found your place in the world. I can't…doing this," Faith gestured to the miniscule rounding at her belly, now completely hidden by the over-sized shirt. "I can't do both. So I guess there's the choice."

"And you've made it."

"I've always been a loner. But some things…some times you get into something that's too much to handle all by yourself."

"But you're not all by yourself, Faith."

"Maybe not, maybe not now. But who knows what's coming up? What extreme apocalypse is gonna have all the Slayer-types a-running? You telling me you'd turn that down?"

"I-I never said I wouldn't." Buffy dropped her head, a sadness slouching around in her guts.

"You don't have to." Buffy felt Faith's fingers light under her chin, propping her face up until they were eye to eye. "It's cool. Better, if you want to get truthful about it. You could be giving me all sorts of lines about making this baby thing work. But if you were doing that, I wouldn't be talking to Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer. And right now, me, this operation, we need the Slayer more than the BFF, you dig?"

Buffy swallowed a sea of regret to make room for what had to be said. "I dig. And about the operation, we need more guns."

"What kinda guns you thinking about?"

"Couple of them. Locals. Faith, we need to bring Xander and Willow in on this. It's time."

Faith's bootlaces rustled through the silence as she tied them up tight. "Lot of liability," she finally answered.

"You're gonna need to recover for a little while after…and I can't fill your shoes at the Compound. Especially not with the diner job eating my days up, and we need that if we want to continue our luxurious fed and sheltered existence. The Compound needs more people."

"I'll think about it, B. But don't go playing telephone with the warm up band until you get a go from me. You got ideas about how to pull this off, I'm happy to hear 'em out. But don't forget whose shots these are when you're thinking about calling 'em. You're playing in my sandbox now."

Buffy nodded up at Faith, who was standing in front of her, taller than Buffy'd ever seen her stand before.

Morning sickness had stumbled into afternoon and eventually morphed into night sickness. Faith refused to stay home despite the discomfort. Discomfort being a deceivingly tidy term to describe the vomit-fest Faith's life was steadily becoming.

"S'cool, guys. I'll take a dive into the sea of paperwork, try an' get this office into some sort of presentable state. Don't want Xander and Willow to think we're fuck ups when they work their first shifts next week." There was a stiff nod, and Faith pushed herself up out of the chair she'd sprawled into as soon as they'd arrived.

They'd stopped on the way for bush-puking. Twice.

"Faith, I'd be more than happy to walk you home. As much as we rely on you around here, we function without your physical presence on occasion." Greg was stepping around piles of file folders in what looked like some deranged waltz, trying at least to get Faith back into a reclining position of some sort if she couldn't be convinced to take a night off.

"This isn't going to get any better until this gets better," Faith asserted, pointing at her belly. "Which means I'm gonna have to learn to cope, and you two are gonna have to quit treating me like a pansy ass who can't throw down should the need come up."

"Um, I think you could fall down," Buffy assessed, eyebrows raised.

"Whateves. Greg, take her to meet Boo. I'm sure they'll have loads to talk about."

"Boo?" Buffy parroted. "As in scary ghost?"

"She wishes. You ever run into kids, like back in high school, who were obsessed with death? All black, lots of eyeliner, maybe a little lusty on the vampire end of things?"

Buffy thought of Chantarelle-cum-Lily-cum-Anne. "Yeah. I met one or two of those. They actually wanted to be turned. It was way creepsville."

"Right. So imagine what happens if one of your standard issue wanna-vamps gets the Call."

"Oh God." Buffy rolled her eyes.

"Pretty much." Faith handed Buffy a single sheet of paper. It was a condensed life story, the likes of which Greg had typed up for each of the girls one night after Buffy'd said something about the British always droning on and on without ever getting to the point. "Her given name's Patricia Williams. She asked to be called Ravenetta. We compromised on Boo."

"You compromised?" Buffy asked skeptically. "Compromised like she was into it, or compromised like funny on the goth girl that's gonna get me socked in the nose when I use it to greet her?"

Faith considered. "She's more of a clothesliner. Neck thing, I'm thinking," She was looking around for somewhere to file the sheet Buffy'd handed back to her. "Keep your hands up. You'll be fine. Besides, you should have this one memorized by now."

"What one?"

"The one about the girl who crushes out on vampires."

"Look, I'm not saying vampires aren't interesting. It's natural that, as a Slayer, you'd want the inside scoop. Knowing all there is to know about them is a tool to help keep you alive, which is basically the whole point. Well, that and killing demons."

"How can you want to kill them, though? They're so beautiful."

Buffy's sigh was so big it blew her hair out of her face. This back-and-forth had been going on for awhile now. And Boo—or whatever it was you wanted to call this girl—wasn't violent and whacked-out like Sparks, or the epitome of stand-off-ish, like Trudy, she was almost harder to crack. She was talking, debating, getting in a good point here and there.

And what was Buffy supposed to say? Stay away from them? They're all ruthless killers who want your soul on the next train out?

"Look, did we forget the instinct part when we called you? That spell was kind of a last ditch thing. We didn't, like, do a practice round."

"Her instincts are totally intact," Faith walked into to the room as approached where Boo and Buffy sat facing each other on the bed, apparently feeling better. "They're just a little more like yours than like mine."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Buffy looked up at Faith indignantly. She looked tired.

"Boo, Buffy's having a hard time doing the talky thing with you because she's not ready to admit that she knows exactly where you're coming from."

Boo's face registered the information one-hundred-and-ten percent, like a flood of interest where Buffy'd just been staring at a dam for the past half hour.

"Faith, that's…Boo, she's not being accurate. Don't, it's not…"

"Boo," Faith continued pointedly, "Buffy's always bought into this Slayer-vamp connection. She's gone through some next level shit, shit that's taught her about the little piece of every Slayer that is a demon, and that feels the pull of other demons. She's also never been afraid to seek out allies in vampires, and has…well, let's just say she's worked closely with a couple of 'em in the past in the name of saving humanity from a world-wide ass-kicking."

"You've worked with vampires?" Boo was astonished. "What was it like? What were they like?"

"I don't really think my personal—"

"Maybe you don't think it has relevance, B, but it does. All these girls have when it comes to their Slayer history lesson is you and me, our stories. Greg wasn't around long enough in Merry Ol' to learn too much outside the fact that there was a sick 'em crew out after Slayers who didn't fit the cookie cutter. We don't have the diaries, the library. It's just your head and mine."

"Give us a minute, okay Boo?" Buffy said, her voice a strained fake-sweet. She grabbed Faith by the wrist and pulled her into the hallway.

"There's stuff in my past, vampire stuff, I'm not even ready to think about, mush less wax poetic over with a complete stranger."

"Not stranger. Sister."

"Doesn't change anything. I come here. I do my best. I work hard, just like I always have, and I'll do whatever I have to keep these girls alive and out of harm's way. I'll teach them to fight, I'll go over the lineage, the spell, whatever. But my personal life, my love life? Off limits.

Faith gave a small chuckle. "How do you hold so much in that tiny little body of yours anyway, B? I always wondered. Because with you, there's so much that's off limits it's hard to even have a conversation with you about anything beside the weather and the Sox. And you don't have any commentary on the second point, so I might as well be talking to myself."

"I'm a warrior, Faith. You said it yourself, you need the Slayer, not the cutesy best friend who passes notes between training sessions."

"I need the girl who gets the job done. And here, with these girls, Buffy, they're scared shitless and they feel like their completely on their own. They don't just need the text book back story, they need family, community, a reason to fight. You should get that better than anyone. You always had…" Faith stopped and swallowed. When she looked away, Buffy suspected, no, knew there were a few tears washing down Faith's face.

"If I'm the one who had the family, what makes you the expert, anyway?"

"Sometimes you take what you got for granted. You don't realize how important it is, how much you need it, till you don't have it. The hole in these girls where the love's supposed to go? I got a matching one. You might know about family, but I know about that."

Buffy wanted to…she didn't know what. No, she did. She wanted to take Faith in her arms. Get her hands in Faith's hair and tell her it would be okay, that she wasn't alone anymore.

And then she realized, even more than Faith, that's what the baby Slayers needed. Buffy's head spun at the concept, at whether or not she had that to give. She'd never so much been the mothering type.

"Buffy," Faith had scrubbed her face and turned back to look Buffy in the eye. "This is my deal. Your cards, on the table. That's how it's gotta be if this is gonna work. It's up to you to figure out how to pull it off."

Buffy took a deep breath. This was General Faith talking now. Which meant there wasn't room anymore for argument. Just action.

"So she's just, I mean, Will? Do you remember that time back in Sunnydale when you had the vamptastic doppleganger?'

"Ohhh yeah. Sheesh. Really? Did she talk like she was on mild sedatives?" Willow bit large into her doughnut.

"Yes," Buffy answered. "The girl who's actually on the sedatives though? Energizer Bunny."

"Man," Xander sighed around his cream puff. "Buff, are you sure we're ready for this. I mean, I'm for Slayers. It's kind of a once you pop, you can't stop thing for me."

Willow shot him the most eyes-y eyes ever.

"Poor choice of words, but you get the gist. Slayers. I'm behind them. I don't need to know much more than they save the world, and by proxy my own personal ass, day after day. If I can lend a hand, I'm there." He crammed the final bit of his pastry into his mouth and gave his fingers a good licking clean. It's just that I don't know if my hand is so lendy in this particular sitch."

The drifty thing between she and Xander and Willow had gotten out of hand once they'd moved to Frieda. Between the three of them and Faith, they'd all lost the person they'd been clinging hardest too by the final Sunnydale days. Faith and Buffy had paired off to the do the support thing, and Willow and Xander had more or less done the same.

Buffy suspected that the closeness, if that's what you wanted to term it, that had developed between she and Faith was a little a little bit responsible for all the distance. Even after the water and the bridge and the going underneath part, there was still some Scooby-Faith tension. Buffy joining in on Faith's top secret op without including Will and Xan hadn't helped.

Faith was on board with the total Scoob immersion now though, and in her current conditions—which would be booting or snoozing—she didn't so much have a wealth of options. As much as she hated to confess it, Buffy didn't have the same kind of natural ability with these girls as Faith did. It was like Buffy walked into the room and they stiffened, like they were about to face off with an enemy. More than once it had brought a sting to Buffy's surface, the memory of the night Faith had taken the Sunnydale Potentials out to the Bronze to work off some stress. It wasn't that Buffy couldn't stand behind her own assertion that work had necessarily superceded play during that time. It was the idea that it had never even occurred to her to view the girls as anything other than soldiers. She'd never gotten around to considering what they might need, just what was needed from them.

Faith struck the balance Buffy was still learning about. She somehow managed to keep slaying a serious business, but didn't need to water down the souls of the inductees to dig the point in good and hard. And the damage piece? Buffy often felt like being the Slayer had weathered her nearly to the point of wreaking her, breaking her down, but she'd come into the ordeal more or less whole. Faith had one up on her there. She knew what it was like to break pieces into more pieces and still have something whole at the end of the day.

Hell, every once in awhile, Faith still managed to throw her head back and laugh like roaring. Buffy's best attempts were stifled, snuffling reflections. She realized it was a good defense, staying unattached. More than once it had saved people's lives.

But the Lone Ranger gig also had backfire capacity, the burn of which Buffy had experienced regularly.

"I know how you guys feel." Buffy spoke across the plastic lid on her mocha. "Sometimes I'm sure I'm in this thing way over my head, and I'm really not used to…" She sighed. There was no easy way to say it without losing face. "I'm not used to being a worker bee. I think I have mucho new insight on what it must have been like for you guys back in Sunnydale."

"Well we can show you all those ropes. There's not really all that much too 'em, actually. You'll need to work on your nod-and-smile. That one comes up a lot." Willow nodded, with all the seriousness of someone who'd just made some vital observation about apocalypse aversion. Buffy almost laughed at how adorable Willow was, the downy soft place she'd missed while it had been mostly just Faith's raw edges, featherbed versus cinderblock.

And then, thankfully before she could break out the giggles, Buffy realized that Willow, and Xander too, now that she looked over at him across the café table, were serious-faced for a reason. They weren't making jokes. They were providing valuable training, reciting skills they had that Buffy didn't and now, for the first time, needed access too.

They were telling her about what they'd been doing all those years to contribute to the mission.

"Thanks guys. I don't know what I'd do without my Xan-and-Will-shaped friends."

"If I were wearing one, there'd be hat tippage," Xander replied, and Willow bobbed her head up and down in agreement. "Now," Xander continued, leaning in over the table like it was about to go all top secret in the Freida Bake'n'Take, "Tell us, for real. What's this Boo chick like?"

Buffy was belly down on the couch, diner uniform fitted around her body. It was quarter to six in the evening. Faith had run over to the Compound just as Buffy was getting home from her day job an hour before. Something to do with Sparks being extra unruly.

Buffy had volunteered to be the one to head over when it came through the wire that veteran Slayer back up was needed, but Faith had taken one look at her and pointed to the couch.

"Been sleeping all day. Belly's behaving itself best I can hope for. I'm up for this, way more up than you are. Get some rest. We'll need you full strength tonight. I'm with you about Xander and Willow getting their feet wet, but Compound always gets stirred up when you toss the new element in. Girls are already being asked to take so much…"

"So much what?" Buffy was already gravitating to wards the couch, her eyes stingingly tired.

"On Faith."

Buffy met Faith's eyes for a tight moment, and as droopy as they were, the signal still transmitted. There was trust, and then their was reaching your hand out into a vast blackness because you didn't have any other choice.

It was coming up more often for them. Common ground like that.